Whatever else happens, the military will be returning to a home very different from the one from which they shipped. More different for those who’ve re-upped and done multiple deployments.
It’s easy to get morose sometimes. (I will try to be less ose…) But today when I stopped to leave some shirts at the cleaners, there was a hand-lettered sign “pick-up only.” Leaving my shirts in the car I walked in, and the lady who has greeted me with a big smile for the last six years said the owners had told her three days ago they’re closing the place.
Next on the itinerary was a fine luncheon on minced beef at a well-known burger franchise, where for years the joint has provided a widescreen wall-mounted TV with Fox News featuring highly entertaining typos in the scrolling captions.
The screen was gone; nothing but some naked connecting wires and a metal plate with empty bolt-holes. Well, that’s gonna save the place the monthly cable fee and all that electricity. And the cash register had a crabby sign telling customers “No free water cups or Ice. $1.00 charge for ice & cup”
There are other signs of stress – increasing workload for the perfessers where I teach, substantial jump in tuition and fees, no replacement of faculty who have announced plans to decamp.
It’s hard not to brace one’s self against the anticipated blow-up… these seem to be the metaphoric tiny cracks appearing in the dam, evidence of titanic strain that will not give much more warning before catastrophic collapse.
Some accounts of the history of Rome mention that in the late empire corrupt patricians ceased sending their sons into service in the Legions to go off to participate in distant campaigns. Roman divisions in whose ranks the pride of the aristocracy had once marched still made a very great army. But many small-holders and merchants and working farmers returned from their service to find their little plots of land, their vineyards, and their cottages confiscated by the high-born.
Damn. I can see how the few Democrats who have a couple brain cells to spare for some imagination might be a little worried about how returning vets are gonna react when they see how totally f****d up Obama’s gotten the country while they were out getting IED stains all over their cammies.
