America doesnt have an immigration problem we have an integration problem.

Im a student of History and if you look back at the Roman Empire what allowed it to last 1000 years is when they conquered a people they fully integrated them into Rome and with it all the benefits of the Empire. Art, Literature, Aqueducts, Coliseums, law and order. The newly conquered peoples learned the language and adapted the culture. Ultimately what crippled Rome was the loss of identity and a weakening from within. Where provincial loyalties trumped that of Roman loyalties (that and the Germans wiping out 3 legions in the Black Forest who were led by a former Roman Mercenary).

The reason why I flipped back in time was to give perspective on today. I have no problem with immigrants coming across our border wether they are 15 or 50 but if our culture is to survive they need to adapt our language and ideals.

The great thing about America is it big enough to fit everyone and our ideals are pliable to accommodate different beliefs and values. The problem is the myth of equality. People didnt leave their homes thousands of miles away because they wanted shit to be the same. They left because it sucked and they wanted opportunities for themselves and their children. For America to subsidize people who do not integrate it is building a house divided. The harder immigrants cling to their language and culture the easier it is for their children to be marginalized and stepped on.

Some of the greatest American Patriots I have ever met were Brown, played soccer and spoke English with an accent and the biggest Douche bag anti-Americans I have ever met are affluent white kids who vote Democrat.

One thing that is unique to America is our ability to adapt elements of the different cultures who come here for the delicious taste of freedom pie wether its apple pie, churrios or stroodle. Our freedom to choose what we eat, think or believe is a beacon to the rest of the world that E Pluribus Unum is just as true today as it was 238 years ago.

To be an American has nothing to do with your race, religion or where you are from. To be an American is a mindset that explores and pushes humanity to the next level from the deepest sea to the farthest galaxy. In my opinion Americans are born in every country around the world. Its whether or not they find their way home.
#PatrioticAsFuck #SemperAmerica #ApplePieAndBaseball #SoccerAndChurrios

*Caution* If you have a weak stomach you probably dont want to read about mine.

I was on post when the Afghan Army yelled over to us to ask if we could give them coffee. H— jumps up and wants to make a trade for Naswar. Ive heard about this shit from Steve on the last contract Im not sure if it was the same thing for sure but I figured Id give it a ride. I hadn’t dipped in about 45 days but I figured how could I pass on a local experience. H— puts it in a cup and I look down at it. It resembles brown cigarette ash. I ask do I pinch it in and he instructs me to hold my lip out and let it fall into place and pack it down with my tongue. As I hold the cup up to my mouth the smell was awful and hard to place but lets just sum it up as something I should not allow to have contact with my body. It slides down the cup and into my lip I pack it in and it instantly starts to burn my lip. A searing feeling almost as if the ash was parasitic size razor blades. I sit back down and Im initially disappointed with the amount I have but that changes within the next 2 min. I feel a slight buzz that slows my thinking and speech. I try to reengage in conversation and find my faculties are are impaired to the point of omitting words and really trying to focus on what I have to say. The buzz spreads to the rest of my body and I am starting to enjoy this local take on Copenhagen. I check the time and its almost time to move… To the bathroom. I get steps away from the door before I losing everything in my stomach not once not twice but 3 times. I take whats remaining in my lip and curse myself for putting that god forsaken poison in my mouth. Then I lumber over to grab a couple of water bottles and dilute my mess hoping no one will notice but of course that is a vain desire. The men I work with smell weakness and wont let anything go without rubbing your face in the mess. One positive take away from this whole experience is that it reminded me of how clean ive been running my machine and how my body responded to something unhealthy. Really makes me question all the unhealthy choices Im about to make once I get back to America.#AllTheDranks

Id like to imagine myself continuing on this path of physical health but when I only get so many days of freedom and such a limited time with those that matter. I live life in a way that the only chute I have is for riding riding back to start and once there I make that long climb up the ladder so I can make it to the top. But what waits for me there? What can I consider a win that will allow me to put away this game that gives me such extreme highs and lows. I feel its the only game I know and anything else will drive me to find the same outcome. Do I only know one game but will just call it by several names. I guess Im just looking for sympathy for the devil and everything I do is just apples to apples.

“Its funny while I was in the Marines I dreamed of getting out so I could “Start my Life” Now that Im out I realized all I did was end it.”

With the 10 Year Anniversary of Phantom Fury and the Marine Corps 239th Birthday to celebrate this 10 November 2014. I found myself watching moto video’s on youtube about 1st and 2nd Recon. I was left thinking about how Ill never be that cool again. The only thing cool about my current job is the paycheck. It was sobering to watch that shit and in all truth it just made me hungry. I wanted to be locked in I wanted to fight but not for my country or even my brothers in arms. I just wanted to fight the enemy and go to Valhalla. I feel like I pushed fast forward on life and now Im stuck in slow motion praying Im given the opportunity to hit rewind. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself at the time the main reason I took my current job was so I could go to Afghanistan. I had thought that what I wanted was a safe job where I could make money and prepare for a transition back to a family man. Ive come to realize being armed in Afghanistan with no bad buys to engage stirs a hunger inside me and Im looking to eat.

Was I born this way #LadyGaGa or was this created? I always remember wanting to be in the military but Ive tasted a life without violence in San Francisco and it was good. If I had never of joined the Marine Corps would I have this hunger or would it have consumed me back in America for not having served. If I truly was born this way it gives me hope to know that different types of people #Jung make up a functional healthy society. If that is the case and we are predestined to fill these roles wether it be hippy artists or Marine respecting the different types of people will allow a society to function in a healthy way. So one shouldn’t hate a cop for his/her love of law and strict adherence/enforcement of the rules. Just like I cant help thinking some rules are meant to be broken. As long as all of us are allowed to have the freedom to exist and be ourselves gives balance to the whole. Otherwise look at nations where that balance is to one-sided they are dysfunctional and oppressive. Much like how families are dysfunctional if the members are locked into very specific roles. #Hero #Rebel #Ghost

All I know is that thank god for the terrorist otherwise what would we do with the monsters we send to go kill them.

Happy Birthday Marines and Semper Fidelis

I spoke to my brother today as he is settling into his new life in CA and he had quite an experience to say the least. He went to the Doctors for a skin rash that had been bothering him and it turned out that his previous doctor had misdiagnosed his condition. No Worries he gets a cream and the rash should be gone in 48 hours if not come back get some more. My brother as you can imagine was a little upset about his previous Doctors mistake and that he had to deal with a month of irritation due to incompetence. As he sat brooding waiting on his cream he got a good dose of perspective because in the same room he overheard a young man about his age (early 20’s) getting diagnosed with HIV. Which he received when he was raped in Jail a few months prior. (sentenced for violation of probation) The young man pled with the doctor to give him Drugs so that he could die.

“Ill never have kids.”
“My life is over.”
“People die everyday please just give me something so I can die.”

On Nov 2nd a young lady named Brittany Maynard decided to take her own life because she was diagnosed with terminal Brain Cancer. Brittany did not want her quality of life to slowly wane down and her final days to be spent in embarrassment and agony. Her final act of living was to “die with dignity” at her own hand by drugs given to her by her doctor.

I recognize the situation is not the same and people can take anti-virals and make life choices that will allow them to live very long and healthy lives. #MagicJohnson Where as Brittany had a much shorter timeline but one could make the argument that the psychologic damage is a suffering that cant be compared. With that said I have a friend who has been living with HIV for 10 years and is healthy and happy but that is his choice on how he wants to live and see the world. Since this other young man choices to see the world differently should he have the right to “Die with Dignity.”

I now would like to pose a couple questions. Would you support this young man and his desire to end his life with Doctor/Drug assisted suicide? Do you feel Mrs. Maynard had people like this young man in mind when she decided to fight for the right to “Die with Dignity”?

In closing I would like to pray for peace and comfort for all people who are facing untold suffering and feel hopeless or lost.

A friend of mine who sits on the left side of the aisle politically speaking (it is good to have friends with different political views and opinions because you have to evaluate your stance and potentially grow.) told me she shared some of my work with a kindred soul who was mortified by some of the things that she read.- “continue to fuck the enemy in a way I am only allowed to remember!!!!” I was asked “does that mean you wish you could still kill people?” The problem I feel is a miss communication between myself and the reader.

The true nature of my articles (as a body of work) is i am trying to express my view’s and experience’s to people so I can be understood and seen as human. In turn that help’s make me feel “normal”. The last thing I would want to do is instill hate or glorify the killing of innocence. To me the “enemy” are the people who wish to do harm to my friends, family and people anywhere who cant defend themselves. I only lose sleep on the enemy I didnt pull the trigger on due to limitations imposed by my superiors and of course myself. (Knowing someone is dirty but is not doing something wrong at that time.) For professional warriors it is not as easy to take a life as one may think. For a coward kills out of fear a professional kills out of code. It is never the Kung Fu master who kills someone in the street it is the skinny guy with the 38. special in his pocket who will hide behind his weapon.

My friend said “people know combat is a unique life changing experience that “normal” people will never see and want to know what its like.” My response “It is a a life altering event that there is no return from. adrenaline aside the scars and your perception of reality are forever skewed.” When you live at the speed of light that carries over into every other spectrum of life. The only people I can truly relate to are my brothers in arms because they have all the same addictions and social dysfunctions as myself.

When I spoke of the nymphomaniac and the blood thirsty war veteran. I was not glorifying either. “I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.”-Robert E. Lee. Those people are sick and without balance in their life. They are consumed with their perspective addictions and will ultimately destroy themselves.

To me the truest enemy to myself and brothers are the politicians who are so quick to send us to war. (“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.-Voltaire”.) War has taken from me more than it could ever give but what it has given in brotherhood can not be measured. So when I say “To my RECON brothers continue to maintain the tremedous reputation of those who went before you and continue to fuck the enemy in a way I am only allowed to remember!!!!” What I am trying to do is encourage my brothers as well tell them I miss living with them at the speed of light. My true feelings about war are best summed up by Robert E. Lee when he said ” It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

Beaux

SEX and COMBAT are both physical acts of love.

Yeah, I said it. A physical act of love. In the warrior culture to say I never had the honor of serving with him in combat is saying I never got the opportunity to physically express my love for my brother. For in combat you truly see that affirmation of love in the willingness to give yourself for your brothers because “Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (JOHN 15:13)

The best lovers and warriors are truly selfless and a bit crazy. A nymphomaniac and a bloodthirsty veteran are one in the same because sex\combat becomes so desensitized that they need some next-level craziness to get off and there is no such thing as enough. For the rush you receive before a shot is fired is far more exhilarating then release. It’s the unknowingness of whether or not it will go down and once it starts you can get lost in the moment and it can become mechanical.(to me sliding off panty’s is like watching someone emplace an “IED” Improvised Explosive Device) Then finally after its all said and done no one likes the cleanup either mess.

The battlefield or the cause is irrelevant to the warrior but the love is real. (In all my years of service. I never served one day for the US government. I protected the constitution, the citizens of the United States and my brothers in arms but sadly I feel as though all 3 were exploited by the former.) Cowardliness in battle is as despicable as adultery because at its core you are being selfish. You care more for your own selfish desires (i.e your life or release) than that of your team/mate and when one is found out it is the betrayal and the lies that hurt more than anything else because all the love and care that was put forth was taken for granted and spat upon. Then from that moment on your brotherhood or relationship will be seen as a failed fraud from an outsider’s perspective and to the warrior, a stain on their honor is the greatest insult of all.

Ahhh but when the sex is good or the mission successful. You’re just a couple of sweaty people breathing heavy and sharing a smoke. Then you try to explain your experience’s with your friends who just don’t know but have only fantasized or played Video games it’s like talking to a virgin about sex.

To my RECON brothers continue to maintain the tremendous reputation of those who went before you and continue to fuck the enemy in a way I am only allowed to remember!!!!

In the end SEX without love is just fucking and COMBAT without love is just violence.

David “Beaux” Engelbert 

Ive come along way stamping out my own personal preconceived notions about people but I would be lying if I were to say I wasn’t prejudice. I prejudge people everyday and I know in doing so I am not giving human being’s an equal chance. I also know I have no intention of changing nor do I think I can but hey at least I’m honest.

Now for the fun part the people who am I judging the short answer is everyone and I do it without thinking and so do you. Physical health, car, fashion sense, manners, intelligence, teeth, smell/BO, political preference, ethnicity, profession, socio-economic background, education, religion, voice, motivation, region (city, state, part of the country) they are from, cleanliness, breath, tattoos, sexual preference, diction, gate, looks, how well they can hold their alcohol and so much more. Every time I look at someone all these things compute inside my head on how to interact with this person before I even say hello. Is that a bad thing? It can be when you make sweeping generalization’s that are outside of their control but when judging someone as a matter of personal safety I feel its very healthy and we use these prejudices to navigate ourselves through life from avoiding danger to attracting friends. I mean who would want to be friends with someone in a Raiders Jersey? #AlbertPolay #ThisGuy

How you look and present yourself to the world really shapes the world you live in. I remember walking through the streets of Georgetown with my friend Phil who was dressed like a young professional and all of a sudden we were stopped by police. I forgot to mention I was wearing a Rad gnome “ugly” sweater courteous of Toddland.com #StayRad with a MoHawk and Thor Life shaved into the side of my head. The cop literally threatened to arrest me for J-walking and he didn’t even look at Phil. Had I not switched to confused German tourist who knows how that could have ended up.

Dressing like a hooligan or a round about douche aside. Your face, body and how you present yourself are a perceived perception of your character. Is it fair? no, but neither is life. When people have health problems that are generally equated to long time abuse is when you start to really limit your options. You can only hide a meth addiction for about a week before everybody knows. Even if you haven’t told a soul your jack-0-latern smile is telling the world.

I mention all this because success is a conscious decision you make everyday and to borrow from my own personal experience more doors open when I am in good shape, maintain excellent hygiene and present myself well. “A man doesn’t have to be well dressed for the job but well presented.”-Nick Naylor #Nails. Look at your interactions with strangers and if you don’t like how others treat you be a little more modest or less threatening when you go out. Don’t be stopped on the street for looking like an asshole and if you are learn a little German or just be hella polite. Cops like it when your polite.