Support and Defend: Bret Speaks with more Military Whistleblowers
In a follow up conversation to last week’s episode, Bret speaks with two more active and past duty service members about their experience in the US military during Covid, they seek to convey their experience over the last few years in the, and make it known what process is underway in our military.*****Ms. Jordan Karr, former USAF:Jordan Karr is a former USAF Intelligence officer. She served 9 years on active duty to include multiple deployments and was recently separated in May 2022 over the...
Many military leaders have asked, many people I know, you know, and I've gotten the question myself, is this the hill that you want to die on?
And those leaders asking that question, they will never find that hill.
If this is not it, they will never find that hill.
Yeah, if this ain't that, if COVID doesn't reveal all of these hills and the need to protect them, I don't know what does.
It seems that clear.
Jordan, go on.
Yeah, I've been asked that same question.
And, you know, I think a question that I have and that many military members have is, where is the moral courage of our commanders?
Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast.
This is the second in a series of interviews with military whistleblowers who have faced mandates and various kinds of punishment and retribution for resisting them.
I have with me today Jordan Carr and Grant Smith.
They're going to tell you who they are and what they've faced, and then we are going to explore the many issues that are connected to these mandates and the very courageous resistance to them that members of the military are showing.
So, Grant, Jordan, welcome to Dark Horse.
Jordan, do you want to start by telling us who you are, what role you played in the military, and what has happened to you?
Yes, thank you, Brett, for having us.
So my name is Jordan Carr.
I am a former United States Air Force intelligence officer.
I spent nine years in the United States Air Force, and I was discharged on May 1, 2022, over these COVID vaccine mandates, and we'll get into a little bit more of that later on.
But I come from a family of service members, multiple generations of my family have served this country or are currently serving this country.
And like a lot of service members, you know, we love this country, we love the Constitution, and we want to continue to serve our country.
Excellent.
Grant, how about you?
First of all, thanks for having us, Brett.
My name is Grant Smith.
I am still on active duty, so I'll start off by just saying that all these thoughts and opinions that I'm going to be sharing today are my own and don't reflect those of the DoD or Departmental Army.
I was an infantryman and have since become a physical therapist.
At the beginning of COVID, I was a Brigade Physical Therapist and I've since transitioned to being a Division Holistic Health and Fitness Officer.
The Holistic Health and Fitness Program and the Army is a new program that is based on a field manual that replaced the old Physical Readiness Training Manual a couple years ago.
I think it's a great framework and I think We can use that framework to talk about these issues, and that's one of the main reasons that I'm here today to talk about that.
Excellent.
Let me ask you a question.
It's a clarifying question.
Holistic is one of these words that if well used, I love it.
And if abused, it causes me to shudder.
I assume that in this case, holistic just simply means that you're taking a broader view of human well-being that doesn't isolate particular systems, but recognizes that you have all of these systems interrelated with each other and interacting.
Is that somewhere in the ballpark?
Exactly, Brad.
It's the opposite of myopic.
You know, we have these different facets of health and fitness, and the holistic approach is just recognizing that they're interdependent.
Excellent, yes.
Heather and I, when we see errors that people make where they've isolated something and then discovered that when you isolate that thing and try to improve something, something much worse goes wrong, our response is, well, welcome to complex systems.
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You can't treat a human being as an isolated series of systems.
It doesn't work.
The same thing can be said for governance, right?
We have to recognize that there are always unintended consequences and be mindful of that.
And in fact, that is a A highly resonant theme with respect to what has taken place both with the apparent human meddling that produced COVID in the first place to our remarkably jaw-droppingly inept at best response to the spread of COVID which of course
As those who viewed the first episode of discussions with military whistleblowers, is part and parcel of what we're facing.
That although the military, the mandates have largely been lifted for the civilian population, in effect as a result of successful pushback, By many of us, the military retains a commitment to these mandates.
I know that courts have enjoined, that is to say suspended the mandates in some branches of the military and not others.
Can either of you shed light on what the current state of mandates is?
Yeah, I can touch on that.
The other branches of service in the military other than the Army have injunctions.
My position is that the Army's kind of played it smart with respect to evaluating religious accommodation requests and that they took a very long time to do so.
For example, I had mine submitted in November of 2021 and just got back my denial about a month ago.
And when your request for accommodation is denied in each branch of service, you get an opportunity to appeal.
And so it looks like The duration of that process in the Army is close to a year for the initial denial to come back.
In the other branches of service, it happened much more quickly, which required or gave courts justification to intervene to provide temporary injunctions to provide relief, given that there is evidence the legal process required for evaluating someone's request for religious accommodation were not being adhered to in those branches of service.
Interesting.
So you have a very long process, and courts have intervened.
None of the branches, I take it, have relented, but courts have forced them not to apply mandates in what sounds like most of these cases.
I will say that there is a part of this whole story that just cannot help but evoke Catch-22, right?
The idea that a religious exemption would take a year to work its way through this process.
I mean, it should be a fairly simple matter, especially If, as I understand it, the legal standard is, is your religious belief earnestly held?
And beyond that, the content of the belief is irrelevant.
So, whatever the assessment is about whether or not you're telling it like it is with respect to what you believe that should be exempting you, it shouldn't be a very complicated process for them to figure out whether you've met the standard or not.
And yet, something so utterly bureaucratic has taken over that there's a year-long process involved?
Is that what I'm understanding?
So, it's not exactly that the process takes that long.
I'm not an attorney, so keep that in mind.
But my understanding is that you can have a sincere belief And the government's not necessarily required to provide you with accommodation so long as they can meet the strict scrutiny standard, which is that they can prove there's a grave risk of serious harm if they grant that accommodation.
And so the evidentiary basis for this in the case of COVID is just non-existent.
The government does not have evidence that providing somebody an accommodation to forego COVID-19 vaccination constitutes a grave risk of serious harm.
If they had such evidence, they would have provided it.
And we could go down that rabbit hole, perhaps at some point in this conversation down the road.
But my assertion is that they don't have such evidence.
And since they don't have such evidence, denying them very quickly puts the courts in a position where they can evaluate that, where the courts can say, hey, DOD, what's your evidence that this is the least restrictive means, that vaccination is the least restrictive means of allowing somebody that vaccination is the least restrictive means of allowing somebody to continue to serve?
And in those cases and those other branches of service, that's why we have those injunctions, because the DOD has not provided that data.
So I speculate that the reason that the Army's taken so long is to forestall litigation and forestall courts intervening.
But as we proceed, and I will tell you that shortly after the latest injunction was provided in the Marine Corps, within about two weeks is when I got my initial denial back.
So I do believe that the things are, those two things are connected.
And I think that the Army made the determination You know, hey, you know, an injunction is going to come eventually for us not taking action on these.
So let's go ahead and just deny them and get this process started.
Interesting.
So, I did not know that.
The grave risk standard, it does seem to me that this is, you know, a, I'm struggling for a word other than marvelous, but it's a marvelous test case here because that standard fails on multiple obvious grounds.
Right?
If the idea is that there's a grave risk, then the implication is that these remedies, these things that are falsely called vaccines, would, you know, prevent transmission or contraction of the disease.
Right?
That would be the basis on which you would be compelled, in which your objection would be overridden.
But in this case, these inoculations do not prevent contraction or transmission.
What's more, I'm just gonna guess by the fact that you're in the military and by how you appear that you're young and healthy and so the idea that this is somehow essential is preposterous, because if there's one thing that we have learned over the course of COVID, it's that young, healthy people are actually in an excellent position to fend off COVID through innate and natural immunity.
And so the idea that your objection must be overridden because of a grave risk is just, it's multiply preposterous.
You know, Brett, just to add something on that, you said that, you know, there's not evidence that it prevents transmission.
But in fact, my denial memo from the Army Surgeon General did specifically state that the reason that it was the least restrictive means was for me to become vaccinated was to protect other soldiers.
You know, that was explicitly stated in my denial memo and many other denial memos that have been shared with me.
So they are taking the position still at this stage that these vaccinations prevent infection and transmission.
And I can tell you that the data doesn't support that within the DoD, from what I'm aware.
And I agree with your assessment of the situation.
It absolutely does not support it.
That would be true even if there were no known harm to these things.
But the idea that we're going to expose people to a risk from the inoculations themselves when they have mechanisms that do successfully fend off COVID and do successfully generate much more robust immunity than the shots themselves is the height of preposterous.
And it's as if The DoD is responding to some fantasy narrative that just has no obligation to meet any evidentiary standard, right?
Even if we didn't know these things at the beginning, we sure as heck know them now.
And the idea that the mandates have not been backed off in light of what we have learned about the ineffectiveness and hazard of these vaccines It's unthinkable.
It's unthinkable that we would expose people to these products and it raises, you know, as I keep saying on the Dark Horse Podcast and as I said in the first of these discussions with military folks, This goes straight to the heart of Nuremberg, and it does so twice over.
In the sense that, one, Nuremberg established that we have a right to informed consent.
That is to say, we have a right to know what it is that we are being treated with, and to say, yes, I will accept the risks that come along with it.
And we are not being well informed, and we are not being allowed to give our consent.
We are being strong-armed with these things, the military more than the rest of us.
And the second way in which this is a violation of Nuremberg is that Nuremberg established that the highest principle is not the chain of command.
The highest principle is that when immoral orders flow down the chain of command, one is obligated to refuse them.
And the idea that we are going to punish people who have refused For very good reason.
Is.
Let's just say it is alarming to say the least.
If you understand why the world went through the exercise of the trials at Nuremberg and the writing of the code at Nuremberg, then you know when we start violating those principles, something terrible is is afoot.
Now, Jordan, I know you have.
A closer relationship to the questions of Nuremberg than, uh, really, I think, uh, well, with one exception, maybe anybody I've met.
So do you want to talk to us a little bit about, about your history?
Yes, Brett.
So, um, first of all, I do want to point out that, you know, the oath of office for officers is different than the oath of enlistment for enlisted members.
And for officers are oath, you know, the constitution is, um, Really what we base everything off of.
Regardless of rank, regardless of person, regardless of chain of command, every single officer has an obligation to put the Constitution above all else.
And so every single officer who has been complicit in passing down these unlawful orders, they're part of this.
We have an obligation to not obey unlawful orders, immoral orders.
And I have a family legacy of, you know, my mother served in the United States military, but her mother was German.
Her oppa was in the German military leading up to World War II.
Um, and he saw what was going on kind of similar to, to, you know, what's occurring throughout the world today is, you know, more and more we're giving up our freedoms and people say, you know, how could the Holocaust have happened?
How could nobody have done anything about it?
Um, in the same way that we're allowing, you know, the government to dictate, you know, our livelihoods and our jobs.
Um, they're telling us that in order to make a living, um, to, to earn a paycheck, that we have to put something in our body that we do not want.
And so, my great-oppa saw what was going on in Germany, and he said, I'm not going to participate in this.
And so, he was very wealthy.
My only family was very wealthy.
And the German military imprisoned him during World War II.
Because he wouldn't carry out the Nazis orders.
And I'm very proud of that legacy, because I see what's going on today.
And I'm proud to stand up, you know, against tyranny today, within the military and now outside of the military.
And, you know, he almost died in prison.
And then after the war, they lost everything.
I mean, they lost, the Germans completely ransacked their house.
But of course, it was Nothing compared to what the true victims of the Holocaust experienced.
But I am proud to come from a family legacy that says, you know, we're not going to be complicit.
We're not going to turn a blind eye.
And so I think that's something that people need to realize is, you know, it's never too late to do the right thing.
And at this point, there's so much evidence And there's been so much litigation demonstrating how unlawful all this has been.
And my hope is that people can now see what the government has done, what these unelected entities have done, and how much power we, the people, have allowed them to have by not standing up.
And so, you know, I do see parallels between this and this message is really for all the military officers, all the commanders.
It's not too late to stand up and to say this was wrong and to make remedies for what's, you know, occurred.
It is never too late.
It is never too late.
It is always at whatever point you realize that immoral orders are being handed down.
It is never too late to resist them.
And I will say, um, I do not come from a military family.
Um, but, uh, I am Jewish and I was raised by elders who made very certain that, that I and my brother understood What had taken place and that in fact no one anywhere is safe from this kind of process that something takes a hold of a population and We knew it could happen here.
I did not think that I would live to see it, but I don't think you are In any way exaggerating the relationship between these.
We are looking at immoral orders.
We are watching people accept them because not accepting them is very difficult.
I have to say, hearing your description of your great-grandfathers,
resistance and the idea that he was imprisoned over it the idea that your your family lost what they had which was apparently quite substantial that does suggest a kind of integrity that was not commonly seen the willingness to give up things because what you've what you're being told to do is simply wrong when it would obviously be easier just to go along with it and rationalize it that is what
We all must do, and very few find the courage to do, and I find something very hopeful in the fact that you are generations apart from your great-grandfather continuing his legacy of resistance of that very pattern.
Words are inadequate, but thank you and thank him for standing up.
It is the morally right thing to do, and I don't think people appreciate how difficult it is.
Right.
And I think, you know, there are parallels to those standing up today.
I've met and heard from so many people who have lost their jobs.
They've lost their health care for doing the morally right thing, for not obeying these unlawful orders.
And so, you know, there's been over seventy seven hundred military members involuntarily discharged from service over this.
And, you know, they've stood up for their for the Constitution.
They've stood up for Really the right thing to do.
And they've lost pretty much everything.
I mean, some of these people can't find a job because they have a discharge characterization that is less than honorable.
And so, you know, I hope that those people know that there's hope.
America has a way of righting wrongs.
And we're not going to stop fighting.
Uh, I, I resonate with that wholeheartedly.
I would also say, you know, one of the, one of the difficult things for me growing up in grappling, you know, I, I thought as a child that I was, you know, distant in history from the Holocaust and World War II.
I realize now that that was a child's error, right?
It was, I was born 25 years after its end.
Um, And so these things were very much alive and well in our minds.
But still, understanding how it could have happened was difficult, and in fact has remained difficult for me until COVID.
Until I saw these processes unfold in front of me.
Until I saw people Say things that every reasonable human should know are false, but say them with apparently complete conviction.
And the other thing that comes from your story that I think helps explain the curiousness of the spasm of genocidal authoritarianism that the Holocaust represents is The way in which punishment is used to alter belief.
That is to say, you know, we look at the Nazis and we think, how could anybody have said these things?
Do they hear themselves?
What we don't quite understand is that hierarchies in which reward and punishment flow are very natural to human beings.
And when the thing that controls those hierarchies is intent on moving in a direction that all reasonable people would understand is a violation of our most fundamental values, they can accomplish it by making the recognition of that violation incredibly expensive.
And so what I'm getting at is I'm looking at a medical establishment in which almost every doctor has been drafted into something, you know, I'm not a religious person, but I do think unholy is almost the only term for it, right?
When the entire medical establishment is recommending treatments that are at the very least so new and so radical that we couldn't possibly know how dangerous they are, And they are doing so and assuring people that they are safe, even as the evidence mounts that that is not remotely the case.
What has happened?
How could all doctors be participating in this with very few exceptions?
And the answer is, at every stage, the corruption of their values and their relationship to the oath that they took when they signed up for their profession, Is eroded, right?
That is to say the compromises are each small and in the aggregate they are gigantic and maybe what I didn't learn as a young person was that the resisting of immoral orders is more difficult than you think because they don't come all at once.
And by the time people hear an order that they know for sure is immoral, they've lost the ability to assess it because they've done things along the way.
So among other things, these discussions are filling in pieces of the puzzle that I think are essential if we are to avoid adding another tragedy to the terrible list of tragedies of history, of which the Holocaust is obviously a part.
So, Brett, you said something about the no reasonable person, you know, would be put in a position, and I think that that's half of it.
I'm a big fan of Robert Barnes, who I know you've talked to, and he says motivation is the master of reason.
And so, you know, you have people that are engaging in preference falsification, where they know that Hey, you know, Pfizer's randomized controlled trial, there were problems with it, and they kind of just keep that to themselves.
But you also have people that are able to make themselves believe because the incentives align, such that they're incredibly motivated to believe.
And so I do think that there are a tremendous number of people that are true believers that to this day believe that the vaccines prevent transmission and infection.
And I think that that's the underlying psychological mechanism is just confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.
Yes and then there's another piece to that puzzle isn't there?
Because at the point that somebody because that it is in if you let's say make the error of underrating the hazard of these treatments and so you think okay they're not as safe As I was told, they don't really do what I was told they did, but they're not that bad.
I'm very likely to get away with it if I get one, if that's the mistake you make.
And then somebody approaches you with evidence and says, actually, you know, for every case of myocarditis, that's bad enough for it to show up in a doctor's office and get written down in a chart.
There are destined to be cases that are subclinical, and those cases may well shorten lives.
We may never know which lives have been shortened, but actually getting away with it isn't It's not like if two weeks after your shot you haven't seen a symptom, you necessarily had no harm.
We just don't know.
If you say that, and the problem is having accepted these things creates an incentive to silence the person delivering the unwelcome message.
Especially if you've signed up for one of these shots and so the sense is, oh damn, I don't really want to walk around thinking I'm a ticking time bomb.
So, the easiest way not to have that thought is to imagine that there's something desperately wrong with the person trying to tell you there may be no level of safety for anybody with these things.
So, I agree with you.
Motivated reasoning is at the heart of this, but the shocking lesson is really That it plays out in things like personal attacks, right?
Rather than process this piece of analysis, I might go after somebody who's trying to deliver it, right?
I might try to do away with the messenger so that the analysis doesn't arrive, and I think that's been the experience for many of us who have tried to deliver that message, is that People don't want to hear it.
They don't want the truth because they feel... I think they acutely feel the hazard that it puts them to psychologically.
Comfortable lies preferred to the painful truth.
Yeah, and I think also a lot of people don't want to believe that the government and these entities, you know, could have done this to them.
I'm vaccine injured as a child, and to this day my mom, you know, says, how could I have been so ignorant to allow you to get this when there was no reason for you to get it?
And so, you know, I think that people need to focus on the fact that we were lied to, you know, the FDA, the CDC, our own government lied to us.
And so I think some people, you know, they don't want to believe this, you know, ignorance is bliss.
And also it comes with self reflection, right?
Like, can you look yourself in the mirror and say, you know, how did I give up my integrity In believing the government.
And you don't have to be religious to understand that the government is trying to play God.
And I think that a lot of people were fooled.
And that's another aspect of this, is that, you know, we want to believe that we can trust our own government.
We want to believe that our government, the United States of American government, has our best interests at heart.
And so, you know, it is very disconcerting when you wake up and understand, no, this is a money making machine.
Big Pharma is very much getting profits from this.
Our representatives are getting profits from this.
And so I think when you when you really look into this and you see that we were all deceived.
That's when people I think can can start coming together and saying look like I was You know, I really thought that I was doing the right thing I thought that I was doing this to protect my family to protect my neighbor and we were lied to I Think this is a hugely important point and there is I think there is a character difference that Uh, is at the heart of who ends up on which side of this issue.
Those of us who, however it manages to be true, are comfortable recognizing when we've gotten something wrong.
The evidence is incontrovertible.
People who tend to rationalize having been wrong so that they don't have to face the mental consequences of it get stuck in this cycle.
And I will say, you know, I've been I've been Alarmed by, at first, the story of COVID itself and then the story of the remedies and preventions that we were faced with for a long time.
And I've watched how people behave.
And many of the people who have shined in this moment Right?
The whistleblowers, the doctors who have stood up, Robert Malone, who is a key inventor of core technology in the mRNA vaccines, who has stood up.
Many of these people are themselves COVID vaccinated.
And what that means is that at first they bought it too, at some level.
Right?
Either they thought it was less dangerous than it was, or they thought it was going to be more useful than it was.
But they had the kind of character that upon discovering that the evidence didn't meet what they had thought said, well, okay, that was an error.
And what I would say to those listening to this podcast is I promise you if you find that feature of your character where you become, you know, nobody likes having been wrong.
It's a painful experience.
But if you run from it, you will be wronger and you will stay wronger and that pain will linger.
If you realize that the best thing you can do is always as quickly as you discover that you're wrong, acknowledge it and pay the price up front of acknowledging it.
The price over the course of your life is just that much lower.
And frankly, in this case, your safety is that much greater.
The safety of your family will be that much greater.
If you just, as soon as the evidence tells a clear story, you recognize, you know what?
I called that one wrong.
Maybe I know where my error was.
Maybe I don't.
But I'm happier to just have the debt paid.
I hope people will look for that in themselves.
Because if they do, a lot more people will join us.
Because frankly, the evidence really isn't ambiguous at this point.
I think that's an important point, Brett, about character.
We talk about character a lot in the military.
And frankly, I don't think civilians understand fully why it's so important.
At the end of the day, we're a bureaucracy.
You know, we don't have profit and loss mechanisms to organize what we do.
We have commanders at every echelon.
that are often required to self-certify things.
So to give you the most straightforward example, in the Army at the company level, which is the lowest level of command, we have mission essential tasks that if you're able to do these tasks, hey, guess what?
You're ready to go to war.
And it is up to company commanders to certify what level of training they're at in those tasks.
And Nobody can come in and tell them they're wrong.
It does get checked in a way at training rotations, but at the end of the day, if that commander says, hey, we are trained, we are good to go, that unit's trained.
So if that company commander doesn't have character, or like you said with the little nitpicking where they're doing like one little decision that doesn't align with their conscience at a time,
You know, that can build up to the point where you have a company commander that, hey, you know, if I stand up and say, hey, we are not trained and I'm going to get chewed out by my boss and it's going to negatively impact my career, you know, maybe they're going to take the easy out and say, hey, we're trained.
And that happens at every single level of command.
And that's why character is so important.
Well, I would say critical.
It's critical and it's also the foundation of leadership.
So in the civilian world, character is important and the military can't function without it.
Well, that's an interesting point because I think this is showing up in many different realms because every system that actually works has a large degree, any complex system, any complex human system that works has a large degree of discretion built into it somewhere.
And, you know, that's because if you try to write the exact rules of something so that you can automate it, then it will grind to a halt based on error terms that were too small to recognize, or conflicts between multiple values.
So you need somebody who knows what the objective is, who can say, actually, okay, this passes muster, that doesn't.
Not surprising to find that in the military because the military has to function in order for us to be made safe by it.
But it also functions in other places too.
And what I'm beginning to understand is that whatever Whatever force it is that decided on the policy surrounding COVID, and I truly don't know what it is and what it's up to.
I can see that it's not good, it's not wise, it's very dangerous, but I don't know what it's trying to accomplish.
But whatever it is, has taken advantage of the discretion layer of every system and effectively decapitated it.
It has used people's discretion against reason, right?
This is the case in journalism, it's the case in medicine, it's the case in government, it's apparently the case in the military, where people's discretion has been borrowed.
Oh, maybe the worst place is in science.
The scientific evidence here is clear, right?
I mean, not perfectly precise.
We don't know how dangerous this is, but we know it's far more dangerous than was represented.
And we know that for healthy young people, the danger of the treatments is so great compared to the danger of the disease that there's just no argument in favor of them.
And yet the recommendations come because of the discretion at other layers.
And my wife Heather recently published a piece on her substack
About the fact that science functions on the honor system, which is true But I think the fact is the honor system finds its way into everything that works and the honor system has been captured Right people are dishonoring themselves by saying things that they should know aren't true and that is resulting in Well, it is it is resulting in a slow unfolding of
You know, at the very least the inversion of Nuremberg, and hopefully not, but perhaps worse.
Jordan, I know you...
You have been clear about the fact that there might be, although the focus on the so-called vaccines is understandable, because the level of intrusion is so great, that these are not the only mandates.
And I believe, if I'm correct, your story actually initially unfolded around other mandates.
Is that right?
Yes, and I think if you actually look at the timeline of, you know, COVID and what's transpired since then, you can see that all of this was, you know, in my opinion, intentionally conducted to demoralize people.
Specifically in the military, you know, we were told that we had to mask up.
Even when the civilian population, you know, was told they didn't have to wear masks anymore, we were told we have to mask up no matter what.
Um, and I worked in a unit with, uh, you know, we did shift work and it was very mentally, um, tough situations.
Uh, it was a pet unit.
So processing, exploitation, dissemination, you're looking at things that, you know, most people will never see in their life.
And these are, you know, young airmen out of high school, so 18 to 25 year olds, witnessing really traumatic things and add on the fact that, you know, they were put in forced isolation, forced quarantine, forced to test, to submit to testing if they wanted to get seen at a medical clinic.
And then they were told to mask up all the time.
In fact, I knew flight commanders who would yell at airmen if they even put their mask down to eat or to breathe.
I was not one of those commanders, and I very rarely wore my mask, especially if I was, you know, by myself.
And the only time I wore it was in my job.
I didn't wear it outside of the military base.
But you started to see this breakdown, this mental breakdown from these young airmen, many of whom experienced suicidal ideation.
Just in the span of five months, I had four to five young airmen who had experienced suicidal ideation, suicidal thoughts.
And when I brought this up to my chain of command and said, you know, the rate of suicides is much higher than the rate of healthy military members dying from COVID.
They completely ignored what I had to say, or some of them said, I know, but we have to do this.
Basically, I know, but we have to follow these orders, no matter the science behind it.
So then after this was the COVID mandates.
And at this point, I think a lot of people in the military gave in to these mandates because they saw that nobody was sticking up for them with the mask mandates.
And they were completely demoralized.
And even today, you know, military installations are forcing the unvaccinated to submit to weekly testing with an EUA product because they're unvaccinated, even if they have no symptoms.
With an EUA product that frankly doesn't work.
Right, right.
So, to me, ineptitude doesn't quite get you there.
This is just punishment.
This is harassment of people who have shown a willingness to refuse an immoral order.
Right, and instead of backing off and saying, we were wrong, we've done evaluation, now the science is showing us what we didn't know before.
They're doubling down, and I think that's the most concerning.
For me, specifically, and I think for a lot of military officers and military senior NCOs, what was the most concerning was when you saw the civilian population being mandated to get a vaccine.
In the military, it's expected of us.
We are expected to get certain vaccines, but there's always been exceptions, right?
There's always been medical exceptions.
There's always been religious accommodation exceptions.
But when you see the civilian population being told that in order to keep your job, you have to get a vaccine, for me, that was kind of the moment of, what am I doing?
You know, the role of, I think, the military is to protect constitutional rights of Americans.
And when we couldn't even protect Americans' constitutional rights against our own government, that was kind of my, what is going on moment.
Yeah, there are a number of things in there that I think we need to focus on.
One of them is, okay, there are some vaccines that are required.
There are reasons for that.
In this case, you're dealing with something so new that it has not been FDA approved.
So this is a place where informed consent is essential.
It is obviously absent.
And worse, It is not as if there isn't an approved version, but somehow it's not available to anybody.
Am I correct?
The military does not have the availability of the FDA approved version of this vaccine?
You are absolutely correct, and they have tried to say that they have the FDA-approved version, but some amazing whistleblowers have actually exposed that this FDA version that the DoD said that they had was not produced at an FDA-approved facility.
Oh, sorry, go on.
No, go ahead.
I was going to say, and so previously talking about what's the objective here, I think the objective is to comply with government mandates, because all other remedies have been completely ignored.
You know, hydroxychloroquine is a remedy that works, and in the military, it's actually something that's prescribed if you deploy to African countries.
But for some reason, the military would not give you hydroxychloroquine as a remedy for COVID.
And so, you know, you have to kind of think, like, what is the objective here?
Is it to force vaccine on everybody or is it government compliance?
And I think that there's been a couple of different mandates that the objective is to comply with what the government is telling you.
Right, now this worries me tremendously because the argument I've made is if you wanted to create a force that would accept immoral orders, this would be how you would do it.
You would deliver some orders that were completely arbitrary and absurd.
And then you would see who showed signs of resistance.
You would strong-arm them and coerce them.
And you would see who would knuckle under.
And then anybody who, in the face of that, stood strong, you'd throw them out.
Right?
That's basically the rapid plan to making a compliant force that doesn't have any notion of what was learned at Nuremberg.
So this alarms me.
It does have the sense of some deadly game of Simon Says, and the result of that is going to be, oh my god, our military force is now compliant, irrespective of what it is that it's being told to do.
I don't want to live in a country where that's true, because I know what happens in countries where that's true.
So, you know, maybe I'll tell you that we have to be worried.
Yep.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I don't want to live in that country either, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing.
You know, Jordan alluded to this earlier, but we have a spiritual crisis going on in the military, and this is just one part of it.
Um, when I say spiritual, a lot of people don't know what that means.
I'm just using the holistic health and fitness term for spiritual.
It's one of the five domains of readiness.
It's just purpose.
What's your purpose?
You know, I can tell you that my professional purpose, I have a lot of personal things that are, you know, my purpose, like taking care of my family, but my professional purpose is to support and defend the constitution.
It's very straightforward.
And so if I see an order and a process where there is a constitutional process in religious accommodation and I see that process not being respected, the number one way that I can fulfill that purpose is by going through that process and trying to hold people accountable and taking that process seriously.
And what you saw with this mandate, specifically with religious accommodations, is widespread attempts to prevent people from submitting religious accommodations.
I can tell you that personally, when I talk to chaplains, they would say, Oh, you know, that doesn't sound like a religious belief.
And then they would say, Oh, you know, just so you know, there haven't been any that have been approved.
You know, I got told that by at least a half a dozen individuals, you know, those exact words, Hey, just so you know, none have been approved.
And that was during a time when none have really been denied either.
And, you know, I knew the background of the process from, you know, following Robert Barnes, who's, you know, a great attorney that knows a lot about constitutional law.
So I had that benefit.
But what about junior privates that had no idea?
You know, when they publish a document that goes through a list of faiths, like, hey, this is what this one, you know, the Pope says, this is what this person that's a Baptist says.
And they're saying, hey, you should be able to get the shot.
That's coercion.
That's trying to insinuate that somebody that comes from those faiths doesn't have a legitimate claim.
And I will tell you, I am an atheist and I have a sincerely held belief as determined by a chaplain.
And so if you understand what constitutes a religious belief under the law, Then you can understand that almost everybody that denied this injection had a legitimate claim.
And we actually have a process in the Army for uncovering that.
So, not getting this injection when it ends your career and exposes you to a lot of adverse action and unpleasant interpersonal interactions, why would you make a sacrifice like that?
Just because you don't want to?
Well, you know, in the Army, we have something called Master Resiliency Training, and there's a bunch of, you know, divisions of competencies, and one of those competencies is self-awareness.
Now, this is based on positive psychology research at the University of Pennsylvania.
It's an excellent program, and if people would just use the tools that we had and gone, okay, Let's think about this.
There's a skill called Detect Icebergs.
So hey, you have a soldier, they're declining the vaccine.
Instead of just saying they're a dirtbag and assassinating their character, why not try and figure out why?
Maybe they can't articulate exactly why, but it's your duty as a leader, given that we're talking about constitutional rights here, your First Amendment rights, to dig in and find out exactly why.
And if people had just done this and followed the process, it wouldn't have had nearly the negative impact that it had, you know, because there would have been this way for people that had a sincere objection To find out, hey, does this constitute a religious belief or not?
You know, there's ways to investigate that.
I believe that the services made a deliberate effort to obfuscate that.
And there's evidence of that where, you know, an attorney for the Department of Justice was caught on tape talking about how, oh, you know, people that are declining it because it has aborted fetal stem cells in the testing process, that's going to be a really hard claim to overcome.
As if they're strategizing.
About how they're going to infringe upon people's religious freedoms.
And so, you know, that's my big thing that I want people to understand, is that by not getting the vaccine or requesting religious accommodation, or getting the vaccine and taking care of soldiers, airmen, whatever branch of service, by taking care of them and trying to
you know, detect those icebergs, see what those beliefs were to see if they had a belief that would warrant accommodation, I think that we'd be in a really great place.
But they just, they didn't do that.
And I think that at the highest levels, that lack of attention was encouraged.
And the focus, instead of being on the constitution and religious liberty and first amendment rights, I think it was exactly like you said, I think it was exactly I think it was on compliance.
I think that our senior leaders are more concerned about compliance than they are with fulfilling their oaths to support and defend the Constitution, which is a spiritual crisis, because I think if you wear the uniform, that should be your number one purpose professionally, because that's what your oath says it should be.
Yeah, this has the unmistakable sense, to me at least, of a desire to unhook the normal constitutional protections, right?
It's not a question of them failing to meet them.
It's a question of them seeing that a sincere religious objection to a mandated treatment is a loophole that they cannot tolerate if they You know, basically, if you want to have a force that must comply and is devoid of people who would resist, then you can't have loopholes like sincerely held religious beliefs.
I would also say I don't describe myself as an atheist.
I'm pretty close to it.
I believe that the universe Is a place in which there aren't there is nothing Metaphysical going on but it doesn't matter.
I don't think of myself as an atheist.
I think of Religious beliefs as very important and fundamental to how we got here.
But this is more or less beside the point I studied As a scientist, that's what I am.
And I can tell you that people's concerns, their religious concerns about these treatments, even if they cannot phrase it in scientific terms, are valid.
There is something, there is a violation of a fundamental principle that, you know, I can come close to stating.
I can say, look, you've got a virus.
It is itself apparently unnatural.
You have a essentially miraculous system for fending off pathogens that your ancestors have never encountered before.
And it works very well with COVID.
It works very well with COVID.
And the only exceptions are people who are profoundly compromised by either age or comorbidities or both.
The idea that some entity wants to mandate a radical A physiological alteration of your system.
It wants to hijack your cells and turn them into vaccine factories.
Something that has never been done before.
That it thinks it has the right to tell you that that is not only in your best interest, but it is so essential to your functioning in the military that it can require it of you.
is preposterous.
It's biologically preposterous.
You have a system to fight off viruses, even ones you've never seen.
It works well with respect to COVID.
The mandates are not coherent in light of that fact, in light of the seriousness of the disease and the uncertainty surrounding the treatment.
So, okay, those are sentences I can say because I trained to be able to phrase it, But the fact that somebody's objection may come in metaphorical or spiritual terms does not mean it's not valid.
Their intuition that, hey, I don't want that thing injected into me, that sounds like a violation of my nature as a human.
Whether that nature as a human is the result of a creator or the result of evolution or the result of a creator who used evolution doesn't matter.
It's a violation of your humanity.
And so I guess the point is those those objections are sound.
The system that looks at them and says, oh, we can't really tolerate sound objections now, can we?
Because we're going to be ordering people to do all kinds of things that they might object to.
And so let's let's deal with that now.
That's a system that is it's gearing up for something.
And we can't afford to find out what, frankly.
It is clearly on the move.
Now, before we lose it though, oh, go ahead.
I was just going to say, you know, I've talked with a lot of members and the way we feel about it is, you know, the government is trespassing on our bodies, on our bodily autonomy.
And so it feels like it's not just, you know, a violation mentally and spiritually, but physically.
I mean, the government is telling us that they have the right to trespass on us.
What you have just said, Is literally true.
Right?
The mechanism of action here for these mRNA vaccines is to introduce into you something which is a clumsy pseudovirus which enters cells indiscriminately and hijacks their machinery in a way that is far more durable than we were led to understand.
And the problem is Your body has one and only one way to understand cells that are making proteins that you yourself are not supposed to make.
Your body understands those cells as virally infected, and it rightly targets them for destruction.
If those cells are in your heart, and your own immune system says, goodness, those are virally infected cells.
Virally infected cells in one's heart are a lethal hazard.
So as bad as it is to destroy your own heart cells, it's better than the alternative, right?
This is an invasion of your body.
It's an invasion of your body.
by something that is highly bioactive and intersects your ancient evolutionary mechanisms in a way that cannot possibly be safe.
So You know, I think people have too much comfort dismissing objections that sound imprecise.
This is this is you trespassing on my body.
But to my ears, that is a completely accurate description of what's taking place.
And the objection to me is so clear in the case of You know, they're trespassing for reasons that they themselves cannot even explain.
Right?
If it doesn't prevent contraction and transmission, then why is it their business?
Is that to save you from serious harms of COVID?
Because the data on that is clear too.
You're in an excellent position to fend off COVID if you're young and healthy.
And these shots are not a contributor to that protection.
So, Where do they get off telling you to take these things?
It's not logically coherent in any regard.
Well, I'll tell you what they do, Brett.
They just assert that it's for readiness.
You know, unilaterally.
They don't provide any data.
You know, hey, this is for readiness.
And one of the main reasons that I'm wanting to speak out and discuss this issue is, you know, I think of the Milgram experiment and I think about the few people that didn't keep increasing the shocks.
And who were some of those people?
They were people that were electrical engineers that were familiar with what that entailed and what was safe and what it means.
And I'm an expert in readiness.
You know, you can say that there's people that Maybe no, a little bit more than me, but you know, by any account, I am an expert in holistic health and fitness.
You know, there are not very many division holistic health and fitness officers.
It's a new program.
Um, I've been in the military for 12 years and you know, I've seen it from the line being an infantryman, um, and the medical side, I know what readiness is.
I know what, What makes it up, what it's constituted of.
And I will tell you that this mandate has been a disaster for readiness.
That's my opinion.
You know, and, and a lot of the people that are saying, Hey, you know what?
It's for readiness.
They're commanders that don't have any medical experience.
They don't have any scientific experience.
You know, I'm a clinician scientist and I had excellent training and From my perspective, using the kind of reasoning that you outlined, Bayesian inference, right?
You understand biology, so you don't just look at a randomized controlled trial and say, oh, yeah, this is how it is.
You think of the prior probability of how likely it is that a novel injection based on a novel platform for a novel virus, for a retrovirus that mutates rapidly, for a type of virus, a coronavirus that has never been for a retrovirus that mutates rapidly, for a type of virus, a coronavirus that And you go, huh, I think regardless of what this randomized controlled trial says, You know, I'm going to want to see probably more than one RCT.
I'm going to want to see some more, more data.
And in terms of readiness, there's a lot of stuff that you can't measure this, the spiritual piece.
And I'm telling you off the backs of coming out of Afghanistan for two decades, people that have sacrificed untold, you know, untold hours, years of their lives, lost friends and loved ones.
And to turn around and go into this where people are forced to wear masks even though they believe in their hearts that they don't have an effect, forced to take vaccines that they don't believe have an effect, that takes a toll on readiness.
And that spiritual toll is being discounted as if it's not worth anything.
And it's definitely a part of the picture.
And I know that your position and I agree with your position that on the physical side for young and healthy population, that it's also not great.
But even without acknowledging that and going into that, which is there's still some controversy there.
I just want that spiritual piece to be discussed and to be recognized as a part of the crisis that we're dealing with.
And you see it reflected in recruiting and retention numbers.
And everybody's kind of throwing up their hands and going, Oh, wow, I don't know why this is going on.
And I'll tell you, this is a hypothesis.
This is my hypothesis.
This is what's going on.
It's a spiritual crisis and people don't know what their purpose is.
When they're wearing uniform, they don't know why they're here.
They don't know why they need to work hard on their fitness, to work out, eat right, get their sleep.
Why would you have the motivation to do all those things if you're just kind of mailing it in until you get to retirement or just trying to survive until you finish up your first enlistment?
Well, we could unpack that for a full podcast easily.
I think part of the problem, I find no question that the demoralization of the force amounts to a spiritual crisis for sure, and that will have Impacts on readiness that are going to be Hard to measure right what role does it play in?
Recruitment and retention, you know, that's a hard you could study it, but it's not going to be obvious you're not going to know why people don't show up at your recruiting office, but It's certainly going to play a role but at the very least we can say that for anyone To look you in the eye and tell you that these mandates are there for the purpose of readiness.
It's like somebody lighting a house on fire and you say, why are you doing that?
And they say, I'm remodeling.
Right?
It doesn't make any sense.
You've got mandates that are forcing them to discharge highly trained people.
Pilots, right?
Pilots in who we've invested millions of dollars.
You're going to compromise the cardiac health of people who are flying around jets worth many millions of dollars.
Those pilots' ability to endure stress in actual battle is dependent on their heart health and the safety of the nation may be dependent on their ability to do that job.
All of these things impact readiness in a disastrous way.
So the idea that this is about readiness just couldn't possibly be more ironic.
This is making us much less ready and You know, I said in the first episode with military folks that I try to tread very carefully around issues of conspiracy.
I don't believe in advancing conspiracy theories.
I believe in talking about hypotheses.
That's what I do as a scientist.
But the problem is That the absurdity of claims around readiness, when you are claiming to make the force more ready as you are very directly making it less ready, that sounds worse than incompetent.
That does not sound like an error.
That sounds like something that our enemies might want us to do.
Right?
It's far better, rather than face our military on the battlefield, to get us to hobble it.
Right?
That sounds like enemy action, and I'm completely open to hear, and I will be in some ways relieved to discover that this isn't somehow our enemies causing us to destroy the force that protects us, but It is at least a hypothesis that belongs on the table, right?
These are very unreasonable things that a country that wished to last, you know, another couple hundred years would not mess with our readiness in this way.
And I guess I'm hoping that somebody will hear me say that and they'll say, you know, Brett, as bad as this is, here's an explanation that establishes this is not our enemies.
This is something gone wrong internal to our system.
But But I haven't heard it yet.
I'll advance a more charitable hypothesis.
And it's just that, you know, there's a scientific technocratic elite that really believes that this stuff works.
They think that you can, you know, they really believe it.
They really believe, hey, if we have centralized control, you know, we have the experts that, you know, are the best educated.
They come from Ivy League schools.
We get them into the positions where they can make the decisions.
And, you know, everybody else is too stupid to make decisions for themselves.
And so we need that power and authority in order to do that, to make the world a better place.
And maybe they recognize at this point that they were wrong with this particular issue, but that concept needs to be defended.
You know, that regardless of, you know, the risk benefit analysis for Young Healthy, service members for this particular injection, you know, down the road, the scientific technocratic leader going to come up with the next great thing.
And they need people to comply because otherwise, you know, we'll never make it as a, as a species.
Well, I have to say, uh, I don't believe that hypothesis is likely.
I, I will say the beauty of speaking in terms of hypotheses is that it tells us exactly what the rules of engagement are.
That hypothesis makes predictions, and unfortunately they're not easy ones for us to test, but I would say if these people really believe this garbage, then they're first in line for these shots.
I would bet strongly in the other direction.
I think they are mandating things for other people and they have all kinds of explanations for why they themselves are doing something else.
Now, I know that publicly they will represent themselves as accepting the treatments, but hopefully someday we'll know.
Yeah, I think it's even more than what Grant was saying because it's not, you know, the destruction really of the military didn't start with these vaccine mandates.
I mean, it started with critical race theory.
It started with demoralizing the force and making us lose sight of our military identity and focus on things that make us different individually.
And I think the most disheartening One of the most disheartening aspects of what I've witnessed in the military is that I've believed that the military is a force for good, and I think most everyone does, and I still believe that.
But when we witnessed this coercion, this abuse, these unlawful orders, and we voiced our concerns up the chain of command, You know, nobody listened to us or very few people listened to us.
And we had to go outside of our own chain of command.
And the only reason why over 100,000 military members are still, you know, fighting and have their job today is not because the chain of command realized what they did was wrong.
It's because of the court systems.
It's because the court systems put injunctions in place.
And I hope that people understand, you know, the severity of that, the fact that military members had to go outside of the military system and find attorneys to represent us.
And usually what happens is, you know, there's the UCMJ, there's the court systems within the military, there are remedies in place within our chain of command, and we could not get anybody to listen to us.
So that is a very significant you know, fact that I think people need to understand is that there are people fighting within the military against our own chain of command because we believe so strongly in our oath of office, in our oath to the constitution and in protecting constitutional rights for all Americans. - Yeah, I think this is a crucial point in our oath to the constitution and in protecting constitutional rights for all Americans. - Yeah, I think this You have a higher obligation.
The chain of command is a mechanism, but your obligation is to something higher.
In the case of military officers, it is to the Constitution and therefore to the nation and its well-being.
And to the extent that the chain of command is saying utterly absurd and dangerous things, you're obligated to fight it as difficult as that is.
I do want to say, I can imagine a world, I want to live in a world where the military, because it is interested in the long-term well-being of the nation, and frankly the world, that it does own up to what it's gotten wrong, right?
How relieved would we be to hear it say, you know what?
Here's why we made the error.
And we put people in jeopardy.
Lives were lost.
It is in all of our interest to correct the policy as quickly as possible so no more lives are lost.
Right?
That would, I think, be a tremendous boost to morale and therefore a boost to readiness.
But we see the opposite.
And I realized in listening to you earlier, Jordan, You were talking about face masks and the mandates and the fact that those mandates have implications which I think Go to in part what Grant is talking about that the human face is a highly unique product of evolution right our ability to exchange emotional information with our faces is Unparalleled and it's there for a reason and these masks.
Yes, they have a symbolic relevance they they function as a kind of Gag, an anonymizer, a confuser of emotional information.
But, you know, they directly interfere with our relationships with each other.
Now, here's the connection though.
I got the mask thing dead wrong.
I was very early on masks.
In fact, I was so early on self-masking as the information about COVID was emerging that I got the nickname at the hardware store that I frequent as the bandit because I was coming into the hardware store in a bandana before anybody was wearing masks, right?
Because I thought this is bound to be helpful.
This is a dangerous virus, which I still believe, and I thought, you know, I was modeling the behavior that I thought was right.
As the evidence came in that masks are mostly useless, and cloth masks especially so, I acknowledge my error.
I said, look, I had it wrong.
Here's why I think I had it wrong.
And I don't advise you to wear these things.
And in fact, I'm now concerned that we're doing things, you know, we're putting them on children, which is bound to interfere with their normal psychological development and their ability to interrelate with each other and their ability to understand adults and their ability to Did I like being wrong about masks?
No.
It was embarrassing.
and human characteristics are interfered with by masks.
So, you know, did I like being wrong about masks?
No, it was embarrassing, but it's not half as embarrassing as staying wrong or worse, pretending that I hadn't gotten it wrong, right?
And just changing my behavior and hoping nobody noticed.
So, you know, it seems to me the lesson is clear, right?
Adults, part of being an adult is recognizing that you've made an error, acknowledging it so that errors are reduced in the future, both your own errors and other people's errors.
The government and the military are doing the exact opposite.
They are not behaving in an adult fashion, which raises all sorts of questions.
Brett, I think on that note, for, you know, being able to recognize that you're wrong, you can't even get there if you don't act in accordance with what you believe.
So I think one of the biggest problems that we have is that people are afraid, you know, they believe something, And they're afraid to verbalize that or behave in accordance with what they believe.
And you're not going to be right every time if you do that.
But, you know, to use another landmark psychology study, like I always think of the Ash conformity experiment.
You know, like if you think the lines are different lengths, say so, you know, and then look stupid and then apologize and change your mind.
But you'll never be able to learn and you'll never be able to do your duty to the organization, especially when it comes to solving complex problems and being able to get out of groupthink.
If you don't say what you think and what you believe and lay it out as you understand it, let other people test your reasoning and give you feedback.
And, you know, assume the risk that you're going to be wrong because we're all going to be wrong at some point.
We're human to err is to be human.
So I think that, like you said, nothing's better, a better learning opportunity than making a mistake and then being able to recognize that and change your mind.
But nobody's getting those opportunities because they're so terrified to say anything that's outside of, you know, you know, the Overton window.
Which goes to the earlier part of our discussion about the The way that people are dissuaded from learning this lesson is they are punished if they show signs of learning, right?
So I think we have to acknowledge that... I mean, let's face facts.
The reason that I'm doing the Dark Horse Podcast Is that I stood up and said what needed to be said about wokeness when it took over the college that I was very happily teaching at and that my wife was very happily teaching at.
I don't work there anymore, right?
I couldn't stay in my job, the job that I had very happily done for 14 years, very successfully done for 14 years, a job I felt great about.
I had to find something else to do because it became impossible to continue in my role.
Jordan, it sounds like that's your experience in the military.
So it's not surprising that people who look at the costs, which have been artificially driven through the roof,
For doing the right thing for acknowledging that you got something wrong It is not surprising to me that people look at those costs and decide not to pay them and in fact You know, I can't even really judge people who decide not to pay those costs Because look I'm fortunate I was able to move from that job and to do something else that keeps a roof over my family's head and But not everybody's in that position.
A lot of people are in a much more insecure position to begin with.
And so the ability of these coercive systems to punish them into compliance is that much greater.
And the hard part about this is What really makes it safer, if we want to drive the costs of doing the right thing down, the way to do that is for more of us to stand up.
But because these forces have such disproportionate influence over us, they can dissuade each individual from standing up.
And therefore, there's no chorus of people standing up.
And that chorus is therefore not in a position to make it safer for other people who are more insecure financially or in whatever other way to stand up.
So at some level, this all comes down to a massive power asymmetry, right?
What is right is not unclear at this point, right?
Many of us got stuff wrong early in COVID.
But by now, the information is there for people to simply evaluate the evidence and reach a reasonable conclusion.
But so many people have said and done things along the way, and the cost of bailing themselves out has been I absolutely agree that it's difficult, but, you know, we all have different values.
what they now either do or should know.
And let's just agree that that's at the very least an actually difficult puzzle to solve.
Oh, yeah, I absolutely agree that it's difficult, but, you know, we all have different values.
And, you know, for me personally, self-expression, you know, I don't think we have a country if we lose the First Amendment.
You know, if we don't have the ability to express ourselves, we don't have an America.
And, you know, I don't think that there's any cost too high to pay in order to be able to express yourself.
And so I think that's a really good thing.
And I'm prepared to face any consequences with respect to that.
This might sound dorky, but I think about the speech in Braveheart.
It's like, yeah, stay quiet.
And, you know, you'll live and, you know, many years from now, laying in your bed, you know, you'll think you could have said you could have stood up and you could have spoken your mind and maybe it would have worked out.
And on that note, look at what's happened with Dr. Sam Sigalov.
You know, he has been a very vocal proponent of taking an honest look at these injections.
And they came after his license for it as a physician.
And recently he just got his clinical privileges reinstated.
So a lot of it is an illusion.
A lot of it is based on fear.
And I think a lot of people might be surprised as to the degree to which if you are speaking from the heart and you're saying what you believe to be true, uh, You know, then it's totally unreasonable for people to try and ruin your lives about that.
And in fact, when people try to ruin your life or take adverse action against you from speaking your mind and speaking your heart, it empowers our side in this struggle towards freedom of instruction and America and American values.
Yeah, I'm struck.
You know, in the circles that I travel in, there's a, you know, we've all heard it.
People will say, is that a hill you want to die on?
And I have a complex relationship with that particular formulation.
Because my sense is, there are hills I'll die on.
I don't want to die on them.
That's not my intent.
But the point is, the real question is, do you believe that there are hills that are worth risking your life over?
And our military, by its very nature, is composed or needs to be composed of people who agree that there are hills worth dying on.
And I would say two of them are easy to name.
One of them is Nuremberg Hill and the other is Constitution Hill.
And the fact that these hills are now threatened because individuals are being dissuaded from thinking those are hills worth dying on is itself, it's almost a separate threat here, right?
We are being trained to believe that our own individual well-being is so important that these abstractions, you know, Nuremberg and the Constitution are secondary to them.
Nothing could be further from the truth because in fact, you know, we are the custodians of something incredibly, immeasurably valuable, right?
We are custodians of America.
We are custodians of the West.
We are custodians of the earth.
We are custodians of the human lineage.
All of these things are bigger than we are.
And all of them are threatened if we allow these forces to train us to accept obviously wrong things, to agree to orders that are obviously immoral.
All of those things are jeopardized.
So really, I have to wonder, who looks at issues this big and doesn't realize, actually, you know what?
I'm not looking to die on any hill, but if I've got to die on one, that's that's a reasonable choice, right?
Who doesn't see that?
Many military leaders have asked many people I know, you know, and I've gotten the question myself.
Is this the hill that you want to die on?
And those leaders asking that question, they will never find that hill.
If this is not it, they will never find that hill.
Yeah, if this ain't that, if COVID doesn't reveal all of these hills and the need to protect them, I don't know what does.
It seems that clear.
Jordan, go on.
Yeah, I've been asked that same question.
And, you know, I think a question that I have and that many military members have is, where is the moral courage of our commanders?
And I have been told in, you know, confidence by many military members that they're rooting for me, that they're rooting for us, that they wish that they could, you know, join us.
And it's been very eye-opening for me, because the majority of those comments come from men who got the vaccine that maybe did it sacrificially for their family, to provide for their family, but others did it because it was just easier to give in and to submit to this than to fight.
And so, for me, you know, I look at that in the state of our military, and I think, where is the moral courage?
You know, where are the commanders, and Lieutenant Colonel Long has said this, where are the mighty men of courage?
And I think that the military and the government did such a great job isolating people and making people think that they were alone, that their thoughts on not getting this were crazy and that they were wrong.
They did such a good job of it that so many people gave in and have to now sit with that and feel that they gave in, they gave up their bodily autonomy.
For a lie.
And so I think, you know, it's never too late to stand up and say, you know, we were wrong.
But I think a lot of military members feel completely betrayed, betrayed by their commanders, betrayed by the chain of command, betrayed by the country we swore, you know, to protect that we would die for.
And that has been very disappointing.
You know, I hear testimony and parents of service members reach out to me all the time and say, you know, all my son wanted to do his entire life was be a Marine and serve this country.
And now he's discharged for not getting an EUA vaccine.
And he has a less than honorable discharge characterization and can't even get a job.
And so it's really breaking down this patriotic, you know, element of Americans.
And this is going to have, you know, you talked about the mask mandates and how detrimental it will be for children.
This is going to have generational effects on the readiness for our military.
Yeah, profound effects that are going to last for generations if something, something honorable doesn't gain control of the system and start riding the ship.
I will tell you, I'm a little bit chilled to hear that your experience has been of people quietly, personally approaching you and saying that they're rooting for you while they're not standing up, because I have had that experience more than once.
Most profoundly, When Heather and I stood up against the woke revolution at Evergreen, many people, especially colleagues, came to us privately and said, you're right, but refused to say anything publicly.
They allowed it to happen to us.
And in that context, you know, I came to some conclusions I didn't want to come to.
I realized that academia selects for cowardice and that there is an epidemic of cowardice in academia as a result.
But it's quite another thing to discover that the epidemic of cowardice is also afflicting the military, right?
It's one thing for people to get things wrong, maybe to be coerced into thinking wrongly about them.
It's another thing for people to know better in the military and not have the courage to say what they know.
That really speaks to a force that is not going to be ready to make the kind of sacrifices in battle that one must make.
So it's alarming for me to hear that.
I can't be surprised because it was one of the most painful lessons.
These crises, they reveal character and To the extent that cowardice compromises people's character.
Boy, do these crises reveal where it exists, but it's riddled throughout our military.
That's a scary shock.
The parallels are uncanny.
And I will tell you, you are one of my inspirations for standing up.
You know, when I heard about Initially read about what you went through.
You know, you're one of several people that have been in a situation that I can empathize with.
And you know, I thought to myself when I read it, I was like, if I was in that position, I, you know, I would do, I would have done the same thing.
And you can't tell yourself something like that.
When you're confronted, so like, I kind of look at this as an opportunity, uh, for all of us.
And you know what?
It has been a, an opportunity in a lot of ways because it has connected me with some of the most amazing Americans I've ever met, you know, including Jordan.
Uh, and you know, I feel like these people are going to be lifelong friends and brothers and sisters in arms.
And, You know, this situation has provided a litmus test, you know, that has allowed us to separate the wheat from the chaff and separate the people who, you know, talk the talk and the people that can walk the walk.
And, you know, you are among the people in my life and your story and what you went through and the unbelievable pressure because, I mean, you had somebody in your face And there are some of my colleagues in this vaccine mandate context that had the same thing happen, but I just felt compelled to say that because it's true.
Your story and the stories of people like you inspired me to have the moral courage to do what I think is right.
And I think that what Sam Sigalov likes to say, he has it in his signature block, is courage is contagious.
And so same deal with him and Teresa Wong.
Those are individuals that I talked to that gave me motivation to begin speaking my mind.
Well, that's very nice to hear.
It's a little uncomfortable, but let's use it, actually, because I think I can mine my own experience a little bit to figure out what it ought to imply to others who are trying to figure out what to do.
One thing I will say is that your description of having been put in contact with extremely high quality people, people of excellent character, this is what happens when you do the difficult thing and you stand up, right?
I have lost so many friends.
The upgrade in the quality of my interactions has been equally spectacular.
It's very painful to lose the friends, the ones who don't stand by you and disappoint you.
But the people who become your friends when you've stood up together are remarkable.
And so if you focus on who you're gonna lose, it'll keep you from doing the right thing.
If you recognize, well, Something fascinating happens to people who jump that gap.
I promise it does.
So I also wanted to say People often talk to me about what happened at Evergreen, and I sometimes hear in what they say that they think highly of me because of the choice I made, and that really was not the experience.
And I think there are some breadcrumbs here that people can follow.
I never for a moment thought I had a choice, right?
I literally, I put myself back in the situation and I think, I just don't have access to the circuit that would have done something different in that case.
And I'm glad for that, right?
It's lucky for me.
Not having a choice in that situation is wonderful because you won't screw it up, right?
I don't know why I ended up that way, but I guess I'm hoping that we will recognize that that that is what a military is supposed to be, right?
A military is supposed to be composed of people who their character and their training results in them not blinking at the point that they have to act.
Right?
That's not a natural state.
It's a difficult state to attain, but the defense of the nation and our principles depends on it.
And to the extent that whatever our military has become has compromised that unflinching nature, it's time for a rethink.
Right?
So anyway, thank you for saying what you said.
I appreciate it.
Not having a choice means that some of it is not deserved, I think, because, you know, Brett, that's what living in the spirit is, you know, in the in the Pauline Christian context being justified, like that's what living in the spirit is.
You know, you you know what the right thing to do is and you don't have a choice.
So, I mean, that's just it's it's an exemplification of spiritual enlightenment.
You know, and I'm not blowing smoke.
You know, that's that's just how it is.
And that's the way that I conceive of it anyways.
Yeah, I think I think that's good.
And I wonder, you know, it's funny, you describe yourself as an atheist, and I'm pretty close to one.
And yet the terms you're using to describe where those characteristics come from borrow from a whole other language.
But I do think what I experienced, you know, if I'm honest with myself, the reason that I'm wired that way has to do with the fact that You know, I don't mean this psychologically, but I was very secure so that I wasn't... Yes, I loved my job, but I didn't need it.
Right?
I had skills.
I could go do something else.
I had a family that wasn't going to look askance at me if things didn't go well.
And so anyway, the reason I raise it is I am very, very careful not to judge people who can't find their way there because in many of their cases, their baseline is just far more vulnerable, right?
And this actually goes to something that you were alluding to, Jordan.
Actually, both of you have alluded to this.
There is a kind of a cascade.
You say, Grant, that courage is contagious.
We've seen this.
I think we've all seen it.
But the point is, those of us who are in a position to say the right thing early make it safer for the next rung.
You know, people who are just somewhat less secure than we are.
They can say the right thing and they make it safer for people who are just a little bit less secure than they are.
And that is how that contagiousness can actually turn the tide.
Is if each of us can muster the courage that is possible from our level of security to generate safety for others.
You know, we can bootstrap enough safety to make the system do the courageous thing.
And that, at the moment, I'm not especially hopeful based on what I've seen, but I certainly, that is my wish, is that that happens quickly.
Yes, and actually that's something that we talk about is, you know, the thing that is keeping the DoD from mandating these boosters is this line of defense that we have formed.
By pushing back on the original mandate.
And so these people who got it thinking that they just had to get one shot or two shot and it would be done.
I think that a lot of them, because I've heard from people, have realized that it is because so many have stood up and said this is unlawful and we're not going to comply.
We're going to push back against this.
That is the reason why booster shots have not been mandated.
And I think, you know, given the time, it's been over a year since the DOD mandate was implemented.
People are now awake to what has occurred.
And so, you know, you talked about losing friends.
I hope that they know that you're not just fighting for yourself, you are fighting for them.
I mean, I think a lot of people have, you know, come to realize that, that, you know, we are fighting, even if we don't agree with with them, even if they say, you know, we're wrong by not, you know, protecting our neighbors and getting the shot.
We are fighting for their rights to be able, you know, when the next one comes down, you know, God forbid, but for them to be able to say, no, I'm not going to do this.
Yeah, that's what it is to be a citizen of a nation, right?
We don't fight for, you know, those on our side of the political aisle.
We fight for the nation as a whole, those who agree with us and those who disagree with us.
And I do feel that way, that you're right.
To informed consent is sacred whether you intend to exercise it or just take the shot because some doctor told you you should.
Right?
You have that right.
Whether you exercise it is your choice, but whether you have it is not.
You have to have that right.
And so yes, we, you know, we do fight for even those who oppose us.
I did want to, some part of me doesn't want to say this, but your point about the boosters not having been mandated and that being a measure of the success of the resistance, I see this in the civilian world.
I believe we have been very successful at raising awareness of The radical nature of these vaccines, the hazards to which they expose people, the possibility that there are alternative treatments, the fact that natural and innate immunity are your best defense if you're young and healthy.
We've been very successful at creating that awareness, but the enemy Fear is nothing more than that success and so what it does is it will it will spend it will bend over backwards to deny you the evidence of the impact you've had.
Right?
It doesn't want others following that example and it doesn't want you learning how to do it better next time.
So it will pollute the data so that you can't see your impact.
It will give credit to something else so that you will feel that your effort was wasted.
The advice I would give you and anyone else listening who is in this battle is don't listen to it, right?
Work backwards from the change in the world that you can see and, you know, be careful.
Don't over extrapolate from the change.
But to the extent that people are not lining up for boosters in the civilian world and the military is not mandating them, that is a strong indication that what you have been doing is well worth it.
All right, is there more that either of you want to say before we close this out?
I would just like to push back a tiny bit on the consideration of security and spiritual awareness.
When I was put in a position, you know, 12 years in, in a position where I feel like I'm finally able to make the impact that I wanted to make, doing something that I think is important, which is trying to maximize the human performance of soldiers.
Not necessarily so that they're more lethal.
That's a logical consequence of them being healthy and fit and being able to find their own purpose and having the skills they need to achieve that purpose.
When I was put in that position, a part of the religious accommodation process is you go through and there are a bunch of questions on your faith and then detailed questions.
Reflecting back, a lot of us had suicidal ideation, like I did.
I'm not the only one.
But something good can come of that in what's called post-traumatic growth.
So I feel like I had some spiritual growth, some post-traumatic spiritual growth.
And going through that experience, I would say, just like in your position where you said you didn't have a choice, Were you sitting there and thinking about, oh, you know, actually, I'll be okay if I don't lose my job?
You weren't thinking about any of that.
It was already done because you had achieved that level of spiritual awakening where you know what the right thing to do is, and you're going to do it, and you're going to face the consequences.
And yes, some people are in positions where if they speak up, they are taking on a higher amount of risk.
That is unquestionable.
And relatively speaking, because I have a professional degree, I'm probably taking on less risk than say somebody that's a pure combat arms person with 15 years of service that's depending on that retirement.
But nevertheless, That spiritual acknowledgement of doing the right thing and being committed to that and accepting the consequences, It's parallel to and outside of a consideration for the material consequences of doing the right thing.
Once you commit that that's what you're going to do, and that's the path that you're on in life, and that you'll accept the consequences, like a lot of people, if you believe in an afterlife and have traditional religious beliefs, I can make a little bit more sense about heaven and so on and so forth.
But for me, it's life.
What kind of life do you want to live?
And do you want to truly live while you're alive?
And the only way to do that is by staying true to yourself.
And if the consequences of that are incredibly painful, then so be it.
We don't know the future.
We can't know the future.
It's always speculative.
So if you waste cognitive resources sitting around and thinking about what could go wrong if you do the right thing, you're not there yet.
And if you want to get there, you just have to recognize that you don't know the future, and you might be surprised as to what the future might hold for you if you do the right thing regardless of the consequences, as long as you're doing the right thing in accordance with what you believe and know in your heart.
That's very well said, and you put something together for me that I hadn't realized before, which is when I say I had no choice, you're right.
The answer is I wasn't.
None of that was going through my mind at the time because I had already decided who I was and what I was going to do.
So there was nothing to decide in that moment, which does strike me as, um, you know, a, a military mindset, right?
You, you, you train for it so that when it actually happens in front of you, how you will react is already, you know, a settled question.
Jordan, did you have anything you wanted to say in closing?
I just wanted to encourage the audience, you know, that the military is still an institution for good.
There are still amazing commanders fighting within the system.
And there are many who have, like you stated earlier in the podcast, have come to realize, you know, that they were wrong and are working to correct, you know, and remedy really what's been going on.
And I would just ask, you know, for the American people to help us by contacting representatives.
You know, we're changing hearts and minds all the time.
Thank you so much for having us on here to share our testimony and what we've encountered, you know, throughout the last two years, really.
But we need the help of the American people.
There's a historical number of lawsuits filed.
military members.
It's never been done before.
And I think that that's a testament to how strongly we feel and how convicted we are that we are right and that we are standing up for our constitutional rights and the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Yeah, I think the opportunity here to return the favor to a force that protects us from all sorts of things, which we don't have to think about because they don't threaten us, right?
A functional military is something that frees us citizens to do other important things.
And your jeopardy is not something we can allow ourselves to turn away from.
I will say I appreciate your thanking me for the opportunity, but I don't see it that way.
I see this as a my obligation to my nation and also my obligation to people who are threatened because they Because they have honorably signed up to protect the country and that has exposed them to a force that has more power over them Than the federal government has over the rest of us so in any case, I hope that
Hearing you and understanding your mindset what has motivated you to stand up what you have faced I hope that that wakes people up not only to your predicament but to what it suggests about the moment in history that we all share and You know so far although COVID has revealed many bright spots.
It has brought people to public attention who I truly think are of excellent character, both of you among them.
I also think it has been a massive setback for the values that we paid so dearly for.
But it would be wonderful if That setback awakened people to the value of opportunities that they take for granted and if they became consciously grateful for them and acted to protect them, the number one way they can do that is by recognizing that the military mandates are are unjust and must be reversed.
And anyway, I hope it happens and I hope that we have contributed to it happening here today.
Thanks so much for having us.
Jordan and Grant.
Oh, go ahead.
Grant, you want to say something?
No, I just wanted to say thanks so much for having us.
It was a wonderful conversation.
Well, thank you both for doing this, and I very much hope we see positive change as quickly as possible.
