It was, uh, the very popular Long Island dialect of Italian. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Long Island Italian.
Thanks for the assist, Euty.
The OP has been answered here, and most of the various follow-ups either are flame wars or are on their way there or are a comment on my moderation of this forum. So I’m sending this thread to the Pit.
Hang on, folks, it gets a little bumpy flying over MPSIMS on the approach!
So being ignorant or knowing the truth is unpatriotic? I don’t know what country you live in, but I’d rather people be patriotic based on truth rather than on exciting but false stories.
What about the draftees.
I’ll let my dad know. He seems to have gotten his peace about it after years of therapy for PTSD.
Patriotism is important. It shows a love of the land that bore you and respect for those who died that you may live in peace and freedom. One can be a patriot and love one’s homeland without descending into noisy jingoism. Anyone who is ungrateful and uncaring of the sacrifices made for his benefit is to be pitied.
On the other hand, patriotic feeling should not be inspired by falsehood. We can be inspired by our nation’s triumphs, but we should also learn about America’s failures so that we don’t make the same mistakes again. We need to see our ancestors not as infallible supermen, but as life-size mortals who accomplished great things. Ben Franklin was a brilliant inventor and statesman, but he was a rotten father and a notorious libertine. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the most capable men our nation ever produced, but he did not manumit his slaves until he died.
I would recommend that y’all read Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, both by James K. Loewen, which are tad lefty, but also clear away some of the mythic underbrush from our history.
Not to belabor the obvious or to be trite or disrespectful, but no land bore me, goboy–my parents bore me, and they happened to live on this particular parcel of land at the time they did. Had my father’s family not emigrated here at the close of the 19th century, I might have been born in Poland or Hungary. I find it difficult to get terribly worked up over coincidences of geography, and I’ve never really understood them. Am I glad I live here rather than, say, Liberia, and am I glad I live in the 20th century and not the 16th? I suppose so, although it’s not as if I had control over it. It just happened.
No one?
I am a counselor for disabled and/or homeless veterans. I guess all the PTSD support systems (i.e. Vet Centers, therapy, etc.), not to mention the monetary and medical benefits are a figment of our imagination?
Just what do you mean by your statement?
Oh, and Farmer? Freedom of speech doesn’t apply to a privately owned website. You’re (note the difference between “your” and “you’re”) a dumbass.
Oh, and I’m with Phil. Patriotic isn’t the same as “Believe anything without question”.
I have also received this in my e-mail about a half dozen times but have yet to see anything that verifies the claims. Pardon me if I am skeptical.
I am also curious as to:
Do you know the author? Why no attribution? Can this person back up his claims by proven facts?
A variation of this “Framers/Signers” dealie appeared in yesterday’s Ann Landers column, sent in by a reader without attribution, an almost sure sign that much of the information contained therein is false. Ann is not real big on fact-checking.
I can be as cynical as the next guy, but I submit that even a completely fictional article that can raise the level of patriotism in this country is a good thing.
Those of you who differ in opinion seem to wear your debunking as if it were a badge of honor, and in this particular case, unlike many others, it sickens me. Do you believe that whomever wrote this piece wrote it with malicious intent? Certainly not. I feel as if you’re spurred on by a kind of bloodlust, caught up in the thrill of the hunt. There’s no need. It helps nobody here.
You want something to prove to be a fake? Go after David Copperfield. I would say that he’s in league with the devil, but I’ve already proven, in another thread, that the devil does not exist.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the end results justify the means. That article could well be one of those means with good results.
Some things are better left unsaid. And with that, I’ll get off my soap box, and shut the hell up. Thank you for your time.
Oh, horseshit, Mr. Cynical.
It’s one thing if you’re talking about an article which is fictional and presents itself as fiction, and is designed to induce patriotic feelings.
It’s quite another, as in this case, when you’re talking about an article which purports to be an account of recorded history and real people, and is brandished by someone as a true account, for the purpose of making someone else feel ashamed of not being a True-Blue American like the one doing the brandishing. Generally, sensible people are opposed to teaching lies as history, and if these are lies masquerading as facts, the people spreading them as facts should be ashamed.
Also, patriotism-for-patriotism’s-sake is best referred to as jingoism, and is, IMNSHO, a badge of idiocy rather than pride.
Mr. Cynical -
Let me see if I am understanding you correctly. Are you saying that the American public should soak up stories such as this and accept them as historical fact? Sorry, I don’t believe that goes hand in hand in fighting ignorance, do you? I find it a little insulting that you think the general public gullible enough to base their patriotic feelings on something that may or may not be fact. There are many other proven historical facts that contribute to an overall American public “feel good” patriotism without having to grasp at e-mail routing stories.
If it “makes you sick” when someone asks for verification of something that was stated as fact, you better load up on the barf bag supply. There tends to be a large group of SDMB posters who aren’t so willing to eat up everything thrown their way without some sort of proof. Get used to it.
I am more than willing to believe this story if someone can show me more solid proof than e-mail bombardment and a mention in Ann Landers, until then I remain skeptical.
I have to agree with Diane and Phil, mythologizing to inspire patriotism is harmful. The real story of America, warts and all, is far more inspiring than fanciful tales that reassure folks that America is always right. I, as posters who have read my immigration and patriotism threads might know, take a back seat to nobody in my love of country. However, telling pious falshoods to inspire patriotism isn’t history, it’s propaganda. If we gloss over the errors our nation has made, we risk committing those errors again; Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Palmer raids after WWI, and the intern- ment of Japanese-Americans during WWII are cases of civil rights of citizens being trampled by the government.
That BS e-mail about the signers of the Declaration is worthless if it tells lies. We can learn nothing about our country or ourselves from myths.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Diane *
**
I suppose what I meant was that all the anti-war activists that were around in the 60s and 70s, as well as people of the same mindset that are around today still accuse us of being ‘babykillers’ and whatever other mindless drivel they can think of. Don’t take offense. But now that you mention it, if someone tries to enter the VA PTSD system today, they are told that it will be about two years before their case can be decided. I know, because I help veterans do just that. No one accused you of being a figment of anyone’s imagination although you might as well be for all the good most of you do.
Maybe, after you and Phil finish your ‘skepticism’ class, you should take one in ‘English’. There, you should learn the concept of the ‘allegory’, in which, to make a point, one gives an example which, while not necessarily true in itself, points at the truth. You seem to be a little too worried about the literal truth of something that was clearly to make a point. ‘Anal’ is a word you have no doubt heard many times.
In order to satisfy all of you who insist on the exact literal truth in all written posts, please allow me to refer you to the National Archives, here:
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/constitution/confath.html
Of course, this presupposes that you can determine the complete accuracy of historical events as they were written by (1) the winners of any given conflict, or (2) the lawyers who wrote the politically correct version of any given event. You can’t. But you can rant on about ‘supposed historical fact’ when in fact, my version, whether allegory or not, is as likely to portray the events as precisely as anything else. What difference does it make to you? The biology books I had to memorize in seventh grade were wrong in many respects. So were the history books. Paleontology texts are revised daily. Get a grip. If you don’t like my version show me where it should be corrected instead of yapping that you THINK it’s wrong.
Gee, tc, you seem like too smart a guy not to know how to click on a link. Chronos provided exactly what you request way back on page one. For your convenience, I reproduce it here.
If you’ll read it, you’ll find that some of the stories in your glurge are true, others are partly true and others have little basis in fact. The author of the piece goes well out of his way to make the point that many of the signers did in fact make extraordinary sacrifices because of or following signing the document. That is not in dispute. What is up for discussion is the specific list discussed in the email you reproduced.
Getting the facts just right, well that’s pretty much what we do around here. One need not be unpatriotic to insist that our history not come from the Paul Harveys of the world.
Aloha Mr. Cynical.
Thank you for your erudite and to-the-point comments. You are a light in the darkness.
Please do not worry too much about what Diane thinks. She is a vet counselor. Our (the veteran’s) experience of vet counselors is that, for the most part, they are anal retentive couch commandos who know everything…or act like they do…but are clueless and, need I say it? Useless. Of course, she might be the exception, but she seems nasty enough to be a vet counselor. God knows they don’t get hired for their care and concern vis-a-vis their clients.
That fact is obvious to everyone since you see how fast she was to jump on me after I said I was a Viet-Nam veteran and a PTSD sufferer. That’s about par for vet counselors. Like I said, either completely clueless or working above their level of incompetence.
This one in particular completely misunderstands the meaning of the word ‘allegory’ and the fact that allegories are in general useage throughout the English language. For more on this, feel free to read this thread in the BBQ pit where it belongs.
Amazing how quickly some people can backpedal when they’ve been caught dissing out shit and disguising it as chocolate pie, isn’t it?
Let’s recap: In the third post of this thread, yojimbo describes the Bud Dwyer suicide video as “horrible,” a term most of us would use to describe footage of a man sticking a gun in his mouth and blowing the back of his head off. tcburnett comes back with:
Implication? “You aren’t allowed to call anything horrible unless you’ve been in combat.”
Then, when he gets called on it, he comes back with:
Nasty? Like calling someone’s suicide “vanilla”?
Do you see the word “allegory” in there anywhere, folks? Or, “instructive lesson”? Nope. tcburnett is presenting it as truth, because he found it on the Internet, and therefore it MUST be true. He also can’t distinguish between “not supporting the Vietnam war” and “being unpatriotic.”
As the son of a Vietnam vet, I’m ashamed my father had to be there. I don’t blame him–he enlisted in 1962 and really had no other options–but I’m not going to pretend there was anything particularly patriotic about Vietnam. I’d rather he had been spared what he went through, and so would he.
Don’t get all pissy with us, tc, just because you got caught trying to engage in self-aggrandizement through a bunch of half-truths. Suck it up and take it like a fucking man.
Oh, and BTW, I’ve known Diane as a poster for several years now, and she’s one of the coolest, most sensible people I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with. I also knows that, despite the fact that she’s obviously smart and talented and probably could have other career options, she volunteered to take on the task of working with homeless and disabled veterans, who don’t have privleges like computers and the leisure time to act like assholes on an Internet message board. These guys live on the fucking streets. And by all accounts, Diane is good at her job and her people love her. So if you’ve had a problem with a VA official, don’t blame her. Maybe you’re just a prick and people don’t like you.
This is just plain bullshit.
I don’t know where or how you used to help other veterans obtain benefits, but the average time to process a PTSD service connected compensation claim is 6 to 9 months.
Ninety percent of the processing period is obtaining stressor verification from military records. Once the VA has all records it takes 30 to 90 days in a rating board to make their decision.
But then again, what the hell would I know about something like that, I’ve only been helping these guys for 13 fucking years!
Oh, and just what is the VA PTSD program you speak of?
There is the PTSD clinic which doesn’t take any amount of time for anything to be decided as it is open to all vets experiencing mental problems from any traumatic incidences that happened during military service. This does not necessarily mean they served combat duty.
The same goes with Vet Centers. Having problems? Just show up.
Or are you referring to the Service Connected Compensation Program? This is NOT exclusive to those suffering PTSD, but is a monthly payment that is paid to those veterans with any disability that has occurred during military service. As I said above, this process takes 6 to 9 months due to the large amount of claims received by the agency who verifies military stressors. (U.S. Armed Services Center for Research of Unit Records, Springfield, VA). Although it appears to be a long time to verify stressors, you should know that they handle any and all PTSD claims filed nationwide and must do thorough research of military records.
Or are you referring to the PTSD extended in-hospital care centers for those suffering severe symptoms (Palo Alto here on the west coast)? There is no processing period as veterans are referred by their doctor if deemed necessary.
Please clarify.
Diane:
Where you volunteer, do you generally see a lot of vets who feel that fighting in a war gives them the license to be a sanctimonious asshole to everyone?
Just curious… I’ve seen this phenomenon before, but I am unaware how often it rears its ugly head…
Yer pal,
Satan
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There’s an excellent book called Stolen Valor, cowritten by a Texas Vietnam vet-turned-businessman and an investigative journalist. The book deals with the phenomenon of men falsely claiming to have served in Vietnam who tell tales of atrocities and horrors to get people’s pity or make themselves seem important, sort of a military variety of Munchausen’s Syndrome. A recent instance was the AP story about the man who falsely claimed to have killed civilians at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, but who was never there
IRL.