Sunday, December 22, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Stop the presses ... reaching the end of life is unpleasant
Dying is not, I hope, such a big deal if you are not sick. (Knock on wood!) But nearing the end of your productive life without having been President of the United States or won a Nobel Prize or even have some modest recognition, makes one wonder what it was all for.
If you're a guy and you had a traditional marriage (that has fallen apart), whatever great deeds of your kids are really, at most, influenced by your wife. You were just putting a roof over your family and bringing home the bacon. Not luxuriously.
If you have worked in in a certain field nearly 30 years it's galling when people ask you if you work with an employee of yours.
If you ended up in an obscure field so obscure that people will tell you to your face "that's boring." That's disappointing.
You're 60-something and you have nothing to show for anything you did.
And, of course, there are resentful people who hate you or envy you or are just mean to you. Some of it deserved, no doubt.
What was it all for? Why doesn't it just end, already?
If you're a guy and you had a traditional marriage (that has fallen apart), whatever great deeds of your kids are really, at most, influenced by your wife. You were just putting a roof over your family and bringing home the bacon. Not luxuriously.
If you have worked in in a certain field nearly 30 years it's galling when people ask you if you work with an employee of yours.
If you ended up in an obscure field so obscure that people will tell you to your face "that's boring." That's disappointing.
You're 60-something and you have nothing to show for anything you did.
And, of course, there are resentful people who hate you or envy you or are just mean to you. Some of it deserved, no doubt.
What was it all for? Why doesn't it just end, already?
Monday, November 18, 2013
Defying the militarism in this society is difficult but it forces people to think
Allow me to respond to several criticisms (not including the swear words and simple insults offered by those apparently incapable of thought) to my jeremiad against Veterans' Day and the supposedly hallowed and heroic status of people in uniform or discharged from the military.
I will concede to one heckler that the federal government defines as “veteran” anyone who “any person, who served honorably on active duty in the armed forces of the United States.” However, there is no reason to have a day that honors drivers, clerks and cooks in military uniform — rather than people who saw bullets fly — if there is no honoring their civilian peers.
The next set of complaints — actually whining — was about money.
One cranky note was sounded about the fact that military men and women pay for their uniforms. That’s actually true. However, the alleged heroism of the deed vanishes once one learns that these payments are reimbursed: the military clothing allowance tables below are effective as of October 1, 2012 through September 30th, 2013 for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps was between $2,031.69 for females in the Navy to $1,464.04 for Air Force men.
Plus, there‘s a civilian clothing allowance. No civilian job has these benefits. Just like almost no civilian job includes
Finally, there’s the excuse deemed inadmissible at the Nuremberg trials: we were following orders.
The modern American version that we should really complain to politicians whom the veterans obeyed. Hiding behind the skirts of the politicians might have worked during the draft and only for those unprincipled enough not to declare conscientious objector status, damn the consequences.
Today, every individual in the military is a volunteer. Don’t want to kill people? Don’t join the military. It’s a choice. Quit whining.
I will concede to one heckler that the federal government defines as “veteran” anyone who “any person, who served honorably on active duty in the armed forces of the United States.” However, there is no reason to have a day that honors drivers, clerks and cooks in military uniform — rather than people who saw bullets fly — if there is no honoring their civilian peers.
The next set of complaints — actually whining — was about money.
One cranky note was sounded about the fact that military men and women pay for their uniforms. That’s actually true. However, the alleged heroism of the deed vanishes once one learns that these payments are reimbursed: the military clothing allowance tables below are effective as of October 1, 2012 through September 30th, 2013 for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps was between $2,031.69 for females in the Navy to $1,464.04 for Air Force men.
Plus, there‘s a civilian clothing allowance. No civilian job has these benefits. Just like almost no civilian job includes
- housing;
- a basement-price shopping mall (aka the PX);
- a education system for the employee’s kids;
- moving expenses and opportunities to see the world free and meet interesting people (in the Vietnam War era the joke added: then kill them); and
- lavish, life-long free health care.
Finally, there’s the excuse deemed inadmissible at the Nuremberg trials: we were following orders.
The modern American version that we should really complain to politicians whom the veterans obeyed. Hiding behind the skirts of the politicians might have worked during the draft and only for those unprincipled enough not to declare conscientious objector status, damn the consequences.
Today, every individual in the military is a volunteer. Don’t want to kill people? Don’t join the military. It’s a choice. Quit whining.
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