Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
Josh Lowe on Military Leadership, Humor, and Tackling Gen Z Challenges
In this powerful episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Josh Lowe to explore his journey from DEA agent to National Guard service member. They dive into the high-stakes challenges of combating the fentanyl crisis and the mental toll of working on the front lines of law enforcement. Josh shares how military support roles can be a lifeline for those navigating these pressures and why mental health awareness is essential for both service members and law enforcement professionals.
The conversation also touches on the evolving motivations for joining the military, leadership in guiding younger generations (Gen Z), and the cultural differences in drug policy. Humor and camaraderie emerge as crucial coping mechanisms in dealing with the daily stresses of military life. Together, Josh and Deny emphasize the importance of finding purpose, celebrating the National Guard's contributions, and staying connected within the military community.
Don’t miss this insightful and engaging discussion that blends hard-hitting topics with humor and motivation. Tune in now on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts for an unforgettable
🌟 Join us for an engaging discussion packed with actionable insights on personal growth and resilience. Don’t forget to follow, like, and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts!
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction and First Impressions
03:03 Transitioning from DEA to National Guard
06:01 Life in Law Enforcement and Its Challenges
08:57 The Fentanyl Crisis and Its Impact
11:53 Strategies to Combat Drug Trafficking
15:05 Cultural Differences in Drug Policy
17:58 Mental Health in Law Enforcement
20:55 The Importance of Support Roles in the Military
25:19 Respect and Physical Fitness in the Military
27:20 Challenges of Leading Gen Z Soldiers
29:48 The Shift in Military Motivation
32:27 Pride in National Guard Service
36:34 The Importance of National Guard Contributions
38:40 Finding the Right Fit in Military Units
42:29 Maintaining Connections Post-Deployment
46:35 The Role of Humor in Coping with Military Life
55:24 The Surreal World of Memes and Military Culture
57:25 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
01:00:43 Mental Health and the Warrior Culture
01:12:11 Navigating Law Enforcement and Military Dynamics
01:19:40 Recognition and Awards in the Military
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Produced by Security Halt Media
Security Odd Podcast. Let's go the only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent. It's hosted by me, denny Caballero. Thank you for being here today, man. How you doing.
Speaker 2:Good, happy to be here, man. This is my first podcast I've ever been on Nice.
Speaker 1:I'm holding out for Talk Tua, but we'll see how it goes. You know she runs a tight ship over there, josh, it's very, very tight, tight buttholes over there. I talked to her. I mean just the professionalism of uh, what's her, what's her name? Hayley? Um fuck, I don't know, just get some fucking, just hock to her.
Speaker 2:Never thought that would lead to such great success she is smart, I'll give her that, like she's already a millionaire, like multi-millionaire, just from that meme.
Speaker 1:Like I'll give her that, I'll give her that yeah, you know I, it's that meme, that meme where the, the evangelist, is praying to her god. I've seen what you've done for other people and I just pray that you do the same for me.
Speaker 2:I know all it takes. All it takes is one little random, because the guy who interviewed you didn't even get famous.
Speaker 1:He's still just some nobody like talk to before we even dive in. Could you imagine that dude?
Speaker 1:because here's the thing she had reached out to him like several times and like, please take it down. I understand, you're getting notoriety, you're getting all this fame out of nowhere, it's a viral meme. You're like, just try and live your life. And she reached out to him and was like, please take it down, please take it down. He was like, hey, uh, no, I filmed it, let it go viral. But because and maybe he didn't have foresight, maybe he was just like hey, I'm trying to get this as many views as possible. But because at least he was like hey, no, she got this notoriety. And in the interview she's like fuck, no, I don't give a shit about this guy. I told him to take it down and he did it. And the lady interviewing her was like hey, wait a second.
Speaker 2:So you asked him to take it down she's like yeah, and because he didn't.
Speaker 1:You're now here, yeah, and you're saying fuck you to him she's like, yeah, so at that point you know, fuck you I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I didn't know she had asked to take it down.
Speaker 1:That's crazy yeah, I mean it makes sense. I mean you know it's you.
Speaker 2:You don't want your parents seeing that 24 seven Uh yeah, that's fair, yeah, so I, I gotta ask how do you, how do you say your first name?
Speaker 1:Uh, just imagine like you would in the most ghetto town. Uh, no, most people would say deny, it's Denny, it is Denny.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, all right, cause I'm looking at that, I'm like, cause it's spelled like deny and I was like there's no way, right, it's like I thought it was like a pseudo name or something at first, but I was like oh, denny, that makes sense All right, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:My parents were really unoriginal. They thought they were willing to put something funny out there for for the masses to just pause and laugh, and uh, that's that's how you came across my feed one day and then I saw that you were former dea and I was like shit, like that is not. Uh, I don't run across people that used to do that job. Either they they do it for the rest of their lives or, as I've come to find out, like you, do it for a while and then you leave, uh. So I'd like to dive into that part, because you and also you're still serving the national guard, which, uh, fucking, my hat's off to you, fucking Fucking. We need more individuals that are willing to continue serving, because I have to imagine being in a DEA probably wasn't the easiest job.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you're right. So of all the like federal law enforcement agencies, dea tends to be one that people migrate to. It's not one that people typically leave. Secret Service Border Patrol, generally considered like lower tier. They bleed a lot of agents.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had deployed to Iraq Conventional this was before I had joined and done. I had joined the 19th and been support, support for them. So this was all conventional, supporting uh, first ad, first id, and I loved it. Man, this was like this was towards the end of iraq. You know there wasn't. You get mortars and stuff like that, but you know, I'm not like sitting there in Mosul going house to house. I was, I was an Intel Pogue. I loved it, working out every day, doing something that felt fulfilling, getting Intel and giving it to people that were actioning it. Like it felt great. I loved it. And I came home and when I left, fry Rack my son was born like three or four days before I left. Wow, that was rough. It was rough. I mean, it was more rough for my wife I was just lifting with my brothers but, like, in a lot of ways, it was rough for me too. And I got home and I remember there was a guy who worked at the state department at the embassy and he had worked there like-.
Speaker 1:Nope, I just lost you for a little bit.
Speaker 2:I don't have a lot of experience with wireless mics. I'm working on it. Hey no worries, I'm your first. Yeah, yes, let's see.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I had realized I was like I could do this the rest of my life. I really enjoyed this. I felt fulfilled, I loved it. But when it came down to it I was like I can't, I can't just keep deploying, I can't keep going overseas. For the rest sounds cool. Get some action, do some cool stuff, and I get to get get to go home and be with my wife and kids every night. And so I did what most people do is you just shotgun, apply, you know, fbi, atf, marshall secret service, and at the time DEA was just the fastest. And I was like sure, sure, let's do it sounds fun.
Speaker 2:I picked a job on the border. I started out in baltimore and then I moved to the border and I will say border with the dea is really rough, really rough. Um, I enjoyed baltimore. Baltimore was nice. Um, you don't seize as much drugs but you take down a lot of gangs, violent gangs. It felt like it was a little bit more productive. Down on the border you're knocking down illegals left and right and they just they just keep coming and coming and coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's endless waves yeah yeah, I mean the political landscape down here has been very like. I mean, border patrol has been getting hit a lot more than dea has. Um, I enjoyed it. I I tried to shift from cocaine cases to fentanyl specifically. I I had this feeling that if you've ever seen, uh, what american made tom cruise, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it starts off with them trying to get this like little marijuana dealer like dea going all in on this operation for this little weed dealer while he's flying in just tons of Coke into the United States. And I feel like that's kind of happening right now with fentanyl. And you look at the fentanyl overdoses, you see everybody dying from fentanyl. But people who join the DEA, they see narcos, they see Breaking Bad, they see all that too. And everybody wants the big cocaine seizures, everybody wants to focus on cocaine.
Speaker 1:But that's not. That's not the real, real thing going on. That's not the real threat.
Speaker 2:It's not killing Americans. You know fentanyl is killing Americans like tons, and so I found that really fulfilling. Going after fentanyl cases, people who knowingly sell fentanyl where we send the undercover and they're like, hey, does this have fentanyl? And they're like yeah, yeah, they fully know. Like hey, you got to be careful. I know it kills people, so just be careful. They know, they know, and when that comes out in court, they're done and when that comes out in court like they're, they're done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, like that's. That's a crazy part that I don't think a lot of people truly understand, unless you've lost somebody close to you from fentanyl. How dangerous it is, like, uh and and being on the ground going after this dude, like that's got to take a toll on you. That's got to be some fucking wear and tear I.
Speaker 2:I think it's with any law enforcement job. All you deal with is like the worst of society, the worst of culture, the worst people and, yeah, absolutely that. That wore on me. I. I was becoming increasingly I I don't even know what the right term is, but I just very skeptical of every person. I just abrasive. It becomes more and more difficult to find the good in people that you just talk with and interact with on a day-to-day and absolutely negatively affected me. I think if you can get through that and not be negatively affected like you are, that's a superman right there, like the people who do the um, the child cases yeah, dude they can walk away from that and the healthy mental like headspace that's.
Speaker 2:That's some superman stuff.
Speaker 1:That's insane yeah dude, I want to. I want to pause and like kind of dive into this for a little bit, like what can we do or what? What's being done to slow or stop this? This fucking what? What feels like a never-ending fucking fire hose of fentanyl pouring into this country?
Speaker 2:it's a great question the the enough. The one thing that helped stop the flow of drugs into the country the most was COVID the COVID restrictions that shut the border off. Yes, there are a lot of illegals that come through. There's a lot of illegals here that receive drugs, move drugs, but a lot of it is US citizens, green card citizens, people that have paperwork that drive loads across and Border Patrol just does not have enough resources. There's millions of people that cross that border every day. They don't have the time, they don't have the technology, they don't have the manpower to to get them all. I yeah, I'm not saying close the border down, but honestly, if you did want to stop the flow of drugs into the united states, that is one of the best ways is to just limit the to and from flow into Mexico to be honest, yeah, it's, it's, it's something that's measurable.
Speaker 1:Right, we can look at the cases, we can look at the slowdown in the rates. It's there, it's proven. But how are we going to get that across through the emotional arguments? Right Like that, that seems to be like the biggest thing. Right like that, that seems to be like the biggest thing. We hear the emotions often from our political leaders that, uh, you know, we have to be mindful of, you know, people coming here to seek asylum. We have to be mindful of the people that are fleeing tyrannical governments at the same time. That's not everybody, that's not. That's not the reality. And our border patrol agents are tasks saturated man like watching what, uh, vinnie vargas is doing with borderlands. Um, it's like.
Speaker 1:Alternative media has now given us a better inside view of not only what it takes to become a border patrol agent and what it goes on in the day-to-day lives, but the reality of struggle, the fight and everybody that's involved in that there's. You know, a lot of people don't understand that. Even our special forces service members are working in South and Central America and oftentimes they'll find themselves working across from a BORTAC agent who's there working their mission and it's like dude, like it is such a giant mission. And it's like dude, it is such a giant mission. And now we have this and it seems like, when you're not paying attention, that, oh, it will just slowly go away on its own.
Speaker 1:Well, we saw the drug war in the 80s and 90s. Eventually, crack kind of just fizzled out. It's like I don't think so, I don't think this is something we can wait to, just kind of like, just let it fizzle out on its own. I think this is way different than crack cocaine was in the 80s and 90s. And, from your experience, like, are we headed towards a darker, harder future with more an influx in the trafficking of fentanyl, or do you think it'll stabilize and maybe we'll just have right this, like you know, wave this like middle ground of like hey, it's here and we just have to advocate for people. Be more careful I've tried to.
Speaker 2:I've talked about this a lot with with friends and family. Um, I think it will probably get worse. Yeah, you can look at different ways that different countries have combated it. You've got El Salvador or Singapore, which is super authoritarian.
Speaker 2:And they've shown it works for their tiny little countries I think Portugal is one of the famous ones in Europe that, on the other hand, they tried to decriminalize everything and turn all that money into a rehabilitation centers and rehab and I think that had some success. I haven't kept up on that but nobody has ever tried anything. At the scale that we have in the United States and without an actual culture change within the United States that kind of supports a lot of the measures that are taking place, I just I see it getting worse, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I think it's important to understand like we're a vastly different group of people. When we look at case studies like portugal, which everybody likes to bring up, so god, just decriminalize everything, I'm like america is very different and our people, our culture are very different. Like, if you look at any city or any state that has very, uh, lax drug rules and and look, I'm a medicinal marijuana guy. Uh, I'm a psychedelics guy. I absolutely believe these are medicines. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about opening it all up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree. I think the culture in the United States is just completely different and when people try to compare those systems you can make some correlations. But I just don't think you can use it as a basis to support any kind of movement in the United States, like I mean, we saw prohibition, how well that worked and how much the American think you can use it as a basis to support any kind of movement in the united states, like I mean, we saw prohibition, how well that worked and how much the american people hated that. And if you want to go that route, that's fine, but it needs to come from the american people themselves. Government coming along and trying to force that kind of authoritarian thing, I don't think it will work unless the people themselves support it.
Speaker 1:no, yeah, and how well you know when you're fighting this. Uh, it's again. You mean, you've deployed, you've been in a forever war. How do you handle that mentality when now your date, your, your state side and your nine to five is also fighting what may seem like an endless war?
Speaker 2:we're close man that we're on drugs. We're so close we're close, man, we're. We won the war on terror, so we're on drugs, is it's there, man? We're coming up on it fully.
Speaker 1:We had an infographic for you to bring.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd rather not look at the numbers.
Speaker 1:You see this dip right here, this dip right here.
Speaker 2:Um it, it was rough. I think border patrol deals with it a lot. It's a lot more difficult on the border patrol side but because we are very proactive, we're trying to make cases and get arrests. We're trying to seize money, we're trying to seize drugs, and so those little wins are they do they feel good, they feel fulfilling, like when I can find an American who took some fentanyl pills, didn't know that they were fentanyl overdoses and dies, and I can tie it to two or three people up the chain who all knew it had fentanyl in it and put them all in prison. Like those little wins do feel good. But it's like you said, like the next day you get another tip and it's, it's another thing and you've got six, seven, 10 cases going at the same time.
Speaker 1:It just never stops, never stops. Yeah, how do you recharge the batteries, man?
Speaker 2:uh, you leave like no, that's, that's a great question. Um, no, yeah, one of the last cases we were on it was a cocaine case. It was pretty big. They were moving probably about 50 to 100 keys of cocaine a week, and so it's a lot of surveillance. I think what a lot of people don't understand.
Speaker 2:Most of the DEA day-to-day, outside of writing your reports and affidavits, it's just sitting in your car watching a house, watching another vehicle, getting out with six of the other dudes and just just setting up surveillance. And so we were setting up on these guys for like two, three weeks, 14 hours, 18 hour days, and eventually it did lead to a couple of arrests. And it turns out the people that were heavily involved on this side of the border were all illegal immigrants and it just it kind of hit me then like it didn't feel worth it. You know like, yeah, they felt like mopes, they weren't the geniuses behind the scenes and at the end of the day I I felt like the amount of time I was spending out there in my car when I could have been home with my kids, with my family, I was like and it didn't feel like it had enough positive effects for me to be sacrificing that amount of time that I was sacrificing? Yeah, other agents drink a lot.
Speaker 1:It's very common in law enforcement culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a demon not a lot of agents exercise. You know you only have to pass one pt test. Uh, ever, or sorry you're. There's like a couple at the academy. You have to pass. But once you get out of the academy you can balloon up. There's no tape, there's no height weight and there's a couple. There's a couple.
Speaker 2:You know monsters out there and it's hard oh hey, the moby dick, best case officer we had so like, like, when you deploy I don't know, I mean for the most part, especially in 2024 you go on these deployments you know you're going to the gym every day, you've got a nice d-pack and it's, in a lot of ways, it's a lot easier than working like a law enforcement stateside. Maybe, maybe not you guys specifically. I was never a green beret, you know. I've only been support, so it's been pretty chill.
Speaker 1:But we got to kill some myths. Right now Let me tell you something. It's the soft imperatives. Like, we don't get anywhere without the men and women that do every other like dude, it's a great mission to be an 18 series, but you don't do those jobs by yourself. You're not just a team by yourself. Yes, when you deploy, when you're on mission, yes, but behind you is 40, 50, 60, 170 other individuals that have their fingers tied into you, into your team that support you. So my greatest friends never deployed on an ODA, but they're the movement guys, they're the range NCOs, there's so much.
Speaker 1:And your job, your intel job. Like, yes, we have an 18 Fox, so guess what? Yeah, you have Palantir, you have your own intel cell within the team. But when you go and you're you need some extra help, devon out some targets, you go talk to the intelligence cell. Like, you don't make it through these missions, you don't make it through these rotations without all the support structures. You don't make it on your own. There's never been a green beret that can stand up and say I may not throughout my entire career without any soft support. Cool fucking shit. So that's part of the. The other thing I want to talk about is your role now working in and still being in support of, you know, our green beret brothers, the, the guys on the ground. It it opens up to the entirety of everybody. It's within that group. Not every, not everyone understands that, and that's why I always say we have to kill the myth that, oh, the only people worth talking about are green berets.
Speaker 2:I was like no, there's millions of jobs you can do in the military and, believe it or not, some are pretty fucking cool and they don't have anything to do with sleeping in fucking cold, wet environment no, I, I love the 18 foxes that I've been able to work with, but, like you ask any green beret, especially the ones that have gone to like the intel courses, be like, hey, can you write a report on this, can you?
Speaker 2:write an ir, like even the ones that can write them really well, every single one is gonna say fuck, no, you know, and I I don't. I don't blame you guys like you. Don't be a green beret to write reports, man. I understand that. That's. That's why I'm here.
Speaker 1:That's what I do, like dude, it's, it's a hard dude. You open up you, you open up that, uh, that report and you read, and you read it in such great detail and so much information goes into that and it takes a special individual to be able to capture all that information and put it on. So my hat's off to you, because I never wanted to do that shit.
Speaker 2:I don't blame you. I don't blame you yeah, none of them do. And no, I'm happy to do it, I enjoy it, I like it, and so that's what I do, and I feel like, especially for support personnel, because I feel like I've had, especially as a National Guardsman, an Intel National Guardsman never been infantry. I've had a very blessed career, being able to go to a bunch of schools, do a lot of cool things that most active duty people have never been able to do, and I just, I love being able to support them. From what I've seen, if you don't look the part, though, the green berets are never going to really respect you. Do you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean, oh yeah, you have to be fit, you have to be fit, you have to have if you work in a skiff, you have to. You have to at least have some good hygiene and and and not look like you're busting out of of your clothes, Like that's one thing.
Speaker 2:Like I'm. There are exceptions, sure, where some guys just so good at his job that he can overcome I get that. That's not me, I'm good, I'm not that good, but like, yeah, being able to go into the gym and just like, work out and, you know, put up some decent weight, and they see that it's, they instantly have just some kind of level of respect for you. We had, on my last deployment, when we were supporting them, we were out in Europe and we had human intelligence collectors with ODAs all over and, yeah, sure enough, the ones who did really well are the ones that were fit that, hey, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 2:Oh, you want me to do this BS task? Sure, yeah, no problem, didn't talk back, didn't fight, didn't fight, found a way to provide value. And too many times we see I work very heavily with the S2, the 2X and you see these soldiers that just try to find issues, find problems, on why you can't get something done, instead of finding the way to get it done Like, yeah. On why you can't get something done, instead of finding the way to get it done, like, yeah, I understand you can't do it that way, you know, nobody cares about the roadblocks, just get it done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think support personnel as a whole have a pretty big problem with dude, and I feel like and maybe you can probably speak better to this Now that GWAT's over, now that we've for I don't believe we're truly at peacetime, but it's now we've turned a page on that. Have you felt like the individuals, the younger service members? You find it difficult to connect with them and lead them, versus back in the day, just a few years ago?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Oh yeah, I think being in the National Guard it's definitely a little more relaxed, being in SF support it's even more relaxed, and then being in an intel unit it's even more relaxed. And so if you intel unit, it's even more relaxed. And so if you've got good soldiers it's great. But you don't get a lot of those opportunities to flex leadership skills that act in active duty soldier would in you know, ranger regiments or something like that, and I think that's just gen z as a whole, or I guess gen alpha is probably joining the military soon, but just very combative, like oh no, I don't want to do that. Yeah, like, oh no, thank you, oh no. And so you've got to find, you've got to find ways to motivate them, to encourage them, and it forces you to dig a little deeper as a leader, rather than just, you know, forcing them to push.
Speaker 2:Or, yeah, the traditional methods, um, yeah, because it's just kind of not, it's just not really done, especially on the national guard side. Just like, hey, do push-ups, like you can counsel them. But yeah, absolutely, it has been very difficult getting gen z soldiers to kind of get on board, and I I don't necessarily blame them, you know, back in the day, the whole thing was oh, you get to go to iraq, you get to go to afghanistan, you might see combat and I don't know if I would have joined the army. You know, if I was 20 years old today, I don't know if I ever would have joined. There's there's no end state, clear end state that I'm working towards anymore. Most of them are just getting out of their town, gi Bill, and that's a whole different kind of motivation than I want to go to Iraq and kill some people.
Speaker 1:It's so true I say it a lot we had this national calling. I mean, vast majority of the people I talked to when I asked them about what inspired them, what gave them the the idea to to join the military, they always say 9-11. They always say they either watch the towers get hit or you know what's happening so fast and they caught a glimpse of it. But everybody within our age group has some sort of connective tissue to that moment and this generation doesn't have that. They don't have that calling.
Speaker 1:It's very inward. It's inward like how do I get to school, how do I get out of this environment? And there's nothing wrong with that, but how do you? You have to figure out a way to bridge that gap and build that sort of like spirit decor or even, but like how do you build national pride? That's the other thing because, like dude, when I log on the amount of critiques I have, I see on social media of how shitty this country is. It's like no wonder for the one to serve they only see service as a means to an end, like, oh, I just need x amount of money to get that hellcat, I need x amount of money to get get that college degree.
Speaker 1:It's like dude, it's. It's about more because let me tell you, jump pay is never going to increase, yeah, and the cost of living is going up way, way higher, higher. So you know, your language rating and what you get as pro pay is never going to be make you a rich man. But there is a greater and higher calling to serve and it's up to guys like you and and you know, anybody in the public space like myself, to help kind of fan that flame of like, be willing to give, be willing to join, be willing to have this adventure. I guess it will come at a cost to your mental stability and some of your health, but but it will be the greatest adventure of your life.
Speaker 2:I felt like so I got my, I got my six and six I felt pretty good about it. I always felt like I was oh, like a younger NCO, a younger whatever, yeah. And that stone turned on my last deployment, when I had my first soldier, who was born after nine 11. That was hard. It was kind of the first time it hit me that like I'm, I'm older, now older now you know there is a new generation after me. It had just never really sank in until that moment and that that was rough.
Speaker 2:The future's now old man yeah no, but like you'll see it a lot with national guardsmen, especially where, uh, people, people are almost embarrassed, like national guardsmen are embarrassed their service and I've, I have always loved serving the national guard and so I have tried time and time again to try to kind of reshape that cultural perception of the national guard, because, I don't know, I love it, it's it's allowed me to do a lot of things that I wouldn't have been able to do.
Speaker 2:It's allowed me to have a very successful federal career on on the side and it's kind of just allowed me to do both both worlds and I'm trying to help other national guardsmen to kind of like allowed me to do both worlds and I'm trying to help other National Guardsmen to kind of like yeah, I'm in the National Guard Because it's always like oh yeah, I'm in the Army National Guard.
Speaker 1:I too served in the National Guard. I had a very, very, very, very challenging childhood and I opted to run away from home. At 17, uh, unbeknownst to me, that led me down a darker path.
Speaker 1:uh, that's for a different episode, but um I didn't have a way to pay for a lot of the things that so many of us take for granted, and the only option that I saw as something like that you literally a shining light in the darkness was like well, if I joined national guard, I can start drilling in high school, I can start developing and figuring out what it means to be a man. And you know, drill money wasn't that much. It's a private it's. It's not that much, but for a kid struggling, working Friday nights, it meant a lot to me and I'll never look back on that service and look down upon it because, while ultimately it wasn't the highest calling, I had greater ambitions, bigger dreams. That is where I first learned how to be a soldier.
Speaker 1:I did meet some individuals that were great leaders, because here's the thing about the National Guard A lot of guys get out of the military and they say I'm not done serving, I want to continue serving my country, and they join the Guard and then they mentor, coach and lead a whole different generation of military leaders that will either stay in the Guard and make it better, or some of those individuals will go to active duty, like myself, get to a point where you realize like okay, like I enjoy my, my drill weekends, these people, I enjoy being around. There's a sense of purpose, there's a sense of a mission. People here have dreams and everybody else that's a civilian. They they're. They're not really going anywhere, like I don't want to live in a what bedroom, frigging, subsidized housing for Asian students at CSU? That's a real thing. Smell like fish every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me tell you, life was rough for young Denny. It was a lot of open, open face, bologna sandwiches and a lot of, a lot, a lot of grinding trying to make it, try to make it happen. Yeah, I'm enrolled at csu. I'll take the student housing. That was in fact a lie. And uh, but hey, I got six months for a very cheap rate apartment. They eventually found out and that's when I had to get that up. That's neither here nor there. That's a tale for another time.
Speaker 1:But you're right, man, we have to be willing to understand that your service as a National Guardsman does matter. If you're listening right now, you're actively in the Guard or you served in the Guard. I want you to know that you should never be ashamed of your service. When I look back to the Colorado Guard time being called up to help your neighbors when there's frigging snowstorms that have blocked roads, being called up for Katrina. That was miserable, but that was an amazing, eye-opening experience for me and the amount of aid and help that we were able to provide to individuals in that time of need. It's amazing and our National Guard's going to continue to do that.
Speaker 1:It's a proud history of individuals that have always been willing to show up and be there when their state needs them the most and they get activated for federal response too. So you're right, it's something we have to understand. Like, yeah, maybe your calling is to go active duty and that's okay. That's not for everybody, but if you're still showing up and you're still part of the National Guard, you should be freaking proud of that, because they ended like you said. You're able to serve your country, your state, and you're also able to have an awesome federal career. So we have to normalize that and I think being able to bring individuals like yourself, yourself, onto you know a podcast, to be able to talk about their, their service, with pride, rather than that, that, oh you know. 19th group, let me tell you, 19th group and 20th group have some fucking amazing people. They have amazing fucking teams they deploy, just like we do, like it's. It's about time we realize that, hey, let's celebrate our National Guard, let's for an entire weekend. Nobody make fun of them.
Speaker 2:No, I think you hit on something I always like to talk about as well with, like you felt that you had more ambition, so you, you did some little bit in the national guard, and the term I've always heard is like, like you're a big fish in a little pond and so you got to move into a bigger pond.
Speaker 2:It's something that I always see that's frustrated me about other soldiers is you'll see them complain about their crappy leadership, their crappy unit, their crappy whatever. And then when you ask them, they're like, you're like, hey, what, what kind of unit are you in? Like, well, I'm just some conventional seaburn unit. It's like brother, that's. It's going to suck a little bit. Like, if you think that you don't fit in, if you think that you know you're too big for that pond, you got to go find the bigger pond, you've gotta send it, you've gotta go a little further. And there's nothing that frustrates me more than, yeah, those dudes that just complain and do nothing about it, like, yeah, oh, this pond is too small. It's like, bro, there's, there's a big pond.
Speaker 1:There's like 10 big ponds, 20 different packets you can try them all like yeah, go, go, go talk to your ceo. I'll still. I'll never forget. When I went to my commander I was like, hey, I'm going active duty. Um, it's got cool, man, here you go later. I get too fucked about it.
Speaker 1:There's guys that make it so difficult in their mind, like, yeah, it took a little bit. Like I had to drive, like way I couldn't find a recruiter, was willing to do the paperwork for me because I'd like drive across state lines. I have to find an individual. And uh, but then once the process is in motion, like dude, fucking, go live your life, go have an adventure. Like. I know tons of guys that stayed in that same unit did great things. That unit evolved and and freaking, went on to do some amazing things and good for them. But if you feel just like you said, but if you're feeling like you're, you've outgrown that organization. Don't just fucking sit there and be miserable. That bleeds off on everybody else. No one wants to be around you and then you're going to blame everybody else. Oh, fuck this shit. This shit, it's all the people suck. Or maybe it's just your attitude.
Speaker 2:No, my first sergeant was like dude, there's you can drop a packet to and like you could do site Like, so I'm. I understand not everybody has what it takes to to become a griever. I fully, or they're not willing to make the sacrifice. I get that there's. There's psyops, there's civil affairs, there's all these other units that are going to be better than conventional units in a lot of ways. No, no units going to be perfect, but I feel like the further up you go, the more trust that you know higher up leadership will have in you. And I think at the end of the day, a lot of people do join that military because they want, they want that brotherhood.
Speaker 2:you know they want to sit in, and there's nothing worse than like going through basic training and graduating, and you're like, you look to your left and right and there's just some like some like retards, you know, and you're like what.
Speaker 2:you know what I'm talking about, though, right yeah yeah, like you go through this selection process and you're like that dude through, that guy's here and like it's a little disheartening. You know and I think everybody deals with it to some degree because you build up, you build it up so much in your mind, like when, when I was, uh, when I was in the dea, and I would tell them like, oh yeah, I'm jumping this weekend and oh yeah, I'm part of, you know, a special forces support unit. To them, that was like the coolest thing ever. And then, yeah, I work for the dn. They're like, oh, you work for the dea and so both sides think you're doing like the coolest things ever. When, like you're not really doing it, but everybody builds these things up in their minds that like, oh, that's got to be some crazy people over there and you get there and it's just, they're all people, man, they're all just regular people, uh. But yeah, I mean, if you feel like you don't fit in in your unit, man, you got to drop that back. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the only thing that I always found difficult and maybe you've been able or within your organization, been able to figure this out is when you leave that drill weekend. You have such great times, you're reconnected with your friends Maybe you had annual training, went great you leave back home. It's almost like you're going through that same like cycle of identity and purpose over and over, and like you, maybe you don't live next to any of your friends. Like, how do you? And nowadays, like what do you guys do to try to stay connected more?
Speaker 2:no, that's, that's, that's good. I I would say I I do pretty well for the most part. I'll say when I got out of Ranger school I did kind of fall into a little bit of depression. It was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life, and actually doing it and accomplishing it was one of the greatest feelings that I had ever had in my life, one of the greatest feelings that I had ever had in my life. And then I go back to, you know, sitting at a car, you know looking at some illegal you know do Coke for like a week. I'm just like sitting there, like what am I doing, you know?
Speaker 2:But I would say, memes, man, group chats, memes, um, they're, they're green berets that I served with on my last deployment that I'm still in group chats, that they'll. You know, we'll send each other memes and stuff and you don't have to do the whole like, hey, man, how are you doing? Like it doesn't have to be that serious, it can just be memes, just, oh, hey, here's this funny meme. Oh, doesn't this remind you of you know that one person or that one incident? This remind you of you know that one person or that one incident?
Speaker 2:Because, like it is something that's always kind of bothered me with like the mental health community online, where people are like, hey, if you, if you're struggling, you know my dms are are open, you can talk to me. It's like you're just like some person, though, like you need like a therapy. Most of these people need like therapists, like real therapists, real psychiatrists. You go to some Joe Schmo like, hey, I want to kill myself based off of real issues in my life. What are they going to say? They're not trained professionals. They're not. I don't know, I'm not great at the mental health stuff, I'm not going to lie. But memes, man. Memes are great, that's what. But memes, man Memes are great.
Speaker 1:That's what I always say. Man, I'm vulnerable and gracious enough to sit down and share my story with frigging anybody on multiple episodes, and I always share. When you're going through the worst part of your life, you fall back on what you know, and for us it's dark humor. That's what we know. That's what's always kept us going. Maybe it was you failed the school, or maybe it was your team sergeant fucking really laid into you and now your spirit's and you got that poopy lip and you're fucking just sucking and your buddy sends you a funny meme, lifts your spirit. It's hey, today sucked, tomorrow will be better, better.
Speaker 1:We've developed within our own warrior culture ways to help each other and, yes, there's stop gaps, but if it keeps you moving forward, just like when we were doing in selection or anytime or maybe you find yourself doing this in ranger school you're fucking moving and you're like, fuck, I can't keep going. And you just maybe you whisper something. How much longer? There's always that one guy that's like, hey, five more minutes, dude, we got five more minutes, we're almost there. And I found myself always being that person like fucking, five more minutes, dude, we're almost done.
Speaker 1:And then later on someone's sure enough. Someone's keeping track like, fuck man, it's been an hour. Yeah, dude, it's like five more minutes. And and then that becomes the running joke, like how much longer can you really make it? I'll tell you. Right now you use whatever tools you got and if it's humor, you lean on it and you can make it five more minutes. You can make it another day. Eventually, maybe you'll get vulnerable and you'll ask for help. You'll reach out to that P3 source, but in the moment when you're really dealing with it and you just need a friend to send them meat and that's why it's always been a cornerstone to what I do Fucking poop and cum jokes have saved more lives than fucking better health, it's probably true.
Speaker 2:It's the absolute fucking truth, man.
Speaker 1:Because I've been doing peer-to-peer support for a while and I know even in my own lived experience I didn't want to Google for help. But when I sat down with somebody that was willing to do the Googling, that was willing to do the searching and figuring things out, then you're really able to get help. Because when you're absolute worst, the last thing you want to do is fucking sit down and try. Because I've been that guy. I call that stupid fucking number I won't say cause, I don't want to deter anybody from doing it but you call a suicide helpline. It gets fucking put on hold. Dude, like, like, what the fuck Like do better, like that's. That's a layer.
Speaker 1:That's like God that proves to you that god's a comedian. And then you're talking to somebody that's like like not in their greatest day either, and you're just having a fucking moment. It's just like, yeah, hang on a second, let me put you on hold. It's like, fuck, dude, really like this is really happening, but it's. It's those moments you can look back and be like, wow, dude, like that's, that's funny, that's dark humor and it it saves you, like, and you've been there.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the things like when you're ready, when you're in your own journey in your own time, when you're ready for help, you'll be amazed the way it shows up in your life. And often, more more often than not, it's a friend that reaches out first through a meme or a joke, gets a conversation going. Then you find yourself, finally, you know, like myself finally going in and having the courage to go talk to somebody and get inpatient. And that's a shout out to Lower Ridge Treatment Center. They're not a sponsor, they're not associated with this dog shit show, but they saved my life and they could save yours. Fuck, that's a good pitch.
Speaker 2:I'd sponsor you. I would sponsor you for that?
Speaker 1:no, I was looking over.
Speaker 2:I I've got my ranger flag over here. I can't find it, but you're talking about the five minutes thing. The the big ongoing joke we had was uh, do you know grave digger, the monster truck? Yes, I don't know who started this. It was so stupid. But like hey, man, listen, I heard at the end of graduation grave digger's gonna be there and it just became this thing like bro dude, come on, man, grave digger. Like do it for grave digger. Like it just became this stupid, like nope, everybody knew it was like this is a joke, but it's just what you know, things that people say to get through things, and you just gave me a free.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I'm gonna be laughing about this. Could you imagine? You fucking make it through the entire thing. You're about to graduate ranger school. They make you a bound face full send. Oh my gosh. And this is proof that everybody that serves within this community, support or not, everybody has the same fun of humor. Oh my god, it's something that that has.
Speaker 2:I won't pull any names out, but it's something that has bothered me about, like other military creators who like the way I can best explain is they package it for civilians. It's like military humor for civilians, and they're they're all the biggest creators. I hate that stuff like hey army does it like this navy does it like this, but gay, and it's like dude. That is, it's just the lowest brow, bro, awful.
Speaker 1:I can't stand it. Oh my god, yeah, let's just fucking vet humor, fuck, worst, absolute, fuckingst, absolute, fucking, worst, fucking. Quote me on this. Fucking. What is his name? Chul Timo O'Malley, whatever the fuck his name, is the most cringeworthy vet fucking humor guy out there. Just the humor, just sucks. It's like you know it's bad when my own fucking wife's like who the fuck are these people and who watches this? I'm like there's a lot of people with Down syndrome that join the military that watch this shit. It is so bad and you're right. You're right. It's like, yeah, can you imagine sitting down in that pitch meeting to make those skits? Yeah, and have the Army guy be totally cool, and then the Navy guy comes in and wants to suck his dick? Yeah, because navy's gay.
Speaker 2:I hate it. I hate it so much oh people still make those things. You know it's like it's like 2024 and people are still, like big creators are still making those types of memes. It's like the bills cannot be that rough man, like just I don't know, like, if you're not making it for military as your audience, then like, what are you doing? Like what is the point?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's, it's um, look it's, it's a time honored. It's just a simple formula. Put it on an excel spreadsheet and I'll I'll fucking dial it in for you. Motherfuckersers, poop and cum that's it. That's it. You want to get a million followers tomorrow for real military individuals? Poop and cum jokes. It's all you need, literally. I'll show you the algorithm. Look, come to my TED Talk. I'm putting it on. It'll blow your minds. If you want to tap into the Special Operations community, you'll want to be there. I'll break it down in my award-winning style seminar I'll tell you I hate making these.
Speaker 2:I've made one or two about like being like an e8, you know, cheating on my wife with like the e3, and they always do like crazy well, and so I'm like gosh dang it, because now I gotta make more of them, because people love those kinds of memes and like I've got a wife and kids, I've never cheated or anything like that, but like those memes are just the ones that do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people love them. People love them. It's, it's um, it it's. And I did the same thing. I look at. I look at what performs best. My va, new va, disability unlocked. It's a real quick video of a guy that has some sort of weird disease where he's constantly coming. What? Three million fucking views?
Speaker 1:three million fucking views and then the people that remixed it have all like hit, like multiple, like thousands of views, and I'm like this this is what you fucking crave. You degenerates. I mean, you're trying to sell positivity and this is this is what you crave.
Speaker 2:Give the people what they want poop and cum when I because I started on tiktok originally making videos, and I had started trying to do like fitness videos because I used to compete in power lifting I still do sometimes no shit. And I was like, let's do like fitness videos because I used to compete in powerlifting, I still do sometimes. Oh, no shit. And I was like let's do some fitness stuff. I still post some lifts occasionally, but like because I'm not like super shredded or have like insane numbers, it just never really went anywhere. And so, yeah, sure enough, I posted some kind of military meme and like, all right, guess that's what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1:You posted one the other day was you were bench pressing but I forget, forget the caption. Nearly pissed my pants so all right.
Speaker 2:So so that, yeah, that that's. That's one of the ones I'm talking about. So that was. That was a bench press.
Speaker 2:That was like a year and a half ago, oh wow, benching 395 pounds, and I had never benched that much yeah you know everything and I've I've benched more and it's looked easier, but because it was such a struggle to get up, I just man, I lost it. I was good, I was so excited and but nobody, nobody gives a shit. Nobody gives a shit that you bench a lot, nobody gives a shit. That you squat a lot, nobody gives. I do. I have a. What's his name, master sergeant plumley yeah medal of honor recipient.
Speaker 2:Right, love him. Nobody gives a shit because he doesn't like make funny content. You know like nobody cares and so I just put a little thing where it's like, oh, you know, I was benching 395 and then I remembered all the glass ceilings women have broken in the military and like that's what, that's what gets people to watch my lifting videos, that's it like nobody cares like, unless you entertain them somehow like people just don't care dude, it's, it's so fucking true man.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, earl's a fucking great dude, um, great guest freaking amazing story. But it's, it's right, dude, unless you're tapping into exactly what the degenerates want to see, then it never. Yeah, I'm gonna fucking kill you to fucking subscribe, like and share. Huh, fucking talking to you. Fucking, I'm over here, goddamn, sweat my dick off like alex jones, fucking josh over here. All right, try to give you what you crave. You won't even follow, like and subscribe.
Speaker 2:Earl, earl kills me because I I shared some meme. It was, uh, it was one of the rangers who was like who was going around showing his medal of honor, yeah, and it's like. It's like I can't even remember what it's captioned, but it's like, you know it's, it was just very prideful, like, oh, this, you get the shit in fucking cagville. You've never been to cagville. Little bitch like something cringy thing like that. And he likes it. You know he likes the meme and I was like that is surreal to me. Like me, just some pogue and an actual medal of honor recipient be like, all right, that's pretty funny. Yeah, that was a pretty surreal experience, like I love that man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, uh, I. I think the most profound moment in my memeing career was, uh, when ac slater, the man himself, liked one of my memes and uh, I remember I, I woke up and I, I was like, as a Hispanic man, that's a very important thing Saved by the bell is the cornerstone of Hispanic entertainment. And don't refer to him by his real name. He'll always be AC Slater. But I remember you wake up, alarm goes off at 4, like Jocko tells me, and I roll over out of bed, I check my phone and I'm like ac slater, he liked my meme and I was like and it was the pooping, it was that cum joke meme where the guy is falling down and on the golf course, and I'm like that's what he likes, that's, that's what makes him laugh, it's a dude having a crippling orgasm. All right, then I know I tapped into the the right mindset. Yeah, if I'm doing this, by the time I have like grown adult children fuck dude yeah, yeah, I feel that, yeah, did you, did you?
Speaker 2:did you start this podcast while you were like are wait, are you still in? Are you still serving?
Speaker 1:no, I'm out okay, okay, in uh april 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay, so, yeah you, so you did start this while you were still serving. Yeah yeah yep, did you come across? Did you get hemmed up in any way with anything that you posted? Nope, no.
Speaker 1:Oh interesting.
Speaker 1:I didn't have a strategy and I was just creating this podcast, which, when you create something positive, it's a lot harder to get an audience. If, um, if I made a podcast and all I did was just shit on special operators and monday quarterbacking their operations, I would get thousands of views. There's a market for that. Yeah, I know, um, there's a market for, uh, and it's all about how you title the, the videos, right, exposing navy seals next, or fucking five things that you-and-so didn't do on his operation, and that would get a lot of views. Or I'm going to break down all the things that were fucked up on this action movie. There are tons of channels like that, but I wanted to connect with an audience that wanted to hear about how to get over something that I think all of us will go through, that that pivot into the civilian world when you're dealing with mental health issues. I nearly ended it all. I nearly, friggin, did something really stupid and I didn't find any other green bright talking about this. Because we suffer from this myth that we can't break, we can't fall apart, and the ones that do fall apart, we fucking push them them off into GSB or we push them off somewhere in a corner office and then we don't talk about it. We very rarely welcome them back to sit down in front of the actual service members and be like, hey, these are all the things I use to build myself back up and make it through this dark time. And if you find yourself going through this, you too can survive it, you too can get better.
Speaker 1:Here are some of the things that helped me, and that's what I wanted to bring out, because I realized that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And then I found operator syndrome and that proved to me that somebody else saw this out there within our warrior culture. And now we understand that it's not just Green Berets, it's not just Navy SEALs, it's not just Rangers. Our infantrymen are going through it, our paratroopers are going through it, our artillerymen are going through it. It's because the human body, the human mind, isn't meant to go through 20 years of war. And now you're thinking well, daddy, I had to do 20 years. Well, jimmy, you didn't need to do 20 years, you just needed that one deployment. And maybe because you were an artillery man, fucking firing rounds over and over and over again, a repeated head impact has now changed you, but there's a way to get that back, there's a way to recover, and that's what I wanted to put out in the world.
Speaker 1:Be that voice of reasoning that says, hey, here are these nonprofits that can help, here's these individuals like Josh that can tell you their stories of how they serve in the National Guard and also serve in the DEA. So it tells you that you can do that too. It tells you that, hey, you know what? Maybe I will throw that application for the DEA, because in the world of shit, there has to be somebody that's willing to put something good, right, wrong or indifferent.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm not the podcast for you, maybe I'm not the YouTube channel for you, but I would say I would argue that I put enough good out there that if somebody stumbles upon just one episode, they might be willing to say you know what?
Speaker 1:I'm willing to go get help or I'm willing to bet on myself, I'm willing to take ownership of my pivot process into the civilian world and I'm willing to bet on me, and that's what I want to do. On the backside, I also want to just continue putting something out that will make you laugh throughout your nine to five, because we're so different. Our warrior culture is very different. We don't laugh at the same things and we need that. And if I happen to be hypercritical of leadership in some units, then so be it, because everybody needs to be held accountable. And if I can put a meme out there that does that and the boys see it and they laugh, then so be it, because I always have to stay by what I've always set out to do, of the boys, for the boys and girls for the boys and girls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I it's something I've never. I can't fully explain it, but because I I I really hope none of my co-workers from the dea see this. I love them. You're all good people.
Speaker 1:They probably won't because you motherfuckers don't share fair enough.
Speaker 2:But, like you know, I I just went on this recent deployment and with the green berets, the support personnel, my co-workers, like the you know, within a week I could tell like hey, oh, we're gonna be, we're gonna be good friends, we're gonna work well, and I felt more connected to them than coworkers that I've worked with for five years and it kind of just goes back to that thing. I thought the transition would be similar. I thought military, federal law enforcement would be very similar In some ways. It is a lot of ways it isn't. And I've never been able to really explain that difference between somebody who makes that decision to go into law enforcement as opposed to joining the military. But I just felt like I couldn't connect with them the same way I can connect with people who serve in the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something I hear a lot from individuals. It's just that idea that some people aren't really part of that warrior culture. It's just they just see it as a job, they just see it as a nine to five and that's hard to like try to instill when somebody is looking for a job with specific packages which, like, yeah, tina, is not going to have your back in a, you know, a back alley dog fight. It's just, that's just the truth. Yeah, it's, it's hard to like try to establish that and so many people share that. Like I miss having the brotherhood, I miss having the ability. Like how do we foster that? How do we bring, how do we bring civilians into that, into that culture of like, hey, like we're about this, we've got to be able to like lean on each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah, I think leadership too, at all levels DEA felt most of the time it was like some bureaucrat you know, pushing GS-1415 does not care, just does not care, just doesn't want scandal paperwork, never drawn their weapon. And it's like you've got these people who want to do SRT and then you've got the people who just want to make cases and listen to phones, and the phone guys are typically the ones that are going to get promoted and, yeah, take over. And I don't know it's.
Speaker 1:There's definitely some clashing of accountant culture and warrior culture yeah, dude, I think it's a perfect name for that accountant culture. Yeah, I'm just here for my, the right package, the right Rate to pay and my weekend Vacations.
Speaker 2:I will say like, if you are interested In doing law enforcement, to see action, specifically Action being like putting hands on Drawing your weapon, best, best option, in my opinion, would be to go to a big city and go to the police department. You know, lapd, chicago, pd, new york, pd you, if you can get onto one of those swap machines. Now, I'm not like connected to fbi, hrt, I don't know all of their missions, so this is a guess. So don't you know, don't? Don't I have 50 grenades, you know?
Speaker 2:no, no, don't damn it, I went three episodes with nobody saying anything about him don't clip this um, but like they get more, like hT probably trains better and trains more, but these local swats see more action in my opinion. And if you want to go, federal Bortak, like you were saying, bortak is the real deal. Bortak, borestar very good, obviously. Fbi. Hrt they're like the gold standard. Hrt, they're like the gold standard. Yeah, um, marshals going back, if I were to do it all again, I do wish I would have looked more heavily into the marshals they. The problem is, is your first year or two with the marshals you have to do bailiff duty, which is like you're in a suit.
Speaker 2:Nine to five, escorting some guy to a Zoom call with the judge, all right back to yourself. It sucks, it's not fulfilling. But after that year, two year probation, you get to go on a fugitive task force and you're not writing reports, you're not building cases. This dude's already guilty, he's been sentenced, he's been whatever, you know the case has already been done. You're just finding him and bringing him, you know to to jail and you know their reports are like yep, found suspect at address, like that's it. You're not writing like oh, it's this time we started surveillance and he did this and you know multi-page reports and they're, uh, what are they called? The sogG? Their SOG is uh, it's like their full-time tactical unit. Yeah, also very respectable, very cool.
Speaker 1:Um, in my opinion, if it's a part-time federal tactical team, they're not gonna be great yeah, yeah, yeah, anytime we do anything part-time like that, like because, dude, like dude I've, I can only imagine the amount of workup you have to do Because, dude, you're dealing with like civilian entities now and they have to be by the book. They have to have every I dotted, t crossed. Yeah, I can only imagine what it's fucking painted as and staying current on all those fucking mandates. Fuck that. More power to anybody wants to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got body cams now too, yeah that's the other thing. Everything's yeah, everything's up for review yeah, because like we used to, I guess I could talk about it. But like I mean, you find all sorts of weird stuff in people's houses, you know, like you'll go into a guy's room and there's like 20 dildos in there. That's funny man.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, those are just collections. Those are just collections, and that's funny. I'm going to make a joke. I'm going to say something. I might have a co-worker who's a little less mature that might touch one and use it as a sword. Maybe, allegedly Possibly less mature, that might, you know, touch one and use it as a sword maybe allegedly possibly. But like you can't do that stuff now, like can't even play with freaking suspects dildos, it's ridiculous what this world is coming to you, what kind of world are we living in?
Speaker 1:I mean, you're not not gonna pick them up and have a sword fight, like, but like my biggest problem is it it removes um, what's that word?
Speaker 2:Like it removes some of your discernment where, like previously, you could be like, well, you know, like, oh, that guy's got a weed plant. We're DEA, we don't really care about weed, unless it's like thousands of pounds, like who cares, we're looking at Coke and fentanyl and heroin. But, like, if we have body cameras on, now, have to, we have to take everything. We have to like, oh, that's a legally possessed firearm. Well, you had coke, so we gotta, we have to take it now. And processing processing firearms sucks, like it's just a pain and they usually destroy them like they'll never be in circulation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yep like cue the sarah mclaughlin's music right there, because that's a sad.
Speaker 2:Oh, so many guns I'm telling you thousands that, just like, if you use it in combination with the drug crime, seized, destroyed, can't be used, can't be resold, and like how many gold-plated ak's have you come across, or two or three? Yeah, pistols are more common, like the 1911s like an angel.
Speaker 1:Put it to good use it's painful, they just let the agents like all right, this is your new service weapon.
Speaker 2:Be badass they do that with vehicles. You can seize vehicles and put it in circulation, like all of all of our undercover vehicles, for example, are like really nice yeah, you know real nice stuff that we seized and so the undercovers can use it. The uh, we've got a local police force down here that seized a mansion and so now they moved in and that's their base of operations. What asset forfeiture? Because this guy was running like thousands of kilos of cocaine and so when they you know they had all the paperwork, he ran to mexico so they just seized it, seized it all of the city and they moved in. That's why, if you're doing drugs, I'm telling you, if cartel wanted to hire me, they would be so good at their jobs, it's so easy.
Speaker 1:All right, if you're listening right now. Any cartel members? Josh Lowe is up for sale.
Speaker 2:Renting, leasing, once you put stuff in your name and you buy it. You buy a vehicle, you buy a house and you deal out of it. It's on the table and like so. But if you lease, if you rent like you don't own it, we can't take something that the bank owns. But you only catch the dumb ones for the most part. Anyways, you know the smart ones always, always, always, figure it out, always, know what to do and they that they we have chat gpt.
Speaker 2:Now they're probably utilizing that for for illicit games I would have killed for chat gpt to write affidavits. Writing affidavits suck like like. Hey, you know, this guy did this, this and this, a three-paragraph affidavit based off of Texas and federal DEA law Boom.
Speaker 1:You have that prompt already mapped out, my man.
Speaker 2:I 100% would have done it I 100% would have done it.
Speaker 1:You know what? I'm editing this episode. I'm going to actually put that prompt in. I want to see if it works.
Speaker 2:I'll send you the results. I'm pretty sure, like not with all things, but chat gpt in general has been very good with legalese type stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been very impressed yeah, well, dude, what are you? What are you up to these days? Where are you working?
Speaker 2:so I still so I'm working on the military side working law enforcement. Um, I don't want to blast out my uh organization. It's not like a super secret organization. I just don't want to blast out my uh organization. It's not like a super secret organization. I just don't want to bring any attention to them right now. But I'm still a gs employee, still lateral, still get my gun. Um, I enjoy it. I enjoy working more with the military than I do. Department of justice here's hoping that there's going to be some big changes with the new administration. We'll see how that goes. A lot of it stems from FBI. Fbi's just had a lot of issues for a long time. A lot of power from Herbert Hoover that's its own thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We can dive that into another episode. Oh, this is awesome.
Speaker 2:But yeah, once, once I left the dea I had a little break. I started um, I don't know if you've have you seen my aam post army achievement medal post and I've written. I've just crossed 100 aams written right now yeah, no way yeah, I.
Speaker 2:I had the idea when ipse came out, where they're like, hey, you can write this for literally any soldier. So I was like, all right, because I got my tiktok ban for you know shenanigans, right. So I was like, starting my instagram account, I was like I've got a lot of free time, let me grow the account a little bit and do something good for the soldiers. And so I was like, yeah, anybody who scores higher than me on the ACFT, I will write you an AM. And so, yeah, I just crossed a hundred, like two days ago. A hundred AMs written, not a hundred AMs awarded.
Speaker 2:We're at a failure rate of about 15 right now. Failure rate of about 15 right now. So most of them have been lieutenant colonels that are just like I don't think of 590 warrants in am totally understandable. And there are others that have been pretty rude. I posted about some of it but was like this was a Seaburn unit and this dude scored like a 596. And the Master Sergeant was like these are the types of scores that are expected on active duty. I don't know how it is on the National Guard. Never write any award in my chain ever.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:What a boner. I don't care Right, so I call him out by name, by rank I was like boner, I don't care, right, so I call him out by name by break. I was like dude, I don't care you know because when, when I'm, uh, not on orders, I'm kind of outside of some of the dod regulations. You know what I mean. Yes, yes, so I don't care. No, but apparently that master sergeant started harassing the soldier himself, so I had to take it down. Just how it goes.
Speaker 1:What a piece of shit. Yeah, offline, throw me that name, because then I'll get on that campaign. I don't mind hazing some. Master Sergeant, you have a fucking power. What a piece of shit, dude, you're going to be that miserable. I would imagine you probably live in a one bedroom apartment and you eat your hot pocket over the sink and fucking drink yourself to sleep at night. Fucking miserable, miserable.
Speaker 2:There were others. There was like a female captain who was just like we don't have any regs in place to award soldiers for ACFT scores and I was like what? And she like, because you can see their comments, and she denied it once and I I reached out. She's like, well, I don't think it should go up, but I'm not the approval authority. So she sends it up with that comment. Her little first sergeant, same thing, like oh, I don't think this warrants a um, the the major above her is just like good job, and sends it up. It got approved.
Speaker 1:It was great You're doing the Lord's work, man.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I, I, I. The ones that I've dealt with are just like cause. When you see a national guardsman awarding your own soldier, I think it bothers them a little bit you know, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of them will just kind of they'll get butthurt and they'll react accordingly. But I've had some really great experiences. 101st, for example, they had like a bunch of blc classes where the cadre were like, hey, if you score this, we'll send it all in a packet to this guy and he'll write it for you and we'll make sure it gets approved. And yeah, sure, that was the biggest group was just a bunch of them and that's great.
Speaker 1:I had a bunch of first sergeants over there.
Speaker 2:They're like, oh, we love you what you're doing, and it's just so interesting to see like the different reactions from the leadership on extremely positive versus like you're a piece of trash, don't ever write an award for any of my soldiers, ever again.
Speaker 1:Dude, we have a weird. We have a weird, uh like subgroups when it comes to awards, man, but I think you're doing something amazing, man. I loved seeing those posts. And to all the leaders out there that are embracing it and getting after and getting excited for it and being part of it good on you, man. I know it takes a lot of work, but if someone's willing to do it, like someone's willing to do this, why not, man? That's what your soldier is going to remember. They're going to remember that crazy situation where they found somebody online that was willing to put them in for an award. And they're going to remember you for saying, hey, you know what? Hell? Yes, you smoked that PT test.
Speaker 1:Because let me tell you right now, one of the things that always gets put on social media, always gets put on our news, is how unfit, unmotivated our younger troops are. Then reward them when they do something great when it comes to physical fitness. For a lot of people coming into the military, they never had that sort of relationship with physical fitness. Maybe they weren't athletes, maybe they weren't brought up in a home where it's like, hey, let's go outside, let's go for a hike, let's go do this stuff. So it does take a lot to get them excited enough to go do an ACFT and crush it. So reward it, be happy about it.
Speaker 2:No, I like, I understand, because a lot of these people come from a time where an AAM was like oh, you only get an AAM from a combat deployment, you know it's like I get that, but like I hate to say it, but like you know, it is 2024.
Speaker 2:And I agree with everything you said, though. People need that reward to keep going, to keep feeling good, to feel like there's some kind of point to scoring well on the ACFT Cause, like if your unit's not rewarding, you're not sending you to cool schools. Why try? Why not just do the bare minimum and move on?
Speaker 1:I don't know. So true, man, josh, I can't thank you enough for being here, man, and for being a hilarious voice in the meme war for positivity on instagram. Uh, people want to get a hold of you. How can they connect?
Speaker 2:um, just through my instagram, the ghost round. When I was coming up with my name, I started with the duality of man. I was like, no, that's lame, the ghost round. Nobody had it at the time and it's that like when I went through ranger school the 240s were dog shit. If you bumped it the wrong way, it would just charge and a round would pop off. So what you would do is you would load like an empty casing in first and you know it would just charge and a round would pop off. So what you would do is you would load like an empty casing in first and you called it the ghost round. So called myself the ghost round. Just follow me on instagram. I don't have anything else right now, any other platforms. Um, if you score above 580, I'll write you. Uh, am on your ACFT.
Speaker 1:That's about it. If you're retired or out of the military, you can still score a 580. He'll just send you a nude. It's a gift that keeps on giving. I highly encourage you to go out there and motivate yourself to do it. You just hang it up in your bathroom you know cabinet and look at it for inspiration for the next time you do it. Josh. Thank you again, and to all y'all listening and tuning in, please do me a favor Pause right now and go to the episode description. Go check out Josh's Instagram, but, even more importantly, new swag has dropped to securityhubcom. Go grab some of our new merch. Go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star review, because we've been focusing on Spotify for months now. We won that campaign. I need you to help me with Apple Podcasts, because I'm sitting at two reviews that cannot and will not be accepted. So help me out. Give me a fucking review At least. Go under and just five star and say bananas, you know what? That's the mission. That's the mission right now I'm going to do that right now.
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Speaker 1:I'm Denny Caballero. I am grateful you've been listening and until next time, please take care of yourself and each other. Take care. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, head on over to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash SecHawk podcast and buy us a coffee. Connect with us on Instagram X or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week. Thank you.
