It seems that there was a time when people used critical thinking skills to contemplate there life’s endevors. Evading group think can be difficult if you are unwilling to open your mind to various opinions.

Today I ate dinner at in an Orlando “Bar and Grill” type chain. I just finished my reserve weekend, and was still in uniform. Suddenly a guy walks in, and sits down next to me at the bar, dressed in fatigues and wearing a fatigue hat. No rank ensignias, but the words US Army on everything. He proceeds to tell those of us sitting at the bar how he just came back from 18 months of “overseas” duty. And that he was an Airborne ranger. Personally, I wasn’t really sure I bought all that. He didn’t have that “clean cut” military look, quite honestly, but I listened to what he had to say. Maybe the fact that he insulted me by saying that he didn’t have any respect for the Navy, since we wouldn’t know what it would be like to be deployed for 18 months.

I listened to his crap about how the US doesn’t “fuck around” and we kick ass. So I asked him a reasonable question, “how do you feel about your fellow soldiers being used as policemen rather than soldiers in Iraq?” I figured if he was so war gun-hoe, he probably would be pissed that he couldn’t kill anyone. He’d have to try and work things out with the local civilian population.

His response was, “If you sign up, then you do what your told.” He just couldn’t understand that if you sign up for one thing and then are forced to do another, that maybe there could be something slightly to take issue with. And as a US citizen, you can think about that. Are we supposed to be in the business of Nation Building?

He just didn’t get it, and I figured that talking about the new Star Wars movie would just be too much.

Bottom line, it ruined my dinner.

Cheers,

J