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

• The Alibi Factory April 9, 2026
  The cleverest racket in public life is not corruption. Corruption is almost refreshingly honest. It leaves fingerprints, invoices, cousins on payroll, and a marina somewhere. The truly sophisticated scam is moral explanation as self-exoneration. That trick is much classier. You take a social failure, wrap it in a grand historical indictment, repeat the approved diagnosis […]
  Tammy Pondsmith
• Inversion of Loyalty and Conspiracy of Mediocrity April 9, 2026
  By Sam Yudin Nothing does more to corrupt and undermine mission accomplishment or team success and well-being than an inversion of loyalty or a conspiracy of mediocrity. The focus must be on the mission first and the team always. This requires loyalties to be ranked and aligned so the team can focus on continuous improvement […]
  Special Guest
• A Forecast for Panic April 9, 2026
  For almost two weeks, meteorologists and weather apps tracked a “devastating” snow and ice storm that was due to wreak havoc on the Eastern Atlantic area. I heard one official say that this forecast had the same ominous feeling as Hurricane Helene. Depending on which source you cited, the storm ranged from minimal impact to […]
  Stan Lake
• The Day I Hit Back April 8, 2026
  My first four years of school, I was a flippin’ bully magnet. I’ve always been a little smaller than average; teachers have always loved me, and I’m told I was just plain adorable when I was a kid. I was a small, pretty, teacher’s pet. That’s the hat trick, yo; absolutely irresistible to your standard […]
  Michael Bama Katt
• My Body Knew Before My Mind Did April 8, 2026
  By Ryan Mimna Author’s note: I wrote this while recovering from a broken foot during my first semester at Penn. Around the same time, a Ranger friend of mine was killed when his parachute failed to deploy, and my grandfather died of cancer. I could barely walk, but I kept going. This piece came out […]
  Special Guest