Vietnam

[Mark Mandel]

You may not wish to reply, Victor. But as one who has not previously spoken
in this (I agree, over-politicized) thread, I will throw in my two cents to
disagree in part with you here.

"When we returned from Vietnam, I remember the taunts, the verbal and even
> physical abuse we encountered."
>

There are two "we"s here. The first, in "When we returned from Vietnam", I
agree can be read collectively, referring figuratively to "America" or
literally to "America's troops".

But next comes "I remember the taunts, the verbal and even physical abuse we
encountered". To this reader, the cooccurrence of "I" and "we" in this
clause practically forces a personal, literal interpretation of that "we".
If "I remember" what "we encountered", then that individual "I" who
remembers was a member of that "we" who encountered abuse, the set of
returned veterans receiving tribute. And he wasn't, and he knew it.

Mark A. Mandel

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 4:11 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> http://bit.ly/dCcOTz
> > During a May 18, 2009, military board tribute to veterans in Shelton,
> > Blumenthal was quoted by the Connecticut Post [http://bit.ly/boM16X]
> > as saying, "When we returned from Vietnam, I remember the taunts, the
> > verbal and even physical abuse we encountered."
>
> Sure, YMMV. But what I see here is a "we" that represents the country,
> not "we" including the individual "I". I suppose, a more technically
> accurate statement would have been "When our troops returned from
> Vietnam", but it would not change the meaning of the statement one bit.
> NYT quotes a similar line from the Milford Mirror, another local paper.
>

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