May 19th, 2010 / 1:46 pm
Power Quote

Thomas Jefferson, make up your mind

“We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

— Thomas Jefferson

*

As beautiful as the former quote is, and as much as I’d like to believe it — the latter quote rings a more sober, unflinching note. Frontline‘s “The Wounded Platoon” investigates soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a quiet, empathetic, and respectful way, with a welcomed void of political commentary about the Iraq war. I was watching it on TV last night, crashed out on the futon (my attempt at “cold turkey” gone tepid via some Hennessey that my wife got for flambé), as the cat kneaded my crotch. Until they start drafting near-sighted Canadians with high blood-pressure and carpal tunnel, I’m safe from war. I used to be an artist, and never did I think to thank a soldier for securing such liberty and peace-time; my arrogance was only tempered with some modernist myth about a humble Van Gogh. The soldiers, under the spell of both psychiatric and street drugs, met up three years later at a grave site of a fallen Sargent. They followed one of them as he rode across America — the sadness of a flat open road occasionally punctuated by the sadness of the reoccurring fat waitress, in some state the shape of a box bled red with desperation. At the grave, the wife cried, and thanked them all for coming, her “all” cloaked in a southern y’all, her unwiped tears half-dried on her face. When I was more arrogant, I used to make fun of people who said y’all. I used to spout off about politics with some liberal mag folded in my back pocket. Now I just cry at the TV.

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28 Comments

  1. jereme

      this is really good.

  2. Mather Schneider

      Even if you do go to war, Chen, Jereme will protect you.

  3. jereme

      yep.

  4. Hank

      That documentary was really good. It made me angry.

  5. Mather Schneider

      Anyways, well, anyways, Thomas Jefferson’s this guy, this angry guy, and he doesn’t even have a web page, but if he did he’d probably use some lame template from the 18th century or something, and some stupid font probably too, some totally uncool thing like that or something. Well, anyways, that’s all I got to say about it, you know, and anyways Thomas Jefferson was just a dummy who might have contradicted himself sometime in his life, probably many times like every human being does, but curiously not in these two quotes which I have chosen to illustrate this point, out of all the quotes I could have chosen, because, well, I am an idiot, but not as much of an idiot as I used to be, and anyways, I got an Ipod, right here, an Ipod, and anyways, signing off…waiting for compliments…signing off y’all…gonna write another post y’all…gonna go cry while watching tv y’all…that is the modern situation anyways y’all…been chewin on this toothpick like a smug moron and now am gonna go stick it up my ass…

  6. Jimmy Chen

      well done, i enjoyed that

  7. jereme

      check your email.

  8. rk

      Its rough what goes on when those fellows come home. I grew up under the shadow of just such a fellow. But both quotes come from a man who never did any soldiering and would have lived the life of an artist and intellectual with or without a revolution. Jefferson spouted a lot of fine poetic thoughts about the blood shed of revolution–until he became president. Then he had other ideas. Truth is artists do not need soldiers to exist. We had our meager artists before the revolution and we had our meager artists after the revolution. Artists survived in Nazi Germany and in communist Europe. It is a mistake to say that freedom is a gift bestowed by a rifle.

  9. Kevin

      I’d all but given up on PBS, but I watched this Frontline episode and it’s quite an indictment of War – and, yes, you’re right, without the Meet-the-Press-type quackery that generally passes for insight in the mainstream. PBS’s American Experience recently ran a program about My Lai (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/mylai/), on the 30th anniversary of the massacre. That show begins by connecting in a graphical way civilian casualties in Afghanistan with those in Viet Nam – as if they are a continuum of the same violence, which of course they are. At the end of the Frontline piece, almost as an afterthought, the soldiers talk about murdering civilians indiscriminately in Iraq. We’ve learned nothing.

  10. Janey Smith

      And artists will survive capitalist USA.

  11. Kevin

      Sorry: not 30th anniversary. I don’t know why I wrote that. It was 42 years ago.

  12. jereme

      this is really good.

  13. Mather Schneider

      Even if you do go to war, Chen, Jereme will protect you.

  14. jereme

      yep.

  15. Hank

      That documentary was really good. It made me angry.

  16. Mather Schneider

      Anyways, well, anyways, Thomas Jefferson’s this guy, this angry guy, and he doesn’t even have a web page, but if he did he’d probably use some lame template from the 18th century or something, and some stupid font probably too, some totally uncool thing like that or something. Well, anyways, that’s all I got to say about it, you know, and anyways Thomas Jefferson was just a dummy who might have contradicted himself sometime in his life, probably many times like every human being does, but curiously not in these two quotes which I have chosen to illustrate this point, out of all the quotes I could have chosen, because, well, I am an idiot, but not as much of an idiot as I used to be, and anyways, I got an Ipod, right here, an Ipod, and anyways, signing off…waiting for compliments…signing off y’all…gonna write another post y’all…gonna go cry while watching tv y’all…that is the modern situation anyways y’all…been chewin on this toothpick like a smug moron and now am gonna go stick it up my ass…

  17. Jimmy Chen

      well done, i enjoyed that

  18. jereme

      check your email.

  19. rk

      Its rough what goes on when those fellows come home. I grew up under the shadow of just such a fellow. But both quotes come from a man who never did any soldiering and would have lived the life of an artist and intellectual with or without a revolution. Jefferson spouted a lot of fine poetic thoughts about the blood shed of revolution–until he became president. Then he had other ideas. Truth is artists do not need soldiers to exist. We had our meager artists before the revolution and we had our meager artists after the revolution. Artists survived in Nazi Germany and in communist Europe. It is a mistake to say that freedom is a gift bestowed by a rifle.

  20. mimi

      Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) was made in Nazi occupied France, released in 1945.

      I like “It is a mistake to say that freedom is a gift bestowed by a rifle.”

  21. DN

      Seems to me it’s a mistake to assume freedom being purchased by rifle means artistic freedom.

  22. DN

      Seems to me it’s a mistake to assume freedom being purchased by rifle means artistic freedom.

  23. Kevin

      I’d all but given up on PBS, but I watched this Frontline episode and it’s quite an indictment of War – and, yes, you’re right, without the Meet-the-Press-type quackery that generally passes for insight in the mainstream. PBS’s American Experience recently ran a program about My Lai (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/mylai/), on the 30th anniversary of the massacre. That show begins by connecting in a graphical way civilian casualties in Afghanistan with those in Viet Nam – as if they are a continuum of the same violence, which of course they are. At the end of the Frontline piece, almost as an afterthought, the soldiers talk about murdering civilians indiscriminately in Iraq. We’ve learned nothing.

  24. Janey Smith

      And artists will survive capitalist USA.

  25. Kevin

      Sorry: not 30th anniversary. I don’t know why I wrote that. It was 42 years ago.

  26. mimi

      Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) was made in Nazi occupied France, released in 1945.

      I like “It is a mistake to say that freedom is a gift bestowed by a rifle.”

  27. Fawnforest

      PTSD in Child Vicitms of Interpersonal Abuse

      69

      rate or flag this page

       

      By krillco

       

      Complex PTSD in Children

       

      W.E.Krill, Jr. M.S.P.C.

       

      The diagnosis of PTSD is very specific, and has very
      specific rules for diagnosis. The child must have experienced one particular
      event that produced symptoms from a list of three particular categories. The
      diagnosis and rules for diagnosing it is largely based on work done in the
      1960’s and 1970’s on soldiers coming back from Viet Nam.

       

      Since that time, there has been much more learned about
      stress disorders, and mental health professionals now speak in terms of
      “complex PTSD.” This means that the person suffering from PTSD may have more
      than one event that caused their stress disorder, and multiple and complex
      behaviors associated with it. Some mental health professionals speak about
      “rolling stress.” What is meant by this is that some children who have lived in
      very chaotic and inconsistent environments develop many of the same symptoms
      that are seen in classic PTSD.

       

      The idea of many traumatic events happening to a child is
      not news to those who work with children in foster care. In most cases, these
      children have some kind of mental health disorder, and have many signs of high
      stress and reactivity resulting in acting out behaviors. In cases where the
      child has been physically or sexually abused, there have been multiple events
      of this type that have contributed to the behavioral symptom the child
      demonstrates.

       

      Since the diagnosis for PTSD was based largely on adults,
      and adults coming home from battle conditions in war, the symptoms and
      behavioral signs were shaped around the adult’s experience. Once veterans began
      to be diagnosed, mental health professionals began to notice that other people
      who had experienced traumatic events (such as rapes, natural disasters, etc.)
      also had similar symptoms as did the veterans. It was only natural and logical
      that victims of other traumas received a closer looking over for PTSD signs.

       

      Though children who have PTSD do demonstrate classic signs
      of the disorder, they also can express these signs in ways that are specific to
      children and are not seen in adults. As such, children who are diagnosed with
      PTSD may have had many other diagnoses and treatments for those diagnoses
      before they were discovered to really have PTSD.

       

      The three classic symptom
      clusters in the diagnosis of PTSD are

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