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Half Staff

Shadow Link

Active Member
In honor of the fallen...

United States Flags at Half-Staff From Sunrise Until Noon on Monday, May 28, 2018 for Memorial Day.

IMG_2197.JPG
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I honestly resent how we Americans officially "honor" our military perhaps two or three times a year in most communities, then turn around and allow them to be kicked even to the gutter in so very many cases just as soon as their usefulness to the corporations and uber-rich who all but own the government is over.

Yeah, we'll pay you to fight, Johnny, but not to come home alive -- or worse, come home wounded maimed or injured.

To me, it makes it that much worse that we idolize them, that we put them on a pedestal nowadays and easily express gratuitous and recreational outrage if anyone is so bold as to suggest that perhaps teachers, police, fire fighters, social workers, paramedics, etc are public servants who also should be equally honored and respected with the military.

What really goads me is I strongly suspect the hidden motive for putting our service members pedestals these days has so much more to do with shrewdly rallying political support for our wars of aggression than it has much of anything to do with genuinely respecting and honoring them. You simply do NOT genuinely respect and honor a man or woman by giving them two or three parades to march in each year then cut funding to their VA benefits, etc. etc.

That is so screwed up, so sick. All of it.
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
Have your nineteen year old friend die in your arms in some God forsaken part of the world and then make the comparison.

PS: While your at it, thank that nineteen year old kid for having the guts to do what needed to be done so you could have the right to publicly make whatever foolish statement that enters your head.

Half a day at half staff seems a small price to pay for such a large debt.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Have your nineteen year old friend die in your arms in some God forsaken part of the world and then make the comparison.

PS: While your at it, thank that nineteen year old kid for having the guts to do what needed to be done so you could have the right to publicly make whatever foolish statement that enters your head.

Half a day at half staff seems a small price to pay for such a large debt.
Here's what it boils down to.....
- If enuf people get value from the holiday, then it will serve its purpose.
- For those of us who don't care about such thing......
Nuthin fer nor agin it.
No need to dis anyone, either vet or non-vet, hawk or peacenik, lib or con, bacon or vegan.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Too bad they haven't fought or died or defended our country and its ideals and freedoms for a very long time, but have been sent time and time again to die for corporate/imperialist conquest to economically repress developing countries into submission. "Gangster for capitalism" was the term about a century ago, and now it's to enforce these fantasy ideas of spreading American democracy and consumerism to people who don't want it and are turning radical because of it.
"We don't like to kill our unborn. We need them to grow up and fight the war." And then when they come back from the war we spit on them, give them healthcare that has long been a focus of controversy, give them little aid, and over hype just how useful military experience will be in landing a job back in civilian life. If we really wanted wanted to honor them, we'd demand no more military interventions and wars of attrition, and that they have all their basic needs met for the rest of their life.
American ideas of honoring the military is a joke. We have recently politically weaponized them to decry certain freedoms as insulting to them, we blindly thank them even though we don't know what they did, and we really only support them as long as they are fighting in wars they shouldn't have been sent to in the first place.
To me, it makes it that much worse that we idolize them, that we put them on a pedestal nowadays and easily express gratuitous and recreational outrage if anyone is so bold as to suggest that perhaps teachers, police, fire fighters, social workers, paramedics, etc are public servants who also should be equally honored and respected with the military.
Yup. Teachers bear the weight of the future on their shoulders; physical and mental health professionals give life, hope, and teach skills to live - often at the expense of their own mental and physical health; firefighters more-or-less run head first into the gates of hell serving and protecting others; and police (ideally and if not so militarized and corrupt) put themselves in danger to keep the rest of us safe. But if you point out that some people in the military really are nothing more than sanctioned killers (I use to work with a guy who enlisted just to kill people, and he did have loads of anger problems and difficulties managing it), you can expect a good deal of social backlash.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
And to clarify, I am pro-military. The art of war is the survival or death of the state. But I am very against the state abusing the military and using it for non-defensive reasons and fighting wars that are unwinnable before the first pair of boots hits the ground.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Have your nineteen year old friend die in your arms in some God forsaken part of the world and then make the comparison.

PS: While your at it, thank that nineteen year old kid for having the guts to do what needed to be done so you could have the right to publicly make whatever foolish statement that enters your head.

Half a day at half staff seems a small price to pay for such a large debt.

I assume you are addressing my post, although I certainly hope not, because if you are then it does not speak well of either your knowledge, your reasoning here, or perhaps both your knowledge and your reasoning here.

Let me begin with an apparently necessary question, do we live in the same world? Is the world in which you live the same as mine? A world in which not only service members sometimes die in the line of duty, but a world in which fire fighters also sometimes die in the line of duty. And police officers too? Or even teachers these days?

Yes I know you will most likely say, "But service members take greater risks and have higher mortality and casualty rates than those other groups."

But you do NOT want to go down that road because it leads straight to the fact that in every war of this or the last century it has not been combatants who suffered the most dead, maimed, crippled, and wounded, but instead, and by far, non-combatants. Men, women, and children who never signed up for the war in the first place.

So, if you still insist on tallying up numbers and then accounting special and superior those groups who have suffered most, you won't get far with me, or with most any rational person, unless you are fair and just enough to include in your books everyone who is made to suffer for our freedoms -- even including those innocents who never signed up to take upon themselves the risk of suffering.

Moreover, I wonder where you get the idea -- maybe I should even say here, "the nerve" -- to imply I might lack sufficient respect for our military members simply on the grounds that I equally respect other public servants too?

In the first place, that's a low, vulgar, personal attack on me, to say nothing of being false and misleading. Yet, I still have too much respect for you to hold it against you, so you're off the hook with me in that one way, if only in that one way.

But in the second place, you force me to ask, do you think respect is some kind of zero-sum game? Do you think if Jones is highly respected, then Smith cannot be highly respected too without that somehow, in some mysterious way, damaging the respect for Jones?

Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? It sounds just as if you somehow have made yourself believe that respect is like a bucket of water, and that once you've poured out the water, there's no more to go around.

You gratuitously accuse me of making "foolish statements", but look to your own house first! I must begin to wonder now if you even calmly and reasonably think through your own words and what they mean before you post them? Did you actually make the effort to first understand my post before lashing out? It does not look like it to me.

Again, you imply that I might actually in some sense begrudge our military members "half a day at half staff". I've already forgiven you once for attacking me, but this time, I will say this: Quote me where I said any such a thing or even logically implied such a thing, for it's high time you "put up or shut up".

Last, I am disgusted with your reasoning here. There's no better word for it than disgusted. So, whatever response you make to this post, will be met with silence on my part unless -- you reason more rigorously, fairly, and less accusingly than you have been reasoning. I could say so much more than what I have about your post, but only at risk that you might legitimately feel yourself insulted, so I simply won't.

Thank your for your service. I mean that sincerely.

But no thanks -- absolutely none -- for your unjust, false, and misleading post.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I'm for givng all people equal billing and recognition for their contribution that makes a country strong healthy and prosperous.

I'm not exclusively on the public servant bandwagon because you need more than public servants to make a country work.

I believe in giving recognition when recognition is due and it's for those that had paid real world prices for dedication and service weither by public or private service.

This is Memorial Day. It's not for the living but rather a solemn reminder of those who are not among the living who had no chance to enjoy the fruits by which they paid that price.

Half staff is appropriate with knowledge that it's for them, the military personnel who have fallen.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
The best way we can honor those who have fought is to take care of them afterwards. We're great at speeches but abominable when it comes to honoring them in deeds not words.

The current policy of kicking out those without papers who have served rather than giving them a path to becoming a citizen as thanks, is just one more sign of our true lack of respect.
 

ADigitalArtist

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Just a reminder, as someone with service person contacts, tomorrow is not the day to thank them for their service. It weirds them out and is even considered by some to be bad luck. Tomorrow is for the dead, not the living.
 
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