A Guide for Combat Veterans to Corporate Life, Parenthood, and Caging the Beast Inside
I had the distinct pleasure on Saturday night to sit down with the guys from Dysfunctional Veterans. If you don’t already own their gear, I bet you’ve probably seen someone walking around with DV stuff:
The interview was a lot of fun and they gave me plenty of time to really discuss our project here at CBD.
My sweet mother says I cuss too much…she might be right. Don’t worry, I don’t do it in front of my kids. Anyway, enjoy the recording. Warning: Lots of language.
There was a loud knocking and banging on the door. She looked up at her children and could see terror come over their faces just by the nature of the sound. She forced a smile, “I’ll get it.” As she unlocked the door it flew open sending her stumbling backwards into the wall nearby. “Mommy!” her daughter yelled running to her mother as the man walked in wearing a soldier’s uniform and a beretta on his hip.
“By order of the Communist Party and Fidel Castro, this house is now property of the Revolution. Get out.” She was now holding her daughter who was sobbing loudly, “Where is my husband,” she asked. “He’s being reeducated,” the soldier stated staring at her lasciviously, pausing at her breasts before meeting her eyes, “you have five minutes to pack one suitcase.”
The woman sprung to action, heading towards her bedroom. “Mommy, I don’t want to leave, I like this house.” She comforted her daughter by squeezing tighter, but the words didn’t come. She sat the little girl on the bed and began to pick out clothes. “Go get your favorite toy ok sweetie,” she gave the instructions as tears welled up in her eyes, seeing the little girl made her want to break down and cry.
As they walked out of the house, she held onto the suitcase in one hand and the little girl in her arms. It was her first glance at the madness in her neighborhood. A caravan of soldiers had pulled up and were kicking people out of their homes. A soldier walked up to them and stared at the little girl who clutched tightly to her favorite doll as she continued to cry. He stood blocking their way, “I need to search you, to make sure you aren’t stealing anything of value from the revolution.” She put down the girl and the soldier began to run his hands all over her body. She was standing with her legs spread facing her house as they placed a sign on the door, “property of the communist party.” She flinched and shut her eyes tightly as his hand slid into her pants and his fingers went inside her. “We gotta be thorough you know,” he whispered into her ear as tears began to roll down her cheek.
“Alright you’re good, need to search her now.” He pointed at the little girl, “No please, she’s just a child!” The soldier raised his voice, “She’s a fucking worm!” He reached out and ripped the doll out of the little girl’s hand, “You hiding diamonds in here?” “No, please, that’s my favorite toy,” the little girl’s voice screeched as she reached helplessly for her doll. “Please don’t,” the mother’s voice was low and defeated. The soldier smiled as he ripped the toy apart, sending doll stuffing floating into the wind. She grabbed her daughter tightly and could barely hear the soldier laughing over the screams of the little girl.
As she made her way down the street, she was stopped by a commotion as a neighbor’s door flew open and a man was thrown down the stairs. She pressed her daughter’s head into her shoulder so the little girl wouldn’t see. The man got up to his hands and knees attempting to stand, when a soldier reared back and kicked him hard in the mouth. The sound of the boot cracking the man’s face made the little girl flinch in her mother’s arms, but the sight was much worse. The force of the boot sent the man’s head flying backwards shooting a stream of blood onto the soldier’s uniform. It flipped him completely onto his back, and he struggled to get air as shots of blood flew into the air with each exasperated breath.
“Now you got blood on me,” the soldier exclaimed as he kicked the man again in the side. “What’s the problem faggot? You like to take it in the ass, but you don’t like it when Fidel fucks you?” He looked over to the crowd that was forming and stepped quickly towards a man who was visibly angry at the scene, “You got a problem with what you see, Nigger?” The man stayed silent as the soldier drew his sidearm and leaned in closer. Just then, the man on the ground let out an intelligible sentence.
The soldier spun around, “What’s that faggot?” He bent down next to the naked man’s head. The man sat up, leaning on his arm, “I said, Viva Cuba Libre!” He defiantly yelled it loud enough for everyone to hear as he stared at the soldier, their faces were not more than an inch apart. The soldier stood up, pressing the barrel of the pistol right into the man’s head, “Viva Fidel, Maricon.” The shot rang out loudly in the street.
– – –
Although this story is fictional, every event did indeed transpire, just not in the same moment. In Fidel Castro’s Cuba political dissidents were routinely murdered, homosexuals were persecuted, and blacks were treated as an inferior race.
My grandmother was evicted from her own home with only one suitcase for her and her children. My mother had her only toy ripped apart in front of her. Without any legal source of income, my uncle sold croquettes on the street at age 7 because his mother, a teacher, wasn’t allowed to work, and his father was placed in a concentration camp. My grandfather entered the concentration camp at 6 foot and over 180 lbs. He was forced to work as a slave in the fields and when he got sick, he was given no medical attention and left to die. He survived and when he was finally released, he had dropped to a sickly 120 lbs.
My father’s father was a doctor and a Major in the revolutionary army, but when he refused to join the communist party, he was stripped of his rank and degree and also forced into a labor camp. He eventually escaped via a raft, but left behind my grandmother and my father, a 14 year old boy at the time. When my father was jailed for arguing with a teacher about the perils of communism, he too escaped and was alone in Mexico for a year as a teenage boy before he was able to earn enough money to fly to the US.
My uncle Tony was a star athlete, but was ousted from the Cuban National Baseball team because his views were “too American”. He was forced to escape and leave his family behind. He would routinely send back items so his family could survive like fishing hooks.
His brother was jailed for stealing a government cow (the irony isn’t lost on me), and died in prison. His father’s fishing boat was confiscated, and when he died, my uncle wasn’t able to visit him. It would be 25 years before my uncle saw his sister again.
These are just some of the stories of pain and suffering Fidel Castro left in his wake. His legacy is a Cuba in ruins while he lived in palaces. A people in fear of their government, while he operated with complete impunity. A place where ideas and thoughts can get you tortured, imprisoned, or killed. A place where blacks and gays are considered inferior.
This is why when people like Jesse Jackson, Jill Stein, Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau, and Jesse Ventura praise or whitewash the sadistic, evil, son of a bitch that Fidel Castro was it pisses me off so much. It is an affront to all those who suffered under his brutal reign of terror that still continues today even after his death. It shows a great ignorance and moral bankruptcy to praise or even diminish the evil that was Fidel Castro.
It is a sort of beautiful irony that I have this medium, as a child of Cuban immigrants, with which to reach thousands of people and say…
It’s also why I proudly wore a uniform and placed myself in harm’s way for the USA. Folks, the United States is the last stand for freedom in the world. Although my parents and grandparents had a place to run to, me and my children don’t. This is it, and I will ferociously fight to protect it.
God Bless the United States of America!
Airborne all the Way!
Viva Cuba Libre!
-LJF
When the second plane hit the south tower on September 11th, it became clear that we were under attack and I remember thinking that I needed to do something. Over the next few weeks I spent a lot of time doing some soul searching and figuring out what being an American meant to me. I watched as my country came together and rose above the fray. I watched as we acted like neighbors, helped each other, and rallied around each other. It was then I realized that you were a people worth dying for, and this was a country worth fighting for, and I walked into the recruiters office.
Sunday morning I awoke early to prepare for church and I was greeted with the news that someone had attacked a nightclub in Orlando, shooting as many as 50 people, and before the bodies were even moved, we began to attack each other.
Over the last two days I’ve seen this blamed on Christians, guns, homosexuals, Muslims, the NRA, Republicans, Democrats, and more. Our “leaders” have all joined in, dropping a soap box on warm dead bodies to peddle whatever cause they believe is going to get them elected. Members of congress are interrupting moments of silence (I’m sure the fact that it’s an election year with expected high turnout has nothing to do with these tantrums on the floor).
Families had not even been notified yet, and we turned our backs on them and begun pointing fingers at each other; it still hasn’t stopped.
We couldn’t take even one day to mourn? We couldn’t stop and feel sympathy for all those mothers who are grieving the loss of the most important people to them? Are we so eager to hate each other that we step over bodies and yell at each other covered in their blood?
Right now there are parents who simply cannot stop crying, and you can’t stop bickering. It’s embarrassing.
I get it, you’re angry, but how about you blame that piece of shit coward and not all the people that didn’t shoot up the Orlando nightclub? How about you turn around and give someone a hug and tell them you love them? How about you act like Americans and leaders instead of psychos in the comments section?
You’ve become so conditioned to act in anger, so conditioned to live in your own echo chamber where a dissenting opinion is only a block and “unfollow” away, that you have forgotten that these people are still your neighbors.
I’m not sure what will fix it, but I refuse to blame all the people that didn’t pull the trigger in Orlando. I refuse to engage in more vitriol, there is plenty of that already. In stubborn resolve, I choose to love my neighbor. If this is a one man stand, so be it; it’s not the first time a paratrooper has taken on an army.
-LJF
This is the first part of two-part postings on suicide. The first part deals with a general introduction to the problem and the concept of risk and protective factors. The second part will address more intrapersonal, individual factors and possible options to find hope and relief. However, it is important to keep in mind this is a very complex subject that resists any attempt to quick fixes or easy solutions. We humbly approach this deadly subject with hopes at understanding it better and hopefully finding possible solutions.
The man in front of me was looking distressed and his words were coming out with great difficulty. He was a platoon SGT, with multiple combat deployments, and currently having problems with chronic pain, poor sleep, and depression. As we discussed his background and his military experience, something seemed not right. As we progressed in our interview, I asked him if something had occurred recently. He looked up to me and said, “Yesterday I found out one of my guys from my platoon in Afghanistan committed suicide, he was like a son to me”
For those of us in the military, these are sadly, common occurrences. We all know somebody or know of somebody, who has taken his life. The news is devastating. These men have been in combat, shared great dangers and adversities, and through it all, they survived and came home only to end their lives at their own hands. We feel sad, powerless, angry, and we ask ourselves why?
It may be surprising to some, but there was a time in the past that suicide in the military was much lower (20% and more in some cases) than in the civilian population; in fact, being in the military used to be a protective factor. However, all of that began to change around 2004, and suicide rates have continued to rise and maintain at levels much higher that our civilians counterparts. By 2012, when we were still significantly involved in combat operations, more soldiers died by suicide than those killed in action, a very sobering fact. It does not take a genius to see that the rise in suicide rates corresponded to the onset of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars our longest wars to date. Yet, the statistical link between deployments and suicide is at best weak or non-existent, a fact that adds complexity to this issue.
There are hundreds of studies and millions of dollars spent in trying to find a solution, or even an understanding to this perplexing problem. One factor however, which seems significant is that suicide rates are much higher for those who separate early from the military or separate under less than honorable conditions. This fact alone, underlines the importance of transition issues, of losing connection with our brothers in arms, and of finding oneself lost in a world we do not seem to fit in very well and we do not seem to be well equipped to survive and thrive.
A significant line of research, mostly based on statistical and epidemiological studies of suicide populations, focuses on risk and protective factors; that is, what are the factors or elements that render a person more vulnerable or likely to commit suicide versus the factors that tend to protect the person from it. While this research is helpful and promising in many respects, if fails in two fundamental aspects. The first one is clearly linked to the weakness of correlational studies; that an association exist between to variables, does not implies causation, it only suggests a relationship ( that a rooster crows at sunrise does not mean that the sun makes the rooster crows). The second one is similar, that while a set of factors may predict a likely behavior from a member of a given population, it can’t never predict the behavior of a specific member of that population. For example, risk factors may tell us that soldiers who display those factors have a higher likelihood to hurt themselves, but it cannot tell us that a specific soldier, SGT Smith will do so.
Nevertheless, risk and protective factors are place to start in helping us think more concretely about suicide and in ways to prevent it from occurring. Here is a short list of those factors.
Risk and Protective Factors
| Risk Factors | Protective Factors |
|
Mental disorders Prior history of suicidal behavior Personality Disorders Personality Traits (anger, impulsivity) Hopelessness Substance Use Stressful life events (loss of job, partner) Lack of Social Support Single/divorced Cognitive Problems Chronic illnesses (Pain, TBI, etc) Demographics (white, male ) Access to lethal means Family history of mental illness History of childhood abuse/neglect
|
Social Support
Being Married Religious affiliation Character strengths Life Satisfaction Positive mood Hope Self-esteem Meaning and purpose Coping ability Adaptability Meaningfully employed. Life goals |
A quick look at this list may suggest some possible ways to minimize risk. Some factors are of course, impervious to change; we can’t alter our race and gender neither can we alter our lives’ histories. Who we are biologically, and what has happened to us, is determined and unchangeable. On the other hand, there are many factors we can change or modify which may enhance and enrich our lives and in doing so, protect us from self-destruction. Maintaining a sense of connection and belongings, fostering primary relationships, returning or coming to Faith, seeking professional help, taking care of our basic needs (employment, housing, etc) and developing life goals and purpose may be a place to start. There are no easy solutions, and even those actions we could take may not be completely under out control. Even our willingness, disposition and desire may be lacking. However, it is not the size of the problem, but the strength of our character that will carry the day; we need to believe that and commit ourselves to that ideal.
SPARTAN
