Killing Ourselves

EVERY DAY IN THE UNITED STATES of America, about twenty military combat veterans commit suicide, give or take a tragically heroic corpse or two, about the same number who die from pain killer addiction, which, arguably, is a form of suicide, accidental. The troubled veterans kill themselves in a fairly wide variety of ways, gun shots, not surprisingly, the most common. Neither is it surprising, upon further thought, that the rate of combat veteran suicides has remained fairly constant since the Civil War, a hundred and sixty years ago. Multiply 365 days times a hundred and sixty years times twenty, and you have just over one point one million total suicides, roughly equal to the total number of American war dead throughout American history. War is so mentally, emotionally, psychologically damaging that mind damage casualties as bombs and bullets. This collateral damage, as we call it, throughout America's civilian population down through the decades and centuries, decade after decade of war prep, war, and post war recovery, is literally incalculable in its enormity and extent. I was born ten years after the end of World War Two, and grew up during the Cold war and Viet Nam War era, the two overlapping. The psychological impact of all three wars negatively impacts me to this day, if only vicariously, even though i was spared their immediate consequences. My father served in World War Two. It adversely impacted him with depression and alcoholism, which harmed my childhood, the effects of which linger to this day. His mental illness will always be with me, for it took him away from me. The Cuban missile crises scared the crap out of me when I was seven years old. For ten days in October, 1962, I, like every other American, thought I might die in a nuclear war. Seven years old. The Viet Nam War consumed most of my childhood, endlessly, on television, scenes of death, the casualty count posted on the screen like a baseball scoreboard. Early on it seemed evident even to me that there was no victory to be had, anx when Walter Cronkite split the program, so did I, at thirteen. I became a war protester. I was eight when JFK was assassinated; that horrible memory, of our nation locked in deep grief, will never leave me. it can easily be seen how all this would effect anyone, and did, and still does. My theory is that my self confidence, anxiety level, depression and paranoia were engendered to a large extent to this toxic mixture. The point is that in America a high percentage, one hundred percent of the population is mentally damaged. My purpose here is not to complain, but to elucidate a situation most of us prefer to ignore, pretend doesn't exist, and refuse to talk about. Without confronting the monster directly, we can never hope to vanquish it.