Life after door kicking.

Author: lifeafterdoorkicking

  • From Duty to Dad: Navigating Fatherhood After War

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    I never really knew my dad.If you added up all the time I spent with him, it wouldn’t make six months. The first time I saw him, I was around eight, and I don’t remember doing much with him. The next time was as a preteen, and that round didn’t do me any favors —…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • A Different Assignment – A Different Fate

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    Today marks a day I can never forget. Twenty three years ago, the squad I was in before we deployed, hit an AT mine. I was moved to weapons squad as soon as I got in country. I’ve carried the weight of that randomness, the loss of my team, and the disillusionment that followed. I…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • Enriching Your Conqueror : The Cost of Confusing Ideology for Strategy

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    If Russia is the existential threat European leaders claim it is, then their behavior makes no sense. For over a decade they’ve warned of Russian aggression while funding it through energy dependence, under investing in their own defense, and redirecting moral outrage toward the one alliance that actually deters Moscow. This isn’t about ideology or…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • Weighted Sunrise

    Do you need a break? From what? I could use a break from pain that doesn’t risk addiction. It would be nice to wake up and not feel my back. Not feel my nerve-damaged leg. Not feel the grinding of joints that have run out of cartilage. Not feel the scrape of bone on bone.But…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • Argentina’s Libertarian Experiment: A Real-World Trial

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    Commentators predicted mass suffering.Headlines promised chaos. As Javier Milei rose to power, I started observing something rare: my political ideology undergoing a real-world trial, not in a think tank or a debate hall, but in a country already brought to its knees by decades of bad policy. To the uninitiated, what followed seemed unexpected. After…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • You Can’t Violate the Constitution and Then Hide Behind It

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    There’s a dangerous sleight of hand happening in public discourse: people violate the Constitution, trample the rights of others, and when consequences follow, they suddenly cloak themselves in constitutional language and call it “protest.” That isn’t principled dissent. It’s bad faith.The Constitution is not a prop. It’s a contract. And contracts don’t work if one…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • On Wishing Power To the Persians

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    I’m not a foreign policy expert, and I don’t pretend to have answers here. I’m very aware that situations like this are complex, and that well-intentioned ideas can have unintended consequences. What follows isn’t a proposal so much as a set of thoughts I’m still turning over.Watching what’s happening in Iran has been unsettling. From…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • Hindsight, Tribalism, and the Refusal to Deal With Reality

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    Every time a federal enforcement shooting happens, the same pattern emerges: facts secondary, certainty instant, outrage filling the vacuum before investigations begin. Within hours, the story is fixed: enforcement is illegitimate, resistance is innocent, and context is optional.The recent immigration incidents aren’t notable for simplicity — they’re notable for how quickly the public abandons reality…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking

  • Power Is, Was, And Will Always Be the Rule

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    Every time a major power acts decisively, someone warns that “a dangerous precedent has been set.” That assumes history was ever governed by precedent rather than permission. It wasn’t. States have always done what they could get away with. What changes is only who notices.What feels destabilizing today is the recognition of a truth we…

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    lifeafterdoorkicking