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The Vietnam War was a different story entirely. In many ways, it was the beginning of the giant schism in American society between the military and the public. Even though there was a draft, wealthy kids could stay in college on deferment after deferment, while others who couldn't afford college or who didn't have the brains or the desire to attend a university, were subject to the draft and a ticket to Southeast Asia.

But some of those who had the means and the brains enlisted and didn't wait for the draft.

For those who had the means but not the inclination, the deferment was the means by which the New Left skewed the pool of teachers, sociologists, psychologists, journalists, etc. to the Left, towards their Communist ideologies, and so populated those sectors with people polluted by their ideology they guaranteed the next wave of leftist minds would have the credentials to propel their mindset forward another generation.

While Americans were winning the war in jungles, rice paddies, and skies over Southeast Asia, another war was being lost in the universities and television studios of America.

The result: a gigantic cultural divide between the mainly blue collar military and the public who gradually began to blame the war on the troops and began to lash out at the brave men who fought in Vietnam.

A public who had lost the basic belief that our cause was just, our warriors noble in their task, who had lost sight that the fight for freedom at home and abroad was a worthy fight, because their minds had been filled with the muddied mush our enemies fed them daily from the bully pulpits of the news media, the entertainment sector, and every aspect of popular culture.

In sync with our enemies' agenda, even as we showed our martial might, we allowed our cause to be undermined, we quit having our children pledge their allegiance to their Country and their God at the start of their school day, abandoned clarity of thought for the 'expansion of minds' and turned our cultural back on the concept that an idea can be unequivocally right to the exclusion of all other ideas. While the messiness of war was played across magazine pages and the television to horrify the insulated masses, the slaughter of babies in the womb was declared a 'right'.

There are some things which will always be right, and some which will never be right. There are some people, people who do or did run toward the sounds of trouble rather than away, who know this deep in the fiber of their being. For them no explanation is necessary; for those who do not understand, none will suffice.

America has trivialized so much with 'hashtag this' and "save the..." that that even sincere thanks come out in catch phrases that have been stripped of value and become cliches, despite being genuinely meant to convey respect, thanks, and admiration.

Just send a check, pennies a day to...and you will be absolved... That is what 'caring' has been largely reduced to. People 'communicate' via Facebook or linkedin or text back and forth across the table, not face to face.

Scoundrels do hide behind those phrases, and the sincere may be stripped of credibility by the triteness of those combinations of words that rise so easily, almost fashionably to their lips, no matter how sincerely they are meant.

And while you were away, some pencil-neck in human resources was cooking up a new policy which would have you keel-hauled for calling some stupid ______ (fill in the blank) a stupid ______ (fill in the blank) in just so many words.

It makes the transition from living and playing and fighting rough to the rabbithole of civilian Candyland harder; the tendency to engage in conflict resolution under a different, more basic set of rules suddenly unacceptable--to the same people you were fighting for.

Keep in mind most of them have never had to depend on the person next to them for their well being or their very lives. Some of them have only watched another's back for the opportunity to put the proverbial knife in.

Many who are sincere will find another way to say thanks, beyond the phrases rendered trite by people who use them without understanding, but that does not mean those who do understand mean what they say any less when they say thanks. Take it at face value, most of us mean it.

FWIW, I am not a veteran, was a firefighter/EMS for a while, and have worked nearly 4 decades in the oil patch, where about half of the people I have worked with have been veterans.

When I say "Thanks" --and that's for whatever you did, from paperwork or answering phones to heavy contact--I mean it.