Opus 2026-063: Forgotten Blessings

We live in a privileged age and a privileged country. We tend to forget that, and many Americans who have never left the country unsupervised have no idea of how good we have it.

I say unsupervised because there are many people who might travel to other parts of the world in carefully sheltered bubbles designed to give them a false impression.  I think back to the journalists who were taken to the Soviet Union in the early days of communism.  They were taken to the Potemkin villages and thought they were seeing the real Russia when all they were seeing was a carefully constructed movie set.  Many of them returned, writing glowing approval of the Soviet system, totally unaware that reality was more displayed in the Gulag Archipelago than it was in the construct they visited.  You get the same effect when you go on a scheduled tour.

And thinking about our blessings, my mind went back to some of the things that stood out to me when I was on a tour of Vietnam.  It’s always strange what you remember.

I think the memory that comes back to be most often is the absence of the smell of diesel fuel.  It was pervasive in Vietnam.  There was a limit to personal cars, but lots of trucks and all of those trucks ran on diesel fuel.  Not having the dubious benefit of the EPA those trucks spewed out lots of fumes and clouds of black smoke.  But that was only part of the problem.  Today when I smell diesel fuel being burnt in a truck, I think of Vietnam, but what that brings back is the memory of using diesel fuel to burn the grass off of the berms around the camp.  The idea was to make it harder for terrorist to sneak up through the grass and take a pot shot at you.  You smelled it in your barracks.  You smelled it on guard duty.  You smelled it walking across the camp.  It was everywhere, but it is not here.

How about displaying your flag because you want to.  Several times I’ve read about how people from other countries are amazed at how many American flags they see flying from front porches, from businesses, even from car windows.  Americans tend to be patriotic, or at least we used to be.  Flag waving was a part of our life.  You could drive down the street on the Fourth of July and know that something was up because every porch would have a flag waving.  That means that overall we are glad to be living in a country where liberty is still in existence in parts of our lives.

I can load my rifle and not get an Article 15.  One of the totally retarded truths of being on guard duty on the outside edge of an American facility in Vietnam was that you were not allowed to load your weapon.  If you were caught with a loaded weapon, you’ll be written up.  Keep in mind this was a war zone.  It was a place full of hostile enemy out to get you.  That didn’t matter.  Some politician, back in Washington DC, surrounded by security who were armed decided that the soldiers in Vietnam should not be able to shoot back.  In Texas we don’t have that problem.

I remember the taste of the soda that we used to buy at the PX.  It had been sitting in the hold of a ship, on the back of a truck, in the hot sun for possibly months.  That brought a certain taste that was not necessarily fresh.  You couldn’t get away from it.  Well, you might’ve gotten away from it if you wanted to go into town and buy something from the black market that have been stolen from the American army.  It might still be somewhat fresh.  It always amazes me that if we couldn’t get a part to get our jeep going from the motor pool, it was available on the streets of the cities.

One of the great blessings we have that we don’t think about is the fact that we do not have a national ID card.  In many countries of the world, you can be stopped at any point and asked to produce your papers. I f you don’t have them with you you are in trouble.  I remember just checking into a hotel in Europe, I had to turn over my passport.  I remember traveling on trains and being asked to show my passport.  This is the normal procedure in much of the world.  Be careful what you wish for.  Now I can put on my pants and shoes, slip some second amendment into my pocket, and walk out the door without my wallet or any kind of identification and take a walk.  It’s called freedom.

This is one of the liberties we take for granted.  It is under attack by the underground fascists who are trying to make America a Gulag.  The problem of illegal aliens is multifaceted.  This is often overlooked.  People are calling for a national ID.  With that will come the habit of government officials stopping us and asking for ID.  So far we have mostly avoided that.

I intend to enjoy it and be grateful for it as long as possible.

homo unius libri