Remembrance Day
Nov. 11th, 2018 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI wrote this on Facebook this morning but wanted to include it here too.
My fictive nephew was part of the local service this morning as part of his Scout troop so I got a special invitation to go, but I couldn't bear to have anything to do with Remembrance Day this year. "Lest we forget," when recent years have shown that we've well and truly forgotten.
Trump and Brexit are both causes and effects of how thoroughly we've forgotten the dangers and brutality of nationalism. We've forgotten the non-white, non-Christian soldiers and others who died. We've forgotten how important it is to work with other countries on problems bigger than any of us.
We've forgotten and I'm sorry and ashamed.
A friend said a while ago that they remembered how much we heard about the centenary of WWI beginning in 2014 and at the time expected even more for the end in 2018.
But 2018 has been swallowed up by Brexit. 2014 seems a very long time ago now. I'm certain there will have been people at services this morning wearing poppy pins they bought from Britain First, people who voted to leave the EU which was set up specifically to stop this kind of war happening again, and it's been successful in that.
And the institutions Britain set up after the second world war -- the NHS, the welfare system -- are in peril now from those same people thinking that immigrants are ruining them. Brits are proud of the Kindertransport but the current government is doing its best not to let a single refugee child in the country now. Windrush was synbolic of another part of postwar Britain that I learned about a few years ago when it was still something Britain was proud of (celebrated during the London Olympics wasn't it?); now it's a disgrace too.
Today I can't be reverent and remember because I'm so goddam angry and disappointed. And determined to make it better.
My fictive nephew was part of the local service this morning as part of his Scout troop so I got a special invitation to go, but I couldn't bear to have anything to do with Remembrance Day this year. "Lest we forget," when recent years have shown that we've well and truly forgotten.
Trump and Brexit are both causes and effects of how thoroughly we've forgotten the dangers and brutality of nationalism. We've forgotten the non-white, non-Christian soldiers and others who died. We've forgotten how important it is to work with other countries on problems bigger than any of us.
We've forgotten and I'm sorry and ashamed.
A friend said a while ago that they remembered how much we heard about the centenary of WWI beginning in 2014 and at the time expected even more for the end in 2018.
But 2018 has been swallowed up by Brexit. 2014 seems a very long time ago now. I'm certain there will have been people at services this morning wearing poppy pins they bought from Britain First, people who voted to leave the EU which was set up specifically to stop this kind of war happening again, and it's been successful in that.
And the institutions Britain set up after the second world war -- the NHS, the welfare system -- are in peril now from those same people thinking that immigrants are ruining them. Brits are proud of the Kindertransport but the current government is doing its best not to let a single refugee child in the country now. Windrush was synbolic of another part of postwar Britain that I learned about a few years ago when it was still something Britain was proud of (celebrated during the London Olympics wasn't it?); now it's a disgrace too.
Today I can't be reverent and remember because I'm so goddam angry and disappointed. And determined to make it better.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-11 09:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-11 10:19 pm (UTC)I had been trying to work out why the poppies this year were making me feel angry which is something I've never felt before, and I think this is it exactly.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-12 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-11-12 06:48 pm (UTC)