Stood in Line at Pharmacy w/ Vietnam Vet Talking....His Take on This Whole Shit Show

Since I’m playing a ‘Runner’ (I started a thread here yesterday w/ that in the title) for several seniors, I had to stop at a Walgreens to get allergy meds. Keeping up the whole ‘social distancing’ gig, an older gent behind me just shook his head sadly at a PO’ed woman at the counter complaining about no TP, no hand sanitizer, limits on certain other items to the poor cashier.

After she paid for her stuff and left, I turned around and said to the gentleman how sad it was that folks younger than us had no idea about what ‘hardship’ really means.

He LOL and said (am paraphrasing as best as I can from memory here), ‘Maybe some good will come of all this. I’d love to see our President give another national public address saying that the new tests are yielding true numbers of infections and that the cure is simple, affordable and in plenty of supply. So everyone can calm the hell down.’

I just howled which made him start chuckling, too. And I agreed w/ him, saying I sincerely hoped that some folks would absorb a few lessons from all of this ‘hardship.’

And here’s what I nearly dropped my jaw at when he replied, ‘Well, maybe Trump should also tell the nation that what we’ve been thru’ is just a sample test of what socialism is really like when it gets ugly. Guaranteed most Americans have never been in countries where socialism has failed, evolved to communism making this little bit of inconvenience our nation is going thru’ now look like a damn cake walk.’

I smiled and said, ‘Now that sounds like the basis of an election campaign for re-election if I’ve ever heard of one!’ His response was something to the effect of ‘Yeah, Trump needs to point that out before November election and suggest people think real hard before casting their vote.’

After paying for my purchase, I turned to the gent and told him ‘thank you for your service, sir.’

As I walked out to the car, I thought about how totally appropriate his comparison was given other countries’ histories.

Just thought I’d share what an old soldier had to say about this whole shit show.