Vicarious Ted

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A vicarious experience is one person’s living his or her life through another’s.

It’s why we have overbearing stage mothers who, not having the talent to become a star themselves, drive their child who might.

It is why some people without the talent to play a sport wear their Tom Brady football jersey to watch every game and speak about how “we played hard”, “we won a tough game, or “we was robbed.”

When I was a kid, most of the fathers in the neighborhood had fought in either the European or Pacific theater during World War II, but never really talked about it. You could find the occasional picture of them in a city or jungle dressed for war, but you were hard pressed to get them to tell the story behind the picture.

But there was one man in the neighborhood who held an annual “Army Day”.

Each summer on a day that may or may not have had some military significance he would gather us kids all together in his yard and put us through a day of military exercises.

We paraded, did all those acrobatics with toy rifles, were assigned ranks, called him “sir”, and then ended the day eating hot dogs.

This was a man dedicated to the army and its spirit. He told us stories of soldiers’ heroism and the great battles of the war.

Except, as we found out when we had grown out of that stage of our lives, he had never served.

He was compensating for his lack of military experience due to some physical limitation by playing army in a big way.

That is why Ted Cruz is a danger to other people’s children.

As he stated in April, 2015, about serving in the military,
“I will say it’s something I’ve always regretted. I wish I had spent time in the service. It’s something I respect immensely.”
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Back in 2014 he said, “They want to go back and reject modernity. Well, I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

He was talking about ISIS.

Recently he declared, “We will utterly destroy ISIS. We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”

He has never served, but he has no problem speaking about the glories of combat. He loves America, but that is not the same thing as someone who has not served being so glowing in the glories of the work of those who do and did.

But then he votes against the U.S. from entering the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which would have slowed or even stopped illegal arms from being diverted to ISIS and other terror groups. The other three countries who voted against the treaty are benefiting from its defeat as they are Syria, Iran and North Korea.

He earlier voted against arming the Free Syrian Army after President Bashar al-Assad gassed Syrians.

Now he doesn’t want those fleeing Syrians to come here.

He’s like that kid I had in every Social Studies class, when I taught it, who declared after any description of the treatment of slaves in the Unites States, or Jews in Nazi Germany, “Well, If I had been there…..”

Lots of post facto bombast from a safe distance in space and time.

He’s not alone, though.

Many of the people who want to get in there and have other people’s children get the job done, did not serve, with some even going so far as to not bathe for a week and defecate in their pants to avoid serving, or finding multiple ways to avoid service like ingrown hairs on their backside while now demanding that someone make the ultimate sacrifice because they are so American and for the troops.

Like Moe telling Curly and Larry to go ahead and be strong as he was right behind them while crouching down, Ted’s calling for action.

 

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