Matter of Facts: Advocacy, or Anonymity?

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

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Welcome back to the Matterfax podcast

on the Pepper Broadcasting Network.

We talk prepping guns, politics, every week

on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.

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I'm your host Phil Ravley, Andrew Nick

or on the other side of the mic.

And here's your show.

And welcome back to Matterfax podcast.

I'm here Nick's here.

I am freaking sad.

Yep, today work was working.

It does seem to do that now and then.

I put this way.

I was so zonked out that when I got,

when I got home, first on my wife wanted to kiss.

And I literally did like a couple of seconds

to loose off before I could kiss her.

That's an aggressively shitty day.

And then I went and got my pipe,

my pipe tobacco and everything went on the back porch.

And I smoked my pipe and had like a good 10 minutes

before I looked at my phone and realized,

oh, today's Thursday, I have to do a podcast this evening.

Hey, you caught it before seven.

That dude, I'm telling you there are days

where like my little calendar on my phone

is the only thing stopping me from just spacing out

in all kinds of directions.

As much as we like to dog on these things

that the anxiety rectangle, man, they are handy.

Dude, I'm gonna tell you that like

the little murder screen in my pocket.

On the one hand, I'm convinced that they are the downfall

of society, but I also believe that for the person

who has as many different tasks and irons in the fire

as some people do, it's a godsend.

Like that thing beeping in my pocket tells me,

hey, dummy, you're about to forget something.

Yeah, so.

Raggle saying, my children are running me ragged,

I feel you, I would be drinking, but I gave it up for a lend.

I forgot it was lent.

I mean, I'm not mad at you, but there are reasons

why I'm not Catholic anymore,

because I am not convinced that my creator wants me

to give up booze or caffeine or tobacco,

because he claimed through his teachings

that I should love my fellow man,

and that's gonna require alcohol and tobacco in coffee.

It's just fair.

You know, I do think there is some good to doing periodic

periodic intentional withdrawal from certain things.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

I don't know, man.

I regularly will run out of bourbon

and then just forget to get more.

Like sometimes it'll go like six months or I'll be like,

oh, you know, I'd like to have bourbon go over to the kitchen

like we are entirely out of booze.

All right.

But point of order, I don't believe you're an alcoholic.

No, definitely not.

I am a coffee-holic.

True.

I happily admit, I have a chemical dependency to caffeine.

It is clinical.

It might be terminal, but it is a thing.

It'll be terminal for somebody.

It will be terminal for somebody.

I'm not saying I would commit like

axiophysical violence if I wasn't allowed to have coffee,

but I am saying that the chance is more than zero.

I kind of get my theory on that from,

I think it was either Marcus Aurelius or Socrates.

It was one of the stoic philosophers,

all things in moderation, especially in moderation.

And then being in the theory of being intentional

with the things that you do, like, yeah,

I make coffee every morning.

I do, but there are some days where I very intentionally

have a coffee and I will just have a coffee

because I do enjoy it,

but I don't want to ever get to the point

of any substance or any dependency,

any dependency where I'm not the one choosing to do this.

If that makes sense.

So I mean, it is worth pointing out that

there have been periods where I have involuntarily

not had the ability to drink coffee.

Sure.

And I wasn't really happy about it,

but it wasn't like I was like, you know,

walk it up and down the street like, you know, doing this.

Yeah, you know, picking my scabs and stuff.

It was just a, I really don't like my fellow man

and I would tolerate them a little bit better

if I were caffeinated.

That's fair.

That's fair.

But anyway, Edmund work and then the topic

that will not require spreadsheets,

it will not require banners.

This is gonna be like just two friends talking about a thing

that I imagine at least most of the audience

will probably resonate with.

The audience is composed of patrons tonight,

which I'm thankful for.

They promote my own personal and Nick's

poor behavior and poor decisions.

And we appreciate y'all supporting us in the show.

And each other because, you know,

one of the cool things about being a patron

is that I let you behind the curtain

to have a peek at the wizard eyes

and you also get entry into a private chat

with all the rest of the patrons.

And when they're not busing church balls,

they're actually pretty helpful to each other.

Like wildly helpful.

It's like YouTube University in text form.

Yes, it doesn't really hurt that like,

literally I can't think of a single person in that chat

that does not have some area of expertise

that their knowledge just blows everybody else away.

Yeah, not a single one.

Everybody, and there is some overlap

where you've got multiple people

with very in-depth experience on the same subject.

But the amount, the breadth of topics

that can be covered in that chat is astonishing.

Yes, and if you do like I do sometimes

and you unplug because you're busy,

you come back to like 140 mis-messages

and I just scroll all the way to the bomb building.

If it was important, y'all will fill me in later.

Yep.

I was not tagged in any of this good.

Excellent.

Code M-O-F-A disaster coffee.

I was drinking disaster coffee most of the day.

And then I had to switch to coffee crack

to get me through the rest of my evening.

Caffinated coffee.

Caffinated energy drinks.

Whoever had the broad idea to put monster and coffee together

was a sociopath or a brilliant person.

I'm not a mature witch, both.

Probably both.

But we don't sell Java monsters in the store, unfortunately,

but at disaster coffee we do sell all manner of coffee,

everything from green beans to roasted coffee

to whole bean to coffee pods

that are compatible with your desktop fast coffee brewer

that starts with a K, but you can't use the word

because it's trademarked,

which is why I'm putting in air quotes

for the audio listeners.

And Mercher the Southern Gals.

I don't know 100%, but I think I saw the principle

of Southern Gals mention something about a killdozer shirt.

Oh yes, I did see the potential for a killdozer shirt.

Yeah, so I'm just gonna say that

if your personal little Venn diagram

is like the road warrior,

Bert Gummer, killdozer, and the walking dead,

you should probably look into the Southern Gals.

The leaks in the show description,

fun shirts, fun stuff, and it supports small business and us.

Now Phil, this reminds me, Raggle reminds us again.

We need to find a way for him to give you money

to get him into the chat.

That is not a patron.

Because he doesn't like it on the principle.

Which I understand, patron is kind of anti-everything we like.

Yes.

But it's a very simple platform that works.

That's kind of my problem.

And only fans has connotations.

And he's not the only person that's asked,

I really need to put a block on my weekend calendar

and try to figure that out.

I mean, there are other options.

I'm sure there are.

I don't well mean.

I can think of a fairly simple one.

I'm just trying to think if there's a more replicatable

than that single, simple solution.

Rebel, I don't think you can just straight up send

Phil Venmo's of cash.

That will flag the IRS.

He is a government employee.

I am already on it up watch list.

Thank you.

Also, my employer credit checks me annually.

Actually, no, not annually.

I think it's every five years.

I have to have a security clearance read on every five years.

That's how you know you have a big boy job.

Oh, does that mean that you have to list me as a known,

a known associate?

They haven't asked for my known associates.

So I'm not going to volunteer the information.

I wouldn't.

I sure as hell, I'm not because I'm pretty sure that the fact

that I'm already on this main government watch list

is concerning enough when they realize that all my friends

are also all to say watch list.

That's when the questions are really going to start.

We're trying to get our names as close together

on as many lists as possible.

That is the goal.

Pretty sure that's how, that I'm pretty sure that's how

cult and commune start.

But well, it's not good.

They're true, but they're fun.

Yeah, until the ATF burns into the ground.

Well, yeah, but I mean, so is owning short belt shotguns

until the ATF burns your house to the ground.

There's a lot of fun stuff that causes the ATF

to burn your house down.

You see the theme developing though.

I do.

Everything that's fun gets your house burned down.

Turns out Arson is the solution the government uses.

Apparently.

Anyway, the topic is advocacy or anonymity.

And we, we own the show.

I think it might have been me and Andrew

have definitely talked about this in one point in the past,

but like, this is a talk that keeps coming up

because, personally, because like I, I have,

when I decided to start this podcast,

especially under my full Christian name,

I pretty much eat it anonymity into the wind,

like immediately.

Yeah.

But even then, like, you know,

we know people in the community who've like

done content creation, under assumed identities,

and it was found out later what their real names were.

Like, it's really hard to hide in the last until someone

decides to not let you be anonymous.

Yeah.

And the problem is is like, I see two side effects

of trying to maintain your anonymity

and doing something like this.

And one is that there is a certain segment of the population

that immediately becomes distrusting

because you tried to hide your identity.

True.

And it's kind of hard to argue against that.

But the other problem is is like my observation

has always been that people tend to dig

when it seems like there's something to dig.

Like if you try to hide, people notice.

They notice what's not visible and they go looking for it.

As opposed to if you just go out on the internet

and start talking about stuff like totally above board

out in the open, people tend to not look very hard

because you're already out in the open.

Like there's no secrets here.

Or they assume you're just a full on bed plan.

Which you can't win them all.

I mean, there is a running joke in the patron chat

about the fact that like several of our friend group

literally worked for the government.

Yeah.

And quite a few million people do.

Well, and I was also going to say like

given the number of global war on terabets

that were out there, even the guys in private sector nowadays

used to work for the government

and still have back, you know,

still have active background checks, hex running.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But like I said, that's kind of the, that's the topic.

That's what I wanted to talk about tonight

because I bore witness to this within the last few days

because my daughter, God bless her,

decided to tee off on a group of friends of hers

who were having a very spirited political debate

and she took the opposite opinion they all did.

And she pretty well took a multitask over

what she, what she viewed as inconsistencies

in the fact that things they were presenting as fact.

And I did briefly, I don't know why,

I did briefly try to coach her like,

hey, maybe not choose violence like, you know,

decide a good, dead thing.

Well, you know, the thing I've always tried to coach her on

and like, it's moderately frustrating sometimes

because there are times when I look at her

and I think to myself, oh my God, you're your mother's child.

But then there's moments like the other night

where I look at her, I'm like, oh, no,

that is Phil Jr. right there.

Because when I was her age, I never saw an argument.

I wanted to walk away from, I chose violence

as a default position.

If I thought I was right, I was ready to go to war.

Yeah, over anything because I thought I was right

and I wasn't going to back down.

There was no, there was no thought given to diplomacy

or to let the other, just walk away.

It's not worth fighting about or it's not worth arguing about.

It's like, no, I'm right, they're wrong.

I want to argue.

Well, yeah, I see that.

Folks like yourself and me, a lot of times,

we look at things in a very fact-based perspective.

Black and white, very black and white,

very literal words have meanings, definitions do matter

and if you're using them wrong,

your entire argument is meaningless.

So it's not so much,

are we having a discussion or an argument is no,

you're wrong, there is no gray area,

there is no discussion, you are factually incorrect.

You cannot say that the sun revolves around the earth.

That's not how it works.

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You're an idiot, but it doesn't always make friends.

And that's the thing I was trying to coach her

on the other day is like these are good friends of hers

and I was trying to encourage her

to not grenade her friendships.

But it got me thinking down this road

of like the decision point,

a lot of us in various communities have had to make

over the years about do I advocate

or do I just like let it slide

so I can stay under the radar a little bit.

And I feel like anybody that's in the preparedness community,

the second amendment community,

anybody that's really like,

I don't even want to say political

like they run for office,

but just like politically switched on.

There's a lot of people in a lot of different communities,

man, that like whether they've thought about or not,

they have to make this decision point at some point

of, do I fight it out?

Do I stand on business and stand for my beliefs?

I heard something in passing.

It could have been friend group, family, dinner table,

co-workers at work, church, it could be anywhere,

but I heard something that just wasn't right.

It was factually incorrect, it was false.

It was a, it didn't jive what I know the facts

of that situation to be.

Do I let it slide or do I be the person

that's a naysayer in the group

and what kind of ill will does that buy me after the fact?

Yeah, I know what you thought, I know what you mean.

And I think that there's also almost a third option

that you, depending on the group of people that you're with,

I have found myself among my friends

as one of the more conservative ones.

Hey, you know what, fair enough.

When the whole Roe v Wade thing was going on with SCOTUS

and that got overturned,

there was a discussion that occurred in my basement,

just on the other side of this wall next to me here,

where people were very, very against the ruling

that had occurred, and they did not understand

the ruling at all.

It wasn't ruling for against abortion,

it was ruling whether or not that medical topic

was covered under the section of the constitution

that was cited in the original ruling.

And when I said, look, that is actually what is being ruled

on here, it was ruled correctly

because it's not written in the constitution

that that is what is there.

It is not a pro, it is not an anti abortion discussion at all.

It is a, are these words in this document?

Yes or no?

Yeah, the answer is no.

They took that as I am anti abortion.

Now, I am, but that's not the point.

You know, sometimes you can get into these discussions

accidentally, even by just pointing out,

yeah, but this is the actual thing

that is being discussed in the law instead of,

yes, I'm for, yes, I'm against whatever situation.

You know, this reminds me,

I had this experience with Gillian

of all people several weeks ago,

like just a level set of expectations.

I am very much anti abortion.

Yeah.

And I am 99% sure Gillian feels the same way.

But when, when the ruling came down,

you're referring to Louisiana,

I can't remember if immediately passed legislation

or had a trigger legislation,

basically on standby review, it was ever overturned.

I believe it was trigger legislation

or legislation that was already on the books

that would have been reenacted were that.

And that's one referred to as trigger legislation.

In other words, it was a law that was overruled

by federal statute with the understanding

that if federal statute ever gets overturned,

this jumps in and play immediately.

Right.

And it has created a situation in Louisiana

where abortion is basically not just not possible.

Sure.

Now, Gillian brought to my attention

that there was a case recently

where a young woman literally nearly died

because like her, she hadn't miscarried

and the unborn, now deceased child,

need to be DNC to remove from her body.

But what was claimed in the article

was because of the new laws in Louisiana

that procedure could not be performed.

And this woman became septic and nearly died

as a result of it.

It was the very classic stereotypic, stupid conservatives

passed this law and it hurt women's health.

And Gillian was very upset and alarmed by this.

Like, you know, whether this was an unintended consequence

or not, like this is a really bad thing.

And I agreed with her.

But I went and read, but I went and read the law.

And literally what the law states is that you cannot have,

you cannot perform procedure

that terminates the life of the child.

Once the leak, once medically legally,

it's determined that that unborn child

is no longer alive.

There's nothing stopping that doctor,

any from doctor, from removing the dead, the head child.

So I pointed this out to her and I'm like,

I need more information because

was that the one where the doctors and nurses

purposefully delayed her care to try

and make a new story out of it?

Kinda seems like it.

Cause I couldn't remember.

I remember there being something like that

that happened in a couple different places

where it seemed like it was activist doctors and nurses.

Purposefully not understanding the law.

Yeah, kind of like taking the law to the point of absurdity,

that way, that way they could make an issue out of it.

And like I told my wife, that was kind of,

that was kind of what I thought was going on.

Once I really read the law,

I mean, I literally googled the specific statute

and read it word for word.

And I'm like, there's nothing in here that precludes that.

So if you want to argue that like the doctor's

mishear stood at the law,

and that is an unintended consequence of passing a law

with this, is that some doctors don't understand it.

Like, okay, fair point.

But the law did not cause this issue.

But no, that's the doctor's fault for not,

for not being properly educated.

But to our point about advocacy versus anonymity.

In that moment with the emotions in the room,

there was every possibility that I bring those facts forward

and immediately have called an altercation with my wife

because she's emotional and she's upset.

And I am kind of like being a naysayer in the room.

It's another one of those examples about how,

especially when you're dealing with an emotionally charged issue,

there can be that price to be paid for being the person

that is logical and just says,

or that I read the statute, it doesn't say that.

Or that at the very least is the educated person

in the room on the topic.

And in this case, I read her, I read her the law,

and then she got twice as pissed off with the doctor.

And she wasn't so, that was 100% on the doctors.

That is not at all on anyone else other than the doctors

who, I mean, look, look, you're a gun owner,

I'm a gun owner.

It is on us to understand firearms law better than the police.

Yes, better than the ATF and God forbid,

hopefully at least good enough that you're not accidentally

committing felonies.

Now, ignorance of the law has never been a defense.

Exactly, ignorance of law is not a defense.

Those doctors should be at least as knowledgeable

about medical-related law as I am about firearms law.

Because people's lives are in their hands when it comes to this.

In Italy, I have a better education than the average person,

but yeah, I read the statute.

So do doctors.

My 13-year-old could have read that

and figured out what it meant.

Right, but I have a hard time giving ground on the idea

that like, it was a lack of understanding.

Just in this one individual case,

I just, unless, unless,

unless these doctors get their understanding

of law off of TikTok and social media,

because like I said, I went and read the statute.

I do believe that a lot of them do, though.

I do, I believe a lot of people can terrifying.

Well, but in their defense,

being a doctor requires a very wide knowledge base.

I think it does.

Long hours, long shifts, very high-stress job.

But I think at this, in this case,

there's no excuse for, at the very least,

the hospital not having had a policy meeting and said,

this is the hospital's policy.

This is what the law says.

They have hundreds of lawyers.

I'm sure.

And that's my problem.

You cannot convince me that the hospital system

doesn't have lawyers on freaking staff,

specifically for moments like this.

I guarantee you those hot,

the second that case got brought before the Supreme Court,

the hospital lawyers went, all right,

here's what we're going to have to do if X happens,

here's what we're going to have to do if Y happens.

They're going to have binders full of stuff for that

because I've worked in the manufacturing sector

for a long time.

And we've had meetings with lawyers

about various foreign policy things that have occurred

regarding even just tariffs, okay?

You can't tell immediately

that a multi-hundred million dollar hospital system

doesn't have better lawyers

than a two million dollar a year manufacturing business.

One would hope.

One would hope.

I mean, yeah, it's just,

but I mean, I guess back more towards the center line,

like,

how do you figure out how to wear the draw that line?

Because that was the thing that you and I were talking about

the other day when I kind of brought this up was,

like, you know,

I am fortunately foolish enough, I guess,

to consider that

because I would not engage in speech

that would rise to the level of being legally actionable.

Let's phrase it just like that.

Sure.

I might say controversial things, spicy things,

even overtly upsetting things.

Sure.

But I also kind of feel like if I'm,

if as long as I'm not going to the point of legal action,

then I should be able to say whatever I want

and keep my private life separate from my work life.

I don't do, I don't talk about this kind of stuff

very openly in my workplace.

I have a few people that they know me,

they know what I'm about,

we'll talk about things kind of quietly,

but it's not like I stand on the stump and, you know,

beat my chest about any sort of political

or, you know, farms related issue of work

because it's inappropriate.

Right.

But I've also been in that situation

where like I've heard things set out loud

that were factually incorrect

and whether it was foolish or not,

I just couldn't help myself,

but to like speak up and be like,

that's not accurate, that's not right.

Yeah.

But even I don't know where to tell somebody to draw the line

because I'm still figuring that out situation by situation.

I think that for a very long time,

conservatives drew the line way too far back.

They held way too much back for way too long

and that is why one of the reasons

we're in the position we're in right now.

Why do you think that is because I have a theory

because the polite thing to do in like,

say like dinner table discussion was always a religion,

a politics, no money.

Well, the impolite people were willing

to talk about religion, politics, and money

and the people that tend to be more fringe

are often less polite with their views.

The right pushed down their extremists

for a very long time and continued to do so.

The left went extremists are useful

because extremism for the left worked historically

in like the Soviet Union, in China,

in the various other socialist revolutions.

That's why.

I think that's why.

And the conservatives said,

no, we're going to be the polite professionals.

Guess what?

The people that shout the loudest

tend to get heard, unfortunately.

So we need to start shouting louder, I think.

And see, I think my perspective was simpler.

Not necessarily correct, but simpler than that.

Sure.

I think your average conservative

is far too concerned about being likable.

Yes.

I think your average is like

and is far too concerned about being likable,

not even just conservatives.

Because you saw that the state of the union address

if you watched any of that.

Every one of the Democrats was looking around

to see what each other were doing

to make sure they were still in the club.

But I don't know if I agree that it's everyone

because the most outspoken, the most outspoken

vociferous liberals I personally know

in my personal life, to give less than zero fucks

if they offend or upset any conservative attendance.

They feel morally justified in upsetting the other side

because their opinions are right.

And if you're upset, that's a you problem.

I only see this behavior of like,

I still want to be invited to the table

and to the club, I only see it from one side.

The air side doesn't seem to give a shit

and doesn't really want the air side in their club.

But that's an outgrowth of what I was referring to, Phil.

That's an outgrowth of the college intelligentsia

who they got their way by shouting down their opponents

at these gatherings, that struggle sessions.

Yeah, struggle sessions.

The loudest person in the room got their way

and that tended to be the most extreme person.

And that's why they all started feeding into that

with each other.

And then the outright demonization of anyone

that did not agree with them

and did not struggle hard enough

at the struggle sessions was clearly the enemy

and the enemy only exists to be destroyed.

So given that, that is the backdrop we're talking about.

And like, you and I are in interesting situations

because like, you live in an extraordinarily liberal,

yep, state, and I work extraordinarily liberal workplace.

And we're both in situations where like,

I feel like it's a fair assumption

that the majority of the time, our opinion kind of cuts

against the grain of everyone around us.

Yes, I would say that's fair.

At least the majority population in the urbanized

and semi-urbanized centers around me, yes.

Yeah.

So what do we do, just not give a shit

if we're like of or not?

That has always been my solution.

I pretty much go by the rule of,

I would rather be hated for who I am

than hate who I am pretending to be.

I mean, that's fair.

I find that I'm okay not being invited

to the dinner party or to the country club.

I want to be in places where I feel welcomed and wanted.

And lying to get there, I'm neither welcome nor wanted

in truth.

No, that's fair.

I find that really within the last five or six years,

since my career is kind of taking a different track

and work like, I wouldn't say it's,

I wouldn't say office politics guide everything,

but I have reached a point where there is a certain amount

of office politics involved.

Like once you get up to a certain point in any organization,

there's going to be a necessity as a component of your job

that you be able to work with other people

and sometimes being able to work with other people

means them not despising the very side of you.

Sure.

And I find that that is the situation.

I find myself in very often.

Like I know I'm already fighting from the bottom up.

You and I've talked about the fact that like there are literally,

there have literally been, you know,

I don't know to what degree,

but human resources has looked into this podcast

to see what exactly I talk about on it.

Sure.

That's the level of scrutiny I have invited into my life,

you know, into my professional life,

simply by having a podcast,

simply by existing outside the orthodoxy of your office.

Yeah.

You know, on the one hand,

I invited that because I kind of started this podcast

all these years ago, under my full name,

pretty much always said, you know,

let come what may I don't care,

but I have to admit it was kind of a sober experience

when I found out like, oh, yes,

people are actively crawling through your social media

to try to find out like,

have you said anything that they can get you in trouble for?

Yeah.

Why would they not?

You're an enemy of the revolution, Phil.

That's what they see you at.

Call me idealistic.

I thought I was just a coworker

who was super helpful and knowledgeable,

but you know, see,

that is because you're not an ideologue.

You're not, you're not,

you've not been captured by an idea to the point

where you can't separate it from what's going on around you.

I can't even imagine what that'd be like.

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I can't either.

And maybe that's just how our personalities are wired,

perhaps.

I mean, I give a piece of advice whenever we get,

oh, I can intern or an apprentice

that I start working with.

And they come up to me with a problem,

because there's always personal disagreements

in any workplace.

And, hey, in Blue Collar, sometimes somebody's

going to call you a dumb fuck for doing some dumb fuck shit.

That's going to happen in this Blue Collar environments.

Some kids, they just, they just,

they've never experienced that before.

And I always take my tell in this, part of your paycheck,

doesn't matter how much you're paid,

it doesn't matter how little you're paid.

Part of your paycheck is tolerating your coworkers.

They are paying you a fee to tolerate the people around you

that you work with.

If that fee is ever not enough for you

to tolerate your coworkers, you either a,

have to ask for a raise to get more money

to tolerate your coworkers, or b, you leave,

and find coworkers you can't tolerate

for the amount you're paid, all right?

You should have loved that.

You are not just paid to make the widget.

You are paid to deal with Tom in accounting

and Jerry over in advertising, all right?

It's, it's part of your pay.

And I tell you what, some places pay really, really well.

And they have really shitty people that work there.

And several of my family members

are discovering that to their peril,

golden handcuffs do exist.

Oh God, yes they do.

Dude, you and I talk very openly about like,

some of the absolutely just mind numbing bull crap

I tolerate for frickin' money,

so I can continue to take care of my family.

But you know what, Phil?

That nice chunk of change.

And that retirement package, it is.

Because you tell me that if the pay was half what it was,

you'd be dealing with it?

That's what I thought.

Damn.

Yeah?

As much as half your paycheck might be a fine

the company pays for how stupid your co-workers are.

Oh that, where were you all these years ago?

That perspective makes me feel so much better

about my situation.

I'm glad I could help.

I think I got that piece of advice

from a co-worker at my first job when I was 13.

I need if we need to put that on a shirt.

We do.

I mean, Steve was,

Steve was a, is, actually I ran into him

not that long ago.

I'm amazed he still exists

with how much he smoked cigarettes.

That guy smoked a lot of cigarettes.

But I had a problem with one of the other older guys.

He was very short with me all the time.

And Steve pulled me aside and said,

look, this is just how he is.

This is just how he is.

You can either accept that your paycheck pays for you

to deal with him being an asshole.

Or you can go home.

Those are your choices.

And I was like, okay, I'm being paid to deal with an asshole.

That's fine.

But most money I'd ever made at that point.

I mean, that's fair.

I'm going to use, I'm going to abuse that saying from that one.

Couple of comments to catch up on.

Ragle saying it was a mistake to suppress

that speech at the dinner table.

It was.

I'll be real honest.

Like I think that when you're talking about like in your workplace,

you could make a really good argument for maybe not choosing

violence all the time and like, you know,

modulating things a little bit in the name of your employment.

But when you're talking about like dinner table, back porch,

front porch friends and family, like, I can't speak for everybody else

or the type of company y'all keep.

But like when it comes to family, I kind of think I'm going to say

and as polite as I can manage and if it bothers you that bad

that you never want to see me again, we might have been blood,

but we weren't family.

Yeah.

I mean, at work, I will speak slightly differently.

I will be polite.

I will be professional outside of work.

When you're not paying me to be polite and professional,

I will be as blunt as I feel I need to be.

Jiminy Cricket is listening to you just so you know.

She is and she knows.

I think we were dating for all of like three months before I told her

mom off about something.

You made it three months.

I made it a full year to be fair.

I only spent like a couple hours with her parents at that point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a whole another.

I need to wait till the statue limitations runs out of my in laws

before I start telling all those stories.

There you go.

But as far as like that's family.

Now as far as friends, I'm going to be real honest.

If I invite you into my life, like if I've gone on vacation with you,

if I've camped with you, if I talked to you on a regular basis,

I kind of have a reasonable, maybe not reasonable.

I have an expectation that you're going to act like a reasonable human being

and we can agree to disagree about the things we don't agree about.

Yeah.

And if you disappoint me sufficiently,

then I eject you from my life and never want to speak to you again.

And it's not because we disagree.

It's because we couldn't disagree respectfully.

Yes.

In my weird little world view,

the respect is the important part.

Like you and I, you and I could have it out.

Matter of fact, and I was used to the greatest example.

Eddie.

Yeah.

Eddie and I offline, two of us by ourselves have had some incredibly

like 45 minute long debates about things.

Yeah.

Very passionate, very like very, you know,

each equally educated in the subject from our own perspective.

Agreed about freaking nothing.

Yeah.

Came away from his friends and said,

Hey, I don't agree with you.

You don't agree with me.

You know, every time I have a disagree,

a disagree with the guy he's been respectable about.

And as long as, as long as that is the perspective I come away from,

I can continue to call a person a friend

when we have nothing in common.

Best man in my words,

disagrees with me politically about just about everything,

except firearms.

Yeah.

It's really in the firearms too.

But we can have him to unregistered ghost guns.

No.

He's in the Mausers, which is cool.

I guess he's a mills, he's a millsurf guy.

He's definitely a millsurf guy.

I don't even know if he has an AR yet.

He's in Wisconsin, so he can.

But I'm sorry, but like there are,

there are definitely two different kinds of gun owners.

And I am the should be able to buy RPGs

out of bending machines type.

And if you're not, that's fine.

That's cool.

Just understand that there are two kinds of gun owners.

That's true.

And they can only choose the other one.

They can only choose the bending machine.

You don't have to buy.

Yes, but very often the second type of gun owner

doesn't want the bending machine to exist at all.

So you know, boo, boo, boo.

Anyway, um, raggle.

That's how you pass values down for one generation to the next.

It is.

So I will say that one, one of the frustrations and joys

of having children is making peace with the fact that my child

and I will not agree on everything.

And I don't know if I want her to like, I've, I've set

for years that like my goal was to teach her how to think,

not what to think.

And as a result, I have to kind of like be at peace with the fact

that she's going to make her own decisions, come to her own opinions

and we're not going to agree on everything.

And that's cool.

But it does my heart good when she and I can go like toe to toe

in an intellectual discussion, disagree about everything.

But she doesn't, she doesn't back down.

She doesn't short personal attacks.

She doesn't resort to emotion.

She just defends her points.

So it's like, okay, even the intellect right there, even though

we don't agree, and even though I question some of the things

you're portraying as fact, at least you thought this through

enough to get to the point where you can go like head

with a ground adult, you can defend your stance.

Yep.

I can respect somebody that has done the due diligence enough

to defend their stance beyond, yeah, but it's good thing.

Yeah.

As long as you're not taking your whole opinion straight

out of a TikTok feed like I feel like there's, there's,

there's been some progress made.

I did have one coworker that I just, I just could not stand.

He was one of those guys that thought he was going to create

a free energy machine and that the government was trying to

kill him with Apache helicopters.

Not the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard.

You couldn't, you couldn't pay me enough to work with that guy.

And I told my boss, I said, you can't pay me enough

to work side by side with that guy.

I have to be in a different department.

Apparently your boss agreed.

He did.

I got moved.

That's okay.

He left.

I'm still there.

It worked out.

It worked out for the best.

See here, Jeff, Jack.

Unfortunately, I'm paid enough to deal with the fact that

day shift has a collective IQ of 56.

I mean, hell, that's a, I mean,

I'm freezing.

That's above freezing.

As a day shift myself, I have to say,

third shift is always responsible for all the crashes.

Yeah.

Raggle says day shift is stupid and night shift is lazy.

This is the way of the world.

And Raggle thinks your co-worker sound delightful.

I might have been interesting, fellow.

I might have used the word entertaining,

maybe not delightful.

Yeah, he was entertaining, for sure.

And Jeff saying, I'm convinced that no polyester's

religion or money at the dinner table is a government plot

to make teachers the only ones to talk to your kids about it.

It has to do with, all right.

So where etiquette at the dinner table came from

was European court politics and the unacceptable things

to discuss at a proper dinner table.

It wasn't meant to be like at your house having dinner

with your family, it was at the high table,

these things are not discussed.

Which makes sense when you consider the fact that a lot

of those customs are rooted in communal eating,

like dining, great dining halls, where if you started

talking about controversial subjects at the dining hall,

it would devolve into a melee.

You don't besmirch the king when he's sitting five seats down.

Well, and there's a guard behind you with a sword.

Well, that end, you don't besmirch someone

when their actions could cause the entire hall

to erupt into violence.

And the next thing you know, everybody unique

guarding the gate is injured.

Yeah, there's a certain point at which that makes sense.

In a communal perspective and I get it, you know it,

but I think that like a lot of things with etiquette,

it can be taken way, way too far

and it does get taken way too far.

And you see, I don't completely agree with Jeff

about one thing.

I don't, I think if, I think if everyone played

by those same rules that like in these arenas discussing

controversial subjects or out of bounds,

but in these other arenas, it's acceptable.

I feel like if everyone played by the same rules,

then that would work and like hear me out.

I'm thinking to myself like for a long time.

And I'm kind of thinking that like if we all agreed,

left, right, center, everybody in these situations,

like let's say it's dinner table and work.

You don't talk about these things.

And that's cool.

Nobody gets, nobody gets talk about those things.

But in these other situations, we talk about these things

respectfully.

We debate and we have discourse.

I feel like a lot of the problem is more the fact that like

within the no go places, one side decided,

this is a perfect place to talk about these things

and get our opinions shoved in there.

And the other side didn't respond to it.

And then in the places where you're allowed

to have these discussions,

one, the same side who just a minute ago was saying,

we're going to stick it where it doesn't belong,

started saying we're not going to allow

the other side to get involved in this debate

so that our opinion is the only one getting propagated.

I feel like it was never as much a case of,

I feel like it was never as much of a case of

things weren't spoken about that should have been

as the armistice that made these social conventions

work was broken.

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, look at, it's like mustard dash in World War I.

The first person to use it got a pretty good edge

for a minute and they did.

But now everybody's starting to discuss it everywhere,

which I think is a positive because we need

that cultural pushback.

We need to find that nice or that balance

where we can, where we can disagree

but not consider half of our country or our enemy.

I think that's also part of the problem though

is that I've kind of notoriously said for years

and admittedly it was very, it was major hyperbole

when I said it, but I said for a long time

that like conservatives are going to lose

until we stop giving a shit if we're likeable or not.

Yes, that's accurate.

We're going to lose until we stop being polite

because I was, as a young man in my 20s,

I was looking at the landscape around me

and I'm like everywhere conservatives go,

they get their asses handed to them in debates

because they get shadowed down by the airside,

they get talked over, they get heckled

and they just don't do anything.

They just sit there.

And then you get Crowder, Milo, Shapiro.

Nothing I like the guy, but Nick Fuentes.

Yeah, he gets a lot of traction, Donald Trump.

He gets a lot of traction for not being polite.

Calling Rosie O'Donnell the fat pig

and then doubling down on him is probably

the single most memeable part of that year.

Well, there was a lot of memeable parts of the year,

but I guess my point is like, I don't know, man,

that I still see that get passed around

and how long has it been?

I mean, he lost a presidential election

in between winning two.

Yeah.

So it's been at least what 10, probably 12,

10, 12 years since that happened.

Now, probably 10.

I think it's kind of my perspective though

is like, I haven't seen it.

And he's not even a conservative.

Oh God, no, he's built claims in the 1990s.

Yeah.

I mean, look, except we all knew from the start

he was going after the hookers.

Yeah, trust me.

I was literally trying to find a way to make a meme

that wouldn't get me banned off the internet,

which was like a picture of Donald Trump

and it was like, you hate him because he's literally Hitler.

I don't like him because he's literally Bill Clinton

resurrected.

He is.

Although to be fair, Bill Clinton did some things economically

that weren't that positive for the US at the time

and he deported a lot more people than Trump.

So what you're telling me is the parallels

are kind of self-evident.

No, I'm saying Trump's not doing a good enough job

at deporting people, but my point is

the parallels are self-evident.

Oh yeah, they definitely are.

So my aggravation is that the orange Republican

is not conservative enough.

And other people's aggravation is that I don't know.

He's not Mao Zedong, best I can tell.

Correct.

Yeah, well, actually, I don't know that Mao

is liberal enough for the liberals now

because Mao killed a lot of gays.

Yes, and continue a lot of gays

and continues to persecute religious minorities

while I was right at center.

Oh, I'm not thinking Mao.

I'm thinking Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping, yeah, well, Xi Jinping also killed

the number of gays back during the revolution.

Yes.

Or was responsible in part for their deaths.

Still committing genocide on marginalized populations

to this day.

Literally concentration camps

full of persecuted religious minorities.

Hitler, anyone?

I mean, come on.

You got it right there.

It's not even a stretch.

This is wild to me.

But look, the more you learn about history,

the more frustrating current events become.

Well, and I think that could be said

going back into history as far as we have written records.

Yeah.

Because these, the humans have not changed that much

since we invented writing.

They really have not.

I literally broke a college professor's heart

because I told her that I did,

I was of the opinion that human beings had not evolved

appreciably beyond our animal state.

Yeah, I think that's true.

I think that's fairly accurate.

I think if you took a hunter-gatherer human,

taught them English like any of the pick any of the hominids,

even in the antitall, teach them English,

drop them in the US.

I bet their behavior is not that dissimilar

to what we have now.

There might be some small outliers.

I actually went the opposite direction

and said that if you took your average,

your average,

Pulse colonial post-industrialized

member of society today,

and you put them in a primitive survival situation

where it was kill or die,

that they'd revert back to a primitive animal state

within days.

I mean, Somalia, anyone?

I was thinking post, I was thinking like,

the Middle East Katrina,

I was thinking New Orleans after a major hurricane,

but New York after Hurricane Sandy,

there was some gang violence going on.

I mean, look at modern day gang violence.

That is tribal warfare,

re-skinned over the drug trade instead of hunting rights.

Yeah.

As much as we like to have all these high ideals,

people are animals,

and unless somebody is holding themselves

to a higher standard,

they will default to their base or nature.

That's what I told a cultural anthropologist professor,

and she, I think I saw her die inside,

probably, because look,

I mean, there's a lot of fancy shit we do.

It looks really different.

Have you seen the Clay Tablet translation fill

of the Copper Review?

So there is a Clay Tablet,

from, I believe it's a canoe-of-form tablet,

where a customer is writing a review

of some, or sending a complaint letter

about some bad tin or copper ore

that they were shipped from a guy.

And the only historical note of that copper merchant

is this one complaint letter.

The single one star review.

El Nassar.

Yep, El Nassar.

He is only known for history

of having shipped a bad batch of copper,

one bad batch of copper.

And if you read the translation of that,

it sounds like a terrible Yelp review of a restaurant.

It's hilarious.

You guys gotta go look it up.

It's great.

Obviously, Raggle hangs out in cooler parts

of Reddit than I do.

Yeah.

It comes up all the time in various subreddits.

It comes up sometimes on Instagram.

It's pretty great.

Oh, apparently there were several bad review tablets.

That's awesome.

What are you gonna do?

I mean, people in the community,

Greek and Roman era we're discussing,

we're bemoaning the weakness of the modern youth,

the weakness and laziness of the modern youth

and how they're spoiled by modernity,

like by the same people doing the complaining, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah.

It is one for one how the boomers talked about

my generation and your generation.

And it's word for word how a lot of my generation

talks about the younger group.

And I'm like, you guys,

you're bitched about this then

and you're doing the exact same thing now.

So the question remains,

how does a person decide whether to advocate

or whether to protect their anonymity?

With the understanding that like a career disagree,

like I firmly believe that if you advocate for something,

you are in some way hanging a target on your back.

You are.

How big of a target depends on how publicly you're advocating

in the case of micro celebrities on social media

that can be a fairly wide reaching target.

It can.

I mean, all it would take is somebody

with a much larger following than us

taking a clip out of the show, out of context,

blasting it out for one or both of us to become a pariah

to a variety of groups of people.

I'm sure there are things that I have said

that that could probably get some people

very riled up and angry at me.

Yeah, Raggle, it's a good point.

How much do you have to lose now?

Are you willing to lose it?

And do you believe in your conviction strongly enough

to risk it?

I'll say this, if you're in North Korea,

I probably would not besmirch the Kim family

all that much because your life

literally hangs in the balance.

We are fortunate enough to live in a place

where you will get a public shaming

is probably the worst you're gonna get.

I've been publicly shamed before.

It didn't particularly bother me.

It's probably not gonna bother me that much later.

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Yeah, I think my frustration has always just been

the fact that like,

maybe I'm unique in this, maybe I'm not.

I can't say I've ever felt public shame

for something I said that I expected to get.

I have had people attempt to publicly shame me.

But I think that's my point is that

if I say, to start talking about like loony lefties

or any variety of political social topics,

I pretty much like say what I'm gonna say.

And then you can attempt to publicly shame me,

but I have to feel shame in order to feel shame

and I don't because I said that I meant it.

So like buzz off.

Yeah, if you're not ashamed of what you're saying

then it just doesn't really work when they try.

But you know, the one thing we haven't talked about

in all this is when you get blindsided by it

because there have been times,

and you know, I've talked about this years and years ago

before the gun community had their great epiphany

that maybe we need to take a little bit of a different

point of view if we were ever gonna make these politicians

shut the hell up about our rights for five seconds.

And I said quite a number of things

that I didn't think were controversial

and based on how the gun community reacted,

apparently they were.

Things like, we should be able to buy RPGs

at eventing machines and there should be no NFA

and there should be no, you know, like we should be able

to, I should be able to take a shotgun

and solve the friggin' barrel down to two inches of my garage

and what the hell does the government have to say about it?

And how dare the government force me to submit

to a background check to exercise a constitutional right

and how dare the law be set up in such a way

that your average police officer

with a frickin' high school education,

hopefully a high school education,

can I have a frickin' full auto short barrel machine gun

in the back of his cruiser,

but I have to beg the crown and pay thousands of dollars

for the same privilege.

Like those were all statements I made back then.

And it was the mainstream gun owner

that clutched their pearls the tightest

and was the most vociferously against the things I was saying.

And that's the thing we haven't talked about

that shocked me the most was,

if I were in a group of anti-gun people,

maybe the statements, I expect people to get upset.

I hope you get upset.

Pile the shame on if you think you can figure out

how to shame me for the things I said

because I meant them.

But it was when I wasn't expecting the shame

and I wasn't expecting the reaction

and that's when I got surprised the most.

Because I said things I thought in the presence of like friendly years.

And I found out very quickly that even in a group,

I consider myself to be a member of,

I was all of a sudden the fringe element.

I don't think you can prepare for that

because it's almost like an unanticipated betrayal.

But I think that you do need to speak out,

especially in groups where you feel like

you are one of the crowd.

Because it serves as a reality check to yourself of,

well, do I really believe this?

You know what I mean?

And you evaluated that and thought,

no, vending machines.

That is the correct answer.

And you know what?

Good.

If you can't take a critical look at your own beliefs

and your own statements and say,

okay, maybe I went too far on that one or,

no, that wasn't going far enough.

We're going further because upon further reflection,

you're all wrong.

And I was wrong because I didn't go far enough.

And I think that's kind of where I get bound sometimes.

That's where this whole discussion about,

do I advocate or do I hold my tongue really falls apart

because like for me personally,

and some of y'all out there might be the same,

but like a lot of times my problem is,

I believe in the principle of something to such a degree,

I don't know how to compromise on it.

Like the whole RPGs of a vending machine thing.

I've had this debate with people there like,

well, you can't honestly think that just everybody

should have guns.

Like what about the mental ill,

what about this, what about that?

And I'm like, if you trust them to walk amongst the streets

with my wife and daughter.

You trust them now with a driver's license?

Yes.

Then I trust them to have all the rights and privileges

everyone else does until they do something stupid.

But the trick is, do you trust them to vote?

Yeah, because that's voting,

you could be voting with a nuke.

And does have the football.

And at the same time,

I always fall back on the saying that I love the most.

At any given time, an opposing party is welcome

to resort to violence

as long as you understand

that I'm probably better at than you are.

Yep.

And that's kind of why I believe the way I do about

like Farms ownership or people being able

to freely carry firearms.

If you have a gun and I have a gun,

I'm not concerned.

We're unequal footing.

I like my odds.

I don't like my wife's odds

versus a six foot four, 250 pound bodybuilder.

I guess a gun.

I can tell you that my wife and I have wrestled enough

that I think I've firmly made that point with her

that like you're not,

you're not handing any grown man the business, honey.

I had a girlfriend in high school

that grew up with all female cousins and all sisters.

And was she one of the ones that thought

you could talk your way out of anything?

She thought for sure that she had watched enough action movies

that she could kick the ass of just about anyone.

And I said, bet.

Why is it that people that have never practiced

the use of violence are always the ones that insist

it's never an op, it's never the answer?

Yeah.

Or at the very least that they would be

a unconscionably good at the application.

Is this like the discussion we had about training

not too long ago where it was like,

what, why would you think you will suddenly rise

to the miraculously rise to the occasion

to do something you've never practiced doing before?

Because the only thing the media has ever shown you

is heroes rising to the occasion.

We need more, think about it.

All of our childhood, what did you see?

You saw spy kids.

The kids with no training at all suddenly becoming super spies.

But wait, save and private Ryan.

Whole freaking, whole freaking squad of army rangers.

Every last one of them dead and dying by the end of the show.

True, that I think, I think that is the first movie

I saw that was a like cultural touchstone

that showed the reality of that.

And while we're at it, Black Hawk Down,

you know, I don't know if that was as big

of a cultural touchstone as saving private Ryan.

13 hours.

I've never seen 13 hours.

I should probably watch it.

I will just say before I move the ball a little bit,

like 13 hours, you would probably really enjoy 13 hours.

I probably would.

If you're putting it in that same category,

it's a very different type of movie

than saving private Ryan.

It's, I don't know, like as a combat veteran,

there are parts of it that are very hard for me to watch.

I would believe that.

I've heard the same thing about saving private Ryan

and for the same thing about hacksaw ridge.

There are parts of the same private Ryan

that like genuinely bring tears to my eyes

because like for those with that serving combat,

some of those things you see,

you put yourself mentally in that situation

and think to yourself,

like if that was me and my buddy,

I'd be having a bad day.

But in a case,

we got totally off the topic and all the way over here

and I have no idea how we got here.

Well, I think that it comes down to a cost benefit analysis.

This whole topic comes down to a cost benefit analysis.

Is it going to cost you more than you are willing to pay?

And I think for a very long time,

the amount people were willing to pay

on the conservative end to talk about their beliefs

has been extremely little.

And that's rapidly gone away,

especially in the Second Amendment community,

especially in the anti-abortion community,

especially in the religious community.

I'm seeing a lot more people very rapidly advocating

for their Christian conservative beliefs.

And you know, I'm not a religious person.

I'm not.

I have said that before on this show

and I've had discussions with my wife lately

where I've said, honestly, I might be wrong

about not being religious because clearly,

the rest of the world can't handle their shit

without sky daddy holding a sword over their head.

I mean, oh God, are you and I ever going to have

the religion, the religion episode?

How would we even do that?

With at least two glasses of bourbon of peace.

Okay, that, that, we'll pocket that one.

That might be a patron only episode,

but we'll pocket that one for both intoxicated.

We should definitely do it as a patron only episode

and a prerecord so that in case it goes way too off

the rails, we can edit it.

Oh hell no.

Oh hell no.

I don't edit, I don't edit the, the patron episodes.

We actually have it.

We actually have not done like a dedicated

for the patron's random facts episode in a while.

And now is definitely not the time to do it

because as it is tomorrow night,

we're doubling up because I got to get one in the pocket

for the next couple of weeks of my life

that are going to be insane.

But family do be like that sometimes.

Yeah.

But I mean, to your point about the cost benefit analysis

before we roll this out, I don't think it was just,

I don't think it was just a cost problem.

Like, conservatives weren't willing to pay the toll.

I think the problem is they didn't see any benefit.

Like this is, this has been the argument

I've made about like people that are anti-gun,

people that are, most people that I meet

that are ideologically opposed

to this video ownership of firearms,

like on a principle basis.

Their problem is they see the cost as they see it

of civilian gunnership.

There is violence that involves firearms,

people are injured, blah, blah, blah.

But they don't see any benefit

to balance out the earth side of the scale.

I look at it from a historical perspective

and say every time the government

are the only people that have guns,

really bad shit happens after that.

So the benefit to civilian gunnership

is that we don't become stalling in Russia

or Mao Zedong China

or the, you know, the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia.

We don't do those current day China.

Yes.

But we don't do any of those things.

We don't allow the genocide against people

because the people have a lot more guns

than the government does.

Look at our own country's history

with the Native Americans.

Yeah.

There were laws against selling them firearms too

and African Americans.

Mm-hmm.

The only historical basis

we have for firearms regulation in this country

are slave codes.

Yep.

What does that tell you?

Right there.

Tells me that there was an ardent interest

in making sure that people that might want to shoot you

for doing bad stuff to them.

Don't have the guns to shoot you instead

of just not doing bad things to the people.

That's very high minded.

So far out of your way to just not be a dick.

But my point is, that's where I see anti-gun people

like get stuck is there's all this costs

or is no benefit.

Therefore, guns are net negative period in discussion.

And I think that was the problem.

Stuart, I got you to click on the wrong one.

Stuart, we're not starting over.

You should listen to it though.

It's been a really fun conversation

and we did lots of gathering.

But I think the problem for conservatives

for a lot of years, what kept conservatives

as a large group quiet was that they saw the cost

of social ostracism, public shame,

and they didn't see a benefit to it.

Like the idea that I grew up with was that

well, conservatives are logical, rational, or right.

You know, our ideas are better so we'll win.

And we as a group continue to get our asses handed to us

in the court of public opinion over and over and over.

And it didn't matter how right we thought we were,

we kept losing because we wouldn't fight

the populace at large or not rational actors.

And so I think that's the parallel though.

Mobs are not rational actors.

But I think that's the parallel.

For too many years, conservatives said,

there's a cost, there's no benefit.

I'm just gonna let it slide.

And I think now that the overtune window has gotten pulled

as hard as it did to the left.

Now our generation, nothing but downside.

And now our generation of conservatives

are grabbing the outside of the overtune window

and yanking it as hard to the right as humanly possible

saying, no, there is a cost and the cost is this

and the cost is this and this.

And it's my culture being disintegrated.

It's my ideas being tread under.

It's my rights being taken away from me.

It's the government choosing winners and losers

when their job is to make the playing field level

in the first place.

I'm not cool with this.

I can see the cost involved in keeping quiet.

And the benefit is, I can see the benefits of speaking up

is that my voice gets heard and therefore

the cost is now justified.

I think that's the difference between

our parents generation of conservatives

and our generation of conservatives.

We are finally realizing what they never did

which is being quiet does cost something to.

It does.

The cost is too damn high to being quiet.

Yep.

So anyway, that is some version of a debate

that I have with myself when I first started this podcast

10 years ago, this August.

It's a version of a debate I have with myself occasionally.

It is still to the state, the thing that I ask myself

when I have a moment to think and breathe.

And I'm like, wow.

I really thought this was a great idea.

And I guess in most ways it was, but I don't know.

Looking back on it.

Oh, it's been a hell of a lot of fun.

I've met a lot of really cool interesting people

doing this podcast.

I mean, I've met you for one, but at the same time,

I look back at it and think to myself,

I'm like, did I truly understand what I was risking

by putting my face and my full name on the internet

and saying, take a shot at me

if you think you got one.

No, I don't think you did.

I don't think any of us really do

because the retaliation that you can get

for putting yourself out there can be quite extreme.

Yeah.

And fortunately or not, fortunately, unfortunately,

however you want to look at it,

we mostly had positive interactions with people

for the most part.

And I think that's because the original mission statement

for this podcast from you has always been,

how do we help people help themselves?

Yeah, to some extent.

Yeah.

Not always going to agree on what is helpful,

but, you know, I didn't just try freaking Stuart.

I usually do take a shot at the Taliban recruiter

look alike.

Well, I mean, fair enough.

He's just jealous of my beard.

He is.

And in addition to a bourbon sponsor,

I apparently also need a beard oil sponsor.

So, you know, beard oil does have a price tag on it.

I mean, I have a brand and I've really liked that brand.

And if they were to reach out and say,

hey, we love sponsor your show,

there's now two of us on the show with Beards

so we could probably make something happen.

That's true.

There was two of you on the show with Beards originally.

Yeah, but he had his own brand

and I didn't like his brand

because I don't care for the smell.

I'm not particularly settled on any particular brand.

Okay, so next wide open and I have my parents,

but no one's reaching out sponsors for beard oil.

So, you know, I set my wife out to the store

and said, I require beard oil

and she brought it back and it smells nice.

I'm going to shoot her a message

and turn her on some stuff that if she likes the smell of it,

you're going to wear it.

That this is accurate.

Yes, that's usually how it works.

I keep the beard because my wife likes it.

Like, look, the only kind of peer pressure that works

really well on me is coming from either my wife

or my grandma.

One, because my grandma has been known to swing a shovel

quite hard and is very good at baked goods

and my wife is also very good at baked goods

and can probably also swing a shovel.

She has yet to swing a shovel at me on purpose.

So, we shall see.

Yeah, I'm going to send her a message

about beard oil and swinging shovels,

but that's might be painful.

We'll go ahead and wrap this one up.

I will tell y'all now,

because y'all will be,

so right now is the 26th of February.

Y'all will be watching this tonight

and hearing this on the 28th Saturday morning

when it goes out.

March 12th.

And I'm going to say it now and Nick,

I'm asked you to help me remember to say it

on the episode we record tomorrow,

but I'll probably forget that episode will be pre-recorded.

You are all welcome to come in the comments

like usual and antagonize each other.

Unfortunately, Nick and I will not be able to hear you

because that episode will be pre-recorded.

And I'm just telling y'all now,

in case I forget to record it on the show tomorrow.

I don't know.

I don't like pre-recording.

I remember halfway through the show

to remind you to say it's a pre-record.

That's better than neither one of us remembering.

But I mean, personally, I don't care for pre-recording.

I enjoy the audience interaction,

even Stewart brow beating me about,

being a towel band recruiter, look alike.

But in this case, it's kind of a necessity.

Yeah.

Pre-recorded live, Stewart.

I don't know how on earth we would do pre-recorded live.

Well, you could just live stream

when we're recording ahead of time

and then put it up later.

Yeah, but then no, that feels weird.

Because then it's been floating around out there

for like two weeks before it goes out on audio.

That's just great.

It's just gonna throw things off.

It's gonna throw a full fills function way.

Okay, so I don't know if anybody's been around

long enough to remember.

But I actually tried this a long time ago where

there was a time years ago,

I think Andrew and I were still recording together.

I actually like pre-recorded an episode.

I actually know, Andrew and I pre-recorded

a couple of episodes.

Cause like, that was like right before he had to exit the show

and his schedule got really weird.

So we recorded like two, three shows in advance that way.

If he couldn't make an any particular day

I already had content, we just kind of stayed

a week ahead.

And then at some point I lost a whole episode

that we pre-recorded.

Just forgot to post it.

And I found it like five months later.

Which is a little frustrating because I'm hyper organized.

It's part of my, you know, hyper fixation and autism.

And I just lost it.

I, I, it was uploaded into our podcasting interface.

It was just sitting there and draft.

And that's probably why I lost it.

Cause it wasn't like, it wasn't on my hard drive

where I have things nice and you know, lined up or ready to go.

But I put it out there so that if worst,

I always kept one episode on in the interface.

That way, if like something happened,

I could literally just jump on with my phone

and just kick it in, you know, just publish it from my phone.

And then I, I, I lost it.

Oops, it's five months later.

I was like, whoops.

Oh, look, a pay trial drop.

Yeah, anyway, let's go ahead and wrap this one up.

I got to take shower.

I got another crap.

I'm going to hassle you about a pay trial in episode though.

Once things get settled, give it a month or so.

You know what?

Get into summer that we can that we can

in a couple of weeks after the thing I have to do.

That might be a nice, quite weekend.

Do a page and only episode.

We can do that.

We'll figure it out.

All right, absolutely.

Matter of fact, it's going to go out the door.

Just remember, whenever we have this conversation about

whether you be an advocate or you protect your anonymity,

I believe you have a responsibility to advocate for the things

you hold near dear to your heart.

And yes, their very will might be a cost involved in speaking up.

But there will also be a cost involved in not speaking up.

So you decide which cost you're willing to pay

and which one hurts your pocket, your emotional social

pocketbook the least.

And I'll talk to you on another week.

Bye, everybody.

All right.

All right.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

Another checkered flag for the books.

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