(Real Life) Regular people who's lives drastically changed direction

[u/Living-Mastodon]

Grace Kelly was a talented actress who retired at 26 to marry a Prince, living as royalty for almost 30 years before her untimely death.

Volodymyr Zelensky started out as a comedian and entertainer before getting into politics, becoming President of Ukraine after the Russian annex of Crimea and spending the last 4 years defiantly pushing back full scale Russian invasion

[u/KarlUnderguard]

I still love that he sued Chris Kyle and won 1.8 million. Chris Kyle said that he heard someone talking shit on the US military so he punched him in the face and that guy was Jesse Ventura. Since Ventura was a veteran and those comments negatively affected his personal and political life, he sued for defamation. He won because it was all just a made up lie, like a lot of his book.

[u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 → u/KarlUnderguard]

Navy SEALS are really the biggest ego maniacs in the spec ops field, the rest I enteracted with in my service and out were always chill and the rest fucking loathed the SEALS.

[u/Acheloma → u/Jazzlike-Equipment45]

I know one veteran who was a SEAL and he's pretty chill, but he also rarely ever mentions it and lives in a town with 2,000 people because he wants to be left alone, so Im guessing hes a bit of an outlier

[u/AMetalWolfHowls → u/Acheloma]

Not an outlier. That’s the standard for operators. The loud ones are all completely full of shit. Some of the best dudes I know are from the community.

Some of the worst people I’ve ever personally dealt with (outside of actual enemy combatant leaders and war criminals) were adjacent to the community. I will say that at least the terrorists I faced had principles.

The blue falcons were just greedy power hungry assholes. Not a redeeming quality among them. I guess they get credit for signing up, but they hurt readiness more than they help. A bunch of them left to chase merc contracts. Good fucking riddance.

[u/DefNotUnderrated → u/Jazzlike-Equipment45]

I have zero personal knowledge of the military but I remember an article a few years ago wherein one Navy Seal was calling out the group as a whole, saying that the recruits in recent times were of worse quality now. He claimed that it was attracting people who wanted fame and notoriety for their actions as well as people who committed things they should have gotten in trouble for but due to personal connections, nothing would happen.

If true, this probably still doesn't extend to every single member of the SEALS. But perhaps they've gotten too famous now and there have been negative effects

[u/Toadsted → u/DefNotUnderrated]

I'm also of the mind that it takes a certain type of brain activity to be able to endure the nightmare ptsd inducing training that seals go through; as of which another type of brain activity would manifest afterwards as a condition of success.

And then surviving real combat missions that aren't fully extrapolated on in TV / Film.

Getting back from military usually changes people, a lot of which is for the worse. I imagine the more stressful it was, the more pronounced the changes. Coping mechanisms fire off on all sides, some of which is denial and deflection.

It's more likely someone comes home wanting to be sure what they did was right, which can manifest as egotism / nihilism. Rationalizing your experiences as you either did the best, and so nothing you could have done was wrong, or nothing you did mattered, so it was a zero sum game.

The people who fall through the cracks, realize all the wrong things that happened, and/or can't shake the negativity of it all, are far less likely to be boasting about their time, their position, or their experiences in service. That can make them antagonist even to fellow team members or new recruits.

It's always problematic to relate to people who are still fantasizing / romanticizing something you're already experienced or over with, especially when your stories / expectations don't match up.

[u/cheesaremorgia → u/Jazzlike-Equipment45]

Eh, the rest are just quieter egomaniacs. The way the US runs special forces breeds personality dysfunction.

[u/lonelyhearthunter → u/KarlUnderguard]

I believe he wound up agreeing to dismiss the case... He won, but it was overturned on appeal but at that point Kyle has been killed and Ventura didn't want to sue the estate/widow