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My experiences changed me because I came back realizing how ignorant and naive I was before I went. I can relate to the line “…no way to become the men we want to be.” I thought I was intelligent, well read, in a position that granted me a perspective that very few people ever have. Even after knowing about so many of the lies that got us into previous wars, Syria was different. That’s where the real menace was. I understood the propaganda that was used against Americans to start the Iraq War but I didn’t learn the lesson. I fell for the next one; even if the rose colored glasses had worn off. So I came back to a world feeling like the story of Casandra. Trying to warn people who hadn’t learned the lesson. Trying to be a better man to make up for the sins of ignorance, complicity, and violence I was a part of. I had to take responsibility and ownership of my role and try to make up for it. But we come back to a world even more ignorant than what we left. Not that they became more ignorant, but because our perspective had changed so much in relation to those at home. The tendency is to get mad and angry. But we were them before we changed. They’re good people trying to figure out the world just like we are. Our passions are not theirs. Our fears are not theirs.

The maturation of being red pilled is learning how to live in a blue pilled world while making the change you believe is right, without destroying the world in the process. I think that has been the province of truly Great Rulers; far and few between as they may be. Imagine having the power over society even as a good man. Especially at that level, you live in a sea of evil and corruption. Changes to that system could mean your own head, civil war, and/or societal collapse; knowing a tyrannical despot would take over and make the world even crueler. What do you do?