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Speaker 3: All right, Ron Donson, welcome back to the Jay Burden Show.
Speaker 3: How you doing man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm doing pretty good, doing pretty good considering that
Speaker 4: chaos abounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I should bring you on to discuss
Speaker 3: more light topics, but every time. It seems like the
Speaker 3: world is on fire. When I decided to bring you on, yeah.
Speaker 4: You bring on Edwards to talk about all these fun things.
Speaker 4: That Angel Hard episode was fantastic and I was as
Speaker 4: I was listening to it on a very slow, mostly
Speaker 4: walk jog. I'm getting old, guys. I was like, well,
Speaker 4: this is fun. Why doesn't my buddy Jay bring me
Speaker 4: on to talk about it. I like movies, I like books.
Speaker 4: No I get to talk about the Four Horsemen. It's
Speaker 4: all dead, famine, pestilens and destruction. Oh Ron's back. The
Speaker 4: world must be doing good.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I might. I might have you back on,
Speaker 3: maybe to discuss your music career. I think that would
Speaker 3: be a good episode.
Speaker 4: But I did that with some o GC guys or not.
Speaker 4: That was fun. We can do that. We can talk
Speaker 4: about my dalliance with Van Halen, but we're here to
Speaker 4: talk about more serious things. Jay.
Speaker 3: This is complete sidebar issue, literally completely irrelevant. I was
Speaker 3: actually supposed to record with several other people today. I
Speaker 3: couldn't because my power went out. It's back on. I
Speaker 3: live in the South, It's midway through March. A window
Speaker 3: in front of me. It is now snowing, if this
Speaker 3: isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I have no idea
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 4: Well, for those of you watching and not listening, it
Speaker 4: is not snowing here.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 4: It is a glorious we're in that we get about
Speaker 4: two weeks of spring in Dallas before the before the
Speaker 4: blast furnace gets opened, and we're in the middle of that.
Speaker 4: It's actually chilly today.
Speaker 3: So but in any case, we're not here to talk
Speaker 3: about the weather, just an observation because I'm sort of
Speaker 3: a gas that it's snowing when it was eighty degrees yesterday.
Speaker 3: But in all seriousness, I brought you.
Speaker 4: Always it's always winter, always winter under that uh witch
Speaker 4: that you live under. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Really, uh don't remind me somehow, as over as I
Speaker 3: thought it was, it is even more over than that.
Speaker 3: The things going on in my state are I was
Speaker 3: gonna say, worse than I could have imagined. But they're Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just about as bad as I thought it could
Speaker 3: be in my worst moments. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But speaking
Speaker 3: plan right, perfect transition. We're here to talk about Iran More.
Speaker 3: I put on an episode yesterday with Fears and Darryl
Speaker 3: Cooper going over certain aspects of it, and it's rare
Speaker 3: for me to do two subsequent episodes on the same topic.
Speaker 3: But this is a big deal, clearly, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of different aspects that I wanted to address that
Speaker 3: I simply couldn't in an hour and fifteen minutes. Right,
Speaker 3: there's only so much to say. And Ron, you've been
Speaker 3: going on a podcast tour talking about this issue. Your
Speaker 3: work with Fearis and Petequanonas is excellent. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 3: But there's a specific element that you wanted to bring up,
Speaker 3: and so I'll throw it to you. Ron, What is
Speaker 3: going on here?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's important for us to realize how
Speaker 4: we got here quickly, and we could spend easily spend
Speaker 4: an hour talking just about this. But I think that
Speaker 4: there is an absolute, absolutely, a manipulation campaign meant to
Speaker 4: sidetrack the president from his what his opponents would call
Speaker 4: isolationist goals, what I would call just wise application of
Speaker 4: the donro Monroe doctrine of can we own our near
Speaker 4: abroad and defend that for instance, uh midnight hammer I
Speaker 4: was I thought was while maybe a little bit beyond
Speaker 4: what I would normally espouse, I didn't have a problem
Speaker 4: with it, the move to retake through less violent means
Speaker 4: the Panama Canal. I have no problem with that. I
Speaker 4: I I'm a I'm a big fan of controlling as
Speaker 4: a regional hegemen and global power. You need to own
Speaker 4: your own space. It's why Canada and Mexico and Cuba
Speaker 4: should be huge priorities, much more so than anything across
Speaker 4: an ocean and a sea and a desert. But that
Speaker 4: being said, Uh, the president was was exposed in the
Speaker 4: and the work of and I'm I don't know what
Speaker 4: to always think about Max Blumenthal, but his uh, you know,
Speaker 4: I had heard through sources very close to the president
Speaker 4: that he was very concerned of for his own personal safety,
Speaker 4: for the safety of his family. And I thought, and
Speaker 4: and the way it was was put to me, I
Speaker 4: thought that he was concerned about honestly about IDF and
Speaker 4: Masad infiltration into the administration. Uh, it's it's it's out
Speaker 4: in the open throughout the d O D. The Massad
Speaker 4: has I mean, uh IDF has Uh has a large
Speaker 4: presence in the Pentagon and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: But I thought he was very concerned and that wasn't
Speaker 4: the case at all. What he had been convinced of.
Speaker 4: Max Blumenthal writes about this in the Grey Zone, about
Speaker 4: a long campaign by the CIA and FBI to convince
Speaker 4: the president that Iran was looking to assassinate him and
Speaker 4: had the capacity to do so. That is very troubling.
Speaker 4: And you can go and read Blumenthal's long article, uh
Speaker 4: essay about this and and he has some pretty good
Speaker 4: receipts on the matter. I highly suggest that. And so
Speaker 4: so in hindsight, what the the the trepidation that the
Speaker 4: President was feeling was was with regards to what he'd
Speaker 4: been convinced was an Iranian attempt to assassinate him and
Speaker 4: his family. Uh, take care take out his family. So
Speaker 4: we have that one level of manipulation. And then we
Speaker 4: also see that uh that BBU that net and Yahoo
Speaker 4: was had UH basically told the president with or without you, uh,
Speaker 4: he was going uh to quote you too. I guess
Speaker 4: UH that by the time Puriam was coming, they were
Speaker 4: absolutely going to attack Iran uh and they were going
Speaker 4: to withhold uh withhold the right to use whatever means necessary.
Speaker 4: Now that implies the use of nukes that they don't
Speaker 4: officially have. Have nudge nudge, wink wink. And that's unaccepted.
Speaker 4: We can't allow that for a lot of reasons because
Speaker 4: if you anyone using nukes, even a tactical nuke a
Speaker 4: you know, that completely up ends the mad calculus apple cart.
Speaker 4: So we can't allow that. So, and we're concerned about
Speaker 4: operational security of our own forces, which I think we
Speaker 4: saw was very, very low anyway, even even with us
Speaker 4: going in like we did. So this manipulation campaign to
Speaker 4: get the president off his not just campaign promises, but
Speaker 4: his philosophical foundation of what a foreign policy for America
Speaker 4: first should look like. I think was was was planned,
Speaker 4: It was too pronged, it was very effective and very
Speaker 4: most probably amplified by some of those very close to him.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at you, Susie Wiles, and Susie has allies.
Speaker 4: The cabinet is factionalized, and Susie has allies within the cabinet.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go too far into that, but
Speaker 4: but but that's what I see getting us to where
Speaker 4: we are, and that's very troubling to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at the same time, we've seen this
Speaker 3: sort of unprecedented push throughout the kind of civilian side,
Speaker 3: through the media. This is something that you know, fear
Speaker 3: is brought up yesterday talking about the series of purchases
Speaker 3: in you know, the mainstream world. Obviously you have Barry
Speaker 3: Weiss rising to a position of prominence the free press,
Speaker 3: but also you know what happened with TikTok and others.
Speaker 3: And when this war first kicked off two weeks ago
Speaker 3: plus or minus, that was sort of the first thing
Speaker 3: I noticed is that my feed, my information was very
Speaker 3: very different than the last the twelve day war right
Speaker 3: between Israel and Iran last year. We weren't seeing the
Speaker 3: sort of things that we saw before, and you realized
Speaker 3: very quickly that non traditional narratives were being suppressed very,
Speaker 3: very heavily. Similarly, we've seen an insane response from Epstein class, right,
Speaker 3: those sort of people. For instance, one of the things
Speaker 3: that you know, I noticed very quickly is that many
Speaker 3: of these Zionists who have been clamoring for longer than
Speaker 3: I've been alive, we need to get Iran, we need
Speaker 3: to kill their leadership. Well, as soon as they got
Speaker 3: what they wanted, instead of taking a victory lap saying
Speaker 3: we did it, awesome, great, they pushed even harder. Right,
Speaker 3: you have people sort of making claims about Turkey, which
Speaker 3: you know, look like I'm not a fan of Turkey.
Speaker 3: I don't want to live there, but they are a
Speaker 3: country in NATO that's a very difficult you know, ask
Speaker 3: to wage some sort of war against Turkey. And in
Speaker 3: the media we've seen political figures from across the spectrum,
Speaker 3: I mean not across the spectrum, but basically across the
Speaker 3: board losing their minds. And one of the things is
Speaker 3: that there's been a very deliberate effort to cast opposition
Speaker 3: to this war as one of two things. You were
Speaker 3: either a Holocaust denying Nazi or an isolationist. This is
Speaker 3: almost a direct quote from Ben Shapiro, who blamed the
Speaker 3: fact that, according to him, fifty three percent of Republicans
Speaker 3: under fifty don't believe the Wikipedia version of the Holocaust.
Speaker 3: And he says this is a rise of dangerous conspiracy thinking.
Speaker 3: You've heard the term the Bircher's thrown around, like we
Speaker 3: need to get rid of this crazed conspiratorial thinking. It
Speaker 3: says that Israel got us into this war. Mark Gerberwitz
Speaker 3: in the New York Post he wrote an article making
Speaker 3: that exact same claim that if you oppose this, you
Speaker 3: believe that there is a shadowy Jewish cabal controlling the world.
Speaker 3: This blood libel. That's the only reason you can oppose this.
Speaker 3: And I think it's pretty clear that there are a
Speaker 3: multitude of reasons to oppose this war, a multitude of
Speaker 3: reasons to say this isn't a good idea. Now you
Speaker 3: mentioned the operational security, one of the things we've seen
Speaker 3: being sort of tossed around is the supposed commando option.
Speaker 3: What it's sort of become in you know, in media,
Speaker 3: the term they're using for it, which is the idea
Speaker 3: of using special forces. We can't really confirm or deny
Speaker 3: those rumors that that is planned to occur, but the
Speaker 3: alleged target seem to be very very dangerous for our assets.
Speaker 3: It would involve flying a lot of very expensive guys
Speaker 3: that there aren't a lot of into airspace where they
Speaker 3: could be shot down and killed, sort of another version
Speaker 3: of what we saw with Operation Red Wings. This is
Speaker 3: setting aside the diplomatic fallout, right the countries and the Gulf,
Speaker 3: who understandably are quite peeved at us, let alone, you know,
Speaker 3: South Korea who's had their THAD batteries hijacked, right taken,
Speaker 3: and so the idea that this is the opposition to
Speaker 3: this war is motivated out of some sort of cheap
Speaker 3: ethnic hatred is completely and totally absurd, and really at
Speaker 3: the core of this, I think are two issues, which
Speaker 3: is one, what does it mean to be sovereign? What
Speaker 3: does it mean to be a sovereign nation? And two
Speaker 3: what does it mean to be a serious nation? A
Speaker 3: nation that has civilizational concerns instead of this sort of
Speaker 3: you know, primary focus on I guess we could say
Speaker 3: prosperity if even that and uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, particular kind of a particular kind of prosperity. But
Speaker 4: but let's back up, because you've got a ton there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a lot there. But what I would say, let's
Speaker 4: let's let's be very uh let's be very rational and
Speaker 4: step back and try to put this in uh in
Speaker 4: a press conference uh speak to begin with, and then
Speaker 4: let's get more granular and more gritty. I think in
Speaker 4: wartime there's always a temptation to collapse the range of debate. Okay,
Speaker 4: so anytime bullets start flying, there's just the the the
Speaker 4: the window gets smaller, regardless, that's part of that is
Speaker 4: is not just governmental but human nature. Okay, we're we
Speaker 4: we want to U pull together, and that ends up
Speaker 4: pulling at the at the limits of of ideological view
Speaker 4: as well. So I want to I want to say,
Speaker 4: that's kind of a natural thing. But if you question
Speaker 4: the wisdom of a conflict, not just this one, but anyone,
Speaker 4: you're told you must be. This is historically in this country,
Speaker 4: you must be either an isolationist or motivated by prejudice.
Speaker 4: And yet historically American foreign policy debate has included the
Speaker 4: realist tradition, which asks a different question, not whether we
Speaker 4: like or dislike a country, but whether given conflict actually
Speaker 4: serves the long term interests of the United States. And
Speaker 4: that should always you should always push for that to
Speaker 4: be valid. That is a valid question, no matter what.
Speaker 4: And the way and the way you ensure it's legitimacy
Speaker 4: is say, hey, look, I'm I'm absolutely pro us and
Speaker 4: and I don't want our guys killed. You do see
Speaker 4: some I have seen some weird you know, there's some
Speaker 4: weird fringes where you know, maybe our guys getting killed
Speaker 4: will serve our long term purpose. Look, I just don't that.
Speaker 4: I don't want to entertain that those the guys who
Speaker 4: are man, the guys who are fighting, regardless of whether
Speaker 4: I agree or disagree with whether they ought to be
Speaker 4: over there. They're Americans, and if we're going to be
Speaker 4: if we're going to see America as not just this
Speaker 4: propositional thing, then we have to be pro flesh and
Speaker 4: blood Americans. Right, So I kind of want to step
Speaker 4: against that. But to your great greater point is I
Speaker 4: see kind of this, And tell me if you think
Speaker 4: I'm wrong here, but I kind of see this effort
Speaker 4: to Ukrainify the United States, this Ukrainification, and what does
Speaker 4: that look like? Well, okay, bear with me. Who was
Speaker 4: Zelenski before? When when Ukraine was actually a normal going
Speaker 4: concern back in the day. He was he was a
Speaker 4: TV guy, He was a TV star, He made people laugh.
Speaker 4: He you know, he was comedian, but he was you know, uh.
Speaker 4: And and who is the cabal that now runs the
Speaker 4: country that we helped put into power? But the US
Speaker 4: foreign policy gang helped put into power because Maydahan was
Speaker 4: absolutely we pushed that along, if not gendered up completely ourselves.
Speaker 4: Look who the controlling interests are in the country now?
Speaker 4: That really doesn't reflect the the people in Ukraine. Okay,
Speaker 4: So I don't want to get too ethnically specific about that.
Speaker 4: But you can put two and two together, and I
Speaker 4: see a similar effort being done without having to go
Speaker 4: the Bircher or the conspiracy route. I just think you
Speaker 4: see a very similarly uh uh some of the same
Speaker 4: incentives driving the the the ruling class here. And no,
Speaker 4: I don't think uh Jews are the boogeyman that secretly
Speaker 4: run the world. There's just not enough of them. Do
Speaker 4: I think they represent a type of cosmopolitan collectivist GDP
Speaker 4: first citizen of the world because that makes most sense
Speaker 4: for a diasporic people, and therefore because we're the most
Speaker 4: because that's the most rationalist take. That's the Do I
Speaker 4: see all those incentives aligning? Yes, and uh so that's
Speaker 4: kind of where I see. I see this kind of
Speaker 4: uni ukrainification and process at play here, and I think
Speaker 4: it would be easily. I mean, look, the history of
Speaker 4: Russia shows this. Only seventeen percent of Russians were Bolshevik
Speaker 4: at the time of the revolution, So it's easy for
Speaker 4: a unification of incentives around some of these same goals
Speaker 4: to hold a greater than let's call it democratic mass
Speaker 4: impetus or influence. And I think that's what's going on,
Speaker 4: rather than a Elders of zion kind of view of things.
Speaker 4: I think they just there is a there's a confluence
Speaker 4: of incentives and views that Nea Kon's Zionists, collectivists kind
Speaker 4: of new new wave in the sense of there's a
Speaker 4: certain part part of the tech community that sees this
Speaker 4: as the kind of the atheist rationalist what's the next
Speaker 4: step of human evolution. There's a part of that, there's
Speaker 4: a part that really isn't that's more more right oriented,
Speaker 4: but there's a portion that that's and and the confluence
Speaker 4: of all these kind of points in that direction, but
Speaker 4: it But finally to your final point is is this
Speaker 4: what serious nations do? And that's the big question because
Speaker 4: if serious nations are see a civilizational cohesiveness to their
Speaker 4: to their identity, and that stands a thwart this cosmopolitanism,
Speaker 4: this this uh what we've been talking about, the open
Speaker 4: society kind of thing, and and serious nations are civilizational
Speaker 4: and civilizational nations ask the questions that we just asked,
Speaker 4: is this in the long term civilizational interests of the
Speaker 4: United States? Rather than does this make does this make
Speaker 4: arrow go up? Long term? I don't think it does
Speaker 4: that at all. But But but that's the thinking behind it.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of that's that's a lot. Your question
Speaker 4: was a lot, but that's kind of where my head
Speaker 4: is on on on all this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that that question of like what
Speaker 3: is best for the nation is really at the core
Speaker 3: of this, and I think that's part of why you've
Speaker 3: seen a deliberate attack on so called isolationism, which is,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, it's a slur. It is intended to say,
Speaker 3: you have a ridiculous opinion, We don't need to talk
Speaker 3: to you because look.
Speaker 4: Like islence you. It's meant to put you in an
Speaker 4: ideological internment camp. That's what it is. Okay, we can't
Speaker 4: do real internment camps anymore because we've in our egalitarianism,
Speaker 4: we said that's the one thing that FDR did that
Speaker 4: was wrong, But we can as freaking surely put you
Speaker 4: in an ideological internment camp. And that's what that's meant
Speaker 4: to do. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Go on, Well, and I mean you've seen as part
Speaker 3: of this ongoing fight between sort of con inc and
Speaker 3: you know, whether you would call it the new Right,
Speaker 3: I mean, this has been going on since the election,
Speaker 3: but particularly since you know, the Israel hamas war kicked off,
Speaker 3: is that there's been a deliberate attempt to purge the unbeliever. Right.
Speaker 3: We've seen this throughout you know, different young Republican organizations.
Speaker 3: We saw this at Heritage, We've seen this at you
Speaker 3: know a number of levels. And particularly this term isolationism
Speaker 3: is oftentimes bundled with an idea that, oh, you just
Speaker 3: hate one America or you hate the president. And I
Speaker 3: don't think that's a particularly compelling argument, seriously, but it
Speaker 3: has been used and it is currently being used to
Speaker 3: do exactly that, to sort of create this ideological internment
Speaker 3: camp where we can just section you off, dismiss you
Speaker 3: sort of out of hand. But I think part of
Speaker 3: the reason that this slur doesn't stick is that myself
Speaker 3: and many other people look at, you know, a history
Speaker 3: of recent wars that were done quite poorly, but we
Speaker 3: can think of many other armed conflicts that we think
Speaker 3: we're a good idea. You know, I may be in
Speaker 3: the minority, but I think by doctrine at the time,
Speaker 3: both Korea and Vietnam were legitimate. Right within that framework,
Speaker 3: they made sense. You know. Okay, maybe it didn't work
Speaker 3: out great, but like at least, you know, you can
Speaker 3: within the sort of constraints at the time, is a
Speaker 3: reasonable decision.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So as a philosophy, was that a viable and
Speaker 4: valid philosophical view to foreign policy? Yes? Absolutely, okay, And so.
Speaker 3: The reason I bring that up is, you know this,
Speaker 3: I am not despite the fact that I'm good friends
Speaker 3: with him, I'm not in this Scott Horton camp on war.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't believe that war is fundamentally illegitimate.
Speaker 3: It is a thing people do. It is a horrible thing,
Speaker 3: but it comes, like the seasons. It is something that
Speaker 3: people do. So given that when I am told, well,
Speaker 3: I must accept seemingly the complete sort of surrender of
Speaker 3: my nation's sovereignty, my nation's right to decide on its
Speaker 3: own matters of war and peace, that isn't really an
Speaker 3: issue with isolationism. It's an issue about, well, what is
Speaker 3: the point of this country? Are we independent? Are we
Speaker 3: a civilization? Because you and I spoke on the phone
Speaker 3: a week ago plus or minus about comments from Secretary
Speaker 3: of State Marco Rubio, and I realized that he later
Speaker 3: walked these back. In my mind, it's sort of an
Speaker 3: open question as to whether he walked back those statements
Speaker 3: because they were untrue or because he shouldn't have said
Speaker 3: it out loud.
Speaker 4: That shot collar, Uh, that burns after a while.
Speaker 3: Yes, And he basically intimated that the whole reason we
Speaker 3: got into this is because Israel was going anyway and
Speaker 3: we were worried that without our support they would go nuclear, right,
Speaker 3: a situation we don't want.
Speaker 4: That's right, And Okay, I loved it that he came
Speaker 4: out and said that. It was like, oh, we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk about the elephant room, finally, finally.
Speaker 3: Right, And so okay, let's discount that. You know, you,
Speaker 3: my imaginary critic, might say, well, Rubio walked those statements back. Okay, Well,
Speaker 3: let's simply look at the interests of Israel and America
Speaker 3: what we both want, and sure there are areas where
Speaker 3: those are aligned, but as with any two nations, there
Speaker 3: are gaps, and seemingly this war is being waged to
Speaker 3: serve the interest of Israel and not ours. Here's one
Speaker 3: more example when you have the President saying, and he
Speaker 3: was joking when he said this, well, we killed our
Speaker 3: first choice for the next Iranian leader, and our second
Speaker 3: and our third right, all of our plans to have
Speaker 3: a regime change were stymied by everyone getting blown up.
Speaker 3: That indicates to me that that really isn't what we
Speaker 3: wanted to have happen. That strike, at least as far
Speaker 3: as I know, was carried out by Israel, and now
Speaker 3: we have become thoroughly embroiled in this conflict, which again
Speaker 3: seems to be in Israel's interest and not ours. I
Speaker 3: mean down to the point where you have you know,
Speaker 3: oil tankers with our flag on them getting blown up
Speaker 3: in the strait of horror moods, which is a situation
Speaker 3: that we definitely don't want for fairly obvious reasons. So again,
Speaker 3: the idea that the only possible objection to this is
Speaker 3: one of either isolationism or sort of undue hatred to
Speaker 3: a certain ethnosectarian group, to me, that doesn't hold up,
Speaker 3: because I'll admit I'm no friend of the state of Israel.
Speaker 3: I don't particularly like it, as that should be no
Speaker 3: shock to my viewers. But I can set that aside.
Speaker 3: I could say, you know what, I'm biased. I have
Speaker 3: these sort of inclinations, but setting those aside, this doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be a good deal or my guys, my team,
Speaker 3: the nation I live in, and so I think that
Speaker 3: that question of sovereignty is very close to the core
Speaker 3: of this issue. Are we in charge? Because it doesn't
Speaker 3: feel as if we are kick it back to you Ron.
Speaker 4: Well, what you're getting at, ultimately is the question of legitimacy.
Speaker 4: So I gave a talk in college station earlier this
Speaker 4: where anyway earlier this week, and one of the questions was, well,
Speaker 4: is this going to erode the support for Trump? And
Speaker 4: my answer is that legitimacy always flows from one simple question.
Speaker 4: I don't care if you're a king or an emperor,
Speaker 4: or a local representative or president, whatever it is, it's
Speaker 4: do the people believe that you have their interests at heart?
Speaker 4: They don't even look. Being a good guy helps only
Speaker 4: inso much as they think you might be more trustworthy
Speaker 4: to do those things. Uh. Being a bad guy kind
Speaker 4: of hurts, I guess at the margin, but not really
Speaker 4: a good guy bad guy. Uh, your ultimate philosophical standpoint,
Speaker 4: All of that goes away in mass democracy if if
Speaker 4: you think if that, if I represent you, period, you're
Speaker 4: gonna make things better for me, and you're doing your
Speaker 4: best to do so. It's why guys like Clinton who
Speaker 4: didn't do that but were very, very good at convincing
Speaker 4: people that that that that was his only point of living,
Speaker 4: that that's why they do well. It's why uh Reagan,
Speaker 4: who wasn't you know, maybe the brightest guy in the world,
Speaker 4: but was a very good communicator, could do so. Obama
Speaker 4: the same thing, was a horrific resident, but immensely popular
Speaker 4: because people believed all he had to do was get
Speaker 4: on TV, and people believed he represented them, at least
Speaker 4: the majority did. So this whole operation calls into question
Speaker 4: because of number one, it goes against look at me
Speaker 4: being all continental. Number one, it goes against the president's
Speaker 4: stated goals of his foundational beliefs, and number two against
Speaker 4: his promises to uphold those things. And then number three,
Speaker 4: as it's come out that we're doing this because another
Speaker 4: nation basically you know, wag the dog, so to speak.
Speaker 4: So it's a question of legitimacy. Ultimately, does this does
Speaker 4: the president? Is he's staking his legitimacy? Is that the tape?
Speaker 4: Is that the stakes he's bet here? And I think yes, Now,
Speaker 4: is he uniquely talented in the ability to could he
Speaker 4: go on TV? I mean, one of the reasons I'm
Speaker 4: not really trading around all this is I mean, I
Speaker 4: think this is going really badly, but I can't trade
Speaker 4: around it very much because he could go on TV
Speaker 4: and convince, hey, we're winning, we're doing great. So so
Speaker 4: he has a unique capability to convince people that even
Speaker 4: though he's going against everything he promised, that he's not
Speaker 4: just by saying he's not. And he look, he's been
Speaker 4: very open about this in the past. You know his
Speaker 4: famous line about, look, I could murder somebody on Fifth
Speaker 4: Avenue and you know that whole deal. So but that's
Speaker 4: kind of where I think the the that's the hinge
Speaker 4: that all this turns on. And I think that again
Speaker 4: it gets to this not knowing what you what? Uh what?
Speaker 4: Fearas and Darryl spoken on this. But but operationally there's
Speaker 4: some real problems because it looks like we were spoofing
Speaker 4: some some satellite data to show that more there were
Speaker 4: more uh straight transits than there were. That's bad. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's really bad.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: The the strike on Oman is really bad because there
Speaker 4: that's far enough out of the theater that we kind
Speaker 4: of thought that that wasn't in play. And Iran is like, hey,
Speaker 4: look we're gonna make this. We're gonna make this as
Speaker 4: painful as possible, and we can keep popping up. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've got a good uh, we've got a good target list.
Speaker 4: It's clear they're getting help with our civilizational rivals, for
Speaker 4: our civilizational rivals. And my again not to beat a drum,
Speaker 4: but the fact that it's not being viewed as civilizational
Speaker 4: rivals but more operation it's pure tactics is really troubling.
Speaker 4: And I think there's a good chance there might be
Speaker 4: some operational we're we're we're, we're doing this on We're
Speaker 4: doing this talk on Thursday the twelfth, and this coming weekend.
Speaker 4: I think that there absolutely may be some stuff go down,
Speaker 4: and that's tactically questionable. That really concerns me because what's
Speaker 4: holding this all together is the fact that we don't
Speaker 4: have is that we have established air supremacy. We have
Speaker 4: we do have the ability to kind of if we
Speaker 4: can find something, we can vomit. But that's those are
Speaker 4: all tactical wins, they're not civilis. They're not strategic wins,
Speaker 4: because again, because of what I just said, they can
Speaker 4: go launch a missile at Oman, they can. Two ships
Speaker 4: got hit in Basra last night overnight. Uh uh, our
Speaker 4: ship got that US flag tanker got hit, so strategically,
Speaker 4: strategically it's not going well, and then civilizational goals aren't
Speaker 4: going well. So the tactics are only going to carry
Speaker 4: you so far. And if the tactics go bad, then
Speaker 4: it's it's all downhill, and then the legitimacy comes into question.
Speaker 4: So I don't want a black pill, because ultimately the
Speaker 4: president is way better than any of the alter you know,
Speaker 4: any alternative in play. I want him to succeed. I
Speaker 4: want our other goals to succeed. I want the Monroe
Speaker 4: Doctrine to be absolutely upheld. I want immigration to be limited,
Speaker 4: if not reversed. I want the courts to be brought
Speaker 4: down to their constitutional rightful place. I want the executive
Speaker 4: to have article to power. I want the legislature to
Speaker 4: have to be to go to to legislate again as
Speaker 4: opposed to grandstand and just eternally be playing budgetary games.
Speaker 4: And so all these things are very important to me.
Speaker 4: And if this, if we lose this, then I think
Speaker 4: all those other things might get lost as well, and
Speaker 4: that's that's very, very troubling to me. So I don't
Speaker 4: want a blackpill, but I'm concerned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I've spoken about this on
Speaker 3: air before, but because I am very much aware of
Speaker 3: the fact that I am in a bubble, I talk
Speaker 3: to people who don't have normal opinions basically what I do.
Speaker 3: So I cast my net as far as I could
Speaker 3: to try and figure out what is the public perception
Speaker 3: of this, and by and large, everything I heard back
Speaker 3: was very negative. And one of the common pieces that
Speaker 3: I'm getting is this sort of outrage of like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, you couldn't get the Save Act done, you
Speaker 3: couldn't get XYZ done, But the moment that Israel wants
Speaker 3: your help, they snap their fingers and we're there. And
Speaker 3: in a lot of the negative coverage, or to say,
Speaker 3: the kind of neo conservative coverage of this, you see
Speaker 3: this term a grievance politics, which is sort of a
Speaker 3: derivation of the woke right thesis that I've spoken about extensively,
Speaker 3: which basically the idea is if you use grievance politics,
Speaker 3: you complain about something you feel that you aren't given
Speaker 3: a fair shake. That is fundamentally a legitimate that's just
Speaker 3: what the left does. And I really disagree with that
Speaker 3: analysis because in my mind, a grievance is dependent on
Speaker 3: whether it is a legitimate or an illegitimate grievance. So
Speaker 3: if I say, well, I'm really mad that, you know,
Speaker 3: more men than women compete at X y Z competitive field,
Speaker 3: you know, whether that's you know, Wall Street or professional athletics,
Speaker 3: and I think something should be done about it because
Speaker 3: it's not fair. Well, that's kind of an illegitimate grievance.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be honest, right, there aren't a lot of
Speaker 3: women shaped like shack. They're probably not going to be
Speaker 3: a bunch of them in the NBA, thank.
Speaker 4: The Lord.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean go to certain parts of the Deep
Speaker 3: South and they're getting close.
Speaker 4: But in all seriousness, right, somebody's got it. Somebody's got
Speaker 4: to get those hormones put in the milk and all that. So,
Speaker 4: I mean that's true.
Speaker 3: And apparently a friend of the show, Merek from the
Speaker 3: Good Old Boys, he's into that, so you know what,
Speaker 3: there's an all audience for it. But in all seriousness, right,
Speaker 3: that would be an illegitimate grievance, right, nothing can be
Speaker 3: done about it. But the idea that all grievances are
Speaker 3: illegitimate is kind of stupid because there are very legitimate
Speaker 3: cases where people have gotten a raw deal. If you
Speaker 3: are American, you may remember at this little scuffle with
Speaker 3: the British about exactly that we felt as if we
Speaker 3: were getting the short end of the stick, a raw deal.
Speaker 4: Yes, perfect.
Speaker 3: So the idea, the idea that where this is going,
Speaker 3: this may be in an article soon. I've been playing
Speaker 3: with it, but point is right.
Speaker 4: Okay, which point? Which are yourni platforms?
Speaker 3: I won't say yet, but in all seriousness, right, this
Speaker 3: is another very cynical rhetorical device. The idea that if you,
Speaker 3: if you object to this lack of sovereignty, if you
Speaker 3: object to these unmet promises, and say, why are you
Speaker 3: you using your capital to accomplish the goals of someone
Speaker 3: else who doesn't vote for you, who isn't part of
Speaker 3: allegedly your nation. That seems to me to be a
Speaker 3: very legitimate grievance. Entirely so. And the idea that if
Speaker 3: you feel as if you're getting a raw deal, that
Speaker 3: you're some sort of secret SJW. You know that you're
Speaker 3: just as bad as the woke. I mean, it's completely
Speaker 3: and transparently absurd and one of the things that I've
Speaker 3: found worrisome coming from both the commentariat and also from
Speaker 3: the administration is the weak to absent messaging, which is,
Speaker 3: what are we doing here, right, what is the goal?
Speaker 3: What is the stated goal? How long are we going
Speaker 3: to be doing this? And effectively the administration has been
Speaker 3: relatively silent on that front, and the commentariat has basically said, well,
Speaker 3: if you object to this, you're an isolationist, left wing
Speaker 3: woe Corshoe theory nazi who's so stupid. We don't don't
Speaker 3: have to talk to you. And I understand what you
Speaker 3: said earlier that you know, in times of conflict, the
Speaker 3: overton window shrinks, right, There's an instinct to rally around
Speaker 3: the flag. That's very human and very natural. But in
Speaker 3: my mind, it seems as if we were in the
Speaker 3: midst of a very dangerous sort of rhetorical failing where
Speaker 3: there really seems to be no narrative for our guys
Speaker 3: other than our government is completely and totally occupied. And
Speaker 3: if you're in charge of that government, that's a negative
Speaker 3: outcome for you. You don't want to be seen as illegitimate
Speaker 3: or incompetent. And I cast my mind back to the
Speaker 3: very real time during the Biden years, where many people
Speaker 3: felt the same thing. They felt as if this government
Speaker 3: is illegitimate, it's a bunch of crooks. They're incompetent, they're petty,
Speaker 3: they're tyrannical, and in a situation where got in basically
Speaker 3: on a protest vote, right basically on a make that
Speaker 3: stop happening, and there have been wins, particularly on immigration.
Speaker 3: I was very encouraged by some of the targets of
Speaker 3: dose initially albeit you know that has gone away, but.
Speaker 2: Nonetheless right ready set.
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Speaker 3: A great many people gave Donald Trump a Mandy and
Speaker 3: that Mandy sure had a foreign policy component. You know,
Speaker 3: the anti war coalition is always has been some fraction
Speaker 3: of first the Tea Party, then MAGA, but the fact
Speaker 3: that not only has that foreign policy commitment been abandoned,
Speaker 3: which I think, even if I don't like it, MAGA
Speaker 3: could have held up under right. If it was everything
Speaker 3: you wanted domestically and some foreign adventures, I think most
Speaker 3: people would take that deal. But when it is both
Speaker 3: none of that and less and less of the domestic concerns,
Speaker 3: when you know you have, as Trump said right, a
Speaker 3: major oral refinery going in apparently staffed and funded by Indians,
Speaker 3: that rankles people. People get legitimately upset, They have legitimate grievances,
Speaker 3: and look, it seems that there needs to be an answer,
Speaker 3: and I don't know where that answer is coming from,
Speaker 3: because neither the administration or the media allied to them
Speaker 3: are providing that. So I threw a bunch at you.
Speaker 3: There ron much chance to good with that.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, real quick, I'll speak to the
Speaker 4: Indian refinery deal. We did that to ourselves. It's impossible
Speaker 4: for if it's a it's a four to six billion
Speaker 4: dollar investment in order to get something like that off
Speaker 4: the ground and going, and if you do it domestically,
Speaker 4: you have an immense and I mean immense target on
Speaker 4: your back from all the political uh the all the players,
Speaker 4: and it's it increases the risk of your uh uh
Speaker 4: of ever getting that you know, any return on that
Speaker 4: capital and so on. So the way this was set
Speaker 4: up was through a basically like a swap. It's it's
Speaker 4: a purchase agreement that that makes valid the ahead of time,
Speaker 4: the the the capital interest in the in the project
Speaker 4: that'll be mostly Americans, staffing, building, all of that. It's
Speaker 4: just it's just but we did that. We did that
Speaker 4: to ourselves in the sense of we've created this this
Speaker 4: environment where it's very hard for people to do great
Speaker 4: things anymore because there's some left wing special interest group
Speaker 4: that can, through injunction, make your life impossible. So so really,
Speaker 4: if we're going to and we need more we've got
Speaker 4: we're cheap oil producer now in the world. We need
Speaker 4: more refinery capacity. We had to do this and the
Speaker 4: only way it was going to get done was through
Speaker 4: FOURIGN dollars. I hate to be the bearer of that,
Speaker 4: but that's where your country is right now. So it's bad,
Speaker 4: but it's bad for different reasons than people think it is,
Speaker 4: if that makes any sense. Okay, So sorry, to put.
Speaker 4: I'll take off my nerd finance hat for a minute
Speaker 4: and go back to what you mention. You mentioned, you
Speaker 4: mentioned and our the grievance culture in our founding, And
Speaker 4: so why did and these were philosophical guys who in
Speaker 4: the seventeen seventies, These were smart, honorable people. These weren't
Speaker 4: just you know, these weren't four chan chuds. These were
Speaker 4: absolute elite kind of folks. And why did they and
Speaker 4: they were concerned with these things? Why did they consider
Speaker 4: the grievance against England legitimate? And it was because it's
Speaker 4: the thing that makes every grievance either legitimate or illegitimate.
Speaker 4: And it's a metaphysical question. And it gets back to
Speaker 4: it's the King was responsible personally for the for all
Speaker 4: his colonial states, okay around the world, but specifically to
Speaker 4: the American to the American project, the American colonies, and
Speaker 4: he personally had there was this there was this royal
Speaker 4: pledge on the king's honor to protect and ensure the
Speaker 4: prosperity and safety. And the King, in a bit of
Speaker 4: political trouble, offloaded the responsibility to Parliament without without any representation.
Speaker 4: You always hear about that, and we always hear, oh,
Speaker 4: no taxation without representation. It was much deeper than that.
Speaker 4: It was a philosophical, metaphysical argument of honor and loyalty
Speaker 4: and pledge and all these things. That's why in the
Speaker 4: declaration and these things are called out, it's on our
Speaker 4: sacred honor. They were calling out the king to his
Speaker 4: metaphysical commitments. And so you can always judge the legitimacy
Speaker 4: of aggrievance by its metaphysical commitment. And the problem is
Speaker 4: we have said metaphysics is off the table. We're not
Speaker 4: gonna think about that. It is all tactics. It is
Speaker 4: all positivism. Positivism in other words, law is what I
Speaker 4: say it is, rather than law is is legislated rather
Speaker 4: than discovered. The classical understanding is we look for that
Speaker 4: which is true by nature, physicis and by and and
Speaker 4: we're always going to do that imperfectly because we don't
Speaker 4: have divine revelation to every single instance. But but but
Speaker 4: we seek to determine that which is true and legislate thustly,
Speaker 4: as opposed to positivism, which is is it's pure custom. Okay,
Speaker 4: it's purely what we decide, because that's just and and
Speaker 4: so that metaphysical. Uh so, there's this metaphysical understanding that
Speaker 4: that we we thought the king was held and then
Speaker 4: we still want to hold the president to of honor.
Speaker 4: You made a promise. You've got to keep that because
Speaker 4: you represent us. You are the one person the entire
Speaker 4: country votes for, one person that the entire country ordains
Speaker 4: we lay our hands on. I mean, it's the form
Speaker 4: of our government as Presbyterian, it is we ordain you
Speaker 4: as presiding elder. That's what president means as presiding elder
Speaker 4: over not just the executive branch, but the representation to
Speaker 4: the foreign nations. And you have a vice elder in
Speaker 4: the Secretary of State who helps you out. Okay, and
Speaker 4: if there is If you don't keep those promises, then
Speaker 4: metaphysically you are illegitimate and our grievances are valid. Does
Speaker 4: that chang? Does that philosophical chain make sense?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. And I realized there's a there's a
Speaker 3: fair critique someone could level at you and I, which
Speaker 3: is why are you engaging with these arguments because they're
Speaker 3: clearly not genuine. It is clearly I will say literally
Speaker 3: whatever to get you to shut up. That's fair. That's
Speaker 3: what they say, is this isn't a real argument in
Speaker 3: the way that you and I might have an argument, Ron,
Speaker 3: But also I think it's important to really dig into
Speaker 3: the details of how this war is being legitimized, of
Speaker 3: what they are trying to say to get us ever
Speaker 3: more involved in this pointless, stupid conflict. It is not
Speaker 3: for our interests, and if you make that objection, they
Speaker 3: will cast all possible slings and arrows at you to
Speaker 3: try and get you to go away. And fundamentally, I
Speaker 3: think that the problem is this isn't going away. Say
Speaker 3: what you will about the state of Israel. They have had,
Speaker 3: as the kids say, a generationally bad run. This has
Speaker 3: been a really tough two to three years for their
Speaker 3: public perception in America. Whether that is what we saw
Speaker 3: with Operation Midnight Hammer, obviously you know the what happened
Speaker 3: to Gaza. We have the Epstein files and now this,
Speaker 3: and clearly there are many people in this administration and
Speaker 3: elsewhere who really want everyone to stop talking about Epstein.
Speaker 3: Do I think everything in the files is true? No,
Speaker 3: clearly not. There's a bunch of random FBI tip lines
Speaker 3: about you know, George H. W. Bush eating babies that
Speaker 3: probably aren't true, but nonetheless it.
Speaker 4: All have problems with with with George, but probably probably
Speaker 4: not one of the probably not one of the sins
Speaker 4: he regularly.
Speaker 3: At least it doesn't make the top five. But you
Speaker 3: a seriousness, right, you have again this same core question
Speaker 3: of who is in charge and how does this work?
Speaker 3: Because obviously there's many salacious things in the Epstein files.
Speaker 3: You know, the man was a pimp for underage women.
Speaker 3: He was a very bad man who I sincerely hope
Speaker 3: as being Kentucky Fried in hell. But there's an additional
Speaker 3: thing you can learn from that, which is the way
Speaker 3: that this system works is not how you and I
Speaker 3: were told in school that it was. It works very,
Speaker 3: very differently, and many people have come to that conclusion.
Speaker 3: And when you have that piece of information, that model
Speaker 3: delivered to you, and then like six weeks later, you're like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, why are we in this war that
Speaker 3: seemingly nobody seventy to ninety percent depending on which pole
Speaker 3: you look at, supports this doesn't seem to be in
Speaker 3: our interest. You can't blame people for drawing a logical conclusion, right,
Speaker 3: connecting those two points of data. It's not a huge leap,
Speaker 3: and I think that one of the problems that we
Speaker 3: face across the West. You're seeing this in the UK
Speaker 3: rapidly in America, is that much like the off ramps
Speaker 3: for this conflict, where we're not really sure how we
Speaker 3: could get out of it even if we want to.
Speaker 3: I don't understand where that attitude goes. Because we had
Speaker 3: the Democrats in power, motivated a lot of people to
Speaker 3: protest against what they saw is corruption and tyranny, and
Speaker 3: now you have the Trump administration, who I have not
Speaker 3: been particularly harsh to. I've supported many of their wins.
Speaker 3: I view my relationship as sort of calling balls and strikes.
Speaker 3: There've been good things and there've been bad things. But fundamentally,
Speaker 3: if that movement is discredited, if the broad public consensus
Speaker 3: is new boss same as the old boss, we're not
Speaker 3: in charge. We have no way to redress our grievances.
Speaker 3: I don't know where that energy goes. And just as
Speaker 3: it has created a very volatile situation in the UK.
Speaker 3: I speak to many people about this. I don't pretend
Speaker 3: to understand your politics, Britishers, but nonetheless it seems to
Speaker 3: be increasingly volatile. I don't understand. I don't understand a
Speaker 3: way for that to go pleasantly here when there is
Speaker 3: seemingly no political way to address grievances unless you are
Speaker 3: a foreign interest group, a country that starts with the
Speaker 3: letter I, Seemingly those are the only ones who can
Speaker 3: get anything out of this system. And one of the
Speaker 3: stories in my mind of the twenty twenty four election
Speaker 3: was certain people realizing, if this continues, my situation is
Speaker 3: at risk, rich and powerful people who basically realize that
Speaker 3: if Biden, if we continue in that direction, I don't
Speaker 3: get to be rich and powerful anymore. And obviously, you
Speaker 3: know certain of those people are profiting from this arrangement,
Speaker 3: you know, whether they're involved in certain technical fields or others.
Speaker 3: But fundamentally, if we have a major energy crisis, if
Speaker 3: the strait of horror moves is shut down, if you
Speaker 3: know countries across the world are desperate for petroleum products LNG,
Speaker 3: that's a problem for a country that doesn't actually make anything, right,
Speaker 3: that can't really spin up a new refinery overnight anymore.
Speaker 3: And again, going back to this the core central conceit
Speaker 3: of this that seems to be a very legitimate objection
Speaker 3: to this war. And I don't know where that person
Speaker 3: would go to have those grievances redressed. Ron, I'm curious
Speaker 3: to get your thoughts.
Speaker 4: Well, how much time we have? What are we looking at?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had another ten minutes plus or minus.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I think the bigger question and that you
Speaker 4: raised it the first of all, that is why are
Speaker 4: we Why are we concerned? Why what interest does this serve?
Speaker 4: And the and the way we went down this path is, well,
Speaker 4: there's the geopolitical reality. And the geopolitical reality is that
Speaker 4: there are uh several major choke points around the world
Speaker 4: that control that the control of which is the control
Speaker 4: of UH of of International GDP. It just that's the
Speaker 4: way it works. So so UH Panama, Malacca, Suez, Horror,
Speaker 4: mus Bosporus, Dardenell's Bosporus, Dartnell's not so much because the economic,
Speaker 4: but because of the strategic But and so we were
Speaker 4: always concerned.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Once oil was discovered and in the Middle East and
Speaker 4: was a huge deal, Suez and Horror moves became hugely
Speaker 4: important from a sense of those whoever controlled those things
Speaker 4: had way more leverage on the international system. We went
Speaker 4: through this is you know, everybody remembers seventy four being
Speaker 4: all about Watergate, but we were embroiled in a massive
Speaker 4: bear market because of the seventy three seventy four oil crisis,
Speaker 4: you know, and and so on, and then later on
Speaker 4: you saw again in seventy nine, and then and then
Speaker 4: in later when Iraq took Kuwait, you saw a similar thing.
Speaker 4: So but but the control of these choke points is
Speaker 4: hugely important in a in a world where we trade. Okay,
Speaker 4: So that's and we are in the world. So and
Speaker 4: that has to do with just the reality of post
Speaker 4: World War two. We were going to have a world
Speaker 4: economy because that's how we rebuilt Europe, and so these
Speaker 4: things start to have a momentum of their own. So
Speaker 4: why do we give it too It's about Iran. Well,
Speaker 4: we've always cared. That's why the CIA have put this
Speaker 4: Shaw in power back in fifty three, I believe that
Speaker 4: was fifty three, and we had great relations with Iran,
Speaker 4: and Iran was a natural balance. You can go and read,
Speaker 4: or you don't have to read. You can listen to
Speaker 4: Nixon's interviews about the balance of Iran and Israel as
Speaker 4: civilizational and Middle East balancing there and also Egypt and Turkey.
Speaker 4: And it made this kind of four legged stool and
Speaker 4: Nixon with Kissinger's help and running on kind of a
Speaker 4: knee or Morgenthal philosophical framework that was perfect. It made sense,
Speaker 4: and it gave us the leverage with which to support
Speaker 4: Pakistan against China. All these different things that had going
Speaker 4: on that the public didn't even know about because Nixon
Speaker 4: wasn't a blowhard and he anyway. But that's why we care,
Speaker 4: and that's ultimately why we got in bed with Israel
Speaker 4: because in the seventies after Watergate, we lost all control
Speaker 4: over all. This with Carter's foreign policy was terrible. We
Speaker 4: were giving away the world. We had no real way
Speaker 4: to exert influence abroad. The Russians were ascendant or the
Speaker 4: Soviets were ascendant, and Israel bombed a reactor using American
Speaker 4: hardware F sixteen's and F fifteen's in this incredible raid,
Speaker 4: and we saw Israel as and this is coming after
Speaker 4: in Tebby and the fallout of Munich, and we saw
Speaker 4: Israel as a way to up our reputation because they
Speaker 4: were really good at doing this crazy military stuff and we,
Speaker 4: frankly were terrible. I mean, we don't know if you remember,
Speaker 4: but in seventy nine the reason Delta forhor was Force
Speaker 4: was really created was to go and rescue the hostages
Speaker 4: after the Shaw was deposed in the Iotola original Iatola,
Speaker 4: Kamane took a bunch of American hostages and we did
Speaker 4: this big Delta Force operation that was a massive failure.
Speaker 4: A bunch of people got killed. And Israel was this beacon.
Speaker 4: I'm just telling you how it was. Most of you know,
Speaker 4: I was old enough to remember this. They were an
Speaker 4: operational success. So that's how we went down this path
Speaker 4: of teaming up with them, and it created this entire
Speaker 4: with the geopolitical stresses of these choke points and Israel
Speaker 4: being this seemingly they're winning and we're losing, We're going
Speaker 4: to partner with them, and it created this huge momentum
Speaker 4: that has just increased over time. And that's how we
Speaker 4: got where we are. And we need somebody to stand
Speaker 4: up and reassert our civilizational pre eminence and our operational
Speaker 4: authority in order to stand athwart that. And that man
Speaker 4: is not Donald Trump. It's just not. He is doing
Speaker 4: all these other great things. And the question is is
Speaker 4: this going to bring his ability to do all these
Speaker 4: other great things down? And I don't know the answer
Speaker 4: to that. I hope not, because I love all these
Speaker 4: other things, but he's not going to be the one
Speaker 4: to stand up to I mean, he's too personal. Look
Speaker 4: who put as his technical as his negotiating team, Wick
Speaker 4: Coffin Kushner. These are two Zionists who who have zero
Speaker 4: technical understanding of the of of of what was going on,
Speaker 4: completely out of their league. I mean, uh so he's
Speaker 4: just not that guy, and and I love him. I
Speaker 4: want him to succeed, but he's not the guy to
Speaker 4: stand up to Israel. It's just not gonna happen. So
Speaker 4: I don't want to end on that note, but I
Speaker 4: know we're running out of time. But that's kind of
Speaker 4: where I see things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's something to that. I think that realistically,
Speaker 3: like there are there are many many negative side effects externalities,
Speaker 3: if you will, to this war continuing. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that I've i say, long predicted I don't
Speaker 3: know if this has been going off long enough to
Speaker 3: say that, is that it's entirely possible or the president
Speaker 3: to move the goalposts because we haven't really had a
Speaker 3: victory condition and so I think it's entirely possible for
Speaker 3: one to be made up after the fact, oh, this
Speaker 3: war was entirely designed to cripple the Iranian navy or
Speaker 3: to do something else. And we're done. And you've heard
Speaker 3: the president say that. You've heard the President say this
Speaker 3: war is over or we want and you know what,
Speaker 3: it may be stupid, it may not be like technically true,
Speaker 3: but I'll take it. I will take an end to
Speaker 3: this conflict. I don't really care how it happens, because
Speaker 3: not only do I think it's a colossal waste of life,
Speaker 3: not only do I think it has the potentiality to
Speaker 3: destabilize the world, let alone you know, our nation, and
Speaker 3: so you know what, whatever it takes to end this
Speaker 3: within certain limits, fair enough, right? And do I have
Speaker 3: faith that this will, you know, mark some major change
Speaker 3: in our relationship with Israel during this administration. No, I don't.
Speaker 3: But I think and I this is conspiratorial, But I
Speaker 3: have to imagine that in Tel Aviv they're running the
Speaker 3: mental calculation on how long support for Israel is politically
Speaker 3: viable in the US. Because the numbers I'm seeing they're
Speaker 3: not good, even in the Republican Party aren't good. And
Speaker 3: so I think it is very much in their interest
Speaker 3: to get us into as much of a mess as
Speaker 3: they can as quickly as possible. Yes, because that support
Speaker 3: may not be guaranteed in the future. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's a sorry bron Well.
Speaker 4: No, do you think The question I have is is
Speaker 4: do you think that that? Do you think the Israelis
Speaker 4: believe that greater Israel is an achievable goal over time?
Speaker 3: I don't know, because this is a point that you've
Speaker 3: seen from Carlson and others, which is just because you
Speaker 3: want something doesn't mean it's possible. And that has been
Speaker 3: a major concern of mine as well, which is setting
Speaker 3: aside my personal feelings about Israel, the question is are
Speaker 3: there goals even possible? Is this something that can be done?
Speaker 4: Because realist does that, That's what you have to do.
Speaker 4: You have to live in the world on the right.
Speaker 4: We are the faction of the real that's what that's
Speaker 4: what grounds everything that we're about. So you have to
Speaker 4: ask these questions.
Speaker 3: Well exactly and when I look at you know, seemingly
Speaker 3: a desire to turn Iran into Gaza, to turn Iran
Speaker 3: into Syria, you know.
Speaker 4: This is non functional Libya.
Speaker 3: Is that possible? Because we've to quote Lindsay Graham, pounded
Speaker 3: Iran to phrase he really likes saying. I'll let you
Speaker 3: speculate as to why. But okay, we've done that for
Speaker 3: two weeks. Now do we have the material to keep
Speaker 3: that going? That is an open question. At least judging
Speaker 3: by our our missile interceptors, we are running out of material.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have shallow magazine.
Speaker 3: Depth and okay, well, assuming we need at least some
Speaker 3: of those for other things. Right, you don't want to
Speaker 3: go dry trying to blow up Iran. They're still there,
Speaker 3: like sure, you know, the Supreme Leader isn't sure. You know,
Speaker 3: a couple hundred other people aren't. But seemingly Iran still stands.
Speaker 3: It is still a nation, It still has the capacity
Speaker 3: to endure. And so if we have wasted all of
Speaker 3: these resources blowing up, you know, a non negligible number
Speaker 3: of Iranians, but not enough to turn it into Syria
Speaker 3: or to Kasa, well what have we done here? Realistically?
Speaker 3: What have we done?
Speaker 4: We killed?
Speaker 3: Okay, we killed an eighty seven year old man with
Speaker 3: prostate cancer. Yeah, okay, you probably didn't need a drone
Speaker 3: to do that. You could have just waited, to be
Speaker 3: blunt about it. And so that goal of Greater Israel.
Speaker 3: It seems to me to be impossible. Israel's in my mind,
Speaker 3: a very bad strategic situation. Their domestic political situation seems
Speaker 3: to be chaotic. You saw the same footage I did
Speaker 3: of you know, crowds in the street upset about Netanyahu.
Speaker 4: Tel Aviv's getting pounded. They are censoring, they're censoring the deal.
Speaker 4: But I mean, you can find the you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of Ai. But but anyway, keep going.
Speaker 3: Sorry, well exactly, and if you look at what happened
Speaker 3: in you know, Operation Midnight Hammer, the Twelve Day War,
Speaker 3: seemingly Israel got cold feet. They didn't like how hard
Speaker 3: they were getting hit. And one other thing we need
Speaker 3: to keep in mind, Iran has not maximally escalated this war.
Speaker 3: There are targets they have not hit, whether it's the
Speaker 3: desalinization plant, whether it's you know, Israeli nuclear facilities, oh.
Speaker 4: Symbolic stuff. They could hit Holocaust, Holocaust Center, they could
Speaker 4: hit the Knesse, they could.
Speaker 6: Hit uh, they could hit the uh uh, the the.
Speaker 4: Where they could hit. They could hit the city of David.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of there's why there They're not going
Speaker 4: to hit the whaling Wall because I don't think there.
Speaker 4: I don't think they're uh there. Uh. Their targeting error
Speaker 4: is tight enough to hit the wall and not accidentally
Speaker 4: hit dome of the rock. So that's not gonna happen. Okay,
Speaker 4: target is pretty good now with their drones. They could
Speaker 4: but their drones don't carry enough punch to bring down
Speaker 4: the and that's another topic for another day. But but uh,
Speaker 4: but they could absolutely hit at the Kannesse, the decel plants.
Speaker 4: They could hit h the Holocaust Center, that is, as
Speaker 4: you know, kind of a religious deal. They could hit
Speaker 4: the Mount of Olives, which which is covered with the
Speaker 4: Jewish Elite's Jewish Elite dead. You know, it's a massive cemetery.
Speaker 4: If you've ever been there, it's it's actually quite beauty.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you're a Christian, Jerusalem is is phenomenal
Speaker 4: to visit just to see.
Speaker 3: We'll take your word for it, Ron, because I don't
Speaker 3: have an an overly inflated view of my importance. But
Speaker 3: also if I did get black bagged, I think the
Speaker 3: general consensus would be you were kind of asking for it.
Speaker 3: I may, I may scratch.
Speaker 4: It's amazing, I would you know, just objectively, as a Christian,
Speaker 4: it's amazing. I mean going and seeing the siege wall,
Speaker 4: their siege ramp at Masada that was built by the
Speaker 4: Romans in eighty seventy starting in late seventy seventy one
Speaker 4: and is still there. There's amazing. You know, the caves
Speaker 4: at Cuamorum where we get you know, anyway, I could
Speaker 4: go on and on, I hate, but you're right. Israel
Speaker 4: Iran could go, could go ham on all that, on
Speaker 4: every one of those things I just mentioned, but they
Speaker 4: don't have to because all they have to do. Look,
Speaker 4: here's the wind conditions for the US. It's going to
Speaker 4: be at least this no more missiles are flying at
Speaker 4: forget just Israel, at our at our Arab coalition states.
Speaker 4: I mean, do you know what they're in Bahrain and
Speaker 4: Abu Dhabi and so on and so forth, these places
Speaker 4: that live off to a large degree oil, but also
Speaker 4: so tourism. How many tours are going to be visiting
Speaker 4: those places until this is sealed and done. So we've
Speaker 4: broken this is pottery barn. We have gone in with
Speaker 4: a nine iron and taken it to all the furniture
Speaker 4: and everything hanging on the walls.
Speaker 3: Well, and one of the things that I can't stop
Speaker 3: thinking about is the damage to the Golf States, both
Speaker 3: in our relationship with the Golf States, but also the
Speaker 3: international relationship or sorry, reputation, rather of a place like Dubai, who,
Speaker 3: at least according to the Daily Mail, which I realize
Speaker 3: is not you know, the paper of record, but you
Speaker 3: know they do report things from time to time. They
Speaker 3: are charging.
Speaker 4: Dubai is what is what London used to be? You
Speaker 4: go over there and that that's oh yeah, it's it's
Speaker 4: English spoken, elite kind of deal, and they are freaking out.
Speaker 4: This is not it's yea plant run what's that?
Speaker 3: To that point, Roun, they've arrested and charged a sixty
Speaker 3: year old man from Britain or filming the missile strikes,
Speaker 3: which one indicates they're freaking out. And two, if you
Speaker 3: know anything about the sort of people who go to Dubai,
Speaker 3: they basically go there because it's like, to your point,
Speaker 3: what London used to be. It is a place for
Speaker 3: rich people to hang out. And if all of a
Speaker 3: sudden you're not only getting hit with missiles, that becomes
Speaker 3: less fun. Singapore starts to look a lot more attractive.
Speaker 3: And two, if you're the all of a sudden getting
Speaker 3: black bagged and thrown in a you know, a prison
Speaker 3: that I imagine is not particularly pleasant. That sends a
Speaker 3: message that this is not the safe playground of the wealthy.
Speaker 3: It has becomes.
Speaker 4: Expat rich xpac community. It's what Hong Kong was before
Speaker 4: ninety seven that went away Macal which went away. Singapore
Speaker 4: is to a certain degree. Uh, I love Singapore. Singapore
Speaker 4: is in a is is in a real demographic shredder
Speaker 4: right now. So uh uh we need to pray for
Speaker 4: the land of uh of uh Lee Kwan Yu. But
Speaker 4: but these places are slowly but surely, these these these
Speaker 4: uh cities of refuge to borrow a levitical term, are
Speaker 4: are going away and uh and we're helping. And that's
Speaker 4: that's a canary that is uh looking a little uh
Speaker 4: that's in the mind and not looking real good. You know,
Speaker 4: that's a warning sign again if we're gonna be a
Speaker 4: civilizational bulwark and if we're the champions of the West,
Speaker 4: and right now it's not looking like we are. The
Speaker 4: last thing and then I think we both probably got
Speaker 4: to go. Is what does this do to Jordan? Jordan
Speaker 4: has been our most loyal ally. They do everything for us.
Speaker 4: They'll host that they they will put up with whatever
Speaker 4: and have been friends, and we are you know, what
Speaker 4: are we doing with those guys if we're if we're
Speaker 4: giving the signs that we're kind of on board with
Speaker 4: a greater Israel idea, because guess what's right in the
Speaker 4: They're not stopping at the West Bank, They're not stopping
Speaker 4: at a mind, They're going all the way to the
Speaker 4: northern half of our northern third of Saudi. So what
Speaker 4: do we tell what are we saying to your point,
Speaker 4: to our to our golf allies, our Arab and I'm
Speaker 4: talking real allies, guys who have stood with us. You
Speaker 4: know what should we be able to say, Hey, look,
Speaker 4: we're just gonna let that whole part of the world
Speaker 4: go away. But you can't because the safety of the
Speaker 4: world depends on mutually assured destruction. And all it takes
Speaker 4: is the one the one group over there that has
Speaker 4: the bomb is the one that I'm least confident in
Speaker 4: and keeping it in their pants. And so we're we're
Speaker 4: they've got us by the short hairs, and we have
Speaker 4: to find a way out. And this all goes to
Speaker 4: Israel's got to decide whether it wants to be part
Speaker 4: of the West or part of the East. I think ultimately,
Speaker 4: if they keep going down this road, they abandon us.
Speaker 4: I mean, because we're gonna ultimately, democratically, we're gonna aband
Speaker 4: We're if zoomers start voting, this is going to be
Speaker 4: you know, President Newsom or President whoever is going to
Speaker 4: be like, screw this, there's we aren't playing this game,
Speaker 4: and they're gonna have to pivot east.
Speaker 3: Well to the point of what is that are they Well,
Speaker 3: I shouldn't say that. I have no commentary on that,
Speaker 3: but I mean, I think it would be somewhat difficult
Speaker 3: to tell. You know, King Abdullah the second. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: know that seems scary, but have you considered the fact
Speaker 3: that you're a Nazi? That's why you don't like this? Again,
Speaker 3: it's absurd, It's patently absurd. Yeah, And that's again why
Speaker 3: I just want to reiterate, this war needs to end.
Speaker 3: Much damage has already been done. It can be smoothed
Speaker 3: over ultimately, but if this continues, we are going to
Speaker 3: start losing things, whether that is people, whether that is allies,
Speaker 3: whether that is global shipping, and for what for the
Speaker 3: insane jinguistic ambitions of a certain Middle Eastern democracy is
Speaker 3: that the point of America is that what we are
Speaker 3: spending all of this capital to do, alienating our friends abroad,
Speaker 3: alienating our domestic voters right from the political class. Are
Speaker 3: we going to spend all of that for this pipe dream?
Speaker 3: Sincerely hope not, But Ron, we are over time, this
Speaker 3: has been a great conversation. Where can people find you?
Speaker 4: All right? For the American Mind, which is a publication
Speaker 4: of the Claremont Institute, a right occasionally for responsible stake craft,
Speaker 4: all right, for American Reformer. And then I have a
Speaker 4: substack that I'm actually have gotten very active on that.
Speaker 4: And then I'm on x and you can find me
Speaker 4: at Ron Dodson. And you know, probably something I'll say
Speaker 4: that will hopefully make you happy but occasionally make you mad.
Speaker 4: That means I'm I'm just trying to think through these
Speaker 4: things like we all are.
Speaker 3: As far as my stuff The Jay Burden Show Apple,
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Speaker 3: new people. The last episode with Fears and Darryl went
Speaker 3: by the standards of substack quite viral. So, like I said,
Speaker 3: you can find me pretty much anywhere you listen to
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Speaker 3: I realized it's a little annoying, but this is what
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Speaker 3: If you're interested in my writing, you can find it
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Speaker 3: I've as I've been writing more elsewhere, I've been doing
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Speaker 3: really great episode. Man and everyone at home, keep your
Speaker 3: head up. I can't last forever. Good night.