Guest Post by E.M. Burlingame
In the dim, smoke-choked haze of this campfire somewhere in the mountains of Idaho, I think. Who knows, I’ve been in the bottom of not a bottle but bottles for days. Wherever I am, I sit here, hunched over a fifty-year-old scotch strong enough to burn away the memories. But it doesn’t, won’t, can’t. The demons don’t drown—they just whisper louder, angrier, clawing at my skull, demanding to know what and why. What the fuck did they die for? Why did we bleed and break and lose everything for a system that just says, “thank you for your service,” while we’re left choking on the decaying cadavers of their lives, our civilization and world?
Jeremy’s dead. Died on some commando raid, brains out, trying to drag an Air Force TAC off a road alive, PKM rounds ripping the air. Took one to the head—bam—blood speckled grey matter painting the dirt before his boys could even suppress the fire. And for what? So we could hand that shithole back to the enemy years later like it was a used hooker. Would he have done it if he knew? If he knew we’d just piss it all away? Yeah, probably. That’s the kind of solid motherfucker he was. There for his boys, not the fucking locals. The best of us. His mother and sister—they’re walking corpses since, hollowed out, crushed under a weight that’ll never lift.
Dawson’s gone too. Christmas Eve, he ate a bullet. Self-inflicted, they say, like that makes it cleaner. Couldn’t take the pain—the broken back, the scrambled brain from tumbling off a cliff in the black of night on some pointless patrol. They pumped him full of pills, turned him into a junkie, but it didn’t touch the real hurt: the betrayal. Would he have signed up if he knew? If he knew the government was brewing a plague to fatten Big Pharma’s wallets, a vaccine jacking the “unexpected death rate” up, whatever the fuck that is, by 40%, while the suits in government, business and banking count their stolen trillions? Hell no! None of us who knew him will ever fill that hole he left. Good men like him don’t survive this soulless meat grinder of a world.
Pepper died in some goddamn qalat, in some nowhere village that’s never mattered in the whole stinking history of man. Honestly, I don’t know much about it. What kind of fucking friend was I? I only know he took a round to the femoral artery—bled out fast, hot and red, in the hands of his 18D teammate and buddy who’s carrying that shit nightmare to this fucking day. His wife back home? She’s got nothing now but a flag and a fading memory. Why’d he enlist? Because the 2008 financial crisis—those slick Financialists pulling strings—stripped him broke which shoved him into the Army. Would he have served if he knew it was all a rigged game, a wealth grab for the rapists at the top? Maybe. Who the hell knows. He was also a quiet, solid motherfucker.
Eric’s dead too. Blown into five wet chunks by an IED he was disarming to keep little local kids from getting shredded. My team had to find the parts, scrape him up, bag him, ship him home to his boys and a closed casket funeral—two little guys under seven who’ll never again see their adored dad. His EOD junior, Ken, lost an arm, his brain turned to mush in the blast, condemned to stumble through life half a man. Would Eric have left those boys if he’d known? If he knew the lunatics in charge—teachers, social workers, doctors, government freaks—might one day try to trans them, pump them full of estrogen, carve up their bodies, throwing their genitals in the fire? Hell no. He lost himself trying to save strangers’ kids. That great father sonofabitch died for a future that’s turning to poison.
Three of my other boys offed themselves within ten months of one another. Few years back. Died back here in the States, not even on the battlefield. Brain injuries, career problems, divorces, courts ripping their kids away, handing them to unfit mothers while the system took half of everything they’d ever built, would ever build. Every one of them with at least two years in straight up combat. Would they have pushed so hard to be selected, to wear the beret, if they knew? If they knew their own government would flood our streets with the same enemies we fought for twenty-five years—rape gangs, murderers, human traffickers all protected by the insane, by academics, politicians, NGOs, cops and judges, while good men rot in jail for fighting back? If they’d known our intelligence agencies and law enforcement would be flooding fentanyl into our streets, killing hundreds of thousands of our own? Not in a million fucking years!
What the fuck are we doing? Fighting for these bastards, these fucking antihumanist viruses. These parasites that create nothing. That do nothing but take, as they send us away to murder the innocent to collect on their debts! What the fuck are we doing guarding their accumulation of even more wealth by slaughtering humans in their sleep—their wives and kids just “getting in the way.” All so some pedophile, some predator, some Financialist Resentful can cash in on a ten-million-dollar “performance” bonus this year, while our families have barely enough to eat.......
Full text: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/05/26/were-done-dishonoring-our-dead/#more-368159