I woke this morning to news of a shooting in Colorado and though my heart went out to the families and victims of this horrible incident my mind begged immediately that the shooter not be a veteran. It sounds awful and self-serving, but with the continuing media coverage of veterans suffering from PTSD, my concern is beginning to grow.
My concern is over the growing fear of veterans and the calls for monitoring of those suffering from PTSD. Public fear can grow into something awful, something unfair and cruel. Think it can’t?
In 1942, 110,000 Japanese Americans were gathered up and sent to “War Relocation Camps”. President Roosevelt himself issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, which allowed the local military to designate certain areas as exclusion zones. This power was used to remove anyone of Japanese decent from their homes along the entire west coast. The United States census assisted these efforts by providing confidential information on Japanese Americans.
Many of these people had been born in this country, they were not immigrants, they were not illegal, and they were not criminals. Fear mongering led the charge. Fear after Pearl Harbor, fear of the unknown. And I’m watching this fear rear it’s ugly head again. Immediately after any gun violence the media looks for the assailant to be a combat veteran. PTSD is not whispered, it is screamed as if it is not an awful debilitating disorder, but a horrible monster running wild in the streets. The possibility of PTSD suffering veterans “snapping” is mentioned ad nauseam.
How long? How long before the government is swayed by the public’s fear and we’re gathered up and placed, for our own safety, into “Veteran Relocation Camps”? We’re already on a list, we’re already being monitored. I can no longer sit here and keep telling myself it won’t happen to me because it happened before. History repeats when we don’t learn.
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