: an old soldier of long service. 2. : a person of long experience usually in some occupation or skill (such as politics or the arts) veteran adjective.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word “veteran” comes from a Latin adjective, veteranus, describing long experience. The first known use in English carried the meaning of an old soldier who served for a long time. But okay, let’s pretend that the original meaning isn’t valid because it was borrowed as a word describing a soldier, then shouldn’t we also go after people who call themselves “veterans” because they spent a single term of enlistment in the armed forces, and especially those who never had a tour of duty?
As a veteran of the US Air Force, I can say that veteran is not exclusively a military term. You can be a veteran of any field, hobby, or activity if you’ve been there a while and are experienced.
We always get these people who might have served for a single enlistment (4-6 years), then make the rest of their life about their military service. It’s really cringey and they don’t deserve half the respect they think they’re entitled to. Your life shouldn’t be defined by a few years in a particular role.
(Hint: no one is entitled to respect. Respect is earned.)
For the record, I spent 20 years working an IT job in the military, mostly out of harm’s way. I feel weird when people try to thank me for my service. I didn’t really do anything worth thanking. Save it for people who laid down their lives in your defense. Most of us don’t actually experience that level of responsibility and hardship in our service; a lot of service members tend to have a pretty quiet career.
Hey, so I’m curious. Have you ever been to sports games or other events where they ask veterans to stand up to be recognized? Do you participate? And if you do, has anyone sitting close by asked you what you did in the military? What was their reaction when you say you were a non-comabatant? Just curious really, I mean no disrespect.
I don’t usually participate in these kind of events. Those closest to me know my service experiences and that’s usually good enough for me. I don’t feel right being publicly acknowledged and/or thanked by strangers. There are far more deserving people.
But my prior service does occasionally come up in social circles. I actually had a doctor ask me this morning what kind of work I did, and he was somewhat familiar with it, as his son in-law served in the Navy in a technical field like mine.
Most of the time, when I tell people I was in the Air Force, the first question people ask is, “What planes did you fly?” It blows their minds when I tell them I don’t know anything about planes; that my job was to fix computers. Not even computers on airplanes, just regular ol’ desktop computers, servers, laptops, etc. Anything that touches a computer network.
Only 5% of the Air Force are pilots. The other 95% of Airmen work in jobs either directly or indirectly supporting those pilots. We have a lot of generic job fields you might find in the civilian sector: mechanics, police, doctors, lawyers, cooks, firemen, chaplains, etc. All have a critical role to fill that ensure our ultimate flying missions are accomplished.
So yeah, there are a lot of people in the military who work a job that doesn’t put them anywhere near the front lines of war. In some careers, your job is the exact same as the civilian sector, except that you have to wear a military uniform while doing it.
Viscous Having relatively high resistance to flow. Viscid; sticky. Adhesive or sticky, and having a ropy or glutinous consistency; viscid; glutinous; clammy; tenacious.
(“Vicious” is what I think you meant, but your spelling made it way funnier.)
I particularly like that he labels himself as ex-Founder of something… Either you established something or you didn’t, you can’t take it back motherfucker
I fought in the great war against Ulfric the false Dovahkiin! In the time before and ever after I’ve slain countless Dovah and befriended but few. In the towns, in every city they all herd the Greybeards call. In every mead hall a song in remembrances of my kin long before my time had come.
Did this dude say this somewhere I can go and call him an idiot directly? Because, if this wasn’t one of the corporate social media companies, I would very much like to.
UPS has dropped my box off so say, only for there to be nothing, twice. The second time they provided “proof.” It was a form that said delivered with no image.
You should thank Louis DeJoy for that. He was appointed postmaster by Trump and gutted USPS while possessing an equity stake in XPO, a subcontractor for USPS.
When you roll out the feasible alternative let me know. Until then, I’ll be voting for the candidate whose rallies don’t break out in chants of “kill f*ggots, kill all transgenders”
Hoo boy. Against my better judgment, I’ll wade into this pool.
If voting for either party gets you the same result, fascists wouldn’t be so focused on elections and trying so hard to take the vote away.
Withholding your vote doesn’t do anything. When has losing an election pushed either party left?
Voting doesn’t prevent you from engaging in other forms of direct action.
Both parties suck. People will needlessly suffer and die no matter who wins. But there are also people who will suffer and die under one party but not the other, and the same can’t be said the other way around. Our democracy is fundamentally flawed, but voting is a tool at our disposal, and we’re in no position to turn anything down.
files.catbox.moe
Oldest