I am not sure it can be any other way. And I am not sure that remembering the horror of war is the only projection that gets placed on it. It's also the playground for military movie marathons, which all reflect the politics of the time they were made, as well as the interpretation from our own lives that we project upon them today.
For those who wish to do so, Decoration Day/Memorial Day can be experienced as an opportunity to reeducate and propagandize. A day to create images of a military and of a time that we currently need to get us through the present. In an historical period of jingoism, as we live in now, all things ever touched by the military are venerated and heroicized beyond anything that veterans would recognize as 'authentic'.
Fly-bys over sporting events have nothing to do with exposing the horrors of war. And if they did, in 2012 shouldn't we be doing fly-overs of Predator drones?
When the federal holiday first came into existence after the Civil War, the people in southern states refused to recognize it and set up their own dates to decorate the graves of those who fell. The south generally refused to recognize Decoration Day until after WWI when the purpose of the holiday shifted from ostensible remembrance of those who sacrificed in the civil war to Americans who fought in all wars. Southern states still retain separate dates, often different dates, to remember the Confederate dead across the old south.
It's a holiday whose birth was observed through lenses tinted with old politics and regional identity, that gave it different views to different people, why shouldn't it still be?
How to say that it's a holiday of pure spirit? It's a holiday whose significance was touched by a law that turned it into a 3-day weekend in the 1970's and thereby for scores of millions of Americans made it's economic significance over-shadow the holiday's moral and spiritual significance.
Is that bad? Is it good? Do other's respect and keep it as it 'should' be? Who is to say, really?
Well, in all honestly--EACH OF US--is supposed to figure out what it means. That's the nature of special remembrance.
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