Memorial Day- For the Fallen

I hope that this gets read, there doesn’t seem like a rush of traffic to comment on this particular radio special.
Why do shows like this get produced and played on patriotic holidays? We need this kind of patriotic syrup to sugar coat a deep wound: our collective national guilty conscience. There is no excuse, since Vietnam, for the deep shame of serving in America’s military, knowing that it’s primary purpose has shifted to the defense of corporate profit. Perhaps these poor kids enlisitng don’t understand, but their parents should. There is no excuse for a national economy that forces an underclass to fight these wars of exploitation for a callous and greedy ruling class. There is no excuse for the waste of national treasure and the lives of the young, fittingly memorialized in your show. Because of the bleeding wound of America’s conscience (which shows that, thank God, there still is one!) the military needs to constantly bombard us with this “It’s for freedom, their sacrifce, it’s for freedom!” These wars, in particular Iraq and Afghanistan are to end freedom. We are not more free here and they are not more free there. The net result of the sacrifice of “The Fallen” is that some well-connected corporations have a whole lot more money, and we have lost some civil liberties we may never regain, and, just for a bonus, as a culture we’re much more accepting of militarism and torture. Your show did everything it could to extend this absurd lie, and marry people’s real respect for human sacrifice to the the vicous, backward logic of these wars. THERE IS NO FLAG LARGE ENOUGH TO COVER THE SHAME OF KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE. Howard Zinn.