Gretchen Bronson

Christian | Registered Nurse | Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner | Fatigue Coach | The Fatigue Resolution Founder | 25yr Logistician/Policy Expert

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@MCCCANM Here’s a toast.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

If you’ve ever spent time in Japan this wasn’t a surprise.

The Japanese people are respectful to everyone they encounter. They’re also generous as well.

[FIFA @FIFAcom]

The reason Japan fans clean the stadium after each game. Respect. 🤝🇯🇵

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@adamscrabble No rain in our neck of the woods yet.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@adamscrabble “Never bet against America”
- Adam Townsend

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

I can imagine my grandchildren and great grandchildren walking this and understanding what the GWOT was to an entire generation.

[AngryFatWhiteGuy @AngryFatYtGuy]

GWOT vets- I’m working on an alternate concept to battle this mistake.

I’m just fleshing it out, and unlike the @GWOTMF, I actually care about what you think, and frankly, I could use the help fleshing it out. We need a monument that actually tells our story. One that an eighth grader in 2126 could visit and walk away with some understanding of who we were, what we did, and why we did it. It necessarily must TELL OUR STORY.

Towards that end, I maintain the walking path concept, but one that differs greatly from the hippie donut version. I want visitors generations from now to walk a path where they trace the history of the war, told in bronze statuary vignettes, with one (or more) for each year of the war.

It, of course starts with 9/11, then progresses through Afghanistan, rising in physical elevation requiring visitors to climb a staircase up a hill to convey the uneven, mountainous terrain. The path splits in 2003, branching off and downward to Iraq, which should effect more of an urban feel, with portions even mimicking a facade of a Baghdad alleyway. Major battles will be captured. It will honor heroism, loss, defiance, and the character of those who served.

Right now it’s just an idea in my head that is fighting like a madman to get out, but my only tools are grok and runway. Anyways, here are some AI generated mock-ups for some of the vignettes I envision. More in replies along with some descriptions

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

— Will Durant (from The Story of Civilization)

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@infantrydort We lean 6-Sigma’d the hell out of everything during GWOT. Spent several yrs on the ARSTAFF/OSD as a contractor from 2004-2018. It was all about the process.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@CoffeeBlackMD @bowtiedmeathead At least it’s not Houston. 1000% more humidity than here.

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen. And what happens when society becomes overly decadent, it becomes stupid.

We don’t want to honor the fallen “symbolically”. We want to honor them literally.

Why is this such a hard concept for you to grasp? Is it not sexy enough for you?

Not cool enough for you?

If any of you are actual war veterans, then you would know that our brothers and sisters are only REALLY dead when we stop saying their names.

You don’t even start saying their names though. You don’t want to fucking say them at all.

Nobody cares about stupid “footsteps” where we can “walk beside them.”

Stop overthinking this shit. You’re just pissing us all off even more.

I’m thankful for you though. Because my living brothers and sisters haven’t been this united on something since 9/11.

Now go back to the drawing board and unite us again; THE RIGHT WAY.

This thing sucks in its current form.

I have spoken.

[SharrellAnne @SharrellAnne2]

To the Commission,

As a Gold Star spouse, I am grateful that our nation is finally building a memorial to honor those who served and sacrificed during the Global War on Terrorism. This generation answered the call after September 11th and carried the burden of nearly two decades of war. Their service deserves to be remembered.

That said, I have serious concerns about the proposed design.

When I look at the concept images, I see an abstract landscape. I see architecture, symbolism, and reflection spaces. What I do not see are the men and women who fought these wars or the names of those who never came home.

My husband, SSG Alan Shaw, was killed in Iraq in 2007. He was 31 years old. He had a name. He had a family. He had children who grew up without their father. Like thousands of others, his sacrifice was not abstract.

Nothing about the current design makes me want to take my grandchildren there to learn about their grandfather and the sacrifices made by him and thousands of others. A national memorial should do more than inspire reflection. It should teach. It should tell a story. It should ensure that future generations understand who served, who sacrificed, and what was lost.

The men and women we lost were not concepts. They were individuals with dreams, families, and futures that ended in service to this country. I believe names matter because names force us to confront the true cost of war. They transform statistics into people.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial remains one of the most powerful memorials in our nation because visitors are immediately confronted with the scale of the sacrifice through the names of the fallen. The names are not a design element. They are the memorial.

I am not opposed to symbolism or artistic expression, but I believe the Global War on Terrorism Memorial should provide direct recognition of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. If someone visits this memorial fifty years from now, they should not have to guess who it was built to honor. The memorial itself should tell that story clearly and unapologetically.

The combat fallen deserve more than an abstract representation of their sacrifice. They deserve to be remembered by name.

Respectfully,

Sharrell Shaw
Gold Star Spouse

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

Understanding Western Civilization is understanding that these were built by the same type of people.

The most righteous and terrifying force in the world is a people who understand when to pray and when to fight.

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

The more I look at this lighthearted monument idea. the more I think it accidentally captured the entire story of the Global War on Terror.

Not the war itself, but what it became.

A giant restraint stretched across open ground, another buckle fastened by people convinced that every problem can be solved by tightening the strap one more notch.

Those of us who fought that war were not fragile. We crossed oceans, climbed mountains, walked through cities filled with bombs, and carried burdens that would break most people. Yet somewhere along the way an entire generation of leaders became convinced that the greatest threat to those men was not the enemy, but risk itself.

What followed was twenty years of wrapping warriors in procedures, approvals, permissions, reviews, assessments, oversight mechanisms, and legal opinions until the institution slowly forgot the difference between protecting a force and restraining it.

Every buckle arrived with good intentions. Every layer was justified. Every restriction was sold to us as profound wisdom. Nobody noticed that the accumulation of caution was producing its own form of recklessness. We became so obsessed with preventing small failures that we lost the ability to achieve great successes.

That is the lesson staring back at me from this seemingly funny image.

Civilizations are not preserved by eliminating danger. They are preserved by producing men capable of confronting it. A people that spends enough time worshipping safety eventually begins treating courage like a pathology and initiative like a threat. The instinct for survival remains, but it becomes detached from the willingness to act.

History has never been kind to societies that make that trade.

What makes this monument joke so powerful is that it unintentionally captures the hangover of an entire era. An era spent tightening straps while the muscles beneath them slowly atrophied. An era spent managing risk while forgetting that the greatest risks are often the ones created by excessive caution.

If the Global War on Terror means anything, it should be this: never again confuse bureaucracy for strategy, process for progress, or restraint for strength.

The buckle is perfect.

Not because it honors what we were.

Because it reminds us what we became.

And it reminds us what we should never be again.

Cautious to the point of calamity.

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

I’ve never watched to a @jockowillink podcast before. So I dove into his episode 192 recently.

He started off going into this powerful monologue. Spitting absolutely warrior poet fire. Frankly I was taken aback. I mean this was POWERFUL stuff.

Then he says one line that hit me hardest:

“Eventually you and the men by your side have lived lifetimes worth of life in a matter of months. And those men, the ones that survive, become your brothers. And the ones that don’t survive, become your heroes.”

After reading a little more from the paper he was looking at, he reveals those are the words of Sean Parnell @SeanParnellASW from the book ‘Outlaw Platoon’.

Absolutely epic warrior prose.

And given the current environment where we are arguing over how to remember the GWOT, it hits harder than ever.

The ones that didn’t survive became our heroes.

We would do well to remember that and act accordingly.

All we ask from our countrymen is to be Americans worth giving the last full measure of devotion for. So that if there is no choice for us but to charge into the abyss, we do so knowing it isn’t all in vain.

And that we do it for more than because the law tells us to.

The law can compel obedience. Only love of country compels righteous sacrifice.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@CoffeeBlackMD The REWARDS of parenting

[InfantryDort @infantrydort]

GWOT veterans haven’t been this unified about something since the morning of September 12th, 2001.

The design of this monument sucks.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

Uhhh I still remember Gen Horner telling my class before we took the Oath of Office that our job was death and destruction and we needed to be ok with that to preserve our way of life. Mind you this was fall of ‘94 my senior year and the Highway of Death was still front and center in our young minds. We had a few classmates who elected to leave as a result.

Pretty sure that’s still the job of the US Military.

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

Guam had a hell of a typhoon season in ‘97 which ended with Super Typhoon Paka in December’97. I was without power for 3 months.

This year’s typhoon season kicked off early in April. El Nino’s bringing it.

[A 🌸 @AThinksAloud]

I remember the 90s Super El Niño because Chris Farley walked me through it 😂

[Iñigo San Millán @doctorinigo]

Every few months, a new therapy arrives with the same promise: activate this pathway, inhibit that enzyme, filter your blood, flood your cells with light, and the clock of aging will slow.
NAD+ precursors, senolytics, mTOR inhibitors, plasmapheresis, ozone infusions, methylene blue…
The list grows longer, the marketing grows louder, and the evidence, the actual human evidence, stays stubbornly thin.

Walk into most longevity clinics today and the experience is carefully constructed. Red light panels. Cold plunges. IV drips. Expensive diagnostics. Physicians positioned as pioneers. It looks sophisticated. It feels scientific. It costs a great deal of money….

But here is the uncomfortable question nobody in this space wants to ask: are we actually improving human longevity, or are we stacking interventions on top of a poor understanding of human physiology?

https://t.co/SQfrCsilou

[Gretchen Bronson @gebronson]

@CoffeeBlackMD This reply. 💀

https://t.co/9BG4huNbRs

[Wei Wu 吴伟 @WuWei113]

@bryan_johnson Where Hunter Biden’s cocaine on this list?