The Frustrations of Writing for a Progressive Veterans' Web Site Are Legion!

When I served in the U.S. Coast Guard I met men and women with every conceivable ideology imagionable. But we all did the job together OR we were told to leave. Sometimes people left by Admin Discharge, sometimes by Court Martial, sometimes by end of enlistement and simply going home. But whoever did not fit in was basically given one or two warnings and then we cut them loose. We did not care what they believed. We only cared about what they did, how they acted, how they behaved, what they did for the total group. That is the way it was with us.

The major veterans organizations have become lobbying groups. They knew for generations that there were hundreds of thousands of disability cases that were log jamming the system at the D.V.A. and they said nothing. NOTHING. They were all caught up in wearing goofy hats and going to annual conventions and playing fat, overaged, out of commission soldiers for their wives. What a shame. They did not serve us as well as they should have. Many of us died before benefits could be received because the funny hat veterans organizations were caught up in denying reality, running bars, going to picinics and telling war stories. Veterans be damned. THAT is why this web site was born. We cannot have that nonsense anymore if we are going to gain anything for our fellow veterans.

I am lifetime member of the D.A.V. and a member of the American Legion. Both groups at one time or another represented me in the almost eight years of appeal after appeal that I went through to get declared IU Totally Disabled. In the end, the federal government (Office of Personnel Management) declared me totally disabled due to service connecte disabilities and retired me from the Smithsonian Inst. THIS is what forced the D.V.A.’s hand and forced my appeal to be seen, not any action by the veterans organizations. What a mess. I won’t ever forget it.

We are progressive because damned near nobody else is in the veterans’ universe. We have to be. Somebody has to see and say what is really happening without all the goofy flag waving, flag burning amendments, Reich wing manifest destiny horse manure that infects virtually every veterans organization or web site that it out there.

We exist because we have to exist if the truth is going to get out.  The funny hat organizations won’t tell it like it is.  They have too much to lose if they do so.  We have very little to lose.  Most of us have already lost a great deal.  Do not look a gift horse in the mouth here.  Take what you like and leave the rest.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)