Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein challenge Western narratives on Ukraine, arguing that U.S. involvement in Iraq, Syria, and Libya provoked Russian concerns over NATO expansion. They cite the 2014 coup involving Victoria Nuland and Soros-funded NGOs, noting Crimea's reunification votes, while contrasting Putin's aggression with America's role as the "greatest purveyor of violence." Ultimately, the discussion urges a serious examination of historical provocations rather than dismissing Russian perspectives as binary thinking, despite condemning the war's horrors. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Neocon vs Socialist Perspectives00:14:24
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith, the most consistent motherfucker you know, the libertarian Tupac.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, COVID Jesus, the king of the caucs.
What is up, my brother?
Weekend edition.
We're getting into it.
That's right.
We sure are.
How are you feeling today?
I'm doing great, dude.
I'm going to live stream after this.
Run your mouth.
I got Gene Epstein coming on tomorrow.
Spend the rest of the weekend staying at home, jerking off.
It's going to be a big weekend for me.
Gene Epstein and jerking off.
Sometimes not in that order.
Sometimes all mixed together in one.
That's what I like to hear, Rob.
Very good.
Very good.
What about you?
You're actually home.
You get to enjoy your family.
Yeah, I'm home.
I'm spending a weekend at home for the first time in quite a while.
So yeah, I'm happy about that.
My mother is going to come over and hang out with kiddos tomorrow.
So yeah, have some nice little family time, which is important.
It's important to do.
I tried visiting my sister in her kids today, and within two seconds of hearing those kids, I was like, I got to get out of here.
I hung out for about 15, but I was like, man, these kids are not cute.
Oh, you cold, soulless monster, Rob.
How old are they now?
I tried.
You don't want to know it.
Like at the exact age where people are supposed to be cute, like four and two or whatever.
Yeah, that's adorable.
Yeah, they were real whiny today.
Oh, okay.
Oh, one of them kept complaining that Uncle Rob kicked him.
You know, such a jerk.
They wouldn't share their snacks.
I went over for snack time and they wouldn't share, Dave.
I don't even know who you are anymore, Rob.
All right.
Well, let's get into it.
So for today's show, a whole new topic.
The war in Ukraine is still raging on.
Really hard to know exactly what's going on, of course, because there is misinformation that comes out.
But I think there's no question that it's bad and people are dying.
And the Russian forces have been shelling Western cities.
That much seems to be very clear.
Anyway, I know we referenced this on one of our last shows, but I was thinking for today's show, I was like, you know what?
Let's actually play this video and go through this because I thought this would be interesting for us to respond to.
I saw it again because people were posting it all over social media.
This is from a few days ago, but Bill Maher was on Ben Shapiro's show and the topic of Ukraine came up.
And Bill Maher is in like a little bit of an interesting situation.
He is, you know, he's a progressive, but he's a little bit more of an old school progressive, I guess at this point.
He's probably almost 70 years old.
And he's not exactly with the new progressive, you know, talking points.
And he kind of comes from an age where they at least pretended to be a little bit more anti-war.
He's certainly not on board with the woke shit.
And he's certainly not on board with the COVID shit.
And all of this just kind of makes for an interesting dynamic.
Definitely not someone I would agree with on everything.
But he at least, Bill Maher has this thing about him that I've always admired, that I still admire, where I think he feels that his role is always to say something interesting.
There's something about that that I really connect with and I admire.
And I try to live that myself.
I think it's part of the reason, you know, some people say like I've been criticized on Twitter and stuff, particularly over the last couple of weeks, as people have said that I'm just being a contrarian because I'm going so hard against the kind of narrative of, you know, whatever, the people who are like putting up Ukrainian flags and saying that Vladimir Putin is the next Hitler and all this shit.
And I'm kind of talking about all the other stuff.
And I don't personally, I don't think that's right.
I don't think I'm just being contrarian.
I don't think I'm just saying the, you know, opposing the establishment narrative for the sake of opposing the establishment narrative.
I think I'm opposing it because I think there's a lot of bullshit in it.
But I will say that I guess the kernel of truth that I would I would concede is that I do feel like if there is something and you tell me, Rob, honestly, what you think.
If like maybe this, this make if this doesn't make sense.
But I think as a comic, you would, you would kind of get this too, that even when I'm not trying to be funny, I'm not like delivering a joke or something like that.
It's not like, you know, if I do stand up, I'm like, I'm trying to be funny and make the crowd laugh.
But when I just talk about things, like my opinion on something, as we do on this show, if I just agree with what everyone else is saying and have nothing interesting to say on the topic, I probably just won't even comment on it.
Maybe I'll just very quickly comment on it and then move on to something else, you know?
But like, if there was like, if my only comment on 9-11 was like, oh, it's horrible that this happened and the terrorists are evil, I'd just be like, yeah, it's horrible having terrorists.
But anyway, let's talk about something else.
Because I don't have anything.
If I don't have anything interesting to add to that, then what the fuck is the point?
If I'm just repeating what everybody else is saying, then what am I like, what am I adding?
What's the value of me being here?
And so I always feel like what I'm searching for is like the interesting point that not everybody else is saying.
And I feel like Bill Maher's always had a little bit of that.
And I've, I've always looked up to him for that.
And so anyway, that's kind of neither here nor there, but that's just the thing that I kind of like, I like about him.
And I try myself to embody that or whatever, you know?
Does that make sense?
It does, but you come to support things if he sees it.
Usually the interesting perspective is here's why this is so important.
But I think like with, you know, you're particularly well spoken.
If there's something you're passionate about and it comes up, if we agree with the take, it's usually, we'll do, we've done, you know, segments here where we go, hey, I agree with this person and here's why.
Sure.
But even then, I'll usually think I have at least something to add to why this is so important, if that makes sense.
It's not we're not going to do the moral grandstanding of 20 minutes, hey, Putin shouldn't be bombing kids.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, of course.
And like, yeah, but what value is it if I'm just saying the same thing that everybody else is saying?
That's the easiest thing to say.
So that's, that's all I'm saying about this.
So anyway, Bill Maher is what I like.
I got to say, I've always liked, I like kind of seemingly contradictory, interesting figures.
And I like in a way where Bill Maher is right now.
He's this kind of liberal progressive type who's got a very like left liberal audience.
And he's got a sizable audience.
I think his show gets like a million views an episode on HBO.
It's pretty good.
Like very good.
And he has been opposed to the COVID regime.
And he just filmed the comedy special and he did it in Florida because he's like furious about all the restrictions in all the blue states and stuff.
So it's just an interesting, you know, there's something about that I like.
I like the, I think it's probably part of what I was drawn to about the great Ron Paul was that he was like this, you know, Texas Republican congressman who's the most anti-war.
Like that's just like, oh, that's kind of like right away, that's interesting.
That's not just like you're the same thing everyone else is doing.
That's like a different, you know, one of my favorite Murray Rothbard pieces ever was titled Confessions of a Right Wing Liberal.
And that's, you know, he was just talking about how he's a right-wing liberal and basically he's always been the same, but one decade he'll be called a left-winger.
The next decade, he'll be called a right-winger, but he's always the same.
But I just loved the right-wing liberal.
Now, I remember like the first time I heard that, just being like, yeah, that's me, the right-wing liberal.
I like that.
I just kind of like the idea of like kind of these paradigm crushing people or ideas or things like that.
So anyway, now, of course, that doesn't mean that Bill Maher is right about everything.
He's wrong about a whole lot, but he is right about some important things.
Anyway, him and Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, who is right about some things and then really wrong about some very important things.
They had a conversation.
I thought it was worth watching if anyone wants to go check it out.
It was interesting to me.
But here's where the conversation turned toward the current war that's going on in Ukraine.
When it comes to Ukraine, there are, I mean, not just seems to me, it's pretty obvious.
There are no good options.
When deterrence fails, there are no good options anymore.
And the grave failure of the West was that we spent 30 years basically thinking that bad people are not bad people if we talk to them strong enough.
And if we negotiate with them or if we ignore them taking pieces of territory in Georgia under Bush or under or Crimea under Obama, if we just ignore it hard enough, then maybe it sort of goes away.
And now deterrence has failed.
And it seems like the world order is radically reshifting.
Like the United States, we can't get it.
Let's already pause it right there.
So I think, Rob, you were telling me that I made this point on one of our recent shows.
I never remember.
I black out on these things.
But this to me is already so, just so interesting that that's kind of Ben Shapiro's worldview that he starts with, which is that 30 years of deterrence and And being too friendly and negotiating has failed.
And that's the real problem.
That's why there's no good options right now.
That for 30 years, America just has tried to pretend there aren't these bad people in the world.
And we even looked the other way when he freaking took Crimea, you know?
And it's all just such bullshit.
Like it.
It does remind me, it's this kind of neocon perspective is like the same to me as the socialist perspective, which I think is the point that I was making, where, or not even the like flat out socialist, but like very, you know, progressive, you know, perspective where, you know, they'll say these things like, well, you know, we just haven't spent enough money on education.
We need to invest in education in this country.
And then someone like you, Rob, will like go through the numbers and you'll be like, well, I mean, you know, like in New York City, we're spending like $20 plus thousand dollars per student per year on education.
That just seems like a lot of money.
I mean, you know, you got in in a, you're spending 20 grand per student per year in a classroom of 20 kids.
That's like 400 grand a year just on the class.
Seems like enough money to probably make a good class happen, right?
Like, but, but it doesn't matter because no matter how much the story is always, we haven't spent enough.
It's like this unfalsifiable kind of worldview that no matter how much you do, you still haven't done enough.
And it is really something to say that, I mean, just imagine saying that America, the problem is we haven't been strong enough over the last 30 years.
Like how many people we got to kill?
How many wars we have to start?
How many people have to die as a result of the wars that we've started?
I mean, like before you'd go, oh yeah, we've been strong enough.
What is it?
We haven't nuked the world.
Like, what is it you're looking for?
It's like with the progressive on schools.
Like, what are you looking for?
100 grand per student per year?
500 grand per student?
Like, like, you give me, you give me the fucking, like the standard.
So the problem is that we haven't deterred Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
And meanwhile, we've marched NATO all the way from Germany up to the borders of Russia.
But I guess the story there is that that just wasn't enough deterrence.
It's like, what does it take?
Like, just with the example of education, and there's a million examples I could use, but just with that example, at a certain point, if you're being honest about this and you're not just an ideologue, wouldn't you go, oh, maybe if we went from spending $5,000 per student to year to $10,000 per student per year to $20,000 per student per year, and the results are getting worse and worse, you'd go, oh, I think the government spending might be the problem here, or certainly at least isn't the solution.
And if you were doing all of this to deter Vladimir Putin, and, you know, then the thing you're trying to deter happens anyway, you'd think the conclusion might be like, I guess that wasn't a deterrent.
Maybe it was actually a provocation.
Sheath Underwear Sponsorship00:04:42
You know what I mean?
Like, at least consider that possibility.
But it's the same, it's the same logic.
It's the same snake oil logic that they use on the vaccines.
Well, if you're double vaccinated and you got COVID, well, that just means you need a booster.
You got a booster and you got COVID.
That means you need a fourth shot.
You have a fourth shot and you got COVID?
Well, obviously you need a fifth shot.
You know, like at what point are you like, are we going to get out of this ridiculous kind of like unscientific, unfalsifiable worldview where doing the same thing and getting the result that was unintended means you must do that same thing, but just more.
It's anyway.
So I just think, you know, his world, you look, I mean, Martin Luther King said once in his quote, it was a famous Martin Luther King quote that he said that his government, the United States government, was the, I believe it was, he said, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
And Scott Horton recently pointed out, and he's right, that he was wrong about that.
Because this was in the 60s and Mao Sedong.
Uh was uh ruling China and he certainly was responsible for more violence.
But over the last 20 years there's no question that that is the true, like that is.
And over the last 30 years, 40 years, there's the, the United States Federal Government this doesn't mean the people of America, but the Democrat and Republican lawyers who run the government and the deep state operatives and the you know oligarchs who really pull the strings.
They are the greatest purveyor of, of uh, purveyors of violence in the world.
There's no debate about that.
It's not Vladimir Putin and it's not you know it, it's the, it's Washington Dc.
They're the greatest purveyors of violence in the world.
Um, and if you look at that and go well, we just haven't been strong enough, then I don't know what the hell.
I just I don't know what to tell you.
And if you take the perspective that we haven't been strong and evil's out there, and unless we're really strong in keeping back evil, then evil is going to go ahead and proliferate then uh, how come evil hasn't made more advancements?
Why is it only specifically now that Putin?
Why hasn't he taken more?
Why hasn't he been more aggressive?
What, what was, or what specifically?
More do you think we needed to have done at a prior point.
That would have stopped this.
Like you know what I mean it's.
It's such a nonsense theory because you can't quantify any of it well, and also the fact that you know he'll the the way they talk.
Absolutely, you're absolutely right.
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Eastern Ukraine Freedom Vote00:14:40
You know, they talk about him.
Oh, he seized Crimea or invaded Crimea or whatever the fuck they talk, they call it.
And like, but we also orchestrated a revolution and then put in a government that would like, so did we take all of Ukraine?
Well, that basically happened in Crimea.
There was like, I mean, he helped him out.
Well, so what happened is that in 2014, there was a coup in Ukraine, which was absolutely, you know, I know some people will dispute this, but it's just absolutely the fact that this was a U.S. led, orchestrated, fomented colored revolution,
you know, whatever they call a coup, not even a revolution.
That's what they call it, but it's like that.
And you can go listen to the Victoria Newland, you know, basically admission of this, where she's her leaked phone call, where she's picking who the new leader of the country will be.
You can listen to her speech in the middle of the uprising where she's bragging about what's happening and how much money they're sending in.
Now, this is not exactly the reason why some people can deny this is because it's not exactly the same thing as, you know, like, you know, even Syria or even Libya or some of these, you know, countries where there's no debate.
No one's even arguing what happened.
Like, you know, okay, fair.
But it's like, they're like, no, it, you know, they'll say that it was, oh, you know, some people say, well, it was a popular uprising by these people who were upset about the government, a democratically elected government, by the way, in Ukraine that was somewhat neutral, but definitely leaning pro-Russian.
But if you look at where, like, if you actually take the time to look into like where all the money was coming from, it was all from like these Soros-owned NGOs and some other NGOs that are very like tied in with the West.
You have, you know, Keegan's wife, Victoria Newland, bragging about this.
You have John McCain going over there and meeting with the fucking like neo-Nazis themselves and like all this.
It's like, it's very obvious, the more research on this that you do, that it's like, this was, this was a Western-led operation, no question about it.
And after that, in response, there were referendums in Crimea and in the Donbass region, and they both overwhelmingly voted for Russia.
They said, you know, do you want to be with the West or do you want to be with Russia?
And they all voted for Russia, a vast majority.
And yes, Putin did go into Crimea and take Crimea.
But I mean, if you're look, I don't remember the numbers exactly, but the amount of people that died in Putin seizing Crimea, I think double-check me on this, but I think it might be six.
And it's not clear that all of them died from the Russians.
There was like some fighting in the streets and stuff like that.
You know what I mean?
So it just, you know, to describe this as like, well, we just sat back as he seized Crimea.
It's like, I don't know.
He took a fucking area that was his.
You know, I mean, like, you'd think about something like Puerto Rico or like if the Dominican Republic, you know, held a referendum tomorrow and voted that they wanted to be part of the United States of America.
And then we sent some military in there and like a few of the people who didn't vote that way, you know, fought back.
And those people killed a few of the Dominicans who were pro-Americans.
Maybe a couple of the pro-Americans killed a couple of those people.
A few people died.
Would you look at that as like we invaded the Dominican Republic?
I wouldn't.
And I'm the most anti-war guy you know, and I wouldn't view it that way.
That's not the same thing as America invading Iraq and fighting a war there for fucking, you know, a decade and a half where fucking hundreds of thousands of people are dying.
It's just not the same thing in any reasonable person's mind.
So, but that's the story, you know, that Ben Shapiro gives.
It's just, well, we sat back while they took Crimea.
Okay.
All right.
Let's get back into the video.
Almost a natural disaster, like a thing happening far away.
But in Europe, they're treating this as an epic shifting event.
And they're talking about rearming.
They're talking about forming new security alliances with Eastern European countries.
Where do you think this ends up?
I think this is actually turning out to be, I mean, obviously what's going on for the people of Ukraine is horrible right now.
But I think in the long run, I think it's going to be a good thing because, first of all, Putin is being shown to be way less strong than we thought he was.
I mean, this is, I don't know what the opposite of Blitzkrieg is.
Quagmire.
Yeah.
I mean, he's quagmiring.
Yeah.
Right.
It was supposed to be a cakewalk.
So was Iraq.
You know, I'm so surprised that he actually did it because it wasn't really necessary.
I tried to explain one night on my show that I think a lot of this comes.
Sure.
So there's reason to believe that Putin's fucking up here.
And that's definitely the way that they're portraying it in the media.
And there's even been reports which are kind of funny that essentially they lie.
His generals lied to him.
They've been spending a lot of the money on things other than military gear.
He's kind of surrounded by yes people and they're like, yeah, we can get it done.
And now he's finding out that it's a mess.
That's possible.
The other possibility is that he really wants to take Eastern Ukraine.
He wants NATO to say, hey, I have no interest.
We're not going to be joining NATO.
And for the rest of the world to go, okay, as long as you leave everywhere but Eastern Ukraine, we're cool.
And maybe there's enough resources in Eastern Ukraine that he actually breaks even on whatever this cost him and whatever damages he needs to pay.
But like he's not, I'm just saying it's not clear that he's losing.
It could be he doesn't want to take over the country.
And so there's more of a siege going on.
And he's kind of ramping up pressure to get basically what he wants, which is eastern Ukraine and for NATO never to be there.
Okay.
I straight up, by the way, let me just, just to say to you, I don't think it's that there's resources in Eastern Ukraine.
I think it's that he wants a buffer.
So he might accept, I think there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of like nickel lithium and things for like when he took Crimea, there was an unbelievable reserve of like nat gas and the and whatever else was there.
That is true.
That is true.
But I believe the warm water, the warm water port, I think is what that is all about.
But I'm not like discounting your point about some lucrative shit down in Eastern Ukraine.
Maybe, maybe you're right about that.
I'm just, I'm going to go a step further than this and just say, and let me preface this by saying, I might be wrong about this.
I am not sure that I am right.
But this narrative that Putin's being embarrassed and humiliated and isn't winning and they're getting fucked up, I don't believe it.
I don't think this is right.
I think this is all like propaganda to be like, they kind of want to like, it's almost like at the same time, they want to like, he's the next Adolf Hitler and we all have to fear him, but also he's a fumbling buffoon who can't even invade his neighboring country.
It's not exactly clear, but they just want you to like hate him and laugh at him and get all your evil out on him.
That's kind of the thing.
I just know that I trust Colonel Douglas McGregor more than I trust these guys.
And he said the other day that this is all bullshit and that Putin is handily winning this war and he can do basically he can do whatever he wants to Ukraine.
And look, I'm just being upfront with you.
I don't know any more of the details than that.
I'm just saying that the guy that I trust more is who is a military expert who literally like drew up the plans for military confrontation in a land war with Russia.
This is a real deal guy.
He was General McMaster's boss before McMasters was better at politics than him and moved up the ranks more.
And I just err on the side of believing that that guy's right about this and not the fucking, you know, Wolf Blitzers of the world.
But maybe I'm wrong about that.
But anyway, this seems to be all the rage to talk about.
He's not even a threat at all, except he's the biggest threat that's ever existed, which I find weirdly contradictory.
But I just don't buy this.
I don't buy it at all.
I think that I think Colonel Douglas McGregor is correct and that probably Vladimir Putin can do whatever he wants to this country.
Again, maybe I'm wrong.
That's my suspicion.
Let's keep playing.
I tried to explain one night on my show that I think a lot of this comes from he thinks he's the savior of the Russian people.
I think when you get to that level where he's been in office, he's been an absolute power.
Sorry, Brian, you got to pause again.
This drives me nuts because it assumes that he's an irrational actor.
This is the biggest talking point in propaganda, and I don't understand it in any capacity that like it's this idea that Putin sees like Russia as this entity.
It's like an alien entity, and it's only satisfied by being expanded.
And so for the greatness of Russia, Putin's looking to re-engage in conflict and expand to salivate this demon creature of Russia that needs to feel its glory.
I don't believe it.
Like, I just, it makes no sense.
There's no reason to assume it that there's some messianic role of Putin in expanding Russia.
I don't get it.
Well, it's also kind of like it, it just really, a lot of this stuff reminds me of the response after 9-11 and the kind of like, well, how do we assess what the motives of Osama bin Laden were?
And if you remember back to that time, if you're old enough to, they're basically like, well, the official experts said, well, they hate us because of our freedom.
And, you know, they just hate freedom.
They're just such bad people.
They hate freedom and they love tyranny and they're just everything that's good, they're against good.
And everything that's bad, they're for bad.
And that was kind of like, these are what the adults in the room are supposed to say.
And you're like, okay, but like, if I listen to this guy and what he says, and again, I know this triggers some of the fucking binary thinkers out there.
Like, as soon as you go, as soon as you start talking like this, they go, so you think he's the good guy?
You're saying he's the good guy and not the bad guy?
You know, and it's like, I don't know, it's maddening.
But it's like, if you listen to what Osama bin Laden was saying, what he said was that he hates America because they bomb the shit out of Muslim countries and kill innocent Muslim men, women, and children, that they prop up brutal dictators in the Middle East and they prop up Israel who oppresses the Palestinians.
That's what he's saying.
But our leaders are saying, no, none of that's true.
It's just he hates freedom and goodness and wholesomeness and hates families and loves Satan, you know, like whatever it is.
And you're like, oh, okay.
Now, by the way, I'm not saying that it's completely what he's saying.
Like maybe there is an ounce of truth to the fact that like he's just bad.
He's just an evil dude who, you know, kind of gets off on killing people and stuff.
Like I'm not saying that.
But it's just like, if this is at least the official reasoning that he's giving, and this is what's rallying the people who support him behind him, it seems at least worth paying attention to that.
At the very least, this is his recruiting shtick.
You know what I mean?
And with Vladimir Putin, they're like, it's all this stuff.
Like, oh, he's got this glory of, you know, he just wants to take over the world and reunite the Soviet Union and all of this.
But then you listen to Putin himself talking and he's like, look, this is about security for us.
We can't have missiles right on our border in the same way you would never accept having missiles right on your border.
I mean, how would you feel if this was happening to you?
And then they're like, he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and decided I'm going to invade Ukraine.
And, you know, at least for me, again, I'm not trying to downplay that people are fucked up and there's evil in the world.
But even, you know, whoever it is, even the war criminals in Washington, D.C., who I've been railing against for fucking forever now at this point, I'd always accept that they had some type of motive.
Now, there are evil factors in there as well, but the idea that they're just like, I just want to see bloodshed.
And so I'm going to bomb the shit out of fucking Syria or something.
It's like, no, they were saying like, oh, fuck, Iran is taking too much, you know, dominance in this region.
And therefore, we need to overthrow Assad so that it offsets Iranian influence within the region because we just fought the war in Iraq, which handed Iraq to the Shiites who are like allied with Iran.
Like there's got to be some type of motivation that's at least playing a part in this.
And anyway, it's just all this stuff about like, when they talk about what's really motivating Putin or what's really going on here, it all seems very childish to me.
It seems like you're not really trying to take on what is actually happening here and why, why now?
Why after all this?
Kind of the point you made before.
Like, is it really just you're saying one day Vladimir Putin just woke up pissed off and said, I'm taking Ukraine?
Was there a little bit more to it than that?
That's my guess.
Good Guys Bad Guys Mentality00:17:06
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Anyway, okay, let's keep playing.
To that level where he's been in office, he's been in absolute power for 20 years.
What is left?
What's in the soul of a man?
He wants to be a hero and he thinks this is the way to do it.
I think people know this is history major stuff.
Kiev, or Kiev, I guess we say it now, you know, is the ancestral home of Russia.
It's the beginning of the Russian state from around the year 1000.
I'm not saying that that gives them a right to take it.
It is a completely different nation now.
It changed.
It's not even part of Russia anymore, but that is, and I think that's what is in his mind: I'm going to reclaim this.
Yes, the Russian state moved to Moscow, but it's almost similar to the way Kosovo.
I mean, when Milosevic started the Balkan Wars, it was all about, it was, the year was 1989.
It was the 600th anniversary.
In that part of the world, that's like yesterday.
You know, that's so foreign to the way Americans think, but it was 1389.
There's this battle in Kosovo, which again, not even part of Serbia anymore, but it was the ancestral home of Serbia.
And we got to get it back.
And this, I think, is what Putin wants.
That is what he thinks in his mind.
And what he's finding out is that not only are the Ukrainian people hate him for doing this, but the Russian people hate him for doing this.
They're like, are you crazy?
This is not the world we live in anymore.
We're on TikTok now.
We can see.
Just pause it right here.
So, yeah, you just, it's like pure speculation about what's in his mind.
And then this kind of like assertion that, and everyone hates him now for it.
And even the Russian people hate him for it now.
See the rally today?
Yeah.
They seem to all be holding up Russian flags, right?
I mean, maybe he's got so much power over there.
You're going to knock on your door and you go, hey, go dress Team Russia and show up to the stadium.
I don't know the way it works in Russia, but it certainly looked like a Donald Trump-esque like rally for Putin.
Yeah, it's like, it doesn't seem like, again, I'm not even saying like, I don't know, maybe, but what are you doing?
You're psychoanalyzing this guy based off what?
Here's what motivates them.
See, unlike Americans, they live in thousand-year chunks at a time.
They're not just like me and you, distracted by yesterday.
The people, the Russian people even hate him for this.
All of that stuff about how the Russian people hate him for what he's doing to me has seemed like pure propaganda.
And I think that it is absolutely, and this is what's been reported by very credible sources, not just like the libertarians I listen to, like all types of like really smart people have been saying this for at least like, yeah, there you go.
There's a nice picture of it.
Seems they all hate him.
And they're out in the cold for it.
This has been Russian winners.
Sure, that's right.
But this has been reported for quite a while now: is that it's not just Vladimir Putin or even like the hard right-wingers in Russia.
This is the consensus, even amongst Putin's liberal detractors in Russia, is that Ukraine is like, that is the red line, a serious red line.
Not like when we give red lines in America, like we go like, well, if fucking, you know, the leader of Syria uses the wrong weapons against the fucking, you know, the ISIS, you know, rebels in Syria or something like that, like a real red line, like a real red line, like if America, you know, like the Monroe Doctrine or something like that, like a red line, like you put nukes on Cuba and we are at war, like that type of red line.
And I think anyway, maybe I'm not even saying like I know for sure, but the idea that Bill Maher is pretending he knows for sure is so bizarre to me.
So bizarre.
Anyway, anything you want to add to that before we go back, Rob?
No, let's hear more of this idiot.
Dogs getting shot and families being torn apart and things blown up and we're a modern country or trying to be one.
Look at what are you doing?
So I think it's just going to turn out horribly for Russia.
The question I was going to ask you is: do you think it was the right thing to not only keep NATO going after the Soviet Union fell, but to encroach right up to Russia's borders?
Because a lot of people don't.
I don't.
I actually do think that, well, I think that here's the thing.
If you are going to make overtures to a nation that they should try to join NATO and then not back it up, that's the worst thing you could do.
So we took sort of the worst path with Ukraine.
We were encouraging them, maybe you'll join NATO, maybe you won't join NATO.
If you make an overture, maybe we'll consider it.
And so that leaves them in an incredibly vulnerable spot because we're basically saying to them that you have to make overtures to us.
And meanwhile, Russia is on your eastern border.
And so Russia's looking at that going, no, we're not going to do this at all.
If we had wanted, if you're going to make a move, make it strong, in other words, if you're going to have Ukraine join NATO, make Ukraine join NATO, and you make sure that they have the armaments necessary to defend themselves and you have a mutual alliance pact.
If you're an independent armed nation, by the way, right now, like to me, the one long-lasting ramification of this that's incredibly dangerous, if you're a non-aligned nation right now, you don't have a mutual defense guarantee with either China or Russia or the United States, how fast are you looking for a nuclear weapon right now?
I mean, you are looking like hell for a nuclear weapon right now because you don't want to be in a conventional war with a major power.
But there's nothing else.
I'm asking you.
So isn't that so?
Okay, that's the, so that's the major concern that Ben Shapiro sees with this is that, well, I don't know, this might encourage some of these other countries to want to get nukes or something.
And if you're going to make a move, he goes, you can't be indecisive.
You know, you can't be like, hey, look, we're thinking about bringing you into NATO, even though that's always the process to bring countries into NATO.
No one ever just goes, snap, you're in NATO.
You know, there's always a conversation first.
But okay.
And of those, you know, if he's just saying, well, the real problem is being indecisive, it's not like he wants to be decisive in the pacifist way.
He doesn't want to be decisive and not bringing them in.
Obviously, he wants to be decisive in bringing them in.
But so he's real concerned with what Ukraine might want to get nukes, but you're not concerned with the fact that Vladimir Putin has been.
I know you've, I know Bill Maher just psychoanalyzed him, and I'm sure you have too, Ben Shapiro.
But like, you're not concerned at all that what he's been saying might actually be what he means, which is that Ukraine is a red line.
And if you brought them into NATO, like he might actually launch a nuclear strike.
That's not a concern at all to you.
Oh, that seems like a little bit more of a concern from my perspective.
That maybe I'm not just going to project what I think is in this guy's head.
I'm going to listen to what he's saying and think that maybe at least that's part of what's in his head.
Maybe not the entire thing, but that's that's it right there.
The problem is that we fooled around.
We didn't just bring them in right away, you know?
Like that, that would have been like the move to just like bring them in.
Don't be indecisive about it.
Don't even talk to them about it.
Just bring them in NATO.
Don't have any conversations.
Just bring them right in.
And then we could really, then what?
We'd really solve the problem here.
It's a very aggressive and dangerous way to look at the world.
And I will say that it is, it seems quite often to me, like people who there's a common trait amongst neocons where it seems like a lot of people who strike you as someone who's who have never been in a fist fight in their life advocating for this kind of like aggressive posture toward other nuclear-armed countries.
Something about that really bothers me.
Anything to add on that, Rob?
Yeah, it's also that he stated basically this, you guys can't join NATO.
And then like Biden's like, nope, we refuse to say that we're not going to take them.
So then from there, I mean, it's firstly the fact that you even want to claim that you're trying to negotiate with the guy.
He said, hey, here's my one demand.
Doesn't seem that unreasonable.
We didn't give it to him.
So off the bat, you're not listening to the guy in terms of what he's saying he needs.
So the idea that, oh, we're going to be diplomatic, we're going to try and negotiate.
Well, you didn't.
The guy told you very specifically what was important to him.
And you said, we refuse to do that.
And I don't understand why it was so important to us.
That's one.
Two is if he tells you what's super important to him.
So then, like, I mean, that's what you negotiate.
You go, fine, we won't do the NATO thing, but in return, we want this.
And we want to know that the following penalties will exist if it turns out that you were actually just looking to expand.
And then when that happens, like, you know that you're right.
You've proved your theory.
And then you can go after him aggressively because it's clear that he's actually looking for Warren to expand.
But until that happens, this is all loony talk.
The guy literally said what he was looking for.
Like you have to give him the opportunity almost to go, oh, that was wrong.
Yeah.
No, I completely agree.
And, you know, I think part of this, and Bill Maher is at least getting into this a little bit, right?
When he's talking about the like the NATO expansion, which I give him credit for at least bringing up, is that, and maybe this is part of, I think, what really like, what really is the heart of the issue for why some people look at this from a different point of view is that, and this is why I started by saying that America, the United States of America's federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,
which I think is a factual statement.
I don't think you can like actually argue that on the merits of the claim.
I think it's objectively true.
And there is this tendency, which I bet exists on all sides, to think of your side as the good guys, you know?
And don't get me wrong, I, as much as I am not a fan of the United States of America's federal government, I wouldn't want China being the world empire.
Now, I don't think that's a real fear.
Like, I don't think that's going to happen, but that would freak me out more.
I'll say that.
That would freak me out more than America being the world empire if that were something that were like plausibly going to happen.
Because I don't know, they're not my government and they freak me out a little bit more.
I don't know, whatever.
So, even I have a little bit of it, I suppose.
But there is this kind of like mentality of like, well, yeah, but the commies were the bad guys and NATO were the good guys.
And so, yeah, well, if NATO's expanding, then whatever.
Okay.
But all it takes is a little bit of like, I don't know, like whatever you call, is it empathy?
Whatever it is, like putting yourself in the other person's shoes to go, well, from their perspective, we're not the good guys.
And can't you kind of see where they could have that view?
Like, you know, it's like in World War II, where it's like in all the history books and all of the, I guess all of the modern world pretty much accepts now that like, well, we're the good guys.
The Allied forces were the good guys.
And well, certainly it's real easy to convince you Hitler was like the worst of the bad guys, but you're saying Stalin and Churchill were the good guys?
Like, do you want to look at how much violence they, you know, imposed on the world?
It's pretty rough.
So, okay, I'm just saying things are a little bit more complicated than just looking at it as good guys versus bad guys.
And by the way, FDR is the other.
He's, he's the best of the guys.
And as we know, not the best guy.
So what proof does he have also that every country that's not in a military pact, either with China, Russia, or America is currently looking to get a nuclear bomb?
Like, does most of South America, are most of those countries nuclear powers?
I don't know.
This is not like my topic of expertise, but like if I look at South America, are some of those shitty tiny countries all trying to get nuclear bombs?
Or do they all have military agreements with the US?
Like Brazil, or I don't even know what's down there.
I'm really mad with Argentina.
Yeah, you know, there you go.
I mean, you mispronounced it, but you nailed it.
Yeah, sure.
That's a country in South America.
Well, no, it's not a military agreement the same way that NATO is for sure.
There's not a mutual defense pact.
But, you know, but just to finish my point, it's like, it's not like from the Russian perspective, right?
You got to think that Russia was invaded from the West multiple times in their history and that the Nazis invaded them.
They feel like they won that Second World War as much as we feel like we won that war.
And that also that they might have looked at after all of that, you know, that I don't know, you could just make, you could see where from some people's perspective over there, they'd go, well, America were the ones who like dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.
And then after they, we were all allies together, turned against the Soviet Union and then fought them in every little proxy war around the world.
And then, you know, and then and then and then, like they could have their own narrative, and you could see where they would look at NATO as not being like the, you know, this force for good, not a defensive alliance, but actually an aggressive military, you know, alliance that has been responsible for, you know, several aggressive wars and has been involved in those wars.
I mean, NATO was blatantly involved in the war in Libya, for example.
They were involved in Afghanistan, for example.
And not even just that, but NATO isn't just NATO.
It's a military alliance, and they're the countries in the military alliance.
And of course, really, as everyone knows, no one has more influence on NATO than the United States of America.
And the United States of America has been just, you know, starting wars left and right for decades that have brought like unbelievable amounts of death and destruction to the countries that they've, you know, started wars with.
So, like, really, you can't understand where they'd be a little bit like concerned about NATO moving closer and closer to their doorstep.
America Now Is NATO00:08:06
It just, to me, not being able to understand that point of view is frankly just strange to me.
In the same way that I always found it strange to not understand how someone who grew up in a country where America had been bombing the shit out of them and killing innocent people wouldn't want to fight America.
I just, I'm not even saying you have to agree with them.
I'm just saying to not understand that, or at least be able to, you know, to some degree on a superficial level, be like, well, yeah, I get that.
I get why they would feel that way about us.
That just seems strange to me.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
All right, let's keep playing a little bit more.
30 years ago.
Yes.
1991.
Okay.
What should we have done then?
The Soviet Union fell.
NATO was formed specifically to counter the Soviet Union and communism, which now was no more.
Why keep that lions going?
not invite Russia at that moment, Boris Yeltsin took over, right?
Invite them.
You're one of us now, as opposed to keeping this organization going past the point where it had a reason to be going.
I mean, the question is whether you really thought that Russia was going to be and developed toward being a friendly nation to the West or not.
If you were skeptical.
But that caused them not to be.
I mean, I wonder if that's the case.
I mean, we'll never know.
But if they had disbanded NATO and said, look, we're all capitalist countries now.
We're not fighting communism anymore and we're not fighting the Soviet Union because it doesn't exist.
So we should stop having this organization which treats you like the enemy and bring you in.
So I disagree to one extent, which is that you'll notice that there are a bunch of nations that Putin has attempted to invade.
Not one of them is a member of NATO.
So I think Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would all be Russia right now if we'd gotten rid of NATO.
And Finland has been bordering Russia since 1949 as a member of NATO.
All of these nations joined NATO in the 90s.
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, I think they all joined either 99 or 2004.
So why does Russia get along with Belarus?
No, they seem to be allies.
Yeah, why wouldn't if he's just taking everything that's available to him and not in NATO?
Do I have that right?
Belarus is the guy who is getting him back in Ukraine.
Yep.
Also looks like a general out of a movie.
Yes, you got it.
And so that's it.
It's like to just say like, well, Russia, again, it's this unfalsifiable view that, well, Russia would have just been the USSR all over again if we hadn't continued NATO and kept moving forward with it.
It's like, and kept expanding it.
Like, all right.
But why would it be?
I mean, just imagine that, you know, the let's say someone opposed, you know, there was like a major force, China or Russia or someone like that, and they opposed America and they opposed it on the grounds that we're an expansionist, you know, nation that's trying to take over the world, which you could make the argument that we are, right?
We've got thousands of military bases around the world and hundreds of different countries.
We've started wars in like seven different countries in the last 20 years, probably 10 different countries in the last 30 years.
You know, we're quite involved in lots of the internal affairs of lots of other countries.
And let's say someone really made the case.
Like, you know, they could even make the case like, you know, like the part of the problem, you know, argument against America.
Well, look, they started wars.
They started a war that led to a million dead in Iraq and a war that led to half a million dead in Syria and a war that led to 200,000 dead in Afghanistan and a war that led to half a million dead in Somalia and a war that led to whatever it's going to be, a million dead in Yemen and all this stuff.
And they were like, well, we got to start a military alliance to deal with this country, to fight back against them.
But then that military alliance starts getting involved in war after war after war.
And then just imagine the United States of America crumbles.
And all of a sudden, it's not, you know, a lot of the states just start leaving.
You know, Texas and California, they leave and all these other states and like Washington state leaves and all this.
And now America is down to this like kind of smaller thing that's just from, you know, the Eastern Sea, you know, the Eastern Sea or the Atlantic Ocean to, I don't know, whatever, Kansas or something like that.
That's kind of the, that's, that's America now.
But we're no longer, all the military bases are closed, and all of that's over.
And we don't have this overarching United States of America anymore.
This is now we're called the remaining states of America, and we're just a smaller country, and we're just kind of hanging out here.
And then that alliance that was started to deal with the U.S. global empire starts moving in further and further and further.
And they take over Canada and they take over Mexico and they move in.
And now they take over California and they take over Washington and they take over like all these states.
You know what I mean?
Now they're in Colorado and now they're into, you know, and it's like, and they start moving in and they're starting more and more wars and all this stuff.
And like they're sending weapons and missiles and all of this.
At a certain point, wouldn't you be like, well, what the fuck?
Like, there's not this justification anymore.
And hey, by the way, we still got some nukes left over.
So what, like, again, I just don't understand.
How can you not put yourself in that perspective?
Now, that to again, I'm sure there are the binary thinkers out there who will give me shit for this and say, well, so you're justifying Vladimir Putin killing innocent people in Ukraine.
It's like, no, that's fucking wrong.
And he's not justified for that.
As I've been saying over and over again on Fox News and on this podcast and all over, you know, it's horrific what's going on in Ukraine right now.
Justification For Nuclear Weapons00:01:34
And what Vladimir Putin's doing is inexcusable and evil.
And that's anytime innocent people are dying, it's a goddamn tragedy.
But, you know, to look at this, if you're going to sit there and start talking about what this guy's mentality is and what should have been done in the past and what provocations were made and what weren't, let's just have a serious adult conversation about this.
That's all I'm saying.
That's really all I'm saying.
I think I don't think we need to play any more of this.
Any final thoughts, Rob?
Idiots.
There you go.
There you go.
Idiots.
Rob sums it up real nicely.
All right, Rob, what do you got coming up?
Where are you going to be?
Next weekend, Colorado.
Other than that, I got a, you know, some report store coming up.
Got to start putting together some dates.
Check out Run Your Mouth.
Tomorrow, I'm going to be doing an episode with Gene Epstein on the book he's writing and inflation expectations.
So catch that.
All right.
Sounds good, brother.
And that's how you're going to be out in Colorado.
I was just out there, of course.
I will be in Minneapolis for the Libertarian Party convention out there.
And then I will be at in Dallas for the Mises Caucus event out there in Texas.
And then I'm going to be at Reno, the big one for the national convention.
And me and Rob, I think we'll start putting some more gigs together and doing some more comedy shows coming up in the very near future.