Veterans Day

Maybe if our society understood that going to war is a shared responsibility among the nation, we wouldn't be treated to such nonsense in our Op-Ed pages on Veterans Day. Today's turd is from David Ignatius, who, having an apparent change of heart from his Harvard days, once referred to the "needle-popping" Army in an article about why Mao would make a decent President:

Through all its own difficulties, the military has kept its stride. That sense of balance comes partly from the fact that soldiers are anchored to the American bedrock. This includes the stereotypical small towns in the South and Midwest that have military service in their DNA. But it also counts plenty of hardworking, upwardly mobile Hispanic and African-American families in urban America who produce some of the best soldiers I know.

Great. All the military folks David Ignatius "knows" are probably the people he called the cops on when they drove by his country club. As long as the nation's elite continue to see military service as something only poor, desperate rubes would take part in, we're going to have a pretty fucked up republic.

So this Motorhead tune is for all the vets out there, because it seems appropriate. I don't really think it's anti-war or anti-religion necessarily, but it's kind of a harsh criticism about the leaders of the world making everyone else doing all the sacrificing:



Nobody gives a damn about anybody else,
Think everyone should feel the way they feel themselves,
Rich men think that happiness is a million dollar bills,
So how come half of them O.D. on sleeping pills,
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, you all know what I mean,
What's the use of a cry for help, if no one hears the screams,
No one hears the scream,

No voices in the sky, confusion blinds the eye,
Can't take it with you when you die,
No voices in the sky,

The ones who dedicate the flags to make you brave,
They also consecrate the headstone on your grave,
Ritual remembrance when no one knows your name,
Don't help a single widow learn to fight the pain,

Politicians kissing babies for good luck,
T.V. preachers sell salvation for a buck,
You don't need no golden cross, to tell you wrong from right,
The world's worst murderers were those who saw the light.