A Veterans Day Message for the 99 Percent

It is said that one percent of our population provides the security and freedom for the other 99 percent to enjoy. If this is true, and Tom Brokaw said it was so ... so it must be, I think that on this Veterans Day when the one percent is fighting our nation's longest war, on battle fields forgotten before they are known, that we - the 99 percent should take the opportunity to thank these people that volunteered to do things we would never do ourselves. Things that we, the 99-percenters, glorify and glamorize in movies and first-person-shooter video games, but in reality are so horrific and stressful we can't ever comprehend what it was like for the one-percenter to live it.

So on this Veterans Day lets truly honor those few we don't understand and share nothing in common. Let's honor them, not with empty platitudes during halftime of a football game, or a free entree at a chain restaurant so we can gouge their family members at full price, or by selling them a new car, flat screen TV, or furniture with a go-day same as cash offer. Let's honor, not ease our guilty conscious with empty verse or further exploit under the guise of thankfulness.

Let us really honor the one-percenters by trying to understand that which we can never know. Giving them forgiveness when they come home damaged and broken: when the violence, stress, and concussion don't end on some arbitrary redeployment date, but follows them home and manifests itself in our streets and living rooms for years to come; when it presents the ugly face of war in suicide, drug abuse, sex crimes, and domestic violence.

To be honest, we the 99-percenters, don't want to see any portion of the ugliness we sent the one-percenters to live, and we become judgmental when they bring some of it back. When we get a glimpse of what the one-percenters lived it scares us. Scares us almost as much as the time we contemplated joining them in combat, that terrifying moment between our latte and bite of bagel when we actually shivered and our heart stuck for just a beat.

So on this Veterans Day, when we have demanded they fight longer than any soldier in our historic let's truly honor them. Honor them by helping to comfort and fix our broken brothers and sisters, not judging them in our minds and our courts, but giving them a sliver of the opportunity they gave us with their lives. After all...they do not condemn us, they do not pass judgment on our cowardice.