Living
As a man who was once in combat I see life differently than many who never served. My service for America was in Vietnam where I was sent not once but twice. It was what some often call, “a learning experience.” It took many years for me to see it this way because the disrespect we all got when returning home was devastating and those who weren’t prone to “combat fatigue” were stricken by “spoiled brat fatigue.” American citizens who have so much that they appreciate little to none of it. When people get this way they are easily susceptible to propaganda which belittles a nation. Sometimes, such as Vietnam, a nation deserves this but one needs to understand history to rise above being belittled.
I come to this website with eyes wide open and what I place here will not be reactionary in the sense of recoiling. I’ve had a lot of time to consider exactly what America has dwindled to just by watching congress and various presidents. I have this view from being born shortly after World War Two. I reject what the press called us back then: Baby Boomers. NO, we were native born Americans and that is all we were. Human beings is exactly what we are if we take the press away and the leftist pundits who like nothing better than pigeon holing races and cultures.
Congress folks and presidents have to be elected and those who elect them are ultimately to blame for their choices. I tend toward conservative and never leftist doctrine. Even the Nazis could be considered leftists even though it is popular to believe they were extreme right wing. I look at politics as though a circle and that circle, right side and left side, meet at the bottom and the bottom is extreme dwindling to democratic toward the top. On the right circumference is right and on the left is left and they both meet at the bottom which is extreme. Extreme has no difference as citizens are killed when extremes occur. It has always been this way and “modern” is a feint because human nature will never change, has not ever changed, and will not ever change. We kill without regret in the extremes.
It is with this understanding that it is difficult to fool me when it comes to thieves and politicians as they tend to come out of the same basket. Those who are not of that basket should be celebrated and there are some and have always been some. No, I am not a cynic. I just learned human nature the hard way. I have studied history since a child and considered what I had learned for decades before and after the Vietnam War. One could say I was jaded by that homecoming and they would be partly correct. I now look at war as the failing of human beings and not some victory when the vanquished have been dispatched. I look at war as human nature and human nature is one that waits for an excuse to harm others. Only strong discipline and a willingness to expend total energy to avoid fighting is what we have as a recourse. Much as we like to consider ourselves strong or mighty we fall to violence at the drop of a hat. It has always been this way, from clubs to nukes.
Peace is a pipe dream. How that word was invented was an ironic thought in a dystopian mind. One of mental vagueness brought about in a dream in which fog and snow blinded one person to reality. Reality is how we need to live yet is the one thing we avoid. Combat lifts that veil and demonstrates the internals of human kind in all its disease and innards. We lack a soul and most of us understand this who have seen blood and guts in jungles and trenches and no mans land.
This is where I come from and here you will learn of life as seen by a combatant who came home to ridicule and curses for doing what politicians ordered him to do. A young man, or boy, who was physically strong enough to go overseas and kill other human beings for a war that those very politicians never intended to win. Still, I laugh and smile at times. Other times I muse in a fog where little joy shines in. Don’t worry, I will approach this with humor also as I have learned to laugh at myself due to the urge to survive.
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