Remembrance

When we remember the fallen today, remember all of them.

Not just the ones our governments bring to our attention.

Don't let the dead be a matter of convenience to the living as they justify and pursue policies that betray a failure to learn anything at all from the past. Commemoration must not be allowed to be merely expedient. It must be the grossest of inconveniences.

Remember them all, friends and foes, foreign and domestic, military and civilian, known and unknown. Remember the victims of our own aggression, innumerable nameless millions lost to history whose very existence is reduced to a matter of speculation by our genocides and war crimes.

Remember the heroes and the villains. Remember the deserters shot at dawn. Remember those crushed in insurrection against the world we have made over their unmarked graves. Remember the reviled.

Remember them all and take no comfort in your commemoration.