Veteran's Day

Turner Classics has been playing a bunch of WWI and WWII movies these past few days, and I still can't get past my horror of war to see anything noble.

I grew up in the era of Vietnam, when a war was fought to reduce unemployment and to please General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed and other MIC campaign donors. There was NOTHING heroic about that war, so far as I'm concerned. We were not fighting communism or dictatorship or to protect the American homeland. It was a war of convenience, strictly optional, for those who didn't have to fight in it.

The World Wars I might have felt differently about, had I been alive then. But my cynicism is rooted in my lifetime, and watching the veteran's day parades and movies does nothing for me.

Movies like "Independence Day," where humanity is fighting for its very existence against hostile invaders, I can just about see the point. But even Star Wars, about the rebel alliance fighting the empire... it just all seems so... so... so UNIMPORTANT compared to the loss of life.

I'm a dedicated pacifist I guess. Luckily my pacifism was never tested in my lifetime.

As you would expect, there have been assorted posts on Facebook related to Veteran's Day. There was only one that I chose to share with my friends list.

https://www.facebook.com/185180654855189/photos/a.389966974376555/2233284186711482/?type=3&theater

That's a good one. Wise.

Coincidentally this weekend I caught a few minutes of a Rick Steves travel show, where he was visiting little villages along Italy's coast, and every village had a cemetery up on the hill above the village.  He talked to some villagers who liked to take picnic lunches up the hill "to be with their relatives, hang out, enjoy having the family together."

Some might find this charming.

I found it ghoulish and Medieval.