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Aug. 4, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
55:30
Veterans Edge: Veterans Confronting Self-Awareness
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Self-awareness is something that I think everybody struggles with from time to time.
There is definitely things about the veteran culture, the veteran population, as it relates to self-awareness that is vastly, vastly different from the civilian culture.
Today Jason and I are going to have a conversation about some of those things.
Keep in mind that we are not experts.
We are just a couple of regular dudes trying to figure out this world that we live in.
But I feel like it's insightful sometimes.
So, stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Richard Leonard Show.
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We get some contradicting feedback to our opinion.
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Okay, so let's get started.
There's my spiel for the beginning of the show.
Self-awareness.
Self-awareness is something, as I said in the intro, everyone struggles with it time to time, but I believe that it is very different from the civilian culture, as does my friend Jason, who is joining us now.
Hello, sir.
How are you?
Pretty good.
And you?
Well, I'm here.
I'm grateful to be here.
And I want to dive into this issue of veteran self-awareness because you and I were talking offline, man.
And I think that there are some pretty unique things that I hadn't thought about that you mentioned.
And I can completely see them coming to fruition in my life in the near future and in the past.
So, start us off.
When we talk about self-awareness, what does that mean to you?
How do you, Jason...
Put that into words.
I guess I'm having trouble putting it into words.
How do you put that into words?
Yeah, again, thank you, Kamala.
Easy one to jump into.
I think running down the line of self-awareness, what I'm looking at or what we were discussing was sometimes, actually, no, I'm not going to talk in hypothetical.
I'm just going to talk about myself.
I don't even realize who I am 90% of the time because it's just who I am.
And I don't see it as something that's outside of the context of regular people anymore.
As it turns out, I'm wrong.
My wife knows I'm weird.
You know I'm weird.
Anybody that knows me knows that I'm weird.
I operate a very particular way.
I have no qualms, issues, or concerns with it.
However, when people talk about their typical operational tempo, their Riding in the groove.
And my groove does not have a simple ride.
My groove is all over the place.
And my groove typically comes out of left field or remains behind the dugout.
Okay, so what is...
I mean, everybody has a different definition of weird, though.
Right.
I don't necessarily think that you're weird.
In fact, I relate to a lot of the things that you probably would think somebody would say is weird.
Right.
But I do think that those are issues or activities or whatever you want to call it, that people like our wives or our parents, our co-workers, would probably take a second look and either shake their head or go, well, what the hell is wrong?
What is wrong with you?
Right.
Well, the things we do get mad about versus the things we don't get mad about.
I think that's a great starting off point.
Because there's a lot of things that I know for a fact, if other people were in my shoes because they've said it, they would have lost their marbles.
That's when I relax.
When things get really difficult, really odd.
That's where I go into slowdown mode.
I pay attention to what's going on.
I make quick calculations and decisions and I drive through that problem that sometimes would stymie somebody else for hours if not days.
But then there's other times where I hit something that's a small hiccup and that'll ruin my month.
Okay, so the things that will ruin your month, do you believe that the people around you believe that those issues are small or that you make too big of a deal about them and then vice versa for the other stuff?
Because I would say that that is true about me.
100%.
Dude, the stuff that will throw me off my game are like kiddie farts.
You can't hear him, you can't smell him, you can't see him, and I'm off my shit for a week.
Maybe not.
But yet again, information or things that happened to me that would take people out of their life entirely, remove them into a different place, I just look at it and say, well, it didn't take away my birthday.
Drive on.
Got to figure it out.
The only way through it is through it.
You know, I don't take any time to think about it.
I just react.
I move.
I make decisions.
And sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong.
But I make decisions.
I think that's maybe one thing that...
I think the decision-making is what we should be talking about, too, in this, because I think veterans have a tendency to make fairly quick decisions that more often than not get them through a problem faster than other people, based upon just things that we've done.
We have an innate ability to take in a lot of data, and I'm not talking black and white data, but just a lot of information that brought you to that problem and that point.
And you can see where things likely went awry and very quickly figure out the fastest trajectory to get back online on target and go.
And we don't waste a lot of time thinking about it because it's not worth it.
Again, not we, but me.
I don't spend I might think about it when I'm not having to deal with it and be angry about the moment, but on a whole, best way through is to put your head down and go.
Well, you said something there that really kind of made my spidey senses tingle, right?
Yeah.
The realization that the only way through it is to actually go through it.
I think that there is this idea amongst a lot of people in the civilian world where they try to scheme and plot a way around a problem because it's going to hurt, it's going to suck, it's uncomfortable,
and I think that Just purely through the sheer experience of basic training even, not even talking about like deployment and just military living as a whole day to day, just that experience of basic training, you figure out real quick that it's just easier to suffer through it.
Get it done, get it over with and move on to the next thing and hopefully the next thing It goes better, or it's easier to get through organically without having to plot and scheme about how to get to the end goal.
Right.
Well, it's funny, because a mutual friend of ours, a good friend, Matt, had brought it up in the past, and we would talk about it, and he would talk about issues in the context of mountains.
And a lot of people will look for the easiest paths through the mountain, right?
Might take them forever in a day because they have to go all the way around and maybe they have to travel 1500 miles to get a mere 40 miles across the mountain.
Some people will take the hard climb, which is shorter, maybe it's a 500 mile climb, but they go straight over the top of the mountain.
What I tend to do is grab a boring machine And dynamite.
And I drill through and I go through the hardest fucking plausible case.
But it gets me from point A to point B in 50 miles.
And it's going to be a treacherous, difficult, arduous task to get there.
But that's what I do.
So you just blow it up.
I'm just going through it because I'm not gonna pussyfoot around and take this long cover.
You know and I think a lot of times too we get when we do that or when I do that that's when that's when I really question everything that I'm doing because I'm like why am I worried about what's in the rearview mirror?
You know my grandma told me and I think it's one of the greatest lines and far too many of us think like this.
When you're looking in the rearview mirror you're not paying attention to the big picture the windshield.
Quit looking back.
Drive forward.
Like, when you're taking that short path and you've got all that time to try to figure out where it went wrong, why it went wrong, it doesn't matter.
It already went wrong.
You write a bang.
It's already happened.
So who gives a shit why it happened?
It happened, now go through it.
No, of course, at the end of that, if you don't learn from your mistakes, then you keep running that dozer.
But we don't tend to have the same mistake over and over.
We know people like that too, though.
Yeah, but these are people that rinse and repeat.
They're the most insane version of Marty McFly.
They fly back to the same shitty decision and then jump right back in the system and go.
It's like, brother, you just did that again.
But I think that's sometimes where we differ from civilians in that context of how we want to work our way through them.
Because we realize at the end of the day, if there's no bullets flying, there's no babies dying, it's really not that big of a deal.
Not the end of the world if things didn't go right or created a huge problem.
There is a solution to figure out.
It's never simple, but it doesn't get any easier with time.
Well, and that plays right into the decision-making, right?
I mean, you don't really have a lot of time in many instances, at least the way I see things.
You don't have a lot of time to make this outline.
If you will.
And try to determine outcomes of path A, B, C, and D. And then make an informed decision.
And I'll say this.
I'll be the first one to say, and if my wife watches this, I guarantee you she's going to clip it and text it to me.
But I'll be the first one to say that sometimes when I make decisions quickly, on my feet, I'm not always right.
And I think, like you said, sometimes when you blow it up to go through the center, it's an arduous task.
It's super painful.
It's monotonous.
It sucks really bad.
But it is the shortest way.
And then this conundrum of...
Well, you know, did I do the right thing?
Did I make the right decision?
I think that this quick decision making that we're talking about becomes less of an issue because even though it sucked a lot, it's already over.
And it's a lot easier to look back if you're going to look back and go, well, you know, that really sucked, but I'm really glad that it's over.
So now let's get on to the next thing that I can blow up.
And so it's always easier to look at things after they're done and over with.
You don't have to deal with it anymore.
And it's always a convenient thing to say, well, you know, it wasn't that bad.
I mean, look, we got through it.
Yeah.
But then we keep making the same decision.
Right.
Or putting yourself in the same situation.
You know, similar situation.
Maybe it's the same tune, not the same song, if that makes sense.
Because we rarely do the same thing in multiplicity, but we often make those decisions in a certain pattern, regardless of what the choice is.
And so if it's something at work and how you deal with co-workers or something at home and how you deal with your family, there's a tendency there, right?
Yes.
How we react to those things.
Don't get me wrong, the three Chinese faces, you know, who you are to your family, who you are at work, and then who you are alone in the mirror.
That does certainly play into the family versus co-workers, but I do think that Those are the tessellating issues like the frequency of recurrence runs greater in just the overall difficulty of recovery because we keep doing the same thing and yes we can get through it and you eat a bunch of shit on your way through but at the end of the day now you become accustomed to that shit sandwich and you're just gonna keep eating it because it's just that that's what you do now and that's just who you are and I think that's sometimes where our
wives would admittedly say We're kind of messed up.
We're not normal in context.
We're not normal in thought.
Yeah, and so my wife and I have had this conversation of sorts in the past.
Do you think that your wife would say that even though we're screwed up, And we're different.
And sometimes it's hard to understand.
Maybe it's even frustrating or outright maddening for them to watch us navigate through life or any particular problem or situation that they yet still appreciate that about us.
Because my wife has said that.
Karen has said that before.
Like, I don't understand that.
I don't understand your thought process.
I don't understand why and how you approach life, in some instances, the way that you do.
And I would never, ever, ever, ever approach said issue the way that you do.
But I can appreciate the way that you do it.
Right.
Which, to me, sounds like a contradiction.
It is.
But there's a compliment in there somewhere, right?
There is, because I think there is a certain, there's a simplicity to our decision making.
And maybe it's predictable.
Oh, I can tell you this much.
We are programmed machines.
And we weren't programmed very well.
You know, I would never think that.
It's 100% there.
It's something they can rely on.
Probably the reason that your wife is okay with it is because you do it all the time, right?
So now I've got a pattern of frequency that I can depend upon that your wife is going to always know when these things happen, this is the way Richard's going to deviate or turn.
And she can rely on that consistency.
To me, it's an endearing thing.
But where this one happens for me the most is on my job sites.
Okay.
With your employees or with your customers?
Employees.
And what I continue to talk about, and I preach this to anybody that's spent any time in the field with me, is we have a finite number of steps that we want to take every day.
And we want to keep that number as low as possible, right?
So it's mission effectiveness.
So, if you're making multiple trips to grab certain things, if you're picking things up and handing them to people the wrong way and they have to turn them around.
Now, I understand in the course of building a home, none of these things, theoretically, should make any difference, right?
Does it really matter how I hand you something if you're up on a ladder to, let's just say you're nailing in some headers, right?
And they just hand them to you randomly.
What I will get angry about is hand it to the person that you're giving it to with a crown up.
Have it ready for install.
Hand it to the person's hand that's going to be grabbing it.
And I think a lot of that comes down to like military effectiveness.
If we're going to go do something, we are going to do it the best way possible with the least amount of effort required.
Interesting.
And I can't let it go.
It drives me nuts when people hand me a handful of screws or hand me one screw at a time or do any of these things.
I'm like, this is not effective.
And it seems really small, but I focus on it because maybe this is some of my...
82 IQ coming out, but if I have to keep repeating this process and it takes an extra three, four, five seconds, but I'm doing something 150 times, those three seconds times 150 became 300 seconds, five minutes are gone.
And it's for one small thing.
And that five minutes could be better spent doing something else on the job site or doing this or doing that.
It's a number of things you can carry per load.
Like, I don't want anybody to load up like a burrow and break their back.
But I'll also say let's be smart with how many trips we make.
So I'm counting literally every day how many times we're walking from say this lumber stack over to this job site.
And if we're spending too much time doing that, I'll change something up.
I'll go get a machine.
I'll move things closer.
I'll do all this other stuff to limit those steps to make things more efficient and fast.
And I don't know if it's Because of my experience why I do this, but I do it, and I do it for everything.
That's the shit that drives my wife nuts.
Like, I want to shower with efficiency.
I want to be able to do this with efficiency.
And it has nothing to do with, I never ask my family to do it, but for me, if I'm pulled out of doing things that way, I can be a cranky cucumber.
Do you think that your employees, the people that you work with, Do you think that they appreciate that or have they ever voiced to you like, hey man, neither good or bad, that it's just different and call it out and mention it or say something about it?
Well, sometimes, you know, sometimes it'll be an irritant because I won't be all that happy about it if we're doing it time and time and time and time and time again.
And that's when I'll vocalize my concern.
And then I'll take corrective measures, right?
This is very simple.
I'm not going to watch you do this anymore.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to show you how I do it.
And then you should just replicate what I do because it's easier.
And that's the hardest thing for me in life is watching somebody do something a difficult way when it can be done easily.
I think that you share a little bit of bloodline with my wife because she says the exact same thing.
She'll say things like, well, I can just see it done.
So I'm going to do it myself and I don't have to explain it to nobody.
I'm just going to do it.
Or she's gonna ask for help and then start handing out assignments and then she gets very upset when it doesn't go the way that she sees it operating because she can see the end product.
And so it takes some getting to know each other and some work to be able to do projects together, right?
And you gotta figure that out.
I mean, we're married for Pete's sake.
We're gonna do a lot of projects together.
But on the job side, it's different, right?
You're the boss.
You can tell them this is the way that we're going to do this.
So I don't want to hear any bullshit from nobody.
And at the end of the day, I'm only trying to make it easier for them.
And more efficient for us.
I'm going to be there every day with you.
It's different when I show up in the morning, I give a list of things that I would like to see done when I get back, and then I come back to check on it.
They're all done.
I don't really care.
But when I'm there and I'm working, as long as we achieve what we're trying to do, I typically don't have any issues.
But when shit comes up, I can be like, man, why didn't this happen?
And I'm always, again, I'm looking for the shortest path.
That should really be my nickname.
Amongst other things that are short, so is my path.
So here I sit, and I'm like, why did this happen?
Oh, well, this was all the way over here, and so we had to go and do this.
Why didn't you just do this?
And oh, no shit.
And I'm like, yeah, the few steps.
Like, I don't want anybody to work any harder than we need to.
Right.
And when I watch people work harder to achieve the same or it takes longer to achieve the same, it's a massive frustration for me.
I feel like I've gotten a lot better about it, but it's something also that I don't wear at home, which is odd.
What do you mean by that?
I would never be like that around my house.
If it's something that I'm doing, of course I'm going to do it my way.
But when it comes to...
Oh, you mean like handing out orders and things?
Well, or even just...
I wouldn't even share with my kids how I would do something.
Let's just say, so my boy just started mowing the lawn.
Mm-hmm.
Do I have a way the launch can be mowed the most effective, efficient way that burns the least amount of fuel that creates stuff?
Yep, I've got it.
Positive you do, yes.
100%.
And then it changes week by week because I don't want to put the patterns in it.
But I digress.
Now, as Little Man has started to mow, I don't tell him any of that shit.
I'm excited that he wants to go do it.
That he has a task that he can make his own.
But if that person, if that were somebody that worked for me on a job site and we were doing this to work, Not making it.
I wouldn't do it.
This has to be this very particular way.
And it's weird because I'm having this moment of understanding as we're talking about this.
And so I'm just going to apologize to anybody that truly does know me or that we work together.
I am hearing myself right now.
And I do apologize for those times when I become short because I do pride myself.
I do not yell.
People don't work for me.
We all work together.
But certainly there are times where I'll sit there and I'll kind of do like that.
I'll put my hands on my hips and just give them the really look.
They've probably got an armful of, you know, they've got three sacks of Crete that they're trying to carry around, busting their absolute ass.
You know, with 240 pounds of concrete in their arms and I'm giving them the...
You know, that look.
What?
I'm getting it done.
But I'm sitting there and I'm so frustrated because there's a wheelbarrow right next to you, or there's a cart, or there's something else that would make your life easier, yet you choose this hard.
Yeah.
I apologize.
But there's also this, there's also, just quickly, you also have to on the job set, you're also worried about customer service, the final product, The production of the final product because your customers are probably in and around checking on the status of their projects and all this other stuff.
But you also don't want any of your workers to be getting hurt or get wore out because number one, when you don't have workers, business stops.
And number two, you care about the people that work for you and you don't want them to get injured.
And so, I mean, I can understand where you're coming from.
Where do you think in your...
In your military career that you really started to hone in on this idea that this is the process, this is the technique, this is the way we're going to do it, and become very regimented about the way that you walk through your life.
Because you're right, I don't know that I know you extremely well, but I think I know you well enough to know And watch you enough to know that you are very deliberate about your movements.
You're very deliberate about the things you do.
Truth be told, since we're on the truth boat, sometimes you're impatient because you can see that this is not efficient and this is not going to be advantageous to the success of anybody involved.
And so, for those reasons, you become frustrated.
And I'm sure that I have been the cause of that frustration at times for you, and I apologize for that.
But know that I do see it, and I do understand, and I do love you.
Love you too, brother.
And that's it, right?
And that's why, you know, this dysfunctioning flaw.
I mean, we're all born flawed, right?
We're all chopped liver.
We can't get anything right.
And you get a little bit better.
But when you were saying that, I was thinking about basic training.
And I'm going to have to send this one to G. Because he and I, even though we went together at the same time, we ended up in different platoons, but we ended up in the same bay.
And...
Very quickly, we realized the nonsense around us.
And we were a little bit older, I think, when I went.
I would have been like 22 years old.
I didn't go when I was 18, 22 or 23, whatever the heck it was.
But the way that Drill Sergeant's laid things out, even though the timelines were unrealistic, a lot of that stuff was doable, right?
And because we were on the other side and I was on this side and we were both quiet guys.
Now, girling is way more intimidating looking than I am.
But neither of us really spoke up, but we were there and that presence, I think, was enough where we were able to kind of shift and move and make things a lot easier during our basic training experience.
Because we wanted to be efficient.
Both of us did.
And I don't remember a lot of times I heard a ton of stories from other people about what their basic training was like.
Ours was not like that because often As soon as the timing was realistic, we were able to accomplish it, because we would just focus on effectiveness, and we knew the people that weren't going to do it, so we made sure they had help.
And, you know, you're kind of building out a team, and I think that's probably where this shit started.
So, thank you, Basic Training.
To the detriment of anybody that I've ever yelled at, you can tell Basic Training to F off.
Yeah, well, don't take it personal.
You know, I mean, at the end of the day, shit needs to get accomplished.
And I think when you're in a large group like you are in basic training, somebody, somebody has to just nut up and become the leader.
You're right.
And so, like the drill sergeants, they put people in leadership positions, right, throughout the...
The cycle of basic training.
But somebody, if they're not in that leadership position, still maintains some kind of control, if you want to call it that, in air quotes, of the herd.
Just because they're natural leaders.
Correct.
So, anyway, we've gone over time.
We've got to take a break.
So stick with us, folks.
We'll be right back.
There's a whole bunch of stories that have to be dug into, rethought, reconsidered, and in some cases completely discarded.
As modern Americans, we've been spoon-fed this dumbed-down, cartoonish, simplified version of history.
It's all fake.
It's all bullshit.
Everything that we have been taught is part of a self-serving narrative written by the people who will say and do anything to keep us on a leash.
Now, this version of history, some big-name corrupt families like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and their many associates are credited over and over and over again with propelling human development.
Throughout the late 18 and early 1900s, almost every major American city was burnt to the ground.
What if we really are quite literally living atop the ashes of an advanced civilization that's been hidden from us?
For our entire lives.
For our entire lives.
Actually, more than half.
We're more than halfway through.
I think that we should, Jason, pick up the conversation with some talk about why does military service or why does military training teach us these types of things?
And I don't know that I don't know that I'm trying to say that they strategically, on purpose, teach us to be OCD or teach us to be super regimented in our lives after the Army, but there certainly is a reason for it while we're in the military because being efficient can save lives.
Being efficient will accomplish the mission faster.
Being efficient will give us the element of surprise.
All these types of things.
Do you think that this is something, now that we've been trained and we've been living our lives this way, and I'm not trying to say that there's any need for this, but do you think that these types of things are things that can be trained out of us?
If anybody ever wanted to, you know, like if there's guys or gals out there, they're like, yeah, you know, I deal with the same thing, but I really don't want to live life this way.
Yeah.
Well, that's a funny one that we're talking about right now.
Another one of our buddies, Ben, has talked about this.
I've talked about it quite a bit with him.
He was kind of one of the first people that kind of talked to me about how that quote unquote programming works when you join the military and then certainly gets hardened through deployments and time in the saddle, all these other things.
And it seems to take a while for it to break out of some of us.
And some of us, it's just built in forever, right?
But there is, I know for a fact, I don't know who and I don't know how, but there specifically were people that go through and do some type of psychological treatment or therapies to help you deprogram from the programming.
Really?
It's out there.
It's 100% out there because it's, you know, as I got to know him and started to talk to him about some of these things, like, you know, we talked about, like, right now, my back is in sheer pain.
I am at a point where if I weren't sitting here doing this with you, I would be lying down, hurt near comatose.
But because I want to do this, I'm sitting here in this chair engaging with you right now when I shouldn't be engaging with anything.
But part of that is the programming.
When something is important enough, you will do it.
You will go through these Hurdles, obstacles, warnings, warning flags, warning lights, etc., to get to where you want to go, just because you want to be there, regardless.
Yep, I agree.
So, kind of the play through the pain, any of these other things, but when I was talking to him about them, we were talking about He said, you know, certainly when everybody knows the military breaks you down to build you back up, right?
That's not a conspiracy.
They're trying to create certain personality traits that are more successful in the environments that you need to be in should you be called on to serve.
And so it would be an absolute travesty not to be doing that.
So they clearly do.
And then I asked myself, well, what are the psychological profiles that they're trying to create?
And I hadn't spent a lot of time, you know, knowing the difference between Alpha, Sigma, Beta, all the, I don't want to call it nonsense, but I am for this instance, all these other Psychological breaks in people, who they are and their tendencies, their abilities, and their desires.
And so when we started talking about it, like Alphas are great, they're wonderful in business, they want to be the ones up front, they want to be the boom-bastic folks in the group, right?
And then there's Sigmas who are capable of being the person that actually runs the business, but they don't want to deal with the headaches of being the forward-facing front man, basically, like the lead singer of a band.
They want to do everything else, and they're capable of playing every instrument in the band, but they don't need to be the cover.
So, in the military, what happens is, I believe there's a particular type of training, and be it beneficial as all hell, right?
Because they're going to make everybody better team players, they're going to manipulate these things.
And then my question to him was, well, is that why we have the struggle bus that we do when we leave?
Because you get these patterns and these things and they become fractionalized.
So let's just say you weren't an alpha or a sigma type.
You were, you know, some other type down chain.
And basically through your experience in the military, you have so many of these sigma traits that run contrary to who you really are deep down that you end up with further and further troubles down the hill.
Like things, you know, like we just talked about compartmentalized OCD. You have to have files a very particular way in your computer or it drives you absolutely batshit crazy but you could probably throw your clothes all over your bedroom floor and don't give two shits.
Correct.
Right?
So the OCD doesn't stick for everything and that's what kind of got me thinking because I have a touch of that in different ways too that are absolutely infuriating to my wife.
Yeah.
Again, Mama, if you're watching, I apologize.
I stopped everything else.
And I promise the garage will get clean.
Right?
Try to do better.
Yeah, I'll try to do better.
But when Ben and I talked about this, dude, it was like three hours.
We really, really, really dove into it.
And he told me a lot of the things as he understood them because, again, he's not a psychiatrist or a therapist or anything like that.
But he had a very rudimentary understanding of what that could look like.
And I started to think about it.
If you're being rebuilt in a way that's not naturally who you are, right, to serve this better purpose, which is an absolutely wonderful thing, and it could be utilized as your superpower in the real world, too.
But if it totally fractures who you are when you're comfortable, like that third face I talked about, the one that you are when you're at home in the mirror by yourself.
Yep.
You can't even be that face anymore because that face is too broken up or altered to even recognize or operate who you used to be.
There's a part of me that thinks that that could be the stem or one of those issues, those deep-rooting things that creates all the other stuff that we see in our culture that's problematic.
The abuse of substances, from alcohol to...
I don't even know.
Alcohol to heroin, does that cover the gamut?
I was trying to come up with an A to Z, but I couldn't quite get there.
You covered all the bases, I think.
Tried to get there.
But, you know, maybe is that it?
Because you're just not comfortable any longer.
And some of us have, you know, some of us had those...
Personality traits to begin with, so it was simple.
You know, I think about the people that I knew in basic training where it really didn't phase them all that much.
I think maybe they probably had a personal trait demographic that very closely mimicked what they're trying to create.
Thus, they just got really, they got better at who they were.
And there were a lot of people that I met that basic training and getting into the military was the single worst thing that had ever happened to them.
And in four years, when I can get my ass out, I'm gone.
Or two years.
Whatever the case was.
And I wonder if it wasn't the military, if it was the military service, or was that part of it that made it so viscerably terrible to them that they just didn't want to be any part of it, even if they would have been really good.
They were out because it just broke them.
So you're saying that this experience of serving, even though it's for the greater good and this programming takes place, but it's not really who you are.
I guess you'd have to be a really self-aware person.
To even understand that this is not who I am and I need to search out some deprogramming.
I mean, I'm sure that people are like referred to this or check this out.
Maybe this might help you type thing.
Exactly.
But just think about when you first get out of the military.
I mean, you still use way more acronyms in military speak than I do.
I don't use it anymore.
There are certain things I do, the easy ones, but I don't go back to that vocabulary anymore.
When I was fresh out or when I got, you know, when I first came back from deployment, I spoke military, right?
Just like, you know, if you go to Germany and you have German as a second language, when you come back, you kind of have that bit of an accent, and then it goes back to who you are.
And that's, again, that's kind of another thing.
That's that shale off, you know, reprogramming to who you were.
I can see this more clearly now than I could even when Ben and I were talking about it because depending upon how long you were in the military, think about how long you were forced into that situation to be that person.
And now once you get the opportunity to come back out, you're either going to be enlightened by being able or relaxed because you get to go back to who you were or now you're so internally conflicted because you just don't fire off and operate the way that you used to.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you what.
It's a very interesting concept to think about because I think that it plays into a lot of this idea that we had.
You and I did a show about, I don't know, maybe it was seven to eight months ago, about this exact thing, about decision-making, for example.
Yeah.
And the programming.
The military programs you to think on your feet.
The military programs you to make decisions in a split second.
And sometimes those decisions are whether or not you're going to take a human life.
Or whether or not you're going to charge up over this hill.
Or you're going to kick this door.
Or you're going to do this.
Or you're going to do that.
And It's a super intense thing.
It can be.
But when you leave, they don't teach you how to turn that off.
And so all these things that we've talked about today, in my mind, all play on this programming that we've all kind of went through.
But nobody has really talked to us about how to turn it off.
And so now we mentioned, you know, like chemical and substance abuse and carmentalized.
Carmentalized.
Holy cow.
No t-shirt.
Sectioned off OCD. Compartmentalized OCD. And all kinds of other things that don't necessarily make our lives worse.
But can make our lives a little more difficult, and they can make our lives a little more hazardous, in air quotes, a little more hazardous in one way or another.
Like when we talked about, we're not going up and over, we're not going around, we're going to drill into the center of this motherfucker, and we're going to blow this son of a bitch up.
The repercussions of that can be extremely profound in the positive or the negative, right?
But nobody's ever talked to you, nobody's ever said, hey Jason, maybe we should sit down and talk about the benefits and the negatives of blowing up and going through the middle.
Maybe there's some more simplicity about going over the top that's going to be better for you in the long run.
And whether you want to hear it or not is another thing, but there's really no effort to turn it off.
Or teach you how to turn it off or how to cope.
It seems as if you have to go through hell and you gotta blow it up and you gotta walk through hell.
You gotta walk through the fire.
And when you've come to the end of your rope and it's become more than you think you can bear and you finally have swallowed enough of your pride to say, hey, I'm really struggling here.
I think I need a hand.
And for many veterans, mind you, that day never comes because they end their lives before they get there.
Right.
But nobody's ever talked to them about how to turn these things off.
And I don't want to make it sound like this programming of sorts.
Is a super negative thing, because I don't think it is, but I think for some, it can be.
Or it can be hazardous to their bodies, to their minds, to their overall well-being, and the way that they're going to navigate their lives into the future, even if they're doing fine right now.
Does that make sense?
It was kind of a lot.
I think I said a lot.
You said a ton, but there was a lot to be said.
And I, you know, again, and this is always the thing that we end up talking about, and I have to believe that the VA has so much data that they could actually do this.
How interesting it would be to see the psychological traits on intake and the type of service that military members had who have taken their own lives.
And just see if there are certain trends or tendencies that are in there, and then go back to that and say, well then how can you change that?
Or if it is something that you know is more likely to occur amongst this type of person, maybe spend a little bit of time on the back end of their career or their service, and hopefully try to right that shit.
There's only so much money to spend in this world too, so I get it.
Well, but that's an interesting perspective because I think you're right.
I think that the VA has a whole shit ton of data in many different subject matters and different topics that we probably can't even fathom.
But I'm pretty sure that if one were to ask, from the year 2022 to present, how many veterans under VA care have committed suicide?
That number is probably easy to obtain.
And then of those numbers, how many of them had similar issues maybe?
And maybe that's like super hard to quantify, but then there's like HIPAA and all this other stuff.
I think you're right.
I think there's probably something to all of this stuff, and it's all related and connected somehow, amongst other things.
And that's the thing, right?
The dichotomy of all of these things that affect veterans is so vast.
How do you solve just one?
And it's easy for you and I to pick one because that's the topic we chose to talk about today.
Right.
And that's the most important thing that anybody can take from any of this, right?
It's like seatbelt laws.
In the great state of Minnesota, they say, it doesn't matter.
We're going to drive to zero deaths behind the wheel with all these laws that we're going to create.
I hate to break it till your shit happens.
Yeah.
There's a certain point where you should be done spending money.
Of course, we haven't gotten there yet here in Minnesota because they keep raising more money somehow.
I'm not sure how they do it.
But the drive to zero is foolish.
We know you're not going to solve all suicides.
There is no question in my mind.
I don't believe that you have that as a thought either.
But how can you, with some of the ones that seem to make absolutely zero sense, why they don't have some type of flag somewhere with the sheer amount of money that they spend to have the suicide prevention hotline, all these other programs that are designed for awareness.
Spend five minutes on the back end and know your demographic.
Well, and I think that it would...
Yeah, you're right.
You're a thousand percent right.
And I think that it would be worth spending the money if we saved 22.
Like, we could be at zero for one day.
Like, I think that that would be worth the research.
It'd be worth diving into it.
You know what I mean?
You're right.
We're not going to save everybody.
You're not going to stop it.
You're not going to bring the number to zero.
In fact, seatbelts kill a lot of people too.
Right.
And as far as intentional suicide...
You can talk, you can treat, you can analyze, you can do all this stuff all you want.
The bottom line is that if a person, you take everything away from them, they're going to find a way to kill themselves if that's what they really want to do.
It's unfortunate, it's sad, it's tragic, but it's the truth.
For some people, it's the only way to drown the pain.
And that's, to me, that's hard to hear, man, because I think that And it's true, you're right, but it's a hard reality to hear.
And I think that's a very, very hard reality for a lot of people to hear who are just everyday, run-of-the-mill Americans, right?
Because they don't...
Well, let's not dive into that.
We don't have enough time.
Let's not go.
Yeah.
Anyway, we got like a minute and 10 seconds left.
So you got 30 seconds for your final thoughts, my friend.
Go ahead.
Well, I guess since we're talking about being self-aware, there's a lot of things in this world that we can't figure out, that we have no ability to even wrap our minds around.
And so, with my final thought, I would like to ask people to go grab that book that sits in every one of our houses, at least certainly in a vast majority of them, crack it open, and start to find where the reality is.
And that's it.
There you go.
There you go.
Very well said.
Thank you.
Please, if you agree with me that Jason's getting a lot better at these final thoughts, please leave a comment below because it's true.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate it.
I think that if we've learned anything today through the course of this conversation, it is that being a little more self-aware of the things that we have going on inside of our bodies, inside of our minds, It is not a detriment to our well-being or the way that we live our lives.
It is, in fact, extremely helpful.
And even though it takes sometimes the ability for you to swallow your pride, admit that there's something happening that you maybe need to be a little more conscious of.
Not that it's necessarily good, bad, or indifferent.
But there's always room for change.
There's always room for self-improvement.
And I probably need to take those words to heart the most out of anybody who's here in the studio or who's watching this because I struggle with it myself.
And so...
Let's just, for the next week, I'm going to give you some homework here.
For the next week, just think about those things.
If you've served in the military, think about the programming, in quotes, the programming that you have went through and how is any of it still with you?
And is it a positive or a negative thing in your life?
If it's a negative thing in your life, is it something that you're willing to look at changing?
And if it is, how are you going to change it?
Because I don't think there's any secret that we could all use a little bit easier days, especially with all the shit going on around us in our communities.
So with that, we are way over time, but I appreciate you being here.
We'll be back next week.
Enjoy the rest of your evening, and we will see you next weekend.
Have a good night.
We all have one common enemy.
His name is Satan, and right now his minions are trying to run this country.
The German nation does not wish its interests to be determined and controlled by any foreign nation.
France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans.
We are resolved to prevent the settlement in our country of a strange people which was capable of snatching for itself all the leading positions in the land and to oust it.
Oust it!
Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.
Pull it.
On September 11th, 2001, were perhaps the most shocking and terrifying events in US history.
The witness called police, who stopped the van hours later and arrested five men.
All five, it turns out, were Israeli.
And I could see that they were, like, happy.
But it was very strange.
They have to get the blessings of this country before they can swear an oath to our Constitution.
They won't get any spotlight in the Zionist-funded media.
And one of the scariest things in the world is that nobody is willing to admit that.
Nobody wants to have that conversation.
Why is our army not arresting pedophiles who put their dicks in little kids' faces during the whole month of June?
- Shoot me, sue me, everybody do me.
Kick me, kick me, don't you black a white?
All I wanna see is that they don't really care about. - The Jewish watchword, workers of the world unite.
Workers of all classes and of all nations.
Recognize your common enemy.
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