PSYCHOSCAPES: I got war on the brain

Everywhere on the media and in my dreams, I see corpses “carpeted through the streets”^⁠1 and neighborhoods reduced to rubble. It takes me back to Vietnam. I limit what I view, but some veterans cannot stop watching. Is it an unconscious attempt by those with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to make sense of what happened to them in combat?

I know my own life has been soaked in war since I was little. I remember walking with my family through the Harvey Lake Cemetery in Northwood on Memorial Day to watch my father’s WWII buddies, still mainly young men in in their twenties, fire final salutes to their dead comrades over the lake, scaring birds out of the trees and causing babies to cry.

Before I was in my 20s, I found myself in my own war in Vietnam. Afterward, I co-founded the Merrimack Valley Chapter of Veterans For Peace (VFP) to educate the public about the costs of war, particularly immoral wars of choice like Vietnam. Our slogan was "Never Again," which now sounds so pathetically naive.

How can any of us not be traumatized from the unspeakable violence force-fed into our psyches around the clock? It's not just from this war in Ukraine, but the cumulative effect, starting from being held hostage to reliving 9/11 endlessly, to watching the nightly carnage of countless conflicts around the world; to bearing witness to what seems like an endless loop of our kids being gunned down in their schools by other kids. One could make a good case that we now all have PTSD.

And what do folks with PTSD do?

They obsessively attempt to control their lives to avoid further trauma. It's an unconscious reaction, often irrational. Look at us in N.H., one of the safest places on earth. Yet, because of PTSD, we live in fear, afraid of the bogeyman, the dreaded Other who doesn't really exist: Like the feverish hallucination that democrats are satanic pedophiles who eat babies, that our teachers are indoctrinating kids to feel guilty about being white, or that brown-skinned immigrants, fleeing death squads, are drug dealers and serial rapists.

And what is the most common American response to these bogie men of our dreams?

Buy more guns – lots of them. According to the 2018 “Small Arms Survey,” U.S. civilians alone account for 46 percent of the worldwide total of civilian-held firearms, which breaks down to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."^⁠2

Today, most of us buy guns not for hunting but for protection against that evil Other. Toward that end, we've repealed regulations prohibiting military-stye assault rifles with big clips; we've loosened laws to allow practically anyone to carry loaded weapons openly; and we've passed new laws in many states, allowing the gun owner to "stand your ground." At the crux of these ‘shoot first” laws –like reliving the wild west – is the notion that lethal force should be used on first instinct, instead of saving it as a last resort.^⁠3

And what is the predictable result?

More shootings, more violence, more killing. Around and around we go. Worse yet, this same insanity is happening on the national level. Just look at Ukraine, fighting for its very existence against the Russian Bear. Of course, we have to support them: Arm them, we must. But that doesn’t mean raising the defense budget.

That would be the same mistake individuals make by buying more weapons. Yet, both Republicans and Democrats are guilty, bidding against each other to increase the Pentagon budget, even though, by the most conservative estimates, we already spend four times more on arms than Russia.^⁠4

Like Americans buying more guns, spending more money on the military does not supply security, only more death. The honest solution is to give Ukraine whatever they need to defend their country while, at the same time, reducing our overall defense budget. We can start by scrapping the Pentagon's program to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, projected to cost two trillion dollars.

We already possess thousands of nuclear weapons we don't need. New research shows the "pragmatic limit" of atomic weapons any country needs is only 100. That's because any nation, unleashing more than that, would create a nuclear winter blowback, destroying their society as well.^⁠5

It's time to commit America for mandatory therapy to address our irrational behavior. Our survival depends upon it.

xxx

anImage_41.tiff