Veterans Day

After my grandfather, Ivan Beran died three years ago, we found in his papers that he had been personal secretary to Douglas Macarthur in the war, the big one, the last one worth fighting.  Grandpa was physically safe in this position, and today here among others am I. 

He despised Macarthur, as it turns out, considered him to be the strutting arrogant peacock we know him to have been from historic record.  Reading about just how much leverage the Pentagon had; in the early days of the Cold War up through Vietnam (and at some level to this day) never fails to scare the hell out of me.  It was the cultural norm there, (I do not say this as a self-strawmannig flag burning lefty but in plain fact), the cultural norm you see, to view the potential mass annihilation of their compatriots to be worth the cost of feeling like the most important creatures who have ever been.  Macarthur, in particular, even more so that that chucklehead LeMay, was the closest thing to an M Bison. Pinochet that our own military has ever produced; the whole business of posing with expensive shades well into his sixties and that giant wooden cock of a pipe of his, Christ on a stick.  Also that whole business of trying to start a nuclear war on his own volition, that thing too sure. 

Perhaps this whole spiel has been inappropriate for this special day.  I know my mother, out laying regalia along graves for the VFW women's auxiliary right now, wouldn't approve.  Really though I couldn't care less.