Some (slightly belated) thoughts on US Memorial Day, 2026. Memorial Day and the Melian Dialogue It’s Memorial Day again. It seems that every year (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025) this causes some sad introspection, because of the nature of our times (and, to be fair, because of who I am). I’m absolutely sick of hearing the right-wing patriotic talk of how the US is great, has never started a war, never taken territory, never committed war crimes, and other lies. On the other hand, I’m also sick of hearing historically uninformed diatribes painting the US as absolute evil. So I’ve been wondering what a historically informed view of the US right now would look like. We’ve previously on this CLBTNR (crummy little blog that nobody reads) invoked the Melian dialogue from Thucydides, about the arrogance of the wealthy, the politically powerful, and their eagerness to wield military power in our New Gilded Age: The strong do as they will; the weak do as they must. In the Melian dialogue, more or…
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