Eccentric Flower:200911/Armistice Day

Bunny42:

"We have met the enemy..."

-- 16:17, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

I know that remark was wholly innocent, and I'm not jumping on you personally, but sometimes it ticks me off that that's the only Pogo quote anybody quotes. It's not even Kelly's best by far, yet it's going to be the one bit of Pogo that survives long after the rest of it is dead in our collective memory. That's a shame. The problem is it's pithy. People like short and pithy (see: reading is dead). The cartoon above, for example, strikes me as far more profound. Then again, I always felt that Porkypine's philosophy was my favorite in the strip. He's a grumpy, cynical idealist, always hoping for a better universe and realizing he's never going to get it. Dunno why that would appeal to me so ....

-- 16:29, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

ProfRobert:

The U.S. had the right idea when it converted Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Why commemorate with a federal holiday a war's ending 91 years ago -- the last veterans died in the past year -- particularly where the victors' greed and need for vengeance laid the seeds for an even more horrific war 21 years later? Why not Appomattox Day? Or V-E Day? Celebrating Armistice Day (as opposed to Veterans Day -- all vets deserve to be honored) seems to me a lot like celebrating Mission Accomplished Day: Things pretty much went to crap right after the original.

-- 18:42, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Bunny42:

"He's a grumpy, cynical idealist, always hoping for a better universe and realizing he's never going to get it. Dunno why that would appeal to me so .... "

Heh, why, indeed. I remember Pogo in the funny papers, but I was too young to appreciate Kelly's wit and insight. Then it was gone. You are correct, that's the only quotation I know. But it's so true, on so many levels. We do seem to be our own worst enemies. Sorry to peeve you, even if accidentally.

Robert, things were so great before? Back in the day, we used to display the flag on VE Day, VJ Day, Pearl Harbor Day, things people are still around to remember. Now I see celebrations of stupid stuff like Kent State. It changes with the generations. One of my first essays in college (at Kent State, actually) was entitled "War is the Natural Condition of Man." Got me an A+, too. There will always be wars, so it's appropriate to honor the veterans, no matter which altercation they attended.

-- 19:10, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

DanLyke:

ProfRobert: Yeah, on the Veteran's Day entry in my own blog I just commented that we didn't win WWI, and that though military action was a big portion of WWII, what really won that was the Marshall Plan and the Japanese reconstruction.

Columbina, I remember most of the words to "Deck the halls with Boston Charley", but when I sing that during the holidays everybody just looks at me strangely. Of course I also wish Tom Lehrer had written more to the same tune than "Hark the Herald Tribune sings / advertising wondrous things...".

-- 19:33, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Columbina:

Robert, I disagree. I like observances which are about something specific. In replacing Armistice Day with a much more generic memorial, we are encouraging people to forget what it was for. If you say, "well, that doesn't deserve to be remembered any more," that's fine. Kill it and replace it with something else. But don't blur its edge. The reason that, for 4/5 of the American citizens, Veteran's Day has absolutely no meaning except a day off from work is that we have dulled it into a meaningless fiat holiday, just as most of our other national holidays become. Meanwhile, in the UK and Canada, people still know why they should have two minutes of silence on 11/11, and poppies are still seen in many a lapel.

The fact that the armistice was such a failure, for the reasons you give, only makes the memorial more poignant to me. This was going to bring peace forever, remember - and look how well that worked out.

Our mistakes need to be remembered as much as our successes - probably more so.

-- 19:53, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

ProfRobert:

So Bunny, are you disagreeing with me? Note I said I thought Veterans Day was an appropriate holiday because "all vets deserve to be honored."

I think that remembrances of events like Pearl Harbor, V-E and V-J Days are passing with the passing of people who remember living through them. But they will be replaced by things like 9/11. I'm sure that there won't be a lot of flag-waiving on September 11, 2065, say. Instead it'll be about the day the Canadians nuked Buffalo, or whatever momentous thing happened most recently.

I also agree with you that Man's life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short -- but we should probably take that discussion over to the Leviathan entry!

DanLyke: I trust you've heard "Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear," yes?

-- 22:38, 11 November 2009 (GMT)

Bunny42:

Robert, I'm not disagreeing about Veteran's Day, exactly. I'm only pointing out that there used to be more "significant" days than there are now. I see Col's point about generalizing the days and events. It's interesting to note that the vets themselves put the skids on making Veteran's Day a Monday three-day weekend like they did for the presidents' birthdays.

-- 23:30, 11 November 2009 (GMT)