The gift that keeps on giving
Doug Powers notes that comedian Richard Belzer came out and said what most Leftists imply and few admit: that they think the men and women serving in our American military are subnormal in intelligence and understanding. Certainly, that’s what I hear in my community, an accusation I’m always quick to refute. Of course, I’ve never refuted it as well as Powers, who has this heartfelt tribute to our military:
For a moment, let’s consider the people Belzer insults. Americans like these have helped put an end to slavery, oppression, genocide and all manner of craziness put forth by every spiral-eyed deranged dictator and tin-pot wanker on the planet.
The military can be sent to fight in some of the biggest dung-heap, dirt-bucket and generally scummy areas on the face of the earth — places that make a septic tank look like the Presidential Suite at the Bellagio. They perform tasks — from the incredibly dangerous to the intolerably mundane — without complaint or plea for recognition.
The military is often called upon to take on unhinged nut cases — the aberrant likes of whom may make you long for the stability of Courtney Love. They volunteer to dive head first into a big bowl of “Crackpot Bouillabaisse” against knee-jerk fascists, totalitarian fist wavers, and mad men engaged in a fierce game of “Virgin-Quest.”
All this is offset by the lousy pay.
What must make a soldier’s job even more difficult is that, on top of all this, they hear entertainers who make a fortune on fiction telling them they have no idea what they’re talking about because they didn’t learn about their own missions in the biased mainstream press.
It’s so true. So much of what our military uncomplainingly does is miserable scutwork. It’s not glamorous. It’s not Tom Cruise dashing about on screen in gleaming hand to hand combat with some politically correct bad guy. It’s slogging through horrible conditions in nasty places. And our troops do it for us because they believe it’s the right thing to do. Or maybe some of the troops do it because they made the logical decision that their civilian life was a dead end one. That’s not a stupid decision; that’s a smart decision, even if one factors in the risks inherent in military service. (And, as Little Green Footballs points out, those risks, while real, are not as dreadful as the Left would have us believe.)
