I'm writing this in response to another comment post from yesterday. Hopefully, the users who were interested end up seeing this.
I’ll preface this by saying that there are thousands of veterans who have sacrificed a lot more than I did. I consider myself lucky that I got out with only a weapons-grade chip on my shoulder. Many people were not so fortunate.
From here on out I’ll do my best to give you the “high-speed, low-drag” version, but no promises.
I was 15 or so when 9/11 happened. I live close to the west coast so I was just waking up when my Dad came to tell me that something was happening, something bad.
My family has always been conservative, of the mostly normie variety by today’s standards, and I was raised to be a patriot and to love my country. When the towers fell, I couldn't stand to see my father so worried, to see my mother cry, and I wanted to do something about it. Like many people, I decided to join the military as soon as I was old enough.
I enlisted in the Navy halfway through my senior year and shipped out the summer after graduation. Boot camp was fine, job training (A-school) was fine, and I got orders to an aircraft carrier in Norfolk, which was an exciting endeavor for 18 year old me.
I spent five years on that ship and deployed twice. I advanced quickly and performed well for the most part. I didn’t know much about what was happening politically, I figured serving was enough at that time.
When it came time to rotate to shore duty, I accepted orders to go recruiting for no other reason than they were guaranteeing that I could recruit from my hometown. Seemed like a good idea, and a great career bullet for newly frocked First-Class (E6).
I was wrong.
To try to keep things brief, I was not a good fit. I had excelled in the engineering environment but could not get behind the people or the practices I found in recruiting. It was a night and day difference, and my attitude went downhill fast.
Of the many examples I have, this is what fucked up my attitude the most. There was a points system assigned to processing potential recruits at that time. More points for diversity, gender blah blah. The seeds of the woke-mind virus we know today, but this was more than 10 years ago, so I’m sure it’s only gotten worse by now.
Our monthly goals were built around finding diversity over interest or qualifications, and the points were used as metrics for measuring a recruiting stations success, and as a recruiter your quality of life is effected dramatically by the success or failure of your station. Our monthly goals were built around finding diversity over interest or qualifications.
Anyway, it wasn’t enough to find qualified people to join the Navy, it was about finding the right LOOKING people, and white males like me were at the bottom of the list. Warfighting wasn’t the priority, diversity is what mattered to the Navy and I could not reconcile this fact with my own principles. I was thoroughly disenchanted.
This wasn’t my “awakening” just yet, but it had made me face some hard truths about military service. Hard truths that take years to digest.
I declined to reenlist and separated just shy of nine years in. My view of the Navy had been tarnished significantly, but I cared a lot for the fleet and the friends and mentors I’d spent so much time with, and I still do. I was proud of what I had done prior to the recruiting gig. I still held on to the belief that joining was the right thing, and that our efforts in the middle east were about protecting America. This was early 2015 or so . As any veteran knows, the transition to civilian life is not easy. I was frustrated about so many things. I felt betrayed by the Navy, apprehensive about starting a new career, and doubt over the war and our military’s role had started to creep in.
I started paying more attention to politics around this time and the 2016 general election was right around the corner. I used reddit a lot back then (cringe) and one day came across r/the_donald. I had heard about Trump only through media osmosis and had assumed he was just a clown, not a serious candidate. I think I was tacitly supporting Ted Cruz at that point.
But r/the_donald changed all that. The memes, the centipede videos, all of it was BRILLIANT. It was funny and informative, and as a result, the sub was exploding in popularity. It completely changed my opinion on Trump, and gave me hope that real change was a possibility.
However, the most interesting part was the left’s reaction to subreddit. Saying they hated it is a understatement. It was becoming so popular it was frequently showing up on the front page of the site and ruining their lefty echo-chamber. My first taste of liberal tears, ahh the memories.
They lied about r/the_donald constantly, saying it was racist, hateful, all the labels we’re so familiar with now. The sub was quarantined, suppressed and eventually banned outright. Nothing shocking by today’s standards, but it represented my first real taste of censorship.
Again, not my “awakening” but I was starting to see the matrix so to speak.
Then Donald Trump won the Presidential Election in 2016. If I had thought reddit’s response to r/the_donald was bad, now the entire media/government was collectively shitting its pants. The shock the day after he won was palpable, you could see it on all of their stupid faces. Something much bigger than I imagined was afoot, and that something just got kicked in the balls by the looks of it.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to win, Trump could not be president. The sheer magnitude of their outrage and the year’s long witch hunt that followed is what woke me up. Obama’s administration spying on Trump as a candidate and later president-elect was what shook me from sleep. That wasn’t the America I fought for, and as we all know now, that was only the beginning.
What followed for me was the rabbit-hole of research that has lead so many of us here. Rejecting the legacy media and looking for answers everywhere else. This led me to Q and the thousands of hours of reading and researching what was discussed. The process was painful, realizing that 9/11 was a lie hurt me deeply. Realizing that my country had been co-opted decades ago and that the core mechanics of representation were an illusion hurt even more. Like thousands of others, my military service was predicated on lies, my good faith, my patriotism, was exploited to kill millions of people in pursuit of greed and agendas that were at odds with me and the best interest of my nation. That’s what hurt the most.
I'm grateful for the truth though, living in ignorance isn't living.
Covid happening before the general election in 2020 wasn’t a wake-up call to me, it was further confirmation of the war that’s being fought. I think many of us knew something was coming before that election. Because whatever Trump is doing broke them, and I intend to help in any way that I can.
I don’t recognize my country because I’ve never seen its true face. The only way to fix it is with truth and justice to those who have stolen so much from us.
Welp, that was way longer than I intended and sitting here I feel like I left out a lot and barely scratched the surface, and I still ended up with a wall of text.
I would love to hear from other vets here, or anyone for that matter than feels compelled to share their story. I hope this ends up being helpful.
My war was Vietnam. My life will soon be over. And not a moment too soon.
Hang in there, Brother in Arms. I get those feelings often enough, but there's always something brings me back. For me, it's my current family and my place. Worked most of my life to get here, damned if I'm not going to enjoy it for a while. Gone through three wives (sort of), fourth now, a good one, finally. God only knows how many jobs, but it's a lot; finally had to do contract work, usually short term types that others couldn't do. But I finally got my acres in the woods, with few people around, no close by neighbors, my small armory, food stocks and all that. Makes this part worth living. Fortunately, most of my flying was over North Nam, and we didn't get exposed to AO, at least not much. Not so many of us left - can't afford to lose more.
I need to breathe, and control myself so I don't go over the edge. But I did not watch the life slip away from young kids as they died in my arms so that this idiot fuck-wad Biden could screw it all up. I understand differences of political philosophy, but I never thought that I would see this level of incompetence mixed with corruption.
We were supposed to have balances, protections, equal justice for all. We don't, and I am pissed off.
Believe this: I have many times felt exactly what you've said. At the end of my mil time, I went to Balboa VA hospital to visit the Marines/sailors there. That was bad shit, all the way. Being medevac chopper many times, I had the same situ with the deaths. However. One must remember, and it seems many on this board don't, that the Q thing has been going on for many decades, underground. Things that people damn, such as the Patriot Act, were done with purpose. While the elites considered it to be a major victory, it works both ways: written as it was, it allowed collection of intel on the elites also, and somewhat less on Americans, thus becoming a two edge sword. And the nsa has used it very well. Note that Trump cleaned nsa, and Rogers prevented general use of nsa intel. Know also that bidan isn't really the pres. His role as pres is an act, and that which you see is all necessary (much as I don't like it at all) in order to restore what we had before 1913. The administration of harmful chemicals to the general population, for instance, is most easily accomplished through centralized production, such as major manufacturers of cleaners, processing of beef, chickens, eggs and so on. Control of those has been in the hands of elites for decades, but now those institutions are falling. This isn't some plan to starve people: this is a plan to decentralize and make people more self-dependent, a thing that has been bred out of people since the 50s. The US infrastructure must be modified to force people to take responsibility for themselves, and have the courage (through necessity) to do so. At the same time all this crap is happening, worldwide, it's necessary to view it all from a tactical sense. Since Trump began his term(s), he and Q have virtually destroyed economic controls over the US, using various emergency declarations. One of the more important was the economic emergency in 2017, which forced confiscation of wealth of all forms of foreign entities interfering in US economics. It was that, almost alone, which allowed the huge economic recovery. Remember also that Trump and Putin allied against the elitists at the Finland conferences. Later on, China's Xi was brought into the fold. The advent of BICS, primarily the aspect of gold backed currency, was planned, almost certainly, giving a superb foundation for the downfall of EU/NATO/UN. Note also that the sabotage of the gas pipeline shouldn't necessarily be viewed as a bad thing, since it contributes greatly to the fall of the globalist empire in Europe: people are more and more pissed off at the elitist shenanigans there. While Europe tends to be more brainwashed (throughout history), the current happenings are waking a lot of them up. What happens here is hard to determine at this point. Personally, I can't see a good way out of the situ at hand with the illegals (many I believe are UN military), and the black population, which was utterly destroyed by LBJ's "great society". So, unlike most on this board, I'm inclined to think that there will likely be a series of civil altercations in which the Rednecks (and I consider a very wide range of people as Rednecks) become those who correct the problems, since most of us do have the capabilities to do so on a local level. "Only by Blood and Suffering" - Finicum.
Bluntly, hope is not lost. It is tempered with the realization that the shit hitting the fan is in the future, but in the end, the elites will lose.
Thank you for the work you did to type that out. I only know a few things for certain. I don't like the direction we seem to be headed. I don't feel I can trust anything that I read, or am told. I feel powerless to change anything except my existence.