Is It Just ME ??

Is it just me??

Am I the only one?

Or do some of you out there feel it too?

I'm talking about the feeling I get when I'm sent the emails, one after another, day after day, and sometimes several in the same day. The emails telling me about how proud these people are of our Soldiers and Sailors and Marines who are serving in some faraway hell-hole, laying their lives on the line for our way of life.

I don't think you quite understand yet.

These people feel that if we don't support 100% of what our sometimes clueless leaders do, and where they send these young warriors, then we are lesser Americans, less patriotic than they. They apparently don't understand just how much I really do support our troops, including my own son who just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq a few weeks back.

But then maybe it is I who doesn't understand.

I don't understand the self-righteousness of these people, whose own sons and daughters are too busy going to college or making their first million or simply drinking beer and making babies to be a part of our fighting forces. I don't understand how they can see me as being less patriotic than they are, when it's my own son, my firstborn, flesh of my flesh, who volunteered and filled that spot in our military, so that THEIR son or daughter didn't have to "waste" a year of their life, a year apparently better spent climbing the ladder in corporate America.

Oh, I know very well that my son volunteered to join the military. And I know that my son has made a choice, the same as their son or daughter. But I don't understand why these people can't see this in the same context as the relative commitment of the chicken and the pig in their Egg McMuffin in the morning. Their situation is comparable to the chicken, who is merely involved in bringing you your breakfast, whereas the pig is committed.

So I guess it's all right, then, if these folks look upon my son--and, by extension, me--as the pigs when it comes to supporting our troops...as long as they accept that they deserve to be called the chickens that they are.

I think I've earned the right, through my son's service to our country, to resent the implication of their self-righteous "patriotism" via email...as their own sons and daughters are too busy, too important, or too valuable to corporate America to defend our nation. In my point of view, these people don't have a dog in this fight. They DO have a stake in the outcome of the war in Iraq, but only to the same extent that all Americans do. If they had a son or daughter who'd served, them I might be open to the idea that they have a right to preach patriotism to anyone else.

Now I have friends and relatives who DO have sons and daughters who are serving in the military, and who have served in Iraq. Oddly enough, they are the ones who DON'T feel the need to preach patriotism. NO, I only get those self-righteous emails from the folks whose sons and daughters are too busy to get involved in the military, and who therefore [in MY view] have the LEAST reason to preach patriotism.

Am I out of line to feel this way?