Boy, am I glad we didn’t decide to do anything fun for Spring Break. It’s been pouring rain for two days, and the sky is excessively gloomy. I had thought about trying to clean everything but I’ve discovered that just turning off a couple of lights makes it so you can’t even see the dirt.
Here’s something fun. Apparently, the VA (Veterans Affairs) was going to insist that the famous picture of a young sailor kissing a young lady must not be used anywhere for any reason on the grounds that (checks notes) there might have been questions of “consent.” End Wokeness broke the story open, to the embarrassment of the VA who immediately reversed themselves. Here’s what the original memo said:
“The photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault,” the memo stated.
“To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all Veterans Health Administration facilities.”
It took them a few hours to say this:
“This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities,”
I’m sure you’ve seen the picture:
There are so many interesting bits to pull out of that brief announcement. Let’s just take a gander at it to cheer ourselves on this gloomy day. The first thing we may observe is that it’s been a long long time since anyone working in an HR department has been near a battlefield. Worrying over a photograph like this is only something one can do from the safety of an office tucked away in some windowless basement somewhere in Virginia. Second, it’s interesting to me that they use the word “depict.” I would have said that someone took a picture of two people, that the moment was “captured” not “depicted.” Why use the word “depict?” As if someone had some kind of artistic or political agenda ahead of time? Didn’t someone snap the picture on the day in the midst of amazement and rejoicing? Third, when did this picture become “inconsistent” with the VA’s policy? I mean, I can imagine the moment.
Some young person, fresh out of university, all shiny and enthusiastic, took up her cubicle at the VA and was astonished to discover the strange remnants of an ancient culture pinned up on the walls, lurking in the cupboards. Everywhere she turned, there was another old person from some lost world staring back at her. These other people spoke a strange language and thought things she had never encountered. They had feelings about military service, probably, that ought not to be mentioned amongst decent people—feelings about the founding of the country, feelings of affectionate patriotism. They might have even said things like “America is the greatest country in the world” which made her shudder to her very core.
At first, she tried to just cope, but, as everyone knows, it’s hard to endure living amongst benighted people who don’t know what it means to be civilized, who don’t know how to speak properly, who think appalling thoughts and love wicked things. She became worn down. In the evenings, angrily glaring out at her TikTok followers, she gathered her strength so that the next morning, triggered and full of wroth, her supervisor, just to abate the storm, acquiesced to all her demands. From thenceforth, everyone else working in the office somehow understood that things were different now. Those who preferred the old world went and found different jobs until no one even remembered what that other world was. In this way, like barbarians staring at a crumbling aqueduct, the VA literally said, about their most iconic image, that it was “inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault.”
Of course, the woman in the picture isn’t being assaulted. But also, all the people standing around in the street, looking on in surprise and, some might say, joy because the war was over, probably had at some point in their lives darkened the doors of various churches. Whether or not they believed in God, they lived in a world with moral sensibilities that, on the whole, discouraged men from actually assaulting women, especially in public. When men were caught doing that kind of thing, they were not celebrated. On the contrary, they were ostracized. They were told they were wicked. Nobody explained gently to them that they had a “problem” and needed to get therapy. They might have been beaten up in a back alley. Or, if caught, a priest might have come and prayed for them to repent lest they go down into hell.
This other world, of course, is lost to the VA. Looking at the picture, all they can see is the wasteland of this present world, this disappointing and narrow age whose moral proclivities are formed and shaped in the fires of gender-affirming care and self-affirmation. Recoiling in horror from even the grainiest of images of the past, whoever wrote the memo wants, now, to “foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve.”
Isn’t that precious. The VA is anxious about “psychological safety.” I wish my World War II Flying Ace Grandfather were still here to ask what he might think it means. “Dear Grandfather, what is psychological safety?” I would bellow—for it was sometimes hard to get his attention in his late nineties. He would have stared at me and then offered me a hard candy.
Why is it the job of the VA to foster psychological safety for their employees? What kinds of rotten and toxic things are they doing over there to people? I can well imagine that people come back from war-torn regions of the world would be in need of psychological and physical healing. How terrible that they have to go to get some help from the organization formed just for that purpose only to find the place full of people who don’t know what on earth they’re doing or why.
So anyway, have a nice day!
Sure, it is a non-consensual, aggressive act on the seaman's part—Trigger #1. But that is just the start. Other micro-aggressions would disturb most modern people.
Trigger #2: Did you notice that there is no attempt to incorporate body positivity people into the picture? Everyone is so thin.
Trigger #3: What is the deal with the white stockings on the woman? Is she 'showing off' her white nationalism?
Trigger #4: All the women are wearing dresses, and all the men are in pants. How quaint. But these are stereotypes. Dresses are a tool of oppressive patriarchy.
Trigger #5: Did you notice that the world--I mean literally everything--was in black and white back then? This alone marginalizes people of color.
Trigger #6: Greta Friedman, who is the nurse in the photo, was a member of the DAR, the Daughters of the American Revolution, a known patriotic group.
This is almost more than one can bear.
I wonder if we had to work hard physically like pioneers would we have time or energy to look for offenses.