Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Another Personal Update
I see that I've done it again. I've gone weeks without posting anything. So here's a short update: I arrived back in the states in August and promptly sank into a deep, numb depression. My girlfriend left me when I got back, making what I thought would be a time of healing and reconnecting into another period of seclusion and depression. I barely left my couch for days on end. I started grad school, enjoyed it, then dropped out thanks to my continuing mental and emotional troubles and a mortgage that was sinking me financially. I realized at some point that the only real reason I was still living in that crappy Arizona military town was that undervalued house, so I decided to accept a foreclosure or short-sale (selling or renting the place is out of the question--many homes on my street are for sale, my housing development isn't even halfway finished and the rental market is flooded) and move to Portland, Oregon, a city I've long wanted to call home. I've got family in the area, so at least there's a support network for me there.
I'll be settled in Portland by mid-November. I'm hopeful that living in a positive, progressive city near loved ones will be the jolt I need to get on with my life. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.
I'll be settled in Portland by mid-November. I'm hopeful that living in a positive, progressive city near loved ones will be the jolt I need to get on with my life. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.
Friday, May 30, 2008
My Life Among the Compassionate Conservatives
There's been an outpouring of support for me since my last post, for which I am very grateful. Special thanks goes to Edger at OOIBC and Docudharma. He re-posted PTSD... over there and his commenters have been amazing. Thank you each and every one.
It's a funny thing: when I was a conservative, I always got a lot of "it's great that you're in the Army/defending freedom/taking it to the terrorists" but when I problematized the situation a little bit--bringing up flaws in the war strategy, expressing doubts about the war itself, pointing to past mistakes made by our government that contributed to the current situation--my conservative friends couldn't find it in themselves to acknowledge that anything was wrong. And this was in 2005, by which point you would have had to be deaf, blind, mentally retarded and/or willfully ignorant to not notice that things were looking very bad. Invariably, they would tell me that it was all the media's fault (just like Vietnam!) and that I needed to insulate myself from traitors and collaborators such as Peter Jennings.
I finally had enough of the conservative movement and its pathetic inability to look in a mirror or think critically about any of its cherished platitudes and bolted. What I had expected to find, based on years of reading the likes of Russell Kirk, David Horowitz, Lew Rockwell, Victor Davis Hanson, the AEI gaggle, The National Review (I subscribed for more than five years), Human Events (my parents subscribed throughout my childhood), and other organs of the right-wing propaganda machine, was rabid anti-war neanderthals who hated America. (I should say that by the time I left, I knew this wasn't the only face the Left had to offer.)
What I found instead was compassion, understanding, a willingness to examine one's positions, and an openness to divergent points of view that utterly confounded the dichotomies I had absorbed in my youthful Right-wing radicalism. These were good, decent people by and large. I won't claim that there is no Left-wing lunatic fringe, but I will say that the crazies have not infiltrated the Left mainstream the way they have on the Right. There is no Left equivalent of Ann Coulter, at least not in terms of attention, airtime, book sales or general publicity. This is partly because the Right has much more leeway in the current media climate, but it's also because the Left does a better job of policing itself. It's true that Coulter was kicked off The Corner, but that didn't actually affect her popularity at all. When the Left ditched Hitchens (a subject about which I remain conflicted) he stayed ditched. This is not the result of some sort of Politburo that meets in the offices of The Nation every Wednesday at 9 am to decide the fate of liberalism, it's the genuine dislike of rank-and-file liberals for those who give them a bad name.
I have no doubt that the Right will eventually come to the consensus that Bush has been a disaster, but the Left would have been dogging him all along, rather than swallowing his absolutist rhetoric so gleefully as they failed to criticize even his most abhorrent policies (torture being perhaps the most egregious). The Right did that eventually with Nixon, after all, but only because of his economic policies and supposed kowtowing to Mao. When LBJ got us (deeper) into an unwinnable and morally repugnant war, the Left ensured that he would not serve another term. When Bush did it, the Right rallied around him and invented controversies about the service of an actual warrior and patriot in one of the most cynical and depraved moments in the history of our politics. Oh, and google the term "PTSD" on "corner.nationalreview.com" to see how often that issue has come up on one of the busiest political blogs in the world. That's what happens when you substitute "support my agenda" for "support the troops."
The Right loves to talk about freedom, but it suppresses freedom of expresion within its own ranks. They barely even debate anymore. As Peter Fonda put it in Easy Rider:
Too true. Sorry I was so wrong about you guys for so long.
It's a funny thing: when I was a conservative, I always got a lot of "it's great that you're in the Army/defending freedom/taking it to the terrorists" but when I problematized the situation a little bit--bringing up flaws in the war strategy, expressing doubts about the war itself, pointing to past mistakes made by our government that contributed to the current situation--my conservative friends couldn't find it in themselves to acknowledge that anything was wrong. And this was in 2005, by which point you would have had to be deaf, blind, mentally retarded and/or willfully ignorant to not notice that things were looking very bad. Invariably, they would tell me that it was all the media's fault (just like Vietnam!) and that I needed to insulate myself from traitors and collaborators such as Peter Jennings.
I finally had enough of the conservative movement and its pathetic inability to look in a mirror or think critically about any of its cherished platitudes and bolted. What I had expected to find, based on years of reading the likes of Russell Kirk, David Horowitz, Lew Rockwell, Victor Davis Hanson, the AEI gaggle, The National Review (I subscribed for more than five years), Human Events (my parents subscribed throughout my childhood), and other organs of the right-wing propaganda machine, was rabid anti-war neanderthals who hated America. (I should say that by the time I left, I knew this wasn't the only face the Left had to offer.)
What I found instead was compassion, understanding, a willingness to examine one's positions, and an openness to divergent points of view that utterly confounded the dichotomies I had absorbed in my youthful Right-wing radicalism. These were good, decent people by and large. I won't claim that there is no Left-wing lunatic fringe, but I will say that the crazies have not infiltrated the Left mainstream the way they have on the Right. There is no Left equivalent of Ann Coulter, at least not in terms of attention, airtime, book sales or general publicity. This is partly because the Right has much more leeway in the current media climate, but it's also because the Left does a better job of policing itself. It's true that Coulter was kicked off The Corner, but that didn't actually affect her popularity at all. When the Left ditched Hitchens (a subject about which I remain conflicted) he stayed ditched. This is not the result of some sort of Politburo that meets in the offices of The Nation every Wednesday at 9 am to decide the fate of liberalism, it's the genuine dislike of rank-and-file liberals for those who give them a bad name.
I have no doubt that the Right will eventually come to the consensus that Bush has been a disaster, but the Left would have been dogging him all along, rather than swallowing his absolutist rhetoric so gleefully as they failed to criticize even his most abhorrent policies (torture being perhaps the most egregious). The Right did that eventually with Nixon, after all, but only because of his economic policies and supposed kowtowing to Mao. When LBJ got us (deeper) into an unwinnable and morally repugnant war, the Left ensured that he would not serve another term. When Bush did it, the Right rallied around him and invented controversies about the service of an actual warrior and patriot in one of the most cynical and depraved moments in the history of our politics. Oh, and google the term "PTSD" on "corner.nationalreview.com" to see how often that issue has come up on one of the busiest political blogs in the world. That's what happens when you substitute "support my agenda" for "support the troops."
The Right loves to talk about freedom, but it suppresses freedom of expresion within its own ranks. They barely even debate anymore. As Peter Fonda put it in Easy Rider:
[Freedom's] what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.
Too true. Sorry I was so wrong about you guys for so long.
Labels: conservatism, personal, politics, PTSD
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
PTSD...
...is a bitch.
I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.
The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:
It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.
In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.
Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.
So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.
Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.
Cross-posted at OOIBC.
Labels: Iraq, OOIBC, personal, politics, PTSD
