Friday morning did not yield the typical post from Uncle Ken, and it took me by surprise. I don't recall him going off like that before, you could even call it a rant, and I don't know if it was because of a particular news item or the result of the cumulative Trumpian nonsense and at this point I am afraid to ask. And in a very atypical fashion, there was a very early Saturday morning post, around 3am or so, where he kind of settled down a bit. In any case, I'm not going to make anything of it and I'm glad he took the opportunity to vent. We all need to do so once in a while, even as it seems futile to make sense of the current goings on, especially in Washington.
But I want to make it clear that I'm in almost complete agreement with Uncle Ken's righteous indignation, especially regarding military spending. It's completely nuts and we have no business getting sucked into civil wars or local skirmishes. Last century it was the Commies, now it's the terrorists, and I'm wondering if they are all straw men to bolster that military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. The US sure seems to sell a lot weapons but as long as those sales improve the balance of payments and provide jobs not much is going to change.
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And then Uncle Ken's post got me thinking about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and how prevalent it is among the returning troops. I don't think it's the same thing as shell shock but something that first occurred in Vietnam, where it was almost impossible to distinguish between enemy combatants and civilians. In the Middle East you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys unless they are shooting at you, or so I've read, unlike fighting the Germans or Japanese in WWII. The bad guys wore different uniforms, were easy to spot, and.the rules of engagement were easy to follow.
I don't know all the causes of modern PTSD but I suspect that the pointless nature of the fighting has a lot to do with it, along with horrific amount of collateral damage like women and children. Maybe it's simply moral guilt, with the guys thinking they are fighting for something and then realizing they are fighting for nothing. I haven't read about any flag waving from those guys returning from combat overseas but maybe it's not a newsworthy topic. If Trump wants a military parade it should consist solely of wounded veterans and widows and orphans marching alongside empty caskets. War is still hell.
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Recently I mentioned something about declining teen pregnancies, and what do you know, a recent article on the Politico site bears it out a bit: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/08/why-young-americans-having-less-sex-216953
There is either something in the air or the Institute members are really tuned in. Or it's a coincidence, flip a coin.
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