V-E Day
Eighty years ago tomorrow the war in Europe ended.
It was, and is, V-E Day.
May 8, 1945, marks the fall of humanity’s greatest evil, and the end of its greatest cataclysm.
Here is the cable that was sent by Eisenhower that records the end:
“The mission of this Allied Force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.”
The disgustingness of Trump’s bombast and the crudity of his jingoes is a disrespect only exceeded by his ego and inability to see that he is what the dead fought against — and revile from heaven with the deepest scorn.
Why did they fight?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry tried to tell us:
Friends in America, I would like to do you complete justice.
Perhaps, someday, more or less serious disputes will arise between us.
Every nation is selfish. Every nation considers its selfishness sacred. Perhaps your feeling of power may, someday, lead you to seize advantages for yourselves that we consider unjust to us. Perhaps, sometime in the future, more or less violent disputes may occur between us.
If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.
If therefore, at some future date, I were to inwardly reproach those American businessmen, I could never forget the high-minded war aims of your country.
I shall always bear witness in the same way to your fundamental qualities.
American mothers did not give their sons for the pursuit of material aims. Nor did these boys accept the idea of risking their lives for such material aims. I know – and will later tell my countrymen – that it was a spiritual crusade that led you into the war.
I have two specific proofs of this among others. Here is the first.
During this crossing in convoy, mingling as I did with your soldiers, I was inevitably a witness to the war propaganda they were fed.
Any propaganda is by definition amoral, and in order to achieve its aim it makes use of any sentiment, whether noble, vulgar, or base.
If the American soldiers had been sent to war merely in order to protect American interests, their propaganda would have insisted heavily on your oil wells, your rubber plantations, your threatened commercial markets.
But such subjects were hardly mentioned. If war propaganda stressed other things, it was because your soldiers wanted to hear about other things.
And what were they told to justify the sacrifice of their lives in their own eyes?
They were told of the hostages hanged in Poland, the hostages shot in France.
They were told of a new form of slavery that threatened to stifle part of humanity.
Propaganda spoke to them not about themselves, but about others.
They were made to feel solidarity with all humanity.
The fifty thousand soldiers of this convoy were going to war, not for the citizens of the United States, but for man, for human respect, for man’s freedom and greatness. The nobility of your countrymen dictated the same nobility where propaganda was concerned.
If someday your peace-treaty technicians should, for material and political reasons, injure something of France, they would be betraying your true face. How could I forget the great cause for which the American people fought?
The desecrations of this day of remembrance, which should be steeped in humility will be many. The Trump White House will share ground zero with Fox News, which will lie to their brainwashed audiences about the meaning of the day.
It is a day when humanity, not America, celebrated victory.
Americans filled the streets in jubilation and joy because they were all in — in every way. They led the way to victory through the assertion of a national will and power that has collapsed into ruins in the hands of a fascist, surrounded by oligarchs and a growling security state that wishes to show more teeth — and soon.
George Marshall was America’s most indispensable man in the war.
He said this:
We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.
It was — until it wasn’t.
Ask Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney if our flag still stands for freedom.
It has been hijacked and turned into a banner of fear by a posse of sycophants who are perfect distillations of the warning given by Avner Less, who interrogated Adolf Eichmann for 275 hours.
Twenty years after Eichmann was hanged Less talked about his faith in democracy as being essential towards safety.
He said that we are surrounded by Eichmanns. He said they are everywhere.
They are.
He said that they are harmless in a democracy, but turn deadly in an instant in a dictatorship.
Let me show you three ‘Little Eichmanns:’
We have reached an ending, and what is gone is gone forever, lit on fire by the American Nero:
What comes next means letting go.
We must imagine better than what has been in order to overcome the malevolence at hand.
It is time to ring the bell for a new era to begin.
The great visionary of the world in which we live was Franklin Roosevelt. He hoped that the world he dreamed into existence would endure for as long as all the people who were alive on the day that the war was won were still alive.
The youngest of those Americans are 80 years old. The world they have known was flushed into the sewer by a grifter from Queens, a blow hard and conman, a jack ass and a jerk off.
Their grandchildren and great grandchildren will have so much less than we all did unless we get ready to step up.
Will this generation of Americans roll over like the oligarchs and the media chiefs, the lawyers and the universities, or will they take a stand?
My friends, there is no more room to back up.
There is no more room for the ego above country ethic of the past era.
There is no more room to look away anymore.
This madness must be faced down.
Liberty is not an option in America.
Its preservation is the deepest obligation that we all share. Make no mistake: it is threatened by a malice that is historic, bearing down and deeply malevolent.
There can be no backing down or backing away.
No way.
The world witnessed madness in the Oval Office of the White House yesterday.
This is an American mess. The American people best clean it up.
Should we not, the greatest tragedy in the history of the world will happen on our watch, but I guess the good news is that, in our new Trumpistan, no one need ever be accountable for anything — so long as you love Trump enough.
No thanks.
MAGA people should be giving thanks at the grave of my uncle, but I guarantee you they are not. United States Third Army from July of 1944 to May 1945, including the liberation of Buchenwald at 3:15 PM on April 11, 1945. Gone but not forgotten.
Powerful piece, Steve. I like that you said there's no backing up. The past is dead, and we need to rebuild a more perfect union. Just grateful my parents aren't here to see this. I'm be sure to share far and wide.