First off, Happy Veteran’s Day!
I had a nightmare last night that seems strangely appropriate for this day. One where a teenage girl taking her specialty cookies to the baking contest falls through a rip in reality into a communist world where she’s forced to work in the palace kitchen’s because she can do something no one there can, and she dies of infection because they don’t have basic antibiotics.
It’s something I swear came out of my boyfriend’s head, got mixed up on its way to the land of drams, and landed in my dreams instead. He was raised in the USSR and every once in a while will have these horrible nightmares about the US going the way of it, basically all of us fighting for food, hiding out in the country and trying to live off the land without the government finding us, every city being taken over by gang warfare, you know… er, normal nightmares 🙂
As someone born and raised in this country, I don’t have a concept outside of books of what that kind of world must be like. I can hear stories from my friends raised in foreign countries that give me an idea of what that world is like, (and it terrifies me to my very bone marrow – no anesthesia to get tonsils taken out or cavities filled, ’nuff said) but I don’t really get it. Why?
Here’s where I start waving my flag. Because this is America, bitch! 😀
We live in a country that yes, sometimes has issues, but where we have never had to experience that world. We’ve had worse times, like during the depression, we may be facing another one, but we don’t bend to the pressure, we don’t just break down and make a new government, and since the Civil War, we haven’t tried to tear ourselves apart.
This is America. And it’s that great for a reason. Again, yes, we have some problems. But this is still the country where you can be better, smarter, faster, (okay, sometimes just plain lucky) and make something of yourself. This is the country the dream is named after. You know, The American Dream. Where you can go to school, learn a trade, just be brilliant all on your own, work your ass off, and you make something or you do something and you put it out to the public.
And we can do this and be this way because of a ton of different factors, but one of them is our military, protecting us (and let’s face it, basically playing world’s police) overseas.
I do not agree with everything our military has been sent to do, sometimes I don’t get why we spend the money to interfere in other countries that don’t want us there anyway, sometimes I get it’s because if we don’t, no one will.
But, no matter what I believe about any individual skirmish, war, the not-technically-a-wars, I support our troops. Because they support this country on their backs. Every single person who puts on the uniform and goes out there, is doing something for their country. They might have joined just to have college paid for, maybe because they wanted out of their ghetto or small town and that seemed the best way to do it, I don’t care. What I care about is what they do once they’re in uniform.
They risk their lives, they leave their families for years at a time, and they do it because they are Americans.
I can’t (or if I can I don’t know how yet) put up any of my books for free just for the men and women in uniform so in honor of this day, I have my first story in a series of shorts up for free on Amazon today. It’s Evie Jones and the Crazy Exes.
So today, let’s not pretend it’s cool to hate America and capitalism and how other people’s freedom’s piss you off. Just for today, how about you thank a soldier for their service, because it is a service, and it isn’t an easy one.
And since this is America, they are choosing to provide that service, so I for one am grateful.
To all those wearing the uniform and those that have before, from George Washington to the newest guy just enlisted.
Thank-you for your service.
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