Every Christmas we go through the ritual of collective cleansing.

Every media outlet shows either pictures or videos of a soldier returning from a war zone jumping out of a big over sized, wrapped gift, being the person wearing the Santa suit, coming out from behind Santa’s big chair, or turning out to be the person wearing the odd costume in the Christmas pageant so that the spouse or child squeals with delight, and viewers and readers release a collective “Aw” at the preplanned moment of revelation.

We feel good.

We feel relieved.

For the rest of the year we convince ourselves that we have not sent our youth off to fight someone else’s wars while they let us do their work for them, and then condemn us for any failure, by wearing flags, putting bumper stickers on our vehicles, holding ceremonies that are more for us than the service members, and screaming that we support the troops while we actually do nothing to support that claim.

We even find ways to excuse them when Congress cuts programs that help veterans.

So once a year we give ourselves over to lessening our creeping guilt.

We do what we can to make ourselves feel good. We remove any crumb of our own guilt for putting people into unnecessary harm’s way.

We even claim they are fighting for our Constitutional rights without any way to back that claim other than constantly repeating that that is what they are doing.

We do whatever we can to feel better about supporting the unsupportable.

We want to feel happy without asking the question, ”Why are they coming home from somewhere anyway?”.

So we crave these cute, heartwarming videos and pictures.

We need them.
The drug is meant to be taken 30 minutes before a man is having desire to purchase cheap viagra view for more info do sex. Nowadays, erectile dysfunction can be treated easily with the regular intake of Ayurveda medicines and that too without any adverse effects on the patient’s body. viagra online no prescriptions Erectile dysfunction condition sometimes is a symptom of heart disease and can cause pain viagra buying online in your chest, jaw, or down your arm. Vardenafil 20mg (Snovitra) is one of the most common killers of sex force. cialis without prescription
What we do not see, because it would make us face reality and our own dismissed guilt, are the boxes returning with soldiers unable to jump out of them to surprise anyone.

That is not easy for us to accept.

We don’t want to see that.

Once each week on at least one weekly talking head panel show someone intones that “these are the names of those who we lost this week” just before a list of names comes on the screen for a brief moment, and the show then returns to some discussion or friendly banter.

Unlike the homecoming videos we see repeatedly on multiple news casts and morning talk shows for multiple days, we might see this list once if we choose to watch that one Sunday morning show.

How different we might feel about the ease with which we wage war, if, instead of the list of names superimposed on a patriotic background, we saw the names superimposed over the scene of the coffins coming off a plane, and we saw them multiple times.

Perhaps for every cute coming home video with family members who can barely contain themselves hoping not to ruin the surprise, we should also see the more somber videos of the families waiting at the back of the transport plane for their son, daughter, spouse, or parent returning home in a less heartwarming way.

Perhaps then, we could see war, especially those we fight for others, in their correct perspective.

Perhaps we would finally question our eagerness to be the world’s police.

Perhaps, then, reality would be real.

But that would be uncomfortable. That would not elicit the “aw” we all release that is not just an expression of our appreciation of the cuteness of the image, but our feeling of relief that we can bestow on ourselves the forgiveness we accept freely, but do not earn.

How soon our attitudes would change if we matched videos box for box.