1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

It takes a staggering level of moral bankruptcy to gut veterans' benefits on Veterans Day via an unrecorded voice vote. You spend the morning draping yourselves in the flag for hollow photo ops, and by the afternoon you are slashing $57 billion from future disability compensation and tripling VA home loan refinance fees. And if you aren't one of the pieces of shit who directly pushed and passed this garbage, pass this message straight on to the ones who did. This is what happens when an entrenched oligarchy treats human beings as disposable currency—screwing over the working class at home while doubly betraying the very security forces sent abroad to enforce an imperialist empire visibly marching toward its own grave. The people who wore the uniform were used as instruments to project power around the world, only to come home broken and be forced to shoulder the medical and financial wreckage of endless geopolitical overreach. Instead of fixing a decaying system, the buffoons running this government keep repeating the same destructive cycle, banking on a public too distracted or lacking in critical thinking to connect the dots. Watching educated, skilled people endure the consequences of willful ignorance and political cowardice in this country is exhausting. As Søren Kierkegaard warned about institutional rot and herd conformity: "The crowd is untruth." He also wrote that "the tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins," noting how corrupt empires collapse under the weight of their own hypocrisy while pretending to represent righteousness. This nation has never honestly reckoned with its foundations. From the violent displacement and ongoing betrayal of Native Americans to the brutal reality that this country never truly surpassed its reliance on systemic exploitation and slavery to become the egalitarian society it claims to be, the pattern remains identical: extract everything from the vulnerable, wrap it in self-righteous mythology, and abandon those who paid the price. Even religious institutions woven into American political power—including early Mormon history in the West, marked by violent frontier conflicts and atrocities against Indigenous peoples like the Timpanogos and at Mountain Meadows—carry histories of conquest and erasure mirroring the broader American refusal to confront historical crimes. You do not get to preach patriotism, family values, or faith while picking the pockets of disabled veterans to balance your ledger. Hiding behind voice votes to dodge accountability is cowardice, plain and simple. Reject any legislation that uses veterans' disability pay or VA loan fees as budget offsets, and pass the clean, stand-alone Major Richard Star Act immediately. Until you stop sacrificing the people who bore the burden of this nation's policies, there is only one word for what you are doing: SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. Sincerely,