in all seriousness

I'm not a serious person, or at least I don't take myself seriously. Not anymore. I care mostly about those around me and what can affect them. What is within their scope to change and effect.
I can't do anything about getting deployed again. What I can do though, is make it as good as possible. Yes, that means video games, movies, and porn. But it also means training. The kind of training that keeps people alive, the kind that we're not getting. It is hard to do it one weekend a month, two weeks a year. Actually, it's impossible. I spent days, weeks, months doing this training and I only know (maybe) a third of what I need to know. It scares me when I think about it because I know how I'll beat myself up if something did happen. They're cocky because they got through one deployment. Yeah, I'm cocky too for thinking that I know better, but it's not that I know better but I know that I don't know better.
Things like people exercising their First Amendment right, whether I agree with what they say or not, doesn't matter as much as getting whoever is shooting at me to stop. That usually only occurs with more force. And yes, I get pissed off when people think it's more important to look pretty than to train on how to use a weapon system or a radio. "Well we're training two people how to use them." Really? Two people? Out of a couple hundred huh? Well, *bleep* happens. Chances are slim that they'll be the two people hurt, but what are the chances that they'll be the first to that weapon? Hmm. A lot less than them getting hurt, so why wouldn't it make sense to have people trained on a machine gun? A nice looking uniform isn't going to help you fire more effectively. And yeah, being told how to do something is not the same as trying to do something.
Still, when it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I'll be there holding the line. By myself if I have to.