Wearing unearned medals is protected by 1st Amendment, appeals court rules

[hunter]

98. Posers, fairly obvious, and mostly harmless.

I have a mildly schizophrenic friend who was gung-ho to join the Air Force since he was a little kid. By some miracle he was accepted into the Air Force (possibly because his dad was buddies with the local congressman) but his eccentric behavior soon earned him a general discharge.

Yet his glorious military service continued, inside his head.

He's "retired" from the military now and people who don't know him sometimes mistake him for a traumatized military veteran, even though the only military trauma he ever experienced was that general discharge.

Nevertheless, he's a gentle fellow so not even the truly traumatized vets are bothered by him.

I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and then a Quaker because my mom can't stay out of politics, as the Witnesses require. My mom's dad was a Conscientious Objector during World War II. They gave him a choice when his number came up, prison or building Liberty and Victory Ships. He built ships.

My dad's dad was an Army Air Force officer during World War II. He loved airplanes but he didn't fly, the Air Force had other things for him to do. Mostly he was the handsome guy in uniform with a big black government car and enlisted driver who carried a get-out-of-jail free card for other eccentrics like himself deemed essential to the war effort. When the Air Force was separated from the Army, bolstered by an infusion of amoral "just following orders" paperclip scientists and technicians, my grandfather and most of the people he worked with were honorably discharged.

My grandfather later got work as an engineer for the Apollo Project, which was always his pride and joy. He didn't have any great love for the military industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned us about.

Anyways, that's probably why I can't get too excited about this issue. The most heroic military people I know are pretty low key about it, and the posers are pretty obvious.

"Valor" isn't anything that can be stolen.