A woman in Anchorage who owns a pet-sitting service had a bumper sticker on her Jeep that I was especially fond of: “Support the troops, not the policy.” I was talking with a close friend recently in email. He and I mainly agreed on what Memorial Day remembrance should be about, and not about. He mentioned the Vietnam war, and the [miss-attributed] harsh criticism too many people in this country at the time had for the returning troops from that “conflict overseas” (recalling John Prine).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I replied that this miss-attributed criticism heaped on returning troops was by people who didn’t understand the kernel of wisdom in that bumper sticker. Especially where their criticism targeted conscripts (~1\/3 of all troops who fought in Vietnam) – I mean, how stupid and insensitive were those people. A man is forced to go to war to face possible death, or else face jail time, and he’s <\/em>the target of your scold?! Talk about blaming the victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I proposed that maybe Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day should be collapsed into a single holiday of remembrance. If the point is to be grateful to the men and women who made a huge sacrifice to protect our freedoms, then let’s remember them all, both the fallen and the one’s fortunate enough to have returned home alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or, keep the days of remembrance separate, as they are now, but maybe follow up Memorial Day with a companion celebration of raucous contempt for past leaders who got us into foreign wars, frequently on false premises (looking at you McNamara*<\/strong> and Bush), that had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the freedoms of individual Americans. Call it: Anti-Jingoism<\/span> Day. So that future Americans should never, forget, the folly. Give all Americans Anti-Jingoism day off from work, except for employees of Faux News and other like-minded hawks – their punishment is to write on a blackboard one thousand times the words of that bumper sticker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *<\/strong> Hat-tip for the confession of folly in his memoir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A woman in Anchorage who owns a pet-sitting service had a bumper sticker on her Jeep that I was especially fond of: “Support the troops, not the policy.” I was talking with a close friend recently in email. He and I mainly agreed on what Memorial Day remembrance should be about, and not about. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10466"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10473,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10466\/revisions\/10473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}