Memorial Day 2025

It’s Memorial Day in the US again. This happens every year, but lately it seems we are absolutely determined to learn nothing from it.

The Sitch

This was supposed to post 2025-May-26, which is Memorial Day in the US. But here we are 3 days later, because my feelings about this ‘holiday’ are both strong and complicated!

As all 6 of you who follow this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), Memorial Day stirs up some mixed emotions in me.

My general attitude toward war memorials ^[1] is that they should make us ashamed that humanity is driven to that kind of thing. Sure, we can be glad about a victory, or proud of a response to a bad situation… but the situation causing the war was still bad. So, like fellow physicist Chad Orzel shown here, we should be thinking about how not to let wars happen again.

I also can’t help but remember that Memorial Day itself has a complex origin, involving not just North/South tensions after the Civil War, but White Southerners attempting to eradicate a rather sweet Southern Black post-war tradition ^[2] involving cleaning Union graves, singing hymns, praying, and picnicking.

So here we are, with a US government that is most definitely The Bad Guys, and not much hope of reprieve until we might flip Congress in 2027. It is extremely difficult to feel patriotic when our government is so thoroughly dishonorable, stupid, and destructive.

See? Sad and conflicted.

The Ideal

On the one hand, my general sense of appropriate memorials, as always, stems from William E Stafford’s poem, “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border” ^[3].

An essential extract from the poem conveys the sense of the whole:

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed – or were killed – on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

It is, if anything, a thought on war memorials that emphasizes peace. John Gorka’s ^[4] setting to music, shown here, is… well, it often brings tears to my old eyes.

The other Memorial Day tradition, at least for the last 5 years since retirement, centers around James Hilton’s 1933 book Lost Horizon ^[5] and Frank Capra’s magnificent 1937 film. ^[6]

At the outset, a warning: this is a book and this is a film somewhat of its time. There will be a certain amount of casual racism that is shocking today (though conservatives reveal themselves ever more racist each day). The “white savior” trope is in full flower here.

However, it is worth noting that, especially in the book, the main character acts against the prejudice others have against Asians. He is, if anything, a forward-looking character to a better world. We must live in the times in which we are born, but it is our responsibility to drag it toward a better world.

It is a momentary refuge, a fantasy if you insist on calling it that, of a distant place of peace, long life, and preservation of all that is good in human culture. Like many utopian novels (yes, I’ve read many), it is not so much a blueprint of how to save humanity so much as an inspirational and aspirational statement that this is of value.

Yes, to an extent we’re drawing down the moon here, but it’s surprisingly effective (at least on me). The world has been a horror show since Trump, COVID-19, and now more Trump attempts to dynamite the foundations of American culture. It’s not just fantasy to imagine how we might do better; it’s an essential to envision what we will do, should our turn ever come again to build instead of burn.

See? Hopeless idealist.

The Sad Reality

Alas, we must, in the meantime, deal with the world before us, in its sadly degraded state.

Here we see The Creature’s own Memorial Day message, reported by noted conservative judge J. Michael Luttig. He’s one of the very few conservative figures who, to this addled old lefty scientist, seems to have his head screwed on straight. He despises Trump.

And, if you can fight your way through the all-caps word salad, there’s a lot to despise here. It’s not even coherent! It’s just a long venting of his spleen, spraying bile at all who are not Trump himself. I mean, just consider all the adectives: he’s not trying to say anything factual or change any minds; he’s just calling names like a child on a school playground.

If a normal person wrote something like this, I’d conclude “That person is not well.” But with Trump, it seems that this is his consistent personality that he has shown us over many years. He may be a bit disinhibited now, but it’s still his core self: bitter, vengeful, and almost incapable of coherent thought.

Worst of all, about 1/3 of Americans looked at that and voted “yeah, more of that.” And all the rest of the Republican party just lies supine beneath him.

Honestly, I don’t know if we can get out of the hell-hole he’s digging for us. I can only hope his destructive strategies will work against him. The Republicans are clearly of no use. Democratic majorities in Congress in 2027 would help, but it’s not clear Republicans would convict upon impeachment.

And it’s not clear we can survive that long. Many of us, with curtailed access to health care, will die.

See? Dark and sad.

The Weekend Conclusion

The charge from the 2023 Memorial Day post was:

• Let’s remember the Black origins of Memorial Day, and respect them instead of the Confederate slavers.
• Let’s work to undo the systemic, structural racism that has plagued us from the start.
• Let’s study ways of peace, to avoid future wars, where avoidable.
• Since not all wars will be avoidable, let’s use strength to end them quickly.

In the meantime, we have a lot of clearing out of fascists to do. We should take inspiration from Chumbawamba’s 1998 song “The Day the Nazi Died” ^[7], shown here, about the resurgence of fascism after Rudolf Hess finally died in Spandau Prison. Today we face a much worse resurgence.

Everyone’s motto, worldwide, should be: Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.

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Notes & References

1: Weekend Editor, “On War Memorials”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2021-Sep-11. (#fn1a)

2: Weekend Editor, “Memorial Day 2023 (The Origins of Memorial Day)”, Some Weekend Reading blog, 2023-May-29. (#fn2a)

3: WE Stafford, “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border”, The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems, 1998. Retrieved 2021-Sep-05 from the Poetry Foundation. ↩

4: J Gorka, “Where no monument stands”, YouTube, home video made 2020-Sep-27, retrieved 2021-Sep-05. Gorka wrote the song in the 1980s. ↩

5: J Hilton, Lost Horizon, MacMillan, 1933.

Amusingly, this was the first in the series of “pocket books” (what we call paperbacks today) put out by MacMillan in the US. So it’s the first American paperback, ever.

Also amusingly, I first read it in an old World War II “military edition” intended for soldiers on leave. Putting one of the more famously and powerfully pacifist novels about escaping to a utopian paradise to avoid war? Somebody thought it was a good idea to put that in the hands of soldiers on break from fighting! It’s either shockingly clueless or breathtakingly subversive. Hard to disapprove, either way. ↩

6: F Capra (director), R Riskin (screenwriter), et al., Lost Horizon, Columbia Pictures, 1937.

NB: There is a very regrettable 1973 remake (as a musical?!). It is about as deplorable as you may imagine. Film critics Dreyfuss & the Medveds put this musical abomination on their list of the 50 worst films of all time.

Don’t waste a couple hours of your life watching it like I did; watch the original instead. Then read the book! ↩

7: Chumbawamba, “The Day the Nazi Died”, YouTube, lyrics video uploaded by user bonosbones. Song originally released in 1998.↩