I woke up as an angry veteran yesterday
The debacle at the Department of Veterans Affairs shows just how truly rotten the DOGE debacle is being executed across the government
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“We had to destroy the village to save it!”
Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s the bullshit reasoning that drove bad decisions in Vietnam and is the purposeful cover story of the Trump/Musk Administration now to dismantle our government.
You see they keep telling us this is about “efficiency” and making things better then when they “examine” it they find its just not possible to “save” it. Hence, the disappearance of USAID and the Consumer Finance Protection Board. Both of which were “looked at” by DOGE’s evil munchkins and quickly nuked.
On Tuesday brand new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins gleefully recorded yet another video in his office which seems to be his main job. This time he was throwing his cheery southern charm into telling upwards of 80,000 employees he intends to fire them.
Such a great guy.
Watch this clownish performance from the guy that VA employees not lovingly call ‘Dougie Fresh’ that probably took a dozen takes to get right.
That isn’t the whole video because I can only force you to watch torture porn for so long. But from the opening statement on its all lies. The VA has not been the butt of jokes or failing. It has seen rapid improvement especially since the passage of the PACT Act.
What gives the whole game away at VA and other departments is that they have already decided the number they are going to cut before doing that “detailed review and analysis” to determine the right structure. You don’t set a number you are firing before deciding what is the best way to serve veterans or reorganize.
No…the goal is to undermine the department until it fails then declare the only way to save it is to burn it to the ground and privatize the healthcare for veterans as they have dreamed for decades.
While this story is specific to VA what we know now lays out how DOGE and Musk are taking a chainsaw to government without any clue what they are doing, little pushback, and no regard for who it will hurt. Their goal is to destroy it and privatize our needs for profit.
Period.
The fight
Now comes the fight because like it or not, Americans do still respect veterans. There will be a concerted effort to change that. I have no doubt that we will see carefully crafted attacks on our service, benefits, and support. You’ve seen hints like with Alina Habba, fresh off slobbering over Andrew Tate, stepping before the cameras to imply the 6,000 veterans already fired by DOGE “weren’t fit to have a job at this moment or willing to come to work.”
I have been predicting for some time that it is only a matter of time before they start calling us freeloaders or lazy for getting retirement and disability from our service. I fully expect to be called a grifter for retiring at the ripe old age of 45 from the Army and getting my retirement and healthcare for the rest of my life.
Just watch.
But, today it’s not working. As Politico reports,
As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk lay waste to scores of federal programs and the careers of thousands of government workers, Republicans on Capitol Hill have mostly kept their objections to themselves — with one big exception.
Military veterans have been disproportionately affected by the administration’s early cuts, and GOP lawmakers have unleashed a rare tide of public pushback. That reached a crescendo this week as the Trump administration raises the possibility of large-scale dismissals of Department of Veterans Affairs employees.
Mass firings at the VA began weeks ago, spurring a flurry of panicked calls from GOP lawmakers to the White House. But a new memo outlines the potential for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” after the AP first reported the 80,000 figure Wednesday. Moran, who has been in close contact with VA Secretary Doug Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added in an interview Thursday that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”
You see we just ended the longest war in American history and we had to fight tooth and nail to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs, get a GI Bill that actually worked, and get mental healthcare to match the devastating consequences of an all-volunteer force repeatedly deploying to war.
We are not going to sit back and let some asshole 20-something techbros strip all of that because they think they can get away with it.
Awakening the Sleeping Giant
So, now we finally see actual Republicans looking to pump the brakes even a little bit. Now the big Veterans Service Organizations, that desperately try to stay in the good graces of the Administration, realizing they can’t just sit on their hands and see their members have their benefits and health destroyed. Even MAGA Republican supporters seeing through the bullshit of the entire “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach that this DOGE ketamine fueled cluster fuck has created.
All I can say is…let’s….fucking…go!
Some of us have been in the fight for a long time and I welcome the new converts. Now get to work.
I got the email from the VA that had a link to that video and before he even started talking I was mad because the video was posted on X. I guess X is our official government communication system now. Then I got pissed because he said the VA was the butt of jokes and it was time to stop kicking the can down the road. The VA was in shambles a while back, but they hired a bunch of people and it made a huge difference in wait times and quality of care. Then he said blah blah blah we're doing this so "get used to it." Get used to it? Who the fuck is this guy? We're veterans, not basic trainees. What do you mean "get used to it?" Fuck you Dougie Dumbshit, veterans know how to fight. Get used to that.
Why would you piss off the people who have been trained to use guns to kill people? Really shortsighted.