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Individual Blog Post From Erich Forschler
Erich Forschler is an Iraq War veteran and author of Weight of an Empire, a novel about three Iraq War vets in Georgia.
Monday, April 7th 2014
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/rachel-maddow-media-fort-hood-shooter_n_5090327.html
Posted Mon Apr 7 2014 10:00
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I agree with Rachel Maddow approximately 6% of the time, 1% of the time. Okay?
But right now I'd buy her a beer if I could. Why? Because she's a high-profile type who said something I appreciate, and she said it in public. Here's part of what she said, RE the media's treatment of the latest Ft. Hood shooting:
"that the most important deciding factor on what explains the [shooting] must be the fact that the suspected perpetrator is an Iraq War veteran. As if veterans are uniquely dangerous. As if knowing the suspected shooter served in Iraq explains why this happened."
Absolutely. First of all, Post-Traumatic Stress is NOT a disorder. Anyone can get it, and the source of the stress is different for all individuals. The intensity of the stress is proportional to the perception of trauma experienced, and through the lens of a given person's perceptions and experiences. Dead bodies probably don't bother a coroner as much as they do someone who doesn't expect to see them everyday, or someone who is seeing a dead body for the first time. It doesn't mean the person being stressed by the trauma is broken or experiencing a mental "disorder."
Quite the contrary, really. Isn't it natural for a person to replay traumatic memories and try in vain to amend the past?
Maddow also said:
"If we think of every other mass shooting in America as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting but this one as explained away as 'Oh he was an Iraq vet'... not only does that not help us understand what happened here, it is an offense against every other veteran who right now is getting that stigma shoveled onto them by a lazy civilian world and a lazy civilian media who find this dangerous veteran stereotype to be an easier thing to point to than America has a bad mass shooting problem."
The last sentence is probably a clue to some "it's the gun's fault" type thinking, but I'll look past that for now to appreciate her rejection of the Feinstein-esque idiocy. Cheers!
But right now I'd buy her a beer if I could. Why? Because she's a high-profile type who said something I appreciate, and she said it in public. Here's part of what she said, RE the media's treatment of the latest Ft. Hood shooting:
"that the most important deciding factor on what explains the [shooting] must be the fact that the suspected perpetrator is an Iraq War veteran. As if veterans are uniquely dangerous. As if knowing the suspected shooter served in Iraq explains why this happened."
Absolutely. First of all, Post-Traumatic Stress is NOT a disorder. Anyone can get it, and the source of the stress is different for all individuals. The intensity of the stress is proportional to the perception of trauma experienced, and through the lens of a given person's perceptions and experiences. Dead bodies probably don't bother a coroner as much as they do someone who doesn't expect to see them everyday, or someone who is seeing a dead body for the first time. It doesn't mean the person being stressed by the trauma is broken or experiencing a mental "disorder."
Quite the contrary, really. Isn't it natural for a person to replay traumatic memories and try in vain to amend the past?
Maddow also said:
"If we think of every other mass shooting in America as somehow particular to the circumstances of that shooting but this one as explained away as 'Oh he was an Iraq vet'... not only does that not help us understand what happened here, it is an offense against every other veteran who right now is getting that stigma shoveled onto them by a lazy civilian world and a lazy civilian media who find this dangerous veteran stereotype to be an easier thing to point to than America has a bad mass shooting problem."
The last sentence is probably a clue to some "it's the gun's fault" type thinking, but I'll look past that for now to appreciate her rejection of the Feinstein-esque idiocy. Cheers!