longreads:

U.S. soldiers returning home face a culture that doesn’t understand them:

The 1 percent tends to be concentrated in the southern states and among the working and lower-middle classes. With a few notable exceptions—such as vice-president Joe Biden’s son Beau—the children of the elite have not served in these wars. It’s a sharp change from the night of Pearl Harbor, when Eleanor Roosevelt told a radio audience, “I have a boy at sea on a destroyer, for all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific.”

Instead, America now has its first generation of political and business leaders who have not served in the military, and it shows. With the Pentagon ordered to slash spending as part of wider government budget cutting, military benefits, such as pensions, and college education funding for veterans are on the chopping block.

“Veterans’ Struggle.” — Anna Fifield, Financial Times

See also: “The Last Two Veterans of WWI.” — Evan Fleischer, The Awl, May 3, 2011

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   What I never got is why don’t we cut military spending on weapons and bureaucracy, and focus it more on veterans...

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    I’m very proud of the men and women in my life that have served our country in the armed services. I’m not sure that...

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    its good that they want to cut the military spending but they’re doing it in the wrong places… i know how about we get...

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    The great irony is, of course, that the same party cutting veteran pensions and the like is the same one saying they’re...

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    plus they are coming back to a shit storm of no jobs or health care and a higher rate of homelessness for veterans. this...

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