WHAT DO YOU MOST APPRECIATE IN AMERICA? 

Just the amount of freedom that we actually have. And it’s not just a “I can go and do this, or that” You don’t have to worry about massacres, that have been organized by secret police. I mean in Iraq, I can stick my M4 in a guy’s face, and he wouldn’t flinch. But if I even reached anywhere near my 9-millimeter there, people would cower and run away. Over there, if one of my guys pulled out his baton, it would scatter a crowd. And it didn’t make sense to me at first- but it makes perfect sense. Because in Iraq, the secret police and Saddam’s republican guard and what not, they would go out there in the middle of the night, snatch people up, and beat them to death with their pistols and batons. There were such strong marks of authority and abusive power. The corruption that people think we have here is so minimal in comparison to other countries.  I don’t mean to slight what’s going on in recent news, but it makes you very mindful of what we have. And you can be sitting at home saying “government this, and police this, and police that” If you actually went and saw some of this other stuff other people go through- you’ll be saying “we got it pretty good over here”

And on the flip side of that, it makes me look at people who are taking advantage of the system, and don’t appreciate the simple things that they have, you know? If I want to go ride my motorcycle, or just sit outside- I can do that. Something as simple as that, you can’t do over there.   You’ll come home and your just like “Wow- look at all of this stuff” and you just see so many people wasting it, and not appreciating what they have, not appreciating their family. And that’s another thing. Not just being in another country, but just being away from your family and your friends and actually being in the world. You come back and it’s just sensory overload. You’re just thinking “I could just lay in this grass for hours, and not care about anything, because no one is trying to shoot me. And if I want to go see someone, I can.” When you come back it slows life down quite a bit, in a lot of ways.

I mean, when you come back it makes you angry at how much American’s squander, and how much they waste. You see these other countries, and these children and how much they’re suffering and how much they’re going without. And you come back and you have these whiny little shits, and their weak parents, and they’re just playing video games and being fat and they’re not doing anything to really be productive- and you’re like “These people in other countries are literally squatting in shit, every day, walking in shit every day, and living in mud huts. Kids out there hustling, selling coke that they probably stole, on the side of the road, to help feed their family. And you can’t wash the dishes? I want to choke you out.” It’s terrible, and it’s aggravating in a lot of ways.