Depending on what you read, which station you watch and what radio show you listen to, you might have been stunned with the result of the elections last week. Most are discovering they were lied to. Not just mislead, but lied to on purpose.
The most aggravating part of all to me is smart people tend to trust the wrong people instead of investing time in discovering what the truth is. I listened to people on all sides of the political divide, walking away stunned by how little they really knew.
One example is the claim Romney made about how President Obama was trying to restrict early military votes. Republican leaning sites made sure every single person in their audience knew about this but few bothered to check to see if it was true or not. It was not true but the repeaters of this lie kept it going.
Historically military/veterans have voted for Republicans. Over the last few years they have lost support to Independents and Democrats. More and more people are taking sides but without noticing veterans have been losing because they vote against their own best interests.
There is no doubt in my mind Romney and Ryan would have made it worse for veterans just as there is no doubt in my mind that President Obama, no matter how much he tried to make things better, didn't get the support he needed from veterans to hold Congress accountable for any of what was not being done. There is also no doubt in my mind that President Obama didn't do enough to fight for veterans, stop the failures of the DOD to prevent suicides, get the troops the knowledge they needed to understand what PTSD is and how to heal. He did not end the redeployments into combat even though the Army released a study in 2006 stating redeployments increased the risk of PTSD.
While Romney had a deplorable history when it came to veterans and the Ryan budget would have cut VA funding, veterans still supported the ticket. Did they just expect change out of them? Was it a matter of voting for Republicans the way they always did? What was it about this pair?
What is it now preventing them from understanding that all the problems veterans and the troops had over the last 4 years have gotten better but are only a fraction of what could have happened? These problems didn't happen 4 years ago or even 8 years ago but have been in the history books for decades.
Democrats do a better job of holding their politicians accountable to their positions but again they fall short of making sure everything is done for our veterans and our troops.
The hard truth is, this day after Veterans Day, is that for all the problems they've had in the last 4 years, those problems are still there. They remain because for all the anger from both sides during the election, no one really does anything about any of it when the election is over.
We can get so pumped up over a political candidate but as soon as the votes are counted, we go back to reading the same publications that lied to us before, watching the same station we heard lie after lie from and putting our car radio on the same station where we heard nothing but lies.
They say what we want to hear. They express something we believe in and that's all we care about so nothing else really matters and then we wonder why someone we thought was a sure bet to win loses. We wonder why nothing is changing and the rest of the world must have gone crazy when they knew the truth but we didn't.
I go back to covering the stories that should matter to the entire country no matter what political party they are in or which ticket they voted for and will still be shocked that Republicans and Democrats elected to do their jobs aren't doing them and their supporters refuse to pay attention to what they do once they are in office.
Time for some soul searching from all of us. If you supported President Obama and Democrats, then hold them accountable for what they don't do just as much as you pat them on the back for what they do accomplish. If you supported Romney and Republicans then do the same. Until we decide that our veterans are veterans everyday no matter which party is in control, they will keep suffering for all of it.
Do not support anyone with blind faith. Demand they live up to the trust you gave them and if you didn't trust them in the first place, then make sure they change your mind with their actions, not words.
No matter what side the newly elected came from, they are supposed to work for all of us. Make sure they do and never forget that our veterans should never be a subject of debate when it comes to what they need after they paid for it all ahead of time.
Homeless veterans are still homeless but there are less of them without a roof over their heads. Veterans still have problems with college and getting the money they need to pay their bills. Veterans still get lost in a backlog piles of claims while they are expected to wait and live without income to pay their bills. Suicides have gone up instead of down no matter how much money congress just handed out to take care of them. Families are still falling apart no matter what the DOD says they have been doing to help them too.
We just spent the last two years with nothing getting done and unless congress wakes up, it will be two more years of more bad news. The troops are supposed to be out of Afghanistan in two more years but their needs will only increase. If we can't take care of them now, then what are their chances of coming home to a better nation if we do nothing now?
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