Latest / The Junto Podcast / E60: Separate Soldier from Politics - A Memorial Day Reflection

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E60: Separate Soldier from Politics - A Memorial Day Reflection · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Juneto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for.
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Hello, America. Welcome back to episode 6060. First thing I want to do is start
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off with a little disclaimer.
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So in episode 59, I was talking about DUI and that kind of thing.
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And I'm fully aware after listening to the audio on that, that I sounded like I myself was drunk.
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I can assure you I wasn't two things were
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going on one I was sick which I'm still kind of sick and
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two I had my voice
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coming through the ears the
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earphones that I don't normally do that so there was some and then there was
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a slight delay from me speaking and then the so I was kind of slowing down to
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hear my own self speak and the result was that it sounded like I was very, I was talking very slow.
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I already talk kind of slow, but that was even more exaggerated.
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So yeah, I was, I was like, holy cow, I sound like I'm drunk.
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Well, I decided to roll with it.
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I didn't want to rerecord. And.
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There it is. Anyway, here we are.
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Episode 60. I think that might be a bit of a milestone. I don't know.
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Nah, it's not really a milestone.
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But I feel like we're doing pretty well. I heard a statistic that most podcasts
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don't make it past eight episodes.
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That's kind of weird. But so I guess we're doing all right.
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I'm recording. You guys are listening to this about six or seven days after
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I'm recording on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
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And so I feel compelled to talk about Memorial Day.
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And what I want to do is much like I talked about separating art from the artists
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and us looking at the individuals we disagree with politically or philosophically.
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But can we still appreciate the art? Well, today, well, this being Memorial Day weekend,
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Obviously, I'm given to think about all my friends that have passed,
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all the heroes that have fallen in combat and other things.
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But I think about the state of patriotism as it is today.
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And I think that it's taken a bit of a hit, patriotism.
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Because I don't think people are really separating the soldiers and the airmen
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and Marines and all those people who sacrifice and join the military.
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I don't think they're able to separate that from the politicians that direct these people.
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So anyway, we're going to talk about that.
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And clearly Memorial Day, it's a big weekend, but it's not just about the flags
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and the barbecues and all.
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Those things are fun. Most of the time, swimming pools all open on Memorial
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Day weekend. It's all fun.
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But if we're patriots, or we real patriotism anyway,
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that allows us to appreciate and honor the sacrifice of the soldiers while still
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being able to criticize the government, right?
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Yeah, the military is a tool of the politician.
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That's right. And these politicians sometimes will send soldiers in harm's way
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without what doesn't seem to be much deep thought at all.
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But I think we need to learn to separate the soldiers from the government.
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I think that's what we need to do.
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We can love the country. I love America. And we can respect the uniform,
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which I do. I respect the uniform.
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Clearly, I wore it for 25 years. Of course, I respect it.
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And still call out dumbass, reckless, and, well, even criminal policy that comes
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out of the halls of Congress and executive branch.
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And that's patriotism, if you ask me.
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But understand, like, the 17-year-old kid that raised his hand and swore the
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oath, he didn't vote for war.
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He didn't have a hand in the war, right? He didn't, he was a decision maker.
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He didn't have any input into the rules of engagement.
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Nobody asked him, what do you think? He didn't sign any shady ass contracts
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with Palantir or Lockheed Martin. That wasn't him.
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He showed up and did what his country asked him to do. That's what,
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that's what that kid did.
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And that is why that's the, that boils it down.
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You know, the 17-year-old kid that signed with mom and dad's signature to join
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the Army because he was so dedicated to either the image of being a soldier
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or just a genuine desire to do something, a part of a greater,
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something greater than him. You know, that kind of thing.
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That's why we got to separate the government from the soldier in our minds,
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right? When we think about how bad we hate Trump or Obama, we've got to think,
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yeah, but this kid right here, yeah, is he a pawn?
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You can call him a pawn. Is he just a tool of oppression?
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You can call him that all you want, but you don't know this kid, right?
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If you're a patriot, you can
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salute the courage of the kid going into the great unknown without saluting
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the goddang gaggle of congressmen or even the unilateral decisions of a president
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that sent that kid into war.
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You can be, and I think it's a requisite that you, to be a patriot,
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you have to be vocal against the sitting regime, whatever regime it is, red or blue.
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That's part of what it means to be an American, is to be able to criticize your
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so-called country leaders.
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You can do that and still thank the individual service member for their sacrifice
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and not the greasy gaggle of bureaucrat suits who flippantly order people to
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whatever country to do whatever thing,
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to import democracy or whatever.
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The hyper-partisanship in our current society and exacerbated by social media and all.
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Every single issue today gets put into some extreme bipolar political sort of
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sort of frigging underground cage match on social media.
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You can't, you know, you post up, God bless our troops.
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Somebody is going to come in and comment that they're baby killers or some some
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shit like that or are out there executing genocide.
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Yeah. And it's unnecessary, folks.
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It's unnecessary. It doesn't prove any point. It doesn't reinforce any point.
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Yeah, man, social media. It's always left versus right.
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Blue versus red. It's always. And so the way they do that is you're put in these categories.
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You either worship the military and you're a right-wing warmonger or you hate
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the military and you're a left-wing blue-haired zealot.
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And that's garbage, man. that assumes that nobody has the capacity for nuance
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critical thinking that assumes that everybody is is just these characters and
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i hate that i hate that so bad especially when it comes to to the to the men
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who went to troops and i mean the ground level tactical level troops,
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and it's dangerous it just foments violence and whatnot anyway.
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Both groups, right and left, imagine that they are what America is supposed to be.
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So any disagreement, what would be normally seen as nuance and just a reasonable
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disagreement, they turn that into some kind of treasonous act and treason to be punished by death.
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And it overshadows honest and legitimate concerns or disagreement.
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And like I said, it incites violence in some cases.
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We've seen over the past, it has.
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All this red versus blue stuff.
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And it stops us from having very rational, grown-up conversations about when
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force is justified and when it isn't when it comes to going to war or doing a military action.
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Now, social media didn't create the division, folks. It just pours gas on it.
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It just pours just gallons of gasoline onto an issue and then hands everybody a box of matches.
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That's all social media does.
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Yeah. But look, Americans, Americans, we're better than that.
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Just because there's a vocal minority, that doesn't mean anything.
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We're better than that as Americans, and I know we are.
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We just need to start acting like it or vocalizing it.
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Excuse me. Now, look, there's been a whole bunch of questionable wars.
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There's been a whole bunch of questionable wars and a whole bunch of questionable military actions.
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Sorry. I'm trying to get a little bit of video with this stuff, too.
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History gives us plenty of examples of the questionable wars and the flawed
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decision-making, you know, in retrospect, right?
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We get sold a bill of goods based on sort of shaky intelligence.
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Wars that get dragged on for unknown reasons with no clear objectives and things
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that have nothing to do with actually defending our own borders.
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So obviously, what's the big
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one? Well, I don't want to say for my generation, but in 1964 in Vietnam,
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the Gulf of Tonkin incident, well, it got exaggerated purposely in order to
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launch us full scale into the Vietnam War.
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And Americans died in a war that we ultimately lost.
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If you're looking at it in terms of win or lose, I mean, we did not win the Vietnam War. Thank you.
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That's not to take away from any of the great human beings that participated.
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And I will direct you guys, everybody listening to this,
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there's a Mac V SOG podcast out there and it might be called the SOG cast,
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but there's still some old boys who were, who were part of SOG doing just absolutely bizarre things,
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heroic things, and the stories are just unreal, man.
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So that created a generation of heroes, for sure, even though the war was largely
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looked at unfavorable, and yeah, the communists won.
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Iraq in 2003, we were told without question, without doubt, there were weapons
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of mass destruction, ready to rain down death upon the world.
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Some people say there weren't any. Now, I disagree with that.
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I happen to disagree with that. I think the numbers may have been exaggerated.
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I think the information was exaggerated in order to get us into the war with Iraq.
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But yeah, I don't think there were no weapons of mass destruction.
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Whatever. And Americans died chasing a threat that was not as advertised.
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And of course, there was Afghanistan in 2001.
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That war dragged on for 20 years. I was a part of that.
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Yeah, I went to Afghanistan on multiple rotations.
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And what started out as noble intentions, and I think a just mission,
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It morphed into nation building pretty quick Nation building by the way that
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would never and could never,
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Stick It can't, it won't stick The Afghans don't want American democracy No,
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they don't want American democracy,
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I think we were just regenerating bad guys at some point.
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And these weren't, yes, these were policy failures, but they weren't just, that's not all this was.
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This wasn't just abstract policy failure.
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Americans died in Afghanistan in the pursuit of what?
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Allegedly strategic goals that, well, in my experience, they kind of changed every six months.
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I'm not excited about that. Am I anti-American for calling that out? I don't think so.
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Do I appreciate all my brothers and sisters that fought in that war? I do.
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The sacrifice, leaving your, how many birthdays and Christmases and et cetera,
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et cetera, that you missed in order to do that.
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So let's think about, I mean, I want you to try to put a face to some of these,
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right? Like, never mind the orders and the big strategic failures.
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Those political games, yeah, the soldiers and airmen and Marines and everybody, they're pawns for sure.
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I mean, that's just it.
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But imagine this fresh-faced 19-year-old kid from Ohio who got pumped up by his recruiter.
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He believed in America. He believed in his country.
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Maybe even had a blind belief that the politicians were honorable.
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And then one day he steps onto a helicopter that gets shot down by RPG. Lives lost.
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Or a 21-year-old Marine from East L.A., maybe a first-generation American citizen,
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who in a gunfight ran toward the gunfight in the open in order to drag his homie to cover.
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In the back of his mind, suspecting that he's only there for political theater.
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Gets smoked trying to save his homie.
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Or maybe another soldier who, a lot of you may not know this,
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but there's a significant number of Native Americans in the military.
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There is a strong tradition of Native American service in the military.
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So maybe a young Native American has a family tradition,
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a warrior tradition, and he gets killed by IED after After, you know,
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let's say 2012 or whatever, most Americans already tuned out,
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stopped watching.
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Nobody cared about it anymore. They just, it's just a political, you know, hot potato.
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None of these young people that I just described were warmongers or profiteers.
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There were young American men and women who stood up when the rest just kept
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clicking on the manufactured outrage. You know what I mean?
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I don't think it's patriotic putting young Americans through a meat grinder.
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That's not what I'm saying. But there is a nobility in serving your country
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to a degree, especially something as thankless.
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Now, I say thankless. A lot of people will thank you for your service.
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But while you're in the military your
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leadership is thankless they don't care you're a
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number to most most of them now they're again look
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i'm not that's a blanket statement there's a lot of quality leaders there's
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also a lot of shitty leaders it's a thankless job and how i know the leadership
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don't care as much as they should because when they have you standing around
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and waiting for no apparent reason.
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Oh, you just don't understand the reason. Bullshit.
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Learn how to manage time better.
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Get your people where they need to be when they need to be there,
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not two hours prior, just to give you a comfort zone.
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I almost got off on a tangent. All right.
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And look, the military doesn't breed some,
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the military doesn't breed some like separate warrior class that were born and
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bred to be shipped off to be gladiators in war.
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They weren't born in isolation and in train in like a closed compound until
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they reached the age of 18, and then they kill a wolf by hand,
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and then, boom, go off to the military.
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That's not it.
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And I'm talking about from conventional Army private, Air Force private,
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Navy private, whatever, all the way up to your most, the coolest of cool special operations ninja.
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It's a cross-section of all of us, of America.
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White, black, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Native, every possible mix of faith,
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Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, Wiccan,
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even atheists, everybody.
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It's everything in between.
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And guess what? They put the same uniform on, and it says right on the uniform, U.S.
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Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, all the works. space for us.
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And they're the same. And guess what? Here's what I know for a fact.
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They bleed the same. It's red every time.
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Read every time. So your understanding of that and how you treat these service
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members when they're alive, or even how you talk about them when they're dead,
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kind of informs on how you treat your other people just out and about,
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your average people out in public.
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If you shit on service members living or past, then you probably shit on your
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average citizen out and you're and you're probably a bit of an asshole.
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Probably. And why, what are some of the reasons that young people in America join the army?
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I know that I'm surprised that sometimes there's some like lefties.
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There's a lot of lefties in the military and you most time don't put those two together.
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But generally speaking though, why do people join? Why do you think?
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Do you think they go, oh, you know what? I want to be a cog in the evil machine.
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I want to bring war unjustly to smaller nations.
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Nah, I don't think that's it. They sign up for a multitude of reasons, folks.
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A lot of times it's to carry on a family legacy.
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My Uncle Jimmy was a Green Beret and 5th Special Forces group in the Vietnam War.
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He was on a mobile guerrilla force and he was His death, in fact,
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was featured in the book Blackjack 33, written by Jim Donahue.
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So that was part of the reason I did. My dad was an infantryman in the 70s.
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He just so happened not to go to Vietnam. It was his unit just didn't deploy.
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He was in, I want to say, the old Ironsides. Is that right?
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First or second armored division.
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He drove a M113. That's what my dad did. So there's a little bit of,
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yeah, a little bit of that.
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Some kids join out of pure patriotism. They're just brought up in a very patriotic home.
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Red, white, and blue, America. Yeah, and they love it, and they want to protect what they love, man.
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That's just seen as a duty. Like, okay, I'm going to join the Army.
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There's a significant number out there to join for college money.
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It's a good deal. And if you are playing your life out and you want to go do four years in the Army,
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and get, you know, $40,000, $50,000 of college money when you get out,
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great. There's nothing wrong with it.
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Now, you have to understand that sometimes during that four years,
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you may be called upon to do some unsavory shit.
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But that's you sign the contract. That's what you do.
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A lot of officer types join to get their college debt paid for.
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Young married couple, you know, 23 years old, you got some kids and you ain't
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got no health insurance.
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Well, the military has pretty decent benefits in active duty and even retiring.
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You know what I mean? So it's, yeah, there's, that's a reason.
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Some, now I fit a couple of these bills here when I joined, but some people
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crave structure and need some discipline in their life.
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I definitely needed that. Yeah, I definitely needed that.
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My Aunt Betty, who was the wife of my Uncle Jimmy, who was the Greenberg,
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she said the military will either make you or break you.
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And I don't think she was wrong about that.
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And then for a lot of people out there, man, it's just a stable job.
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Depending on the economy, look, you ain't going to get rich as a soldier,
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but it's a job and you got a place to live and you got food to eat and you get a paycheck.
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And yeah, it's a steady job, stable job. There's clear expectations.
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Show up on time, be on time.
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Yeah, that's it.
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Yeah, and some people, again, just admire that there's something bigger than
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themselves that they're a part of. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that.
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It's not, you know, maybe in the 70s and 80s, it may have gotten sort of this
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being the last resort sort of thing.
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You join the army or go to jail. It's a place where they send rejects and criminals.
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No, no, no, no. That is not the case anymore. Now, even when recruiting is tough,
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right? Even when the numbers are low and recruiters are getting hammered,
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there's still the standards to join the military.
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The vast majority of Americans cannot qualify to join the military.
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That's it for whatever it is.
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The military has a lot of waivers for a lot of things, but then there's a lot that they do not.
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And you got to get a certain ASVAB score. Now, you don't have to be a genius,
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but there's got to be a level of physical fitness.
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And increasingly these days, I think people are more unfit than past decades.
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Background checks, man. Like sometimes they'll let people in with certain offenses
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and sometimes not. It depends.
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But right now, so I looked at a statistic. Only 23% of humans in America right
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now would qualify to join the Army without any waivers.
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Yeah, that's pretty low.
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Some of those, what are some of the factors? Well, here's the number one cited factor, obesity.
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And they wrote this in a very diplomatic way, educational deficits.
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What does that mean? Yeah. Well, there's kids graduating high school who can't
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read here in Georgia, at least.
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So you can see where that educational deficit might be.
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And then criminal records and drug abuse records. Yep.
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Think on that stuff for a minute. 23% of Americans right now would qualify to join the military.
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Everybody's worried about drafts because of Iran and all that shit.
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23% of Americans qualify. So what are they going to do with the rest?
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What are they going to do with the other 77% make them laundry specialists or something.
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You only need so many laundry specialists. All right.
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So make every attempt. This is, this is my plea to you a little bit.
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Make every attempt to not to project your, your political hatred onto the soldier,
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onto the American soldier, especially the dead American soldiers.
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If you love Trump or hate Trump or you loved Obama or hate Obama,
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don't project your hatred onto an 18-year-old kid who just shipped out the basic
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training or even onto an old salty old retired master sergeant.
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Don't harbor ill will for the soldier, sailor, airman, marine,
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coastie, or even your space farce guardian.
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That's a thing now guardians there are hey good on them they might be fighting
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war on Mars one day don't project your vitriol onto them.
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You despise the administration, whatever the administration is.
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None of these people started any war.
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None of these people said, yeah, I think we should go do horrific war crimes
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in some nation undeclared. You know what I mean?
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They did what they thought was
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right. They answered the call that so many others could not or would not.
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They answered the call that so many others could not or would not.
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So in the course of our history and in the course of the wars that we fought,
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1.3 million Americans have given the last full measure of devotion.
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1.3 million Americans have died during our various wars. They didn't die for politics.
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That wasn't the last thing like, oh, I hope Obama is proud.
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No, they didn't die for some think tank fucking national defense strategy policy paper.
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But it's as true now as it ever has been. And I know it sounds cliche, but...
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Die for the person next to him on the left and right. That's a fact.
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Because never mind strategy at frigging cosmic levels,
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never mind operational level, tactical level, ground level, in the moment,
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the thing that matters is that you can help your homie and your homie can help you not die.
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And that's a powerful thing, by the way.
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And yeah, they may have died for a measure of loyalty to the flag that they wear on their shoulder.
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Because they have some kind of dedication to, well, albeit imperfect and albeit flawed,
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they may have some measure of
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dedication to the American experiment that's still going 250 years later.
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So by the time you're listening to this, Memorial Day will have passed.
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The beer will have flowed the steaks and burgers will have been delicious,
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but I encourage you even after the fact a lot of guys will especially former
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service members you will take some time to reflect and you will take some time
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to remember the following,
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and it may affect some of you in a profound way kind of affects me in a profound
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way at times But if you're one of these people out there who are you're just
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your whole personality is built around political activism and you utter the
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words that they deserved it, that they deserve to die.
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Reexamine yourself. Reexamine yourself. Rethink that statement.
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And then go out and seek some clarity on the difference between policy written
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up in the halls of frigging the Death Star and the people who are on the ground
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scratching out a living,
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whether it's in the service of the military or what.
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If you ever uttered the words they deserve to die you need to re-examine yourself
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and you're welcome to email me to discuss it.
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Fallen good people. Whatever you think about it, it was an honorable act.
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And yeah, thank the soldiers who are still walking the streets.
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Thank them. They still live pretty miserable lives.
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And if you are one of those activists, though, yeah, look,
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do keep fighting to ensure that the next generation doesn't get sent off to
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unjust illegal wars, for sure.
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That they get sent to wars that truly affect American, well,
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sovereignty and safety, for sure, and that are just.
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There is such a thing as just war. It exists.
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And that, folks, is, in my opinion, how you do patriotism. So,
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yeah, support the ground level, well, fighters, right?
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The ground level, every little pawn on the chessboard.
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Support them, love them, because they don't get much of it.
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And then when, let's say, Private Jared Dennis, who gets smoked in an ambush,
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and later goes back to get his body recovered, and he's got a hand grenade clenched
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in his hand as a final act of defiance.
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You know, give that guy props, man. Because in that moment, he was the biggest
32:12
hero on the planet, right?
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Whether you believe it or not, how much guts did it take for him to go through
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that thought process as he was shot and bleeding out to grab a grenade and.
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And hold on to that thing until a Taliban come and flipped him over.
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That's real stuff, man. So show just a little bit of deference and a little
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bit of respect, I guess, or a little bit of compassion, even if it's no respect.
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Show a little bit of compassion to those that have gone and gave it all in the
32:54
name of the American way, whatever way that happens to be in this current generation.
33:01
It's a thankless job, by and large, and it's only semi-glorious.
33:07
There's times when it's glorious, but it's not glorious when one of your mates
33:13
dies on the battlefield, in your mind.
33:16
It might make a great movie, but it's not glorious.
33:20
Okay, good people. I didn't mean to go dark on that.
33:24
In summary, I just want to, again, I want to compare it to a previous episode
33:30
where separate the soldier from the policy and the administration.
33:37
Because the soldier may be doing a noble thing.
33:40
In his mind anyway, he's paying homage.
33:44
I paid homage to my, my uncle who, yeah, he went, he went, he did three tours in Vietnam.
33:52
He did two tours, got out, went back in to, to rejoin the same team because
34:00
like, well, they're going back.
34:02
I can't, do you know what I mean? He felt compelled to go back a third time
34:10
in Vietnam. And those were like year long deployments.
34:14
Yeah, man. So the soldier that dies in combat, I don't care if he's the 17-year-old
34:21
kid or the 43-year-old Sergeant Major, he's doing a selfless thing.
34:30
Not many people are in the military who are, have a selfish,
34:37
truly selfish personality or trait in them.
34:45
Most people in the military are selfless and they're doing what they think is
34:50
right and noble until the end.
34:53
So, so let that soak in. Please do.
34:56
Please let that soak in. All right. This has been the episode folks I didn't
35:01
have It's not long and drawn out Didn't have a lot of statistics I just Want
35:06
to share with you that Because it happens to be Memorial Day weekend And it's what I'm thinking about.
35:13
And this will air next in one week from now. Until then, yep,
35:17
the OSS Challenge is not very full.
35:22
There's plenty of seats for that. Please sign up for the OSS Challenge. Bring a buddy.
35:27
Bring two buddies. Bring three buddies. It's going to be a good one.
35:31
It's going to be physical. It's going to be challenging. It's probably going to be hot as hell.
35:35
And Special Forces Foundation rep is going to be out there, who happens to also
35:40
be my best friend, Timmy.
35:42
And it's sponsored by Athena Target Solutions, our friend Mike Pearson.
35:49
So come on out and support. Please do. And then we have a lot of other things in June.
35:54
We still have a couple seats for the armed force on force, the armed self-defense course on June 20th.
36:02
We have a venue for that now. We have already volunteers who are going to be bad guys and whatnot.
36:08
So it's full blown. It's ready to go. That's still up. So everything that's
36:12
up on the website is ready to go.
36:15
There's spots. If it's up on the website, there's spots for it. Let's see.
36:20
TwoTeamGuys.com. Check it out. We do great things there.
36:25
And then GiveSendGo.com backslash Help a Homie Fund.
36:31
Help us help other people who need help. Yeah.
36:35
If I had to do math, like if I were a business right now with Help a Homie,
36:40
a nonprofit, I would be in the red significantly.
36:46
To help people who, small, small scale, because that's what I am, is small scale.
36:51
I try to help people who need food, water, diapers, a pair of shoes, things like that.
37:01
They need help to get the brakes fixed on the car.
37:05
The bicycle is just busted beyond repair. So maybe grab a used bike.
37:13
Things like that folks things like that so i
37:17
think it's it's a good thing i do
37:20
and i hope to grow that into a proper non-profit a bigger organization to where
37:26
we possibly have where we can start sort of storing material to to be able to
37:32
go out and give out on a regular basis as opposed to me driving down the road
37:36
and you know hey bro do you need some food.
37:41
So anyway help out with that please do gifts and go.com
37:44
backslash help a homie fund again
37:47
i think you'll be blessed if you do that it's not forced charity
37:51
right all things voluntary that's the way
37:53
i look at it all things voluntary other than
37:56
that folks please reach out to me edgar mills
37:59
at ospreyshooting solutions.com i
38:02
would love to hear from you suggestions for podcasts suggestions
38:06
for training questions about training guest suggestions
38:11
or if you want to be a guest if you got something compelling
38:14
to say or something that you think's important yeah we'll get on here and do
38:18
it uh so do reach out because i do love to get your feedback all right good
38:24
people that's it i appreciate you guys i love you guys and yeah happy memorial
38:29
day past and take care of each other.