Well, today is Memorial Day, and before I get to the subject of the title, I want to take a moment to remember a single person who, in my mind anyway, serves as a touchstone, linking together all those who have given their lives for the grand idea of Freedom and a country ruled justly and kindly by it's own people.
William Stanley Smoyer, was killed in Vietnam in July '68. He was a platoon leader in a Marine company that got into a vicious fire-fight on that day and he'd only been in country for a few weeks. The navy medic (all marine fighting units depend on the navy for their combat medics....don't know how it got that way, but it is) attached to Bill's company was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day...and that tells you that it was a bad shit-storm in the rice paddies.
I grew up with Bill, known forever to me as Billy, and we went to Princeton Country Day School together. He was a natural athlete and leader. We jokingly called him, "Chairman of the Board', but it was out of respect not mockery. Billy went on to Dartmouth, where he captained the hockey team, and was president of his senior class. He also took NROTC and after graduation he joined the USMC. I only learned of his death in combat some months after it happened, and I was devastated. I had always felt that Billy was destined to accomplish something special in this life. He was not merely a bright guy who was good at sports. He was exceptionally kind and even 'wise', if one can be wise at a tender age.
So, when I heard he'd been killed in 'Nam, it came as a swift kick in the nads. Potential missed, a gift to society...destroyed. And, I struggled for years to gain some kind of understanding around it all. And, on occasion, I still do. A WWII combat veteran, Paul Fussell, an author and college professor (d. 1988), wrote a book about his combat experience in Europe. And, at the end of it he opined that only the 'underclass', the working people and especially people of color, are the ones who sacrifice their children in the ruling class' wars.
I wrote Fussell and told him that he was full of shit, that the war in Vietnam had inflicted tragedy on all levels of our society. And, I explained who Billy was and what had happened. He never had the temerity or the politeness to admit his error in grossly generalizing.
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So......................here we are. And, the news is plastered with images of Americans clumping together this weekend. Seems a large segment of the population has finally run out of patience with the Covid-19 shut-down...so, they're choosing to flaunt the rules: no masks, no social distancing etc. So, hey, do what you want to do...because, who cares, right?
I shouldn't be either surprised or offended by this. It was inevitable at some point. And, now we must wait and see how the rule flaunting manifests. Maybe, just maybe, there won't be a tsunami of new infections. But, much more likely, there will be. People are almost certainly going to pay for the loss of patience with their lives. And, some of them will just shrug it off...which is exactly what the Big Cheeto wants to happen. He is so callous about lives...other than his own...that he will be celebrating. His obvious goal is to get re-elected. That's it. Nothing else can even come close to having the same urgency in his mind. He NEEDS power, craves it, because along with the office comes the praise and adulation that is his opiate of choice.
The Idiot has already told us that we should regard 100K dead Americans as a 'badge of Honor', as if he even knows what the hell Honor is. And, until people wake-the-hell-up to what he's really all about here, he will keep urging us to ignore all the safe-guards and rules and get the hell back to work.....so his sorry butt can get re-elected, because he knows that will not happen as long as the economy is in the shitter. But, sly and clever as the Big Weasel is, he figures he can force the economy in much the same way that professional gardeners force some plants to flower....by creating the right circumstances and constantly reminding people that all this sickness and suffering is A) not as bad as we're making it out to be, and B) that it will magically disappear on its own, or C) it's all the Chinese's fault anyway, so why are we blaming him?.
So, hey, let's have a beach party and drink bleach.....why the hell not? And, hey, can you get me some of that--what's it called?--Hydroxychloroquine? Oh, I guess there is a run on it, eh.
Are you going to fall for it?
Really?
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