Another Veterans Day, another 24 hours under a national psychosis. Americans reflexively thank veterans for their ‘service,’ but why?
If more Americans were to read John Waters’ River City One, perhaps more Americans would substitute gratitude with an apology. Waters portrays the mental anguish many veterans endure via the fictional but likely sad realities of his brothers in arms. Though at times amusing, the reader hopes that what he is reading is not an accounting of the author’s loneliness, substance abuse, infidelity, and aimlessness.
But dwelling on that distracts from the point: When good people are required to do bad things, life devolves into ritualistic torture. Patriotic Americans thank veterans for their actions in uniform, but what happens after veterans shed the uniform is seldom discussed. Thankfully, Waters describes that in compelling, moving prose.
The costs of war are diffused, but they are not always diffused homogenously.
Here is the fundamental defect of the political mechanism: it is a system of highly weighted voting under which the special interests have great incentive to promote their own interests at the expense of the general public. The benefits are concentrated; the costs are diffused; and you have therefore a bias in the marketplace which leads to ever greater expansion in the scope of the government and ultimately to control over the individual.
~ Milton Friedman
The following scenario aligns with Friedman; the second scenario does not.
Say that your local school district wishes to increase its revenue (raise your property taxes). It cannot legally get away with robbing you directly. And, because only those devoid of empathy can escape the guilt of robbing you at gunpoint, the costs are great, as most people are not sociopaths. But if a majority of voters rob you indirectly (via the ballot box), everyone bears the cost, and the proponents of this scheme somehow rid themselves of guilt by conflating popularity with morality.
Humor your author for a minute and pretend that Congress declares war instead of allowing the president to usurp their duty with yet another authorization for use of military force. The benefits are concentrated in this scenario, but so are the costs.
The military – the last-ditch, violent branch of politics – bears the costs, which are diffused only among those who are doing the killing or who are maimed or killed. Again, when good people steal, kill, destroy… when what they thought noble is revealed to be a sham, “thank you for your service” is a phrase without a recipient, a song hummed to no one, a jingle that brings joy to only those who chant it.
And year after year, the U.S. regime creates more veterans, utterly unconcerned with the nonfinancial costs. River City One details those costs, and if more people were to read about them, a great awakening might occur.
No therapist or program at the Veterans Administration or elsewhere can cure what ails many veterans. The only cure is to stop making good people do bad things. Stop diffusing the costs among those who genuinely want to serve their country while pretending that “thank you” is adequate. It will never be adequate, so the best way to show gratitude to veterans is to stop coercing them to do what you wouldn’t even dream of doing.
Veterans swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But in 2020, they – your author included – were too cowardly to defend the Constitution. “Thank you for your service” is not only inadequate; it’s unwarranted. “Thank you” implies receipt of something.
But all that we’ve received is greater indebtedness, more divorces, more fatherless children, fewer freedoms, more taxation, more homelessness, and more suicides. No return on investment there, and there will never be one as long as the only diffused cost is muttering “thank you” to those who’ve done nothing for you. It is veterans who should be thanking everyone else (for their education, salary, pension, etc.), and only when everyone else demands a refund will we learn that the psychosis has ended.
This first appeared on RealClearDefense.
Casey Carlisle writes in the Pacific Northwest.
