{"id":2647687,"date":"2026-08-21T07:43:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T11:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignyour-son-doesnt-want-you-to-complain-about-his-deployment\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T07:50:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T11:50:46","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignyour-son-doesnt-want-you-to-complain-about-his-deployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignyour-son-doesnt-want-you-to-complain-about-his-deployment\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Son Doesn&#8217;t Want You To Complain About His Deployment"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignyour-son-doesnt-want-you-to-complain-about-his-deployment%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2647687&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The text discusses the commonality and misconceptions surrounding military service, particularly in the Navy. it highlights that families often complain about long deployments and limited amenities, but these grievances are typical and expected among those in military service. Service members generally take pride in enduring tough conditions, although they may voice frustrations. The article emphasizes that such complaints do not reflect suffering beyond normal military hardships and compares them to historical accounts of severe wartime experiences. It also criticizes the tendency of families and politicians to seek intervention or make public complaints about service conditions,noting that these actions are frequent and often unhelpful. The author stresses that military personnel knowingly accept the challenges they face and urges against portraying them as victims. the piece defends the resilience of service members and criticizes media and public narratives that dramatize routine military hardships.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Families do this. It\u2019s normal. Also, it\u2019s usually unnecessary and misguided. <\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/us\/100000011096947\/family-members-of-sailor-aboard-uss-lincoln-speak-out.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">video<\/a> on the New York Times website features the family members of a sailor at sea on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, and the story frequently descends into the realm of parody. Note the captioning on this screenshot from the paused video:<\/p>\n<figure><\/figure>\n<p>People who enlisted in the U.S. Navy didn\u2019t sign up to <em>be on a ship in the ocean<\/em>, one family member complained, especially if they don\u2019t get plenty of breaks and port calls and have to be there for a long time. Bless your heart.<\/p>\n<p>People who serve in the military are proud of their endurance in bad conditions. They\u2019re proud that they do hard work for an unreasonable period of time. They complain about those conditions, but (to a point) they like it while they hate it. They know they\u2019re doing something that other people couldn\u2019t handle, and the complaining is just a thing everybody does to pass the very long days. Most of them don\u2019t want you to make it a thing, and the ones who do mostly don\u2019t belong in the military. A few weeks on a limited menu is <em>most certainly not<\/em> outside the normal limits of military experience. <\/p>\n<p>If you think anyone on the Abraham Lincoln is <em>suffering a lot<\/em> right now, I recommend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa\/dp\/0891419195\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reading<\/a> <em>With the Old Breed<\/em>, E.B. Sledge\u2019s war memoir about island hopping with the Marine Corps in World War II. We\u2019re grading our deprivation on a curve.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve seen this behavior firsthand. In both the peacetime army in the 1990s and the <em>other<\/em> army after 9\/11, I watched a tiny minority of weak soldiers complain to their mothers, who complained to their congressmen, whose offices called somebody in the chain of command. No one has any patience for it. No one is ever impressed that Private Smith feels stressed by the length of his work day or the communication style of his squad leader. <a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/army-doctor-pleads-not-guilty-to-272-counts-of-sexual-abuse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Abuse<\/a> merits political intervention and news media inquiries; plain sandwiches for several nights in a row <em>does not<\/em>. An extended deployment <em>does not<\/em>. They knew. We all knew. We chose it.<\/p>\n<p>On the topic of seeking support for people who are struggling to tolerate the conditions of their military service, I once reported to my senior drill sergeant that a member of my platoon had become catatonic and non-responsive and appeared to require assistance for a severe psychological crisis. His response was two words long, and indicated that his concern was fairly limited. It\u2019s an environment where people expect you to shut up and deal with it, and patience for someone who doesn\u2019t do that runs out more or less instantly.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/veteransfamiliesunited.org\/intervention-to-help-your-veteran\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">post<\/a> from a support group for veterans strangely enough describes family support for \u201cveterans\u201d who haven\u2019t left the military yet, and it\u2019s a useful look at the advice families get. The group explicitly tells families to do this for a service member who seems to be in crisis: \u201cWrite your State Senator and Representative and your United State Senator and Congressman. Tell them what is happening and ASK for intervention.\u201d Here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/exceptionalmilitaryfam.com\/how-to-advocate\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">another \u201cadvocacy training\u201d website<\/a> for military families that explains how to ask for help from your representatives in Congress. Here\u2019s some <a href=\"https:\/\/girightshotline.org\/en\/military-knowledge-base\/military-army-navy-air-force-marines-coast-guard-gi-rights\/grievances-congressional-assistance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">congressional grievance advice<\/a> for service members. There are a <em>lot<\/em> of people telling military families how to complain.<\/p>\n<p>Families do exactly this, all the time. Here\u2019s a 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/what-i-wrote-to-the-7-congressmen-trying-to-make-my_b_58b345cfe4b0e5fdf6197407\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">blog post<\/a> from a Navy wife who complained to Congress about her husband\u2019s deployment schedule. Congress also does this all the time, and here\u2019s Sen. Mark Warner in 2020, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.warner.senate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/warner-kaine-raise-alarm-over-health-of-crew-on-american-warship-abroad\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">describing<\/a> his letter to senior military officials expressing concern about Covid-19 outbreaks on another aircraft carrier. Branches of the military have created <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usar.army.mil\/Portals\/98\/Documents\/Publications\/Preparing%20Responses%20to%20Congressional%20Special%20Inquires.pdf?ver=2019-09-26-112334-470\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">detailed guides<\/a> for the officers who spend their days responding to the endless flood of congressional inquiries, or for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hqmc.marines.mil\/Agencies\/Office-of-Legislative-Affairs\/Congressional-Correspondence-Section\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">congressional staffers<\/a> who <a href=\"https:\/\/api.army.mil\/e2\/c\/downloads\/2024\/12\/16\/5450497e\/casework-guide-119th-congress.pdf\">send them<\/a>. The senator would like to know if it\u2019s true that you yelled at his constituent\u2019s son, drill sergeant.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the case that the current family complaints about sailors being at sea for a long time and having a limited menu on a ship represent a sudden and shocking break with the American military experience.<\/p>\n<p>If one of yours is at sea: They\u2019re complaining, and their days are long and very hard, but they\u2019re proud. Don\u2019t reduce them to the status of victims because they\u2019re doing work they chose to do. They <em>did<\/em> sign up to be in the ocean on a ship, you poor thing, and they do it well, even when they doubt the strategic wisdom of the thing they\u2019re doing. (There\u2019s a two-word phrase I heard all the time in the infantry, and the second word was \u201cidiotic.\u201d Then we went and did the thing.) <\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t record videos with the legacy media to complain about your family members in the military doing <em>military stuff<\/em>. You\u2019re not helping.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"U.S. Navy \u2022 Sailors in Action During Intense Flight Deck Operations\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pZ4vfNpITEc?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<hr>\n<p>      Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at &#8220;Tell Me How This Ends,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Families often complain about military service; it&#8217;s common but misguided<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2647688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/carrier-ops-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[84489,84488,84490],"class_list":["post-2647687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-deployment-support","tag-military-parenting","tag-parent-child-relationship"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/carrier-ops-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2647687"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2647695,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647687\/revisions\/2647695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2647688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2647687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2647687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2647687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}