“I’m a patriot. Weapons are part of my religion.”

March 21, 2024 8:45 AM

'Stay Strapped or Get Clapped' How the media misses the story of companies seeking profit by keeping traumatized veterans armed and enraged (Rick Perlstein (previously), The American Prospect)
posted by box (25 comments total)

Who are these clowns, the First Cargo Pant Battalion?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 9:21 AM on March 21 [3 favorites]

@neolithicsheep.bsky.social:

With respect, Mr Perlstein, I can tell you why this happens to veterans (I am one): if you never let go of or question your rage, if you never deal with your trauma, you never have to deal with the fact that you killed a bunch of people and saw your friends die for a shitty immoral war.

At this point I've lost more friends to the refusal to process that the war we participated in was shitty and immoral than I have to suicide and KIA but for a little while there it was real close. The dealing with it and coming to terms is never over nor is the seeking ways to be a better person.

In this fucked up country that disallows all feelings from white men other than rage, it's no wonder at all that so many veterans take refuge in a comforting, unquestioned anger and paranoia even while it further erodes their humanity.
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on March 21 [41 favorites]

Thank you for posting this. I've read all of Perlstein's rise of the right histories, and cannot recommend them enough.

This piece felt like the kind of necessary corrective that people will point to afterwards asking why no one stopped the mainstreaming of the divide, the remorseless monetisation and amplification of division, that so obviously was building . But then, it's been a tremendous boon for The Paper of Record, to, hasn't it?
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 9:49 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I've never read anything by him save the histories, is this the piece he's referring to here?

The last time I wrote too frankly about certain concerning symbols of wartime trauma and mourning celebrated by veterans, I was singled out as a witch and reported on Fox News, and was flooded by messages from veterans about the pleasures to be had of flaying off the skin of people like me.

posted by ver at 11:22 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

That seems like something that would get you pushback from right wing nuts (and NYT style “moderate” defenders of right wing nuts) but not really specific to veterans?
posted by Artw at 11:37 AM on March 21

Oh, sorry, he's probably referring to one of the weekly columns at that Prospect site. (The first link i found was just from googling.)
posted by ver at 11:43 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Rick Perlstein has not seen the Mandalorian.
This helmet is not a "a Spartan helmet done up in Darth Vader black" and the other helmet isn't " the same helmet, only this one with that most patriotic of symbols added: sharp Viking horns"
posted by shenkerism at 2:06 PM on March 21

Rick Perlstein has not seen the Mandalorian.

this is your take-away after reading TFA
posted by elkevelvet at 2:34 PM on March 21 [5 favorites]

Rick Perlstein refuses to acknowledge the existence of Baby Yoda.
posted by box at 2:51 PM on March 21 [4 favorites]

I hate to say it, but I think this article itself is missing the point.

I think the majority of the people who buy these angry veteran brands aren't veterans. They are simply garden variety conservative culture warriors who want to wrap themselves in the veteran flag to make themselves look patriotic. If they were veterans, they likely did nothing of note that would have led to trauma. This is perfectly fine, I didn't really do anything of note in Afghanistan myself. The veterans who experienced mental trauma, I would like to think, are suffering in silence the same way non-veterans with mental health issues do. We can help them by strengthening our mental health systems that serve everyone.

The real story is how our society went from veterans just being regular people to objects of hero worship. I wish we could get rid of these veteran identity brands, but I don't see how we can do this until we abandon the post 9-11 cult of the "warfighter".
posted by Tasty Casserole at 4:49 PM on March 21 [18 favorites]

> The real story is how our society went from veterans just being regular people to objects of hero worship

I agree. I wonder if it started with the Gulf War and "support the troops," or was it earlier?
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:15 PM on March 21 [2 favorites]

I dunno, perhaps start limiting t-shirt, coffee mug and bumper sticker trade at VA gift shops.

The men's Def Leppard pyro tour shirt is kinda cool. I get the machine gun oil pocket T' with extra flap for 90 round mag with constitutional draw string with Patton and an AK on the front is over the top but perhaps start by not selli g emblematic apparel at the V.A.

somehow that seems un-American.
posted by clavdivs at 5:24 PM on March 21

I agree. I wonder if it started with the Gulf War and "support the troops," or was it earlier

I'd say so, perhaps before. The uncle started wearing a WW2 cap and even bought a bomber jacket, he gave me is original.I think it was when Bush give POWs 100% disability and also pows were issued in medal. it's interesting because I found that when veterans go to seek help, the opposite can be true not in all cases but in some they start to wear army shirts and whatnot whereas they didn't before that could have something to do with identity and dealing with the past.
posted by clavdivs at 5:35 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I agree. I wonder if it started with the Gulf War and "support the troops," or was it earlier?

It goes back at least to Viet Nam, as evidenced by this number one song. And this less popular but even more odious top-40 hit.
posted by TedW at 6:14 AM on March 22

Gomer Pyle ran from 1964-1969.
I don't think of him as a war fighter
There were a ton of shows poking fun at military life
Mchale's Navy, Sergeant Bilko, Beetle Bailey

Conscription existed in the US and many adult males served their 2 years.
Many could laugh at the various idiocies of military life.

Vietnam raised the stakes. Wasn't funny anymore.
And the culture slowly started to change .
posted by yyz at 7:01 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

As for when the idolization of The Troops became a thing, it was definitely in the 9/11 aftermath. Before American troops went to Afghanistan and kicked over the Taliban, basically nobody in America ever walked up to a uniform-wearing stranger and said "thank you for your service," but by 2003 it was commonplace.

Also what that guy on Bluesky said, linked upthread: how the real PTSD has to be realizing, at last, that the sacrifices you and your buddies made in Afghanistan and Iraq were not merely in vain, they were actively harmful to America's interests and America would be better off if those sacrifices had never been demanded. Of course nobody with a platform in America is going to say that until 20 years after all of the witnesses are dead. Because in America we do not face the unpleasant truths about America.

As for the customers at places like Nine Line, I concur that they are almost certainly mostly not veterans.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:26 AM on March 22 [4 favorites]

When was it that people got really fucking weird about ribbons?
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

Desert Storm, but there was a lot of lead-up.
posted by box at 7:49 AM on March 22 [1 favorite]

All the people pointing at yellow ribbons and other 20th-century signifiers of loyalty to soldiers are completely missing the point. The 21st century "thank you for your service" militarism is definitely 21st century and not prefigured by anything that went before. Yellow ribbons in particular were something entirely different.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:27 AM on March 22

The got heavily weaponized at some point, like with little American flags and other virtual signaling tchotchkes.
posted by Artw at 8:35 AM on March 22

With respect, Mr Perlstein, I can tell you why this happens to veterans (I am one): if you never let go of or question your rage, if you never deal with your trauma, you never have to deal with the fact that you killed a bunch of people and saw your friends die for a shitty immoral war.


This. And we send them over there as kids, with the unfinished cortexes and all, and then bring them back to a sort of half-assed attempt at delivering on the promises of good jobs and public respect and support, and then act surprised that they are not coping well.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:56 AM on March 22 [2 favorites]

And we send them over there as kids, with the unfinished cortexes and all, and then bring them back to a sort of half-assed attempt at delivering on the promises of good jobs and public respect and support, and then act surprised that they are not coping well.

This. And so many of these kids are recruited from backgrounds where they’ve already been exposed to trauma, poverty, and lack of opportunity, and the processes in place for addressing trauma/mental and behavioral health in the military are limited and complicated to access. There are problems both upstream and downstream, with little acknowledgment and inadequate resources to address them.
posted by Spinneret at 9:39 AM on March 22

The got heavily weaponized at some point, like with little American flags and other virtual signaling tchotchkes.

perhaps you're thinking of the daughters of the Confederacy.
posted by clavdivs at 1:44 PM on March 22

My entire experience of this company: I went looking for Caribou Coffee on Amazon some years ago, couldn't find it, stumbled over Black Rifle, went to their site, saw that it was veteran-owned and thought, "Oh! What a positive thing that would be to support, I wonder what their coffee tastes liYAHHHHHHH okay no" as I scanned across their brews and found a bunch of jingo-istic brand names and stuff that made it obvious these guys were not cool. It's plain to me any disavowal of violent far right nuts is disingenuous at best. Even if these guys are just profiteers who have zeroed in on a market of coffee drinkers who don't want to support effete brewers of caramel lattes, they're still comfortable pitching to a far right market.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:57 AM on March 24 [3 favorites]

And we send them over there as kids, with the unfinished cortexes and all, and then bring them back to a sort of half-assed attempt at delivering on the promises of good jobs and public respect and support, and then act surprised that they are not coping well.

I work with a 27 year old (I'm 58) who is active-duty military. He's finishing up his service in a desk job while attending community college and planning for a four-year college next year. He is a combat medic who has seen a lot of service. He doesn't talk a lot about his service, but this is one of the things he's talked about. How you go into the service as a very young person, thinking you're doing something good for your country. You get there, and you discover the war you're serving in is bullshit. At 19, you may very well find yourself in charge of some group of soldiers, making decisions for them, responsible for their well-being.

Last spring, I was working with a veteran (I'm a tutor at a community college, so I work with all kinds of students: we have a number of refugees from Sudan, for instance; a fair number of veterans; a fair number of students who have been incarcerated. We also have high schoolers who've already done all the math or comp sci or physics their high school can offer. The diversity is one of the gifts of the job.)

Anyway, I was working with a veteran with severe ptsd. He was really good at the math we were working on, but tanked tests because being in an enclosed space full of people was overwhelming for him. Being in the tutoring center's great big open space full of people was also sometimes too much for him, as well. I was very bossy with him: I told him to get some fucking accommodations as he was entitled to. For instance, the testing center has quiet rooms where students can take exams and do in-class assignments in a private room that has been somewhat acoustically protected.

During this same time, I was working with a young man who was leaving for basic training a couple of weeks after the semester ended. He was very clean and neat, and like every service member I meet, called me "ma'am" in a way I can't help but find appealing. But sometimes I would literally be working with him, and my PTSD student would be one table over, doing homework, sweaty and shaky to various degrees. He had a girlfriend and a baby. He really wanted to be able to keep his family. He knew that the odds for a veteran like him, with his degree of PTSD, with his inability to always contain his explosiveness, were very low.

I'd look at this clean-cut kid. "Let's go over factoring that polynomial again," I might say. "Yes, ma'am," he'd say. I wanted to say, "Don't go." Maybe I should have. "Let me introduce you to someone," I might have said, and brought him to my co-worker, or to my student. No idea if it would have made a difference. I think about him a lot.

I have a mobility disability, and commute to work using a mobility scooter and the bus. I like taking the bus; in general, I enjoy the other people on the bus, or am not bothered by them, with rare exceptions. One is a bus driver who, no kidding, I legit thought was a veteran. The way he carried himself, the boots and pants he wore, the khaki backpack covered with military-style patches that he put in the little pen of storage space up by the windshield. He put it there where everyone could see it.

He was one of the most helpful bus drivers, the most cheerful and willing when it came to lowering the bus and putting out the ramp for me, and then strapping my scooter into the tie-downs built into the floor. But one day I happened to get a better look at his backpack as I was getting off the bus, and realized that it was not actually military in any way. It had military-style patches that declared him a VETERAN of [small text] covid. It had a patch that might represent a person's MOS, or "Military Occupation Speciality." It looked very legitimate. His "MOS" was CATA Operator, CATA being our municipal bus service.

On the one hand, I felt schadenfreude. I was embarrassed by his pretensions and the way he'd exposed himself as a poseur. I thought he was putting himself in serious danger of being stomped in an alley if any actual veterans or service members happened upon him, and his outfit, his haircut, and his backpack.

On the other hand, he scared the shit out of me. The things he was signifying with that get-up and those patches suggested that, outside of our roles on the bus, driver and passenger, he would hate me. My fatness, my queerness, my Quakerism.

I've read about Stolen Valor but have never seen such an extreme example in real life. Fortunately, I haven't ended up on his bus in a long time, but that means I've had way too many rides with the driver who frickin hates the way dealing with disabled passengers slows her down. She hates the inconvenience of strapping us in. When there are two of us, and the other device-user gets off first, she takes the opportunity, a few stops later, of having me as a captive audience to express her dislike of the other guy. I assume she does the same when I get off the bus.

One time after work recently, I got to the transit center downtown just as my bus was loading. There was a pretty long line waiting to board. I got in it. When the line had cleared enough to see into the bus, there she was. Her eyes met mine. "Oh," she said in a sour voice. "It's you.

Fortunately the vast majority of drivers are neither of these people. I'm not afraid of them, and they don't dislike me for just needing the services I'm entitled to. But it's one of the downsides of taking public transit.

I wandered. Please forgive me. But I liked writing it so I'll leave it here.
posted by Well I never at 8:30 AM on March 24 [7 favorites]