Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 27

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Full Auto Friday is a rapid-fire Q and A format where I answer questions from the listeners.  Each question is limited to a five-minute answer, topics will vary.  1. Hazing for new Officers 2. Concerns for a high-risk medical provider still seeing Covid-19 patients.  3. My plans for 2021 4. Military force against rioters 5. How do I get my kids to take guns seriously 6. Social Media and the SEAL Teams.  Enjoy

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Before we get going, this episode of Fall Out of Friday is brought to you by On It. I think they are the longest running sponsor of the podcast. And I like them so much because I was using them for a very long time before they ever approached me for any sponsorship type stuff. On It is your one-stop landing page for total human optimization. Onit.com slash Hot is where you want to go. You're going to know you're in the right spot because, well, front and center is the podcast artwork. Directly underneath that, it says total human optimization. But above it, supplements, nutrition, fitness apparel, sale and more, and then content. And if you have some time, explore each of those categories. The main landing page for, well, actually three products and then one category that I use. The alpha brain.

Not the alpha brain. It's just alpha brain. is a neutropic that helps you with memory, focus, and processing speed. People ask me often, does this actually work? The answer is, yes, it does. Next, Power Food Active, if you're busy, not that I'm, like, incredibly busy, but I will like to supplement protein throughout the day. So why not add micronutrients to support your body?

Power food at its finest. Fitness categories where you can go to find all of your equipment needs. And then the bottom one is total gut health. my, well, I should say it's probably diet-driven, but sometimes I'll have some issues with my stomach. I actually just got off of a series of antibiotics, and I took this to help my tummy, some digestive enzymes, prebiotics, probiotics, and Batinehci. Onit.com forward slash hot. That's it. Let's dig into the episode. You guys know the format.

Rapid Fire Q&A do my best to limit myself to five minutes per answer. Otherwise, I'll ramble like a son of a bitch. Question one is a four-part question. I do not know if I'm going to answer all four. But it comes from Alexander. Number one, do Seal Mustang Junior Officers, O1E, O2E? So I'm going to interrupt here already. retired is an O3E, which is a lieutenant, the E means prior enlisted service. So do O1E, O2E, do they still get

hazed like junior seal officers with no prior enlisted experience? No, they do not. There is no, well, you go back to the bottom of the rink ladder, but there is no hazing that's going to occur. Most people, if you're going to become a Mustang, you're going to hit it probably about the 8, 10, 12 year mark. If you're going to have somebody haze you or remediate you for your behavior, positive or negative, it's likely happened at that point in your career already. So no, there's not going to be any hazing. Question number two, and it says, more serious question. I am stuck in a vexing conundrum.

Hmm, tell me more. My fiancé's father is a practicing family physician, but he is also easily in the category of at-risk COVID population. My fiancé is correctly very nervous and upset that he continues to see patients despite the great physical danger to himself. My fiancé is seeking my assistance in taking or talking her father out of practicing medicine. I'm requesting your thoughts, not even advice unless you have some, on how to support my fiance's desire to protect and keep her father safe, while explaining that her father is exactly the kind of person that the country is relying on during the pandemic.

To me, this is somewhat akin to how my parents must have felt when I joined the Marines and deployed, now that the rules are somewhat reversed, this has caught me off guard. I served as a Marine officer in an infantry company, forward observer, tactical air controller during the GWAT, Global War on Terror. And I'm proud of the work I did, but I never really thought about how concerned my family was about me or what I must have put them through. For context, I feel like this pandemic is the time for healthcare workers to shine, just like every combat arms servicemen throughout the Global War on Terror was their calling.

I love and respect my future father-in-law. I see the same determination in his eyes to treat his patients as I did to fight overseas, and I respect the hell out of him for still seeing patients every day. While at his age and with his health risks, badass obviously comes in many forms. How can I reconcile a proud physician answering his true calling with my soon-to-be wife's legitimate concern of losing her own father? Man, Alexander, that's a tough one. But I like how you laid it out because I do see a lot of parallels in what you said. And I totally agree with you. Right now, this is the time for physicians, medical workers,

healthcare workers, front line, and all of those things to shine. Not that they don't shine every other day, but obviously right now our country and the population, they need them the most. I think the biggest piece of advice I would give you is be there to listen to your fiancé and do exactly that. and perhaps don't say anything back to start with. Because your fiancé, obviously she's concerned about her father, just like your family was concerned about you overseas. But here's the biggest reality. Your future father-in-law, he's a physician. He probably more so than you and your future fiance understands the risks of COVID-19. If he is in a high-risk category, I assure you that he realizes and recognizes that because he's a medical professional.

He's probably spending his day in and day out navigating through the trenches of COVID-19. And just like you felt the military was your calling, I assure you that her father feels like treating patients is his calling. And I'm not a doctor, so this is a total assumption on my part, but he probably feels more of a sense of purpose and meaning right now. then when he did in portions of his career where perhaps he didn't feel necessarily as needed, because like you opened with, we need these people. So I don't think that there's anything that your future wife is going to say to her dad that is going to change his mind. He's educated. He's making decisions with that education in mind, and he's prioritizing the health, wellness, and safety of others over himself. And I cannot think.

of anything more honorable than doing exactly that. Does it make it easier for your future wife? No. It absolutely does not. So you need to be there for her, be a sounding board for her. But if there's going to be a conversation between her and her dad, I would stay out of it. I would allow them to have that conversation because that is one where if you agree with the woman who's going to be your wife and you interject yourself, you might deal with some resentment from your father-in-law. If you agree with your father-in-law and interject yourself into that situation, you might deal with some resentment from your future wife. So I think the best thing that you can do is to be there to be a sounding board. And she may need it.

If he is high risk and he is exposed and he doesn't make his way through it, you are absolutely going to be a pillar and foundation for her going through that time period. And that's the best that you can do. Be there to be supportive, but try not to steer the ship. Listen, absorb it. If she gets frustrated and angry, realize it's not you, realize that she is concerned, she's worried about her dad. But at the end of the day, her dad is the one who's going to have to make that decision. And that decision should, and I believe must rest with him.

So hopefully that helps. Number three, if my topics are selected for the podcast, will I know that it will be featured in advance? No, you will not. You are going to find out that this is featured when you listen to it. And then number four, on a lighter note, as a fellow bow hunter, I just shot a typical white tail, 16 point buck with over 190 inches of horned on Saturday. I would attach a picture if I could. Well, what the fuck, man? You sent an email, but you didn't attach a picture. So I don't know why you didn't. A 190 inches. I have no idea what that means. I measure my dears

by hands and I like to shoot a six or seven hand deer. And most elk that I like to shoot 13, 14 hands. Next. So ABC News. Just reported this morning that Trump is replacing a number of people at the Pentagon. The focus of this was to put people in place that would authorize military force against rioters. Please do your own research on this to see if this is accurate. But if so, it seems pretty alarming to me on many levels. If you choose to use this, what are your thoughts, Tom? Well, Tom, let me be totally honest with you. I did absolutely no research on this. And the reason I didn't is replacing people at the Pentagon is not where you would actually need to replace people that would authorize military force

against rioters. So what I want you to do, Tom, is look up Passi Comitatis, which essentially and broadly, I'm not going to give the most precise definition here, precisely and imprecisely, my God, it's early and I haven't had enough coffee. Pasicometatis prevents the military from being used in a law enforcement capacity here in the United States. So even if you switch people around at the Pentagon, that does not lift the obligation to Passicomatatus. There are and should be state, federal, local organizations that are tasked with dealing with rioters. And I've said this before, and my opinion holds to this day, it is the state and federal, I'm sorry, yeah, the state and federal government are failing people by not stopping these riots. They're failing business owners and they're failing people in their communities.

Law enforcement should be empowered and authorized to stop these riots. If an elected official in the city that oversees that law enforcement is not allowing them to do so or execute the roles and responsibilities of their occupation, in my opinion, it is that individual that is failing the civilian populace. And that should be addressed. There is no role for the United States military in quelling rioters inside of the United States. We have more than enough state and federal organizations absent the Department of Defense to handle these things. So I'm not worried about people being shifted around inside of the Pentagon. What I'd be worried about is where you get your news. So double-check that news source to see if it's even remotely accurate.

And then two, look up passacometatus. And if you still have any other questions, shoot me another email. Crushing this. That's too down and I don't know. Actually, I'm not even keeping track how much time. Number three comes from Matt. Hey, Andy, nobody asks, how are you doing through everything that 2020 has thrown at us? And what does the next year look like for Andy Stumpf?

This year has been a javelin missile to the face, question mark. I wouldn't call this year a javelin missile to the face because that, let me tell you from firsthand experience, watching that is fucking awesome. And it's like instantly catastrophic. I would describe 2020 is the year of a thousand. paper cuts where you think you're getting a little bit better and then you get a little bit a nick and then another nick and another nick and another nick and it's those small nicks in the aggregate that are that are building up and I think finally well I guess in that analogy be putting

people to sleep due to blood loss but overwhelming people and just pushing people to their breaking point so I describe it as a dumpster fire that started as a small slow rolling smolder and now if flames are jumping out of that thing and I have no idea when that's going to stop, or if somebody's just going to close the lid on it and let it burn itself out, or we're going to get a big old fire truck and hose it down. But how am I doing throughout 2020? It's been an interesting year. I'm still trying to navigate my way through a divorce, which has been challenging enough

as it is absent slow court processes during the pandemic. In one hand, it's been great because my kids are doing remote school, so I'm able to spend larger chunks with time than I would in the normal parenting agreement where I would have every other weekend. So that's been very nice. However, I only have about five weeks of that left, and then they are going back to in-person school. A vast majority of my income has been shut down due to the fact I can't do any public speaking. And that was, of all the things that I do, that's probably the most lucrative that I do. There's been some opportunity to do things digitally. I don't really like it because there's a lot lost in translation. And I hope that it will

come back. I'm not sure that it will. So that's been an interesting challenge of trying to reprioritize and reallocate and really plan for an unknown and uncertain future. But all and all, I'm healthy. I am surrounded by people that are supportive of myself and what it is that I'm doing. And I'm happy. So all in all, 2020 has been going, okay. I wouldn't say that I'm thriving, but I'm certainly doing better than a lot of people that I see. so I have absolutely nothing to complain about. 2021. What's it going to look like?

I don't know. Fuck, I think about this a lot. Everybody says, well, you know, things have to go back to normal. And I think they will go back to normal, the question being, what does normal actually look like in the future? So I mentioned public speaking. I think that that will come back, but I also think that large organizations are seeing the utility of not having everybody in the same place.

and they're seeing how effective and efficient people can be when they are off working remotely. And, you know, if I was a large organization and didn't have to pay a monthly nut of a massive rent bill or a mortgage payment on the building that they own, I would probably consider that. So I think some will continue with their disaggregate workforce. Others will come back. So I think that the public speaking will return to a degree. The podcast, which people are either listening to or watching, and I cannot thank you enough for the support, whether it be just listening or telling people about it or sharing it or buying the

t-shirts like the one I'm wearing right now. I can't thank all of you enough for all of those things. It's continuing to grow. And my goal for 2021 with the podcast is to continue to not necessarily try to grow it. My commitment to myself is to continue to explore ideas that I may be uncomfortable with and to try to reach out people to people that, A, I think I have no ability to actually access, meaning it's a difficult way to connect communication-wise, or B, that I don't necessarily agree with. So I'm going to try to challenge myself and continue to explore my own thought process, my own ideas, and my own feelings and beliefs on the podcast side of the house. And then I hope that in 2021, the divorce is final. So not only myself, but the other side of the

coin can move on, can move forward and seek a happier and healthier life. So that's really kind of it for 2021. I'm just going to keep doing the things that I do. I'm going to try to get out and actually bow hunt in 2021. Jacked up my arm this year. So I wasn't able to do that, but I am rifle hunting. So standby animals, it's really not good or in your favor, right? If I'm if this was the hunger games, the odds are not in your favor if you are a four-legged critter and I get a rifle, but it is what it is. Next year, I'll go back to my darts flying at about 400 feet per second. And that's it. I hope I don't even, I'm going to rambling. I hope I actually even answered your question, Matt. Moving on. This one comes from Bill.

My nephew is 15 years old and his buddies seem to be romanticizing guns. I'm all for him learning properly and understanding that it is a tool. My issue is that I'm seeing that kids truly have no idea what it means to own, operate, own or operate a gun and what could go wrong. I don't think most kids understand the severity of what could happen. Could you address this and how it's not cool to post a pick of your AR-15 with my cold dead hands? I'm assuming that means come take it from my cold dead hands.

Thanks. So again, this is from Bill. Yeah, this is an interesting one. First off, I don't have any issue with people posting pictures of an AR-15. And if they want to express themselves and say, come take it from my cold dead hands, that's their choice. You know, they have First Amendment right to expression, Second Amendment right to gun ownership. And I've said this before. I don't care if people don't support the Second Amendment or choose not to own firearms.

That's a personal choice. And I don't care if they choose to vehemently support it and buy up all the guns and everything in between. My biggest thing is I want people to be responsible gun owners. And actually, for those of you, or for those, not those of you, but for those who do not agree with gun ownership, I think responsible gun ownership is something that spans both size of that. So if there's a line in the sand and on one side is, I don't want to own a gun, and on the other side is I want to own all the guns, I think both of those people standing with that line

in between them agree that responsible gun ownership is a good thing, whether you believe in owning guns or not. So if people are going to post a picture with an AR-15, I have no problem with that. As long as they're not pointing it at something, you know, the five basic firearm rules. Don't point it at something you don't intend to kill. Treat it like it's loaded at all times. Never put your finger on the trigger. Always be aware of your backblast. You know, all of these things, not backblast, but backdrop. You know, you need to always be aware of these things. And if people want to highlight their love of the Second Amendment through pictures and they're responsibly portraying that, go to town. If you want to put on there, come take it from my cold dead hand.

I mean, I think it's kind of moronic, but whatever. You do you. To your question, Bill, the severity. And this is the thing when it came to my own children when I was talking to them about guns. It's hard to describe to a young person the severity of an accident with a firearm, meaning a one second mistake that can never be taken back and can have fatal consequences, either for themselves or for somebody else and for somebody else. And life-changing, life-altering. consequences. The key for me with my kids and what I tried to do is to not make guns a mythical thing. So I always told them that if they ever had questions or they ever wanted to hold a gun, I would allow them to do so. And it was always under supervision. I always have them talk back to me and repeat to me, you know, how do you treat the weapon? Do you ever put your finger on the trigger? Do we ever point it at something that we don't intend to kill? And we go through all of these things. And when I first introduced the concept to guns to all three of my kids, they were very curious and they were very interested in them. And that faded rapidly the more exposure I

gave them to those weapons. Now, when I'm talking about this exposure, we weren't at a gun range because I wasn't at a place that was easily accessible for me to take them and to go shoot. So the first thing I tried to do is remove the mystique, but in, you know, the shiny object nature or the mysterious nature of the weapon. But in doing so, So I never once, and I still never remove the severity of the consequences when it comes to dealing with a firearm. So when I finally took him to a range, there's two theories on this. And my buddy Jason Gardner kind of changed my opinion on the second one because the theory that I was exposed to is, and the most common thing would probably be taking a 22 to a range, which is a very small caliber round.

you get there and you shoot it and you get used to a small controlled explosion in your hands. Now, Jason's theory was you can go the other way with that and you can go for a much larger caliber to reinforce the power and serious nature of what it is they're holding in their hands. So I'm not saying take them out there with a 50 cow and tell them to hold it two inches off their shoulders and pull the trigger. I'm not saying that, right? That would be idiotic. But if you take somebody to a gun range and their first exposure is largely a cap gun, a 22LR, and they think, you know, and they watch it hit a piece of paper and it's a really small hole and they think that, oh, okay, you know, that's not that big of a deal.

That could lead to potentially one thought process. The other one being, you know, you go take a 7mm, a 270, a 300 wind mag, and you let them pull the trigger on that thing and they feel the explosion. They hear the explosion. Obviously you have them wear ear pro, but they're still going to get a little bit of ringing. in their ears. They're going to see the hole that it makes. They're going to see the after effects of that. And I think that might potentially lead to a different thought process as well. So consider both. I went the route of the smaller caliber. And thinking back on it now, I wish I

would have gone the route of the larger caliber. But I went with the method that I was exposed and it worked out okay. And I think it worked out okay because I never stopped talking about safety, responsibility, and consequences when it comes to firearms. You know, these kids, You say they have no idea what it means to operate a gun and what can go wrong. I look at the video games my kids play. They're not, I mean, they're very different than the games that I used to play, but, you know, for me it was like contra, you know, up, up, down, down, left, right, left right, A, B, A, A, B, A, or B, A, A, A. If you know, you know. So that was like a 2D version of gun play online.

I look at my kids now and it's immersive first-person shooter. And honestly, my kids know more about the common weapon systems and the vernacular and what they're called than I do from playing fucking car. of duty. I was literally working in a gun safe yesterday with my middle son and he's talking about this optic and that flashlight and this gun and I was blown away by this knowledge. Every single bit of that came from call of duty. And in those worlds, you know, you can swing your weapon around wildly. You can go into a room and jump and do 360s and be on full auto and hit things and there's no consequence. And it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous mindset. If you don't realize the difference between that and a mistake in the real world.

So I think it starts with sitting down constantly and consistently if there's going to be firearms in play and having those conversations. And then being with them and shepherding them through that process of initial exposure to competence and then to currency. And then even with that, my kids, I feel are very competent with firearms. Again, I was working in Gun Save with my son yesterday. And I would hand him a pistol and he would go through, you know, removing the source, e-drop in the magazine, checking to make sure it was empty to make sure that the,

you know, he's pulling this slide back to make sure that it was empty. He's keeping his finger off the trigger. He's got good muzzle awareness. Every single time that he was doing that. That comes from conversations and then also me showing them and always handling weapons in that manner. So get involved with these kids. Don't let them romanticize the tool. And if you need to shock them or scare them, and this is a last-ditch effort, what I would say is the internet has some videos that highlights exactly that. I'm not talking about people killing themselves, but there are plenty of videos of AD accidental discharge and ND negligent discharge on the internet. Sit down with them, show them those things, and then talk with them about when that happens,

and that's the biggest issue. You pull the trigger, and it takes a quarter of a second, or less than that, obviously. But what happens after that can never be taken back and the kids have to understand that so hopefully that helped brian last question on your previous podcast with bill rapier you both discussed how bad how the bad media press books movies tv shows and people and people even possibly joining for the media fame and attention have done more harm than good for the seal teams and how it could negatively affect the teams for the future The thought of serving alongside someone, assuming they even make it through training, who is only there to get likes on Instagram, is frightening.

My question for you is, if someone were to come to you with the desire to join the SEAL teams, would you suggest to them they possibly look at joining other special operations units? Love the podcast, keep up the good work. This comes from Andrew. So let me be clear. I think, I can't speak for Bill, but I'll think for myself. I think what we were saying is the excess. exposure in the media can have a negative consequence on the community because it can sit in the

back of the mind of those who would either be making decisions in the military system or those who are trying to get or those who sit there for you know they're the deciding factor on mission approval they have a high level operation getting ready to come up and they're looking at two units and like well we pick this one we're probably going to have to deal with the books to come from it versus we pick this one and they're silent quiet professionals it's pretty easy to decision, assuming that their capabilities are equally matched. So I think that's what we were saying is that's the risk. I don't think somebody would make it through seal training just because they want to get likes on Instagram. It's just, it's extremely difficult and it's painful and it drives you

to your lowest points and then forces you to make decisions so your true character can come out. Would the desire to be InstaFamous allow you to suffer through that? I don't know, and I don't think so. But what I do think is in the generation of people coming up now, they've been living on Instagram for a very long period of time. So they may be there for the right reasons and then realize later. So those right reasons are what's going to get them through the program, but they still have a social media presence,

and they may feel that tug of exposing more and more and more of what they're doing operationally because it's probably very likely that when they expose those aspects of who they are and what they're doing, they're going to get a better engagement and a better response. I mean, that's the reality of what it is. I posted a couple, or I posted a picture of myself in my dress whites. So as physical proof that I actually have worn them once, the day that I got commissioned. And most of the time, when I will post a picture of myself from my old career in uniform, it gets more engagement. That's just the way that it is. So I can understand where they feel that tug from,

but it's a dangerous double-edged sword. If somebody were to come to me with the desire to join the seal teams, I would not try to talk them out of the seal community or try to talk them into another special operations unit. What I would do and what I continuously do, a double-edgedo, do-do, when people come to me and they talk about wanting to be a seal, if I have the time and I can sit down with them in person, what I ask them is, why is it that you, A, want to join the military and be specifically the SEAL community? And then I'll ask them, what is it that you think that you are going to get out of that career? Is it a sense of service, a sense of purpose? Do you feel like it's a calling? Is it something that you want to do for a short period of time, or is it something that you want to make a career out of? And there are no wrong answers to those questions. I asked them out of pure,

curiosity. And I don't ever try to talk people out of whatever it is that they want to do. I spent 17 years in the SEAL community, so all I try to do is explain to people what the community is and what they actually can likely expect. And what they actually and likely can expect is anything but what they have seen on TV or a screen of any kind of an iPad in front of me or a phone or a movie or a fucking IMAX screen. It's likely not going to be anything like that. And it's likely not going to be anything that they've read in a book. Because those are the highlight reels. And a lot of times those things are a combination of multiple people's careers, multiple deployments, multiple years. And that's great because they're highlighting some important things that have

been done historically, but it can also set an expectation of that's what your career is going to be, a constant never-ending barrage and bombardment of RPGs flying by and bullets whizzing by your head explosions. And if that's what you go into it for and you don't find that, which there was a 20-year time period post-Fietnam pre-9-11, even more than that, where guys didn't find that, if that's all you wanted, you're going to leave disappointed. So I try to prepare people for the likelihood, or not the likelihood, the reality of what the SEAL community will provide for them. And I always reinforce to people to make sure that they get what they need out of the military as well. The military will take their pound of flesh first, but you will have educational benefits,

the option for health benefits, vocational training, networking, the ability to get to know people in an industry or sector that you may want to work in after the military. And those are amazing and great things. And in the SEAL community, you'll probably have even more of those opportunities. So I tell people about that. And I just try to prepare them with as much information as possible so they can make whatever decision they feel like is right for them. because only they can make that decision.

And I would not try to talk anybody out of their dreams, just like my parents didn't try to talk me out of my dreams. They supported me. They tried to get me in front of people that could educate me about the process that I wanted to go through. The best way, in my opinion, that I can honor them is to do the same for everybody else. Social media is part of the world

that the SEAL community is dealing with, and the community has their own guidelines when it comes to that. So I don't need to say anything. other than good luck and take the long approach. That's basically what I tell people. Take the long-term approach. Instead of looking for excitement in every second of a day, focused on a well-rounded career where you are developing

and turning yourself into the best operator that you can possibly be and keep your eyes on the horizon just about equally as much as you're looking down at your feet. So short-term happiness and then long-term stress. strategy and happiness as well. And that's it. I hope everybody enjoys their weekend. See you all on Monday.