Stephen Miller’s Big Shift: Mother-Shooting Goons Replace VA Nurses and Psychologists
A part of the video Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good — took of the shooting has gotten little attention.
Before Renee’s wife Becca taunts Ross, “You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say you go get some lunch, big boy,” and after she notes the plate of the vehicle would still be the same when ICE visits them later that day, Becca identifies herself as a US citizen and a “former fucking veteran, disabled veteran.”
If Becca is, indeed, a veteran, it would mean one veteran shot the spouse of another in a neighborhood of Minneapolis, where both lived.
Ross deployed with the Indiana National Guard to Iraq as a machine gunner.
Deployed to Iraq as a member of the Indiana National Guard from November 2004 to November 2005, Specialist Ross of the 138th Signal Battalion earned the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal among others, according to the guard.
During his time in Iraq, Ross was a machine gunner on a combat logistical patrol team, court documents show.
Renee’s second husband and the father of her six year old son, Tim Macklin, was an Air Force veteran.
This not only was a conflict between authoritarianism and tolerance, but it appears to have been a conflict between American veterans.
That’s worthwhile background to this WaPo story, which catalogs which agencies shrunk in the first year of the Trump Administration and which have ballooned. The article shows that the Veterans Administration lost the most employees (the largest number through attrition), over 50,000 people.
That includes around 3,000 nurses (3% of the total) and 2,000 claims examiners (10% of the total).
Meanwhile, DHS ballooned in size, adding more than 6,000 ICE goons (reflecting a 30% increase) and almost 1,000 CBP officers.
Ross is not one of these new hires; he worked at CBP for eight years and has been working at ICE for ten years.
Republicans — and because this was done via Trump management, DOGE, and the Big Ugly Bill, with virtually no input from Democrats — took service away from veterans and instead hired a bunch of people to invade blue states instead.
Republicans — Stephen Miller — decided snatching grannies was more important than providing veterans medical care.
The American Prospect has been closely following the staffing woes at the VA — which is basically a bid to privatize much of it, including this recent story explaining why new staffing cuts will endanger mental heath care not just for veterans, but for the entire country.
In late November, a mental health leader at a major VA medical center learned about a directive issued to the 18 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) regional offices, known as VISNs (Veterans Integrated Service Networks). Department of Veterans Affairs’ leaders in Washington were imposing lower caps on employee positions nationwide. Directors of local VA medical centers and clinics had a month to decide which vacant positions to eliminate, and which job offers to rescind. None of these identified positions would be filled because they would be swept from organizational charts entirely. At his facility, 60 percent of the unfilled positions would be lost, including 23 in mental health.
“The past nine months have been very challenging,” the mental health leader told the Prospect. “But this is really going to impact patient care.” He also worried about the effect of cuts on the VA’s critical teaching mission. “The VA trains 50 percent of psychologists in the country,” he said. “Now, we may not have enough staff to supervise trainees.” In the midst of a national mental health professional shortage, reducing VA training capacity ultimately impacts access to mental health care for both veterans and nonveterans alike.
Again, Donald Trump is taking services away from veterans, and then hiring them to invade blue cities as if they were Fallujah.
The results were all too predictable.
Sigh, the old “let’s privatize the VA”. That said, I just wanted to add some background information on combat veterans that may help explain (not excuse!!!!) Ross’s behavior. I worked with combat veterans for 12 years and treated them for PTSD, depression and other post combat sequelae. Infantry have the highest rates of PTSD, and machine gunners were the worst – most intense- in terms of the kinetic action and sheer power of their actions (God complex). I published a research article on the “other side of PTSD “ and the addiction to the powerful, exciting high of combat.
Most combat veterans don’t seek treatment, and unfortunately, even the most “evidence based “ treatment has a high drop out rate and relatively low success rate.
Ross was likely hyperaroused with fight or flight physical changes in his brain and body. This manifested as intense anger, laser focused attention on the “enemy”, stalking behavior, loss of rational thought, etc. My opinion is that he flashed back and thought he was in Iraq.
Another big sigh. Some veterans avoid the VA and a diagnosis of PTSD, but others are not too shy to get diagnosed and collect a very generous life time disability. And they can still work, and many of them gravitate to LE type jobs because they like the action.
Thank you, Marji Campbell, for adding your expertise here. I’m curious as to how you see Ross’s continuing to film with his cell as he pulls his gun and shoots Renee Good. To me it bespeaks a kind of double consciousness: while he may indeed have flashed back to combat (or, as VP JD suggested, his previous run-in with a moving car), he persisted in holding that cell phone with his left hand, which suggests a kind of compartmentalization and/or narcissism of the exact type this administration wishes to exploit.
My father was a sharpshooter in Korea, decorated combat vet. I only knew him afterwards, as an anger addict of the kind we kids couldn’t escape provoking no matter how carefully we moved and spoke. His mother said he was withdrawn and unaffectionate as a child, so maybe it had nothing to do with his army time. If this country were to resume a military draft, we might gain a better understanding of how combat experience affects different personalities, instead of those who self-drafted.
Sorry, to clarify, he didn’t specifically flash back to Iraq. He flashed into any combat zone, and he had a combat mission. I treated hundreds of active duty marines and soldiers who told me that they fantasized about ISIS coming to their door, and blowing them away. They fantasized about being stationed on the roof tops of schools like sandy hook and theaters so they could be the good guys and take the shooter out.
“He flashed into any combat zone…”. A combat zone of his own making? Has he, since his very time in Iraq, sought to create here the circumstances most propitious for re-experiencing the feelings, the emotions, that he would (came to) enjoy while in Iraq? Join ICE: What better way for him to get now, what he has craved since then? On a street in Minneapolis: you go to combat with the zone you have, not the zone you want.
The veterans who “avoid the VA and a diagnosis of PTSD” may be the ones most in need of their services. Yes. “Big sigh.”
I think many of us who grew up during, and in proximity after, Vietnam could see and predict the consequences of sending soldiers into that misbegotten war in Iraq and Afghanistan. There would be a lot of damaged people in one way or another, and this country in more recent years does not have a good record of taking care of them.
My good friend and former boss was a Lieutenant in the combat engineers in Vietnam. He is one of the kindest, gentlest, people you will ever meet, but he was afflicted with combat related PTSD for decades after coming back in 1971. He finally broke down at a veterans event in 2012 where there was a helicopter fly-over and had to go into the hospital for awhile. He is doing much better now. But he is also afflicted with health consequences from Agent Orange exposure.
That’s what combat does to people – mental and physical damage.
We seem to be blind to the lasting consequences of our insistance on performing these constant military interventions, and so we fail to mitigate them. Specifically, if this guy actually has the mental damage you describe, he should be nowhere near any law enforcement job involving weapons.
“What combat does …” to those who went over, came back, but never came home; and to the mothers and fathers; sisters and brothers; etc. and etc. of those who went over but never came back.*
Yes. “There would be a lot of damaged people in one way or another … .”
*RIP: T.M.
4th Brigade Combat Team
101st Airborne; Operation Enduring Freedom
Died 2010, Afghanistan; age 21 yrs.
Thanks Snowdog. And thanks for being a good friend to your former boss.
There is not a big enough, well-run enough VA to deal with these broken humans, deliberately created demons.
At the time:
Many of us knew and predicted that veterans of the Global War on Terror were being trained to come home and unleash the same pacification on American civilian populations that they were being trained to inflict on Iraqi and Afghani populations.
Iraq invasion recruits being made to yell “KILL, KILL, KILL” during training, & etc: military training shifted to more extreme techniques of brutalization and breaking down socializing inhibitions. See Abu Ghraib.
Religious indoctrination by rogue commanders, force-feeding recruits with Christian Nationalist/Crusader indoctrination:
CENTCOM was well aware that commanders such as William G Boykin were force-feeding recruits with Christian Nationalist indoctrination that termed Muslims as fit to be killed, because they “worshipped idols.”
We knew then that at some point this cadre would be trained upon us here at home. Their humanity was deliberately broken in GWOT. There is not a big enough, well-run enough VA to deal with these deliberately created demons.
Karma, or the second shoe drops?
A couple of draft dodgers got the US into those wars, with support from the NYT. The US sacrificed its domestic federal workforce to hire right wing socialists to kill brown people. Due to the 5 point preference that veterans receive, some of the right wingers I was fleeing, ended up in these declining domestic operations and a few arrived at the perception that these domestic agencies only attracted people with a certain mindset. I was always quick to retort, “What type of mindset does the MIIC attract?” These right wingers were very low on self-awareness.
Bush/Cheney knew what they were doing and that sin almost bit Dick’s daughter in the ass. Unfortunately a whole generation of angry, white right wing socialists were funded to have families to carry on the hate parade. Trump then came in and decimated the liberal leaning parts of America to fund a bigger hate parade, again with support from the NYT, and this is where we are today.
As Kevin Robert’s opined, this revolution will be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
The right is hungry for blood. Don’t blame the left for that.
That Kevin Roberts quote may be the most under appreciated quote in recent history.
They ARE at war with America.
The fascist rightwing is in the process of their attempted “second revolution”. There will be no willing stop to the project.
Roberts told us that if you resist, your blood will spill.
We can’t expect they will be deterred by laws or court orders. On many levels, the administration has shown to have no respect for such old fashioned words. They control the Supreme Court. The corrupt leadership of the DoJ will not enforce them anyhow.
Trump’s CBP/ ICEstapo agents are openly attacking Americans and spilling blood on camera, in their deliberate provocation attempts.
Murdering civilians and actively preventing medical personnel from responding to the scene. They spray high school students with chemical agents.
We can be sure the Trump cult is just warming up.
More ICE brownshirt violence will lead to more and larger protests. Leading to more state violence in service of Kevin Roberts grand plan.
Trump’s desperation to be dictator and love of violence upon others is Robert’s tool to attempt to make it happen.
As the war on Americans accelerates, i hope and pray that the protests become to large to overcome.
My view from the middle of MAGAstan leads me to believe we need to be prepared.
Hopefully, I am wrong again.
Yes, being trained to yell “kill kill kill” happened after WW2 and before Vietnam. Apparently the DoD did a survey/study and found that 80-85% of soldiers coming home from Europe admitted that they did not shoot to kill. Apparently this went back to all wars, and had to do with the innate prohibition of humans killing other humans- not good for survival of the species. So the DoD developed new training to maximize killing, and it worked. Shoot to kill was 90-95% in Vietnam. But that really really fucks you up when you get home.
See Grossman’s book, “On Killing “.
Thank you Marji Campbell for your posts.
Regarding “[T]he innate prohibition of humans killing other humans …”.
Here’s another book recommendation:
The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (2013) by Joel F. Harrington
My notes from On Killing:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2006/8/19/238306/-
Off topic but this seems like another “The Onion” headline: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/man-who-stole-lectern-from-nancy-pelosi-is-running-for-public-office-in-florida-reports-say-jan6th/
“…Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal…”
The only medal worth mentioning is the ARCOM. In Ross’ case it came with neither a ‘V’ or ‘C’ device and so was undoubtedly awarded end-of-tour as a step up from an ‘attaboy.’ Considering Ross was a ‘gun truck’ ( probably an up-armored HMMWV ) machine gunner for the 138 Signal Bn, had he engaged the foe to any significant degree a device would have been affixed.
( I am conversant with this as I’ve 2 ARCOMs myself )
Ross was NOT a special operator of any sort.
I’m concerned about a different “goon” action. What happens when the Bovinists show up at polling places and start pulling people out of the line-up?
I think it’s time we start talking to the normies (aka the people in our lives that are less interested in politics and or the state of affairs) about this particular scenario.
We need to start preparing ourselves for it now so it doesn’t come as a surprise.
That has been on my mind too. I think one of the way to counter this would be to expand early voting enormously so that the turn out does not rely on election day.
our local, fabulous, newspaper “Cascadia Daily News” has an article up on its home page with an in depth look at the Afghan man who traveled to D.C. and shot the two National Guard members. in particular, it outlines how the already limited mental health services for these Afghan men partnered with U.S. forces has deteriorated leaving those working with them few ways to help. struck by one man they interviewed who lamented how hard it was to find work. his job back in Afghanistan? a doctor.
not sure if this is paywalled or not, but you can find it at the top of the page at : cascadiadaily (dot) com “National Guard shooting suspect ‘fell through the cracks’ in Bellingham”
Doesn’t seem to be paywalled.
This part leaped out to me:
The word “every” is not hyperbole. These folks in the US don’t typically want to call attention to themselves, for fear that word would get back to the Taliban and put their loved ones at risk.
With all the grief it takes – like the IRS, Congress habitually underfunds it – the VA does a decent job providing health care to millions of veterans.
Privatizing the VA would cut many thousands of govt employee union members, as well as take away their employment. It would notionally cut the Pentagon’s budget – not where the VA is formally accounted for, but where its budget belongs, as is true for several other large USG agencies – by a huge amount. In reality, the annual payments to the private sector would dwarf direct funding of the VA.
And, it promotes the catechism that govt should never do something at cost, when it can outsource it to the private sector and thereby add tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in costs. The recipients of that largesse are corporations, not veterans, and they give politicians a tiny fraction of the new money they rake in. Health care for veterans? Meh.
In reality, those annual payments to the private sector, in lieu of direct funding for the VA, would be at the whimsical discretion of Congress, creating another huge payola stream from lobbyists to MOCs.
earl, that sounds wholly in keeping with this Age of Corruption, in which the might of your figurative wallet makes right.