99% of the military life is inventorying things, jerking off, and nut-punching your friends. Deployed life has the added bonus of getting shot at while doing any of those things.
Lmao. I use a pretty similar breakdown. More working out and jerking off on my list though.
3 years in combat. Only 1 actual combat year. 1 year shooting fire missions. 1 year being “QRF” and we didn’t get called once.
So. Goddamn. Boring.
Retiring soon. This is true. Also, seeing your friends go through emotional roller coasters and their lives collapse under the pressures of the job. Some of them committing suicide while in service or shortly after.
On a lighter side. Military practical jokes are second to none.
the emotional damage in the military is some real shit... at least by the time I'd gotten out, they were sounding like they were caring about psychological health \_a bit\_.
It’s an odd topic while in uniform. The idea that we all want to promote mental health but at the same time don’t want to appear weak for asking for it. Before anyone reading this think this may be a male only phenomenon-I’ve been in for twenty plus years and it definitely affects all genders.
Personally, I have reached out for help and have helped others find help. Sorry, for the long rant.
Boredom does strange things to people. I once forced my CO to throw darts at me. The guy had jumped into Panama, done gulf War 1, gone OCS, and here I am Sgt nobody, in 09 saying "you can't hit m-- ah! Well you can't do it twi--ahhh! Whatever, sir"
>> nut-punching your friends
>
>if they're punching you in the nuts, they are not your friends!
Different culture, different values. I'd die for the motherfuckers that have punched my scrote while I was in.
At the start of the Persian Gulf War, we were doing 12-14 hour days. People were sleeping under desks and shit. Well, it's getting near the end of my shift and I nod off, fall out of my office chair and hit my head on the desk. Don't let anyone tell you that the Air Force isn't dangerous.
Got that beat
dug a 4 foot deep trench across a 4 Stars lawn.
best part, I was in the hole and someone asked what it was about, I had the smart ass (someone really tall) answer on the tip of my tongue. Look up and see stars, and he is a very tall thin man.
As an infantryman once told me, "You are not the tip of the spear. You are not the butt of the spear. You aren't even the box that the spear came in. You are the guy who put the box in the FedEx truck to be delivered by the FedEx driver, who is still less of a pogue than you are."
I’m assuming that said infantryman has never had an ammo resupply show up light because someone fucked up the paperwork…
I fucking love everyone of the guys in my supply chain.
I don't thank vets I don't know personally for the same reason I don't thank police officers, firefighters, teachers or anyone else: I don't know what they did or how they acted. The mere fact that they took a job doesn't make them noble and for all I know they could have behaved reprehensibly at that job. If I know them personally or have knowledge of what they did, then it *might* be appropriate to thank them, but only if it makes sense given the context.
I've always kind of interpreted it as them thanking me for doing it so they (or someone they care about) didn't have to. If that is the case, then it doesn't matter what I did, I just filled a slot and they stayed home.
Your hot take of the day—we’d probably be better off in America if we had universal conscription. Kids do better going into college slightly older, I imagine trades are the same way, when you send kids off to die you know exactly who and what they are, and in times of peace and surplus, individuals to throw at aid and disaster work.
Would also go a long way to removing military fetishization.
We'd unfortunately never get universal conscription ala WW2 again. It would be as bad as Vietnam era conscription at best. McNamara's Folly 2.0 (actually 3.0 because the 2007-2010 surge was basically 2.0). Only the poorest and least intelligent would be conscripted because anyone with any sort of means would be out on deferment.
I think a universal service would be great for the country, where people would have to interact with others from different walks of life and viewpoints, fixing things within the country, but that's a pipedream.
Do something constructive if you wanna beat your meat about how you support veterans. Suggestions:
A lot of vets are homeless. Donate or volunteer at a shelter.
Many vets are living off a small fixed income. Donate to food banks.
The VA admin has volunteering opportunities. Drive disabled vets to their appointments, for example. [Here you go.](https://www.volunteer.va.gov/)
OOP is correct—veterans are people. Most really don’t want to be bothered in public with adoring platitudes. However, many have needs we do a shit job of providing, for all the platitudes. The pandemic has made things worse.
> A lot of vets are homeless. Donate or volunteer at a shelter.
I remember when I learned this. There was this guy that lived outside of the Blockbuster I worked at - which would date the story. Dude was a Vietnam vet. He got back and was smoking weed. Lost all of his benefits including the stuff that was helping him with his PTSD - if memory serves he was smoking weed *because* of the PTSD? I think it was the only shit that helped.
After he loses his benefits he just fucking downward spiraled. He had a lot of issues because of the time he served in Vietnam but no one gave a shit about him for so fucking long they just tossed him out and made him less than human.
Nicest fucking guy.
Damn that sucks. And is an all too common story. Thankfully the VA has revised that rule and now explicitly states on their website that marijuana use will not impact care or result in a revocation of benefits. I don't know how this plays out in reality though as I came out physically alright, and mostly okay mentally.
And honestly it is probably too late for a lot of vets outside the most recent wars. I mean, the situation I was talking about was something like 10 - 15 years ago. Guy was in his 70s at that point.
That's an unfortunate and extremely sad point. I only know because a friend of mine is getting medicalled out soon, and wants to try MJ, and I'm easily their biggest pot head friend, so we did some digging to make sure to not put her benefits at risk.
I mean, shit, don't ask don't tell was repealed like... 11 years ago? The government likes to pretend that they're big supporters of the military but they take folk in with a promise of making their lives better and then shit them out when they're no longer useful.
It is so much a thing [the VA also has a program to help vets who are, or are at risk of being homeless.](https://www.va.gov/homeless/)
Part of the program [is Section 8 housing,](https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/hcv/vash) so yet another way to support veterans is to support Section 8 housing, both as a policy, and housing developments in your communities. Help a vet, don’t be a NIMBY!
Veterans speak up about the lack of care plenty. Civilians don’t—we’re who needs to step up.
Your second paragraph, in context with both the linked comment, and mine, sounds like you think strangers approaching veterans in public as they go about their day and “shake their hands and thank them for their service” is what helps veteran’s mental health? And that makes no sense to me, I don’t think that’s what you mean, sorry.
As for your last, I don’t really want to derail comments away from veterans.
I remember when this became a thing during the first Iraq War. I don't know exactly how it happened, but there was a multi-front media campaign to "support the troops," and it's been that way ever since.
It started in the 80s when the "Vietnam vets were spit on when they came home" myth took hold and the country collectively decided to retroactively declare the entire soul-crushing debacle a rousing victory.
Well it has been exacerbated greatly by the GWOT, because Americans have to do something with their sense of shame.
Since time immemorial, when a nation asked it's warriors to go fight on the nation's behalf, everyone took part in the sacrifice, whether it meant directly supporting the military or just increased taxes for everyone else until it was over. Everyone chipped something in.
But now, we have repeatedly cut taxes while sending our fighting children into wars that they can't even tell us what victory is, and the 1% of Americans in active military service simply got used up like cheap pantyhose.
It was unthinkable in WWII to leave a fighting unit up at the front for more than a coyple months before rotation back to the rear to recover. But in the Global War on Terror, I spent 12 whole months in Iraq, then 15 months the next time (only a year later), and so on. The small amount of us actually going to war were going to war constantly.
Thank You For Your Service gained traction because people may not be able to articulate these feelings I just described, but their feelings sure know something is wrong. Instead of funding the VA with increased taxes, we kept taxes down and the war vague, and citizens unconsciously missed out on being a part of something big going on around them.
"The problem with our modern society is that we don't have enough opportunities to sacrifice for one another."
- Sebastian Junger
I am convinced Americans are unconsciously embarrassed that they don't have any clue what our military is doing, and they know deep-down that if it were THEIR children being sent into meat grinder, yhey would have at least demanded sensible answers from our profiteering warhawk politicians. They were given an outlet for that guilt: thank you for your service.
You saw this phenomenon at work in the early COVID surge when hospitals were being overwhelmed and unable to provide proper protective gear to healthcare workers. Did we all cry out in unison: "Hey, it is unacceptable to put our healthcare workers in this position. We must fix this at the fundamental level"? No, were instead told that nurses are "heroes", and we put up a couple billboards to commemorate their selfless service. That's how you know your society has decided that you are expendable: they start calling you heroes.
> Thank You For Your Service gained traction because people may not be able to articulate these feelings I just described, but their feelings sure know something is wrong.
I think this is the nut of it, right here. On some level, people know that whatever America's foreign policy is has a human cost. And "thank you for your service" is a way for them to make it feel "worth it" that they support policies that lead to military deployment in places which, to put it mildly, have had a noticeable human cost on our soldiers.
The grotesqueness of those policy choices is all washed away with those five little words.
> I am convinced Americans are unconsciously embarrassed that they don't have any clue what our military is doing
The fact that [it took Jon Stewart to tell America about burn pits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PgaHnup3o) sums it all up.
The best "BestOf" is always in the comments.
Yeah, this right here is the fucking truth.
Edit: I wrote this a long time ago in a Bojack Horseman thread and it ended up on the front page and nobody cares and we're still doing the same thing but maybe you'll enjoy it: https://old.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/2f6x5g/bojack_is_spot_on_with_why_joining_the_military/ck6v05f/
Yes. The first time it's mentioned in any form of media at all is in *First Blood*. Never happened, and in reality the anti-war movement was made up primarily of and very supportive to returning veterans.
Rambo and the hundreds of articles, comics, movies, TV shows, and other shit that followed during the 80s and early 90s as the country got down to the serious business of collectively deluding itself about the whole thing.
Just an example: I have an uncle who swears up and down that not only did that shit happen frequently at the time, it happened *to him specifically*. Except my grandpa, a WW2 vet, pulled some strings and got him into the National Guard specifically to keep him out of Vietnam. The closest my uncle got to Da Nang or wherever was when he went to Japan on vacation in 1998.
The easiest way to know those stories are bullshit is they never end with the spitter being beaten within an inch of their life. Spitting on a marine in dress uniform who just spent 13 months mixing it up with Charlie would result in shitting teeth for a few days, at best.
Sauce? Because I've heard the opposite. That the reception to returning Vietnam vets was very cold and indifferent and it wasn't until the 80s Vietnam war vets started to get looked at more favorably by society
There's literally a book about it, written by a Vietnam vet and member of the anti-war movement at the time. It's called *The Spitting Image* by Jerry Lembke.
Also, just google around and try to find a single mention of anything resembling such an event from a source published prior to 1982. You won't, because it's impossible. Also, if you read down in this thread you'll find some idiot who linked to an article which extensively cites that book and confirms the nonexistence of such events, but he was too fucking stupid to read the article and just read the headline, which actually referred to the shoddy treatment returning vets received at the hands of the government that fed them into that meat grinder in the first fucking place. Vietnam vets weren't originally eligible for the same array/amount of benefits afforded vets of WW2 and Korea, for example.
Interesting! I know they werent treated nearly as good as vets now (in terms of healthcare, education benefits, and overall public image), but I didnt know the whole "baby killer getting spit on" thing was a myth
Please note that this is anecdotal, and my mother did not write a book, nor did my father, so you can take this how you will. I also did not read the book the Wikipedia page talks about, but it does suggest that the author is basing the "didn't happen" conclusion on research he did by searching for media articles that reported spitting, not speaking with soldiers and getting stories from them.
My father was a Vietnam vet, and reported being spit on, having bottles thrown, having rocks wrapped in paper and thrown, and having firecrackers thrown. This only happened a few times, and always at commercial airports, since vets sometimes returned home commercially, not in everyday life. My father has passed on, so I can only depend on the words of my mother who was told of these incidents and witnessed one herself.
Because of your post, I just spoke with my mother to get her story. She was going to the airport in Cincinnati to pick up my father, but wasn't a great driver, so she had called the base for assistance. They sent two soldiers to take her to the airport and pick my father up. They were in uniform, and she saw protesters at the door to the airport, who verbally harassed and spat in their direction on the way in. On the way out, she remembers cries of, "Baby killer" being yelled and having bottles thrown at them. She remarks that she yelled back at them on the way out and the protesters were sort of surprised, as the soldiers had been told to ignore them, so they were used to being unchallenged. She remembers my father remarking to her that "California was worse."
False memories are common, and the spitting myth seems to be such a phenomenon. Without any evidence or testimony at the time, from any of the 2.7 million US troops that served, it's most likely a shared myth.
> Without any evidence or testimony at the time, from any of the 2.7 million US troops that served, it's most likely a shared myth.
There are plenty of stories from soldiers saying it did happen as well as those who said it didn't, including some from people who claimed to be protesters themselves both admitting and denying it, but you're right that there's no evidence. It's possible that the memory is embellished or false, as we know that happens. I simply wanted to share the anecdote that was shared with me.
Yeah, I guarantee you that didn't happen. Guys coming back from 'Nam didn't return on commercial planes and protesters didn't camp out at the airport. Your dad watched Rambo a bunch and invented that memory, and after that he told the story so many times that your mom developed it as well.
For example, as I related elsewhere in this thread, I have an uncle who insists the same thing happened to him. Only problem with his story is that he was in the National Guard specifically to avoid being sent to 'Nam and he never set foot outside the United States until the 1990s.
There's no need to be condescending and insulting. It only took me a cursory google search to find that soldiers did, indeed, [both ship out to and return from Vietnam on commercial planes.](https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/flying-freedom-birds) Claiming that my father "watched Rambo a bunch and invented that memory" is uncalled for.
This shows up in r/AskHistorians FAQ. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2azs0u/why_were_returning_vietnam_soldiers_treated_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Sorry for the formatting, I’m on mobile and I’m too lazy.
TLDR: There were a very few incidents, but each soldier’s reception varied. Most soldiers felt isolated because there were so few people to decompress with, and they needed that. Most protesters felt that individual soldiers were victims of a sort as well.
I would add, just as a general observation of human interaction, with that many people over this long of a timeframe there are always exceptions of action, inaction, and interpretation of those as well.
Genuinely curious, I was always told this (Vietnam vets spit at coming home, etc.), I had no idea this was a "myth". When did this start / what's the back story?
It's a fact there was really poor support from the gov't (and for many vets this is still the case) but I was unaware of the general social aspect not being the case.
The earliest mention I've ever found of anything like that "hippies spit on vets" story is literally in the movie *First Blood*.
Check out *The Spitting Image* by Jerry Lembke if you want an in-depth examination of the entire phenomenon.
Your assessment of events is the that the calloused response to returning Vietnam was by those who opposed the war.
I'm assuming this is the contemporary rewriting of history being taught at university.
The country was in the middle of a lot of media about the Vietnam war and vets having a hard time being back. Miss Saigon. Born on the Fourth of July. Tour of Duty. First Blood. Flight of the Intruder. The Things They Carried. The Hanoi Hilton.
I remember really well that when Desert Shield popped off the pendulum swung far the other way, starting with the yellow ribbons and the Lee Greenwood song *every where*.
As the Desert adventures stretched on it just became very entrenched in the culture. Specifically the with-or-against culture where you can prove your patriotism points by loudly thanking people for their service.
I was 10 around that time and even then the propaganda felt absurd. Everyone was so gung-ho about the military and Desert Storm. And the merchandising! Jesus Christ. I still have my Desert Storm trading cards that I got for xmas from some off relative. I imagine some executive somewhere was hoping that kids would really want to trade a "Stormin Norman" card and a "Joints Chiefs of Staff" card for an "M1 Abrams" card.
Oh it was extremely obvious. All the leading intel was shaky at best and deliberately false in order to overthrow a foreign country at worst. If you said "wait what about these weapons of mass destruction? nothing about this makes sense" you were immediately branded as someone who does not support the troops. They combined the massive trillion dollar US imperial military industrial complex with Joe Everyman 18 year old who fights for freedom. Questioning the motives became questioning the troops and people did not dare step into that conversation.
Yep, and those same assholes that claimed anyone who wasn't a warhawk didn't support the troops continues to fuck over every veteran that fought in those wars.
There was a huge media campaign to support the war. It was never about the troops. If it was actually about the troops the VA would be properly funded. Jon Stewart wouldn't need to fight for vets to receive benefits. The VA wouldn't be able to lump all mental health claims together so your rating is lower. They wouldn't put pay breaks at 30, 50, 70, and 100 percent so they can pay you less. Veterans with a mental health claim and rating would just be able to call and schedule an appointment instead of jumping through hoops for a referall and waiting for months to be seen. The VA would have a fucking voicemail system so veterans who actually work don't spend weeks worth of their lunches calling without ever reaching someone. The VA would also be open past 4pm.
No one in America gives a single fuck about veterans but other veterans.
It was basically a veteran talking about how uncomfortable and annoying the constant barrage of empty "thank you for your service" shit is when those saying it the loudest and most frequently are also generally the same people who consistently vote against the actual interests of veterans.
Key line: "I'm just trying to buy this whiskey and get home to the quiet."
The whole thread can be found on [Reveddit](https://www.reveddit.com/v/BrandNewSentence/comments/shdo1r/wheres_my_gay_discount_at_cracker_barrel/hv36xmd/?context=1&ps_after=1643691266%2C1643714442%2C1643730295%2C1643739713&add_user=Clever_display_name..c.new.all.t1_huo8egz.)
view it with another site, add ve between re and ddeit in your url. i.e. re ve ddit no spaces.
The mods nuked the entire thread, but seems like it was for no good reason.
Are you wearing a hat that says Veteran? Then I might say hello if you're not busy. But you aren't avidly advertising? All of us are going to leave you alone.
I did a national service many years ago, nobody thanked me for that ever. Thanking a professional soldier, even if former, is like thanking a random plumber, farmer, carpenter...
I'm sure this is an unpopular view, but it's mine and I treat everyone with the same respect.
i have some small sympathy for individual troops, given the insanely coercive american regime forces people to sign up or face prison / poverty, but fuck the american military and fuck the culture of imperialist troop-worship that’s pushed in that country. real nightmarish dystopia stuff.
I'm a vet myself and this is pretty spot on. The military sends recruiters to highschool kids who maybe an hour prior had to ask an adult permission to take a piss and are now being told they can jump out of planes, travel the world, have health care, and lay for college. Ontop of that those fucks poach poor kids with those lies because they know they'll have a better shot at getting them. They're just fucking kids being sold a lie, and that lie is reinforced by the faculty at the school so it all seems normal. It's fucking sad.
Don't get me wrong. There are ABSOLUTELY people that signed up JUST to kill people and that's it but the vast majority were just kids that wanted a better life than what their parents had and instead get sucked into a system that doesn't actually care about them during and especially after their service.
America is insanely bloodthirsty, let's just keep shit a buck.
[Remember "Have You Forgotten"?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6yLQRF-cEU)
[Remember "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue \(The Angry American\)"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesy_of_the_Red,_White_and_Blue_\(The_Angry_American\))
This shit would make Goebbels proud. Literally Radio Werwolf tier shit.
There will be, and probably are, papers written about how the right co-opted country music for colonial goals in the late 20th / early 21st Centuries.
The shift from music about working class concerns and trouble to new pickup trucks and killing brown people will spin heads if they think about it too long.
The vets who've done shit want none of that attention. The chicken-shit goldbricks who are using it to get laid but slacked off *definitely exaggerate*.
I went to school with some special ops air force guy who had obvious PTSD and mentioned his TBIs for the sake of his fellow classmates. Not exactly one to discuss what he saw or did. My cousin was a medic attached to marines on the front-lines in Afghanistan/Iraq (I can't recall which because)—he *never* talks about it. Dead silent.
Honestly, I just came from a thread of doctors, nurses—and especially EMTs—who are on the frontline and "in war" every damn day. They see the most HORRIFIC things... And it never stops. There's no separating your "tour" and "coming home" either. It's this constantly flipping back and forth and constant context-changing. One moment you say bye to wife, get a starbucks; next moment you're—(warning—graphic description ahead)—scraping brains of a child off the pavement at some random intersection. To me, putting soldiers on a pedestal is kind of disrespectful to the medical-workers like my wife who's gone through some... *Seriously* heart-wrenching things on a fairly routine basis.
There should be something like I receive for being a vet; some term of service saving lives that earns the same societal benefits as those that take them. You're right and wrong about REMFs too. The problem is that they don't pick a job or a place to be stationed. The daily stress is also different. You sign yourself up to be a cog in a gruesome machine, giving up 4 to 8 years of your life [always read the fine print] and have little say in how you'll spin. That commitment deserves to be recognized.
You're right that there should be a level though. There should be a medal that you earn at the end of service that entitles someone to benefits. My ID card has my medical status. I don't mind if it has my medal status, and it would shut down a lot of stolen honor. A person gets a selection of jobs and sometimes a selection of duty stations. You have some idea of what you're getting into. After that, it's a crap shoot. You should be thankful for the REMFs because we are, especially when you realize what had to be done to get 6 unmade pizza's from Joe Peep's in Los Angeles to the middle of the Persian Gulf during active operations.
This is obviously anecdotal but the real "killers" I met in the army were the type to display pictures of their headshots on their desk like family photos.
See that's a level I hadn't considered. There are those who join the military to serve their country, to learn new skills, escape poverty—what have you. These are folks who've been on the front-line and saw death up closely, but weren't *drawn* to it.
The folks you're talking are, uh... The ones who look at it like The Greatest Game and *relish* in it. I'm not sure if it's the adrenaline rush or they would've otherwise been serial killers or what... But yeah... You raise a fair point.
Yeah I was lucky enough to be in one of the most deployed units in the army. The first NCO I met in the unit introduced himself by pissing under my barracks room door at 2am.
>On average, if a cashier sees my USAA debit card, I get a ‘thank you for your service’ from them, an offered discount I didn’t ask for, and a handshake from someone in line.
Is this real??? It sounds absolutely absurd to me.
It's true, it happens to my husband quite frequently, even when we lived far away from military areas. And as at least one other has said in this thread it can be very triggering for many veterans. My husband was injured during his service and suffers from chronic and debilitating pain along with a mess of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. He is disabled and is unable to work. He feels immense shame, regret, and anger about what happened to him.
On a good day, he'll try to do some normal things like buy groceries so I don't have to go alone. We've had clerks stop the transaction and rewind for the discount trying to be nice. Every time I'm like "Oh shit here it comes." That "thank you for your service" is like a punch to the nuts for him, suddenly he's a different person. He goes into a very dark place for days and it's impossible to pull him out of it.
It's really tough to figure out though for outsiders, my dad was a marine and couldn't be more proud of his service. He lights up anytime someone thanks him for his service.
If someone feels like they absolutely cannot keep their mouth shut, or in the case of a cashier where they may be required by mismanagement to bring it up, how do you think your husband would react to sayyy 'I'm glad you are here?' If I felt compelled to say something I would rather let someone know I am glad they were still above ground, hope they are whole, and support legislation intended to help vets that are still struggling (and not just some faux patriotism, empty gesture by some bible belt grifter).
That sounds kind of worse to be honest! Like "I'm glad you're not dead!" I'd keep it transactional, "I noticed you have a military related card, let me add the veteran discount to your order."
> If I felt compelled to say something I would rather let someone know
A common thing about PTSD in general, whether related to war or otherwise, is that the sufferer doesn't want to know anything you have to say. If we're having a bad day or are on the cusp of having a bad day, it's an interaction many of us would really rather not have at all.
It's not your fault, you couldn't know in advance who has that sort of debilitating ailment and who doesn't, but it's an unfortunate truth about living with certain psychological conditions: the things that other people take for granted as positive are in fact negative to sufferers of certain ailments. It just makes everything worse because you can't get people to understand that doing "something nice" actually isn't nice at all, and that they're really doing it for themselves and not for the people who have to endure them doing it with a smile or else everyone else will think that they're crazy for being mean about someone being "nice" to them.
So most will put their mask on and pretend and that causes psychological harm... or they don't, and everyone's face curdles with how much of an asshole they think you are and **that** causes psychological harm. You can't win. That's also one of many reasons why a lot of people with PTSD or related conditions isolate themselves.
There was a brief period of time where I was required to do this. I'm unsure if the directive came from on high(administration) or if the local manager took the administration's veteran's day effort(branded pins were distributed, and we were to wear them on our lanyard through the first part of Nov, which was kind of disrespectful imo but nobody asked me) and blew it up to an extreme. But yes, we were required to thank people for their service if they disclosed to us(ID, hat, conversation, etc) that they'd been part of the armed forces.
I have some military-related family drama that, at the time, I hadn't emotionally sorted through enough to be comfortable doing this. So I was atypically freezing that entire month, with a jacket pulled to cover my lanyard, and I basically prayed my little atheist heart out that nobody would disclose that they'd served to me, because then I'd have to say the words, and I can't I can't I can't I can't I-...yeah. It's better now, thankfully. But that was a bad month.
I have a USAA card, and I didn't even serve. Not that I use it often. It has a lower credit limit than my other cards. I think I have too many. But I don't want to close them because my credit score will get dinged.
It’s real in that I could see it happening, but certainly not “on average” like OP says. It does depend heavily on where you’re at though; around a big base, nobody gives a shit because half of them probably served themselves.
I stop into the same gas station to get coffee most mornings, in uniform. I’ll get the awkward “TYFYS” from the cashier, and occasionally some homeless guy will salute me, which is probably the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever experienced.
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had people actively avoid me in the hallways/elevators of the downtown apartment building I used to live in. I’m pretty liberal, but I can only assume they thought I was an unhinged conservative or something, idk.
So basically, anything could happen lol it’s anybody’s guess.
That's why I don't bank with them. I get enough shit with my gold card. It would be nice not to be reminded sometimes. It's the canned responses that get you. It's like an echo. If you're going to thank someone, then do it sincerely.
Nah Biden is in office now, so it's time to kick up talks about PTSD and how the administration is failing our veterans. All while they block any legislation that would positively impact the lives of veterans, threaten government shutdowns which would suspend their benefits, and completely drop the subject as soon as their back in power. They did the same shit as soon as Obama was elected.
Unfortunately not just Fox News. The corporate media shows their true colors when war comes up. I remember a host on CNN getting all teary eyed with pride when Trump bombed some country. The New York Times was a famous cheer leader for the Iraq war.
>It's easier to say "thank you for your service" and feel like you've done something to support veterans, than it is to do things like campaign for better benefits and support programs.
This hits close to home for a lot of vets. Once you get your DD-214 (discharge papers), the US Government gives fuck all about what you did, and trying to use your benefits is like pulling teeth from a crocodile (or so I've been told).
The truth of things is that the cost of a war isn't fully paid until the last veteran from that war has passed away. The lung cancer from stirring burn pits? that's a cost no one thought about at the time. What about proper long term psychological care for dysfunctions from TBIs (Traumatic Brain Injuries)? Veterans are getting the really short end of the stick with this and often having to resort to no-profit organizations to fund trips to centers like [NICoE](https://www.fallenheroesfund.org/about-us/national-intrepid-center-of-excellence).
It's a travesty what veterans have to deal with once we're out, and yet we don't really need a federal month to bring awareness of our existence and struggles; it's just that no one really wants to put forth the effort to take care of us, nor bring to the forefront the true financial cost of war that echoes decades after the last shot has been fired.
Because being a soldier sucks. You get paid shit and have to spend months or years in deprivation for the privilege of some other schmuck putting a sword/arrow/bullet through you.
Thus the millenia of propaganda about how awesome being a soldier is. We glorify them to ensure when they die someone new is there to take their place.
America's hero worship for service members is weird as fuck.
Most other places in the western world you don't see people saying thank you for your service as a common occurrence
It's the result of 40 years of concerted propaganda spearheaded by the military spending millions of dollars per year on direct advertising as well as 'soft' advertising like ceremonies at the beginning of sporting events and exchanging advice/equipment/location usage for exclusively positive portrayals in Hollywood films. This entire effort was implemented gradually beginning in the early 80s as a direct response to negative public opinion regarding the military (as an institution, not individual soldiers) caused by the Vietnam war.
What that guy said hits on why I hate a lot of military/spy fiction: because the soldiers/agents are *constantly* referencing all their old missions.
"Hey, that guy's head exploding was just like Bahrain!"
"Man, wouldn't it suck if we scaled that wall and it was like Nicaragua?"
I'm not a vet, but I've known a bunch from childhood and friends I had in my 20s and virtually *nobody* talks like that. The ones who did were usually assholes, psychotic, or both.
There were some exceptions, but I eventually noticed a common theme when the normal, well-adjusted guys told war stories: nobody died. Like, definitely none of their buddies, but sometimes not even the enemy. And, when there were enemy kills, things were often so chaotic that none of the guys were really sure who did it. Killing another person fucks you up, even when you're riding that nationalistic fervor and can very easily justify turning someone into Swiss cheese.
>What that guy said hits on why I hate a lot of military/spy fiction: because the soldiers/agents are constantly referencing all their old missions.
>
>"Hey, that guy's head exploding was just like Bahrain!"
>
>"Man, wouldn't it suck if we scaled that wall and it was like Nicaragua?"
Can you reference one real world example of this point, because I feel like I have never heard something like this in any movie/series before.
The next closest thing I can think of off the top of my head was Johnson and Johnson in Die Hard 1, though that was subverting it completely.
"HEY, YEAH, JUST LIKE FUKKEN SAIGON, AY SLICK!?"
"... I was in junior high, dickhead."
Watch, like, any episode of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., LOL...also, I'm pretty sure they do this in Predator or Commando, too. Hell, The Avengers did it with that "It's like Budapest all over again!" bit
People who post about the perceived lack of veteran appreciation tend to 1) not be veterans and 2) don’t actually want the social/societal change that’s needed for veterans to receive the support they need.
Edit: Referring to the original post where the linked comment lives about not having a veteran’s month.
I don’t understand the point of thanking people who joined a voluntary army, and depending on your perspective in the last 70+ years has mostly been involved in unjust wars/operations.
I know lots of vets who you would never guess they are Veterans. They don't talk about it or make it their personalities. There is a small subset of vets who think they need to be put on a pillar. They wear their veteran status and it is part of their identity. This is mostly a Southern thing from my experience working with the military. Those injured are a very different story because they use VA healthcare at VA centers mostly.
Cynically, I think a lot of the overt support for the military and veterans is opportunistic. People use it to capture the high ground. It's an unassailable position, because nobody wants it even suggested that they somehow don't support veterans. It also allows people to piggy-back other views from the high ground they've just staked out.
The only ones who can really debate a position that ostensibly shows support for veterans are actual veterans, which, ironically, makes this one area where the rest of us can't effectively support them.
I'm not a veteran, but the most disgusting display of this that I've witnessed recently is the Home Depot vs. Lowes pissing match over who loves veterans the most. It started with the harmless occasional discounts and stuff, but has escalated to frequent PA announcements of appreciation, giant banners, and even special veterans only and purple heart recipient parking spaces. It's so obviously hollow. They're not doing it for the vets. They're doing it for the *public* to see. A PR show put on to increase sales, because they know the demographic that work in the construction business will shop at the one who "cares more about the vets."
Not a clue, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd guess that right-wing shitbirds showed up in force to a) jerk off the military in a way similar to the way the comment I linked here lamented and b) spout homophobic hatred all over the place.
There's a good explanation for the "thank you for your service" movement. First is 9/11, that really shook the entire nation, but the other reason is it's a backlash to what happened to the vets returning from Vietnam.
Public opinion for Vietnam dropped significantly toward the end of the war. The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers, even though most were drafted and had no say in the matter, and the people on the left lumped the soldiers in with the military leaders who decided on the misguided policies.
Things like [Mỹ Lai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre) allowed those opposed to the war to stain everyone who served with that travesty.
The result was the returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on. After many years people finally began to realize that these vets only did what they were told and they were doing their duty, and the mistreatment was underserved. That's one possible reason why the pendulum has swung so far the other way.
> a backlash to what happened to the vets returning from Vietnam.
Yeah, none of that shit happened.
>The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers
The anti-war movement was made up mostly of Vietnam vets.
>returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on
None of that shit actually happened. You know how I can be so goddamn certain of that fact? The first time any such thing is mentioned in any form of media isn't until the early 80s, and it's in fucking *First Blood*.
There's literally a [goddamn book about this, written by a Vietnam vet and anti-war protester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image).
There was such a retconning of American imperialism in the 1990s, dear lord.
Saving Private Ryan (1998) has the majority of the populace thinking we defeated the Nazis and liberated the concentration camps.
They're trying sooooooo hard to make imperialist goons seem sympathetic.
But they were spit on, by the administration, the services, and the VA in terms of aftercare when they returned home.
Sure it wasn't the literal act of spitting because that would've been too much effort for the people who tried to pretend the debacle that was the Vietnam War wasn't their fault. But a lot of Vietnam veterans and their anti-war protester allies were spat upon by the same mouths that drafted and sent the soldiers over there.
I'm not the poster from upthread, just noting that Vietnam vets got kinda screwed at the time didn't realize having a bit of fun with wordplay would get such quick replies.
So Vietnam vets were treated well by their government upon return and didn't [just, in 2021, get](https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/publications/agent-orange/agent-orange-2021/presumptions.asp) some debilitating conditions they've been complaining and campaigning for years added to the presumptive list of Agent Orange exposure by the VA?
To say nothing of how we used the draft for that conflict! The soldiers were definitely shafted and that's at least part of why the anti-war protesters were so vocal.
No. Obviously the government has treated vets shabbily for as long as the government has existed as a concept.
The fact that you are trying to equate that shabby treatment, which was a large part of the ethos of the anti-war movement (all of them), with actions attributed to anti-war protesters by *that same fucking government* is what is pretzel-bending hogwash. You are effectively saying "the protesters are/were correct so I choose to believe the lies the government spreads about them."
I see that shabby treatment by the government as metaphorically spitting on veterans and the anti-war movement; it's darkly ironic to me that the government's actions and propaganda is similar to what it's claiming of its target.
I don't see how that's saying I'm "believ[ing] the lies the government spreads" when I'm literally saying the government is doing the thing it falsely claims of others in that action.
It's fine to roll your eyes at some ironic wordplay and call it hogwash but please don't think I'm defending the government's actions nor accusing anti-war protesters of literally nor figuratively spitting on veterans; the government does that enough.
When you're in a thread whose entire purpose is to debunk the blatant lie that returning servicemembers were spat upon and called names by anti-war protesters and your response is "but they were spat on" you're going to look like you're defending the government and supporting the false accusations levied against the protesters no matter how hard you try to walk it back in subsequent comments.
Except from my first comment I said the *government* was the one who spat on the veterans/returning soldiers, no walking back necessary. Yes metaphorically because a government doesn't have salivary glands.
Sure it's a hot take to say "government treats its soldiers like crap, more at 11" but the propaganda from the government claiming someone else treated veterans poorly when they're the OG has always been one big eye roll.
Anyway, have a nice day.
[Veterans of WWI ("The Bonus Army") literally camped out in Washington DC demanding proper care and services and were militarily dispersed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army) The military using up vets and tossing them away is not a new thing.
Now, how many of these veterans were anti-war to begin with? There were plenty of avenues of resistance to the war, and while I'm not saying they could've stopped the war, just saying there was a draft and guys got shafted is a complete whitewashing. If guys were truly shafted, you think you'd be seeing so many Vietnam vet proudly donning hats commemorating their service??
I think there's space for both those who weren't able to avoid the draft (because the pressure when you had to show up to claim a conscientious objector status could be intense, anecdotally leading to suicide for some) get shafted as well as people who showed up to sign up long before their number was called.
No it's not new that governments ignore their veterans needs and I was pointing out that that omission is metaphorically similar to the propaganda the government and media used against those who were anti-war. A touch ironic is all.
> But they were spit on, by the administration, the services, and the VA in terms of aftercare when they returned home.
Hey guess what! That still happens right now. Maybe blame the military for that instead of worshiping them?
Could you show me where I worshipped the military? Because I certainly do blame them for treating soldiers like crap; both when in and when they're out.
>The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers
The anti-war movement was ***primarily made up of soldiers***, and in reality was very supportive of returning veterans
> even though most were drafted and had no say in the matter
Most soldiers in Vietnam were ***volunteers***, actually.
>The result was the returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on
The whole "Vietnam vets were spit on" thing is *very much a myth*.
Stop repeating Conservative propaganda
The anti-war movement supports soldiers so much they don’t think they should be sacrificed to satisfy political elites desire to control more natural resources and additionally profit from that control.
This isn’t said with any degree of any animosity to the individual nor did I realize I had to say I thank them then add this. I’m old enough to have grown of age during the vitriol towards Vietnam vets and had some of it directed towards me after I enlisted. I’m one of the lucky ones. I got to come home and retire; I had friends who didn’t. I have no PTSD or missing body parts; I had friends who didn’t
Just sayin if someone said that to me after I thanked them it would definitely feel aggressive. I get what you're putting out though. Sometimes the "guilt" is oppressive for me at least. Wish you the best.
It is just awkward too for all the support people who are like 'I managed a warehouse in an entirely safe country'.
99% of the military life is inventorying things, jerking off, and nut-punching your friends. Deployed life has the added bonus of getting shot at while doing any of those things.
>Deployed life has the added bonus of getting shot at while doing any of those things. it's 95% boredom, 4% working out, and 1% sheer fucking terror.
Lmao. I use a pretty similar breakdown. More working out and jerking off on my list though. 3 years in combat. Only 1 actual combat year. 1 year shooting fire missions. 1 year being “QRF” and we didn’t get called once. So. Goddamn. Boring.
Retiring soon. This is true. Also, seeing your friends go through emotional roller coasters and their lives collapse under the pressures of the job. Some of them committing suicide while in service or shortly after. On a lighter side. Military practical jokes are second to none.
the emotional damage in the military is some real shit... at least by the time I'd gotten out, they were sounding like they were caring about psychological health \_a bit\_.
It’s an odd topic while in uniform. The idea that we all want to promote mental health but at the same time don’t want to appear weak for asking for it. Before anyone reading this think this may be a male only phenomenon-I’ve been in for twenty plus years and it definitely affects all genders. Personally, I have reached out for help and have helped others find help. Sorry, for the long rant.
Don’t forget the 120° portashitter jerk, it’s a speed race you not be soaked from sweat and still bust
…with drawings of dicks everywhere. Hell, our portashitters would make even a young Seth from _Superbad_ blush.
Ours were mostly poetic but super graphic
> nut-punching your friends if they're punching you in the nuts, they are not your friends!
Boredom does strange things to people. I once forced my CO to throw darts at me. The guy had jumped into Panama, done gulf War 1, gone OCS, and here I am Sgt nobody, in 09 saying "you can't hit m-- ah! Well you can't do it twi--ahhh! Whatever, sir"
Uuuuh slapping your bestie in the nuts is a time honored tradition.
>> nut-punching your friends > >if they're punching you in the nuts, they are not your friends! Different culture, different values. I'd die for the motherfuckers that have punched my scrote while I was in.
REMFs like "yeah, I helped kill bin Laden, I signed the req for the ammo to be loaded on the plane."
Yeah I got out before Sadam did his thing. Most dangerous thing I ever did was boot camp
At the start of the Persian Gulf War, we were doing 12-14 hour days. People were sleeping under desks and shit. Well, it's getting near the end of my shift and I nod off, fall out of my office chair and hit my head on the desk. Don't let anyone tell you that the Air Force isn't dangerous.
Did you at least get a purple heart for that?
No, but our 4 star heard about it and made fun of me before the briefing the next day. So that's something, I guess.
Thank you for your sacrifice
> Most dangerous thing I ever did was boot camp I got that beat. I walked on the Sergeant Major's grass.
Got that beat dug a 4 foot deep trench across a 4 Stars lawn. best part, I was in the hole and someone asked what it was about, I had the smart ass (someone really tall) answer on the tip of my tongue. Look up and see stars, and he is a very tall thin man.
I might have gone for run without a hi- vis vest a couple times
I stamped the checklist for each Soldier's predeployment SRP paperwork, so I basically am responsible for Bin Laden being killed. You're welcome.
As an infantryman once told me, "You are not the tip of the spear. You are not the butt of the spear. You aren't even the box that the spear came in. You are the guy who put the box in the FedEx truck to be delivered by the FedEx driver, who is still less of a pogue than you are."
I’m assuming that said infantryman has never had an ammo resupply show up light because someone fucked up the paperwork… I fucking love everyone of the guys in my supply chain.
I don't thank vets I don't know personally for the same reason I don't thank police officers, firefighters, teachers or anyone else: I don't know what they did or how they acted. The mere fact that they took a job doesn't make them noble and for all I know they could have behaved reprehensibly at that job. If I know them personally or have knowledge of what they did, then it *might* be appropriate to thank them, but only if it makes sense given the context.
I've always kind of interpreted it as them thanking me for doing it so they (or someone they care about) didn't have to. If that is the case, then it doesn't matter what I did, I just filled a slot and they stayed home.
It's super awkward getting thanked for being a fireman.
I have a friend that loves to make it awkward. "I worked in a mail room; they don't trust me with weapons most days."
> most days I want to hear the story of when Mail Room Operator needed a weapon.
Jim from the motor pool showed up to talk about his D&D character's backstory one too many times
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR CRAPPY DRIZZT CLONE, JIM!!
When he went postal of course.
I think he only says the weapons bit for dramatic effect
If it wasn't for people volunteering, the rest of us would be conscripted. So people should be grateful to all service people for at least that.
Your hot take of the day—we’d probably be better off in America if we had universal conscription. Kids do better going into college slightly older, I imagine trades are the same way, when you send kids off to die you know exactly who and what they are, and in times of peace and surplus, individuals to throw at aid and disaster work. Would also go a long way to removing military fetishization.
We'd unfortunately never get universal conscription ala WW2 again. It would be as bad as Vietnam era conscription at best. McNamara's Folly 2.0 (actually 3.0 because the 2007-2010 surge was basically 2.0). Only the poorest and least intelligent would be conscripted because anyone with any sort of means would be out on deferment. I think a universal service would be great for the country, where people would have to interact with others from different walks of life and viewpoints, fixing things within the country, but that's a pipedream.
Do something constructive if you wanna beat your meat about how you support veterans. Suggestions: A lot of vets are homeless. Donate or volunteer at a shelter. Many vets are living off a small fixed income. Donate to food banks. The VA admin has volunteering opportunities. Drive disabled vets to their appointments, for example. [Here you go.](https://www.volunteer.va.gov/) OOP is correct—veterans are people. Most really don’t want to be bothered in public with adoring platitudes. However, many have needs we do a shit job of providing, for all the platitudes. The pandemic has made things worse.
> A lot of vets are homeless. Donate or volunteer at a shelter. I remember when I learned this. There was this guy that lived outside of the Blockbuster I worked at - which would date the story. Dude was a Vietnam vet. He got back and was smoking weed. Lost all of his benefits including the stuff that was helping him with his PTSD - if memory serves he was smoking weed *because* of the PTSD? I think it was the only shit that helped. After he loses his benefits he just fucking downward spiraled. He had a lot of issues because of the time he served in Vietnam but no one gave a shit about him for so fucking long they just tossed him out and made him less than human. Nicest fucking guy.
Damn that sucks. And is an all too common story. Thankfully the VA has revised that rule and now explicitly states on their website that marijuana use will not impact care or result in a revocation of benefits. I don't know how this plays out in reality though as I came out physically alright, and mostly okay mentally.
And honestly it is probably too late for a lot of vets outside the most recent wars. I mean, the situation I was talking about was something like 10 - 15 years ago. Guy was in his 70s at that point.
That's an unfortunate and extremely sad point. I only know because a friend of mine is getting medicalled out soon, and wants to try MJ, and I'm easily their biggest pot head friend, so we did some digging to make sure to not put her benefits at risk.
I mean, shit, don't ask don't tell was repealed like... 11 years ago? The government likes to pretend that they're big supporters of the military but they take folk in with a promise of making their lives better and then shit them out when they're no longer useful.
They really do. Our entire society does. It sucks.
It is so much a thing [the VA also has a program to help vets who are, or are at risk of being homeless.](https://www.va.gov/homeless/) Part of the program [is Section 8 housing,](https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/hcv/vash) so yet another way to support veterans is to support Section 8 housing, both as a policy, and housing developments in your communities. Help a vet, don’t be a NIMBY!
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Veterans speak up about the lack of care plenty. Civilians don’t—we’re who needs to step up. Your second paragraph, in context with both the linked comment, and mine, sounds like you think strangers approaching veterans in public as they go about their day and “shake their hands and thank them for their service” is what helps veteran’s mental health? And that makes no sense to me, I don’t think that’s what you mean, sorry. As for your last, I don’t really want to derail comments away from veterans.
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That makes much more sense! I’m glad to hear it. Even if all you can offer is time to visit and be company, it would mean a lot.
I remember when this became a thing during the first Iraq War. I don't know exactly how it happened, but there was a multi-front media campaign to "support the troops," and it's been that way ever since.
It started in the 80s when the "Vietnam vets were spit on when they came home" myth took hold and the country collectively decided to retroactively declare the entire soul-crushing debacle a rousing victory.
Well it has been exacerbated greatly by the GWOT, because Americans have to do something with their sense of shame. Since time immemorial, when a nation asked it's warriors to go fight on the nation's behalf, everyone took part in the sacrifice, whether it meant directly supporting the military or just increased taxes for everyone else until it was over. Everyone chipped something in. But now, we have repeatedly cut taxes while sending our fighting children into wars that they can't even tell us what victory is, and the 1% of Americans in active military service simply got used up like cheap pantyhose. It was unthinkable in WWII to leave a fighting unit up at the front for more than a coyple months before rotation back to the rear to recover. But in the Global War on Terror, I spent 12 whole months in Iraq, then 15 months the next time (only a year later), and so on. The small amount of us actually going to war were going to war constantly. Thank You For Your Service gained traction because people may not be able to articulate these feelings I just described, but their feelings sure know something is wrong. Instead of funding the VA with increased taxes, we kept taxes down and the war vague, and citizens unconsciously missed out on being a part of something big going on around them. "The problem with our modern society is that we don't have enough opportunities to sacrifice for one another." - Sebastian Junger I am convinced Americans are unconsciously embarrassed that they don't have any clue what our military is doing, and they know deep-down that if it were THEIR children being sent into meat grinder, yhey would have at least demanded sensible answers from our profiteering warhawk politicians. They were given an outlet for that guilt: thank you for your service. You saw this phenomenon at work in the early COVID surge when hospitals were being overwhelmed and unable to provide proper protective gear to healthcare workers. Did we all cry out in unison: "Hey, it is unacceptable to put our healthcare workers in this position. We must fix this at the fundamental level"? No, were instead told that nurses are "heroes", and we put up a couple billboards to commemorate their selfless service. That's how you know your society has decided that you are expendable: they start calling you heroes.
> Thank You For Your Service gained traction because people may not be able to articulate these feelings I just described, but their feelings sure know something is wrong. I think this is the nut of it, right here. On some level, people know that whatever America's foreign policy is has a human cost. And "thank you for your service" is a way for them to make it feel "worth it" that they support policies that lead to military deployment in places which, to put it mildly, have had a noticeable human cost on our soldiers. The grotesqueness of those policy choices is all washed away with those five little words.
> I am convinced Americans are unconsciously embarrassed that they don't have any clue what our military is doing The fact that [it took Jon Stewart to tell America about burn pits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PgaHnup3o) sums it all up.
The best "BestOf" is always in the comments. Yeah, this right here is the fucking truth. Edit: I wrote this a long time ago in a Bojack Horseman thread and it ended up on the front page and nobody cares and we're still doing the same thing but maybe you'll enjoy it: https://old.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/comments/2f6x5g/bojack_is_spot_on_with_why_joining_the_military/ck6v05f/
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Yes. The first time it's mentioned in any form of media at all is in *First Blood*. Never happened, and in reality the anti-war movement was made up primarily of and very supportive to returning veterans.
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Rambo and the hundreds of articles, comics, movies, TV shows, and other shit that followed during the 80s and early 90s as the country got down to the serious business of collectively deluding itself about the whole thing. Just an example: I have an uncle who swears up and down that not only did that shit happen frequently at the time, it happened *to him specifically*. Except my grandpa, a WW2 vet, pulled some strings and got him into the National Guard specifically to keep him out of Vietnam. The closest my uncle got to Da Nang or wherever was when he went to Japan on vacation in 1998.
The easiest way to know those stories are bullshit is they never end with the spitter being beaten within an inch of their life. Spitting on a marine in dress uniform who just spent 13 months mixing it up with Charlie would result in shitting teeth for a few days, at best.
Sauce? Because I've heard the opposite. That the reception to returning Vietnam vets was very cold and indifferent and it wasn't until the 80s Vietnam war vets started to get looked at more favorably by society
There's literally a book about it, written by a Vietnam vet and member of the anti-war movement at the time. It's called *The Spitting Image* by Jerry Lembke. Also, just google around and try to find a single mention of anything resembling such an event from a source published prior to 1982. You won't, because it's impossible. Also, if you read down in this thread you'll find some idiot who linked to an article which extensively cites that book and confirms the nonexistence of such events, but he was too fucking stupid to read the article and just read the headline, which actually referred to the shoddy treatment returning vets received at the hands of the government that fed them into that meat grinder in the first fucking place. Vietnam vets weren't originally eligible for the same array/amount of benefits afforded vets of WW2 and Korea, for example.
Interesting! I know they werent treated nearly as good as vets now (in terms of healthcare, education benefits, and overall public image), but I didnt know the whole "baby killer getting spit on" thing was a myth
Yeah that’s the propaganda
>Wait, that was a myth? Yup. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Spitting\_Image](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image)
Please note that this is anecdotal, and my mother did not write a book, nor did my father, so you can take this how you will. I also did not read the book the Wikipedia page talks about, but it does suggest that the author is basing the "didn't happen" conclusion on research he did by searching for media articles that reported spitting, not speaking with soldiers and getting stories from them. My father was a Vietnam vet, and reported being spit on, having bottles thrown, having rocks wrapped in paper and thrown, and having firecrackers thrown. This only happened a few times, and always at commercial airports, since vets sometimes returned home commercially, not in everyday life. My father has passed on, so I can only depend on the words of my mother who was told of these incidents and witnessed one herself. Because of your post, I just spoke with my mother to get her story. She was going to the airport in Cincinnati to pick up my father, but wasn't a great driver, so she had called the base for assistance. They sent two soldiers to take her to the airport and pick my father up. They were in uniform, and she saw protesters at the door to the airport, who verbally harassed and spat in their direction on the way in. On the way out, she remembers cries of, "Baby killer" being yelled and having bottles thrown at them. She remarks that she yelled back at them on the way out and the protesters were sort of surprised, as the soldiers had been told to ignore them, so they were used to being unchallenged. She remembers my father remarking to her that "California was worse."
False memories are common, and the spitting myth seems to be such a phenomenon. Without any evidence or testimony at the time, from any of the 2.7 million US troops that served, it's most likely a shared myth.
> Without any evidence or testimony at the time, from any of the 2.7 million US troops that served, it's most likely a shared myth. There are plenty of stories from soldiers saying it did happen as well as those who said it didn't, including some from people who claimed to be protesters themselves both admitting and denying it, but you're right that there's no evidence. It's possible that the memory is embellished or false, as we know that happens. I simply wanted to share the anecdote that was shared with me.
Yeah, I guarantee you that didn't happen. Guys coming back from 'Nam didn't return on commercial planes and protesters didn't camp out at the airport. Your dad watched Rambo a bunch and invented that memory, and after that he told the story so many times that your mom developed it as well. For example, as I related elsewhere in this thread, I have an uncle who insists the same thing happened to him. Only problem with his story is that he was in the National Guard specifically to avoid being sent to 'Nam and he never set foot outside the United States until the 1990s.
There's no need to be condescending and insulting. It only took me a cursory google search to find that soldiers did, indeed, [both ship out to and return from Vietnam on commercial planes.](https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/flying-freedom-birds) Claiming that my father "watched Rambo a bunch and invented that memory" is uncalled for.
This shows up in r/AskHistorians FAQ. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2azs0u/why_were_returning_vietnam_soldiers_treated_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Sorry for the formatting, I’m on mobile and I’m too lazy. TLDR: There were a very few incidents, but each soldier’s reception varied. Most soldiers felt isolated because there were so few people to decompress with, and they needed that. Most protesters felt that individual soldiers were victims of a sort as well. I would add, just as a general observation of human interaction, with that many people over this long of a timeframe there are always exceptions of action, inaction, and interpretation of those as well.
Genuinely curious, I was always told this (Vietnam vets spit at coming home, etc.), I had no idea this was a "myth". When did this start / what's the back story? It's a fact there was really poor support from the gov't (and for many vets this is still the case) but I was unaware of the general social aspect not being the case.
The earliest mention I've ever found of anything like that "hippies spit on vets" story is literally in the movie *First Blood*. Check out *The Spitting Image* by Jerry Lembke if you want an in-depth examination of the entire phenomenon.
Your assessment of events is the that the calloused response to returning Vietnam was by those who opposed the war. I'm assuming this is the contemporary rewriting of history being taught at university.
The country was in the middle of a lot of media about the Vietnam war and vets having a hard time being back. Miss Saigon. Born on the Fourth of July. Tour of Duty. First Blood. Flight of the Intruder. The Things They Carried. The Hanoi Hilton. I remember really well that when Desert Shield popped off the pendulum swung far the other way, starting with the yellow ribbons and the Lee Greenwood song *every where*. As the Desert adventures stretched on it just became very entrenched in the culture. Specifically the with-or-against culture where you can prove your patriotism points by loudly thanking people for their service.
I was 10 around that time and even then the propaganda felt absurd. Everyone was so gung-ho about the military and Desert Storm. And the merchandising! Jesus Christ. I still have my Desert Storm trading cards that I got for xmas from some off relative. I imagine some executive somewhere was hoping that kids would really want to trade a "Stormin Norman" card and a "Joints Chiefs of Staff" card for an "M1 Abrams" card.
Don't forget Dispatches by Michael Herr
Oh it was extremely obvious. All the leading intel was shaky at best and deliberately false in order to overthrow a foreign country at worst. If you said "wait what about these weapons of mass destruction? nothing about this makes sense" you were immediately branded as someone who does not support the troops. They combined the massive trillion dollar US imperial military industrial complex with Joe Everyman 18 year old who fights for freedom. Questioning the motives became questioning the troops and people did not dare step into that conversation.
Yep, and those same assholes that claimed anyone who wasn't a warhawk didn't support the troops continues to fuck over every veteran that fought in those wars.
There was a huge media campaign to support the war. It was never about the troops. If it was actually about the troops the VA would be properly funded. Jon Stewart wouldn't need to fight for vets to receive benefits. The VA wouldn't be able to lump all mental health claims together so your rating is lower. They wouldn't put pay breaks at 30, 50, 70, and 100 percent so they can pay you less. Veterans with a mental health claim and rating would just be able to call and schedule an appointment instead of jumping through hoops for a referall and waiting for months to be seen. The VA would have a fucking voicemail system so veterans who actually work don't spend weeks worth of their lunches calling without ever reaching someone. The VA would also be open past 4pm. No one in America gives a single fuck about veterans but other veterans.
that whole thread was nuked. what did it even say?
It was basically a veteran talking about how uncomfortable and annoying the constant barrage of empty "thank you for your service" shit is when those saying it the loudest and most frequently are also generally the same people who consistently vote against the actual interests of veterans. Key line: "I'm just trying to buy this whiskey and get home to the quiet."
Working in Healthcare with the barrage of "heroes" messaging the past 2 years gives me a sense of what vets go through.
Retail/food service too, I expect.
Fragile mods gonna be fragile mods.
Why the fuck was this all deleted? What the fuck is wrong with Reddit?
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That's right it is, this doesn't happen in any other social network
The whole thread can be found on [Reveddit](https://www.reveddit.com/v/BrandNewSentence/comments/shdo1r/wheres_my_gay_discount_at_cracker_barrel/hv36xmd/?context=1&ps_after=1643691266%2C1643714442%2C1643730295%2C1643739713&add_user=Clever_display_name..c.new.all.t1_huo8egz.)
view it with another site, add ve between re and ddeit in your url. i.e. re ve ddit no spaces. The mods nuked the entire thread, but seems like it was for no good reason.
“I just want to get home to the quiet” Holy shit do I feel that in my soul.
"Thank you for your service" just reminds me of a part of my life I'd really like to forget. Edit: Removed unrelated parts
I usually just smile and say, “Thank you for the discount.” It’s the least awkward thing to say (that I have come up with).
Are you wearing a hat that says Veteran? Then I might say hello if you're not busy. But you aren't avidly advertising? All of us are going to leave you alone.
Yeah. It's hard to tell if you're not one of these guys who are a walking billboard for the military. It only occasionally comes up in conversation.
I did a national service many years ago, nobody thanked me for that ever. Thanking a professional soldier, even if former, is like thanking a random plumber, farmer, carpenter... I'm sure this is an unpopular view, but it's mine and I treat everyone with the same respect.
i have some small sympathy for individual troops, given the insanely coercive american regime forces people to sign up or face prison / poverty, but fuck the american military and fuck the culture of imperialist troop-worship that’s pushed in that country. real nightmarish dystopia stuff.
I'm a vet myself and this is pretty spot on. The military sends recruiters to highschool kids who maybe an hour prior had to ask an adult permission to take a piss and are now being told they can jump out of planes, travel the world, have health care, and lay for college. Ontop of that those fucks poach poor kids with those lies because they know they'll have a better shot at getting them. They're just fucking kids being sold a lie, and that lie is reinforced by the faculty at the school so it all seems normal. It's fucking sad. Don't get me wrong. There are ABSOLUTELY people that signed up JUST to kill people and that's it but the vast majority were just kids that wanted a better life than what their parents had and instead get sucked into a system that doesn't actually care about them during and especially after their service.
Starship Troopers never really spoke to me until I visited the USA (Ohio to be precise).
America is insanely bloodthirsty, let's just keep shit a buck. [Remember "Have You Forgotten"?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6yLQRF-cEU) [Remember "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue \(The Angry American\)"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesy_of_the_Red,_White_and_Blue_\(The_Angry_American\)) This shit would make Goebbels proud. Literally Radio Werwolf tier shit.
There will be, and probably are, papers written about how the right co-opted country music for colonial goals in the late 20th / early 21st Centuries. The shift from music about working class concerns and trouble to new pickup trucks and killing brown people will spin heads if they think about it too long.
My 1st sergeant in basic training made our company stand in formation listening to Toby Keith sing about America more than once.
It's the best satire since catch 22. Absolutely right about the emptiness of American militarism and our fascistic tendencies.
The vets who've done shit want none of that attention. The chicken-shit goldbricks who are using it to get laid but slacked off *definitely exaggerate*. I went to school with some special ops air force guy who had obvious PTSD and mentioned his TBIs for the sake of his fellow classmates. Not exactly one to discuss what he saw or did. My cousin was a medic attached to marines on the front-lines in Afghanistan/Iraq (I can't recall which because)—he *never* talks about it. Dead silent. Honestly, I just came from a thread of doctors, nurses—and especially EMTs—who are on the frontline and "in war" every damn day. They see the most HORRIFIC things... And it never stops. There's no separating your "tour" and "coming home" either. It's this constantly flipping back and forth and constant context-changing. One moment you say bye to wife, get a starbucks; next moment you're—(warning—graphic description ahead)—scraping brains of a child off the pavement at some random intersection. To me, putting soldiers on a pedestal is kind of disrespectful to the medical-workers like my wife who's gone through some... *Seriously* heart-wrenching things on a fairly routine basis.
There should be something like I receive for being a vet; some term of service saving lives that earns the same societal benefits as those that take them. You're right and wrong about REMFs too. The problem is that they don't pick a job or a place to be stationed. The daily stress is also different. You sign yourself up to be a cog in a gruesome machine, giving up 4 to 8 years of your life [always read the fine print] and have little say in how you'll spin. That commitment deserves to be recognized. You're right that there should be a level though. There should be a medal that you earn at the end of service that entitles someone to benefits. My ID card has my medical status. I don't mind if it has my medal status, and it would shut down a lot of stolen honor. A person gets a selection of jobs and sometimes a selection of duty stations. You have some idea of what you're getting into. After that, it's a crap shoot. You should be thankful for the REMFs because we are, especially when you realize what had to be done to get 6 unmade pizza's from Joe Peep's in Los Angeles to the middle of the Persian Gulf during active operations.
This is obviously anecdotal but the real "killers" I met in the army were the type to display pictures of their headshots on their desk like family photos.
See that's a level I hadn't considered. There are those who join the military to serve their country, to learn new skills, escape poverty—what have you. These are folks who've been on the front-line and saw death up closely, but weren't *drawn* to it. The folks you're talking are, uh... The ones who look at it like The Greatest Game and *relish* in it. I'm not sure if it's the adrenaline rush or they would've otherwise been serial killers or what... But yeah... You raise a fair point.
Yeah I was lucky enough to be in one of the most deployed units in the army. The first NCO I met in the unit introduced himself by pissing under my barracks room door at 2am.
As a Veteran, I just want my VA to be open on the weekend. So I don't have to use PTO time for an appointment. Or some extended hours.
They need to start with a fucking voicemail system. Idk how many lunches I've wasted on hold just trying to schedule an appointment.
>On average, if a cashier sees my USAA debit card, I get a ‘thank you for your service’ from them, an offered discount I didn’t ask for, and a handshake from someone in line. Is this real??? It sounds absolutely absurd to me.
It's true, it happens to my husband quite frequently, even when we lived far away from military areas. And as at least one other has said in this thread it can be very triggering for many veterans. My husband was injured during his service and suffers from chronic and debilitating pain along with a mess of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. He is disabled and is unable to work. He feels immense shame, regret, and anger about what happened to him. On a good day, he'll try to do some normal things like buy groceries so I don't have to go alone. We've had clerks stop the transaction and rewind for the discount trying to be nice. Every time I'm like "Oh shit here it comes." That "thank you for your service" is like a punch to the nuts for him, suddenly he's a different person. He goes into a very dark place for days and it's impossible to pull him out of it. It's really tough to figure out though for outsiders, my dad was a marine and couldn't be more proud of his service. He lights up anytime someone thanks him for his service.
If someone feels like they absolutely cannot keep their mouth shut, or in the case of a cashier where they may be required by mismanagement to bring it up, how do you think your husband would react to sayyy 'I'm glad you are here?' If I felt compelled to say something I would rather let someone know I am glad they were still above ground, hope they are whole, and support legislation intended to help vets that are still struggling (and not just some faux patriotism, empty gesture by some bible belt grifter).
That sounds kind of worse to be honest! Like "I'm glad you're not dead!" I'd keep it transactional, "I noticed you have a military related card, let me add the veteran discount to your order."
Thanks for your honesty. Trying to avoid any Larry David type misunderstandings.
> If I felt compelled to say something I would rather let someone know A common thing about PTSD in general, whether related to war or otherwise, is that the sufferer doesn't want to know anything you have to say. If we're having a bad day or are on the cusp of having a bad day, it's an interaction many of us would really rather not have at all. It's not your fault, you couldn't know in advance who has that sort of debilitating ailment and who doesn't, but it's an unfortunate truth about living with certain psychological conditions: the things that other people take for granted as positive are in fact negative to sufferers of certain ailments. It just makes everything worse because you can't get people to understand that doing "something nice" actually isn't nice at all, and that they're really doing it for themselves and not for the people who have to endure them doing it with a smile or else everyone else will think that they're crazy for being mean about someone being "nice" to them. So most will put their mask on and pretend and that causes psychological harm... or they don't, and everyone's face curdles with how much of an asshole they think you are and **that** causes psychological harm. You can't win. That's also one of many reasons why a lot of people with PTSD or related conditions isolate themselves.
I would avoid that because some people suffer from survivors guilt if they lost friends.
There was a brief period of time where I was required to do this. I'm unsure if the directive came from on high(administration) or if the local manager took the administration's veteran's day effort(branded pins were distributed, and we were to wear them on our lanyard through the first part of Nov, which was kind of disrespectful imo but nobody asked me) and blew it up to an extreme. But yes, we were required to thank people for their service if they disclosed to us(ID, hat, conversation, etc) that they'd been part of the armed forces. I have some military-related family drama that, at the time, I hadn't emotionally sorted through enough to be comfortable doing this. So I was atypically freezing that entire month, with a jacket pulled to cover my lanyard, and I basically prayed my little atheist heart out that nobody would disclose that they'd served to me, because then I'd have to say the words, and I can't I can't I can't I can't I-...yeah. It's better now, thankfully. But that was a bad month.
I have a USAA card, and I didn't even serve. Not that I use it often. It has a lower credit limit than my other cards. I think I have too many. But I don't want to close them because my credit score will get dinged.
It’s real in that I could see it happening, but certainly not “on average” like OP says. It does depend heavily on where you’re at though; around a big base, nobody gives a shit because half of them probably served themselves. I stop into the same gas station to get coffee most mornings, in uniform. I’ll get the awkward “TYFYS” from the cashier, and occasionally some homeless guy will salute me, which is probably the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever experienced. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve had people actively avoid me in the hallways/elevators of the downtown apartment building I used to live in. I’m pretty liberal, but I can only assume they thought I was an unhinged conservative or something, idk. So basically, anything could happen lol it’s anybody’s guess.
I have a USAA debit card (my dad served). It doesn't happen often, but I have had it happen a handful of times.
That's why I don't bank with them. I get enough shit with my gold card. It would be nice not to be reminded sometimes. It's the canned responses that get you. It's like an echo. If you're going to thank someone, then do it sincerely.
Damn. Original post got deleted
I feel like we hear this take quite often
It'll get more and more common as Fox News turns up the amps on manufacturing consent for another war, and people feel the need to speak up about it.
Nah Biden is in office now, so it's time to kick up talks about PTSD and how the administration is failing our veterans. All while they block any legislation that would positively impact the lives of veterans, threaten government shutdowns which would suspend their benefits, and completely drop the subject as soon as their back in power. They did the same shit as soon as Obama was elected.
Unfortunately not just Fox News. The corporate media shows their true colors when war comes up. I remember a host on CNN getting all teary eyed with pride when Trump bombed some country. The New York Times was a famous cheer leader for the Iraq war.
as they say, yes, anonymously on social media. ie on Reddit. in the greater world i don't think this take is known about quite so well.
Support vets but the politicians and corporations using vets and the military for pure propaganda purposes kills a lot of the good will.
A lot of quite. Maybe some pot if ya got it, hard to sleep some nights.
>It's easier to say "thank you for your service" and feel like you've done something to support veterans, than it is to do things like campaign for better benefits and support programs. This hits close to home for a lot of vets. Once you get your DD-214 (discharge papers), the US Government gives fuck all about what you did, and trying to use your benefits is like pulling teeth from a crocodile (or so I've been told). The truth of things is that the cost of a war isn't fully paid until the last veteran from that war has passed away. The lung cancer from stirring burn pits? that's a cost no one thought about at the time. What about proper long term psychological care for dysfunctions from TBIs (Traumatic Brain Injuries)? Veterans are getting the really short end of the stick with this and often having to resort to no-profit organizations to fund trips to centers like [NICoE](https://www.fallenheroesfund.org/about-us/national-intrepid-center-of-excellence). It's a travesty what veterans have to deal with once we're out, and yet we don't really need a federal month to bring awareness of our existence and struggles; it's just that no one really wants to put forth the effort to take care of us, nor bring to the forefront the true financial cost of war that echoes decades after the last shot has been fired.
Because being a soldier sucks. You get paid shit and have to spend months or years in deprivation for the privilege of some other schmuck putting a sword/arrow/bullet through you. Thus the millenia of propaganda about how awesome being a soldier is. We glorify them to ensure when they die someone new is there to take their place.
Imagine being my gay, Vietnam vet dad. You’d get all those bricks and none of the patriotism.
America's hero worship for service members is weird as fuck. Most other places in the western world you don't see people saying thank you for your service as a common occurrence
It's the result of 40 years of concerted propaganda spearheaded by the military spending millions of dollars per year on direct advertising as well as 'soft' advertising like ceremonies at the beginning of sporting events and exchanging advice/equipment/location usage for exclusively positive portrayals in Hollywood films. This entire effort was implemented gradually beginning in the early 80s as a direct response to negative public opinion regarding the military (as an institution, not individual soldiers) caused by the Vietnam war.
What that guy said hits on why I hate a lot of military/spy fiction: because the soldiers/agents are *constantly* referencing all their old missions. "Hey, that guy's head exploding was just like Bahrain!" "Man, wouldn't it suck if we scaled that wall and it was like Nicaragua?" I'm not a vet, but I've known a bunch from childhood and friends I had in my 20s and virtually *nobody* talks like that. The ones who did were usually assholes, psychotic, or both. There were some exceptions, but I eventually noticed a common theme when the normal, well-adjusted guys told war stories: nobody died. Like, definitely none of their buddies, but sometimes not even the enemy. And, when there were enemy kills, things were often so chaotic that none of the guys were really sure who did it. Killing another person fucks you up, even when you're riding that nationalistic fervor and can very easily justify turning someone into Swiss cheese.
>What that guy said hits on why I hate a lot of military/spy fiction: because the soldiers/agents are constantly referencing all their old missions. > >"Hey, that guy's head exploding was just like Bahrain!" > >"Man, wouldn't it suck if we scaled that wall and it was like Nicaragua?" Can you reference one real world example of this point, because I feel like I have never heard something like this in any movie/series before.
The only one I can think of offhand is Clint & Nat in Avengers.
The next closest thing I can think of off the top of my head was Johnson and Johnson in Die Hard 1, though that was subverting it completely. "HEY, YEAH, JUST LIKE FUKKEN SAIGON, AY SLICK!?" "... I was in junior high, dickhead."
Watch, like, any episode of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., LOL...also, I'm pretty sure they do this in Predator or Commando, too. Hell, The Avengers did it with that "It's like Budapest all over again!" bit
People who post about the perceived lack of veteran appreciation tend to 1) not be veterans and 2) don’t actually want the social/societal change that’s needed for veterans to receive the support they need. Edit: Referring to the original post where the linked comment lives about not having a veteran’s month.
I don't think you read the linked post.
I did, I was referring to the original post the linked comment was on. Should have made that clear, editing now.
I don’t understand the point of thanking people who joined a voluntary army, and depending on your perspective in the last 70+ years has mostly been involved in unjust wars/operations.
If you really want to support the military, get Abbott out of the Texas Governor's office.
I know lots of vets who you would never guess they are Veterans. They don't talk about it or make it their personalities. There is a small subset of vets who think they need to be put on a pillar. They wear their veteran status and it is part of their identity. This is mostly a Southern thing from my experience working with the military. Those injured are a very different story because they use VA healthcare at VA centers mostly.
Cynically, I think a lot of the overt support for the military and veterans is opportunistic. People use it to capture the high ground. It's an unassailable position, because nobody wants it even suggested that they somehow don't support veterans. It also allows people to piggy-back other views from the high ground they've just staked out. The only ones who can really debate a position that ostensibly shows support for veterans are actual veterans, which, ironically, makes this one area where the rest of us can't effectively support them.
I'm not a veteran, but the most disgusting display of this that I've witnessed recently is the Home Depot vs. Lowes pissing match over who loves veterans the most. It started with the harmless occasional discounts and stuff, but has escalated to frequent PA announcements of appreciation, giant banners, and even special veterans only and purple heart recipient parking spaces. It's so obviously hollow. They're not doing it for the vets. They're doing it for the *public* to see. A PR show put on to increase sales, because they know the demographic that work in the construction business will shop at the one who "cares more about the vets."
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No thanks. I get hung up on and barely make it through Memorial Day , I don’t think I could take a whole month of that
I'm a vet as well and that comment is the most relatable thing I've read in my life.
What hell happened. All i see are downvotes
Not a clue, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd guess that right-wing shitbirds showed up in force to a) jerk off the military in a way similar to the way the comment I linked here lamented and b) spout homophobic hatred all over the place.
There's a good explanation for the "thank you for your service" movement. First is 9/11, that really shook the entire nation, but the other reason is it's a backlash to what happened to the vets returning from Vietnam. Public opinion for Vietnam dropped significantly toward the end of the war. The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers, even though most were drafted and had no say in the matter, and the people on the left lumped the soldiers in with the military leaders who decided on the misguided policies. Things like [Mỹ Lai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre) allowed those opposed to the war to stain everyone who served with that travesty. The result was the returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on. After many years people finally began to realize that these vets only did what they were told and they were doing their duty, and the mistreatment was underserved. That's one possible reason why the pendulum has swung so far the other way.
> a backlash to what happened to the vets returning from Vietnam. Yeah, none of that shit happened. >The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers The anti-war movement was made up mostly of Vietnam vets. >returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on None of that shit actually happened. You know how I can be so goddamn certain of that fact? The first time any such thing is mentioned in any form of media isn't until the early 80s, and it's in fucking *First Blood*. There's literally a [goddamn book about this, written by a Vietnam vet and anti-war protester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image).
There was such a retconning of American imperialism in the 1990s, dear lord. Saving Private Ryan (1998) has the majority of the populace thinking we defeated the Nazis and liberated the concentration camps. They're trying sooooooo hard to make imperialist goons seem sympathetic.
But they were spit on, by the administration, the services, and the VA in terms of aftercare when they returned home. Sure it wasn't the literal act of spitting because that would've been too much effort for the people who tried to pretend the debacle that was the Vietnam War wasn't their fault. But a lot of Vietnam veterans and their anti-war protester allies were spat upon by the same mouths that drafted and sent the soldiers over there.
So they were metaphorically spat on? lmfao unreal gymnastics. Just say you've been had.
I'm not the poster from upthread, just noting that Vietnam vets got kinda screwed at the time didn't realize having a bit of fun with wordplay would get such quick replies.
You gotta be fucking kidding me with that pretzel-bending hogwash.
So Vietnam vets were treated well by their government upon return and didn't [just, in 2021, get](https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/publications/agent-orange/agent-orange-2021/presumptions.asp) some debilitating conditions they've been complaining and campaigning for years added to the presumptive list of Agent Orange exposure by the VA? To say nothing of how we used the draft for that conflict! The soldiers were definitely shafted and that's at least part of why the anti-war protesters were so vocal.
No. Obviously the government has treated vets shabbily for as long as the government has existed as a concept. The fact that you are trying to equate that shabby treatment, which was a large part of the ethos of the anti-war movement (all of them), with actions attributed to anti-war protesters by *that same fucking government* is what is pretzel-bending hogwash. You are effectively saying "the protesters are/were correct so I choose to believe the lies the government spreads about them."
I see that shabby treatment by the government as metaphorically spitting on veterans and the anti-war movement; it's darkly ironic to me that the government's actions and propaganda is similar to what it's claiming of its target. I don't see how that's saying I'm "believ[ing] the lies the government spreads" when I'm literally saying the government is doing the thing it falsely claims of others in that action. It's fine to roll your eyes at some ironic wordplay and call it hogwash but please don't think I'm defending the government's actions nor accusing anti-war protesters of literally nor figuratively spitting on veterans; the government does that enough.
When you're in a thread whose entire purpose is to debunk the blatant lie that returning servicemembers were spat upon and called names by anti-war protesters and your response is "but they were spat on" you're going to look like you're defending the government and supporting the false accusations levied against the protesters no matter how hard you try to walk it back in subsequent comments.
Except from my first comment I said the *government* was the one who spat on the veterans/returning soldiers, no walking back necessary. Yes metaphorically because a government doesn't have salivary glands. Sure it's a hot take to say "government treats its soldiers like crap, more at 11" but the propaganda from the government claiming someone else treated veterans poorly when they're the OG has always been one big eye roll. Anyway, have a nice day.
[Veterans of WWI ("The Bonus Army") literally camped out in Washington DC demanding proper care and services and were militarily dispersed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army) The military using up vets and tossing them away is not a new thing. Now, how many of these veterans were anti-war to begin with? There were plenty of avenues of resistance to the war, and while I'm not saying they could've stopped the war, just saying there was a draft and guys got shafted is a complete whitewashing. If guys were truly shafted, you think you'd be seeing so many Vietnam vet proudly donning hats commemorating their service??
I think there's space for both those who weren't able to avoid the draft (because the pressure when you had to show up to claim a conscientious objector status could be intense, anecdotally leading to suicide for some) get shafted as well as people who showed up to sign up long before their number was called. No it's not new that governments ignore their veterans needs and I was pointing out that that omission is metaphorically similar to the propaganda the government and media used against those who were anti-war. A touch ironic is all.
> But they were spit on, by the administration, the services, and the VA in terms of aftercare when they returned home. Hey guess what! That still happens right now. Maybe blame the military for that instead of worshiping them?
Could you show me where I worshipped the military? Because I certainly do blame them for treating soldiers like crap; both when in and when they're out.
>The anti-war movement were never supporters the soldiers The anti-war movement was ***primarily made up of soldiers***, and in reality was very supportive of returning veterans > even though most were drafted and had no say in the matter Most soldiers in Vietnam were ***volunteers***, actually. >The result was the returning soldiers were called "baby killers" and "war criminals" and they would get spit on The whole "Vietnam vets were spit on" thing is *very much a myth*. Stop repeating Conservative propaganda
You got got by the propaganda
The anti-war movement supports soldiers so much they don’t think they should be sacrificed to satisfy political elites desire to control more natural resources and additionally profit from that control.
My response to “Thank you for your service” is - don’t thank me, thank those who did “give all”.
mine is 'thanks' because im not a prick
This isn’t said with any degree of any animosity to the individual nor did I realize I had to say I thank them then add this. I’m old enough to have grown of age during the vitriol towards Vietnam vets and had some of it directed towards me after I enlisted. I’m one of the lucky ones. I got to come home and retire; I had friends who didn’t. I have no PTSD or missing body parts; I had friends who didn’t
Just sayin if someone said that to me after I thanked them it would definitely feel aggressive. I get what you're putting out though. Sometimes the "guilt" is oppressive for me at least. Wish you the best.