City Of God 42

Happy Friday, Gentle Reader. It is the first day of my habitual long weekend, and as a bonus I have Monday off as well, because of the long weekend, thanks to Remembrance Day. For whatever else I might think or opine about this august occasion, it does give me a day off. Which also means I get paid less, because as a contract worker I don't get compensated for not working on statutory holidays, neither am I permitted to work on those days. Don't ask me how my employer can get away with it, but they do. Should they be challenged about it, the response could well be, "We are the your Regional Health Authority! We are omnipotent! (so fire me VCH!). If I didn't live in social housing I couldn't afford to live in this city, given that I get paid a whopping fourteen bucks an hour for my work, and they are very stingy about just remuneration for peer support workers, since they seem to think that that is a living wage, at least for damaged mental health consumers (which I am not!) who subsist on a meagre disability pension (I do not, I work for a living and that is how I survive!) And that is the logic of our regional health care provider? I could say more, but I don't want them to really feel they have just reason for firing me, so better to pick my battles. Aside for that minor and ongoing complaint, I am enjoying this morning, even if it is cloudy and grey, but the long weekend promises sunshine and blue skies, and that is not necessarily going to be the ideal backdrop for the ceremonies at the cenotaph this Sunday. But why not celebrate with blue skies and a sunny day? Does it always have to be so morose, sad and solemn? I mean, we won the war, didn't we? And didn't our soldiers kill tons of the enemy in the name of king and country in order to secure and safe-guard the liberty and democratic freedoms that we enjoy now to this day? That's what the propaganda says, anyway. Except they always leave out the killing part. It's only the enemy, Hitler's armies, etc. that did the killing. But our troops, who killed at least as many or more Germans and Japanese, etc. as Allied troops were slaughtered, didn't kill. They merely fought, in the name of king and country. The victors never do the killing. Only the enemies. And that is where the propaganda of war that is churned out by the Remembrance Day war machine just sticks in my craw year after year after year after year. in war, no one is innocent. To this day, it is considered heresy to speak honorably of the enemy dead from the wars. Even the innocent citizens of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden, Hannover and Hamburg. But they were also innocent victims, like the Jews butchered by the Nazis, whom like the Jews, Roma, homosexuals and people with disabilities languishing and being gassed and worked to death in Auschwitz, wanted only the war to end, the madness to end, the killing to stop, and to be able to resume, if at all possible, their normal lives that had been so cruelly snatched from them. Don't get me wrong, Gentle Reader. I also honour our soldiers. They were duped by their government, perhaps, but I think they went to war with the noblest intentions, and that they died with the noblest intentions, though they were horribly deceived into fighting wars that they did not invent, and had to swallow the lies of their governments, if only because they lived in an era when media was much less developed and evolved, and alternative news sources that could give the lie to government propaganda were virtually nonexistent. This isn't to say that there was not a huge and credible threat coming from Germany and Japan. Of course there was. Was armed conflict the only way the threat could be contained and prevented? Probably. But that was also a simpler time, when black and white perceptions and solutions were never conceived of. Now we have a little more insight, and I think we have better tools for preventing future wars, but only if there is a strong enough public will, and political will, and only if enough of us are prepared to think clearly, research and learn the lessons of history, and not become lazy and simply fall for what ever propaganda, lies and half-truths that our governments will be dishing out, because that is what governments always do.