America loves a man in uniform, but it’s a self-destructive love, like the kind I used to have for cigarettes. Coffin nails, my friends called them, and I did, too. It felt like a joke. None of us took the danger seriously.
In the 1960s and early 70s, we smoked in movie theaters, college classrooms, restaurants, and airplanes. Years before we started saying, “Have a nice day,” a phrase that eventually evolved into, “Have a blessed day,” we greeted each other with, “Got a light?” or “Can I bum one?”
We were killing ourselves, but we didn’t give it much thought. Smoking was a cultural norm; we smoked as teens because we grew up watching our parents smoke. Everyone did it.
Even Ike, who warned us about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, was sucking down three or four packs a day. He was ignoring the dangers of tobacco, but he was right to be worried about how our war-lust was developing; while we’ve finally recognized nicotine for the killer it is, we’ve developed an inexplicable taste for war.
We’re under the thrall of the uniform. This is our team, and we support them, win or lose. We turn a blind eye to the lives destroyed by war. Those are foreign lives; they're not important. Their religions are different from ours or they’ve got the oil we need, or they’re communists instead of capitalists. They’re not dressed for the West. They talk funny.
We don’t stop to think that if by chance we’d been born in another country, we’d be cheering for a different team, the way I cheered for the Razorbacks for no better reason than that I grew up in Arkansas and then for the Boomers when I moved a state away as a young adult. We’ll fight anyone who’s not from the place we call home, who’s not just like us, who’s not a member of our team.
We can’t tolerate differences. We prefer uniformity. We worship it.
So when we see a uniform, we snap to attention and say “Thank you for your service.” I mean, I don’t; I hear it all the time, but that’s one addiction I didn’t develop. I’m older now, past the point of going along with the crowd.
When others in the Starbucks line compete to be the one who picks up the soldier’s tab for coffee, I don’t join in. I don’t feel the craving. To me, uniforms have always been a symbol of…well….uniformity, a lack of individuality, groupthink, the inability to make decisions and act for oneself. They represent a dedication to a standard, a willingness to fit into a mold. And while I believe there’s a place for that, I value individualism more highly.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, and people are going to hate on me for expressing it. In fact, when I told a friend that I thought the phrase “Thank you for your service” was about as ill-considered and rote as “Have a nice day,” she stiffened a little. “Service people risk their lives for us,” she said.
Yeah well, so do teachers. And so do children. You’ve probably heard that in 2018, more people were killed in schools than in the military. I know it sounds fantastical, but I checked it out, and it’s true, with some qualifications. And even if it weren’t, it would still be a fact that children risk their lives by going to school every day. Slaughter doesn’t have to be confined to the battlefield to be part of the American way.
Children now learn how to respond to a rogue shooter the way I learned how to respond to a nuclear blast when I was a child. But when we see a child, we don’t say “Thank you for your studies” even though I would like to think that their learning will benefit us all. I believe that some of them will go on to solve the major problems of the world, cure diseases, address social ills, and make the country a more tolerant, purposeful, and happier place. They’ll change the world in ways we can’t even dream of now, the way none of us dreamed of the internet or cell phones when I was a little kid.
So to children everywhere, may I take the opportunity to say thank you for your studies. Sincerely, thank you. May the world be your oyster and may it open up for you, bringing you opportunities of every variety instead of funneling you into a life of uniformity.
The people inside the uniforms
Aside from the type worn by some schoolchildren, there are two broad categories of uniforms. Many of the people who wear uniforms are in the business of enforcing national or local laws they did not make and may not believe in. Others wear them to convey reassurance of uniform standardized service and products at the drive-through windows in establishments such as McDonald's or Dairy Queen.
In both cases, many of their wearers don them because they don’t qualify for jobs where they’ll be expected to wear collars instead (white or blue). At least that was the case for me for several years after my high school graduation when I worked waiting tables or handing out lunches over the counters of fast-food establishments while I took classes one at a time at the local community college.
It was the case for some of the boys I knew in high school too, the ones who didn’t get into college or find good jobs. They told us they were going to Vietnam to kill some gooks. They tapped a cigarette out of their packs, laughed.
Somehow, the decision to dehumanize and kill people on the other team turns men and women into heroes. They became objects of reverence, drinking coffee for free wherever they go, coffee bought for them by people who say: “Thank you for your service,” while the person who made the coffee and served it to them without harming anyone gets “Have a nice day” instead.
