Reflections for Veterans Day 2026 from Frederick Foote

Reflections for Veterans Day 2026

 

“The U.S. has been at war or in armed conflict for 229 of its 249 years — roughly 92% of its existence.”[i]

Should we use Memorial Day to reflect on this rather startling fact and to promote peace and a better understanding of our combative history?

Most of our troops (enlisted and junior officers) are working-class, with a few generals and admirals in the upper class.

African Americans are 12.63% of the US population and 18.1% of our armed forces.

Should we be concerned about the burden of service falling almost exclusively on the working class or of ethnic groups being disproportionately represented in the military?

African Americans have participated in most of our military conflicts, yet this participation is rarely reflected in our Memorial and Veterans Day celebrations. Many Americans are surprised to learn about the Black troops who fought for their freedom in the Civil War.

 Africans, Negroes, Blacks, coons, tar babies, jigs, mulattos, colored, African Americans, and always niggers fought in most of the USA's declared wars.

Niggers that had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect" stood up in numbers during our Revolutionary War and fought for their freedom on both sides. Between 5,000 and 8,000 African Americans fought for the United States during that war. Their contributions to the nation's freedom have been routinely ignored or denied.

An estimated 20,000 Blacks fought for the British during that war and were awarded their freedom at the war's end.

Was it the British promising Black slaves freedom, or the US military fighting to continue Black slavery that was truly fighting for freedom?

During the American Civil War, approximately 200,000 African Americans served in the Union Military. These troops were crucial to the Union's victory in the war. My great-grandfather was one of them. There is a small and obscure Monument to these troops in Washington, DC, near Howard University.

About 2,500 African American troops fought in the Spanish-American War. My grandfather was one of them. Six African American servicemen won the Medal of Honor.

More than 380,000 African American troops fought in World War I in segregated units. Most of these troops were relegated to support units and subject to racial discrimination. However, the African American units assigned to the French army saw extensive combat. And units such as the Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry Regiment) earned the highest honors.

African American troops returning to the USA were beaten and lynched for having the audacity to wear their uniforms.

Over a million African Americans served, again, in segregated units in World War II, and almost none of them showed up on the movie screen or popular literature concerning the war. My father was one of them. 

Over 300,000 African Americans served in Vietnam, many of whom were cannon fodder. I served in the US Air Force during this war, but exclusively in the United States and Canada.

African American military service did not go unnoticed in the Vietnam War, as Black and White soldiers fought each other to a degree that could not be ignored or concealed.

Sixteen percent of the troops serving in the Iraqi Wars were African American.

The number of African American troops serving in Afghanistan is not known, but they were a substantial number of the casualties. Again, literature and popular media often ignore the role of these troops.

On Memorial Day, we should not lose sight of our history of constant warfare, the horrors of War, and we should make a conscious effort to understand the economic and ethnic demographics of the people who fight our Wars.

 

 

 

 

 

[i] US Wars List — Every American War & Military Intervention Since 1776 | WarCosts

All these institutions controlled by the “capital” class are manifestations of the advance of world wide totalitarianism. In other words, it’s worse than you think.

All these institutions controlled by the “capital” class are manifestations of the advance of world wide totalitarianism. In other words, it’s worse than you think. When ADAM SMITH wrote The Wealth of Nations, the world was in a far different mode. Nations, the banking industry, the control of resources were all certainly established but not on an international scope. Sanctions, blockades, and localized warfare were in the mix but it took the worldwide industrial (read technology) revolution to supply a worldwide reason for capital consolidation, along with the development of worldwide communication systems so companies, government collusion could be enhanced. Governments could and did begin to react to any political adversarial relationships in any region of the world that possibly hindered the advancement of their imperial interests. Imperialism, capitalism, colonialism rather than being mundane historical antiquarian principles became the basis for ethnic cleansing, genocide, and exaggerated manipulation of the worst mankind had to offer at a moral level. The economic strangulation of countries also became a tool to control. We are seeing it in the modern world, at least the obvious instances, such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, but the part we don’t see is the near majority of nations who over time have become indebted to the owners of every nation state. No nation is exempt from this much universal crushing of freedom, though freedom among nations is practically nonexistent, inside domestic freedoms are more like living in a glass bubble rather than actually living free. Freedom itself has suffered the most, because now freedom is more about any individual's desires than it is about the acceptance of other's differences between you and them. Taking away, hindering, and even hating the others freedom becomes a freedom in itself, thus full circle we come around to eating our own tail. The freedom of the government has always been the purpose of the nation state, whether it be kings, princes, strong man dictators or so-called reasonable Age of Reason aristocrats. It’s ironic that we the commoners of any nation come to believe that our struggle is to change the present in our favor against a system designed to make sure that doesn’t happen. Sent from my iPad

And so it was that later in its life,

And so it was that later in its life, it sunk to the lowest levels, it looked into its past to see if anyone It knew had done anything worthwhile, at least, worthwhile enough to have been recognized by any major news source, ( oh yes, it more than understood that it may be a much too relative criteria for acknowledgement of success) or really any notable consequence or notoriety, from serial killer to "quietest woman on earth" ribbon at the Macon, Georgia county fair would be considered infamous. It would be journalistically spurillist to expose the final reports because of the new rule of journalistic ideas are ordered in such a way to keep the truths a mystery, inadmissible as evidence in any court ruling. No, it's true that no one ("no one" being a purely no brainer to statisticians) should ever have to look at truth and believe they understand it. For some reason, it is aware that what's wrong with the world isn't virtual reality but age old unproven nor unrealistic traditions, from the likes of witches, brujos, religious fanatics, perfectionists and idealists, or billionaires, the world has its own mind, made up of swelling oceans, low lying deserts, thunderstorms, hurricanes as well as soft breezes, cool nights, pleasant afternoons, and rain in its ways of thinking. Although many armies will be turned back and defeated by snow, mud, natures perseverance, they will carry on with their mission, die for their cause, all for bloody naught, because when memory, which keeps so many alive between life and deaths, is gone, there's no one who can venture outside with only their own Truth as a guide and triumph over a Lie. Sorry folks, that's where we are, can't be denied nor verified. Why is it considered relevant to want to be in a science fiction movie, besieged by the same imaginary monsters created here on earth. I like it when you (or anyone) can Start anywhere and end up somewhere else, but at the same time go nowhere and everywhere. Conclusion: no one I ever loved, friend, lover, wife (which is different than lover or friend but has a category of its own), acquaintance, nor co-worker, bar friend, more or less anyone and everyone I spent any time with at all, universally, hasn't amounted to more than an obituary. No one ever wants to die, there’s always a hope and chance for some sort of miracle that may give us one more day, month or year. For some I suppose it’s the children that bear the futures burden. Maybe for them, there will be a miracle, and they won’t have to wave goodbye to someone else as they escape into the new frontier, going where no one has gone before, where no one cares about what’s been left behind. Sent from my iPad

By the time I was thirty I had stripped nearly all artificiality and humanity from my consciousness, although I understood underneath still lay the quick sand muck of socialization and instinct. I thought that would be okay, after all, residue, rust, and dust is the natural order of all physics.

By the time I was thirty I had stripped nearly all artificiality and humanity from my consciousness, although I understood underneath still lay a quicksand muck of socialization and instinct. I thought that would be okay, after all, residue, rust, and dust is the natural order of all physics. I remembered my first real girlfriend and I talking one day about what we wanted to be or have when we reached thirty. I don’t know why thirty was important, but I guess that was about how far along in life we could think of ourselves before we started getting old. She wanted to be a millionaire and I wanted to be a doctor or a saint. I have to laugh at that now, imagining what it would have taken to be either one. She was smarter, money was a simple object to gain some happiness out of life. She didn’t care how she got it or where it came from, from her own creativity or by just being pretty and available. I had plenty of conversations with god, or Jesus, and maybe, as I discovered later, a little misogyny probably prevented me from conversing with the Blessed Virgin Mary, maybe out of shyness, thinking how complicated it could be, being a virgin and a mother, with god as the father. Still, those were the good old days. Nostalgia can be nourishing at times. That’s one realization I’ve come to, the Principle of Lasting Peace, from which Nostalgia is derived. You might not see that now, but you will a little further on. 

Anyway, she did become a millionaire and I didn’t even make it to Australia, which was the second thing we both wanted to do in our lifetimes. I went a lot of other places but not there. There is an indigenous culture there that is one of the homeliest people in the world. Yes, that’s just my standard of a certain kind of beauty, but I’m pretty inclusive when it comes to accepting most of the six billion people on this earth of ours. I really love humanity and all it has to offer in such a basic way but, once I get down to what they’re all about, the bad far outweighs, or should I say, dominates the good. Like I was saying, by thirty I had accepted that fact. I didn’t relish that because deep down in that residue I mentioned before, there is a semblance of belief that there is always a chance humanity could find its balance between being suckers for the godhead and the philosophy, “money talks and bullshit walks.” I suppose that’s Hope. Hope is the belief that in every truth, there can be found, if one looks hard enough, a kernel of optimism among the many dire warnings that life produces. In fact truth itself is inherently a realization that for every action there is a reaction, truth or consequences, right and wrong, a contradiction. Or wrong time, right place or vice versa. Sent from my iPad

Genocide is a spectator sport

Genocide is a spectator sport Like everything else. I think we’re all going to find out what it was like living in Roman times when gladiators and Roman armies entertained the pre tv audiences of the day. When smoke rose from the chimneys of Auschwitz and Dachau, when Gaza, Armenians, Romanians, Rwandans, Serbs, indigenous peoples in every nook and cranny of the earth, all of them valiant, valor, honorable for the kings of money. We’ve accepted all this in our name. We hear and see it all, like an incessant drumbeat and dance, pounding throughout our nights, flashes of light like the sun going off and on, something’s coming, it calls us by the names we were given when time began. Sent from my iPad

Recant the incantation.

Recant the incantation. I've been watching and listening to alot of you tube dissenters, but mostly the young Turks, who I actually like most of the time but recently they had an episode trying to recycle the "I love America, but not what America does" incantation in order to alleviate concerns, I suppose, of regular people who listen to their righteous spiel yet think they may be anti-American as well as anti-Semitic. Frankly, I don't know what America is. It's kind of like Gertrude Steins statement about Oakland, "There is no there, there." Don't get me wrong, I like Oakland in the same way I think of America. I lived there and live here in America. I was born here, my parents born here, and eventually, as for us all, and I mean all, go back far enough, and all of our ancestors born somewhere else, back to Africa, our Mother Eve. Whether by land bridges, boats, by foot path, air, and ambition, we have all come here, tried to live here, been made here in spite of the unnatural obstacles thrown up in front of us by false pretenses, lies, promises, and all the incantations of the mystical, cultist, political systems we live under. So, America to me is the Grand Canyon, places like that. Nativism means nothing to me. If there's anything left of a native/indigenous "place" on this earth, it has been usurped, corrupted, misused, abused by sometimes the native as well as the settlers and colonists, themselves. The land is free, it's just as Rousseau said, "When the first person built a fence or wall, and the rest walked around in deference to that fence, that "ownership" by King, Prince, or wealthy man, we all became some sort of slave and serfs and working for others rather than for ourselves, we all became owned. If there is an America like what people say they believe in, like a personality, like they have made God, presidents, and other authoritarians, it is something with a fence or wall between you and your freedom. I'd rather believe in the Grand Canyon version. Sent from my iPad

When it comes to fear, all it takes is a pedophile

When it comes to fear, all it takes is a pedophile breaking into a house with two young girls in any city two hours away, or a legal, peaceful protest of thousands that is taken over by a hundred violent assholes in any city with five million inhabitants. It's all about proportion and who are the observers, which most of the world and nation is, yet what the government of your nation does to anyone is a ok, doesn't flutter your heart one iota. We're either going to have the largest humanitarian tribunal on genocide and the breaking of what is, euphemistically speaking, "international law" or eventually realize, that the legal and political terms describing the many faceted fake diamond of democracy has turned out to be flawed or based on nonexistent criteria altogether. Don't forget, the simpleton who breaks Windows or burns forests isn't going to listen to a post revolution tribunal asking everyone to maintain peaceful coexistence with their neighbor because there will always be those who believe that cooperation, collaboration itself is anti-freedom or too authoritarian. Calling the kettle black in comparison is the equivalent of a relevancy of evil, or as has been said, evil is mundane rather than dramatic. Another thing most of us forget is that the human race has always had slavery, oppression, genocide and probably extinction on its hands. Every culture, ethnic group, race on every continent, has condoned and accepted atrocities. If progeny consciousness is real, that is if you pride yourself, or take pride in your nation, race, ethnicity, religion, you still have blood on your hands. It's the fraternity syndrome. If the tribunals don't ever happen, it's apparent that words or terms, such as genocide, international law, humanitarian law, Justice, are mere euphemisms for racketeering and corruption rather than idealistic principles by which we can try to live. The entire human species has been trying to find the way to get the 10% of its population to cooperate with whatever it's doing at one time or another. Burn them, kill them, incarcerate them, ignore them, let God sort it out, after all that Let there be light magic. By the way, idealism is dead, God is dead, and the only thing left is incarcerate them. Sent from my iPad