Try to Keep Up with the Changes

I was skimming through a 2.5-hour video from Valhalla VHT, my favorite ex- Green Beret podcast. Nate puts up some pretty good stuff, particularly about the Charlie Kirk assassination debacle. It is very helpful to have available the knowledge of men who have actually killed in combat when the subject is guns and wounds and kill shots. I've dealt with hundreds of gun nuts who have thousands of hours of range time, but no practical experience. I don't care if you can make that shot in your sleep. Good for you, dreamer. The shot not being made at all is what I care about in this case. I am in the camp that believes that Tyler Robinson did not take that shot and that grandpa's 30.06 was not the murder weapon. I really wonder if Tyler was there at all. Really now, if he was on the roof, why? Why doesn't he resemble all the security camera photos of the suspect (him) making his way to the roof- without a rifle- and escaping from the roof- without a rifle- and the rifle being found in the nearby woods? You can drive a fucking truck through the FBI findings of this story, and you also have to ask, why was this the FBI's case? While Kirk was a political figure, he was not a sitting representative of any state or country. He was a maga podcaster who debated maga policy with college kids, for fun and profit. Bigly profit. Is that in the purview of the FBI? Maybe the local law enforcement, quickly overwhelmed by a sniper attack that was above their paygrade called them in, but didn't that happen kinda fast, like it was part of the plan? 

Kirk's fame and importance in politics was really rather limited to politicians who needed to curry his favor and people on social media. I got to tell you; that's not your average American. If you are on Bluesky, Twitter, Tik Tok or Facebook, you probably knew who Charlie was, but the vast majority of us are not on those sites. The average person can't even name their state's senators because they didn't vote for them. This is because they don't bother voting. You can look that up. So, in the actual very small, scummy pond of politics, Charlie was just one of the more well-known catfish. I am certainly on the internet, and I just saw him as a pin-headed guy with really big gums and really bad takes on politics who made his bones debating younger college kids. When it's your job to memorize *facts* and Bible passages and to translate them into talking points, it serves you well to fight below your weight class. You win more, especially with editing. Charlie was smart enough to not go up against young, Dean Withers a second time or to take on Medhi Hasan at all. Either man would eat his lunch. Best to be like Trump and just declare yourself the king. 

But enough about Charlie Kirk and his being more famous for being dead than alive. That's an odd career choice and it would have been pretty cool if he showed up alive three days later and then ascended into Heaven, but that was not the play. He's dead for some reason. I was not shocked that my boy Nate wasn't buying the whole government line on the event. I've always found him to be very sober and honest in thought- for a combat veteran Green Beret. We expect these guys to be hard charging, life-takers and heart breakers after they retire, and many of them are, but more of them than you might think are very uniquely reflective about their service. It's because they were there. The politicians were not. You and I were not. For a man to be honest about his life to you, he must be honest with himself first. That is whether it's combat or civilian life and it goes for women too. To thine own self be true. You can quote me on that. 

I would imagine that if you are in the military, deployed anywhere in the world, you know why you are there. Orders. It may suck, but that's what you signed up for and being there is how you get home. I imagine it's as simple as that. I also think that, like a lot of things in life, you'll figure it out later. I look at my own life- especially the cringe moments- and wonder to myself, "Why did I do that??!!" they say don't dwell on your past, but past is prologue. You have to understand where you've been sometimes to understand where you are now, and where you might be in the future. You can't change the past, but you sure can change how you feel about it. You have to come to grips with it to your own accord, no one else's. Other people are going to tell you how you really feel. They'll be wrong, of course, but you can't change their mind. They likely can't either. Relish the ability to change. Not everyone can.