Tag: Leadership

The first time they sent me to the gas chamber

Guest Post by Simon Black

The first time I was sent to the gas chamber was in late July 1996.

I’m not being dramatic– that’s literally what they called it.

I was 17 years old… a brand new cadet at West Point undergoing my first summer of basic training.

It’s affectionately known as ‘Beast Barracks’, and one of the highlights is a few days’ worth of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical training.

The culmination of this is going through the gas chamber; it’s basically a small room filled with tear gas… the same stuff that riot police use on protesters.

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MILLENNIALS LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP

Guest Post by TPC

Millennial men are an interesting group, as the recent political winds favor their eradication almost entirely. Oh, the Left want your productivity, your strength of back, and your insights, but they want to keep this while changing everything else about you.

Still, in a post-Trumpening world, it appears that the sexless childlike minnie men are starting to slowly pull their heads out of the sand and look around to see what kind of world they are creating for themselves. These poor bastards are questioning everything they’ve ever been told, and don’t like the answers they find. Some dive face first into their shallow pools of cognitive dissonance, too afraid to face a reality so at odds with their own chosen paradigm. Some become outraged, and swing so far in the opposite direction that they embrace the most insane and illogical of conspiracies. However, the vast majority of them are rocked back on their heels, unsure of what to do next. They find the left end of the spectrum appalling, and the conspiracy-riddled far right to be pure lunacy. They are in a holding pattern, looking for a symbol of hope.

So what then for these?

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Character Traits And Skills That Are Hard To Find During A Crisis

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

I have never lived through a national scale crisis and like most people, I hope I never have to. That said, with the growing instability present in the state of the world today it would be rather foolish to assume that the near future holds nothing but fairy dust, unicorns and gumdrops. Preparation is a necessity.

Many Americans cannot yet relate to the concept of full spectrum crisis, but most of us have at least experienced localized disasters. In order to understand what a national emergency might look like, one simply needs to examine the microcosm of localized disasters and then imagine the same exact problems but magnified 1,000 times.

From my personal experience with local crises, I can say that the worst threat comes not from the event itself, but the ways in which people choose to deal with the event. That is to say, for smart, courageous and prepared people with the right traits and skills, there is no such thing as a crisis. For stupid people who overestimate their abilities or who let fear dominate their thinking, any crisis becomes an insurmountable moment of utter terror.

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NO WAY OUT

I know there are many people out there who don’t watch the daily drivel emanating from their 72 inch HD boob tubes. I don’t blame them. Most of the shows on TV are dumbed down to the level of their audience of government educated zombies. The facebooking, twittering, texting, instagraming generation is too shallow, too self-consumed, and too intellectually lazy to connect the dots, understand symbolism or learn moral lessons from well written thought-provoking TV shows. But there have been a few exceptions over the last few years. Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Walking Dead are intelligent, brilliantly scripted, morally ambiguous, psychologically stimulating TV shows challenging your understanding of how the world really works.

The Walking Dead is much more than a gory, mindless, teenage zombie flick. Personally, I find myself interpreting the imagery, metaphorical storylines, and morality lessons of Walking Dead within the larger context of cultural, political, and social decay rapidly consuming our society today. I don’t pretend to know the thought process or intent of the writers, but I see plot parallels symbolizing current day issues plaguing our empire of debt. Their mid-season opener was one of the most intense shocking episodes of the entire series. It was titled No Way Out, as the main characters appeared to be trapped in a no win situation with long odds and little hope of surviving.

From my vantage point I see four explicit types of characters inhabiting the world of the Walking Dead. There are the infected mindless zombies roaming the countryside in search of flesh to consume. They are oblivious to the world around them, unable to think, feel, or act human. They can be distracted and led in different directions by loud noises or other diversions. Then there are the still human zombies inhabiting the walled city of Alexandria who are sentient, thinking, frightened men and women, not prepared to face the harsh reality of an unfair brutal world and the consequences of not fighting the forces of evil. They cower behind their walls and hope for the best.

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