What is a veteran?

OK, so I know someone who I will not identify by relationship because I just don't want to go there. I will say they are not a member of this site, nor one of my sons, so I just wanted to establish that.

This person is a male in their 40's who has not worked for a bit for the past 5 years when they received an inheritance from a grandparent, upon which they they quit their job and spent the inheritance smoking Medical Marijuana (they live in Arizona and it was legal there then). He owned a home and had a mortgage just like most homeowners. Also like the rest of the us he has the usual bills such as a car payment, electricity, water, etc. Of course, even though the money was enough for him to pay off his house and his car (or even by a new one with cash) he choose not to and it soon was wasted and ran out. So he applied for Social Security Disability because he believed he has a disabled left leg. Now I honestly believes that he honestly believes that he has a very painful left leg (or at least has talked himself into it to where he believes it). I do not think that he is lying when he tells people that there is something wrong with his leg. The problem with applying for Social Security Disability is the timing that he had just run out of money and the fact is that no doctor can find any problem with his either of his legs. His own doctor said so, so he fired him and of course he was denied on his first attempt at applying for Disability.

That is not unusual or even really a big surprise. Seventy plus percent of people who apply for Social Security Disability are denied on their first try. Less the 3 out of 10 are accepted on their initial application and out of them nearly every last one of them of them are examined by a specialist doctor who is contracted by the Social Security Administration to check them out and see if their particular Disability the applicant is claiming is really so bad that they should be granted Social Security Disability right away. Less then 10% are granted Social Security Disability outright based only on their application and the medical information they supply and the information that the Department finds out from about their history from all of the clinical references that the applicant supplied with no examination at all. I was granted my Social Security with no further questions asked after I applied. I saw no Social Security contracted Psychiatrist. They just called me and told me that I was approved and disabled retroactively back 18 months. No questions asked and no Social Security examination. They were right. I say all of this because some people, including this man I know, think that it is like applying for unemployment or something. That it is automatically owed to you and all you have to do is to make something up and ask for it and you get it. It simply does not work like that.

Anyway I really don't care that this guy keeps applying and getting denied over and over again for his fake bad leg (and making the rest of us who do have disabilities look bad) because what the hell as long as they don't let him get the money, hey, everyone need a hobby, right? I have no idea how he makes his house payments, or gets food or the rest, except that he posts a whole lot on his Facebook page about a lot of help from the Mormon Church. Again, so what, right? That's between him and them.

However what he has also posted on his Facebook page for the past few years and I have been biting my tongue about for reasons I'd rather not go into is that he thinks and says that he is getting a really bad deal after being turned down for four times for Disability, because he says “I have served my country in uniform for seven years!” and that “I have protected my country in uniform for seven years!” and that he thinks he should get some extra consideration from the nation he has served for his service. Now I am not a stupid person. Even most of my enemies on this site will say so and I will be more then happy to say that all of my friends and say even most of my enemies are not stupid either. However it seems to me that just about any American or person reading a statement like that, who reads those words would immediately think that he is saying the he is a Veteran of one of the Armed Forces of the United States such as the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines or the Coast Guard.

However he has not serve a single day in any of them. What he never says is that when he says “I have served my country in uniform for seven years!” and “I have protected my country in uniform for seven years!” is he never says that those seven years have been as an armed security guard at a factory in Phoenix, Arizona! I mean he WAS saying for years that being an armed security guard was the same as being a United States Veteran and that really burns my ass! OK, granted I never served in combat. I am not a war hero. However I did what everyone who joins the military did. I signed a blank check saying to the US Government that you could do whatever, anything , you want to do me, train me in anything you want and for four years, send me anywhere you want, for as long as you want , to do anything you want me to do and to keep me on call for two more years to call back any time you want to do so. And goddamn it that is not the same as being a fucking security guard at a mostly empty factory in Southern Phoenix for seven years! It just is not! He is NOT a fucking Veteran!

He pointed out that he carried a sidearm as a security guard and that I did not carry a weapon when I was on duty in the Air Force, like that somehow qualified him over me and he is right. I did not carry a weapon in the USAF. Except for qualifying (as a Marksmen BTW) in Basic Training on the M16, I was never assigned nor carried nor fired a weapon in anger during my four years. I was not in a traditional combat unit. I was assigned to the 321 ^st Strategic Missile Wing in the Strategic Air Command during the very peak of the Cold War where we handled we handled Minuteman Three ICBMs. The very strongest nuclear weapons in the world at the time. Each missile had 3 independently amiable warheads many thousands of times more powerful the the Hiroshima bomb. IMHO terrifyingly power, each one. With our sister base, Minot AFB to the West of us, which was an almost exact copy of us, we made the state of North Dakota the third largest nuclear power in the world, once you threw in our two B52 nuclear armed B52 Bomb Wings and we could have destroyed the world more then 300 times over and if anyone assigned there said they did not have that tucked away in the back of their mind they were an idiot or lying. If the unit I was assigned to had taken fire in anger or fired weapons in anger then I would not be typing hear now. It guaranteed death for us.

I am very proud of my service in the USAF. Yes I know there were tougher assignments and harder ways to serve, yet I served knowing on a nearly daily basis how close (and damn we came close) we were to losing it all and myself becoming nothing but vapor. There is no way or time to run from an incoming Soviet ICBM. You accepted your service knowing that. I am also proud of my Honorable Discharge. I am not saying this to brag. I am saying this because very few things in the world piss me off more then phony Veterans! Who in the fuck do they think they are? If this person I am talking about had even been shot to death as an armed security guard for this private company it would have been a real shame, but god-damn it he would NOT have died “Serving my county in uniform!” He just would not have! There IS a difference! If he wanted to defend his country in uniform then he should have signed up for the big leagues! Veterans are not bragging when we say we different then other people who serve. We don't take anything away from THEIR service, but damn it we are different and I am not ashamed to say so. If you are NOT a Veteran then god-damn it do not try to equate yourself with one or say your are the same as one or what you have done is as good as one! IT IS NOT THE SAME THING! If you want to be a Veteran then join one of the Armed Services and EARN the right to say you are one! Don't post it online that you ar one when you are not. Don't claim to be one on you Facebook page unless you are one. You will be found out and ridiculed. Shit I did it! I'm a Vet You can to! But if you did not serve in one of the Armed Military Services of the United States of America and you insist that whatever other thing you have done makes you the same or as good as a Veteran, then don't say it in front of a Veteran or in an American Legion Hall or a VFW Hall or wherever Veterans gather, because they will beat the shit out of you and you will deserve it.

BTW, after he bitched me out, before I could find examples on his FB page to throw back at him he had deleted every reference to him having ever worn a uniform at all in any manner for at least the past two years. Shit, that was all I asked in the first place. LOL! Asshole.

An Original Writing By Randy Snyder