A highlight of every year for MAGA patriots and local militias is the War Season, also known as summer.
It begins on Armed Forces Day in May, triggering a series of war-themed holidays (Memorial Day, D-Day, etc.) during which the nation honors all current active duty service men and women, plus survivors and non-survivors of all the nation’s wars beginning with the War of Independence (1775 to 1783) through the Iraq-Afghanistan-Syrian War (2003 to to-be-continued).
It reaches a crescendo of parades, marching bands, and fireworks on July 4 and ends in November on Veterans Day. It would run longer but Thanksgiving triggers the Happy Holiday Shopping Season, and nothing dampens retail spending and fourth quarter profits like talk of war.
Still, five months is not a lot of time to thank and honor all who deserve it, and a lot do. America is flush with veterans and war dead because War is what America does best. Forget Silicon Valley, hi-tech, banking, autos, or steel – as its share of the federal budget proves, War is our most important industry, and we’re damn good at it.
That’s because the U.S. has been at war for 224 of its 241 years of existence, and counting. It honed its killing skills on Native American “savages,” British invaders and on each other during the Civil War, and on a virtual United Nations of foreign countries, one or two of which actually attacked us first. Pearl Harbor comes to mind, but that’s about it.
Equally deserving of Honor but decidedly less cared-for is the vast population of surviving ex-service members residing in VA hospitals, mental institutions, rehab centers, homeless shelters, and single-occupancy sleeping bags tucked away in alleys, under bridges, and among trees on the Montini Preserve. Known in defense industry manufacturing parlance as “scrap,” these veterans continue to serve by providing good-paying jobs for doctors, police, jailers, nurses, social workers, and others in industries that provide supporting equipment and services “before it’s too late.”
Like regular bodybuilding, regular war bulks up a country and almost-continuous war has given America the largest, most buff, and most expensive military in history. However, it hasn’t done much for the nation’s education or health care systems, unless one considers the extensive knowledge gained through treating the wounded, dismembered, and PTSD.
Our military-industrial complex is the most pervasively profitable on the planet, providing guns, ammo & etc. to virtually any country or rebel outfit with a credit card, enabling friend and foe alike to defend themselves against each other. During the occasional time-outs, they can also eradicate internal pests: opposing politicians, Hutus/Tutsies, Taliban, Rohingas, Apaches, Uighurs, Romas, Bokas, Arabs, Refugees, and the universally despised People We Just Don’t Like.
Americans can take particular pride when an American-made surface-to-air missile (captured by Iran during the Iraq-Iran War) is launched in support of Yemeni rebels from an American-financed Iranian launch site (constructed during the regime of American-installed and later-deposed puppet Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi), and downs an American-made surveillance drone launched from an American-made Saudi destroyer, after being detected by American-made Israeli radar and confirmed by the U.S. Drone Command headquarters in Nevada.
With this year’s War Season well underway, the (Acting) American Secretary of Defense, along with the (Acting) President, are promising to turn the page – to Chapter 129, “War With Iran and Operation Venezuela Freedom.”
On Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms, it’s looking like a great 4th quarter, Thanksgiving be damned.
I am looking forward to finding my two fraternity brothers on the movable Vietnam Memorial Wall in August. It is visiting my hometown while making its way across country. I was drafted in 1968 while living in NYC. I failed and was reclassified 1 Y. Having lived this long, I think about these men often who never had a life. One died a father of an infant girl who was deprived of a father and a wife who was deprived of a husband. She was not treated well as a widow. No survivor benefits then.