{"id":82002,"date":"2018-09-26T16:15:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T20:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=82002"},"modified":"2018-09-26T15:51:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T19:51:04","slug":"we-few-we-happy-few","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=82002","title":{"rendered":"We Few… We Happy Few…. We 21 Million Strong"},"content":{"rendered":"

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That article yesterday, about how \u201crespect\u201d for the military is okey-dokey, but being in the military is a waste of time and is undermining this country approached the subject from the viewpoint of the dorky kid who didn\u2019t like sports in high school because he stunk badly at something as simple as softball and didn\u2019t like football because the footballers got all the girls and\u2026. Well, really, when you come down to it, even geeks in high school could get hot dog jobs after college at high-end companies like GE or General Motors or DuPont.<\/p>\n

That was then. And back in Them There Olden Times, even the geeks got their draft notices and showed up and served and subsequently got the girls hanging on them, too. \u00a0There is a balance there.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something unifying about a suit with a military cut that says \u201cI\u2019m part of something Really Big\u201d. I think that\u2019s the reason these people in glass towers don\u2019t like the military. There\u2019s a unity they can\u2019t touch, a commonality that binds veterans and current A\/D people together, and those in the glass towers are on the inside looking out at the Gathering of Brothers and Sisters, and the poor things just feel left out.<\/p>\n

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I\u00a0 think that some military service, no matter how brief, is a means of bonding that is missing from all the SJW\/snowflake experiences. While they try to mimic it with the #metoo stuff, the \u201cwimmins\u2019 parades\u201d and those \u201cfor the cause of \u2013” public gatherings, it is not even close to the same thing as saying \u201cmy unit\u201d or \u201cmy ship\u201d or \u201cthis one time in Bien Hoa\u2026\u2019 or \u201cI was posted\/stationed\u2026 and hey, I was there, too. Did you know\u2026?\u201d Not even close.<\/p>\n

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Are they jealous? Possibly. I think they are. It might be a reason for saying military experience \u201ctears the country apart\u201d, which is a falsehood, plain and simple. \u00a0My own humble bit of time, a mere two separate hitches, 5 years, 6 months and 28 days (they couldn\u2019t give me those 2 extra days, could they?) has more substance, and made me more employable than many of these \u201cgraduates\u201d coming out of schools with big, important degrees. It’s true of many people who show up here.<\/p>\n

But if a college degree makes you more employable, then why are trade schools advertising now and offering job assistance on completing courses? Why is it easier to find a job as a licensed cement or gravel truck driver if you have the training, or doing road construction (which pays +\/-$40\/hr around here) than it is to find a job with your several degrees in Chinese economic history?<\/p>\n

Why is the pseudo-intellectual response always the disparaging\u201cWell, you know \u2013 education\u201d \u2013 and then the \u2018sour grapes\u2019 look when you rattle off your education, basic and advanced, and your job experience and enhanced skills?<\/p>\n

Based on the limited amount of time I had, my view may be rather insular, but it is still wider and more broadbased than the narrow, hidebound viewpoint of the people who think they are \u2018better\u2019 somehow than those who did spend time serving, however brief it might have been. The fact that there is no get together to swap stories and share experience among Those People is a given. They have no commonality, no \u2018this is no shit\u2019 stuff, no epic tales of how hard it was to get the supply room girl to fork over a box of staples, and they know it. A firecracker or a cherry bomb will make them drop to the ground, quaking like a jello mold.<\/p>\n

While you and I can build a campfire, set out chairs, blankets, stumps and logs for people to sit on, pass around the bug spray, let the kids run and play freely and fire up the sparklers, roast half a feral hog on the spit along with foil-wrapped potatoes baking in the coals and a spread of dishes concocted by anyone with access to a kitchen (or a good deli), those denizens of the glass-walled towers can only watch as this Band of Brothers and Sisters gets together, shares what happened and when, tell tall tales that start with \u2018No shit, I was there\u2026.\u201d, hoist a few cold ones and end up singing the songs we all know under the stars.<\/p>\n

They can only watch… and wish\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That article yesterday, about how \u201crespect\u201d for the military is okey-dokey, but being in the military … We Few… We Happy Few…. We 21 Million Strong<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}