Reading: Unintended Consequences

Oh boy, today is gonna be a fun one. We're doing another book episode. We're actually going to record hopefully to today, although we generally just do one a week because this this helps me get ahead for some travel that I have planned. And my goodness, Carl, we have quite a book uh for everyone today. So I received in the mail from a fan a couple of weeks ago a hard cover copy of a book called An Tended Consequences. Now, Sophie, Carl knows this book. Everyone who's

in gun culture is aware of this book. You want to you want to describe that that cover to our audience. It's a I think I think it's the Declaration of Independence on fire? Is that what I'm seeing? That's certainly part of it. Yeah, I can only see the top of it. Can you say, okay, one sec let me get my let let me let me see if I can properly here we go. So I'm just gonna google it. Consequences book cover. Oh, I recommend people at home check

this one. I take it back because all I could see was the top, which is the Declaration of Independence on fire. But it looks like a soldier attacking a topless woman with who's been blindfolded. Yeah. I think she's a Lady Justice. You can see her scales, they're right. Yeah, So it's it's like some sort of swat team operative attack Lady Justice. And there's nipples you can see, like it's full there's full frontal ludity on the cover of

John Ross's Unintended Consequences. Yeah, it's a super hot Lady Justice getting the full Alien Gonzalez treatment with a full swat team guy with an MP five. What a choice, What a series of choices? Um? Yeah, and I think

he wrote this. When exactly was this published? Um? I think actually so, yeah, this would have been right after Elian Gonzalez, because I think you're right, Carl, they're very clearly like doing because he's the cop on the front has an MP five, which, if I'm not mistaken, is with the cop who grabbed Elian Gonzalez and that famous photo had and it's his his like body language is

not dissimilar, No, it isn't. But honestly, I think this is one of those weird things where the alien Gonzalez thing happened after they did the cover art, So it's a weird thing where like actually simulated art. Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of weird. Yeah, So in that regard, I guess they kind of ailed it, although it wasn't going after Lady Justice of course. Yeah, it was going after

a well trying to escape. Yeah. And it's interesting because I think the main influence behind this book and in brief this is like a kind of fantasy about gun confiscation leading to a civil war type scenario against like

the evil gun grabbing government. And I think it was very directly inspired by Ruby rich Um, which is kind of like a seminal moment for a lot of people and is life is actually like just so we're clear an example of the government doing a lot of really fucked up things because they shot a child and his mom to death in a raid gun horribly awry. Um not to kind of like whitewash the some of the sketchy ship that like their their father was doing, but

like it's definitely an example of government overreach. But that Ruby Ridge kind of leads us into this kind of explosion of action on behalf of the militia movement, which culminates in a big way in the Oklahoma City bombing after the Waco UH tragedy. So you've got like the series of largely police overreaches with high body counts, and it kind of ignites this militia movement and into that, into that culture comes a guy named John ross Um.

Now John is an interesting guy. He calls himself he was actually a Democratic UH congressional candidate in Missouri in nine but he calls himself a pre Roosevelt Democrat, which he defines as a Democrat without the socialism, which is interesting because like it's not that far pre Roosevelt that the Democrats were the party of slavery. Like, how how pre are we going? John? Is a question I would

ask anyone to find themselves that way. What what is your understanding of John Ross, because he's he's he's a pretty interesting dude. Yeah, I don't know. I looked up some stuff and some interviews with him, and it's very clear that whatever he described was all as that. When he wrote this book, he was promoting it very much to the Republican side of things, um, even back in the nineties and early two thousands, which is not surprised

at considering how firearms centric his content was. Right. Um, I don't know a lot about him in individually, but I do know quite a bit about the culture around the book and the gun shows and the environment that that was written. And if we get into that a little bit, because that was going on then in the gun community and now I would have to say it it's hard to believe it's actually better now than it was then, But back then it was it was a

pretty weird space. Yeah, And this is one of those books you would not have found unintended consequences in like Barnes and Noble, Like, it wasn't that kind of I mean maybe now you can. I'm sure like places like Powell's books that make a point of selling absolutely everything, sell it. But this was a book that, like I started to encounter in the early two thousands, like gun shows. It's one of those. It's one of those books you

would find at gun shows. Um, And it's not it's in a lot of people compare it to the Turner Diaries. It is not a neo Nazi book, is my understanding. Um, although there's some problematic shit in it, as I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, I mentioned, you mentioned that. But when you go to the gun shows, like I mean, gun shows now are still a thing, right, there's like

some weirdness there for sure. But back in the late nineties early two thousands, a gun show was like this kind of dark, denk, musty place with you first walk in and there's the guy in the right corner, the old man with his Nazi paraphernalia. On the left side was the Confederate and paraphernalia, and then there was the book vendor. But how'd all the occult knowledge about how to make this thing full auto or how to make

booby traps? And right there next to that was this book from John Ross, Unintended Consequences, And it was like, I think a lot of people went to the gun show not only for that, but to go pick up those crazy books that have now of course been replaced by the internet. But you come back and you could have that feeling of being the guy in the know, and you don't really see that as much at the gun shows anymore. Yeah, it's in part because there's just so much more money, not just in the gun part,

but the culture part of gun culture. Right, there's like a whole media ecosystem. There's big name magazines, there's large obviously large YouTube channels. Um there had there is like it's it didn't feel in that there was that period of the the late nineties early two thousands where gun culture

didn't really feel vibrant. It kind of felt like it was it was something that was dying and not particularly healthy, just in not even in like a not to get into like a moral sense, but just in like the it did not seem like something that had a bright

future for a while there. Yeah, this is a topic for another day, but I actually feel I think that the honestly, uh, the assault weapon ban of actually made it more vibrant because it got people to uh, it really woke up and maybe some good ways and in some bad ways. Um uh, an interesting creation. It got people involved in a way that I don't think people were that concerned about before the a w B. And I think that's one of the things that fired it

back up. It did, And I think you get you get a lot of funding from politicians and from political action groups and whatnot, from the industry that starts coming in, which is responsible for like kind of revitalizing gun culture in a lot of ways and moving it out of this kind of you know, dank uh jim filled with weirdos kind of space that you were describing. So what is your understanding about like the overarching plot of unintended consequences?

Have you read this before? Yeah? I actually I was one of those guys that picked that up off the counter because I'm like, what the hell is this thing? Right? And um and I mean the overarching plot as I know it is a guy named Henry Bowman who's the protagonist and in it fire call correctly, it's been decades

since I've read it. Um. It takes and builds up an argument based on a number of relatively accurate historical events like the breaking of the Bonus Marchers, the Ruby Ridge Waco, amongst others, and then guides that up to a position in which Henry Bowman gets involved in a shooting and which he ends up killing some A t F agents, which then he turns into a essentially counter culture coup revolt to destroy the A t F. A is there the reason, or at least one of the

reasons that this country is falling into tyranny? I mean, that's a real simplistic summary, but that's the premise. And that's interesting because I my my recollection, like this is not an uncommon starting point for kind of novels in this space that like the A t F there's some big gun confiscation grab. This essentially how the Turner Diary starts.

But the Turner Diary starts with the assumption that like it happened and everything's already been outlawed and uh like that that's kind of like where it goes from there, whereas this, I think is is kind of more of a um, more of a slow burn to the start um.

And I just noticed that my copy from Accurate Press is the publisher of this book, has has Mr Ross's signature in it, so oh wow, uh huh, yeah, I got a real, um, a real peach of a copy here, so thinks I believe the hard copy version of that's been out of print for a long time and is relatively valuable. Actually, well there we go. Um, I'll take this. Let's try to uh trade this for a man liquor

in ninety four or something like that. What this is gonna be interesting conversation because, as I remember in the book, this is a challenging piece of work because there's a lot of problems here obviously, but there's also a lot of stuff in it that's not necessarily incorrect. Yeah, he's definitely not coming at it like, especially on a technical level.

I think he does know what he's talking about. Like it's not one of these we've talked laughed about the Ben Shapiro books and the things he gets wrong about guns. I believe John Ross actually knows how firearms function. I do. I agree with you, and I think he gets some of the historical stuff true as correct as well. To be honest, Yeah, he's a nerd about this, although I should note so he had a regular Internet column for for a long time. He's kind of an older dude now,

so I don't think it's still going. Um. But his Wikipedia says that his column Ross and Range was where he discussed topics that interest him. Quote a recurring theme is understanding and coping with women. So and that was my recollection of this book too, that like not a lot of We're not going to find a lot of well written male characters here. Um, but yeah, it notes on the back here. John Ross is an investment broker and financial advisor in St. Louis. He went to Amherst College,

which I think might surprise some people. Um, and he was an early concealed carry advocate. So this is also a thing like when you talk about sort of the history of gun culture in this guy's roll in it, there was this period of time like now most states have some sort of concealed carry. A lot, even in California is getting easier to get a concealed carry license.

I know someone in San Diego who just got their's, which was like there's been a series of legal battles around that, but it wasn't possible to legally concealed carry in a lot of the country like thirty years ago. Oh less than that, it wasn't that long A though the concealed carry was considered like a pretty crazy concept, and as one state after another started really changing to the point where we see a number of states now

which don't even require permits anymore. They're called constitutional carry. But twenty something years ago that wasn't the case, Like you have to go through two days of training and get a background for permit, and you have to apply for this and have a background check. And that was in a place that was permissive, like Arizona. Other places it was considered impossible. But like you said, in California, even there are certain counties that I think are kind

of shall issue now. Yeah, And it's one of those things where even in like a place like Texas, which has I think most people who kind of aren't super aware of the history see is just like always this fashion of gun rights, and like the nineties, you could not carry a gun in Texas under very most circumstances. And in fact, one of the things that changed that

I forget the exact year. You may know more about this than I do, but there was a mass shooting at a Louby's um where a guy killed a lot of people and at least one of the people who was in the Loubi's during the shooting, like had a weapon in their car, but they couldn't bring it in, and that kind of ignited the concealed carry uh movement within sort of Texas. UM and John Ross was a big part of that in Missouri and was like a

major advocate for it in Missouri. So that's kind of the context of this, dude, and in which this book is written. So there's a lot going on here. Um. And now we're gonna We're gonna start this very small print book. I should note this is a massive book. This is like, this is like the size of the first two Lord of the Rings books. Like, this is

a this is an enormous text. So heads up, I don't think we're ever going to get through all of it, but this is a this is an interesting piece of history here for people who are we see how tiny the font is. Oh yeah, Sophie, look at this. Oh my god, I know this is this is There are so many words in this book, so yeah, do we have I'm going to look up the word count. Go ahead, Yeah, yeah, you should do that. So it starts with present day. It was late afternoon when he finally heard them coming

to kill him. The wind was blowing gently towards him, and it carried the sound well two choppers, he judged from the pitch of the engines, possibly three. Henry realized that his first emotion upon hearing the sound of the rudder blades approaching was an overwhelming sense of relief. The waiting was over. His next thought concerned the relatives of

the men that were about to die. The widows will never stand that their husbands died because the government got a little too heavy handed after June of nineteen sixty. He scanned the sky until he spotted the aircraft approaching from the north. This isn't that isn't quite right. The Kennedy and King killings weren't the first links in the chain that dragged us here. No, the death sentence was

handed down before World War Two. So this guy is getting ready to like murder a bunch of federal agents coming to his house, and he's thinking about the March of tyranny and like debating with himself whether or not it started with the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. And he's shades of Waco too, because if you've ever

been to the Waco site. There's memorial stones. They're placed by the Davidians, and they immoralized not only their own lost people, but they memorialized each lost a t F agent, which was sort of impressive to see. That is interesting. I actually was unaware of that. Um huh, that's interesting. They pretty much memorialize it as a tragedy all around. And there's there's stones there for the government agents that died. Huh.

I I did not know that. That's certainly like more nuanced then I think we're going to get on Waco here. Although yeah, um so yeah, it's uh, what is a solo? Third, I guess that's the gun he's got here. Yeah, that's a I believe that's the same. Okay. So it's like an anti anti yeah, a lotty Like it's an anti vehicle weapon, like very big bullet twenty millimeter bullets is like the size of a small person's forearm. Yeah that material. Yeah,

it's for shooting through armored vehicles. So he decides, after like debating with himself while he's willing to kill his waiting to kill these federal agents, that the thing that ended started the end of liberty in the United States was a Supreme Court case involving a Moonshiner who was arrested in nineteen thirty eight. A federal district court had thrown out the charges as being unconstitutional, and the government had appealed. At the hearing, something very unusual had happened.

Neither the Moonshiner nor his lawyer had seen fit to appear before the court to argue the case. They didn't even bother to file a brief on the Moonshiner's behalf. The court ruled for the government, radial precedent was set, and the issue was never again heard by the Supreme Court. The nineteen thirty nine ruling became the foundation upon which many additional laws were constructed. The Supreme Court has been ducking that issue ever since. Henry thought, is he strained

to hear a change in the approaching noise? Well, guys, the time has turned. It's time you thugs had a little history lesson. I don't suppose you're familiar with what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto in nineteen forty three. So you're seeing he's drawing like a line here between the Nazis cracking down on the Warsaw Ghetto and massacreing Jewish people, um, and charges against bootleggers during Uh, that's that's actually after

Prohibition nineteen thirty eight. That's interesting, Like this is this is a weird opening. I'll give it. I'll give one thing to him. He's definitely a better writer than Ben Shapiro, like already, um, and if you read the book, he knows more about sex in general too, even if his even if the way he models his super low bar Robert, I didn't find the a word count. But the this

book is like only has five star reviews. Yeah, that makes well because the only people who read this than like Carl and I right now are people who are already primed to want to read this book. It's just very interesting because normally when we do a book episode, it's like the reviews are horrendous. I have not seen a review. But isn't five stars? Yeah that makes sense. There's five plus on Amazon and they're all five stars.

And like there's even like fan art in the room. Yeah, oh boy, I'll bet you don't want to look at that fan art, Sophie. You simply do not know. Yeah, but so it's interesting. Is this what I was talking is he does get into a lot of Actually he does reference a lot of real history, like that US versus Miller is that Supreme Court case, and in that that moon that that bootlegger had a shotgun that was below legal length I believe or something like that. Neither

of them showed. But the court ruled in an interesting way that the gun that they were persecuting him for wasn't useful as a militia weapon, therefore it didn't apply. Ah, so this is like the start of kind of the probe. That's that's where is that where the law against like short barreled shotguns came. We're talking about the n f A and shotguns. But the moonshiner had a shotgun that was I believe was below legal length, and that's what

this was about. But then when the court ruled against him, they didn't rule against him because of they ruled that the shotgun really wasn't viable for militia use, Which that opens up a weird door about does that mean specifically that the that the Second Amendment applies only to guns that are for militia martial use, like an r fIF team for example. That's where you see this stuff and these arguments come out of. That's interesting because with DC

versus Heller, like there's this kind of understanding. The current Supreme Court understanding is that the Second Amenment does protect an individual right to bear arms. And it seems like in thirty eight they were saying that, like, this gun is illegal because it is not something that would be useful as part of a militia. And so were we like, the individual does not have a right just to bear arms for individual purposes, So then isn't legal if it's

not useful in a militia. So reading this, it says the Supreme Court hinted that individual right might exist in the concust of a common obligation to possess arms and to cooperate in the work of defense, and that a sought off shotgun the fire issue in this case, was not protective because it had no reasonable relationship to the preservations, preservation,

or efficiency of a well regulated militia. Now that's a fascinating ruling because I think basically everyone today would be angry at it, Like if you're pro gun control, then you're going to be angry that it's basically saying, like, well, weapons that are useful in terms of like fighting in part of a militia are legal, like an a R fifteen, but like which I think pro gun control people generally

disagree with. And if your pro gun rights, you're like, well, why why would I be able to have an a R fifteen but not a much less deadly weapon as sought off shotgun? That's like way less effective at killing people. That doesn't make any sense either. It's a like it is a pretty nonsensical ruling, I think by most standards.

I know there's more wrapped up in that, because I think there was a lot of fear over specifically sought off shotguns as a result of like the bootlegging era, right, because that was like a famous crime gun um, even though they're not not any deadlier than a lot of other weapons that people had easy access to, like a Thompson or something which would have been pretty widely available in the mid thirties, although that was regulated by the n f A too. Speaking of being regulated by the

n f A, it's time for adverbs. Yeah, you know who's not regulated by the n f A is our sponsor the mac ten um. If you want, if you want a gun that will you can make out of a single stamped piece of metal. That's that's gonna be one of your better options. And they're super for a gunfight on a phone booth. Oh my god. Yeah, good to know. I'm thinking back. We're back from ads. I'm thinking of my favorite movie gunfights. Have you ever seen the movie? Uh? Gross, point blank, Carl, No, I actually

have it. Oh, it's got maybe the least accurate gunfight where like, uh, what's his fucking name? Um, let's just go with John Ritterter it he looks like John ridder Um, John Cusack, it was. It's one of the John's. John Cusack is in like a gunfight in a seven eleven and he's taking he's he's he's dual wielding blocks which he's firing blindly and taking cover behind the chip aisle at a seven eleven, which provides excellent cover, can stand

goun rounds. It's one of my favorite movie gunfights. Um okay, So started the book December eleventh, nineteen o six. Um, alright, so we're we're starting with two guys firing there. Boy, there's just a lot of I think one of the reasons this is so popular is this is a lot of just very technical gun stuff. Like the opening of this chapter is him walking through like firing tens of thousands of rounds with a Winchester Model nineteen o three, um,

which was an old twenty two semi automatic rifle. And it's just kind of like discussing how the firearm works and how the rules regarding like this early gun sport worked. Um, which is a thing I think that if you're buying this book at a gun store, you're probably interested in, and but not a thing I think most readers are going to be interested in. So so we're going to

skip ahead just a little bit here. Um. Yeah, this is just a lot of oh wow, And now there's a picture of a guy on top of a mountain of are those skulls? Show us? Show us, show us. I want to see standing here. I'm sad that we can't see what you're seeing. Oh no, these are target blocks. Yeah.

So it's it's it's he's yeah, it's just kind of uh nerdy gun stuff, like he's he's explained in the like this guy, I'll read you a representative paragraph and the San Antonio Fairgrounds closed in December fifteenth, nineteen o six. Add topper Wine using three Semiato Winchester nineteen o three rifles had shot seventy two thousand, five hundred wooden blocks thrown in the air. He had missed nine. More than a half century later, another man employed by Remington would

hit over a hundred thousand. His throwers, however, would stand by his left shoulder and gently tossed the blocks straight out along the same path the bullet would take. Tops records shot under the rules laid out by another man in the nineteenth century would never be broken. In nineteen o six, skilled riflemen were universally admired. People like ad and Plinky topper Wine spent much of their time urging young boys and girls to earn gun safety and hone

their shooting skills. Um, okay, so he's talking about the birth of the gun culture here. That's that's actually quite nice. I was worried at first that this was because this bears a resemblance to some of the photos you would see of like frontier men standing on top of like buffalo skulls. But it's just a guy standing on top of a bunch of like blocks that he shot during

some time, a type of old timey shoot contest. Yeah, we're going back to like the shooting these wooden blocks, and then like Annie Oakley would shoot glass balls and it was exhibition shooting, which was almost explicitly done with twenty two rifles and it was kind of a cool thing and people really did exhibit some amazing skills. Yeah, and the next chapter is nineteen eighteen, and we're still

going into like the birth of gun culture. So he's he's kind of framing like the idea of shooting sports as a character in this book. Um, again, I get why this is is popular among the specific people it is. We're not It's not like the Turner Diaries where we jump right into there's a civil war and like here's

my here's my like racist theories about whatever. Like we're we're really talking kind of at length about the birth of gun culture, um, the creation of the maximum gun, but kind of stuff we talked about in our in

our Behind the Bastards episodes. Um. Now, I think this is probably maybe not the best narratively to start with you to start your fiction novel with a very long but it does kind of, you know, it reminds me a little bit of is like um, Michael Crichton, where you've got these like books that have this this like

science fiction or whateverything. But the first like thirty pages is him like vamping about chaos theory or whatever kind of mathematical thing he's interested in instead of nature finding the way, guns will find the way, peace will find the way. Yeah. Yeah, But I think in nineteen eighteen there and nineteen was at nineteen nineteen he gets into like this is this book is really a difficult thing

to discuss because it's hard. It's so it's a bit schizophrenic, right, There's this narrative in there of this revolt, but there's a lot of actual real history in there. He gets into the Bonus Marchers, which was a pretty fucked up thing, honestly, and he pretty act July sixteenth, nineteen thirty two, we get Smedley Butler as a character. Um. So yeah, and

he's talking about the Bonus Marchers here. Um. Although I think it's interesting like the pieces of Smedley story that he does take out here, Like the opening quote he gives from Smedley here is take it from me. This is the greatest demonstration of Americanism we've have or had.

Pure Americanism will need to take this beating as you've taken at stand right and steady, you keep every law, and why in the hell shouldn't you, Who in the hell has done all the bleeding for this country and this law and this constitution anyhow, but you fellows, which is it's interesting because the thing they're taking, and this is the period where for people who aren't aware, you've got these World War One veterans when the economy collapses, who are are owed a bonus that's being paid out

over a very long period of time, and because everyone is in dire financial straits, they're like, we want the money now. Can we just get the money that's owed to us now? When they have a big march on d c Um which is cracked down on via Douglas MacArthur using tanks um and before it is cracked down on Smedley Butler, who is, like I think still to this day, the most highly decorated marine in history. He's

certainly like in the running for it. He had two medals of honor um, which he had very mixed opinions of, but he definitely earned them um. And he's he shows up to like speak in defense of these men and support their cause. And it's interesting because they're they're kind of framing what Smedley is doing here is a defense of kind of this idea you see Robert Heinlin talk about a lot um. This is kind of the thing

that's come down to us and Starship Troopers. But it's something Heinland played with a lot that, like, uh, this idea of like the citizens soldier being the ideal kind of building block of a free society. And I don't think that's actually what Butler believed, obviously, because by the end of his life, Butler had come around very much against militarism and like I was saying things that like I believe I've only ever been a gangster for capitalism.

So it's interesting that they've picked this specific time to kind of hone in on Smedley Butler and and turn him into a character in this book. Um, because I'll check here, but I'm not sure if I think we're going to get Butler stopping the business plot. Um. But that said, this is a really valid piece of history. And this is one of those things when we talk about like areas where I think it's possible to get people on the right kind of in line with some

of the things I believe. I think it's really useful to talk about history, about things like the Bonus Marchers, where it's like, well, you can't really trust the government and when it comes down to who's going to violently crack down on people standing in favor of their liberty, Maybe it's these these police forces that you're continually trying to like fund an arm heavily, and perhaps this is a place where we could come together and discuss some

shared interests. Gee whiz, guys, maybe if we actually looked this, you know, with clear eyes, we'd realize we kind of had a mutual problem here, regardless of our particular peculiarities as to why so we introduced this character, um cam who's this veteran um and who's about to We're told at the end of page twenty six cam Bowman did not know that the government had its own agenda concerning

the Bonus Army. Cam Bowman had less than three weeks left to live, and then in the next chapter we have him getting more murder along with everybody else by Um General Douglas MacArthur. Um. The soldiers had been instructed by their commander to clear the bonus marchers out of the area by striking them with the flats of their sabers blades, not the cutting edge. And this was what the cavalrymen did. It was like being struck by a three foot steel bar, and Lieutenant Cameron Bowman's left wrist

was shattered like kindling. He did not cry out or fall down. But when Bowman saw the soldier prepared to deliver a second blow, he finally accepted his fate and gave ground. As he made his way to the bridge, his ruined wrist beginning to scream an agony, Bowman saw three men leading the army troops, and he was stunned by what he saw. He did not recognize the two

army majors, who would both later come to prominence. The man in charge of leading the infantrymen, Cavalry and Tank Division, however, was impossible to miss. The lesser ranked soldiers were Major George S. Patton and Major Dwight D. Eisenhower. The senior officer was the Chief of Staff of the United States Armed Forces, General Douglas Smith MacArthur. And this is interesting, um,

because that's very accurate, that that's completely true. Um, it's neat because these guys, all these these these figures, both of whom would become generals, are all of whom would be general. I mean MacArthur was a general when this happened. Patton and obviously Dwight Eisenhower are going to be generals very quickly, um in World War Two. And they are both, I think today, broadly speaking, heroic figures for conservatives, UM,

particularly pattent. Eisenhower interestingly has a really mixed history there because, um, you know, he he's who the John Birch Society focuses on him as like a secret communist. So there is this longstanding distrust of Eisenhower on the far right. But MacArthur becomes a major far right figure, um, especially after

he gets fired by Truman during the Korean War. UM. He's a big part of We just had an episode on kind of some of the early like Christian conservative movements in the United States and like the reforming of the idea of the Fourth of July. He's a big

part of this. UM. So it's interesting to me that Ross is kind of emphasizing his role here, which which is a big one, UM, because I don't think that's done a lot in uh, in conservative sort of uh like far right propaganda these days, MacArthur because he was such an anti communist, tends to be heralded. So at least this guy so far seems to be pretty consistent. Yeah, I don't know that how how that would have been received now versus when it was actually published initially, Right,

we have a pretty different world from then. But it is interesting to note that. Um, I don't know about John Ross's thoughts on workers rights, but he's certainly concerned with veterans rights because these Bonus Marchers is one of the arguments he uses to portray the government is becoming an authoritarian regime that doesn't seem to care about its people, including its own veterans, and he uses the Bonus marchers as or the breaking of the Bonus March as one

of those examples. And it's really compelling to me because obviously that is a really valid point. The breaking of the Bonus Army is totally an example of the government becoming like doing an unhinged authoritarian thing. But he it's also a choice, and John Ross, I feel like, just based on what I'm reading here, knows too much history for this not to have been a choice to not discuss any other aspects of Butler's career or the business plot, or kind of the elements of this that are the

government tilting its hand on the scale in favor of capital. Um. And I think that's because obviously John Ross has his own biases here. He's worried about communism. I I it's fascinating to me that he seems to be tying the destruction of the Bonus Army, the massacre of these soldiers in with like the creeping socialism in the government, because I I really don't see it that way. Um. And

I'm sure MacArthur wouldn't have seen it that way. Um. But also I have to I have to respect the fact that he is very astutely identifying MacArthur is like part of the problem here. That's really interesting to me. Yeah. And this is like the first example in the book. And he goes through and I and each and every one of these, like I said, he'll he'll get to Ruby Ridge, you get to Waco, and he uses these as an argument that slowly builds up to the culmination

of this this rebellion that that Henry Bowman actually engages in. Yeah. I think part of what's fascinating to me about this is it is I don't think John Ross and I have a lot in common, and I don't think we would agree on a lot. But up to this point he's he's not wrong. I would argue that, like his analysis of the building problems of authoritarianism in the U. S. Government are incomplete, and he's leaving out some really important moments,

but he's not all. He's also not wrong. And I have not noticed any like you know, uh, any racism here so far, and I have not noticed. Um, he's not inventing things out of whole cloth, which is like what you see in the Turner Diaries, right. And I'm not comparing these two because they're super similar. For one thing, this is objectively a better written book, um. And for another thing, the Turner Diaries, by page twenty eight you have ingested enough racism to kill a large dog. And

we haven't really seen any yet out of this. So no, I know, and I've been a long time since I've read this, so I don't want to speak to the nuance that might be in there. Of course, So this is not a this is not a promotion for this, but but like there's a. I found a interview with John Ross later in which apparently Timothy McVeigh, of course the bomber of Oklahoma City, said that he was inspired by the Turner Diaries and Turner Diaries. It's a terrible, vitriolic, racist,

Nazi book. It is unreadable if you are not like studying it as an academic or a Nazi. And Timothy McVeigh said that if he had read Unattended Consequences, it might have changed his approach to the problem. And that's an interesting thing. So we have these people that of course been become I don't know how to put it. They got pushed further down the path of extreme, extreme

beliefs by things like the Turner Diaries. And it's weird that Timothy McVeigh kind of argued that the Unattended Consequences might have actually tempered him, which is a strange thing to think, because this book is a revolutionary kind of book.

And I've come across that too, and I've always wondered did McVeigh mean he might not have carried out an attack, or that maybe he would have liked gone because like the stuff Bowman does, the Turner Diaries obviously, like the thing that inspired McVeigh as they blow up, I think it it's literally the Pentagon or in its FBI headquarters. They said, I like a big bomb and FBI headquarters, which was was something he considered, and he picked the target.

He did the more about building an Oklahoma city because it had a large FBI presence and that was really who he was targeting as a result of Waco, although he was obviously fine with the fact that it blew

up like a daycare and a bunch of other things besides. Um. But I wonder if he's saying, I don't know that maybe I would have liked organized with people as opposed to like carrying out a bombing or is he saying perhaps I would have liked done what Bowman does and carried out like a series of armed attacks specifically on federal agents, as opposed to like a bombing campaign that was much less discriminate. Um. Like, I'm not sure McVeigh saying I wouldn't have done a violent thing if I

had read this book. But it's also probably if if he had patterned his attack off the kind of attacks you see an undetendent consequences, probably wouldn't have blown up a daycare. I think, Yeah, I agree, I'm not I'm not trying to say that. I'm not trying to say that this book would have turned Timothy McVeigh into putting flowers into rifle bags, right, but but but it's it's a it's an unclear quote. But it's an interesting thing

to note. Yeah, I'm not trying to like make a broad moral point about like, well, it would have been better if he'd been radicalized into just shooting some FEDS is supposed to blowing up, Like I'm not. I'm really not trying to get into the weeds there. But I think if you are interested in like radicalism and what causes people to do stuff like that, I don't think I I think there might be a tendency to just

discount what the vey is saying. And I don't know that we should because I think it is interesting that like when different media radicalizes people, it radicalizes them to take different actions. And that's not Um, this is not the kind of like thought I would blast out on Twitter because it's difficult to get out in two characters and it's gonna seem like you're saying something different than what you are. But I don't think that's not a

thing we should think about and study. Perhaps is where I mean, it's like art is an interesting thing, and books are an interesting and fiction is an interesting thing. I mean, I think one of the most inspirational books that the Uni bomb are referenced was by all Gore, right right, Um. And Timothy McVeigh, just to go back to him, was also heavily influenced by fucking Star Trek. He was a huge fan of Star Trek and of Star Wars. UM and so yeah, I mean, it's it's

just interesting to see that. And it's interesting, like the different kind of because both Um Pierce, the author of the Turner Diaries, and Ross, you can see broad similarities in that they are both people who advocate for an armed overthrow of the government. Now they're both arguing that for different things, and I think they both see a

different world as desirable as a result of that. Um. But it is compelling if you're someone who kind of studies radicalization to see the different ways they go about it. And Ross is really building a much slower case that is based on real history about the necessity of a revolt against the government. UM. And I think it's important that we're like noting the things that he's leaving out. But the choices he's making here are really interesting. And

you know who else makes interesting choices, Carl Monsanto? They absolutely so. Carl. Have you ever been driving through like a rural part of the country, seeing like beautiful fields with corn and other crops, and going I wish those farmers would get thrown in prison if the wind happened to carry seeds from one field to the other that didn't have the legal right to use those specific patented, genetically modified seeds. Have you been thinking that, like just

driving through the country side, I really have. I really think that all the food we eat needs more DRM around it. Absolutely. That's the problem with food is that it doesn't have digital rights management. And that's the beautiful dream of Monsanto digital rights management for everything. Um I I think that's a beautiful dream. Let's let's hear these ads. Ah, we're back. So you're at him on Santo kick these days? Carl, Yeah, I'm a big fan of it. You know, ready, round

up is pretty good on a salad. I do, I do? Who was that was that the Monsanto guy that like someone tried to get him to like drink weed killer because that sounds vaguely familiar. It's so safe. Let me chug this. Yeah, yeah, nothing like a Monsanto bong on a Saturday night. Oh my gosh, that that does sound fun because then also you know you're killing whatever insects are on your weed. Nice and safe. Um all right, So Carl, page twenty nine. We we are about what

there's so much history here. So we're nineteen thirty six now. Um, we're talking to a woman named Zophia, who I am guessing here is some sort of refugee from the bad things that are happening in Europe. Um hm, yep, okay, yep, that seems to be what's happening here. All right. So we've got this lady talking with her mom, YadA, YadA, YadA. Um, oh, I think we're okay. So she yeah, this is this

is uh, I think setting up one of our characters. Yeah, she's marrying some guy named Irwin man Um who's also a Jewish refugee, which is again, so that's a nice bit of change from the Turner Diaries. It does seem like a number of our heroes are going to be Jewish people. So that's yeah, this speaking. This is one of the character here. This is this character becomes, if I recall correctly, one of the fighters in the war

saw got to uprising. And so he's using this character to demonstrate the ability of the individual to fight the government with small arms. Gotcha, Okay, well that makes sense. Um. So nineteen thirty eight, we've got a treasury agent hiding in the woods. Oh I think this is him writing out the arrest of that moonshiner. Is that what's coming here? Yeah? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, cool, Um, So that's fine. Um, let's you know, that's that's an

interesting note. I mean, I wouldn't say that you should read this book like a history book, because that would be that would be wildly inappropriate. However, if you wanted to get like a basic bullet point timeline of things that would be worth further investigation, this book is full of that. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff to like look into here. And again it's it's there's he's making

a very specific ideological case. So it's incomplete, as we noted with like Smedley Butler, um, and probably incomplete as we're talking about like gun control and prohibition, because he's really focused on this thirty eight case, um, which is kind of late in the history of like arms regular like thirty four is when we get the n f A. So it's interesting to me that he's not kind of focusing on any I mean, I it makes sense based on kind of the ruling here, but it is interesting

that that's kind of that seems to be where he's starting in terms of gun control regulations as opposed to going in anywhere earlier. Yeah, the watershed out of gun controls considered nineteen thirty four, and then the second, the second strike to the core or the heart of that is the nineteen Gun Control Act, both of which are

heavily discussed in the book. Yeah, And I suspect he's kind of going for this moment in thirty eight because it's a little easier to to build sympathy for the audience for this like small scale bootlegger rather than like the thirty four gun control in thirty four was heavily driven by you have like this this soaring rate of organized crime, and you have like these really horrible murders

in the street. And uh, I think it's probably he's probably making a choice as a writer here that like, well, I'm gonna have to put in a lot more legwork to get people on to to get people seeing the government as the clear bad guy in that one than I am. If I focus on this like small moonshiner,

who's got this sought off shotgun? And it makes this easy case that like they're they're kind of making this this ruling that I can claim is where like all of this illegitimate stuff is descended from like he's making he's giving you a very incomplete look at the history, but he's making what I think is a pretty smart editorial choice by face. He definitely was strategic and what

he did with that. And it is also interesting to note that people that don't know this in the audience, UM uh n f A. The National Firearms Act, which was to regulate machine guns, short barreled rifle, shortbeled shotguns, suppressors. UM isn't actually a gun law. It's a tax law. It's actually done through the it's right and so it's UM. What they do is they don't make it impossible to own these things. But they regulated as a tax stamp, which the time was two and was cost prohibited was

actually more than the value of the gun. But now that we come to the future, you can't make more machine guns, but you can still buy them, but it's still the same two tax But it's very interesting that it's a tax law not really unnecessarily a gun law. Yeah. Yeah, that's really compelling. And again this is something that he's kind of like skipping entirely over um And what he does here in the next couple of chapters is interesting.

So after we're introduced to like these these moonshine owners and we get like the start of the arrest that leads to their case, we have a chapter uh that's November nine, nineteen thirty eight in Germany where they're sending a bunch of like we focus in on a Jewish family,

um and who they are sending to Dakow. Right, So we've got like the Nazi sending guy to dak How we get one page of that and then so that's a one page chapter that literally um it ends with the line he was going to dokaw um and it's talking about like, okay, I'll read the last two lines here the watchmakers share to fate with almost a quarter million of his countrymen and every single one of his relatives who was still in Germany as of November nine

night he was going to Dakow. And then the very next chapter, after that one page chapter, we get a district like the basically the minutes of a district court meeting for this case United States versus Miller involving this bootlegger.

So he's really very kind of directly making a comparison between the Nazis shipping people off to concentration camps and this bootlegger going to court over an a legal short barreled shotgun, which is definitely like, this is the most problematic the book has gotten so far, at least since they're over our reading of it um and you can see what he's doing here, right, Like, this is not particularly subtle, although it does, I think count is subtle

within this genre of literature. Yeah, he's setting up the argument that gun control lends itself to what we saw a Nazi Germany, which is general side, etcetera, which he's drawing a direct comparison between the agents of the state in both countries. And of course it's a much more complex argument to that, but there is some historicity to

gun control leading itsself to that too. So he's not entirely wrong, right, because a lot of earlier and this it's interesting to me again in terms of like the thing he thinks he does choose to read out this is not so far an explicitly racist novel, But he's making the choice to not lead at all with the history of gun control as it involves the suppression of black people's right to carry concealed handguns, which is a big part of early laws against concealed handgun was to

stop black men in the reconstruction area from carrying concealed handguns, which they did because people would try to murder them. Um. And he's he's definitely leaving that out. He's also we just did an episode on this with Margaret Killjoy leaving out a decent chunk of like there were a number of some of the first gun control laws in the country were also passed in order to stop anarchists from carrying handguns and as part of the labor movement. Um.

And so we're not really getting any of that. We are, really he is making a really pointed choice by focusing on Miller in nineteen thirty eight as kind of the birth of all this gun control um. And that's interesting to me because it does this is kind of We've talked about how careful he's being, and he this is a very careful book so far. He is not. It is not like an unhinged screen at all, and it

does not read that way. Um. But he is making some really distinct editorial choices about what he leaves out, and I think that's really worth kind of highlighting. Yeah. I don't disagree, and I don't recall all of it, but I don't recall this book really getting into issues like the panthers or um or or civil rights in regards to firearms in their use, which of course is a topic that has been so left off of the

American historical record that it's been intentionally ignored. It's like I call it um uh, intentional um amnesia, where we don't want to talk about those things where black people use guns to defend themselves and the reason they still exist is because they had a gun in their possession. I don't remember that being in this book, and it would It's interesting because that you're right, it lends It would have lended itself even more credibility to his argument

if he had included it. Yeah, I mean it would you you could have slotted that in here and it would have like worked as part of the narrative progression he's building. But I also think that would have really turned off a decent chunk of who he knew was kind of And it's also I'm sure this is this is also based on like he didn't. I think it's very possible Ross doesn't see that as part of really the history of of unfair gun control in the United States.

I don't know the man um so I don't know the degree to which that was a choice or that was just stuff he was unaware of. But he seems so knowledgeable that I do have trouble imagining he wouldn't at least know about like the panthers and stuff which perhaps we haven't gotten to. But again I don't recall from an earlier reading of that book, this book, I don't recall that being a part of this. If it's

in there, it's not heavily profiled at all. And I think I would be more along the lines of thinking that he knew the audience he was targeting and did not want to alienate them, And that's one of the things we've talked about in previous work together, is like, you know, the community and the gun community is getting is getting much more uh as much as it's becoming a much larger tent, but it's still a big uphill fight. And um that that level of acceptance definitely did not

exist in when this book was published. So by including things like that, I think he would have lost his core targeted audience, which is why we see those five star reviews on this book, because it's very specifically read only by the people that are going to like it. Yeah, and the next like forty or so pages of this are really heavily dealing with Irwin Mann and the Warsaw

Ghetto uprising. We're we're getting into a lot of World War two stuff and it's going to be in here that um I think it's is Bowman's dad that gets introduced as a World War two veteran, right, um, because he's start he comes in here, yeah, Walter Bowman. Um. Yeah.

So so by page ninety three is kind of when we're introduced to the Bowman family, who's going to be our protagonist family, and he comes into the story at at at right after uh, the end of kind of our chunk on the warsaw Get Out Uprising, um where we have so so May six, nineteen forty five is when we kind of meet the family of the guy who's going to be our main character. And I think we'll probably come back to that when we when we

deal with this again. But so that's that's the introduction to this book is ninety two pages of what is effectively like, um, the history of shooting sports and gun control. Like this is a real slow burn of a starter, UM And it's different from any other book with kind of a broadly similar theme that I think I've gone through. UM. I have to say it's probably one of the smarter pieces of of of kind of right wing uh militant

like propaganda literature that I've seen. UM. And it is something that if you're not of that ideology, there's even aspects of this that you could enjoy, because there is like quite a bit of history in here that that's interesting, but as we've talked about, it's also very in complete history. I do kind of find this fascinating in a way that for example, Ben Shapiro isn't right, Like there's actually a lot to say about this that's not mocking the writing.

In addition, like the writing is not it's not particularly like inspired writing, Like I'm not going to call this guy. Uh, this is not like a toured a force of narrative power. Um. But it's not like there's nothing about it that's jumping out to me is incompetent or bad at all. Like it's just like, I mean, it's definitely like a slow burn, but kind of in the same way. You know, I get shades of Tom Clancy from this actually, oh I would yeah. And and the writing is it's it is readable.

It's um, I don't know how where would I put in terms of qualit like Tom clans is a good unc channel pros Yeah, kind of like Stephen King. It's it's it's it tells the story, but it's not necessarily Shakespeare. Yeah yeah, yeah, Like it's certainly not You're not like I can't think of any lines here that jumped out to me is like particularly artful, but nothing like, you know, nothing that made it difficult to read. It's just kind of, um, it's if you're not interested in this history or in

the technical details. And this is something I know from the book. He really loves getting into the technical details about how all of his guns work and stuff, and um, even if you like in a way that's very Tom Clancy. So if that's your thing, you may find aspects of that compelling. I tend to think, even as someone who likes guns, that it can be a bit of a slog at times. Well, you mentioned what you were a page not D six when they just introduced his father.

I think this book is like five thirty pages, so you're like, you're less than one fifth through the book and that's just beginning to introduce the main characters for the storyline. Yeah, so we'll we'll come back to this.

But I think it is interesting to talk about how this guy chooses to introduce this book that has become so influential in US gun culture because it's it's it's a pretty He makes some pretty intelligent choices here, um that I think are going to be surprising to people, just based on the cover, which is not a subtle cover. You don't you didn't see You don't see this much anymore.

But like in the in the early two thousand's, this book was influential enough that the at the Gun shows and on all a bunch of the cars at the gun show, you'd see stickers that said Henry Bowman as my President. Yeah. Yeah, and this book was a big deal. Yeah.

And it makes it makes sense that it is because I think, number one, there's a lot of people who are going to be attracted to some of the ideas of like revolt against the government and like an armed in urgency and seeing themselves as as members of that obviously, UM, but aren't going to be drawn to the fact that the for example, the Turner Diaries is just a piece of genocidal propaganda and is very clearly that from the beginning, UM.

And it it makes total sense to me that this book succeeded in drawing those people in and and providing them something to identify with, because I really do get why they find this to be an identifiable work. He does some very smart work early on to make this feel both intellectual to the kind of people who are going to be drawn to it, um, and to be to make it effectively radicalizing. I see why this is

is so effective, um. To the people it was effective, And I see why a guy like McVeigh would read this UM and even feel like, oh shit, I wish I had come across this first. Yeah, no doubt. It's um. It's uh. I think I said this earlier. It is um.

It's an. It's an. It's a very hard book to put into a category because as as we were going through just these nineties pages or whatever, there's real history in there, and there are things that people may not have ever been aware of that this government has been culpable of and other governments have been culpable of that.

He did his cherry picking on to make his argument, but by his cherry picking, um, it's not to say that the things that he particularly picked are not true narratives, like his discussion about the Bonus Marchers and later on in the book other topics are real accurate things. And um, a lot of that which I don't know if that's for now or some other day, but a lot of this falls under the terrible, the terrible regime of Janet Reno and some of her actions, and a lot of

that's in this book. Yeah. Yeah, And and Janet Reno definitely deserves to be a bad guy in your history books. Yeah, so, I mean, he really does demonize some people that deserved it. But you said it's not necessarily holistically inclusive, and that's what's challenging about it. That's the thing too, is like if you're um, if you're focusing on these people and these moments is like horrible moments in these people, is is in these trends as like negative, You're absolutely in

the right. But also when you when you make that out to be the whole story, you're very clearly exercising chunks of history and particularly like chunks of um history of the oppression of black and Indigenous people that could be a part of your argument if they were if you were willing to include them as a part of the aggrieved classes that you're speaking to. And I think

Ross clearly is not here. Um. But I you can see how people would find this appealing and also be like, well, I'm not a racist and and this isn't a racist book, um, And and yeah, it makes sense that this has had the impact that it's had. Yeah, it's fascinating. I UM, I don't, UM, I don't know. I don't. I wonder what its repercussions are until now, because it's been out of print for a while, I don't know if it ever came back into reprint there was supposed to be

a sequel. I don't think that ever came out. Um, there was never a really bad B grade version of it, like Left Behind it with Kirk like Kirk Cameron and all that. There was never like there was never the Left Behind movie of Unintended Consequences, Right, But I feel like, um, I suspect that if that were, if that pump were to be primed, I bet it would be successful still

to this day. Well, I think there is essentially a reboot of Unintended Consequences written by a guy named Matt Bracken who's a regular on Info Wars Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Are you familiar with that? I've never read it? Yeah, um, it says, yeah, I have not read that one, but

I know it. It's broadly speaking, kind of in the same narrative terrain that we've talked about, where there's like this kind of insurgency, uh, an overthrow of the evil American police state that is, of course like a left wing police state. They see it as. Um, yeah, I'll read you the the Amazon for this. Bullets rained down upon a packed put football stadium, killing dozens, triggering a

panic stampede, which leads to a thousand more deaths. A police marksman kills the sniper, a mentally unbalanced desert storm veteran holding a smoking assault rifle. It's an open and shut case, or so America is led to believe in the aftermath of the stadium massacre and outraged public demands and into the threat posed by assault rifle. So yeah, and then America passes gun control um and the yeah, it it leads to a crackdown that leads to an uprising. Right,

that book was written before that event. But man, that is shades of Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. And it's interesting because Bracken frames it in his book apparently as like, well, this is what leads to like this huge FBI cracked down of the militia, and it's unjust, and the militia has to find out the truth about this. What I'm guessing is like this shooting that was engineered in order to create gun control, when in reality we had an almost identical shooting and the result was was nothing like

on a legislative level, I guess, I guess bump stocks. Yeah, I think I think it was. It was Trump made essentially a ruling that bump stops, but Eagle. But but there's no assault weapons ban, not not from that event. No,

there wasn't. But it is interesting that all of these books hinge themselves, that that the fight for the fight against an authoritary and increasingly authoritarian American government is always hinged on the loss of gun rights versus some amalgamation of all sorts of horrible things that the government has done. It's always that one thing, it's always that single platform of it. It's the gun rights being lost that caused us to revolt, versus here's gun rights amongst many other

problems that cause a revolt. Like that's interesting to me. Yeah, they zero in so much and there's such certainty too.

And you can even see this in like some of the Alex jones Um conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook, where it's like just historically, looking at the last thirty years, creating a false flag mash shooting is not a good way to get gun control, because most mash shootings have not resulted in gun control, right Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think you see Columbine as being the one that did, right did, which absolutely like Columbine did where it comes from, right, Yeah,

And so that the argument is that each and every and and and and and sadly, so many of those events have happened since Columbine, that each and everyone's going to be the one that does that. Um. Historically excellent, except for Columbine, that has not been the case. Yeah, it really. I mean there have been again some like state level laws that have been that have been come in the result of like mass shootings, but even that's not is not super common. Um. It is interesting that

like that that's still such a focus. UM. I think there is probably you could probably make quite a good living if you were to rewrite a variation of this book that was a little bit smarter about your opening cause, um, and that that steered more towards trying to reach some of those people on the libertarian left as well as the libertarian right. You could probably make a pretty good

living doing that. You might need to get better cover art too than than John Ross picked, although his cover art beats the hell out of Matt Brackens, which is like a really ay uh uh this you know, I kind of now I remember, I think I remember the cover of that book. It's like it's like the don't tread on me snake with a naifteen or something, right, Yeah, yeah, it looks like it's like clip Yeah, it's clip art

paste together. You know what it looks like. It looks what's the name of that that guy who was he was in congress? He was like a TV host and then he got in the Congress and then he had to leave because he's sexually harassed somebody. What's his name? I don't know, there's so many of those, Um, what's what's his uh? Al something? You're talking about al Franken, al Franken the cover people, right, Yeah, he grouped that

woman on that plane. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like the cover of Enemies for in a Domestic It's like this, this like lazy clip art of a snake cuddling a rifle. It looks like the cover of like a left wing book making fun of gun culture from like two thousand and three. Like, it doesn't look like the kind of cover. The only thing that to make that cover are better or some googly eyes. Yeah, it's it's really a pretty

lazy cover. Like I wouldn't guess it was a pro gun book by the cover art because it kind of looks like it's making fun of the Gadsden flag as opposed to an ironic, whereas, at least with Unintended Consequences, there was no mistaking what kind of like ideological world this book inhabits. So you said there was a sequel to this enemy's foreign and domestic. I think there's like five of them, Max, Oh my gosh, Um, I think there's a ton of these books. Um, Matt Bracken Mason, Yeah,

there's at least so there's enemies foreign domestic. There's enemies foreign domestic, the ricon Qui stuff, which I think is about Mexicans taking over the Southwest. Uh, and then there's foreign enemies and traders. So he's got at least three of them. Yeah. Yeah, So this is the kind of stuff that would be so pervasive, and maybe it still is in some instances. At the gun show we talked about at the beginning of this, I could walk in there and there was that giant book section and it

was all sorts of this kind of stuff. And I guess the best thing you could say about Unintended Consequences is it was the best of its breed. It was the most readable, probably the least shitty, if you want to say, that of that stuff like, um, if I mean on one on one end, you got the Turner Diaries, which is like the most vile thing you can think of, and then you've got Unattended Consequences, which is much more nuanced.

And then you had stuff like we're talking about now somewhere in the middle mostly poorly written quality of a zine, but Unintended Consequences had the polish of being a legitimate book. Yeah, I would say this is the gold standard of this

kind of of this particular kind of narrative propaganda. Um. It definitely seems to be, which which does not mean I think most people reading it are going to enjoy it, or that I think it's narratively a well constructed piece of fiction, because again we're ninety three pages in and we have not really gotten to the narrative yet, which

is a choice, um. But it's also kind of broadly in line with This is being written in the period when Michael Crichton is and um um uh Tom Clancy are like the biggest authors in the United States, and it does seem like very much in line with that. Um. So yeah, you can't divorce it either from the time

it was written in what was popular. Then well, Carl, I think that's gonna do us for for for at least the first episode on Undintended Unintended Consequences will well, will reconvene and see if we want to go more into this or maybe look at what a Matt Bracken's books. Um, I'm endlessly fascinated with this, this species of novel. There's like eight hundred more pages of this book, Like literally, there's so many more pages of this, and Enemies Foreign

Domestic is also five hundred and sixty eight pages. So we're delving into Jesus a lot. Well, I think, I think, I think that we only got this far into it does speak to the density of what it is and how complex a topic this book is. Like if you wanted to describe the if you wanted to talk the Turner Diaries, you could. You could summarize that in thirty seconds. Right,

it doesn't. It is not an intelligent work. Unintended Consequences is, and that's what makes it interesting because, Um, whether or not want to agree or disagree with any of the content in it, anyone reading it, even if you're against what it's about, will probably find something out in it that they didn't know about. And I'm not trying to

promote anything. I'm just saying in that regard, it is an interesting work because I'm going from the Bonus Marchers to the Warsaw Ghetto to Ruby Ridge to Waco to all of those things combined. There's a lot of nuance and that like most people wouldn't you know about Us versus Miller, that that Supreme Court ruling about that sought

off shotgun. There's all that's in there. And while it is cherry picked, is done in a way that it's there's there's there's content there above and beyond maybe it's intended point yeah, yeah, And and certainly like it's it's not a lazy example of what it is. It's it's an exact like he put a lot of work into this, and I think did so in a pretty intelligent way. And that's that's interesting to study, just as someone who's kind of um drawn into this this sort of thing

and is interested in its impact on the world. Like um, it's it's meaningful and worth understanding that, Like he put the work he did into this and it's had the impact that it's had. Well, Carl, you want to plug your plug doubles before we roll out. Sure, um, you can find me an range dot tv. I create a

firearms history and other types of content. It's kind of all over the place, but it's all somehow Lynch pinned around the concept of firearms and and the history of firearms or the civil rights associated issues around them, including up until today. So if you want to check out my video and some of other stuff, you can find all of my distribution points at enranged dot tv. Yeah, check out Carl, check out in range TV. Probably don't

check out Enemies Foreign and Domestic um. But you know you can get a lot of the same things by watching the documentary trimmers Um, which which is my manifestout. Oh my god, that guy would have been a character in this book definitely. Bert Comer is a character that fell directly out of unintended consequences. It is worth it doesn't really stand out in the movie, but it is worth noting that he and his wife in thirty seconds go from huddling in their basement to making pipe bombs

on the roof. Bert Comer has seven copies of Unintended Consequences, all of them signed, one of them with some DNA on it from John ross I guarantee you yeah this maybe Bert Gummer's copy of Unintended Consequences. Um, all right, thank you. Carl. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.