The Oyster Filter

Misc.

November 10th, 2009

Several months ago I was riding in a car with a soldier named Vic, who just learned that he was going back to Afghanistan. We were driving through Broadmoor, and I asked about his circumstances. “You don’t know what it’s like over there,” he said. I agreed that I didn’t know, and asked what I could do for him before he left. He didn’t directly answer but became increasingly anxious and stressed. Then he pulled over and did something quite unexpected and dangerous.

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Hi! My name is oyster and I want to welcome you to Filter, my new weekly blog here at Humid Beings. The world obviously needs more blogs, so this is my latest contribution. Please accept my invitation to join me here here each week to laugh and think about the events and ideas swirling around us.

The Oyster Filter won’t be a mere “weekly digest”, though. Digests are usually dull. Often, they just collect some interesting items in one place, and then you investigate the destination links and forget about the original digest. Because “no friction, no thought” is my belief, I’m going to aim a bit higher. I want Filter to be your “weekly indigest”— like the irritating speck in the oyster that becomes a pearl (if you’ll pardon the bivalvular metaphor).

My goal here is to present topical commentary that is worthy of some considered response, not a visceral insta-reaction to breaking news that begs for kneejerk counterreactions. I want to be as concise, entertaining and thought-provoking as I am on my daily blog… well maybe that’s a bad example. But suffice it to say, my hopes are high that I can present some ideas that will perhaps marinate in your subconscious a bit, and inspire sustained discussion. In other words, I’m optimistically shooting my blog arrows at the sun. Expect frequent failure.

Normally my bias is towards local and state political news that has national ramifications. I basically think politics is a funny game played for high stakes, and it always gives us opportunities to be clever and scathing towards the participants.

Last week most of us briefly observed Veterans Day and then went on to all the other various news topics out there (Rep. Cao’s vote on the Healthcare bill, the Greg Meffert trial, former Recovery Czar Ed Blakely’s insulting comments, the assault on raw oysters, the expanding Mayor’s race, the success of the Saints… etc). Sure, there was the opening of the WWII museum, the 234th birthday of the Marine Corps, and even Navy’s win over Notre Dame… but these celebrations and the normal solemn remembrances of military sacrifice were overwhelmed by the horrible killings at Ft. Hood. This massacre made Veterans Day ever more somber, and we shouldn’t try to get away from it.

I’m a big fan of Greg Peters’ work at Suspect Device. One of his recent comics really stayed with me, and is pertinent to the message I’m trying to get at in this initial Filter post. When I say I’m trying to get you to “laugh and think” about issues, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about.

The brute fact of the matter is that we are still in a war that began eight years ago. A few months after it began, special forces were transferred from Afghanistan to Iraq in preparation for the next war (that had yet to be sold to the American public). Now President Obama, who campaigned on bringing the Iraq war to an end, is facing a Hobson’s choice on what to do in Afghanistan. What should we do?

Have you read All Quiet on the Western Front frecently? Most of you probably read it in high school, but I missed it, and read it for the first time this year. It didn’t take long and very early into it I knew it was going to be one of the best (anti-) war books I’ve ever read. Incredibly powerful and poetic. Another book I read recently was Ethan Brown’s “Shake the Devil”, which has some unexpectedly gripping passages about the recent conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq. I will review it in a coming Filter post, when I recount the exciting conclusion to the story of me and Vic. (The Filter is not above being a tease.)

Suffice it to say: War is always horrible, and Veterans often return from war needing substantive, sustained care— something beyond the fleeting holidays and awards ceremonies. Inexplicably, they do not receive the care that they deserve. Over and over again, they fall through the multitudinous cracks in the system. The result is psychological trauma, substandard healthcare, and even homelessness and suicide.

Here is the most horrible thing I’ve read in years, from a jaw-dropping article in the Boston Review.

It speaks to this perverse, recurring impulse we have to err on the side of LESS care for Vets, rather than more.

Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.” At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.

Welcome to the Filter.