You're a bunch of crazies...

While I was taking a break at a Nevada rest stop, a white male approached me and told me he loved my truck. We began talking, as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the walkway to the bathrooms. He identified himself as a Viet Nam war veteran who was presently living in Montana. He said at first he supported the cry to war, when he was caught up in the grief and horror of 9/11 – and when he was surrounded by neighbors, friends & family who were on that war path also. Then he began having conversations with the people important in his life and he realized he didn’t feel the way they did.

He recognized the blanket hatred of Iraqi’s as so familiar, so similar to the blanket hatred he was supposed to feel for the Vietnamese. He said he was traveling now to California because he came to realize – at 58 years old and during this time of u.s.ofa. invasion and occupation of Iraq – that he was not living the life he wanted to live, and he was not getting the support in Montana to live the life he wanted to live. He said he’d lived in California for a few years after the war (against Vietnam) and he wanted to return to that way of life.

As we had this conversation, I noticed a late model Nevada pick-up truck highly decorated in decals of flags, god bless america, and something about guns, pull up and park close to us. An older white man was scowling about, slamming car doors, and grunting audibly but incomprehensibly. When he saw he had our attention, he hurled something like “you’re a bunch of crazies” in our direction.

The male I was conversing with immediately pulled himself up and began to defend himself, identifying himself as a Viet Nam war vet – which the other guy says he was too. My initial relief at this younger fellow taking on his peer leaving me free to observe, was soon turned into dismay then horror as these two began talking with disgust about how “They just didn’t bomb enuff in north Viet Nam to end the war immediately and here they are doing it again.”

I said loudly and probably equally as disgustedly, “That is precisely what is wrong with you men and your inability to solve any problem without increasing your violence. It is wrong to bomb people. Period. It is not human, let alone xian which I see you both are.”

I walked away as quickly as the older man got in his shiny new truck and peeled out (shamefully I hope) of the parking lot. The other fellow raced over to me, apologizing for his succumbing to the camaraderie of military buds.

Later he was to shake his head, holding his beard, while he wondered aloud why it was so easy for him to fall back into that military bull shit.