December 7, 1941

[PornoDoggy]

First of all, I never "fought", as such ... spend some time in antisubmarine warfare, which was as "close to the edge" as things got between 74-78, but we were still recovering from Vietnam and not in a hurry to go kill a bunch of small brown people at the time (unless you count Reagan's Lybian hissyfit or the Grenadian excursion).

Am I an American? Well, I'm liberal, so MikeAI doesn't think so sometimes. Nevertheless, I am the descendent of good German Bürgers, some of whom defended a St. Louis armory from the traitors and kept Missouri in the Union; and of your typical escaped indentured servants of Scottish and Irish origin who came to Missouri with Daniel Boone when Ohio got too croweded (but departed his company after a "dispute" over the ownership of some horses). Had a great uncle on my mother's side who was a member of the IWW, and a (whatever the hell my father's 2nd cousin would be) who was deported back to Germany for membership in the Bund.

I spent a great deal of my teen years in VERY active opposition to the Vietnam war, then dropped out of college and joined the U.S. Navy in December, 1973. BTW, anyone who thinks there is the least bit of inconsistency there is a fucking moron. While I was in boot camp the oil embargo hit, and my Company Commander assured us daily that we would soon be going to war with the "A-rabs"; the price of gas had more than doubled during my 9 weeks in training.

My mother's father was a doughboy. My father joined the U.S. Coast Guard in mid-1940, and was very disappointed when he found out his plan to defend the Mississipi River had a small hole in it - when Pearl Harbor came, he was looking for German submarines in the North Atlantic. My mother's brother lied and joined the USMC at 16.

Am I an American? I think I qualify.

Most people now join the military for college money or vo-tech skills. Nobody with an IQ over 40 in this country wants to die in a jungle somewhere, hunting an ideological boogey man. Willing? They have no choice.

See, this is where you prove that your success in the academic factory has caused you to have very limited contact with reality. You are partially correct. Many of the people who are in the military join because they have no choice, just as many of the people in academia have no choice either - after all, those who can't, teach.

But in spite of your bigotry, there are all kinds of intelligent people in the military services who are there because that's what they want to be doing. I know plenty of high-school-dropout enlisted guys who have no more education than that available from a library card who could rip you into tiny little shreds in a debate on just about any subject imaginable. And it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to recognize that only a fucking fool WANTS to go die in a sand pit or a jungle - but somebody has to protect the cowards who avoid reality in academia, and are WILLING to go die if necessary.