The Havok Journal | Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

• When the Virtue Machine Learned to Hate in Public May 16, 2026
  The most impressive trick of modern American moral culture is that it can take an ancient prejudice, hose it down with graduate-school vocabulary, slap a lanyard on it, and march it straight into the faculty lounge as “liberation.” Bigotry used to at least have the decency to arrive wearing a bedsheet. Now it comes with […]
  Tammy Pondsmith
• The Story of How Jaded I Am May 16, 2026
  A song came on the radio today, an early 2000s song, one of those catchy ones whose meaning is lost. It’s one of those songs that obviously lays out the sexual nature in its lyrics but is lost in the catchy music (think R Kelley, Ginuwine, Usher, etc).  Having had a few fermented friends at a […]
  Jake Smith
• Everything I Like Online Is AI May 15, 2026
  The other day I realized something mildly unsettling: everything I like online is probably AI. The article that made me think.The podcast that sounded unusually polished.The photo that looked just a little too perfect.Even the comment that made me laugh. None of it might be real. Or at least not entirely. It wasn’t one moment […]
  Charles Faint
• Thoughts in a Pub While Waiting for a Train May 15, 2026
  By Ryan Mimna Author’s Note: I wrote this by hand in my journal at an Irish pub near 30th Street Station in Philadelphia while waiting for a train. Unfortunately, it looks like the pub itself was a casualty of the pandemic. At the time, I was in my last semester at Penn, living in North […]
  Special Guest
• What I Learned from Eating with a Spoon May 15, 2026
  In the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP), now the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP), I learned a lot of things through difficult and seemingly meaningless and impossible tasks. I learned a lot through hitting the wood line, sand babies, and the Circle of… well, you either know the name or you do not. The first day […]
  Jake Smith