![\"Tiny\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/bouncer.jpg\")
\nby Christopher Paul Meyer<\/p>\n
\nby Christopher Paul Meyer<\/p>\n
Link Provided By Denise Williams<\/span><\/p>\n National security is becoming a sexy topic again. Thanks to the Daesh attacks, foreign policy, military concerns and intelligence issues are as hot as Kylie, Kourtney and Kendell. A re-energized American public now re-litigates issues like the Iraq War, the profiling of Muslims and the length of leash we should give the NSA.<\/p>\n Yet the issues remain muddled. It\u2019s hard to decipher the Pentagon\u2019s jargon, the politicians\u2019 posturing and the intelligence community\u2019s secrecy. Especially if you have no first-hand experience to guide you. After all, less than 1% of the US population has served in the military since 9\/11. And even fewer have experience in the alphabet-soup of law enforcement or intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n But damn near everyone knows what it\u2019s like to get buzzed on a Friday night. A lot more people go to nightclubs than to MEPS. But here\u2019s the thing \u2014 if you really want to understand the national security issues of today, you just need to understand the security of your Friday night watering hole. What can the velvet rope teach us about border security? What does the size of the bouncer have to do with the defense budget? How is Iran like the partygoer who cops a feel on a passing waitress? Here are the five biggest lessons that nightclubs teach us about national security. You\u2019ll never look at a nightclub the same way again.<\/p>\n 1. The Velvet Rope. The first nightclub I bounced in was a rooftop bar with only a five-foot abutment ringing the roof. The club sat on top of thirteen stories of hotel rooms that catered to the party set. And it was located in downtown LA (before its multimillion dollar revival). As the only swank nightclub in downtown at the time, it was a target for partiers of every socioeconomic class as well as every transient, gangbanger, call girl and MMA thug. Oh, and we also had to worry about jumpers looking for a glittery suicide. In short, it was a property rife with the liability issues posed by a dizzying array of potential sources. So, when we manned the velvet rope at the front door, we didn\u2019t just check IDs. We scanned the people as they passed in front of us. Did they have red eyes? Gang tattoos? Bulges where a gun or knife could be? Could they stand up on their own or were they too drunk already? Were they pissed off? Were they carrying a grudge? Had we ever 86\u2019d them before? That wasn\u2019t all. We were master profilers. None of us wanted to earn our $13\/hour the hard way, so we favored parties of girls over parties of guys and we favored suits and ties over NFL jerseys and do-rags. We reminded disgruntled patrons that entrance to the club was a privilege, not a right. Every night, I\u2019d end up dealing with pissed off people that we\u2019d turned away, but I never had a major physical altercation.<\/p>\n Of course, there were other ways to run the velvet rope. When I worked a nightclub on the Sunset Strip, we barely screened at the door. The club was smaller and had less obvious risks, but it also just wanted to make more money by flooding the place with patrons. The result? I laid hands on people every night. Our waitresses were harassed more often, fights broke out frequently and even our doorgirl was knocked unconscious. Our incident report binder was three times the size of the one I\u2019d had downtown. Lesson learned \u2014 if you don\u2019t stop the problems before they come inside, prepare for a messy extraction of the problems later on.<\/p>\n 2. Peace at all costs is a pretty high price. One night, a dude put his hand up a waitress\u2019 skirt. Now usually, he\u2019d have been spitting Chiclets out of his mouth for a move like that. But this dude had rolled deep \u2014 at least eight defensive-linemen-sized cats in his posse. Our team was small (that night, only five of us), unarmed and overworked already. Then the dude flashed a gun at me and my boss. My boss opted for the better part of valor and instructed us to leave the dude and his party alone.<\/p>\n I was shocked \u2014 I knew we were waist-deep in trouble, but I\u2019d never seen us back down from a righteous fight. The dude knew he had backed us down, he knew the power of his gun and he knew he had the run of the place. Our waitress was at his mercy, and so was the rest of the club (whether or not they knew it). I confronted my boss and we argued until, finally, we agreed to pretend that the cops were emptying the club because someone had seen the dude\u2019s piece and called 911. We offered to sneak homeboy out the back so he wouldn\u2019t get caught. He accepted and we got him and his crew out of the club without any issues.<\/p>\n The lesson? Not every fight requires muscle. But every righteous fight requires a righteous resolution. As we saw when we failed to support Iran\u2019s Green Revolution, or when we equivocated about Russia\u2019s invasion of Crimea, the false peace of capitulation to thuggish tyranny weakens our allies, discourages the victims and emboldens our enemies.<\/p>\n Thanks for the link, Denise! The rest of this article may be viewed at: Havok Journal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"hotties\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/women-in-limo-dpc-1024x683-e1546198395938.jpg\")
What can the nightclub scene teach us about national security? Quite a lot, actually.<\/p>\n