“Greatest Generation?”
“Why doesn’t this generation have the same opportunities as World War II’s Greatest Generation?”
I logged onto Hacker News early today. I find this article on Vice, about an Iraq vet who’s now driving with Uber. Sounds like an interesting read, right? Except that was an understatement. To put it succinctly, I’ll quote one of the comments on that writeup.
I wanted this to be longer too — a lot longer. It reads like great sex: you wish it would last forever but someone has to blow their nut first, dammit.
Here’s another link to the article, if you missed the one above.
https://www.vice.com/read/driving-uber-as-an-iraqi-war-veteran
Anyway, something in the writeup caught my eye.
Sometimes, I tally up the things I’ve got going for me: I’m a veteran. I have an Honorable Discharge. I used my Post 9/11 GI Bill to obtain a work permit into the middle class, a.k.a. a diploma. Historically, higher education has helped generations of veterans go on to live nice, middle-class lives. So why is it then that when I apply for job after job after job, virtually no one ever responds? The scarce few who do tell me they only have part-time positions, jobs that pay only a fraction of what Uber claims to pay their drivers. Why doesn’t this generation have the same opportunities as World War II’s “Greatest Generation?” Why am I in the front seat driving, watching life go past me, instead of seated in the backseat fiddling around with my smart phone, enjoying it?
Hmm. Okay. Now I’m really hooked.
The Greatest Generation. We’ve probably heard it in passing, here and there. That’s the generation that went through the Depression of the 30s, fought on multiple fronts in WWII, and went on to turn America into a superpower, that could proclaim itself as the defender of freedom, democracy and free trade. And what made that possible? I think one of the biggest drivers was the GI Bill.
You just fought your way across countless islands in the Pacific, driving the Japs back? Did you land on a beach in Normandy, and push back the Germans right into Berlin, and sock ol’ Adolph on the jaw? Well, welcome back. Why don’t you get a degree? You’ve earned it. Uncle Sam will pick up the bill. We’ve got industries booming, the world’s suddenly changed in a massive way, and we can spread our economy, our trade, get new markets, show the world what freedom tastes like.
And behold, America rises from the ashes of war.
But what happened later? What happened after Vietnam? Vets returning from Vietnam — were they offered the same opportunities? The same respect? Does the same hold true for vets who’ve just come back from Afghanistan and Iraq?
No. They weren’t. Rather, they were spat upon, as another comment on that Vice article eloquently states,
The writer asks: “Why doesn’t this generation have the same opportunities as World War II’s “Greatest Generation?” Because the Greatest Generation came home and didn’t wait for ‘opportunity’. They created the world’s first superpower in only ten years. They weren’t spat on in the airport by hippies. Their optimism and hope weren’t crippled by SJW self-loathing, grievance, hate and entitlement. Everything the Greatest Generation created, from entrepreneurial wealth to standard of living to self-reliance, is fought today by the children of their children; the hippies who took over academia and government through the seventies and eighties. Short answer: Today you guys are driving for Uber because it’s now more fashionable to cry “PTSD” than to help build America back to the greatness that others did in the 50's.
He’s got a point there. But isn’t he woefully wrong? The biggest thing we’re missing today, is the GI Bill. The GI Bill wasn’t just about providing vets an education. It was about a range of benefits to help them re-integrate back into society, and build up America. Interest-free loans to start businesses, easy mortgages, and much more. What one would call “support”. And that made the Greatest Generation the greatest.
So the penultimate question, which was probably lost upstairs. Uber initiated a campaign called UberMilitary which aimed to hire about 50,000 vets by 2016 — that’s roughly about 1/4th of all unemployed vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. The question is, does this mean that vets can’t depend on the government for VA benefits, and instead turn to private industry? And when a company like Uber — which is usually under fire whenever you mention its name — when they initiate campaigns like these, are we justified in hating them for it — which is exactly what happened? After all, they’re doing what the government should have done.
But after reading that writeup — I guess it’s not so black-and-white after all, is it?
