she’s fielding phone calls from a woman whose veteran son was committed to a non-VA psychiatric facility

• This is a categorical claim because it categorizes the woman’s son as a veteran and the psychiatric facility as non-VA.

he doesn’t want to be at the facility because he, a severe-PTSD sufferer, was already paranoid before one of the other resident loons threatened to kill him, and anyway he fought for his fucking country and they promised they wouldn’t abandon him and he swears to God he will have to kill himself if the VA doesn’t put him in with the other soldiers

• This is primarily an evaluative claim because the author uses strong language such as “resident loons” and “fucking country” to suggest that he is displeased with the VA and the facility they have placed him in. It may be an ethical claim that proposes that the position they put him in was wrong after fighting for his country. This is also an attributive claim because it suggests that these are the man’s feelings.

Another veteran’s wife calls from the parking lot of a diner to which she fled when her husband looked like he was going to boil over in rage. Another woman’s husband had a service dog die in the night, and the death smell in the morning triggered an episode she worries will end in him hurting himself or someone else if she doesn’t get him into a VA hospital, and the closest major clinic is four hours away and she is eight and a half months pregnant and got three hours of sleep, and the clinic’s website says its case manager position for veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan is currently unstaffed, anyway.

• This is a categorical claim that uses long descriptions of a person’s situation to categorize them. The author is categorizing different situations that veteran’s wives find themselves in.

The phone never stops ringing.

• This claim is a good example of a claim that is simply factual.

If it does for 14 seconds, Brannan writes an email to help get whatever someone needs, or publishes a blog post about her own struggles. 

• This is a quantitative claim about what Brannan does if the phone stops ringing for a quantitative amount of time.

 Caleb was not amused the first time one of these posts went live. But now he’s glad she didn’t ask him his permission. “I’d have said no,” he tells me on the couch one day.

• This is an evaluative claim about how Caleb feels about the posts Brennan makes.

It’s a brief emergence from his bedroom—he’s been “sleeping or hiding,” Brannan describes it, 20 or so hours a day for a few days. He leans forward to put his glass of orange juice on the table; it takes many, many long seconds for him to cover the few inches; today, like most days, he feels “like a damn train ran over me.”

• This segment includes multiple quantitative claims about how much Caleb sleeps and how long it takes Caleb to move his glass a short distance.

“But because of the feedback she got, I know that other people were going through the same shit I was. And she’s helping people.” His face softens. “She’s got a good heart. She’s always been like that. I’m glad she’s doing it,” he says again, and shrugs, because that’s the end of that story.

• This is an evaluative claim about how Caleb feels positively about the social media posts and his wife.