Comments on: Memorial Day

By: Quin

Quin — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:01:19 +0000

Nice idea, Antigone. I also liked the suggestion that we spend the day rolling a boulder up a hill to watch it roll down again, over and over, until we drop. Me, as I said, I think it would the perfect time to meditate on all of the victims of war. Rachel, here's hoping your sister stays on the domestic end of things.

By: Rachel II

Rachel II — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:29:52 +0000

My sister recently joined the National Guard and I’ve been waiting to see if my opinion would change, if I would start to become knee-jerk supportive out of deference to my sister/fear of my sister’s death. But if anything, I was even more pissed off on Memorial Day because I will want my sister alive and making moral decisions more than I would ever want an anonymous holiday in honor of her wasted life after a few months/years of doing horrendous things to other people.

By: Antigone

Antigone — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:00:50 +0000

I sometimes wonder if we’re doing this wrong, on Memorial day, as if we’re glorifying the dead as opposed to remembering. War is disgusting and tragic, but instead of showing that, we get nice speeches about heroics and people decked out in dress uniforms and colorful ribbons. I sometimes wonder if it shouldn’t be speeches about filth and disease, and people should wear muddy fatigues.

By: Quin

Quin — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:54:05 +0000

Revere the dead. All of them. The soldiers, the victims, the soldier victims, the women, the children, the men. If we all, as Americans, thought of all of them, and wept for all of them, and put up monuments to all of them... Well, once again, I've invented a fantasy land. But one that's nice to imagine.

By: Quin

Quin — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:38:53 +0000

Ah, and with that I believe I’ve put my finger on it. I have no problem with revering the troops; I think we should. Because I want us to revere everyone. It’s when we are selective with our reverence that the problems begin.

By: Quin

Quin — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:36:28 +0000

There is something that bothers me slightly on this post, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. After all, I was being careful not to confuse an amorphous support of “The Troops” and with support for individual people who are soldiers.

Maybe it’s because, in a post named “Memorial Day”, I seem to have missed the point of the occasion, which is to remember the dead, right?

But really, I haven’t. I am not at all meaning to say “Don’t remember the dead soldiers”, but rather “Do remember the soldiers– and remember everyone else, too.”