Our enemies have a plan. Our enemy’s leader has a plan. We all have one common enemy. His name is Satan. And right now, his minions are trying to run this country. We’re gonna expose all the lies around the COVID bioweapons. We’re gonna expose all the lies around our fake and stolen rig elections. We’re gonna put the sexual depravity of our fake leaders on full display. And then when the truth is known to the entire world, we are going to have extreme accountability. We will be the planner. We are never going to give up. There’s a whole bunch of stories that have to be dug into, rethought, reconsidered, and in some cases, completely discarded.

As modern Americans, we’ve been spoon fed this dumbed down, cartoonish, simplified version of history. It’s all fake. It’s all bull. Everything that we have been taught is part of a self serving narrative written by the people who will say and do anything to keep us on a leash. Now, this version of history, some big name corrupt families like the Rockefeller and the Rothschilds and their many associates, are credited over and over and over again with propelling human development. Throughout the late 18 and early 19, hundreds, almost every major american city, was burnt to the ground. What if we really are quite literally living atop the ashes of an advanced civilization that’s been hidden from us for our entire lives? Every time that we speak on this show about veteran suicide, things seem to be much of the same.

The conversation centers around, well, the VA is working on it. They released new numbers. The numbers went down from 22 a day to 19 a day. But now they’re back up. And they’re going to go, but they’re trending down, but now they’re back up. There’s many things that folks talk about that relate to why veterans at such high numbers are taking their own lives. Today’s conversation is about suicide once again, much. We’ve, and we’ve covered it on this show many times, but however, today’s new spin hopefully will be groundbreaking or at least extremely enlightening to the powers that be if they see this.

But more importantly to you as an audience, you as an audience who are maybe living, working, and just around veterans who may be feeling this way. So just another thing to think about. So today, Jason and I are going to have this discussion. So please stick with us. Don’t go away. We start now. Everybody, welcome here to the next installment of the Richard Leonard show. As always, I want to thank you for joining us. It is, as usual, extremely humbling to watch the viewership of this show and the network grow. And I can’t explain to you enough how much we appreciate it.

Everybody here, it’s great to watch you all dive in and have discussion with each other and just be part of the, part of the herd, if you will. So thank you for that. Also, before we get started, I know that you won’t mind me telling you about how this show is made possible. And that’s Cortes wealth management. Get yourself on over to americafirstretirementplan.com. let Carlos and his staff help you design, plan and execute a tax free retirement plan. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening at 07:00 p.m. eastern standard time. There is a webinar that is put on and they will give you all the information you need.

Once you have all said information, if you have any comments, questions or concerns, reach out to them. That’s what they’re there for. They want to help you get down the road to have a relaxing retirement. So America first, retirementplan.com. get on over there, check them out. Don’t miss it. Okay. So as I mentioned in the intro, I’m extremely excited because we have our friend Jason back. Oh, wrong one. There he is. Hi, Jason. What it is? Well, it is great. It is a great day. I want to thank you for being back. Thanks for having me.

Well, no, this is your home, too, bro. So veteran suicide, let’s just jump into it because I think we have a lot to talk about. Right. Whenever we talk about it. And I would say out of all the topics on this show that we’ve covered, veteran suicide is probably the most frequent. And it’s always a little bit of the same or it is always the same with just a little bit of variation sprinkled in there. But you and I were having a discussion not long ago and talking about some other things that might be going on because it can’t be the same every time, every year, every month, every week, whenever these numbers are calculated and tabulated.

It can’t be the same reasons it can’t be the same information all the time. No. And so we had this discussion and I would like, I would like for you to explain it because when we were talking, you had a great, you had a great explanation as my jaw was hitting the floor because I had never thought about this. And I think that this is certainly something that not a lot of people have thought of in the past. So if you don’t mind, please explain to us your thoughts. No, I, you know, it is interesting because, you know, for those that don’t know us, for those that just know us through the show, we do shows on suicide, we have to talk about it because it’s a problem in our culture.

It’s a problem with the people, it’s a problem going on and it’s a problem that’s not being addressed. And so we talk about it more often than probably anybody would ever want to believe. It comes up in regular conversation when you and I are talking, my wife has made comments about how often we talk about it. And we’re not talking about it in the execution manner, but we’re just talking about it, like why and how. And I’ve often thought, and that’s where that conversation kind of led us. And I’d thought about it and played it through in my mind before I finally articulated it to you.

And it was rather than continually focusing and talking about prevention, like put it, putting a, I don’t care, insert the number here. A suicide prevention hotline probably catches a few, but you need to start thinking about why it occurs. And that’s what got me to the place where, where I came up with this hypothesis. That is not true. I have no way to prove it that this is a thing, but I’m sure if there’s somebody out there that’s super smart, you can figure it out. Where do the populations of experience level come into play when it comes to suicide? And my feeling is that those people that deployed, that had what I would consider difficult deployments either through, you know, small arms interaction, close quarters mortaring, real combat, or an experience where their Humvee were hit, or they’re just insert any of these real war experiences that can happen.

Those people I would assume, and just my feeling is that you’re better built because you had a chance to exercise in totality what you were there for, whereas there are folks out there who, who deploy and spend nine or twelve months just pounding sand waiting on the what if, what if, what if is it today? You know, another briefing route is black head on a swivel. You know, you’re geared up, you’re fired up and nothing ever happens, man. I mean, that’s like, if you think about a professional athlete that’s constantly, constantly, constantly training, pretty soon it’s just training.

They never get better at the game. And I’m drawing a perfect correlation there. But I think there is something to it where when you have those, those real combat experiences, those difficulties, that likely your brain changes a little bit and it could certainly go overboard with change, because I know there’s. There’s a lot of. A lot of folks who have been through a lot of shit that have taken their lives, too. And so I’m trying to say that that’s just the end all, be all. Once you get to exercise demons, you’re good to go. I don’t, you know, that’s not it.

It’s just those who don’t get to experience the dance in its totality often have. I believe they’ve used the phrase survivors remorse. Survivors guilt. Yeah, survivors guilt. That other piece. And I think it’s that bigger piece. It’s just the what ifs. It’s just a, you know, you. You not only trained for so long and you went out and you did missions and you did a wonderful job. I mean, what a beautiful blessing it is to have that you could serve overseas for months on end and not experience difficult combat. That’s not a bad thing. Well, but I.

In some instances, it can be. Yeah, I agree. But let’s expound on that, right? Because imagine, if you will, for. For a minute, like you were. Like you were insinuating with the professional athletes when you. When you are in the military and you’re training. What is the common phrase when, so, like, for folks of you who are watching or listening that. That don’t know, there are many, many times when you are doing your military training where, you know, you take a break and everyone’s standing around the smoke circle or you’re getting chow and everyone’s huddled around some humvee on the hood eating your chao quick, talking about how bad this sucks.

It’s cold out here. It’s wet. It’s too effin hot. This food sucks. The water’s warm. Whatever that. Whatever the. Whatever there is to bitch about, trust me, soldiers will find a way. And then somebody in the group, almost automatically, every time, will say, embrace the suck. Right? Like, embrace the suck. We’re not here to play games. We’re here to train for war. If the war breaks out, we need to know how to. We need to know how to do this. We need whatever your job is. And they will say, we train as we fight. So training at times can get very intense.

It can really suck. It’s hot. It’s cold. All those things that you feel, that you complain about, they’re all real. But at the time, it doesn’t matter because in a training environment, if you have the mindset that you train as you fight, none of that matters because as we’ve discussed on this show, multiple times, the mission comes first. Right. And so I can imagine from what you’re saying that you train so hard, you build. You build brothership or family, like relationships with the men and women that you serve with while you’re going through this training. And so it’s like this constant, like you said, head on a swivel.

You’re constantly on edge, just waiting for that shoe to drop. And. And. And you think about all these things that you’re told in training. You know, like when you. When you make a mistake, the instructor will say, hey, don’t worry about it. We’re going to do this again and again and again. And eventually your training will take over. You’ll do what you need to do, and then we’ll move on the next thing. And I think that soldiers get comfortable with that reality. And all of that is true in my experience. And so I can understand what you’re saying, that when you get.

When you get to the dance, when you get to wherever, wherever the big army or the marine Corps, the name, whoever tells you you’re gonna go, and now you’re there for six months to 18 months or two years or whatever the case may be, and you never get to do any of it, but you’re still. You’re still in that posture every day, all day long. And then your duty day is over. And you. And you go back to the fob and you go to chow and you work out and you watch a movie, you play, maybe play a game of Madden with your roommate, and you lay down and go to bed.

You do it over and over and over and over again. And maybe you get a day off once or twice a month, but you never get to fire your weapon. You never get to experience those rockets or mortars coming in and what that’s like. And. And all of that, you’re right, is a blessing, but also a curse. And I feel like both sides of this, both sides of this coin, bro, is a blessing and a curse. Yeah, but I think you have so many more people on the other side of the coin. Yes, agree. There is a large larger or a hefty percentage greater on the one side.

And, you know, for those of you that are deployed, you all understand. But for those of you that haven’t, you know, it’s not only where you are, it’s where you were. And so, you know, a lot of. A lot of guys that I knew, you know, lost relationships, wives lost connection with their kids while they’re being deployed. So as you’re, you know, completely disconnected from back home. Now you’re here in this thing, and then you’re gonna come back to that reality that no longer exists. It’s gone. Yeah. Life moved on while you were not there. And it never stops, right? It keeps moving, and it’s gonna constantly go.

And I think, you know, the potential to be able to seek that or kind of create conversation places for people to get some type of therapeutic treatment, understanding that they’re not the only ones that feel that way. Way. Not the only people that feel like, boy, I sacrificed all this, and I, you know, I got this participation ribbon, you know, whatever, you know, I lost. I now have this really cool butthole that doesn’t work, you know, quite right. My back hurts. I’m deaf, you know, I’ve developed a bunch of body hair from some weird drugs. I get whatever, right? You get all those really cool pieces with it, too.

And then you still got everything that you lost and everything that you gave up, and you never got to experience the thing, and you probably didn’t want to really experience it, but if you had, I think that the potential comeback is you. You end up being. You’re a much different person. You’re not kinetically charged. Like, you don’t have that build up. And I’ve often explained it to people who’ve never deployed, even though I don’t know shit about computers. It’s like a CD Rom that’s stuck spinning. We all kind of come back with that, right? Like, if you crunch on your computer, maybe not your multimillion dollar computer, Richie, but that, you know, 15 year old laptop I call a computer that I punch on and just turning it on.

You hear that CD ROM spinning. I mean, it’s just working overtime just to do the simplest thing. That’s what happens with a lot of veterans, is that CD ROM is working, and it never stops. And it takes a ton of effort just to do the basics and to see darkness in that. I mean, you and I have talked about, we’ve both seen darkness. We’ve chosen happiness. We’ve chosen light, ultimately to this day, but we’ve experienced it. We understand what that is. We have empathy for it. And I don’t think a lot of people really wrap their minds around that darkness as that comes in and then why that comes in.

And I’m not saying normal people need to think about this, but certainly if we’re spending millions, if not a billion dollars thus far, you know, creating pamphlets, websites, you know, insert whatever here, questionnaires at the VA that nobody’s taking the time to actually understand the real root cause because we never hear it. Yeah. It’s never discussed. I mean, it’s. They always blamed it in World War Two on shell shock. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, old crazy man John down there, he’s shell shocked, but shell shock. Well, so I guess that brings up a good point. I’d be interested to do the research, maybe to find out how many war, like, what percentage of world War two veterans actually saw combat.

Was there a large percentage men that, that were in Europe but never actually fought? Because they make it sound like everyone fought, which I think we know isn’t true. No, because it, that’s not, it’s not the way that any of this works. Right. It’s a, it’s, it’s a ten to one, you know, but I mean, certainly anybody that played early in World War Two, you know, there were only two ways in. You were either jumping or you’re on a beach. Neither of those are exciting or good. And so here’s the thing. Here is why I believe that this is a, is a extremely important angle to look at when we talk about veteran suicide is because statistics have shown, and whoever is the statistic police and put, put these numbers out, they have said before multiple times that large number of veterans who commit suicide are ones who have a.

Never deployed or deployed and never saw combat. And so when you said that, when we had this conversation initially, that just kind of clicked in my head, like, oh, well, maybe there’s something to that. And, and I think that when we think, when we think about the build up to combat, right, even, even after you join and you’ve been through the training and the training sucks. And we, you know, you, we fight as we train, or we train as we fight and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you’ve prepared and you’ve, and you’ve written your own obituary and you’ve taken your.

What is that? Your da photo or whatever the hell it is, that the picture that they take of you that if you get smoked overseas, this is the picture they’re going to put of you in the paper and on the local news so that all your schoolmates and teachers and friends and family see your face. And all of that is a huge mind screw, in my opinion. Is it necessary? Maybe. But it still messes with your mind. And so now you’ve, now you’ve gotten there, you’ve gotten overseas and you’re there and you’re at the chow hall and you see your, you see your bro who’s in a whole different platoon.

You’re talking about how things are going. Hey, man, I haven’t seen you for a few days. What’s up? Oh, well, yeah, we were just, we were up in baghdad. We got pinned down for. For a day, and we had to fight our way out or whatever the case may be. And that might be some movie story that I’m thinking up or something, but those types of things happen, right? There were. There were a few times where we would leave the wire, and we didn’t come back for three, four days because, you know, our vehicles got damaged or broken or whatever.

We had to get them repaired, and we couldn’t be outside the wire without working vehicles or weapons. And. And so, like, that gets into your head. Oh, man. You know, Nate Johnson is. He’s out there fighting. We went through the same training. What. What the hell am I doing? Right. Why can’t. What’s happening, right? And so it must be. There must be something behind it. And I don’t. Do you think. Do you think, Jason, that maybe it’s like this feeling of being inadequate? Like, I. The. The. Maybe. Maybe the younger generation doesn’t think this way, but maybe it’s like a.

Well, the army spent all this time and money on training me to do this. I sacrificed my. My. My youth. I’ve sacrificed this. I’ve sacrificed that. My time away from my family and friends, blah, blah, blah. And we’ve collectively sacrificed a lot of time, money, and energy for me to be this machine, in quotes, if you will. And now here I am, rotting in the desert. Yeah. When I would get away from inadequacy, and I would venture to guess that the conversation that most people have. What was it worth? Because if you’re gonna go to that extent to take yourself off the face of this earth, you have to have some pretty massive regrets about things that happened.

And I’m not saying that every one of these military suicides, these veteran suicides, are related to their service. I would venture to bet it’s a lot of them. But thinking about, again, all of the sacrifice that you gave up and then you never really did anything. You. You can look at it and say it was a grain of sand in the desert, right? You didn’t do anything. You didn’t really get to do anything. You can’t put your name on it, but I can guarantee there’s a lot of people that would be out there and be like, oh, man, I went to God through that deployment without that dude.

Yeah. Right. But we don’t ever know that, you know, people would never know that, but I would think would come down to, like, the. The feeling of self worth and the worthiness of the sacrifice that they made that brings them to that crossroad. And so that’s where I think, you know, even if you have just that, that minor amount of real experience, you look at it and you go, oh, shit, I’m really happy. I did all that training for that one five minute time in my life. All of that was worth it. Or, you know, you were able to do something that maybe the military didn’t see as heroic, but it changed somebody else’s day, and now you think it’s worth it.

That, to me, is to be the most powerful piece of this, is. Is letting those folks that know that if they’re in that dark place, that it was worth it. You might not see it and you might not be able to go quantify it and talk to somebody about it or, like, that one person, that one person that you put a smile on their face on a terribly shitty day that they were having. And I could tell you this much, Richie, I don’t know about you, but I like to live with a smile. Try to. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I want to have fun, and I always did that in the military. I mean, the dirtier the day, the better the jokes. Now, that’s probably why we all developed some of the archiest sense of humors known to planet earth, but, oh, yeah, that, too, is a coping mechanism. Right. And it’s something that doesn’t go away. So as many times as our, as our wives want us to lose, that it’s not happening, that that that humor will go when I. It’s here to stay. Well, and that that’s where I think this. I think that’s where a lot of this comes from, bro.

I wonder. It’s interesting that you say that, because I wonder if. I wonder if our wives really would want that to leave. Like, I wonder if. If my wife would say if she would change that about me, and I don’t think that she would be honest about it to my. To my face. Right. Because she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. But I think that there are, there’s. There’s certain metrics that make us who we are. There’s certain life experiences that make us. And not just you and I, but everybody. Like, there are certain things that happen in life that, that mold who you are.

You mold your personality, mold your whole being. And these experiences that you’ve had, that I’ve had, and many others have had, they mold who we are. And so I know for me, in my marriage, I was. I was a. I was a. A bumbling idiot when she met me. But there was something. There was something about me that intrigued her enough for, for whatever reason, I’ve been searching. Yeah, right. There was something about me that intrigued her enough to continue the relationship. There was something about me and the things that I had going on, which I, to be honest with you, in my opinion, wasn’t a whole lot of positive stuff at the time her and I met.

I was going through some. I was going through some tough times in my head and professionally as well, but she, like, we latched on to each other. She was going through some tough times, too, I think. And so I think that we latched on to each other and just used each other as support and. But that whole initial, like, meeting and then, and then getting together, it would be an interesting conversation. Maybe we should have our wives on. There’d be some long shows, dude. Yeah, well, it might be. It might be worth it, and it might give us a lot of answers, and it might also shed some, some real insight to the viewers of this show or whatever show we do it on, whether it’s this or disgruntled.

But I wonder if they would change that about us, right? Well, probably not, because, again, just like everything that’s. That’s. For whatever reason, that’s how we trick them into marrying us. I mean, I’m still trying to figure out. Right. It’s not looks, it’s not money. I’m speaking for myself, only, not you, because we know both of those are true. For me, too, bro. You’re good looking. I’m not attractive. Nah. We’re willing to admit that. I got Capricorn skin. You got alabaster. That’s the only difference. Well, I got bastard skin, but, yeah, no, it’s. It’s one of those.

It’s one of those oddities, right? Like, I don’t, I don’t think they would ever want us to change, but I can guarantee it, dude. Same. Same situation for me. I guarantee. I met my wife, and I was probably at my lowest, like, pretty successful, you know, pretty good job and a financial institution like those, you know, from the outside looking in, you know, doing the thing, but not happy, you know, like all that other shit it was. But I think that’s. But I think that’s where I get some of that stuff that we’ve been talking about is through that shared experience, wherever you have to wake up and meet every day with a smile.

You have to be grateful. You have to know where your blessings are coming from. You have to know that as much as we want to control everything that we can do, we control nothing. Right? We control nothing but the reaction to what’s happening. We can put ourselves in better situations. We can put ourselves in worse situations. Less positive outcomes or more positive outcomes. And, yes, I’m moving my arms each way, and I just saw that, and that’s. I’m done. But, you know, it’s. That’s that. That’s that thing, right? Because it doesn’t matter. Try to make a plan.

There’s one person that’s gonna laugh at you. That’s God. Yeah. You know? And that’s it. I mean, but if you think you’re the one that’s gonna master and control everything and everything is continually blowing up in your face or everything is difficult, nothing is coming your way, or nothing’s going your way, nothing’s coming easy. You see where the darkness comes from, and. And I do think. I think there’s. I think there’s something about that discharge in that moment that can allow your CD Rom to slow down. I think everybody, when they come home, has a period of time that they’re just not going to slow down.

And in some people, it can take. You know, I mean, I remember my first appointment, dude, within, like, a week, I felt pretty normal. No problems. I’m sure I wasn’t right, but it was short. My second deployment, that took a long time to break off. Like, way longer than it did in the first one. And again, there were different circumstances, different experiences, all those pieces. But my second deployment didn’t wear off easily. That didn’t wear off fast. And I think that that’s where I’m saying there’s something to this. And I’m sure there’s somebody out there at the VA, and if you do know that person, shoot them this video so they can see it.

Maybe they can look into it, because for what we think of the VA, if it’s negative or positive, I can promise you this. They have more data on veterans than anywhere else on planet Earth. And I can assure you that they can be the ones to extrapolate that data using AI and see where these. These correlations run and maybe run down these tracks and just see, because it’s. It’s enough that it’s happening, and we all discuss it and we know about it. And 22 days a thing, right? That’s. That’s a ton of death. Yeah. Don’t want it to happen.

But the. The things that they’re doing to change that are inadequate, in my personal opinion. Well, what are they doing? That’s more the question. And so that gets into previous shows we’ve had on veteran suicide, but, I mean, it’s all relevant. Like, what. What are they doing? What is the answer? What is the. Maybe nobody has the answer, but what is the path that we’re traveling down to find the answer and remedy this thing? And if not, take it away completely, which I don’t think is really even possible. Never. But I think it’s possible to drop that number to tend or five, you know, and maybe.

Maybe that’s too much to ask as well. But even if. Even if you could just find the similarities in the track. Yeah. And make those people aware. Hey, you know, there’s. There’s. There’s other people like you. Like, you’re not the only one. And here’s the thing, and here’s what we look for. You know, it’s not like the other shit. Like, what do they say? Oh, if your buddy calls you up and they’re in a dark place and they’re telling you what to do with their stuff. Oh, no shit. Yeah. And they’re gonna tell me that, hey, when I’m not here anymore, can you take care of my dog? Oh, this is a sign of suicide.

If that’s what your money is being spent on, quit spending it now. Right? Yeah. Because if there’s one thing for sure that most all veterans are pretty good at, it’s knowing when their buddies are lying. Right. Or just talking shit. I think that if guys that I served with, even the ones I haven’t talked to in 15 years, if one of them called me with some problem or some issue and I asked them, hey, man, are you okay? And they lied to me, I think that I’d be. I probably wouldn’t know for sure, but I’d have an idea that they’re probably not telling the truth.

I mean, that is how, at least in my. My experience of my career, that’s how close of a brotherhood that we created. Oh, yeah. I mean, we. We knew each other’s kids. We showed up at our. Each other’s kids birthdays, all that kind of stuff, and so. And I would like to think that they respect me enough to tell me, hey, man. Yeah, I’m really struggling. I need some help. Do you know who I can call? Can you come help me? Can I come to your place? Whatever it is? I would like to think that we have the camaraderie that’s close enough for them to be able to reach out to me and, and, and also know that I know when you’re lying.

I mean, shit, Stu and I made a living for 1516 years based on knowing when people were lying to us. So, anyway, we got to take a break. We went over time, as usual, so stick with us. Don’t go away, folks. We’ll be right back. Hey, folks, welcome back here for the second segment of the show. Let’s continue on down the road. Jason, I think that we should discuss a little bit about the. The little intricate differences, maybe between the folks that, that maybe seen more combat than others and why. Why we came to this conclusion.

I think that there, there are certainly, there’s certainly room for interpretation, and I’m sure there’s a lot of people that will, will enter in their own information into this idea that we’ve been talking about. But why would you think. And I got my own ideas. Why would you think that folks who have trained so hard, sacrificed so much, then got to the. Got to the dance and actually got to strap up their dancing shoes and took baby out of the corner and actually did the dance? And may not to say that they don’t, they don’t suffer from any kind of aftermath, because I think that they do.

That’s why. It’s a double edged sword. But just in everyday life, things seem to be a little less. What’s a good word? A little less hectic, maybe, or a little less maddening or a little less frustrating than others, I think, because you’ve seen what a really bad day looks like, you know? Yeah. You know, it’s not an inconvenience. You know, we’re talking. We were just talking about it before that site. You know, it’s when you go into the gas station, the guys, you know, somebody’s losing their ever loving mind over not having funyuns. Yeah. Like, really? You’re going to lose your shit for.

For a minute and a half on a teenager who doesn’t own this gas station. But I’m even funny. And then you’re losing your shit. I mean, yeah. Not that that’s a normal thing, but the books are, those are the types of things when I sit there and I see, I’m like, well, there’s no bullets flying. There’s no babies dying. That’s a great line that somebody else taught me. And, and every day where there’s no bullets flying and there’s no babies of people dying, those are good days, like nothing’s really going to get you down. Like you’ve.

You’ve seen bad as it can get, or at least as bad as you can hypothetically see it get. Right? So you’re just never going to. You’re always going to know that it’s survivable that you could be here. You might not be the same, but you’ll be here. And so you’re going to have some resiliency, maybe built in that people that don’t have those experiences, they wouldn’t have it. Yeah. And. And I believe that it’s just a. It is a hundred percent life experience. Right? Like. Like you were saying. No. No bullets flying, no babies dying. When you have seen complete and utter destruction of the human body, of the.

The. The surroundings that you are. Are living in or taking. Taking cover in or the surroundings in which you’re operating in, and everything is decimated, and there’s. And there’s, you know, there may be bodies there. There may be dead animals, or there may be just a stench. Like death has this. This stench. And. And to be quite honest, there have been times in my life since deployment where I can recall exactly what those things are, what those smells are, what those. What those scenes look like. And in times when I think that, man, this really sucks.

This really sucks, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. It’s. It’s easy for me to think back to those times and imagine what I was thinking then. And I said the same thing then. How could I possibly. How could I possibly have that train of thought doing anything here when I was half a world away and had the same exact feeling right like, there, with. With the exception of, you know, for me, there hasn’t been a whole lot of other traumatic events. We know that there are people in our communities that have traumatic events. There are shitheads everywhere that perpetrate people.

Women, children. People have trauma, and people have extremely devastating things happen to them, and hopefully, they survive those things and they get through them and could one day be in a situation where they. They think that, man, this really sucks. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to pick up my ball and I want to go home and then recall how they felt in this time of complete and utter despair when they were helpless. It couldn’t do anything to help themselves. And maybe it’s even as bad as. As, you know, being. Being. Losing your job and having three kids to feed, and you’re in this situation where you got one box of Mac and cheese and two bologna sandwiches.

And you feed your kids and you don’t eat for a week, but your kids get fed. That sucks. But you can remember how you felt when you were going through said traumatic event and said the same thing and then have this thought of, how the hell can I. How can I say that now? There’s no way that this is that bad. Yeah. How am I drawing this line? I have options. There’s things they think. That’s the, that’s the dangerous thing, though, too, is to just think that just because of that, you know, that’s totally gonna change the game.

It’s not going to. I mean, certainly I never lived, like, a lone survivor moment, you know? Right. I mean, my comedic, you know, nothing burger, you know, little something here and there. Nothing crazy, but I talked to a lot of people that have gone for a long time, multiple times, and never did anything, you know, never even probably worked out of the Fob. I heard stories like that. I’m like, what are you. You literally telling me, like, no, only time I left was when I came home on leave and when we left from leave. Yeah. And then that was it.

Yeah, that was it. That was, like, their travel time. And of course, I mean, I was on the road all the time there. No, no comparison there. But to me, then I started to really think when I was like, oh, man. Like, what we do all the time, this was, this was busy. You know, there was a lot of people that were not busy. You know, they were doing their support jobs, which are vitally important. And. But again, you’re not exercising. If you’re at the dance, you don’t have dance shoes on, right? You’re sitting in the corner, you’re putting away the gear.

You’re, you know, filling up the drink of the punch glass. And to me, I would just like to see, like, could you break it down by mos? Where are these suicides coming in and shit? And I put, I put all this down, but it said, and this was going all the way back to 2012. And that. That metric has not changed, which should be even more striking now than it was then. 33% of all suicides, the folks hadn’t deployed. Yeah, see, that’s what’s always gotten me. That’s what I don’t understand. And when you. When we were having this conversation and you brought this up, that is, that’s the first.

That’s the first statistic that can. I didn’t know the number, but that’s the first statistic, the first topic that came to my mind. Well, then why are so many soldiers, sailors, marines, and coast Guard people? Why are they the ones that are at such high numbers committing suicide? And I don’t. I don’t. I struggle to find any other reason. Then they didn’t get to use their training. They trained. They trained and trained and trained and trained for the real thing. And, like. Like we said, that alone is a mind screw, all the things you prepare to do to go to combat.

And so, like, here’s an interesting. Here’s an interesting twist. Years ago, I remember going through an SRP, and I was sitting next to a young soldier, and we were at that. So for those of you don’t know, an SRP is like this logistical event where you go through and they check all your information to make sure it’s right. Your pay, your. Your legal stuff, your health stuff, blah, blah, blah. Just make sure everything’s right before you deploy off into wherever you’re going. And we were in line to get dog tags, and the kid must have been.

He was. He couldn’t have a beer. I remember that he was new. The unit couldn’t have a beer. So he wasn’t 21. I think we fed them beer anyway, right? If you’re old enough to wear a uniform to defend this country, you can have an effing beer, especially if you’re in my effing squad. Um, and he asked, well, why? So we got two dog tags. And he asked why there was the small chain, the one on the small chain. And I was like, well, buddy, I said, well, if you get smoked overseas, bro, that’s the one they hang on your toe to identify your.

You know, if your leg gets blown off or you don’t have a head or whatever. This is the. The dog tag they hang on your toe so they can identify your remains. And the look on his face was as if you, like, smashed him in the gut. Like, just. He couldn’t fathom that he’s wearing his. His toe tag around his neck, and three months later, we never saw him again. So I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know if he just, you know, was like, hey, I don’t know if I can do this. Or he went through.

Maybe he didn’t like me and he went to a different unit. I think he unitopped. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t even remember the kid’s name. And so, like, all these things, they. They get you all spun up, right? Because everyone needs to be trained the same. Because what if you do end up there? Yep. But now you have. Now you have this wealth of knowledge, and you have this, this training, and you, you’re. You’re a war fighter, you’re a trigger puller. You’re. You’re the. The biggest dick on the block, right? And then you come home and everyone’s like, hey, man, what? Or, or let’s say you don’t even go right.

There’s something wrong with your, your class three dental, right? Your teeth are out of line, and so they don’t even let you deploy. Now, you’ve done all this, and everyone’s going forward without you. Maybe that’s part of the deal. I don’t know, man. Like, I wish that somebody would see this, or somebody would just think of this and put out some information so that we can understand it. Yeah. See what’s feeding it. See where these. You keep talking about the big number and tell me where they’re coming from. Like, if they said there’s 22 suicides a day in corporate America, we have a lot more data.

What, tomorrow? Exactly. Tomorrow morning, they would know by finance, commerce, retail, government, they would know every one of those suicides, every one of those jobs, every level of job, every type or specification, how many years you had been doing it, how many years you were out of work prior to going into. They would know everything and it would all be out. Like, why aren’t we talking about that? Right? For crying out loud. They divide everything anyway. Go through and divide up the veterans. Don’t keep us in the, don’t keep all the information secret. We want to know these things because third, a third are non deployed assets.

Are they coming out of the reserve component? They’re coming out of the active duty component, or they are the suicides after they’re out of the military, while they’re in the military. They never talk anything specific about it. It’s always a generalized statement, you know, and it’s not like, it’s not like you and I or anybody out there listening is going to be able to do a damn thing about it today or at any point in time, for that matter. Well, we keep talking about it and make it something they have to pay attention to. But that’s a really, that’s a really good point.

I think that if they, the proverbial, they, whoever the hell they is, would release more information on the metric, or metrics. We’ll take care of the rest. Right. I think that there’s enough veterans in this country that care about other veterans in this country that if we knew who. By. By mos, by age group, bye. By gender, by. By race, if we want to start throwing the race card in there, by whatever metric it is you want to measure by, just put the shit out there, right? And we’ll take care of the rest. We’ll find our people.

We’ll take care of them. We’ll make sure that they know that they’re not alone. We can please our backyard. Yeah, you don’t have to do anything else. But you see, then they’re. Then there. Then the question is, well, what are we going to do with all this money? And what are we going to. Where are we going to get the next round of money from? It almost seems, now that we’re talking about it, it almost seems as if they don’t want us to police each other. I mean, I think that we would be just fine. Tell us where.

Tell us where wounded are. We will not leave our wounded on the effin battle. I almost slipped. We will not leave our wounded on the Effin battlefield. Tell us where they are and we’ll get them. We’ll get them. And once we have our hands on them and we can. And we can have a conversation, we can show them a better way. If they still decide that they want to pull it off. Well, at least we can say we tried. But this way is extra frustrating because we, as a community, don’t even have a chance to save our own brothers and sisters.

Nothing. Yeah. Especially those who serve. You understand? Like, that is your ultimate goal in this, in survival, is to ensure that you, your brother and sister, come home the same way that you left. Agree, the whole workings are a little jacked up, but on the outside, you bring them back. And now here we are. We’re all discombobulated. We’re all strewn. Strewn about. Right. You don’t have those old groups anymore. As soon as you’re out, you’re out. You know, you keep. You keep contact. I can. I’m only speaking for myself. You only keep contact with the people that you want to stay in contact with.

But, you know, if you were in those units, you would have been around those other people, and. And you’ve had individuals from your units take their lives, right? Yeah. I mean, in the short time that you and I have known one another, there have been multiple suicides. And you and I have known each other for a very short period of time. Statistically, for us to have three or four shared suicides between the two of us. Yeah. And I don’t think that when people hear 22 a day, they don’t. They don’t understand how connected we truly are and how often it occurs for most veterans.

Right. And how often we. We hear about it, how often we know the person that’s. It’s not like other suicides, because those are the ones that if we knew, we would have wanted to be in a position to help. We might not have been able to do anything. But if you don’t get a chance to do anything, that feels much worse. Yes, I agree. At least give them a chance to. To be big kids like. Like you and I have talked about. I don’t know, man. It’s. It’s a real. As always, every time we talk about it, it’s a real.

It’s a real heavy topic, man, and it really weighs on you and this. This feeling that there’s nothing that you or I or anyone else in our circle can really do about it unless somebody approaches us for help. Yeah. But I believe that. That this small circle that you and I have. Have, I don’t want to say built, because it’s not just you and I building it, but this small circle that you and I are a part of. I feel like that we are the type of people that will go out and find them. All we just need is a place to start looking and.

And maybe. Maybe some of it is. It’s maybe some of its obvious, right. Maybe we should. Maybe we should start walking the streets of South Minneapolis and just ask every homeless person, are you a veteran? But I think that there are a lot of. There’s a lot of ways to go about, like, effectively helping people. And so having. Having the background is extremely important, I think. Like, what. What did you do in the art? I mean, all these things. All these things that we. That we could use to. To help build a plan. Yeah. To identify these risk factors and know, you know, not necessarily what a person’s doing, but if you know somebody that kind of fits this mold and you’re, you know, and you notice or you hear something, you know, if you know a little bit about what you’re looking for, you know, or something, if that makes any sense, you can better identify things.

Right? Like, we all know the. The stupid b’s that they continually put out, you know, again, it’s a joke. Well, if they ever ask you to take care of their dog, if they ever ask you to take care of, you know, their. Their family or their. You know what I mean? Just. Right. Basically putting a secondary plan in place for when they’re not here. Do no shit. That’s obvious. You know, there’s, you know, there’s. There’s a lot of other things, and I think you and I probably as much or, or more than most people out there, you know, know more of the risk factors, the real risk factors, the real things that are occurring, the things that, you know, when you hear a problem occurred back, oh, man, I know that dude was down, down in the dumps.

Then this happened. I’m going to go check on my boy. Right, right. Like, I know we do that. I know we do that in our small group. And maybe that’s what the final thought here on this show for me, is perfect, is take that time to get to know your group and grow your group. We need to get. We need to connect and ensure that there’s nobody falling through that net where we don’t have to think about what if could we have, or did I do anything? Get involved with one another, get to know each other, reach out and maybe because maybe you can help somebody.

Perfect. And I was just going to tell you around time, we need to do final thoughts. And you took it upon yourself, folks. I am a. I am a living testament that Jason can be taught like he did it on his own. Thank you. I love you, brother. Here’s what I think. I think that this topic, as I’ve already said, is super heavy. I think that if we were able to get those metrics that we talked about, there are a lot of things as a community that we could do to help each other. And we talked today about the differences between soldiers who may have actively engaged, engaged in combat and used the training that they were, that they were giving, and then soldiers who were given the same training but weren’t actively engaged in combat.

Therefore, the difference becomes warfighter versus non warfighter. But I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter, in my opinion, if you trained and you were ready and willing to grab your rifle and stand a post or take that building, or get in that vehicle and take that convoy from point a to point b, or clear a route or do whatever it is that you were asked to do, you are a war fighter. Whether you did it or not is not relevant to me. And at the end of the day, our community is hurting, and it doesn’t seem like the United States government gives a shit, not enough of a shit to really help us and give us the resources we need to crawl our way out of this hole, whatever that looks like.

And so, as I said, give us the metrics. And we’ll take care of each other, but you have to give us. You have to give us the information. You’re going to have to separate yourself, Uncle Sam, from the deep pockets of whoever you’re getting this money to combat veteran suicide, whoever’s giving you all this money to fight this fight, you’re going to have to separate yourself from that, because it isn’t working. And we’re losing veterans every day. And these are the people. No matter how young or how old, we need to keep around in our community.

And more than ever now, more than ever. Because when and if shit hits the fan and this younger generation curls up in a ball underneath a truck and pisses themselves, it’s gonna be that old, crusty Vietnam veteran that goes into his closet, grabs some old rifle that’s all rusty and shit with his, his wolf ammo, and starts plugging. Son of a bitches. Those are the people we need. Those are not the people we need to start taking themselves deep. We don’t need anybody to be killing themselves. There’s enough people killing each other. All I think we need to do is put the information out.

Let the community police itself. Because if there’s one community in this country that will look after their own, it is this community. Amen. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have. I think that Jason and I could probably go on for another hour. Take care of yourselves. We’ll see you all next week. Jason, thank you for being here. Thank you and have a great evening. Good night. There’s a whole bunch of stories that have to be dug into, rethought, reconsidered, and in some cases, completely discarded. As modern Americans, we’ve been spoon fed this dumbed down, cartoonish, simplified version of history.

It’s all fake. It’s all. Everything that we have been taught is part of a self serving narrative written by the people who will say and do anything to keep us on a leash. Now, this version of history, some big name corrupt families like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and their many associates, are credited over and over and over again with propelling human development throughout the late 18 and early 19. Hundreds, almost every major american city, was burnt to the ground. What if we really are quite literally living atop the ashes of an advanced civilization that’s been hidden from us for our entire lives? Our enemies have a plan.

Our enemy’s leader has a plan. We all have one common enemy. His name is Satan. And right now, his minions are trying to run this country. We’re going to expose all the lies around the COVID bio weapons. We’re going to expose all the lies around our fake and stolen rig elections. We’re gonna put the sexual depravity of our fake leaders on full display. And then when the truth is known to the entire world, we are going to have extreme accountability. We will be the plan. We are never going to give up.
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