Watching PBS, I encountered some alarming statistics. Every 80 minutes, a veteran commits suicide. That adds up to 6,500 veteran suicides per year.

      Of course, the government’s analysis of these facts seems to miss the point deliberately, and the U.S. Military will never get to the root of the problem. It can’t get to the root of the problem.

      It is the root of the problem.

      The fact is, we subject human beings to trauma that distorts and alters them. As a veteran myself, I know this to be true. But then we subject them to even more serious and prolonged trauma in combat—in wars that benefit the aims of the larger system, the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Because the suicide rate is really fueled by trauma, and because that trauma is necessary in order to turn troops into what the military needs them to be, the government can only react to these suicides by treating each one as a lamentable tragedy while avoiding any discussion as to the real systemic causes of this suicide epidemic.

      So what if this kind of denial leads to thousands more veterans blowing their brains out? To the government, that’s just a reduction in potential payouts in benefits. Suicides don’t spend their G.I. Bills.

      Veterans return from combat expecting to transition back to a world of white picket fences, opportunity, and individual liberty. They expect to return to a world based upon fair play, where character and hard work are rewarded. Instead, they find that Americans have the right to shut up. We have the right to sleep in our cars, to lose our families due to economic stresses, to struggle and suffer and wonder why all those soldiers are giving their legs and arms and eyes and lives. And if we stand up, we have the right to be hit with billy-clubs, sprayed in the face with mace, and get our fingers snapped while we’re prone and cuffed.

      Land of the free? Home of the brave?

      Veterans return from combat to find they have inherited poor, butchered half-lives in return for their sacrifices.

      The disillusion wears them down.

      But suicide isn’t the solution. I mean, sure, it’s the solution the government actually prefers—which is why it does nothing to substantially address the suicide rates. No government wants thousands of angry, disillusioned combat veterans. If you didn’t kill yourselves, the government would have to monitor you.

      You’re dangerous. Dangerous to the real enemy.

      My thinking is this: If you returned home from the war to find jihadists tearing your family apart, seizing your home and kicking your kids into the street, forcing you into slavery for pennies per day, you wouldn’t tuck your chin and go along with that. You’d get a rifle and you’d find friends from your old unit, and you’d handle that problem. You wouldn’t put a bullet through your own brain-pan and call it a day.

      Okay. So the real enemy isn’t a group of jihadists. The real enemy is a group of bankers and politicians who want to destroy your family and your way of life. Don’t rifles work on them too? I bet they do.

      You have come home to a real threat, a threat to your loved-ones’ well-being, a threat to your pursuit of happiness, a threat to the very future itself. As veterans, you have self-discipline, dedication, team-work, and a wealth of direct experience under fire. You have a specific set of skills developed under pressure. Put those skills to use.

      Look, you’re being presented with a false concept. You think your only choices are (A) find some way to drag stones up the side of the pyramid for the privileged few and go along with the program, or (B) opt out. What about option C? Option C is: Change the conditions.

      Change the conditions.

      Look at those now involved in Occupy. Whether you agree with their methods and whether you agree with their political orientation, they have recognized that the system has become intolerable and they have decided that, instead of being slaves, they are going to change the conditions.

      Together, all of us who are disillusioned can tear down this system and build something better.

      So, don’t kill yourself. If you’re going to kill anybody, kill somebody who’s really got it coming. Don’t remove yourself from the equation—you aren’t the problem. Be part of the solution. Get organized. Develop a plan. Help teach and train others. Build a coherent resistance to this tyranny.

      A better world is possible.

      We need you.

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By ____ _____1

1  This article may or may not have been written by Sean Swain, but because the federal government has stripped Swain of all constitutional protections on the grounds that his writings “promote anarchy and rebellion against authority,” his name cannot be associated with any published work for fear of fascist repression. Sean Swain, who may or may not have written this, is a political prisoner who supports the Occupy Movement, burning down banks and courthouses, and arming the homeless. In a free country, this footnote would not be necessary.