Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 18 - Thoughts on 9/11

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Today's episode focuses on 9/11, the impact it had on my personal life as well as the United States. My thoughts on where we are now, where I am concerned we are heading, the foundation of our rights and freedoms, and how incredibly fortunate we are.

Ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Well, before we go, I got ahead of myself in the first five seconds of the podcast, before we get started, people have been to email me asking me about when I'm going to replenish the shirts. The answer is they are replenished right now. Four new shirt colors and colorways, clearedhotpodcast.com. Click on the shop tab, and you will arrive at the store and go to town. One of them is very limited in numbers because there was an issue with the blank. So I am making more, and that happens to be the one that is printed with the reflective ink, which looks awesome.

It actually looks even better in person. And I'll leave it at that. If you want to support the podcast, and literally, well, I guess it would be figuratively because it's not a flag. If you want to fly the flag and help me promote the show, like I said, go get a T-shirt, wear it around. And when people ask you what cleared hot is, yeah, make something up. sound good. Make it sound better than it is, which shouldn't be that hard. And on that note, let's get into this. Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, here we are round 17 of Fall Auto Friday. Today is September 11th,

2020. A day, not this day particularly, but September 11th has a huge meaning in my life. It changed the trajectory of my life and many other people's lives. And I received an email actually yesterday on the topic of 9-11. So I'm going to read the email because it has some questions at the end. And then I think today I'm just going to dedicate this episode to my thoughts on September 11th. And what it has meant to me, hopefully what it has meant to other people, and where I think we should go from here. The email reads, my birthday is 9-11. It was a horrible birthday that year. My brother lived in New York City at that time and worked in Manhattan. As so many others, I was

extremely worried about his safety. Fortunately, he was nowhere near ground zero and safe. That can't be said for so many others that were in the towers and responded to try and help those that were trapped. It was horrible to watch and even more horrible for so many families that lost loved ones that day or there soon after. It still makes me extremely sad thinking about it so many years later. Ever since then, I have tried to do something fun for my birthday. Most of the time I have succeeded, but this year I've been thinking, as most people have, about rights and freedoms. With all of the protests, riots, politics, and other bullshit, it's hard to have a clear perspective at time. I was listening to a podcast the other day featuring Kevin Owen. He's an American

citizen that grew up in Northern Ireland, served in the Irish Army, came to America, and joined the American Army, and became a citizen. He spoke of growing up in Northern Ireland. They had to hunt to put food on their table. Fortunately, his father already had a shotgun and a 22. Apparently, you had to apply for a permit to own a firearm there. When Kevin's brother went to apply, he had to go to the local police station. The police chief just looked at him and said, no. That story made me think of how extremely lucky we are in the United States of America to have the freedoms we have, and how extremely lucky we are to have the ability to vote for change, to speak freely about what we believe, worship freely, the God that we choose, and the opportunity to have a better life.

So to my question, you have traveled widely. Can you speak to the lack of freedoms in other countries or what people in other countries experience, voting rights, women's rights, hatred of one tribe towards the other, exploration. I just think as a country, we need a reminder of how good we have it. And also that because of that, we can work to make it better for all because so many people around the world do not have that opportunity. Thanks, Tom. in most days when I do these episodes where it's Q&A,

I screenshot the question and I just throw it on my laptop and I read it and I'll give my answer based off just the top of my head. Today, though, I felt it was deserving to take the time to sit down and write some notes out. Not that the other questions aren't deserving, but I just think in that format I can kind of rapid fire. Like I said, 9-11 had a huge impact on my life. So Tom, I'm going to do the best I can to answer your question and explain what this day means to me and what it has meant on the anniversary every year for the last 19 years.

And I have to start with the realization that I no longer recognized the person that I was when I was 23 years old. That is how old I was when I watched the second airplane go live into the World Trade Center. And at that moment in my life and at that phase in my life, I was relatively certain. that I had just about everything dialed in. If you had a question, I had an answer, and I was pretty sure that my answer was correct. Looking back, I realize now that I didn't have anything dialed, and I don't think that that's abnormal. But I guess more than anything, perhaps that is a realization of how far I have come since that time. And thinking about this today, it's hard for me to fathom that 19 years have passed since that day because it doesn't feel like that.

And I realized that for the first time, somebody born after 9-11 is actually going to have the chance to vote in the upcoming presidential election. And I suspect that their view of 9-11, because they grew up in the years past it, they didn't have to live through it as an adult or feel the impact on their life, I suspect that their view of 9-11 may be very very very, different from my own. And I don't say that from a matter of a judgment. One is right or wrong. But I was just thinking about 9-11 quite a bit today. And that realization just struck me. It's like, holy shit. People now are a voting age and will have a hand on the wheel to navigate our country towards wherever it is we may land. And they weren't even alive. It was crazy for me. But I digress. I've said this before. And maybe I've said it too much. But I would never wish another 9-11 on this country.

But I do miss the country that we behaved like on 9-12 and in the days after. I feel like that 9-11, for a short period of time, it did bring us together. And I feel like it connected people. And I feel like it united us. And I also feel like it faded very, very quickly. And perhaps that is our destiny as a country. Perhaps that is the way that it is, a catastrophic event that we are able to move forward or pass rapidly. I don't know. But I look around at what's happening and the things that people are saying, and it makes no sense to me.

And perhaps that is also just the way it is in this experiment that we call the United States of America. I think most people would prefer it to be a straight road. Perhaps the problem being they want that road pointed only in the direction of their personal beliefs or desires. but I don't think that's what it is. And I don't think it was designed to be like that. I think it's a pendulum and I think it has to find its own center. And perhaps that is what's going on right now. I'm not sure. But what I am sure of and what I can agree with wholeheartedly from the email that I received

is that we do have it, we have it good. And that's an understatement. And perhaps we have it far too good. in the recent months I have watched people rioting in Patagonia jackets while they're filming with $1,000 smartphones

and I listen to people who are standing in line to get their coffee where they're paying more per ounce a fluid ounce of coffee than they do for gasoline while discussing how bad they have it and I've listened to quite a few people disparage the police and everything that they stand for

and then complain when it takes the police too long to arrive when they call for help. If you were born in the United States of America, and this may be tough for people to hear, you're not oppressed. Sorry, what you are is surrounded by opportunity. They both start with a no, but they mean very, very different things. We are surrounded by, in this country, rights and freedoms, and those rights and freedoms are amazing.

but in my opinion, they come with an additional obligation that I do not hear people talking about very much, and that is responsibility. The rights and freedoms that we have, they apply to us all equally, not just you, the person listening, or just to me, the individual. And the application of those rights and freedoms have nothing to do with your personal depth of belief on any given topic. The depth of belief that you have does not in any way, shape, or form remove or outweigh somebody else's belief, regardless of how much it turns your stomach. This goes right to freedom of speech. Again, this is my opinion, but this is what I believe freedom of speech to stand for. Freedom of speech is not about what you want to yell at the top of your lungs. Freedom of speech is about allowing somebody else to voice their belief, regardless of how much that you disagree.

with them. And cancel culture and shouting people down in suppressing free speech, that is all part of the problem that we are navigating our way through. Violent expression of frustration and anger or a desire to burn the existing system to the ground with no framework or no desire or plan to rebuild it, it is not a solution. It's part of the problem. If we are irresponsible with the rights and freedoms that we have, that we are so incredibly fortunate to be born into because nobody alive today provided us those freedoms. If you're born in the United States, you were born into an environment where they already existed. The founding fathers laid out the framework for this nation.

Were they perfecting and doing so? Absolutely not, which is guess what? Why we can amend it as we again navigate through what we're dealing with. But if you are born in the United States of America, you are so incredibly fortunate to have these rights and freedoms. But if you are irresponsible with them, it is my worry. that in the long run we might actually lose them. So my question to people, I have, I guess, a few questions and then perhaps a few statements, but my question to people, and this is based off of what I see with my own eyes and what I

read, I guess it would be, and then I hear with my own ears, when it comes to rights and freedoms or just your belief in who you are and what this country stands for, how much are you willing to give up to be right. Think about that for a second, please. How much are you willing to give up to be right? And what I mean by that is, are you willing to lose friends to pit yourself against your neighbor and alienate yourself from the people that you live next to?

Are you willing to lose family members and the desire to be right? And I asked that question because if this is a pendulum that we are on, and I don't care if you think it's on the left or the right, but it's swinging as it comes back towards center. And let's say it lands in a place where you were correct, right? Everything that you believe in, you were correct. When you wake up tomorrow, whenever that position is achieved of being correct, when you wake up the next day, your neighbors are still going to be there. And the friends that you lost, they're still going to be around as well. and your family is still going to be your family. Why do they need to be your enemy? Is it worth giving up all of that to be told that you were right?

Are your personal beliefs that important? And I can't answer that question for anybody. I can only answer them for myself. And to me, my friends, my community, and my family, they outweigh my desire to shout somebody's beliefs down or just shout their ideas down. They mean so much more to me than to stand up and say, I am right and everybody else is wrong.

And there's another very interesting thing that I'm seeing, and I've had sent my way a few times in the past few weeks. But I think it's very applicable to when we think about 9-11 or our country as a whole. I've received a few emails and messages that are essentially titled, Your President, and somebody will lay out to me their beliefs and then tell me how my president, or literally use the words, your president is the cause of these issues.

And I would like to believe that I have been pretty open on how I feel about politics in general, right? In my opinion, just to be clear, is that both the left and right is basically like choosing which SDD do you want. Do you want gonorrhea or syphilis? That's what I think of when I think of our political system. I am not stoked by either of the choices. But when it comes to the President of the United States, if you are a citizen of the United States of America, guess what? The elected president is your president. And if you refuse to accept that, I have a few more questions for you. If you're the person who sends these emails that says, you know, this, that, or the other, and it's your president's fault, I have some questions. So the individual is sending those things or talking this way because I see it often. Question one, do you believe in the Constitution of the United States? Do you want to be a the protections, freedoms, and rights of that Constitution. Do your kids attend K through 12, paid for school, you know, through tax dollars?

Do you, as an individual, want somebody to answer, let alone respond when you call 911 if your house is on fire or there's a burglary? Do you utilize roadways, public spaces, and national parks? And if the answer to all of those questions is yes, which I have to assume it would be, but you use the term you're in regards to the current president, you're part of the problem. not the solution. You're driving the problem, in my opinion. Because my issue with this is simple. If you would have believed in the system had Hillary Clinton won, but you chose or choose to throw that system into the garbage can now because the outcome did not match your personal desires or belief,

again, you're part of the problem. And before you scream at your phone or write me an email and saying, well, she won the popular vote. Yeah, I get it. But that's not how we elect president. is it? These sentiments and this behavior, it's part of the problem. It's driving us farther apart, and I don't have a solution to it by any stretch of the imagination, but I hate seeing it going on. Okay, digression. Sorry, back to the email. When you ask me to talk about how fortunate we are, I would be more than happy to take people on a short tour of some of the places that I have been that are outside of the first world. And I think it would be shocking to most people. I would love to show people families that drink the same water that they bathe and shit in.

Because I have personally watched entire families do exactly this. Oh, and they also did laundry. I would love to take people to villages where each house, if they're lucky, has a single light bulb that is powered by a car battery. And if they're not lucky, they have candlelight. They're centuries in the past. I would like to take people to places where free speech will likely cost you your life. I would like to take people to places where sexuality might get you thrown off the roof of a building. Or where being from the wrong tribe is going to get you put on your knees on a street corner, but you're not going to be there long because you're going to get your fucking head cut off.

And if you don't believe that happens, I could show you pictures of literal, corners of streets stained red. I would like to take people to places where families survive on less food per day than the average American will sweep into the garbage can after a single meal, where women are forbidden from education, where mobs are met with automatic weapons fire and not tear gas and non-lethal rubber bullets. Imagine for a second in any one of those things that I laid out. How much do you think that people who live in those environments would trade to be with you right now, even in the condition that our country seems to be in?

Now, that doesn't mean that we are perfect, and I am not trying to make a value judgment of one area over the other. What I'm trying to show is that we are so incredibly, ridiculously won the lottery, got struck by lightning twice to live where we live and to have what we have. It doesn't mean that we are perfect, and I don't think that we are ever going to be, but I also don't think that means that we should stop trying. And trying, to me, doesn't mean burning the ship to the ground on the shore. So to go back to 9-11, it changed my life forever. And looking back on it, there's no, if you had asked me to sit down and write what I thought my life would be like post-9-11, I would have been wrong on most things. and I probably would have been the most wrong on things that having to do with my personal life. I've been relatively close when it came to the military actions that we were going to take.

But it had such a deep impact on my personal life and what it is that I think of myself as a man and as a human being. And right now, well, in addition to that, it did change the trajectory of our nation as well. And right now, I feel like we are as far from 9-12 and the days after as possible. And I don't know what it would take or if it is possible to, get us back there. But I do believe that the answer to at least writing that a little bit or navigating back towards that is founded in, is rooted in individual accountability and responsibility. It starts with each and every one of us. That's where we have to begin change. And before somebody yells at their radio or sends me an email that says, well, what about Donald Trump? Please do me

a favor, a super small favor, to shut the fuck up. The mechanism for that change exists. Use it. It's coming up in two months. And in the meantime, get yourself and your own house in order before pointing fingers at other people. And I'll close with this. And ask to the listeners or people who view the podcast on YouTube. I would like for you to allocate 10 minutes of your day. You're going to need 10 minutes of your day and a piece of paper and a writing utensil. And I would like for you to take the first five minutes

and write down, well, first think about, but then write down the three things that you are the most thankful for. The three top things. There's no right or wrong answers, but for you as an individual, the things that you value the most. And then take the next five.

minutes to think about everything that has to exist, everything that is required, and how fortunate we are to live in a place where those three things are even possible. Because the vast majority of the world likely doesn't even have the opportunity to achieve the three things that you just wrote down. And everyone who, and this is where it, 9-11, I think has a deeper meaning. I'm not going to say I'm not going to say 9-11 has a deeper meaning to me because it doesn't and it shouldn't. It is very meaningful to me, but I'm not going to say it has a deeper meaning to me than anybody else. But I do think that, and I know that everybody who died on 9-11 and everyone who has died since then, preserving our rights and freedoms, they're never going to have the chance to value the things that most of us take for granted every single day to include those three things that you just wrote down.

And I personally believe that we can be better than this. I'm embarrassed by how Americans are behaving right now. We can be better than this. But it starts with each and every one of us as an individual. And if you can't accept that, then we're on the slow path to hell. And I'll close with that. I hope that today is meaningful to everybody. And then I hope that you enjoy your weekend.

Until next time.