Harsh Truths From A Special Forces Master Sergeant - Tim Kennedy (4K)

77% of US 17 to 24 year olds could not join the military. The American Department of Defense recently did an analysis of 17 to 24 year olds and found that 77% were unqualified to serve in the military due mostly to obesity, drug abuse, physical health or mental health. Almost half were disqualified for more than one of those reasons.

Yeah. It, uh, th- th- this is, um... When we talk about strategic level issues like national security problems, anybody looking at that number from, from the SEAL teams, to the Green Berets, to Ranger, those all are- those select their populations from a larger general population from Combat Arms. Combat Arms gets their people from this larger population of people. So like, as the, as the, the arrowhead gets a little bit more narrow, the availability of people to fund these small groups, to these middle-sized groups, to these potentially larger groups are just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. This is, um... We're gonna lose to everybody if this trend continues. We just can't, we can't win wars with the bodies that we have.

Because the catchment area of the normal people feeds into the catchment area of the normal soldiers, feeds into the catchment area of the semi-elite, into the absolutely elite. And if the bottom rung of the ladder, which is population is bad, that trickles all the way up to the very top.

Yeah. And the Department of Defense is always, um, a parallel... It- it's just a reflection of what society is at a large, right? When you look at society at large right now, they are just that. They are very large. They're, they're obese. They're gelatinous blobs of broken minds. Um, they don't know if they're a boy or a girl. They definitely have never jumped out of a tree before. So when they go to airborne school and they land on a static line jump and they break both their legs, it's because they've never done it before. You know, you and I grew up chasing kids and like smacking each other with sticks, you know, and this generation hasn't done that. So they're just weaker in every form of the word. I know every generation says this, but right now, statistically, we've never had a data point to point to, to show like that ha- has ever been this bad. So now I, I know like the, the World War II guys were like, "Oh, those Vietnam guys are a bunch of pussies." You know, and the Vietnam guys are like, "Oh man, those GWOT guys are a bunch of pussies." And the GWOT guys are like, "Man, all these millennials and Gen Zs are a bunch of like..." But they really are. (laughs) You know, like, but this is a real big problem and we don't know how to fix it.

How much do you lay at the feet of the population with this? Because lots of people probably would like to be fitter if they knew what that would feel like. They would like to have better mental health. If they knew what that would feel like, they would... But they weren't aware, they weren't given the tools, there are distractions and, and environmental issues. Technology, screens, social media, porn, video games, all of these things are relatively new inventions that didn't have to be contended with by World War II or Vietnam or even early millennials. So how, how do you think about it sort of individual agency versus environmental, uh, stimulus and restrictions and stuff?