056 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:22

Howdy, Ben. How you doing today?

Ben: 0:24

I'm doing good. You're back from the border.

Gene: 0:27

I am back.

Ben: 0:29

Yeah, it looks like it was a much smaller crowd than they were kind of expecting.

Gene: 0:34

Certainly smarter than I was expecting. I don't know what everybody else thinking, but,

Ben: 0:40

people.

Gene: 0:41

yeah, I'd say somewhere between 250 and 300. And

Ben: 0:47

Yeah, some, the estimates range from around 200 to 500 at the little private event. Yeah.

Gene: 0:54

there certainly could have been 500 after I, I really took off from the event.

Ben: 1:00

Yeah, and it. And here's the other thing. There was a private event on private land apparently away from everything and that, that's the numbers we're getting, not who else was there in the city or spread out or,

Gene: 1:16

Right. Right.

Ben: 1:17

anything else.

Gene: 1:18

Yeah. And I, I originally, I think like most people thought it was just going to be a, you know, an event right next to the park there, which I forget the name of the park. And that there's just going to be people with flags and cars and stuff. And so when we got there in the morning I saw that there were probably a dozen or so people, few of them with flags right next to the park. And I thought, okay, it must be early showing up. And then I saw some police barricades about two blocks away from the park. And as I was walking down towards the park, I thought the police barricades probably don't want people driving all the way up there. That would make sense if there's a large crowd, you probably don't want cars just being allowed to drive right next to the large crowd because we don't want to happen in

Ben: 2:12

our law a la Charlottesville. Yeah.

Gene: 2:15

Mm hmm. So consequently, I didn't think anything. Oh, and then the cop says that's closed. I'm like, what do you mean? Says we're not letting anybody any closer to the park than, than here. And I was like, okay. And I actually captured that interaction with the cop. I asked him about it. On video and then posted it to X, because clearly there were people in the background that were walking around and what the cop said, he was very nice about it. But basically he said that they just got an order like 10 minutes ago,

Ben: 2:51

Shut it down. Shut it down.

Gene: 2:53

basically, yeah, from their city police department. These are all city cops.

Ben: 2:58

Yeah.

Gene: 2:59

And incidentally, the cops were the only people in the city that actually spoke English.

Ben: 3:04

You're

Gene: 3:04

nobody walking around was speaking English. Just the ambient conversation you did here. I stopped at a Walmart to buy batteries. The cashier at the Walmart no habla ingles. Just speak Spanish. It, that, Eagle Path is really part of Mexico. It just Votes for Democrats in the U S, but for everything else, it's part of the cartel run Mexico.

Ben: 3:28

Yeah. I mean, it, it's a small little nothing border town

Gene: 3:33

It's, it's a lot bigger than that. It's about 26, 000 people.

Ben: 3:36

well now I don't think it's official size is

Gene: 3:40

No, that's the official size on the sign when you get there.

Ben: 3:42

Really?

Gene: 3:43

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 3:44

it's bigger than I

Gene: 3:45

And it's, it's, it's a much bigger city than you would imagine. It's downtown area is probably,

Ben: 3:52

Yeah. Wikipedia says population is 28,

Gene: 3:56

there you go. So it's about 20, probably 15, 20 blocks by 15, 20 blocks. I mean, it's a decent sized city,

Ben: 4:03

Wow.

Gene: 4:04

but it, it certainly sounds like it's another thing. And also keep in mind that just on the border, on the other side of the border is a city about 60 percent bigger than

Ben: 4:14

Yeah. And the Galas. What

Gene: 4:16

And I don't think it's in the gals. I think it's something else,

Ben: 4:19

is it?

Gene: 4:20

but I could be wrong. I'm not looking at a map. So if you get a map. Look it up, but it's a significantly larger size and all of those people more than likely come to the U. S. to go shopping. So, you know, it is an official checkpoint. There are 2, in fact, I think, places within about 2 miles of each other where you can legally cross the border there. But it's also that park is where the river is very wide and therefore very shallow. And it's really easy to cross

Ben: 4:52

it's it's a long way from there to to East Texas. So yeah. So that was a hell of a trip y'all made.

Gene: 5:03

More, more my trip wasn't that long. It's, it's really only about four and a half hours from Austin.

Ben: 5:09

Yeah. So for instance, for my parents, it was a six hours, 52 minutes if they drove straight through. So

Gene: 5:16

And they probably drive straight through.

Ben: 5:18

no, it's that's 470 miles. So yeah.

Gene: 5:21

Yeah, I mean, it was definitely worth going. I, I certainly have a much better feel for the, kind of the

Ben: 5:29

What's going on,

Gene: 5:31

Yeah not so much what's going on, but just the idea that there's not just two, two factions here, right? It's not just Texas versus the federal government. It's also the low, the locals down there the, the people in the district, ironically for which Brandon here is running

Ben: 5:49

which they're currently represented, they're currently represented by, yeah, who is a Republican,

Gene: 5:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know why, though? They're Republicans purely because of abortion. the only thing that makes them a Republican, is he's, he's pro life. He's not pro choice, right?

Ben: 6:07

So

Gene: 6:08

In every other

Ben: 6:09

Herrera down there. Okay. Cause there were a lot of politicians apparently speaking down there.

Gene: 6:17

Yeah, I think there was supposed to be some coming down today. I didn't see a single politician there when I was there yesterday.

Ben: 6:22

You left early. Other people I know who were there, who

Gene: 6:26

I see

Ben: 6:26

much, much later got to hear lots of politicians talk.

Gene: 6:30

Really? Okay, that's fine. Yeah, I, I was at the official event till about 1. 30. And then I went back to the town to see if I can sneak around to the other side you see there's some places didn't put a barricades and walked around some more and no, they were very solidly barricaded off. The other thing is. They're al what?

Ben: 6:58

You're not going to get down there, bud.

Gene: 7:00

Yeah, exactly. I think the, the, the barricades to keep the Americans away from the border were significantly more solid than the barricades to keep the Mexicans away from the border.

Ben: 7:11

Did you cross the border?

Gene: 7:12

which makes sense. No, I thought about it, I'm like I could legally cross it. There's nothing and says that I couldn't do that. But I said, the line on the other side,

Ben: 7:21

Oh, coming back.

Gene: 7:23

I'm not waiting in Mexico for an hour and a half to two hours just to cross back in here. Just to go buy a souvenir in Mexico.

Ben: 7:31

Yeah. I mean, you could have just walked across.

Gene: 7:35

Yeah, and I could have just gotten shivved too.

Ben: 7:38

Oh no. Anyway.

Gene: 7:40

Or kidnapped. Because I look like a rich American.

Ben: 7:44

No, you don't

Gene: 7:46

Wait a minute, is that an insult or a

Ben: 7:48

you can fly into the radar. You're okay.

Gene: 7:52

I don't know man, I was, I was mistaken for one of the organizers of this convoy several times. Apparently he's got a long beard as well.

Ben: 8:00

Oh, man. That's that's that's funny.

Gene: 8:03

Yeah, yeah. No, I had, I got interviewed by a few reporters and, and then also one of them Started wanting to interview me until she realized that wasn't actually the, the guy organizing the event. Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 8:17

Yeah. Some other people I know who are down there were were asked by Fox News and a bunch of others. And they had a funny interaction. I think after you left,

Gene: 8:28

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 8:28

Where this reporter came and sat down and said, Oh, where'd y'all come in from and started talking to them. And, you know, they kind of were like, Hey, you know, what, what do you really want to ask us? And, you know, kind of had been dancing around it and asked them some question and they were like, yeah, that's none of your business. That's rude. Sorry. And ran off like the snowflake they were, you know, it was just hilarious apparently. But yeah, apparently about 10 percent of the crowd or better was reporters.

Gene: 8:56

Yeah. I'd say in the morning when we got there, it was probably damn near 50%. Every other car that was pulling up was

Ben: 9:05

A news

Gene: 9:06

giving large camera equipment from the back of the vehicle. I mean, it was like Jesus, it looked like it was a media stand, you know, and I talked to one guy that was working for New York times. I talked to who incidentally didn't interview me. I just parked next to him. So we ended up chatting for a while. Then there was definitely the big ones, NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox were all there pretty early. Didn't see anybody from CNN though, but then again, they may not have been wanting

Ben: 9:39

just take their pictures from the AP.

Gene: 9:41

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 9:43

There, there were apparently a lot of drones flying around.

Gene: 9:46

I saw two. I don't know if I, maybe more later, but when I was there I saw two drones. One of which I saw the guy that was flying it and he was a hobbyist on one of them. The other drone I saw footage of. Later on NBC and it was clearly that drone because it was shot from exactly where I saw the drone,

Ben: 10:07

Okay.

Gene: 10:08

but there might have been two later.

Ben: 10:10

there have been a, there have been a smattering of articles out. And I, I've sent you a couple

Gene: 10:16

Yeah, one of them you sent me, I thought was relatively fair.

Ben: 10:19

They all read to me like they're like, oh man, there wasn't any violence. Like that, that's the vibe I get from the reporters is, aw, do something.

Gene: 10:31

Incidentally, for anyone's going, what the hell are you all talking about? What we're talking about is there was a alleged truck convoy like a freedom convoy that was driving from Virginia through Texas out to Arizona. this was the stop at Eagle Pass for that convoy. The reality was, there was literally four semi trucks, and everybody else was in the regular vehicle.

Ben: 10:57

And there have been various different things said about that. Um, I, I think the Temples and others who have been

Gene: 11:08

Fanning the flames?

Ben: 11:09

That have been saying, hey, this don't go, don't go, don't go. Got their way. You know, it, it certainly appears that at least part of the way there were more vehicles, but who knows, you know, that that's the thing about the Internet is it certainly shows when, when you have you on the ground and other people on on the ground, it certainly shows how do I put this? The, the light through the fog of the propaganda, you know,

Gene: 11:39

The hyperbolic nature of reporting?

Ben: 11:42

On both sides, though, too,

Gene: 11:44

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's all sensationalized for whichever side. And there was definitely outside of the official event, literally right across on the other side of the road, there was what to me, cause I don't want to get sued like Alex Jones, what to me appeared as a obvious agent provocateurs AKA feds because the signs they were holding up and the stuff that was coming out of their mouths. literally could have been, it was sort of stuff that could have been written by a set a night live writer for the Saturday night live version of this event. You know, it's, it's, it's basically taking the, a rational conservative position and shifting it a couple of octaves up into an extreme version of that position. Sort of like, you know, all Muslims are terrorists was, I think one of the signs. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 12:43

yeah, it's, it's satire quite literally, it's, it's, it's the parabolic nature of communication, right? If you play a game of telephone, it's that sort of end result. So someone says, hey. People are coming across our border and, you know, they're committing crimes, by the very definition, and we really ought to just make sure they're coming through a checkpoint. It eventually turns into, they took our jobs, kill them all.

Gene: 13:13

know, they didn't take our jobs, but it's a

Ben: 13:17

they just want UBI.

Gene: 13:20

highlight of the trip was definitely stopping at Bucky's as usual tends to be the highlight of most trips. Yeah. So here's some of the signs they had. Homosex is sin. Does that sound like a sign that, that somebody like you know, a strong, devout Christian would be holding up

Ben: 13:37

I mean, you have the certain churches that are very,

Gene: 13:43

but it's not good English is my point.

Ben: 13:45

yeah, no

Gene: 13:45

Sex is sin that

Ben: 13:47

I, I mean, I, I can see people saying homosexuality is a sin, but that abbreviation like that and everything else.

Gene: 13:56

but homo sex Is sin with no a between the is and the sin. I mean, it just looks stupid. Um,

Ben: 14:04

Well,

Gene: 14:05

you know, I'm a racist thugs was another one. And you know, I mean, there's certainly people in BLM that have acted as racist thugs. I'll absolutely give them that, but that just the nature of the signs. It looked like something that Saturday Night Live writers would have just, you know, put together themselves to poke fun at the crazy conservatives. Here's another one. Got AIDS yet? Which, of course, the first letters of those spell gay.

Ben: 14:36

I mean, but why would they be putting those signs up at this protest? That's what makes no

Gene: 14:41

Yeah. And, and they're, they were literally, clearly

Ben: 14:45

illegals are a bunch of You know, homosexuals or what,

Gene: 14:50

Yeah, I don't, I don't know, man. I guess they're all men, so I guess, statistically speaking, since no women are crossing the border. I, maybe they are, I don't know, I don't know, but it's crazy. It's like they stood out as obviously being fake. If 4chan wanted to do a troll and just fuck with people, they would have come up with literally the same signs. And these guys were in basically the best spot, literally across from the official entrance to the private property. So every reporter, anybody that drove past or anybody walking into the event would be walking by these guys.

Ben: 15:30

which, you know, always fans, the flames of the report.

Gene: 15:34

Yeah, and the same guys also had confederate flags

Ben: 15:38

of course they did

Gene: 15:40

because what else would they be flying or I should say the the army flag of Virginia, which

Ben: 15:49

battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia.

Gene: 15:53

as I was corrected by that other buddy of mine that I, I told you about is actually not a flag. It is a

Ben: 16:00

It's a regimental flag. It is a flag,

Gene: 16:03

well, no, we said it's not a flag because of dimensions. It's a banner. It's not a

Ben: 16:08

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you want to call it. Sure.

Gene: 16:11

I'm just saying, guy's got, you know, 26 years in the military,

Ben: 16:15

Yeah. The, the, the point is it.

Gene: 16:17

that'll correct me on that.

Ben: 16:18

The point is, it was a representation of Lee's army, not the confederacy as a whole and you, you got also schools on what the stars and bars

Gene: 16:27

Yeah, fuck all

Ben: 16:28

a bet that I wouldn't know. And you lost that bet. So there you go.

Gene: 16:33

I did. I, I did lose them. Because I didn't know. And I was like who the hell knows this shit except somebody who's into history. And he's done it to history, so he won't know either, I bet.

Ben: 16:44

Huh.

Gene: 16:45

Yeah, so

Ben: 16:46

How'd that go for you?

Gene: 16:47

It was funny because he was, you know, I was talking to him live while I was texting you with the question and so he was laughing his ass off when you, when you said it correctly

Ben: 16:57

That's good stuff, man.

Gene: 16:58

yeah, yeah you know, I don't, I don't mind giving money to the Texas clan member like that,

Ben: 17:04

So. Uh, did you pay attention to what else happened on Friday?

Gene: 17:11

um, Uh, probably not, because I can't think of what else happened.

Ben: 17:16

We bombed the shit out of Syria and Iraq.

Gene: 17:19

did hear about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we

Ben: 17:21

Iran attacks us, so we bombed Syria and Iraq. Makes complete and total sense to me.

Gene: 17:29

Yeah. And

Ben: 17:30

I mean, this is literally what we did to Afghanistan and Iraq after, if you believe the official story, Saudi Arabia attacked us on 9 11. It's the fuck? Did we not learn?

Gene: 17:41

you know, we just can't seem to get our geography straight when it comes to the Middle East.

Ben: 17:47

I mean, 85, Oh, we hit over 85 targets in Syria and Iraq,

Gene: 17:52

And by targets, does that mean buildings or humans? So that's

Ben: 17:56

Locations, geographic locations,

Gene: 17:58

probably a thousand people that just got killed.

Ben: 18:00

Potentially quite a few, and we telegraphed and announced it. So anyone important probably wasn't there,

Gene: 18:07

So that's a That was in Syria

Ben: 18:11

Syria and Iraq. Yes.

Gene: 18:13

and I think Jordan joined us for that exercise, if I remember right.

Ben: 18:18

Yes, because, you know, supposedly three U. S. airmen were killed in the drone attack in the Jordan drone base. Again, why are we there? What are we doing? Why the hell, if we're saying Iran is responsible, why are we attacking other sovereign countries? And then, you know, they had the nerve to come out and say, This doesn't mean we're at war with them,

Gene: 18:44

hmm, mm hmm, mm

Ben: 18:46

but it's clearly an act of war against an unrelated are you insane? I don't know, I, I, I,

Gene: 18:56

hmm. Maybe we have a deal with Iran that they need to get their recruitment efforts up on jihadists, and the best way to do that is to have the U. S. attack some random Arab country every 10 years.

Ben: 19:08

I mean, all I can say is it's going to fan the flames, it's going to Tick people off. It's going to cause more and more problems. You know, the best way to make a an extremist is to do shit like this.

Gene: 19:28

Exactly, that's what I mean. It's like we're trying to make sure that we get these radicalized Muslims.

Ben: 19:35

Then you can cause problems and maintain control.

Gene: 19:41

so I had Texas flags on my car and the cheap damn Chinese are no good at making flags for cars. I figured that out.

Ben: 19:49

Oh yeah. They blow off.

Gene: 19:51

no, it didn't, it almost, they, they all scrunched up to the top. Like the, the bottom of the flag was not glued on.

Ben: 19:59

Hmm.

Gene: 20:00

And so when the vehicle is moving, the flag just slides up the flagpole and squishes together.

Ben: 20:06

yeah, the the air pressure.

Gene: 20:08

I got to fix that. Probably put some super glue in there and get it permanently attached. I mean, they worked actually just fine in terms of just staying in the car, but the the flags themselves just turned into ribbons basically as you're driving.

Ben: 20:24

Eh, that's disappointing.

Gene: 20:26

Yeah, yeah, there's some big ass flags there too. The a lot of the cars had obviously home built. poles made out of pipe, like water pipe.

Ben: 20:42

Yeah, like uh, PVC.

Gene: 20:44

No, like metal, like metal pipe. And then they

Ben: 20:48

galvanized or

Gene: 20:49

yeah, yeah, like galvanized pipe. And they were flying like, you know, three foot by five foot flags, which has got to be adding a nice amount of drag to your car.

Ben: 20:59

Oh yeah, kill that gas mileage.

Gene: 21:01

Yeah, I, I actually do want to find one thing. I think I'll, I'll pick one up just for future is somebody had a hitch mount flag mount and

Ben: 21:11

Yeah, yeah.

Gene: 21:12

I wouldn't mind picking up cause you could put that on or take it off pretty easily.

Ben: 21:16

And it's behind, you're reducing drag because instead of being up and, you know, adding to the overall surface of the vehicle, the slipstream effect of the vehicle is actually gonna mean that just whatever's sticking up above is adding drag. Substantial reduction there. Yeah,

Gene: 21:34

So get an idea for that. I tried one of the food vendors there was very mediocre. Um, you know, it's all the usual Biden sucks Trump 2024 stuff there. One of the other disappointing things, my mind was average age was probably 65. There were, there was literally no zoomers and extremely few millennials there. The youngest people there were Gen Xers and the average age was even beyond that.

Ben: 22:08

I've been saying it for a while. All that really has to happen for communism to really take over in this country is to

Gene: 22:15

People die.

Ben: 22:16

wait till the baby boomers are gone and it's over. There's not, not that there aren't those of us who would oppose it, but there aren't enough. And that's really

Gene: 22:26

most people just don't care. That's kind of what it comes down to. And of course, on this trip, I'm listening to your audio books. Or I should say your recommendation of audio books, not, not ones you wrote. And there's, it's the second series

Ben: 22:44

Charlie's

Gene: 22:45

author that I, yeah, that I was reading previously, but this one's Charlie's Requiem, which starts off as a short story, which was weird.

Ben: 22:55

Because he, he didn't intend for it to become another series. So he, he wrote this novella as a, okay, this is what's going on in the cities versus Morgan and his crew out in the country. And the response was such that everyone was like, no, this needs to be another series. And yeah, you you'll get, when you get to the end of Charlie's, you'll see like having read Charlie's while I was waiting on book 12 to come out. There's some tie ins to book 12 where. He's weaving some of the storylines together and you'll, you'll see that from the other side speaking, which I'm a little over halfway through that. I actually picked it up

Gene: 23:36

still reading it. Jesus.

Ben: 23:38

I, I,

Gene: 23:38

Lowest I've ever heard you read.

Ben: 23:41

you mean the longest? Yeah, the longest it's taken me. I, I've been a little busy. As a result yeah, it it, my reading has has

Gene: 23:49

Limited. No, that's

Ben: 23:52

but you know, I, I read Quite a few books last year. I, I'm okay. I'll, I'll, I'll catch back up.

Gene: 23:59

Yeah, no, I haven't done that out of that. Given your average yearly speed of reading for sure.

Ben: 24:05

Yeah. You know, it's all good. It's fun.

Gene: 24:09

Yeah. I mean, I'm balanced. It was definitely a trip worth doing. It was worthwhile to go down there. Had it been a much bigger event, I think it would have been a lot. I would have been a lot more optimistic, but given the size of this thing I'm back to my default, which is fairly pessimistic about the future of the country because I honestly think that even if Texas doesn't back down, that it all, all it's happened is the, the, the primary gateway for the illegals is just shifted. There's not any fewer coming in today than there was six months ago. They're just coming in through different

Ben: 24:48

Arizona, California, New Mexico.

Gene: 24:50

Even, even other areas in Texas, dude. Texas, I think, has 18 border crossings that are official. And between all the official ones, there, there are plenty of unofficial ones.

Ben: 25:00

Yeah. And did you see Abbott about the actual building of actual wall?

Gene: 25:07

I saw a PR piece about it. Is is there a Actual substance to that.

Ben: 25:12

Again, we have to watch the the parabolic nature of the reporting, but yeah, it appears that Texas has. Purchase some of the same style bollard fencing and things that the Trump wall was being put up as, and Texas is funding sections of the wall.

Gene: 25:35

Yeah. But the the ironically named the border border patrol will be using porches to cut through that so that there can be holes in that official Texas fencing.

Ben: 25:52

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. You know, I, I think that

Gene: 25:58

Incidentally, I, to go down there or more accurately to go back up. You have to go through a border patrol checkpoint down there, which I was generally always annoyed by because the idea of driving within the United States, never leaving the country and then being stopped

Ben: 26:16

And having pretty much zero constitutional rights.

Gene: 26:19

yeah, yeah, to question your your citizenship, it just seems. Very absurd at this point, I have to say that I, I think that under a different president, it's obviously not going to happen under this one, I'd be in favor of building way more of those, like one on every road going north, because if you can't stop people at the border, you have to stop them at the checkpoints.

Ben: 26:52

Yeah. Yeah. I don't like them because it's unconstitutional as hell. Yeah, no,

Gene: 26:59

Yeah, but. But so is a lot of things. And I think the way, the way I'm seeing this is we're in a war. It's a war we didn't start, but it's a war that we have. And as a consequence of that if you do nothing,

Ben: 27:15

up my civil liberties because we're at a war. Not gonna

Gene: 27:18

yeah, yeah, may not have a choice.

Ben: 27:21

I'm aware and that's a, that's a major problem, but you know,

Gene: 27:26

but I, I think that the, the bigger problem is them not checking. So it's there, as you like to point out very accurately that you can vote your way into communism, you can't vote your way back out.

Ben: 27:43

correct.

Gene: 27:43

And that's where we are right now. We're right now, probably 10 years out of simply through voting, the government of this country to not include any of the rights we currently have. It's gonna, it's, we're probably about a decade away. So certainly within our lifetimes, this is going to happen. And if you combine that with the the removal of the United States as a first world power, with the crash of the U S dollar, the economy going down all of these things will seem like the next logical step as the politicians will explain to you. So given that we're going in that direction somebody else I was talking to about this I can't remember now.

Ben: 28:30

Just remember that there are four boxes used in the defensive liberty, the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and finally the cartridge box.

Gene: 28:41

Yeah. Yeah. The ammo box. True. However, I think where you're going to find is the number of people that like to LARP and the number of people willing to use the ammo box are two different things.

Ben: 28:55

Eh, and again, they may not have a choice,

Gene: 28:57

I think a lot of the people will, they absolutely will have a choice, which is they're going to be on the side of the new government.

Ben: 29:03

eh,

Gene: 29:05

I think they will be. I think if you watch most of the. Most of these YouTubers that you watch that and not just you, I mean, all of us watch that have gun related channels and gun related shows. I will bet you dollars to donuts that under just simply the risk of losing their jobs and the ability to provide money for their families, they will all shut down their channels.

Ben: 29:37

We'll see.

Gene: 29:38

Now, the handful that aren't married. Those might have a better pushback, but

Ben: 29:43

shall see.

Gene: 29:44

the threat to the family is the single biggest liver liver, single biggest lever that communism using in the Soviet Union, because it works because people are willing. To put their beliefs aside to keep their children alive, to keep their families fed, to be able to keep providing for their families. They may not change their minds individually, but they will absolutely shut the fuck up. And I think, I, I think the difference, you know, we like to talk about how Americans have more guns and Texans, in fact, have more guns than most of the rest of the world. And that's totally true. You threaten the Texas with a loss of livelihood and easily 95 percent of them are going to capitulate.

Ben: 30:33

I mean, it's what I've heard over and over again. And people look at me like I'm crazy when this conversation comes up. But I hear people say, oh, yeah, I lost my guns in a tragic boating accident. And I just look at them and go, if you feel that you have to hide your guns, because that's the regime you're in, it's past time to use your guns.

Gene: 30:54

absolutely.

Ben: 30:55

If you're, if you're not going to use them, just might as well give them up because they're, they do you no good if you're not going to do something with them. And I'm not advocating violence. I'm just saying in a hypothetical situation, if you feel the need to hide armaments, let's say this is, you know, we were conquered by a despot and we have to resist, you know, there is some guerrilla warfare stuff going on there potentially, but. You're hiding them because you're using them, not just to hide them. And unless you're just LARPing and this is just

Gene: 31:26

But we have been conquered by a despot and we are in that situation right now and no one's using their gun. No, but I mean, what, what Biden's done is on par with what any of the TV movie scenarios would show as the conquest of the United States. It really

Ben: 31:47

Yes.

Gene: 31:49

is. I mean, there's not a huge amount of difference here. It's, it's it's, it's still a form of government, but if you if you watch or you read the man in the high castle, you know, where the Nazi conquer the United States after World War II, it's not like they kill everybody, but people to work and they talk about the great prosperous future for the country,

Ben: 32:14

And a lot of people buy into it.

Gene: 32:17

I'd say 95%.

Ben: 32:19

Huh?

Gene: 32:20

Cause what are you going to do? Are you going to be one of those guys that, that led to Colorado where it's, it's a bastion of,

Ben: 32:28

Very likely.

Gene: 32:29

yeah, yeah, it's, again, I'm not saying that that's the wrong thing to do. Obviously you know, we watched the, the heroes go to Colorado in that book, but the, the majority of the population does not the majority of the population. Just want to live their lives in whatever way they can with the least amount of stress and, you know, negative things happening to them. They're not willing to risk anything in order to push back. And we talked about this, that it, you're really, you need the number that you need to, to get to the pushback is 1%, a 1 percent of committed people willing to do whatever it takes to do. To achieve their goal is sufficient enough looking at history to topple governments.

Ben: 33:31

One, 1 percent very dedicated, but yes.

Gene: 33:34

1 percent people willing to stake their lives, their fortunes and whatever the rest of the phrase is. That's really all it

Ben: 33:42

our fortunes and our sacred

Gene: 33:44

takes. Yeah, exactly. That's what it takes, but if 1 percent of the people that are committed enough to risk their lives, then you're at the mercy of the government in whatever shape or form it takes. And incidentally, that, I think that number is true across the board for anyone, you know, any country, countries in the Middle East, Iran even countries under the leadership of Hamas. All it would really take is 1 percent of the population to stand up and push back. And then flip the government to a government that is more of what they want in the country. And again, it could still be a theocracy for all I know, but maybe a different theocracy. But when people don't do that, when North Koreans don't push back, when there's not 1 percent of the population that's willing to risk their lives, then the entirety of the population just, you know, suffers through and puts up with whatever happens. So it's, I'm not saying this is just for. You know, the U. S. This is for any country and the majority of people don't want to risk not just their lives, but more importantly, the lives of their loved ones. And as as certainly we have examples from Soviet union the communist party knew exactly how to make that happen. So if you fucked up by doing something that was contrary to the government. You weren't going to be hauled off to Siberia.

Ben: 35:15

The

Gene: 35:16

your wife would be hauled off to Siberia and you would never see your kids because they would be growing up in a, in a you know, a home for kids without parents.

Ben: 35:24

And

Gene: 35:25

would still be working on your job until you fucked up again. And then other relatives would disappear.

Ben: 35:31

and anyone who hasn't read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, it's, it's huge, right? There's three huge volumes and it gets pretty repetitive to be honest with you. But that's kind of the point is, Hey, this wasn't a one off, here's a bunch of examples. You know, take that for what it is, but anyone who hasn't read the Gulag Archipelago. And thinks that, oh, it can't happen here. They should read that. And then they should also read the book. It can't happen here by, I think it was Lewis Carroll, which is about a fascist takeover in the United States.

Gene: 36:07

Yeah. And that works very well. And you know, and I'll, I'll say that as a, as a lifelong professional consultant. These would absolutely be the tactics that I would be recommending to a dictatorial government to utilize because, because they work. They've been proven time and time again. If you want to entice your population to revolt, then break down the family unit. So that no one cares about anybody else and what you'll get is a revolution and you'll be toppled. If you want your people to never revolt, then you have to maintain a strong family unit because the threat to the family is the strongest threat that you as a government possess.

Ben: 36:53

Yeah, and this is why a bunch of young men who are not having sex and not having families is a very dangerous situation.

Gene: 37:03

Yeah. Now let's look, who's crossing the border into the United States right now?

Ben: 37:07

A bunch of young men.

Gene: 37:09

Huh. And no women.

Ben: 37:12

You know, they say it's families and everything else is what the official narrative is, but man, everything I see sure

Gene: 37:19

no family. Yeah. It's

Ben: 37:22

how do we know? How do we know what the reality is? We're not down there every day.

Gene: 37:27

no, that's totally true. And incidentally, that, that whole area where they were the, the migrants is to use the best you know, non controversial term, but where they were held, that whole area is empty right now because I, I, I could see that from where I stood, there's nobody currently being held for processing down there. Which means they move them proactively, or they finish processing them, and no new people have been arriving.

Ben: 37:57

actually, they did evacuate the migrant camp there because of a, of a quote unquote bomb threat by white supremacists.

Gene: 38:06

course. That makes total sense.

Ben: 38:08

that, that was in the that was announced last night,

Gene: 38:11

but that, there you go, so they evacuated them.

Ben: 38:16

They evacuated them because there was a, there was a bomb threat, apparently. And, you know, what the joke I after I was talking to some other people who were down there last night, I, I made the joke after those reporters didn't get a bunch of stories from y'all, they had to make something up.

Gene: 38:29

Mm hmm.

Ben: 38:30

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the fucking reporters that called it in to spice up the story.

Gene: 38:35

Exactly. I still think that one of the most creative suggestions was to start putting piranha into the river.

Ben: 38:46

Yeah, no, let's not do that.

Gene: 38:48

I don't see why, man. I think piranha is a very cool fish if you ever

Ben: 38:52

Cause, cause I want to be able to swim in my rivers in Texas.

Gene: 38:56

I'm okay with that. Nobody else will either.

Ben: 38:59

Yeah, I want to be able to swim in a river.

Gene: 39:01

You can fish there. You don't need to be swimming in the river, you can just fish there.

Ben: 39:04

I want to swim. I like swimming.

Gene: 39:06

You like river swimming? Really? Do you

Ben: 39:09

I mean, I'd rather be in the salt

Gene: 39:11

brown water?

Ben: 39:13

dude, have you seen the Gulf of Mexico? Or at least the part of it I grew up in?

Gene: 39:20

I mean, I've driven by there. That part of Gulf of Mexico where you didn't grow up more. I will

Ben: 39:26

yeah. So the, for those who don't know, Texas is west of the Mississippi and the way, the way the currents flow, the Mississippi silt all drifts to the upper Texas Gulf coast. So from really New Orleans. To probably Corpus Christi the sand is pretty brown. The water is, depending on the time of year and what the conditions are, you know, can be silty and people complain about it and are turned off by it. And to me, it's just what I grew up with, so it doesn't bug

Gene: 40:01

not the prettiest water on the coast, that's for

Ben: 40:03

Right, but if you if you go out a mile or two, it goes blue. It's just literally that silt dropping off from the Mississippi and going west.

Gene: 40:14

Which incidentally, that, that silt ought to be pretty full of nutrients too.

Ben: 40:18

oh, it's it's very alive. And that's the big difference. If you go to. Florida, the other extreme, and you go to the gulf side down, down at the tip, it's dead beaches. It's, it's very beautiful white sand, but it's dead. There's, there's very little life. If you look at Texas, you go down to Brownsville, it's very white sand and, you know, fairly dead, but. You know, if you look off of Galveston, if you haven't ever looked at the flower gardens off of Galveston and that part of and part of Louisiana there, it's a huge reef out in the middle of the Gulf that is fed off of that. And the amount of shrimp and fish and sea life that exists off of all that, you know, to your point, nutrients is pretty high. You know, it's why East Galveston Bay has a huge oyster industry and everything else. I mean, there's, there's lots of stuff there.

Gene: 41:13

Yeah,

Ben: 41:14

A lot of people, you know, who think they're getting oysters from the Northeast are actually getting Galveston oysters.

Gene: 41:20

so incidentally, it was, it was fun going to a restaurant with your parents, the they had a server combined with a giant shrimp, appetizers thing. What do you call it? Bowl? I don't know.

Ben: 41:38

Like a cocktail, shrimp

Gene: 41:39

Yeah. Shrimp cocktail. Right, right, right. And I mean, it looked pretty, pretty appetizing. And, and your dad right away is can you tell me what the origin of those shrimp are? And they're like,

Ben: 41:49

nope.

Gene: 41:50

we'll check. Yeah. We'll let you know. We'll let you know. And then they, they, they come back and said, Alaska. Your dad's yeah, okay. The, the shrimp in Alaska don't look like that. And, and he is absolutely right. They don't get to that size up there. And yeah, I think most people have no clue where the shrimps come from. Most of it's coming from Central America, south America.

Ben: 42:13

Actually a lot of it's coming from Asia. So for those who don't know, I my dad was a commercial shrimper for many, many years. And I grew up going from Brownsville to Key West chasing that shrimp boat. And beyond that, my dad actually is a pretty educated man and has a degree in marine biology.

Gene: 42:31

your family owns Bob gum shrimp.

Ben: 42:33

We used to own a shrimping company. We don't anymore. But and my dad, you know, Dr. Cornelius mock, who was the inventor of shrimp farming and fish farming for that matter, was a good close personal friend of my dad. So he, he, he is very aware and hyper aware of what what fish are getting served in restaurants.

Gene: 42:54

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 42:55

yeah, but actually Vietnam and Indonesia, yeah. Vietnam and Indonesia do the majority of the shrimp farming for the world.

Gene: 43:03

Yeah, that makes sense. But there's still wild caught shrimp you could get.

Ben: 43:07

Yeah, I mean, you H E B actually has their own fleet now because diesel and some of the permits and everything have gotten really expensive, but,

Gene: 43:15

That's hilarious.

Ben: 43:16

but yeah, no, wild caught, and there, there's a massive difference in taste, texture, everything from wild caught to farm raised. And by the way, for, from a, you know, somewhat shrimp expert here, if you get shrimp and you, if you're not going to the fish house and getting them, then what you want is IQF which is individually quick frozen, which means on literally on the back deck of the boat, they have a say a very cold, freezing saline bath that they're throwing the shrimp into as they're Picking through them so that they're flash frozen at the point of catch and stored frozen. That's how you're going to get the

Gene: 43:59

Oh, that's how they do it. I was wondering

Ben: 44:01

that's how you're going to get the highest quality shrimp without getting literally going to a, a, a fish house or somewhere that As that day's catch,

Gene: 44:10

Yeah.

Ben: 44:12

which most, by the way, most boats, most shrimp boats stay out for extended periods of time until their holes are full. So for instance, when I was growing up, my dad would be out at out at sea for. 30 days at a time going and running and catching until, you know, especially as they were catching and catching big, what they would do is literally shrimp until their whole, the whole was full and they come back, refuel off of the cargo and go straight back out. Right? So it's not oh, we're done for the day. Let's go home. No, they, they would be working 24 hours a day, you know. As as long as they could to catch those.

Gene: 44:54

Yeah. I heard a lot of those stories. That was very interesting.

Ben: 44:57

Yeah, I had an interesting childhood and apparently you got educated on some of it.

Gene: 45:02

Oh, I sure did your dad and your mom both had a lot to say that was

Ben: 45:06

yeah, they're, they're a little proud of me

Gene: 45:10

Yes,

Ben: 45:11

for better or for worse.

Gene: 45:14

Yep. In some things, maybe not in others, but anyway we've been talking about the, the whole Texas thing and then we kind of moved into shrimp here, but what else has

Ben: 45:23

I, I tried to, I tried to get you on to the Syria Iraq thing, but you went back to the

Gene: 45:27

I, I did. I know, I know.

Ben: 45:29

Yeah. Yeah, I what worries me with this is it is an escalation in the Middle East and you know, if you're Iraq hey, what the fuck? You're just planning on leaving and now you're bombing us again. We've been here, done that. If I'm, if I'm, if I'm in the Iraqi government, I'm talking to China and Russia and Iran and talking mutual defense treaties. Immediately and, you know, if Iraq and Iran sign a mutual defense treaty then that will be very, very interesting because we've avoided bombing Iran directly because we don't want to get into a war in a more defensible mountainous area than Afghanistan that has. You know, not maybe a peer military, but they aren't, Iran hasn't been destroyed by Jesus. How long has Afghanistan been at war? When did the Soviets invade?

Gene: 46:34

Oh you could go way before that. I mean, if Afghanistan has historically never been successfully invaded.

Ben: 46:43

Right, but my point is, for literally the last four or five decades,

Gene: 46:51

Oh, yeah.

Ben: 46:52

the 1970s, they've

Gene: 46:54

It was the late

Ben: 46:54

at perpetual war with a few brief respites in the

Gene: 46:58

with somebody. I mean, it's, it's where the poppy grows.

Ben: 47:03

yeah, but my point is that that's not a strong military force. They've been beaten down. Iran is not that case.

Gene: 47:09

No,

Ben: 47:09

would not

Gene: 47:10

there's, there are definitely problems with the thing that makes no sense is ever since the revolution in Iran, which resulted in American hostages, which obviously pissed off America.

Ben: 47:23

Which was the fall of the Shah, which

Gene: 47:25

Which we installed as a CIA

Ben: 47:28

And as a dictator we supported for a good long time until he got toppled by his people.

Gene: 47:34

If we were truly wanting to squash Iran, then what the fuck were we doing fighting Iraq, which was their natural enemy. We should have been supporting Iraq. We should have been supporting Iraq when they went and invaded Kuwait. Because Kuwait was absolutely drilling under Iraqi. Submarine territory. That's a fact. That's not a supposition that we know for a fact that that's exactly what they were doing. They were drilling diagonally underneath the border in order to tap into the oil. In Iraq,

Ben: 48:14

Yeah

Gene: 48:14

we wanted to have the Iran Iraq war continue, we could have absolutely done that by providing military equipment and supporting Iraq more fully. And ultimately at least when the Soviet Union collapsed and the funding for Iran from there would have stopped, we could have through an intermediary like Iraq. Taken over Iran, but we didn't do that. So my question has always been, what is it about Iran that makes us talk to talk, but never walk the walk?

Ben: 48:48

Again, around, so have you, have you gone back and looked at pictures of Iran from the fifties and sixties?

Gene: 48:56

Oh yeah, yeah,

Ben: 48:57

It was a very Westernized industrialized

Gene: 49:01

more so than Turkey even.

Ben: 49:02

Yes. And then, you know, after the fall of the Shaw and the direction things went there, the Christians being pushed out, et cetera all that infrastructure and know how is still there. Right? And you have. A Western manufacturing base let's say in 1970s, 1980s ish main Western manufacturing base in a very mountainous geographically, very defensible country that has been supported and armed by your enemies for. You know, 50 years. I'm not, again, I'm not suggesting they are a peer to the U. S. Army, but again, look what happened in Korea, right? MacArthur wanted to use nukes. He was told no.

Gene: 49:51

Yep.

Ben: 49:52

you know, when you have a technologically superior force and you're told you can't use that technology, ah, kind of evens the playing field a little bit.

Gene: 50:04

That's because you have to consider the rest of the world. And the use of nukes unilaterally, I think it's something that absolutely could have been done during World War II, but once the nukes are no longer only possessed by one country, a lot harder to do that.

Ben: 50:25

Yeah

Gene: 50:28

And I'm not saying it's not going to be done, because I do think that there probably will be A nuclear response from the United States after the takeover of Taiwan. I don't think it's going to end well.

Ben: 50:47

so where, where do you think the U. S. would nuke?

Gene: 50:51

Oh, I think the U S is going to nuke in whatever the largest sea naval Chinese bases. I don't know what, where that would be located, off the top of my head. I'd have to look it up, but I think it's pretty likely that after the invasion happens and I think it'll be. Over very quickly, just because of the massive amount of, of troops that are going to be brought over from China into Taiwan.

Ben: 51:19

How do they get there? That's the problem.

Gene: 51:22

They're very close. It's really not that big a

Ben: 51:24

Right, but I

Gene: 51:25

it doesn't have to be on a military vessel either. It could be literally on anything. How many troops do you think you could fit on a of those giant cargo ships that brings crap we buy from Amazon into,

Ben: 51:38

so depending on the container ship, and if you're talking about putting them in containers on deck and stacking them that way first of all, a lot of them would die in

Gene: 51:48

You don't have to stack the containers, right? You could

Ben: 51:50

Alright, so just on deck. I mean, you're talking a few thousand people, but here's the problem. You're gonna see that. That's an unarmed merchant ship. That's technically a war crime to militarize

Gene: 52:03

my God, not a war crime. Oh God. What will we do? U

Ben: 52:06

Oh, I, I, I know, I know, I know, but I'm just telling you they would be sitting ducks. There's no good way to deploy off of that. And if I'm Taiwan, then any commercial vessel coming from China is now destroyed. Period.

Gene: 52:21

there's a bunch of commercial vessels going back and forth all the time because a lot

Ben: 52:24

Right. But if, if you put troops on them, what am I going to do? I'm going to say, yep. Nope.

Gene: 52:31

The bottom line is I think that that the United States doesn't have sufficient interest in providing the type of defense that is necessary. Or Taiwan, because it's literally going to be the entirety of our Pacific fleet. If we just position our entire Pacific fleet off the coast of Taiwan, yeah, we could totally keep Taiwan from ever being invaded, but I think that that'll create other problems for us because Taiwan's not the only hotspot there. The other thing. You have to keep in mind is that there's a clock ticking with Taiwan, which is the, the process already started for us to construct the manufacturing capabilities for the the chips that they're doing in Taiwan.

Ben: 53:20

ish.

Gene: 53:21

Ish, but more than it was two years ago. So we've got maybe four to five years until foundries are up and running in the US. And when that happens, the. The interest in maintaining Taiwan goes down significantly. Like it's no longer strategic. It's purely a status quo objective at that point. So I think, I think one of a couple of things are going to happen. If Biden wins the next election and is the next president, I think China will accelerate their, their plans for the takeover of Taiwan, because it's better to do it under Biden than under anybody else.

Ben: 54:05

If Biden is the next U. S. president and Texas doesn't leave the United States, I think I will.

Gene: 54:13

yeah, and that's, so I started bringing this up earlier, but I, I completely I didn't continue on with the topic. So I was having a conversation with somebody recently, I can't remember who. And I said that of the things that you have to consider as somebody living in the here and now in today's America a question of, do you want to do what's good for America or do you want to do what's good for your family and what's good for your family? May mean leaving America and a lot of people have done this over the years how my parents did that right? They left the Soviet Union And it's it's a time honored tradition to escape bad governments if you're able to so the idea that America gets to a point where it's beyond salvage It's, it's not a theoretical question. It's a very real question. And like you said, if Biden is the next term president, then we may very well see that America has achieved that point

Ben: 55:22

yeah, but the, the question is, where do you go?

Gene: 55:26

yeah, and it is a good question. And I know that. A quite a few friends that I have that that have net worths of, of seven and eight figures they are hedging their bets on this by buying or building homes in several countries right now.

Ben: 55:45

Yeah, but again. Where do you go from a freedom standpoint?

Gene: 55:50

Exactly right.

Ben: 55:51

This is, sadly, you know, as the quote goes, the last stand on Earth. We lose freedom here, it's gone.

Gene: 55:58

It, it really isn't it,

Ben: 56:00

for generations.

Gene: 56:01

poetic to say that, but the reality is somewhere is always going to be the freest. Even if the current freest goes away, there's somebody second place that will become first place.

Ben: 56:13

Yes, but the point there is the drastic difference in and the amount of reduction in what is now the freest is pretty sad. I

Gene: 56:25

Oh yeah.

Ben: 56:26

that in the last couple of generations.

Gene: 56:29

And, and I think you have to make a distinction between free and first world. And an example of that is if you look at what's happening right now in the UK, what's happening in the Netherlands, these are very first world countries. But as we were seeing with the, the farmer uprisings there these are first world countries that are becoming increasingly totalitarian to the point where they are now making decisions for the good of the earth. And for the bad of their populations, no more food. Sorry guys, you're going to have to starve to death because that's what the planet wants.

Ben: 57:06

And it may even be such that you know, the first one you have to choose, do you want to live in a first world country that is falling? And as a result of bad decisions like that, going to go down the rabbit hole of you know, less and less freedom and less and less stuff because of the, the actions of the government, or do you want to live in a third world country where, you know, Nope, you don't have everything that you had in the first world, but. It's not changing on you.

Gene: 57:37

And, and there's a degrees of freedom. Like in the United States, we have an awful lot of sort of big freedoms.

Ben: 57:44

Until you don't.

Gene: 57:45

yeah, until you don't, but big freedoms where, you know, anyone who isn't a felon can have a gun, for example, in a lot of countries you can't do that. But there's also personal,

Ben: 57:58

enough, did you know Texas allows felons to have guns?

Gene: 58:02

yeah, I did, I did know,

Ben: 58:04

I didn't. I recently learned that under the Castle Doctrine, it can't leave your home, you can't do jack shit with it, but it's for personal defense, you are allowed to have a gun in Texas as a felon.

Gene: 58:14

And I believe that's after either three or five years of being a felon. It's not immediately after you become a felon or not immediately after you're released. There's a delayed period there, but at least in Texas you can where federally you're breaking the law by following Texas law, because you're just not allowed to ever period have a gun. But anyway, getting back in this subject, so that they're also very sort of small freedoms or personal freedoms, which is something that people in the United States experienced when they left the big cities of the East in the 1800s and went West. The, the laws of the country may still exist, but when you're in Colorado of the 18 hundreds or you're in the the Dakota Territory or in Texas Texas is a little different'cause that, you know, became a country, but a lot of these places were just territory. So they, they literally didn't really have anybody to enforce US laws. And so people lived under the laws that. Their towns enforced, not the federal government. And that,

Ben: 59:24

sheriff.

Gene: 59:25

that created an awful lot more freedom. Yeah, exactly. Because if everybody in the town for example you know, they, they were, I don't know, I'm trying to think of something that would've been illegal on the East coast that people could still do on the west coast or in the, in the territories. Gambling is probably a good example, right? The gambling was very controlled in the east coast. It was relegated as a, already an undesirable activity in all these little towns and territories. You'd be hard pressed to find a hotel or a bar that didn't have gambling in the premises. And, you know, that's just a small example, but there was a lot of them. And so I think when you're talking about where do you go from the United States? I think you have to look at what are some of the countries where they was essentially they will just leave you alone if you just buy a plot of land somewhere. And those countries absolutely exist. I know from personal experience although I think things may have changed. I haven't been there in years, but in the late 1990s, I spent some time in Costa Rica. And you absolutely could essentially have a an exemption, if you will from laws. Pretty cheaply still costs some money, but you know, you could establish your own private little yeah, your own fiefdom, your own little city, your own little town.

Ben: 1:00:54

Yeah, and, you know, Mexico, if you go somewhere and pay the cartels that right now, then you can do the same

Gene: 1:01:01

Yeah. Yeah. And, and from what I hear, the cartels are actually better about, you know, contracts than a lot of A lot of the corporations in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like they're they have this, this thing that companies don't have, which is called honor. They don't want to paint their honor by breaking agreements because they're going to get a bad reputation. Companies don't really give a shit about that. I'll do that all day long and the US government in a lot of ways doesn't care either. You know, you can make fun of honor amongst thieves, but in the end, the only, the only thing that a government of any country is, is the exact same conglomeration of thieves, but they're the thieves that you're willing to

Ben: 1:01:52

Yeah. Oh, all

Gene: 1:01:53

and support.

Ben: 1:01:55

government is is legalized force that is broadly accepted versus a cartel or a mob is, I mean, there really is no difference there. It's just, you know, I mean, you know, the blue mafia is a real thing. The way they take care of each other, the way they look out for each other, the stupid shit they do. It's a real thing. And you know,

Gene: 1:02:20

you mean the

Ben: 1:02:21

I'm not, yeah, I do.

Gene: 1:02:23

I just want to clarify for people that didn't understand what the hell blue mafia means.

Ben: 1:02:26

yeah, and the problem I have is and I have cops in my family, you know, I've got,

Gene: 1:02:31

I'm sorry.

Ben: 1:02:33

yeah you know, the problem I have is that it is very clear to me that even a quote unquote good cop to me at the very least is evil because they're turning their cheek and not. They are participating in a system that is, you know, not good at the very least.

Gene: 1:02:59

Yeah, we don't need more cops. We just need more Batman. More vigilantes. I think that's preferable to cops. You ever seen Batman give a speeding ticket to anybody?

Ben: 1:03:12

no.

Gene: 1:03:13

There you go. There's my point.

Ben: 1:03:17

We'll see.

Gene: 1:03:18

Cops do the work that politicians are too chicken shit to do themselves, but would like somebody to do. And

Ben: 1:03:28

Yeah. I don't know, man.

Gene: 1:03:32

it's quite often contrary to the will of the people. So it's, takes a special kind of person to To go into law enforcement

Ben: 1:03:43

and, you know, I have,

Gene: 1:03:44

for us.

Ben: 1:03:45

I have known some cops that I would consider good cops. Or at least who ended up being good people after they were cops, like Jack McClam I, you know, I knew him very personally.

Gene: 1:03:58

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:03:58

Jack McClam was a big patriot in the 90s. He helped get Randy Weaver off of the hill at Ruby Ridge. I knew him and Bo Graetz, you know, pretty, pretty well personally. And, Yeah, the Jack McClam, I, I, I, I believe Jack was nothing but a good, honest individual. I didn't know him as a cop, but I knew him afterwards, and he, he was a good guy. But, man that, that's the only one I can think of that I would say and feel that same way about including the ones that are in my family,

Gene: 1:04:35

yep. Yeah. And

Ben: 1:04:37

like I've got cousins that are in police departments, and I think they're fine, they're fine people, but I, I don't think they have the same moral fortitude that he had,

Gene: 1:04:46

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:04:48

so, yeah.

Gene: 1:04:49

And I mean, there, there are certainly guys like Masala, you, who were policemen forever, and there are strong advocates for the gun rights. And, you know, the, the, the right side of the political spectrum. However, I think that there has to be something that. Is off kilter in a person's brain from childhood for them to want to go into police work. It's not a, it's not a normal desire. Like you can, you can want to be a fireman and that interest is very simple. It is literally saving people's lives. But if you want to go into police force, you're not going there to save people's lives. You're going there to have an alternative source of funding for government bureaucrats. going there because you can exhibit your power above others because you have a badge and a gun. You're going there. You could say to help people, but how are you helping'em?'cause you don't show up until after the crime's been committed, you're not gonna undo the results of the crime. The work of the police department is really to record what happened and to make sure that as much information about what happened exists so that if it happens somewhere else again, you can connect the dots and, and eventually hopefully find the person responsible. Cops don't stop crime.

Ben: 1:06:28

And nor should they. That, that's the thing, is stopping a crime before it happens, this idea of pre crime, is dangerous and bullshit.

Gene: 1:06:37

You don't need to stop it before it happens, but you can have drones flying around and then immediately upon seeing a crime, stop it.

Ben: 1:06:45

Yeah, sure. You know, if someone is being assaulted and on the verge of being murdered, yes, stop it. But the point is, we institute these laws in our society that constitute pre crime that are problematic.

Gene: 1:07:00

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's such a thing as pre-crime. I, meaning either it's a crime or it's not a crime. And, and pre-crime

Ben: 1:07:08

again, it depends on what your definition of a crime is.

Gene: 1:07:11

Yeah. But I mean things like with intent to blah, blah, blah, should never be. Illegal. It's just ridiculous. It, it's,

Ben: 1:07:21

reckless driving,

Gene: 1:07:22

in my mind, it's unconstitutional, but obviously the courts have not sided with my mind on that count. Quite often they add the, with the intent to blah, blah, blah. Whether it's intent to sell narcotics, the intent to commit robbery, intent to commit murder intent to any of these things,

Ben: 1:07:40

Which how can selling anything be a crime?

Gene: 1:07:45

I mean, there's something to be said for that.'cause the buyer's buying it. So I was just fulfilling a need,

Ben: 1:07:50

That's, that's my point. It's a, it's a, it's a willful transaction. So if your definition of a crime is harm to one's life, one's liberty, or one's person.

Gene: 1:07:58

material?

Ben: 1:08:00

That'd be, that the, the transaction itself would be harm to the person who was. Being exploited in the imagery. So that, that's

Gene: 1:08:10

not really. I mean, they've already been exploited, whether they're sold or given away for free,

Ben: 1:08:15

further danger and damage to them because their image or whatever is being promulgated further and further. So therefore, yes, it is further harm. This, I mean, it's the same way we would look at this if it was liable and slander. You know, if someone's repeating liable and slander.

Gene: 1:08:35

Yeah. But again, I think the distinction is, are they making money out of it or not? And I think the intent there's an intel. Yeah,

Ben: 1:08:43

you don't have to make money to liable or slander someone.

Gene: 1:08:47

no, you don't, you don't. And that's why I'm saying is I don't think you. If we have stupid laws to begin with, like ones that prohibit certain drugs, then it's, it's extra stupid to have laws that we then slap on top of it by saying with an intent to sell these

Ben: 1:09:06

Yeah. Yeah. In the way I would look at the drugs and transactions like that is. If you're willingly buying drugs and so on, then, hey, great. Good for you. Now, if you sell drugs that end up killing people, you get charged with murder because you did something to harm them. So maybe you should make sure that your your wares are good. You know,

Gene: 1:09:29

Yeah. And this is why drug companies have immunity and

Ben: 1:09:34

a, that's a whole nother problem.

Gene: 1:09:38

they're excuse, but we won't be able to create anything new. If you don't give us immunity, it's, you know, you have to give us immunity.

Ben: 1:09:45

Really, it's about biologics at this point and vaccines. And that's why you, I think you've seen such a uptick in vaccines is directly because of that.

Gene: 1:09:54

That's you're right. It's another, another point for sure.

Ben: 1:10:00

yeah, I, you know, hey, we'll, we'll see what happens speaking of which the apparently I have it on good authority and I even validated this myself, but there are still companies asking for proof of vaccine. And submission to that,

Gene: 1:10:22

Holy shit.

Ben: 1:10:23

One of my buddies recently actually was laid off. He's looking I've been looking not really hardcore, but starting to look some more and I've run into it as well. Yeah, there's, there's some there's some companies out there that are still pushing that

Gene: 1:10:41

Yeah, I mean,

Ben: 1:10:42

and anyone who would be willing to

Gene: 1:10:44

I would imagine these are companies

Ben: 1:10:46

is just wow.

Gene: 1:10:48

I guess I would assume these are companies that do business with the government Outside the U. S. government, anyone really gives a shit if you had vaccine or not.

Ben: 1:10:57

I know of several companies that, that do

Gene: 1:11:01

Yeah.

Ben: 1:11:01

they have that are not directly supplying the U. S. government in any way, shape or form.

Gene: 1:11:06

That's crazy. Yeah.

Ben: 1:11:10

yeah, so I sent you a video this morning on a different note of a, there was on no agenda. No, it's not no agenda social anymore. It's no authority social of E. V. power cords being cut.

Gene: 1:11:25

Yeah. Which I thought was total bullshit, but apparently it's not.

Ben: 1:11:28

Yeah. And then I found a D. O. E. article talking about it.

Gene: 1:11:32

That's crazy. But

Ben: 1:11:34

Yeah, the crackheads have figured out this is an easy way to get copper

Gene: 1:11:37

I guess, but man, I guess they should just always supply power to those. They should never shut them off. Yeah.

Ben: 1:11:45

that that would be a safety issue.

Gene: 1:11:47

No, not really, because they're not meant to be cut. So it's not really a safety issue.

Ben: 1:11:52

It's a safety issue when you go to plug it into your vehicle and you're having arc flash incidents

Gene: 1:11:57

They could turn them off as soon as the the transaction starts until you plug it in. I mean, there's ways to do it, but,

Ben: 1:12:07

I mean, that could be considered a booby trap in some states and that's illegal.

Gene: 1:12:11

You can't then you can consider the power lines over your house and the pole to be a booby trap too. Because if you, if you decide you need wood and you, you use a chainsaw to cut down the pole with your power lines, you might get electrocuted.

Ben: 1:12:24

Yeah, utility companies because of the rural electrification act that was passed in the 20s or 30s. And some of the issues there and, you know, why the power company has easements everywhere, right? Because of that, they are indemnified to a much higher degree than a lot of other companies would be otherwise. The utilities got a sweetheart deal at the turn of the last century.

Gene: 1:12:50

Yeah.

Ben: 1:12:51

And they are grandfathered the fuck in, man.

Gene: 1:12:55

Yeah. Then fuck them.

Ben: 1:12:57

Yeah, I'm just telling you,

Gene: 1:12:59

I know the

Ben: 1:13:00

but yeah, no who would just go cut the course in my question is why are they leaving the plugs? The plugs are good to, I

Gene: 1:13:09

locked in there until you run the transaction, you can pull it out.

Ben: 1:13:13

didn't know this. I don't have an electric vehicle.

Gene: 1:13:15

right, right. Yeah, so they, they don't actually unlock until after the transaction starts, then you can pull it out of there and plug it into your car.

Ben: 1:13:22

Oh, so it's not like a gas pump. I always thought it would just be like gas pump because you can pick up the gas pump and put it in and while you're starting the transaction, you know,

Gene: 1:13:30

They're locked in there, which is also why I thought they, there was always power in there. Cause you know, if there's power, then they should be locked in there. You shouldn't just be able to pull it out willy nilly.

Ben: 1:13:42

Yeah, it's a safety issue. That's why they're not energized until it's plugged in and the circuit's

Gene: 1:13:47

That sure would have solved the problem though.

Ben: 1:13:50

yeah most of those are only like 220. So it's not like super high voltage, but yeah, you got to cut through it. It's it's going to be a bad day.

Gene: 1:13:58

it, it all depends. I mean, some of them are 220, but plenty of them are doing a DC charging as well,

Ben: 1:14:05

Yeah.

Gene: 1:14:05

DC at over 900 volts.

Ben: 1:14:08

Yeah. Some of the super high voltage D. C. or hell even the 2 2050 amp. You know, that's. That's a lot.

Gene: 1:14:14

You're going to get zapped. Yep.

Ben: 1:14:18

Yeah.

Gene: 1:14:20

That's make you not do it second time. That's for sure.

Ben: 1:14:23

Yeah. I guess it does depend because I know you can supply the car directly with AC and it will convert it for the DC charge, but

Gene: 1:14:31

DC, but they have,

Ben: 1:14:33

they have the inverters. Yeah.

Gene: 1:14:34

inverters on them. Yeah.

Ben: 1:14:36

But they have onboard inverters because you can literally take a cord and plug it into a 220 AC in your home and plug it directly into the car and charge the car. No intermediary needed. Yeah, but I guess if you have a charger that is there and can do the intermediary step better at a higher voltage, that'd be

Gene: 1:14:54

exactly, and more, most importantly with the appropriate cooling.

Ben: 1:14:58

Yes.

Gene: 1:14:59

because that's the part in the car that, that, that heats up the most as an inverter.

Ben: 1:15:03

Oh, absolutely. And the digital inverters, what we've seen at scale for like large solar farms and wind farms and so on we've seen several companies that sell these big digital inverter systems go bankrupt because they're, they're not holding up. They're just, they're not. So if you can charge your car directly on DC and not have a built in inverter, that's going to fail. That would probably be the

Gene: 1:15:26

well, and that's the thing, is they couldn't do that. When there were no chargers and people had to charge the home they, I think there will be a time, maybe five years from now, 10 years from now, where you will start seeing cars that have the inverter as an option. So you can buy the car with direct DC charging only, or if you think you're going to be camping DC chargers or whatever, then you buy the car with the inverter option. So it'll be, it'll flip, it'll kind of become like an optional thing.

Ben: 1:15:58

So Grantham, depending on what his findings are may need a Nobel prize for his scientific work that he just published. I haven't watched it

Gene: 1:16:08

Brand thumb. What?

Ben: 1:16:09

Yes. Look at the video I just sent you.

Gene: 1:16:12

All right. Let's see what you got here. Damn it. How do I get out of this?

Ben: 1:16:16

It's on Signal.

Gene: 1:16:18

I know I'm looking through, if you look at a picture on signal, it doesn't want to leave the damn picture. Deflect bullets. Can breast implants save your life? Yes. He's definitely running out of things to do, isn't he?

Ben: 1:16:31

No, no, this is great. I mean, if he can show that, you know, they, they, they may be able to help save your life and that that's just another reason to get them by, he deserves a Nobel

Gene: 1:16:43

you going to have Kevlar breast implants now being put in,

Ben: 1:16:46

Hey, that's okay.

Gene: 1:16:48

US military will pay for breast implants now?

Ben: 1:16:52

Hey. I, I, I think they already will if you're a dude.

Gene: 1:16:55

Oh, really? Oh, if you're a dude, they will.

Ben: 1:16:57

ha ha ha ha.

Gene: 1:17:00

That's true. Yeah. It's yeah. Grant. Grant thumb is he is very creative. He's trying to find more stuff. Also those realistic skeletons that they

Ben: 1:17:12

Oh my god, that's crazy.

Gene: 1:17:14

They're expensive as fuck, man. I, I don't know how they're affording them.

Ben: 1:17:18

They, they, they have some, you know, grants from the federal government. Ha

Gene: 1:17:22

They must, because they're

Ben: 1:17:24

No, I, I think the companies help sponsor them and so on. But no, the, I mean, there's no doubt that some of those Guntubers are feds. Or at least You know,

Gene: 1:17:36

Yes, I know that's your, that's your current theory, is they're that half of them are feds.

Ben: 1:17:40

Probably more than that. I wa I was surprised to see Risky Krisky get axed off of YouTube.

Gene: 1:17:46

yeah.

Ben: 1:17:47

Yeah

Gene: 1:17:48

That's just what a fed would pretend to do, have happen, wouldn't it?

Ben: 1:17:51

he yeah,

Gene: 1:17:54

Oh, I'm too controversial because I'm, I'm like a total gunner dude. I've never trusted that

Ben: 1:17:59

You know, like us, if we were on YouTube, we'd be gone. But that's why I never

Gene: 1:18:04

we're not on YouTube.

Ben: 1:18:05

I just went straight to Rumble. It's I'm not gonna fight that fight.

Gene: 1:18:09

yeah, yeah. And when I get my shit together and get the Mac running, we'll be back on X for streaming. I just haven't gotten the software installed on the Mac yet. But yeah, it's YouTube is very See, this is the thing, given how much editorial control YouTube has, there's no way in hell that they ought to be off the hook for the content from a the, what's that section called? The,

Ben: 1:18:38

Section 230.

Gene: 1:18:39

yeah. There's no way that they ought to be off that hook. They, they're, they have completed editorial control. They will. The number of videos that they flag for content is tremendously huge. And they specifically tell people the time intervals that they need to either remove or edit. If that's not editorial control, I don't know what it's

Ben: 1:19:05

You know, that's the big problem I see is that, you know, people want to repeal section two 30 and everything else. I don't think you repeal. I think you actually just enforce it the way it's meant to be done. And if someone is exercising editorial control, i. e. YouTube or i. e. Facebook or anyone else unless you just literally allow everything except for law enforcement, takedown requests. You're editorializing, therefore, you are liable to be sued.

Gene: 1:19:32

And that's the way it should be. Yeah. I totally agree with that. I think that

Ben: 1:19:36

if you're 4chan, you're cool. If you're anyone else, you're getting sued.

Gene: 1:19:41

yeah, pretty much yeah. If, if law enforcement sends a take down, you take it down, but no. There should be no takedowns proactively and no takedowns based on human complaints.

Ben: 1:19:55

Yes, you know, you can say DMCA then comes into play as well for copyright notice takedowns, and you may have to comply with that, but again, short of that the way Section 230 was originally written and understood was if you're editorializing, i. e., you're the New York Times, and you have a comments section that's user generated content, and you edit that then you better edit it, and edit it well, because anything that is posted in that comment section, since you are editing it just like letters to the editor, could be considered something that you would be sued over, right? Same concept. If I send a letter to the editor to the New York Times, and they publish it, and it's slanderous, then New York Times is getting sued for slander, not me.

Gene: 1:20:44

Yeah, and that's so like an example of a system where there is no editing involved. I think is a mess done because a good

Ben: 1:20:57

Depends on the server.

Gene: 1:20:58

going through are of Japanese teenage girls dressed in Nazi uniforms with cat ears.

Ben: 1:21:06

Yeah, it, it depends on the server, but yes.

Gene: 1:21:09

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, the, the mastodon system by design doesn't have editing built in, you can block servers, you can block people, but you can also not block anything. And, and so you get a lot of that shit, you get a lot of that kind of, I don't even know what to call it because it's not

Ben: 1:21:29

a lot of anime porn.

Gene: 1:21:31

Like it's not even anime porn. It's like anime Nazi porn. It's how did these two things get tied together?

Ben: 1:21:39

I, I don't know what Mastodon server you're on now, Gene, but

Gene: 1:21:42

I'm not on any I left that that shit piled behind man. I'm on the next

Ben: 1:21:47

I still prefer Mastodon. And it's just, it just feels

Gene: 1:21:54

I Got to the point where I had blocked more people than were following me

Ben: 1:22:01

There's your problem

Gene: 1:22:02

that's not my problem because they're all just Full of Nazi anime porn, or Ukraine.

Ben: 1:22:10

There's your, there's your problem.

Gene: 1:22:13

It's ridiculous. At least on X, you don't run into that Nazi anime porn. It's not a thing. At least I haven't. None of the, I guess none of the people that I subscribe to are into that shit.

Ben: 1:22:27

well, and it looks like so I'm back on X a little bit, not really just dipping my toe into the water. So there's that it's the real DN Ben. So kind of the real, our real DN Ben,

Gene: 1:22:42

Yeah, which is a stupid name, but

Ben: 1:22:45

find me a better one.

Gene: 1:22:47

How about, how about DudeNamedBenTX?

Ben: 1:22:51

I believe it was taken

Gene: 1:22:52

Now you didn't check it. Just put a TX on the end

Ben: 1:22:57

I, I, I checked a lot of items, but let me check because I can, I don't have enough followers right now that it would matter. So before the show goes out, I will check that and I will register it if that is

Gene: 1:23:09

if it's available.

Ben: 1:23:10

thing, but dude, I checked a lot of different different connotations and capabilities there. And.

Gene: 1:23:19

Yeah. even good old boy band or something, you know, it just could using abbreviated

Ben: 1:23:25

was just trying to get something shorter. Thank you.

Gene: 1:23:30

Just two good old boys host Ben, I guarantee you that's available.

Ben: 1:23:35

Yeah. I'm not going to do that.

Gene: 1:23:38

but yeah, I just, I, I don't have anything against Mastodon than the sliminess factor of the people on there. That's that's really about it. And if there were other options other than Mastodon back in the day that No agenda could have taken maybe they would have been better, but it seemed like Mastodon was the closest to recreating Twitter and

Ben: 1:24:08

And still kind of is,

Gene: 1:24:11

Yeah, but the people that were on Twitter with blue check marks that I got all butthurt and left Twitter And mass after Elon bought it are the people that all went to Macedon because again, because they want their Twitter now, you probably don't interact with a whole lot of them because most of them banned no agenda social immediately because it's full of Nazi quadroons. But

Ben: 1:24:35

you know, if there's a way to change your name on Twitter or migrate

Gene: 1:24:39

I don't remember, I don't think I've ever tried, so I don't know if there is. But it's, it's a, I mean, certainly before you start paying for Twitter, I would try and get a better name.

Ben: 1:24:52

really just don't care and I'm not paying for Twitter.

Gene: 1:24:58

You say that now, but we'll see. I know Darren's now paying for it and he wasn't going to but then he makes enough money from people supporting the podcast.

Ben: 1:25:13

yeah,

Gene: 1:25:13

Speaking of, we still have people

Ben: 1:25:15

do not,

Gene: 1:25:16

yeah, but we still have three people that are currently supporting it.

Ben: 1:25:19

which is great and thank them.

Gene: 1:25:21

Yeah. So if we could get like one new person a month without anybody leaving,

Ben: 1:25:26

If we could just get one more person in general, we could be at least not losing money on the

Gene: 1:25:32

That's true. Yeah. One more person would be enough to completely cover the costs of the hosting. So it's there you go. There's a challenge for y'all become, become the fourth person to support. And by support, it's literally a link right in the podcast. It says support us and allows you to put in a, a credit card or something. It's not a PayPal thing, it's, it's a direct

Ben: 1:25:56

Yeah, it's, it's through our hosting company and then also on namedven. com you have my get Albie, you have jeans get Albie. You've got lots of different ways to donate to the show.

Gene: 1:26:08

Yeah, yeah. But the most immediate one that I actually covers the cost of podcast is the link right in the

Ben: 1:26:14

Through, through, through our hosting company. That's Buzzsprout.

Gene: 1:26:17

I don't know if you're doing anything with it, but literally

Ben: 1:26:20

I haven't gotten jacked there, I mean, I've gotten more sats by listening to other podcasts.

Gene: 1:26:26

ever gotten from anybody in the form of sats is still sitting in that account. Like it's never going to get taken out. It's just sort of, you know, it's a I don't even know what to call it, but it's a one directional system. And at some point I need to actually find a cheaper alternative to paying 20 bucks a month for fricking hosting for that.

Ben: 1:26:53

So question, should I do DudeNamedBenTX or NamedBenTX?

Gene: 1:26:58

I would do the name of NTX cause that's your full name.

Ben: 1:27:03

Alright, I've

Gene: 1:27:04

I will tell you this, that I've gotten a much better response from people with having, who have TX in their name. To subscribing to me since I have a TX in my name, there's a built in affinity that happens when somebody reads a message from somebody else who's in Texas, they're more likely to follow that person. I think,

Ben: 1:27:27

got some of the Texit guys following me now. After some of my posts,

Gene: 1:27:32

yeah,

Ben: 1:27:32

that was interesting adding sending a post to some of my articles with Abbott and you know, doing that, got got some attention there,

Gene: 1:27:42

I would love Texas to happen. I just think practically speaking, the process is so complicated, even if you could get both sides to agree to it,

Ben: 1:27:51

which you're not,

Gene: 1:27:52

which you're not gonna, but the process is extremely complicated because. Texas hasn't been a country for so long. It's not like Brexit, which was its own country and then was part of Europe for about a decade, maybe a little longer, but it wasn't that long ago that they had everything separate. I mean, you'd have to separate out and create so many new things. I'm not saying it couldn't be done. It could be done, but it would probably take over a decade to do, assuming both sides agreed.

Ben: 1:28:27

That are violently and quickly.

Gene: 1:28:30

Yeah, yeah, it could happen violently and quickly, but I think that will still have a tremendous amount of confusion where you'll have what happens to all the companies that have offices here? But. Also have offices in the us.

Ben: 1:28:44

All right, so my Twitter handle is now changed and is updated on on my website and it allowed me to move without losing or doing

Gene: 1:28:56

Oh good. That's awesome. Which Darren is still bitching about the fact that he can't move his subs so he is got like 3000 and then some people on ma done and he can't move'em to the new ma. Done.

Ben: 1:29:09

Oh, I was able to.

Gene: 1:29:11

That's because you don't have 3, 000.

Ben: 1:29:15

Fuck you.

Gene: 1:29:17

No, it's not a fuck you. It's and I, and I, I asked him about that and he said, it's absolutely tied to large number of followers. The system times out. There's a timeout value somewhere in there that before the transition can finish the process, it times out and resets, assuming there was an error.

Ben: 1:29:36

Has he done the export import?

Gene: 1:29:39

Multiple times.

Ben: 1:29:41

No, no, no, not like. Redirecting the account. So there are two options here. One of the things he can do is export and import, or he can redirect the account. Redirecting the account doesn't automatically subscribe anyone to you. It's just, if they're already linked to the other account, it basically links cross links. And then, you know, they can, if that server is eventually going to shut down, actually shut down, not just be

Gene: 1:30:05

I have no idea what he did, but he was bitching about how it just does not work. And he's now, I think also more active in X.

Ben: 1:30:13

Maybe he shouldn't just, maybe he shouldn't be so damn popular.

Gene: 1:30:18

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And he does do 20 hours of podcasting a week or not just podcasts, but he does two hours

Ben: 1:30:27

I don't know how he does it, dude. Even if I did not have a full time job sort of thing, I would, I couldn't do

Gene: 1:30:35

Oh, I bet you would. If you didn't have a full time job, you'd be coming up with all kinds of new podcast ideas you want to do.

Ben: 1:30:43

No. I, I,

Gene: 1:30:45

You'd want to do like a how to, how to be a prepper podcast. You do a how to raise cows, podcast, start doing all kinds of

Ben: 1:30:56

Nope. No.

Gene: 1:30:58

And they agree to disagree.

Ben: 1:31:01

Okay. Yeah. I, I you know. I, I'm, I'm not someone who, I mean, it, it wasn't. It wasn't something that I automatically wanted to do when we started this, right? We had something that happened with Yuri, and that's how you and me and Adam really kind of got started to talking in more detail. You and I had met in person before and,

Gene: 1:31:25

apparently I couldn't remember it.

Ben: 1:31:27

yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, um You know, it was just one of those things that you know, people had to ask me a couple of times before I said yes, so I don't know. It's just not something I'm like hopping up and down to do and just hasn't been. So

Gene: 1:31:48

Yeah. Yeah. But also I think if we started getting more popular and getting more donations coming in, I think you'd be getting more excited about it too.

Ben: 1:31:58

yeah, maybe you know,

Gene: 1:31:59

The way I always describe it is I do podcasts because if I didn't do podcasts, I would just still have these exact same conversations. Cause then it'd be on the phone call with the same people that I'm talking to on the podcast. And as you remember, before we started doing the podcast, we weren't having phone calls.

Ben: 1:32:17

I, you know, I I guess one of the things that did get me excited was when I posted. Shit I forget which one of my posts and articles it was that I put up on namebend. com that I also put up on Twitter, but I, I got, it was interesting to see the Twitter engagement and versus my website stats, on who clicked on the article and actually went and read what I said. And I was pretty shocked at the, the numbers there. Like it was definitely the most traffic I've seen.

Gene: 1:32:46

Yeah. And people can click and read your shit and then still not post a comment.

Ben: 1:32:52

Oh, on Twitter, yes. I mean, my comments are disabled anyway, so yeah.

Gene: 1:32:58

yeah, it's definitely there. I don't have any illusions of anything that I do that's in podcasts or, or just leaving comments that'll have any impact on anything. Just not enough people are seeing it, but I, I like having that outlet for communication of my thoughts and ideas and opinions.

Ben: 1:33:19

Yeah, I guess I'm naive and still hopeful that You know, part of the reason why I want to do this is to put ideas out there and get people thinking and have people at least think through that, hey, maybe something isn't right, and we should try and make it different in this world. again, I very much believe that if we lose the battle here for freedom, if we let this slip away from us here, we will have lost something generationally that will take Generations to get back.

Gene: 1:33:57

Yeah. And it's probably a true statement, but also a statement said by every other empire in this decline. You know, if, if we, if we let it keep going the way it's been going, the British empire. We'll never be the same way again. And there may never be an empire like the British empire and same thing with the Roman empire, same thing with any empire it's, it's coming to the twilight of something is never as exciting as being at the birth of something. So that's what I think the trick is to find the birth of the next empire.

Ben: 1:34:34

Yeah. And here, here's, here's what I would argue and say about that is when the Roman empire fell, we ended up with the dark ages and we lost a lot and it took centuries to dig out of that. I would rather not go through a modern

Gene: 1:34:51

a little something to do with that, but yeah, Christianity had a little something to do with that, but yeah.

Ben: 1:34:58

Oh, no, no, no. Actually, Christianity saved the majority of what we know. If it wasn't for the monks going through and copying documents and taking care of shit, we wouldn't know.

Gene: 1:35:11

Yeah. The,

Ben: 1:35:11

Roman Empire would be a

Gene: 1:35:13

saved the majority of the Greek and Roman writings that we have. The the Vatican certainly saved a good chunk, but arguably not to preserve them, but to keep them out of the hands of the commoners, which is what the dark ages were all about. It was a regression back to a a much more isolated and uninformed time in history.

Ben: 1:35:39

Disagree.

Gene: 1:35:40

You, you may disagree, but you actually read some Catholic history. I think you'll start changing your mind.

Ben: 1:35:46

I'm not saying the Catholic Church was a good thing, but I'm just telling you that yes, the Arab world helped, but also, you know, Christian monks in Europe did a Damn decent part of going through and trying to save some knowledge there.

Gene: 1:36:06

I think the Christian monks were doing exactly what they were told to do, which is to copy books. That's it. There, there was, I think you're ascribing intention there and noble intention that did not exist.

Ben: 1:36:21

Okay. I think the reason why you have the Renaissance is because of Christianity. Actually. Okay.

Gene: 1:36:32

Yeah. I think that you have the Renaissance for a lot of reasons, but part of it was the, the decline in religion in general. That was happening. There were, there was more humanist thoughts starting to pop up, but we can, we can do a whole episode on that. I'm not opposed to it at some point in time.

Ben: 1:36:52

Yeah, we should at some point.

Gene: 1:36:54

Yeah. When, when current issues and affairs are not nearly as interesting, I should do a historical one. I think there's an awful lot that if you look at European history you start seeing a lot of patterns that they certainly don't. Go out of their way to explain to students and in general, the the American, let's put it this way the amount of time that European history is taught in American schools is graceful.

Ben: 1:37:27

Oh, absolutely.

Gene: 1:37:29

There's virtually, and I, this is 1 thing where obviously homeschooling can make a huge difference as you will know, is, is that you're not following the standard curriculum because

Ben: 1:37:41

Thank God.

Gene: 1:37:42

it's almost as if. European history and Chinese history are just both footnotes, and it's it's extra ironic because the history of America is 250 years old, where the history of Europe and Asia obviously go back much further. So it's it would seem like there might be some benefit in spending a little extra time. The history of where the people that allowed America to become what it is, the, the founding fathers, where, where their heritage comes from and what are the ideas that they brought with them

Ben: 1:38:23

There has to be you know, what I would, what I would say there is if you are not how do I put this? If you are not teaching. All of history, then your Children are missing out. One of the things, for instance, there's a great book that I read actually as an adult. But if if it had existed when I was a kid, my parents would totally had married it, which is the 5000 year leap, which is really talking about why America is special and what the difference is there. And, you know, hey, You know, things that are not not what it was. So yeah. But those are, those are very different things than than a lot of people teach their kids and it's unfortunate.

Gene: 1:39:11

Do people even bother these days? I mean, most people I know just hand off the entire education to the government.

Ben: 1:39:16

Dude, homeschooling is running like crazy. I, I, I, I think it

Gene: 1:39:21

it goes even more. So

Ben: 1:39:24

I'm sorry.

Gene: 1:39:25

I hope it goes even more popular, you know, I hope it really keeps growing because I, I feel like I have a disproportionately large number of friends that are homeschooling their kids, but I also think that is a function of the people that are my friends, not the, you know, American public as a whole.

Ben: 1:39:44

I mean, I would say the homeschooling movement is growing and has been since my generation.

Gene: 1:39:49

It's not just John Dorak.

Ben: 1:39:52

I mean, I'm, I'm essentially Dvorak's kids age, right? Um, you know, my parents were definitely kind of a hippy dippy group to an extent but, you know, hey, whatever.

Gene: 1:40:09

It's not quite the word your dad used, but okay.

Ben: 1:40:12

What, what did he say?

Gene: 1:40:13

Patriotic

Ben: 1:40:15

Okay, yeah,

Gene: 1:40:16

because I asked him about the whole move you know, when they left Texas,

Ben: 1:40:20

Yeah, that we can talk about that more later. Uh, the, the, the big deal there though. And what I would say is that the reason why I say hippie dippy is like my mom uses essential oils. My mom's very into herbs and alternative medicine and lots of other things. And has been for a very long time. The way I was schooled is very much in the unschooling or Montessori esque method. You know, I, a lot of people

Gene: 1:40:47

where does that come from Montessori? I mean, I've heard it a lot of times. I don't know what word comes from,

Ben: 1:40:51

Oh, it's a whole movement.

Gene: 1:40:53

but yeah, but what's the word beam

Ben: 1:40:56

It's last name,

Gene: 1:40:57

name or.

Ben: 1:40:58

name. Yeah.

Gene: 1:40:58

Okay. Gotcha. So it's a style of teaching.

Ben: 1:41:05

Yes, it is.

Gene: 1:41:09

Yeah. So I don't know. It's it's also a little bit. You know, I, I don't know what the right word is a little weird for me as somebody without kids to be talking about what we ought to be doing with teaching kids. I get that. But I also see the failures that are happening in, in not really holding education to the importance level that it should be

Ben: 1:41:36

And just allowing

Gene: 1:41:37

like, for example,

Ben: 1:41:38

at their own pace.

Gene: 1:41:40

yeah. And or that there were no zoomers and hardly any. Millennials at this event on the border, statistically, shouldn't there be as many people throughout the different age groups that are interested in this, they could even be counter protesting for all I care, but it's just a complete lack of interest that's

Ben: 1:42:00

Again, I would go back to kind of what I was talking about earlier. I think that the ten pools of the world got through to those people and,

Gene: 1:42:10

Yeah.

Ben: 1:42:10

yeah, dissuaded them from doing it.

Gene: 1:42:14

Yeah. I mean, even Alex said previous to this said, said there's going to be some kind of you know, event

Ben: 1:42:21

There's definitely a risk of it, yeah.

Gene: 1:42:23

you'll going on. Yeah, but Adam it's. And that's bad because it's very easy for the

Ben: 1:42:34

a way to get blackmailed, if nothing else.

Gene: 1:42:38

Yeah, but, but I think if, if you have enough people that are blackmailed, you'll have the opposite effect. You'll have enough people that just don't think that things are ever going to get better and nothing really matters. So there, you might as well go into a risky situation because it doesn't matter.

Ben: 1:42:59

Maybe.

Gene: 1:43:00

The ultimate black pilling is not to make everybody sit at home and do nothing. It's, I think it's the exact opposite. It's basically to say, my life is irrelevant. I might as well do something not to help somebody, but more as like nothing ultimately matters. It's a very nihilistic kind of view.

Ben: 1:43:22

Yeah, and we don't want to drift into nihilism, because nihilism is how you get very, very bad things in this world.

Gene: 1:43:31

yeah, but that may not be up to us. Because people don't consciously decide what their worldview is going to be. It happens because of the events that happen to them and around them.

Ben: 1:43:44

Meow.

Gene: 1:43:45

So it's I mean, you could say that in, in large part, the current, very much worse. I think state that the black community is in, is in large part due to a nihilistic viewpoint. It it's a self fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. If nothing matters, you might as well do things that maybe you wouldn't have done if something didn't matter, because who cares? It doesn't matter.

Ben: 1:44:21

Okay,

Gene: 1:44:22

It's, in a lot of ways, I think San Francisco is a good example of what's happening with nihilism, where people are shitting on the streets. You know, there's nothing, there's, any, any sort of semblance of civility is gone in San Francisco. It is a it is, I think, very much a, Nihilistic black hole where you can work at a Google job making 280, 000 a year and have everything provided for you, including your snacks and, and computer equipment and everything else. And that is happening in the same city where people are living in tents and shitting on the street. And stores are getting robbed during the middle of day by months of people with bags, with trash bags, just taking shit. And there isn't zero police presence. Like it's, it's, it's very much a dystopian sci fi movie setting, except it's happening in real life. So I don't know. And but I

Ben: 1:45:33

know, you know, 1 movie that I think kind of you've seen demolition man. Right? All right. That to me is what happens to Los Angeles in the future is kind of where we're heading with what's going on with San Francisco and everywhere else. It won't just be Los Angeles that it happens to speaking of, I, I did listen to some of some of unrelenting. I didn't get very far because. Shit's been busy, but What the fuck is wrong with Darren? That he doesn't like idiocracy.

Gene: 1:46:07

he's an idiot. I told him as much.

Ben: 1:46:10

yeah, have you,

Gene: 1:46:11

don't understand how somebody can have the viewpoints he does. And not idiocracy because it's too silly. It's too, you know, slapsticky. that's the point.

Ben: 1:46:24

yeah, it is literally meant to be making fun of it. Have you, have you seen God Bless America?

Gene: 1:46:33

don't think so. What's that?

Ben: 1:46:35

Oh my god, alright, go on Amazon tonight and watch God Bless America. And if you don't laugh your ass off I will be shocked.

Gene: 1:46:47

Is it recent or

Ben: 1:46:48

Oh no, it's, it's early 2000s.

Gene: 1:46:51

I'm D I'm doing a search for it right now.

Ben: 1:46:55

it's very much a Bonnie and Clyde movie.

Gene: 1:46:57

Okay. It's got where the actors

Ben: 1:47:01

It's a 7. 1 out of 10 on IMDb.

Gene: 1:47:06

the mission to rid society of its most repellent citizens, terminally ill. Frank makes an unlikely. Oh, you know, I remember the ads for this movie and I didn't see it it came out because it, it sort of seemed like it was one of those B budget films.

Ben: 1:47:28

Oh, it is. But yeah, I mean, same way that Idiocracy is.

Gene: 1:47:33

Yeah, I guess. But yeah. And Darren was complaining about the actors and the accuracy. I'm like, are you kidding dude? That's not meant to have famous people be playing anybody.

Ben: 1:47:44

Yeah, it's, it's, it's very much an idiocracy esque movie, but it's, and I, perhaps Darren would like it more because it's just a little different approach. There are times in the movie where the protagonist thinks about killing himself, and then he sees what's going on with society and decides to kill other people

Gene: 1:48:05

That's a rational thought.

Ben: 1:48:07

it, it, right? Yeah, there, there's lots there.

Gene: 1:48:10

And again, I think that that's kind of what I was trying to get through

Ben: 1:48:13

by the way, it came out in 2011.

Gene: 1:48:16

Trying to get through about Nihilism is that there's a point at which the, you're not thinking of, of man, everything that's happening is bad around me. And you're thinking in the context of yourself, that there's a point to which you get where, you know, the self doesn't matter that much anymore. And it's your, the actions that you can do to get some kind of result that are the only thing left within your control. So it's not a, there's not a, you're not trying to be good. You're trying to do something that makes some kind of difference. And I think that's where a lot of vigilanteism comes in and where a lot of revolutions end up going like the French one that we're seeing right now

Ben: 1:49:06

You mean actually in France? Yes.

Gene: 1:49:08

in France. Yeah. The French revolution in France. Yes.

Ben: 1:49:11

I

Gene: 1:49:11

Where if you start seeing some of

Ben: 1:49:12

to a French style road revolution here, potentially as well. So we'll

Gene: 1:49:17

you've been saying that for a while, but I'm, I'm glad that to see that the the French style revolution in France is well on its way to happening as well. And I think they're a couple years ahead of us because there seemed to be a complete disregard for the rule of law. Like people just don't give a shit anymore. They're not, they're not phased by anything. And it's very interesting to see what will end up coming out of it. Cause the thing about the French, you know, they're best known for disliking Americans, but they're probably second best known. For really being contrarians, like they, they're, they're not, unlike the Germans that all are perfectly happy being put into straight lines and square boxes and, you know, following orders and being told what to do. And it's I'm not even talking about world war two Germany. I mean, the German character is very much one that abhor, abhors disorder. Like they much prefer order over disorder. The French are the opposite of that. They, they think that the beauty of life is in uniqueness amongst everybody. so it's a group that you would think would be really hard to unite behind some cause. So when that happens, all hell breaks loose and you have a French style revolution.

Ben: 1:50:55

I, I, I have said it more than once I will say it again, this is the failure of our society that we are not teaching people how to make gallows and guillotines.

Gene: 1:51:09

And I had a post, which just reminded me that I put on X, which is after that light latest execution that we had of the guy with nitrogen

Ben: 1:51:20

the lawsuits around that. What

Gene: 1:51:23

It's like, how did we go from having

Ben: 1:51:26

do you mean? Nitrogen pois literally, if I were going to choose a way to Commit suicide. If I was going into space and they said, Okay, what method of death do you want? Nitrogen asphyxiation would be the

Gene: 1:51:39

horrible way to die? It's a very bad way to die. So we went from having,

Ben: 1:51:43

How is it a bad way to die? Your body

Gene: 1:51:45

me finish. Goddammit. It is realize it. You don't realize it. Your body does. I. We went from an execution with a guillotine, which takes roughly a split second to an execution with hanging by rope, which you've done appropriately, meaning there's sufficient distance for the body to

Ben: 1:52:06

your neck.

Gene: 1:52:08

Napster neck to a matter of maybe a couple of seconds until death, usually just long enough for you to shit your pants to going to a firing squad, which can take very little time. But also can take much longer because not everybody's going to guarantee a shot to the head to going to execution by electricity, which takes several seconds to several minutes, as we've seen in the examples of extreme pain to going to lethal injection. Which took about seven to eight minutes before the body was completely dead to now doing this nitrogen method, which takes half a fucking hour for the body today. We're going in the wrong direction. What we ought to have is nothing but guillotine executions. This is, this is, in my mind, this is absolutely what's the, what's the phrase that you can, what you can't do to people? It's

Ben: 1:53:11

Brule.

Gene: 1:53:13

no, it's if you're just causing pain, like a pain, what do you, what do you call it? Yeah, cruel and unusual punishment. Yeah, absolutely. Like a death should be quick. It should not also contain a half hour of punishment.

Ben: 1:53:25

Yeah. So everything I know about nitrogen asphyxiation is that you will, you, you will suffocate, but your body, because the air is majority nitrogen, your body does not realize that you are not getting oxygen. You don't feel like you're getting, you don't feel like you're drowning. You don't feel like you're asphyxiating because you're taking normal breaths, but you're just not getting any oxygen and you,

Gene: 1:53:51

Yeah,

Ben: 1:53:52

like carbon dioxide poisoning or anything else. It's. Yeah, it's a fairly peaceful, it does take a while, but it's a fairly peaceful way to go.

Gene: 1:54:02

that's not a peaceful way to go, man. And I think that that example of the video of the guy dying just proves it. Yeah, this

Ben: 1:54:09

seen it.

Gene: 1:54:11

Maybe you should it

Ben: 1:54:12

not into smut

Gene: 1:54:14

the snuff videos. That's one thing I will say about X is there is an awful lot of snuff videos on there. Mostly from other countries where security cameras pick up murders.

Ben: 1:54:28

or accidents.

Gene: 1:54:30

accidents as well, but there's quite a few murders out there that happen and most of them are titled fuck around, find out. So if you want to see snuff videos, you could just search for fuck around, find out, you know, get plenty. Yeah, it's, I think fast is the key. Not we don't think you're going to notice. You know, you could say the same thing about just a what do you call it? The the, the like a poisonous snake bite that attacks your nervous system. That's the hemotoxic is blood. What kind of toxic is neurotoxic? Having an injection of neurotoxins that your body may be wriggling air bounds. But your nerves are all dead. They can't feel a goddamn thing. But we don't fucking know that. Because we, all we can say is theoretically the nerves shouldn't feel anything. The body wouldn't be moving muscles unless there's some activity in the neurons.

Ben: 1:55:35

In medicine, here's the big problem. Medicine is individual.

Gene: 1:55:42

Yeah exactly

Ben: 1:55:43

a good example of this, also, is I almost died. And the reason why I almost died is because I was having pain. I went to the doctor Oh, it's too high to be your appendix. That's, it's not your appendix. So we're gonna send you home with this muscle relaxers and some other stuff to try and treat it. Saturday comes, I'm in desperate pain. I'm sweating, it's horrible. End up getting myself to the ER and my appendix has ruptured.

Gene: 1:56:13

Mm

Ben: 1:56:14

Turns out I have a, what's called a retro, or had. A retroverted appendix. So instead of dangling down, it's tucked up under and it's a affects about 20 percent of the population

Gene: 1:56:25

Mm hmm. Mm

Ben: 1:56:26

and means that I was having appendicitis, but my symptoms were not such that. It would trigger doctors to think about it being appendicitis because maybe 20 percent of the population has

Gene: 1:56:40

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:56:41

So out of that 20%, how many have appendix that that's the representation, a fraction of the percentage. So yeah,

Gene: 1:56:49

Yeah. It happens all the time.

Ben: 1:56:51

medicine is individualized or should be.

Gene: 1:56:55

Yeah. And it's

Ben: 1:56:56

But I'm not going to give up my DNA to do it though,

Gene: 1:56:58

it's mostly statistical. Like it's all based on what we think the majority will see. So there's a lot of problems with that. And this is also why I'm predicting the end of the physician within our lifetimes, because the collective data about the science does not require a human being to interpret it when it can be done much better by an AI.

Ben: 1:57:30

I mean, we've, Watson's supposed to have been doing that for years now and has failed. I

Gene: 1:57:36

Oh, they've had, yeah, they've had systems that you can subscribe to as a physician do it. And I've, I've seen certainly with the younger generations of doctors, they're a lot more prone to actually look shit up than the older generation who just thinks they know everything.

Ben: 1:57:52

And, but that's a, that's a generational thing as well because you used to memorize things. Now, very few people memorize phone numbers or anything else anymore. They just look them up,

Gene: 1:58:00

and that's very true too. Yeah.

Ben: 1:58:02

which is all fine and dandy until you can't have access to things. And then, what do you do?

Gene: 1:58:09

You,

Ben: 1:58:10

have an offline repository of knowledge, it's a problem.

Gene: 1:58:14

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think that a lot of knowledge has not been documented. Because a lot of professions have not had the historical you know, like they, they historically have not documented knowledge. They just passed it on to the next generation.

Ben: 1:58:32

I mean, the Agile development method, which is finally, finally fucking fading out of popularity some, but you know, Agile preaches minimal documentation only. No, no, that is wrong for so many reasons. Yeah. Personally, I think the reason why a lot of developers wanted to go that way is to have some job insurance, quite frankly. I'm, I'm dead serious. I really think that that is part of the case.

Gene: 1:59:04

it's it could certainly be the case because, you know, having, having things that only, you know, does create a certain amount of, of job security.

Ben: 1:59:14

we have to go fast. We have to get to minimum viable product. I don't have time to document everything. So what do you want me to do? I can't document everything. I can't comment my code. What do you mean?

Gene: 1:59:25

Yep.

Ben: 1:59:27

that is not the way. Anyone involved in like industrial controls or it's like NASA or anything else is fail fast is not an option. You, you, failure is not an option. You have to do everything you can to stop failure. And the way you do that is document review, document review, a very waterfall development process of this stage is done. We now have the inputs to go to this stage, not very few parallel tracks.

Gene: 1:59:55

It's, it's very true. And you know, I haven't. Programmed commercially for many, many, many years. And I've always hated documenting shit because when I'm actively working on something,

Ben: 2:00:09

Does this work?

Gene: 2:00:10

I have all that in my, fuck you. I have all of that in my head, so I don't need to document it because I know what I'm working on. And what I found is if I ever go back to old code that I wrote. It takes just as long to figure out what the hell I was doing as it would to just redo it from scratch to have the same end result. Because even though I did the original code, I always enjoy using shortcuts and so

Ben: 2:00:44

This is why you should comment your code.

Gene: 2:00:46

in the middle of the, why would I comment, you know what, that would be so ugly if I commented code, because my goal is to write the entirety of the piece of software in one line, a very long line, but it's one line of code. And so

Ben: 2:01:01

That's insane and not what you should do at all, and with modern languages,

Gene: 2:01:05

man.

Ben: 2:01:06

with modern languages, not possible because it's portionally structured text.

Gene: 2:01:11

that's why you use C. You don't use this bullshit languages that are forced around you. You can put it, it's basically one long mathematical equation when it comes down to it. But good luck

Ben: 2:01:22

no one, no one wants to do it that way because that's ugly to most people and annoying to most people because you can't see having structured text and actual organization in a script for that matter is very important. Like hell, when I'm right, I remember years ago, I was writing a script to collect baselines for SIP compliance at power plants. And I wrote two versions, one in the same bat file for windows, one for Linux and Unix based systems. And I had all the comments and I had the comment characters for windows and Linux for both because they're different and everything else. I did all commented out and everything done and. Like references, the how to everything, you know, done in there, what the operators were, what the changes were, where that's just how I do it. I comment everything. I detail everything.

Gene: 2:02:24

Yes. I like RPM, so fuck you.

Ben: 2:02:28

And on that note, Gene, I think we ought to wrap up.