Some Days It’s Sergeant Slaughter, Some Days It’s Kurt Vonnegut

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 18, 2026

Every now and then, somebody looks at me and decides I remind them of someone else.

On one day, it’s Sergeant Slaughter—hat, mustache, and the general impression that I’m not interested in anyone’s nonsense.

On another day, usually when the hair decides to do whatever it wants, it’s Kurt Vonnegut—same mustache, but now paired with a look that suggests I might sit down and write about the nonsense instead.

It depends on the weather. It depends on the hair. It probably depends on how much sleep I got.

But it says something.

Because those are two very different comparisons.

One is authority.

The other is observation.

One is the guy who walks into a situation and takes control of it.

The other is the guy who stands back, watches it unfold, and then explains what just happened in a way that makes people uncomfortable later.

I’ve been both.

I’ve worn some version of that hat since the 1970s. Aussie bush hats, field hats, boonie hats. Not as a statement. Just because they worked. Sun, rain, long days. You find something that does the job, and you stick with it.

That part of me hasn’t changed much.

The rest of it has.

Working security long enough, making sergeant more than once, you learn how to read people quickly. You learn when to step in, when to step back, and when to let things play out because intervening will only make it worse.

You also learn that most problems aren’t new. They just show up wearing different clothes.

That’s where the other comparison starts to make sense.

Because at some point, after you’ve seen enough of it, you stop reacting the way people expect you to. You start thinking about it instead. Turning it over. Trying to understand not just what happened, but why it keeps happening.

And sometimes, eventually, you write it down.

That’s the shift.

From dealing with the moment to making sense of it afterward.

From presence to reflection.

And if you stay in it long enough, you notice something else.

It gets a little scary when you realize the people running the country are your peers.

As Vonnegut once put it, true terror is waking up and discovering your high school class is running the country.

He wasn’t wrong.

Not my friends—but people from my time.

That’s when it stops being abstract.

So when someone says I look like a wrestling character one day and a writer the next, I don’t see it as a contradiction.

It’s just two sides of the same experience.

Some days, you handle the situation.

Some days, you explain it.

And if you’ve been around long enough, you end up doing both whether you planned to or not.

And mostly anymore I just step back and watch and explain why people are being people.

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