Here in the United States, we set aside one day, the last Monday in the month of May, to honor the memory of all who have fallen while serving the country in uniform.

For some, and I’m ashamed to say it, this extended weekend means nothing more than the traditional start of the summer barbecue season. Public swimming pools around the country open, summer clothing prices drop for special sales, bikinis are purchased based on this year’s trending fashion, and garage doors stand open while guys who seldom get their hands dirty tune up their riding lawn mowers. I’m not without sympathy, the wounds these guys carry to the ER make me snort with laughter.

In places not many people ever remember or even hear the names of, there are services in memory of the brave men and women who died in the line of duty. This year, 18 soldiers, airmen, marines and others fell. Nobody will know their names, save family and friends, because we have as a nation numbed ourselves to the point where the faces and the names are nothing.

Or perhaps I am wrong, and it was always this way. That’s history before the Vietnam War, before my time. I hate the idea that we were always this way, but I’ve never seen anything to the contrary. A paragraph in a history book for a battle, a biography on a general, a portrait, a statue. That is all that we will give them for all the things we have enjoyed or continue to fight for.

Once, during World War Two, it might have been different. We as a nation honored and supported in every way the service men and women in the European and Pacific theaters of the most dreadful conflict the world has ever known. It is because we were attacked first, a sleeping giant, as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto called us. On learning that our aircraft carriers were not found at Pearl Harbor, he knew the operation had filled that giant with a “terrible resolve” and he was not unfamiliar with us; he had spent time in America and even attended college. He had traveled and he knew very well what we were capable of, even if, on 8 December of 1941, we did not.

Internment camps for Japanese immigrants and Japanese citizens of the United States were locked up in plywood shanties surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers. Then we proceeded to show the industrial might Yamamoto had warned his country about while we also displayed hysterical and reactive hatred and bigotry. He knew we would do that, too.

After Churchill and Stalin insisted that they would help us defeat the Japanese, but Germany had to be defeated first, we engaged in both theaters, and my God what about ugly show we humans put on. Had Hitler not defeated his own forces in the end with his insanely stupid and wasteful tactics, leaving his country in ruins, and had the nuclear weapons been used on Japan months later, it could all have kept going until humanity was almost wiped out.

Things done differently, you and I would not be sharing this time together. We may not have been born at all. If not for the United States, do we want to imagine where the Berlin Wall might have otherwise been? Perhaps it wouldn’t have been necessary; suppose that it was the English Channel which marked the extent of Soviet Union territory.

We and our allies combined to do the impossible. We beat Nazi Germany and gave Stalin something to think about. Now, here we are.

After VE and VJ day, it seemed that the prominence of American armed forces did nothing but get us involved in conflicts we had no business engaging in.

That’s a matter of opinion; many South Koreans would say that they hate having their country divided, but considering the glaringly painful alternative, they’re better off. Was the Korean Conflict a waste?

I’ve known veterans of both WWII and Korea. Some served in both. The stories they told me were never detailed. The men I knew were tough without doubt, heavy drinkers and smokers and hard workers who knew how to cuss just enough so their words had weight. You listened to such men, even if you thought of them as bastards or pricks.

In my case it has taken hindsight and accumulated experience to realize many were dreadfully affected but silent. Whatever happened to them to change them into angry and abrupt people, it was a closed subject.

We know what it was like because plenty of accounts have survived, but outside of the nonfiction section in the library, they might as well have been away for vacation.

Newsreels and articles in the papers were censored, but in every war, there were always a few who broke the taboo and spoke. Mostly, it violated a code of conduct veterans stuck with for the rest of their lives.

The Vietnam veterans I knew were different. Most weren’t complaining, but being in combat had changed so many in drastic ways. They openly gave details because they had trouble living with the horrors they’d endured. Marriages ended. Suicides and hospitalizations were all too common. Arrests were made for everything from shoplifting to homicide. And it is no myth that protesters publicly abusing them added to their trauma. They stopped wearing dress uniforms and medals. Marks of achievement were the badges of shame.

They had not fled to Canada, burned their draft cards or even tried to escape the draft with medical or educational deferments. They went, and came back with parts of their bodies or minds damaged or missing. An ungrateful nation threw rocks and called them names. It was a shameful time in our history.

President Johnson had done good things, but his reelection was doomed by the war. What we remember is flag-draped coffins and nightly news stories on the networks. Something had changed.

Vets found out that other vets who had been cooks or clerks were bragging or bitching about the Nam, and the combat veteran had a dirty name for those. They called them REMFs, or “Rear Echelon Motherfuckers.”

How dare they claim benefits or talk to reporters when they might just as well have been home the whole time?

However the split in reality happened, or when it happened, doesn’t matter. Anywhere from 1964 to 1970, America changed.

The young generation never got over the guilt it caused, and, much later, insisted on supporting troops. Most people gave lip service about the modern veteran, but it shows up as the empty words and platitudes that it is. Only recently has it been revealed that Agent Orange has caused damage still being discovered in surviving veterans, and only now is compensation and treatment being discussed. We never stopped turning deaf ears to them. We have never stopped eating our own.

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I doubt very many people even know or care that 18 service members died this past year. I believe they would, on being told, say “That’s it?” And then forget it as they rub their noses on their smartphones.

The job of recruiting may never have been more difficult than it is today. We’ve turned into a nation of indifferent and unpatriotic slobs. The attack on our Capitol building in January proved that if nothing else, democracy is not even a tangible concept to a generation of loons who shouted Trump’s name while beating Capitol police and shitting on the floors of the House and Senate chambers. They all had death on their mind, the deaths of the House leader and vice president at the very least.

To add to such terrorism and dishonor, and in fact to condone it, word comes of a filibuster to stop an investigation. If you thought in grade school that Benedict Arnold was a son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that you had it right. And that’s what I think of Snowden and the Walkers and everyone else who turns traitor, including Senator Joe Manchin (D-WVA). It has been traitors who, at times, have cost us the lives of our own. Damaged our security. Dishonored themselves and their country as if it were nothing more than deciding to go for a walk.

I don’t know why this is happening. But the Republican party has turned on the people of the United States and in so doing diminished even more the sacrifice of their lives of our military men and women, especially now. They are trying to make the service to our country by veterans and our honored dead meaningless, all of it in vain.

There can be no greater dishonor.

This Memorial Day, I will remember. I’ll give thanks. I’ll pray for the souls of the departed to be given peace in God’s hands. And for their families to be able to grieve and ask for help should they need it. They more than anyone else should see Republicans trying to take away the very things we Americans have fought for, and died for.

To all of our current military personnel and veterans, I thank you. Your service and personal sacrifice means so much more than even you can know. You are part of something bigger than yourselves and you swore an oath in good faith and with honor. God bless and keep you.