Part of the point

  Part of the point, the largest part, was not to be destroyed.  By the time our-agers were born it was already the age of terrorism.  A lot of the dark side of WWII and Vietnam and Korea wasn't staying neatly contained in some old memory box.

  It was character building not to crumble when they lashed out.  And becoming stoic as they clung to each other in a necessary toughness about a mysterious violence that wasn't hatred, at least not for you.

  While some people chose to go ahead and be hateful others didn't go that route but settled on bitterness.  A roomful of stiff, cross-armed, boulder men who'd rarely had a "day off" let alone caught the virus of free love and "alternative" only in a top secret way and a head nod as agreement admitted to having feelings.

  At school some kids couldn't really get free of the complicated.  It's in our DNA, some said when they found each other and found in each other a kind of ability to hack through any jungle.  Some had a tougher time with lazy assholes being "authority" and navigating growing up for them included some run ins where they awkwardly realized there was no army behind them in individual rebelliousness.  A few were always walking a chain link fence watching for opportunity to escape somehow.

  The somehow though, on escaping, an Americanism not separable from service, has always been elusive.  Most people in the Country have wrestled with duty and honor and service to nation even if not involved directly with the military.  Just as we've all wrestled with, for example, how much money should be spent on "social programs".  And, yes, there are feelings about feeding others at the expense of self not eating.  But especially when there's been dramatic imbalance in favor of one group or another kind of profession in America our Nation rallies to level playing ground through capitalism.  And that's been a saving grace.