How has your weekend gone? Since Wednesday I've been to 5 parades, seen the turn outs and heard the speeches. Today in Albany I heard Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speak at a parade where the Grand Marshalls were the five Nardolillo Brothers of Albany, who all joined the Marine Corps within a twenty-year period. While I listened to all of the exhortations to remember the fallen and the wounded, and to honor their sacrifice, I started to ponder the paradox of War - and Peace.
No sane person celebrates war. What we do is recognize the quality of character in which people choose to put their own bodies in harm's way, to defend what they love and believe in. War calls for great national effort, a coming together for a dread purpose, shared sacrifice in the face of the possibility of losing everything as a people and a nation - or so it should when war is fought for reasons that will bear the light of day and the judgment of history. Wars are fought for other reasons too, reasons that play to the worst side of human nature.
But what of Peace? (more)
It is the paradox of War that this worst of all human cooperative efforts can be a stage where the best of human nature can be displayed. It is the paradox of Peace that the worst so often seems to rise to the fore. We need to take Peace and Justice as seriously as we take War, for it is possible to lose in Peace as surely as it possible to lose in War.
Gillibrand spoke of the fact that many of those who went off to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan recently have come home to a very different America. Economic collapse means too many of our returning veterans are coming home to unemployment and other problems. Gillibrand noted that while the national unemployment rate is around 10%, for veterans it's at 20%.
We've heard about the horrific costs of the war, not just the money or the destruction but the loss of innocent life as well, whether by accident or intent. And while Gillibrand is trying toget veterans help with unemployment, the rest of the country may be out of luck. Alan Grayson has detailed how we are losing the peace even as we pony up to keep the war going.
Meanwhile, innocent lives are lost as matter of course in the normal course of business. Destruction is taking place on a scale that rivals the waste of war through corporate incompetence and the never-ending drive for profit.
The American military is a paradox all by itself. An organization which is inherently authoritarian in nature nonetheless serves to uphold and defend Democracy as its raison d'etre. However well or badly that goes, it is a form of betrayal when that effort is rendered useless by petty demagogues who seek political advantage heedless of the cost or the damage it does to the political process. The unity of purpose and the mutual respect observed in War can not stand the partisan maneuvering for advantage that robs Peace of meaning.
A breakdown in the very idea of America seems to be taking place as so many institutions fail to do their job and the worst tendencies seem to become the new normal. Here's an excerpt from an interview about the book "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" with the author Charles P. Pierce
Question: What is the most dangerous aspect of Idiot America?
Charles P. Pierce: The most dangerous aspect of Idiot America is that it encourages us to abandon our birthright to be informed citizens of a self-governing republic. America cannot function on automatic pilot, and, too often, we don't notice that it has been until the damage has already been done.
Question: Is there a voice or leader of Idiot America?
Charles P. Pierce: The leaders of Idiot America are those people who abandoned their obligations to the above. There are lots of people making an awful lot of money selling their ideas and their wares to Idiot America. Idiot America is an act of collective will, a product of lassitude and sloth.
Question: What is the difference between stupidity and glorifying ignorance?
Charles P. Pierce: Stupidity is as stupidity does, to quote a uniquely stupid movie. It has been with us always and always will be. But we moved into an era in which stupidity was celebrated if it managed to sell itself well, if it succeeded, if it made people money. That is “glorifying ignorance.” We moved into an era in which the reflexive instincts of the Gut were celebrated at the expense of reasoned, informed opinion. To this day, we have a political party—the Republicans—who, because it embraced a “movement of Conservatism” that celebrated anti-intellectualism is now incapable of conducting itself in any other way. That has profound political and cultural consequences, and the truly foul part about it was that so many people engaged in it knowing full well they were peddling poison.
emphasis added
What I'm writing about here is not news to anyone who frequents Daily Kos I'm sure. But it struck me that while we spend one day a year remembering the sacrifices of those who fell in War, it would be just as well to remind ourselves that Peace requires no less dedication, integrity, and effort if it is not to be lost. The catalyst for this diary came tonight when I ran across a piece by author James Grady which reminded me that what we have today has not always been thus. It's a tribute to a man whose example seems to come from some strange foreign land now. I'll excerpt the beginning here, and strongly recommend reading the entire thing.
Of all the chiseled stones standing silent watch over us in these uncivil and dangerous political times, this Memorial Day consider one modest white-marble slab on a green hillside at Arlington National Cemetery:
Michael Joseph Mansfield
PVT
U.S. Marine Corps
Mar 16 1903
Oct 5 2001
Private Mansfield fell not in battle like so many Americans, nor did he endure combat's scars. He lived to know his grandchildren and died at 98 in Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In these MySpace and "American Idol" days, he ordered that his headstone in Arlington disclose no more personal glory than that honor shared by millions of Americans in holding the lowest rank in the United States Marine Corps.
Not that he was America's ambassador to Japan.
Not that he was a United States senator from his beloved Montana.
Not that he was our longest serving majority leader of the Senate through unpopular wars, terrorism, battles for equality, American rivers catching on fire, filibusters and financial furies, mushroom cloud nightmares, clashes of church and state, guns and taxes, and the crimes of Watergate.
He preferred to be called Mike, worked as a mucker in the mines of Montana, a job that is as it sounds, and what's tragic this Memorial Day is how at the end of his life, he saw America's democracy that he'd fought to conduct in a civil and respectful fashion morph into sound-bite nastiness, TV-shouted slogans, Internet smears, and blind faith ideology tempered by gotcha & gimme narcissistic power grabs.