Remembrance Wha...?
I boycotted Remembrance Day this year. It's the first year I've officially boycotted it - in the sense that I told my kids I was boycotting it.
And why.
Why matters because it's the first things kids ask - "WHY ARE YOU BOYCOTTING REMEMBRANCE DAY, MOM?!
Luckily, the oldest is sixteen and has a teacher who is also boycotting Remembrance Day - for political reasons that dovetail nicely with my own boycott reasons.
Now, I know it sounds mean - boycotting the one day the old veterans have to be honoured, to have their fallen comrades honoured - to get out into the dreary weather of November in their formal wear to be recognized by the public as having done something once upon a time that mattered.
I don't care. The Conservative Right has so long since bastardized the original meaning of Remembrance day - "Lest We Forget" - to support its hawish agenda - that I will no longer pretend there is any point in participating in any public way in this charade.
Remembrance Day is over.
To prove it, a tail-end boomer and Conservative Rightist, Andrew Coyne, wrote a column recently endorsing the idea of a state funeral for the last of our three remaining First World War vets to die. Well, of the three, none are really vets - having never seen battle - not that THAT small fact should in any way detract from the MUCH BIGGER fact that these three old guys are living to be over 100 years old, which DOES matter. And which is a testament to our world class healthcare system more than anything else - I'd wager. Ahem - something the aforementioned Coyne doesn't really support, by the way.
Let's face it - Andrew Coyne is somewhat of a ghoul, that's all. I mean, how respectful is it to be hovering over the lives of these three human beings like some kind of cultural vulturist? "Lest We Forget" that individual life matters. And that these three old guys deserve to live out their lives without Andrew Coyne poised over them waiting to ponce on the last corpse for a State Funeral update column.
I mean - really. Whatever happened to common decency? Did that die because Remembrance Day is suddenly all the rage? Because tail-end boomers on the Conservative Right have nothing better to obsess about that they have to write whole columns devoted to the impending death of the last three remaining Canadian World War I vets? So that they can be THAT GUY WHO SAID FIRST - STATE FUNERAL!
Christ. How about getting lives, pundit fellas? Lives, no doubt, that the remaining three WWI vets lived between 1918 and 2006. How about columns celebrating what they did - IN BETWEEN! not seeing battle in WWI and living to be over 100 years old?
In the meantime, I should point out that my father (who I did not know) fought in the Second World War. Right through it, in fact. Up to and including the liberation of Holland. What do I know of his war career?
Nothing. Except a couple of guns, a WWII uniform and helmet, and slides - terrific amateur slides - of his downtime between tours of duty. A visiting in-law was appalled to find said slides, crammed into a box, stuffed into a den closet in our family home, never viewed. But our lives were not WWII lives. My Dad died in the 60s, my Mom went back to teaching, wore pantsuits, subscribed to Ms. Magazine. Meanwhile, we dated, drank, had sex, moved in with boyfriends and girlfriends. Life went on in our family. The War was left so far behind, I guess we forgot all about it. And wasn't that the whole idea? To live modern, free lives? I mean, these days - one wonders.
Cripes, the war dead would probably wonder, even. We seem closer now to the events of the Second World War than we did when I was growing up not that long after it had ended.
Even buying poppies was viewed with a certain distain in my family. Poppies support legions. Legions support legends. And drinking. Not to mention - smoking. I know, I know - shouldn't the vets be able to live out their lives telling stories at the Legion over drinks and smokes?
No.
They should have to move on like the rest of society. Or, at least, that's what I was raised to believe. That indulging a romantic notion of war is as bad as... I don't know... wearing white after Labour Day. Or a woman putting love above financial security.
Whatever. It's self-indulgent. And it lets subsequent generations off the hook.
There is no glory in war. There never was. It was a duty - no more. As my mother would say - you had to go. There was no choice. And the men who couldn't go had a hard time of it in the society they were left to live in. So much of what it was really like has been Hollywood-ized - that one wonders if the best thing is an organized boycott to the monster Remembrance Day has become.
Because it has become a monster. A monster with no meaning. If the war dead were to arise and see this crazy, insane "War on Terror" led by this spoiled privileged brat of a son of a former C.I.A. director elected President of the United States of America - well, I think they'd just roll right back into their graves. In Flanders Field. Where poppies grow.
I've had enough. So sue me. Bring on the Traitor Act - or whatever it's called. The dead are dead. The living survived - and are still living. Long live the living. Live well.
As we say now - it's the best revenge.
