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Jan. 31, 2024 - Viva & Barnes
01:29:56
Live with Viva Barnes Law Locals Supporter Ginger Ninja!
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Time Text
These agreements require employees of the government of candidates that access these documents to sign confidentiality agreements.
And why is that?
Why is there much more reductions, as my colleague said, in these documents than in other documents?
It's because these documents were signed at the beginning of a pandemic, when everybody was desperate for vaccines, when companies were being told to rush vaccine production.
Do testing in an unprecedented way in a way they normally don't do it.
So these companies were exposed to way higher liability putting their products on the market than they normally would because they didn't do the type of testing that normally takes these drugs years to come to market.
They did it all in less than a year.
So that's why these companies said if I'm going to deliver you this product that I haven't tested in my normal way, I want to have different conditions.
And with countries around the world competing with each other to get these, the countries had less leverage than they normally do.
For example, if we were entering into flu vaccine contracts or monkeypox contracts or other things that were normally available, this would be a different issue.
But these are already signed.
They were signed at a time the government didn't have that leverage in negotiations.
We just wanted to sign as many vaccine contracts with as many producers as possible because Canadians were desperate for vaccines.
And in the end, it worked out.
We got vaccines and we were one of the countries that got to vaccinate everybody the fastest.
Do you know how hard it is for me to not interrupt that steaming pile of verbal diarrhea that we just watched?
And also, it's not by accident that I didn't maximize the screen.
I could have maximized it, but I did want everyone to see my tweet.
Because yes, people, I've started swearing, and I was thinking about this the other day.
I don't think that I've changed.
I'm an idiot.
I don't think that I've changed.
I think I've stayed pretty much the same.
And for anybody who thinks, oh, Viva, you've totally changed.
Once upon a time, you were clean cut and you had the skin fade and you were a lawyer.
And you guys didn't know what I was like in high school.
You guys didn't see what I looked like when I was playing squash and I had hair down to my shoulders and it was streak blonde.
And they say, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I've always had the urge to tell people to go fuck themselves when they act like a bunch of...
Raging jackasses.
But for a while, I said that politeness will win.
For a while, I didn't even want to touch politics.
Don't talk politics.
And politeness will win.
Well, I'm done with that.
I haven't changed.
I've just now removed the filter that had been keeping me back from telling someone they're acting like a jackass when they're acting like a jackass.
Now, it's a two-way street.
I expect people to tell me that I'm acting like a jackass if they think I'm acting like a jackass.
Never let this video disappear, people.
These were the motherfuckers telling us to follow the science.
And you have to.
I mean, I've played this video at least five times.
I've tweeted this video out at least five times.
You know what's amazing is it gets progressively harder and harder to find this video whenever I Google it.
Now I'm going to interrupt it for a bit.
I've done this before, but I'm going to do it again one more time just to highlight.
What the hell Anthony Howe's father, Minister of Procurement in Canada, admitted to when he offered a much more honest answer than he should have.
Get the volume up.
These agreements require employees of the government of Canada that access these documents to sign confidentiality agreements.
And why is that?
Why is that?
Tell me.
Why is there much more reductions, as my colleague said, in these documents than in other documents?
Because we don't want you knowing how badly we screwed you.
I, my goodness, sunlight is the greatest disinfectant.
Why would there be more redactions than usual?
Because we don't want you to see what we've done to you.
It's because these documents were signed at the beginning of a pandemic.
Rush.
Everybody was desperate for vaccines.
Desperation.
When companies were being told to rush.
Rush production.
Rush production, by the way.
It's a very important distinction.
There were a number of recalls because there was very little, if any, oversight of production.
Rushing production is a little bit different than rushing development, which he gets to right now.
When companies were being told to rush vaccine production, do testing in an unprecedented way, in a way they normally don't do it.
Call that what you want.
Putting their products on the market than they normally would.
More liability for rushing production, rushing development.
So what did they want?
Immunity.
Because they didn't do the type of testing that normally takes these drugs years to come to market.
They did it all in less than a year.
It's a magic how they made like seven to ten years trials.
Just boom, one year.
And I'm the conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer who took two of these things.
So that's why these companies said if I'm going to deliver you this product that I haven't tested in my normal way.
Immunity.
It's called immunity.
And why did we buckle?
And why did we bend the knee, bend over backwards to give you immunity?
Because we had whipped up the public into a total frenzy.
They just wanted something.
Just hook it to my veins, to quote Gimble Gumbel.
And with companies, all countries around the world competing with each other to get these, the countries had less leverage than they normally do.
For example, if we were entering into flu.
We didn't have leverage to negotiate well.
Normally available, this would be a different issue.
But these are already signed.
They were signed at a time the government didn't have that leverage.
We got exploited.
We just wanted to sign as many vaccine contracts with as many producers as possible.
Canadians were desperate for vaccines.
Desperate.
In the end, it worked out.
We got vaccines.
Yeah, you got something.
We were one of the countries that got to vaccinate everybody the fastest.
Garbage in, garbage out.
People, I wasn't going to do a show today.
This feels like it's going to turn into a show because I'm looking at our man of the hour.
The amazing thing is there are going to be so many of you out there who have no idea who this person is because he's...
Not someone that might be known on the aggregate interwebs, but he's certainly known within our locals community.
This is a tradition we have, and I'm bringing it back, but I'm bringing it back with a bit of a tweak because the old system was good, but it got too complicated to make it fluid.
In our locals community, vivabarneslaw.locals.com, for those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Viva Frye, David Fryeheit, former Montreal litigator turned current Florida rumbler.
We have an amazing...
VivaBarnesLaw.locals.com community.
We've got, I think, 116,000 members.
That's not 116,000 supporters, but we've got 116,000 community members.
We've got an amazing community at VivaBarnesLaw.locals.com.
There's a ton of content that is available for everybody.
We have our supporters as well.
And so one of the perks that we came up with at the community is what we call Locals Chats.
We take someone who's a supporter who wants to submit themselves to the...
What's the word?
The proverbial digital colonoscopy that is appearing on the interwebs.
It's out there forever.
People can see everything about your life.
And so we do these interviews periodically.
And I was trying to do it like in a democratic, random way.
Say, who wants to do it?
And then I randomly select the number.
Then we orchestrate, organize, etc.
It became very difficult to do the timing.
And I said, screw it.
Everyone get in the list and I'm going to pick you.
And we're going to pick it this way.
Because we've got an amazing community with people with stories to tell.
Life experiences.
I just spat.
Sorry about that.
Life experiences to share with the world.
And all of the locals' conversations that we've done have been absolutely amazing and astonishing.
From psychologists, I want to say forensic psychologists, to students who are studying music, to former veterans.
Well, they're always veterans.
It's been amazing.
Ginger Ninja was a gamer.
We're going to see about that.
Dude, I'm going to ask all my questions.
So we're just going to do it this way.
And Jeanette Victoria, I know you're watching.
You might be next on the list.
So the good list, you know, not the bad list.
Not the center for countering digital hate list that I seem to have made myself onto.
So those of you who are watching, you're going to have a discussion with a member of our vivabarneslaw.locals.com community.
You know, it won't be Taylor Swift, but everybody.
is singularly unique in their life experience and have stories and insights to share with the world.
And I know, I met Ginger Ninja when we were at the Tennessee meetup and it's amazing.
And he's amazing and that's it.
Okay, now, let me just make sure I'm, we're live everywhere here.
So we're live on vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
We're live on Rumble by the looks of it.
Yep, we are.
And where else?
And we're live on YouTube.
And I'm not going to cut it on YouTube for this because it's, I don't know, it's not going to be a marathon stream and I don't really want to, I'm going to interrupt the discussion.
Maybe I will.
We'll see if I change my mind halfway through.
So, oh yeah, and by the way, all that to say, one other thing here.
I picked a bad time to go live because I was doing another episode of The Unusual Suspects.
And I'm going to give everybody the link.
So I'm simultaneously on two places on the interwebs right now.
But go watch the episode of The Unusual Suspects.
It's a great show on Patrick Bet David's Valuetainment.
I periodically show up as a guest.
It's not a far drive, so I appreciate getting out of the house and having discussions with other people.
Go watch it afterwards.
Share some love.
Hey, double watch.
Watch it at the same time.
I'll share the link with everybody so that this can be value-added for the unusual suspects.
And it's a premiere now, but it's on the internet.
You can go watch it afterwards.
We talked about Eugene Carroll, or at least that was my subject.
Taylor Swift, that was someone else's subject.
And a number of other stuff.
Okay, Ginger Ninja has been patiently waiting in the back.
Ginger, sir, I got my first question lined up.
You ready to come in?
Sir, how goes the battle?
Not bad, not bad.
There might be echo.
Do you have headphones?
I do have headphones.
Let me try just unplugging my mic.
Hold on.
Maybe what I'll do is this.
I'm going to go echo cancellation audio.
Can I do that on my end?
Echo cancellation.
Now, is that going to work?
That made it look better.
I can also turn this down a little bit.
I'm using my wife's iPad because I don't have my laptop.
I have to sync my...
You know what?
I think it's good now.
No, no.
It's good now.
So everybody understands.
Well, actually, let me see if anybody...
Here's this.
Is there echo?
Can't hear him.
Hold on one second.
Is there echo?
Can't hear him.
Boomer.
Let me see.
It's not on my end.
He's low.
Okay, so hold on.
Maybe they mean they can't hear you because you're low.
Okay.
Hold on.
Let me see what locals has to say.
Let's see here.
I'm asking locals now.
Do you happen to have headphones while we're doing this?
I do.
I'll just have to pair them with the iPad.
Okay, do that.
I'll take you out, and then I'll bring you back in.
I've got more to rant about.
Don't worry.
Okay, while Ginger Ninja does that, and now some of you might understand why his nickname is Ginger Ninja, I'm going to talk about just one piece of news that just came out today.
Do you remember once upon a time?
Okay.
Once upon a time, we were called crazy conspiracy theorists.
For stating the obvious and for knowing, for knowing things.
I mean, just bottom line.
Did you hear?
I mean, it's a freaking joke.
I see the article and I think it's a Babylon Bee article.
You heard who, John, not John.
Damn it, I just let the cat out of the bag.
You heard who Joe Biden appointed today for his czar of the environment?
Don't go to the punchline!
Sorry, here.
Disclosed TV.
Are we looking at the same thing here?
Justin, Biden will tap John Podesta, probably the wrong word, descriptive there, to replace outgoing U.S., quote, special climate envoy.
Envoy?
Whatever that, envoy.
John Kerry.
WAPO.
John Podesta.
It's an amazing thing.
Like, on the internet, I tell people, what did I just do?
I tell people, you can recycle video concepts.
A video that went viral seven years ago, can go viral again and all you have to do is recreate the video because it's a generational memory on the internet and people forget after you know seven years to whatever people seem to have forgotten who the hell John Podesta is and so I just asked you know the obvious question is John Podesta's art collection environmentally friendly or is it oil-based because it seems that people forget about the amazing It
seems that some people forget that John Podesta was one of the objects of the Pizzagate scandal.
The Pizzagate, which has now been turned into something of a fiction, even though there's some elements of it that are quite, quite real.
He was part of the Hillary Clinton email hack.
This is his artwork, by the way, just in his house.
And apparently he has a statue of Jeffrey Dahmer.
But there was even one other better one.
I had one question.
Is his artwork...
You know, is it oil-based or environmentally friendly?
I was like, no, no, you know, hold on a second.
Got a second question.
And the second question was this.
If I can get it.
Yeah, the second question was this.
Hold on, I'm going to put this in incognito just so I don't accidentally bring up any DMs.
Not because I have anything bad in DMs, just because I have numbers in there.
The second question was this.
In his environmentally friendly universe, are they going to be using...
Wood stoves or gas ovens for their cheese pizza?
Everyone seems to have forgotten about this amazing doozy of a tweet, of an email that was hacked.
They were talking about whether or not they forgot a map.
Listen to this.
Oh my god.
Hey John, the realtor found a handkerchief.
I think it's a map that seems pizza related.
Is it yours?
They can send it if you want.
I know you're busy, so feel free not to respond if it's not yours or you don't want it.
Susanner.
It's mine, but not worth worrying about.
I found a handkerchief with a map.
Map means minor attracted persons, just for anybody, you know, and it seems pizza related.
What the flaming hell are they talking about?
Oh yeah, but Pizzagate was a total, total thing.
Just collective memory, everybody.
Look up who John Podesta is.
If they didn't, you know, if you had any doubts as to whether or not the climate thing Uh, ruse than anything else.
They've just appointed John Podesta to the czar to replace John Kerry.
Okay.
Uh, look him up.
Look him up.
Alright, then Ginger, bringing you back in.
Sir, let's see if this is better.
Are we doing any better?
Holy cows, yeah, you came in hot.
Hold on.
Okay, sorry.
We were gonna do the audio check before.
Just like, nah, don't worry about it.
I'm gonna bring...
I'm gonna bring in your mic.
Edit mic settings.
Hold on.
Automatically reduce.
Give me a mic check and tell us who you are.
Mic check.
One, two.
I'm getting kind of close to the camera.
Let's see if I can...
I'm tall, but I'm not that tall.
Okay, good.
I think...
Good volume now.
Awesome.
Ginger, I don't want to divulge your real name if you don't want to divulge it.
You want to tell the world who you are?
Yeah.
I'm Luke.
Born and raised in Tennessee.
Eastern Tennessee.
Yeah.
I don't know how somebody found out I was a gamer.
I don't know if they guessed, but that is where Ginger Ninja came from, was my gamer tag in 2008, 2005 maybe, on Xbox Live.
Oh man, I already have too many questions.
Ginger, this is the first time I've ever been aligned in a screen where the person is 6 '6 and makes me look like the proper 5 '6 that I am.
We met in real life.
You're an amazingly tall human.
Yeah, well, the boat was leaning, and so it lifted me up a little bit.
Yeah, right.
Thank you.
Ginger, okay, man, so let me start from the beginning.
How old are you?
I know I know this already, but do you mind telling the world?
That's a good question.
I am 31. You're 31. So you're playing gaming on Xbox.
I'm going to get into that in a way second.
Born and raised where in Tennessee?
Just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.
What was the size of the town that you're born in?
The area is Lenore City.
I don't know, probably 30,000 people at the time.
But Knoxville is pretty big.
I don't know the population of Knoxville.
But too big for me.
I don't live in Knoxville anymore.
Knoxville itself would have been too big.
And Knoxville is not a massive city, right?
It's probably half the size of Nashville.
It's a good-sized town.
I don't know.
The population size is too big for me still.
I mean, UT is there.
The UT Vols in Knoxville, University of Tennessee.
Okay.
And now, let's start from the beginning.
How many generations American are you?
I do not know how many generations American generations in America.
It goes back a ways.
Irish.
As you could tell by the facial hair, Irish, Scotch-Irish, family, I don't know, been in the Appalachian Mountains for a long time from all that I know.
Well, you say Irish to the ginger.
You could have been Scottish.
You could have been Lebanese.
You could have been recessive gene.
Scotch-Irish, mostly.
Very cool.
And so...
And 31 years old, and so you, I mean, okay, siblings, what did your parents do?
So yeah, my dad's a civil engineer.
My mom's a stay-at-home mom.
I'm a third of seven kids, six boys, and then a girl.
The girl's the youngest.
Okay, I'm sorry.
So they went, your mother obviously was saying, we need to have another kid until we have a girl.
Apparently, yeah.
They quit after that.
Seven kids.
Luckily, they didn't have her first.
You know, they didn't just have one kid, I reckon.
Well, no, they would have had six girls.
They would have kept going until they had a boy.
You know, we're five kids, and I'm the youngest of five, and my mom just wanted one girl.
But she went, boy, boy, girl.
And then, in theory, stopped.
I don't know if I'm allowed saying this.
And then my brother was apparently the product of a faulty diaphragm.
And I was the product of her being too scared to go get her tubes tied.
They made Nookie Nookie, and then out came Viva.
A faulty diaphragm?
Dude, I hope I'm not going to get in trouble.
I think they're lying about that.
That doesn't sound like a faulty diaphragm causes a pregnancy.
Dude, so what number are you of the seven?
Three.
Three.
Okay, so you've got four younger.
Well, I mean, what's life growing up with seven kids in the family?
Most people don't have anything close to that of an experience.
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
It was a good time.
We were homeschooled.
Both of my parents, college educated.
My mom has a degree in computer science, but that's back when computers used those punch cards and worked in Binance and stuff like that, I think, back in the 80s when she got her degree.
So it was good.
I liked having a bunch of siblings.
We could, you know, hang out with the ones we liked at the time and leave the other ones.
You know, you go through phases where you get along with different siblings.
I mean, if I was just stuck with one sibling and we didn't really get along too well together, I don't think that would be too much fun.
What was the age gap from first to last?
Or what is the age gap?
16 years.
Shut up!
Up!
All from your mom?
Yes.
I'm going to ask the totally crass question.
No twins.
Nope.
And all births.
That's amazing.
16 years!
So how old was your mom when she had the seventh?
42, 43. Okay.
Getting up there.
It's not that long.
I'm trying to talk Marion into another one, but I think we're done.
You guys should do it.
You should do it.
I think Ethan would love having a younger one.
It would be amazing.
We're going to see Andrew Dice Clay this Friday, so who knows what happens after?
I don't know if it's a two-drink minimum, but who knows what happens?
Ginger, so a religious upbringing or no?
Yeah, we're all Christians.
And you go to church?
Yep.
All right.
After this, go on to church.
When we get off here, I'm going to church.
Hold on.
Why?
It's Wednesday.
Yeah.
We do Wednesday night during the week, Bible classes, Sunday morning Bible classes, and then service.
Very cool.
All right, man.
So tell me, if you don't mind saying, and I don't think I remember, but I think I should know, what do you do in life?
Sorry, I got distracted by the chat.
I'm watching the chat on my phone.
I am a Finnish carpenter now.
I tried to go to school for mechanical engineering.
That didn't work.
Calc-based physics kicked my butt twice.
And then, so now I'm a Finnish carpenter.
I actually, I joined the Air Force.
I was in the Air Force for three years and then tried.
Anyways, I don't know.
I don't know how fast you want to roll through this stuff.
Well, the military service, I always...
Not I love diving into, but I love diving into it.
Curious, yeah.
Because also, it'll fit into...
We have an ongoing promise that when I come back up to Tennessee, you're going to take me to a range and show me property.
You told me, don't go to a range here because you'll learn the bad habits, but...
I would just like to...
To claim you, but no, no, no.
If you can make it to a gun range with somebody that can teach you stuff, do it.
But yeah, I'm glad you remember that.
You know, I'm going to hold you to it.
Dude, there's things I don't forget, and then there's things I can't remember.
Typically names, but concepts.
So you go to the, you said Air Force.
Yeah, so...
Went to college for two years.
Dropped out after I couldn't pass physics because that was an essential course.
I was like, well, I just can't cut it.
I could do the calculus, but the other science stuff was too difficult.
And I did spend too much time playing Call of Duty as well.
That didn't help my grades.
I've gotten rid of the gaming consoles eight years ago, so I don't play anything because it's too addicting.
I joined the Air Force.
I was an F-15 sheet metal mechanic.
Structures shop.
So, manufacturing the skins and repairing the steel and aluminum and titanium on the F-15s.
Stationed in Idaho and I got medically discharged after three years.
So, I wasn't going to re-enlist anyways at year four.
It's all good.
And so medically discharged means that you don't go back, you don't have to go back, and then you're off to civilian life for the rest of your life.
Right.
Yeah, so I started having epileptic seizures, some minor ones that I didn't know what they were, in basic training.
And they got worse and worse, more severe, more often.
Finally went to the doctor about it.
And they did EEG, CT scans, all that stuff.
And we're like, yeah, you're having seizures.
And so it's taken them a while to get that under control.
But they won't tell me what it's service-connected for.
And I'm going to ask the medical questions.
Nothing about a tumor or anything putting pressure on the brain that they identified?
No, but it did happen in basic training out of the blue right after going through the assembly line with all the nurses on both sides if you like cattle.
So they won't tell you what caused it, but they said my service caused it.
So you can put two and two together there.
Don't want to get us kicked off of YouTube.
Dude, I don't care about that anymore, but I think I've put two and two together.
Dense Viva, um, put it together.
Interesting.
And so, um, medically discharged.
So then, and then what they, I mean, this is what I also always found fascinating is you're either you leave the military or you come back from whatever, and they punch you off into civilian life.
What, what do they, I mean, what, what do you go do once you get out of the military?
So I used my GI bill, um, to try to go back to school and, uh, decided to.
Take another shot at engineering, civil engineering at that time.
Also, maybe so.
Also, didn't succeed past, so just started looking for work, and general contractor took me on.
I mean, I had been working on aircraft.
I've always been pretty handy with...
Power tools, all that stuff.
But we're doing some repairs on the F-15s, measuring to the thousandth of an inch.
So reading a tape measure to a sixteenth and stuff was no big deal.
So I got into the finished carpentry business and just a cabinet installer mostly.
Now Ginger, I'm going to bring this on.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
Okay, that's good because I want to do this.
Shitballs.
Everybody.
For those who don't know, this is what Ginger Ninja, the board, produced because I had these pieces of chess since 1999.
I'll get that after.
I had those chess pieces since 1999 from France.
They were the most expensive thing I bought back in the day.
I think they were like $350.
And I don't...
I don't use them, never use them, and I was telling everybody, and Ginger said, he asked for the dimensions of the pieces, right?
I think that's how it started, and then sent me that, and made a video about how he did it.
Yep.
Gone Rumble, Ginger Ninja 1776 is the channel name, and it's one of the older videos about six months ago.
Now I've got a question, though, about the gaming.
So you're gaming on an Xbox.
This is after the military.
Before and after, yeah.
Before and after.
And I mean, I don't know what gaming on an Xbox looks like.
I've never done it.
I've got the old NES, but I've never had that bug.
What's gaming like on an Xbox?
What do you do?
I mostly just got into the Call of Duty games.
So, you know, you got your Xbox controller and playing Modern Warfare, Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2, all that stuff.
Yeah, first-person shooters.
So just running around killing people, I reckon.
I love it.
Mind-humming stuff.
It's about as productive as, you know, scrolling on Twitter or watching TikTok or whatever.
It's funny.
That might be my addiction, but I like to rationalize my own addiction.
I say I need to be on Twitter for work and I need to bookmark things and then go randomly pick fights with people like John Podesta.
So you have this experience in the military, which might explain a lot of things in terms of current perspectives.
Were you politically involved as a kid growing up, high school, debating, school president, things like that?
I was passionate when it came to politics, but being homeschooled, the only person I had to debate was my mom, so that didn't go well.
But yeah, I was always paying attention to politics.
I was a pretty conservative person.
You know, jumped on the George Bush bandwagon.
But I mean, he became president when I was eight.
So that's the only president I knew until I was 16. I was blind to some of this stuff.
I'm sorry, you're not that old.
Well, no, but I mean, like, I remember Reagan.
Well, I remember, I vaguely remember Reagan because I was only seven or eight at the time.
But man, I remember Bush one, I remember Bush two.
And I remember things like, it makes you feel crazy where everybody says, oh, Trump is a Nazi.
If anybody else, we would tolerate them.
I remember what they said about Bush two, in particular, because we had, you know, I had siblings who were at...
They were left-leaning institutions, American colleges back in the day.
They've only gotten worse.
And I remember, you know, hearing some talking points.
So you, um, is a conservative, I mean, everyone in the family conservative as well-ish?
Yeah, basically.
To some degree more than others, yeah.
And so you get out of the military.
After the experience.
I've been radicalized.
I've been just watching you.
You join my journey just five years after me.
Well, that's what I'm good.
Now, we don't use the word radicalized.
We use the term awaken, Ginger.
Awaken.
We're woke now.
It's a Tom McDonald lyric.
A difference between being awake and woke.
Awaken with JP.
You watch him as well?
Occasionally, yeah.
I remember him from back.
But he's still the Black Rifle coffee guy, so he doesn't get as many of my views.
Well, now explain your journey, because you go serve, you have what seems like it might be related to the Anthrax, the AV.
You have that experience.
Do you get disenfranchised, or do you begin retrospectively living life and saying, it's never been what I thought it was?
Yeah, so...
I've always been and am still extremely patriotic.
I remember on September 11, 2001, I remember watching the news on the rabbit ears.
We didn't have cable or anything, just the local channels with the antennas.
Watching that, I didn't even know what the World Trade Center was.
I was nine at the time.
My next older brother was 11 at the time, and that stuck in my head.
I was pretty upset about 9-11 and how that went down and everything.
When I was unable to graduate college and try to go the engineering route, my fallback was, well, I've always thought about joining the military, so let's do it.
And so I did.
And my brother had already joined.
He joined the Marine Corps as 0311.
So he became a crayon eater a couple years before I joined up.
But I kind of followed in his footsteps a little bit.
But I didn't want to be eating MREs all the time.
So I didn't...
MREs?
I know what MREs are.
Be all ready to eat.
It's the instant.
The freeze-dried food, you know, stuff that they have to eat when they're in the field and when they're deployed and stuff.
So I like my nice, cushy D-FAC dining facility in the Air Force with my soft bed and all that stuff.
When you do the three years, it's three years straight?
Like you're away from home for three years working?
Yeah, it was active duty.
Went to basic training in San Antonio, Texas, which is where...
All airmen go to basic training.
And then they stationed in Mount Home Air Force Base, Idaho, which if you want to know how Mount Home looks, it's where they filmed, or in that area is where they filmed Napoleon Dynamite.
So the flat desert that's about, I forget the elevations, like 6,000 feet above sea level, 8,000.
It's beautiful.
I mean, when we were driving through Arizona, and you drive from Phoenix, and you realize that you're going uphill the entire time, and you're like, how am I going uphill to the Grand Canyon?
And you realize you're driving up a plateau to 7-8,000 feet, and the Grand Canyon is just washed out, and you're looking at, you know, washed out 8,000 foot.
Amazing.
And it's Idaho.
I get mixed up between Idaho, Iowa, and Utah, but that's only just because I'm an idiot.
It was beautiful.
And by the way, just because you said it a third time and I've been holding off, it's obligatory, so let's just...
Yeah.
Well, what's...
Dirty.
Nice.
All right.
I've said it three times.
I catch it when you say it.
At least three times.
I looked it up the second time.
So you do three years.
Is it...
In retrospect still, is it an amazing experience?
Are you still friends with the military folk that you've trained with?
Oh, I hated it.
I was miserable the entire time I was in.
I was glad to serve whatever you would call that, but I didn't really mesh with the guys I was stationed with, at least.
I didn't go out in bars on the nights and weekends and go drinking and stuff.
And, you know, these guys, some of them cheating on their wife or whatever.
And I was, no, I'm just going to go home, you know, be boring.
And they didn't care for that too much.
It wasn't in any condescending way, like, well, go do what you like, you know, but I just didn't fit in with the click or whatever.
So it wasn't an enjoyable time at the shop, but, you know, I was there to fix the jets.
So I did that and it was 110 degrees in the summer and 10 degrees in the winter.
So we got the worst of both worlds there.
30 mile an hour winds almost every day is miserable.
And when you get the medical discharge, what's the procedure?
How does that happen?
Like an incident happens and they say you can go home?
Yeah.
So I got diagnosed and then that started the Med board process.
So they send my diagnosis and all the stuff to a medical board that the Air Force has.
And they start the process of discharging me.
And that took eight months or so.
And then I was out and on my way back home.
You get home.
Relieved to get home.
Do you go back and live?
So when you get out now, if I'm doing math, you're...
It's 2014, I think.
2014, so you're going to be like 20. You're going to be a young...
2015.
Yeah, I'm 20. I was 23 at the time.
You go back home to live with your parents?
And I ask this non-judgmentally.
I lived with my folks until I was...
I think I lived with my folks when I was married with Marion with one kid.
We lived in a closet.
It was great.
Yeah, well, so I moved back to the Knoxville area, got an apartment and stuff, and tried going back to school.
And then when that didn't work, I moved out to Cookville, Tennessee, where I'm at now, and met my wife, well, now wife, and started looking for work and stuff, and so now I'm doing carpentry.
Okay, now, you...
I jokingly called it radicalization.
I'm saying it's the journey of awakening.
Let me ask you this.
When I went to Chattanooga, and Barnes, for those who don't know, Robert Barnes takes me around.
We do a tour.
I put together a little documentary.
And he was explaining, in real time, the effects of shitty government policy at the national level, but the impact it has at the very local level.
And, you know, Barnes is diplomatic, but, you know, says this is how this area has morphed and evolved over time.
When I was getting on a plane from, I want to say South Carolina, I think it was South or North Carolina, but, you know, I go Florida there, and I'm getting on a plane, and I say it with no judgment whatsoever.
I just noticed a lot of Guatemalan immigrants on the plane.
I didn't understand why the plane was, why this would have been the demographic going from either South or North Carolina.
To Chattanooga, Tennessee.
And Barnes is explaining, you know, this is the impact of immigration policies on small-town America.
You've lived in Tennessee your whole life.
Have you noticed...
I don't want to load the question, but I have.
Have you noticed an evolution of how Tennessee has changed over the decades?
Yeah.
It's definitely increased in the last five years.
Maybe because I'm looking for it more, but I'm in the trades and in stuff like construction, especially in a state like Tennessee where there's less licensure requirements.
As long as your finished product meets the codes and inspections, then it's good a lot of times.
So we get a lot of...
Hispanic, Central American people that, I mean, I never ask anybody's immigration status or anything, but it's difficult.
It makes your wages less because you basically have to compete with a larger labor force that's there, and usually they're not paying taxes on their stuff because I'm sure it's just cash.
And also, they're used to living with less.
So, you know, whatever they end up making, clearing hourly, you know, $12 an hour is a lot more to them than $12 an hour would be to me or whatever, you know.
So, you got to be pretty competitive.
And general contractors, they're just trying to...
Maximize profits on thin margins to begin with.
Yeah, and then also they have the competition as well with other general contractors.
They have to try to, oh, well, I can give you a 1,400 square foot home for a set amount.
They have to compete with all the other general contractors who are also using more and more laborers.
What's amazing is...
I was flabbergasted.
It's not just an American thing.
When I went back to Quebec, actually, I think it was the year before I left even, I'm talking with a farmer.
And again, it's not, without judgment, it's just an observation.
I'm like, oh, you have a lot of South American folk working on the farm.
It's like, we're up in rural Quebec.
You can't find any local work.
And he says, nobody out here wants the work.
I suspect, and it is a problem in Quebec where...
People go on, like, seasonal unemployment and they work cash and they make the best of both worlds.
Who the hell is going to want to work hard manual labor for minimum wage?
And so this guy literally does it legally.
He brings up on buses South American seasonal workers, houses them for the whole summer.
You can't do the farming really during the winter.
And then they go back afterwards in the free room and board, you know, a minimum wage living.
That is...
You know, money in their pocket.
They send money back to the family.
It's created a system where you can't even find local employment because people don't want to take up the jobs.
Yeah.
I definitely see the effect it has.
I'm still doing well.
And that might lead us into something else.
My brother now works with me.
He's worked with me for...
Just over two years now.
My next younger brother, he's two years, no, excuse me, four years younger than me.
But he had to join on with me because of 2021, you know, September, October, they started forcing people to take the shot and take the jab.
So he found a message in a bottle that...
It was found somewhere that had a religious exemption, really well drafted.
I don't know.
Somebody just jumped in in the river or something.
But it showed up down one of the creeks.
But he was denied that.
And so he was fired from his job.
None of the courts at the time were giving anybody any relief for their infringement on the people's religious rights or bodily autonomy in general.
It's amazing.
My body, my choice quickly went to...
But they're not even analogous.
The problem is when you make those analogies, then they say, well, if you support someone's decision to not get jabbed, you must surely support a woman's decision to, you know...
Reproductive freedom.
They're not analogous.
They never were.
One actually involves, whether or not you agree to the T scientifically, involves another body.
And the jab only involves one body, mine.
Right.
Now, you were mentioning that you think you were ahead of the curve on the awakening.
When did it start with you?
And what has been the progression?
So, I couldn't put a finger exactly on when it...
When it started, you can pigeonhole me as your classic Republican, you know, as the 14, 15, 16-year-old.
But then when I saw these politicians speaking so passionately about, oh, we're pro-Second Amendment.
But they never do anything to enshrine the Second Amendment.
They only do things to infringe on the Second Amendment.
The best we can get is stagnation.
And the same thing when it goes for, oh, we want to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
Or we want to what.
Brain just went blank.
But, you know, we want to fulfill all these.
We want to overturn Roe v.
Wade.
You mentioned abortion.
And then nothing is ever done.
And so the colloquial, every politician's corrupt that, you know, the older generation would say.
You'd be like, oh, yeah, but, like, this guy's a good guy, you know?
What's wrong with Kennedy?
Well, it is amazing.
Or Lindsey Graham.
You live long enough to see that the government is the proverbial blob out of the horror movie.
It just keeps getting bigger and it doesn't actually do anything.
I mean, the blob killed people and maybe so does the government.
But it gets bigger and bigger and does nothing except for feed itself.
And then the same, it's an amazing thing.
I remember, though, this is how long I've been now in this game.
I remember once upon a time the idea of overturning Roe v.
Wade.
Was conspiracy theory.
It was like, they'll never do it.
It'll never happen.
It can never happen.
But that's what they want to do.
And then it happened.
I was like, holy crap.
I've actually lived through enough of an evolution now.
But did your revelation begin before or after Trump came into office?
There was never a giant aha moment.
I did not vote for Trump in 2016 because we had three politicians running for office, and I said that we had three Democrats running for office because Trump had always been a New York Democrat.
That was his history, donated to Hillary Clinton.
There was Hillary.
There was Trump.
There was no third party.
The libertarian guy that couldn't remember.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Johnson.
I can't imagine.
That's...
Oh, poor guy.
Poor guy.
That's what he's going to...
So I was like...
And so people would ask, hey, who's going to win?
And I was like, oh, probably a Democrat.
And they'd be like, oh, I don't know.
I think Trump has a chance.
And I'm like, that's what I said.
And so actually, my...
My opinion on Trump's politics didn't really get overturned by his actions.
I knew he wasn't...
Gary Johnson.
Thank you.
It didn't really change with Trump.
I knew he wasn't pro-Second Amendment.
Fight me if you disagree with me.
And I was a little surprised that he actually...
Well, it's his Supreme Court.
Nominees actually overturned Roe v.
Wade.
But as far as his foreign policy, it was better than I thought it would be.
And I don't know.
He was more populist than I thought he would be.
But on the things that I cared about prior to Trump, which was Second Amendment abortion, some foreign policy stuff, he didn't seem to...
To fight for much of that.
But now I understand that those are things that can be fixed later if we don't have the feds going through our emails and tapping our phones.
They're going through our emails.
They're tapping our phones.
What was I going to say about...
We had this discussion.
I think it was not to put him on blast.
I still like him.
But when Justin Hart came back on a second time, and I think that's where...
I think that's where you were in the chat and someone was saying, or maybe it was John Burke.
Never mind, it was John Burke.
Where he said, I voted Trump in 2016.
Or what was it?
He said, I'm not voting him now.
And you come in and say, look, I didn't vote for him then.
I am voting for him now.
And the thing was, I was calling out, he was like, oh, I was all for the bump stop thing.
I was getting a bunch of hate from my friends who, when I was calling out Trump for being a...
An anti-constitutional tyrant when it came to the Second Amendment.
Oh, because you think this one piece of plastic is useless, you're going to override the Second Amendment?
You're going to say that a piece of plastic is a fully automatic weapon by itself and going to give the ATF all these powers?
Like, I don't even care about.
Bump stocks themselves.
But the precedent is insane.
And the ATF is still running with what Trump allowed to happen.
So it's funny.
John Burke couldn't see it at the time.
I think they will see it when it comes time to vote.
But the other thing is, your firearm knowledge is extensive.
Is this pre-military or is it military trained?
Pre-military.
I started hunting when I was eight years old.
I never lost the itch with firearms and hunting.
So, handguns, turkey hunting, deer hunting, long range precision is my favorite.
We'll do that when you come up.
We will have video of you hitting steel at a thousand yards.
One kilometer.
That's almost one kilometer.
I guarantee it.
I guarantee it.
I think I can do it.
Despite the frantic manic, I've got pretty steady...
Look at this.
Look at these steady hands right here.
I used to play piano.
The bump stock thing is interesting because I think most people don't know what it is and don't know how it functions.
And it became synonymous with some sort of functional mechanism to make something fully automatic.
And so it became an easy sell on the one hand for the public, but also politically speaking...
Probably more difficult to oppose just because of messaging at the time and for someone who understands how it works.
First of all, the bump stock does not render any rifle automatic.
It allows you to somehow manually bump the bullets into the cartridge to replenish it faster.
It has nothing to do with any actual mechanism.
Yeah, it doesn't change the function of the AR or whatever semi-automatic rifle.
They even have bump stocks for shotguns, for some shotguns.
But it just increases the rate that you can pull the trigger.
So you can bump fire.
Bump fire is a thing that's been around since semi-automatic weapons were around.
You can use it.
Use your belt loop as an aid to bump fire.
You can use rubber bands.
It just allows the gun to shift back when it recoils, and it's holding your fingers steady.
And if you keep forward pressure on the firearm after the recoil, and you keep forward pressure, when it comes back forward, your finger pulls the trigger again.
So you're still pulling the trigger one time.
Bullets leaving the barrel.
So it's a semi-automatic weapon.
Nothing changes.
And now after the Vegas massacre, that's when Trump implemented the bump stock ban.
Yeah.
And that pissed you off.
Convenient, isn't it?
Have they found that guy yet?
Or have they figured out why he did that yet?
None of this.
There's no questions to ask.
There's no news.
Maybe Crowder will find it right next to that manifesto, that tranny manifesto.
I'm fairly certain.
I know that Barnes and I have talked about it.
I'm fairly certain he's done a hush-hush, so everybody might want to go find that one.
But you start off skeptical about Trump and someone says, someone's criticizing, not criticizing, but someone's saying, how can he be a Democrat if he overturned Roe v.
Wade?
You start off with that impression.
I mean, when did you get the revelation as to how malicious the media was in terms of their treatment of Trump?
I mean, I saw it before the election, even.
I could see the false messaging about Trump.
I thought they were making a bigger deal of him, and I still think they're making a bigger deal of him than they should.
They're more afraid of him than they should be, I think.
But in attacking him the way that they have, I think they've even realized...
In his mind, how corrupt Washington is, how bad the swamp is.
And, you know, he trusted Mitch McConnell, and that's why he picked the Supreme Court justices he did.
Thank God we got Gorsuch, but, you know, Kavanaugh is not great, and Barrett's even worse.
But I'm basically hoping that he picks better people around him.
I think he trusts the Republican Party less, which is good.
So we need that.
Now, in the chat, you often say you're not doom-pilled, you're realistic, and I say you might be a little too cynical.
Oh no, you can't ever be too cynical, Viva.
I'm trying to think of cynical versus jaded versus black-pilled versus doom-pilled.
See, it's funny.
I was going to say you're living it now.
What is your perspective?
What's your hope and what's your expectation for the future of America?
I'm not surprised by much anymore.
Nothing shocks me.
It's difficult when the Babylon Bee can't make satire anymore because it's just true.
Back in 2020, 2021, I couldn't even make up.
I mean, I would make up something that was a joke and it would come out the next week.
You know, two masks.
I was mocking people for being afraid of unmasked people because they would talk about, oh, it's Swiss cheese.
You know, it's not a perfect barrier, but it helps.
You know, so if you have...
Two imperfect barriers.
That's better than one.
Oh, well, that's fine.
Just carry an extra mask in your pocket.
And if you see somebody that's not wearing a mask, put a second mask on because then you got two in between you and them and you're good.
And then like Fauci, the next week is we need to do two masks.
And I'm like, you can't make this up, man.
They're so stupid.
People are so stupid.
They'll just follow their ideology to the death.
I had an argument with somebody at the risk of being called an anti-masker.
I mean, look, I wore that...
I still keep it here.
I wore it to just avoid conflict in fighting among citizens, but I was having a discussion with a family friend who says, you know, wear it outside.
And I was like, why would you possibly wear it outside?
And the person said, with a straight face, well, if I'm jogging...
And you're walking and you hypothetically sneeze as I walk by you.
I mean, it's possible.
I was like, so you think people should be wearing masks outside in the event that that person's infected but asymptomatic?
Sneezes or coughs and a particle...
But this is the level of the irrational terror into which people were whipped.
The frenzy that, you know, basically rationalized to them surrendering each and every one of their most fundamental freedoms for the semblance of security.
Yeah, yeah.
I do want to bring up something else that you don't know about, but you will be, I'm sure, have some questions.
Go on.
In 2020, my wife and I lived in this little cul-de-sac, a small neighborhood that was built by actually the general contractor who hired me.
And I learned some of my skills to move forward and become a subcontractor myself.
But man, it was great.
And we had a bunch of the neighborhood, most of us Christians, and we even created a neighborhood Bible study, small group.
That we would meet one night every other week and read the scriptures and pray and have dinner together and stuff.
Man, it was awesome.
In 2020, we had pancake breakfasts outside for the rest of the neighborhood to come by.
We set up a...
A sheet and did a movie night in the cul-de-sac one night.
I forget what movie we watched, but with a projector, you know, and had a movie night.
And, man, it was amazing.
The best neighborhood ever.
But on the night of March 2nd, I was awake until about 1 a.m. working on my truck.
I had just got my new truck.
That was that Saturday.
I had bought a truck, and this was Sunday night?
No, Monday night, excuse me.
So I went to bed about 1 a.m., and I wake up, and I don't even know what's going on, and my wife's in the bedroom, or excuse me, in the master bathroom in the doorway screaming at me.
And it was, as I was coming out of my, I'd only been asleep an hour, so I was in a deep sleep.
I didn't know what was going on, but I knew that I needed to get out of the bed and in the bathroom and that something behind me was bad.
So I leapt from laying down position across her side of the bed and landed on my stomach on the floor and grabbed the door frame and I'm pulling myself laying on my side into the bathroom.
As a tornado starts throwing limbs and breaks through the window and stuff starts coming through the walls of our home.
So I pulled my wife down to the floor and laid on top of her and she's screaming, cover your head, cover your head.
And so I'm covering her head.
And they're like, I am covering your head because I couldn't care less about myself.
I had to keep her safe.
And so we lost our house that night.
By the grace of God, we were mostly uninjured, but the rest of my neighborhood was not so lucky.
That night, it was 3 a.m., excuse me, 2 a.m. when the tornado hit.
It hit Nashville and kind of picked up and dropped back down, but it was at its strongest when it hit us, an EF-4 tornado.
Tennesseans know about this one, the March 3rd tornado.
It ripped the, I just bought that F-250.
and it ripped the trailer the enclosed trailer off of it full of tools and it used the trailer as a kite to drag the truck across the yard trying to suck that into the tornado as it went by but luckily the the truck was on the ground still I'm guessing the engine block held it down and so I was able to find my keys and
started getting Neighbors and loved ones out of the wreckage that night.
I just Googled this as you're talking.
A small but deadly tornado outbreak affected West and Middle Tennessee March 2nd into the morning, March 3rd.
High-end EF3 tornado hit Nashville and Mount Juliet, becoming the sixth costliest tornado in United States history, and a violent EF4 tornado impacted air.
Holy crabapples.
Yeah.
You lose...
When you say lose a house, I mean, that means...
Our house was probably 60% standing.
And there was only two houses out of the 19 on our little cul-de-sac that were salvageable.
Most of them didn't exist.
Ours looked pretty good compared to the rest.
I'll pull up a couple pictures and send them to you real quick.
They're going to ask you the obvious question.
Does insurance cover any of this?
Yes, we did have home insurance and they did write us a check, thankfully.
Ginger, someone in the chat, there's a picture of a man in front of a yellow plane.
Is that you?
I don't know if...
Go back to the chat.
Is it in Rumble?
No, it's in Locals.
Hold on.
Here, I'll bring it up here.
Someone said you're a pilot and...
No, it's definitely not me.
Okay, dude, I'm thinking like, holy crap.
Okay, so that's somebody else in the chat.
I guess they're talking about someone else.
I'm like, that can't be you unless you went through some wild change.
And this is right before the world shuts down for COVID.
This is March 3rd.
Yep.
My wife and I that night got, including ourselves, 15 people out to ambulances and emergency vehicles and people's personal vehicles that got as close to the neighborhood as they could.
And 14 of them survived.
Juan did not.
We had a lady who broke her spine.
I carried her out to the ambulances after the truck was finally stuck because I was driving over foundations and rubble with nails and everything.
The tires finally got flat and the rain had made everything muddy.
Once it was out of commission, we started carrying people by hand.
We loaded one lady on a door that was pretty severely injured.
She was in ICU for six months with like over 30 surgeries.
But her husband didn't make it.
Her son didn't make it.
Their nanny that was with them didn't make it.
There was 19 people in our county.
That passed and nine of them were on our street and the one parallel to it.
They called our neighborhood Ground Zero.
It was not good.
What do you do after something like that?
Practically speaking, where do you go the next day but also what happens to the neighborhood?
Do they rebuild it or is it...
Abandoned?
It's been mostly rebuilt, yeah.
And some of the lots, like we demoed our house and the neighbor, hers was one of the two houses that survived.
She bought our lot.
She didn't want anybody else building right there.
So she just expanded her property, basically.
But yeah, I mean, we went and...
We had a friend who had an Airbnb that she was kind enough to let us live in for like a month.
She canceled all the people who had made reservations there.
I'm going to try one more time.
I don't think I'm going to be able to find the photos I took, but it was pretty...
Pretty drastic.
That's intense.
And then COVID hits, and at some point you might have a different perspective of risk and urgency.
Yeah, it was quite maddening when the guy who was the best man at our wedding lived two houses over.
I ran out the door.
It was surprising how well we could see.
In the darkness of night with no street lights and everything, the tornado coming through.
And when I came sprinting out the door right after the tornado hit, I saw him and his wife holding their two kids running down their driveway.
And I didn't understand where they were coming from because there was no house and anything behind them was death.
And their older daughter, who was, I believe, three at the time, was put in a coma after they got to the hospital and sent to Knoxville Children's Hospital.
And yeah, within like a week, they were only allowing one person in there at a time.
So they had to...
Him and his wife had to take turns going and sitting with their daughter, who was in the ICU, just to swap out every 12 hours.
Mom would stay there for 12 hours, and the dad would watch their son and take care of him, and then they'd swap.
It was touch and go.
They didn't know if she would make it.
They were four of the ones that we got out that night.
And it was for what?
When they're swapping out, who can sit in there?
Why is that any less dangerous than both being there?
It was maddening.
Maddening.
It made no sense and everybody bought into it and it was infuriating.
The lady that we put on that door and carried out She was not told for months that her husband and son and one of her two sons didn't make it because they wouldn't let anyone in to visit her.
And so it was, I think, two months until they finally allowed her dad to come in and they broke the news to her.
It was heartless.
It was heartless.
I couldn't wrap my mind around it.
Infuriating.
Yeah, that is...
I mean, it's...
I mean, that's...
It's a traumatic...
I mean, beyond traumatic, but then leading into absolute insanity and from trauma to heartless bureaucracy.
I mean, the people who we've known who...
What mothers had to deliver without the husband being there.
We knew people who were not allowed to have loved ones while they're...
Passing.
And then forget that limited funerals.
Not more than 10 at a funeral.
Yeah.
And if I may, so there's one really special family that had moved into the neighborhood six months before the tornado.
And their house was completely wiped out.
We got their kids from them.
They were in shock.
Literally, their bodies were in shock.
They were not there when our neighbors got to them.
And I don't talk much about them because some of the things that went on that night, even though I was in the story, It's not my story to tell.
But they recently started a, he was a youth pastor, and he just stepped out of that, and they've made an organization to help people with early child loss and sudden child loss because there wasn't an organization like it when they needed it.
So, if I may, this was written on March 8th of 2020 by her dad, their little four-year-old girl.
Our neighbors brought them, her and her sister, to my truck as...
They needed to get out.
So little Hattie had a heartbeat when they handed her to us.
We had six adults and four children in the truck the first trip to the ambulance.
And so her dad said, Hattie loves to be held.
Ever since she was born, Hattie has loved being held.
In four and a half years, she has slept with Macy and me nearly every single night.
Close, she wants to feel you.
Early on Tuesday morning, March 3rd, Hattie had wound up in our bed once again.
She was asleep between Macy and me when Macy's phone went off, alerting us of a tornado warning.
She immediately woke me up, and I quickly turned the TV on.
Dan Thomas from Channel 4 was on.
The words I heard warned about those around Upperman High School to take cover.
We immediately grabbed Hattie out of the bed and ran as fast as possible toward Laney's room to grab her out of the crib.
Laney's the infant.
Macy grabbed Laney, I grabbed Hattie, and we hit the floor.
The sound around us was unlike anything I had ever heard.
Deafening silence.
That's what it sounded like.
As soon as we hit the ground with the girls, the tornado hit.
Everything was collapsing around us.
I was yelling as loud as I could.
I don't remember what I said, or even if what I said were words at all, but my yells were pleas for my girls to hang on.
The four of us were relocated by the storm to somewhere around our front porch, we think.
We were in the dirt, in the crawl space, but together.
The following are memories I do not have.
Macy and I both blacked out around this time and had no memory until we woke up across the street at a house that was still standing.
The rest of this story is filled with God's people, many from College Side Church, who came to our aid.
Lauren and Corey are our neighbors.
Their house was also lost in the storm, but they were able to escape.
Soon after the storm passed, Corey could hear my screams.
He had a light and was able to locate the four of us.
Macy was holding Laney, I was holding Hattie.
We had never let go.
Corey took the girls from our arms because he could see all four of us were injured.
Our neighbors, Luke and Amy, myself and my wife, had been able to escape and get to Luke's truck.
Luke and Amy and Chad and Jill and their family in the truck with them.
Oh, to get to Luke's truck, excuse me.
Corey handed Hattie to Jill and Lanny to Amy.
My girls never touched the ground.
Luke drove, hoping to make it to the Broom Chapel Church building, but couldn't.
He was able to make it to Amy's house, another neighbor.
Where some of the truck was unloaded.
Amy took care of Lainey, getting her out of wet clothes and keeping her warm with an ambulance.
And when the ambulance was able to locate the group, they checked her into the hospital.
Luke was holding Hattie.
She had already passed.
Luke held her, though.
Hattie loves to be held.
My girls never touch the ground.
Luke turned her over to the professionals when they arrived on scene to help more people.
There's no doubt the Hensley neighborhood saved each other that night.
That was her neighborhood.
Now, Ginger has just frozen.
Hold on a second.
This is on...
I'm going to wait for him to come back.
Here we go.
Yeah, Ginger, you froze for a second.
Sorry.
Every night before bed, Macy would read Hattie a story.
Monday night, after they finished reading, Hattie looked up at Macy, as she often does after story time.
Hattie would rather talk than sleep.
She told her, Mommy, I can see Jesus, and he's wearing all white.
Hattie could see more clearly than the rest of us before we knew Jesus was going to hold her that night.
She did.
We do not believe the Lord took our girl from us.
We believe he is holding our girl for us.
And Hattie loves to be held.
So if anybody wants to go support this family, that their mission now full-time is to support other families with early child loss.
That is their mission.
What's the name of the organization?
I'm going to bring it up right now.
It's called the Magnolia Foundation.
It's on Instagram and probably Facebook.
The Magnolia Foundation.
Let me see if it's this, who we are, our story.
Let me just see if this is the right...
Yeah, this is it.
The MagnoliaFoundation.com and also on Instagram.
Here, I'll share the screen so everybody can see this.
Here we go.
This is it.
And I'll give everybody the link here.
I've donated.
I bought a couple hats.
I love the hats.
And they have shirts.
And they're the greatest people I know.
And they're so strong.
And I can't imagine what it's like to be in the situation they were put in.
It's difficult enough to be in the situation we were put in.
I can't imagine losing your daughter as well.
Well, we're going to blast that link around here one more time.
That's the who are we, but that's only because I landed on that page.
Ginger, we're going to end with a little optimism, a little white pill.
Sorry.
We had to get to that.
I couldn't be on here.
It was one of the biggest things that's happened in my life.
What's weird is that out in non-tornado land, people hear about it.
They don't make light of it, but they don't appreciate the severity of these disasters.
That is a life-altering, traumatizing tragedy for anyone and everyone.
Yeah.
In East Tennessee, we never had tornadoes.
I didn't know it existed.
I didn't know it was a thing.
So when I woke up, I didn't know what was going on.
I just knew I needed to get over there to her.
When you come out of the bathroom and there's glass all over the place and your mattress is shoved and stuck in the doorway, it's pretty...
I'm just texting you.
Sorry.
It's pretty obvious what's going on.
I figured that out.
Do you...
I mean, I guess, how do you cope with that?
I mean, you don't get over something like that, but how do you cope with that on a daily basis going forward?
Grief is an interesting thing.
It puts a lot of things in perspective.
You know, some people think that I'm black-pilled or whatever because they see comments online or whatever.
And it's funny because stuff doesn't bother me.
Let me text my wife real quick.
But everything is put into perspective.
If you lose your truck in a car accident, that stinks, but oh well.
It's just a little bit of time.
The Lord is the only reason that I'm in the place I am today.
The trauma was difficult.
I don't even know how to describe what the weeks following that were.
But the Lord wraps His arms around you.
They say, and it's true, I don't know the first one to say it, but a man goes to heaven and he's saying, God, look at my life.
It's footsteps on this beach.
And look, I see you walking next to me through my early years.
I see you walking next to me when I'm 30. But at this hard time in my life, there's only one set of footprints.
You left me, Lord.
Why did you leave me in that place?
And the Lord says, I never left you.
That one set of footprints is is where I carried you.
And and they.
Believers will say God never gives you more than you can handle.
I guarantee you, if you live long enough, that's not true.
He will give you more than you can handle.
Without Him, you can't handle it.
And so you have to learn to lean on him because he's the only one that will sustain you.
He's the anchor behind the veil when you have nothing else to hold on to.
Ginger, that might be at least the most uplifting way to end this.
We're going to talk afterwards.
GingerNinja1776 on Twitter, for as long as 1776 is not an actual call to violence, is not deemed to be a call to violence.
It is what it is, freedom of speech.
Franklin Fleming says, the list you're on...
Oh, I think if you're talking about the Center for Countering Digital Hate list...
Yeah, I'm aware that I made that list.
I'm contemplating...
Do you know what your name means, David?
The first one or the last one?
Your name.
I don't know what your middle name is.
Andrew.
Do you know what David means?
I just thought it was the guy who beat Goliath.
Hold on, let me just go quickly Google.
No, it's Beloved.
Your name means Beloved.
Nomenes Omen.
Beloved freedom.
The beloved state of freedom, David.
Well, I'll take that omen, that nomeness omen any day of the week.
I know Dalet, Vav, Dalet is in Hebrew.
I can still read.
I never knew that in my entire life.
Okay, I'll take it, Ginger.
And by the way, also, mildly on topic, tomorrow...
I think it's 10 o 'clock.
I'll double check.
Jessica Rose is going to come back on to talk about her recent findings as it relates to myocarditis and a certain other medical intervention.
Ginger, you're still going to remain...
I don't call you blackpilled at all.
I think you're cynical, but I think you're realistic.
Let's give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down for 2024.
I think I know where you're going to go with this.
Are things going to get worse before they get better?
That's a stupid question.
They're obviously going to get worse.
I think it can only get better with the right perspective.
It can only get better.
I can be cynical and I can also be right in my cynicism.
And when things come true, it's okay because I'm prepared for it.
A tyrant doesn't have authority over me.
He doesn't have authority over my life.
You know, I'll take care of myself and my own in whatever means necessary.
And I will make sure that I am able to sustain my family in the most apocalyptic of situations.
And that's what it is.
You know, when you have a I worry about, oh, well, if the nation decides this, then there goes my life.
Well, then you don't have control of your life.
So I don't give them that control over my life.
So it can only get better.
If it turns out the cancer is deeper than we thought and it takes more chemo and radiation, well, that's all right.
We'll just treat the cancer.
Who said it?
The most revolutionary thing you can do is grow a tomato.
I don't know.
And I now truly appreciate how insightful that is.
I was going to ask you one more thing, Ginger, before we...
Oh, for goodness sake.
I forget it.
Hold on.
It had to do with the apocalypse.
It had to do with Darkest Before This.
You've got to arm up.
I'm in a good neighborhood.
Oh, well, your guys...
Oh, what was it?
Not the value-tainment.
PBD.
They were just out of range firing some serious stuff.
They were talking about, oh, well, if I have guns, then I can get whatever I need.
Man, that is...
I mean, I get the instinct to go that route, but man, I'm not going to be stealing food.
Or ammunition from anybody.
You have to be in the place where you don't have to become an evil person to sustain yourself.
You don't have to become a Somali pirate to live.
People think that if they have a firearm or two, then they're good to go.
No, you need to be.
I have a plan to be self-sustaining.
I've got my plan.
There's a lot of iguanas out here to eat, and I have no problem eating iguanas.
I've got my fishing stuff.
I've got a truck that I can drive over whatever nature throws in front of me.
But I am mildly optimistic.
I think it's going to get a little darker, but I think that there's a groundswell of change.
I hope.
More people are awake now than ever before.
We see that.
Absolutely.
Now, Ginger, there was one more thing I was going to ask you.
For goodness sake, I'm going to realize it right after we end.
Doesn't matter.
I like your shirt, Ginger.
Thank you.
Crazy Chinook.
The flag behind you, I know that I should know why it's different.
It's the Betsy Ross flag.
This is the first flag of the United States.
The American flag has 13 stripes because of the 13 colonies, and it also had 13 stars because of the 13 states, the colonies that became states.
There's several iterations.
I've got a 48-star flag over there before they added Alaska and Hawaii, I believe.
I knew the answer to that question.
For those who are too embarrassed to ask it.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Absolutely.
You know what drives me nuts?
I now remember what it's like to shame the kid in class to not ask a question because it's a stupid question.
Oh, God, I will never be too shy to ask the stupid question, even if I feel stupid after asking it.
But I feel stupid for having forgotten what I was going to say.
It doesn't matter.
Ginger?
We will meet up.
We'll go fishing.
We'll go hunting.
And we'll do it now.
We don't need to end right now, but I'm going to end this for everybody and just say, everybody, this has been episode whatever.
I'm going to go add it to the playlist of locals chats, supporter chats on locals.
And tomorrow, 10 o 'clock, Jessica Rose talking about stuff and Ginger.
I don't know, man.
What do you have planned for the rest of the week?
It's going to be work.
Work, work.
Yeah, doing a bunch of big kitchens, and we're trapping some coyotes right now.
Some people had some coyotes harassing their livestock, and they tried getting some coyote hunters out there, and so we got some traps set.
That's a stupid question, but not because I condone eating dog.
Can you eat a coyote?
You can, but I'm not going to eat one.
They're disgusting.
Well, if they're eating, if they're scavenging, they wouldn't be...
I just feel like if you're going to kill something...
It's not the cleanest of meats, I'll tell you that.
But people can and do, but it's not a very high percentage of people that eat coyotes.
You know, a lot of them have mange and vermin, you know, about as clean as a possum would be.
Any other...
I saw a possum in our backyard and it looked...
I mean, if I had to describe a possum, it's a dirty, hairy rat.
I mean, even rats are more attractive than possums.
Someone says not kosher.
No question, it's not kosher.
When you come up, we'll have some wild turkey and we'll have some venison burgers or venison steaks or whatever you like.
Freezers full.
I am a culinary discoverer.
I'm still trying to find a place that will serve iguana here.
I won't do it myself because they carry salmonella, so I just got to make sure I get a trusted place.
But I am a culinary explorer, so we'll do it.
Ginger, stick around.
Oh, yes.
I'm going to end it at exactly one hour and 30 minutes.
Ginger Ninja, 1776.
I'm going to hit the end stream.
Stay here, everybody.
If anyone wants to go donate, Magnolia Foundation are some amazing people.
They're worth it.
They're worth your donation.
Done and done.
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