Censorship, Gen Z, and the War in Iran: Coffee and a Mike

so highly recommend checking out. His podcast will be linked in the description. And yeah, these are two interviews I thought went particularly well. So without further ado, let's get into it.

in their outside appearances. Who knows I'm gonna end up doing that right now that I've said.

the story. I had a friend of mine who lived in Phoenix and he's now moved to Austin, but he had been on Joe Rogan a few times and I used to have like all this I felt, and maybe I don't know if you felt this way, but when you started it like this internal pressure of like having these notes and doing all this research. And I was in La. It was a sixth or seventh episode I had done. And my childhood hero is a guy by the name of Freddie Roach. I love boxing, so when

I was a kid, we knew Freddy. Freddie was friends with our family. My uncle lived in Vegas, so I watched him throughout his whole career, and he eventually be if you don't know who he is or people that are listening don't know who he is. He became a trainer, eventually trained Mickey Rourke who was an actor, still an actor, Mike Tyson, Manny Paciao had his own show on HBO about his life because he has Parkinson's And so anyway,

I was prepping for that. I was in La, went down to the Wildcard Boxing Gym, which is the Hollywood and Vines, a famous boxing gym, one of the most famous in the world. And the whole day before I was so nervous all these notes, all this is and I felt all this pressure. And after that my friend who had been on Rogan, I said, does he have like a bunch of notes or anything, And He's like, no, I didn't see anything, just pad of paper and had

some stuff written down. And if he got to everything, great, and if he didn't get to everything, that was okay too. And it changed my whole perspective on how I was going to handle this. And I received a compliment on I think it was Apple where they said, I feel like I'm listening sitting in a coffeehouse listening to two people next to me chatting, and I was like, that's what I wanted, Like, that's so I do that habit when I'm a guest because it's just I don't know,

it's just natural, just like to just chat. And so one thing, one more thing I was gonna add, I'm talking more on my show than I am than I went up when I was a guest on your show, but also as I as I assessed myself as a guest, and I'm happy to do that when people. I'm honored that people think to me to come on. But I'm

not a I'm not a well versed research guy. I'm not a I'm not someone who specializes like in you know history or student of history, or an economist or you know, a geopolitical analyst or military veteran, or on and on and on. I'm just somebody who's curious, Like I could never go toe to toe with you. I could never go toe to toe with Will Tanner. I mean I learned from watching your show, and I learned from speaking to you guys as a host of things.

And so it was the first one I did with no had an idea of what I wanted to talk about, but no notes, no bullet points, and it was a marked improvement. And it's funny you bring up that idea of in two guys talking in a coffee shop, because, as I'm sure you're aware, you know, when you're talking to someone, especially someone who hasn't done a lot of interviews. You sort of give him a little brief upfront, right, all right, you know, here's what we're doing. You know,

I'm not going to do this. This is what we're going to do. You know, if you need anything done, just let me know. But they're kind of accommodating someone. And the line I always use is the illusion I'm trying to sell is that you and I are just sitting down a bar together just talking, and you an audience is kind of listening in. It's the same thing. It's conversational. And look, neither you nor I is on the cutting edge of podcasting. You know, we came to

it when it was still established. But I think a large part of the success of the medium is, well, there's a couple of things, which is one, you know, people have commutes, they have a lot of time, and you know, it's a good way to imbibe information without you know, trying to read a book at seventy miles

an hour. But also, I think a big part of it is that because you can put out, you know, really as much as you want and you're not beholden to I guess you could say, like the overhead of a TV network if you can give a conversation time to breathe, you can just have two people talking batting an idea back and forth for three hours if you want. Okay, fair enough, maybe every idea isn't a three hour idea.

You compare and contrast that even to talk radio, where you know, they're assuming that every person is tuning in thirty seconds ago, so you have to state exactly what you're talking about every segment, you know, three minutes than an ad break over and over and over again. And look like I certainly have you know, good memories of you know, bumping around country roads with my grandpa and you know, listening to Rush Lutenbaugh. But fundamentally it's a

different thing. It fulfills a different niche. And I think really the explosion of podcasting is that it offers something additional, right, It offers that space for dialogue and dialectic And one of the things that I've found really interesting, one of the reasons I found myself on the kind of nominal right is that the combination of that medium and that

general political kind of circle. And I mean that in the widest possible sense, is that it's really, in my mind, the only place that an actual dialogue and actual conversation is happening. When you came on my show, you talked about how your work kind of had his genesis in COVID, and you saw that theory very clearly that there was a large percentage of culture by extension media that was locked down couldn't talk at all about this one thing.

But you know, an alternative media for whatever alternative media means, much of it was on podcasts. Well, you could have that conversation because it sort of getting you know, Spotify or Apple to kick you off, which takes some doing. You know, there are some guys I know on there where it's like, I'm not saying you should be kicked off, but if you were, you you know, we're probably asking

for it. Right, Like, the latitude is definitely there. It enabled this this interesting development of like a real conversation and real dialogue. Also, I mean, on the the the more kind of metapolitical level. You know, I'm a huge fan of the term woke because it's been so bastardized

to the point where it means everything and nothing. But when you look at the kind of hyper aggressive political religion that takes up a large part of left wing politics, and there is certainly one on the right as well, but it's very hard to dissent from that. You know, you can disagree on, you know, certain aspects of economic policy, but there are certain things you cannot They're kind of sacred, they're kind of holy precepts, and that freezes the conversation.

Like you see that when you read these people's work, as I do, they're citing thinkers from the sixties, citing thinkers from the seventies, the nineties at the latest. It's the same canon. It's the same stuff, and it has been even on the far fringes of the radical left. I mean, look longer than I've been alive, longer than my parents have been alive. It's a frozen conversation with very hard barriers on it. And you see that in you know, kind of modern media, right. I know, you're

a big movie guy. One of the I think one of the main reasons why a lot of modern film feels so hollow is they're sort of jousting at windmills. You know, they're repeating a cultural critique that may have been you know, really insightful, that may have been very subversive, and in the Reagan administration. But now it's like a right, come on, we've seen this before. There's been no development, there's been nothing interesting. And not to say all modern

films are fad. There's certainly, you know, quite good films have come out recently, but nonetheless, you see that kind of conversational stagnation as it applies to art as well, that you're running over the same tropes over and over and over again. And you know, someone could pick up their copy of Joseph Campbell and say, oh, well, you know, all fiction is ultimately the same story told a thousand times, the hero with a thousand faces, And okay, fair enough

it might be. But that's a very baseline you could say archaic if it wasn't so negative. Human narrative, right, it's something that people inherently relate to, whereas if it's if it's a more political narrative, it's like, well, that was a narrative for a time and a place, and

when that time and place changes. I mean, look, man, like if I came on your show and I was, you know, raging about you know, Cromwell in the English Civil War, like at best, you'd think that was sort of eccentric like whatever, who cares right because and look like I know there's gonna be someone in the comments who's like, well I care quite a bit. Yes, you

sure you do. But the point is that's not an active sort of political disagreement in And that doesn't mean that, you know, whether on the left or kind of the neocon right, there's politics happening and power happening, but from the perspective of you know, people like you and I who work in the space of discourse, like what else is there to be set And on the right, like particularly as we see with media analysis, you see the exact same but instead of being stuck in nineteen sixty four,

they're stuck in twenty sixteen. You know that there's an immense amount of money to be made by you know, talking about how XYZ thing is woke and bad and we hate it. It was like, yeah, sure, right, it

probably sucks. But like at a certain point, man, like if you're running the same experiment over and over again getting the same result, like, hey, but maybe it's on you like, stop watching it if it's really at that And again you see that same kind of stuck culture, not necessarily stuck in the same culture, but how much is there to be set on that front? It runs out and I think that, you know, it's part of the other reason why people were run to this shows

and others. It's like, Okay, well there's a conversation to be had, there's something that's developing. You know, you can look back, you know, for cultural analysis at your own culture rather than you know, or you do on kind

of more specific issues. And I think that's really why that space in general is I don't know if I would say exploding yet, although it's certainly massively risen in prominence, but I think it stands to because again it's and this is both a blessing and a curse, really the only place that a conversation is actively happening.

Not to get too much into it, but because of COVID and other things, that had kind of into a snap foo with my education and so I was stuck needed a couple of credits to graduate. So I was still in school but not very much while also trying to hold down a job. So my education was here, job was somewhere else, traveling back and forth during the week, and so I basically I literally got onto Google Maps, like used my phone, drew out the kind of line on the route. He's like, hey, I drive this twice

a week. If anyone's along this line, you know, let's meet up for dinner or something, because that's what I'd do. I'd get hungry halfway through and pull off. And one of my buddies, who's still somewhat active rights under the name Paul Fahrenheit he was in college somewhere along that route, and he, you know, replied to the messages like, yeah, hey,

here's where I am. Let's grab dinner. So this guy, I don't know him from Adam, Yeah, got to a bar, have a burger and we got into like a four hour argument slash discussion, just going all over the place. And I had been a long term lurker. I'd been reading a ton, you know, listening to a ton. It kind of you know, watching the conversation, and this is my memory of it. It's been a couple of years now. Uh So you know, if he tells a different story,

I don't blame him for it. But he basically was like, hey, man, like you've you've got something to say, Like have you ever thought about doing anything or making anything? It's like, oh, shoot, I'm honestly not really. And you know, from that conversation I kind of took, you know, a month off where I was basically like, what do I want to do? Like I've you know, I've I've written more now, you know, in a couple of magazines. I have a sub stack,

but it's not like my primary form of expression. But I you know, I think I'm pretty good at talking to people, says, you know what I should do, I should have an interview show. So my first EVERTS episode zero is uh Me and this guy Paul Fahrenheit, recorded in my mom's attic because I didn't have anywhere else

to do it, and it was a fun conversation. And from there it was just sort of that process of like, oh, like, you know, I want to talk to that guy, send him an email, and it sort of kept up in that mode. It's kind of a secondary thing that I did, you know, just as a as a hobby. You know, I had corporate jobs. I worked in a factory, you know, and basically it started to kind of get some traction and grow, and you know, I've been been working in

another company. We had to you know, part ways, and so I'm sort of stuck at this crossroads where it's like, Okay, I have this thing, it's doing really well, and I could go back get.

full time job. It's what I do. And so that's kind of the general origin story as far as you know, becoming what I consider like a political dissident or you know, someone who's not on the reservation. I really had no chance at being normal. I was lucky enough to come up through.

be on you know, the reservation, so to speak. You are already selecting for people who have an alternative view on education that tends to correlate to you know, other alternative views. And I you know, the very good memory of my friend George Bagbee, who is a teacher there, and you know, he writes, he has his own you know, he republishes books, and he's on my show, you know, probably every six weeks or so, very very talented historical mind. And he was one of my teachers there, and we

developed a friendship even after I graduated. He was you know, even as a young teenager, you know, giving me resources, giving me books that were well beyond my ability to comprehend, but were things that were you know, showing me an alternative view, showing me, you know, they're like, look like there's more to human thought, there's more to politics. There's more history than just you know what. You can find

it a Larn's Noble bookstand. And you know, he introduced me to you know, figures like Mensis Moldbug before he ever came out as Curtis Darbin. I was reading you know, Mensus Muldbug at fourteen, which is you know again I didn't have a chance. And when you combine that kind of you know a certain natural you know, dissonance with I'll be honest, a personality which is highly disagreeable. I

do not like being told what to do. When I went to school, and I you know, started at you know, college right after the first Trump presidency and sort of came into all of the excesses of woke campus politics. For instance, you know, just a few anecdotes on this, we had a troop of radical vegans who would like use hammers to smash out the windows of the dining hall. I was like, I hate you people, but more seriously,

you know, I had sort of hellish orientation. It was eight days you know, before we started school, and it's burned into my memory. They it was a small liberal at school. They broke people down into you know, all the men and all the women, and you know, all all the guys or whatever. Three hundred of us got put in this room with this very stereotypical left wing political activist. She was a She's a burly woman, blue hair, you know, straight across problem bangs, and you know, like

out of something out of a comedy sketch. She you know said, you know, one in three women on college campus will be sexually assaulted. Look to your left, look to your right. One of those men is a rapist. And you're like, well, okay, man, I'm eighteen, I got here forty five minutes ago. This seems a little unfair. And so when you combine that kind of you know, initial training in non traditional thought, you're dumped into this environment where you're seeing the kind of worst excesses of

again in scare quotes, kind of woke politics. It's like, well, this is awful, Like what's the alternative? Because I cannot be a part of that, Like they won't and they won't accept me in two Like I don't want to live in this sort of like constant be like the

constant cringing shame for what I am. And you know, like a lot of people I you know, sort of went through you know, what would be referred to as kind of like the IDW and the libertarian sphere, and in all of those places, I was like, well, it feels like this is a halfway. This isn't a true resistance. It's sort of a to be honest, kind of a

cope in between. And that's where I you know, kind of came back to my roots and the more what you know, sort of drives the report to is the dissident right or that kind of synthesis of you know, paleo conservatism, you know NRX stuff political realism, And to me it comes down to very much that like, well, I if we accept that there is some thing wrong, if something is not going well, you know, whatever it is.

You know whyever that's the case, It's like, well, you don't want to all yourself to that, you know, that kind of force of entropy. And it's so how I ended up in the weird political circles I find myself.

And then that story almost immediately dovetails with you know, as I said earlier, I actually started a podcast, and look like I very much consider myself to be like a second or third tier figure in the sense that like you have these people who are kind of first order thinkers who are writing and producing new works, and you know, then you have people who are great synthesizers and analysts, and then you have popularizers, someone who can take someone who's written a book and say, all right,

like explain that in a way that a normal guy can understand. And so that's the role I sort of see myself in, not to be too grandiose, but that's sort of how I view it.

I go, this is probably new orientation training. And for me, I just started my third year doing this. I think it was last week full time, and I say, I said to my friend, I said, you know, there's no fucking way I could ever go back to that, like and you know, and I kudos some people that can

do it. I mean, you have to be able to roll with it in today's world, in today's climate, when you work for companies or corporations, if you're one of those people that can put your head down and just keep quiet, they don't want to hear about your opinion and you know, and follow the rules. God bless you.

I couldn't do that anymore. And I literally I was like, God, you got to come in there Monday morning, your first day with this binder and have an HR person tell you blah blah blah blah, this this, this, this is awful. Like all you're doing is looking at the clock and like, oh,

what time is lunch? Where am I going for lunch? Well, one hundred percent, And you know, one of the other things that I think is and this has been There's a great piece I can't remember who it was by called total Boomer luxury Communism, which is a great name, but the point of it is sort of similar to I think it's the Michael Savage, I'm confident on the last name on in the first one article that came out talking about the straits for young men in corporate America.

It's very, very difficult to get into those corporate jobs. And I think that that's another reason why, you know, so many people my age are interested in, you know, alternative things where that's making money on the internet, you know, starting a small business, becoming a tradesman. Is because that traditional route of you know, you go to school, you get a job, you see need that way is well certainly possible, and I know people who are doing it

is much much more difficult. It's not necessarily the safe option anymore. Like for instance, I was talking this came up, you know, with an elder at my church, and I basically told him I was like, look, man like, in my immediate social group, right, the people I see on a weekly basis, uh, I know two with benefits out of a group of you know fifteen people and they have jobs or productive members of society. They're not sitting

on you know, mom's couch. But you know, that track is much much more difficult than you know, whatever used to be. And we can go into why it's maybe a different discussion, but you know, I think that you know that that kind of corporate job, like, if you're in it, dude, keep going. I understand it, like you got to support your family somehow. But I think for you know a lot of guys, that's simply not an option. And there's two reactions to that. One which is completely understandable.

It's just say like, look, I'm getting screwed, and I'm going to tell you, yes you are. But there's sort of a silver lining to that cloud, which is, well, you both need to do something on your own, whatever that is. And also you get to like that's kind of nice and surely, you know, you get screwed on taxes,

you don't get benefits, like that's not ideal. But at the same time, I think that there is a benefit to having that track closed off to you from the beginning, because you know, the longer you go down that track, the harder it is to jump off of it. And again, like I've said, like, there are people for whom you know, their corporate job is not that kind of you know, miserating experience that you know, I experience that I you know, went through and many others did, in which case you know,

this advice is not for you. But I do think that there is sort of a hidden blessing to that, both from you know, a kind of personal perspective. You know, when you are supporting yourself fully, there's no system. You are in a way kind of engaging in what Kazinski would call like the power process, in the sense that your decisions actually matter to you. It's not kind of

diffused through a network. It's like, well, you know, if you decide to never do another podcast again, you'll run out of money, you won't be able to have a house, who won't be able to eat, and like, yeah, sure, the same thing kind of happens with a real job. But like when I talk to many of my friends or what few of my friends, I should say, who have the kind of you know, big company job, their

responsibility is very diffused. You know, It's very difficult to say, and this is by design, right, who is to blame for with me anything. And so as long as you're not an astonishingly bad employee, you know, as long as you don't you know, come in and you know, stand on your boss bosses desks and you know, give them both fingers, you can probably pretty much coast, you know. And again like they're restructurings and all that, whereas that luxury is not afforded to most people who are out

on their own. And again like there's an element of responsibility to that, but as we understand what that responsibility comes an immense sense of fulfillment. Right, you're getting to affect your own life one.

than I do. But fundamentally this peace of analysis stands and he says is that as systems get more and more complicated. As your individual actions get further and further from the inputs that affect your life, get really dissatisfied. They feel as if, you know, my life is pointless, my decisions don't have a huge impact. And again there is both a positive and negative to that. You know, you can succeed vastly above how you could in a you know, kind of salary position, but also you don't

have that social safety net. And so I guess my general perspective on that is like I see you guys lamenting that, and I understand it like they have been given a raw deal. But I think there's a certain advantage as well, which is that like with that comes a certain sense of like genuine freedom that you couldn't get otherwise. Forgive me if I'm if I'm rambling, Mike, no, not at all. Uh do you do you feel in your own situation?

bit younger than you. And one is specifically with his daughters and he was like, tiny, said, well, get a corporate job, you get insurance, blah blah blah blah blah, and she don't want to do it, and he goes, well, I had to do it. I was like, yeah, but the times have changed, and that's where I I try. I mean, I can't not your age, so I don't I don't understand. I try to be as good of a listener as I can be to grasp, you know, get a little bit of a grasp what it is

like for you to in what you're going through. But you know, how is there a disconnect between say, my parents' age sixties and seventies when they try to speak with people like you, oh, one hundred percent. So the problem is.

last twenty years. So you have a lot of people who you know are doing quite well, but realistically, like didn't that is a relatively new thing in their lives. I think of my own grandparents who were working in class. My grandfather was a mechanic basically, and yeah, sure, like if he cashed his house out, he'd have a lot of money, but you know, throughout his entire life was a working class guy. He made a good job, he worked hard, but by no means with your rich man.

So I get that, and so I understand the reaction of like, well, that's not what I saw. But to be honest, the problem is, and this is both due to currency debasement and many other factors, young people are just really poor, man. And they're not necessarily just poor when we come when it comes to assets, right, what they're actually able to hold, but also compensation is relatively speaking,

very very down. You can compare this and my Peruvian bull on Twitter, Cordo Rios has done some great analysis on this, comparing effectively average compensation to gold. It just is kind of a broad brush of like, assuming this is a relatively constant value, and just on the compensation level,

it's been disastrous. Every subsequent generation has in real terms earned less and at the same time assets, so whether that's housing, whether that's you know, automobiles have gone up dramatically, so for instance, and it's been a while, so that the numbers are going to be slightly and exact. Here I did a very simple calculation where I compared average, like the true median wage to a certain number of different major purchases. Right, So for instance, I chose the

mid sixties just because it made this relatively convenient. If you go slightly further back, it's even more pronounced. But basically, you know, a house was about you know, approximately four times median wage, okay, whereas now it's about nine. So that means it is significantly harder to buy a house. Cars are not quite as bad, but they're pretty close. Like you have a roughly fifteen percent of median wage to buy a used car in the sixties it's now

about thirty three percent. So even those smaller financially responsible decisions are much much harder to make. And this is setting aside what I mentioned earlier, which is getting a normal job. How relatively difficult is that thanks to the wonders of either the borderless labor market, it has gotten much harder. We saw this first, you know, generations ago hit you know, manufacturing, obviously construction. It is now starting to hit those good six figure laptop jobs. You know,

programming is a great one. And so yeah, things have dramatically changed. One of the other ones that I don't think a lot of boomers appreciate. And I was talking to my grandfather about this. He's a great guy. We have an awesome relationship, and he bucks many of the trends.

Do I understand what you go through? I mean somewhat because we work all the time.

complete and total disillusion of culture. Now there's a purely demographic element to this generation. See my generation is the first majority minority age block, so that's created kind of a dissolution of culture. But also on a very fundamental level, the relations between the sexes have just exploded, detonated. So I'm married, right, So this isn't my experience, but when I you know, even my friends, my family members going through it. The war between the sexes that previous generations

spoke about actually exists in generations. And a large part of this is there's a huge gap between shall we say, stated and revealed preference when it comes to these kind of luxury beliefs, right, views about you know, how men and women should interact. And so to pick on the baby boomers a little bit, if you ask that entire generation, which is a number of people, their views on certain things,

they will tell you one thing. But if you actually dig into how they lived their wives, they lived like their parents did. Okay, maybe they got one divorce in the eighties, but generally that second marriage had a much better chance of surviving than a second marriage would nowadays. And so, you know, put those progressive values that many of them held, well, the next generation may have actually

put it into effect. And so you see with Generation Z and look, our parents are Gen X, they're not boomers. Boomers are either our grandparents or aunts and uncles. So oftentimes that term boomer is basically just used to mean anyone older than me. It's an exact but we were largely educated by millennials, in many cases older millennials, some gen xers, who took many of those particularly you know, feminist or other kind of you know, cultural t wing beliefs,

and they actually meant them. You know, they didn't just say it, they actually did it. And so that same experience that I had in college with that rubenesque feminists, to use a polite term, guys got just slammed by. I was lucky to be in college by the time that came around. But if you're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, or if you were in a more progressive area where that stuff was more you know, acceptable, you've been getting just

like bombarded with that your entire life. Similarly, like you know, in the post Me Too era, right, both on an institutional level and also on a cultural level, relations between men and women changed dramatically. Certain things that were deemed to be appropriate or even you know, within the kind of normal scope were not only rendered inappropriate, but you could lose your entire life if you hit a trip wire, you know, if you and again, you know, I'm a

religious extremist, so this wasn't my experience. But like, if you hook up with a girl and three weeks later she doesn't like it, tells the wrong person, your life is ruined. You know, you have an article as what happened to you know the Duke lacrosse team has happened at many at many other institutions. You're now an internationally known rapist already a term that you'll probably have to bleep.

And I said to her, I go, you know, it's so funny to me because I grew up as a kid, you know, the R rated movies when they would be on regular TV, because I grew up in front of the television, and so these R rated movies, I couldn't watch them on cable because they were uncensored, and they would delete the you know, the sex scenes, and then all the swearing. They would either mute it or they do some lousy dubbing of it. But yet she's on a show and they didn't even have her on the

picture of the thumbnail. They didn't want to have her. They didn't want to take a chance of that. And then I think, if my memory serves me, he had that. Danny Jones had to his production team whatever, had to go over with YouTube to make sure it was all up and off before they even publish it for the public. That's crazy, like genuinely, that's that's crazy. It's incredibly irritating. But I know exactly what you mean. I am the

world's worst editor. So I will, you know, take notes on the side of like, oh, I've probably got to take that out and invariably forget it.

is crazy. This was for again alternative medical hypotheses, and the context. The thing that I got clipped for is I was as a joke describing the tinfoil hat stuff, you know, like like kind of playing a character for a little bit talking to a guy, you know, Eugipius, who's a very very talented researcher on this, and I was saying something like, oh, yeah, because you're not one of those guys that thinks if you take the thing, you know, you become a mind's mind chip slave to

the CEO of Microsoft. Except I used all the real words, and when I got dinged for it, they played that clip of my voice saying that I was like, well, one, I clearly disagree with that. It was a joke. You know, I'm hamming it up. But however, the AI on the other side did not appreciate that. There's another one which was on me. I can't even fight this one where I called then Transportation Secretary Pete Boudhage Edge a slur, which I thought was funny. YouTube did not. So that's

my only two. I've managed to skate otherwise, which is sort of a miracle. But returning to the kind of war between the sexist stuff and so you obviously have this kind of you know, rising resentment of feminism or kind of social progressive signaling among young men. Also you have to remember, like imagine being a teenager going through the pandemic, going through George Floyd, going through all of this, that's going to produce a reaction, and largely that's been

facilitated by social media. And at the same time, you have almost a perfect mirror image reaching young women, right. They are getting the you know, the feminist narrative, they are getting you know, the racial justice in scare quotes and narratives. And again, like, I've not necessarily experienced a ton of this because you know, I'm part of a conservative religious community. That's where I met my wife, We've known each other forever. But it's hit women incredibly, incredibly hard. So,

for instance, my wife doesn't vote. She doesn't believe in voting. She just doesn't do it right. It's not like I told her not to, but even before we were together, she just didn't do it. And she will tell the story where one of her then friends basically said, you know, you're not a woman if you don't vote in this election. That was deemed to be sort of synonymous and so in much the same way that black doesn't literally mean

of African descent. So for instance, you know, Joe Biden said, if you don't vote for me, he ain't black, and people laugh at him because that's obviously not true, but that but it will be black is a political identity. It means more than just the color of your skin. So Clarence Thomas isn't black because and I'm people have said this because he doesn't ascribe to that political identity. And so for generation Z, largely speaking, man and woman

have become political identities. Right, there's baggage associated with it. And again, social media has enabled many, many things which are not explicit political signals to become implicit ones. So, for instance, I deleted all of my quote unquote, you know, normal social media in twenty twenty because basically it was like, I'm just hating everyone that I know because I'm seeing

there and saying political ramblings. And you know, rationally, there's nothing about deleting social media that is a political act. But that was a signifier that I was a wrong thinker because I didn't want to be seeing the truth, which was you know, the mainstream narrative on COVID and on George Flood. That was a signifier. You're like, oh, what,

that's weird. But there are dozens of other things like that, like your you know, whatever your vices are, you your taste in music, you're like all of these little things have become signifiers of you know, these broad political camps. And so in addition to you know, this loneliness epidemic that we often talk about, there is also this sort

of political war between the sexes that is horrible. Like genuinely it's a bad thing for the human species to have taken male and female and turned those into in many cases, rival political blocks. And so you certainly, as I've said earlier when talking about Generation Z, have the economic situation which is dire, like it's really bad for any number of reasons. But you also have what you know, people kind of derisively referred to as the dating discourse. Right,

why aren't people pairing up? And you see this both in the data on marriages, but even down to you know, the number of people who've gone on dates in the last year, let alone had sex in the last year. It's like, okay, like shure, those aren't great proxies for you know, whatever X Y Z thing we want to be happening. But at a very fundamental level, men and women are not interacting, they're not talking to each other, they're not pair bonding. And so I mean, to be honest,

I think that's behind a lot of it. As well, which is that you know, many young men feel locked out of you know, economic advancement and also locked out of social advancement, right, like I can't meet a girl, or you know, I can't meet a girl who's not to be honest, kind of crazy. And again that doesn't absolve any one person of personal agency, like they need your you know, and this is sort of what we got into on my show, like you exist in the

time you do. You need to make certain decisions that you know, even if your your hand of cards is not particularly good. But I think that that's another big part of it. And you see this and oftentimes these posts become viral because they are sort of a certain amount of confirmation bias, like oh, I hate the boomer so much. This is what they say, and who knows

how you know representative they are. But you'll hear something like oh, I don't know why young men aren't just you know, approaching a random girl who works at a gas station, and it's like, well, we kind of see that. And that's a you know, specific example, right, you kind of see at once two different things there, which is one I would get arrested if I did that, Like genuinely, like not I personally, but like that is a very real fear that either you know, in the court of

public opinion. And there are a great number of these viral videos of women, you know, recording themselves interacting with a guy saying, you know, look at this creep, here's his face, or also write the legal, legal repercussions. But also it's sort of revealing because it's like, oh, you grew up at a time where working at a gas station was just a thing that normal people did, Like you could be assured that's just some you know, girl from like the local college or whatever, working in her

free time. It's like, and I'm sorry if you're a gas station worker listening to this, I'm not trying to disparage you, but like now that is like an underclass job, mostly for immigrants. So like, even that you know that hypothetical situation, it's like you kind of see that perfect mix of not only have the relations between the sex has changed, but the economics have dramatically changed. And so look, I get it, Like some part of this is simply a function of you know, getting older, your point of

reference becomes more and more distant. But I think at a very fundamental level. Uh, And I'm ruder to the boomers on this show that I normally have been. There's a failure to recognize that things may have gotten worse in aggregate, even if they have gotten better for you personally. And you know, again right like that that incredible increase in the relative value of a home, if you're already in,

that's great for you. You have this massive store of equity basically due to currency debasement, and you know a few other trends, but still, like, you have this huge asset, and it's entirely reasonable for you ton't want to cash out collect that value. I get it. But fundamentally the interests of young guys like me and people looking to

cash out and retire are diametrically opposed. I mean, I you know, I own a house, so like I was able to kind of beat the odds on that due to know some factoris you don't need to get into.

But like, even setting aside my personal interest, it's like, well, you've got a whole bunch of guys who are basically trying to get started, who are trying to establish themselves, who are up against relatively speaking, a two to three x increase in underlying asset valuation where there has been not even simply a freezing of average compensation in real terms, a decrease. Right, So you're kind of getting screwed on

both sides of the equation. And it's like, well, yeah, of course there's going to be some anger and some resentment there. Does that mean that all of that resentment is correct in every specific instance. Does it mean that

it's directed correctly? No, those are separate questions. But if we're talking about that disconnect between younger and older people, I think that's a large part of it is that many older people view the system as having worked fundamentally get worked for me, and if you could just put your nose to the grindstone, you could replicate what I've done. And for many younger people, they feel as if, no,

I'm being screwed. This system has nothing for me. And so if I'm going to achieve what my parents and grandparents did through normal means, I'm going to have to do something extraordinary. I'm going to have to break out of that system one way or another. And again, we're talking about fairly large numbers of people, but I think that fundamentally is the core of the difference, like is this system working or not? And you see that in politics as well. A lot has been made of the

same divide on you know, the political right. This is a relatively recent thing. You see it on kind of the the the fracture point of Israel, but it applies to many other things as well. You know, look at the difference between you know, Republican staffers and the people they work for. You see this Actually even in the kind of legacy GOP press, look at figures like Rod Dreyer, David French, they are freaking out about this. They say, oh,

you know, the young people aren't conservative. It's like, well, that's entirely true. They're not because again, like I've said, they view the system as being, if not unsalvageable, but directly contraar to their interests. See the exact same thing on the left, where there is this difference between the kind of legacy party, you know, the people who view the system is fundamentally working, and those who want to

burn it down. Momdannie is kind of a perfect example of this, even if not him personally, then his supporters were basically like, why I don't care that he's a socialist, fix it, make it better. I don't think that's a great answer, but just look at the pulling from Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen on my show not too long ago, really really fascinating guy, and he's talking about the kind

of rise of the burn it down politics. If basically like, well, I'm getting screwed, so whatever makes this go away, I'll press that button. Like I don't care what it's called, I don't care who does it, but fix it somehow or at the very least, you know, blow it up, and I'll at least have a decent chance then to make something happen. And I see a lot of you know, understandable angst from older people because they are very worried

about it. But fundamentally it's like, well, you know, if you want to save this system, I don't necessarily, but something needs to change because it is becoming less and less workable for the next generation. And you know, someone might say like, oh, why are you complaining or like

why are you so upset? It was like, well, to be honest, man, like, you know, I'm doing fine, not like wealthy by any means, Like, but I was able to get married and you know, do some things right, but like that's proportionally more and more rare, you know,

the kind of what was assumed to be baseline things. Again, like I think about my grandfather, Like he didn't go to college, he got out of the military, worked in McDonald's, then got a job as a mechanic, like a very normal life, but he was able to his whole life. You drive new or almost new cars, have houses, and support a family, and like, yeah, sure these weren't like mansions. This wasn't some kind of princely affair, but the kind of basic, you know, parts of accepting a steak in society,

we're much more achievable. And if you have guys who don't have a steak in society, who don't have anything to lose and also don't really have an accessible way to get a stake in society, it's like, well, eventually you're going to reach a critical mass of people who just say like, well, like fuck it, like why not. And you know, even if the answer they select on is not you know, a great idea. In particular, you have to understand that that is a individually you know,

rational position to arrive at. That's probably much more than you wanted on the generational vibe.

a nation? And so you know, when it comes to something like you know, immigration or even the culture war stuff, it's like, well, okay, like do I get to have a say, like, do I get to you know, have a culture that is mine that I am allowed to you know, engage in well fundamentally like am I someone

to be replaced? And so, you know, I think that that's a huge part of it, because if the point of society is simply to act as kind of a nursing home, right like the to you know, give the most number of people a sort of maximumly comfortable existence right where it's like you have all of these services done for you by who it doesn't matter. Well, that

leads to a very specific, you know, outcome. But also again going back to our conversation about the power process, that leads to a complete and total erosion of meaning, that life becomes pointless and so be briefly mentioned to the IDW And you know, Peterson and others have sort of a comparatives of themselves, but I think what shot them to the kind of strategy or kites was addressing

that conscious that that crisis of meaning. You have more and more people who are lonely, one and more people who don't have anything they feel as if they are part of, and they feel as if their lives are pointless, right, why might I even here? For I don't have a family, I don't have fulfilling work, and so a very fundamental level right at that crisis of meaning, like one, why am I personal here? But two, you know, what is

the purpose of our nation? I mean that's huge, right, And even someone like Peterson will pick on briefly, you know, don't have any hate for the man, but that again was sort.

the godfather of trolling. He actually trolled, not e controlled. But he made a comment to my friend Dave Colin last night which you haven't seen. It's hilarious, absolutely larious.

get a reaction out of you. And so like even if you look at this and I'm like, oh you o cancellns, it's a great you know, she's saying crazy stuff threat, it's like, okay, sure, you know. I don't agree with Candaceellans Uh. I will admit I find her ability to sort of play mad libs very entertaining, where it's like you can sort of just swap the nouns and verbs, where it's like ah, yes, uh. Charlie Kirk's ghost astually projected into my third eye and told me

that he was Catholic. It's not a one hundred percent of retelling of something she said recently, but it's pretty close, Like I get it. It's entertaining, but if people are kind of morally offended by that, it's like it's the oldest bit of as on the internet, like don't feed the trolls, and at a certain point much you know, much like Wolke Media, it's like if you hate it, but you won't stop talking about it, like, dude, this is kind of on you.

You know, you see this massive explosion and deaths of despair. You know, whether it's it's opioids, whether it's self inflicted, you know, a gunshot wound, alcoholism, and that speaks of a society that's fundamentally very sick, right, people who feel as if there's nothing justifying their existence. And when you combine that with this kind of epidemic of loneliness, right, we're like, okay, well, something's deeply, deeply wrong. And like there's a part of that that's a political or part

of it, it's spiritual as well. But to me, it's sort of a you know, microcosm of a broader crisis of meaning across the West, where you have these cultures, you have these nations that can't really justify their own existence anymore. They believe and many people believe that these these nations, these peoples are irredeemably sinful, right, they have done something wrong and they don't really deserve to exist anymore. And see the same thing with many people, and it's like, well, no,

I like these things. I like these people. I want them to continue to exist. They're a good thing. They're forced for good, as someone might say. And so you know, if you believe that that project is in crisis, it's like, well, one, all right, there's your purpose, Like that's that's a huge thing to do, you know, whether that is your literal bloodline, you know, your culture, your nation, whatever it is. Like

that's that's an anecdote to that purposeful purposelessness. But also like there're a great number of and this has been kind of proven right in the recent DJ files. Right, there's a great.

very there's a clear enemy in that. And so it's why do you consider myself in a certain way to be kind of a political partisan, not in any way, not in any violent sense, of course, but like that that is something to throw yourself into, you know, that is a thing to dedicate your life to. And again, right, this is one of the things that I think is very interesting and it doesn't have to be explicitly political. In fact, many of the people doing this are not

political at all, and they're better for it. But one of the things that was interesting about the pandemic is that it was a massive sorting event. And I noticed this in my immediate peer group. I saw it in others as well, that it sort of caused a split and it was basically who is going to be normal and who's going to go along with this? And those

two populations over time have produced dramatically different results. Right, the kind of normal population, which I guess in a statistical sense is not it was a dissident thing, but historically normal. It's like, okay, well, you know those people are doing things people have normally done, right. They you know, they're starting families, they're building relationships, they're doing what you would expect. And that population who hasn't has sort of,

to be honest, kind of devolved. They live in this sort of extended adolescence, the kind of effectively pointless lives of consumption where you know, they may have their hobbies and activities, but really not much of consequence is done.

And I think that that is sort of an expression of exactly that what I'm talking about, where it's like that dissent, that break from the kind of mainstream norm is basically what is required to be a human, not in a biological sense, of course, but to do the things that mankind is traditionally done, which seems to, again going back to our conversation about the power process, have that synthesis of accountability and meaning which prevents either implicitly,

like explicitly, or effectively ending your life. Like okay, sure you may not have you know, suck started a shotgun, but like if you're you know, an aging you know cat lady who does nothing, but you feeder animals, buy things on Netflix and or buy things on Amazon and watch Netflix, it's like, well, functionally, from a biological perspective, you're dead. Like you did not pass through that filter.

And so maybe I'm speaking vaguely here, Mike, but I think that like that is what is to be done, and that is sort of that anecdote as person would say that anecdote to chaos, that anecdote to meaninglessness, And really I see that's what that that is. What's happening is that you you have a great number of people who are looking for a meaning, looking for a reason to exist, and you see this. I think it was

real clear. Just did a poll about this. One of my buddies sent it in talking about how the you know, the return to religiosity is being driven by effectively gen z men. And you could look at that as basically a out like a crying out for meaning, crying out for like why am I here? What am I supposed

to do? And you could look at you know, the rise of you know, left wing activism among women, which we spoke about earlier, is sort of a zeno religion, like a xeno estrogen, right, a molecule that your body thinks as a hormone and so it bonds onto it. It's like, well, let's put politics aren't really a religion. It doesn't have to be to be left wing politics. But you know, politics aren't really a religion. They don't

quite fulfill the same role. They don't do the same things for you do much like you know, whatever chemical from your shampoo doesn't actually do what estrogen does in your body. Well, but it's close enough. Right, You'll latch onto that because that does provide you with a narrative to tell yourself about the world. Right, I am a I am an advocate for this Palestine for a little bit. Now it's you know, immigrants, it'll probably be you know, some drug dealer who got ventilated by the police in

three months from now. It cycles through, but again, is a a narrative is something to tell about yourself, why you exist, what you should do? You know, what is your place in the world, and you know fundamentally, and it's actually uh, sort of phuitous. We you know, mentioned Campbell earlier, because humans are mimetic, right, they tell themselves stories. They placed themselves in a narrative. I mean, this is why we have such a visceral emotional connection to stories

that are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. Right, Like you read Homer and you're like, Okay, some of the language a little archaic. I don't one hundred percent understand what's going on, but you're like, all, I get this this, but it resonates on a deep kind of brainstem level because even if you aren't literally Achilles, so like's that's a story I can sink into it. It explains I can imagine myself as that, where I can

relate to that in a certain way. And fundamentally, right, there's a large group of people who find themselves with either no narrative or a very weak one where it's like, well, I guess my narrative is that I am irrevocable, like irredeemably sinful because of my you know, my culture, my skin color, my religion, whatever. And I guess that that

just means I'm bad forever. And the one thing I can do is sort of empty consumption, you know, hitting a certain number of you know, serotonin receptors, and that's supposed to give my life purpose and meaning, and very clearly that is not working. And so I think what you see is people casting around for an answer to that, whether that's a literal religion, a zeno religion, there is

a a great need for that. And one more thing, and I'm sorry, I'll get off this soapbox, but you oftentimes see older people and conservatives making fun of the kind of you know, weird theater kids who post neo pronouns. Right, the zs are types on social media. I don't know, I don't even know what that is. Educate, Oh, Neo pronouns are all the like really ridiculous, like I'm not

a he she or I'm not a day. I've made up my own like zs aer uh, And they get increasingly more fractal and ridiculous, to the point where it's like literally no human has ever uttered this combination of syllables. But I guess if I don't say that, you're going to report me to HR? Who am I joking? None of these people at jobs? But uh, in that right, there is something on its face completely and totally ridiculous, like you called yourself a demi boy and you dress

like a kid from a nineties Siers catalog? Like what is that? And it is like it is ridiculous on its face, But from my perspective, what that is is it's a desire for meeting. It's a desire for identity. What am I? I don't feel as if there's any answer to that question, So I guess I will just have to construct for myself this you kind of cobbled together, you know, brand affiliations and personal aesthetic and pronoun to

create some sort of identity for myself. And it's sort of tragic because historically that is not where people derive their identity from. It was, you know, from their their nation, their people, the institutions they surrounded themselves with. And this is sort of elegantly explained in you know, in Putnam's

Bowling Alone. Right, the death of these sort of civic institutions, these places where people made friends, met their spouse, derived a sense of purpose from right, These institutions required something of you know, their members and so general. Later, it's it's no shock that people are searching for identity and many of them come up with really retarded ones like yet sure, where you can laugh at them and should. But that speaks to that kind of wider crisis that

you see in all the other examples I've mentioned. Yeah, that's that's kind of my I guess, rambling and organized thoughts on it, Like.

that time period of what you know, questioning everything. And I say when I say objective, I mean questioning everything and asking you know, you know why, and not being afraid to speak. But you know, it's like on the left is still I don't know if he knows the left or right. Kevin Diana's got me thinking differently now after I talk to him the other day.

But but but anyway, you know this this idea of being an absolutist, and now I'm the further on the right. It's like there's more dividers, more dividers, Middle East, huge divider, right Maga versus people asking questions, huge divider. So it's like it's being cut and cut and cut and cut. And the only conclusion I can come from that to come take from that because I get heat up both sides, as probably you do as well. Because I think I'm objective. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you know, you might get a

sense maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm totally you know, biased in my own absolutist world. But uh, I feel like if you are an absolutist and you're you're you're you're in a cult where you think you just this is the way it is, this is the way it's going to be, and I don't know, I I mean, that's not what I want. I kind of went off on my own rant. There, No, no, not at all. So I think that.

mad with this one. But you kind of see this with the Catholic Church right where it's like, if you're one hundred and thirty IQ artist and you want to get really into you know, stimistic law and all that you can't that exists, you can deep dive into that, and that's Catholicism. But also Catholicism is like you know, when like a Mexican lady like lights a candle with a picture of Saint on it and that's about as

much as she gets from it. I'm not trying to pick on Mexicans, but you know what I mean, there's that simple, kind of peasant version of it. And okay, that's one thing for the Church. But you see the same thing with any idea, right that you know, there's this sort of you know, vanguard whatever form it takes that you know, is interrogating ideas has a nuanced version of it, and when you know, expanded to you know, a mass, it gets necessarily dumbed downed and turned into

a series of slogans. Right, it becomes a meme. Right, that kind of infectious idea which has almost no place for nuance. There's there's it is catchy and spreadable and short. Right, it's the difference between you know, oh, you know, Nietzsche

was like the nihilism. Man, you did nothing, God is dead, you know, nothing matters that that kind of like quick, you know, kind of thumbnail view versus like, you know, actually reading about the distinction between you know, the apolony and the dynasy and or whatever, you know, the kind of real meat of it.

at you. And that's always the thing you have to remember, which is like, look like most people don't understand the most complicated version of an idea, right, they get the kind of quick and dirty version, and they you know, they go with that, and that being you know, incorrect or incomplete doesn't discredit the kind of core of it. You saw this ten years ago with all the like SJW destroyed content right where it's like, well, I can

debate a you know, eighteen year old college freshman. It's like, sure you can, man, But like, dude, I could find you know, an eighteen year college freshman.

And so within one broad you know, kind of meta political claim, you can have conversations on you know, the merits of something.

we have a common frame of reference. But and this is part of the reason why I think these like religion debates are so mindendingly agonizing, as it's like, okay, well, if I'm quoting the Bible and your quote like the bog of a geta or whatever, we can't have a discussion there because fundamentally we're all operating off of these different, ultimately unprovable claims about the nature of reality, right like I can't prove to you physically that Christ raised from

the dead, and you can't prove to me as this hypothetical Hindu I don't know enough about Hinduism to even know what claim they would make cowser sacred. We'll go with that, right, that is fundamentally improvable. And so what I think again with that kind of totalizing instinct, is that politics is fractured to the place where that common ground has gone away. They're operating under fundamentally different metapolitical narratives and what is the purpose of life, even down

to something like what is a man? What is a woman? And so without that common ground, you it's Hindus and Christians, right, They're they're working on fundamentally different you know, axioms, and so that I think that's a big part of the reason why debate culture has kind of died out, you know, like you still see some of it, but it's really not anywhere near the kind of high cultural prominence it used to be, because, to be honest, it seems as

if many people have realized that it's ultimately futile. And also you see this in politics as well, right, Like people are more and more, even on the legislative level, abandoning the pretense of appealing to everybody, right, abandoning the pretense of like, oh, well, you know, my opponent across the stage for me, we disagree about a great many things, but we both want, you know, a bright future for America.

It's like that's I mean, that still exists. And like if you're from like you know, I'm say Iola, I don't actually know that much about Iolist. That maybe a profoundly ignorant statement, like in the kind of more historically normal parts of the country, but like, fundamentally politics, the culture war, and they're kind of one and the same, have become a war of belief, right, a war between those mutually incompatible means. And so I think that's another reason.

And this is I guess something we went into in our last conversation. To forgive me if you're bored hearing you repeat myself. But I think that's another part of the reason why we see that sort of totalizing that you're just describing that totalizing behavior. And also here's another example that cultural dissolution I spoke about earlier, where the meaning, the institutions, the responsibilities that created meaning. As those have

gone away, politics has stepped into their place. So my friend arn McIntyre wrote a book, The Total State, which is about exactly this. It's a very good book. I've read it, you should too. But he makes a point that many others have made that for total politics, total control by the state, this kind of tyranny, there can be no rivals. So in the Roman context, right, they had to smash the old families for the empire to

be born. Like if you have this sort of you know, familial kind of mafia organization that runs the state, well you can't have an empire in that at the same time, or you know, you can't have you know, the church and you know the revolutionary government, right you. So as those institutions have fallen apart, both through deliberate action and just lack of interest, the state has stepped in. So going back to kind of the sexual revolution, right, all

of the institutions you had around family formation. As those broke apart, well the government steps in. So now you have you know, divorce court, you have CPS, you have all of these things which exist to take up the slack. But also that's now a new way that politics affects your life because if you're in government, now you get to dictate the rules of all of the those different things.

You have created an entry. You've taken something from the a political because I mean, let's be honest, right, Like can you imagine talking to like a farmer from eighteen hundred about like family politics. It's like, what does that even mean? You know? I have I guess I vote because I own property, Like it's sort of beyond the scope of politics, right, Well, that enters into the political arena,

and it is more and more stuff gets dragged into that. Well, well, everything becomes political and two, the total amount of power the state has grows and grows and grows because now the state doesn't just to get to decide, you know, if you get you know, like frog marched into a you know, a frontline battalion in a war. Well, they also get to decide do you have custody of your kids?

They also get to decide, you know, any number of things you mentioned hr like, let's be honest, that's sort of an arm of the state, you know, of a plus or minus. And so I think that that's another part of it as well. Right, that is why politics is totalizing because more and more, even down to you know, the relationship between parents and children, the relationship between you know, husbands and wives have entered into the romal politics. What I'm getting at there, Mike, do.

this in a couple different ways. One of my buddies, Thomas, he talks about this because he deals with many of these same issues. And he said, look, man, I've been in this for longer than you've been alive. And when I started out, you were the biggest deal in the world. If you had a physical newsletter with one hundred people subscribe to, that meant you were a big deal. You

were important. Look, man, if you have like one hundred listeners on your podcast, no one cares there's nothing and look like I'm not saying that if you were a podcaster with one hundred listeners you should neck yourself. Not my point at all, but to say like that has scope has increased. But also like within the the political groups I'm affiliated with, the conferences I'm going to, not only they're growing in terms of numbers, but also the quality of people is rapidly expanding. I went to the

Old Gory Club OGC conference in Tennessee last year. I've been three times down three years in a row, and there was a marked difference from year two to year three that I went there. Not to say the guys there before weren't good guys, not at all, but I was meeting more and more guys who are capable, like

competent people with something to lose. You know, a guy who's in his forties working in tech in one of those big tech cities, pulling down a whole lot of money, and he basically like, look, man, like, things aren't going well and I think I need to do something about it, Like I feel compelled for the sake of my family. It's like, okay, good, like not good that that's happening.

To you, not good that we're in this situation, but like that's a strong sign when people who are serious, people who have something to lose, who have something from a certain perspectives better that they could be doing. That's a strong that's a leading indicator. You see this as well, Like and I won't name any names, but like as

I'm sure you'rewhare Michael. You can see people's names and emails on substack, and you know, every once in a while you get email Okay, I know that name, so you google it and you're like, oh, shoot, that's actually that guy. Why is why is he here? Because you don't just default to our weird corner of the internet, right, that speaks of something, And so generally speaking, like in the mid to long term, I think I think we're gonna win. Like the short medium term is likely not

going to be pleasant. But I look at even my friends in South Africa, the guys that after Form, the guys that Arerania, and I see a country that is way worse than we are now. Right, they don't have power, they don't have roads, a horrific crime, and yet there is still that kind of light there like they're building something they're making something. They made their own university how

to scratch. It's like, okay, that's real, Like that's something even in these kind of horrible circumstances on paper, it's like, well that is like that's there's something redemptive in that, right, that is again one to call it like you can do it. You know, look at these guys who had it worse than you are, in a worse situation, they

were able to make something worth preserving. And I think that that is incredibly white pulling from the perspective of like okay, like something can be done, like there is a way to beat this kind of cultural degradation. And also like again that I think that that is very much kind of an anecdote or antidote, excuse me to

that that kind of crisis of meaning. And so when it comes to the show to medium term, like on any issue where you're like, oh, do you think this is going to get better or worse, It's like, oh, dude, it's going to get way worse if present trends continue. Like you know, you look at something as stupid as like driving down the road and not being hit by a guy who doesn't know how to drive in an eighteen wheeler. It's like, well, I's probably gonna get worse.

Like that seems to be, you know, given to current trends, you know, the demographic, to crime, any one of these. It's like, okay, well, yeah, I accept that analysis. But the idea that you know, things are going to get worse soon and they will stay worse forever, I fundamentally

disagree with. And again it's because you know, I see, you know, so many young guys who are discontented, who feel as if they're being screwed and are taking the appropriate measures, who are organizing, We're building you know, networks of like minded individuals, We're building things, whether business or political institutions, who are basically saying like, oh okay, like this sucks, I'm going to fix it, like I am going to make it better. And I think that that

attitude is exactly what's needed. And there's a great, a great segment in you know, Nick Land's Cracker Factory in the book Dark Enlightenment, which I think I've referenced like four times in the last week because it keeps coming up. We He talks about how for you know, Western anglos in particular, that the default mode of conflict resolution is secession, basically like, ah, all right, I lost, I'll go start

my own thing. He said it all across America, right, like the formation of Rhode Island, even where it's basically like, oh shoot, we lost that fight. We have our own thing now. And you see that cultural idea carried obviously the American Civil War, but also even into something like white flight. Right, well, it's like, I guess I'll start a suburb somewhere like I don't. I don't want to be a part of this thing anymore. And it's understandable. But eventually you reach a wall, right you can't run

any further. And if I can close on this, it reminds me of a great essay translated in English or written I can't quite remember, by my buddy Ernst Vinzel, conscious Carocle, member of the team in after Form, where he talked about the importance of digging a trench, and he was basically saying, He's like, look like, when you retreat, you don't retreat to run away forever. You retreat to make a defensible position. You retreat so that you have time to dig a trench. We have something to defend

and that essay was incredibly impactful in my life. It's actually not a huge It was at almost the exact time decided to start a podcast, decided to get involved in this, to put out eventually, to put out my face and make this what I do. And I was walking around downtown Richmond. They were tearing down the monuments and I was listening to this, walking down Monument Avenue. The least statue was still up ritually defaced, covered in graffiti,

and I was walking past. I believe it was Davis, might have been the admiral whose name I can't remember, but looking at these just holes in the ground where you know, the symbol of a culture had been dug out and replaced with just a pit of mud. Listening to him read this, listening to talking about, you know, retreating to find something defensive, and I was like, God, damn it, he's right, And so yeah, book, things are

gonna get worse. Like you know, all of the available metrics, at least the ones I'm seeing, things are gonna get worse. But fundamentally, I view us, our guys, whoever you know it is, listening to this is like containing the seeds of or a generation of renaissance of something that could actually fix this. And I might be wrong, you know, I might you know, be overly romantic in that, but to me, like I see that as being an immense,

an immense white pill, right, a case for hope. And look like, if it doesn't work, if this project all turns to dust, well look man, it's better than watching Netflix and blowing your brains out. I guess like it. At the very least, it is a meaning to your life, which is I think, you know, even if it is ultimately unsuccessful, there's sort of a heroism and a doomed cause. And I don't think our cause is due.

forget anybody any I think that's it. But you know, talking to you guys is I'm gonna group you here for a second because it does provide me with a practical approach. Provide, not provide me, provide a practical approach on where we're at and working within the system the best that you can. And it's it's great to hear, you know, And so I appreciate you, you know, taking time for me to taking time to come on.

has decided to actually do something about it. So for those wondering, like, oh, what should I do Johann Kurz leaving the legacy, that'll be my That'll be my shill, check that book out. But there were many minds devoted to this problem, and like Kurrs, many others, many serious people who could be, you know, making lots of money and not thinking about this, who've decided that this issue is worth their time.

this book. I like it. I've just bought a you know, a bundle of of off Amazon, and actually I still have one more copy. I just haven't had time to give it to the guy I think he'd be. For the point is, yeah, what can you say about that guy? He's very, very talented, And I've got to catch up

on that episode I have. After he and I spoke last, which is probably six months ago, I haven't been in touch and I have something I need to fix because uh yeah, as you've said, great guy and very very uh well spoken, which is a you know, commendable trait.

you hear, you hear this stuff. And so I was talking were specifically referencing my conversations with both Will and you that I was having this week, and I said, I, you know, I gotta tell you, the younger people, some of the ones I talked to, they're not clueless, they're not dumb, they're not stupid, and you know what, they're taking their own initiative. They don't want to go to the corporate route. They don't want to go to the

traditional and you know what, I don't blame them. I wish I would have been that age to recognize it because I hated it. I hated college, no offense to people to go, but I hated corporate sitting at a desk all day long. So I have a lot of optimism and hope and you know, I hate that word for your like people in your age, the gen z s.

ten percent, Well, it's always a minority, right, So if we're talking about the large the largest groups, right, a whole general, especially one where you know you still have and I'm a little fuzzy on this, but you still have kids in high school, right who are part of that generation. It's like, well, you're probably not wrong, Like sure, I'm one hundred percent sure that you know, nine eyed out of one hundred nineteen year olds or morons. I

certainly was. But at the same time, right, we've got to understand one who will be talking about because like in a culture like America that's incredibly fractured and diverse

in both positive and negative sense of that. It's like, well, who are you talking about, man, because, like, you know, I know a bunch of guys in you know, the homeschool space, Like I was talking to this morning at the gym, and he's got a twelve year old that you know, works jobs with him, you know, like it helps his dad as a contractor, knows how to put you know, shingles up and do all that kind of stuff. And it's like, Okay, well that's an incredibly capable young man,

well above his years. So like if we're talking about that group orsus anyone else, It's like, I understand the appeal. And you see the same with boomers, right, people love to throw it around, but uh, you know, if we're gonna be adults, we have to talk about groups. I understand that. But at the same time, it's like any statement is inaccurate on that level, you know, on a

personal level. And we spoke about this last time. Uh, And actually this is funny because this sort of connects to our you know, our eventual topic, right, which is that this war in Iran, which is there is a sharp generational divide in America and as we said last time, I really think that is to what degree has the system ever really worked for you? And sure, you know there are people like Harry Sisson or whatever that you know, the DNC twink that people are always making fun off

like that guy's the bought and paid for right. He probably makes a lot of money directly or indirectly from his activism, like you'll never see him be anything other than that. But I think for a lot of people that that kind of you know, college to corporate path is either not an option or so unappealing of an option that you're sort of forced to go elsewhere. It's funny, I think last time, I'm speaking to you about, you know,

my immediate peer group. And you know, one of my best friends, guy I lived with for a long time

before I got married. He and I were talking and you know, oh, give no biographical detail on that, but he's the guy who sort of threaded the needle right, went to a good school, good grade scholarship, got into a you know, relatively lucrative corporate job, and he easily, you know, he's got a large you know, runway in front of him again to do something else because the institutions like that, even if you can sort of I guess I've said thread the needle, and we've certainly mentioned before,

you know, the racial discrimination angle, the weird gender politics of the workplace, which are very much felt in corporate America. But also one of the weird transitions and you see this at all, you know, many different industries, is that, particularly over the last five years, there's been a move away from training people. And you see this when anytime someone's complaining about looking for jobs right where it's like the bare minimum entry level position says two to five

years experience. And Okay, maybe is some of that because their positions they're not even looking to fill or it's one of those well we don't really need this, but if someone comes in who's massively overqualified, will take them? Or is it you know, part of the kind of uh, you know, like ethnic rackets that we found out about, you know, with different hiring practices, you know, the whole ongoing you know, h one B scandal that all may be part of it, but fundamentally a lot of these

institutions are not interested in developing people, right. They would much rather find someone that someone else has paid to develop and then bring them in at the kind of middle level, and so, okay, sure, sometimes people are able to, you know, like my friend kind of you know, shoot

the gap. If you're unusually competent in your right place, right time, you know, you're able to get thrown into a position that is expecting a lot of you, and you're able to rise that that one hundred percent exists. But that creates a very weird culture of there is nobody under a certain age and no one without you know, a certain number of kind of years in that institution.

And so one of the things that we're seeing is that a lot of companies, because we've been talking about you and I personally, the people this problem with how different industries are gray right, they have a relatively small number of highly competent people nearing retirement who know how XYZ works, you know, the power grid, the you know, the water treatment plant or whatever, and they are retiring that knowledge is being lost with them, Well, at least

what I'm seeing in their articles on this. You can certainly find them if you search where companies have basically started to make the gamble that well, what if we just pay that guy two x his working rate to sit in a cubicle for a year and a half and dump all of his knowledge into an AI that will solve the problem. Now we don't know if it

will or not. I'm perhaps a little skeptical, but you know, that corporate route is, even if you can make it in the door, very difficult to you know, advance up the level because you have a large number of people who are by virtue of the sort of entry requirements ahead of you and also sort of bought into that institution. And so my buddy and others to basically been like, you know what, like, I don't want to be behind this big glut of people who are ten to fifteen

years above me forever. I'll have to wait until they retire to ever rise above a certain level. The whole population pyramid is really distorted due to know a whole number of different things. And also, you know, the point is all of that is not just me complaining about the job market. It's to say that again, these sort of trends and forces that push people out don't tend

to only push them out along one vector. Finally bringing it back to you know, the Iran war, we're seeing a very sharp divide I think it was New York Times. I'm not entirely sure it was a prestige outlet. Forgive me for not having a citation to hand that broke down opinions on Israel favorable or unfavorable by demographic as you would expect. More Republicans like Israel to Democrats. That

you know, goes back to Carter and Reagan. Don't need to get into that, but the divide on age is rather sharp, and they put it at fifty basically that the majority of self described Republicans have unfavorable views of of Israel. It's a pretty dramatic majority. It's nearing sixty percent obviously, you know when you count that fifty plus, which is the majority of the Republican Party, of course,

so it's you know, more heavily weighted that shifts. And this is what I've seen anecdotally is that my friends and peers, and sure some of them are like me, political nutcases, but most aren't. They're just kind of normal guys. Are by the standards of the ADL, extremely anti Semitic. And is that personal right? Are they going to their accountant's house with a burning cross?

movements tend to be led by one man. But you know, just given the kind of limitations of current American politics, at some point, Donald Trump is not going to be around anymore. He's either going to retire or he's going to pass away. He's, you know, an old man. So the question was always, well, you know, what becomes of this project after him? Right, what becomes of Maga or this kind of marriage of Mega and the Republican Party.

And one of the really shall we say, interesting dynamics in twenty four was that men under thirty swung hard for Trump. Right in certain states, they were, you know, the deciding factor. It's been two years. Forgive me, I

don't remember all my electoral maps. But this was a well reported upon, you know, feature of that election, and it was recognized by Democrats to such a degree that they started dumping a lot of money into right Harry Sissan, others, these kind of like mega or not MAGA sorry, like DNC, you know, TikTok influencers who you know. I'm not on TikTok. I don't understand it, but I see some bleed over.

But also you may remember that rather uh, how would you say this, kindly uh, rather well built Hispanic woman that the DMC brought in as their sort of like, you know, ambassador to young men. She was going around to like uh, you know, frat parties and things like that. It went about as well as you would imagine. So it was incompetent, but at the very at least there was a reaction. There's a recognition that this group has shifted. If we, you know, assume normal trends that people tend

to become more conservatives they age. If this group is already you know, a strong leader for you know, a strong sort of support of GOP, that will create problems. We need to hit that off. And that firstwhile effort was not successful quite simply just due to you know, the last ten years of you know, kind of like woke racial guilt politics. You know, this sort of extreme miss injury. It wasn't really working. But and it's not

just this, but it is a part of it. This sort of salavish devotion, uh to the state of Israel has really alienated those people. And okay, sure, in many cases, is it you know, the most aeradyite kind of John Jay Meersheimer, you know, breaking down, you know, the power politics. No, it's gut level, it's instinctual. It's wrong in certain you know, provable factual instances. But people feel as if they were

sold America first. They were sold you know, fixing our domestic problems, and what they got was a bunch of court cases. You know, things got wrapped up by the judiciary, which, okay, fair enough, isn't necessarily the president or the Republican Party's fault per se. And a huge shift to effectively neocon foreign wars. Right time is a flat circle. It's two thousand and six all over again. Nothing has changed.

And sure, foreign policy doesn't necessarily matter a ton of elections directly, right, it doesn't matter. Like to be honest, I think most people, especially most right leaning people, are relatively ambivalent on this war. But the problem is the perception, if we can use that term, that this is the highest priority, right, this is the actual purpose of everything, because all of those other secondary priorities have bent for this one. If foreign you know, ally quote unquote.

from Iran, but who knows. But to your point, you don't know where this is coming from and who's putting it out and.

on a mountain in Arizona. It's hard. A thousand feet is hard, and these are well, travel trails that I was on very populated, you know, groomed for hiking. So I'm having a hard time buying the story about this pilot seven thousand feet crashing a plane three thousand feet So that's a hard hike. Sorry, no, no, not at all.

I mean, man, I don't know. It seems like this war isn't going great, just from the perspective of, well, are people clamoring to take credit or are they looking to blame other people? Seems as if they're looking to attribute plame. Wh's just from a human behavior standpoint indicates to me this isn't some sort of soaring success. But at the same time, look like we're fighting a real country with real air defenses and a real government. Like do I think that's good? No, But on balance, it

seems as if our planes are doing relatively well. They're not raining out of the sky like it's you know, footage from World War Two. So I want to admit that, like, not all of the coverage we were seeing is honest or true or fairly sees what we're fairly portrays what is possibly because again that's the other part. We don't really have, you know, sort of a divine like a

plumb line on this. But I will say, big picture, what I'm feeling is sort of what I joked about earlier, right time is a flat circle like this, you know, decade and a half process to kick the neo cons out, to get away from the conservatism. The governance of George W. Bush has failed, or at least it's deeply, deeply imperiled. Because look like the anti War Coalition wasn't the biggest part of MAGA, but you can trace a direct line from anti Bush to the Tea Party to the roots

of MAGA. It was people who basically said, I want a government run for my benefit, an America first government, and when government officials, Rubio, Trump himself and others have basically said, well, Israel sort of forced us into this, right, we didn't want to do it, but you know the exact reason why. But they basically, you know, put down an ultimatum and so we felt like we had to. Well,

it doesn't feel like an America first government, right. That feels as if the priorities of a foreign nation, excuse me, rank higher than domestic ones. That naturally rankles people. You see this as well in the response to you know, the Joe Kent resignation. I assume everyone's heard about it. Basically Joe Kent, leader of some office in DNI for counter terrorism, resigned basically said, you know, I can no

longer continue with this war. Seems as if you know, Israel goddess into this, and okay, you can believe him, you cannot believe him. You can think Joe Kent is a rat bastard, you can think he's an American hero. Realistically, does that matter? Right, He's a minor d and I official from an office that before now, like I guarantee you, neither you nor I knew about or could name you

another director of that position. Right. But the response from the sort of Zionist aligned media is telling you have Alan Doshowitz noted massage enthusiast freaking out, absolutely losing his mind. This piece on substack. You can read where he calls, you know, Joe Kent, you know, an anti Semite, Jew hating, neo Nazi Nazi lover, and you're like, well, okay, man, he didn't say anything much Jews at all. He didn't, you know, use ugly or a piece of racial language.

I haven't really heard any stories about Joe Kent making an extracurricular trip down to Argentina to you know, hang out with some hundred year old guys. To me, that seems unhinged. It seems insane. And when you're seeing it from other figures like Mark Levin, who's been heavily boosted by the President a number of times, effectively frothing at the mouth, you know, calling for blood, it seems kind

of insane. And it seems especially insane, and you're like, wait a minute, well, why don't you care this much about my stuff, the stuff that I voted for you to do as a citizen of this country first and foremost. That seems as if that's the deal. And look, I'm not ideological about this. I understand corruption is sort of a fact of America, a fact of political organization period. You know, our leaders are you know, ultimately you know, human,

and you know they have their moral failings. But it seems as if a request for h the leaders of my country to be primarily concerned with the running of my country, I mean that seems kind of reasonable. You know, I'm not even asking for you to be this sort of like wise philosopher king, just to care more about me than some other country. And when you combine that with you know, the fact that another big reason that Trump was elected is because you know, Biden's economy was

was awful. It felt hopeless, It felt as if, you know, everyone was kind of you know, losing. You know that people were getting poor. And not only has the economy not gotten better, but the result of this war have made it worse. Right, the strait of horm moves might or might not be open right now. It's sort of unclear. We're in the middle of this like bizarre maybe cease

fire maybe not again. The reporting on this has been really difficult, But fundamentally, when you you know, you sort of run on a like I'll make everything stop sucking so much, and you do things that materially make people's lives harder. For instance, we've all seen gas prices shoot up. Well, okay, does you know the lady who works at the local cracker barrel? Does she care about the fact that the new Ayatola may or may not be gay? Or does she even know what the IRGC is? Probably not, she

doesn't care. And if she voted for Donald Trump, it was to make things better. And when things are getting worse, and things aren't getting worse due to you know, for instance, a free hurricane or just you know, the way that the global economy is going, but because of an active choice to do something you promised not to on behalf of a foreign alleged ally you still have to look around and you're like, wait a minute, what was the point, right? What was the reason that I, you know, colored in

that little bubble? And so I think for many people it feels as if, right, we tried to do what we were supposed to do, right, vote the bums out, And very similar thing happened in twenty sixteen, albeit you know, at sort of a lower level of amplitude, and at least the first time around, you could kind of look at it and say, you know what, Well, you know,

they tried all this stuff. They tried to impeach him, they tried to they kept him tied down so we couldn't do all that stuff, and they hated him so much they cheated to get him out. You believe that I happened to. But so there was a story there, There was something that you could say, well, you know what, this is why pulling the lever didn't do what it was supposed to do. And I think what makes this one particularly cruel is for that first six months to

a year, seemed as if it was work right. We had Doge going around, you know, draining the swamp right, you know, getting rid of all this fraud. And sure, you know, there were this kind of flurry of executive orders and judicial stays going back and forth, but it felt as if something was happening right, they were making a good effort of it. And then you know, naturally the momentum starts to slow. Fair enough, you had Operation Midnight Hammer, which made a lot of splash on Twitter.

I don't think it really mattered for real people. It was so short, and it was like, okay, I guess we blew up their nuclear program. Who knows either way? Right, whatever, Okay, But then when it feels as if that momentum, that positive sentiment has run out, you know, you're you're dealing with like real domestic issues and the entire focus has shifted to the exact sort of foreign policy that ten

years ago Donald Trump was criticizing. Right, he was making fun of the other Republican candidates in twenty fifteen in a way that shot him to popularity, right, making fun of Jeb Bush. You know, you can go back to the tweets Ruth's criticizing Obama, and so to me, you know, even aside from how well is this war going, are we, you know, kicking ass and taking names? Are we kicking ass? Taking names and then creating further problems? Is it a debacle?

Who knows? But I think that the real problem and the real problem for a lot of people, and the reason that you see support from you know, young men just absolutely disintegrated right in the raw aggregate. I believe Trump's under thirty approval on his first day and office was negative one, which, okay, that's still negative but compare that to other Republican presidents. Right, that's a win. It's now deep into the double digits negative, right, very very unpopular.

ballot races across the nation. And what's frustrating to me is taking setting aside my feelings about this because, as I've said before, not a huge fan of the State of Israel for any number of reasons, but Okay, setting that aside, the political calculation here is baffling to me on on its face, because look like setting aside this, setting aside, you know, gas prices or anything else, the president had a pretty narrow gap to shoot. It's probably going to lose the House, but had a decent chance

of keeping the Senate. Why does that matter? Well, one, you know, so he doesn't just get stuck doing nothing forever, vetoing you know, pants on heads, retarded bills and getting nothing done. But also, let's be honest, the Democrats want to impeach him. It've been very clear about that, and not only impeach him, but prosecute him and his friends. You've heard this rallying cry for certainly the last year, but even before that. I see no reason to disbelieve that.

And so to me, that is really why the midterms matter, because you know, it's effectively a really decent shot of you know, Donald Trump, Trump being impeached and people around him facing jail time. And so, you know, I and naively assumed that people would be, if nothing else, at least self interested enough to avoid that. Right, you know, I don't want to be impeached. I don't want to

go to jail. I don't want to, you know, be under the thumb of you know, figures like Letitia James, who you know, I believe suit him for five hundred four hundred, five hundred and forty four million dollars right to some kind of absurd, astronomical sum for you know, something that his accountant maybe should have gotten fined for. Whatever. The point is like, that is a very real fear, right,

that is a very real consequence. And also we are also dealing with is shattering any chances of MAGA becoming a multi generational product. We spoke last time about the you know, the sort of dire economic circumstances where many young people also feel as if they're getting screwed over

to sort of pad the retirement of baby boomers. And when you combine that with you know, figures like Lindsay Graham saying, you know, I feel as if my highest political goal is to go back to South Carolina and convince them to send their daughters and sons to die in the Middle East. You're like, well, wait a minute, I'm one of those sons, you know, I'm you know, I guess currently depending on this is another news story I was very difficult to verify if the age of

selective service has been increased or not. Who knows. But the fact that that story went incredibly viral and I had, you know, my friends basically walking up to me shilling their phone and they're like, is this true? And I'm like, I have no idea indicates right that there is a lot of anxiety around that, a lot of feeling like wait a minute.

about it. They feel as if like, wait a minute, am I not only getting screwed because I can't buy a house or I can't you know, get a decent paying job, but also, now you know, you, Lindsey Graham, expect me to go fight some sort of ill conceived war. And again, I don't think there will ever be another Vietnam style draft for a whole number of different reasons.

I don't think it's politically viable. But at the same time, the fact that anecdotally people are worried about it, people were concerned about it.

something else that's gonna screw me over. And I think that's the feeling of a lot of people of like, not only did everything stay the same, right, did it just continue to be kind of shitty? But now this, right, you're adding another thing onto it. And at least from what I've seen, like, I don't see a lot of guys saying like, all right, great time to get out my shade guavera T shirt. They're just much like we were talking about with the corporate world, looking at you know,

the political system, be like, what can I even do? Right?

It seems as if there's no place for me, because really it seems as if and this may be the lesson of both you know, Ukraine and Israel, it's that you know, you're allowed some leeway domestically, but on the foreign policy front, it's always John McCain, right, no matter what you do, you're always going to be, you know, funding some foreign war the very least, if not, you know, sending people to you know, kill and die there and look like I'm not And I get this feeling as well,

kind of you know, emotionally opposed to war as a concept, Like there are certainly guys in the anti war movement who view every war as illegitimate. I don't you know, I'm not some sort of peace nick, But to me and I think the thing that galls a lot of guys is it's like, well, this is so transparently not in our interest. This is so transparently not even our idea.

So for instance, right, you have the Leaderanian negotiator, you know, in kind of back channel talks, trying to get this thing wound down, and he and his wife get killed in Pakistan by and his Ralely strike and you're like, wait a minute, aren't you guys supposed to be our friends, right, why are you killing the guys we're trying to talk to or similarly, write this kind of weird abortive maybe a cease fire, maybe not where you know, uh, Israel

just continued striking Lebanon, you know, after we had sort of done some sort of deal. And look, don't get me wrong, it seems as if the Pakistani's kind of screwed the pooch on that one, like there was a

big miscommunication. But nonetheless, right, it's sort of like that, you know, you've ever seen it, like at a bar where it's you know, a guy, you kind of a big dude, and his tiny little girlfriend and she starts picking fights, you know, and now he's the guy who has to sort of sort this out afterwards, you know,

the kind of drug sorority girl. But like that feels as if the situation the situation we're in where it's like, well, we're not the ones making these decisions, but we're on the hook for right you have again, you know, Israeli officials confirming that, you know, idea of soldiers will not participate in a ground invasion of Iran. Again, I think that a ground invasion of Iran is fairly unlikely, But I also would have said that, you know, unilateral out

of the blue assassination of Iotola that was unlikely. So, you know, may not be your guy for predicting things. But I think that if we can really drill down to it, the the problem is not necessarily the particular you know, vagaries of foreign policy, but it's that general feeling of oh, I'm getting screwed and you guys are compromised. And I'm not saying, you know, this is Epstein stuff or whatever, but like you are not acting in my best interest. You have a higher priority. That isn't me,

that isn't even America. It's those guys over there, and that's really frustrating to people. And so you know, you have figures even as you know kind of you know, diverses, guys like you know, uh, your Theovonne and Tim Dillon, who like, look aren't intellectuals, but they do have big audiences and they're widely listened to saying things along that line, right, saying things that like it basically seems as if you know this, this whole maga America first thing was a

giant scam. I mean, the Epstein stuff is another great example, right, another instance where people felt like, I have this burning desire to fix this, like we don't do that anymore, that's not what we are. And sure we got way more documents, albeit you know, it was done very differently than we were led to believe, but still we had a bunch of documents out. And again it feels as if you know, we were promised transparency and we got more cover up. We were promised to America first and

meet got Israel first. And look like, I don't irrationally hate Donald Trump, I don't have TDS. I don't I'm not sort of morally offended by the kind of borish or you know, it's like uncooth things he says in general, I think they're pretty funny. I still think he's funny, but it's like, look, man, like this was conditional for me. I gave you support because there was a patronage element here.

It was a quid pro quo. And that's why Donald Trump shot to popularity, particularly with his most devoted, you know group, because normal working class white Americans had been for a long time promised a lot and given very low right. They have been promised these kind of vagaries about you know, either Christian values or you know, how trickle down economics would finally hit them.

of rainbow coalition. And when Trump came in and was basically like, hey, I'm gonna do things for you I'm going to you know, and some protectionist policies bring manufacturing home. Okay, fair enough, you promised me something. And did people get all of those No, but they sort of got like

a little bit of like a psychic patronage. Yeah. Well, he's smashing the libs, you know, he's you know, making fun of the the you know, the people I hate on TV and fair enough, and lots of those people will be loyal to him for that till the day he dies. He could do anything. But for a lot of other people, particularly in twenty four, it sort of

felt as if like, well, geez, I'm getting screwed. You're offering me something, and even if I get one out of ten of these crazy promises, well, you know what, it's something and the idea. And I think this is why, you know, many people are sort of feeling one more insulted by this is that like, you know, you have the terms for people like us, right, It's like, oh, you're a Panican, You're you've tuned out, you know, you're

you're insufficiently loyal. I have you abandoned ship. It's like, look, man, like just.

we doing here? Well, because I question to your point of what you've just explained, you know, over the last forty minutes, because you question things and how you're not seeing benefit from it. Now all of a sudden, you're dis loyal, stupid, no, a hundred sorry, sorry to me. And it's one of those no, no, not at all.

fair enough. And so I'm not coming to this position out of some irrational hatred for the man, or coming to this position because I'm so motivated by you know, hate for Israel or hatred of Jews. As Mark Levin would put it, that I just am chomping at the bit and anything that you know, that nothing would be

good enough for me. Far from it. But it's sort of a you know, a rational actor here right who believes that I call balls and star At a certain point, it's like, well, look, this isn't in my interest, right, You're wasting your political capital, You're wasting your attention doing this for someone else, not for me. So like, yeah, sure, I'm not exactly hoping that you know, the Malas, you know, kill you know, seventy thousand American servicemen. I don't want

that to happen. But like the idea that I have to get screwed over and then you know, clap for it, you know, I have to say, like, yes, sir, may I have another It's like, look, man, like this didn't work for the other guy. It's not working for you. You know, this is not some sort of like undying blood oath to President Trump. And you know what if tomorrow he said, you know what, we're done. This is stupid,

let's go back home. Fair enough, great awesome, Still a stupid decision to get involved in the first place, but like, we need to be done with this, and however that happens, I'm fine with it, to be perfectly honest. And you know, in the future, if he's the one who gets rid of directly or indirectly birthright citizenship, great awesome. You know, there's some things that we got rid of through him

that I thought we never would. And so you know, on balance, so you have to consider that a point in his favor, and I you know, I'm never going to diminish that. But at a certain point, it's like you've got to understand, right, there is no relationship in politics that is unconditional and you know, eternal like that, especially you know, given exactly why he you know, sort

of rose to prominence. I will also say that as we go to the generational divide, you know, we're seeing this more and more strongly, right that I am not alone in these feelings that many people under a certain age. Did I mention last time I was on here, I can't remember the comments Ben Shapiro made about the war in Iran.

Kick them out, you know, denounce them, get rid of them. Similarly, again at Heritage, right where it was, you know, find the unbeliever. Oh, this Catholic kid wouldn't go to Shabbat dinner. You know he must be there must be something wrong with him. You know. The leader of you know, Heritage basically you know, first defended you know, Tucker Carlson over talking to I believe Darryl Cooper, maybe it was Nick fuent Tees. I can't remember either one, and then you know,

was forced to apologize for that. And we've seen this sort of growing moral panic on the kind of neo conservative right over grapers quote unquote For those aren't familiar, this is a sort of semi derogatory term, although they embrace it for fans of Nick Funtes, basically saying that, oh, the young people are poisoned, you cut them off.

You've seen this coming from this sort of like you know, more explicitly kind of neo conservative way, but also from the kind of like former liberals, you know, figures like James Lindsay's and others, you know, basically saying like, watch

out for these guys, don't let them in. And so what Ben Shapiro said is a very clever illision where he was talking about he was talking about a report from I believe the Manhattan Institute that said fifty three percent of Republicans under I think it was forty seven arbitrarily picked I assume, don't believe the Holocaust narrative, as you know, reported by historians, basically saying that over half

of these people are Holocaust deniers. Isn't that awful and explicitly connected that fact to low support for the Iranian war, right, the idea is, oh, you don't support the Iranian war, you are a Holocaust denier. And then very quickly afterwards made an allision to what he and many others This is a point, you know, from I've seen from Lindsay

and Mark Levin. And when I'm using these guys' names, I'm partially doing it because they're ridiculous and they're fun to make fun of, but also you've got to understand these are both you know, widely read figures, and for every one, I'm mentioning there's another fifty right who were sort of in that nexus, Douglas Murray.

life are caused by other people. You're not accepting responsibility because you have grievances ill defined. So it's basically not only are you a Nazi holocaust denier for not supporting this war, you're also basically the woke left right. Young people are Nazi woke left, and this is being amplified to people of a certain generation, and it's not working

on all of them. It's not what I'm trying to say at all, but to say that narrative, right, the idea that the young people are unsavable, you need to cut them out, that they're you know, the worst of the worst, is furthering that generational divide, that problem of succession that you know, Maga Incorporated had where it was already a tough row to hoo, you know, given the you know, the economy, given the affordability crisis, given this war.

But the fact that all that same time you have these figures saying, yes, they're irredeemably bad, they're horrible, they need to be cut out, they need to be shunned from these institutions. Well, that means that the problem doesn't just apply at you know, the voter level. Well, what happens to all of these institutions, right, what happens at Heritage, what happens at the Daily Wire, what happens at any number of you know, these sort of you know, conservative institutions.

Because from what I've heard, and I have multiple sources on this, this same fight is raging down the middle of all of these right people who feel as if, you know, they're American nationalists first and foremost, and people who feel as if we have this eternal special connection to the nation of Israel. And that's the the sort of approximate reason we understand there are other issues going

on there at once. Like that's a that's a huge gulf to bridge, right, That's how are you going to you know, continue this you know force in politics on when you have kneecapped, you have literally you know, pulled the ladder up behind you and say no one else

can come up. Well, and you know, forgive me if this is a real long time to get to this point, Like, but to me, it seems as if we're going to see the same logical conclusion we saw in the corporate world hit politics we're basically, oh, there is no way for me. There is no place for me to go. And I understand when I say no, I don't mean all there are guys right now who are in their early twenties in the corporate world. If you're listening to this,

I'm sorry, Uh, that sucks. And similarly, there are those same guys you know work at writing you know, speeches for different you know, Republican congressmen, and you know, reading through legal documents. I will also say, I'm sorry. So we're not talking universally, but it seems as if the logical conclusion is to explore alternatives, right, to find other

places to go. And you know, big picture, right, if we're talking about these sort of talented, driven young men, it is incredibly foolish of leaders to abandon those guys because look like one obviously they will become, you know, leaders of another generation. But also right, we have to understand that like, those guys just don't stop existing because you have kicked them out of heritage or kicked them

out of you know, your local young Republicans group. If they were you know, talented and driven enough to get there, that energy doesn't go away and do some guys get ruined when they're canceled one hundred percent. You know, they're they're sad stories. Although it seems to be working less and less, But like that's how you create real genuine political instability, right both on the level of there are no solutions available to you, red or blue, you're still

getting screwed no matter what. Oh, you want to get a normal job and put your head down, you can't do that. Either. You want to work in politics and change it, you can't do that either. These guys don't just go away. They don't just disappear when you fired them from your office. And you know, a lot of the fear mongering over you know, the kind of coypers and stuff like that, I think is a realization of exactly that that there is a large, untapped well of

energy that is not particularly friendly with you. And you've seen this in the religious world, you know, we can That's a conversation for another day. A very similar dynamic of you know, young people significantly to the right of you know, either their literal or spiritual elders. You know, that is creating problems. And I think that there's this desire to simply you know, stick your head in the sand, you know, to look and say, you know, we're doing great.

You know, the war's going great, the economy is going great. You know, I have this video on Facebook of this you know, bright young conservative man Berlin Hollyhand seems to have been sort of you know, grown in a that everything is fine. No, it's not fine.

within the remit of people in power. It is possible to in an immediate sense fix these issues, but that would require an uncomfortable rearrangement of loyalty, and I don't know if anyone is willing to have that. And until that happens, these trends will continue. They are not imaginary. They are not a product of grievance politics of you know, idiot young people who've never worked today in their life

when everything handed to them for free. These are real grievances that all of the problems with affordability that I mentioned last time. You know, the incredible amount of wealth it takes to live, as you know, my own lower middle class grandparents did right, literally a McDonald's manager and a lady who worked at a bank. Right. People feel that and that is not going to go away simply because you've called them woke, simply because you've called them

the Nazi. And this is something that you know, we on the right were all too eager to point out on the you know, the nominal woke left. But when it comes to something that people in power care about, when it comes to one of their sacred cows, it comes right back around. And so to sort of tie a bow on this, what are my feelings on the Iran war? Uh? One, it doesn't seem to be going

great just on a military level, right Iran is still there? Uh, you know, we got rid of the malas Israel seems to be getting you know, if not you know, battered at least, you know, a bloody nose from this right there, taking real shells or real shelling. You know, we maybe haven't lost a lot of people, but we certainly lost

more than we needed to. And ultimately the sort of military you know, situation on the ground doesn't really matter because this is exacerbated a widening political divide that I view as basically the sort of iceberg that sinks the Titanic of Maga. Because again, and I don't say this out of joy, but we are fast approaching the fiftieth percentile mark of you know, baby boomer mortality, right, that

rate will be increasing at astronomic rate. And sure, fair enough, I understand, you know, Gen X is one of the most conservative voting blocks in America, But uh, buddy, there aren't a lot of you you know, at least compared to the boomers and the the you know, millennials, another large generation have you know, one do not like Israel and aggregate as well. And so the idea that we can simply keep running the George W. Bush playbook, like

that's not a functional option. Maybe once, but after that, like who are you selling that to? Who are you selling that to? And again, we have to understand that both for our politicians and for us, there are very real consequences to this, another Biden level migration surge that changes how things go in the country. You know, if all of Maga is in jail, which okay, sure is, I realize not a definite possibility. But the Democrats at least seem to be saying that that's a real consequence

for them. And so to me to watch, you know, a moment of incredible political capital, a moment where so much good could have been done, squandered and for what it really bothers me, and it bothers a lot of people. And yeah, it's really a frustrating situation. I'll leave it that.

and horrible and unjust. It's like, well, you know what, like ultimately, you know, the little people you and I Mike are not always is in a position to you know, make decisions on that level. And so you know what, if I have to, I have to, I'm not particularly looking forward to that, you know, particularly it's worrisome and I've had this conversation with my friends as well. If you didn't GETO the data on what percentage of Generation Z is actually fit to serve, it's very low. I

would guess that. I would guess it would be low.

that problem goes away. But you start to kind of run the math and you're like, all right, even on the top end of that age bracket, I am definitely in the top blah blah blah percent by like body fat, and yeah, I'm probably getting screwed, aren't I. So anyway, I mean I view it as a as a pretty unlikely situation, but you know, if it has to happen, either I get blown up, which is, you know, not ideal, but you know, if you're enough of a religious extremist

kind of know where you're going, or alternately, it seems like a necessary part of being a good writer is having some horrific war experience, so you know what, maybe grand scheme of things, it's not the worst thing that can happen.

we spoke about the Iranian nuclear program. So talking about the sort of five stages of a nuclear program, right going from you know, the ability to enrich uranium for medical usage all the way up to you know, really scary stuff intercontinental ballistic missiles. That's interesting if you're looking at the stated justification for this war, right we had to stop the Mullas from from getting nukes, from turning themselves into a you know, a sort of a pyeong

Yang in the Middle East. How you recommend that. As far as what's coming up, I have Alex pet Kiss of Constant Glory on to resume the series about the Life of Caesar and the Roman Civil War, and then what else do I have coming out? Yeah, that's what I think I've got, you know, in the hopper immediately. I have no set structure for what my shows are there an hour long, but I'll be honest, I'm a

little bit adhd. So we'll jump from you know, politics, history, philosophy, uh, what movies I've seen, and then every once in a while, my buddy car will come on and we'll just talk about like, you know, uh, literally anything I did. I did a show all about cars where all we did was look at bring a trailer for like an hour and a half. It was a great episode. That's great about anything.

Have you ever seen those? Few of them? Yeah, fist full of dollars for a few dollars more, and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. You gotta watch him in order, because Sir Giulioni and Clinice Wood, Sir Giulioni did all three and he had no money for the first one. So if you watch him in order, you see the budget gets bigger and bigger, and the Good, Bad, and the Ugly is a classic. So then he says, when you get through those three, go watch Once upon a

Time in the West. That's Sir Gioloni's fourth movie, Clinice Wood, wasn't in it. It's Jay. It's a masterpiece. It's a brilliant, beautiful film. So so then so I watched that, and then I recently watched V for Vendetta, which I had never seen before, and One Battle after Another I just saw.

on the internet about movies for that hour. So no, in all seriousness, you know, I'm glad for him to be doing that. And when he comes back, I think we're gonna do unforgiven. But we've got a whole bunch set up.

So for instance, we're talking like super high dollar like you know, Dus and Bergs, stuff like that. He did the cars for who framed Roger Rabbit and also for Chinatown, and so a bunch of those cars I saw because they were an inventory. I was like, wait a minute, you know again forty years later, right, it's like I've sat in that car. It's a piece of junk now, but it's still cool. So anyway, I love that movie for many reasons. It's done exactly an uplifting film. I

won't spoil it for you. You probably guess that from the general tone of it, but uh yeah, man, anyway, I'm so sorry, Mike Jack.