The Old Lie

[poliphilo]

The Queen turns up

And all the pajandrums of church and state in their silly get-ups.

And of course the military all chingling with medals.

And the word glorious gets used a lot. As in "our glorious dead".

That's what upsets me.

We are still telling ourselves that death in war is glorious.

Here are the images from Falluja. And death in war is glorious.

And images of the coffins of Black Watch soldiers coming home, having been killed by suicide bombers. And death in war is glorious.

Wilfred Owen tried to spike our guns. It's one of the most famous poems in the language. It even gets taught in schools.

"The old Lie, dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."

(Note that Lie has a capital "L")

But it doesn't get read at the Cenotaph. Not in this august company.

The Queen is wearing a black hat. Tony Blair is wearing a black coat. The military band plays Elgar. And death in war is glorious.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Death isn't glorious--it's just death, and adding a fancy adjective to it is like whitewashing a sepulchre.

-- I heard yesterday that the Evangelical Christians are now gleefully expecting and even demanding to cash in their chips, now that their (and their God's) President has been elected. They want their "home and family" values stamped on this administration through its appointed officials (the Mexican for Attorney General? Too liberal for them) and its new laws.

And this morning there were pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger smiling at the people--he's really being talked up as a possible presidential candidate for 2008.

We have entered a dark time of repressive government, reactionary legislation, grim conservatism and fear of change, and lives and money poured into a senseless and cruel war that goes nowhere, and may go nowhere for years.

We were so close to moving beyond this shrunken up way of living. Where are all those Aquarians with their sparkly auras? They need to hurry up. We're heading back into the iron age.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And Bush is a member of the Aquarian generation- a little younger than you and me.

I had great hopes of the Millennium. Unrealistic as it turns out. But I cling to the belief that what we're seeing now is just the last flailings of a dying beast.

Schwarzenegger disgusts me, but I believe he is more of a liberal than most of Team Bush.