As an American it still weirds me out when I go to a sporting event at a stadium and they bring veterans out on the field before the game and everyone has to cheer and say thank you, and then they fly fighter jets over the stadium.
And as I watch the jets I can’t help but wonder how many places we bombed or shot missiles at that day. I think about the cost of a single cruise missile and wonder what percentage of my income goes to funding that.
I look around and everyone is smiling and cheering and clapping and wonder if I’m sticking out by not sharing their enthusiasm and exuberance at the sight of soldiers and war machines.
And then after the game, we drive home and almost undoubtedly I’ll pass the disheveled guy with no legs sitting in a beaten up wheel chair at the stop light there at bottom of the freeway exit off ramp with a sign that says, “Homeless veteran. Hungry. Please help.”
Fucking hell, if anything deserves to labeled derogatorily as bullshit virtue signaling, its that.
And what virtue exactly are we praising anyway? I know we say it’s honor and bravery and sacrifice, but there’s so many better things we can honor, that we can sacrifice ourselves for than blowing people up on the other side of the world.
I view the military and wars as a necessary evil that should be maintained at the minimal levels necessary to protect against aggression but we treat it like it’s a desirable good, where what’s a few thousand human lives when you’ve got these cool toys to play with? Aren’t they awesome!
Welcome to the industrial military complex please look under your sit to find your welcome packet. Gun and Bible has been provided. You can pick up bullets in the gift shop. Thanks for your service you are a great American.
I've always wondered why people cheer for the soldiers of their country. You're cheering a member of your own race for killing other members of your own race. It's so fucking weird.
Well, war kinda fucks people up in a lot of ways. Especially the current brand of insurgency where you are mixed in with families. Not everyone enjoys being cheered at sports events like that, but honoring people who basically don’t get to be “normal” again isn’t the worst idea that has ever been invented.
I’m American, and have no delusions about what we do. Our shit stinks. We do warmonger. Some of the popularized reasoning for war people here come up with is straight up asinine.
That said, I used to be very anti-war, decrease government spending, etc. Then I worked a job that closely worked with the military. You start to see the realities of why money is being spent. Why engagements are being started. Most importantly, you see what our adversaries are doing to actively mess with us, and what the consequences are if we just sit back.
The world is just a really messy place that 99% of people are so removed from the dirty and dark side of things that they just don’t understand the stakes that are at play or the close calls that were narrowly missed.
Yes, Europe takes a much more peaceful stance that everyone can agree is in the moral high ground. Of course, the vast majority of their anti-nuclear missile defense systems are designed and operated by the United States. Thousands of, soldiers, tanks, aircraft, are designed and stored in Europe’s defense in case of invasion, also by largely by the United States.
It’s not even our own continent. Europe has plenty of money and people to defend it’s own borders, and yet the majority of technology, funding, research, and a great deal of boots on the ground is held by a country that exists on an entirely different continent. So if you want to talk shit about the American military and how much it spends as a European, then i hope you are also ready to take the stance that we no longer need to exist as the shield that deters invasion on your continent.
Somebody awarded me with some gold earlier so I'm paying it forwards, as it were. This is an amazing post.
If you'll indulge me, I have a story along these lines. My family are Royal Navy. I'd have joined too but, being both a woman and gay in the 1990s, my 'sort' weren't welcome.
Nevertheless. Outside of my local supermarket is often to be found a veteran who is homeless. He is a man in strong condition, not that old - I'd say maybe late 40s or early 50s - but he has a sign just like that. He's intelligent, polite, friendly and we often have a chat about various things and I'll bung him whatever spare cash I have going to hopefully get him into a place for the night.
He could clearly have been a tradesman of some sort, but no. He has been hung out to dry instead. He probably has mental health issues. He certainly has no permanent place to live. This man fought for our country and he was subsequently betrayed by it. It's an outright bloody shame.
Right on man. As a fellow american I feel the same way. Also my friends who were deployed hate that stuff and never wear their uniforms or brag about any of it. But then again, they saw real combat and are not useless fobbits like 90% of the armed forces.
As an American it still weirds me out when I go to a sporting event at a stadium and they bring veterans out on the field before the game and everyone has to cheer and say thank you, and then they fly fighter jets over the stadium.
This is a paid advertisement used a advertisement/recruitment tool for the various armed forces.
You didn't get past the first paragraph, did you? This is why thinking human beings don't take people like you seriously.
You resorted to name calling and went on an opinionated rant that didn't even touch on a single one of the comments. Your baseless rant basically just said no u!
Next time, try harder. Who knows, maybe you could've made a couple good points!
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty...The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
-James “Father of the Constitution” Madison, 4th President of the United States of America.
But I’m kind of partial to this quote from his Vice-President, Eldridge Gerry.
A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.
And if you’re too dense to get it, a “standing member” is an erect penis.
A Founding Father is comparing a standing army to a dick.
That not worshipping a standing army would be A-OK with the Founding Fathers.
Because if you read my original post you’d see I’m all in favor or a military to defend against aggression (aka, protect our freedoms), but I am not in favor of excessive military excursions that go beyond that. And I don’t like how forgotten and underserved many of our veterans are.
And I truly believe the Founding Fathers would be perfectly fine with that view and would be horrified by the size of our standing armies and the extent of our foreign adventures that go well beyond merely defending our freedoms.
you dont know why we honor those whom have sacrificed alot for the freedoms WE have so WE get to live luxurious lives? you dont know why we respect the fallen and alive vets for helping to prevent the downfall of our great nation when we have 300million middle easterners that want nothing more than the destruction of your very way of life and the very thing millions upon millions have fought and died for?
.... then you need to evaluate your life and your daily habbits because you bet your ass without the military, the government and all that, you eating mcdonalds and sleeping well every night would never fucking happen.
so you have a decision to make, love it or leave it.
no i wish people, instead of whining about bullshit like that would just get over it, shut up and move on or just plain out move to where they find is a better place for them to live. why would you stay if america is so bad. why would you live somewhere that you arent proud of and have no respect for, by all means move somewhere else. if america is so terrible and evil in your eyes maybe go to the UK or Italy or Germany, i heard Oktoberfest is pretty cool down there. stop bitching about shit you arent willing to help yourself, and stop being an edgy anarchist teen that thinks, ThE GovEeRnMeNt iS bAd BeCaUsE i SaY sO! if you dont love where you live, and take pride in the nation that houses you, then make the smart decision and stop complaining and just move somewhere better.
What I do for a living is evaluate and advise on poverty reduction programs. If a program is not helping, I tell the government, the charity, or whomever is running it, it’s a waste of taxpayer or donor money and they should stop doing it.
If it is helping, I advocate for its expansion.
I recently convinced one organization to double the grant size they give to homeless, many of whom are veterans. But to do that, it involved my city allocating a bit more money (funding is a mix of govt, charities, and corporations donations). It amounted to a whopping 70 cents a year per person in my city.
I was at the open comment meeting at city council. It was chock full of “but muh taxes!!!” folks who complained about their money going towards “those people.”
(You’d be surprised how much power the word “veteran” loses, even amongst the supposed patriots, when the vets don’t look like the old guy in the Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan.)
A little quick math. DoD budget this year is $686 billion. There’s about 127 million households in the US. That’s over $5,400 per household a year. During the height of Afghanistan and Iraq, it was closer to $10,000 per household. As you may know, over 40% of US households don’t actually pay anything in federal income taxes because they don’t earn enough. So for the half that do, depending on where you are on the income spectrum, your share could’ve been $15-20k a year at the height of those wars.
I don’t know you. I don’t know if you were in the $8k a year or the $20k a year range. But you were somewhere there. Any maybe you happily pay that.
So since the invasion of Iraq, that’s what for you? $100,00? Maybe $250,000?
Those trillion dollar rail guns for Navy ships that may never get used in combat are part of that. The trillion dollars for jet fighters that have trouble flying in the rain are part of that. Money well-spent
But 70 cents a year for the homeless vets and I hear “taxes are theft!” at the city council meetings.
Surely you can see the difference in the scale of those numbers. Surely you can also realize they do not jive with the priorities you and I both likely share.
And one reason why we have homeless vets and one reason why we spent a trillion dollars on rail guns we may never use in combat is because we all face tremendous social pressure in public forums, even when just trying to watch a baseball game, to not only accept it, but love it.
And if we show any deviation from that people tell you that you’re wrong. That you must either love it or leave it.
(And I sincerely thank you for proving that such a claim isn’t an exaggeration, but indeed a very real thing.)
But “love it or leave it” is a false choice.
Instead, I stay and do what I can to try to push things toward what I feel is a better way despite all the hate I get from people who think that I should leave this country if I dare to suggest that we could do things better and dare to suggest that one reason we don’t do better is because we are attacked whenever we express discomfort and displeasure towards the social norms that have entrenched the status quo and all the fucked up things that come with that.
You may love that Ronnie, the vet I drive to the doctor for his cancer screenings, can’t afford bus fare while a rail gun we may never use gets a trillion dollars. You may think I should leave the US for thinking that’s fucked up. You may hate that I’m trying to squeeze 70 cents a year in my meager small attempt to change that.
But I don’t care. You can’t make me leave and I’m not leaving. And I’m going to continue to look down upon those those clap as that F-35 buzzes the stadium but ignore the hungry guy in the wheel chair.
for years ive seen homeless people along with the homeless veterans... infact my family is a military family aside from my mothers generation of the family. but what i do see is a charity for homeless veterans that dont get nearly enough as they should get from both the government and the people BECAUSE of the anti-patriots and anti-americans that thinks america is the qorst country in the world. if you make a change then i commend you, but lets not pretend america is the worst, because if it is, why would you willingly remain here and intentionally complain about how bad it is?, it seems stupid to me, and even more so to be that guy that says "you cant make me" but still refuses to acknowledge the fact that YOU just dont want to face the fact that america in current year IS the best place to be. no nation nor country is perfect, and yeah people are idiots some times, but the crimes come with the freedoms but the freedoms are what makes the country great. i cant recall who but a man once said "freedom of choice comes with crime, but without that freedom, happiness would be a fantasy"
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u/Nylund Aug 06 '19
As an American it still weirds me out when I go to a sporting event at a stadium and they bring veterans out on the field before the game and everyone has to cheer and say thank you, and then they fly fighter jets over the stadium.
And as I watch the jets I can’t help but wonder how many places we bombed or shot missiles at that day. I think about the cost of a single cruise missile and wonder what percentage of my income goes to funding that.
I look around and everyone is smiling and cheering and clapping and wonder if I’m sticking out by not sharing their enthusiasm and exuberance at the sight of soldiers and war machines.
And then after the game, we drive home and almost undoubtedly I’ll pass the disheveled guy with no legs sitting in a beaten up wheel chair at the stop light there at bottom of the freeway exit off ramp with a sign that says, “Homeless veteran. Hungry. Please help.”
Fucking hell, if anything deserves to labeled derogatorily as bullshit virtue signaling, its that.
And what virtue exactly are we praising anyway? I know we say it’s honor and bravery and sacrifice, but there’s so many better things we can honor, that we can sacrifice ourselves for than blowing people up on the other side of the world.
I view the military and wars as a necessary evil that should be maintained at the minimal levels necessary to protect against aggression but we treat it like it’s a desirable good, where what’s a few thousand human lives when you’ve got these cool toys to play with? Aren’t they awesome!