Gary Varvel for May 25, 2023

GOD Bless our troops.

Hand Salute…………………………two

Great heroes that fought for the USA.

Then there’s Tommy Tuberville (who sounds like a benign railroad-train character from a cartoon for toddlers, but is anything but…) who apparently approves of white supremacists in the military, resisting any attempt to research the existence and prevalence of extremists in the military. You know what happens when the military takes over; never good.

Perhaps the best way to thank our veterans is to fight hard to preserve the freedoms they died protecting. Rockwell portrayed the four freedoms in 1943 when the world seemed to be at its greatest peril. We are at a similar crossroads now.

Excerpts from NY Times opinion article entitled, “The Four Freedoms, According to Republicans” by Jamelle Bouie on May 19, 2023:

“In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Roosevelt said there was ‘nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy’ and that he, along with the nation, looked forward to ‘a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.’ Famously, those freedoms were the ‘freedom of speech and expression,’ the ‘freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,’ the ‘freedom from want’ and the ‘freedom from fear.’ Those freedoms were the guiding lights of his New Deal, and they remained the guiding lights of his administration through the trials of World War II.”

“There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people."

“Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated.”

Thank you for your service. Our war dead deserve so much more than a Purple Heart.

God Bless!

While we honor them.. it is a sad wasted life that in many cases accomplished nothing.

I’ll bet Varvie is all teary-eyed at the headstones in Crown Hill Cemetery (here in Indianapolis) but just wants those homeless gals and guys (lots of ‘em vets) off the sidewalks near the pretty, new condo’s along Pennsylvania and Delaware streets.

fusilier

James 2:24

If only we honored all the American children who have died in mass shootings. After all they died for the Constitution (2nd amendment).

Headquarters, Camp ClarkWashington, D.C., July 14, 1861

My Very Dear Wife:

Indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps to-morrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines, that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine, O God be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for any country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know, that with my own joys, I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with care and sorrows, when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it, as their only sustenance, to my dear little children, is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country.

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death, and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country and thee.

Keep T away from War Memorials.

Honor the warrior (and the veteran), not the war. Happy Memorial Day.

4500 American soldiers dead, unknown numbers of American contractors, 32,000 casualties (physical), unknown numbers of PTSD, (a couple hundred thousand Iraqis, but they don’t count),

Because Saddam was responsible for 9/11. AND he had nucular weapons.

.

But let’s not think about that OR consider it in the future.

Stop Republicans from gutting Veteran’s programs and VA centers, Vote Democratic.

Want to honor those killed in war? Stop sending Americans off to die in conflicts ginned up by American politicians and the Department of Defense.

Remember that War Dead doesn’t simply mean those who died on the battlefield.

Today we have 1,000’s of Viet-Nam Vets still suffering, and dieing, from Agent Orange effects. We have 1,000’s of Gulf War Vets suffering from Burn Pit Exposure. And 1,000’s of other Vets from all experiences who suffer from PTSD, depression and a long list of service related illness and injuries.

They may not have died on the battlefield, but their deaths are still service and combat related. And they need to be honored just as well.

This weekend, try to refrain from thanking us for our service. (I’d like you to stop completely, but that’s another argument.) This weekend isn’t for veterans. It’s for the fallen. Remember those who died to give us our freedoms and our democracy. And respect their memory by protecting both.

Now do one for the children.