Reading Recommendations for Donald Trump: On PTSD

by Brandon Davis Jennings

I'd really love to crack a bunch of jokes, but this is too important. One thing that Donald Trump's campaign for president has accomplished this year is make it impossible for me to stay out of politics. That's probably for the best. Living in a free society should encourage citizens to be engaged in the governing of that society. We should care about who we choose to be our leaders. And I've never been more disgusted by a political candidate in my life.

Having said that, I've started a list of Reading Recommendations for Trump. I'm tweeting these recommendations to Donald Trump simply because he's used so many people for so long that I feel no remorse at all about using him to try to help people who his statements have shown me he couldn't care less about.

What am I using Donald Trump for?

The study I am linking to here claims that 20 veterans commit suicide every day in America. This is surely due to a variety of factors. PTSD is one of them, and as a veteran and a person who dealt with PTSD for a long time, I think it is my responsibility to do anything in my power to help others who are suffering from PTSD now. To be clear, PTSD is not only caused by combat (I wasn't in combat. My PTSD was from something else). PTSD can also be caused by sexual assault, and because of what I've witnessed over the last couple of days, it is apparent to me that I would be failing as a man and a feminist if this list didn't call specifically for feminist texts as well.

I hope this list opens the eyes of a few people. I know for a fact that there are people voting for Trump because they believe he is going to bring jobs back to America, and there are people who are voting for him because they really do believe he would do a better job than Hillary. And convincing them that they're wrong would be about as easy as convincing the Pope that Jesus isn't real.

But if there is anything that I could say to the children of these people who are voting for the candidate who looks most like them because they believe that people who look like them are also people who care about them, it's this: Just because a person has the same skin color as you do, that does not mean that they give a damn about what happens to you. People of all colors have the same capacity for being terrible. And people of all colors have the same capacity for goodness. If someone tells you otherwise, they're lying to you. You can trust me. I'm a Dr. (Fine. One joke.)

So here's the deal. You tweet me a book recommendation for Donald Trump @brandonsbass, tweet it @realdonaldtrump and at whoever else you think might benefit from the book, and then I add it to the list, and we try to spread the word about PTSD. It's really that simple. We share books that opened our eyes about these issues with others and hope that they learn more about it too, and then, hopefully, all our shared knowledge chips away at the ignorance about these issues. One tweet to Donald Trump at a Time.