After the Civil War, Memorial Day arose as a holiday for remembering the human cost of war: You went to a cemetery to visit the graves of friends and relatives who had been killed. It had a personal scale. If you thought of nations at all, it was to pray that somehow they might work out their differences without any more battles.
But in the post-Vietnam era of the professional military, more and more Americans — particularly in the upper and upper-middle classes — have no personal connection to the wars we fight, much less to those who have died in them. And so the holiday is tending to drift. If it has any content at all (beyond marking the beginning of summer), it’s turning into a celebration of the American military and the greatness of the United States.
I feel a need to protest this, so today’s featured post will be “On Memorial Day, we ought to remember the dead, not celebrate the Empire.” It should be out early, certainly before 9 EDT.
The weekly summary will review whatever-the-heck is going on with Jared Kushner, an appeals court (by a wide margin) refusing to let Trump’s Muslim Ban take effect, the CBO score on the Republican healthcare bill, Clarence Thomas amazingly taking a stand against racial gerrymandering in North Carolina, the FY2018 budget proposal, and a few other things, before closing with a Paul Simon/Stephen Colbert duet that doesn’t feel very groovy.
The Weekly Sift 