Camp Lejeune Water Contamination Case

They only exist at the right time. We love them, but only from a distance, only as an idea, so that we ourselves will be mentioned along with them as exemplary examples of patriotism. We are introduced to them, and some come to appreciate and depend on them, using phrases like “they protect us,” or “they make the ultimate sacrifice.” We do so by seeing them through a type of disillusioned fog, increasingly thickening with every picture, every commercial, and every video, until they bleed into one another. But do we see them?

Lately, I am reminded of how in brief and unconnected moments I enjoy magic until I realize I am being tricked. I quickly lose interest when the joy is replaced by a feeling of foolishness, coming to terms that I may be, not the observer of said trick, but the subject. For many, being tricked is in and of itself the entertaining part. When it comes to this level of bait and switch, however, I am led to point out that the magician among us performing the trick has become the subject and the subject is far closer to me and to you than we realize.

Declaring that our American Democracy is in peril has now become so common place that many, if not most of us, pay it little attention. Perhaps we have always heard pundits and political candidates and politicians tell us how this election is the most important, that this or that event is a crisis, or he or she will tear down our great institutions (well, perhaps now more than ever, this one may be true), or that we are on the verge of heading into either anarchy or authoritarianism. I am not sure where I fall on these matters, or if I fall on them at all, but I do suspect those who espouse them either believe it or believe it enough to capitalize on others being led to believe this, with the latter case being far worse than the former. Again, I hope it is not the case. Eventually one of these statements will eventually be correct, but that will not be the result of someone being correct. Rather, its importance lies in how unique, fragile, and important democracy itself is as an idea and how imperative it is to maintain it as a beacon of what is possible in the world. In other words, American Democracy is always, everyway in peril. It is this fact that I begin with what I think is the most profound and stark example of how quickly this great experiment can go astray.

I am a son of a United States Marine. My father served three tours in Vietnam and earned two Purple Hearts and the Navy Cross, spending over twenty years of his life in one of our greatest institutions. As a family, we would spend approximately ten years, from 1976 to 1985, in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I began to get sick and would spend much of my youth at Duke Children’s Hospital. We would eventually move to Montana upon my father’s retirement in 1985 and very shortly after I began to get very sick. Indeed, I would lose my high school experience and continue to lose my youth. Shortly after high school I would suffer a heart attack, have a creatine of 19.6, and eventually be placed on dialysis. Luckily for me, my identical twin brother Mike donated his kidney to save my life.
I provide for you this story to highlight the real consequences, the human suffering, that was the result, still is the result, of the actions taken by the Department of Navy and the Federal Government. That is, I suffered, but no more than those veterans. But worse than any disease, cancer, or predicament, is the simple fact that our veterans are ignored and pushed aside, often times until it is time to sell more beer.

Litigation to correct the documented wrong, that both the Department of Navy and the Federal Government orchestrated, including the several decades long cover up, began years ago and although unnoticed by most, the Navy and the Federal Government began pushing data under the metaphoric rug, trying now to get rid of that very house for which the rug lays. But as the days turned into seasons and seasons into years, the wheels of justice churned slower than a three-toed sloth, resulting in veterans, who served us and this nation far from their and our homes, now dying in our neighborhoods, our communities, and in our nation. Sure, we can sell beer to their homecomings, and we can give them that short expression of gratitude that seemingly resolves us from all real responsibility to them; but what of the justice that is owed to them and their families who did nothing less than sacrifice their lives for the greater good?
We are today losing veterans and that is to be expected. Soon though we will lose all those who fought in World War II and Korea. Soon though we will lose all of those who fought in Vietnam, only to honor them more in our history books and classrooms. But it does matter how we lose them, however. We can lose them from a distance and when we do we have parades to honor them, for doing so makes us feel good and requires little, except to deliver upon the signals used to demonstrate patriotism and appreciation. But when we lose them at home, we are reminded of our own lack of effort we put into our lives towards that greater good. Even worse, however, we realize that to praise them at home, close to us, we need to see them up close and are forced then to address that which inflects them.

The Camp Lejeune Water Contamination case is the latest example of how we ignore. But this seems worse, for it is the very service and the very government, not merely the people, that have turned on them. The latest from the case is that the government is arguing that not only were the toxins perfectly safe to drink, but that in some cases people got healthier. I am an example of that not being the case. Hundreds of thousands of service men and women and their families are examples of that not being the case. And when I reach out to our elected leaders the response is crickets, made more troubling is the silence from elected officials who are themselves veterans.

Florida has well over twenty-six thousand veterans who lived in Camp Lejeune during this time. I have reached out to Congresswoman Luna; her first response, remember she is a veteran, was she is working on it. However, she has never signed or pledged her support to fight it. I reached out a second time and her office gave me a response concerning her support for the environment. Finally, I reached out for a third and it was clear she and her office had turned to AI to respond to constituents. I am writing this to bring the issue closer. I write this so we no longer are deceived, and we no longer deceive. I write this so we can see them and, in the end, help them, protect them, and honor them.

Matt Jette
480-205-0698