From 2nd Smartest Guy in the Room substack:
"Even if I were pollinated and fully vaccinated, I would admire the unvaccinated for withstanding the greatest pressure I have ever seen, even from partners, parents, children, friends, colleagues and doctors.
People who were capable of such personality, courage and critical ability are undoubtedly the best of humanity. They are everywhere, in all ages, levels of education, states and ideas. They are of a special kind; they are the soldiers that every army of light wants to have in its ranks. They are the parents that every child wants to have and the children that every parent dreams of having. They are beings above the average of their societies, they are the essence of the people who have built all cultures and conquered horizons. They are there, next to you, they look normal, but they are superheroes.
They did what others could not, they were the tree that withstood the hurricane of insults, discrimination and social exclusion. And they did it because they thought they were alone, and believed they were the only ones.
Banned from their families' tables at Christmas, they never saw anything so cruel. They lost their jobs, let their careers sink, had no more money ... but they didn't care. They suffered immeasurable discrimination, denunciation, betrayal and humiliation ... but they kept going.
Never before in humanity has there been such a "casting", now we know who are the best on planet Earth. Women, men, old, young, rich, poor, of all races or religions, the unvaccinated, the chosen of the invisible ark, the only ones who managed to resist when everything collapsed.
That's you, you passed an unimaginable test that many of the toughest Marines, Commandos, Green Berets, astronauts and geniuses could not withstand.
You are made of the stuff of the greatest who ever lived, those heroes born among ordinary men who glow in the dark."
Anon
Same here. Most of of the things called heroic acts today are just people doing what any decent person would be expected to do in the normal course of life.
Bob is a hero for jumping in the pool and saving the toddler. The only way Bob would be a hero is if it was perfectly normal and excepted action just to stand by the pool, do nothing and watch the toddler drowned, but that not the case, yet.
Space Shuttle launch broadcast commonly used the term, Hero Astronauts. What did they do that made them hero's? They did their jobs, what was expected of them.
Different time over the years, in our little one redlight town, I tried to get my father to attend the "Honor WWII Vets" events. He would not go. He had metals, he had a right to be honored.
One year, during a Forth of July celebration, they planed one such event. I begged him to go, he would not. I asked why. And he just told me that the felt to bring any attention to himself dishonored all those who did not make it home.
I though about that for a while, and came to the regrettably conclusion that I did not want him to go to honor what he had done, I wanted him to go so I could stand beside him as a proud son. In other words for my own satisfaction. I think that was selfish of me.
I remember when Saving Private Ryan come out. I asked him if he wanted to go see it. He said no! I asked why not. In a way, with a look that I will never forget, like time had stopped, he looked at me sternly, and said, man, when you've seen that stuff in real life, you don't ever want to see anything like it again.
He was a strong man of mind, and of will. He kept the nightmares of war buried all his life up until near his death when he started to weaken. He would wake up sometimes stare at the wall and get a visibly disturbed look on his face and almost at times come to tears, and I'd never seen my daddy cry.
Someone years ago, someone had made a nice case and mounted his ribbons and medal, his DD-214 and a newspaper clipping of him coming home from the war. It's not something he would have done himself. But when we set him up in the room where he eventually died, someone had put this up on the wall in that room. One day he ask us to move it somewhere else, said that seeing it brought back the nightmares that he had just after the war, that he had managed to bury. When we move the display to somewhere else, his nightmares stopped.
Sorry for the long story.
Nothing to apologize for, I hope your father finally found the peace that war had stolen from him.
My own father is a former Marine, Korean War vet, one of the "Frozen Chosin". Not once has he ever spoke of it to me directly. But I once overheard him talking to two of our close family friends after they all had a few drinks., both war veterans, when we had a Memorial Day get-together with the families many years ago when I was a kid.
It was a nightmare for them all.
Chosin Reservoir was terrible fight under the most extreme conditions.
Out of all the 20th century battles, in my view the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, and Chosin Reservoir were not only two of the most brutal, and also mostly due to incompetent, arrogant behind the lines leadership.
I don't know how you view him, but I have a very low opinion of Douglas MacArthur. He should have face a Court Marshall after Philippines fiasco, but because the war effort needed hero's he was awarded a MoH. History, thus far has been very kind to him, but I think as time goes by, he will be judged as one of U of A's worst generals.
One of our family friends was an Army artillery crewman on Corregidor when the war broke out. He survived the Bataan Death March. He had a steel plate installed on the side of his head after being freed from the Japanese POW camp because his skull was caved in on one side by the butt of a Japanese rifle.
You don't want to know what he thought of MacArthur.
I can imagine. And my dad who was in the area, and also knew something about 6v systems, told me flat out that everyone knew that the reason JFK's boat got rammed by a Jap destroyer was because he had shut the motor off to be able to hear better. The PT boat crews were under orders not to shut off engines. They had 6v electrical systems, and were notorious for not starting when the engine was hot. By the rules, he should have been court marshelled too. I got no beef with JFK. Just strange how when your a Senators son, you go from getting court marshalled to some making a movie that portrays you as a hero.
You ever listen to these guys. I was really fascinated with their knowledge of events and the way the presented the data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSHVfY2LVoE
In the old days, many cars had same 6v systems. I heard from my oldest brother, who maybe learned from my dad, that is was a common thing to leave moonshine running cars running all night long, don't even shut them off, or they would not recrank till the engines cooled.
Didn't make sense to me because I though presumingly if you left the shut off for all night, it would be cool in morning. Maybe I did not understand the typical schedule of a car used to run shine.