Jasper Craven and hosts Brace and Young Chomsky dissect West Point's toxic culture, tracing its roots to Washington's demand for Revolutionary War obedience and Sylvanus Thayer's emphasis on suffering as virtue. They expose historical racism, citing the 2019 removal of a Nathan Bedford Forrest plaque, and detail brutal harassment against women since 1976, including condom sabotage and weaponized sabers. The analysis critiques the institution's prioritization of physical conditioning over intellect, its high rates of domestic extremism, and homoerotic initiation rituals that paradoxically permit gay-coded behavior while enforcing heterosexual identities. Ultimately, the episode argues that this repressive environment produces incompetent officers out of touch with reality, suggesting a systemic failure to foster genuine leadership or ethical development. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
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One Job: Lifting Weights00:01:36
If you're gonna have one job in the army, what would it be?
My one job?
Fucking lifting weights.
That's not really a job.
Yelling at other people to lift weights.
You would be an officer.
I guess.
Or you'd be a physical instructor?
Yeah, I'd be the trainer.
That's so crazy, man.
What would you do?
I'd be in charge of the whole army.
That's the whole thing?
Yeah.
And I would change everything about it.
First of all, turn the guns around.
Like, point them at you.
You point them at yourself.
Right.
And that's how we get what we want.
I could be like the range master.
That'd be sick.
Yeah.
I'd yell at people for like bad trigger discipline or something.
And then I'd make people, I'd make all the guys like get on the ground, you know, like how you do like the prone position.
Yeah.
And then I would lay my body on top of them and nestle my shit between their butt cheeks.
You'd wear them up.
Yeah, I'd do that and be like, now this is like simulating the stress of combat.
Now hit the target.
Now hit the target.
I blow in their ear.
Now hit the target.
Now hit the target.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Truanon.
My name is Brace.
I'm producer Young Chomsky.
And again, this is TruAnon Soldier Edition.
Saluting.
Ten Hut.
Ten.
Ten Hut.
Simulating Combat Stress00:07:56
Yeah.
I like it.
Have you seen videos of drill instructors yelling at people?
Every night.
But they got the.
You watch ASMR.
That's how I go to sleep.
But you know how sometimes they have the smoke of the bear hats, but they're like right over their eyes?
Uh huh.
That's cool.
That's badass.
No, brother.
It's like, I can see so well that I can even see your shit with this thing over my head.
It's because they're only looking at your shoe.
That's why they're always yelling at people that their shoes aren't shined.
Yeah.
Is because that's the only thing the drill instructor can see the shoes.
Well, it's like when Luke Skywalker puts the blast shield over his eyes, but he can still use the force to block the shots.
Dude, I feel like if you just wave a lightsaber around, it's probably deflecting most shots.
Well, you think that, and then you try it, and you're like, I guess I'm not a Jedi.
How come only Jedis get to use those lightsabers?
Yeah.
Because if you're not a Jedi, you'll cut your own dick off with it.
What if I'm a woman?
You know, extrapolate.
Exactly.
Or your ponytail.
That's how come Darth Maul could use that crazy ass double sided shit, which makes no sense.
And also, Kylo Ren with his like cross hilt also makes no sense.
That shit sucked.
Yeah.
That shit sucked.
What even happened in those movies?
I didn't, I still haven't seen the last one, which is crazy.
I don't know if I did.
We've talked about it.
There's multiple Star Wars movies and soon to be more that I will not see.
Mandalorian and Grogu?
Yeah, it's like about to come out.
It looks like absolute dog shit.
No, we'll be there front row.
I got to spend.
Fucking press, we'll do an episode, a series of episodes reviewing it, dude.
Sometimes I look at like what it must be awesome to be like a media YouTuber who gets flown out to like Disneyland, Star Wars to just like soy face at different things.
Like, this is awesome!
Like, could you imagine being like 40 and being like, check out Grogu?
Yeah, I mean, I know guys who do that for clothes, that's true.
You know, a lot of Grogu guys with clothes, I do, and I think it's you know, there are just squirrels trying to get a nut, but it's.
I think it's fucking goofy as hell.
Spawn, yeah, spawn.
Like, finally, pants.
Finally, G Crew has released a new sweater.
It's not even an exaggeration.
Do you think I should get sponsored by something?
Yes.
Some sort of, I don't want to say what you should get sponsored by.
What?
Say it.
Like, prep?
Yeah.
That's what you should get.
Dude, it's just one shot.
You were in that ad for the Empire State Building.
Was I?
I sent it to you.
It was like a picture of a man from behind, and it fucking looked like you.
I was scrolling, and it's like, Visit the Empire State Building and he's got your jacket and your hair and your glasses.
I've been in a Levi's ad before.
That's true.
I got paid $1,000 to be.
No, I think I got paid $400.
In my head, I made it $1,000.
Well, now it would be $1,000 now.
But they made me wear the photographer's pants, and so he just made me wear his wife's pants, and they didn't fit.
That's fucking some.
Yeah.
He was trying to.
And they didn't even let me keep the jeans, which were the expensive part.
They let me keep the t shirt, which in fairness really only fell apart last year.
I did this like 10 years ago.
Okay.
Well, yeah.
Anyways, this episode is sponsored by the United States military, all five branches.
And we have to wait, I don't know how many there are.
The Space Force.
I told you how the guy outside the Army recruitment place yelled at me because I took his picture a couple weeks ago and he's like, You need to get a permit.
And then some total stranger came up to him and he's like, No, he doesn't.
You're in public, which was the funniest fucking thing.
Dude, all of the Army and Navy and Air Force recruiting things I've seen in New York look like Fucking crack houses.
Like, all the windows are like blacked out and like they're always basically locked.
This was in Queens and he was just like on the phone, just like hanging out in front.
And I was like, that's a picture.
And he was not happy about it.
If you're a young man, my advice is this go to army and you're like, if you don't have a lot to do in your life, go to army recruiting stations and just sit there and waste their time.
Just bargain with them.
Be like, yeah, I want to be a sniper.
I've got a pretty good eye for these kind of things.
I need a Dragunov.
And sit there for hours and refuse to sign and be like, well, I think I want to be a general.
And see just how much of their time you can waste.
Because people think a lot, oh, what can I do?
Imperialism is such a dominant force.
It's so big.
The apparatus is so large.
How can I, as one tiny person, you know, impede it in any way?
It's a waste of time.
Yeah.
You go there, you just are like, yeah, I don't know.
I think I should maybe.
What if I want to try to join them to become a recruiter?
That'll cause an inception situation in the recruiting office.
My like Marine Todd fantasy is where it's like, I think it's the Marines they set up with like pull up bars.
I want to go and just fucking bust out.
25 pull ups, and they're like, You should join the Marines.
And I'm like, Fuck you.
I'll never join the Marines.
How about this?
Bring an empty pookie.
Like a.
What?
You know what pookie is?
No.
Man, you need to take a sabbatical from the show and just get out there and lit.
It's a crack pipe.
Oh.
Take out an empty crack pipe in one of these places and just start lighting it up and see how far you can get.
And when they try to bust you, empty.
Just a piece of glass.
Yes.
And be like, I want to join the army right now.
Got your ass.
Good situation, good sit awareness.
I need to join the army right this fucking minute.
Yeah.
And then start saluting.
Just go in there and hit them with that Zig Heil.
You walk in there, Zig Heil, I want to join the army.
That's not how you guys do it?
Yeah.
What?
It's a salute.
I'm not in the army, so I can't do yours yet.
It's Roman.
That one's retired, so I can use it.
It's like a jersey.
You know what I mean?
Exactly.
All right.
We have today an interview, it's an interview and it's a talk with Jasper Craven, author of the new book.
God forgives and brothers don't.
And I've been craving a new book because I just finished one.
Listen, start the interview.
I think the reason that you could never hack it in military school is because of the nicknames Josiah Terrified, Mordecai Scaredy Cat, Zebadiah Fearful, and even your real name.
Jasper Craven, the author of God Forgives, Brothers Don't, is here to strangle me, beat me, pour liquids on me, wrestle with me, all kinds of wrestling, Turkish, Greek.
But interesting, both those ancient racial enemies have their own variety of gay wrestlings.
He's going to shoot guns next to my head to make my earring go off, and then he's going to tell me his secrets while they're still ringing and I can't really hear them.
He is going to make me do push ups.
He is going to sit across from me and ask me about the art of war.
Sun Tzu, should we leave the front door open to the enemy so he comes in and we can close it and make him have a horrible time?
Or perhaps we should let him flee across the field, but the field is filled with rats and they bite him, giving him.
The Honta virus.
And with that being said, I would like to welcome the first American victim of the Honta virus onto the show.
Again, the author of the new book out when?
May 19th.
May 19th.
And may God forgive us for having him in the studio.
His book, God Forgives, Brothers Don't, The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood.
And then look on my copy, it does say, Out on May 19th.
Jasper Craven, welcome to the show.
Founding Fathers and Manhood00:09:56
Sir, yes, sir.
Hut!
You are dressed fucked up and crazy, and I want you to describe your outfit for the audience.
Well, sir, today I am wearing the standard West Point Cadet gray uniform, sir.
So, to my view here, and I come to this with a sartorial bent in my mind, you're wearing a Chinese style jacket.
But if a Chinese guy was a bellboy, was a bellhop, A bellboy.
Bellhop, they gave him.
That's the woke name.
What makes you say it's Chinese?
Because the collar.
I see.
The stand collar.
Yeah.
You're like a Chinese bellhop who is maybe at a hotel out in the moors in somewhere in Scotland, and the gray reflects the grayness of the outside.
And then the pants, which unfortunately were made for a smaller man, don't quite fit.
Don't quite fit.
He does have his pants unbuckled during this, which, hey, in all fairness, we all do.
Yeah.
Um, This is the West Point uniform.
This is the West Point uniform.
And it's funny you should say that the West Point uniform was actually copped by Radio City Music Hall in the 1920s.
And so the ushers at Radio City Music Hall basically wore this.
They do.
I've never been, but I've seen it.
I haven't been either.
But yeah, so maybe it's still some version of this.
But yes, there's brass buttons, it's wool to survive the hardy winters in upstate New York on the Hudson at West Point.
Originally, the uniform was blue, but then during the War of 1812, when the British were fucking up the seas, we could no longer source indigo.
And so the uniform was made gray, and it's remained so ever since.
Interesting.
So you are actually wearing it.
This is a real vintage West Point uniform.
And you had a little story about the fella that you got it from.
Tell me, where did you get this?
Whose is it?
I got this on eBay for.
$79.95.
It's pretty good.
I haggled with the seller.
I don't know if it's like, was like a relative of the man who once owned it or what.
Yeah.
But the man's name was John Farrar Jr.
It's inscribed inside the jacket.
And he is sort of a classic Cold War era West Pointer, graduated in 1954 from West Point.
He claims, and his obituary claims that he's a relative, a descendant of Pocahontas.
The girl?
The girl.
Lewis and Clark.
Pocahontas.
You know the weird thing where some guys, like white guys, claim they have indigenous blood in them?
White guys.
I'm going to be honest with you.
It's not just white guys.
It's not just white women.
But also, it's a lot of people in this country of many races claim to have a lot of indigenous blood in them, if maybe apocryphal family stories.
True.
True.
But yeah, so he served two tours in Vietnam, then went on to work.
For an Israeli think tank focused on Middle Eastern issues, he returned to government, worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, worked at the State Department.
He had a mustache and a weak chin.
He's dead now?
He's dead now.
And I am wearing his uniform.
And it's funny, too, because for many years, especially the first half of the 20th century, being a West Point cadet was just such a the pinnacle of manhood and gentlemanliness.
And There were actually cases where young men would get their hands on a uniform or sort of copy one and pose, sort of some of the original stolen valor cases, which were prosecuted.
There's old newspaper clippings of young guys who never served in the military who are caught and prosecuted for wearing the uniform.
Wow.
Yeah.
So, West Point, listen, I've been there by there on the train.
I've tried to look across it, across the Hudson River.
To see any of those beautiful co-eds working out and doing their football practice.
Never could get a glimpse.
It is that's so the book's thesis, as far as I can tell, is hurt people hurt people.
You got it.
And you trace some of the genesis of that to, I think, our first military academy, which was West Point.
Now, when I think of military education, I gotta be honest with you, I think of the Prussians, right?
We love the Prussians, a militaristic people.
But also, people who love school very much in little uniforms that they wear around and they march, and you have the horsewhip, and you horsewhip your boy.
And we'll get to the obvious sexual undertones of that, I'm sure, shortly.
But the American version is a little bit different than I think the Prussian version.
And so it starts early on at West Point.
Yes.
So the American Revolution sort of germinates the idea for military education because, you know, Washington and the founding fathers.
View themselves as infallible, strong, brilliant, but once the pedal hits the metal, they're not actually very good at fighting the British who have a long history of conquest, have established, formalized military education, mercenaries, officers, all the rest.
So we're kind of getting our asses whooped.
And Washington and his aide de camp, Henry Knox, he was fucking him.
He was fucking him.
They were fucking, they were reading books about military science and really sort of developed this insatiable desire to establish a school for young boys that they could shape in their mold.
West Point was during the Revolution what Washington considered the most important post in America.
The British, as you'll recall, controlled New York City.
They did.
But there were many colonial outposts up the Hudson.
And West Point was sort of this critical defensive fort that came in this sort of wonky part of the Hudson where it snakes like an S, it's hard to maneuver on boat.
They built this big metal chain.
Yeah.
That could be, you know, thrown across the river to stop boats from coming.
So you're saying, like, you know how, like, so you know how if someone you don't like rides a motorcycle and you put like a line across the street and it cuts their head off?
Yeah.
They were doing that to boats.
They were doing that to boats.
That's so smart.
There were all these sick cannon outposts up on the hill.
And so there was an early sort of officer training program that gestated there.
It was pretty ad hoc.
Yeah.
I mean, like, You know, these were militias, not very well trained.
They're also, I mean, critically, what Washington and the other Revolutionary War generals wanted was obedience.
And a lot of these guys were like, I'm not going to fight for you.
Why should I respect you?
Why should I, you know, march and risk my life and do all of the rest?
So there was like a deep need to sort of formulate a system that could really breed obedience, loyalty, and a sort of like, you know, self devaluing.
To the point that you, you know, go walk in a line towards a gun and get shot.
So, despite all of this, there was also deep skepticism from the citizenry in the years after the Revolutionary War was won against a standing army because, you know, especially in the North.
Cincinnati.
Cincinnati.
You're supposed to put that thing, go swords into plowshares.
Exactly, exactly.
And, you know, many of the founding fathers gestured to the need to sort of never elevate the soldier above the citizen.
And, you know, The colonial army was essentially all but disbanded, and there kind of remained this little nugget of officers at West Point.
And from there, really, that sort of, you know, few dozen post Revolutionary War officers sprouts into the military industrial complex that we see today.
It's interesting.
Now, the concept of like a professional officer class, which is certainly not unique to America, it has its Pros and cons, I think, and everybody does try to kind of, if especially post revolutionary governments, you kind of try to like put your own stank on it or abolish it in some cases, and everyone kind of keeps coming back to it because you eventually need a guy whose job is being in charge of war, yeah.
And if you're gonna do war, it kind of no matter what your ideology is, uh, and like the Soviets sort of toyed with that and really had to eventually professionalize their officer corps a lot.
Um, the problem is, is sometimes if that community becomes too insular.
Or, too, maybe politically minded or too independent, you know, they will overthrow you.
Not happening in the US, but this is a kind of a common theme throughout history and officer corps.
So, what I guess I, you know, that makes sense, right?
That they're like, all right, well, we need some guys to like study all this kind of shit.
Right.
And to be in charge if we ever do.
Because the army does grow in the ensuing years.
Confederate Values and Scandals00:12:50
Yes.
But, like, what kind of education was that?
So there was kind of a fight between two men early on, old frat brothers from Dartmouth.
Their names were Alden Partridge and Sylvanus Thayer.
And basically.
A little touch of the Harry Potter to that, no?
Yeah, they were both in Gryffindor, I think, as well as myth.
Sylvanus Thayer.
Sylvanus Thayer.
Baby names.
Yeah.
Idea, baby names.
Alert, alert.
But yeah, so they were both at Dartmouth together, both very smart, mathematically minded engineers, and both had huge egos, both were sort of short.
Both had weak chins.
This is a common theme.
We chins.
But most had, who had a strong chin back then?
That's a good thing.
Look at a portrait, dude.
You know what I'm saying?
I hear that.
A lot of recessed chins in there.
But go on.
Go on.
And so Partridge basically, you know, had a theory for West Point that was more nurturing and more warm, relatively to sort of, you know.
The military.
He sort of saw the cadets under his tutelage when he served as West Point superintendent as like his boys.
He, I mean, there were still pretty gruesome punishments back then.
Like, there was this kind of like dungeon at West Point where naughty boys would be sent if they, you know, if their hair was out of place or if their feet didn't like.
They shackled you?
I don't think they shackled you.
It was just called, it was called like, I think it was just called the cave and you sort of just spent time there.
Sometimes, Like days, but generally, Partridge would sort of let his youngsters out after a few hours, yeah.
Um, and he let them to sort of like think through what this sort of educational model would look like.
Um, he believed more far more in the humanities than Thayer.
Um, Thayer was really kind of an asshole with daddy issues, really severe, puritanical.
He was a puritan, he came from Braintree, Massachusetts, and so he was raised in this environment of like.
Whippings and punishments for very minor infractions, the scarlet letters, and all the rest.
And so he sort of had this deeply ingrained understanding of how to punish people and create uniformity and sort of like indoctrination.
And he was ultimately chosen as the man to become like West Point's godfather, its superintendent.
And he shaped the place profoundly.
And virtually every other military school has borrowed.
The fair method.
The fair method, yeah, exactly.
You know, I was reading that part in the book and it struck me that I was like, people who sort of are into suffering for suffering's sake, we all got to suffer, right?
And just, you know, sometimes life is suffering.
But we don't want to suffer.
And suffering without cause or without reason, I think maybe can build a certain amount of character to an extent.
But if it becomes an ethos, And it becomes something that you think is this central idea to educating others and to instilling that virtue.
If you elevate it to a virtue, essentially, and you inflict that on others, it's no wonder our fucking army men are so weird.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Because they sort of worship at this useless suffering.
And you can't even, if this has been your life for so long, you can't even really ever admit to yourself that it was actually useless.
You have to invent reasons for it.
And it just.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's so that's it.
I'm gonna tell you from the layman's perspective.
Well, I was a layman before I read the book.
But from the layman's perspective, military school seems to be like a place that you get sent to if you're A, you're like the top little rotsy guy in your school and you want to be, I want to be Mr. Officer.
And you like try to go.
Or there's like a military school that you get sent to because you're a naughty little boy.
Right.
And they make you run up the rope thing and, you know, climb all this kind of stuff.
And then they yell at you and make you tuck in your shirt.
Yeah.
And, and, But both of those, I think, revolve around this system of like punishment for infractions that are like so minute and so small.
Like you mentioned, your hair is slightly out of place.
Right.
And being having this like, you know, tremendous, oftentimes corporal punishment meted out into you.
And that is supposed to mold you into somehow a man.
Right.
Is that right?
Basically.
I mean, you know, part of what I discovered or sort of was clarified during book research is that really.
You know, the military education, which I define pretty broadly to include service academies like West Point and the Air Force Academy, the 5200 ROTC and JROTC programs in American high schools and colleges, the Boy Scouts, the Young Marines, and then sort of like all of these other military schools.
Some of them are state chartered, religiously chartered, private.
Often that bunch is kind of like more the troubled teen style school where bad apples are sent.
But really, The sort of conditions today for any man in crisis, you know, are sort of pushed them towards the military.
The military is sort of like seen as this catch all.
Like, if you are, you know, the smartest kid in your class, you're sold on West Point.
This is the place for, you know, America's best and brightest.
If you are lost, if you, you know, have been sent into the juvenile court system, go to a military school.
You'll get whipped into shape.
If you want to escape your family, if you want a new identity, if you want community, if you can't afford college and want to get on the GI Bill, join the military.
If you want your undocumented mom to get maybe papers.
Yes, yes.
So there's just such a dearth of healthy options for men.
And so, like, what often happens is people, men in need of help, of true mentorship, love, support, assistance, just kind of find themselves in this system, which, as you note, equates like Punishment and suffering with virtue.
And, you know, at this point, there is just such an emptiness to the mission and the ideology of the military that just all of these like warped, fucked up ideas around violence and, you know, misogyny and religion and all the rest are sort of like elevated because there's no nugget of like morality to really latch on to or believe in.
Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, even the way that, that, People, when they sort of talk about the US Armed Forces, like defending our liberty and things like this, they're almost like echoes of what you would say in like 1798 or something, you know, like some time in the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s even.
But like, it's certainly from the 20th century on, it's like, well, no one's really attacking us.
Right.
You know what I mean?
And like, we're kind of going into other places and either, quote, securing someone else's liberty or depriving somebody of any chance at that.
And it's interesting because they're still supposed to have the same sort of values that these institutions started with.
You know, an officer, a gentleman, you know, somebody who serves with honor and distinction is fair minded in their dealings with other people.
But like, that's just not the way the world is.
You know, I doubt it was back then, but I can tell you for sure it's not right now.
And it's funny, like, there's all these anachronisms that one encounters in the military.
Down to the uniforms.
Yeah.
You know, like I'm not just talking about your, you know, your little bellboy thing, get up there, but, but for instance, like when the Marine ball or whatever, which you know we hit in sniffies when that motherfucker comes to town, but like the Marine Corps ball wearing their little, their little uniforms or like these, these rituals that are sort of absent from the rest of American life, I still take place in the armed forces.
You know, you mentioned, so you mentioned that there's these different kinds and there are like a few, like a Official military academies.
Right.
Which, like West Point, for instance, what are they?
They basically every branch has a congressionally chartered elite officer training school.
So, West Point is for the Army.
Annapolis in Maryland is for the Navy.
The Air Force Academy is for the Air Force.
There's a Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island.
Is that the one on Throg's Neck?
Yeah.
I gotta be honest with you guys.
Didn't know that was technically a military academy.
I did try to go there.
I really wanted to go there when I was young.
I really want to go there too.
Apparently, There was like a massive scandal of some sort there a few years ago.
And a friend of mine was at a Merchant Marine Academy graduation.
And there were all of these whispers about something really fucked up happening.
And I tried to chase it for months and I could not figure it out.
I got a friend who went to one of those when I was younger.
It was like one of my best friends in high school.
And she became a lady officer.
Oh, wow.
I think you make good money doing that.
Totally.
But go on.
And then there was Norwich, which actually Alden Partridge.
Established in Vermont after he was booted from West Point was the cavalry officer school, but it no longer is because America doesn't.
Does the Coast Guard get one?
The Coast Guard has one, yep.
We don't give a fuck though.
No, I mean, we don't talk much about that.
And then there's these sort of ancillary ones, like the Citadel, where Mademoiselle Nancy Mace went.
Like, what is that?
So the Citadel, there are a number of.
Southern military schools that sort of have this.
Oh, we do a little bit different down here.
Oh, yes, they do.
It's a romantic chivalry.
Yes.
I'll say, I'll say, I'll say.
And many of those were established in the years leading up to the Civil War to put down slave rebellions.
Another big one is the Virginia Military Institute.
And a lot of the big boy, Confederate, bad boy boys worked there, went there, did their thing.
PGT Beauregard being one, I should say, I should say.
And yeah, so those, you know, I mean, racism runs through all of these places.
No.
Yeah?
I'm crestfallen.
Yeah.
These places are racist.
These places are racist.
I mean, the southern ones, sort of, especially so, but West Point had a plaque honoring the KKK up until 2019.
Like the group?
The group.
What did the plaque say?
It basically was just like the KKK.
Fuck yeah, let's go.
What?
Yeah, if you.
Well, I guess because what was, what's his name?
A West Pointer?
Robert E. Lee was a West Pointer.
No, no, no, not Robert E. Lee, the cavalryman.
You know what I'm talking about?
Mm mm.
Fucking God, Confederate guy?
Confederate cavalryman.
He was like the goat of horses.
You know what I'm talking about.
You know what I'm fucking talking about.
Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Oh, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, right.
Yes, of course.
Yeah.
He was a big KK guy.
KKK.
Wow, they really did have a KKK plaque there.
Yeah.
I'm looking at it.
It's a guy right on the entrance and he's wearing his little hood.
Yeah.
But these places are racist.
They're racist.
Yeah.
And especially so in the South, or it's especially blatant in the South.
And so the Citadel and VMI are sort of like the preeminent racist Southern military schools.
And those, VMI is state chartered, Citadel is private.
But yes, Nancy Mace went there.
KKK Plaque at West Point00:15:19
She was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel.
The woman before her, Shannon Faulkner, who arrived in 1995, thanks only to a court order from the notorious IBG.
She lasted a week because of the incessant hazing.
The day after she matriculated, Citadel Boys pushed a big sign out onto the highway that said, Die Shannon.
And so, what you also see at these places is because they are constructed around validating American masculinity, and because so much of the appeal of attending a military school or joining the military is to get masculine validation, any sort of threats to that, whether that's You know, someone of color or a woman, they are like violently repressed and you know, put down ideally.
Yeah, that's the chapter you have on women in these institutions.
Uh, boy, they don't fare well.
Westport, so Westport has no locks on the door or shades in the windows, right?
And this proved to be a problem for early and probably current uh women who attended there.
Because the guys really did not like girls being there.
And I got to be honest with you.
As a young man, I loved it when girls were around.
You know what I mean?
We love women.
We love them.
They're so beautiful.
And you could maybe, you know, you play your cards right.
Maybe you get a little, you know, a little kissy kissy.
A little smooch.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, maybe you don't go.
But these guys were just like, all right, these women are here.
We need to kill or rape them.
Or both, and they basically go on like a seemingly decades long, like insane harassment spree against any woman there to the point where you have several anecdotes from women you've talked to who are like they're putting like traps in their room and like alarms and stuff because there was like a guy I think you're talking about one guy who raped like eight different cadets, yeah, yeah, and like wasn't punished, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was really brutal.
I mean, I think honestly, that may be the most disturbing chapter in the book.
It's called The Last Class with Balls.
Which is what the West Point class of 1976 called themselves.
And they had those initials, LCWB, etched on their class rings.
Women were ordered by federal statute to be admitted to West Point beginning in 1976.
And I spoke to many of the early women who landed on campus.
And yeah, it was brutal.
I mean, West Point did next to nothing to prepare for their arrival.
You know, I mean, like, They were basically wearing men's uniforms.
The bathrooms for women weren't really retrofitted.
There were no locks on the doors.
There were no shades on the windows.
And there were bands of roving cadets, male cadets, who made it their explicit mission to denigrate them, to hurt them, and to push them out.
There was one particularly bad company called B1.
They referred to themselves as Boys One, and they launched what they called Project Zero, which was to try to just push out all the women through incredibly mean epithets, through sexual assault, through very intimidating behavior.
Women would come back to their dorms at night and find that male cadets had, you know, put sabers through their pillows, left condoms on their beds.
They would come at night and sexually assault them.
There was one cadet who wore a mask and was terrorizing women for a period of months.
And West Point officials knew about a lot of this.
In surveys, like exit surveys for many years, West Point women said, please put locks on the fucking doors.
And They did not for decades and decades.
They did not put locks on the fucking doors, which again sort of gets back to the honor code at West Point and this sort of very shallow morality that is basically just built around like punitive rules and behavior, not actual big ideas, noble goals.
But, you know, because West Point's honor code outlawed stealing, they felt like that was protection enough to sort of stop cadets from going into other cadets' rooms.
And they sort of wanted to like, Tempt cadets to sort of like, you know, fortify their dedication to Natsum by being like, well, you can go into this room and steal, but you won't because you're going to be so self disciplined as not to.
And so that was the reason they kept locks off the doors.
Yeah, I mean, it's really like, I mean, I think there's definitely a part of a theme of this book of sort of masculinity and manhood.
And with those sort of attendant, you know, ideals of honor and gentlemanliness.
And it's just funny because, like, they sort of pretended this, but it just doesn't exist.
Like, from the beginning, it seems that, like, this whole system is built on lying to everybody.
That you have these virtues exist simply by dint of declaring that they are so.
Absolutely.
And then they never become so to this present day, but nothing changes.
But it gets cemented because it's said so often, it's like, yes.
Our officers are scholars and gentlemen and honorable.
But like, these are some of the least honorable people.
I got to tell you, you have a building full of people I know.
I mean, I don't know about strangers, but I'm just thinking of people I know.
And there's some women in some rooms and some guys in the other rooms.
I feel like if you didn't put locks in the door, there wouldn't be like a bunch of people going around, like, we're going to rape you.
It's like, this is pretty specific to these people.
I'm not saying that it doesn't exist in society, but like that kind of like sustainability.
Sustained and vicious abuse is like clearly nurtured by this environment and by the kind of people who are funneled into it.
Absolutely.
I mean, the rates of sexual assault at military schools are far higher than those reported at civilian schools.
So, like, there is an exceptionally rotten culture at these places that is actively nourished.
And that is because at the end of the day, you know, these schools are part of an institution built on violence.
And, you know, many of the men, mostly men teaching there, have like also just unaddressed PTSD, deep war trauma.
And there's sort of like this warped campaign that they engage in to toughen up their boys so that they can like be ready for the shit when it comes.
It's a very, you know, vicious cycle.
Not unlike, A fraternity where, you know, like you said earlier, hurt people, hurt people.
Hurt people, hurt people.
But yeah, I mean, the ideology is so thin here, you know, just like it's like duty on our country.
That's the West Point motto.
What does that mean?
You're fucking, what is it?
Yeah.
Like a collection of Instagram reels.
Right.
You know, that's what you're fighting.
That's what drives me crazy.
That's what you're fighting for.
Yeah.
And I guess, no, they're fighting for the right to get discounts from the people they see on Instagram reels or to board the plane in front of them.
Right.
No, I mean, really, the bargain here is that, you know, the uniform confers universal acclaim.
And so many of the men who join I mean, that's the other thing is it's just like a self selecting group of men often who just want to sort of be seen as exemplars in their community, want to be seen as cool, strong, aggressive, all of the rest.
And so, you know, they like the pomp and circumstance.
They like to be, you know, put on the front page of the paper when they get into West Point.
You will be on fake 100% disability.
You will wear a grunt style t shirt one size too small that hugs your little belly so fucking tight you look like the damn Octo Mom.
You will be on fucking Vicodin at your family's cookout and have intrusive thoughts about family annihilation.
Like, this is what you're going to be given after your service.
And it's, I'm not saying this, you know, it's just, it is what it is, you know.
It is a, our military is one big crook factory.
Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing.
It's like, There's sort of a universal understanding or belief today, like across the political spectrum, that the military will straighten out a boy who needs some straightening.
But the truth of the matter is, they're entering an institution that just does damage to them.
Terrible, you know, divorce rates, pandemic suicide, pandemic drug use and alcoholism.
I mean, you know, military service is now the number one indicator of domestic extremism in America.
Like, it's just a fucked up factor.
And your wife's cheating.
Your wife's cheating.
She's with Jodie.
She's with Jodie.
And we love Jodie.
You know?
But yeah, that's sort of the, I think one of the big contradictions that your book talks about is that, like, this is supposed to be the way for a wayward son of the soil to get his act together and become, like, a man of honor.
As far as I can tell, this is a way to get you addicted to fentanyl in five years.
And West Point, the role of, because, like, What is like West Point?
You don't go out of there and you're like a private.
You come out of West Point an officer, right?
Yeah, you're a first lieutenant, which is also insane, too, because I mean, part of the thing that I focus on in the book, too, is that like the military is predatory.
It is recruiting boys for this institution, whether that's through the Boy Scouts, which has a deep and abiding relationship to the military.
I mean, the annual Boy Scout Jamboree every year is at West Point.
So these ideas are inculcated very early.
Or, you know, through military culture movies, Toy Soldiers, The Hummer, like blah, Call of Duty.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4.
Yeah.
Yeah, you played them.
Black Ops.
I have a backdrop.
I see that they're around.
Black Ops.
That's what I'm here for.
Well, that's no, you're not, you're not, no, that's different.
I want to put on a fucking mech suit.
Well, yeah, but now they're all like sci fi and it's kind of goofy.
Really?
That's what happened in Black Ops 7.
I was playing it last night.
Damn.
M. Chomsky's toxic masculine.
I'm all kinds of masculine.
But it fucking makes you like, it's like you come out and you're the officer.
And it's like, I know that from like movies and TV.
You know, you got all your boys.
You guys have been in the shit for a while, right?
Your lieutenant gets killed.
You know, by a sapper, a North Vietnamese sapper.
And then they got this West Point pretty boy coming in here.
He's like, You guys can't smoke reefer anymore.
Yeah.
You guys can't take acid anymore.
And they're like, Fuck you.
No, that's the other thing is that, like, these are the elite training grounds for officers.
And they're kicked out basically at the age of 21 as first lieutenants.
Often they're in charge of people that are older than them.
They don't really know what the hell they're doing.
They've been in this, like, you know, Isolated environment that is completely closed off from the world.
Unlike officers who go through ROTC, for instance, who are at least in a civilian educational environment and are exposed to the humanities, exposed to the civilians, people at West Point are, you know, legendary for being completely out of touch and, you know, full of themselves.
They have developed their own sort of like secretive, supportive network.
Often it's called the West Point Protective Association.
And like you see this, you know, During Vietnam, for instance, a bunch of West Point guys get caught up in My Lai and other West Point guys cover for them and they send them over to Paris rather than deal with a court martial and blah, But then, like, yeah, the enlisted guys look at these people and feel like they are not nearly as competent as they think they are.
I mean, one of the fun, derisive terms that enlisted guys have for West Point is shit, which is the South Hudson Institute of Technology.
So, like, you know, I mean, they're.
Maybe you could argue that these places are good for creating an officer class.
And there are moments in history where maybe that's true.
But overall, they're just not really even effective at building competent leaders.
I mean, David Petraeus is a great example, William Westmoreland.
You know, there just aren't that many people you can point to who have emerged from these schools and done an incredible job waging conflict or leading men.
Like the strength of the United States military lies in, I would say, two things technical capacity and money.
And the fact that we're a big country and basically share borders with Canada and Mexico.
Right.
We're kind of good.
But like, it's not like we have, I mean, there's obviously been some inventions.
You know, coin, for example, is really, I mean, obviously that was, we didn't start counterinsurgency methods of warfare, but we really owned them.
Over a long period, but we don't win a lot of wars.
Not that, I mean, that, I think that's an easy thing to say, but also it's like, what does winning look like?
We go in and destroy a country.
That is basically winning.
Yeah.
If you, if you, and certainly we won the war against the Iraqi army, as such as it was.
We just sort of had a little interesting time after the insurgency.
But like, it's not like these people are particularly like ultra competent or whatever.
And I think this is a crisis of competency you probably find all over society, but also in militaries the world over, right?
Like, you always have, A great officer class for the last war that you fought, and oftentimes not so great for the next one.
And so, you know, it's interesting because we just have kind of a lot of money.
And so it looks like the best army ever.
I don't know if that's necessarily true.
I don't know if there's a lot of great armies out there right now.
But I think the U.S. Army, a lot of the accolades it gets, I don't know, accolades, the right word, but the respect it gets is because we have awesome helicopters and shit like that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
We have a fucking shit ton of money.
Crisis of Competency in Armies00:11:53
But like, as for the actual, these guys are a bunch of bums, right?
They lose wars.
They're crazy.
They're stupid often.
I mean, Petraeus, Westmoreland.
You know, these guys are not like this, isn't they're not talking Klaus Witz here, right?
Yeah, I mean, and that stems all the way back from the curriculum that they are designed.
Like, this was not about creating thinking, feeling officers, it was, you know, engineering, black and white subjects, depriving cadets from like reading daily newspapers.
You know, it's when you have a cultish indoctrinational environment, it's very hard to.
You know, create space for like dissent, accountability, all of these things.
There's an incredible amount of intellectual incest where, you know, it's just like West Point guys teaching West Point cadets.
There's just kind of like this perpetuating cycle that makes it very hard for new information to get on campus.
There are many examples of civilian professors being retaliated against for their, you know, efforts to bring in some, you know, English or history being squelched.
Like it's, It's just a very poorly designed curriculum and it encourages obedience above all else, really.
Well, I mean, to paraphrase Thomas Sankara, himself an officer, you know, a soldier who doesn't have the right education is basically, you know, a potential criminal.
And I think that's what we see in a lot of cases.
I want to do want to talk about some of these sort of secular education that occurs at these institutions because West Point is also a liberal arts school.
Has woke.
Been there.
I've been visited by Woke.
Woke spent a bit of time there a few years ago, but it's now on sabbatical, permanent sabbatical.
Okay.
Thanks to Peter Bryan Hegzeth.
Woke has been dealt with to a permanent end.
That's what it seems like.
There was Toni Morrison in the library at one point, but no more.
There was a professor of feminist theory.
But no more.
There was a professor of military ethics, I dare say.
But no more.
That doesn't seem particularly woke to me.
That seems like you should maybe learn that.
Ethics are woke.
I will say, I don't know.
Professor of feminist, what was it?
Theory.
Theory at West Point, I mean, come on.
I'm doing a little bit of the jacking off motion there.
And I'm saying this because it is, you're going out there to kill women and children.
Let's not beat around the bush here.
Well, Pete Hegzeth thought it was military ethnics.
So they had to get rid of that.
But, you know, but I'm saying a well rounded, you want a well rounded education.
You know, it is funny because I had always also thought of, not always, but in recent years, I guess I had thought of West Point as having this kind of like weird liberal arts school sort of attached to the education program there with this, you know, feminist theory and whatever else there.
And it seems like that is no more.
But it doesn't seem like it made our officers better.
No, no.
I mean, it's, there is, there's always been like a bit, a very sort of mild presence of the humanities at these places.
But the fact of the matter is that the priority is, you know, the body, not the mind.
I mean, the, interestingly enough, the sort of historical development of military schools parallels the sort of like rise of physical, the idea of physical education.
PE teachers from a very early moment in the early 20s, 20th century sort of saw how military schools could validate their profession and like really became major boosters of compulsory military education and like filtered into these environments and became very prominent, very powerful.
I mean, the head PE teacher at West Point to this day is called the master of the sword and it's one of the most like prestigious jobs on campus.
Apparently, I hear that like he's our most valuable samurai.
When you last met me, I was but a learner.
Now I am the master.
The master of the sword?
Yeah, the master of the sword.
Doing the jacking off.
You know, like Sylvanus Thayer back in the day would rank his boys by not just academic standing, but height and sort of like body.
We're giving a slight pause to that there.
Yeah.
He's like, oh, he's got a, we're working with a tight body on this one.
He's getting an A?
Yeah.
They did weigh ins for men, right?
They did weigh ins for men.
It's crazy.
This is like how, like, if you have like a.
A mother with an untreated eating disorder treats their daughter.
Nothing wrong with weighing your boys.
Yeah, well, me?
Well, I.
Yes.
You see that?
That's self censorship right there.
He makes you.
This is, as far as I gather from the book, they're making everyone go out and do mass weigh ins.
They're doing mass weigh ins.
And that also permeated into the abuse of women because they were forced to get weighed in as well.
And, you know.
The male West Point boys would oink like pigs and say, you know, crack jokes.
And so there was a joke I was trying to recall.
It was like, they would call them like, when they would do like swimming practice, they would call all the girls in there like the Bay of Pigs and, you know, shit like that.
So yeah, I mean, the body has always been primary at these places.
And that leads to a lot of strange homoerotic.
Initiation rituals and lots of gay shit, basically.
Yeah, let's stop beating around the bush.
First of all, the body keeps the score, right?
Right, right, right.
And this is something I've always said the body keeps the score.
What is your score, your body score?
It's a complete loss.
It's a win lose thing.
It's a complete loss.
But I'm, I mean, if we want to just stats right here, I'm 411, 260, and 30 centimeters.
30 centimeters long or 30 centimeters wide?
That's just the stats.
You know, it's like, that's my numbers.
But this is, I don't know how to say this.
I respect gay shit.
And it's cool with me.
I mean, we all have our pants open right now.
We do.
We do.
We are jacking here.
I would jack off a guy.
I would jack off a guy.
I don't want to, but I would.
I would too.
You know what I mean?
I would, like.
Under what circumstances?
Like, if, like, I don't know if he really needed it.
But, like, you know, if it was like to put out a fire, I mean, to put out a fire, I'd suck a dick.
But, you know, but like, but, but it seems like a lot of people in the middle, this is an interesting contradiction.
A lot of these guys are like, I'm a man.
I hate women.
And I only want to be, but I'm heterosexual, but I only want to be around other men.
Now, this is not a unique thing to the modern U.S. military.
Right.
Certainly it's, It's there's been a long history of male only militaries, although they used to have chicks there.
I mean, they now they have there's women in the military, but you know what I mean?
Like, it wasn't like you're in the army or whatever in like 1500, there's only dudes there.
Um, but uh, but these guys they joined the army and they're like, I'm really heterosexual.
And then, do you remember that video of actually we might have to pause?
I think I need to bring it up.
I'm going to show you a video made a huge impression on me.
I believe these are men of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Look at that.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, he does the whole thing.
He's got a talent for it.
I mean, really, this is so the video is a bunch of men, I believe in Marine Corps uniform.
They look like they're in a subway car.
They do look like they're in the subway car.
And there is a, I would say, a healthy looking pink dildo attached to the wall.
And one man who has a tribal tattoo with a tribal heart in the middle around his arm to the cheers of a bunch of other guys gather around him.
There's no other word, but deep throats.
Takes it to the hilt.
Takes it to the hilt, this.
And this is from August 18th, 2019.
Being in the military is gay.
Let's just be upfront with it.
And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with being in the military.
There's nothing wrong with being gay.
But there's an interesting dynamic where a lot of these people kind of can't, that they hate that.
Because there's something a little gay about being in the army, there's something moderately, medium to highly gay about being in the Navy.
Which I think we can talk about.
Yes, yes.
But that's a long tradition of the sea folk.
Yes.
But it's a weird thing where, like, it is, it's like you're at the dick sucking contest, but you're all like, I'm doing this for protein or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's so crazy to me.
What is up with their stance on gay guys?
Well, the military is interesting because, you know, intimacy, emotion, relationships are very tightly controlled and regulated.
So, everybody is incredibly repressed.
At the same time, the military provides a permission structure to act like a gay guy while still claiming heterosexuality.
Dude, that is an important point.
I think a lot of people are looking for an excuse to be a little light in the loafers.
Yeah.
And you need that permission structure.
Right.
I mean, all of us wish we could act gay towards our guy friends, but we can't.
We all kind of do, right?
You do up the river flick dick.
Right, right, right.
You know, some guy passes out at a party, you pour a fucking olive oil and then Tabasco in his butthole and then tape it shut.
Sure.
You know what I'm saying?
That was you?
No, some guy.
I'm not saying me.
You teabag, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Right, right, right.
But these guys take it to a new extreme.
You're right.
There is like this permission structure there.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, you know, they are cut off from their families, their girlfriends.
And so, I mean, especially if you're in the Navy, you're like completely cut off.
Yeah.
But, you know, I mean, I think like.
Honestly, the best thing I could say for the military at this point is that it can facilitate like really beautiful relationships and camaraderie and support and like acts of love.
But at the same time, it can very quickly morph into like abuse and like really nasty sodomy and other types of hazing that I detail in the book.
Yes.
So, yeah, I mean, there's like a lot of very sort of fun, harmless, Homoerotic initiation rites, especially at the Naval Academy.
Gay Soldiers and Hazing Rites00:08:48
I detail one of them in the book, which is called the Herndon Climb.
And basically, it occurs on what's historically known on campus as Lover's Lane.
Plebes at the Naval Academy were unable to go on dates until after their plebe year.
And so, once they were sort of freed, given the opportunity to see a gal, they all just sort of organically started hiving around this.
Monument to an old seafarer and like taking off their clothes and jumping up and down.
And that kind of morphed into the Herndon Climb, which involves plebes at the end of their plebe year climbing up this phallic monument covered in Crisco to place a sailor's cap right on the tip.
Oh.
So they're all greasy.
A sailor's cap, you say.
A sailor's cap, I do say.
So it's all these young men greased up, usually just in shorts, writhing, climbing over each other in order to prove that, you know.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
And that is but one of the rights.
One of the other crazy Navy rights is called Crossing the Line and still exists today.
But anytime a sailor first crosses the equator, there is a huge party on the ship, often like drag shows, drinking, sadomasochistic stuff.
Often the fattest, cheap petty officer would put olives in his belly button and the young sailor wogs would uh suck it out of his belly button, etc.
Wogs, yeah, isn't that an Albanian?
Maybe, I mean, did I have that was a racial slur for Albania?
Maybe it is, and I just up in my research.
I think you might be right, seems like something they talk about in uh Moby Dick, young wogs, yeah.
Oh, no, it's a racial slur in Britain, but it is it is also about uh young sailors, yeah, about sailors, um.
Well, that's a classic thing when you cross the equator, you're supposed to eat a fucking octopus raw or whatever.
People have different traditions.
But the Navy is a tradition heavy, like more than any other branch of the military, it is like tradition heaven.
Yes.
It's weird because there's girls on the ship now.
There are, yeah.
There are.
But I mean, the Navy stereotype is true that there are, I mean, it is the gayest service branch.
This is confirmed by.
Ran data from a few years ago.
Also, when the military first started tracking HIV in the 90s, the Navy had elevated rates.
So, there's truth to that.
And, you know, I mean, it makes sense like a young boy wanting to sort of escape the strictures of, you know, American life.
And then the Marines are kind of like the hardo, you know, closet cases who are just like, I'm going to fuck.
They're like the real classic, like, oh, I'm heterosexual.
Now, suck my dick type guys.
Yeah, yeah.
They're a word we learned recently trade.
Or trade, I think that's what it's called.
You do sort of describe them as the Navy being the bottoms, the Marines being the tops in the book.
I don't know if you say it outright, but I do.
I do.
It gives you the impression.
Yeah.
It's weird because there's obviously a great deal of homophobia in the ranks here.
And I don't know how to explain it to people.
Sometimes you're both gay and homophobic to your male friends.
Right.
But that's sort of tempered by the presence of women generally in your life.
I'm thinking of kind of when you're younger.
If you're doing that when you're older, Just blow them, you know what I'm saying?
Sure, but uh, but with this, it's sort of like it's that adolescent kind of like push and pull sort of thing, there, yeah.
But you're older and it's writ large, and there's also like regulations that you're sort of navigating with that stuff.
I remember Don't Ask, Don't Tell when I was younger, which you cover in the book, um, which was basically like you're not allowed to ask if someone come in the army is gay because before that, if you go join the army, they're like, Do you dudes?
Yeah, no, there was a time where before Reagan, it was basically permitted to be gay in the military.
Well, because my dad told me that when people try to get out of the draft, everyone would be like, I'm gay.
And eventually they'd be like, we don't care.
Okay.
Yeah.
But there's been like, you can be gay in the army, but you can't really be openly gay in the army.
And then it was like codified where they couldn't ask you, but you also kind of couldn't be like, I'm gay.
Yeah.
I mean, Don't Ask, Don't Tell is an interesting.
Chapter in military history because again, it was sort of like Clinton did not know what he was getting into, but he sort of ended up challenging again, like these very fragile masculine ideals that are so crucial to the military's recruiting structure.
Again, it's like be a man, join the military.
And so, once there's like the possibility that a gay dude can like do more push ups than you, that just completely demolishes any sort of like military validation.
Have they been to an equinox?
I know.
They can do so many more push ups than me.
No, all the seals should just be gay guys.
They would fucking see them.
Gay guys are huge.
Ripped.
And I know that there's a lot of tension in gay communities because there's, of course, the hierarchy of very ripped, in shape gay guys and then, you know, the less so.
But still, you see a ripped gay guy.
I mean, these guys are built like Adonises.
And so there's like this sort of fear of like their masculinity being shown up by a guy who's maybe a fairy, but he's.
Also, very good at doing push-ups.
Oh, behave.
But it's weird because so much of that reminds me of the woman stuff and to the race stuff to an extent, too.
Because this all sort of plays into it.
And there's a weird relationship that certain white dudes have with, like, whenever you hear a guy talking about, like, black cock or whatever, you know what I mean?
Like, you're always like, brother, there is something going on in that brain of yours.
Yep.
But because so many people go to that for, for, yeah.
But, uh, But there's this thing of like this like insecurity with this like sort of assembled masculinity that they have.
Yeah.
I mean, it's crazy.
Like Clinton promises to overturn the ban on gays in his election.
This is actually the first time where gay voters show out and sort of like join the Democratic tent.
They are very crucial to his win in 92.
Buckley's like, we lost them.
And then like he gets to the Pentagon and puts his proposal on the table and like, All of the joint chiefs threatened to resign rather than enact this policy, which is fucking insane.
So crazy.
Yeah.
Like, they are so freaked out about this idea.
And of course, Clinton immediately folds.
I mean, there's an interesting, like, Clinton, when he was younger and a Rhodes Scholar, like, became very close with a gay, a pioneering gay activist named David Mixner, who I talk about in the book.
And, like, this guy was, like, a badass who was a part of the moratorium to end the war during Vietnam.
And, like, Clinton seemed kind of obsessed with him.
He spent a summer in DC crashing on his couch, wink, wink.
Like, they had a very.
Weird, I mean, not weird, but just like questionable relationship.
Like, I don't know.
No, it's weird to fuck Bill Clinton, dude.
And like, basically, Clinton had promised his old buddy, Mixner, that he would do two things to get the gay vote allow gays to serve openly and like put together a bunch of research for AIDS funding.
And yeah, immediately buckles.
Mixner is completely mortified.
And then not only that, but Clinton starts.
Blackballing him in Washington because Nixer was also like an advocate and a lobbyist for different groups.
Wow.
And is like, I don't want any single issue that Mixner is tied to to get any hearing in the White House.
And Mixner loses all his clients, has to start selling his assets.
Like he basically bankrupts the guy.
And so there's like this weird dynamic between them that's also sort of in the background of don't ask, don't tell.
But yeah, I mean, I think that.
Purpose, Bonds, and Anger00:16:11
I think that gay guys in the military just, you know, bring something nice to the experience often if they can do it openly.
Like, part of the reason, too, is not just that people are scared about sort of their masculine ego being undermined, but also, like, if military men are able to sort of like truly have the space to build deep bonds that transcend loyalty to their commander or to the country, that's a huge threat to the military because, like, then there's a love there that, um, That they can't control.
Well, that's so it's, you know, I have, you know, without a shred of irony, my view is that genuinely, for my political purposes, the United States needs to reinstitute the draft.
Yeah.
And these bonds need to form and a change needs to come in this country.
That's not going to happen.
It's because nothing I want ever happens.
But it is funny, like, there is this, I do think that.
The camaraderie that you feel with other people when you go through something very difficult together is really unique and one of the most beautiful things that you can have.
I agree.
The quiet joys of brotherhood.
But I don't know.
I've met people who've been in the military who sort of have these really strong bonds with other people.
A lot of these guys were not doing so great outside of the military.
But I don't know.
It's weird because the officer class.
Is sort of this like almost disciplinary force where these people have been abused and screwed and whatever by their superiors in getting these positions, whatever, these lieutenants, and then onwards and upwards.
And they're almost there to sort of like, obviously, they're literally there to discipline the people under their command, but also to add this sort of like professionalization to prevent sort of those bonds from forming.
And that's what you see in common depictions of like West Pointers or their equivalents in like military media.
You see this like stuck up person.
Who is like a stickler?
Like, shade that fucking mustache, or you know, you two, like, go clean the latrine, who like inflict these like baseless and unnecessary sufferings upon the people under their command.
It's just, I don't know.
Well, but it's the book, I think, that the real subtext here is Matt, like, what makes a man.
Right.
And it's, I gotta tell you, by the end of this, certainly not these military schools.
Yeah.
I mean, part of why I came to the book is that I have a very like unique.
Family background, and that my dad was a prominent activist during Vietnam, worked with Howard Zinn, John Lennon, dated Jane Fonda for a period of time.
I forgot your dad fucked Fonda.
He's got to call her up, dude.
Dude, I've been emailing her.
I'm trying to get her to help me with my books.
No, no, no, no.
Because didn't her man just die?
Teddy.
Didn't?
Yeah.
Oh, but your mom's.
My mom's.
It's weird.
My dad.
My dad's like still obsessed with her.
Like two years ago, he bought this, like.
15 foot poster of Barbarella for our house.
That's sick.
Awesome.
Like, I'm just, I'm like my poor mom.
My dad, my dad, I think we might have talked about this on the show before.
My dad hooked up with Tom Hayden's press secretary when Hayden was in the house.
Oh, no way.
Yeah.
Wow.
I know.
Yeah.
I think my dad overlapped with Sutherland, too.
I think Jane was maybe dipping the candle at both ends.
Respect.
But she's single now.
She is.
I don't know if she was still with him towards the end.
I don't think.
Teddy?
Yeah.
I don't think so.
No.
She's probably still single.
But go on, you're finally history.
Right.
So, you know, it was sort of the inverse of like the kid who's, you know, the son of the hard charging colonel.
And like these ideas about what masculinity and service and honor mean are like inculcated at a very young age and a very specific sort of military mindset takes shape.
I had this other sort of like strange and unique experience where, you know, ideas of peace, but also like solidarity and riskiness and sort of like fighting for big ideas was.
Was implanted in me.
And I find that those ideas were very positive in forming my masculinity.
And, you know, you see this like brief moment during Vietnam where the anti, like all of the sort of like the antithesis to the soldier becomes the cool hip archetype, you know, rather than like the high and tight and the pecs and the parade uniform, you've got, you know, the dirty hippie with the joint in his mouth.
And the, you know, buckskin fringe jacket.
The buckskin fringe jacket.
And the, you know, the weird like turquoise ring.
Doc Sportello.
Exactly, exactly.
And there was something really like cool about that.
And the military was so worried about this archetype like forever sort of subverting theirs to the point that they would like hire these like kind of like, you know, acid.
Hippie dirt bags as groundskeepers at West Point, so that the young cadets would sort of see this, like the worst version of the hippie, like cleaning the grounds at West Point and be like, I do not want, like, I can never fall that far.
And there were a bunch of things that the military did to try to, like, push back against the peacenick as, like, a sort of, like, ideal masculine archetype.
But I was, you know, because of my lineage, exposed to those ideas.
And there is, like, a longer history of.
Masculinity that is explicitly against militarism and violence.
I talk about in the book, the history of conscientious objectors.
You know, many men who like put their lives on the line, risked it all legally to like fight for peace.
And so, yeah, I mean, there is another way.
Like, and I sort of try to nod at what that might look like.
I mean, obviously, the military is like, you know, forever funded and it's so fucking hard to put any, to sort of make any headway against an institution that's of this size, but it's possible.
Yeah.
You never thought about joining the army or nothing?
Well, it's weird.
I think.
You were mad at your dad?
I like.
I mean, I think that all men in America at some point sort of like fantasize about righteous violence or like the appeal of the uniform.
I mean, mine's.
And like my sort of conflict around this, I mean, it's very corny, but like when I was 18, I got my first tattoo and it's a peace sign grenade.
And so, like, clearly, like, I had some, like, something inside me that wanted to be seen as tough.
I mean, I got a bunch of shit.
As a kid, for being like chubby and kind of like not very athletic and all the rest, so you sort of it's kind of impossible to totally avoid those inputs.
My parents like kept video games away from me, only showed me sexy movies, not violent ones.
Like they really did do their work to sort of Barbara.
What about Barbara?
Oh, because that's that's a little bit of both twine, she'll meet.
Yeah, well, that I actually haven't seen it, but I probably should.
I really love making it with Sydney.
Oh, yeah, I did hear that first in line.
No way it'll be as good.
Um, well, we know, yeah, probably not.
Um, yeah.
Yeah, it's weird.
I think about that too because it is like, I think a lot of our perception of masculine is either this like really corny Iron John shit where you're like, I need to be, I'm actually a sensitive guy in touch with Iron John.
Right, right, right.
I'm yelling it or whatever.
Or it's this like, you know, I am this disciplined fucking killer.
But the reality, listen, I don't spend a lot of time, I guess, thinking about masculinity.
I know a lot of people do now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because of like Andrew Tate or whatever, but also because of Trump and all this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
And I think that maybe for younger people, it is a more complicated issue.
I don't know.
Maybe I just, it's weird.
I think it's just, it gets a lot of airtime these days.
It does.
It's just funny because that is really still the military is still our kind of like number one thing.
Like, this is what makes you a man.
Right.
And I think that's because, okay, well, you're supposed to be instilled with the virtues of discipline, with physical and maybe mental bravery and fortitude.
But do we really get that in the military so much?
Some people do in the military, but most people in the military aren't fighting.
Like, most people don't get it.
They zero trigger time your entire time out there.
Right.
And, like, the vast majority of soldiers will never fire a shot in combat.
And, you know, so then, like, what are you doing?
You're learning how to get yelled at by somebody for pointless shit.
I guess it's good training for being an American, but it doesn't really, like, I don't know.
I don't really see how that makes you a man.
But then, what is a man?
You know what I'm saying?
I'm at my new documentary coming out of the Daily Wire.
I don't know.
You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, war is a powerfully attractive thing to people.
Yeah.
I mean, did you feel some of that when you went to Syria?
Like, what?
Or were you just like, I don't have anything fucking else to do?
When I went to Syria?
Yeah.
Like, was there a part of you that was like, I got to fucking man up and fight and here's a.
I mean, I, I, you know, as much as I would like to pretend that, like, that didn't factor into it all, of course it does.
Yeah.
I mean, these are these that, that, that decision was a, was an amalgamation of many things, uh, sort of brewing in my mind.
Um, And that certainly wasn't the main reason.
But yeah, of course it was.
That was a little different because it was certainly not an all male military.
And it was a very, our commander was a woman.
And it was, I think they approach it quite differently than a lot of maybe Western or professionalized armies do.
But yeah, I mean, of course, it's an attractive thing.
But I don't, it's weird because I've been both the recipient, especially in my younger days, and then the meter out of a certain amount of violence in my life.
But it's not very attractive to me.
You know, I don't really have fantasies, certainly not in my dotage.
I don't really have fantasies about.
Visiting sort of terror and violence upon other people.
I mean, sometimes I do, you know, but it's certainly once it actually happens, like once you're in these sort of situations or in battle or whatever, I don't know.
It's a lot of these notions that kind of go by the wayside.
Yeah.
I mean, there's this foundational lie that like man is inherently violent, which I just refuse to believe.
Like, man has, violence has been sort of man's defining vocation for throughout world history.
And there was something.
You can sort of understand the practical needs for that many moons ago when, like, you know, a country needed resources and access to the seas and all the rest.
But that doesn't mean it's like baked in and sort of intrinsic to what he needs to be fulfilled.
That is a lie that is perpetrated through, you know, a million different channels and in a million different ways.
I think that there's probably like certain, I mean, part of the debate about like masculinity and toxic masculinity is so reductive and it's kind of like.
Divorced from reality, and you're right.
I mean, like, I think man sort of has certain ingrained, like, a certain ingrained, like, recklessness and maybe thirst for chaos and things like that.
But that's not violence, it can lead to violence.
But like, there are ways to channel these maybe inherent instincts in positive ways.
Like, I think being militant, being sort of aggressive, like, depending on what it's about, is defensible and should be endorsed.
Yeah, and so like, the The conversation about like all men should be nurses, and like, I mean, and that's great.
I don't disparage that, but like, I just feel like the debate is not leading anywhere because the people on the left are just like so completely willfully blind to what actually makes a man.
Yeah.
And they sort of want him to, you know, like basically become a woman, which is not going to happen.
And there just needs to be a way to like realize I mean, like, men deal with anger in different ways.
Like, men are more angry than women generally.
And it's about not just like expunging anger, but like trying to like channel anger in a positive way.
Yeah.
And I think that like, I agree with like, like the whole thing about like, I think fighting in a war is because if you join the military, you get a, there's a purpose, right?
Like you're given a purpose, you're given a mission.
Right.
And having that is really important.
You know, I got to tell you, when I was, when I was back from, I've had a lot of, I've been really lucky to have a lot of missions in my life and goals and things that I work towards and struggle towards with other people.
Not always political, but sometimes.
But when I was young, I had a fairly adventurous life and it really did fulfill something in me.
And I felt like I had some kind of purpose.
And then as you get older, maybe that sort of drifts away or you get out of college and there's not like something, you're not kind of given this structure that's sort of built up around you.
And I think that a lot of people just don't know what to do with themselves.
And I think with young men, they don't know what to do with themselves.
It becomes very crazy.
But for me, I remember I got back from war and I did feel like empty.
Yeah.
And I did sort of feel meaningless.
And then we kind of hatched up this plan with the brewery that I went and worked at.
And that was like something that I was like, okay, well, actually, now I have something to focus on.
Like now I have like a mission that I need to do.
And like, you know, I'm taking orders again and I'm, you know, and I'm being disciplined and I'm doing all of these things.
And I think that is really important.
And it fulfills the exact same thing, which is like a purpose.
And I think a lot of people rightfully feel like they are completely purposeless in life because, like, well, what is your purpose?
Is it to have indolent fun?
You know what I mean?
Is it to, like, play video games as much as possible?
Is it to, you know, I don't know.
Is it to fuck as many girls as possible?
Is it to get as drunk as possible?
Like, well, what is the purpose of that?
It's to give you pleasure or to distract you from things?
Like, I think that people intrinsically, and I'm not talking about, I'm not trying to be reductive just to men here.
Like, everybody, because women have this too.
It's you, you, you, Strive for this higher meaning.
You want meaning in your life.
And, like, I think for a lot of people, the military is still one of the only things in society that says, We will give you meaning.
And I think that's really important to recognize that, like, that is like the one thing that says, We will give you.
And, like, I think you see a lot of these, like, sort of like masculine or whatever influence, which is such a ridiculous concept.
And by the way, it's like, I don't know.
I mean, it's not the kind of, Thing that I would consume.
And I don't really understand why people do, but I guess in a certain sense that I do.
These people could have given you reasons why these things aren't in your life, you know, like the sort of red pill kind of guys or whatever, you know, whether it's women or the Yehudis or whatever, it's like, or the blacks or, you know, all the, it's, it's, they kind of give you a reason that you don't have a purpose.
But that's, you know, it's, it's, it's because.
Gambling for Meaning00:04:20
The society doesn't need you to have a purpose.
Capitalism doesn't require you to have a purpose.
Your purpose is to get up and go work in the morning.
Right.
But we are all engaged on this great collective project of mankind.
But so much of our sort of smoke and mirrors and bread and circuses of society is meant to distract you from that.
I mean, you're a workaholic, right?
Yeah.
Like all you give a fuck about is like the next thing.
Because you're an energetic reporter.
Yeah.
We didn't even have you on to talk about the gambling thing.
And I'll tell you why.
I was a little jealous.
Yeah, I'm not even joking.
Well, I forgot, but it was a good article.
You wrote an article on Harper's about gambling and going to Vegas, and I was like, fuck, I wanted to do that.
Um, not for Harper's, but I just wanted to gamble.
We should hit the casino.
I would love that.
Here, oh, the new one, the Nas one.
We should Nas is a part of it.
Yeah, let's do casino night here.
Actually, let's do 24 hours in the casino.
I would do that.
Um, I'd be down.
Can you, yeah, you have you gambled, brother?
I'm not a gambler.
Have you ever gambled?
Um, no, I've been in casinos and I kind of have like a point of I'll hang out and not do it.
I need to be a therapist because there's repression here that I need to because I think it's one of those things where I'm like, what if I really like it?
So I don't want to, like, if I did heroin, I'd probably really like it.
It's awesome, so I don't want to try.
Do you have an addictive personality?
No, I just yeah, you're fairly a regimented guy.
Yeah, I like to do, but when I start doing something, I get really into it.
I'm sure you do.
Yeah, that's why I won't get like a modular synthesizer because I'm like, well, I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole.
So, I don't gamble.
Yeah.
I'm going to tell you.
Maybe one day.
I'm just not getting to it yet.
But, like, brother, you might really like it.
You're forgetting the second part of that.
You might be really good at it.
I probably would be.
So, what if you respect?
What if you really like it?
And what if you're really good?
I just don't have the time.
Because I'd have to dedicate myself to it.
Here's the deal with casinos you actually, time loses all meaning.
Yeah.
Time loses all meaning.
And they pump in air.
I just got a lot of other stuff to do.
But once you're in there, there's a.
I'll get to it.
I'll get to it.
There's this lady that I've been trying to come on the show to talk about gambling.
We should go to the fucking casino.
Let's hear it.
So, why didn't you have me on for the gambling piece?
I actually just forgot.
Oh.
But I wanted to have you on.
But I had.
In reality, I was like, fuck.
That's a really good piece.
It was because it was a good piece.
Well, McKay Cobbins at the fucking Atlantic got all the goddamn stuff.
Talk about stealing valor.
What happened?
The Atlantic did like a similar story by some Mormon writer there who was like, oh, God.
And I got like.
It's funnier that a Mormon did it.
It's funny.
Let's be real.
They gave him like $10,000.
They gave him $10,000?
I got like 500 bucks from Harper's and ended up losing like $1,000 of my own money.
How much was the Mormon up?
I didn't even read his piece because I was pissed off.
But I think he lost it all.
But he also wasn't.
He just like was trying to lose it all for the sake of the story.
He lost his money at a fucking casino.
It's the place where you go.
Put it all.
I know.
That's what I tell my girlfriend.
It's just, she doesn't like the gambling, huh?
She doesn't like it.
They don't like the gambling.
But you know what?
The ladies at the casino do.
Yeah.
Because when I start winning, they crowd around me.
And they bring me a big bottle of champagne with a little Twizzly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, gambling feels good.
But I guess that's what young men are into is sports gambling, huh?
Yeah, I mean, it's also fleeting.
But like, yeah.
Gambling, you feel risk, you feel meaning, highs, highs, low, lows, emotion.
There are all of these just like very synthetic versions of meaning that are circulating now.
Like, I mean, fucking Scott Galloway, who's kind of like the left's alpha bro man guy, is like, you just got to make money.
You got to make money.
That's how you create meaning.
That's how you create meaning.
This guy?
Yeah.
I guess he's so high T, he doesn't have hair.
Yeah, he's high T, but he doesn't have hair, but he's got Botox.
Then that's manly?
No, it's not.
But I guess I'm just like, oh God.
Yeah, he's got a podcast with Kara Swisher.
Yes, sir.
I'll follow you into battle anywhere.
I don't know.
It's just weird because there is this desire that we all have, right?
Urge to Conquer Europe00:10:21
There is this urge to conquer and to have meaning.
I have one piece of art in my room.
Um, and it's, it's that, uh, it's this, I guess, what is it, etching, um, by Durr, Night, Death, and the Devil, you know, the famous one with the knight sort of going through there, uh, and the devil's being nasty near him, and the death is kind of, you know, is on the white horse.
He's looking all fucked up.
Um, and I was like, I was, I bought it a while ago, and I was like, looking at it, I was like, weird.
I just, I like it, I face it when I go to sleep, and I'm like, I guess I do just want to be that, you know what I mean?
Um, and, you know, I'm a podcaster, so it's, you know, but, but, uh, You know, no disrespect to podcasting, it's a very noble profession.
But there is this urge that we all have.
And I think that you do a good job of elucidating why it is just not going to be fulfilled in the Army.
In fact, it's kind of fruity with it to do it.
Way fruity with it.
Which is obviously, I'm just joking around there.
But I don't know, man.
It needs to be another war against the U.S.
I think that the young, disaffected men of America need a chance to be turncoats.
You know what I'm saying?
Because they always say the Chinese go to war with us.
I'm not, listen, I'm not taking a side.
I'm not taking a side.
You always say this when I'm on the show.
You say you're not taking a side.
I'm not taking a side.
I'm neutral in the war of China versus the U.S., but I just got to say, they don't seem to struggle with some of these same problems.
Well, actually, what's your plan for invading China?
How do we do it?
If the U.S. was going to invade China, do we go sneaky on it?
How can we be sneaky on it?
They're across the ocean.
Tunnels.
It's true.
A crazy ass tunnel thing.
And also, I'm totally wrong.
They have a crazy issue with masculinity in China.
But I don't know.
I guess I would trick them somehow.
I would convince them.
I would try to go on like a decades long thing to provoke a war between China and Russia, probably between some territory like Mongolia or whatever.
And when they have all their guys on that side of the country, I would invade from this side.
Oh, baby.
And then we, me and the Russians, who I've convinced to fight them, because this is like in 2065.
Melvin Putin, his great grandson, who's now the prime minister, we squish them.
But reality, what I would do is I would have them come here.
I would provoke a war with China and I would get them to invade the U.S.
And a lot of Americans are like, well, they'll never stand up against some tweakers in West Virginia.
They won't need to go to West Virginia.
They'll just take over the major arteries of the country.
You're in the backwoods.
Stay there.
But, and then I would just subject them to Americans.
You know what I mean?
Culturally.
Culturally.
They'd have to imagine.
Culture war.
Imagine.
We would destroy them in a culture war.
And I just got to be honest.
Against, like, and I'm not saying that they would adopt our culture.
I think that they would be so confused by many aspects of our culture.
But they have TikTok.
They invented TikTok.
I know.
And that's their greatest.
And they have those small little trucks that everybody wants.
Small little trucks.
I don't know.
I would probably just surrender and then leave them confused.
Like the second war started, I'd be like, oh my God, I surrender, I surrender.
And then they'd be like, oh my God, this is great.
We won so quickly.
It's like, you remember how they had the French, like Hitler made the French sign the surrender document in the same train car that the Germans did in World War I?
I would get all the leaders of the country I was fighting to come to a place to sign the document.
MP5 briefcase.
Total decapitation strike.
And then their security shoots me.
It's not me.
It's a guy, crazy plastic surgery with Kevlar underneath it.
So, in fact, you think he's dead.
He's got another MP5 briefcase.
No, we're in 2065.
It's like an MP10.
Because it's like crazy Sonic.
But then, what if they get an odd job style guy who can throw those hats that have knives in them, like 007?
Guess what?
I stop time.
I grab the hat.
I put it on my head.
I give it a saucy little slant and I go, hello, mister.
And I do my best Cockney accent.
This odd job guy, what is he, 2065?
That means he is 40 years old now.
He is six years old today.
He is growing up watching the awesome show, The Peaky Blinders.
And so when he sees me with my little odd job hat, tilted it aside, my cravat, my English rose on my bosom, he goes, oh my God, this guy reminds me of The Peaky fucking Blinders.
And then he's like, I can't fuck with him because I saw what they did in that TV show.
And so, first of all, and I'm so, I'm apologizing to all the guys I just killed because I do have honor.
Because you are a gentleman.
I'm a gentleman.
I did trick them.
I'm so sorry for smoking you guys at this fucking crazy trick I did.
Your security, you now work for me, you know?
And I treat the world like a mafia.
I take over their army.
I come out, I come out fucking like Mashima style on the balcony.
And instead of being called like, you're gay by all the guys down, like, that's how he killed himself.
I would go out in the balcony.
I'd be like, listen, I've destroyed your leaders in hand-to-hand combat.
You work for me now.
And we're going to take over the world.
I combine my army with China's army.
Bam.
Europe, or no, we go Central Asia first.
Belt and Road, we put it because now I control both countries.
They put in all those fucking crazy intersections and stuff.
We're through Kazakhstan, we're all this shit in like two hours.
We're in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.
We skip it.
We skip it.
We take one look at Afghanistan and say, not on my watch.
I'm no different.
We go to Pakistan.
I'd say, hello.
Guys, India's about to nuke you.
You guys got to nuke them.
Nuke each other.
Wow, wow, wow.
What about a guy comes?
I am from the Wagner group.
What do you do with them?
Interesting.
We do have an episode about that coming up.
I say, oh my God, you're a mercenary?
You work for me now.
Yes, sir.
There we go.
Thank you so much.
It's easy.
Or I do the same thing that Putin did, which is blow him out of the sky.
Crazy to be in a plane like that.
We get to Europe.
I buy the craziest.
You know, kind of Monte Cristo?
He buys the craziest house and he makes everyone think he's the biggest baller ever.
I buy Luxembourg.
No, fuck that.
I buy Lichtenstein and I go in there.
But then Zorro shows up.
Smoke his ass.
He's got a rapier.
He can't even deflect bullets with a rapier.
But look, a telegraph from the Pope.
The Pope?
I'm Jewish.
Don't recognize your authority.
And in fact, I install an anti Pope.
I install an anti Pope who is woman, gay, black.
Oh, you don't like my new Pope.
Interesting.
Europe tears itself apart in a woke versus anti woke Catholic civil war.
I'm sitting there in Lichtenstein.
No go zone.
No go zone.
First of all, we ethically cleanse all Catholics out of the city to begin with.
But no go zone.
You guys cannot come in here.
But then, ring ring.
It's your girl from Casablanca and she misses you.
Where are you, Bracey?
She would be speaking Arabic.
I'm not going to do that.
I would say that's incredible that you mentioned that because we are coming down south now that Europe is in ruins.
And I am greeted in Africa, in North Africa, which is part of Africa, as the liberator.
And I come down there and I say, listen, I'm talking to you.
I earned the Appalachian white chocolate immediately.
And I'm in Africa and I'm like, I am bringing, we are making the United States of Africa.
We are making the United States of, we are doing Gaddafi's dream.
We are making the United States of Africa.
I make it one country.
Cause you know how they're always like, oh, you think Africa is just, you think that's a country, right?
No, it's actually a continent.
You know how they say that?
Well, guess what?
Two birds, one stone.
Now it's a country and a continent.
First in history.
First in fucking history.
And then the Reconquista.
I invade the United States using my army of the US and China.
And now, well, Europe is in ruins, but my African army, my Indian and Pakistan armies, because I stopped the nukes at the last minute and I said, just tricked you.
But look how easily our minds are fucked with.
Make peace.
They do.
Every army in the world is now at my back.
South America, I forgot about, but I'll get to there in a second.
We reinvade America.
We institute a new kind of political system that you've never even heard of.
What's it called?
It is called, what was Gaddafi's?
The Green Book, Third Political Theory?
Yeah, something like that.
That's the third way, wasn't it?
What's Dugan's?
I don't know.
Eurasia?
I just made, you know what?
We just call it Brace.
Yeah.
We just call it Brace.
The Belden Method.
The Belden Method.
Well, the Belden Method implements Brace.
Okay.
And so we just have Brace now.
And then we all go down south, and they've been watching this kind of shit from their fucking everywhere from the adobe houses on the plains to the wooden houses in the Andes.
Everybody has seen that I've conquered the world, and I go down there and they're like, Fuck, this dude probably doesn't even speak Spanish.
And I say, I still win the fedora.
Me llamo Brace.
Crowd goes fucking crazy!
And I agreed to rename it Football Everywhere.
We're all pronouncing it like that now.
And I was like, And Pele, we're making him the new pope.
Because both the other popes killed each other.
Is Pele dead?
They are perished, unfortunately.
New Book Coming May 14th00:02:26
Yeah.
But as is all of Europe.
Then.
Of course, we are going to the Arctic.
And unfortunately, there is, I do discover a city.
And that city is made of obscene obelisks, horrible shapes that you could never even comprehend in your mind.
And I'm like, fuck, dude, I thought I was supposed to conquer this.
South America was so easy.
They got bought off by that Pele maneuver.
Oh, I gotta get down.
And inside of one of these obelisks, what do you think I find?
You find a small piece of obsidian.
That's fucking facts, bro.
It's so fucked up.
I find a small piece of obsidian.
I put it in the wall.
Door opens, obelisk opens, it's a fucking portal.
Oh shit.
I go in there and I discover there's in fact an entire other world under ours, and our world goes to war with the subterranean world.
The kingdom of the crystal skull.
Kingdom of the crystal skull.
So that's basically what I would do if China invaded America.
Jasper Craven, thank you so much for coming on the show.
God forgives, brothers don't.
What day is it now?
It is May 12th.
This is coming out on May 14th.
May 19th.
May 19th.
This episode is coming out on May 14th.
Double correction, both wrong.
A public episode, I pray.
It is a public episode.
It is a public episode that we are releasing on our new tier, which has zero subscribers.
God Forgives Brothers Don't, which we didn't even talk about that.
It's in the book, though.
It's in the book.
Yeah, there's an interesting, fun little story about the Aryan Brotherhood that concerns the book's title.