It seems like culturally the expectation is to give people in the military additional respect, beyond what a normal person should receive. This doesn’t really make sense to me because, after all, it’s a job like any other. Everyone should respect everyone, but I don’t understand why people in the military should get additional respect in this regard.
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It seems like culturally the expectation is to give people in the military additional respect, beyond what a normal person would receive. This doesn’t really make sense to me because, after all, it’s a job like any other. Everyone should respect everyone, but I don’t understand why people in the military should get additional respect in this regard.
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The simplest solution is to treat everyone with respect (at least, until they earn your disrespect).
Sure, I agree with giving troops higher pay.
It’s just a job. I don’t see why they should get any different treatment.
Whatever people want to do.
I agree!
There is a great assumption in American society that necessarily people serving in the military are sacrificing their lives (all valor and vanity). While it could be true that some are doing that, things are never that black and white and many people are not primarily doing it out of sacrificing their lives for patriotism. There’s a desire to maintain that false narrative, in part, maybe to feel good, to claim honor where it doesn’t really belong, and also to continue militarizing the country’s mentality. It’s way overblown.
I have even seen parents get teary eyed when their sons graduate boot camp. The teary eyes is associated with these internal emotions of “oh great self-sacrifice” when it’s hardly any of those things. So even parents buy into that belief at some level. I think it’s really ridiculous.
American society is really into the performative. And this isn’t just around the military. In progressive circles, I see that happening too, though not about the military but about other things.
By default, yes.
If a person is a military and they don’t behave in ways unfit for military personnel, I totally respect them more than the average joe or jane
It’s a job but it’s a dangerous job potentially.
It’s not a job like any other. Having done both I can assure you of that.
But, distribution of respect is a personal choice. You do what you want to do.
It’s just human nature to respect those that endure danger and hardship on your behalf. And most logical people will come to this conclusion.
“It is a job like any other.” I mean, for those in combat this is not true. There are few, if any, equivalent jobs where you are under such psychological and physical stress. What other job are you expected to decide when it is appropriate to kill somebody? And then kill them? Maybe swat?
So I don’t know about respect, whatever that means. But 100% we should show them compassion. A measure of gratitude for putting their bodies and minds on the line. They get PTSD and have trouble re-integrating into society after serving, and it is our responsibility to help them with that.
Now I hate many of the actions our military has taken/is taking. So what it means to show them gratitude is complicated. In most cases, these actions are not the fault of service members in combat. And the relative wealth we enjoy in America is because of our military strength.
Regardless of these complex feelings of the military overall, we need to take much better care of our individual combat veterans.
I think everybody should be given respect until they prove they don’t deserve it. I don’t subscribe to “respect is earned, not given.” Respect should be given and unearned. With that said, I don’t give anybody in the military any more respect that I’d give anyone else just because they joined the military. I come from a military family and that seemed to be the consensus with them, as well. And also most of my friends who are ex-military. The only ones that demand more are friends that have an inferiority complex because they served in the Coast Guard or were just reservists.
I once got into an argument with a guy who was being a real asshole. I’m not sure what his deal was but he was a jerk and 100% in the wrong. I got yelled at by someone else because “he’s a veteran”. For some reason, some people think that being a veteran gives someone carte blanche to be an asshole and that’s not okay. Also, hearing vets bitch about not getting discounts at Applebee’s or priority boarding on planes is a real turn off.
Until we fulfill our end of their contract, absolutely. If for no other reason than guilt for how our vets are treated.
Yes. If you want to attract the type of person that is worthwhile to your armed forces, then it needs to have some degree of social prestige.
Would you like to know more?!
I think it’s weird how you have a job at 18 and then demand that the entire world to automatically call
you a “hero” and give you discounts and platitudes for the next 50-75 years of your life…regardless of whether you were in combat or worked as a mechanic or logistics clerk in a warehouse never touching a weapon (majority of military jobs are non combat..there’s even a branch that has zero combat capability)
“hero” gets tossed around like $1 Jell-O shots on spring break
Like it’s fine if you served. Good for you. Don’t demand that I thank you 25 years later cause you’re wearing a cheesy hat or have a license plate holder bragging about it.
Respect? Yes. Kissing their feet at their every whim? No.
Here’s why respecting the military makes sense. Regular jobs don’t require you to pledge to kill or die for our country and its citizens. It takes courage to raise your hand while reciting that oath and to know that one day, you may have to honor it.
Yes.
I try to be as respectful to everyone as I can me. I don’t think people in the military should be treated any better than fireman/garbage collectors/bus drivers/restaurant workers/farmers etc. We’re all contributing to society in our own way.
As a military member (Air Force officer), it depends. My thoughts are that we should be respected for what we do, but…
Am I looking for the mindless TYFYS that I get? Not really. It’s ok, but it’s plebian. I’m not looking for hero worship. Sure, it’s nice to be respected and looked up to (and occasionally, it even impresses a lady or two), but it’s not why we do it.
What I’d rather see is our veterans being taken care of, housed, fed, given the healthcare they’ve earned signing a blank check with their lives to defend our country. I think pay could always be higher for our enlisted personnel. I think there’s a lot of sacrifice carried out by our families, many of whom are not members of the military yet bear much of the same burdens for their loved ones and for the mission.
I’d continue building on educational opportunities and skills training. Prioritize the lives and welfare of our troops, veterans, and their families.
We’re an organization centered around people doing a job that can ask a great deal from us, much more than most any other job can relative to our ability to control its trajectory. I would appreciate if our society reflected that more through action, not just platitudes.
Are you in favor of mandatory service? If not then you should thank the people that volunteer for the job. If people didn’t volunteer there would need to be mandatory service and you may be forced to do it.
> This doesn’t really make sense to me because, after all, it’s a job like any other.
There is really no such thing as ‘a job like any other’, because there is a wide variety of work available in society. There should obviously be a baseline level of respect given to everyone, but I think it’s pretty common for people to rate certain jobs as being worthy of a bit of extra respect – teachers, doctors, firefighters, whatever. Are you asking whether it’s proper for service members to be included in that enhanced category, or whether it’s correct for such a special category to exist at all?
same level of respect I give anyone else I suppose
I agree and disagree with your point. For starters, military service is not just “a job”, certainly not in the US military. There are some countries, like the UK, in which military service is a bit more like a job, but it is a different animal in the US military. The US military really is a totally different lifestyle with a completely different set of challenges, advantages, supports, and isolating factors when compared to civilian life. Honestly, I think this is major reason why military personnel disproportionately suffer mental health crises when transitioning out of the military into civilian life. I even performed roughly the same job in my civilian life that I did in the military….it is totally different. Military service isn’t like any other job and is intentionally built to be different.
To be clear, just because the military lifestyle is so different than the civilian lifestyle does not mean veterans deserve more respect. I want to emphasize, there are some advantages to the military lifestyle over civilian lifestyle. I am simply saying that regarding military service as “a job like any other” just isn’t true.
In my experience, most service members don’t really want to be treated with “extra” respect. We would often joke about being thanked for our service. I always found it to be an awkward conversation. For starters, service members fully understand that a good amount of their fellow service members are actually “shitbags” (that is what we called bad soldiers) and many have less than stellar service records and are less than honest about their service records. So I am a bit critical of offering thanks without specific reason. I just often strikes me as performative and insincere. For example, I have gotten multiple emails from perspective employers denying me a job, but thanking me for my service. If you want to thank a service member, think twice about voting for politicians who are going to send us to war, support giving veterans’ healthcare that they need, and hire qualified veterans if you are in a position to do so. I don’t really get much out of gratitude for my service unless you are commenting on something specific. In which case, it means a lot.
With all that out of the way, there are certain things that the military does a really good job at teaching motivated service members which the civilian population just doesn’t receive. For example, with very few exceptions, civilians know next to nothing about some of the deeper concepts of leadership, accountability, and maintaining standards. The training I received as an Army NCO about these issues were stellar and reinforced pretty much daily. I lived the Creed of the Non-Commissioned Officer. And so when I have to go to some corporate training on leadership, I have to actively calm myself down while listening to the hypocrisy and ignorance from civilian trainers. All this is just me trying to say that, just like how you might respect some specialized professional training, service members often have some specialized training that should be listened to and respected. The trouble is that the civilian population really struggles to acknowledge some of that specialized training service members receive.
In short, I think that offering service members some sort of generic “respect” due to some sort of performative political gesture is bad. Frankly, I think it makes it easier for civilians to justify sending service members into unjust and unnecessary wars. So it isn’t really in the best interest of the service members at all. However, civilians really should do a better job at seeing some of the ways military service can expand a service member’s perspective and professional development, in ways the civilians really can’t receive, and respect it appropriately, similar to how they would other sources of education and professional development.
2 things:
Let me explain.
During the global war on terror, a lot of folks were deployed and they had really shitty lives. GWOT broke a lot of people physically, mentally and socially. And through it all, there was a lot of disdain for the war (and rightful disdain, I think the war was terrible too), that sometimes that echoed on the folks that were deployed when they never themselves asked for that war.
So you have a guy that’s broken, and day in and day out he hears about how shitty people think of the war, and he’s wondering, “what’s the point my (his) life?”
Sometimes just telling them that “they mean something, that you know they may not have chose it but it’s their job and you respect them sticking with it” – it makes a difference. And sometimes it’s not easy to convey all that nuance but just saying “thanks” is enough. Because they get it.
Its not about that person being a hero, it’s about that person preserving in life In general.
Now sometimes you might come across service members that throughly don’t need or deserve that sentiment, but so what? Its fine that 100 undeserving people get thanks if it means that 1 person that really needs it gets it.
Anyway, just my 10 cents.
Blanket support? No. The US Military hero worship has gone off the deepend since 9/11. We need tk recalibrate our expectations and the reality of most people’s service actually is.
As a military historian, I can give some background to why it’s like this. In the first place, it’s useful for a society to honor professional warriors. It’s a profession where people have to be willing to die for the cause and that’s something that requires non-monetary motivation.
Honor is a specific kind of respect that’s especially transactional. You only get it if you uphold certain standards and pay severe social penalties for violations of it. This is given to the military not just for recruitment but because it binds a military to a society. It’s a bargain that while the military enjoys honor from society, it owes a reciprocal debt of honor to adhere to the standards of honorable conduct. That means dying in the defense of the society, receiving physical or moral injury, or just adhering to laws and regulations even if they cannot be fully enforced.
This post is an example of how liberals are seen as out of touch.
Everybody should be treated the same. With dignity, kindness, respect, and compassion. But the fucking same.
So many people I work with served four years at McChord turning wrenches, and they act like they charged the Beaches of Normandy. Fuck em. Other guys I work with served in Vietnam, or my relatives who landed on Iwo Jima, landed in France and made it to Berlin, or served in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, and you don’t hear a word about it from them. My grandfather did say something once about the war. He said the ones who died were the lucky ones.
Yes. I do that by not voting for a president who thinks they’re a bunch of suckers and losers.
They deserve additional respect because their job can put them in great jeopardy. It’s a big sacrifice to serve. You’re giving up your right to self-direction for years in service to your fellow citizens. That’s a lot to give up and it deserves extra respect. I always thank military members for their service.
Yes, everyone should respect everyone.
That said, do you believe that you are somehow being disrespected with members of the military are shown gratitude, appreciation, or deference?
You are confusing respect with recognition that those in the military have served their country to an extent that civilians have not and will never be asked to do so.
>This doesn’t really make sense to me because, after all, it’s a job like any other.
Actually, the opposite is true. Serving in the military is totally unique compared to other jobs. For one, you cannot up and quit at will if you decide that don’t like it. It’s the only job that require you knowingly agree to the risk of serious injury or death as par for the course. What other job requires that one move to a base overseas without your family for months at a time with little to no notice?
This is too vague and open-ended a question for me to respond. However, I will take the opportunity to push an idea I’ve been advocating for a while, since you touch upon the contentious concept of “deserving”.
People complain that the Veterans Affairs system is dysfunctional and I say this is because only 7% of American voters are veterans, therefore only 7% of voters get mad about it. That’s not too dangerous for a politician making cuts to the VA. So I think all Americans should use a single, common healthcare system that guarantees equal access for all with no discrimination (ie you’re treated according to your needs, not who you are). If a policymaker were to ever make cuts to such a system, then everyone would get mad. It would be political suicide to let such a system fail.
America’s health systems are fragmented. You have VA for veterans, Medicare for old people, Medicaid for the poor, Obamacare for everyone else, etc. This allows policymakers to divide and conquer the voters. If you make a cut to the VA, only 7% of voters get angry. After things have cooled down, you can then make a cut to Medicare, and only old people get angry.
Right-wingers justify this scheme with the contentious and deceptive concept of “deserving”. Veterans “deserve” special treatment and therefore shall be set apart from everyone else so that they may be treated “special”. I say that what you get in life, whether from the government or your employer, is based on power. Therefore the voters should form a coalition to give themselves more bargaining power.
It isn’t a job like any other. It’s a job where people agree to die as a public service.
They did volunteer their lives for this country 🤷♀️
Definitely not more. At least equal, in same cases less. For an example of the latter, Navy SEALs hold this bizarre cultural cache when many of them behave like complete monsters while in service and are often deeply flawed and nasty people outside of service.
IIRC this sort of “Thank you for your service!” empty respect comes from how veterans were treated after Vietnam, and to detach how we treat veterans from how we view their wars (i.e. Vietnam was bad and unpopular, so all Vietnam vets must be evil monsters because of it even if a lot of them were drafted)
But it’s that “empty” respect that I think is the sticking point. Because we don’t really respect veterans, not in any meaningful way, we just host parades where the least-traumatized veterans get to stand behind a politician using them for campaign clout and maybe give them a 10% discount at stores/restaurants eager to brag about their military discounts. But nothing that would, you know, cost taxpayers money like better funding the VA and not making VA benefits a colossal pain in the ass to receive.
More concerned with not cutting their benefits
Everyone deserves respect unless they earn disrespect though I don’t think military service members deserve extra compared to baseline
Sure, they should get additional respect.
War and combat is old people sending young people off to die. They’re doing that so I don’t have to. So yes, more respect is warranted.
That doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t get base level respect, or you just do whatever a service member says.
I don’t even see why this is a controversial topic. You don’t stand to lose anything by giving service people a little more respect. What’s the big deal?
Yeah but they’re jobs are literally risking their lives to protect our security not sit in an office building