Insecure
What a wilderness reform school reality show taught me about being gracious
Here is the tweet from last week. This newsletter is a continuation of last week.
There is this weird thing happening in the military where service men and women are reacting negatively to people saying, “thank you for your service.” They aren’t confronting people, they are being courteous to those who say it, but then they are disparaging the practice on social media and complaining about it internally. This is baffling to me, but I think it reveals a deep psychological problem facing the military.
Once I was watching a television show where misbehaving kids were sent to outdoor wilderness camps specifically designed to reform their behavior. I can’t speak to the efficacy of the camps in general, but one episode sticks out in my mind. One of the girls, who had a lot of insecurity issues that were causing a lot of problems for her, had a big turnaround after coming back from the camp. in a post-show interview, her mom said that she seemed like a totally different person. Before the camp when someone gave her a compliment, she would brush it off or say, “shut up,” or be even harsher and say, “don’t give me that bullsh*t.” After the camp, her mom said that now she took comments so graciously and kindly.
Ever since I saw that, I realized that learning how to take compliments graciously is an important skill that is rooted in a feeling of security in oneself. Maybe too many people in the Army are like that young girl before she went to reform camp. They can’t take a compliment for their service because it makes they are insecure and it makes them feel uncomfortable. Maybe this is because the Army’s record as of late hasn’t been great. Having lost a war in Afghanistan and being a continual participant in the nation’s ongoing culture wars, willingly or unwillingly, has caused many Americans and servicemembers to simply lose trust in the institution. When I see tweets like this it feels like servicemembers have lost pride in the organization so it becomes “just a job.”
I myself even wrote an essay last year as Kabul was falling where I said,
I used to be proud to tell people that I am in the Army and that I served in Afghanistan. Now, I feel embarrassed.
And I did feel embarrassed. I felt embarrassed but not insecure. More than ever I felt the gravity and importance of my job as an officer. At the end of the essay, I wrote:
I am going to do everything I can as an Army officer to make sure that we don’t ever have another Afghanistan.
In such tumultuous times as these, Army leaders need to instill pride in their soldiers and make them feel as though they are doing something for which thanks is warranted. If Americans are going to thank you for your service, but you don’t feel like you should be thanked more than a Door Dash driver, then maybe it’s you who should change, and not the citizens. In other words, “earn this.”
But if you are going to earn the thanks you get, then maybe you should work harder and with more purpose than having “just a job.”
In closing, the country’s general support for “The Troops” is one of the last remaining valence issues left in American political life. This is no time for officers to downplay the Army virtues of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. The country needs something that we can all look to and embrace as our own, an institution that can be a symbol and hold the country together. The military can fulfill that role if it gets its act together. It can fulfill that role until another institution can figure out how to do it.
Being in the military is a service to the nation, it’s not “just a job.” If you’re an officer and that’s not how you feel then either earn the thanks you get or hit the bricks.
The Army has way too many officers anyway, but that’s a rant for another week.