Monuments Instead of AchievementsA suburb near where I live will be dedicating its new veterans memorial on Veterans Day. Another nearby town is planning its new veterans memorial. A nearby veterans memorial has a "sound and light show" offering up the horrors of Pearl Harbor for the digital age. Actual veterans, returning home from dusty death country in Afghanistan, can attend the events, depending on if they have to work, if they have jobs. As the World War II generation passes from among us, as we mint new veterans every day, as even the boys who went to Vietnam grow old, it seems to me we are in an age of memorials, in a backward-looking time that prefers to see in the mind's eye not cheap toys from China storming our borders, but Flying Fortresses over Japan. Ah, we were good in those days. Swing music. The flag going up on Iwo Jima. Rosie the Freakin' Riveter. And who are we now in a time of uncertainty? Are we a race of monument-building beavers, grubbing up bigger and bigger piles of engraved stone to remember those deeds of bravery we cannot seem to replicate in 2012? The men and women overseas are, of course, still brave, still willing, but it seems sour now, in a time when we argue about the rightness of the war in Afghanistan, when some people say we thundered into Iraq because the then-president was weak-brained. We look back longingly to certainty — a certainty most of our population never knew because, after Vietnam, there was no more certainty ever again. And we are trying to get it back, and the easiest way to do that is to build a monument, to play "taps" mournfully over a bouquet of roses and to buy a bumper sticker reminding us to thank a veteran for our ability to speak English.
But what else are we building? What else are we achieving? The glance backward, however prideful, does not take us forward. I think that, in the last 10 years, I have seen more memorials dedicated than I ever saw in the fat 1960s when I was a boy, when every kid's dad had helped save the world. Now, roiling and spinning in a thousand cultural clashes, unsure, but feeling that somehow the good times are gone, we build monuments not to honor the dead but to reassure ourselves that it's not over, that we are still strong and pure, and if we are not, then at least we once were that way, when we so carelessly ruled the world. I am not immune to the spine-shiver that accompanies the crack of the honor guard's rifles. Perhaps no one is immune to that shiver. Perhaps that is why Arab boys strap bombs to their chests. Glory waits. But good schools are better than stone markers for the dead. Jobs that pay well are a better tribute to America than bumper stickers or a politician vomiting the word "hero" into the cool morning light of Veterans Day. That they fought for it means nothing if it's not still here, that gentle, free country where you could work at the same job for 30 years, ending up with a small paid-off house and a measure off certainty to chew on, sweet and meaty as the Sunday dinner roast beef. "Look back," the monuments whisper. "Look back. See what we were. Don't you feel better now?" But what do we build that hums and grows? What do we build that nourishes and educates? What are we building for the future? To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Marc Munroe Dion is the author of two books available on Kindle, iTunes and Nook — Mill River Smoke and Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America. COPYRIGHT 2012 BY CREATORS.COM 
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