0:00 and I go to the the Marine office I'm like hello anybody in here and then this guy like crawls up from underneath the desk are you here to join the Marines dude this is my place [Music] I thought this would be a really interesting question to answer uh since we're off the Record currently off of the record um and it would be an interesting answer for BART to hear from all of us the question is why didn't you join the military oh Jesus why why why would it why would be interesting because you actually did did you ever have a dream because I have a big fat ████ mouth that's why I I don't think I could handle somebody telling me what to do you're from a
0:50 military family exactly wait are all your siblings military your sister well my sister's not but she is hot she was too hot to join she would have served them too good too hot to join yeah yeah they wouldn't let her how many bows you got I got two brothers and an older sister but all your but all your uh relatives are military every single one and the reason like they never pressured you to join never no do they all sit around and make fun of you like you're like the non-military nah they know not to because I'll hit them back 10 times harder they're like you're just I'll go and I'll go personal do you think that's what made you funny uh because he was a non-military one the non-military guy I think it was more just like attention right because like you're I'm in a big family like four kids you have to like fight for every like bit of moment in the sun you're like it's like those plants at the jungle floor like you gotta really work to like get to the light uh I think that was when did you
1:42 have the for sure I'm not gonna do it was it like in high school earlier or like I remember making my girlfriend at the time cry because I was like I'm probably gonna get out of the military I don't ████ know because like I cried yeah she was like crying about because because this was like around Afghanistan but I was ████ pissed I was like I'm gonna go kill some talibans yeah yeah and I was but I was calling them worse things than that racial epithets yeah no uh but I was I remember just thinking like I'm probably gonna have to join because of all the things going on like with Iraq and stuff like that but then um as it got closer and closer to the reality of that like I was like yeah I don't know that I could actually do it like I'm not I could actually like be good at it because I'm really bad at respecting anybody telling me yeah I'm really bad at it I knew about
2:36 um Al Qaeda before mainstream America knew about Al Qaeda yeah I had a book and then the crazy thing is these two Taliban has start taking each other's robes off and they're sucking each other I was watching this video about it somebody has to stop these guys I was in about I was like 8th or ninth grade eighth or ninth grade right I had a book called 21st century uh terrorism because in junior high I just had this like okay I think in elementary school right probably most people's first like introduction to being a soldier or whatever was GI Joe I think GI Joe was part of the cartoon first like Real American Hero exposure to like Soldier Romanticism like I want to
3:26 ████ be in the Army that's what boys do that's what men do right and then you have the little green army men that you would play with your friends and stuff and then you get like the machine guns and you have water fights and then you're just like Good Guys bad guys right and then you obsess about this stuff and you like think one day I'ma be a ████ Soldier and you get like camel fatigues you dress like a soldier during Halloween and then like I believe that I was gonna be somewhat military and then I started picking up books magazine and I was like wow like I learned about a soldier of fortune and mercenary groups that you can like get military training outside of just joining the military fast forward to like reading about uh 21st century terrorism they were talking about how like U.S P like people that want to be
4:16 private contractors they can go to Taliban camps and get training outside of the US because then if you're like secret secret then you can basically like learn all these like skills without being a part of the military program in the U.S and I was like that's ████ crazy and then when I deep dived into everything I was like everything is kind of the same like countries all just have soldiers that do what the country wants them to do so then there's no good guy bad guy everyone's just power like hungry and then at that point I was like ████ well does that mean my country is a good country but is it really good though and then that's like because in high school you just start reading all these things
5:06 about like wait the CIA was selling drugs to like the black community and using that money to buy soldiers in Costa Rica or whatever and I'm like what the ████ is all this stuff and I think that was scaring me to the point where I'm like who do I trust and if I join the military does that mean that I'm gonna be used or I don't know and that scared the ████ out of me like at that point I was like why even be a part of society if everything is a lie versus just talking to a recruiter well how would the recruiter know everyone's brainwashed at that point I know but it's just crazy that like you you did all your own research you went to the library for for 40 months yeah the guy outside the school like anyone wants to join do some pull-ups do some pull-ups yeah yeah
5:57 you get a ten thousand dollar check it was it was like six six to tenth grade so sixth to tenth grade I think like that was just all of that yeah and there were guys that would walk around and doing the junior was it the ROTC ████ yeah yeah the junior military guys and then I was like that's so cool but yeah I didn't even go that route because at that point I I think also that's when I was also leaving religion so everything that was like um your words were like crumbly everything was scary because everything was like that's fake this is fake this is fake yeah so that's kind of like I think what people are going through with the woke ████ but like they're just adults but I went through that like in ninth grade damn dude I just didn't want people to tell me what to do
6:47 Anthony why didn't you enlist uh I like Steve I think um during that time especially coming from being an eagle scout a lot of guys well yeah they joined the military yeah I feel like right when 9 11 um maybe happened yeah we got you yeah we saw the video yeah during that time uh when 9 11 happened I I definitely remember that that was the most uh patriotic that I felt but at the same time I was only 16. and then by the time I was like nearly 18 uh you know I we maybe were looking at things like I was definitely looking at things like JROTC and ROTC and stuff to kind of like look into it because it was close to things that I was familiar with but I maybe just didn't have enough of uh a
7:39 realistic urge to like go that far when I had um I think confusion as a senior in high school not knowing what my purpose or career would be I strongly entertained it as well when I just didn't I don't know if it was like patriotism or just lack of understanding of what I would do yeah you know what I mean when you're just like I don't know what I'm gonna do with my life so then you're like oh well if I go to this then they're going to give me this and this and this or I'll definitely be able to get this super good option yeah I'm pretty sure I'm like not going to be a loser there because like I'm very familiar with how to do certain things so it was like practical so I definitely considered it I definitely went to a a recruitment place or recruiter and I like had some conversations but just never end up crossing the line my sister was like this close to actually joining because it was going to pay for her vet school but then my grandparents ended up co-signing and then also my sister when she was there with the recruiter they
8:30 said that her titties were too big to fit me oh that's crazy I was I was a recruiter for a period of time yeah they tried they had to try it on yeah we try another size my uncle's the buttons ricocheting and damaged Soldier they got medical leave though five thousand dollars a month for the rest of his life yeah it was a if she doesn't need a bulletproof vest yeah that ████ bounces it back my uncle saw um Pearl Harbor go down when he was a kid was he in the planes attacking them what was the view oh is it like that here we go dude it was right there the guy saw it he was like he said after school so so they they would all work on this Watercress Farm in Hawaii so after
9:21 school they're like picking ████ whatever doing some peasant ass ████ right and then he just saw the planes like crashing down and he was like what the ████ and then um you know military is one of the ways where like broke kids could see the world so he's like I want to travel so then he goes you know you meet so many people that are on base in Hawaii that come from all over and he's like oh yeah I want to go visit different places so that's like one of the reasons why and I was thinking yeah I think the military though like the way I went into it was so cynical and like the mentality of like wow this is such a scary thing that people can use you for and thing but I still think it's a good thing for poor working class or even people that are in broken homes to like get into a system that can help you discipline yourself and build character because it's
10:11 designed to get like a straight up jungle man with no education into becoming a part of an organized group so I was like at the end of the day it's up to you what you do after boot camp and I mean leaving the program it's like yeah would you say like the military it's for jungle man no the military making jungle men into civilized men oh okay okay it's for jungle man is that why uh you didn't want to do it well I think that's a two jungle men didn't want to become a civilized man no at the time I think um the sentiment of the military in the Middle East was like not good like by public opinion everybody was like oh they're they're like killing people
11:01 they're like you know by that time we've never found the weapons of mass destruction yet we bombed like three countries that's true because by the time we we were like we saw 911 and everyone was like I'm joining yeah by the time it was next Generation it was like wait what are we doing there yeah it was like let's pull out we're still looking for if you read the David K report don't worry the government investigated themselves they found that Iraq was in possession of some things they shouldn't have had it too though don't worry about it oil y'all checked out long-range missiles for example so like I think that was a sentiment at the time and then I remember a lot of it was like anecdotal too it was like some of my sister's friends had joined the military and they would come back and they would tell stories about like their time overseas in Iraq and it was just like pretty rough stories or just who knows how true they were at the time because this guy was a little kind of
11:52 crazy the guy that was like telling us these stories in retrospect like years looking back but he just was like yeah he just had a lot of bad things to say about like the military oh I wouldn't do it again blah blah blah so at the time but recruiter yeah but I think but I wasn't necessarily like really ever into thinking about joining the military because I think growing up my uncles and like my dad would always be like yeah it's ████ a load of ████ you know like oh really they're kind of like they're kind of like that like don't even waste your time they're just gonna use you they just want you to ████ fight other people's Wars like that's how they would talk about it in the military so Me growing up I just was like well I'm just not gonna do that like I didn't really have an interest in it I didn't really I was kind of neutral about it either way but I never had a feeling of like I'm gonna join the military but in retrospect a couple years later I think it probably would have been a good thing for me if I joined the military like honestly like
12:42 in going through that boot camp I think it would have gave me a lot of structure but you know do you think you wouldn't have been 15 minutes late today if you join them I think my bed would have been made I think my boots would have been cleaned uh military doesn't matter because Bart didn't read the call shooting like smoke signals or something yeah yeah we're gonna we're gonna walk you in what about you Ryan I'm Ryan the funny thing is that I really wanted to very badly yeah but uh three things that ruined it one was at three two people died my recruiter died lost my paperwork he got circumcised during boot camp time I wanted to join but then um what happened is for firstly I was more concerned about being rebellious against
13:33 my parents and that's what they wanted me to do so I didn't want to do they wanted you to go to the military yeah my dad really wanted me to join the Marines you would always like tell me that as an infantry because in our religion everyone became a medic interesting yeah because it's more of a caretaker yeah because they were like if there's ever a draft or if there's any type of um you know military work that you have to sign up for they're like passive go into go into medic don't be don't don't don't yeah but that means you're that that's like being the radio operator guy dude you're on the front ████ lines I guess it's better and more yeah sin free they didn't really care about that they were just that's not rich don't pick up a gun my dad would just like always remind me about that like as I was growing up but then once I got to my rebellious stage I just didn't want to do anything they wanted me to do
14:23 so then like even though I wanted to join I didn't want to because it Rebellion took precedence so I was like I'm doing that and then the second thing was uh there was a recruiter who came to the high school uh he had went he graduated from my high school and he came back to talk to the kids about it and he just did such a bad job he just like he just seemed like a boring person first of all so then like once you don't win as a as a Charisma person then you just It's A Hard Sell yeah and then he started saying like what it was like for him in the Marines and he's like yeah I did a lot of training what we do is we uh we go into the water and then we we test and we uh you have specific amount of seconds to inflict pain on your partner as you're underwater and he just kept saying that and we were like that doesn't sound fun man he's like the food's pretty ████ oh well sometimes the chicken's okay he
15:13 was just so boring and he just kept saying this like water training thing over and over and we're just like dude that sucks and then like nobody was into it what a s█████ yeah he really that was a big part of it and then the third part was that somehow I don't know how this happened but I got it in my head that if you did poorly academically then you would never make it in the military oh well you couldn't just join and get like a rank or like um be um an officer because like the way that our school and the teachers would make you feel about your grades is that like that affected everything in your life so then like we all thought and it wasn't just me but we were like oh dude like I didn't I gotta see in in Geometry I'm probably gonna suck at the military like we just equated like your uh academic proficiency with how good you would be at anything so we were like oh dude I'll die the first day I remember telling my dad that my dad
16:03 was like why don't you just go and I'm like dude I was like I'll probably be killed but my first day there my dad's like no you're not you're not even gonna die you're not gonna use geometry over there he was trying to like tell me all those things that they're not connected I think that's the that's the fire of like your parents and your family and your church and your friends and everybody telling you your whole life that like hey whatever happens to you in school with your grades is gonna affect your whole life so then I just thought they were linked that's like the biggest lie that ████ sucks it's the biggest lie yeah and it discourages everything so I was like why did I think that why did I go to school what made you doing Bert um I feel like like the the way like Ryan worded it almost feels like um majority of people want to join and then so what was the reason why you did it why you didn't why you did it but I felt like the consensus was the other way like most people went to college
16:53 and then so for me um I messed up so much in like my academic career that I was like I definitely don't have the tools to do well in college because I got kicked out like four schools and all I spent five years in high school you know so I'm like studying and reading and stuff it's definitely not for me um and then I also I think like my dad has always held like the military in a high regard like he not in a way of like like a doctor but he always felt like um the way he said it was like this is like how like a Rite of Passage to like like uh have discipline and and kind of be your own man type of deal and then so I was like that started like simmering in my brain I think like junior year when I started to realize like everyone's trying to take SATs and stuff people are getting their scores back like applying to college and already kind of skipped that whole process and I'm like I'm not really doing any of that stuff
17:44 and I was like maybe I'll go talk to some recruiters and um I went to like the Army recruiter didn't really Vibe with them that much went to the Navy recruiter didn't really Vibe with him that much and then I went to the Marine Recruiting Office in Montebello I was actually set on joining the Army but then I was like these two guys are kind of whack they kind of felt like used car salesman like all slimy and ████ like hey you wanna you wanna see the world or whatever I'm like don't talk to him like you jump out of helicopters do the world yeah I don't know that's weird and I go to the the Marine office I'm like hello anybody in here and then this guy like crawls up from underneath the desk you're like oh you're here to join the Marines all right dude this is my place and that's not a used car salesman I'm like this ████ don't give a ████
18:34 yeah he reminds me of me and then I try to talk to him but he just seems so ████ wow that's funny because that's the hardest branch in the military by far yeah but he didn't he just he's like the most undisciplined one but I liked it because he just didn't like give a ████ everyone else was like that you're like like I I think this guy like takes his job for way more than what it is like all you're trying to do is sign up kids that's a real job right and then this guy like he looks like this guy's a nerd yeah hero is trying to save the future of this country that's kind of tight yeah and this guy gets up he doesn't give a ████ and then he almost Vibe of like okay wrap it up because I gotta go coach wrestling soon can I come back tomorrow I got more questions all right so I was like that's a Salesman right there yeah it almost like hurry up
19:25 lost going in he's kicking but in your in your experience you played hard to get in your experience being in the Marines right and then like do you know everyone's past story and like why they joined and like what type of people joined oh yeah all different it's crazy like when you the minute you hit boot camp at least in the Marine Corps uh west of the Mississippi they all go to MCRD San Diego in the Camp Pendleton everyone else goes to Paris Island so I only meet people that are from like Texas Oklahoma whatever everyone that's uh west of the Mississippi and there's people where they come from military towns it's like that's like being a doctor in their town There's broken families broken homes there's ones where uh the whole family is like military and they're just trying to carry on the tradition there's people that are like I literally don't know what to do like there's people that you see like when you first join in the platoon it was
20:17 like 90 people and then within the first week or two it goes down to 70. what do you mean they get weeded out yeah they just get weeded out of them not in boot camp and boot camp immediately because sometimes people that are just like oh ████ I signed up for the wrong ████ you could leave like that or you get medically discharged or like people's bones break there's like or people recruiters not doing a good job like the recruiter is supposed to set you up so like the minute you sign up and until you finish your senior in high school you're supposed to set up all these events that you can go exercise and train so like I think like I don't know what the bare minimum pull-ups is but they're supposed to get you to do the bare minimum Pull-Ups so that when you come into boot camp oh I didn't know that yeah you don't die then there's people so the first day that you go in there is a physical fitness test and then there's like a ton of people that just died and you're like oh ████ you're a recruiter did not do their job preparing you and then so like a bunch of people get weeded out and then you
21:07 start connecting and then yeah there's people from all walks of life there's guys that are like 30. there's guys that are like 17 super young um super like super jocks that were like cut it with D1 and high school or college like you just the whole the whole gamut yeah if there's a draft would you guys Dodge it absolutely today absolutely but like what's the TR what's the real war what's the fight and what would we do at our age it's like if aliens came down every ████ Nation had to pull together it's like I don't know about dodging it's like yeah let's go yeah let's ████ fight that I'd also kind of think they're tight so I'd have it'd be a tough time yeah it'd be a tough one as long as we're in Bart's platoon yeah yeah if we could be together that'd be tight if aliens were trying to war on us though I'd be like that's ████ up yeah don't try to war on us don't try to walk I really like the idea of like if that recruiter that talked to you could just read you as a person so well it sees you walking up
21:57 he's like he's like an expert person reader yeah he's like oh oh those guys they look like they already want to join no what's up play art again hard to get mode I heard that I heard that rumor or whatever or maybe it's not a rumor maybe it's true that um you can only be Air Force pilot if you had like 20 20 vision and at that time I had I was gonna I think you need to be I think we need to be better yeah I was in the four eyes club and I had glasses so it just shattered my dream so I genuinely was like I'll never there were a lot of rumors like that oh yeah another reason but that's a real rumor though that's real though that's real you have to have better than 2020 let's be 2010 2015. but at the time they didn't come out with this ████ called Lasik so I just my green my dreams were crushed yeah it was asthma thing too like if you have asthma you can't do it uh yeah I mean but everyone lies on ████ like the recruiter
22:48 will almost help you lie like I remember like he's like oh did you like like ever smoke any weed or doing your drugs and I was like what am I supposed to say you're like I would just say like you didn't touch the other stuff so don't say I did Ecstasy but I never even heard of that and I'm like okay I never did ecstasy and I'm like what about weed I'm like uh I did but he goes oh you're probably experimented right I was like yeah I just experimented maybe like 40 55 times 75 times just say like once or twice you don't try to fill up the form like there's no field for the amount that I did they'll help you out you know that's because a lot of these guys like I didn't do them I sold them is that like a lot of them they know they're trying to help this guy get to a better life right so they're almost like don't rat yourself out like here's your chances you know you know recruitment's at like an all-time low right now right now yeah full-time month yeah but it's not just the states it's happening to other countries too yeah yeah
23:38 which uh interracial marriages are most prominent Zimbabwe wins foreign
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