Memorial Day 2010

It's that time of year again. And while Americans all over the land rush to the beaches and parks to "celebrate" by eating barbecue and potato salad, others wait anxiously for news of those deployed; visit graveyards, lay wreaths; weep for those who never came home; or wonder why they lost their home, spouse, job, sometimes every anchor that holds them in place in society.

I never understood the "celebrate" aspect of Memorial Day. There is nothing to celebrate in the deaths of men and women, mostly young, of any race, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, or religion. Rather, it is my sincere hope that all of you enjoying yourselves today will pause for a minute and contemplate this. Or simply bow your heads and think of the young boys and girls we have sent to so many places to be hurt and killed to make our oligarchic owners a little richer.

Today we at this blog bow our heads and think of Louis Rochat (Rocket, to members of the 1/9 Cav), who fought his last fight on Saturday. Rocket risked his life to save his fellow troopers. He lost part of a leg, the vision in one eye, and two fingers for them.

There's plenty of stories among troopers of the 9th Cav, that elite group of helicopter pilots who flew missions in VietNam. Most of them portray Rocket, fairly accurately, as an ornery SOB with courage and class, and a willingness to lay down his life for his fellow troopers. He was just a lad when he arrived in VN, and a wreck when he left, leaving behind pieces of himself. In his own words:

I was twenty years old and just married when I left for Vietnam, and I couldn’t wait to get there. I didn’t even think about the feelings of my folks or my new wife. . . . She watched a twenty-year-old, six-foot, 175-pound Army warrant officer gunship pilot, full of piss and vinegar and a will to live life to its fullest, leave for a place she had heard nothing but bad things about. She got back a 102-pound, dark hollow-eyed, morphine and Demerol dependent, shrapnel and nine times gunshot-wounded, nine-month and two-day Vietnam veteran, who barely knew where he was, much less that he was facing two years in the hospital and thirteen surgeries.

Despite his injuries and the horrors he had seen, Lou pulled himself together and went on to make a long and happy life with his doubtless-horrified young wife. And he took his time to say all his goodbyes when, wrecked by the horrors of that war, his body failed him. He found a new vocation and a voice as a writer, with passion reverberating in his stories. Here is his wonderful description of the sacrifice one of his fellow Troopers made for him.

Louis Rochat, you were a class act. You made the world a better place and showed how to live and how to die. Rest in peace, trooper, you've earned it.

So stop for a moment today and think about how you can make your fellow citizens' lives better. Send a letter to someone deployed out there, telling them you care. Put together a package for a trooper on the front lines. Volunteer for a couple of hours a week or a month with any organization that works with vets, especially the VietNam vets who didn't have the many opportunities we provide for troopers today.



As for all those people who wear flag shirts and "support the troops" with tacky crap made in China? Go read this. And then get off your fucking ass and do something. Other than flapping your gums, that is.

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Bill Moyers and The Wire's David Simon Talk

Tonight's Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS is a must see. It is soooooo good. His guest: David Simon who used to work for the Baltimore Sun and was a screenwriter for HBO's The Wire. He talks about the "drug war", inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today.

And David Simon was one of the authors who wrote a pledge in Time magazine that says:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.

The other authors (also screenwriters on The Wire) were: Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and Richard Price. If you want to read the entire editorial, go here.

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