CARL R. TOERSBIJNS, VIDEO

The Vietnam Experience Audiobook 2

Vietnam Experience AudioBook 1

Insane but not Crazy book trailer

https://youtu.be/GVgOl8SLrEAYOUTUBE Book Trailer

A fine line between normal and evil -

When a person does some terrible things in their life, things that seem to be utterly wasteful, stupid or senseless, like the murder of innocent people or pets, there is split off from the norm to the evil side of the world. At least that appears to be the assessment of the world around us.

Some people would say that this is a mentally ill person and in dire need of help to return their mind back to normal. Their logic is that a normal sane person would not do such a terrible and senseless thing. So what I am trying to do in this book is to illustrate how we can engage in a war that is filled with insanity but throughout it all, we remain normal and not be crazy. Let me explain this concept by rationalizing logic used in the world today.

We live in a world of views that express, decide and judge these things as being insane but not crazy. As you can gather from this logic, the distinction between evil and being mentally ill is a matter of significant concern as for many, it is purely subjective in matter. For this purpose, crazy is linked to evil and if the act was not evil, then we are not crazy.

The world’s patterns of thinking, justifying and explaining these anomalies in life are filled with biases, morals, ethics and other norms are culturally created. One major point of concern in this matter is the burden of responsibility and accountability and the correct way to a person who has done something terrible such as committing a crime against another human being, race or country.

If a person acts from mental ill rather than evil, then it seems somewhat reasonable to regard or judge them to be not accountable for the action(s) or at least, to the degree the person is ill. After all, if something terrible occurs because a person suffers from a physical illness, or a mechanical failure, the person is generally and sometimes legally, not held accountable (exceptions noted).

For example, immediately after doing a tour in Nam, I was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky at the 42nd Field Hospital as a dispensary medic. I had the privilege to have my personal vehicle on post when I had a malfunction with my car’s accelerator – it got stuck and caused the car to veer out of control almost hitting a group of officers standing on the sidewalk. Since I was driving normal when the car malfunctioned, and the fact that I didn’t stomp my foot down deliberately or to press the accelerator down to speed up, I had an unexpected seizure of my ability to control it.  At least, that is how the adjutant general attorney explained it to me. However, I was not completely vindicated of the act, as I was demoted from E-5 to E-4 for a violation of our Military Code of Justice. Something I didn’t understand clearly but it was much better than a criminal charge and facing charges as that was told to me at the beginning of this investigation.

Oddly, when the car rocketed down the street, smashing into another car and coming to a stop in someone’s back yard after barely missing the pedestrians, I could have been charged for attempted vehicular manslaughter or other kind of crimes, as the car could have easily plowed over the officer, injuring or killing some of them.

However, since I was not physically in control of my own actions (and they had no reason to think I would do such an act on purpose) I was not held morally accountable. That is, I did nothing wrong. I hope you see where I am going here as this is all based on perceptions and subjective thinking. If a person had intentionally tried to murder this officer with a car, then that would be seen as an evil action. Unless, perhaps, the driver was mentally ill in a way that disabled him in a way comparable to a stroke and since a stroke may cause the car to veer out of control, much like a mechanical failure, a case might be made that the driver might be as “innocent” as the afflicted victim.

There seem to be at least two ways that a mentally ill person might be absolved of moral responsibility (at least to the degree he is mentally ill). Regardless, the person appears to be suffering from what could be classified as a perceptual or interpretative disorder or malfunction.

That is, he may have mental defects that cause him to perceive and interpret reality incorrectly.  For example, a person suffering from extreme paranoia might think that some stranger intends to steal his brain, even if there are no such intention. I am hoping you are staying with me as I detail how we become not just institutionalized in our thinking patterns, but also fall to the games of the ‘establishment.’

In such a case, it seems reasonable to not regard the person as evil if he tries to harm someone —after all, he is acting in what he thinks is legitimate self-defense rather than from a wicked motivation. In contrast, if someone who wanted to kill me to carjack my car or just for fun would be acting in an evil way.

Put in general terms, mental conditions that distort a person’s perception and interpretation of reality might lead him to engage in acts of wrongful violence even though his moral reasoning might remain normal. 

Again, strangely, it seems sensible to consider that such people might be following their conscience as best they can, only they have distorted information to work with in their decision making process and this distortion results from mental illness.

Second, the person might be suffering from what could be regarded as a disorder of judgment. That is, the person’s ability to engage in reasoning is damaged or defective due to a perceived mental illness.

The person might (or might not) have correct information to work with, but the processing is defective in a way that causes a person to make judgments that would be regarded as evil if made by a “normal” person.

For example, a person might infer from the fact that someone is wearing a blue hat that the person should be killed or maybe in the case of the Vietnam War, a person is wearing black pajamas and therefore, should be killed.

One obvious point of concern is that “normal” people are generally bad at reasoning, no anomaly during the war, and commit fallacies with alarming regularity. As such, there would be a need to sort out the sort of reasoning, that is merely bad reasoning from reasoning that would count as being mentally ill.

One-point worth considering is that bad reasoning could be fixed by education and awareness, whereas a mental illness would not be fixed by learning, for example, logic and should be treated by diagnosis and medication or therapy.

A second obvious point of concern is discerning between mental illness as a cause of such judgments and evil as a cause of such judgments. After all, evil people can be seen as having a distorted sense of judgment in regards to value. In fact, some philosophers aka Kant and Socrates regard evil as a mental defect or a form of irrationality.

This has some intuitive appeal—after all, people who do terrible and senseless things would certainly seem to have something wrong with them. Whether this is a moral wrongness or health wrongness is, of course, the big question here. For many war veterans, this is linked to their experiences and perception during their time of service.

One of the main reasons to try to sort out the difference is figuring out whether a person should be treated (cured) or punished (which might also cure the person). As noted above, a person who did something terrible because of mental illness would (to a degree) not be accountable for the act and hence should not be punished (or the punishment should be duly tempered).

For some it is tempting to claim that the choice of evil is an illusion because there is no actual free choice (that is, we do what we do because of the biochemical and electrical workings of the bodies that are us).

As such, people should not be punished, rather they should be repaired. Of course, there is a certain irony in such advice: if we do not have choice, then advising us to not punish makes no sense since we will just do what we do.

The adverse impact of this rationale is the fact that when you apply this to government, there is no distinction made. government is not held accountable or responsible for what they do, carry out or engage in especially when it comes to making war.

So how do you introduce a subject as tender as the Vietnam War without offending anyone who fought this conflict with all his or her body and soul? Why would you even write about things that were so atrociously violent, brutal, mind boggling and controversial and what would justify speaking out against the flow of main stream media and history books when the dust has still not settled.

Controversy causes doubts of whether or not you know the truth in these matters. Can we trust the history books to tell us the truth? Perhaps to some extent, it would be the appropriate source to mention and refer to for war statistics, facts of battles, chronology, and other factual matters that verifiable by military records.

If we understand the truth correctly, without the extra perceptions, was the was a necessary evil or was it justified of being as close to ‘normal’ as life gets?

On the other hand, does the government allow the truth to be printed or would it rather conceal the deception and lies they provided over a long period of time to justify their use of one of the world’s mightiest armed forces in such a small country called the Republic of South Vietnam.

As a war veteran, I mourn the loss of my teammates daily without exceptions. As a former warrior, I seek condolences and forgiveness for what I was a part of during my one-year tour as a medic. It is a fact that for over forty years I carried a lot of guilt inside me.

One such guilt was survivor’s guilt, another kind of guilt was my own conscious, fighting my own morality and mortality. In the end, I suffered no more and no less than most Vietnam Veterans, except that I was spared the agony of Agent Orange and other visible wounds.

How I survived does not matter anymore as that stands for the record to be satisfactory and successful in both family and career paths. What I did or underwent during my recovery time, is now, not much of an issue as it has brought me full circle with life and my heart.

There is nothing more to say except to tell the truth as I have known it to exist. Is it wrong and does it point the blame somewhere else? Yes, I think so; I think the blame belongs to the ‘establishment’ that sent us to a war that was never fully justified.

At least, in my mind, that is how I see it after it was all over and done with and as I visit the Wall in DC to see the names of my fallen comrades, I realize that over 58,307 men and women lost their lives because of the bureaucracy that wanted a war fought in a foreign land under the pretense of stopping communism at the front door and not letting it be fought on American soil.

The hypocrisy in this message is stronger than the truth itself. Our country shamed us into believing we fought a good war, an honorable war and a justified war.

To some, including me, it was an honorable war but not a good war to be fought. This is a paradox that will never be clear to anyone who experienced this warfare.

This war was full of hate, racism, class warfare, political pandering and foreign policy meddling to control the power of the world while sending young men into battle. Battles that were mostly won but not sufficient to win the war.

Politics took a front seat over military victories. The entire conflict was riddled with political agendas and corporate greed that served the rich and punished the poor. Punishment that came in the form of death, injuries, maimed bodies and screwed up minds.

So now it comes down to what we know to be an insane war fought somewhere most people today have already forgotten. Why are American soldiers who engaged in a brutal war for years being punished for their loyalty and devotion to God and Country? Why does duty have such a bitter taste in my mouth, or is it the guilt that puts the salt in the wounds and cause us to suffer until eternity?

It is with high hopes that after reading my book, you become somewhat better educated, aware and cognizant of how the soldier’s mind was twisted, tortured and damaged by the war and its visual, mental and physical distortions as well as the fact that no human being can endure such an assault or onslaught on their humanity and morals without denting or impacting their reality where they have been and what they have endured.

This does not mean that I am making excuses for those who became criminals under our system of laws. The laws are there for a purpose. At the same time, the laws should distinguish the difference between mental illness and evil. I believe there are too many veterans locked up in jails and prisons who are not evil but in their own world, did things that they thought were normal or without malice or indiscriminate harm towards others.

Excluding those who plan or commit premeditated crimes, I believe many others are victims of a subjective prosecutor, jury or judge who do not understand how the mind breaks down when exposed to harsh and toxic conditions day after day, year after year, without rest, sleep, a relief of psychological guilt or anxiety and more.

On a case by case basis, we would find many veterans who served with honor during their tour of duty, who gave their all in any way they could or felt it should have been delivered or done but labeled evil and put away for crimes, punishable by many years behind bars with no chance for treatment or recovery of their own losses. 

TONY'S VOICE & LAW

Purging the ADOC with good people -

As the Arizona’s Department of Corrections (ADOC) suffers daily staff shortages and critical mass situations, the control of the agency has fallen under the control of Republican legislators and our Governor who occupy the offices that funds and oversees such public services. Within this email, I want to relay some concerns that demonstrates the emasculation of our correctional forces and the tempting desire to destroy it for reasons that point to the proliferation for more private prison services.

While the services of correctional services have long been inadequate and insufficient for public and employee safety, there has been a weak attempt to recruit and select qualified personnel of integrity and honor needed to fill such positions. In the meantime, the agency has replaced and purged qualified and good men and women with strong integrity & values from administrative ranks and replaced them with individuals who share the desire of the power brokers to devastate the agency into ruins and allow privatization to pick up the tab for public safety of our prisons.

Since 2009, we have endured the increasing influence of new politically correct guidelines but was ultimately given one that was simply too offensive to the men and women in key administrative and mid-level supervisory positions, creating a mass exodus of qualified people through early retirements or resignations.

In the meantime, we are under assault of more PC directives that are insufficient to protect the lives of staff and inmates and directly impacts good public safety. We should all take notice. The director took a sworn oath of office to uphold the state constitution and the US Constitution. This oath has been denigrated and indicates that the governor needs to re-evaluate his positon on public prisons and remove the current director from office.

A purge of experience is never good. If it continues, what will the agency be like in a few more years?

Whenever this matter comes up, the union and every officer, are told not to talk to the media or press about the staff shortage situation as well as the deterioration of the agency from within as infra-structures are seriously suffering major damages and no repairs are in sight for such recoveries. They are purging everyone and if you want to keep your job just keep your mouth shut. Now this trend appears to be accelerating.

Since Charles Ryan took office, former Governor Brewer and present governor Ducey have given him free rein in destroying the agency for the betterment of privatization. The more the public prisons failed, the better the private industry looks from their view. Things have gotten so bad during this purge that people are starting to speak out about the atrocities and mismanagements when silence was kept intact before.

Today there is a deliberate attempt to reshape our prison systems and the change or reform will be justified through administrative or management failures. Every day, they are removing those who don’t follow or adhere to the new policies written to appease failure. This administration protects their own with stalled requests for public document information and investigations.

 In an election climate that reeks of economic chaos, we may be overlooking a greater threat to our future. Diversity has been replaced by division of the rank and file. Employees wounded or injured in workplace violence or attacks are being denied reasonable accommodations to heal and return to full duty in an effort to identify as the workplace violence as an acceptable condition of employment. This includes blunt trauma, sharpened instruments or prison made knives, rapes, physical and sexual assaults and many more.

Under the leadership of Charles Ryan, the agency has suffered as never before. He instituted an insane policy which has caused an unprecedented number of staff and inmate suicides and PTSD rates among our state employees and depression and anxiety in their families. The public is unwise and heeds no attention to the failures related to the Parsons vs. Ryan healthcare lawsuit but the families of these victims have reached out to many legislators, attorneys, or some news reporters, to have someone help their sons and daughters inside prisons.

The officers are being grossly neglected. They haven’t received a raise since 2007 and more cuts are coming, and the administration actually admits losing more than 500 officers in the past years and re-arranges staffing patterns to pat the numbers on paper but leaving officers dangerously low or short on shifts. This loss is blamed on legislative cuts but in all reality, the culture of the agency drives people away and hampers legitimate recruitment attempts to hire new employees.

Just as frightening is the lack of experience or expertise in the agency. Leadership is lacking and poor decisions are made by those on the front lines responding to critical incidents that result in life and death situations.

Through their silence on the matter, a majority of the media are complicit in the cover-ups of events happening inside our prisons. Add those legislators who turn a blind eye to the matter and we should think, that should be enough – and refusing to at least give it a shot to investigate this deficiency in our state prison system is scandalous.