How the US Government Fails to Support Veterans

What's an interesting segue on that too, because that's like in part some of the nonprofit stuff I do on the side is solely based on that, the individualized treatment for veterans specifically in law enforcement, because you see a lot with the military, DOD, the VA, like you're saying, you show up, don't feel good, and it's a blanket treatment, right? Here's some antidepressants, here's all that, but it's a band-aid for a bullet hole. And if you're not actually figuring out what the cause is and you're treating symptoms, then the third and fourth order effects of those treatments are going to make that individual worse. Some of the issues they have, like I think I have PTSD, if that's a guy saying they're a PTS, they go through and they find out they have TBI and 40% memory function, short-term memory function. And so now you go to cognitive therapy and you get the guys or gals working through it that way. But the only way to figure that out is through brain scans and blood work and actually focusing on the individual rather than being lazy and say, hey, here's some antidepressants when the whole time the issue is something completely different. And then you have budget problems, right? So the veterans hospitals don't have enough money to send you through all these different scans and all these different doctors and specialists and try to fine tune what's wrong with you. Well, I think that that's, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot is the, our politicians will say our leadership, they love to go to war. They love it. You know, Hey, how many times can we send more guys to war? How many countries, you know, and I'm a participant in that endeavor by the way, right? I've invaded Iraq. I've spent a lot of my adult life in war specifically in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the thing that I've noticed in my adult life is that politicians love it. They love to send, you know, 18 to 26 year old men and women. They love to send them to war. What they hate is paying the fucking bill. That's what they hate. They hate paying for the after effects. They hate standing by their word in the sense of, Hey, we're going to take care of you. Your all your health problems, your education, we're going to start really fixing the VA system. So there's long term care. What most veterans that I know, what they have to do is they have to continue to lobby the government over and over and over for them to prove that what's happened to their body is connected to their service. But the issue that I continue to see is that this is a lack of one. It's a lack of experience for our politicians. They don't quite understand what war is and the long term effects on individual soldiers after decades of service. And I think, you know, hundreds of my friends, every one of every one of us has some type of long term effect from their service. Every one of us in the sense of, do you have sleep issues? Do you have, you know, gut issues? Do you have inflammation? Are you missing a limb? And really it's disgusting. The amount of emphasis there is ongoing and then the lack of emphasis on care. It really, it saddens me as a society when we have to rely on nonprofits to pay for the care of veterans because the military or the DOD and the tax, the taxpayer essentially, I think if they understood this, if they knew they weren't paying for the long term care of our service members to the degree that they needed, they would absolutely have no issues stepping up and saying, Hey, we have to do something about this. And it's, it's really when we look at the entire system and how it's, it's put together, there's no way that a person, this is a good story from my friend. Clint, he's missing both his legs recently from last year during COVID. What was happening is that his leg was changing as far as the shape of it, because he was growing an addition additional layer of bone where his leg was blown off and he needed a new leg, but he couldn't get in to get a new leg. So he was confined to his wheelchair for almost six months during this process. And he couldn't get an appointment. There's no reason why that should happen. There's literally zero reason. We can't have the largest transfer of wealth from our taxpayer into the military industrial complex in modern history without zero ethical argument as far as our entire political system and then not continue to care for our veterans. There's just no way that we can do that as a society because I think ultimately that defines us and who we are collectively. And it's not a good grade. Well, there's a long history of the United States doing that. I remember when people were coming back from the first Gulf War and they were having all these issues with radiation because they used that, what is a depleted uranium rounds? And they kind of denied, first of all, that they use them. They denied that this effect was related to that. And then birth defects and all sorts of like weird radiation sickness issues that people were having. They were calling it Gulf War Syndrome, but they did their very best to not take care of these people. Exactly. Well, you look from Agent Orange in Vietnam and the long term effects of that. And all the studies and research that's coming out right now with the burn pits and the carcinogens and how much cancer. But then they're like, ah, you can't really draw the conclusion that it came from burning shit for six months. You know, and to Evan's point as well, it's tragic to be honest that there's tens of thousands of nonprofits that are having to do the legwork without government grants or funding. The money is coming from people that are participating in philanthropy saying, I want to do something good for these guys and gals that have real issues like to Clint's that he's missing his legs and you're going to make him be in a wheelchair for months because of it. For me, that's just absolutely unacceptable. And there has to be change. Well, with the story you were telling right before the show, Mary about your friend who lost her arms. Yeah. Explain that one of her good friends, Mary. She's a EOD tech, had both of her arms blown off when she tried to catch some ordinance that they were going to dispose of. And essentially she has a full time caregiver and she went to go see her family for, I believe it was a month. And during that time she didn't have the caregiver because she's with her husband and family and they were taking care of her. Well, the VA determined after that stint that she doesn't need a full time caregiver because she obviously was fine that month she was away. And this is a young lady who amazing person like just nubs. There's, you know, she calls herself Wonder nubs, bless her heart. She's hilarious. She can't do things that come so easily to us like grab things, use the toilet. And she has a really funny Twitter about wiping her ass, I believe she said. But the fact that that's happening and someone in the VA wasn't like, oh, that's fucking stupid. Here you go full time caregiver like that. I mean. They're just trying to find a way to cut money left and right. And it's just numbers on a piece of paper. It's numbers on a piece of paper. And it's I don't think people want to be reminded. Right. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Just go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye. Bye.