The band Five Finger Death Punch has a new video for the song “Wrong Side of Heaven,” which focuses on the plight of homeless veterans. It struck a chord with me.
Mood music:
I’m not a veteran, but I have scores of friends and colleagues who are. They are respected and thriving. But there are many who aren’t so lucky.
The plight of homeless veterans is an old story, and it highlights American hypocrisy. We have holidays honoring our vets, and when we see veterans we thank them for their service — especially those who served in the second World War.
But when we see homeless people — many of whom fought in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — we treat them like vermin.
We let so many of them live on the streets, without proper shelter or medication for the mental illnesses they caught from watching comrades get ripped apart on the battlefield.
We look down at these vets every day as lazy, crazy, smelly vermin who prowl the streets scaring our children. We have no idea of what they’ve been through to get so scarred, and a lot of us don’t really care, even if we say we do.
This video nails that reality.
We can do better.
