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Veterans Day AfterNovember 12, 2005 Even in these allegedly liberal parts, the bumper sticker is sometimes seen: IF YOU LOVE YOUR FREEDOM, THANK A VET. I'm not sure I love my freedom; more often I think it's an unshakable burden that I wish I didn't take so seriously. Why can't I be like so many of my countryfolk who blithely sell themselves into bondage at any opportunity? Mortgages, marriages, jobs they say they hate, cars they can't afford . . . I guess I do love my freedom, in a way; enough to hang on to it, even if (and probably because) it makes my life difficult. But "thank a vet"? Truly I am grateful to those who kept Hitler and his Nazis from invading, but many of those people weren't in the military -- or USians, for that matter. In this country freedom has been far more often, and more seriously, threatened by the likes of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover than it has by the likes of Herr Hitler or Comrade Stalin, and I'm more inclined to thank those who spoke out against them, and all their predecessors and successors, long before it was safe to do so. I also thank all those who have inspired me to speak out and think about this freedom thing. Vet-worship is something of a cult in the U.S. of A. Oddly enough, deifying The Veteran coincides with letting real-life veterans live on the street and suffer flashbacks to the things they saw and did for their commanding officers and their country -- "our freedom." (Actually, it's not odd at all: putting Woman up on a pedestal coexists with keeping women barefoot, pregnant, and out of work, and harping on the sacredness of Children, even Unborn Children, doesn't seem to translate into devoting serious resources to various kinds of education -- or encouraging kids to think freely, as opposed to pledging allegiance to the flag.) As an anti-Vietnam War activist, I honored the vets who came back from hell and told the truth, even when they were still in uniform and risked military penalties against speaking out. They had a credibility that we mostly untested youngsters lacked. They woke me up. I thanked them. You bet I thanked them. I still do. But the professional veterans' lobby gives me pause. The World War II vets turn out in their uniforms -- if you love your freedom, thank a vet -- and I think, OK, you fought for freedom when you were 19 years old; how old are you now, 79? 82? What have you done for freedom since then? Sure, I'll grant that sometimes freedom really is best defended by those who can follow orders (take a look at the U.S. "left" if you want a glimpse of what happens when a large bunch of people can't subsume their egos to their own version of the common good for two consecutive seconds), but often disobedience is more important. What have you done for freedom since you left the service? Is it freedom you want to celebrate, or is it a narrow definition of duty? November 11 was my uncle Neville's birthday. He was a gentle, self-effacing soul -- lived with his mother (whom I don't think he especially liked) till the day she died. The story -- never told, often hinted at or alluded to -- I grew up with was that he was "shell-shocked in the war." That would be World War II. (Supposedly he was single because the love of his life had died tragically, or jilted him, or something, long, long ago -- my family has a pretty solid history of not wanting to deal with the messy complications of reality.) "Shell-shocked" seemed mysterious, even romantic -- like the wasting disease to which brilliant poets and fair maidens seemed so prone in previous ages -- until I started reading about war and listening to those Vietnam vets. Then I wondered how any sane human being could go to war and not come back shell-shocked -- either that, or up in arms. Now I see the photos of those old vets at the cemetery on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and I think of middle-aged men whose life's high point was scoring the winning touchdown in the homecoming game their senior year of high school. If I were still dining out on something I'd done when I was 18, I'd be at least a little uneasy -- but you wouldn't call me on it, and I wouldn't call you, because most likely the response would be like Rumplestiltskin tearing himself in two because the queen has guessed his true name. Since no one's child and no one's freedom is at stake (at least in the immediate in-your-face short term), we tiptoe around them, humor them. Don't ask; don't tell. An unpleasant aspect of the USian character is that when we're uneasy, or downright scared, we don't seek serenity within -- no, we try to rearrange the world to make us feel better. Someone's making us scared: wipe them out and we won't be scared anymore. If the message unsettles us, why, silence the messenger; won't that make us feel better? If we're so free, why are we so afraid? I think freedom comes with a built-in burden of fear, and the real heroes are those who summon the courage to live anyway. P.S. I wrote this on two coffee-stained sheets of lined paper torn out of a spiral-bound notebook, partly in a persnickety felt-tip pen and partly in blunt red pencil. Typed on-screen, it doesn't have nearly the character, nor the faint whiff of coffee, but I guess it's easier to read.
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