BBF4MF.3 - Human Dignity
Build a Better Future for Military Families, Part 3: Human Dignity
Watch the rest of the BBF4MF video series:
BBF4MF Intro | Part 1: Civilian Bias | Part 2: Political Power | Part 3: Human Dignity
This is the third installment of my three-part series on Building a Better Future for Military Families. In Part One, I talked about bias, specifically civilian bias, and how it operates. In Part Two, I talked about power, political power, who has it, who doesn't, and why we all need to be able to have access to it. In this final par,t I'm going to be talking about how you can promote human dignity for soldiers, veterans, and military families, whether you're a member of the military or you never have been. How we go about doing that, promoting human dignity, is the same for everybody and there's a reason that they're called CIVIL rights not civilian rights. That reason is that the military, because they fought to secure these freedoms, of anybody in our nation, the military should have access to these protections at a federal and a state level that we call civil rights. Whether that's fair housing, economic opportunity, protection from hate crimes... you know, you name it. We should have it but my own history shows that we don't. Listening to soldiers and veterans and military families as I've heard them (hell, in the comments of my own videos where they reference how bad the VA is, how they get treated by their own elected representatives...)
This should shock us and it should inspire us to speak up with military families, soldiers, and veterans who clearly don't feel like they can share these things publicly. They share them in other veterans' and other soldiers' Tik Tok comments because of the way that they get treated in society when they are honest to those who have power (who are largely civilians). If you want to promote human dignity for soldiers, veterans, and military families, it means to speak up. I know it's hard, if you're a soldier or veteran, it's hard! I get shut down a lot: I've had the cops called on me three times in the last two years; I've had a failed two failed Federal investigations; I have a congressman who won't respond to me; and I'm I'm out of a career field because I blew the whistle on poor treatment at a major research institution. So I know what the costs are, and the costs don't stop when you come home from battle or when you transition out of the military. They don't stop, the fight is always going to be there.
The hope that I draw or the inspiration I draw is from the original Civil Rights Movement. We just passed Martin Luther King Jr day. I sometimes get angry comments from progressives when I say that Martin Luther King INHERITED a movement in 1967. No, I'm sorry, earlier than that. Throughout the 1950s the Civil Rights Movement was begun by black soldiers coming home from World War II expecting that contract of 'I fought for these rights, I deserve these rights.' They came home expecting that and they didn't get them! Jackie Robinson was court-martialed for doing what Rosa Parks did later. Two female soldiers, Dovey Roundtree and Sarah Keys, both were treated similarly and fought when they got out of the military for equal rights to civilians. Ralph Abernathy, who was a World War II platoon Sergeant... All of these black veterans came home from war, saw the mistreatment that I've named in my last two videos. knew that they didn't have the power that they deserved as veterans and as Americans, and they fought to get it.
I get a lot of flack from institutional people like Mike Levin, VFW schmucks, because, I don't know, because I'm abrasive. Because I don't accept the treatment that I'm expected to allow. So I get people that hang up on me or slam their door on their face or don't answer calls or abandon their their district office. But that's what it means to fight; there will be costs but the benefit is worth it, human dignity, civil rights are worth it. If you don't believe me, ask a soldier or a veteran (more probably a veteran); ask them how they really feel, and if they tell you if they are angry, when they tell you how they feel, and you don't like how that makes YOU feel... that illustrates the point I'm making in these videos. If you really support soldiers and veterans, you'll be willing to hear that frustration, that anger, that anxiety, even if it may be directed at you. It may be felt in a wide societal sense on the part of individual veterans, but if you're a civilian you've contributed to that society, that community, that sense, that feeling that veterans get that we don't get (as I said in one video to a VA psychiatrist) we don't get to vent. We don't get to tell you how we really feel because there are consequences. Some people, some veterans, are afraid of getting their guns taken away. Some veterans are afraid of being involuntarily committed. And those are valid fears; if you can't hear them as a civilian if you can't hear them, that is what I mean when I say civilian bias. If you hear that and you get angry, and you withdraw, and you reserve your political power, your own moral agency, and your ability to change things because of how some veteran made you feel... That is what I mean by veterans lacking access to political power. We are a minority in America; we will not get anything done just because it's the right thing. We will only get things done when civilians stand alongside military families and demand human dignity from society at large, from our judicial, legal, federal, state institutions. But also just from within society itself, from civilians who think that thanking us for our service is like that makes everything better...
So if you want to Build a Better Future for Military Families, subscribe to my Substack. You can read more background on these videos I've been making, leave comments in the videos. I'll respond as best I'm able, but this is important not just because it's the military, not just because there's a suicide epidemic, but because it's the right thing to do. And the time is always right to do the right thing. We just need to stand up and do it. I hope you will with me.
