Fox News traffics in populist outrage. It is its forte, its stock in trade so to speak.
It’s not hard to see why. For one thing, it’s great for ratings. It stokes the need of its core audience to perpetually
seethe with resentment. One of its
specialties is bringing to light the opinions of obscure dissenters no one
would ever have heard of had Fox not pointed them out as proof positive that
good old fashioned American values are in dire peril of extinction.
This week, the Fox affiliate in Philadelphia
aired a story about a Drexel University professor who Tweeted that he wanted to
vomit after seeing a first-class passenger on his plane gave up his seat for a
service member in uniform. The network picked
up the story, which is now on all the major news nets.
The professor, one George Ciccariello-Maher,
had drawn right wing ire a few months back for another Tweet calling for the
abolition of the white race.
Ciccariello-Maher claimed his remark was sardonic, but the story of the
plane incident began by describing him as an “anti-white Drexel professor.”
The good professor’s nausea stemmed from the botched coalition airstrike on Mosul last week, which is
reported to have taken a couple hundred civilian lives while doing nothing to
break Islamic State’s hold on the Iraqi city.
Didn’t the other passengers who thanked the man for yielding his seat
know that the uniformed soldier was complicit in this tragedy just by being in
the military?
The newsreaders displayed the expected level of disgust at Ciccariello-Maher’s words while reporting the story. The trolls crawled out of the woodwork in
force to leave comments condemning Ciccariello-Maher’s message, with the
predictable profanity and malice. One
poster wrote ominously of the “enemies within.”
For me, the report dredged up the usual mixed
emotions whenever I read about encounters between progressive academia and the rest of society. You see, I’m that overeducated, godless, lefty professor your conservative, God-fearing parents
warned you against. But I’m also a
veteran. I understand the passenger’s
gesture. I accepted a number of small
kindnesses from people while traveling in uniform over the years which helped make
the stresses of being far from home bearable.
As a civilian, I’ve anonymously bought a drink or paid a restaurant
check for service members from time to time, particularly if one was traveling
through an airport alone.
So, I’m not about to knock the guy who gave up
his seat. The soldier could have been
traveling for a number of reasons.
Perhaps there was a family emergency such as a sick relative. Maybe he was rushing home for the birth of a
child. It could be that he was beginning
or coming back from midtour leave or returning from a long overseas deployment. Regardless of the reason, it was a gracious
gesture which I’m sure was graciously accepted.
But let’s take a clear-eyed look at that
gesture in the context of how the public views the military. “Thank you for your service” has become the
obligatory affirmation during any encounter with a service member or veteran,
however trivial. Just this afternoon, I
was on the phone with my insurance company.
This particular insurer is a well-known company whose clientele consists
exclusively of current and former military personnel and their immediate
families. The customer service rep was
pleasant and was able to assist me with the issue I’d called her about. The call ended like this:
“Thank you for your membership with -------,
Mr. Scholar, and thank you for your service to our country.”
“Um, thanks…thank you for…for your help.”
I never know how to respond. I’ve come to see gestures such as thanking
veterans and giving up seats on planes for soldiers as a form of conservative
virtue signaling, a little like wearing American flag lapel pins or attaching
Christian symbols to the backs of cars.
Membership in the U.S. military has become politicized, a phenomenon
which would certainly horrify the founders of this country if they ever found
out.
I blame our collective guilt over how we
initially rejected the Vietnam vets. Prior to the Cold War, we never had a
large peacetime military. Soldiering was
a refuge for petty crooks and ne’er-do-wells in times of peace and a noble
calling for citizens in times of war.
The Second World War was the apogee of the citizen-as-soldier ethos, and
rare was the family without someone in the services. The inequities of the postwar draft were
impossible to ignore, however. During
the Vietnam era, the poor were shipped overseas by the thousands while their
middle class contemporaries hid behind student deferments and exaggerated minor
ailments.
I’m agnostic concerning tales of returning
Vietnam vets being assaulted and spat upon by “hippies” at airports. Some I’ve known claim vehemently that this happened
to them. On the other hand, I’m familiar with
historical investigations which were unable to identify a single substantiated incident.
America was split down the middle over vets in
the years following the withdrawal from Vietnam. I recall the repatriation of the prisoners of
war in 1973. My small town put up banners
in celebration, though none of the returnees were from there. (“Mommy, what’s a ‘pow’?” I asked in
confusion.) That was my small town in
the rural West. Out in the world beyond
its limits, people thought and believed differently.
The prevailing attitude toward the military and
veterans in the 1970s was roundly negative.
The mass media have left an indelible record of the time. It’s common knowledge that the TV show M*A*S*H was really about Vietnam despite
being set in Korea. The antihero
protagonists of Dog Day Afternoon and
Taxi Driver were Vietnam vets. In Black
Sunday, a disgraced former POW is goaded into attacking the Super Bowl with
an explosive laden Goodyear blimp. The disaster
movie Earthquake featured a psycho
National Guardsman who tries to rape a woman he’s obsessed with and a cowardly Army colonel who flees a
tunnel in panic at the first sign of collapse.
Even movies like Coming Home
and The Deer Hunter which were
praised for their compassionate portrayal of men and families damaged by Vietnam
contained a hint of superciliousness. During
my first year or two of high school, visiting recruiters were greeted with
smirks, smartass remarks, and the occasional taunt.
Then, as if somebody had thrown a switch, the zeitgeist turned on its head. Reagan’s cocksure swagger and anticommunism had
something to do with it. Frustration
over the Iran hostage crisis and other foreign policy reverses probably did as
well. For whatever reason the Eighties
were the Decade of the Heroic Vietnam Vet in American pop culture. There was First
Blood and its sequel Rambo, of
course, not to mention any number of Chuck Norris movies. Platoon
played in theaters to rave reviews. One or more of the
main characters in Magnum P.I., Riptide, Miami Vice,
and The A-Team were Vietnam
vets. A Rumor of War, Platoon Leader, and The Things We Carried told the grunts’ story to a mainstream which
would have scornfully rejected it a couple of years earlier. Pop songs such “Goodnight Saigon,” “Still in
Saigon,” “Born in the USA,” and “Walking on a Thin Line” extolled the travails
of the discharged vet in an uncaring world.
This new awareness not only inspired
guilt-ridden feelings about vets, but over the military generally. The Iran crisis made Americans realize that despite
decades of propaganda to the contrary there was a lot of pent up anger over
U.S. policies abroad. It also made them
aware that future military actions abroad might be necessary and that the
burden of these would fall on the shoulders of recruited volunteers. Americans love the troops because they don’t
have to be the troops. The specter of
the draft lurks in the background, particularly during rough patches such as the
Iraq War prior to the 2007 surge. There’s
a kind of desperate cheerleading from the mainstream which I trace back to the 1991
Gulf War. It’s born of remorse over one’s
affluence, comfort, and safety when others are facing danger even though few
would ever, ever entertain the thought of volunteering or allowing their sons
and daughters to do the same.
There are other symptoms of our collective embracing
of veterans. The sudden anointing of the-vet-as-hero
has had its seamy underside. Rambo gave credibility to the Vietnam Dolchstoẞ myth of the left behind
POW. Despite the black POW/MIA flags
flying from the flagstaffs of numerous public buildings and burly biker types
too young to have served wearing “You Are Not Forgotten” vest patches, no
evidence has emerged proving Vietnam is still holding American prisoners. What could they gain? It defies common sense. Vietnam has had diplomatic relations with the
U.S. for over twenty years and the U.S. is an important trading partner. Why not come clean up front and avoid future
friction?
Another unfortunate side to our hero worship is
the rise of the imposter. Lots of guys
have their war stories with a detail or two exaggerated here and there. That’s one thing. Telling everyone you were GI Joe with a kung-fu
grip when you were really a cook, claiming you received the Medal of Honor or
even a Purple Heart when you never heard a shot fired in anger, or accepting
veterans benefits when you never served is another matter.
Why doesn’t anyone call foul on these
antics? Why do they go so long without
being caught? It’s because the public
has become intimidated. Criticizing
anyone linked to the military is seen by some people as tantamount to
treason. Hence the uproar over the
yielded airplane seat. The soldier who
drew Ciccariello-Maher’s opprobrium in all likelihood had nothing at all to do personally
with the tragedy in Mosul. He is neither
villain nor hero. He’s not responsible
for decisions made by the Pentagon or CENTCOM.
He was just a traveler trying to get to where he was going.
By the same token the hubbub on Fox and
elsewhere over the professor’s infelicitous Tweet has a further chilling effect
on any legitimate critique of our foreign policy in the Middle East and
elsewhere. Question our policies or
tactics, and you’re disloyal and un-American.
I think that this incident is one of countless symptoms of misplaced
guilt masquerading as Americanism. Perhaps
if we had done right by Vietnam veterans in the first place we might have
avoided this unpleasantness. But in
light of the heavy doses of propaganda ladled out to us by government and media
alike over the past century, I am inclined to doubt it.
© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar
