The Forgotten Frontline: The Suicide Surge No One Talks About
Stew Peters exposes a critical crisis of rising suicide rates among military families, highlighting overlooked demographics like male spouses and dual-veteran households struggling with deployment instability. He argues that current support systems fail civilians, creating despair that threatens recruitment and mission readiness. While advocating for resources to ensure warriors can focus on duty without fearing for their loved ones, the episode concludes with a sudden, controversial shift where Peters claims Christians should oppose Jewish leadership in the US government. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Battling Veteran Suicide00:14:05
Veteran suicide is not a foreign subject on this show.
In fact, we talk about it two or three times a year.
It's a very important subject.
It's something we need to keep battling.
We need to keep working on getting better.
Is it something that can be solved?
Hopefully so, but maybe not, unfortunately.
And that's a tough pill to swallow.
But some newly released data by the VA and whoever else participates in these studies has shown that the suicide rate for military families.
Is on a pretty steep spike, which is interesting.
I don't know that it's something that's a surprise.
I don't know that it's a topic that hasn't been talked about all that much.
They say it is, but inside military circles, it is certainly talked about.
Maybe not enough, but it is talked about.
So today, anyway, that's what our conversation is going to surround.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
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Okay, so sometimes it seems like we talk about suicide and death and dying and killing and all this stuff a little too often, uh, on this show anyway, more than I would like to talk about.
But the truth of the matter is that this issue of suicide amongst veterans, um, Of course, it is a daunting battle, right?
Because it seems at times that there just is no way to move forward.
There's no way to get ahead.
Every time we feel like we've taken one step forward, we end up taking two steps back.
And it's hard to gain ground on this fight, it seems.
One thing that we don't ever really talk about publicly, the media certainly doesn't talk about it.
When we talk about military suicide rates and things like that, we don't talk about.
The families.
We don't talk about the spouses.
We don't talk about the kids and what it means for them to serve too.
And full clarity, a couple years ago now, I had a falling out with my own son.
He is now 21 years old.
It was a couple weeks before his birthday, and he was living here, and we had a disagreement about something really stupid and really petty.
I felt that he was disrespectful, and we had this screaming match at each other, and it ended up being me more screaming at him than him screaming at me.
And he walked out of my house with all of his shit.
It was hard.
It was really tough.
We didn't talk for quite a while.
In fact, only recently has he moved back into the area, back to the state.
And it's great to see.
It's great to have him around.
It's great to see how much he's grown up in a few years.
And I think that we both, even though some things have still gone unsaid, I think that we both realize and know.
That we weren't innocent in the thing together collectively.
We have to own part of it and also collectively have to do some forgiveness or some more understanding or something like that.
I'm sure that's something that we'll get to in short order now that he's home.
But I used to tell him when he was younger all the time when we would have discussions about military service or when I would have conversations with my wife or other family members about military service.
I have always made it a point to stress to people through conversations, especially when it comes to reintegration and it comes to struggles that veterans have coming home.
I always make it a point to at least mention we can't forget about the family.
We can't forget about the husbands and the wives and the kids.
Even like the, and it sounds real stupid, but even like the pets and the dogs and all that other shit that people have.
They say, and I don't know, I didn't have any pets when I deployed, but they say that they go through it too, especially dogs that are attached to these service members that leave.
And so, because of this, allegedly, apparently, the suicide rate for these folks is on a pretty steep spike.
The actual numbers weren't very clear.
And to be quite honest, I don't know if the numbers really matter.
All that much.
I think what matters is that we identify the problem, which I think that we have a long time ago.
We've been fighting this battle against veteran suicide for many years.
I mean, hell, we were at war for what, 22, 23, or whatever it was.
So it's not a new thing.
It's not a new idea.
It's not a new subject.
But very rarely talked.
And I agree.
The article I read about this, I agree.
When they say it's not widely talked about enough, that is a thousand percent true.
I believe that it is true that within these circles of families, these military families, I believe that these conversations do happen, and I believe that there is support out there for families.
I think that the issue is it's harder to find than it should be, a hundred percent.
But let's not let anybody think that nobody is talking about this.
Because the families that are going through it, they're certainly talking about it.
The support systems for these families, they're certainly talking about it.
And everybody that knows these families, they're also certainly talking about it.
So let's not let anyone go on thinking no one's talking about it.
Should it be talked about more, more publicly, in a wider area?
Yes, 100%.
It is something I believe that should be addressed when we talk about taking care of veterans.
Now, to the best of my knowledge, there are some support systems in place for families.
I do know for sure that the VA does offer family counseling, they offer couple and marriage counseling.
I do know that they offer, even if you want to do marriage counseling, for example, Or family counseling, they allow the other members of your family to see a mental health professional within the VA as well.
And so it's not just gather the kids, have your wife or your husband gather the kids and show up at the VA, and then all of you sit in a room and talk about your problems.
I think that does happen, but they also can individually get therapy and counseling.
And that's a great thing because I don't believe that all of this stuff really works all that well.
Unless everybody involved is also having somewhat of their own counseling or their own person to talk to.
Because I don't care what you say, I don't care what anybody thinks.
I believe that when you get a family in a room for some kind of counseling session, you're not going to get 100% of the truth from everybody.
I just don't think it works that way.
Maybe it does for some families, but I wouldn't believe that it's common.
So, excuse me.
This is certainly something that I'm glad that I came across this.
It wasn't very hard to find.
So, there's attention on it, there's people talking about it, and things are coming to light to the surface.
And that's a great thing.
So, let's dig into some of the talking points here that I've picked out.
One of them is here this is a hidden crisis, and it's not just veterans, right?
Suicide rates are rising amongst military spouses, young adults, and teens.
So, young adults they classify as 18 to 22 years old, and then, of course, teenagers.
Interestingly enough, they are a higher percentage, apparently, than spouses.
So, the children, these military children, are not dealing very well.
And there's probably a lot of reasons for that.
I mean, if you grow up in a military household with at least one military parent, I do believe that life for those children is different.
I don't think that it's necessarily negative.
I don't think that's necessarily positive either.
I think it's just different.
I think that many of military families are probably sometimes a lot more structured than a normal, everyday American family.
But I'm sure that there's also some that are.
Less structured.
I mean, of course, it always depends on the person.
Let's not make any mistake about it.
There are certainly shitbags in the military, right?
And there are certainly people that, and I'm not saying that I'm the cleanest guy either, but what I am saying is that there are some people that just live gross.
I think there's some people that just live disgusting.
And so you got to learn to live with all types.
How did we even get to dirty houses, anyhow?
Military kids.
And so this is really, really interesting because later on in the article, they talked about how the kids are more of an issue than the spouses, which probably sounds bad.
Like, we want to see more spouses kill themselves than kids.
I don't know that that's the comparison they're looking for, but.
It becomes more of a, some would say, a national security issue, right?
We already have problems with retention, military retention, although it's getting better.
We've also had recruiting problems, which also are getting better.
And so, like, maybe those aren't too big a thing to worry about at the current time, but we can't bank on it, right?
I mean, they're getting better.
In the last couple of years, recruitment numbers have gone up.
Retention numbers aren't going up very fast, it seems, but they are rising, I suspect.
But if we are seeing the children of our warriors that have already served or are currently serving having these horrible, horrible experiences, and what those experiences are, who knows?
But they're bad enough for these young people, these teenagers and young adults, to take their own lives.
And I think that teen suicide is a pretty important issue also.
And what's interesting about it to me is that we don't really ever hear the causes of how somebody may have gotten to this point of committing suicide, and especially in kids, right?
No one's going to talk about that with anybody else, and rightfully so.
Military Spouse Struggles00:13:22
But what is happening, right?
Like, what is going on in the households where these children of veterans or military members are in such despair that they're doing these things?
Some people say that it's because they can't compete, they can't live up to the same standard as their mom or dad who have served in the military, especially.
Veterans or service members who are well accomplished.
They may have a bunch of awards or been in kind of a top tier job, like a special operations job or military intelligence or something that's sexy.
And so they just don't want to do it.
They don't want to compete.
They don't want to try.
It's just not their bag, whatever the case is.
Some of these kids just think it's a massive disappointment to their parents who do serve, and apparently they just can't take it.
And so, my question would be, what are the conversations like inside the home?
I mean, I remember with our kids, we started asking in about 10th grade, maybe a little sooner, hey, what are your plans?
Like, what do you want?
Where do you see yourself going after high school?
Like, in my opinion, that's the time where you really start having conversations with your kids about what they're going to do after high school.
Not that it has to be urgent, but start thinking about a plan because three years goes by.
Pretty effing quickly.
And so, what are these conversations like?
Is what I wonder.
And of course, these are things that we'll never know.
But I just, maybe there's abuse going on.
I'm sure that that's a thing.
Chemical dependency, substance abuse issues, irritability, anger, depression.
I mean, there's just all kinds of possibilities.
And I agree with the author of this article that this is something that is super important to get handled or at least get a rein on and make a plan.
Moving on, male spouses are getting hit harder with this epidemic, we could call it, than female military spouses, which I found pretty interesting.
And then I started to think about it.
And it says here male military spouses show higher suicide rates than expected.
This group is rarely talked about or supported, which I think is true.
Most people, when you hear the term military spouse, you automatically think of some guy's wife who's got a couple of kids running around, who is underrested, overstimulated, and just can't wait for her husband to get home from.
Wherever he's at in the world, or from that three day long field exercise, or whatever.
But the truth is, is that in today's age, we have a lot more females serving in our military.
And by the way, sorry about this.
Apparently, it's time to test the tornado sirens.
Anyway, there's a lot more females joining the military.
And it wasn't all that long ago that they opened up and Let loose some of the tension over women serving in combat roles.
So I assume that that was attractive to some ladies, and either they joined or stayed in and wanted to participate in whatever those jobs were and took a shot at it.
Went to the school.
If they passed, then they're doing it.
So military, it makes sense.
It makes sense.
So then let's think about this.
We know that historically, military service has been predominantly men.
Right?
The fighting and this just seems like the way that we were taught growing up that gender roles says military is mostly for men.
Right?
There's spots there for women, the nurses and the dental technicians and the office clerks and that type of shit.
But think about if you're a man listening to this who's never served in the military, think about how you would feel having your wife.
Serve in the United States Marine Corps, for example, as a military police officer, or in the U.S. Army as an infantryman, right, or a Cav Scout, or anything, even if she's serving as a dental technician or a nurse or an office clerk, I guess that doesn't even really matter.
But if some of these dudes who are married to ladies in the military and they're Marine Corps police officers, for example, These ladies are going to be badass chicks, right?
So, you better be a dude that appreciates a badass lady that isn't going to take your shit, that can stick up for herself.
It's not a traditional gender role of a lady.
But times, boy, have they changed, right?
So, ladies can do the job, they meet the qualifications, they go out and they do it.
And I mean, I just, I have a hard time with it, right?
But it's hard to put myself in the shoes of a dude married to a military, a female military service member.
I mean, and if I think about it in the context of my marriage, right, there are things, and I would be completely lying if I didn't say, but there are, if I said differently, I would be completely lying.
There are things that are vital to my day to day life that my wife handles for me.
She reminds me of shit.
She picks up the stuff I forget and walk off.
You know, there are a lot of things that she does for me because I believe that's how ladies are, right?
They're the caretakers.
I mean, my wife is the caretaker in our family.
I mean, I'm sure our family is not the same as many other families, but those are things that I can.
Be a little bit more at ease with being a little bit absent minded here and there, knowing that she's sweeping up behind me.
She reminds me when I got to get to the doctor.
She reminds me when I got to do this.
I mean, she does a lot of things to care for me, and she probably would say I don't allow her to do enough.
But in my mind, she already does a lot.
And not to mention, she puts up with my shit.
So there's that also.
But I cannot imagine being a civilian dude married to a military lady.
But I can imagine my wife leaving for six months, let's say, even.
And we're empty nesters now, so it's not like I'd have to be stuck at home taking care of the kids and getting to work and getting them to soccer and getting them to swimming and getting them to here and there and getting a haircut and the grocery shop and all that stuff that we used to split when our kids were living in the house.
But some of those things just don't come to dudes, right?
And some of those things that just don't come to dudes that the moms do are vital for the structure and the stability of the kids.
And so now these dudes who are married to this military lady, she's a badass, which I believe you got to be somewhat of a badass one way or another to be a police officer in the Marine Corps, right?
Like when the Marines decide they want to destroy shit and they got all this pent up adrenaline and tension and this training they're dying to use and mix in a few beers and a nice day and a game of.
Prison yard football or something, things could get a little out of hand.
And so when the MPs show up, well, you better be ready to fucking tussle with your battle buddies because it does happen.
You know, not to mention all the other BS that they probably got to deal with in and around a military installation.
So now this dude has to do the grocery shopping and all this stuff that his wife helped him with.
But it's also not, he's not doing maybe.
Masculine things that help him to keep his testosterone up and help him to feel like he's providing and producing or whatever.
I don't know.
This is all just an assumption because I can't imagine this, right?
Like, I'm not married to a lady in the military and I did also serve.
So maybe if this is you, if you're one of these people, even if you're not struggling, maybe you did struggle.
Leave some comments or something.
Like, help us to understand it.
I don't think that these dudes are pussies.
I don't think they're weak.
I don't think none of that stuff.
I just think it's probably a difficult thing to be a regular civilian dude that wants to work a regular job and lead a regular life and build a regular family and all this other stuff.
And then, I mean, just like it is for the ladies, I'm not trying to say that dudes have it worse.
I just think that it's different.
And apparently, it's a lot more different than we imagine because.
The husbands, or I guess even male military spouses, I mean, it's okay to be married, gay, and married in the army now.
I imagine that it's difficult.
I don't know that it's any more alarming because it's males.
I think it was surprising.
So I thought it was an interesting statistic to share.
The other part about this is there's a lot of instances where the military spouse who's now at home taking care of the kids and doing all this stuff because their husband or wife is deployed or something are also veterans, have also at one time in their lives served.
Maybe deployed, maybe were in combat, maybe not.
Maybe they were pilots, maybe they were dental tech.
Technicians, anything, but they also are veterans.
And so, what we know about this is that it becomes a pretty cumbersome burden to carry your own weight, carry the weight of your spouse, also when you've been sharing that load for maybe a long time, or maybe your new parents, for example.
Boy, can that be a daunting task.
I mean, Being the parents of teenagers can also be an extremely daunting thing.
I think the consequences just get worse the older they get.
So now you have the warfighter that used to serve, that was in the Army infantry, or he was a crew chief on a C 130 in the Air Force, or a gunner's mate in the Navy, or something, and retired a couple of years ago.
And when he retired, him and his wife realized, well, you know, she's got about six years left and then she can retire.
And sometimes these families, they don't often plan towards the end of their career on deploying or having to go away from home for long periods of time.
But what we know anybody that serves or has served, we know that that shit can change in the blink of an eye.
And so now you have all this shit going on, and all of a sudden, now you got a month to get ready for your spouse to be gone for six months, a year, 14 months.
Back in the day, it was 16 months to two years back in the early 2000s.
Life Without a Partner00:02:45
And I imagine it's a little bit of an intimidating deal if it's short notice, especially, right?
Because now you got maybe you got two kids and they're in different activities, and there's only one of you, and you know.
Jack has football practice on Wednesday nights at 5 30, but Olivia has swim practice on Wednesday nights at 7, and they're 25 miles from each other.
So, what are you going to do?
Those are the things that parents start thinking about when these things come up.
If the husband's going away and the wife now, well, now I have to fill the water softener salt, I better figure out where he gets it, where it's stored.
Is it too heavy for me to lift on my own?
All these things, and this is like little minute things that you don't, that you kind of take for granted to be honest, even though you're doing them or they're being done for you.
You just, you know, you learn that, that, uh, like for example, in our house, the water softener salt is my gig, right?
My, my wife is the first one to notice.
She'll come out of the bathroom and go, my skin is, is, uh, is, it's, it's hard.
The water's hard, you know, and, and my skin is, is, uh, streaky or whatever.
I forget what word she said, but she knows right away.
When the thing is running low on salt, okay, babe, no problem, I got it.
And she doesn't say nothing else about it until it's running low again.
If I don't catch it on time, well, if I leave for a year, of course she'll figure it out, but the first few times she's gonna have streaky skin or sticky skin or whatever the hell she calls it.
I forget, I forget the word she uses, but it's it's it's uh, it's it's it's a giggler for sure.
But now, that's just water softener salt.
Now, imagine practices and recitals and conferences and work meetings.
And God forbid there's any unforeseen things happen, like your water softener goes out, or you raise the garage door and it gets stuck halfway up, halfway down, and your cable has snapped, or the spring has snapped.
And now, well, who the hell do I call?
My husband did that.
Those things become super stressful when they're all on top of each other.
And then your only support structure, your only support system, your backup, is halfway around the world fighting somewhere or doing whatever it is they do.
And now imagine that they're also in a combat zone.
The Weight of Guilt00:03:07
Right?
So you never know.
I mean, every time your phone rings, maybe it's a, and I don't know because I didn't live through that part of it, but every time your phone rings, you don't recognize the number, you wonder if that's the call, maybe.
I guess I've never, and so I'm guilty of this too, like this not talking about it enough.
Because as I'm saying these things, I'm thinking, well, I've never done that.
Never thought about that.
So I'm just as guilty.
I mean, I mention it when I talk about these things, but I've never really made it a point to go out of my way to address it.
And so that's my failure to these families and to the people that I may have been able to be assistance to.
Just now realizing that that's a shitty feeling, to be honest.
So, anyway, both spouses are veterans.
Now, put yourself, if you can, in the shoes of the 10 year old boy in the family.
And then, if you can, put yourself in the shoes of the seven year old girl in the family.
And now, all of these things that you used to be super excited about when dad gets home.
They don't happen anymore.
Builds disappointment.
The bully that's picking on you that your dad used to talk to you about hey, man, you got to stick up for yourself, be strong, don't let nobody walk on you, blah, blah, blah, those types of things.
Well, shit, dad wasn't here to give me that pep talk.
Maybe I didn't remember all that.
I got my ass kicked by the bully, so now that brings me down.
Or I just like having cereal with my dad in the morning before school.
It's our thing, it's what we do.
We go to the movies, we have whatever.
Whatever it is that kids look for, whether they know it or not from their parents, and then it just goes away, it's got to be a difficult thing.
And apparently, it's difficult enough that these kids are fucking killing themselves.
And it's a fucking tragedy.
And it makes it even worse because all of it, at least for the most part, in my opinion, all of it is being done for the right reasons.
Most people join the military for the right reasons.
Most people join and fulfill their contract and they get out with honorable discharges and they go on to lead fruitful lives, hopefully.
But man, the kids didn't ask for it.
The spouses, well, maybe, maybe not.
I guess I don't know where I stand on that.
I mean, if you marry somebody that's in the military, you know what you're getting into, hopefully.
At least you could be more aware, but the children certainly did not ask for it.
It wasn't their choice.
It's tragic.
It really is.
Fueling the Network00:06:18
Anyway, folks, we've got to take a break.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
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What these researchers found was that vaccinated children had 4.29 times the rate of asthma, 3.03 times the rate of atopic disease, 5.96 times the rate of autoimmune disease, and 5.53 times the rate of neurodevelopmental disorders.
A number of different diagnoses, including diabetes and ADHD, and a number of them.
In the unvaccinated group, they were zero.
In other words, all these chronic diseases that we're accepting, the reality is maybe 99% of them don't have to exist in children.
That's not the way God made us.
They looked at over 47,000 Medicaid claims between 1999 and 2011.
Those who were vaccinated versus unvaccinated, I can say an odds ratio of like 2.81.
2.81 to 1.
So that would be 181% increase.
Epilepsy seizures, 252%.
Learning disorders, 581%.
If you look at all these different diagnoses, they're all higher.
For example, I'll just give you one example.
Learning disorders in the full term is 581%.
In the preterm, the ones who are vaccinated, 884%.
Increase.
Every single vaccine has an excipient that is a human toxin.
Human toxin.
Human toxin.
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Hope After Thirty Years00:15:14
Hey, folks, welcome back here.
Let's keep rolling.
We were talking about children, the military children, and of course, the topic of the day is family suicide.
According to the research, and I agree with it, is that these children, a major part of their issue is the constant instability that they live in.
What we know about people who serve on the active duty military is you don't stay in one place for very long.
What we also know about raising children is that children thrive under stable, well structured situations.
And so the life of a military family, of a person serving on active duty, day to day, can be hectic.
And then you move somewhere for a few years and you don't know exactly when or where you're going when the time comes.
And so I believe what happens is that these families learn not to get close, not to make friends.
I'm sure that they, on these military bases where these families live in soldier housing, I imagine that they become friends with the people in their immediate area, their neighbors and things like that, the cul de sac, maybe.
But I don't believe that they let anyone get too close, especially the kids, right?
Because the kids know, especially by the time they're in early high school years, if they've lived most of their life, if not their whole life, as military children, they've already moved a few times, maybe even way more than a few times, depending on.
What their parents do, what position they have, you know, that type of thing, what rank they are.
And so they're not making lifelong friends.
They're not having these experiences at school or in the community that they can share with their children in 20, 30 years and bring them back to the old neighborhood and show them the ball field.
Yeah, we used to come down here and we'd play pickup baseball every day almost in the summertime.
We did it for 15 years of our childhood.
Almost every day we were playing baseball here.
This is the house that your grandfather built that I grew up in.
We lived here my whole life until I moved out to college.
Any of those experiences, those nostalgic things that we do like to share with our kids when we get the opportunities, though even something that simple and maybe seems trivial, also affects that family unit, I believe.
I think that these are the things as our kids grow up, the experiences you share from your childhood and your life journey.
Help to build them stronger.
Now, it's not to say that military children who grew up skipping around the world with their parents aren't successful people and don't lead fruitful lives, because that's completely not true.
But we're talking about the folks that are falling into this mind trap, or whatever we want to call it.
Clearly, for some people, the skipping around and falling mom or dad around the world every few years.
Isn't helpful for some people.
It doesn't help them to thrive.
It doesn't help them to feel stable.
And whether you're a person who thinks they're just weak minded pussies or they have a valid concern, that's irrelevant.
Whether you support or against it, that doesn't matter because it's happening.
The truth is that not everyone's as strong as someone else, mentally or physically, or maybe even both.
And I don't believe that anybody, especially children and super young adults, they don't deserve to feel like that.
They don't deserve to feel like they need to take their own lives because they can't compete with mom and dad or they don't have stable friendships.
They're not in stable activities.
Like one of the greatest things in my childhood growing up was looking back.
And still to this day, being pretty close friends with several other dudes, I played football, basketball, baseball, I was on the track team.
Some of those people are still my best friends in the world.
And I think now being in my 40s and looking back through all the years, all my years of military service, my years in college playing college football, my years in high school, my years as a civilian.
I mean, my whole career was National Guard, so I also had a civilian job all this time.
And I also had other things going on outside of my military career, also.
But when I look back on all of that, The people who are the closest to me today, majority, and I shouldn't say all of them because that's not true, majority of the people that are closest to me today are people that I was really good friends with as a kid or a teenager.
If I didn't have those people walking through life, I think I would be in a different state mentally, right?
Because it's those life challenges where you really figure out.
I mean, it's the old cliche.
When life gets hard, you really figure out and you really see who your friends are.
And I can tell you, there's been a lot of people that I've been close to or been good friends with that when I needed them the most, they turned tail and ran.
And some of them, without an explanation or excuse, I guess not that I'm owed one, but it'd be nice to know.
So, those people that I've been friends with for shit, man, 27, 30 years, 25, 30 years, 27 years.
I wouldn't know in my 40s what it's like to have friends, have people in my life that I don't share blood with, but I could get a hold of anytime if I needed help.
They can get a hold of me anytime if they need help.
And just to have that circle of people.
Because for me, as a veteran, the other side of my life, There's some people I met in the military that I'm still friends with that I would do a lot more for than other people in my life, if that makes sense.
Would go to a further extreme for.
Now, I'm not saying that I'd be out wiping people out or anything like that.
But if, if, if, One of them needed a couple hundred bucks, or one of them needed a place to stay, or something like that.
For most of the people in these circles of mine, it wouldn't even need to be asked.
You need a place?
I got one.
Whether it's convenient for me or not is irrelevant.
Mi casa su casa, motherfucker, right?
I mean, that's what it's like.
And so, for these kids to grow up in an environment where they don't get to experience that, or their routine is interrupted every day because, you know, I used to do this with mom every day, or every Tuesday and Thursday, whatever it is, whatever things you have with your kids that are important to them and are important to you, imagine that they just go away.
They're difficult.
It's difficult for adults.
But then, what do we know about teenagers, right?
Like, there's, they say, I don't have teenagers living in my house anymore, but they say this pressure from social media and the environment around them and this and that and just the state of affairs around the whole world like they're just fighting fucking battle after battle after battle after battle.
And now send dad away for a year.
Apparently, some folks aren't strong enough to take it.
And that's okay.
Not everybody's strong enough.
If we all were, there'd probably be bigger problems happening.
Right.
So, like, my whole point here is not to say that these people are sissies.
My whole point is that it's not for everybody.
Not everyone can handle it.
Not everyone's strong enough.
But that's all right.
Not everyone's supposed to be strong enough.
The question becomes what do we do about it?
Because it's a problem now.
Maybe it's irrelevant that people aren't strong enough because it is a problem.
And we need to come up with a solution or at least a way to make things better.
The system is not set up.
For whatever reason, I believe that there's small steps to make it better, but it's a very slow process to change these types of things.
But the system isn't set up to treat families, the system is set up to treat the veteran.
And there's really good systems in place, there's really good organizations, there's really good foundations, and all these things for veterans to get the help that they need.
Now, comparatively, there are also systems in place and organizations and foundations and things in place for military families.
The problem is that they're not always taken very seriously.
They're usually massively underfunded.
The volunteer pool is not as large.
There's a lot of things working against it.
But I'll tell you what, the people that are out there trying to fight this battle are relentless.
The issue is just that there's not enough of it, and it's not being screamed loud enough or often enough for it to gain enough traction, apparently.
So, what do we do?
What do we do?
How do we spread the word?
And I think that's an easy question to answer.
We keep talking about it.
But we talk about it more often.
When and if you have discussions with other people about military issues, military problems, problems that military people have, hopefully you can do, you can remember to also enter into that conversation the families, the kids, the spouses.
They deserve to be helped out too, especially the kids because they didn't ask for it.
And some of those kids, man, they're so courageous because they'll do just like dad.
And they'll stand up in front of everybody, they'll be recognized with a stone face.
And they'll just shake their head, thank you.
They'll shake hands.
They'll give a state whatever.
And they're not going to complain.
Because that's what they've learned.
This is the structure, is what's taught within the confines of the structure that they've been raised in.
And I believe that also no one talks about this stuff because of the stigma.
Very common in military culture are all these negative stigmas around mental health, around physical injuries, around a lot of things.
And why?
Well, because when you were in the service, these are things.
That would disqualify you.
These were also sometimes things that would happen, and other people deal with pain or whatever differently, and they're able to keep working.
Some people aren't.
Some folks just aren't able to strap up their boots and fucking tough it out.
I don't necessarily agree with it, but it seems to be that that's the way it is.
Do we hold it against those people?
I don't think so.
I don't think you hold it against anybody.
I think you just shut the hell up and put your head down and do your job.
Maybe that's a prime example of what I'm talking about.
There's a stigma about complaining, there's a stigma about asking for help, there's a stigma about being labeled damaged goods or whatever you want to call it.
So, folks just don't talk about it.
They don't talk about it until it's too late.
By the time folks get to talking about it, sometimes they're at the point of no return.
Breaking the Silence00:11:55
And then we know how that turns out.
And it was many years ago that I can recall sitting in a briefing when I was still in the Army.
And it was a briefing around asking for help.
Usually in the National Guard here in Minnesota, usually December is death by PowerPoint month.
So your December drill usually was like a day and a half of sitting down and listening to somebody in a monotone voice read a PowerPoint presentation to you.
And it was required mandatory training.
So that's when we got our cultural awareness briefings and we got our suicide awareness briefings.
We got our resiliency training done for the month.
You get talked to about service member life insurance.
I mean, there's just a ton of mandatory things that the Army said every year you will be informed of this.
And it was probably because if there's things out there and people don't know, And then they find out later they could have got it.
Then they raise a big stink.
And then everyone's all up in arms.
And I'm sure that there's enough things going on.
So I'm sure they just don't want to deal with that shit.
So they say, you're going to see this every year, at least once.
And so these were the times when we would have these discussions about, like I said, suicide awareness.
And I remember one specific December.
One of the people in our unit rose their hand and asked, Is there anything for our family members?
Now, this person had said, I know a soldier who has a family member that's really struggling.
I believe that it was this person and it was their family member, but I get why the.
The go around the block to go across the street presentation.
I get it.
You don't want to admit it.
And that, there again, that's the stigma that we're talking about.
And the response was, well, you know, there's a couple places that say, but we don't really have all that information.
If you'd like, we can maybe give it to you.
And I remember thinking, well, wait a minute, why isn't this part of the presentation?
And the reason why it stuck out to me was because at that time in my life, I had gotten divorced.
I was in a pretty rough situation mentally.
I had to swallow my pride and move back into my mother's basement until I could figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.
And my son, I felt, was struggling.
I thought he was having a tough time with it all, going back and forth from house to house.
I believe he probably would hear his mother and I arguing on the phone when we would.
It happened pretty often back then because we were freshly split up, and there was a lot of deception, and there was a lot of.
Fucked up things that went on while I was in Iraq.
And so I'm sure that he heard those things also.
Even though he was very young when we, I mean, he wasn't older than three years old.
But I believe that this was really affecting him.
And it seemed that there was a lot of things going through his mind.
And the one thing about my boy that I have a hard time dealing with sometimes is that.
He is like Fort Knox.
If something is bothering him, he will absolutely not talk about it, at least with me.
And so that's something that I really plan to work on in our relationship.
But he had said to me at one point when we were having that screaming match that I had mentioned earlier in the show that.
I'd left him.
I'd left him.
I got on a plane.
I went halfway across the world and put myself in a situation to be killed at any time.
And, like, I get, I understand where he's coming from.
But it was hard to hear because my intentions for serving.
We're always good.
We're always pure.
And once he came along, I always thought, well, I'm going to continue to do this so that our family is good.
That was my thought process.
If I do this as long as possible, no one in my family, none of my kids, will ever have to feel like they need to.
To serve as a way to contribute.
If they decide to serve because that's what they want to do, great.
But I didn't ever want them to have a feeling that this was their duty as a member of this family or as an American citizen.
I wanted them to believe that I did it for long enough, I sacrificed enough that they don't have to.
Do something better.
Go do something better.
Be more successful, make more money, make more of an impact, and build a bigger legacy.
You don't have to do this.
That was genuinely part of the reason I stayed for so long.
My goal was to get to 23 to 20, between 23 and 25 years, while I was medically retired at 18 years and 10 months.
And so I feel like I gave it my best shot.
I stuck in there as long as I could.
I produced, I contributed to the organization in which I belonged at any given time.
As well as I could.
I worked as hard as I could and I provided as much value to the team as I possibly could.
Now, full clarity, there probably were a few times where I was like, man, fuck this.
But majority of the time, I was in it.
Right?
I mean, we all have those days where we're like, man, I'm just not feeling this today.
And in the military, sometimes it can happen often if the conditions are real shitty.
But I didn't want them to ever feel like they had to.
So, family suicide is a huge problem, in my opinion.
It should be talked about a lot more.
This is something that I am going to follow a little closer.
Hopefully, there is going to be more research.
Hopefully, there is going to be more conversations about this topic.
And hopefully, there will be some real serious.
Places for these spouses and these kids to go to be able to talk to somebody, work through this, whatever it is that it's going to take.
Because at the end of the day, if the families of the men and women who stand a post to provide us with this proverbial blanket of freedom that we talk about, they're not going to be effective at their job if their family is suffering.
They're not going to be focused.
They're not going to be in it.
They're not going to be thinking about what they have to do to complete the mission and get home to their family like they should be when they're worried about their kids and their wives or their husbands.
And I don't know as a country if we can afford to let this get a whole lot worse because what this is going to do is cause people to not stay in.
It's going to cause people not to want to join because as this gets talked about more, there's going to be yet another stigma that the United States military needs to battle.
And I don't know that we need any more stigmas to battle.
I don't know that we need anything else to battle.
I think we got enough battles in front of us.
And I think we need to complete those and build ourselves back up and be ready for the next threat when and if it arrives.
But we as a country need to focus on taking better care of the families that support these men and women.
Because without them and the support structure they provide to our warriors, our warriors can't be effective.
Not as effective as they could be if they knew everything was good at home.
So take that for what it's worth.
If you have any comments or you want to call me a dipshit or whatever, Put them in the comment section below.
I really appreciate you being here.
That's all the time we have for this week.
We'll see you next time, folks.
Take care of yourselves.
Good night.
As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over, and instead we're just sending them money, and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the side of Israel, look at the side of Televaven, look at the side of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going, you tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle.
Fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and to take away my god?
Go yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign state, you've got dual citizens in your government.
Who do you think they're supporting god right now?
Would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say we stand with them?
You go to Trump's cabinet, you go to Biden's cabinet, it's full of Jews.
Controversial Religious Views00:02:18
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible it says that you're like animals.
The Jews crucified our God.
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