Monday, November 11, 2019
Veteran's Day PSA
Look, kids, I understand this may be hard to grasp, especially for the 99.5% (the actual percentage) of Americans that have never and will never serve in the military (vs., e.g., the U.S. circa 1944, when 1 in 6 military-aged males was, in fact, in uniform). Don't get me wrong, military service isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong per se with being a civilian, but it's not exactly hard: you don't even have to take a physical.
But here's the thing that some of you keep fornicating up, over and over, year after year.
The Fourth of July is pretty self explanatory, and people seem to grasp Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Most times.
But Memorial Day comes in May (yes, every year, Snowflake), and as the name might subtly imply, it's the day you celebrate those who died in the military service of their country, particularly this one.
Today, by contrast, is Veteran's Day, which those possessing more facility with vocabulary might have sussed out (without a good head-slapping with a frozen mackerel) is for people who served (or still are) in the military, and therefore still alive.
You could look this up, cupcakes, but Memorial Day was originally Decoration Day, when the tradition was to decorate the graves of the honored dead.
Veteran's Day was originally Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of the War To End All Wars (before we started numbering humanity's massive clusterf**ks). It isn't that any more. And, let's face it, saying "Thank you for your service" which I'll generally tolerate today, isn't going to do a lot of good for guys dead and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. They can't hear you.
So, just maybe, write this on your hand with a Sharpie:
Memorial Day: dead guys.
Veteran's Day: live guys.
Then you won't be caught on the internet posting Taps, Last Post, In Flanders Field, and any twenty other clips, photos, or memes of guys in flag-draped coffins, today, and the Gunny, above, won't have to smack you in both sides of your slimy civilian head to help you correct your malfunction.
Please?
We appreciate that as a general rule, the childishness and churlishness of the hippie scumbags during the Vietnam Era has given way to thanks (at levels from sincere to patronizing ignorance) to vets, as opposed to spitting on them all, calling them baby killers, and asking them how many people they killed. Walk tall. You're not the juvenile walking penises the pussified flower children of the Sixties were.
But if you really appreciate veteran's service today, don't force them to humor you for being too retarded to know the difference.
Get that part right, and maybe next year, we can work on disabusing low-information nitwits of the notion that everybody wearing an old army jacket and begging for cash is an actual homeless veteran rather than a chiseling valor thief, and of the liberal asshole meme via Hollyweird that most vets are out panhandling alcoholics and strung out on drugs, from all that PTSD, or one step from climbing a tower with a rifle.
Maybe.
If you work really hard, and pay close attention.
But for today, just remember, it's for the guys still alive.
Not the ones lying under rows of crosses in 20 foreign countries.
Baby steps, campers.
If you've got this without being told, or you're here from 20 other countries celebrating Armistice Day for what it originally was and is elsewhere, carry on.
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17 comments:
Thanks. This is a pet peeve of mine. THIS year my church got it right, finally, by only thanking living veterans.
Michael Ramirez cartoon: "Happy Veterans Day. Can you give my cat a checkup?"
I don't celebrate it. I usually work on it. When I don't I stay at home. Don't see the point in standing in line for an hour and sitting in an over crowded restaurant for a mediocre $10 meal. I've grown especially annoyed over the years with staff. Due to my youthful boyish looks (31) they tend to go CSI on my identification. All while not giving a cursory glance to anyone wearing mismatched uniforms or ROTC PT clothing. I sit asking myself if it was worth it (totally) and let existential dread seep in.
Thanks for giving the lesson Aesop. Maybe some of that will sink in. Perhaps next May you can run a course on why one should NOT say 'Happy Memorial Day'.
Jack, maybe you need to hang out somewhere else on Veterans Day.
My VFW post holds a ceremony at 1100 open to all, with food afterwards. A large group jumps into the post van (or vans some years) to make the rounds of area VFW and American Legion posts. we usually get visitors from other posts stopping by.
It's both inspiring and humbling to listen to the conversations around the bar by folks that have been there and done that. (I really don't feel like I deserve to be included with them given what they went through vs my relatively easy time in).
Check around locally, you might find something similar.
A salute to my brothers and sisters, especially those still holding the line against the barbarians.
Quite true for Americans. For other countries (really, the Anglosphere less us) then November 11 really is their equivalent of Memorial Day. Ours got started fifty years before theirs, in the aftermath of the American War of Southern Independence.
Link not working.
Had to do a little shopping today, stopped by White Castle for some b'fast shits.
Kid at the counter didn't even look at my VA cripple-card after I asked about the VD special.
I figured the least I can do to recoup a little after the vacant "thank you for your service" rah-rah Chinese-made-flag waving the rest of the year.
Veterans' Day is the chauffeur monkey-brain idea; the back-seat lizard-brain concept of Remembrance Day carries more reverence, respect and purpose.
In the US of A occasions such as Veteran's Day are frequently male bovine fecal material, particularly for those who have always been at a remove from the services. In my case, being of the governance caste, it was normative over the millennia to participate in the various aspects of the social order in which one found oneself.
As Hitler and Tojo played their parts for the class the stars fell on, so too Saddam Hussein played his part in my fledging from LTC to bird. But rather than service, it is more the natural course of events.
I've taken to saying " Memorial Day is for those who didn't get to LIVE to BE veterans". It sometimes works.
This is day day to gather the clan and check on my brothers and sisters; happy to report things are almost uniformly good.
Boat Guy
Can we get a pass if we post a picture of poppies, THIS year only in order to "honor" the Canadians?
I like the 3rd verse of the National Anthem for Veterans Day.
Good post for those of you native born Americans but in my case even after being in this country since I was eight years old from the UK and having retired after 22 years in the US Army, November 11 will always be Remembrance Day honouring the War Dead, red poppies and all.
@Don
You get a pass because you know the difference, and you know why.
Most folks hereabouts who should, not so much...
I've always considered Armed Forces Day (third Saturday in May) to be for honoring CURRENT service members, Veterans Day for honoring former service members (IOW Veterans) and Memorial Day for honoring those who died in the service. So I generally consider it appropriate to place a flag on my Dad's grave on Veterans Day, because he was a Marine in WW II, survived the experience (so he WAS a Veteran) and he died in 1988.
I'm willing to be educated if I got it wrong however.
Mark D
A former military individual informs me that
"there IS a wreath laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day just as there is in May for Memorial Day. So we do recognize war dead in November, not just in May. But in November we honor all who have served including those who did not return from the battlefield. "
If correct, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, I must regretfully inform you that your head-slap status has been stamped REJECTED.
No, it has not.
Dead veterans are still veterans, and tradition at the Tomb Of The Unknowns is one that will be upheld as long as anyone who can draws breath.
That's what the Old Guard does.
But most of the dipsh*ts walking around on the day are too clueless to realize that the day is not about dead veterans, (who have had a special day of remembrance since decades before November 11th was a thing: you could look it up), and who generally fall all over themselves posting dead veteran tributes, while they're stepping over and around the 5000 live ones they bump into and ignore every day.
Veterans' Day isn't just abut the four or five dead guys under the wreath; it's about the entire regiment of guys standing guard over them, 24/7/365/100 years and counting.
Sorry about your other ear. ;)
Is it still okay to use Veterans Day to celebrate veterans who did not die while in military service but are still dead today?
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