Happy Memorial Day!

[peterabnny]

After a day spent drawing and grilling out with family, I wanted to take a moment out to say thanks to Laemkral (and any other CG servicemembers) for his service and for keeping us safe. We love ya, man!

[Laemkral]

You're welcome! Technically, today is not my day. My day is Veteran's Day, today is specifically for those service members who have died in service to their country. But, even though I haven't given the fullest measure of devotion (a euphemism for dying), I'm still humbled by the appreciation and support. Thank you.

Also Brockway is a service member. But he doesn't come around much. And is in the Navy, and beyond the SEALs they don't do much. Just kidding.

[Warren]

It's fine with us if you don't give the fullest measure of devotion.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Seconding Warren!!

I went and saw the parade and service in town. There was a bunch of WWII and Korea vets last year, this year there was only three or four of them. It's weird because I remember being REALLY little and we still had a handful of WWI guys walking the parade. No Vietnam or more recent war veterans marched, and it's sad to think there could come a year where no veterans march in the parade. Already it seems like almost everyone there is so removed- I thought it was just a jingoism, but I realized (because of people admitting it out loud, not proudly necessarily, but probably not with the reluctance/deference they should have had) that a lot of people actually do not understand why we have Memorial Day. I can understand not knowing about its origins, but seriously- the listing of all the fellows who died, all the religious figures talking about people who "gave their last"- people really can't put two and two together? Really?

Either way me and my mom went over and shook hands with the veterans that were there. I know the holiday isn't about "them," but it didn't seem like an inappropriate time/place to tell them "thank you."

I love Memorial Day, but the weird surge of commercialism associated with it and the detachment of its "celebrants" make me really sympathetic to the "Keep CHRIST in Christmas" people, if you get what I'm saying.

[McDuffies]

I have bad news guys, my goldfish yesterday gave it's full extent of devotion.

[Warren]

I have bad news guys, my goldfish yesterday gave it's full extent of devotion.

DIBS

[IVstudios]

...and it's sad to think there could come a year where no veterans march in the parade.

I dunno, having a day come when there were no veterans to march would sort of imply that a day would come when we hadden't had a war in like 70 years, wich would be sort of awesome.

I get your meaning though.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

...and it's sad to think there could come a year where no veterans march in the parade.

I dunno, having a day come when there were no veterans to march would sort of imply that a day would come when we hadden't had a war in like 70 years, wich would be sort of awesome.

I get your meaning though.

I guess it just kind of makes me think of the day when we don't have any Holocaust survivors left and stuff like that. As much as it's nice to be distanced from things in the past, people forget how horrible and significant such events were. I know that's the way time works- eventually eveyrone who was there for something dies off- but it isn't something that should just be forgotten and left ot the history books, you know?

I realize that 90 or so years ago I would have been saying the same thing about Civil War veterans.


Also the fact that we DO have veterans of more recent wars, but for various reasons they either can't or choose not to march in the Memorial Day parade (In my town, I'm sure in other places it varies). It's the nature of the recent post-draft wars though.

[Warren]

I realize that 90 or so years ago I would have been saying the same thing about Civil War veterans.

My friend was tearing the walls out of his house and a previous owner used newspaper for insulation/wallpaper. The papers were from about 1903, and lots of the obituaries said that the guys were Civil War veterans. It was kind of odd.

It was also kind of sad that ads for apartments clearly indicated that some were for whites only.

But man, stuff was cheap. Except for cable internet. That was still about $35/month even then.

[McDuffies]

I guess it just kind of makes me think of the day when we don't have any Holocaust survivors left and stuff like that. As much as it's nice to be distanced from things in the past, people forget how horrible and significant such events were. I know that's the way time works- eventually eveyrone who was there for something dies off- but it isn't something that should just be forgotten and left ot the history books, you know?

I realize that 90 or so years ago I would have been saying the same thing about Civil War veterans.


Also the fact that we DO have veterans of more recent wars, but for various reasons they either can't or choose not to march in the Memorial Day parade (In my town, I'm sure in other places it varies). It's the nature of the recent post-draft wars though.

My first thought is that there are always witnesses of some horrible event, seeing how these pesky wars don't seem to stop appearing.
My second thought is that we're generally doing what you described without a second thought. Does any of us have an idea just how mind-numbingly brutal were crusades, for instance? We're talking about the level of violence that modern person probably can't begin to imagine, a level worse than any you've seen in a movie (which is the only window to actual violence for most of people).
Isn't there a certain disrespect in a movie like "300" where horrible events are glamorized (and not in Truffault's sort of way), slicked up and practically turned into caricature of themselves? For that matter, considering what standard of living was like several centuries ago (more Monty Python's Holy Grail than Errol Flynn movies), can we consider hollywood historical spectacles an abomination?
I'm asking rhetorically because I don't know myself. It can be considered a coping mechanism, that's how we cope with how miserable history of civilization.
I advocate that people should be more acquainted with history, for one because a lot of deeply-seated stereotypical opinions wouldn't hold up, but also to help us get some perspective on our own place (we usually tend to believe that everything worthwhile began just a little before we were born). But most of people apparently think that their lives are difficult enough without dealing with centuries of misery in their free time, to which I can't really object.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I've thought of that too, McD. It's like there's a delineation somewhere in history where people stop being "like us" in some way that makes them kind of unrelatable and we don't think of the deaths as seriously as we think of more recent ones. Some events seem so unlike anything we could imagine seeing today that we sort of shut off our sympathy receptors or something.

[Laemkral]

There is a great difficulty in relating to events as they become further and further from our recent memory. Desert Storm probably feels really far off, right? It was just a little over 20 years ago. It was not that much different a war from the invasion of Iraq, which was nearly 10 years ago. A decade passed and yet not a lot had changed. Same weapons, same vehicles, same doctrine, maybe some slightly better electronics. 10 years, no changes. 10 years more, literally nearly everything has changed.

This is why it is important for people "who were there" to tell their stories so it can be recorded for future generations, because the impact of talking to someone "who was there" is unlike anything else short of experiencing it. I can travel to a Civil War battlefield, a historian can describe in intricate detail where the fighting lines were and what happened, but the greatest impact will always be the recorded first hand accounts from survivors of the battle. This is true of every grand (and I don't mean grand as in good, I mean grand in scale) event in human history.

Movies like "300" do glorify events and change the context to fit a socially acceptable narrative. This is inevitable. Watch anything WW2 before Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Then watch either of those and compare. Big difference. In fact, the best comparison I can think of is to watch "The Longest Day" and then "Band of Brothers". Filmed less than 20 years after WW2 ended, "The Longest Day" is one of the most grand scale retellings of D-Day at Normandy and even filmed at St. Mere-Eglise where the 82nd Airborne dropped, and used military consultants from both sides of the war. "Band of Brothers", for those who don't know, is the story of E "Easy" Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne who dropped alongside the 82nd on D-Day. It doesn't paint as nice and pretty a picture as "The Longest Day", but its a hell of a lot closer to the truth of how the war was fought.

Sometimes, the glorification is intentional. We want to make our heroes a little big bigger, after all. Sometimes, it's subconscious because we just don't want to show how horrible something is. To go back to "300", the battle of Thermopylae is a very important one in the discussion of tactics, comparison of military training, and selfless service for the mission. To members of the military, Spartans, REAL Spartans, do embody some concepts that are truly worth striving for because those really were some hardcore motherfuckers. "300" just takes that an extra step further by throwing a bit of comic book shimmer onto it. Hell, the same could be said of Captain America. In the end, I think the most important question is not "does it glorify something that was really horrible to go through" but "does it imbed this event in our memories in a way where we are going to remember it and maybe dig for the truth of it afterwards?" I bet a lot more people learned about the battle of Thermopylae in a good way after seeing that movie.

In the end, the disconnect between society and events like war and genocide can be chalked up to a lot of factors.

[Laemkral]

...and it's sad to think there could come a year where no veterans march in the parade.

I dunno, having a day come when there were no veterans to march would sort of imply that a day would come when we hadden't had a war in like 70 years, wich would be sort of awesome.

I get your meaning though.

Yeah, I kinda look forward to the day peace puts me out of a job and mothers don't need to hang gold or blue stars in their windows.