Allen Furford: "Every time I sit and ponder the holidays we honor"

Every time I sit and ponder the holidays we honor, normally in a darkened room at night with the problems of the day also at rest, Memorial Day always comes up with others such as Christmas or Easter, and who in America can forget the Fourth of July and what it stood for. In reality all of the holidays can be summed up in Memorial Day, something that covers all the events deemed important one way or another, as we honor our dead with flowers, prayer or parades as well as a few moments of reflection and then go about our lives in a manner of our own choosing for the most part as if we have done our duty for the year, if we have a duty structured mind at all. Examining the word “duty” carefully for real definition does not even enter the picture at all for most people. I find I am not like most people...

Duty is an ambiguous word defining a course of action for the sake of excuse in executing the action, whatever it well may be, good or bad, and nothing more. The soldier in the firing squad executing someone by someone else’s decree or command is merely doing his duty. The airman dropping a bomb on a hospital or school as directed by higher commanding officers was merely doing his or her duty. The police officer crashing his car into a crowd during a high speed chase was merely doing his or her duty. The Roman soldier nailing Christ to the cross was merely doing his duty. After all is said in done we honor the dead from the results of some stated duty, because some great thinker in command of large scale media in most cases, told us this is also our duty, so we accept this practice in mass and call it Memorial Day which is really a day without any deep thought about cause and effect.

For the military: On your honor you will do your best to do your Duty for God and your country, to obey the high command, to maim, torture and kill, to lie, cheat and steal, to ruin, destroy and rape, to desecrate, pillage and plunder, while rendering useless the land in some cases for generations yet unborn.

For the Congress: On your honor you will do your best for God and your country to tax the masses into poverty, to promote the Defense Industry and major energy companies, to hide the truth from the masses, to steal for yourself and those who pay you under the table, to promote dissension throughout the world for the likes of banker’s profits, and to sanction Zionist expansion at all costs and depriving the people of affordable health care, while stealing their Social Security and their other retirement benefits to promote war.

For the bulk American masses: On your honor you will do your best for God and your country to mindlessly accept the media propaganda, to vote for the corrupt politicians, to support rigged elections, and promise not to remember anything except Memorial Day, your excuse for another day off of work fun time or sporting event rather than any of the deeper meanings it really implies.

Memorial Day oh busy American? When you put the flowers on the grave of some young veteran doing his or her so called duty, never forget this: ...and where their sightless eyes stare out beyond life's vanished joys, I noticed nearly all the dead were hardly more than boys... a thoughtful sumnating word gift to you from Grantland Rice on memorial Day, 2004, fifty years after his death.

Allen D. Furford