Newzstory where its existence as a nation isn’t intertwined with its military history, from 1776 to now. It runs through the weave of ordinary American life, like the way that “Thank you for your service” is a commonplace saying aimed at veterans and those in uniform. Most American adults don’t serve, or aren’t very connected to the people who do and their families to have a sense of what their lives are like.
Those who do serve often come from generations of the same families, or the same communities, from certain states more than others. It’s a concentration that can make the responsibilities and burdens of military life land disproportionately on them. The public pays little attention unless there’s a crisis situation, like the concerns over mental health for USS Abraham Lincoln sailors.
The military-civilian divide, a gap in understanding and connection, carries real-world impacts on public policy, on the logistical issues of everyday military life, on the views or stereotypes each side carries about the other. It raises questions: In this experiment in democratic life that has run for 250 years, how can military and civilian life sit so far away from each other? And how can that divide be crossed?
Disconnects are ever more evident That America benefits from having a professional, highly trained military whose members have opted into being there is not in contention, nor is there any serious effort to bring back an active draft. These days, the military includes about 2 million people on active duty or in the National Guard and reserves. That number is a tiny portion of the roughly 230 million adult citizens and legal permanent residents in the country.
Contrast it to the World War II era, says Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University, “where everybody, every family, had somebody who had served.” “If not themselves, if not their dad or mom, certainly they had an uncle or an aunt or somebody,” he says. “And the military was widely distributed geographically throughout society.” That’s generally not the case these days, says Kathy Roth-Douquet, co-founder and CEO of Blue Star Families, an organization which advocates for military households and has launched the Do Your Part initiative, calling on s… NEW YORK (AP) — The realization brought Qwynn Galloway-Salazar to tears.
She was looking for civilian work two decades ago after leaving the Army Reserves, but what she saw was the disconnect between her and the panel of interviewers. As a Black woman, she didn’t fit the stereotypes of who veterans were or what military service looked like. “They thought of a veteran to be a white male who served in Vietnam,” said Galloway-Salazar, who has built her professional life since then around veteran issues and working to increase the public’s awareness.
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