American Military Hero Worship - Politics & Religion

RockyRaccoon
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Age: 33
Location: Maryland

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So this article has been getting a lot of attention lately because of the naturally controversial subject and I thought it might make for an interesting discussion.

So thoughts?
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bongritsu
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Pretty substanceless piece. It's clear the author doesn't really understand the state of the American military.
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benpaco
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Age: 27
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I'm not gonna pretend I understand the state of American military, but it's an interesting point I guess. I don't know. I don't thank army men for their service, but genuinely those I've seen in uniform or with the bags or etc that makes it clear they are ex-military are just good people and I find myself thanking them for other things.

Point in case, guy in uniform at an airport restaurant let several families who were clearly more stressed than he was about catching their flights go first. Then when the person behind the counter offered his cookie free because of how kind that was, he asked how much that usually would've cost and put it in the tip jar. He then helped an old man who'd dropped his cane and walked to his table casually tossing an apple and then catching it. Did I thank him for his service? Nah. Did I thank him for helping the old man? Yeah, of course.
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Happymeal

I didn't read the entire article because the tone was overly annoying from my perspective so I won't comment upon any of the points made outside of one within the 3rd paragraph. In regards to viewing the American military with skepticism, I agree, but solely because you should be skeptic of everything. It's impossible to read something from someone who claims one should be skeptic of x, but readily believes any statistics that support his views.

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

While I get the point the writer is trying to make, I think it's a misguided one. I'm extremely anti-war, but still have a certain respect for the kids who decide to enter the military. Maybe hero is no longer the word to be used, since their actions are not always necessarily so, but I think it's unfair to attack the kids who serve our country. And I'm not saying that because what they do is brave, or even important, but because most of the kids entering the military do so because they simply do not understand what they're becoming a part of. And of those that do, many come from the lower economic and social classes with very few options for making a living.

The article compares military with police but I find that the two often produce very different types of people. Police are notorious abusive of power and singular in their actions, while military men and women function as though part of a larger system. The military breaks them down are often turns them into incredibly courteous and selfless humans, because selflessness is necessary for their work.

I'd say military personel are closer in line with Firefighters, and hardly anyone ever has a bad thing to say about them.

Of course, when you start going up the chain of command to lifetime employees of the war machine, you get a different type of person. But even then, you'll notice that many high ranking Generals have come out against recent wars and are far more rational and humane than the politicians who decide on the actions.
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sp4cetiger

meccalecca wrote:

The article compares military with police but I find that the two often produce very different types of people. Police are notorious abusive of power and singular in their actions, while military men and women function as though part of a larger system. The military breaks them down are often turns them into incredibly courteous and selfless humans, because selflessness is necessary for their work.

Very much agree with this.

Soldiers are not politicians, they don't decide what should and shouldn't be done to protect their country, they just volunteer themselves to serve. The fact that the current generation of soldiers is fighting in wars that are less directly connected to our individual freedom (and perhaps less justifiable) doesn't make their sacrifice any less admirable. While the word "hero" is a bit strong in most cases, I'm still grateful to those who chose to serve their country.

BrandonMiaow

sp4cetiger wrote:

Very much agree with this.

Soldiers are not politicians, they don't decide what should and shouldn't be done to protect their country, they just volunteer themselves to serve. The fact that the current generation of soldiers is fighting in wars that are less directly connected to our individual freedom (and perhaps less justifiable) doesn't make their sacrifice any less admirable. While the word "hero" is a bit strong in most cases, I'm still grateful to those who chose to serve their country.

Yeah, but there is also the point the author made about whether you should be grateful solely for them being in the military regardless of if you know what kind of person they are and whether anything they did in the military is worthy of praise. You praise a cop who does his job well, but you vilify brutal police officers, surely the same could apply to military people? Surely there's unnecessary violence and sadism that occurs by individuals but when you blanket-statement make all military people heroes that sort of thing will get more overlooked (not to mention the sexual abuse the article made a point of) Like, I've encountered a few fairly fucked up military people living near Fort Bragg...my ex-step-brother's friend's dad was military and he apparently showed his kids some lovely videos of, like, buildings getting bombed or whatever and people flying out of them. Civilians too. His kids were so into that. The dad was in some lame metal band, played with Drowning Pool (the creators of the classic "let the bodies hit the floor"), which gives you an idea of how bad it was...just an irrelevant tidbit lol. The kid across the street from me says his military dad has a knife in his garage he killed someone with and that it still had blood on it, lol. I figure the kid is more than likely lying but I wouldn't be surprised to be honest. I do remember one of my friend's military dad seemed like a nice guy. I remember he did some really crazy exercise routine in the garage and he came in all sweaty and made us banana smoothies, with a nice dose of sweat. They were pretty good though.

Anyways, I don't think our military trains soldiers to be selfless so much as it trains them to thrive on a strict hierarchy...It don't think it makes empathetic and selfless people if they weren't already, but I could be wrong. I just don't see anything in the way military training is set up that seems to make those type of people. Maybe out doing their service is where this selflessness must develop? I think the bit about teachers, nurses, etc needing more praise is pretty spot-on, at least get this macho-kill-bad-guys-action-movie-hero vibe outta the way so we can make any praise we give to military peeps earnest and not just praising a caricature. I read a similar article with the same opinion; wasn't quite as well-written, but it was written by a military peep.

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

BrandonMiaow wrote:

I think the bit about teachers, nurses, etc needing more praise is pretty spot-on

Couldn't agree with you more about this.

And I think that's part of why this article is such a failure. It spends so much time focused on why we shouldn't call military heroes, when the article could have just been written in praise for someone more worthwhile. It's basically that cynical journalism is far more valuable than a puff piece. An article questioning the heroics of he army will draw loads of comments and discussion, while one praising nurses will have a hard time drawing any criticism. This is the sad state of journalism.

I think as the military has shifted further and further from direct hand to hand combat, we've seen the military more desensitized to the violence, and the need for valor is mostly lost, and easily replaced by mindless drones.
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sp4cetiger

BrandonMiaow wrote:

Yeah, but there is also the point the author made about whether you should be grateful solely for them being in the military regardless of if you know what kind of person they are and whether anything they did in the military is worthy of praise. You praise a cop who does his job well, but you vilify brutal police officers, surely the same could apply to military people?

The same applies to all people. The problem is that I generally won't know which service members are guilty of doing nasty things, I just know that they served, so I thank them. Similarly, I don't know whether the person who held the door for me at lunch was also a serial killer, all I know is that they held the door for me. So I thank them.

You can choose not to, of course, but if we treated everybody coldly because of what they could have done, this would be a very depressing place to live.

BrandonMiaow

sp4cetiger wrote:

The same applies to all people. The problem is that I generally won't know which service members are guilty of doing nasty things, I just know that they served, so I thank them. Similarly, I don't know whether the person who held the door for me at lunch was also a serial killer, all I know is that they held the door for me. So I thank them.

You can choose not to, of course, but if we treated everybody coldly because of what they could have done, this would be a very depressing place to live.

Fair point, I get what you mean, but imo that level of unanimous praise is dangerous, not to mention it probably can feel a bit hollow and meaningless to some military peeps. But yeah, I get it, no way of knowing how good of a person they are so you should thank them for doing it to begin with.

meccalecca wrote:

Couldn't agree with you more about this.

And I think that's part of why this article is such a failure. It spends so much time focused on why we shouldn't call military heroes, when the article could have just been written in praise for someone more worthwhile. It's basically that cynical journalism is far more valuable than a puff piece. An article questioning the heroics of he army will draw loads of comments and discussion, while one praising nurses will have a hard time drawing any criticism. This is the sad state of journalism.

I think as the military has shifted further and further from direct hand to hand combat, we've seen the military more desensitized to the violence, and the need for valor is mostly lost, and easily replaced by mindless drones.

True. Though I don't know, I don't see the article as overly cynical so much as trying to point out something the author sees as a nasty trend. It didn't read as trying to be controversial. I think it is much easier to get passionate about something one sees going wrong then to take a moment and say, "Yeah, this is great, this needs more appreciation", so if anything I think it is just a tendency of people rather than anything specific to journalism. But I don't know much about journalism in the past or in its current state so you could be right.

I think that is probably very very true.