Following Orders

This is a depressing story. I grew up in a Navy family and this sounds about right. Takes me back to 1972 it does:

“The problem is, a lot of the chiefs don’t make any secret of the fact that Bush is their man,” said Wendy Layton, program director at the USO center just outside the Mayport Naval Station here. “A lot of these young people feel pressured to register a certain way and vote a certain way.”

The officers may not say so while on registration duty, she added, but enlistees say they usually don’t have to.

“I knew they wanted me to register Republican, and when I came out of the NEX, I just sort of avoided the [registration] table,” said Navy Seaman Charles Gillis, 22, who was invited by officers to register a few weeks ago but declined. He is undecided and still not registered.

[…]

In the Navy’s part of this town, it is fair to say that no non-Republican would feel welcome. Walk into American Legion Post 316 any night and it is crowded with retired Navy enlistees and their wives who for the most part revere Bush. They not only revere him, they take umbrage at any perceived suggestion of disloyalty, a standard met in the eyes of the group one recent night by the mere presence of a reporter.

“Out! Take your notebook and get out of here!” said a battery of voices when I entered, though they relented when others at the bar spoke up for the rights of the free press – a value held as dearly, apparently, as fealty.

Their general rap on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a decorated Navy veteran of Vietnam, was that Kerry didn’t deserve his Silver Star, or his Bronze Star, or his three Purple Hearts; that these decorations were somehow obtained by political calculation. “He was just planning to run for president, right from the beginning, that’s what I think,” said Margaret Leonie Dent, the wife of a Navy retiree. “They say his wounds were paper cuts. Just look at the man. He looks French for God’s sake.”

Tell it to Mark Racicot and Tom DeLay, you pathetic ignoramus.

I’m getting awfully tired of the Borg.