Decency

I’m not sure what it is about conservatives and veterans. In recent memory, one political party has demeaned the service of a pair of Navy veterans who did two of the most dangerous jobs during the Vietnam war. One commanded a river boat and one flew missions from an aircraft carrier. The latter spent six years in a prison after the North Vietnamese shot down his plane. The first saw his Purple Hearts ridiculed at the Republican national convention.

 

Then the party insulted the family of an American soldier killed while serving his country in the Middle East wars. Don’t know why, just to get votes I suppose.

 

A highly decorated officer received his crass treatment recently while in the full, ribbon-bedecked uniform of his country. The insignias include the Combat Infantry Badge and the Purple Heart. The vast majority of American have no idea, nor do they seem to care, what a CIB is. It’s the blue image with the wreath and rifle on top. It means that foreign enemies of our country have tried to kill you physically. You don’t get one for having internal enemies of our country hurl insults and stereotyped accusations at you. If you did, I guess most of us would warrant one. Maybe if it were the president of the United States making the insults, the badge would come with a star attached.

 

You’d think it couldn’t get any worse. It did. The party then made sure that a World War Two veteran, now deceased as almost all of them are, received his treatment. Many of them have called his kind “The Greatest Generation.” This party suggested the veteran was burning in Hell. (That’s a fiery pit of eternal fire where evangelical “Christians,” (and those who would exploit them) mentally send people who don’t believe exactly as they do—the ultimate act of judgement by their loving god.)

I don’t understand it. Is it their religion that makes them so mean-spirited? It’s not Christianity itself. I watch a Methodist service each week and it is founded on love and grace. I always feel better toward the human race after I watch it. What is it on the outer fringes of that same faith that makes faces turn red and veins bulge with hate and anger?

Like I say. I don’t know, but it sure would make me happy if they would leave the veterans out of it all. Haven’t they suffered enough?

My father-in-law wore a Combat Infantry Badge and a Purple Heart home from World War Two. He told me once, “You’d think: just let me live one more second … just one more second.”

When I think that some draft-dodging asshole would have the gall to dishonor men like that, it makes me very sad for America. It may not bother some of you, but it does me.

Sorry for the tirade. Sometimes it pours out and I fail to stop it.