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Patriotism and "Respecting the Troops"
Pony
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Patriotism.
There's a word thrown around a lot.
I'm not super interested in debating the core concept of patriotism and nationalism as a whole in this thread. That's a massive, complex subject that hugely varies from culture to culture.
What I am interested in, and what this thread is about, is the specific intersection of patriotism and the military. The idea of "respecting the troops", thanking people for their service, the idea that as a default, we should honor and respect and defer to people in the military unless given a specific reason not to.
This isn't something that is universal around the world! In fact, in many countries they have very good historical reasons not to do this, because naked deference to the military and pride in military service has uh... not... gone especially well for their country or their country may lack a traditional standing army.
But there's definitely countries that value these ideas extremely strongly, the United States most notably.
Gonna go ahead and ask for your opinions on whether or not this is something that we, as a society, should be doing.
Should we simply "respect the troops" and consider the military openly laudable by a default, is the American notion of thanking soldiers for "defending our freedoms" a good thing?
My opinion is it absolutely is not. It is, in fact, a very very bad thing and one that has been brutally abused by politicians in every country where it is culturally ingrained, America most of all.
It is how football players taking a knee in protest of police brutality and institutionalized racism gets twisted around into being about "disrespecting the troops", and in clarifying how this is not the case those who commit to such a practice have to also perform mental gymnastics of both criticizing the state and adequately showing their patriotism as it relates to respecting the troops.
It is how during the post-9/11 era, conservative politicians in both the US and Canada tried to cow opposition by calling their opponents not only soft on defense and anti-military (conventional conservative talking points for any era, really) but specifically invoked "respect for the troops" and forced left-wing politicians into a position of performatively mouthing respect and honor for the military while also criticizing military expenditures or foreign warmongering, lest they appear unpatriotic and fuck themselves over politically.
It gets used as this absurd trump card, like daring to say you don't respect the troops or honor their service is this gauche, horrifying, impossible thing to say regardless of your other political affiliations and it's enormously damaging to honest political discourse.
Moreover, I think the way it gets used performatively by politicians actually gets used as a cover to not do anything substantive for veterans in a meaningful way. A Republican politician might say "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!" as loudly as humanly possible during the campaign season to shout down a Democrat opponent... but he'll also be the first to slash funding to a VA hospital in the name of fiscal conservatism.
That's just the surface of my opinions on this complex and contentious subject.
You?
There's a word thrown around a lot.
I'm not super interested in debating the core concept of patriotism and nationalism as a whole in this thread. That's a massive, complex subject that hugely varies from culture to culture.
What I am interested in, and what this thread is about, is the specific intersection of patriotism and the military. The idea of "respecting the troops", thanking people for their service, the idea that as a default, we should honor and respect and defer to people in the military unless given a specific reason not to.
This isn't something that is universal around the world! In fact, in many countries they have very good historical reasons not to do this, because naked deference to the military and pride in military service has uh... not... gone especially well for their country or their country may lack a traditional standing army.
But there's definitely countries that value these ideas extremely strongly, the United States most notably.
Gonna go ahead and ask for your opinions on whether or not this is something that we, as a society, should be doing.
Should we simply "respect the troops" and consider the military openly laudable by a default, is the American notion of thanking soldiers for "defending our freedoms" a good thing?
My opinion is it absolutely is not. It is, in fact, a very very bad thing and one that has been brutally abused by politicians in every country where it is culturally ingrained, America most of all.
It is how football players taking a knee in protest of police brutality and institutionalized racism gets twisted around into being about "disrespecting the troops", and in clarifying how this is not the case those who commit to such a practice have to also perform mental gymnastics of both criticizing the state and adequately showing their patriotism as it relates to respecting the troops.
It is how during the post-9/11 era, conservative politicians in both the US and Canada tried to cow opposition by calling their opponents not only soft on defense and anti-military (conventional conservative talking points for any era, really) but specifically invoked "respect for the troops" and forced left-wing politicians into a position of performatively mouthing respect and honor for the military while also criticizing military expenditures or foreign warmongering, lest they appear unpatriotic and fuck themselves over politically.
It gets used as this absurd trump card, like daring to say you don't respect the troops or honor their service is this gauche, horrifying, impossible thing to say regardless of your other political affiliations and it's enormously damaging to honest political discourse.
Moreover, I think the way it gets used performatively by politicians actually gets used as a cover to not do anything substantive for veterans in a meaningful way. A Republican politician might say "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!" as loudly as humanly possible during the campaign season to shout down a Democrat opponent... but he'll also be the first to slash funding to a VA hospital in the name of fiscal conservatism.
That's just the surface of my opinions on this complex and contentious subject.
You?
Pony on
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Posts
But so does anybody who performs a difficult and dangerous job.
The fetishization of the military that goes on in this country is awful and, if not the cause of our long and bloody history of interventionism, surely an enabling factor.
We’re supposed to stand up and sing for the people who “protect our freedoms,” but what about those who secure them in other ways? If we talked about teachers the way we talk about soldiers, schools would be hallowed halls.
Of course, if we treated education the way we treat the military, schools would be underfunded and inconsistently cared for.
It’s the government’s job to support the military, not the people’s, and the government should do so with veterans programs and mental health treatment and rape prevention efforts and above all by wielding the military carefully and only in cases of great need.
In that sense, support the troops. And shut the fuck up about it.
..Ye....Yes?
As for deferring to the opinions of veterans, I only do so on matters directly related to their service. I'm not gonna tell some dude who was in Fallujah what it was really like there. But at the same time, I understand that the people taking orders don't always get to see the big picture. So I'd probably stand my ground in an argument about foreign policy as a whole even if I'm arguing with someone who spent a couple tours in the sandbox.
Nobody gets to tell me I'm disrespecting them because I'm not praying to their God or standing for their flag. If I'm disrespectful they'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
That's not even getting into the question of whether the military has truly been "protecting our freedoms" for the last 150 years or so. We have not been seriously threatened with invasion by a foreign power since before the Civil War. The only people endangering our freedoms have been the same politicians who throw a hissy fit if someone doesn't wear a flag lapel pin.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
When I think of the phrase support the troops I think of avoiding how the U.S. failed Vietnam veterans.
But in politics it's just used for cheap points.
I think this is actually pretty important.
When we say "thank you for your service" or imply a soldier is "protecting our freedoms", it's supposed to be treated with the sort of gravity as if were that person not doing this absolutely critical job... the entire country itself would crumble and there would be foreign invaders who would destroy your country or take your "freedoms" (whatever that is supposed to mean) away.
Except... when has that been true, exactly?
Certainly, unchecked Nazi power was bad for everyone during World War II, so that was... yeah okay, sure. The Cold War sure was scary, but that was a Cold War, and thus each individual soldier was more a unit of measurement in a global dick-waving contest the likes of which the world has never seen before or since.
Since then? There's what?
The Taliban? ISIS?
Are individual soldiers going over there really protecting you from them? Are they really protecting America from ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda or any other similar group? Really?
Because uhhhhh that's a debate that political scientists have been raging about for like 15 years in a heated fashion and the side I come down on it is "No. No they are not."
This is not to say military intervention in such regions or conflicts is pointless, mind you. I'm not saying we should just say, let ISIS run roughshod or some shit.
But like, my cousin, who serves in the Canadian Forces right now? He has not "protected my freedoms" in any meaningful way during his service. And that is not a knock on my cousin. My cousin was in Kosovo. He was in Afghanistan. He's worked his ass off and put his life at risk he's definitely protected some peoples' freedoms and he's saved lives, both abroad and domestically through disaster relief in Alberta and Quebec.
But he has not "protected" or "defended" my "freedoms" as a Canadian. He's... maybe like... personified our values, as a country, in foreign peacekeeping efforts or like... foreign military interventions? Maybe? That's the best spin I could put on that, man. Sorry, Steve, that's the best I got for ya, cousin.
This doesn't mean I don't respect him, or the work he's done. Of course I do. But I'm not going to overstate or overblow or glorify or lionize what he actually is or does. And to be fair to him, neither does he. If you were to ask my cousin Steve what, in his opinion, the most "heroic" or noble or good thing he's ever done was, he'd tell you it was disaster response to flooding in Alberta when the military was deployed to help. Not peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo or his shit in Afghanistan, which he's still proud of, mind you, but his domestic disaster work her in Canada where he was handing out blankets and driving around in a boat crawling into flooded houses hauling people out and shit. That's the most noble thing he's done, in his opinion.
I'm inclined to agree.
Given all the various formal and informal actions performed in the name of "supporting our troops", it's arguable that support of the military has led to reduction of freedom on the continent. The only people who have enjoyed more freedoms as a result of US military actions have been other nations, and given the state of Iraq and Afghanistan it really does bring into question whether military force projection is even effective at sustainable regime change in this day and age.
I think this is why plays like Coriolanus have existed since we started writing things down. You get into real shaky territory when people start demanding respect for military, especially when it starts sounding like it's to the exclusion of other less "heroic" groups of professionals. Fetishism of standing army prowess doesn't seem to have ever gone well for any country and it sure seems like the founders of The United States were trying to actively avoid it to some extent. I guess it's just too deeply burrowed into popular culture at this point though.
As is obvious by our capacity to care for our veterans, my view is that we're very good at taking young people with few opportunities, abusing their bodies and minds after declaring ownership of them (more or less) and then dumping them when age and the abuse catches up. It's an assembly line for dysfunction.
None of this is to say that the sacrifices and risks soldiers have made for all sorts of things all over the world haven't been heroic and awesome in scope. The Coast Guard and Navy do a lot of rescue work year round. Individually each member of the armed forces deserves an amount of respect for having made that decision, but so do Paramedics and Preschool Teachers.
As for the supporting... I support the service members, I could give a fuck about the branches themselves. If some guy stuck in a listening post in Alaska needs to have a Turkey Dinner and some magazines, bill me for it. I don't support demands for an increased defense budget with all the airquote sympathy and patriotism because it's "for the troops" when it's bundled up in shit that closes military hospitals and funds f-35 research instead of getting someone lexapro for PTSD or in home oxygen because they've fucked their lungs building ships for 30 years.
Edit: I know we have a lot of people currently in the armed forces on this forum, I have a lot of friends who went in... I often times wish I'd have done the same when I got out of high school instead of washing dishes 50 hours a week. Truth is, those who have stayed in and are aiming for retirement in casual conversation have essentially said to me, "I've seen terrible things, but this is a business and I need a job."
I think it is particularly ok to be patriotic in this country as long as we are willing and able to question it. We're not North Korea. If I badmouthed veterans I'd be seen as tasteless and maybe lose my job if I was stupid about it, but I wouldn't stand a good chance of being a missing person.
So I feel comfortable respecting the military because it is my choice to do so.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The bolded bit here is I think the serious political danger of "Support the troops" as a rhetoric and cultural mindset. Politicians use it as a fucking weapon to justify bullshit like the F-35 Adele (because, you see, it sets fire in the rain) while refusing to fund VA hospitals and allowing actual vets to go homeless. It's bullshit.
They chew up young people with promises of GI bills and say "Thank You For Your Service" and then fire them out with ballistic speed when they're done while jerking off billions into the gaping mouths of DARPA contractors under the cloak of "patriotism".
The whole impetus for me creating this thread was it spun out of the thread I made on the NFL player protests and how politicians tried to make that about disrespecting the troops, when it was about players very specifically and openly making it about police brutality and racism.
So how, exactly, do the THE TROOPS come into play there? Well, because the only reason NFL players are on the field during the anthem in the first fucking place is the military paid the NFL for them to be there as a blatant propaganda move. This is how inexorably the military has tied itself into American patriotism, where you can't not stand for the anthem without it being about the military... because the military are the ones who literally paid the league for you to stand out there in the first place... and that's not even a thing the people making the criticism even know.
My coworker who is missing large parts of his intestine and has a screwed up back didn't suffer those injuries "protecting my freedoms", he got those attempting to establish a puppet petro state for GWB, Haliburton et al..
But "thank you for your service" is a lot nicer to say than "It's too bad you had a terrible home life and poor academics, so you had few other options in your small town other than enlisting when they cut standards at the peak of the Iraq war". Not to denigrate anyones service or family member who served, but he isn't a hero in my mind; he's a victim and respecting the troops is all about deflecting from that.
Edit:
I respect the sacrifices made but firmly believe if we loved our troops the way we pretend to, they'd almost never be asked to make them. That our leaders send the youth to harm without supporting them at home makes me extremely sad. I've spent time in VA Hospitals.
Ironically, the U.S has the same advantage as the former USSR, they dont need a draft outside world war levels because their population size is so massive that they're guaranteed manpower for a standing army.
anyway
debates over "respect" are insubstantial; their prevalence indicates the wider antipathy to the more substantive question of foreign policy. We don't want to talk about that, so we talk about this instead, as a kind of proxy war tacitly funded by partisans whose actual preferred positions cannot obtain a mandate across the countries of the West. This applies across the left and the center and the right - the left cannot summon the energy to revive the peace movement and its mainstay orientation around denuclearization, the right's dalliance with neoconservatism has run out of steam, and the center's revival of liberal internationalism has, like its forerunner, run aground on the rocks of divergent interests. All of these factional forces have always struggled with internal tensions (e.g. the left clashing with the demographic prevalence of hardhattery in its supposed destined demographic base) and right now everyone has other priorities
tl; dr because the stakes are so low
No, America doesn't have to be for this to be a shaming method to score political points, or used hypocritically by greedy and selfish politicians who'll declare Barack Obama a traitor for not having a flag pin then refuse to fund the VA appropriately.
Define "bad mouth veterans," that's an incredible vague statement. Insult their service, call them baby killers and whatnot? No complaints about the military at all? What about circumstances where troops break international law, and commit war crimes?
That missing person thing, I'm confused about.
And the whole kneeling come about as a compromise from a veteran, as something soldiers do at funerals to honor the fallen.
That’s not really how Vietnam went. I mean, there were plenty of people at the time who were still pro-war. Meantime the draft was grinding up young people left and right.
Ironically the left is the one side who does more to support the troops with good bills, and don't try to waste money on overpaying contractors.
The left does care about peace, except the shape of that is no longer entirely on protest marches with hippies anymore. They even tried doing this pre-Iraq war, to ill effect. Conservatives don't want to talk about peace when a war is in the air so they can kill brown people and steal natural resources.
Neoconverservatism may be over, the right's ability to war monger is not. They may core about isolationism from time to time, but once Trump gets the US into a war you bet they'll support him without hesitation. The only reason this hasn't occurred yet is that other countries have gone out of their way not to fall for Trump's bait. He's been making noises about having a hot war with NK for months, which is concerning.
That stuff is all what politicians do. When I compliment someone I generally mean it without subtext. So all this doesn't really apply to whatever I do as long as I am free to do it. I can extol servicemembers or denigrate them; it makes no difference as far as the law is concerned.
As for politicians doing it, it's just another moral purity test that encourages insincerity in our public officials.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That doesn't really answer my questions?
Bad mouthing veterans is saying bad things about them. Missing person implies you were disposed of by the government.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yes, but this ignores the nuance and context like the military are immune from criticism of doing horrendous things on duty, or after their service. Your phrasing is so vague as to be meaningless. Why is that relevant?
edit: What about Blackwater Xe, and other mercenaries utilized by governments during war?
It's irresponsible as shit to try to wash "support the troops" as "never be critical of the United States' conflict and war choices." This is stuff that's been happening for decades and I don't see it going away any time soon.
My point was that you can say bad things about the military if you want and that's fine, which is why I think it's ok to be a little patriotic without falling into the whole brainwashing thing. I feel like you're arguing about something else here
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I was trying to decipher a clearer intent of your stance, since it came off to me like you were ok with jingoism rather than patriotism. I'm glad to hear that I was wrong about your intent.
What about soldiers who know exactly what sort of people they're going to be working under and voluntarily choose to sign on anyway?
So this may be a bit controversial and aggressively stated, but I think it's a viewpoint that isn't very common anymore. So I'm going to advocate it a bit because I think it deserves some discussion.
Remember we don't have conscription, our military is all volunteers. So with that in mind -you want to give them incremental credit for all disaster relief efforts, etc sure that is fair. But then they get to incrementally own every Abu Ghraib and every piece of "collateral damage" and those scales aren't even close.
I graduated HS in 05. Everyone knew then what a lie Iraq was- that there were no WMDs. So why do my classmates who joined up to go fight in an illegal war in Iraq that has killed half a million or more people to protect US oil interests deserve respect? Why couldn't they join an organization with less blood on its hands to pay their bills? Like Idk a drug cartel?
Good job Jason, my mate, rather than work a more banal job, you enlisted and drove truck loads of ammo around Iraq, most of which hit no one, but for that 1 round per case that did, 50-50 chance it was a civilian. Whose life did this noble risk improve? Not mine and certainly not those of the Iraqi's...so how is that more deserving of respect than just delivering pizza? In the wrong neighborhood you can get shot doing that too, but no 6 year old gets hit and killed by one of the medium pepperonis you just dropped off.
And without those like him choosing to enlist. This whole immoral enterprise grinds to a halt. The $250 million dollar gunship doesn't strafe the Doctors Without Borders hospital killing 41 people without a pilot and flight crew, or a green beret on the ground calling in the strike, or the ground crew back at base keeping the plane running, or the Jasons delivering ammunition. They all do their part.
Volunteering to go serve in a war is not morally severable for the righteousness of the war, and treating it like it is by heaping praise on people who were either gullibly misled, trapped by circumstance, or just morally calculating enough to see a steady job in inflicting misery on the rest of the world just makes it easier for the next generation to be seduced and used.
So no, most the troops, aren't to be respected. Most especially at the lower ranks are probably to be pitied, but many are contemptible. Seeing a paycheck and status working as a cog in a factory of tragedies, one that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the last 15 years.
As Buffy Sainte-Marie sang (Donovan did a more famous cover)- and this was written when there was a draft at least.
This kind of falls apart when you realize that the bulk of our troops are from poverty, and thanks to the Boomers' insistence that you need a college degree to be an office assistant and the GI Bill, serving in the military is one of the best ways to escape poverty. I graduated the same year you did, which meant that the recession hit and blew up my plans for paying my own way through school and I was living out of my car. I didn't end up serving because it ended up taking longer for them to process me than for me to find a job, but the experience disabused me of the above way of thinking.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
For me, this doesn't mean thinking soldiers are "bad people" and being a dick to them, but it does mean convincing people to not soldier, and it means arguing against the notion that what they do overseas is morally defensible or that you should always "support the troops" even if you oppose the war.
edit - I admit that for tactical reasons this isn't always the best approach given the context of US politics. I'm a hell of a lot more likely to convince someone that the US should withdraw from Afghanistan than to convince them of the stuff I wrote above, and I'm conscious of that in more public discussions of war-related issues.
At the e4 e5 level it works out to a middle class income. But the training and combat messes them up.
I think we should be compassionate and appreciative, but some of the fetishism especially in the south is a bit much.
Quickly to answer this thing from someone who did their time in the Army.
It's because of survivor guilt, or the overwhelming feeling of not doing anything particularly important.
It also assigns a higher level of gravity towards ones service than someone actually feels like they properly pulled off. We had days where we literally did nothing, or did such menial bullshit, and those days happened more often than you'd think. We also got guaranteed 4 day weekends every month, generous leave packages, and did a lot of fun stuff as well as training on how to kill people.
So, when someone thanks you for your service, it's awkward, can immediately bring back horrible goddamned memories about lost friends, PTSD-causing events, makes them feel ashamed for even getting such lauds because nothing they did particularly feels like it should be thanked for, deployed or not. It fires up survivors guilt to a huge degree.
I'd almost say it does the exact opposite of what you think it does, and I'd even recommend to not do it again.