 
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
Friday, May 26, 2000
As most of us head into the excess of the Memorial Day weekend, our thoughts are far from those whose blood was spilled to guarantee our right to a more perfect barbecue.
It isn't that we Americans aren't a patriotic lot. After all, "I'd rather be dead than Red" got its start here, far from Eastern Europe where Soviet expansionism finally collapsed after defying gravity for 70 years.
But rather than reflect on something as unfashionable as blood sacrifice over a holiday weekend ostensibly dedicated to that very thing, we've erected a fascinating counter-ritual. With a minimum of thought, we can now pay lip service to our war dead while ignoring the values that made their sacrifices intelligible in the first place.
Obviously, the Memorial Day ads blanketing television and bulging our newspapers are designed to smother the holiday's more somber tones. We know there will be little, if any, morbid reflection on the Battle of Antietam at SUV showrooms this weekend.
But isn't it hypocritical of me to complain about the commercialization of a holiday that perpetuates American civil religion? Perhaps, but it serves a larger purpose to remind the reader of what should already be painfully obvious: Very little of what we consider sacred means anything when we're standing over a grill this weekend.
We're a lot like those politicians who can always be counted on to be righteous advocates of meaningless legislation returning prayer and the Ten Commandments to public school classrooms, who say: "By all means, impose it on the kids, but don't expect it to affect how things are done in the real world."
If only our reasons for dying in foreign conflicts had held up after 1945, Memorial Day wouldn't be an excuse to wander aimlessly at the malls. Our eagerness to shed blood may have been a little too simpleminded once upon a time, but moral complexity hasn't necessarily given birth to enlightened dissent or a renewed sense of service.
Vietnam taught us to question our leaders. To our credit, no one is in a hurry to defer to the so-called expertise of the ruling class anymore, but we have yet to articulate values to replace those that sent so many American soldiers to their doom during the Cold War.
So, instead of struggling with this doozy of a thought experiment -- "What does true patriotism and genuine dissent mean if a society has lost a wider sense of purpose?" -- we pretend that the old rules still apply somehow.
All sorts of opportunistic nonsense has rushed in to stake a claim in the void, but I refuse to believe a single American soldier ever died so that the suburban commandos who comprise the bulk of the NRA could accumulate all the guns and ammo they need to feel secure in their subdivisions.
So we stumble about, trying to find our way back to a sense of community that means something other than the right to "do whatever I damn well please over your dead body if necessary."
While most of us are ignoring our war dead and democratic obligations this weekend, maybe we should think about formulating a "Pledge of Allegiance" that truly reflects our values. The original pledge pointed to a future that was more inclusive than the society the author was a member of in 1892. Now the challenge is simply to "keep it real":
"I pledge allegiance to myself, a cog in the machine of America, and to a republic rooted in fear, one nation (with the exception of the South), exploiting God, invisible, full of libertines, with justice going to the highest bidder."
It may not have the lyrical cadence of the original, but at least it tells the truth. On a weekend full of insincerity and pious huckstering, that's all we can ask.
Tony Norman's email: tnorman@post-gazette.com.