Memorial Day (previously known as but now seldom called Decoration Day) is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Many people visit cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day to honor and mourn those who died in military service from the Civil War to now. We honor those who died in service to our great nation.
About 420,000 Americans died over the course of the four years that the United States was involved in World War II.
In three months, the United States has suffered the loss of 100,000 ordinary citizens — one-quarter of the military lives lost in the four years of WW II. We seem to have trouble absorbing this fact.
As in WW II, civilians have stepped forward to help. In the 1940s, women sewed parachutes and knitted socks for our servicemen. Now, civilians are making masks and other protective gear for our front line workers. Unlike in WW II, these civilian efforts replace rather than supplement the use of the Defense Production Act. Because our current President is not up to the task.
It has been estimated that we would have lost 36,000 fewer American deaths in the last three months had social distancing begun one-week earlier. That would have taken a President who read his intelligence briefings, or at least listened to them. We don’t have such a President.
This weekend, we mourn the loss of life and also the lack of intelligent and moral leadership.
” On Monday, Memorial Day, we will honor those young men and women who did not believe that being an American meant refusing to inconvenience themselves to help their neighbors.” ~ historian, Heather Cox Richardson.