There is a natural (perhaps “unnatural”) Immunity Factor to counter Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…
It’s called “sociopathy” and its evil twin “narcissism”.
I know, some people will only accept the opinion of Army scientists on what causes or prevents the disease, so I’ll use a paraphrase of their definitions.
It started to be a really really noticeable problem at the time of our Civil War and the Crimean War(s)…
A time when large standing armies of conscripts were suddenly the norm rather than an aberration.
A time of weapons technologies wherein somebody you could not see or hear, somebody perhaps miles away, could kill you, or your comrades, large numbers of you at a time.
But the truly extraordinary stress, wasn’t from the sudden spurts of violence, not directly, at least.
It was the vastly longer times Between barrages, between battles…
The disruption of you natural Circadian rhythms, sleep patterns and waking patterns, the “attack at dawn” because Dawn is the point at which all living creatures, from the lowest proto-bacterium to the Great Apes, and Humans, are at their lowest level of energy.
So you had to be awake, and aware, by dawn. Guards have to be maintained at all hours… thus intermittent episodes of sleep deprivation. And that not on a regular basis.
The randomness of that is also a factor.
Then there’s the acts of pure murder. You can train yourself to ignore your conscience, or be trained en masse to ignore your collective conscience… to supress the certain knowledge that you are doing something totally against your basic humanity…
But the Basic Training itself, aka Indoctrination, aka Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Brainwashing, is designed not to strenghten your resolve, or your ability to think logically… but to break those barriers, those mental and spiritual bits of armor provided by God, that keep most people from committing outrageous crimes.
You can, if your indoctrination is constantly reinforced, maintain that level of denial… but only for as long as your indoctrination is reinforced.
Once you are separated from your army, or from your cult, or whatever group is brainwashing you, the denial becomes harder and harder to maintain.
False “patriotism”, or devotion to whatever OTHER similar lower-case “g” god you’ve been trained to worship, and a simple fear of admitting, mostly to yourself or your comrades, that you have done wrong, is a very powerful reason to keep it sublimated, to bottle it and suppress it.
Alcohol and other drugs are one really commonly used method.
Perhaps it’s the reason members of the military are actually Encouraged to drink. Somebody who’s a total drunkard might be punished or looked down upon, but so are tee-totallers.
People who abstain from social drinking are actually looked upon as having antisocial tendencies, or at least, not being as suggestible, “not a team player”.
So, what would be a good, non-destructive vaccine, a good prevention for PTSD?
not maintaining a Standing Army for one.
It might sound kind of idealistic, like what would then prevent some foreign power from invading and enslaving America…
Well, for one thing, we haven’t been invaded since 1814. And then it was one of the Superpowers of its time, Great Britain. And they couldn’t maintain their other, bigger wars and still attempt to occupy even those small patches of American ground that they DID gain.
Too much drain on their manpower, materiel and other resources, especially money.
Much like our Federal Government spending DEFICIT after 7 years of Bush is now 5 times (approximately) the Government Budget for the entire 4 years of the “tax and spend liberal” Carter Administration. Add in, (or subtract) an equal amount which was the Projected SURPLUS for 2007, made in 2001 when Bush took office.
That might sound like phantom accounting, unless you realize that the “Liberation” was projected to actually make a profit.
Just not for, you know, the average American or the average “Liberated” Iraqi.
And this is from the economy that the Capitalist Masters say is “The Strongest on earth”.
Israel, one of our proxy states, could not maintain an occupation in Lebanon even with massive American money aid. They can’t maintain an occupation of the West Bank, populated with the poorest Arab nation there is, where their most advanced military technology is a reworked Russian rocket-propelled grenade… without massive American financing.
If we had simply left “goddam insane” alone in 1991, the other Arab nations, and the simple economics, would have ended the invasion.
We’re a rich nation, how would the poorest nations maintain it? Historically, they’ve done it the way Hussein maintained his battle with Iran… with massive amounts of money.
Donated money.
So it’s do-able. People who point out that it’s never worked before fail to recall the other side of that equation, it’s never been tried before.
The same people who say we need to pour (literally) countless trillions of dollars into occupying the Arabian Peninsula for the rest of our national existence, were the same ones who cut the funding for every actual Peace initiative whenever a snag was hit in the progress thereof.
That’s the REAL “surrender mentality”.
The notion that peace would be very difficult to achieve, therefore we shouldn’t even try, and just surrender to Endless War and the Dictatorship necessary to maintain it.
And the economic degradation. And the inescapable fact that our children or grandchildren or hell, maybe even our very own generation, would be occupied by a foreign power when the Empire falls.
And then there’s the medical costs, not least the cost of PTSD.
Even if somebody doesn’t have full-blown psychoses as a result of PTSD, it degrades the physical health, medical problems like Diabetes, Heart, lung, kidney diseases, even arthritis, become more common. The human immune system is suppressed by PTSD.
That’s the most common symptom of it, actually, according to the Army. The most expensive.
We have one candidate for president, has said that he WILL cut “social spending”, like public health, VETERANS health care, etc etc etc.. to fund his Masters (Satans) Endless War.
We need to innocculate the entire American public against PTSD, with the knowledge that war is NOT a “necessary evil”. With the knowledge of WHY it can be ended and HOW it can be ended.
It beats living Hell out of the alternative possibilities probabilities.
Was it news to you? The Iraq withdrawal is off. The war that launched America’s first black president GOES ON. Didn’t the new Dissembler in Chief campaign to end the Iraq War, sort of, or uh, eventually? Skeptics were ostracized and accused of not stepping up, hope-wise. What’s next, Obama’s Tink dies if we all don’t clap our hands in obeisance, chanting “we believe”? If American voters were upset about Guantanamo, Endless War on Terror, torture, rendition, corporations indemnified of their abuses –take your pick– you wouldn’t know it now. Were you hoping to see Bush and Co prosecuted? What did you think of the President standing by as his SCOTUS nominee gushed about the preeminence of the rule of law.
From A.N.S.W.E.R.:
The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.
W. James McNerney Jr.
Robert J. Stevens
Nicholas D. Chabraja
William P. Utt
