Most people, even criminals, are the hero of their own stories. Probably when they signed up they didn’t plan to do any of the crimes you listed, and just sort of fell into it, for a variety of causes.
I’m not saying they don’t need to be dealt with appropriately, but if we’re all just lumps matter obeying the laws of nature, then it is what it is.
I worked for MWR (Naval Station San Diego - civilian) during the first Iraq war. Many of my colleagues were Navy spouses (virtually all women) and I always tried to hire spouses for my department.
Many of them, to my mind, approached being quietly heroic in keeping the home fires burning, as there were a lot of deployments out of NAVSTA to the Gulf. I was shocked by how little low-level sailors make and the women in MWR didn’t make much either - a lot of making do.
I respect folks in the military, but obligatory knee jerk jingoistic patriotism makes me uncomfortable.
My SIL was a recruiter (not sharing which branch) and he saw potential recruits get turned away for some of the most bizarre reasons–the one with bad acne comes to mind.
The days of “we’ll take anyone” have been over for awhile.
I thought the army was still running below needed recruitment levels and currently had lower standards?
Count me as one who thinks the word hero is overused. My observation - not a formal study - is that the military draws from the civilian population and gets a good mix of the good, bad and average. Same applies to the other “hero” occupations- police, fireman, teacher.
To be picky, though, a lot of people volunteer to do jobs that are really, really dangerous:
I know soldiers LOOK heroic, but why is the garbageman less heroic? It’s a hideously dangerous job, and garbage collection is an absolutely central, necessary function, without which a lot more people would die.
You are allowed to quit those jobs without going to jail.
The pay and hours are a lot better and as k9bfriender, you’re allowed to quit.
As already noted, most of the ‘Vietnam vets were treated horribly’ bullshit is just that.
IMHO, it was part 9/11 but the precondition was the increasing separation between the military and the lives of most Americans. From WWII through Vietnam, the draft pulled a fairly wide swath of Americans into the military. Once Nixon instituted the all-volunteer army, that gradually ceased being the case. That was 45 years ago now, so ‘gradually’ has done its work. We say inanities like “thank you for your service” because we don’t know what else to say, and call them ‘heroes’ because we’re too far removed from their experience to know one way or the other.
(This sounds like I believe we should bring back the draft, but I’m actually of two minds on that. The flip side is that a volunteer army can be a much more well-trained, professional army than an army of draftees, and that’s clearly true of ours. Would be nice if we could get the upside without the downside, but I don’t see how.)
Excellent reply. I notice most of the people who reflexively say “Thank you for your service” anytime they meet a veteran are right-wing flag-wavers. They’re quick with the empty patriotism, but also the most likely to espouse values (and support politicians who enact policies) completely contrary to what our armed forces are supposedly defending.
In the pre-email era, a local newspaper columnist addressed the fact that local teachers made less money than city garbagemen, and wondered why, thinking that perhaps it was a gender issue. :rolleyes: . He got a LOT of feedback about it, and one letter was from a married couple; she was a teacher, and he was a garbageman with a master’s degree. They had come here for her job, and he was a very active young man who liked being outdoors and took the GM job when he found himself having trouble finding a job in his field. They said he didn’t plan to do it forever, but it was a tough, dangerous job and there’s more to know than most people would ever imagine.
My neighbor and friend was in the military for almost 30 years, and is entitled to lifelong benefits because he was at Fallujah. He told me that there is no excuse for a veteran to be homeless, because so many services are available to them, both through the government and elsewhere. He and I agreed that a lot of them are probably unable to access or use those services because they refuse to follow rules.
See, this brings up something different: for all that veterans get too much credit, military spouses get far too little. You have to find a new job every six months, you have to deal with your spouse being away for years at a time (to do something that they signed up for but you didn’t), and may only get them back in a coffin.
It is. But most of the areas they need people for are specialist/officer roles, not “stand there and hold this gun” grunt jobs.
Also, the guys who put their lives on the line so that we can eat crabs. I mean, crabs are fucking delicious, and these guys are out there suffering and frequently getting killed just to bring them to us. OK, I mean, really they’re doing it for the money, which is substantial…but what the hell, they are still heroes just for getting the crabs at all. Do you want to live in a world without crabs? If you do, you are a despicable individual.
And don’t forget:
Maternal mortality rates in the US are still over 26 per 100,000 live births; compare that to 33 on-the-job fatalities per 100,000 sanitation workers and under 22 for construction workers and electrical workers. Loggers have a much higher fatality rate of 91 per 100,000, and police patrol officers considerably lower, at 10 per 100,000.
So you must have a LOT of respect for late-night convenience and liquor store cashiers?
Seeing as their violent-death-per-100000-per-year is twice that of US military servicemen?
In Islam, women who die in childbirth are considered equal in honor to martyrs who gave their lives in combat.
The United States has the appalling worst rate of maternal mortality in the developed world. And getting worse. This is what you get for spending more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world. :smack:
When I was in boot camp in 1993, there was a guy who said this was why he enlisted. As I recall, he got shitcanned about halfway through for not progressing in his PT tests.
I dunno. When you sign up, you’re taking the risk of putting your life on the line for your country. But you’re getting paid to do that. Maybe not heroic, but definitely more worthy of respect than flipping burgers. IMO.
However, it doesn’t automatically confer expertise on anything outside of the military, just like being a “school shooting survivor” doesn’t confer expertise on gun control policy.
For that matter, being a veteran, even a combat veteran, does not confer expertise on gun control policy.
I routinely see pro-gun-control articles posted by people using their own military veteran status to give them cred, to say, “see, I’m a veteran, I carried this rifle [actually a fully-automatic version of it] and blah blah blah.” OK, but then for every veteran with that opinion, you’ll find 10 with exactly the opposite view. If you’re gonna use the “appeal to military experience authority” angle to bolster a gun control argument, what happens when 60 guys who have rappeled out of helicopters into hot LZs, taken fire, and put tourniquets on their friends’ arms to keep them from bleeding to death, vociferously oppose gun control?
They battle it out and the group that survives gets to dictate gun policy, of course.