CSotD: Pattonly offensive
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So I guess the answer to "Have you no sense of decency?" is "Nope. None at all."
Clay Bennett nails it about as well as it can be nailed, on a day when we all pause to pay tribute to the Greatest Generation before going back to betraying the values they sacrificed to preserve.
Bennett's combination of the cheap lip-service of yellow ribbons with the screaming lynch mob that has now emerged is awe inspiring.
Hollow patriotism itself being nothing new, of course.
I once had, but somehow lost, a TIME Magazine from the early-mid-Sixties that included an article headlined "Oh, You're Back" about vets returning from Vietnam to a nation that didn't really give a damn where they had been or why, and hadn't even really noticed that they'd been gone.
With no rationing or other ongoing sense of national sacrifice on the homefront, there really was no homefront. There was home, and there was the front. Never the twain did meet, and veterans were expected to pick up where they had left off as if nothing had happened.
The yellow ribbons emerged more than a decade later, in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis, when Vietnam vets complained that people were giving parades to the hostages but hadn't welcomed them home.
So we hung out the ribbons and held some parades, but we still didn't provide adequate funding for PTSD treatment and we told Agent Orange victims they were mistaken or possibly lying.
I interviewed NFL player and Vietnam vet Rocky Bleier on my radio show about the problems of returning vets as a way to announce a benefit for the local Vet Center, for which a local social activist who owned a small movie theater was donated a showing of "The Best Years of Our Lives."
Not "a portion of the proceeds." Not "profits from." 100 percent of ticket sales.
My callers were all thrilled that someone was finally doing something for our brave veterans, and about half a dozen of them showed up for the screening. (Postscript: There was also a two-page spread in the entertainment section of the paper. People knew it was happening.)
On the show the next day, the rest of them explained that the bitter cold had kept them in, so I invited them to send donations and they all said they would.
Not one damn nickel. My producer's mother donated. That was it.
Did you think faux-patriot blowhards were strictly an Internet phenomenon?
The next time those ribbons appeared was Gulf One, and they were a fundraiser at first, a sign someone had donated to a non-profit support group for soldier's families, as I recall, and the critical difference that made it work was that you could pick them up at a convenience store for five bucks, so it took little effort. Fair enough, though I never heard what the split was.
But then the knock-offs appeared, so what difference did it make anyway? The price of advertising your patriotism on the back of your car didn't go down, but the profits from sales were simply that: Profits.
There's a term for it, and it reminded me of a column I wrote at the time which did not endear me to a local T-shirt magnate. As always, click to embiggen:
Note that I was supportive of Gulf One, mostly because we had a genuine coalition joining in, though also in part because we didn't know that tearful little Kuwaiti girl was a fraud, a relevant discursion I'll let pass today.
The point, rather, is that the mob has gone full circle from the days of Vietnam. Though it continues to believe, against the historical record, that everyone but Congress, a few hippies and Jane Fonda were supportive of the Vietnam War, and in the for-the-most-part mythical abuse heaped upon returning vets from that war, the hordes are now repeating the very thing they say they despised so much then.
Tim Eagan doesn't specifically cite that parallel, but it's clearly present in his image. Today's welcoming crowd may be screaming "Trater" (heh) and "Coward" instead of "babykiller," but they're still a slavering mob that has no proof of what happened and no idea what the veteran they're spitting on may have gone through.
And no interest in finding out.
Perhaps his PTSD didn't wait to kick in until he got home. Perhaps he sent his things back to his parents as a warning that he was suicidal rather than an announcement of his intention to desert.
Perhaps it's something for the courts to sort out, since, even in the military, "innocent until proven guilty" remains a basic tenet.
They have no interest in the system of justice they claim is the envy of the world and something our brave veterans risk their lives to defend and uphold.
Their ignorant, hate-filled rush to judgment and vengeance is, after all, what defines a lynch mob.
It always has been, and this time around, they've got entire TV news channels helping them string up the noose for a returning vet. They've even enlisted one major political party to help, and intimidated the other into silence.
Have they no sense of decency? At long last, have they left no sense of decency?
No, nor any sense of history, either.
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