Elliot Ackerman Puns

Adam, Gina and Bryan open today’s podcast with a brief discussion about Dr. Drew’s musical background. Adam then gives an update on Brad Williams and Jim Jefferies’ recent round of golf, which leads to him discussing his own experience playing golf with Jimmy Kimmel. Later, Adam rants about a recent COVID press conference delivered by Gavin Newsom, and takes some listener calls about life in Philadelphia, Loveline memories, and defending Woody Allen. Before the break, Jeff Cesario joins the show to reminisce on his first standup appearance on Johnny Carson, and to provide a Chet Waterhouse update.

Admiral James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman join the podcast at the start of Part 2. Adam asks the Admiral and Elliot to discuss their military careers, and also talks about their new novel that imagines the origins of the next world war. Adam then plays them a clip from Tucker Carlson about the threats that China’s military poses, and they go on to discuss the realities of what a conflict between our two countries could look like. Later they talk about the new Top Gun movie, the future of our navy, and the end game for China. As the show wraps up, Gina reads news stories about the LA teachers union reaching a deal to re-open in April, the latest with Vanessa Bryant, a murder suspect accidently released from Riker’s Island that is still at large, Lady Gaga’s dognapping, and Mumford and Sons’ Winston Marshal taking time away from the band after receiving backlash from a book endorsement.

this fucking drunkard Carolla

Hi Reddit, I’m [Elliot Ackerman] (http://www.elliotackerman.com/), journalist and author of the novels Green on Blue and most recently, [DARK AT THE CROSSING] (http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535225/dark-at-the-crossing-by-elliot-ackerman/9781101947371/), out this week from Knopf. Since 2013, I’ve been living in Istanbul, covering the Syrian Civil War.

Before moving, I served as a White House Fellow in the Obama Administration. Prior to this, I served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. As a Marine Corps Special Operations Team Leader, I operated as the primary combat advisor to a 700-man Afghan commando battalion responsible for capture operations against senior Taliban leadership. I also led a 75-man platoon that aided in relief operations in post-Katrina New Orleans. I hold a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and studied literature and history at Tufts University where I graduated, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2003.

My essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone, among others, and my stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories. Ask me anything.

Website: http://www.elliotackerman.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/elliotackerman?lang=en Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8344246.Elliot_Ackerman

Proof: https://twitter.com/elliotackerman/status/824358320123297792

Thanks so much for coming to this Reddit AMA and I hope that you'll check out my novel "Dark at the Crossing"

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The novel's story is hanging on me like a depression. Everytime now I hear about Afghanistan, war in the Middle East and elsewhere, and American interests abroad, I find myself wondering how people can't see that wars are not waged to be won....they are waged as a business where people don't count.

Has anyone else had a similar reaction to the novel?

In a recent summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, the Chinese President warned his American counterpart against encouraging the independence of Taiwan (AKA the Republic of China).

Over the last year, the potential for conflict between the United States and China in the South China Sea has received growing attention, with the Economist describing the region as “the most dangerous place on Earth” for this reason. Likewise, the possibility of war appears frequently in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, and The Washington Post has reported on the popularity of the scenario amongst military planners. A war of this nature was even the subject of a recent novel co-authored by Admiral James Stavridis.

Though the United States remains the top dog in terms of global military clout, China has greatly expanded its offensive capabilities over the last decade, and recent Pentagon war games have predicted that the United States would lose such a conflict. Further, Admiral Phil Davidson (former head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command) has warned that China could attempt to take Taiwan “in this decade, in fact within the next six years.”

At the same time, many factors discourage war. The U.S. and China are both nuclear armed powers with heavily intertwined economies, making direct conflict extremely costly.

All things considered, is the United States willing and able to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion? How can the U.S and its allies (as well as Taiwan itself) best prevent and/or prepare for conflict with the PRC in the South China Sea?

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

I heard this former Marine Officer in an interview about war and reintegration into society, and his words rang true to me and helped adjust my perspective on my own sense of being rudderless after injury and ETS (ETAS for you Navy cats).

I hope it helps. A hyperlink to the article is at the bottom.

>On struggling to find meaning and purpose outside of war:

>>I think that ... for any person to be happy, they have to have a sense of purpose, right? ... Well, when you go to war at a relatively young age, I would argue you sort of develop a kind of dysfunctional relationship with purpose.

>>So you're in your late teens, early 20s, and... you have this, at least at the tactical level, like a pretty clear mission, and you are trying to accomplish that mission with a group of people who are probably going to wind up being some of the very best friends you've ever had in your life.

>>So if purpose is this drug that induces happiness, [then] at a very young age, you are, like, freebasing the crystal meth of purpose. There is nothing more intense than this sense of purpose that you're having every day. And you do that for a while, and you go back to these wars and you fortify those friendships.

>>But at a certain point, the war ends for you, and you come home. And when you come home, years later, you have to find your happiness, you have to repurpose yourself. And so you look out there, you look around, and ...[w]hatever you're going to do, you're going to repurpose yourself. And when you look at those options, if you've been, again, doing this crystal meth of purpose, well, none of those [options] are that intense. It's sort of more like the Coors Light of purpose. And you realize that you're going to spend the rest of your life sitting on your front porch, drinking Coors Light. And a certain depression sets in. People talk a lot about PTSD, and there's a type that people who suffer really intense flashbacks and nightmares, and that's a very real thing. So what I'm saying is not to be dismissive of that, but there is this other type of PTSD that I would kind of correlate with just this, this purposelessness, this inability to find meaning outside of the war.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/11/1054655268/former-marine-elliot-ackerman-veterans-day

A lot of contemporary media depicting a future conflict with China seem to all have this idea that once a war starts, the People’s Republic of China would somehow shut down all the F-35s (along with comms and the power grid) using a back door they have in the electronics. Books like 2034 by Elliot Ackerman and The Ghost Fleet by Singer and Cole both have this as a major plot point

I understand a lot of this is a warning tale about over-reliance on technology, or straight up F-35 hate. But how realistic is this? Is the concept of hacking high-tech aircraft from far away something even based on reality? If not, where do all these people get that idea?

Link: https://adamcarolla.com/jeff-cesario-admiral-james-stavridis-elliot-ackerman/

Description:

Adam, Gina and Bryan open today’s podcast with a brief discussion about Dr. Drew’s musical background. Adam then gives an update on Brad Williams and Jim Jefferies’ recent round of golf, which leads to him discussing his own experience playing golf with Jimmy Kimmel. Later, Adam rants about a recent COVID press conference delivered by Gavin Newsom, and takes some listener calls about life in Philadelphia, Loveline memories, and defending Woody Allen. Before the break, Jeff Cesario joins the show to reminisce on his first standup appearance on Johnny Carson, and to provide a Chet Waterhouse update.

Admiral James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman join the podcast at the start of Part 2. Adam asks the Admiral and Elliot to discuss their military careers, and also talks about their new novel that imagines the origins of the next world war. Adam then plays them a clip from Tucker Carlson about the threats that China’s military poses, and they go on to discuss the realities of what a conflict between our two countries could look like. Later they talk about the new Top Gun movie, the future of our navy, and the end game for China. As the show wraps up, Gina reads news stories about the LA teachers union reaching a deal to re-open in April, the latest with Vanessa Bryant, a murder suspect accidently released from Riker’s Island that is still at large, Lady Gaga’s dognapping, and Mumford and Sons’ Winston Marshal taking time away from the band after receiving backlash from a book endorsement.

Get your copy of ‘2034: A Novel of the Next World War’, available now on Amazon.

Also subscribe to ‘Play with Pain’, visit http://jeffcesario.com, and follow Jeff on Twitter @RealJeffCesario.

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