Today is Veteran’s Day, 2024.
I am grateful that I’ve never had someone try to kill me, never been somewhere that was intrinsically dangerous to be, and have never fired a weapon in anger despite almost ten years on active duty in the Marine Corps. I was lucky, even by the standards of the 1990s. I didn’t deploy to the Gulf War or to Bosnia or to Somalia or to any of the small wars that happened while I was in, and I left active duty before the 21st Century really got going.
In the past few months I’ve come to realize how much baggage I’ve been hauling around from the lasting impact of having my identity too closely connected to the mythos of America, and of having that mythos not live up to reality. Sure, there are a bunch of other things that cause me problems that are more personal, more directly connected to choices I’ve made or things I’ve done, but this is about what happens when you are wrong about who you are, how you see yourself, and what you think that means when conceptualizing yourself, the world, and your place in that world.
Tienanmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989 – taught me that America doesn’t protect people yearning to be free at all costs.
For me, this was the end of Communism-vs-Capitalism as the major conflict between the East and the West. We, in the West, didn’t care enough to fight for the people inside China that wanted an end to Communist rule in China at the same time people all across Europe and the Soviet Union were securing an end to Communist rule in their countries.
Instead, we did worse than nothing by ignoring democracy movements within China and aligning with the Communist regime, helping them build their economy, enter the world markets, become part of the global economy, and culminating 11 years later by granting them Most Favored Nation trade status. We gave China a license to run Capitalism as an application on the Communism shell of AuthoritarianismOS instead of insisting that they change to DemocracyOS.
There is a witches brew of reasons why things turned out this way — racism, greed, arrogance, to name a few — but the end result is that, starting in June 1989, the United States actively worked to pave the way for the creation of a new peer threat in geopolitics, economics, and technological advancement that has cost them their industrial and manufacturing base, jobs, and influence while creating a domestic oligarch class enriched by the cheap Chinese labor, cheap trans-oceanic shipping, and low barriers to market.
It has been 12,943 days since we chose capitalists over freedom and it is obvious who the winner is.
al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 – taught me that America can be the villain and that your response to getting punched tells everyone who you really are.
Osama bin Laden looked at the United States and saw a corrupt, godless, imperial hand moving pieces on a game board with neither empathy nor sympathy. He saw a superpower without peer propping up governments of all kinds to support the financial gain of its corporations that was willing to use its military and intelligence power, and of its allies, to side with capitalists over freedom-fighters, And he devised a strategy to cost them money, power, prestige, and stability.
When his attack was over, it set in motion a series of events that would reveal the United States that he saw to the entire world. We would be forced to spend trillions of dollars creating a domestic security apparatus that would destroy personal freedoms and privacy, fueling xenophobia, religious zeal, and surveillance capitalism. We would waste trillions more fighting wars to secure objectives we didn’t have the will to hold, killing more than 360,000 people in the process, more than 120 people died for every person who died in the attack on September 11, 2001. And we would waste time, spending 23 years and counting in an asymmetric conflict with people all over the world who want the liberty to decide how to live their lives in their own countries without consent of, or meddling from, the United States instead of addressing a broad set of domestic issues fueling distress, disdain, and distrust among Americans. Americans who watched as the rich got richer, the government became more present in their lives, and their lives became more expensive, more hostile, and more fragile. Americans who’s world became smaller, programmed for them by engagement algorithms that trained sociopaths how to push the boundaries of what is acceptable, trained their victims that they were alone, and trained anyone who watched it happen to accept victimization as normal. Americans who died from an epidemic of manufactured pharmaceuticals pushed on them by corporations that created the market to drive profits and leveraged by organized criminal gangs that took over the market with cheap, dirty knockoffs made from raw materials shipped in from China. Americans who watched the streets fill up with desperate, hopeless people whose lives were destroyed by medical debt and housing shortages and mental illness, whose jobs were sent overseas never to return, whose dreams are shattered by PTSD, whose hope was stolen to maximize shareholder value.
It has been 8462 days since the attacks that started the Global War on Terrorism and it is obvious who the winner is.
MAGA insurrection at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 – taught me that America wasn’t great, isn’t getting greater, and is afraid of who we really are and how awful that can truly be.
On Tuesday November 3, 2020, 158,383,403 of the 231,593,631 American citizens over 18 years of age decided not to vote for the incumbent president Donald Trump. That is 68.39% of voting-age citizens who did not vote for the MAGA agenda of white nationalism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofascism, and oligarchy. Fortunately, enough of them did decide to vote for Joe Biden for him to win the electoral college and the popular vote. But that set into motion a criminal enterprise to steal the election using dirty tricks, procedural loopholes, and manufactured powers, which culminated with a mob being summoned to Washington and being sent to the Capitol to prevent the ballots from the Electoral College from being counted and certified by the Congress.
A violent mob, representing less than 32% of voting-age American citizens, sought to destroy the Constitution so they could put in power a minority rule government. They failed. But then, nothing happened. Just like nothing happened to China in 1989. We didn’t call these insurrectionists domestic terrorists. We didn’t pass laws clarifying that this was an insurrection and that anyone who participated was subject to Article 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, barring them from holding future office. We didn’t convict Donald Trump of leading the insurrection when he was impeached for a second time, barring him from holding future office. We didn’t go after the money that paid for the MAGA movement, or go after the companies who promoted it, or go after the investors who profited from it. And we didn’t undo any of the policies enacted by the Trump administration about immigration, or tariffs, or taxes. We just hoped it would go away.
On Tuesday November 5, 2024, 194,824,420 of the 272,127,000 American citizens over 18 years of age decided not to vote for the leader of that insurrection. That is 71.59% of voting-age citizens who did not vote for the MAGA agenda of white nationalism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofascism, and oligarchy. Unfortunately, not enough of them decided to vote for Kamala Harris for her to win either the electoral college or the popular vote.
There were 1399 days between January 6, 2021 and November 5, 2024 and now it is obvious who the winner is.
President Woodrow Wilson, speaking on the first Veteran’s Day, said that for Americans, the reflections of Veteran’s Day, “will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.”
Today is Veteran’s Day, 2024