"Lighten up, Francis."

 

From comments here:

 

Francis W. Porretto said...

-- "...you're nominally supposed to remember the almost literal real three-percenters who've actually served to give you other slacker 97% the freedom to ignore and spit on us the rest of the year. "--

That is uncalled-for arrogance. We of the 97% you disdain made your service possible. We paid the taxes that provided for every facet and element of your soldiering. We supported you with our purchases of War Bonds. We've practically fallen over backwards in praising you and thanking you. And a great many of us worked at making the weapons you wielded, or learned to wield, rather than at higher-paying occupations elsewhere in the private sector.

You want thanks? You get more of that today than any class of veterans in America's history. You want praise? See previous answer. But don't expect either of those conditions to continue if you make a practice of sneering at us, simply because we never donned the uniform.

As Sgt. Hulka said. "Lighten up, Francis."

But you sound serious, so here's my serious reply to that.

I don't disdain the 97%. As lifelong civilians, the vast majority of them are exactly what I expect.
(This is why there hasn't been a Democrat elected president with any military experience since Jimmy Carter.)
I just call it like I see it. And perhaps it escaped your notice, but veterans, including those in combat, pay taxes too. Which, last I heard, was more of a contribution than 51% of the country does, year in and year out. So if anything, I'd only be disdaining maybe those douchebags, who neither pay nor serve.

Secondly, for comparison, in 1944, something like 16% of the males 18-45 in America were in uniform. Now it's less than 1%, going back 25 or 50 years. As Churchill once said, "Never have so many owed so much to so few."

As for "making the weapons" thanks, sincerely. I was unaware, however, that working for defense contractors was such a financial sacrifice. Mainly because most of the kids I went to school with had parents who worked for Lockheed, Hughes, Northrop, McDonnell-Douglas, Martin, Consolidated, Vought, North American Rockwell, Rocketdyne, General Dynamics, and a few other small companies, now mainly departed to more tax-friendly havens, and conglomerated out of existence in most cases. And BTW, most of their dads had served in uniform too, unlike most of their own sons. I seem to remember most of them doing just fine, financially, but when the government gives you college and wildly advantageous home loans gratis just for serving, it's a lot harder to screw up in life. I wouldn't know.

As for "more thanks" and "more praise", hey great.
Send a can of that to my brother, who graduated from DaNang, Class of '65, and got called "baby killer" when he rotated home through LAX.
He still hasn't gotten his parade, or thanks, or any praise (and long since gave up looking for any of the above from the wastrels of society, and got over it), and last I looked, Ken Burns and the Usual Hippie Suspects just shit on his generation all over again on PBS/Pravda. Like they do, since forever.
Some day when I get the courage to broach the subject, I want to sit down with my brother and his boot camp yearbook, and see how that class from MCRD did. I suspect if it was compared alongside such artistic endeavors as HBO's Band of Brothers, the aftermath for his classmates would be a national scandal.
(That is, it would if the yellow-backed cowardly jackasses culpable for that generation's treatment had any sense of self-respect. John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and almost everyone in Hollywood, call your office.)

Please read what I wrote, instead of what you imagined I wrote, and note that I didn't ask for praise, nor even thanks. As if either would ever be forthcoming. Just a little unspoken respect, and acting like decent Americans, all on your own. It's not like I demanded you stand watch in Bumfuckistan at 3AM 8000 miles away from home in freezing rain for less than minimum wage, or something equally unreasonable. But as befits those of lesser mettle, just don't be douchebags, and flaming embarrassments to your entire country. That's all.

FTR, I haven't seen any "bending over backwards", except for about five minutes after the Gulf War, which was over in, what, 72 hours on the ground, and six weeks of near-bloodless air pummeling? And that was 26 years ago.

But I've lost track of how many movies, articles, and newspaper stories have done nothing but paint every vet as a defective drug-addicted suicidal PTSD loser, going back to about 1966. The only bending I've seen is actual vets, being bent over before they take it in the pants, yet again.

We won't even talk much about the pampered pussies of the NFL, or their mostly libtard kissass owners. The only thing that hasn't been beaten almost to death there (that ought to be) is the players pulling that crap.
The best thing we could do, instead of having the Army start taking Cat IV retards and psych cases, should be re-instituting national conscription. I'd start with the NFL; they already understand how a draft works, and giving those overpaid thugs some constructive supervision would probably straighten out more than a few of them. And the rest could use some serious wall-to-wall counseling, from people who aren't playing a kid's game.

{Oh, and while we're there, let's draft the chicks, too. Nothing will cool all that happygas BS about "women in combat" like mandating that 50% of all draftees be women, starting tomorrow, and that they be assigned to infantry, artillery, and armor units at the exact same percentage males are. If they wash out, keep drafting women until they find enough to fill the quotas. That will be every woman of draft age in America, by the way, to find the three dozen living that can pass the current standards. Sure, if there's a shooting war, they'll die in droves, and get half their male counterparts killed too, but what's that compared to seriously inconveniencing 20 million crippled women washouts, and serving the "Diversity is our strength" mantra?}

And don't even start with what the 97% have paid for; I've seen the pictures of sewer rats and cockroaches running through the VA hospitals without a single civil service oxygen thief running that shitshow demoted, fired, or prosecuted once going back to the 1970s, while vets back to the WWII are literally dying waiting to see a doctor. That's what taxes and war bonds (War bonds? Those haven't been a thing since, when...? 1945?? How old are you?) have paid for.

I'm sorry if a half-serious comment hurt your feelings. Really, I am.
You seem to be a pretty bright and decent guy, a fellow blogger, and well-known author, and I think what I wrote struck a lot closer to home for you than I ever intended. That a mostly tongue-in-cheek comment gets you that riled says more about you, I think, that it does about the sentiment I expressed.
But sneering at those who never donned the uniform?
What would be the point?
The phrase "He never served" is so pregnant with meaning to those who have, none of us would ever waste the effort to even exercise our facial muscles about it. Mainly because the military isn't for everybody, and I'm actually pretty happy for many of those who never attempted it (not least of all because I wouldn't trust any number of them with firearms, high explosives, nor any conveyance more complicated than a pack mule).

I merely repeat my fond yearning from the original post, that those of you, by happenstance, choice, temperament, or accidents of fate, who never put yourselves at risk for the country, to please not make those of us who did wish we hadn't either.

I don't think that's really too much to ask for.

And the only contempt I've seen expressed has all been going the other way, pretty much non-stop, for decades. (When, in contrast, the Westboro @$$clowns get beaten to a bloody pulp by bystanders for mocking and jeering at soldiers who've died, and NFL take-a-knee protesters start getting the Tonya Harding steel pipe leg massage every time they venture out amongst the public, give a holler. I not only want to watch, I'd pay to see that.)

I'll even go out on a limb, and say that if those who served from about 1917-1991 knew how their children and grandchildren were going to f**k up both the country, and the world, they'd have probably stayed home too. Mainly so that succeeding generations of their progeny would get to learn the hard way and first-person what simple common sense would have taught them otherwise, and exactly how, in all likelihood, they're going to learn the lesson when it's dropped on their doorstep again and again, like it was on 9/11.