Spankie's n'th Rule to Life

Rule #574: Freedom of Speech

Come no now, we had to get around to it eventually….

I was just invited via facebook to join sombody’s ‘cause’, I usually ignore these things as yet another to one of the many kinds of spam my facebook friends like to throw at me. 

However for reasons unbeknownst to myself this time I didn’t…

The ‘cause’ was titled ‘Help shut down: ‘SOLDIERS ARE NOT HEROES’ page’. 

Which prompted me to immediately go and look at the page and see why this person was riled up enough to start a ‘cause’ to have it removed.

As it stand the page has an astounding 308 members and its blurb is as follows…

This group has been set up to act as a means for people to interact about the military, its role in society and the fact that a uniform does not make a man a hero; especially considering the current conflicts we are ALL involved in.

The key point in this for me is ‘a uniform does not make a man a hero’ which I’m pretty sure we can all agree on, because the dictionary’s certainly with them on this.

‘a person, typically a man, who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities:’*

All becoming a solider means is you either have the balls or lack of brains to accept your own life-nullification as an occupational hazard.

So why do I feel I need to dedicate a whole post to this? 
Well it is my own opinion that many of the people who join the military are woefully unaware of what it is they’re getting themselves into.
Second to this, having seen who from my youth joined the armed forces, my opinion** of what their prospected candidates are made up of is, in all honesty, not the highest.

Now I’m going to say this next part even though I know I shouldn’t have to, I’m sorry but bear with me***.

I’m friends with vets, I have worked with vets, I have even worked (albeit for the most part indirectly) on veteran programs. There are men and women in the military who are heroes, I’m not disputing that, but I am agreeing with the simple fact that just because you take on the role that gives you the capacity to be something does not make it so. I am also aware that many of my feelings towards soldiers are soured by the people who make the big decision.
However I am also aware of what I’ve been told first hand by soldiers.
Luckily I’ve managed to wipe most of this from my conscious memory, the only one I can remember off hand involved Afghan children and chilly peppers. Granted this may be an isolated incident (although I very much doubt that), I take this as a pretty clear example of how being a soldier doesn’t instantly equate to being a hero.

Who cares what 308 people think about soldiers? It’s a closed group, you can’t see any of their contents, so it’s not as if you see offensive pictures all over your  feed, like so many of those ‘lad’ pages****.

Who the hell are you to start a fucking ‘cause’ aimed at removing their free speech?!?!?! The next time someone badmouths a traffic warden should I go and write up a petition to send to Parliament? No now sit down and STFU… *SIGH*
If you think the page is in breech of some Facebook rule then report the page. If the page stays up, then leave it alone.

Basically what prompted me to post this is that I was tempted to join the group but I didn’t.
Partly because I don’t feel strongly enough to need to talk to ‘like minded individuals’. 
Partly because there probably is a fair few people who hate the military for one reason or another and are just as bad as those soldiers who act ‘un-heroically’.
But the main reason and the thing that’s bugging me the most, is that I didn’t join because I knew it’d be an unpopular thing, it’d piss people off and it occurred to me that having anything other than the utmost admiration for soldiers, not the military but soldiers, is met by a seemingly unanimous wave on contempt, it’s a total taboo. 

Thank god I have this medium to post my opinions.  

I guess I’m just annoyed that someone started a ‘cause’ directed at killing someone’s freedom of speech around a subject that itself is already difficult to voice negative opinions of.

I’m still not going to join the group but because of the other reason I’ve stated and also knowing it would upset some people would make it a bit of a dick move since I don’t actually feel that strongly.. 

And that FINALLY leads us to this week/month/however long it’s been between posts rule 

Rule #574: Freedom of Speech…
Embrace it, but don’t abuse it and most importantly defend it at all costs. 

And for those of you that hadn’t noticed the use of ” to encapsulate the word cause is to highlight how incredibly OTT the notion is to me.

One last thing before we hit the pic (which according to Google Analytics is the reason 80% of you come here…) and the asterixesisisissesisessss (There were a lot today ok…) If anyone has been offended by this it wasn’t my intention, but you were then you’re probably the wrong sort of person to care about things such as intentions. But all the same feel free to send any hate to Spankie@Spankie.co.uk I’ll be happy to try and explain myself further (and totally not make a hate mail post a’la CFSM) 
 

^^^Yay contextual and a Starcraft reference ^_^ *****

*I know it’s incredibly childish to quote dictionary definitions of words as part of an argument but I felt it was necessary  

 **Yes coming from me and my current level of unemploydnessnessness…

***On a seperate note, do you know that in a call centre you’re not supposed to use the phrase ‘bear with me’?
The phrase is from way back when, when people still used horses and carts as the main form of transportation. If a wheel broke you’d have to ask a kindly stranger to ‘bear with you’ which meant to hold the weight of the cart on their back as in load bearing.
Hummm… Well at least that’s what they told us back when I was training to do customer services, however a quick google search apparently does not agree with me

****Tbf it’s actually the apauling grammar that offends me rather than the contents, and also every post from http://www.lebestfails.com or http://www.loldivision.com or http://www.ujelly.me or any other asjk;bfwer;cv erh;vf er twatty site with the poorest content every, seriously don’t even go look them up, I don’t want to give them the traffic…

You looked didn’t you >_<

***** If you try to correct me on that and say it’s WoW I’ll actually port my page from tumblr into my own website just so I can ban your IP. You sicken me…