One American - Chase Geiser - Freemasonry, Propaganda, Americanism & Marxism | Ryan Turbeville

May 25, 2021 - One American - Chase Geiser

01:24:45

Freemasonry, Propaganda, Americanism & Marxism | Ryan Turbeville | One American Podcast #4

Chase Geiser is joined by Ryan Turbeville. Ryan is a self-defined free man, free mind, and Freemason who believes in culture over politics. EPISODE LINKS: Ryan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanturbeville Chase's Twitter: https://twitter.com/realchasegeiser PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://www.patreon.com/IAmOneAmerican

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	So one thing that I noticed when I um went through the degrees is it was really apparent to me um how the principles of Freemasonry are so heavily embedded in the founding documents of our nation.
	Um what are your thoughts on that and and masonry's role and sort of sort of forming what America would become?
	Yeah, so Masonry, you know, it's been around for a very long time, but it it formally started getting organized in the early 1700s in Britain.
	1717, right?
	Was the official coming out day?
	Yeah, that's the official.
	Now we know it was around way longer than before then, but if you want to look at the the modern version of it, it's heavily influenced by the enlightenment.
	And so is America.
	So I think it's easy to say that American ideals are Masonic ideals, and there's no doubt that Freemasons in America had a direct impact on the revolution and what came out of that.
	Uh, but both are really pulling from the enlightenment.
	And um I don't know if you have an America that we have today without Freemasonry.
	And I know that's a bold statement.
	I don't think that you know it was a Masonic conspiracy to create America or any formalized uh choice by the fraternity itself to do this, but I think if you look at the men that were involved in our founding that were some of the most influential men, their lives were heavily influenced by Masonry.
	We choose to go to the moon in this decay and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
	Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
	A date which will live intimate.
	Good night and good luck.
	Turbo.
	Why did you become a Freemason?
	So I used to work in politics, uh, long story there, but I met a guy on a campaign who was a Freemason.
	Uh somehow mentioned it to my grandpa, and he informed me that my great-grandfather was one who was still alive at the time.
	And I had uh known him my whole life and had no idea he was a Mason and uh just an incredible man, really uh uh a Titan of a man.
	And uh once I talked to him about it, that pretty much sold me at least my initial interest.
	So, you know, I had this idea maybe of what Freemasonry was in my head, you know, I'd seen National Treasure and I was a big history nerd.
	I knew about Ben Franklin and George Washington.
	And other than that, I didn't know a whole lot, you know.
	I just kind of figured, well, it's good enough for those guys, if it's good enough for my great granddad, it is good enough for a few of the men I knew in my social circle, then it's probably worth investigating.
	So that was it from the beginning.
	How old was your great granddad?
	Was he uh world war one guy?
	No, uh he was in his 90s.
	Uh he was 96 when he passed, and that was just a few years ago.
	So he was post-World War One.
	Uh I should know his actual birthday, but I had not.
	Uh but just you know, a good example of your typical Southern man who I think he dropped out of high school in the eighth or ninth grade, started working at a factory as a janitor, became an electrician somehow from janitor and worked there for the rest of his life, you know, and then when he retired, uh that the day before he died, he was cutting his grass, 96 years old, out cutting his grass.
	So you he was just one of those individuals that uh had in my mind this this spirit that encompasses what America is, which to me is just this self-determination uh strength.
	Um mixed with kindness, you know, he was one of those guys that uh every time something happened in the neighborhood, someone's dishwasher broke, or Just some sort of problem arose.
	The community knew they could call him and he'd come help them.
	That's awesome.
	So one thing that I noticed when I um went through the degrees is it was really apparent to me how the principles of Freemasonry are so heavily embedded in the founding documents of our nation.
	Um what are your thoughts on that and and Masonry's role and sort of sort of forming what America would become?
	Yeah, so Masonry, you know, it's been around for a very long time, but it it formally started getting organized in the early 1700s in Britain.
	1717, right?
	Was the official coming out day.
	Yeah, that's the official.
	Now we know it was around way longer than before then, but if you want to look at the the modern version of it, it's heavily influenced by the enlightenment.
	And so is America.
	So I think it's easy to say that American ideals are Masonic ideals.
	And there's no doubt that Freemasons in America had a direct impact on the revolution and what came out of that.
	Uh, but both are really pulling from the enlightenment.
	And um I don't know if you have an America that we have today without Freemasonry.
	And I know that's a bold statement.
	I don't think that you know, it was a Masonic conspiracy to create America or any formalized uh uh choice by the fraternity itself to do this, but I think if you look at the men that were involved in our founding that were some of the most influential men, their lives were heavily influenced by Masonry.
	You know, a lot of these guys, it's not that they were just members and they never came around.
	No, like these guys were masters of their lives, grandmasters of the state.
	Like a lot of these guys spent a lot of time in Masonry and it helped inform their moral, their values, you know, and then they clearly put those values into our founding documents.
	I've often uh wondered if the reason Masonry had so much to do with the revolution and the founding of America has to do with the fact that um the lodge was the only place where there was actually safety and freedom of speech.
	Obviously, if you spoke out against King George prior to the revolution or during the revolution for that matter, uh it was treason, it could be tarred and feathered.
	So do you think that that had something to do with it, where there was just this level of trust uh at Masonic Lodges where people could share ideas and actually express how they were feeling about uh the crown and its sort of dominion over the colonies?
	Definitely.
	I think uh a huge part of being a Freemason is this idea of free thought, free expression.
	Um again, an American ideal, but very much so a Masonic ideal.
	And I don't think uh any sort of revolution is possible.
	Let's not let's not even say revolution, just let's just say a movement in general is possible without networks.
	So we love to point out these individuals that were influential in the revolution.
	And while individuals are are don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the role of someone like Washington and just how big he was, but he could not have done it without a network.
	And Masonry provided these men a way to get together, build trust, as you said, speak freely, and have this bond, this brotherhood where they knew they would have each other's backs.
	And I don't think you can downplay the importance of that and what that network was able to provide, because if any of these guys would have just came out on their own, they would have been crushed.
	But instead, they came out together.
	You know, the declaration is uh is a very powerful document.
	Uh, and I think everyone remembers the the preamble and um you know the the beginnings of it.
	But I I like to think that that the end, their signatures are every bit as important because it's not you know, you know, those guys were literally signing their lives away, their their careers away, their families, everything that they'd ever worked for in their entire lives by putting their name on that document, they were they were willing to give it up, but they were committing to each other that that they were gonna stand together.
	And uh yeah, I'm not while not all of them were Freemasons.
	I I think that those of them that were uh the fraternity provided them with uh a backing and a trust and uh uh a knowledge that uh if they weren't doing it alone, that their networks were there with them.
	Do you know why um Freemasonry kept itself such a secret for so many centuries?
	Because what's the earliest Masonic document?
	It's isn't it 14th century?
	The that poem, what's it called?
	The what's the name of that poem?
	I can't remember that off the top of the head.
	Um I don't know.
	That that's an interesting question.
	I think part of it's just um think it was fear of the church.
	That was definitely part of it.
	Uh part of it was simply the fact that the printing press and all those types of uh technologies that allowed ideas to spread more freely, were they either weren't around or they were at their very beginnings, you know.
	So as technology allowed society to become more interconnected, uh, not just through the printing press, but let's just say commerce, you know.
	I mean, the British Empire is uh a huge reason for the spread of Freemasonry.
	It's not just that Masonry's ideas are uh universal and compatible and easily spread.
	We we had the benefit that you have a uh culture that spread itself throughout the world, and masonry just happened to spread with it.
	You know, so some of it was just not so much that it was being kept a secret.
	I think there just weren't the means to disseminate it as widely.
	And as time progressed and technology progressed, it became easier to do so.
	That's really interesting.
	And it came out of um, um, as I understand it, of course, it came out of the actual Masonic guilds, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you know anything?
	I mean, I know a little bit just on a surface level about that transition from actual Masonic guilds to um uh speculative masonry.
	Yeah, there was uh again part of this whole enlightenment type era where somewhere along the line the the stonemason guilds had these signs, they had these symbols, they had a structure, you know, they had uh a network, you know.
	I think part of the reason why they they most likely had the secret handshakes and all this stuff that people think about when they think of masonry today is if you were an ancient stonemason working on cathedrals throughout Europe, you had to have some way to prove yourself.
	You know, you couldn't just show up on a if you were working on a cathedral in France and then a year later show up on a job site in Germany, you had to somehow prove that you had knowledge, you know, and that you were capable.
	So that the guilds came up with these systems, and somewhere along the line you had this uh group of men within the aristocracy in in Britain, uh in Scotland, uh that felt like this base layer that the stonemasons had provided, whether it be the network, whether it be the secrecy, whether it be some of the signs, you know, they they felt like that was something that could be adapted into this higher form of masonry that could appeal to all men.
	So I don't know when the exact transition happened, but uh I think that's debatable.
	But it's one thing that I really appreciated out of um joining the fraternity was I joined at a time in my life when I was coming of age.
	I was 20 years old, I think, when I got my inner apprentice degree, and 21 when I became a master mason.
	Um and I really appreciated it because it helped um act as a guide for what it means to be a man.
	And I know that's something that comes up quite a bit in politics today in terms of all the trans stuff that's going on and and equal rights and equal pay.
	Like there's a lot of there's a lot of debate around what's appropriate in terms of how men and women view and interact with one another and what it actually means to be a man or what it means to be a woman, whether or not it's good to be masculine or or bad to be masculine.
	And so what are your thoughts in Terms of men and women.
	Does it mean something different to be a man and something different to be a woman?
	I think so, for sure.
	You know, I like to preface this entire discussion with Masonry is not political.
	It's not left or right per se.
	There are plenty of Republican, plenty of Democrat Masons.
	That being said, I do think there's at least a set of basic principles that used to not be left to right in my mind, such as freedom of speech or personal responsibility duty.
	We have this huge concept of Masonic duty that's repeated in a lot of the degrees.
	I kind of view that as an enlightened selfishness it's this idea that you have a duty to yourself and to take care of yourself because it's hard to help others if you're not even taking care of yourself and And you know, historically, I think masculinity has encompass some of those same ideals, you know, that men have a role in society.
	Um and it's not this fake masculinity, you know, it's not this picked up artist bullshit that we see with a lot of this world.
	You know, when you get into the the quote unquote manosphere, there's there's a lot of you know, boys running around acting like men and talking about alphas and betas and whatever else.
	And you know, I think I think a lot of that's fraudulent.
	Um I think what masonry tells you about what truly being a man is it are principles like duty and responsibility to yourself, but also to your family, to your country, to your neighbors.
	Um and I don't think that it's healthy for us to try to you know uh demasculatize society, if that's the word.
	Demasculate, yeah.
	Demasculate uh I guess you know, one thing masonry teaches is balance.
	Um, and you have a lot of opposing forces and energies in the world, you know, the obvious ones most people think of as like yin yang.
	Um we express that in a lot of different ways, and and uh you're supposed to find harmony between these forces.
	Well, well, two of those forces are masculine and feminine energies.
	Uh they exist.
	We don't need to pretend that they don't.
	One's not more important than the other, you know, it's it's not uh uh some sort of competition as and and I don't think anyone that truly uh understands masonry thinks that uh because we're a fraternity and that we're four men, that somehow we're saying that men are better or more important or anything along those lines.
	That you know uh it's simply saying that that we have a role to play in society and that we need to improve ourselves first as individuals in order to then have a greater impact on society.
	When we were talking earlier before we got on the podcast, um we talked a little bit about the importance of community and and being connected and actually interacting with people face to face, and um how avoiding that or not having a sufficient amount of that can really have negative impacts on the culture.
	And one of the things that I really appreciated about Freemasonry um is just the meeting once a week with the guys, you know, on a more superficial level.
	There's something really um psychologically cathartic about having a night with the guys, and I it's not like a cultural thing.
	I mean, it is to a certain extent, but it almost feels like just 100% natural, you know, like like we were made to have that sort of camaraderie.
	And I feel like a lot of guys, um, especially after college, uh, really lose that.
	They get wrapped up in their their jobs and their families, and obviously it's good to spend time with your family, but um I feel like as adults, we don't spend enough time just friends.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And everyone needs a tribe, man.
	The problem is when you take that and then you get into tribalism and you get the us versus them, and and you know, there's a lot of nasty stuff that comes out of that.
	But we're not made, we're we're social beings, you know.
	We're we're we're not made even introverts, you know.
	I mean, uh obviously some people are more social than others but uh I think that human beings are wired to crave human interaction and men specifically have uh a need to bond with other men just like women do with other women you know um and and there's a role to have co ed stuff you know it's not it's not to say that you don't need female influence in your life we certainly do like if the world was too masculine that would be a
	You know, going back to this whole concept of balance, you need both.
	But there's nothing wrong with saying that society needs a place where men can get together and be men, you know.
	So let me ask you this.
	We have the revolution in 1776.
	Half the guys are Freemasons.
	They're pissed off.
	They're willing to die for what they believe in.
	And there's just this consensus, at least there's this cultural consensus among the colonies, even though there's dispute about how many of the colonies, how many citizens of the colonies actually supported the revolution.
	But there's this consensus among the leaders of the colonies that freedom is everything.
	And without, you know, without freedom, there can be no pursuit of happiness.
	You can't have fulfillment.
	You can't have self-actualization.
	And here we are in 2021 and nobody gives a damn about freedom.
	Like what the hell happened?
	Yeah.
	Even if you look back a hundred years ago, like with the Spanish flu, which was way deadlier than COVID, you don't hear about.
	about like crazy lockdowns and businesses closing.
	I mean, I'm sure there was a little bit of that, but it was voluntary.
	It was like they didn't even fathom that the government could possibly step in and quarantine and shut things down.
	Yeah, actually, I did a little research on that.
	So I looked at when the Spanish flu hit Nashville and found some old newspaper articles.
	And I looked at the mayor at the time actually did shut down group meetings.
	But my lodge specifically, we kept meeting.
	And we put it in the paper that we're meeting.
	There's this order out there that says groups can't gather.
	And we're right there in the paper saying Phoenix Laws.
	Lodge number 131 will meet Thursday night at 7 p.m to have an interapprendance degree you know yeah um there was more self-determination back then I feel like uh you know we've talked a lot offline about why we have this shift in the culture and why why we are seeing these changes and there's probably not one answer to that you know it could be a very broad topic but um there's definit there definitely is a shift
	I think that's the first step, right, is to acknowledge that this stuff is happening.
	And typically when you have some sort of crisis, and I'm not even saying we're in a crisis yet, but that's a potential.
	People revert to usually two things.
	It's either despair, you know, so you have the types that acknowledge there is a problem, but the problem appears to be so large that they're just like, oh, fuck it.
	I can't do anything about it.
	I'm out.
	Or then you have the denial crowd.
	Which just refuses to see what's in front of them no matter what.
	So, you know, I would say the vast majority of people fit into those two categories, either despair or denial.
	And it's the few that can usually rise above that and get stuff done and change history.
	And we need strong people.
	You know, this isn't just a male or female thing.
	You know, we need all people to jump in and help shift the culture back to a more productive phase.
	phase um but specifically as it relates to Freemasonry what you know we need strong men and Freemasonry supposedly uh that's one of our goals is to take good men and make them better and and make them stronger as individuals but also make them stronger together.
	And I think a society that has strong men is less prone towards despotism fanaticism all this craziness that we're seeing in the streets right now.
	So while while masonry like I said earlier is not left or right I think I can be pretty clear in that anyone who is involved in the riots of the last summer probably was not a right a Freemason.
	Or if they were, they're not a very good one.
	Turbo, tell the story about uh tell the story about the writers outside of your uh apartment.
	Are you allowed to talk about it?
	Uh it's currently being uh tried right now, so I don't know how many of the specifics I can get into.
	But long story short, uh I live in downtown Nashville and had some people trying to destroy my building, and I helped defend my building.
	So that would be the long and short of it.
	So when's the trial gonna be over?
	Do you have to do you have to go on the stand?
	Yeah, I've already been uh on the stand once.
	Is the guy pleading not guilty?
	Uh as of right now, we're waiting on the grand jury to indict him.
	So he hasn't entered a plea yet.
	So uh yeah, I I don't think that I think Masonry is is trying to um prevent people from going to the extremes, you know, that we we shouldn't be too far left or too far right.
	Again, balance, you know.
	Uh I mean I'm personally a right-wing guy, you know.
	Uh but I can acknowledge the fact that if we swung too far to the right, that would have uh every bit as a negative impact on society as where I think we are today, which is too too far to the left.
	We're just out of balance.
	It's it's not that well, and the thing that's interesting about Masonry is that there's an emphasis on balance and harmony, but there's also an emphasis on conviction.
	Yeah.
	So it's it's almost like the uh speak softly and carry a big stick metaphor with Masons, I think, because um it's what's that yeah, yeah, that's right.
	That's right.
	But it's um, you know, it's not an aggressive organization.
	It's it's more of like like the original self-help group.
	And it's in a certain to a certain extent.
	But if if you if you get to a point where there is tyranny, masonry allows for uh standing up and strong against that tyranny, especially if it's if it means protecting your family and your community and your brothers.
	So um it's really interesting.
	It's like a almost like um like a samurai sort of mentality where there's not an emphasis on on violence by any means, but there's always like in the back of the in the back of everyone's mind, like hey, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, uh are more important than anything else.
	So, you know, whatever we whatever you have to do to protect those ideals is necessary.
	Yeah, and preferably that's through you know, legitimate means that's through the legislature, that's through our government, it's not through revolution, it's not through violence.
	Um but at the end of the day, uh I think men have to be prepared for that, you know.
	Like uh, again, without getting into specifics, like I didn't go down to the street with the intention of of uh being violent, but I'm glad I had the capacity for that, or I would have been in some serious trouble, you know.
	I might not even be here.
	So um I think that that's always a last resort.
	Um but peace through strength is is in my mind a proven concept.
	Uh and you know, Freemasonry again is not political in the sense that we as a fraternity choose to unite and work for anything.
	We're not out campaigning for Masonic candidates, it's not an organized political force.
	It just has basic ideals that I think we as Masons are supposed to uphold.
	And we should be involved.
	Part of being a better man, part of being a complete man is you should be involved in your community.
	So, like one of the questions we ask a member who's joining is if they're registered to vote.
	And then the follow-up is do you vote?
	It's not how do you vote?
	It's not who do you vote for?
	Uh, but there is an expectation that if you're going to be an upright man in society, you need to be able to participate in the political process.
	Yeah, and you need to be an informed voter, you know.
	It's it's so I don't think a lot of people know this, but in the Holocaust, I think it was 70,000 Masons were killed by by Hitler.
	Yeah, I've seen that as high as 250 even.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	The only figure I saw was when I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC.
	And I think it was 70,000 is what they had in the plaque, but I can't remember for sure.
	It was a lot, you know, it's like, why is that?
	Did the Masons organize against Hitler?
	Right.
	I haven't found any uh evidence of that.
	But I think he knew that that what he was trying to do is antithetical to Masonry.
	Well, and there's a lot of there's a lot of Judeo-Christian symbolism in Masonry too.
	Um a lot of symbolism from the Old Testament, particularly.
	And it's it's quite possible that Hitler was just antagonistic toward Freemasonry because he thought it was a Jewish organization.
	Yeah, we we get lumped in uh with a lot of those anti-Semites as somehow being part of this worldwide Jewish conspiracy, whatever you want to say.
	So that's part of it.
	Uh I think the other part of it would just be all all despots have had a problem with masonry.
	It's it's not just Hitler.
	I mean, we're not uh actually got to meet the grandmaster of Iran.
	Uh, they're in exile right now.
	They're they're based in Washington, DC, because ever since the Islamic Revolution, uh, you can get killed in Iran for being a Freemason.
	I'm just it's certainly illegal in China, right?
	Yeah, I would imagine so.
	I actually don't know the exact answer on that.
	But if if it is, if it isn't illegal, I guarantee you it's not free.
	You know, there's some sort of influence there.
	Uh so yeah, the the Soviets, uh communists, uh, Islamic fundamentalists, you know, pretty much anyone you can list, fascist with Hitler, any you know, person throughout history that has wanted to control their populace in one way or another, has been an enemy to Freemasonry.
	There was a time in America though where Freemasonry sort of had a reputation for for being corrupt.
	I mean, there was an anti-Masonic party in the 19th century at one point, wasn't there?
	Yeah, I think a lot of that stems from just misunderstandings.
	Uh a lot of that came out of uh clergy at the time.
	Well, you had uh so masonry does require that you believe in a god, but we don't tell you which god.
	Uh and that's a problem for some people, you know.
	Some of you religious fundamentalists don't like the idea that we tell people that they can figure it out on their own and that it's up to them to have their own experience with God and their own spirituality.
	We're not here to judge them one way or the other on that.
	Uh we we still put up with that, some of that today.
	You know, there's certain denominations within Christianity that that just plain do not like Freemasonry.
	And in Muslim majority Muslim countries today, we're not permitted for that same reason.
	It's not that our ideas are dangerous or corrupt or whatever it is they want to label us as.
	I think a lot of it comes down to they just see us as a threat to their power because we actly promote and allow people to freak to think freely.
	Right.
	That makes sense.
	Um I really was enjoying our conversation that we had earlier.
	I wish that we would have captured it.
	Um about the difference between guilt and shame.
	Yeah.
	And um, we got into it a little bit how at least I suggested that um Marxism is sort of a shame-oriented philosophy or system.
	Whereas, as you mentioned, Western culture and western civilization is has been a guilt uh-based system.
	And when we were fleshing that out, you mentioned, or we we we fleshed out for lack of a better term, that uh the interesting thing about shame is shame has to do with the community around you knowing of something you've done wrong or some flaw that you may have, whereas guilt has nothing to do with anyone else, and it has to do with your own feeling toward yourself.
	Right.
	And it's a really subtle but important and interesting distinction that traditionally with Eastern cultures, it seems that They're based on shame as a motivator.
	And with Western culture, it's uh it's it's historically used guilt as a motivator.
	And it seems to me that that ties into Marxism in the sense that if you believe that um uh sociopolitical dynamics are set up in an oppressor versus oppressed way, um uh it's it's all about shame uh in the sense that you could do something wrong and not really consider yourself culpable because the guilt is absent as long as no one knows what you've done.
	Um but in the Western in the Western situation, if you do something wrong, you might you might uh carry that burden on your conscience uh forever, regardless of whether or not anybody um realizes it.
	And I think that may tie in and have to do with the Western culture's tendency to believe that your outcome, your experience in your life is a result of your decisions and your actions.
	Whereas with the Marxist philosophy, it has less to do with what your decisions are, your actions are, and more to do with the uh preset power dynamic between oppressor and oppressed.
	Yeah, there's this total lack of personal responsibility, and it's uh it to me that's probably the most dangerous part of it.
	Like I think when most people talk about Marxism and capitalism, the easy place to go is is only speaking of the economics of it all.
	But I view Marxists as evil, not just because of the economic outcomes.
	I I think that it's just an ideology that destroys people, just it's and often, you know, literally, you know, I mean, we we've got a hundred million plus people dead around the goal around the globe because of it.
	But it's more of a it's a crushing of the soul, you know.
	I like I I think that uh and we see it today in critical race theory and a lot of these uh what I would say are cultural cultural Marxism, these ideas that you know you're only where you're at in life because of your skin color or your gender or your sexual orientation, and that you're a victim because of these things.
	And the only way for you to rise above of that is that you need some sort of restitution from the people who have quote unquote oppressed you.
	And it totally removes this aspect of personal responsibility and taking control of your own life.
	And that has to have a negative psychological impact on people, you know.
	Let's just be honest, the the people in Antifa and Black Lives Matter who are rioting in the streets right now, these aren't happy people, you know.
	And um, you know, I I can be angry at them, I can I can hate them back, you know, for whatever their their crazy beliefs are and what they're doing in this country, or I can try to have empathy for them and come from a place of love and just say that you know what, these are some really broken people, you know, and they've been fed a lie, and it's a really dangerous lie.
	Um again, not just economically, not just this surface level of what Marxism does, but I think it's what they it does to them mentally and um Do you think they adopt it because it's a shortcut?
	And what I mean is do you think Marxism is so alluring to people because it keeps them from having to feel ashamed of themselves for the for their life not being what they they would like it to be, or or themselves not being what they would like to be.
	Yeah, it's much easier to blame someone else than to blame yourself, right?
	Um some of it's a cop-out.
	Um obviously, you know, in 18th, 19th century industrial revolution times, there were situations in which you know there was exploitation of people with land or people with power over those without.
	So we're not talking about um like overwhelming monopoly or power dynamics uh between people economically.
	We're talking about a psychological phenomena of how people view themselves and they relate and how they relate to society around them, right?
	So to someone who's just like tuning in, it could sound like we're just totally negligent of the fact that you know there were there were times or instances where people were really suffering, uh, like in feudal systems, uh, in a real way in which there was actually oppressors and in the oppressed.
	But today what we see seems to be totally superficial in the sense that there's not actually any real oppression.
	There's only the comfort in the feeling that you're being oppressed and that's why you've failed in my opinion.
	Yeah, uh you know, I think true defenders of liberty and this is where some of my I disagree with some of my more libertarian friends who just want to allow you know their their borderline anarchists in a way it's if you're a true defender of liberty, you should oppose concentrations of power in all of its forms.
	Now oftentimes that's the government but that can show up very easily in in corporate America or within unions for that matter.
	You know, so like one of our one of the prescriptions to that the Marxists love to play is well the capitalists are evil so we need to get together and shift that power balance and uh do it in the form of a union.
	Well then the union becomes corrupt and is every bit as tyrannical as the capitalists were that they were trying to defeat so let's just leave it as concentrations of power in all forms are bad and there needs to be checks and balances on on all of it.
	My problem with with with anarchy and maybe this is a maybe this is a rookie or naive uh position but it's there's a couple things I think about it.
	The first thing is it seems to me that our natural state when mankind started was a state of anarchy and obviously there are no anarchies really anymore anywhere except for maybe some obscure situations.
	Um, and the second thing is, it seems to me that in order to maintain a state of anarchy, you have to have a central power in place to enforce a system of anarchy.
	So isn't it just totally impossible?
	Isn't it just a moot point?
	Yeah, I think so.
	And so is pure Marxism, you know, like all these things, this, this is, it's the reason why so many academics are behind this because, uh, they don't live in the real world.
	You know, it's easy to sit around and just write books about this stuff or have discussions, but none of it plays out in the real world.
	Uh, even some of these tribal cultures that people may point to as being a little bit more, you know, they may appear to be anarchists.
	Uh, you know, they're highly structured, highly structured societies.
	It just may not look that way to us because they dress different and maybe they have some weird rituals and stick shit through their nose and whatever else, but there's no anarchy there.
	It's a very structured culture.
	Um, and yeah, human nature, uh, just doesn't truly allow for that, you know?
	And again, balance, you know, tyranny.
	Is it one side of the spectrum?
	Anarchy is at the other.
	Neither are beneficial.
	Like we don't need chaos.
	We do need a semblance of order within society.
	It's just lately.
	I feel like we're, we're moving further and further towards this tyranny aspect.
	You know, I think authoritarianism is definitely on the rise.
	Uh, when you look at China's influence throughout the world, but even in the West, I think this woke, uh, you know, whatever you want to call it, woke capitalism is a very authoritarian, uh, ideology in and of itself.
	So we're, we're surrounded by, uh, a rise in authoritarianism.
	And I think we need structures within society that are willing to push back against that.
	And it's one of the reasons why I am, uh, proud to be a Freemason and, uh, and I'm trying to build the fraternity up and and bring it back to a level of prominence because not to push a political agenda has nothing to do with politics.
	It's simply trying to bring the culture back into balance and uh unite like minded men who don't have to agree on everything.
	You know that like I said that I have plenty of Democrat brothers who are with me at least on the fundamentals of let's get out of the streets you know let's get the riots and and all this craziness that is pushed on us by the media and others.
	Let's throw all that away and come together and unite people, you know, and and masonry should be a uniting force within society.
	Um we just we have to push back on this authoritarianism that I see creeping up everywhere.
	So how do we shift the culture to because we were talking about this too earlier?
	The Democrats do a very good job of branding their party and their candidates.
	Yeah.
	And the Republicans, in my opinion, have superior policy, but terrible empathy, like no absolutely no appeal to emotion, right?
	There are some exceptions, like like Breitbart, for example, Trump, for example, is an exception to that.
	He was able to um uh like stoke the flames of anger uh among people.
	But how do we how do we change the narrative as conservatives or or right-leaning Americans?
	How do we change the the narrative so that we can actually on an emotional level appeal to all classes of American?
	Um, regardless of socioeconomic status or race or gender.
	How do we make an emotional case for conservative policies?
	Because right now, what's going on is Democrats on a very superficial level on a surface level, look like they care about the poor, and the Republicans look like they don't give a shit about the poor and they only want to protect their own assets, right?
	And we we keep letting them brand us because we think that having logic and better arguments is enough, but it just isn't.
	So what do we have to do?
	Yeah, I think this is a problem specifically for the right, but if I could go even higher level, you know, like I want to rebrand, maybe it's not even a rebrand, it's just getting back to what it means to be an American.
	And that should appeal to both left and right and center.
	You know, we have some core principles.
	But they've attacked that with 1619 project and all this shit.
	They've attacked that at its core to where people are feeling ashamed of being an American.
	For sure.
	And that's and that's on purpose, man.
	That's straight out of the cultural revolution.
	That's Mao's playbook.
	There's a reason why they're kneeling down during the anthem.
	You know, Kaepernick didn't just come up with that idea on his own.
	You know, they're going after all the symbols that unite us, they're going after history, they're going after tradition.
	All of that's very purposeful.
	Uh who's behind it?
	CCP.
	Yeah, you know, I don't think there's I'm not a conspiracy guy.
	I don't think there's some cabal that pulls all the strings.
	Uh I just think it's probably a part of their their playbook and their ideology that's been around for a very long time amongst the radical left.
	You know, I don't want to call them liberals.
	I use the word leftist.
	You know, I think uh the authoritarian left is nothing new.
	You know, it's been around for quite some time.
	Their tactics are very similar.
	And, you know, if you look at who's leading it today, so to speak, it's it's probably decentralized in a way, but they're all using the similar playbook, and a lot of it's straight out of mouth.
	Uh, do I think the CCP's funding a lot of this and promoting it?
	Hell yeah, I think they do, but I don't think it's enough to just blame the CCP.
	You know, I think sometimes we always want to find this other, and you know uh the man behind the curtain, so to speak, we're always looking for that.
	And in fact, man, there's just a lot of people out there with really bad ideas, you know.
	Uh, I don't think it's one thing.
	It's just a lot of people with really, really bad and dangerous ideas.
	And um the CCP is probably the largest factor in that right now.
	But you know, a lot of these ideas are homegrown.
	A lot of these ideas have been in our universities for 60 years, you know.
	Um I think I think I missed your your overall question of like how do we shift this back?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Uh, You know, it's tough.
	They they control, they overwhelmingly control the narrative.
	And then the few every time we seem to break through that narrative, they come along and try to crush that.
	You know, uh talk radio is maybe like the first little chink in the their armor of getting some different views out there.
	Uh but the internet's provided us a lot of tools to get around this frame control and this narrative control.
	But now of course they're using that against us, you know.
	They're there the the algorithms and the social media, big tech, Google, uh they're now using the same the same technology that often gives us freedom can be used to take it away.
	And uh that's a constant push-pool, you know.
	So we just have to keep we we we don't shun the technology, don't blame the technology.
	Uh technology may be the only way we get out of this stuff like the crypto economy.
	You know, I think if you look at the forces in the world, whether it be uh the CCP or this woke movement in America, I think one of the only things that's standing against both of those is uh this cryptocurrency movement.
	And it's and it's not about the currency, so to speak, it's just this idea of decentralization, yeah, of uh preserving freedom through having financial freedom through having uh lack of these middlemen who can control narratives or control your bank account or or any of those means.
	So uh but we have to do a better job of branding.
	Conservatives must understand that we cannot win this war simply by having better ideas and winning intellectual arguments, you know.
	Uh right.
	Trump understand Ben Shapiro doesn't change anybody's mind.
	No, no, right.
	Um Trump was a master of this, and and you can dislike Trump for who he is as a person, or maybe you don't like all of his policies.
	But I think most people, if they could actually be objective about just that skill set of his, would would have to acknowledge that he was a master at that.
	People resonated with him on an emotional level.
	Yeah, it's as simple as that, because in a world where traditional Americans didn't realize why they were feeling sick to their stomach.
	and Trump was able to come out and have a strong populist message, they could feel the endorphins of that.
	Like they could feel the pressure and the stress of these cultural changes being lifted off their shoulders in an emotional way.
	And then we were talking about this earlier, people when they make buying decisions I know this from my background in marketing, they buy based on emotion and they justify later with logic.
	And Trump was one of the few conservatives in a long time, uh, maybe since Reagan or JFK.
	I know JFK was a Democrat, but in my mind he's a conservative.
	Yeah, who could appeal on an emotional level, and also um have somewhat of a logical uh uh backbone behind the the policies that were being pushed.
	And so we I think ultimately what we're short on in the in the Republican Party, man, is we're short on leaders.
	And the Democrats are short on leaders too, but the but the Marxist system doesn't really require leadership in the same way.
	They control the narrative, right?
	Right.
	So when they when you own the education system, the media and entertainment, uh it doesn't matter if Elizabeth Warren is a terrible spokesperson for it or not.
	Right, right.
	Yeah.
	So who's who's next?
	I mean, is it gonna be DeSantis?
	Is he good enough?
	I think so.
	I think he's shown, you know, we just praise Trump, but if I had to criticize him, it it's probably that he swung too far to just being the showman and probably didn't have uh probably overrelied on people around him for some of the details, you know.
	And uh DeSantis seems to have both, Man, he he knows how to make the emotional appeals yet.
	Uh, I think he understands policy at a level that that most do not.
	I think the guy's extremely well read, extremely I don't understand how he keeps getting so much shit and he literally hasn't failed.
	Yeah, well, they fear him, man.
	That's all it is.
	You think it is?
	I mean, I they're calling him Death Santas like a month ago, and it's like no one's dying in Florida of COVID right now.
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, truth, truth and facts don't matter within propaganda, you know.
	And if I if I did have to summarize, you know, I've been playing around with different ideas of how to summarize the world we're living in.
	And you know, I I very hesitant to try to make this a left versus right thing, because I think there's so many people on the left, as I said earlier, that I I want to view them as as victims uh in the sense that I know that a lot of these people wouldn't think and feel the way they do if they were just left to their own accord.
	They're they're trapped in this system that's told them that they're a victim and has instilled this fear in them to the extent that their behavior is just out of this world, you know.
	I mean, if if you're a guy, and and listen, man, I'm not even pro I'm not even anti-mask.
	I think probably the science says mask can make a marginal difference.
	So the problem though is it been it it's got turned into this symbol to where now if you're a leftist who's been fully vaccinated, you're in your mid-20s, you're healthy as hell, you could still be walking around outside to this day wearing two masks, and that's just brainwashing, man.
	And it's easy to point the finger at those people and laugh at them and say they're idiots and yada yada yada.
	But I'm trying to, in my older age now, I'm trying to get a little bit of empathy and just say, no, these are broken people that have been uh brainwashed to just a crazy extent.
	So that was a long-winded way to say uh of how I'm trying to frame what we're going through right now.
	And and one of the the terms I came up with, I don't know if you feel free to pick this apart, but I think it's the people versus the propagandists.
	And I think the people that's shown in these populist movements that are well, even with the trending hashtag enemy of the people as a reference to the the media, that enemy of the people hashtag encompasses left and right, the people are left and right, and the media, the propagandists were framed as the enemy in that sense.
	Didn't that get banned from Twitter?
	Uh probably.
	I don't know.
	It was years ago, but I didn't mean to interrupt you.
	It's just interesting to think of it in terms of people versus propaganda.
	So it's basically the truth the truth versus the lies.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And propaganda right now, I think is overwhelmingly uh it is the far left that's using it as a tool, but it's not even that, you know.
	Think of how many uh, you know, a lot of it's corporate.
	Uh think of how the left has shifted on certain issues just in the last 10 years when there's really no other explanation other than corporate interests, you know, like like why is the left wanting us to be involved in Syria.
	You know, like like where the hell did that come from?
	Other than most likely you have a you know, defense industrial complex that that wants these endless wars, and they use a lot of propaganda to get people on their side in that.
	So yeah, when I when I say the reason I like framing it that way is you know the people is is literally all of us, man.
	It's not just the right.
	Now I I personally think that the right has better ideas.
	I do think we have better policies.
	I do think that freedom is the solution.
	Uh, but I don't want to just write off half of the country simply because they may have some different policy um beliefs than me.
	And right, especially when the reason they have those beliefs is because they've just been inundated with propaganda.
	Well, there's a lied to their entire life with like weapons grade level persuasion.
	Right.
	So but there's a difference though between the the political dynamic 20 years ago versus now in that, you know, we used to argue about whether the tax rate should be 24% or 36%, right?
	On capital gains, for example.
	Now the argument is about are you inherently evil and privileged because you were born white?
	Right.
	So it's gotten very personal.
	Yeah.
	It's a dangerous, dangerous shift.
	Um personal, not just in, you know, people are gonna write mean things about you on Twitter, you know, I don't give a shit about that.
	You could lose your job.
	Yeah, and lose your job.
	Uh you know, now you and I have kind of designed our lives in a way where we're immune to that, you know.
	So yeah, but nobody's immune.
	I mean, you never know what's gonna happen.
	Yeah, well, they they could set me back, but they're not gonna stop me.
	How about that?
	Yeah, yeah, I understand.
	But like if for example, if my business, you know, started to struggle and I decided I wanted to get a job, I might have a hard time given all the things I've tweeted.
	For sure, for sure.
	It it makes our paths harder.
	But uh it's good being in a position to think freely and act really.
	Yeah.
	And if that if that makes my life harder, then so be it, you know.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think I think that there's a it's not just a propaganda culture thing.
	Um it's not just an isolated issue.
	Um, I think that the economy and the financial system has a lot to do with it, man.
	I know I've told you before that it seems to me that when the when when the black community in the United States started to really struggle uh after the civil rights movement was when inflation started kicking up in high gear in the 70s, particularly.
	And it seems to me that if we're saddling people with all sorts of debt and the value of the dollar is going down, um, it puts people on a very vulnerable position where they adopt more radical weapons to survive, right?
	And by radical weapons, I mean Marxism, right?
	An idea, an ideal is uh is a weapon.
	And it seems to me that if we really want to fix these problems that we're having in America, there's multiple things that we have to do, but one of them is we have to get our money right.
	We have to get away from this debt culture.
	Because I've been in credit card debt before.
	I know what it's like to not know how you're gonna pay it off.
	Fortunately, I've uh gotten past that.
	And you you are not the same person when you're in debt as you are when you're not in debt because your mind is constantly trying to figure out how to solve that problem.
	So you don't read the books you would normally read, you don't play the guitar that you would usually play, you don't do the things that are you because you're in like the survival mode, right?
	And it's incredibly stressful and taxing.
	And I think that um the vast majority of Americans, uh, working class Americans in particular, feel that constantly, and it's having an impact on our culture and the way that we interact with one another.
	For sure, man.
	That's it's the debt.
	It's uh there's the economic factors, and then how to your point, how that plays into your mental uh well-being.
	And you know, we're in a huge mental health crisis.
	Uh you know, suicides are through the roof, addiction, you know.
	Uh we have a uh and even addiction, right?
	So people think that addiction is just oh, you're uh crackhead or on heroin or whatever.
	Well, most people don't even factor in the amount of people that are just on mind altering prescription drugs, you know.
	Or just I mean, I've struggled with this too.
	I go through bouts where I play video games way too much.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I don't think I played video games in two months, but two months ago I was playing way too much.
	And I go through phases, you know, if I'm if I'm down or discouraged, I just bury myself in it.
	So it doesn't even have to be something for pharmacological.
	It's there's all sorts of things that we we uh seek refuge in.
	Yeah.
	And part of that's because we've lost things in society that we used to seek that refuge in that were more productive, such as the family, such as Freemasonry, such as churches, synagogue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	We we had more support within Society of real life networks that provided us outlets and escapes and some sort of community and networks that benefited our lives.
	And we've replaced those networks with phones or chemicals or video games or porn or you know, you can just go on and on and on.
	Uh and it's affecting everybody.
	I think uh both men and women have their own struggles on this.
	I think specifically when you look at men, you know, we we have this mass shooting issue, right?
	Uh and everyone, every time it happens, we we talk about guns, and the right says it's not the guns and the left says it is, and then I feel like every time we miss the entire point of why are these people doing this to begin with, and why is it overwhelmingly young white men,
	you know, like like why are those questions not being asked, you know, and and it's it's so simple in a way, but like one way I've already always looked at is like not a single one of these school shooters is on the football team, right?
	They're disconnected, isolated, yeah.
	Yeah, and not even football, let's just say chess, anything, like like do they have even the goths have the goths?
	Right, yeah, right, you know, so uh we need these institutions and systems within society that connect us to one another.
	And I think for young men especially, you know, there used to be in every society, you had these like rituals and these coming of age type of of ceremonies and connection with other men in the tribe, and we really don't have that anymore, other than maybe the football team, other than maybe a college fraternity, you know, like a a lot of men never experience that, you know.
	I I am a big proponent of sports.
	I'm not saying that everyone has to play football, you know.
	Uh, but for kids that never uh, and especially men who never experienced anything like that, they're missing out on a big part of being male, especially the contact aspect of it.
	You know, like if you've never had any sort of combat or contact sport experience, um, I think you're missing out on a huge part of your your evolution and just how you're wired as a man.
	Yeah, I've experienced a little bit of that because like you know, I grew up with hemophilia, so I wasn't able to play any contact sports.
	I did cross country for a year before my ankle gave out.
	Um, so I did have a sense of rigorous physical competition, but not contact, right?
	And um, I can identify and could always identify the part of me that wished that like yearned for that.
	Um, it wasn't a big deal because I, you know, I was interested in other things.
	I was a musician and I was in pants and stuff.
	So I always felt connected in terms of like having friends in a community, but like sometimes you just want to tackle somebody, man, when you're growing up, you know.
	Yeah, no, it's innate, man.
	I mean, I've never been in a fight in my life, never been in a fist fight in my life.
	Yeah, little kids wrestle though.
	Right.
	Even I'm I'm not saying you you you have to beat the shit out of someone else to be a man, you know.
	Right.
	But there is uh there's something there to that.
	I've I played every sport and I imaginable, hands down football is my favorite.
	And because it gave me an adrenaline rush that I just cannot get from anything else.
	And uh, you know, I think uh, you know, I never I didn't join the military, and I'm obviously not comparing high school football onto the military, you know.
	But the closest thing I probably ever came to a boot camp like experience in my life was uh two days in football.
	You know, we go off in football camp, we wake up at 6 a.m., we beat the shit out of each other all day, uh, barely sleep, and you're up the next day doing it again, you know, and it's a pretty intensive thing that like I just don't know where I would get anything like that in my life now at this point, you know.
	Uh and yeah, we're we're getting slightly off topic here, but I I think that it's uh even remove the physical aspect of it, remove the contact aspect of it.
	I I think overall just having that community is so important.
	And again, not every kid has to play football.
	It could be the chess team.
	And that's still highly valuable, highly valuable.
	And we're uh we're all those institutions seem to be fading away.
	And we could talk about why that is, you know, that's probably uh a whole other discussion.
	But I do I do think some of it comes back to that propaganda, you know.
	I think I think the propagandist, whoever they be, you know, let's I don't want to say it's this cabal, but there's very clearly the conservative effort to go after a lot of these institutions, you know.
	Well, you can see it with all the all the leaks and stuff too with big tech, and you can just I mean they're whether or not it's a conspiracy is is another argument, but it's definitely organized, right?
	When they're when they're hiding stories about the Biden family and they're hiding uh reports about vaccine risks and things of that nature.
	It's uh there's a coordinated effort to only allow certain information to reach the public by big tech, corporate media, and they're influenced by the government, they're not private institutions, they're totally under the thumb of our leaders under the constant threat of antitrust violations being broken up, uh increased tax or regulation on their business.
	And so it's it's it's a dangerous situation that we're in, and we're gonna have to do something highly specific on a policy front in order to correct it, because if we don't, then we are gonna end up in a situation where the only voice is the propaganda.
	And uh the real tragedy of that is not that independent thinkers will no longer be heard, it's that independent thinkers will actually become extinct.
	That's what's really sad to me about it.
	Like in 1984, you know, you have the the classic, you know, individual protagonists of the of the of the story, and he's sort of like this anomaly in the society that's totally brainwashed.
	I think you can have society that doesn't have that individual.
	I think you can have a North Korea where everybody's on board, and it's it's so sad.
	What you know, it's natural for us to talk about problems um in a format like this, but if I can add a little bit of optimism, you know, one area that America is still hands down, uh no one can compete with us in my mind is innovation.
	We innovate, and not just compared to China, but even compared to Europe, you know, like like uh there's something about the American spirit, our culture, you know, call it what you want, the American dream that that pushes us to innovate and grow and build and create.
	And China, we look at a lot of what they do, and it's impressive because they can organize, right?
	When you're an authoritarian regime with a ton of resources, yeah.
	Well, the way I put it is they can play Beethoven perfectly, but they can't write.
	Yeah, they can't write, they can't write it.
	Exactly.
	So they they rob and duplicate, you know, well, they're very effective.
	And we don't have any damn leaders willing to protect our uh intellectual property rights.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, it's it's past that.
	It's not just that they're not protecting it, some of them are actively giving it away.
	It's correct.
	And yeah.
	Well, Hollywood's sold out to them just so they could have the market share.
	I don't understand why we do business with China at all.
	In my opinion, CCP is the definition of a terrorist organization, what they do to their own people between the slave labor that they have and um uh the camps that they have, right?
	That that have recently been revealed.
	I don't understand why we tolerate it.
	I it doesn't make any sense to me that other than corruption.
	Creed and corruption, man.
	Uh there, yeah, there's no in my mind distinction between the Nazi Party and the CCP.
	Now they're different, they're different in a lot of ways, but as far as their their level of evil, no distinction.
	And well, there's zero diversity in their culture, intentionally so, right?
	Everybody's on the same page, uh, both at ethnically and idealistically.
	So that's very Nazi-esque.
	Uh, they have a strongman leader at the top, right?
	Just like the Nazis.
	Um and the only difference is that in Nazi Germany there was there were some there were private property rights, and then in communist China there aren't, as far as I can tell.
	You still have the camps, you have their own little experiment in uh eugenics with uh one child policy.
	Uh I mean the great leap forward, you had a hundred million people die between 58 and 62.
	Yeah, yeah.
	This the CCPs killed way, way, way more people than Hitler ever did.
	So communism was the number one cause of death in the 20th century.
	Yeah, hands down.
	Yeah.
	So we have to start acknowledging that and abhorring it.
	You know, I I uh the fist that we we continually see on on Black Lives Matter and on leftist propaganda to me, that is as a boring as a swastika is no difference.
	Yeah, I think the only the only difference between between communism versus Nazism, uh, on like a human psych psychological level is that Nazism was much more explicitly racist, right?
	So we inherently just hate when we see people who actually believe that a race is inferior or a person is inferior because of their immutable quality of race.
	We hate that, and we should.
	And we don't really see that, even though you could have definitely argue that the CCP is racist, it's not really explicitly racist.
	And so on an emotion, again, we're talking about emotion versus logic on an emotional level.
	It's a lot easier psychologically to have a negative reaction to Nazism than communism, but on a logical level, communism is way more intense of a slaughter, right?
	And I think that's the reason that you never see movies really criticizing the CCP or Mao or communism.
	Uh just you know, there's one here or there, like Red Dawn and maybe the red violin is another one.
	But you're not wrong, right?
	But I would argue that the main reason that we don't view them as the same would again go back to propaganda.
	Yeah.
	Um so I you're you you're totally correct in what you just said.
	I would just add to it that there's been a lot of propaganda over the years in Hollywood and elsewhere.
	That we don't uh yeah, we we we've just never branded communism in the way that we have Nazism.
	And I think people um, you know, who knows why.
	I you know, I I well, some of it probably has to do with our leadership's desire to exploit the the cheap labor labor.
	I mean, we knew that we were gonna be able to import goods for nothing forever.
	I mean, I have to I have to you know take my hat off to them.
	They they they studied the Soviets, they they saw where the Soviets went wrong, which was mainly economically, you know.
	So they kept all the authoritarian bits, they kept all the propaganda.
	Uh they actually stepped that up a notch, you know.
	Uh, yet they incorporated just enough capitalism in order to uh keep their system afloat and then and then infiltrate, you know.
	There was a very clear line during the cold war.
	You didn't have American business doing business with the Soviets.
	You just didn't, you know.
	So there was this this absolutely clear line between the Western capitalist free world and the Soviet communist regime.
	Uh the CCP is blurred that line to where it just basically doesn't even exist.
	You know, they they've infiltrated every institution imaginable.
	And uh it's gonna be really, really hard to decouple from that, you know, which again is why like I don't disagree.
	We need policy solutions right now.
	There's definitely some some uh very simple must have policy changes that we need, but we also need a culture that's robust enough to stand against this stuff because it's everywhere.
	It's it's not our government versus their government, it's literally our culture versus their culture.
	And uh we've got to fight it within the education system, we've got to fight it within the media, we've got to fight it within an entertainment.
	Uh a lot of that starts at home, you know.
	We uh, you know, uh the there has been a destruction of the American family again.
	Why is that?
	Well, there's probably a hundred different reasons, and and is that intentional.
	Uh, I don't know.
	Some people I'm convinced it was inflation.
	Yeah, but but that's uh that's our original social network, you know, as a family, having a strong family and strong fathers, you know.
	Uh if we want to really get to the specifics of of why the family's falling apart.
	Um we have a lot of men that aren't doing their jobs, period.
	Simple, you know.
	So maybe to tie it back to Freemasonry, you know.
	Uh I don't think you can be a good Mason and simultaneously be a bad father.
	It's incompatible, yeah.
	Right.
	You have a duty as a man to take care of your children, period.
	So no gray area to that.
	So if we need someone in society to be carrying that message, then the Masons need to step up and carry that message.
	Right.
	And we need it, but culturally, we need a desire from individuals in our society to rise to the occasion.
	Yeah, you know, like in World War II.
	Yeah, everybody wanted to fight after Pearl Harbor.
	People were signing up, people were crying when they didn't when they weren't accepted into the military.
	And lying, I mean, signing up at 15.
	Lying to go.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I just don't feel like we have um men with that sense of conviction anymore in this country.
	And I think a lot of it has to do with the propaganda, because propaganda is on one hand, it's something that it's a tool to convince you of something that isn't true, but it's also more so a tool to make you doubt what you thought was true.
	Yeah, right.
	And you know, when World War II was so obvious to American citizens that it was good versus evil.
	We were attacked, we gotta go to war.
	And ever since then, I feel like the trust in our government has continuously eroded to the extent that no one is really people want to fight for something, but no one is properly convinced of which side or which organization or or which ideal to fight for because so much doubt has been sown.
	Yeah, maybe should fight for truth.
	I mean, that's that's probably step one, right?
	Uh for me, it's for me, it's America and the I and Americanism, right?
	The ideal.
	It's the concept that the individual is the most important, that self-esteem is the highest ideal, and that freedom is absolutely necessary in order for individuals to reach self-actualization and therefore societies to reach societal actualization.
	So it I have a strong sense of conviction about what what's important to me, what my ideals are, but I feel like I'm fortunate in that I've you know, I grew up in a situation or I joined masonry and I was put in environments where I was caused to think through those things,
	and I think that people are so distracted dealing with their debt, getting by being inundated with propaganda all day that they don't even take a minute to sit on the porch and like actually write down what they think, you know.
	Yeah, they're on antidepressants, they've got terrible diets and go on and on and on of these uh issues.
	Um I think you're right.
	I I think it's a we need a return to Americanism, and hopefully that encompasses not just the right that should encompass the majority of us.
	Um yeah, yeah, we need a strong, we need strong leaders.
	We need heroes.
	Um, and hopefully somebody will come out of the ashes, right?
	I know you got the Phoenix going on in the background, but hopefully some leaders will come out of these ashes.
	Because I do believe that both parties, particularly the Republican Party right now, are sort of burned down and rebuilding and dealing with those struggles.
	And I hope that we have strong leaders come out of this and uh with with the vision to see us through the other side.
	I think we will, but it's gonna be very interesting to see who that is.
	Well, we have, you know, let's be honest, there's there's a lot of people left and right, call it the establishment, whatever you want.
	Uh they benefit from the status quo.
	Yeah, so they're just so they're active, they're they're just not going to do anything to change it.
	You know, they may talk if they will, you know, they they may give a good speech here or there, but you know, true disruptors are are gonna be few and far between, and the ones that do arise, they're gonna get attacked mercilessly.
	Yeah, that was one of the advantages that Trump had.
	He did not give a shit.
	Yeah.
	Um, because he was he had he he he was totally financially independent, everything was totally independent.
	And yeah, um, we're gonna, you know, I think uh your your fellow uh Austinian, is that what you call yourselves out there?
	I don't know.
	I just call myself a Texan.
	Uh you know, Alex Jones had it partially right when he says that it's an info war.
	I I would change that and say we're in an intention war.
	Uh attention?
	Yep, it's an intention war.
	Um or AT.
	AT.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So we're we're well then we should send everybody to concentration camps.
	Oh that's that's good.
	Hopefully I don't get banned from YouTube for saying that joke.
	Yeah, well, you're clearly a Nazi chase, obviously.
	So uh and comedy can't, you know, you can't say anything funny anymore at all.
	That's just really yeah.
	So but yeah, our our we have so much information that's out there.
	Uh we don't change anything unless we're able to grab people's attention.
	And and Trump understood that he's able to grab their attention.
	Uh it's it's not just an information war because we can write a hundred thousand white papers, and we can have every libertarian think tank in the world, you know, come up with the best policy positions and yada yada yada, and none of that matters at all if we can't get people's attention and connect with them emotionally like we were talking about earlier.
	Why do you think he lost?
	Yeah.
	Uh multiple factors.
	Uh I do think the rules were changed in the middle of the game.
	Now that doesn't mean that uh I have to think that there was some Dominion voting machine conspiracy that quote unquote stole it, but hands down, uh switching to uh uh metal and ballots and allowing for ballot harvesting uh made a massive difference.
	Um COVID didn't help.
	Made it more prone to fraud, COVID didn't help.
	Uh I don't think he did himself any favors there near the end.
	You know, he he did not perform very well in the debates.
	Uh not that I think the debates decide everything by any means, but you know, it didn't help that his campaign manager kind of had a mental breakdown halfway through the campaign.
	Um there was a lot, you know, they kind of ran out of money near the end.
	Um so a lot of factors.
	But I I would hands down put the largest factor that if you did not have melon votings and legal ballot harvesting, that uh Joe Biden would not be our president today.
	Just to clarify, you're not saying that there was any cheating, you're saying that it was just incredibly cheap.
	I think you change the rules in a way where an election can be manipulated.
	Right, but it would not necessarily anything illegal, right?
	Yeah, it's cheap.
	And not well, well, melons and ballot harvesting have been illegal for a hundred plus years.
	And Right, but they changed the laws.
	So it wasn't technically illegal, but it's there's a reason why you used to only see these type of elections in third world countries.
	And there's a reason why up until just a few years ago, Debbie Walsham and Schultz, you know, you had the head of the DNC opposing ballot harvesting and melons.
	Uh it is not a great precedent.
	We have to get rid of this stuff before the next election cycle.
	Uh I think that a lot of this has been lost in the weeds of, you know, when people say the election is stolen, they're distracted by, you know, Linwood or whoever the hell that guy's name is, and all just stuff out there about servers in Germany and yada yada yada.
	And to me, that's that's probably just more disinfo, if we're being honest.
	I think overwhelmingly the election was stolen in the sense by they for over a year used or not over a year, around a year, they used COVID as a means to either change or throw out election law all throughout the country.
	They changed the rules of the game that gave them an advantage, and that's why Joe Biden is your president, overwhelmingly, hands down.
	That's what I think too.
	I don't think that there was cheating per se in the sense that voting machines were hacked or ballots were necessarily faked.
	Um, I'm not comfortable with with have holding that position or defending that position because I'm just not confident enough in it.
	But I'm up to it.
	I'm open to it.
	But I think it was totally cheap what they did with with changing these laws, and they knew that it they knew that it was gonna detrimentally impact the conservative voter base who traditionally shows up on election day.
	Ask yourself this.
	Why in the very first stimulus bill?
	This is early on in COVID, right?
	This is before we really know how long it's gonna last.
	This is before we before we knew the lot of things, but they're trying to get the first stimulus bill passed.
	And Nancy Pelosi is holding up the stimulus bill with what?
	Do you remember why?
	I can't remember.
	Was it melon?
	They were trying to get melons and ballot harvesting laws in the very first stimulus bill.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	So no, this this was a concerted effort to change the laws in this country to allow them to harvest ballots.
	And and you know, they only did it in swing states, you know.
	If if this was just about COVID and about people's safety and, you know, not catching COVID in a line and dying, you know, yada yada yada.
	Well, then why did they only do this bullshit in the swing states?
	You know.
	Uh, this wasn't about people's safety.
	This is about rigging rigging the game to their advantage.
	Well, on that note, Ryan.
	Let's call it.
	Let's call it.
	Let's rig the game back towards free and towards the center towards Americanism.
	I agree.
	We'll do it, man.
	Thanks so much for hopping on.
	I appreciate you.
	Yep.
	Great to talk about.
	All right, dude.
	I'll send you the link when it's uh all uploaded.
	We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.
	Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
	Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall.
	A date which will live in infamy.
	I still have a dream.

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