Blog 100: My Political Reflections and Transformation Over the Years
Growing up in the largely conservative Upstate New York, it is no surprise that I was enthusiastic about war and cared very little about the passage of the Patriot Act and what that meant for civil liberties. My first political memory was being in my grandparents’ house with the news coverage of the operation in Somalia in the background (I was four years old and cannot recall specific details and only that it was on the news at the time), and by the time of the partisan Bill Clinton impeachment, it was clear that I would develop my early life as a typical Republican who would vote for George W. Bush in the mock election at my elementary school.
I had just entered the seventh grade when the horrific events of 9-11 occurred, and after leaving my first period science class, I remember feeling anger at the terrorists who had killed thousands of Americans in an attack just 150 miles south of where I stood. That night, I went home and played out war scenarios with my action figures and drew world maps of what the geopolitical scene would look like in a World War III scenario that I had believed would result from Bush’s upcoming war (al Qaeda and bin Laden were instantly blamed without hesitation).
I was ecstatic when the Iraq War was announced because we would finally take out the brutal dictator who had plagued that country for years and all of the terrorists who threatened our country (I would later learn that the war was fought over nothing beneficial to the average person), and I ate up every minute I could watching Fox News and CNN and simulated battles of glory on my bedroom floor. When it came to the Patriot Act, I even fell for the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” mentality that filled the conservative circles of the time (now with vaccine passports, the mantra is, “the government and Big Tech already track you on your cellphone anyways, so this is not adding anything new”).
After graduating from high school, I enlisted in the Air Force, and although I qualified for intelligence-related jobs, my recruiter convinced me to enter a career in security and law enforcement (Air Force Security Forces). Upon completing basic training (being broken down to be built back up in a conditioned manner like some kind of slogan out of the 2020 presidential election) and technical training in San Antonio, Texas, I flew across the pond and started my first duty at RAF Alconbury in Huntingdon, England. I had my first encounter with anti-American sentiment when protester Lindis Percy would attempt to scale the fences at the base, and I could not for the life of me understand why people would be so ungrateful for the security that an alliance with the United States and a military occupation brought.
The thing that stuck with me the most from the 2008 presidential debates was listening to Congressman Ron Paul talk about his anti-war views, and I remember thinking that he was not a true Republican and was a bit off the rails, and perhaps crazy. When I heard the announcement that Barrack Obama had won the presidency through the car speakers on British radio and subsequently saw the new president’s face plastered all over magazines, I realized that the politics of the United States was the politics of the world. The American president was the face of democracy and the leader of the free world after all, and just like other Republicans during that time, I opposed the policies of President Obama at every turn and longed for the days when Bush was in office.
The major moment in my political transformation was surfing online for political and historical documentaries to watch, and upon stumbling on the Obama Deception: The Mask Comes Off by Alex Jones, I was curious of what anti-Obama views he could hold. I quickly learned that this film had little to do with Obama and was more of a critique of the whole system that was in place. I could not find myself giving in to the views that our own government would be responsible for 9-11 (what could possibly be the motive?) and that there was a small group of evil men controlling the world from behind the scenes (now with COVID-19 and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, it is difficult to dispute that businessmen and government officials do meet in secret to discuss their agenda for the world). Eventually after doing research and watching videos, it became clear to me that deep state agendas were taking place, and during my deployment to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, I read works by Ron Paul (it is ironic how the tides had turned) and became interested in how money interests were manipulating the people.
After a quick few months back in England, I packed up everything and moved to my final duty station at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where I started reading works on constitutional and anti-war topics by authors such as Andrew Napolitano and Chalmers Johnson (in addition to political science and history, I read about religion, quantum mechanics, astronomy, zoology, and other topics). Traveling the countryside of Montana to guard nuclear missiles brought with it a tradition of pride, and I remember one rally call, in particular, where the officers were attempting to motivate airmen by bragging about how no country on earth had the air power or the nuclear might of the United States and that the intercontinental ballistic missiles in the American inventory were many, many times more powerful than the bombs dropped in the disgusting obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having developed libertarian and pacifist-leaning views (reading about Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Thomas Jefferson and John Locke), this struck me as arrogant and frankly appalling, and the thought of killing hundreds or thousands of people did not appeal to me on any level. I had gradually gotten to where I was, but through research and contemplation, I would further develop my views.
After my enlistment had ended and I began my new life as a college student (I later graduated with a degree in accounting from the University at Albany), I decided to pick up writing on the side. I attended an awards ceremony for my paper on the excessive taxation in New York State, and shortly after, I began writing collections of essays and a book on American imperialism and state terrorism conducted by our government. From covert operations to overt wars to economic bullying, I critiqued the federal government’s war on terror and drone warfare and emphasized how in addition to being immoral from an emotional standpoint, these policies often were detrimental to average Americans just trying to live their lives thousands of miles away. The wars also led to violations of our civil liberties at home, as warrantless searches, spying, and collusion between government and Big Tech has evolved to become the norm (Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations were not a huge surprise to me, as I suspected that these things were occurring, but I was pleased that they were finally being discussed in the mainstream).
Being shy and not particularly fond of promoting myself, I did not want to release my works to the public, but I had a friend who encouraged me to get The Global Bully published. I have been producing content since, but then the 2020 COVID-19 fiasco hit (the 9-11 of the current generation and the next crisis used to justify theft of our rights). Part of my book details the growing and unconstitutional police and surveillance state and the militarization of police (my writings detailed police brutality, no-knock warrants, and the dangers of the drug war well before the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and problems like these are not due solely to racial tensions as they have been portrayed).
I even casually suggested years ago that we would eventually need a permission slip to leave our houses, and lo and behold, in the spring of 2020, my company issued me a permission slip in case I got stopped by police (I know others who received similar papers). Although I could not have predicted that arrests or license revocations would be made for people trying to attend churches, gather at private residences, or sit at a table in a restaurant or bar and that they would occur this soon in my lifetime or for a virus with a less than one percent death rate, I understood the concept that history repeats and overall trends of government move towards more restrictions and less freedom. I was looked at as mad for suggesting that we would need to present papers for living our lives, but now, the idea of a vaccine passport has become a potential necessity to have our freedom “restored” (freedom once taken by government never returns in full without a revolution).
People with similar views to me were quickly branded as conspiracy theorists, selfish, and science-hating individuals who only cared about the economy and not people’s lives (yet, lockdowns and mask mandates have failed throughout the entire pandemic, and the consequences that have yet to fully reveal themselves will be far worse than the “cure”). Big Tech is censoring information hardcore, and ideas of a domestic version of the Patriot Act and McCarthy-style witch hunts for Trump-supporters, libertarians, and nonconformist conservatives have been floated. I was once considered crazy for suggesting that the United States would regress to a police state, and now I am considered crazy because I do not embrace the fascist authoritarianism and Covid tyranny. I value freedom over a collective “utopia” and a false sense of security, but apparently, this concept is considered selfish, unscientific, and unpatriotic. Welcome to the life of a political radical in the twenty-first century!
I had just entered the seventh grade when the horrific events of 9-11 occurred, and after leaving my first period science class, I remember feeling anger at the terrorists who had killed thousands of Americans in an attack just 150 miles south of where I stood. That night, I went home and played out war scenarios with my action figures and drew world maps of what the geopolitical scene would look like in a World War III scenario that I had believed would result from Bush’s upcoming war (al Qaeda and bin Laden were instantly blamed without hesitation).
I was ecstatic when the Iraq War was announced because we would finally take out the brutal dictator who had plagued that country for years and all of the terrorists who threatened our country (I would later learn that the war was fought over nothing beneficial to the average person), and I ate up every minute I could watching Fox News and CNN and simulated battles of glory on my bedroom floor. When it came to the Patriot Act, I even fell for the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” mentality that filled the conservative circles of the time (now with vaccine passports, the mantra is, “the government and Big Tech already track you on your cellphone anyways, so this is not adding anything new”).
After graduating from high school, I enlisted in the Air Force, and although I qualified for intelligence-related jobs, my recruiter convinced me to enter a career in security and law enforcement (Air Force Security Forces). Upon completing basic training (being broken down to be built back up in a conditioned manner like some kind of slogan out of the 2020 presidential election) and technical training in San Antonio, Texas, I flew across the pond and started my first duty at RAF Alconbury in Huntingdon, England. I had my first encounter with anti-American sentiment when protester Lindis Percy would attempt to scale the fences at the base, and I could not for the life of me understand why people would be so ungrateful for the security that an alliance with the United States and a military occupation brought.
The thing that stuck with me the most from the 2008 presidential debates was listening to Congressman Ron Paul talk about his anti-war views, and I remember thinking that he was not a true Republican and was a bit off the rails, and perhaps crazy. When I heard the announcement that Barrack Obama had won the presidency through the car speakers on British radio and subsequently saw the new president’s face plastered all over magazines, I realized that the politics of the United States was the politics of the world. The American president was the face of democracy and the leader of the free world after all, and just like other Republicans during that time, I opposed the policies of President Obama at every turn and longed for the days when Bush was in office.
The major moment in my political transformation was surfing online for political and historical documentaries to watch, and upon stumbling on the Obama Deception: The Mask Comes Off by Alex Jones, I was curious of what anti-Obama views he could hold. I quickly learned that this film had little to do with Obama and was more of a critique of the whole system that was in place. I could not find myself giving in to the views that our own government would be responsible for 9-11 (what could possibly be the motive?) and that there was a small group of evil men controlling the world from behind the scenes (now with COVID-19 and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, it is difficult to dispute that businessmen and government officials do meet in secret to discuss their agenda for the world). Eventually after doing research and watching videos, it became clear to me that deep state agendas were taking place, and during my deployment to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, I read works by Ron Paul (it is ironic how the tides had turned) and became interested in how money interests were manipulating the people.
After a quick few months back in England, I packed up everything and moved to my final duty station at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where I started reading works on constitutional and anti-war topics by authors such as Andrew Napolitano and Chalmers Johnson (in addition to political science and history, I read about religion, quantum mechanics, astronomy, zoology, and other topics). Traveling the countryside of Montana to guard nuclear missiles brought with it a tradition of pride, and I remember one rally call, in particular, where the officers were attempting to motivate airmen by bragging about how no country on earth had the air power or the nuclear might of the United States and that the intercontinental ballistic missiles in the American inventory were many, many times more powerful than the bombs dropped in the disgusting obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Having developed libertarian and pacifist-leaning views (reading about Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Thomas Jefferson and John Locke), this struck me as arrogant and frankly appalling, and the thought of killing hundreds or thousands of people did not appeal to me on any level. I had gradually gotten to where I was, but through research and contemplation, I would further develop my views.
After my enlistment had ended and I began my new life as a college student (I later graduated with a degree in accounting from the University at Albany), I decided to pick up writing on the side. I attended an awards ceremony for my paper on the excessive taxation in New York State, and shortly after, I began writing collections of essays and a book on American imperialism and state terrorism conducted by our government. From covert operations to overt wars to economic bullying, I critiqued the federal government’s war on terror and drone warfare and emphasized how in addition to being immoral from an emotional standpoint, these policies often were detrimental to average Americans just trying to live their lives thousands of miles away. The wars also led to violations of our civil liberties at home, as warrantless searches, spying, and collusion between government and Big Tech has evolved to become the norm (Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations were not a huge surprise to me, as I suspected that these things were occurring, but I was pleased that they were finally being discussed in the mainstream).
Being shy and not particularly fond of promoting myself, I did not want to release my works to the public, but I had a friend who encouraged me to get The Global Bully published. I have been producing content since, but then the 2020 COVID-19 fiasco hit (the 9-11 of the current generation and the next crisis used to justify theft of our rights). Part of my book details the growing and unconstitutional police and surveillance state and the militarization of police (my writings detailed police brutality, no-knock warrants, and the dangers of the drug war well before the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and problems like these are not due solely to racial tensions as they have been portrayed).
I even casually suggested years ago that we would eventually need a permission slip to leave our houses, and lo and behold, in the spring of 2020, my company issued me a permission slip in case I got stopped by police (I know others who received similar papers). Although I could not have predicted that arrests or license revocations would be made for people trying to attend churches, gather at private residences, or sit at a table in a restaurant or bar and that they would occur this soon in my lifetime or for a virus with a less than one percent death rate, I understood the concept that history repeats and overall trends of government move towards more restrictions and less freedom. I was looked at as mad for suggesting that we would need to present papers for living our lives, but now, the idea of a vaccine passport has become a potential necessity to have our freedom “restored” (freedom once taken by government never returns in full without a revolution).
People with similar views to me were quickly branded as conspiracy theorists, selfish, and science-hating individuals who only cared about the economy and not people’s lives (yet, lockdowns and mask mandates have failed throughout the entire pandemic, and the consequences that have yet to fully reveal themselves will be far worse than the “cure”). Big Tech is censoring information hardcore, and ideas of a domestic version of the Patriot Act and McCarthy-style witch hunts for Trump-supporters, libertarians, and nonconformist conservatives have been floated. I was once considered crazy for suggesting that the United States would regress to a police state, and now I am considered crazy because I do not embrace the fascist authoritarianism and Covid tyranny. I value freedom over a collective “utopia” and a false sense of security, but apparently, this concept is considered selfish, unscientific, and unpatriotic. Welcome to the life of a political radical in the twenty-first century!
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