Memorial Day wasn’t meant to be a party. It wasn’t meant to sell mattresses, grills, or three-day weekends. It was meant to remember. To mourn. To grieve lives lost in war. But in today’s America, remembrance has been replaced with fireworks, bar tabs, and red-white-and-blue ignorance.
What began as a solemn, often Black-led effort to honor the dead after the Civil War has been warped into a commercialized, performative spectacle—propped up by cultural amnesia, capitalist opportunism, and blind patriotism.
And while we're told to honor American troops, the countless civilian lives lost in the wars America started, funded, or supported are rarely even mentioned.
Cultural Amnesia: America’s Favorite Coping Mechanism
The United States doesn’t just forget—it chooses to forget. It forgets inconvenient truths and rewrites uncomfortable histories. It scrubs out the parts of the story that would require reflection, accountability, or change.
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, when Black communities—many recently freed from slavery—gathered to honor fallen Union soldiers. This was a day rooted in justice, anti-racism, and grief. But that version of the story is rarely told.
Cultural amnesia makes room for myth. And myth makes room for blind patriotism.
They Didn’t Die for Freedom—They Died for Empire
Let’s be clear: most American soldiers didn’t die protecting your freedom. They died serving the interests of corporate power, imperial strategy, and political greed.
In Vietnam, they died to preserve Cold War dominance—not democracy. In Iraq, they died for oil, not justice.
Today, billions of U.S. dollars fund weapons used in the genocide of Palestinians—while the same government ignores broken veterans and working-class families back home.
These soldiers were sold a lie, used as pawns, and then forgotten the moment they became inconvenient.
Blind Patriotism: The Opium of Empire
Blind patriotism tells people not to think, not to question, not to feel.
It teaches us to grieve American soldiers while ignoring the millions of civilians—from Vietnam to Iraq to Palestine—slaughtered by American weapons and American policies.
It turns war into virtue, death into dignity, and silence into a civic duty.
It allows people to chant “support the troops” while voting against veteran healthcare.
It enables the U.S. to keep waging war without accountability—because any resistance to it is labeled un-American.
Capitalism and the Hijacking of Grief
Memorial Day has been hijacked by corporations and weaponized by nationalism. Brands sell you "freedom" as a marketing scheme.
Politicians use troop worship to avoid hard questions. The public uses three-day weekends to escape the hard truth: War isn’t noble—it’s profitable.
This Year, Remember Differently
If you want to truly honor the fallen:
•Question the wars that sent them
•Name the civilians whose lives were stolen
•Reject blind patriotism and demand informed remembrance
•Support veterans beyond performative praise
•Mourn with truth, not propaganda
•Refuse to celebrate war, no matter the flag it hides behind
Remember the Dead—and Who Killed Them
Don’t just remember American soldiers—remember the people they were sent to kill.
Remember the Vietnamese farmers, the Iraqi families, the Palestinian children. Remember the Black Americans who fought wars abroad while being brutalized at home. Remember the truth they don’t teach you in history class.
Remembrance without truth is propaganda. And patriotism without conscience is complicity.
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