Memorial Day Week: Closing Ceremony

As this Memorial Day Week 2007, filled with the usual vigorous valorization of the military, comes to a close I am left with one lingering question: Throughout the day I heard several people in the media say, "Regardless of your politics or what you think about the war, you should support/thank the troops."

For the majority of people, this is a reasonable position, but what of the pacifist? If one believes in war as a concept, but not a particular war or other that is one thing, they should support those who serve today and have done so in the past (akin to the axiom that "you can't be a little pregnant, you either are or you aren't", one can't be a little pacifistic), but if one abhors violence of all kinds, are they, too, obliged to "support the troops"? And if they don't does that make them less "patriotic"? And if so, what does that mean for them?

I am reminded of an episode of Cartoon Network's The Boondocks (especially because my brother constantly references the show, which is really quite good if you haven't seen it. Season two is set to start this summer from what I hear, and I am already anxiously looking forward to the episode 'Invasion of the Katrinians'....wow that was a long side-bar, back on topic). In one episode, the main character has a dream in which it turns out Martin Luther King Jr was not killed when he got shot, he only went into a coma, and he wakes up in 2003 to much fanfare. He ends up on one of those cable news talk shows and they ask him if his ideas of non-violence still apply and if he has a problem that the US went "on the offense" (to use the GOP parlance of today). Dr. King responds that in the bible it says if a man strikes you, you are to turn the other cheek. Well, this causes an uproar, he is deemed a traitor and asked on a subsequent show "One question, Dr. King, why do you hate America?"

Is it just that simple? Pacifists hate America, liberty, and all that is right with the world? If denouncing violence is tantamount to a denunciation of America, what does that say about America, and possibly modern civilization as a whole? (I believe this was one of the themes in the Aussie Western The Proposition, which you should check out if you already haven't). Is violence, as Oliver Wendell Holmes posited here earlier in the week, man's natural state, and therefore not subject to the shifts of time, space, and culture and thus we should strive to incorporate, or at the least, sublimate it, into our culture, rather than make futile attempts to restrict or remove it altogether?

Once again, just questions. I have no answers; maybe you do.

And on that note, and as a Memorial Day gift, ben just posted his 'mid-year: most favorite of 2007 mixtape', available for free download; so should you share his musical tastes (or even if you don't for that matter). The tracklist can be found here. Commence pira...sharing.