Two years ago while visiting an antique store in Monterrey CA. I came upon a Crystal ship setting on a table. The ship had etched into its sides the words "Remember the Maine" It sat upon a piece of paper which said the article was for for sale for $50.00 with the interesting and sarcastic comment " Is there really anybody left who actually remembers the Maine??"
The USS Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain.On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew. Though then, as now, the cause and responsibility for her sinking were unclear; popular opinion in the U.S. blamed Spain, and the sinking (popularized in the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!) was one of the precipitating events of the Spanish-American War. Her sinking remains the subject of speculation, with various authors proposing that she sank due to the results of an undetected fire in one of her coal bunkers or that she was the victim of a navel mine.
It was America's original day of infamy whose citizen's flames of rage were fanned by the yellow rag journalism of William Randolf Hearst. As a child I remember the date of 2-15 was still being identified on calenders as Remember the Maine Day. Now it is reduced to obscurity as the start of a war most Americans are not even aware we fought.
What does this have to do with anything? I have watched the remembrance and significance of Dec. 7th Pearl Harbor Day fading with each passing year. It has become politically incorrect to remember an attack by a Nation that provides the pickup truck in your driveway. Unlike the Maine the sunken USS Arizona sits as both a memorial and tomb on our native soil and thousands of tourists visit it every year.
I wonder in 100 years from now if we will remember 911? When the children of the victims who died that awful day themselves pass into the great beyond will anyone remember?
The real question is will there still be a great nation known as the United States of America left to remember all of those who have fought and died in her defense or will we be remembered like the Maine??
A Voice In the Wilderness
Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
ReplyDelete1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Part 1, Chapter 4.