Friday, June 6, 2014

Compare and contrast

Ace juxtaposes two D-Day related news items that demonstrate just how unworthy we at the twilight of Western civilization are of the remaining blessings we enjoy.

First, he links to a truly inspiring, uplifting UK Telegraph story about an 89-year-old D-Day veteran in an assisted-living facility who was told by his caregivers that he was too frail to go to Normandy for today's 70th anniversary commemoration.  He turned up missing, and guess where he was?  Yep.

But guess what he and everybody else gathered at that solemn place was subjected to?  A god-damn interpretive dance performance.  Seriously.

One more time: culture precedes politics, and this is why our way of life's viability would still be questionable even if Tea Party / UKIP-style politicians filled every executive, legislative and judicial position in every Western nation.  We can't even make grown-up art anymore.  We want to feel our way through not an actual historical event but an abstraction of it.  And it's all about us, how we feel about something we're incapable of actually being grateful for.

I wish there were some way to give that vet an impression in his remaining time in this mortal realm other than that, in June 1944, he was casting pearls before swine.




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