Pippin, I thoroughly understand your frustrations, and love your fervor for America.
Hear me well, though. The current situation does not hold a candle to the vilification our heroes endured returning from Southeast Asia - I LIVED THAT ONE as a military wife, and there were no thank you's at all during those years.
When my husband returned from his year there, in the airport in San Francisco, a flower child yelled to him he was a 'baby killer' and spit in his face.
The truth is, he routinely went to the villages surrounding the air force base he guarded, looking for the communist infiltrators intent upon downing our aircraft, seeing what they had done to those in authority there.
One day they had rounded up the village and took the elder's grandson, a lad of 5, and pierced his eardrums with shards of bamboo.
Then they took his 12-year old granddaughter and several 'had their way' with her - cut out her private parts and beheaded her, stuffing those 'parts' in her mouth, and impaled the head on a fence post as an 'example' of what their communist reign would mean.
HOW DO YOU THINK OUR MEN FELT, SEEING WHAT THE SPREAD OF COMMUNISM MEANT??
How determined they were that communism would not take over those nations and spread it to AMERICA??
The Peaceniks DID NOT GET IT THEN, EITHER - and why so many of us Golden Eagles are so fired up and determined they will not hold sway now.
By the way, his instinctive reaction to her act (fresh out of the jungle and a year in combat) was to snap her arm - and he and about 50 other men who were behind him dragged a bunch of kiddies into the bathroom for a Lesson in "Thou Shalt Not Spit in Public 101."
The airport policemen waited outside so they would not be disturbed..:))
On his flights across the country to reach home, having to travel in uniform to get lower rates, he was literally forced by the stewardesses to sit in the REAR of the plane, so he would not disturb the civilians aboard!
And by the way, in his off time at Tahkli AFB, he regularly scrounged food and used the Chaplain's jeep to take it to the starving villagers.
One day, the chief greeted him, weeping, and placed Bernie's hands upon his head as a tribute.
Related the communists the night before had taken every bit of their food except for 3 chickens they had hidden.....
I spent a year alone with three children, without any public emotional support, even while teaching in a military base school, grades 1-8.
The other women there were afraid that to speak of Southeast Asia at all would bring orders for their husbands to go to over!
We count on your generation to keep this country on a steady course, Pippin, and appreciate your going to the D.C.Freeps!