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Dec. 17, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
57:17
Military Community Updates: Rethinking Suicide Prevention and Career Opportunities
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What's happening around the world today and how big or small it is depending on who you are and where you come from.
However, the Department of Defense this week has doubled down on suicide prevention and also Lateral job movements.
Just a couple things this week that were talked about in the military community that isn't horrible news, but yet interesting enough for discussion.
So today we're going to have a conversation about those things, if I'm a good time manager and get to all of them, hopefully.
But anyway, don't go away.
Stick around.
We start now.
Hey everybody, welcome here to the next episode of The Richard Leonard Show and I'm going And as always, I want to thank you for joining us.
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Okay, so this week I was...
I was looking for something to provide, as far as content is related, that's not super heavy.
You know, it's the holiday season and we have a lot of things that we could probably be talking about that are quite heavy that will surely piss you off if these things are important to you, which you wouldn't be watching this show if they weren't, I suppose.
One of them is the DOD's initiative, part of their initiative.
One thing that they have started to do is that on the 1st of January, the Department of Defense has said that there will be no late night alcohol sales on any military installation around the world.
And my first instinct, my first reaction to this is, Well, here we go telling military members, grown adults who have chosen to fight for this country, that they can't have a beer when they want one.
And they can't go buy a bottle of scotch to have a few fingers of scotch with their dinner or whatever late night.
And so, of course, we all know that people who are struggling with mental health issues or anything like that, that alcohol is not a good...
And it's not a good answer to your problems.
And so in an initiative to slow down veteran suicide numbers, Now there will be no store on any military installation.
Army or Air Force, this says.
I'm not sure about Navy bases and Marine bases, but they specifically talk about AFES stores.
And if you're not familiar, AFES, which is an acronym for something, I guess I don't know after all this time, but it is A-A-F-E-S, it's AFES, and those are the on-base stores, the PXs, and the Class 6, and the Shopettes, and the gas stations.
They're all ran by the same organization.
And so it says in here that the change will affect 161 shops worldwide, including express stores, which would be mostly like your gas stations or your little shop-ats.
It's a small shop where you can go and get a case of beer or you can get some beef jerky or sodas or Gatorades or you know some field gear any kind of gear you may need for your uniforms or anything like that but small kind of like a small Walgreens I guess you you could say they don't have a pharmacy or anything but there may be about that size or a little bit smaller The other thing they talk about is the Class 6 stores and main exchanges.
So a Class 6 store on a military base is like a grocery store.
And the main exchange, the main PX would be more like your Target or Walmart type of place.
So no longer anywhere around the world, starting January 1st, can the service members or anybody, so that includes family members, retired service members, anybody who has access to the base, for the most part, should be able to access and use any PX or exchange or what have you.
And I thought about this for a minute, and I thought, you know, maybe this is not such a horrible thing, right?
Because they did say in this article that only about 1% of all...
I've got to find it here.
Only about 1% of all total alcohol sales last year at OnBase stores was done before 10 p.m.
or 2200 p.m.
And after 06.
So from the hours of 10 p.m.
through the night to 6 a.m., you're not allowed to buy booze.
But outside of those hours, less than 1% of all alcohol sales were done at any on-post AFI store.
And so that really kind of made me think again.
It's clearly a problem.
We know through research and we know through personal experience and we know through friends around us or even people we may have lost to suicide or drunk driving or anything else.
The alcohol always makes it worse.
And so maybe this is not a horrible thing.
But my question about this initiative is...
Why is this the only thing in the news?
Why is this the only initiative being reported when we talk ad nauseam about combating this military and veteran suicide issue?
My question would be to the powers that be that made this decision, what else are we doing?
Because I think that if we just tell service members, hey man, from the hours of 2200 to 06, you can't go buy a beer.
And that's it.
Well, now we're just telling soldiers what they can't do.
Which kind of comes with the territory.
I completely understand that.
Hmm.
But these things that soldiers use to cope, which the other thing I understand very well is that this is not an acceptable coping mechanism.
It's not an acceptable form of dealing with issues that may haunt you at night or whatever.
But the fact of the matter is that it's there.
And so...
I guess I don't know that just telling service members, hey, you can't have this anymore because people get drunk and it doesn't mix with their depression, it doesn't mix with their anxiety, it doesn't mix with PTSD, it doesn't mix with this, it doesn't mix with that, or medications you may be taking for something else, whatever the situation is, and it makes things worse.
Alcohol does.
But what are we offering instead of?
So we're gonna tell soldiers, hey, from 10 p.m.
to 6 a.m., you can't buy booze, so if you're having a tough time, make sure you get to the PX before 10.
Well, I don't know if that's an acceptable form of leadership to give your soldiers if they wanna have beers or whiskeys or whatever, and they shouldn't be because they're having issues.
But the only thing we talk about is The closing of the alcohol sales, but no other initiatives, no other suggestions, no other forms of combating this issue.
And so in the last six months, the reason why I talk about this today is because within the last six months, now we've made changes to what soldiers have access to to combat suicide numbers and suicide rates.
Which is good, which is fine.
But the public hasn't been told about any other types of programs, any other types of help, any other types of...
And there's no content put out by the DOD or the military of maybe soldiers who have been through this and maybe attempted suicide or at their last straw and were able to find a way out of the darkness to be able to not take their own lives.
If you remember, maybe it was three or four, maybe five months ago, we did a show on the Department of Defense and the VA trying to work together to take away gun rights for veterans who suffer from PTSD or any other mental illness or mental handicap or whatever the heck you want to call it.
So again, there was an example of, and I don't believe that they ever did that.
I wasn't able to find any kind of information that suggests that they actually went through with taking away gun rights of veterans that suffer from mental health conditions.
But we haven't heard anything that they're doing that seems positive.
I think under the blanket of we just want to help this issue, saying that we're going to cut off alcohol sales at a certain time, that seems reasonable to me.
Because the fact of the matter is that around Minnesota anyway, liquor stores close, and any establishment that's open 24 hours or past 10 o'clock that sells liquor, they can't legally sell it after 10 o'clock.
I believe that some of these places now, their point of sale systems just won't even allow you to ring it up.
It doesn't happen.
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So, I can appreciate the initiative to slow down liquor sales.
But if we're telling veterans, or I'm sorry, if we're telling service members...
That you can't buy booze.
What do you think that they're going to do?
Well, they are going to get in their vehicles, and they are going to drive off post, and they're going to go get booze.
And so this becomes kind of a double-edge, lose-lose situation for the service members, for the DOD, for the military branches.
This whole thing becomes a lose-lose when you talk about just, let's close the PX at this time to liquor sales.
Because now we open up this whole litany of other issues that can be happening.
And some would argue that an increase in military members' DUI rates or whatever else problems can result from getting in your car and taking off and going to get more alcohol, those options and consequences may be a little better than having the soldiers kill themselves.
And I shouldn't even say it may be a little.
It is better.
On the front end, it's better.
So what happens when Joe gets in his car and he goes down to the liquor store off post, gets a DWI, or God forbid, crashes his vehicle and hurts himself and somebody else.
All those things that we don't want to see happen to anybody.
What does that do for them later on in life?
And so, we all know what those consequences are.
We all know what those consequences are for drinking and driving, getting caught, or hurting yourself or somebody else.
Everybody knows that.
The question is, what are we doing as a department, the Department of Defense, what are we doing To ensure that this is successful.
Because I don't disagree with turning off liquor sales at night.
I don't disagree with that.
Everybody else in the world, or in the country rather, has some kind of law to win in where they can buy alcohol, I think.
I would imagine.
I know that next door to us in Wisconsin, they sell alcohol in the gas stations.
You can get a tall boy of Coors Light or whatever you like to drink.
In the gas station cooler and it's just a few doors down from the coke and the root beer.
So it's a lot more available in Wisconsin than it is in Minnesota because in Minnesota, if you buy your beer in Minnesota gas stations, it's 3-2 beer, which won't get you drunk.
So if that's your goal, you're going to have to go before 10 o'clock to get your booze.
And so I think that there's all kinds of things that we could probably put along with this.
Like, you know, if you just got to have alcohol, maybe we should shift some of our spending.
Some of the things that we waste money on, even in the military or in government in general, and provide service members with a sober Uber ride of some sort or whatever, if they just got to go.
Because I don't believe that you can just stop somebody's movement.
I mean, I suppose soldiers can be told that they can't go anywhere.
They have curfews.
You're not allowed off base.
You're not allowed out of the company area.
Whatever that looks like.
And I would hope that there is other things that are being done and being talked about and other initiatives that are being put forward.
And maybe they're just not being reported.
Because this issue of suicide, as we've discussed so many times, so many times on the show, is way bigger than when and where these folks are buying their booze.
We'll never read articles about new forms of treatment or other people coming forward to talk about their experiences publicly.
At least on the big stage.
I think that there's probably a lot of guys and gals that are open to telling their story in hopes that it will help somebody else.
But where are those stories?
We have to dig for them.
I'm sure they're out there.
But why is it not on Fox News or MSNBC or CNN? Why is it not out there?
Why do we not see it at all?
It just baffles me.
And then we run across articles that talk about what times the PX is going to be open.
This article says here,"...in 2022, nearly 500 soldiers died by suicide." That's crazy.
500 Joes killed themselves in the year 2022.
While fewer people died, the active duty suicide rate rose by 3%.
So they released a report in October that was talking about suicide nationwide.
That number apparently has dropped a little bit.
But active duty suicide rates rose by 3%, which is a completely separate metric.
18% of service members who died by suicide had been diagnosed with an alcohol use disorder.
The Pentagon found this out in 2021.
The committee also cited research showing that of suicides in the American public where toxicology data was available, one in three people were acutely intoxicated at the time of their death.
And so alcohol-related suicide deaths is nothing new across the board in our country.
But isn't it alarming that the suicide rate of active-duty service members rose by 3%?
500 people killed themselves in the military last year.
And here we're talking about making alcohol unavailable to them, to service members.
Between the hours of 10 and six.
As a concerned, retired United States Army soldier, I would like to know, what else are we doing?
What else are we doing?
Our recruitment numbers, which we're gonna get to in a little bit, recruiting is a complete disaster.
And some of the things that have been suggested, some of the things that have been suggested to increase recruiting numbers are laughable.
And maybe they shouldn't be laughable.
Maybe they should be pissing all of us off.
But what else are we doing to help these people?
What are we doing to ensure that these soldiers know that they're not alone?
What are we doing to ensure that these soldiers believe that there are people out here that support them and have their best interests in mind?
Are we doing more than just telling them thank you for your service?
Because although that's cool, it's great, It doesn't help the guy or gal that's going to look you in the face, smile at you and say thank you for your compliment or thank you in general, and go home that night and shoot themselves in the head or take a bunch of pills or take a bunch of drugs or whatever they're going to do.
I would just like to know what the plan is, what the thoughts are.
From the powers that be about how we're going to move forward to combat this issue.
I'm going to be honest with you guys.
I didn't read this whole article before we started recording today's show.
And I'm absolutely taken back by that number.
500 soldiers?
This article came out this last Wednesday.
On the 13th.
That's crazy.
This should be headline news.
Not that we're not going to sell booze from 10 o'clock at night to 6.
The news should be that 500 active duty service members killed themselves in 2022.
And we're closing up to the end of the calendar year.
Man.
It's maddening.
What are some of the reasons that these men and women are killing themselves at such alarming rates?
Has anybody talked about that?
Has anybody asked questions of the people around these 500 troops to find out what was going on in their lives?
I know we can't capture all of them.
But I promise you, out of 500 soldiers, there was quite a large handful of them that were around people that probably would've went, oh man, we probably should be watching out for, you know, Private Snuffy or Specialist Taylor or whoever.
But no, we're talking about limiting alcohol, the availability of alcohol to our soldiers.
500 soldiers, guys.
and Are soldiers killing themselves maybe because they don't see another way?
They don't see another option?
They've committed to joining a military under the idea that they're going to fight for the freedom of this country.
Is it an issue for how many of these 500 troops felt like they were betrayed?
Betrayed by the very country that they chose to defend.
I don't mean betrayed by you and me.
I mean betrayed by the country, by the government.
They were forced to take shots that they didn't agree with, maybe.
Some did.
I'm sure some people believed in it and had no problem going to the TMC to get a COVID vaccine or any other of the cocktails of shots that they give soldiers.
Did they feel betrayed by that?
Did they feel betrayed about giving up our whole foothold in the way that we left Afghanistan?
How many of those soldiers were on the pullout?
How many of these 500 soldiers were there when we left Afghanistan the way that we did?
How many of these 500 soldiers felt extreme guilt because one of these other 500 soldiers was their battle buddy?
I mean, we could talk for probably two or three hours about all the reasons why these soldiers might have done it.
But what I want to know is...
What other questions are we asking?
What else are we doing as leadership in the Department of Defense in the upper levels of the United States military to ensure that we can understand a little bit about where these 500 people came from?
Why did they do this?
But no.
We talk about limiting their access to alcohol in the store.
And maybe I'm overreacting, guys.
Maybe I'm way off base and all these things that we're talking about have already been talked about.
And if that's the case, then great.
Fantastic.
But why are we not reporting it?
If we're reporting that we're going to cut soldiers off from buying booze, great.
That's just kind of the way life works, right?
When you're in the military, do what you're told.
Now as of January 1st, you can't buy beer after 10 o'clock.
So plan accordingly.
You having a barbecue?
Plan accordingly.
So if we're reporting this, why would anybody take the time to craft and edit this and put it out to the masses?
But then also put in there that 500 soldiers died by suicide because that makes me think who gives a shit about whether or not soldiers can buy alcohol at 10 o'clock.
Why are these guys killing themselves?
We already know.
We already know without you doing studies that alcohol contributes to and exacerbates any issues that you're having, especially depression and post-traumatic stress and anxiety and any other of these mental or emotional health issues.
So who gives a shit if we're going to cut them off at 10 o'clock?
What are we doing to stop 500 soldiers from killing themselves other than telling them they can't buy booze and maybe we're going to take away your rights to own guns because you suffer from mental health issues?
What are we doing?
Anyway, as usual, I've run over my time for the segment.
Please stick with us.
We'll be right back.
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Hey folks, welcome back here to the next segment of the show.
Sorry, in the last segment I got a little heated, but I seriously hadn't seen the number of active duty suicides reported for last year, for fiscal year 22.
And I gotta say, 500 in one year is alarming.
A hundred in one year would be alarming, but 500 is absolutely alarming.
And so I hope that as a government, as a country, that we are having conversations about how to change that narrative.
And we'll talk about it again on this show.
I can guarantee you that with 100% certainty that at some point...
We are going to double down again on talking about veteran and service member suicide.
It's that important to us here at the show.
So let's move on.
Recruiting.
Recruiting, as we know, we've talked about before, is a serious issue.
It's serious enough that the Department of Defense and every branch of the service, except for the Marines, the Marine Corps has been doing a pretty dang good job recruiting it seems, have talked about significant force reductions.
And what that looks like, I guess, I don't know.
I would imagine that if the government said, came out and said, we need to drop our strength by such and such percent, that they're going to start getting very strict about things like physical training, height and weight requirements.
Alcohol-related issues, drug-related issues, any of those things, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, and probably the Marines also, all branches are going to go to an absolute zero-tolerance policy for any of that to try to thin the herd out.
And so the other thing that came out earlier this week was that the United States Army, in particular in this one article I found, is looking at how to offer newly enlisted service members a less siloed career path.
Which means they want to give soldiers the option to switch career paths.
And so the reason why this is important, I think, is for many years, recruiters have told potential recruits, This is the jobs that are available.
The recruiters will tell you what's available.
If I walk into a recruiting office and go, I want to fly helicopters.
I want to fly Apache helicopters.
I'll do whatever it takes.
Sign me up for whatever I need to do.
The recruiters are going to look and see what the needs are for the area.
So if you're in the National Guard, for example, your state has vacancies that need to be filled to meet what they call an MTO. An MTO is basically what each unit is allowed for personnel and what jobs Those people are trained for.
So if it's an infantry unit, for example, a unit will be allotted so many slots for straight leg ground pounder infantry, 11 Bravos.
They also will have a certain amount of slots for like snipers or, you know, engineers.
Whatever those things are, your unit MTO will tell you What slots are available in the unit, how many, and at what rank levels those are.
And so offering soldiers the ability to switch career paths seems like an interesting take, an interesting twist on how things have been going, but it's no secret that for many years recruiters have told recruits You know, I got an infantry slot open for you.
Why don't you try it out?
If you don't like it after, you know, a year, maybe two, no problem to switch.
Excuse me.
You can reclassify into, if you want to be an engineer, if you decide, I'd like to learn how to operate heavy machinery and build roads and bridges and buildings and things like that, I'd rather do that.
So recruiters would tell you, after a couple of years, if you don't like this job, you can go be an engineer.
But unfortunately, I don't really have any slots available.
They try to match you up the best they can.
They tell you.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that they push harder for anybody who's joining to reconsider what they want to do into what fits their MTO, their unit's MTO.
And the same goes for active duty, I believe, although I think it's a little broader than that because you're not confined to just the state.
When you join the active duty military, you can request, you can put on your wish list, Any base in the world that your branch lives at.
So if you're in the Air Force, but you want to go to Fort Jackson, for example, you probably won't be able to do that.
I don't know that there's a whole lot of Air Force personnel station there.
It's an Army base.
So that type of thing.
And I think that in certain respects, this is not a horrible idea.
You know, they went out and said, in the article here, they talk about Gen Z, right?
So, Dr.
Agnes Grebin, Grebin Schaefer, and Dr., I slaughtered your name, I think, so I'm sorry for that.
But anyway, this person says, Gen Z, they're looking for flexible career paths.
The service's assistant secretary of manpower is this Dr.
Grebin Schaefer.
And she is citing a marketing and recruiting research that they had done.
So back in October, the United States Army assembled a team of experts to diagnose and break down Just workforce issues in our country and how they have changed.
And of course, things evolve, things change as, you know, generations, they retire out and the younger generations start filling those slots and those jobs and those workplaces.
You know, I mean, it's transition, right?
Everyone gets there.
The time waits for no man.
And so eventually we're all going to reach the age where we retire, whether we want to or not.
And so they assembled this team of high-ranking military officials.
They brought in some other subject matter experts from the civilian workforce industry, people that analyze workforce trends and patterns and all this stuff.
And what they came up with is that they would like to go to what they call more of a jungle gym model in the United States Army.
Which means if I go in as an infantryman and I don't like it, there should be absolutely zero reason why I can't go be an engineer.
And if I don't like that after a few years, maybe I can go be a medic and just change career paths.
Which I don't think is horrible.
Again, I don't think that that's horrible.
But the question then I have...
How are we going to backfill those slots?
And I would imagine, I mean, I don't want to sit up here and say that we have complete dummies working in the military and the Department of Defense, and although I'm sure there are quite a few dummies working there, not all of them are completely oblivious to what's going on around them.
So how are we going to backfill these jobs?
So if 1,000 recruits come in, To be combat engineers.
And out of those thousand recruits, 400 of them in 24 months or 36 months decide This is not for me.
I'd like to go be a communications person and work on radios, set up radio, you know, relay sites and fix radio, all that stuff.
Anything communications related.
Great!
One thing that you do need on the battlefield for sure to work 100% of the time you need it to is your communications with your higher The battalion talk or company talk, whoever your higher echelon is that you report to.
Because when those fail, that's a real problem.
Because the only people you have to call for help is on the other end of that radio.
So those are very important jobs.
So if 400 of these combat engineers decide that they want to be communications people or they want to be cooks or they want to be finance folks or they want to work in the dental side of the house and,
you know, I don't know, clean teeth or whatever, they're saying that they want to offer the ability for soldiers to do that, which I don't think is horrible, but in an era where We have absolute, no doubt, problems getting people into the military and keeping them there.
What are we going to do to backfill these positions?
Or are there going to be certain positions that you just can't transfer out of because they're considered mission essential?
We need infantry people, we need fighters, we need trigger pullers, we need Supply people, we need commo people, we need mechanics to fix our stuff when I get shot up or broken or whatever.
So what are we going to do to keep the force level so that we can maintain a fighting posture and a defensive posture in this country that makes sense?
And so offering something like this to bring more Gen Z men and women in It's not a horrible idea if we have a way to backfill these thoughts to ensure that we keep our left and right limits covered.
Now, why...
I want to choose my words careful here.
Again, why is this the news?
Why is this the news and not...
What the real root of the problem of the recruiting is.
You see, I think, my opinion is that the recruiting problem stems from a lot more than unflexible career paths.
I think the recruiting problem stems from the fact that the civilian workforce has evolved to a point where That serving in the military doesn't seem like a viable option any longer because of all the extra bullshit that goes along with it.
Now, what do we know to be true about serving in the military?
As a young soldier, your housing, your room and board, your food...
All that's covered.
You don't have to pay electricity bills, you don't have to pay a garbage bill, water bill, none of that stuff.
Your financial responsibility as an active duty soldier is to pay your car payment, if you have one, cell phone, any of those other things that aren't basic needs.
Those are your responsibilities, the wants, not the needs.
All your needs are covered.
So that's a good thing about being in service, right?
Especially as a young person, you can kind of ease your way into more financial responsibility.
But of course, there are those few turds in the bunch that take advantage and end up getting themselves into a whole lot of financial trouble, legal trouble, all kinds of other stuff.
Why else might we be struggling to get people to join the military?
We don't see any information in the media other than maybe this show or some other podcasters talking about the real issue.
The real issue is wokeness.
The real issue is Forced vaccines, not necessarily just the COVID vaccine, because that's not forced anymore, but it was.
And then also, just the optics, right?
The optics of an organization that told thousands of soldiers, if you don't take this vaccine, we're going to ask you to leave, right?
All this time that you spent and you sacrificed, we're going to ask you to leave because you won't take the shot.
A shot that is now proving to be less helpful than we were told.
There's a lot of people who have put in a lot of work and a lot of time to help expose the truth.
Stu Peters, for example, now we're the owner of the network, the Stu Peters network.
Stu Peters himself went on what I would say a crusade to tell us the truth about this vaccine.
And of course, there's all kinds of naysayers that say it's fake news and it's made up and it's just a tinfoil hat wearing BS. But some of it, most of it, is proving to be true.
As days go by, the words that spewed out of Mr.
Peter's mouth are proving to be true.
Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them.
So who really is telling us the truth?
It doesn't seem to be the people that hold the most weight in our decisions as news goes.
We don't see these real issues about how the military lied to our recruits, lied to our currently serving soldiers about things like this vaccine.
The fact that we have trannies being used as recruitment tools.
And I'll tell you what, guys.
If you want to...
Here's my little conspiracy theory.
Right?
I mean, if we're going to talk about tinfoil hat wearing, well, let me give you one.
Maybe it's not so tinfoil-ish.
If I wanted to...
Build a military force to use someday—and I hope that I'm wrong about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true—build a military force that will someday be asked to take the fight to Americans— We would shy away from trying to get real
American fighters into our ranks.
This brings me to...
I'm telling you guys, this is a wild one.
If I wanted to construct a military force to use against American people at some point in the future, maybe even the near future...
I would not want a bunch of American-loving, down-home country boys to join.
I wouldn't want patriots to join.
This makes me think that the article I read, maybe it was two weeks ago now, man, the article I read about two weeks ago that suggests that at some point soon...
The left is going to make a move to allow illegal aliens to join our military to earn citizenship.
Let that sink in for a second.
It was reported that there are many people in our upper levels of government that are supporting this idea.
Well, We gotta give these folks a way, a path, a path to citizenship, to the American dream, land of the free, home of the brave.
Why don't we let them serve in the military?
If they serve in the military for X amount of years or X amount of time, we'll allow them to obtain American citizenship.
Really?
If we do that, it makes it a whole lot easier for some radical, tyrannical government to tell the military, hey, I want you to go to the heartland of the U.S. Let's go to the Midwest.
Let's go to South Dakota.
And we need to make sure that residents of South Dakota surrender their firearms.
They're gonna say no.
They're gonna be pissed.
They're gonna raise a ruckus.
But you guys are the United States military, so do what you're told.
And now we find ourselves in a situation where we have formerly illegal aliens that chose to join our military...
With the promise of citizenship, and now when we're asking them to go turn on Americans to take their guns or to push whatever narrative it is that they want us to abide by, well, it's a whole lot easier for those people.
Well, we'll do whatever the government tells us because they're going to let us be Americans.
Is it possible?
Ask yourselves this.
Is it possible that the United States government or somebody in the United States government has some crazy plan or crazy idea to allow illegal aliens to join the military in order to gain citizenship?
And five years from now, ten years from now, I imagine that If, in fact, Donald Trump gets re-elected into the office of the President of the United States, by the time he's done with his four years, there will be a full-fledged plan to do stupid shit like this.
And then we as Americans are going to find ourselves in a position where we're fighting our own military.
Hmm.
Quite, it's quite tinfoil-ish, wouldn't you say?
Uh...
I'd like to bring your attention to a new movie coming out.
I don't know quite where it's at, where it's coming, Netflix or whatever, but it's called Civil War, I believe.
And it's all about...
States that have seceded from the Union and the war going on between the United States military and these states that have seceded.
And I believe they call themselves the Western Military Front or something like that.
And I watched a three-minute trailer recently.
Which really made me think about this whole tinfoil hat idea.
Movies like this could either be telling us the truth.
I mean, it could be somebody's conjured up idea of what is possible, what could happen here in our country.
But think about it.
Think about it.
If you really pay attention to the video clips and the pictures and the news reports and everything, all the content that's filmed and photographed and all that stuff at the border, how many of those individuals are military fighting age males?
A lot of them are.
I mean, we see some women and children, we see some older elderly people maybe, or some folks that are on the verge of being elderly.
But for the most part, in my opinion, I notice large amounts of men between the ages of 16 or 17 and 35, all of them that can pick up a rifle and stand a post,
But what's interesting to me is, if you're willing and able to serve in the military, why are you here serving in ours?
If wherever you came from is so bad, go serve in your military there and help make it right.
Or freedom fighters or whatever it is they got out there.
Whatever side of the fight you choose to be on, go beyond that side in your own country.
Or, be an American the legit way.
Like so many other people have over all these years.
Done it the right way.
I don't know, just something to think about.
Recruiters offering a more jungle gym style career path through the military.
Let's go full circle here.
Let's get back to the topic.
You guys got me down on tinfoil hat ideas and all pissed off.
I've spit all over my mic again.
But we're running short on time.
We are going to propose...
That we have a less siloed career path, more of a jungle gym career path, so that folks who chose a job that maybe isn't for them, they can continue to serve, but just be in a different branch or a different job.
Now, as I said before in the beginning of the segment, this is something that recruiters have been promising for a long time.
It doesn't always work out.
Of course, because what they don't tell you is, if you want to change jobs, it's possible.
It's possible for any service member.
If you're willing to jump through the hoops, you got to find a slot.
You got to get a commander's letter.
You got to apply.
You got to do a board.
You got to do a personal profile.
I mean, there's a lot of steps involved.
It's not as simple as going, I don't like being this anymore.
I want to be that.
Because what we also have to remember is that the government spends an absorbent amount of money to train us to do whatever career path it is that we chose.
And so if you're going to change, it only seems logical that the government wants to get at least their investment out of you.
So if I'm going to train you to be a communications expert, you better be a communications expert for X amount of time before you're able to change and we're willing to grant you that.
There's just a whole lot of unforeseen conversations and unforeseen issues that we don't get to hear about.
Things like this, although it could be a great thing, just like the alcohol sales after 10 o'clock, What else are we doing?
What are the other initiatives that maybe might bring in some more recruits and make military service attractive to young adults?
And I'll tell you right now, money has a lot to do with it.
Follow the money.
But now that leads off to a whole other conversation about whether or not we can afford to pay soldiers more.
But anyway, we need more time.
We need more time on this show.
We're going to try to make that happen.
Anyway, we've run out of time.
We're going to revisit this.
We're going to revisit something, especially the recruiting thing in the weeks to come.
That I can promise you.
Thank you for joining us this evening.
I want you guys to ensure that you have a great start to your holiday season if you haven't started it already.
We'll see you next week.
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