Speaker 1: It is the Jesse Kelly Show on an Amazing Friday,
Speaker 1: and asked doctor Jesse Friday, we're gonna talk about how
Speaker 1: I would have felt when I was in the Marines
Speaker 1: getting deployed.
Speaker 2: Over there to LA jury duty. Someone wants to discuss it, women, men, sports,
Speaker 2: college sports, the National Debt, all that and so much
Speaker 2: more coming up this hour on the world famous Jesse
Speaker 2: Kelly Show. So let's just dig into this one right here. Hey, Jesse,
Speaker 2: if you were still in the Core, how would you
Speaker 2: feel about being sent to LA? Says this from an
Speaker 2: eighty five year old listener. So I'm gonna say something
Speaker 2: and it's not going to sound great unless you can relate.
Speaker 2: And man, that was awesome. Did you guys hear that rhyme? What? Chris?
Speaker 2: Did you hear that? It's not gonna sound great unless
Speaker 2: you can relate. Aa. That's good. I'm gonna use that
Speaker 2: again anyway. So when you're in I'll just make it
Speaker 2: about the Marines, when you're in the Marine Corps, and
Speaker 2: when you're specifically in the infantry in the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: any kind of a real combat mos a combat job
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps, which that's what I was. It
Speaker 2: was infantry. Your day to day life sucks, and I
Speaker 2: made it in this way. It's not that it's it's
Speaker 2: not that it's horrid overall. It's that your day to
Speaker 2: day life is a grind and it's always miserable, and
Speaker 2: it should be. I'm not complaining by the way it
Speaker 2: should be. It's not supposed to be sunshine and roses.
Speaker 2: You're in the infantry. They're trying to make you tough,
Speaker 2: they're trying to train you. So your whole life every
Speaker 2: day is sweating and misery, and you're out in the field.
Speaker 2: You're getting dirty, you're constantly hot, you're constantly tired, you're
Speaker 2: constantly getting screamed at doing pushups, constantly running to and
Speaker 2: fro and then waiting, hurry up and wait. This is
Speaker 2: your daily life, and this is how it has to be. Again,
Speaker 2: this is not a complaint. That's how it has to be.
Speaker 2: It's your daily life. And as you're going through this,
Speaker 2: you are getting tougher and better. As you acquire more skills,
Speaker 2: you do shoot better. You are physically getting harder and
Speaker 2: harder and harder. You are becoming the longer you spend
Speaker 2: you're becoming that warrior, right and well, I'll put it
Speaker 2: to you this way. If you decided to go out
Speaker 2: for the football team, and you go out and you
Speaker 2: make the football team, and you go to two days
Speaker 2: in the summertime, two practices of today, hot, miserable, you're
Speaker 2: running stairs, you're puken, waits over and over, practice, over
Speaker 2: and over, yelling over. Don't you want to get in
Speaker 2: the game at some point in time, if you're going
Speaker 2: to go through all of that, don't you want to
Speaker 2: play a game? That's the idea. You put in the work.
Speaker 2: You got yourself strong, you got yourself ready. When we
Speaker 2: were in we wanted to go to war. We wanted
Speaker 2: It's not that we weren't afraid. There was always that
Speaker 2: fear there. No one wants to die or be maimed,
Speaker 2: or be burned or something like that. There's always that
Speaker 2: fear there. But as young naive men, it is fairly
Speaker 2: naive to want to go to war, trust me on that.
Speaker 2: But as young naive men, you spend all this time
Speaker 2: to go through all this misery, getting yourself hard and ready,
Speaker 2: and hard and ready and hard and ready. You want
Speaker 2: to use those skills I did the two days I've
Speaker 2: been in the weight room, I want to go out
Speaker 2: and play a football game. Now, if you had told
Speaker 2: us we weren't even political, really, there wasn't really anybody
Speaker 2: that I can think of that doesn't stand out to
Speaker 2: me that was political, myself included. I know you're probably thinking, well,
Speaker 2: except for you, no, I was. Remember I did not
Speaker 2: grow up political. I did not grow up in a
Speaker 2: political household. I have always been a huge history nerd.
Speaker 2: And I knew that we were Republicans just because that's
Speaker 2: the only thing my dad ever told me. I asked
Speaker 2: him one time whether we were Democrats and Republicans. I
Speaker 2: was a small child, and he looked at me and
Speaker 2: his lovely soft way and said, we're Republicans, and that
Speaker 2: was that. So I was not political when I was
Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps. None of us really were. If
Speaker 2: they had come and told if they had come to
Speaker 2: us one day and said, get your stuff packed. You
Speaker 2: know all those people rioting in LA We're going to
Speaker 2: go smash some skulls, we would have been beside ourselves
Speaker 2: with excitement. This is they Like I said, it was
Speaker 2: not even a political thing. If you told us that
Speaker 2: there were a bunch of people looting and burning and
Speaker 2: American city that would have bothered us a great deal,
Speaker 2: and you told us that we now have to go
Speaker 2: there and fight them. Oh gosh, we would have been
Speaker 2: unreasonably excited to do so. I know, from the outside
Speaker 2: looking in that maybe sounds barbaric or makes us sound violent,
Speaker 2: or and maybe it is. Maybe it is barbaric, Maybe
Speaker 2: it is violent. I would have loved the opportunity to
Speaker 2: smash some commie rioters face in. I would have absolutely
Speaker 2: loved the opportunity to do so. We ran into one
Speaker 2: in a well, you know what, I probably don't need
Speaker 2: to tell that story on the radio. Maybe that's another time.
Speaker 2: Shall we Let's move on? Hey, Jesse, so now the
Speaker 2: floor or so now the women are suing for equal
Speaker 2: pay in the nil deals. He's talking about NCAA sports
Speaker 2: men's football and basketball bringing all the money, so well, listen.
Speaker 2: I you know, I would never give myself any credit
Speaker 2: for predicting this, But Chris Corey, I don't even know
Speaker 2: if Corey was here yet. When I said, what did
Speaker 2: I say was going to happen when college sports started
Speaker 2: allowing these athletes to sign endorsement deals? What did I
Speaker 2: say was going to happen? Chris creeah. Here's what I said.
Speaker 2: The women are going to sue and it's going to
Speaker 2: blow everything up in college sports. This is how it works.
Speaker 2: And I know because my wife was a college athlete
Speaker 2: and I got to know all the intricacies of the
Speaker 2: whole thing. Did you know that most universities, most this
Speaker 2: is the vast majority, they only make money on the
Speaker 2: football program. All the other different sports, men's, women's, doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what it is. The football program is the one
Speaker 2: that brings revenue into the university. That's big schools, small schools.
Speaker 2: Most of the unionies. That's the case. There are a few.
Speaker 2: There are some these men's basketball meccas, you know, like
Speaker 2: a Duke or something like that, where the basketball team
Speaker 2: will also make money, but there aren't many of those.
Speaker 2: Beyond that, the sports are money losers for colleges when
Speaker 2: you consider the facilities, when you consider these are essentially
Speaker 2: six figure scholarships you're handing out for free. When you
Speaker 2: consider all these things, the lack of attendance. Sports in
Speaker 2: college outside of those examples I just gave are money losers. Well,
Speaker 2: you decide to open up college sports, and now you
Speaker 2: can pay the players. You can get sponsorships for the players.
Speaker 2: I saw this coming a million miles away. I don't
Speaker 2: know why anyone else couldn't. Who's going to get the sponsorships?
Speaker 2: The starting quarterback, the starting power forward, the wide receiver,
Speaker 2: the defensive ends, because remember, you only would sponsor a player.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't get advertisers for funsies. You know
Speaker 2: the people who advertise on this show. Yes they share
Speaker 2: our values, and yes I'm friends with pretty much all
Speaker 2: of them personal friends. But they're not advertising just because
Speaker 2: they love the show. You want a return on the
Speaker 2: investment you expect, you demand, and you have every right
Speaker 2: to demand a return on your investment. If you're sponsoring
Speaker 2: a college athlete, you're not doing it for no reason
Speaker 2: at all. Either A you are just a huge fan
Speaker 2: of your school and you're gonna hemorrhage that money because
Speaker 2: it's nothing to you, or B. The most common one
Speaker 2: is you expect the starting quarterback to advertise for your
Speaker 2: local chicken wing company because you expect his endorsement to
Speaker 2: bring in business and you want to sell more chicken wings.
Speaker 2: Who is showing up at your business for the softball player.
Speaker 2: I'll make it about obs sport Gymnastics she was an
Speaker 2: elite gymnast, one of the best in the country. She
Speaker 2: didn't bring any money into the university. You could have
Speaker 2: driven through Tucson one day and actually seen her up
Speaker 2: on some little billboard flag type thing. She didn't bring
Speaker 2: a diamond too that university. She on an international scholarship
Speaker 2: cost the University of Arizona money. And she'd tell you
Speaker 2: that to this day, when I had to go to
Speaker 2: the gymnastics meets and when I got to go, when
Speaker 2: I got to go to the gymnastics meets, is what
Speaker 2: I meant to say. When I got the awesome opportunity
Speaker 2: to go to the gymnastics meets, even the big ones
Speaker 2: against the rival school, nobody in the stance, nobody's buying
Speaker 2: gymnastics merch. But when you combine the fact that other
Speaker 2: sports don't money with the fact that today's young athletes,
Speaker 2: not all of them at all. There are a bunch
Speaker 2: of wonderful young athletes, but a lot of today's young
Speaker 2: athletes are really really entitled, little nasty brats. It was
Speaker 2: obvious to anyone with the brain that the women's basketball
Speaker 2: player was going to watch the starting quarterback get a
Speaker 2: million dollars a year and she was going to feel
Speaker 2: entitled to some of that sheddar herself. It was obvious.
Speaker 2: That's how it works. All right, to move off of
Speaker 2: this and talk about the national debt. It is the
Speaker 2: Jesse Kelly Show on a Friday. Remember if you miss
Speaker 2: any part of the show, If you missed our Alexander
Speaker 2: the Great History thing from last night, you can download
Speaker 2: anything that. All the podcasts are free. iHeart Spotify iTunes.
Speaker 2: Dear hummer lover, how much of our thirty seven trillion
Speaker 2: dollar national debt do you think is from waste, fraud
Speaker 2: and abuse and could have been avoided half most all?
Speaker 2: If I had to put a number on that, I
Speaker 2: would tell you, well, I got hold on pause for
Speaker 2: a second. What do we consider waste or fraud or abuse?
Speaker 2: And I ask it for this reason. I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to be cryptic here. If a president declares a war,
Speaker 2: a war that really doesn't have an end goal to it,
Speaker 2: a war that maybe you consider unjustified or kind of pointless.
Speaker 2: If he declares a war like that and the war,
Speaker 2: on top of the lives and everything else, costs five
Speaker 2: trillion dollars, does that fall for you in the category
Speaker 2: of waste fraud and abuse. It does for me. And
Speaker 2: this is why I want to answer the question this way.
Speaker 2: We don't because this is the only thing we've ever
Speaker 2: known as America. And I realized we have a bunch
Speaker 2: of foreigners listening to But I'm just speaking as an American.
Speaker 2: We don't really realize and appreciate how wealthy we are.
Speaker 2: I don't either, how wealthy we are as a country,
Speaker 2: over the top, ridiculously wealthy in ways that even other countries,
Speaker 2: modern civilized countries can never even compare to. They don't
Speaker 2: even relate to it. I was, remember I told you
Speaker 2: that time I went to Europe with the fam, took
Speaker 2: ob and the boys. We went to Austria in the
Speaker 2: Czech Republic. Well, part of the appeal of leaving Houston
Speaker 2: in the summertime was we were going to get to
Speaker 2: get out of the heat. Let's get out of the heat,
Speaker 2: spend a week out of the heat. I'd never been
Speaker 2: to Europe. I'd always wanted to go nerd out on history.
Speaker 2: Let's get out of the heat and lo and behold
Speaker 2: the way it works. Sometimes we show up in Europe
Speaker 2: and they are having the hottest summer they've It was
Speaker 2: something like a record or one of the hottest they'd
Speaker 2: ever had. I don't want to be over the top
Speaker 2: with it, but it was baking. We're talking for Europe.
Speaker 2: It was ninety four ninety five degrees roasting in Europe.
Speaker 2: So we get there and it's cooking, and everybody, all
Speaker 2: the tourists, it's all tourist spots. We're all walking around
Speaker 2: looking at stuff like that. It's all hot. You know.
Speaker 2: The main thing restaurants were advertising as you walked up
Speaker 2: and down the street air conditioning. It is so rare
Speaker 2: there that the restaurants who had it knew they had
Speaker 2: a selling point that other restaurants could not match. All
Speaker 2: they had to do was put a sign out in
Speaker 2: front and said, we have air conditioning here, come on
Speaker 2: in and eat. Let me ask you something as an American,
Speaker 2: have you ever won time in your life eaten in
Speaker 2: a restaurant in this country that did not have air
Speaker 2: conditioning in it. I'm sure I have a couple times.
Speaker 2: But that's something most people will never experience in this country.
Speaker 2: Air conditioning. Everybody has air conditioning. You have air conditioning
Speaker 2: in your apartment, of course you do if you have
Speaker 2: if you have a small one bedroom apartment. It's air
Speaker 2: condition isn't it If you work in an office building.
Speaker 2: We're in one right now. There's air conditioning. I'm doing
Speaker 2: my show. I think it's like seventy five degrees in here.
Speaker 2: Your restaurants, I'm gonna stop at a gas station on
Speaker 2: the way home. It will be air conditioned. So what
Speaker 2: I was getting to is, we have an absurd amount
Speaker 2: of money in this country. Thirty seven trillion dollars in
Speaker 2: national debt is an unbelievable disgrace because it should be
Speaker 2: zero dollars with the amount of money we take in
Speaker 2: in this country, with the amount of money we truly have,
Speaker 2: if we were run the right way, if we had
Speaker 2: done things the right way, we'd be sitting on a
Speaker 2: thirty trillion dollars surplus. That's how ridiculous, that's how criminal
Speaker 2: it is that we are thirty seven trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 2: We are as a country, as a people. Those professional athletes.
Speaker 2: We make fun of the NBA player who makes twenty
Speaker 2: million dollars a year and then goes bankrupt the second
Speaker 2: he retires because he was spending somehow more than he
Speaker 2: was taking in. We love to point at that guy, Ah,
Speaker 2: look at that stupid idiot. Wow, what an uneducated moron.
Speaker 2: How do you spend more than that's us, That's the
Speaker 2: United States of America. We've done that. A country this
Speaker 2: wealthy should never be in debt. Ever, maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: could make an exception for a large war like a
Speaker 2: World War Two. You can understand, Hey, we have to
Speaker 2: put some economic things on hold. We have to overbuild
Speaker 2: planes and ships, and we have the maybe temporarily we
Speaker 2: should be spending more than we take in. But the
Speaker 2: amount of money this country takes in, that we have
Speaker 2: not only not been able to stay underneath that amount,
Speaker 2: but that we have blown through it to the point
Speaker 2: we're thirty seven trillion dollars in debt is a disgrace.
Speaker 2: It's pathetic. I'll be honest. It embarrasses me. It embarrasses me.
Speaker 2: We are the young NBA player who makes twenty million
Speaker 2: and spends thirty million a year. We're the rapper who
Speaker 2: goes bankrupt, but he's got a diamond necklace worth eight
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars. That's us here in the United States
Speaker 2: of America. Embarrassing. But we have allowed to happen to
Speaker 2: the treasury. That's how it goes, All right, move on,
Speaker 2: do some other stuff. It is Jesse Kelly Show on
Speaker 2: a wonderful Friday and ask doctor Jesse Friday. And we're
Speaker 2: not discussing anymore of this regime change stuff right now.
Speaker 2: I realize missiles are flying and threats are being tossed around,
Speaker 2: and it's probably going to be a wild weekend over
Speaker 2: there in the old Levant. So we're just going to
Speaker 2: sit here and answer some ask Doctor Jesse questions, and
Speaker 2: I guess we'll sift through the carnage on Monday. Jesse,
Speaker 2: your history discussions and your comments the other night about
Speaker 2: whether we are still a nation prompt me to request
Speaker 2: or suggest that you discuss our founding as these United
Speaker 2: States versus being a country or a nation. You explain
Speaker 2: things well, and I would appreciate hearing your explanation of
Speaker 2: our progression from a group of sovereign states to whatever
Speaker 2: we are now. Thank you for your time and attention. Well,
Speaker 2: I'll just touch on this briefly. Remember that we were
Speaker 2: colonies at first. We were colonies. Everyone knows about the
Speaker 2: thirteen Colonies. We were colonies, and the colonies had their
Speaker 2: own governments. Human beings whenever they live together a city
Speaker 2: or a call, any estate, whatever, they're going to create
Speaker 2: a government. A government is a very human thing. You're
Speaker 2: always going to have some form of it. It could
Speaker 2: be a tribal chief or a king or a representative republican,
Speaker 2: but you're going to have a government of some kind.
Speaker 2: So the colonies had a government. But as they were
Speaker 2: chafing underneath the king, they were starting to figure out
Speaker 2: that a bunch of separate colonies can be smashed, can
Speaker 2: be crushed. But if there was some way to unify them,
Speaker 2: if there was some sort of uniting principle, then their
Speaker 2: collection getting together would be a strength. They would become
Speaker 2: stronger and possibly even strong enough to fight off the
Speaker 2: British crown. We did that, but then then you really
Speaker 2: need to figure out, Okay, how are we going to
Speaker 2: live together? Because New York even back then was different
Speaker 2: than South Carolina. It's different different regions. You're going to
Speaker 2: have different values in different regions. What are the unifying ideas,
Speaker 2: what are the unifying principles? And they had all kinds
Speaker 2: of debates about that back then, back and forth of
Speaker 2: how should the government be here, how should it be there,
Speaker 2: how should it function? Endless discussions. Eventually we settled on
Speaker 2: what we obviously know the constitution. The federal government should
Speaker 2: be limited. The states really should govern themselves for the
Speaker 2: most part. But we are still one country. We have
Speaker 2: united the states. The states are united, so we're one country.
Speaker 2: But the federal government is a very very small thing.
Speaker 2: The states should handle their own business. That's how we
Speaker 2: were founded. That's what they believed, that's what worked, and
Speaker 2: that's what would still work. Federalism the idea that the
Speaker 2: states govern themselves, handle themselves. The federal government only does
Speaker 2: the things that are absolutely necessary for a federal government
Speaker 2: to do. Things like currency. You can't have South Carolina
Speaker 2: having a different currency to Montana. It doesn't work. You
Speaker 2: have to have one currency as a country, all right.
Speaker 2: So how did we get to where we are now? Well,
Speaker 2: on a macro level, we're human and we're governed by
Speaker 2: other human beings. And people who achieve power very very
Speaker 2: very rarely try to just maintain it, and almost never
Speaker 2: do they try to reduce the amount of power they have.
Speaker 2: You know, no football coach takes over the football team
Speaker 2: and says, you know what, I really want less control
Speaker 2: over things. That's not how it works. You want more control,
Speaker 2: But governments operate the exact same way. And our federal government,
Speaker 2: over years, decades and decades and decades and decades, because
Speaker 2: it's occupied by flesh and blood human beings, was always
Speaker 2: trying to find a way to take more power than
Speaker 2: it was constitutionally allowed to have. Hey, we're the federal government.
Speaker 2: I want to be able to do this. I want
Speaker 2: to be able to do that. I want to be
Speaker 2: able to do this. You keep limiting my power. But
Speaker 2: I have things I want to do, so I need
Speaker 2: more and more and more of it. And how we
Speaker 2: got to this place is, honestly, money is a big
Speaker 2: part of it. When the federal government started handing out money,
Speaker 2: it started gaining control. That's that's really the huge problem
Speaker 2: we have as a country. It's the amount of money
Speaker 2: the federal government takes in and then hands out, giving
Speaker 2: them control over things they have control over. Well, the
Speaker 2: Department of Education, Department of Education hands out money. That
Speaker 2: money is power. They can withhold it. Hell, keep you
Speaker 2: go ahead and defy me. I'll hold back my money.
Speaker 2: Trump has done it, Democrats do it, Republicans do it.
Speaker 2: Everyone does it. Now. Because you have money, what you spend,
Speaker 2: what you pay for you control that. They've done it
Speaker 2: with Wall Street, the financial sector in the government. You
Speaker 2: can't even tell. There's not an inch of daylight between them. Now.
Speaker 2: They have completely merged with each other because the federal
Speaker 2: government has this. The federal government has that, Hey, go
Speaker 2: ahead and screw up at your bank. We'll come in
Speaker 2: and take it over and piecemeil that whole thing out.
Speaker 2: It's our bank. Now, these are ridiculous powers. The federal
Speaker 2: government should have never had. The making war. I know
Speaker 2: this is a basic point, but you know that the
Speaker 2: president can't just declare war. Right, that has to come
Speaker 2: from the Congress. We are not a country with the
Speaker 2: king where the president can just declare a war. But
Speaker 2: I mean, all the way back to LBJ, I mean, shoot,
Speaker 2: you can, are you the Korean War? You could? Presidents
Speaker 2: have just asserted their authority. They didn't like that limiting power. No,
Speaker 2: I'm the president. I think we should. I think we should.
Speaker 2: So they tried look back to Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson
Speaker 2: because he was a worthless piece of tyrannical trash. Woodrow
Speaker 2: Wilson thought he was above other people. He felt like
Speaker 2: he was a king. Woodrow Wilson wanted US in World
Speaker 2: War One so badly, so badly. FDR wanted US in
Speaker 2: World War Two so badly. In the public opinion polls
Speaker 2: were always against them. The public was dead set against
Speaker 2: getting involved in these wars. Until Pearl Harbor. No one
Speaker 2: wanted to be involved in World War Two. Until you know,
Speaker 2: the Lusitania and the Zimmerman Telegram and things like that.
Speaker 2: No one wanted to be involved in World War One.
Speaker 2: Nobody did. But Woodrow Wilson in FDR again saw themselves
Speaker 2: as kings, and they despised the fact that they had
Speaker 2: to go along with the American public, that they had
Speaker 2: to wait for cons to declare war. They hated that.
Speaker 2: And look, you can hate those guys, and I don't
Speaker 2: care for either of them, but it's human nature. Hey,
Speaker 2: lady Fingers, it's not nice. I'm listening to your rant
Speaker 2: about observing on jury duty. Whatever sort of case it is,
Speaker 2: it's probably not near as heavy as what my elderly
Speaker 2: mom has had to endure in Sending a pedophile to
Speaker 2: jail as a member of a jury here in Alabama
Speaker 2: is as heavy as tin boxes that you might be moving. Well,
Speaker 2: I do agree with your civic duty. I would caution
Speaker 2: people beforehand because you might be on a case like
Speaker 2: a pedo and you have to look at all these
Speaker 2: disgusting evidence items. I could never process this. It would
Speaker 2: scar me for life just looking at that garbage. What
Speaker 2: are your thoughts, bald Philosopher? I love your show, but
Speaker 2: I'm contentious on this topic. I think I think guarding
Speaker 2: your what do they say today? What do these fruities
Speaker 2: say today? Your mental health? I think guarding you mental
Speaker 2: health it is appropriate at times. Of course, of course,
Speaker 2: at the same time, who's going to sit on the jury?
Speaker 2: And how much do you think you should shield yourself
Speaker 2: from the ugly realities of life? You know, when when
Speaker 2: we're out traveling or doing something with our kids and
Speaker 2: we encounter bad neighborhoods or or you know, some sad
Speaker 2: homeless person drugged out or something like that, we don't
Speaker 2: run across the street or tell our children to cover
Speaker 2: up their eyes look see. Understand that there's a different
Speaker 2: side of the light of life that you know, there's
Speaker 2: an ugly side out there, and I don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: that's unhealthy. It may be painful, but I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: think that's unhealthy. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on
Speaker 2: a Fantastic Friday, reminding you you can email the show
Speaker 2: Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Your love, your hate,
Speaker 2: your death threats. All are welcome. Let's start chopping away
Speaker 2: at some more of these, shall we, Jesse? Can you
Speaker 2: know us and tell us another story about your experience
Speaker 2: in the Marines. Did you ever have to work closely
Speaker 2: with other branches of the military other than Navy? Corman
Speaker 2: thanks to you and your crew. So I've told this
Speaker 2: story a long time ago. I'll I'll give you one.
Speaker 2: I'll give you two, actually, because do you ever get
Speaker 2: the feeling that God smiles on you. You don't deserve it,
Speaker 2: but you end up, you end up catching breaks in
Speaker 2: life that you that are inexplicable. I'll give you two
Speaker 2: of them. First, I told you about the time I
Speaker 2: got giardia, that parasite in mountain warfare training, and then
Speaker 2: I almost died when we were training. It was one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty degrees it was I was so dehydrated.
Speaker 2: I was unbelievably sick. They had to rush me to
Speaker 2: the hospital and I took down like three ivs. It
Speaker 2: was I mean I was in bad shape. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: symptom free after this for a couple of weeks, symptom free.
Speaker 2: They gave me a bunch of pills symptom free. Our unit,
Speaker 2: our battalion, was getting ready to go out for one
Speaker 2: of these brutal five day field ops in the desert,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be brutal. It's going to be brutal.
Speaker 2: The day they're supposed to leave, I get called down
Speaker 2: to the office. This is always bad, universally bad. You're
Speaker 2: in trouble when you get called down to the office.
Speaker 2: So I think I'm in trouble. I take off to
Speaker 2: go down to the company command, the company office. Okay,
Speaker 2: I see one of my corporals, one of my NCOs.
Speaker 2: He passes me on the way back, and he's just
Speaker 2: glaring at me, won't say anything to me. Now, I
Speaker 2: really don't know what I did wrong. So I don't
Speaker 2: know what I did wrong, but clearly something. I show up.
Speaker 2: I find out that they fly got my test results
Speaker 2: back and that I have giardia, a parasite, and they're
Speaker 2: telling me this like with a heavy like I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be sad. They're like, hey, this is very contagious, so
Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to go to the
Speaker 2: field with us. In fact, it's so contagious that we
Speaker 2: have to quarantine you in your roommate. He was my
Speaker 2: best friend. We have to quarantine you and your roommate
Speaker 2: in case he has it too. You guys need to
Speaker 2: stay in your rooms. You won't be going with us.
Speaker 2: For five days, my unit went out to the desert
Speaker 2: and lived in complete misery. We weren't even allowed to
Speaker 2: go to the chow hall, so we ordered Domino's Pizza
Speaker 2: almost every single day. It was the only pizza place
Speaker 2: on base on twenty nine Palms, and we played video
Speaker 2: games in eight pizza like a bunch of college freshmen
Speaker 2: for five days while everyone else was suffering like the
Speaker 2: These are the kind of things that always happened to me.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you. I'll give you a working with
Speaker 2: the other branches story that again, it goes right along
Speaker 2: the lines with what we're talking about here. We go
Speaker 2: to Iraq. I'm in first Betid seventh Marines Alpha Company
Speaker 2: Weapons Patoon. We go to Iraq, Well, we go to Kuwait.
Speaker 2: We stage in Kuwait. This is before Bush declares war.
Speaker 2: Find the heat declares war. We take off, we head
Speaker 2: into Iraq. We fight our way, we get all the
Speaker 2: way to all the way up to Baghdad. Okay, so
Speaker 2: we remove all the way up through Iraq, we get
Speaker 2: to Baghdad. We get into Baghdad. We have not there
Speaker 2: are no facilities at the time, because again this is
Speaker 2: the beginning of all of it. There aren't bases, there's nothing,
Speaker 2: there's nothing there. We're sleeping in holes in the ground.
Speaker 2: We dig. There's no facilities, and there's no bathing for
Speaker 2: two or three weeks, there's no shower, there's no bath.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, it's hot. We've been wearing
Speaker 2: our mop gear for lots of the time. That's your
Speaker 2: don't don't die from gas gear. That's what it is.
Speaker 2: So what what Chris said, How do you prevent the
Speaker 2: chafing and stuff? You don't when you the only thing
Speaker 2: you can do, as you are living in sweat and
Speaker 2: dirt and you stink like you can smell yourself, that
Speaker 2: kind of a stink, the only thing you can do
Speaker 2: is you get baby wipes, an attempt to wipe sensitive
Speaker 2: areas down as best you can to make sure just
Speaker 2: to make sure you don't get sick for you have
Speaker 2: to maintain some sort of a high, some sort of hygiene,
Speaker 2: or else disease is gonna spread. So this is your life, sweat, dirt, misery,
Speaker 2: and there is no bathing. Have you ever gone two
Speaker 2: days three days without bathing? Most people have for one
Speaker 2: reason or another. Maybe you're camping or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: How do you feel? Yeah, greasy, slimy, dirty. You can
Speaker 2: rub your skin into right now. Picture two or three
Speaker 2: weeks in the desert with all this. By the time
Speaker 2: we get to Baghdad, we are disgusting, We feel disgusting,
Speaker 2: and everyone's dying for a bath. So we get to
Speaker 2: Bagdad and they take my unit and we go to
Speaker 2: a place I believe it's still there. You can probably
Speaker 2: look it up called the March. I think it was
Speaker 2: called the Martyr Monument or Martyr Monument Park something like that.
Speaker 2: It has what looks like a gigantic blue water drop
Speaker 2: in it. So if you look it up, that's where
Speaker 2: we were. Okay, if it's still there, if they haven't
Speaker 2: blown it up or something like that, that's where they
Speaker 2: took my unit. Hey, this is where you're going to
Speaker 2: stage go secure this area at the time Again, I
Speaker 2: don't want to tell you that's still the case. Is
Speaker 2: this is twenty years ago. At the time, there was
Speaker 2: a big pond in the in there. I can't even
Speaker 2: describe how badly we wanted to go have a bar
Speaker 2: of soap and go dive into this water to clean ourselves.
Speaker 2: We are nasty for whatever reason. Maybe it was security,
Speaker 2: maybe they had tested the water, it was disease, maybe
Speaker 2: they were just being me and I don't know. You
Speaker 2: don't know a lot of things when you're in more,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't let us get in it. So not only
Speaker 2: are we nasty, we can't get in the water now
Speaker 2: we are. I was in a mortar section. I was
Speaker 2: in O three forty one mortarmen. We really didn't hardly
Speaker 2: we'd ever used our mortars in Iraq. We were just
Speaker 2: basic infantrymen. We had to carry them around, we had
Speaker 2: to set them up on occasion. But mortars are not
Speaker 2: great in an urban environment for obvious reasons. You hit
Speaker 2: buildings and things like that with it. It's hard to lob things.
Speaker 2: Just we weren't in a mortar friendly environment, so we
Speaker 2: just became basic infantrymen walking around just like all the
Speaker 2: other Oath three elevens, which we were all trained for
Speaker 2: that anyway, it was fine, it was no big deal.
Speaker 2: We were basic infantrymen. Now, remember I told you we're nasty,
Speaker 2: and remember we haven't slept in anything resembling a bed
Speaker 2: or even a cot or anything like that. In weeks,
Speaker 2: we get called down to the company commander's office and
Speaker 2: he gives us some of the best coolest news ever.
Speaker 2: I'll finish this in a second. Hangou