Why We Fight

From Wikipedia :

Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films commissioned by the United States government during World War II to demonstrate to American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S. public to persuade them to support American intervention.

Now I'd really like this blog to have a bit less activist content. I'd rather be blogging about the Space Programmes that will get Humanity to the stars - or at least the local neighbourhood out to the Oort cloud - in the next millenium or two. I'd prefer to blog about speculations on Cosmology, what the Universe is, along with humour, wit, and the endless fascination I have with this particular segment of the Multiverse. Sometimes measuring the marigolds (as to me that makes them even more wondrous), sometimes just pondering their beauty.

I've just spent a month of my life with some of the most wonderful people on the planet.

Looking at it objectively, consider a gathering of women comprising: A sound tech from Los Angeles; An NCO in the Canadian Armed Forces; A former US Artillery Officer and Tall Ship Sailor from Philadelphia; A world-renowned GeoScientist from Hawaii and her Fabulously talented Architect partner; A trainee nurse from Boston with a profoundly autistic teenage son; A Rocket Scientist from Australia; an on-call Radio-Tech with the ability to debug broadcasting antennae across the whole of North America from her cell-phone; a Radiographer from New England; I mean, this is a group that would be considered spectacular over-achievers anywhere else. Some of the kindest people on the planet too, and the most courageous. They had to be, as so many like us don't survive to middle-age. Why were they there, having travelled anything from hundreds of kilometres to halfway round the planet? To give support to two of their number who were having major surgery. They were there out of Love.

Why do such as we fight? Because of this :

A boy of 10 has been found hanged at his South Yorkshire home after telling his mum he wanted to be a girl.
Tragic Cameron McWilliams had already asked for permission to wear make-up, and been teased after he was found wearing his half-sister's knickers.

His desperate mum Kelly McWilliams told a Doncaster inquest she had bought him girls' underwear to wear in private, but had refused his requests to be allowed to wear make-up.

She said: "It was apparent he was unhappy and said he wanted to be a girl. He did like girls' things."

And this:

Lawrence “Larry” King was shot to death and the media thought that you didn’t need to know about it.

Larry, as you might have now learned, was fifteen and in his junior high school computer lab when Brandon McInerney, 14, followed through on a previously declared threat and shot King.

The mainstream media apparently didn’t think that you needed to know that King had recently come out as gay and had started to wear lipstick, mascara, earrings, and a pair of particularly fierce high heeled boots.

The first LA Times article on the shooting made no reference to Larry’s sexual orientation, or his manner of dress. When the mainstream media first reported the murder, it was stated that the violence stemmed from a “personal dispute” between the two boys.

And because of all the outright lies, distortions, and hatred spouted out by the "Concerned Women of America", "Traditional Values Alliance", and other supposedly conservative groups that are far more interested in gaining funds through Sensationalist misinformation and deliberate falsehood than in genuine conservative issues. Falsehoods that maliciously propagate ignorance, with tragic results to loving families. Falsehoods that lead to children dying, and I'm unable to forgive them for that while those groups still continue their mendacity. But we don't fight alone.

Youth groups across the country began holding marches in King’s honor. Details of his death was spread virally on youth-dominated, Facebook.

Old Chooks like me who get utterly incandescent with rage at the way children are dying to line others' pockets are encouraged and heartened by the younger generation. For all their faults, they're better than we were in some ways at that age, and I think their children will be better still.