1): My father's mother was an emotional black hole. She always needed more love and more attention. My uncle wound up with the worst case of learned helplessness I have ever seen, unable to do anything without her to do it for him. My father joined the Marines and built himself into someone who didn't rely on other people. He still has difficulty openly showing his emotions.
2): My father believes that Vietnam was a just war in which America achieved its primary objective. He gets angry when someone says the war was bad or unjustified.
3): My mother told me once that she thinks my father's health problems are because of Agent Orange. She told me he will never admit this, not even to himself, because he can't accept that his own government poisoned him.
Maybe the reason my father feels the way he does is because the Marines were his father and mother when no one else was.
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