Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 8

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Full Auto Friday is a "rapid-fire" format of Q and A submitted by listeners. Topics from all walks of life with a 5-minute cap on all answers. 2:06 Q1: How to serve when you have been physically disqualified from military service 7:25 Q2: Violence, and my relationship with it over time 14:01 Q3: Can you celebrate the Confederacy and still be a patriotic American 18:27 Q4: Why did I leave Devgru 23:15 Q5: Daughters standing for what they believe Enjoy

Okay, got the red smoke. Dr. Gun runs. North and south. West of the smoke. West up of smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke.

I'm looking at danger close now. I'm all winter, man. It can be clear not. Ladies and gentlemen, full auto Friday number eight. And as you can see,

the backdrop is a little bit different. And maybe I should open by talking about the backdrop just a touch. I didn't realize. that when I said the backdrop on the previous Full Outer Fridays was a green screen, that people were actually going to take me seriously. So perhaps my sarcasm was a touch, a touch much.

I might have laid it on a little bit thick. That was, in fact, my backyard. But today, I'm actually in the new studio for the first time. I got the first guest coming tomorrow. And I'm excited. I just hope that this audio recording works. Let me just say thank you to Google and YouTube right out of the gate, Because without them, there's no way I would have been able to do this.

It actually was a complete another pain in the ass. So let's dig into this. We've got the rapid fire Q&A. I have. Let's take a look how many I have. I think I have five. One, two, three, four, five. I got five.

I'm going to give myself no more than five minutes per. I'm going to work from the bottom to the top. Got my stopwatch in front of me. Let's fire away. Question number one is from Michael. I have a family. that has almost all served in the military in some capacity dating back to the Civil War. I'm a history major and I hope to be a history educator someday.

I've done work with museums where I served, where I and several others, portray World War II U.S. Army personnel operating in A.A. training headquarters tent. Visitors can come interact with us and see us using radios, maps, and we give presentations on the equipment, operations, and history behind the location. this is where my question and struggle comes in i have always wanted to serve in the military and i have tried to join however i have Crohn's disease and it causes immediate disqualification after learning about this i have struggled with feelings of inadequacy and failure and i question whether i can participate in these historical events as i have not actually served again that question was from michael so stopwatch is off and running i'm going to assume your question is when you say whether or not you can participate in these historical events.

I believe you're talking about your reenactment of them. And for that, I would say that there is absolutely no issue at all. I actually think it's cool that you have a tie, a family history tie to the military. Because if you didn't or if it wasn't you portraying these people, they obviously were going to fill that slot or bill it somewhere. So I think it's actually awesome that you were able to do that. Now, the reason I chose to answer this question is it comes to me in a variety of forms.

I have this, whether it be the individual, wants to join the military and they're colorblind. I've seen it with bone spurs. I've seen it. Crohn's disease, this is actually the second or third time that I have received this question in this way. And it's often paired with what you described of feelings of an adequacy or failure. So the first thing I'm going to say is, and I say this often, you can only worry about the things that you have direct control over. You do not have control over whether or not you have Crohn's disease. Other people do not have control over whether or not they have near-sightedness or far-sightedness or colorblindness.

And I think you just have to at some point realize that that is the hand that you were dealt and you have to let it go. Because if you don't let it go and you consistently focus on it and focus on what it limits you from being able to do. do, I just feel like you are going to be in a mental space, the majority of your life, that is looking at something from a glass half empty perspective as opposed to a glass half full or an opportunity perspective. Very few people. I think the current statistic is 0.05% of the United States population actually serves or is on active duty in the military.

It's an incredibly small percentage of society. And I believe the peak was in World War II, World War I, World War I. World War II time periods, about 6% of the U.S. population was serving. Again, it was smaller population, but, you know, relatively along the lines of the percentages, much higher than today. But most people, even at 6%, six out of 100 people serving the military, it's okay if you don't get the chance to serve in the military, even if it has been your lifelong desire. And it's not something that if you're unable to do, you should feel inadequate or have any feelings of failure about. because serving in the military, although it is unique, is not the only way that you can be of service to your fellow citizens and of service to the world, which is, I think, in my opinion, at least, a lot of what military service is.

If you can't join the military, but it was your lifelong goal, and it just, it, it wears on you every day. Like I said, my first piece of advice is try to find a way where you can let that go, so it doesn't drive you insane. And if you still have a sense of wanting to serve or wanting to do something with a purpose that benefits other people, go find a different way to serve. You could serve locally in your community. You could stir, you know, you could try to serve at state level organizations or even federal level organizations. Go and join the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace for all I care. I actually am a huge proponent of a two-year mandatory service. And this is just a conceptual idea.

I'm not saying that we should institute this. But I think there would be benefit from it in our society. Two years of mandatory service of something other than serving yourself. And those things that I mentioned, it could be the Red Cross. It could be great. I don't care. You know, building schools in Africa, helping get clean water to areas of the world that don't have clean water. I think the more value that more value would come if you did it outside of

the borders of the United States, but I think there is so much value in purpose and serving other people. And I think if you could put down this weight and burden a little bit and shift that energy and emphasis over to finding a different way to serve, I think it might be something that you would eventually be able to completely put down. And if you could put that down, you're not going to have to worry about those feelings of inadequacy and failure. And if you go down that path of trying to find other ways to serve, let me tell you right now, you might have the ability to have much more impact on the world than your ancestors did serving in World War II. You know, because even if you are able to join the military, even if you were able to join

the military right now, there's no guarantee that you would be able to go or be involved in major activities throughout the world, history-making activities. You might leave military service with feelings of inadequacy and failure as well because you set too high a bar for yourself going in. So long, winded answer, try to put it down, trying to find another way to serve. Question one, right on time. Four minutes, 58 seconds. Question two comes from skunk works.

How would you describe your relationship with violence? From being a kid and perhaps getting into fistfights to being a highly trained warrior, how has that relationship evolved? How has it remained the same? Do civilians place too much or too little emphasis on violence when thinking about being part of a modern military organization? Cheers. This is another one where I'm going to cherry pick a little bit here. First and foremost, I have never described myself as a warrior. I will never describe myself as a warrior. I was a soldier. I worked in an occupation, a profession of arms.

and I, you know, I often hear the term warrior associated with modern day military, even often from people in the military, talking about it themselves. But I often hear it in, you know, they look at the movie 300 or the Spartans or the Romans or people who were in battle in previous eras that were much more, well, not much more, but much less technologically evolved. Very dirty, hands in the mud, close combat. I hear those people being described as warriors. and I don't think that anything that I have ever done compares to that.

So that's not a term that I use. I guess I'll start there. My relationship with violence, when I was a kid, I did not get into fist fights. I would have to say that I am actually not, I'm not a huge fan of violence, meaning I don't go and seek it out. I have never been somebody to go and to try to antagonize fights. And, I mean, again, I would leave this up to my peers to describe how I behave because that's a more objective view. But I actually is, in my opinion, pretty difficult to push across the threshold of actually engaging in violence. My oldest son right now is 16.

I have a 14-year-old getting ready to turn 15 and a 12-year-old daughter. So I have boy-boy girl. In the 16 years that my son has been alive, I've been involved in one physical altercation where they were present. And it was not an altercation that I started. It was an altercation that I found myself unable to avoid because there was a small child involved and two adults that were so ridiculously shit-faced and making bad decisions. They were the ones that escalated the situation, not even directly with me, but with law enforcement. And I got involved because I felt like I had to.

But I had plenty of opportunity where I probably could have jumped the gun. And I didn't because that's just not me. In my opinion, violence should be a measure of absolutely. last resort and that includes my old job i do believe that in certain circumstances or situations that violence is absolutely essential and sometimes it depending on the environment you are in it can be the only viable option to get your way out of that but i believe it should always be a measure of last resort because it's your measure of first resort how are you going to escalate beyond that um you know If you start off at a 10 and 10 is all you have and that doesn't work and you disregarded all the options between one to 10 that could in fact probably have worked, you're very limited.

And I think that's how situations go from horrendous to catastrophic. I guess that would be a term that is worse than horrendous. And even in the military, you know, violence of action, we talk about it all the time. If you get into a firefight, the first rule of, you know, if you get into a firefight is you have to win the firefight. but how about the rule before that? You know, one of the best ways to survive a firefight is to not get into one. There are the most powerful weapon that you have on the battlefield is your brain. You can try to outthink your enemy.

You could try to get yourself into a dominant position. You could maneuver. You can de-escalate. There's verbal things that you can do. There's visual things that you can do. There's warnings. There's a spectrum of things to choose from between all-out guns blazing to standing there. and doing nothing. And I really believe that those should all be emphasized. And they are inside of

the SEAL community, at least. That was my experience. So I don't think that my relationship with violence has actually changed from my time in the military. I still avoided it when I could avoid it and did not interject myself into situations that were avoidable or I thought that I would actually make worse by getting involved in. But if you flip that lever and you get to a place where you have no other choice, I think you need to be as violent as humanly possible so you can achieve the outcome that you're looking for. And then when it comes to being a part of the modern military organization,

one key point that I think I need to emphasize is that violence is not a large portion of most of the military. If you are on, and I don't say this negatively about somebody in the Navy, but I was in the Navy, but if you're on a submarine or an aircraft carrier and you're an aircraft mechanic or you are a radar scope, operator or you're a communicator or an intelligence specialist, your job isn't violence. It might be working on pieces of the wheel that come together to get small elements to a place

where violence might occur. But as the overall military organization, violence and exposure to it is far less frequent than most people might think. And I do not believe, to round out the answer of this question, I don't believe that if somebody comes into the military that is averse to violence, they're not going to come out of the military. So if you enter the military, averse to violence, you are not going to come out of the military. And I don't actually even care what branch of the military you're in. You're not going out a sociopath.

You might, if you were a sociopath going in, but if you were a normal, reasonable person, I believe that your relationship with violence, and your understanding of violence, rephrase that, your understanding of violence is going to expand. But I don't think your relationship with violence is going to change. if you are reasonable and you avoided it going in, you will be reasonable and you will likely

avoid it coming out of the military because of that enhanced understanding. You actually might be even more violence adverse. I actually think now I am more violence adverse than when I went into the military. But that could be just my own experience. I went over a little bit on that one. And I had to pause in the middle because I thought the air conditioning turned on, but it didn't. All right, question three. Here we go. And this one will be anonymous because they asked me to be. The question is, can military service members celebrate the Confederacy or Confederate heritage and be patriotic Americans at the same time? If so, how, if not, what problems does it present when it comes to celebration? This is a good question for the timeliness of what's

going on in American society right now. I'm recording this Thursday, I think it's July 2nd. Yep, Thursday, July 2nd, if you watch the news, or if you, I should say, if you live in the United States and you watch the news, you are watching history being ripped down, painted over, and destroyed throughout the United States, which to me is a problem. And I'll unpack that further. But let's talk specifically about the Confederate Confederacy or the Confederate heritage. Can military service members celebrate the Confederacy or Confederate heritage? I, from a, Doctrine perspective? I don't know the answer to this. I remember seeing something in the newspaper. I believe it was about the Marines that they were saying they were not going to allow people to or service members to display the Confederate flag. I could be incorrect on that. But let's say that there is no doctrine and you leave it up to the choice of the individual.

And now we can answer, I think, in the broader perspective of what's going on in society as a whole. there are a lot of the things about the Confederacy that are not awesome but there's also a lot of things about the United States as a whole that are not awesome and I also think that there are a lot of things about every single country on the face of the planet every nation on the face of the planet I bet if you did an objective review a neutral third party objective review, there is going to be some utterly atrocious, heinous behavior. Portions of society built off the backs of other members of that same society, oppression, racism, bias, fill in the blink. I believe personally it exists everywhere. Do I think that you should celebrate things

that have that history? Let's look at Nazism, for an example, the Third Reich. I can't think of a single reason to celebrate anything to do with that. But I also don't think that it should be erased from human history because I feel and I worry that if you erase those painful memories that as a society or as a species, because human beings are the single most fucked up species I've ever seen, I think we're more likely to repeat them. I think you should have to work through the past in history. And the more painful and uncomfortable it is, the more powerful the lesson and the more meaningful it is to go directly through those things. So the Third Reich, Nazism, horrendous, heinous, should not be celebrated at all. But we still need to remember what they were, what they stood for, and what happened because they were allowed to exist. The Confederacy or the statues that are being ripped down now because of the, you know, the history,

or what they stand for in the South, you know, is keeping them on display prominently a good idea? You know, I don't know. Is ripping them down and trying to whitewash them out of history to make it seem as if they don't exist a good idea? I don't think so. I think that that is actually a worse idea, in my opinion,

than allowing them to sit there as a reminder. I would rather have them in front of everybody's face as a reminder to what they stand for, then have them ripped down and destroyed and have people forget. There's value to understanding our history. There is no value to celebrating oppression or racism or things that are viewed through the lens of history

as being, quite frankly, negative. And if there is something that is like that, yeah, you know, I don't think it's probably a good idea to celebrate it. But the worst idea is to erase it. And that is what I am more afraid of. I'm more afraid of people forgetting that these things happened and why than having a Confederate flag. Question number four. Let me set the clock. It says, I'm sure you get bombarded with questions and requests. I do sometimes. So I'll keep it short. Why did you choose to leave Development Group with a guest request on the bottom, Tyler Gray. And I'm going to start bottom up on this one. Tyler Gray,

it's not his real name, by the way, but I'm not going to tell you what his real name is. You can find him on the CBS show, I believe, SEAL Team. And it's not CBS or it's ABC. I apologize. Look for the, not daytime, nighttime TV show SEAL team. He is one of the actors, and I believe he actually did some directing on that show. What people probably don't know is that he and I shared a hospital room in Launschild Germany when we were getting medevac from Iraq because we were both hurt on the same target in Iraq because I was deployed with his squadron. I was on the courtyard. He was inside of the house and we began our journey together. So Tyler's awesome. I would love to sit down with him one day. It's kind of a matter of putting the pieces together. Now to your question,

though, why did I choose to leave development group? This is abbreviated dev group, but development group, naval special warfare development group is the actual name. It was a combination of things. First and foremost, I served the absolute minimum time required at that command. I made it through selection in 2002. I left in 2006. It's a four-year billet when you go there or it was when I was there as an enlisted seal. And that is what I did.

I would have stayed longer. I wanted to stay longer, but that's just not the way that the cards were dealt for me. Getting shot overseas threw me flat on my back, metaphorically, literally figuratively. And that command at that time, I would describe it as a wheel that had perpetual motion. They were continuing to go down the road. It was earlier on in the post-9-11 conflicts. We're talking 2005 at this point. So I got back to where I was living in Virginia Beach, and rehab was largely on me.

I was taking care of it on my own. And while I was doing so, the squadron was still training. They were still deploying. They did not miss a beat because they are not designed to miss a beat because one member of the squadron is, you know, sitting on the injured reserve. I requested a year to rehab and get myself ready to go for a couple of reasons. Physically and mentally were huge, but also on the family side of the house. My wife at the time was pregnant. When I came down the steps of the aircraft getting medevacked home, I had one, my oldest son was in a stroller and she was pregnant with my middle son.

I needed some time to work on the family side of the house as well. And the leadership at the command decided that I was not going to get that time. They did not want to give it to me. They wanted me to deploy again in an administrative role, not in combat or operational role. And I refused to do so. I wasn't ready physically. and I certainly wasn't ready mentally. I needed that time, and it was at the point where I had finished my obligation.

I could make the decision to stay and do that deployment, or, I mean, again, my description, perhaps not theirs, was to push up against that request, and in doing so, I was given the option of picking my next duty station. I selected being a Buds instructor at the Naval Special Warfare Center to allow me to continue to rehab both physically and mentally. I left on good terms. I don't think that I rubbed anybody the wrong way on my way out. I would like to think that I did my job at least to an ability that it didn't hinder anybody else that I was working with or for. That was my goal while I was there or actually throughout my entire time of the military. I just wanted to do my job and not be hindrance to other

people. So it was a combination of things. Physical ability, status, mental, emotional, state, and family, the combination of all those things. And it was a decision point for me that was not easy. I had to stand up for myself and advocate for myself against very senior and seasoned operators in the leadership cell of that command. And it wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done. But it was a turning point for me and my ability to advocate for myself. So I'm glad that it happened.

And it was time for me to go. it was time for me to detach myself from that wheel because that wheel was going to go and do things at a speed with which I no longer was capable. And that's really it. There's no conspiracy theory associated with it. It was just time for me to go. Last question for today. We'll finish it off and get everybody into the weekend.

As a father, seeing both the still photo and that video made my blood boil. Let me add to this. We're talking about the podcast I did last. Monday with Samantha Francine. If you haven't watched the video or looked at the picture, I highly recommend it. It is a very powerful picture and a very powerful video. I'm not sure if it's worthy of a full auto Friday question, but I wanted to ask you how you would have handled that situation if your daughter was standing where Francine was. What would you have, would you have felt compelled to step in? Would you have? Personally, I don't know if I could count

on myself to stand by and allow my daughter the opportunity to opportunity to handle it as beautifully as Samantha did. So I guess to answer this question, we start the stopwatch, I'm going to have to explain a touch the picture. Samantha Francine, like I said, was the guest on Monday. She is a resident of Whitefish Montana, which is about 15 miles north of where I'm sitting right now at the studio. She was captured in a picture staring down a larger white male that was towering over the top of her. And I can't remember his name for the life me right now. Otherwise, I would use it. And instead of cowering and moving back, she lifted her sunglasses, made eye contact with the man, and he moved on to somebody else. And I just

did this very shitty description of what that picture was. Go to my Instagram page and look at the episode artwork for money. That'll give you a better understanding. Samantha is 27 years old. My daughter right now is 12. I just had lunch with her today, and I can't quite frankly even imagine her at her age right now having to deal with something like this. So I'm going to say this from the perspective of my daughter being 27. And perhaps she would be as tall as Francine was, even though Francine's quite a bit taller than my daughter now, even though she's starting to grow like a weed.

If I was there with my daughter and somebody approached my daughter and acted or behaved in the way that that man did, I would agree that it would be very difficult for me as her father, to stand there with uncertainty in my heart as to what that man was going to do. And I should probably be clear about that. I'm not worried about my daughter's ability to stand up for what she believes in. I take my kids and have taken my kids to school as often as possible every time that I'm home. And when I drop them off, every day I tell them to stand up for what they believe in and stand up for what is right.

I have no doubt that all three of my kids are capable of standing there and standing in front of somebody standing for what they believe in. The uncertainty in my mind and my heart on this one would not be from my kids. It would be from the other individual. The man, when you watch the video, you can see it's even more telling than the picture. And he's very animated. He is a little bit unhinged, it seems like. He's screaming. He's slapping signs out of the way.

So my uncertainty with the behavior would be on his side of the house. And it would be extremely hard for me as her dad to allow that man to approach her in that manner and not step in there and beat the ever-living piss out of that individual. And of course, I just talked about on a previous question, my relationship with violence, that probably wouldn't be the right call because I'm escalating immediately and then I'm going to be out of options. So verbal diffusion, maybe even just standing in between them would have been an option. but again, let's say that I'm actually there. I have to give my daughter the opportunity to stand for what she believes in because I am not always going to be there as her father. And this is true of all of my kids, not just my daughter.

If I step in every single time that they have the opportunity to stand for themselves, to voice their opinion or to stand for what they believe in, I'm doing my kids a disservice. What I would do is get myself into a position where if that's, individual escalated because they were unhinged, I would have an ability to do something to help any of my kids. Because in that picture, if you'll notice, there's a height, weight discrepancy. And in that situation, there's pretty much no way that my daughter would come out on top. So I would get myself into a position where I could help. And then I would let my daughter handle it in the way with which she chose to. And in doing so, I would hope that I would continue to empower her,

as a young woman to have her own voice and to not think that she needs somebody to step in for her. There's a time and place where I think that's absolutely essential, but they have to, and by they, I mean boys, girls, young men, young women, they have to learn to stand their own two feet. They have to learn how to stand up straight, pull your shoulder blades back, and look somebody in the fucking eyes and say, not today. And the only way that you do that is by doing it. So I would do the best that I could. It would be extremely difficult.

I'd make sure that there was no physical harm that was going to happen. And then I would let my daughter be my daughter. And if I know her even half as well as I do, she would have done the same thing that Samantha did. And it would be a moment that she would be able to look back on for the rest of her life that was meaningful and impactful. And hopefully she could teach her kids about the same thing, standing up for what they believe in, standing up for what is right,

and not waiting for somebody to do it for you, to be willing, able, and ready to do it yourself. And that is all I have for this week.