It's Veteran's Day

Update: Oops. Veteran's Day is actually tomorrow, according to the feds. But I'll let this post stand.

Although Veteran's Day--or Remembrance Day elsewhere--is technically Nov. 11, it's celebrated today in the US, a move of the 1970s that allegedly saves the feds money or something like that. After three years of doing this site, I know traffic will be down today, so I'll only have this and another post today.

The last few weeks have been pretty damn tumultuous for our country, in terms of the economy and the general election and a sense of either joy and celebration or of fear and loathing. But the one big constant in America is the fact that there are people who willing to put their butts on the line in the military for our freedom and that's what Veteran's Day is about. So I'd ask you, regardless of where you are on politics, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the election and so on, to take a moment to remember those people who do put their butts on the line for this country.

I've got plenty to remember on my end. My father is a combat vet, so are several of my older cousins and relatives (the wars skipped my generation), and my mother's father was a man from the streets of Brooklyn who somehow got appointed to the US Naval Academy, became a naval aviator and, from what little information I have, behaved heroically at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and was killed in a flight accident about six months later when my mother and aunt were little girls and my grandmother was suddenly widowed only months after having evacuated her daughters to California from Hawaii following the Pearl Harbor attack. My grandfather wasn't even piloting the plane that crashed, apparently as a result of a mechanical failure. I can assure you I think of that whole bit of business and the sacrifice involved on a rather regular basis.

My other grandfather was a flying mechanic in the Army Air Corps in the 1920s and was too old for active duty in the 1940s, a fact that rankled him his whole life, but for which I am thankful. At least I knew him.

When I was a kid, my grandmother, who struggled on a war widow's pension and taught piano lessons to local kids, used to make me get dressed up and then she'd take me and my sister down to Alameda to show us whatever aircraft carrier was on display or to an air show at the air station there. I can remember how on a couple of occasions she introduced me to various Navy brass (mostly admirals) who were classmates of my grandfather at Annapolis or knew him in the service and they'd pretty much stop what they were doing--shaking hands with the public basically--and take me off to show me something about a ship, submarine or airplane. I was four, five and six years old and really didn't know what any of that gesture was about. Now I do.

For the last few weeks, I've been asked and sometimes pestered by neighbors about how I was voting for President and who I voted for on election day. Here, in uber-liberal Seattle, it's social lubricant to blather on and on about politics and to find new ways in which to point out to whomever you are talking to just how progressive-liberal you are and how seamlessly you fit into the urban archipelago zeitgeist around here. The only problem is I am not and I don't exactly fit in, as I am something of a moderate and social Libertarian wrapped into one. I haven't been enamored with the takeover of the Republican party and the Presidency during the last eight years (and more) by big government Neo-Cons and I am a bit nervous about what's coming from President-Elect Obama and the bigger government Democrats and that's rather tough to talk about with Seattleites since they voted overwhelmingly for Obama and also voted in favor of a sweeping set of local tax increases in the midst of a recession. It's especially tough when I refuse to get into who I voted for with anyone except for friends.

Last week I was getting pushed rather hard on all of this by a few people one evening and I finally reached my limit on this new tradition that one's vote is not a private affair. "Look," I said, "my grandfather died for your and my right to vote, my dad got shot at for your and my right to vote and I'll vote for whoever I want, write whatever I want and be whatever I want without having to explain it to anyone."

I've been a bit worked up about such things recently, not only because of the election but because this site has found even more new readers, some of whom have slammed me pretty hard for my views on mental health, psychiatry, depression treatment and so on. The basic thrust has been: "How can you say such things? What gives you the right?"

Well, you see, there's this thing called the First Amendment and over the years many Americans have served in the military and died in order to see that it and the rest of the Constitution aren't shredded by anyone for any reason. That's what gives me the right.

And as for how I can say such things about dear old Prozac and Zyprexa (and all the rest of it), it's because I know I am right. Politics have nothing to do with it.

Have a nice day. See you tomorrow.