Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Over the weekend, my husband and I celebrated our fifteen year anniversary five years ago. On our ten year anniversary, I tweeted a thread about where my life was before I got together with my husband and how fast it turned around. I'll read it to you so on my tenure wedding anniversary today. I want to do this thread in case it helps anyone going through a bad time. I'm forty one. I got married at thirty one on
my thirtieth birthday. My life was a total disaster. I was at the tail end of a seven year relationship with a really great person for whom I was ill suited. I wasn't working, and I had no idea in what direction to take my career. I was in debt for the first time in my life because I made the mistake of going to grad school yet continued to live like I had the same high paying job I had before.
I was a pharmaceutical legal straight out of college, which paid well, but I quit that to follow my passion into politics. I was in a dark place. I'm an optimistic person, but I had a hard time seeing my life improving. I wasn't suicidal. I don't want to minimize people in real darkness, but I was completely adrift. I was drinking a lot daily, and my friend Tom Elliott kept asking why I'd always drag him to bars with
homeless people asleep in the corner. I didn't want to be around functioning, normal thirty year olds because I was so off the path, and also those bars never really close, so four am would come and go and I'd still be out. I'd sleep till five pm regularly. My husband was actually my best friend. That's not just something we say. He was the main voice, along with my brother, who
would reason with me to get my shit together. But it's so much easier not to seriously when you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose, which is just so true. I don't have a secret sauce for how things got better, But the summer of my thirtieth year, I slowly started to pull myself together. I got a consulting job, I spent more time with my now husband, I went outside during the day. That's a big one.
It turns out I took better care of myself. After some false starts, my husband and I got together for real that Thanksgiving. We were engaged in September and married the next April. Sometime I'll do a thread about what went right in my career after we got married. I had to fix myself before I could be with him seriously, and then just being with the right person went such a long way toward making everything else fall into place.
He knew all my faults and they were okay. My big point is that everything seemed hopeless, really hopeless, and then a year later I was at the start of the best decade of my life. It can turn around so quickly. Don't give up on yourself, don't wallow. Acknowledge you're in a bad place, and work to get yourself to a better one. I believe in you. So five years later, I think about that thread and I reposted for people who might be going through a hard time,
and look that thread. It's honest, But really it was far worse than it sounds. I broke up with a good guy because he wasn't the one for me, and that's way harder than breaking up with a jerk who treats you badly. Career wise, I was feeling that I had made a huge mistake going into politics. I wasn't a writer yet, not really. I had a blog and I made a tiny bit of money from it, but I had no idea that I could even be doing what I'm doing now, and I retreated further and further
from my normal and successful friends. My husband was my best friend, and when I say that, I mean that whenever I met a nice girl, I would try to set him up with her. He was worried about me, and it showed in so many ways. But my point here is not that life can be bad or hard, and it's only partially the amazing things that can happen to you if you're in the right relationship. It's that it all can turn around very quickly. If you're in
a bad place, don't give up. Make incremental changes, small steps, leave the house, talk to people who love you. There's a light at the end of the darkness, even if it's not obvious to you. Right now, my light was brighter than I could have ever imagined. Coming up next, an interview with Kurt Slifter. Join us after the break.
Welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is Kurt Slichter. Senior columnist at Townhall dot com, retired Army colonel, lawyer.
And author of The Attack. Hi, Kurt, it's.
Nice to have you on here.
So the attack.
Scared the living Bejesus out of me, so we could start there.
Why did you.
Do that to me? And tell me about this? The book came out in January. First of all, it came out in January?
Is that right?
Yes, I saw the attack on ten to seven. I immediately recognized the vulnerability here. I started talking with folks at Regnory, and on October tenth, I started writing it. On November twenty nine, fish it Wow. Unfortunately Regnory went away as an imprint, But I did what I did
with my Kelly Turnbol People's Republic novels. I got it out very quickly on using Amazon as my distribution platform, and by January seventh it was out and it has been selling like hotcakes and scaring the hell out of people ever since, which is exactly what it was intended.
So can you tell us a little bit about the book? What was your you know, what was a thinking behind it? And you obviously have experience in this world. In fact, you often write about kind of military topics and also very scary stuff.
We'll get into that, but tell us about the book.
Well, the book is a novel I could have done as nonfiction, but I don't think that would have punched people in the gut the way they need to. Essentially, imagine a ten to seven attack here in the United States with except exponentially larger because we have a wide open border and a you know, an intelligence and law enforcement community that's more focused on arresting people for walking through the rotunda, taking selfies or praying at abortion clinics
than protecting us from mass murderers. And we've seen you know you. Every time there's one of these psychos with a rifle, you know he's been on the FBI's radar. It's shocking. I took a look at events like the Boston incident, where you had a couple of idiots with pipe bombs and a couple of handguns and they managed to shut down an entire city. Imagine thousands of guys with minimal training, simple weaponry, and simple instructions going on a rampage. And this talks about the rampage from the
points of view of many different individuals. The way I did that, I couldn't have like one character Forrest gumping his way from the White House to a city street where a bunch of psychos are killing people. So it's about forty little vignettes of people telling what happened. If you remember World War Z or World War three for that matter, the old John Hackett book from the eighties that really scared the hell out of people about the Warsaw Pact. I use that style. I think it was
pretty effective. It has been scaring the hell out of people, and that's what it's supposed to be doing, because we're in a lot of danger. We are at risk because we default to a peaceful and secure society, but we're unwilling to do the things that were fire. They're required to maintain a peaceful and secure society, and much of what we do is frivolous and stupid. Much of what
we do is self defeating, you know. I think if you look at our vulnerabilities, particularly the kind of people who watch an MSNBC are particularly vulnerable because very few of them are armed, you realize that as individuals we are vulnerable, and as individuals we need to be able to fight back, but we also need to be fight back as a country, and this talks about all of that from the perspectives of men and women, law enforcement,
regular civilians, government officials, bad guys as well, including homegrown anti fought type terrorists who I think is to be a willing part of this sort of thing. So it's suck. It's a scary book, okay, And it's selling very well, which I appreciate. I hope people listen.
I hope they do too.
I have to say that the thing that helps me kind of sleep at night when I think about this kind of stuff is that it hasn't happened yet. And what do you say to that, the fact that we haven't had any kind of attack like that yet, and our border has been wide open for a while, and we do have people across the world that hate.
Us, Why do you think it hasn't happened, You.
Know, Carol, I'm often stunned about how our enemies missopportunities. We like to think there are enemies. Are these ern stavros Blofeld, the volcano layer guys stroking the task, these geniuses who can put all the pieces together. It's important not to underestimate them. It's also important to be realistic.
A lot of them are kind of stupid. In fact, as the book points out, a lot of the foot soldiers in these things are stupid people, dumb people, people in no future, who get sucked into these things and do horrible, horrible things at the behest of much smarter people. I see them missing a lot of opportunities I have always looked at, for instance, on a different level, President g not moving to take Taiwan. I mean, you know,
it would be an audacious move. I'm not sure we could stop it, and I kind of wonder why not. I don't think it's the goodness of their heart. I just don't think they're as unbelievably talented as we sometimes make our enemies out to be.
You write and tweet a lot about our military largely falling apart. You do you feel like that that is fixable.
I have a town hall column that'll run on March seventh about that very subject, with a lot of focus on the frivolous trans idiocy. I mean, when you have a full colonel coming up, who is a man pretending to be a woman addressing other officers, that's not a serious military and I might give a little more leeway to these kind of social fads. If we had unequivocally won a major war in the last thirty years, which we have not done. I was there the last time
we did. I was there at Desert Storm. I was in the seventh Core main command post, and we achieved a victory on par with Hannibal or Julius Caesar. We destroyed what thirty six divisions and one hundred hours. It's unbelievable, just unbelievable. And since people know, I'm.
Going to drop that line by the way to my history loving son, because I don't know anything, so I'm going to be like, you know, it was a victory on par with Hannibal and Julius Cesar.
It absolutely was. And if you're right, we could do a deep dive in a Hannibal at CANi, but we don't need to do that. The simple fact is we had the most You know, there are legendary military forces throughout history, and the American military of nineteen ninety one would have to be in the top ten of any serious list, you know, with the Mongols, with Hannibal's army in Italy, with a Julius Caesar and Gaul. It's just it was a pinnacle, and as for so many as
with so many things, we took it for granted. My theory is, you know, we're being run by the third generation, right Like you look at the Fords, and you know, Henry Ford had a lot of issues. He was a jerk in personal life. He was also a genius who revolutionized manufacturing and he built a giant empire. And the second generation of Fords took that and made it even bigger than you know, they brought us the Mustang. I mean, it's just Ford is a multinational corporation, just a huge achievement.
Name me a third generation four. It's like naming me naming a third generation Kennedy. Okay, you want to meet one of them. You know they're they're there, Toyota Corolla is idling in front of a crack house.
Okay, do we just get too comfortable?
Is that we had what we are? We are run by trust fund babies. Our institutions were not built by the people who run them. They were not uh they didn't suffer, they didn't put any sweat equity in. They were handed them these institutions thanks to their credentials. You went to Harvard, great you're now qualified. So look at I mean, generationally, look at it. The World War two generation beat beat Hitler, beat the depression, the next generation,
you know, civil rights built America into a superpower. And the third generation, what's it got? Only fans and the grinder. Okay, I mean the the the people who run our institutions right now are not running the institutions to have the institutions do what the institutions are supposed to do. It's pursue their own personal agendas. The thing about institutions is the institutions have to actually perform their function or they lose all credibility. So if you look what's what's the
institution that works today is at academia? No? Is it the media? No? You know? Is it the military? No? You you you look at polls in.
Health care agencies no.
And uh and they and the credibility uh uh just shrinks. So these people are simply defending sinecures rather than actually doing jobs. So we are run by cultural trust fund babies who are not accomplished people. They're not particularly right, they're not particularly good at their job. This is why we have a war on accountability. You know, I mean, there is nothing our ruling class hates more than being
held responsible. And look, I've got some issues with Donald Trump, but Donald Trump is accountability in the sense that he was elected because you guys suck and and nobody nobody about. Yeah, nobody exemplifies that better than Hillary Clinton, who he beat. Hillary Clinton is a unaccomplished, not particularly bright woman. She failed the District of Columbia bar exam for God's sake. I mean, she had a pulse and everything. How do
you do that? She's she's no genius. She got went to the right school and married the right guy, and that that's that's who she is. But that's emblematic of our ruling class. They you know, they get they get hand to a silver spoon and then imagine that they somehow mine the ore. But they didn't. And they're terrible and they're only concerned with maintaining their power. That's what aar democracy is. It's not art democracy, it's their sinecures.
What would you say is our largest cultural problem, Like, what do you think we need to tackle first?
Basically, Uh, there's so many. I I think we have to re establish normality in the sense that it's the normality that I grew up with. I'm not sure whether you were here during the seventies or eighties, but that was. Yeah, there was a sense right that kings worked one perfect you know. I mean there were there were problems, there are always problems, but there was a sense that, you know, justice is kind of going to prevail, you know, the economies, we're going to get through it. I'm going to be
better off than my parents were. You know, I can generally walk the streets safely. I'm not going to get arrested for saying something. Government's not going to stop me from saying something. And none of that's true today, none of that's none of that's something we can rely on. We have to get back to that, and that means reorienting our ruling class, because there's always a ruling class, and I am hoping that we don't have to completely
fail before we have a reform move. But right, you know, the the old thing about weak men make hard times. You know, hard men make good times. Good times make weak men. I mean, there is a cycle to history, and I just you know, I don't want to run out my personal life clock on the downslope of the Bell curve. But here we are.
Yeah, you're still in California.
That's a surprise. I do have you just want to be the last one to turn out the lake.
Literally, I literally have one or two conservative friends left here. There used to be a vibrant community when Andrew Breitbart was here, a lot of people and they're all gone. The people in California are not the communists, not the welfare cheats, not the losers, not the Chardonnay soaked wine moms. It's people like me and I am. I'm going to be spending more and more time in Texas. Yes, Arena wants us to get a third place in Florida.
I love her.
I watch it too. I love Florida. If there wasn't family in Texas, I got the only Manbin family that's not in Miami. But no, you know, I got here in seventy two, and you could feel, even as a little kid, I could feel the excitement. It was a beautiful place.
I used to love California. I mean I loved it.
It was a governor. He there was always a sense and I never didn't have this sense that I could do whatever I want to do. I went to school at uc San Diego, went off to the Army for four years. But I came back and I went to Los Angeles. Now I grew up near San Francisco, and then I went to school in sandiw but I'd never been to Los Angeles, and I knew Los Angeles was a place you go to do what you want to do. And you know care I was able to make it. I built a law of firm. I was a stand
up comic. I became a best selling author. You know, I built a family. I did all these things that I wanted to do, and it never occurred to me I couldn't. But we have a whole generation to young people now who only see limitations, They only see constraints, and that's not what California is supposed to be. It's heartbreaking.
Do you feel like you've made it?
I know, I feel like I have a lot of things that I want to do, but I'm not. I don't feel like I've missed something. I feel like I've always been an optimistic California kind of old time California person. I'm looking to the future, going there's all these neat things I can do. You know, what are you thinking?
What do you what are you gonna do tell us.
Maybe I'll write a movie. Maybe I'll start another company. I'm certainly gonna write more books. Who knows. Maybe I'll get a radio show. I'm a guest host for Hugh Hewitt tomorrow. I mean, I's some suburban kid from California, right, and I'm going to talk to two million people for three hours tomorrow morning.
That's amazing. Yeah, I'm not special.
I'm not particularly I'm not an idiot, but I'm not a genius. I just I just don't think there are any limits out there. And I want other people to get that too, Because I'm excited about tomorrow. I always have. It's like, what's going to happen next? I mean, what cool thing do we do now?
I've seen you excited about rain, you know.
I remember that you and Arena were in Florida and it was raining outside and you both ran toward it like it's so cool. But then you guys got a lot of rain in California, like right after that.
I feel like, but in.
How we should all be excited about all the new things that can happen, all the things you can do. I watch people who spend their lives on video games. Or you know, on the internet all the time. And I'm on the Internet a lot, but I'm enjoying and I'm learning new things and doing things. I look at Twitter as my Sudoku. It's a you know, can I be funny? Can I be clever? Can I be pippy? And there's just so many There's so many neat things, and I just want to do them now. Sometimes I
just want to chill. That's okay. I love my routine. I have my favorite restaurants and everything. But I think I'm essentially excited about life, and I don't like that the younger generation doesn't seem to feel that way because they've been told they can't and that doesn't happen.
How do you challenge that with your own kids?
Oh gosh, Well, they're teenagers, so they don't talk to me. They're finding their way in the world, doing interesting things and not the things that I did, not that not not necessarily the past that I've taken. But uh, you know, there's there's a world out there and they've you know, they they've got some of I don't, which is youth. They got they got this whole future ahead of me. It's very exciting.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. What would you be doing if you weren't in the media or a lawyer world?
What would be a plan be?
I don't know. Yeah, there's so many things. I could have stayed in the military and tried to do some cool stuff there. I mean, I was in the reserves for Rocco, stayed active. Uh. I always thought building another a different kind of business might be interesting. Who knows. Maybe i'd be a park ranger and take people out and uh, you know, show them, you know, do the little uh midnight star watching things. I always enjoyed those.
I mean, gosh, I like that answer.
Park ranger?
Why not? I mean, that's just yeah. I have always promised myself I'm never gonna get in a situation where I wake up dreading the day on a regular basis. Yes, I mean as a lawyer. Sometimes I'm like ah in a deposition. Most of the time I get up, I'm like Okay, cool another day, yay. And I think people ought to try strive for that. It's possible, but that people get being told they can't, and I don't like that.
So end here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives and be happy, Like you.
Just go do it. You know a lot of people are like, how do you find time to write? I just sit down and do it. If you get learn to manage your time, time is amazing. As a commander, I could give you more ammunition, more people, more tanks, more whatever. I had all that, but I never had more time. Manage your time wisely, you know, like today I had about, you know, an hour between what I was doing and then and then this knocked out a call, got that much off my trip an hour?
Damn yeah, get it really bad about myself?
Well, you know I've already written for forty years. I mean, I hope I could go quick. It's just, you know, get things done early so that you maximize your freedom. I try and teach that to my lawyers. You know, you don't have to throw it over the trance on the eleven fifty nine. You know, you can do it two weeks ahead of time, and then you might done.
My next life, I want to be one of those people who does it ahead of time and not at eleven fifty nine and.
Then oh always, I always do it in advance. Then you maximize your freedom.
Thank you so much Kurt Schlichter by his new book, The Attack. It is terrifying, It is fantastic.
I must read. Thanks so much for coming.
On, Kirk, Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.