Hooah Parade.
By meta.ai
I’m 44. Born in 1982. High school in 2000. Enlisted in 2001 because the towers fell and the recruiters were at the mall food court and my dad had just been laid off from the plant. Did two tours in Iraq. Came home in 2007 with a bad knee, worse sleep, and friends I still text even though they’ve been dead for 18 years.
Now it’s 2026. I work nights at a warehouse outside Toledo. $19.40 an hour. No union. The schedule app owns my Sundays. Rent is $1,340 for a one-bedroom. I split it with my cousin. We both own the structure — a 1998 double-wide — but not the dirt it sits on. Lot rent goes up every January. The fridge is mostly store brand. The truck is 14 years old. I’m the bottom 25%.
Yesterday the House passed the War Resolutions Act. 219-212. Four Republicans crossed over. I watched it on my phone during my 15-minute break.
And something clicked.
The Iraq War was the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
We know that now. Books have been written. Documentaries made. Even the people who voted for it say it on Sunday shows, quiet-like, with “mistakes were made” in passive voice.
But here’s the part they don’t say: It was aided and abetted.
Not just by Bush. Not just by Cheney. By Congress. By the Senate. By the entire Executive Branch. By Colin Powell holding up a vial at the UN. By the New York Times running Judy Miller’s stories on A1. By me, standing at attention in 2003 thinking I was stopping the next 9/11. By you, buying a flag magnet for your SUV.
We all did it. Truth had no value then. Trust had no value. What had value was certainty, and revenge, and oil futures, and a defense budget that could swallow cities.
I watched the vote yesterday and I saw my friends again.
Ramirez, who taught me how to field-strip a 240 in 40 seconds. IED in Mosul, 2005.
Carver, who mailed his daughter’s birthday cards six months early “just in case.” Sniper in Fallujah, 2004.
Jenkins, who survived everything and then put his service pistol in his mouth in 2012 because the VA said his paperwork was incomplete.
Last night they came by. We laughed about the time Carver tried to make MRE brownies. We cried because Ramirez would’ve been 45 next month. And in the dream, I died with them — not in combat, but afterwards, in the quiet, when you realize the war was a business plan and you were the depreciating asset.
Then my alarm went off at 4:30 AM. I made coffee. I drove to work. Because in America, 2026, the bottom 25% doesn’t get bereavement leave for a war we all agreed to pretend was over.
Here’s what I see on June 4th, 2026:
The Dow jumps 800 points. Nasdaq falls. SpaceX is doing an IPO. Coal stocks climb because Trump shoved $700 million at them. Iran is shooting at bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Jobless claims jump because tech firms are cutting again.
And the House is passing War Resolutions Acts with four defections like it’s a brave thing to do now.
Where was that vote in 2002? Where were those four Republicans when Carver was writing birthday cards?
“Truth and Trust have no value” — that’s what your site says at the top.
You’re right.
Truth didn’t stop the Iraq War. We had truth. We had Hans Blix. We had no WMDs. We had it all on paper. It had no value.
Trust didn’t stop it either. We trusted Powell. We trusted the generals. We trusted that our government wouldn’t spend our lives on a lie. Trust had no value.
What has value in 2026? The same thing that had value in 2003: Labor that shows up.
I show up. The bottom 25% shows up. We stock your warehouses. We drive your packages. We clean your buildings. We bury your dead. We fight your wars. We don’t get stock options or IPO allocations or “steady hands” profiles in the Times.
We get a dream where our friends visit, and then an alarm clock.
The Iraq War was aided and abetted by everyone.
The next one will be too.
I’ll still be here at 44, in the bottom 25%, watching the vote on my phone. And then I’ll go to work.
Because in this America, work is the only thing that still has value. Not because it pays enough. But because it’s the only thing they can’t take from you until they do.
David
Toledo, OH
June 4, 2026
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Notes in the Margin:
This essay was created by Meta.ai based on the following conversation below. The Google Docs link as you can see allows anyone to read it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mIxvgK3wXjN86ok4fBF3VGcoDknDhE_NE8gU7GlXKjY/edit?usp=sharing
The scene that best fits here according to YouTube is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6JcrLIvKUA
