On Mar 30, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: > On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> >>> The comments along the lines of "What did he think he was signing >>> up for?" >>> and "Others aren't using the war as an excuse" really get under my >>> skin. >>> Walk a mile in his shoes, people. >> >> What do you mean for us to do with that challenge, exactly? > > Nothing. Nobody here said anything like that. I was talking about > comments > to the article, on the Rolling Stone web site.
Ahh. I read the article, but not the comments. The article itself took Blake Miller's (and others') problems seriously, or so it seemed to me. I don't very often read comments on articles like this -- a funny thing, considering what we do for a living... > I'm guessing you thought I was talking about the article? I > wasn't. I was > talking about people who refuse to take PTSD seriously, as if it > were merely > a matter of sucking it up or whatever. Look at the comments by > "RealAmerican" on the R.S. site. I thought you were talking about the article and possibly my response to it -- the questions that swirl in my head about my automatic assumption that I would (at least verbally) beat Ryan's ass "across that fuckin' corn field" if he told me he wanted to enlist. Sorry if I took it too personally. I guess the article got to me more than I realized. I got a serious case of Daddy-protecting-his-son out of reading it. Incidentally, I heard back from my buddy Kurt in Iraq -- he didn't have a lot of time to write just now, but he was very surprised to hear from me after three decades, and he is definitely in Iraq, having just taken a new assignment of some sort. In a picture of Kurt with US Rep. Tim Murphy, Kurt looks to be about the same age he was when I last saw him: about 18. He says it's the short haircut. > You repeated my point a different way when you wrote that you don't > know > what it was like to be Kurt or Wes. Exactly my point. Isn't that > what > "walk a mile in his shoes" means? Before passing judgment, realize > that you > don't know what another person has been through? On this point, you and I are in complete agreement. To be honest, I don't even know that I can walk a mile in my own shoes from a different time in my life: I try to think about what it was to be a scrawny teenager in Pittsburgh, or a father of a dying child... I'm not even sure I can honestly get hold of what _those_ people, who were me, were feeling. > I'm a little surprised at your response, given how much you know > about my > own dealings with PTSD and what I do to help others. But a lot of > it is > beyond words, almost by definition. I think my response tells more about me and my fears than it does about your comment, specifically. Dave _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
