How do I propose to change it?

How we affect the world, what changes we can cause as individuals—it is impossible to tell. I have always tried to act in accordance with my conscience, as informed by critical thinking. As far as the War Racket, it began when I was 15 and faced the Vietnam Death Lottery — to which my response was to refuse to go along with in any way whatsoever. My views on it have not changed.

I put myself out there by trying to expose the lies that underly it (here), by not going along with the comfortable agenda, by staying vigilant and angry, and not slipping into sentimentalizing the results of the War Racket — which is pretty much all that Memorial Day is.

Nothing will bring back the millions of young men and women who have died serving Wall Street. (I recommend Caitlin Johnstone’s piece here on Medium today about all that.).

Can you be a “hero” if what you are fighting for is at the very least corrupt, at most evil?

Pacifist - “a person who believes that war and violence are UNJUSTIFIABLE”. How then justify a military - especially one that is not for defense but for invasion after invasion under false pretenses. Everything the military is doing now is pretty much empire driven adventurism. We have no business having bases in 150 countries.

I feel that women should be the least supportive of the military. This is male aggression on a global scale. The battlefields are strewn with mother’s sons from both sides. ”Lysistrata” should be women’s response to war!! But, alas, the indoctrination runs deep.

You personally may not go shopping, but look at the whole county, ready to rush out to Memorial Day sales.

(I feel the rush of this obsession from the internet alone - where I don’t even go to mainstream websites - and I don’t have a TV. It’s all part of the narrative, the mentality around the day. The same leaders who send young people to kill or be killed are the ones who make the grandiloquent speeches to sell the populace on this absurd celebration of the War Racket.

I also recommend the book - it’s also a short free audiobook on YouTune - War Is A Racket by Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler - which he wrote in 1935.

Yes, we do disagree on approach.

I believe we have to call out the leaders (and not have absurd notions that they’re not ALL in on, based on some sort of party affiliations). We are not in a democracy. We are in an oligarchy, a plutocracy. We have to expose the lies that have decade after decade kept the powerful in power and getting richer on the blood of the young and poor.

Hoping and waiting for “time to tell” is not a viable choice for me. I take my soapbox wherever I can. I’m ready and willing to disrupt the festivities. That thin veneer of proper behavior around this continuing nightmarish behavior must be challenged.

The approach of getting sentimental about dead soldiers, praising the work of the military, and all the other maudlin manifestations of Memorial Day have done NOTHING but further entrench this system and keeps feeding it to another generation.

Thank you for reading my work and taking the time to respond.