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