Pretty sure it goes back to the terrible treatment soldiers received when returning from Vietnam. When the Gulf War happened in the early '90s, people went in the opposite direction, showering troops with well wishes. Add in some patriotic peer pressure, and a little bit of puritanical “if a little bit of well wishes is good, then we must endeavor to be VERY good by overdoing it”, and you get to where we are today, i.e. nobody wants to be the one who isn’t heaping enough praise on our veterans.
I believe that statistically the most dangerous job is farming.
I’m a veteran, Army, 1974-1977. I had never though about the military as an option, but when the recruiter made a cold call a year after high school and spoke about school benefits, I started listening. I wasn’t all that patriotic before joining I’ll admit. But the Army helped me finish college later with no debt.
I’ve never taken a military benefit or discount in stores or restaurants. The only time I have acknowledged my time is during the Veterans Day service at church, when they have any of us stand up to be recognized. I was kind of surprised that I’m the only female veteran in the congregation.
At least in terms of death rate, it’s either logging or fishing. It varies depending on source after that, but roofers, oil derrick operators, and aircraft pilots rank pretty high as well. Farmers usually come in towards the end of the top 10. If you include serious injuries as well as deaths that might change, but I would guess logging and fishing would still be at the top. A few sources:
Yeah, I grew up in a farming town. I can think of two men missing hands and two missing most of their fingers off of one.
Although not confirmable, the on-the-job death rate of early electrical linemen is believed to be 1 out of 3. That’s about the same death rate of mosquitoes in a bug zapper.
My supermarket has “reserved” parking spots for Super Heroes: military, law enforcement, and first responders. I consider myself a superhero since I spent many years teaching, so I figure that I should qualify.
I don’t park in the spots for Senior Citizens or for expecting/new mothers though.
When I was in college, John Thompson famously lost both arms to a PTO shaft, stumbled back to the farmhouse and dialed 911 using a pencil between his teeth, and then waited in the bathtub so he wouldn’t bleed all over the carpet.
Around that same time, one of my classmates returned from a weekend at home on the farm sporting a series of deep gashes on his leg, courtesy of a close encounter with a grain auger.
My workplace has a shortage of employee parking spaces exacerbated greatly by unauthorized people parking in our lot. It’s been a ( sore ) point of contention for a while, with management vacillating between lip-service and indifference.
Their “solution” now has been to take several-ish heretofore precious parking spaces and turning them into veterans-only parking spaces. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 
When it comes to construction workers I always remember this video. It was national news in 2013, and thankfully had a happy ending. But the gap between happy and would have been sad was fifteen seconds.
I posted the above thoughts earlier this week.
Coincidentally, I was reading a book about Abraham Lincoln’s speeches yesterday and I discovered he made similar points in his 1838 Lyceum address:
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana; - they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning suns of the latter; - they are not the creature of climate - neither are they confined to the slave-holding, or the non-slave-holding States. Alike, they spring up among the pleasure hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order loving citizens of the land of steady habits. - Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.
It would be tedious, as well as useless, to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi, and at St. Louis, are, perhaps, the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case, they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers; a set of men, certainly not following for a livelihood, a very useful, or very honest occupation; but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature, passed but a single year before. Next, negroes, suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection, were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State: then, white men, supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers, from neighboring States, going thither on business, were, in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.
Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short; and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic, if anything of its length, that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man, by the name of McIntosh, was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world.
Such are the effects of mob law; and such as the scenes, becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order; and the stories of which, have even now grown too familiar, to attract any thing more, than an idle remark.
But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, “What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” I answer, it has much to do with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil; and much of its danger consists, in the proneness of our minds, to regard its direct, as its only consequences. Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg, was of but little consequence. They constitute a portion of population, that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept, from the stage of existence, by the plague or small pox, honest men would, perhaps, be much profited, by the operation. - Similar too, is the correct reasoning, in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life, by the perpetration of an outrageous murder, upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city; and had not he died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law, in a very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was, as it could otherwise have been. - But the example in either case, was fearful. - When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil.–By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. - Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed - I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.
I know the American People are much attached to their Government; - I know they would suffer much for its sake; - I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.
Here then, is one point at which danger may be expected.
I’m one of the youngest of GenX, and I’m probably not supposed to talk about how my generation is so small because so many potential members of the latter half of it were legally aborted.
I know two men who had terrible farming accidents. One was crushed when his tractor flipped over while carrying a round bale of hay (round bales weigh around half a ton to a ton); he’s a paraplegic. The other fell through the rotten roof of an old grain silo, plunging to the floor and breaking both his feet. He walks but will always limp severely. They were both in their early thirties at the time of the accidents. I know of others. There’s so many damn things that can happen on a farm.
In the book Freakonomics, this was postulated as a reason for declining crime rates.
I was talking with a friend earlier today and she expressed concern about the fact that I don’t ever go out and spend time with other people. Admittedly, I don’t really have a social life except for going to conventions, but I really don’t have any interest in finding local social groups just so I get out of the house and meet new people.
But I don’t feel comfortable telling her this, because I understand that she feels concerned that I’m getting withdrawn into myself. And maybe I am, but I’m fine with it.
I knew a one armed farmer who lost his arm farming. He could toss hay bales with his one arm better than most people with two.
I also knew a retired farmer in his eighties. He still liked to ride his tractor and keep the fields mowed. While brush-hogging a sloped field he fell from his tractor was brush-hogged.
And we saw exactly that happening in my city, Ottawa, just about a year ago. Every level of government and police dropped the ball on dealing with the “convoy” that was occupying our downtown. The regular citizens became so upset, that a group of private citizens spontaneously organized the most effective anti-convoy action up until the police finally got their act together to end the protest, in the “Battle of Billings Bridge”.
The best people have the highest capacity for evil, but chose to be less evil conditionally.
I don’t think one is supposed to say that Democrats are not nearly as honorable as they think themselves to be. There is endless complaining that Trump and other R’s have been maintaining that they had won, or at least ‘won’, elections that they did not. Rarely, if ever, do those looking aghast at those claims mention that D’s did exactly the same thing about Trump in 2016, and maintained the claim, many to this day. Worse, the D’s then exerted significant and ongoing efforts to sabotage Trump and his administration, in every way they could. He was certainly not my choice for President but he won and the actions taken against him and his administration were reprehensible.
I am so old that I remember when Eisenhower won over Stevenson in 1952. I lived in a very small town in rural Illinois and my dad ran a gas station and was also a precinct captain for the D’s. That ‘honor’ earned him the perk of free publications once in a while, one of which was a face book of politicians of note. Dad brought home a nice book and Ike was on the cover. I said something disparaging and how life would be better had Adlai prevailed. Dad didn’t hit me but he made it clear that I was being disrespectful to our elected President and it was every persons duty to support the new President to help him govern our nation.
I’d like to say that I think we would be better off if more people had his idea of democracy and the duties it assigns to not only the elected but also the citizens of the country.
I honestly don’t think I’ve seen Democrats say anything about 2016 except that Trump lost the popular vote. Which he did. I’ve never seen anyone say Trump lost overall in 2016.