I’vre had this one sitting in the hopper waiting for me to get around to it for over a week now. It was worth the wait, I promise.
Great and sobering read.
From a published SF brother!
First stop calling it a swamp to be drained! It’s a septic tank, that needs a giant flush and DOJ- FBI-CIA-DIA-ETC need a giant enema, DOGE. Let’s say 30% from top day one POTUS45-47!
Please call me back to help Sec Def, slash Special Forces, and sea pigs (squeals). Just saying….old school PT for unit selection and 10 mile run in kit, first five with everything, you need for week prior in winter desert, at five mile dump, to LBE and weapons. Bottom 30 percent of team guys gone, all chicks and chicks with dicks (gender confused).
“ I am quite sure the event in Las Vegas has shaken us all, if for no other reason that none of it appears to make any sense. The principle of Occam’s razor is that when searching for an answer to an event or circumstance, the simplest explanation is more likely over any complex set of possibilities. Bearing that in mind, the thing in Vegas is either a conspiracy so weird and convoluted it makes every crazy Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory look completely sane and plausible, or . . . the guy was bonkers . . . I’m going with bonkers.
It was inevitable that people would start repeating the “22-a-day” mantra, especially considering its looking more and more like a deliberate suicide. I hate suicide – it is so destructive and unnecessary; a permanent solution to a temporary problem that permanently affects everyone around it.
Regarding the “22-a-day” thing – can we ever put that to rest? It has never been 22 a day, it never was – not even after the worst wars we had: Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam. The 22-a-day number is a completely flawed statistic derived from the VA taking a sample of numbers (from an incomplete and inaccurate sample set) and extrapolating it out, then the Left-Leaning Lamestream Media taking that number and running with it to prove that all us veterans are a pack of crazy Rambos – an extension of the old “Vietnam Flashback” myth (which they also made up) which validates their view that America is bad because America makes wars that turn all veterans into ticking time bombs.
Where “22-a-day” came from: The statistics come from the VA’s 2012 Suicide Data Report. The VA analyzed death certificates from 21 states from 1999-2011. Looking at the certificates, they identified which individuals were veterans and came up with 22% of all suicides were by veterans within those 21 states. They then extrapolated that number to the national number of suicides (~38,000), divided by 365.25 for days in a year, and voila: “22-a-day”!
Issues with this:
• The statistical sample did not include California or Texas, the two states with the largest veteran populations
• Does not account that the majority of veterans (67.7%) are over the age of 55
• Not all deaths are correctly identified as suicides
• Hunting accidents and/or accidental shootings (cleaning weapons etc) may be listed as suicide but are not the same thing as an intentional suicide
Not all veterans are the same – here are some numbers:
• 18.2 million veterans, 5.5% of the US population, 7.25% of US population aged 18+
• 3.5 million post-9/11 veterans, 19.4% of veteran population
• 1.6 million veterans aged 18-34, 8.9% of veteran population
But not all veterans are the same, and not all suicides are the same:
A WWII vet who served 3 years and went through the horrors of the D-Day landings, Battle of the Bulge etc, is not the same thing as a guy who served in admin or support and never saw a shot fired in anger, who is not the same as a post-Vietnam/GWOT guy who did 20 years in combat arms with multiple combat tours, who is not the same as a guy who did less than 2 years and got kicked out as a private E-1 for being a substandard soldier, dope smoker whatever – but statistically they are all veterans.
A suicide by a WWII or Korean War vet in his 90s suffering from cancer who just wants to end the pain is not the same thing as a young vet in his 20s or 30s distraught from any number of life events (divorce, alcoholism, etc) plus the effects of PTSD and/or clinical depression, and not at all the same thing as the substandard individual who barely served and ended his life for whatever reason that had absolutely nothing to do with his minimal time in service.
Any suicide is a tragic thing – even one is too many. However, taking all of the above into consideration, the real number of veteran suicides among the post-Vietnam/GWOT generation is closer to 2 a week.
Unlike the last email I ran, I actually did get permission from the sender to run this one. Thanks for that, Doc, I do appreciate ya. Been having some problems of late with the Brave browser running slow as molasses in the Alaskan tundra in January, which caused me to hold off on posting this until I got a chance to look into the matter. Thankfully, I believe I have that pettifogging little issue resolved now.
- Entries
Mike, is there a link to that?
I also think the 22 a day is horseshit.
Nah, that’s the entire email exactly as I received it.
Ah, gotcha, misunderstood the part about it being an email to you.