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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peak and

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Yona Show returning and somebody I always enjoyed talking to

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Lee Enfield.

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Speaker 2: How you doing, Hey, Pete, how are you? Thanks for

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having me back.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Well, once you hit some plugs right up front,

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and uh, you know, then we'll we'll jump into this

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uh something that I can't remember the last time I

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did an episode where it was like based on a tweet.

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But I think this is a good one. So I

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want to hit some plugs.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, My name is Lee. I write over at

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in block Press. It's E N B l O C

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press dot com. It's a newsletter about predprinting, guns and politics.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, let's go check it out.

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Speaker 2: We've got a paid entree option over there you can

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content each week. And yeah, again, Pete, thanks for having

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me on. This is an interesting topic. I saw this

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and I was like, huh, that's that's interesting, So I

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was happy to get the invite.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, cool man, All right, well let's jump right in.

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Then I'm gonna pull the tweet up so we both

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can uh anyone who's watching the video.

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Speaker 3: Too.

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Speaker 1: And this is from a tweet from Catgirl Coolock, a

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narcoonomic con and yep, just for people. So people know

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cat girl Coolock is actually a male, so Lee had

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Actually I didn't know that, and I suspected it, I

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didn't know it for sure. And then Lee's like, well, uh,

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I heard him on on Alex Cashoota's show. And I'm like,

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how did I How did I miss that one? So

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I'm feeling a little bit dumb here, But you ready

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to let me just start reading this and you can

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interrupt me anytime you want.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, all.

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Speaker 1: Right, So the tweet goes and this is a long

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one why no one wants to join the military, And

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well before we do that jump and uh, obviously, opsee's

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really important for you. Do you want to talk at all,

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give people a little idea of what your military service

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or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm g wat Vett.

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Speaker 2: Did you know one tour in Iraq just a normal

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infantry guide in one contract got out feels like ancient history.

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I mean I got out in two thousand and eight,

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so it's been a minute. The military has obviously changed,

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but some of some of the stuff that we're going

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to talk about is kind of timeless concepts. And so yeah,

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just a regular guy. But yeah, I did do tour

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in Iraq with eighty second so it's something I can

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talk about with some degree of familiarity.

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Speaker 1: All right, So, like I said, interrupt me any time.

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So an arconomic con says starts out. I've been reading

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The Second World War by Sandhurst military historian John Keegan.

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It explained a ton about nineteenth century early twentieth century

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military culture. I didn't get the Edwardians were patriotic as hell.

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The military was massively popular, the average person eight twelve

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hundred calories a day, whereas soldiers in garrison ate fourteen

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hundred and higher quality food at that It was a

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massive education and networking opportunity for people of all classes,

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and produced bonds that would be necessary for social advancement.

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Conscription was massively popular and demanded from the population during peacetime,

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less because they wanted to make sure no one was shirking,

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and more because they didn't want lower class people left

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behind and all the opportunity and the army hoarded by

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the connected who'd be able to get into a volunteer force.

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In Britain, which had always a board conscription and had

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Whig pro libertarian objections to it, the populace practically rebelled

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and formed illegal regiments and militias and drilled to participate

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in martial life. This was a phenomenon across Europe, and

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after the Treaty of Versailles restricting Germany to a scent

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one hundred thousand strong army, the country was flooded with

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free crops, non government paramilitaries and militias to either advance

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some political movement or just be part of military life.

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This was after World War One. Millions of young men

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had just died as part of regiments many little different

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than this, and yet there was this much demand from

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young men to be part of the martial world. This

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is because the military and military life was actually a

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good career move and actually formed lifelong bonds. In the

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early twentieth century, amidst the population boom of the early

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twentieth century and all the access and all the excess

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young men with little inheritance, the military and militia life

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was a major vehicle for social mobility and aspiration and

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forming social connections. So what changed? Why is it almost

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completely opposite in early twenty first century America. These attitudes

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survived the World Wars, even the Western Front of World

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War I, but they were devoured by Vietnam and the

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Civil rights era. Implicit in a lot of nineteenth and

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twentieth century militarism was the vision of every soldier a citizen,

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every citizen a soldier. This ethos was first expressed during

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the French Revolution. It was aspirational. The subjects, divorced from

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the state and military were now armed and able to

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participate in civic and military life. They were now citizens.

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Of course, by the early twentieth century this sounds very menacing.

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Soldiers must obey orders every day. If every citizen a

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soldier and bound to obey on pain of death, that's totalitarianism. Indeed,

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a friend recently said, you know, the Wymer Republic may

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have been the only true democracy in history. We talk

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about how your vote matters and your deciding your government,

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but really the public has little say. Barack Obama versus

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John McCain was literally the option presents it to America.

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That was their spectrum of options. Whereas Wymer Germany, they

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had monarchism, liberalism, communism, fascism all right there on the ballot,

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and any of them could win, and one of them did.

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It wasn't a coincidence that this seeming pinnacle of democracy

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exactly coincided with and produced the era when the most

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men were in uniform and many women in auxiliaries. The

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ethos of universal suffrage and universal conscription went hand in

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hand with the contradiction that implies, are you master of

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your country? Or is every other person in your country

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now master of you? Are you empowered with your I

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assume that's rifle to move politics, to move the politics

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of Europe? Or is that rife? Do you know.

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Speaker 2: I read it as rifle? I think it's just okay.

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Speaker 1: So are you empowered with your rifle to move the

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politics of Europe? Or have you been enslaved to your

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state people and their faith? One might think this is

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the source of their disillusionment, But America had conscription and

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its nineteen forties marshal ethos through the fifties and into

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the sixties. But of course there's a contradiction between universal

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suffrage and this masculine, martial conception of the citizen. Why

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is the vote of a woman or disabled man who've

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never served equivalent to a man who's been taxed years

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of his life and often extraordinarily risk and effort how

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exactly does racial equality work when some groups are underrepresented

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a military life and are perceived to be underrepresented in

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the most dangerous roles. These questions were papered over with discrimination.

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What did you do during the war was an interview

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question that made or broke your entire economic life. In

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a world where a massive percentage of people had served,

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this was a massive inducement to do so, and indeed

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you could still hear concerns about missing a war in

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the fifties and being shut out of the aspirations and

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opportunities available to other luckier cohorts of young men. Obviously,

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even though there was little legal barriers to women fulfilling

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most corporate and professional roles, this fact of life was

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a massive barrier. But then the sixty four Civil Rights

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Act was passed and the logic of it necessitated affirmative

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action to women and underrepresented minorities. Whilst, at the same time,

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a new generation of upper middle class young men, insulated

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by one of the most abundant and forgiving economies in

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world history, were encouraged by family and friends to either

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avoid the draft with bogus medical excuses, hide out in university,

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or indeed dip out of the country for a spell,

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and far from suffering a fatal blow to their career

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and social prospect. For what previous generation would have called cowardice,

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they were rewarded. Military service became increasingly a marker of

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the lower class, and the liberal educated non serving class,

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already critical of the war out of self serving concern

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to not be drafted, latched onto tales of war crimes

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in Vietnam, often going so far as insulting and spitting

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literally or figuratively on returning soldiers. Not wealthy enough to

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dip into university, there were no return parades. Benefits were

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often non existent, with some unable to health care for

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even malaria, a disease in New Yorker probably didn't catch

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at home. And not only were they not given priority

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in employment. Lacking both the right ethnicity and the university degree,

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where are the only qualifications protected from a disparate impact assessment,

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many fell to the bottom of the economic letter. America's

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recruitment capacity really never recovered. Total US military personnel shrank

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from three point five in nineteen sixty nine to two

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million in nineteen eighty five to one point three million today,

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even as the US population has increased from two hundred

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million to three hundred and thirty million. America has gone

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from over one percent of the population actively serving at

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any time to nearly a third of that. The professionalization

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of the US military to an all volunteer force has

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an effect just been a cover for this collapse in

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recruiting capacity. America's military isn't significantly structurally different. These aren't

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really professionals. Your average three year contract private isn't making

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some obscene yeppie amount of money for his ambitious professional commitment.

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A private makes under thirty thousand a year. A second

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lieutenant with a university degree and years of professional development,

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who may have had who may have had to plan

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out his career from sixteen years old getting a congressman's

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letter of recommendation to AT ten West Point or another

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service academy, makes forty to sixty thousand a year. USGD

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per capita is seventy two thousand. If that lieutenant had

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gone to a second tier school and gotten a computer

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science degree, he'd be making six figures and have vastly

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more control over his life. It's not a good career move.

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In the seventeen eighties or nineteen hundreds, an ambitious they

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start that in it's not a good career move. In

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the seventeen eighties or nineteen hundreds, an ambitious scion of

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a decayed noble family desiring to conquer the world might

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want to become an artillery officer. Today he wants to

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work on Wall Street or at Google, even if you're

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starting out from a very rough place, there or almost

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certainly a dozen better things you could do to advance

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yourself faster, for better money and with less effort than

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joining the military. The only a peer of the US,

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the only appeal the military for decades now has been

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to people who really want to escape their situation, who

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really felt they needed to needed to hard reboot their life,

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or who are really drawn to military life out of

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sheer love of it. And then the army went woke.

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Wokeness is toxic to the Army, not just because of

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the values clashed with most ordinary recruits, but it places

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front and center the entire dynamic that makes the military

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such an awful career path. Not only you are young

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men not enticed to join the military out of the

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knowledge that they're wasting years not getting a university degree,

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or that their gender, skin color, and sexual orientation are

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still going to count against them even once they're out.

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They're not having it declared to them that they'll suffer

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that disdain and discrimination even in the military, invariably by

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some fat, university educated minority woman brought in to give

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a diversity lecture. Even whilst you're serving the US government,

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it's going to rub your face and the fact that

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it's undermining you and your career, and it's somehow a

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mystery the army can't recruit. The US military has taken

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close to half of the people it takes, it took

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in the nineteen eighties, and it still can't find anyone. Meanwhile,

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it's not uncommon to hear in various forums open talk

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from active military that if the US military were used

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in in an international war against dissent by the Trump

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and proletariat, they desert. Indeed, anonymous leaked military wargaming projects

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something close to a fifty percent desertion desertion rate if

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any major in any major civil conflict, and there's nothing

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to be done to save it. There's no will to

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double or triple pays to reflect GDP or what similar

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effort could be could get a person in the US economy,

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don't enlist, go fracking or Alaskan crab fishing. There's no

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political will to undo the bizarre system of racial and

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sexual patronage that benefits everyone except the productive class that

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drives the US economy. And there's no way any of

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the elite would recreate a world where military service was

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a better guarantee of job prospects and financial security than

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a university degree. So America's effective recruitment capacity and civil

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feeling will continue to collapse even as Americans hate each

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other and their government even more. You think recruit capacity

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is bad, now, wait till they imprison Trump. So that

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was a lot. I mean, the thing about old Twitter,

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when you only had one hundred and forty characters and

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then two hundred and eighty and now you can do

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things like this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's uh, I mean, there's a lot there.

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Speaker 1: So when I guess it starts off talking about just

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the whole idea that there was a time when going

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into the military basically brought about gave you in society

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like some kind of you know something, a lot more

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than people clapping for you at the airport. It was

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like you were in basically another class, like a separate class.

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Is that how you read history?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And and this is something this is a

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theme that is recurrent in writings and you know, autobiographies

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things like this by war fighters since since the beginning, right,

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I mean you see some of this sentiment. I mean

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this is this has been around since like since the Greeks,

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since the Romans before that. And this is something I mean,

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a lot of things have gone off the rails in

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the last fifty years in America, right, there's a lot

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of inversion of reality in the way things are kind

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of postured at this point is pretty out of touch

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with a lot of a lot of how life was

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for you know, thousands of years before it and the

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ability like if you went off and you did you know,

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if you did did your duty, that that was kind

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of how a man might earn his make his bones,

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so to speak. Right, Like, this was something that young

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men traditionally we're tasked with your country needs you. You

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go do your thing, You fight the fight, take the pain,

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make the sacrifices, carry the weight, come home and then

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you know, then you intern into that phase of your

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life where you have a have a family or career

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or things like that. And that's where a lot of

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a lot of you know, masculine social standing at least

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comes from. Right, this is a This is something that

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a lot of a lot of people have written, you know,

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volumes about some of these things. Are there are prerequisites

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for this, right like this, this is not something that

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you can force into existence through HR policies and diversity

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initiatives and things like this. Okay, there's just no way

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to kind of defy reality on this, right Like, you

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can't fight a war against reality because you're going to lose.

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And when you try to create a reality that relies

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on a military that is too small, things too highly

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of itself, it's staffed by people who, for whatever reason,

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you know, just just don't have the ethos needed to

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be successful in a martial sense, Eventually you're going to

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run into some very serious problems. And this is kind

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of what the US military is is teetering on currently.

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Some of these cracks started to show through in Gwatt, Vietnam, Korea.

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I mean, hasn't been like a great sixty seventy years

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for the US military all told, you know what I mean,

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Like the decisiveness.

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Speaker 3: Of the kinnectic ability.

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Speaker 2: Exceeds the will to victory by the political class and

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by the upper middle class. You know, this tweet does

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a good job of discussing the social dynamics in Vietnam,

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where if you had just enough money to get into college,

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you didn't have to actually go serve. And if you

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did not have enough money to get into college, then

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you know, you had to go fight in the jungles

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in Vietnam and then get told that you know, you're

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an asshole for doing that when you came back, right, Like,

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this is kind of signals at the beginning of the

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end in a genuine erosion and in some of the

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basic necessities to create like an effective martial society.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: And people might hear that and say, well, you know,

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the United States is it's not not a martial society.

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And that's basically not not not quite true, right Like

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most of the famous martial societies throughout history. If you

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look at the Romans, the Greeks, these were civilizations that

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a largely like the like the Greeks particularly relied on

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like the concept of like government government by consent, right, Like,

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these were free men who would fight, and this is

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a concept that I mean, I mean this goes back,

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like Xenophon writes about this, like this is not.

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Speaker 3: You know, something novel.

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Speaker 2: This is a prerequisite and this is something that you know,

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Ben Franklin talks about, you know, this idea like the

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catral Kulak mentions. He says implicit in nineteenth and twentieth

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century militarism is a version of every soldier at citizen.

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This is a Thomas Jefferson quote, right, and it was

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expressed of course, you know the French Revolution, but it

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predates that as well. So I mean even the founders

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of the country understood that, you know, soldiers should be

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every soldier is a citizen. Every citizen is a soldier.

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This this goes deeper than just having to put on

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a uniform and go be involved in some type of fighting.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: This is referencing like a deeper responsibility that citizens have

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to their communities, their cities, their states, their countries, that

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people have to be bought in this type of thing,

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and that these sacrifices are ones that are you know,

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people are not sent to on a whim or for

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corrupt purposes or things like that. That this is a

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responsibility that soldiers have to fight, and that leaders have

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to send soldiers into worthy battles. And so the military

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for a long time, you know this, this isn't just

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something that happened in.

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Speaker 3: The last three years.

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Speaker 2: I mean for a long time, the military is kind

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of the US military at least has been deviating and

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kind of getting off path with that. And so I

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think this is a lot of a lot of this

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is correctly identifying like the outcome of the problem, which

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now is that nobody wants to serve at least nowhere

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near the number of people that you know, have wanted

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to serve in previous generations. Right, And this is not

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something that you can fix.

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Speaker 3: Easily, right.

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Speaker 2: It takes a long time and a lot of cultural

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effort to create a society that can function with like

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a legitimate markle, you know sense, and it doesn't take

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very long to destroy it, unfortunately, And you know, we've

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largely eroded, uh, you know, thousands of years Western military

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tradition in the past, you know, four or five decades,

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just in the interest of you know, every basically everything

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that comes out of the Civil Rights Act and equality

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movements and things like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I just noticed something that he misspelled. Freed corps

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and I've pronounced it pronounced it improperly. Well before we

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get any more into the so, I wanted to ask you,

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but I mean you joined after nine to eleven, what

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was the uh, what was the culture then? I mean

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you were in infantry eighty second and everything. I assuming,

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I'm assuming the culture would have been a lot different

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than other divisions.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is uh, it's it's funny.

364
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Sometimes I talked to like younger guys, uh, and we

365
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kind of live in a it's kind of a mixed

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bag because like I mean, you you remember, America was

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a different country in two thousand. I mean in our

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you know, in our lifetimes, this country has really really

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changed and in a lot of ways. And so when

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you when you tell people, the young guys, you know,

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like yeah, you know nine to eleven happened. You know

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a lot of us, you know, we were in high

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school and you know, I saw this unfold and it

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was like cool, like the the you know, there's a war,

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so you you joined the army when there's war if

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you're teenage male, you know, because that's uh, you know,

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that's what people have been doing since like before Christ

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was on earth. So you know, it's not like a

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00:25:03,599 --> 00:25:05,079
you know, it's kind of a no brainer. And when

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you explain that, you know, to someone you know who's eighteen,

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nineteen years old today, it's like, well, why, like, you know,

382
00:25:16,799 --> 00:25:18,920
why would you do that. There's a lot of sentiment

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that like, you know, that's just silly.

384
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Speaker 3: Why would antybody do this?

385
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Speaker 2: Because there's this eroded sense with young people ultimately that

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you know, America is bad, everything sucks, the founding origins

387
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of America, the founding origins of Western culture, that all

388
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this stuff is bad and it's all fruit from Employison tree.

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Speaker 3: And so.

390
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Speaker 2: Why would you inconvenience yourself? Why would you put yourself

391
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in harm's way? Why would you do anything other than

392
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like vape and play Xbox and you know, work at Chipotle.

393
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:02,759
You know, this is this is like a foreign concept

394
00:26:02,759 --> 00:26:05,680
to a lot of young people, and it's it's unfortunate

395
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because the sentiment was not like that, you know, twenty

396
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:15,039
years ago. But the government has very effectively been able

397
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to squander all of that goodwill. I mean, if you

398
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look at g Watt and the outcomes post nine to eleven,

399
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:28,960
you know, you and I we have considerably fewer freedoms

400
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,640
today than we did in the year you know, two thousand, right,

401
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:33,119
I mean.

402
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Speaker 1: In well two thousand was I mean, in nineteen ninety two,

403
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,119
Francis Fukuyama says, you know, it's the end of history.

404
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:45,920
Liberalism is one, right, and yeah, so everybody throughout the

405
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,720
nineties is living like liberalism is one. Everything's great. You

406
00:26:49,799 --> 00:26:52,480
hear people like Bill Maher, and you hear people like

407
00:26:52,559 --> 00:26:54,839
the Weinstein's, you know, they just want to go back

408
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to the nineties because that was that was the end

409
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of history. That was that was the most perfect society

410
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we could ever have. And then all of a sudden,

411
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:07,799
you know, terrorist attacks basically turn that on their head, right,

412
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And I mean you weren't ready for that. People were asleep.

413
00:27:11,559 --> 00:27:13,960
I mean most people slept. I slept through the nineties.

414
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Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I was born

415
00:27:19,079 --> 00:27:20,839
in the mid eighties, so I was a kid through

416
00:27:20,839 --> 00:27:23,000
a lot of it, you know. I mean I wasn't

417
00:27:23,599 --> 00:27:25,079
you know, you're a little older than I am, but

418
00:27:25,599 --> 00:27:27,720
I wasn't quite looked into it as you would be,

419
00:27:29,839 --> 00:27:34,480
you know. But the sentiment largely, you know, in the

420
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:39,559
year two thousand was just a like, you know, it's naive,

421
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:42,079
but it's like, well, why would anyone want to attack America?

422
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:45,079
Like that seems crazy? You know, what are we doing anybody?

423
00:27:45,759 --> 00:27:48,920
And you know, I know it's naive, but you remember,

424
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,000
you know, I'm like fifteen sixteen at the time, and

425
00:27:51,039 --> 00:27:55,119
that's the sentiment that's you know, common, is like, you know,

426
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:57,839
I'm just trying to go to class and like, you know,

427
00:27:58,319 --> 00:28:00,680
do shit with my friends, like why or these guys

428
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:04,240
flying planes into the buildings in our cities and things

429
00:28:04,319 --> 00:28:09,960
like this, and so a lot of this, you know,

430
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:13,359
really a lot of this good will, and there was

431
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:16,559
a lot of unity post nine to eleven. You know,

432
00:28:16,759 --> 00:28:19,319
there was a lot more like an overt sense of

433
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:23,440
patriotism and all these types of things, and that it

434
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:26,279
really just kind of vanished over the twenty years that

435
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:31,160
followed because we entered into you know, ground conflicts in

436
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:35,759
Iraq and Afghanistan where things really didn't go great for

437
00:28:35,799 --> 00:28:39,119
a long time. And you know, especially in Afghanistan. I

438
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,279
mean we know now that there was like a good

439
00:28:42,279 --> 00:28:44,240
stretch of that time where there was no actual plan

440
00:28:44,279 --> 00:28:46,680
at all. Right, I mean, if you look at the

441
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,039
Afghanistian papers from a year or two ago, now, they've

442
00:28:50,079 --> 00:28:53,880
been out. You know, it was just kind of like, well,

443
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:55,559
you guys just kind of stay over there, you know,

444
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:59,920
and don't don't pause any bad press. And there was

445
00:29:00,119 --> 00:29:04,839
no like clear strategic goal at all. And obviously we

446
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:08,759
saw you know, this culminates with people falling out of

447
00:29:08,799 --> 00:29:14,279
cargo planes and you know some you know, geriatric guy

448
00:29:14,319 --> 00:29:19,039
with dementia making weird commentary about it, and you know,

449
00:29:19,759 --> 00:29:23,039
hitting civilians with missiles and you know, a dozen soldiers

450
00:29:23,039 --> 00:29:28,799
getting killed things like that. So it really ended, you know, poorly.

451
00:29:29,279 --> 00:29:31,880
And in that time, the only thing that changed for

452
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:36,640
most Americans was that everything became more expensive. The government

453
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,720
was able to you know, read every text message and

454
00:29:39,759 --> 00:29:42,200
record every phone call and scan every email, and.

455
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Speaker 3: You know, the.

456
00:29:44,599 --> 00:29:51,799
Speaker 2: Institutions like this. This obviously, this was a the institutional

457
00:29:51,839 --> 00:29:54,599
capture by the left didn't start with nine to eleven.

458
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:56,039
Speaker 3: But the g Watt era.

459
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,599
Speaker 2: Really was kind of the cherry on top of you know,

460
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:02,440
this endeavor that had been unfolding for a long time.

461
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:07,559
And now we're at a point where you know, I mean,

462
00:30:07,559 --> 00:30:09,839
I'm not saying anything crazy here, right, but you could

463
00:30:09,839 --> 00:30:12,839
get fired for talking this way and mixed a company, right,

464
00:30:13,519 --> 00:30:16,480
And this is the society that we live in where

465
00:30:16,759 --> 00:30:19,559
you have to worry about losing your four oh one

466
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:23,079
K because you don't want like a cross dressing pedophile

467
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,480
shaking his ass in front of your kids. And that's

468
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:28,519
what we got out of g Watt, right like that.

469
00:30:28,599 --> 00:30:32,960
So when you when you put that all together, you

470
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:34,440
you look at this and you go, Okay, well, yeah,

471
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:38,319
why why would anyone fight? Right, like, why why would

472
00:30:38,359 --> 00:30:41,279
you go sign up in the year of twenty twenty three,

473
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:48,279
especially in the wake of g Watt And he mentions,

474
00:30:49,559 --> 00:30:51,160
so there's a there's a couple of things he mentions

475
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:58,480
here about the like the compensation, the pay structure, things

476
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,640
like that in the military. I will take a slight

477
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:06,480
issue with that. Not I'm not saying the military gets

478
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:10,640
paid well, but it's a little different arrangement than just

479
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:11,680
like a normal job.

480
00:31:11,759 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 3: Right.

481
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:15,839
Speaker 2: It's true that like a private might make less than

482
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:21,640
thirty thousand dollars a year. However, there's no real cost

483
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:22,119
of living.

484
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 3: Like if you're.

485
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:29,359
Speaker 2: Unattached eighteen nineteen year old guy, yeah you don't. Your

486
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:33,200
salary is not anything considerable, but you have no cost

487
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:39,279
of living because you're you're your housing is taken care of, right,

488
00:31:39,279 --> 00:31:42,000
you live in barracks for free, and your health insurance

489
00:31:42,079 --> 00:31:45,599
is taken care of because you're a soldier and you

490
00:31:45,599 --> 00:31:48,160
don't have a water bill or power bill those types

491
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:50,200
of things, and a lot of your food costs are

492
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:54,799
also offset. So you know you're not you're not like wealthy,

493
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:58,640
but there's you know, you're not really like budgeting, right,

494
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,240
Like all your core expenses are taking care of and

495
00:32:01,599 --> 00:32:03,119
for a lot of guys, the money that you make

496
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:04,960
is just kind of like spending money.

497
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:06,599
Speaker 3: So when you.

498
00:32:08,359 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 2: Like in fairness, when you stack that up, it's not.

499
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:13,759
Speaker 3: Like all in.

500
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 2: Your compensation is halfway all right, I mean it's not

501
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:18,079
it's not great.

502
00:32:18,119 --> 00:32:18,759
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that.

503
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 2: Like, you know, this is where people go to get wealthy,

504
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:28,519
but you're not necessarily like like working poor. Right, So

505
00:32:29,359 --> 00:32:33,160
the question of whether this advance is your career I

506
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:37,279
think goes deeper than just like just your yearly salary.

507
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,319
It goes into what does this do?

508
00:32:39,519 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 3: Right? Like what is.

509
00:32:42,599 --> 00:32:45,519
Speaker 2: What does college do for you? Like showing getting a

510
00:32:45,559 --> 00:32:50,279
four year degree does not necessarily indicate that you're an

511
00:32:50,279 --> 00:32:52,359
expert at anything, and in fact, usually it's it's not

512
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:53,880
a reliable indicator of that at all.

513
00:32:54,799 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 3: But it does.

514
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 2: Show that you have four years where you can play

515
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:01,799
the game, go through the song and dance. You have

516
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:04,240
enough social skills that you can navigate this for four

517
00:33:04,359 --> 00:33:08,559
years without getting kicked out of something, and then you

518
00:33:08,599 --> 00:33:11,680
basically know how to play nice. Right, Like, you get

519
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,319
out of a four year degree, and unless you're in

520
00:33:14,359 --> 00:33:18,319
something that's very very high tier, like a good STEM

521
00:33:18,359 --> 00:33:20,839
program or something. I mean, getting out of a four

522
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,440
year degree with like a general like a degree in

523
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:27,920
business or something just means that you're able to kind

524
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,319
of interact socially as needed and you're able to do

525
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:35,799
some degree of independent work, you know, So that in

526
00:33:35,799 --> 00:33:37,640
and of itself is and what opens doors for you.

527
00:33:37,720 --> 00:33:40,920
The social proof, the proof of concept is what opens

528
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,680
doors for you. And in an era where like military

529
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:49,559
service might count for something, that's why it was important

530
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:51,799
to be in the military, right it was like, okay,

531
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,160
when I was eighteen to whenever twenty two, twenty five,

532
00:33:58,519 --> 00:34:02,839
you know, I successfully served in the military, and that

533
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,839
shows that socially, like this is a safe bet to

534
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:11,079
offer this person a job or position of responsibility or

535
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:13,199
you know that they might be a little bit more

536
00:34:13,199 --> 00:34:16,880
favorable choice than somebody who stayed at home during you know,

537
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:19,800
any event. And this isn't specific to g WY. This

538
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:25,679
is you know, service in the military historically. So it

539
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:29,400
is true, like the dollar amount of compensation is not

540
00:34:29,559 --> 00:34:35,480
anything crazy, but you're still relatively taken care of. It's

541
00:34:35,519 --> 00:34:37,400
just that it doesn't open the same types of doors

542
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:41,039
for you now that it may have sixty years ago,

543
00:34:41,079 --> 00:34:45,079
one hundred years ago, five hundred years ago. So that's

544
00:34:45,559 --> 00:34:47,559
you know, some of the some of the change. And

545
00:34:47,679 --> 00:34:53,480
so he mentions increasing like the pay and that's not

546
00:34:53,519 --> 00:34:57,159
a bad thing like that, that that's not going to hurt, right,

547
00:34:58,119 --> 00:35:01,960
But that in and of it's I don't think is

548
00:35:02,039 --> 00:35:03,760
the heart of the matter. I don't think that's the

549
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:08,800
essence of why the US military has this credibility problem

550
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:11,199
at the moment and it has this recruiting crisis at

551
00:35:11,199 --> 00:35:11,599
the moment.

552
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this, ask your opinion on this.

553
00:35:17,679 --> 00:35:21,679
Prussia was always described as a military with a government.

554
00:35:24,079 --> 00:35:26,000
Is it getting to the point that a modern state

555
00:35:26,639 --> 00:35:31,079
is going to be able to exist without with only

556
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:34,880
having a all volunteer force?

557
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:40,800
Speaker 2: If you ask the US Army War College, the answer

558
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,199
is no. Right, Like they actually published an article this

559
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:50,119
week I read it this morning, and they're of course

560
00:35:50,159 --> 00:35:55,920
discussing this in the context of the Ukraine Russia conflict,

561
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:03,159
and it's couched in the idea of a large scale

562
00:36:03,239 --> 00:36:07,920
combat operation. And the answer basically is no. They're they're

563
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:11,920
saying that if you look at you know, twenty years

564
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:16,719
of g WATT produced roughly fifty thousand casualties between dead

565
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,960
and injured, and you know this, this would be like

566
00:36:21,119 --> 00:36:24,800
two weeks of large scale combat operations against a Western army.

567
00:36:26,039 --> 00:36:30,039
And there's very low levels in the what's called the

568
00:36:30,039 --> 00:36:31,719
ir ARTS Individual Ready Reserve.

569
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 3: This is.

570
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 2: I'll give it just a quick background for anyone, anyone

571
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:41,239
who's not familiar with this. The shortest term of service

572
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:43,320
that you can have for the military is eight years.

573
00:36:44,599 --> 00:36:47,719
Now you don't have to do all eight years on

574
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:51,480
active duty. So, for example, if you go down to

575
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,480
the recruiter's office and you sign up for a four

576
00:36:54,599 --> 00:36:58,199
year contract in the US Army, what you're actually signing

577
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:00,679
up for is four years of active duty and four

578
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:05,079
years of what's called ir R or Individual Ready Reserve,

579
00:37:05,199 --> 00:37:07,119
which means that you get out of the army and

580
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:10,519
you can go to work. You don't go you don't

581
00:37:10,519 --> 00:37:14,360
wear a uniform, you're you're basically a normal civilian. However,

582
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,440
they can always call you and say, hey, Bud, you

583
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:22,119
got to come back, and they can do that for

584
00:37:22,159 --> 00:37:25,719
four years after you got out right, and it's you'll

585
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:29,440
hear it referred to as a backdoor draft sometimes, and

586
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:32,079
this was a common thing. You saw a lot of

587
00:37:32,079 --> 00:37:36,400
this during Iraq and Afghanistan, where guys would do a tour,

588
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:39,079
they would get out of the military. Nine months later,

589
00:37:39,119 --> 00:37:41,519
they'd get a letter in the mail that says, hey,

590
00:37:41,519 --> 00:37:44,320
you're surprised you're coming back, and you need to go

591
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,079
report here and you're going to Afghanistan for.

592
00:37:47,079 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 3: Nine months or something.

593
00:37:48,679 --> 00:37:53,199
Speaker 2: And you know, it's not popular, of course, people don't

594
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:57,119
like dealing with it. But the IRR is like our

595
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:58,239
last reserve.

596
00:37:58,599 --> 00:37:58,800
Speaker 3: Right.

597
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 2: You have active duty and then you have like National

598
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,800
Garden Reserve units, and then you have ir over, which

599
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,519
is kind of like calling up the guys who are

600
00:38:07,679 --> 00:38:10,719
now out of shape and you know, binge drinking and

601
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,239
not wanting to go back, but they still technically have

602
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:17,920
this obligation. So the number of soldiers in IRR is

603
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:22,960
also historically low. So not only is the military way off,

604
00:38:23,119 --> 00:38:27,280
I mean you're talking like five percent for some recent

605
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,639
years in their recruiting goals, but the IRR levels are

606
00:38:30,679 --> 00:38:34,360
also very low, and so they're saying that, like, yeah,

607
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:38,280
if we're in a large scale combat operation where the

608
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,199
military is looking at fifty thousand casualties in a short

609
00:38:41,199 --> 00:38:45,039
period of time, we don't have the ability to sustain

610
00:38:45,079 --> 00:38:48,559
that for any length of time. We cannot put fresh

611
00:38:48,599 --> 00:38:51,679
bodies through trade off fast enough to get them up

612
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:54,719
to the line, and so this is basically just not

613
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,000
something that we could really do right now.

614
00:38:58,719 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 3: And again this is in.

615
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,239
Speaker 2: The context of like a war similar to the Ukraine

616
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,599
and Russia conflict. The War College paper there they refer

617
00:39:07,639 --> 00:39:10,519
to this as a strategic inflection point, if I'm remembering

618
00:39:10,559 --> 00:39:15,920
it correctly, meaning that like their opinion is that the

619
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:20,519
military should look at this, take a deep assessment and say, well,

620
00:39:20,599 --> 00:39:23,320
hang on, we might have like a systemic problem here

621
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,039
where we really couldn't play in a war like this

622
00:39:26,199 --> 00:39:29,880
right now. And you know, there's a lot of factors

623
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:39,039
that go into that. The military really really is extraordinarily small, Okay,

624
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:42,480
a lot of people. You know, there's there's like a

625
00:39:42,519 --> 00:39:47,599
trillion memes about the American defense budget, and you know

626
00:39:47,639 --> 00:39:50,559
how the government just gives everything to the military and

627
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:55,119
blah blah blah. But the reality is that that's that's

628
00:39:55,119 --> 00:40:01,440
not true, like that that's not the case. So in

629
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:05,800
the tweet, he says there's one point three million total

630
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:10,519
US military personnel, and that's accurate. There's three hundred and

631
00:40:10,559 --> 00:40:12,840
thirty million people in the country.

632
00:40:13,079 --> 00:40:14,159
Speaker 3: Okay, So.

633
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,719
Speaker 2: Right away, just at face value, that you know, is

634
00:40:20,760 --> 00:40:24,000
not anything impressive. But when you drill down on the

635
00:40:24,079 --> 00:40:28,480
numbers of this as of twenty twenty one, and these

636
00:40:28,519 --> 00:40:34,360
numbers haven't shifted significantly since then. But as of twenty

637
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,760
twenty one, the active duty Army force was about four

638
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:42,400
hundred eighty two thousand people and the active duty Marine

639
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:46,519
Corps force was about one hundred and eighty thousand people. Okay,

640
00:40:46,599 --> 00:40:49,960
so you're talking about less than seven hundred thousand people

641
00:40:51,199 --> 00:40:55,199
that are active duty Army or Marine Corps. Now, the

642
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,880
Navy has about three hundred and fifty thousand people, same

643
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,679
with the National Guard, a little bit less for Air

644
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:05,079
Force active duty. But the important thing to understand here

645
00:41:05,119 --> 00:41:08,079
is it of Army active duty and marine active duty,

646
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:14,079
only only about fifteen percent of that force is infantry. Okay,

647
00:41:14,159 --> 00:41:17,880
and infantry is you know, that's your your trigger pullers.

648
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:23,159
That's the guys who those are frontline combat jobs. Okay,

649
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:27,880
so you're talking you're actually really not talking about a

650
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:31,719
large number at all. And I looked into this. As

651
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:38,719
of twenty nineteen, the number of soldiers between the rank

652
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,719
of E one and E four, so that's your lower

653
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:44,880
enlisted soldiers. That's just grunts.

654
00:41:45,199 --> 00:41:45,400
Speaker 3: Hey.

655
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,599
Speaker 2: The number of grunts that's in the army is the

656
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:51,840
mos is an eleven bravo. So the number of eleven

657
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:57,280
B E one through E four, can you guess it's

658
00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:03,920
nineteen twenty people. Right, So there's there's three hundred and

659
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:10,360
thirty million people in America and there's twenty thousand young guys.

660
00:42:10,039 --> 00:42:13,599
Speaker 3: With rifles who are just regular g I joes.

661
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:16,280
Speaker 1: Wow.

662
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,639
Speaker 2: I mean, so the money that goes into the government's budget,

663
00:42:21,679 --> 00:42:26,760
of course is large, but even that is not what

664
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:31,000
people think it is compared to the overall federal budget. Okay,

665
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:35,000
But like I said, I mean, you're twenty thousand lower

666
00:42:35,079 --> 00:42:41,599
enlisted guys. What's that going to do you against a

667
00:42:41,639 --> 00:42:43,039
place like China.

668
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:52,119
Speaker 1: I think I've heard that China has China could mobilize

669
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:57,880
quickly almost almost as many soldiers as as our population.

670
00:42:58,679 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 2: Right, I'm sure you know. Now the you know, the

671
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:08,639
Chinese question, you know, so a little outside of the scope,

672
00:43:08,639 --> 00:43:11,280
but there's some things to consider. I mean, they don't

673
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:14,360
have the force projection ability, right.

674
00:43:14,599 --> 00:43:17,199
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not scared of China, China. I'm believing

675
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:20,840
I'm so well studied in China that like the only

676
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:24,280
thing about China that I ever worry about is manufacturing

677
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:26,559
and trade things like that.

678
00:43:26,639 --> 00:43:29,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

679
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,119
Speaker 2: But the you know, my point with this is that

680
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:41,480
you can't expect twenty thousand guys to deal with a

681
00:43:41,559 --> 00:43:45,880
near peer adversary, right like having having twenty thousand guys

682
00:43:46,039 --> 00:43:51,800
who are low level grunts. You can't control the globe

683
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:57,000
with that, right, you just can't. And it's obvious that

684
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,159
America's foreign policy is to control the globe, right, Like,

685
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,880
I'm not you know, I'm not saying that's good or bad.

686
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:06,559
I'm just saying that's the reality of the situation, is that.

687
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:11,599
Speaker 1: That's that's not hyperbole. That is their goal, right right.

688
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:16,679
Speaker 2: So, now, of course, you know this is twenty thousand

689
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:22,480
lower enlisted guys. There's you know, you know, well above

690
00:44:22,519 --> 00:44:26,679
that in terms of NCOs and officers to matchments and

691
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:31,400
things like that. So even still, if you're looking at

692
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,800
four hundred and eighty two thousand active duty Army and

693
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:38,840
one hundred one hundred and eighty thousand active duty Marines

694
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,360
and fifteen percent of that is infantry, you're still kind

695
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:46,880
of in like the low six figures of actual grunts, right,

696
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:53,960
And this is not a large number compared a to

697
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:58,280
our population, but b to our goals in terms of

698
00:44:58,320 --> 00:44:59,079
force projection.

699
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 3: Right, it's just not enough to get the job done.

700
00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,599
Speaker 2: When you're looking at a conflict similar to Ukraine in Russia.

701
00:45:08,679 --> 00:45:12,079
Right now, Notice I'm not talking about the Navy in this,

702
00:45:12,159 --> 00:45:14,960
I'm not talking about the Air Force, I'm not talking

703
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:19,800
about the Air National Guard, you know, fucking space force,

704
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,320
talking about active duty army and infantry like combat arms,

705
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:28,039
because this is kind of the context of today's you know,

706
00:45:28,159 --> 00:45:32,400
concern is fighting a war similar to Ukraine versus Russia,

707
00:45:33,039 --> 00:45:37,440
where you know, you're seeing kind of a return to

708
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:42,719
almost more traditional inventional style ground war between uniformed armies

709
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:45,400
who are having a hard time getting the one up

710
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,039
on each other, and a lot of this just turns

711
00:45:47,079 --> 00:45:50,840
into guys shooting each other from five feet away in trenches.

712
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:54,320
You're going to need more than you know, one hundred

713
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:56,639
hundred and ten thousand dollars if you're going to win

714
00:45:56,679 --> 00:45:59,679
a war like that and still project force around the globe.

715
00:46:00,159 --> 00:46:04,199
And so this is a reality that the US is

716
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:07,079
at least some parts of the government are starting to

717
00:46:07,119 --> 00:46:11,239
look at and go, Okay, that's not good, right, Like

718
00:46:11,639 --> 00:46:16,360
this is this is actually a pretty serious problem, and

719
00:46:16,679 --> 00:46:19,239
the way they're trying to fix it is the worst

720
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,679
possible way, like he mentions, he says, and then the

721
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:29,039
army went woke. Wokeness is toxic to the army, not

722
00:46:29,119 --> 00:46:31,719
just because of the values clash with most order and recruits,

723
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:34,679
but it places front and center of the entire dynamic

724
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:36,639
that makes the military such an awful career path.

725
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 3: Okay, so he's.

726
00:46:39,599 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 2: Mostly correct on this, And as with anything else that

727
00:46:45,519 --> 00:46:48,880
the federal government does, their solution for it, at least

728
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:52,280
in recent years, is to just make it woke, make

729
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:57,320
it more diverse, Get some people who shouldn't be there

730
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:01,920
in there, right, Like, let's get some women in pregnancy

731
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:05,079
flight too its and pregnancy body armor. Let's get some

732
00:47:05,079 --> 00:47:08,760
some cross dressers out in the trenches. Like these are

733
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:11,840
things that only an idiot would think is a good idea,

734
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,400
or someone who would like to, you know, dismantle Western

735
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,880
civilization or both. You know, it's not mutually exclusive, but

736
00:47:22,119 --> 00:47:25,079
these are bad ideas. These are these are This will

737
00:47:25,119 --> 00:47:29,960
not rejuvenate the military. This will not improve the situation

738
00:47:30,079 --> 00:47:35,760
with recruiting because almost definitionally it cannot Okay, there's just

739
00:47:36,679 --> 00:47:39,519
there's no way that this can happen. And I remember,

740
00:47:40,679 --> 00:47:42,840
you know, one of the big points of contention when

741
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,079
I was getting out of the army. You know, we

742
00:47:45,079 --> 00:47:48,360
we did this deployment. We were there for twelve months

743
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:50,440
in Iraq, and then shortly before we came home, we

744
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,559
got told it's actually gonna be fifteen months. We had

745
00:47:53,639 --> 00:47:57,280
ninety days added on. Some of you remember that it's

746
00:47:57,360 --> 00:48:03,559
the troop surge in two thousands, and so what happens

747
00:48:03,559 --> 00:48:06,360
with this is, you know a lot of guys on

748
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:10,159
these three four year contracts, you're you're gonna be getting

749
00:48:10,199 --> 00:48:12,639
out soon, right Like if you if you sign a

750
00:48:12,639 --> 00:48:15,480
three or four year agreement and it takes you, you

751
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:18,480
know a few months to get through basic training and

752
00:48:18,559 --> 00:48:21,719
jump school and things like that. You spend a little

753
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:25,159
time in your unit, you go to JARRTC, you overseas

754
00:48:25,199 --> 00:48:28,360
for fifteen months. You know, there's actually not that much

755
00:48:28,360 --> 00:48:31,320
time left on your contract when you come home, and

756
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:33,119
especially when you get extended. So we had a lot

757
00:48:33,159 --> 00:48:36,840
of guys that were stop lost what it's referred to

758
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,400
as again some of some of you who are old

759
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,280
enough to remember that from Gwatt. That means that you're

760
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:47,079
you're in the military and your contract expires while you're

761
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:51,639
like overseas. So you're in Iraq and it's the last

762
00:48:51,679 --> 00:48:54,199
day that you were technically supposed to be in the army,

763
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,400
but surprised you're going to be there until the unit

764
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:00,519
comes back, and then you're gonna be there for a

765
00:49:00,559 --> 00:49:03,960
few months while you're out processing and clearing your unit

766
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:07,559
and all this type of thing. And so, you know,

767
00:49:07,599 --> 00:49:11,400
we get back from Iraq and the Army. At the time,

768
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:16,800
it was called PLDC. It's I'm sure the name has

769
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:20,880
changed since then, but it's it's basically there is the

770
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:24,079
Professional Leadership Development Course or the Warriors Leadership Course. It's

771
00:49:24,159 --> 00:49:27,639
it's it's the training course that you go to when

772
00:49:27,639 --> 00:49:29,679
you become an n c O, when you become a sergeant,

773
00:49:30,679 --> 00:49:33,880
and every time you break up in the Army, I

774
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:35,800
don't know if it's like this in other branches. I

775
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,119
would imagine that it's similar. But in the Army, every

776
00:49:38,159 --> 00:49:40,719
time you you gain a stripe, once you're an n

777
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:41,400
c O, there's.

778
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 3: Some type of school that you go to.

779
00:49:43,039 --> 00:49:47,199
Speaker 2: When I was in it was PLDC, binoc Anoch and

780
00:49:47,199 --> 00:49:50,199
so on and so forth. So like you go from

781
00:49:50,199 --> 00:49:52,079
a sergeant to a staff sergeant and start up for

782
00:49:52,119 --> 00:49:55,840
a class, so on and so and uh, this is

783
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:58,599
like a professional course. And so I I had become

784
00:49:58,639 --> 00:50:02,960
an n c O in Iraq, I'd basically taken a

785
00:50:03,079 --> 00:50:07,360
promotion in country, and so I came home. I was

786
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:10,000
getting out of the army in like four or five months,

787
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:14,719
and you know, we all got called down to like

788
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:20,480
the Italian classroom, and you know, you get a new start,

789
00:50:20,519 --> 00:50:24,199
a major and a new battalion commander. They're shot out

790
00:50:24,199 --> 00:50:26,440
of a cannon about all right, this is what we're

791
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,239
doing before the next deployment. You know, everybody's going to

792
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:34,000
PLDC blah blah blah, and you know, nobody a lot

793
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:36,960
of the people in the room really shouldn't go to

794
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:38,679
this because they're they're not even supposed to be there

795
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,320
that day, right or they're they're in the process of

796
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:44,000
like trying to like buy a house back home, or

797
00:50:44,679 --> 00:50:47,199
you know, see their kids or all this type of stuff.

798
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:50,760
You know, remember, these are guys who just spent fifteen

799
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:56,239
months in like you know, actual combat during some of

800
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:58,480
the worst times in Iraq. So you get home and

801
00:50:58,519 --> 00:50:59,559
you you know, you kind of have.

802
00:50:59,519 --> 00:50:59,960
Speaker 3: Shit to do.

803
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:03,760
Speaker 2: And this is only a three week course, but you

804
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:06,519
know you're there all day. You stay at PLDC. You're

805
00:51:06,559 --> 00:51:09,719
not you're not home at night, and it's like a

806
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:17,639
farm where you know, basically like non combat overweight female

807
00:51:17,679 --> 00:51:24,039
soldiers go to like give like whiteboard classes about you know,

808
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:27,360
how to how to perform like a near ambush or

809
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:31,239
things like that. And these are the things that make

810
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:34,639
you hate the army, right because it's like, well, like

811
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:36,960
this is actually my job. I'm in the infantry. I

812
00:51:37,199 --> 00:51:41,719
don't need the chick from the supply unit trying to

813
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:45,760
explain to us how to conduct an ambush. But that's

814
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:50,199
what the army wants done because to the Army, you

815
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:54,079
need to be having you know, women in these spaces

816
00:51:54,199 --> 00:51:57,719
or taking these these leadership roles, right, and these are

817
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:02,679
like resume bullet points on these people's n coors. And

818
00:52:03,519 --> 00:52:05,079
so the whole thing is like a it's kind of

819
00:52:05,079 --> 00:52:08,079
a gode rop because it's obvious that they don't care

820
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,000
about doing what's right, which is, you know, these guys

821
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:17,119
who got held over or are getting out soon probably

822
00:52:17,119 --> 00:52:18,360
need a little bit of time to get like their

823
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,599
affairs straight before they transition out to you know, back

824
00:52:21,599 --> 00:52:25,480
to the civilian life. You know, they're really focused on

825
00:52:26,039 --> 00:52:29,559
getting these bullet points for resumes and for the sake

826
00:52:29,599 --> 00:52:33,119
of diversity, and you know, this type of thing. And

827
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:36,760
so again, this isn't this is in two thousand and eight,

828
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:41,039
so this was kind of before the stuff got as

829
00:52:41,079 --> 00:52:43,599
bad as it was now, Like this is this has

830
00:52:43,639 --> 00:52:48,320
been a problem. It's been brewing in the military for

831
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:51,559
a long time, right, Like this is something that has

832
00:52:51,599 --> 00:52:58,199
reduced combat efficacy for for everyone, and a lot of

833
00:52:59,119 --> 00:53:01,440
a lot of the things that the army has done

834
00:53:01,519 --> 00:53:02,800
are moving in the wrong direction.

835
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:03,079
Speaker 3: Right.

836
00:53:03,119 --> 00:53:07,000
Speaker 2: You don't fix recruiting for a military by making it

837
00:53:07,039 --> 00:53:11,880
easier or by making it, you know, a more inclusive

838
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:15,719
environment for people who can't run as fast, or can't

839
00:53:15,719 --> 00:53:17,840
do as many push ups, or can't shoot their rifles

840
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:21,599
as well. Right, this is the exact opposite of how

841
00:53:21,639 --> 00:53:24,599
you would develop a military. In fact, it's precisely how

842
00:53:24,599 --> 00:53:28,360
you would ruin a military, which is the most frustrating

843
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:32,559
part of this because it's to people who have like

844
00:53:32,599 --> 00:53:36,119
any degree of common sense, of course, you would say, well, yeah,

845
00:53:36,159 --> 00:53:38,559
that would be a ridiculous thing to do to the army, Like, well,

846
00:53:38,599 --> 00:53:42,199
why would you want a military that prioritizes fitting in

847
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:44,199
the guys who don't run as fast, or don't shoot

848
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:46,360
as well, or can't do as many push ups, or

849
00:53:47,559 --> 00:53:50,960
emotionally you're not rugged, or you know, or just in

850
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,559
it for the money, or any of these things, right Like,

851
00:53:53,599 --> 00:53:59,440
these are bad ideas when you're trying to create a military,

852
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:04,039
and especially if you're trying if culturally what you're trying

853
00:54:04,079 --> 00:54:07,440
to do is create a military that is relatively small,

854
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:11,480
that can do more, that can punch above its weight,

855
00:54:12,039 --> 00:54:16,880
right Like, if you're building a Chinese military, then yeah,

856
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:21,639
you know, you just need any person who's you know,

857
00:54:22,119 --> 00:54:25,800
old enough to eat a fucking, you know, crab out

858
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,159
of a mud puddle can be in the military. But

859
00:54:28,519 --> 00:54:30,760
this is not the case if what you're trying to

860
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:36,400
do is carry on like a Western tradition of martial policy,

861
00:54:36,559 --> 00:54:40,519
right it doesn't make sense. And this is the position

862
00:54:40,679 --> 00:54:43,679
that the army currently finds itself in, which is that

863
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:46,159
the people you would want to be in the military

864
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:50,159
are not going to join the military because they have

865
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:55,400
almost deliberately ruined the military by turning it into a

866
00:54:55,840 --> 00:54:59,480
hr department that has machine guns instead of a force

867
00:54:59,559 --> 00:55:03,119
that's really good at killing a lot of bad guys.

868
00:55:04,519 --> 00:55:07,639
Speaker 1: What is your take on people's opinion that one of

869
00:55:07,679 --> 00:55:13,199
the reasons, and it's mentioned here about turning the military

870
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:19,000
inside on on the citizenry here, what's your opinion on,

871
00:55:19,679 --> 00:55:22,880
you know, the whole bio lens and take that basically,

872
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:28,480
you're not really staffing the military with the the best people,

873
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:33,920
but people that you know will be loyal to your regime,

874
00:55:34,079 --> 00:55:36,880
the trannies and the freaks, right.

875
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, the the obviously, for any leader who plans to

876
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:47,800
stay in office, the military being politically reliable is uh,

877
00:55:48,559 --> 00:55:51,159
you know, vital, right like this, this is not something

878
00:55:51,199 --> 00:55:55,679
that is negotiable if if you're the Biden administration, or

879
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:58,960
not even just the Biden administration, but any administration that

880
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:03,199
has an agenda that is deeply an incisively counter to

881
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:09,400
long held cultural beliefs of the people over whom you

882
00:56:09,440 --> 00:56:12,920
are governing. You kind of have to get rid of

883
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,519
the true believers from the military and bring in.

884
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:17,800
Speaker 3: People who will be loyal to you.

885
00:56:18,119 --> 00:56:20,800
Speaker 2: Right like this, This is like I mentioned earlier. You

886
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:24,159
get free healthcare in the military, and that's really great

887
00:56:24,239 --> 00:56:30,280
for people who have like anxiety problems, exchange genders.

888
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:34,440
Speaker 3: They you know, have.

889
00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:40,440
Speaker 2: You know, pet problems that you know constantly require attention

890
00:56:40,519 --> 00:56:43,320
from some type of medical professional like these are. These

891
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:46,800
are high maintenance individuals who are a drain on society,

892
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:52,599
do not contribute anything, especially in a martial purpose, but

893
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:54,880
they will vote for you no matter what, right like

894
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,880
if you if you look at like like the trans

895
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,519
thing is a perfect example of this, because you know,

896
00:57:02,599 --> 00:57:07,239
you're you're seeing ads, you're seeing recruiting ads on social

897
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:14,440
media from the army of these pudgy, overweight, like weird

898
00:57:14,679 --> 00:57:19,000
fetish you know, guys who are too old to be

899
00:57:19,079 --> 00:57:24,880
there talking about how whatever they're really women or they transit,

900
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:28,719
you know, the whole nine yards, and how everyone in

901
00:57:28,719 --> 00:57:31,400
their unit loves them, and you know, the army is

902
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:35,320
a great place to be if you're like them. And

903
00:57:35,559 --> 00:57:39,480
you know, of course, because the government will pay to

904
00:57:39,599 --> 00:57:43,599
either remove their penis or put a fake penis on them,

905
00:57:44,519 --> 00:57:46,039
and then it will give them a waiver that says

906
00:57:46,039 --> 00:57:48,840
you never have to deploy into combat, right like the

907
00:57:49,119 --> 00:57:52,079
current arrangement for trans people in the militaries, you basically

908
00:57:52,119 --> 00:57:56,199
have a permanent waiver system where you're non deployable, you know,

909
00:57:56,199 --> 00:57:58,519
which is insane. Like if you if you went back

910
00:57:59,639 --> 00:58:03,760
at any point in history and you told, you know,

911
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:08,360
Caesar Alexander or anybody that you need to you need

912
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:11,679
to hire some guys who can't fight, and they're also

913
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:13,960
going to be a freak show that needs to move

914
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:17,199
with your frontline troops everywhere they go. You know, they

915
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:19,559
just would have cut your head off and for wasting

916
00:58:19,599 --> 00:58:22,840
their time. Like, this is an insane concept. I mean,

917
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:27,119
it is obvious that that's the end goal, right, but

918
00:58:27,599 --> 00:58:33,639
I don't think like like America and America specifically is

919
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:38,559
kind of a unique example where if you're doing a

920
00:58:38,559 --> 00:58:40,719
good job as a head of state, right like, if

921
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:46,000
you're a president who even even somewhat takes into account

922
00:58:46,360 --> 00:58:49,239
the broader populations well being, you really don't have to

923
00:58:49,239 --> 00:58:53,159
worry about the military not being politically reliable because traditionally

924
00:58:53,159 --> 00:58:57,639
people who serve in the military in America are relatively

925
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:04,320
extremely patriotic and loyal to the concept of civilian governments

926
00:59:04,840 --> 00:59:06,239
governance of a military.

927
00:59:07,679 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 3: You know.

928
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,039
Speaker 2: This is again this is this is kind of a

929
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:13,199
it's unique to America in this day and age, but

930
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:17,760
it's not a unique concept to Western military. Is if

931
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:20,159
you're doing what you should be doing as a leader,

932
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:27,159
you don't really have to worry about the military, you know,

933
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:28,679
as a threat.

934
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:30,119
Speaker 3: Right, But if.

935
00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:33,639
Speaker 2: You're acting, if if you were dealing with impropriety, corruption,

936
00:59:34,519 --> 00:59:38,280
you're going against you know, the the broader sentiment of

937
00:59:39,159 --> 00:59:43,480
the productive elements of society, then of course you you

938
00:59:43,559 --> 00:59:46,280
have a real problem. And so yeah, I mean there

939
00:59:46,559 --> 00:59:51,039
is some element of that. But the the real problem,

940
00:59:51,239 --> 00:59:56,320
of course is that we have enemies like potentially China,

941
00:59:56,360 --> 01:00:01,480
potentially Russia, potentially any number of places where if we

942
01:00:01,519 --> 01:00:05,719
want to maintain this what is perceived as like a

943
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:12,239
US hegemony on things, we cannot continue at this rate. Right,

944
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:16,599
Like the military cannot miss its recruiting goals by twenty

945
01:00:16,599 --> 01:00:22,000
five percent every year, the military cannot fill it's lower

946
01:00:22,119 --> 01:00:27,079
and like its officer corps with people who can't see combat,

947
01:00:27,119 --> 01:00:29,480
people who do not want to deploy, people who do.

948
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:30,360
Speaker 3: Not believe.

949
01:00:31,639 --> 01:00:37,119
Speaker 2: In these military concepts. These are people who you know,

950
01:00:37,239 --> 01:00:39,559
these belong in the HR department at like Chase Bank.

951
01:00:39,679 --> 01:00:43,800
These people don't belong in like an artillery unit, right,

952
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:46,480
and so you can only get so much like, yeah,

953
01:00:46,519 --> 01:00:49,039
maybe they're a little bit more politically reliable to you,

954
01:00:50,639 --> 01:00:55,039
but the second you have an actual engagement with a

955
01:00:55,079 --> 01:00:57,639
modern military, you are going to pay for this one

956
01:00:57,679 --> 01:01:01,119
hundred times over. And it's not something that you're guaranteed

957
01:01:01,119 --> 01:01:03,159
to come back from, Like there's no do overs with

958
01:01:03,239 --> 01:01:04,400
this stuff most of the time.

959
01:01:04,599 --> 01:01:06,639
Speaker 3: So it's I think that is.

960
01:01:06,599 --> 01:01:08,960
Speaker 2: What they're doing, but they're really really running a risk,

961
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:13,440
like an existential risk by doing it.

962
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:16,639
Speaker 1: It really seems like if that were to happen, and

963
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:21,159
I hope it's an unlikely scenario that there would be

964
01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:27,320
enough people who you know, like yourself, who actually know

965
01:01:27,599 --> 01:01:30,519
how to handle themselves for lack of a better term,

966
01:01:30,599 --> 01:01:37,400
no fed posting, that could just turn an attack on

967
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:40,159
people like that and just put them down.

968
01:01:41,159 --> 01:01:46,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's you know, I mean, these things it's not

969
01:01:46,679 --> 01:01:48,320
you know, it's just not fun to talk about. Like

970
01:01:48,440 --> 01:01:50,599
I don't like you know, talking this way, you know

971
01:01:50,639 --> 01:01:51,639
what I mean, Like this is.

972
01:01:51,639 --> 01:01:54,559
Speaker 1: Not no we just I mean, come on, we know

973
01:01:55,239 --> 01:01:57,960
we've talked about this, we've hung out, all we want

974
01:01:58,039 --> 01:02:00,960
to do. We're like literally people that want to grow.

975
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:03,039
Speaker 3: In a lot of ways.

976
01:02:03,079 --> 01:02:06,639
Speaker 2: You know, this this is the Yeah, it's brutal and

977
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:10,719
this this stuff, uh, you know where he's talking about.

978
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:15,039
You know, obviously there's there's a distance sentive. He says

979
01:02:15,039 --> 01:02:17,079
that not only are young men inc ue to join

980
01:02:17,079 --> 01:02:21,920
the military out of knowledge that they're wasting years or

981
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:24,519
basically that you know, their genders can color sexual orientation

982
01:02:24,639 --> 01:02:27,639
things like this, it's going to be used against them.

983
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:32,440
This is like, this is true, but it's uniquely true

984
01:02:34,159 --> 01:02:37,480
in a military sense, right, Like the the people who

985
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:40,639
join the military, especially people who join the military voluntarily,

986
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:46,360
do not want to be made to feel, uh feel

987
01:02:46,400 --> 01:02:51,760
like they are or are perceived as criminals or like

988
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:53,840
victims of some type of broader system.

989
01:02:54,199 --> 01:02:54,360
Speaker 3: Right.

990
01:02:54,440 --> 01:02:58,599
Speaker 2: This is just this is just a simple truth about

991
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:03,119
the psychology of this. No one, you know, no one

992
01:03:03,119 --> 01:03:08,280
wants to do anything that involves some type of competitive achievement.

993
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:12,079
You know, if this is going to be the sentiment, right, like,

994
01:03:12,119 --> 01:03:14,920
no one would play high school football if they got

995
01:03:14,960 --> 01:03:19,400
perceived as bad guys who are like somehow victims of

996
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:25,559
you know, their own flawed way of thinking. Right, this

997
01:03:25,679 --> 01:03:29,599
is the opposite of the culture you have to foster

998
01:03:30,719 --> 01:03:32,920
if you do want to have a military that's effective.

999
01:03:33,719 --> 01:03:38,480
And it's somewhat ironic because one of the timeless themes

1000
01:03:38,639 --> 01:03:43,480
of famous militaries through history is actually egalitarianism.

1001
01:03:43,679 --> 01:03:44,519
Speaker 3: Like this is.

1002
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:49,920
Speaker 2: It sounds counter to any right wing thought, but this

1003
01:03:50,039 --> 01:03:52,760
is this is kind of a lot of people listening,

1004
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:55,079
you've probably heard the expression, especially if they were in

1005
01:03:55,079 --> 01:03:58,719
the service, the expression of never above you, never below you,

1006
01:03:58,719 --> 01:04:01,519
always beside you, and that that's kind of a mantra

1007
01:04:01,559 --> 01:04:04,000
in a lot of units and a lot of military thought,

1008
01:04:04,639 --> 01:04:08,360
which is that everyone who's there is equal, right, and

1009
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:11,079
it's it's the old cliche about being equally worthless and

1010
01:04:11,079 --> 01:04:15,519
everybody you know equally sucks and all this type of stuff.

1011
01:04:16,199 --> 01:04:19,599
But there's a lot of truth to this because in

1012
01:04:19,639 --> 01:04:24,519
a military context, the idea of egalitarianism is one where

1013
01:04:24,559 --> 01:04:29,599
everyone is equally contributing and equally sacrificing, rather than equally

1014
01:04:29,719 --> 01:04:34,599
consuming something or equally receiving a perk or a handout. Right,

1015
01:04:34,800 --> 01:04:40,360
military egalitarianism involves a equal willingness to shoulder a burden

1016
01:04:41,239 --> 01:04:45,719
a right to suffer. And it's very different from the

1017
01:04:46,079 --> 01:04:51,199
liberal thought about egalitarianism as a right to enjoy privilege

1018
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:54,599
or a right to be included in something. Okay, So

1019
01:04:55,559 --> 01:04:58,920
like this is kind of like this is why it's

1020
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:02,360
a bad idea to give every want a right to vote, right,

1021
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:04,519
because not everyone's going to see it as a duty,

1022
01:05:04,960 --> 01:05:07,519
you know what I mean. This is a theme that

1023
01:05:07,719 --> 01:05:12,280
comes up in philosophy since stay one when you're talking

1024
01:05:12,320 --> 01:05:15,159
about something like democracy is why would you give everyone

1025
01:05:15,199 --> 01:05:18,639
a right to vote if they're not invested in you know,

1026
01:05:18,719 --> 01:05:21,840
good faith outcomes and some type of fiduciary obligation or

1027
01:05:21,880 --> 01:05:27,039
civic obligation. Right, So, military egalitarianism.

1028
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:29,159
Speaker 3: Is critical.

1029
01:05:29,559 --> 01:05:33,840
Speaker 2: You have to create an environment, culture, and a spree

1030
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:38,760
de corps that it tindts on some type of egalitarianism

1031
01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:43,000
in a fighting unit, or you're not going to be

1032
01:05:43,039 --> 01:05:47,199
effective because people will not fight right like an army fights,

1033
01:05:48,639 --> 01:05:50,320
you know, on its heart.

1034
01:05:50,559 --> 01:05:51,800
Speaker 3: So there is no.

1035
01:05:53,280 --> 01:05:58,519
Speaker 2: There's no way to create a rifle company that works

1036
01:05:58,760 --> 01:06:03,199
if you're telling people it The lazy people, the slow people,

1037
01:06:03,559 --> 01:06:06,840
the weaklings, the people who can't shoot, the people who

1038
01:06:06,880 --> 01:06:09,159
are too dumb to read a map. These are the

1039
01:06:09,199 --> 01:06:12,000
people that you have to take with you. You cannot

1040
01:06:12,320 --> 01:06:16,400
create that environment and create a rifle company that is effective.

1041
01:06:16,559 --> 01:06:17,719
Speaker 3: Okay. And that's not.

1042
01:06:19,159 --> 01:06:24,079
Speaker 2: Again, that's not new. This is something that you see

1043
01:06:24,679 --> 01:06:31,159
written about in warfare for thousands of years. Okay, Like

1044
01:06:31,239 --> 01:06:34,599
if you like, I went through because I was thinking

1045
01:06:34,599 --> 01:06:37,639
about the stay, I grabbed carnage and culture.

1046
01:06:37,960 --> 01:06:40,119
Speaker 3: And here's two quotes.

1047
01:06:40,119 --> 01:06:44,920
Speaker 2: And this is interesting, and I highlighted these because there's

1048
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:49,079
such a long span of time between this. Okay, So

1049
01:06:49,159 --> 01:06:51,760
from carnage and culture, that's victory David Hanson's book, for

1050
01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:56,400
David Hanson's book, and he's talking about, like the March

1051
01:06:56,400 --> 01:07:00,679
of the ten thousand and Xenophon. We're out of the

1052
01:07:00,679 --> 01:07:05,079
Mediterranean with philosophers and students of rhetoric, march and file

1053
01:07:05,199 --> 01:07:09,880
alongside cutthroats to crash headlong into enemy flush where outs

1054
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:12,559
would every man under arms feel equal to anyone else

1055
01:07:12,599 --> 01:07:15,480
in the army, or at least see himself as free

1056
01:07:15,519 --> 01:07:18,119
and in control of his own destiny. And he's talking

1057
01:07:18,119 --> 01:07:22,400
about the fact that this Greek mercenary army was composed

1058
01:07:22,599 --> 01:07:29,039
of low lifes and scumbags, mixed in with people from

1059
01:07:29,199 --> 01:07:33,400
noble families and aristocratic backgrounds, and that they were all

1060
01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:38,639
committed to one another with a sense of disciplined egalitarianism

1061
01:07:38,679 --> 01:07:43,719
and exclusivity, and they were able to basically fight their

1062
01:07:43,719 --> 01:07:47,920
way back from halfway across the world through hostile territory

1063
01:07:47,920 --> 01:07:53,199
the whole time. Now, pair of this, you have Steven

1064
01:07:53,199 --> 01:07:58,559
Ambrose in the introduction to Parachute Infantry. That's David Kenyon

1065
01:07:58,599 --> 01:08:02,599
Webster's book. He's describing him. Webster he was a literature

1066
01:08:02,639 --> 01:08:05,440
major at Harvard, but in World War Two he joined

1067
01:08:05,840 --> 01:08:10,480
the infantry, the one hundred first Airborne, and Steven Ambrose

1068
01:08:10,480 --> 01:08:13,000
says Webster was a man of books and libraries, a

1069
01:08:13,039 --> 01:08:15,960
reader and a writer, thrown into an intimate and life

1070
01:08:15,960 --> 01:08:22,119
dependent relationship with ill educated hillbillies, southern farmers, coal miners, lumbermen, fishermen,

1071
01:08:22,199 --> 01:08:25,760
and other typical paratrooper enlisted men. In short, with a

1072
01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:28,159
group of men with whom he had nothing in common.

1073
01:08:28,800 --> 01:08:31,359
He would not have particularly liked or disliked them in

1074
01:08:31,399 --> 01:08:34,119
civilian life, he just would not have known them. Yet

1075
01:08:34,159 --> 01:08:36,680
it was among this unlikely group of men that Webster

1076
01:08:36,720 --> 01:08:40,479
found his closest friendships and enjoyed most thoroughly the sense

1077
01:08:40,479 --> 01:08:45,520
of identification with others. Now, these are about twenty four

1078
01:08:45,600 --> 01:08:52,359
hundred years apart, and you're seeing this theme recurring, this

1079
01:08:52,520 --> 01:08:56,560
concept that people from different backgrounds and different walks of

1080
01:08:56,640 --> 01:09:01,720
life can be effective. These are both militaries that won decisively.

1081
01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:05,000
They can be effective if they view themselves as contributing

1082
01:09:05,039 --> 01:09:07,920
equally in part of like this tight knit unit where

1083
01:09:07,960 --> 01:09:10,199
everyone belongs because everyone can carry their weight.

1084
01:09:10,720 --> 01:09:11,159
Speaker 3: Okay.

1085
01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:14,840
Speaker 2: Married to this is this idea that what you're doing

1086
01:09:14,920 --> 01:09:19,840
is a challenge to yourself, right, like the desire to

1087
01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:24,119
and you know other people have written about this. This

1088
01:09:24,199 --> 01:09:26,640
is also a sentiment that I share because when nine

1089
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:30,079
to eleven happened, I mean, if I'm being honest, a

1090
01:09:30,079 --> 01:09:34,680
big draw of this wasn't necessarily like, oh man, nine

1091
01:09:34,720 --> 01:09:37,439
to eleven happened, I'm going to join the military because

1092
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:42,800
just because of nine to eleven, you know, a lot

1093
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:46,399
of that was, Hey, do I have what it takes

1094
01:09:46,399 --> 01:09:49,399
to fight in a war like this? Can I shoulder

1095
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:52,520
the same burden? A lot of people who came before

1096
01:09:52,560 --> 01:09:55,640
me have shouldered, right, And I just happened to be

1097
01:09:55,680 --> 01:09:59,560
at the right age in a country, you know, on

1098
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:02,800
Earth it was in that situation, and so I joined

1099
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:05,119
and a lot of guys that were in the Army

1100
01:10:05,560 --> 01:10:10,439
appeel two varying degrees. Similar to this, David Blavia writes

1101
01:10:10,479 --> 01:10:16,520
about this. I mean, he says, we endure for two reasons. First,

1102
01:10:16,520 --> 01:10:19,840
there's a nobility and purpose in our lives. Are America's

1103
01:10:19,840 --> 01:10:24,039
warrior class. We protect and we avenge. Second, every moment

1104
01:10:24,079 --> 01:10:26,439
in the infantry as a test. If we measure up

1105
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:28,880
to the worst days such as this one, it proves

1106
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:32,319
we stand to breed apart from all other men. This

1107
01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:37,119
is the concept that you see time and time again.

1108
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:40,359
This has to be there. This cannot be in a

1109
01:10:40,399 --> 01:10:45,760
military and still be a top tier military that is

1110
01:10:45,760 --> 01:10:48,760
better than other militaries in the world. Right, There's just

1111
01:10:48,840 --> 01:10:52,119
no way around this stuff. It's baked in. You can't

1112
01:10:52,199 --> 01:10:55,439
change the recipe. There's just no way around it.

1113
01:10:55,520 --> 01:11:00,119
Speaker 3: Right. So you see this, like, if you look.

1114
01:11:00,079 --> 01:11:01,680
Speaker 2: At the military and you look at the jobs in

1115
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:04,800
the military, the army might have like a like a

1116
01:11:04,840 --> 01:11:09,479
twenty five miss from its recruiting goals, But there are

1117
01:11:09,560 --> 01:11:12,560
units in the army that don't have this problem. Right, Like,

1118
01:11:12,600 --> 01:11:15,039
there's never a shortage of guys who want to go

1119
01:11:15,119 --> 01:11:17,840
be a Navy seal. There's never a shortage of guys

1120
01:11:17,840 --> 01:11:19,159
who want to go to be an army ranger.

1121
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:23,680
Speaker 3: Does that make sense? Like, do you understand where I'm

1122
01:11:23,680 --> 01:11:26,600
coming from with that? Like there's like, there's always going

1123
01:11:26,600 --> 01:11:27,079
to be guys.

1124
01:11:27,119 --> 01:11:29,479
Speaker 2: You will always have enough guys in a Western society,

1125
01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:32,000
especially in a country if you're running it well, who

1126
01:11:32,039 --> 01:11:34,920
want to step up and take on some type of challenge.

1127
01:11:35,319 --> 01:11:37,960
But if what you're offering, if you're what you're watering

1128
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:41,520
down in the military, is not having to take a

1129
01:11:41,560 --> 01:11:46,560
PT test, you know, a bunch of walking stomachs, just

1130
01:11:46,680 --> 01:11:51,279
bumbling around through the day vaping and buying dodge chargers,

1131
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:54,479
then you're going to lose. Right, you have to offer

1132
01:11:54,760 --> 01:11:59,680
young people, and specifically young men, a challenge to themselves

1133
01:12:00,079 --> 01:12:05,039
worthy purpose to pursue some environment that's going to be

1134
01:12:05,479 --> 01:12:09,880
dependent on meritocracy, like genuine meritocracy. Uh, and it will

1135
01:12:09,880 --> 01:12:12,520
foster camaraderie. And this has to be something that they

1136
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:16,319
enter into voluntarily, right like this, This is where I

1137
01:12:16,359 --> 01:12:21,159
disagree with the concept of you know, draft and conscription

1138
01:12:21,239 --> 01:12:23,119
and things like this. I understand that as like a

1139
01:12:23,199 --> 01:12:27,479
civilization saving policy, but all other things being equal, it's

1140
01:12:27,479 --> 01:12:29,600
best to avoid that type of thing in my opinion,

1141
01:12:30,039 --> 01:12:32,479
because you want people who want to be there, right,

1142
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:34,119
you have to take people who want to be there,

1143
01:12:34,159 --> 01:12:35,800
and you have to give them a challenge, and they

1144
01:12:35,800 --> 01:12:37,680
have to be led well, and they have to have

1145
01:12:37,720 --> 01:12:40,920
a purpose. And these are things that the military is

1146
01:12:40,960 --> 01:12:44,079
not doing right now and has been doing less and

1147
01:12:44,159 --> 01:12:48,880
less and less of for honesty for generation. Yeah, it

1148
01:12:48,920 --> 01:12:52,720
seems that if the only thing that the soldiers are

1149
01:12:52,760 --> 01:12:58,079
bonding over is their their trends status or their gender

1150
01:12:58,199 --> 01:13:04,680
status something like that, sure that's not going to there's

1151
01:13:04,720 --> 01:13:07,159
going to be no cohesion when it comes to actually

1152
01:13:07,479 --> 01:13:10,680
pulling a trigger, I mean, or going into battle together.

1153
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:17,159
Speaker 1: I mean, what there's what's the camaraderie there? I mean,

1154
01:13:17,199 --> 01:13:21,439
most of these people are have bought into a trend

1155
01:13:22,239 --> 01:13:26,640
and they've made this trend their identity.

1156
01:13:26,800 --> 01:13:32,399
Speaker 2: Right, so that goes out the window, right exactly, And

1157
01:13:32,439 --> 01:13:34,760
there's you know, I don't know. I mean, like I said,

1158
01:13:34,840 --> 01:13:36,479
I got to the army in two thousand and eight,

1159
01:13:36,520 --> 01:13:41,039
so it's basically ancient history. I'm sure that there are

1160
01:13:41,920 --> 01:13:46,279
quality young people in the army today. I'm sure that

1161
01:13:46,319 --> 01:13:49,520
there are still on of guys who are very capable,

1162
01:13:51,439 --> 01:13:54,239
but you know, I think it's less and less and

1163
01:13:54,279 --> 01:13:56,920
I think that the environment as a whole is less

1164
01:13:56,960 --> 01:14:00,239
and less conducive to those types of things. And you

1165
01:14:00,279 --> 01:14:05,600
can only this can only be degraded so far before

1166
01:14:05,640 --> 01:14:08,319
it's not effective at all. Right, Like, this isn't something

1167
01:14:08,359 --> 01:14:14,880
that's just you know, ironically, but it's binary. You can't

1168
01:14:14,880 --> 01:14:19,279
be non binary, right, Like the military is either functioning. Specifically,

1169
01:14:19,319 --> 01:14:21,119
the infantry is either functioning or it's not.

1170
01:14:21,319 --> 01:14:22,399
Speaker 3: Right, it's either.

1171
01:14:24,119 --> 01:14:26,760
Speaker 2: Going to win in a kinetic engagement or it's not.

1172
01:14:27,520 --> 01:14:30,920
And once you cross a line where there's x percentage

1173
01:14:30,920 --> 01:14:32,760
of people who don't really want to be there or

1174
01:14:32,880 --> 01:14:36,239
x percentage of people who can't actually hack it, right, Like,

1175
01:14:36,439 --> 01:14:38,039
even even on a good day, this is not a

1176
01:14:38,119 --> 01:14:40,800
job that just anybody can do, right, Like it it's

1177
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:44,279
not the most difficult thing in the world. But you know,

1178
01:14:44,359 --> 01:14:49,199
if you're eighteen, like I mean when I joined, you know,

1179
01:14:49,560 --> 01:14:52,760
you have to be clean. You have to be able

1180
01:14:52,760 --> 01:14:54,039
to graduate high school.

1181
01:14:54,119 --> 01:14:55,479
Speaker 3: You can't have a criminal record.

1182
01:14:55,760 --> 01:14:59,359
Speaker 2: You know, for the most part, you can't you know,

1183
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:01,920
have like face tattoos or you know, you got to

1184
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:04,159
pass a drug test. All you know you have physically,

1185
01:15:04,199 --> 01:15:07,800
you can't have any real ailments. And you know, to

1186
01:15:07,840 --> 01:15:11,279
get into better units. You have to be you know,

1187
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:14,600
be physically capable. So even on a good day, this

1188
01:15:14,680 --> 01:15:18,119
is not something like just any seventeen eight year old

1189
01:15:18,199 --> 01:15:21,199
guy is going to be able to jump into. Like

1190
01:15:21,279 --> 01:15:24,600
the percentage of young people who are been ertically eligible

1191
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:28,840
for military services is just not high, right, everyone's overweight

1192
01:15:29,119 --> 01:15:34,000
or sick mentally some type of unwell, either either fake

1193
01:15:34,079 --> 01:15:39,239
or imagined, and so's it's really not great. And I'm

1194
01:15:39,279 --> 01:15:43,720
sure you know, you know, there's probably some zoomers out

1195
01:15:43,720 --> 01:15:46,560
there that are that are really good at being in

1196
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,840
the infantry, Okay, and I hope there are, because there's

1197
01:15:49,840 --> 01:15:51,720
not a lot of them, right, Like we discussed, there's

1198
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:54,359
about twenty thousand of these guys. But it doesn't take

1199
01:15:54,399 --> 01:15:57,560
a lot to fuck that up. Like it doesn't take

1200
01:15:58,720 --> 01:16:01,760
a lot of like being in a rifle platoon for

1201
01:16:01,840 --> 01:16:05,239
the rifle platoon to stop working as a rifle platoon. Okay,

1202
01:16:05,840 --> 01:16:09,359
it takes like exactly one. And it's the same for

1203
01:16:10,319 --> 01:16:14,199
you know, trans people, people who can't meet the pet standards,

1204
01:16:14,199 --> 01:16:18,479
people who cognitively can't meet the minimum requirements, you know.

1205
01:16:18,560 --> 01:16:20,560
I mean this is like it's it's kind of a

1206
01:16:20,600 --> 01:16:23,640
trope that the Infantry's you know, the crayon eaters, and

1207
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:26,399
it's it's just grunts and stuff like that. And some

1208
01:16:26,479 --> 01:16:28,479
of that's true, Like some of the dumbest motherfuckers I've

1209
01:16:28,520 --> 01:16:32,479
ever met in my life were in the infantry with me. However,

1210
01:16:33,000 --> 01:16:34,520
you know a lot of a lot of the smartest

1211
01:16:34,520 --> 01:16:37,800
people I've ever met were too. And you kind of

1212
01:16:37,800 --> 01:16:39,560
have to have a couple of brain cells to rub

1213
01:16:39,560 --> 01:16:43,720
together to be effective, especially in a leadership position. And

1214
01:16:44,039 --> 01:16:47,079
this is just this is just something that you're you're

1215
01:16:47,159 --> 01:16:53,039
really really poisoning the well by reducing these standards, flooding

1216
01:16:53,079 --> 01:16:57,079
these places with people who shouldn't be there. And and

1217
01:16:57,119 --> 01:16:58,279
I don't even mean that in like.

1218
01:16:58,279 --> 01:16:59,079
Speaker 3: An edgy.

1219
01:17:01,159 --> 01:17:05,159
Speaker 2: Like Mimi kind of way about people who shouldn't be there.

1220
01:17:05,239 --> 01:17:07,640
They could go do something else, right, I'm not saying

1221
01:17:07,680 --> 01:17:10,680
that to be a dick. I'm saying that because that's

1222
01:17:10,760 --> 01:17:14,199
just the reality. Like, you cannot win a war if

1223
01:17:14,560 --> 01:17:18,600
your commanding officer is a thirty six year old, overweight transperson.

1224
01:17:18,680 --> 01:17:20,960
Speaker 3: You can't do it. I'm sorry, it's not possible. That

1225
01:17:20,960 --> 01:17:23,960
will not happen. There's just no way around it. Okay.

1226
01:17:24,800 --> 01:17:28,319
Speaker 2: And so again I'm not saying that to sound like

1227
01:17:28,560 --> 01:17:30,760
a doomer or be blackpilled, or say this is like

1228
01:17:30,800 --> 01:17:35,680
an irreversible problem, or like like it's over something like that.

1229
01:17:36,560 --> 01:17:38,920
These are just realities that have to be confronted. And

1230
01:17:38,960 --> 01:17:41,640
if you don't confront these realities as a culture and

1231
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:45,600
as a society, as a military, you will stop being effective.

1232
01:17:45,720 --> 01:17:48,319
The end, you will you will lose, Like this is

1233
01:17:48,359 --> 01:17:50,640
what will happen, Like you will lose. It's going to

1234
01:17:50,640 --> 01:17:54,720
take some type of crushing defeat for people to sober

1235
01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:59,000
up and realize that, you know, this isn't nerve right,

1236
01:17:59,119 --> 01:18:04,640
Like when you send guys into some type of kinetic engagement,

1237
01:18:04,680 --> 01:18:07,439
Like if you send a platoon and do ground combat

1238
01:18:08,199 --> 01:18:11,920
and the pl is like a cludgy, twenty nine year

1239
01:18:11,920 --> 01:18:17,960
old guy with a diaper fetish, you know you're gonna

1240
01:18:18,000 --> 01:18:21,000
have thirty eight like American dudes getting dragged through the

1241
01:18:21,039 --> 01:18:23,840
streets because they're all going to be dead. And that's

1242
01:18:23,840 --> 01:18:25,840
what it's going to take to wake the country up

1243
01:18:26,119 --> 01:18:28,159
from this stuff. There's just no way around it. And

1244
01:18:28,399 --> 01:18:30,439
again I don't I don't like talking that way. I mean,

1245
01:18:30,560 --> 01:18:33,159
I have kids, I have a son who's interested in

1246
01:18:33,199 --> 01:18:35,359
the army. I mean, this is this is what comes

1247
01:18:35,439 --> 01:18:37,800
natural to boys, this is not the way I want

1248
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:41,239
the things to be. It just it just kind of

1249
01:18:41,319 --> 01:18:44,159
is though, right, And if we don't as a society

1250
01:18:44,239 --> 01:18:46,359
wake up to this stuff and say, hey, look like

1251
01:18:46,800 --> 01:18:49,119
you can even keep the woke stuff, right, you could.

1252
01:18:49,199 --> 01:18:51,239
You could keep this stuff in the university, because you

1253
01:18:51,239 --> 01:18:54,119
could keep the stuff in the HR departments. You cannot

1254
01:18:54,199 --> 01:18:57,640
let it come into the military. The parts that are

1255
01:18:57,680 --> 01:19:00,079
in the military need to be remote from the military.

1256
01:19:00,119 --> 01:19:03,239
This needs to be something that's understood as hey, look,

1257
01:19:03,239 --> 01:19:05,439
this is just not where this stuff goes now. I

1258
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:08,560
don't know if that's possible socially, right, Like, the people

1259
01:19:08,600 --> 01:19:13,000
who believe these things believe that these are real concerns, right,

1260
01:19:13,039 --> 01:19:16,760
Like there are true believers, like in the Biden administration

1261
01:19:16,920 --> 01:19:20,199
and the broader progressive movement a lot of this. There

1262
01:19:20,199 --> 01:19:21,920
are a lot of people there who, you know, they're

1263
01:19:21,920 --> 01:19:23,399
just doing this at a corruption and they know that

1264
01:19:23,439 --> 01:19:26,039
if they get people who are politically reliable and they

1265
01:19:26,119 --> 01:19:29,119
head up certain agendas, then they're going to you know,

1266
01:19:29,159 --> 01:19:31,439
get a board seat on an NGO somewhere or like

1267
01:19:31,439 --> 01:19:35,000
a sinecure job or something like that. Those people are

1268
01:19:35,079 --> 01:19:37,319
less dangerous and the people who are genuine believers, Like

1269
01:19:37,359 --> 01:19:40,880
there are people in positions of power who actually think

1270
01:19:40,920 --> 01:19:44,720
that it would be really good to have a bunch

1271
01:19:44,760 --> 01:19:47,840
of fat asses and weirdos on a rifle company. And

1272
01:19:47,920 --> 01:19:49,960
those are the people that they need to be removed

1273
01:19:49,960 --> 01:19:50,520
from power.

1274
01:19:52,159 --> 01:19:53,560
Speaker 3: And this thing needs to.

1275
01:19:53,520 --> 01:19:57,079
Speaker 2: Be reversed or out, you know, God forbid when the

1276
01:19:57,159 --> 01:19:59,760
day comes, like, and it will come, you can't have

1277
01:20:01,800 --> 01:20:06,039
you know, a dominant country right and never have someone step.

1278
01:20:05,760 --> 01:20:07,520
Speaker 3: Off to check you on that.

1279
01:20:07,920 --> 01:20:09,680
Speaker 2: That's that's the history of the world, Like there's no

1280
01:20:09,720 --> 01:20:12,199
way around it, Like that day will come and we

1281
01:20:12,279 --> 01:20:15,680
have to be prepared for that eventuality, and we're not

1282
01:20:15,720 --> 01:20:17,039
on track to face it right now.

1283
01:20:18,800 --> 01:20:22,079
Speaker 1: Let's end it right there, because I don't think we're

1284
01:20:22,079 --> 01:20:23,760
going to come up with an answer for it other

1285
01:20:23,800 --> 01:20:27,680
than the obvious. And I think you pretty much hit

1286
01:20:27,800 --> 01:20:30,159
the points that need to be hit about this. And

1287
01:20:30,279 --> 01:20:33,600
that's why I asked you to come on, because I

1288
01:20:33,640 --> 01:20:38,560
know that this is something you you follow. You mean,

1289
01:20:39,760 --> 01:20:42,960
you're reading war college, you're reading war college stuff for

1290
01:20:45,199 --> 01:20:48,560
just just to research for yourself. So I couldn't think

1291
01:20:48,560 --> 01:20:50,680
of a better person. And plus you know we know

1292
01:20:50,800 --> 01:20:54,960
each other, so thank you, thank you. I appreciate that

1293
01:20:55,000 --> 01:21:00,640
and always a pleasure. Yeah, and quickly remind everybody about

1294
01:21:00,720 --> 01:21:01,560
end block Press again.

1295
01:21:02,239 --> 01:21:04,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's e N B l O C Press p

1296
01:21:04,800 --> 01:21:07,520
R E S S N block press dot com again.

1297
01:21:07,560 --> 01:21:12,840
It's weekly newsletter, occasional podcast. Go sign up, subscribe. All right, man,

1298
01:21:13,000 --> 01:21:15,399
I appreciate it, Thank you very much, Lee, for sure,