In an online forum, soldiers debate their place in America

Whenever a celebrity dies, the Twittersphere explodes with grief memes. When a soldier dies, a different sort of meme arises: why mourn Paul Walker, and not Cpl. Kimberly Walker? I’ve always found these memes self-gratifiying and tasteless, and a discussion of these memes on an online forum reminded me why.

Simply put, the soldiers in the discussion have resigned themselves, on some level, to the idea that it is unrealistic to expect the American public to rearrange their priorities to mourn them above celebrities, and in fact, the expectation that this was possible was a lie. The gap of understanding is so large that it’s probably more respectful for soldiers to mourn their own, leaving the population they protect to their toys. A striking, depressing thought. The conversation is below:

Writer #1 “What do you guys think of memes like this? I’m probably guilty of posting them in the past, but I’ve begun to think we should be above complaining that the civilians pay more attention to dead celebrities than soldiers. I signed up to serve, not get headlines. Honor the fallen, of course. But they’re ours to honor, I don’t expect civilians to do anything but lead their lives. Am I off-base here?

Writer #2 “I agree. You can’t expect 100 million people to mourn a guy they never knew existed. It’s dumb.

Writer #3 “Yeah, these are crap. Another form of FB attention whoring: ‘Look at how righteous I am and how fucktarded the rest of America is!’ Yeah, no shit, nobody outside his unit and family know who LCpl Schmuckatelli is. Big surprise.”

Writer #4 “Agree. America is put in touch with the character of an actor in various movies and TV shows. Then they are further immersed in celebrity fanaticism by the constant, unending gossip. They rarely get such a connection with a service member. We are more closely associated with a yellow magnetic ribbon and the phrase ‘care package’. When we are associated with more…it goes right back to Hollywood and war movies. Nature of the beast I guess. I equate it to the shit bag that always gets out of working while the reliable ones work late. Nobody questions it as long as everything seems to be getting done.”

Writer #5 “Ok, good. I’m glad I am not the only one who thinks that way…”

Writer #6 “I’m probably more vitriolic about entertainer-worshipping than anyone and I’m at the point where I just accept it. It’s an entertainer’s job to make an emotional connection with the audience and a Soldier’s job to anonymously protect that audience. It’ll never be just or merciful, but it’s America.”