22 (Slight Return)

Sometimes you see or say something about a situation, and in your arrogance, you think because of that attention, you can now move on. Continuing failing of the care we provide to those whom we have sent to the unending wars we are engaged in around the world suggests to me, today at least, I not need say anything new but revisit a topic from sometime ago that I thought we had turned the page on. I was wrong.

When, or if, the military adventures in Southwest Asia ever end and we tally up the cost of whatever it was we set out to do, I can guarantee the one item no Administration in Washington, not the current one and none that will follow, will want to do is tell us, we the people who nodded when this whole thing got started, what the actual in human lives was. 

Not everyone in an American uniform who came home, came back. A lot of people need a lot of help and it's NOT happening for reasons of cupidity and stupidity. Greed has overwhelmed need and Wall Street has crushed Main Street and the casualties on the human highway are too many to mention and to count. 

If you can read this story about the sad ending of Daniel Somers and not feel your heart breaking, it's either already broken or gone. A remarkably talented person who was terribly tortured and each of us knows one or more just like him (and her), and those entrusted with helping them heal are overwhelmed, underfunded and overworked. 

The Daniels disappear by their own hand at a rate of almost two dozen a day. You might think we'd pause RHONJ while that realization sinks in, but it never sinks in. The challenge of ideas is only that if we let it be one. When all we do is exactly what we're told, all we end with are other people's nightmares to fill up our own lives.
-bill kenny