When Is Civil War Reasonable? | With Jack Murphy & Chase Geiser
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It's One American Podcast live with Jack Murphy.
What's going on, man?
Hey, Chase, great to be here, man.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's good to have you on.
I've been following you for a long time and very interested in your work and your story of how you came to influence in the space that you're in.
And I don't really classify it as any particular space because there's several different elements to what you do.
So I'm reluctant to use any specific word.
I don't want to describe you as right-wing or a self-help guru or anything like that.
You're just Jack Murphy, similar to how I am, just one American.
So tell me a little bit about how this journey started for you.
Was it with the book that you wrote?
I think it's called Democrat to Deplorable from Democrats to Deplorable.
Yeah, Democrats are deplorable.
Well, I mean, I appreciate you saying that there's no one particular way to put me in a classification.
And it's true.
I never set out to be a conservative influencer or a self-help guru or anything.
I basically started on this journey just by asking questions.
And the questions started back in 2009 or so when I got divorced and I had been married.
Sorry, you had to go through that.
Yeah, you know, well, it was one of the worst and best things that ever happened.
I had to figure out what was going on in the dating world and the single life world.
And in that, I was 34, I guess.
Okay.
Is that right?
Yeah, 34.
And, you know, I had been in a relationship for like 10 years and I didn't know what had happened in the dating world.
Like, nobody had cell phones all the time.
I mean, I remember my wife and I got our first like Nokias, right, while we were together.
So like smartphones weren't a thing, Tinder wasn't a thing, match.com, okay, Cupid, none of that.
So I got dumped into the single life in my mid-30s after, you know, raising two small children and just being totally, you know, ensconced and really in a blue liberal like marriage.
And I had to figure it out.
And I started learning about the dating, mating market, and seeing how it was kind of screwed up.
And in doing so, I began to learn about feminism and learning about, you know, I guess we call it critical race theory now or gender queer theory or race Marxism or whatever the latest name is for it.
But I just started to figure out how the dynamics between men and women had changed and why and the philosophies behind that.
So I just started asking questions.
And first place it led me through was through the manosphere where I think that there's a lot of good information there for guys trying to figure out how to become better men, how to how that being a better man is basically the answer to all of the issues, you know, getting fit, you know, taking care of yourself, self-improvement, become financially secure, et cetera.
But that's a space you don't really want to stay in forever because there's a lot of toxic people sort of stuck in that sphere.
Right.
And I began to just understand the way that politics and dating and relationships and marriage and everything was all intertwined.
And that's when I really started to get, as you would say, red-pilled, right?
So 2012, 2013, 2014, just started learning, right?
And reading and trying and coming to understand how much feminist ideology had taken over in the universities and how much the Democratic Party was swinging wildly towards this progressive ideas, how much things like Title IX on college campuses affected relationships between young adults and how the power of the federal government was being used to coerce people and to terrify them and to change the definition of harassment from something that prevents you from working
or getting an education all the way down to just something that you're annoyed by, right?
Seeing how due process was stripped away from young men on college campuses.
And inevitably that leads you into politics if you keep pulling on the same string.
You keep pulling and pulling and pulling.
And then Donald Trump happened.
And, you know, it was 2015 campaign time and it was Trump versus Hillary Clinton.
And after all the things I had learned about progressive ideology on the left and how anti-American it was and how anti-individualistic it was and how anti-male it was, there was only one choice.
It was Donald Trump.
And that was a, that in and of itself was a huge awakening for me to spend my whole life Democrat, voting Democrat, living in Democrat City, Washington, D.C., always thinking that the Democrats were on the right side of everything.
You know, they were, in my mind, I thought they were for freedom and being yourself and individuality.
Well, they kind of used to be.
Kind of used to be.
And then what a shock it was to find myself supporting a Republican.
Was he the first Republican that you supported?
First Republican I ever supported, for sure.
Were you behind him in the primary too, or was it the general that you kind of came on board?
Oh, no, definitely from the jump.
Because I don't, you know, I'm still not a fan of GOP establishment.
I'm not a fan of the bushes.
I'm not a fan of any of the standard, fair Republican, you know, what we call it now.
We call it, you know, like the rhinos or the Chamber of Commerce, libertarian rhino types.
Like, yeah.
Yeah.
And those were the guys that I always laughed at and made fun of and thought were fake and were sold out shills to corporate America, which they are.
And there I was, a lifelong Democrat turned a deplorable.
And it's interesting because the name of the book isn't Democrat turned Republican voter, right?
It's horrible.
So specifically around the way Donald Trump was pushing back really against the entire establishment.
It was him against all 17 of the GOP primary candidates.
It was him against the Democrats.
It was him against national security apparatus.
It was him against basically all the people that we had identified, you know, coming up through blog sphere and the manosphere and the Twitter space had identified as being the problem.
And man, that really just sent me down a journey.
I attended all the events that you could go to, the deplorable and a night for freedom and conferences and any kind of meetup, happy hour I could, and just got to know all the people in the space.
And I made friends with people who at the time had very small followings, who now have a couple million followers, massive, you know, national influence.
And as they grew in stature and power, you know, I kind of went along with them and was able to find my own voice and put out the book and start the podcast and just keep asking questions, right?
The podcast is just me asking questions of people.
I've had political people on.
I've had academics on.
I've had entrepreneurs, tech guys, fitness people, nutritionists, whomever.
It's just about me following my own sense of curiosity.
And man, it exploded, really exploded finally when I both got the Claremont Lincoln fellowship as well as started making regular appearances on Timpool.
And then from there, man, you get to the point where you walk down any main street in any city in America and somebody's like, hey, holy shit, Jack Murphy.
And that just blows my mind going from just a guy asking questions on the internet, posting anonymously using a pseudonym to being basically like famous in any city I go to in America.
It's crazy.
We got the signature look too.
There's only a few people in the world that really pull off like having a brand that is a look too.
Trump is actually an example of one, I think.
But like, even if you think of celebrities, like Leonardo DiCaprio is famous because of the roles that he's played, but he doesn't have like a look that's a brand.
Alec Baldwin doesn't have a look really that's a brand.
He's maybe a voice that's a brand, but like it's something that's unique about you that I appreciate as somebody who's in the advertising space for my actual income is that you've like set you've established this, I don't know, just awesome aesthetic brand that just strikes right through, you know?
Well, it's cutting.
I appreciate that, but totally not by design, right?
Sure, sure.
You know, like 10 or 12 years ago, a girl I was dating was like, you ever tried growing a beard?
And I'm like, no.
And I tried and here it is.
Anything for you, babe?
He was all brown back then.
And just like slowly but surely, this gray is creeping in and I can't stop it.
I imagine eventually it'll be Santa Claus style.
And if it does get there, that's maybe not the aesthetic look I'd be looking for.
But yeah, I guess all these things just added up.
You know, they just stacked on top of each other and you become memorable looking and do memorable things and do and say some crazy shit.
And before you know it, you know, you're kind of famous or infamous.
And never a goal.
I don't recommend it.
It has a lot of downsides.
Being able to leverage that into spreading, you know, the good word, which is really about just taking care of yourself, taking care of your family, taking care of your community, you know, being someone who builds and creates and protects and provides and isn't going to just sit back and believe the things that you're told to believe and is willing to ask the questions,
to figure out what it is that you really believe is true, and then to embody that in your day-to-day life, and then to hopefully manifest more of that in the people around you, starting especially with your children.
So, you know, that's the general gist of my work.
And, you know, if people are going to jump on and follow me on this way, great.
If not, you know, more power to you.
Plenty of haters out there.
You can just keep on hating.
Yeah.
So you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation how your divorce and sort of looking into feminism and things of that nature sort of got you started on this journey.
And I want to ask you what your definition of feminism is, because it's one of those words like racism, where it used to mean one thing very specific and now it's sort of like thrown around.
So when I think of feminism, I think of it in terms of like, I try to think of it in terms of what it actually means, even though I know that colloquial, that's not really colloquially, that's not really what it means anymore.
So it used to mean, if you were a feminist, that you believe that men and women should have equal rights.
And now we're in a society in which, legally speaking, men and women do have equal rights.
In fact, there's probably, in terms of civil court or civil law, there's probably more advantages to being a woman than a man at this point.
Definitely.
Right.
But feminism now sort of what it really means is like a feminazi, right?
Someone who's just like, you're meant, you know, you're the patriarch or you man, you're a pig or whatever.
You're so privileged.
I'm, I'm, I'm so oppressed.
And just kind of like, man, I hate to use this word, but just cunty, right?
I mean, it's a strong word.
And I use that word very selectively, maybe only a handful of times in my life.
It's like a sledgehammer.
But that's really what it is now, right?
And so I'm a feminist in the traditional sense.
I believe men and women should have equal rights, but I'm not a feminist in the contemporary sense.
I know there's like first wave and second wave.
So what do you mean by feminism and what type of feminism did you determine or discover to be problematic?
Sure.
I agree with so much of what you said.
And my understanding about feminism is has evolved as well as it has evolved, right?
So yeah, do I believe that women should have the right to vote and get checking accounts and credit cards and be independent and make their own decisions?
Of course.
And in my book, Democrats of the Poor Bible, I have a whole long chapter on this, and I talk about that very clearly.
The original feminist concept, I think, is a good one.
And I know that I want my daughters to have all the same rights and opportunities as my sons.
Easy.
But then I began to understand that radical feminist literature, which really creates the intellectual and academic space for the political feminism and the cultural feminism to explode.
These are people that wanted to destroy the family.
They want, you know, Judith Butler, if I can recall the name correctly, and her original text back in the 60s, they wanted to destroy the family.
They want to destroy the idea of what it means to be masculine or the idea of what it means to be feminine.
They've championed the ideal woman to look like the ideal man and the ideal man then to look like the ideal woman because what they want to do, and which I've learned over time through lots of study, is that this is really a deeply philosophical question.
And it's about changing the plane of meaning.
And therefore, you can change reality in this way.
So, for example, right, Aristotle with his virtues and magnanimity to be the magnanimous man, you know, there were a set of virtues there that he believed if you lived this way in this life, you would find meaning and be the best political citizen you could be.
Then, fast forward, I'm skipping over a ton, but you get into like Hobbes and Locke, and they start talking about how avoiding a violent death or life, liberty, and property are the ways in which you understand the world.
And then you can build a political economy, like a universe in reality off of that.
You've got Nietzsche who believes that, you know, vitality and creativity and the will to power is the plane of meaning that you should use to analyze the world.
And I don't think anyone's developed a political economy based on that just yet, but it's possible.
Heidegger has his understanding of the world, starting with Dasein, starting with the first understanding of self before you even are aware of who you are.
And that there's a political economy devised off of that.
That's Alexander Dugan's fourth political theory and so on.
But here we are now at this identity theory where identity is this plane of meaning.
It's no longer to be magnanimous man.
It's no longer to live a life of life, liberty, and property.
It's no longer a life of vitality and strength or in Machiavelli's terms of courage.
This is about identity and everything can be analyzed through the lens of identity.
And then on this pole of identity, you have oppressed and oppressors.
And so from there, you build a political economy.
So the feminism itself, you know, you throw it around casually at Thanksgiving and your aunt's like, of course I'm a feminist.
But if she really truly understood that it was, it's a philosophical ploy to redefine the way that we understand the world in order to redefine and recreate a political economy based on that, not a political economy,
but a political philosophy and a political space based on that plane of meaning, which then will have as just contained therein, you know, the oppression of men, the obliteration of the oppressors.
And of course, the only oppressor in this equation is the white heterosexual cis, whatever, dude.
And masculinity is the root of the power of those men and therefore must be destroyed.
So if you really study it, if you read what they write, and James Lindsay has been terrific at doing this, if you read what they write and what the plan is and what the goals are, you see it for the nefarious plot that it is to actually.
It's so well documented because so much of it is in the academic sphere, whereas the other side of the political dynamic is more of like an intuitive, just sort of conservative, like, hey, that's not right kind of thing.
There's not a lot of like Republican professors writing books and papers that are peer-reviewed about like, you know, not even, not even about like the pros of capitalism anymore.
You can hardly find economists writing about capitalism like Milton Friedman, say whatever, or Greenspan, right?
So it's like so well documented what the enemy, so to speak, is doing, you know, in so many facets.
Yeah, well, they lay it all out right there for you.
And then the funny part is, is when you read it back to them, they freak out and then you get banned off of social media or you get fired from your job or whatever.
And you're like, yeah, but dude, I'm literally just reading this text that you wrote, you know, and it's a, it's a strange phenomenon of putting everything out there in the open, but then hoping nobody really pays attention to it.
And, you know, it's, it's, it's truly a fight for the way that we perceive reality and the way that we construct a political space based on that perception of reality, which contains in it concepts of justice, right?
Like it's okay to defend yourself in a Hobbes-Locky and Jeffersonian sort of way because the right to living, the right to life is the most important fundamental concept in that in that ideology.
So you can defend yourself, of course.
But if the most important philosophical concept in your construct is the oppressor or oppressee dichotomy, then anything you do to eliminate that oppression is then just.
And it could include anything from fewer honors and prestige, less opportunities, less money, outright discrimination, harassment, perhaps jail or even death.
It depends on how far it goes.
But if the concept of justice is embedded in the oppressed-oppressor relationship, then that's a terrifying place to be.
And that's where my understanding is today.
And that's what I'm opposed to.
And that's what I don't want to see spread anywhere.
And the answer, you know, there's, God, there's so many different levels that this has to be tracked on.
But for me, Jack Murphy, who is not a political player, who is not, you know, even a giant media player or anything, it's really about starting with myself, my family, and then building a community of people around me that see things the same way.
And I was just tweeting today, you know, Reagan said that all meaningful change in America begins at the dining room table.
And I still believe that.
And I believe that our long road, our long march through the institutions also begins at the dining room table.
And it took the progressives, what, five, six decades to take over all the institutions in America, media, corporations, advertising, you name it, government, everything.
It's going to take us maybe that much time too.
With technology being what it is, the development of these technologies that mediate all of our relationships, be they financial, be they personal relationships, be they information relationships.
If the technology that mediates these relationships, and it's not even the outright ones that you see, it's like the glue that holds the society together, that makes the transactions happen, that allows information to flow.
If the technology that mediates those relationships and creates the fabric of the community become captured by progressive ideology and then have that embedded in their code, well, then it may be a one-or-nothing race to control those items because once they're already in place, I don't know how they get eradicated.
And this is a line of thinking that comes to me through many interviews and discussions and reading with John Robb, who's a technologist and a military guy, a strategist, a former special forces dude who has been involved in this cutting-edge area of technology, war, and politics for a couple of decades.
And he calls that the long night.
So we need a long march through the institutions, but the technological race perhaps has a shorter timeline than the long march would allow.
So it's not necessarily a super positive outlook when you look at it from that perspective, which is why I just focus.
Start with yourself, get yourself into shape.
Saving the world starts in the squat rack, move the weight, eat the food, get outside.
Make your bed, right?
As Jordan Peterson would say.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, Jordan Peterson, yeah.
Do you have problems with Jordan Peterson?
It's okay.
You know, I have mixed, I have mixed feelings about Jordan Peterson.
I remember in 2016 or 17 when he made his first appearance on Joe Rogan.
I was moved by listening to him.
Me too.
It was an emotional reaction that I had because it was the first time I had heard somebody with real academic and psychological and theological background express the same sentiments that I had had and that the guys in our little sub-sub-niches online had had in a context that chunked it up into just meaning, real meaning, not just us saying, hey, this is a problem.
This really sucks.
We should change this.
And then he came in and he put it in a context that if anybody was listening, they could relate to and understand.
So it was powerful for me in that respect because it finally crystallized everything that we had been talking about for many years in the manosphere, many years in our Twitter sub-niches and all this.
And yeah, I mean, the only bad thing I would say, and this is, you know, is he living life?
I don't know, but I do know it's difficult to always be perfect.
And it's certainly difficult to always be living with such an intense spotlight on him.
But he asked for it.
And I feel for the guy if he's having drug problems or emotional issues.
I don't think he's in value or I don't think he's not valuable anymore.
Although, I got to be honest, I don't really pay attention to what he's doing.
It's been a couple of years since I really paid attention.
But I do know that his appearance on 2016, 2017, I started following when he had like 40,000 followers or whatever, and millions of people worldwide famous.
He was a phenomenon.
And we should all be indebted to him for him bringing these issues, giving them an academic context, giving them a psychological context, giving them historical context, and then getting them out there in the world and then trying to spread a good message.
I see him as a fellow traveler for sure.
So this is not what you said, but this is my interpretation of what you just said.
So set me straight, okay?
If I'm promised.
So what you're saying is right, right, exactly.
Which is great, great Jordan Peterson joke.
So this is not what you said, but my interpretation of what you said is you were a big fan of Jordan Peterson in the beginning, but very disappointed to discover that he had an addiction problem because it seemed hypocritical that someone like him saying what he says would allow himself to like fall into that trap.
Is that what this is?
I'm not like condemning the guy for having a drug problem.
I mean, I, at times in my life, have had issues with substances years, many, many years ago.
And, you know, it happens, right?
It happens to people.
And It's tough to judge somebody for, I don't even know the whole story, right?
So that's sort of, that's sort of the last, you know, that's not a criticism I really want to levy at him.
Okay.
I, I, I qualify all this by saying I literally stopped paying attention to him a couple of years ago.
Yeah.
Well, I guess what I'm trying to get is like, what put your fire out for with him?
Yeah.
It's a good question.
I think maybe just, and this happens to me with a lot of things, is that unless it's novel to me, I lose, I lose interest.
I had that with Gary Vee when I started my business.
I couldn't get enough Gary Vee and now I don't care because I've heard it.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
And so, you know, that happens with all kinds of stuff.
And, you know, I'm, I'm the type of guy that will discover something new, pour myself into it a thousand percent until I've reached like 90% mastery, well enough at it to teach somebody about it, execute it.
And then, you know, I just am interested in something else.
And that, that's the overall theme of my work, too, which is keep asking questions, get to a level of mastery with it, and then ask more questions, ask them new questions.
This, this is why I'm bored today with politics.
Like, I'm bored with politics.
I feel like the table has been set and defined, and all the pieces on the table have now been defined.
You know, it was, it was sort of up in the air.
2015, 2016, it was like unprecedented.
Yeah, it was unprecedentedly exciting.
Yeah.
And it was a new information environment.
And it was, there were new players and new forces that had been bubbling up over time and new waves crashing on the shore.
And I feel like all that's already happened.
And yeah, we know about these issues.
Yeah, we understand the dynamic between the right and the left.
Yeah, we understand what the real political issues are.
There's nothing new now.
You know, God bless Chris Ruffo.
Love Chris.
He's doing great work.
I want him to keep doing it.
But, you know, it's not novel anymore.
It's not a new thing to discover.
And I don't see any big changes coming.
At least I'm maybe not tuned into the deepest of the deep undergrounds to see what's coming these days.
But, you know, I think I am.
And, you know, politics has me left a little, a little bored.
It's not about discovering something now.
It's just it.
Now it's just the roll your sleeves up and duke it out part, which is not the part that I've ever been interested in.
I'm much more interested in the meta story, the systematic story, the decades-long journey through philosophy to get to where we are and why.
And, you know, my, I find myself wandering mentally towards, you know, what, what's the future?
What's what's what's it going to be like in 10 years?
What's the 2015 of 2030 going to be?
And that would get me exciting to think about that.
So, you know, in the meantime, you know, it's doubled down on kids, double down on community, double down on taking care of yourself, double down on your relationships, double down on becoming financially independent.
For some people, land and water, you know, independent.
For all of us, information, informationally sovereign.
You know, one thing that I think Jordan said that Young said, which is people don't have ideas, ideas have people.
We don't want to be those guys, right?
You don't want to be the guy who's been captured by a mind virus.
You want to be somebody who can stand back and analyze what's right for them and then make the right choice.
So that's sort of the phase that I'm in.
And, you know, I'm always looking for the next exciting thing, but I don't see any new ideological plates coming into this sort of tectonic collision, whereas before they were submerged and new and novel and people didn't really understand it.
But now you've got mainstream vanilla-ass Republican senators talking about the need to build more masculine men and this and that.
So our work is done here when it comes to that.
I mean, I've been involved in the masculinity space or Manosphere or whatever since 2009.
And now the things we talked about back then are literally on the floor of the Senate and in presidential races and coming out of the mouths of, you know, anchors on national television and whatnot.
So, you know, that part, that part is done.
We did our work there.
And I think a lot of it has to do with the way the Manosphere stuff exploded onto Twitter.
And then from there, combined with Gamergate and a few other things, really exploded.
And then these ideas spread throughout the sort of alternative conservatives, let's say, and then has now become a little bit more mainstream.
So it's been an amazing thing to watch, actually.
I'm thinking about doing a deep dive project on that, the experience of the early manosphere translating into contemporary politics and the influence that it's had on society, whether people know it or not.
Yeah.
Well, and I think one of the things that's most fascinating about Twitter is that when you look at it from like a data analytics standpoint or even from an entrepreneurship sort of investment standpoint, it's really not at all an accurate reflection of how people feel in the United States, like countrywide.
You know, there's, there's a very specific type of person on the right or the left that's active on Twitter.
I'm one of those, right?
But at least I at least I know that nobody else cares except for the other people on Twitter, right?
But that the impact that it has on the political conversation and the national conversation is so disproportionate to the actual people that it represents.
You know, like I wonder what the real conversations ought to be, if not just sort of these, I don't know, radicalized, sort of branded notions that we're seeing, you know, trend.
Absolutely.
You know, it's sort of like in the information landscape, you've got the info aristocracy who then who then like argue with themselves and debate things, and then that spills over into practical politics.
And I would argue that the Twitter space is like that, right?
It's an info aristocracy.
It's people whose jobs are to deal with information, to transmit information, to create information, disinformation, misinformation, to promote narratives.
It's a narrative aristocracy, right?
It's the few controlling the many through the power of narrative.
But you're right in the sense that, you know, it's so interesting when people are like, Twitter's not real life.
Like, okay, correct.
What?
Yeah, it's definitely fucking with real life.
It is.
So are most people on Twitter?
No.
Are even the people who are on Twitter on Twitter all the time?
No.
And are the people who are on Twitter content creators?
No.
Such a small percentage of the people in the country are content creators on Twitter.
And then a small percentage of the slightly bigger, but small percentage of them are reading it.
But that being said, every single politician, every single policy advisor, every single political animal, every single media person, everybody who has an influence over the common person is on Twitter, is influenced by Twitter, and their policies are affected by it.
They go into law.
The money moves around.
Penalties get handed out.
Cultural change takes place.
People lose their jobs.
It's fascinating.
It is an info aristocracy, is what it is.
Which is interesting because it's an aristocracy that you can elect to be a part of, right?
Yeah.
Just give your time.
Just do your time, work at it, even just participate by observing.
But most people don't.
And I think that that's a vibe that I'm trying to put out right now too, which is like, yo, y'all are angry on here, but everybody's this angry, bro.
Like, just like we were in Knoxville, for example, the other day.
I see, this one thing I have going for me, too.
I travel all over the place.
Like in last year, I went to like 20 plus states.
We did events in nine different cities.
I travel with baseball for my son, growing with my daughter.
We are driving all over the country all the time.
Big cities, small cities, country cities, whatups.
We're just in Knoxville.
You just talk to people.
They're all happy.
I'm not saying everybody's happy.
You know, generally, people aren't walking around in a constant state of enragement as a lot of people are on Twitter.
And, you know, it's deeply ironic to be on Twitter being like, yo, bro, you got to get off of here.
Yo, you got to get off of Twitter.
You got to get off of social media.
Go outside.
Talk to your neighbor.
See some sun.
See some land.
Travel across the country.
Talk to the person at the gas station.
Everybody has their own day-to-day practical issues you got to deal with, whether they don't make enough money or shit costs too much or whatever.
But I think those are the real issues that people are worried about.
They're not constantly enraged all the time.
I got a good example of that this week.
I have a close friend who I play video games with from time to time.
We've been, I met him online playing video games in 2019, 2018.
He's younger than I am.
I think he's 21 or 22 now.
And he's like, how's everything been going?
How's your podcast?
And I go, dude, I'm so excited.
I got Steve Banning coming on.
You know, it's like, so stoked.
He's like, who's that?
You know, he's just a regular American dude.
He's, he's an electrician, you know, a young guy.
He plays video games like a normal dude just got engaged, you know, looking for a house in Paris, Texas, whatever, right?
Normal American dude, not like dumb or anything.
He's not ignorant.
He's just busy doing other shit that's more important to his life.
So I think you're right.
It's like, I don't know, it's just an example of what we've been talking about.
Right.
And Bannon, of course, is so popular within our space that he's an amazing influence.
And even to think, and even for folks on the left, even those who are involved in this arena still know who he is.
So I think most people don't really have any idea who Steve Bannon is.
I think most people don't really care.
I think most people don't even know who Alex Jones is.
And like, most people are literally just going to work, taking their kids to baseball practice, coming home, having dinner, and going to bed, and not spending all day on Twitter and social media.
Now, that's not to say that it's not important because, bro, if you want to be involved in the narrative arena, you have got to be on social media.
You have got to be putting out narratives or counteracting narratives or putting out information or gathering a tribe.
It's like a double-edged sword and it's it giveth and it taketh.
Yeah, that is that is for sure.
But one thing it does give that I wish people would be more aware of is rage.
Just rage.
Just it's it's a combination of the subject matter, right?
Like you can really hype up political issues into rage-inducing things by selecting edge cases, blowing them up and making it seem like it's happening to everybody all the time.
Then it's also rage-inducing too, because it's like, you know, how when you're, I mean, for me as a big guy, I notice very clearly how people treat me differently when they're in their car versus how they do when they're standing next to me, right?
Like people will cut me off on the highway, but literally.
They treat me the exact same in both those scenarios.
But literally, no one is cutting in front of me in line in person, right?
Right.
And like, and like Twitter is the same.
Twitter is like a hundred times more than the difference between real life and the car, right?
It's like you're not only bulletproof in a vehicle, you're bulletproof.
You're most, you're, you're a non.
It's a million miles away.
It's just text.
So that induces, it's like, it's like people are inserting themselves into a constant road rage scenario around politics and then treating everybody that they come in contact with as you would giving the dude the finger or laying on the horn or whatever in a highway road rage incident.
And you know what, man?
That can't be good.
I cannot be good.
So let me ask you this.
When is rage good?
If ever?
That's a good question.
Like as a man, when should you just be fucking enraged as a citizen, a man, whatever?
I think rage implies a certain loss of control.
So probably never.
Justified anger, you know, controlled aggression.
Sure, there's definitely times for that.
Times to be aggressive.
I think, you know, just to be semantic here, I think rage specifically involves a loss of control and a disregard for potential consequences.
So I would say never.
Rage, probably not a good thing.
But to be justifiably angry, absolutely.
And if you want to let that motivate you, sure.
But let it motivate you in a positive way.
You want to capture that anger.
And in many cases, today, justifiable anger and channel it into something positive.
Alternatively, there are other philosophical approaches where you could just disregard things.
Oh, imagine that.
Imagine not getting enraged by something you don't like and just actually forgetting about it.
Like that, that could really benefit most people who don't have productive avenues to channel their aggression.
Now, if you have productive avenues, if you're the type of person that can take anger and turn it into something valuable, productive, and healthy for you and the people around you, awesome.
We all need to find ways to keep our edge and stay motivated and whatever.
Some people use fear, some people use love, maybe some people use anger.
But to lose control and to without any regard for the consequences, I think is bad.
And that's why I've been lately really critical of this talk of national divorce, right?
People openly advocating for succession, people openly advocating for, they call it peaceful, but come on, bro.
Like, we're not stupid here, like walking away from the union.
And I have a lot of concern about that because one, I think some of the people who are promoting those ideas are just deliberately being provocative.
Some of them are academics and theoreticians who are like, Yeah, you guys, go ahead, go ahead, national divorce, get out there, do it.
On paper, this looks great.
You get what you want.
We get what we want.
That's how it would play out.
Exactly.
Well, it's an easy trap to fall into too, because everybody wants to say fuck you to the other guy.
Yeah.
So like emotionally, and I've fallen into this trap too.
I'm almost positive that I've tweeted content like pro-Texas secession in the past.
But when I think about it rationally, like it's absolutely a last resort.
Like there's nothing but violence and problems that come from that.
Like, I know that, but it's just easy on Twitter to like have that emotional kind of impulsive reaction to be like, fuck you.
Like, you know, Texas is better without.
You know, it's just an easy thing to like think and feel and do.
So I've caught myself doing that too, for sure.
Yeah.
Definitely.
And that, and that is part of, and I want to come back to this topic in particular, but that is part of the rage machine that is Twitter.
Yeah.
Like, like, dude, I have like 100,000 tweets, right?
Like, I've seen how every tweet can play out.
And, and I know.
You've been through the ringer, man, just generally.
I've seen all sorts of things.
Cheers to you, man.
I know that if I tweet about Antifa and mobs and whatever or Trannies or whatever, huge engagement.
If I tweet about like, take a deep breath, calm yourself, love your kids.
Yeah.
17 likes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So there is a incentive.
And for people who are monetized on Twitter, a literal financial feed your kids incentive to throw rage into the machine.
And that, and that's part, that's part of the problem.
That's part of the problem.
But back to the national divorce thing.
I mean, you're right.
It sounds like something that could be pulled off, but it really isn't.
And I think we have every obligation in the universe to a moral obligation to make that the absolute last resort, period.
Literally all options exhausted.
And by that, I mean like things that we haven't even come close to considering, right?
Okay.
Yeah, I'm with you on that, but where would the line be for you?
Like if you if you were to draw a line, and I know this is like almost an impossible question to answer, but I'm just curious because since people are throwing around national divorce so much, there's no clear indicator of where the actual line is.
So is it when they come to your front door and demand your firearms or is it when they increase your taxes to 75?
Like how bad do things have to get before you as someone who despises the notion of national divorce, how bad would things have to get before you would think that it was appropriate?
It's a good question.
And, you know, you put, I don't really have an answer for that.
Yeah, I'm sorry to put you on the spot.
I know that's tough.
I've been thinking about that too.
Yeah, I don't, I don't really have an answer.
And of course, people will be like, you know, that's the whole point, man.
The boiled frog before you knew it did.
And yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, man, like, what did it take?
What did it take, Lincoln?
Like, Sumpner, right?
Like, an actual attack where people are getting killed and whatever.
The revolution was a t-tax.
The revolution was a t-tax, right?
DMT is too expensive.
Fuck these press.
Well, I mean, look, I have been guilty of being like, yo, the Republic is dead.
Yo, like the founding fathers revolted over like 1% less than any of this.
Although conceptually, the revolt was really about.
There was more going on.
People were getting tarred and feathered.
I mean, there was a lot of turmoil going on.
But not even that.
It was a philosophical question of not being treated like an English citizen.
I mean, like, come on.
So, like, and the rights and honors and benefits that come with it.
They were second class.
And that was just a philosophical position that they couldn't stand with, which irrespective of whatever fucking taxi, irrespective of whatever tea, it was a philosophical question.
We don't, we are not being granted the rights of citizens.
Like, that's the philosophical question to fight over.
And that, and that wasn't implied.
That wasn't, we're surmising this.
It was explicit.
It was explicit.
So when it comes to the United States, I don't know, dude.
There's a part of me that wants to say it's pornography.
You'll know it when you see it.
I don't know.
I know that we're not there yet.
And I know if you go out into regular America and you ask people, should we have a succession and civil war and take up arms against our cousins and brothers and maybe kill somebody's daughter and all this?
I think the answer is probably pretty clear.
When you put it in those kind of terms, the progressives, they had a long march through the institutions.
We can do the same process.
I think process is important.
I think if anyone is not enheartened, enheartened, is that a word?
Inspired.
I don't know.
Inspired.
There we go.
Professional word guy here.
The opposite of disheartened, right?
And heartened by the process victory represented by Dobbs and Rowe.
I don't know what to tell you, right?
Like people wanted to change overturn Roe.
Federalist society wanted to do it.
Lots of people got involved.
They worked for years to elect the officials that would confirm the judges and vote for the president.
They would nominate the judge, et cetera, et cetera.
And then there was a process victory, a major process victory.
I've seen other indications to say that there are process victories occurring as well.
The appellate judge that struck down the that basically struck down the mask mandate, that was huge because it took a struck a blow at the administrative state.
And basically that being that the legislation used to create these agencies who then make their own rules, which are basically laws and make all these executive decisions that weren't granted to them, they struck a blow at that.
And the administrative state is one of our biggest issues.
So there's process victories to be had.
And I'm still in the mindset of wanting to win those process victories rather than say, okay, let's figure out who's going to kill each other the most and the best in order to see who's in charge of the country.
And, you know, anybody that talks about national divorce or succession or peaceful, peaceful, you know, no one's ever been through a divorce who says that, first of all.
And second of all, there is embedded in our national identity is the precedent for how to handle secession.
Like America is defined by that.
You can't.
You just can't.
Like we can't have.
You can't do it without violence.
Well, you can't, you cannot secede without, you cannot secede.
I think that's like the general fundamental myth in America, is it not?
I mean, well, I mean, the Supreme Court officially ruled that it was unconstitutional to secede, but technically it was illegal to have a revolution too.
And that legal, that legal finding is moot.
It doesn't matter.
I just mean like the will, the will of the people, the national, the national spirit, the mythology, the mythology, which is even more important of America.
You know, we fought the Civil War.
We kept the, you know, for whatever reasons, I can hear all the nitpicking motherfuckers in my ear right now about it wasn't about slavery, it wasn't about this, whatever.
We fought a war, we put the country back together, and that has been a fundamental myth within the United States.
And it actually worked.
The South and North totally cooperate today.
In so many ways, absolutely.
And I think it did work, even despite the best efforts of many people and, you know, all kinds of retroactive history being written and whatnot.
But the idea that we're going to have states secede without using military force to prevent that from happening is farcical.
So I just wish people would be honest about it when they say national divorce means pick up guns and start killing your neighbor because that's what it would be.
And I don't know, call me crazy, but I'm not necessarily interested in that.
And then it's definitely not a priority.
It's not a priority.
And I'm going to throw out one more thing.
And I got a lot of shit about this on Twitter.
Thomas West is like one of the most important political philosophers of our time.
He wrote a book called The Moral Foundations.
Shit, I can't remember the name exactly.
But basically, the moral conditions for liberty, a political philosophical discussion of the founding.
And in there, he addresses the consideration of those who are opposed to slavery joining up a union with those who were slaveholders and believed that it was their right to do it.
The people who are abolitionists, and I'm not saying North and South here, I'm just saying people who are opposed to slavery said that they didn't want to have slavery.
How can we join a union and form a country with people that want to have slaves and vice versa?
But there was a moral argument to be made that maybe one day we'll end slavery.
But if you allow a country to form on your continent with the fundamental component of it being slavery, then slavery itself will persevere and slavery will continue on and more people will be enslaved.
So there was a moral argument for the abolitionists to join a union with people who held slaves because over time they could exert their influence to remedy that.
Well, that's what happened.
That's what happened.
So I believe that there is a similar moral argument to be made of whether or not we should stay in a union with the woke folks, with the people who have a different fundamental understanding of reality, people who base their meaning of life and reality on identity rather than our Jeffersonian life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.
We have a moral, there's an argument to be made, I believe, that we have a moral obligation to remain in union with those people so that eventually we can squash that political philosophy.
If there's a nation left to base itself upon that fundamental political philosophical perspective, then is there not a net negative moral outcome to that?
And that was the same consideration that was made by the abolitionists in union with the slaveholders.
And I believe that that's a consideration that should be made here.
And I threw that out on Twitter and everybody said that I was just, you know, what did Malice say?
He said, yeah, coming from a guy who likes to get fucked in the ass, I'm not surprised.
Or something, something as stupid and crass as that.
So yeah, it's not about getting screwed over.
It's about the net moral calculation.
And what would happen if there was a nation on our continent who had as its fundamental philosophical understanding of the universe that identity and oppressor and oppressive is the only way to understand the universe.
It's the only place that justice, that's where justice, their version of justice is fixed.
That would mean that over time, they would think that they should kill us all.
We'd be a hostile, hostile nation right next to next door to us.
And what about their children and their children's children and all that?
Do we not have some obligation morally on balance to consider that?
And I don't have the answer, but I mean, that's an argument worth having, a discussion worth having when we're discussing what is the net moral benefit of remaining in union with people that have a fundamental different notion of justice, which is really what it comes down to.
And these are really deep concepts, man.
These are concepts and discussions that come about a handful of times throughout history.
Like how many times have we been talking about what is philosophy?
What is the meaning of life?
What is the good life?
And then how do you build a system of government around it to achieve that system, that, you know, that idea of a good life?
You know, philosophy moves slower than fucking glaciers, right?
And here we are apparently like ready to have that conversation yet again.
And it's been some time.
In America, it's been a long time.
And so this is something that's going to take a long time to work itself out and should be thought through very carefully.
And the Twitter rage machine isn't necessarily the best way to hash this out.
One last thing on this.
I am concerned as well that there are people out there.
I'm going to use this term and pizza gating.
Okay.
If you remember.
I remember.
And I remember very clearly because this, I've been to that Comet Pizza ping pong.
It's the food good.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
They have a great pizza, good beer, good environment for kids.
I've brought my kids there a whole bunch of times before and after.
I bet you did.
It's like literally walking distance from my house, man.
I'm not talking about anybody that participated in spreading it or whatever, but somebody created this misinformation.
It was distributed heavily.
And a dude brought a gun down there and started firing shots.
Right?
Like he believed it.
That really happened.
Misinformation.
But even if it was true, that doesn't justify just shooting the place up.
I'm not saying it does, but what I'm saying is that people out there are going to, I'm using this as a verb, pizza gate us into a revolution, pizza gate us into a civil war.
Promoting things that are obviously false in order to generate rage and clicks and money and fame and notoriety could result in some group of people being like, fuck yeah, I heard about this on Twitter.
This shit's really happening.
It's time.
Let's go.
Who knows?
Who knows to what extent?
I'm not going to go there.
It's possible.
I think there's a this we're in a novel information space.
It's still novel, no matter how many years we've been involved in it.
And the norms and mores and like customs and safeguards and stuff have really yet to be developed.
I just urge people to remember that there's a lot of people listening.
If you've got 100,000,200 followers or more, you've got national influence, probably even less than that.
National influence, those people talk to other people.
Just don't sell your country out for fucking clicks.
That's what I'm saying.
Anyway, that's a great point.
That's going to be a good short.
So last question before I let you go, because we're coming up on an hour.
You mentioned earlier in our conversation about how you're the type of person that puts 1,000% in everything that you do.
So I just wanted to ask, what are you obsessed with now?
Well, interesting.
I am currently and have been obsessed with my kids for the last couple of months.
Everybody's obsessed with their kids.
Yeah.
I've been really, really focused on them, though.
Joe Biden's obsessed with everybody's kids.
They're both, right?
But I'm bumped after what we were just talking about.
I know.
I'm just fucking around.
You know, my son's a rising junior, my daughter's a rising senior.
They're both D1 recruited athletes right now.
They're both choosing where they're going to go to college, what major sports programs they're going to play.
It's a critical time.
It's a critical time.
They're both been on tour all summer long, all over the country, all over North America, as a matter of fact, playing and competing in national tournaments, national regattas, placing, making honors, like really even exceeding any wildest dream I ever had for my kids and their athletic prowess.
Like it's blowing my mind.
And so it's really, it's a super busy time.
We've been on the road all summer long.
I've put thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of miles on my car.
You know, I got an oil change at the beginning of the summer and halfway through, it was like, time for another oil change.
That's how much we've been driving.
And, you know, so really the last couple of months, I've been obsessed with that and trying to help them make the best decision.
And, you know, for better or worse, it is exactly the thing where I put in a thousand percent effort.
The whole world of college recruiting and scouting and all this scholarships, it's very complicated.
It is complicated and competitive.
Complicated, competitive.
There's all kinds of weird arcane rules.
There's a million different things to consider.
There's a million different things to learn.
And so, you know, I'm not the kind of guy that's just going to like rely on somebody else's advice about it.
You know, so I've dove in headfirst.
I've been helping them with social media as well, teaching them how to do that.
And so I have been, I've been totally obsessed with that.
Now, the other thing I've been obsessed about is work.
And the Liminal Order has been planning its biggest event of the year.
It's coming up in September, and I'm really excited about it.
What it is, is it's a four-day event in Michigan where if you've ever seen the show Homestead Rescue, we are going to one of our brother's farms that he took over the family farm from his ailing in-laws who were sick.
And we're going to help him build his fences and pens and some goat sheds and get it stocked with livestock.
And the guys are going to come and learn basic carpentry skills.
We're going to work together.
We're going to build these productive assets for his farm.
And we're going to have fun and recreate and hang out together and camp and stuff.
And so we've got about 30 guys that are coming.
We're going to be able to get a ton of work done.
At parallel, we're also going to record it and produce it and put out some videos and shorts and maybe like a little documentary on what it's like.
And so we're not only helping this guy out, we're increasing his sovereignty.
We are doing service work.
We're working outside together.
We're acting as a community.
We're being brothers in a brotherhood.
We're teaching people skills in terms of basic carpentry and how to get the farm and homestead working.
We're also teaching people how to create content, how to edit it, how to publish it, how to produce it.
We've got general contractor, architecture and designer, TV and film producer and editor, all from within the LO all on board on this project.
So it's going to be very professionally done.
And I'm really, really excited about that because it embodies all of the values that were about, the Liminal Order.
We're about masculine energy.
And that's, you know, not teaching you how to be masculine because that's kind of dumb and gay, but just like getting guys together that believe in the power of masculine energy, right?
How to build, how to create, how to protect, how to provide, that believe in brotherhood, accountability, service, and community, and then believe in sovereignty, whether it's your financial land, water, personal information, sovereignty, any way you can become more independent and self-sufficient.
And so this event captures all of that together.
We're building and creating.
We're protecting and providing.
We're doing it together with each other.
We're providing service.
We're learning skills, mastering skills, teaching people how to create, right?
Whether it's carpentry or coding, like how to create is very important.
And then we're helping increase not only his sovereignty, but our own sovereignty and the sovereignty of the network.
So it's four days in Michigan in late summer.
It's going to be absolutely beautiful.
So that's what I've been obsessed with as well.
The Liminal Order.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
It's been a real pleasure to have you.
I really appreciate your insight, your perspective, and just your general sharp perception of the meaning and the philosophies behind the real mechanisms behind the machine that we're faced with.
So I'd love for you to come on again sometime.
If you ever need anything, great, man.
If you ever need anything from me, just let me know.
And good luck with you and your family.
Congratulations on the success that you've had on the home front.
And I wish the best for your kids as they come into adulthood, man.
An exciting time.
Thanks a lot, Chase.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks for taking the time to do a little scheduling management with me.
But it was a real pleasure to talk to you.
Really good.
Congratulations with the show, man, and keep it up.
Thanks, man.
Take care.
All right, buddy.
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