Every generation of U.S. military veterans seems to get some form of the “veterans versus corrupt authorities” story.
For the World War II generation, it was very real. After finally coming home to McMinn County, Tennessee, after the war, they found it had been taken over by a corrupt local government that would arrest them on trumped-up charges and steal their hard-earned savings. When they couldn’t oust the government by legal means, they used their military training and forced the conspirators out in the so-called “Battle of Athens” — a victory that historians have characterized as the only successful armed rebellion in the U.S. since the American Revolution.
The Vietnam generation has its own action hero take on this story, but theirs is entirely fictional. In “First Blood,” John Rambo takes a long trip to visit some buddies from his old Special Forces unit in Vietnam only to find that most of them had died, some from exposure to Agent Orange. While he’s trying to get food in a small town, the local sheriff harasses and unlawfully arrests him; the situation escalates quickly, and Rambo soon finds himself at war with the local government.
Netflix’s new movie “Rebel Ridge” is somewhere between the Battle of Athens and “First Blood.” It’s supposed to be a work of fiction, but what precipitates the fight against corrupt authorities is something that can actually happen in real life — and has.
In “Rebel Ridge,” Marine Corps…
