I was in Wichita, Kansas last year on a job hunt. Some guy in the area was looking for bass players, a retired professional in some other field who bought himself a small-time country music career. He liked my audition video and wanted to hire me. So he said. He left me stranded at the bus station at 3am, knowing full well that Amtrak was late, and my bus into Wichita had been delayed over 24 hours, and there was nothing I could do about it. I got a non-music-professional text the next day about "normal business hours" (in the music industry?), talked to the smug dilettante on the phone for 2 minutes, and spent the next couple days at a hotel in Wichita, wondering what my next move was going to be.
My stay happened to coincide with a conference full of Army Reservists, who took up most of the hotel. I was in the lobby the next morning, waiting for my cab among the uniformed warrior class, drinking some kind of melon water from the fancy cistern. The Holy Spirit inspired me to give 2 Chick tracts to 2 guys who were nearby, a couple of Army guys high on their own inflated sense of self-importance.
I wasn't aware of this until I tried to give them the tracts. One guy looked at me with haughty annoyance and asked, "what's this?" The other guy wasn't so rude. I replied with no small amount of aggravation, "they're gospel tracts, take them," as I handed them the tracts. They took them and walked away, but I was left bewildered.
What was this guy's problem, anyway? He obviously thought he was somebody, and maybe he was, though nothing exceptional was immediately apparent, dressed like everybody else in the room as he obviously was. He clearly thought he was better than me.
Why?
Could it be that years of being thanked for his "service" made him act like a small-time god incapable of service? Was he in on some weird conspiracy, to make everybody I spoke to in Kansas look aloof? (It was a weird trip).
I don't know, and I don't care. The reason I bring it up is this article from National File, posted today regarding the release of Kyle Rittenhouse:
According to the article, the Black Rifle Coffee Company "released a statement insisting that 'we do not support legal advocacy efforts. We do not sponsor nor do we have a relationship with the 17-year-old facing charges in Kenosha, WI,' as reported by Media Right News, who also reported that the company would end its advertising relationship with The Blaze over the image of Rittenhouse wearing their t-shirt." The article goes on to say, "National File received comment from a competing conservative coffee company, Covfefe Coffee, who condemned Black Rifle Coffee’s decision to abandon the 17-year-old’s cause.
'For people who have been to war, you would think they would be ready to fight to take our country back,' said a Covfefe Coffee spokesperson. 'Apparently making sure the feral mob is satisfied and their corporate orthodoxy is upheld is a far greater virtue to Black Rifle Coffee than courage.'"
I've obviously added the emphasis, and I would like to respond to the incredulity of the Covfefe spokesperson: No, You Would Not Necessarily Think That. And let me tellya why.
"For people who have been to war?" What about people who have been celebrated and thanked for their "service" by every aspect of society for decades, to the point that "service" becomes a platform upon which one receives countless accolades for his bravery, in a system of brotherhood-think, surrounded by his compatriots?
Do you think someone like that is necessarily going to stand up, alone, in the face of a "feral mob?" Without his compatriots?
Do you think it is still "service," to be a "high-class muscle man for Big Business?"
Those aren't my words. Major General Smedley Butler said it:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Most people who look more than 2 inches below the surface of the "capitalism is bad" issue understand that what he's really referring to is "crony capitalism," but the point is clear. I'm not saying that "the service" isn't service; I'm wondering what and who it is, exactly, being served.
The American people? Robber barons? God Himself? Satan?
Whatever the case, the blind spot in mainstream society that the troops are always good and need to be thanked every step of the way is as bad as throwing them to the wolves of homelessness, the bureaucracy of the V.A., drug addiction, and suicide. Years ago, I went to a WWII re-enactment with a cool uncle of mine, and we met a WWII vet, who was very, very old, and my uncle thanked him for his service and it was absolutely the right thing to do. Respectful, deserved, honorable, and beautiful.
But the degree to which "thank you for your service" becomes a platitude is the degree to which it unnecessarily inflates the egos of the soldiers, far beyond the needs of morale, thereby weakening them and potentially turning them into future drug-addled suicides, when their brotherhood and mission have been pulled out from under them.
You'd think, after all, that someone who'd been to war would be able to handle the stress of living Stateside?
Sadly, in many cases this appears to be completely untrue.
God bless the troops.
