It’s a day-of-visibility for something that’s already highly visible all the other days in the year.

It is associated with a pledge to remember something everyone is already remembering, and can’t forget about even if they want to forget about it. Because reminders are everywhere. Yes, all days of the year.

Also, to drive something from the planet forever and ever, something that will never be driven from the planet — ever. Just like a bunch of other “get rid of it forever” vices, like pollution, war, jealousy, bigotry, blight, poverty…

It is an annual celebration conceived and designed to make sure we never get past something, to preserve resentments.

I say, let’s use the day to think about how easily manipulated we are.

I notice on social media lately there are lots of comments for me to read about men and women forming relationships with each other. It’s funny that I’m happily married and I’m not in need of this “wisdom,” which comes from male and females who have yet to form a lasting relationship with the other. It’s the blind leading the not-blind.

I’m seeing a lot about “market value.” There seem to be a lot of people in need of being told: This is not a male-female thing. I sense much confusion about this. Females seem to think it’s a win for females if males have to prove their market value. Males seem to think it’s a win for males if females have to prove their market value. That’s not how any of this works.

Market value is a real thing, but it’s a courtship thing. After courtship there is supposed to be attachment, some inertia built up if you want to think of it in those terms. Affection. At that point, market value isn’t supposed to matter, and if it does, then you’ve established a relationship that isn’t going to last.

But at some point, it’s a real thing. There is filtering that has to be applied here. Stenciling. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t. Our evolving society has settled this the way it settles everything else that sometimes-matters and sometimes-doesn’t: By kissing lady-butt. Marketability matters when the females like it. When it puts them at a disadvantage, we’re not supposed to acknowledge it or talk about it, and we’re supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist even though it does.

In high school, girl is plugged into the social framework, boy isn’t, he’s a scrawny, geeky sort of thing — marketability matters. He doesn’t bring market value, doesn’t “bring anything to the table.” He needs to “up his game.” She is “out of his league.” We can go ahead and talk about marketability.

Ten years after, she’s a single mom reeking of baby puke twenty hours a day, and he’s an up-and-coming successful software engineer. Then you don’t talk about it. What’s she bring to the table? By asking the question you have offended every female. And he’s a “high value male”? You’ve just offended them again…even though it’s true.

We love to talk about how she needs to make her suitors prove their worth before she goes out on dates.

We don’t like to talk about how he needs to do the same thing, with his various pursuits. Even though disaster follows if he doesn’t.

We’ve filtered this out incorrectly, because we crave female approval. We have built all these customs around female approval. The truth is that marketability applies to everyone, but it is pre attachment. Once you’re with someone, you’re with them. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But when you’re just in the courtship stage, if things don’t go beyond that, like ever…maybe there’s an issue. “Bring to the table” becomes a real concept. It’s possible someone needs to go and look at that. Maybe there’s a little too much ass-sitting and not enough self-building.

That could apply to either one. Neither one is automatically entitled to one of that special someone. You have to show respect to the other. You have to earn it.

But…what do I know? I’m off the market. So don’t listen to me.

For those who are presenting themselves as newcomers to politics and desiring a simple, one-line explanation of “right” vs. “left”; you could do far worse than this.

The Left sees things in terms of “Thunderdome” competition; two go in but only one comes out again. A good day for the lion is a lousy day for the gazelle. If the fly lives, the spider starves. If the economy is good, you can count on them to weep and mope about “The Forgotten Man.” Their big thing is not forgetting people who would ordinarily be forgotten. Remember perspective; the sinking of the Titanic was a miracle for the lobsters in the kitchen.

With the emergence of the environmental movement, they reached an apex with their “what about” attitude and became particularly vexatious: A dam that helps everybody! Well, what about the snail darters? Logging that helps everybody! But what about the spotted owls?

They think this makes them positive, and broad-minded. In reality, it makes them scary. As they acknowledge, or invent, these situations in which one side must lose so another one wins, their method of resolving the conflict is to vote. Democracy, as the old saying goes, is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch.

This creates a difference, and it’s probably the most important difference. The Right believes in running a society — right. A rising tide can, and should, lift all boats. There’s a right way to control traffic at this intersection, or to collect garbage weekly, and if you do that then we win. We do. All of us.

You’ll notice a lot of the time when The Right is provoked into offense, or action, or a combination of those two things — the issue is very often one of incentives. The Left doesn’t seem to understand this. They might say “What about someone who needs the thing and doesn’t have the means to pay for it?” and so the thing has to be provided. Then The Right will say “If it’s free, then people will consume the thing who otherwise would not.” If you want more of something, subsidize it, and if you want less of it you tax it. The Left doesn’t engage this. They miss out on the whole subtopic, or they pretend not to understand it, or they change the subject. The Right thinks big and The Left thinks small. The Right is more concerned with making society work.

For any of this to happen, you have to have law and order. This distinguishes humans from animals. We have figured out how to make advanced societies, and the whole point to having these is that everyone can win. Everyone, everywhere, all at once.

The Left, confronted with this, puts on their “what about” hat and creates conflict where there is none. “Law and order? But what about the persons and groups historically oppressed by police?” So they talk of defunding the police. They may as well be discussing the dismantling of civilization itself. Look, they say; we cooked up a situation in which your law-and-order costs somebody something. So get rid of it.

Well — if what you’re trying to do is break the law, then yes. Law and order would get in the way of that. It’s supposed to do that. That’s the only way we can get to the “public good” the way The Right sees it, where everyone benefits, and you don’t need to hold a vote so that 51 can enjoy the omelet while 49 fill the role of the eggs. Far from The Left being broad-minded, they’re actually the narrow-minded ones, who can’t see this. They’re the ones who only see omelet-diners, omelet-chefs, and eggs. But when the governed provide their consent to the government, we’re actually supposed to be trying for something more benign than that, more sophisticated and grander than that.