Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 62

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Rapid-fire Q and A submitted from the listeners! A variety of topics with a five-minute time cap per answer, sometimes. 1. I want to join the military but I feel like I have "missed the war," what should I do 2. How did you handle having female service members on target? Did it impact in a positive or negative way 3. I have lost all hope and empathy in the human race, how do I regain it 4. I have young children but I want to serve, but I also want to be there for my family Enjoy

What's up, everybody. It's Friday. Probably most people's favorite day of the week. I don't think it's my favorite day of the week, though. I think I like Saturday, because you're one day into a two-day weekend, assuming it's a two-day weekend. So you're not into the next week, but you're out of the one before. I don't know. Regardless, we have a Q&A today.

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I'm looking at danger close now. What's up, everybody? Good morning. You guys ready for a little Friday Q&A? Because I am four for today. I'm going to try to keep it short. And I think I say that more often than I realize and then I'll talk for like 40 minutes. My goal is not to do that because I also want to go and enjoy my weekend.

So let us begin. The subject line, war. in all caps. Full Auto Friday. All right, you had me. Hello, Andy. My name is redacted. I am a 19-year-old that lives in Ontario, Canada. I am currently in the final stages of my processing to join the Canadian Army as a combat engineer. After listening to Monday's episode with Kelsey Sharon, I can't help but feel that I missed out on the war. When she was my age, she was already serving her tour in Afghanistan in a combat trade. My question for you this week is, it's selfish to want to go to war, even after seeing the potential impact it can have on someone.

It's an interesting question, Mr. Redacted, which isn't his name, by the way. I almost said his name. Most of the time, just so people know, I prevent myself from making a mistake by cutting and pasting or taking a screen grab of the content of the email because I want to keep everybody anonymous. But this little son of a bitch put it right in the text of the email. So you almost had me, Mr. Redacted, but not today. Not today. Is it selfish to want to go to war? Even after seeing the potential impact it can have on someone? I would say it is selfish to go to war if you ignore the potential impact that it can have on others. If you only think about yourself and you are only viewing your decision or your decision to pursue, military and your desire to pursue a profession of arms and then go execute that profession in a

wartime capacity or in a war zone and you're only thinking about yourself and you're only focusing on your goals and maybe not the impact of your family or significant other, then yes, I would say that that is selfish because if your life touches other people, then the impact that war could potentially have on you. And I'm sure you've heard me say this before. If you touch war, it's going to touch you back in a variety of ways. And I actually don't always mean that. as a negative. I think there can be incredible personal growth from those experiences, but there is, of course, the chance that there could be some very negative. If you make an educated decision about what it is that you want to do and the potential consequences of that, I think that's okay.

I think it would be irresponsible to pursue this and not have an understanding of what could potentially happen, but it's not selfish as long as you're thinking beyond the scope of just your personal life. What I'll say to you, though, to go farther into that, because that's relatively, I mean, it's as succinct as I can get it. That's truly how I feel. If you think about only yourself, selfish, if you think about others in the potential impact, not selfish. But you had another point in your email that I want to address. And it came to you feeling that you potentially missed out. and I would caution you against the desire to test yourself in war or use that as the most important litmus test or barometer for success or failure in your life.

Be very careful what you are wishing for is what I will say to you. And there's probably a lot of people post-Vietnam pre-9-11 who were serving up until September 11th, 2001, who thought that they may have missed out as well. And I bring that up because you never know what the world is going to throw at us. I had been in the SEAL teams. Let's see, I went through Buds in 97,

so I'd already checked into SEAL Team 5 in 97. So I had been serving for close to five years in the military when 9-11 happened. Actually, I had been just over five years because I joined in August when 9-11 happened. And I had had thoughts about whether or not I was ever actually going to get to do anything with the training and education and the hundreds of hours, if not thousands of hours of training

evolutions that I had done up until that point. And then the world answered that question for me on September 11th. So September 10th, I don't think actually that day I was thinking about it too much, but probably in that time period right before then. And then, boom, the world made the decision for me. So I wouldn't necessarily worry about what you think you may have missed out on in the past, in the rear view mirror, because the reality is, the road that we are driving on at the world as we know it, we don't really know what's going to be presented with us. And there could be a semi-truck getting ready to come unrailed directly in front of us, and you might have to go through that or around it. So don't worry about whether or not

you've missed out on it. I would view your military career as an opportunity for you to continue to discover who you still are, to test yourself against the crucible of military service, especially if you are going to pursue something it is a profession that is a combat facing profession. There's going to be plenty of tests along the way. You're going to get plenty of education, whether that be vocational or book knowledge or just a better understanding of the world in general as you travel. You'll be tested from a leadership perspective, probably not very much when you first start, but later on into your career. So even if you get to do nothing in your military service in terms of war or the execution of war,

There is so much that you can take from it that you will come out the other side of that journey, a completely different person, highly capable, hopefully very disciplined, and prepared to take on any challenges that the world may throw at you. What I'll say about war, people very often talk negatively about their experiences and war to include myself sometimes, but I try to at least balance that discussion with the positive things. have happened to me in my life that I found out about myself in those environments. There's not a single day that goes by that I don't think about being overseas at some point in time in my career and specifically think about the things that we were doing overseas. Oftentimes they're like hilarious hijinks that I'm remembering. And one example that I've brought up pretty commonly, but it's literally brought me to tears in the years afterwards is watching somebody run through a courtyard and literally get

closed lined by a clothesline. I was combat ineffective because I was just dying laughing. It was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen. And their relationships and the level of bonding that you can have with individuals as a team, it's an environment that I've never been able to replicate. And on the other side of that coin is the most horrendous experiences that a human being can probably be involved with and loss and struggle and suffering. And those experiences can put a lot of weight on your shoulders and it can take you a very long time to slowly start chipping away at that and have a healthy continuation of your life. The struggles with post-traumatic stress is very real. And I do mean it when I say

that if you touch war, it will touch you back. Having said all of that, I think about it I think about it every single day. And if I was given the opportunity to go back and do what it is that I used to do, even though I'm no longer, I'm no longer current, I'm totally dated on my understanding of tactics, I still shoot, but my head is not even in the, in the correct space that it used to be for that occupation. I would absolutely go back because I have never found an environment that has allowed me to test. myself than war. It's the competition between human beings squaring off and the realization, probably not in the moment, but maybe at a conceptual level as you're pursuing this career, that you're going to find yourself in situations where you are going to put absolutely everything on the line and so is another human being and only one of you is going to walk out of that

situation. It is the single most pure competition arena that I have ever set foot in. And I learned so much about myself by seeking that for a very long period of time and very formative years of my adult life. So having been through that, I'll close with what I think I opened with and just use with caution. And I say this to military members who want to pursue a special operations career path or that I feel are using war as the only metric that they can think of to test themselves. And I'm not saying that you're doing that, but be cautious if you are. You may find yourself in a situation where you never get to have that test. And if you have set yourself up and only focused on that and you never get to experience it, even though you were in uniform

and maybe you even went overseas, you're going to leave very unfulfilled. So be cautious with that. There are many ways to test yourself outside of military service. And there's probably more meaningful ways to test yourself than the experiences you will have inside of military service. So just keep your head up, keep looking around. I wish you the best of luck, but don't spend any time looking in the rearview mirror. Spend your time looking out the windshield in front of you and do the best job you can to navigate through the world as it presents itself to you. Question number two.

Good morning, sir. I would like to know your perspective and maybe the team as a whole on people being attached to your team for a target. mainly females. I am just a dumb civilian and had no clue y'all took the thought process of attaching a female to search women and children on operations. I figured you came in hot, cleared hot, if you will, cleared the target and never gave two thoughts about the population. You, as in the military as a whole, I'm asking to please explain what the team as a whole, and of course yourself thought when a female that did not train with y'all is coming on target. Did you feel concerned for her or the team? Or were you so locked in, it didn't matter? It's fascinating to me that a female could get plugged into a team that is already dialed in and has everything worked out. Doesn't the protection instinct go dormant? Or is it still in the team's mind?

Thank you. Well, first and foremost, I can't answer from the team perspective. I can only answer from myself. And I don't think I ever thought twice about having attachments come with us. You could call them attachment. You could call them an augment. But it was very frequent that we would have people outside of the team or the squadron or the element that was specifically that we would train together or we were assigned to together in garrison. That would come with us because other people bring core competencies that we, quite frankly, could not focus on.

I've often described being a seal as being a jack of all trades and a master of none. I didn't create that description of the seal teams. It was told me very early on in my career. and it became much more true to me through my own experiences. Your life as a seal is spent going from training block to training block to training block, and they change throughout. So you'll develop a moderate level of proficiency in one subject matter for two weeks, and then boom, you're on to the next.

And as your proficiency increases in the one you're now focusing on, your proficiency is decreasing in the ones that you have just finished. So the best way to buffer those things or bring in somebody who really focuses on one particular aspect. Maybe it is electronic or signals intelligence. Maybe it's human intelligence. Maybe it's weather. Maybe in this case, as in your question, it's a female so they can interface with the women and children. That's the easiest way to do it.

It allows us to focus on our job while they focus on their job. And I'm not going to get into any. tactics by any stretch of the imagination. But what I will say is it is very easy to have augments or attachments with you and keep them in locations where the risk is absolutely minimal. Obviously, there's risk associated when going overseas in general, but then if you leave the FOB, which is a Ford operating base or an outstation if you get into a helicopter or a vehicle, of course, there's the risk associated with that level of travel on your insertion platform or your insertion method. But when we get on target, the augments and the attachments

are not the ones who will call it the very front leading edge of the knife. There are very easy ways to allow them to be on target until everything that happens on target needs to be done, meaning the target is secured. And then the augments or attachments can focus on their core company. So it's actually, it's really not that hard. And quite frankly, every time that we had a female with us, I had never once thought about her safety over anybody else's. I was very front-side focused on my job. I was aware that the females were there for specifically the reasons that you mentioned, which was searching the women and children. And on that, right after that you wrote, you figured you came in hot, cleared the target, and never gave two

thoughts about the population. There were times early on, I would say in both wars where that was probably the case, but you very rapidly realize that by giving no thought to the population, you're probably going to turn the population against you. And if you're not even going to get into the counterinsurgency strategy or the winning the hearts and minds, but let's just say that it is based in respecting the population, specifically those that you are not there to target. When it comes to, if somebody would ask me, who is it that we were targeting? We had very direct intelligence for individuals, but if you get on target and somebody presents a hostile act or hostile intent, they become a target. So it's more about their behavior when we arrive

than it is, you know, a woman and children, people think that we pay them no attention. I would pay them very much attention until I could pass them off to somebody who could watch over them. And if a woman or a child presents a hostile actor, a hostile intent, they get treated just like anybody else for absolute clarity. So we also care about the population. And that's why we would bring females along. We didn't always come in hot very often. We would. We would. would come in, I'll say we would come in the opposite of hot. Again, I'm not going to get into tactics at all. Yes, the target would be cleared. The target would be secured. And then boom, we go back to work. Afghanistan, great example of this. One of the worst things that you could

do would be have a man, search a woman. And they're also very protective of their children, more so the females, though. So the best thing that we could do was have a female there to help in that capacity. What else? And like I said, did the protection instinct go dormant? No, the protection instinct never goes dormant, but the protection instinct for me was for every single person that I was with. I was far more concerned every single time that we would get all of our, you know,

party gear on and head out the door. I was so much more concerned that I would do something stupid or make a mistake and it would cost somebody else their safety or life, limb, or eyesight, than I was about myself. And that was the umbrella for everybody that I was with, you know, man or woman. So I can't say that it was just one person that I would be worried about. I was worried about everybody else to almost the exclusion of myself. And I found that to be a pretty common sentiment with the people that I worked with. And it kind of ties back into the first question about the individual.

And I mentioned, you know, the bonds that you can have between the individuals that you work with. It's real. It's a very, very real thing. and I don't know how you replicate that. So hopefully that helped answer your question. It's actually been happening for a very long period of time. Attachments and augments, they're not new, and they do a great job enhancing oftentimes the lethality

and effectiveness of the combat units on the ground. Question three. My name is redacted also. 32, happily married and worked for a small oil and gas company up here in Canada. I'm writing to you because I'm suffering from an extreme lack of empathy and understanding for other people. Prior to my current employment, I worked for the military for a number of years as a reservist and also worked in law enforcement. Overall, both careers were amazing and allowed me to help people, serving both my community and country.

However, near the end of my career in law enforcement, something happened. I don't know what moment or interaction it was that caused it, but I hit a point where I lost nearly all empathy for the people I was serving. In the back of my mind, while doing my job and acting professional, I hated everyone I interacted with. I had extreme hatred for perpetrators for what they had done. I even had hatred for a lot of the victims for the choices that they had made that led them to the situation they were in. Talking to coworkers on my team about my thoughts, constantly reinforce them, and over time I became very jaded and cynical. Due to these thoughts, I eventually requested a transfer to a different unit that works with troubled youth. I hope that working with youth would help change my perspective, but in a way it only made it worse.

Again, I did my job and I acted professional, but in my mind, I was angry at what felt like an inevitable path these kids were going down, and I was furious with the parents for their lack of involvement in their children's lives. I knew my internal feelings and rage were coming to a boiling point, and I was worried that it might lead me to doing something at work that I would regret. Also, I was worried that this growing mindset would affect my home and family life. I would never take anything out on my loved ones, but it became a concern with my parents, or it became a concern when my parents' wife and close friends individually told me that they had noticed a change in my attitude and behavior due to certain comments I was making about things going on at work and around the city. They also mentioned that they felt I was no longer the hopeful, empathetic, idealistic person I used to be. I was terrified that it was turning, that I, I was terrified that is, all right, you got me. I'd used every version of that.

That I was turning into someone I didn't like. So when I was offered the chance to work in the private sector at my current job, I jumped at the chance and haven't looked back. It has been about eight months since switching careers, but my perspective hasn't changed much. I can't seem to shake these feelings of anger, disgust, and lack of empathy for my fellow man. My mind always goes to the negative. Every time I see a homeless person or a drug user on the streets, I think of them as a scumbag who has left dozens of victims in their wake. Every time I meet someone new, I go into the situation expecting the worse, even though many times I have been proven wrong. I hate feeling this way.

I wish I could go back to my empathetic, idealistic self. But I feel that due to my previous work, I have seen behind the curtain for how the world really is. and for that there is no returning to my previous mindset. I have thought about going to talk to someone about this problem, but I'm not sure how much it would help provide in changing my mindset. But I fear that if I do not address this problem, it is going to affect my personal relationships more severely going forward, most importantly, my wife and future children.

With your work history, have you ever felt this way? And if so, how did you build a better mindset of empathy and understanding for other people? Wow. long question and there's a lot in there i'm going to start with this you need to go talk to somebody that is my brass tax non-professional non-educated when it comes to i mean obviously i'm not a therapist so i'm speaking from personal experience that is the first recommendation that i would make for you let's take a look at the job that you used to have and i again i'll reference the friends that I have in law enforcement here in the Flathead Valley.

Law enforcement, first responders, when people pick up the phone and they call 911, I don't think that they are generally doing so to report that they're having the best day of their life. I don't think anybody dials 911 is like, listen, I just wanted to drop you guys a line and let you know I just got an advancement at work in a raise and I am stoked. I don't think that's how most of the calls go. I think they go the other direction when somebody is having their worst day of their life or the worst moment of their life and they're calling and they're asking for somebody to come help. Now, you were on the receiving end, not of that call, but the dispatch coming out. And then you would show up to those situations time and time and time again. Part of the job that you have as a law enforcement officer is that you are going to be interacting with and engaging with the underbelly of society that.

that most people do not ever see. And when they do see it or encounter it, guess what they do. They call 911 and then you show up to help. So you're seeing it at a frequency that is so much higher than anybody else outside of your occupation is ever going to see. So I want you to think of yourself as hot water.

You're hot water and what you deal with on a day-to-day level, call after call, hour after hour, day after day after day, week after week, year after year, that's what's all in the tea bag. So that gets dropped into that hot water. The longer it sits in there, the stronger the tea becomes. So it doesn't surprise me at all that you adopted the mindset that you have. You were seeing the worst of what human beings have to offer probably every day that you are on duty.

And you weren't getting the opportunity to go and see the birthday parties or the happy experiences or the beautiful interactions. No, you're dealing with crime and enforcing law because that's what you do for a living. It's going to leave a mark for you. And what I'll say to you is this. You are seeing people, probably the criminals, let's talk about it from that perspective,

or the drug addicts or the homeless people, whatever it may be. You're seeing people probably in the worst expression of themselves. But remember this. before you start judging people for the worst moment of their life or perhaps the biggest mistake of their life that led them into the situation where they are, how well would your life be viewed if that magnifying glass and spotlight was swung back to you? I have fallen far short of who I have wanted to be as a man many times in a variety of different interactions. And I try to learn from those

and become a better person from that. But if an individual only encountered me during those moments where I was falling short of who I want to be, I really don't think they'd have a good impression of me. And then if after they dealt with me, they had to go deal with somebody else who was in the same situation. And then another person and another person, you're going to develop a very, very jaded perspective of what human beings are. people make mistakes and so do you so like i said before you harshly judge the mistakes of others make sure that you are ready willing and able to have somebody else judge the mistakes that you could potentially make with that same magnitude it can be a bitch and it can break you and i'm not

excusing their behavior but maybe looking at it from the perspective of how others see you might help you a little bit in your perspective and how you see other people but the reality is You have spent so much time in that cup of tea that it's probably impossible not to have those thoughts go through your head. This is where I think professional help, counseling, psychiatrist, psychologist, is going to be able to have the most impact in your life because they understand how the brain works and the thought process. And they can probably unpack a lot of the stuff that you had to deal with in the execution of your job. Or perhaps they can give you some strategies to hijack your decision making. process or your thought process, I should say, in this situation, before it immediately goes to the negative, I have no doubt that they can give you some tools that can flip that towards the positive

or at least get you to be towards neutral. It is no surprise to me that your email is what it is, and I don't want anybody to live like this. It was hard for me. You know, you referenced my old career. Did I ever lose empathy for the people that I was fighting against? Yes, I did, to be the quite frank, I oftentimes saw them as subhuman because of the behavior that I would see from them and not even necessarily towards me. They hit a category of subhuman from me in the way that they treated other people, an absolute lack of respect or care for life, a complete ability to manipulate, torture, and cause excruciating amount of pains and other people for no reason other than their own personal benefit or their benefit of their bullshit ideology.

So yeah, I didn't have empathy for those people. But I had empathy for the people that those individuals were navigating their way through and their attempt to try to come and find me and do damage to me. Now, they got dealt with accordingly, but the empathy still existed for the rest of the people that were there in that country. And I tell you what, they lived at a quality of life level that is far below. anything that anybody in the first or second or probably even third world has any understanding of. It was so incredibly hard to see what it is that they had to live their life through.

I was not able to recover my empathy, nor did I actually try to recover my empathy for my enemy, but it did maintain for the civilian populace. It's still there inside of you. I can tell you that much for sure. And what I'll say is this, you've only been out of your career for eight months. It probably is going to take you some time. And it's, you know, what you're doing now is you're adding more water. So the tea bag is out.

And you're adding more water to your cup. So in this situation, I guess we'll have to say you have a bigger cup. So you can add more fluid. But every ounce of water that you add in, it's diluting the concentration of what you have from your previous career. And it's going to take some time. Probably the best thing you could do to expediate that. is to go and find somebody to talk to. I know you may not understand how it could help,

but what I will tell you is from my own personal experience, it absolutely can help. It could change your life, and it could change the way that you view the world and the people that are sharing this world with you. And the last thing I want you to do is be jaded and cynical. I am oftentimes, I totally understand gallows humor and talking to coworkers and the dehumanization of people

that you have to encounter a negative environment, I get that. But that's not a way to live a happy, fulfilling, and healthy life. So recognize where you are right now. And then recognize that you're also human. The people that you have developed that jaded and cynical attitude about, they're human as well. We all make mistakes. But go in, go in and do the work on yourself because you're not going to be able to change the world. You're not going to be able to change the people that you dealt with your old job or the percentage of people that there are like that in this world. But what you can really do is focus on yourself and change your perspective and how you engage with the world. So hopefully that helps.

Last question. I would like your advice as a father. Well, okay, here we go. Hello, good sir, long-time listener of the podcast and big fan of your unique viewpoint on most situations. I'll try to keep this short. I'm 26 years old, father of two beautiful girls, five and three, never been married, but have been with my girlfriend who is the mother of them for over seven years. We have had a long, rough patch, which we have pulled through within the last couple of years, thanks to counseling, and us both growing up in split-up homes and vowing to do everything and anything to make sure our girls don't experience that. I have a burning desire to serve specifically as a green beret. But I feel like I would be a selfish asshole because my father was never there for me

and I desperately wanted him to be. I can't imagine doing that to my girls or my girlfriend. I have tried to rationalize the right decision from both sides for a few years now. I feel it's my obligation to subdue my own wants and needs, but I don't want to die a bitter man by living at his life that way. Any advice would be awesome. Thank you. Well, my first thing would be, the first piece of advice would be involve your girlfriend in the conversation and see how she feels about it. You know, the military relationship, both with spouse and children, is it's unique because of the, the demands of the military occupation, but it's not impossible. You can absolutely be a father

and a boyfriend, father to your daughters, obviously, and a boyfriend to your girlfriend, while serving as a green beret. There will be, of course, stretches of time that would be abnormal or atypical for a non-military relationship. So when you go through selection or training cycles or deployments, like that stuff generally doesn't exist for people who are working a traditional nine to five, but it's not insurmountable. I think the fastest way to make it insurmountable would be for you to make that decision to pursue that without talking to your girlfriend and without considering the impact on your daughters, but you're doing so. You're at least considering it. Involve her in the conversation. It's not impossible, like I said. Is it more

difficult? Yes, it is. Will you miss things in your kids' life? Yes, you absolutely will. you also could go through selection now or start the pipeline now and be a green beret for, let's call it, three to five years to determine whether or not it is what you think it may be. And maybe it's more than you think it could be. And then you could decide how you want to pursue it from there. And the reason that I say that, you know, that three to five years is you could do it now and you could get out if you decide to and your oldest would be 10 and your youngest would be six. you would have a substantial amount of time with them still in their formative years.

You would have been able to test yourself in the ways that you had wanted to and to figure out for yourself whether or not that occupation actually sounds like something that you want to do or it's something that you are called to do and you want to continue to do so. So I would say, again, not to repeat myself, involve your girlfriend in the conversation. It's hard, not impossible. but come to the conclusion together. And when you do so, sit on it for,

I'm going to say 30 days and then have the conversation again. If you decide to go down this path, if your girlfriend is willing to let you pursue this, you need to do absolutely everything you can in the moments that you're not focused on your job to be focused on being the best father and boyfriend that you can absolutely be. I failed in that respect.

I became much too externally focused at times to the detriment of everything else in my life. And my kids did not deserve that. And my ex-wife did not deserve that. And it wasn't intentional. It was very insidious. The creep that happened was very insidious. But that's my fault. I'm not blaming it on anything other than myself.

But again, it's avoidable. It's difficult, but it's not impossible. Talk about it. Keep talking about it. Make your decision. Sit on it for 30 days. Talk about it again. And then take action on whatever.

is that you want to do. And that's it for this Friday. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible.

If you have a question, comment or suggestion, you can go to clearedhotpodcast.com. And there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox. And the last thing, if people are interested in helping out, what you can do is fly the old flag. And by that, I don't mean an actual flag because I don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats, whatever it may be. Again, clear-thoddhotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab. And hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you.

But that is it. The biggest thing I can say is thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.