Our incumbent representative, Warren Davidson, is a veteran himself; he joined the Army and went to West Point after being station in Germany. He left the Army in 2000, narrowly avoiding seeing combat post-September 11th.
Some have suggested that his lack of combat experience is what has caused his lack of understanding or empathy for veterans, while others speculate it's related to his entitled, silver spoon upbringing and that attending West Point further exaggerated his privileged naivety and detachment from the reality other U.S. veterans' experiences.
Whatever the cause, he is dangerously detached from reality. He had the audacity to say in a town hall that there's an issue with vets who are "pretenders", "moochers... clogging up the system":
“Just like workers comp out here’s got moochers, I wish that there were no vets that were the same sort of problem on our society. But part of the problem is there are some vets that are moochers and they’re clogging up the system, and we do as taxpayers want to make sure the VA filters out these folks that are pretenders.” -Warren Davidson
He continues to misjudge the character of our nation's veterans, of his fellow man, and underestimate how darn hard the bureaucracy already makes it to get benefits approved. Assuming there's such an issue with people trying to scam and cheat; to the extent that it's "clogging up the system" - to the point of being a burden on our society - when in reality, there were only 4 cases of VA benefits fraud the year Davidson made that statement. According to the article, "only one of those four cases involved VA health care services, when a California man falsely claimed to be a decorated Marine Corps veteran to get health care benefits.".
Anything he would possibly do about this (nonexistent) "problem" would either reduce resources available for veterans' healthcare or would add more layers to the already-obtrusive VA bureaucracy! He would rather make it even harder than it already is for veterans to get the health services they deserve than dare possibly risk 1 or 2 "undeserving" human-beings from reaping health care they didn't "earn".
Having such an unfounded, baseless conviction that there are veterans who are "moochers" and "pretenders", always scamming the system - one can't help but wonder if this is a classic case of projection. There have been countless studies on this type of psychological projection. It's a defense mechanism - where people attribute their own thoughts or behaviors on others when there's no supporting evidence.
Perhaps because he has never had to go without and doesn't know what it's like to be one of the folks who needs their disability check to get by, or who can't afford private insurance. While many without that experience can have empathy and imagine what it's like, Mr. Davidson doesn't seem to be able to. Maybe it's not the scamming and cheating he's projecting, perhaps he projects his privilege on the rest of us, assuming veterans in-need are just greedy and don't really need help.
Whatever the reason for his distorted view of veterans and VA benefits, a lawmaker who doesn't base their beliefs on truth and facts is just dangerous, especially when he has the lives and livelihoods of veterans in his hands.
Read more about Dr. Enoch's support for veterans >>
