Veterans Day 2025

 

(Full disclosure: While I am a veteran with an honorable discharge, I never saw combat. I was never deployed overseas. I am in no way comparing my service with those who have gone in harm’s way and acquitted themselves with honor and valor.

 That said, I am not apologizing for my service. I once made a humorous, self-deprecating reference to my time in an Army band to a career Naval office. He asked me if I did everything requested of me to the best of my ability; I said I had.

 “That’s all any of us do,” he said. “They just need different things form us.)

 I attended a Veterans Day rally at Union Station in Washington DC, mainly to add a face to the crowd; I didn’t expect to hear much I hadn’t heard before.

 I was wrong. Again.

 A speaker, a combat veteran, mentioned he is sometimes made uncomfortable when people thanks him for his service. In light of the current government  and how it got there, he said he’d much rather people take that time to ask themselves if they are worth serving.

 Think about it. Thousands of jobs have been cut from the VA; services are fewer. Some military families receive food stamps. Voting for people who implemented such policies makes you complicit. How willing would you be to potentially lay down your life for someone unwilling to ensure you’re taken care of when you need it?

 There are two many people, especially suit-wearing MAGgots, who, when they say, “Thank you for your service,” leave unsaid, “so I didn’t have to go.” The Secretary of Defense – Congress has to vote to make an official name change to the Department of Defense – so much as said current service members are weak in front of a roomful of flag officers (and television cameras) while he flogged his new book. Is that someone worth serving?

 The Secretary of Homeland Security has turned ICE into a secret police force that pulls small children from school to use as hostages so their parents will have to come for them, where the parents are locked up. She signs off on raiding entire apartment buildings in the middle of the night, turning everyone into  the street regardless of age or infirmity, in the hope of finding someone undocumented. Is she worth putting your life on the line for?

 The second man in line for succession to the presidency, the Speaker of the House, had his chamber out for 54 days. None of the people’s work was done while he kept House Republicans away from Washington and refused to swear in a new representative in a cynical effort to keep from possibly having to release documents that might show his boss is a pedophile? (Make no mistake: Mike Johnson works for Donals Trump.) Is he worth enduring the depredations of a career in the military?

 And then there’s the Abasement-in-Chief, a man who has no bottom and stays up late seeking new ways to prove it. Is he worth serving?

 Millions of Americans made this possible with their votes. If you are one of them, are you worth asking someone else to die for your safety, when you showed so little concern for others? “We were lied to.” Of course you were. You knew that going in. Trump had done nothing but tell easily discerned lies since he came down the escalator. You wanted to believe them, for reasons of your own.

 “What can I do about it now?”

 Write or call your representatives. Attend rallies. Send money to resistance organizations. Work to evict those who enable this administration from positions of power. Do something. Millions of your fellow Americans, young men and women from all levels of society, are willing to take potentially mortal risks to keep you safe.

 As Tom Hanks said to Matt Damon at the end of Saving Private Ryan: “Earn this.”

 

 

Veterans Day

If you're not in the mood for me to sound like a prick, stop reading now.

Today is Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in many other places. Newspapers, blogs, and television will be full of people who want to make sure veterans are properly appreciated for all they've done. "Thank you for serving and protecting my rights and my family..." and on and on, and they all leave out the part most of them feel most strongly about:

"...so I didn't have to."

If you want to show appreciation for veterans, pound your elected representatives to get medical care and counseling for them. Raise hell to ensure they get the proper equipment and armor so those serving now have a better chance to live long enough to become veterans. VA hospitals should be state of the art; they're better than they used to be, but considering what they used to be, that's damning with faint praise.

Talk is cheap, and the paeans offered by politicians are the Wal-Mart of talk . I wonder what could be accomplished for veterans if they got the money spent on the new engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, which the military didn't want but got shoved down their throats.