An Empty Flanders Fields

A Metafilter commenter talks about his visit to a WWI cemetery this week:

“This morning, when I arrived at the US WW1 cemetery at Flanders Fields to pay my respects to the 368 men interred within its walls, the gates were locked. … The ghosts of the dead of WW1, it has always seemed to me, are never truly alone. Nor do they deserve to be. This is why i can’t really describe just how I felt this morning standing outside the gates of that cemetery. In fact I’m not ashamed to say that this Englishman almost cried at the grievous injustice that was being dealt to the undeserving dead. That feeling of injustice then turned to anger as I stood and watched Americans turn up at those gates and find their own entry barred. If there is one experience that is now indelibly burned into my mind it is having to comfort a crying elderly American lady who couldn’t understand why, after travelling over 4000 miles for the explicit purpose, she could not lay a flower on the grave of her grandfather. There are worse effects that this shutdown is (and will) have on more people, of that I have no doubt. This morning, however, for me I witnessed the politics… no the pettiness… of the Republican political party at their absolute worst. That experience is now burned into my mind, my opinion of America now forever tarnished by an act of sheer malignity that has affected the very people the Republican Party constantly claim to represent. Fucking wankers. Damn all of them. Damn them to hell.”

Commenter on Metafilter thread about the shutdown.


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