Now We're Throwing Away Veterans
Who wants therapy from a cubicle? Step right up, patriots! 🇺🇸
It’s not right.
What they’re doing to veterans in America is not right.
That’s one of the wrongs in a long list of wrongs currently happening. And I’m not even talking about all the firing of good-performing veterans from federal jobs. (That’s wrong.)
I’m talking about therapy.
Mental health therapy.
When you get a chance, read this absolutely appalling article. (It should open for free.)
And then imagine having therapy with your counselor in a cubicle at the VA.
A cubicle.
Where you can see other people walking by her. Where your therapist is fighting to hear you and concentrate over all those other voices.
And you want to tell her how you’re scared or terrified or the nightmares won’t stop. How you wipe down your handgun with that supersoft cloth and think about shooting yourself. How you think maybe everyone would be better off if you weren’t around.
But Bob and Frank are walking by in the background. Somewhere you can’t see, is that someone giggling? And oh no, you can hear the woman in the next cubicle crying about the second time they attacked her in the barracks.
Deal With It?
Sure, you might say, but we all have bad memories, trauma, reasons to go to therapy. What’s the big deal? Cope. It’s free so you get what you pay for.
But here’s the deal: veterans already paid … and in such a different way.
Because the difference between veterans and everyone else is this: the U.S. government caused this trauma.
Imagine if the government had promised you that if you did this honorable but dirty job for little pay and protected everyone else in the nation — a job where once they swear you in, you can’t just quit or they send you to prison — that the government would take care of you, help you with your medical problems they caused. That this was a sacred obligation they would always keep.
Our nation made that promise to veterans.
Fight for America and we will support you, even after you take off the uniform, when you pack your bags and try to go back to your life — because your baggage now holds bad memories of all those missions and all that death.
Because the truth they never tell you when you’re signing those enlistment papers is that veterans never really go back to their lives.
Physically you can go back but mentally a part of you always stays right there … wherever the worst shit happened.
I Know a Little Bit About This
I didn’t even serve in combat, only in a combat zone. My military ride as an Air Force officer was easier than that of many others — and still my military experience sits in the back of my mind always, shaping my posture, my reactions, and my thoughts.
It’s so minor but even 30 years after I stopped wearing camouflage, I can’t wait for a subway train without taking a defensive position.
I stand there in Seattle, on the platform waiting for the #1 train, my back to the wall, reminding myself that loud noise and wind doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Just a train coming. Not the train of memories. I’m safe. Everything is okay. I just need to breathe. Other folks are looking at their phones or talking to each other, casually interacting … but my head is on a swivel because something bad could happen.
It’s not normal.
And this is just one small everyday instance of how the military stays with veterans.
The System Is Built That Way
Put an 18 or 21-year-old in a pressure vice for years, training only to effectively and efficiently kill enemies … and what do you create? A veteran with core experiences that will forever shape their lives, for good and for bad.
I can only viscerally imagine what other veterans went through. In Baghdad. In Kabul. On dark nights nobody wants to talk about, and civilians don’t really want to know about. The business of protecting our country is hard and dirty work.
And some of us did it. We raised our right hands and promised to give our lives for this nation.
So, as a nation, we should keep our promises back.
But now we’re asking suicidal veterans to talk about bad memories and difficult emotions in open pits of chairs and bodies.
How is this better than the open burn pits of Saudi and Iraq during the Gulf War? The pits that caused so much physical death and destruction that we have the PACT Act to mandate medical care, years after the fighting ended?
But here we are now — creating open burn pits for veteran minds and souls.
How is this not the shame of a nation?
The VA Isn’t Perfect But It’s Better Than Before
I will admit that the VA isn’t sacred and it could probably use a few job cuts. And, for a long time, it wasn’t even good.
Most of my life, the VA was not a sound medical option. When I got out of the military in 1994, the VA was a scary brand of medicine, underfunded and sketchy at best. Not many vets wanted to use it. Better to bite on a stick and avoid going to the doctor. (Besides, the “suck it up” mentality was bled into you in military training so it always feels like home.)
But then things changed at the VA.
Somewhere after the second Gulf War, the VA received more funding and things got better. Care wasn’t so scary. It was actually good. And they started to help many veterans understand that there were better options than a Glock and an empty barn. The VA became a legitimate source of care and hope. This was a success story.
Let’s Not End That Story
And that’s why it’s so sad that this period — this long overdue VA renaissance — seems to be ending.
They’re planning to cut 80,000 jobs from the VA.
80,000 jobs.
In an organization where it already can take close to a year to get a decision on disability claims (not kidding), there aren’t 80,000 wasteful positions to cut.
But we’re being sold a fairytale of excess by men of excess, greedy politicians and businessmen whose appetites only get bigger.
And while these asshat millionaires and billionaires with their cushy lives of non-service cut the VA to the bone so they can get tax cuts, our scared and scarred veterans are getting therapy in a cubicle farm.
This is the best we can do for those who served our nation?
WTF, America. This is some serious bullshit.
What You Can Do in Two Minutes: Use the 5 Calls website or app to oppose VA cuts. I like the app because it makes it super-easy to call your representative and your senators. Leave a message with your name and your county (and mention that you’re a property owner) and say you want them to protect VA benefits for our servicemembers. And on behalf of all veterans, thank you.
Musical Fadeout: Shut Out the Light by my man Bruce.
It is so cruel. Terribly unhappy men wanting to make sure nobody else is at peace. That threatens them. They were raised in fear so that is their currency. Sure I’m afraid but also completely convinced that I know truth and I have empathy-two things that are anathema to them and I know those values last. This regime will not☮️