Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Disappearing Americans: ICE Raids and Constitutional Crises
How does a democracy collapse? Not always with a bang, but sometimes through bureaucracy and paperwork.
When 86 Americans go missing after government raids and the official response is "fill out a form on our website," we've crossed dangerous lines. As veterans who swore oaths to defend the Constitution, we're deeply troubled by what we're witnessing. The suspension of Fifth Amendment rights creates a slippery slope where other constitutional protections become vulnerable, all while officials mischaracterize concepts like habeas corpus to justify expanded executive powers.
The contradictions are striking. The same political voices that rail against "tax and spend" policies now champion trillion-dollar deficits while gutting social safety nets. How does removing healthcare from 13.7 million Americans strengthen our nation? These aren't abstract policy debates but real decisions affecting real lives—including veterans and military families who served this country.
Most concerning is how democratic processes themselves can undermine the republic. By building power from school boards up through local government, a strategic minority can gradually reshape laws to legitimize previously unacceptable actions. When what's legal diverges from what's ethical, we find ourselves in treacherous territory.
We're hosting a V-Day event on June 6th at Memorial Park, where veterans will speak about serving under oath. Purple Heart recipients, Gold Star families, and military spouses will share perspectives on duty and justice in today's America. As veterans, we continue to serve by standing for the principles we swore to defend—even when those principles are under attack from within.
Whatever your political beliefs, we invite you to join us in asking: What kind of America do we want to build? One where citizens disappear without recourse, or one that lives up to its founding ideals? Subscribe to hear more veteran perspectives on the issues that affect us all.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face, the Pikes Peak Region Veterans Podcast about political views and personal topics.
Speaker 2:That was good. Yay, that wasn't bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined, as always, with my friend Adam Gillard. Hey, dick, how you doing? I'm doing great. We are now going to try and outdo each other with peas in the intro, and you know it'll be fun for the listeners.
Speaker 2:It's like an Easter egg.
Speaker 1:You get to count the peas. There's other jokes there. Reminds you of those days of the drug test mornings back in the military. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the greatest days is like you become an E5 and you realize you have to do that. You're like oh, it's not what it ought to be, it's all cracked up to be.
Speaker 1:I have to get here before everybody else and then I have to watch everybody else and then I have to stay when it's over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no fun.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure a lot of our listeners can reminisce about that. It was a guaranteed experience in the military that you'd have those early morning calls and, as we talked about recently, some folks on Fort Carson probably had some of those.
Speaker 2:No kidding, there's probably some different rounds. One thing I learned is that they don't test everyone right. They dump them all into a batch and then they test the batch and then if that batch test pops, then they dive into the people on there. So if you get called back in, you're in a bad batch. So yeah, it's a crazy system that they got there, but I'm sure they're getting some new folks.
Speaker 1:While we're on our sidetrack, you know I was never in a unit where some big you know fraud, waste and abuse type story broke or anything that hit the front headlines of military times or anything like that. But I did get, you know, I got to witness one of those things that you might hear about in one of your annual trainings, right when they're like, hey, if you ever see this happen, something might be up, right. Well, I did get to see one of those. There was a guy that was the NCO in charge of the urinalysis program for the unit, and we were overseas and so there was a little bit more paperwork to ship it to our, like, parent unit wherever we were at. But we weren't, um, we weren't allowed to not do it right there's some places where you don't have to do it because just logistically you can't right.
Speaker 1:So we had like four batches in a row get flagged and like thrown out because the paperwork, the handling of everything was not done properly. Right. And it's all in the chain of custody, and the just signatures, and is everybody trained and all that stuff? Right, yeah, there's deficiencies every time.
Speaker 1:And so all all these just got thrown out, you know. And so there was an investigation. Yeah, um, and dude was leaving right about that time, right, and I mean he was just already on orders and it was just time for him to go right, and he had just gotten promoted and was now wearing e7 and was on the way out the door of the unit, okay, and that was kind of the end of it is.
Speaker 1:They were just like, well, he's gonna go on and be a great guy somewhere else, and like I don't know who ran the investigation, but that was it that was it, he just left you know so like okay, well, at least I guess you know from the unit's perspective, if it was him not, that you would want to pass this problem on to somebody else. But we, our next batch is going to make it through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, problem solved you know, yeah, whether he was being nefarious or just bad at his job, whatever yeah, a lot of times in the military like it just becomes someone else's problems, because everybody's jumping in like two years so they're like, yeah, it's somebody else's problem yeah, I got six others, yeah right exactly so.
Speaker 1:Yep, that was that for sure. Well, thanks, thanks for following that with us everybody. Um, we'll get back to the story here, our usual weekly update. We have the Kilmar account Today. We did the math, we asked chat GPT and it told us because we're not in our normal office today. So we're at 73 days 72 days since he was taken from his home.
Speaker 2:And silence crickets. The administration said we're not going to get him, he's never going to spend another night here, and it's true and everybody's just kind of cool with it at this point. It's crazy because we have 86 or 46. I can't remember the number that we have missing right now because some have been accounted for and things like that.
Speaker 2:But here locally, from that 104 that we're missing, I believe it's still 86 are unaccounted for, that were missing. I believe it's still 86 are unaccounted for Because people come on and say these folks had warrants, these folks are eligible for deportation, like 12 of them or something like that, were eligible for deportation.
Speaker 1:So they were identified and this agency has control.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like this was a bad person. Let's deport them, get them out of here, whatever. And then this other 80 plus is just gone.
Speaker 2:And I keep reaching out to elected officials offices and they keep saying well, family members need to go to this government website and fill out information on the person. Yeah, and then we'll reach back out and contact you. And you're telling these people to go to a government website and fill it out after the government has just kidnapped their loved ones. To go to a government website and fill it out after the government has just kidnapped their loved ones. So even if that kid say I'm a 20-year-old kid, I'm the anchor baby right. So both my parents are illegal. If I got snatched up at that time, my parents aren't going to be coming to like— Not in this government.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely not. They would have been hesitant anyway.
Speaker 2:Right, but that's a guaranteed door knock right there, exactly, yeah and so. And the person that got snatched doesn't want their parents getting snatched up.
Speaker 1:No, so yeah, they're not, they're not gonna be like hey, mom, help me out right, like they'll be like hey I'm not calling mom I don't want anybody to know.
Speaker 2:you know who I'm talking to People are accepting that people are disappearing and it's sad that the community has to deal with this and live in fear. There are so many still shady vehicles. I'm part of the response network. There's a lot of shady vehicles out there just waiting for people and there's a lot of. There's just a lot of like cooperation between our local law enforcement just ceding their rights to serve and protect us to the federal government when they're just letting ICE come along for routine warrant serves and things like that. It's so out of hand, so far past. I said it earlier, we're just streaking past red lines like lines in the sand, like we, we should have stopped it at this point, this point, this point, this point.
Speaker 2:I mean that going back to like the 2016, election when he was like making fun of like handicapped people, like, yeah, we should have said this probably isn't the person.
Speaker 1:The amount of tolerance and you know, um, just not even. I don't even say second, second chances, because that's not a.
Speaker 2:Thing.
Speaker 1:Just tolerance and grace given towards somebody that doesn't want it.
Speaker 1:They're going to do what they want to do. Whether you forgive them for being a difficult person or not, For me the trouble I hear within this story is the answer is a bureaucratic answer, and the process of engage with this website. I'm not trying to say anybody's specifically trying to punt and like, not solve the problem, but if they're trying to basically say this is the right channel to follow and that's maybe the only channel to follow other than just showing up at a police station or something like that, Um, that's kind of sad, you know, like, hey, we understand that this route is broken and if that's the stone wall, then that's the stone wall. And political affiliation aside, if the answer from the government is basically engage with this bureaucracy and if you can't do that, then we can't help you, that's not what we should expect from the government and definitely not the judicial.
Speaker 1:Law and order, that's not law and order. No, that's not what we should expect from you know, the government, and definitely not the judicial. Like law and order, that's not law and order, no, it's law.
Speaker 2:Yeah and then no order. You know like they're doing a great job of exercising, you know their authority, but you know we have a whole series on NBC about this law and order, yeah Right, plenty of case law. It's like it's a two-part process. Sure, you know they really need to get back to this due process because you know right now they're suspending the Fifth Amendment. You know, and Did you see?
Speaker 1:Christie.
Speaker 2:I was just about to sidetrack there too. You must have saw my eyes when you said amendment and I was like, I know, yeah, habeas corpus, habeas corpus. And I was like, no, whatever, habeas corpus, habeas corpus. It does not mean that the president can deport whoever the hell he wants.
Speaker 1:That's pretty common. She said it means the executive can exercise his right to get rid of dangerous people. Yeah, no, that's not it.
Speaker 2:And what blows my mind is she's a politician her whole life, so she's probably been in law. It's just such a a gross um misinformation campaign like she knows she, she knows what that means right yeah, and she's trying to.
Speaker 2:She's trying to serve that narrative because people will get that and that's it. Um, yeah, yeah, that was just I can't remember where we were talking before that, but we had a couple conversations about that this week where actually I remember now. So right now we're suspending the Fifth Amendment, saying that it's illegal, since they came here illegally. As soon as they're here illegally, they're criminals. Once you suspend one amendment, it's pretty easy to suspend others. Yeah, you know they're. They could easily roll back. Second amendment rights. And and then where do we stand?
Speaker 2:like when that red line happens, like what do you guys do that right? Um, so just allowing this. And it always frustrated me the argument about the slippery slope. Like you know, you allow gay people to get married pretty soon.
Speaker 1:They're sleeping with dogs, you know it's a slippery slope, sure, sure but then now we're.
Speaker 2:We are like skiing down this black diamond slope and they're not even trying to hit the brakes and like nobody's wearing a helmet. Yeah, yeah, you know, we are on the slope, man, we are falling. Uh, where are people to stand up to this? Um, it has to come from people on the right, because right now, the left is so demonized and so, like, ostracized when it comes to anything, uh, that we can't get. We can't get anything done well, you know what?
Speaker 1:uh, let let's use a very current event. It's not even a done deal yet. The Big Beautiful Bill and I don't want to talk about that too much I haven't watched, I've kind of ignored some of the news on it a little bit.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of letting it boil over until I go look at it, but the thing that I'm surprised by I shouldn't, I shouldn't, excuse me, surprise is not the right word the thing that I heard and I said oh really, was it? Increases spending? Right, and so Democrats the same people who say that you're worried about slippery slope in social narratives Right. They also will jump up and down and call Democrats, tax and spend Democrats, right. And I mean it's not wrong, right. Like there's some aspects where government, social services, that democratic politician comes up with a new tax to pay for the thing that they believe the community needs.
Speaker 2:That does happen, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, republicans have to do that at sometimes too, to get things done. Right, you know they do. But the but an administration that's meant to be hearkening back to the days of conservatism a la Ronald Reagan, is putting forward a trillion dollar spending increase. I'm not talking about the DOD budget, I'm just saying the overall budget. Right. Trillion dollar deficit increase per year, more money to be going out than what could be coming in, with tax cuts built into this. Trillion dollars, yeah, yeah, how Okay. So we're tax and spend. You're what? And spend, what are you doing? You spend and spend. Is that it?
Speaker 2:What do you call that. I've been to Congressman Crank's office a few times now and every time that, whoever they're arguing with or talking with, we don't get into arguments, just talk with them. But whoever they're talking with, did they always bring up the $34.6 trillion in debt?
Speaker 1:Well, how do you want us to?
Speaker 2:take care of this. That is their talking point. It's like we're taking care of this but, like you just said, you're increasing it while removing all of the social safety nets that people rely on for when things go bad. So all the stuff that you are saving money on, you're just passing that buck on to the people.
Speaker 1:You're destabilizing the economic base that pays those taxes in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so folks are going to be getting kicked off their insurance. Yeah, I think it was like 13.7 million people are going to be kicked off their insurance without being able to shop from the exchange. Yeah, so now they have to go somewhere else and be at the whim of the insurance companies again. And that's just day one, like you said, waiting for some of these things to kind of come to fruition, because this was another late-night bill. That again, republicans whine and cry all the time about these late-night bills. I think the Affordable Care Act was a late night bill. That again, republicans whine and cry all the time about these late night bills. That I think the affordable care act was a late night bill too. Okay, and everybody was, you know, crying oh, they did that late night behind closed doors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and here we are, like dude doing the same hypocrisy, it just never stops now I I mean uh, now I mean, hmm, the House not everybody on the Republican ticket in the House voted yes and they actually had enough dissenters that they didn't get it by purely on Republican votes. Right, there were some Democrats that actually voted for it.
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I thought there was two nays only on the Republican side. Well then they know where their bubble is. Yeah, it was like 215 to 214. I didn't. Was two nays only on the Republican side. Well then they know where their bubble is. Yeah, it was like 215 to 214. I didn't know they played the bubble on this one.
Speaker 1:I thought there was a little bit of shifting there. I didn't know what those numbers were, but the Senate now there, seems to be a little bit more pushback, and so that's what I was saying in the beginning.
Speaker 1:It's a current event that's not done yet. Beginning it's not. It's a current event that's not done yet. I don't know if we're going to see senators taking a grandstand approach, if we're going to take to see them take a true hard line fiscal approach, or if this is all just a show and you know it doesn't matter and they're going to vote for it anyway yeah, um so far, like with the confirmations and things like that, where there was really some candidates that a lot of these senators just were like oh my gosh, I can't believe.
Speaker 1:They're like, really, you want me to vote for this person, but they would. Only they'd say that for two days and then it was like in the bag. He didn't have to call them and tell them, you know, vote for them, they just made their one little remark and then two days later they so the I.
Speaker 1:That's totally possible that that's going to happen again right now. Um, I heard that I don't, I can't you know, we can't verify this, but that, basically, if you're a holdout on something that Trump likes, he just calls you on the phone and starts yelling at you oh really, yeah, and he's just like I'll ruin puppet.
Speaker 2:Master, you better dance or we're going to cut your strings yeah which is like grossly unconstitutional Correct To put them on that kind of lever, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. That's why you're in the executive branch right, that's what the majority whip is for or the minority whip is for. Is you call that person and say get it done. And then if they have some you know marbles to play in the game like, oh, what's his name? Oh, gosh, turtle guy, what's his name?
Speaker 2:The senator McConnell Turtle guy, I got you.
Speaker 1:McConnell and, I think, lindsey Graham both have had you know, I know McConnell's kind of checking out now but they had the strings, the purse strings on all the money for all the senator you know senatorial campaigns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were the super PAC leaders.
Speaker 1:Yeah you had to get into the alliance, right, and so that guy could basically tell you I know how you're voting on this. I'm going to remember when you come back. I'm going to remember and I know we got six years and that feels like a long time, but I've been here for a minute. He's leaving now, but that's what that person's there for is to do that bidding. They do it based on what they believe they can achieve in their role different from the executive.
Speaker 2:When we talked to Representative Crank's office this week we had a second meeting where we're trying to work towards a relationship and have some like um influencer like conversations with them to hopefully get a veteran's perspective in there. Um, but you know, when we're talking with him I I specifically talking about the budget bill and coming up. We didn't think it would go to vote that quickly or last night, but uh, or the night before I can't remember yeah, um.
Speaker 1:But I told him, beautiful it lasted, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:I told him you know we need crank to start dissenting on things If we have any hope of keeping space command here. You know, with, with.
Speaker 1:Oh, as a lever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only leverage that he has to do anything, or our entire, because they keep telling us our entire Colorado delegation is this is our number one priority. Well then, stop voting yes every time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you got to step out of the party line for a second and raise your hand and say we need to pay attention to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's have a conversation about here real quick, waiting for that to happen. The person we spoke to said that Congressman Crank has a meeting scheduled sometime with the Speaker and moving up and things like that to hopefully keep those conversations rolling about keeping it here, but his vote tells me that he doesn't. We know that Trump doesn't give a shit about us. He's already threatened every blue state out there, sure, and so now we're a deep red spot inside of a blue spot and he's going to give up all of his power by just saying yes to him all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And I mean I'm looking to the Senate because Tommy Tuberville is the draw in Alabama to you know he's the voice that saying this that we want it, and he, you know he's the voice that's saying this that we want it, and he's the squeaky wheel in the you know the overall, I guess, political argument right. And so if you look to our senators, I'm not, you know, upset with them one way or the other but, they're democrats and so they don't have this way to do anything about.
Speaker 1:You know his, his request or his favor, or whatever it is like they don't have much way to affect his relationship with trump well, and you know, with our senators.
Speaker 2:I've spoke with both of them like kind of briefly, and both of them kind of told me they like to be in the middle and just kind of be that you know, moderate voice and like okay, but that's not going to get anything done with these folks in charge. You know, like right now, if you, if you can't stand up and like draw a hard line and say, no, we're this, you're just going to get pushed over and like just to like try to be friendly with them and keep saying yes to them and it's just, it's not going to work. Like this is why people don't like respect Democrats just in general. It's because they're so easy to push over and, like you know, people got stolen from your community.
Speaker 1:And your answer?
Speaker 2:yeah, your answer is well, fill out a website. No, the answer is you go stand in that office until you get some answers Like you can do that.
Speaker 1:I hear the mayor of Newark is up for a squabble. You know, let's get him out here. He can teach them how Throw down.
Speaker 2:And then the representative from that area got arrested too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what I'm saying we need a delegation.
Speaker 2:And Trump said, like you know, that type of stuff isn't going to go on anymore. And she wasn't doing anything crazy. She was standing there like doing her job yeah, you know, making demands for, you know, her constituents. And yeah, he's saying that anybody that dissents like that is going to be crushed.
Speaker 1:And so now, like you know, with, we've had people you know sit in on the floor of Congress and get arrested for doing that, you know. And they were, you know, elected officials. So I'm not saying there's a tradition. I'm not fond of this tradition.
Speaker 2:But there is a tradition of, as you had mentioned before, political officials, you know, getting their little civil disobedience slap on the wrist at some jurisdiction that they don't live in, right?
Speaker 1:But to have the president piggyback on and be just his vitriol self.
Speaker 2:It's just disgusting To have him represent America. It's just disgusting.
Speaker 1:It just frustrates me to no end, yeah yeah, like it just frustrates me, to no end, yeah yeah. And the you know idea that they want to get rid of bureaucracy, but yet they use bureaucracy to create the stonewall and you know, get rid of transparency when it works for them.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I was just having this conversation, if you want people to keep their jobs. Well they're bureaucrats right, you want people to obfuscate stuff.
Speaker 1:We have some job openings. You, you know, that's what's up.
Speaker 2:I mean we're laughing, but that's yeah, that's what's up. You know, I had this conversation with somebody yesterday too about how the right has they've had such a long-term plan to use democracy to attack the republic. You know, even if you look at president trump's election, where he didn't even win 50 of the vote, and now they're using that to consolidate power behind the executive branch, when you know it wasn't the mandate that that they talk about, um, but they did it through grassroots democracy, starting at, like, the school boards, the superintendents, uh, city council, and building that base of dedicated voters and just voting in the minority, a loud minority of folks and all these little small ones, and it's built up. So now it's hard to go against it because they just changed the laws so that what they're doing is legal, so that they can sleep easy at night, but it's not ethical. So now the republic's being attacked with democracy. How do you combat that?
Speaker 1:I feel like I heard. When I sit around with my republican friends, I hear them say sometimes the same thing, where they're like, man, I can't believe it, you know. And then they'll go off on something that they think is, you know, liberal madness, right, and then they'll say that basically, it's mob rule. It's mob rule, man, you know. And it's like, yeah, democracy is mob rule. We're going to just put definitions out there, you know. And so, yes, if there you get enough, concentrate enough people and get them heavy, you know, heavy handed with something, and either side can do it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that happens. That's a funny comment to make about you know people on the other side because, again, talking in Crank's office, this week his representative said a couple of times like you know, know the other side thought if harris won, that democracy would have fallen too, you know, and like I don't understand, that yeah, because you know, providing health care and infrastructure for people does not kill democracy um like there are people that believe that there is.
Speaker 1:We're one breath away from communism, right, and I think that might be a little bit Of the type of mindset that he's talking about. You know, is that you get a California liberal in the White House and we're one step away from communism, and that's like how a wonder twin powers activate and next thing, you know, there's no constitution anymore, but but we've had.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't, I don't know we've had democrats and they've never attacked the capital on the way out, sure?
Speaker 2:yeah you know, and I told them, I agree like they've never attacked the capital on the way out and they've never like deliberately said I make the laws or I interpret the laws, which is straight up the judicial branch, and I control the purse, like those are, like he has already done this, so it's a direct attack on it. And so like when people make that correlation it's just like a straw man argument, like oh, you guys have too, but those arguments over there they don't hold weight because they're like the actions to destroy our republic were never taken.
Speaker 1:The evidence isn't there, right. The belief is there, yeah. The evidence is there, yeah, but it's a standard conservative tactic but politics is very much about belief, right, and then culture wars is even more about belief, right and so that's the. You're talking about the base that he's representing, that's the culture war base.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and culture wars, wars again.
Speaker 1:these are just problems that they make up and once they're empowered, they say they solved it and it was never a problem in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so solved it, by which, I guess just means we're going to stop talking about it now right, exactly like you haven't heard anything about like transgender stuff really recently, right like, but last year that's why people bought it, because they thought everybody was going to get like a punch card for sex changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's ridiculous what they it because they thought everybody was going to get a punch card for sex changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's ridiculous what they were sold and they're like oh, everybody's going to go. No man, it was never the problem that you guys made it out to be. Yeah, people are just trying to live and be happy and not be attacked.
Speaker 1:Well, and you're right. I mean it was almost always single-digit numbers in any given state, in any given like school system or whatever. It was never uh, this huge, uh the. It was easy to make the story seem like. Uh, if we concentrate on this topic and we scoop up all the stories from all over the country, it seems like there's a lot happening, right. But then if you really blow that out and you're like there's like a million schools in america, what are you talking?
Speaker 2:about, yeah, you know, when I was doing the election.
Speaker 1:There's a hundred people and there's a million students. I don't think that's a statistically significant, something that we need to print banners about. You know what I'm saying Marked downtown about. Is that required? Do we have to go rally at the stadium to make sure everybody knows how much we hate people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was doing the election stuff last year and one of the people the Republican on the board she gave me Newsbreak. It's an app that kind of consolidates it. It puts it all together for you and I noticed that once I started seeing it, it definitely knew it, but you'd start to see all the bad things happening. So even here in Colorado Springs, you'd see everything, like every accident, every accident, and it's like I don't need to know all these things going on because it's not affecting me right now. Yes, it sucks and it's newsworthy stuff, but to get bombarded with it, with these news breaks every couple minutes, 30 minutes, whatever, this is happening over here. This is happening over here. This happened like no man, we don't need to know all that, but like just focus on your day, take care of your stuff and like go forward um, yeah, to get that that much inundated and like blasted with news all the time, it melts your brain, man, it's crazy now.
Speaker 1:I have, um, kids that are teenagers right now, so they're in the school-age generation of people who could be affected by something like a transgender athlete or a whole bunch of other policies that are happening at the federal level, like education and, like you said, school board things, all that stuff. So I have family, my kids, that are involved with that and I get exposure is the point of the story. It's not just with my own kids, but with being around their friends or hearing about what's going on at their school or with their friends. Personally, I get a lot of exposure right and I think the sentiment around fairness and transgender athletes it is not an open and shut case with kids between the ages of 13 and 18 years old.
Speaker 1:There is an extremely diverse set of viewpoints out there surprised that at how it what. It's not hard to find somebody who's like oh yeah, that you know. I'm really glad these things are changing and I never would have said anything but now that they are changing. I was not ever comfortable with that easy to find that kid, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then there's you know total flip side to that there's. There's totally easy to find a whole group of kids that are like, yeah, we're gonna go, you know, protest over this, right, yeah. And so the passion is there and the kind of breadth of viewpoints is there Topic. You know, if it wasn't about transgender topic aside the fact that I feel like there's a breadth of interest in the, in that age group, around even what are fairly political topics I'm encouraged by that.
Speaker 2:I'm encouraged by that? I am too, because you know, when we were growing up, you know 80s, 90s, kids, any kind of like different thought, like any kind of femininity for a guy like you, just got the crap kicked out of you, sure.
Speaker 1:You know, so like.
Speaker 2:Herd mentality.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, like people didn't really, you know, try to think outside the box, you just kind of, you know, toughened up and toughened up and went about your business. So for people to be able to have the capability and just the space to explore, kind of, who they are and find happiness through other ways than just being a grunt running through walls, good for them, yes, and the fact that they can sit there and talk about it and have a conversation. And it's okay that some folks don't understand it, but, like I said, it wasn't allowed to be even thought about 30, 40 years ago. So the fact that we're having the conversations now is always going to be positive, as long as when people go into it, they listen to each other.
Speaker 2:Don't go and say everything's one way or the other.
Speaker 1:Listen to where they're coming from so that you can meet them and I don't know how well the kids that I'm talking about are able to listen to counter viewpoints. I can't speak too well to that skill because they are teenagers but I hear different viewpoints in similar kids, you know, and so that that point you know I can make, but I will.
Speaker 1:I couldn't tell you for sure how that clash might happen if two counter viewpoints of you know a couple of 15, 16 year olds, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, a little sidebar, the one about the thing a few months back about asking a woman if they would rather be left alone in the woods with a man or a bear, Right you know wow, that was a yeah stimulating conversation with my kids, man, because I have a daughter and a son.
Speaker 1:That are both teenagers, and so, of course, they just got pulled into the whole TikTok craze or whatever, and then they were both had, you know real life conversations. Everybody at school was just. That's all they talked about, for a week.
Speaker 2:you know was that topic. It's crazy how like something like that can have like a pretty big social impact, you know, and just get the conversations rolling like a pretty big social impact, right, you know, just get the conversations rolling, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it exposed, you know how are. Are young women really afraid of men, or just young men, or whatever? You know what's their viewpoint on that? Oh well, if it was a boy my age, I might not be afraid of him, but if it was a 30 year old man, I'd be freaked out. Okay, sure, that makes a little more sense, you know.
Speaker 1:But hey, this is a chance for you to describe that, instead of just saying I'm afraid of men, you know, yeah, you know you could talk about where your trust lies. You know things like that and boys get to hear that, right, and it's a question that a boy might not ever ask, you know. So I think it was a good eye opener for both sides. But, um, then of course, there were people that were just uh, sensational to be difficult, you know, and I would have been that, I would have been the troll.
Speaker 2:Real life trouble, walking around with a bear suit, difficult you know, and I would have been that I would have been the troll.
Speaker 2:I would have been a real life troll walking around in a bear suit at school you know, like brr you know you chose me I would have showed up with a bear hat or something For sure. Yeah, the other thing we wanted to kind of hit real quick was talking about V-Day coming up. 6 June, down in Memorial Park, we're going to have an event where we're just going to have some veterans kind of come forward and tell their stories and talk about serving with an oath and what it means to serve under oath. We should have a pretty good turnout there. We're going to have people in the back helping people make signs because we have another big protest on the 14th for no Kings Day in the back helping people make signs because we have another big protest on the 14th for no Kings Day. So, you know, we'll start getting signs prepped and, you know, hopefully get some martial training, things like that.
Speaker 2:But celebrating D-Day and this is a, you know, memorial Day weekend here it's something really special for all of us veterans. So in order for us to, you know, kind of, you know, get out into the community, we need to have these moments where we collaborate as veterans and come together as veterans and just kind of tell our stories and let people know that we are here in the community and we're here to serve still, so it should be a really special day. I hope everybody comes out. Dick's going to be one of our speakers, so I'm really excited to hear him.
Speaker 1:I know, you've got a lot, uh, a good track record of speaking, you know through your days here going back to debate in high school, so I'm pretty excited to hear you kind of have 10 minutes of just yeah, just oh. Now I gotta bring something special. Got to get my keynote chowed out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it should be a pretty fun day, though. Down in Memorial Park Pavilions it's near the Veterans Memorial, that's down there. If anybody hasn't been down to the Veterans Memorial, it's pretty cool. It's under some construction, some repairs right now, but it's still a pretty moving place.
Speaker 2:We're not doing it right on there just because I don't want to have thousands of people trampling over the memorial there, but real close, right by the lake down there. So, yeah, I hope people come out. We're going to have Purple Heart recipients talking, gold Star recipient speaking, some local leaders, spouses, because I always valued the spouse's opinion, because, especially now when we're talking about serving during D-Day, when they went out to serve, spouses back home knew that their folks were doing something. Just they knew that they were going to fight bad people. Now folks are leaving home, they're leaving their spouses behind and the cause isn't as just because they're going down to a border and, you know, possibly interact with americans, you know, and it's just when they're taking people and they're, you know, executing that law and we know there's going to be no order behind it.
Speaker 2:we know there's going to be no order behind it we know there's going to be no justice and so getting some spouses speaking too, it's going to be a powerful night, so I really look forward to it and I hope everybody can come out.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, thanks for putting that together, Adam, and thanks for inviting me to speak. I look forward to it for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what else we got for today?
Speaker 1:I think we've done. Oh, last little wrap up there. Our thoughts go out to the community, military community. Out in San Diego Yesterday morning a small jet crashed. There was eight passengers on board I believe. There was fatalities associated with those passengers, I don't know if anyone survived and then it crashed into a military housing area in some Navy, some navy housing, I believe. That's in out there in san diego. Uh, it wasn't really close to the water, it was over somewhere else, but you know there's housing units kind of plugged in different parts of town. So, uh, yeah, they crashed into a military base and, um, everyone was evacuated. As far as I know, there were not any injuries to any military members on the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, but I saw a picture of it today and, yeah, the plane, just you know, crashed fully into probably a duplex style house on base and once, I you know, it crashed into the garage and crashed into the housing park. So it didn't seem like the bedrooms or anything were like crashed into, but all the way down the street all the cars maybe federal credit union's gonna be out there. They're already out there because jet fuel spilled loud like a mile of road and so there was like more than a dozen cars that just got blasted and there was nothing you know they're ashes, so yeah, so this is another situation too.
Speaker 2:where are there more air wrecks right now? Or is this just something where I've been paying attention more, you know, because, like with the all the cuts at the FAA and all the kind of chaos that the Trump administration is causing there, are there more accidents now, or is this just kind of normal pace?
Speaker 1:So about three weeks ago I saw a news story that said are there really more air accidents right now or is this just something media reporting? And it said no, there's not really any more right now. There's just a little more emphasis because of the other stuff that's going on at the FAA. But that was three weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Here's one of those more airplane crashes and helicopter crashes and close calls and diversions and outages. So I don't know if that story holds up. Now you can't go two days without hearing about something getting grounded, something getting turned off, something getting a near miss, things getting diverted, Like I mean, maybe the media is just tuned in, but gee stop, it's like the news break thing.
Speaker 2:You can just kind of give us a once a week update. You know, because I got to fly, it worked on me. I have a couple cross country trips planned this summer. So yeah, I'm not going to mess with air I couldn't mess with airports the last couple years anyways just because it seems like everybody's in their own little selfish world, kind of bumping into you, I was like, yeah, I'd just rather drive in my own little selfish world and have my own music.
Speaker 1:Good for you, man. I don't like flying, but I also can't do long, long car rides. They bother me more than flying. Wish me luck. Come flying next week. I'll be flying to DC and back. Hopefully all the air traffic works.
Speaker 2:Hopefully We'll tune in next week. We'll see if Dick makes it back. Thanks for joining us everyone. This is Left Face. I'm Adam Giller, Dick Wilkinson. Thanks for tuning in.
