Texas Gov. Rick Perry visited the wounded and said the soldiers he met with were honored to serve their country.”What I heard time after time in those hospital rooms is they’re honored to be able to serve our country,” Perry said during a news conference.

I don’t know … It’s a complex issue. I find it courageous and admirable that any soldier feels honored to serve his or her country.

On the other hand—or, same hand, different finger—those who serve in the military are by far disproportionately drawn from the lower, less-advantaged (what the hell is the politically correct term) ranks of society. Rural kids, inner city kids, for whom the military is an uptick in their lives. A chance. One you’ll possibly die in the taking, and doesn’t that say a sad lot.

I’m going to go further out on this shaky but, trust me, very sturdy limb. The one thing it is forbidden to speak of in America is class … yet class is everything. It bespeaks education, it bespeaks opportunity, and for the upper-middle and upper classes, it sure as hell doesn’t bespeak volunteering down at the recruitment office.

What a lousy farce. This whole notion of honor is just too tidy. The wounded and maimed feel it’s an honor to have become that way … and people like Rick Perry get to feel all good and upright about something no sane person would find anything good about. We live in a narcissistic, opportunistic world. When the government solicits your service to kill people in foreign lands, for dubious reasons mostly having to do with pipelines, aren’t you really a tool of the corporation?

You betcha.

Tags: class, patriotism, tools, war

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