It's funny how conservative you get over time. I've come to prefer "Armistice" to "Veteran's" to label the day, maybe because "Memorial Day" has been taken over as another day to have a spasm of declaring ourselves free because we resemble Rome (with its standing army) more than we resemble Athens (with its citizen soldiers called to battle only when the need arose).
Paths of Glory is the story for today. The story of a French general ordering a suicide charge by his own troops, and then issuing a order to shell his own troops to get them out their trenches and into the fusillade of machine gun fire that would surely cut them down like so many blades of grass.
That's the movie for today. "A voice says, 'Cry!" And I say: "What shall I cry? All flesh is grass...."
Which is the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Call the names. Call the names. Call the names.
Peace was made unpatriotic in the United States during the cold war.
ReplyDeleteAnthony McCarthy
Patriotism in this country (USA) has morphed into fighting, pre-emptive striking, spending on death weaponry, and shopping. It is marketing, selling, always turning everything possible into a commodity to be traded, to make someone somewhere some money. The purveyors of this mind-set have totally forgotten that all flesh is grass, if indeed they were ever aware of it. This culture is completely and utterly serving Mammon. We need prophets but anyone who has such a voice is silenced by fear and violence masquerading as Patriotism. It is very hard to hear the voices crying in the wilderness; but it is good to find this blog and read some of them.
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