 Good day, everybody. On behalf of Harvard Law School, the Veterans Legal Clinic of the Wilmar Hale Legal Services Center, the Law School's Armed Forces Association, and DAV, I'm very delighted to welcome you to this year's convening of the DAV Distinguished Speaker Series. I'm Daniel Nagan, Director of the Veterans Legal Clinic and the Legal Services Center, and we have a simply amazing program today. We're honored to welcome award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker, Sebastian Younger and other distinguished discussants to address a too often unspoken, unexamined, but pernicious reality in modern America, what is often called the military civilian divide. Before we turn to this urgent topic, a few notes about our closed captioning option today to ensure that all our attendees are able to access today's content. Closed captioning is available during today's discussion. To enable this feature, click on Close Caption on the bar at the bottom of the webinar window. You can also hide the captions by clicking this button. To change the size of the captions, click the arrow next to Close Caption and select Subtitle Settings. A new window will open where you can move the slider to increase or decrease the size of the captions on screen. If you have any technical issues or concerns during today's discussion, please submit them via the chat. And then we also have a Q&A button on the webinar so that you can submit substantive questions and comments as our discussion unfolds, and it may be that we can share some of those questions with our distinguished guests today. So let me offer just a few introductory comments before I turn it over to our distinguished guests. First, we're profoundly indebted to DAV for its sponsorship of the Speaker Series and also for its extraordinarily generous support of and partnership with the Veterans Legal Clinic. And that partnership has so many dimensions. This event is just one of them. DAV, with its one million strong membership, is an inspiring example to us and to so many of veteran community building and empowerment, but also the capacity and the enthusiasm for connecting veterans to the rest of society and society to veterans. And we could not be more honored to collaborate with DAV. Today's event marks the ninth annual convening of the DAV Speaker Series at Harvard Law School. And the goal of the series is to bring together important leaders and advocates to shine a spotlight on the unmet needs of veterans and disabled veterans and society at large. And the theme of today's discussion in our lineup of esteemed speakers more than fulfills this goal. For those who don't know, the Veterans Legal Clinic is part of the Legal Service Center of Harvard Law School. In addition to the Veterans Legal Clinic, the center is home to five other practice clinics consumer law, housing law, family law, domestic violence, tax law and LGBTQ plus rights. The center is a major part of Harvard Law School's clinical program. We teach and mentor law students in our practice areas and leverage our community based location in the city of Boston to reach thousands of low income clients every year and provide community members with essential legal services. As to the Veterans Legal Clinic, we focus our work on advocating for low income disabled veterans and their family members in a range of veterans and military matters. And this is all made possible by DAV's generous support. The clinic represents veterans of all generations and combines individual client advocacy with initiatives that seek to reform the systems that serve the veterans community. Our practice areas span everything from estate planning and social security disability appeals to discharge upgrades before Department of Defense tribunals and practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for veterans claims. Among our many priority areas, we advocate for veterans who unjustly received less than honorable discharges. In many of those instances, it's unrecognized mental health conditions from combat trauma or in some cases military sexual trauma that can lead to life-altering challenges where advocacy can be essential to pursuing justice and stability for our clients. To learn more about our work in the center, we invite you to visit our website, LegalServicesCenter.org. I'm very pleased to now pass the baton to DAV's Brian Buckwalter, who will carry our conversation forward. Brian is a senior communications associate with DAV. He started this position in 2001 after retiring as a master sergeant from his 20-year career in the Marine Corps. Brian joined the Marines in 2001. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with American Forces Network and in 2011 with the first Marine Expeditionary Force. Brian's also served as a producer, anchor, and recorder for the Department of Defense. Brian, I'm very pleased to introduce you and to pass the discussion to you and our distinguished guests. Thank you very much, Daniel. It's a privilege to share the virtual stage with you and with our other guests today. DAV was founded in 1920 by Robert S. Marx, a lawyer who joined the Army a month after the United States entered World War I. He returned two years later as a decorated war hero. Soon after his return, he was elected as a Cincinnati Superior Court judge. He was a popular figure in Cincinnati and on Christmas Day in 1919 was hosting a meal for other veterans at a downtown hotel. Most of these men were recovering from their injuries and receiving vocational training at the nearby Ohio Mechanics Institute. During their meal, the conversation turned into an impassioned discussion about the current state of veteran services at the time. The nation, which was thrust into the war late, was not prepared to handle the care and needs of returning service members, some returning with a degree in severity of injuries never seen before. And there was no one government agency like today's Department of Veterans Affairs that claimed overall responsibility for veterans. For those veterans facing the challenges of recovery after returning from war, what came out of that Christmas Day conversation was an agreement to seriously consider forming a group to unify the voice of disabled veterans in the halls of government. Judge Marx said about the idea, we had a common experience which bound us together and we ought to continue through an organization of our own, an organization of us, bias and for us. More than a century later, DAV is still at it. At more than a million members strong, we are that voice for veterans and we work every day to keep our promise to them, to restore and make whole those forever changed by service. We're proud of that mission and our accomplishments on behalf of veterans. Today though, I want to focus in on something that I just quoted Judge Marx saying. We had a common experience which bound us together. It speaks to a deep connection between a group of people that when leveraged can have a profound impact on that group. In the context he was speaking about, it was a way to take the adversity that comes with being wounded in war and channeling it for a positive purpose. For a long time in the United States, war was actually a bonding experience for the entire society. Even if you didn't serve, you knew someone who did or you found yourself making sacrifices to support that effort. Even if you are a military age male, the reality of being called to service wasn't far from your mind. Not so much anymore. The connection between those who've served and those who haven't has faded. This has become known as the military civilian divide and the gap is widening. To talk more about this, I'm honored to introduce Sebastian Younger. Sebastian is the number one New York Times bestselling author of several books including The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe and Freedom. As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Sebastian is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film Restrepo, a feature-length documentary co-directed with Tim Heatherington, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Restrepo chronicled the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Sebastian and Tim are both the 2011 recipients of DAV's Bugle Award. This award recognizes the outstanding contributions of members of the media in support of disabled veterans. Sadly, this was a posh and dishonor for Tim who was killed on April 11th, 2011 while covering the Libyan Civil War. Sebastian is also the founder and director of Vets Town Hall. Sebastian, thank you so much for joining us today. It's my pleasure. I want to jump right into this conversation. I did talk a little bit about it, but I want to first define what we mean when we say the military civilian divide. I touch on it briefly, but I wanted to get your thoughts on what we're talking about here. Yeah, and I have to apologize. I'm just recovering from COVID, so if I start coughing for a moment, that's why. Yeah, I mean, we're a modern complex nation, and politically, socially, economically, it sort of behooves any administration to try to insulate the American population at home from the effects of war and the consequences of war, which it has some advantages, right? The downside is that it can look like the nation is sort of going about it sort of merry way while a very small proportionally, very small number of people in the military service are fighting and paying enormous costs overseas. I think the question is, we probably don't want a kind of widespread wartime footing where everyone in this country is making sacrifices every day. I mean, war in some ways is the purpose of it is to insulate this country from the toxic effects of the rest of the world, if need be. But on the other hand, you don't want it to be so separated that our military or men and women in uniform have the feeling that the nation doesn't even know what they're doing and doesn't care. So how do we sort of thread that needle so that there's meaningful moral and emotional connection, but the nation also can continue with daily life as it knows it, as it were. You have done a lot of writing, though, about that sometimes these kinds of tragedies or experiences like war can have an incredible bonding experience for a community for what you call a tribe. There's historical examples you certainly mentioned in great detail, but can you share a little bit more about this, though, in the power of that bot? Yeah, so just keep in mind humans are social primates. Alone, we die immediately in nature. I mean, you drop a human being into the wilderness within a few days or a few weeks, that person is invariably dead, but we survive and we thrive in groups. And so that experience of being part of a survival group and addressing the survival needs of the group collectively is enormously empowering. It's enormously meaningful. It actually is what makes life feel meaningful in some ways. And the downside of modern society is that through technology, through industry, we have managed to solve the sort of daily survival needs of most people. And I don't know the people that grow the food that I eat. I don't know the people that built my house. None of us really are connected to any of the individuals that allow us to survive day by day. In some ways, that's an enormous blessing. But what you lose with that is a sense of vital connection to the group of people around you. And then when you are thrust into that, maybe you're in a platoon in combat, maybe you're in the Peace Corps in a small village in the developing world. Maybe your community, your coastal community was hit by a hurricane. It doesn't matter. Within hours, we are so wired to act collectively that within hours, people reorient their priorities and put the group first. And interestingly, when you set your own interests aside and prioritize the group, you would think that that would be a hard thing to do, an unpleasant thing to do. It's actually the opposite. And often people look back on these crises, whether it was a wartime experience, the blitz in London, the hurricane that hit, whatever, terrible, terrible things. Often people will look back on those times with a real nostalgia. They're not missing the fact that people died and that buildings got destroyed or whatever. But they're missing is the experience of being needed and necessary within a small, cohesive group. And that is the essence of being human. And it calls to all of us. And I think one of the problems that veterans have when they come home is they spend a year or more in the context of very, very close group needs. And then they come back to American society, which basically says, you know what, the group doesn't need you individually. We're fine. We're all a bunch of individuals. We're good. And if you have a disability, you know what? We're going to just take care of your expenses for the rest of your life. And don't worry about it. And it's a benevolent thing to do on one level, but it's psychologically disastrous on another level. Yeah, because you talk about these bonding events, having a profound impact on the overall well-being and health of the entire group. When you talk about the blitz in Great Britain in London, can you share a little bit more about that? What happened once the group started experiencing this common tragedy during that period of time? Yeah. So during the blitz, which lasted about six months, the German Air Force was bombing London and other English cities almost nightly. I mean, they lost 30,000 civilians during the blitz. America lost 3,000 civilians on 9-11, 30,000 civilians. And it was obviously enormously traumatic to people. The British government was worried that there would be mass psychiatric casualties along with the physical casualties, the medical casualties. And what they found was very interesting. It was the opposite, that when the bombings started, emissions to psych wards went down in London. And the theory is that what one British official called, I think kind of hilariously, called the chronic neurotics of peacetime, all of a sudden have a job to do. Some are driving ambulances. Some are digging people out of rubble. When you are called to act for your community, it allows many people to ignore their personal psychological struggles, which in some ways is a great blessing. And then when the blitz stopped, that's when the psychiatric casualties increased again. So what you find is that in a community under stress that's facing hardship and danger, people rally. And they rally in a way that gets them to overcome their personal issues. And it almost gives them a break from their issues. And then when things go back to, quote, normal, you suddenly see, again, the very high rates of depression and suicide and anxiety and addiction that affluent Western society is ironically known for. And in those kinds of situations, certainly aren't sustainable in perpetuity forever. That would just not be realistic to expect somebody to be able to essentially be in a tragic environment for an entire lifetime without maybe some negative consequences. Right. I mean, no one's arguing that we should be at war in order to not have a mental health crisis in this country. I mean, no one's arguing that. But it is interesting to understand how this works. It is interesting to note that when people are called to service, even if it's the flood in their hometown that got flooded during the hurricane, they are able to, it acts as a buffer against their own personal struggles. And so in understanding that, we may be able to understand another solution to mental health issues, which is that we have to foster community, try to foster community in the absence of catastrophe. Like ideally, we would exist in some kind of communal human way without having the floodwaters rising, the enemy shooting at us, et cetera. And what do you think about that though, when there's like this technology that's, you know, basically social media, this whole idea of media virtually? I mean, I know it's a little ironic that we're talking, you know, several states away, but I mean, I don't know if that's like people are trying to substitute this for what you are saying is, what you've written about is that tribes are, that's not what we're designed to do. Yeah. I mean, you know, we're animals and we're, we are, we are designed for sort of face-to-face quote, analog interaction. And social media, I think is, I really, I think it's, in some ways, I think it's a misnomer, it's misleading. I think it's sort of anti-social media, in fact. I mean, it's not that there's something inherently bad or wrong about social media interaction, except that it's known to take away from one-on-one personal interaction. And, you know, the numbers are coming in. I mean, the rates, particularly among teenagers and particularly among teenage girls, the rates of suicide, suicide attempts, depression, anxiety are skyrocketing. I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but they're absolutely catastrophic and they are thought to be closely tied to the advent, not just of social media, but social media on smartphones. When you can carry around a smartphone all day long and be basically on social media 24-7, that seems to have an extremely alienating effect on people. It deprives them of real flesh and blood relationships, you know, in the real world, in the same room as other people. And that really, really undermines emotional, psychological health, particularly with vulnerable people. And, you know, essentially, teenagers are all vulnerable. They're becoming the adults they're going to be. They're in a state of transition, a state of flux. It's extremely dangerous time for them. How about for returning service members and veterans? How are we seeing this playing out with them returning this fracturing of society in a way that we can become so engrossed in our own little world that we fail to see what's around us in that sense? We're almost isolating ourselves in public. How have you seen that maybe play out with veterans returning from home and their ability to reintegrate back into, you know, society that they've been away from for a period of time? Yeah, I mean, so, you know, depression is one component of a exposure to trauma. Of course, not all vets are traumatized. I mean, you know, maybe a third of vets were actively engaged in combat, but all veterans experienced a close communal bond with their unit. And then they are asked to give that up. And it's similar to Peace Corps volunteers who obviously were not in any combat whatsoever, not in a wartime environment, and one quarter of Peace Corps volunteers struggle with severe depression when they come back to this country, one quarter, or roughly the same percentage as veterans. So the issue with depression is that it's a protective mechanism. All of these mental health issues could be thought of in some adaptive ways in terms of our evolution. It's a protective mechanism. You withdraw to a place of low visibility and safety. The problem with social media is it gives you the illusion of having a social life, of having social interaction, but it's actually not that. And so you can be extremely isolated and have the illusion that you're not. And but you experience the consequences of isolation. And, you know, people keep saying to me, you know, I mean, so I'll just have to show this. This is my phone, right? I have a flip phone. I don't have a smartphone for some very, and I never have for some very specific reasons. But people will say, oh, come on, Sebastian, it's just the new way, you know, social media smart phones, just the new way, etc. etc. It's just just how things are done now. It's just as good, if not better. If that were true, COVID, the isolation of COVID where everyone was on social media would not have been psychologically devastating to our population in the way that it was. It would have been fine. We wouldn't have even noticed, right? But we all know what that isolation did to mental health in this country. It's because social media is not a substitute. So when you get a veteran that comes home and is stripped of the bond of their unit and is offered the sort of placebo in some ways, the placebo of social social media connection, but is allowed to sort of self isolate in their home. And maybe they're even being they can maybe they can even do this because they're getting a disability check for the depression that is then being exacerbated and entrenched by their circumstances of isolation, which are enabled by the by the disability check and their use of social media. I mean, you can see how this thing can just go around and around and around. When you do that, you were really putting someone at risk of a kind of a very dangerous isolation, maybe addiction issues, alcohol issues as a extremely dangerous place to be. I want to kind of take the flip of a look at this for a second. Talk about the isolation of maybe what happens when you return home and take a look at what you experienced. And we're going to bring in a couple other people soon. But before I do, I do want to talk and get your perspective on and to help people understand who may have never been in the military or served before, how deep that bond is when you get a group of people very close together, relying on each other for survival, quite literally what that looks like and how that played out from from your experiences. Yeah. And let me say, I mean, I was with a combat unit and they were in a lot of combat. But, you know, let me just, you know, reemphasize, you don't have to have been in combat. You could be a rear based unit that's functioning very closely to accomplish a task. You're taking meals together, you're sleeping shoulder to shoulder, you know, etc. Like that experience is the human experience in evolutionary terms. We are wired for that as a species. Add combat in there. And then it's even, then it's even more so. So as one guy, guys, Brendan Ober, who's still a close friend of mine, as he said to me at one point during the deployment that I was documenting, he said, you know, there's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other, but we all die for each other. In the civilian world, that kind of absolute bond, right, like what I will do for you doesn't depend on how I feel about you. In fact, I don't even like you very much. But we're all in the same tribe, which means that I'm absolutely committed to protecting you with my life and vice versa. The security, the emotional security of that is unbelievably profound. And then it all goes away when they come home, right? And it's extremely disorienting. And, you know, what I would say about the military, let me just wrap this up with the military civilian divide, our society is complex, it's highly technological, it's industrialized. We are not connected to virtually anything that keeps us alive. Not the guys who drill for oil that we put in our cars to drive our cars, not the people who build our houses, farm our food, nothing. It's a completely fragmented society. Vets are just one thing that our society is not connected to in a meaningful way. And that is new. I mean, until very recently, human society was a close-knit group of people where everyone knew and understood it was intimate with the other people that helped keep them, keep everyone alive. That's no longer true. It's a great liberation from the tyranny of the group. It's also there's an enormous emotional loss there. So how do we navigate that as a society where we keep the best parts and fix the broken parts? Yeah, that fraction. I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. And I'd like to try to unpack some of it at this time. I'd like to bring in two more people to this conversation and please to get their thoughts, their insights and experiences with the military civilian divide, their experiences with that. I'm pleased to introduce Robert Santiago and Phoebe Kotlikoff. Robert is a retired Navy veteran and currently serves as the City of Boston's Commissioner of Veterans Services. He is the first Puerto Rican and LGBTQ Veterans Commissioner in the city's history. Among his responsibilities, he oversees Boston's Operation Thank a Veteran, which is an outreach program that seeks to proactively connect volunteers with local veterans and their families. And his priority right now is to make his office a one stop shop for all veterans who served or have served. Phoebe is currently a second year Juris Doctor candidate at Harvard Law School. After graduating from the United States Naval Academy, she served as a submarine officer as part of the first generation of women in the Navy Silent Service. She's also the graduate of Harvard Kennedy School of Government and is currently a Navy reservist. So Robert, Phoebe, thank you so much for joining us on this conversation. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. And I'd like to continue by first getting your initial reactions to what Sebastian was talking about. Robert, I'll start with you. What are your thoughts? I think he hits a lot of notes. A tribal bond that veterans have is something that only obviously veterans know about and feel and it's a part of our life. In each and every service, we have our own different language. We have our own different monikers. But we're able to relate through the services. Just earlier today, I was on a panel for the GE Veteran Summit that they're having here in Boston. And a lot of their questions was around how do we as veterans take care of our veterans and how does that translate into the civilian community and also into the jobs working for GE? And there were a lot of great responses. A lot of it starts out with just listening, listening to the veterans, listening to what they have to say, listening to what we have to say, what our experiences are, what are we going through, what have we been through. And that's something that they found that in the civilian community, they'll listen, but they won't translate what's being said from what the veterans are saying. They don't have that empathy because was mentioned a little bit earlier about movies, these war movies. People see soldiers, sailors, Marines in these very action-packed movies, but they don't see the person behind the uniform. And that seems to be a very big problem in the civilian community. They don't see that person who's wearing the uniform. They don't know that individual's story. Whether it's in Phoebe going into the submarine world, congratulations as a sailor. I like the surface Navy better, but it's great that you're doing that. And that's also another thing in the military that we've had issues with. We've had issues with diversity and inclusion and equity. And that's something that's being discussed finally here in these type of forums, but the tribal bond is very important. My experience when I retired from the Navy back in 2008, I thought I had a good footing to join the civilian community. I was volunteering out in town. I got to know a lot of people in a lot of different organizations, but I didn't. I didn't because of that bond. All of a sudden, I lost my identity. I was a sailor in the United States Navy. I was stationed on board the USS Constitution. And as veterans, when we retire, when we leave service, and everybody who's a service member now at one point in their lives is going to return to the civilian community. And that's why this conversation is so important. These service members lose identity when they become veterans. They are no longer the staff sergeant. They are no longer the commander. So those titles become ceremonial in nature when they leave in service. So it's very important that we have this conversation and that we train and do what we can to let the civilian community know that, yes, we're veterans, but we are also human. We are also part of the community. Thank you. Yeah. And Phoebe, what about you? What are some of your initial thoughts? Thanks, Brian. And thanks so much for having me to the whole DAV and LSE team. This is such a wonderful event, especially centered on Veterans Day, which we know is coming up. It's just a really important topic and a really great event. So thank you for putting it on. And thank you for having me. I wanted to really quickly take a moment to remember Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who we lost about a week ago, beloved member of this community, the veterans community, the Harvard community, the Department of Defense community, and a person who did so much for service members, veterans, and especially women in service. So I absolutely loved everything that Sebastian had to say. And it really got me thinking a lot about the ways that those experiences map onto my experience in the Navy as a submariner. Not, you know, it's not a combat role, but there are so many parallels. And I think, you know, I just thought of a few of them as you were speaking. In the submarine community, we have a shared sense of values. We have a shared structural hierarchy. We share trust. We have shared behaviors. We have shared language. And on the submarine, you know, as you said, Sebastian, we are vitally connected to those around us. It's just the 150 of us on board making sure that the submarine is safe and that we all survive. And, you know, we do make our own food. Three meals a day are served to this crew of 150 people by the cooks on board who make up a small division. And we trust each other to safely operate this multi-billion-dollar warship while two-thirds of us are sleeping. So, you know, I think just kind of reinforcing your point that the relationships and the bonds that are formed on in a group like this, in onboard a submarine, in a group like the crew of a submarine, I think, really can't be overstated. And I do think that, again, as you said, part of what makes that experience so kind of formative is the fact that each individual is deeply needed and necessary. If I can't stand my watch, that means someone else isn't getting to sleep that day. And so I think that is just something that does not translate all the time to civilian life. And I think for most people in their professional endeavors, you know, if they tap out for the day, if they say, you know, I'm sick or I can't come in, it really doesn't have the same kind of outsized impact on the rest of, you know, their job, their people that they're working with. And I think that that's just something that's kind of totally missing. And I also think that to your point, Sebastian, about, you know, why do we find serious issues of isolation among veterans? Part of that is if you don't have anyone holding you accountable, if you aren't feeling like you, you know, owe a debt of labor to someone and you're going to let them down if you don't perform. I think that just gives people an out to kind of not do things that feel hard for them, whether that's taking a shower because they're depressed or getting out of the house or whatever the case may be. So those are kind of, you know, some of my immediate reactions. And maybe I'll just say one point on the social media aspect, because I think it's so deeply important. You know, I think the ultimate conclusion that I heard, you know, I didn't hear you say, Sebastian, but that came to my mind is that what happens on social media is that people become more extreme versions of themselves. And in many cases, I think because of the way social media works, and we all know how these algorithms feed you more of what, you know, you interact with, I think that this is certainly not exclusive to veterans and the veterans community. But I do think veterans are particularly susceptible to this. If you are isolated and you are interacting with extreme views on social media, it is very likely that you will continue to be pulled further and further into those views. And I think that that is, it's something that worries me all the time. So I'll stop there. But thanks for the great conversation. And it's really wonderful to chat. That what you just kind of said to is something that I don't think I'd necessarily thought about before either, but you're saying that like the use of social media and or ability to say an opinion without necessarily having an instant reaction coming back to you, you kind of put your thoughts out there, whether it's civilian side or veteran side, those extreme thoughts can tend to get more extreme. Is that driving a wedge in between civilians and military even further than there already is? We've already kind of identified that there's a maybe a misunderstanding between the two communities. Is that creating a further divide because we're allowed to sort of speak without any kind of repercussions or instant feedback for what we're saying? And I'll throw that out to everyone. Well, I mean, I'll just jump in briefly. You know, it's obvious to everyone, I think that the political divide in this country is approaching something that could be fatal to the nation. And one of the alarming things for the veterans that I know was seeing how many military associated people were sympathetic to the January 6th attack or even involved in it. And that really mortified a lot of the men and women in uniform that I'm personally familiar with. And I have to think that part of that is an outgrowth of exactly what Phoebe was saying. Like this sort of ideological isolation that is in a feedback loop that gets more and more extreme. And, you know, an extreme position gets mitigated by reality by meeting people with other opinions who say, hey, well, wait a minute, on the other, yeah, okay, I get what you're saying. But the other hand, how about this? That's how we all sort of mediate our opinions and our feelings when you're developing those opinions and feelings in isolation. And they're just being echoed by even more extreme versions of what you're thinking and feeling. Then you get the kind of extreme, the kind of dangerous extremes that we're starting to pop up in our society. And so, I mean, is it bad for vets? Yeah, it's terribly bad for vets. Is it bad for the country? Is it dangerous for the country? Yeah. I mean, no, we it's the United States, we're the most powerful nation in the world, the most powerful nation ever, economically, militarily, culturally, socially. No other country is going to take us down, right? We will take ourselves down. I mean, the only real threat to this nation is ourselves. And it's not going to be with bullets, it's going to be with words. And that to me ultimately, you know, is the is the that's the ultimate case against social media in isolation. Interesting. Yeah. Any other thoughts on that, Robert or Phoebe before moving on? I got to agree with Sebastian and Phoebe as well. I mean, we are our worst enemy. And that's very troubling to even, you know, ponder and think about, but, you know, unless we started working together as a country, it's not going to get any better. Yeah. So I'll go ahead. If it's okay, I'll just add one more thing, which is, you know, I think like many groups, veterans are often kind of, it's easy to view us as a monolith. We are obviously not a monolith. And it's, I think that part of exactly what Sebastian and Robert both alluded to, that I think is very important is this is why it's crucial to have veterans in positions of leadership who are outspoken on, you know, you know, the importance of maintaining a healthy democracy in America. And, and so I think, you know, I'll just cite the statistic. I think we have fewer veterans in Congress today than we have had since World War II. And I don't, I'm not, you know, saying there's necessarily, you know, a causation correlation causation there, but I do think that it is so important to have people who kind of get to carry the privilege of using the term veteran to really come out strongly on deeply divisive issues that are threatening to democracy, even if they are politically uncomfortable. You know, I want to get into trying to transition this conversation into a little bit of more of the solutions of what we can do. We've kind of identified, and I think this is a fabulous thread that we can continue to pull. I do want to make sure we leave time on about the 20, 15, 20 minutes that we have to make sure we talk about how we can come together to to kind of bridge this divide. Some interesting things and some questions that are coming through talking about just some suggestions. How do we have that conversation? How do we engage both as veterans as as civilians in creating a creating a bridge to close that gap? One thing I did want to say, though, it's kind of interesting and it's been reported on, I believe, Quill Lawrence on NPR said it too, is that the military civilian divide likely from his reporting started when the draft went away. When the nation wasn't responsible necessarily for, you know, it became an all volunteer force. You had a choice whether not you served or not, and there may have been the beginning of that divide. So, you know, now fewer than, you know, the 1% statistic of people have ever served in the military now is the one that's thrown around. But with all of that, you know, what can we start to do both on people who have served and people with the role of people who've never served? What can we start doing to bridge this gap of the military civilian divide? I think for me, as commissioner of the biggest city in Massachusetts, it's going out there, getting the word out, talking to the different civilian organizations or to the different ERGs and the different companies out there as well. Here in Boston Veterans, I'm proud to say that we just recently have a position to transition and integration advocate. And I'm happy to say and to announce that this position has been filled by an Air Force veteran. And she's going to coordinate visits to institutions, provide potential candidates, you know, with unbiased information regarding available homes, employment opportunities, and community-based services. She will also assist in participating in discharge planning once we identify those Boston veterans who are planning to get discharged from the military. So, you know, what I tell people or active duty service members, the second you decide to get out of the military, that's the time, that's the second that you must start your transition. You know, don't wait till you get your DD 214, don't wait until you get to the, it's called something else, but in my day it was called the Transition Assistance Program, the two-week program for veterans who are going to be discharged. So, she's going to be participating in that discharge planning, coordinating with other relevant agencies, but most importantly also that she's going to be working with recruiters and identify those future service members before they go into bootcamp and start that relationship at that point. This is crucial to ensuring that they know that they have a place to come to when they return home and an office that basically has their back. This is also crucial to ensure that their family members who are staying behind are also taken care of as well. So, while they are on deployment, while they are overseas or we're stationed anywhere around the country or around the world, they know that their family's back home is being taken care of. So, that's one way that I think for me here in Boston works out, but also one thing that we started last year, we started to have an Army-Navy flag football game, excuse me, and we have that game the same day as the actual Army-Navy game. This year is a second iteration of that and what we're trying to do there is invite the community to come out and watch the Army take on Navy and, of course, Navy's going to win. Yes. To meet the service members, to see who they are. We're not just about being in uniform and fighting in wars or out deployed. Again, that human aspect of who service members are I think is very important to get out there and then have conversations with these service members. One of the greatest experiences that I had in my military career was, of course, not only being stationed on board USS Constitution, the other commission warship in the world, but also it afforded me an opportunity to talk to people about what we do in the military, who I am, what are my likes. So, they were like, oh, oh, so it's getting the word out there and coming upon us as veterans to talk to those our civilian counterparts and let them know that, yeah, we served our country with pride, honor, and commitment, but right now it's time for us to have that dialogue. Yeah, that dialogue is important. Sebastian, any thoughts on, you know, I know Vets Town Hall, I think ties right into this. Yeah, so just, you know, basically people ask me all the time, how can I feel like I'm more part of this nation? I mean, there's 330 million of us. It's easy to know how to be part of a 30-person survival group, but what about a nation like this? Veteran or otherwise, right? How do we do that? So my quick and easy answer is there's three ways you have to vote to be part of this nation. You must vote. You must serve jury duty. Jury duty is what keeps us from tyranny, right? It means that no one person can decide the fate of another person. Do not get out of jury duty and donate blood. The nation needs blood. People, all people, make blood. You replace a pint of blood within a week or two, right? It's free. There's no other way to get it. It's the ultimate free lunch and the nation needs it. And if you do those three things, you will actually feel like you're part of something, right? And it's an enormous, you don't have to join the Marines to feel like you're part of this nation, although that's great too. You can just do those three things and you are part of something great, something grand, something noble. I would also say that I mean, I think there are moral issues with compelling people to fight against their will in a war, such as the draft. But I think there's, there are no moral issues with mandatory national service of some sort, with the military option. I think that could be an enormously good idea for this nation. The nation needs school teachers. The nation needs nurses. It needs all kinds of, nation needs babysitters. I mean, whatever, tree tremors, you name it. I mean, the need, we're a great nation and we have great needs, right? And so I think that mandatory national service would be an amazing experience. I wish when I was 18 or 20 that I'd had to do something like that. And it puts all Americans together in this melting pot. And that actually might break down some of the ridiculous social, political divides, racial divides in this country. The way the military actually does very successfully. And finally, I'll sort of end with this, Vettstown Hall. It's an initiative that I came up with. It's based on the gorge dance of some of the tribes of the Southern Great Plains in this country. The gorge dance was a way of reincorporating warriors back into the community after combat. And basically, the warrior has the chance to sing or dance or tell of his exploits on the battlefield defending his community. I'm sure there was a lot of boasting involved in this. But the experience is enormously cathartic and it requires the community to participate morally in the war, right? I mean, when we send soldiers off to fight a war, it's our war. It's not their war. It's our war. They are just pulling the trigger for us. That disconnect has to be solved or it's veterans who will carry the moral burden. So in Vettstown Hall, we're not a small-scale tribal society. We're a modern industrial state. But the center of every community is the Town Hall. And on Veterans Day, go to the parade if you like. Great. But go to your town hall, organize the Vettstown Hall. A veteran of any war has the right to speak for 10 minutes to their community about what it felt like to serve. Some veterans will be extremely angry that they had to fight the war that they fought. Some will be very, very proud. Some will be so struck with grief that they can't speak. It will be everything, but that's what war is. And the community must participate in those feelings, in those realities, or it really will end up being the soldier's war, not the nation's war, and everyone will suffer as a result. And I think what you're saying there, those different viewpoints of everybody who served speak right to what Robert and Phoebe both said. This isn't a monolith. There's a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of different backgrounds. We're a cross-section of our own society. Phoebe, any of your thoughts, too, of what we can do to start looking at bridging this divide? I couldn't follow these two. I mean, Robert is out there walking the walk. So I think, to me, that is the most important thing you can do is take on an opportunity to be a public-facing veteran in a position of authority in your community, or not even authority, just an open position in your community, a position that approaches everything with an open mind and some openness to kind of show who you are. So I just think I really commend Robert wholly on this, and I'm taking notes for my, hopefully when I eventually graduate from however much school I decide I'm going to be sucked into, I'll be doing the same thing in one form or another. So thank you for doing that. And yeah, I think that's pretty much my take is that it shouldn't be on veterans to kind of explain who we are. And I'm not saying that that is a burden that that veteran should bear is creating, helping to pull down the civ mill divide. But I think it helps. And I think those people who are willing to take on a little bit of actual work absolutely helps. Excellent. As we're talking through this, there's some questions that have come through talking about the media's influence, entertainment's influence on how people who haven't served portray veterans and maybe having that paint the picture. And then I'll throw this in there too. It's just interesting. It came up with a Veterans Day, a columnist for Tennessee Magazine posted, kind of said the natural reaction for a lot of people that don't have military experience say thank you for your service. I want to see, give some comments on both of those things. Is that a helpful thing to say? Is media entertainment, is that helping bridge the divide? I will say that the columnist said the wording is unimportant. The idea is to start a conversation rather than end one that never occurred. So maybe instead of saying thank you for your service, what did you do in the military? Kind of speaking to what everybody's saying is starting that dialogue. But I'll put those thoughts out there for your reactions. Media, the influence of entertainment on the gap, and then also kind of that wrote, thank you for your service. I'll just say quickly. I think most movies about war are made by people who were never in war and they're sort of basing their themes and their ideas on movies that they've seen about war that were also made by people who weren't in war. And there are very few exceptions to that. And so I think it gives the public an idea that war is on the one hand maybe not as traumatic as it really is. I mean a real body blown up is unimaginably more disturbing than anything you could really show on film. But also it portrays the soldiers experience as overwhelmingly about combat. And many soldiers were not in combat. It actually feel quite guilty about that. And so I'm not sure that what Hollywood comes up with is particularly helpful to understanding what the real experience of war is. And it's entertainment. At the end of the day, it's entertainment. And that right there right off the bat should tell you that there's something a little bit off about it. And I would say about thank you for your service. I mean I'm not a veteran. I never serve. But from the outside looking in, to me I think that can feel too reflexive and meaningless. And I think you could say something like welcome home. That has some real emotional content to it. Welcome home. You could say that whether you were for the war or against the war. And you could say that to someone who was in combat or not in combat or whatever. It doesn't matter. It's automatically heartfelt and sincere. And I think it's quite a nice sentiment to impart. But when you find out that someone served the country. Excellent. That's a good point. I'll chime in here real quick. Sometimes when you hear thank you for your service, it sounds shallow from the person who's saying it. And I love the whole thing about welcome home. Just wanted to share one quick story. I was talking to a gentleman who has a son. And we were talking. And he said, oh yeah, that's right. And by the way, thank you for your service. And I had asked him, so with just Sunday sites to join the military, would you be supportive of him? He's like, oh no, no, no, no. I'm going to make sure he goes to college and becomes a doctor. No, he's a doctor and engineer. And I'm like, well then that says it all right there in a nutshell. So a lot of times when you hear that, and I've said that before too. Get to know a veteran, the operation, thank a bit. We've been very successful in reaching out to our veterans in the city of Boston. But there's a lot of intangibles that come with that outreach. And a lot of those veterans, one, were never thanked for the service or even welcome home, in particular the Vietnam veterans. So a lot of our volunteers, when they come back, they come back with stories that, hey, you know, the veteran invited us into their house. We had a cup of coffee, told us about his service, his time in service. Someone actually got teary eyed in pride because they never had that formal or welcome back, that recognition that they served and that they served for the country. So it was very heartwarming and heartfelt that hearing those stories when our volunteers returned from their time out in passing on information to our veterans. Because it's not just about, again, thanking them for the service, but also to let them know that, you know, city of Boston veteran services exist, that we're here for them at every turn. And that, and I'm sorry, lost my track of the phone started ringing. And, you know, that it's a great way for us to reach out to our veterans, go to them instead of waiting for them to come to us. Excellent. You know, that proactive approach. And a couple minutes, Phoebe, do you have any final thoughts? You know, I just have been thinking a lot about what Sebastian said about mandatory, you know, some sort of mandatory national service. And it's something that I've thought about for a long time. I'm a huge supporter of not necessarily mandatory military service, but some sort of public service, you know, public service loan forgiveness. There are lots of policy injections that could work here. And so, you know, this ties for me to thank you for your service, because I think, thank you for your service is used kind of exclusively for veterans. And I think it's pretty inappropriate. Because we have so many people in society who are doing such important public service work, that we don't acknowledge in that same way. And of course, these things are distinct. It's different to sign up to deploy, you know, than it is to sign up to try to wrangle 20 high schoolers every day. But they are both hard, they are both service. And I think my take on, you know, I appreciate it when people tell me thank you for your service, because I think it gives an opportunity for the opening of a conversation. But I would just encourage everybody to ask yourselves who deserves that phrase, and maybe expand the aperture a little bit. Great. You know, as we're just out about out of time, I do want to make sure we have a time for Dan to come back and give some closing thoughts. I mean, this has just been an incredibly insightful, important conversation to have. And I do a disservice by summarizing it, but it does sound like having conversations, not shying away from using thank you for your service as a way to end the conversation, but as an opening, serving, getting in there, being proactive about that interaction to get to know each other, to get to know our thoughts, our feelings, to have those conversations in public forums where we allow differing viewpoints to come together, and hopefully come to some kind of understanding instead of creating bigger factions and bigger divides that we're having public forums to come together and talk, maybe not just with civilians and military, but just as a society together, that service. You know, whether it is through Operation Thank a Veteran, the transition services that we have, Vets Town Hall, which is vetstownhall.org, correct, Sebastian? You can learn how to put one on for yourself. It's free to do and host, and all the resources are there, or the many volunteer opportunities that we have at DAD. We do have volunteer for vets.org, and that's a way to engage. There's endless ways to engage from both sides on bridging that gap and hopefully shrinking that military civilian divide. So I just want to thank you, the three of you, so much for your thoughts. It's just been incredibly engaging conversation, and I hope everyone takes something away from this today. Thank you. Rob and Phoebe for this just very candid and powerful conversation. This has been extraordinarily enlightening. In the spirit of sharing things that people can do to take action or to learn more, I'll also just note in the Veterans Legal Clinic that we recruit, train, and support pro bono lawyers, those in private practice who may not focus on veterans legal issues or military law topics, and train them up and mentor and support them to represent veterans who would otherwise go without representation in various kinds of cases. And so any advocates out there who are interested in learning more about how to get involved, you can visit our website, LegalServicesCenter.org. I also just want to recognize again DAV for making this event and our work in the Veterans Legal Clinic possible. One of the most important features of DAV's mission, as reflected in Brian's comments a moment ago, is that at every turn, DAV prioritizes translating urgent conversations into concerted action. How do we make a better world for veterans and the society that asks them to do the heavy labor of defending the nation? So in that spirit, as a just closing note, I want to share news about an event, another DAV sponsored event that engages this very topic but in a different and uniquely profound way. Next Wednesday, November 9th at 7pm Eastern Time, online, DAV will host the next performance in the Theater of War program. If you're not familiar with it, Theater of War is a remarkable and innovative artistic and cultural program. Theater of War brings together leading film, theater, and television actors to present dramatic readings of seminal plays from classical Greek tragedies to modern and contemporary works. And the performances are followed by a town hall style discussion designed to confront the pressing issues that are raised by that particular material. And many of those obviously focus on war, military service, and the consequences of war for society. So we invite you next Wednesday at 7pm Eastern Time and we put the web address to sign up to participate and attend online on the slide. DAV and Theater of War present a reading of Phylloctides by Sophocles. It's a powerful story of war and suffering from ancient Greece and it resonates in very profound ways for our current condition. And as you can see, a lot of leading actors and voices and also veterans obviously too, a part of this conversation and performance and discussion. And so on behalf of DAV and the Veterans Legal Clinic, we encourage all those with a greater interest to potentially attend that as well. Thank you again to all of our distinguished guests, to our attendees, and to DAV. And we hope you have a good day. Thank you. Thank you.