DECEMBER 7, 2021 – Veterans Day was originally “Armistice Day,” marking the end of the “Great War for Civilization” (I kid you not—that’s what the victors dubbed it, despite the four years of criminal slaughter—all sides—of the men of a whole generation)—at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. I did a little checking and learned that in 1945, after the end of more slaughter known as “WW II,” a movement took hold, quite understandably, to change “Armistice Day” to “Veterans Day.” The switch became official in 1954, 36 years after the end of the “Great War.”
Yet here we are in 2021, 76 years since the end of WW II—more than double the time between the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, et cetera and the switcheroo to “Veterans Day,” and 80 years from the actual “Day of Infamy.” Yet we still call December 7 . . . Pearl Harbor Day.
Given the average American’s ignorance of history and concomitantly short attention span, on this anniversary of the day FDR called the “Day of Infamy, I’m wondering how long before the day’s title is switched from “Pearl Harbor Day” to “Day of Infamous Acts.”
In the broad wake of propaganda of all varieties that accelerated during the You-Know-Who years, I wouldn’t be surprised if leading, rightwing demagogues were to fan ever more the flames of their crazy demagoguery. For notoriety, particularly the form that pays cash on the barrelhead, these demagogues would rededicate this day to remembering attacks by such demons as AOC, Dr. Fauci, Speaker Pelosi, and “Brandon” himself.
As time has passed since the original Pearl Harbor Day, the infamous enemy of the day—Imperial Japan—havs faded into the annals of history. Even the bogeymen of 9-11—extremist Muslims—are no longer the nefarious adversaries they once were. No, the enemy of the day is our own sitting president. Moreover, not even Emperor Hirohito or General Tojo; nor Osama Bin Laden . . . nor Barrack Obama . . . was infamous enough to warrant billboard size signs bearing the imperative F-bomb. Now such signs directed at Biden are in clear view every day in just one state over—Wisconsin, technically a presidential blue state, I’ll remind my readers, unless you believe in “the steal.”
If the sadistic, horrible, below-our-dignity Japanese forces would wind up killing 41,592 and wounding 145,706 of our soldiers—to make no mention of Chinese, Filipino, et alia—a person would assume that a later common enemy in the form of a virus killing 786,386 Americans and landing an estimated 7.5 million in the hospital would have gained the moniker of “infamous” as well; or at least that there’d be greater acceptance of “magic wand” protection by way of vaccination.
As we salute old soldiers who answered the call after that “Day in Infamy,” we must ponder in the silence of memory . . . eight decades later, what will it take to unify our country enough to be called accurately again, the “United States of America”?
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
