Mockery and Derision

Fair warning: these next two posts will be angry, and in all likelihood poorly written and irrational. Sorry. I’ll return to my Shakespearean self sometime tommorow.

A little about me: I rarely get angry. For any reason. At a bar, in traffic, what have you. I don’t get into fights, I don’t yell. And for the most part, I legitimately don’t care what happens to me. But I do care what happens to other people. Especially people I care about.

And I don’t like that old campaigning pasttime, the righteous indignation people pretend to feel when candidates make a controversial remark. But for some reason, this isn’t pretend, and I can’t let it go. Cindy McCain, in a very recent interview, said some very fucking stupids things about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and who gets it.

Let me be clear. I don’t think she’s a bad, sinister person. I just think she’s very fucking dumb. Excerpt to follow:

“Q: You met your husband after his POW days. To what extent is that still with you - or is it a part of history?

McCAIN: My husband will be the first one to tell you that that’s in the past. Certainly it’s a part of who he is, but he doesn’t dwell on it. It’s not part of a daily experience that we experience or anything like that. But it has shaped him. It has made him the leader that he is.

Q: But no cold sweats in the middle of the night?

McCAIN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. My husband, he’d be the first one to tell you that he was trained to do what he was doing. The guys who had the trouble were the 18-year-olds who were drafted. He was trained, he went to the Naval Academy, he was a trained United States naval officer, and so he knew what he was doing.”

 Fuck you, you ignorant, elitist Stepford wife. First of all, it’s certainly not in the past. Part of the reason I can’t stand you people is because you’re husband shamelessly exploits his service for his own political benefit. So when your husband can’t go ten minutes without mentioning Vietnam, it’s not in the past.

But most importantly, there’s the second answer. I know you’re not the one running for office, but you still play a huge role in politics and in an administration as a potential First Lady. I can’t imagine Laura Bush saying something fucking dumb like that.

I’ve been to Iraq twice. And luckily, very luckily, I’ve never had a problem with PTSD when I’ve come back. But it has nothing to do with age (I was 18 when I went the fist time). And it has nothing to do with training or some admirable personal quality like “guts” or “courage”.

PTSD happens to people who’ve been in combat, and there’s no rhyme or reason to who suffers with it. And 1 in 3, 1 in 3, soldiers come back from Iraq with it, which from what we know are similar statistics for returning vets from every war.

One soldier in my battalion killed himself in the last month (he was 38 I believe, not 18). When we first came back a few months ago, one of my very good friends in my unit tried to kill himself. Last deployment, another very good friend tried to kill himself when we came back. And I have no idea how many others have sought treatment for PTSD/ depression, since the Army finally keeps that stuff confidential. 

They all fought for their country and risked their ass every single day. They all “knew what they were doing”. And whatever they’ve had to go through when they came back had nothing to do with age or training or some deficiency on their part.

So don’t ever fucking suggest otherwise about anyone I’ve served with, or anyone from Vietnam. You’ve never had to deal with coming back from a war, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and you’re clearly too dumb to know that.

Fuck off, and go back to your 7 houses, 13 cars, and false sense of understanding. I don’t want to hear it anymore.

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