Martial Atmosphere Increasing and Ominous

Quiet often when I'm watching TV a public service announcement will broadcast about a cause called "Wounded Warrior Project".  Its aim is compassionate and compelling, rallying support around the all-too-many veterans who have returned from combat duty physically and/or mentally traumatized from the experience.  Both volunteers and financial donations are solicited in these ads: I think this is a good cause.  Beyond this, though, is an ominous trend: the increasing martial mood in this nation.

People in uniform brandishing weapons are being increasing held up in our society as a superior class of citizen, to which all others are expected to at least perfunctorily show the signs of humble deference and appreciation.  But although the duties of soldiers, police, and the like have their undeniable value, each of the individuals who engage in these occupations go into them fully aware of the dangers and consequences of their choices, in the case of the military there not having been forced conscription since 1973.  After the Bush administration in 2003 launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the push for exalting the military above anything else was pumped mercilessly through the press.  It soon came to be that anyone who was against this horrible, unnecessary war wasn't properly "supporting the troops".  In my view, it was the bungled continuing occupation of Iraq that the political leaders of the time (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney) in Washington were mismanaging that was a betrayal of support for the troops. The soldiers followed their instructions professionally and bravely, for the most part, and deserve the compassion and support of the rest of society upon their return to civilian society.  But that's just it: it is CIVILIAN society they are returning to, not a continuation of the military.  I also don't understand why, after it had already been made patently clear that we were bogged down in a hopeless quagmire in Iraq, young men and women willingly signed up for military service, knowing perfectly well that they could be the next reported killed or injured in combat.  Why should I necessarily defer to someone who made that kind of deliberate decision to seek out the danger?

In Gainesville, any time a police officer is killed on duty, the street where the death occurred is renamed after the fallen officer.  This on the surface sounds like a nice gesture and shouldn't be a problem, except that, as I said before, it puts uniformed, armed individuals on a higher pedestal above others.  Where I work, at a civilian organization, it has been a long-standing policy to give military veterans and even their spouses, regardless of whether there was any combat duty involved, substantial hiring advantages over non-veterans and their spouses.  I was passed over for a year in my hiring process because of this, and I found myself, after scoring a perfect "100" on the pre-employment examination that was supposed to set the hiring list order, suddenly relegated behind several others who leapfrogged ahead of me because of military connections.  I don't think a civil society that has constitutionally placed the military in a subservient role should be run like that.  Yet in the midst of gridlock on Capital Hill, one kind of issue inevitably gets clear sailing: anything that gives preferential treatment to those in uniform.

We don't live in science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein's universe where the military and those who are members thereof are set apart to enjoy perks and rights that the rest don't.  Or do we?