(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . On My Father's 100th Birthday [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-06 My Dad would have been 100 today. He was born on June 6, 1924 in Pikeville, TN, and had never really been off the Mountain. He was one of 9 kids in a dirt poor Depression family. He spent his 20th watching young men he had crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary with, had drilled with and drank with and played cards with for months, die on a cold beach far from their homes and families. They were there to stop a charismatic mad man, who was, ON THAT DAY, murdering people he called unworthy, who had oppressed him, and dragged him into court. He declared that they were "poisoning" the blood of the race. He promised payback and revenge. His followers were filled with outrage and bile and fear and prejudice against so many "others." So much so that they devised and planned and built and operated efficient gigantic mass slaughter houses for the killing of HUMANS. It wasn’t soldiers following orders or politicians. Everyday people--engineers, accountants, suppliers, planners, welders, construction workers, brick layers, janitors, cooks, drivers all in service to creating ABATTOIRS to enact their “cleansing.” and not just for Jews and Gypsies and Poles and Slavs and homosexuals and Communists and Socialists and journalists and (from the Wikipedia) "Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Spanish Republicans, Freemasons, Black Europeans (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called "Rhineland Bastards" by Hitler and the Nazi regime), and other minorities not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the "master race"); leftists, communists, trade unionists, capitalists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents who disagreed with the Nazi regime..." (sound familiar?) And those frightened and brave young men and women from every FREEDOM LOVING nation in the world STOPPED HIM and his allies and his death machines. But not the hate It took YEARS and an unimaginable COST for the whole world, and not simply in dollars. My Dad rarely spoke of his experience to us. His PTSD was severe and unacknowledged. He drank to near death until I was 9. He would explode in anger, like a bomb going off in our home. As kids, we never found the trigger or the tripwire. That made us afraid of our own father. Everyone of us MUST understand that this is the legacy of war. Sure we can honor them, celebrate them, laud them. How about a free cup of coffee and a sale at Lowes But many of US don’t see them, don’t want to see any of their injuries, internal and external. And when Dad finally stopped drinking, his un-diagnosed bi-polar PTSD still tortured my family almost until his death from his addiction to tobacco. His mania was frantic and desperate and costly; My poor Mom managed to keep us from total financial ruin, but we were so poor, did without, a life of getting by. His depressions were so low and they filled our home with weeping and anguish and apologies. This is what happens (and is STILL happening) to all those brave women and men who serve in uniform, trying to stop MAD MEN all over our world. They come home broken, to families who love them and don't know how to help. We have to change this. We have to change this. We have to change this. And we have to keep this from happening again. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/6/2245111/-On-My-Father-s-100th-Birthday?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/