On Roles and Role Playing in America

Co.G 143rd ABN RNGR LRRP

 

 

 

 

Many years ago, after returning from a tour in the Republic of Panama,  I joined a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, ABN/ Ranger Unit, garrisoned in Texas and was posted as a Senior Scout on the team. We were not the standard “Kick in the door” Rangers as our mission was an LRRP one with our area of operation, in the event of war, running from about ten miles to one thousand miles behind the forward edge of battle area, with intelligence gathering as its focus. We were an attachment of an MI Brigade. My buddies there were a great group of guys and I learned a lot about gathering intelligence and its application to the battlefield.                                               
We would regularly train in the National Forests of Texas and in the forests of many other states, as well as on military reservations in Texas and across the U.S. On one of these training missions, we were practicing inserting our teams with rubber boats into water from helicopters. We would be inserted (here the technical term "insertion" is used for jumping out the back of the moving aircraft in full equipment, holding on to the sides of a rubber boat) into the large reservoir by CH 47, then a waterborne movement to a bridge where we would gather intelligence about the bridge, measurements, traffic on the bridge and water and any other intelligence pertinent to the mission and then execute a waterborne movement to land where we would travel overland to an extraction point and be extracted by helicopter. A typical LRRP type mission, (just shorter).
This mission went just as smooth as it could. We didn’t make a ripple in the lake or any of the goings on there. We gathered our intel and made our way to shore around 0300 hours, where we deflated the boat and hid it in the brush under some dirt, limbs and some trash we picked up at the shoreline. Being the Senior Scout, I was in charge of finding our routes of travel and then scouting the way ahead on our missions. Locating danger areas and then relaying this information to the team leader for decisions on how to proceed.
After removing all traces of our landing, I began a recon of the trails leading away from the shore, and immediately heard voices in the woods, maybe thirty yards or so ahead. LRRP SOP requires that team members never be seen or heard. Never do anything which might lead the enemy to know, or even think, that a LRRP team has been in the area gathering intel. Infractions of this rule are forbidden. Once the opposing force is made aware that you have been there, the probability they will change things and or make additional preparations which will compromise most of the data you took such great pains to acquire, is quite likely.
I began working my way towards the voices and as I got closer, I could make out that the the voices sounded strange. Obviously being in Texas, I expected them to be in English, or perhaps even, Spanish. And while the general sound of the voices were in English, they had a strange quality to them and some words indeed sounded unintelligible or foreign. I made my way to within ten or fifteen feet of a small group of men talking and stopped to listen and watch them. I could only make out vague shapes in the dark. But I could tell that they were in some kind of uniform and were armed, and for some reason, were speaking in bad German accents.
I was just about to break every rule in the LRRP handbook and walk over and find out who they were and what they were doing there, when one of the guys said he had to relieve himself. He walked toward me and stopped right beside me and made ready to begin his project. I took this opportunity to quietly slide in behind him and take him with my Ka-bar. (I used the blunt side) And quietly told him to keep walking. Once far enough away I turned him around and to my astonishment, could see he was wearing a complete German SS Infantryman’s uniform.

Nazi Reenactors

I was stunned. We were on a fake mission to gather intel on a bridge in Texas. Had made our way to an obscure landing point and found it occupied by Nazis in SS uniforms. I had one of those weird moments where you question what you are seeing and then your mind races to find a solution to what your eyes are telling you. Dozens of explanations are simultaneously viewed as possibilities, including a momentary,(.0001 seconds), thought that some how, some way, I had crossed through a fold in time and space, and I was actually in Nazi Germany from 40 years ago.
I took a moment, and rejecting most of the theories my brain was presenting, asked him what exactly the hell was going on. It turns out they were members of a WWII Reenactors Group, participating in a WWII exercise, portraying German units engaged in the Battle of the Bulge, in Belgium, at exactly the same time that we were using the area for gathering intel in the Republic of Georgia, Union of Soviet Socialists Republic. It is a small world, especially when you lay Western Europe and Russia on top of Texas.
I talked with him a while asking him about his group and its activities, then unceremoniously released him and continued on with my mission. It was my first contact with a Reenactor, or even the idea of reenacting. And I did not think to ask him the pressing question I have had about that encounter until this day. Why? Not why be a reenactor, that is neither here nor there. People have all types of desires and hobbies and I find this one actually, to be intriguing. But why, I meant to ask him, a Nazi?
There are reenactor groups all over the country, all over the world. Reenacting wars and battles that have occurred since the beginning of time. I imagine the current fascination with cavemen, in insurance commercials and television sitcoms, will spawn a group with the agenda of reenacting early battles between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, if they are in fact, not already being fought as we speak.
We count among the members of the Revolutionary War Veterans Association several members I know of who belong to reenactor groups. They take their groups to schools and universities around the states they reside in and teach people about the American Revolutionary War. How American Colonials dressed and ate and lived in that time period. I think this is a wonderful and needed function of these groups. But even if all they wanted to do was stage reenactments of Revolutionary War battles, that would be great too. I have no qualms with this and find it very appealing. I have not donned a Revolutionary War costume yet, though I might well do so some day soon and take the program to schools in my area and teach them about our forefathers and their ways and ideas.
However, the fact remains that to stage a battle between two opposing forces from an historical event, you will need troops from both sides. In this case American and British forces. Finding the men to portray American Forces seems rather simple. It would seem that people would be very interested in putting on the costume of one of our American Heroes. Perhaps a General Washington, a Colonel Barrett, or a Captain Issac Davis. These men were heroes worthy of emulation. But where will you get the British forces? The General Gages, the Colonel Smiths, the Major Pitcairns and the Jesse Adairs? Or, the Banastre Tareltons?
Is there a large population of British exiles in America to draw from? Are these men who represent the British all actually British citizens? And if not, what makes a man decide to become a reenactor on the wrong side of the war? And don’t misunderstand me, I have a great deal of respect for the soldiers of other nations whom we have engaged in battle. The men who fought honorably for their nations deserve the respect of their nations and of ours for their courage and sacrifices in representing their countries honorably on fields of battle. The men who fought dishonorably, on any side, wrapping themselves in their countries flags in order to commit atrocities and crimes against people and property, deserve no respect. And their judgment will come.
And so, there are people who will dress up as Adolph Hitler, tiny little mustache and all, and prance around in Nazi uniforms. People who want to dress as Imperial Storm Troopers and track down Luke Skywalker and drag him back to Darth Vader (who someone else is playing) . People who will want to be German soldiers in reenactment wars, or dress in British uniforms and shoot Colonials in Revolutionary War battles. People who they admire and want to emulate. Fine, no problem.
I am sure you could find people to take any side in any battle that has ever been fought. But, my question remains, how do they decide the role they will play, and why
As a child I remember playing the part of Audy Murphy in the westerns and in his WWII movies. I was always the “Good Guy” sheriff, tracking down desperadoes and outlaws. I was always the American platoon Sargent in the WWII and WWI wars we acted out in backyards across the neighborhoods and schoolyards. Back then it was hard to get anyone to play the bad guys. Usually it turned out to be the smaller kids and kid brothers who wanted to play, but were only allowed to play if they would accept the role of the evil German soldiers or the bad outlaws. They didn’t want to, but they had no choice. Take the assigned part of bad guy, and get bruised and pummeled by the rest of us, or don’t accept it, and get bruised and pummeled by the rest of us.
These days, it seems harder and harder to find children who will stand in the ranks with the Dough Boys and Yanks, than it is to find kids willing to be the “Super Bad Nazi Dudes”, or the “Gangstas”. Of course to kids nowadays, the word Nazi has little meaning and is usually reserved for, or thought to represent, Conservatives/Republicans.

Banastre Tarleton

 What has happened in America? When I was looking at reenactment groups recently in order to ask some of them to come to Appleseeds and give the attendees some idea of what early American Soldiers Looked like, what they wore and how they acted in ranks, I found dozens of sites that were dedicated to the British born, Banastre Tarleton. A Colonel in the British army who followed a “total war” ideology. Any and all enemies of the British were to be dispatched by any means necessary, including any civilians who gave aid and comfort the the enemy.
Colonel William Tavington, the sinister cavalry officer in the movie, “The Patriot” is based on Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his exploits in America during the Revolutionary War. He was the one who herded the civilian population of the town into the church, chained the doors and fired the church. Not a nice man, and yet there are literally hundreds of Americans emulating and praising this British Officer. If they were British citizens I could better understand it, maybe, but I wrote to several of them asking if they were English, and they were not, they were Americans. Or, without trying to qualify what it takes to make an individual an American, their response to my inquiry informed me that they had been been born here to American parents.
But they have chosen to play the role of Banastre Tarleton in their fantasy lives. Every single day, people all over the world play out the roles they have been cast in, or selected. Some roles are better than others. Sometimes we pick our roles and sometimes they are picked for us. But we can always change the roles we play in our lives, we can trade them in for new roles. We can become the heroes we have always dreamed of, we can alter and adapt the roles we play, in real life in a meaningful way, and not just in fantasy.
At Appleseed we have simplified the roles we have selected for Americans, by dividing them into just two categories. We use a “USS America” analogy. We use this analogy quite often in our discussions, and we are casting people for roles in this analogous story every day. The scene we are casting for in our story, shows passengers on an antiquated, but beautiful cruise liner. After a collision with an iceberg, it appears the ship is sinking. Water is rising fast and the decks on this multiple deck ship are rapidly passing under the water one by one.
There is a crowd gathered on the uppermost deck, and they are split into two groups. The first group( the largest of the two by far) has people who are crying and moaning. Some who are ignoring the event altogether and acting as if it were not actually happening and that they were in the midst of a gay evening on the ship, chatting and giggling among themselves. Some are just sitting there glassy eyed and muttering to themselves over and over, “How did this happen? Oh Why!, oh why, and What, oh what, will we ever do?.” But not doing anything, just repeating their mantra over and over again as if it were some catechism that will save them merely by its inane repetition.

The Titanic

The second group is quickly forming work brigades to handle the evacuation of water by bailing it into buckets and then moving the buckets from the ships interiors to the railing where it can be poured over the side and then sending the buckets back for more. Still others are attempting to ascertain the location and extent of damages occurred by the collision. Then gathering supplies in order to make repairs. Still others are seeking medical aid for anyone injured in the collision, in the bailing effort, or by the stampede of the ships crew to get to the life rafts and desert the ship. Some are searching for, finding and preparing food and water for the people who are bailing to eat and drink.
In this scenario, before the volunteers for the “Bucket Brigade” were allowed to volunteer, they had been asked, “Do you believe we can win this battle with the rising water?, and, even if you do not, will you continue to bail even as the water reaches your neck, your chin, your nose?”. If they answered yes they were allowed the honor of volunteering to help. The consensus was that no one would be a whiner or a doubter and no one would be allowed to stand in the hallway or port side doors, bemoaning their fate, and idling away their time while others bailed in their stead.
The second group have committed themselves to a course of action, in order to save themselves and their ship.The first group have committed themselves to a course of action which compells them to do everything and anything but help themselves. The first groups course also requires them to criticize and rebuke the players in the second group for having a love of their ship, and a common cause which unites them, rather than seeking the satisfaction of their own personal “needs” and “feelings” first, which would require them to remain idle until someone satisfied those needs.
As I mentioned earlier, no roles are permanent. A role in the first group where you laugh and idle away your time, listen to the band play on as the ship, which is carrying your wife and children aboard as passengers, slips beneath the waves, plunging to a watery grave thousands of feet below the surface, may be exchanged for a role in the second group, with ease.
Ships may be later constructed which can be christened with the same name, but they will never be the same ship. You may survive the event and some day marry again, perhaps have children again, but they will not replace the wife and children you lost.
At the same time men and women from the second group, the bailing party, may indeed become tired and weary. They may become disenchanted with the constant bailing they are doing which to them, seems to be doing no more than just allowing the ship to sink at a slower rate, rather than any actual gains being made in the saving of the ship.
Because of the few hands doing the job of many, they feel worn and abused and become disheartened and decide that perhaps it is just as well if the ship sinks. Or they may feel some real or perceived slight has impugned their honor,or injured their feelings, and leave in a huff. Vowing to laugh as the ship sinks, even to drill holes in the hull to help scuttle it. Perhaps even puncture the buckets their former mates are using to bail with, vowing that it is better the whole ship go down than their own personal dignity be wounded by a word here or there asking them to hasten the bailing, lest the ship sink beneath their feet. Oh!, how can all the trouble and misery be worth it? And they eventually leave for the first group.
The people we look for at Appleseed, are the people from the “Bucket Brigade” group, who have left their egos at the door when they received a mission of such dire importance, people who will continue to bail even as their heads slip beneath the water. The kind of men George Washington was speaking of when he wrote to congress about the type of soldiers he needed, “The type of men who wil make a brave defense when success is very doubtful and falling into the enemy’s hands is very probable”. And we are finding them every day. Real Americans who are willing to exchange the role they were playing, for one America needs them to play now.
And have no doubts, everyone in America is playing a role in this scenario today. Every single person. Have you thought about which role you are playing? The decision about which group you will belong to is a personal one. No one can make it for you. It is a decision that clarifies your character, illuminates it, and makes it visible to all.

"Not Where I Want to Be Yet"

I get a lot of emails from people who want to come to an Appleseed Event, but they say they are “not where they want to be yet” with their marksmanship. This is what is preventing them from coming to an event, until they are ready, in their minds, to ace the course.

Of all the reasons not to come to an event, this has to rank as one of the worst ones, and it epitomizes the dissociative behaviors of the American People. Since they are not where they want to be, as far as rifle skills, they do not want to come and learn. It is also the way most folks deal with the current problems America faces. Since I can not fix a certain thing with ten minutes of effort or a $20 bill, I can not spend any time thinking about this. I do not want to think about the fact that we are facing some troubling times, because if I do, I will have to do something about it. We will get back to this in a minute.

As far as being ready for attending an Appleseed Project two day rifle marksmanship weekend, there is nothing you need to do to prepare yourself for attending a course. The Appleseed course is designed to take anyone who attends, from never having fired a rifle, to being able to fire at four minutes of angle, which is the Appleseed standard and is above what 99.99% of American firearms owners can achieve. How do I know? I have been teaching events now for several years and have seen many hundreds of shooters attempt to shoot to this standard and fail on their first attempts on day one, but have seen quite a few folks achieve this standard by the end of day two.

But if this was all Appleseed did, teach you to shoot to a four minute of arc standard, I could see, maybe, why people do not wish to show up “unprepared”. Even though an Appleseed event is not a contest, it is a fundementals of rifle marksmanship course, no one wants to make a bad showing when they are meeting new people and trying something new, right?

Banish these thoughts, because Appleseed is much, much more than a rifle marksmanship program. Appleseed is a beginning. A place to start, a launch site.

Americans are adrift in a sea of uncertainty, floating nervously along in a nebula of media pablum without a compass and not comprehending the fact that they need to find true north. Were they to find the source of their anxiety, they would then be faced with doing something about it. Much like the sick and dying Grandfather or Mother that is ignored until the funeral makes things right . Faced with the mess of a dying relative better to ignore it and try to make the best of your day rather than having it make a mess of your life right? Soon enough they will die and all will be well again, right?

Wrong. When America dies, we all die. Like all the fruit on a vine, when the vine is cut or the roots pulled from the ground, the fruit of the vine does not survive. We have a direct and unbroken link to our past in all the men and women who have embodied all that being an American is.

In Naomi Wolf’s latest book “Give Me Liberty, A Handbook for American Reviolutionaries”, she talks about what being an American really means. About who Americans are. By what right they deserve the title “American”. This is what we do at an Appleseed. We help people to understand what it is that defines them as Americans.

That is what Appleseed is. It is a starting place, it is a way to reconnect with the Founding Fathers. We teach people who attend that they did not just today, pop into existence with no history and no direct line to the Founding Fathers. We tell them that they owe all that they have to men and women who came before them and sacrificed all in some cases so that they would have the freedom and liberty that they now enjoy. And that without remembering and honoring those people, and without continuing to safeguard those very same principles and ideas, they will lose them. With only two days we can not give them everything they need to know to do all that is needed to save our country, but we can start them on the path, and we do.

We try to teach people that being an “American” is not granted to you by virtue of being born on a certain piece of ground, but earned by you every day you live. The path to becoming a Rifleman in the RWVA Appleseed Program is not an easy one. It is not a program where you learn to shoot at a target and hit it and then go home and put your rifle away in the closet with your training and get back on the couch and become one with the remote again.

A chimp could, theoretically, be taught to hit a target with a rifle. I imagine somewhere the military has some data on experiments they have done with this. One of the things we teach you, besides the greatest fundamentals of rifle marksmanship courses in the nation, is that once you have been to an Appleseed and we tell you what is occuring in our country and how you have a blood debt to honor the Founding Fathers and do your part to protect and defend our liberty and freedom, that you are a changed person and you can never go back to who you were. Not with a clear conscience. You now have a duty, a place to start.

So when I get that email saying “I am not where I want to be yet”. I have a ready answer. As a Rifleman with the Appleseed Program, get used to saying that. That should be the phrase that follows you into the grave. You should always be on a quest to learn something, find answers, become more skilled. If you ever think you have learned all there is or that you have nothing left to learn or teach, think about how sad that would be? But, you should not let it stop you from attending an Appleseed two day rifle marksmanship weekend.

A Rifleman never stops learning, a Rifleman never stops teaching. A Rifleman continues to seek ways to to protect the freedom the Founding Fathers left us, to improve himself, his home and family, his community, his state and his country, everyday of his life. A Rifleman adapts, a Rifleman overcomes and a Rifleman persists.

This is not just some fancy gilded rhetoric we throw around like popcorn and pennies. This is the code we live by here. There is nothing wrong, no matter how often the mass of talking heads tells you it is wrong, or outdated, or corny, stupid and cavemanish, with having a code to live by in your life. Modern Americans have forgotten their code. They have forgotten how to be Americans. We are here to help them remember.

Texas Attorney General Warns UN Elections Monitors They Could Face Arrest for Violating Texas Election Laws

The United Nations has dispatched election monitors to oversee elections across America this voting period. They feel that America is repressing voters by asking for identification of voters at polling places. They had reportedly met with representatives of Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate, to discuss having UN observers at polling places.

As of this time, UN Observers are going to be in states across America monitoring polling places. Texas State Attorney General, Gregg Abbot wrote a reply, a copy of which is reprinted below, informing them they will not be allowed to break Texas State Voting Laws.

Makes you wonder what is next, right?
Scout

Text of the letter:

October 23, 2012

Ambassador Daan Everts
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
UI. Miodowa 10
00-251
Warsaw, Poland

Dear Ambassador Everts:

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will reportedly dispatch election observers to the State of Texas to monitor the November 2012 general election. While it remains unclear exactly what your monitoring is intended to achieve, or precisely what tactics you will use to achieve the proposed monitoring, OSCE has stated publicly that it will visit polling stations on Election Day as part of its monitoring plan.

In April, you reportedly met with a group of organizations that have filed lawsuits challenging election integrity laws enacted by the Texas Legislature. One of those organizations, Project Vote, is closely affiliated with ACORN, which collapsed in disgrace after its role in a widespread voter-registration fraud scheme was uncovered. In September, a federal appeals court rejected Project Vote’s challenge to the State’s voter-registration regulations and allowed Texas to continue enforcing laws that were enacted to protect the integrity of the voter-registration process.

According to a letter that Project Vote and other organizations sent to you, OSCE has identified Voter ID laws as a barrier to the right to vote. That letter urged OSCE to monitor states that have taken steps to protect ballot integrity by enacting Voter ID laws. The OSCE may be entitled to its opinions about Voter ID laws, but your opinion is legally irrelevant in the United States, where the Supreme Court has already determined that Voter ID laws are constitutional.

If OSCE members want to learn more about our election processes so they can improve their own democratic systems, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the measures Texas has implemented to protect the integrity of elections. However, groups and individuals from outside the United States are not allowed to influence or interfere with the election process in Texas. This State has robust election laws that were carefully crafted to protect the integrity of our election system. All persons—including persons connected with OSCE—are required to comply with these laws.

Elections and election observation are regulated by state law. The Texas Election Code governs anyone who participates in Texas elections—including representatives of the OSCE. The OSCE’s representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance. Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE’s representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law.

Sincerely,
Greg Abbott
Attorney General of Texas

Upcoming Guests

Hey Guys, we will be having quite a few guests in the upcoming months. We will be having Sheriff Richard Mack, of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association on the show as well as Chris Knox of The Firearms Coalition, Dr. David Fischer Hackett from "Paul Revers Ride" fame, Trey Tuggle, head of the National Rifle Association's Tactical Rifle Department, Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast, Larry Pratt from Gun Owners of America, and many more.

I will start listing the dates and guests on this blog and on the show list as I post the shows this next week.  I do the radio show in order to bring the listeners the information and entertainment that I feel they will benefit from and find enjoyment in. So, if there is anyone you would like to hear on the show, please send me an email or a PM and I will do my best to get them on the show.

If you would like more information on shooting, or on survival and prepping news, world events etc. Then be sure and let me know, it is the only way you are going to get exactly what you want.

As always, I hope top see you all there on Thursday nights!

Scout

It's The End of The World as We Know It....

At least it should be, right? Every day should be the end of the world as we know it because we should be reinventing the world  every day we wake up and find ourselves still alive. We should never be accepting the world around us as the only way it can ever be.

It should always be in our minds to make sure we are creating the world we want to live in. How can we do this? Well, the best way, unless we wake up to an EMP, or an "ELE"  size comet striking the earth, is always one small step at a time, a little bit every day. That is the same way we can change the rest of the world we live in, the groups we are part of. Making them our own and investing ourselves in their success.

America is entering into one of the most dangerous periods in it's history. More dangerous than even in the first days of The American Revolution. If we had failed then, I can say with almost complete certainty we would have tried again and again until we succeeded. If we fail now, we do not lose just a battle, or even a war, we lose a nation and the ideas that created it. We lose our heritage and we lose the nation we want to leave to our progeny. Instead of leaving them a home we make them orphans.

We do not have a defined enemy like our ancestors did in many cases. We can not put our sights on a British Regular and make it right with a squeeze of our triggers. Our enemy is much more subtle and heinous. Our enemy knows we will not recognize it in time to save ourselves. Our enemy is one of our own making, it is our own disregard for saving ourselves and taking the huge step of recognizing our enemy in our own faces, and closing with our enemy to do battle.

What are you doing to make sure we do not lose the most important battle in our history?

You can log on to the show at

 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/appleseedradio/2012/11/02/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it

And you can call in at 347-308-8790

I hope to see you all there!

Scout