In the USA now and for many years, veterans or veterans to be, now on active duty having served many tours of combat regardless of their branch of service, regulars, reservists, or National Guard, in combat or awaiting orders to ship out are frequently treated as assets, but expendables or a drain on our capital resources that contribute to the national debt.
Too often in the halls of Congress and countless board rooms all over the country, veterans are considered to be numbers. You can hear, “How many do we need; what will it cost to train and outfit them; where’s the funding coming from?” Often the politically correct response is, “The treasury has more than enough money to cover this budget line item, and besides, it is our policy whether realistic or not requires that we support these numbers, our troops. This is the
Also, in the halls of Congress and countless board rooms, lobbyists from profiteering corporations are executing their duties to company shareholders, ‘negotiating’ or possibly pressuring law-makers to pass this amendment or filibuster that amendment. Interestingly, some of these lobbyists may be wasting their time and money when you consider that many of our elected officials just say ‘no’ to legislation that is needed by veterans and their families if doing so is politically self-serving.
What I have just said about self-serving no-sayers, may resonate in our heads for a while, because it sounds like what we heard during recent voting for health care to keep citizens alive while trying to reduce their pain; creating jobs; preventing home foreclosures; protecting our families from toxic chemicals; and educating our young people. There should be signs posted at Congressional doors stating, “Get out of the way, or risk being trampled on by more hungry, less fortunate countries that are educating themselves and working in ways that could make America a second or third class nation.”
Our little life boats are awash with political polemics, deceit and manipulative word games forever being foisted on “we the people”. The media bombard us with deceptive ads while journalists rant on assuming we are gullible, naïve, hateful, and somewhat dimwitted. Could this be true? Many of the groups paying for this media mania have been known to lie. Well now, could this be true? Can any of us believe that our own elected officials and corporations from here and abroad would lie? It seems that lying and financial abuse have been justified by the Supreme Court’s decision stating that corporations have the same rights as us truly human citizens; thereby, allowing them to spend all the money they want to continue controlling our elected officials.
Maybe it is futile; however, let me point out to the emerging clans of Constitutionalists that they need not worry about our government becoming socialistic; too late. The Government has been performing in socialist ways even as the Constitution was being written, and we’re still here. Actually, what should be pointed out is really scary. There is a hidden government in the
A few weeks ago, I e-mailed President Obama having heard he announced that our country will finally provide therapy for all veterans suffering from PTSD. He pointed out that the VA can no longer deny veterans treatment they so courageously earned. He underscored what any real and competent psychotherapist should already know that a person can suffer PTSD and other dissociative disorders by observing and experiencing trauma without having his or her own guts blown out. I am a recently retired psychotherapist having practiced for over thirty years, most of the time working with victims of domestic, community, and combat trauma.
For many of those years, I would get word-of-mouth referrals from chronically abused and traumatized victims, some of whom had been seen and released often worse off than when they first went to veteran’s hospitals expecting to receive competent help they desperately needed. A few years ago, I experienced that the VA in the region of my practice had hired therapists that could do this work. So, I assumed the same therapeutic credentials would be required throughout the VA community across the country. Recent data and the President’s statement tell me that I was very mistaken about our veterans receiving the help, the bill for which they so dearly paid. They did their jobs even when many jobs they were given were unjustifiable, certainly misguided. Tell us, you in your Congressional halls and you in your board rooms, why you don’t meet our troops lying in their boxes on airport tarmacs, visit the wounded in hospitals, and make certain that those making intake diagnoses, conducting therapy, and are responsible for providing follow-up care make sure veterans and their families get proper support .
I have heard PTSD used as the latest buzz word in the media. Often it is used incorrectly, as are many other physical-emotional disorders. What has been reported is that the VA or people funding therapy have been making wounded veterans prove that they are so traumatized. Get real! By the nature of dissociative and other disorders, the brain’s survival defense reactions to experiencing trauma are to neurologically bury the damned experience. How can anyone who was put in the decision chain expect traumatized victims to prove what their minds are physically, emotionally, and visually burying? Those responsible for this demand should prove they have the ability, not to mention any right, to keep their jobs. Can we ask a veteran who had his buddy torn apart before his or her eyes, or a little child who has been sexually abused by a family member, a big, bad adult who was supposed to be trusted, prove they have buried experiences that their minds naturally hid at the time and place of the event? Come on prove it. How ridiculous!
I discuss trauma to veterans, children and vulnerable adults in depth in my book “How the Family Goes, So Goes Everything; It Is Up to Us”. It is available from Amazon, as well as, other distributers and websites. I am somewhat reluctant to mention my book at this time, but the whole subject of chronic abuse and trauma, how victims can reconstruct their lives, become happy, and have healthy relationships is greatly misunderstood. This must be changed.
