I show my support for our country differently than you do.
It is all about how I deal and the legacy I choose to pass on.
This is also a purpose for me.

But we need people from every walk of perception to help keep honesty well oiled and up and running. Together maybe the answer is in every day people. Doesn’t mean we will ever have a say though. But for me it is about what I have to do. I have pared down my own personal bullshit to where I stand on very solid ground, and my convictions are simple and true for myself. War sucks. Period. But I will always keep the home fires burning for our boys and gals. I am simply hard wired to be this way.

The damage done to us, eg 9-11, is nothing compared to what we had done to others. WWII was fought to preserve European colonies for Europeans.

There is some justification for WWII in Europe, though realistically Hitler did not threaten the US. The US did not have sympathy for the Jews and turned away Jewish refugees – the moral issues of the war came later.

American soldiers have been used mainly for economic purposes, not for “freedom”. To believe otherwise is to succumb to the propaganda of big money.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Just because you refuse to buy into the Sound Tank’s agenda doesn’t mean you want to live in Viet Nam, or betray your country. That’s the “my way or the highway” I’m always talking about. And those, like Sound Tank, who force you to choose either one or the other are just as bad as the communists, or those crazy medieval tribesmen and religious fanatics who fly airliners into our office buildings.

I have a family that suffered terribly under Cuban Communism. I am under no illusions about it. I volunteered to go in the Navy not because I felt heroic and wanted to fight, but because I felt no moral or political objection to fighting if that was where my duty sent me.
Much later, after my discharge,I came to object to the pointlessness and futility of that war, and to the purity of our motives, not because I had any sympathy for our enemies. Country Joe Macdonald also volunteered for and served honorably in, the US Navy, FWIW.

I think you’ll do all right, Jody. I just hope I explained myself well. I abhor fulfilling someone’s agenda too, even if its one I happen to agree with. Especially when they insult my intelligence by trying to manipulate me by pushing my emotional and moral buttons.

Thanks for making me hip to Sound Tank. I’ll keep an eye open for them in the future. And I’d also like to know where they get their funding.

I did not realize this. If I had known THAT fact I would not have posted it.

Not because of you, but because of me. I abhore
fulfilling someone’s agenda.

I believe all our servicemen and women deserve our respect and gratitude. I am a mother, grandmother, aunt, and a sister and a daughter, I understand on a whole different level than a man would. We are not equal that way. However, our passion for liberty is equivalent with each other…and what it takes for that freedom. The cost.

Now with that being said, Viet Nam is also not the vacation haven that is being portrayed in this day and age. Things there suck. For the people that live there. https://www.hrw.org/asia/vietnam

We may or may not have been spat upon, but Communism still is alive and well in other parts of the world.

Indeed.

What pisses me off is that video. That’s not about love of country and honoring the vets. That video is a commercial, its advertising, propaganda, it is pushing a political point of view and a cultural agenda. It used to be a lot more common, but its making a comeback, now. And that POV is more about domestic politics and economic policy and even labor and corporate and tax policy; an attempt to exploit peoples’ natural love of country and respect for those who put their lives on the line to defend it. And it does that by questioning the motives and legitimacy and patriotism of anyone who doesn’t support that POV. “You don’t agree with me, completely and whole-heartedly, then you must be a traitor or a villain or a fool.”
There is a subtext there, a hidden message. I’ve known it since I came back from that war and, contrary to what has been drilled into us continuously ever since, NOBODY spit on me, or called me “baby-killer” or shunned me because I had short hair and wore my uniform on Fridays before I went to Reserve meeting. It wasn’t hippies versus vets, the vets all were hippies. And none of them were spit on, or called baby-killer, or shunned either.

That film is a production, someone hired cameramen and filmmakers and actors, worked long and hard on a script, paid a lot of money to get that patriotic message across, so people could feel fuzzy and warm about the message, and therefore learn to despise those who won’t swallow it, to hate anybody who dares question it. You don’t do this out of love, you get hired by someone to do it for a very specific reason.

How do I know this? Because I’ve had this flag shoved in my face for as long as I can remember. Barry Sadler, John Wayne, the Pledge of Allegiance, the homeroom prayers, singing Dixie before the football game, the whole shooting match. There was something in my growing up that made me suspicious about it from the start. Ever since I was a kid, I could see the game they were playing. Do you really want to know why the hippies burned the flag? It wasn’t because they hated it, but because they hated seeing it fouled and dishonored by the cynics that wrapped themselves in it and rubbed it in our faces.

And it ain’t about Americanism vs Communism, either. The Communists in Cuba tell little stories and play little commercials just like that to indoctrinate THEIR kids. I know, I’ve talked to them.

So isn’t Country Joe and the Fish singing the “Gee Mom I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” at Woodstock political propaganda as well? Of course it is! No one is denying that. But it makes no bones about it. You know exactly where he’s coming from and what his agenda is. He’s not telling you what you need to think and he’s not hiding the message wrapped up in god and country; He’s telling you exactly what he thinks. And even if you don’t agree with him, you have to admit he’s being honest and up front about it.

Welcome to the Culture Wars. They’re heating up again.

We must never be afraid to fight and we must always be ready to do so. But it is not glorious, it is not an adventure, it is not something we do to “teach them a lesson” or to “sort them out”. This is why little patriotic exhibitions like the video you pointed us to infuriate me. They are deliberately designed to make us ready to go, to want to go, and if we question that we must therefore be traitors or cowards. That is a filthy lie. War is not about national honor, or love of country, or the flag or god; its more like surgery without anesthetics, pulling out an abscessed tooth with a pair of pliers or an improvised amputation as a cure for snakebite. It may be about freedom, at least, that’s usually the reason both sides give for fighting. No, you do it because there is no other alternative.

War should not be an orgasm of smug patriotic righteousness we can unleash on our enemies whenever they insult us. It should be done only when there is no other choice. We have no assurance of victory, and even if we do win, it will be awful for those who have to go and do it, even if they survive it. And it never quite turns out the way we expect it to.