Veterans Day
Veterans Day got me thinking about veterans. I’m not ashamed of these thoughts but I know I can’t share them with most of the people I know because even my extremely liberal friend group may be appalled. The fact is I see no reason to celebrate Veterans Day. I do not say the Pledge of Allegiance, do not stand for the National Anthem, and have never been particularly proud to be an American. For some decades now I have consistently felt at least a little national shame. I am pretty vocal about all of that except for the Veterans Day part, the part where I feel no need to thank people for their service. The need to do so is so deeply ingrained in me that I actually have a hard time writing that.
I do not subscribe to the American wholesale adoration of and gratitude for the armed services. (I actually don’t even like the term “armed services.”) I understand the need for a military and there are a handful of wars that I would definitely have been behind. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII in very different capacities. One was stationed as a dentist on a ship where I guess soldiers were brought for treatment. The other was in combat, earned a Distinguished Medal of Honor that we only learned about after his death, and was not the least bit interested in talking about any of it. That, to me, is an attitude toward military service that makes sense. I did what I had to do. I made it home alive. I’m glad it’s behind me and I don’t particularly want to talk about it.
War stories glorify things. When I worked for adolescents in a group home we forbade “war stories.” The girls were encouraged to talk about previous trauma but when they framed things in a way that made it sound exciting and fun it was shut down. My grandfather, the one who served in combat, Grandpa B (because he was nicknamed “B” for Bill), once had an old Army buddy pay a call on him. My father recalls that Grandpa B immediately led the man away from the house, chatted with him for a bit, and sent him on his way. He wasn’t interested in “war stories” and definitely didn’t want his wife and children regaled with them.
I understand the need for an active military. I’m not so Pollyanna as to think we don’t need armed forces. (That sounds better than armed services to me. Yes, they provide a service to us. I know that. But service to me sounds like caring for people as opposed to a force to be reckoned with.) I know that all countries (or all the ones I know about) need some sort of protection against other countries because people are assholes. (It’s more complicated than that but I never studied political science and I think that sums it up.) I know that in the city I keep my doors locked a lot of the time and in the country I only lock them when I sleep (and rarely lock my car). I know that is because in the city the people are much closer and more likely to help themselves to my belongings and in the country I could hear anyone coming from a fair distance. (I guess I’m saying countries with close neighbors need more military? Not sure where I was going with that except it reminds me of the game Castle Risk in which, if you got a nation that is surrounded by, or mostly by, water, you were safer because your opponents needed an Admiral card to come at you on that border and those are hard to come by.)
Back to my refusal to observe the American generalized worship of the military. I don’t dislike soldiers. I try extremely hard not to dislike anyone and I mostly succeed, sometimes via a fair bit of navel gazing. And I do appreciate that many, if not most, military do so out of a feeling of duty, a need to serve their country, a desire to protect the American way of life. (I’m not entirely sure how the American way of life is all that distinct from a lot of other ways of life but that’s beside the point.)
I have to preface the rest of this with the statement that I have not looked up any statistics and have no scholarly knowledge about how any of this works. But the thing is that we have way more military than any country should need. We are vastly over militarized. The Car Talk guys used to talk about certain types of cars as being “overpowered” and therefore dangerous, not because the car was going to do something stupid but because no driver outside of a race course needs to go that fast. I use that metaphor for many things. Pit bulls get a bad rap because of their jaw strength. I know now that most pit bull terriers (if you think of them as terriers they sound cuter) are sweet and loving dogs but the ones that aren’t can do a lot more damage than a cantankerous chihuahua. No one needs an AK 47 (or whatever those ridiculous looking guns are called) unless they are at war. If you need one for personal protection you should move. If you need one for hunting then I am a little more than terrified of whatever it is you’re trying to bag. (And, yes, I’ve heard of the 40 to 50 feral hogs story and I don’t like picturing them being mowed down by Rambo. I don’t know the answer to that scenario. I rarely have the answers. I am better at the questions.) (If you don’t get the 40 to 50 feral hogs reference you should look it up.) Pit bulls, AK 47ish guns, and our military are vastly “overpowered” in the sense that they have much more capacity to do damage than their purpose requires.
Part of having a cool, fast car and a really big military is to whip it out a lot like the guy at the Doctor Who Convention who has the actual, authentic sonic screwdriver that was used in that one show everyone loves. (I was going to make a pedophile reference which would have been a lot pithier/more clever but decided it was in poor taste.) The rest of the world mostly expects this of us now. This means that because we have a huge military then we have to have a huge military and we need to maintain that huge military or else people are going to see us as weak. It’s like the fact that every piece of technology we get used to slowly becomes necessary. No one “needed” a cell phone 25 years ago. Now there are many things you cannot do without one. It wasn’t so long ago that cars were a serious luxury. Now, unless you live in a city with a good public transit system, you are in big trouble without one. I could go on.
Of course, there’s also the situation that, since we have been whipping that big, fat military out whenever it pleases us, we have made a few enemies along the way. Playground bullies need to maintain their reputation and keep up with their posse or else they eventually get their comeuppance. And even our allies have become a bit pissed off at us in recent years. Not exactly the time to lay down our weapons.
So what’s the answer? Again, I’m not good at those, but I really don’t feel the need to encourage others to join the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. I have no idea what I would do if one of my kids wanted to do that. Luckily there is almost no chance of that happening. And I’ve told them that if there were a draft I would cut off the tips of their index fingers like Owen Meany did for his friend.
I don’t celebrate Veterans Day because I don’t celebrate veterans because I don’t celebrate the military. I am grateful that people with guns have rid us of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and the like. (Dammit, I just looked it up. The military didn’t kill any of those men but they at least caused Hitler to kill himself, I think.) I am glad that Communists are not swarming our borders like in Red Dawn. If that was the purpose of the military, to rid the world of terrible people and to protect us from foreign invasion, then I would feel a bit differently. But it just really isn’t. My entirely uneducated understanding of the US involvement in WWII is that it started because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, not because Hitler was massacring a few million Jews. We didn’t seem to have much of a problem with Pol Pot or Stalin’s mass murders because, as Eddie Izzard says, “they were killing their own people and we’re sort of fine with that.”
If people want to serve their country I think a much better method would be to become a teacher or volunteer at a homeless shelter. Visit nursing homes. Tend gardens in public places. Plant trees. I would gladly thank them for those services.
I do not subscribe to the American wholesale adoration of and gratitude for the armed services. (I actually don’t even like the term “armed services.”) I understand the need for a military and there are a handful of wars that I would definitely have been behind. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII in very different capacities. One was stationed as a dentist on a ship where I guess soldiers were brought for treatment. The other was in combat, earned a Distinguished Medal of Honor that we only learned about after his death, and was not the least bit interested in talking about any of it. That, to me, is an attitude toward military service that makes sense. I did what I had to do. I made it home alive. I’m glad it’s behind me and I don’t particularly want to talk about it.
War stories glorify things. When I worked for adolescents in a group home we forbade “war stories.” The girls were encouraged to talk about previous trauma but when they framed things in a way that made it sound exciting and fun it was shut down. My grandfather, the one who served in combat, Grandpa B (because he was nicknamed “B” for Bill), once had an old Army buddy pay a call on him. My father recalls that Grandpa B immediately led the man away from the house, chatted with him for a bit, and sent him on his way. He wasn’t interested in “war stories” and definitely didn’t want his wife and children regaled with them.
I understand the need for an active military. I’m not so Pollyanna as to think we don’t need armed forces. (That sounds better than armed services to me. Yes, they provide a service to us. I know that. But service to me sounds like caring for people as opposed to a force to be reckoned with.) I know that all countries (or all the ones I know about) need some sort of protection against other countries because people are assholes. (It’s more complicated than that but I never studied political science and I think that sums it up.) I know that in the city I keep my doors locked a lot of the time and in the country I only lock them when I sleep (and rarely lock my car). I know that is because in the city the people are much closer and more likely to help themselves to my belongings and in the country I could hear anyone coming from a fair distance. (I guess I’m saying countries with close neighbors need more military? Not sure where I was going with that except it reminds me of the game Castle Risk in which, if you got a nation that is surrounded by, or mostly by, water, you were safer because your opponents needed an Admiral card to come at you on that border and those are hard to come by.)
Back to my refusal to observe the American generalized worship of the military. I don’t dislike soldiers. I try extremely hard not to dislike anyone and I mostly succeed, sometimes via a fair bit of navel gazing. And I do appreciate that many, if not most, military do so out of a feeling of duty, a need to serve their country, a desire to protect the American way of life. (I’m not entirely sure how the American way of life is all that distinct from a lot of other ways of life but that’s beside the point.)
I have to preface the rest of this with the statement that I have not looked up any statistics and have no scholarly knowledge about how any of this works. But the thing is that we have way more military than any country should need. We are vastly over militarized. The Car Talk guys used to talk about certain types of cars as being “overpowered” and therefore dangerous, not because the car was going to do something stupid but because no driver outside of a race course needs to go that fast. I use that metaphor for many things. Pit bulls get a bad rap because of their jaw strength. I know now that most pit bull terriers (if you think of them as terriers they sound cuter) are sweet and loving dogs but the ones that aren’t can do a lot more damage than a cantankerous chihuahua. No one needs an AK 47 (or whatever those ridiculous looking guns are called) unless they are at war. If you need one for personal protection you should move. If you need one for hunting then I am a little more than terrified of whatever it is you’re trying to bag. (And, yes, I’ve heard of the 40 to 50 feral hogs story and I don’t like picturing them being mowed down by Rambo. I don’t know the answer to that scenario. I rarely have the answers. I am better at the questions.) (If you don’t get the 40 to 50 feral hogs reference you should look it up.) Pit bulls, AK 47ish guns, and our military are vastly “overpowered” in the sense that they have much more capacity to do damage than their purpose requires.
Part of having a cool, fast car and a really big military is to whip it out a lot like the guy at the Doctor Who Convention who has the actual, authentic sonic screwdriver that was used in that one show everyone loves. (I was going to make a pedophile reference which would have been a lot pithier/more clever but decided it was in poor taste.) The rest of the world mostly expects this of us now. This means that because we have a huge military then we have to have a huge military and we need to maintain that huge military or else people are going to see us as weak. It’s like the fact that every piece of technology we get used to slowly becomes necessary. No one “needed” a cell phone 25 years ago. Now there are many things you cannot do without one. It wasn’t so long ago that cars were a serious luxury. Now, unless you live in a city with a good public transit system, you are in big trouble without one. I could go on.
Of course, there’s also the situation that, since we have been whipping that big, fat military out whenever it pleases us, we have made a few enemies along the way. Playground bullies need to maintain their reputation and keep up with their posse or else they eventually get their comeuppance. And even our allies have become a bit pissed off at us in recent years. Not exactly the time to lay down our weapons.
So what’s the answer? Again, I’m not good at those, but I really don’t feel the need to encourage others to join the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. I have no idea what I would do if one of my kids wanted to do that. Luckily there is almost no chance of that happening. And I’ve told them that if there were a draft I would cut off the tips of their index fingers like Owen Meany did for his friend.
I don’t celebrate Veterans Day because I don’t celebrate veterans because I don’t celebrate the military. I am grateful that people with guns have rid us of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and the like. (Dammit, I just looked it up. The military didn’t kill any of those men but they at least caused Hitler to kill himself, I think.) I am glad that Communists are not swarming our borders like in Red Dawn. If that was the purpose of the military, to rid the world of terrible people and to protect us from foreign invasion, then I would feel a bit differently. But it just really isn’t. My entirely uneducated understanding of the US involvement in WWII is that it started because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, not because Hitler was massacring a few million Jews. We didn’t seem to have much of a problem with Pol Pot or Stalin’s mass murders because, as Eddie Izzard says, “they were killing their own people and we’re sort of fine with that.”
If people want to serve their country I think a much better method would be to become a teacher or volunteer at a homeless shelter. Visit nursing homes. Tend gardens in public places. Plant trees. I would gladly thank them for those services.