Radio Mano, Papacango.

The

rains have begun in Portland. It's cold. It dropped about 20 degrees in the

last two days here I think. So summer's coming to an end. I recorded this

conversation with Elliott at the beginning of the summer. So it's been a couple

of months. He's a vet part of the vet series. He was in the Naval Academy and

then he was an Air Force analyst, free for I think he's had six years.

Very nice guy, very thoughtful. He's spent a lot of time thinking about American

foreign policy, the military, his own role in all this and how his life's been

affected by his service, service. I've got a problem with service, the term

service. You know, it suggests that everybody in the military is doing it for

you and for me and therefore we're obligated to be thankful about it, which

makes us participants in something that we haven't decided to participate in.

You know, you want to join the military, that's your business. It's a job. A lot of

people join the military are doing it because they don't have any other

opportunity. It's their only chance to get out of town. It's only a chance to

make some money, maybe to save some money for college, get, you know, there are

all sorts of financial incentives to being in the military. Not everybody's doing

it, you know, with defending freedom. Without even getting into the dubiousness

of the concept of defending freedom. By the way, I realized I learned just in the

last week or two, I was doing some research on Edward Bernays, who is the sort

of the godfather of marketing and advertising and so-called public relations.

...