Today is Memorial Day. Most folks get it confused with Veterans Day, and wave flags, put crap on sale and have picnics. But it’s supposed to be for those who have fallen in war. One such person was my grandfather, Archibald Edwin Curtis. The big difference was that it took the war fifty years to kill him.

My grandfather, in my mind, was a pot bellied old man, gruff but kind. He could be a bear, but cried one time when I came home from school and didn’t say hello to him becuase I’d had a bad day. I keep a picture of him on my nightsand, of me at about five, sound asleep on his lap in a lawn chair at his house. I could spend hours telling you about him, how he was my first real role model as a man, but that isn’t the point of today’s post.

He died in 1983, on an operating table in Norfolk, Virginia. When my father, who’d flown from our home in the Chicago suburbs to be there, called to tell me the news, it was the first time I ever heard my father cry. I was numb for months. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found out much about my grandfather’s service, a tale both amazing and horrifying.

My grandfather left for the army in 1943. His number got called up, even though he was a father of two, with my uncle Harvey sitting in my grandmother’s tummy. But he did his duty and left. He spent a year over there or so, details are fuzzy. He was wounded there, rescuing a fellow soldier pinned down between two machine gun nests. He received the Bronze Star for the rescue.

There’s a funny tale that I used to think was bullshit until i ran into one of grandpa’s fellow soldiers, who showed me a pic from that time. General Patton used to visit hospitals and give Purple Hearts to the wounded.He tried to give one to my grandfather, who refused. When Patton started in on him, my grandfather pointed to a man across the aisle who’d had both legs blown off by a mine. My grandfather told Patton to give his medal to him, but all the medal he needed was his wife and kids at home. He was that kind of man.

I think that rescue and being in a squad that had to help count the dead at Buchenwald death camp were what killed him. Folks who knew him say he came back a changed man. Grandma certainly felt so. He drifted between jobs, trying to feed three kids. He was a farmer, a policeman, and finally became a contractor and carpenter. I can use Google Earth on his hometown and still see houses he built with his bare hands.

It was while he was doing this that he had his first real mental health issues. He went in for depression, and they used electro convulsive therapy on him. They didn’t have the words for PTSD, but that’s what it was. He’d fight the black dog and mental health issues most of his life. He snapped one day and chased my father aroudn the yard with an ax, believing him to be a German soldier in his half delusional state.

Where it really impacted him was how it caused physicians to regard him. Every time in the late fifties and sixties, if he complained of heart problems or physical ailments, the local doctors would just tell him it was all in his head, and to go back to the VA. On one of those trips, they tried insulin shocking him, and as a result he devolped diabetes.

By the time I came around, he was retired. He spent weeks at a time in hospitals. I remember finding out he was one of the first ten people in America to recieve a triple bypass in open heart surgery. He had a second one, and that was the one he couldn’t survive.

My grandfather was a veteran, who the VA failed in their handling of him. The medical examiner who did his autopsy said he’d suffered at least four strokes and seven undiagnosed heart attacks before he’d gotten treatment. But I respect,love and honor the veterans who serve, they deserve better.

My grndfather never made too big a deal about his service, except to join the American Legion and the VFW. He loved parades, and when I’d spend summers with him, we’d go to at least one every weekend. I still salute folks who are wearing their Legion hats or VFW colors.

But today, while I’m thinking of him, I’ll also be doing my best to honor him. I’ve volunteered at the VA before, and I give to various veterans groups when I can. I’ve seen up close and personal what modern warfaare does to humans.

Much to my father’s annoyance , my biggest way to honor my grandfather is to protest whenever this country goes to war. My family has suffered horribly because of war, and we’ve seen the cost. I respect those who serve, and condemn those who would use them to further political agendas set out by religion and corporations. Right now, we have hawks in office who are looking at Iran like the last piece of chicken in a KFC bucket. We don’t need to go in there, and anyone who says we do, I tell them to send themselves and their kids first.

Gods rest you, Archibald Curtis. I miss you, and I’m also sort of glad you didn’t live to see what’s become of your country and your party. I think you would have hated Trump’s draft dodging guts. I think you would have tried to respect your enemies better. You’d have approached everything with some common sense. You’re gone, but I’d trade a dozen of my days in this world to have one more with you. Goodbye.

I really didn’t want to write this, but my hand was forced. One, I’m a slave to procrastination, and I’m under deadline. And two, I have a rule:if you fuck up one of my fandoms, you’re allowed a pass. But if you’re going to fuck up two, then I have to say something.

History is not going to be kind to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. These two have been running the biggest genre show in history, Game of Thrones. And they’ve managed to screw it up by taking a fairly unpolitical show and indulging in Donald Trump’s three favorite things:xenophobia, racism, and sexism.

I’m sure George R.R. Martin didn’t intend for his story to be used this way, but he’s checked out and cashing his checks. While I’m sure the books will have a more nuanced and interesting ending, the showrunners, in putting thier own interests forward, have forgone character development for shock and violence. I’ll let others tackle the pacing, lighting and other issues. Let’s bring up the three I discussed.

First up is the xenophobia. Game of Thrones starts off taking intelligent, well reasoned approaches to issues like borders, showing us the human side of the Wildings, that desperate people are still people. Then we get to season eight. And all that disappears, especially in episode five, where the Unsullied and Dothraki follow Danaerys into a blind fury of killing and rape(more on that later). Foreign invaders coming from the south to destroy our way of life and rape our women, then kill our kids. Was this HBO or Fox News?

This leads us into Game of Thrones next problem: skin color. Every single brown person on this show is either weak or an asshole. Dorne is shown to be full of conniving sluts who only want to screw and poison us. The Unsullied are only fit to be slaves, and the Dothraki murder and rape. The first five seasons gave us people in these lands with character,flaws and hopes. By the eight season, they’re sterotypes. Again, I don’t blame Martin for this, I blame the two showrunners. These are the same two who wanted a show where the South had a stalemate with the North. Wonder who’d they’d get to write that, Steve Bannon or David Duke? Also, these fierce warrior have all been kept at bay for centuries, but are all liberated by a white woman.

Which brings me to GoT biggest problem since they left the Martin plot. This show is as sexist as the day is long. I really didn’t want to think it, but there’s way too many signifiers. A show where the producers added extra rape scenes was bad enough, but the idea that being raped builds character? Really? I’ve worked in domestic shelters and on crisis lines, and that is some straight up bullshit there. Also, why develop the love story of Brianne and Jamie, only to have her get left when Cersei comes calling. Guess if you’re not classically beautiful, you can be horrible and still get some.

And then there’s Danaerys. A woman who was orignally trying to free people after they’d been enslaved. A woman literally called the Breaker of Chains? And what does she do? She snaps, and starts incinerating innocent people. And they showed it repeatedly, over and over. Even in that part fo the story, strong women like Arya and unknown mothers are shown to be failing while the men get away.

I was going to be slient about all of this. But this is my wife’s favorite show. And they’ve completely shit the bed on the ending. I knew my wife was going to be sad when the show ended, but not before. People have been following these characters for years. I’m generally against owing something to your audience, but also, don’t take those characters and destroy them just to get it over with.

I hope D.B. and David can pull it off and give us a decent ending next week, but I’m not hopeful. This show used to be about the best ideas of humanity, fighting for existence. That ideas like freedom, equality and treating people decently, regardless of wealth or skin could be rewarding. Now, all we are left is with the idea that people are ugly and never change for the better. That no one is redeemable and that people from foreign lands are only here to hurt us. This show used to represent the America we hope to be. Now it’s representing the America that Trump thinks we ought to be. And I don’t want to be that.

Finally, one of the factors that went into me writing this was the news that GoT’s showrunners are doing a Star Wars trilogy. I don’t know if I want to see it. I don’t think Star Wars needs less female heroes or less brown ones. I don’t think we need the first Jedi being sexually assaulted on screen. Yeah, that’s harsh. But I’ve given these two chances for the last two years, to diminishing rewards. If I want a Game of Trumps, I just need to check my Twitter feed.