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Memorial Day’s shifting meanings

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I can't remember how long ago it was, but part of an Easter homily has really stuck with me over the years.  The priest remarked that while we've all experienced Easter before, each year is different because each year we are different.   Easter as a child is different from Easter as an adult, or a parent, or a grandparent.  This of course applies to other holidays as well, and it's particularly true of a secular one like Memorial Day.

It has shifted a great deal in my lifetime, not just in terms of how I approach it, but how society approaches it as well.

As a child, it was about picnics, maybe a family reunion, trips to the beach and so forth.  As a young adult increasingly involved in politics, it meant parades and speeches (I became quite good at speechwriting).

The coming of war changed it still further, and celebrations became more strident, no doubt a result of the fresh graves arriving in the veterans' cemeteries.

As the wars faded in importance (and casualties lost their political potency and became less newsworthy), ambitious and amoral politicians began trying to tear open the origins of the holiday, seeking to overthrow the post-Civil War reconciliation for fun and profit.

Most recently, the wars have ended in American strategic defeat, and the same sacrifices that were lauded years ago for spreading freedom and democracy are seen as wasteful and useless.

In retrospect, one can't help but wonder how much of the Peace Movement was ever sincere.  I knew people in it, and while I thought them misguided, I felt that they honestly abhorred violence.  Yet many of them now demand that Ukraine and Russia fight to the death over obscure bits of geography most people have never heard of.  I've yet to see any meaningful peace marches for that.   Oh, there are big demonstrations against Israel, but demanding a nation be completely obliterated isn't what I would call a "peaceful solution."

This Memorial Day therefore finds us in a strange place.  The day is the same, but we have changed greatly.

  1. CN Avatar
    CN

    “In retrospect, one can’t help but wonder how much of the Peace Movement was ever sincere. I knew people in it, and while I thought them misguided, I felt that they honestly abhorred violence.”
    Most of them abhorred the idea of having to serve. While being a couple years too young to have contemporaries drafted, I did have neighbors and cousins caught in this dilemma. And I recall the day they did the annual 1969-72 draft lottery and all the anxiety and horror. Should we have another situation like this, I would hope that college deferments NOT take place at all.
    Today, we talk about sacrifice, but in many cases the sacrifice was more of a burnt offering, but at very least, unwilling. I also suspect that there will be even less willingness to serve to benefit Ukraine money laundering and mineral policy (also see Niger), and I don’t think any administration will send “boots on the ground” to Israel. If conscription comes again, it will be uglier this time out
    But back to Ukraine/Russia. I recently watched a video in which some EU woman was talking about how breaking up Russia was “not such a bad reason” for continued conflict. But I’m certain she would not want the EU broken, and God forbid we break up Vanguard, Blackrock, Microsoft or Amazon. If breaking up a conglomeration of groups in Russia is OK, then why not the US and Canada as well?

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  2. A.H. Lloyd Avatar
    A.H. Lloyd

    I’m not referring to the Vietnam-era movement, but the No Blood For Oil/Give Peace A Chance marches circa 2003-4. There were awful movies and lame TV shows that denigrated the war effort, and now no one seems to care. My point is that there no longer seems to be ANY philosophical objection to war so long as we can make a buck on it and claim some higher moral cause. Pope Francis offered one and was immediately denounced (by his ideological allies, no less) as a Russian shill.
    One can say that things would change if US troops were getting killed, but they are getting killed, the media is just going along with the government cover-up. Losses are small, so no one cares.
    Well, not no one. Prospective recruits care, and so do troops that realize they could be deployed, killed and their family lied to about what happened, which is our military is melting away – another story we don’t hear much about.
    Ironically, we’re approaching the Hippie ideal of throwing a war where no one shows up.

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