38
Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 12PM Central Standard Time
Mike was sitting at the bar when Pete arrived. “You’re late,” Mike said.
“Some of us have jobs,” Pete said, smiling.
Mike looked preoccupied.
“What’s up?”
“Ah, nothing.”
“Lay it on me,” Pete said. “The President still got your panties in a wad?”
“Of course he does,” Mike said. “I’m a patriotic American. No patriotic thinking American has unwadded underwear at this moment.”
“Well mine’s hanging loose, so what does that make me.”
“It’s a question you should be asking yourself,” Mike said.
“Something else is bothering you,” Pete said.
Mike sighed.
“Lay it on this unpatriotic Republican who is… unthinking,” Pete said.
“It’s my kid,” Mike said.
“Shit,” Pete said. “He’s okay, right? Is he in Iraq?”
“No, nothing like that. He’s fine.”
“Whew,” Pete said.
“But he’s back in the states.”
“Is he out?”
“I guess he is out.”
“Nothing bad happened over there?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure just about everything that happened over there was bad. But physically he seems fine. Not that I’ve seen him.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m not sure. He seems to be in Washington. But he’s been flying around different places. I guess he has a new job. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, except to say it was stateside and not in the military.”
“So, what’s wrong?”
“I just don’t like the sound of that. It sounds weird. I got the sense that it was something having to do with security.”
“Well it’s got to be better than being over there, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. Just the way he was unwilling to talk about who he was working for kind of made me uneasy.”
“Hey – maybe he’s working for the President!” Pete said, laughing. “Now it all makes sense. You’re worried he’s working for the guy who Made America Great Again.”
Mike exhaled.
“Christ. That would be all I needed. No, I just feel like he should decompress a little. I think an experience like his… I think he needs a little time to get it into perspective.”
“What experience?”
“Just being in combat, living with the possibility of dying, maybe killing people, it’s got to have an effect. And he’s the kind of guy to avoid seeking help when he needs it. Not like his old man, who complains and talks constantly.”
“I was gonna say.”
“I admit it, totally. Anyway, something else happened that bugged me.”
“Now what?”
“The only reason I know he’s back is, I was watching a basketball game and during a break they showed him as a returning vet. You know how they do it at ballgames, the vet goes on the field and waves and everyone cheers. Well, they had him come onto the court.”
“That’s great.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on. They’re cheering your son, for Christ’s sake. How can you be against that? No wonder your side lost.”
“Well, a lot of it was, he’s been home almost a year, and he never told me. I mean, we talked, but he never told me he was out of the service. He used to come back stateside so often that I didn’t realize that this time he was back for good. But also, I feel like… I feel like he was being exploited. By the basketball teams, by the network, by the armed forces. He did not look happy. No smile. And all these fat shits standing all teary-eyed in their socially distanced seats, and almost none of those people served. But you know that by standing and cheering, they somehow feel like they have served. Like they are big patriots, just for saying ‘yaayyy’ and getting a little teary while they play ‘Proud to Be an American,’ which was written and sung by a guy who got out of serving in Vietnam by a deferment, by the way. Did ANY of these Republican heroes fucking serve? It pisses me off.”
“Some of them did, sure. That Senator Hanson did.”
“He was a JAG.”
“Hey, there’s no reason to name-call.”
“No, JAG – Judge Advocate General. He was a lawyer in the service. Over there.”
“Oh, right. It’s been a while. And I spent as little time as possible with officers. And lawyers.”
“Don’t you feel like it’s a little fake, all this ginned-up patriotism for monetary and political gain?”
“I don’t know. I like it. Makes me feel like people care. Better than being spit on like my uncle was when he came back from Nam.”
“I agree there. But I am starting to think sentimentality kills, brother. Whenever I see a teary eye over something patriotic, I think, ‘Someone is going to bleed for this.’”
“Come on. Aren’t you even a little proud of your son?”
“Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? I’m in awe of him.”
“Well there you go.”
“But I’m serious. Can we really say that any of the wars we’ve fought since World War II, or maybe Korea, really made us safer? Or maybe more important, freer?”
“Getting bin Laden made us all safer, I think. And we have not been hit by another 9/11, so I have to think that our military had something to do with that. You can’t have freedom without security.”
Mike paused and thought it over.
“There’s some truth there,” he said finally. “I do think there’s a reason we have not been whacked like we were on 9/11. But I’m not sure we are freer. We sure are under more surveillance. The war in Iraq cost us a mint and made the Middle East even more unstable. From what I read, Iran benefited more than anyone else from what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are Iran’s two closest enemies, traditionally, and we took both of them out at once. But now there are some people in the administration who want to go to war with Iran.”
“The President fired that guy,” Pete said. “And then he wrote a book slamming him.”
“Yeah, but we still have sanctions on them, and we took out one of their leading generals. And we’re fighting a proxy war against them in Yemen. I wonder if my son was over there.”
“Probably not. We don’t have troops there.”
“As far as we know,” Mike said. “Anyway, when I feel my heartstrings getting pulled, when I sense some manipulation going on, when I see a military parent who reveals him- or herself to their kid in school as a surprise on MyTube, I think, ‘They should never have been away from their kid to begin with. Whatever we needed to accomplish over there, we’ve done enough. Save your costless tears of joy – they just encourage everyone involved to keep sending more parents and kids over there to get killed, or to kill others and be scarred for life.’”
“Whew, that’s cynical,” Pete said.
“I think it’s the opposite of cynical. Cynical is exploiting patriotism and the enthusiasm and energy of young people to pursue questionable goals overseas, or make money over here by identifying a mere business with the highest ideals of the nation and the harshest sacrifices.”
“I’ll have to think about that one,” Pete said, taking a drink. “I will say this – I sense a lack of respect for the military from your side of the political aisle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you guys undervalue the military virtues, which used to be the male virtues. I was just reading about Teddy Roosevelt. Man, that guy would never fly today. He was all like, ‘The vigorous races must subjugate the inferior races. A man is not a man until he has tasted combat.’ That shit would not fly today. But there’s some truth to it.”
“Some truth?” Mike said, aghast.
“Like your son,” Pete said. “When he went in, I know you were upset.”
“I was proud,” Mike said.
“Sure, but you were upset, too.”
“I was worried, of course. And I was wondering where this kid came from. He was so determined to go test himself. I never had that in me. I was impressed, but scared for him.”
“Well, what if it’s not him that was the exception, but you? What if the natural thing is for a young man to want to be tested, to want to develop his courage and to use it alongside other men for the good of the community? And to be recognized for it? What if the unnatural thing is to sit at home and virtue-signal how woke you are, and how you as a male are uniquely evil and incapable and bigoted and misogynist?”
“Where’d you get all those big words?” Mike asked.
“What if we as a nation have lost that thing that every generation before ours had, where young men are expected to be courageous and to display virtue, manly virtue, to put their lives at risk? What if you are the outlier?”
Mike was at a loss for a moment.
Pete continued. “I just think that maybe, maybe a lot of those teary-eyed guys in the stands were sincere in their admiration for him, and I also think maybe he got something out of their applause. Like they say at military funerals, ‘The thanks of a grateful nation.’”
Mike said, after a minute, “It’s something to think about, and I hope you are right. But I have to tell you, the guy I saw being applauded there did not seem happy about it or comfortable with it. And I do think there’s a lot of cost-free bullshit where non-serving guys acting like hardasses and thinking they are tough applaud at these corporate-sponsored set-up events, and deep down inside they think they have done their duty. It makes pointless death more likely, in my opinion.”
Mike went on. “In fact, I think there is a huge and completely illegitimate addiction to sentimental patriotic bullshit in this country. It used to be, like in World War II and Korea, everyone served, and no one romanticized the military or war. Or anyway, they romanticized it a lot less. No one worshiped generals back then, because everyone knew someone who had gotten killed or their ass or leg shot off because of some stupid-assed officer. Now, literally our wars are fought by fewer than one in a thousand Americans at any one time, even at the height of the Iraq and Afghan wars. 300,000 out of 300 million, and only a fraction of those actually in combat. To refer back to your need for young men to prove themselves, well, when only one in a thousand of them gets to prove themselves, that leaves a hunger in the rest of them that is unfed. So, we romanticize a military that very few of us are directly acquainted with, and start worshiping these generals who turn out to be complete assholes. Remember the Surge in Iraq? The guy who ran it? How he was a genius who had figured out how to win against an insurgency? Well, it turned out his big brainy idea was, ‘Let’s bribe all these rebels so they’ll stop fighting us.’ And then it turned out he was shtupping this female officer who was writing this blow-job of a biography of him. And the Surge faded, and we pulled out, and they hate us now. Not one of these generals has figured out how to make these long-term Middle Eastern conflicts into a winner. But we worship uniforms, because most of us never wore one, so we keep pretending they know how to do the impossible. Our presidents start these stupid wars, and tell the generals, ‘Win this war,’ and instead of saying, ‘Sir, this war cannot be won,’ the generals salute and say ‘YES SIR,’ because that is what they teach you in the military – NEVER SAY YOU CAN’T DO SOMETHING.”
“Charlie Mike,” Pete said.
“What about me?” Mike said.
“Charlie Mike,” Pete said. “C-M. Complete the Mission. It’s what we are taught.”
“Exactly. So all the fine young men who go to war are being fed into this unwinnable situation, and I say it’s largely because of those fat fucks sitting in the bleachers getting all misty-eyed and clapping for the brave hero kid who has somehow made it home out of whatever hellhole he was fighting in. And maybe even more, the women who tear up or get moist around a man in uniform. They are expressing the societal demand for tear-jerker moments, and it is that demand that feeds our kids – MY kid – into a fucking furnace.”
“Everything all right here?” Janet had glided over as Mikes’s volume had edged up.
“We are absolutely fine,” Mike said. “We would like some tacos, though. And a couple more beers.”
“Okay,” Janet said, eyeing him suspiciously. Pete laughed.
Janet walked away.
“You done?” Pete asked.
“For now,” Mike said. “But I am worried.”
“Well, as long as you’re worried.”
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian