Episode-2014- Bennett Tanton on Prepping and Working with Veterans
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Bennett Tanton is a former Reconnaissance Marine and US Army Infantryman. He has his BA in Security Management and is a graduate of 2014 Entrepreneurship Boot camp for Veterans with disabilities (EBV) at Syracuse University.
Bennett is the Co-Founder & President of Warrior Hall Inc, Co-founder & Co-host of Cigars and Sea Stories and the Co-host of Change Your POV. Bennett also works as a contributor and adviser to a few publications, companies and organizations.
Bennett is a Certified Peer Support Specialist in the states of NC and AZ; he currently works for the Veterans Administration as a Peer Support Specialist. Bennett has dedicated his life to helping veterans navigate the system and aid them in adding value to their communities.
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- Join the Members Brigade
- The Year 2014
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- Walking To Freedom
- TSP Gear
- PermaEthos.com
- TspAz.com
- The Granddaddy’s Gun Club
- Bullhead Fishing Forum – A new little site I started
- Without Those Songs – The Script
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https://youtu.be/rV7WF5VVwuo?list=RDfDYK2H0ldbo for a funny Casey Kasem radio rant. (I first heard it on the Howard Stern show).
Great show today Jack and Bennett. As a veteran, I am honored to know there are people like this looking out for veterans!
Does Bennett devote any of his time to lobbying against the shameful act of the US state sending young men across the world to murder poor people trying to defend their on homelands with huge risk of getting killed or injured themselves. Lets make a world without war and make veterens history.
Frankly why do you constantly have to be a purest asshole and attack everyone doing the best they can where they are. Like you I want to stop all foreign wars and see forces as to be used only for defense.
But to be blunt, what the fuck do you do to reduce war other than post shit on the Internet? Seriously tell me one tangible thing you have done in the last 10 years that had any actual effect on US intervention in the world, ONE, just ONE. Go ahead.
Now you are thinking, “well, shit, what can I actually do other than have and give my opinion, there is nothing I can actually do about this, I just hate it. No one gives a fuck about protesters, the congress is bought and paid for so calling my congress clowns won’t help, shit there isn’t anything I can do so what does this asshole Jack expect me to do?”
Well sweetheart, welcome to real fucking life! And Bennett is in the same boat, no matter what he thinks they will keep sending men to war, and said men are going to come home fucked up. So you can sit around and call these good men who did what they believed in killers or some other stupid fucking shit or you can help them reneter our society and contribute to it.
But it is much easier to sit on the net and talk shit about good people isn’t it? People do not serve because they want to kill children and murder people they fucking serve because they believe in our nation and think risking heir lives for it is worth doing. Many figure it out along the way but at that point they are trapped, they come home, can’t deal with it and blow their fucking brains out. People like you that talk shit about such men likely have more blood on their hands than most vets that kill themselves.
95% of those deployed to even hot zones never kill anyone. Now go look in the mirror and do some real self examination. I am fucking tired of this line of bullshit!
I Jack, I take your point, there is a lot of good in someone who tries to help damaged vets, many who blindly stumbled into the army for one reason or another to end up as the pawns for rich business men who want to control other nations. I also agree that many vets may have done great work on these missions but they could easily have been forced to murder inocent people. For example the hundreds of thousands of people who died in iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia etc can not all have been bad people but many may have become crazy extremest and bad people after the US invasion destabilised their countries and destroyed their livelihoods and bombed their towns and cities etc. I see things from the view that prevention is better than cure and that the best prevention is education of the younger generation of the through horror which joining the army can lead to. I see the celebration of veterans especialy by governments or even by anyone as something which tends to intentionally or untentionably glorify armies and glorify war and thereby plays a part in wrongly influncing the next generation of young men to want to join armies and war and that makes me sad. I thing Vets shold be honoured for what they truly were, young misinformed men who made a bad dicision, a sort of gamble which could have worked out good or bad for them but either way was a bad dicision. I think the biggest value and focus of Vets should be to guide young men to avoid the army and see guns as somethin to hunt food with not to murder people with just because some politican says they are the enemy. Myself I was influenced by the film Gandi, the early version. It completly changed destroyed my earlier hollywood view of soldiers as heroes after which I saw soldiers who join the armies of any powerful country as sort of young zombies who did not think deep enough for themselves about the consequences of their dicision to join up. When my time came I refused to sign up and emigrated, not out of fear of fighting to defend but as a dicision that I was never going to be put in a position where I would be asked to murder on the order of a government or rich businessman. I knew in making that dicision I was throwing away the chance of a good apprenticeship. I know many who made the same decision and have not regretted it. No offence meant to any Vets I am only trying to put my view across, we all have different views from our different experiences of life.
Just an after thought, the question I should have been asking is, Does there exist any organization in the US or any where in the world whose purpose is to educate young men to avoid joining the army where the army of their country has a history of offensively invading other countries especialy remote week poorer countries thousands of miles away. Does anyone know if the government state schools broach this subject or do they just play a part in indoctrinating children into seeing glory in offensive armies and war. If so then I can certainly see the value in home schooling.
The Survival podcast completly revolutionized by thinking from dependability to self sufficientcy, after a few episodes, maybe even one young American boy will read my posts hear and it may change his mind about joining the army. That would be a a reward in itself.
You are starting to talk like a rambling fool with a paper asshole.
Your answer NO THERE IS NO ORGANIZATION THAT DOES SHIT TO EDUCATE YOUNG PEOPLE (women die too now) ABOUT OUR ACTIONS IN THE WORLD.
So since you are so quick to talk shit about people who I bet you are not even fit to shine their boots when it comes to honor, why not get off your lazy ass and create one?
I’ll even give you some advice in your messaging focus on the bad the State does and stop talking shit about the men and women who are used in this system that takes the best from us and uses them like “dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy” in the words of Henry Kissinger. Blaming the solider for the actions of his nation makes about as much fucking sense as blaming a rape victim for being raped, that is how fucking stupid you people sound.
I fear I have not made you think enough when you continue with such a stupid line of thinking.
Let me guess, you never served did you, so you do not know the character of the people of whom you fucking speak. When one is ignorant of a subject they make themselves less of a fool if they don’t speak about it! And for fucksake if you are going to ramble that long learn to use the damn return key so at least my eyes won’t hurt while I read what makes my brain hurt.
Great show. I was in the army reserves and by the grace of GOD and the prayers of my mother was never deployed or placed in Harms way. I have traveled all over the world in the Petro industry in a non combat role. I have seen first hand what poor is. I saw what made their country poor happening in our country now. It even seems to be exponentially happening as the years go on. I woke up about 9 years ago and started thinking about this.
I never really knew what to do until I spent 3weeks in KSA last November before the election. I went almost crazy trying to get ready to give my mind some level of comfort. I found this community here a few months ago. What an elixir for my mind this has been. I am now learning what to do and how to do it on a common sense level. Thanks for doing what you do. Also Thanks to Bennett Tanton for what he does. Also thanks for digitally slapping that negative poster degrading the military.
Hi, I think you misunderstood what I was saying in origional post.
I did not criticize Bennett for his great work, I simply enquired if he puts any of his effort into trying to prevent the root cause of the problem. Bennett reminds me of the great Mother Theresa of Calcutta who spent her life helping victims of poverty which was great honerable work, but she did not put any effort into addressing the root causes such as corruption and gross inequality and in some ways she might have even helped maintain the problem by her work acting as a sort of release valve which prevented the corruption structure from blowing apart.
The ethos of the wonderful Survival Podcast is to not depend on government or state to fix ones own problems or problems of community or nation because the government is the problem.
Rather the message is that we should fix them ourselves for if things get bad or even if they don’t.
Well the current state of the army as a private army for the oil billionaires to invade and grab the resources of weaker distant nations by invading them and installing local dictators is not noble.
If young people were educated about this then they would not be as quick to sign up and this in my view would bring the role of the army into debate and reform to be what it should be, a defensive army.
What if the oil billionaires and their greasy politicians organized a war but no people turned up to fight it, Just saying.
Note that I have not criticized, insulted or used swear words against anyone ( other than oil billionaires, politicians and government)
Funny I had originally only posted a short simple question, Jack read much deeper into it and his replies, even if a bit negative have opened my mind to things I otherwise would not have thought of.
Thank you for reading this.
Again I understand perfectly you talk shit about military personal every time the subject comes up, then you want to walk back and say well, you see, bla bla bla.
I am going to ask ONE MORE TIME, what have you done to acomplish the goals you seem to set out for others to do?
Unless you are going to answer that don’t bother replying, and again find the damn return key.
Hi, Jack, Thank you for replying on this subject which has been a big part of my life for so long.
My father and grandfather were Vets, both were injured and my mother and us had to pick up the pieces.
We did not have a hero like Bennett to help us.
My grandfather was blind from WW2.
I have spent my life persuading young people I meet in life to not join the army and have succeeded with some.
I also refused to sign up and paid a price for that decision. My biggest goal in life has always been to try to unbrainwah people about politics from what the corporate media tells them about the world and the excuses for invasions and I do it every day.
That role is to me what the Survival Podcast us to you.
Well those are the things I have been doing outside of my work.
Perhaps we could email on this subject privately some time, I think arguing publickly about something which I think deep down we both probably mostly agree on is not ideal for the Survival Podcast.
Again thank you for producing this wonderful, useful and entertaining podcast.
There are tons of your comments on this blog over years shitting on good people. As to emailing you, since you use fake emails, not possible, however it is not desirable.
As to doing this publicly, YES IT IS PRODUCTIVE, people should see people who talk shitty about our service men called out even if they back peddle once it is done.
You have restated your position, but we will see what comes of it in the future.
Can’t wait to listen. Bennett thanks for your continued service to our brothers and sisters.
For those in the NW I’ve heard great things about the growingveterans.org farm in WA. Their model could be followed in other areas.