Thanks for asking. I used to like Remembrance Day. Well,"like" is the wrong word. I always felt a quiet sadness, mixed with gratitude toward those who gave up their youth to go to hells like Vimy and Ortona. It was a time to praise those who had sacrificed and promise not to have to send more kids off to die. This year, I am not feeling that way and it's all because of Stephen Harper.
Under Harper, the message has changed from "love the veterans, remember their sacrifice, work to avoid war", to "love the veterans, remember their sacrifice, glorify war as an enterprise". I get the sense, when I watch Harper, that he revels in his role as chief cheerleader for the concept of war. It's like he sees war as a means for a country to assert its collective manhood and show the world it isn't gay. It is a fetishization of war and the military and it is deeply disturbing to me. War is a sad failure, and is nothing to be glorified. Harper's love affair with the idea of war, has injected a creepy eroticism into Remembrance Day (even going so far as to say that Remembrance Week will "climax" on Remembrance Day) and it makes me feel dirty.
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