Turkey in the oven? Not the real one as Christmas sems to be under review
Christmas Holidays for our Veterans and Soldiers
BY G. DUFF
Do I really go to see the new Chipmunk movie today? Are we really down to that? Can I join the hundreds pissing and moaning about the suffering troops? Perhaps I could whine about the war in Vietnam that I barely remember anymore.
What do you do when there is nothing left you want to own, of if you did, you couldnt use it, afford gas for it or catch it if it decided to run?
I go back to the old questions. What is it that people do? I don’t really shoot anything, not hunting anyway. Shooting people is generally illegal, even in wartime, it seems, if the military needs a scapegoat to please the New York Times or some pissed off Irakkis. I’d like to hear what people out there are doing. We don’t run this with any form of dialog. Bobby has taken over politics. Peter is saving the world. Morgan and John hold it all together. I seem to be stuck in an inability to accept hypocrisy.
None of this is real life. Is anything we do real life, if so much of our lives depends on the internet, television or buying things? Every time I try to get involved in things I either find myself the only one moving forward, the only one who is realistically looking at things or, worse, maybe we aren’t supposed to do anything at all and I am too stupid to understand this.
This part is more likely the truth.
Christmas is a typically a thing Americans look at each year in different ways. We don’t even understand why we have Christmas? How many Americans know that Christmas is really a German invention? It’s true. Everything we do either comes from German traditions or an interpreted version of those combining the poem “The Night Before Christmas” and Dicken’s “Christmas Story”.
To this we have added the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which was actually held in vaults for decades because people suspected that Capra may have been a communist and the movie itself has communist themes. We are now deemed mature enough to watch Jimmy Stewart try to save his fathers lending institution from the evil capitalist Lionel Barrymore without immediately disarming ourselves and inviting Stalin in to take over our country. It’s a big relief to me.
TV has now given us Darin McGavin, formerly Mike Hammer, now a “loser father” who breaks down, buys his kid a “Red Rider BB Gun” and the kid ends up shooting himself in the eye. The movie is a quality 2 star at best but since it has a Christmas theme and the Tim Allen Santa films are so shamefully idiotic, we watch it over and over and over because we are, frankly assumed by those who make such decisions for us, too stupid to know the difference.
I did last Christmas in Berlin, Krakow and Vienna in a combination of “seeing how the other side lives” and punishment. I got back just in time to put up a tree, pass out gifts and get past the holidays alive. Germans in cities get out every day from 5pm to 10pm and visit Christmas Markets, kind of make-shift carnivals where they eat brats and potato pancakes, walk around aimlessly and eventually return home to reruns of shows with David Hasselhof. It is probably an improvement on what we do.
In Poland, they pack into churches where they seem to spend endless hours. What they do there, I don’t have a clue but it gets in the way of my usual sacrilegious picture taking. When I say “hours and hours” I really mean it. They have more churches than you an imagine and they have lines out the door like they were giving away free (unnamed sex acts).
I spent a couple of days at the Post Hotel in Partkenkirchen, in the German Alps. As far as I can tell, they don’t do anything at all. Bavarians are very religious and maybe they live a form of Christmas all the time anyway. Little Baby Jesus is painted on everything, every house, every building, even on people’s cars. Christmas might be just enough to send them over the edge, push them into the attics and drag out the Nazi regalia. From then on, they might retake Austria, or just head on to France again. Switzerland was and is always Nazi anyway but we can’t talk about that.
Few people in Europe, with the exception of Poland, are actually Christians. Americans attend church at four times the rate of our European brothers who look on our varying forms of Protestantism and our bible toting politicians as a joke. I tend to join them in this.
Kids are now starting to arrive. Some aren’t making it this year as we have had several deaths in the family and the idea of getting together and talking about dead people over a turkey dinner has some clear downsides. I am tending to be a bit over reflective because of this also. I am remembering Christmases from the 50s and how special they seemed to be to me. I am also remembering Christmas with small children and how special they seemed. Maybe “visitable” grandchildren are an adequate replacement but that hasn’t seemed to materialize.
When kids were dependent on us for money and transportation, ski trips filled in the weekends around the holidays. In recent years, finding snow without heading to Colorado or Switzerland can be hard. Last week it was 73 degrees in Zurich.
One thing for sure, there is no war here. None of the kids have thought about the military. None of them even know anyone in the military. One daughter has an “ex” who did 2 tours with the Marines in Iraq but even he has disappeared, albeit over a period of years. It certainly takes the pain out of war when we only kill off the kids a few at a time, most often from suicides, a very private death and spread the war over decades.
We don’t need bond drives, we have a federal reserve system. We don’t need scrap drives, we simply repair everything that gets blown up and we had made too much war junk already. If we did have bond drives, we would have to go to China, they are the ones paying for the war anyway.
Bob Hope is dead. But I am certain that top Hollywood talent is flooding into the war zones to howl, yodel and “ass shake” for the troops who are being inundated with turkey, video games and free phone cards at 10 times normal international calling rates.
I even hear that Bush is phoning up troops thanking them. Isn’t that special? He never calls me, although I suspect he will eventually get around to it. Nobody else will listen to him.
I’m ready for a road trip. Morgan says Mexico is the place for the real Americans. The real Mexicans say that America is the place for them. Perhaps we can trade.
As a spoiled American, I want to live somewhere without spiders, snakes, mosquitoes, barbed wire around houses, but I want servants to work for a dollar a day, food to be good and everyone to be charming, colorful and entertaining. When that happens, Christmas will truly become the really dark time of the year that it may actually be for those who have forgotten how to be children.
GORDON DUFF IS A VETERAN OF SOME KIND WHO WRITES ABOUT STUFF WHILE WAITING FOR THE TURKEY
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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