Revolt of the Veterans?
For sure, many of them wonder if, perhaps, a day might come where they can use their skills to truly fight for their country, a war not decided by the politicians, but one they decide on.
A link to an essay published in a relatively new magazine titled Compact showed up in my Twitter feed the other day. It was behind a paywall, but the title and first few paragraphs were interesting enough that I decided to bite the bullet and drop a one-time payment of $9 just to read the whole thing and so you, my readers, might not need to pay it yourselves.
The essay is authored by Malcom Kyeyune, a Swedish writer who has gained prominence in the last year-plus. I talked about him in one of this blog’s first posts. Because there’s a paywall and also because it’s not a long essay, I won’t give all of it away, but I did want to talk about the more important points Kyeyune raises. The topic concerns what he sees as an increasing disconnect between America’s veterans and the people they were charged with protecting:
In the military, life often resembles the sort of social structures common to tribal societies: hierarchical but selfless, with individual needs subordinated to the interests of the group. The bonds between soldiers in a unit aren’t necessarily bonds of friendship or mutual affection, but they are still very strong ties—the only sort that will keep you safe in a life-or-death situation. Many soldiers find it hard to adjust back to a life where those sorts of bonds are few and far between.
The need for strong communal bonds is hardly unique to soldiers. [Sebastian] Junger also spends quite a lot of time exploring how natural disasters and wars bring humans together, mainly by disrupting the normal operations of modern societies to the extent that we are, at least temporarily, brought back to a more “primitive” level of in-group solidarity. Junger notes that during the Blitz, the British government prepared for looting, anarchy, and mass psychosis, only to be shocked by a major decline in mental illness and a dramatic outpouring of public-spiritedness. Humans, such historical experiences suggest, are built to thrive in difficult conditions. The earliest humans may have lived lives that were “nasty, brutish, and short” by modern standards, but they also seemed to have found satisfaction in those lives. Similarly, war might be hell—but for many American veterans, the experience of peace is evidently worse.
Kyeyune’s bottom line is that America’s veterans could come to pose a threat to society. He centers his argument on a book written in 2016 by Sebastian Junger titled Tribe, a best-seller which talked about the difficulty veterans experience when returning home from war and they often found the experience of war, terrible as it might be, more fulfilling and meaningful than anything they found back home. It leaves many with a feeling of emptiness that can’t be filled, except maybe with violence - either directed at themselves or at others.
Before delving deeper, a few critical facts need to be established at the outset. First, Kyeyune isn’t talking about veterans in general, but about “shooters” - specifically, the men (yes, nearly all men, sorry feminists) who fought on the ground, weapons in hand, and confronted the enemy in an up close and personal way. It goes criminally understated how much military experience can vary from servicemember to servicemember. This isn’t to downplay the experiences of those who performed administrative, logistical, or technical tasks requiring skilled training - military service has been and always will be inherently dangerous - but there’s still a difference between being the ones constantly sent in to fight the fire and those who support them.
Appalling as the issues of veterans homelessness and suicide are, it needs also to be understood that it’s not all bad news for those who’ve served. Quite the opposite, in many respects. For example, veteran unemployment currently stands at 2.7%. By comparison, non-veterans are at 3.6%. Veterans populate the ranks of government and government contractor jobs and service practically guarantees employment in some respects. “Thank you for your service” might be cliche and Veterans Affairs (VA) maybe a textbook case of death-by-bureaucracy, but most who served joined to get a leg up on life and, for most, it pays off.
Nor are veterans culturally divergent from civilian society to the degree feared by commentators and scholars. A lot of research has been done on the topic, but I think, often the data amounts to the proverbial trees in the forest. Whatever it says about how many veterans come from what part of the country, whether they had a family member serve before them, etc., servicemembers don’t come from a separate society entirely divorced from the one the rest of us came from. It’s easy to think they do if you don’t know any veterans, but most of them attended public schools, worked normal jobs before they joined the military, and partook in the same activities and were steeped in the same culture as the rest of us who never served.
The military changes so much, but it doesn’t change the kind of movies and music you enjoy or the clothes you wear when off-duty. Most troops yearn for the day they can be civilians again and, when the military allows them to, are more than happy to indulge their civilian side while serving. This isn’t the military of Chile under Pinochet nor the military of Germany under Bismarck, both examples of where soldiers were literally a separate social class unto themselves and lived apart from everyone else.
In fact, the trend of the last 20 years or so has been to narrow the seeming civil-military divide. This is an entirely different topic deserving an essay or two all it’s own, but one way in which the divide has been narrowed has been, unfortunately, through commercialization. I say unfortunately, because it’s reduced military service to just another “job,” though undeniably, it’s more than that. However, with an all-volunteer force and the fact most people, when given the choice, prefer not to serve, there needs to exist incentives to get people to sign the dotted line. I don’t know how well these efforts have translated into attracting recruits, but the point is the military has become less “military” over time, minus the uniforms and the all-important part about taking orders.
I’m digressing, but my point is that not only are veterans well-integrated into society, only a certain percentage of veterans had what we can call a “true” war experience. For others, military service was about navigating a bureaucracy and performing both skilled and unskilled labor under a myriad of conditions, most of which sucked. Certainly, veterans, both combat and non-combat, have seen and done things most Americans never will, but there’s something about shooting and being shot at that changes a person. I’ve always bristled at notions of the existence of a “warrior caste” in America, but there’s no getting around the fact the act of exchanging fire with the enemy does place one into a class all their own. What’s always been, always will be.
Back to Kyeyune. The argument he’s making is that America is full of angry and restless men with decades of combat experience between them, constituting a potential social de-stabilizer. Like the Freikorps of post-World War I Germany, they are capable of raising a lot of hell if things get bad enough, maybe even facilitate a revolution or two, or stop one, if needed. The problem with this argument is that America has already had a whole bunch of angry and restless veterans who’ve come back from war to an absolute mess of a country and, well, the unthinkable never occurred.
According to the Census Bureau, over 6.3 million veterans served during the Vietnam War era. The same 2018 report showed 3.7 million served from 9/11-onward. Put another way, more Americans served in half the time span during the Vietnam era than they have during the last 20 years. By the time U.S. troops had fully withdrawn from Vietnam, America was suffering from economic stagnation, high unemployment, high gas prices, high crime, and rampant drug and alcohol abuse. For those of us who didn’t live through the 1970s, it’s easy to overlook how bad times were back then. If soldiers feel alienated and resentful of the society we are today, what do you think the soldiers returning from Vietnam felt at the time?
The attitude towards the military was nothing like it is now. I remember hearing a Vietnam veteran once recall how there was nobody to greet him when he returned home, except for some anti-war protesters. Today, we live in the Thank You For Your Service age. Disrespecting the troops is a line most are unwilling to cross, regardless of how one may feel personally about the military, signifying a tremendous cultural shift which has occurred since the end of Vietnam. Even the Left today openly courts the support of the military, something unthinkable even a decade ago.
My point is that, in the 1970s, the U.S. had a critical mass of veterans who could’ve turned out to be a real handful for the country. Movies like Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro, captured this phenomenon in real-time. For reasons beyond the scope of this entry, the American Freikorps didn’t emerge in the ‘70s, even though conditions were bad enough back then that logic dictated it ought to have. In the end, the millions who served in Vietnam and the many more who served in uniform during that time chose to move on with their lives or otherwise suffer in silence. Maybe they just wanted to leave the violence behind.
There’s a sense the current moment is unprecedented and some sort of profound shift is afoot. In many respects, I agree, but I also think it can be overstated. This ingredient of the narrative recipe is important because something needs to spark this veterans’ uprising. The masses of veterans, many of whom never wanted to go to war, didn’t revolt in the ‘70s because, though they might’ve had reasons to, the opportunity never arose. Well, what sort of opportunity is afoot today? We’ve already established deteriorating conditions at home are hardly enough to trigger a veterans’ revolt. What might trigger one is a collapse of some sort, the S**t-Hits-The-Fan (SHTF) or Without-Rule-Of-Law (WROL) scenarios I spend much of my time talking about.
But we’ve already seen an economic collapse in this country during the Great Depression. Aside from the Bonus Army march to Washington, which was a protest, not an armed uprising, veterans did not pose a threat to the country during the 1930s. Granted, by then, World War I was well in the past, but when you consider over 4.7 million Americans served in the Great War and how devastating it was, the repercussions of that war can linger for at least a generation or more.
Again, it didn’t happen.
Kyeyune isn’t wrong to raise these concerns. For the military to be good at protecting us, it also needs to be capable of threatening us. This means veterans, on some level, can be dangerous to the rest of us. After all, not only have they been trained to kill, many have killed. It’s not a pleasant thought, but civilization needs killers. As Thomas Sowell said, “If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
A running theme of this blog has been that not all that’s possible is probable. Many commentators confuse the two and end up constructing narratives where “it’s happening” because it’s easy to capture imaginations with the possible, thereby generating clicks and clout. I hate to sound like I’m saying that’s what Kyeyune’s doing, but there’s no indication we’re close to a veterans’ revolt any more than we’re close to a military coup d'état.
Of course, we never know what’s going on in the minds of people. That doesn’t matter, either, because again, what might be isn’t the same as what is. I’m sure, no, I know for a fact there are thousands of angry and disgruntled veterans, many of whom have seen combat, many of whom have shot and been shot at, who are confused and incensed over what this country has become, and wonder exactly what it was they fought and lost their friends for. This isn’t unique to the current generation of veterans; they have existed since time immemorial. Only the Greatest Generation can be confident they fought for something worthwhile and, even then, I’m sure many World War II veterans weren’t sure what to make of it all for much of their lives, if not the rest of their lives.
Still, the veterans haven’t turned on us en masse. In some ways, they remain loyal to this country as ever. For sure, many of them wonder if, perhaps, a day might come where they can use their skills to truly fight for their country, a war not decided by the politicians, but one they decide on. Until that day comes, however, and there’s no telling when that’ll be, the veterans are just trying to get by and live their lives like the rest of us. If there are veterans who are stocking up weapons and preparing for the big day, then we don’t know about it anyway and none of it matters if the day never comes. If there are veterans out there plotting to do things which are illegal, then a tragic fate awaits them, but again, there’s no indication this is a widespread problem.
I guess what I’m saying is: don’t put too much stock in the things people say. This isn’t to say words don’t matter: they do, but words need to be viewed in the context of what’s actually happening in real life. People might be talking about civil war, but until it manifests in actual shooting, it doesn’t mean much all on its own. It’s far too easy to craft narratives based on anecdotal information.
If you’re really concerned about veterans, give a thought to the over 6,000 veterans who’ve been taking their own lives every year since 2001, instead of worrying they might be fixing to man a local militia barricade, as Kyeyune put it. Which, by the way, if that ever happened, there would be a lot more to worry about besides veterans taking up arms. If SHTF or WROL were to happen, I’d be shocked and dismayed if the veterans weren’t manning those barricades. To say they would doesn’t mean anything particularly profound.
Thankfully, the number of veteran suicides seems to be on the decline, but it’s still several thousand too many. The fact the number was that high even before the Global War on Terror kicked into high gear tells me war is only part of the problem and it might not even be the biggest part of it. Millions of Americans wear the uniform and go on to thrive, but there are many who don’t. In that sense, yes, Kyeyune is correct - we do end up discarding and forgetting our soldiers - but instead of taking it out on society, they take the bullet themselves instead.
I don’t know what the answer to reducing veteran suicides is, but I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that a revolt isn’t coming. I do think we need to hear more from our veterans and the conversation also needs to be a two-way street. In other words, veterans ought to speak freely to the public, but so should the public speak freely to veterans. In doing so, those who serve will discover those who didn’t aren’t totally unrelatable and that wearing a uniform isn’t the ultimate act of high honor. Likewise, those who didn’t serve will see that those who wore the uniform are, at the end of the day, just people, not superheroes. Like most people, they’re all just trying to get somewhere in life and then find their way home.
Have you served? How many veterans do you know? Do we need to beware of those who’ve killed on our behalf?
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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