July 25, 2025 - Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer
01:05:34
Who’s REALLY Behind the Origins of TERRORISM.. And Who Does it BENEFIT? | Rift Book Club | B1E3
In this week’s Book Club episode we’re covering chapters 4 through 6 of ‘Where the Right Went Wrong’ by Patrick Buchanan, touching on topics ranging from the origins of terrorism to the “sleeping giant”, a rising adversary in the East - none other than China.
Sarah Stock and Braeden Sorbo join us for another Book Club episode on Rift TV!
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Welcome to a very special episode of The Rift, the book club from home.
I feel like it's too quiet here.
I feel like it's, you know, I think that's kind of proper, I guess, for a book club episode.
It should be quiet.
It should be quiet when you're in the library, when you're in the bookstore and whatnot, where those certain Lake Worth residents don't normally go to.
But yeah, we have a special episode today.
Obviously, the book club.
We haven't done the book club in a bit.
So we want to make sure that we got one out because it's been a while.
You know, has everyone been keeping up with reading?
Well, I can't speak to that too much, specifically for myself, but it's okay.
I mean, I was always a kid in school where I would be asking someone for a piece of paper or for a pencil because I wouldn't bring it because I would be skipping the lunchroom the entire half the day or something.
So that's okay.
But thankfully, I have two people who are smarter than myself, Braden Sorbo and Sarah Stock.
Well, I mean, I guess maybe more arguably on that second one.
But regardless, we're going to be talking about chapters four through six of the book Where the Right Went Wrong by Patrick Buchanan.
I still haven't got a physical version yet.
I have a Kindle.
Obviously, we did the giveaway for the Kindle.
I'll be shouting out the person who won the Kindle in this last go around later on in the show.
But we have an abbreviated show for you tonight.
Right now, Elijah's traveling.
He's working on some stuff in a Texas.
He's also there with Michael Hennessy.
So he said, you know what?
I'm not going to keep you guys in the office for 20 hours today, but just today.
You guys can work from home.
And here we are.
So, you know, if Elijah is so gracious, I mean, I might build this out a little bit more.
And, you know, someone actually has an even better from home setup than I do.
And then I'll be introducing him in just a second.
But I don't want to ramble on too long.
We're going to get right into it.
Again, this show is on restream, so, or not restream, sorry, StreamYard.
So a little bit of a different format.
So, you know, bear with us.
Let us know what you liked about the show, what you didn't like about the show.
Make sure that you smash like and subscribe.
If we're on the front page of Rumble, make sure that you subscribe.
And, you know, this is kind of one of our more unique content-driven shows where we're focusing on a specific topic, such as a book.
Normally, we just do current events.
We also have some more shows that we're onboarding soon.
So, you know, if you guys will just bear with me for the show, Elijah will be back next week.
Like I said, he's just working on business out in Texas with Michael Hennessy.
But until then, we'll be doing this and let's just get right into the show.
Let's see if this works.
Sorry if I blew your guys' ears out.
I feel like it blew my ears out.
I was trying to find a way to fix it on my end.
I don't think there is a way to fix it on my end, unfortunately.
And that bug also just came in.
Wait, Long, where is it?
That bug right there just came in very unceremoniously.
I would have preferred the fade.
You know, after working in production for a couple of years, like you start to notice stuff.
Maybe you guys don't notice.
Maybe you guys are a little bit more forgiving.
That's fine.
But anyway, like I said, I'm not going to keep rambling, but I am going to introduce one of our guests, one of our contributors here at Rift TV, who, you know, he's been putting in a lot of work with us recently.
Right now, and right now, Sarah is actually at a conference.
I want to dox her and say where she's at.
I mean, maybe some people know, but she's been advertising this like Catholic charity stream for at least a week or two weeks now.
So, you know, shout out to her.
She will be joining us shortly.
We're going to kill time until she joins and probably to talk about the first three chapters and what you guys thought about.
Who's actually been keeping up with the book club thus far?
I am looking in chat right now.
You know, I'm a little bit of a one-man band today.
I mean, normally I am once it comes to setting up the stream, but I, but I normally have Michael Hennessy.
Um, Elijah helps with the cameras and mics and everything.
But today it's really just me setting everything up.
Uh, Braden and Sarah just coming in here to look pretty.
Uh, I'm the one who's actually putting the nose to the grindstone.
But yeah, she's on the stream right now.
Um, I would encourage you guys to go to it because you guys should be here with us.
But maybe if you want to watch the replay later, um, and then donate to the to the charities, I believe that they're contributing to um the Christians in Gaza, if I'm not mistaken.
Like, well, maybe if you talked about uh Catholic dogma incessantly on the internet, then they'd they'd uh be inviting you, but you're not so I do it on Twitter a whole lot.
Well, you know, I mean, like you have it in your blood to fight people, so you have the Herculean blood, so you should be fighting more people, I think.
But um, anyway, so uh, um, people in chat, um, I want to see who else um has been keeping up with the chat.
So I'm just going to check through the chat real quick.
Um, I don't see, okay, well, um, I see an end towers that's that's great.
This is not exactly relevant to what we're talking about tonight, but that's fine.
Well, by the way, I mean, right now, having um, like, you know, right now, being or doing this from home, like I instantly thought of doing an air horn.
Like, I seriously have the soundboard, it's like ingrained in my head.
Like, I thought it's like hit the soundboard, but I'm assuming that's Homer Jay Fuentes' significant other, if I'm not mistaken, which is kind of funny.
That's like, it's actually a great gimmick because, you know, Homer, Homer Simpson, Marge, Marge Simpson.
Shout out to Homer Jay Fuentes, obviously, and Marge Fuentes, Rogue 12.
Some of the other people in the Rumble chat.
If you guys haven't shared the link already, or if you guys haven't liked the screen, make sure that you go ahead and do that.
I also will be reading super chats.
And if you guys want to drop super chats early, that'd be great.
Because as I mentioned, we are killing time until the great, the indomitable Sarah Stock joins us.
But in the meantime, until I get any super chats, we can talk a little bit about the first three chapters.
And I know I have some of my notes from before here.
The first chapter, Democratic Imperialism and the War President.
Second chapter, the War Party hijackers of American Foreign Policy.
And third chapter, is Islam the Enemy?
Which was very, very timely considering that last time that we were doing this was when we were, well, I mean, not us specifically, but by proxy, you know, we're engaged in a proxy war with Iran, which, you know, everything has calmed down a little bit since then, but diplomacy talks have not really resumed.
I know that they're planning to meet with, I think, the G4 summit or something.
Yeah.
So there are plans of talking again.
But also in these next three chapters, the fourth chapter is the unwinnable war.
Fifth chapter is a crouching tiger hidden dragon, which I think that if you've ever seen the movie before, you can probably guess what that chapter is about.
And sixth chapter is economic treason.
So, You know, um, Brand, I'm gonna pass off to you a little bit because obviously you've read the entire book.
I still haven't read the entire book.
We have a lot going on the rift.
Sorry, I don't have as much time to read as I would like.
But from your recollection, I know that you're probably a little bit more hazy and probably not even more so or more much than me.
But can you kind of just give a brief summary, a brief synopsis of those first three chapters and kind of what the foundation that Patrick Buchanan is laying down in the first three chapters.
And, you know, if you want to go even further, talk about how it's going to lead into these next three chapters and set the stage for those chapters.
I did the whole thing on Audible driving over to SAS.
So I just had, I just had a whole lot of time to kill and I didn't realize that I was taking part in a book club, which means that I didn't pay too much attention, but I'll do my very best to catch up.
So I actually quite enjoyed this book, at least from the perspective of this is a good way to get a Fox news boomer sort of acquainted with distancing themselves from the neoconservative party and this whole idea of Judeo-Christianity.
And actually someone in YouTube said the same thing.
They said this book is good for a boomer to get introduced to non-Fox info.
And even back then, he was beginning to question the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and what we were doing with the occupation.
And so the first three chapters are sort of the buildup, the leading into all of that.
And the next three that we're going to be talking about today, four, five, and six, really talk about the essentially the hijacking of the American parties in favor of forever wars.
And well Buchanan doesn't exactly hit the notes on who's behind it.
Like he's not fully there yet.
It's kind of hard to fault him considering this was literally two decades ago.
And so we don't have the same info back then as we do now.
And so when it comes down to a lot of, you know, the discussion that we can have around this, we do have to look at it through that, that kind of, what was it, the horoscope or the eyeglass of time or something like the hourglass of time.
We have to take that into consideration when we're talking about it because Buchanan is a huge Reagan supporter and you see it throughout a lot of his stuff.
And what's funny is the more he talks, the more he realized that if he understood that a lot of the policies he's speaking about that he's giving to Reagan were actually anti-Reagan policies, I have a pretty good suspicion that he would change his opinion.
I mean, a lot of, if I'm not mistaken, this is in the third, the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapter.
He talks about the free market trade system that we had, where essentially the government before World War I funded itself solely off of tariffs and that there was only one income tax before the origin, or there was only one tax before the income tax was instituted to help kind of supplement World War I efforts.
And it was the slavery tax right after the civil rights, the civil war happened.
And it was for the civil rights movement.
And that was temporary.
It got removed.
And then everyone thought no more taxes.
And the income tax was instituted.
And, you know, the people came out and they basically said, all right, this will only be for a temporary time to duration of the war.
We'll win the war and we'll take it off.
And obviously, we know how that ended up.
That wasn't necessarily something that we can look back on now and go, all right, they were clearly lying.
But the people, once again, looking at it from the perspective that they had when they were introduced it, we do have to give a little bit of leeway with it, unfortunately, because people don't see things as they happen.
It's like they say, the hindsight is 2020.
And so, I mean, I'm looking at the comments right here.
Billy, Asian peers in Cali are lefties said, Pat Buchanan, rest in peace, a true America first.
Exactly.
Was wholeheartedly America first, which is why I think if he were still alive today he would be against Reagan, at least in some areas, such as the mass amnesty, the gun bans and the, the trickle-down economics, because unfortunately trickle-down economics is like communism, where it's great in theory because oh, everyone wins, but in practice humanity is inherently selfish and it won't ever work because of that reason and also because we don't have an Ethno state, so nothing will work properly.
But I will give Buchanan a lot of credit because, as someone who doesn't read a whole lot of books and like you said at the beginning, this is sort of this is a gray area for me.
I mean, I was the kid in school who would spark notes every book to do my estimate, yeah right, read a single thing.
Sorry mom, but this was one of the few books that i've read recently that I did seriously enjoy, and I remember I actually gave Elijah a few more suggestions for books in the future, just because i'm eager to to go into them.
But I did learn quite a bit, especially with these three, I mean with the whole book there's there's things you can glean from every single chapter, but with these chapters it really is interesting to watch someone who would be considered a boomer in age but not in mindset, because he's so Anti-neocon that it's almost refreshing.
It's kind of like, oh, my gosh, there are people that are older than 30 that aren't neocons.
Well, and like, you know, kind of touching back to the point of, you know, him being more of a Reaganite.
I mean, one thing he really harps on in the first couple of chapters, I think especially second chapter, is about American exceptionalism.
And obviously that was kind of subverted by the Trotskyites, by the people who came to the country and then kind of tried to impose their own ideology.
that being communism or some kind of more uh left authoritarian worldview um, and sometimes, you know like, when it comes to to the Neocons, it's not even so much about political ideology, but it is more about like a uh, a tribal ideology, as we talked about before, with the Zionists and with the Jewish state um so um, I think that I think Buchan did a really good job of kind of yeah and and um, I do like how you actually frame that, because I actually like hadn't thought about that how like,
here is someone who came up with like Reagan and then um, he kind of had such a change of heart and it it took the Iraq war for it to actually kind of dawn upon him, which is kind of the funny thing like, I mean, you know, before that there was operation Desert Storm, there was a bunch of things that were going on, there's Vietnam, there was a bunch of stuff going on in terms of military operations but um, it was really the Iraq war.
That was kind of just like the gall of actually going to that war when you know the country wasn't free fall already.
Um, and you know i've mentioned this before.
But if you read Patrick Brimlow's writings from around the same time period, I mean, Patrick Brimlow's thing is more more so immigration.
I'd say I'd say Peter Brimlow, I think it's Patrick.
Oh, OK.
I don't know how she did that.
Sarah just popped in like that.
But but yeah, I mean, like they were talking back then as if as if it was over over from a political, military immigration standpoint.
And it's just like, man, you know, I mean, but and by the way, both Patrick Buchanan and Peter Brimlow are still alive.
And, you know.
seeing it 20 years later down the line, it's just like, man, you know, um, and we all thought that Trump was going to be the person that was going to stop that was going to put a halt to that, but um, apparently, not.
But actually, before I let Sarah in, before she so rudely interjects herself, um, as she just did, um, I do want to go over a message from one of our uh sponsors, um, Hyperbit.
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I'll let her in a bit.
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Also, we have a disclaimer in the bio and you know, just another note: this is not financial advice.
Um, investing and stuff is always a risk.
Uh, there's never any guaranteed returns.
And if someone is telling you that there are guaranteed returns, then they're trying to scam you.
So, just a little note on that.
So, anyway, all right, let me figure out how to bring Sarah in in a oh, because I do it like this.
Well, I mean, Ohio kind of is just the middle of nowhere.
Just exactly.
So, okay, cool.
Well, awesome.
Well, Sarah, thanks for joining.
I guess we didn't really do intros in the beginning, but everyone kind of knows who everyone is by now.
But actually, Brayden and Sarah, if you guys want to kind of just give your socials real quick, Brayden, you can go ahead and start just so people can follow you and whatnot.
So, uh, me and Brayden were just briefly talking about the first few chapters and kind of setting up or setting the stage for actually wait before I do that.
One more thing.
I'm not gonna do an ad read, I promise.
We have one super chat.
We have one super chat from Bloodshot567 said, Where the hell is Anna?
Um, Anna's been gone for less than a week.
Chill out, she'll be back.
Everyone loves Anna, so we're good on that.
Um, also, actually, um, I did want to mention something real quick because uh, I don't know how much you've been getting it, Sarah.
Um, but I do think it's funny that people are harping on this and they think it's like a gotcha thing.
You found, you looked up my name and found out secret information that's publicly available that I used to work for a Zionist network because I come from, because like pretty much every conservative was a Zionist at one point.
I mean, I was never even really like ultra Zionist or anything, but I just like worked in conservative media.
And what I have noticed is that when people get red pilled, they love to trot around as if they've been red pilled for longer than the next person.
So I try to not do that.
Cause, and I mean, it is kind of surreal seeing people and, you know, kind of tying it back to the book.
You know, like, I mean, Buchanan does a really good job of, I think, I think, Brayden, you had used some term or some turn earlier to, because he's not really naming them per se, but he is by saying neocons, Trotskyites.
I mean, you can kind of like break down the ethnic genetic lineage of most of those people and probably come to a common conclusion.
But yeah, so just to tie it back to the book, that was one of the things I was just talking about too, was about the neoconservative coup, the chapter two, where he talks about lots of people who joined the GOP, but they never actually adopted any conservative values when it comes to international relations or a bunch of fiscal or monetary policy.
They were kind of just taking their policies from the old world, their ideologies from the old world, and then imposing them on an entire country of white Christian Americans.
And then rightly so, I think, I think Iraq was the first shooter drop where people started really asking questions.
And, you know, 20 years down the line, now we're genociding people in Gaza.
And then now people are really starting to ask questions.
And I think that I think that the dam is breaking.
So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about those first few chapters and what you got from that, Sarah.
And some of my points that I wrote down from it was basically what I was talking about with Iraq kind of segwaying into that Iraq thing.
Iraq being a being a mistake.
There was no clear objective going in there.
And I forgot who the military general was that was like so dumbfounded when after 9-11 happened.
And then they're like, oh, yeah, we're going into Iraq.
And he's just like, what does Iraq have anything to do with what we're doing?
And then, yeah, and then just the overall betrayal of conservative values and non-interventionism.
And then I think the last point that I kind of wrote down from this chapter was that this is going to cost us the American empire.
And I mean, even with even in the last 10 years already, we started to see it shift from a unipolar world order to more of a multipolar world order, which I don't want to get too much into next chapter, but those were the points that I kind of got from this chapter was about just the mistake of Iraq and how it's how like, you know, eventually this is going to lead to the downfall of American hegemony.
So I don't know what you guys got from it, but you guys can go ahead and take it away.
But yeah, I'm trying to refresh my brain on the Iraq chapter because I just read the ones about China, the free trade.
But yeah, I mean, it is just like interesting that the parallel there with what has been happening recently with Iran and how it's kind of, it was kind of the same talking points were used to bring America into that war that they were now using with the war with Iran.
And I know a lot of people are going to say that, you know, it wasn't a war, barely anything happened.
We got out of it.
But let's just give it a little bit more time because I don't think either side really got what they wanted out of that situation.
So I do think it's, I don't think that situation is really over.
But it really was the same sort of talking points.
It didn't make any sense to drag America into that war.
It's like, oh, well, we can't let them have nukes and stuff.
And it's like, and it really doesn't affect America at all.
So yeah, America should never have been dragged into that.
And the stuff with Iraq, it was really interesting.
I remember there was a list that was published.
I think it said possibly in the New York Times after 9-11 of like seven different countries that America should bomb.
And it's like none of them were the countries that the terrorists were even from.
I mean, we had, what was it in 19, it was 1998 that the project for the new America century was created.
And so you have people like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, and a bunch of other neoconservatives who were already gearing us in that direction towards war, because as everybody knows, war is incredibly profitable.
And so you have this almost imperialist overreach with these figures that are aiming to usurp and hijack what was once the Republican Party, what was once the party that, you know, fought to free slaves and all that stuff, which we can get into later.
But you have what was deemed originally a morally upright society and has now or party and has now been kind of overtaken and become essentially a war party.
I mean, obviously today we have a uniparty that's a war party at the same time for another foreign country.
But back then, when the PNAC was established, it was sort of the fundamental roots.
It was sort of that bottom bare, like the base floor, the ground floor of everything that put us into the trajectory of where we're at now with the neoconservatives and paleoconservatives.
Like you said, the Trotsky's, you have sort of a very noticeable footmap.
You can trace everything back.
And it's interesting that so many people have essentially ignored it for their own prejudices simply because the media tells them to when it's laid out right in front of us.
And so I like how he outlined all of that.
It made it very digestible and like what other people said, a really good tool for, especially for boomers to get off of Fox News.
And actually, just to mention those countries that you talked about earlier, it was Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia were some of the ones that were mentioned in some of the documents from the project for New American Century.
This is from chapter two, but one of these quotes here, he said, we may willing-nilly find ourselves forced to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world, including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, otherwise known.
I think that's PLO, if I'm not mistaken.
But so, I mean, even then, they knew that it just didn't make much sense, if any sense, at all.
But also, by the way, I did want to actually just, because I don't think we really told Sarah too, but we do have a heart out at 815.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, this is going to be a bit of an abbreviated show, but next week we should be getting back to normal scheduling.
And right now, Elijah is blowing up the chat because apparently he had a not so favorable interaction with a airport worker, which is not surprising.
I don't know how much was I was a huge Adam Sandler fan when I was a kid, but like now knowing that he's kind of just like a, I mean, he is kind of just like a Jewish clown.
And I know how that sounds, but I mean, like, like, he's like a Seth Rogan or like Jack Black.
Like, it's just like, you know, I feel like when there are like rich Jews who are in Hollywood and they have like a loser son, and then they're like, oh man, you know, he's not making it.
Like, I'll just throw him on the screen.
And then he ends up being like a freaking billionaire.
Like Adam Sandler.
I still like Adam Sandler generally, but it's like knowing that for what it is is like, it kind of ruins it for me a little bit.
I've actually been watching a lot of those like early 2000s Eric comedies recently because it's like the best thing to watch when you just want to turn off your brain.
But like, but not to sound like a total Fox News watcher, but it's like nice because they're like not woke.
And it's like you can just like watch something normal without like gay people in it or something.
And you're like, wow, it's kind of like the old America.
I mean, I have nothing for chapter four other than it was just an alarmist chapter warning us that we're just going to become like Rome, which is so true.
I mean, we are, we're literally in the decline of Rome.
And so we can move on unless Sarah has something else.
And it starts off with one of my favorite historical figures or a quote from one of my favorite historical figures, Napoleon.
And if I can pull it up real quick, he said, China is a sleeping giant, let sleep.
For when it awakes, it will shake the world.
And no, it's not Steve Bannon speaking.
That's Napoleon Bonaparte.
But you could be forgiven for thinking it was Steve Bannon because that's all Steve Bannon talks about is China.
So some of my notes from this is that, you know, the rate at which China ascends to a world superpower is kind of congruent to the rate at which America will be declining as a superpower.
And I mean, especially in the last even five years.
And I think that COVID was kind of the thing.
And, you know, I mean, sometimes people also call China, what, a paper tiger?
Because there's a lot of these things they do.
It's kind of like a Potemkin city where they will build up all this infrastructure, all this, all this housing, these crazy, elaborate militaries, but then the cities are empty.
People aren't inhabiting the houses.
So from Buchanan's angle, and forgive me, this is actually the chapter that I didn't finish.
I got through about halfway of this chapter.
But some of the notes that I do have on this is talking more about the trade deficit and how we are hurling towards disaster with that.
Specifically, and this is also without the context of the, well, I guess there's always been this conflict, but this is without, like, you know, this is 20 years ago.
So this is not even taking into account the current current saber rattling with Taiwan and kind of China provoking us to, or like maybe not provoking Us directly.
But, you know, obviously, I think for the longest time, America has said, okay, you know, we have a trade deficit, but I mean, what's China going to do?
Like, are they going to call that debt?
Do of course not because we have a stronger military.
But now it's like they're kind of saber-rattling with Taiwan.
And I'm not really sure what that means, but I want to hear what you guys had to think about the chapter.
I know, Sarah, you have a lot to say, so you can go ahead.
Yeah, well, I think it actually did talk about Taiwan a bit, but that was later in the chapter.
And it obviously just wasn't updated because this was written like 20 years ago or so.
But yeah, I found it really interesting how it's like the reason why we had so much free trade with China is because there was an argument from the liberal side of things in our government and I guess the neocons and everything that if we lift countries out of poverty, then they won't be authoritarian anymore.
They won't be communist.
They'll basically become more moral the more prosperous they are and they'll be more free and everyone will just be happy and it will decrease war and everything.
And so because of that, that was their argument for why we need to open up free trade with China to basically make them be less of our enemy, I guess.
But it didn't really work out because now it's like, well, now they're just our competitor, you know, economically.
So, and now they're draining out the interior of our country because we're exporting a bunch of labor over there and manufacturing and everything.
So it didn't really work out how they thought it would, but you kind of wonder if that was just the plan all along.
Well, yeah, it goes back to what we were saying earlier before Sarah joined, where America's government was completely subsidized by tariffs and the income that we received from taxing other countries rather than our own citizens.
And so when we started to kind of push away from this big government system that we had, or from the small government system into the larger government where there were more responsibilities because it was good for you for the government to handle all of these things, we pushed our, it was like the 2003 Medicare drugs that we started prescribing to everybody, right?
This whole, what was it?
It was the Medicare Drug Improvement and Modernization Act or something like that of 2003.
And that was when we started to mainstream and make the government more prevalent in society as opposed to less.
And obviously, even people like Reagan understood that less government was at least something that might be better as much as he infringed on a lot of amendments, like the Second Amendment that we mentioned earlier.
And the one thing when it comes to the tariff trade that we have to remember is we do have a deficit.
I mean, we're 30, what, $37 trillion in debt?
And we're not in debt to nobody.
So yeah, technically our lenders could call those debts.
Do they?
No, not yet.
I mean, we're watching ourselves decline in real time.
Why would they even want to get involved?
They don't need to.
China doesn't need to get involved militarily and get into a war with the United States because, yeah, they're going to take a lot of hits and there's a chance that we win because we are stronger physically, but we do owe them.
And so to that end, how does that end well for us?
Well, first of all, I'm just trying to figure out how to work StreamYard real quick.
So, oh, wait, here we go.
Can I?
Oh, my God.
Okay.
Sorry.
I'm just terrible with this.
You can now Venmo.
Actually, let me take this thing off because it's blocking Brayden's face.
So one moment.
You can now Venmo the treasury to help with the national debt if you so care so much about your government.
So yeah, so I mean, I would do this, but the only thing is that I don't use Venmo because I hate how you have to put in like an emoji or something every time that you send money to people.
There's somewhere out there, there's like a boomer, and they're like, I would normally donate to Young America's Foundation to teach the youth about support for Israel.
But today I'm going to decrease the national debt and I'm going to send my children's fortunes.
Yeah, it's like, I'd rather just, you know, I don't know if you're in a hotel right now, sir, but whenever I'm in a hotel like late night and I have Fox News on, those commercials come on where it's like Pastor John Hagee and he's talking about like giving money to like Jews in Ukraine or something.
Like I might as well give my money to that because it's it's it's essentially going to go to the same source anyway.
Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, like I'm going to go straight to the straight to the source and then donate to Holocaust survivor.
Also, too, we are actually like, you know, I was actually surprised with, you know, doing this new format, doing, doing five shows a week because we never got super chats before on Slightly Offensive, but now the super chats are rolling in.
And, you know, thanks.
Thank you guys so much for supporting the show.
Obviously, we have sponsors and other ways of monetizing everything, but super chats really do help.
And Elijah mentioned this before, but this really goes into the piggy bank to bring people out, to book people, to get hotels, because that stuff does add up.
We've kind of figured out a science of like where to book people and where to fly people into and stuff like that.
And we are trying to cut down costs, making sure that we can keep everything going for as long as possible, if not forever, and make even more money.
That'd be great.
And, you know, spread our views in the process.
But anyway, that's a long tangent.
The one super chat that I got from, I got two.
One is from Skippity Toilet.
Scribbles Scribbles 915.
And he says, job hunting has been hardcore, not going to, not going to lie, relocated from El Paso and have been working in the oil field since 2018.
I partied a little too hard during dad's weekend during PTO and lost my job.
No, he says, he says, I take this loss as a blessing, guys.
I've been having a good time with my wife and my two-year-old Charlie Buns, I guess is his daughter's name or son's name.
I guess Charlie can go either way.
Watching the rift for a while now.
Cheers.
Scribbles 915 on X. Make sure to follow him there.
That's S-K-R-I-B-L-Z915 on X.com.
Also, too, that's awesome because I have a one-year-old daughter and I wish I could spend more time with her, but obviously trying to build this network is very time consuming, but I think it'll be worth it in the long term.
So shout out to you again.
Let's see if we have anything over on YouTube.
We do not.
The Rumble audience once again reigns supreme.
So anyway, getting back into the book, let me just look at some other notes I had and some highlighted parts that I thought were interesting.
Give me one second.
I don't know if you guys have any like notes or anything.
I know one part that he talked about towards the end of the chapter that I thought was interesting was the potential inevitability of a conflict with China.
I know, and this is kind of why I joked in the beginning about Steve Bannon, because Steve Bannon seems to be dead set on this.
And I don't know what school of thought Steve Bannon really comes from because he can kind of just, he bounces around a lot.
I'll go first just because mine will be probably quick.
It's definitely a possibility when it comes to a foreign war, especially with stuff like the Taiwan conflict, just because Taiwan is the largest exporter of, what is it, computer graphics cards?
They make like 90% of them.
And so that runs deep.
I mean, there's so much that you make with those.
And so obviously, if China kind of pushes in and takes over Taiwan, then the U.S. is going to be forced to retaliate in some way, shape, or form.
And so it really is, I want to say it's almost like the Cold War, where it's basically just two massive countries edging each other, like who's going to go first kind of thing.
That's sort of my take on it is we're just, we're just edging until, and someone asked if they could use Van Man for that.
I was like, maybe the countries are using Van Man to edge to the next war.
I actually put Van Man on right before and I look super greasy now, but that's fine because it, because it's very moisturizing.
But yeah, one thing, and also shout out to Van Man, I don't have the banner for Van Man right now, but shout out Van Man.
But some of the ways that Buchanan talks about kind of, you know, staying away from actually getting into an actual shooting war with China is how we mentioned earlier, imposing tariffs, ending those free trade agreements, and then withdrawing from some of those trade deals that we had made.
I'm blanking on the name now, but I know it was one of the ones that Trump had pulled out in his first term.
But, you know, a lot of these things were why people were so were looking forward to a second Trump term because we we kind of got whiffs of that in the first term.
And we thought that he was going to go balls to the wall second term.
And he did go balls to the wall, but for it for Israel.
Dude, I wish I had my soundboard right now because like not having like we're like missing out on some of the good soundboard moments right now, but go ahead.
I mean, I think that uh, um, you know, like Nick, like a Nick Fuentes was actually talking about this the other day, but um, how Trump is almost just like so sure of himself, um, you know, after dodging a bullet and after beating all these lawsuits against him that he thought he could just come into office and do anything.
And yeah, like a lot of these things that he's that he did in the first hundred days that all the Magatards online were trying to rub into the people who didn't vote's faces uh kind of just got instantly pulled right back.
That's kind of where the problem is, those people, yeah, the problem is those people are so loud and annoying on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook that everyone assumes that that's how all people who voted for Trump are.
And it's like, dude, can you just take two seconds to realize that we also don't want foreign wars?
That we also like the only difference between Trump and Kamala is Kamala had to be on her back to get her position.
That was pretty, you know what I mean?
Aside from maybe some border policy and things like that.
But, and also, Kamala's a woman, and I wouldn't vote for a woman for president, but that's just my perspective.
But yeah, I mean, it's so stupid how everyone had the first hundred days and like, look at everything we're doing.
And we didn't really do, I mean, the border closed, but we're not even getting mass deportations right now, which is sort of like kind of disappointing.
I read it and I'm just, yeah, I'm just out of it right now.
But anyway, but I just mod you in there.
And yeah, and like, you know, so I'm, I'm, I'm basically looking in the chat right now to see if there's anyone who Who has actually read the book, who has actually done the assignment and then has some takeaways.
If not, I think we can go into the next chapter, which if I bring up my notes real quick, we have 10 minutes.
Well, I just want to talk about something real quick with free trade.
So free trade is one of those things that we got basically after World War II, where it's like the world is now opened up.
And basically, when like globalism really just fully kicked off.
And Trump, what like one of the reasons why Trump was so amazing and kind of really just like changed the conservative movement and like defined what it means to be American first is because he broke the free trade consensus.
Because it was for years and years, like Buchanan is talking about both sides of the political spectrum just said, yeah, of course we need to trade with every count with all these other countries.
And that obviously has, I mean, we'll kind of get more into this in the next chapter, but it obviously has like totally just like broken down our own manufacturing.
And basically, it's like over this period of time, it's like we've been like exporting white male American jobs to everyone else so that men can't raise a family.
And it started with women going into the workforce.
Shout out to me.
But yeah, so now it's like double the woman, right?
So it's like now that basically you get to pay men half as much.
And yeah, because it like totally inflates the levels.
Sorry, it's like so hot in this room I'm in right now that I'm just like drenched in sweat while I'm trying to find Florida.
unidentified
So I was gonna say, some of your fans, there's no, there's no AC here.
Like, these are all just things that take away jobs from young white men.
Like, that's basically the point of our entire DEI.
Like, every point of our entire economy is to basically just like take the futures away from young white American men.
And that's like both sides of the political spectrum have been doing that.
And, you know, free trade is one of those things that everyone thought was fine.
But when you start to look into it, you realize that we're exporting jobs overseas and it could be Americans making so much more.
And another thing is now everything is like on this huge scale where it's like, even like every job that a woman does is something that she should be doing in her own home.
So like what women are teachers?
Yeah, women used to teach their own kids.
Now they're teaching 20 other kids.
Women, a woman's a nurse that used to take care of their older relatives.
Like basically any job that a woman does is something she would normally do for her own family, but now he has to do it on a mass scale.
And it's actually kind of the same way with men too.
Men used to build their own homes.
Now they have to go in teams and build.
So this is like what capitalism has done.
And what it does is it basically like removes like the fact that the economy is on such a global scale instead of a localized scale, it means everyone has so much less purpose in their own life.
Because think about if you're doing something for your family, you're seeing the direct result of it.
You're using your hands to do it and you're seeing the result instantaneously.
Right.
And so that makes you, that's like why we want women in the home.
It gives them so much more purpose and fulfillment.
And it's the same thing with men.
Now it's like even a man used to be the milkman and you would go around to every house in the neighborhood and give them milk.
It doesn't seem like that glamorous of a job, but if you don't do it, no one in your town has milk that day.
And so you actually matter, right?
But now it's like what?
You go work for a milk manufacturing plant or whatever, like, I don't know, or you do graphic design for a milk company.
And it doesn't matter if you don't go to work.
You're just replaceable.
So basically, this whole rant is just to say that globalization has made everyone replaceable and an interchangeable economic unit.
Oh, I'll touch on free trade really quickly and pass the torch right back to you.
I mean, it's basically an echoing of the sentiment that Sarah was saying.
The only difference is I like someone mentioned in the YouTube chat that the Amish build houses together.
And so it really comes down to what is the priority of the community as opposed to the world.
Like it's trying to be the world police, which is the dangerous aspect of free trade versus building up your community.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with working construction and building skyscrapers for your city that you live in, as opposed to, you know, going and doing this free trade system where the citizens via taxes are supplementing the entire government income as opposed to the importation of goods, which fosters companies bringing their work and labor and then new jobs to America.
And so, yeah, I mean, the introduction of free trade has wholeheartedly been a negative for our country.
And also, and also one thing I'll add is that we've always had some level throughout history of trade with other countries, you know, because there's times when it's like you can only get like there's certain fruit we can't grow here, right?
Like, obviously, we want to import dragon fruit or mangoes or whatever if we can't grow it in the U.S.
And same thing, you know, obviously with the Silk Road, we wanted spices from Asia, right?
And so those are things that totally make sense why you would import that if you can't get it where you live.
But when it comes to things like, you know, like our everyday items like our lumber or well, maybe that's not a good example, but our, you know, if you're baking bread or something, like we shouldn't be importing anything from other countries that we can just make here in America.
And yeah, and it's not just products, it's also the manufacturing of it.
We shouldn't be exporting that at all.
It doesn't make any sense that we do that.
It makes things a little bit cheaper, but it, you know, at the end of the day, it's like that money isn't going back into Americans' pockets.
And also, I mean, you know, it does also have, or uh, there are concerns about national security, especially with you know, COVID back when everyone thought they needed PPE.
Let's just assume that COVID was oh crap.
I shouldn't have said that we're on YouTube correctly.
But I'll, I'll take a mental note of that, and then we'll just cut that out in the stream later.
But, um, you know, I mean, people thought that they needed PPE or PPEs and then other things.
And it's like, oh, where's all this stuff come from?
Oh, crap, China.
And then, um, and then also too, like, you know, even with the uh, uh, this, this is gonna sound like it's like a bit of a deviation, but with the pager attacks that Israel carried out, um, it's like, you know, uh, when there's so many different touch points in these lines of trade, who knows where you're getting stuff from, and even if it's not from a nefarious actor, um, it could just be low-quality stuff.
Now, I'm like, I specifically told my wife, I was like, hey, don't buy anything on Amazon that has like a weird company name anymore because it's always cheap.
So, even just the degradation of quality, even if we're security, yeah, that's nerding too, is that like, you know, it's just you know, it's it like you know, it's it's kind of out of control capitalism to the point that people don't care about standards at all, don't care about safety of their products or whatever, and then everything is just meant to be thrown out right away.
It's just uh, yeah, I mean, I could rant about this for a while, but it's like the quality of everything goes down when you mass produce it.
It's the same thing as if you go, uh, you know, if you buy a loaf of bread at the grocery store versus if you just make it at home, it's like a million times better at home, and that's the same for everything else.
It's even the same for like music, for instance.
Like, everyone's trying to make these disgusting, like TikTok, chat GPT-sounding pop songs, and it's like the worst thing I've ever heard in my life because they want it to appeal to this mass audience that's just like these brain rot rotted retards, basically.
And so, like, that's why music sucks now, too.
And our movies suck now because people in China will just watch them.
Like, we're exporting our movies all over the world.
And, you know, we'll be back to a normal schedule next week.
But you know what?
I'm going to take these guys off of here because I have something else for you guys.
You guys thought that you were going to get away with only one live read?
I have some bad news for you.
I'm going to circle back on that crypto angle that we're touching on earlier.
And by the way, I have more announcements that I want to say after this.
So stick around.
It's going to be like the after credit scene on like a Marvel movie.
But it's wild how digital assets are flipping the script on corporate finance.
And if you're into how businesses are adapting to this volatile yet rewarding space, Hyperbit Technologies is worth a closer look.
We talked about giants like MicroStrategy or Tesla stacking Bitcoin on their books as a smart treasury move, treating it like digital gold to combat inflation and preserve value.
But Hyperbit listed as hype on the Canadian Exchange and Hype AF in the US takes it up a notch.
They're not passive holders.
They're actively mining coins like Dogecoin, Litecoin, and more with cutting edge, eco-friendly setups powered by renewables.
This creates a dynamic treasury that's constantly growing through production, not just purchases.
What sets them apart is these advanced rigs optimized for efficiencies, paired with affordable hydroelectric power, ensuring that they mine profitably while keeping their carbon footprint very, very low, which I know that you guys all care about.
But, you know, they handle, so they handle all the mining, the acquisitions and safeguarding.
That way you don't have to worry about crypto.
Crypto can be very complicated.
I get it.
So, but they kind of just condense all this work and their professionals with it.
So check them out.
Obviously, as I mentioned before, it's Hype AF in the U.S.
It's HYPAF, their ticker symbol.
And then HYPE in Canada, H-Y-P-E.
You can check it out there.
And link bio for more on that.
Plus, a disclaimer, also not financial advice.
And just know that whenever you invest anything, it is a risk.
You're not going to always for sure get your money back.
So it's always risk.
Make sure that you do your own due diligence.
But I did want to say thank you guys for joining.
I know it's been a while since we've done these book club episodes.
And we have a bit of a weird setup doing StreamYard, but now we have StreamYard actually set up.
So whenever we have to actually do something on the road, we can do this in the future.
But normally we'll be doing it from a studio.
You know, we're very concerned with our production quality.
So we want to make sure that we're giving you guys the best product possible.
I also announced in the Discord earlier.
Let me open up Discord real quick.
I announced earlier that I will, I'm taking a bit of a road trip tonight, just for a couple hours, but I will be going live on locals as I drive.
So hopefully the connection is not too terrible, but I will be streaming on the locals.
So go to elijahschafer.locals.com.
And I think there might actually still be an active promo code, which is all caps grape joey, G-R-A-P-E, J-O-E-Y, which will give you one month free.
That might not be active anymore.
I'm not 100% sure.
But if you want to watch me there, it'll be free anyway for the first, I think, 15 minutes.
I think it is on locals.
And after that, you have to be paid for.
But I will still do a local segment on there.
We've been getting a lot of good content on locals.
And a lot of people have been signing up for the free trial, but then they've actually been joining as a paid subscriber afterwards.
So that's how you know it's good.
So again, go to elijaschafer.locals.com.
Join us there.
And also, before I go, you know, I'm going to check the super chats.
I'm not going to miss all.
I'm not going to miss super chats, especially one from Homer Jay Fuentes.
And he dropped a 50 bomb and said parallel economies are inevitable.
So true, King.
So true.
No super chats on YouTube per usual.
What's the point of getting monetized if people aren't even sending super chats over there?
But like I said, Joinman Locals, I will probably be heading out in about 15, 20 minutes.
I'll be driving for about two hours and 15 minutes.
So you can join me on there.
I hope I can bring the live chat up because I want to just like, or maybe I'll bring Discord up.
I don't know.
We'll see.
I'll see how it works.
But I'll be streaming for at least 30 minutes to an hour.
Join me there.
I'm also going to shout out some people in the chat.
Shout out Scribbles915.
Shout out Rogue12.
Shout out Colin Dowen Riddle, is that how you say it?
Joshua Tries, Cheetah Men, obviously Homer, Jay Fuentes, also Marge Fuentes.
We talked about her a little bit in the beginning.
Also, is my mic even pointing the right way?
It probably could have been pointed better, but that's my fault.
Elijah would kill me for that.
Oh, yeah, it's a lot better.
Okay, way better now.
Yeah, glad I found it at the very end of the stream.