Burning Flag Birthday Suit

by Molly Ivors

One of the first major pieces of imaginative literature that this nation produced was a weird little parlor drama called "The Contrast," by Royall Tyler. It's pretty, well, dull in a lot of ways, though it does contain some cheerful Dutch-bashing of the type countered by Washington Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." (For Irving, the Dutch were an expansive, cheerful people who were right to openly mock the ascetic, superstitious Brit Ichabod Crane; for Tyler, writing some 30 years earlier, the Dutch were decadent and careless in contrast to the solid simplicity of the British-identified citizens.) Colonel Manly, the forthright square at the center of Tyler's play, is, teh Google tells me, the quintessential "stage Yankee"--plain and honest, sometimes unpleasantly so, according to the tastes of his frou-frou sister and her citified friends. (In the pic here, he's the only one *not* wearing a wig).

Colonel Manly is a veteran of the Revolutionary War, but he is living in rural poverty rather than the urban decadence of his peers. He has come to New York, he tells his sister, "to solicit the honourable Congress, that a number of my brave old soldiers may be put upon the pension-list, who were, at first, not judged to be so materially wounded as to need the public assistance. My sister says true: I call my late soldiers my family. Those who were not in the field in the late glorious contest, and those who were, have their respective merits; but, I confess, my old brother-soldiers are dearer to me than the former description. Friendships made in adversity are lasting; our countrymen may forget us, but that is no reason why we should forget one another."

The first piece of American literature, then was about veteran's benefits.

We treated veterans well, once. The 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or G.I. Bill of Rights provided a number of benefits to those who had fought in the European and Pacific Theaters, including home loans, financial assistance, and tuition. For disabled vets, services were even greater. Over the years, these services were extended to veterans of Korea and Vietnam, and then to all who had served in the military, regardless of battle status.

But we don't, anymore: as the stakes went up, the benefits went down, which is why I find myself returning to "The Contrast."

It's a useful reminder that we as a nation have frequently been shitty to vets, despite the "Freedom Isn't Free" crowd, who frequently have little or no use for the very real complaints of actual veterans, dismissing complaints about the appalling state of Walter Reed Military Hospital as just so much liberal carping, for example, or stating that this is why we can't have nationalized health care.

So, the vets self-medicate.

Half a decade into the "war on terror," America's bars have become our barometers: instruments that measure the extent to which our veterans have been left to wrestle alone with substance abuse, anxiety disorders and other mental health problems after long tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The men and women who come back from the traumas of war "are often hyper-alert, quick to respond and susceptible to a loss of impulse control," says clinical psychologist Jeffrey Jay of the Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Studies in Washington. "The brain is actually altered by these experiences -- it's part of a survival mechanism, and it's very confusing for them."

..........

On a recent night at R.J. Bentley's, I perched near a young man nursing a flask of whiskey who told me he'd been ordered to collect his best friend's body parts from the crater of an improvised explosive device, and an older vet with darting eyes who said he'd tried to slit his wrists in Kuwait rather than return to Fallujah. And if you agree that trauma begets trauma, the evening's trajectory won't surprise you: Mix equal parts broken bodies and frayed minds, stir in college kids who couldn't tell an IED from an iPod, add alcohol, and things are bound to get explosive.

(h/t This Veteran's Life)

I spent a good while this afternoon with a young man who was in Iraq two or so years ago, and who is still, for lack of a better phrase, broken. He told me stories very much like the ones cited here: terrifying, heartbreaking stories. I encouraged him to get the help he could, to keep a journal, and to try and work through his experiences because, he told me, he has no health insurance, no College Fund, and only cursory help from the VA. They drugged him to the gills, giving him as many as five psychoactive medications at once, medications he voluntarily stopped. He has attempted suicide twice, once slashing his wrists only to wake an hour later and drive himself groggily to the hospital, and once, after the VA recommended to him that he no longer live alone, having his mother call the cops on him in time for a sheriff's deputy to tackle him before he could pull the trigger of the gun pointed at his head.

If I supported this war, if I believed it was doing one damn thing to end radical Islamism (instead of feeding it red meat), if I thought for one second we had compelling national interests that were greater than those of Exxon or GM or Blackwater, such a story would make me unspeakably sad. It would be a tale of someone who was let down by a system he believed in and is struggling just to get through day-to-day life, who had done a Good Thing and was getting kicked in the teeth for it.

But I don't, as it happens, believe any of those things. And so this young man, handsome, bright, motivated, has been destroyed for nothing. A population that callously ignores the damage it inflicts on several million strangers maybe should not be expected to notice the damage it inflicts on hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, but even the most xenophobic warmonger ought to be able to acknowledge that these young men need more than a pat on the head and some Prozac. Recognizing this damage, however, interferes with the Super Happy Fun War that We Are Always Winning of the denizens of Earth-W, and so I'm not holding my breath.

(h/t Clark Community Network for PTSD image)

(Crossposted at Pax Americana)

Comments

[four legs good]

Oy. The warmongers have a lot to answer for.

[Virginia]

You are wonderful.

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

[racymind]

I am on your team anytime.

[fl]

That was heartbreaking. And infuriating.

And they wonder why the DFHs curse.

[K. Ron Silkwood]

Bravo. Batshit insane fuckers.

[r@d@r]

FPR (faggitpunkrock) solidarity with the DFHs.

support our troops: don't use them like toilet paper.

i haven't talked to my bro-in-law in the strykers who just got back, and who i hear doesn't really want to talk to anyone except his wife; but i was thinking of buying him some very old scotch for christmas, and now i realize that maybe i should ask his wife first. maybe alcohol is really the last thing he needs right now.

[Vertalio]

To make a "Glorious War to Re-Subjugate Brown People in the Name of Empire" omelette, you must first break a few million eggs. Some, regrettably, will be merely cracked and leaking.
At least their mortaged homes are secure, and their jobs pay well, and their freedom is not compromised.

[Jake T. Snake]

It breaks my heart, because I know that when I joined the army I had no idea what I was agreeing to. Who does at 18? I was looking to escape home, see the world and eventually pay for my college education. I lucked out and wasn't maimed or killed.

The substance use prevents the flashbacks from playing constantly in one's head or so I have been told by people I have worked with who have post traumatic stress disorder. In that light it makes sense that you would want to stay stinking drunk, anyone in their right mind would. Once again substance use is the rational response.

[Molly Ivors]

Once again substance use is the rational response.

You're Irish; you have to say that.

[dilirlurils]

Make peace, not war!