Few predict that Barack Obama will generate the Black turnout that propelled him to victory in 2008. “A small but growing number” of Black former Obama enthusiasts “have grown weary of the charade and know they have been played for fools.” Race pride motivated them the first time around, but that is harder to muster for “a man who never saw them as anything more than saps who would vote for him no matter what he said or did.”

by Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“In November 2012 it is almost certain that black turnout will be lower.”

Black Americans’ devotion to Barack Obama during his 2008 run for the presidency was unparalleled in American political history. From the moment he won the Iowa caucus and proved that white people would vote for him, any and all questions or concerns raised about Obama were promptly forgotten. The opportunity to see a black president created a level of enthusiasm previously unseen, and unfortunately a blind devotion too. A group of reliably progressive people changed their political religion and coalesced nearly unanimously around the only kind of person the system will allow to compete, a corporatist and imperialist with no inclination to put black people anywhere on the agenda of the day.

On Election Day in November 2008, the black turnout for Obama was so huge that he won states like Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia, states which had not voted for Democratic presidential candidates in decades. That level of turnout meant that thousands of black voters who had either never voted before or hadn’t voted in many years came out to the polls with the goal of putting Obama in office.

The downside of that phenomenon is that those people who were previously disengaged from the system still have no reason to be engaged four years later. Their motive was race pride, albeit for a man who has only a passing, academic connection to their life experiences and who never saw them as anything more than saps who would vote for him no matter what he said or did.

“The novelty of seeing the Obamas in places previously reserved for white people has worn off.”

Now that Obama has been president for nearly four years, the bloom is off the rose, as well as the inclination to excuse his dismissal of the black community. These days any defense of the Obama administration consists of little more than protecting him from the likes of Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh, and not because he has done anything for the millions of people who were so devoted to him.

The fantasies of black life created by centuries of oppression were made real when Barack Obama become president. Many powerful longings were met at the sight of Obama on Air Force One wearing his POTUS jacket or knowing that the black first lady’s fashion sense was admired by white people. The Obamas have presided over state dinners and met the queen of England and the Pope in Rome. These images meant a great deal to people whose very right to exist and live in this country has been precarious at the very least.

But now the thrill has diminished considerably. The novelty of seeing the Obamas in places previously reserved for white people has worn off, and while the numbers of black people willing to publicly criticize Obama may still be small, the level of disappointment has grown. In November 2012 it is almost certain that black turnout will be lower. The depth of Obama love was bereft of political ideology to begin with, and the flimsy rationales are visibly threadbare.

The self-delusion has come to a head. In 2008 Obama critics were advised to “hold his feet to the fire” after he got into office. The more honest Obama lovers admitted that they wanted to see a black man in office, and had no intention of holding his feet to fire or anything else. Now a small but growing number have grown weary of the charade and know they have been played for fools.While the Obama win at any cost mantra was the directive, a desire remains for black people to have the same political expectations that other groups do.

“While the numbers of black people willing to publicly criticize Obama may still be small, the level of disappointment has grown.”

The LGBT community has seen an end to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and an expression of support for marriage equality. The Jewish community has seen no change in the pro-Israeli policies advocated by every president since the state of Israel was founded. When black people dare to ask for any acknowledgement of their political aspirations the president tells them, publicly and pointedly, to stop complaining.

If seeing a black man sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office was the goal, it has been reached. The apathetic can now go happily back to being apathetic. If Barack Obama wins a second term it won’t be because of high turnout in Gary, Cleveland, Richmond, or Charlotte. It will be because the Republicans have shot themselves in both feet with white women voters who will not put up with openly sexist appeals for votes from right wingers.

It is possible for Barack Obama to win a second term, but even in victory his mandate will be diminished. The people who were inspired to go to the polls 2008 will not show up in the same numbers. The discontent will be largely unspoken, but the results won’t lie. Even Barack Obama can’t fool all the people all the time.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [4]Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

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By David Swanson

Chris Hayes was driving me crazy, because I was beginning to think I’d need to start watching television. Luckily I’ve been saved from that fate, it seems. Hayes’ comments on MSNBC, for which he has now absurdly apologized, were the type of basic honesty — or, better, truth telling as revolutionary act — that was tempting me.

MSNBC is part of a larger corporation that makes more money from war than from infotainment. Phil Donahue learned his lesson, along with Jeff Cohen. Cenk Uygur did too — or perhaps he taught them one. Keith Olbermann didn’t last. Rachel Maddow wants war “reformed” but would never be caught blurting out the sort of honesty that got Hayes into trouble.

Hayes questioned the appropriateness of calling warriors heroes, and of doing so in order to promote more war-making. He was right to do that. This practice has been grotesquely inappropriate for a very long time.

Pericles honored those who had died in war on the side of Athens:

“I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating. Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes can it be said as of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame! I believe that a death such as theirs has been the true measure of a man’s worth; it may be the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valor with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions.

 “None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fl y and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory.”

Abraham Lincoln honored those who had died in war on the side of the North:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Even though presidents don’t say these thing anymore, and if they can help it don’t talk about the dead at all, the same message goes without saying today. Soldiers are praised to the skies, and the part about their risking their lives is understood without being mentioned. Generals are so effusively praised that it’s not uncommon for them to get the impression they run the government. Presidents much prefer being Commander in Chief to being chief executive. The former can be treated almost as a deity, while the latter is a well-known liar and cheat.

But the prestige of the generals and the presidents comes from their closeness to the unknown yet glorious troops. When the bigwigs don’t want their policies questioned, they need merely suggest that such questioning constitutes criticism of the troops or expression of doubt regarding the invincibility of the troops. In fact, wars themselves do very well to associate themselves with soldiers. The soldiers’ glory may all derive from the possibility that they will be killed in a war, but the war itself is only glorious because of the presence of the sainted troops — not actual particular troops, but the abstract heroic givers of the ultimate sacrifice pre-honored by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

As long as the greatest honor one can aspire to is to be shipped off and killed in somebody’s war, there will be wars. President John F. Kennedy wrote in a letter to a friend something he would never have put in a speech: “War will exist until the distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today.” I would tweak that statement a little. It should include those refusing to participate in a war whether or not they are granted the status of “conscientious objector.” And it should include those resisting the war nonviolently outside of the military as well, including by traveling to the expected sites of bombings in order to serve as “human shields.”

When President Barack Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize and remarked that other people were more deserving, I immediately thought of several. Some of the bravest people I know or have heard of have refused to take part in our current wars or tried to place their bodies into the gears of the war machine. If they enjoyed the same reputation and prestige as the warriors, we would all hear about them. If they were so honored, some of them would be permitted to speak through our television stations and newspapers, and before long war would, indeed, no longer exist.

What Is a Hero?

Let’s look more closely at the myth of military heroism handed down to us by Pericles and Lincoln. Random House defines a hero as follows (and defines heroine the same way, substituting “woman” for “man”):

“1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
“2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child. [“]
“4. Classical Mythology.
“a. a being of godlike prowess and beneficence who oft en came to be honored as a divinity.”

Courage or ability. Brave deeds and noble qualities. There is something more here than merely courage and bravery, merely facing up to fear and danger. But what? A hero is regarded as a model or ideal. Clearly someone who bravely jumped out a 20-story window would not meet that definition, even if their bravery was as brave as brave could be. Clearly heroism must require bravery of a sort that people regard as a model for themselves and others. It must include prowess and beneficence. That is, the bravery can’t just be bravery; it must also be good and kind. Jumping out a window does not qualify. The question, then, is whether killing and dying in wars should qualify as good and kind. Nobody doubts that it’s courageous and brave.

If you look up “bravery” in the dictionary, by the way, you’ll find “courage” and “valor.” Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary defines “valor” as “a soldierly compound of vanity, duty, and the gambler’s hope. ‘Why have you halted?’ roared the commander of a division at Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge: ‘move forward, sir, at once.’
 ‘General,’ said the commander of the delinquent brigade, ‘I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.'”

But would such valor be good and kind or destructive and foolhardy? Bierce had himself been a Union soldier at Chickamauga and had come away disgusted. Many years later, when it had become possible to publish stories about the Civil War that didn’t glow with the holy glory of militarism, Bierce published a story called “Chickamauga” in 1889 in the San Francisco Examiner that makes participating in such a battle appear the most grotesquely evil and horrifying deed one could ever do. Many soldiers have since told similar tales.

It’s curious that war, something consistently recounted as ugly and horrible, should qualify its participants for glory. Of course, the glory doesn’t last. Mentally disturbed veterans are kicked aside in our society. In fact, in dozens of cases documented between 2007 and 2010, soldiers who had been deemed physically and psychologically fit and welcomed into the military, performed “honorably,” and had no recorded history of psychological problems. Then, upon being wounded, the same formerly healthy soldiers were diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, discharged, and denied treatment for their wounds. One soldier was locked in a closet until he agreed to sign a statement that he had a pre-existing disorder — a procedure the Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee called “torture.”

Active duty troops, the real ones, are not treated by the military or society with particular reverence or respect. But the mythical, generic “troop” is a secular saint purely because of his or her willingness to rush off and die in the very same sort of mindless murderous orgy that ants regularly engage in. Yes, ants. Those teeny little pests with brains the size of”well, the size of something smaller than an ant: they wage war. And they’re better at it than we are.

Are Ants Heroes Too?

Ants wage long and complex wars with extensive organization and unmatched determination, or what we might call “valor.” They are absolutely loyal to the cause in a way that no patriotic humans can match: “It’d be like having an American flag tattooed to you at birth,” ecologist and photojournalist Mark Moffett told Wired magazine. Ants will kill other ants without flinching. Ants will make the “ultimate sacrifice” with no hesitation. Ants will proceed with their mission rather than stop to help a wounded warrior.

The ants who go to the front, where they kill and die first, are the smallest and weakest ones. They are sacrificed as part of a winning strategy. “In some ant armies, there can be millions of expendable troops sweeping forward in a dense swarm that’s up to 100 feet wide.” In one of Moffett’s photos, which shows “the marauder ant in Malaysia, several of the weak ants are being sliced in half by a larger enemy termite with black, scissor-like jaws.” What would Pericles say at their funeral?

“According to Moffett, we might actually learn a thing or two from how ants wage war. For one, ant armies operate with precise organization despite a lack of central command.” And no wars would be complete without some lying: “Like humans, ants can try to outwit foes with cheats and lies.” In another photo, “two ants face off in an effort to prove their superiority — which, in this ant species, is designated by physical height. But the wily ant on the right is standing on a pebble to gain a solid inch over his nemesis.” Would Honest Abe approve?

In fact, ants are such dedicated warriors that they can even fight civil wars that make that little skirmish between the North and South look like touch football. A parasitic wasp, Ichneumon eumerus, can dose an ant nest with a chemical secretion that causes the ants to fight a civil war, half the nest against the other half. Imagine if we had such a drug for humans, a sort of a prescription-strength Fox News. If we dosed the nation, would all the resulting warriors be heroes or just half of them? Are the ants heroes? And if they are not, is it because of what they are doing or purely because of what they are thinking about what they are doing? And what if the drug makes them think they are risking their lives for the benefit of future life on earth or to keep the anthill safe for democracy?

Bravery Plus

Soldiers are generally lied to, as the whole society is lied to, and — in addition — as only military recruiters can lie to you. Soldiers often believe they are on a noble mission. And they can be very brave. But so can police officers and fire fighters in quite similar ways, for worthwhile ends but much less glory and hoo-ha. What is the good of being courageous for a destructive project? If you mistakenly believe you are doing something valuable, your bravery might — I think — be tragic. And it might be bravery worth emulating in other circumstances. But you yourself would hardly be a model or an ideal. Your actions would not have been good and kind. In fact, in a common but completely nonsensical pattern of speech, you could end up being denounced as a “coward.”

When terrorists flew airplanes into buildings on September 11, 2001, they may have been cruel, murderous, sick, despicable, criminal, insane, or bloodthirsty, but what they were usually called on U.S. television was “cowards.” It was hard not to be struck, in fact, by their bravery, which is probably why so many commentators instantly reached for the opposite description. “Bravery” is understood to be a good thing, so mass murder can’t be bravery, so therefore it was cowardice. I’m guessing this was the thought process. One television host didn’t play along.

“We have been the cowards,” said Bill Maher, agreeing with a guest who had said the 9-11 murderers were not cowards. “Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly. You’re right.” Maher was not defending the murders. He was merely defending the English language. He lost his job anyway.

The problem that I think Maher identified is that we’ve glorified bravery for its own sake without stopping to realize that we don’t really mean that. The drill sergeant means it. The military wants soldiers as brave as ants, soldiers who will follow orders, even orders likely to get them killed, without stopping to think anything over for themselves, without pausing for even a second to wonder whether the orders are admirable or evil. We’d be lost without bravery. We need it to confront all kinds of unavoidable dangers, but mindless bravery is useless or worse, and certainly not heroic. What we need is something more like honor. Our model and ideal person should be someone who is willing to take risks when required for what he or she has carefully determined to be a good means to a good end. Our goal should not be embarrassing the rest of the world’s primates, even violent chimpanzees, through our mindless imitation of little bugs. “The ‘heroes,'” wrote Norman Thomas,

“whether of the victorious or the vanquished nation, have been disciplined in the acceptance of violence and a kind of blind obedience to leaders. In war there is no choice between complete obedience and mutiny. Yet a decent civilization depends on the capacity of men [and women] to govern themselves by processes under which loyalty is consistent with constructive criticism.”

There are good things about soldiering: courage and selflessness; group solidarity, sacrifice, and support for one’s buddies, and — at least in one’s imagination — for the greater world; physical and mental challenges; and adrenaline. But the whole endeavor brings out the best for the worst by using the noblest traits of character to serve the vilest ends. Other aspects of military life are obedience, cruelty, vengefulness, sadism, racism, fear, terror, injury, trauma, anguish, and death. And the greatest of these is the obedience, because it can lead to all the others. The military conditions its recruits to believe that obedience is part of trust, and that by trusting superiors you can receive proper preparation, perform better as a unit, and stay safe. “Let go of that rope now!” and someone catches you. At least in training. Someone is screaming one inch from your nose: “I’ll wipe the floor with your sorry ass, soldier!” Yet you survive. At least in training.

Following orders in a war, and facing enemies that want you dead, actually tends to get you killed, even if you’ve been conditioned to behave as if it didn’t. It still will. And your loved ones will be devastated. But the military will roll right along without you, having put a little more cash into the pockets of weapons makers, and having made millions of people a little more likely to join anti-American terrorist groups. And if your modern-day soldier job is to blast distant strangers to bits without directly risking your own life at all, don’t kid yourself that you’ll be able to live peacefully with what you’ve done, or that anybody’s going to think you’re a hero. That’s not heroic; it’s neither brave nor good, much less both.

Submitters Website: http://davidswanson.org

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org

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By Jay Janson, Contributing to OpedNews

“On this Memorial Day, Veterans For Peace asks you to mourn not only for Americans killed in battle, but also for those killed by Americans in battle, to accept that these war deaths did not have to happen–that they are actually in vain. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died in American wars of aggression. That is a tragedy and is a truth that must be accepted and for which we must take responsibility.” VFP Pres.

Worthington Memorial Day Parade 2009 by From marada

For the Memorial Day 2012 celebrations the Veterans For Peace web site features a posting by VFP President Leah Bolger titled Memorial Day: Pick Your Perversion. The final paragraph is highlighted in bold print:
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

“On this Memorial Day, Veterans For Peace asks you to mourn not only for Americans killed in battle, but also for those killed by Americans in battle. We ask you to be willing to accept the fact that these war deaths did not have to happen–that they are actually in vain. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died in American wars of aggression. That is a tragedy and is a truth that must be accepted and for which we must take responsibility.”

“For which we must take responsibility” sounds like Martin Luther King Jr.’ outcry in his world shaking 1967 sermon “Beyond Vietnam – a Time to Break Silence.” King demanded that we take responsibility for and bring these atrocities to an end. 
 
But King was quickly silenced with a bullet to the head, and his condemnations of America’s wars to maintain predatory investments in poor countries has been blacked-out in media for the forty-four years since his assassination.

Last summer, Veterans For Peace was one of the first to endorse the Campaign for International Awareness that King Condemned US Wars as “meant to maintain unjust predatory investments.” [see King Condemned US Wars]
http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/

For Veterans know better than anyone else that King’s condemnations, once well known, will arouse widespread desire to prosecute all who were and are criminally involved in illegal undeclared wars since 1945. When it becomes fashionable to be moral and decent rather than depressed and self-centered, the wealthy, investing in and arranging wars, instead of ruling us, will find themselves in prison until no longer a danger to society and themselves.

If Leah Bolger’s truthful words could be read by half of the millions of Americans that will be subjected to corporate media war adulation this Memorial Day, elected politicians signing deadly orders pursuing what Republican candidate for President Ron Paul calls “illegal and undeclared wars,” would find themselves defendants in court proceedings indicted under the US constitution and the Nuremberg Principles for crimes against humanity.

Her article:

Perversion #1 -Commercialism/Consumerism/Entertainment

Perversion #2 – American Exceptionalism

This perversion of Memorial Day is typified by the glorification of war and everyone who participated in it. God is always on our side (which means we are always right). Politicians try to outdo each other in their effusive thanks for the military, and refer to everyone who has ever worn a military uniform as a hero. God, guns and glory are wrapped up in the flag, and the whole package is given the credit for all that is good: liberty, freedom, justice, and the American Way of Life. Perversion #2 is of much more concern because of the ideology that it represents.

Leah Bolger

Bio: Leah Bolger spent 20 years on active duty in the U.S. Navy and retired in 2000 at the rank of Commander. She is currently a full-time peace activist and serves as the National President of Veterans For Peace.

Submitters Bio:
Archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.

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An editorial installation by Patrice Greanville
Dedicated to Cindy Sheehan, in appreciation of her brave and desperately needed work.

Mike Taibbi / NBC News

The mawkish, strident adulation for fallen American soldiers—mostly sons and daughters of the underclass—reaches a crescendo during perverted “holidays’ like memorial Day, as  the propaganda mills of the Empire work double time to reinforce the prevailing chauvinist myths that imprison the American consciousness from cradle to grave. It’s all part of the cynical propaganda playbook used by the elites to keep the “great unwashed” doing their bidding.  I say cynical because the upper tiers, while seeming to partake of the reverence,  cold-bloodedly manipulate people’s most fundamental emotions to serve their ends: thus bonds of love and gratitude for the fallen; the deeply ingrained, tribal love and respect of country; and hatred and fear toward “the other”— our designated enemies du jour—all are marshaled to keep the population well within the approved catechism.

While trying to inject some sanity into this self-congratulatory orgy, many antiwar activists are often surprised if not shocked by the fierceness with which some wounded vets (and their kin) defend the goodness of their mission. They should not be. It is a huge tragedy, alright. And it’s perfectly human. For what could be more tragic than giving up your life or your health in the service of a criminal enterprise? After all people who have invested so much, who lost precious limbs or their sight, who suffered grotesque disfigurements, who witnessed the death of close comrades, are not the kind of audience to welcome with open arms someone telling them they went through all that hell for nothing, and, that, to top it all off, they were not only terribly unlucky but played for suckers.  It’s a classical case of cursing the messenger, of finding the Matrix a lot more comforting to live with than the truth.

Separate the person from the mission

Hard as it is, the work of public education about our wars must continue.  For propaganda —and often poverty and immaturity—killed these men, each and everyone of them—whether they fell in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, or in any other of the scores of outposts where the imperial elites have decided to meddle. These people never quite understood what they were doing (most still don’t) but their actions—some ugly enough to leave them with psychic scars for life, which is undoubtedly a testament to their decency— in no way enlarged or strengthened America’s freedoms or security. They merely created more sworn enemies for the United States.
_____________________

EXCERPT FROM COMING HOME (1978),  directed by Hal Ashby.  In this concluding scene, paraplegic vet Luke Martin (Jon Voight, who that year won best actor award for this role), addresses an audience of high school kids to warn them about the risk of falling for the war propaganda being dished out by a Marine recruiter. This powerful scene is intercut with the suicide of Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern, also in a memorable role) a man who returns home totally broken inside, and the life sustaining chores of the women (Jane Fonda and a friend), all wrapped up in a magnificent musical score. Coming Home is one of the best antiwar films ever made. Too bad that Voight has since veered sharply to the right and is now a silly outspoken shill for Republicans.  Apparently, like many actors, he learned little from the noblest part he ever played.

_________________________

Of course, as explained earlier, attacking the carefully seeded propaganda minefield is tough in America; the truth goes against the grain of what most people have been indoctrinated to believe and hold dear in our country.  After all, the best propaganda is usually grounded in half-truths, with the “true” part making the lie easier to swallow. In this case, if you observe the example I use below (courtesy of NBC)—a routine exercise, mind you, for our Big Media controllers—the words and deeds of “patriotic Americans” ring true because they are true.  Most propaganda disseminated in the US is for consumption by the “hinterland”, the social and cultural “backwaters” of the nation, the people who innocently eat clichés for breakfast, lunch and dinner; who never quite shed the “Leave It To Beaver” mindset; who furnish disproportionately the bodies in uniform who kill and get killed; and who vote regularly against their own interest…not by the smart kids at Yale, Harvard and other bastions of privilege who will later move on to hedge funds or other cushy spots in the social pyramid.  These people are not faking their emotions, but having genuine feelings of sadness and gratitude, a huge sense of loss for those who went and never came back, or came back unplugged. That’s the entire reality they see, and their reaction is understandable.

Unfortunately, being genuinely sad, angry or joyful about something does not preclude being at the same time manipulated and completely wrong about it, and that’s where the catch-22 is. These people are following a script, a faux reality implanted in them, and transmitted via all cultural channels, all pulpits, many decades ago, way before they were born. Fact is, how many of our soldiers would have enthusiastically put on the uniform to fight “for truth and freedom”, the American Way, etc., if they had known it was all a cruel hoax? That the glorious crusades in places they had never heard of before would be about further enriching a puny, filthy rich sociopathic minority or helping a bunch of multinationals and their system maintain  control over the world? That they would be seen —correctly—as oppressors and not as liberators? Not many takers I think, except for the war lovers and the mercenaries in our midst, but that’s another story. Some people are simply born stupid or indecent, and there’s no sending them back.

Yet the power of propaganda, the power of mass psychosis and conformity to coerce behavior is immense, especially when the truth about the social reality has been decisively stamped out.  What’s more, people fighting for the “wrong cause” can be awfully heroic, too, and, at the retail level, quite nice, which confuses matters even further.  How many Southerners died in the Civil War defending what they thought was a noble cause instead of the obscene way of life of an oppressing plantocracy? And what about the Nazis? Germany’s armies in WW2 had millions who fought bravely for what they saw as the righteous cause of the “Vaterland”.  Or—the supreme irony—something that would improve on capitalism! They were horridly wrong, but it took the industrial might of the greatest powers on earth, and the mobilization of massive armies across the globe to straighten them out. Chauvinist and narcissistic lies die hard, literally.

Next time you feel saddened and angered by all these coffins and broken bodies coming home, these endless wars, the scandalous dedication of badly needed social resources to destruction and greed, think about the fact that, in general, most wars are needless, futile and criminal enterprises, notably those which are wars of conquest. Against such a backdrop, a just peace is the greatest bargain, the most beautiful thing anyone could dream of.  And that is something really worth fighting for.

Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post’s founding editor.
OTHER FILMS YOU SHOULD WATCH ON MEMORIAL DAY
Born on the Fourth of July
All Quiet on the Western Front
Friendly Persuasion
The Battle of Algiers

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ADDENDUM

EXHIBIT / Material reproduced under fair use clauses, as editorial comment. This kind of propaganda obfuscating and whitewashing the actual motives for our wars is routine operating procedure throughout the corporate media.

The beauty in the details: Idaho’s ‘Field of Heroes’

By Mike Taibbi, NBC News correspondent

POCATELLO, Idaho —  I was walking past a hard-used SUV when the passenger window rolled down and a woman’s crooked finger emerged, summoning me over to talk.

“See that man over there, in the red cap?” she asked. “That’s my husband.  He started all this…” 

‘All this.’ As I let my vision follow hers, I saw a vista beneath a morning drizzle of more than 6,000 simple white crosses arranged more or less precisely, filling the entire soccer field behind Pocatello’s Century High School.  The crosses, seized together by a local Korean War veteran and then painted, labeled and tapped carefully into the turf by hundreds of volunteers of every age and interest, were the once-a-year memorial to the fallen in America’s two longest wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We have right now 6,378 casualties,” said the man in the cap, who introduced himself as John Rogers.  “Each cross has a label, with the name and unit and casualty date…and if we can keep this going we’re not gonna forget them.”

I told him his wife Joyce had explained his motivation to me: on the day he came home to San Francisco from his war, Vietnam, a “hippie girl” protester had met him as he stepped off the ship and let him know for the first time what his welcome home would be like …  no matter his two Purple Hearts and three tours fighting for his country.

John nodded.  “She come up to me, she stops and holds up her arms like this…”  He pantomimed carrying an infant.  “And she says, ‘Hey, you baby burner!’”

So in 2004, with the controversial Iraq war a year old and Afghanistan an intensifying warzone following 9/11, he decided to see to it that the veterans fighting and dying in those two conflicts would be treated differently.  He got some fellow veterans to help him find the wood for the crosses and to fabricate simple labels, and talked the town into giving him the use of a piece of land. Then he set up the first “Field of Heroes.”

It was a simple idea, “sort of like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington,” Rogers said.  A gathering place where each name with identifying details would allow loved ones to reclaim moments of personal connection and remembrance, while permitting strangers who just needed to give thanks a gateway to learn what they choose to learn about the heroes who gave their lives so the rest of us can continue to flourish in ours.

That first year, there were fewer than 1,400 crosses.  Now, with well over 6,000, there’s almost no more room for additional crosses on Century High’s field;  but the Iraq War is effectively over, and Afghanistan is winding down.

“If we’re lucky, we won’t need this eventually,” Rodgers said.  “But look,” he continued, gesturing. “Now we have people … veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan … they come here and find the special friend they lost over there … they get down on their knees and pray, in front of their crosses.”

And then there are the loved ones of the fallen: like Tiffany Petty, whose husband Jerrick Petty, with two toddlers back home in Pocatello, volunteered to go to Iraq only to be killed three days after landing.  Tiffany spent several days with the volunteers affixing labels on the crosses of the other war dead, whose service and sacrifice have too often been overlooked by too many.

“I’ve seen that happen, and it just hurts,” she told me. “It hurts your heart, it hurts your soul … we need to remember these people.”  She looked across the broad field, a thick coil of labels hanging from one wrist.  “And we need to remember them not as a group of people, but as specific people.”

Prepping for Memorial Day

For a few years now, Pocatello’s “Field of Heroes” has been too big a job for John Rogers to handle with just a handful of friends.  Now Bannock County is lending a hand, and whole platoons of volunteers plow into a full week of preparatory work so the field will be ready when the long Memorial Day weekend starts. 

Mike Taibbi / NBC News

Pocatello, Idaho’s annual memorial, ‘Field of Heroes,’ honors each of the dead service members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Scout troops, high school kids, and senior citizens pitch in, alongside strangers who are moved to lend a hand. Big tents with generator-fired heaters warm the volunteers; the local Sign-A-Rama shop makes and donatesthe waterproof labels; and professional surveyors measure the field and line up the rows so the matrix of crosses looks the way it should.  In the middle of the Snake River Plain, in the shadow of the foothills of the Rockies, more than a full brigade of the honored dead appear in silent and precise formation.

The visitors come from all over the West, bonding over a patriotism that’s as humbling as it is palpable, and understanding each other’s tears.  In fact, there’s nothing like it anywhere in the country, though the feelings generated by a visit to this Pocatello yearly shrine are like those that arise from a famous national shrine:

“Arlington Cemetery is a long way from here,” said Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad.  “There’s a special spirit there … but you come here, you can feel that same spirit.”

“It’s immense now,” Rogers said, a touch of wistfulness in his voice as he surveyed what his simple idea had turned into.  “But it’s not just a field of crosses…you can come out and read each name…the dates, the places they died…and if you want you can learn their stories.

“It’s important, that we don’t forget the young people we’ve sent to war.”

The old soldier smiled.  “Oh yeah,” he said, pointing to the flags stretched by the breeze on the periphery of the field. Each flag was accompanied by a yellow streamer.  “I still make the printed yellow ribbons for every local soldier coming home.  I’ll keep doing that.”

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