I didn't serve in the military, even in peacetime, but I have always respected those who did or do. More to the point, I have older cousins who did serve during the Vietnam era, one in-country, and he came back pretty messed up. I won't tell what little I know of his story, I'm just giving context to my disdain for pretenders who claim to have served but didn't and for those who trivialize real sufferers of combat PTSD by hijacking that diagnostic term by associating it with unpleasantries of ordinary life.
The infantile teeny- and twenty-somethings "traumatized" by the loss of a Presidential election to an imaginary bogeyman are their moral (and often, probably, literal) offspring.
Yea, that's the touchy part of this subject. The issue is definitely real, I know a few of those guys you are talking about too.
But I don't know a single, solitary one that has ever used it as a tool to scam freebies.
I know full well there are those guys out there who are probably messed up enough to where it affects their ability to work, but those cases are rare, and those guys are likely already under supervision.
My own dad went through the same thing... and he wasn't even infantry. It wasn't until a few years ago that grandma told me what happened back then, dad has never spoken a word of it to anyone except for her. I'm sure it's true what they say regarding what happens to your mind when you have to kill someone, most especially the first time. It's not something I'm willing to bring up with him, it's his own thing and he'd tell me if he wanted to talk about it.
But he's strong. He may have suffered with his conscious all these decades, but he has gotten through it without being on SSI like these leeches. I guess more than anything it pisses me off because it diminishes the personal responsibility of those who DO work through it.
And for the record, I never served either. I was one of the few in my group of friends who didn't. I was young and stupid, I didn't think I would survive basic training without ending up in jail, or worse, a negative discharge following me around the rest of my life. I was a little... let's just say, rebellious.
Looking back at this point, I recognize that it was a mistake. It's one of my biggest regrets too.
If those wankers I hung around with made it, I could have done it. I think it was also a big serving of selfishness. I wanted to go to college and that would have gotten in my way.
