Looking Back on Cancellation w/ George Bagby: The J. Burden Show Ep. 418

parents on my side. Certainly it turned out I didn't, and there was more of a There was more of an element there of wanting to be respectable and not saying controversial things that would get you in trouble with the left that I didn't appreciate at that time. I thought that we were pushing back against the modern world in modest and vague ways. I wasn't there to throw bombs or anything. I wasn't trying to stoke any controversy.

I was paying lip service to basic sexual morality. In the context of teaching Dante, one of the things I did was I explained the image in Dante of the barren sand where the usurers and sodomites were marching around tilling barren earth forever in hell, and that this was a kind of fraud. And I was explaining the images, so the image of usurers, they're making something infertile into

something fertile. They're turning money which does not naturally reproduce like animals and agricultural crops naturally reproduce because of their nature. They're turning money into something fruitful, and so they're punished in the barren sand that does not bring forth any fruit. And likewise, the sodomites are forever running tilling the sand with their feet because in their lives they had turned something meant to be fruitful, which is sex, into something barren.

And so we see this kind of thing recapitulated endlessly in Dante. You know, the gluttons are constantly eating too much and vomiting in Hell, and they're surrounded by rotting food and such, and sometimes those images are extremely easy to understand, but the barren sand was more complicated, and so I went in some length on that to explain what Dante meant. It turned out to be. It turned

out to be very controversial just to explain it. I even had my dean come talk to me about it, and I thought that I had won honor for the school by going into that. I had even given a lecture at a conference about that instruction about teaching sexual moras in the context of teaching literature, because it's a major element. It's something that everyone's talking about in their own time. It's in pol politics, and my whole presentation on that occasion was how to do this innocuously and

also its importance. Funny enough that particular lecture I had an interesting member in the audience, Rod Dreyer, was actually there. It was it was the very first time I'd ever encountered him. But anyway, I after seven years of that first teaching job, my contract was not renewed. That was a moment of incredible crisis for me because it was a reconsideration of teaching as a career. Would I what would I do if I wasn't going to teach? And

I decided to leave the area. I went and took another job with someone that I knew and trusted to do more or less the same thing, and got myself rank in a new school, and I found elements there

that I was totally accustomed to. Thankfully, it wasn't my teaching responsibility, but this was also an interesting element in classical schools just generally, the civil rights narrative from the nineteen sixties is a particular focus where it doesn't necessarily need to be of Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail has become a standard, and this is taught in

rhetoric classes. It's not taught in a historical context. It's not taught in an American history course, modern history course, not necessarily anyway, it's a standard in the rhetoric class. So they analyze the argument and it's it's famous and taught in like junior high as a standard piece for intense investigation, and they're working on it rhetorically. They're analyzing arguments and such. But it is part of the inflated role of Martin Luther King and his legacy, so that

he is he's taken as a secular saint. And that's an element that's very widespread. And I encountered that yet again at my new school. Political salvation story, and that's a very important American narrative. It figures very large, and I think that one of the reasons it's there is to win credibility for Christian schools in America. Moreover, it is one of the essential beliefs of practically all the

adults involved in the school. They've they've all that they've all put an awful lot of stock into the narrative. But that wasn't that wasn't my role at my first school or my second school. I never had that on my on my syllabus. It wasn't in the classes that I taught, but it's interesting to note that that's that's a standard, and that that ended up coming back later. I was given a special role at my new school.

I was given the role of reviewing the history curriculum, specifically the history curriculum for anti European bias, for the needless assaults on European heritage in America in particular. Now, that proved to be an extremely challenging assignment because you basically just have to go back into old textbooks to skirt that kind of narrative. But my work in that was not so important as the fact that I was

given that task. So one of the things I did do is I taught modern literature, and particularly American literature. I still remember the morning that I began teaching The Great Gatsby for the first time, and I went to my favorite diner, a really old diner, and had the Great Gatsby with me and had my notes in such

and I and I was reflecting. I think I wrote a letter I frequently did when when I went to the diner very early in the morning before I taught, and I was reflecting on how I felt like I had really made it as a teacher that I was teaching The Great Gatsby in high school. I felt like I had really really achieved a landmark in my career by doing that, and that was that was very satisfying. But I also taught Flannery O'Connor, who I really love.

We had a tremendous amount to cover in that class, which was a challenge, but we were reading everything that rises must converge. So if you don't know this story, I was. I was talking to Pete Kenyonez about this story just recently and recapitulated the platform. The story involves a man named Julian, a young man who's taking his mother to the doctor. And his mother has gone through all of the sit ins and bus protests and such in the South from that period, and she's very worried

to ride the bus with black people. She's very concerned about public transportation, she's concerned about her safety. Made newly relevant, perhaps just in recent times. Julian his response to his mother is fury and resentment. He hates her scruples and for all of her her so called backwards opinions about civil rights, which manifest in the short story. She is very kind. She's an old woman in poor health. She

talks to the black people on the bus. She's totally respectful to them, though she voices her misgivings with her son. She gives a black child a nickel, insists on doing so as an emblem of patronage, which the girl's mother resents in anger and knocks the nickel out of the old woman's hand. But her intentions are all benevolent, and it's clear that that's so, whatever her opinions might be, whatever we might think of them. The narration is very clear that Julian is the one in the wrong. He

wants to make an example of his mother. He's responding to her very angrily, bitterly telling her that she's going to she's going to embarrass him. Curiously, Julian tries to interact with the black people on the bus to show his own political opinions, and he has no idea how to talk to them, and they look at him as if he's weird, he's out of line. He doesn't succeed in interacting with them, whereas Julian's mother seems quite comfortable

with them. In interacting, and she has she has more rapport, seemingly is able to get along, at least until the final scene where the angry mother knocks the nickel out of her hand. Well, when that final confrontation takes place, now they're on the sidewalk and Julian berates his mother in public and says, now you're going to see how things really are. Now you're feeling the embarrassment I've always

wanted you to feel. We live in a new era now where everyone is equal, And in the midst of his berating her, she collapses on the sidewalk and dies of a stroke. So it's one of these very compelling Flannery O'Connor stories where we see we see conflict of sin in an individual and it manifests in some revel

litory moment which should be a moment of repentance. This is one of the great themes in O'Connor, and O'Connor marks at the very end of the story in Narration that Julian is now entering a new world of pain and repentance. So she's putting a punctuation point at the very end in her inimitable brief style. But she's also pointing about the whole You know, she's indicating the point of the story in the narration, in these tiny little remarks in the narration, where it's clear what's going on

according to the narrator. Well, I was teaching this in my high school class, and my students responded in a very unexpected way. They were all against Julian's mother. Several students are saying, she.

And my inspiration for that handout, which predated Flannery O'Connor and teaching literature in that mode. My inspiration was a book by Robert pin Warren called Who Speaks for the Negro, which he published in the sixties. And what Robert Pinwarren did was he traveled around the country and he talked to Martin Luther King, he talked to Malcolm X, he talked to James Baldwin. He talked to black educators in universities.

And the point of his book he asked them all the exact same questions, and he wrote a whole book of his interviews with them. And the whole point of his book was they all had different ideas about policy in the Civil Rights era. None of them had the same vision. So that is what I distributed to the class, and I said, you all think you know what's right with the Civil Rights era, but what did Black Americans

think of this? And among the quotes are black nationalists who say they need an independent country, a homogeneous racial nation. Among them are opponents of desegregation, like Zora Neil Hurston, who says, the Native Americans don't whine about their social status in America. I take the side of the Indians. I don't want anyone forcing someone to associate with me. They should associate with me because I'm a compelling person

and they like me. That's that's what Zaora and Neil Hurston said, And of course you've got Malcolm X and MLKA and all the rest. And the whole point of the of the handout was not this person's right and this person's wrong. The whole point of the handout was there are a lot of different opinions here, you know, if we're interested in what they think about the situation, we'll note here there's a great variety who speaks for

the negro Robert Penn Warren's evocative question. Well, I ended up having conversation with the faculty because the whole thing was about it was about Julian's mother and the glee that certain students had with her death in the story, and I talking to my colleagues about this and saying that I found it quite disturbing that they would gang up on an old woman in the context of the story and say she deserves to suffer and die and

inhumiliation and not getting the point of O'Connor's O'Connor's tale anyway, But I circulated my handout that was, in retrospect a mistake, because there was a there was a scandal soon after that which I'm not going into but the result was a new atmosphere of paranoia, of a very unsettled time. We had a great many faculty meetings, faculty and staff meetings in which the school's stance on race became the

primary concern of the board. So it turned out I had enemies after the Flannery O'Connor situation and my efforts to try to explain the story and talk about the Civil Rights era with a completely hands off sort of approach. I wasn't there to say what I thought was right in the Civil Rights era. The whole point was what did black Americans have to say about it? And those were all names that anyone would have heard of, you know,

these weren't obscure people on my list of quotes. But the controversy it led to this paranoid investigation into the beliefs of various faculty members, and I was singled out. So there were two things that led to me being singled out so far as I know. The first was the handout. The second was my special role in history curriculum to root out and replace anti European bias in the curriculum, needless hostility to white people in the curriculum,

the history curriculum. Soon after this whole investigation commences, I realize how serious the matter is. Board members start meeting me after my last class and pull me aside into the into the work room, a private space, and I get really incredible questions from them. The first sign of trouble is a board member of pulling me in. I'd met him before, but we'd never had a conversation. And he's also a father in the school, you know, his children attend the high school. And he says, yes, I'm

here to ask you. Are you a racial segregationist? And I said no, what would what would give you that inclination? What would give you that idea? And he said that he had been told that I was. And I found that very interesting, especially considering we had one black student in the entire K through twelve program and she was adopted. Like, we don't believe in segregation, but is it to facto segregation?

Any critic would say it was. But that's not the statute, that's not the policy, that's just how it ended up. So I didn't mention any of that. Of course, that had grounds to bring up later, but I said, no, I don't espouse that I don't propose that I'm a teacher and I'm explaining things I had been given a history class. I was teaching American history, and this was American history too, So it began with Reconstruction, and I

was distributing readings and questions primary sources from Reconstruction. I had edited things for a history reader and handed them out to the students, and they brought questions that I had written for class discussion and confronted me with them and saying, well, what are you trying to say about civil rights in the reconstruction Europe? And I said, I'm trying to motivate conversation about it. What are you preferring here? This was a subject of argument at the time. How

to affect citizenship for the freed slaves? What was the best way of going about that? Are their notable differences between the freed slaves and the white citizens of the post war or South. This, it seems to me to be perfectly reasonable, and I don't have any brief for it other than that. But they were offended by the tone of some of my questions. They also looked into

the poetry recital for my history class. I had chosen Donald Davidson's Tall Men an excerpt from it now, just so you can appreciate, this was the point on which I got confronted privately by a board member. Soon after this controversy began. The line that they found so offensive in The Tall Men by Davidson was, shall I say the praise of men bright honor? The songs of my own race and the ways of fighters are something read in a book only, or graven only in stone, and

not in the hearts of men. So Davidson is reviewing Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson in his poem. His poem's title The Tall Men, he refers to many times referring to the founders of the state of Tennessee, and also reflecting on modern ways and how easy our modern life is. We glide effortlessly over the pavement, you know, gently tapping the gas pedal. We sit beneath air conditioning in office towers, where our ancestors were carving out civilization in the wilderness.

We're fighting the Indian nations. We're watching their loved ones massacred and fighting for their place in the new world. And so he's drawing a contrast there and then saying, are the ways of my ancestors something we only read in a book or is it something that's in our being? Are we essentially organically connected to our ancestors who founded our place in America? And he offers a lot of good material for historical reflection, which I've always resonated with.

I've always been a fan of Donald Davidson. But the board members decided they were going to cancel the poetry recitation right at the end of the semester, after everyone had already memorized it. They singled it out as offensive and it used the word race. The songs of my own race and the ways of fighters are engraved not on stone only, but also in the hearts of men. They found that highly offensive, and once again I was

pulled aside. I was asked if I was a racist, and I said, no, it rather depends on what you mean. But I wasn't going to I wasn't going to address that under the circumstances. I denied it, and they said, well, you gave your students this poem to memorize. And one of the board members, this was a couple of men that pulled me aside on that occasion one of the board members said, well, I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was a racist. Why were you giving them

racist poetry? And I I offered my brief for the tall Men now the name of my press, a tribute that resulted in pulling the poem from recitation, and then I got a very interesting assignment from the board. Now I believe this was something that was specially decided. I don't think that it was. I don't think this was something that everyone was required to do, is what I'm saying, though I don't know that for sure. I was given a statement on race that was written by a third party.

The board had found a statement for Christian schools about civic nationalism, the idea that this was something adaptable and cultural, nothing intrinsic. The statement went well out of its way on ostensibly Christian and Biblical grounds to conclude that race is an Unchristian concept and that anyone that thinks race exists has anti Christian priors. I was asked to write an essay in response to this statement and also to

affirm its conclusion. I demurred artfully wrote an essay exhibiting all of the instances of national differenentfernces, tribal affiliations, ancestry mentioned in the Bible, and saying this statement being being emphatically Christian in its effort couldn't mean contradicting the Bible on matters of ancestry and inheritance and national characteristics, or even the creation of the nations of the world at

the Tower of Babele. Those are all explicit in Christian belief and in the Bible itself, So the statement cannot mean that. The statement instead means that the topic of race has been dangerously politicized and Christians should avoid the subject, which I try to find some quality ways to assent to. This is too dangerous to talk about. People that talk about it are destroyed and everyone knows that. So for the sake of the institution, we avoid those subjects, is

what I wrote. Well, the demur was not satisfying to the board, so we had an interview. They called me in for a special meeting with the board members to talk about the statement. Now, the people that gave me this statement were considering making it the official statement of the school and putting it on the website. This civic nationalist statement about race, a statement that they had never considered that they themselves had not written. They did not

know the issue. So I went to the meeting. The meeting or the statement was all based on the assertion that race is a social construct, that it is man made in fact, that any differences that we might notice between people are differences of nurture and not of nature. And they said that the belief of anyone that claims to be a Christian, that believes that there are differences between the nations of the Earth is outside of the Christian communion in a serious way. That's what the statement said.

So I went to the meeting, and I was prepared to talk about what I had written, but I decided to start the meeting with questions to the board, which turned out to be all that was necessary. First, I was well aware that the civic nationalist position is one of the key targets of the race critics of the time. So Ibram Kinsey and Robin DiAngelo and Tom Nahasi Coats, they all excoriate the civic nationalists because they all believe that race is real, and they believe that races are

divided into two groups, oppressor races and oppressed races. Therefore, everyone must note who is being oppressed and who the oppressors are, and anyone who refuses to do that by taking a civic nationalist stance are, according to them, the worst racists of all and deserve primary focus for attack. Now this is in the literature and in the journalism and such. This is broadly known, but they obviously did

not know that. So initially I asked them if they were aware that that was the mainstream on the matter. They were all in a panicked situation. They were desperately trying to get out of out of the gaze of their enemies. They did not want to be accused of being racist. They were extremely afraid that they would be. They were considering issuing this statement as a way of

getting out of that. What they thought was a mainstream position, an uncontroversial position, was actually quite controversial and would not have saved them. So I told them, if you make this the official policy of the school, if you require us all to publicly assent to this, if you post this on your website, you will increase hostile attention on the institution. These are your enemies. This is how they think. No matter what we might think, this is what they think,

and they hold all the cards. They have all the power to destroy you. You can't duck this by making a civic nationalist statement. So though it may be what you sincerely believe, though you might think this will get you out of trouble, if you were to make this statement, you should make it privately. You should not make it a public statement. They were completely unaware of this. None

of them had heard of the writers I mentioned. None of them were aware of the state of the discourse, because for them, this was a brand new problem that had them all afraid. So that was my first question to them, Do you know these writers? Do you know what they would say about you? Do you know what will happen if you make this a public statement of

the school. They didn't know the writers, they didn't know what they said about them, and they had no idea what the implications would be if they made it a public statement. So I advised caution. Second, I said, do you, gentlemen believe well, how did I say it? I wrote it down here? Would you tell a Jew that race is a social construct? This question had never occurred to them. They looked at one another in shock, and they looked back at me, and they said, no, no, we would

not do that. And I said, so you have. You've got a statement that you can't tell someone outside of your own immediate circle. What I could have said is you've got a statement on race you cannot share with anyone outside your own race. The thought had never occurred to them. Of course, we could have taken in another direction. Would you tell a black man that race was a social construct, that it wasn't real? They wouldn't. But I decided to stick with I decided to stick with the

biblical nation, a biblical race, if you will. Lastly, I asked them, do you believe do you sincerely believe the Bible teaches that race is a social construct made by the action of human beings and not through any other reason. And my source which I brought up, what about the Tower of Babel? Did God providentially divide the peoples of the earth? Does that represent divine intention? This had also never occurred to them, though they did read my essay.

Presumably they were more interested in my demurl. So I asked, does the Bible teach race as a social construct? They had no answer. They found the thought disturbing. So I concluded, and I said, you have a statement your enemies may not see because they will destroy you for it. You have a statement that you cannot share with anyone outside of your own special circle, and you have a statement that you cannot assert is biblically true. This is a problem.

And I left it, and the meeting dissolved, and I walked away from that meeting with a singular conviction that I would either be asked into leadership because they didn't know what was going on and I'd made that clear to them, or I couldn't stay in retrospect, I believe that all of the interviews, all of the tests I was given, in particular the essay I was asked to write, were efforts to find grounds to fire me that did not pan out. I stood by everything that I had

said in class an out. I stood by all opinions that they actually had had approached me. At one time, another board member had come to me to ask for all of my handles on the Internet. He asked if I had Facebook. I did not. He asked if I was on Twitter. I was not. I had never had a presence on Twitter at that time. I had a Facebook account, but it had been deleted years previous. He then wanted to get any blog articles I had written

in my life. And I went to the interim headmaster, who was a friend of mine and who was very supportive of me through the whole thing, a very humane man who I'm still friends with. He's no longer at the institution. Many are not this is. This all happened years ago. So one of the reasons I decided to talk about it. I asked him about that. I said, so they want they want MySpace articles I wrote in college.

This is outrageous that I'd be subjected to such scrutiny at this occasion in my career that a college student wouldn't have some controversial opinion or other. This is obviously an effort to fire me and cancel me. And he was very sympathetic and said that he thought that it was. It was paranoid and bad policy. It was. It was extremely discouraging to everyone I talked to. And I don't know what other faculty we're going through at that time. I only know my own experience because I went through

all of those encounters alone. But when I walked out of that inquisition about the race statement, I knew that I would either I would either come out with enhanced position or I would have to leave. There wouldn't be any means for me to stay, and I did not want to stay. I talked with my wife many times in that period saying I want nothing to do with these people. The sooner that I can leave this arrangement, the better. But of course I didn't want to lose

my contract. I had nothing to go on on for besides my salary. You know that that was the way I supported my family. So it was a very uncertain period. Soon after, maybe a couple of weeks after, I got a call another meeting with the board. So I went, and this this was right after exams, midterms, and we were all coming back to the school for class. In a couple of days, I had everything graded and I sat down in the room with the board members and

they said, we've decided that we will part ways. We have decided you are not in violation of your contract or the code of conduct. No doubt they had been looking for ways that I was. Because the next step was they helped me gather my things. I gave them the graded tests, and they escorted me off campus and

told me not to come back. They also gave me a statement in writing that in the name, in the name of the board, that I would be paid the remainder of my contract, and indeed I was up till the very last paycheck, which I caught a couple of years later. In the midst of all of that, I got a public confrontation by an officer of the school, the person that I had talked to about the quotes about from from the Black American writers in relation to

the Flannery O'Connor episode. She confronted me in a public place in front of my friends and called me a white nationalist and excoriated me. And after that I realized I had I had serious opponents in the structure of the school. Then then it made more sense to me the kinds of confrontations that I'd had, the board member asking me if I was a racial segregationist and such. It made a little more sense that someone in the structure had taken a side against me and was saying

things about me unknown to me at that time. So it's a it's an interesting circumstance, and I want to I want to try to explain the position of the board because I like these people. In spite of everything and I feel like they did something honorable to me under the circumstances of honoring my contract, for instance, last paycheck, notwithstanding whatever I got it eventually. These were professionals, these were accountants, These were our ends, These were people with

small businesses. These were people that had put extraordinary resources and time to set up an institution they could trust to educate their children. That is a really extraordinary achievement. There are very few people that have the time and resources to do such a thing, and the charge of racism would cancel all of them, would destroy their careers,

would destroy the institution they had built. We know the forces that would act against them, We know how ruthless they are, and their rally to try to avert that disaster makes perfect sense. The fact that they didn't know what was going on, the fact that they did not know the state of the discourse is not in the least unusual. Who's reading White Fragility leftists? You know, we may know the thesis of those books, but they don't make for edifying reading. Let's let uh, let's let prude

and dimes handle things like that. They can tell us what's going on there, so we don't have to read it right? Do you even read the prudentialist in our friend Dimes from Canadia? They're doing wonderful work there. But these these middle class folks with so many virtues, and I'm I don't think that I'm overstating this. I have tremendous sympathy for these people. They don't want to touch the likes of me with a ten foot poll and I've learned through heart experience I can't trust them because

of the huge disparity between me and them. I'm utterly at their mercy. They could bankrupt me by tossing me to their enemies to distract their enemies from their throats. And that's the situation until we find some way to set up an independent institution that's not vulnerable to such tax and that leadership that will protect their own people. I don't see a way, not for me, anyway to tease Chetta at a school. I chose to teach at

this school for particular reasons. And this this all fell apart in in the course of the controversy in obvious and unspoken ways, and it was a it was an extremely important experience. It was it was based on my transition out of that I started driving Uber. I was I had no desire to go and work for any employer at that point, but I had a family to care for, and so I started driving Uber full time soon after that, and UH was able to make things

work doing that for a while. Now I've I've mostly transitioned out of that and have other other means to support my family. But I've been I've been privately burgh. Let's see, I've been a private contractor just self employed since then. And Tall Men Books is my major effort. What have I done with all of this, all this initiative and time between now and then? I started Tall Men Books, which is a reference to the poem that

once got me in such serious trouble. It is my slogan, and I want everyone to remember that the bones of tall men lie in American earth, and those are our ancestors who gave us our inheritance. This is not something that we just read in dusty old books. This is the blood that flows in our veins. So that's my story. I'm glad to be able to conclude it here with you today.

And I'd imagine that's sort of a difficult transition to go through, right, realizing that while you may have friends, they're not in a position to protect you. And interesting note there, and again I think that you're check kind of pick a through line. There's something interesting as well to the degree to which, you know, kind of good conservatives in quotes are really the only believers in the

kind of civil rights mythology of a previous era. And they think that by you know, holding that position and retreating to it, that they can protect themselves. And that is plainly not true. You know, as you've said, the people who accuse them already have disdain for those figures. And you know, no matter how many times you've guided a group of you know, seventeen year olds through letters from Birmingham jail. That will not protect you from the mob.

It's by no means a deterrent. Absolutely Well, George, we've sort of wrapped this story and now you were, you know, on your own, you have your your book sales. Is there any sort of advice or something you could offer to someone in a similar situation, right, someone who's sort of going through a cancelation?

and it's taken many sacrifices. We must continue to network among people of our own beliefs and build up organizations to support one another. The Old Glory Club has been extremely helpful to me, help me find people to work with, help me find talent to do things that I don't know how to do myself, and has offered me tremendous solidarity and also of financial support. The Old Glory Club gave me a grant for a series of books that

I've been republishing, The Chronicles of America. Just as an example. I've had very kind private individuals arrange fundraisers for me when I've been in special need. This is something that I'm very humbled and deeply grateful for. My family and I are just overwhelmed with the kindness that people in the organization have shown to us, and it's done us tremendous good. Recently, I was able to get a dentist from my daughter through private gifts from friends. But obviously

we want to be more independent and self sufficient. I've been. I've been in business for myself now for several years. I've got a wife and three children. I have to travel a lot to support my family, but it's also offered all sorts of new rewards. It's wonderful to work in my field with my material and what I know best. That's sometimes I think that maybe I should move into something more traditional in terms of employment, but we also know that that's an extremely difficult thing to do now too.

My advice for those who are under these pressures, facing cancelation or going through it is network with those you trust, get advice, consider relocation because when you go through a cancelation, when you are excluded from the community on grounds that you think dangerous thoughts, you believe unpalatable things, it may be time to find different community to network with. After my cancelation, I lost a lot of valuable social contacts in my town. And many of these people they meant

me well. They never had problems with me, they never attacked me. They offered me their support privately that they thought what was going on was dreadful, was wicked. They are subject to the same kinds of social forces as the board members were. Their careers could have been attacked,

they could have been brought under suspicion. They wanted to stay out of attention, and I can't blame them, but it means that I became a dangerous person to associate with, which I think plenty of people on your podcast certainly can relate to. This is a common story among us. So identify the friends who aren't afraid to be seen with you. Identify the friends who are not afraid to associate you publicly. Those are the kinds of people that we need to rally with in with the unusual challenges

that we face today. It's those that you can trust, those that will be known by your side in public. Those are the most valuable connections that we can cultivate. Go into business with those people, relocate to be near them. If you can't get along with your family under the under the circumstances, family ties are always the deepest and should be the ones that we primarily look for. Family will help you. Family will will get up in the middle of the night when you're all sick and imperiled.

Family will come and defend your house from a mob. It is a special kind of friend that will stand with you and do that. And I'm extremely proud and humbled to have many of those friends, many of which most of which I've come to know after the cancelation. So socially, it's been very instructive, very painful, but also very instructive and very rewarding. Some of the things that I've encountered since that whole ordeal.

my mortgage, So thank you all so much. If you're wondering what you get for your support, get the episodes early in ad free on Patreon, Substack, or gum Road. Also check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching. JD's another guy right who's you know, started a business with guys like us. Check him out, support him, tell him I sent you and George. It was great speaking to you. Thank you very much, to everyone to know home, keep your head up. I can't last for ever. But what