MY grandma — we called her Mamaw — loved her country. Born in eastern Kentucky coal country at the beginning of the Great Depression, she credited so much of the good in her life to America’s bounty. When I interviewed her about her life for a school project, she spent most of the time talking about World War II: her dad’s love letters from the Pacific; how her younger brother lied about his age in an effort to enlist. “We did it,” she told me, still beaming with pride more than a half-century later. “We freed the whole world from tyranny.”
Mamaw
said something else entirely when, just a few weeks after America
invaded Iraq, I told her that I had enlisted in the Marine Corps.
“You’re a grade-A idiot,” she shouted, and though her anger stemmed in
part from worry, I knew that she saw the conflict as the indulgence of
an elite president who knew nothing of sacrifice. She liked George W.
Bush’s folksy demeanor and admired his Christian faith, but as the war
dragged on, her criticisms grew increasingly personal.
More @ The New York Times
An interesting article, however I think he misses a huge point about why the Americans of European descent from the working/middle class has had it with fighting the elites squabbles. The only time the elites have anything nice to say about European males - who let's face it, make up the majority of the combat arms, especially special operations - is when they get maimed, bleed, or die overseas in some filthy, worthless, fifth-world shithole, supposedly for our "freedoms". Any time that same group voices it's displeasure at it's own government for (insert your particular injustice here) those same elites have no problem publicly lashing out at those same Europeans! Calling them every name they can think of and accusing them of being responsible for every evil known to man!
ReplyDeleteYou pegged that and the pendulum only swings one way so far. I would be extremely concerned about my future welfare if I was one of the traitors, but they think they're impervious.
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