BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN ( PART 9. )

AI SARCASM OF VA SERVICE CONNECTED CLAIMS PROCESS.
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Ah, the VA claims process — the final campaign. Not fought with rifles or resolve, but with forms, phone trees, and Kafka’s ghost perched on your shoulder whispering, “This is your life now.”

You thought the war was hell? That was just the audition. The real torment begins when you’re back home, bleeding on the inside, and some paper-pushing oracle demands, with a straight face, “Do you have evidence that the mortar round that shredded your spine was service-related?”

You hobble into the labyrinth, dragging a medical file thicker than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, only to be told, months later, that it’s “insufficient.” Why? Because your injury wasn’t documented in the right font on the right day during the right fiscal quarter — and your commanding officer failed to initial it in unicorn blood.

You see, the system isn’t broken — it’s finely tuned for inertia. A masterpiece of apathy, where the gears grind just slowly enough to break your will before your appeal hearing. It’s not about denying your claim outright; no, that would be too humane. It’s about letting it die of old age.

And don’t forget the Compensation & Pension exam, the VA’s version of performance theater. You sit across from a contractor who skims your file like it’s a Yelp review and asks, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt when you remember you were abandoned by your country?” Then they type for six seconds and diagnose you with malingering, mild inconvenience, and, somehow, tennis elbow.

But don’t worry. You’ll get a decision — eventually. It might arrive in a year, maybe two, maybe after you’re dead and your spouse gets a folded flag and a letter that begins, “We regret to inform you…” followed by a retroactive award payable to no one.

It’s a slow, cruel ritual: the government’s way of honoring your sacrifice by making you crawl, beg, and bleed again — not on the battlefield, but in the waiting room.

Because in the eyes of the system, you’re not a hero. You’re a liability. And every form they lose, every deadline they delay, every appeal they deny, is just a quiet prayer that you’ll give up before they have to pay up.

The Hard Truth About American Soldiers ~ From A French Soldier In Afghanistan ( from VAT Member Sabotage Jeff in Colorado. ) ~ https://gettr.com/post/p3lcsfq39a8