This is such a beautiful song, I just wish I could find a better version of it…
Chris Marvin, founder of GotYour6, in the Washington Post:
I fought in Afghanistan. When people learn of my military service, I get a variety of comments — none more common than “Thank you for your service.” My response sometimes surprises people. I look them in the eye and say, “You’re welcome.”
For years, I struggled to find the appropriate response. I felt uncomfortable when thanked because I didn’t know what to say. My friend and mentor Eric Greitens , who founded the Mission Continues, experienced similar feelings. He suggested that I simply reply the way my mother taught me.
When I began to respond with “You’re welcome,” I was concerned that it shocked people. I wondered if I was being too flippant or prideful. Then I realized that their reaction said something about what “Thank you for your service” now means in American culture. The phrase has become a reflex for civilians who don’t know what else to say. Most people today play a minimal role in national defense beyond expressing gratitude to those who have served on their behalf….
NotMax
O-o-okay.
That was an Obama video up until a second ago.
raven
On War, Guilt and ‘Thank You for Your Service’: Elizabeth Samet
NotMax
Second day in a row with pounding rain and wind gusts up to 55 mph. Flash flood and high surf warnings abound.
More to come throughout the week.
raven
@NotMax: From Yolanda I assume? Wonder how big it’s running on the North Shore oh Oahu?
oooo, “Surf along north facing shores will be 12 to 18 feet through tonight, then lower to 10 to 15 feet on Monday. “
OzarkHillbilly
Can’t do it. Just can’t do it. I won’t go into the reasons why, certainly not today. This is Veterans Day and they deserve to have that unqualified “Thank you.”
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Can’t do what? Read one person’s opinion of what baloney it is?
HeartlandLiberal
No, what civilians also do is ramp up the faux respect by increasing levels of introduction of military and militarization into the fabric of our life. This includes the dramatic increase at football games nationwide of using the slow raising of gigantic flags while the anthem is being played, raised by National Guard troops brought in to be props for the audience to show their respect to.
raven
@HeartlandLiberal: At the Georgia game Saturday they were giving a mom some award and her son surprised her with his homecoming from Afghanistan. Then they had a 90 year old WWII, Korea and Vietnam MOH recipient recognized. It was pretty nice.
geg6
@raven:
Excellent piece. I thank veterans for their service by doing my best to get them their benefits in a timely fashion and by faithfully participating in our democratic rituals. The veterans in my family tell me that’s what it’s all about.
raven
@geg6: UGA finally has a Vets group that seems to be of help. I was only 19 when I came home and I couldn’t vote for 14 months!
BadBob
I retired to South Korea and was career Army. The natives here simply say thank you in their language, of course, after they see me salute while retreat is sounded at the end of the day. You’re welcome is my response too.
It is appreciated.
NotMax
@raven
Storms and gales pretty much all around us.
Honus
I’ve been close to a number of veterans throughout my life. After talking to them I always want to say “I’m sorry”
raven
@NotMax: My buddy is flying back from Vietnam, he was supposed to be here today but the word is that it will be tomorrow.
BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: Yup. The kid’s in nursing school now and some of her veteran benefits got delayed; thanks republicans in congress for that shutdown. Asswipes.
NotMax
@raven
Jeez, Louise, that was one long deployment.
magurakurin
@raven:
don’t imagine those waves would be from Yolanda. Here in Japan we never saw any swell from Yolanda at all. Those waves are most likely coming from the low that just brought a blizzard to Hokkaido. More snow and wind today in Aomori. The North Shore season will be in full swing soon, I’d reckon. Our icy cold Siberian winds become you guys giant surf.
Hal
Am I the only one who missed this story?
She gave a very rambling interview on why which seems to be some combination of the law not being written well enough for her, but also that the people protesting against the bill moved her? Confusing all around.
magurakurin
I never really talked much with returning vets. I sometimes would see guys in the airport in Kansai and they would get on the same plane. When the big draw down from Iraq was happening there was a lot of guys coming back. I don’t say much more than “morning” or “howdy” to people I don’t know anyway, so I always thought it was a bit strange to say “thank you for your service” to someone I didn’t know from Adam. One young guy though had trouble getting his rifle checked under the plane. The Delta counter people were being dicks about it even though it was in a box labeled “FIREARM” and he had a stack of papers to document it. They called the Kansai Airport cops over and being Japanese cops they had no fucking idea what that weapon was when he opened it to show them. One guy next to me, a Japanese guy, says something to the effect “that guy is a bit foolish to bring a replica gun on a plane.” I laughed at him and said he was the one who was being foolish, that’s a real gun and it no doubt has been well used in the war from the look of it. He suddenly realized the truth of it and got the same puzzled look as the cops. They finally let him got through, but it just seemed so unfair and pointless to put the poor guy through it. For fucks sake he was only trying to get home from a goddamn war. When we finally got to the States we ended up in line together at Customs. Just before he went up to the counter, I said, “Well, ya made it.” He smiled. He was with a mate and they seemed damn glad to be home.
Applejinx
Huh.
Maybe something more tangible, like “Blow you for your service”? A little less vague and hypothetical, there. Might be well appreciated by some.
Or the flip side: follow it out.
“thank you for your service”
“You’re welcome.”
“Yikes. My God, what have you done? Welcome for what? Why would you say that?”
You’re not supposed to think about it, you’re supposed to weep tears of patrotism and grovel before the mighty warrior, but he’s not HUMAN as such. No VA benefits for him! No looking into what you’re asking him to do! No no. You’re supposed to thank him, bootlick a bit and then move on.
Any auto mechanic gets more scrutiny and, in a sense, more respect: because we are prepared to look at what the auto mechanic actually does. What constitutes a really terrific soldier? What about a lousy soldier you want to fire, what does that guy look like? Is the lousy one lousy because he murders random civilians? Or is that the terrific one, doing his job of terror and intimidation of enemies more effectively than others? IS that even his job, and if not, what is it?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
No, see it in their eyes. I work with too many vets not to know that.
Raven
@NotMax: He moved there 3 years ago, he loves it!
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin:
Why the heck was he carrying his issued weapon on a commercial flight anyways? Normally, the weapon ultimately belongs to the unit, not the individual, so the unit would be responsible tor transporting it. There are exceptions of course…I once had to take an M16A1 with me on a six month TDY mission to Honduras, where people were individually tasked for the duty. I broke the weapon into the two major components and the bolt, and each part was put in a different piece of luggage…so that a complete, assembled weapon wasn’t transported as a unit, and therefore would not fall into the wrong hands in working condition. This was the best advice the local MPs and the Miami Airport security people could give me!
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I have flown as a civilian with weapons and just had to do the locked case checked deal. Sounds like this dude might have been doing that?
NotMax
@raven
Sole person among friends and acquaintances who served in Viet Nam was nuckin futz.
But he was like that before he went. Was a supply sergeant there, so probably never was in the thick of it.
Only other among my circle who served during that time (low draft number) managed to wangle a post as a typist at JAG in D.C., working under blue-haired female civilian secretaries.
Villago Delenda Est
Also, too, on topic, the best way to deal with veterans is to not create more. Because once you have created one, they don’t go away until they die. And ANYONE who has joined the military has ALREADY given their life for their country, because even the peacetime experience changes you to something your pre-military self would not recognize. Cube this for combat vets.
The problem with “Thank you for your service” to me is that it strikes me as dismissive in a way….the sort of thing that Rush Limbaugh says to avoid confronting someone he claims to respect out of pure political correctness, but refuses to listen to because the veteran has a perspective that he (Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reilly, or any of the other warmongering assholes out there in wingtard land) can never, ever grok.
Raven
@NotMax: Fewer than 10% were in the shit. Always.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I hate it when Tweety starts that shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
He might have been doing that, but I just wonder why he was made responsible for an issued weapon.
The method I was advised to use worked just fine. A bit of “security through obscurity” to be sure….
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: we are not communicating this morning. It’s cool.
magurakurin
@Raven: I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the guys face they were giving him grief. I have no idea why he had that gun, but it was pretty clear from all the documents he had, very official looking stuff, the case it was in, it seemed like he had permission from someone to do it. In my experience, Delta counter people are just dicks. It was a weird deal all around.
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin:
It may be that someone transporting a military weapon was just a slight bit out of the ordinary and the counter people just can’t handle out of the ordinary. Thus, they turn into dicks because the out of the ordinary causes their brains to hurt. Ouch!
NotMax
@raven
Yeah. He used to regale us with stories along the line of reporting that 2 cases of champagne had mysteriously “fallen overboard.”
Then there was my friend who served just after theViet Nam era for a while in Spain, who put in a requisition with the last number of the part incorrect, inadvertently ordering an $800,000 landing assembly for a B-52. Caught holy hell for that boner.
Elizabelle
@Raven:
Hey Raven, I hear you are even older today.
Hope it was a happy one.
And enjoy the bud’s visit.
magurakurin
@Villago Delenda Est: normally, I’d agree with you and be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I am so biased against Delta after many years of shitty flying with them. But the thing was that they called the cops. I don’t what they thought the cops were going to know. They were just scratching there heads and from the cops faces (in Japan you get good at reading faces because a lot things are unspoken and said by face) they were sort of pissed that the counter people got them involved in something that was way above their pay grade. There definitely was an element of gunless society meets full on firearm violence.
MomSense
I do think these situations are awkward, in part because most people aren’t really interested in their lives. We don’t want to think about what they do, how poorly they are paid, and the health consequences of their service. Most of us are blissfully ignorant and indifferent at all times other than when we are obviously face to face and then we say the awkward “thank you for your service”.
At my work, we have a number of clients who are veterans, some active duty, so the dynamic is very different mostly because we are just having normal conversations.
Raven
@NotMax: people have no idea of the level of theft in the military, take it from me.
mai naem
For me I noticed “Thank you for your service” first being said by right wing talk show hosts. It just always sounded fake to me. They couldn’t give a crap about these people IRL since they always wanted to send them off to war.
Watching Bill Kristol on Mornin’ Ho. I am glad Carville’s giving him a good whacking. Seriously, does Bill Kristol like his pal Dick Cheney, not come with a label = “Don’t do what he says to do, and do what he says not to do.”
Raven
@Elizabelle: when I get older, losing my hair, many. . . Oops! It’s now!
Betty Cracker
I choose to believe that the “thank you for your service” folks are coming from a place of generosity and empathy. It might be lame, but I believe it is heartfelt in most cases.
MomSense
@raven:
That is a great article.
And somehow I missed that it was your birthday (thanks, Elizabelle!) yesterday.
I hope you did something fun.
Raven
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think there is such a thing as “thanks for you service” folks. Just like vets they are different. It’s. Like the makerana, everybody did it for a while.
Raven
@MomSense: my poor bride insisted on having a brunch for my grumpy ass.
NotMax
Well, it’s focus on Robert Ryan on TCM for a while today, so you can’t go wrong.
Crossfire on a 9 Eastern. Dated, yes, but a groundbreaking story of anti-semitism and the military.
Early advisory: 6 a.m. Saturday is A Walk in the Sun, perhaps the most realistic war movie ever made.
cmorenc
Coming of draft-age during the height of the Vietnam War, my regard for service in the armed forces is forever warped by the fact that I was among those who fortunately managed to escape having a chunk of my life warped, damaged, or wasted by that misadventure, and yet growing up with some classmates who did go (a couple of them are on the “Wall”). It isn’t lack of respect for those who went; the parents of our generation were the ones who fought in World War II and we absorbed from then a deep sense of how very valuably important their effort was to avoiding what otherwise would have been a very dark future. In more recent history, I’ve seen how badly misused our armed services personnel have been by cynically lying, blundering, arrogant politicians who themselves were too chicken shit to serve and did everything possible to avoid it (looking at you Dick Cheney and George W. Bush).
So I’m grateful to those people willing to serve in the armed forces; but I’m deeply angry at the assholes who have damaged or wasted so much of and so many of their lives in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Villago Delenda Est
Yeah, and Raven’s linked article is pretty good, indeed. It’s way back up there at comment 2.
Does a good job of capturing the ambiguity of the entire phrase. It’s not easy for me to describe my discomfit with the entire phenomenon…the use of it by right wing dipshit cowards who could have served but had “other priorities” grates on me, particularly. I’m sure most people are as Betty stated, but there are some, a minority to be sure, who use it defensively.
Gypsy Howell
Mr Howell has told everyone he interacts with at the VA to please not say “thank you for your service” to him – it only pisses him off. It must be in his file at this point, because no one at the VAMC ever says it to him anymore.
Instead of mindlessly thanking them for their service, how about we fund services for them when they get home, and stop making so damn many of them in the first place.
Raven
@NotMax: The Pacific is the most realistic war movie ever made, hands down.
Raven
@Gypsy Howell: he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: In my fathers family, 2 of his brothers were in the “rear”, 1 flew C-10s, the other never left the homeland. 2 other brothers were rifleman, 1 Army, D-day plus 4 to Germany, the other a Marine (I forget where all he was), and my old man flew B-29s over Japan. Only 1 didn’t make it back, my Uncle Joe who flew the C-10. Crashed in Alaska, after the war.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Can say that my father was a Seabee in WWII. tasked with hacking out and setting up landing strips in the Pacific in advance of the troops.
He never, never wanted to talk about it.
MomSense
@Raven:
Shoot, I love a good brunch and would have happily traded places with you. Then you could have cleaned my house after a gang of 10 year old rascals destroyed it in a fit of birthday cake sugar high madness.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven:
One of the books it was based on was “With the Old Breed” by Eugene Sledge. Very powerful, horrifying, and poetic.
Gypsy Howell
@Gypsy Howell:
I want to clarify what I said. “Mindlessly thanking” wasn’t meant to apply to the good people working at the VA- those folks are great. And interestingly, they all seem to understand why he has a problem with it.
Elizabelle
From raven’s article:
The crux of the matter.
What do you think about saving future veterans by reinstituting the draft, so that the burden of wars of convenience are more broadly shared?
And Elizabeth Samet nails it, with the “theater of gratitude” observation:
We have not become a better society for basically employing mercenaries.
Good on Bloomberg News for printing this essay. It’s a discussion worth starting.
WereBear
Well, from the sounds of that timeframe, we missed it, but in any case, I heartily second the sentiment. Aside from some maudlin narration, it is an almost flawless film in depicting “what it’s like” to be dealing with combat, and has an impressive array of characters that does not check them off by the numbers as so many platoon films of the era did.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: @NotMax:
Thank Dog for theft in the military and thank Dog for the Seabee’s. My old man never talked about the missions he flew, but one of his favorite stories was about the time they almost got wiped off the island (Saipan) by a typhoon. Their co-pilot had a buddy who flew transports and was one of the first in after the storm. He brought them a case of scotch, which they began trading with the Seabees for building materials. Their hootch was the first one back up and it was the most luxurious hootch on the island. Generals were jealous.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
The military-industrial complex has no, zero, zilch interest or desire to re-institute a draft.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Raven:
They’re showing that today in a marathon. Can’t remember which channel.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax:
Mainly because a draft creates all sorts of difficulty for war-mongering and profiteering.
NotMax
@WereBear
To be clearer, it is upcoming on Sat. the 16th.
MomSense
I don’t know why I am watching Morning Joe because I really do dislike them. They are talking endlessly about the bad polling numbers which I think are driven by our media and their BS “reporting”.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s a site of his writings. Great man.
cathyx
Thank you for your service is equivalent nowadays for I’m sorry you were duped into fighting a war for corporate interests.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My FIL was a SeeBee officer on Saipan and my old man was an APD sailor, 30+ landings from the Canal to Okinawa.
Gypsy Howell
@cathyx:
“…. But not sorry enough to do anything about it. Those flyovers at NFL games are AWESOME!”
NotMax
@MomSense</a.
Mmmm. Brunch.
This is maybe ¼ of the pre-dessert table on the way to the real dessert stations at one of the wretched excess Sunday brunches at the hotels here. After everything from omelets prepared to order to prime rib sliced thick and fresh (and copious amounts of champagne), dessert is an aspiration which the belly often isn’t up to.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MomSense: The Narrative, it must be served. Schmoe is of, by, and for the Village.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MomSense: The Narrative, it must be served. Schmoe is of, by, and for the Village.
MomSense
@NotMax:
That is the pre-dessert table? Wow and omelets made to order–sounds fantastic. I don’t think I could do prime rib (even if I were still eating meat) but it sounds like there are plenty of other things.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Annnnd FYWP.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Great, Thanx.
@raven: who knows, maybe your FIL and my old man shared a little of that scotch?
MomSense
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
They had Kristol on who was insufferable as you would expect but Carville’s advice to the President was to take a hit on the crack pipe because Ford’s popularity is 48%. Hahahahaha so clever. Everyone had a nice laugh.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: A truly random draft would solve a lot of issues.
NotMax
@MomSense
Incredible selection, which should be experienced once. Meat, fish, pork, lamb, oriental and Italian stuff, cheeses by the dozen, breakfast selection of all types, you name it.
Seen less food on display in one room in Fellini’s Satyricon.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: On the other side my mothers brother was a frogman. Even got written up in a teenagers book titled “Frogmen of WW!!” (he would have been embarrassed to know that) Maybe your old man and he were shipmates a time or 2.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est: @NotMax: @Betty Cracker:
That’s the discussion we should be having, as a society.
Not about whether a website meant to help people sign up for healthcare has glitches because it was underfunded, oversold, and outright sabotaged by Republicans and the status quo.
Eisenhower was right about the military industrial complex.
It has become the only jobs program Republicans support.
And it is not making us safer.
PaulW
And there’s no evidence it’s creating enough jobs even with all the billions we throw at it.
And the jobs that complex are creating nowadays are in the NSA spy everyone / third-party-vendor double-billing / no sane overhead markets. Not exactly legal or ethical jobs to begin with.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MomSense: Carville is a very special kind of stupid. The less said about him, the better.
HeartlandLiberal
@raven: I am not deprecating respect for any vet or anyone who serves. My father and uncles who served in WWII and left me a chance to live through a pretty decent half century after the war, all things considered, would have my hide. Including the one who is hitting 90 soon, and was an MP in Patton’s army. A few years ago we visited him and my aunt in their retirement home in rural Alabama. He had a special certificate on the wall from the French government, who had tracked all the survivors down and issued a special award to them for saving their country and their bacon. It meant a lot to him.
The GOP do a good enough job of that by ignoring them and the results of what the went through when they get back home. What I am referring to is the increasingly obvious use of military personnel as props for entertainment and commercial use in the sporting industry, and the includes Division I football, and basketball to some degree, but primarily football.
Poopyman
@Elizabelle: @PaulW: I don’t know. Raytheon and Lockheed stocks are only up 55% over the past 52 weeks, although Northrop Grumman is doing “OK”, up 70% for the 52 week period. Booz apparently got hammered by the Snowden thing, being up only 28% for the past year.
rikyrah
Hillary’s Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren
BY NOAM SCHEIBER @noamscheiber
We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.
Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.
…………………….
Judging from recent events, the populists are likely to win. In September, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, running on a platform of taming inequality, routed his Democratic mayoral rival, Christine Quinn, known for her ties to Michael Bloomberg’s finance-friendly administration. The following week, Larry Summers, Obama’s first choice to succeed Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman, withdrew his name from consideration after months in which Senate Democrats signaled their annoyance with his previous support for deregulation. Not 48 hours later, Bill Daley, the former Obama chief of staff and JP Morgan executive, ended his primary campaign for governor of Illinois after internal polls showed him trailing his populist opponent.
All of this is deeply problematic for Hillary Clinton. As a student of public opinion, she clearly understands the direction her party is headed. As the head of an enterprise known as Clinton Inc. that requires vast sums of capital to function, she also realizes there are limits to how much she can alienate the lords of finance. For that matter, it’s not even clear Clinton would want to. “Many of her best friends, her intellectual brain trust [on economics], all come out of that world,” says a longtime Democratic operative who worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and then for Hillary in the White House. “She doesn’t have a problem on the fighting-for-working-class-folks side”—protecting Medicare and Social Security—“but it will be hard, really wrenching for her to be that populist on [finance] issues.”
Which brings us to the probable face of the insurgency. In addition to being strongly identified with the party’s populist wing, any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given Democrats’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115509/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clintons-nightmare
Poopyman
@rikyrah:
Fuck you, Noam.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack (tablet):
The Pacific is running on HBO Plus from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. EST.
Also, PBS here is showing Victory at Sea, the 1952-53 documentary series (mostly) about the naval war in World War II. Breathless, “ripped from the headlines” narration, but great film footage and of course Richard Rodgers’s music.
Notable by its absence is Band of Brothers, which one channel (Spike?) used to trot out on every “patriotic” holiday.
catclub
@MomSense: “bad polling numbers”
I answered the phone to a Rasmussen Poll. Goofed it up as much as I could.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, that’s just become so trite. I’ve found myself, on the several occasions I’m introduced to a vet, saying, “I’m glad you made it back,” and no one’s seemed upset yet.
aimai
@Elizabelle: I don’t participate in a “theater of gratitude” because it would creep me out to approach a complete stranger and propose or pretend that I know why they joined up or what they did or how they feel about it. One thing I’m sure of is that I did not want them to do any of that and that I did not support the policies of the administration that simultaneously exploited their patriotism/desperation and then short shrifted their families (food stamps and food stamp cuts, really?) and which continually underfunds their medical care. I don’t even see how this can be approached in a casual, fleeting, interaction.
Another reason I don’t presume to approach someone in military uniform, or guess whether or not they served (another issue) is, well, I don’t come from a part of the country that condones veering into someone else’s day and expressing yourself to strangers on the street.
And a final reason I don’t walk up to people in uniform and strike up a conversation is that when I was a very little girl a very young and beautiful family friend was permanently put into a wheelchair when the vet she was talking to and interviewing for some little journalism project freaked out (poor guy, I’m not blaming him) and strangled her until loss of oxygen to her brain permanently crippled her. Really: I don’t strike up conversations with people often about their presumed suffering and pain unless it is socially appropriate and has been signaled as ok by that person.
Fred
@cmorenc: Your feelings pretty much align with mine. I’m a proud Vietnam draft dodger. Of all the friends who did go (met a lot of guys in the VA hospital on visiting days) I can’t think of one who had a good thing to say about it. They were used, abused and discarded. Much like today’s vets.
And let me add that the BS about Vietnam vets being insulted (spit on?) by antiwar protesters is, well, bullshit. The most vocal antiwar folks were the vets themselves. All us dirty hippies helping carry guys in wheel chairs up and down stairs while we were spitting on them.
As to thanking vets, I would thank them to not join. As they used to say:”What if they had a war and nobody came?” They’ve been making war for fun and profit my whole life and I have yet to see any good come from it, even when it starts with good intentions. You know good intentions, the stuff the road to Hell is paved with.
handsmile
To continue on with NotMax’s TCM alert above (#44, and thanks!), Bad Day at Black Rock will be broadcast at 4:15pm EST. Such a great film, with Ryan and Tracy giving among their performances; deserves much wider recognition and appreciation.
It’s followed by quite an oddity: Billy Budd, produced, directed, and starring Peter Ustinov (a fingers-on-the-chalkboard actor for me). Terrence Stamp in the title role, with Ryan as the evil Claggart (and an early role for “Illya Kuryakin”). Must be TCM’s gesture towards the Veterans Day/Melville niche market.
(Siubhan Diunne (if you’re reading this): Britten’s opera of the tale is not to be missed if you ever have the opportunity.)
Jaws clamps down on the holiday programming at 8:00pm, and then things get really obscure.
Frankensteinbeck
I’m pretty god damn grateful, personally. Our soldiers are doing a job I wouldn’t want to do, that terrifies me just to think about, to keep me safe. Whatever I may think of each individual soldier, yeah, I’m grateful for and impressed by their service.
The thing is, the guy in the OP isn’t talking about us. He’s talking about the 101st Chairborn. He’s talking about conservatives who yell ‘Support our troops!’ while treating our troops like plastic toys, pew pew boom. Those are the people who think they have to go out of their way to say ‘Thank you for their service’, and they’re the ones who are repeating a shibboleth when they say it. They’re not actually grateful, and it’s a shocking idea to them to have to connect military service to the person who gave it.
MomSense
Now I’m watching Richard Engel tell Chuck Todd that “unnamed sources” are saying that the Obama administration doesn’t know how to buy a carpet in the Middle East.
Could someone please direct me to the liberal media channel?
handsmile
@MomSense:
It’s the “OFF” button on your remote control. At least until it gets dark.
You’re too nice a person to subject yourself to Joe’s frat party and then Richard Engel on the same morning.
xian
All I know is that when I returned from the Nam as a four-year-old in 1968, I was repeatedly spat upon by everyone I met.
Elizabelle
@Poopyman:
I am thinking that seeing Transvaginal Bob and his ethically challenged family in deep doo doo might keep Terry Mac out of it.
It would be lovely and ironic if McAuliffe is the one who strengthens Virginia’s ethics rules, which are insufficient.
Even as “guidelines and not a code.”
ETA: I think voters should get to vote on ethics standards and Senate rules and procedures.
In both cases, you’ve got the people who benefit making the rules, and that ain’t working.
They work for us. Ostensibly.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah:
I would take Elizabeth Warren over Hillary in a walk.
As much as I, um, appreciate Hillary’s service. And will vote for HRC if she is the nominee.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MomSense: Agreed. The myth of a liberal media is dead, and MSNBC until late afternoon is no exception.
MomSense
@handsmile:
I’m normally a nice person but I do confess to some not so nice thoughts and words this morning!
rikyrah
Amazon to deliver on Sundays using Postal Service fleet
By Cecilia Kang, Published: November 10
The Internet has been blamed for the death of the mail, but now it’s offering hope to the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service.
Amazon announced Monday that it will begin Sunday deliveries using the government agency’s fleet of foot soldiers, office workers and truck drivers to bring packages to homes seven days a week.
To accommodate the online retailing giant, the Postal Service said it will for the first time deliver packages at regular rates on Sundays. Previously, a shipper had to use its pricey Express Mail service and pay an extra fee for Sunday delivery.
The initiative will begin immediately in Los Angeles and New York and spread to the Washington area and much of the rest of the nation next year, Postal Service officials said. The partnership should help the turnaround effort underway at the financially strapped Postal Service, they said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/amazon-to-deliver-on-sundays-using-postal-service-fleet/2013/11/10/e3f5b770-48c1-11e3-a196-3544a03c2351_story.html
Elizabelle
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
It would be nice if we had a functioning broadcast news media, instead of profit centers driven by ratings.
gene108
@rikyrah:
This sort of worries me about 2016.
If the next Democratic nominee is another middle-aged white dude, I hope people will realize the alternative would be a person, who would make Bush, Jr. look like smiles-and-sunshine, because the Republican Party has publicly repudiated the “liberal” parts of Bush, Jr.’s regime such as Medicare Part D, Sarbanes-Oxley, McCain-Feingold, etc. and turn out to vote.
Also, too all the foreign policy wankers in the GOP are still neo-cons, who thought up the Iraq War, so look for another misadventure somewhere in the world to prove how exceptional America is.
Ruckus
@Raven:
Ain’t that the truth.
handsmile
@MomSense: , @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):, @Elizabelle:
Time Warner Cable has recently signed an agreement with Al Jazeera America and will begin broadcasting that channel at the end of this month. AJA’s predecessor, Al Jazeera English (no longer available in this country) was, by several orders of magnitude, the most comprehensive and widest-ranging news channel; broadly “liberal” but a description not really applicable to its programming.
If AJA is a worthy successor to AJE, the inadequacy/myopia/incuriosity of other American-based news channels (including the loathsome BBC America) will become readily apparent.
Elizabelle: I don’t know if AJA is now available in the DC metro market via another cable service provider. Ben: I don’t know where you live. MomSense: LePage will probably try to block its transmission there.
Southern Beale
Philippine lead negotiator Yeb Sano’s emotional address to the UN climate summit received a standing ovation this weekend — with good reason. His hometown took a direct hit from the super typhoon.
It’s definitely worth spreading around.
justawriter
Back
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1915)
They ask me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands…
Though I must bear the blame
Because he bore my name.
Mike in NC
I heard that exactly once in 30 years, and it still almost knocked me over. It happened when I left the Pentagon on a Sunday afternoon and stopped to get a bag of cat food at Seven Corners in Falls Church.
Mike in NC
@gene108:
It’s spelled I-R-A-N
MomSense
@handsmile:
I do like AJE on most things although they do have an agenda when it comes to some of their ME reporting.
Cutler would probably hate it even more being the big shot lobbyist that he is.
Elizabelle
WaPost update on the Virginia Attorney General’s race:
17 votes.
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
Thanks re Al Jazeera. Cox doesn’t carry (yet), but I think Verizon does.
You’ve reminded me I need to follow up on that.
liberal
@Mike in NC:
Unfortunately it’s not just the Republicans who are at fault here. Obama is doing reasonably well vs recent historical norms, but Congress is another matter.
handsmile
@MomSense:
True, though I’d put it that AJ’s “agenda” simply differs from that of American news media’s ME reporting/analysis.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
“How it was” to be in a war is very rarely accurately conveyed. Bill Mauldin did it brilliantly and obliquely for WWII infantrymen in Up Front. For the war I was in (carrying an M60A1, 1 additional barrel for M60A1, 1 silicone mitt to change out barrel, 400+ rnds belted 7.62 NATO, 1 Tokarev pistol w/extra clip, 1 KBAR, 2 canteens water, 1 pack Camel cigarettes in waterproof container, 2 joints in container with Camels, 1 Zippo lighter) Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is brilliant writing and “how it was” in one book.
MomSense
@handsmile:
Absolutely! They all have an agenda or perspective or interest. Just something to consider when evaluating the information.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Samuel Fuller was one of the few directors who made movies about the Korean War while that war was going on — Fixed Bayonets! sticks in my mind because of the scene where the sergeant is shot but they can’t rescue him or even retrieve his body, so the rest of the squad sits and watches as individual jets of steam rise from his multiple wounds. He couldn’t show blood because of the Production Code, so Fuller used that detail instead.
(Unlike most other filmmakers of the era, Fuller was an actual combat veteran — Pacific theater in WWII — who didn’t direct his first film until after the war.)
Origuy
Comcast carries AJE in San Jose.
Villago Delenda Est
@Elizabelle:
I didn’t dub them the Ferengi controlled infomedia networks for nothing, you know.
Yatsuno
@rikyrah: Two things about that article:
A) It’s a very strong argument for leaving Warren right where she is. She’s showing herself to be an effective legislator, and it’s clear she’s having a big impact already working the mechanics behind the scenes. I like this. A lot.
B) Tucked away almost as an afterthought is the fact that the South Dakota (!) Senate race is within striking reach for the Democrats. Granted we’re a ways out yet, but this is encouraging.
nancy darling
The veteran’s face most deeply etched in my heart is that of Jose Gutierrez—the fourth soldier to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He lived just a mile or so from my home in Torrance, CA. His strong, beautiful mestizo features and his sacrifice are testament to what it really means to be an American.
I suppose many would consider him a criminal since he came here from Guatemala, illegally and alone, when he was eleven. Others might call him a moocher and a taker since he became a ward of the Juvenile Court and was supported by the good taxpayers of Los Angeles for several years. To me, he is one of the many unsung heroes whose life was needlessly cut short.
http://projects.militarytimes.com/valor/marine-lance-cpl-jose-gutierrez/256506
Elizabeth Samet, an English professor at West Point writes about war, guilt, and “thank you for your service”.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-02/war-guilt-and-thank-you-for-your-service-commentary-by-elizabeth-samet.html
I recall a young black soldier who was a seatmate on a flight from LAX to XNA back in ’06. I offered to buy him a sandwich. It was his first ride in an airplane. He proudly showed me a picture of his one year old daughter. He was headed for a base in Missouri. I did not thank him for his service, but I did wish him godspeed.
On days like today, his face, along with Jose’s, creeps into my memory. I know Jose’s fate, but I often wonder about this young black man. Did he make it home? Did he transition into civilian life successfully?
Vaya con dios, Jose, and all the rest.
Ben Cisco
@handsmile: AJAM is on DirecTV here in Charlotte – I’ve been told it’s worth a look.
? Martin
My dad hates the ‘thank you for your service’ comment. He fucking hated the service. He got drafted, and volunteered to go into the sub service instead. 3 months underwater with a nuclear reactor was preferable to getting killed in Vietnam like happened to too many of his friends. I’ve seen him ‘thank’ a few of the people who commented for electing people like George Bush and cheerleading us into creating so many more people to recognize on Memorial Day – wouldn’t want to run out, dontchano.
He gets more hippy every year.
Elizabelle
@aimai:
Good points.
And such a sad story, for your friend and the vet who suffered.
Mnemosyne
@nancy darling:
My favorite veteran (who I only just learned about recently): Guy Gabaldon, who successfully persuaded about 1,500 Japanese soldiers to peacefully surrender. He was nicknamed “the Pied Piper of Saipan.” He was Mexican-American, but he had been essentially adopted by the family of a Japanese friend and learned enough conversational Japanese to be able to negotiate the surrenders.
(He apparently became a right-winger after the war, but you can’t have everything.)
philadelphialawyer
Well, Chris Marvin, you will have no trouble with me, cuz I ain’t thanking you for jack….
(1) You chose to join the military, even with all the info out there about how what it does and how it does it is morally wrong
(2) The US military is not being used to protect the USA, but for imperialist, neo colonialist purpose…why should I think you for that?
(3) Even if you were defending the USA, you weren’t doing it for me. You don’t even know me, and my existence had no bearing on your choice to join. Whether I was alive or dead when you joined, you would have joined anyway, so why would I thank you for an act that was not even intended for my benefit (much less actually benefiting me)?
(4) You joined the military as a contractual arrangement….you weighed the costs and benefits and, presumably, decided that joining was a good deal for you, considering all factors….risk v rewards, chance of getting killed, injured, plus losing autonomy and so on, versus pay, benefits and veterans’ preferences and the like. To the extent that patriotism was part of your motivation, you should have considered factors (1) and (2).
(5) More than enough civilians are already thanking you. As has been mentioned, one cannot go anywhere these days, without being more or less coerced (on pain of, at minimum, having an argument, but it is not unlikely to face threats of violence or even violence itself) into “thanking” the military, or praying for military members and so on. Every holiday is being turned into a hoo ha for you, not only Veterans’ day and Memorial day, but the Fourth of July too….even on Labor day, we are urged to take a veteran golfing! in my view, you and your ilk have been “thanked” many, many times more often than was ever warranted in the first place, and that is without even considering points one through four.
philadelphialawyer
Oh, and one more thing, Chris, I don’t “have your six” either.
You are going to have struggle through the rest of your life without my support.
Jebediah, RBG
@handsmile:
Interesting thing about that movie – early days of wide-screen formats and the lenses weren’t quite worked out yet and couldn’t handle close-ups. So, a whole movie with no close-ups. To me it made it feel a bit like a stage play. Great movie!!