I never quite understood my best friend’s obsession with all things military. From the time he was a teenager through college, he watched military films, but as a pinko environmentalist from the Left Coast he was first intrigued by the military. Our first years in college were spent in liberal arts while Kerry got up at four AM every morning and drove the hour to the nearest ROTC center. But even then, my experience, direct or indirect to his military service, was the tax-free cigarettes and liquor available at the Class Six on the base, and the cheap – oh, how incredibly cheap – military clothing that was available to me via him. Even now, as I poke through the large numbers of coffee mugs from the various bases he was stationed at, I still wonder how our personal disconnects – me to civilian life, him to the military machine to figure logistics and (currently) to care for burn victims as a nurse managed.

But that’s nothing compared to the disconnects I have found between the cheap, flimsy support for the nation’s military that shows up and the people who actually have “supported” the troops.

From the minute that the order was given for the United States to enter Iraq, I have been chafed by the bumper stickers that say, “United We Stand” or “Support Our Troops” or the yellow ribbons plastered on windshields and side doors and tied to aerials. Historical accuracy aside (the yellow ribbon tied round the old oak tree was for an ex-con coming back from prison to know if his sweetheart still loved him and wanted him, not for the kids fighting in a war, as some would revision it). Chafed because, again, there’s been a disconnect.

I can’t pretend to understand military life. Though two of my cousins, two of my best friends, and my grandfather went through it, it’s a career choice that has never appealed to me. The cousins were Marines; my grandfather was Air Force. Greg was a tanker in the Army, Kerry was both an Air Force logistician and an Army ICU Burn Unit Nurse. I don’t comprehend the mechanics of living on or near a military installation – but I do know that communities tend to support the economic base. In many smaller cities around the country, that happens to be the military – from Tucson’s Davis-Monthan to Omaha’s Offutt, the closing or the relocation of a base eliminates jobs in the community. Wal-Marts fold, Burger Kings close down, and the clubs and the hot spots dwindle. Car dealerships lose their business. And many, many single mothers find themselves without a late-night job that gets them tips for doing very little, clothed in very little. So for a community that has a large military population, I understand why yellow ribbons would be so popular.

But why, then?

I got a chain letter last week from a co-worker, whose current mission is to send huge amounts of toys and goodies to an Air Force Squadron stationed in Iraq. The list of things is very specific – ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, foot powder, socks, candy bars, DVDs, CDs, anything “treatlike”. Reading through it, and having spent a good chunk of money on items for a food drive, I got irritated reading through it. I couldn’t understand why, though.

Why should I feel resentment at being asked to send military personnel a few things to keep them occupied? Was it because I felt their families should be the ones sending them candy and CDs and DVDs? Was it because I knew you could get Gatorade shipped by the crate? Was it simply because I knew in my heart that the war in Iraq was wrong; that the number of happy things I sent to boost the morale of the troops would never adequately prepare them for the ways in which they would die or lose limbs?

Or was it a purely selfish selfless thing – I was running a canned food drive, and the military “needs” were horning in on my charitable giving program. MY donation drive took a big hit – simply because it’s hip to love the troops. It’s cool to enjoy the look of someone in uniform. It’s considered “patriotic” to follow the line of the commander-in-chief.

When faced with two options, we take the one less traveled, by and large. “Support the Troops With Stuff!” is perhaps more appealing than “Make sure the kid on the corner has dinner tonight” – simply because that kid on the corner will be hungry every day for the rest of his life, and Supporting the Troops With Useless Plastic Junk only has to happen once in a while. It’s sexy to be Yellow.

And, realistically, the support of the military by buying and sending knickknacks is a safe way to express concern – either against the war or for the war. People can still say they’re against the war but trying to make the lives of the troops easier. People can use it as an expression of their fierce loyalty to a party line. And they can sneer at those who don’t give – like the people who didn’t see any reason whatsoever to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, or who don’t have a “ready terrorism action kit” in their car or truck or home.

The fact that the Air Force Squadron – part of the supposedly best-equipped military in the world – needs “incidentals” to make their lives easier, like foot powder and gummi bears…that wears on me. It especially wears on me because it’s been three years with no end in sight to the mess we’re in. Each time I’m asked to support the troops reminds me that the people who demand support had been slowly eroding all the protections that the lower-class income brackets of the United States citizens who make up most of the military enjoy. National Guardsmen are being deployed for record tours to make up the shortfalls of the regular Army – and they are losing their jobs when they return home.

The assumption many of the Yellow Ribbons make is that everyone wants to support the military. And by and large, we do. However, the problem is, the distinction of supporting the military by SAYING you support the military, and the actuality of it through the payment of taxes and benefits to servicemembers are two entirely separate beasts. By supporting progressive reform, by supporting tax deferments and employment programs, retrainings, and social and health services for all Americans WITHOUT privatizing their health care…

With tax season just around the corner in the United States, supporting the military might mean not taking that tax deduction on your H2 Hummer vehicle that you use “exclusively for work”. It might mean not supporting military systems that are designed for Cold War applications. It might not mean “tax relief” for anyone. It might mean sticking by the military through the times of crisis. It might mean remembering that it takes more than a chain letter professing to support the troops through a meaningless request to “Send this to everyone you know! And Pray For Our Boys!” attached to some liberal-bashing “funny” paragraphs cribbed from Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

In some ways I wish I could say, “No, I don’t support the troops”. But I can’t say that – I have friends and family who are troops. I have former significant others who wear green underwear. Two of my acquaintances through the arts community are stationed in Afghanistan. I pay my taxes. I don’t cheat on them. But first and foremost, I’m still a native of this land, and bound to the rock and crag and wood and valley and stone. I have more love for the land where I was born than anywhere else. Put me in the headwaters of the river that flows through my hometown and I can navigate my way through every small crook of that riverbend, point out the places where the salmon and otters live, and tell where the orchards are. But the difference between loving the country and “supporting the troops” who are not directly fighting to preserve anything as concrete as the sandbar where we swam in the summertime, or the fresh sweet mountain runoff, well, there it is.

So I’m between Iraq and a hard place when it comes to the yellow ribbon. Should I ignore it and drive on, or is there something else I’m missing? I am beginning to think just no longer that interested in giving my all to the home team. I am right in thinking that the yellow ribbon – and the Yellow Bandwagon Patriotism movement that shows up whenever the military has a new extended conflict – are just justifications by an unwilling public to the problems of an ill-timed war, and a quick method to defer the tough questions.

Like why we went in the first place. Why we are getting our kids killed. And why, when they come home, they come home to a country that no longer has jobs or the interest to support them…or the problems they carry back with them.

This little puppy was written as a generic response to people who keep sending me chain letters.

if you find yourself thinking that I might reply with this to you, please fucking stop sending them.

You’ve received this because beyond all karmic impossibility, you’ve sent me a chain letter that asks me to forward said chain to as many people as I possibly can. Rather than do this, permit me to share with you a little story.

Years ago, I lived in Eugene, where there was a sizable homeless / alternative lifestyle group that enjoyed living in the downtown core. The best way to describe many of the kids who went onto the streets voluntarily is, “Loser”. Loser not because they were homeless, but because they chose homelessness – chose to leave their parents’ house and strike out on their own. And finding that said home cost a lot more than they were generally willing to stake out, many of these kids never figured out that stealing – especially from people with wallets, or barring that, college students – was wrong.

Usually I’d carry my wallet in my front hip pocket. Left, so that when I got out of the car I’d put my keys in my right pocket and the wallet in my left. One day, I bought a NEW wallet and finally replaced the old nylon-and-velcro number I had had since I was nine. The new leather wallet fit neatly into my front pocket, so I left the old one (which had some receipts and movie stubs in it) in my back pocket.

Within ten minutes it was gone – lifted, pickpocketed But what amused me was not that the thief had gotten my wallet, but rather the wallet that had gathered grime and grunk from sitting in my pocket for the past fifteen years. And my receipts for movies. And stubs. And grimy handwritten notes. And all the other crap that gets thrown away. I had a beautiful image of my friend the little thief digging through my wallet to desperately find nothing but trash – in a crappy old wallet. No credit cards, no money, no ID, nothing but receipts for Taco Time and sixty-five cent bagels.

Seriously, when was the last time you NEEDED a receipt for your bagel? Yet every time I get a bagel from my market down the street, I always have to get a receipt. It is either pressed into my hand along with the little white bag containing my cream cheese or it’s handed to me. I actually had to buy a bagel and coffee with a credit card one morning – didn’t think anything of it, except that somewhere my bank is looking at my receipts and thinking, “We should sign this man up for our Bagel Credit Card.” I’m sure Capitol One has a program for it.

But once I get that bagel receipt, man, do I hang on to it. I have this irrational fear that if I don’t get my bagel receipt, maybe men in blue uniforms with a BAGEL POLICE badge on will stop me on my way out the door. “Where’s your receipt?” I’d look back at the cashier, who would have suddenly disappeared. I wouldn’t have my receipt! No proof that the bagel I held had been paid for! My bagel, my precious bagel would be confiscated, and I would have to cough up another sixty-five cents, which I wouldn’t have, so I’d have to go back to call the bank to show that I had authorized a two dollar and eleven cent transaction for one cup of coffee and one raisin bagel with cream cheese in a seedy back room…or at least one that hadn’t been cleaned up after the last batch of poppy bagels. These two big Bagel police (I always envision them as oversized, younger versions of Mel Brooks, with yarmulkes, or bulky Dr. Ruth Westheimers) would sit me down with a bowl of chicken soup and begin the intense questioning.

“So, thought you could get a free bagel, eh? What a schlemiel.”

“You know what we love around here? Tough schlemiels like you.”

“What, you think you can get a bagel like this just by walking in?”

“Uh, no, see, I paid for it and got my cream cheese…”

“You got cream cheese? Of course you got the cream cheese, all goys get the cream cheese, but where is the lox, schmart guy?”

“What, he stole the lox??”

“Of course he stole the lox, you think he stops at the cream cheese?”

“Yeah, but the lox, I mean, I get the cream cheese, but why would you steal lox? I mean, the lox. That’s precious.”

“No no, see, I just bought a raisin bagel.”

“You put lox on a raisin bagel?”

“No, no! I prefer my bagel without lox.”

“You don’t like lox?”

“How could a nice bagel-stealing boy like you not like lox?”

“Are you geschmicket?”

“What the heck does that mean?”

”We’re asking the questions here, Mr. Schmartypants. We don’t ask you what you mean, eh, you don’t ask us what geschmicket means. What do you mean by that, anyway?”

“How should he mean, with my hip?”

“Enough with the hip, already!”

Eventually the cashier would come back and everything would be cleared up, and we’d all have a good laugh, but then I’d screw it up by asking if I could have a Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich instead of the bagel. This is what goes through my mind as I get my bagel in the morning. Maybe I don’t get enough sleep at night. I don’t know. I do know I’ve been considering scones, which are more expensive but don’t carry the same kind of penalties if you forget your receipt. I mean, what type of person, really, would steal a scone? And at the very least, the Scone Police would be nice and ask me if I wanted a cup of tea and a good English Player before they beat me senseless with their handbags.

At any rate, this is why I collect my bagel receipts, and being lazy, I usually just stuff them right back into the wallet I used to take out money to buy the bagels until I remember to haul them out and let the cats play with them. Which makes the wallet nice and thick, but seeing as the ratio of paper with value to paper collected to prevent arrest by the Bagel Police is about the same number as independently wealthy Mall-Wart employees to ones at the poverty level, it doesn’t really mean a whole lot as to my personal value. One thing’s for sure – I have a paper trail, so I can always prove I bought my bagels fair and square.

So the point is, I took every chain mail letter, email or otherwise, that I would get that month, print them out into ten copies (just as instructed), and place them lovingly in a cheap dime store wallet. The paper fattened the wallet nicely. Then I’d walk around the area where you were likely to be mugged unless you spent $50 or more a day getting your hair into just the right shape to piss off your parents, and dance with glee every time one of them stole my decoy wallet.

Then I’d go buy a bagel and save the receipt and watch through the window as the kid would frantically try to get his friends to take the copies of the chain letter. It was a little like watching a leper try to convince people to let him give them facials, except without the rotting skin bit. But the expressions on his friends’ faces were priceless.

I’ve always been like this, though. I wave, smile, and call in to the highway hotline if you cut me off and slow down repeatedly. I prefer seeing somone lose their temper over something they did to themselves than to strike out in righteous retribution. I’d rather see the people who bother me step on a rake and give themselves an all-body ice cream headache than to sue them for using a leaf blower (true story, my old neighborhood had some pretty litigious folks in it). I’d rather see someone suffer from bad karma than to develop some of my own in an enforced dealing of it. Which leads us to the rationale of my sending you this response.

Why are chain letters bad karma? Well, for instance, they’re incredibly arrogant. Preying on the superstition of people, they always request you forward to X number of people or SOMETHING TERRIBUL will happen. If you do, then something GOOD (your dog gets his teeth flossed for free, your wife and kids come back from CSD, you get a new gas-guzzling SUV, those nasty charges get dropped against you, and maybe even something SPECIAL might happen.) But they’re incredibly arrogant because their originators believe that somehow their words have so few socially redeemable qualities that they would ordinarily be ignored – except for the “If you agree with this forward it on to everyone you know kthankxbye oR BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!101!!!” tagline. Welcome to Superstition Wonderland – enjoy the ride and keep your fingers crossed or BUNNIES WILL DESTROY YOUR CAR TIRES!

But these aren’t the worst offenders of the bunch. Better yet are the heartstring tuggers. Listen up, kids. She’s had a brain tumor for twenty years. Chances are it’s either not going to get better or she’s been REALLY good about faking illness to stay home from school. Break the chain. Let her die. The Make-A-Wish Foundation nearly hired people at Walt Disney World to kill her on the Dumbo Drop after the fourth trip to Disneyland. It’s her TIME. Let her go. And STOP SENDING ME THE STORY ABOUT HOW SHE LOST HER SPLEEN TO A RABID GIRAFFE! I don’t care. I don’t want her to get better. It may make me a horrible person for saying so, but maybe there’s a REASON the doctors can’t cure her. Maybe if she grows up she’ll become the Giraffe Hunter and hunt them to extinction. There’s no telling what evil this child is capable of.

Most recently in the irritating list are those Patriotic™ emails that encourage you to:

“Support the Troops!”

“Pray for Jessica Simpson as she goes on her multimillion-dollar tour to support the troops (and gets paid for it)!!”

“Remember, God needs to be returned to schools and government!”

“Those damn liberals are changing our American way of life! If you think that wholesome American values mean dog tags, not dog collars, forward this to all the people you know!”

“Pray for the President in His Time Of Need!!!”

For the record:

Supporting the troops means paying your taxes and voting for presidents who don’t start frivolous wars. You want to support the troops? Pay your damn taxes, sell your H2 Hummer, buy a Honda Accord hybrid, and quit supporting businesses that headquarter themselves in Barbados to avoid paying corporate taxes to the United States. Revive the system of checks and balances that keeps power out of the hands of one man. Challenge the elimination of your civil rights. Hold the men and women of the armed forces accountable for their actions. Make sure you elect leaders who send them into battle fully equipped.

Jessica Simpson is doing just fine – anyone that has that kind of hair can’t be living a miserable life. And getting paid to hop around the globe and lip-synch to a crowd of people is nice work, if you can get it. Heck, I can lip-synch to just about anything. I suppose it takes a special kind of dedication to lip-synch to Jessica Simpson songs, though. Even if you ARE Jessica Simpson. There are some things nice girls just shouldn’t have to do in this world. Hell, I wouldn’t want to force anyone to lip-synch to Alanis Morisette’s songs.

Next: God is probably just fine not doing anything in the government (The Man is probably a lot happier in civilian life than he would be working the crowds, disciplining unruly kids or passing bills he didn’t read – chances are he’s got a full-time job trying to keep us from screwing up his Creation without getting directly involved in the screwing-up process. Involving The Big Guy in politics is just asking for trouble, and not the kind that involves self-righteous idiots running around worshipping grilled cheese sandwiches that someone decided looks like the Virgin Mary. More like the Old Testament Smite Your Butt type.

And last, if your way of life DIDN’T get changed, you wouldn’t have this wonderful avenue of harassment (namely, EMAIL!). How did the Internet get built? Originally, it was a network of computers designed to keep the country running in the event of nuclear war. But when that turned out to be pretty unlikely, the Department of Defense turned it to a much more profitable purpose – porn websites. That’s right – depravity and naked flesh doing interesting thing with gardening implements for the gratification of sweaty people huddled in front of a computer screen built the Internet into what it is today. So go ahead and pray nightly that the sins of the world will be washed away, but remember that without chaos and entropy, nothing changes, and there’s no room for progress.

Your way of life changes each time you buy a new motorhome, or you install cable television, or you go up in personal net worth. If your “way of life” is changed dramatically every time I put on a kilt, you’ve got a very unstable life indeed. I, a self-professed damned liberal who enjoys changing our American way of life, am not the originator of the Cultural Butterfly Effect. (Although in some way I do wonder if the Amazonian butterflies are angry ex-patriates Democrats wreaking vengeance upon Florida…)

If I DID have the power to change the American way of life, I’d probably just have everyone stop shopping at Mall-Wart (Always low wages! Always!) and prevent them from buying cheap Made in China crap they don’t need.

Oh, and for every person praying for the president, there’s a whole lot more praying for a repeat of the pretzel incident. (Even the dogs – they were licking him for the salt. God forbid anyone tells him about Cheetos.)

And don’t for one second believe that sending it with a one-sentence tagline that says, “Some of his stuff is kind of out there, but I agree!” mitigates any kind of responsibility on your part. That does nothing for nixing your bad karma in the form of a chain letter. In fact, you know what? I don’t care if you don’t agree with everything the writer says. You can’t have disagreed that much – you forwarded his tripe on, and you didn’t make commentary on it other than “I AGREE!” Here’s your fleece. Go join the others. The guy with the crook will tell you what to do.

So here’s what I want to say, really.

1. I don’t have to forward this on. In point of fact, my breaking the chain of this letter is probably the best thing for it. By refusing to forward this crap, I’m raising the bar of discussion. I’m making sure the marketplace of the mind isn’t getting contaminated by the equivalent of the Weekly World News.

2. I am under no obligation to you, to the little diseased wretches who continue to suffer from rare afflictions and want attention because they’re dying, that kid who writes the incredibly bad poetry with the disease in the hospital who was featured on Oprah, Dr. Phil, or anyone else to use my Internet connection to pass along your dogma. There is no onus; there’s no “Dittohead!”, there’s no miserable Men And Women Of The Armed Services out. Go out and DO something to change the world if you don’t like it. DO NOT send me a damned email in the delusional hope that by hitting thirty keys you’re going to make one lick of difference.

3. There is no Microsoft miracle email tracking device. The French are not really going to be hurting if you pour out all your French wine, and you stop eating French fries (they actually call them fried potatoes, and they get most of theirs from Idaho. Go figure). If you really must let the world know that you believe the president is a really swell guy, do so in the privacy of your own home, and at the very end, scream, “AND GOSH DARN IT, PEOPLE LIKE YOU, GEORGE!” That’s great. You’re welcome to your opinion and/or delusions of grandeur. KEEP IT OUT OF MY INBOX.

Yeah, I may be pretty rude about it, but I’m tired of this crap. I’m tired of filtering my email for FWD: FUNNY! I’m tired of biting my lip every time someone sends me a crappily-written “joke of the day” that’s a vicious dig at someone else. I’m tired of racism masquerading as “concerned patriotism”. I’m tired of listening to people rag on about how horrible 9/11/01 was. Get over it. Get over yourself. Get over the role you think you play in this world, and get over the fact that you can spread YOUR message out to the people. Ever wonder what would happen if you amplified a German shepherd barking? Wonder how annoying it would be if everyone had an amplified German shepherd in their backyard? Maybe German shepherds wouldn’t be so scary or effective any more.

So. I’m breaking the chain, but I’m breaking it in such a way that the onus is on YOU, dear sender. If, within ten minutes, you DON’T share this little story with the chain of people you have distributed it to, I’ll simply note that it’s fairly easy to backtrack through the email addresses listed on this email and find every single person who this was sent to and who forwarded it on. And using that list, to sign you all up for Amway Sales Presentation Scheduling.

I’m not vicious, I’m just retributive. You send me useless, annoying, irritating spam, I’ll forward you to the Nigerian Minister of Finance as a potential customer.

If this is your first time getting this response from me, don’t worry, I still like you. You, however, are the lucky recipient of my vitriolic anger towards a trend of American society that has cheapened the political process – and cheapened the way we interact. I would dearly love to get a nice long conversational email about your life. Instead I get, “SUPORT TEH TROOUPS! IF YOU DON’T AGRE U R A TERRORIST!!!”

It bugs the hell out of me. So quit it. I’m a rational, intelligent human being with plenty of interest in world politics. I have my own way of contributing to society. This is one of them. Send me no more chain mails. Send me no more “I AM A PATRIOTIC SHEEP!” chain letters. Send me no more “OMG THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!” I do have a subscription to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I do have functional eyes, and I distinctly remember being able to read. I believe those sources are a tad more factual than rumors forwarded around on the Internet.

If you’ve read this far, you get a cookie. Thanks, and just don’t forward me any more of these things. It took me a lot more time to write this (by a factor of three hundred) than it did for you to hit “Forward” and send me that crap. So thanks for reading. And I’ll get your cookie as soon as the Nigerian Minister of Cookies sends me those guaranteed million cookies the Nigerian president is hoarding from the rebels in his country and sending to me for safekeeping.