Premature Yub Nub!

Yup, nothing but smooth sailing for
the rest of the 20th century!

Hey everybody, today is Veteran's Day! Or Remembrance Day if you're British. Or Armistice Day if you're like a hundred and twenty. Today November 11th is about remembering veterans in general, but it started out as a day to mark the end of World War I. You know, the guns fell silent on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month? Oh and the treaty was signed by eleven world leaders using eleven pens and then they all went out after and had eleven drinks. Anyway, in addition to remembering veterans, it's also a day to remember one of our stupidest conflicts.

Look, I'm not trying to disparage the people who fought and sacrificed in WWI, and all conflicts are pretty goddamned stupid when you get down to it, but holy shit. One dead Archduke and four years later eighteen million people are dead, Europe is a trench-ridden wasteland and one frustrated art student is gearing up for the sequel.

"C'mon men! Let's uh, avenge the Archduke? Win one for the Gipper?
Remember the Alamo? Wait, what the hell is this about anyway?"

It turns out baby Hitler was a more
formidable foe than Bush had anticipated.

You'd think we'd have learned some kind of lesson from the senseless slaughter but instead we went balls-to-the-wall crazy over the Lindy and flappers for a few years, suffered a global economic collapse and then spent the next decade slowly descending into an even bigger shit show all because a time-traveling Jeb Bush from the future couldn't carry out a simple mission and murder baby Hitler. Slow clap, Jeb, slow clap. Then we had the Korean War, the Cold War, Vietnam, the War on Drugs, the Gulf War, The Star Wars prequels, the vaguely defined War on Terror, Gulf War 2: Electric Boogaloo and ISIS. And it's not just wars between countries, we as a species have a serious aggression problem. In some states you can just up and shoot someone as long as you shout 'standing my ground!'

Hey maybe that's why we changed the name of this holiday. Armistice Day sort of suggests a state of peace, but in many ways we're like the Ewoks at the end of Return of the Jedi. Sure we're dancing around, playing bongos with the severed heads of Stormtroopers and celebrating the end of the Star Wars, but peace is boring and it's only a matter of time before the First Order or whatever swoops in and starts fucking things up in Episode VII.

The Ewok village about ten minutes before a squad of vengeance-crazed
Tie-Fighter pilots make their strafing run. Hurray for sequels!