The Rise of Virtue Signaling Veterans

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

We need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

You know, they say that steel sharpens steel. That's a phrase that people use when, you know, you have a friend who's doing something really wrong, and they're going down the wrong path in their lives. And because they're going down the wrong path, you wanna steer them the right way. Why? Because, well, they're your friend, and you wanna see them live a great life.

And so a lot of times you'll say something to this friend, and it might sound a little bit harsh. It might sound critical, but you're doing it out of love. Well, here's the thing, ladies and gents. I consider all of you my friends, people who listen to this podcast, members of the veteran community, people I wanna see going down the right path in life. And if I am going to do my job here on this show, I have to tell you when I think that we're going down the wrong path together.

So I'm gonna be very honest with you about certain things on this episode. Some of you are gonna like it, some of you won't. If you don't like it, feel free to disagree. Feel free to send me a note saying you disagree. That's that's absolutely fine.

I want you to be able to think for yourself. And the last thing I ever wanted to do when I created this show was to create material that you're mindlessly going to agree with. But here's the thing. If you're willing to have productive debate about it, if you're willing to have a productive discussion, awesome. I'm here for that.

If you're just gonna sit there and you're gonna be hypercritical, then you know what? Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe to all my stuff. Unfriend me on Instagram. Unfriend me on Facebook, and just get the heck away from Warrior Soul in general.

Because I'm pretty sure that at some point, I'm gonna say something else that offends you in the future. And that's the basic topic of today's today's discussion. We're gonna be talking about the fact that a lot of people in this community, the veteran community, have become a bunch of snowflakes. Before we get into that discussion, I just wanna say I've got one announcement, really, and it's just that we do these episodes, these Warrior Notes episodes every Friday. They're absolutely free, available on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

In the Warrior Soul podcast, we also do interviews. And we recently published an interview with Phil Randazzo from American Dream U. And Phil's created an amazing platform, absolutely free platform for education for veterans. It's called Mission Next. And like I said, that's for American Dream U at americandreamu.org.

We just did an interview with him on Monday, and this guy is absolutely amazing. His education platform that he's created, it's packed with information. I'm talking about the stuff you'd learn from like those Tony Robbins types, those the the business types, Tim Ferriss, Grant Cardone. These are guys that are putting out like, you know, couple thousand dollar courses out there on the Internet, and you can get on to the American Dream U platform and learn about ecommerce, about business, about building up your LinkedIn profile absolutely free. Alright?

So number one, I want you to go over to the americandreamu.org profile and sign yourself in and start learning. Right? It's there for you. It's a gift that Phil put together with his team. But two, really want you to listen to these other episodes, these interview episodes that we've got up with guys like Phil Randazzo.

We've got them up with guys like Les Stroud. I've had Ben Greenfield, Doctor Dominic D'Agostino, Doctor Terry Wahls, all people who've attained a good degree of success in their life or attained a good degree of expertise about something that can help you out. They've come on to this show to help veterans out.

And we've been doing this for the past couple years, so you'll find some amazing ones up here. So definitely do that. And all we ask in return is if you can write us a review up there on iTunes or on Stitcher, and let people know about the show And share this episode out to other people or share this this show out to other people who you think could be helped by it. And that's all the announcements I've got for today, guys. I I really just want to get into this material and start talking about, you know, just the the complete outrage culture that we created in recent years in this country, and not just on the political left, but also I think within our own community.

And it's becoming stronger and stronger within the veteran community, and it's something that I really want to address right now because I think it's going to keep us from moving forward. So what am I talking about? Well, a few years ago when President Trump first got elected to office, you know, we saw all these protesters coming out in the streets. And a lot of us in this community, we pointed our fingers and laughed. Right?

Now because what were they protesting? They were protesting words. They were protesting, you know, what they perceived as somebody being mean. And we sat here and we laughed. A lot of us sat here and laughed.

Right? Because a lot of us here in the veteran community, let's be honest, lean conservative. And we kept saying to ourselves, well well, how can people be so weak? How can people be so weak that they allow words to offend them? Right?

And a few years before that, you know, when university started putting together trigger warnings and safe spaces. Right? Trigger warnings are warnings that the professor gives when he's about to cover some material that might be offensive to the student body. Right? And and and they do that so that the students in the audience can know that something that that that's gonna offend them is gonna come out.

Right? And safe spaces are spaces where students can go so that they don't have to deal with anybody who's gonna offend them or anybody who's gonna, you know, disagree with them or anything like that. And, again, we heard about this, a lot of us, we sat here and we laughed. We laughed, and we told ourselves, how can anybody be so weak? And a lot of us, we started claiming that political correctness was ruining this country, and that it's defying the constitution.

Right? It's defying our right to freedom of speech. We should be able to say whatever we want to say, regardless of how offensive it is. And then people started doing things that offended us. Right?

So, obviously, unless you're living under a rock, I'm talking about the issue as far as NFL players kneeling for the national anthem and, you know, expressing their right to free speech by not standing for the national anthem because they want to highlight what's going on with racial injustice in this country. Now I wanna make something really clear for you right now. I'm sure a lot of you are gonna come at me and say, well, you know what? You're a closet, antifa loving leftist. And I'm not.

I'm really not. You know, I think that there's a million better ways that the NFL players could have approached that issue, right, without, you know, offending veterans, offending people who have lost loved ones in service to this country. But you know what? It's their right to do so. It's their right to do so.

And there's nothing that I can do about it. And as much as I wish they would stand for the national anthem, as much as I would like everybody to stand for the national anthem, to honor our flag, and to honor the lives of of those we've lost, and to honor those who've served, I can't force them to do it. And if I could force them to do it, I wouldn't wanna live in a country like that. I wouldn't. Why? Because that country would be against everything that I believed in when I signed up to serve this country.

And that country would be against everything that our brothers and our sisters fought and died for. That country would not be The United States Of America. It would be something else. So while I don't like the fact that they're kneeling, while I don't like the fact that they don't want to stand for the national anthem, I have to agree with the fact that they have every right to do so. And here's the thing, a lot of you are going to sit there, because I have that belief.

And you're going to point your fingers at me, and you're going to say, well, he's a antifa lover, or he's a closet leftist. And you're just gonna try and write me off that way. And that's fine. That's fine. You've got every right to do that.

But here's what I have to say to you. If you can't bear the fact that somebody is going to disagree with you slightly on an issue, if you can't bear the fact to have your views on a situation challenged, then your views aren't very strong. Then you are really defeating your own purpose. Because it's a fact. If you've got something you believe in, you're not afraid to have that challenged.

If you've got some value that you strongly hold, you're not afraid to have that value criticized, because you truly believe in it. And this is what I think has happened to our country in general. And it goes the same for those leftists who are sitting there in their safe spaces on the universities who don't want to hear anything that they think is going to offend them. Right? It's that if we don't allow for productive debate, then we're keeping the truth from really coming out.

We're keeping the truth from ever really taking hold. And that's because we're afraid of the truth. So what do I think is the big issue here? The big issue is that all of us here who have laughed at those people sitting in their safe spaces, who have laughed at the fact that some people think that words can hurt, we've retreated into our own safe spaces, and we become snowflakes. And why is this so dangerous?

Well, all the things we're doing. Right? We're posting memes. We're basically pandering to our own cause. We're sitting here, and we're creating an empty movement.

Right? Basically, we've been doing is virtue signaling. Right? We've been trying to out patriot each other. We've been trying to out veteran each other.

We've been trying to out American each other. Alright? And all we're doing is we're creating memes, and we're putting dumb shit out there into the social media world. Alright? And my big problem with that is that it's empty.

It's completely empty. Right? If you're angry about NFL players not standing for the national anthem, and you're claiming that getting them to stand is gonna help veterans, how's it gonna help veterans? Right? How is forcing some NFL player to stand for the national anthem going to help veterans?

Tell me. Right? That's completely illogical. You're putting a lot of energy into something that isn't really gonna help anybody out. Right?

It's gonna make people feel good. It's gonna make their emotions feel good. Right? Would it make me feel better? Absolutely.

Like I said, I wish everybody would stand for the national anthem. But it's really not gonna help out anybody's cause. And if you really, really wanna help veterans, what you could do is you start taking some action. Right? You can shuttle more veterans over to to something like American Dream U.

Right? I just talked about Phil Randazzo and and the massive education platform that he's created that has over a $100,000 worth of education that's free for veterans. You can get more of your buddies to go over there. That's a very small thing you could do, right? Otherwise you can go and you can start to volunteer at the VA, right?

You can go out there and you can start creating events, maybe put together a fishing event, maybe you can put together another social event or an educational event and invite a bunch of local veterans to that. But if all you are doing is creating memes, and you are sitting there and you are talking about how you believe in standing for the national anthem, all you are doing is you are signaling your virtue, Right? You're signaling the fact that you're a better patriot than everybody else because you stand for the national anthem. And you're not really helping anybody else out. We've still got a problem with veteran suicide.

We've still got problems with veterans suffering from things like traumatic brain injury. We've still got problems with veteran homelessness. And if you really want to help veterans out, then put down the phone, get off of social media, get out there, and start making an impact in somebody's life. It's not that hard. Right?

I talked about, you know, putting together a class for veterans or something like that. Well, it really wouldn't. There's plenty of business leaders out there who want to help veterans. There's plenty of them out there. And if you want to put together an event with local business leaders who are looking to teach people about what made them successful, You could just go over to your local chamber of commerce, you could say, listen, I want to get get together a group of veterans to to talk to some of your business leaders.

And I'm 99% sure that those people are going to be willing to accommodate you. All you've got to do is put the ask out there. Right? That's that's it. But it'll regardless of of how it comes out, it'll do a lot more than just sitting on your ass and looking at social media and making yourself angry and then trying to put something out that you think everybody else is gonna appreciate because they agree with everything you have to say.

Right? The second thing about this is that it's completely distracting, and it's distracting you from your real life. It's distracting you from the things that are actually important. Right? Your family, your job, your career, your business, all the different things that could be pushing you forward.

You're wasting a lot of energy just being angry over something that really has no bearing over you. And again, does it emotionally affect you? Right. Yeah. It emotionally affects me.

I hate the fact that people don't want to stand for the national anthem. But guess what? If I sit here and I just get pissed off and I just get angry and I just create a bunch of memes about how this pisses me off, it's not pushing me forward. It's not helping me to be any better. Right?

If you want to put your energy into something, put it into something that's actually going to increase your position in life. Put it into something that's going to help you to make more money. Put it into something that's going to help you to become smarter. Put it into something that's gonna help you to grow or that's gonna help you to get more experience. You know why?

You know why that's awesome? Because if you really wanna enact change in this country, the only real way to do it is to increase your position in life. Right? We can't just sit here and expect to be in the same space every year after year after year and expect to push ourselves forward. If you want to have an influence over other people, if you wanna have an influence over the direction of this country, you need to become a leader.

And the only way you do that is by actually taking action. So again, put that phone down, go out there, pick up a book, pick up a class, do something for your business, do something for your family, do something to teach your children the right way, do something to help you to make to earn more money. And through that, you can actually enact some change. Right? You can have a bigger influence over your local community, you have a bigger influence over other people, you can start teaching people to become leaders themselves.

And you can actually make something happen. The third thing is this, you know, and and this has kind of been the theme throughout what I've been saying is that a lot of this is just pretty hypocritical. Right? We sit here, and we talk about the fact that the constitution is important. We talk about the fact that the bill of rights is important.

We talk about how we believe in free speech and how we believe in the right to bear arms. But yet, when other people exercise their right to free speech in a way that we disagree with, gonna sit here and we're gonna scream and cry. Well, you know what? That's not making the country stronger. If we're only gonna pick and choose when we believe in the constitution, then you don't really believe in the constitution at all, and you don't believe in The United States Of America.

And that's a value that I am absolutely 100% a big believer in. I believe in everything this country stands for. I believe in the idea that we can all express our opinions, our views. I believe in the constitution, and I don't believe in it. I don't believe in it piecemeal.

I believe in the whole thing. And that if we start taking away pieces of our rights, then eventually, we're going to find ourselves living in a country that we don't want to live in. And that we're going to find ourselves in a time and a place where all the sacrifices that our brothers put out there, all the lives that have been lost, we're going to find ourselves in a time and place where it just wasn't worth it, because what we created was something else. So, again, you guys are free to disagree with me. You're free to challenge me.

I want you to challenge me. I want you to let me know exactly what you think. But if you're going to do it, do it in a productive way. If you're just going to sit back there and you're going say, you know what, you're a closet leftist or you're a closet antifa lover, Tell me why. Tell me why.

Logically, I'm a closet leftist and why logically I'm a closet Antifa lover. And if you don't have any good reason, then go back and take another look at your views because they're not standing on solid ground. I'll be back at you next week with another interview, another episode of the Warrior Soul podcast. Thank you guys for listening.