Memorial Day

I'm an old movie buff and this is the weekend for many WWII movies - from post from Here to Eternity/To Hell and Back/Bataan/Purple Heart/Halls of Montezuma..... and others.

But I've seen some of these movies over and over for decades. What I see has changed. How I Listen has changed. How the times have changed. And the culture. I saw how patriotism is made by the company of movie makers... how my heart is stirred, the changing of emotion with the scene of the moment.

And what broke my heart how the very words of the villains of those movie days have become ours. We treated prisoners well. They tortured. We fed them - They starved us. We stood together, no matter what. They honor their principles and not their people.

Today we often do what then we despised. See Judgement at Nuremburg again. See it and imagine that today's Us were yesterday's Them.

I empathize when I see how we learn our beliefs. And how we democratically and freely chose these evil ways. I see who we are and how we behaved then. I still see who we are and how we find ourselves behaving now.

I stand for morality. I want us to listen over and over to our own beliefs in the dignity and honor of all people.... especially those we don't like and don't agree with. We honor our own image of ourselves. We stand for those who can't (even won't) stand for themselves