A GI Bill for Bob, Bill, Fred, Greta and Everyone Else

by Jim Washburn

The wife and I accompanied her dad to the VA hospital out near San Bernardino a few days ago. The place was packed, the waiting rooms and cafeteria chock full of folks with problems of all stripes. It wasn’t a classy joint, being to a normal hospital perhaps what Fedco was to Bloomingdale’s, but it was pleasant enough. The workers there were courteous and efficient. Leslie’s dad says that, compared to other doctors he’s seen, the young docs there are better informed and more thorough, which is rather what you want when you have a condition that requires them to sometimes jab hypodermic needles right into your eyeballs.

The VA, of course, is far more like socialized medicine than the “Obamacare” he disdains. That’s one of the curious things about our country: folks on the right tend to worship our military, and conservative representatives would rather cram 60 kids in a classroom than consider ever cutting weapons programs that even the military didn’t want; yet the military is one huge example of socialism at work, as Nicholas Kristof recently pointed out in the New York Times.

I remember making the same case back in high school, when the Vietnam War was raging, except I used the word “communist.” Nearly everything we hated about the communist system we were at war with were the same things that propelled our military.

You had a vast central bureaucracy deciding everything, from whom you would kill down to the specs of your underwear. If your underwear itched, too bad, because you had no choice in it. You were under strict authoritarian rule and individuality was drilled out of you. No one asked for your opinion and dissent wasn’t tolerated. You were a number. You lived communally .

All of that’s probably necessary. If you’re at war with Germany, you can’t have Private Gripweed deciding to wear purple and go to war with Uruguay instead. (And, despite the authoritarianism, Americans manage to be Americans during wartime anyway, my favorite example of that being the ever-griping bedraggled WWII dogfaces vividly depicted by cartoonist Bill Mauldin in the Army’s Stars and Stripes newspaper, over the objections of Gen. George Patton, who thought the cartoons were bad for morale).

Following the First World War, veterans protested the lack of care and opportunity they found at home. Some set up camp in Washington, D.C., prompting one of the ugliest episodes in our history when, to clear the encampment, servicemen were ordered to fire upon their former brothers in uniform. To prevent a repetition of that, in 1944 Congress passed the GI Bill. Though its initial author was a Republican, many Republicans at the time opposed the bill, arguing that the help it gave vets would make them lazy.

Instead, the opportunities the GI Bill afforded enabled the Greatest Generation to be so great. Vets got health care. They got a chance to better themselves through education. They got help buying a home. Because so many Americans had been in the service during the war and benefited from the GI Bill, it deserves much of the credit for creating the burgeoning middle class and America’s golden era of the 1950s and 1960s. Far from being made lazy, the government-assisted vets—educated, secure and well-to-do—made America into a competitive powerhouse.

It was a grand experiment, and it worked. You might think such an example would inspire the nation to try it on a grander scale. But no, it would make Americans lazy, we’re told again, by the same perk-packed representatives who claim that extending unemployment benefits makes people lazy.

I know some vets who bristle at the idea of GI Bill-like betterment opportunities being given to non-serving Americans, who never faced the dangers and sacrifices they did. In other settings I’ve heard the same vets talk about their dull rear-echelon posts, how high they were most of the time, and how the closest they ever came to hand-to-hand combat was with a hooker. They do have a point, though, that, for little pay, they gave up years of their lives—sacrificing freedom, individuality and all the good things about being home—in service to their country. Part of the deal was that their grateful nation would look after them on the back end. A lot of military people also need the help most, since many folks only went into the service because they had no other opportunities. Doesn’t it cheapen their sacrifice to offer similar benefits to all?

Yes, but maybe that’s also what they were sacrificing for, to help make sure America remains the land of opportunity.

The 1950s and 1960s were our greatest years in the estimation of many. We were creative. We were questing. We were questioning. We were a nation. We were also noticing we’d left a lot of Americans behind, opportunity-wise, and started doing something about it.

We accomplished great things not because every waking minute was a character-building struggle to keep from sinking into foreclosure and bankruptcy, but because, thanks to programs like the GI Bill and union-won benefits, we were relatively prosperous and comfortable. Homes were cheap. Jobs came with health and retirement plans. We were living the dream. We had luaus, for Christ’s sake.

Some people say affordable healthcare and a secure retirement are a right. I don’t, and I think that presumption needlessly polarizes the argument. Our founding documents don’t guarantee us happiness, just the unfettered pursuit of it.

The founders also gave us a government that’s responsive to our wills. So if we as a people decide that the kindest and best thing our society can do is to provide more security and opportunity to all; and we decide that government, as already proven, is an effective instrument for delivering said security and opportunity, then why not do it? Not because it’s a right, but because it’s the right thing to do, resulting in plenty aloha for all and sundry, Amen.

With the military being such a priority, it seems like they’re often the first to get the latest technologies. But things trickle down to the public. Stealth bombers went to the Air Force, but you can be pretty sure the Koch brothers will be able to buy some soon.

A friend sent me a link to a cool, relatively new invention that is presently being marketed for military use, but could also be a godsend for emergency housing, temporary housing and luaus.

A British company, Concrete Canvas, has this clever package that can be delivered anywhere by pickup truck. Once dragged to the ground, one end is tethered by a stake, while the other is attached to the truck’s trailer hitch, which is used to pull the thing out to its full length, which is then inflated with an air pump, forming a Quonset-shaped structure, which is then hosed down and left to set for 24 hours. It’s made of a concrete fabric, so it dries into a solid structure designed to provide weather and warfare resistant shelter for over ten years. Check this video:

People continue to ask me how I’m doing with my war on the ants. They remain my daily work companions. Whenever I take a break, I can be pretty sure to sweep 80 to 120 of them into my pile of deadly boric acid powder, while nearer my “work station,” I crush about 25 on average. Over on the counter, I’ve taken to using a champagne cork instead of a wine cork to crush another 10 or 15. The champagne cork affords a better grip.

I do this about ten times over the course of a day, so that’s approximately 1,370 ants dispatched manually, plus another five to eight ants that crawl onto my computer screen, which I slide off using a FourStory business card, then crush.

Then there’s the untold number I’m supposedly killing with the ant bait traps I’ve left, though I’m not so sure about that. I sent an email this week to the manufacturer, the Senoret Chemical Company:

Sirs, I have a colony of ants living in the walls of my 800 sq ft back house. I’ve cut off their access to the outside, and virtually the only food they’ve had for two months are 18 of your Terro traps with Borax. I’ve found ants avoid most brands of ant traps, while, bravo, they go for yours like crazy. The problem: aside from the few that get stuck in the goop, the ants show no signs of dying off. Rather, they’re numerous, plump and full of pep. Are you sure you’re not marketing an energy drink for ants instead of a poison? Best regards  —Jim Washburn

I received a nice, if perhaps boilerplate, response, urging patience and suggesting I avail myself of two other Terro ant-obliterating products. I don’t need their help. I will kill all the ants, one at a goddamn time.

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