Let's take this a different direction...

(July 12, 2018 at 4:30 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Let's take this a different direction...

(July 12, 2018 at 4:30 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

What is it with "respecting the troops".
They are just doing a job.
You don't have to stand when the bin men go by.

(July 13, 2018 at 3:24 am)downbeatplumb Wrote:

(July 12, 2018 at 4:30 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

What is it with "respecting the troops".
They are just doing a job.
You don't have to stand when the bin men go by.

I thought it was a reaction to the Vietnam vets coming home and being protested and shamed and stuff.  People don't like how it looked when men who were drafted to fight in a war were shamed for doing so so the public has swung completely in the other direction and bows down at the feet of what is now an all volunteer military.

Look, I get that being in the military is inherently more dangerous than the majority of other jobs Americans have and going to war can exact a psychological toll on a person in a way few things can understand and that's nothing to sneer at, and I generally don't have a problem with the sorts of benefits veterans get (discounts at stores, medical insurance, access to financing programs for housing, etc.) but I'm not going suck off every soldier that I see for volunteering for that job.  We are past the day of pressing citizens into service and forcing them to choose between serving, going to jail or leaving the country.  Or mysteriously developing bone spurs.  Yes there are people who join the military because they want to be of service to their country but you can't deny that there's an aspect of boys-and-their-toys about the military in that there is a subset of people who volunteer because they want to drive tanks or shoot big guns or like the adrenaline rush of being in an aerial dog fight.

But they do volunteer.

I also understand that many (most?) military personnel don't ask to be thanked for their service.