Kiss our American asses, world!

I haven't posted in a while, having been preparing for and then recovering from a rather ill-conceived and harrowing nautical excursion over the weekend. I was hoping to be far away and in another country and thus to avoid what has become, like the War on Christmas, another contrived anti-American battle. But the sea pays no attention to our ambitions and acts of arrogance and there was no escape for the old captain this time.

The war on Memorial Day is a bit different, but no less insidious than our religious wars. We're long since used to being chastised for our lack of piety in not spending the event in self flagellation and the worship of the American messianic mission that some would pass off as appreciation for those who have died in Military service. We've never been asked however, at least not to my knowledge, to express our ritualized regret for the premature deaths of the 60 to 70 million who died in WW II alone, only for the US soldiers who won it without assistance from the unappreciative world -- and I've long suspected that the War on Memorial Day has become the sole reason for the holiday itself. If it were an expression of the wish that no more people would die in wars, it would be more likely to please the dead, could they be aware of it, but what it is supposed to be about has been, at least to those who write viral e-mails, a celebration of soldiering; the glory, the rituals and all the self worship and vainglorious bluster America can muster. It's the day of unmitigated, unalloyed arrogance, unrestrained by fact or reason and often not even by sanity or decency.

Of course in these latter days, when we have a President whose rationality and lack of shamanistic display require that we simply make shit up in order to preserve our military/religious complex, the War on Memorial Day is become the war that is Memorial day. It's now a war against Obama and Obama's honest assessment of what we have done, what we are doing and what we should do beyond waving flags, setting ourselves up as the world's sole and only begotten savior, puking up beer and burgers and getting discounts on foreign made goods at the big box stores.

Apologize for what? asks the e-mail. What follows is a sequence of pictures of US military cemeteries in Europe all entitled "We apologize." It ends with

"Apologize to no one. Remind those of our sacrifice and don't confuse arrogance with leadership. And we have to watch an American elected leader who apologizes to Europe and the Middle East that our country is "arrogant"! HOW MANY FRENCH, DUTCH, ITALIANS, BELGIANS AND BRITS ARE BURIED ON OUR SOIL, DEFENDING US AGAINST OUR ENEMIES?? WE DON'T ASK FOR PRAISE ... BUT WE HAVE ABSOULUTELY [sic] NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE!!"

No, it's not just the typical American arrogance about the world needing to kiss our feet every day. It's not just an illustration of our stunning ignorance of history, it's just another rabble rousing attack on a president who had the honesty to say that we have often of late been perceived as arrogant and we've often been unfair to those who disagree and that others have likewise been unfair to us. It's actually one of the best things Obama has said, in my opinion, and they're not going to let him get way with such heresy; not while there remains one pitchfork wielding and furiously ignorant psycho-patriot to arouse.

American Patriotism is a large and dense forest in which more scoundrels than we can count have taken refuge. I'm afraid there isn't enough Agent Orange and enough napalm to force them out or do away with them. I'm afraid that soon enough, Memorial Day will be the day some of use remember that there used to be an America that stood for something; something that contained a lot of good before the bastards flushed it down the toilet.