Veteran Suicide

On this 244th anniversary of The Marine Corp and a day before Veterans day I'd like to take a moment of your time to discuss a very serious matter; Veteran suicides.

It has been suggested that every 85 minutes or roughly 22 times a day a veteran commits suicide. This year it hit me hard. I have had three people that I know attempt suicide with one, my dearest brother in arms, succeeding.

It is about him that I am going to speak. I will not use his name because I haven't asked his family for permission but I will simply give him a letter “J”.

He was a combat vet and I was his platoon Sgt. We met in Iraq early in the war and spent a lot of time eating some of the same sand and trying hard to avoid “lead poisoning.” We experienced much of what many before us had endured in war and as a result we became closer then family from our experiences.

He later went on to become a state trooper, worked for the IRS, and eventually joined NCIS. At the same time he married his beautiful wife and had two children, all of this while earning his masters degree.

On the surface everything looked great but the inner demons from war and some of his other experiences were eating at him.

Both his wife and children noticed that he wasn't as happy as he used to be and that the pressures of his job were really starting to tell on him. She tried to get him to go to counseling but he wouldn't go. She reached out to me to talk to him, and I did, even telling him of my own battles with PTSD and the fact that I went to counseling for it, but he still refused to go, and do you know why?

He was afraid that he would loose his badge and gun, along with his pension, if he admitted to having PTSD, and where did that thinking come from? The very government that sent him off to war and had him working horrible cases for NCIS. They have, and still do, see it as a weakness to admit that you have a problem.

In the end he did loose it all. The inner demons of hell tormented him to the point of suicide and tossed him over the edge.

He was not homeless, he wasn't on drugs, by all accounts his life was moving right along, and he was doing well, but he did suffer from PTSD, something that could have been treated, if he had been allowed to do so with out fear of losing it all.

While he was ultimately responsible for ending his own life. I don't blame him. I blame those in the government who would send us all off to hell to fight and then essentially dismiss or even mock us upon our return or a few years down the road when the symptoms start.

I blame congress for speaking about mental health issues and yet still doing nothing to address it and all the government agencies that put people in harms way and then ignores mental health issues related to it.

I even blame myself for not being able to reach him, but at least I tried, which is more then I can say about the powers that be.

I don't know what the best solution is other then to not go to war in the first place but I do have A solution. Give veterans,especially war veterans , more then just words. Many do have various addictions, many are poor and are living on the streets and many more are just able to get by on much less then a living wage, based on their injuries and illnesses as set by the VA, but most importantly they need a community that will reach out to them and help them readjust to life rather then shunning them.

PTSD is real and it effects many veterans in various ways, so instead of just a thank you, though greatly appreciated, really check on them to make sure that they are receiving all the help that they need then perhaps we can lower the number of vet suicides to zero.

The United States of Racism

For the last two and a half years or so, we have been treated to the main stream media and various politicians that have loudly pontificated about Russia, collusion and obstruction or a combo of all three. Mercifully it has gone away, rather quietly, into the void where it never should have been released from in the first place. I remember telling my wife that if HRC was to loose, which no one could conceive of in their wildest dreams, that the excuse would be Russian interference. Well I was right, that has been the excuse, but finally, after millions of wasted dollars and endless media gushing over every possible ridiculous theory of what was in the report long before it was ever put out, it has come to its predictable end. So basking in this glorious enlightenment of those that should have known better in the first place, we can get back to the business of running the country, right? Apparently wrong.

The newest bit in all this is now constantly accusing President Trump of being a “white nationalist” or a racist. The NYT and CNN (as well as others) are now taking the racist theme so far as to say that if you voted for Trump, or are planning on it again, that you are a racist and you have blood on your hands. Doesn't matter if you are black, brown, yellow or white you are evil, you are the embodiment of Hitler and Satan combined if you had the nerve to vote for Trump rather then HRC and you are the root of all that is evil.

The NYT has admitted that their goal is to show everything American, from our history and founding, to President Trump, is based on nothing but bigotry and racism, with their end goal of making sure that Trump and anyone republican or conservative never gets elected or reelected.

So how do they do this? First you distort and eliminate history. You rewrite history to follow your views and push it on to kids, if you teach them history at all,and when you do speak of the countries founding you eliminate the good that the founders did and focus on their flaws. Instead of focusing on the declaration of independence which declared that “all men are created equal”, you note instead that the writer, Thomas Jefferson, was a slave holder and therefore a racist and by default all the founders were as well. The fact that only about 3% of the southern population owned slaves is irrelevant. After that it becomes easy. You tear down statues and institutions and when people argue back you just label them as racist and destroy their lives in any way necessary. You don't need facts, you just need feelings and mental lenses that let you filter the world of a hundreds of years past through your own 21 century world view.

Ironically by trying to eliminate or alter history, with the help of media, the democratic/socialist party is actually trying to protect itself from it's own history.

No democrat voted for Lincoln, nor did they support freeing the slaves, in fact it was partially because they believed that Lincoln would free the slaves with out their consent they seceded from the union.

Only 3% of the people,rich democrats I might add, in the south, actually owned slaves,as I mentioned before, but even for most of them slavery wasn't the issue, it was the rights of the individual states to live as they so chose versus the rights of the federal government to decide how they lived their lives.

Democrats were responsible for the KKK and Jim Crow and segregation. They voted against the civil rights act, and women rights. The only things they seemed to support was for bigger government and for Planned Parenthood, who's founder was a democrat who's stated goal was to destroy the black community. This is historical fact, look it up.

The real racists are the ones that have spent the last 30 or 40 years dividing us by everything, including race, and pitting us against each other, rather then embracing the idea that “all men are created equal” and rejoicing in a country that offers unlimited opportunity for anyone who is willing to work for it.

Whats truly amazing to me though is that the very same people that are promoting “racism” in everything and the rewriting of history to promote that view are the same people who are profiting greatly by the very system that they claim is evil and racist. But I guess if screaming racism can earn them money and great profits why would they want to change it?

Falling Prey To Racism

It has been a long time since I have attempted to write anything politically speaking. I have stayed silent, for the most part, as the circus, we laughingly call “government” has shown us little more than smoke and mirrors, and have ignored the very things that they were elected to do, while trying to convince us that the bears on the unicycles and the flying monkeys ARE the things that are important.

So I have decided that I am going to go back to offering my own opinion on the things I see happening based entirely on my own experience and view point. Please don't take me wrong: I don't like either party or the way they are running things or say they are going to if they get into power. I trust the media even less.

So here we are buckle up and lets ride with the bears and fly with the monkeys.

I wasn't going to start with the concept of racism in this country but this last weekend changed some of that for me. I am not going to get into detail about the shootings either in Ohio or Texas because you can read all about it elsewhere but I will say that the one in Texas I found disturbing on a personal level.

I am half Cuban. My father was one of many Cubans who came here to the United States to escape from Castro. At that time all Cubans were admitted because it was clear that they would be killed if they returned. Having said that, by the standards of today, he would be considered an illegal or the more “PC” term of undocumented. In all candor I know little of the Cuban culture partially because of where I grew up and partially because when I was young it was not something I ever gave much thought to.

The Texas lunatic wrote many things in his manifesto ( I have not read it nor do I plan to ) but one thing he made undeniably clear, he hates Hispanics and in particular illegals. He drove 600 miles just to kill them. That kind of thing scares me.

I was at Walmart yesterday shopping with my wife, and we were by the produce section near the front doors when it really occurred to me that this is something that could have happened here, though I don't look Hispanic, not completely anyway, there were clearly others who were, entire families in fact, and I know that there are some in this state who are white supremacist, so it could have easily been here.

Before I go on I have to say that I don't believe that racism is a systemic problem in the US and is in every institution as many on the left would suggest but at the same time I would say to the right don't try and disregard the fears of those who have experienced it.

I have had several encounters with members of the KKK in the south and even here in the “liberal” north east and I have experienced the fear that has gone with it. I have also been targeted by “lending institutions” who were caught charging higher interest rates to black and Hispanic people for no other reason than they are black or Hispanic. Racism exists and though I don't believe that it exists on the level that the media would suggest, it has affected me enough to be very cautious in what I say and do.

I have never been fond of telling people my name. Most folks don't mind it much, but others have become openly hostile once they heard it. I have even gone so far as to use my middle name as my first name when being introduced so that I didn't give even a hint of my ancestry. But not everyone is a racist a lesson I have had re- learn. Case in point; I went to a gathering in memory of a dear friends mother. As my wife and I drove up to where it was being held, a double wide out on a dirt road, I noticed that there were a bunch of guys standing out front that gave all appearances of being bikers, generally speaking, my kind of people. I don't ride for several physical reason not to mention rather squirrely eyesight, but still people I would gladly hangout with. I didn't recognize any of them. As we approached I asked if we were at the right place ( we were ) but then the dreaded question came up “whats your name?” Now I am not one to lie and I assumed that somewhere in the house was my friends so I told them and waited for the commentary to fly. It didn't happen, or it did, just not the way I was expecting, in fact quite the opposite happened, first the guy who asked the question said “really? that's flipping ( not the word he used) awesome!” I was then introduced to everyone ( one of the guys outside was my friends nephew) and of course my friends were inside. It all went well.

Two things I learned that day; first I made a judgment call on race, they were white bikers who were going to eat me for lunch, I was wrong, and the second thing I realized was just how much I had been sucked in to this notion that everyone is a racist. It snuck up on me and had sucked me in and I hadn't even realized it.

This is the overall fallacy of the media and the politicians trying to divide us even in the wake of a mass murder, most people are just people, they are not racist, they are not killers of those who are different then them. The media is lying to us all and the politicians are banking on our beliefs and fears, dividing us into our factions so we focus on each other and our alleged differences rather then on what they are doing or their lack thereof.

So the bottom line is this; Until we can look past the flying monkeys and bears on unicycles and realize that the media and the politicians, ON BOTH SIDES , are stoking this racial divide, and fear, nothing will change. It's not about the guns or the manifestos, it's not about the victims of the mass killings, it's about control and fear as well as division. That's what they thrive on, that's what they will continue to push.