Jingoism – My Fellow Travelers

When You Say “Support Our Troops,” Think About What That Actually Means

General rule of thumbs:

If you are not prepared for people to voice their opinion, avoid making controversial posts.

If you have comments to make about the troops, and you have troops on your friends list, assume that they are likely to see those comments. Assume that there are going to be times that they cannot hold their tongue.

And when you make comments about the troops, remember that they do not all think the same. Even if what you are saying is something that is agreed upon by about half the troops (that is a higher percentage than you can actually expect for us to agree on anything), the flip side of that is that about half don’t agree.

Supporting the Troops does not automatically mean supporting the regime that is sending them to die.

Supporting the troops does not mean buying into every bit of ra ra Jingoistic propaganda that you see.

It sure as hell doesn’t mean blowing the troops off when their opinions don’t match the image that you have in mind of how they should think and act and feel.

I hold my tongue on a lot. I hold my tongue on most things. There are limits however beyond which I have a moral obligation as a member of the United States Armed Services, as a Citizen of the United States of America, and as a plain old Human being to speak up and say something.

If I see posts that are purely religious in nature, I am generally going to ignore them. It is your right to hold whatever religious beliefs you want. I am not going to judge that.

I ignore a lot of posts that are just plain dumb, or misinformed unless it is something I can actually be of help on in some way.

I generally try to avoid offending people whenever I can.

However, when I see posts talking about the constitution, about people’s rights, about what a person thinks it means to support our troops, those are kind of things I have to speak up on if I disagree. They are things that are very personal to me, and quite often have a direct impact on me and my way of life.

When people say “Support our Troops,” I am one of those troops.

When people say “The troops fought and died for your right to do such and such,” we also generally fight and die for your right not to do it as well.

When people speak about freedom of religion, and how something is trampling their rights, Freedom of Religion is Freedom to practice ANY religion, not just yours.

When someone says that preventing them from trampling someone else’s rights is taking away their rights… There is a world for that, and it is plain old bullshit.

I am opinionated about certain things, but as a general rule they are things that I am very passionate about for one reason or another. When it comes to issues of what our troops fight and die for, that one is about as personal as you can get.

Support Our Troops, But Don’t Bash Dissenters

A lot of people post things in support of the troops. I am cool with that. I am all for supporting the troops.

Whenever this happens though, you will often get people who are pissed off about the wars, and about the government, and about the direction that things have gone. Believe it or not, I am cool with that too. I understand what they are getting at and where they are coming from.

What I am not cool with is that the response to these people is almost always a personal attack, with a liberal application of jingoistic slogans and references to 911.

People who get the most pissed off about our government’s military actions are generally not anti-troops. You don’t have to protect us from them. They are on our side too.

What may be a good idea though is to take a step back, and read what they posted and think about it. Google a bit. Ask questions. Don’t just jingoistically wave the flag and sing the praises of the troops while invoking the image of 911 as the answer to all the concerns you might have.

Yes, 911 happened. A lot of people died that day. That number though is dwarfed by the number of people killed in the decade since. That number is dwarfed by the number of men women and children who will never see another birthday, who will never see their families again. Most of them were only guilty of being in the country that our leaders decided to attack under the guise of tracking down a non-state entity.

By non-state entity I mean that we officially went to war against a group equivalent to the Mafia, only smaller and less well armed. We did not declare war on a specific country.

There are politicians that will still use the argument “They hate us because we are free!”

Guess what, they hate us because we bombed their neighbors. They hate us because we used words like “Crusade” and “Jihad” to describe a war not only on a group of people, but on the religion that group claims to follow. They hate us because having a Muslim sounding name is all that it takes in some places to get picked up off the streets and not see your family for four years… That is totally ignoring the fact that at the end of those four years you were dropped off in a random Middle Eastern country where you have no connections, have never been, and don’t even speak the language (That guy was Canadian, picked up in Canada at the request of our Government).

This is the sort of thing our government is doing in our name. They send our troops to faraway lands to cause massive damage and leave behind massive numbers of casualties, and they claim it is in the name of the “War on Terror.” The troops suffer. The local populations suffer. Their families suffer (both the troops and the locals). The military contractors make millions. And when all is said and done, they like us even less than they did before. Not only do they hate us more than they did before, but most of them don’t even know why we are there. When polls have been done, questioning people in Iraq and Afghanistan, over ninety percent had no clue what happened on 911. First word they got that anything was wrong involved an explosion in their back yard.

And of course, once the dust settles, and the end of hostilities officially arrives, it is only a matter of hours before the oil companies, and the mineral companies have boots on ground securing contracts.

Not a Happy Read

Warning: This one is not written with friendly words.

There are a number of bumper stickers out there that are geared towards encouraging community, cooperation, unity, and peaceful coexistence. Probably one that everyone has seen simply says “Coexist” and the letters are made up of various religious and philosophical symbols, as well as a few LGBT symbols thrown in for good measure.

The message is simple, and it is obvious. We are all human. We are different, but we are human. We need to learn to deal with that.

And of course, as is inevitable, I have started seeing various opposed variations. Sad as that may sound, it is true.

I saw one earlier on the way home that offended the hell out of me. I am not prone to road rage, but I went ahead and got ahead of the guy just in case I changed my mind.

It said “Coexist?” except that the letters were made up of bombs, guns, and various jingoistic symbols. And then bellow that it said: “Ok Lefty, you first.”

It offended the fuck out of me. To be blunt, it is not intolerant to discourage hate. It is not intolerant to tell you not to go bomb and kill people because you don’t agree with their skin color or their religion. It is not intolerant to say that it is wrong for you to bully.

It also offended me greatly because the combination of the message and the symbols used caused one thought to stick in my head and refuse to budge…

People like that are the reason that people like me still die on a daily basis, even if they don’t make the news any more.

We still get periodic lists of names of sailors and soldiers who have been shot, blown up, run over, or just taken their own lives in the Middle East. So yeah, fuckheads like that offend the hell out of me.

You know what the real bitch of it is though? They are the ones screaming “Support our Troops!” any time they see someone even indicating that peace is a good idea.

Some Messages are Better Left Half Finished

This started out as a response to a facebook post, but then exploded into a thing of its own.

I have to say that this is a message that would be best served by posting only the first half of the words. I know that what I am about to say may not be popular, but as a military person who works to protect the Constitution, and the freedoms it provides, it becomes harder and harder for me not to speak up when people say things that are mean and angry and attribute it to the Constitution.

First off, I have never met a person that wanted to stop everyone from praying. There are those who want to see prayer and religion removed from a position of authority in public (i.e. governmental) situations, but they generally are ok with the idea of you praying at home. They are not anti-prayer, they are simply in favor of freedom of religion.

As for “Let’s take our country back,” back from who? People of Christian faith are the vast majority of lawmakers. They are the ones who have the most sway over the laws.

More importantly, saying “Let’s take our country back,” in this context is implying that you are more American than the next guy. It is saying that if someone disagrees with you they are obviously dangerous and radical. It is saying that somehow the country has been invaded and must be liberated.

As for “In God We Trust,” that is a very sound concept for families and groups that are Christian, or follow some other singular deity. It is not however part of the Constitution. It was added to our currency in response to the “Red Scare,” because the communist leaders of the day had some very unhealthy ideas about religion and those in power wanted to prove that America was not a communist country. The same goes for “Under God,” in the pledge of allegiance. “Under God” as added sixty two years after the pledge was written (Not only that, but according to WikiPedia, the guy that wrote the Pledge was a Christian Socialist).

We are a nation that has many Christians. They are by most accounts the vast majority of the people in our country. We are also a nation that was made great in part because we encourage diversity. When people make the claim that “Liberals are trying to take God out of government,” Well… To be honest, they are. But that is because God does not belong in government. Our founding fathers fled England for that very reason. This Nation was founded primarily for that reason. Yes, we are a nation of Christians, but we are not a Christian Nation. Yes, our laws often (but not always) match up with Christian morality, but that is because in most cases Christian morality matches Jewish Morality, matches Muslim morality, matches Pagan morality, and matches Buddhist morality. Certain things are right and wrong, and most people of most faiths agree with that.

The Church has a strong role in our country, and that role is to provide faith and support and compassion to their flocks. When the Church gets involved in government though, it generally does more harm than good. Many people who are Atheists today left the church because of the church’s public and legislative behavior. If you want to push anyone out of government, it should be the people who are CLAIMING to be Christian’s, and then pushing a hate filled agenda with all the passion and grace of a feral animal. Christians should not be uniting to “Take Back Our Country,” they should be uniting to take back their name from the bigots that present themselves to the world as representing the church and all that it means to be Christian.

As for the military, we do fight for your right to be Christian. We also fight for your neighbor’s right to be a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, an Atheist, or whatever he wants to be.

We are also sworn to protect the Constitution, and I cannot stand by and let people defame it with their anger and hate. If you love God, you can say so. If you love the Constitution, you can say so. If you hate your neighbor, well… You can say that too. Please though, do not spout hate, and then claim it is you defending the Constitution our country or what it means to be American.

I mean, you can say those things. You do have freedom of speech, I would just rather you not lie to yourself or the world about what the Constitution says.

I would rather you not spread hate and bigotry at all, but if you choose too, please keep it away from the constitution, and please keep God/gods out of it.