forget Vetwife, can we take avantage of this terrible moment?

[G_j]

forget Vetwife for a moment. The terrible wounds of Vietnam have NOT HEALED and are being opened wider by the Iraq war. Now we have countless new wounds to suffer and deny. This will effect our society, our families, our friends for generations to come.
I'm tired, my nerves are raw, there are tears in my eyes and my heart hurts from reading all these posts today.

PEOPLE!!! everyone, freepers, lurkers, liberals alike,
We need need some f&#$ing healing!
What the hell are we doing doing to ourselves? How do we heal???
How do we heal???

[Fovea]

1. I do not think we will heal

Sadly, I am waiting for the civil war to start.

[mermaid]

5. I Have Been Saying That For Years

And this time, the Civil War won't be a nice, neat North v. south thing..it'll be a hundred different factions all fighting over the rancid bits of what once was a great country.

the signs are there.

We are becoming ever more intolerant of any opinion or viewpoint that does not match our own...there is a barely kept in check undercurrent of violence in our discourse on the subjects of religion and politics...and I don't think it takes much more pushing before one side or the other goes off the deep end. And that is where mob mentality kicks in...and that has a way of getting out of hand, really fast...because mob mentality is infectious.

And before we know it, we will be in the biggest shitstorm you have ever seen!

[G_j]

8. well

if there ever is a (God forbid) civil war, I will not fight in it.
I will try to leave the country if it's not too late.
If it is too late, I will continue as a peacemaker.

[G_j]

6. that is part of it

our people are so divided, we even hate each other and fan those flames at an increasing rate.
WTF will the results be?
I don't want a fucking civil war.
Why not peace?
Entering the "new millenium" embracing war was a very bad move.
Can we step back and try again?
I don't know.

[coloradodem2005]

2. I just don't know anymore.

In order to heal, we need to learn our lessons. In order to learn our lessons, we need to acknowledge that we are wounded. The problem is, we don't want to acknowledge how deep the damage of Vietnam and Watergate go. Or at least a good portion of the people of this country don't. THey do not want to learn. Vietnam taught us a lesson as a country. A lesson that much of America does not want to learn. Now the wounds are only getting deeper.

[enigmatic]

3. I'd like to think we can...

But I don't know. I really think the country is polarized to a degree that trying to heal and come together may be moot.

I just don't know.

[Erika]

4. I am devastated again

We fought in Vietnam which cost us 55,000 lives. Now we are in Iraq and www.icasualties.org says it all. There is zero reason we would be in either country. We now have hundreds of amputees because of Iraq.

[lostnfound]

12. I am devastated again

At age 7 or 8 watching the nightly news as the Vietnam War was happening, I had a sense of confused horror that such a thing could happen, that my government would send it young men off to kill and be killed on the other side of the planet.

35 years later the past has been resurrected, it feels so familiar..a feeling of unresolved tension and disgust, large and constantly looming in the background of my life.

[Desertrose]

7. I think it almost has to be on an individual basis

maybe the Iraq war will bring some catharsis at some point in the future.....

We heal by accepting that we are all in this together...on the same planet...breathing the same air...drinking the same water.....when we as a species "get" that, it is easier to forgive and have compassion for our brothers and sisters who have made choices that have harmed others. As individuals we can only do so much...as a group we can do more....

G_j....I 'm worried about you. You are such a good soul but you don't have to take on the world's sorrows.....I :hug: you and tell you that it is not your responsibility to take this all on...I have no doubt you are doing, have done, everything in your power to help this heal.....but maybe all you can do really is find your own peace.....and I truly believe that by doing that it WILL help others.

This is a deep wound and I have no answers for you....I just feel that everyone has to come to their own peace in their own way and time...

:hug::loveya: take care & love yourself....give yourself a nature break :)
DR

(its late - hope this made sense...very tough question)

[G_j]

9. yes it makes sense DR

thank you. You are a true friend.
Something about this discussion has opened some of my own wounds,
though I think I'm also chanelling a lot of tears. I'll be OK.

BTW DR :yourock: :loveya: :hug: :-)

[Enquiringkitty]

10. We've all heard of cases where a child dies suddenly and the parents,

in their own grief can not comfort the other. Unfortunately, the marriage ends in divorce all to often. We are in the same emotional state. We push each other away at the very time we need each other the most. We all lost people close to us and we felt the loss of those we didn't know but most of all we lost our own innocence, our ability to trust and believe in our leaders like children being betrayed by their parents. This is our common wound. Many of us have raised children of our own. They feel an unaddressed tension. We need each other.

[G_j]

11. how true

I trust at least some of us will realize this and begin to build bridges. you offer some very valuable insights, thanks
:-)

[B Calm]

13. War never heals anything. Some are still fighting the Civil War.

Go down south and look how they are so damn proud of their Rebel flag. Don't they know it was a war where the dirt poor stupid white men fought and died so the rich white men could own black slaves.

[H2O Man]

14. An interesting thread.

I think that many people look at the state of our society, and ask, "What can we do?" Is it possible that we would do better to ask, "Can anything be done?" Because you have hit the nail on the head when you note that the wounds from Vietnam have not healed.

If an unhealed wound that has been beneath the surface suddenly breaks open, after some thirty years of festering, it requires a great deal more treatment than had it been dealt with at the time it occured. That festering is the consequence of its having been ignored. But an infected sore left untreated cannot help but spread to other parts of the body.

Perhaps the key word is "consequence." Everything in the material world is a consequence, or a direct result, of what happened yesterday. Likewise, yesterday was a direct result of the day before, and on and on. Thus said, tomorrow will be a direct result of today, and that is why a person who wants to predict with great accuracy what tomorrow will be like, need only look to yesterday, and the day before.

All material, (or mechanical or organic) life on earth follows that pattern, or cycle. So we can say that it is evolution, creative design, God's will, or any one of a dozen other names for the exact same thing, and be accurately describing a cycle that works in the exact same manner for an atom as for a universe.

And so the question can only be accurately asked in that context. If today is a consequence of yesterday, than in order to change tomorrow, our only option is to change today. And even if we look at DU for our example of the foolishness of fighting, we can see how harsh it can be.

Let's not use "Vetwife" as our example. Rather, let's use the example of the never-ending debates on religion and science. I think that an atheist and a theist on DU usually hold about the same values, share about the same concerns, and generally could be neighbors, friends, and even relatives, without any problem .... unless one or the other, as a consequence of some past "bad experience" with someone else, is predisposed to conflict with those of different viewpoints.

Because that is the cause of so many conflicts -- is it not? We are democrats or republicans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Hindus, we are Irish, African, Indian, Italian, we are old or young, male or female, and on and on and on. And we carry on yesterday's fights today, laying the groundwork for tomorrow's strife.

That is why we have the grossly infected sores upon the body of the United States, and indeed the entire world.

And the only thing that can change are people. It takes a conscious effort to change, and most people are unconscious of that simple fact. We need to make a conscious effort to give up our self-righteousness, our anger, and our desire to revenge yesterday's wrongs. And, to the exact extent that we do not, we will see all of the ugly and diseased infections that occure in the outside world occure in our inside world. It's as simple as that.

[timtom]

15. Heal? Hell, I haven't even healed

from the JFK assassination.

Every infamy just adds to the debit side of the right wing. They will be held accountable somehow, someday.

[papau]

16. When the right wing went to winning at any cost - from illegal voting

to murder - the whole meaning of what it means to be an American changed.

The media could have stopped it - and still could stop it - but the right found "strong leadersip" and "patriotic motives" could be a mantra that silenced the media.

Today only sports is - usually - a topic you can discuss without the worry of serious hurt feelings leading to violence - and even then it is brief. It is not like destroy the other fellows life, end his job, make him into a joke amoung his peers that is the right wing reaction to discussion of other topics with the right wing.

[Deja Q]

17. As humans, most of us have been brned so much that healing is not

possible.

Neither side wants to come together. *'s comments and actions alone basically say he is going to do what HE and ONLY HE wants and will not be nice to anyone in office who tries to vote 'no'. Since 11/3/04 he's said a lot that basically says "my way or the highway".