See, yesterday, I was hobbling around a VA hospital, jumping through bureaucratic hoops so I could go home. The last hoop to stumble through was to pick up my travel pittance (disabled vets get that). Actually, I'm being unfair. The funds allowed, per mile, are more than adequate if you hitchhike, sleep in a ditch, and look at the whole thing as fasting practice.
Anyhow, the lady at the cashier's window was about 45 or so, her face crisscrossed with stress lines, the corners of her lips turned down-- the saddest permanent frown I'd heretofore seen. Red-eyed, unkempt.
On her cubicle's right was the reason:
Photo of a very-young Marine-- likely the first time he'd worn his dress blues. "11-01-05" and "Iraq" told me that sometime last November he'd worn those one last time, forever.
It would have been totally inauthentic for me to ignore something as plain as that -- at least, something plain as that to someone like me. So I offered the sincerest condolences I could, that I could find words for -- and as neutrally put as I could.
I also told her that I write, sometimes well enough to be appreciated by some of the few who, remarkably, still have an interest in the printed word. And I told her I intended to fashion something to illustrate the meaning of her child's dying.
I have no idea what that something will be. But I'm certain what I want it to do: I want just one person to turn off their fucking television set for a while, and in its stead read something outside that silly, stupid Media paradigm. Something to facilitate learning just a little bit about how and why -- and most important! -- the fact itself, viz. that the person has been living in a world built of lies... one where even the simplest of mental processes have been skewed, so skewed that the most blatant of obvious nonsense is routinely lapped up, like a dog eagerly licking at the ploppings from a baby's diaper.
I want that person to begin learning to see what I saw in that shattered mother's face. I want that person to begin to think.
--Stieger
Friday, March 03, 2006
"I Want That Person to Think"
Yesterday, I posted a link sent to me by a friend. Here are some further thoughts he sent me:
In 1999, Clintonista had his bud at the VA declare open admissions, the brainchild of idiots like him. Basically, ANYONE that would walk thru the door and claim benefits would get them, as long as you could prove you were once in the service.Blammo! People in the active VA system went from 3.9 million to almost 7 million in one yr. Ta da! That means that IDIOTS like me that bought that bill o'goods about being taken care of for life if you get damaged In The Line of Duty, and are 70% disabled now get(drum roll,please) NO CARE. All thanks to that stooge from Ark. and his socialist puke wife. If I didn't get my wife's insurance, I would be dead by now. I already know what is in that womans face. I saw it in my now dead mother's face when all I could do was roll on the floor, clutching my ruined guts while I puked them out and told her the VA couldn't help me out today, come back next week. Or that sly look on the hundreds of men sitting around in the waiting rooms for sick call that just didn't manage to get started that day, so they sat around for 10 hours on the odd hope that it might. G*d help all the live ones who come back from Afghanistan and Iraq,and wherever, because the stink of the late-funded,underfunded, and seldom funded VA, with men and women dying and suffering while the assholes in Congress dither,piss away, and steal to their hearts content,will surely reach Him, and His anger does not sleep. Yeah, I know all about that travel crap. I believe I was offered $1.34 the last time about ten yrs. ago that I managed to squeeze throught the door,wait about 5 hours in pain, and finally see an overworked PA that gave me some samples from a drug peddler, since that was all she had to offer. Anyway, I couldn't think of a way to reply without getting really frosty, so I just walked away.Rome loves her brave warriors."A soldiers life is a life of glory,but a dog would not lead it" NB
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