A Pleasant Brush with The DOD

POSTED BY: THE TEMP
MAGNIFICENT MILE, CHICAGO, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Have you ever been to a VA health facility? It is without parallel. If you want to have your finger on the pulse of Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom, I contend there is no better place stateside to do this than a VA hospital. In a sense they are even closer to the action than the Pentagon; and it is fascinating to see the inner-workings of such a bureaucratic, underserved, yet crucial component of the American defense effort.

Since I am
A. Going into the Peace Corps
B. Uninsured
C. In need of a comprehensive health screening in order to qualify for service in the Peace Corps

I have been spending a lot of time at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center on Chicago’s Near West Side.

Most of the veterans who visit this facility are seniors and it is rare to encounter many veterans of the current conflicts our great nation has staged, but nonetheless there is a great sense of connectedness to the war efforts abroad and the tension in the facility is almost palpable; particularly in light of recent revelations of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’ egregious failings of returned soldiers.

Plasma screens are carefully positioned throughout the facility running film clips of different conflicts across the span of modern American history from the World Wars to Korea to Vietnam to Desert Storm to Afghanistan; scenes of soldiers fighting in the trenches and in the sand are underscored by dramatic music, and superimposed against iconic imagery of American flags waving in the wind, the Statue of Liberty, and the Golden Gate Bridge. No narration, just music and images.

I remember living in Tokyo, and during breaks at work being able to pick up Yokosuka Air Force Base’s broadcast on the AM band, listening every Saturday for Rick Dees and the Weekly Top 40, or a news update from CNN about the Kerry v Bush campaign. There, as in the Brown Medical Center in Chicago, intermittent messages of “hope,” “freedom,” “God,” “democracy,” et c. would be broadcast to the soldiers and their family in a format that, like in the Brown Medical Center, was not a far cry from good old fashioned propaganda. If you have not witnessed this part of the American experience, you should effort to do so.

Anyway, I am treated like a demi-god at the VA hospital, but I am not exactly sure why. I walk in and they stop everything to help me. They open doors to doctors’ offices; make appointments that are available to no one else; offer bananas and Pellegrino (seriously); put me in the front of lines; give me free medical treatment that I do not qualify for under the partnership between the Peace Corps and the Department of Veteran Affairs.

As much as I would like to think so, I guess all this fawning and flourishing is not because I am me. They do not care who I am, but who I am not, I think. I’m not a cantankerous, over-weight, disheveled, incoherent, ungrateful veteran of the Korean War (that’s my grandfather), so it is their pleasure to work with me. Which is great.