MILITARY VETERANS AND THEIR ROLE IN REVOLUTION:
A brief history and applications.
The modern resistance movement in the United States is notable for many characteristics such as accurately reflecting the diversity of our nation and being able to operate within Constitutional Law, our creativity and our resources, our passion for “fair play” and yet finally not the least of which is our embrace of non-violence, and our willingness to conform to State pressure.
Quite the opposite of the armed resistance that had actually liberated the “Americans” from the “British” or the French People from their dreaded and opulent monarchy in a time when men were on a little more equal footing with the State; a time when the hardware between them was roughly the same, and the game rules a little more flexible.
It was the righteous efforts of the Woman’s Suffrage, civil rights and anti-war movements that brought the “principle of non-violence” to the table, a major “revolution” within insurrectionary tactics while Labor was still being gunned down in the streets of San Francisco and the hills of Virginia.
And yet we find ourselves still engaged in armed struggle. The disquieting and obvious point of the matter is that it is not WE who are armed.
To shame the state into obedience or obsolescence takes so much longer than a couple of well-placed assassinations or massive boycotts, it takes so much longer, and at greater cost to the rebels to petition, entreat or beg the corporations to halt their predations.
Alas, our population has largely become disarmed and apathetic as we have surrendered the responsibilities of our own safekeeping to the very opponents of our liberty and destroyers of our environment.
The use of violence is somehow uncouth; yet its enjoyment as a spectacle has never gone out of fashion. If it were to be used by the movement it would no doubt bring to light our own uncomfortable resemblance to the State itself. Of course, as a counter-state, this is unavoidable; and we regret that we must reflect, mimic or utilize the very materials of State in order so that we may become familiar to the greater masses of people. And it is also regrettable that for the time being we are forced into using the States very own processes to leverage our own position against them; for it is quite obvious that we cannot beat them at their own game, we must force a change of rules. The one caveat being that we must use the tools available to all of us while others of us expropriate the hardware of the state; then we must destroy that hardware and those tools.
One problem is that many people confuse force with violence. Groups become bogged down in endless discussion about “diversity of tactics”; the current euphemism for “violent” reactions to the iniquities of the State. Whether the discussion is revolving around smashing bank windows, or using inflammatory language in our propaganda, there is always someone eager to elevate their status by decrying any aggressive behavior as violence. The real problem here is the disorder created within our movement by militant pacifists and those who would impede our progress with hyper-moral platitudes and class prejudices, thus exposing their own status template as bourgeoisie bohemians and armchair revolutionaries.
We have seen how the State handles “peaceful” demonstrators; the provocateurs will create disorder in the crowd, initiating chaos and the police will beat the protesters down.
When people in the movement begin to defend themselves, fighting back, lashing out at property through vandalism and sabotage, they may become stigmatized and disenfranchised from the movement by well-meaning and decent people who become unwitting collaborators with the State, in many cases are co-conspirators with the State, yet remain in either case symptoms of State. (Just saying.)
Some of our best people leave because of this issue; it is an important one. Another problem is that of consensual definition; terms like force, aggression, violence, anarchy, chaos and disorder must all be equally understood to mean the same things to the same groups of people.
A third problem arises; we must be able to project a credible physical threat to our opponents. We must meet force with equal, if not overwhelming force. What types of force do the people possess? And perhaps more importantly, how do we harness those forces into something which does not alienate people from the movement while attracting more powerful elements into our “counter-state”?
We do not need , nor can we ever hope to best the Police State in a contest of arms. Military veterans know this from the beginning and for that reason, many of them recede into the shadows of oblivion instead of coming together as organized groups to combat social injustice and war. There are indeed many such groups; the challenge is to draw in the homeless and radicalized veterans, the ones still in possession of the strategic faculties granted to them by the United States Military, and the ones who most need to refocus their lives through this type of work.
We must be able to protect our selves in the streets and we must protect our Movement from becoming weakened by the sheer attrition of low morale and time. The State has not been in the game any longer than WeThe People have, and indeed, discussions as to whether or not the State was formed as a response to revolution or if the reverse may be the case has consumed too much of our time.
State repression wears us down, most of our people are generally unused to such a long and seemingly pointless struggle, and furthermore, many are unaccustomed to the rigors of constant struggle. Our country has indeed, melted into the sofa and the soda pop.
But there is a meta-class of people who are accustomed to struggle, who have spent more time “in the field” of State custodianship or repression than many of our more benign comrades, and it is they who must lead the way through the darkness as we the people grope towards the light of an untested freedom, a revolutionary state of being that is self determined and generated; the restraints against the optimization of ones own authentic being have been dissolved along with the social restrictions and artificial realities of our current paradigm.
Everyone involved in the struggle for liberation has a part to play. Our participation is relative to our resources and our willingness to engage the police at street level. The State is extremely threatened by the movement; not by our ability to beat them militarily speaking, but by our stubbornness and our ability to reach the “average citizen” by embarrassing the State.
By exposing their projection of control and dominance as cowardice and an inability to govern, we gain some confidence from the public; they must come to trust us and so long as the revolution isn’t in their backyard or smashing their cars’ windows, we can rest assured that most people will not interfere with us.
Most folks will continue to consume all the shit the Establishment is feeding them, but the mistrust in the System grows as we expose more and more of the Establishments lies and the brutality of the State, the abuses of corporations and our declining prosperity. Of course all the rich guys magazines are proclaiming growth and success and what it means to be cool and powerful, financially stable and what clothes to buy, what to smell like, how to shave your chest and all manner of nonsense.
The attitude is generally something like:
I'm okay, you're okay. Or: I'm okay, fuck off. Or: It Could Be Worse.
Yes, it could be worse. It will get worse. Military veterans and homeless people have had it worse. They have seen what worse looks like, and we of all people should be doing everything in our power to slow it down if not halt it altogether.
Ever since the first army was mustered, soldiers have borne the brunt of a nations poor choices. The nation suffers whether in victory or defeat, and every victory brings more problems, gives birth to new enemies. Every defeat heaps upon us more suffering and discontent. There is no escaping the fact that warfare is the sad, slow, suicide of humanity.
Throughout history, soldiers have mutinied, rebelled against the chain of command,and have killed their leaders; particularly when the army is getting its ass handed to them and it seems the war is lost. Juxtapose this with our earlier problem with the protesters.
People give up the fight, they surrender, they turn, they go over to the other side, they hedge their bets with the opponent and cross their fingers.
Some of the better known instances of military veterans participating in acts of civil disobedience or even outright revolt, are Shay’s Rebellion and the Bonus Army, the GI Resistance Movement during Viet Nam, and the Occupy movement.
In 1786, Daniel Shays, a wounded veteran of the War of Independence returned home to his small Massachusetts farm only to find a mountain of bills and notices, and his neighbors had been losing their properties to the banks, who needed to collect debts incurred by the war. Now our man Shays was already steamed about not being paid to fight in that war, plus there was all this lead stuck in him.
Sounds familiar, yes? My how some things never change.
Faced with “homelessness”, Shay organized a group of other veterans and some pissed off farmers to seize the armory in Springfield, Massachusetts and storm Washington to confront the recently formed “government” and their cronies, the bankers. Shays’ group conducted Direct Actions such as shutting down courts and banks throughout the state, and began to plan the march to Washington. The movement was infiltrated and in short order the“rebellion” was crushed by a private army hired by the bankers and businessmen who had been preying on the people of Massachusetts.
Here we have one of the first examples of military veterans taking a role in the revolutionary process; Shays’ rag tag group of wounded, un paid soldiers and grubby farmers protesting against the elite of their day and ready to string ‘em up if need be. After every avenue for relief was unsuccessful, the group made the transition from peaceable assembly and petition to outright armed hostilities. Shays’ operation was essentially a guerilla act, storming an armory for weapons with the intent of using those weapons against the people who had been responsible for looting the country and destroying peoples’ lives.
Revolutionary rabble-rouser and ironic G-Man Samuel Adams (who drafted the “Riot Acts”, effectively outlawing political protest and advocating the death penalty for “rebels”) was put in charge of the private army that put down the rebellion, hanging two of Shays’ men, but pardoning old Dan Shays himself, whom it is said to have moved to New York and died penniless, reviled as an anarchist and cast into the dustbin of history.
Shays’ autonomous direct action was an inspired piece of work; it was very ballsy and he managed to recruit thousands of people to his cause. (4,000 people signed confessions to the plot in exchange for amnesty)
Yet ultimately the rebellion only served to highlight the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, which alerted the Establishment and prompted the state governments and businessmen to draft even tighter restraints on the people while loosening the bonds of the young corporations.
One hundred and forty-six years later, in 1932, nearly 43,000 people—18,000 veterans and their families and supporters-- led by a former Marine sergeant name of Walter Waters, marched on Washington and began occupying the Mall. They set up a huge encampment (‘Hooverville’, so named after president Herbert Hoover) demanding payment for bonuses promised to them in 1924 that were not payable until 1945. This became the Bonus Army, popularized by Maj. General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket”.
Americas’ pre-eminent war hero, the intrepid Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book entitled “War is a Racket”; a scathing indictment of the fledgling military industrial complex and the on-going collusion of the financiers and politicians who keep America embroiled in conflict both at home and abroad. A showman and whistle-blower ahead of his time, the General laid out the entire scheme of Imperial domination via the agency of economic and military force, as well he exposed a military coup that was using the protest occupations as a cover, and in his book he named names.
In this period between the wars, and after the crippling 1929 crash, Americans were extremely disenfranchised from their political leadership, which had been busy cementing the bonds between Big Business and Government. They had come to question the Governments’ abuse of military power; and indeed they had always done so. From the 1863 Draft Riots in New York to the massive opposition to US involvement in the First World War, the American people were reluctant to accept the massive cost of foreign entanglements and the use of tax dollars to suppress our civil liberties here at home.
Again, veterans had taken to the streets, among them active duty service members to assert their rights and demand what was due to them. Getting your “benefits” 30 years later was not an appealing proposition, especially when your family just got kicked off the farm and you needed a break now.
Again the people used righteous civil disobedience tactics and occupations until enough pressure had been applied and again an American President resorted to calling in the Army rather than cede to the needs of the people. This time, an up and coming officer name of Douglas MacArthur got the job and used 6 RT Renault tanks, an infantry division and the calvary to utterly destroy an encampment filled with impassioned poor people who had gathered together to seek relief from the Federal Government.
No fewer than four veterans were killed and over 1000 people, including women and children, were injured in the crackdown, and 69 police officers were hospitalized.
Yup, right there in DC. But this is nothing new, American troops had been killing people on “our own soil “for a very long time.
People are “shocked” when tyrants order these crimes, yet for all time, all leaders have “killed their own people”. It’s what Empire does. It must consume itself when all else has been subjugated and acquired, when there is nothing left to eat but itself.
Almost 40 years and two major wars later, Americans were again protesting military intervention; this time it was in southeast Asia and Ohio.
In the ranks of the Armed Services, a growing concern over the use of force on civilian populations, whether it was the Marines in ‘Nam or the Ohio National Guard gunning down civilians protesting the afore-mentioned “conflict”, an awareness among the soldiers and the civilians began to grow; whereby they started to question the moral and legal arguments for the use of military “intervention” in instances where it was unclear whether or not the use of armed military force was actually justified.
Concurrently with this trend arose a demand for clarification from military leaders and public officials to be held accountable for their actions and pronouncements and to accept responsibility for the effects of their policies.
Soldiers in the field began to disobey orders, entire companies mutinied, and officers began to fall like flies in friendly fire incidents and fraggings. There had always been stories of unpopular officers catching a tossed cannonball in the forehead back in 1812 or funny little tales of a British officer having a saucy little grenade deposited into one of his ridiculous ornamental pockets during the Boer War, and with the advent of much more technical warfare it became easier to get away with acts of resistance and outright assassination within the military order.
These soldiers couldn’t confess to a fragging, but would be awarded medals for committing atrocities against civilians. This war on southeast Asia is arguably the defining moment of 20th century warfare.
(WW2 has special considerations that cannot be undertaken due to sheer lack of space)
There is little I can add to the voluminous work done on Viet Nam and its’ aftermath other than it was the war that ushered in my birth, and some 40 years later it is still being fought on the streets of America.
Viet Nam brought the war home. An ex-soldier in the 1960’s or 70’s had a much, much different cultural landscape to confront than his father, or even his older brother had to contend with.
Everyone comes home knowing the war is fucked, but few ever stand up to say it. The young men and women coming home from southeast Asia were locking arm with some of the hippies and taking it to the presidents’ doorstep. It began to work so well that in 1970 the President called in the National Guard to suppress the growing anti-war demonstrations taking place at the university in Kent, Ohio.
When the smoke cleared, 4 students lay dead and another 9 were wounded.
After this horror, the movement began to slide into a decline with the introduction of hard drugs into the counter culture.
The veterans carried on, though; it was they who still had friends and lovers back in country.
It was they who had to endure the Kafka-esque mess of the VA and the difficulties of re-adjustment into civilian life. The veteran has a vested interest in ending the war (Now) and as the General had stated in his book the problem was that the average American civilian “…has no skin in the game.”
America’s wars had increasingly come to be fought by other peoples’ children.
During a draft, people are much more into stopping a war.
But when the military is composed of volunteers, there is a collective sigh of relief, because at least somebody else has to do the war.
There is so much to this topic that it could warrant its’ own discussion. Suffice it to mention that the basis of this idea is that war is for poor people. It is fought by poor people commanded by rich people to do their bidding and then kill each other.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were, and remain the vanguard of the anti-war movement. When Veterans for Peace was formed as an off-shoot of the VVAW (endless discussions about “diversity of tactics” split the movement. ) in 1985, America was gripped in economic splendor and Cold War night sweats. The movement that kicked Nixon out of office and ended the war retired into their own “Golden Years” and things seemed relatively quiet here in ‘merica.
The growth of new industries and the rise of the Yuppie quietly folded the idea of outright war making into covert wars, proxy wars, drug wars, wars on hunger, wars on cancer, wars on everything.
Gently grooming the public mind into accepting that “war is normal”, and quietly setting the stage for the next wars we could cop to. The return of the jingoistic,hyper-moral war, the war we can be okay with.
Fifteen years after the last trembling human being was “rescued” from Saigon, we rolled our tank battalions through the deserts of Iraq, crushing the heart of the Persian Empire in two weeks.
This whole nuclear disarmament scheme by the softies on the hill gave the hawks in the Pentagon room to explore different weapons systems and discover new markets. The CIA creates the market, in essence providing opportunities for GOVCORP to keep its’ millions of wage slaves gainfully employed in the business of killing everyone and stealing everything.
Things had developed to the point in America where once again, Americans were asking themselves
“What the fuck just happened, and why does it keep happening every 20 years?” And they noticed they were broke, and they shouldn’ta been, and a few already rich people are incredibly richer.
It is larceny to steal $1000 from one man, but to steal ONE dollar from a THOUSAND men is very petty indeed, is it not?
Particularly if this theft was consensual, as in the disaster of 2008, whereby the sound of a million simultaneous forehead slaps roused our over worked and under employed people from their slumber to once again slouch towards Bethlehem as a new leader promised us a new Nation.
There had been opposition to these latest wars, but the anti-war movement did not really gain a foot hold in the public eye until the Occupy movement captured the nation’s attention during the late months of 2011.
During the formative months of the Occupy, every encampment had its share of homeless veterans spanning the generations. It was possible to share a bottle of cheap liquor with 4 generations of veterans standing in the driving rain. The veterans basically self organized, and many were instrumental in the establishment of camp infrastructure such as medical tents, field kitchens and security patrols. They trained people in the use of radios and taught basic first aid classes in public parks.
When it came time to interface with the State (a sad inevitability, as we have seen thus far) they lined up between the police and the protesters, ready to defend them against our opponents in the Class War. During one such encounter in Oakland California, a veteran was targeted and shot in the head by a 40 gram bean bag fired from the grenade launcher of an Oakland cop. The wounded man fell to the ground and the street medics rushed to his aid. With the scene engulfed in tear gas, the police fired a flash bang grenade and more tear gas into the group of medics trying to evacuate the fallen brother.
Veterans had been coming into the camps and to the demonstrations and rallies and this incident opened a floodgate of media attention, making the police departments around the country reconsider many of their own rules of engagement. It also became a call to arms for many veterans who would not tolerate the fact of a kid who made it through Iraq unscathed becoming brain damaged from a crushed skull simply for protesting the wars his friends were still fighting.
Todays anti war movement is vigorous; it is hard at work, everyday, somewhere in the streets protesting the ongoing wars. But are they fighting against the wars? Who is sabotaging production facilities, jamming communications, interrupting supply lines? Who is blockading munitions plants, hacking the Pentagon or physically preventing military recruiters (head hunters) from coming onto our childrens’ school campus?
As I write this in 2015 it appears to me that some of the most radical activity directed against the Establishment originates from our environmental sectors; the groups taking direct action against the actual machinery and properties of our mutual opponents. Eco-defense and animal liberation groups risk far more for arguably less important issues than war. Moreover, they maintain a high sense of duty, remain strategically oriented and tactically fluid; they actually cause damage, of some sort or another; and I think it only by these measures that above ground groups have any leverage at all with the state.
Without the threat of escalating actions taken by the radical militant wings of the movement, perceived by the authorities as to be somehow under control of the movement itself; the state cannot be compelled to bargain with the professional leaders of the movement. And we have no problem with any such distinctions between participants in the movement. The cohesion of the units within our movement should be purely situational, so that it is more difficult for the authorities to contain us or discover our plans.
Let it remain so. Think rival ninja clans conspiring against one shogun at a time in order to get at the Emperor.
Militant tactics and Peaceful protests are one and the same to the state; it is we who insist upon this argument that “revolution must be achieved” by one means or another. In terms of the struggle, there is no difference between the Department of Motor Vehicles and the nearest Police Department. The opposition sees it no differently; hippies with permits are on the same team as Black Bloc and illegal immigrants.
So it is important that military veterans help other people to see this very important framework of functions and roles, of how stuff gets done when it involves enormous amounts of people.
Veterans from all walks of military life need to step up their duty and reclaim some fresh living. Our hearts may still weep, yet our stories can inspire, our hands can teach. If we can provide some safety; some collective wisdom, learn from what it means to be under constant stress and hungry, and how through team work and dedication we were able to overcome our challenges, we will become an invaluable asset to the “revolution”.
Again, my appeal is not to the mainstream; it is directed at homeless veterans who are frustrated with the direction their lives have taken. I would rather the military veteran compost their skills and experience into a productive force for change, not to succumb to the pressures of “re-integrating” into the War Culture; not to throw away the GI Bill trying to “become” a happy tax payer by getting a business degree, getting into security jobs, etc.
Use that money for music lessons, art school…pursue your passions, even if it is business; let your business lead the way in hiring veterans for “green” jobs…do not try to fit into the social templates that are expected of you.
Recall the many jams you got yourselves out of by coming up with unexpected solutions.
The Establishment expects us to come home and get back in the game, but we know it is’nt that easy. They would like us to sink into the couch and keep our appointments, get back to working and keep waving that flag; that flag that shrouds thousands of coffins.
A flag that only gets buried with good soldiers, not chicken shits or suicides.
I say, quite LOUDLY:
Fuck that system. Fuck them for every sleepless night, every bottle of pills, every failed relationship, every lost job, every lost limb and every life wasted making those fuckers richer than we will ever be.
FUCK THEM for every drunk driving accident, every beaten spouse and every bottle hidden under the bed.
They do not expect us to show up at anti-war rallies or police brutality marches; they do not expect us to produce art and poetry and beautiful things; they do not expect us to LIVE beyond our usefulness to them, they do not expect us to ride bicycles across the country, teach and speak at schools and libraries.
They do not expect us to stand up and fight back. The fight is to be driven out of us, we are to be too tired and wasted to struggle against them, we are to be apathetic and jaded; we are to be grateful.
I am not grateful. I never will be, make me.
A brief history and applications.
The modern resistance movement in the United States is notable for many characteristics such as accurately reflecting the diversity of our nation and being able to operate within Constitutional Law, our creativity and our resources, our passion for “fair play” and yet finally not the least of which is our embrace of non-violence, and our willingness to conform to State pressure.
Quite the opposite of the armed resistance that had actually liberated the “Americans” from the “British” or the French People from their dreaded and opulent monarchy in a time when men were on a little more equal footing with the State; a time when the hardware between them was roughly the same, and the game rules a little more flexible.
It was the righteous efforts of the Woman’s Suffrage, civil rights and anti-war movements that brought the “principle of non-violence” to the table, a major “revolution” within insurrectionary tactics while Labor was still being gunned down in the streets of San Francisco and the hills of Virginia.
And yet we find ourselves still engaged in armed struggle. The disquieting and obvious point of the matter is that it is not WE who are armed.
To shame the state into obedience or obsolescence takes so much longer than a couple of well-placed assassinations or massive boycotts, it takes so much longer, and at greater cost to the rebels to petition, entreat or beg the corporations to halt their predations.
Alas, our population has largely become disarmed and apathetic as we have surrendered the responsibilities of our own safekeeping to the very opponents of our liberty and destroyers of our environment.
The use of violence is somehow uncouth; yet its enjoyment as a spectacle has never gone out of fashion. If it were to be used by the movement it would no doubt bring to light our own uncomfortable resemblance to the State itself. Of course, as a counter-state, this is unavoidable; and we regret that we must reflect, mimic or utilize the very materials of State in order so that we may become familiar to the greater masses of people. And it is also regrettable that for the time being we are forced into using the States very own processes to leverage our own position against them; for it is quite obvious that we cannot beat them at their own game, we must force a change of rules. The one caveat being that we must use the tools available to all of us while others of us expropriate the hardware of the state; then we must destroy that hardware and those tools.
One problem is that many people confuse force with violence. Groups become bogged down in endless discussion about “diversity of tactics”; the current euphemism for “violent” reactions to the iniquities of the State. Whether the discussion is revolving around smashing bank windows, or using inflammatory language in our propaganda, there is always someone eager to elevate their status by decrying any aggressive behavior as violence. The real problem here is the disorder created within our movement by militant pacifists and those who would impede our progress with hyper-moral platitudes and class prejudices, thus exposing their own status template as bourgeoisie bohemians and armchair revolutionaries.
We have seen how the State handles “peaceful” demonstrators; the provocateurs will create disorder in the crowd, initiating chaos and the police will beat the protesters down.
When people in the movement begin to defend themselves, fighting back, lashing out at property through vandalism and sabotage, they may become stigmatized and disenfranchised from the movement by well-meaning and decent people who become unwitting collaborators with the State, in many cases are co-conspirators with the State, yet remain in either case symptoms of State. (Just saying.)
Some of our best people leave because of this issue; it is an important one. Another problem is that of consensual definition; terms like force, aggression, violence, anarchy, chaos and disorder must all be equally understood to mean the same things to the same groups of people.
A third problem arises; we must be able to project a credible physical threat to our opponents. We must meet force with equal, if not overwhelming force. What types of force do the people possess? And perhaps more importantly, how do we harness those forces into something which does not alienate people from the movement while attracting more powerful elements into our “counter-state”?
We do not need , nor can we ever hope to best the Police State in a contest of arms. Military veterans know this from the beginning and for that reason, many of them recede into the shadows of oblivion instead of coming together as organized groups to combat social injustice and war. There are indeed many such groups; the challenge is to draw in the homeless and radicalized veterans, the ones still in possession of the strategic faculties granted to them by the United States Military, and the ones who most need to refocus their lives through this type of work.
We must be able to protect our selves in the streets and we must protect our Movement from becoming weakened by the sheer attrition of low morale and time. The State has not been in the game any longer than WeThe People have, and indeed, discussions as to whether or not the State was formed as a response to revolution or if the reverse may be the case has consumed too much of our time.
State repression wears us down, most of our people are generally unused to such a long and seemingly pointless struggle, and furthermore, many are unaccustomed to the rigors of constant struggle. Our country has indeed, melted into the sofa and the soda pop.
But there is a meta-class of people who are accustomed to struggle, who have spent more time “in the field” of State custodianship or repression than many of our more benign comrades, and it is they who must lead the way through the darkness as we the people grope towards the light of an untested freedom, a revolutionary state of being that is self determined and generated; the restraints against the optimization of ones own authentic being have been dissolved along with the social restrictions and artificial realities of our current paradigm.
Everyone involved in the struggle for liberation has a part to play. Our participation is relative to our resources and our willingness to engage the police at street level. The State is extremely threatened by the movement; not by our ability to beat them militarily speaking, but by our stubbornness and our ability to reach the “average citizen” by embarrassing the State.
By exposing their projection of control and dominance as cowardice and an inability to govern, we gain some confidence from the public; they must come to trust us and so long as the revolution isn’t in their backyard or smashing their cars’ windows, we can rest assured that most people will not interfere with us.
Most folks will continue to consume all the shit the Establishment is feeding them, but the mistrust in the System grows as we expose more and more of the Establishments lies and the brutality of the State, the abuses of corporations and our declining prosperity. Of course all the rich guys magazines are proclaiming growth and success and what it means to be cool and powerful, financially stable and what clothes to buy, what to smell like, how to shave your chest and all manner of nonsense.
The attitude is generally something like:
I'm okay, you're okay. Or: I'm okay, fuck off. Or: It Could Be Worse.
Yes, it could be worse. It will get worse. Military veterans and homeless people have had it worse. They have seen what worse looks like, and we of all people should be doing everything in our power to slow it down if not halt it altogether.
Ever since the first army was mustered, soldiers have borne the brunt of a nations poor choices. The nation suffers whether in victory or defeat, and every victory brings more problems, gives birth to new enemies. Every defeat heaps upon us more suffering and discontent. There is no escaping the fact that warfare is the sad, slow, suicide of humanity.
Throughout history, soldiers have mutinied, rebelled against the chain of command,and have killed their leaders; particularly when the army is getting its ass handed to them and it seems the war is lost. Juxtapose this with our earlier problem with the protesters.
People give up the fight, they surrender, they turn, they go over to the other side, they hedge their bets with the opponent and cross their fingers.
Some of the better known instances of military veterans participating in acts of civil disobedience or even outright revolt, are Shay’s Rebellion and the Bonus Army, the GI Resistance Movement during Viet Nam, and the Occupy movement.
In 1786, Daniel Shays, a wounded veteran of the War of Independence returned home to his small Massachusetts farm only to find a mountain of bills and notices, and his neighbors had been losing their properties to the banks, who needed to collect debts incurred by the war. Now our man Shays was already steamed about not being paid to fight in that war, plus there was all this lead stuck in him.
Sounds familiar, yes? My how some things never change.
Faced with “homelessness”, Shay organized a group of other veterans and some pissed off farmers to seize the armory in Springfield, Massachusetts and storm Washington to confront the recently formed “government” and their cronies, the bankers. Shays’ group conducted Direct Actions such as shutting down courts and banks throughout the state, and began to plan the march to Washington. The movement was infiltrated and in short order the“rebellion” was crushed by a private army hired by the bankers and businessmen who had been preying on the people of Massachusetts.
Here we have one of the first examples of military veterans taking a role in the revolutionary process; Shays’ rag tag group of wounded, un paid soldiers and grubby farmers protesting against the elite of their day and ready to string ‘em up if need be. After every avenue for relief was unsuccessful, the group made the transition from peaceable assembly and petition to outright armed hostilities. Shays’ operation was essentially a guerilla act, storming an armory for weapons with the intent of using those weapons against the people who had been responsible for looting the country and destroying peoples’ lives.
Revolutionary rabble-rouser and ironic G-Man Samuel Adams (who drafted the “Riot Acts”, effectively outlawing political protest and advocating the death penalty for “rebels”) was put in charge of the private army that put down the rebellion, hanging two of Shays’ men, but pardoning old Dan Shays himself, whom it is said to have moved to New York and died penniless, reviled as an anarchist and cast into the dustbin of history.
Shays’ autonomous direct action was an inspired piece of work; it was very ballsy and he managed to recruit thousands of people to his cause. (4,000 people signed confessions to the plot in exchange for amnesty)
Yet ultimately the rebellion only served to highlight the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, which alerted the Establishment and prompted the state governments and businessmen to draft even tighter restraints on the people while loosening the bonds of the young corporations.
One hundred and forty-six years later, in 1932, nearly 43,000 people—18,000 veterans and their families and supporters-- led by a former Marine sergeant name of Walter Waters, marched on Washington and began occupying the Mall. They set up a huge encampment (‘Hooverville’, so named after president Herbert Hoover) demanding payment for bonuses promised to them in 1924 that were not payable until 1945. This became the Bonus Army, popularized by Maj. General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket”.
Americas’ pre-eminent war hero, the intrepid Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book entitled “War is a Racket”; a scathing indictment of the fledgling military industrial complex and the on-going collusion of the financiers and politicians who keep America embroiled in conflict both at home and abroad. A showman and whistle-blower ahead of his time, the General laid out the entire scheme of Imperial domination via the agency of economic and military force, as well he exposed a military coup that was using the protest occupations as a cover, and in his book he named names.
In this period between the wars, and after the crippling 1929 crash, Americans were extremely disenfranchised from their political leadership, which had been busy cementing the bonds between Big Business and Government. They had come to question the Governments’ abuse of military power; and indeed they had always done so. From the 1863 Draft Riots in New York to the massive opposition to US involvement in the First World War, the American people were reluctant to accept the massive cost of foreign entanglements and the use of tax dollars to suppress our civil liberties here at home.
Again, veterans had taken to the streets, among them active duty service members to assert their rights and demand what was due to them. Getting your “benefits” 30 years later was not an appealing proposition, especially when your family just got kicked off the farm and you needed a break now.
Again the people used righteous civil disobedience tactics and occupations until enough pressure had been applied and again an American President resorted to calling in the Army rather than cede to the needs of the people. This time, an up and coming officer name of Douglas MacArthur got the job and used 6 RT Renault tanks, an infantry division and the calvary to utterly destroy an encampment filled with impassioned poor people who had gathered together to seek relief from the Federal Government.
No fewer than four veterans were killed and over 1000 people, including women and children, were injured in the crackdown, and 69 police officers were hospitalized.
Yup, right there in DC. But this is nothing new, American troops had been killing people on “our own soil “for a very long time.
People are “shocked” when tyrants order these crimes, yet for all time, all leaders have “killed their own people”. It’s what Empire does. It must consume itself when all else has been subjugated and acquired, when there is nothing left to eat but itself.
Almost 40 years and two major wars later, Americans were again protesting military intervention; this time it was in southeast Asia and Ohio.
In the ranks of the Armed Services, a growing concern over the use of force on civilian populations, whether it was the Marines in ‘Nam or the Ohio National Guard gunning down civilians protesting the afore-mentioned “conflict”, an awareness among the soldiers and the civilians began to grow; whereby they started to question the moral and legal arguments for the use of military “intervention” in instances where it was unclear whether or not the use of armed military force was actually justified.
Concurrently with this trend arose a demand for clarification from military leaders and public officials to be held accountable for their actions and pronouncements and to accept responsibility for the effects of their policies.
Soldiers in the field began to disobey orders, entire companies mutinied, and officers began to fall like flies in friendly fire incidents and fraggings. There had always been stories of unpopular officers catching a tossed cannonball in the forehead back in 1812 or funny little tales of a British officer having a saucy little grenade deposited into one of his ridiculous ornamental pockets during the Boer War, and with the advent of much more technical warfare it became easier to get away with acts of resistance and outright assassination within the military order.
These soldiers couldn’t confess to a fragging, but would be awarded medals for committing atrocities against civilians. This war on southeast Asia is arguably the defining moment of 20th century warfare.
(WW2 has special considerations that cannot be undertaken due to sheer lack of space)
There is little I can add to the voluminous work done on Viet Nam and its’ aftermath other than it was the war that ushered in my birth, and some 40 years later it is still being fought on the streets of America.
Viet Nam brought the war home. An ex-soldier in the 1960’s or 70’s had a much, much different cultural landscape to confront than his father, or even his older brother had to contend with.
Everyone comes home knowing the war is fucked, but few ever stand up to say it. The young men and women coming home from southeast Asia were locking arm with some of the hippies and taking it to the presidents’ doorstep. It began to work so well that in 1970 the President called in the National Guard to suppress the growing anti-war demonstrations taking place at the university in Kent, Ohio.
When the smoke cleared, 4 students lay dead and another 9 were wounded.
After this horror, the movement began to slide into a decline with the introduction of hard drugs into the counter culture.
The veterans carried on, though; it was they who still had friends and lovers back in country.
It was they who had to endure the Kafka-esque mess of the VA and the difficulties of re-adjustment into civilian life. The veteran has a vested interest in ending the war (Now) and as the General had stated in his book the problem was that the average American civilian “…has no skin in the game.”
America’s wars had increasingly come to be fought by other peoples’ children.
During a draft, people are much more into stopping a war.
But when the military is composed of volunteers, there is a collective sigh of relief, because at least somebody else has to do the war.
There is so much to this topic that it could warrant its’ own discussion. Suffice it to mention that the basis of this idea is that war is for poor people. It is fought by poor people commanded by rich people to do their bidding and then kill each other.
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were, and remain the vanguard of the anti-war movement. When Veterans for Peace was formed as an off-shoot of the VVAW (endless discussions about “diversity of tactics” split the movement. ) in 1985, America was gripped in economic splendor and Cold War night sweats. The movement that kicked Nixon out of office and ended the war retired into their own “Golden Years” and things seemed relatively quiet here in ‘merica.
The growth of new industries and the rise of the Yuppie quietly folded the idea of outright war making into covert wars, proxy wars, drug wars, wars on hunger, wars on cancer, wars on everything.
Gently grooming the public mind into accepting that “war is normal”, and quietly setting the stage for the next wars we could cop to. The return of the jingoistic,hyper-moral war, the war we can be okay with.
Fifteen years after the last trembling human being was “rescued” from Saigon, we rolled our tank battalions through the deserts of Iraq, crushing the heart of the Persian Empire in two weeks.
This whole nuclear disarmament scheme by the softies on the hill gave the hawks in the Pentagon room to explore different weapons systems and discover new markets. The CIA creates the market, in essence providing opportunities for GOVCORP to keep its’ millions of wage slaves gainfully employed in the business of killing everyone and stealing everything.
Things had developed to the point in America where once again, Americans were asking themselves
“What the fuck just happened, and why does it keep happening every 20 years?” And they noticed they were broke, and they shouldn’ta been, and a few already rich people are incredibly richer.
It is larceny to steal $1000 from one man, but to steal ONE dollar from a THOUSAND men is very petty indeed, is it not?
Particularly if this theft was consensual, as in the disaster of 2008, whereby the sound of a million simultaneous forehead slaps roused our over worked and under employed people from their slumber to once again slouch towards Bethlehem as a new leader promised us a new Nation.
There had been opposition to these latest wars, but the anti-war movement did not really gain a foot hold in the public eye until the Occupy movement captured the nation’s attention during the late months of 2011.
During the formative months of the Occupy, every encampment had its share of homeless veterans spanning the generations. It was possible to share a bottle of cheap liquor with 4 generations of veterans standing in the driving rain. The veterans basically self organized, and many were instrumental in the establishment of camp infrastructure such as medical tents, field kitchens and security patrols. They trained people in the use of radios and taught basic first aid classes in public parks.
When it came time to interface with the State (a sad inevitability, as we have seen thus far) they lined up between the police and the protesters, ready to defend them against our opponents in the Class War. During one such encounter in Oakland California, a veteran was targeted and shot in the head by a 40 gram bean bag fired from the grenade launcher of an Oakland cop. The wounded man fell to the ground and the street medics rushed to his aid. With the scene engulfed in tear gas, the police fired a flash bang grenade and more tear gas into the group of medics trying to evacuate the fallen brother.
Veterans had been coming into the camps and to the demonstrations and rallies and this incident opened a floodgate of media attention, making the police departments around the country reconsider many of their own rules of engagement. It also became a call to arms for many veterans who would not tolerate the fact of a kid who made it through Iraq unscathed becoming brain damaged from a crushed skull simply for protesting the wars his friends were still fighting.
Todays anti war movement is vigorous; it is hard at work, everyday, somewhere in the streets protesting the ongoing wars. But are they fighting against the wars? Who is sabotaging production facilities, jamming communications, interrupting supply lines? Who is blockading munitions plants, hacking the Pentagon or physically preventing military recruiters (head hunters) from coming onto our childrens’ school campus?
As I write this in 2015 it appears to me that some of the most radical activity directed against the Establishment originates from our environmental sectors; the groups taking direct action against the actual machinery and properties of our mutual opponents. Eco-defense and animal liberation groups risk far more for arguably less important issues than war. Moreover, they maintain a high sense of duty, remain strategically oriented and tactically fluid; they actually cause damage, of some sort or another; and I think it only by these measures that above ground groups have any leverage at all with the state.
Without the threat of escalating actions taken by the radical militant wings of the movement, perceived by the authorities as to be somehow under control of the movement itself; the state cannot be compelled to bargain with the professional leaders of the movement. And we have no problem with any such distinctions between participants in the movement. The cohesion of the units within our movement should be purely situational, so that it is more difficult for the authorities to contain us or discover our plans.
Let it remain so. Think rival ninja clans conspiring against one shogun at a time in order to get at the Emperor.
Militant tactics and Peaceful protests are one and the same to the state; it is we who insist upon this argument that “revolution must be achieved” by one means or another. In terms of the struggle, there is no difference between the Department of Motor Vehicles and the nearest Police Department. The opposition sees it no differently; hippies with permits are on the same team as Black Bloc and illegal immigrants.
So it is important that military veterans help other people to see this very important framework of functions and roles, of how stuff gets done when it involves enormous amounts of people.
Veterans from all walks of military life need to step up their duty and reclaim some fresh living. Our hearts may still weep, yet our stories can inspire, our hands can teach. If we can provide some safety; some collective wisdom, learn from what it means to be under constant stress and hungry, and how through team work and dedication we were able to overcome our challenges, we will become an invaluable asset to the “revolution”.
Again, my appeal is not to the mainstream; it is directed at homeless veterans who are frustrated with the direction their lives have taken. I would rather the military veteran compost their skills and experience into a productive force for change, not to succumb to the pressures of “re-integrating” into the War Culture; not to throw away the GI Bill trying to “become” a happy tax payer by getting a business degree, getting into security jobs, etc.
Use that money for music lessons, art school…pursue your passions, even if it is business; let your business lead the way in hiring veterans for “green” jobs…do not try to fit into the social templates that are expected of you.
Recall the many jams you got yourselves out of by coming up with unexpected solutions.
The Establishment expects us to come home and get back in the game, but we know it is’nt that easy. They would like us to sink into the couch and keep our appointments, get back to working and keep waving that flag; that flag that shrouds thousands of coffins.
A flag that only gets buried with good soldiers, not chicken shits or suicides.
I say, quite LOUDLY:
Fuck that system. Fuck them for every sleepless night, every bottle of pills, every failed relationship, every lost job, every lost limb and every life wasted making those fuckers richer than we will ever be.
FUCK THEM for every drunk driving accident, every beaten spouse and every bottle hidden under the bed.
They do not expect us to show up at anti-war rallies or police brutality marches; they do not expect us to produce art and poetry and beautiful things; they do not expect us to LIVE beyond our usefulness to them, they do not expect us to ride bicycles across the country, teach and speak at schools and libraries.
They do not expect us to stand up and fight back. The fight is to be driven out of us, we are to be too tired and wasted to struggle against them, we are to be apathetic and jaded; we are to be grateful.
I am not grateful. I never will be, make me.
Article from San Francisco back when One Liberty was with me, excellently executed with upmost expediency for your pleasure:
On Tues / November 19, 2013, two Occupy veterans, Stephen Michael Clift (Army) and James Cartmill, (Navy), radicalized and humanized by their military service and their Occupy experience, began a self-described 'epic' 'Trans-national
mission to wage peace,' Code Name: March Across America. This two-man team
represents Occupy Veterans San Francisco (OVSF), a working group of Occupy San Francisco. Their journey will be undertaken in the name of Veterans For Peace whose 81+ chapters they are determined to visit. They intend to advocate for “the establishment of a special [VFP] chapter for homeless veterans and other
non-joiners,” to honor the government's chosen goal of ending veterans'
homelessness by 2015.
The Occupy Veterans San Francisco mission statement stresses
encouraging U.S. Veterans to cease suiciding through “addictions and despair”
and “instead take their lives back into their own hands, without depending on
either government styled bureaucracy or on the Federal Government itself which
has exploited the soldier and continues to exploit the veteran soldier through
many of the various so-called charitable or non-profit organizations.”
At this writing, the OVSF team is heading south from San Francisco
toward “the sun drenched waves of San Diego,” visiting towns along the Pacific
Coast. So far, they have established temporary base camps and Field Service
Centers as they passed through San Jose (Tues / 11-19), Santa Cruz (Tues /
11-26-13), Monterey (Sun / 12-1-13), Salinas (Tues / 12-3-13), and King City, CA
(Thurs/ 12-5-13). Their next stop is San Luis Obispo.
These are two veterans whose service has trained them well in survival skills: How to weather rough conditions, sleep outdoors on city streets, under Monterey
pines or on beaches, 'spangeing' ('spare changing') for bus money or food as
they walk, thumb, bus, or bike to each new location.
In his serial blog posts on his website,http://occupyveteranssanfrancisco.weebly.com/
Mike Clift writes of waking up to sunlight filtering through the branches of
trees, while “two husky little squirrels run and leap, joyously defying
gravity.”
From San Diego the two will swing
east, crossing the Southern states where they will hit “every Veterans For Peace
chapter between here and Gainesville, [Florida].”
Gainesville
is the home of Mike's personal hero, Viet Nam veteran, Scott Camil.
They will conduct an Occupy Direct Action, bearing the symbol of
their mission, a Peace Dove flag, on which they will collect veterans'
signatures for an May 19th surprise
birthday greeting honoring Camil for his help ending the Viet Nam war,
conducting the Winter Soldier campaigns, and founding VVAW, Viet Nam Veterans
Against The War.
Wrote Mike, “I just read
about [Camil] in a book, and I was amazed and shocked and surprised and cried
and laughed, but the guy's a living hero, and I'm honored to take this upon
myself to surprise him on his birthday with these loving well-wishers'
signatures collected from across the country.
“Scott Camil is awesome. He's more like my Dad, I guess. And, I've
got to carry this flag to him to show him that I love him.”
They intend to connect with, “strengthen and encourage,” other
Occupy groups and build “The Occupy Railroad.”
In each town these Peace Soldiers visit, their modus operandi is to
first reconnoiter, locating the Veterans Memorial where they personally honor
soldiers who gave their lives. Then, they radiate outward establishing a 'field
spectrum,' in which they determine the best location for their Veterans Field
Service Center. At this VFSC locus, they may hand out leaflets to those they
engage in conversation. Or, Occupy style, they may megaphone messages to people
passing by.
In their video diaries, they
explain that their chosen tools of Peace are a megaphone, launching words
instead of ordinance, and a camera, shooting live action instead of deadly
bullets.
In their megaphone addresses, they
plan to weave together local and global issues. Mike, whose Occupy name is
Pirate, describes his speaking style as different from James,' who calls himself
'Liberty' or 'One Liberty.'
“I tend to be
polite yet frank, sometimes steamed, fact-driven op/ed style, and Liberty tends
to comically rant, Ala CARLIN TECHNIQUE.
“Our
favorite bit is the QnA on horn relay, usually short bursts.”
In the future, they intend to show the Fran Strine
video about homeless, addicted veterans, 'Battlefield of the Mind.'
You can follow their trip on the Occupy Veterans San Francisco
website where James and Mike speak about their adventures on video together.
Part 1 and 2 have been posted on Writing For Godot videos, titled 'Veterans
March Across America.'
James, an accomplished
photographer and videographer, also has several websites full of photos and
videos at:
#ICM3
Website - http://independentcitizenmedia.weebly.com
#OSFTV Ustream -
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupysftv
#OSFTV YouTube -
http://www.youtube.com/user/OccupySFTV
Livestream Archive #OSF 2011 -
http://www.livestream.com/occupyliberty
I intend to write updates throughout these two Peace Veterans'
'Epic journey.' In the next installment, I will tell you more about them. You
may feel you know them personally, but there will be much to discover as they
stride across America toward their mutual holy grail.
[All quotes above are taken from Mike Clift's blog
posts.]
VIDEO LINKS:
Pt
1 - #Occupy Veterans San Francisco #VFP #ICM3 UPDATE Santa Cruz 11.29.13
http://youtu.be/VFM0bDGWDHk
Pt 2 - #Occupy Veterans San Francisco #VFP #ICM3 UPDATE pt2 Santa
Cruz 11.29.13
http://youtu.be/lmemRY3n3hg
VETERANS! Formulate response and DA as reaction to this latest tragedy!
On Tues / November 19, 2013, two Occupy veterans, Stephen Michael Clift (Army) and James Cartmill, (Navy), radicalized and humanized by their military service and their Occupy experience, began a self-described 'epic' 'Trans-national
mission to wage peace,' Code Name: March Across America. This two-man team
represents Occupy Veterans San Francisco (OVSF), a working group of Occupy San Francisco. Their journey will be undertaken in the name of Veterans For Peace whose 81+ chapters they are determined to visit. They intend to advocate for “the establishment of a special [VFP] chapter for homeless veterans and other
non-joiners,” to honor the government's chosen goal of ending veterans'
homelessness by 2015.
The Occupy Veterans San Francisco mission statement stresses
encouraging U.S. Veterans to cease suiciding through “addictions and despair”
and “instead take their lives back into their own hands, without depending on
either government styled bureaucracy or on the Federal Government itself which
has exploited the soldier and continues to exploit the veteran soldier through
many of the various so-called charitable or non-profit organizations.”
At this writing, the OVSF team is heading south from San Francisco
toward “the sun drenched waves of San Diego,” visiting towns along the Pacific
Coast. So far, they have established temporary base camps and Field Service
Centers as they passed through San Jose (Tues / 11-19), Santa Cruz (Tues /
11-26-13), Monterey (Sun / 12-1-13), Salinas (Tues / 12-3-13), and King City, CA
(Thurs/ 12-5-13). Their next stop is San Luis Obispo.
These are two veterans whose service has trained them well in survival skills: How to weather rough conditions, sleep outdoors on city streets, under Monterey
pines or on beaches, 'spangeing' ('spare changing') for bus money or food as
they walk, thumb, bus, or bike to each new location.
In his serial blog posts on his website,http://occupyveteranssanfrancisco.weebly.com/
Mike Clift writes of waking up to sunlight filtering through the branches of
trees, while “two husky little squirrels run and leap, joyously defying
gravity.”
From San Diego the two will swing
east, crossing the Southern states where they will hit “every Veterans For Peace
chapter between here and Gainesville, [Florida].”
Gainesville
is the home of Mike's personal hero, Viet Nam veteran, Scott Camil.
They will conduct an Occupy Direct Action, bearing the symbol of
their mission, a Peace Dove flag, on which they will collect veterans'
signatures for an May 19th surprise
birthday greeting honoring Camil for his help ending the Viet Nam war,
conducting the Winter Soldier campaigns, and founding VVAW, Viet Nam Veterans
Against The War.
Wrote Mike, “I just read
about [Camil] in a book, and I was amazed and shocked and surprised and cried
and laughed, but the guy's a living hero, and I'm honored to take this upon
myself to surprise him on his birthday with these loving well-wishers'
signatures collected from across the country.
“Scott Camil is awesome. He's more like my Dad, I guess. And, I've
got to carry this flag to him to show him that I love him.”
They intend to connect with, “strengthen and encourage,” other
Occupy groups and build “The Occupy Railroad.”
In each town these Peace Soldiers visit, their modus operandi is to
first reconnoiter, locating the Veterans Memorial where they personally honor
soldiers who gave their lives. Then, they radiate outward establishing a 'field
spectrum,' in which they determine the best location for their Veterans Field
Service Center. At this VFSC locus, they may hand out leaflets to those they
engage in conversation. Or, Occupy style, they may megaphone messages to people
passing by.
In their video diaries, they
explain that their chosen tools of Peace are a megaphone, launching words
instead of ordinance, and a camera, shooting live action instead of deadly
bullets.
In their megaphone addresses, they
plan to weave together local and global issues. Mike, whose Occupy name is
Pirate, describes his speaking style as different from James,' who calls himself
'Liberty' or 'One Liberty.'
“I tend to be
polite yet frank, sometimes steamed, fact-driven op/ed style, and Liberty tends
to comically rant, Ala CARLIN TECHNIQUE.
“Our
favorite bit is the QnA on horn relay, usually short bursts.”
In the future, they intend to show the Fran Strine
video about homeless, addicted veterans, 'Battlefield of the Mind.'
You can follow their trip on the Occupy Veterans San Francisco
website where James and Mike speak about their adventures on video together.
Part 1 and 2 have been posted on Writing For Godot videos, titled 'Veterans
March Across America.'
James, an accomplished
photographer and videographer, also has several websites full of photos and
videos at:
#ICM3
Website - http://independentcitizenmedia.weebly.com
#OSFTV Ustream -
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupysftv
#OSFTV YouTube -
http://www.youtube.com/user/OccupySFTV
Livestream Archive #OSF 2011 -
http://www.livestream.com/occupyliberty
I intend to write updates throughout these two Peace Veterans'
'Epic journey.' In the next installment, I will tell you more about them. You
may feel you know them personally, but there will be much to discover as they
stride across America toward their mutual holy grail.
[All quotes above are taken from Mike Clift's blog
posts.]
VIDEO LINKS:
Pt
1 - #Occupy Veterans San Francisco #VFP #ICM3 UPDATE Santa Cruz 11.29.13
http://youtu.be/VFM0bDGWDHk
Pt 2 - #Occupy Veterans San Francisco #VFP #ICM3 UPDATE pt2 Santa
Cruz 11.29.13
http://youtu.be/lmemRY3n3hg
VETERANS! Formulate response and DA as reaction to this latest tragedy!
A recent news piece about our fellow homeless veterans: our Sisters That Served. Please pass this along, because although it may seem as if this website is addressing only the men, this is not the case. All my work, all of my writing is dedicated to all veterans, not just men, not just Army, but all of us. WE ARE FAMILY!
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/2014/3/female-veterans-fromthebattlefieldtohomelessness.html
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/2014/3/female-veterans-fromthebattlefieldtohomelessness.html
Recent story about the journey through Arizona:
http://www.trivalleycentral.com/opinion/columns/veteran-marches-on---with-a-cross-country-message/article_eb2a27ce-9b14-11e3-a18e-001a4bcf887a.html
http://www.trivalleycentral.com/opinion/columns/veteran-marches-on---with-a-cross-country-message/article_eb2a27ce-9b14-11e3-a18e-001a4bcf887a.html
Below you can read my working draft of my forth coming book. I am writing this while on the road, using all my experience, as well as the experiences and feelings of all the other veterans I meet out here. Men and women from all eras and conflicts. It is the ultimate "compost" of our veterans' zeitgeist, and although it is solely my work, the ingredients come from many sources, particularly the state of affairs within our nation and the events occurring around our precious planet.
I hope you enjoy it, and you are most certainly invited to leave comments. Indeed, I cannot hope to express the voice of our veterans without your input.
I hope you enjoy it, and you are most certainly invited to leave comments. Indeed, I cannot hope to express the voice of our veterans without your input.
Re-Greening Veterans:
An approach to Post-deployment Life and the radicalization of US Armed Forces Veterans
INTRODUCTION
For several decades now, American citizens
have shamefully and quietly passed by thousands of homeless and needy veterans
living on the streets of our small towns, the steam grates of our teeming
cities, and in the canyons and wilds of suburbia from Washington DC to the
shores of California. And all too infrequently have we as a Nation stopped to
ponder the reasons for this gross negligence of our children. For too long our
communities have suffered; not only from budget cuts and a crumbling
infrastructure, mass-shootings and increasingly annoying police brutality, but
from monolithic case loads and the shrinking availability of affordable
space.
It is time for the men and women who have
returned home from the military to think about the role they played by
supporting US militarism, and the opportunities to heal themselves from the
“damage” they may have done or suffered. One of the things that this author had
to endure after service was the sort of shocking realization that America
appeared far different that it had prior to my departure. The difficulties of
post deployment life vary from each individual, and for many who may have had an
unremarkable service record, such as myself, the difficulties and stress of
military life had a negative impact on my development as a young person. The
constant “existential stress” of my particular unit and duty stations (in
Honduras and Germany respectively) created a very agitated state of mind, and
consequentially, the many disciplinary problems I encountered only cemented a
latent mistrust and disdain for authority.
That being said, when I was released from
the service, I tended to over compensate my expressions of “being free”, that
is, I began a 25 year long attempt at being mainstream while living in a haze of
drugs and parties. I was able to function in terms of getting jobs when I needed
to, find romance and have a wife and child, a home to care for them in. I thus
suffered from a sort of delayed reaction, a form of “blow back” when this
mainstream lifestyle ended, and I could not sustain myself in the shifting sands
of the American economic and political climate. I became fascinated and
disgusted by the fact that so many homeless people I encountered were veterans,
and I became ashamed that I had for so long neglected my comrades, those I may
have served with. I became homeless myself, for no other reason than that I
decided mainstream life was just simply too difficult to sustain, and the values
of “mainstream culture” were simply too banal and
superficial.
I had discovered that the America I was
living in was not the America I was sold as a child. America had appeared to
degenerate into some sick post-Reagan nightmare, and I had done little to
prevent my own part in it. Moreover, as a soldier in Reagans’ army, I had helped
accelerate this slide into entropy, had facilitated the deaths of thousands of
innocent people, and ignored the growing numbers of homeless people, not knowing
that in some cities up to 40% of them were veterans of the armed
forces.
As veterans, we are uniquely qualified to
determine whether or not our government is acting in the best interests of the
people. We know first hand the waste and corruption, the incompetent leadership,
the black mail, rape and assaults, adultery and every other vice imaginable
lurking in the ranks of the chain of command. We have witnessed the deaths of
our friends, the mutilations of children, and the horrible environmental
destruction of our planet. We were a part of that continuum of violence and the
wasteful spending of billions of dollars on the “war
effort”.
Today we will not spend ANY effort on war
making, nor will we support a regime hell bent on the domination of the Earth’s
people and the annihilation of our environment. In this paper I will discuss how
we as veterans of the “Armed Farces” (sic) will be able to heal ourselves and
repair some of the damage we were a part of. As veterans we need to reclaim our
lives on our own terms. Some of us have nothing left. Some of us live benny
check to benny check, lost in the thick fog of addictions and PTSD. Some of us,
the so-called lucky ones are okay, we survived the war, came home to our women
and children, got Govt jobs, or retired out of the
service.
This paper is not written for the patriotic veteran getting 100% from the VA and still waving a flag,
thinking America is still just apple pie, football and Mom. This paper is for the fuckwit, the
loser, the bum, the startled kid coping with nightmares he thought the video
games and movies would have prepared him for. It is for the veteran who is lost
in the bureaucratic no-mans’ land of the VA that refuses to consider that it is
not just combat that wrecks peoples minds, but simply the militarization of ones
life, the forced halt of normal teen development, or the unfortunate veteran who
suffers from PTSD from a training accident or some incident that prevented them
from graduating boot camp yet still irrevocably damaged their lives.
This paper is written by a veteran who asyet does not qualify for VA benefits because my time
in service is not an officially recognized combat period, even though I was shot at by other human
beings, and my return fire may have killed other human beings. You see, the
“Drug War” I was involved in was eclipsed by the bombing of Panama. The
Establishment doesn’t consider the period of the “Cold War”, they considered it
peace time. Yes, the 15 years between Viet Nam and Desert Storm were the only
period of peace in our country. Not quite.
There is never peace, anywhere, with the US
government running amok from the sands of the Middle East to the cities of our
own nation, with violent police crack downs on peaceful anti war demonstrations
and movements, with unending racism and poverty, the only peace we can hope to
achieve is within our selves, and we can turn this inner peace into outward
expressions of love and beauty, and POLITICAL POWER.
Through the techniques of Direct Action and
community organizing we can participate in the struggle to get our nation back
on track domestically, and reduce the hellish footprint we leave wherever our
abused and abusive military might has planted a flag in OUR name.
Chapter 1
Veteran in Distress
“Veteran Anything Helps God Bless”. The signs are everywhere, in
every city, in every town across America. The poor human being behind that
message, scrawled on a dirty pizza box, claims to be a veteran, and stares up at
us with rheumy eyes and filthy outstretched hands. Perhaps we fumble through a
stack of credit cards looking for a dollar bill, or we drop some coins into a
tattered Vietnam Veteran baseball hat.
More often than not, however, we avert our eyes in shame or disgust.
How does a person come to this? How does a man or woman that
survived a war end up ignored and forgotten by their families and fellow
citizens? What could have possibly traumatized this individual so horribly that
they simply could not reclaim their lives?
The Establishment has a neat answer for these questions: It is
their own fault, it must be their choice!
After all, everyone knows the VA takes “care” of the veterans,
why, granpa is doing just fine, isn’t he? Well, we need to consider that
granpas’ war against the Hun and Uncle Johns’ war against the “Red tide” were
“Just Wars”, fought for the sake of the worlds’ safety, welcomed home as heroes
in a booming America, the American Century, full of promise and the strongest
economy the world had ever seen.
But these poor creatures, these homeless drunks and drug
crippled people in broken wheelchairs…what kind of America did they return to?
Perhaps we need to begin considering what type of America did they fight for?
These are hard questions, yet the answers lie before our very
eyes, and within grasp of our everyday experience. This chapter sets out to
discover the various cultural and generational differences between veterans that
served in different conflicts, how those conflicts were marketed to the American
public, and our nations handling of those
conflicts.
It would appear that atrocities are “acceptable” in some
instances and not others. But as the act of war is an atrocity itself, a unique
disease among man and nations, we are primarily concerned with the feelings of
regret or the absence thereof.
The Nation, as we have seen experiences no “regret”. Witness the
statements of “leaders” such as Colin Powell and Madeline Albright whom have
stated respectively as concerns the Iraq war (ongoing, for occupation is
war):
Colin Powell, when questioned about the number of Iraqi deaths
stated: “That is not a number I am concerned with.” {ref}
and as to the woman, the honorable Ms.Albright when asked if the deaths of 100,000 human
beings killed in a manner of weeks, and countless others due to U.S. sanctions
was “worth it” stated: “We think it is worth it.”
{ref}
It would appear to even casual observers that these leaders, far
removed from the risks of war physically, yet clearly responsible for the wars,
are at little risk of becoming homeless, broken individuals. I believe however
that our leaders are no less psychotic or socio-pathic as the most hardened case
of PTSD, and that the man or woman closest to the horror may actually be better
equipped to heal themselves and help others to heal.
I find this challenging however, because no individual really
likes to think of themselves as broken or in need of rehabilitation/reclamation
of their lives. Until they have been “turned on” by some trauma or inspiration.
Perhaps the veteran is finding it too difficult to navigate the
professional and administrative channels necessary to get help or services, and
this may be for a number of reasons, and they may be actual reasons
or idle excuses. Whichever the case may be, the veteran must support themselves.
Now I prefer self reliance as opposed to compelled dependence, and I seek to
liberate myself and others through the motivational technique of politicizing
your condition.
What I mean by this term is merely being able to own the fact
that it is your life, your feelings and your survival at stake. No one is
responsible for taking care of your needs but yourself. This can be a heavy
realization for the person who comes from an entitlement background, such as
“system kids” who segued into service, and had their needs met by the
Establishment. Even silver spoon kids, the officer class and others from a
privileged background. We attempt to own our dysfunction, it does not define us,
and we can refute the diagnosis and optimize the symptoms, we can modify our
thinking and behaviors. We can hold power over ourselves by not letting “the
uniform wear us”.
When we tap into the bottom base of our military experience, we
find the twin pillars of the Armed Farces: Obedience and Submission. Enforced by
the credible threat of Force and Punishment.
Real Authority does not lie in the person “bearing” that
Authority. Rather it emanates from the symbols and tools displayed by that
person. It is a perception of “authority”. Uniforms and weapons. Lab coats and
charts.Backpacks and filthy clothes, surrounded by trash? Now we have the perception
of Submission, of the Quitter.
As soldiers we were viewed with respect and awe, admired, or
reviled, viewed with horror and disgust, all manner of perceptions, and we see
these as being subjective, unique to the person we interface with, and relative
to the situation. The fact is we as human beings remain the same, of course
(“Angel to some, Devil to others”) and we have trouble when we begin to sort out
what was done to whom, and how this modified us.
I am making a digression here, but it is important to remember
the power of appearance and bearing; indeed we may have first learned this while
in service. Now when we have become the poor guy I describe at the beginning of
this chapter, who are we to
blame?
How much of it, in what proportions can be assigned to which
person, institution or incident that we feel is responsible for our
condition?
Surely we are responsible for our appearances and actions. We
can appear pitiable and helpless, or we can maintain ourselves and our bearing.
We can make an effort to be courteous and approachable, we
can maintain our dignity. We can “make” people want to help us by a variety
of methods, but which method of getting help will allow us to feel best about
ourselves?
Let me tell an anecdote.
I first learned the power of the sign, that is the “kite” we fly on
corners, medians, etc. during the summer of 2011. During Occupy, I met a veteran
who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The man was a Combat Engineer and
unfortunately had his fingers blown off trying to do his job. Whenever I meet
folks who are claiming to be veterans, and they happen to have missing limbs, I
remain polite and in this case I was able to ask him in a caring way where had
he left his fingers, and he said he blew them off in
country, he fucked up, he admitted and said he forgot a crucial point of process
and lost his fingers over there.
Now the main question is “And the VA? Whats’ up with that?” Well
he got bad paper, he doesn’t like going there, yadda yadda, maybe he’s a
bullshitter, maybe not. But he had a “credible” story, and he was playing the
vet card.
The guy liked the streets. It was his way, and he made a decent
go of it. Living on maybe 5 to 40 bucks a day, going to the feeds, etc.
I suggested he turn his “poor me, veteran needs help” sign into
something like “Forgot my hand in Afghanistan”. Get it? He lost his hand, he
forgot his fingers, wasn’t wearing gloves because he thought he could skip a
step, or he didn’t’ need them, what ever the case may be, he wasn’t paying
attention.
Now I realize this may strike some readers as morbid, but the
fact remains that when he switched his sign up, he increased his “donations” by
nearly 200%. Consistently. And he was able to approach the idea with a little
bit of humor. He began donating some of his take to the Occupy camp. We became
close, he and I,and we began discussing ways veterans could empower themselves
out of the gutter and off of the streets by the messaging
of our signs. Making the decision to get off the streets and start living
inside is a choice the veteran must make for themselves.
But in the meantime, a guy has to eat, get loaded, and acquire things he needs.
For many, this means using the regular homeless techniques of flying signs and trash picking.
I do not for one minute think these survival strategies are good for ones’ self esteem, or even ones
health. But it IS survival, it IS remaining alive. If we inject meaning and
tactical practice into these actions we can begin to recover our self respect.
These things we do to survive are not just degrading activities
that we MUST do to get by, they become small acts of resistance against an
economic condition that compels us to living like this.
We are not victims of the Establishment, we are a symptom, and
we are the Nations immunity system against further oppression when we realize
the powerful tools we were given by our time in the service.
What makes the” Veteran in Distress” sign a much more powerful
message or tool than other signage is that it does not ask for anything. It is
merely a statement for people to ponder, it is not too long to read, can be kept
fairly legible, and opens up room for conversation.
You are a veteran in distress, but it does not imply that you
are weak or needy, our country is a Nation in Distress, but are we a weak or
needy nation? There are so many things run afoul in our America, not the least
of which is the public disregard and administrative grind of trying to optimize
your life. But the veteran in distress sign only applies to certain situations.
Like when you need something. Whip out the sign. It’s a distress
call,” mayday mayday! I don’t need anyone to take care of me but need
assistance”. When you fly this sign, and you maintain good posture,
reasonable hygiene, flash peace signs and your winning smile, people will
approach you, and you can have this exchange:
Civilian: “Hm. Veteran in Distress. Why are you in distress?
What does this mean, veteran in distress?”
Vet: “ I got injured, need to get medical supplies/aid” or “My
socks are shredded, it’s a drag.”
Whatever the specific need is. No preaching or bitching. Just the truth.
Instead of having change tossed at you and told (yet again) “Get a job”.
And very often you will find you get what you need. People have
both given me the money I needed, or even better, returned with the bandages or
socks. The people are good, for the
most part, they are just afraid of you. And this is the Establishments’ design.
You are a veteran, you killed people, you’re crazy, all kinds of horrible
misconceptions about veterans are out there.
Your job is to take care of yourself and your buddies without
adding to these messed up judgments about veterans, our brothers and sisters.
And when we can open ourselves up to fellowship and bond with other homeless
veterans, we can do all manner of good for ourselves and our communities.
Consider yourself an “outdoorsman” instead of homeless, and you
can politicize your position and start working with the environment or
constitutional issues, local laws that make your chosen way of life more
difficult. You are the defensive arm of the homeless nation, you are not some
cast off piece of shit living day to day on the scraps of affluence and rare
occasions of sympathy.
Build new squads, get team work really working for you. You and
your pirate crew can continue to turn off the public, and make the whole thing
worse, and risky, or you can present a united front of solidarity. Pool your
resources. Instead of everyone taking turns burning out their food stamps,
put them together, and budget it out so everyone can eat more quantities of
better food. Instead of everyone passing out drunk and vulnerable designate a
sentry. Acquire two way radios, stay as “clean” as possible. There are
many ways to keep your body from becoming filthy. Have your gear serviceable,
and try to have as many of the same items among you, such as flashlights, eating
utensils….you know, your gear.
Many of you are reluctant to re-engage military style
discipline, but remember this is self discipline, and you are militarized. You
have been militarized. The Establishment owned you, but now you have become
“owned” by your own dysfunction. They may marginalize you, but you stigmatize
yourself by becoming the person they are looking at. It is important to remember
that difference between looking and seeing.
You must reclaim, regreen yourself, twist the militarized skills
and leverage you have back onto the target, The System That Fucked You.
Politicize, organize, and mobilize. Organization begins with your backpack. Your
main piece of gear. Regular maintenance of the gear will invest it with meaning
and purpose.
Do not allow yourself to neglect your self or your things. If
you are always losing stuff, breaking it, getting it stolen….you have become
dysfunctional. You are disordered. You are playing right into theirhands.
The only time you should lose your gear is when you are in
charge of the moment. Only the cops should be able to take it unless you give it
away after you have upgraded.
Remember always that you served in the military, and the fact
that you are reading this would indicate some desire to better yourself, and
that you have retained some tactical and operational methods buried in that
brain of yours. We are imminently qualified to be successful at surviving in
hostile environments, and we have the abilities to work as teams. We need to
unite as homeless veterans, and not let the inter service antagonisms such as
Navy vs. Airforce, or Marines vs. Army get in our way of building unit cohesion
and Veteran Solidarity.
We are all vets now, and we are all we really have out here.
Everyone bring your skills to the table, and be open, honest and
caring for one another. Civilians don’t really get it, you know? And if we are
choosing this lifestyle, we need to optimize it. Get involved with supporting
the community, do not tend to view everything as bullshit and everyone's’ an
asshole. Your thoughts and feelings affect your behaviors, and you must remain
mindful of how you are feeling, so that you do not inadvertently screw yourself
up or negatively affect others by making stupid mistakes and hasty decisions.
We are in the midst of a class war, and we must remain defenders
of ourselves and our comrades, every other homeless person in America. We are
the most threatening segment of the marginalized, and this does not give us the
right to be disgraceful, or entitle us to perpetrate violence, theft or sexual
assaults. It does entitle us to sleep wherever we want and create our own
hustles to survive. It does grant us the right to pursue our vision of
ourselves, and it gives us the responsibility of having each others’ backs.
Once again we are not powerless to change our lives, we can suck
it up and ask for help from hundreds of Veteran Service Organizations, and we
will have to abide by their rules. If you want to change your life that much,
then go for it. If you want to live your life, your way, you will have to accept
the fact that the Establishment is your opponent, and you will need to re-tool
your mind in order to get back into a military mind set.
Only this time, you ARE the entire chain of command, and you
will need to re-order your thinking process. You will need to become organized
and have goals. You will have daily objectives that must build into a long term
goal. Begin with keeping yourself and your gear high and tight, other self
disciplinary measures will begin to manifest on their own.
Don’t be too hard on yourself or others. Focus all anger or
negativity on the Establishment, not the people you live with.
Bear in mind that the public is oblivious and apathetic. Pity
them knowing that 85% of the population just goes along to get along, and that
the fate of the country is being battled over by the other 15%, and they are
divided into two factions. The Establishment and the Radicals, and the 7.5% of
the Establishment is made up of the Elite with all the resources at their
disposal; media,police,incredible amounts of money with which they pay off politicians…
WE on the other hand, are much weaker “militarily” speaking, but
we hold the higher moral ground, our intentions purer, and our solutions more
agreeable. What we need as a mass movement is credibility, and we can only make
sure our drop in the bucket has as much integrity as possible, and that we
maintain an operational mindset.
You are not a veteran in distress so much as a veteran trying to
de-stress, and no one can make you feel better unless you want to, remain open
to the suggestions of your elder vets, and try to help younger vets. Remember
when you are too busy helping others, you will soon forget your own misery.
There is ALWAYS somebody worse off than you, and it will help put your own
problems into perspective if you help others through their tough
times.
Chapter 2
Composting your Trauma: The Hate Processor
The Nation in Distress is the "nation" of veterans within the greater "nation" of the U.S.
Whether we were drafted or "volunteered" all of
us were somehow compelled into service. It could be said that we knew what we
doing at the time, however we could not fathom what we had gotten ourselves into.
The first realizations for most of us were probably when we
stepped off the bus at Fort Knox, Perris Island, MCRD in San Diego, or any one
of the other many “interesting” universities we found ourselves enrolled in. The
yelling and confusion, the humbling haircuts, the drills, all were completely
shitty at the time. Then came our weapons training and more intense field
training, learning the skills that would keep us and our buddies alive, and we
felt our bodies grow stronger as we came to respect our Drill Sergeants and look
forward to those 5 mile runs in the crisp morning air.
We were swollen with pride and collapsed in exhaustion at the
end of the day, and we were certainly not envious of the poor lug who couldn’t
hack it, or got “profiled” out. Then came graduation, and we amazed ourselves with just how
fucking bad-ass we had actually become. The excitement continues as you head off
for AIT and a new place to get yelled at, but now there are new additional pleasures
such as studying your MOS all day and taking in a movie after chow orchasing tail at the PX.
(C’mon, you all know you did).
Some months later, another ceremony; and you are now ready for
the big time. As in the real world, school is followed by getting a job, and you
get your orders to your first duty station.
It has all the amenities of civilian life, hell, maybe even a
bowling alley or Harley shop. Definitely the yummy Mickey D’s and Burger Kings
or Starbucks that one must have to feel human. Yup, just like a little chunk ‘o
America, right here in the middle of the friggin’ desert or hot steamy jungle,
or frozen piece of wasteland.
Except now you can’t understand a word of the gibberish coming
out of the peoples’ mouths, and even though some of ‘em seem okay with
you being there, most of them appear to view you with suspicion or
contempt.
And those are just your fellow soldiers. The native population of
the land you are occupying is a much tougher crowd.
Your new home has all the same garbage of the real world too:
scandals involving sexual harassment, blackmail, petty drama that can drive you
to heavy drinking, incompetent idiots in charge of lives and munitions,
accidents, drugs, adultery, and the constant obedience and submission to
authority. Throw in on top of all that: constant alarms, raids, mortar barrages,
truck roll-overs, getting shot at, picking up dead bodies, eating shitty food,
screaming villagers, getting no sleep, rotten socks, gear that fails, commanders
with their heads up their asses, sketchy patrols… the list of distinctly non-
civilian amenities and experiences goes on for as long as the tour is long,
and then beyond.
In the case of the sensitive patriot, the disillusionment comes
from the realities of military life and the mission. In the case of the
patriotic psycho/sociopath, it may have been an exhilarating and wonderful time,
but the blowback shall inevitably occur.
Killing and aiding/abetting in the deaths of human beings,
irrespective of whether or not they were “enemy combatants” does incur a
"karmic debt"; and it will become due, sometimes decades later. Whether or not
the "war is a lie" is relative, or rather perhaps subjective may be a better
word...no one can argue that WW2 was a "lie" although it was fomented and
designed by evil financiers and assholes...it was a "just" war according to the
"conventional wisdom" of the time, even today it is the war by which all others
are judged.
Gramps went through hell no better or worse off than any other
combat veteran, not only because gore looks remarkably similar, but fear, shock
and horror are unalterable experiences, felt by every soldier throughout the
history of organized war fare. The men that followed Attila through the Alps
may have been wanton killers and brutal, but fathers and sons none the less.
The cultural “petri dish” of the time was much different than that of the
Napoleonic Wars, or Afghanistan today. The culture into which the person is
born and raised has nearly as much to do with the psychological outcome of the
individual as do the actual conditions on the ground.
Tutsis and Hutus are no doubt irrevocably scarred and damaged
people, but their sense of “honor and loyalty” are far removed from that of the
“civilized” human being. The Establishment, whether it be the Kaiser’s Prussia,
or Nixon’s US of A, or Obamas’ twitter feed, has worked very hard to make War
appear to be an honest undertaking, and it is well known that Military Service
has for the most part been considered a man’s highest duty and honor.
This is grafted onto such concepts as “serving ones’ country” or
“glorious battle”. All such illusions are dismantled rather quickly when the
first comrade falls to the ground silent. But the cloth of stoicism is of many
colors and hues, and these have been tinted by one’s upbringing. Thus Granpa,
the proud Jap-Killer, comes “home” to huge parades after saving the world, and
beats his wife in an alcoholic stupor, a hero none the less.
Or maybe forces the kids to a little Russian Roulette ( I have
actually met a woman whose father did that to her and her brothers; the Old War
Hero committed “suicide” in this manner, damaging the woman for her entire life;
her brothers committed suicide decades later.)
The Greatest Generation weren’t so much the “greatest” generation, but the toughest.
Having come up through the Great Depression, in an era of
“Manifest Destiny” and stories of the Civil War or Uncle Teddy’s romps through
Cuba and the Philippines, these people grew up with the last vestiges of
frontier mentality and a Hollywood obsessed with a macho-driven presentation of
masculinity. It was very easy to get young men to risk their lives for the “adventure of a life time”.
And the threat to the physical continent of North America was very real, a pressing
concern in a time when industrially and logistically speaking the Great Nations
were on a more level playing field.
But because of our victory in WW2, we were able to further
insulate our shores from attack via the twin hammers of carving up Europe and
boosting our industrial and trade capabilities by utilizing the renewed energies
and hopes of the American people. With our indomitable human potential and
access to fresh raw materials we began a new era, one in which the Establishment
turned its’ attention to Global Conquest, much in the manner of 15th
century Spain, England or heck, even the Roman Empire. (“New boss, same as the Old boss”).
The conquest of the western frontier and the security of our
country had been enough to satisfy the peoples’ need for space and security. We
had been content with a sort of isolationist position, and perhaps
we had been hampered by our ability to physically dominate the
planet. But in the post-atomic world, new fears were to accompany our
new power, and we began a race for superiority, on the ground, in outer-space,
and in the Market. All of this boiled over into the Red Scare and the Cold War
that our “boomers” grew up in.
Thus a process began whereby the Establishment
churned out loving portrayals of war glory in the movie houses and very
realistic war toys replaced lead soldiers and the old man’s helmet liner and
marbles. A sort of glamour began to obscure the old mans’ drunken tirades, and
the glum cripples were reminded of their past glories. They were forgiven, and
held their honor intact, even though they “never spoke of it”. The enemy we had
defeated had “deserved” it. After all, there were “the camps” and a powerful
Zionist lobby to make sure the rest of the world would Never Forget.
(Tell it to the Palestinians)
The Establishment didn’t take long before attempting to cash in
on some lingering jingoism and war lust before Korea came on the scene, and this
was our initial effort at making a war but calling it something else. It was
more of a favor, really to the other Western Powers we shared the table with, so
it was labelled a “police action”. We could field test some new war machines and
tactics. Besides, we need to stay in shape, right?
Russia and China had to be shown who was who around Southeast
Asia, lest they get cagey and start stretching the red tentacles closer to home,
and what with these new missiles and stuff, America had to remain
vigilant. Then our war shifted into ‘Nam. You see, the World War never
ended, it just shifted fronts. War is alive, it slithers around, seeking blood
to keep it alive, and now it was the Flower Generations’ turn to give it a shot.
But there was a problem. The kids of the era were not too hip on the whole war
thing. It was better to try out the old Jack Kerouac or go to school (since
working the farm was so old hat, and we didn’t really need to anymore with
entire industries replacing formerly local or family based needs).
Besides after granpas’ “combat fatigue” and outmoded John Wayne
testicularity being out shone by free-love and the Jefferson Airplane, who in
their right mind would want to drop everything to go to some brackish little
place like Viet-What?
Oh Hollywood tried, bless their hearts to make war kinda cool
again, what with Hogan’s Heroes, and Ba Ba Blacksheep or World At War, even
F-Troop. Remember the Honor, Glory and Adventure, you know the stuff Fun is made
of. Wrong. The kids were making fun of that nonsense, in fact
many of them were opposing the war, much to the consternation of the old grumps
and scared little old ladies who were their parents. So hey hey hey whip out the Draft.
From what I understand, after talking to and interviewing
hundreds of ‘Nam vets over the years, most of them were reluctant to head over
to the Selective Service office to begin with, but it was a “thing” you did in
America. When you turned 18 you went to the office, like a rite of passage. Not
as fun as turning 21, or getting your driver’s License, but it was something we
all accepted. But when your lottery number came up, it was a fucking bummer.
And here we note the term “lottery”. (Yay! I won!...wait, oh SHIT!)
Of course there were dudes who just leapt at the chance, there
will always be those types, and we are trying to reduce their numbers through
education, not through the attrition of war. So now we get to the crux of the
matter, the first generation of soldiers that takes the old fox hole question
of “What the hell am I doing here?” to a whole new level. It becomes a question
of why are we here, the mission is not clear, the enemy not easily
identifiable, the patriotic imperative not so clearly defined, the battle
ground not drawn so precisely. The war itself is heavily opposed at home, and
Washington is consistently making bad, bad decisions, the diplomatic efforts
appear to be purposely bungled, and the troops now had access to drugs
previously unknown to US troops of yore, the CIA is meddling with everything… all is confusion.
Racist jerks in charge. Little kids with guns. Hmm. A
little bit like WW2 in some respect, but nowhere near the support from
back home, despite the USO parties. Back home, Sally is getting turned on to the
Haight-Ashbury scene, and daily TV coverage is reinforcing the idea that Viet
Nam is a drag, quite different than the grainy black and white news reels you
remember from when you were a kid rooting for pops and his buddies. This new
breed of soldier is actually a little less “tough” than his forebears, he is
more introspective, he grew up in a different America than the old man did.
Everything had gotten better in America, perhaps the new
generation had become soft, like his old man had said all along.
So maybe he overcompensates things a bit. When all is said and
done, we can safely assume that although no one soldier is more or less tougher
or more sensitive than any other, the accepted ways of behaving or coping with
things differs from generation to generation. Because after all, every soldier
is a human being before anything else. What has shifted is not the condition of
the human soldier, but the cultural setting. And the military is an unchanging
culture. The nature of War is unchanging. We may laud ourselves over reduced
troop deaths, enemy kills and the latest technology, but it all fails in the
face of actually bringing peace to the world. It is such a truism that we
cannot make peace through war. We can only create peace by not making war.
It is simple to comprehend.
But we have an Establishment, a culture that proposes “Peace
through Superior Firepower” and churns out literally mind-numbing films and
video games that make entertainment out of war. This is what we as veterans must
struggle against. To overturn, to compost.
The job the soldier did is important, it is the main
component regarding the level of regret one feels, or serves to excuse the
veteran from the part they played in the war-making process. An infantry man has
killed directly, the pencil pusher in the rear lines has merely been a part of
that process by communicating the orders, the cooks fed, the drivers delivered
the troops, etc. In the former, a "human toll" is quite apparent, in the latter,
the "What the fuck are we doing here?" piece falls into the
puzzle. The tone of the disillusionment shifts with the job, is this clear enough?
It has to do, I think with the actual levels of trauma, the "body horror" one has experienced directly.
You are clearly supposed to be able to run, take a piss and other basic activities, like
hearing things and being able to see. Human beings are meant to be vibrant
living creatures, not maimed by stupid, blind violence or reduced to inert
bloody piles of tissue. An analyst or military planner will have a very
different "color" of dysfunction than a front line soldier.
So the "doing of things" is different than the "knowing of things". Of course there are
various levels of connectivity that are unique to the individual.
What are we to do with these experiences? How do we live with
ourselves when we have become broken equipment, when we have been injured body
and soul? Do we not have every right to pissed off and to not have to deal with
jack shit anymore? Of course, for the physically injured, there is a fairly
smooth transition from ambulance to hospital to home, all facilitated by the
very Establishment that put you there in the first place. And of course, through
all the rehabilitation and hand holding (“You still have one
hand to wave this flag with, don’t ya son? Now smile for the camera!”) there are
the bottles of yummy drugs, to numb you to the pain and the fact that you can’t
hold your penis anymore, or look at a kid in a Nike shirt without flashing back
to that other kid in a Nike shirt that you wasted back in country.
The VA is there for you guys. They have the ability, if not the
resources and time to get you “re-integrated” and on your way back to becoming a
happy tax-payer, as you were in the service. So you have to fall back on the
military’s health-care branch, and there are various ratings and regulations and
requirements and the like. It is almost as if the wounded vet is the “good
soldier” that gave what was expected of his or herself, and the Nation is damn grateful for the sacrifices these
brothers and sisters made. However, it would have been less costly had they been
entirely killed, so this is why they always make you feel like a chump, and keep
you drugged up.
Now; I am not saying that there aren’t any folks working at the
VA who don’t care about the patients, there are some damn good health care
workers and some very sensitive administrators working the VA, and it is very
encouraging that the winds of change are blowing in a favorable direction at
that hallowed and sorely under-funded outfit. But despite progressive healing
models and techniques like meditation, art-therapy, advances in prosthetics,
facial re-construction and the diagnosis of certain brain injuries and PTS
related out-patient programs, beneath it all there is a dependency problem.
And that dependency problem, as a stream, flows two ways. In the
first and most obvious instance, it is the dependency of the veteran on the VA
and the services it provides, typically The Meds. And you must play ball to get
your Meds. But the Meds are good for you, right? They kill the pain, are usually
free, and keep you quiet. For the VA this is cheap and easy. Be a good vet, and
stay in the good graces of the VA.
The other direction, and the one less obvious but more
insidious, is the dependency of the VA on the veteran, the wounded, fucked up
veteran. The one that keeps the money flowing in. From Big Pharma (eager for
test subjects) from Med-Tech firms and all types of contractors for everything
from chow to slippers and soap. Never mind the institutional nature of this, or
that many of these products are also made for the prison industry.
But wait, aren’t we concerned with de-institutionalizing
the veteran? Why yes we are, and that is why we want to encourage veterans to
self- heal. (Self-medicating is another issue to which I shall turn
shortly.)
The VA is dependent upon war. The veteran is dependent on the
VA. As our Military increases in lethality and power technologically, we see
less troop deaths in the field, but more wounded and psychologically traumatized
comrades coming home. And the physically hurt ones are undoubtedly coping with
the “P” as well. This bodes well for the VA and poorly for us as communities and families.
Ever wonder why so many of us are committing suicide? We have
some clue, as veterans, maybe it is in the words of Frankensteins’ monster: “We belong dead.”
It is the public,
including our friends and families that haven’t got a clue, and this is what we
are so pissed off about, that no one except the other homeless bum vet seems to
understand what we went through. Or the guy in the next ward, who got his leg
blown off, or the sister who was raped by a “superior officer”, or the kid
filling sandbags who stared in shock as his buddy came back from a “routine”
patrol as a lump of shredded clothing and mangled body armor.
We have to express, not repress this HATE, for that is what it is, hate, pure and simple.
We hate ourselves for not being stronger, or tougher, for being there, or not there, when our buddies were
out on a patrol, for signing on the dotted line. We hate the chain of command,
the fucking weather, we hate “them” for killing our friends, we hate civilians
for not understanding what we went through while they barely glance at us as we
live on the street. We hate being told to “get a job” while we panhandle, and
our last job was kicking in doors and shooting rifles and driving 100 mph
through dust storms.
Screw you and your “get a job” bullshit, I should never have to
work a day for the rest of my life, I am ALIVE goddamn it!
And this being alive is the important thing.
We embrace the hate, for a while; we have to as there is no
choice, sometimes no other feelings are available. Regret, confusion…these new
constant companions leave no room for joy or love to come into us, which we
desperately need. We need to squeeze the hate-pus from our blistered hearts, we need to let floods of tears
clean our brains, we need to own this, this pain that is ours alone, but not only ours.
It is the pain of life itself, of life wasted, of everything that has ever died, it is the pain and suffering of
all we have ever done or not did, every smiling face turned to ash, every tree,
river and rock blown to smithereens and polluted forever by radioactive dust
and debris.
It is the pain of a nation, of a people oppressed and destroyed
by what you did, or failed to do. You have become, you must
become intensely familiar with the human condition and the fragility of our
lives. You have become a victim of your victims. You must own this pain, so that
you can compost it into something useful to redress the wrong you were a part
of. The Establishment is the only proper target for your anger and hostility.
A vast institutional machine, grinding down everything to
benefit only the automatons and slaves that feed it, the Establishment is not
human; it is completely artificial, though it is composed of human beings and
concepts only. You will no longer focus your anger or violence on other living
human beings nor animals, you will channel all this garbage in your head and
heart onto the Establishment, the Establishment, which is interested in only
pursuing further war. War abroad, war at home, war on nature, all is militarized
under the shadow of the Machine, the thing must be neutralized, and what better
way to fight fire than with water?
And this water is a flood of art, music, civil disobedience and
non-cooperation. It is developing a healthy self attitude on your own terms. It
is doing what they forbid you to do, it is self reliance, autonomy, reflection,
service to others, unit cohesion among the homeless, solidarity with the working
class, doing your own thing standing up for the rights of others, so many things
other than sitting on your ass complaining about it.
Think about the nature of your discharge. Who were you before
and during your service? Who, or “what” have you become now? Do you feel real?
What do you WANT TO DO? Do you want to feel better? Do you want to overthrow the
Government? Do you want to hurt someone or your self? Do you want to end it all
in an orgy of violence?
Or do you appreciate being given a second chance to live? We
want to enjoy the beauty of nature, the experience of being, to paint, write,
love, play with our animals, swim in the ocean and nap in the grass… we want to
be FREE, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and we want to do it on our own terms.
We deserve to be able to live with dignity and pleasure, with
the freedom to move about and not be constrained by all the mechanisms the
Establishment puts on ALL of us, civilian, vet, environment and beast. On the
one hand, we may want “payback” and this will lead us into a path of violence,
and violence is to be avoided, because remember you have had enough to last a lifetime.
The anger leads to hate, and that in turn leads to violence, in
the very least violent thoughts, and as a man thinketh, so he is. Do not let
them gain the upper hand. They say they
want you to get better, but that is just to shove you back into their
template. In reality the Establishment wants you to get worse. All the more
better if you do the job yourself and become a statistic that they can exploit,
or become a criminal they have every justification to eliminate or incarcerate.
I want you to feel better. I want you to be helpful and loving,
caring for the other veterans as if you guys were still in the trenches, because
we ARE. If you are a homeless veteran there is nothing more worthwhile to do
with the rest of your life, then helping other vets and struggling to improve
conditions for ALL of us. Another duty you have is to protect our homeless
brothers and sisters, our family for lack of a better term.
Lead by example, be the person you deserve to be. I don’t care
if you are dumpster diving or flying sign, don’t rip each other off, of
anything! Don’t become exploiters yourselves, taking advantage of women or
treating your pups like shit.
Maintain your dignity, and keep your survival skills sharp. We
want the Establishment to consider us a formidable and credible concern, not
some group of grubby, pissed of losers.
Which unfortunately many of us are okay being just that. And
that means we are a liability not only to ourselves and our comrades, but for
our communities and our country.
TO BE CONTINUED
An approach to Post-deployment Life and the radicalization of US Armed Forces Veterans
INTRODUCTION
For several decades now, American citizens
have shamefully and quietly passed by thousands of homeless and needy veterans
living on the streets of our small towns, the steam grates of our teeming
cities, and in the canyons and wilds of suburbia from Washington DC to the
shores of California. And all too infrequently have we as a Nation stopped to
ponder the reasons for this gross negligence of our children. For too long our
communities have suffered; not only from budget cuts and a crumbling
infrastructure, mass-shootings and increasingly annoying police brutality, but
from monolithic case loads and the shrinking availability of affordable
space.
It is time for the men and women who have
returned home from the military to think about the role they played by
supporting US militarism, and the opportunities to heal themselves from the
“damage” they may have done or suffered. One of the things that this author had
to endure after service was the sort of shocking realization that America
appeared far different that it had prior to my departure. The difficulties of
post deployment life vary from each individual, and for many who may have had an
unremarkable service record, such as myself, the difficulties and stress of
military life had a negative impact on my development as a young person. The
constant “existential stress” of my particular unit and duty stations (in
Honduras and Germany respectively) created a very agitated state of mind, and
consequentially, the many disciplinary problems I encountered only cemented a
latent mistrust and disdain for authority.
That being said, when I was released from
the service, I tended to over compensate my expressions of “being free”, that
is, I began a 25 year long attempt at being mainstream while living in a haze of
drugs and parties. I was able to function in terms of getting jobs when I needed
to, find romance and have a wife and child, a home to care for them in. I thus
suffered from a sort of delayed reaction, a form of “blow back” when this
mainstream lifestyle ended, and I could not sustain myself in the shifting sands
of the American economic and political climate. I became fascinated and
disgusted by the fact that so many homeless people I encountered were veterans,
and I became ashamed that I had for so long neglected my comrades, those I may
have served with. I became homeless myself, for no other reason than that I
decided mainstream life was just simply too difficult to sustain, and the values
of “mainstream culture” were simply too banal and
superficial.
I had discovered that the America I was
living in was not the America I was sold as a child. America had appeared to
degenerate into some sick post-Reagan nightmare, and I had done little to
prevent my own part in it. Moreover, as a soldier in Reagans’ army, I had helped
accelerate this slide into entropy, had facilitated the deaths of thousands of
innocent people, and ignored the growing numbers of homeless people, not knowing
that in some cities up to 40% of them were veterans of the armed
forces.
As veterans, we are uniquely qualified to
determine whether or not our government is acting in the best interests of the
people. We know first hand the waste and corruption, the incompetent leadership,
the black mail, rape and assaults, adultery and every other vice imaginable
lurking in the ranks of the chain of command. We have witnessed the deaths of
our friends, the mutilations of children, and the horrible environmental
destruction of our planet. We were a part of that continuum of violence and the
wasteful spending of billions of dollars on the “war
effort”.
Today we will not spend ANY effort on war
making, nor will we support a regime hell bent on the domination of the Earth’s
people and the annihilation of our environment. In this paper I will discuss how
we as veterans of the “Armed Farces” (sic) will be able to heal ourselves and
repair some of the damage we were a part of. As veterans we need to reclaim our
lives on our own terms. Some of us have nothing left. Some of us live benny
check to benny check, lost in the thick fog of addictions and PTSD. Some of us,
the so-called lucky ones are okay, we survived the war, came home to our women
and children, got Govt jobs, or retired out of the
service.
This paper is not written for the patriotic veteran getting 100% from the VA and still waving a flag,
thinking America is still just apple pie, football and Mom. This paper is for the fuckwit, the
loser, the bum, the startled kid coping with nightmares he thought the video
games and movies would have prepared him for. It is for the veteran who is lost
in the bureaucratic no-mans’ land of the VA that refuses to consider that it is
not just combat that wrecks peoples minds, but simply the militarization of ones
life, the forced halt of normal teen development, or the unfortunate veteran who
suffers from PTSD from a training accident or some incident that prevented them
from graduating boot camp yet still irrevocably damaged their lives.
This paper is written by a veteran who asyet does not qualify for VA benefits because my time
in service is not an officially recognized combat period, even though I was shot at by other human
beings, and my return fire may have killed other human beings. You see, the
“Drug War” I was involved in was eclipsed by the bombing of Panama. The
Establishment doesn’t consider the period of the “Cold War”, they considered it
peace time. Yes, the 15 years between Viet Nam and Desert Storm were the only
period of peace in our country. Not quite.
There is never peace, anywhere, with the US
government running amok from the sands of the Middle East to the cities of our
own nation, with violent police crack downs on peaceful anti war demonstrations
and movements, with unending racism and poverty, the only peace we can hope to
achieve is within our selves, and we can turn this inner peace into outward
expressions of love and beauty, and POLITICAL POWER.
Through the techniques of Direct Action and
community organizing we can participate in the struggle to get our nation back
on track domestically, and reduce the hellish footprint we leave wherever our
abused and abusive military might has planted a flag in OUR name.
Chapter 1
Veteran in Distress
“Veteran Anything Helps God Bless”. The signs are everywhere, in
every city, in every town across America. The poor human being behind that
message, scrawled on a dirty pizza box, claims to be a veteran, and stares up at
us with rheumy eyes and filthy outstretched hands. Perhaps we fumble through a
stack of credit cards looking for a dollar bill, or we drop some coins into a
tattered Vietnam Veteran baseball hat.
More often than not, however, we avert our eyes in shame or disgust.
How does a person come to this? How does a man or woman that
survived a war end up ignored and forgotten by their families and fellow
citizens? What could have possibly traumatized this individual so horribly that
they simply could not reclaim their lives?
The Establishment has a neat answer for these questions: It is
their own fault, it must be their choice!
After all, everyone knows the VA takes “care” of the veterans,
why, granpa is doing just fine, isn’t he? Well, we need to consider that
granpas’ war against the Hun and Uncle Johns’ war against the “Red tide” were
“Just Wars”, fought for the sake of the worlds’ safety, welcomed home as heroes
in a booming America, the American Century, full of promise and the strongest
economy the world had ever seen.
But these poor creatures, these homeless drunks and drug
crippled people in broken wheelchairs…what kind of America did they return to?
Perhaps we need to begin considering what type of America did they fight for?
These are hard questions, yet the answers lie before our very
eyes, and within grasp of our everyday experience. This chapter sets out to
discover the various cultural and generational differences between veterans that
served in different conflicts, how those conflicts were marketed to the American
public, and our nations handling of those
conflicts.
It would appear that atrocities are “acceptable” in some
instances and not others. But as the act of war is an atrocity itself, a unique
disease among man and nations, we are primarily concerned with the feelings of
regret or the absence thereof.
The Nation, as we have seen experiences no “regret”. Witness the
statements of “leaders” such as Colin Powell and Madeline Albright whom have
stated respectively as concerns the Iraq war (ongoing, for occupation is
war):
Colin Powell, when questioned about the number of Iraqi deaths
stated: “That is not a number I am concerned with.” {ref}
and as to the woman, the honorable Ms.Albright when asked if the deaths of 100,000 human
beings killed in a manner of weeks, and countless others due to U.S. sanctions
was “worth it” stated: “We think it is worth it.”
{ref}
It would appear to even casual observers that these leaders, far
removed from the risks of war physically, yet clearly responsible for the wars,
are at little risk of becoming homeless, broken individuals. I believe however
that our leaders are no less psychotic or socio-pathic as the most hardened case
of PTSD, and that the man or woman closest to the horror may actually be better
equipped to heal themselves and help others to heal.
I find this challenging however, because no individual really
likes to think of themselves as broken or in need of rehabilitation/reclamation
of their lives. Until they have been “turned on” by some trauma or inspiration.
Perhaps the veteran is finding it too difficult to navigate the
professional and administrative channels necessary to get help or services, and
this may be for a number of reasons, and they may be actual reasons
or idle excuses. Whichever the case may be, the veteran must support themselves.
Now I prefer self reliance as opposed to compelled dependence, and I seek to
liberate myself and others through the motivational technique of politicizing
your condition.
What I mean by this term is merely being able to own the fact
that it is your life, your feelings and your survival at stake. No one is
responsible for taking care of your needs but yourself. This can be a heavy
realization for the person who comes from an entitlement background, such as
“system kids” who segued into service, and had their needs met by the
Establishment. Even silver spoon kids, the officer class and others from a
privileged background. We attempt to own our dysfunction, it does not define us,
and we can refute the diagnosis and optimize the symptoms, we can modify our
thinking and behaviors. We can hold power over ourselves by not letting “the
uniform wear us”.
When we tap into the bottom base of our military experience, we
find the twin pillars of the Armed Farces: Obedience and Submission. Enforced by
the credible threat of Force and Punishment.
Real Authority does not lie in the person “bearing” that
Authority. Rather it emanates from the symbols and tools displayed by that
person. It is a perception of “authority”. Uniforms and weapons. Lab coats and
charts.Backpacks and filthy clothes, surrounded by trash? Now we have the perception
of Submission, of the Quitter.
As soldiers we were viewed with respect and awe, admired, or
reviled, viewed with horror and disgust, all manner of perceptions, and we see
these as being subjective, unique to the person we interface with, and relative
to the situation. The fact is we as human beings remain the same, of course
(“Angel to some, Devil to others”) and we have trouble when we begin to sort out
what was done to whom, and how this modified us.
I am making a digression here, but it is important to remember
the power of appearance and bearing; indeed we may have first learned this while
in service. Now when we have become the poor guy I describe at the beginning of
this chapter, who are we to
blame?
How much of it, in what proportions can be assigned to which
person, institution or incident that we feel is responsible for our
condition?
Surely we are responsible for our appearances and actions. We
can appear pitiable and helpless, or we can maintain ourselves and our bearing.
We can make an effort to be courteous and approachable, we
can maintain our dignity. We can “make” people want to help us by a variety
of methods, but which method of getting help will allow us to feel best about
ourselves?
Let me tell an anecdote.
I first learned the power of the sign, that is the “kite” we fly on
corners, medians, etc. during the summer of 2011. During Occupy, I met a veteran
who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The man was a Combat Engineer and
unfortunately had his fingers blown off trying to do his job. Whenever I meet
folks who are claiming to be veterans, and they happen to have missing limbs, I
remain polite and in this case I was able to ask him in a caring way where had
he left his fingers, and he said he blew them off in
country, he fucked up, he admitted and said he forgot a crucial point of process
and lost his fingers over there.
Now the main question is “And the VA? Whats’ up with that?” Well
he got bad paper, he doesn’t like going there, yadda yadda, maybe he’s a
bullshitter, maybe not. But he had a “credible” story, and he was playing the
vet card.
The guy liked the streets. It was his way, and he made a decent
go of it. Living on maybe 5 to 40 bucks a day, going to the feeds, etc.
I suggested he turn his “poor me, veteran needs help” sign into
something like “Forgot my hand in Afghanistan”. Get it? He lost his hand, he
forgot his fingers, wasn’t wearing gloves because he thought he could skip a
step, or he didn’t’ need them, what ever the case may be, he wasn’t paying
attention.
Now I realize this may strike some readers as morbid, but the
fact remains that when he switched his sign up, he increased his “donations” by
nearly 200%. Consistently. And he was able to approach the idea with a little
bit of humor. He began donating some of his take to the Occupy camp. We became
close, he and I,and we began discussing ways veterans could empower themselves
out of the gutter and off of the streets by the messaging
of our signs. Making the decision to get off the streets and start living
inside is a choice the veteran must make for themselves.
But in the meantime, a guy has to eat, get loaded, and acquire things he needs.
For many, this means using the regular homeless techniques of flying signs and trash picking.
I do not for one minute think these survival strategies are good for ones’ self esteem, or even ones
health. But it IS survival, it IS remaining alive. If we inject meaning and
tactical practice into these actions we can begin to recover our self respect.
These things we do to survive are not just degrading activities
that we MUST do to get by, they become small acts of resistance against an
economic condition that compels us to living like this.
We are not victims of the Establishment, we are a symptom, and
we are the Nations immunity system against further oppression when we realize
the powerful tools we were given by our time in the service.
What makes the” Veteran in Distress” sign a much more powerful
message or tool than other signage is that it does not ask for anything. It is
merely a statement for people to ponder, it is not too long to read, can be kept
fairly legible, and opens up room for conversation.
You are a veteran in distress, but it does not imply that you
are weak or needy, our country is a Nation in Distress, but are we a weak or
needy nation? There are so many things run afoul in our America, not the least
of which is the public disregard and administrative grind of trying to optimize
your life. But the veteran in distress sign only applies to certain situations.
Like when you need something. Whip out the sign. It’s a distress
call,” mayday mayday! I don’t need anyone to take care of me but need
assistance”. When you fly this sign, and you maintain good posture,
reasonable hygiene, flash peace signs and your winning smile, people will
approach you, and you can have this exchange:
Civilian: “Hm. Veteran in Distress. Why are you in distress?
What does this mean, veteran in distress?”
Vet: “ I got injured, need to get medical supplies/aid” or “My
socks are shredded, it’s a drag.”
Whatever the specific need is. No preaching or bitching. Just the truth.
Instead of having change tossed at you and told (yet again) “Get a job”.
And very often you will find you get what you need. People have
both given me the money I needed, or even better, returned with the bandages or
socks. The people are good, for the
most part, they are just afraid of you. And this is the Establishments’ design.
You are a veteran, you killed people, you’re crazy, all kinds of horrible
misconceptions about veterans are out there.
Your job is to take care of yourself and your buddies without
adding to these messed up judgments about veterans, our brothers and sisters.
And when we can open ourselves up to fellowship and bond with other homeless
veterans, we can do all manner of good for ourselves and our communities.
Consider yourself an “outdoorsman” instead of homeless, and you
can politicize your position and start working with the environment or
constitutional issues, local laws that make your chosen way of life more
difficult. You are the defensive arm of the homeless nation, you are not some
cast off piece of shit living day to day on the scraps of affluence and rare
occasions of sympathy.
Build new squads, get team work really working for you. You and
your pirate crew can continue to turn off the public, and make the whole thing
worse, and risky, or you can present a united front of solidarity. Pool your
resources. Instead of everyone taking turns burning out their food stamps,
put them together, and budget it out so everyone can eat more quantities of
better food. Instead of everyone passing out drunk and vulnerable designate a
sentry. Acquire two way radios, stay as “clean” as possible. There are
many ways to keep your body from becoming filthy. Have your gear serviceable,
and try to have as many of the same items among you, such as flashlights, eating
utensils….you know, your gear.
Many of you are reluctant to re-engage military style
discipline, but remember this is self discipline, and you are militarized. You
have been militarized. The Establishment owned you, but now you have become
“owned” by your own dysfunction. They may marginalize you, but you stigmatize
yourself by becoming the person they are looking at. It is important to remember
that difference between looking and seeing.
You must reclaim, regreen yourself, twist the militarized skills
and leverage you have back onto the target, The System That Fucked You.
Politicize, organize, and mobilize. Organization begins with your backpack. Your
main piece of gear. Regular maintenance of the gear will invest it with meaning
and purpose.
Do not allow yourself to neglect your self or your things. If
you are always losing stuff, breaking it, getting it stolen….you have become
dysfunctional. You are disordered. You are playing right into theirhands.
The only time you should lose your gear is when you are in
charge of the moment. Only the cops should be able to take it unless you give it
away after you have upgraded.
Remember always that you served in the military, and the fact
that you are reading this would indicate some desire to better yourself, and
that you have retained some tactical and operational methods buried in that
brain of yours. We are imminently qualified to be successful at surviving in
hostile environments, and we have the abilities to work as teams. We need to
unite as homeless veterans, and not let the inter service antagonisms such as
Navy vs. Airforce, or Marines vs. Army get in our way of building unit cohesion
and Veteran Solidarity.
We are all vets now, and we are all we really have out here.
Everyone bring your skills to the table, and be open, honest and
caring for one another. Civilians don’t really get it, you know? And if we are
choosing this lifestyle, we need to optimize it. Get involved with supporting
the community, do not tend to view everything as bullshit and everyone's’ an
asshole. Your thoughts and feelings affect your behaviors, and you must remain
mindful of how you are feeling, so that you do not inadvertently screw yourself
up or negatively affect others by making stupid mistakes and hasty decisions.
We are in the midst of a class war, and we must remain defenders
of ourselves and our comrades, every other homeless person in America. We are
the most threatening segment of the marginalized, and this does not give us the
right to be disgraceful, or entitle us to perpetrate violence, theft or sexual
assaults. It does entitle us to sleep wherever we want and create our own
hustles to survive. It does grant us the right to pursue our vision of
ourselves, and it gives us the responsibility of having each others’ backs.
Once again we are not powerless to change our lives, we can suck
it up and ask for help from hundreds of Veteran Service Organizations, and we
will have to abide by their rules. If you want to change your life that much,
then go for it. If you want to live your life, your way, you will have to accept
the fact that the Establishment is your opponent, and you will need to re-tool
your mind in order to get back into a military mind set.
Only this time, you ARE the entire chain of command, and you
will need to re-order your thinking process. You will need to become organized
and have goals. You will have daily objectives that must build into a long term
goal. Begin with keeping yourself and your gear high and tight, other self
disciplinary measures will begin to manifest on their own.
Don’t be too hard on yourself or others. Focus all anger or
negativity on the Establishment, not the people you live with.
Bear in mind that the public is oblivious and apathetic. Pity
them knowing that 85% of the population just goes along to get along, and that
the fate of the country is being battled over by the other 15%, and they are
divided into two factions. The Establishment and the Radicals, and the 7.5% of
the Establishment is made up of the Elite with all the resources at their
disposal; media,police,incredible amounts of money with which they pay off politicians…
WE on the other hand, are much weaker “militarily” speaking, but
we hold the higher moral ground, our intentions purer, and our solutions more
agreeable. What we need as a mass movement is credibility, and we can only make
sure our drop in the bucket has as much integrity as possible, and that we
maintain an operational mindset.
You are not a veteran in distress so much as a veteran trying to
de-stress, and no one can make you feel better unless you want to, remain open
to the suggestions of your elder vets, and try to help younger vets. Remember
when you are too busy helping others, you will soon forget your own misery.
There is ALWAYS somebody worse off than you, and it will help put your own
problems into perspective if you help others through their tough
times.
Chapter 2
Composting your Trauma: The Hate Processor
The Nation in Distress is the "nation" of veterans within the greater "nation" of the U.S.
Whether we were drafted or "volunteered" all of
us were somehow compelled into service. It could be said that we knew what we
doing at the time, however we could not fathom what we had gotten ourselves into.
The first realizations for most of us were probably when we
stepped off the bus at Fort Knox, Perris Island, MCRD in San Diego, or any one
of the other many “interesting” universities we found ourselves enrolled in. The
yelling and confusion, the humbling haircuts, the drills, all were completely
shitty at the time. Then came our weapons training and more intense field
training, learning the skills that would keep us and our buddies alive, and we
felt our bodies grow stronger as we came to respect our Drill Sergeants and look
forward to those 5 mile runs in the crisp morning air.
We were swollen with pride and collapsed in exhaustion at the
end of the day, and we were certainly not envious of the poor lug who couldn’t
hack it, or got “profiled” out. Then came graduation, and we amazed ourselves with just how
fucking bad-ass we had actually become. The excitement continues as you head off
for AIT and a new place to get yelled at, but now there are new additional pleasures
such as studying your MOS all day and taking in a movie after chow orchasing tail at the PX.
(C’mon, you all know you did).
Some months later, another ceremony; and you are now ready for
the big time. As in the real world, school is followed by getting a job, and you
get your orders to your first duty station.
It has all the amenities of civilian life, hell, maybe even a
bowling alley or Harley shop. Definitely the yummy Mickey D’s and Burger Kings
or Starbucks that one must have to feel human. Yup, just like a little chunk ‘o
America, right here in the middle of the friggin’ desert or hot steamy jungle,
or frozen piece of wasteland.
Except now you can’t understand a word of the gibberish coming
out of the peoples’ mouths, and even though some of ‘em seem okay with
you being there, most of them appear to view you with suspicion or
contempt.
And those are just your fellow soldiers. The native population of
the land you are occupying is a much tougher crowd.
Your new home has all the same garbage of the real world too:
scandals involving sexual harassment, blackmail, petty drama that can drive you
to heavy drinking, incompetent idiots in charge of lives and munitions,
accidents, drugs, adultery, and the constant obedience and submission to
authority. Throw in on top of all that: constant alarms, raids, mortar barrages,
truck roll-overs, getting shot at, picking up dead bodies, eating shitty food,
screaming villagers, getting no sleep, rotten socks, gear that fails, commanders
with their heads up their asses, sketchy patrols… the list of distinctly non-
civilian amenities and experiences goes on for as long as the tour is long,
and then beyond.
In the case of the sensitive patriot, the disillusionment comes
from the realities of military life and the mission. In the case of the
patriotic psycho/sociopath, it may have been an exhilarating and wonderful time,
but the blowback shall inevitably occur.
Killing and aiding/abetting in the deaths of human beings,
irrespective of whether or not they were “enemy combatants” does incur a
"karmic debt"; and it will become due, sometimes decades later. Whether or not
the "war is a lie" is relative, or rather perhaps subjective may be a better
word...no one can argue that WW2 was a "lie" although it was fomented and
designed by evil financiers and assholes...it was a "just" war according to the
"conventional wisdom" of the time, even today it is the war by which all others
are judged.
Gramps went through hell no better or worse off than any other
combat veteran, not only because gore looks remarkably similar, but fear, shock
and horror are unalterable experiences, felt by every soldier throughout the
history of organized war fare. The men that followed Attila through the Alps
may have been wanton killers and brutal, but fathers and sons none the less.
The cultural “petri dish” of the time was much different than that of the
Napoleonic Wars, or Afghanistan today. The culture into which the person is
born and raised has nearly as much to do with the psychological outcome of the
individual as do the actual conditions on the ground.
Tutsis and Hutus are no doubt irrevocably scarred and damaged
people, but their sense of “honor and loyalty” are far removed from that of the
“civilized” human being. The Establishment, whether it be the Kaiser’s Prussia,
or Nixon’s US of A, or Obamas’ twitter feed, has worked very hard to make War
appear to be an honest undertaking, and it is well known that Military Service
has for the most part been considered a man’s highest duty and honor.
This is grafted onto such concepts as “serving ones’ country” or
“glorious battle”. All such illusions are dismantled rather quickly when the
first comrade falls to the ground silent. But the cloth of stoicism is of many
colors and hues, and these have been tinted by one’s upbringing. Thus Granpa,
the proud Jap-Killer, comes “home” to huge parades after saving the world, and
beats his wife in an alcoholic stupor, a hero none the less.
Or maybe forces the kids to a little Russian Roulette ( I have
actually met a woman whose father did that to her and her brothers; the Old War
Hero committed “suicide” in this manner, damaging the woman for her entire life;
her brothers committed suicide decades later.)
The Greatest Generation weren’t so much the “greatest” generation, but the toughest.
Having come up through the Great Depression, in an era of
“Manifest Destiny” and stories of the Civil War or Uncle Teddy’s romps through
Cuba and the Philippines, these people grew up with the last vestiges of
frontier mentality and a Hollywood obsessed with a macho-driven presentation of
masculinity. It was very easy to get young men to risk their lives for the “adventure of a life time”.
And the threat to the physical continent of North America was very real, a pressing
concern in a time when industrially and logistically speaking the Great Nations
were on a more level playing field.
But because of our victory in WW2, we were able to further
insulate our shores from attack via the twin hammers of carving up Europe and
boosting our industrial and trade capabilities by utilizing the renewed energies
and hopes of the American people. With our indomitable human potential and
access to fresh raw materials we began a new era, one in which the Establishment
turned its’ attention to Global Conquest, much in the manner of 15th
century Spain, England or heck, even the Roman Empire. (“New boss, same as the Old boss”).
The conquest of the western frontier and the security of our
country had been enough to satisfy the peoples’ need for space and security. We
had been content with a sort of isolationist position, and perhaps
we had been hampered by our ability to physically dominate the
planet. But in the post-atomic world, new fears were to accompany our
new power, and we began a race for superiority, on the ground, in outer-space,
and in the Market. All of this boiled over into the Red Scare and the Cold War
that our “boomers” grew up in.
Thus a process began whereby the Establishment
churned out loving portrayals of war glory in the movie houses and very
realistic war toys replaced lead soldiers and the old man’s helmet liner and
marbles. A sort of glamour began to obscure the old mans’ drunken tirades, and
the glum cripples were reminded of their past glories. They were forgiven, and
held their honor intact, even though they “never spoke of it”. The enemy we had
defeated had “deserved” it. After all, there were “the camps” and a powerful
Zionist lobby to make sure the rest of the world would Never Forget.
(Tell it to the Palestinians)
The Establishment didn’t take long before attempting to cash in
on some lingering jingoism and war lust before Korea came on the scene, and this
was our initial effort at making a war but calling it something else. It was
more of a favor, really to the other Western Powers we shared the table with, so
it was labelled a “police action”. We could field test some new war machines and
tactics. Besides, we need to stay in shape, right?
Russia and China had to be shown who was who around Southeast
Asia, lest they get cagey and start stretching the red tentacles closer to home,
and what with these new missiles and stuff, America had to remain
vigilant. Then our war shifted into ‘Nam. You see, the World War never
ended, it just shifted fronts. War is alive, it slithers around, seeking blood
to keep it alive, and now it was the Flower Generations’ turn to give it a shot.
But there was a problem. The kids of the era were not too hip on the whole war
thing. It was better to try out the old Jack Kerouac or go to school (since
working the farm was so old hat, and we didn’t really need to anymore with
entire industries replacing formerly local or family based needs).
Besides after granpas’ “combat fatigue” and outmoded John Wayne
testicularity being out shone by free-love and the Jefferson Airplane, who in
their right mind would want to drop everything to go to some brackish little
place like Viet-What?
Oh Hollywood tried, bless their hearts to make war kinda cool
again, what with Hogan’s Heroes, and Ba Ba Blacksheep or World At War, even
F-Troop. Remember the Honor, Glory and Adventure, you know the stuff Fun is made
of. Wrong. The kids were making fun of that nonsense, in fact
many of them were opposing the war, much to the consternation of the old grumps
and scared little old ladies who were their parents. So hey hey hey whip out the Draft.
From what I understand, after talking to and interviewing
hundreds of ‘Nam vets over the years, most of them were reluctant to head over
to the Selective Service office to begin with, but it was a “thing” you did in
America. When you turned 18 you went to the office, like a rite of passage. Not
as fun as turning 21, or getting your driver’s License, but it was something we
all accepted. But when your lottery number came up, it was a fucking bummer.
And here we note the term “lottery”. (Yay! I won!...wait, oh SHIT!)
Of course there were dudes who just leapt at the chance, there
will always be those types, and we are trying to reduce their numbers through
education, not through the attrition of war. So now we get to the crux of the
matter, the first generation of soldiers that takes the old fox hole question
of “What the hell am I doing here?” to a whole new level. It becomes a question
of why are we here, the mission is not clear, the enemy not easily
identifiable, the patriotic imperative not so clearly defined, the battle
ground not drawn so precisely. The war itself is heavily opposed at home, and
Washington is consistently making bad, bad decisions, the diplomatic efforts
appear to be purposely bungled, and the troops now had access to drugs
previously unknown to US troops of yore, the CIA is meddling with everything… all is confusion.
Racist jerks in charge. Little kids with guns. Hmm. A
little bit like WW2 in some respect, but nowhere near the support from
back home, despite the USO parties. Back home, Sally is getting turned on to the
Haight-Ashbury scene, and daily TV coverage is reinforcing the idea that Viet
Nam is a drag, quite different than the grainy black and white news reels you
remember from when you were a kid rooting for pops and his buddies. This new
breed of soldier is actually a little less “tough” than his forebears, he is
more introspective, he grew up in a different America than the old man did.
Everything had gotten better in America, perhaps the new
generation had become soft, like his old man had said all along.
So maybe he overcompensates things a bit. When all is said and
done, we can safely assume that although no one soldier is more or less tougher
or more sensitive than any other, the accepted ways of behaving or coping with
things differs from generation to generation. Because after all, every soldier
is a human being before anything else. What has shifted is not the condition of
the human soldier, but the cultural setting. And the military is an unchanging
culture. The nature of War is unchanging. We may laud ourselves over reduced
troop deaths, enemy kills and the latest technology, but it all fails in the
face of actually bringing peace to the world. It is such a truism that we
cannot make peace through war. We can only create peace by not making war.
It is simple to comprehend.
But we have an Establishment, a culture that proposes “Peace
through Superior Firepower” and churns out literally mind-numbing films and
video games that make entertainment out of war. This is what we as veterans must
struggle against. To overturn, to compost.
The job the soldier did is important, it is the main
component regarding the level of regret one feels, or serves to excuse the
veteran from the part they played in the war-making process. An infantry man has
killed directly, the pencil pusher in the rear lines has merely been a part of
that process by communicating the orders, the cooks fed, the drivers delivered
the troops, etc. In the former, a "human toll" is quite apparent, in the latter,
the "What the fuck are we doing here?" piece falls into the
puzzle. The tone of the disillusionment shifts with the job, is this clear enough?
It has to do, I think with the actual levels of trauma, the "body horror" one has experienced directly.
You are clearly supposed to be able to run, take a piss and other basic activities, like
hearing things and being able to see. Human beings are meant to be vibrant
living creatures, not maimed by stupid, blind violence or reduced to inert
bloody piles of tissue. An analyst or military planner will have a very
different "color" of dysfunction than a front line soldier.
So the "doing of things" is different than the "knowing of things". Of course there are
various levels of connectivity that are unique to the individual.
What are we to do with these experiences? How do we live with
ourselves when we have become broken equipment, when we have been injured body
and soul? Do we not have every right to pissed off and to not have to deal with
jack shit anymore? Of course, for the physically injured, there is a fairly
smooth transition from ambulance to hospital to home, all facilitated by the
very Establishment that put you there in the first place. And of course, through
all the rehabilitation and hand holding (“You still have one
hand to wave this flag with, don’t ya son? Now smile for the camera!”) there are
the bottles of yummy drugs, to numb you to the pain and the fact that you can’t
hold your penis anymore, or look at a kid in a Nike shirt without flashing back
to that other kid in a Nike shirt that you wasted back in country.
The VA is there for you guys. They have the ability, if not the
resources and time to get you “re-integrated” and on your way back to becoming a
happy tax-payer, as you were in the service. So you have to fall back on the
military’s health-care branch, and there are various ratings and regulations and
requirements and the like. It is almost as if the wounded vet is the “good
soldier” that gave what was expected of his or herself, and the Nation is damn grateful for the sacrifices these
brothers and sisters made. However, it would have been less costly had they been
entirely killed, so this is why they always make you feel like a chump, and keep
you drugged up.
Now; I am not saying that there aren’t any folks working at the
VA who don’t care about the patients, there are some damn good health care
workers and some very sensitive administrators working the VA, and it is very
encouraging that the winds of change are blowing in a favorable direction at
that hallowed and sorely under-funded outfit. But despite progressive healing
models and techniques like meditation, art-therapy, advances in prosthetics,
facial re-construction and the diagnosis of certain brain injuries and PTS
related out-patient programs, beneath it all there is a dependency problem.
And that dependency problem, as a stream, flows two ways. In the
first and most obvious instance, it is the dependency of the veteran on the VA
and the services it provides, typically The Meds. And you must play ball to get
your Meds. But the Meds are good for you, right? They kill the pain, are usually
free, and keep you quiet. For the VA this is cheap and easy. Be a good vet, and
stay in the good graces of the VA.
The other direction, and the one less obvious but more
insidious, is the dependency of the VA on the veteran, the wounded, fucked up
veteran. The one that keeps the money flowing in. From Big Pharma (eager for
test subjects) from Med-Tech firms and all types of contractors for everything
from chow to slippers and soap. Never mind the institutional nature of this, or
that many of these products are also made for the prison industry.
But wait, aren’t we concerned with de-institutionalizing
the veteran? Why yes we are, and that is why we want to encourage veterans to
self- heal. (Self-medicating is another issue to which I shall turn
shortly.)
The VA is dependent upon war. The veteran is dependent on the
VA. As our Military increases in lethality and power technologically, we see
less troop deaths in the field, but more wounded and psychologically traumatized
comrades coming home. And the physically hurt ones are undoubtedly coping with
the “P” as well. This bodes well for the VA and poorly for us as communities and families.
Ever wonder why so many of us are committing suicide? We have
some clue, as veterans, maybe it is in the words of Frankensteins’ monster: “We belong dead.”
It is the public,
including our friends and families that haven’t got a clue, and this is what we
are so pissed off about, that no one except the other homeless bum vet seems to
understand what we went through. Or the guy in the next ward, who got his leg
blown off, or the sister who was raped by a “superior officer”, or the kid
filling sandbags who stared in shock as his buddy came back from a “routine”
patrol as a lump of shredded clothing and mangled body armor.
We have to express, not repress this HATE, for that is what it is, hate, pure and simple.
We hate ourselves for not being stronger, or tougher, for being there, or not there, when our buddies were
out on a patrol, for signing on the dotted line. We hate the chain of command,
the fucking weather, we hate “them” for killing our friends, we hate civilians
for not understanding what we went through while they barely glance at us as we
live on the street. We hate being told to “get a job” while we panhandle, and
our last job was kicking in doors and shooting rifles and driving 100 mph
through dust storms.
Screw you and your “get a job” bullshit, I should never have to
work a day for the rest of my life, I am ALIVE goddamn it!
And this being alive is the important thing.
We embrace the hate, for a while; we have to as there is no
choice, sometimes no other feelings are available. Regret, confusion…these new
constant companions leave no room for joy or love to come into us, which we
desperately need. We need to squeeze the hate-pus from our blistered hearts, we need to let floods of tears
clean our brains, we need to own this, this pain that is ours alone, but not only ours.
It is the pain of life itself, of life wasted, of everything that has ever died, it is the pain and suffering of
all we have ever done or not did, every smiling face turned to ash, every tree,
river and rock blown to smithereens and polluted forever by radioactive dust
and debris.
It is the pain of a nation, of a people oppressed and destroyed
by what you did, or failed to do. You have become, you must
become intensely familiar with the human condition and the fragility of our
lives. You have become a victim of your victims. You must own this pain, so that
you can compost it into something useful to redress the wrong you were a part
of. The Establishment is the only proper target for your anger and hostility.
A vast institutional machine, grinding down everything to
benefit only the automatons and slaves that feed it, the Establishment is not
human; it is completely artificial, though it is composed of human beings and
concepts only. You will no longer focus your anger or violence on other living
human beings nor animals, you will channel all this garbage in your head and
heart onto the Establishment, the Establishment, which is interested in only
pursuing further war. War abroad, war at home, war on nature, all is militarized
under the shadow of the Machine, the thing must be neutralized, and what better
way to fight fire than with water?
And this water is a flood of art, music, civil disobedience and
non-cooperation. It is developing a healthy self attitude on your own terms. It
is doing what they forbid you to do, it is self reliance, autonomy, reflection,
service to others, unit cohesion among the homeless, solidarity with the working
class, doing your own thing standing up for the rights of others, so many things
other than sitting on your ass complaining about it.
Think about the nature of your discharge. Who were you before
and during your service? Who, or “what” have you become now? Do you feel real?
What do you WANT TO DO? Do you want to feel better? Do you want to overthrow the
Government? Do you want to hurt someone or your self? Do you want to end it all
in an orgy of violence?
Or do you appreciate being given a second chance to live? We
want to enjoy the beauty of nature, the experience of being, to paint, write,
love, play with our animals, swim in the ocean and nap in the grass… we want to
be FREE, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and we want to do it on our own terms.
We deserve to be able to live with dignity and pleasure, with
the freedom to move about and not be constrained by all the mechanisms the
Establishment puts on ALL of us, civilian, vet, environment and beast. On the
one hand, we may want “payback” and this will lead us into a path of violence,
and violence is to be avoided, because remember you have had enough to last a lifetime.
The anger leads to hate, and that in turn leads to violence, in
the very least violent thoughts, and as a man thinketh, so he is. Do not let
them gain the upper hand. They say they
want you to get better, but that is just to shove you back into their
template. In reality the Establishment wants you to get worse. All the more
better if you do the job yourself and become a statistic that they can exploit,
or become a criminal they have every justification to eliminate or incarcerate.
I want you to feel better. I want you to be helpful and loving,
caring for the other veterans as if you guys were still in the trenches, because
we ARE. If you are a homeless veteran there is nothing more worthwhile to do
with the rest of your life, then helping other vets and struggling to improve
conditions for ALL of us. Another duty you have is to protect our homeless
brothers and sisters, our family for lack of a better term.
Lead by example, be the person you deserve to be. I don’t care
if you are dumpster diving or flying sign, don’t rip each other off, of
anything! Don’t become exploiters yourselves, taking advantage of women or
treating your pups like shit.
Maintain your dignity, and keep your survival skills sharp. We
want the Establishment to consider us a formidable and credible concern, not
some group of grubby, pissed of losers.
Which unfortunately many of us are okay being just that. And
that means we are a liability not only to ourselves and our comrades, but for
our communities and our country.
TO BE CONTINUED