Clint Smith
speaker
111 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 19 Jun
Clint Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The thing is, I don't think there is anything that any person can do that
to demonstrate to Pete Hegseth that they are worthy of being a four or five star general.
He fundamentally believes that that is not possible, that Black people assume these sorts of positions.
And so I actually think that most of them are not necessarily trying to prove it to Hegseth or try to prove it to his ilk, but are trying to do it
for the younger soldiers who were coming after them, right?
Like, I'm going to stay and demonstrate what it means to be a good soldier, even when the people we are fighting against, ostensibly, or the people we are up against, when the antagonists are not the enemies abroad,
but are the people who are at the top of our own Pentagon.
And so it is this feeling, again, of a sort of cognitive dissonance, of wanting to stay, of wanting to go, of wanting to prove something to others, of wanting to prove things to themselves.
But I think right now people are leaning a lot on one another.
And there's a sense of solidarity among Black service members that they are trying to use as a way to move forward and keep the ship steady until this administration is no longer there.
The consensus that I've heard is that many of the folks, so as you know, family members in the military, once you get past 20 years, it triggers the opportunity to get a pension, which you receive for the rest of your life.
And the longer you stay after those 20 years, the more money you get when you eventually retire.
So most of the retirements that I've encountered are from people who have gotten past the 20 years, and they would have stayed to 25 years, 30 years, 35 years, 40 years.
But because they had already triggered the pension, that is in many ways the incentive for so many people who are joining the military beyond obviously fighting for your country.
A lot of those folks are deciding, you know what, I did my 20 years.
It's not worth it.
But what they are telling the younger folks who have not yet gotten past their 20 years is you need to stay here not only because it's important for you,
to be able to reach this 20 years because of the opportunity it affords you for intergenerational wealth, the opportunity it affords you to achieve different levels of social and economic mobility.
But also because if every single person who wants to leave, leaves, then nobody's going to be left.
And so much of life as a
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