SCENE:  Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. D-Day. Operation Overlord begins. Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe launch the largest amphibious invasion of all time against Hitler and the Nazi war machine. More than 5000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the landing of 160,000 troops, establishing a foothold from which to drive the Germans back across Europe and bring an end to that horrible conflict. Over 9000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded during the first day of the invasion.

World War II in Europe was declared over on May 8, 1945, only eleven months later. The writing was on the wall for the Nazis–driven out of Africa, Italy and Russia, short on fuel, basically zero in-the-field maintenance capability, and fatally dysfunctional leadership–but what a savage eleven months they were. Let’s never forget that in America and her allies, the Germans faced an unstoppable force. The U.S. Army had the most organized, and just as importantly, creative fighting divisions on the battlefield. We broke their code, eventually dominated the sea and the skies, and anything we lacked in firepower we made up with ingenuity. We could get damaged armor up and running again in days if not hours, and our soldiers were skilled, valiant, and refused to be beaten. It all came, of course, at a terrible price.  There were 75,000 American casualties alone in the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944.

Remember, this was not only a world war but the deadliest conflict in human history. The loss estimates are staggering; 60 million dead is not an exaggeration. Of that number, 40 million people –2/3rds of the total–were the result of deaths other than combat.

The term D-Day has become part of our lexicon in reference to a dramatic event horizon in the lives of human beings. It’s come to assume the moment when an assembly of determined, virtuous people face down a common enemy, to drive out evil and recover their freedom. They bear one weapon for which there is no defense: the truth, and on the 6th of June,1944, the truth arrived at beaches named Omaha, Juno and Sword behind the steel doors of hundreds of LSTs. The ignorant misunderstand or underestimate the term at their peril: D-Day is a big day.

SCENE: The Gulf of Mexico, May 2010. A foreign energy company doing business off the shore of Louisiana is responsible for the largest oil-related environmental disaster in U.S. history. One of British Petroleum’s Transocean rigs exploded and caught fire, and released a torrent of dark poison on April 20th that has still not been contained, and created an ecological and social catastrophe some have equated with dropping a nuclear bomb on our country.

Is it possible to connect these two scenes? Here at A Cavalcade of Crazy, I have been considering that possibliity. A rather large and disturbing picture unfolded, one which has been unfolding for quite a while now. As the oil slick spreads across the water as if from an open vein, it occurred to me on this 66th anniversary of D-Day that too many of those patriots who fill graves over Omaha Beach, in Arlington, and in soldier’s graves everywhere, have been unwitting pawns in a giant con game.  Because what has transpired is that these brave men and women, whether enlisted troops or luckless draftees, have been used to keep us safe to be oppressed by forces on our own side. It’s not just bombs and rockets that are killing us, but the relentless and unrestrained quest for resources and profit. The establishment will sacrifice us in a heartbeat for that cause, and the crusade is always presented and justified with that tried-and true PR spin designed for the lowest life form: Support the troops. We’re making the world safe for democracy. We’re fighting for freedom. Anybody against freedom around here?

The larger question, however, lingers. Did old Private Ryan, and all the rest, give their lives so that we could ultimately be destroyed by dollars? In light of the history of the last century and into this one, it’s not difficult  to imagine this scam. Money, or at least its merciless pursuit, clearly occupies the dominant position in the mass destruction arsenal. Endless strife and grief usually follow in its wake.

Let’s not forget the Cold War didn’t exactly stay cold. The Korean War took 37,000 American lives, and Vietnam claimed 58, 000. The global War On Terror is currently at 5000 U.S. soldiers and climbing. Those figures only represent our combat deaths. Add in the innocent  civilian casualties from all parts of the fighting and you’re up in the millions again quickly. And what has been the legacy? You know, I don’t think we were any closer to wearing fur hats and speaking Russian than we were to wearing atomic pants and speaking Martian. The result of all the institutionalized bloodshed is that we are safe and free to be soaked, worked and jobbed– drenched in corporate sludge like those pelicans gasping for life in the Gulf. Exactly what values are we protecting so these marauding corporatists can loot our treasury, bribe officials, devastate animals, birds and fish, ruin our land and water, and wreck the livelihoods of thousands of people who depend on their country being kept safe and clean?

Every time I look at pictures of those poor birds, I am quite ready to dip those responsible up to the top of their oily heads in their own slime. And that includes the thieves in business, politics, and on Wall Street who encourage too many of my brain-dead neighbors to keep believing that if we don’t continue mining coal and pumping oil, all their big screen TVs will go out. Or they’ll go broke watching them. Which are not only lies, but insults. Excuse me for laughing in your face at the idea that television is important. (I’m not including The Simpsons, Bertie and Jeeves, or Trailer Park Boys in that comment. Those are art forms, not mindless drivel.) At any rate, my usual concern for eloquence may be undermined by emotion and anger in this piece. But for the record, let me state that World War II was a undeniable call to action against murder and madness on a colossal scale, committed by fanatics obsessed with avarice and power– motives not unlike those demonstrated by the reckless corporate behavior we suffer today– and I am proud my country stepped up and joined the fight.

That same opposition to injustice needs to be vigilant today.

Whether unfortunately or by design, in our efforts to rid the world of the tyranny of all the foreign isms that threaten our freedom, we failed to protect ourselves from perhaps the most basic and insidious: Fascism. Or as Mussolini suggested it be more properly referred, Corporatism. Hell, not only did we not finish the job, it’s thriving right here. We should never forget that men like Don Blankenship and Tony Hayward represent simply different players in the same treacherous framework. The old symbols and uniforms may be buried under the rubble of World War II, but this enemy is alive and well. Who can’t feel sympathy for the last D-Day vets, if they look around at the damaging influence caused by the stranglehold of financial and corporate interests on our own country, and think, we didn’t fight for this.

America and our freedom is most definitely worth defending. Industrial predators like British Petroleum, Massey Energy, and their cronies in government who take care of them are not. (General Smedley Butler had plenty to say on this subject. Put War Is A Racket on your summer reading list.) These corporations, not to mention our legislators, were originally supposed to exist at our convenience, not the other way around. My D-Day imagery is in response to mercenaries and profiteers whose only purpose is apparently to make a dirty buck off my resources, and not care one whit about the consequences. It’s as if we’ve been invaded by a race of economic monsters (perhaps mobsters is a better word–domestic shades of John Perkin’s hit men). With the right connections in finance and government, they are allowed to rampage over our land with little regard for our fellow citizens or the environment. Last I checked, the People of the United States, as described very clearly in the Constitution, make no obligations to priests, generals, corporations, senators, or kings. We call the shots. You conduct business for our benefit first, yours second. That concept seems to have sailed right off the tracks.

There’s a common color and substance shared by weasels like Blankenship and Hayward (who is really getting kinda sick of this, and just wants his life back, ya know?): black grease. Only last month twenty-nine human beings died in a hole at the Big Branch Mine, and now we have this atrocity in the Gulf to endure. Both totally unnecessary and totally predictable. The first so-called oil crisis was back in 1973. Safe, affordable power from the sun, wind, and waves has been available for, oh, four billion years or so, and Nicola Tesla was working on an actual universal, wireless energy grid for the entire planet over a hundred years ago. But there is nothing the Energy Complex won’t do in order to keep our wallets glued to their insatiable meters.

On this remembrance of D-Day, I honor the soldiers who fought and died on those beaches. I am also moved to think that under the guise of fighting for freedom, we enable our own abuse, and survive to be mowed down more by banks than bullets.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                             Critic-At-Large