Then, as you might well imagine, they slobber over 'em, where appropriate, draping flags and throwing salutes. Presumably the idea is to make up for the spitting they'd supposedly get if those mythic high 60's Jane College flower types were handy.
The organization calls itself the riders of the purple heart or something -- I think honor is in there, and patriotism -- the honor guard of the patriotic koolade rangers, something like that.
They also go on visits to grave sites in the making, and drop by at the local VA, with a respectful "howdy" for all the folks who contributed their legs to the Empire. God's work, no doubt, in addition to Wall Street's.
It's sort of a sob-sucker beer-keg GI Joe comic-book sendup of Dick Wagner's cult of the fallen warrior. And it's growing like a weed -- 60K members nationwide.
I got to mixing this factile in with the recent Kerry tree self-felling, and I came up with this: It's a highly predictable morbid eventuality -- the incubus of empire as it squats on the collective mind sets of our white jobbery class makes for brown shirt thought: "They're not hapless tin-pan ex-Uncle Sam goons -- They're Siegfried of Akron, Ohio."
Needless to say, most of those drawn in are more Jimmy Olsen than Clark Kent. These cults work well as metonymous meme weevils, spreading like a lachyromose blight to a far wider population of no-shows, dodgers, and scapegraces.
I mean, if they love the military so much, they could always enlist, right? Standards are dropping -- not that they were very high to start with. Next year, Tammy Duckworth herself will be eligible to re-up, probably.
But the Budweiser sentimentalists on their Harleys won't be doing that. They may be a little crazy -- aren't we all, in this great asylum we call America? -- but they aren't necessarily stupid. Sniveling over the soldiers without becoming one is having your patriotic cake and eating it too.
Comments (5)
I've actually seen these wannabes in action and they're far worse than you might suspect. Most of 'em are potbellied 80s action fans who never got a chance to storm the beaches 'cause the only real action back when they could possibly pass the physical was invading tiny little island countries like Grenada and Uncle Sam didn't particularly need them.
So to substitute for a the need to get their ass shot off for mom and apple pie that they learned from their 4F fathers, these Red Dawn fans took to riding bikes on weekends and pretending they're Hell's Angels. (So long as the real deal wasn't anywhere near, that is.) They're also big into this WW II nostalgia crap. Big surprise, eh?
Anyroad, now you can see 'em vulturing around graveyards - waiting for another uniformed corpse to show up so they can get their patriotic rocks off. (Getting all misty eyed as Taps plays in the distance is what these cheese-eaters live for.) More than once these shitheads have had to be run off to give grieving family members a little privacy.
Posted by AlanSmithee | November 2, 2006 12:39 PM
Posted on November 2, 2006 12:39
Hey! You all evil libruls are not supporting out troops! Get with the program!
Posted by Brian Miller | November 2, 2006 12:41 PM
Posted on November 2, 2006 12:41
don't get me wrong
i dare not look down my nose at any one
i really didn't mean to suggest
these chaps are to be lampooned
just cause
they're walter mitty warriors...full stop
but to point out
that among the array of
" active compensations"
that befog opiate and betray
the minds of our
millions of minor league
evil doer
and their various blood relatives
this one here this motor cycle
soldier boy boo hoo cult
(at least among the non owner klasses)
is a particularly
comic
dark rose indeed
Posted by js paine | November 2, 2006 3:26 PM
Posted on November 2, 2006 15:26
I have about as much regard for these simple simon trailer dwellers as I do for the Fred Phelps ghouls who go to funerals and wave their hate signs.
Posted by AlanSmithee | November 2, 2006 7:15 PM
Posted on November 2, 2006 19:15
Bikes like the kind they ride are very, very expensive. Most of them found Jesus and the increasingly less open road after getting way over their heads into drugs and drink. They're pretty stereotypical middle class -- HMO claims adjusters, military subcontractor employees, paralegals for anti-labor law firms, et cetera. No salts of the earth among them.
Posted by J. Alva Scruggs | November 3, 2006 9:29 AM
Posted on November 3, 2006 09:29