What about Whelan?

Standing at my desk, reading back through what I’d just written on Four days in Istanbul, the next piece for the Fortress, I was intentionally ignoring everything happening around me.

Not happy with the last sentence, I held down the delete button as my phone buzzed. I glanced down at the message, it said simply,

“What about Whelan?”

It was from a good friend currently doing the work of four men in Africa like Michael Caine in Zulu, undermanned, undersupplied, and facing nothing but problems on all sides in a place no one but dudes in the business and idealistic young women in NGOs with pics of smiling school children on their insta can point to on a map.

I’ve never been, didn’t have any interest in going until he got there.

Now I’m like Elmo face down in a pile of coke and will be going out to help him next year because the gym he has out there is insane, I like money, and I miss laying on a blanket at a house party with good looking idealistic NGO women and staring at the stars while listening to AK-47 fire in the distance.

I sometimes wonder if western countries keep funding all of this because it is the nation state equivalent of a Netflix subscription from 2009 they forgot about and no one cares enough to go line by line in the federal deficit looking for the billion here or there they could cut like a $9.99 monthly charge on the credit card bill.

I honestly thought the money faucet got turned off when Kabul fell, but wow was I wrong. Business is booming with World War III. I’ve been back for three weeks and already been on three continents.

Thanks to fiscal responsibility being a quaint 20th century concept no one believes in anymore, privateers, NGO women, and warlords the world over are making more money than ever.

So that’s where he’s at and where I’m trying to go next. He’s been pinging me lately, asking how I’d handle certain issues.

He’s getting a crash course in what it is like to be the lone legionnaire left on the wall with no support and told to hold the line.

So when he texts, I try to answer.

My first thought reading his text though was who was Whelan?

I didn’t even know what was going on.

I don’t pay any attention to the going ons in Constantinople so to speak, I’m busy with my own thing.

Did a quick google search, really wished I’d hadn’t, and this is what I texted him back to help him stay focused.

Decided to share it.

_________

You already know the answer to that bro, he’s a male war veteran, not a female basketball player.

Great trade by Russia getting the Lord of War for her.

You shouldn’t be surprised this happened, none of us should, and don’t let it upset you or focus on it.

Kabul showed us all what to expect in the future.

If we expect reasonable decisions from people who were more upset at bomb dogs getting left behind than dudes who helped us getting killed and six months later are getting the Ukrainian flag painted on their cheek for a protest Putin parade, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Being upset at the decisions that are made to win their votes is a waste of time that we could be using to make our own lives better, and for sure the people that depend on us deserve that we stay focused and not distracted.

No doubt, without guys like us the US would be a different place and all these women walking small dogs that are nothing more than eagle bait in their skin tight gym shark two pieces would be chained in a basement by warlords with pet tigers in their courtyard.

But modern society doesn’t believe that.

It would require them to admit that weakness is not a virtue and the world does not work how they desperately want it to work.

They will never do that. No one likes to admit they are wrong.

When given the option, nearly everyone will choose to defend their currently held opinion in the face of reality.

You should listen to the series Death Throes of the Republic. It’s a week long audiobook for $13, one of the best things I’ve ever listened to that discussed what happened in the lead up to the Roman Republic becoming the Roman Empire.

How we are treated by our society is no different than how Roman veterans were treated by theirs.

We’re just repeating the process of every republic that gets soft.

Not something to be emotional about since we can’t change human nature. Might as well be angry at gravity for being constant.

We do what we always do, find a way to succeed in the environment we are given.

Besides, most people don’t care if we continue down this road to Empire because most people just want someone to fix their problems instead of being responsible for themselves.

Being responsible means accepting that life is random and you have to be ready for multiple outcomes and put in a lot of work.

Those are things most people on the planet refuse to accept, and are the same things that have been constant companions in our lives.

No surprise we’ve become more than where we started in life.

We simply did what most people didn’t.

That is a constant edge in life for us.

So don’t be mad at them, just pity them while protecting ourselves.

Because eventually someone will come along and tell them he/she/they can fix all their problems and they will believe it.

We know from personal experience how terrible that will be, but they can’t understand it because they haven’t experienced it and you can’t save someone from themselves.

That only results in them hating you for it.

Which is why I focus on building wealth to buy my family’s freedom in the future and is another lesson from history.

Beretta is on their 15th generation of family ownership. The family preserved through the rise and fall of countries and empires.

Don’t be upset about Whelan, it is just more tragic noise happening around us.

Keep making chaos equal cash and buy your freedom.

_________

Back to Four days in Istanbul.

See you out there, Radigan