Holidays are hard for liberals because they are all self-loathing maladjusted losers who are personally offended by anyone else enjoying themselves. Usually they attack celebratory holidays like Christmas and Easter, but with the coronavirus lockdown multiplying their misery, they are now going after the somber occasion of Memorial Day. Some of the worst liberal media takes include the U.S. Military promotes white supremacy, we need a day to memorialize COVID-19 victims, and there should be a day for war resisters.
The New York Times took the first shot at Memorial Day by complaining about how damn racist the U.S. Military is:
Why Does the U.S. Military Celebrate White Supremacy?
This same toxic legacy clings to the 10 United States military installations across the South that were named for Confederate Army officers during the first half of the 20th century. Apologists often describe the names as a necessary gesture of reconciliation in the wake of the Civil War. In truth, the namings reflect a federal embrace of white supremacy that found its most poisonous expression in military installations where black servicemen were deliberately placed under the command of white Southerners — who were said to better “understand” Negroes — and confined to substandard housing, segregated transportation systems and even “colored only” seating in movie houses.
Military installations that celebrate white supremacist traitors have loomed steadily larger in the civic landscape since the country began closing smaller bases and consolidating its forces on larger ones. Bases named for men who sought to destroy the Union in the name of racial injustice are an insult to the ideals servicemen and women are sworn to uphold — and an embarrassing artifact of the time when the military itself embraced anti-American values. It is long past time for those bases to be renamed.
So it’s bad that some U.S. military bases bare the names of Confederate generals, but okay that democrats actually owned slaves, seceded from the Union, and enacted racist segregation laws? I’m sure that makes sense to liberals because the last thing they want is to recognize their own racist history.
Next, The LA Times thinks we should use Memorial Day to thank veterans of the Vietnam War, which is what Veterans Day is for, because they are most like to die from coronavirus:
In the waning days of April, the number of people who died from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed the tally of those killed in the Vietnam War. The nation has been stunned by the many who have died in this pandemic.
We think of them today, Memorial Day, as we pause to remember and grieve for the nearly 60,000 U.S. service members who died in Vietnam — and the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who gave their lives in other wars.
As the COVID-19 death count continues to mount, it has had a cumulative and numbing effect, much like the counting of war dead. Individual cases disappear into the whole. The focus is on the number, not our fellow citizens.
Just as the COVID-19 dead have likely been undercounted, so have the U.S. military dead in Vietnam. The official number fails to include the many veterans who died after the war as a result of lingering medical and emotional conditions.
And such tallies often don’t acknowledge that as many as 3 million Vietnamese died in that war.
If you were one of those people waiting for someone to recommend we honor dead Vietcong on Memorial Day, here it is. Jane Fonda must be happy.
Now, the American generation that suffered most in Vietnam is the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
If COVID-19 disproportionately strikes the elderly and the vulnerable, the Vietnam War disproportionately killed the young and the vital.
The COVID-19 and Vietnam eras do share unfortunate similarities, including officials ignoring reports and warnings, and confidently insisting on their capacity to control events.
That war and this pandemic have each been marked by a pronounced inequitable sharing of the burden and the cost by the poor and by racial minorities. And in neither was there official national recognition of this or a pause for national mourning.
There is one lesson American citizens seem to have finally learned, between the Vietnam era and now: to thank in real time those who serve, whether it’s in war or during a pandemic. We need to do that today. And every day.
This LA Times piece is kind of all over the place, but from what I can gather, they want us to use Memorial Day to honor the Vietcong, living veterans, and anyone who has died from the coronavirus because, like the Vietnam War, it is racist.
That’s a garbage take but nothing beats this from Vox, which is actually a repost from a few years ago:
It’s time we have a holiday to honor those who try to stop wars, too
Memorial Day and Veterans Day often get equated, but there is an essential distinction between the two. Veterans Day honors all who have served the American military in wars. Memorial Day honors those who’ve perished. It’s an annual reminder that wars have grave human costs, which must be both recognized and minimized.
Those costs are not inevitable. We ought to also set aside time to remember those throughout American history who have tried hardest to reduce them, to prevent unnecessary loss of life both American and foreign: war resisters.
Vox is actually saying we need a holiday to honor draft-dodgers and deserters. Maybe we can call it America-Hater Sissy Bitch Coward’s Day.
But some wars aren’t worth fighting. Some causes aren’t worth sacrificing American lives for. Those who’ve fought to remind the government of those basic facts deserve our respect and our thanks.
No, they really don’t.
How hard is it for liberals to simply thank those who died protecting their freedom to be completely full of shit? Apparently it’s quite hard.
