On Memorial Day, we remember those who made the greatest sacrifice, but seldom acknowledge those who didn’t: returning from battlefields brain damaged or missing limbs, to families changed forever.
On Veterans Day, we wave our flags and parade in shrinking uniforms celebrating those too often forgotten into, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, to homelessness, underemployment and VA neglect.
On December 7th and September 11th, we remember sneak attacks, but ignore our use of nuclear bombs; bells ringing, we weep silently, but praise preemptive invasion into a nation with no 9/11 connection because, the world is a better place without its tyrannical leader, while failing to indict our own.
Whether, passing, loss, passed away, gone home, transference, moving on, crossed over, Assumption or Ascension, some rise above death while others crumble under the debris of denying the truth about death’s war toll on the living.
The few necessary wars, American Revolution, 1812, Civil War, WWII, ISIS a maimed veteran can count on one remaining hand. Still we praise leaders who systematically launch Americans off to fight for their country, while counting the rewards of sacrificing our youth, on the ensconced altar of Corporatism.
Truth Decay is at its most devastating when denied the drill of eyes wide open, to being cast as pawns in the chess games of the obscure. Sadly, the tragically tarnished, so proud of family members dying for their country, are consistent customers and constituents of the very puppeteers who profit most from war’s dead or alive.
It’s not national pride that is the enemy, but rather those who manipulate the Constitution to misdirect the valor of proud patriots, until like a tattered Old Glory with weather faded colors, they become a forgotten symbol denied truth with each deposit of war’s perpetual blood, sweat and tears.
Most often death is not quick to diminish our memories, fracture our relationships or darken our doorstep, for death is not the instrument of destruction – that would be man’s inferno grab for power, breeding insatiable need, for more.
For the suits on The Street tugging at five sided Foggy Bottom and congressional bottom feeders, it’s the thrill of rats racing to turn race against race, against being united, against peace – all for the high risk, of risking others, they take another spin at the wheel of Too Big to Jail.
Death, like new life, comes with the tide of rigged oil spills erupting across land and sea like volcanic lava, coal ash and tornadoes reshaping life and land.
Death can be the pot of gold at the end of a Middle Class rainbow for the wealthiest We Built That.
Death is in the end of day last call, of too many Americans, ignored:
• Medicare refusing to cover cost of hearing loss
• Congress keeping comparatively limited funding for Alzheimer's research at previous levels, proud they didn’t Sequester it
Is it not more honorable to honor our dead by…
• Protecting Social Security for spousal survivors
• Finding a cure for those living maimed by war and underfunded NIH research
If a mind is a terrible thing to waste, then aren’t the lives of veterans, firefighters, climate change scientists, military gays and doctors defending a woman’s right to choose?
And how about unarmed minorities dying by police, for sitting in their cars, making eye contact, playing with toy guns in the park or bicycling while black.
Death comes to America when patriotic phonies use religion to convince We the People that flag waving is enough, while in some neighborhoods, gun salutes mean mass incarcerations and unprosecuted murder of children in city parks, and on public streets -- to protect the wealthy few from losing their international power over our nation.