Memorial Day -- Fear and Loathing on the Congressional Campaign

Campaigning is really hard. I have meetings or events nearly every night. Many nights I don’t see my two smaller children because I don’t make it home before 9pm. It makes me feel like an awful parent. Logan feels more distant, and I can tell Riley is starving for my attention. The other day she made me watch her jump on the guest bed, then after a time asked - No, ordered! - me to join her. She drags me around by my finger on the days I am home while I concurrently work, write, and take calls for the campaign. It sometimes feels like I’m missing their childhood.

But my reason for going down this path is ultimately for them. The strain of running a campaign while maintaining a full time job, the constant exhaustion, the late nights away from my family - despite the daily hardships, I don’t have any doubts or regrets about this campaign. This is something I have to do. I felt this similar sense of duty when I served in the military.

Memorial Day has been complicated for me. When I was deployed I was just a kid myself. I didn't have a wife back home, thousands of miles away, that I may not see for the next 12 to 18 months. I didn’t have kids who were growing up without their father. These feelings of abandonment and neglect that I feel now must be hell for our service people deployed overseas so far from their families.

For years I never wanted to be thanked for my service. I’d tell people, “I didn’t do anything special. I blew things up and broke things.” So many service people have dealt with so much more than I ever have; I especially feel this to be true since I have a father who is a wounded Vietnam Veteran, and a daughter who just returned from combat in the Middle East.

This holiday annoyed me on another level because I feel it is a disingenuous day. How can we, as a country, possibly say that we support our troops when our VA Hospitals are underfunded and understaffed? To make matters worse, Trump’s hiring freeze has exacerbated the problem. Where is the support? How can we say that we care when so many veterans are homeless and committing suicide every day? Despite the fact that veterans only make up six-percent of the population, they make up twenty-percent of the suicides. Really think about that: Every day twenty-two veterans feel that life is so empty and futile, they take their own lives. They survived combat and whatever other horrors they faced only to die at home by their own hand. Female combat soldiers are nearly six times more likely to commit suicide than their civilian peers. A million and a half veterans live in poverty and make up eleven-percent of the homeless population. The entire holiday seemed like a photo-op for political vote pandering rather than a day for somber remembrance or gratitude.

I think the entire meaning of the holiday didn’t dawn on me until my daughter Brooke deployed. It wasn’t just the danger of her mission; it was knowing that she was under unrelenting pressure day in and day out. It was knowing that she couldn’t see her family, no matter how much she may have needed us. It was that helpless separation: she was too far away, and there was nothing I could do to help even if I wanted to. I realized from this experience that Memorial Day isn’t just for the veterans, but for their families as well. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely for the veterans too. But after twenty-five years I think I’ve learned to appreciate the holiday for a day that acknowledges the sacrifices that both the veterans and their families have made. It’s more than bullets cracking overhead and cool movie lines. It’s about real people making the sacrifice of separation, always worried and feeling helpless for a duty they know to be worth the cost.

We remember these sacrifices so that we don’t forget the cost of war; to remind us later why we should avoid war when we can, and to be prudent about our deployments when we can’t. Robert E.Lee said to General Longstreet, “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

This is why we must be diligent about who we vote into office. Too often Washington politicians with nothing to lose personally vote for war based on financial gains. These politicians with million-dollars investments in military contract corporations are too willing and complacent to throw the lives of our brave soldiers - our daughters and sons, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters - into war for their own profit.

May is National Military Appreciation Month, and this weekend is the finale. I see today, our Memorial Day holiday, as a day to commemorate the sacrifices of our soldiers and their families, and to acknowledge what they still struggle against. I also see it as an opportunity to contemplate the consequences of war, and our responsibility to keep our law makers in check.

Most of all, I see it as a reminder that our veterans still need our help. They sacrificed themselves for us and we should, in turn, support and honor them.

Please tell me your story and I’ll publish it on my website. Help me humanize the numbers to address our issues.

https://www.tompriggforcongress.com/letters/

If you would like to help you could go to these links to support these organizations in anyway that is possible for you.

Veteran Outreach

Support Homeless Veterans:http://www.supporthomelessveterans.org/

Veteran Suicide help

Mission 22:http://www.mission22.com/#ourcause

Veteran Crisis line: https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

Stop Soldier Suicide: http://stopsoldiersuicide.org/

Veteran leadership program (Pittsburgh): http://www.vlpwpa.org/

Show your support - contact a veteran: https://maketheconnection.net/use-your-voice

PSA to support the military community: http://www.changedirection.org/militarypsa/