General Discussion

Service is appreciated and combat troops are indeed a different breed - but so are police and firemen and first responders to disasters and medical personnel who run into harms way to protect and save others. But all active duty troops are not combat veterans, and not all of them are really good guys at their core. They deserve respect commensurate with their conduct - just like anyone else. I don't get misty eyed and choked up because of a uniform - but by the stories of heroism or bravery from the person wearing that uniform. Just like our flag. I love the symbol because of a deep and abiding love of the core concepts of self-rule and self-determination it represents - NOT the several states or the government itself.

The over-correction into vulgar troop worship following the fall out of the end of the Vietnam War, the plight of many veterans of that conflict and the revisionist history brought on by the Reagan years (with Rambo, and Norris and multiple paramilitary worship films and books) has left me with a life long aversion to stories about the military. I find many of them to be nearly insufferable.

There is a line (one of the only one's spoken by Stallone in the film "First Blood" - which introduced John Rambo to the country and the world... ironically, in the novel, the character of Rambo is killed in the end and the story is more about the tragic end of a Vietnam vet than an indestructible super soldier on a crime spree) where Sly intones:

In that mini-speech, many people my age cohort (teenagers of the mid-80's) were first exposed to the power of propaganda and the ability to color the past by those who control the present. The Vietnam War and its entire era cannot be distilled (satisfactorily) into a single speech, slogan or idea... yet Hollywood ran with the image of the abused and misunderstood vet, being put down by anti-War protestors as an inherent evil. This was reinforced ad nauseum though the Reagan years and the fall of the Berlin Wall was largely played as capitalism led by America "defeating" communism and Soviet Union era politics.

It took me until the first Gulf War build up to begin to recognize this, and it was all the way to 9/11 and our nation's collectively bungled and evil response to that attack before I fully recognized the BS and propaganda for what it was all along - a control metric for the population and an easy button to push for politicians looking to change the subject at any given moment.

At any rate...I offer thanks and appreciation to all service members - military or civilian - and a special degree of gratitude for those now or previously in combat operations or support; but not carte blanche and not universally without context.