Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is your host, Abby Martin. This is the audio of our show.

You can watch the episodes on our YouTube channel or at the Empirefiles.tv.

I'm John Motter. I enlisted when I was 19 into the Marine Corps.

Um, just like felt pretty aimless.

And, um, it was kind of at the height of the Iraq War and like a lot of my friends from high school were joining and getting hurt and it felt like really important and I felt like I had to do something.

So I was raised in a military family.

My parents were both Navy officers.

That's how they met.

Grandparents, cousins, like all in the military. Lived on a military base in San Francisco when I was a kid.

So I had like all that indoctrination along with all the stuff like every kid gets.

All the Hollywood movies, all the big jingoistic films that came out post 9-11, that whole surge in patriotism.

So that had definitely impacted me and growing up, like I hadn't really thought I would be anything other than, you know, a soldier of some sort.

We're a really poor community, like we're in the heart of coal

country. Not a lot of opportunity for people and I think like a pretty typical story like

military is just like a way out and a lot of guys were taking advantage of that but also

just like an unusually high I think casually rate for a small town like um two two of my friends from

high school or year older than me I was on the track team with they both got hit with IEDs,

got messed up pretty bad and sent home. You know this was in like 2005, 2006. I remember

being at work and just like every single day on the radio just like little like news clips of

casualty reports like, you know, two more Americans, like, killed or wounded, interact,

like every single day.

I wanted to go active duty, Marine Corps infantry, just like whatever I thought would put

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