Episode 1268: Discourse is Dead? w/ J. Burden

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happens that you sit down and you write it. You know it was my impulse too, So yeah, I guess when you know, with the anniversary of nine to eleven last week, you wanted to talk about the towers coming down and you know how there were bombs in it and the planes were holograms.

just say, forty percent of an article done. And then this happened, and it was like, okay, well we got to talk about this. And normally I try not to talk a lot about the current twenty four hour news cycle on my show for a number of reasons, which is one, you can find that anywhere. Two, it really decreases the shelf life of your product. It's not worth talking about. And so fairly deliberately. You know, this was

written about twenty four hours after the event. So in the piece itself, Kirkshot Discourse Killed, which you can find on the old Glory Club substack, there's some things there that I said that were true. As of the time of writing, they had not captured the shooter. There was no motive as of yet known. We were just kind of speculating, I will say, by waiting twenty four hours and having certain baseline knowledge, all of the assumptions were correct, right.

You didn't need to be no strudamis to figure out, you know, why someone went after Kirk and so there are a couple things in that right. As you said, everyone has written a piece on this, everyone has reacted to it. But I think there are a couple things really to examine when we're talking about this, which is first, okay, what can we learn from it? Obligatory it kind of provisos getting those out of the way. It probably won't surprise you, Pete. I wasn't a big Charlie Kirk listener,

you know, he wasn't really in my feed. But from everything I've heard about and he was a good guy, a nice guy, and what I did see from him was refreshingly honest. He got made fun of, he got griped infamously over the past four or five years, and it seems as if well he took it to heart. He changed, he moved on certain issues. And in the last hours of his life, what was he advocating for, Well, he was going hammer and tongs for this poor Ukrainian girl,

Arena who was savagely stabbed. He was sticking his neck out. He was doing something that other conservatives felt too cowardly to do. And I admire his consistency when talking about racial discrimination towards white people, something that is not particularly common in the conservative movement, so fair enough. Also, I realize you've got some kind of former libertarians in your audience.

Ross Olbricht, he came out after Kirk was killed and wrote a very touching memorial piece where he said, look, Kirk was essential to getting him pardoned behind the scenes. Never came out and took credit for it. And again, look, those are two in instances, but I believe that they indicate at least a certain amount of this man's character.

But let's let's go back to initial reactions. Well, I think the first thing I thought, and many others of us thought, especially on the radical right, is wait, really, Charlie Kirk, because from our perspective, well, Charlie Kirk is a moderate right. He holds milk toast opinions. From our perspective and in the grand scheme of things right, looking at the full political spectrum, that is quite true. He was not this kind of fire breather. He was not this sort of guy that you would expect to kind

of stick in the libtard Craw. I hate to say it, I think the guy's hilarious, But if this had happened to Alex Jones, you kind of get it right. They've hated him for a really long time. If it happened to you know, Candice Owens or Marjorie Taylor Green, you could kind of get it right. Not approving of it, but just say, like, that's someone who says things routinely that are deliberately kind of poking the progressive sensibility right

in the face. But then you think about it a little more and you're like, Okay, well, Charlie Kirk has the same politics that my grandma has, right, he has the same politics that the relatively apolitical, just kind of normal conservatives who I live around, they think the same thing that Charlie Kirk does. And we'll wait a minute.

If he was a legitimate political target, if he was someone who it is morally excusable to kill, well, what does that mean about not only everyone who agrees with me, my grandma, the people around me, but also anyone to his right, anyone more extreme than that. And that was one of the things that I brought up in the piece is that one effectively this has shown you, listener,

what they think of you. That you are announced, you're a fascist, you are a representative of the ultimate evil, which our resume is designed to fight, and so killing you is morally excusable. You see this in the reaction. Look the biggest, you know, most prominent TV hosts. Of course they have to do the respectable thing. They have to say. Of course, we condemn violence. You saw Obama say it, You saw you saw Joe Biden say it. Of course they do. It's what you know, soul as

politicians do. But you go even two steps down to someone like Destiny, who Okay, sure he doesn't have a network television show, but let's be honest, he has a bigger viewership than just about any network television show. He's a multi millionaire, he's a very influential person in progressive politics. And does he do it? Does he condemn it? Of course he doesn't. He refuses to. He sets this sort of absurd standard of well, if Trump does exactly what

I want only them, why condemn it? We know what he's doing there, right, we know what he's doing there. And then you go beyond that to normal people, right to progressive soldiers, to progressive doctors, nurses, teachers, and what

do we see cheering it on? You know, I'm sure you've seen the kind of ghoulish displays, you know, mocking Kirk's death, and you realize these people they hate you, they hate your grandma, to be blunt about it, they hate normal conservatives, and they view them as acceptable targets

for political violence. And that's a very disturbing thing. I think that's why, obviously, other than the dramatic, gruesome footage, other than the obvious sensation of a political assassination, why this is stuck with people, Because it's a realization that the sort of radio Rwanda propaganda we have heard for

decades at this point, well, they took it seriously. It's sort of a miracle that this doesn't happen more, because again and again and again in every op ed, in every song, and every kind of awful Instagram infok graphic, the buried premises people like this are acceptable targets for political violence. What do you do you punch Nazis? What do you do you shoot Nazis? It's not a dramatic

rhetorical jump, So that's a big part of it. I think another layer to this, obviously, is that well, if we're all Nazis, what's the point in playing or there, except like, why why do we play to them. Why do we accept their moral judge judgment? Why do we want their approval? Because if Charlie Kirk is worth getting shot, well, okay,

isn't everyone? Why are you playing in their framework? Because the moment you depart from it, and even as mild away as Charlie Kirk does, well you're on the chopping block. So to be honest, why moderate? Why play to their sensibilities? Because but if you ever are a threat to them in even a minor way, well, they understand that you were an enemy. And from their perspective, which is not mine, what do you do with a political enemy? You shoot them in the neck. This is me reading their actions.

I don't believe I'm acting unfairly putting words in their mouth. So what's another conclusion we can take from this? Well, honestly, as you can tell in the sort of pithy title, a discourse doesn't work because what did Kirk do? Well, Kirk did exactly what you were supposed to do when we were in high school civics class. How do you

change people's ideas? How do you change the direction of the country, Well, you talk to people, you engage in the marketplace of ideas, you go to college campuses, hypothetically sit down for an open debate and throw ideas back and forth, see if you can convince them that you're right. And then as popular wisdom goes, people will look at that say yeah, that makes a lot of sense and adjust their voting habits accordingly. That's how you change things,

That's how you do politics correctly. Well, how was Kirk rewarded for playing the game as he was supposed to? Did he win? Was Charlie Kirk the king of America? Did he turn the country around? Did he turn us back to a nineteen fifties version of America? No? He was shot. He was murdered in front of his children, and four K video extremely gruesome, I might add for engaging with the process as he was supposed to, doing everything how you were supposed to playing the game by

the rules. And when we look at this in total, I should say, if you listen to Tucker Carlson talk about Charlie Kirk, and let's be honest, Charlie Kirk took a lot of flak for continuing his friendship with Tucker Carlson took a lot of flak for featuring him at his events, well, how did Tucker describe his friend. Well, one, he said that he wasn't particularly conservative, at least at the end of his career. He understood that con inc Had sold us all a bill of goods. So fair enough. Again,

he has moved. But when I call him a good conservative, I don't mean to say that he is a house conservative, like he's owned, he's on the plantation. What I mean to say is he was playing the game by the rules as set out for all of us, doing exactly what you're supposed to do well, and again he was

shot for it. So those are the big conclusions, at least initially, and I'll throw it back to you after this peet that I take from this, which is one, we're all Nazis, Two a discourse doesn't work, and three we were sold They told us the wrong rules to the game, right, that the correct way to do politics was never supposed to result in anything other than them waining. And obviously, you know a great deal of sympathy for

Kirk's family. It seems as if his widow is a fiery woman who is going after these people looking for blood. She's already intonated that she is interested in suing Jimmy Kimmel, which good. I hope she takes him for everything he's worth. She said that she wants to continue his fight. And I think it's also important to note Charlie Kirk wasn't talking to us, so I think we miss a lot

of his impact. But Kirk was incredibly popular with young people, and when we talk about the shift of young men to the right, you can't talk about that without mentioning Kirk. And look, I am not a conservative. I am not someone who really has a lot in common with conservatives like Kirk. But let's also be honest. We're all on

a journey. None of us, at least not most of us started uber based out of nowhere, just popped out of the womb, you know, with Schopenhauer in one hand and you know, a bust of the Austrian painter in another.

We started somewhere. And when I look at people like Kirk, I see someone who, in very good faith, was trying to move the Overton window to the right, was trying to normalize discussion about anti white discrimination, normalized discussions about things that just a few short years ago, three five years ago, would result in you being kicked out of polite society. And we've got to understand, Pete. Look, if you and I are the narrow end of the wedge, well there needs to be a wedge behind it. And

that was men like Charlie Kirk. And look in sort of a dark sense, and forgive me if I'm out over my skis here, but there is sort of a dark irony in the name turning Point USA, because even if his organization during his life was not a turning point, his death certainly was. It feels as if one of those many before and after moments where obviously, you know, we were kind of joking about nine to eleven when we started rolling, but it's always well where were you?

And it seems as if there was a before and after COVID the same thing, and with Kirk, it seems as if again there is a before and after a turning point, if you will. But I've been going for a while, Pete, I'll throw it back to you.

basically start losing their jobs. And I'm not talking about like the people who do the TikTok videos of them melting down just so that they can get views. I'm talking about the people who are genuinely like, well, you know, I just lost my job, and you know, I don't know what I don't know what's going on. These are people who believe that they are so right. When it comes to call it the zeitgeist. I know a lot of people just hate that term because it's been so

fucked up. But according to you know, the spirit of the age, that of course I'm allowed to celebrate the death of a Nazi and nothing is going to happen to me. You know. It's like I know that I've gotten I know that I've gotten people this I'm speaking in the third person for them. I know that I've gotten people fired from their jobs because they have Republican views. But that's all right, that's the spirit of the age. That's what we are. How am I getting fired now

for this. This is like I mean, and I mean, does this escalate because you see people getting fired? I mean you, I mean, at least from what I've heard, there are groups that are targeting right now because they just don't have the manpower to do it. Forty to fifty thousand people to have to lose their jobs.

we're really late in this. I use the example, you know, speaking on the good Old Boys, saying like, look, if you're if you're in a professional wrestling match and you're a jobber, right, you're the Brooklyn Brawler, and you know you're getting beat up, and then all of a sudden, you know you're wrestling a partner pulls out a switch blade and stabs you in the gut, like, wait a minute,

this isn't what we were supposed to do. And you can choose two ways to react from that, which is one you can complain and say, well, this isn't the rules, right, this isn't governance, this isn't politics as I was taught in civics class. Or you can basically say like, all right, like we're going to have to fight. Then then this has become existential. You have threatened who I am what

I am. And when we talk about that reaction, when we look at the left and the way they talk about Nazis and an existential threat to our democracy, that is implicitly a call for political violence, because what they are saying when they call you a Nazi is they're saying you are an existential threat to democracy, to me, to our nation. And look, you don't have to be a legal genius to figure out what you're supposed to

do to an existential threat. Like if the crackhead with a switchblade comes out of the ally Ali is an existential threat to you, you are justified in mowing them down, right, that is what you do to protect your existence. If you will. And so if we find ourselves in that position, if we find ourselves in a position where we are being threatened and have been threatened first economically and now physically, well, to be honest, man, turn them out is fair play.

We are we understand the stakes of this game. And I think that this is a very encouraging sign when we look at the right for my entire life really before Donald Trump, and I don't want to kind of give the man too much credit, but I think it's fair to say the right has been the designated loser of politics in America. That the game, the system as it was assumed that progressives would ultimately get what they want. The joke is right, Conservatives are merely progressives driving the

speed limit. They would get in power, pull their foot off the gas, but keep going in the same direct action, and ultimately they would faithfully, again like you know a job or in wrestling, lose and take their pay day. Their pay day was whatever they could collect from Red America. That was what they got for playing. The mark for getting beat up is they got to, you know, live out their life comfortably off of the spoils of the

other parts of America. Well, look if you're going to actually turn that around if you say, no, we're not playing to collect the consolation money after we lose, but we're playing to win. You've got to understand this becomes an actual fight then, right, this becomes this becomes a real wrestling match, right, not one with you know, shoots and ladders and you know a fire extinguisher. It's an actual fight, and that, I think is what is what

is happening in politics. So we look at this, right, we look at cancel culture and we say, well, guess what we can do that too, And some of it is nakedly political. Right, you're going to take a hit for this. You took one of our guys. We're going to take you out. Another element of this that can't be overstated is I don't actually want someone who thinks it's cool to dance on someone's grave, operating on me,

enforcing the law, teaching my kids, even making my food. Like, really, do you trust someone who is that cracked, who is that morally depraved, to handle your sandwich? It is quite literally, and you may have heard this phrase before. You may have freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom from consequences. Sorry, someone decided that was a cool way to organize society. Someone decided that's what we were going to do. We were going to bring a shank to this match. And

guess what. As you know many have said in condemning Charlie Kirk, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. And in an ideal society, in a society that had a certain element of moral consensus, in a society that had a culture that was in some way unified, we probably wouldn't need to do this. But here's where we are. Someone some half of politics decided we were going to play revolution. And this is the consequences of

those actions. And when I say escalate, I'm not one of these you know, boogaloo seventeen seventy six will commence again civil war types. But I think you'd have to be an idiot to look at American politics and say, I think things are going to cool down in the foreseeable future. I think we're going to return to normal. I think it's going to be just like it was, you know, right after the Cold War ended. Things are just gonna be hunky door like. Clearly not things are

heating up. And let's not forget that before you know Kirk was killed, there was another example of that Ukrainian refugee arena. Well, when she was killed, what was the reaction. Was it just that charge Kirk was such an execrable political figure who was so hated that people wanted to dance on his grave. No, this poor Ukrainian woman was stabbed for the crime of being white. And what did we see, effectively the exact same response, which is either I don't care or good I got a white girl.

To quote aspiring astrophysicist De Carlos.

the guy who did it. So not only do you have this group of what Thomas calls you know, and I'm leaving the whole Israel thing out of this because I'm gonna need to see a whole bunch more evidence, you know, I'm before before I go down that road. And if I'm saying that, yeah, but when.

there that might be important. Then you have a whole nother group that we see who it's all about their identity, it's all about their skin color, and it's all about, hey, that guy looks like me. He may have just done something really messed up. He may even just killed that girl. But I'm not stepping into help. I'm not stepping into

help at least until it's too late. And the question is, when you see Charlie getting killed and you see Arena getting killed like that, and you can focus on two groups within your society, how do you go forward as a society when everybody when when people are literal enemies, when they are literal enemies who are willing to not only kill, but to you have a group around you that is going to that is going to surround you and go, yeah, you know that person, the system failed

that person. You know it's because of four hundred years of slavery and they, I mean, how there's no way to go forward. If there's anything that we've learned in the last ten days, it's that we have warring factions in this country who are literally willing to kill and nobody's going to stop them because they have radical in group preference and they're in groups are numerous and in some cases politically powerful.

will start working again. It's really not the case. This is actually, weirdly enough, a problem you see both with people who are into peaceful parenting and libertarians is that they seek to act as if their desired end state is already achieved. Well, I'll act like I live in a high trust society that will produce those results. Clearly that is not the case. And that's the problem when you have no moral consensus where there are two diametrically

opposed factions. And this is really what we see when we talk about politics, like what is capital p politics, Well, it's when you have two groups where they cannot both live life as they see fit. The classic example I stole this from Wade Stotts, who's a very talented rhetortician. He talks about if you're Amish and a gay land developer wants to put in, you know, a gay club in the middle of your community, Well, all of a sudden,

you have politics. Those are mutually incompatible goals. You cannot both have an amish community and a thriving gay nightclub. Right, one must give. And it's a silly example, You know, I bring it up because it gets laughs. But either way, that's what we have on a societal level, that you cannot have both of these visions. And look, that's been the case for a while. Let's be honest. The two stories of America that you can read about in Yarvin

have existed for a very long time. But if you have that conflict, but it is being sort of worked out between a winner and a paid off loser, well, okay, even if those two parties don't technically agree on the ground level, it doesn't really matter. There's no real struggle for control, simply a debate over how long it takes for one side to win. But the moment that the loser looks around and says, well, honestly, man, like, why

do would I keep taking this deal? You're going to drive me to the end of my rope and leave you with nothing. I think I'd like to win for once. Well, all of a sudden, that becomes a real deal conflict. And I think that's what we're seeing is people are realizing, especially normal conservative people, that the terms of the game are not simply the kind of negotiated defeat they are used to. But it is a genuine existential struggle. It is genuinely if we don't win, we will be treated

like this. This is how this is what our life will be. We will not be They will not extend the same gracious attitude that conservatives had often in victory quote unquote victory if you will. And so I think that's why so many people are disturbed by this as they are realizing the stakes of politics. And look, it didn't have to be like this. It was a it was a series of choices. It was a series of

human actions that led to this situation. But looking at the situation, looking at the situation, the state of play as it is, you're one hundred percent right, there is no compromise on this. One side will have to be defeated. And when I look at people like is Stephen Miller, who is is impressive to cram so much rage into such a small man, going just hard in the paint, saying,

you know, the West must be saved. Burn these people to the ground, you know, going after these groups with rico charges, basically saying we will prosecute these people to the fullest extent of the law. I see someone who realizes what time it is I see someone who realizes the threat that this sort of violence presents to to

be blunt about it. And on the other hand, if we want to talk about old the old style conservatives, the beautiful losers, as Francis would describe them, well, there are a few better examples than someone like Bondie, right, someone who is saying just this kind of incoherent nonsense about hate speech and how we really want to secure people's rights to printing out photos of Charlie Kirk. It's like, well, this is one a horrible misdirection. This is really not

what anyone cares about. But also you're missing the stakes of this game. You're missing that this is not simply my ability to go to Pop Copy and demand they print whatever I want. But this is a blow struck at the core of what it means to be, let's be honest, a sovereign niche. If you do not have the monopoly on violence, if you cannot say extra judicial killings are inappropriate, they are sanctioned, they will be pursued to the end degree or are you really a government anymore?

And to me, I think that those two figures signal the divide between those who realize that they are in a real deal political capital p conflict, or those who want to go back to kind of sleepy, humdrum version of DC politics where conservatives, where right wingers simply bide their time until they're out of power, raking in donations from from flyover America and fiddling while Rome burns.

The Bondi and Patel are clearly Desantus loyalists anything you could see, because they it seems like they're working to destroy the Trump White House. And yeah, I also make the point that Desantus is obviously a big friend of Israel, and then someone says, well so is Donald Trump. It's like, yeah, there can't be factions. It's not like there could be

actually factions within those things working against each other. You know, like there could be some that have certain interests because ignoring Stephen Miller, you know that his background and everything, he seems to be the most base person out there who's saying the right things, who's in in the administration, and you're right, Miller is speaking the language of what

Sam Hide said. And Sam Hyde, you know, is another one who I can't believe that Thomas had to address this last night that there are people who were saying that Sam Hyde was not sincere in his sentiment towards Charlie Kirk, like that his tears were insincere. It's like, if you think that you really shouldn't have anything to do with politics, you've either been doing this too long and you've just you've lost your you've lost your humanity, or you you know, we live in the age of

total politics. There are people who are paying attention to politics who don't have don't have the temperament for it, don't have they don't have the constitution for it. And that goes for people who've been talking about commenting on politics for a really, really long time, like people on our side of the Great Divide who celebrated Charlie Kirk's death because Israel, because that's the only thing that they

can concentrate on. That is there one thing that they don't that they I'm going to go down a path. But the what Sam Hyde said was, and when he said it, I agreed with him. You literally have like two weeks of momentum and if there isn't if steps aren't taken to basically go full And I hate to say this because it was a failure, you know, rooting out terrorist cells like Iraq or Afghanistan here at home,

where there are people who know where they are. Local law enforcement knows where these people are, knows where they're hold up. If they're not willing to go and do that, and if you're not willing to see anything within the next two weeks, even if it doesn't accomplish anything long term, it's pretty much done. And this administration is pretty much,

in my opinion, to be ignored. And you know, maybe there's some people in the administration who are doing good work, but the administration as a whole, there's no real points to support it, to support anything they're doing.

doubt a lot. I'm not one of these reflective Trump haters, and so in a situation like this, where it is a I mean, as awful as the event is, it is about the best political opportunity you could hope for being given to you on a silver platter, where it's Trump's would be gold in that case if you fumble that, look, man, I'm not going to give you, as we did in Charlotte,

your fifteenth chance. You know, sorry, man, I could notice a pattern, and it's especially frustrating for a man like Donald Trump, who sort of built his media reputation on firing the wrong people and hiring the good ones, for him to be so unwilling to fire these incompetent members of his own cabinet, right BONDI, who has been largely shooting herself in the foot for oh, I don't know about the last nine months, just over and over and

over again. At a certain point, I'm not being cynical when I say that this seems like, if you were not taking an action, this is part of the plant. From your perspective, this is a feature, not a bug. When we look at these organizations, we've understood people like you and I. I'd also recommend the work of Mike Shelby. You can find him on Twitter, who tracks Antifa. These

organizations have been around for a very long time. They've organized in public on places like red it around, you know, the SRA, the Socialist Rifle Association, the John Brown Gun Club, and others, but also on Discord, which, again, if we're talking about living in the greatest you know, digital panopticon the world has ever seen. The fact the administration cannot do something to discourse a discord rather is absurd. So let's examine discord. A lot of people use it. It's

sort of ubiquitous as a chat app. When I was in high school. Is the way that you organize playing games with your friends. It's still predominantly what it's used for, but for those who aren't familiar, it lets you have your own private group chat on a server, right, you can make channels. People use it for work. Most people just use it to hang out. It has sort of taken over what forums were in a previous version of

the Internet. And also in addition to that, Discord is the center of not trying to be grotesque here, but of child exploitation and grooming on the internet, so much so that a Discord moderator for people under about thirty is shorthand for a pedophile is It's almost a hackneyed joke at this point, every joke that you know, my parents' generation made about Catholic priests, their children are making about people who spend a lot of time on Discord.

And in addition to that, obviously you have the you know, the grotesque crimes against children, but you also have a large portion of the trans community. I realized that as a Venn diagram that might just be one circle. But point is, there's a lot of trans stuff that goes on there, much of it connected to grooming. But also these antifook groups, right, these violent terrorist organizations, many of whom are doing things that are incidentally very illegal anyway,

And well, what is to be done? It seems as if the administration, the previous administration, has largely done absolutely nothing about Discord. And look, you could say, well, it's not really Discord's fault. Look at all the crimes that are planned over the phone. Maybe they just don't know, all right, Well, how does Discord treat the problems they do care about? For instance, dangerous right wingers. Are you in a private group chat with your friends dropping the

hard r instant ban You're done forever? Are you organizing a right wing event? Well, just mysteriously accidentally, we didn't do it on purpose. All of your names and identities have been linked to the press. So they do have the ability to do that. They do have the ability to act and to take things down or to forward

them to the authorities. And so again, even if it was not deliberately endorsed, was not planned by the staff of Discord, well, it certainly has their tacit approval because we've seen that they can act when something violates their internal moral code, and they have not acted in this

case or in many others. They have not acted against the you know, the shadowy you know Discord groups connected to you know, passing around like gore and stuff films or you know, footage of child sexual abuse, any of these, you know, horrible things. But when our friend Thomas creates a discord, it's down in two days. And look, you know, Thomas's fans can be a bit rowdy, but I doubt

they're doing anything like that. Again, it's clear that this is another institution which is completely and totally ideologically captured. And if you are the regime, if you are the president, if you are the most powerful man in the world, and you allow a company, even a big company, to thumb their nose at you and to say no, I'm not gonna do anything about it. No, the terrorists, the violent lunatics killing your young fathers in public, I'm not

gonna do anything about that. Well, are you really president? And it seems as if no, because you don't have the monopoly on forced you don't have control. And again, I think it's important to say, when we're talking about retribution, we're not talking about violence, right, We're not saying that people who wish death on Charlie Kirk should be you know, dragged out into an alley and beaten. We'll go with that. We're not saying that because look, let's draw a distinction

between force and violence. Violence is basically force in a state of failure. If you have control, you don't need to get violent. Sure, ultimately, you know, if someone is convicted, there may be you know, a form of corporal punishment. That's not what we're talking about here, effectively, what we

are asking for what ought to be done. The just thing to do is for these people to meet righteous authority, to meet the consequences for their actions, either in coordinating for this murder, either in celebrating this murder, or in when I think this is very important, I included this in my piece for creating the conditions for creating the rhetoric which led to this climate of violence, which led to someone feeling that Charlie Kirk was a fascist, that

Charlie Kirk was so dangerous to his community of button married freaks that he needed to be shot with a rifle. And again, this is not this is not you know, pie in the sky thinking. We're not asking for something that hasn't been done, We're not asking for something that isn't reasonable. What we're asking for is simple justice, the kind of justice that rulers from time in memoriam have understood, which is that if you are to be in control, you must be the final decision maker, you must have

the monopoly on violence. And sadly enough, it seems as if the administration, it seems as if Trump is unwilling to stand up and accept that responsibility. My only hope is that he changes his mind.

the government. And in their ssri addult freak show minds they're like, oh, wow, no, because this because these private people have here, this private business which they're not supposed to like, protects us and is giving us cover. That means we're the good guys. That means we're the legitimate ones and everyone else isn't. And that is people don't. People don't understand that how important legitimacy is in the

minds of everyone that's alive. People you instinctively still you hear something, You hear about a story somewhere, and you're like, Okay, where's a good where's a legitimate source that I can get this from, you know, And that's just it's what we look for. And people have no idea that by not taking down, by not taking down these networks, not only discord by not taking down the networks, by not taking down anti fib By not taking down at this point,

looks like the DSA is involved. By not taking them down, you're just legitimizing them, and their members feel more legitimized by it. Now they could become radicalized if you take it down. But I mean, how much more radical can they get than they are now? They're fucking shooting people.

guys with handguns. Well, they stuck them in the middle of a brightly lit parking lot at night and sat one hundred yards away, right too far to reliably hit under pressure with a handgun unless you're really talented. Where you have a perfect rest, you can see them, they can't see you. You've got ten people there. Okay, fair enough. They weren't that good at it, you know, they hit one guy, didn't kill him, and then seems to have

lost their nerve, ran off and all got captured. Okay, so it wasn't the most successful thing in the world. But that is a major escalation from anything we'd seen previously, you know, going from you know, throwing a piss bottle at a cop or maybe a molotav at a platation up to you, a ten person l shaped ambush like

guess what, bucco, we're in Vietnam. Like, that's a major escalation. Similarly, when we're talking about legitimacy, there are a couple things here, which is one and I think Hyde made this point, and Hyde's show on this was excellent. I consider it required viewing for any of our guys. I am a fan of his stuff and have been for a long time. But even if you aren't, check this out. It's hided

as best unusually serious and very poignant. But one of the things he was talking about is that, look, obviously the person who did this needs to be punished. And after I make this point, I'll return to why I think he should be punished to the fullest extent of Utah law. But it's almost more important that the person is caught quickly and competently, right, that they understand that if you try to do this, there is no chance of you escaping, where in this case the FBI seems

to have sort of fumbled the back. They've bumbled, they didn't what they were supposed to, and so fair enough, I guess it took less than two full days for the guy to be brought to justice. But how was he brought to justice? Well, basically it seems as if his dad and maybe a pastor or a priest were not entirely sure recognized the photo and said, hey, Bud, you got to turn yourself in. This is not exactly a no knock rade. So because why does that matter? Well, one,

it's a show of force, certainly does that. But also you've got to understand that when these people imagine themselves in that position, they say, well, he almost got away with it. I bet I could, especially if what seems to be the case is the case, which is that this was coordinated, that were multiple people involved. If you look at it and say, well, if he had a better driver, or if he had done things a little different, I bet I could get away with it. That is

going to encourage copycats. Whereas if it is an immediate response that no, you will not get away, the FBI will hunt you down and find you wherever you are. That's a deterrent. Similarly, when we talk about punishment, Utah does permit capital punishment. I think it They have, you know, one of two methods, lethal injection or a healthy dose of thirty thirty to the cardiothorastic cavity. But either way, this man deserves to face the full consequences of the

law for a couple of reasons. One, the blood of the innocent cries out for justice, right is Christians and you know, men of the West, we understand this. But another one is that, look, we've got to understand that it seems as if this guy was a bugman loser keeping him inside for the rest of his life, especially given his sexual proclivities. Is I mean, is that any

different from how he lived? Let's be honest, and again, we don't want to make this man into a sort of an uncle Ted figure, right, a guy we can you know, look at in Supermax and sort of view as our our lovable uncle. He needs to face the

consequences for his actions. And one of the bizarre injustices, the bizarre indignities of modernity, is that even if convicted and you know, given a life sentence, it's likely to take ten to fifteen years and you know, two to five million dollars of our money, Pete, to make sure that he goes out the way he ought to. This is a topic I realize it's probably a little dicey to talk about on the internet. I believe in the law exactly is written in the state of Utah. I'll leave it at that.

they're done in a legitimate way. And yeah, I want to see things done in a legitimate way at least when it comes to this, when it comes to everything, I want to see it done in a legitimate way, but that legitimate way is going to take will and you know, to go back to the fact that you still have these networks out there, these networks are still operating, and you know, according to Mike Shelby, he doesn't really

see them escalating, not yet. This could be something a reaction to it could be something you just never know. But if these networks aren't destroyed, we're we're looking at living in a situation like Italy's Years of Lead. I just re released an episode I did on that a

couple of years ago. We're looking at like the early nineteen thirties Spain, where people are just people are just taken out, where you're just it's it can get to the point, unfortunately, and especially when the country is so divided and you have so many groups that have just closed ranks, that somebody gets taken out and the only group that cares about it is that group, the group

that that person belonged to. And yeah, it's comes a time when you have to look at certain groups and they have to be legitimately targeted and legitimately their power has to be absolutely destroyed from the top down, and their worst elements have to be dealt with in a

very legitimate way by state actors. And you know, I just don't know whether we have people who have the will to do it, mostly because the system has been set up up until now that these people drive the narrative that these people are the coddled ones, that these people are the golloms, that these are the people who you know, Uncle Ted talked about in the systems need at trick about that they just basically become the state where they can do as they please and get away

with it, and or you know, you can invoke San Francis and you know, talk about a narco tyranny. But until a narco tyranny is destroyed and is looked down upon as much as you know, you look down upon child molested, you know, anyone who's promoting that, is promoting child molestation or anything like that, we're we're in chaos

and we're basically headed toward. Yeah. I wouldn't say a mass civil war, I don't think that that's possible anymore, but definitely skirmishes like the Haymarket riots or like the years of Lead or you know, like the troubles.

to understand actions produce consequences. It's very basic. But when there is a rampump in political violence, it can and often does. The number of events that you've mentioned lead to a cycle of tit for tat violence. You hit one of ours, we hit one of yours, and in an immediate sense, on the balance sheet of a conflict, that makes sense. You could say that those actors, within their bounded rationality are acting correctly. But look, man, we

live here. We don't want to devolve into political violence. Lady of Shalot Rip she did a great episode talking about growing up during the troubles, what that was like for young girl, and look, I liked her, she was a friend, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not a countryman of ours. We don't need to do this it's something that can be prevented. It just requires

a decision. It requires a leader. It requires someone to like Alexander, step up to the Gordian knot pull out their sword and chop in half, say the buck stops with me. We are this is no longer acceptable. We're done. That's what it takes. As we've been, you know, memed into oblivion. You can just do things, and this is something that can be done. Not to say that it isn't difficult, not to say that you won't face a pushback from within your own institutions, but to say this

is a problem that can be fixed. There are people in power right now who can fix it. The idea that this is beyond the scope of human possibility is it's absurd. It's so clearly not the case, because just like with Discord, we've seen what the FBI, with the DOJ, what our massive, absurdly large security apparatus can do when it wants to, when it wants to make someone's stay miserable, when it wants to pull an organization apart, it can

do that. And if you don't, not only are you massively increasing the likelihood of you know, the kind of civil conflict you were talking about. You were deciding I don't care enough. You were deciding it isn't worth the effort. You were deciding that it's not worth pursuing justice, isn't worth it. And if that's your answer, fair enough. But you've lost my loyalty.

You're going to be it's going you're going to be like South Africa, where you are going to have to build gates and electric fences, and you're going to have to protect your house, and you're going to have to bulletproof some things, bulletproof your house, bulletproof your vehicles. I mean, that is the direction we're heading in. If these people do not step up and eliminate I mean eliminate these people, and I don't care what that is. Just do it under the do it under the legitimacy of the state.

And if you don't, first of all, you're not gonna you're not gonna have the support of the people. You're going to lose the support of the people, and you're whatever legitimacy you have is gone. And two is just it's not going to be safe for you. I mean, Charlie Kirk, who who's next? Who's next? I mean it's I mean, I'm not saying if they can get to Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk doesn't have secret doesn't have secret service, but you.

want to live, okay, then fine, go ahead. It's going to affect you. It'll affect you less than it will than normal person, but it's still going to affect you. And nobody's going to nobody's gonna give you, nobody's gonna take you seriously. And that's all these people care about is being taken seriously. And that's that's where we are. It's just the word. We've talked about a lot, and this is legitimacy, and things need to be done legitimately.

And that's gone. That's gone after this. If you don't destroy these people, it's it's done. It's over right.

Check it out.