SAGE McLAUGHLIN writes:

I realize that this ad for Navy Federal Credit Union which has been showing on TV lately was not commissioned by the Navy as a recruiting ad per se, but that changes nothing—it is an expression of a view of our armed forces which is aggressively promoted by the Department of Defense.

The ever-more-worshipful attitude of the American public toward its uniformed personnel coincides with an ever-more-ridiculous and subversive military, and I no longer want any part of it.

Laura writes:

I think this ad is in its own way refreshingly honest about why women in particular join the military.

—- Comments —-

SJF writes:

Having served in the Navy in a very lowly enlisted position, and having been stationed on a carrier and having witnessed good men die trying to land their jets on the carrier in rough seas at night, I find this ad, which I have never seen before, to be reprehensible, disgusting and totally inappropriate. If that woman is or was in the military, she deserves to be court martialed, and we, as a nation, deserve to be invaded and subjugated by a more worthy people.

James P. writes:

I vaguely remember a Navy ad from the 1990s that showed a female pilot on the carrier deck, and it described her as attending flight school, becoming a qualified carrier pilot, marrying a Navy pilot, and then attending Harvard Business School on the GI Bill. Not a whole lot about God, country, honor, sacrifice, shared suffering, or any of those outdated concepts.

Terry Morris writes:

Shame on Sage McLaughlin. Hasn’t he heard that the U.S. Navy is a ‘global force for good?

Of course I’m being facetious above, but I’m dead serious when I say that if this phenomenon of public worship and self-worship only applied to our military, rather than extending to all public services, including law enforcement officers, fire fighters, teachers and school administrators, and etc., we’d be a lot better off. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that public servants of all denominations are increasingly seeing themselves as more important, thus more deserving, than the common citizen who pays their wages and benefits out of his earnings in the private sector. A laborer is certainly worthy of his hire, but he’d best understand which side his bread is buttered on. But what are we to expect when we honor these people at every turn, continually stroke their egos with ego-enhancing praises and slogans?

As William James rightly pointed out, there is nothing so absurd than when you repeat something often enough people begin to believe it. ‘To Protect and Serve,’ eh? What, your own interests?

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