Poppies are for Opium

Today, I am supposed to wear a blood red poppy and remember all those that have sacrificed themselves in acts of warfare and political combat for the pursuit of nationalist and internationalist goals. It is a sombre and sobering occasion, to be sure.

My personal inability to wear a blood red poppy is not something to be proud of. I feel tarnished, walking the streets alongside my well-dressed, tailored yuppy friends. I am relegated to the rank of tourist, of cheapskate, of unconscientious rube. I feel like my mom, in 1990, who wouldn’t let us watch the Oscars because they were wearing red ribbons for AIDS (and she thought Hollywood promoted a lifestyle of promiscuity, homosexuals, and other mars of immorality). Seriously. And she’d say, “well, why aren’t they wearing ribbons for diabetes, or malaria? Why AIDS?” in a way that makes me hang my head in shame as I argue “but why veterans? Why not all old people? Why not conscientious objects and displaced civilians, or peace activists, or humanitarians?”

And despite this, I really do think I’m right.

I believe that humans, all of us, have the power to know right from wrong, and kindness from unspeakable evil. I believe that become a soldier is giving up that power - it is saying that what the individual believes does not matter, and that power of thought and morality is given up to a larger structure - one’s commanding officer, one’s country, and one’s government.

And I believe that the act of giving up one’s power and basic humanity, to a government (or to a religious body) is a very, very dangerous thing. I believe that it allows us to step into a mass, ‘mob’ mentality and to commit unspeakable acts which we would otherwise never do. We kill. We rape. We ‘other.’

I believe that people go to war for good reasons. I believe that people, the world over, choose to be soldiers for good reasons. And I believe that the majority of soldiers on both sides of major conflicts occurring today, and in the past, are and were good people. But good people do bad things when they forgo their basic humanity and trade it in for dog tags. Good people do bad things when they go to war.

And so I believe that joining an army is an immoral act. And I cannot wear a poppy.

I will thus be spending this day of remembrance, not remembering, but on my much neglected blog, and watching five straight hours of video on College Humor. Wrong? Probably. But at least I'm not a hypocrite.*




*Evidence on whether or not I am a hypocrite, on this subject and many others, is mixed at best.