DU, May I Take the Stump - Democratic Underground

NavyVet07

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Fri Feb-22-08 04:56 PM
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DU, May I Take the Stump

Lend Me Your Eyes and Nervous System for 5 Minutes.

I am a Navy Veteran of 6 years. I did 2 tours of duty to the Persian Gulf on the USS Iwo Jima and the USS Harry S. Truman. I also served in Bahrain under the 6th Fleet Intelligence Command. So In my 6 years I have been one busy man.

But I am not on here to flaunt what I have done or seen, I am on DU because I am now a concerned citizen who is gaining the ability to speak freely again. You see, I left the United States for a good part of my enlistment. I had no ability to keep up with my family, state and nation's news. I was in the dark. I'm coming around like a drunkard on the morning after and seeing the destruction that is happening.

On a personal level I have been forced out of the job that I've held due to downsizing. Even the military is being outsourced to contractors. Now, I have no leg to stand on and I'm 30% disabled due to a fall I sustained while at sea. Finding a job is like finding a hair in a pool. I am still strong, and smart so I'm going to keep kicking around until someone picks me up.

Here recently I returned to my home state to find that due to uncontrolled logging restrictions over 10,000 acres of surrounding land has been stripped and left for dead. This is unacceptable. Is the economy so bad that my fellow outdoorsmen have to surrender their lives and kids lives to these greedy corporations who care for nothing more than their money? I understand dire circumstances, but there is such a thing as selective cutting.

My representative will not respond to messages with photos of the raped land. All I get is a "Thank you for your concern" letter and a peppermint. I feel like I wrote my grandmother rather than my congressman.

So I go to the town I grew up in and find that Wal Mart has literally consumed the entire job force into their scheme of things. Thousands of people have been pushed out of a job because of this monopolizing force (primarily in small towns) comes in and wipes Private Businesses out.

People now are turning to drugs, specifically Marijuana and Meth to get by. Health amongst 25 year olds (the people I graduated with) is dismal. People are dying of heart attacks and from inhalation of ammonia (a integral part in the meth making process). It is a very dangerous and sickening situation, but no one private or government wise is doing anything about it. They view it as just another scourge that will die out.

My parents, proud owners of a 3rd generation farm and a small tire shop have to literally scrounge for money in order to pay health insurance. 2 50 year old healthy people are paying $750.00 a month. No disease or risk factors whatsoever.

We as Americans need to be in a binding force, and we need to change ourselves from the inside out and not rely on the government anymore. I hate to say it, but I've seen things that my government did that will cause me to never trust them anymore. In any aspect, at that. We the people are the mechanism that will eventually turn this country around, and if we do not band together I am suggesting that we will perish in the fashion that all other empires have.

I have hope though, and this mountain might just be another grain of sand in our history, but we are facing SERIOUS issues and it seems people just shrug them off as a passive threat.

Do I share these sentiments with anyone.

Thanks for letting me share.