Military PTSD is a joke

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Military PTSD is a joke

«‹›5 »

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

spengler posted:

they don't have a shitton of medical infrastructure built around profiteering off the sales of antipsychotics, though. Give it 10 years.

Considering like half its population uses drugs and its massive opium production i feel like afghanistan is already set in that rrgard

# ? Jun 20, 2014 06:03

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 11, 2024 18:58

Republican Vampire: Jun 2, 2007

Old Timey Research found that most soldiers were unwilling to actually take another human life. I think the numbers in WW2/Korea were 1 in 5 would shoot to kill. The aim of US military recruiters since has been to focus on recruiting that one man out of five and to ensure that he winds up in a combat role.

1 in 100 people are psychopaths. 3 in 100 high corporate achievers are psychopaths. 10 in 100 violent offenders are psychopaths. I'm willing to bet that the military would beat 'em all.

_{also ptsd is crazy hosed up and being crammed in a hyper regimented environment full of and run by psychopaths would probably give it to anyone}

# ? Jun 20, 2014 06:23

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

Republican Vampire posted:

Old Timey Research found that most soldiers were unwilling to actually take another human life. I think the numbers in WW2/Korea were 1 in 5 would shoot to kill.

This was actually a myth propagated by the famous historian SLA Marshall

# ? Jun 20, 2014 06:27

Tuxedo Gin: May 21, 2003; Classy.

anyone who volunteers for the military should be executed upon application. something severely hosed up with anybody who wants to fight a loving war.

# ? Jun 20, 2014 07:21

Reaganomicon: Jan 31, 2004; Flush please

SmokaDustbowl posted:

Yall signed up to kill people why you so broken now? I guess signing up to shoot guns at people didn't work out for you. Now somebody hosed your wife and you're homeless and you've gotta post to Goons in Platoons from that free wireless. Good job! Now you're back in civilian life and can kill yourself with heroin! Or maybe you're just sitting in a chair and your education was funded by people choking to death on their own blood. PTSD is just an excuse for murderers.

[trigger warning: US Military]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtqPlB-oC4w

i just agree with this 100% and had to register this agreement here

# ? Jun 20, 2014 07:29

Facepalm Ranger: Jan 17, 2012; SOME PEOPLE FIND HOME APPLIANCES SEXUALLY AROUSING! ZORDS ARE NOT APPLIANCES, DAMMIT!

Iron man had PTSD! How dare you mock what he's been through.

# ? Jun 20, 2014 08:01

Slow-Scan Shep: Jul 11, 2001

smartest post-vietnam decision they made was to eliminate the draft, causing it to be replaced with the poverty draft

see to them the worst thing about vietnam was all those middle-class kids who otherwise would have had (on average) quieter, happier lives than anyone before or since coming home and bitching up a storm

of course that isn't quite true because of how the draft actually played out but it was true enough to be a real problem

with an all-volunteer military you don't put too many kids of voters or taxpayers in danger. instead you get the poverty draft. poors, wingnuts, and poor wingnuts. but mostly poors. nobody gave a poo poo about them before they got shot at, nobody gave a poo poo after they got shot at. best of all, it's totally their fault they came back mentally/physically destroyed because they signed up for it, never mind the fact that they all came from places where the only viable alternatives included such wonderful career paths as flipping burgers or slinging drugs

everyone who matters wins

# ? Jun 20, 2014 08:09

Slow-Scan Shep: Jul 11, 2001

in summary op is an idiot

# ? Jun 20, 2014 08:11

Facepalm Ranger: Jan 17, 2012; SOME PEOPLE FIND HOME APPLIANCES SEXUALLY AROUSING! ZORDS ARE NOT APPLIANCES, DAMMIT!

papa_november posted:

smartest post-vietnam decision they made was to eliminate the draft, causing it to be replaced with the poverty draft

see to them the worst thing about vietnam was all those middle-class kids who otherwise would have had (on average) quieter, happier lives than anyone before or since coming home and bitching up a storm

of course that isn't quite true because of how the draft actually played out but it was true enough to be a real problem

with an all-volunteer military you don't put too many kids of voters or taxpayers in danger. instead you get the poverty draft. poors, wingnuts, and poor wingnuts. but mostly poors. nobody gave a poo poo about them before they got shot at, nobody gave a poo poo after they got shot at. best of all, it's totally their fault they came back mentally/physically destroyed because they signed up for it, never mind the fact that they all came from places where the only viable alternatives included such wonderful career paths as flipping burgers or slinging drugs

everyone who matters wins

So...if a small �ber-tactical force worked on eliminating poverty in the US there'll be a window of opportunity to destroy the country at its weakest (military wise) due to a decline in soldiers and before the realisation that the US desperately needs PMCs?

# ? Jun 20, 2014 08:16

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

Republican Vampire posted:

Old Timey Research found that most soldiers were unwilling to actually take another human life. I think the numbers in WW2/Korea were 1 in 5 would shoot to kill. The aim of US military recruiters since has been to focus on recruiting that one man out of five and to ensure that he winds up in a combat role.

1 in 100 people are psychopaths. 3 in 100 high corporate achievers are psychopaths. 10 in 100 violent offenders are psychopaths. I'm willing to bet that the military would beat 'em all.

_{also ptsd is crazy hosed up and being crammed in a hyper regimented environment full of and run by psychopaths would probably give it to anyone}

yeah as nice as it would be if that poo poo were true it turns out killing people is a pretty basic human thing and you dont have to be a psychopath to do it at all.

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:19

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

The most ancient traditions of Western culture instruct us to base our self-respect on firmness of character. Many popular melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. A permanent challenge of working with those injured by combat trauma is facing the painful awareness that in all likelihood one�s own character would not have stood firm. Merely allowing ourselves to hear the combat veteran�s story threatens our culturally defined sense of self-respect. We have powerful motives not to listen to the veteran�s story, or to deny its truth.

...

Homer and the Greek tragic poets held the terrifying view that apparently stable adult character continues to be dependent and vulnerable, even after it has been established by good nurturing in childhood. According to these tragic poets, good character is dependent on good-enough stability and reliability of th�mis and remains vulnerable to high-stakes betrayal of th�mis by power holders. The moral dimension of trauma destroys virtue, undoes good character.

Soldiers did not �set themselves up for it� when they received M-16 rifles that did not work. They did not �ask for it� any more than an eight-year-old girl or boy �asks for it� when he or she is raped by a relative. The insistence with which such reflexive equations as �set himself up for it� and �asked for it� push forward as an explanation for trauma is a reflection of how frightening and painful it is to believe accounts of high-stakes betrayal of �what�s right.� Normal adults wrap th�mis around themselves as a mantle of safety in the world. Every trauma narrative pierces our adult cloak of safety; it challenges the rightness of th�mis and leaves us terrified and disoriented. This is another powerful motive to deny the truth of trauma narratives, to avoid hearing them, or to forget them.

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:25

Al Cowens: Aug 11, 2004; by WE B Bourgeois

Cream_Filling posted:

the book talks about it to some extent

Combat trauma destroys the capacity for social trust, accounting for the paranoid state of being that blights the lives of the most severely traumatized combat veterans. This is not a selective mistrust directed at a specific individual or institution that has betrayed its charge, but a comprehensive destruction of social trust. Lies and euphemisms by the soldier�s own military superiors and civilian leaders of course undermine social trust by destroying confidence in language. Perversion of language and destruction of the trustworthy meaning of words by official lies were not new to the Vietnam War. This is well known and need not be elaborated here. What has been largely overlooked, however, is the way that enemy activities contribute to the destruction of a soldier�s social trust. The enemy does severe damage to a part of mental function that is critical to the maintenance of social trust: the trustworthiness of perception.

In Vietnam the enemy struck not only at the body but also at the most basic functions of the soldier�s mind, attacking his perceptions by concealment; his cognitions by camouflage and deception; his intentions by surprise, anticipation, and ambush. These mind games have been part of war since time immemorial, but never in American military experience have they been directed so skillfully and with such thoroughness at the enlisted man as in Vietnam. Our historical image of surprise and deception focuses on the strategies of leaders and commanders, such as Germany�s surprise attack on the Soviet Union or the successful ruse that convinced German leadership that the invasion of France would land at Pas de Calais rather than Normandy. These deceptions were directed at the high command. Our images of the bitter fighting among the hedgerows of Normandy do not include booby-trapped wine bottles or French babies sitting in the road atop command-detonated mines. Only 3 to 4 percent of American casualties in World War II and Korea were from booby traps, while 11 percent of the deaths and 17 percent of the injuries in Vietnam were from these lowest-echelon attacks of surprise and deception.

American soldiers literally felt tortured by their Vietnamese enemy. Prolonged patrolling in Vietnam led to a decomposition of the normal, the familiar, the safe. Every familiar item of the physical world could be made to be or to conceal an explosive by the Vietnamese, whether a shiny aluminum rice carrier, a Parker-51 fountain pen, a bicycle, a coconut. Coke cans, C-ration cans, and discarded American artillery-shell casings. The trained, safest response to being fired upon was to take cover; the Vietcong prepared some ambush sites with small boards mounted with barbed spikes, which they would conceal in the vegetation, spike side up. When American troops dove for cover, they would impale themselves on the spikes. In such warfare nothing is what it seems; all certainties liquefy; stable truths turn into their opposites.

I see a deep similarity between the experience of the Vietnam combat soldier and the victim of torture. Describing torture, Elaine Scarry writes,

The contents of the [torture] room, its furnishings, are converted into weapons: the most common instance of this is the bathtub that figures prominently in the reports from numerous countries, but it is only one among many. Men and women being tortured � describe being handcuffed in a constricted position for hours, days, and in some cases months to a chair, to a cot, to a filing cabinet, to a bed; they describe being beaten with �family-sized soft drink bottles� or having a hand crushed with a chair, of having their heads �repeatedly banged on the edges of a refrigerator door.�� The room � is converted into a weapon, � made to demonstrate that everything is a weapon, the objects themselves, and with them the fact of civilization, are annihilated: there is no wall, no window, no door, no bathtub, no refrigerator, no chair, no bed.10

Prolonged contact with the enemy in war destroys the soldier�s confidence in his own mental functions as surely as would prolonged torture in a political prison. The opportunity to fight back, which the soldier enjoys but the prisoner does not, may not make much difference. Without confidence in one�s own mental functions, ordinary economic, political, and domestic life becomes virtually impossible.

tl;dr

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:27

stuntwaffle: Mar 7, 2007; I wish Starbound was a dick so I could put it in my ass and mouth!

Cream_Filling posted:

The most ancient traditions of Western culture instruct us to base our self-respect on firmness of character. Many popular melodramas of moral courage provide satisfaction through the comforting fantasy that our own character would hold steady under the most extreme pressure of dreadful events. A permanent challenge of working with those injured by combat trauma is facing the painful awareness that in all likelihood one�s own character would not have stood firm. Merely allowing ourselves to hear the combat veteran�s story threatens our culturally defined sense of self-respect. We have powerful motives not to listen to the veteran�s story, or to deny its truth.

...

Homer and the Greek tragic poets held the terrifying view that apparently stable adult character continues to be dependent and vulnerable, even after it has been established by good nurturing in childhood. According to these tragic poets, good character is dependent on good-enough stability and reliability of th�mis and remains vulnerable to high-stakes betrayal of th�mis by power holders. The moral dimension of trauma destroys virtue, undoes good character.

Soldiers did not �set themselves up for it� when they received M-16 rifles that did not work. They did not �ask for it� any more than an eight-year-old girl or boy �asks for it� when he or she is raped by a relative. The insistence with which such reflexive equations as �set himself up for it� and �asked for it� push forward as an explanation for trauma is a reflection of how frightening and painful it is to believe accounts of high-stakes betrayal of �what�s right.� Normal adults wrap th�mis around themselves as a mantle of safety in the world. Every trauma narrative pierces our adult cloak of safety; it challenges the rightness of th�mis and leaves us terrified and disoriented. This is another powerful motive to deny the truth of trauma narratives, to avoid hearing them, or to forget them.

where can I read more of this?

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:28

OXBALLS DOT COM: Sep 11, 2005; by FactsAreUseless; Young Orc

stuntwaffle posted:

where can I read more of this?

http://books.google.com/books/about/Achilles_in_Vietnam.html?id=CEYDySjS0UwC

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:31

Loden Taylor: Aug 11, 2003

ProperCoochie posted:

My innercity high school had recruitment offices for the navy, army and marines built inside it. We heard pitches all the time. After 9/11, classes like economics and history would be canceled for a whole week just to hear their talks. Every class was canceled at least once.

One navy guy said you could do anything you wanted in the navy. He said if you wanted to be a piano player in the navy, all you had to do was ask.

It's not that much of an exaggeration. You audition, get ranked on a list, wait for a spot to open up, and then enlist.

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:45

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

Cream_Filling posted:

Soldiers did not �set themselves up for it�

actually some volunteered

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:48

Tezzor: Jul 29, 2013; Can't post for 3 years!

Most soldiers are from middle class backgrounds

# ? Jun 20, 2014 20:55

plain blue jacket: Jan 13, 2014; IT DOESN'T STOP
IT NEVER STOPS

Tezzor posted:

Most soldiers are from middle class backgrounds

I thought it was poors and people who couldn't afford college

# ? Jun 20, 2014 21:32

bigzak: Aug 15, 2003

gently caress the troops

# ? Jun 20, 2014 22:41

Extra Large Marge: Jan 21, 2004; Fun Shoe

I met a guy who told me PTSD is a joke and he was a fat bearded certified Magic the Gathering judge

# ? Jun 20, 2014 22:55

Facepalm Ranger: Jan 17, 2012; SOME PEOPLE FIND HOME APPLIANCES SEXUALLY AROUSING! ZORDS ARE NOT APPLIANCES, DAMMIT!

Arian_Samurai posted:

I met a guy who told me PTSD is a joke and he was a fat bearded certified Magic the Gathering judge

Certified! He's a certified Card game Judge! Cracka prolly knows a thing or two about a thing or two, don't you go mocking him or he'll tap your poo poo into next week, hell.

# ? Jun 21, 2014 02:08

FAGGY CLAUSE: Apr 9, 2011; by FactsAreUseless

being in the military is 99% moving heavy boxes around and picking up cigarette butts and 1% throwing barely capped bottles of piss at arab children. never saw any rapeable women really, women there seem to agre really fast. cant blame the men over there for wanting to gently caress the really young ones, pretty much the only time their females are not completely disgusting. ptsd is for faggots

# ? Jun 21, 2014 02:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 11, 2024 18:58

Facepalm Ranger: Jan 17, 2012; SOME PEOPLE FIND HOME APPLIANCES SEXUALLY AROUSING! ZORDS ARE NOT APPLIANCES, DAMMIT!

FAGGY CLAUSE posted:

being in the military is 99% moving heavy boxes around and picking up cigarette butts and 1% throwing barely capped bottles of piss at arab children. never saw any rapeable women really, women there seem to agre really fast. cant blame the men over there for wanting to gently caress the really young ones, pretty much the only time their females are not completely disgusting. ptsd is for faggots

Sign me up! That sounds like every mans dream! :v:

especially that 1% aspect, I have always dreamed of hurling a bottle of body waste at infants and stamping on their necks with my ~~oppression~~ Freedom boots!

Military life is exactly like Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket" right?

# ? Jun 21, 2014 02:39

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Military PTSD is a joke

«‹›5 »