I think just about everyone but me got the day off of work, so I'm retaliating against the man by writing a blog during my paid work hours. It's kind of an empty gesture, really, because my boss wouldn't care, but, you know. I can dream. And so, here I am, sipping on Big Red (por gratis, because my coworkers are trying to fatten me up), and wondering what I should say now.
Serving at Cracker Barrel has been going well, ever since they stopped playing the Wounded Warriors DVD on a loop. Wounded Warriors, as I now know (brain space I could maybe have used for something more important, like... well, anything), is a charity benefitting men and women who sustain injuries during their respective careers in the armed forces. Which is all fine and good, except for how, you know, the military DOES provide full-coverage healthcare, and disability. Meanwhile, people keep dying in other countries, which doesn't matter, apparently, because they didn't die for AMERICA. Sigh. I tried to relate this idea to another employee, only to be quickly shot down with a snippy"They DESERVE this. Is any of YOUR family in the military? Because, if they were, you would understand!" Sigh again.
And yet, soldier-worship is so prevalent. I keep seeing people join the Facebook group "Petition to remove 'soldiers are not heroes' from Facebook", and I have to wonder why. For one, the group is not going to accomplish anything, because saying that soldiers are not heroes is not a death threat, racial slur, or anything else that Facebook prohibits in its terms of use. It's just an unpopular idea.
Second, "Soldiers are not Heroes" makes a pretty good point: it's a little perilous to declare that all soldiers ARE heroes. Whether or not you agree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm sure that it's pretty easy to accomodate the idea that a soldier who risks his life to save a fallen comrade, or something of that nature, is a hero. But, then, not all soldiers do such things. A few soldiers see the front lines... and some spend their deployments chilling out in an air-conditioned tent in Iraq. And some don't deploy, at all. And a lot of them sexually harass their fellow soldiers. Personally, I think that we need to stop exhalting soldiers. They are just ordinary people, getting paid to preform a dangerous job.
Big Red tastes like childhood... and high fructose corn syrup (and other unpopular thoughts).
Author: Notoriously, Mandy. /
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1 comments:
Very well put. I've tried to discuss this subject with some of the fundamentalist Christians that inhabit our respective environments, and, unfortunately, they only think in black and white. Either they all are heroes, or NONE of them are, according to this group. Personally, I find it offensive when someone, military or not, looks down upon others simply because they're not in them military. Being in the service is not a badge of courage, success, or accomplishment. That's not to say that you can't accomplish such things within the construct of the military, but non-military people are constructive, courageous, and productive everyday. In fact, it's those people that make military service possible
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