Seaman Mike Browne - 12/62 -- recording the  Bob Hope show  -- USS Kitty Hawk, Subic Bay, Philippines

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns of the World War One fell silent.  The following year Woodrow Wilson designated the day as Armistice Day. In 1954 President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day, a day of celebration when a lot of aging vets squeeze themselves into their old uniforms, or maybe just put on an American Legion or VFW hat, and march in a parade.

Last year this old vet sat in a wheelchair on a San Diego curb and watched the parade rather than wheel in it, accompanied by two beautiful women, the Lady Karen Simons and Lady Sandy Burgess, the latter being a cousin from Alaska. Lady Sandy and her husband, Keith, were in town to visit their Marine son. Lady Karen had bought me a really fancy cap with Navy insignia. Later Lady Sandy sent me a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a ship I'd served aboard.

During the parade I removed my cap when a color guard bearing the flag passed by.  I'm not all that patriotic about the flag, but I did get caught up in the martial music, the presence of all those impossibly young sailors and Marines probably bound for harm's way, and an ingrained sense of flag protocol acquired at an early age in a military academy and reinforced in the Navy. If you're a civilian wearing a hat, you take off your lid when the flag passes by -- or should.   For me, the gesture was not a tribute to a decorated cloth, but a showing of respect for American kids being shot at in foreign wars.

No parade for this old bat this year, but I did snag a free lunch. See, San Diego is a military town and some restaurants lose a bundle of money offering free lunches to active duty, retired, and former military people like me who never pass up a free meal. Sooo, I put on the Navy cap Lady Karen gave me last year and invited her to accompany me on my free lunch mission.

While we were seated in the waiting area of a restaurant crowded with service people and former service people along with their families and guests, a well buffed 20-something fella with buzzed hair, accompanied by two parent looking people, came up to me, extended his hand and said, “Thank you for your service.” He was gone before I could thank him for his. I guessed he was a Marine from nearby Camp Pendleton despite not being in uniform. The haircut was a giveaway.

Like many of us, I've been watching the behavior the president-elect with mixed feelings, none of them good. He talks so cavalierly about invading Iraq on the false premise that Iraqi oil is America's oil. Now this man never spent one day in the armed forces, and he's perfectly willing to send that 20-something Marine who courteously greeted me in the restaurant, along with thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people in uniform into combat so he can Make America Great Again.

Excuse me, Mr. President-elect, but America is already great – and you sure as hell won't make it any greater unless you learn to play well with others on the international playground.

Me, I do not want to see photos of an airplane hangar filled with flag draped coffins flown in from the Middle East or anywhere else. I hope the young fella I presumed to be a Marine will one day be an old man who marches in Veterans Day parades wearing a silly hat.

-oOo-

Comments, anyone?

This response is full of Thank Yous:
Thank you for your service.

Thank you for thanking others for theirs.

Thank you for sharing your sentiments about the president-elect.

Thank you for your heart.

Hubba Hubba, sailor!

– Ellen

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Thank you for your service, Mike  You are as handsome now as you were then.  Peace and love to you, my friend. – Peggy Hill

Oh stop. – MB

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Re Trump never serving; Didn't you know? Donald Trump attended military school where he learned everything he needs to know about the U.S. military and how it should operate. (Don't you feel secure knowing this failed businessman is in charge of the country?) Three days later and I still have a knot in my stomach, waiting for the other shoe to fall. I don't want to have to listen to him for another four years. I miss George W. Bush already!

 – Brat

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I love your snide remarks about Trump.  My serious side has emerged after my initial denial and shock and disgust. I wrote this little paragraph today:

Trump's appointment is a crisis that may serve to mobilize us to address the very real problems and big questions this society faces.  We have been missing serious Democratic party discourse about the effects of globalization on manufacturing sector in the US. Most people can only blame single causes, when in fact we need to think systematically. Are protective tariffs going to be enough?  Should there be a relocation program for those in dwindling cities? Or a [Civilian Conservation Corps] for the environment?   How does a nation gracefully decline? Does the UK's end of empire offer any insights?  Decades ago social theorists speculated about a leisure society and asked what meaningful activities might take the place of work.  Do we need a citizenship wage? Can we call upon the human potential movement to help people enjoy and share their inner resources?

-- Galen

Galen is right. We liberals have gotten politically and socially complacent and maybe just a little too smug. That made us a big fat target for the disaffected. – MB
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A friend who worked for Homeland Security said, “I have a high security clearance and if I had done what [Clinton did with the classified e-mails] I would be spending the rest of my life in federal prison “

I am glad to see the GOP blown apart and the DNC likewise. Perhaps we can get someone in four years we can proudly support.  As for Donald, I hope he will fulfill his promises. I am willing to give him a chance. 

-- Charlotte
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Thanks. This was most welcome today. – Sum

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I too hope that young man will march in a parade one day.  We are opening a housing project for vets.  I think any president should visit there and hear the residents stories before considering war.  The president would also learn a thing or two about what vets need when they return home.  – Tammy

Thank you and your community for what I gather is a project for homeless or low income vets. -- MB

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Enjoyable read, as always! Glad you got your free lunch. Re the election.... still in shock. – Lynda
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First, I am foursquare against war - and just as surely know American humans will engage in it with noble and patriotic reason, and I honor them every Veteran's Day and any day I see an old vet with a hat on proudly depicting his military service, or a young man from my local Army base sporting his camo and name tag filling up his rig down the street.  I cannot, and will not, take anything from the courageous act of walking into danger in defense of a way of life I freely can live. Yeah, you can cue the anthem.  I love my country and I am safer because of the soldiers who are much more brave than I.

As for Trump, I am pretty sure one of the main reasons he was elected is that so many are so sick of politicians and their chronic inaction that they would elect a pompous ass instead.  I go with this:  In four years, maybe we WILL elect someone we can be proud of.  Time will tell,

Thanks for the piece, and thanks to you Mike, and to my brother, and every person who ever served, or still serves. – Zoey

https://nsjour.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/americas-armageddon-might-be-a-century-or-two-away-yet/

The following is by Garrison Keillor, author and host of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, which appeared in the Washington Post, SF Gate, and which I filched from the whirled wide web.   MB

Let us be clear that if this election is stolen from Hillary by last-minute machinations, you Republicans are in deep trouble. We lefties are not patsies who you can play footsie with. Vengeance shall be wreaked.

We are taking names and we know where you live. If Hillary loses, your hairdresser Heather (a Democrat) is going to cut your hair with pinking shears and color it mauve and trim your eyebrows to look like Bette Davis. She will massage your shoulders and press hard on a certain nerve that makes your voice squeaky and trembly.

You drop by your favorite cafe and Hazel, a Democrat, will bring you coffee with cream though you never take cream but absent-mindedly you drink it and you wind up staying home for 48 hours, driving the porcelain bus.

Hillary has got this election in the can and if you and your KGB pals attempt dirty tricks like give Democrats pens with invisible ink to mark their Xes or jam the voting lever with wads of bubble gum or put our ballots in the fake box full of composting worms or use X-ray binoculars to see through our clothing and spot the ACLU cards in our pockets and hand us the trick ballot that goes blank when exposed to kryptonite, you will pay for this big time. Do not think otherwise.

Schoolteachers, health care workers: all Democrats. No more special help for your kids having trouble with algebra so give up any thought of college -- they are headed for jobs in the hospitality industry, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets. Your urine test at the doctor's will reveal a previously unknown strain of flesh-eating bacteria and you will wind up in long-term care, tended by -- you guessed it -- a woman named Carmelita who will not take you to the toilet unless you ask her in Spanish. ("Necesito el toilet, por favor.")

Did you know that 95 percent of all psychiatrists are progressive Democrats? If Hillary loses, you will be declared mentally incapable and put under the guardianship of your lesbian daughter who hasn't spoken to you in three years. She will bring her German shepherd Namaste who stares at you relentlessly and snarls if you pick up a telephone. Good luck with that.

As you know, we in the media are totally Democratic and when your wedding story appears in the paper, don't be surprised if the bride has a mustache and the groom's eyes are off-kilter. Your name will be misspelled and instead of "is employed as a data imaging specialist at NorCom," it will be "is currently doing time for wire fraud in a federal facility in Oklahoma." Send us your birth announcement and we will rename it Hillary and put "Stronger Together" on the onesie.

Your wife is a Democrat so I'd advise you not to eat home-cooked meals for maybe five or 10 years. And as for your little blue pills, your wife knows about identical little blue pills that will make a man suddenly interested in fabrics and interior decor.

I hope it does not come to this. Ours is a great country and we say let the candidate with the most votes win, but if you carpet-chewers want to play a different game, bring it on. Microsoft and Apple have come up with a powerful whammer-jammer that, should it come to this, God forbid, will shut down the ignition of every RV and pickup truck in America and make the radio play NPR at high volume and instead of the latest CD by your beloved Anthrax Fruit Bats or Demented Loners you will be listening to Ira Glass talk about hipster millennials and the cultural phenomenon of plaid shirts and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

-oOo-