18 Comments
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KayM's avatar

Telling it like it is. Too bad I never got this education in school. Thank you for your courage. I vote for National Day of Shame as well.

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Jean-Sebastien Savard's avatar

Agreed 🖤🎩😎 shame and repentance is the first step to recognition of our error

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Hat Bailey's avatar

Love your suggestion of the National Day of Shame and Repentance. Some long overdue humility is called for in recognition of how our apathy and neglect have allowed so much tragic misery and death to replace an example of the blessings of individual sovereignty, peace making and liberty.

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Howard Switzer's avatar

Memorial Day - a day of mourning for all the lives lost in families and ecosystems destroyed ​unnecessarily due to being ruled by profit-motivated war-mongering psychopaths empowered by criminally accumulated wealth.

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Yetimonster's avatar

I love your Substack and I could not agree more. My ancestors also arrived in 1628 in Massachusetts and have fought in every war thinking they were fighting for freedom.

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Cy Rider's avatar

An uncle of mine died in World War II. I wish I could talk to him and tell him the truth: it wasn't your fault, rest in peace.

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Larry Ellis's avatar

Hi, Richard,

I don't celebrate Memorial Day either. None of the wars are for our freedom. With all the wars, we lose more and more freedoms. Our freedom now is to do what we are told. After that, Tyranny. I was in Vietnam, That war was to keep the drugs coming out of Burma. The French were in there first, but they couldn't do it, they were removed and we were given the job to keep the drugs coming. We did. The first year I was there, Deng was a harbor with jungle surrounding it and the drugs were brought out of Burma on Mule Trains. The next year Deng looked like an American Port. Cranes, docks, ships. And the drugs were brought out on 10-Ton trucks, on a paved highway. All done with Taxes. The CIA gave Heroin to the Army so, if any didn't get killed and made it back home they could start a market for their drugs. It worked well. My youngest son did 8 years in Leavenworth for robbing banks to pay for the drugs. Now his 2 grandsons, My grandsons are on drugs. So much for Arm Forces Day. My Grandfather was killed in France, WWI. My dad was on The the Lucky Lady, USS Santa Fe, a light cruiser. He was in every battle with the Japs, and he was an FT, He sighted in the guns. They never missed. As for me as a kid I wondered how he could tie a fish hook on the line as his hands shook so. My older brother was on a carrier in Korea. And me? Vietnam. I have taught my sons and grand sons to stay out of the military and they have.

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Richard C. Cook's avatar

Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us. We have read about the connection between drugs and Vietnam. Your testimony corroborates it.

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CocotteMinute's avatar

I have the greatest disgust for all governments that shamelessly agree to sacrifice their own citizens to the greed of their masters, hidden behind the curtain...

I hate these liars who manipulate the highest feelings to serve the basest interests.

But—as a European—I have the greatest respect and gratitude for the men of flesh and blood, from both East and West, who gave their lives on the battlefield or who bore incurable wounds for the rest of their days in defense of their fellow human beings.

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Mankh's avatar

Thanks for the history bits and "National Day of Shame and Repentance" would fit with Lao-Tzu's advice: The killing of masses of people we ought bewail with sorrow and grief. Victory in battle we ought commemorate with mournful rites."

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Richard C. Cook's avatar

A man of wisdom.

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Mankh's avatar

A guiding light. And that quote is an epigraph for a poem i wrote nine years ago about memorial day, so was heartening to see your post.

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Cy Rider's avatar

"Memorial Day be replaced with a National Day of Shame and Repentance. I would suggest that we do this before our beloved country commits so many more heinous crimes that it either collapses internally, which may happen soon, or comes to a premature end at the hands of the rest of suffering humanity" 💯

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Carl R Williams's avatar

Well said. Well said. I can think of little to add.

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Jane Stanley's avatar

Europeans have been on American soil for over 15,000 years. DNA test have proven this decades ago. Then when more and more DNA test came up European Clovis the Ten Tribes and Clintons stopped all further DNA claiming it is keeps their ancestors from being in peace. When Clintons ordered Kennewick man’s eating place destroyed by burying it with tons of sand, rock, boulders and trees every Indian and activist cheered live on TV AS I WATCHED IN HORROR!!!! Kennewick man and all of his European artifacts were stolen. When the science community said Kennewick man would be listed as European his entire skeleton was stolen. The bone that was tested is null and void due to broken chain of custody.

America was a prison continent that our European ancestors came here over 15,000 years ago.

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Richard C. Cook's avatar

So much is unknown about real American history.

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Jane Stanley's avatar

History has been rewritten time and time again. Conquers of wars wrote the history they want. Book burning is not censorship and rewriting medical papers when their crimes are exposed.

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