We are underestimating the impacts that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have had on its veterans. They’re small but relevant contributions to current conditions.
Those impacts weren’t just PTSD. They were ideological too: when veterans returned they were shit upon by the very people who sent them there. (Neither Bush nor Biden are innocent in this regard – under the conventions against aggressive warfare both would be tried, convicted, and punished.)
The collapse of Capital markets in 2007-2008 – and their bailouts by people who for decades insisted that any system outside private market mechanisms would have us sucking Stalin off in a gulag – convinced them America’s governance was corrupt to the core.
If that’s how you saw things, and felt no hopeful path in the dark, wouldn’t you consider using your government-issued knowledge and skills of violence to change things?
Do you now see why it was so important for a new collective movement with a positive vision for change to emerge?
But it never did. In the silence, the wrong voices rose, accruing some veterans’ attention. And so they were left with one overarching ideological goal: the negation of the negative.
Positive visions are absolutely necessary to accomplish positive change – and America doesn’t have a single positive vision. Not one.
The right voices aren’t speaking to and for them and the rest of us.
With that in mind, what do you think is going to happen next?