The White Papers

I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1988.  That one sentence always makes me smile, because if you knew me, you’d be surprised I was a Marine. I’m not real military material – and Marines are the cream of the crop.  But I made it through boot camp and spent 3 years in North Carolina and finally a year in Okinawa.  I got out with an honorable discharge in 1992.

I did not serve in a typical Marine type of job. I worked in an office for the most part.  I spent a year working as a Chaplain’s assistant, then working for a Logistics office and finally for an Intelligence office while in Okinawa.  I basically did…paperwork.  But a Marine is a Marine is a Marine.

For someone whose job was to do paperwork, I was always surprised by the amount of time I spent out in the field on exercises and forced marches and other such non-administrative tasks. The reason for this is primarily tied to what I said already.  A Marine is a Marine is a Marine. A Marine is to always be prepared to fight – no matter what their actual day-to-day job is.

I will be the first to admit to you that being a career Marine was not for me. That’s why I got out. I had other ambitions and the lifestyle was a little more than what I wanted.  But I always understood one thing about being a Marine.  It was something to be looked at as a great honor.  Not everyone wears that title and it’s a title filled with a lot of history and should always be treated with great respect.

The Marine Corps motto is “Semper Fidelis” or “Semper Fi” which translates to “Always Faithful”.  In essence, the way I always understood this is that you are faithful to your God, your country, your family and the Corps. This is why even 20 years after getting out of the Corps, I still think of myself as a Marine.  There is no such thing as an ex-Marine.  We are a band of men and women who form a group that not many understand.  It’s an honorable group filled with dignity and blood and tears of many wars over the course of our history.  Even if you never fought in a war, you are a part of that group because you are a Marine.

This is why I find myself in a very unenviable position today. This week a video came out of some Marine soldiers urinating on dead Taliban soldiers. As of this writing, it appears the video is legitimate. And as one may expect, this video has been met with outrage across the world.

However, I have seen a very confusing reaction amongst people in our own country. I – as a conservative Republican – tend to lean towards the attitudes that most conservatives share.  So imagine my surprise when the general reaction of most conservatives I read about was basically, “eh…no big deal.”  No big deal? These Marines urinated on dead people! How is that not a HUGE deal? Being a Marine is supposed to stand for something!  I don’t care what the person who is dead did, we don’t desecrate their bodies.  Ever. Period.

I know and understand that these Taliban soldiers have done horrible things.  I know that given half a chance, they’d have taken those Marines and done unspeakable things to them that makes urinating on them look like a day in the park.  Does. Not. Matter.  We, first as Marines, and second as AMERICANS, should always be better than this. We do not stoop to the same low levels of behavior that others do.  That’s grade-school mentality…”well they did it first!”  It’s ridiculous.

Let’s look at another way.  Consider the roles reversed – because they easily could be.  Picture your brother, uncle, husband, father off fighting a war against some country.  And the soldiers of that country killed your loved one and then stood over them and urinated on them.  Then they  videotaped it and put it out on the Internet for the world to see.  At that point do you still think its ok?  If your answer to that question is: “Well the Taliban does/did horrible things to us so they deserved it!” then you are still leading with a grade-school mentality.

And how about this? If urinating on them is ok – after all their dead and they deserve it…how is that any different from chopping off an ear for a souvenir? Cutting their head off and using it for a soccer ball? Or as gross as this sounds – eating a part of them?  Why is one thing ok but the others cross a line?

Now before anyone thinks I’m taking to task only the conservative side of our country – let me be clear on one thing – I don’t support the liberal side’s position either. While there tends to be the moral outrage amongst them on this issue that I do agree with – it seems that their moral outrage is not put in the same place as it usually is when there is a Republican president in office.

A few years ago – some soldiers did some despicable things to prisoners in Abu Ghraib and the first thing many liberals did – was blame George W. Bush. Where is the outrage against Barack Obama in this case of the Marines?

The left tend to take great excitement when a Marine defends the ludicrousness known as Occupy Wall Street but then turn on them in any case involving the military and their actions against other countries.  Their moral outrage is in no way consistent and in many cases hypocritical.

Ultimately, regardless of political belief, it is my belief that what these Marines did is not only wrong, it’s criminal and it goes against anything honorable about a Marine.  They should go to jail for these actions. As Marines, we need to remember who we are, what our history is, what we stand for and always act accordingly.  These men did not and as such have lost my respect.  While I will be “always faithful” to the Corps, I will not extend that to those four soldiers.  They no longer deserve it.

This whole Occupy Wall Street movement has honestly got me perplexed. For those who have been living under a rock and don’t know what Occupy Wall Street is, don’t feel all that bad, as I’m becoming more of the mindset that many who actually are “occupying” Wall Street don’t really know what it is.

My general impression of this “movement” that started about a month or so ago is this.  A group of people have set up in a park in New York to protest the idea that 1% of our population supposedly makes more than the other 99% does altogether.  From there movements have started  across the country in various places including an “Occupy Sioux Falls” here locally.

From there, things get a little fuzzy for me.  What is the overall purpose of the protests?  Unclear.  What do they hope to accomplish besides being a general nuisance?  Not really sure.

These groups are protesting large corporate influences while basically feeding those very corporations the money they’re upset that the corporations have.  They do so by using their smart-phones (made by corporations) while they use social media (companies that earn huge profits) to protest.  They go to Starbucks (another corporation) to get that warm drink to stay warm in their non home-made tents (made by corporations) that they’ve set up to live in while they fight “the man”.  Unless they make their own clothes, food and shelters, they are protesting every aspect of life that they personally use which makes them in my mind extremely hypocritical.

Their heroes? Steve Jobs.  Michael Moore.  Alec Baldwin.   For a group that protests the rise of the “super-rich” and the effect they have on the down-trodden poor this is mind-boggling.

I watched my own Twitter feed on the day Jobs died and the very people who are all for this protest were almost in a state of mourning over a man who ran one of the biggest corporations out there.  One whose sole purpose was to design products to convince you to give them your money.

And Alec Baldwin, there’s one of the 99% for you.  A super-rich movie/TV star who makes money off those evil credit cards this group wants to protest (he’s a spokesperson for Capital One) and has a reputation for treating his own child like a piece of garbage.  This is a person that these people look up to.

And don’t even get me started on Michael Moore.  Michael Moore has made an enormous amount of money through capitalistic means to espouse his hatred of capitalism.  He also claims not to be one of the 1% which by any sane person’s definition he should be at the top of the 1% list.  There is no bigger hypocrite out in the world than Michael Moore.

Generally speaking, in some regards, the group has very similar complaints that the Tea Party have had.  Whether you’re a Tea Party member or an Occupy Wall Street person, neither group is thrilled by bailouts of companies that then in turn took that money and used it to simply reward people who caused the problems that they were being bailed out for.

But that‘s where the similarities end.  What did the Tea Party do?  They got people into office who hopefully will make a difference.  It’s not guaranteed but at least they’re trying.  Occupy Wall Street simply seems to want to hang out and protest.  For how long?  Again, not real clear.

And they seem to think they are above the law.  They think that they have the right to stay in a place for weeks, go into restaurants and disrupt business because they don’t like what the owner does, defecate on police cars and they think they can do so without consequence.  And when the police do get involved they scream brutality and yell about how the police are supposedly not following the rules of civility when they themselves show no civility whatsoever.

It is so funny to me how this group is being portrayed.  When the Tea Party group was formed, the media went berserk and started accusing the group of having racist overtones – without ONE ounce of proof.  But like I’ve said before, when accusing one of racism in this country, you don’t need proof anymore, the accusation enough is all it takes.

The Occupy Wall Street group has repeatedly showed disregard for other people’s rights or the law in general and the media are trying to make this protest into some sort of positive liberal revolution and paint anyone who may have a concern with large groups of people trying to usurp the rights of others as being paranoid and unreasonable.

Do I think every person in these groups has a desire to cause problems for others?  Absolutely not.  But I think a lot do.  Plus I think the number of people in this group who are hoping for something violent to happen are growing.

I try very hard to be open-minded about other people’s points of view.  I am a strong conservative but I have no problem with someone with a strong liberal point of view.  But this group scares me to death.  I am absolutely convinced that this group is going to cause a repeat of Kent State from Vietnam days.  With the advent of social media and the internet I think that it will actually be much worse than Kent State ever could be and I think violence is going to erupt nationwide.

I hope I’m wrong.  I hope that when winter hits a lot of these people will decide to stop this Occupy Wall Street nonsense and go back to “occupying” wherever it is they came from.  But with each passing day my hope in being wrong is dwindling.

In all of history there has never been a day that was as significant to me as this one.  No, it’s not my wedding anniversary or a birthday of a loved one.  Nope, no one famous did anything of great importance.  A war wasn’t won or lost on this day.  But what did happen was on this day, 45 years ago, the very first episode of Star Trek aired.

Forty-five years! I wasn’t even born when the first episode aired in 1966 and by the time I was born in 1969 the show had been cancelled.  But that didn’t stop me, at the tender age of 5 from falling head over heels with this show.

My mom has told me that I used to enjoy the show so much that I would pretend to be sick at supper time because that was when repeats of the show aired.  I can remember owning a 1970’s toy version of a phaser that would shoot a little circle piece from the top of it.  I loved that toy and wish more than anything that I still had it.

As a teen, I read anything I could get my hands on that was Trek-related. Books, comic books, you name it.  I read the books so much I wore the covers off of them.  I remember seeing Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and was in a state of shock when Spock died.  (I still get emotional watching Kirk and Spock’s final scene together.)  A few years later, I watched with much excitement when Spock was brought back to life in such an unusual way that I overlooked all the glaring holes with the plotline of that movie.

I wished I was Captain Kirk – with his bravado and cunning and his ease around women.  I longed to be Spock with his intelligence and his ability to control his emotions – something as a hotheaded young man I never was able to do well.  To me, Dr. McCoy was like a gruff uncle and Scotty was that crazy relative who seemed to brighten up any room he was in.  The whole lot of them were like this weird extended family that came into my house and brought these exciting adventures to me on a regular basis.

 When The Next Generation came out, I was thrilled – but felt a little bit like I was cheating on my one true love.  For a long time I couldn’t wrap my head around how it was ok that Captain Picard was different than Captain Kirk.  But he and that crew grew on me too and by the time “The Best of Both Worlds” came on, I was hooked completely.  Watching that 2-parter now, I can still remember how I screamed “Noooo!” when Locutus (Picard) came on and Commander Riker ordered Worf to fire phasers and they hit the “To Be Continued” screen.  A whole summer to find out what happened next?  Pure agony!

Meanwhile there were still more movies to watch with the old gang.  William Shatner produced one and while it was the worst of the movies (Kirk takes on God, sort of), it was still very cool and had some great scenes between Kirk, Spock and McCoy.  The final movie for them “The Undiscovered Country”, while showing their age, still managed to provide a good send off for the crew of The Old Series.

About this time, I met my wife-to-be and she somehow managed to stay with me even after I forced her to watch all six of the current movies.  She watched numerous episodes of The Next Generation and if you catch her off guard, she’ll even admit, she liked a few.  Not long after we got married, I took her to see “Generations” which was the much anticipated Picard/Kirk team-up.  At that point, she had enough and from there on forward I was on my own in regards to the movies.

Deep Space Nine came soon then and while not quite what I envisioned Trek to be, I loved the intrigue of the show.  I also loved the fact that Commander Sisko was a little bit more of that rebellious leader much in the same way that Kirk was.  The Ferengi’s never really grew on me but I did love the dynamic between Odo and Quark though.

Then came Voyager – a kind of “Gilligan’s Island” version of Trek.  Which should have annoyed most female fans of the show because it had a female captain who gets her ship really, really lost and we all know that it’s men who can’t ever find their way anywhere without a map.  I loved this show too, of course.  Despite its kind of weak premise of having them lost, it kind of worked, because it allowed the writers to explore Star Trek in a fresh way.  And of course there was Seven of Nine who was primarily put on that show to get every red-blooded male’s attention (played by the beautiful Jeri Ryan) and it was a smashing success.

When Voyager ended, I was sure that would be it but then came Enterprise with Scott Bakula.  I was absolutely beyond pumped for this show.  I thought Bakula was fantastic in Quantum Leap and couldn’t WAIT to see him in Trek.  Unfortunately, if I had to be honest, Enterprise was not that great.  You could tell that they’d gone too many times to the well and the storylines weren’t all that fresh.  The fourth season was better but by then it was far too late.

And so that was it, or so I thought.  The Next Generation had made its last movie and Enterprise was cancelled.  The well had been tapped.  That was until 2009, when the newest Star Trek came out and it was about Kirk, Spock and McCoy again.  Huh?  DeForest Kelly (McCoy) is dead, and Shatner and Nimoy are in their 70’s!  Well, this one took the same characters and had them being played by new younger actors.

It was absolutely freaking FANTASTIC!!!  I saw that movie four times on the big screen.  Even though all of those actors were younger than me now, I literally felt like I was a kid again.  I ate it up.  They could not have made a better movie if they tried and I look forward to many more with this group.

Am I a diehard fan?  Absolutely.  Am I a fanatic?  I don’t think so.  I’m not that much into the technical aspect of the show.  I was once teased mercilessly by friends for calling the “Astrometrics” area “Astrophysics” (yes nerds will tease other nerds for nerdy things like this).  I couldn’t telling you how big one starship is over another or that sort of thing. 

But I love the storytelling that Trek does.  I love how it tackles society’s issues in ways that most shows don’t.  I love the optimistic outlook the show provides for the future.  But mainly, I just love it when Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway or Archer just simply shoot, punch or in some way outwit the bad guys. 

Forty-five years ago this show took to the airwaves and for over 30 of those years I have been “boldly going” to the couch to watch them ever since.  I hope that the series and I “live long and prosper” so I can do this for many, many more years.