Two hearse drivers were fired after someone reported that they had stopped at a donut shop while transporting a body from one place to another. What apparently outraged a bystander who noticed the parked hearse was that the casket was flag-draped and thus likely contained the body of a military veteran.

So he took photos and videos and sent them to a local veteran’s group that posted them on Facebook and this drew the attention of the owner of the hearse company who promptly fired the two men, both of whom are in their 70s, despite the pleas not to do so by the widow of the dead man.

What was the actual harm? Was anyone even inconvenienced? The worst that could have happened is that someone could steal the hearse while they were in the shop, a highly unlikely occurrence.

I bet no one would have cared if the casket contained a corpse that was not a member of the military. What we are seeing is likely a consequence in the US of the highly exaggerated attitude of ‘respect for the military’, arguably a more powerful force than even respect for religion, that requires people to adopt a reverential attitude towards soldiers and anything related to them, while at the same time being quite cavalier about sending them to their deaths in unnecessary wars.

This is of course a deliberate attitude cultivated by the warmongers who govern us because it then becomes easy to paint those opposed to wars as also opposed to the military.