Posted on 05/14/2022 11:13:14 PM PDT by pboyington
Donald Trump put our Vets first. Look how “America” treated him. At this point America needs several divisions of “Rambos” to bring justice to the elites and restore the Republic.
Only part of Billy Jack worth watching is when he kicks everyone’s ass in the town square.
What is now called PTSD is the result of being immersed in an environment of intense danger, very little sleep, and seeing things our young minds had difficulty processing. We used to call it "the shakes" and it was completely understandable.
We came home, got married, got our education, got jobs and built our lives. Nobody turned into killing machines. We drank too much and many marriages failed - but eventually most of us got over it, just like all the men who returned from war in all the previous generations.
Rambo was an insult, like every other damn "Vietnam war" movie (.Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, MASH, etc.- and we haven't forgotten how that felt when we got back.
I read the “First Blood” back in ‘73-74 (?), while in the Navy. If I remember correctly, Rambo and the Sheriff both die at the end.
But, of course, that didn’t make for sequels, so...
'First Blood' Director on Original Ending That Gave Stallone's Rambo a Shocking Death
Billy Jack had the worst singing I have ever heard in a movie.
That was enough to make me quit watching.
I don’t know how someone could stomach all four.
Gimme a damn break! I'm an actual combat vet of Vietnam and have the scars to prove it - and that junk you wrote is idiotic.
I know nothing about the author but..
A memorial day message that involves that movie is... well.. pretty disconnected from reality.
Nice write, brother. I did a couple VN tours in armored cav and air cav and have seen most of the films. As to accuracy, mostly crap. Except maybe the rain in Platoon was spot-on. The air cavalry destruction of the village in Apocalypse Now, including the Robert Duvall attitude was more than a little realistic. Of all the war movies, the most accurately disturbing was the opener of Saving Private Ryan. Maybe the closest to PTSD I’ve been since retiring. That’s what the smallest firefight is like, all that destruction and noise and hardly ever seeing the enemy.
BTW, that photo of Stallone? That potato sack fit and form wasn’t the proper field jacket of the era, either. You’d think they could have found one of the early cool ones. I gave one of my originals to my daughter and she made it look terrific. One of the formless ones I just found yesterday while cleaning out my garage. So uncool none of my kids wanted it.
TYFYS
Oh man...didn’t realize there was an alternate ending. Thanks for that.
The first movie, I loved...great action flick that I’ve watched numerous times. The middle couple were OK. The 4th, at least to me, should’ve been the end of the series...as the final scene depicted Rambo returning to his family ranch (walking down the long drive to the house). The 5th movie (with the cartel) was overkill.
But hey, if Rambo survived the 5th movie (I’m not sure he did), and was recalled from the old folk’s home to save someone/somewhere just one more time...I’d buy a ticket. He’d probably mount rocket launchers on his wheelchair, LOL.
PTSD; Home from service and not knowing any better, I got on with OJT in life the best I knew how; albeit in some social-intellectual-spiritual vacuum. Easily found a decent job which just as easily led to a luck of the draw career position. Whatever “issues” I had from service in RVN were resolved by concluding “others had been in deeper s**t than me”. I had stood at the abyss yet skated war’s worst.
Fast-forwarding nearly 20-years, I began experiencing what I thought to be service connected PTSD. To say the least, it was confusing as I thought that was all neatly stored on my mind’s personal history shelf. In my DIY style, came to realize that it wasn’t service connected PTSD but my perception of ethical failures of two next-inline managers. But PTSD nonetheless.
I found the following works by Dr. Jonathan Shay to be of great help in understanding PTSD and perhaps it’s greater presence in daily life. “Jonathan Shay - Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002) and Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (2010)
I disagree
“Rucus” was released in 1980 - 2 years before Rambo.
A Vietnam veteran passing through a small town is harassed by local bullies but he fights back, using his wartime skills, and triggers a full-scale police manhunt.
(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084611/)
Of course we didn’t give them the attention they needed when we called it shell shock either. There’s a reason Nazi memorabilia became such a big part of the outlaw biker image. Cause that’s where a lot of WWII vets found the support they needed, they left our society and made their own.
Most war movies in that genre have been created by American hating leftists.
Now, they own the Presidency.
The U.S. defeated North Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968, was fully out of the fight in 1973, except for the Marines guarding the embassy. Congress lead by Ted Kennedy cut funding to Vietnam in 1975, then the North Invaded.
The U.S. Army already won the Vietnam War five years before Congress lost it. Academics, Hollywood, and the news have been blaming the Army ever since. It has taken a long time to start to correct the record.
Why is the “junk” I wrote idiotic?
We don't need "Vietnam Era vets" implying that we will get violent if somebody give us a hard time.
Don’t forget the KGB was behind the pinko peace movement too. The Left has always despised this country.
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