Military cemetaries make me tear up. Their silence^* always feels appropriately embarrassed. What can you say to a kid you send to die, emotionally if not physically? Here, have a free tombstone?

So Memorial Day, when I biked to Presidio National Cemetary, I expected to find myself sad as usual at the grassy hillside of rank and file. Instead, I found myself irritated. Not just my usual Memorial Day irritation at the most violent, aggressive nation on earth taking a day to play victim while ignoring those it has killed. I'm used to that feeling. This was a new, improved irritation.

Each grave was decorated with its own American flag. Ten thousand or more fluttered like pinwheels in spring sunshine, looking as cheery and disposable as a raver picnic. Salt in the wound.

There's no greater betrayal of democracy than offensive war. Nobody signs up and enthusiastically donates her or his life for Empire and Conquest. While I'm sure some died happy to know that they helped defend the country against Mexican depredation, Spanish -- um, sinking of the Alamo, Japanese invasion (which even happened!), Communist dominos, or more 9/11s, we're not citizens when we're dead. We're dirt, just like the rabbit I saw on a trail earlier, its entrails being devoured by flies and ants just hours after being crushed by a mountain bike. We're the same dirt no matter what country we called home.

For a country to try to reclaim these corpses, after betraying them by drafting or duping them to die in wars that were, beneath the public rhetoric, almost all aggressive, is like a murderer showing up to a funeral. For the reclamation to be so cheery and parti-colored is like the murderer offering everyone ham canapes.

Of course it's not just the military that screws the pooch on Memorial Day. I also saw mourners visiting graves in fancy Lexi and Mercedeses ("Thanks for dying so I can drive a fancy car!") and I saw a man on a beach with a big flag and a boombox playing bombastic John Philip Souza marches, all brass and snares and the joy of the military machine. I'll take less of that and more Taps, please.

Forget official Memorial Day. Remember the dead of all sides, every day.

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^* Golden Gate National Cemetary excepted. It's in the flight path of an airport and next to a freeway. Some cemetaries are beyond embarrassment.