Skip Navigation
64 comments

  • This is insane, even for him. "Veterans Day" was originally called "Armistice Day" before war-mongering politicians got a hold of it. The people who actually fought World War One knew the truth. There were no victors in that war. And there weren't even veterans worth holding up as national idols. The bravest never made it home. That war was a grinding attritional Hell on Earth. The veterans coming home were not victorious heroes, fresh from the triumphal capture of an enemy nation's capital. They were shell-shocked survivors, the ones who just happened to be lucky enough to still be alive when the buzzer rang and the war ended. And it ended not from triumphal victory, but from politicians suing for peace. An action they only took when they felt that if they didn't, their people would end up eating them alive. They pushed their populaces to the absolute brink of collapse, all for nothing. No grand victories. Nothing to make the immense loss of life possibly seem worth it. No, in immediate aftermath of that war? There was only one thing really worth celebrating - the fact that it was over. That is why it was originally called Armistice Day.

    But "Victory Day." That is a disgrace to everyone who fought and died in that war. There were no victors in that war. One side nominally won when the other's resources ran out first. But the immense cost in suffering, lives, national wealth? None of the combatants left that war in a better state than they entered it. Everyone lost in WW1.

  • Trump or one of his minions reads 'Dulce Decorum Est' as an unironically pro-war pro-America thing

    Dulce Decorum Est

    Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
    \ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
    \ Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
    \ And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
    \ Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
    \ But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
    \ Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
    \ Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

    Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
    \ Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
    \ But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
    \ And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
    \ Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
    \ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

    In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
    \ He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

    If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
    \ Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
    \ And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
    \ His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
    \ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
    \ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
    \ Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
    \ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
    \ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    \ To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    \ The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
    \ Pro patria mori.

64 comments