The Things They Carried: Political Aspects

"You can tell a true war story if it embarasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth. If you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty." -pg. 66

Even though he does not directly hit on the political scale, he does say that the way you vote depends on whether or not we go to war. While the leaders of this country do make the final decision to send out troops, the beginning phases start in the lands across the seas. And it can only be expected that they would come home with a sailor's vocabulary. These soldiers are boys, many not even old enough to drink a beer, and they are sent not only to see violence every day, but to participate in it as well. They kill people they do not even know, something illegal on the homefront but expected of you in battle. They are burdened with a constant fear of an abrupt death. And so when they come home, if the only way a soldier has changed is by acquiring a more eccentric vocabulary, they should be lauded. This is, if they are able to return home at all.