They All Deserve Better
Nov. 13th, 2018 04:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydionI keep thinking about 45 being such a whiny little toddler that he decided it was better to watch TV in his hotel room than commemorate our War Dead.
I keep thinking about the horrible conditions in the WWI trenches, which I've seen a lot of footage of and read first hand accounts of and spent a lot of time imagining because WWI was terrible and important and it changed everything n devastated so many and people sort of forget it. It gets glossed over in History Classes in the US unless you take specialized courses in College. It matters to me for a bunch of personal reasons and because it has always seen more like our shitty forever wars that Republicans started for fun and profit and democrats hadn't the will to end, even though WWI was mud and the Forever Wars are desert. In both cases it is all so much more about the ego of old rich white people and not FOR anything that will actually improve anything.
I keep thinking about Valley Forge, which is, I know a very different War. I grew up near there and I've written a lot about what the place means to me and the way it twines with my family and my first 18 years on earth, so I'm not getting into that here. The thing I'm particularly thinking about was the time Skye went east with me for a Funeral. It was cold and late November or early December, and there was nearly horizontal freezing rain up on those ridges where they have the replica cabins looking down across fields with the lumps of old fortifications grown over with grass. We were freezing in our coats and wearing modern boots. We had slogged through mud to get there. My the end of the day we were wrung out with exhaustion and cold and hunger and we were wet above the knees from the freezing rain the Umbrellas did nothing to stop. I showed him those tiny, icy little cabins where they slept on these little shelves stacked like cord wood until it was time for sentry duty again. We pictured them with thin blankets at best, with feet wrapped in rags instead of boots, with nothing in their stomachs but flour and water pancakes and if they were lucky, some insects for protein. We imagined them hauling themselves out of those wracks to come stand on that ridge with slushy mud, or rain, or snow soaking through the foot rags to stand and pace in that frigid icy wind day after day after day. Standing there shivering, those long dead men were so much closer in a way that is hard to grasp from a textbook or a trip on a warm sunny day. It was a tiny bit easier to imagine what it cost them to stay and the determination or desperation that kept some of them to fleeing back home when so many others deserted.
All those soldiers over time: Those poor bastards who stuck out that shitty starving Valley Forge Winter. The mud and blood and mechanized Death of the Civil War. The poor bastards huddled in trenches with gas masks and flame throwers and old men in power ordering them over and over to die is suicidal charges because those old white men were too set in their ways to have learned a blessed thing from the Crimea or our Civil War. All those guys in chilly mud and snow or jungle heat with death raining down from above. All those wars we hardly ever talk about any more and the ones we endlessly do. All those soldiers coming home to find discrimination and lynch mobs. All those soldiers coming home with no support for the transition and no real help for the lingering effects. Various friends and relatives I've had trying to make lives again after their tours in one war or another and managing it or not.
All that grit and misery and perseverance and maiming and death.
And Captain Bonespurs cares so little about any of it that he won't visit our soldiers in the field or even our War Dead because it might inconvenience him slightly and he thinks sacrifice and duty to country are for suckers.
A commander of any kind, but especially a Commander in Chief ought to go see what conditions are like now and then, ought to meet the people who serve at his word, and to think long and hard bout the consequences of sending them. We should only ask them to risk the ultimate sacrifice for the most dire of reasons, not because invading France seems like fun to the Toddler in chief; we should honor those who made that sacrifice and their families instead of mocking and bulling and belittling them; we should keep our promises to those who served honorably be it health care or citizenship or GI bill, etc., not steal it all out of racism or to make the rich richer with yet another tax cut just for them; we should give the ones serving proper equipment and support; nd help them with whatever they need when they come back.
That is part of what Patriotism means to me; those things are all repudiated by the man in office and the Party he leads.
Our veterans, our soldiers serving, our dead, and their families all deserve better than this disgrace and open contempt.
I keep thinking about the horrible conditions in the WWI trenches, which I've seen a lot of footage of and read first hand accounts of and spent a lot of time imagining because WWI was terrible and important and it changed everything n devastated so many and people sort of forget it. It gets glossed over in History Classes in the US unless you take specialized courses in College. It matters to me for a bunch of personal reasons and because it has always seen more like our shitty forever wars that Republicans started for fun and profit and democrats hadn't the will to end, even though WWI was mud and the Forever Wars are desert. In both cases it is all so much more about the ego of old rich white people and not FOR anything that will actually improve anything.
I keep thinking about Valley Forge, which is, I know a very different War. I grew up near there and I've written a lot about what the place means to me and the way it twines with my family and my first 18 years on earth, so I'm not getting into that here. The thing I'm particularly thinking about was the time Skye went east with me for a Funeral. It was cold and late November or early December, and there was nearly horizontal freezing rain up on those ridges where they have the replica cabins looking down across fields with the lumps of old fortifications grown over with grass. We were freezing in our coats and wearing modern boots. We had slogged through mud to get there. My the end of the day we were wrung out with exhaustion and cold and hunger and we were wet above the knees from the freezing rain the Umbrellas did nothing to stop. I showed him those tiny, icy little cabins where they slept on these little shelves stacked like cord wood until it was time for sentry duty again. We pictured them with thin blankets at best, with feet wrapped in rags instead of boots, with nothing in their stomachs but flour and water pancakes and if they were lucky, some insects for protein. We imagined them hauling themselves out of those wracks to come stand on that ridge with slushy mud, or rain, or snow soaking through the foot rags to stand and pace in that frigid icy wind day after day after day. Standing there shivering, those long dead men were so much closer in a way that is hard to grasp from a textbook or a trip on a warm sunny day. It was a tiny bit easier to imagine what it cost them to stay and the determination or desperation that kept some of them to fleeing back home when so many others deserted.
All those soldiers over time: Those poor bastards who stuck out that shitty starving Valley Forge Winter. The mud and blood and mechanized Death of the Civil War. The poor bastards huddled in trenches with gas masks and flame throwers and old men in power ordering them over and over to die is suicidal charges because those old white men were too set in their ways to have learned a blessed thing from the Crimea or our Civil War. All those guys in chilly mud and snow or jungle heat with death raining down from above. All those wars we hardly ever talk about any more and the ones we endlessly do. All those soldiers coming home to find discrimination and lynch mobs. All those soldiers coming home with no support for the transition and no real help for the lingering effects. Various friends and relatives I've had trying to make lives again after their tours in one war or another and managing it or not.
All that grit and misery and perseverance and maiming and death.
And Captain Bonespurs cares so little about any of it that he won't visit our soldiers in the field or even our War Dead because it might inconvenience him slightly and he thinks sacrifice and duty to country are for suckers.
A commander of any kind, but especially a Commander in Chief ought to go see what conditions are like now and then, ought to meet the people who serve at his word, and to think long and hard bout the consequences of sending them. We should only ask them to risk the ultimate sacrifice for the most dire of reasons, not because invading France seems like fun to the Toddler in chief; we should honor those who made that sacrifice and their families instead of mocking and bulling and belittling them; we should keep our promises to those who served honorably be it health care or citizenship or GI bill, etc., not steal it all out of racism or to make the rich richer with yet another tax cut just for them; we should give the ones serving proper equipment and support; nd help them with whatever they need when they come back.
That is part of what Patriotism means to me; those things are all repudiated by the man in office and the Party he leads.
Our veterans, our soldiers serving, our dead, and their families all deserve better than this disgrace and open contempt.