Memorial Day

(photo by Ernst Haas)

Nobody in the entire photo is looking at the photo within the photo of the dead hero, the poor woman’s missing son. Last Memorial Day I wrote a post “Name Me a War That Was Worth It”. My belief is that 60 year olds should never send 18 year olds to be killed. Of course the 18 year olds are heroes. Nobody disputes that.

And of course the government convinces them and lies to them that they are killing others, killing civilians, killing other 18 year olds, killing and maiming each other, all for a good cause.

It’s never for a good cause and for every single war you can always trace it back to who is making the most money. Back to the Civil War (the North wanted its share of the Southern cotton tariffs) and even back to the Revolutionary War (the myth of “taxation without representation” and now, 240 years later, I am taxed Federal, State, City, Sales, Luxury, Property, and god  knows how many other places.)

But I wrote that post and put it here and also on the most pro-peace site I could find. I never got so many  hate-comments. Most of them came from the pro-peace site. In general, people talk their good theories, but when you touch the chord of hate inside of them, that’s when their real crap comes out. And it stinks.

In the above photo, everyone is looking at the returning hero. Even the mother who is holding up the picture of her son, the hero who died in the war, desperately hoping that someone has seen him. Not a single person is looking at the photo of the dead 18 year old. The real heroes are forgotten. The real histories are made up mythologies. The “good” reasons always hide the real reasons.

The above photo is a picture within a picture. It’s a photo for all of us, where we live our lives being fooled and hypnotized, while searching for the real heroes who might lie dormant inside of us. We mostly die without ever finding them.

 

blog comments powered by Disqus