Anzac Day

I don’t buy into war culture, but, go right ahead and celebrate man’s inhumanity to man all you want, just don’t expect me to join with you. Wear a poppy in your hair. Blow a bugle. Dress up in old medals of distant relatives you never knew. Whatever you need to do.

Yeah right, Christian, so why don’t you just keep your opinions to yourself? This is sacred, or some such thing. That is what I expect people to say after stating my view. How can I put it, people have such belief in their own beliefs, now a days, that dissenting views are no longer allowed.

However, people seem to think they can push their Anzac Day ideas on whoever they want, thinking that everyone should participate and think the same way they do. I don’t think the same way. I don’t want to remember war, because it is pointless and we haven’t learnt anything as wars still rage across the planet. 

War culture is not a bunch of dewy-eyed 16 year olds lying about their age and running off to fight for their country, in some romantic, noble quest, to be slaughtered the moment they set foot on Turkish soil, such is the Anzac story. War culture is now leaders of major countries complicit in telling what lies needed to be told so they could invade foreign countries to steal their riches. War culture is dominant countries killing leaders and destroying countries for political gain to prop up their own economies. War Culture is civilians as collateral damage in times of peace to make the very rich even richer. The disenfranchisement of the people of developing countries to the point of the disenfranchised banding together and voila la we have global terrorism that is threatening all of us. War culture is the stripping of human rights and the torture of foreign citizens. War culture is big business, not the defending of countries and nations. This is not something I want to go and celebrate, or of which I want to feel proud.

Maybe the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism, and the war on refugees, and the war on truth, and the war on everything else that doesn't suit the politics of the day, has tainted my respect for those who went and fought actual wars, sucked the life out of any good feelings I had towards honour and valour and fighting for one's people, maybe? But, I am not ashamed of being a pacifist, either. 

Do I have to add, I’m not trying to make anyone think anything, you are free to think what you like, as I am free to think what I want. I am just telling you what I think.