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Decline to “Answer” - The Pendulum of Purpose · Prompt Air

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  All right, so for today's deep dive, we have
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  a stack of documents that, honestly, they just
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  shouldn't belong to the same person. We're looking
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  at the identity of one Marine, Staff Sergeant
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  Nimrod Maurice Allen III. That's a perfect example
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  of what I call archival dissonance. On one hand,
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  we have this logbook from his boot camp in 2003.
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  It's called The Green Monster. Right. And every
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  single entry is stamped Allen N .M. But then
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  you look at this document from 2012, a Wisconsin
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  U .S. Senate ballot, and the candidate is Nimrod
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  Y .U. Allen III. So that's our mission here.
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  How does a Marine with a service record described
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  as impeccable just overwrite his own name the
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  second he becomes a civilian? Well, you have
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  to start with the baseline, right? In the Marine
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  Corps, your identity is it's a fixed data point.
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  N .M. was Nimrod Maurice. That wasn't just his
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  name. That was a lawful order. And looking at
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  his DD -214, you know, his discharge papers,
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  that order was followed perfectly. There is no
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  YU in his legal file, period. It also lists his
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  MOS as 2847. What exactly is that? He was a telephone
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  systems and PC repairer. So basically one of
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  the nerds of the core, the tech guys. You know,
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  that title can be a little misleading. Yeah,
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  I'll say. I'm looking at his timeline, and he
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  made staff sergeant, that's E6, in less than
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  nine years. I mean, that is a seriously fast
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  track. It is. And he picked up two good conduct
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  medals, held B bullets as a marksmanship coach,
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  and even a martial arts instructor. So not just
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  a tech guy, he was a master of rules, of regulations,
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  of keeping meticulous records. Exactly. He knew
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  the system inside and out. which is what makes
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  this zero -gap shift, as we're calling it, so
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  jarring. It's almost instantaneous. He's discharged
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  in November 2011, and by mid -2012, he's already
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  campaigning for the U .S. Senate, but not for
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  one of the major parties. No, he founded his
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  own, the Independent Democratic Enforcement Alliance,
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  IDEA. Enforcement Alliance. That just screams
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  military, doesn't it? Like he was bringing that
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  Staff Sergeant mindset right into politics. It
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  really does. But the real headline is the name
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  on the ballot, Nimrod Y .U. Allen. So the source
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  material offers a few theories on where this
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  YU came from. Okay, let's get into those. The
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  first one is psychological, and it's kind of
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  fascinating. It is. So imagine you're a drill
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  instructor in boot camp, and a recruit shows
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  up named Nimrod. In modern slang, that word means,
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  well, an idiot. So the DI is probably just screaming
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  at him, Nimrod, why you? Why are you here? Recruit
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  YU. That's the theory. that he took what was
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  likely a moment of hazing, and he just, he reclaimed
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  it, turned it into a badge of honor for other
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  vets to see. Okay, that's one theory. What's
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  the second? It's more technical. He's a 2847
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  working with wires, circuits. YU could easily
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  be slang for wire unit or some other piece of
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  hardware he was known for. Sure, tech fields
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  are full of acronyms. And the third theory is
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  about legacy. His grandfather, Nimrod Allen I,
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  was a major civil rights leader. By changing
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  his middle initial, he separates himself. He's
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  not just the third anymore. He's his own man.
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  And whatever the reason, it actually worked.
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  He got on the ballot, and get this, he secured
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  16 ,455 votes. That's over half a percent. The
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  YU brand was a success, at least in some areas.
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  Which brings us back to the main point. This
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  wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a failure of record
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  keeping. This was, uh... Identity engineering.
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  Identity engineering. He used his military skills
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  and administration to file the paperwork perfectly.
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  He just swapped out one piece of data, Maurice,
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  for a new one. Why you? He bent a rigid system
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  to his own will. It really makes you think, doesn't
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  it? If a name is just a label, just a data point
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  in a file, how easy would it be for you to just
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  overwrite your own identity simply by changing
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  the context? Thanks for joining us for this deep
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  dive.