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Nov. 15th, 2021 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarAt least they waited ‘till Remembrance Day was done. The Christmas trees I mean.
This is my rule, which, thankfully, seems to have been somewhat adopted by wider society on an unspoken basis. We have at least that to thank conspicuous patriotism. If putting up Christmas lights in mid-November feels tacky, putting them up amidst the poppies and wheelchair bound veterans gathered round the cenotaph – or to hold the Santa Claus parade just beforehand, as Hamilton once inexplicably decided to do - seemed positively obscene.
Now let’s talk a little about that Harbinger of Colder Weather to Come.
I’ve summed up my own complicated relationship with Remembrance Day here amongst other places. To whit: the day’s evolution from sombre commemoration of the dead to social media virtue signalling seems complete. I am growing ever more fed up with the increasingly shrill demands to don a plastic flower, as if a hundred thousand dead-boys on the Somme were my responsibility.
The calls of the Don Cherry types to wear a flower on one’s lapel feel ever more like exertions to clap for Tinkerbell. Wear your poppy, or all those kids slaughtered at Ypres and Verdun died for nothing. I’m not a fan of this kind of emotional blackmail. Nor anything that smells this much like a mandatory test of state loyalty.
Thing is, I do wear a poppy. I do attend the annual ceremonies, observe the minute of silence, and afterwards take the flower off and place on the nearest cenotaph, as you are technically supposed to do. I do it because it means a lot to those who did serve, and it costs me nothing (well, 25 cents in the box). I think it’s important to remember history. But history is forgotten when memes and slogans take over. When symbols and gestures take on importance in their own right, divorced from what they represent, history is definitely forgotten.
I am grateful that a previous generation stood up to fascism in the 1940s. And I’m not naïve enough to believe that the meek inherit the earth. Conflict, alas, appears to be inevitable. But it shouldn’t be entered into blindly, and forgive me if I’m not terribly grateful when it occurs.
The lessons of history and of war are complicated, and it’s useless and insulting to boil it all down to the GI Joe themesong. If one lesson is that dictators need to be defied, could another not be less blind allegiance to the state might lead to fewer dictators? If wars need to be fought, might there be fewer of them if we got over this fetish for flags, trumpets and epaulets? Would WWII have happened if more Germans had hated war and not loved Hitler’s plan to annex Poland? What if the Japanese had been less patriotic?
These too are lessons of history lost in all that blather about freedom. If I choose not to forget them, and if I choose not to be lectured about “Sacrifice” by some anonymous internet troll who won’t throw on a facemask in the grocery store, who am I dishonouring?
This is my rule, which, thankfully, seems to have been somewhat adopted by wider society on an unspoken basis. We have at least that to thank conspicuous patriotism. If putting up Christmas lights in mid-November feels tacky, putting them up amidst the poppies and wheelchair bound veterans gathered round the cenotaph – or to hold the Santa Claus parade just beforehand, as Hamilton once inexplicably decided to do - seemed positively obscene.
Now let’s talk a little about that Harbinger of Colder Weather to Come.
I’ve summed up my own complicated relationship with Remembrance Day here amongst other places. To whit: the day’s evolution from sombre commemoration of the dead to social media virtue signalling seems complete. I am growing ever more fed up with the increasingly shrill demands to don a plastic flower, as if a hundred thousand dead-boys on the Somme were my responsibility.
The calls of the Don Cherry types to wear a flower on one’s lapel feel ever more like exertions to clap for Tinkerbell. Wear your poppy, or all those kids slaughtered at Ypres and Verdun died for nothing. I’m not a fan of this kind of emotional blackmail. Nor anything that smells this much like a mandatory test of state loyalty.
Thing is, I do wear a poppy. I do attend the annual ceremonies, observe the minute of silence, and afterwards take the flower off and place on the nearest cenotaph, as you are technically supposed to do. I do it because it means a lot to those who did serve, and it costs me nothing (well, 25 cents in the box). I think it’s important to remember history. But history is forgotten when memes and slogans take over. When symbols and gestures take on importance in their own right, divorced from what they represent, history is definitely forgotten.
I am grateful that a previous generation stood up to fascism in the 1940s. And I’m not naïve enough to believe that the meek inherit the earth. Conflict, alas, appears to be inevitable. But it shouldn’t be entered into blindly, and forgive me if I’m not terribly grateful when it occurs.
The lessons of history and of war are complicated, and it’s useless and insulting to boil it all down to the GI Joe themesong. If one lesson is that dictators need to be defied, could another not be less blind allegiance to the state might lead to fewer dictators? If wars need to be fought, might there be fewer of them if we got over this fetish for flags, trumpets and epaulets? Would WWII have happened if more Germans had hated war and not loved Hitler’s plan to annex Poland? What if the Japanese had been less patriotic?
These too are lessons of history lost in all that blather about freedom. If I choose not to forget them, and if I choose not to be lectured about “Sacrifice” by some anonymous internet troll who won’t throw on a facemask in the grocery store, who am I dishonouring?
Remarks From a Stranger Arriving Late to These Words
Date: 2022-11-11 01:02 pm (UTC)I thank you for this.
Re: Remarks From a Stranger Arriving Late to These Words
Date: 2022-12-06 08:21 pm (UTC)