Posted on 10/20/2024 7:11:26 PM PDT by rlmorel
I saw this sign today in my neighborhood. I take particular exception to this one.
It isn't just the open usage of a libelous slander that bothers me, it is the open support for people who wish to destroy this country.
I saw this sign, and thought this of the person who put that sign out: "You may be a veteran, but if you support the Democrat Party, you are both a sucker and a loser.
I give default respect to anyone who has served. In the absence of any indication that the person might not be deserving of respect, they get it, no questions asked.
But supporting the Democrat Party invalidates that respect.
"Dirty Josey" Benson's husband [Michigan] is one of them.
My belief is that they're getting training on how to deal with us Deplorables.
Make sure you train, too.
Blacks support the party that enslaved them.
I have begun calling the people that support The Boxers Lamprey Puppet “kamunists” or “kammunists”.
Jimmie Clyburn got a nice suit out of being Pedo Joe Biden's step-n-fetch it...
The rank and file that weren’t in long enough to establish pension benefits have zero power. They received training in a military service and maybe some education or home ownership financial benefits. The military branches are run by the careerists and those careerists do what their civilian masters tell them to do.
This person with his stupid sign, thinks Trump called WW1 veterans suckers & losers.
He’s a believe whatever a superior tells him type of person. Whether that is the media or a high ranking officer in the military.
These people are different.
These are the ones we served with that were always at sick call.
They never read the TMs and never knew anything. Stood to the side or got us the screwdrivers we asked for when fixing stuff.
There are a lot of losers in the military. I met a lot of them.
The trouble with the new America is, most Republicans AREN’T Republicans and a large majority of VETERANS THESE DAYS AREN’T VETERANS. Liars are a dime a dozen in America. Personally, I don’t trust anybody anymore.
West Point recently graduated an avowed Commie and then refused FOIA requests sent regarding the student’s current status and punishment.
Tells you all you need to know, I think. Obviously, the officers and civilians running it and teaching there sympathize, otherwise that little sh¡t would have been out on his tail.
These people exist everywhere. I work with a Mavy vet (submariner) who is so appalled at the idea of voting for Trump that he brings it up pretty often. He’s around sixty.
It’s near impossible to accept that some people beg to lick the boot that stomps them. It gives them meaning.
I’ve never been relieved of my oath since August of 1967 when my dad swore me in. The oath may need revised to read “...enemies foreign or democratic....”. I know quite a few vets that have swallowed the kool aid. Zero respect.
I understand, but I do feel differently. (I apologize for the length of this, but I feel so strongly about it that I have the need to convey it fully)
I grew up in a Navy family, and as a family, it was quite different than almost any non-military family. That type of family life has great rewards and great hazards, and we had both of them. My parents barely stayed together, but they did...and when they passed, it was in a state of love for each other that was difficult to see in those years.
As for myself, when I enlisted, I did many things that absolutely are no different on the surface from a task or job that would be done by any guy my age.
But it isn’t that end of things that compels me to deliver “default respect” to anyone who served.
I don’t know what my life would have been like had I graduated from high school and gone on to work at some job or go to college. I couldn’t have gone to college. I was a terrible student, and hated schooling with a white-hot passion.
But even though I wasn’t a screw-up, I had issues with confidence and capability. I didn’t think I was talented enough, and even though I was dependable enough to be able to give my word I would be somewhere to do something, I was still an unfocused, unsure eighteen year old with a lack of self confidence.
So, with my best friend, I joined the Navy. My parents were supportive, including my father who had served 30 years encompassing WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
It was what I found in the Navy that induces me to deliver what I call “default respect” to those who served. I had grown up around the Navy, but when I enlisted, I grew up IN the Navy. I found that I had good qualities that would take me far in life. I didn’t think I was particularly bright, but I found that I was quite bright enough. I found I could work as hard as other people, or harder, and was tenacious with a task, nearly to a point of fault. I found that I was good at doing things and teaching others how to do them. And I found I could fit in, get along, and grow.
I went to college on the GI Bill when I got out. At 18, there is no way I could have done college. But at 21, I was ready, and I ended up with two degrees. As it is, I am past retirement age, but keeping going.
Some years ago, I was involved in some corporate “team building” exercise, where we were instructed to remove a coin from our pocket, look at the date, and tell the group what was going on in our lives at that point.
I looked at the quarter I pulled out, and it had the date of 1978 on it. I was pondering it, and when I was called on, I choked up. I am certain people there did not understand it and were puzzled.
1978 was the year everything turned on me. It was really the year I felt as if I had really grown up and learned who I was, and felt comfortable in my own skin. It was the year I became a man. And seeing the date on that quarter brought it all back to me. It was the year I began to chart the course of my life.
And I don’t think I am alone in this type of thing. I have made it a point to talk to veterans over the years, and had much opportunity to do so. And I have found, without fail, that those key years in the military forged many of them in the same way I was forged. And I know how powerful that was for me.
If I am involved in hiring for a position, if I see that person had military experience, that gives them a leg up for me. It is that kind of thing that I see as deserving of “default respect”, because in the end, even though though the turning of a wrench on a jet engine while on an aircraft carrier may be absolutely the same as turning a wrench in the confines of a garage that services Fords, it is everything else around it that sets military service apart...having people completely dependent on your doing your job, being on the other side of the earth, working twelve hour shifts, 7 days a week for months on end, and being separated from your loved ones.
And that is for a peacetime military enlistee. Being in the military during wartime, though I have never experienced that, is a completely different ball of wax.
Lastly, the responsibility you are given as a young person has almost no analog in the civilian world. Not even close that I can think of. One of the things that has always made an impact on the military to me is the awesome responsibility it gives to very young people. I use my own experience to relate it:
When I was 20 years old and a flight deck troubleshooter in the squadron I was in, one of our planes was on the aft portion of the flight deck, one of the last to take off in what they called an alpha strike (like a maximum effort launch, everything that could fly would go...that kind of thing)
One of our planes had oil coming out of the belly, so I took off the wraparound panel (probably 30-60 Dzus fasteners, the kind that take a quarter turn to undo) so there were a lot. I took off the panel, and could see oil leaking at a decent rate from a fitting.
I figured it would take me just a couple of minutes to determine if the leak could be stopped...cut the safety wire, tighten the fitting, if it stopped, I could re-wire it, check the oil level, put the panel back on, and be good to go.
I started working, focusing on the work at hand (my head and upper torso inside the plane) when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked down to see a pair of khaki trousers being buffeted by the wind. It was a Chief Aviation Bosun’s mate, and he was one of the senior people on the flight deck.
I stood up and put my ear next to his mouth, and he yelled “CAN THE PLANE TAKE OFF?”
I yelled back “YES. I NEED TO FINISH SAFETY WIRING THIS FITTING AND PUTTING THE PANEL BACK ON...JUST ANOTHER TWO OR THREE MINUTES.”
He yelled “OK. LET ME KNOW WHEN IT IS GOOD TO GO. THE CAPTAIN NEEDS TO FINISH LAUNCHING SO HE CAN CHANGE COURSE.”
I didn’t give it another thought, got right back in, finished the job, and the plane taxied to the catapult, took off, and I went below.
It was only later that I thought of it: That entire carrier task force, the escorts, billions of dollars of equipment and probably 10,000 men were waiting for me to finish my job so they could change course and begin the next phase of operations.
All waiting on me, an average 20 year old guy.
What really struck me as I thought of it was...this is commonplace. We do this all the time. We load the young people in our military up with awesome responsibilities, and we expect them to perform. And they largely do almost ALL the time. When they don’t, people can get maimed or killed.
It is for these reasons that I DO feel that someone who was a 20 year old in the service is worthy of my default respect that goes beyond what I might extend to a 20 year old who went to work out of high school in a factory or garage.
Bless you.
I cannot help but view these people, who of their own volition (not hampered by their intellectual limitations) fully embrace the Democrat Party as anything less than domestic enemies.
And that bothers me a great deal to have come to that conclusion. More than I can express adequately.
This made my blood boil when I saw it. It still does.
If that veteran is voting for a democrap then it is both a sucker and a loser.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Samuel Adams
I have to disagree-I felt that as an enlisted my, I was hugely empowered by that experience.
It is why I treasure the opportunity to have served (as you can see from my post just above explaining why) and it bothers me so much to see the military's transition from largely a meritocracy to a completely politically based organization.
And I think that is a dangerous transition.
I sympathize. However, I don’t want to be someone who denies others the right of having their own opinion.
That’s a dark and dirty road which others have walked before. I know enough not to follow them.
agree
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