Ep. 228 | Aren & Cody | Stranger by the Hour Podcast

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I'm just like running through my head. I'm like looking at my stuff and making sure everything's plugged in. And you know, I'm sure you guys have experienced technical issues as.

You're recordings, like half the time, like whole.

Videos are ruined. Oh yeah, various reasons.

People don't know until they start recording a podcast. How much of a pain in the acid is to record a podcast, and how much work. I've lost entire interviews. I've done an interview with someone and then realized afterwards that it wasn't recording, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm so sorry, and then I have to like, let do it.

And it's just you're doing it yourself. You don't have an engineer. You don't have an employee that's responsible for that. You know, that's like they're trained in it and stuff. You could. It's a definitely that's a real job, like being an engineer for podcasts or any of that stuff.

Yeah, this is actually a couple of days ago. I'm going to so I'm trying I'm gonna start doing or I'm gonna try to start doing like a phone in show. I'm not gonna put the name out there yet, but I'm figuring out how to take live phone calls and record it all and try to do all of it myself, you know what I'm saying, using like a Google voice phone number, which a little easier, but.

I don't know how. So I watch a lot of like debate stuff online and they they have they have cracked the code on the call ins, like they have high quality call ins that the people from they'll do like a debate, and then they'll open it up to people that just like pay a super chat to come on and like give a question or something. But sometimes sometimes they video I'm in, But a lot of times it's like a call like a radio show. So I'll send you some links to the ones that I think are doing it right and you can maybe figure out from them. But it's definitely a like a lot of people are doing the calling thing. I think it's a good idea. Yeah, So it gives people an opportunity to participate.

You know exactly. So for the people watching this, hopefully that'll be coming out here pretty soon. I'd like to do it weekly, you know, at least do thirty minutes to an hour, maybe it'll go longer. I'm the first few are gonna be a shit show, because it's gonna be me trying to figure out how to do it, how to take calls, how to do calls like, you know, and then you're gonna have idiots calling in and stuff like that too. So it would definitely be easier if I had another person, well you could.

So you know, if you found somebody like one of your fans or something that was willing, that other person doesn't have to be co located with you to be your call screener, because if you use like stream yard or something like that, you put them in a lobby and then your call, or you do it on discord. This is just all what I observe from the debate doork Rovi that I'm I'm in, like I'm watching like philosophy debates, like like but like they'll have a stream yard or some other software type thing, or they'll do it in their discord. So they're live on YouTube, they're running a discord, their mods are moderating the discord, and then they're pulling guys from the discord or like they'll be like, hey, dude, this guy Tim has a real

good question, you know, relate to the topic whom Tim comes on here it is and give the question, and they're pulling them from the lobby and the discord. I've heard in the discord while the show's going, they're in there talking. You can't hear it on the show, but they're in there chatting and talking and having a whole kind of exchange in the discord.

I actually started a former Action guy's discord like a year and a half, two years ago, maybe longer, I don't even remember. But I don't ever get on there because I don't I don't mess with it.

But yeah, it's weird discord, Like it's confusing to me. I haven't figured out how because I got on Discord to try to do a mid Journey ship.

Yeah yeah, oh yeah. I used to use mid Journey for the AI art.

Yeah yeah. I was into it when it first came out, just because I was like fascinated by I'm like, damn, I can just like type shit and make pictures. It's crazy.

Yeah, but it's I've found myself. When I was using it, it was like I was I never got what exactly what I wanted, right. It's so people will think that like, oh, I can just do this and make T shirts, or I can do this and do graphic because it.

Can't do like letters and stuff like accurately.

It gives you a general idea. I've told people that use it for or that have considered using it for graphic design or whatever. I'm like, use it to make like, uh, individual aspects, like hey, I need to do something that has a skull and crossbones or something like that. Well, I'll have a generate skull and crossbones and then I'll do the rest of the work. I'll do like the text and the circle and you know, all the different objects in the in the image and stuff like that.

So that is good, but you can't it's not really good for one off like in state, like the photo I was ready to print or something like that. I actually canceled my mid journey last year, I think, and I used and I was like, I'm just gonna use chat GPT because if the paid version of chat GPT does artwork as well.

And yeah, I.

Use Adobe products as well for like all my graphic design and for my video editing and stuff for the podcast. And there's an AI part of Photoshop now too, But it's still none of it's really that like great, Like you're not getting what you want on your first go most of the time, but to where world we're moving into that direction, you know.

It's not good.

So Aaron Cody, I want to have you guys on you guys wanna kind of maybe give yourself a quick intro and tell people about your podcast before we get going.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah, so I'll go first. I guess my name is Cody Anderston and this is the Former Action Guys podcast. So what makes me a former Action Guy is joined the Marines in nineteen ninety eight. I was an infeture guy first. You can catch up on the deep dive of this on one of Justin's earlier shows, and basically, long story short as I ended up helping him start Marstok with this guy here, So we ended up behind the fence of Marsk a total of about sixteen years between active duty and contracting time, and twenty twenty one started Farman, I started to wrap all that up and yeah, start building a homestead. You know, there were several things that kind of happened during that time and some wild stuff that was going on in the world that made

me think that resiliency was of prime importance in my life.

Yeah, yep. My name is Aaron Branfast. I was on a couple episodes of The Former Action Guys, so you can go check out in my career, but particularly retired marine. I know Cody from Marsak and from contracting, and i'd say, our show kind of started out as mostly like we were interested in you know, conspiracy, yeah, es terry, you know, like where the pyramids come from, that type of stuff, And it kind of evolved just because we started, you know, writ when Code kicked off, so couldn't help but talk about all the weirdness surrounding COVID, which leads into kind of like an unorthodox perspective on politics and you know, the government and things like that. And I'd say the tone and tenor of our show as of late is

like we we've kind of gone through this whole confrontation of what like what our government uses the military for, what our role was in the global War on Terror, Like how that you know, what was our role and all that, and how to deal with the fact that we now kind of both can both conceive of that whole time and those wars as being completely illegally moral, unethical, and unnecessary, and and how that's still okay because you know, like I was having a blast, so like that's kind of how I but that's kind of like what our show just kind of confronts those things, and you know, like you're you know, obviously a lot of veterans listen to your show, So just try to take take what the kind of stuff we say with a grain of salt.

Where we don't hate the country, we don't hate the people in the country. But a lot of times if this is the first time people are hearing some of the stuff we say, it's like, damn, I was, I was thinking about this just real quick, then I'll shut up. But like, we're the three of us, and a lot of people that listen to your show are in a unique position because like new new wars are on the horizon, right new young people are you know, gonna look at the opportunities that the military presents or have some feel some patriotic duty to go kill Russians or Iranians or Chinese people or whatever. We're in a unique position of having done all that stuff. So it's like you can't accuse us as being being Pussy's like, you can't say

these guys are anti war because they don't have the stones to go, you know, fight, And it's like, that's that's not true.

Correct.

You'd have to work pretty hard to find a couple of people with more time doing that thing. So so we're in a unique position to challenge that and be like, hey, look, you're gonna you're gonna march a bunch of you know, high school wrestlers and farm boys from Kansas off to their doom again for what. Let's make sure you know it's worthwhile.

So all right, I'll shut it and I'll just kind of clean that up on the last part with our podcast is I think the thing that kind of makes us interesting is that around twenty sixteen time frame, going in twenty seventeen, i'd say heavily, we we really went down the rabbit hole in our old military job of psychological operations, information operations, military deception. You know, we we kind of both ended our stint at MARSOC within the G three nine, which the three nine is your information operations directorate of your operations, so you know, during the lockdowns of twenty twenty, whenever the hell that was right, Yeah, you know, we both just kind of found ourselves in a room together and we just started looking, you know,

in the office. You know you're just like, not really you know, missions have sort of died down during that time, so you just have time to just sort of like look at what people are saying and then run it through what we would typically use as a planning process for an information operation, you know, we would we would look to see, is there a deception target? You know, is their rhetoric? Know, is there is? Can we see conduits all putting out the same information? Right like it's almost like a So we just started looking at it like that. And that's really what we brought to a stranger by the hour, is the fact that you know, we are both trained military deception personnel. So when we're looking at these things, we're like, yo, man, if I

was right, if I was writing a mission, and that's the way it would look right there. And this is the reason why, And this is probably what they're trying to say.

Like I could see there was a today there New York Times release an op ed saying that they were deceived by the government and that it does look like that the coronavirus started in a lab and all this other stuff like basically hitting that everyone that they called conspiracy labs for years was correct.

A quick quick note, A quick note about the New York Times. Okay, so you know, of course the New York Times is a privately owned company. It's owned, but I can't remember the name of the family that historically owned it. But this is a privately owned enterprise that is cooperate, that is in a private private public partnership with the US government. So the funk of the New York Times is for the establishment and people need to kind of get out of this left right republican democrat binary.

That's synthetic, Okay, So both sides, So the neokon, the neoliberal, the neoliberal neocon global order. The people that you know, the Victoria News of the World that go out and make sure we have a war in Ukraine to go fight and things like that. They the New York Times is a signal producing entity that like, that's how they know what their worldview needs to be like, because it's not like there's people in meetings, you know, in rooms having meetings and they send out an email and everybody gets their marching orders. They get their marching orders from the New York Times. The articles in the New York Times inform these people of what the establishment political orthodoxy has to think about X y Z issue. That's the

purpose of the New York Times. Now it's lost a lot of its power because the things that we're saying. It was saying are so obviously fallacious and wrong that people can't help but notice so like the kind of their powers draining. So now they're doing this cleanup like oh, oh they tricked us about the COVID, like you can trust us, Like oh they oh geez, you know, I was sure, which I didn't get six boosters. I wish you know, Oh shucks, they lied, Like no, you lied, you knew and you lied. You're a conduit for their propaganda and they're nonsense at.

Least responsible for not fact checking their information.

Well, you're right.

Yeah. People think that places like North Korea are the only places that are continuously propagandaized by their leadership just because they see like there's a loud speaker on the corner playing the great leader's message at all times. It's like, well, we have a CNN on every single TV show, TV in the airport constantly putting out the official narrative and rags like Aaron just said, like that these things might as well be leaflet drops. I mean, they're not dropping them from a helicopter with the with the party's information.

They're they're making you buy the party's information.

Basically and real quick, especially overseas. I think people don't realize when they see that, Like they talk about over sees like all this country, like the people can't believe what's happening in the US or the citizens I can't believe that these things are occurring. How could they allow how could they elect Donald Trump? How can they do these things? And I'm like, you got to realize that the people overseas are seeing very narrow, a very narrow spectrum of the news, and it's mostly like CNN or like New York Times, and and that's just not an accurate portrayal of what's actually happening in America, you know.

Well, and the other the other thing people overseas are seeing is our So you know, our celebrity culture is you know, stared at and worshiped by people all over the world. So our celebrities are conduits for this propaganda. So your George Clooney's, your Sean Pen's every loud you know, liberal Hollywood person. So case in point, they got to sell the Ukraine thing, They got to sell US hundreds of billion dollars of stuff going to going to Ukraine.

They got to get the American people behind that whole enterprise. So they send Sean Penn over there, they send Ben Stiller over there. They send so just again we've said this one hundred times on our show, but they send the actor Ben Stiller to go to Ukraine to meet with the actor named Zelenski, who's his last job before he was President of Ukraine was to play the President of Ukraine on a comedic show on Ukrainian television. That was the That was the last job that he had before he was the president. Okay, so actor Ben Stiller goes to shake hands and yuck it up with actor Zelenski, and while the cameras Sean Ben brought him on oscar and handed it to him like people like all the signals that you need to discern reality right there. But

and then they oh, yeah, go ahead.

I'll just say, you know, a funny way to look at that is, you know, Team America is a brilliant movie, you know, with the puppets, and everybody kind of thinks like the you know, the exoteric funny part about Team America is Kim Jong un or whatever that little thing. But like the esoteric thing in that movie is that they're sending actors around as essentially.

As they're they're doing diplomacy. They're they're they're part of our foreign policy apparatus. And you want some more a proof of that. Guys like George Clooney, I say him because he's.

List of the Council.

He's a member of the member of the Word of the Council of Formulations. So like, these people are part of our foreign policy apparatus. Now you've got the Central intelligence agencies long standing relationship with Hollywood. You know, Zero Dark thirty comes out, so that the American so the average American or everybody in the Western world has a version of the truth about the capture of Bin Laden.

So this is how like we experience events, these events that happened in the world that we weren't personally there for, we experience them through these dramatic portrayals. This is how we know how World War two was. It's how we know how they got bin Laden. How you know what I mean. They make these things because otherwise people are gonna are are free to construct their own version of that reality, and they might even construct the true the true version of that reality, which that's that's that's not good.

They need to they need to have control over how we see these events because we're not signing up for the next one unless we believe the last one was a good idea.

Who's day? Though you keep saying they they believe.

They they is they is I would describe as so, okay, this is I apologize a fair question. I apologize in advance for how this is about to go.

This is real quick before you start. This is why I wanted to have you guys on here because I love that you guys have an alternative perspective on stuff, and I don't necessarily agree with everything you say, but I also think that it's good to hear you know, all of it. So that's why I wanted to That's why I wanted to have this conversation.

Let me say one more thing for Aaron cracks Off safe. This is the this is the exact conversation we all would have had in the gun truck though.

Yeah, like for sure, like when.

We're smoking cigarettes were round up for the night, you know, or we're about to go to sleep, or like in the truck, we'd be like, bro, do you fucking believe? And then somebody like nah, and you'd be like, oh yeah, but one time, and we would spend hours before we talking just like this man, all right, fireworks, all right.

So I'll start with the like the most insulting thing first, right, the democracy that we believe is our system of government is synthetic. It is the public facing proxies for a corporation or a basically what's that guy called the a national.

Global financial owners of global capital.

A national owners of global capital. So look, this thing is this idea that that US citizens have meaningful access to the levers of power is ridiculous on its face. All you have to do is understand, like what lobbying is. This is not things that are concealed. This isn't clandestine, it's overt. It's right in front of your face. Bernie Bernie Sanders looks like he's going to get the Democratic nomination.

Well he's a democratic, socialist populist. Fuck that can't have him. Here comes a Democratic party to pull a job on Bernie twice in a row, you know what I mean. Like they're showing you they don't even conceal it, Like there is not at the level of national politics, like yeah, you can go vote your you know, mayor in or whatever or the county commissioner. But at the level of national politics. You do not have access to the levers of power. You probably shouldn't have access to the levers of power, to be honest with you. Democracy is kind of a bad idea, but that's that's for another time.

But like, the actual reality is, there is a control system in place that is global financial, global capital folks, that they don't leave this stuff up to chance. Okay, so these wars, these the the maintenance of the US dollar as the world reserve currency. The maintenance of the petro dollar requires like the use of the US military as its enforcement arm, and they can't leave that shut up to chance. They're not going to allow us to just vote wars on and off. Okay, They're not gonna have a democratic process in place for how we use our military. That's just not how it works. So but they keep the facade going. So that's who the day is.

The day is capital, it's money, it's a corporation. Now, I'm not a communist, I'm not anti capitalist or anything. I'm just describing reality as I understand.

Yeah, from a journalistic standpoint, it's from the movie Network where that guy's in the boardroom is screaming at the reporter that's like, I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore. He's like, hey, buddy, you have upset the powers that be, and the powers that be are the movers of global currency.

And you know, this is a common thing right now because like we're seeing, we now have billionaires overtly have kind of subsume control of our government. So people are talking about it, like, you know, the commie lefty types are like, there shouldn't even be billionaires. What do you need all that money for? At a certain point, and they're right, like they're not right about that, but I mean at a certain point, you know, I don't know.

Once you get north of a couple hundred million dollars, what's the money for? Well, the money is then it's it's not about buying stuff with the money. It's about manipulating and controlling the entire environment with the money. The whole situation is controlled by money, and once you amass enough of it, you can you can wield, you know, on precedented power.

And people I think are mistaken just to add like another nail in there, but thinking that, like once again that the thinking that they're forward facing politicians or are their interface with the actual government. Thinking that people like Bezos and Elon are the richest people in the world is also incorrect in my assessment. The people you know, your your low key trillionaires. You could probably start to find them, but you have to start to look into the gray areas, you know, you have to start to look at people in the areas that don't see the news every day, because if you were above the billionaire class, of what use is it to you for the pleabs to know who you are? You know, I would start looking at places like any family that's ever had a

pope in their lineage, that's still a family.

And and you know, this is where we get into look so, I I think everything that we just said, I think is provable and demonstratable by like what's publicly available, Like if you you can research all that and verify that those things that we were saying are mostly true. Now, where we get into the weeds a little bit is speculating about who. You know, there's these like these lineage international banking families that apparently allegedly held power, you know ever since like the time are Rome. There's a lot of really you know, people write books about this. It's like a deeply researched subject. I just have never encountered anything where I'm like, that's exactly who it is. It's the Medici family that's controlled, you know. But but I

do believe that there's a lineage, that there's this power lineage. Like these guys they shape shift. They they they maintain their power by adapting with to keep pace with technology, to keep their adaptive. They shape shift, you know, as.

As as for example, I was a tech billionaire who previously was ultra liberal, but I'm but now I'm funding the ultra right. That's what he means by shape shift. We're not talking about lizards here. We're talking about people just simply shedding their last persona to become a new one. For example, if I was the Nazi who was in charge of building the V two rocket, which reigned horror over Europe, and that's not a good shape right for me to move on and I just become Warner von braunad of NASA, I just I just start working and making Disney cartoons, and then you know, I've shaped shifted.

I'm no longer a Nazi war criminal convicted of mass murder. Now I'm the head of NASA's rocket program.

That's which which shift which When when you know about how World War One and World War Two was financed, that that starts to seem reasonable because you're like, yeah, look, these are these people at the at the at our level, it's nation state against nation state. At their level, they're financing both sides of a conflict and profiting off it.

This is the Rothschild's banking family. They started this racket when they had advanced knowledge of the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. And they told, they told who, they tell they they red pulled water and like they pulled England. Yeah, they pulled England over water and it made their fortune instantly, and then it was they were off to the races.

Yeah, everybody thought that the English Empire was about to collapse, so they sold all their stock immediately.

But I mean, like the like the Rothschild's, ostensibly Jewish people, via their Warburg Banking Concern, financed the German the Germans in World War One. World War One would not have been possible without financing from the roths Child Banking Concerned via the Warburg.

Henry Ford, a great supporter.

Of the the Busch family, Bush family Prescott Bush was in trouble for using his bank as a Nazi slush fund, which that sounds crazy. But we're not saying it's not. These aren't This is true.

I'm not saying that these people are Nazis. I'm saying they don't give a fuck about the pageant. I'm sorry, they don't care about the pageantry.

That's it.

Theget is for us.

Cool.

I know YouTube is like firing at that.

Like, dude, if YouTube hasn't de demonetized us for everything up to this point, I think we're going Yeah, I think.

Yeah, you made it two hundred, You're good. Sorry dude, No, but you're right, like, uh, you know, the those things are We're not saying that, you know, these things aren't real. Like it's very real to have you know, the German you know, the the access versus Allies really happened. That was really real. But there's a level of there's a there's a strata of uh, there's a class or control strata or whatever for which that is. They're above it.

They're they're not subject to that.

That's it's like Plebeian.

Same same thing with morality, Like these people we have like a Plebeian kind of Christian based morality that these people don't. They're not constrained by that. That's why. That's like the other thing you got. The people got to get through their head. We apply our even it doesn't matter if you're a Christian or what kind of person you are. We all kind of behave you know less lately, you know, because we're becoming completely degenerate. But like generally we have this morality like you don't murder, you don't steal, you don't are people, you know, you don't do all the shit. That's that's a that's our cont These people don't operate under that cause it's like obviously, like the Epstein stuff, like these people are disgusting, like the reason

it's a matternational security and old Pam BONDI can't give up. I can't like give up, give out the binders or whatever is it security, Pam. Yeah, because the people that are in charge of our country are disgusting, degenerate criminals. They're horrible.

I wonder with the Pam Bondi stuff, I'm wondering what is there left to uncover? I mean, I don't know, I don't, I don't I'll be honest, I haven't really looked that much into it, but it seems like even before Trump came into office, there was a bunch of stuff that had been released, Like there's a lot of names that have been released. I think some of the specifics that haven't been released are some of the girls' names, which I understand that I suppose, but.

I think if I think if there's something in first of all, let's just admit it's okay, So let's let's get this straight. We like, let's go from our perspective that we think that members of our government and possibly other foreign government or governs, we're using the Epstein thing as a way to do sexual blackmail to exercise control over people. Okay, that's what we think, right, So wait, these people were willing to do that, yet they left a bunch of paperwork evidence that exist. Like like like, okay, the FBI is now going to play by the rules and be like, well the thing says don't destroy we Like, what are we talking about here? They they got into the prison that Jeffrey Epstein was in and killed him,

but they're gonna leave. There's no incriminating evidence, there's.

No guards, cameras, right, I mean.

What do we like we're we're getting strung along here like like like foolish little children, Like why would they leave that part of the job undone, Like they're gonna do all this horrible like the like stuff that people consider the worst ship you can do like you know, a like trade children away to disgusting powerful people so you can play like this is like right, So like they're gonna do all that, but they're gonna leave like a paper trail that we can look at and binders.

They're gonna have these like dumb right wing influencers come skipping out of the White House with a fucking Binders.

You know, I had, I had You may know. I'm talking about a guy named Andrew Bustamante On who's a and I asked him. I was like, you know, we talk about how all these other countries do all these horrible things and stuff like that, but we're also doing like some of these things as well. And you know, I was like, what do you think about how do you square that morally? And he was like, hey, you know, you have to be willing to do what your enemy will do to get things done. And I was like, that's kind of fucked up, you know, Like I mean, I get to a point some stuff, you know, but how deep does that go? So it kind of feeds into what you've been saying, right that.

There's what makes us different.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I definitely. So we've talked about a lot, or you guys have gone through a lot so far. Let me let me go through a couple things. I was thinking, Well, you guys were talking one like the New York Times, CNN. Well, not seeing in New York Times, I will say that some of their journalists are good. Some of their non political reporting is good.

Like they spend money on good investigative journalism on things I don't. I don't read them if it has anything to do with politics, just like I wouldn't listen to Fox News if it had anything to do with politics because the bias is obvious. Right, So that's one thing. The second thing I was thinking, Yeah, there are influences out there for all kinds of things to get people to do stuff, you know, to to make world events happen, to make world events not happen. At what level is that?

What level is that control real? You know? And to me, like I really think back to the like CNN and Fox and New York Times and all that, they have really lost the they've really lost their grip on any kind of like power of holding the information because of like podcast, the Internet really just kind of trashed them.

You know what I'm saying, because especially after COVID and everything, like you guys mentioned before how there were some stuff, there's some stuff in there that happened that was just so absolutely asinine that anybody with common sense looks at it and they're like, what are you talking about? That makes zero sense? You know, like, oh, we have to we have to get every kid, you know vaccinated. Why there was like less than five hundred kids that died, and everyone that died had other issues like they were like terminal cancer or they were you know, they was like.

The why is because they want to kill your kids.

But okay, go ahead, right, I get the money behind it, I get you know. So lately what has been bothering me is the whole Ukraine thing obviously, which a lot of people have an opinion about. And you know, when when Russia initially invaded Ukraine, I was like, fuck Russia, fuck Putin. You know, I even sold T shirts on my website that said fuck Putin. You know what I'm saying, like literally within a day, let's walk through.

Let's walk through it slower, like like just because so you said fuck Putin for just because of the invasion, like that act alone, or did you or you already predisposed to see Putin a certain way.

I'm well, I mean I already have obviously a negative viewpoint on Putin, but I think that act.

And you say, you say obviously, so it's not so it's not obvious to me. So why Like I'm just trying to pull apart like you you start. I agree that you know, invading Ukraine is an aggressive act, and if I was a Ukrainian man, I would There's no way I wouldn't be in a trench killing Russians, like, no doubt about that. Ukraine had absolutely no no choice but to do what to wage war, to ask for our health, to ask for NATO's help, no beef against Ukraine at all. I'm wondering, like, what got you predisposed to feel a certain way about Putin?

Well, to me, it's just been kind of like an ongoing thing. I remember the first time I even really thought about post Soviet Russia or whatever.

You know.

While I was in the Marines, I went to Iraq in two thousand and nine, and when I deployed. At the time, I was a mechanic and we had some reserve mechanics that were attached to us for that deployment. And I remember talking to one of the guys and one of the dudes was on his you know how reservists have a weird For those that don't know, reserves have a weird kind of like enlistment, like those guys do one weekend in a month, two weeks of the year, that kind of deal. But they can also go on all these like weird ia like individual augment like deployments, and this guy had gone.

They can basically be active duty all they.

Want, Yeah, but they but they go to weird places that active duty guys never go. Like this dude was in Georgia, the country of Georgia, helping them with their military equipment, like working on their military equipment when Russia invaded Georgia, and that was in two thousand and eight, and I remember him telling me about He was like, yeah, I remember being there, and then like jets, these Russian jets are flying over and shit, I was like, damn, that's crazy, you know. So I guess it's between that Crimea, you know, and then obviously Ukraine. It's kind of like, what are these guys doing. I will say the US doesn't have a big place in the world to talk anything because we have started obviously multiple wars, but we

are not trying to take over Iraq. We're not trying to take it over, and that be you know, that's not our country. Afghanistan. We didn't try to take it over, and that's now our country. We may have tried to like get some resources as payment for being in those areas, but we weren't trying to like you know what kind of what Trump's fucking doing right now talking about Canada in the fifty first state kind of deal.

Yeah, we're a little more soft gloved in that respect. I mean, I would say that we didn't take them where we didn't try to take or we didn't take them over and be slightly inaccurate. We're just not as overt. Yeah, we certainly handpicked everybody in any piece of leadership in Iraq.

Plus like take like taking the taking the United States out of the out of it for just a minute, even though you can't. You can't really separate the United States from what happened in the Ukraine because of what our State Department did to kind of provoke and precipitate all that stuff. Like you can watch videos of Lindsey Graham and a couple of other dickheads in twenty fourteen, after the whole thing, the thing that happened in twenty fourteen, they were standing there promising the military leadership of Ukraine that that that the United States and Ukraine would be in an armed conflict with Russia by they Trump fucked the whole thing up. They were supposed to be by twenty sixteen. Like you can watch Linda Graham tell this

to these people. But that's like just.

A couple of things.

Well, just on Putin real quick like and again I'm not like an apologist for Prutin. It's not like I am pro Russian. I'm just trying to It's like so much of this propaganda goes one way from our media, both you know, both left and right side of our media, and basically it's all kind of of one mind. But like a couple of interesting things, like you know, like Putin's parliament demand the invasion of Ukraine, the one that just happened, not the encourasion in twenty fourteen, was a result of a parliamentary decision that Putin was against. Putin had been putting these people off for a while because since twenty fourteen, it's like, how many people, I think fourteen thousand Russian separatists have been killed in the Donbass

region prior to the most recent conflicts. So Putin's dealing with fourteen thousand of Russian, his Russian citizens being killed in artillery strikes and rocket attacks in this part of the Ukraine. It was previously. You know that the people that live there consider themselves ethnically Russian. Many of them immigrated to that area from Russia. Like, these people that live in that area consider themselves Russian, and they're having a beef with Ukraine and specifically these azahav like neo Nazi, these guys that they worshiped, this guy Benderis, which is like an SS World War two SS guy like these guys are do we hand wave away this like Ukrainian Nazi thing. Now, one thing is true, most of those

guys are now dead. Okay, So these original Azov Battalion guys that are like Nazi like tattoos. Not so the people in the towns that support them were waving SS banners and ship It's not like there's it's not like there's like six of them were into Nazi shit. No, this is like what it was.

It was an entire it was an entire battalion, and it is something that was like basic in our media has briefly been touched on and kind of like, no, no big deal, You're right.

On all that, and it's it's totally inconvenient because Putin is Hitler in our in our little like Marvel cinematic universe of geopolitics. No, Putin is Hitler. Where you have to see Putin is.

Where did this fourteen thousand people getting killed in don Bass before? Where did that number come from? So there was o're you're saying, you're saying prior to the invasion of Russia Ukraine that Ukraine was shooting artillery and rockets into the down.

Bass area than thousand percent.

Okay, I actually have never heard that.

Yeah, it's it's that is the case. So Russians. So Putin's responding to pressure from his own parliament to take care of this and then he's also like we're we're busy encroaching, like we're doing this encirclement, you know, adding countries to NATO. Like the purpose of NATO, you know, was for the Cold War. So as soon as the Soviet Union dissolved, NATO ostensibly could have dissolved. But then we had the Minska Cord saying all right, hey, look look we're gonna do you know, We're gonna do this nuclear disarmament. We're gonna we're gonna have Ukraine give up their nukes. We're gonna promise no no official like paperwork sign but like handshake deals saying we're not one more inch closer to Russia with our bullets. That's right, And

and these things were violated, you know, so it's again, do I think any of that excuses Putin for invading?

No?

Do I think Putin's a good guy? And no, do I you have a fuck about Putin? No, I'm just pushing back against this deluge of propaganda that is not one hundred percent accurate.

Yeah, No, I understand that. I understand that, and I will say that my kind of I'm I'm the same way. I don't. I'm more I don't really care about either country at this point. You know what I'm saying, Like I was all for the support, I'm all for you know, hey, they want to go and fight and stuff. But there's a lot of people out there that it's like, you know, we have to keep we have to keep supplying on, we have to keep pushing this, we have to keep it going. And it's like, dude, hundreds of people are dying every day. Thousands of people are dying every week for and for what. You know what I'm saying. And the only way Ukraine and people that it kills me because you ask people, You're like, what would you what

would the in state you'd want to see? And they're like, well Ukraine gets all their land back, and it's like, okay, well that's not gonna happen. The reality is the only way that could ever happen is if NATO and other European countries send in ground troops because Ukraine does not have enough peace. It's a manpower issue. Doesn't matter how much Ammo technology all that stuff we send them, they don't have enough people to fight. It's that's just how it is. And I don't think that we should be getting involved in that. Again, I was totally fine with US supplying them with arms and stuff like that, helping them defend themselves. But I am not gonna be on board with something that leads us into US ground troops,

you know, fucking in the trenches fighting these guys. I just don't well. And the people and the people that are advocating for that are the people that would never sign up to go do that. And that's why every time I'm online and I'm like debating somebody online or something like that, which I should not do, I always send them the link to the Ukraine Foreign Legion sign up page, Like, if you or if you're that dedicated, bro, here's the fucking thing, go sign up. Because they don't need more S sixteen's, they need more bodies on the ground, you know. Sixteens are nice.

But so I just saw an after action report written by some British officers that have been at the company level fighting in Ukraine, and it was on the green line, so it is what it is. I think it was like labeled UK Sensors ship who gets a fuck? So basically they were given an after action and they were just they were saying, this is like what we wish we would have known like three years ago, you know.

And one of the things that they were saying was that they were ill prepared to fight the way the Russians were fighting. Now, they weren't. They weren't expecting that. So essentially the Russian Russian doctrine, to be extraordinarily simple is they only do maneuver to bring up fires. So we're only pushing our maneuver elements forward in ground assaults so we can buy more terrain to bring the big guns forward. And so essentially what they do is they just encircle pockets of Ukrainians and just dump artillery shells on them. We're talking about like millions and millions of rounds of artillery shells. And in this ar you know, there's pictures of like the redoubts and the dugouts that that the Ukrainians have built in defense, and these these

commanders like, look, be prepared to live underground, be prepared to dig, be prepared to like dig in and keep digging and stay digging. Like they were saying shit, like uh, hey, stop practicing firing your rifle, because almost none of these casuals happen from like like like close combat with rifles. Right, there's it's drones and artillery, and after that is like mines, you know. And like so I'm reading through this, you know, and and I just know how our military operates. I know how the brass operates in particular, and I know what they're they are resistant to change to, like to their own detriment, and so I'm kind of like thinking in my head, like how are they even getting Basically, I'm just trying to reinforce your point, like we have

no business in a ground war in Asia, in either theater, whether that's Eurasia or actual Asia, because I think they were hiding the numbers until just recently. I did a little open social a bit ago, and it was like, oh, the Ukraine's lost like forty thousand, and the Rush have lost like eighty.

It's like seven hundred thousands.

Like it's like seven eight hundred thousand on the Russian side and a million on the Ukraine. Is the only source numbers.

Now, let's just think about that for a second. So you know, they gotta be higher. They're both lying.

They got to be higher.

Bro, we lost like seven thousand in the guy and we get sad about.

It do we get big sad?

I know, that's what I'm saying.

Fucking smoke themselves over it. It was like fifty five thousand in Vietnam. Vietnam. All right, dude, here's another just on the topic. Right, let me ask you how you feel about this? Okay. So the justification for so right from the word jump just because we're contrarian assholes, like we were against we were like, you know, against US involvement and support for the Ukraine thing. Okay, And we were listening to guys like peroninal Gregor early and then in short order we kind of stopped caring about it.

But like two points on that, I knew that Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe. So I knew that off the top.

You know, to say you're not allowed to say that, per yeah, per the State Department.

Yeah. I was like, so I just came from one of the most corrupt countries, you know, so, you know, Afghanistan. And then the second thing, I was like, well, let me get this straight. Like this country Russia that I grew up to fear. I'm a red Dawn kid, dude. I thought I was going to fight the Russians life. Yeah, we spent trillions of dollars against this threat called Russia.

They didn't sell all that shit.

They still got well, they never slowed their production of those.

So somebody was gonna tell me that to go back to Justin's point, like a country of like thirty three million was going to defeat a country of one hundred and like thirty eight million, and that was the country that we feared for twenty straight years, and like, both things can't be true.

In the early stages of this thing, Putin's stated goal was to come in push pass to the Dawn Bass, and I think the port at Sevastopool was secure the support because that's where they're They're like, yeah, special Water Navy is right. Yeah, so it was an incursion in the beginning. Now, maybe he's lying or whatever, but there was a chance early on, but they used Boris Johnson to talk. Zelenski was sitting, was gonna negotiate. It was gonna be an limited cursion by Russia. Russia gets up to the Dawn Bass and stops there, and it's like that's it right now. Of course, the western neoliberal world orders like no, this is tantamount to him starting to take over all of Europe. Freedom democracy, like you know,

it just starts with the buzzwords and everything. But a couple of them like forgot that they're on a microphone or something, and we're honest about it. But at various times, Lindsay Graham has said this, Adam Schiff has said this, that Kinsinger fucking weirdo has said this. But what we're told, you know, as an American consumer of the media, is the very concepts of freedom and democracy at stake. How can we be the United States if we don't support the freedom loving people of Ukraine. It's our you know, all this shit, right, But when you ask these discussing politicians, they say shit like Lindsey Graham say shit like, hey, we're grinding the Russian military down cheaply for us, like this is a good investment, like this is about a

tridding our endem me Russia. So and then you know, various other politicians said the same thing. So how do you feel about that? Like is that a reasonable? Is that a reasonable thing to do to use the fighting men of the country of Ukraine to throw them against the Russian military, have them turned into sausage so that in an effort to a trip our enemy. Is that moral?

Is that justifiable? Is that? Is that what Americans should be support?

I think it's gross, man. I think talk like that is like, just again, these are these are human beings, you know what I'm saying, Like, that's that's my whole especially the last six months, that's kind of been my whole mindset about the about the thing is like, I just I'm just tired of watching people get killed. Man, I'm tired of see an HD video of fucking some dude running from a drone and they getting smacked in the back of the head. Yeah, you know, I'm tired of It's just it's disgusting, it's sad for humanity, and I just don't want us to be part of that, you know. And again I at the begin of the whole thing, I was like, hey, man, they're a sovereign country and they should be able to defend themselves and

we should support that if you know, if we want to then support it. I can agree with that because if someone invaded us, we would, like you guys mentioned earlier, of course we would go out and fight those people. Of Course, we're not going to just allow that to happen. But after three years and there's nothing, there's not a lot happen. And well, people will say too, people will push back and say, well, you know, Putin was never able to succeed in the goals that he wanted. Look how look how slow his progress has been. Their forward movement has been because of the fight that they've given them, you know, and because of the material that we've provided and stuff like that. And that's cool and all, but

after three years, we need to be like, listen, we got to stop something. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. It just feels weird that I care more about these like young men that are getting murdered over there than the leaders of their own countries, do you know what I'm saying? It's just and.

Ultimately, like if our goal is to weaken in a trip Putin and Russia, look at Putin's standing currently. So he's shown the world that he can maintain this, you know, full scale modern war against an enemy that's or you know, against the countries that's supported by the United States and NATO and all the Western countries. So effectively we're fighting Russia via these proxies because because you know, what Poland has, like actual troops and there they just wear Ukrainian uniforms.

Like there's a lot of NATO guys running around getting killed over there. So so you know, we've got America has these European proxies fighting Russia. The world's watching, they watch putin his his own standing in his country has increased, Like his favorability rating has gone up. He's enjoying the popular support of his country, probably not universally, but like his standing has improved, and his relations with our enemies have solidified and strengthened. He's now creating an alternative to our financial genomy, hegemony, whatever that fucking word is like and then and then that yeah, with bricks, dude. That's why our our government, our leadership's panicked about this ship.

It's because the things that we do in the financi global financial world that maintains our quality of life in this country. Our quality of life is what keeps the people from ripping those guys out of their offices and murdering them. Right, because no matter what, even a poor person in our country has it pretty good. You got an iPhone, you know what I mean? Like everything's We're a very rich country. Still, even though eggs cost more and we're complaining a lot, we are just we are opulently wealthy. Still, So what what maintains all that? Well, it's not our manufacturing base anymore. It's not American ingenuity and stick tooveness and grit, none of that shit. It's financial.

It's a financialized instruments of finance that we control all these markets with over the world. Now you've got bricks forming, you've got people making alliances saying, well, we're not going to trade in the dollar anymore. Fuck the dollar. Okay, yeah, we hold a bunch of debt and the dollar I don't care. We'll we'll take it in the shorts on that, but we'll start trading in this other currency. What now.

The other thing we're worried about is we don't want to compete with Russia. We don't want to compete in the energy the European energy market with Russia. Well, too bad, now we are, like, that's why we blew up the nord Stream pipeline. Shit, we're crazy, dude. I think we're I think a lot of them are kind of like strange behavior globally. Is is indicates that we're like in a panic, Like these guys are doing a good job of kind of making it seem like they're they're keeping it together. And now we have a new they did a changeover to the new regime. Now Trump's in there with all this shit, and Okay, no, I think these guys are in a tailspan. I think that I think the fucking ship's about to fall off the mountain.

So probably the bad part of all that, if you're waiting for the bad part is that it's my assessment, and I hope I'm wrong that. You know, we're not going to be in the business of power projection for very much longer. You know, it's very unrealistic to think that we could ever power project to Taiwan too, to fight China over Taiwan. You know, it's just like this sea line of line. The sea locks are too long, the g locks are too long.

It's like, dude, and I work in the really good So I work now in the industrial base. So I'm a consultant, supply chain consultant, risk management consultant to the industrial base that creates the Virginia and Columbia class nuclear submarines and the aircraft carries and stuff. So basically I'm working with the manufacturing and suppliers that feed into these shipyards that build which are the most they are, Like I learned I've learned a little bit recently about our nuclear submarines. They're like they're the most technologically advanced piece of military hardware that anyone's ever made, and nobody's even close. Like, you know, other Russia and China have subs that, but they don't have ship like ours. Ours are these bespoke,

like they're like a work of art. They're like truly amazing, but they're very hard to make, and they're and they and they have a very complicated supply chain that is fragile, and like the things have to be made to such sort of a submarine that's going to live underwater. There's the tolerances and stuff. The way these things have to be made is real. It's really difficult to do. Dude.

We don't have that many of those things. If those things start to getting taken out, or aircraft carriers or airplanes or anything else, like our manufacturing base is not in good shape. It's true. Like it's hard to know with all the political because the Democrats are you know, alleged that the Republicans fucked it up, and the Republicans say that Democrats did it, and all these different people from different states are blaming who and whatever. But the bottom line is, like, dude, world War two required like Rosie the Riveter type shit, like when like your mom had to go in there and make P fifty one Mustangs with their biceps. Right, that shit is not happening now, Like we get into a global conflict where our military

hardware gets a tredded. Who's making this shit? So I think in.

Order to keep the ball rolling though, because you know so, we're gonna make a so the American hedgemoont appears to be shrinking. But in order to keep that grind going for the military industrial complex, it's like, oh, well, look we have this problem at the border. We have these we have these cartels who are now terrorists by the way, So now we have well, I mean we can just run GAT two point zero. You know it can be like we can do it right here in our very own backyard.

Dude, I don't know, I kind of support that. I kind of support the US about to.

Say, and that's it's hard. It's hard to not support.

I'm in San Diego. I'm right by the border, so I'm.

Like, yeah, dude, dude, I'm a I'm I'm of two minds about that stuff. So it's like just like to call out my own like biases or whatever, like my stuff with immigration. Having lived in California most of my life till I got ended up, but being born and raised in California and spending a lot of time, like, uh, I like that Mexican people are in our country, Like, like I see immigration mostly as a positive, even even if it's too much, even if it's illegal or whatever.

Like I can just like see how the economy and like my like how the economy was affected by that all that whatever it is, the labor the people, like not just labor, like the like the way the way those people impact the environment. I think in a positive way. But I have a pro like Mexican person bias or something.

We work in the infantry.

Yeah, it's probably all yeah we Mexicans fifty one but like but but that's that's one aspect of it. And then the other aspect of it is is like I I think that we're respond like dude, I'm about like the drug thing, the fact that our you know, there's fentanyl epidemic or whatever. It's like, dude, we're creating the demand, Like our absolute failings morally as a country is creating the demand. Like like like they're only feeding our weakness. Like, dude, a healthy society that had their their more morals intact wouldn't be susceptible to fucking cartel fentanyl like you. It's just I don't accept, like I don't accept that those people have no agency, Like no, like we're dude, what is it our economy. It's not even our economic conditions,

like it's our It's worse than that, it's a it's our failure as like people like our society is so weak that like we have a significant chunk of people that are so like untethered from any kind of moral foundation that they'll go like take a drug that turns them into a zombie and ultimately kills them. And they just do it all the time, Like there's they're everywhere.

They're like wandering the streets, bent in half, fucking pissing down their leg It's insane, Like that's not the cartel's fault. Now that being said, if we have an opportunity to go down there and like, if we can solve the problem by killing people that are killing our people, I'm guess I'm for it. I just although, dude, and sometimes when I think about it, I'm like, how sick would it be to be back in a team and be like doing a raid on like a drug kingpin like just came the movies, Like that'd be crazy?

I think, I don't know. So for me, I'm definitely pro immigration. I'm just not pro illegal immigration. I think we we deserve to know who's coming into the country, and what we saw the last four years was out of control, was completely insane. Well, especially when you when you hear about like these small communities across the US that suddenly have ten thousand Haitians or ten thousand freaking what named the country that they just drop into this small community and be like, well, there you go, you know, and we're supposed to be totally fine with that. And then they'll come on the news and be like, well, you know, that town was dying and they brought in these people and now there's workers there, and it's like,

you drop ten thousand Haitians into Ohio into one town, are all ten thousand of them working in one factor like that's bullshit. Maybe one hundred of them are like what about the other.

There's a guy with a cart selling barbecued squirrels. We have a fucking problem, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, when my brother lives in upstate New York, there's there's like roving four to five man bands of indiscriminating immigrants, and I'm like, bro, that doesn't alarm you.

It's crazy, man. It's the amount of money we're spending on that and basically allowing it to happen. And then, you know, the same people that will say, hey, you know, our workers need to get paid more are the same people that are like okay with this unfed illegal immigration. And I'm like, don't you realize how how much that's lowering wages for Americans because you have this artificial source of cheap labor that will the next guy will always work for a little bit less than the previous guy.

You know, even even illegal immigrants are like, stop the other illegal immigrants because this guy's coming in and he's gonna work for less than me. Now I'm gonna lose my job. Well, you know kind of.

And they'll say it's a, Oh, they're doing the jobs they're doing the Americans won't do, And it's like that's not true. Like this is we talked about propaganda earlier. It's just we're susceptible to like the wrong propaganda. Like you could propagandaize people entering into the industrial base or doing these trades jobs, you know, American people that already live here, right, But we have propaganda the other way.

We tell everybody those are loser jobs, that's dead end jobs. You need to go to college, you need to assume all this debt or whatever. I just think that we we could be. There wasn't this way when we grew up, Like you know what I mean, Like there were people doing these jobs from this country.

I think we didn't have to Americans won't.

Well it's not only it's it's like racist in a couple of ways. It's like you know, I was again, I was debating somebody on like Reddit the other day or something like that, and the guy was saying, like Americans aren't going to like ruin their bodies for these jobs. And I was like, so we're going to bring in other people or their bodies worth less than ours? Like what the fuck does that you know, you what are you talking about? You're bringing in another class of people because you think they're there. It's okay to destroy their lives, you know, doing some of these.

Jobs like work strengthens your body, for sure.

My you know my son, My son is likely going he's already. It sounds like he's got an apprenticeship basically lined up right out of high school to go into plumbing. And I'm like that's a good job, man. Yeah, I'm like that's a good job. Like people will look at that and be like, oh, clogged toilets and stuff, and I'm like, well, that's probably a small percentage of the job, but you get paid.

If your son's a go getter, there's a there's pretty good odds that he could be in his mid to late twenties owning his own business, like multiple six figure job.

Oh for sure. Yeah he knows that. And that's one of my buddies. Guy that's been on the show a few times, Michael Ferrell actually a lot of times. He he's the one that kind of set him up with it, and he was like, look, dude, like if you work hard at this, get your apprenticeship done. Here in San Diego.

After three or four years, it's very likely you'll be making six figures. And he's like, the deal is right now. For every plumber that retires, they need seven people to sign up because there's so few people that are doing these jobs. Like there's so few people that are like signing up for these kind of gigs. They're open and there's a ton of money to be made. But like you said, the propaganda has told people that these are not there. You know, these are for the others.

I think I would I would expect that to change because and then the other aspect is like plumbing, any of these trades jobs that are that are hands on, masonry anything, these are AI proof, Like you're not going to build a robot that does the plumbing. It's too complicated of a task, Like you'd have to have seventeen robots that do different you know what I mean, Like, you're not getting a plumber robot anytime.

Soon, at least not. Yeah, not in the next ten or fifteen years. He's probably stuff for a little while. I would not put anything behind I use AI every day now. I'm in digital marketing. For the people that don't know I do digital marketing and I'm using AI in some form or fashion basically every day for work, for research for my own novelty. I mean I always tell people, I'm like, this is like the early days of the Internet. You know, this is like the GeoCities days of the Internet, where people are still figuring out.

You know, we have the Internet, how do we use it? What do we use it for? Like people are always asking like, how can I even use it? I don't know how to use it in my industry, And I'm like, that's the point. Right now is the time to figure those things out. We are the forerunners of all this, Like, get in there, ask it, how to use it, you know, mess with it, and figure out. Because if you don't, if you don't get into it, if you just want to ignore it, in ten years, you're gonna be like your parents are, where they don't even know how to use a cell phone, they don't know how to get online, or they get scammed every time they get online because they don't understand concepts and stuff. It's I pushed important

for people to do that. Yeah, you're getting out of here, man.

Yeah, I'm gonna chuck out.

Man.

It's great talk with you. Justin I got a hard date with the wife, So thank you. Everybody's been a while.

I'll just leave this here when because I'm gonna split after this at some point.

I love talking and yeah, mag yeah, take these fellows.

That's fun. Concert. Yeah, I agree. I use AI at work mostly for research, but like its ability to deep search things and we actually I use it like I have to produce some products, like you know, slides and stuff for briefs, and the ease at which you can kind of just tell it the AI assistant and the Google slides to just create things where he's pretty pretty handy.

It speeds up my process for sure.

But yeah, I mean it's it's important for people to, like I said, kind of get familiar with it and kind of use it. And there's just so many things that you can do with it, and I don't think people understand the depth of what can be done both on a personal I mean I've gone to where I've literally, well I've literally what was like what should I make for dinner tonight? And I didn't know what to make?

So I took all the ingredients I had and like all the food and stuff I had in my fridge and stuff put it into Ai and was like, give me three gourmet recipes and it spit it out. I'm like, okay, it looks like a shrimp scampy.

And that's a good idea.

Yeah, and you can do it. You can do it like that.

So but all right, what so I don't know. I don't mean to steer through the conversation. But we're on tech already. Do you do you want to talk about the technique that's being formed currently with Trump and Musk and Teal?

What do you mean? Go ahead?

Let me okay, let me start. Let me start by trying to feel out where you're at real quick.

Let's let's wrap up. Let's make sure we're done. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about on the whole Ukraine and Russia thing or we good? No?

I I honestly like, I'm I disagree with you. I don't want to see any more of those guys die like I I have, I have empathy and and like, dude, like to call out my bias again, like I kind of like like I read a lot of Russian literature, so I'm like kind of fascinated by Russia in general in the history, and so I'm like sympathetic to these to the Russians, you know, And I'm like, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to. I want this whole thing to end, so all these Lava guys stop fucking killing each other. Guys.

Are you sympathetic to the Ukrainians as well? Do you see?

Definitely? Yeah, because obviously like any Ukrainian man, you know, worth his salt, would be shoulder to shoulder with his bros, you know, defending his country for sure, no doubt about it. So you know, and and it's like it's tough to see those guys getting press ganged, you know, pulled off the street and thrown into vans and then sent to the front. To the degree which that's true, it's hard to know, like what whether what I'm consuming is like Russian propaganda or Ukrainian propaganda. I'm kind of experiencing the whole thing through like my phone, and so I try to just not you know, but dude, it's hard to deny.

Like you've seen the drone videos where both sides do this. By the way, it's not just the Ukrainians, but they take prisoner That's why you always see these people getting killed with the drone and they're unarmed and they're kind of spinning around, running around the road or something. It's because they can't. It's because they take their prisoners it's a good game. And they tell them to run and they run them down with the drone and kill him.

Both sides do it. So that's why he keeps seeing because at first I was like, where are these people's guns? Every time, like at least like roll your back and try to shoot the drone or something, you know. But like then I figured out, oh shit, these guys are prisoners, you know, and they're it's like a sick game.

I've never really thought of that. That is kind of crazy. If that's the case.

Yeah, they're getting pretty wild about it. And you know, it's another interesting thing about the drone. I saw a documentary. I wish I remember what it's called, but it's on YouTube. They the documentary crew goes with this Ukrainian drone operator and he's like a dude. He's like vaping, he's got like earrings in. He's like a gamer, like like a pro I don't remember what game, but he's like a pro gamer. All this happening. So now he's a drone guy and they kind of like drive him to this place where they you know, they fill the back of a truck with like he's got like twenty five drones for the night, and he, you know, they get him down into this bunker and he just fly mission after mission after mission, and he's just like finds people to

kill and kills him and he's like vaping joking. It's like a video It's it's a video game.

We started. We started this whole thing with like Switchblade. You remember the switch Blade program. That was like the first kind of if you correct me if I'm wrong, But I feel like that's the first kind of like small drone like squad level jo. You just throw it out there and smoke somebody with it.

Yeah, loitering munition. I got several buddies now that work for Andril as FSRS. So, Andrew, this is Palmer Lucky's company. You know, these guys are making all the technology. That's dude. And this is again here I go on my bullshit, but like this goes into what I wanted to talk about. Like Trump wins the election, and you know, I am I don't vote, and like I don't I just I see voting as an act of consent, and like I was not willing to consent to either of the administrations that were presented to me.

Do you vote for your local do you vote locally?

Though, yeah, I'll vote locally, I just don't participate in the national elections. But yeah, so but uh so Trump wins, and I'm like, when Trump wins, I'm happy. But I'm happy for dumb reasons, like I find Trump to be funny. I think he's like a stand up comedian, Like you know, you can pull up Trump's IMDb. Trump is an actor, he's an entertainer, he's a performer, he's a businessman, he's an oligarch. He's a bunch of things. Right, But generally I enjoyed. So I'm I'm kind of operating all the time, like I'm being shown present at a show, like a kind of like a loosely choreographed production. Is what I'm consuming on my phone and on my screens all the time.

So okay, So now that's this. This season has a good writing because Trump's and it it's gonna be enjoyable. I'm gonna I'm gonna laugh more. It's gonna be fine. And then and again he doesn't disappoint like we get the uh that I don't buy the execution thing, Like it's just so.

No, you don't think that really happened. I look, man, I don't think there's more to it than what we saw.

I just I don't. Look. I I maybe it happened. Okay, I'm not taking a definite stand. I'm just telling you, like how I experience it, Okay, because again, I like my baseline is that I don't is that my default mode is that what I'm being shown on my screen is part of some sort of it serves a purpose. It's it's not organic. Okay. Now that's not always true, right, Some things are organic and they just happen, right, But I start from the position of I'm being shown something for a reason. So so the Trump thing, look, dude, Like, if this was enough, if you were watching it on a show, or it was written into some drama that you were watching, or if it was something you didn't have any emotional attachment to, something that happened in another

country and you were just observing it, it would appear completely fucking absurd to you, like the way those just as someone who's spent a bunch of time around people that are getting shot at and reacting to contact and all these things like if you spend if you spend time really getting into the weeds about what happened that day, watching how those people responded, understanding what the police were up to, prior to what the guy that allegedly shot him was up to. Like, there's a lot of unknowns and a lot of things that are just that don't make sense and are logical. Now, I immediately kind of made my decision that I was suspicious of it and moved on me because I don't I don't care to go down these rabbit holes deeply about it. Right, But

it's drama. It's like it's all just a bit too perfect. You know. He gets up and he's like fight. But let's just all grant. Let's just say it was real. It doesn't matter, Okay, I'm entertained. The point is I'm entertained whether it was fake or real. I'm not good, Like this is what I wanted, right, I'm getting the show.

But then in short order, here comes Musk with his chainsaw and all his shit. Right now, am I am? I? Am? I in support of finding where there's fraud, waste and abuse in the government, and it's and it's rampant and dealing with it. Of course, I am right do I ostensibly kind of like the idea of that, sure, but I know too much about Musk and Teal to to be anything but freaked out by what's going on. There's a political philosophy. So Trump is there, guy, He's it's trum.

Trump is the front facing element of this thing that's happening right now. Do you have ever heard of Curtis Jarvin?

No?

Okay, So if you get a chance and you guys listening, or if you're interested or whatever, just look up Curtis Jarvin you can. He's he's a political theorist. Basically, he operated a blog for a lot of years under the name Menshus Marbug. But he's he is responsible for the political philosophy that drives guys like Peter Teele Mark Andresen and now Trump. Jd. Vance is definitely a Curtis T.

Jarvin acolyte. Or if he's not a Curtis Arvin Jarvin aclyte, he's a Peter Teele acolyte. And Peter Teel gets his political philosophy from Curtis Jarvin. Now what these people believe now Trump, I think Trump is just their agent, Okay, Like I don't think Trump has I don't think Trump is a principled person. And I'm not saying this to shit talk him. I just think this is how he is.

I don't think he's a principal person beyond he wants to be the man, he wants people to like him, he wants to be successful. I just don't think he has these this political philosophy that these guys are, by their own words, right out of Andreasen's mouth, right out of Peter Thiel's mouth, right out of Curves Jarvin's mouth.

These people, they have some basic tenets of their philosophy. One of them is that there will always be elites. Okay, so we have are you know, until Trump won, So that what was cast off when Trump won was the political establishment right right left, Democrat, Republican. We have a degenerate, decadent, kind of failing political elite. Okay, Trump comes in and he defeats them and casts them off. So so these guys like Jarvin believe that there will always be elites.

We just need better elites than the ones that we had, right it's not about like the people democracy, you know, the will of the people being manifest in the government. It's not about that. It's about top down from a better class of elites. This class of elites is building a technocracy, a technique. These are and you notice, like all of a sudden, all the teche they're like pro Trump now, like Zucks on board. You know what's the Amazon guy Bezos, Bezos, Everyone's cool Trump now, right, because they're aligning themselves with the current establishment of this technique.

So these guys like they like they're very willing, like Curtis Yarvin advocates for an absolute monarchy, like a corporate monarchy, and he makes the case this way, every corporation that's successful that you use the products, from Walmart to Sony to Apple to fucking Hyundai, right, all of those things are run as basically a dictatorship. There's a CEO, there may be a board of directors or whatever, but it's not democratic, right, The things that are effective and actually work in the world, they're not democratic. And this is their point. This is what like a guy like Curtis Yarden Jarvin is like, look, this experiment in democracy, we're now at the tail end of it. It you know, it worked for a while, but now it's coming apart

and we're going to replace it with this technique. They're built the surveillance, The technology now exists for them to have complete control in a way that they never never did before, everything from digitizing our currency. So like people are pro bitcoin, but they don't understand and I'm you know whatever, like if you can make money off bitcoin, great, Like the idea, this egalitarian idea that you can have this like this kind of money that is not coming through a central banking concern. It's like very distributive and you know, anarchic and everything, and people love it. But this is just the predecessor to them establishing their central bank digital currency. Once they have that and we're completely cashless,

then the world's their oyster. Like I say something they don't like on the internet, something anti semitic, you know, Like I'm a Columbia University student who doesn't like to see baby slaughtered in Gaza. So I've been running my mouth. Now all of a sudden, they can geofence my money and say, well you can spend it here, but not here.

You can't use the travel you can they can just start establishing these rules on how we can use our money. Now rules aren't in place for that currently, but the technology is right, so they're gonna do these things incrementally. They got Palmer Lucky from Andrew on board. He's part of this technique. He's building the AI security stuff they're gonna use on the border. They're already using it on the border. They've already got this technology in place. They're gonna put it in the smart cities right as they build these. It's not like Trump is against these smart cities, like he's we're gonna start having these things that people were when it was the you know, World Economic Forum talking about it, all the right wingers were up in

arms and they were pushing back and they were like, how dare you? But when it comes from guys like Vance or Peter Teel or Trump, then it's good, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot. I think there's a lot that's changing in our world as this technology comes online. And you know, for all I know, like maybe they're right. Maybe Curtis Jarvin and Peter Teele are right. Maybe we just don't know what's good for us and the technology exists to kind of hold people accountable for crime before they can commit them, like all this like pre crime. They're they're serious about this stuff, right, Maybe they're right. Maybe the end result of all that is this like tech enabled utopia. We're gonna be on

a universal basic income because there'll be no there'll be you know, labor jobs anymore, because robots and a I will have taken it all over, you know, Like this is the world that they imagine and they speak about publicly and they write about. So these are the guys that are behind Trump and so. But the problem is, like they they what they what they sell you is the culture warship. They sell you the stuff that with Trump that you want. Like Trump gets in there and all of a sudden they're fixing the military. Holy ship, the d I stuff's gone. Like that guy the heg sath like, you know hard, it's hard not to get behind that. You're like, yeah, dude, they're gonna they're gonna make the military like it was back when I was

in it, like in the nineties. It's gonna be obviously, I'm for that, right, Like that's cool. Right, They're gonna close the border, They're gonna go after the cartels. They're gonna do. These are positive things that I agree are good, but I think that behind all that, the big project that's little shit to them. This is like this is little shit for them. They're going to fix these problems.

It should have been fixed anyway. Fine, But in behind all that, there's a bigger project. And the bigger project is what I want to point people towards and say, hey, look are you are you ready to abdicate your responsibility over to these people and their algorithms? Are you are you willing to Are you willing to do this? And I don't think we're going to have much of a choice.

I think we're I think the genies out of the bottle with a lot of this stuff, and it's it's we're off to the races.

I don't know well with a with AI, the advancing the advancement of AI and technology, like I said, you gotta get in, you gotta learn about it because it's getting involved in everything. It's getting put into everything, even if you don't like it. You know, I was totally fine with the uh Google Assistant on my Samsung phone, but now Google's doing away with a Google assistant and making it into an AI assistant, which has been so far less less efficient and effective as the original Google Assistant that they had on there. To me, at least, I do think there's gonna be some natural side effects to advancing technology. I don't for me, Like, let's touch on a couple things here. For the crypto thing, For me,

I don't see it. I see I see crypto. Yeah, that's a good like what do you want to call it? Commodity or something that people are trading, But I don't ever see bitcoin like taking over as a main kind of currency. And you know a question I've always and someone can put this in the comments if you can answer this question, but I've always put it out there like there is a limited amount of bitcoins that can be mine. It's not unlimited, there's a limited amount. And as every year we hear about oh so and so lost their crypto wall and it had a million dollars worth of bitcoin. Oh so and so lost this it had one point two billion dollars worth of bitcoin. Okay, well, in a hundred years, how many how much bitcoin is

they're going to be available? You know what I'm saying? Like that to me, just doesn't make sense, like there's an end state where there's only gonna be a certain amount and there can be no more created as as they are lost and things happen naturally, because whatever, what how does that look? You know what I'm saying. So that's the way, just.

Well, just briefly, just briefly, bitcoin's a brand name. It's like yeah, cleanings, you know what I mean. Like, so it wouldn't be Bitcoin, it would be the central bank digital currency probably. They're talking about XRP being that, So we're just talking about what it is. Basically, it's a digitalized you know, global currency. So what are the rails that's gonna ride on, Like what's the technology, what's the mechanism that's gonna facilitate that. So again, and it's tough to know, people are trying to figure out what they're gonna land on because if you invest in it, you know you're gonna make some money. But like they're saying XRP, it won't be Bitcoin per se. And then even when they adopt central bank digital currency, which will actually probably

feel just like it does now cause it's like you know, you can your phone, you can Venmo, you can it's all digital kind of anyway, unless you're actually pulling money out of the bank, So it'll it'll just feel like that they'll make it fairly seamless, but they'll but it'll they'll have the ability to do kind of authoritarian stuff with it. But even so, I don't think that'll preclude people from ever using bitcoin, like some of the things that are possible like to be optimistic about. And this is what like the bitcoin like maximalist type says like, yeah, the government can invent whatever digital currency they want. We can still trade. We can trade doge coins if we want, you know, we can trade bottle caps and say that

have value. It doesn't matter, Like there's nothing really they can do with a bunch of people deciding that something has value and then trading in that way.

So but yeah, we also need to remember I think people need to remember as well. I just saw this the other I saw this stat the other day and I haven't double checked it, so it could be wrong, but I doubt it is, but it was that I think it was sixty percent of India doesn't have internet access. So we're like we're like advancing like crazy into this like technology and you know, digital currency and AI and everything to be online, and we we because of where we're at in our own society, we forget there's major parts of the world that are nowhere near having that kind of capability, or they don't even understand what you're talking about. Like if you went to some village in India and you started trying to describe bitcoin, they'd be like,

what the fuck are you talking about?

Right now?

You know, like this is that's insane, Which I think that's a weak point for us because if we get so wrapped into technology and then something happens to technology, something crazy happens, then we're in a really bad spot because we forgot to how we forgot how to work in a non you know, technology technological world like that.

But well, the other problem with this technology or the issue with it, and again this is like how I get in trouble with people because nobody likes to be moralized too. Right, But there's this thing called the isart fallacy, right, like you cannot you cannot derive what you ought do, what you ought do or not do from what is like you can't just measure and quantify things or observe things and then derive what you ought do from that.

In order to get an aught what we ought be doing ought not be doing, you have to have an objective moral standard. We've strayed very far away from ours. So the thing is like, okay, let's say me and you and Cody and like seven other people we knew from the Marines or whatever, we lived in the same like cul de Sac together, and we just all of a sudden got a whole bunch of like interesting technology right at that scale and with people that kind of share decent like a regular moral kind of standard, Like we may fay feel a little bit differently about something minor, but we just basically all agree like, hey, look, we shouldn't be we shouldn't be violating each other's privacy, we shouldn't be addressing against each other in our property or

in any way. We shouldn't do it right, We did have no problem implementing that technology into our kind of lives in a way that would just be a benefit, Like, hey, because we're because we have a shared mortal understand then that that that informs how we behave with this technology. The problem is, this shit is coming online for everybody, and nobody agrees anymore, like, uh, you know, we live in a country where all, okay, I'll just I'll take a hot button issue like OnlyFans right, Like if you ask me if I was, you know, Emperor of America, I would completely ban it, and I would make it illegal, like I would do that with all of pornography, and and like I know how that like that sounds to people.

I don't know if i'd make pornography illegal, but I would make it very hard for pornographers to do business in my country. There'd be no financial incentives for it, and it would just be difficult. Or I'd leave it to the States probably like it kind of is like they can ban certain you know, I would make it.

I would, I would do I would put some mechanisms in place to kind of make it hard for pornographers to do business. And then I would be releasing anti pornography propaganda because I just don't think it's a net good for the society and I don't want to live in a place where people like tolerate or tolerate is not even the word. Well, people, well we're past tolerance.

We're now like telling young women no, no, no, you shouldn't be shamed for that. That's called sex work. It's legitimate. It's no different than you know, working at a laundromat or something. So and anybody that tells you otherwise is a bigot. I would go the other way. I would say, hey, look, I don't want to throw anybody in jail for making pornography, but I think we should be shaming you. I think you should be a pariah. I think if someone find out you do pornography, you should you know, you should be ashamed of yourself. Like not just my bullshit, but I mean the problem is I'm just using that to illustrate a point. That's that's one issue where people are a million years apart. So it's hard for us to

determine what's appropriate to do with this technology because we don't agree.

So someone on the hard left, I think, would call you a Christian nationalist for saying something like that.

Yeah, I definitely so. And then to them, I would say, even if you don't believe that, like there's no sky daddy, right, like we're just this is just a what an accident of chemistry and physics particles bumping around that just magically kind of resulted in unbelievable sophistication and order. But let's forget all that for a minute. Say there's no sky Daddy, right, we still need a moral standard that we agree on.

So for pragmatic reasons, forget whether God's real or not. Just for strictly pragmatic reasons that you can, like data supports this, we would all be better off behaving as if like the Christian ethics were real or like, we would all be better off as a society adhering to Christian ethics than not doing so. And the proof is like in the pudding. Now again that's people. People are usually too emotional to engage with that. They go, well, you can't tell me, you know, what to believe. It's like, yeah, true, I'm just making the case for the health of our culture.

It's not healthy, like we're not doing good, like we have problems, like we don't get along, we're we're not like we're sick, we're unhappy, like people are crazy, like it's not going well, So okay, what's going on? Well what changed? Well, you know, we and again there was excesses, like there's problems, like you gotta find a middle ground, like do I think we should throw gay people off roofs. No, do I think it should be illegal to be gay?

No?

Do I want you know, a twenty five year old woman with a four year state college degree talking about transgenderism to my nine year old No, you know what I mean, Like, we don't. It's it's a it's a mess, right. But again, I'm dude, and I'm somebody who spent most of my life stone cold atheist, hedonist, like the whole time I was in the Marines like all that. Like there's no atheist in a foxhole. No, there are, Like I I dude, I used to read like Bertrand and Russell books just so i'd have AMMO to use against like Christian dudes on my team, Like there's because there's always like one or two that are like into it.

It's like born again dudes, and I would fuck with them, you know, I'd be like, yeah, well this part of the Bible contradicts is this point. I was like a real dick about it, like a real dick, you know what I mean. So I don't I have empathy for people that are that there that way that like don't believe any of that stuff doesn't matter, Like it doesn't matter like what you whether you believe in God or not.

We we need a standard like imagine being in a military unit where there was like you kind of just do what you want all the time, no matter what.

Yeah. Well, so to back up, you know, for the the only fans thing specifically, like I think the one of the big issues is is that the media, social media, you know, user generated content. They all talk about these like top point one percent girls that are making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, millions of dollars a year and all that stuff, and it encourages, even without actually encouraging. It encourages these young women to to try it themselves without understanding that you're never gonna make that much. Like the odds of you making that much money are super. What you're probably gonna do is make as much money as you would if you had a regular job at most at most, And what are you

giving up in return? You're putting yourself out on the internet. You know, you're showing your butthole for four ninety nine, you know what I'm saying.

Like, well, and at some point, dude and I have a lot of empathy for those girls because do what they need. You know, probably if they had like a strong father in their life, they wouldn't be doing that to begin with. So it's like, so our culture has already failed them in that this seems like a viable and just like you said, like we're showing them examples of you know, this girl just got bought a Bugatti for showing her bottle older people or whatever, and it's like you like you said, that's the exception, not the rule.

But and then we just don't like we'd be doing them a favor by saying, hey, look, this is not there's you're capable of more. This is a low frequency thing to do, Like this is gonna hurt you long term, like you might you may not think so now. And dude, like I'm a huge hypocrite for even saying any of that ship because like I don't have only fan wants to see that. But I just I did things that were against my interest. But it's lower risk for a guy, you know, Like the things I were doing is like stuff other guys would tell you, Oh that's cool, Like you get like positive reinforcement for you know, because it's dude, this is just the nature. This is an this is the way it is with men and women, like they

can kind of tell you that it's otherwise they could say no, no, no, no. Women can be completely sluty, you know, and that and that's cool. Now we don't judge, and it's like, no, we still judge, Like I don't. I'm not interested in a girl that does that. And I'm not alone. Dude, that's an innate thing, like we it's I think it's natural. I think we we.

I would never date an OnlyFans model. I would never date a stripper. I would never date a porn star, you know, like in my in my previous life, I I definitely would have.

I just wouldn't have treated them. I wouldn't have taken them seriously. I would have like hooked up with them, but there would have been no possible long term future with it.

You could. I could never see myself having a kid with someone who's naked online. You know how traumatizing that'll be for that kid in the future.

I mean, dude, and it and and it's these girls are making this decision at such a young age that, dude, we're all idiots when we're that young. It's not I'm not even judging the girl. I'm judging just our our, our failings as a culture. You know, it's not the girls, like, dude, they're young. It's hard to earn. It's hard to earn a buck in this world. And then our culture tells everybody that they have to have all these high end consumer items where they ain't shit, and we tell these girls like dude, we have bad propaganda. Again. It's like the feminism has gone too far. It's like, don't don't get a husband and a family to to serve. You don't want to You don't want to subordinate yourself to the will of a man in a home and you know,

as part of this system that creates healthy human beings, No, you need to go into some corporation and subordinate yourself to a mid level manager who's a man. You know what I mean, Like they're the feminism is trading a natural hierarchy for a synthetic hierarchy and then claiming that it's liberating the woman. It's not liberating the woman. You've just moved her. You've moved her from one patriarchal set up to another one. Because in all there all that you can count all the boss bitches you want. It's the corporate structure is still patriarchal statistically primarily, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, there's plenty of women in leadership.

I'm saying the norm. The chances are this young woman that assumes, you know, one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in student loan debt to get a marketing degree and is now working in an office somewhere, is subordinating herself to whatever man is in charge of her division there, and now she has debt and now she has no Now she has debt that she's paying with OnlyFans, and I can't get a husband. Like this is not helping women.

Yeah, No, in my opinion, I agree. I think I think, like a lot of things, COVID really uh made things worse, right because they sat at home and were like, how can I make money? And then this only fans opportunity came about and people were like, oh, well, I could just sit in my living room again. My buddy Michael, who's a plumber, has said that he's gone into houses and there's like they have their room, their only fans room, that's like a setup for that, and it's kind of like, oh, Yeah, like there's there, that's their filming room. I was, I know, I was like, dude, that is crazy, and you know it's I don't know, it's crazy.

It's understandable, Like it's understandable why they would do that, because and again, like absent any kind of moral instruction otherwise, like they're told at a young age like that's no big deal.

Like what if someone told you, they were like, hey, I'll give you ten million dollars, you just have to take one naked photo put it online. You know what I'm saying, a lot of people are gonna say yes to.

That ten million bucks just a naked photo. Yeah, you know, honestly, damn dude, I want more, Aaron, I know, I'm just being honest. I'd have to think about it real hard, because ten million dollars, man.

That's that's generational wealth.

You know, that's me never that's me never working again, and then me being able to spend every second that I would otherwise be working with my family.

That's the option that a lot of these girls are being told though. That's what they're being told, Hey, if you do this, this is what you're gonna get, and they're thinking of it like, man, I'm I'm poor, or I'm lower middle class and I'd really like to go take that trip to fucking France, you know what I'm saying, and not worry about it. Or I'd really like to buy something from my mom, buy my mama house.

And the way our the way our society works is if you get enough money, it doesn't matter what. People can't shame you then you know, like that, and I'm pretty sure that's part of the calculus, Like, yeah, they can talk shit when I'm nobody, but when I'm rich.

It's funny. It's funny though because we like, like I said earlier, like a lot of these girls will start this thinking that they have this possibility of making this much money, and it's like, hey, the numbers are there. They are the top one point one percent of OnlyFans creators. That means ninety nine point ninety percent of the people doing it aren't making that much money, most of them significantly less. So yeah, the odds are they're they're telling you the odds. It even says. It even says I think like on their accounts if they're like a point one percent one percent or whatever, there's like, yeah, there's this chick right now, who's like one of those models who's like down in Florida banging a bunch of people

on spring break for content and stuff. It's stuff like that. It's just I don't know, man, it's the whole thing is crazy. It's crazy. But again I see where there's like I said, if someone was saying it was like, hey, post a picture of your buttthole online, I'm gonna give you ten million bucks and be like.

I mean, it's totally it's totally rational what they're doing, which is why like this is this is just you know, it's a tough time for for these people, like young people. I uh, how many kids? You just got? The one teenager?

Yeah, yeah, eighteen.

I'm eighteen. Okay, well all right, so you're through. So he's kind of he's that's for him to manage. Then he's got to figure out how he's gonna.

Well, he's still in high school, he's finishing up his senior year of high school. He's one of those like late birthdays, and so he turned like me. I was the same way. I turned eighteen my senior year. So he understands, like, you're eighteen now, man, you're responsible if something bad happens, it's no longer me and your mom having to help you out and stuff like that. It's on you now, Like legally, you're in charge of yourself. However, as someone who was eighteen, you know, and I moved out of my parent I moved out of my mom's house like a few months before I even graduated high school because I was eighteen, and a couple buddies got a place and asked me if I wanted to move in, and I was like, all right. As someone that did

that and kind of knows, you know, where things can go wrong in that kind of situation, I still try to put out like guardrails for him, just to be like, hey, man, make smart decisions. You know, you're an adult and you can make decisions, but let me give you a little bit of advice from someone that's been there. And as most teenagers are, he'll listen to some and he'll not listen to some. You know, it's just out it is.

But it's on us as parents and as adults in society to like try to guide these kids in the right direction. Don't let them go down the wrong path.

It's tough. You're competing with social media.

Yeah, Well, luckily he's not a big social media guy. He's a little bit on Instagram and stuff. He's definitely he doesn't even have TikTok, like, he's not really into that. I'm I'm extremely lucky that he's as well rounded, like he's a he's got a good head on his shoulders. I don't know, he's so far in life he's been good.

I can't have no complaints about my son because he's just doing the things that he's got to do. He doesn't give me grief about stuff. He doesn't cause trouble, he doesn't get in trouble with the law. And part of that, I think is because you know, there's expectations, you know what I'm saying, and not like I'm not like a helicopter parent and I'm making him do things and I'm like, you have to get straight as so you can get into the best college. No, I'm like, hey, man, do your best. That's all I'm telling you. I'm walking, Hey, if you're gonna do something, do your best. I know you don't like being in high school. It sucks. Do your best. Get it over with. It's a check in the box. And then you're done with it and you

don't have to worry about it. Don't be the guy that quits on your junior year or your senior year and goes and you know, cause he's like, oh, I don't even need a high school diploma to work as a plumber.

And I'm like, okay, no, just hang out, just enjoy it. Man. It doesn't get easier in life, like yeah, high school, Like you know, they don't. They don't have that perspective though, they you know.

And they're coming into they're coming into a weird world. And you're right about like technology, And I guess we to go back to what you were saying before about this like these like what were we saying, like technocrats or whatever kind of running I mean maybe to a point. I mean I think technology is advancing and it's gonna go.

There's nothing we can do about that. I would. I don't think it's going to become like a I don't know, man, I don't think I'm trying to think of how to say this. I don't think like Musk and Deal and all those guys are like going to run everything, like take everything over. You know, they're pseudo leaders of the of the world at that point. I do think that they have an impact, you know what I'm saying. I just don't know. I don't see it as dark as you do.

I guess I think I think it'll I just I think it will depend on whose whose political political philosophy gets traction. So the existing order, the neoliberal global order, these guys you know, that have been in power since after World War Two. They they don't want to give it up. But dude, they Trump Trump and company has got them on the ropes. I think they're in tough shape.

I think the existing order is in tough shape. I think a lot of the Republican holdouts are now firmly in the Trump camp because these people are pragmatic. They're just gonna you know, Trump's gonna crush anybody, any dissenters. He he on on dash too. For Trump this time, I don't think he's taken any any kind of bullshit like he had that first go around. And again, this isn't like pro or anti Trump, It's just kind of like what I observed like that first time around, I don't think he knew fully what he was getting into, and I think he just assumed that he'd have all the Republicans and didn't know that there was a bunch of them that absolutely hated him, would work at countered him to included like, you know, he had a big

issue with guys like General Madison stuff. When he's telling his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and he's telling his military to get out of Syria and they're slow rolling him and they're lying to him.

You know, he's they say, I remember they openly said that after he was no longer president, that they had lied to him so that they could keep troops in Syria. But the troops there anymore.

They were proud of it because because from their perspective, they are the government, you know what I mean that they are the security state. So again, neither here nor they're my opinion about those guys, but like I think that who knows what what they're going to do to try to get power. But if you kind of look at like, you know, the Vance is probably the front runner for the Republicans after Trump and dude, maybe Gavin Newsom kind of rises up or something. But like it's not looking good for the Dems, you know, Like I I just they don't seem to have their shit together, and and so it'll be you know, if the global if the rules based international order gets power again, it's gonna have to be the Democrats. And like, I mean,

a lot can happen in the convening four years. But like dude, and so so so if we go another election cycle with a Peter Teel candidate in there, so Vance is very.

Much Wait on, why are you so against Peter Tiel, Like, what's your what's the what's the issue?

I'm not I'm not saying I'm against him. I'm just pointing to the fact that he is responsible for Jade Vance. He funded jd Vance from the word jump. He's was instrumental in jd Vance getting that book published. He word.

J Vance working.

Teals Like, yeah, but I think yes, But but that's not like how he met Teal. I'm not exactly sure, like how oops, sorry, I'm not yeah, but okay, So back to Teal. He so he again, he has a very specific philosophy about how the government should be run. And it's not the one that we've been experiencing since World War Two. It's not this now. I'm not saying that like all of a sudden, democracy will go away.

I just think it'll be it'll take a different form. I think that I think these guys may it might be better. You know, I don't. It's not like I don't like Peter Teel. He seems weird. Like all these guys seem real weird to me, like Musk, Like forget what they're doing. Like if you just put me in a room with any of these guys and and like I'm sitting there and there talking, they seem completely insane, Like Peter Teel's like sweating. He seems nuts. Musk is like autistic and insane, Like he seems nuts to me.

Like these you just don't seem like like stable, normal people like you named one of his kids like a series of numbers and dashes and shit like, yeah, we're giving these people ammense amount of power and I don't know what they're so my thing is is like I don't know what their moral foundations are, like what are their limits? Like what are they about? Ultimately?

You know, Yeah, I don't know. People are hating on Musk for sure, but it's undeniable that he has made quite the impact on just humanity with some of the stuff that he is involved with. You know, with these rocket launches, with Tesla, with PayPal and a lot of this stuff, people will rightly say these were things that were created that he jumped in on and like invested in and stuff like that. But he's also since he's invested in these things, he's also helped guide them to where they are now, you know what I'm saying. It's not like he just threw ten million or ten billion or whatever at PayPal or at Tesla and then just let them continue running it. Like he had some hands on changes that he made to like advance him to

where they are to this point. So it's like on deniable to say that he's having an impact on humanity. I mean, the biggest thing watching these SpaceX rockets is crazy, you know what I'm saying, especially when they start catching them, Like that's crazy. And I understand why. Like listening to him talk, I've watched multiple interviews of his I do think he has like some kind of touch of autism or something, which he probably I would say, he freely admits.

I don't think. I don't know. I think he I think he does most more good than bad.

I don't disagree with with all that, Like you know it's undeniable that he's having an impact. Okay, But for me, just just as I like stare at all these changes in our world, right, and it's in this journey I've been on to understand the what what kind of philosophically underpins all this stuff? When I see guys like Teal and and Trump or not Trump, I already I kind of know what Trump's about. But Teal and my I see them, you know, accumulating power, and they're creating this technology and like you said, yeah, that's the rockets and and you know, but for me, it's like these are these are items. These are material items and quantities of material items. And the success that we're talking about is

in the production, the moving forward to these technologies, the production and and kind of you know, proliferation of these technologies. But nowhere in there is can I find an ought a moral good? Like I want to? I want an improved world for myself and my children and for everybody else, you know what I mean. Like, and the mere advancement in production of technology, it's not obvious to me like how that results in a better world for me or my kids. Okay, you can say that the technology is inevitable, and so you know, uh, if it's an American that's creating the technology, then we win and whatever. So maybe, but like dude, like I don't give I don't give a single solitary shit about going to Mars, anybody ever

going to Mars any of that shit. Like I don't see. I don't believe anyone's ever going to Mars. I think it's nonsense. But even if it was.

True, Like, why do you think is nonsense? Though?

I just don't even think they have their little dune buggies up there. I think that's all bullshit.

Do you think, oh you think space travels off like fake? I mean.

I don't know, I don't know. I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced.

I mean you have to believe, you have to believe in the space station and people being in space because you can literally see it from Earth.

I mean that's low Earth orbit though that's not Mars, which is ninety million miles away. Yeah, so like what again, maybe it's true, but just using my discernment and understanding, like these people's propensity to tell world changing lies and that's another whole rabbit hole. But like I could give you ten examples of things that these people you know, lied about, But like, okay, what I'm expected to believe a couple things, Like, first of all, what I'm told, what I've shown pictures of, is that Musk put a red Tesla roadster with a fake spaceman in it on a rocket, shot it into space and it's on its way to Mars. I used to think, tell me, and then they show you a picture of it and it looks like nonsense, And then Musco's you can tell it's

real because of how fake it is. From my perspective, somebody that's like into all this shit, I'm like, yeah, that's them fucking with me, Like they're laughing at me, you know, Like like I don't believe there's a red Tesla roadster floating to fucking Marble. That's one thing. I also don't happen to believe that there's dune buggies driving around on Mars ninety million million miles away, sending four k fucking And they're.

Like, you don't think so, you don't think the Mars rovers are real?

No, I just don't. I can't. I can't empirically demonstrate to you that they're that they're fake or anything. But I just again airing on the side of like, there's nothing about those things being on Mars that's important to me in any way or benefits me. But these guys they're the the the science or whatever, like there's it's obvious to me how they benefit from that and how I don't you know what I mean, like to continue to show everybody that. It's like they're justifying their fifty eight million dollar a day average budget or whatever for NASA.

It's like a again, I know how insane that sounds, like how many people would have to be in on it and all this other shit. I'm not saying I definitively know that there's no fucking ro control cars on Mars. I just don't really buy it.

I don't know, I think it's true. I think we're looking at it now kind of like if you were in the fourteen hundreds and they're like, hey, there's a land across the ocean that we can go and habit, and everybody's like, yeah, right, you know bullshit. You know it's like yeah, I think it's kind of like that, and I think that's kind of I like that we're doing it because I do think that we got to continue pushing, you know, new frontiers. I do think the Earth is a finite resource, right, so what are the options beyond that, beyond Earth for if something were to happen here?

I don't know that the Earth's finite resource. I think the Earth's like endlessly abundant. I think it's been empirically demonstrated that it's a finite resources. I don't think. So it's like, you.

Don't think an asteroid or something coming and hitting us could uh kind of?

I mean maybe, yeah, maybe that could happen.

I don't like, but I think that's so that's what they're doing. They're they're like, hey, we're not gonna wait for something bad to be getting ready to happen for us to try to figure this out. We should figure it out now so that when something bad does happen, we have some kind of recourse.

Like what are we gonna like if an asteroid's coming, what are we gonna.

Do send eight billion people to Mars?

No? I mean, like it's just it for me. It comes down to like I have no way of I have no way of independently verifying whether that stuffs true. So it's like I have to believe, I have to have faith, So it's hard for me to put my faith in these institutions when when I just don't trust them. So again, like I'm not I'm not trying to take a hard stand, like I don't think it's true. I'm just saying, yeah, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But at the end of the day, maybe just out a priority for you to care about. Yeah, I don't care about it, I guess.

Yeah, that's kind of how I am with a lot of things, man, you know. With again with uh, that's where I've kind of gotten with Russia Ukraine, like I just don't care anymore. If we want to If Ukraine wants to buy weapons from US, then sure we can sell them weapons so you can continue their fight. But I don't think we should just be giving stuff away, kind of like with the whole And I know this might tick off another conversation, the whole thing with Israel and Palestine whatever, I don't care. I don't really care about either one of them. Let them do their thing if they If Israel wants to buy weapons from US, cool, we'll sell them weapons. But I don't think we should be actively involved in you know, that's their that's their

issue to deal with, you know, not our issue.

So and I think most people agree with that at a minimum. Like you don't hear too many people advocating for like us to go get involved over there, although although we did, we did that, like floating peer.

Was so stupid and and and we had an American died on that thing because of that.

It's oh like by accident or something.

Yeah, he got injured. He got injured on a pier that they knew would not work. That So for people that don't know what we're talking about, look up the floating peer in Gaza that cost us like one hundred million dollars or some shit, and almost no it was supposed to be used to bring in supplies. Almost no supplies went on it because it was not useful at all.

It was for it's like a pier that you would build on like like a lake or a harbor or something like that. This was the open ocean. So it's like, yeah, it's just getting fucked up constantly, and for this political thing that you know, that's all it was is the optics. It was a political stunt cost us an American life.

You know, for no fucking reason. And that's that's the kind of thing where I'm like, dude, this is so stupid, man, Like, why are we even involved? Let them do their thing. I do think the reason I do think that we should sell them weapons, and I'm pseudo in supportive of Israel is because there's actual American citizens that were killed and kidnapped during that the whole ordeal, right, and I think, you know, actually they're talking about releasing I think he's the last one on this next trade deal. And I think anytime there's an American that's been captured or something like that, or that there's an attack and Americans are killed, I think we as a society have responsibility to respond to that because then it's like, hey, okay, maybe we

shouldn't fuck with the Americans, maybe we should fuck with like American interests. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. But I don't know. Again, it's another It's another one of those conflicts that have been raging my entire life where it's like we just I don't care. I don't care about either side, you know, like, do your thing.

You know.

Again, if we want to sell weapons to him, sure, but I don't think we should just be giving Israel or Ukraine just weapons for free. Does that agree?

And the Israel Gazza things, you know, dude, Like there's certain people that if you just take a kind of neutral but hey, I don't like the fact that all those kids and women are dead position. Then then in short order, like someone will call you an anti semi and you're like, dude, no.

Palestinian, all the Palestinian women.

Yeah, it's crazy, like it's such a hot button item. And then now like if you look at like Twitter, for example, it's like half of the Twitter feed is like about about people that hate Jews and then choose pushing back against people hate. It's all about that, you know. And it's like that and the degree to which that's going on. You have all these like ridiculous influencer people that are like taking you know, one side or the other.

So you get these like high profile like candas o Insights who are just like on the internet kind of like hey, maybe Hitler wasn't such a bad guy type of stuff. Right, It just feels like an opt to me, it feels really weird.

Well, I think I think a lot of that is driven by money because when They're on Twitter and they put out these crazy things that they know people are going to react to every time someone views that tweet and react and like Lead's alike, these comments, they get paid. So if I can get paid to say the most ridiculous things and this is something that riles people up naturally and people will comment, then maybe it's almost like, hey, is it worth it to show my butthole to get ten million dollars? Yeah? Is it worth it? Yeah?

Is it worth it to to say Hitler was cool?

Yeah? You know what I'm saying. I may not actually think that's a good idea, or I may kind of, you know, hate myself a little on the inside for saying it. But the payoff is this, you know, like I don't.

Know, Yeah, yeah that makes sense.

What do you think about this guy that's getting deported from Columbia?

So I don't know. I tried to look into it, and I still couldn't. I wanted to find out exactly what he said and whether it's whether it's just the case that he violated you know, some statute or law regarding his green card, and I couldn't figure it out. So all I couldn't. All I could get was like the rhetoric from each side that you know, from from the left, they're saying, oh, you guys are free speech absolutists till it comes to this, till it comes to Israel, and now you're kicking people out, And I'm like that, Yeah, there's some validity to that. I think if he was in the streets advocating against Costa Rica, nobody would care.

You know what I mean. This is specifically because the Israel for not taking aside here. I'm just saying, they have very powerful lobby, They have APAC, they have the a d L they have a lot of power in our country, and so when so they're flexing their power there. And then the current administration is very sympathetic to Israel.

They're all Zionists all the way down from Trump. Every single person you will not find one person in Trump's cabinet, all those picks, every single one of them, without exception, is on the record saying I am a committed Zionist. I give. A Zionist is somebody at the most basic tenant, with the most basic definition is a Zionist is somebody that believe this is what Zionists will tell you. A Zionist is just somebody that believes that the Jewish people should have their own state. Okay, But it's more than that in actual reality, because what it really means practically is that, you know, you think that Israel should be able to do a bunch of things in support of that goal, to include like turn Gaza into rubble, you

know what I mean. So, like, do I think the Jewish people should have their own state? Sure, I guess. Like again, it's like you, I like, okay, they can have their own state. Like, It's not like I don't want them to have their own state. I just don't want them to have any power over my government. I don't want the country of Israel not jew and I'm talking about you. I'm talking about the country of Israel.

I don't want them to have as much power as they do over my country. That's it. And so I'm not so for that reason, I'm not a Zionist, you know. But it's not like, uh no, the Jews should just wander the deserts endlessly. I don't want them to have a state, you know. But so, but every person in Trump's cabinet is on the record, you know, pledging their support for Israel and then you know, they don't break from that, like they're they're pretty consistent in that now, and it's no you know, Trump got a hundred million dollars from Mariam Madelson. She's a you know, Israel lobby person.

He you know, Jared Kushner is Benjamin Netanyah, who's godson. Most of most of Trump's kids are now Jewish by conversion. So just that just is what it is. Some people will say that Trump's playing like five D chess with met Yahoo and like he's got some move planned. We'll see again. I'm getting to the point where like, dude, I honestly don't care. And so but even when you say you don't care, people get mad. They go, you don't care if the Jews have their own state. I'm like, okay, I think the Jews should have their own state so people don't try to holocaust him or whatever. The reason is, right, but it is a bit interesting, like we tolerate stuff out of Israel that we wouldn't tolerate from other people,

for sure, dude, And in a lot of ways we say that it's it's not okay to have an ethno state, Like if I just started walking around saying, I want to have like a europe a white European ethno state. No one's gonna no one's patience for that.

You know.

But that's not really a fair assessment of Israel, though, because I think it's like twenty percent of their population or even twenty percent of their government is Muslim.

Uh yeah, but they're but they're, but they are. It's a Jewish state. Like there, it's it's a Jewish state. But it's not like they're like, you can't can't through well, okay, so it can't through a democratic process become like an Arab state, you know what I mean. It's specifically a Jewish ethno state, which I don't have a problem with that.

I'm just saying, I think.

But my point, I guess is that a lot of people are like, oh, they're all racists, they just want Jews in Israel and da da da. And it's like, yeah, I mean, you may say that, but the reality is is that it's a pretty diverse culture.

Yeah. I don't think they're I don't think they're racist. I don't think it's like that. I don't know, I don't mean, I don't mean to say that by ethno state, I'm just describing it like what it technically is. I don't think that they're trying to like make it a place that only Jews can be because, like you said, there's all kinds of people there.

I don't buy the genocide line you know that people throw out there because it's like, uh, one, it just doesn't make sense again because of the diversity of their their actual country. And two, you know, when we talk about genocide and Gaza, that's a if it is it's like the worst ever because they've literally gained population. It's not like they're losing population there.

Yeah, yep, I agree. I uh. I think that what's going on in the interior of Israel and what's going on in Palsline are two separate things. But the they're gonna get. So it's like what they're getting right now is what guys like Net And it's not everybody in Israel there. Israel's divided. There's plenty of people in Israel that are for a two state solution, and they've come close in negotiation a couple of times to like that that kind of happening, But a lot of people don't know that Net and Yahoo's party, the knesse It the like right wing you know, hardliners in Israel. They supported financially and otherwise supported Hamas over the years. So that Hamas and this is this is a matter of public record,

like they admit this. They wanted Hamas in power and not the p l A Palestinian or the PA Palasin Authority because the palison and authority is pro two state solution. Hamas is like, no, let's kill all the Jews, right net and Yahu and his guys are like, we have to have Hamas in there to get what we want ultimately, which is they want to have it out. They don't want to have a two state solution. You know, both Hamas and Israel want to have it out. Like they want to fight and see who's gonna you know, be the only one type of thing, whereas the two state solution people want a peaceful resolution. So it's a bit complicated because it's like hey, like like we do all the time, like we keep creating our own you know,

isis to go fight, right, So this is like Israel is doing this with a Maas and like the monster kind of got out of their control at this point. And but I think ultimately it's looking like I think Israel's gonna get everything they want. They're gonna get Trump, you know, via Trump, with Trump's support, because he's he's made it very clear like they're gonna get Gaza. They're gonna do whatever they're gonna do with those people. They're gonna relocate, They're gonna figure that out. But that will, that will now, it'll be like and this is part of these guys, Like the IDF, they wear the Greater Israel patch, which is like half the Levant, like it goes up into Syria. Like the outline of Israel on

their on the IDF patch for their deployment to Gaza is the Greater Israel patch. So it's not like they don't have a like a biblical interpretation of what Israel is and that extends well past the current boundaries. So I'm not taking aside, like here's my side. I am. I'm anti Hamask guys coming over and hang gliders and killing a bunch of people doing ecstacy to rave. I'm anti that, and I'm anti killing women and children with no agency in Gaza. So at the volume that they've done it, I'm not buying the like, oh, those were all human shields. It's it's all Hamas's fault. It's like, dude, like, I know what I see with my eyes. And again I'm not saying, dude, I'm not like, I'm just saying I'm anti whatever that is, Like whatever is resulting in

all the like armless babies and shit, I'm anti that. Now. The retort to that as well, it's just tough, titty because this is this is what it takes to you know, get one. Yeah, it's war, you know, It's like, okay, fair enough, But I'm also anti work.

I definitely don't believe the numbers that Hamas have put out about the amount of civilians that have been killed. I think those I think that's I think we're getting straight propaganda from both sides, and depending on who you support, you believe that propaganda from that side and disbelieve the other side. I don't think. I I think there are civilians obviously getting killed. I also think that there are teenage kids that are fighters that they're calling civilians.

For sure. I'm not even count dude. That's why I just say, like babies and women like and even some of the women. You know, dude, of course, like some of the women are doing logistics support for the Hamas or they're actually fighting, who knows, But like like that's why I'm not taking a hard line like Israel's committing genocide and you know I'm not. I'm not playing that game because that's the sifting that takes place online is like what camp are you in? Are you in the Jake Shields, the Jews? It's always the Jews camp, or are you in the Ben Shapiro. You know, I'm in none of those camps.

Like I said earlier about like New York Times and politics, like I'll listen to I like listening to some of Ben Shapiro's points, but when it comes to like Israel and stuff like that, I'm always like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna double check whatever he's talking about there his other like American political stuff. I think he has a lot of good points. I disagree with some of his obviously some of his points just like most people, you know, you don't agree with everybody in everything kind of deal.

But I also think that like his bias is well known, so knowing that you should always take whatever information he gives you. That's in regards to that bias and the fact check it with something else.

You know, So this is this is a real tough issue, especially I think for young people that are you know, they're not armed to understand, like you just broke down, like how kind of how the you got to understand what PU people's bias are and approach to But when you encounter they call it the JQ, you know, the Jewish question online because the Jewish question writ large forget Palestine right now, like writ large, the Jewish question is, hey, is there a are the Are the Jews effectively trying to take over control over everything? And then there are evidence for that that people point to is like hey, look look how many Jewish people are in positions of power in media, government? They break it all down like

military industrial complex corporations, right, So people start looking at things that are observably true, and then they start following these inferences like well, if those people are there, they're there because they've conspired to be there and they're exercise and control. And then here's a pac and all the money and all the lobby and also shit. Well, in very short order, like you can you can very easily find a bunch of compelling uh, information that's presented in a very compelling way that radicalize you Jews like that, Like it can happen very very quickly, like a otherwise reasonable person can very quickly come to the conclusion that it's the Jews like everything. And then and then what

happens is you see them online all of a sudden, they that they become the scapegoat for everything. So is there too much pornography in the United States? It's the Jews. Well, don't you know the Jews own the pornography company. Oh okay, well, what you know points to another problem open borders. Don't you know that the Jews have long been running these NGOs that that have been, you know, facilitating migration from Sub Saharan Africa into Europe. And then you can find that it's that there's a case for that. So it's it's and that's why the Jews are always so freaked out.

That's why, like the a d L is so aggressive, because weird.

Weird though that we that people You're right, people will immediately it's easy to fall into that train and like, oh the Jews they do all these things, but then we ignore like well, Catholic charities also facilitate a lot of that's right.

You know what they'll do, They'll find one Jewish person that's involved somewhere in the hierarchy of that charity. I just I've seen it on the online a million times, and and so it creates this like both sides are like right, because not right completely, but like the ADL is like constantly running around like that Jonathan Greenblatt, and it's like everyone's you know, trying to holocaust us again and freaking out. And then plenty of evidence that that's true from the online discourse. And then the people in the online discourse are like, look here, you want some evidence that the Jews control everything. As soon as Kanye started talking bad about the Jews, he wasn't a billionaire anymore.

They took his money and it's like all right, you know.

So it's like, well, it sounds like people are like in most cases, unfortunately, like in our society, people are very binary. You're either with us or you're against us. There's no nuance, you know, there's no like maybe there's a little truth here and a little truth there, but your conspiracy is kind of fucked, you know what I'm saying.

And to me, the antidote for that stuff, because I don't want to be. I don't want to be influenced. I don't want to be I don't want to be manipulated into being like a Nazi, you know what I mean. But so my anidote for because aside from just not being very interested in how many Jews are in what positions of power and what companies or whatever, my antidote is just take complete responsibility for instead of pointing, instead of trying to scapegoat whoever for these external problems. No, like we the problem again, it's like with the drugs, it's demand like it's like it's our own weakness. If there's if there's exploitable like inroads to weaken our society.

Pointing and saying that it's the Jews is not what you ought to be doing. What you ought to be doing is just tightening it up, fixing the problem, to fix your own house, you know what I mean. Like, there's no time to be scapegoating the Jews like this is not well.

It's like that. It's like people that hate billionaires. I saw some you know, it's like they're like, oh yeah, I saw some post something earlier today they're like, just because Elon Musk is a billionaire, that doesn't mean or Elon Musk being a billionaire doesn't isn't the reason why you're poor? And I was like, you know, and people want to be mad at him like that. It's like it's his fault, you know. It's like and people look at something like that, like finance, you know, and the finance is like that, like like it's one pie and he's taking a huge majority of the pie. And it's like, no, there's there's no pie.

There's no, it's not It's never occurred to me to be angry that someone's a billionaire, Like I don't like earlier.

You got to take agency, you have to take some you know, you have to look at yourself, just like in the Marine Corps, you know, know yourself and seek self improvement. If i'm if I look at myself and I go, man, I'm poor. But then I only do like three hours of work a day. I don't ever do anything to improve my my station in life. I don't do anything to improve you know, my output or whatever.

Then whose fault is it? You know, it's easy to get online, like you said, and oh it's the Jews. Oh it's a billionaire. Oh, it's to you know, pick your poison kind of deal where you should be going, what am I doing wrong here? What is there something I could be doing to improve what, you know, my own situation? Yes, but a lot of people don't want to do that because they don't want to admit to themselves that they're not that they're fucking up, you know, that they're not doing it right, that they're making missteps and continue to make missteps.

So yeah, and plus like crazy like you know, all these things, even the things that I like point to them, they're all like some mosque, you know how many people that got employing you know, Yeah, he's not making those people poor, certainly.

That's Yeah, that's another thing that people forget. And I love how when people come out and they're like, well, you know, uh, they should be running this business this way. They don't pay their employees enough for this, And I'm like, well, if you think there's a better way to do it, then start your own business, you know, like prove them wrong, prove that there's a better way to do it. But people don't do that, you know, and there's there's always an excuse. Oh, I don't have the funds to start my own business. Oh, I don't have this. I can't do that. I can't. You know, you're self selecting, Just like you've you saw in the military when you go through these special operations course and stuff, people self select

Like I'm not gonna go to MARSK just because I don't even think I can make it, you know, without even knowing what's involved with it. I'm not gonna try out because of this. You know, you're self selecting. You're going, oh, I'll never have enough money to start my own business, or I don't I can never work through the system to start my own business. Well, if that's how you feel, then yeah, you're right, you're never gonna be able to do that thing. But if you passionately believe in something and you put in the work, then you probably could make it if you really tried, you know.

Well, And I still believe that America is the best place for that. Like it's still, like I said, there's still enough economic activity in this country right now that you can you can still do whatever. Like, yeah, of course, you know, are their challenges, you know, of course, But like I don't think if I was like starting out in the world. You know, pick any kind of thing you want to get into, Like this is probably the best place where any entrepreneurial endeavor. Or just so just to dude, like the difference between a place that just has a bunch of economic activity and a place that doesn't is night and day. Like we we have it pretty good here still, oh just do just it sucks because and like I'm partially responsible because I get pretty

down on the government and stuff. But like people are very sour on the country.

You know, like people it's the cool thing to do, right, It's the cool thing to be disgruntled. Just like in the military, there was like I remember on my way on my way out, and a few years after I got out, the vibe felt like it was cool to be the ship bag. You know, It's cool to be fuck these guys, you know. And that's just kind of the mindset that some people take. And it's I don't know, it's kind of dumb because it's self defeating. People that shit on the country. I mean, we've had when you're talking about entrepreneurs, we've had.

More foreign born.

Self made millionaires in any other country. You know, this is actually a real country of opportunity. These people come over here from other countries that have lived in actual shitty countries. You know, people talk smack about the US, they've never been to an actual like shithole country. Some of these people come over here from these actual shithole countries.

They understand the opportunity that they've been given, and they work hard and they become successful, you know. And and that's part of the problem is that not enough Americans have actually struggled. And that's a people are.

People are to start somewhere like that.

People are gonna take Yeah, people are gonna take that the wrong way, Like I struggle every day, you know this and that. Yeah, But when and when you look at it in perspective, like for someone like us that have been to other countries, like actual third world countries where you know, they're living in mud huts, they're shitting in holes, like there's no computer, there's no internet, there's barely even twenty four hours of electricity. You know, there's you know, if any at all. Then I look at people here and I'm like, no, you're not actually struggling.

I know, it's the hardest thing that you may have ever done personally, but just know that it could be way worse. And people don't want to hear that because it's obviously, you know, if they're in a if they're in a tough situation and it's a tough situation they've personally ever been in, then yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be tough. But yep, they don't want to hear it from someone like me, where I'm like, it could be worse. You.

Yeah, this is not helpful. Yeah, it doesn't help. Yeah, I just don't know what to do. A little gratitude would go along way with people. Like that's something I never had any of it until kind of recently and just just kind of like it's like some hippie hippi shit, But it's like, you know, if you can't on a daily basis, like just take take inventory and take stock of like the things that you are grateful for the things that could be horrible and it probably are horrible for other people. I've read it somewhere and it like kind of sticks with me. It's like we all probably feel the same pressure, like to be doing more or to get more to like kind of keep ascending this career.

Material Goods Ladder or whatever that would just trajectory that we're kind of always on. But there was there was a time in my life where I wouldn't have even been able to fathom like the level of like material comfort I have now. Like from my current perspective, I'm like, you know, I could be doing more. I need more and bigger, health, more shit, whatever, But there was a point in time where I would have been like flabbery acid to have the stuff I have now. Yeah, and not just have like material but like the kind of life I'm living.

You know, No, I completely understand. I completely So it's funny you say that because I just thought of this. I just thought this to myself, like a couple of weeks ago. For the last people that listen to the podcast probably have seen that I've kind of dropped off on releasing episodes like the last six or eight months, and I'm like, I just got kind of burned out on it. I got kind of burned out on doing the podcast. I felt like I wasn't making much traction, you know, And I'm looking at other podcasts. I'm looking at like Sean Ryan, who started a month after me, but he gets millions of views and I'm like, man, you know what am I doing wrong?

Like?

Am I not? It's just not quality content. But then and then, like a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at my analytics and I'm like, you know, I've had tens of thousands of people listen to this podcast this month. If I would have said to myself four years yeah, that ten thousand people are going to listen to your podcast in one month, I would have been ecstatic.

But now I've kind of I've kind of lost I've kind of lost sight of that for a little while because it's like it it just doesn't feel like I'm like I'm growing like I should, or the results aren't like what I expected, or but it does take people definitely should take a step back and go, man, you know, if I would have I don't know, I know exactly what you're saying, though, If that makes sense, that makes perfect sense.

That's a that's a clear illustration what I'm talking about, Like, yeah, yeah, you just started taking for granted the fact that tens of thousands of people listening to stuff.

I remember when I used to be like, oh shit, someone listened to the podcast today. It was like, oh, I got one download today. Sick, you know. Now you know I'm getting downloads people are downloading every day. That's crazy. I remember and my little one bedroom apartment up in Oceanside, you know, like sitting there recording episodes and really hoping people would listen to them. And now it's like I could not put out an episode for a month and I'll still get thousands of people listening to it. And I've kind of lost sight of like you know what I really, I don't know, it's just crazy.

Like it seems just from like the some of the like I said, my interests have kind of straight into all this kind of like debate weirdness. But like kind of watching some of these shows, these shows grow, I think from what I've observed it it's a grind like these are guys that I think the channels that grow, they're putting out so much content. It's like they're like streaming every day, you know. And I think I think it takes like like there's something about like us as consumers of shows, like we want we want it to be like constant, Like if I like your show, I want I want a new one every day. Yeah, And I and like I feel that in myself too, Like, I'm like, the shows that I find myself kind of gravitating to and watching regularly are the ones that are

putting shit out all the time. Yeah, even if they're even if I don't like it as much as one that's like maybe once every week or something like that, the guy that's doing it all the time, I'm looking, I'm watching it, you know. So there's but I don't do. I do not have an enemy to grind like that with it, Like Cody and I are just basically yelling into the void, totally understandable for the ship we say at the time, I have no you know, but like, dude to just what it would take and like how much little bandwidth I have after working and kids and shit.

I respect people that uh well, I guess. I guess if it was my only job, I'd be willing to do it. But that's a risk to trying to Like, Okay, I'm going to be a content.

Creator, yeah, and I'll be you know, this is something I was thinking about a guy I worked with yesterday someone posted on Facebook that he was retiring from the Marines, and I'm like, man, people I know, people I served with are retiring like, was it a mistake for me to get out? You know? I kind of questioned myself.

Some time your contemporaries or yeah, yeah.

You know, I'm like, man, should I should I stayed in? You know, because I did twelve years? I got out of twelve years and everybody was like, you're fucking dumb. You should do eight more years, and and I'm like, man, you know, in the last five years, I've done four deployments or whatever.

It was.

Yeah, it was like, so what am I What's gonna the next eight year is gonna gonna have in store for me? And yeah, I guess that was part of like what I was saying before about getting burned out because I didn't feel like I was getting the results that I was hoping for. Not that I expect to like become rich or anything from the podcast, but I mean I just wanted to. I don't know, I want to be set up so that like if I if I could have retired, I joined in two thousand and six so I could retire, I could have retired next year.

I would like to be making more money from something like this than I could be if I was retired. If I'm making at least what I would have been making from a retirement check. Then I'll be like it was worth it, right because I'm doing what I want and I didn't have to put in all that other bullshit. I don't think I'm going to be making as much as I would if I was retired, especially not maybe maybe eventually, but not next year.

Dude, you never know when this when this shit breaks with these channels though, you know, and the other the other thing about what you do, it's like, yeah, of course it'd be nice to you know, make a bunch of money doing it. But the other thing that you're doing is you're putting on like a on the record people's stories from you know, a piece of our country's history and stuff. So like that's cool. So it's almost like when a lot of times, like these authors will write books and no one reads a book till like fifteen years after the dead and then and then all of a sudden, everyone in the world read the book and it's like, now he's do Savski or something, right, Yeah, And it's like you never know, Like it's even if

even if you don't make any money all sly at it or something, you're still doing a thing that's useful.

Yeah, that's that's in comparison.

To just like us like babbling about like COVID or something. You know, like you know, you're getting people on that tell their story, and I think I think that if if nothing else, that's cool.

Yeah. That was why I started the show too, is because I was like, you know what, man like being in the fire support community and having been at Angelico, being a jaytach and all that stuff, knowing pilots, knowing other jay tacks. I was like, I just know so many people that have done so many crazy things that no one will ever know about. No one's going to come and write a book about you know this captain that was a pilot for this platform, or this like sergeant that did three deployments as a jaytack, you know when he was asked to go do it. No one will ever know that, and including a lot of their families will never know because they never talk about it and stuff. And I think it's you know, I again,

I was on Reddit the other day and I someone said something about they're like, hey, if someone mentions that they're a veteran, or ask if you're a veteran, do you talk about it, and all these people are like, I never told anyone I know, and I'm like, and my response was like, why you know, because One, a couple things here, like one, the American public deserves to know what their military is doing, and you should, as a person that was in the military, be part of the explanation of that. This is what I did, this is what my job was, this is how it rolled. Two, I think it's important for you know, you people complain that civilians don't understand veterans or they don't they can't relate, and it's and it's like, well, part of that is

because you're not telling them anything. If you refuse to explain what it was like to be in the military, how can they ever understand what it was like to be in the military. So I think it's I think it's kind of our you know, kind of a responsibility for us to you know, maybe not share everything, but at least tell people what it was like so they have really understanding of where their tax money is going, where their sons and daughters are being sent off to do, and what they're going to go do and in these kind of things. I think it's important. But anyways, yeah, it's tough, man, it's a tough world out there for us podcaster especially. I do all my stuff myself. I don't use stream Yard, I don't use any of those

broadcast software, So all the edits are me. I take my video, your video, my audio, your audio, and I go through and when you see us cut scenes back and forth, that's me chopping it fitting, you know, going through manually. I don't use AI to go through and slice it up or anything. I'm we'll we're at almost two and a half hours. I'm gonna have at least two and a half hours of editing because I'm gonna rewatch this whole conversation and then cut it all up into pieces and stuff. Where I don't do a good job is probably, which is weird because I'm on social media so much, is that I don't put enough clips and stuff on social media.

I have two almost two hundred view.

Yeah, I have almost two hundred and thirty episodes, and I put some clips up, but I don't. I don't think I put enough up, and I think I would probably get more traction if I did, but I think I just don't have time.

Ep. 228 | Aren & Cody | Stranger by the Hour Podcast

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