Mightier Acorns

I went to vote yesterday. San Antonio’s primary runoff elections.

I hand the poll worker my voter registration card and my ID, and she looks for the word “Veteran” on my Texas driver’s license, and says, “Thank you for your service.” I usually thank her for her service, too, because working the polls is also a civic duty that few people bother to think about.

San Antonio bills itself as “Military City,” and whenever I buy things, at the register, they will ask me if I am a veteran/active duty/first responder, because almost every business in town has a discount or rewards program. I usually say “No,” because in order to receive the “honor” of a 5%-10% discount, I would have to register with their marketing department, which comes with the additional honor of having my personal information sold.

And of course, there are the endless public displays of patriotism. The flags everywhere, on bumperstickers, flag lapel pins on executives, Stars & Stripes truck nuts, and yard signs/statuary/decals of soldiers or cowboys bowing their heads to a Christian cross with the command, “Honor the fallen.” A house in my neighborhood bought a covering for their garage door with that artwork – crosses, rifle planted barrel down in a grave, helmets and flags displayed, soldier on one knee – emblazoned with the slogan “Honor the Fallen, Thank the Living.”

I find it hard to see where the “honor” is in these displays.

The Honor We Gave

To say that most Americans have a poor grasp of our history is like saying a mountain is tall: it is both obviously true and, because it’s rare that we can see a whole mountain from bottom to top, it is also impossible to grasp how tall it is.

Most Americans know that we have holy days for Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and they assume that we have always had those holy days set aside to honor those who served. But in reality, both are relatively new concepts. Veterans Day was first recognized in 1954 as a holiday to commemorate service members of all of our wars, but its predecessor was Armistice Day, which recognized the end of World War I in 1918.

Memorial Day was established in 1868 to honor the fallen on both sides of the Civil War, which, if you spend any time thinking about it at all (as my great-grandfather would have done), is not the kind of honor most people think it is. People who commit treason against their country are rarely honored alongside those who died defending the country from that treason.

But despite strong public sentiment in favor of “supporting our troops” throughout our history, the country has rarely been eager to actually provide that support in a meaningful way.

Pensions and land bounties were promised to attract enlistments during the Revolutionary War, and Congress passed legislation to fund additional benefits in 1818, 1820, 1822, and finally in 1832, when they made full-pay benefits available to anyone who served two years or more and removed the poverty means-testing.

After World War I, promised benefits were slow to come, and veterans and their families turned out to protest in the Bonus Army of 1932, which was met with armed resistance and led to the shooting deaths of two veterans.

After soldiers returned from Vietnam and began joining the anti-war movement in large numbers, treating them like traitors and ignoring their service experiences became a part of the government’s reaction to the protests, adding official neglect to the popular disapproval of the war. Even when Vietnam veterans began to receive more popular support in culture and media during the 1980s, it was framed as if the protesters were dishonoring the service of those soldiers, even when those soldiers were the ones leading the protests.

In other words, it is common for people who have never served to pay lip service to honoring or supporting the troops – and since 9/11/2001, increasingly including first responders – while remaining fiercely ignorant of what “support” is or what “honor” actually looks like.

To Honor Them, Have Honor

The concept of “honor” is a broad topic full of nuance and contradictions. I don’t have time or space in this post to do a deep dive on what it means to different groups today, or what it meant to our ancestors.

But it shouldn’t require a great deal of effort to think about what you mean when you say you want to honor someone. Usually, that kind of honor refers to respect. At a minimum, it means acknowledging that the service the person gave was given in good faith, in order to benefit everyone. That can be difficult to acknowledge, especially if you don’t believe their service was of benefit to everyone, or that it was made in good faith.

And that’s the elephant in the room. The impolite thing that we don’t want to think about, let alone articulate.

Because we don’t see our history in full, we see only the parts we want to see. We look at the lives of people in different times and places with curiosity and rarely apply our critical thinking skills to questions about what their actions were or what motivated them.

We want to imagine glory and pageantry when we think about the Revolutionary War; that’s why the celebrations are so popular and large. But we don’t like to think about the grubby, human motivations of the people who took sides either against their King, or for the radical new idea that kings weren’t necessary. We don’t want to think about how badly the soldiers were treated, how badly they treated others, or how their families were ignored after their deaths.

We don’t want to think about what the Army was doing between the wars.

We don’t want to think about what our duties are. While we celebrate the benefits that we receive because of the events that transpired, we don’t like to think about who was harmed to get us those benefits, or what we are obligated to do to maintain them, or to make up for the harm we have done.

And bringing any of that up is more likely to get you screamed at by someone wearing illegal American flag clothing¹ than any kind of honor.

When it comes to “honoring the troops,” it is less often about contemplating the honor of those troops, and more often about making sure everyone is acknowledging the beliefs of the person making the display. And that isn’t honor.

An Honorable Apology

If you feel that I’ve insulted you or called you out for behavior that you are uncomfortable acknowledging, I humbly apologize for my rudeness.

I know that most people don’t intend to cause harm by carrying on thoughtlessly on their special day. But harm is often caused unintentionally, and if the only way to alleviate the harm is to say something, I feel obligated to say something.

In 1994, I raised my hand and took an oath.

I, _, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

A lot of us took that oath. And judging by current events, few of us have revisited it, or read the document(s) we swore to support and defend. That includes the President, unfortunately, and 70 million people who cast their votes for him without considering what that would say about their honor.

And this year, especially, when I’m at a register or otherwise thanked for my service, I’ll be thinking about what that service meant, what it accomplished, and what I still need to do to make it right.

All I ask is that you think, too.

1. The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker’s desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general. 4 USC, Ch. 1 ↩︎