Memorial Day: Our Irreconcilable Differences
Memorial Day was first observed in 1868 to honor Civil War veterans. More than a century and a half later, we're divided once again.
Memorial Day represents the unofficial start of the summer. Beaches and BBQs. Parades. A long weekend. Family visits. But when Memorial Day was first formally observed 157 years ago, just a few short years following the end of the Civil War, it was more of a solemn affair—a conciliatory gesture at a time when the U.S. needed to mend. It’s a shame we needed the bloodiest war in U.S. history to mend in the first place, as if bone had grown wrong and needed to be broken and reset. A clean break. I wonder what kind of a break we would need now to mend.
Some talk of a second civil war. Hell, A24 released a movie about that very scenario a little over a year ago. I don’t see a civil war happening any time soon, or at least not one on a large scale and with predictable geographic battle lines, but based on our current trajectory, I can envision a U.S. in which assassination attempts, acts of terrorism, and guerilla-style warfare become more prevalent. I don’t see reconciliation any time soon.
We have mutually exclusive positions for so many issues. How can we mend when we live in different realities? Consider the chasms between these perspectives:
Donald Trump
Pro: He’s the best president in U.S. history. He was chosen by God.
Anti: He’s the worst president in U.S history. He’s a corrupt white supremacist.
Abortion
Pro: It’s a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. It’s about women’s health and body autonomy.
Anti: It’s a holocaust of the unborn. Those who have abortions will go to hell.
Israel
Pro: The Jewish people have ancient claims to this land. They have been persecuted throughout the millennia. The state of Israel restored their rightful place after millennia of displacement.
Anti: They’re ruthless colonizers committing genocide. They have become the evil they once condemned following the Holocaust.
How do you reconcile such convictions? You don’t. Diametrically opposed beliefs demand absolute concession, not compromise, and most likely, they further entrench in the face of opposition. If we can’t change each other’s minds, then, how can we, as a country and a civil society, move forward in a coordinated way?
On this Substack, I mostly write about immigrants. Given Memorial Day is coming up, I’d like to point out as of last year, 40,000 foreign nationals were serving in the military, with 115,000 more foreign veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces residing in the U.S. But I digress.
My point is that I believe most immigrants, whether here with authorization or not, are decent people deserving at the very least of basic respect; and regardless of whether or not they’re decent people, they still deserve due process and to be treated humanely. Those are non-negotiables for me. If you believe, because of legal technicalities that can change on a whim, people ought to be tortured, we have no common ground. Everyone has at least one non-negotiable like this, usually more. But when non-negotiables are mutually exclusive, what is the path forward? I’m not sure.
Slavery was a big non-negotiable for slaves (and abolitionists) and slave owners, to be sure. Though slavery was a catalyst for the Civil War, the liberation of slaves was not the chief impetus for the conflict. It was the multifaceted implications of the institution of slavery, ranging from trade to states’ rights, that created the fissures between Union and Confederate states.
The war ended, but the underlying evil—racism—wasn’t addressed, let alone rooted out. As a result, it endured in the form of the KKK, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality, and on and on. But the central conflict, the war between the Union and the Confederacy, produced a functional result that would pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement: the liberation of the slaves.
No ethical quarrel about racism was settled, however. It’s not as if former Confederates had an epiphany: “You know what? You’re right. Black people are our equals. What we’ve done is morally repugnant.” They were simply defeated.
In other words, there was no widespread resolution of moral differences. Only force generated an outcome with lasting consequences.
What does that mean for us? Is violence the only way to resolve irreconcilable differences? Perhaps our differences are not as stark as they appear at face value. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t require a war, although violence during this period was extensive, targeted, and brutal. Is what’s happening now more like that? Maybe.
But are people rising up enough to prompt substantive change? Maybe people today are too comfortable to rise up, coddled by creature comforts and pacified by the infinite drip of entertainment slop. Or maybe people are too uncomfortable to rise up, living paycheck to paycheck, hanging on by a thread. Or maybe, for some of us, it’s a volatile cocktail of both comfort and discomfort that sees us lurching from despairing to narcotized and back, maintaining an existential vertigo that doesn’t allow us to get our bearings long enough to mobilize in a sustained way.
Who knows? Maybe if I go to a really fun BBQ this Memorial Day and have a beer and a burger, everything will be OK, if only for a little while. That is the American way, after all.
A few years ago, Chris Rock joked that America would eventually become so numbed to the memory of 9/11, they'd go out to cookouts for it and shop at stores for 9/11 sales. He was excoriated by critics for making light of the tragic deaths on that day.
People missed the point. He wasn't making light of 9/11. He was acknowledging how reliably America mercantilizes sobriety and tragedy, making every holiday a long weekend bash, regardless of the reason for the observance. Look at how many commercials tell you to honor Veterans Day with a new phone contract or a shiny Lexus in the driveway with a bow on top.
Thanks for reminding us of the reason for the day and the thought exercise for what it could take to reconcile the country now. Without stopping the firehouse of BS pouring out of Faux, Newsmax and net trolls at large, I don't know how it will be possible. Here's to hoping.