Memorial Day 2023

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day for remembering the people who died while serving in the country's armed forces. And I want to honor two of my own relatives who fought Fascism...one died in World War I and the other fought valiantly in World War II.

I am sure my relatives are rolling in their graves, after fighting and dying to make sure that Fascism did not spread around the world and to the United States. That was a time when Republicans thought Fascism was a bad thing, unlike today when they support dangerous regimes in Russia and China. I know both of these men (one of them an Italian immigrant), if they were alive now, would be appalled and outraged that Fascism is being institutionalized by the Republican party, and welcomed and encouraged by its supporters. My relatives died so the very thing that is happening now, wouldn't. And it makes me infinitely sad and frustrated that these men seemingly died for nothing...and that segments of the population of this country support the kind of nationalism, totalitarianism, disdain for facts and humanity, and suppression that are the hallmarks of Fascism.

 
I honor my brave relatives and all who fought Fascism. I truly hope that we can fight this frightening movement to the right and ensure that they all died for the noble, uplifting principle of humanism.

"We are always at war. We spend twice as large a share of our GDP on the military as the world does in general. It’s the longest sustained period of open-ended combat in our nation’s history. And yet the country as a whole is barely affected. We have halftime ceremonies honoring the heroes. We let them get onto commercial airlines earlier, but we don’t think seriously about what they’re doing, the missions we’re asking them to undertake.

And, as a result, in my view, we have embarked on a series of unwinnable wars. We call people heroes and then send them to do things they can’t do....

When I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s and then older in the ’70s, American pop culture reflected a country familiar enough with its military to make fun of it at times. You had shows like 'Gomer Pyle,' or 'Hogan’s Heroes,' or 'McHale’s Navy.'

You had works of art like 'South Pacific' or novels like 'Catch 22' and even movies like 'MASH,' respected the importance of the military and the important things it did that were heroic in the large scale, like World War II, but it was still made of real people with their real foibles.

But we — now we have started to have this artificially reverent view of the military that’s also distant and disengaged."
--James Fallows