Will you be my valentine?

While I’ve never been much for planned occasions, I am rather sentimental. I can remember sending a lot of little valentine cards. Most of them were part of the buy-a-bag-of-cards and send-them-to-everyone-you-know routine that was once common. A couple were very special, though; carefully chosen and sent to a special girl, with hopes that she would be “mine” in any way at all. Ah, those young loves.

Today, though, when I realized that it was Valentine’s Day, and thoughts of love came to mind, they were quickly replaced by mental images of people for whom thoughts of love are far from mind. While we may wish each other love, the actions of our own, elected, “representative” government are sending quite opposite messages.  U.S. military troops are, as usual, destroying, killing and maiming around the globe. Further, other governments, using aid and weapons from our government, are doing the same. We are still imprisoning and torturing.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans losing jobs, losing homes, or just failing to hold their own in a government-caused economic failure, are likely in no mood to wish others happy anything.

There are times when I wish I were like some others, who can ignore such ugly realities and mush on blindly about valentines and loving each other. Oh yes… I use distractions too, but reality is never far from mind. I just finished an unusual book, “Human Smoke”… a compilation of chronological news and commentary items from the years leading up to WWII. I am left with a clarified vision of the utter madness and evil of  world leaders… not just Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, but also Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. There were NO “good guys” among all of them, regardless of the way the “victors” have caused history to be written.

It would be appropriate if our military people, just on this Valentine’s Day, put little red heart stickers on each of their bullets and bombs.