Thanks for that.

I have the same problem with veteran's groups that you do, and to some extent any ad hoc gathering of more than three or so vets. It's great for a short time, and then it takes an ugly turn.

Either things turn Paleolithic, or (less often) you wander into a group that are either born-again Marxist revolutionaries or have decided they are victims and want you there to validate their victimhood. Sometimes you run into people who never made anything else work in their life, or people who want to have a dick-measuring contest with you, or people who are obviously and blatantly lying about their service (I spent most of my career in SOF, and I get this alot from guys who must think I have forgotten all the details about how my world worked and that they can just thump their chest and lie their way into the family).

Either way, it kind of negates any value I would find in spending time with fellow veterans. Which is too bad. I could use the company, sometimes.

Where I live now, there are a lot of retirees who have absorbed without much question the clash of civilizations arguments about Arabs and Muslims. My wife and I do a lot of fundraising for schools and other projects we worked on in Afghanistan, and at one of these events one of these guys will always come up to me with some BS about how things are in 'those people's wacko religion'. Sometimes I can set them straight about those aspects; other times they will insist that their son or nephew Specialist Dipshit is in EyeRack and knows all about their culture and he insists that it's true, or pull out their Pat Robertson pamphlets littered with context-free quotes from obscure hadith purportedly proving that Allah is really Baal the Moon God, blah blah blah. I do not often feel like I am talking with other veterans then, just kooks I happened to share a train with sometime, years ago.

Often in this crowd, when we get into military values and ethics (we will on this story, if it ever gets any play), there's just no hope. They get it or they don't. If they don't, they understand at some level that I'm calling them out for being unethical, immoral, disloyal to the institution, and so forth, and things go predictably downhill from there ... (on the plus side, they always write good checks for the projects, and their wives are almost invariably open minded and good listeners. Funny).

And yet every so often, you run into another sane veteran who was always clear on what s/he swore an oath on, went to the wall for it more than once, and never forgot ... and that just about makes the other bullshit worthwhile.

I keep thinking that if the growing (as your AP link demonstrates) current crop had an outlet, they would a) help themselves, b) have a way to connect that they probably don't now, and c) help the country. I haven't figured out how to do that, other than with the existing orgs, about which I have some reservations.

Sorry to ramble, thanks for reading and sharing.

qs

I remember reading a great newspaper article by Roland Barthes (reprinted and translated in the collection, 'Mythologies') where he took apart the symbology of a news magazine's cover photo of an African soldier serving in the French army, and all the emotional resonance it was supposed to produce for all the purposes you describe. IIRC, he also managed to convey the points that the symbology and hero worship (as you describe it) are not there to serve the troops or honor them, but to advance the purposes of politicians (and Empire).

Fabulous. Also concise and accessible to a lay audience, not just fellow semioticians. I wish we had more of that ourselves, especially now. It's hard to imagine American consumers going for that sort of thing, but that's only because we don't have (enough) contemporary examples.

(To be fair, a much weaker example recently in The NeoCon Republic made the point that veterans' groups sometimes only serve the purpose of providing photo ops for politicians from both sides. The 'troops' are abstractions, like lapel pins, quickly made invisible with only that lingering sheen of patriotism to mark their passage ...)

So there's my proof!

Let Robertson in on the joke, will you? Then he can go back to advocating the assassination of other foreign leaders, the more psychotic MAs will follow suit, and truth and beauty shall reign once more ...