Memorial Day 2024

It’s Memorial Day weekend. Traffic today is getting worse on the highways as people head off to wherever. The weather this weekend feels more like March (cool and wet) than late spring/early summer.

Big-box stores are advertising their holiday weekend sales.  Some even pause to mention ‘remembering all those who served’.   I suppose they have their Veterans Day and Memorial Day sales copy mixed up.

Again as in past years, peace is nowhere to be found – the United States is supporting the ongoing conflict  in Ukraine (with no Ukrainian victory possible) and feeding weapons to Israel as it destroys the civilian population in Gaza. In the Pacific, its efforts to “contain” China over Taiwan have ominous long-term consequences.

The country is led by imbeciles.

The current president is a doddering old fool who barely seems to know where he is;  while his vice president causes everyone to hope and pray the president survives to the end of his term. His opponent in the 2024 election is a narcissistic and petulant man-child who has no real principles except as related to himself. And yet, except at the margins, they both believe in the same thing: more war, undying support for Israel, and either money handouts or tax cuts for the rich.

The Secretary of State – the nominal top diplomat – is seen playing a guitar with a  Kiev rock band in front of a wall of Nazi paraphernalia. The Speaker of the House is a religious crazy. The rest of Congress is full of grifters, idiots, and religious maniacs.

They, and the media that support them, fan division and suspicion among the citizenry.

At this time of political division in this country, Lincoln’s closing of his first inauguration speech comes to mind:

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

And as this is Memorial Day, we have to remember those souls who lost their lives in conflicts – both good and bad. They served – some willingly, some not – but they did their duty and paid  the last full measure of devotion – as Lincoln said at Gettysburg.

As a country, we can no longer look to “leadership” from the top for the problems we face. We have to embrace the notion of an involved citizenry. It is a call to service to something larger than our own narrow interests. It is the best way to honor them.

Remember the war dead.  This Memorial Day, as always I remember my uncle, Charles Rossi, killed in 1945 on Okinawa; and an older brother of an elementary school classmate: Joe Spinnicchia, killed in 1969 in Vietnam.

 

Author: Tom

2 thoughts on “Memorial Day 2024

  1. If “the country is led by imbeciles,” I submit the fault lies primarily with a sizable portion of the electorate, who either are too lazy to vote or can’t be bothered to research the positions of the candidates in order to make informed voting decisions.

    1. I don’t disagree. Every election I’m astounded the same mediocrities keep being sent back to Congress – by the same electorate that expresses its disdain for Congress. And Presidential level politics is no better – in 2024, the best offered are two 80 year olds?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.