Jay wrote:
And it was brought up in my response to larssen because like it or not, it is a form of public service and it is a sacrifice of time for the greater good. This is why middle aged people safe from the draft bring it up as a talking point every few years. "Kids these days need forced public service!" whether it's in the form of the draft or the peace corps, or whatever. Even Jon Stewart was beating that horse before he left the Daily Show. So yes, it was relevant because veterans tend to take pride in this public service. They feel they've volunteered to potentially give up their life for their country, and if nothing else, have sacrificed blood, sweat and tears. So for a veteran to say that his country is irredeemably shit, I would say that it has at least a little more weight than it would be coming from someone that has never volunteered.
And as for veterans not talking about their service. That is correct. Most don't talk about their service with non-veterans. Among veterans, lots of stories and camaraderie. I guarantee some of your grandfathers used to go down to the VFW hall and drink beers and swap war stories all the time. They just didn't share them with you.
I have a video somewhere of one of my grandparent's parties. There was beer, cigarettes, laughing, and good times. No chatter about the glory days of the war. He'd didn't hang out at veterans' places. He worked and did church stuff, and spent time with his family when he could. I forgot to mention that this grandparent helmed the family effort to keep my father out of the military. He did talk about some of the safer stuff with me for the sake of a school assignment (astonishing my grandmother), but was never candid with the brutal aspect of the war (I was a child after all).
My other grandfather didn't really like being around people apart from short visits, I think. Mostly kept to himself on a small, rural property. Eventually wrote in sanitized detail to one of my younger cousins for the sake of one of their WW2 relative assignments.
Do you hang around your contemporary vets a lot, talking about mortars and RPGs? A couple of my veteran neighbors would rarely talk about Vietnam with each other even if beered up. Mostly they swapped recorded music and movies, or talked politics, gardening, home improvement, etc.
Why would you want to constantly relive mortars and RPGs flying 10 feet from your face if it was really as you say? Masochistic.
Jay wrote:
unnamednewbie13 wrote:
OK that puts it into more context (and perhaps to bed), but you are still the benefactor of a massive social program. And I still don't believe people should have to be a part of a force contaminating occupied lands with depleted uranium to be put through college.
Or that the military service, let alone that of a technician, should ever be used as a political convo bludgeon.
Let me know what public service you've done so that we can be on equal footing. Let me know how many years you gave up of your youth.
How long were you sitting on that? I just got done pointing out how silly it was using military service as a casual convo bludgeon and here you are swinging it around like a baton. "How many years of your youth did you give up?" Why are you making that a thing? The most pointless, pitiable, gutter, dick measuring contest.
People living in areas of high radioactive contamination probably aren't appreciative of their cancers, birth defects, and child leukemia. A regrettable public service, don't you think?
I've gotten a lot of people past their learning blocks. I like to think that it made a lasting, positive impact on their lives. I didn't get college money for it, though. While going to high school and tech college, I devoted one of the precious remaining bits of my day interning (for free) at a local alternative high school, helping it get through its administrative backlog so that it could continue to function. I was kept too busy for things like after school activities or dances /fwp. But I moved on.
A far cry from camping out by the Iraqi palace with an Xbox or whatever, I know. No titles, no benefits, no ranks, no dividends, no pay. Instead I get some outlier "tough guy vet" years later telling me in so many words to "shut up if you didn't 'serve'" or whatever. "Newbie acknowledged that maybe I had more than one mortar land nearby! Time to press the advantage!"
Did you have to write an essay about why you joined while you were in boot camp? What's the synopsis on that.
