War? It's a blast!

Paid a visit to a bookstore today. It seems that almost all of the books in the "History"-section are about war.

War seems to linger on everything in the finnish society. We use WW2 jargon like "torjuntavoitto" (defensive victory) to describe everyday things, whether it's a leader of a political party trying to swiftly avoid admitting an election loss or a hockey coach explaining why our team sucked, but in a good way. Everyday there seems to be another campaign to raise money for the finnish war veterans, yet most of the funds haven't even been put to use. Veterans are still struggling in their diapers for the basic necessities of life while some middle-aged war-glamorizing git, with pictures of Mannerheim lining up his walls, is piling up the cash for later use.

Some of the organizations have no intention of spending the money on improving the living conditions of the veterans. They're either waiting for the vets to hop the twig so they can spend the fortune as they see fit, or spending it on endless ceremonies, statues, annual celebrations and other things meant to idolize the horrible situation a lot of finnish young men were dragged into. Listening to Finlandia all teary-eyed in some pompous flag-wielding ceremony does fuck all for the veterans.

The fucked up thing is, these pro-war nutcases that never had to live through it think we owe it to the veterans to serve in the army. We've gone from one extremity (the leftist slandering of the veterans in the 70s) to another. For the modern war-mongers history classes are not enough. They want to "treasure the legacy of the veterans", which basically means promoting their own nationalist bullshit. Finns will always remember and hopefully appreciate the sacrifices made by the veterans, it's not like you have to endlessly bring up the war on every occasion possible. Clinging to past wars isn't an answer; it just divides people and nations.

It's not up to us to sacrifice ourselves for the state, it's up to the government to prevent the diplomatic relations from cooling down to the point of war. I'm not going to kill a single human being for the state nor would I ever be willing to lose my life for it. The prime minister would never die for me. Or you.

I'd like to think it's more about humaneness than cowardice. Be as it may, I'm going to be stuffing flowers down the barrel of a soldier's gun when the shit hits the fan, even if that means getting my noggin blown to pieces. 

La la la. Here's a bunch of good anti-war songs to go with this diatribe.