After the fourth graders concluded singing the songs of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, they were hailed as “our future heroes.” Fifty-caliber machine guns and other weapons were on display. An invocation was offered for those missing and captured. A bagpiper skirled a haunting benediction of “Amazing Grace” and the school kids returned to close it out with “Thank You, Soldier.”
In between there were speeches by local dignitaries and military officers as 1200 people chowed down on pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage gravy and biscuits, fruit salad, coffee and juice. When the grade schoolers filed out, several saluted, some tried a 10 year-old version of marching in step and nearly all said, “thank you for your service!”
So concluded the 20th annual Veterans Day Breakfast that filled the University of Toledo basketball arena on November 11.
That holiday, called Armistice Day for many years, observes the day in 1918 when the guns of the Great War finally fell silent, ending a slaughter the likes of which the world had never seen. Over 8,000,000 soldiers were killed. Some 13,000,000 civilians died, mostly from starvation and disease.
The original Congressional resolution establishing the holiday said it “shall be a day dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as Armistice Day.” At the height of the Red Scare in the 1950’s, Congress changed it to “Veteran’s Day” as part of a full court press to militarize Americans in preparation for the Russian invasion we were told to fear.
And fear we did!
Air raid sirens told us when to hide under our desks. The lives and careers of scores of people subpoenaed for McCarthy and Nixon’s un-American hearings were ruined, as were thousands more who were named or whispered to be Reds. Labor leaders purged their most passionate organizers, insuring union membership declined from 1955 onwards and the South would remain largely unorganized for decades.
Nationalism and its cousins, militarism and xenophobia have long been woven in our cultural fabric and they’re seeing another peak in popularity. Such corrosions of spirit don’t arrive fully formed in the minds of adults but are part of what we breathe every day from kindergarten on up.
Veterans For Peace members and Palestinian supporters outside the UT arena distributed hundreds of flyers that explained the true meaning of November 11 and called for a modern day ceasefire in Palestine. We included copies of Wilfred Owens’ “Dulce et Decorum Est” poem which was extremely well received when we explained he was killed one week before the end of WWI.
Our effort stood out vividly because it was so very rare. “Maybe it got a few people thinking,” we hoped, knowing how difficult that is in a thoroughly militarized society.
If that sounds like a too-harsh indictment, consider these few examples, many of which you’ve no doubt personally witnessed in some version:
- A plethora of bridges, streets, post offices and schools are named for veterans or military celebrities across the nation
- From sea to shining sea light poles on Main Streets are festooned with banners depicting local military veterans but never nurses or teachers
- Military recruiting billboards and commercial messages exert a daily presence everywhere, as do military recruiters in high schools and job fairs
- The Pentagon has annual multi-million dollar contracts with the National Football League to provide flyovers of fighter jets and honor “local heroes”
- Every high school, college and professional sports game is preceded by “the rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.”
- Memorial Day, July 4, Flag Day, Armed Forces Day, December 7, September 11 and other days dot the calendar reminding all of the importance of the military. In my book, the two worst annual perversions have to be the military color guard that leads the Labor Day parade when militarism is a plague on working people and the Marine in full dress uniform that makes sure even the Holiday Parade’s Santa Claus is fully exploited!
Why such an omnipresent, interminable, expensive deluge of propaganda?
Because otherwise successive generations might not learn the hard way that War Is A Racket in which the few profit and the many pay…and to make sure fourth graders become our “future heroes.”