They Salute With Their Left Hand

This is a repost in light of Memorial Day, as we remember the fallen, make sure to ignore Democrat, Republican and media warmonger who are the reason why our young men and women continue to die for the sake of enriching defense contractors and inflating the profits of the military-financial racket.

This is a day where we should honor the dead and remember in silence the memory of the fallen. Decorum demands we don’t turn this occasion into a political football and instead observe with somber reflection how a few are asked to carry the burdens of millions. Yet, as much as I tried to be mindful of my own admonitions, the scene of one politician after another using this day to promote themselves as they pretend to care for the dead and the veterans who live with the nightmares of their perished comrades was too much for me to remain silent. I could no longer bite my tongue, so I choose to do my patriotic duty and speak out against these duplicitous demagogues and double dealing politicians who use the pains of those who serve to serve themselves.

America has become a nation of two minds when it comes to the way we treat wars and the veterans who take part in them. Not wanting to revisit the shameful era where veterans were mistreated during the Vietnam war, we have gone to the other extreme where we utter niceties and pleasantries to veterans as if we are conditioned to say “thank you for your service”. But words without deeds and catch phrases without action are meaningless. We keep buying yellow ribbons as a way of saying “we care” yet walk right on by the very veterans we are supposed to care for as we ignore those who call pavements foxholes and their new homes.

What we do out of indifference, politicians purvey with abject maliciousness. I’m not writing this from a political or a partisan perspective; both Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of this stain that is evident on our nation’s conscience. Patriotism is birthing negligence in the public and giving allowance to perniciousness by the upper crust of society who see it fit to use the suffering of veterans and the memories of the dead to make fortunes for themselves as they ignore the very people who they profess to honor. We keep electing Presidents, Senators and Congressmen in DC who are completely disconnected from any semblance of sacrifice as they cravenly salute men and women of valor. Click To Tweet

Our toy soldier in chief Trump is flown around in a private jet while he sends men and women to their death in order to appease his corporate patrons. This is why I am so vehemently against wars; patriotism and love of country is being used to mask the greed and power grab that is the cause of one war after another. The victims of this vile practice of corporate gluttony and federated excess are the veterans who sign up to serve their country only to be shipped overseas to be treated as target practice for the weapons defense contractors sell to the other side so that we can have an enemy to fight. This paradigm of endless warfare needs a boogieman; arms are thus shipped by the millions to the “bad guy” so that we can have a perpetual state of conflict.

Perpetual state of conflict is extinguishing endless lives on all sides as our finest die in foreign lands and those who return come back broken by the memories of lost friends and lost lives. Maligned once by war, veterans are victimized yet again as they are treated with malice by the very same government they bled to protect. Long lines at VA hospitals, an eternity to get the mental health they need, and families who grow estranged; this is why one veteran every 25 minutes finds a permanent solution by way of suicide’s comfort. Those who survive do so while war continues to ravage their minds; PTSD gnaws at the mind of millions as the lives of veterans become a delicate dance between mind bending strife and a few glimmers of hope. Even the ones who have a life of normality and success–veterans like former Lieutenant Colonel Rick Belt who I interviewed last week–still suffer the remembrances of war’s past. Meanwhile politicians live a life of royalty using those same memories as cash registers.

Our duplicitous politicians overlook the horror veterans go through and instead glom on to the glory of war as they pay scant attention to the struggles of survivors. It is an outrage and an injustice of the highest magnitude that our nation would allow even one veteran to call concretes home let along the teeming masses of once soldiers who are homeless. We spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons systems that the military keeps saying they don’t need, yet we can’t spend a fraction of the cost of one weapon’s program to house veterans! Companies like Boeing and Northrup Grumman are making untold billions by using the blood and bodies of soldiers as sunk costs. To cover this immorality and wicked scheme, politicians like Trump and Obama are foisted upon us to keep us distracted by politics while the military-financial complex wreaks havoc upon the planet.

A left hand salute is a sign of disrespect in the military, soldiers mockingly salute with the wrong hand when they encounter people they are not enamored with. That is the reason why this article is titled “they salute with their left hand”, it’s a way of conveying how politicians on both side of the aisle and the punditry in corporate media continually disparage the military with their policies and indifference as they pretend to be saluting them with respect. This is the same reason why the feature picture was flipped 180 degrees, the same way the establishment use special effects and theatrics to falsify their patriotism can be used against them to reveal their fraudulence–what is good for the goose is good for the warmonger.

When you see one politician after another saluting the service of veterans and honoring those who are no longer with us, discount all of them as frauds and scoundrels of the highest order. These people are not patriots, they are part and parcel of an enemy within that is destroying the fabric of our nation as they send the bravest of men and women to their death in order to reap profits. Perhaps it is time for the draft to be reconstituted after all; maybe we will start caring more for veterans and the lives of those we keep saying “thank you for your service” to in passing if our butts are on the wall too. Until then, we will continue to be led by leaders who salute with their left hands as they take from veterans and all of us with their right hands. #IgnoreWarmongers

“When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants.” ~ Emmanuel Macron

Check out the Ghion Cast below where I interviewed a real life hero and a veteran who served in the Vietnam War. Men like Rick Belt are who we should let lead us instead of letting fear mongers bleed us.