Hickey goes off on military, Nelson

Former Republican legislator and pastor emeritus, Steve Hickey let his feelings known about the world as he sees it and about current South Dakota legislator, Senator Stace Nelson of Fulton.

Ph.D candidate Hickey has advocated for the shuttering of Ellsworth Air Force Base outside Rapid City, for a truth/reconciliation commission to study the extirpation of American Indians from their homelands and for ending video lootery. His draft for reconciliation has been sent to this blog but permission has yet to be given for its publication.

Hickey's essay spoke to the military brat in me, to my revulsion of the Vietnam War and of all war since.

The following comment appeared at a Brookings, South Dakota-based website.

I’ll get to Stace in a moment. Some context.

I’m a military brat. The Vietnam War ruined my dad. There is a book called Vietnam Wives which describes what it was like to grow up in our home. I loved my dad, he was faithful to my mom, good to my brother and I, and he grew to hate the military and the government. I never saw him so mad as when he heard me talk about enlisting during the first Gulf War because the government offered me a $25000 sign-on bonus because they needed chaplains so bad. My dad was mad because he lost all faith in any military operation of the US Government. He refused to lose a son to someone else’s ill-conceived war – he had come to believe all wars were bankers wars (that phrase coming from a book by that title written by a highly decorated war vet). Enough on all that, now to Stace.

My dad would ask the Bull Marine if he has ever had in income that wasn’t a government check. He would tell the Bull Marine he’s not impressed with his incessant military boasting and bravado, having only a career cop job in the military no doubt being a bully, walking secure bases, and doing less in harms way than any Sioux Falls cop does every night. Mostly as a fiscal conservative he would question retirement for anyone, in any career, at year 20. He would challenge, as others are – see link, this unsustainable spending program that has become career military retirement.

My dad fought for VA benefits for decades. I support vet benefits. But, this retirement thing Stace is cashing in on, it does need to be revisited.

I view the Bull Marine as a career government employee who now has a cash stream for life. Meanwhile, people like my dad grovelled to stay employed, war having so messed them up they are quite unemployable.

And Stace vilifies me for my views, he’s heard me voice these before. I wonder if I’m the only military brat he belittles. Certainly he has no regard for the price a military brat like myself paid growing up in war. Unless we honour the Bull Marine with Kim Jong-un-like salutes as we parade by his ruddy rotund greatness every morning we are to be crushed beneath him, investigated, and threatened with a bodily confrontation.