A thought experiment on Veterans Day, part 3

It’s funny to me, how emotional I get around Veterans Day.  I can’t justify it beyond the people I have already talked about, or that I have worked with, or like my friend Mary’s husband Joe, who is a great guy whom I’ve never met but has an awesome family, and a great name, too.  And in America, Veterans Day is to honor and celebrate these very special people, so I hope we don’t forget it.

My interlude still has more to go.

Combine the two previous posts into one chain of thoughts, and you have my brain. It doesn’t stop, and it makes connections to things most normal people wouldn’t.  But I’m not normal.

I had a good time this weekend, and spent time with my family.  More on this later, but something came up in a conversation that irked me, and at the time I responded with a lengthy explanation to the offending party, much to the amusement of those present.  But it stayed with me and created the basis for these thoughts.

The comment was actually about the Bible, the old testament, and how we didn’t really need it anymore.  It was said in jest, just so we are clear, but I’m dying and I tend to think about things.

Take the mentality that we don’t need something anymore and apply it to society.  “Oh, that is outdated and centuries old, we have progressed beyond that, we don’t need it any more.”  Apply it to architecture, law, language, employment, family, religion, whatever you want.  Cuisine.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  Did you try it?  Ok, let me tell you what you found.

In a median, the discarding of outdated or impractical rules and custom frees up any given concept, doesn’t it?  We all know the govt is a s show, so things that streamline are a big help.  Sure, there are speed bumps and people who say we’ve always done it that way, but they are either old or power hungry, am I right?  But then you hit a roadblock, a ritual or rule or law that doesn’t make sense to you, but if you discard it, for some reason the other things start to crumble.  Say, personal property. Or theft, or killing, or if those are too extreme, how about laws like innocent until proven guilty, or how you shouldn’t eat uncooked chicken or pork.  If Bob ate it one time, and didn’t get sick, well we should get rid of that rule.

See, some rules are there for a reason, even if we don’t personally understand them.  Then some rules actually underpin the society we live in, and if we remove them, the structure of society crumbles.

What the hell does this have to do with Veterans Day?

For years, we’ve been told by our betters that one thing is better than another.  And the prime case in point is World War I.  The people didn’t start that war, the politicians did.  Then when the people fighting the actual war had a truce, early on, the politicians knew better, discarded rules, and created a superbloody conflict that gave us tanks, machine guns, chemical warfare, aerial bombing, and just following orders. Then the very deep seated resentment that arose in Germany, the acceptance and spread of Lenin doctrines of communism, the massacres of MILLIONS of civilians, and more soldiers.  fighting came in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, etc.

Yeah, they knew better alright.

Can you imagine if someone had been brave enough to actually pay attention, and stop the senseless war?  Can you imagine what might have been? What would have been different?  But it did happen, and more.  So now, what do you do with it?

Throw it away, that is outdated thinking?  If you don’t remember history, you will repeat it.

It ties back in to the comment about the old testament.  Like it or not, what we have now of Western civilization is a biblical centered judeo christian set of belief, norms, and standards.  And yes, rules.  If you throw them out, thinking they are outdated, then you undermine the society you are in that allows you to contemplate getting rid of them.  Or, to tie it to Veterans Day, when you wage a war against your brother, throwing out accepted norms, customs and rules, you open the door to gas chambers, Kristalnacht, the eastern front, and on and on . I could even go into Mao and his revolutions that purged every five years, that no one talks about.  But I think you know what I mean.

Will war always be with us?  Yes, for we are human, and at any point one nation may rise against another, or against itself, and man will have to fight on the side of righteousness.  But do we have the ability to avoid those wars?  Yes, if we are brave enough to recognize the signs and go against mainstream thought.

I really love my Veterans.  I can’t describe how honored I am to have supported you. I wish though that you were honored year round and not taken advantage of once a year, and that we respected your sacrifice. And that we didn’t need to have an armistice day.  It makes me sad.

I would launch in to the Catholic bishops too, but this is my thoughts on Veterans Day, and they won’t care anyway.

virtue signaling over, on to your regularly scheduled nonsense!

 

1 thought on “A thought experiment on Veterans Day, part 3”

  1. Take the mentality that we don’t need something anymore and apply it to society. “Oh, that is outdated and centuries old, we have progressed beyond that, we don’t need it any more.” what a great line—and just saying it out loud proves we NEED the “rules” more than ever. Society always seems to believe we are smarter than those before us and yet we still fall into the same patterns.
    WELL SAID JOE!

    Like

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