11

Ninety-nine years since the end of World War I.
Somewhere along the way, the Armistice was translated into “Veterans’ Day” in the US.  Given that our participation in that war was comparatively short, it is sort of understandable.
Also understandable is the desire to further obscure the lasting disasters on the world that stemmed from .
Look too unfavorably at the guy on Mt. Rushmore?  A good Democrat?  No.  Let’s not take a look at the fact that he was a racist, his Administration carried out raids on political opponents, he urged the sorts of racial purity measures that’d so disgust people coming out of Germany twenty years later.  NO.  Stop with that crazy talk.  He was a hero of enlightenment.
As I’m working through my backlog of Podcasts, yesterday I heard one discussing the Jones Act, and how it was hampering cleanup from the storms in Puerto Rico.
If you guessed that it was signed by the same guy who wrote the Treaty of Versailles, and employed A. Mitchell Palmer, you’d be absolutely right.
Anyway, World War I shaped a lot of what’s happened since it ended. A Fark headline recently mentioned the Battle of Jutland. I got an alert, because I still have my app set to alert on “Navy.” Go looking around for information on it, and there’s next to nothing.

Down
The
Memory
Hole
Just like the statues of Confederate Generals likely erected by Southern Democrats who thought Wilson was a hell of a guy.
As for the military, my father wanted to be an Army officer, just like his grandfather who’d sailed for Europe to back up the British and French in 1917. My dad bypassed an appointment to the US Merchant Marine Academy to go be an Army officer.
I don’t know the full stories, and everybody’s dead now, but I don’t know that my dad spoke to my Merchant Marine grandfather very much after that point. My grandfather isn’t in any of my parents’ wedding photos, if that says anything.
Both of my grandfathers were Navy during the period between WWII and Korea, but were exempt from going to Korea because they’d married and had kids.
My dad was in the Army for 24 years. He was commissioned just as Vietnam was coming to an end, but his unit was moved to Okinawa while he was in Infantry Officer Basic. He, along with many others, had been branch-loaned to Infantry as they were trying to fill out the front line units. He’d been commissioned into the Transportation Corps. He served as an Infantry officer until the late-70s, when he was pulled back to TC. He retired in 1997 as a Colonel shortly after I finished high school.
I was recruited heavily by the Navy and Air Force on account of my ASVAB score (94, if memory serves) I won an Air Force ROTC scholarship coming out of high school. My vision was starting to go, already, by that point, and they weren’t going to let me fly. They were also going to tell me what my college major was going to be. I was going to be on active duty for four years after I graduated, but they could keep me up to eight involuntarily. I would also have to do four years active reserve following my period of active duty.
I decided to go and do what my dad had done, and get into the Army. After a year of Army ROTC, it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be commissioned, and the solid B I was pulling in Military Science was hurting my GPA, so I dropped out. I started working in TV not long after, which led to radio, which led to actually getting paid for IT, and…
Looking at my friends on FB…
Navy
Air Force
Navy
Navy
Navy
Army
Navy
Air Force
Navy
Navy
Air Force
Air Force
Navy
Navy
Navy
Air Force
Army
Navy
Navy
Navy
Navy
Navy
Navy
Navy
Army
By no means is that definitive.
My FIL was a Navy “Mustang,” which is someone who’s commissioned while on active duty. My BIL was Navy.
This is different than many Americans.
I just wrote, and deleted, something rather unkind, so I’m going to stop. Thank you to all who have and do serve. You are appreciated.
For tomorrow: Have you ever had a strong belief completely disproven by facts and evidence?
In short, no, but I’ll elaborate more tomorrow.