Veterans Day 2022

Wasn't trying to troll. I was thinking in terms of soldiers' honor and respect for one another even across allegiance lines. Not ISIS or other irregular terrorists we've been fighting. I know ex Wehrmacht soldiers some of them emigrated to the states after WW2 and became friends with their former battle enemies. Do you hate the German grunts too or just the Nazis giving the orders?
You are race baiting, thread high jacking troll POS. I think I found the first person to block on here because u have nothing but trouble to offer everywhere you post. Unbelievable.
 
God bless ya cams. The limited Veterans Day menu of precooked shit they put out nowadays sux. I would just rather order whatever I wanted off of the full menu and paid for it.😂👍🏻
Ya I hear you bubba, I’m just being my cranky old f*** self as usual, even when I’m being a dick I’m usually chuckling to myself as I talk so please don’t take me too seriously. I’d rather just go sit in the woods with a fire and a case of beer and be left alone.
 
Ya I hear you bubba, I’m just being my cranky old f*** self as usual, even when I’m being a dick I’m usually chuckling to myself as I talk so please don’t take me too seriously. I’d rather just go sit in the woods with a fire and a case of beer and be left alone.
Ranger TV is a sure fire cure.
 
I said this last year: it grates on me when people thank me for my service. I won’t rehash it this year.

It’s been a good day. Got my leaves raked.
 
I was thinking that just today. All this "thank you for your service" nonsense yet we provide our veterans with bottom of the barrel medical care and staff it with MD's who are unemployable in the private sector.
The best doctor I ever had at the VA was a pain specialist and he started a Acupuncture clinic. He was killing it! Helping out a lot of guys get off Meds. Because the VA wants zombies and he was actually helping guys they got pissed at him and ran him out. The VA basically fired him, let him resign so he could still get Gov employment alsewhere.
 
The best doctor I ever had at the VA was a pain specialist and he started a Acupuncture clinic. He was killing it! Helping out a lot of guys get off Meds. Because the VA wants zombies and he was actually helping guys they got pissed at him and ran him out. The VA basically fired him, let him resign so he could still get Gov employment alsewhere.
The VA will wait for people to die. Here's the thing civies don't get. The VA isn't there to give out money like they think they are. The VA is there to protect government liability. That's that.
 
I said this last year: it grates on me when people thank me for my service. I won’t rehash it this year.

It’s been a good day. Got my leaves raked.
I hate it when corporate America thanks me by sponsoring free meals at chain restaurants I wouldn’t feed to my dog😂😂
As an electrician I would really like some thanks for keeping the power on…now that would be something😂😂

What’s really friggin irritating is someone posting a communist uniform and asking about other countries Vets!
 
I wanted to reply to this thread yesterday, but was so tired from work that I dosed off after dinner...
Yes, we were open yesterday. People give me shit about that every year. But, we trade Veterans Day for the day after Thanksgiving, so that my people can have a long weekend at Thanksgiving with their families. And I am the only Vet at the company. My new book keeper asked me yesterday why I didn't just take the day off? I am the boss and can do what I want. I told her it was because that wouldn't be fair, and I am not special.
Dad was a WWII Marine in the Pacific
Brother was a Viet Nam Marine
I enlisted before the ink was dry on my high school diploma
All three of us 03 Marines. All three with CAR's. All three saw different jungles. I was the only one sent to a desert.
A couple of things I just realized that are pretty cool... All three of us qualified/ were issued 1911's and all three of us would have fired the Ma Deuce.

I will never accept a free meal or discount from a corporation. I refuse to be a part of their BS, fake concern publicity stunts. When you really care about shit, you don't have to announce it with a nationally advertised, feel good promotion. Applebees probably spent more on advertising their free shit than on the actual food they gave away. How bout you just STFU and spend that money directly, and quietly, on Vets in need?
 
I wanted to reply to this thread yesterday, but was so tired from work that I dosed off after dinner...
Yes, we were open yesterday. People give me shit about that every year. But, we trade Veterans Day for the day after Thanksgiving, so that my people can have a long weekend at Thanksgiving with their families. And I am the only Vet at the company. My new book keeper asked me yesterday why I didn't just take the day off? I am the boss and can do what I want. I told her it was because that wouldn't be fair, and I am not special.
Dad was a WWII Marine in the Pacific
Brother was a Viet Nam Marine
I enlisted before the ink was dry on my high school diploma
All three of us 03 Marines. All three with CAR's. All three saw different jungles. I was the only one sent to a desert.
A couple of things I just realized that are pretty cool... All three of us qualified/ were issued 1911's and all three of us would have fired the Ma Deuce.

I will never accept a free meal or discount from a corporation. I refuse to be a part of their BS, fake concern publicity stunts. When you really care about shit, you don't have to announce it with a nationally advertised, feel good promotion. Applebees probably spent more on advertising their free shit than on the actual food they gave away. How bout you just STFU and spend that money directly, and quietly, on Vets in need?
I admit to copping a few free meals many years ago, but not for at least 20 years now. It just seems shallow. The one thing I never want to be is one of those "professional veterans" who wears mismatched uniforms from different branches and different times, and advertises "veteran-ness" at all times. (Many of those guys are highly suspect, by the way.)

A friend wrote this back in 2014. I agree, and it's still true:

Today is Veteran’s Day. I am a Veteran.

I do not need your thanks or appreciation.

I must disclaim up front, I am at this moment up at 6:30am, about to go to the Bob Evan’s Restaurant to take them up of the ‘free hotcakes’ Veteran’s Day offering, because I am a frugal man. Later on today, I’ll be taking advantage of the culinary largesse of another restaurant (or two, or three..). I also do not presume to speak on behalf of any other veteran.

When I say, “I do not need your thanks or appreciation”, I mean this: The symbolism spawned by this federal holiday verges on emptiness. The thanks are as perfunctory and rote as the reflexive “God Bless You” after a sneeze, or the “You Too” we mutter under our breaths after some retail robot sends us off with a overly chipper “Have a nice day.”

I don’t intend to be mean spirited, or to demean those who express truly heartfelt gratitude, but the collective societal action on this day bothers me. It has taken me a while to figure out precisely what it is that bothers me about it all, but I think it is this:

I see a collective sense of guilt dating back to the aftermath of the Vietnam War where members of our society were drafted, and by threat of sanction by the State, forced to go and fight strangers in a strange land and afterwards return to face a significant minority of the populace that treated them as criminals, baby killers, murderers…

And like too many societal reactions to negative trends, attitudes boomeranged too far to the opposite end of the scale to the point where we infantilize our veterans. We infantilize them because we seem to remove from them any responsibility for their choices to sign up and serve. No one born after 1952/3 has been drafted and forced to serve. Our current crop of veterans all volunteered for various reasons. Reasons that span from free education, travel, patriotism, family tradition, economic necessity and other motivations, but none of them forced by the authority of the State.

I knew what I signed up for, and I gambled that the trade of my time and service (and potentially much more) in exchange for education and travel would ultimately end up in my favor. (It was a wash. I was in the Guard during the first Gulf War and volunteered to go, and in a phase of youthful stupidity, I wasted the free educational benefits with too much drinking and endless nights playing Dungeons and Dragons instead of studying). Many of us took the same gamble and most of us came out even or ahead of the game. Some of us lost that gamble, a few in a very big way.

So what’s my point? I signed up for a job. I did that job. I wasn’t duped and I wasn’t used. And, in point of fact, there are firemen, EMT’s, police and even postal carriers that experience more potential danger on a daily basis than I did in a decade+ in federal uniformed service. That many if not most of us veterans (at least in my first hand, anecdotal experience) are doing okay. We made our deals for service, and for good or ill, have reaped the benefits and/or consequences and have continued to move forward in life and overcome the obstacles before us.

There are veterans that *do* need your thanks, and do need it for more than just this day, more than the duration of a parade, or the few moments you open you wallet or mouth. Veterans that do need your thanks also need your help and often need it *daily*. Some, hopefully, just for long enough to get healed or whole, or rebalanced…. Though some will need your help for the rest of their lives.

So, instead of focusing on today, and on those trite well wishes and thank-you’s that will fade and be forgotten tomorrow, do this:

Press your elected officials to keep the promises made to veterans. Make them work to improve VA medical care, to streamline processes that keep veterans away from aid and treatment for PSTD and physical disabilities. Press them to work to shorten what can be year-long waits for help. Help bring down the incredibly high suicide rate for veterans. Hire veterans who need jobs instead of treating them as untouchable PTSD laden balls of explosive rage. There are disabled vets that need help every day, not just thanks today. Find a soldier serving somewhere (anysoldier.com) and write a letter or send a care package.

Do one thing in the preceding paragraph every month for the next decade, if not the rest of your lives.

That would be a meaningful thank you. Otherwise, just save your breath, I won’t mind.

This has been an expression of my personal opinion. I’m sure some of you will disagree, some vehemently…. Have at it. I will not debate it though. Thank vets in the ways you best see fit, and I shall do likewise.
 
Educate yourself.

Veterans Day is an American version of an international holiday celebrating the end of WWI. Other countries, the ones who were involved in WWI, celebrate today as their Memorial Day. It’s why you see Canadian hockey coaches wearing poppies: the poppies are intended, in those countries, to honor the dead.

We already had a Memorial Day. So we call this one Veterans Day. It has a different meaning here than it does in other countries.

And yes, the Germans (our enemies in WWI) celebrate the Armistice too, but they do it on an early-November Sunday as a religious occasion.
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
That part seems forgotten by many.
 
I said this last year: it grates on me when people thank me for my service. I won’t rehash it this year.

It’s been a good day. Got my leaves raked.
I usually smile and reply, "Thank You but you paid me" and the DOD is still paying me. 🇺🇸
It's pretty patronizing but as I mentioned earlier better than getting spit on by some dirty hippie [rofl]

No lie Cam, I didn't ask for anything but if you're going to give me free stuff or a discount I'll take it. Money is freedom and prosperity and if the corporations I've spent thousands on offer me a discount now and then and It's a product I like I'll take it. No different than using my AAA card at Lenscrafters for new glasses or vehicle insurance.
 
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