suicide video

The BBQ Pit
61

Thanks Phil, I take your words as a huge compliment considering you are one of my highest respected posters.

tc - I don’t feel like I need to justify anything since you don’t know me or what I do and by your statements make it obviously clear that you really don’t have a grasp on any vet programs. I will say in my defense that 13 years ago I went from a no-stress, cushy office job with promotion potential to a career in helping veterans.

I took a sizable loss in pay, was (it still continues) subjected to extreme verbal abuse with threats of physical harm (try dealing with a homeless schizophrenic/psychotic who has been off his meds for months and instead self medicating with a mixture of alcohol and crack). I have volunteered to accept clients that others refuse. Those who must have an armed guard (not my choice, my bosses) in order to be alone in a room with me. I also volunteered for the homeless vet program 10 years ago, which entails getting my fat, anal retentive ass of the couch and going out to parts of town you wouldn’t dare drive through fast during the light of day.

I have also volunteered hundreds of hours to Homeless Veteran Stand Downs and other programs. No pay but a lot of hours, hours that are precious due to the fact that I work full-time, as well as raising three kids as a single parent. It’s not like I don’t have other things to do on my weekends and evenings. :rolleyes:

Now that I have tooted my own horn, let me say that I am not the exception. As in any career field, you have your slackers and you have those who bust ass and really care. During the period of my career, I can honestly name 3 people who I considered slackers. They have moved on to bigger and better things.

Do you think that me and my co-workers chose this fields because we enjoy abuse and stress? Do you know that most of my co-workers are disabled veterans themselves, some severely?

I would be dishonest if I were to say I respect all vets, I don’t. The large majority are those who have truly served their country and have earned to right to be respected. I don’t mean only those who have served in combat, but those who have served their country honorably. Some may not be accepted by society due to their mental disabilities or homeless status, but they still deserve our respect. These men (and a few women) may be the homeless guy talking to himself on the corner or the fatigue wearing guy that never leaves his house at the far end of the street. They may look like losers to you, but you may change your tune if you took the time to learn about them. In most cases they may not be able to handle employment or sufficiently support themselves and rightfully deserve taxpayers support. They deserve monthly compensation for disabilities that occurred in service as well as other benefits.

Then there is a very small group of veterans who use their veteran status as an excuse to live off of the government. Vets who spend hours upon hours abusing the system just so they don’t have to work to support themselves. Vets who feel that the taxpayers should support them for life simply because they obtain hemorrhoids during bootcamp (trust me, I am not exaggerating).

It is usually these guys who bitch the loudest at how unfair the VA treats veterans. How they VA takes 2 years to process claims. How VA employees are anal, lazy, rude, nasty, couch comrades. How they don’t get the monetary payments they deserve simply because they served a 2 year stint at Ft. Bragg.

Thank God they are a rare breed.

It irks me that I felt the need to defend my choice of career to an asshole who obviously spouts off his mouth without knowing fact.

It doesn’t surprise me that someone of your caliber not only soaks up e-mail routings as truth and doesn’t understand why some of us are skeptical, but also changes the focus (in this case my career field) in an attempt to back peddle when called upon to verify plagiarized jargon from e-mail routings. Nice attempt to draw the attention off your :::cough::: facts.

As I said before, I am willing to believe your story if you can show me it is nothing more than and internet e-mail routing that someone created.

Oh, and tell me, do you forward those chain letters to all your friends to help pay the Cancer Society for the treatment of some little boy in Muskogee? After all, they do monitor the e-mail routings and will pay $1 for everyone you forward. Maybe you are working on that Disneyland vacation that Bill Gates will give to everyone who is on the routing list at the end of the year. :rolleyes:

I’ve responded to your bullshit attempt to divert attention, now back up your posted historical “facts”.

62

Actually, no.

I can honestly say that most combat veterans are very kind and compassionate. They may have mental or physical disabilities caused by circumstances most of us have only read in history books, but still have enough class to treat others with respect.

This not only applies to the white collar veteran who quietly suffers from service connected disabilities but the homeless vet fighting severe PTSD. One or two sanctimonious assholes will always show up in any group of people, veterans included. Assholes are assholes no matter what their lives have been. Don’t let this dickhead give you an overall impression.

One reason I have continued the homeless program for so long is that although these guys look and act scary, they are truly great people. Knowing and understanding the things they lived through makes it possible to see through the dirt, alcohol/B.O./campfire smells, and psychotic ramblings and see them as humans. Veteran counselors such as myself, are the only friend some of these guys have. I have many regulars who check in just to get a hug, something they don’t get on the street considering they are “invisible”.

I have spent entire weekends with 300+ homeless veterans during Stand Downs and have NEVER witnessed any problems whatsoever. They are all very respectful to the volunteers as well as each other.

I would highly recommend that anyone who really wants to understand this part of society, to spend a day or two volunteering at the next local Homeless Veteran Stand Down. It really is a great experience. You can call the VA Medical Center, VA Regional Office, or the local homeless shelter and ask the Homeless Veteran Coordinator for the next one scheduled.

63

I missed this little gem.

Oh do tell, what “truth” did your story “allegedly” point to? Just what “point” is made by the story? We already know the struggles of our forefathers based on proven facts. If your story is being presented as fact but without basis, forgive me to think it reeks of propaganda.

The more important question however, is how the quote above answered my question that I asked in response to your claim:

I will again ask since you didn’t grasp it the first time.

Oh, I had a teeny-tiny giggle when you suggested I take an English class, but I damn near pee’d my pants when you suggested it to Phil!

WWWD?

:wally

64

tcburnett,

Perhaps you should learn the meaning of the word “allegory.” An allegory is a fictional narrative in which the persons and objects can be equated with meanings outside that narrative. The classic example of an allegory is Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. In it, the efforts of a Christian man to be good are explained by turning the various obstacles to his faith into physical objects. Other famous examples are The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. As you can see, these examples are rather old because it’s not a common literary form anymore. It’s also clear that it’s nearly always written out of a desire to convey some religious or moral point.

This being a rather restrictive definition, sometimes people call other narratives loose allegories. People sometimes say, for instance, that The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis is an allegory. Lewis himself objected that, for instance, Aslan is not an allegory of Christ. Aslan is Christ, Christ as he would have been had he entered another universe. None of the characters in Narnia are simply depictions of virtues or vices. They’re characters whose actions are more or less good or bad and can be taken as role models or anti-role models to some extent. I think, though, that it’s better not to use allegory in this loose sense.

You’re using allegory in an even looser sense. You’re talking about an essay that claims to be nonfiction. In it, stories are told about real people. We’re supposed to learn a moral lesson from these stories. As has been shown though, the stories in that essay are wildly inaccurate.

Now you claim though that the essay is just an “allegory.” Apparently what you mean by the word “allegory” is “a story which I don’t care about the truth of, but I think that the moral of the story is so important that I can get angry when someone points out the falseness of the story and then accuse them of being opposed to the moral itself.” We have another word for such stories. We call them “urban legends.” (If you don’t know what urban legends are, go to a bookstore, buy all six of Jan Harold Brunvand’s books on urban legends, sit down and read them, and come back to this message board when you’re not so clueless.)

All urban legends have similar moral points, most of which are vaguely useful, even if the legend itself isn’t true. As I had to explain to my deputy division chief a couple of months ago, it’s not true, as was claimed in a E-mail message that she passed on to everyone in the division, that there are people at a local mall who are asking women to come out to the parking lot to film a commercial and then assaulting them. Yes, it’s not a good idea to go out into a deserted parking lot with a stranger, but that doesn’t mean you should pass on false stories to make that point. Yes, you shouldn’t go up to your hotel room with a beautiful women who you met in the bar. You’re not going to have your kidney stolen, but she’s probably a hooker who’s going to steal your wallet, so you’ll lose all your money and won’t even get laid.

It is not a good thing to pass on false stories, even if those stories have a more or less good moral. It’s also not a good thing to accuse people of being against the moral when all they’re doing is pointing out that the story is false.

65

Some comments:

  1. Wendell, a form of the “What Happened to the Signers of the Declaration” appeared in the form of a letter to the editor to the Cincinnati Enquirer several years ago. I found it quite compelling. I researched the accuracy of the piece, and found it to be true. My library had several excellent books on the subject, one of which was a 2 volume leather bound ancient thing, which gave lengthy biographies of each signer. Excellent reference source for civics class. Sorry I forgot the name, but I remember it was pretty obvious - something along the lines of “Signers of the Declaration of Independence.”

In any event, remember that this was a time of war. It’s naive of us to think that the men who told the king to bugger himself suffered no repercussions. They were considered traitors by a lot of people in America, much as we ostracized the South 100 years later for telling the Union to stuff it.

  1. I’m glad the link to the suicide was deleted. We can get the best screening software available to protect kids from this sort of thing, but it doesn’t stop assholes from posting links to horrible images from sites that do not get screened.
66

Lisa - Thanks! Hopefully tc will take a clue from you and verify information before stating it as fact. This is the information we have been asking for, but until now all we have gotten is back-peddling and attempts to divert questions.

I am still interested to know what parts of this story are true, half-truths, and false. Not because I am :::insert any insulting name I have been called in this thread:::, but for the simple fact that I would like to know.

This want of knowledge is why most of us enjoy Cecil, right? Too bad there are a few posters who fail to grasp the concept.

Thanks Lisa!

67

PunditLisa,

Are you claiming that the entry in http://www.snopes.com is incorrect? Are you saying that the refutation in

http://www.stanardgroup.com/talk/_disc1/00000358.htm

is incorrect? If so, could you tell us which things in the original “Signers of the Declaration of Independence” essay that tcburnett posted are more correct than the refutation in snopes and the refutation by Professor Harlowe? If this is true, it’s very important that we know this. Most of us expect that snopes is a definitive source on Internet rumors, so if it’s wrong in some major way, I think we should know about it immediately.

Or are you saying that the version of the essay that you read a couple of years ago was greatly different from the one that tcburnett posted, so different that it didn’t contain the errors that were in tcburnett’s version. O.K., that’s nice, but what does that have to do with my reply to tcburnett? Why am I responsible for knowing that there was once some wildly different version of that essay which had the facts correct? Does it make it O.K. for tcburnett to post falsehoods because they are wildly distorted versions of truths?

(Or are you saying something completely different from either of these? I’m baffled by your post.)

And once again, if the essay posted by tcburnett is full of errors, who cares if its moral is (in some sense) correct? I should think that the most basic thing anyone regularly posting to the SDMB should know is that it’s not enough for your heart to be in the right place. You also have to get the facts straight.

68

Lisa - What parts of your research disagree with snopes?

69

Just wanted to say I just listened to the last moments of R Budd Dwyer on a website dedicated to him and it chilled me to the bone.

I also wanted to say that I agree censorship can be a bad thing, but it is sometimes necessary. As I’m sure you know it is very easy to access all manner of vile, disturbing and gruesome pictures on the internet, and I’m not denying that I have looked at stuff like this too, but some of it is very graphic and I think to put direct links to material such as that on pages like these is a little inappropriate, especially if there is no warning as to what the picture may be.

Anyway I’ll shut up now as I have wandered slightly from the subject.

:slight_smile:

70

Falula Guinea Pig: So you think that “some censorship” is okay? Well, who makes those decisions? You, me, the Baptist preacher from Alabama, the art student in San Francisco, some politicians?

Where are the lines drawn?

Sorry. You admitted that you’ve seen some stuff that you don’t like. Then, you decided you don’t dig it and you won’t be looking for it again. This self-censorship is fine, but don’t make any decisions about what I want to see, thanks.

Yer pal,
Satan

TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Two months, four weeks, one day, 19 hours, 22 minutes and 30 seconds.
3632 cigarettes not smoked, saving $454.03.
Life saved: 1 week, 5 days, 14 hours, 40 minutes.

71

(with sympathetic nod of head, hands a bucket of water to Farmer…)
“use it to put out your ass, I think your overalls are about to burn straight through to the skin, and denim sticks.”

72

Wendell, I was referring to the letter that appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer. While having a similar tone and language, the original letter actually listed names of the men, their home state, and their fate. It was quite a compelling letter, and pretty easy to verify. I particularly remember the names Hart and McKean because their circumstances were peculiar. John Hart, for instance, fled and lived in caves for a while. When he returned, his wife was dead and his children were gone. Another signer’s wife was jailed, and died in prison.

Pretty compelling stuff.

I mean, I always thought the patriots of the revolution were pretty cool. Who doesn’t? But I had never stopped to think what a personal RISK they took. Not just risky for them, but their entire families.

We KNOW that the revolution was successful. They, of course, did NOT when they put their lives, families, and fortunes on the line by signing the Declaration. Treason was a hanging offense in those days. Still is.

Perspective is everything.

The letter that tcburnett posted is not the same as what was written to the editor. And while that article in question may not have been 100% accurate (I’ll defer to snopes and stanard.com), in this case it doesn’t really matter. Because the truth is just as compelling as the legend.

The signers of the Declaration were heroes in every sense of the word. They rank right next to Schindler in my book. Because whether they died for their cause is not nearly as important as the fact that they were willing to die for it. They risked their families, their fortunes and their lives for independence. They rolled the dice. And not many people are willing to do that.

Lisa

73

PunditLisa,

Do you still have a copy of the version that was printed in The Cincinnati Enquirer? Could you post it?

As I said, no one was objecting to the moral of the essay that tcburnett posted, just to the fact that it got so many facts wrong.

One thing that did bother me slightly in the version posted by tcburnett was that it implied that the signers of the Declaration of Independence suffered more than ordinary American soldiers (and ordinary citizens) in that war. There’s no evidence that that’s true. Many of the soldiers died in that war (whereas no signers did). Many people lost their homes and fortunes in the war (as some signers did). I don’t think anyone was tortured in that war (although there was usual sort of harsh conditions for prisoners of war, which resulted in many deaths). It’s possible, though hardly certain, that the British planned to execute the signers if they won the war. Many soldiers fought and died bravely in that war, just as many civilians suffered too. It’s not clear that the signers suffered more than anyone else.

74

Wendell, no I didn’t save the original. It was on my old computer’s hard drive, which crashed when I added a new memory board. I can tell you that it was printed on July 4th in either 1998 or 1997 (probably the former) by a man who listed his address as Hartwell (a subdivision of Cincinnati). The on-line Cincinnati Enquirer site is useless, so don’t bother.

I did post the letter on an AOL board when it came out, along with my editorial comments of facts I learned doing my personal research. I’ll contact some of the people on that board to see if they kept a copy. I’ll let you know.

Next time I’m downtown I’ll pop in the library and look it up on microfiche.

Lisa

75

Hey Satan, you’re right, you have every right to look at anything you want to look at, and I agree it is hard to know where you draw the line on censorship issues.

Wow - you’re the first person to a) call me their pal in this place and b) respond to one of my posts - thanks!!
:smiley: You’re a star!!!

:slight_smile: