We love holidays…and parades. The calendar is so fully crammed with commemorations, honoraria, anniversaries and birthdays, both heartfelt and frivolous, that Hallmark® barely has time to rearrange its featured selections so that say, “Podiatrist’s Day” gets a fair shake coming right on the heels, (sometimes these gems are unintentional), of the recently-sanctioned, “Corporations are People Too” walk-a-thon. Most have insincere, if any, connection to their lofty titles and have become excuses for unrelated events like white sales, mattress blowouts or paraphernalia and fireworks heavy picnics and 5K runs. They encourage unnecessary spending and an obscene amount of waste.
I’ve never been a flag waver. I think that nationalism, especially when you’ve got it as relatively good as we do, is, to much of the rest of the world, like sticking your tongue out on the playground, punctuated by a chiding, “Na na na na na!” However, I do get “Memorial Day”. Not the ‘one-week-only-lowest-price-of-the-year’ car sales frenzy part, but the part where we’re supposed to collectively remember our many struggles as a nation and the countless brave men and women who gave unselfishly of themselves to preserve our freedom. It saddens me that the patriotic parades and mandatory BBQ’s and American flag t-shirts, bandanas, cakes and, well, flags have not allowed our memories to both rejoice in our triumphs over heinous crimes against humanity, as well as own the mistakes we have made. Selective memory will only continue to take us down paths not worth taking.
So…things to remember: