"We wear our Widow's Weeds like nuns, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice."
Memorial Day is actually the one day I wish we could forget. But as long as we seek retribution while mistaking it for justice; as long as we see the extreme cowardice of brute force and insist on calling it gallantry; as long as we're willing to cover the stench of corpses rotting on the battlefield with dress uniforms and neatly folded flags, then we'll continue to have wars - which means we'll continue to have the dead and broken warriors that go with it, which means we'll continue to pretend there's something noble in sending people we love to fight and to bleed and to die in some shit-hole halfway around the world in order to get some dickhead politician re-elected so he can make sure ExxonMobil and Pfizer and Halliburton and Grumman and Goldman Sachs can add a few extra pennies to their quarterly earnings per share, which makes sure those companies have lots of extra cash to contribute to other dickhead politicians so we can keep this parade of war porn cranking along smoothly and efficiently.
One lousy fucking day - 0.3% of the year.
Anyway, take a look at this from Addicting Info:
Twenty-Two: the estimated number of veterans who commit suicide every day.
Three hundred and fifty: the number of active-duty military members who killed themselves in 2012.
Eight hundred and forty-one: the number of active duty troops who attempted suicide one or more times in 2012.
Eight thousand: the estimated number of troops who die by their own hand each year and that is a low estimate.
Military Crisis Line: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Military One Source: 1-800-342-9647
Wounded Soldier And Family Hotline: 1-800-984-8523
No comments:
Post a Comment