Drunk Lake Day

oh, how i love wichita. driving by the packed cemetary yesterday, i really and truly honestly saw a huge sign advertising: "memorial day special! 2 for 1 lots!" if that’s not morbid and inappropriate, i don’t know what is and if someone ever buries me in the cemetary that advertised that, i hope they end up right next to me shortly afterwards.

i have a disdain for most U.S. holidays and memorial day is a particularly bad one. first of all, i know that some people use the day to honor anyone who has died, especially loved ones, and i have no problem with that. but memorial day as i understand it was designed to honor our deceased soldiers.

the first thing about it is that like 90% of the holidays we celebrate in america, it’s not about anything. its real significance is only good for fox news and for touchy-feely newspaper articles but to everyone else it’s just an excuse to get stupider than normal with lots of beer and sun. fine, but if you want a summer holiday off for drinking and laking, call it Drunk Lake Day, don’t make a sham out of what’s supposed to be a sacred thing.

secondly, i cannot stand watching a whole country be all sad and feeling like they are accomplishing something by "honoring" fallen soldiers. guess what? they’re not fallen, it wasn’t an accident, they were shot/etc. once again, i have no problem with someone mourning their deceased son who was killed in iraq. but why should the whole country have to mourn everyone who signed up for the army and died? are they really surprised? that’s what war is about, killing the enemy and we are the enemy to our enemy so war is about killing not only them but also us. i have a hard time having sympathy when we have a volunteer army. all opinions about this particular war aside, it’s a volunteer army. people act all sad and shocked when their loved ones are deployed but why are they shocked? you don’t sign up for the army not expecting to be deployed. you know it’s a possibility and that if you spend enough time in the organization, it will happen. if the loved ones are so sad when their sons and boyfriends are leaving, maybe they should have been upset at them for signing up instead of being proud and bragging. and death, death is a fact of war. so if someone chooses to sign up for the army knowing they are risking death and knowing that the point of war is to acheive death, it’s hard for me to feel sad for their death. if anything, i would say that was a bad decision on their part. they know what they are getting into.

it can be argued that these people are sacrificing themselves and fighting for something larger than themselves and fighting so that i don’t have to and that that should be respected. what that says to me is that these people are fighting for ideals, pride and honor. first, if they think fighting is the way to acheive these ideals they are probably not people i would have much to talk about with, ever. secondly, they are choosing to put these things before their life. it’s their choice. it’s not like a firefighter who runs into a burning building. this wasn’t suddenly sprung upon them, they knew it would happen. and a firefighter doesn’t kill anyone. thirdly, no one is that unselfish. if you are fighting for honor and ideals, you are fighting for pride. so fine. if pride is above your own life, good. then choose that. if your country and a piece of cloth are more important than your life or others’ lives, then fine.

but it’s hard for me to get sad about someone who died trying to kill someone else.