Spitting and Disrespect in the United States

Our priorities are in the wrong place

I hope everyone had a wonderful three day weekend. Yesterday was Memorial day in the United States. It’s a day when people flood their social media accounts with praise for soldiers. In the United States, posting something on social media is often mistaken for “activism.”

Some of my closest friends are veterans and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thanking veterans. It’s just that I think we should also be thanking teachers, doctors, librarians, garbage men, street sweepers, etc.

I realize that soldiers don’t get paid much, and I’m kind of over America’s inflated military budget. The military budget is bankrupting the nation. It’s not the soldiers’ fault because they’re not getting paid. It’s the war profiteers out there who are given a blank check year after year.

Every politician acknowledges that we have to cut back on spending, but why is the military budget always allowed to grow? It seems to me that eliminating military waste is the best way to push our country back towards solvency.

But we have holidays like “Memorial day three day weekend” where the public is trained to believe you can’t ever talk about these things.

Yesterday, as I was scrolling through social media, I was reminded of the conservative meme that says, “Here’s a list of everything you’re entitled to” and then the list is nothing but a blank page.

The joke is, chortle chortle, that nobody anywhere is ever entitled to anything.

So, that message implies that veterans are not “entitled” to a pat on the back even on Memorial day.

However, all the guys walking around with their thin blue line hats (I realize that’s police and not the military, but these are all the same people), do believe they’re entitled to praise on Memorial day.

So, the meme should say “Here’s what you’re entitled to” and then have “1. gratitude on Memorial day if you’re a veteran.”

Of course, if you do that, it ruins the whole point of the meme because if there’s one thing you should feel entitled to, there must be others.

Ruining the meme is my point.

Years ago, some conservative dupe posted a line about how “are we going to ban Kool-Aid because one guy used it to poison his followers?”

I replied, “Actually, it wasn’t the Kool-Aid that poisoned the followers, it was the poison hidden in the Kool-Aid. And yes, I think we should ban poison. Don’t you think it’s important to keep poison out of the hands of children?”

Of course, this comment made the guy’s brain short circuit. He got all snarky and accused me of being foolish through some convoluted argument that I can’t quite remember.

I replied with something like, “Yeah, I can see how you wouldn’t want to change the meme to ‘should we ban poison because one guy used it to kill his followers?’ because that would make you look stupid for sharing it... considering we do, in fact, ban poison.”

The thing is, I’m constantly getting into arguments like this. The default setting for discourse in the US is “extra stoopid.”

It just demonstrate a baseline of terrible disrespect. These people shove their idiotic lack of a belief system that’s untethered from reality into your face, and then they feel entitled to hysterics if you call them out on their multiple logical fallacies.

On Thursday of last week, a boy spit in my daughter’s face at school.

In my mind, the consequence of this should be that I received a call from the principal, teacher, and resource officer apologizing. This call should have included the assurance that the kid had been expelled.

What I’ve gotten so far is nothing. My daughter said she talked to the principal, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

That’s the way this goes in the US. People flip out if you don’t post 50 “thank a veteran” memes on social media (as if posting memes means anything), but if your daughter gets spit on, nobody does anything. Even worse, if you call out the behavior, they act like you’re the one in the wrong.

What we have in the United States is an inversion of respectful behavior.

It’s always the case isn’t it? It’s always the case that the entitled white boy spits, and the Spanish-speaking daughter of an immigrant is the one who gets spit on.

They’re going to try and tell me this was an accident, but an accident is behavior you can’t predict.

So, this is what I was thinking about over the weekend every time I saw a meme that lectured me I needed to be grateful for all the things I have that were “paid for with the ultimate sacrifice.”

My daughter got spit on.

What happened to the idea of “nobody gave me anything, I worked for what I have?”

Why is it only with regard to the military that we’re supposed to show deferential treatment?

Let’s start treating everyone with respect. That means not getting in their face and screaming “build the wall” or “go back to where you came from” or “you will not replace us.”

Or spitting.

As far as I’m concerned, we need to work towards a society where no child get spit on. At that point I’ll start thanking people.