Dr.Sanity,
I am a long time fan of yours, first time commenter.
I thank you so much for this blog posting.
I am the wife of one of these men
My husband served on the DMZ (Under Col Hunt now of Fox News)and was later retired disabled after serving in the Army Infantry a total of 11 yrs. He was hurt (back injury) saving another soldier's life during the action in Panama in the 1980's and was retired early-a disabled combat veteran.
After retiring he went back to school and earned a Master's degree in Environmental Science/ Geology. His master's thesis has been published 3 times in scientific journals.
We are here in Southern California now and he works in the corporate world at environmental/geoscience engineering type companies helping to clean up the earth.
I can't tell you how this is such a struggle for him. Besides the fact that the environmental sciences has been high-jacked by the likes of Al Gore and the Left and it has been turned into junk; also consider that sometimes men like my husband are treated terribly by folks with what I believe is some kind of inner "guilt trip" for lack of a better words.
That is to say, I believe he works with men who feel ashamed of themselves and or even maybe envious of my husband because they have not done something as important or as "manly" as he has.
And then there are women in this industry who are "afraid" of men like my husband too.
Think about it. The whole corporate world is run on PC rules, over-layed with the every day corporate BS and the jump through hoops power-plays that go on between managers in this industry,so therefore my husband is having a really hard time fitting in and coping because of these things. Soldiers are straight up and honest, and just want to do a good job and work hard-they don't know how to play these corporate games. There's a clear chain of command in military work, and in the corporate world it doesn't always work that way.
He was just laid off out of the blue two weeks ago, because of "Lack of future contracts" he was told, and he is now going through the hiring process once again and its taking a really big toll on him.
He has good references from his direct mangers from this company but we just found out the VP of the company; who does not like him for some unknown reason (they've never even worked together) has told some body NOT to hire him-"Pass on THAT guy" is what was said; so the interview that he was excited about was canceled based on this man's opinion. This is something personal! This opinion was not based on his work or his performance at work at all.
Dr. Sanity he really feels and reacts to these things. Good gosh he was trained to react! He was so angry, and then he just cried when he found this out. Last night, neither of us could sleep. I don't know how we can get through this stuff. The industry in this area is a very tight knit group of people- I told him he is just around the WRONG people!
I can agree with Grunt's wife. Having spent twenty years in the military I dealt with this in trying to get a job after retirement. I, like the above mentioned gentleman have an MBA.
I eventually went into federal service because it was the only avenue available at the time if I was going to feed my family and provide what they required. It did not take long for me to realize that veterans were considered persona non gratis and discriminated against. I saw young engineers deriding Vietnam vets. I heard Human Resources personnel say the most unflattering things about them and I know that many of them were held back from promotion because of the bias that existed in federal service against them.
What really bothered me was to hear the very people who were supposed to be providing the systems to protect these fine young men and women was to here them talk about these people as just so much "cannon fodder."
If you were smart you had to down play your military service even when you dealt with contractors and people in Washington D. C.
It would seem to me that if any people deserved "reparations" it would and should be Vietnam veterans. Reparations would pay back people who are still alive and have suffered loss of jobs, lower promotions and discrimination from the very citizens they thought they were protecting. The same would be true for current veterans from the WOT.
As I've been reading about what our soldiers are now doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, I've been thinking how lucky we will be when they return to civilian life and can share their experience with the rest of society. We don't so much owe our soldiers as need them. How can we get the message out?
Grunt's wife--I hope the three-sheets-of toilet-paper environmentalists will soon lose their credibility and this country will turn to qualified grown-ups like your husband. Perhaps rapid shift from ethanol mania to food catastrophe will tip the scales in favor of rationality.
To continue: I would from say that the left bears a much larger percentage of the responsibility than wars itself. Not only are they undermining the people who serve this country they also create the discrimination that happens to then after that service is finished and veterans look for other employment.
NOTE: Hear vice here.
The previous comments are disheartening.
The American military is the one American institution that is truly color blind. Success is earned by merit and effort- color and creed notwithstanding.
To be sure, their are 'politics' the higher up you go, but in fact, there are plenty of doors if that first, or second or third is blocked.
If only America and Corporate America shared more of the honor, dignity and equality found in the nation's military.
To Grunt's Wife:
Uphold your husband, make sure he knows he is the Prince of your household.
If at all possible, encourage him to take full stock of his own resources and abilities -- and [b]start his own business[/b] encompassing that which he both loves and knows how to do.
Perhaps the two of you could go it together, many successful businesses have worked because husband and wife teamed together in order to maximize resources.
Might be something as simple as consulting.
Yes, startup is a hustle.
Well. Worth. It.
I shall uphold you both in prayer regardless, you be sure to let your husband know that The Machine thanks him for his service to our country and that you both are on the side of that which is right. Righteous, even.
!
Thank you all for your thoughts and affirmations. It feels good to get this off my chest! I could just scream.
I remember one day a while back when my husband was pretty much labeled "loser" by the "in crowd" at the office, who at lunch time played some kind of virtual reality combat computer game together everyday. They bragged about their game status as virtual "warriors" and when he passed on participating with them when they asked him to, instead of considering how childish it all was to him, they thought he was a bad sport or something.
I could go on and on about the discrimination too...him having to sit through eight hour "sensitivity training" sessions each month at the EPA (he worked for the EPA after school here in California) and later having to hear his left leaning eco-groovy co-workers damn and complain about people in the military "destroying the earth" right in front of his face, and him not being able to say anything back. (His job was to clean up formally used defense sites here in Southern California used by General Patton for example to train soldiers for combat in WWII!) He left that job for the private sector because he couldn't take that environment-Left Coast politics. He was hired as an expert to train these horrible people about military procedures and UXO related science and regulations too.
The Machine,
thanks! He's at a meeting right now with another gentlemen who has an idea about a start up company, and the are putting their heads together for a military project that's up for grabs. Prayers are so appreciated!
The gap between the military culture and the civilian culture in the USA is deepening and widening. This is a very bad thing, imo, for two reasons: first, there is the potential for growing animosity - as evidenced by Grunt's wife. Second, there are the underlying reasons for the divide - the straightforwardness of the military culture, the dedication to duty, and the love of country - when you consider the opposite, you can assume that I lose respect for those civilians who are lacking in those aspects of the culture.
The military has always been subordinate to the civilian government. I see the possibility of a military coup at some point in the future, given the continuance of the present course...the news just yesterday had the story of a trained bear that killed it's handler...civilians should never forget the potential power of the leashed military that holds it's power in abeyance.
I agree with Machine as to your husband's course of action. Form your own consultancy, hire vets.
Grunt's wife, I will be praying for your family. I send my gratitude for your husband's service.
The people that feel 'free' to disparage our military are made so by their service.
If you can't change the people around you, change the people around you. Don't let what others say about you hold you down!! It's their problem, not yours! Success is the best revenge!!
As, The Machine, suggests, start your own business. "Find a need and fill it!!"
I've been self employed quite a while, and I love it.
I worked in the legislative branch in Washington for almost 25 years and got a truer read, I suspect, than most, on our national government, read quite a bit of history, was in the Vietnam Era military and, it has always struck me just how fragile our democracy really is. Dictatorships of one variety or another or certainly authoritarian rule have been the norm in most of past history and we are a very rare exception but, the sword that points outward can also point in.
Our democracy really resides in the minds of our citizens and this democratic nexus of ideas, ideals, traditions and behaviors is what really enables us to continue to enjoy democracy in America; this nexus of democratic ideas, ideals, traditions and behaviors is-- and must be--especially strong in the minds of our military.
The reality of the always precarious nature of the freedom and democracy that we enjoy--and take so much for granted--was captured by Benjamin Franklin at our country’s beginning when he said that we in America have “a democracy, if we can keep it.”
A few key people in the military change their minds, finally get disgusted enough to rebel against their civilian “superiors,” act to stop those superiors from driving the nation over a cliff or, perhaps, decide that their personal power is more important than dealing with game-playing, uninformed civilian idiots and, in short order, we could have a military dictatorship because, everyone is just assuming that, while this sort of thing is routine in a “banana republic,” “it can’t happen here.”
Our democracy functions and continues to exist, in large part, because of the integrity and fidelity of millions of individual soldiers but, these soldiers’s patience is not infinite, nor is their capacity to absorb ingratitude and abuse; we would all do well to remember this.
Thank you thank you! 
suek, here's another problem I see happening too. My husband is the highest functioning psych patient at the VA Hospital in our area.(PTSD and/or "explosive disorder" related to combat experience problems that arose from the frustration in being a part of civilian life BTW): and in truth, and I swear, he's not even as bad as that Chef on TV that gets paid to yell and scream at everyone!)
The dr's in this department at the VA really value his opinion because he is just as smart as they are They ask his opinion all the and have interviewed him in mass over the years and he has helped them to understand conditions for vets as best he can.
One afternoon he was there for his appointment and on the TV on in the waiting room was CNN playing coverage of Ted Kennedy in some kind of hearing awhile back, blathering about Iraq... and you can imagine what my husband had to listen to. So my husband stood up and went to the reception window and asked them to change the channel. "Put on Animal Planet he said, I wanna look at puppies; I do not want to listen to this crap!" LOL The women said she couldn't do that; and he'd have to make a formal complaint to the management department. (geez) He could not even believe it. He then asked where that was and she told him, and so he left to go there right away and while he was on his way to this area, this receptionist in the psych ward called a security guard to go meet my husband at that window of the Admin office. When my husband arrived and saw the security guard standing there arms crossed by the window, he figured out what was happening, and it set him off! He didn't yell at first but the people at the window gave him the same run around "formal complaint" need, so he started to yell...Long story short they held my husband over night in the psych ward...and after all that was said and done; the dr's in the psych ward backed him up and the policy was changed to not air CNN in the waiting rooms at the VA any more. Can you believe that?
So here's the thing, more and more of our VA Hospital's administration and personnel are civilians-at least here in So. Cal they are. That women behind the reception desk had no experience AND the "Administration" staff that thought CNN played in the hospital's (on all the TV's) was a good and perfectly fine thing to do. BTW the security guard claimed at the time "he was threatening their lives" because of his yelling. Sheesh. I'd would have done the same exact thing my husband did!
"It" reflects the smallness of the liberal left mindset. Or I should say 'nothingness', being too small that it becomes nothing. To paint over their nothingness, they have WORDS (like "progress"ive, "more compassionate", etc.) to cover their ^sses.
One note to the military spouses,
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
BTW, that receptionist at the VA could have just turned the tv off and or just muted the sound, because I have done it before myself when I have gone with him and waited for him in that waiting room.
Sorry for the typos too. I need preview!
Thanks again for letting me sound off.
Stay out of the VA. At all costs.
I am Viet-era, have never darkened the door of any VA facility.
Healing for myself came from spiritual side of life, accepting Christ and all that goes along with the real and in depth study of same, not the so-called churches we have today.
Your husband's true calling may or may not be in the field for which he currently holds degrees or higher education, too.
One of the aspects of this culture war that academia cannot understand nor accept for the most part is that in this great nation, people with little more than high school education can indeed succeed in business -- quite often exceeding the salaries doled out to those in academia by many orders of magnitude.
Perhaps Dr. Santy could delve into the psychological ramifications of this little conundrum for the self-proclaimed elitists in academia, in my opinion it is fueld by the grinding-in-the-background and never noticed ENVY process.
Ever notice that university economists are never rich?
I did, and it changed my life and the lives of my immediate family for the better.
!
BTW -- It was NOT the so-called ravages of war itself that got to me those few decades ago. Not at all.
It was the LIE that we all came home to that was the hard thing for me to cope with at the time. Walter Cronkite, Hollyweird, et al had convinced the entire country, our own families even, that we were something that we are not.
Today, I understand the underlying force behind such evil. I know who the mastermind behind the lie truly is, I know of the principalities and I also know who has already won and why.
He isn't called "The Deceiver" more times in the Hebrew than any other name for nothing.
The hardest part of self employment for me was learning to be like the sparrows and not worry about tomorrow's seed or where it might come from. It has always come about.
Nothing to fear but fear itself,
!
My story seems a bit different, but really isn't.It's a story of delayed reaction to the psychic damage of war.
I served in Vietnam, lost six good friends there. Came home to a job recruiting Navy pilots on California campuses. We were met by demonstrations with people burning our literature, shouting hate-filled slogans, and doing their best to drive us off campus. I was angered by all this, but we could not show it or seem perturbed. They were, after all, only exercising their freedom.
Some years later, when our POWs from Vietnam were repatriated, three of my friends were in that group. I was amazed by my reaction to that event. It felt as if I had suddenly been forgiven for my sin of not being a POW. I thought it strange, but quickly put that behind me and gave it little thought.
Time passed and anger simmered in me because my friends had died in Vietnam essentially for nothing because we abandoned and betrayed the South Vietnamese. I was also carrying a load of survivor's guilt because they died and I survived. I was, however, functioning well in my job and family life. What I didn't realize was that I had stuffed all the anger and guilt and was exerting a huge amount of psychic energy to keep it buried.
This all came to a head when our son was killed in a mountain climbing accident. All the anger, guilt and grief came to the surface. I knew I had a problem but thought I could handle it myself. Struggled for four or five years trying to deal. Our marriage almost fell apart before I finally got serious about getting help. It took three years of therapy and a spiritual epiphany to finally get my life back on track.
I only hope that our military today will get help as soon as they feel some stirrings of mental unease. Guilt and anger need to be dealt with. There are ways to defuse and manage both.
I feel for Grunt's wife and any spouse who has to help their loved one deal with these problems. It was very tough for my wife.
This is part of the collateral damage of war that most do not want to talk about. I'm glad Dr. Sanity brought it up. It needs to be visible, understood, and dealt with in a forthright manner.
"It never occurs to them that they themselves represent at least one of the reasons why military personnel are sometimes unable to come to terms with the actions they are called upon to do in war."
I think there are plenty of progressives who have no problem with causing such harm. "That's not a bug, that's a feature."
A couple of years ago while I was working at a different company, I was telling one of my co-workers who is Vietnam vet about the wonderful reception soldiers get at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. My son had recently come home on leave from Iraq at the time and we were estatic to see him. The reception at the airport was put on by vets from all different wars and all different branches of the service. When the soldiers come off the plane, they are greeted by a corridor of people with signs and baloons who are clapping and cheering. All are greeted and hugged. Many times soldiers look a little confused by the cheering but they always seem to take the hugs from strangers with grace.
The sweetest thing that I remember from that day was the white haired woman who stood at the end of the line of greeters. She held a sign that said "Grandma loves you!" and stood there and cried and hugged and kissed every soldier.
The other thing I remember was the bus full of children from a local daycare that came to greet soldiers. They all had looks of wonder and awe on their faces while looking at all the soldiers. You could tell that they knew that heros were passing in front of them.
About then, my co-worker told me about his experience of coming home and how it was very depressing. I said that what happened to Vietnam vets when they returned home was an abomination. To my surprise, he started to tear up. It was good for him to know that things are different. We eventually got to be good friends.
Grunt'sWife - Hold tight to your husband. Military spouses have a tough job. Take care of yourself. Let him that there are people who think he is a hero for serving our country. Here in Texas, it is not uncommon for strangers to stop a soldier in uniform and shake his/her hand and thank them for their service. God Bless the both of you.
Machine - Thank you for your service. God Bless you and your family.
I'd have to think i've lived my 48 years in the top one percent of bountiful lives when i consider all the lives of the past and across the current globe.
And i owe it all to soldiers that cared about my life and DIDN"T EVEN KNOW ME! I am indebted to and have a love for them all.
Thank you for the America you fought to give me.
I first learned about the distain that U.S. and Canadian academics have for people who serve in the military when I was teaching overseas. I was in a program in a foreign country that invited academics from English-speaking countries to teach in their universities in order to help their students learn not just English, but also learn about the culture of the English-speaking countries by having first-hand contact with people belonging to the culture.
It turned out that one of my students was an officer in the military of my host country. One day she asked me why American and Canadian professors hated military personnel so much. She was a brilliant student. But she had discovered that once her professors from North America learned that she was in the military, they began to treat her badly. She told me I was the first American professor who, after learning she was in the military, still treated her with respect. I was shocked when I heard about the behavior of my academic colleagues.
When North American academics display such distain for military personnel, they open up the possibility of their being used as a fifth column by any foreign country who wishes to exploit them. Intelligent people should not permit themselves to become puppets because they harbor and nourish a sentiment, like distain for the military, for no good reason.
As an academic myself, it seems to me that the nourishment of such distain in the universities is an incredible betrayal of the mission of the university to promote the growth of reason and rationality in its students and teachers.
The "shunning" (which is what it really is) that takes place towards people who have been in the military seems to be the "norm" in this society as opposed to the exception. This is not the publicly advertised position, however.
My own experience after I was discharged (honorably) in 1971 appears to be fairly typical from comparasion with others from the same period over the years.
It became VERY OBVIOUS to me that no positive impressions would be created by admitting my military experience; and that for social and economic survival, the best course would be to avoid having it acknowledged or even brought up.
Yes, there were programs, etc to "reward" veterans but I quickly learned that in claiming these "benefits" I was setting myself up for "labeling" in a very self-destructive way.
Anyone who had been in the military during Viet-Nam was categorized as at least "psychically damaged" by the culture and society. Professors did not even pretent to like you, the media constantly portrayed veterans as criminals, "baby-killers", sociopaths, psychotics and generally unstable and scary people.
Most of the time it would keep you from getting hired, and if hired, condemned to low-level, dead-end jobs. If discovered after you were hired, it could easily get you fired if someone told HR they "were afraid" just because you were in the building; even if they had never seen you, or met you, or worked with you. Your mere presence in the same vicinity was enough to cause them to "be frightened" that you would "just go crazy and kill everyone". I saw it on TV last week....
So, not being totally stupid, I learned to just keep quiet. Worked much better for me. Grades improved. Jobs were better.
I quickly learned to avoid dealing with government at ALL levels because they just wanted to put you into another "victim group" or label you for their own benefit. Your helplessness was their power.
Once I learned to accept this "cost" of military service and just left a vague blank spot in my resume for that period, my economic and social life improved.
It may not be just, it may not be kind. It may be precisely the opposite, but it is the way this society is. so, you can accept it or drive yourself insane trying to fight it. Your choice.
"The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards."
General William F. Butler
Nice signs by a couple of apparent losers.
Well, I can tell of a couple or three times when exploiting the Hollyweird/MSM/Academia meme of the batshit crazy Vietnam Vet came in handy...
We're all mad, you know.
heh
!
I'm interested in your comments with respect to PTSD and Vietnam veterans. I was wondering how 30% of Vietnam era vets had PTSD when only an estimated 5% served in combat roles. I indeed suspect lot of PTDS resulted from the treatment recveived not "over there" but "over here" that casued them such pain. Audey Murphy killed all kinds of people and U.S. bomber pilots in WWII incenerated civilians constantly, but they have a lower rate of PTSD?
Well I guess Audey Murphy did not have John Kerry call him a baby killer on a regular basis.
Audie Murphy is not a good example. He had serious PTSD problems the rest of his life.
Wr_guy does make a point that I've thought about from time to time also, though.
Those who have never experienced living in a society where the truth has been turned utterly upside down like that may not be able to place themselves in that situation and empathize with the horrific reality such actually places on our veterans.
If you've never experienced your own daughter coming home from school and asking you if you took part in "the rape and plundering over there" -- stated as a known natural fact as it was -- then you haven't had to deal with this particular evil at all.
Less than a year after that, we were homeschoolers, some of the first of this generation to do so.
But I have been convinced for a long time that this is war, whether we are holding rifles or not, we must constantly and daily fight the good fight.
That is very likely why I've never succumbed to this particular "malady" -- in my view, the war hasn't ended at all, not yet time for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to kick in, this old airman is still in the trenches as it were.
And I don't complain about that.
It appears to be the only logical path to victory.
We can see on these comment pages the vitriole from those who would prefer that people like me just give up. They don't realize how much that actually keeps folks like me fighting.
And, I long ago made a solemn pledge that "never again" is my watchword.
I tell young Servicepeople that, if they are ever anywhere, in uniform or out, and some miscreant should spit on them or otherwise attempt to mistreat them for their US military service, to simply stand aside and watch the old black guy and what he does to the miscreant because I am now a civilian, my kids are grown, etc. etc. -- ain't got that much to lose and everything to gain.
Here's a clue for those types, don't ever try to take your frustrations out on a young lady with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair around The Machine.
I promise you that they will need a pressure hose to get what's left of you off of the sidewalk.
!
Interesting side note--a few years ago I read a book about Vietnam titled "365 Days". In it was a chapter on how psychiatric casualties--men who succumbed to the stresses of combat--were treated in-country. Apparently they were hospitalized for the minimum amount of time needed for them to recover their bearings, and during that time their beds were decorated with signs depicting their unit's insignia.
This was done to remind them that they were still soldiers and were expected to return to duty with their units upon recovery. The impression I got was that this approach was successful to a large degree, and most of those who "cracked" in the field later rejoined their comrades with few problems.
Seems to me the real problems started when they returned stateside, and few of those had anything to do with the vets themselves....
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