Re: It ain't over for Vietnam Vets
I'm pretty sure that stuff bothers non-VV's more than it bothers us.
Historically, discrimination has been a tool used to marginalize us Viet Vets, then to elevate us. Either situation gives us a special status we'd probably all just as happily forego. Neither situation bears up under scrutiny. Our pasts do make us different, but no more so than have the pasts of many other Vets from many other wars throughout our history.
We see stereotypes portraying us as damaged goods, when the truer picture is of citizen soldiers returning to civilian life with a medley of experiences which are common to us and uncommon to the rest.
The stereotypes highlight the bad, which is rare, and ignore the good, which is myriad.
We <span style="font-style: italic">are</span> special.
We have polished skills, appropriate to dealing with adversity, which our fellow civilians can only begin to ponder.
We've seen things go from good to bad to worse, and can spot those trends in their early stages. Unfortunatey, the bad stereotypical images also innnoculate those who surround us with skepticism when we attempt to offer our help as those very trends appear.
So Viet Vets are doubly damned, first by what we've been through, and then again when we try to apply our unique wisdom to the predicaments our detractors daily concoct through their own ignorance and obstinacy.
I'd be outraged, except it's not just us, not just our association with that war. These days more than Vietnam Veteran status separates us from the greater masses. The things that marginalize us go far further than just Vietnam. In some ways, maybe we should cherish our differences.
We will take our differences to our graves. We will never be alone in that. Our society thrives on defining differences. Good? Bad? Life is too short to derive such answers.
But resentment has no place in our situation. Such only serves as a distraction. The real world is challenge enough without us adding to our own allotted portions.
There are days when I consider the splintering of our society as if it were a deliberate attempt to divide and conquer that society. I then try to convince myself that's just plain wrong and simply a paranoid delusion; but honestly, nowadays; my heart's just not really in it...
That splintering dates from that same time frame, but Vietnam was never the whole picture.
Greg