We have put away our flags and hunkered down for summer but some last thoughts on Memorial Day won’t fade away.
The ceremony at East Lawn Cemetery this year was well attended, but increasingly only by veterans, historical re-enactors and the directly bereaved, like Gold Star Mothers. It reinforced the view that younger generations are less outwardly patriotic because they have not been directly affected by military affairs.
Our recent conflicts have been constant but borne by a small volunteer force. We no longer disrupt our lives with a selective service obligation or even pay extra taxes to finance our wars. For many, Memorial Day is just another three-day weekend, perhaps because we enjoy relative peace and have few to mourn.
The danger in not honoring the holiday is that the sacrifices of so many and the devastation that war brings become less clear. This forgetting may make us less likely to resist, or demand that our elected representatives justify, the use of force.
War monuments have evolved from sabers and horses and obelisks with the names of the fallen, to gashes in the earth and names on reflective granite that put us in the presence of the fallen. All monuments are important, however, since they force us to remember.
Memorial Day is about memories. It dates from the Civil War, either the commonly accepted story about a Union General deciding to organize a day of remembrance or the women of Columbus, Mississippi, decorating the fresh graves of rebels and Yankees alike. The latter story is more poignant and believable, but victors often have the last word in history.
The important point is that monuments force us to remember and reflect on our history. Those, like the Taliban and ISIS fanatics, blowing up monuments are the most egregious example of historical deletion, but so are the misguided Americans removing the statutes of Confederate generals in the middle of the night.
While these statues often honor those currently deemed politically incorrect, they also serve to remind us of our sometimes awkward history. Removing them means future generations will not have to remember the past, both the abomination of slavery and the devastation of civil war, and perhaps will be more likely to repeat it.
Those Germans who today try to preserve the concentration/extermination camps of the Nazi era, despite increasing political pressure and the continuing national guilt, are examples to follow.
In Tucson, our memorials are few – more likely to be a mural only as permanent as the next layer of paint. Some are contentious, like the Pancho Villa statue, but serve to have us remember a villain or hero – depending on your point of view (probably some of both) – and the violent era of our state’s centennial founding.
A group is raising money for a monument to the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others exercising the most democratic of American events – the town meeting. This may allow us to remember, enact reasonable gun control laws and perhaps even help us renounce the violence and disrespect of our recent town meetings.
America has historically been focused on the future, with few monuments and little time for history. Memorial days, and nights, are instructive.
