exciting, informative, snarky, and very likely fabricated tales of life as an american expat in london

my silence on remembrance day

by Jen at 7:49 pm on 11.11.2010Comments Off
filed under: rant and rage

it’s difficult being a pacifist on veteran’s/remembrance day. i am awash in a sea of poppies commemorating “the glorious dead”.

to my mind, there is no such thing.

my facebook and twitter feeds are flooded with syrupy militaristic sentiment “honouring those who serve for us all” – including my several cousins in the military.

they haven’t served for me. they actively participate and support institutions which murder with my tax dollars.

during the two minutes of silence observed everywhere – at work, at schools, across the country – it is presumed that my quietude is a symbol respect for lives lost in battles on my behalf.

to me, all deaths in war are an ignoble failure to achieve peace.

but to speak out, or otherwise protest a holiday that i view as a tacit national veneration of killing and being killed, is a transgression of the norms that few would understand, a disrespect of the dead that i can’t bring myself to broach.

so i’m silent in the silence, and in my own internal way, wish for an end to the guns, the bombs, the machinations of senseless death that prevent the rooting of tolerance and peace. a wish for an end to the remembering, and the start of a worldwide silence that is the end of war.

4 people like this post.
Comments Off

Comments are closed.