A Memorial Day of Whine and Roses

It is Memorial Day today in the U.S.

The holiday originally was called Decoration Day and was a day of remembrance for Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include soldiers who died in any war.

As always, I’ve hung an American flag outside of Kiko’s House this Memorial Day.

As always, I will keep the day simple. I’ll have a go on my mountain bike after I post this and probably watch some baseball later, but that will be about it.

As always, I will remember that freedom of speech is not protected by journalists like myself but by the men and women who have given their lives to defend American values.

As always, I will feel a sadness over loved ones and friends who will not be with us this Memorial Day because of their sacrifices. Nick Tuke, Chuck Callanan, Jim Mullen, Mike Tames and Bob Layton. And the men who recently perished in the Iron Triangle of Iraq — Christopher Murphy, Anthony Schober, Joseph Anzack, Daniel Courneya and James Connell — whom I feel like I have gotten to know in death if not in life, as well as their missing comrades, Alex Jimenez and Byron Fouty.

But this Memorial Day is different. Besides being sad, I also am angry — a slow burn, I suppose — over the mess that we’ve made of our great country.

I say we because this has been too big a job for even our imperial president and his court jesters.

As my cousin Country Bumpkin is fond of saying, dissent and bickering are the soundtrack of a democracy. But this should be a golden age for America and it is anything but. I cannot recall a time in my life when so few have so much and so many are struggling. When America’s heart and soul — its middle class — is so beleaguered. When we are so incapable of a national consensus on anything beyond the belief that government and many of our institutions have failed us. That things only will get worse before they get better, if they ever get better.

I am fond of saying that public opinion polls are snapshots in history.

Well, the current batch don’t present a very pretty picture with seven out of 10 Americans saying the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. Seven out of 10. Extraordinary.

So what’s to be done about this dismal state of affairs?

Nothing.

Nothing at all until George Bush slinks back to his Texas ranch 20 long months from now to pick among the sagebrush for his squandered legacy. Even then, the Democrats cannot be counted on to begin putting a house back in order that they had a big hand in tearing down.

Such pessimism is uncharacteristic of me, let alone Americans in general, and I feel a twinge of shame that I am unable to be more upbeat this Memorial Day. But my glass is well below half empty, especially when I reflect on the sacrifices our men and women at arms are being asked to make for such an obscenely wrong war (1,000 more have perished since Memorial Day 2006), how little support we have given them beyond those ubiquitous yellow ribbons on our SUVs, and how our hypocritical leaders have failed so many of the most physically and emotionally damaged of them while harrumphing that people who do not buy into their bankrupt foreign policy are unpatriotic.

Sacrifices for what? An ill-focused and foundering War on Terror? The mess in Mesopotamia? The under-resourced war in Afghanistan? Preparing for the next war against Iran? You tell me.

– Love and Peace, SHAUN