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Full Auto Friday - 3/28/25
00:50:03
Traditional Q and A to round out the week, perhaps slightly heavier or darker topics than normal, but that is how the cookie crumbled this time. Unseen brain trauma and a fathers mission to prevent Veteran suicide , Signal App Whoopsies by Government...
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- [00:00]
Ashley Akinetti
This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You could have lost 10 pounds already if you already started one month ago. So are you ready to start today? Find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just 3 minutes at try fh.com try fh.com try fH.com results vary based on start weight and adherence to diet, exercise and program goals. Database on independent studies sponsored by Future Health. Future Health is not a health care services provider. Meds are prescribed at providers discretionary.
- [00:30]
Andy Stumpf
Good morning and welcome back. Straight to normal Friday programming for today. Three different questions. Maybe a little bit of a heavier episode, I suppose, given the subject matter of the questions for today, but we'll get through it. Maybe. Maybe the questions that are more challenging to answer that make you think deeper are better questions. Anyway, so before we dive in, let's pay the bills real fast, then let's get in the show. Today's episode is brought to you by Spartan Forge. I highly recommend you go back and listen to the episode I did with their founder, Bill Thompson. It irritates me how intelligent that he is. There are people that can create things and then there are people like me who are barely capable of breaking them. But that is the category that I fall into. I would have never had even the idea to create a project or a product like this. Spartan Forge is legit. And what I'm going to say is one of the coolest things before I talk about it is it keeps evolving. I'm on their mailing list and I just got an email. Now they have burn coverage maps. They've had maps that show the difference in North Carolina pre and post, that horrific storm and flood that they had there. They've added the ability to look and see lighting throughout the course of the day and not just the day that you're in. You can forecast way out into the future. And all of these things are amazing planning tools. Now, the Spartan Forge app itself, I'm gonna put it into the hunting genre. It's similar to other apps that are out there, but it has so much more. It is so cool in this modern era to be able to hold onto your device and look at somewhere you wanna go hunt. And you can research terrain, topography. One of the things I've talked about often, especially when it comes to flying helicopters, because I use two apps. I use an app called Foreflight, which is very particular for flying. And then immediately I switch over and I come onto Spartan Forge and I'm looking at their lidar because it Gives me an idea of the terrain underneath the foliage, which is just something you can't do with any other software that I'm aware of. I can look at UAV imagery, I could look at satellite imagery, but I don't know what's underneath that. I don't know the slope of the ground. And that stuff is all very important for Rotary Wing. So I'm using this tool in a completely different space. I've had engineers reach out to me and say that they're using LIDAR and the mapping features. It's unbelievable. It's got. If you go to the Spartan Forge AI on the site, I mean, it has everything from an AI tool that you can actually talk to. Talk to me about calibers for this type of animal. What would you recommend for a rifle build? And this thing is spitting out information. If you don't have a mentor that you have access to, this tool is ridiculous. And it pisses me off that Bill was able to create it, because I want to be smart like Bill, and I can't be smart like Bill. So if you're ready to up your game hunting wise, or even just, I'm going to say situational awareness wise, head over to spartanforge AI. It is worth every penny of the monthly subscription. I am shocked at how often, nearly every day throughout the week I'm firing this thing up and I'm looking at something else. Spartanforge AI. Okay, got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south.
- [03:43]
Unknown
West of the smoke, west of the smoke.
- [03:46]
Andy Stumpf
Okay, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on with it, baby. Give it to me. I mean, it cleared hot. All right, as I mentioned, three questions for today. Let's dive right in. Question one. I'm pissed and I don't know who to reach out to and hope you might be able to verbalize my thoughts and yours in tandem sometime. The subject matter of this email. This next sentence wouldn't make sense without the subject matter. It essentially was Seal Suicide 60 Minutes episode. This episode is about a seal who served in combat and incurred some brain trauma. And now his dad is concerned and angry that the VA hasn't done enough. I served from 91 to 94 and did not serve on front lines in direct combat. I served aboard two ships on four west packs, which is a Western Pacific deployment. That being said, you have explained a number of times that war touches a soldier, and it touches each one in many ways. It may be directly in wounds via bullets, bombs, or other projectiles, and other maybe from being Next to many explosions through training and real life missions. With that being said, soldiers are aware that those things happen, especially being in special operations. But what's the goal of this father on this episode? Is he asking for money from the va? I'm confused and know for a fact that my last 15 years through my care that my last 15 years through my care through the VA has been exemplary because of my own proactive care and knowledge of what I wanted and needed, including procedures and mental health. If I needed medical care, I was seen immediately and asked what I wanted to happen medicine or other care. If I needed to see mental health, if I needed transfer to a VA center, if I needed the crisis line, I was connected immediately and I was asked if I needed an ambulance. I also urged. I also used urgent mental. I also used yeah, urgent mental care for my issues and when I was going through divorce and was seen within 15 minutes by a social worker after 15 minutes was followed up by phone call the next day to see how I was doing. I'm just confused as to what people are complaining about. If you want disability monies from government for what you did, it's going to be a long and possibly expensive progression. If you are in need of help and medical care, you just need to show up and ask. Please advise and ask. Okay, there's a lot in that. First thing I'm going to say is this to whoever wrote this, take a deep breath, take a step back and detach yourself from the care that you have received and the situation that you are in with the situation that other people might be experiencing. I have heard plenty of stories where the VA has provided exemplary care and I'm very glad that you have had that experience. A lot of those stories are tied to exactly what you brought up in your email and that is you knew what you needed, you asked for it, you were proactive in your care and you received the care commensurate with what you asked for. That's kind of true for civilian hospitals as well. And interfacing with healthcare. I would recommend that approach for just about anybody. Don't be a victim of your care, and I'm not saying that negatively. Be proactive and be involved. Don't sit there waiting for somebody to tell you what is going to have to happen. Get involved, ask questions, be proactive. If you think you need something or are curious about something, ask for it. That's going to improve your care in both the VA and civilian medicine. But for the person who wrote this email, what the fuck is somebody supposed to ask for if they don't know what's going on inside of their body. You know, when people volunteer for special operations, they understand that there might be more risk involved due to the proximity to direct combat, like you mentioned, or even training than potentially a WESTPAC or duty on a ship. That doesn't mean that they're asking for those things to happen. It means that they're aware that that job might create exposure to those things. And the vast majority of people are able to navigate through that and not have lifelong or life ending consequences. But for you to sit back and say, well, they knew the risk of that, my answer to that is, you can go fuck yourself. Okay, I'm glad that your experience in medicine was what it is, but you need to do a much better job of getting outside of your own shoes. And view this through the lens of somebody who is having a change in their body slowly over time, no longer recognizing the person that they see in the mirror and unable to ask for the help that they need because they don't understand what is going on. All right, be honest with you. Your email is seeping with arrogance and it irritates the shit out of me. Now, I watched the episode, it's about 13 minutes long. I'm going to put it into the show notes as well so people can watch it themselves. What I didn't get out of that episode at all is somebody concerned or angry that the VA hadn't done enough. What I saw was a father who discovered his own son after he had taken his life, trying to do everything that he can to figure out why that happened, the potential things that could have led up to it, and hopefully implement change or maybe even warning signs along the way, tests and procedures along the way so that the military can highlight these things before it gets to the point of somebody taking their life. Warning signs along the way. I've had these conversations, if anybody's listened to this show. I have talked many times with people from my old job and I've asked them, should there be a maximum limit in exposure to combat? And oftentimes I'm phrasing that through the lens of the psychological burden that can be associated with that. But the physiological burden, it's. I have no ability to rate and say one at 60, 40 or 30, 70 or 50, 50 or whatever it is. I'm just going to say that they're both present and they're different in both people. Almost every one of my friends and myself agree that there probably should be an upper limit of exposure to These things because just like anything else, whether it's coffee or water or aspirin, there's a toxic dosage. Will that potentially make less people want to do the job? Maybe, but at least they're making more educated decisions on the way in. And it can prevent other fathers, hopefully, or mothers from finding one of their children. Excuse me. After they have decided to take their own life. So I don't know where you're getting. This VA hasn't done enough. Is this dad looking for money from the va? I didn't get that at all. This. I don't know what kind of heartless person you have to be to watch this video and not see a father that is doing the best that he can to not be destroyed by the loss of his son. For you to somehow turn that into. Well, people need to just ask for the care that they need. And yeah, if you want disability, it's going to be difficult. You know, you just need to show up and ask. You need to check yourself. If, if this was a conversation that you and I were to have in person, I would run up one side of you and down the other one. I would 100% put you back in your place. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. And you are completely viewing the world through your own experience. And you need to grow the up because your attitude and just show up and deal with it. You have no understanding what it is like to either feel a change in yourself or to see a change in your friends. To see a personality almost go from a full color portrait to a black and white fuzzy image. To watch somebody slowly start taking steps back. Not because they want to and not because they even understand what is happening, but probably because they don't understand what is happening and are on this internal quest to figure it out. And they can't because they don't have any answers. But to step backwards slowly from everything over time. In my own experience in the community that I came from, oftentimes this can be layered with substance abuse, usually alcohol, which is not a great lever or mechanical advantage for anything. I mean, I'm sorry, there's the. There's not a single solution in the bottom of any bottle. And at the end of the day, you're not gonna. Your life is not gonna be improved by the more that you drink. It's an argument can be made that the less that you drink or if stopping drinking, that's actually how you can lever your life in the right direction. In this particular instance, this individual, my suspicion was B having never known this person or met this person is that they were self medicating with alcohol. Not a great call at all. Can be compounding symptoms as well, right? It's a central nervous system depressant. It's a depressant in general. You can find yourself in really low spots. Many of my friends who have chosen to take their life, not all, many of them have done that in an incident involving alcohol itself. And I think that there is a direct tie between those two things. Like I said, not all, but many. It is a compounding set of symptoms that you clearly don't understand and maybe don't have the empathy or desire to understand. And that says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about the people that you are in this email complaining about. There are. There is a cost to everything. I can't even fathom being a father walking into my son's home, yelling his name and finding him in the basement after he had taken his own life. I don't know if I would be able to to live beyond that in this instance. It should be pointed out too that the father also was a SEAL in the 70s, then he served in the Secret service. Then he ran for public office. And I can't remember if he was a senator or a CONGRESSMAN, but about 40 years of public service this guy has put in. So he understood the rigors of the training that his son went through. Definitely a different timeline and a different era. I believe his son had done two combat deployments to Iraq, two to Afghanistan. That's an experience that his father didn't have. But he was familiar with the community and even his own father talked about that fading away of personality. What I see in that video is a dad doing the best that he can to hold onto the memory of his son and use the levers that he has access to to try to prevent other people from having to experience what he did and how you got from that to you just need to show up and ask, I don't know, for whatever it is about this email. You know, there are a few things that get under my skin. This is one of them. And I'll close with this. If you don't have any experience directly with what it is you want to be angry about and you don't have the cognitive ability to step back and step outside of yourself and think about things from a bubble slightly larger than the one that you view the world through, maybe you should take the time to educate yourself or shut the fuck up. And that's all I have for question number one. Question number two, changing gears. I'm a big fan of Clearhot and change agents. I like your approach to how you think and articulate your thoughts on certain topics. I do the best I can. I respect your ability to critically think, which I believe is severely lacking these days in our society. I don't actually know if it's lacking in our society. I think a lot of the interface that we have in society is through our phone, the anxiety rectangle, through social media, through text, and those are really bad mediums to express critical thinking. I think people are capable of it. I think most people don't have the ability to sit down, I mean, strip the camera and microphone away because that makes people uncomfortable. It took me a long time to get comfortable with it, strip those things away and have a conversation with people, at least again, in my own eyes, in my own circle of people that I choose to live my life with. There's a lot of critical thinking going on and there's a lot of conversations going on, but almost none of them are occurring over that device. I think it trends us down. Those devices, those apps, those platforms, they reward super short, concise, shareable, clickbaity, non critical thinking. Ooh, ah, wow. Whiz bang stuff. Whereas most people in the real world, they're not living their life that way. It's amazing how addicting that stuff can be. But that's also not how we live our life in the real world. It's a very interesting time. I'm sure every generation says that, but I've been having a lot more conversations about the difference that I see specifically on anything that we interface with on a screen and then anything we interface with with our own eyes. There is a huge difference for me in my personal life, and I would ask this question to anybody listening. The content you consume on your device. And I realize I'm getting on a tangent here, but bear with me. The content you consume on your device, the things that you see on Snappy Chat and Instagram and Tiki Talk and all these things, how much does that align with what you see with your own eyeballs in the real world? I have found that the things that I see and consume on, I'm not going to say exclusively, but a lot of what I see and consume on my phone is not reflective of what I see and consume and interact with in the real world. And, you know, I've talked with a lot of people who have done, you know, what do they call it? Social media purge or just a phone Purge. They get off everything for 30, 60, 90 days. They're happier, they have better interactions. They. Critical thinking is something that they spend a lot of time doing, which again, I think most people do. It's just everything has now been compressed to a 60 or 90 second or less. Better be able to share it, get some trending audio behind that thing or nobody's gonna pay attention to it. It just doesn't reward that. And I hope that that doesn't become the new norm because humans are pretty smart. You know, there's a bell curve to humans. I am on the lower side of the bell curve. And then it goes up and then down on the other side. I don't know what it would look like to be on the other side of the bell curve. I wonder if you're just. We just have dum dums on both sides and smart people in the middle. I don't know the answer to that one. Probably because I'm dumb. Dumb, but really smart. But I don't think we can keep up with evolution, the way that iPhones rotate themselves through. So I digress. Severely lacking these days in our society. It's still there. We just need to do more face to face stuff. As a former military member and someone who speaks on leadership, I would love to hear your opinion on the recent events in which some of our top officials use the signal app to exchange messages about strikes in Yemen. Do you believe people like Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth are incompetent? Would you agree that incompetence like this not only endangers our military personnel, but even further drives our allies away from us because they do not believe the US can be trusted? What are the national security implications from an event like this? Again, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this since you served and talked to people about leadership. That last sentence is true. I do both. Uh, let's go one at a time. And actually first, this is one of those where I'm gonna talk about what I do know and what I don't know. Here's what I don't know. I don't know at that level, the secretary level. And by that I mean, you know, secretary of defense, I don't know. Or even in higher levels of government, I don't know if they have specific methods and means of communication that they are supposed to use all time, at all times when it comes to just communication with other departments inside of the government. Meaning, do they have a phone that looks like this, but it's not an iPhone and it is a government encrypted phone. And you are supposed to use specific means of communication only with people that have that type of phone. I don't know. I've heard that the president has a particular type of phone that looks a lot like a commercial phone, but isn't a commercial phone and has hardened with encryption. And this, that, the other, I don't fucking know. You know, who would know? Bill Thompson would know because, yeah, that dude worked at DARPA as far as I'm concerned, created the space shuttle in the 60s, even though I don't think he was alive. But so I'm not sure now in the military, in my own personal experience, we had green lines, we had red lines. Green lines are unclassified, I.e. call home from the team space. Red lines are classified lines. So I know that that exists. But we also live in a digital and mobile age. So I don't know from a doctrine level inside of the government what their policy is on cell phone usage. I know a lot of people think that signal is highly encrypted. And from my understanding. Let me me be very clear on this. When I talk about encryption, when I say the word encryption, I roughly know what it means. I don't know how they do it. I know here I hear people say end to end encryption. I think I know what that means. I think that means it's from one user to the next, it's encrypted and nobody else can see it. That's the limit of my knowledge right there. I'm not trying to be smarter than I would appear to be on this particular subject. But from the people I know who are really good at this stuff, they all essentially say the same thing. No platform is perfect. No platform is without the ability to be exploited. So take care or leave it. I use imessage. They say it's end to end encrypted. So basically I feel like I'm good. Also, a national state agent would be utterly and completely bored by what I text back and forth. I mean, if you were to look at the exchanges between my wife and I, it's mostly pictures of our dog Javelin eating things in our house and sending adorable pictures or shocking pictures of how large his balls are. As a complete aside, that has nothing to do with this email. I We had a dachshund before I got divorced. He was fixed. He had a little pancake holster. Javelin is not fixed. And I'm gonna tell you, his balls almost touch the ground and it is shocking and I marvel at them sometimes. He'll do his morning sun salutation and he'll stretch out and I just try to think in my head, if he was the proportional size of a human being, they would be at like the mid shin. And it's impressive. And sometimes I take pictures of it and I'll send it to people and if I do, you're welcome. Welcome to the club. So again, and I do that over imessage so you can't see it China. Haha. Because it's end to end encrypted. Even though I don't know what the fuck that means now. That's what I don't know. I don't know what systems and what protocols are in place for those people. So I'm talking out of school here a little bit. Let's go backwards. What are the national security implications from an event like this? That's going to depend. I don't know the exact specifics of what information was exchanged. From my understanding, a group. I'm going to call it a text thread, even though I know it was on signal. A group signal or group text thread was created, I believe at this point. This morning I saw a article saying that Waltz basically said this is completely my fault. I'm the one who created the group. I'll own the responsibility for it. Cool, we'll get to that in a sec. What I understand is a group thread was created and they were talking about an upcoming strike in Yemen. Now I know a lot of people in the media are saying war plans were leaked. Let's. Let's take a slight step back from that. You know, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, to go back into the G what era of the three levels of warfare, Strategic, operational and tactical. Strategic is like the national. What is the United States? What is our foreign policy? How are we going to execute this? Operational theaters of war, mature theaters of war, which Iraq and Afghanistan both became. And then tactical things that are going on on the ground. And I would put a drone strike into the tactical level of warfare. It's not operational, it's not strategic. Is it a war plan? I don't know. You could probably stretch that through some particular definition if you wanted to. I would view it as somebody who has watched many a drone strike occur and watched people on ISR like predators or reapers for hours and for days and then watch those things terminate in strikes. Is that a war plan? In my personal opinion, no. So it seems like they were discussing a tactical strike in a non mature theater of war. When you look at it through the lens of Strategic, operational and tactical. The doctrinal warfare of the United States. I'm not saying the Yemen's or Yemenis. I wonder how you would say that Yemenis would consider it to be a strategic war or whatever type of war it would be. I'm just talking about it through the US Lens. It was the sharing of tactical information. Did it change the outcome? Did the person do anything with that information? I don't know the answer to either of those questions. It appeared to have not changed the outcome because the person still was killed and it appeared that the person didn't share that information. So what are the national security implications if that's the case? There are none. Does that mean it wasn't a big oopsie? No, we'll get to that in a sec. Would you agree that incompetence like this not only endangers our military personnel, but even further drives our allies away from us because they do not believe the US can be trusted? Let me add the first question to this too. Do you believe people like Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth are incompetent? That is a broad term. I mean, imagine making a mistake which this clearly is a mistake. My first thing that I'll say is this. I don't. I don't care what administration. My answer to this question is going to be identical depending on the administration. I don't give a fuck if it's the left or the right. What I'm about to say applies to either. Is there a perfect person on the left or the right? I don't think so. Is there a perfect person you've ever met in your life that is incapable of making a mistake like this? Because let's be honest again, in the world of this fucking exam anxiety rectangle, how easy would it be to hit the wrong. I mean, this is literally a matter of probably a thumb or an index finger hitting the wrong button. Not excusing the behavior by any stretch, but it's a mistake that I've made. Not when it came to talking about a drone strike in Yemen, but I've certainly more recently than I care to care to admit. I'll give you a little bit of inside baseball, a hypothetical coffee company, and an employee inside of a hypothetical coffee company was talking about their upcoming spring offerings and it was a tea of some kind that even the description of the tea gave me a little bit of a stomachache. And I hit reply and I think my response was are you fucking kidding me Now? I hit reply all on that, not because I wanted to Because I accidentally did. And let's just say that people were cc'd at the corporate level of this hypothetical coffee company that I might own a coffee shop associated with. And nobody got their hair, you know, their hair up in a tizzy or their panties in a twist. But I'm just saying, this shit's really easy to do. Got a good laugh about it. My coffee shop manager may have informed me that I hit reply all, and what are you going to do? At that point, I just let it fly. It is an easy mistake to make. We live in a digital age. Should you double and triple check if you're talking about things like a drone strike in Yemen? Yeah, probably. Should you be really, really sure who is involved in the communication and who is not? Yeah, you absolutely should. But again, if this was a Harris administration, if the election had gone a different direction, my response would still be the same. People are gonna make mistakes. And just imagine as a person listening to this, if anybody looked at one of your mistakes and then viewed you as incompetent, they took a mistake, which in this, I think we can agree, had no national security implications because the information wasn't shared and the objective was still achieved. So you make a mistake, as we all do. I don't know if I've ever made it through a day without making a mistake. And they view you and label you as incompetent, I'm going to say that's a bridge too far. That's a little bit of a leap too much. Now, repeated behavior, that's a different conversation. You keep doing things like this. That's certainly a point of contention that we can talk about. That may lead towards people thinking you are incompetent. But let's not make a mountain out of a molehill. Is it an oopsie? Yeah. Are you a dumbass for doing something like that? Oh, fuck, yeah, you are. Are you incompetent? Well, if we apply the word incompetent for something like that, think about how much more broadly we're going to have to apply it. Right. When words start meaning everything, they stop meaning anything. So if you're going to lower the threshold to incompetence to a single act, be careful, because people might turn that lens on you. Would you agree that incompetence like this not only endangers our military personnel, but even further drives our allies away from us because they do not believe the US can be trusted? Maybe discuss the incompetence aspect of what I think about that. Do I believe it endangers our military personnel. I believe it could endanger our military personnel. Again, I don't think there were any national security implications. I think there was some embarrassment about this for sure. And that ties into the second portion of this sentence. You know, do it. Does it further drive our allies away from us because they do not believe the US can be trusted? No, I don't think so. I think most people, most intelligence agencies and organizations can look at this. If I was to guess, if I was, I don't know, MI5, MI6, they're laughing. My guess would be that they're laughing about this. Not that it's not serious, but. But it's egg on your face in a public, you know, in the public square. And they're glad it's not them. And they're laughing, and they should be, because it's stupid. I mean, don't get me wrong, this is idiotic. Me hitting reply all to that email was fucking idiotic. And I have texted, have done it in so many different forms in any way possible for me to not have the tightest communication security and only make sure that I'm talking to the people that I intended to be talking to and have never texted the wrong, whatever person in my contacts list. Like it's. It's just happened so many times, and I do the best I can, and the people who see that happen, or I guarantee, I mean, I can guarantee you that almost everybody has done this. What ends up happening. Most of the time, people laugh at you because they get it. They're just glad they're not the one who made the mistake. Does this, like, erode trust of the United States globally? I mean, I guess it could. But again, do we need to make a mountain out of a molehill? And I know a lot of people will say, well, you know, you wouldn't feel that way if this was the other side. And I absolutely would. I think there are mountains and I think there are molehills and there's everything in between. And let's use a sliding scale. Let's take a deep breath, let's be adults. Let's use our brain power, regardless of how limited we may be with what we were given to do the best we can. And we don't have to turn something like this, a mistake, into a blanket statement of incompetence. Now, if either of those people waltz or Hegseth, do something that I believe is worthy of being called incompetence, I'll be the first to talk about it. But adding a reporter into a signal thread for a tactical strike is idiotic, but it's a mistake. It's not incompetence, it's a mistake. Please let me know if you ever encounter somebody who has never made one. I get it. This is a little bit more on a national scale. There's still people. Just because you're the department or the Secretary of Defense doesn't mean you're an autonomous robot. It probably means you have a staff of people that could set up these signal chat rooms for you. But if they make a mistake, guess what? It's still your fault. So mistakes are going to happen. That's all I got for question two. This episode is brought to you by Maui nui. The only 100% wild harvested meat that's completely stress free and responsibly source. Yes, you heard me correct. 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Here's the offer. Maui Nui Venison is offering listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products but supply is limited by the nature of their work. So don't mess around, don't wait. Head over to Maui Nuivenison.com Cleared hot again that is Maui Nuivenison.com cleared hotel all right, third question for today. This came in as kind of a two part email and for the person writing this I am just going to answer the first part because it ties into two guests that I've had recently. Hello, my name is redacted and I live outside of redacted and I am a truck driver and yes, that seat has me in its comfy grips in parentheses I'm fat if you don't get it. I didn't get it until you said that. Also, this question is not about what you weigh, but are you comfortable writing down that you're fat? Your words, not mine. How does it feel to write that down? Do you want to do anything about that? And if the answer is yes, when are you going to start? Because the answer to that question is how about right now? That's a total aside. I have some wild shit brewing right now, so strap in if you're reading and I am reading. So here we go. All the reflection really started last year, but what brought it all to a head is this. My middle school gym teacher where I grew up was small town usa. Got arrested for engaging in pedophilia type activity recently. From my own experiences I never knew him to be that way. I was a kid. What did I know? I had a rough childhood and he was one of the first people to believe in me and show me that the limits I had set for myself were bullshit. They could be broken with hard work and a will to do so. Another time he stood up for me is when I felt like I was right and the authority at the time weren't hearing my side. He explained it is not only what you say but how you say it that can make the difference. Not going to go deep into the childhood part, but what I mean by rough is both my parents were addicts of some sort and one of them took me outside and Showed me the no hope left rope. This is just context because I don't mean rough, as in I couldn't get a new pair of shoes rough. You get what I'm saying? No excuses on who I am today. That's just the facts, really. I never had anyone meaningful. I never had any more meaningful moments with the guy. But with that alone, at such an impressible age, impressionable age, I always thought that he was one of the good guys in air quotes. So now I'm faced with the reality, you don't get thrown in jail if you didn't do that crime. I've always maintained, like everyone else, you do pedo shit and your life is thus forfeit. In the words of the mob, it is what it is. I like my memory of who he was. A vet, a standup guy who wants the best for the young minds. He shaped effective education, not just blind discipline. A lot of people and former students like myself echo the same. Then there are some of my friends and people I don't know that said the complete opposite. I always knew something wasn't right. Well, if you knew something was fishy, why didn't you say or do something? What I'm really saying is this, is that just the facts? Did the guy I thought was a pillar at the time, was he actually a demon? How do I reconcile the two, both being true. Is that even possible? I'd want every pedophile to die a slow and horrible death because of the trauma, pain and suffering they inflict onto innocent children. I'd also be helping that process. But I asked myself, if I was in the room, would I make that one quick? Or just rather he get locked away forever with no hope of getting out. Would I make that one quick? I'm going to say. I'm going to add decision in there for you. It's a tough email. Okay, I'm going to compare and contrast two things that you brought up in this email, and then I'll answer your question. Well, if you knew something was fishy, why didn't you say something? That was one of the questions you phrased in one of the paragraphs. And then in your second paragraph, you said, I was a kid. What did I know? So view that through the same lens of what you were talking about. Your experience, your experiences, your upbringing, what you considered to be normal, what you did and didn't know. And then overlay that to the same kids that you're asking them, well, why didn't they say or do something? Because they were a kid also, and they may not have known and that's why these fuckers prey on kids. It is a lot harder to prey on an adult that does know, that has knowledge, context, experience, a sense of self solidified morality, an understanding of right and wrong. I mean, even from a physical perspective, it is easier to prey on somebody smaller than you, a child in this particular instant. So they may not have known either. So I would back away from that one. You didn't know all when you were a kid. I didn't know all when I was a kid. They might have not known all either. That doesn't mean that their sense of that something was off was incorrect. And hopefully they guarded their exposure to this person because of that. But just because you have a sense that something is off or somebody gives you a weird vibe, does that mean that you would have advocated for those kids going and saying, hey, I think this guy is a pedophile? That is a slippery slope is all that I'm saying. If he crosses that threshold, fuck yes. You want that to happen? People give me the creeps all the time. I don't follow them home and observe them through the bushes often or ever. I'm joking. I'm fucking joking sometimes. And I manage my proximity to them. So you didn't know. They might have, might not have known either. Give them a little bit of grace on that. Okay. How do I reconcile the two things being true, that this guy was a pillar at the time, but actually a demon. Are both of those things true? I don't personally believe, and this is my own personal opinion, that counts for Andy Stumpf and only Andy Stumpf. I don't believe that both of those things can be true at the same time. I believe that you could be a pillar or that you could be a demon, but not both. If you put those in the same sentence, one of those is a mask. And in this instance, what I would say is that somebody who is trying to look like a pillar and behind the scenes is a pedophile, is wearing the mask on the former, not the latter, and they are trying to appear like a pillar to sway people towards them, especially young malleable people with which they can then prey upon. Have you considered that the reason your middle school gym teacher acted the way that he did towards you and helped you the way that he did and was a mentor for you is because in his mind, when he went home at night and was alone with his thoughts, was actually targeting you, was actually trying to bring you closer? Right. He is trying to entice you to Develop a level of enhanced trust that you would have in him. And again, I don't know the specifics of this case. I am going to say that, you know, you don't get thrown in jail unless you do that crime. So this person sounds like he has been adjudicated and found guilty and sentenced. So since I don't know this person or the details and I didn't give the specifics, I am going to answer this under the assumption that this person is, in fact, guilty of being a pedophile. How have you not considered that the reason that he treated you the way that he did is that he wanted to abuse you? I do not personally think you can be a pillar of society and a pedophile at the same time. I do not think that that can exist in the same person. I'm not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Maybe there is a way for that somehow to exist in the gray matter between your ears, but I don't think so. You're pretending at one of those. And in my experience, you're pretending at one of those to feed the other. So I don't think you can reconcile that both of those are true, because I don't think that both of them are true. And I don't give a shit how much good somebody does. And this is a line that I've talked with, with many guests as well. You can talk about all sorts of things where forgiveness and grace can be given, but I have never had a conversation inside this room, outside this room, where somebody says, you know, yeah, there's nothing that just can't be forgiven, and there's just nothing that I wouldn't be able to. To move on past. Because then you say, what about abusing kids? What about a pedophile? And they'll say, oh, no, no, no, no. That's. That's a hard line for whatever reason, inside of our species, and I'm thankful that this is the case. That seems to be a very, very hard line. And I've made this offer many times, and I've yet to be taken up on it. And I'm more than happy to offer my services for free. More than happy to pay for my services. When you find these people, law enforcement, I would be very happy to skin them alive with a fucking potato peeler. Let's make sure they go through the legal process first, right? They're adjudicated. They're found to be guilty. I've got it from there. I'd need a blanket pardon and a little bit of time and a room with them. And I'd be more than happy to solve this problem so people can hit me up. Any law enforcement agencies that would like to hit me up for my services, please do. Yeah. Because I'm very serious about that offer. Unless there's some legal consequences, in which case I'm just joking. But your experience is obviously different than some of your classmates. I would ask yourself why people who want to victimize others are not looking for hard targets. The. The data is back on this. My wife was teaching an intro to self defense not long ago, and I'm fast forwarding to the world of adults at this point, or actually. Oh, you know what? I can. I just had a conversation with Greg Anderson. I can tie this one in as well, because he has a fantastic video on this. Law enforcement was interested on how predators select their prey. And I'm talking about humans, not prey, wildlife. At this point, there was a study done. I wish I had the statistics on it or the exact specifics. Law enforcement took videos of people walking on the street, and I don't think these people knew that they were being recorded. And maybe it was. There was so many of them, and it was so broad that you don't have to provide your consent, but they went to people who were in prison, who were convicted of violent crimes, and asked them to select the victim that they would go after based off of that video. And they did this with more than one person, obviously more than one predator. The similarities in their answers were shocking. In that instance, it was how the person carried themselves. They're not looking for a fight. They're looking for a vulnerable person. In that instance, they're making that off of a visual assessment. I just had Greg Anderson on the podcast. He pulled up a video, and this was a pedophile talking about how they selected the children that they targeted. And the person said, beyond looking at the child, I looked at the father. And if the father seemed capable of violence, my words, not necessarily his words, competent, capable, I would add to that, capable of violence. I did not approach the child. Why? Because they're looking to victimize. They're not looking to get in a fight. They're looking to get what they want with minimum exertion of effort and minimum risk. It is very possible that this person looked at you in exactly that way, even in the way that you described him. He was a formative figure in your young life. I bet there was a level of trust that was established there. Who knows how far that line may have been pushed? Why didn't he choose to push that line with you. I don't know, maybe because he was pushing it with other people, but I just truly don't think that you can be both. And I don't give a shit what you do in your life. I don't care if you create the cure for cancer. If in your off time you are abusing children, you can right off into the sunset. And sure, we should use your cure for cancer, but you should be punished to the absolute extent of the law, locked away in a fucking dark corner of humanity, never to see the light again, regardless of the positive you may have done. Because you can't be a pillar and a demon at the same time. Just my personal thoughts. That's all I have for this Friday. Holy fuck. Got a little bit darker than I thought we were going to go. See you all on Monday.
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Unknown
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