Alright y'all, welcome back to the show, Santat War Radio, we're on chaosradioaustin.org and lrn.fm, and a few more places than that, you'll have to just hunt around.
Alright, first interview today is PunkJohnnyCash, I think, you know, for professional reasons he's got to keep his name secret, that's alright, PunkJohnnyCash is a blogger at gonzoetimes.com, think outside of government, yeah, I like that, it's more of a cage than a box, really.
This article is called, Fear and Loathing in the US Marine Corps, Part 2, Brainwashed in the Corps, and oh, I almost forgot, I want to play this clip.
Alright, that's what I know about the Marine Corps, about Marine Corps training, is the movie Full Metal Jacket, what the hell, yeah, anyway, alright, so, welcome to the show, PunkJohnnyCash, how's it going?
Oh, it's going good, going good.
Alright, so, Full Metal Jacket, that's what those of us who have never been in the Marine Corps know about being in the Marine Corps, or at least Marine Corps training, is that pretty much your experience, or throw it out?
You know, if you want to look at a film, I think that shows an accurate portrayal of what the Marine Corps is like in general, I would say Full Metal Jacket has a bit of the boot camp stuff in there, but that's all Vietnam, it's not what I'm used to, I would definitely say that Jarhead would be the thing to look at, I think that's more an accurate portrayal of what the Marine Corps was like.
Okay, yeah, that movie, Full Metal Jacket, for people who haven't seen it, the first half of the movie is basic training, and then the second half of the movie is, I guess, the war for Da Nang, basically.
Yeah, and the first half has some accuracy, I would definitely say, but, you know, this is Vietnam era, it was a different thing, it was a completely different environment, I think, in Vietnam than it was when I was in, so I think there are definitely some things that they have, but there's a lot, you know, that's very similar that happens and occurs.
And one thing, the article that you're speaking of, the brainwashing, the Corps one, was a response to a previous article where I made accusations of brainwashing, and I kind of wanted to back that up and show those areas where it occurred.
I first started noticing that after I was out of the Marine Corps, I kind of looked around and I was looking at abuse victims, women who are in domestic violence, you know, abuse situations.
My fiancée, she's a mental health therapist, and she deals with a lot of that, so I started looking at different elements there, and I started realizing, wow, it's not too far from a domestic abuse situation, and I started looking a little further, and I said, yeah, it's definitely, you know, there's an element of brainwashing that's there, strong.
Well, you know, what's funny is that as I was reading this thing, it reminded me of some audio that used to get played on Chaos Radio sometimes, which is, jeez, I hope it's supposed to be satirical and funny, but it really sounds like a credible how to make your own cult, and how to get people to do whatever you say, and what you do is you just don't let them sleep, and you don't let them eat any protein, and you make them chant things over and over again, and whatever, the leader is good, the leader is great, and all that, like Homer Simpson, and it sounds a lot like what you described basic training as being.
Yeah, and that's really the whole purpose of basic training, and in order to maintain any form of, you know, a military to begin with, you essentially need these things, you need these elements.
They did research, I believe it was the Civil War, it may have been even post that, where these men, they were finding or dying without ever shooting their guns off once.
People did not want to kill.
You have to train these people to make them killers, and that's a large part of it, and that's essentially, you know, the whole purpose of it.
You want to make people what they're not intended to be.
Well, and I think, you know, this is why we keep hearing about all this post-traumatic stress and whatever, is that ultimately, you know, mass killing is the kind of thing that regular people aren't into, and so people get broken, and, geez, the headline today is this is the worst month for army suicides, I think, ever, was one of the headlines.
Oh, yeah, and there is a decent amount of suicide, well, a decent amount, that's probably the wrong term to use, but there was a very large amount of not just suicide, but domestic violence.
When you get into something like that, you know, you're training people to dehumanize other human beings.
You're going to have human beings that are ready, willing, and capable to reach out and harm human beings, and that's just going to be, you know, an element that's going to come with that, including themselves.
Yeah, all right, well, now, maybe especially we can gear this conversation toward the young people a bit, and, you know, what they could expect were they to be so foolish as to sign up for government employment like this.
It's definitely, there is a huge culture in America that very much loves violence and loves, you know, we want to see the good guy killing, you know, even that movie that recently won the Hurt Locker was very much, you know, this is the individual, you know, hardcore military guy, and he's not afraid of anything, and that's very much what people are looking for and looking to try to mimic and create here.
It's very much a bunch of garbage, I think.
Even a lot of that, when you get into the Marine Corps, they kind of mock some of that.
It's going to change who you are, I believe, for most people.
It will definitely, and if it doesn't, then there's, I'm not sure what you want to begin with, and that's what it's intended to do.
And it's not going to do it for the positive, necessarily.
I don't believe.
It will definitely add aggression to your personhood, who you are.
When I was in, I was very aggressive out and about.
I would go out, you know, on the town, and oftentimes we would be essentially looking for a fight when we walked into any bar or anything like that.
Aggression was, you know, a way of life.
We learned how to fight each other.
I was not a grunt.
I was in the rear the whole time.
I never went to Afghanistan.
I was stuck in the middle of 29 Palms for the majority of my career, and the amount of violence that just occurs there and simply, you know, Marine to Marine or Marine to civilian was ridiculous.
People were constantly berating each other and putting each other down in a way, so it was pretty bad.
Yeah, well, so let's get back to what you're saying about the, was it your girlfriend or your wife was a mental health worker and you started noticing things out of her textbook applying to your memories of joining the Marines?
Yeah, a lot of that stuff.
Can you go through some of that for us like you do in the article here?
Yeah, a lot of that stuff I started noticing.
Some of it was reading through some of her stuff and other things that I had started to research after I started to think about hearing about how these people were, reacted to abuse and everything else, and I noticed myself reacting in certain ways.
One of the things I noticed was that, I've noticed is that I can't walk into a restaurant and I've never, I'm not seeing combat or anything like that.
I was pretty, you know, in the rear most of the time in 29 Palms and then later on, you know, stationed elsewhere.
But I still can't walk into a restaurant without being paranoid.
So I have to try to sit in the corner somewhere with my back to everything and eat so I can see everybody.
I'm kind of freaked out at this point to just eat.
Some of the things I started noticing after she started talking about some of the symptoms that were there and some of the things I talked about other people that we knew who had experienced things, you know, was how they had done those things.
I started noticing how, like I stated in the article, like let's start, they start off with the isolation.
You know, they bring all these men and women out to the middle of Paris Island.
You don't get to see people that you, you know, besides your squad, your platoon that you're training with, and even with them, you're isolated.
You don't get to talk to one another.
When that happens, it's rare and it's usually pretty much forbidden.
All your attention, and as it was stated in the article, is your monopolization of perception.
Their attention is now driven towards what they want you to perceive, see, and focus on.
So they've got you completely isolated from any other thought process, point of view, perception, anything, and you've got your mind just focused and funneled with those blinders on, on what the Marine Corps wants you to know, see, and do.
Well now, let me stop right there for a sec, because it seems to me like somebody who was, you know, wanting to kind of be determined to hang on to that little bit of themselves and their, and their own personality or whatever, that basically, the way you describe it in here anyway, is that the stress is so much that basically someone like that even would have to basically decide to just forget it.
You don't have the luxury of taking time out to be yourself for a minute and remember who you are for a minute.
You have to basically decide to completely go along with the program or you won't survive it, basically.
Oh, no doubt.
All right.
Now hold it, hold it right there.
We're going out to break.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Punk Johnny Cash.
All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.
Santa Award Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Punk Johnny Cash.
He keeps a blog over at gonzotimes.com.
This one is called Fear and Loathing in the USMC.
Oh, it's part two, Brainwashed in the USMC.
He's basically comparing being a Marine Corps recruit with being a battered wife, and this article really kind of goes through the different methods of brainwashing that they use to break you down and rebuild you as a killing machine.
Now, Punk Johnny Cash, before we went out to the break, I was kind of asking whether you thought that it was right that someone who really does have a strong personality, really wants to hold on to it and wants to not be broken down all the way, at some point just out of exhaustion has to decide to just give it up and go ahead and go along with the program 100% or else he ain't going to make it through, you know?
Oh, definitely.
I mean, you're going to have to...at some point, there's going to be some kind of give, and they think they definitely have...that's kind of hand-in-hand with the concept of the...as I spoke of in the Demonstrating Omnipotence, this concept that the Marine Corps is the all-powerful and that nothing can go against it.
And I've seen a lot of people break down, and it changes who you are.
You can retain some of that, but even when you leave boot camp and you're in the Marine Corps, when you leave the Marine Corps and you come into civilian life, you begin to notice and see things that you did not realize have been altered in your behaviors, in your speech patterns, in many things, even your eating, etc., etc., that have just drastically been altered from what they've done to you.
Yeah.
So now, let's go through the method here a little bit, the way you do in the article here.
You talk about indulgences and omnipotence, I guess you're referring to that there, enforcing trivial demands and degradation.
It really does sound like that, how to make people join your cult, or how to keep them there once they join, thing that I was talking about before.
It's a very specific program.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there's definitely that concept, and they tell you that we're going to break you down and build you back up to be a Marine, is what the concept is.
And that's what they do, they break you down.
Yeah, you say in here that the overriding lesson all the time is that you're not good enough.
Nothing about you is good enough.
You have to do the same stupid chore over and over and over again, because you suck, basically, until you finally internalize that.
And that was the repetition that they did, it was a constant, you know, everybody would be standing on line in front of their racks, and the drill instructor would say, okay, I need everybody to go put your trousers on.
All the recruits would run to the back of the racks, grab their trousers, he'd be counting down, five, four, three, two, you're done!
And everybody would stop frozen, they were not done with the task, they were no good, they were, you know, you begin to be minimized, your existence, and talk about how much of a loser you are, and how you are worthless, you are not worthy to become a Marine, so everybody rushes back to put their trousers back where they were, stands back on line.
And they would do this repetitively, until you get the concept and the idea that you cannot accomplish anything.
So that's essentially, and it happens with, you know, that's pretty much the daily routine in the boot camp, is you're told to do something, you're counted down at first, and repeatedly you are a failure at that task, we have to do it again.
And there are other forms of humiliation that go on besides that, but that's just one form.
Yeah, go ahead and elaborate.
I mean, there's many things, one thing is, you know, with the restrooms and stuff like that was one thing I mentioned, they used to make the recruits get into the good old, you know, Johnny on the spot, and everybody would stand around, you'd have to be four to a Johnny on the spot, those things are small, you'd have one guy standing in front of the toilet, so he'd be urinating, you know, he'd be standing on top of the toilet, so his, you know, genitals would essentially be at level with your face, and you would have everybody else around that, and we'd all be going at the same time, squished in, and you know, it was terrible, disgusting.
And quite often, you know, things like bathroom breaks and stuff like that were not allowed.
So you know, we'd end up having, I remember one morning, waking up, everybody'd be on the rack, scared to death, and all of a sudden you'd hear one person who'd lose it, because he's not allowed to use the head, boom, he starts urinating on the floor.
And that would, sometimes that would trigger a chain reaction where the other guy would hear it, and he would start urinating on the floor, and they'd begin to berate those guys.
So.
Wow.
And so all of this is really make, is, the purpose of this is to make you less than human, basically, or at least reduce you to, you know, a childhood state where, when you used to pee on yourself, kind of thing.
Oh yeah.
And it builds you back up.
Now I guess there's a justification here, which is that you aren't good enough to be a Marine, and that unless you're extremely well-trained, you're going to die out there in a battle.
And this is all about bringing you home in one piece, if possible, because once you sign on that dotted line, you very well, I guess, you know, this didn't work out in your case, but you very well are likely to end up in a combat situation, right?
Oh, most definitely, most definitely.
And it is an essential thing, if you're going to be doing stuff like waging wars around the world and killing people, I mean, I may not be essential, but it's pretty, until then, it's an intelligent thing to do if you want to be, you know, taking on the world.
I mean, that's the foundation of where it all starts.
I tend to be an anarchist, and, you know, that being said, I don't necessarily believe that we need to be structuring society on such a thing, you know, this is the structure of society.
Right.
Well, and see, that's the real question, right, is if we can make ourselves believe that somehow the policy is all right and all worth it as our first premise, then I guess there's, you know, purpose in this, as distasteful as it all is to, you know, individual humanity and stuff, it's still, you know, like we're saying, this will help you come home alive.
Question is, the bigger one, the premise that, you know, underlies all of this, which is, does America have any business garrisoning the planet and killing anyone who resists?
And I'm an anarchist like you, I think the answer is clearly no.
And you don't have to be an anarchist, you could be a conservative or a liberal, even, and still know that empire will destroy you, if not the people you're destroying.
Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
And as you said, you know, you have to do something like this to maintain, you know, the slaughter of other human beings, and like you said, to keep them alive, if that's even the intent half the time.
I mean, you're at this point, you're told that you are the property now of the state.
You belong to the state.
Your goal is to kill for the state.
So that's the whole single purpose of the Marine Corps, there's this concept that somehow killing other people in the Middle East is bringing us freedom of speech or something like that.
I don't know how people get to conclusions.
Interesting, but when it comes down to it, I mean, some of the people's oppositions to what I say sometimes is, well, we have to have this or you will get shot and killed.
Well, in the situation, yes, you know, we're talking about ruling the world and having that power over everybody in the world, keeping and maintaining the power of the United States Empire.
You are correct.
Now, I'm going to ask at this point, do we need to maintain the power of the state and the empire?
And is that us who maintains it?
That's not me.
I have never, you know, I've never agreed to any of that.
Well, I take that back, I agreed to quite a bit of it for quite a while, for about five years of my life.
And, you know, at this point, I wish no part of it.
So I think that really did influence my thought process and how I perceive the world.
And some people do, they enter in the Marine Corps, they have very patriotic concepts sometimes.
Some people like me went in because I wanted to go to school, I wanted to, you know, get an education, things like that.
They promised, they said, okay, I can't afford it on my own, the military can do that for me.
So I fell in for all the promises that the Marine Corps offers.
Well, you're lucky that you didn't have to go to a war and kill people and lose body parts or maybe your whole life.
Oh, no doubt.
No doubt.
I'm very thankful for that.
I tried to avoid it quite a few, as much as possible in the whole, you know, they said they started sending people out.
I started asking, you know, the Pogues people said, okay, anybody here want to go to war?
It's like, not me.
But other guys seemed to really enjoy the idea and jump at the chance.
So I was lucky there that they wanted to go over there and deal with that.
I did not.
And that's where they, you know, they bring you to that point where you want to do something like this.
You're willing to go out there and lay your life down for a piece of ribbon and a, you know, a little cloth flag if that means that your life means that much to you, you know.
And some people do.
Some people have their eyes open by, I know quite a few Marines that are very intelligent.
They don't seem to be blinded by these nationalist concepts that were drilled into their head through boot camp.
And they're very, you know, open minded.
They've seen the flaws of the state and certain concepts, et cetera, et cetera.
And they've, they are, you know, other guys tend to be a little bit more stuck with what they were taught and kind of stuck along that line.
They're not really going to get out of that.
So it really just depends on the individual.
Yeah.
Well, you know, what's interesting to me is that you'll have people kind of, they know that this is the era of the phony wars and it's all wrong and, you know, they don't want to have anything to do with it.
But then at the same time, they still go for the whole college and straighten you out and maybe you didn't have a dad.
And so this will help you grow up and be a real man.
And then you'll be able to be a helicopter mechanic, like in the commercial or whatever.
And and it's sort of like the fact that there's a war on doesn't even count.
It's so far away and so removed from it that it doesn't really register.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate these articles.
Of course, the Marine Corps trains you to kill silly and fear and loathing in the USMC.
It's at the gonzo times dot com punk Johnny Cash.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
