I wish we would stop mentally raising the age of majority. A 21 year old man is perfectly able to comprehend the profound responsibility that comes with a security clearance, and comply with all that entails. This particular man is morally deficient.
I bet as the investigation progresses we will find out that there were a bunch of red flags that were ignored. I wonder if his unit is short-staffed.
Agreed. Some jobs in the military (that you can sign up for at 17 years of age) require you getting a security clearance before you begin training. Anyone acting as if a 21 year old shouldn't be given clearance by virtue of their age must be clueless about how the military works and who's serving in it. I believe the average servicemember is 23 years old. If you only count enlisted, it's even lower. 21 is old enough to understand the concept "if you tell anybody about this, we'll put you in Leavenworth."
Amen! There’s also so much overblown rhetoric about the brain not developing until age 25. The frontal lobe is literally shaped via experience, not at a set point in time. If we want 18-year-olds to behave like adults, we need to grant them greater independent practice w/adult skills (i.e. working part-time, managing money, driving a car, etc.). When an adult consistently swoops in (or is expected to swoop in) to save them it delays brain maturation. That’s my soapbox. :)
Odd, I would’ve presumed this guy to be more mature than your average 21-year-old given his military training. But, I’m also not familiar with his rank, training, etc. Your point about red flags makes a lot of sense.
(Enter, Chris Hansen, walking in front of The Long Island Bar )
HANSEN: Next week on “to catch a holocaust denier,” we travel to Brooklyn where disgraced former Vice reporter, Michael Moynihan, reveals his true beliefs about the Shoah when, while they wait for an Uber, our honeypot makes an innocent offer of Nazi butter knives.
Goddammit, just got to the part where Kmele is referring to grown ass men who have been elected to office as kids. What's happening right now? Everybody ineligible for Social Security is now incapable of decision making?
Eh, in regards to the level of responsibility they placed upon him by allowing him access to classified material, he is a kid. A child. For all standard purposes he's an adult. He's expected to drive like an adult, even be able to smoke like us. He spent most of his teenage years preparing for the basics. But in regards to the ethics of the position he's been given responsibility for, he's a child. We don't raise our kids to understand the delicate dance that is "national security" right out of high school. And it sure is confusing, what with it being used as a political game more then a legitimate criminal code.
Totally disagree. Indoctrination into the military impresses a standard of maturity upon you whether you want it or not. If you are unable to conform to it within 6 months, they kick you out with an uncharacterized discharge. Plenty of servicemembers younger than this guy doing jobs that require access to docs with an even higher classification. Generally, the threat of "tell anybody about this and you'll be busting up big rocks into little ones in Leavenworth" makes even young adults take it seriously.
E-4 Mafia. A standard of maturity that isn't much higher then a college students. You should see some of the videos of the shit they get up to when the officers aren't around. Hell my uncle used to be in charge of some of them, and had to regularly get them out of trouble in foreign nations.
The military, itself, refers to the process as indoctrination and while there have been plenty of Joes who've found themselves in the clink after a wild night on the town, suggesting this is the same impulse as a deliberate and repeated dissemination of classified material over a long period of time strikes me as erroneous. Young soldiers and college students might be of similar maturity levels when not on duty, but there's even a cultural meme for veterans where we all sign up for 8AM college classes, telling ourselves it'll be a piece of cake after having had to get up for PT at 6 AM, then we sleep through every class because the threat of non-judicial punishment made sleeping in too easy. Additionally, when was the last time you saw a video of a commanding general getting shouted down by lower enlisted because they didn't like his orders? It happens frequently on campuses.
I didn't mention just bar fights, but they're part of the discipline problems that the armed forces face, and they are smaller examples of failing responsibility that means you shouldn't be given higher ones without some sort of proof that you can meet these new responsibilities. The E-4 mafia thing refers to a lot more then just bar fights. I think that has a lot more reputation then the memes you mentioned. And many of those stories are do not leave me with a lot of confidence in this "standard of maturity". Indeed, the stories that I have heard tell me that there are a lot of exemplary people in the service, and a lot of bad apples, not all of which are booted.
When the general removes his legal protections for real, I'd love to see the men give them their actual opinions. You and I know that if that ever really did happen, few generals wouldn't get shouted down, especially if they asked the service members who have actually seen combat. Thanks to the sacrifices of those in the service (giving this right up for the time being one of those sacrifices) our students have the legal rights to shout down their professors, and deans. But as we see in the video it's not good for order, which is necessary for a military, but not so much for a university. Sometimes they even benefit from it, but the military would not. It has it's own means of dealing with dissention for this reason.
No offense, but you seem to take a lot of presumptive liberties in what you assert you know about the military and the people who populate it. You get chaptered out if you get in repeated bar fights, and you definitely lose your security clearance for such behavior. You didn't know that the military refers to the initial training as indoctrination and here you are continuing to try to explain to me, a veteran, stuff about the military. I don't claim to know everything, but damn, I save my bold assertions for when I'm fairly certain I know what I'm talking about.
I'm sorry, but that is patently absurd. He is old enough to vote, to drive, to own guns, to enter contracts, and to enter the military, but he's not old enough to STFU? This mission creep of continuing to increase the age of majority smacks of authoritarian nannyism while at the same time letting this grown ass man off the hook for his dipshittery.
Also, the only way a 21 year old is "right out of high school" is if they were held back several years, come on now.
Weird, I didn't make this argument because I want him to get off. I made this argument because our government should not be handing out this level of responsibility to 21 year old people, who, for all intents and purposes are adults, but realistically haven't been for very long. Experience actually matters here, and I'm not sure that I'm fine with handing this level of it to, if you insist, amateur adults. It's one thing to give them a license at 16, it's another to hand them information that, in the wrong hands, can destabilize the world order, just five short years later.
Why not give him the Presidency while we're at it!
Except that's the exact argument that you're making. If he's incapable of judgment due to his age, then he also can't be held responsible for his actions due to his age. He's either an adult or he isn't, you can't have it both ways.
Weird, there is a hard age requirement for the job... not for no reason. It's because the level of responsibility is unbecoming for anyone younger. If he's incapable of judgement due to his age, that doesn't mean he can't be held responsible for his actions, only that the level at which you can punish him is diminished, due to the fact that those who should have known better chose not to exercise this caution. Basically it means that responsibility for the failure should be shared.
Kids are regularly held responsible for their actions even though we know that they lack the proper judgement. Hence why things don't end up in court... usually. It's also why we have a separate court. Not every 21 year old is equal in competency, and when you compare them to, say, 29 year old's, you see a significant difference in the measure of responsibility you can place in them. But sure, lets just keep giving these passes to these amateur adults. Let them learn the hard way not to mess with national security! Unfortunate for us that it's actually important to the world when one of these "adults" screws up.
If you start experiencing severe TFC withdrawal syndrome, consider listening to The Reason Roundtable. It's not going to get you right, but it'll at least take the edge off. It's the Tylenol 3 you pop when you run out of Percocet.
When I saw that Justin Pearson video, I thought my body was going to turn in on itself and disappear in a black hole of secondary embarrassment.
I’m from Nashville, and it’s depressing how much my TN friends are eating up the “Tennessee 3” stuff. I was a legislative intern in Nashville during college--even we were expected to know the rules of decorum. OF COURSE these bozos knew what they were doing. 🙄
Why didn’t the white woman stand in solidarity and accept the same punishment? Why did she try to distinguish herself as “not as bad” as the other two? It’s so infuriating that she did what she could to avoid expulsion, and, having done so, now claims that it was a race-based expulsion.
There is a professional wrestling element to cable news (and sports opinion shows too). Just listen to the wording. They provide the equivalent to audience prompts. The whole thing would be more honest, if the lines were delivered by the Ultimate Warrior or Macho Man Randy Savage (who has passed away). Then, you’d know exactly what you were watching.
I was going to say, I WISH cable news leaned into their melodramatic pro wrestling tendencies. More nonsensical honorific titles for more politicians, better clothes, and 100% increase in frog splashes off the top ropewould make me consider watching MSNBC.
Why does a junior officer in the Massachusetts Air National Guard have access to hundreds of hard-copy pages of highly classified documents? This isn't a rhetorical question -- I'd love for someone who is familiar with the military/IC to explain this to me. What ever happened to "need to know"?
I believe he's actually an E-3, which basically just means he's put in a year as an enlisted. You can also enlist directly as an E-3 if you have a certain number of college credits.
I wouldn't consider everything classified as "top secret" as "highly classified" though. Entire job categories, such as intelligence, obviously, require top secret clearance. I believe he worked cyber defense, which would also require that.
Access to "top secret" clearance just means you've passed the SSBI, which is a fairly thorough background check. They'll look into criminal background as well as mental health and might reach out to interview a few family members, employers and the like. This is pretty routine. Over a million people have TS.
What we think of as "top secret" is probably closer to "SCI (Special Compartmented Information). SCI qualification gives access to the data the government doesn't need to distribute broadly for low level analysis and it would pose a higher security risk if it were leaked. This is closer to the "need to know" you're talking about.
I wonder also, is there a bit of 9/11 hangover, in that there was a lot of criticism of the various TLA government security apparatus that too much information was over classified, and they made information sharing too difficult? So maybe there’s a stew of giving more people more access to more documents that may be muddled or inappropriate?
I have to say a friend of mine was in the room with tucker and trump shooting that interview at mar a lago 😂😂😂 i gotta see what he says about your segment
Also I would like to know where the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial School For Preacher Talkin' is and how much tuition costs, because clearly Pearson got his money's worth
The bad news is that when you tell people there's no evidence this TN thing has anything to do with race, it's just proof of how blind you are to the plight of people of color. I just found this out firsthand prior to listening to this episode 🙄
Favorite quote from Justin Pearson's MSNBC rant, "It is no coincidence that the two youngest black lawmakers in the State of Tennessee and one of two women are on trial today! That is not accidental! This is what happens when you lose democracy". Further along, "because it's starting in Tennessee but won't end here". The reporter then asked how "painful this week has been" for Justin. Apparently he has suffered a grave injustice for being just as much of an ass clown as the Republicans he admonishes. And of course he says "white supremacy", "the status quo", and "business as usual" are the culprits, not simply him acting like a child. Truly a funny clip
I wish we would stop mentally raising the age of majority. A 21 year old man is perfectly able to comprehend the profound responsibility that comes with a security clearance, and comply with all that entails. This particular man is morally deficient.
I bet as the investigation progresses we will find out that there were a bunch of red flags that were ignored. I wonder if his unit is short-staffed.
Agreed. Some jobs in the military (that you can sign up for at 17 years of age) require you getting a security clearance before you begin training. Anyone acting as if a 21 year old shouldn't be given clearance by virtue of their age must be clueless about how the military works and who's serving in it. I believe the average servicemember is 23 years old. If you only count enlisted, it's even lower. 21 is old enough to understand the concept "if you tell anybody about this, we'll put you in Leavenworth."
Amen! There’s also so much overblown rhetoric about the brain not developing until age 25. The frontal lobe is literally shaped via experience, not at a set point in time. If we want 18-year-olds to behave like adults, we need to grant them greater independent practice w/adult skills (i.e. working part-time, managing money, driving a car, etc.). When an adult consistently swoops in (or is expected to swoop in) to save them it delays brain maturation. That’s my soapbox. :)
Odd, I would’ve presumed this guy to be more mature than your average 21-year-old given his military training. But, I’m also not familiar with his rank, training, etc. Your point about red flags makes a lot of sense.
I dunno. 21 50 years ago: yes. 21 now? 21 today is the new 13. TikTok Gen.
Haven’t listened yet, but I’ll unsubscribe if I don’t hear Moynihan do an impression of Justin Pearson doing an impression of MLK.
Update: Listened this morning and Moynihan did not disappoint.
I too would like to hear Michael Moynihan as Justin Pearson as Martin Luther King Jr.
I won't unsubscribe if this doesn't happen, but I'll happily make an empty threat to do so.
The “I had a dream” about Michael Moynihan that won’t make Kmele blush.
Full confession, when I heard Justin Pearson mau-mauing, i thought “that’s a Moynihan voice over”.
Except I'm pretty sure Pearson was doing an impression of Moynihan doing an impression.
Coming soon to a podcast near you:
"Impression" (enunciated like "Inception")
(Enter, Chris Hansen, walking in front of The Long Island Bar )
HANSEN: Next week on “to catch a holocaust denier,” we travel to Brooklyn where disgraced former Vice reporter, Michael Moynihan, reveals his true beliefs about the Shoah when, while they wait for an Uber, our honeypot makes an innocent offer of Nazi butter knives.
Can we stop referring to the leaker as a child or kid? For shit's sake, dude is an adult by any reasonable measure.
The definition of kid has changed in recent years and is relative. My boss often referred to me as "the kid" when I was 31 years old.
Did you have a clever nickname for him?
A nickname from your mentor is hardly the same as minimizing a criminal act by a person who is above the age of majority.
Goddammit, just got to the part where Kmele is referring to grown ass men who have been elected to office as kids. What's happening right now? Everybody ineligible for Social Security is now incapable of decision making?
Eh, in regards to the level of responsibility they placed upon him by allowing him access to classified material, he is a kid. A child. For all standard purposes he's an adult. He's expected to drive like an adult, even be able to smoke like us. He spent most of his teenage years preparing for the basics. But in regards to the ethics of the position he's been given responsibility for, he's a child. We don't raise our kids to understand the delicate dance that is "national security" right out of high school. And it sure is confusing, what with it being used as a political game more then a legitimate criminal code.
Totally disagree. Indoctrination into the military impresses a standard of maturity upon you whether you want it or not. If you are unable to conform to it within 6 months, they kick you out with an uncharacterized discharge. Plenty of servicemembers younger than this guy doing jobs that require access to docs with an even higher classification. Generally, the threat of "tell anybody about this and you'll be busting up big rocks into little ones in Leavenworth" makes even young adults take it seriously.
E-4 Mafia. A standard of maturity that isn't much higher then a college students. You should see some of the videos of the shit they get up to when the officers aren't around. Hell my uncle used to be in charge of some of them, and had to regularly get them out of trouble in foreign nations.
And indoctrination? It's not a cult.
The military, itself, refers to the process as indoctrination and while there have been plenty of Joes who've found themselves in the clink after a wild night on the town, suggesting this is the same impulse as a deliberate and repeated dissemination of classified material over a long period of time strikes me as erroneous. Young soldiers and college students might be of similar maturity levels when not on duty, but there's even a cultural meme for veterans where we all sign up for 8AM college classes, telling ourselves it'll be a piece of cake after having had to get up for PT at 6 AM, then we sleep through every class because the threat of non-judicial punishment made sleeping in too easy. Additionally, when was the last time you saw a video of a commanding general getting shouted down by lower enlisted because they didn't like his orders? It happens frequently on campuses.
I didn't mention just bar fights, but they're part of the discipline problems that the armed forces face, and they are smaller examples of failing responsibility that means you shouldn't be given higher ones without some sort of proof that you can meet these new responsibilities. The E-4 mafia thing refers to a lot more then just bar fights. I think that has a lot more reputation then the memes you mentioned. And many of those stories are do not leave me with a lot of confidence in this "standard of maturity". Indeed, the stories that I have heard tell me that there are a lot of exemplary people in the service, and a lot of bad apples, not all of which are booted.
When the general removes his legal protections for real, I'd love to see the men give them their actual opinions. You and I know that if that ever really did happen, few generals wouldn't get shouted down, especially if they asked the service members who have actually seen combat. Thanks to the sacrifices of those in the service (giving this right up for the time being one of those sacrifices) our students have the legal rights to shout down their professors, and deans. But as we see in the video it's not good for order, which is necessary for a military, but not so much for a university. Sometimes they even benefit from it, but the military would not. It has it's own means of dealing with dissention for this reason.
No offense, but you seem to take a lot of presumptive liberties in what you assert you know about the military and the people who populate it. You get chaptered out if you get in repeated bar fights, and you definitely lose your security clearance for such behavior. You didn't know that the military refers to the initial training as indoctrination and here you are continuing to try to explain to me, a veteran, stuff about the military. I don't claim to know everything, but damn, I save my bold assertions for when I'm fairly certain I know what I'm talking about.
Re: "Indoctrination"
In addition to what Kevin said, the SCI memo is actually entitled "Sensitive Compartmented Information Indoctrination Memorandum".
Slightly different usage, but interesting and relevant.
I'm sorry, but that is patently absurd. He is old enough to vote, to drive, to own guns, to enter contracts, and to enter the military, but he's not old enough to STFU? This mission creep of continuing to increase the age of majority smacks of authoritarian nannyism while at the same time letting this grown ass man off the hook for his dipshittery.
Also, the only way a 21 year old is "right out of high school" is if they were held back several years, come on now.
Weird, I didn't make this argument because I want him to get off. I made this argument because our government should not be handing out this level of responsibility to 21 year old people, who, for all intents and purposes are adults, but realistically haven't been for very long. Experience actually matters here, and I'm not sure that I'm fine with handing this level of it to, if you insist, amateur adults. It's one thing to give them a license at 16, it's another to hand them information that, in the wrong hands, can destabilize the world order, just five short years later.
Why not give him the Presidency while we're at it!
Except that's the exact argument that you're making. If he's incapable of judgment due to his age, then he also can't be held responsible for his actions due to his age. He's either an adult or he isn't, you can't have it both ways.
Also, and i can't believe this needs to be said, but holding an adult responsible for his actions is not the same as endorsing him for president.
Weird, there is a hard age requirement for the job... not for no reason. It's because the level of responsibility is unbecoming for anyone younger. If he's incapable of judgement due to his age, that doesn't mean he can't be held responsible for his actions, only that the level at which you can punish him is diminished, due to the fact that those who should have known better chose not to exercise this caution. Basically it means that responsibility for the failure should be shared.
Kids are regularly held responsible for their actions even though we know that they lack the proper judgement. Hence why things don't end up in court... usually. It's also why we have a separate court. Not every 21 year old is equal in competency, and when you compare them to, say, 29 year old's, you see a significant difference in the measure of responsibility you can place in them. But sure, lets just keep giving these passes to these amateur adults. Let them learn the hard way not to mess with national security! Unfortunate for us that it's actually important to the world when one of these "adults" screws up.
In this context, I think it’s shorthand for “acting like a child”
My father played in a band with Alan Greenspan..... and wait for it, Leonard Garment (Nixon's lawyer).
Finally!
Was starting to have withdrawal symptoms. Personal problem
If you start experiencing severe TFC withdrawal syndrome, consider listening to The Reason Roundtable. It's not going to get you right, but it'll at least take the edge off. It's the Tylenol 3 you pop when you run out of Percocet.
Matt’s flair for compound mixed metaphors really hits its stride on the Roundtable.
Suderman's probably just alcohol: my go-to sedative.
Two of them wearing shorts, but it wasn't clarified if they were wearing bike shorts because they want to look shady.
Don’t forget Kmele’s bewitching pre-torn pants 👖
When I saw that Justin Pearson video, I thought my body was going to turn in on itself and disappear in a black hole of secondary embarrassment.
I’m from Nashville, and it’s depressing how much my TN friends are eating up the “Tennessee 3” stuff. I was a legislative intern in Nashville during college--even we were expected to know the rules of decorum. OF COURSE these bozos knew what they were doing. 🙄
Why didn’t the white woman stand in solidarity and accept the same punishment? Why did she try to distinguish herself as “not as bad” as the other two? It’s so infuriating that she did what she could to avoid expulsion, and, having done so, now claims that it was a race-based expulsion.
Makes one wonder how much of it was all pre-planned theatre 🎭
There is a professional wrestling element to cable news (and sports opinion shows too). Just listen to the wording. They provide the equivalent to audience prompts. The whole thing would be more honest, if the lines were delivered by the Ultimate Warrior or Macho Man Randy Savage (who has passed away). Then, you’d know exactly what you were watching.
I was going to say, I WISH cable news leaned into their melodramatic pro wrestling tendencies. More nonsensical honorific titles for more politicians, better clothes, and 100% increase in frog splashes off the top ropewould make me consider watching MSNBC.
Cable news would be infinitely more entertaining in that format.
*who have passed away
RIP Warrior
👌👌
Why does a junior officer in the Massachusetts Air National Guard have access to hundreds of hard-copy pages of highly classified documents? This isn't a rhetorical question -- I'd love for someone who is familiar with the military/IC to explain this to me. What ever happened to "need to know"?
TL;DR: "Top secret" doesn't mean "top secret", it's a pretty standard clearance level required for a whole bunch of jobs. You can find a list of Air Force jobs requiring TS here. https://foreverwingman.com/air-force-career-fields-requiring-top-secret/
I believe he's actually an E-3, which basically just means he's put in a year as an enlisted. You can also enlist directly as an E-3 if you have a certain number of college credits.
I wouldn't consider everything classified as "top secret" as "highly classified" though. Entire job categories, such as intelligence, obviously, require top secret clearance. I believe he worked cyber defense, which would also require that.
Access to "top secret" clearance just means you've passed the SSBI, which is a fairly thorough background check. They'll look into criminal background as well as mental health and might reach out to interview a few family members, employers and the like. This is pretty routine. Over a million people have TS.
What we think of as "top secret" is probably closer to "SCI (Special Compartmented Information). SCI qualification gives access to the data the government doesn't need to distribute broadly for low level analysis and it would pose a higher security risk if it were leaked. This is closer to the "need to know" you're talking about.
I wonder also, is there a bit of 9/11 hangover, in that there was a lot of criticism of the various TLA government security apparatus that too much information was over classified, and they made information sharing too difficult? So maybe there’s a stew of giving more people more access to more documents that may be muddled or inappropriate?
I have to say a friend of mine was in the room with tucker and trump shooting that interview at mar a lago 😂😂😂 i gotta see what he says about your segment
Also I would like to know where the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial School For Preacher Talkin' is and how much tuition costs, because clearly Pearson got his money's worth
😂😂
The bad news is that when you tell people there's no evidence this TN thing has anything to do with race, it's just proof of how blind you are to the plight of people of color. I just found this out firsthand prior to listening to this episode 🙄
A good rule of thumb for navigating this sort of issue: if a bad thing happens to a non-white person, it's due to their race.
It's obviously not a very good rule of thumb if you're actually trying to understand the issue, but as a rule of etiquette, it'll take you far.
re: mass shootings & the “backyard politics” of under enforcement of gun laws in major cities like NYC, Philly etc. great column here
A new solution for New York’s gun problems: Enforcement and punishment
by Kevin Williamson <--invite him back on pod!
https://nypost.com/2023/02/04/solution-for-new-york-gun-control-enforcement-and-punishment/
I highly recommend watching season 6 ep. 14, "The Death Camp of Tolerance".
Cartman’s reaction after the slur tunnel is priceless
One more must watch episode of South Park is Sexual Harassment Panda. S3 Ep. 6.
I love the title alone
Favorite quote from Justin Pearson's MSNBC rant, "It is no coincidence that the two youngest black lawmakers in the State of Tennessee and one of two women are on trial today! That is not accidental! This is what happens when you lose democracy". Further along, "because it's starting in Tennessee but won't end here". The reporter then asked how "painful this week has been" for Justin. Apparently he has suffered a grave injustice for being just as much of an ass clown as the Republicans he admonishes. And of course he says "white supremacy", "the status quo", and "business as usual" are the culprits, not simply him acting like a child. Truly a funny clip
Ugh. All the racist Woke conspiracy theories are so boring at this point aren’t they?
Boring is the key word.