We watch the entire series every Memorial Day Weekend. From our perspective it would be hard for anyone to fail to appreciate sacrifice on the behalf of the highest good for all concerned in general and a country based on the Declaration of Independence on the other. All men and women ARE created equal.
Veterans live among us still doing duty – including civic experience and involvement. Their legacy must live on in all of us. When we honor our Veterans we remind ourselves of just who we are.
Those willing to speak out ought to be among the most civically active members of society. I wonder how it is that we got so sophisticatedly wise about political campaign strategy and remain so inept, ignorant and apathetic about genuine civic responsibility?
There are duties required by that responsibility when things go wrong or when some among us seriously harm the rest of the world in our name. There’s a notion that the most rapid path toward resolution of all America’s faults and mistakes – not to mention restitution and repentance – lies merely in working to elect specific candidates.
Such might be merely an empty and naive sentiment. Civic responsibility is love of country. Civic responsibility is not about looking for or appreciating merely doing the least we must.
That’s like a survival show. Some are voted out and some stay. The game will continue with a new slate of contestants next season. It’s not unlike loving to shop for our favorite foods or things while having no idea about all the processes involved that brought our delectables to market.
We seem to consider the purchase itself a more significant and needful event than the actual creation – the bringing into being of that thing which we desire to possess.
Buyers may know how to cook, use or wear something they can easily obtain repeatedly and casually by mere purchase without any knowledge of the effort and circumstances that make such a purchase possible. We may even consider ourselves knowledgeable aficionados about that which we glorify but in reality we have no idea.
We may even pooh pooh someone else’s concerns because we can persuasively justify our investment of time, energy and emotional resources in our favorite things.
Such in fact is what I’m doing right now in grinding my ax about civics, national reputation, morality and conscience and not paying attention to getting a candidate elected or another defeated.
I admit it
So what’s your excuse?
How is it you can get excited or discouraged about the most recent polls, political stupidity, chicanery and deception and how that might cost someone the election without making noise about REAL social global justice?
Will an election loss make for you a disaster that many seem to emotionally equate to your favorite team having lost the Super Bowl?
Or perhaps your civic sense is a touch more intense than that. Perhaps losing the election will be result in a vague civic unease that in actuality is mere intellectual awareness while we go about our post-election consumption?
How can we get so lost in the heat and competition of emotional politics but never arouse a mature and wise emotion when we know we ought to?
Are we genuinely moved to care about our future – a future that will be an undeniable consequence of failure to perceive past events honestly and accurately and failure to set them right?
Can Veterans of my generation still make a difference?
Hell, I don’t know.
I tell my own children and older grandchildren flat out that my generation has greatly and comprehensively screwed up their future; that they absolutely must take back their country in a way they themselves see fit.
How they do that is theirs to figure out. They should not believe that they can be told honestly and truthfully by any political party or church as to who they vote for without question.
They won’t take back their country by choosing more of the same thing that brought all this foolishness to pass.
The Band of Brothers sure as hell wasn’t fighting to glorify any proud boy swastikas and QAnon grandstanding.
If we cannot and will not look at the future in that manner, then those of us who don’t care; those of us who shrug it all off are THE citizens of an imperial nation that continues raping less able societies abroad.
We are the citizens who sustain the Imperial States of America and will make of the coming blowback events an ugly reality.
Curmudgeon at Work 