I did some incredibly stupid fucking things in Afghanistan. Mostly because I'd volunteered for it out of anger in the first place, and then I ended up with no supervision, literally no supervision at all, in country.
But I never did that stupid shit alone. Someone always had my back. Usually it was 2 or 3 Marines, or a couple of British military cops. And it was never a feeling of "these guys won't let me get shot." It was more like "these guys won't let me get shot more than 5 or 6 times."
And because I knew they had my back, and I had theirs, we leaned way the fuck out and did a lot of things no one else was doing, that needed to be done. We were able to take those risks because we knew we had support.
In the context of a fucking war movie, Americans understand that. But in the context of society at home in peacetime, they can't understand that the same principle applies. Give people a minimum feeling of security and support, and they will take risks to do important things.
That's a decent education, basic health care including mental health care, basic income, a roof over their head and some food on the table. We all pitch in and do that for each other and the result will be more good shit getting done, not more people on the couch.
And the other result will be giving people some fucking reason to believe in this country.
