A guest post by frequent commenter Quiller. He and I have something in common. I joined the Navy to avoid being a ground pounder in Viet Nam. I also joined the Navy for electronics school. The Navy did have the best technical schools. Here’s his essay.
FIFTY-ONE by quiller
Fifty-one years ago this last week, I beat the draft in an act of
willful cowardice, enlisting for 4 years in Uncle Sugar’s navy just to
avoid two years on the ground in Viet Nam.
1967 was a supercharged year. The hit song said it all: “Hot Town,
Summer in the City.” It was the summer of the Detroit riots and the
panicked white exodus to the suburbs before the jungle ate us alive.
That was the year Democrats supported draft dodgers hiding out up in
Canada, or pestering England with heroes of probity and high morals like
Drop-drawers Bubba Clinton.
Hayzeus Christie! Fifty-one years after the day my life changed forever.
The draft was calling and instead of a rice paddy, I chose the idea of
duty in a place where the nearest land was five miles straight down.
Anchors Aweigh, and so forth. I was 19 and no senator’s son flunking out
of divinity school.
Throughout my high school years, the draft had overwhelmed young male
America. Unlike the girly-men in nearby Ann Arbor, I fully accepted that
I had a debt to repay for lifelong freedoms I had enjoyed, in an age
where Cubans regularly risked their lives to reach free America and East
Germans died on Soviet barbed wire trying to cross to an isolated,
precarious West Berlin.
My world did believe Russia was and remains evil. It was omnipresent,
the Cold War cranked up to 9. Since Vietnam, what did any of us learn
except that Democrats are like the French, you can never once turn your
back on them during war, for both got us into Vietnam.
Personal lessons were the value of travel and of comparison between ours
and other cultures to appreciate our strengths even more. I came to see
the true power of America lies in what escape it offers from everywhere
else, why all those rafts got floated here, and all those line up (then
or today) to emigrate here for their slice of a better world.
Fifty-one biggies shot to hell, and in my dotage only a scant few
lessons learned. Foist! America is superior in every respect to any
other country. I am not saying it is perfect, or our government, or its
military. But it is, in fact, OURS and not the mad king’s or his
nincompoop successors. We remain free because someone has to do it and
step up and serve, and as long as they do so we all remain free.
Lesson two. It is always better to hold your wars in Shitholistan,
wherever it may be, and not in Steubenville. Liberals should note that
on the site of the Mi Lai Massacre there is now a luxury golf course.
Lesson three. Back in the You-Ess-of-Ay, I returned to find Detroit and
other Democrat-run cities had become something out of a Snake Pliskin
movie, blunt-force examples showing precisely how corrupt and worthless
Dems are. Racist mayor Coleman A. Young (Sr.) didn’t help after the riot
in Detroit, almost every member of City Council was indicted for
something, and later on Kwame Kilpatrick snagged big time over stealing
big money.
Lesson four. I spent a year in Georgia during Carter’s governorship and
found that bucktoothed harebrain to be an absolutely insufferable
hypocrite on damn near every imaginable subject. Jiminy Peanut cranked
the meter up to 12 asking us to dial down to 68. I have visited the
White House twice and assure you that that lying baboon had room-temps
of 80 degrees Fahrenheit when he dictated that.
Fifth. Whatever goes wrong was the lack of money due to previous
bunglers and not the present wastrels who spun funds away from intended
targets.
Sixth. Balanced budgets are fiction because Donks don’t care after they
wasted billions on Vietnam and in a couple of other Shitholistans
without a hint of success. Since then Donks have spent us into the
Berserkosphere™ and we await a kind of Venezuela decline and ultimate
victory of the left, spending freedom into submission.
Seven. Dems befriend and spend billions on people sure to turn against
us. Since it makes Dems feel good to do empty, obscenely-expensive
gestures, they still pour billions into unfriendly hands.
Eighth. In politics, hyperbole is so commonplace it cannot be scaled
back without damage to vocabularies or alliances. Take the tree-huggers
and eco-freaks. The Global Wormening mob. If you oppose global warming
or the right to murder the unborn, then you are unquestionably a
Bible-beatin’ toothless white-trash gun nut with two bandoliers, a
drum-roll Thompson tucked into his “I LOVE COUNTRY” tee-shirt and
grenades on his BVDs. And while we’re at it, Bucko, it’s hayseed
blood-lusting homiciders like you who kill innocent leftists robbing
liquor stores, and NEVER black-on-black violence ‘cause it’s always a
white cop, forget those annoying FBI statistics. We leftists who gave
you Vietnam assure you of this, trust every balanced and well-considered
word….
Elebbenth. Republicans are not conservatives and spend accordingly. When
Social Security fails their congressional retirement equals active pay
and they’ll manage to eke through, but God knows how. A related note: at
least Hanoi John McCain will not be buried in Arlington. Money well saved!
Twelfth. Female teachers will never understand military service unless
and until a family member joins (and doubtful even then). That’s a lot
to expect from Democrats who terrorize children for making hand gestures
of guns but allow “the Bird” toward policemen. Female veterans who teach
are so rare it is nearly impossible to find them. Consider how history
will be taught by theorists and noncombatants who detest spontaneous
patriotism.
Oh. Wait. Under Hussein the Magnificent, Lord of the TelePrompter™ we
got there ahead of time. Stand by. The Two Minutes of Hate will be on
shortly, followed by eight years of vicious ignorant hate by the media
who got caught with false news and will deserve all consequences.
-END-
Mozel tov, RivRon. Best wishes from the bird farmer doing 8s well offshore.
Quiller joined two years after I did. I joined October 28, 1965.