Veteran's Day 2016

Veteran's Day is coming up this Friday, November 11th. I feel strongly that we must more actively support our military veterans. I've seen some halfhearted support--every so often, a picture of an elderly man holding up a handwritten sign proclaiming his status as a WWII vet and asking for likes/shares will pop up in my Facebook feed. More often than not, this elderly man is white. The fact that I’m noticing his skin color is, in my mind, a terrible reflection of one of the problems in today’s society. The fact that it is more likely to be a man than a woman is also troubling. There were black and Hispanic men fighting for our country. There have been women fighting for our country. ALL of these people deserve our gratitude. ALL of these people have made great sacrifices. We should celebrate our black veterans, our Hispanic veterans, and our female veterans just as much as our white male veterans.

As I mentioned in my Veteran’s Day post last year, I actively appreciate our veterans, especially our Vietnam War veterans, all year long. And I truly believe that we do not do enough to support our veterans. We also do not verbalize our gratitude to them, except when we are reminded or it is a popular day to do so. The BLM, PLM, and ALM movements have grown in popularity over the past year. And some of the people in each of these groups have a valid point about their particular group’s goals. I’m going to add another one here: MVLM. Military Veteran’s Lives Matter. These people should not be ignored for most of the year, only trotted out on Veteran’s Day to be remembered and thanked. I would never encourage anyone not to thank or celebrate a veteran; however, I also would never condone saying or doing something to/for a veteran only on this one day of the year. It doesn’t matter if the veteran is leading a successful life or living in a cardboard box under the local bridge. He or she has sacrificed greatly for my country. For YOUR country.

Please thank the veterans you know or cross paths with. Please acknowledge and appreciate their service to this country, even if you don’t agree with the politics or the war. NEVER miss an opportunity to express your gratitude for the veteran’s contributions to and sacrifices for our society. But please make sure you do it all year long, not *JUST* on this one day of the year. Make your appreciation of them meaningful. Make it sincere. And make it real.