This morning I was thinking about suicide rates in the military.
Why? Because in the culture there is always a story of a soldier with PTSD either killing himself or other people...but these soldiers are never from World War I or II or any war previous.
#USArmy 1/

Without knowing the stats, I believed that suicide rates were higher in vets post-Vietnam than pre-Vietnam. And after looking up the data, I found this to be mostly true (with some exceptions). War isn't the issue, then. So what is?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2757484?resultClick=1

2/ #usarmy

So I did some digging, asked more questions: what has changed? If its not the nature of war which causes suicide, then it must be cultural.
Here is what I found
https://msrc.fsu.edu/news/msrcs-david-rudd-consulted-why-modern-soldiers-are-more-susceptible-suicide
3/ #USArmy

The running thesis seems to be that wars have gotten longer, and longer wars cause more trauma to the individual soldier. A second is that the modern soldier comes from a pampered background, he cannot handle the stress of war.
That answer is satisfactory, I guess #USArmy 4/

While I don't doubt that men have gotten soft over the years, I have my own ideas about what is taking place.
One of my major ideas the stress of public sentiment. The media used to portray soldiers as heroes. Now they are portrayed as child murderers and rapists
#USArmy 5/

The demoralizing of the soldier began around Vietnam. When swaths of leftist student activists sided w/ the Vietnamese over the American troops. The demoralizing effect caused the #USArmy to quit fighting a war where they had not lost a battle. Did they really "lose"?
#USArmy /6

Many academics would say the #USARMY lost public opinion, and were forced to withdraw despite not losing a battle.
Leftists rejoiced. Groups like the Weather Underground praised Ho Chi Minh.
The left learned a valuable lesson with Vietnam: demoralizing works
/7

What you see with #BlackLivesMatter and the 2-3 month "protests" which are funded by multimillionaires and billionaires is the same strategy we saw in Vietnam. Demoralize police, they will surrender (as they did in Seattle and Portland) #USArmy
/8

Soldiers were vilified. This led to drug abuse, increased stress and ultimately suicide.
I wish I could run this experiement. It would be a massive undertaking but would be worth it to see the power of mass media and propaganda on a population such as the #USArmy. /9

Just some interesting things I was thinking about today.