0078 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben

Sir Gene: 0:15

Sir Jean here and join me as is now become usual. Ben, how are you today?

Sir Ben: 0:21

I'm doing well, Jean, I guess all things considered could be worse.

Sir Gene: 0:27

well, it could be worse. It could be hotter.

Sir Ben: 0:29

Not by much,

Sir Gene: 0:32

I think we're actually on the, the downward cooling phase. If you can call a hundred degrees cooling at least here in Austin.

Sir Ben: 0:39

Yeah. For at least a little while it looks like it. You know, it's funny because I was looking at the records and people are talking about global warming global warming. Well, up until this June, it was 600. And like 50 days since the last time college station had seen over a hundred degrees.

Sir Gene: 0:56

really. Wow.

Sir Ben: 0:57

Yeah. So, you know, cycles changed. This is definitely one of the hottest summers that I can remember since I've been here. And this is not

Sir Gene: 1:05

there 11 years ago?

Sir Ben: 1:07

Yes.

Sir Gene: 1:08

Hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:09

I've been.

Sir Gene: 1:10

That was the first time we had a hundred degrees over a hun a hundred days over a hundred degrees in Austin.

Sir Ben: 1:15

Yeah. And so I, that, that, that is about where I was going with. This is, this very much seems like that 2011 summer. So, and if you remember, 2011 also was the year we had the bad freeze in the brownouts before,

Sir Gene: 1:31

yep. That's right.

Sir Ben: 1:32

Yury. So

Sir Gene: 1:33

I remember

Sir Ben: 1:33

kind of congruent. Yeah. Yeah. So bad, bad winter, bad, bad summer kind of interesting how that works.

Sir Gene: 1:41

I believe it's called climate

Sir Ben: 1:43

Right,

Sir Gene: 1:44

and the reason it's called climate is because it's not the same temperature every day, year round.

Sir Ben: 1:49

Yeah. And

Sir Gene: 1:50

climate would be meaningless

Sir Ben: 1:52

yeah. And you've got the different Linea wins and everything else that shifts that jet stream around and all that. So yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:59

you know, if you want the same weather every day, go be a liberal.

Sir Ben: 2:03

How, how does that.

Sir Gene: 2:04

California, mostly between San Diego and LA

Sir Ben: 2:08

yeah, to an extent. Sure.

Sir Gene: 2:10

it just doesn't change a whole lot.

Sir Ben: 2:14

Yeah. Also they don't have very good water management over there. You know, they don't believe in building dams. They just believe in stealing from the rest of the country,

Sir Gene: 2:21

Yeah. And that's, I've, I've also talked about that. I'm, I'm just shocked that the voters of Utah and Nevada have not done anything to restrict water rates.

Sir Ben: 2:34

man. They really should, but did you see the transformer fire?

Sir Gene: 2:38

I did.

Sir Ben: 2:39

Yeah. So that, you know, that that's a pretty big deal when a de loose system doesn't work like that. So at least that generation capacity for that one generator that, or whatever feeds into that transformer is gonna be out for at least six months. If they don't have an onsite spare.

Sir Gene: 2:55

yeah.

Sir Ben: 2:56

If they don't, transformers are so hard to get right now, it is six months to a year lead time for any industrial trans any industrial size transformer.

Sir Gene: 3:04

that's assuming that Canada allows the transformer repair to happen.

Sir Ben: 3:08

Yes.

Sir Gene: 3:09

Canada's in charge of fixing all industrial equipment at this point.

Sir Ben: 3:14

What do you mean?

Sir Gene: 3:18

Well, that's a, that's a joke reference to the fact that the Turine for the the Nord street, one pipeline has been held up by six months because Canada thinks that they don't have permission to ship repaired parts back to Germany because Germany will use them in connection with Russia. And of course Russia's bad.

Sir Ben: 3:40

Hmm. And by the.

Sir Gene: 3:41

to just not fix it and have Germany starve of natural.

Sir Ben: 3:46

Yeah, by the way, for those who don't know, we were talking about the Hoover dam transformer fire.

Sir Gene: 3:53

Oh, yeah, I guess we didn't mention it.

Sir Ben: 3:54

Yeah. And it's interesting though, it seems like Russia's turning Nordstrom too back on,

Sir Gene: 4:01

Well, Russia, wasn't the one who turned it off it was it was a waiting German certification for about three months before February.

Sir Ben: 4:09

Maybe I'm stating the wrong pipeline, but it, the pipeline that Russia had cut gas to Europe a few weeks ago is back in operations.

Sir Gene: 4:18

Nord stream one.

Sir Ben: 4:20

Yes.

Sir Gene: 4:20

Well, there's actually multiple ones. So the, the north stream goes directly to Germany. The there's a series of other pipelines that go through Ukraine and through bill Ruth, the one that was getting fixed was Nord stream.

Sir Ben: 4:37

Well, regardless, it looks like, Russia's delivering more gas, also interesting that Lara came out and said, you know, you know, United States by putting these missiles in in Ukraine, you were shifting our strategic objectives.

Sir Gene: 4:54

yeah, I mean, the objective was always the same is to de militarize Ukraine.

Sir Ben: 5:00

Right. But as the west, militarizes it more

Sir Gene: 5:03

right. So it's, it's, it's like, okay, well you're, you're making it more lengthy process demilitarize it, if you keep pumping you weapons in. So yeah, the the occupation zones will keep growing until Ukraine disappears.

Sir Ben: 5:18

Well, you know, it's, it's an interesting thing because we are literally giving Russia the excuse. If you wanna play devil's advocate to do exactly what we said they wanted to do in the first place.

Sir Gene: 5:33

Which one could say is exactly our goal. So we're willing to do whatever we need to do to make them do what we've been claiming. They're going to do all along,

Sir Ben: 5:45

we've always been at war with UIA.

Sir Gene: 5:47

Exactly. Well, we have, I can't remember a time when we haven't actually,

Sir Ben: 5:52

Well, the economic wars heating up.

Sir Gene: 5:54

well, the, the, the U erasure now, too, with the addition of Iran and there's, there's another country that I can, I'm forgetting now, but there's over 3 billion people that, that are gonna be represented by bricks.

Sir Ben: 6:09

Yep.

Sir Gene: 6:11

That's a hell of an isolation.

Sir Ben: 6:14

Well, you know, that's, that's something that people need to realize is that you know, forcing the Eastern, forcing the countries that we do not get along with, into an Alliance and, you know, India being in there being kind of an in, in the middle partner is is a scary thought, but forcing China and Russia together, much less, the rest of the Brooks nations is not a, to me strategically wise move for the west, especially as we are disjointed as we are at the.

Sir Gene: 6:46

absolutely. Yeah. The I think it is, it has to do with inertia. I think that much, like speaking with somebody that's, let's say 65 and older, they don't understand. And don't see a difference between the USR and. To them. It's the same thing. It's never changed. It's always been the same. The people that are younger that have experienced less USSR in their timeframe and more Russia can look back and see the differences a lot more clearly. I think that with with what's happened is NATO and the entire Western sort of state department machine, including the CIA and other agencies of that type. In 1991, I think they, they had a bit of a crisis in

Sir Ben: 7:43

Yeah, they

Sir Gene: 7:43

all their

Sir Ben: 7:44

for their budget.

Sir Gene: 7:44

were justified for by the USSR and, and the potential threat that it posed. And so while business made tremendous profits off of the the, you know, bizarre that the USSR turned into were all kinds of equipment and, and raw materials could be acquired for pennies on a dollar. A lot of money was made by people that were later seen as oligarchs, but also by a lot of corporations coming from the west.

Sir Ben: 8:17

Let me ask you something. What is the equivalent of a penny to Aruba?

Sir Gene: 8:22

a penny to, well, it Rubal is 59 Rubal to a dollar.

Sir Ben: 8:26

right? Right, right. But that's the

Sir Gene: 8:28

Oh, the old you mean the old, oh it's a, it would be a co, which is one, 100th of Rubal, which in my day, when I lived in Russia like a, you know, as a, you could buy a a candy for maybe three COPI.

Sir Ben: 8:42

So, you know, do they even use that denomination anymore?

Sir Gene: 8:45

I don't think so. I think that's been retired. That's just a historical thing.

Sir Ben: 8:49

Gotcha. Yeah. I, I can't believe the penny has hung around as long as it has in the us society.

Sir Gene: 8:56

I, yeah, I mean, I used to have those like put all the pennies in a two liter bottle until the bottle's full and then get rid of'em kind of thing.

Sir Ben: 9:04

Yep. I, I still have change buckets.

Sir Gene: 9:06

I just don't do change. I haven't done change for about 10 years.

Sir Ben: 9:11

Yeah. I,

Sir Gene: 9:12

I use plastic as much as possible and if I have to use cash, I always tell'em to keep the change.

Sir Ben: 9:16

see, I go the other route. I try and use cash as much as possible.

Sir Gene: 9:20

Why it's dirty. It has,

Sir Ben: 9:24

less traceable.

Sir Gene: 9:25

It's got drugs on it.

Sir Ben: 9:27

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 9:27

It's got your fingerprints on it.

Sir Ben: 9:28

Yep.

Sir Gene: 9:29

Uhhuh.

Sir Ben: 9:30

Uhhuh.

Sir Gene: 9:31

I don't know how that's less traceable. I just don't like cash man for, I look, let's put it this way. Do I have cash sitting? Reserve somewhere. Yes, I do always have, but that's not cash that's used by me on any kind of daily basis that is reserve cash. Not just in us denominations either. I have other varieties of cash besides us dollar just in case, but for just day to day ordering

Sir Ben: 9:59

training.

Sir Gene: 10:01

but to just have a variety of, yeah, exactly. That's just, that's basic common sense. Well, one would be hardly enough, wouldn't it? No, you gotta have common sense enough to realize that when shit hits the fan you oughta be a, the first one that can get out of the shit and move somewhere else.

Sir Ben: 10:21

Well, and, you know, that's what it comes down to it for me is just like food storage or anything else, some basic preparedness, you don't have to go full prepper. You don't have to have years and years of food search. First of all, it shit really hits the fan. I'm not living in this house. You know, this house is forfeit. So, you know, why would I keep food for, you know, indefinite stay that's that just doesn't make sense. So, same sort of thing. Just enough to get you by a midterm crisis and get you to where you need to be for long term.

Sir Gene: 10:50

right. Well, and that's, that's really, the question is that I kind of have to think about every time I, I just ordered some more ammo the other day and I, every time I order ammo, huh? No.

Sir Ben: 11:02

carry?

Sir Gene: 11:02

Yeah, exactly. It's the, and I, the thought I have, every time I order more ammo is, well, my neighbors just got another present.

Sir Ben: 11:11

It, you know, to an extent. Sure. But you know, if I'm prioritizing what I'm carrying out of this house, ammo is quite frankly higher than food.

Sir Gene: 11:24

Yeah, I can't carry all the ammo that's in the house.

Sir Ben: 11:27

Well, the bed of my truck can,

Sir Gene: 11:29

Yeah, mine can't

Sir Ben: 11:31

well, you don't, do you have a truck?

Sir Gene: 11:33

I don't have a truck. I, I have a, yeah, I have a sport utility, but you know, I already transported about 1400 pounds of ammo once. And that was I don't, I don't need to do that again. And I have a lot more ammo now.

Sir Ben: 11:47

So I'll tell a story that I haven't told on the show. I don't think so. It was the beginning of the. And I was I had two places, one in college station, one in Dallas at the time. And I was up in Dallas and, you know, quite a few of my toys and ammo supply was up there. And I decided, you know, I don't really want to have to bug out of this city if shit goes bad with all of this. So I'm gonna go ahead and take it to another location. So I loaded up the back of the truck and covered it with the tarp and everything else and the bed of my truck, by the way, full, absolutely full. And anyway, Strape the tarp down, everything else while I'm on my way outta Dallas. And I'm at the Southeastern side of Dallas and the tarp starts flapping. I'm like, Jesus. So I pull over and I fix the tarp. Well, right. As I'm about done fixing the tarp, a police officer pulls up behind me and asked me what I'm doing. And I said, oh, the tart started flapping just on my way. Thanks. And he said, well, what's in the bed of the truck.

Sir Gene: 12:48

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 12:49

And I know your damn business and he tried to look under the tarp and I had to interd to myself between him and the tarp. And I said, excuse me, sir, can I help you? And anyway, he started asking me questions and I said, well, am I being detained? You know, we'd go through this dance. And he says, well, you know, what, what what's in, why can't I look in the back of your truck? I said, because it's none of your business and you don't have a warrant. If you wanna get a warrant, then you can search my vehicle short of that. Am I free to go? So he called in for a warrant called in for a drug dog.

Sir Gene: 13:20

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 13:20

long story short, 45 minutes later, I was free to go. My vehicle ended up not being searched. And I went on with my life. The next week I bought a Tonto cover for the back of my truck.

Sir Gene: 13:31

Yeah. Wait, wait. What'd you call it

Sir Ben: 13:34

a Tonto, you know, folding bed cover.

Sir Gene: 13:36

cover

Sir Ben: 13:39

What did you call it?

Sir Gene: 13:40

a to know cover.

Sir Ben: 13:42

I, I think we're describing the same thing using different words.

Sir Gene: 13:46

Okay.

Sir Ben: 13:47

Okay.

Sir Gene: 13:48

I mean, there's no tea in the middle of, to know,

Sir Ben: 13:51

Oh my

Sir Gene: 13:52

cause that's all I'm saying. It's just a pronunciation thing. You're putting extra tea in there.

Sir Ben: 13:56

Using different

Sir Gene: 13:57

Tanto is a that's a imaginary Indian guy.

Sir Ben: 14:01

yeah. To know is a word for it. But there's another word for it. Maybe I'm just using incorrect and heard something wrong. Who

Sir Gene: 14:09

I don't know, man. I think when you were on the way to the nuclear plant, your tanto may have flapped around anyway. That's that's a good story of actually standing up for your rates.

Sir Ben: 14:21

Oh, that Dave.

Sir Gene: 14:23

Now I always file a complaint with the police department. Anyway, anytime that the police was annoying to me

Sir Ben: 14:29

Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, I have a letter from the chief of police of Brian, Texas from when I was in college.

Sir Gene: 14:36

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 14:36

Apologizing for the actions of his officers when they illegally searched my house.

Sir Gene: 14:41

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 14:42

So we were having a party in college and someone came up to me and said, Hey, Ben there's cops outside and said, okay, well, let me go talk to'em. And, you know, I walked outside and you couldn't hear music or anything else, but we had a bunch of cars on the street and I went up to the cop car and no one was in it. And I just looked back at the house and they're in the bushes trying to look in the windows and stuff. And I said, excuse me. Hello? And I started talking to'em and I'm like, what are you doing here? Well, we had noise complaints. I said, well, I can't hear any music out here. So I don't think you did.

Sir Gene: 15:13

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 15:14

And you know, the bullshit and I'm sober, you know, I'm, we're not doing anything, but having a get together and actually a little dinner thing and we're having a hookah in the back room. And all of a sudden, one of my friends, girlfriends comes outside and says, been there in the house.

Sir Gene: 15:29

yep.

Sir Ben: 15:30

And I said the fuck. So I go back around and I go in and anyway, they they went in the backyard. They, they said the gate was open, which was bullshit. They went in the backyard and saw the hookah and threw the back window and said we saw drug paraphernalia. So therefore we had to enter. And anyway, I wrote up the, I immediately kicked them the hell out and said, you know, go leave now, followed them back to the station, bitched out the Sergeant that was on went that Monday, went and saw the chief police bitched him out and ended up with a a apology because they illegally searched my house. First of all, they couldn't have seen anything from the street or even the neighbor's backyard. So they had to trespass. To see anything. They had no probable cause there was no noise complaint filed. I found that out as well. And you know, they just totally misbehaving. What it was was one officer was driving down the street, saw a bunch of cars parked on a street in a college town and figured they could get a bus and

Sir Gene: 16:36

Yep.

Sir Ben: 16:37

totally misbehaved,

Sir Gene: 16:39

Yeah. Well, that's, that's typical police behavior and I've talked about this and I think even with you multiple times that the mentality difference between a policeman and a common petty criminal is neglige, it is the same personality type that does both jobs.

Sir Ben: 16:57

To an extent I think there are good police, but I think that the days of officer friendly the days of officer friendly have fleeted you know, like Jack MCLE Jack MC was a personal friend of mine. In fact he was my first employer. And great guy. You know, he put out in the nineties vampire killer 2000. He was one of the guys that talked the guy off Ruby Ridge blanking on names right now. Randy Weaver, there we go. He, he helped get Randy and his family off Ruby Ridge. Great guy. Great. Patriot was a hell of a police officer and, you know, he really pioneered community policing. Those are far and few between, and the fact that post nine 11 and post the Iraq war, we have recruited former military so much into the policing departments is a big part of the problem. The militarization of the police that started in the eighties is a big problem. Years ago in college, I posted a meme that was a soldier in Iraq, kitted out with body armor and everything, and a SWAT team member kitted out with body armor and everything. And I monochro him. So they were both black and white. And I said, spot the difference. You know, there isn't any, and you know, our founders would be absolutely mortified at the standing army. We have allowed to exist in our MI

Sir Gene: 18:12

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 18:14

I'm not even talking about the army. I'm talking about police.

Sir Gene: 18:17

yeah, and, but I think that's where that's, that's a more dangerous thing because while the army is made up of people of a variety of different belief systems and creeds and You know, they're look, it's more, more dangerous in my opinion, to arm the police than it is to arm the military.

Sir Ben: 18:38

Agreed. And you know, what the hell does a police department need with an M R what the held does a police department need with bayonets.

Sir Gene: 18:46

yeah.

Sir Ben: 18:47

That is not the purpose of a police

Sir Gene: 18:48

no, no, they're, they're Laing. They're playing soldier.

Sir Ben: 18:52

and they, and they think they are. And they, they think civilians are the enemy.

Sir Gene: 18:56

they do. They absolutely do. They have a very much an us versus them mentality and us being only other people in the uniform.

Sir Ben: 19:04

Yeah. Anyone who's not in the uniform.

Sir Gene: 19:06

yeah. Yeah. Regardless of, of the, you know, peaceful, non criminal nature of anybody else out there. But also you mentioned while I, you know, there, there have been good police or there are good police. I've known good criminals too. You know, I mean, I've known people that are currently in prison that were very good people previously to being caught.

Sir Ben: 19:30

well, I mean, there are lots of different, there, there are lots of people who are in prison today for things that I would not classify as a crime.

Sir Gene: 19:40

Yeah, exactly. Like, drug manufacturing.

Sir Ben: 19:45

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Sir Gene: 19:47

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 19:48

You own your body. You're responsible for what you put.

Sir Gene: 19:52

right. Well, or, you know, if you're working in Columbia, but there's a, there's definitely a it's a disconnect in, in, in my opinion, between the left and the left here, because. The left has been the, the ones advocating and pushing for the militarization of the police, but also the left is pushing for black lives matter and Antifa being the norm. And it's a weird, weird thing because there maybe, maybe it only works in, in a fictional utopia where both of those coexist at the same time. But it doesn't certainly work in real life.

Sir Ben: 20:38

Yeah. It, the, the right has pushed plenty for the militarization of the police over a period of time. I mean, LA got its SWAT team because of conservatives, not because of liberals. And when you look at it, so

Sir Gene: 20:51

They're conservatives in LA. Are you kidding?

Sir Ben: 20:54

in, in the eighties when they got their first SWAT team, sure.

Sir Gene: 20:59

And what was driving that.

Sir Ben: 21:00

Just some of the, the, what was that shootout at the bank where, you know, the cops had their revolvers and then the,

Sir Gene: 21:06

Oh, yeah,

Sir Ben: 21:07

the criminals had the semiautomatics and that kicked off the whole modernization of

Sir Gene: 21:11

cop killer Tiffon bullets and all that

Sir Ben: 21:13

All that nonsense, absolute nonsense in, you know, here's what I would say. I think if you haven't read in book recommendation, anything by John Whitehead, but he's got a book about the militarization of the police. It's absolutely excellent. And, you know, Do you know, I, I think we've talked about this, but do you know why police uniforms are traditionally blue?

Sir Gene: 21:37

no,

Sir Ben: 21:37

So in London where the first police professional policing was set up, right? So they were traditionally in the UK. Actually it was the church, the churches, it was the different parishes that had organized civilian patrols and things like that to help limit crime, investigate crime and do so. So in London, they decided we want to have a professional police force. We're gonna pay people to do this, but there were fears that it would be the same as a standing army. Well, at the time, you know, the British were still wearing their red coats. So the the originator, which I can't remember his name of the British police force, decided to use blue to distinguish them from the army.

Sir Gene: 22:20

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 22:20

To go as far away from the red color as he could. So, you know, the, the very tradition of a police uniform being blue is rooted in. We are not supposed to be a standing army yet. That is definitely what they've evolved to today. And I don't know about around there, but most of them wear black around here.

Sir Gene: 22:39

mm-hmm that's true. You know, it's interesting. Since you brought that up, I remember in the eighties, the Russian policing uniforms being green, and I just looked it up and they're all blue right now. They, I don't know if this happened in the nineties where they switch colors or what, but it seems like, the standard Russian police uniform is actually blue.

Sir Ben: 23:02

Interesting.

Sir Gene: 23:03

Huh? Yeah. Interesting. I wonder what it is in other con, like I've never been to India. What do they have for colors? Do you know?

Sir Ben: 23:15

I have no idea. I just know that the blue started in London and that was the Western start of

Sir Gene: 23:21

Well, that one make some sense.

Sir Ben: 23:23

yeah.

Sir Gene: 23:23

They're the, the same color as our khakis,

Sir Ben: 23:28

Yeah. Well, that probably is actually derived from colonialism and the, the British expeditionary forces were in khaki uniforms.

Sir Gene: 23:37

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 23:38

It it's interesting how the UK also didn't broke up their military forces from just blowing military forces and expeditionary forces.

Sir Gene: 23:49

And how did they do that

Sir Ben: 23:51

I'm sorry,

Sir Gene: 23:52

and how did they,

Sir Ben: 23:54

just for colonial periods of time, you know, colonial governorships, things like that. And X amount of fours being you know, an occupying army versus a response army for defense and so on

Sir Gene: 24:06

So they're, they're blue in Israel for police. Iran has black uniforms for police.

Sir Ben: 24:16

Hey, so do we we're we're we're besties. We're just set up to be besties matching uniforms.

Sir Gene: 24:22

Interesting.

Sir Ben: 24:23

Speaking of Iran,

Sir Gene: 24:25

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 24:26

Iran, China, and Russia

Sir Gene: 24:28

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 24:29

gonna stop using the us dollar for trade

Sir Gene: 24:32

That that's yeah, that's what I said. We got three, 3 billion people that are in and now I'm blanking out in,

Sir Ben: 24:38

bricks.

Sir Gene: 24:39

bricks. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 24:39

Right. But formally announcing that they're gonna stop using the us dollar

Sir Gene: 24:43

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 24:44

for trade amongst themselves, which is interesting. That's that said, you know, the bricks nations are I'm sorry, go ahead.

Sir Gene: 24:53

I just I'm shocked. It took that long.

Sir Ben: 24:55

Yeah, the, the bricks nations though, I have have a, a six sister that's gonna weigh'em down. Looks.

Sir Gene: 25:02

What's that?

Sir Ben: 25:03

China.

Sir Gene: 25:03

Yeah, I don't think so.

Sir Ben: 25:05

I think the Chinese economy is very close to collapse.

Sir Gene: 25:07

Yeah. I don't just last thing about uniforms, Italians black uniforms.

Sir Ben: 25:13

Yeah. I, I think that has to do with miscellaneous. No, so, I mean, I sent you two articles one, one of the largest headphone manufacturers in the world shutting down. And then the other, going back to what I was saying a few episodes ago about the Chinese real estate market in utter free fall, like it has never been before. And the reason why the real estate market in China is such a big deal. I mean, in the us, we think it's a big deal because housing costs and everything else. It the, the, the real estate market in China being in free fall, like this is equivalent to our stock market being in free fall like this. And the reason why I say that is because most Americans have their savings, their life savings in a 401k or something like that in the stock market, the Chinese do not, they have it in real estate. So when the real estate market collapses like that, what you're seeing is the destruction of all the wealth of the middle class in China. That's a big deal.

Sir Gene: 26:11

is it though?

Sir Ben: 26:12

Yeah. China has the only reason China is the power. It is today is because of the expansion of the middle class over the last 30 years.

Sir Gene: 26:20

Why?

Sir Ben: 26:21

Because that is their economic power. It's their manufacturing base. It is their economic power. It is the only reason why the communist government of China has survived past the SSR.

Sir Gene: 26:34

Because the middle class,

Sir Ben: 26:36

yes, because of people coming out of poverty and their lives being so improved.

Sir Gene: 26:42

you don't think it's just the raw numbers they have.

Sir Ben: 26:45

No, because I think had Nixon not gone to China, had Nixon not started the trade with China that we have now in the west. Have we not given them preferential treatment in the nineties and so on and so forth? I think the communist government would not have survived much longer than the USSR. I think they would've collapsed. I think there would've been a revolt.

Sir Gene: 27:08

Yeah, I think non isolationism definitely helped China and because Russia had a much more policy I mean, honestly, USSR policy during the Soviet era was a lot closer to us policy right now in terms of friender foe. So, you know, we, we send money to our friend, the Ukraine, and we limit all trade with people. We don't like Russia. And that was more of the standard policy in USSR, but not in China. China had, and probably thanks to Nixon, like you said, had a lot more of an open policy to where we will do trade with everybody. we. Not just communist countries.

Sir Ben: 27:53

Yeah. And I, I think that, you know, China coming out of isolation. And doing what they did and building up their middle class and really adopting a hybrid system. I wouldn't call the Chinese truly communist. What I would call them is just despotic. Because they have nepotistic economies. You had to be a member of the party. You have to abide by XYZ rules, but other than that, you're fairly free economically speaking. Other than that, they're truly despotic and, you know, the style of communism that was in the USSR and what we see in China today are not comparable really by no means is the Chinese system less bad, but it's certainly has survived better than the SSR did. And I, I really think giving the, I mean, you're, you're talking one generation removed from rice patties. For the vast majority of the Chinese. So you know, that that's a huge deal

Sir Gene: 28:56

It, it is. But I think here's, I think part of the mistake that most people in the us make is that they see the slowdown in Chinese GDP growth and they think aha. China is is starting to fail here. They're they're gonna have a a collapse, but the change in that GDP is from a double digit change down to a change that is closer to the us growth. And actually China is still ahead of the us in terms of GDP growth.

Sir Ben: 29:31

Yeah. But what you're failing to see my point on is that I'm not worried about their GDP growth. I'm looking at wealth destruction being the the primary problem for the Chinese economy.

Sir Gene: 29:45

Yeah. I just don't think that's a effected at all. If you're investing in China, not outside of China, then the fluctuations that you're talking about are internal. They're not external. So

Sir Ben: 30:00

yes, but what do you do when

Sir Gene: 30:02

was losing their investments in external things outside of

Sir Ben: 30:07

What do you, what do you do when half a billion people lose everything economically?

Sir Gene: 30:12

What do you do in the us when the market drops the way it has over the last year, does everybody panic and run around like their chickens with their heads cut off.

Sir Ben: 30:21

So we haven't seen a, I mean the Chinese real estate market in the last month has dropped 30% in overall value. Not, not relative, you know, overall value from one month to one month, 30%. that is a destruction of wealth that the great depression did not see. So, I mean, we we're seeing the drop in the stock market during the great depression was not what we're seeing a drop in the Chinese real estate market has. So yeah, I think during the great depression, a lot of people committed suicide. I think there, I think if it was not for Roosevelt's programs and make work, which I actually think made the situation worse you would've seen a revolt in this country, in fact you know, Prescott Bush and ever, he, mildly Butler came really close to trying to overthrow the government during that period of time. So, you know, yeah. I, I think in this country, during those sorts of economic times, you have seen damn near revolts. And I think I, I, I, I don't know, maybe the trainees people are repressed enough that they won't, but I, I, I, I don't know. It, it doesn't look good to me.

Sir Gene: 31:35

Well, I I'm, obviously, I don't think it's good, but I also think that it's gonna have a much lesser effect than what you're thinking. It will. I, I think that the, the volatility of the us stock market has a much bigger impact on us ability to spend and save money than the Chinese housing market losing value, which was an artificial value to begin.

Sir Ben: 32:08

Absolutely. Well, regardless, I you know, it, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in China and if China survives or if they don't, you know, I, I I'm hopeful that. I hate to say it, but I'm hopeful that there is somewhat of an economic collapse in China, just so that the, the us doesn't get left too far behind. You know, but yeah, that's me being selfish.

Sir Gene: 32:33

well, and, and the other thing is Chinese government investments have primarily been external non-internal. So you're talking about investments of Chinese populace, but if you look at government investments those are predominantly in the west.

Sir Ben: 32:50

yeah, well, okay. But that's dangerous for the government.

Sir Gene: 32:55

starts going down, then I will agree with you that China has a problem, cuz they have invested very heavily in us real estate.

Sir Ben: 33:02

here's the thing though. The citizenry have to be kept that, you know, content, they have to have their circuses and their bread. Right. And when you. Impoverish a citizenry, and then you have this. So what, what has kept China intact? So, you know, there's always a Preto distribution of goods. There there's an accumulation of wealth that happens. And what happens when you have wars and revolts is when that accumulation gets so tilted that so few have, you know, something and so many have nothing. All it takes is really a revolutionary to come in and spark stuff up. And then you have a revolt on your hands. So I don't know

Sir Gene: 33:50

zero danger of that happening in China.

Sir Ben: 33:52

why.

Sir Gene: 33:53

I'm not happy about it. Why? Because the Chinese government much like the Soviet government is pervasive. It's everywhere. There's literally a Chinese communist party board in every corporation in China. It is, it is difficult for Americans to understand without experiencing it. But there, there isn't a separation between Chinese government and Chinese life and Chinese corporations.

Sir Ben: 34:25

I understand that, but the, that to me would indicate that they would be very easy to blame when shit went wrong.

Sir Gene: 34:33

The blame happens. It just goes in the other direction. The people that are in the company that are in the party are the last to go. The first to go are the ones that have been walking around saying, I can't believe the value of my apartment has gone down. This is bullshit. The government ought to do something about it. Oh, okay. Well you have no job now. Congratulations. You have no house and no job go live in the street. Again, I'm not arguing for this as the ideal form of government. I'm just saying

Sir Ben: 35:04

gene believes in despotism.

Sir Gene: 35:06

Yeah. That's reality. And, and they're good at it.

Sir Ben: 35:11

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 35:11

have found a good balance and the us has provided them the finance to be able to pull it off. I just don't see it happening. I, I think that a much more likely scenario in something I was telling a friend of mine the other day and we've kind of talked about it on a show as well, is that one of the big dangers that has already happened, like it's too late to do anything about is by us brazenly arming the next door neighbor of Russia who has an existing conflict with them. They, the, this professional courtesy that's always existed has now been disappeared. That it's not Germany sending weapons to Ukraine. It's the us sending weapons to Ukraine. So my prediction is this. And again, I'm not, I'm not like this is a bad thing. I'm not hoping for this. I'm just saying this is highly likely now that I've seen this happening. I I'm gonna forecast in the next four years, the militarization and state sponsored arming of the Mexican cartels. I think we're gonna have a real war in the Southwest.

Sir Ben: 36:27

Well, interesting. I mean, quite frankly, I, I think there are plenty in the us that wouldn't mind that cuz it would give us an excuse to go in it. I think a lot of Republicans would actually love to see us, our military go in and quote unquote, clean up Mexico.

Sir Gene: 36:45

Yeah. Except it's not gonna happen

Sir Ben: 36:48

Why.

Sir Gene: 36:48

because we have a shit in, in military right now. We've got a bunch of woke military people and the gen Xers and the older millennials are leaving and, or have already gone. And what's left of the military are people that believe in equity. There are people that are going to be more willing to not shoot than shoot.

Sir Ben: 37:15

You know, I don't know. I, I think that is such a minority of the population. I, I think it's a

Sir Gene: 37:21

Who's our president. Who's the majority in Congress. Come on, quit. Pretending that the liberals don't run the country.

Sir Ben: 37:29

I think there's a spectrum. And I think what's driving that spectrum is the tail end of the bell curve.

Sir Gene: 37:37

The spectrum goes from socialists to rhinos. That's the spectrum. All of them are in the left.

Sir Ben: 37:46

Okay. I, I still think the general population is different than that. Those that are elected. And I think that the majority of voters are not positioned voters. They are just, oh, I like what he said in his speech. I have done zero research other than that click. So, yeah. I don't know. I, regardless, I, I think if the cartels get armed and so on, I, I think there will be.

Sir Gene: 38:11

Gonna be death happening. There're be much more people dead than happen in nine 11. And unfortunately it's gonna be on our south side here.

Sir Ben: 38:19

yeah. And I think what you'll see is the national guard called up. I think you'll see the Southern governors try and do something about that. And

Sir Gene: 38:26

Oh, they will. But what are you gonna do against MLRs systems that are shooting missiles from a hundred kilometers away?

Sir Ben: 38:32

Well, the

Sir Gene: 38:34

Us

Sir Ben: 38:34

would, that would be a declaration of war that would, that would be a declaration of

Sir Gene: 38:38

yes. Yes. And that would be a big win for China and Russia

Sir Ben: 38:41

why

Sir Gene: 38:43

because the us has got a war on its backyard, which is going to make it not participate in anything else outside of its back.

Sir Ben: 38:52

there, I, I don't care what Russia arms, the cartels with Mexico would Mexico. Mexico would not be able to stand up against the us. Even as much as Ukraine has stood up against Russia. There's just no way it, it is a failed NACO state at this point.

Sir Gene: 39:12

It may be a failed micro state, but Mexico already kills more Americans than, you know, when we were in the middle east.

Sir Ben: 39:20

Yeah, absolutely. That 100% agree, especially if you're taking in drug overdose numbers

Sir Gene: 39:25

And, and now you take an add actual military weapons and not just handheld weapons and you're

Sir Ben: 39:34

the, the cartels could get their hands on anything. They wanted. The, the last thing the cartels actually want is a hot war with the United States. They are very happy to operate at the level they're operating now. Cause they're making plenty of money and they're doing whatever they want to do.

Sir Gene: 39:48

but that that's my point is here's the difference is right now, the cartels have to make money by selling drugs.

Sir Ben: 39:54

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 39:55

What if they did, what if they were paid more money than they're currently making to do nothing but stir up trouble?

Sir Ben: 40:03

Yeah. Russia and China don't have that much money.

Sir Gene: 40:05

They do.

Sir Ben: 40:06

They don't

Sir Gene: 40:06

They do.

Sir Ben: 40:07

they do not. What, what do you think? The the Mexican drug cartels GDP is,

Sir Gene: 40:14

I don't know. I haven't looked it up.

Sir Ben: 40:16

well, let's do that. Let's consult the book of knowledge.

Sir Gene: 40:18

All right. Do it. Let's do it in real time.

Sir Ben: 40:29

Hold on. Gee, I'll just get it that way and see what it comes up. 500 billion a year.

Sir Gene: 40:36

500 billion. All right. And

Sir Ben: 40:39

China and Russia do not China and Russia don't spend that on their own militaries areas.

Sir Gene: 40:44

I'm pretty sure they do

Sir Ben: 40:45

I'm pretty sure they don't

Sir Gene: 40:46

500 billion.

Sir Ben: 40:47

500 billion with a B

Sir Gene: 40:50

Yeah,

Sir Ben: 40:53

Washington post, by the way. But business insider says it's only 50 billion, so we'll call it, you know, call it 50

Sir Gene: 41:03

gap.

Sir Ben: 41:04

It is a huge gap between the two estimates.

Sir Gene: 41:07

yep.

Sir Ben: 41:10

Huh? So just call it 50.

Sir Gene: 41:12

Okay. Well for sure if it's 50, I mean, even if it's a hundred. I think China and Russia spend more than that.

Sir Ben: 41:25

You're making me Google things, Jean.

Sir Gene: 41:27

Well, do it.

Sir Ben: 41:31

Yeah, Russia. So if it's a hundred million Russian military budget last so Russian military budget in 2013 was 68 billion in let's see. 2016 was nine 98 billion. Yeah, so Russia really hasn't changed. In fact, they lowered their budget. Recently, China is on the upward streak they're spending around. Let's see, they're spending around 150 billion in contrast the us spends over 750 billion.

Sir Gene: 42:01

Yeah, no us absolutely does. It's the biggest

Sir Ben: 42:04

waste of money ever.

Sir Gene: 42:05

Purveyor of military stuff.

Sir Ben: 42:08

Yeah. Which our founders would be absolutely. You'd live it over what we've done as far as that goes.

Sir Gene: 42:17

well also, I don't think it would take all that much money to start causing trouble in through

Sir Ben: 42:23

But yeah, but again, I don't see the cartels as being motivated to do that

Sir Gene: 42:28

Well,

Sir Ben: 42:29

know the, they know the response. I, I mean, quite frankly, that's a good way for, you know, the us to annex Mexico.

Sir Gene: 42:36

That definitely would not happen because China owns a huge amount of property in Mexico. They would stand in the way of that.

Sir Ben: 42:41

Good luck. You, you start something like that, please. The, the us almost annex to Mexico before, it would not take a lot for us to just go, you know what? We're tired of this

Sir Gene: 42:52

the word Mexico with Ukraine and the us with Russia.

Sir Ben: 42:56

Yeah, exactly.

Sir Gene: 42:58

That's my government. The point I'm making is that this is opened door to something like this happening because in the past us would never be involved in provoking a direct neighbor of the USSR, like in Africa, fine. Middle east, fine Southeast Asia. Fine, but not in Europe, not directly adjacent to the USSR. The current stance is everything goes well. Right. The us didn't really didn't really provide any, any military to Poland. I mean, Poland had a,

Sir Ben: 43:40

provided that's very similar assistance to what we supplied the Afghanis with.

Sir Gene: 43:46

I don't think there was any weapons involved though. I think in Poland there was money for sure.

Sir Ben: 43:50

There was a lot of money and I I'm pretty sure that was used. Fund and purchase weapons, you know, the Afghanis we had to directly deliver, but you know, same similar set of aids. So whatever I I'm just giving an example where the us and NATO at the time with SSR putting pressure on Poland, fighting with Poland, the, that, you know, even before membership, we were supplying them with stuff.

Sir Gene: 44:16

but not weapons,

Sir Ben: 44:19

I mean, if you're supplying money, that's used to purchase weapons. Is there a

Sir Gene: 44:22

but they, no. And what weapons are you talking about? I mean, Poland had a they had an uprising, but they didn't, they didn't, they never had any conf open military conflict with Russia.

Sir Ben: 44:34

The uprising is what I'm talking about, but

Sir Gene: 44:37

Yeah, that was okay. Okay. If you're talking about AK 40 sevens being weapons, those already were in the.

Sir Ben: 44:46

okay. As they were in Afghanistan, but they

Sir Gene: 44:50

they weren't shooting down Russian planes. They weren't shooting rockets at rush. They weren't doing anything. They were literally it was a Polish revolution. If you wanna call it that. And Le Vale who kind of was the face of that ended up eventually becoming elected president of Poland after the breakup of Russia or a breakup of Soviet union.

Sir Ben: 45:19

Well,

Sir Gene: 45:20

But it it's, I, I, I think that this is a new a new chapter in open hostilities that has never existed in the past. I think the closest we got was the us Sr sending missiles to Cub. That was the closest to that. Either country got to putting something on the other country's steps and that resulted in the very swift and correct. I might add action by the United States in not just enforcing the Monroe doctrine, but in saying this is an act of war and we will treat it as such. And if you don't change things, the escalation will continue.

Sir Ben: 46:04

let's be clear though. The missiles that Russia was placing, there are slightly different than the missiles that were being placed in Ukraine today.

Sir Gene: 46:12

Not really

Sir Ben: 46:12

I think the war heads are a substantial difference.

Sir Gene: 46:16

well. I mean, yeah, you're saying they were nuclear missiles. I don't think that that really makes any difference. You think us would've been okay with non-nuclear missiles being 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Sir Ben: 46:27

I think the response would be drastically different. Yes.

Sir Gene: 46:32

I don't know. I don't know that any nuclear warheads were ever actually delivered to Cuba.

Sir Ben: 46:37

They weren't but they were

Sir Gene: 46:38

missiles were capable, but guess what? So are the missiles that we're shipping or the, the not the missiles, but the launch systems that we're shipping to curing are also capable of nuclear.

Sir Ben: 46:51

absolutely.

Sir Gene: 46:53

So again, what's the difference.

Sir Ben: 46:54

Intent and Russia's badge Russia's evil.

Sir Gene: 46:57

Yeah, that's, that's what it has to come down to. It's it's a religious argument is my point. What it comes down to is you have to have a particular belief that involves a belief in the evilness of some individual person and not in any just rational dissection of what's happening in the historical perspective they're on. And that's, to me that that's a dangerous line to walk.

Sir Ben: 47:25

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 47:27

I do a lot of negotiating in my line of work. And the, the hardest people to try and shift to a common ground are people that have an unfathomable, unquestionable belief structure, because you can't use arguments and logic to sway them. You can only use

Sir Ben: 47:52

People who are driven by their emotions.

Sir Gene: 47:54

yeah. People that are driven by their emotions, people that the, for whom the word belief, isn't something that's derived out of a build set of knowledge, but something that has derived out of an, almost an ethereal kind of connection within, with a universal.

Sir Ben: 48:13

Yeah. Our idea that they

Sir Gene: 48:14

is evil. How do you, how do you fight that? If you don't okay. If you believe he's evil, you're always gonna believe he's evil. That's never gonna change whether you are a, an 80 year old ex Russian expat who only sees anybody that's in Russian government as in just inherently being evil or whether you are a you know, somebody that's a what's the, again, damn, I'm blanking out the word. The NeoCon in the us. No, if you're a NeoCon, like the, like, you know, the roo skis are bad.

Sir Ben: 48:46

Well in, yes. You know, it's the same sort of beliefs in the constitution. Oh, the Constitution's the most perfect political document ever written, you know, it it's kind of failed us. This was, I'm kind of transitioning this to the conversation we were having after the show last week. You know, we, we started talking and you said, save it for the show. So, The founding of this country really was meant to be a loose association between states. I think Thomas Jefferson, you know, put it best when saying that the only powers of the federal government should be in collective defense taxation of imports. And there was one other, but pretty much that's

Sir Gene: 49:25

wasn't a common military defense or something.

Sir Ben: 49:27

Yeah. I already said collective defense, but yeah. Oh, treaties treaties were the last one that, you know, that outside of that, that the state should be left to their own. And we were debating whether or not you know, the states could do what they wanted and so on. And,

Sir Gene: 49:42

Yeah. What was the example I used, I'm trying to think of what it

Sir Ben: 49:44

you used women voting. and, and, and I said, well, under the original constitution that, you know, the federal government has no business. Now, of course, the amendment that allowed the franchisement of women says that the state shall pass no law. But the point I was making is that the founders would never have ratified that amendment. And it really is a drastic difference in the way we are supposed to be governed or the way the founders intended us to be governed in the way we are governed today. And it's truly as sad, but

Sir Gene: 50:14

Yeah. And I think where that, that conversation came from was in you saying that the, the constitution only applies to the federal government in

Sir Ben: 50:24

no, the bill of rights. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 50:26

The bill of rights. Okay.

Sir Ben: 50:28

Yeah. So for instance, the first amendment says Congress shall pass no law. It says nothing about the state and the argument I was going to there was, you know, when the constitution was ratified and I would say this about the second amendment as well. You know, this is about the federal government and restricting the federal government, not about the state, the states have, you know, a charter of rights or something similar to the bill of rights in most states and the state constitution limits the state government.

Sir Gene: 50:56

And I think the example then that I brought up from that line thinking, okay, so then you're saying as given by the constitution, including second amendment, then any state has the right to completely limit access to firearms, tos citizens.

Sir Ben: 51:09

yes. And I form, I fully believe that the federal government does not have the right to limit firearm access. The NFA should not exist based off of the second amendment. Now if New York wants to go and ban guns in their state, if they amend their state constitution to allow that, then that is on them. But

Sir Gene: 51:25

Yeah,

Sir Ben: 51:26

that that's, what's called a representative government, right?

Sir Gene: 51:28

And, and then I would say, okay, well, if that's true for the second amendment, it should be true for the first amendment. So the right to freedom of speech, the right to journalistic and freedoms, all of those are religion. Absolutely are subject to states rights, overlying the federal admiration of those rights. And so we

Sir Ben: 51:48

federal.

Sir Gene: 51:48

states that don't allow freedom of speech and that's perfectly

Sir Ben: 51:52

freedom of religion, that's fine. The federal government and the federal constitution limits, it's a, it, it, here's the only time I have really ever agreed with Barack Obama. The constitution is a, a document of negative rights. The constitution doesn't say what the government can do. It says what the government cannot do, and then enumerates the rights and says, you know what? And the ninth and 10th amendment make this very clear that any rights, anything that, anything that is not listed as a power of the federal government is reserved by the states and the people.

Sir Gene: 52:28

Right. But that right there, that phrase to me indicates that if it's otherwise in the document, then it is not reserved to the states. And therefore with the freedom of religion or freedom of speech being in the constitution, in the amendments, then that is excluded from the rights of the states as defined by the eighth amendment.

Sir Ben: 52:53

Nope, totally disagree. And especially when you look at the verbiage of the amendments and the ratification debates and what was meant, you know, the first amendment says it right there. Congress shall meant pass no law. It's a restriction on Congress. That is not a

Sir Gene: 53:08

Well, that's, that's the first amendment. Yes. I'm talking about the eighth, a.

Sir Ben: 53:13

Okay. What about the eighth amendment?

Sir Gene: 53:18

It's not the eighth amendment. Which amendment am I thinking of? Let me look. It's not the eighth, but the,

Sir Ben: 53:23

I mean,

Sir Gene: 53:24

I think that

Sir Ben: 53:25

I'm wondering what you're saying about excessive fine here. So

Sir Gene: 53:28

Well, where am, yeah, it's I mean, definitely not the eighth. That's the wrong one, but no, the idea that I think that,

Sir Ben: 53:36

so you could have a bigger argument around the con the, the, the second amendment with the phrase of shall not be infringed. But I would say that the understanding at the time that the second amendment was. And this is why, you know, Texas has a similar amendment to the second amendment and most states do in their bill of rights and charters. Most states have something very similar to the bill of rights in their constitution. And the reason why is because it was seen as necessary if it was seen at the time that the federal government, oh, they've got this it's it's taken care of at the federal level. No. And by the way, this is also the founders of the constitution also are the ones that came up with a nullification document, nullification strategy, meaning if Congress passes a law or even an amendment, even an amendment to the constitution that infringes on state's rights, a null nullification nullification doc was the doctorate at the time used even by Thomas Jefferson at the time. So I, you know, I. These states were supposed to be the powerful ones, not the federal government, the supremacy clause of the constitution only applies to those powers granted to the federal government explicitly and not even implicitly it, you know, the, there was debates over the commerce clause and they never imagined it would be as abused as it was. Patrick Henry had some great lines around that, but regardless what it comes down to is they said, well, if the federal government gets out of WAC here, nullification is the answer. So the states were supposed to be the Supreme entity in this and the federal government was supposed to be subordinate to the states. That's why the senators were the representatives of the states and not the people. The higher house was supposed to be a representation of the states, not the people.

Sir Gene: 55:25

Yeah, well, I, I think that that could be true. Without the interpretation that the constitution only applies to the federal government.

Sir Ben: 55:38

I'm sorry, say that again. I don't follow

Sir Gene: 55:41

Well, I, I think that, that, that the constitution, that those rights, which are illuminated in the constitution are not rights granted by the constitution. They're the rights that exist outside of the constitution. They are.

Sir Ben: 56:00

the, the cons said differently. The constitution does not grant any rights. It acknowledges rights that exist previously by

Sir Gene: 56:09

So if, if the, if those rights exist, including the freedom of speech and the constitution does not grant the freedom of speech, then that right should exist regardless of the state constitution, as.

Sir Ben: 56:26

absolutely. And here here's what people

Sir Gene: 56:27

And therefore the states cannot ban the freedom of speech and cannot ban the second

Sir Ben: 56:32

ban it, but it's, it is your duty at that point to disobey unjust laws, any immoral law, it is the duty of the citizenry to disobey

Sir Gene: 56:43

Okay. Well now you're just getting into a different topic. I'm just the point I'm trying to make is that I don't think, and again, I'm not a, you know, scholar of the constitution by any means I'm not Barack Obama, but I don't think that this works. If the constitution says that you have the freedom of religion as a us citizen, but not as a citizen of the state of Wyoming.

Sir Ben: 57:11

well, but here's the thing. The constitution doesn't grant those rights. So what you

Sir Gene: 57:16

it enumerates rights that exist independence.

Sir Ben: 57:20

is the philosophy of the founders was that the rights, I mean, the declaration of independence, all of this, the philosophy of the founders were, was that it does not matter what government says. These rights exist. We are, we are going to exercise these rights. So by saying that the Congress shall pass no law. They're saying that our government is never going to trample on these rights. A state government is different. You know, Thomas Jefferson, you can look at his and Hamilton's debates on federalism and what the powers of the federal government were supposed to be. You can read the ratification debates. You can look at this. And it was very clear that, you know, other than guaranteeing a Republican form of government in each state, the, the anti-federalists were of the mindset that the federal government should not interfere inside a state.

Sir Gene: 58:14

It makes no sense.

Sir Ben: 58:16

Why does it make no

Sir Gene: 58:17

It does make sense. Why bother having any conversations about, or any enumeration of rights at the federal level if the federal level ignores the state level? If how is it a

Sir Ben: 58:32

were several P.

Sir Gene: 58:33

of states that have, like, if you have, let's go back to the original 13 colonies, you have 13 states that decide rather than being independent countries want to form a, a union with each other, not a not a treaty, but a union. If,

Sir Ben: 58:57

that only came out of the revolutionary war and the continental Congress beating the British and them wanting to not get picked off individually.

Sir Gene: 59:07

Yeah, well that's for whatever the driver was. They did it. So if you agree to have not just independent states with treaties, with each other, but a centralized form of government in existence, then the only things that that should be federal laws should be laws, which all the states agree on. You shouldn't place any laws like take EU as an example, right now, there shouldn't be an EU law let's say against marijuana. If the Netherlands is part of the EU, because that's not something that all the states in the EU agree on, that's something that only some of the states want.

Sir Ben: 59:50

And this is why we started off with the articles of Confederation. And it was very, very limited. And this is why when we moved to the constitution, people like Thomas Jefferson were so insistent on that. The only powers that the federal government should have are around collective defense, trade and treaties. That's it? Nothing else

Sir Gene: 1:00:11

And, and I would be fine with that. And if, if the bill of rights did not exist, then there's nothing that would prevent the states from enacting their own constitutions that have vastly different regulations on speech, religion, and other topics.

Sir Ben: 1:00:29

states already do have vastly different regulations on speech. Guns and everything else. And it, you know, it, it really, I, I don't believe in the supremacy of the federal government. And that's why I'm trying to be as intellectually honest about this as I can, because, you know, I think a lot of people use the second amendment and everything else and want government power when it's convenient for them to bludgeon the states. But no, no, no. The state is the Supreme law in many, many aspects with very few

Sir Gene: 1:00:58

Well, even, even back when that was the case, which I don't believe it is today, but even I think Lincoln completely nerfed that whole thing,

Sir Ben: 1:01:06

100%. That's why he is the worst president we've ever

Sir Gene: 1:01:09

yeah. Yeah. And I don't disagree, but

Sir Ben: 1:01:11

W. Bush is a very close second.

Sir Gene: 1:01:14

even, even prior to this existing, right. Even the, in the the 17 hundreds, there has to be a mechanism for removing a state then, because what if the state has laws completely contrary to what the other states agreed to join a union for?

Sir Ben: 1:01:38

So the clause in ensuring a Republican form of government could be used in that, meaning that if a state refuses to have a Republican form of government. And when I say Republican, I don't mean big R Republican, I mean,

Sir Gene: 1:01:52

Yeah. Yeah. If they get a Des put in there or

Sir Ben: 1:01:54

right.

Sir Gene: 1:01:54

Kinda like

Sir Ben: 1:01:55

know, California, Kevin Newsome would be a great example of that. I, I think that that could be used to justify either removing the state and, or. You know, declaring war and taking over the state. Because you know, now if you

Sir Gene: 1:02:09

but under what law?

Sir Ben: 1:02:12

under the constitution

Sir Gene: 1:02:13

Yeah. Under what law in the constitution would that be

Sir Ben: 1:02:16

clause that the federal government must ensure a Republican form of government in all states,

Sir Gene: 1:02:22

Which where's that.

Sir Ben: 1:02:23

Do you want me to actually go find it in the

Sir Gene: 1:02:25

Well, I can search for that phrase if it's in there. I mean, again, I'm not the, I'm just asking questions. I'm not the constitutional scholar here.

Sir Ben: 1:02:32

And I'm not the constitutional scholar that Barack Obama is.

Sir Gene: 1:02:40

All right.

Sir Ben: 1:02:41

Yep. Section four United States shows guarantee to every state in this, in, in this union, a Republican form of government shall protect each from against ion da, da, da. This is the mutual defense clause in four. So yeah, and against domestic violence, da, da, da.

Sir Gene: 1:02:56

Guaranteed to the state,

Sir Ben: 1:02:58

Article four, article four, section

Sir Gene: 1:03:00

government. So isn't that federal supremacy?

Sir Ben: 1:03:04

No, it is a narrow window of, I mean, the, the supremacy clause saying that the constitution is the Supreme law of the land is federal supremacy, but it's limited to the powers granted in the constitution. So if you believe the Supreme court post the civil war, the constitution is a death pact, meaning that we have to stay together no matter what, how, and that secession is not a constitutional right to that, I would say, well, so whenever we rejoining the UK, because this this con, this country was founded through the declaration of independence, which was a document of se succession. So anyway, it is what it.

Sir Gene: 1:03:51

Yeah, well, it, it is what it is, but I, I think that if you, if you have a It opens up a lot of questions because in my mind, because either you have federal supremacy or you don't because by having a federal supremacy saying that you, you're not allowed as a state to change your form of government away from representative Republic, Republican form of government. And if you do then you are you are potentially going to be forced to change it back by the federal government.

Sir Ben: 1:04:32

So the founders would have, let's say, let's say in 1801, the New York decided to be the despotic state that they are today. I think the founders would have been shocked. They, you know, the nation's capital has still been there and everything else. And I think that they would've started to really Really look at, do we want New York to maintain, be part of this union? And I think quite frankly, New York probably would, could have said, you know what, we want to go it this way. We're gonna be on our own. And we, we dissolve all ties with the fledgling United States. I think that could have happened. I think in the 1830s, it damn near happened. I think when John C. Calhoun rode South Carolina expositions and protests I think the ABOM tariffs really started to push the south in that way. And the south finally did say we no longer wanna be part of this. So, you know, I think the right to succession existed well before the civil war, I think it exists today. A great book on the subject is, was Davis a trader. You know, that, that was his lawyer's defense of Davis, even though he was never charged with treason. I'm sorry.

Sir Gene: 1:05:43

Jefferson Davis.

Sir Ben: 1:05:44

yes. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.

Sir Gene: 1:05:46

Not everybody knows what Davis you're talking about.

Sir Ben: 1:05:49

okay, fine. Anyway, my, my, my point is the federal government is not intended, was not intended to be a strong federal government. There is no policing power in, in the constitution for the federal government.

Sir Gene: 1:06:02

Yeah, that's for sure.

Sir Ben: 1:06:03

So, you know, how, how is the federal government supposed to enforce laws if they have no policing power? The reason why they have no policing power is because they were never meant to have the regulatory authority that they have today.

Sir Gene: 1:06:18

Yeah. Well, and I think that the argument about closer to the civil war About slavery was also used as a, that slavery is inconsistent with Republican government. Meaning it's not a representative government. If some of the populace is not represented

Sir Ben: 1:06:39

Well, again, I don't believe in slavery except at the individual level. So I don't think a race should be enslaved, but I think if you're a free person and I decide

Sir Gene: 1:06:48

what's a race, but just a bunch of individuals.

Sir Ben: 1:06:50

well, if you decide as a free person, if you decide, I want to sell my body into slavery, you should have that, right.

Sir Gene: 1:06:58

I totally

Sir Ben: 1:06:58

That is the only form of slavery that I think is moral. And okay. Short of that, you know, enslaving someone that you captured or, oh, they're an inferior race. Quote, unquote, I don't

Sir Gene: 1:07:09

okay. So as far as

Sir Ben: 1:07:10

those things, I don't think is a moral

Sir Gene: 1:07:12

I think captures a little, little grayer. It's not black and white because in my. At least in, in the exploration of the topic, let's say maybe not directly my opinion, but more of what I've read in the matter is that the concept of capturing and enslaving somebody is in lieu of murdering them

Sir Ben: 1:07:34

Okay. Well,

Sir Gene: 1:07:35

the original tenant, which we're talking about in the previous show, and that I happen to be a believer in personally, is that when you cross the line of being willing to take somebody else's life or lose your own life, that, that there should not be any artificial bullshit restrictions placed on war.

Sir Ben: 1:07:57

yeah, we all know you believe in Mike makes right.

Sir Gene: 1:08:00

I do.

Sir Ben: 1:08:01

Yeah. I have a different nuanced view. So there's that.

Sir Gene: 1:08:07

Yeah. That's that, but the point of is let's say If you were to offer somebody who you're holding a gun to on the battlefield, the choice of would you like this to be your last day, or will you willingly become my slave?

Sir Ben: 1:08:25

Well,

Sir Gene: 1:08:26

Well, is that a legitimate choice or should you just shoot'em every time

Sir Ben: 1:08:30

I, I, I would say neither, it would be

Sir Gene: 1:08:33

that's not an option, that's one or the other.

Sir Ben: 1:08:36

Okay. Well, that's a Ho's choice. That's that's coercive. It's not,

Sir Gene: 1:08:40

It is cos of, but it is a free choice. The person you're giving them

Sir Ben: 1:08:45

I, I have, let me die or let me live as a slave temporarily till I can escape. Hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:08:50

live free or die, live free or death. Right? I mean, if, if you believe that you've made that choice already and your answer is always going to be shoot me.

Sir Ben: 1:09:00

absolutely.

Sir Gene: 1:09:01

Right. But that's your choice, but not everybody needs to think like you, some people will say no, no, no, no. I'm perfectly happy being a slave. As long as I'm alive.

Sir Ben: 1:09:09

most people,

Sir Gene: 1:09:11

Okay, but why

Sir Ben: 1:09:12

most people don't wanna be free.

Sir Gene: 1:09:13

why would you take that choice away from them?

Sir Ben: 1:09:15

I'm not saying that I would,

Sir Gene: 1:09:17

But if you give them that

Sir Ben: 1:09:18

was, if I was the person holding the gun, I would never give them that choice because I am not going to take a slave in any form or fashion.

Sir Gene: 1:09:26

well, that's again, your choice, but now you want, would you prevent others from making a different choice?

Sir Ben: 1:09:34

I, I, I don't believe slavery should be instituted among men. I don't I think a free person having the right to sell their body in whatever way that looks like it's their body. It's their choice. I, I think I believe in that. But

Sir Gene: 1:09:50

you're denying the you're denying the ability for people to sell their bodies in trade for their life. If you just say that that's not a, that's not a choice.

Sir Ben: 1:10:01

well, I would say that in a normal societal, so normal society, not one at war. Why are you threatening to kill? Why are, why are you committing a criminal act,

Sir Gene: 1:10:13

oh, you should. Yeah, no, I'm saying this is purely for war gain slavery.

Sir Ben: 1:10:18

but why would you, why would you want, so we are not in the Roman era.

Sir Gene: 1:10:24

We're moving towards it.

Sir Ben: 1:10:27

yes. But I, I hope we've evolved out of that. Why would you want to enslave a population that will inevitably rise up against you?

Sir Gene: 1:10:35

oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with that. But that's a, that's a long term problem. Not a short term problem. The cleanest thing is, is the, the cleanest way is of course extermination. There is no, there, there is no slavery and there are no prisoners captured.

Sir Ben: 1:10:51

you know, it's funny in the book series that I've been reading red, rising on

Sir Gene: 1:10:57

I still, of course haven't started it,

Sir Ben: 1:10:58

I'm on book four, but the, the golds that conquered earth. So, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:11:05

Wait, they pronou golds or golds.

Sir Ben: 1:11:07

gold. Gold as in the color gold. Yeah. The orientates when they

Sir Gene: 1:11:12

orates or the Ori?

Sir Ben: 1:11:13

orientates as in

Sir Gene: 1:11:15

This sounds a lot like the names, at least there's something a hell of a lot like Stargate.

Sir Ben: 1:11:20

eh nah, I don't think

Sir Gene: 1:11:22

Are you a Stargate fan or not? I can't

Sir Ben: 1:11:24

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway when they conquered earth and conquered the normal humans the non-genetically modified humans they sterilized them all instead of instead of, you know, just genocide,'em all, they, they just forcibly sterilized the entire population so that in a generation they were just gone.

Sir Gene: 1:11:43

Well that's, that's not a bad way of

Sir Ben: 1:11:46

humans that were left were the were the members of the society that, that, that seems a little despotic and dystopian to me, Jim.

Sir Gene: 1:11:56

Well, it is just so open, but I, I think again, we're, there's a difference between war and peace. And I think war has different rules that only kick in when you are at war. You, if you act in the manner such as you would during a war in times of peace, you are a criminal, but if you act in the way in the matter of war during a war, you're not a criminal.

Sir Ben: 1:12:28

Well, the Nuremberg trials and other

Sir Gene: 1:12:31

I think that, yeah, I think the, they would disagree. I also think that Nuremberg trials are bullshit because putting people on trial for actions during a war, while at peace time, Is really just a marketing show. It's it's just to demonstrate that, Hey, we won, we can do whatever we want with these people has nothing to do with justice justice. Would've been to shoot'em on site that would've been justice putting together Berg trials. That's a show piece

Sir Ben: 1:13:02

yeah, to an extent, but it was a show piece for a reason. It was also to highlight what had been done during the war. Now, our war crimes were not highlighted at all. You know,

Sir Gene: 1:13:12

That's cuz we won. We won man. That's why I'm saying it's a show trial

Sir Ben: 1:13:16

I, I, I understand and agree. I mean, more, more German soldiers died in allied allied prisoner war camps than throughout the entire world war II conflict. So, yes. Anyway, I, I, I, I think that history is written by the Victor. I think that there are Victor's rights that are taken. I would just say, I don't think as a modern human slavery should be one of them, but, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:13:41

Well, and I

Sir Ben: 1:13:42

slave contracts all day long, all, all the time. So

Sir Gene: 1:13:45

exactly, exactly. And I, I've always made the argument that if you think you're actually free, then you oughta have the right to do with your body as you will. Whether that mean means selling into slavery, whether that means killing your body with drug use all those are choices that you should be allowed to make on your own. If you're not allowed, you're not truly free.

Sir Ben: 1:14:08

are euthanize yourself, whatever. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:14:10

Absolutely.

Sir Ben: 1:14:11

I, I, you know, you know, the, the whole argument around abortion and birth control and everything else is going on you know, doctors refusing to perform hysterectomies and things like that on women that say they want it. I, I, I think the doctor is free to refuse, but I would say, you know what? Let'em.

Sir Gene: 1:14:29

Oh, totally. I think whether it's chemical castration, whether it's Cy hysterectomies or any other form of you know, preventative measures are perfectly fine. If the people electing them are of adult age and are making an ENCO choice to have that happen.

Sir Ben: 1:14:48

Okay. So where do you stop with, okay, this is mental illness at this point. Do you allow someone who wants to amputate their leg to amputate a healthy limb?

Sir Gene: 1:14:58

Yeah. I think that was one of the stories of Marquita. So, had yeah, I mean, honestly, there's no reason not to it's their body. It's their choice. If, if they're paying for

Sir Ben: 1:15:08

mentally ill.

Sir Gene: 1:15:08

I don't wanna pay for that operation. Do we want to have a red flag law on that? Is that what you're proposing?

Sir Ben: 1:15:17

No, actually,

Sir Gene: 1:15:18

Oh, really?

Sir Ben: 1:15:18

I'm pushing the conversation because I actually tend to agree with you that as long as someone can pay for it themselves and find someone who's willing to assist them, then they should be able to do whatever they want to their body, whether that's a sex change or,

Sir Gene: 1:15:31

yeah,

Sir Ben: 1:15:32

splitting your tongue to look like the Recile you wanna look like or whatever it is that, I mean, I, I see body modification, like tattoos, earrings, piercings, things like that. I see that no different than SX change. If you're willing to do it and you wanna pay for it, go for it.

Sir Gene: 1:15:49

Exactly. I, I don't have any interest in doing any of those things myself to my body, but I completely, yeah. I completely have no problem with people doing body modifications on their own. And most of'em just make,'em look dorky, but some of'em I mean, some I've seen some gorgeous tattoos. I've seen some mostly crappy other body modifications with various metal pieces. Insert it into your body, but I've also seen some that are holy shit. That's amazing.

Sir Ben: 1:16:22

yep. You know, mean anyone who is against you know, for instance, people who are, you know, think it's you know, it's self mutilation to change gender or whatever else. A lot of those people have no problem with tattoos. Have no problem with ear piercings have no problem with circumcision, have no problem with breast implants, you know, so you're okay with this body modification. But not that the, the, the, the biggest problem I have with our society today is the lack of intellectual honesty inconsistency.

Sir Gene: 1:16:54

Oh, totally.

Sir Ben: 1:16:55

And this goes back to the constitution conversation and everything else. I, I, I try to be very consistent in my opinions.

Sir Gene: 1:17:01

before you jump to the constitution back. And so it's, as far as the circumcision that's I, I think that there's nothing wrong with circumcision. If the person is making that decision on their own. And I don't like the idea of, you know, forced child circumcision.

Sir Ben: 1:17:20

I completely agree.

Sir Gene: 1:17:22

is a, I understand why it happens. It's a tribal identification is how it started. And and you know, it was codified in religious text as a result of

Sir Ben: 1:17:34

I don't understand the Christians that do it.

Sir Gene: 1:17:36

Well, I, I mean, Jesus was circumcised.

Sir Ben: 1:17:39

Jesus was also a Jew. I'm not a

Sir Gene: 1:17:41

Exactly. Well, maybe that's, that's your problem.

Sir Ben: 1:17:45

No, I, I, I mean, I, I, I refuse to do that to my son. I, you know, I'm not gonna remove my daughter's C hood, so why would I do that to my son? I, I don't see it as any different and when you look. the amount of circumcisions that end up botched and cause massive issues and, or, you know, some cases of doctors deciding, well, since we, you know, cut the Dick off, why don't we just force this child to grow up as a, a female and, you know, they end up committing suicide and so on yet. No, I, no, thank you.

Sir Gene: 1:18:21

Yeah. I, I think if somebody wants to do that and like that wouldn't circumcision be a perfect, like entering manhood kind of event. If you were of a particular religion.

Sir Ben: 1:18:33

you know, what's funny is my cousin I had a cousin that ended up having some complications because apparently he didn't know how to wash and he ended up having to get that done at like age 10 or 12. And that was horrible. I mean, he, he was in a wheelchair for days

Sir Gene: 1:18:50

oh my God.

Sir Ben: 1:18:51

yeah, I mean, bad.

Sir Gene: 1:18:53

But again, if it's your choice and if you are of a religious persuasion, that is you know, into having a common form of body modification in your tribe slash religion,

Sir Ben: 1:19:03

that's fine.

Sir Gene: 1:19:04

that's fine. I see nothing wrong with that same thing for women. I mean, there's so, oh, they're making girls views. Yeah. I'm against parents doing this, their children. I'm not against women doing it to themselves.

Sir Ben: 1:19:16

Yeah. And I think so I'm an advocate for parental choice, but I, and I would not stop a parent. Let me put it this way. I would not stop a parent from circumcising, their child, or, you know, cutting off their daughter's clitoris. I think parental right is I is Supreme there, but what I would say is I think both practices are equally horrible. The problem I have is the feminists that say, oh you know, female circumcision is horrible and wrong, but oh, you know, I, I, I don't want to anything to do with a circum UN circumcised male. Well,

Sir Gene: 1:19:53

well, they don't, they don't need to cuz nobody welcome. Anyway.

Sir Ben: 1:19:56

true. True.

Sir Gene: 1:19:59

Yeah, there there's a, there's a new YouTube channel I found of this. I think she's in her early twenties. It's at least visually, I think she's past college age, but this American check that's living in the UK and she did a video that talked about Jordan Peterson and how like, you know, reading his stuff totally changed her life. But she is doing these kind of feminism is a cult, prove me wrong kind of videos. And you know, she's not well spoken, like a lot of, you know, older people that are doing this. She's not a, a, a Ben right. She's.

Sir Ben: 1:20:42

I'm not sure which Ben are you talking?

Sir Gene: 1:20:44

Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah, there's a lot of bends around Ben Shapiro. She's not like a Ben Shapiro, you know, super

Sir Ben: 1:20:49

think you were talking about

Sir Gene: 1:20:51

of, not you.

Sir Ben: 1:20:51

I wanted to make sure to

Sir Gene: 1:20:52

no. I'm, I'm talking about that super smart guy. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:20:55

ouch. Hey, at least I, I, at least my speech pattern isn't, you know, 90 plus words, minute

Sir Gene: 1:21:04

yeah. I mean, you don't even have to plan him back on 25% fast speed at all. Anyway, but she is definitely hitting a demographic that most people are not, which is you know, slightly post-college females in the UK. And so she has had like, you know, women that are going through law school or women that are just starting their professional career. So they're, you know, they're all kind of full of life possibilities, thoughts, and they're, they're all feminists. And then. Doing somewhat similar to a Steven Crowder way version of that, where she does, she has done the research and she has her facts. And so when the old, well, you know, women only make, you know, 75 cents on dollar versus men, that's actually bullshit. And the reason that people think that's the case is because of reasons, 1, 2, 3, and four, and it mostly has to do with choices that are different for men and women, because guess what, men and women are different

Sir Ben: 1:22:05

Yep. Because women drop out of the workforce to have children

Sir Gene: 1:22:08

because they place a higher value on having children than men, as they're, they're somewhat powerless to be because they have been genetically selected over millennia. And in fact, over much longer than millennia over a million years plus two care about children because the ones that didn't didn't get to reproduce.

Sir Ben: 1:22:29

I mean, it's even longer than that because you know, mammals are all there, there are no mammals that are a cloning species. So in fact,

Sir Gene: 1:22:37

But there are some species where the females are the ones that leave the nest and go hunting and, and the males don't really hunt lions is a good example of that.

Sir Ben: 1:22:48

yeah. There's still the ones that carry the children. The only species I can think of where the male carries and gives birth to the children is, is a seahorse.

Sir Gene: 1:22:57

Yeah. Yeah. See, I think, well, if, if you're going down to that, that kingdom, so a way outside of mammals, I think there's actually a few of'em. And then of course we have the Platypus,

Sir Ben: 1:23:08

That

Sir Gene: 1:23:08

which is a mammal that lays eggs.

Sir Ben: 1:23:10

and has been

Sir Gene: 1:23:10

Only the males, only the males have

Sir Ben: 1:23:12

Yeah, but I, but I'm serious when I say, you know, the Platypus is proof that God has a sense of humor, you

Sir Gene: 1:23:18

mm-hmm I think Platypus is just the proof that there were spare parts left over.

Sir Ben: 1:23:23

right.

Sir Gene: 1:23:25

Hell. Let's see if we can make something out of this.

Sir Ben: 1:23:28

yeah. Yeah. So, before we get too far off of this topic did you see the Twitter band, the word groomer?

Sir Gene: 1:23:35

I just heard about it, which I think we should have some campaigns to get Twitter, to ban other words, because clearly this worked so well.

Sir Ben: 1:23:43

Yeah. Well, I mean, calling it a slur against L G B T QIA a, whatever the current acronym is, is just insanity.

Sir Gene: 1:23:52

we should just let's call those

Sir Ben: 1:23:54

don't exist,

Sir Gene: 1:23:55

Well, let's, let's get the word pedophile band. Let's get the word sexual predator band. I mean, I think we just need to start using these words more frequently when they're referring to liberals and Twitter will ban the word

Sir Ben: 1:24:05

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 1:24:08

that's apparently all it takes.

Sir Ben: 1:24:10

well, I mean, at, at some point there has to be some

Sir Gene: 1:24:14

is so nonspecific in general. I always thought that that was kind of a pussy word. Why, why don't you just actually call them a pedophile instead of calling'em a groomer

Sir Ben: 1:24:21

because it was trying to be non offensive when, I mean, my God, if you think that someone's doing that, why are you worried about being offensive

Sir Gene: 1:24:27

Uhhuh. Exactly.

Sir Ben: 1:24:29

you know, I really you know, Adam, on the last note, Jim, the kind of pooed John's take on the teachers and everything, but I, I think it deserves highlighting. I think that there, yes, yes, Adam, we've all been aware of this for a long time, but you know what? There are a lot of people who are not you gotta push that anyway.

Sir Gene: 1:24:49

and I think that there's a, there's a mentality there that assumes that parents should and do leave their children to learn About topics that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic in school. That, and I, I think that's a false belief. I think that honestly, most parents just treat school as babysitting it's government paid babysitting services.

Sir Ben: 1:25:18

Well, so I was working with this guy. I, I won't use his name because I don't wanna disparage him. But yeah, he, he we were sitting around a conference room having there was lunch brought in and he was bringing up how teachers aren't paid enough. I mean, my God, they raise our kids and I just looked at'em and said, maybe yours. And maybe that's a problem. You know, but the, a lot of people look at it that way teachers are raising our kids. The fuck is wrong with you. If the

Sir Gene: 1:25:47

why

Sir Ben: 1:25:47

are raising your

Sir Gene: 1:25:48

that to somebody else or, or, okay. So I think there is a legitimate way to look at it because Hey Catholic schools have been raising Catholics kids for a long. In more religious or I just, I dunno, more religious is the right word in more in certain Jewish sects children are very much raised. Yeah. Well, well that that's just for older, older men, but no, I mean, there are certain religious groups which very much want their children to be taught a certain way. Not the general public school way.

Sir Ben: 1:26:21

Yeah. I, I still don't think that's raising the kid. I think that's a certain education and so on, but raising your kid to me, denotes that. Oh, so the only discipline that the child gets is from the school, the only direction that the child gets is from the school. You know, the idea that,

Sir Gene: 1:26:37

guess you have to define the word raise. What does that mean in the context of a

Sir Ben: 1:26:41

Yeah, well, I mean, I, to me, it's just anyone who sends their child to anyone who outsources the child's education to the point where the child literally spends more time at the school than they do around and with their parents is a problem to me,

Sir Gene: 1:26:56

Although, technically I kind of fit that category because I was very much a latch lock kid, latch, kid, whatever the fuck the word is.

Sir Ben: 1:27:05

See you, you make fun of my pronunciation of things, but then you don't

Sir Gene: 1:27:08

can't remember things cuz I have a shitty memory. That's all. Yeah, it's it's because I was, you know, picked up by the school bus at seven 30 in the morning or whatever, and then I was at school and then after school, the bus would drop me at home. Parents were still at work. I would get my bike and then ride my bike to any, anywhere from, you know, a mile to 15 miles to visit the variety of friends or go to a mall or hang out wherever. And then

Sir Ben: 1:27:37

adolescent, I don't think that's a problem, but as you know, a grammar school aged kid, that's where I

Sir Gene: 1:27:44

I mean, I was doing that at, at like 12, 13.

Sir Ben: 1:27:47

Okay. That's still adolescent versus, you know, a five or a six year old.

Sir Gene: 1:27:52

honestly, my parents were working pretty much since I was nine years old.

Sir Ben: 1:27:56

Hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:27:56

Like both of'em were working.

Sir Ben: 1:27:58

I, I was raised very differently than that,

Sir Gene: 1:28:00

I know, I know. That's why it's, it's kind of a neat contrast in, in our education. And I, I,

Sir Ben: 1:28:05

also though, by the

Sir Gene: 1:28:06

want for my kid more of what you had,

Sir Ben: 1:28:10

you know, for, by the age of 10, I would be, I would go, you know, take my gun and go for a hike or go do whatever for, you know, all day depending on the circumstances, but you know, that. It, you know, very different though.

Sir Gene: 1:28:25

yeah. You weren't in school. That was a difference.

Sir Ben: 1:28:27

I, but I did a lot of schooling,

Sir Gene: 1:28:30

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I'm not saying that in a bad way. I'm saying that in a good way. It's like you didn't have to go to an institution. You had parents that took care of that. Now was it most of your mom or your dad?

Sir Ben: 1:28:42

Oh mostly my mom. My dad did a lot though, too. You know, when we started as a young child, when we were living down the beach we actually had a garage apartment you know, above the, a detached garage and we set that kind of up as the school house. So it was leaving the house and somewhat structured. But, you know, by the time I was, by the time I was doing like eighth grade stuff it was really okay here. Here's the subject you need to cover. Here's the progress you need to make. And really me reading textbooks, me reading supplemental material. Doing some early video

Sir Gene: 1:29:17

what you were living up in in Montana back then,

Sir Ben: 1:29:20

Idaho. Yeah,

Sir Gene: 1:29:21

Idaho? Yeah, Idaho.

Sir Ben: 1:29:22

And we did some stuff through Rebecca academy and you know, where they would have classrooms videoed and stuff like that. And teachers describing things, which was helpful. Some wasn't the, the hardest concept I ever had to get was irrational numbers. And that just took me forever to click with

Sir Gene: 1:29:41

well that's cuz they're not real.

Sir Ben: 1:29:43

well, exactly. And

Sir Gene: 1:29:44

That's a math joke right there.

Sir Ben: 1:29:46

Pie be national. Yeah. Anyway I'm just envisioning a cartoon in my head.

Sir Gene: 1:29:51

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:29:52

but no, that, that was a really hard concept for me. And it took me a while, but other than that, you know, by the time I was a teenager, it was very, very self-guided and. Going down rabbit holes in many ways, but

Sir Gene: 1:30:04

every time you talk about your childhood, I just, I, I, I picture this like huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, kind of, you know, torn Jean kind of running around the woods. Doing questionable things, but nothing too bad, just kind of, you know,

Sir Ben: 1:30:23

yeah. You not far off. I mean, when I was 10, I decided that I wanted a buzz cut, so I didn't have to comb my hair, you know, and stuff like that. I, I, I was a boy scout you know, did lots of things. You know,

Sir Gene: 1:30:37

so you know how to tie that?

Sir Ben: 1:30:38

yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, me, me and me, me and my friends were. We, we did a lot of questionable things. So at around age 10 one of my best friends, they had a farm and everything, and his dad had taught him how to weld. So, we had, we had just watched the three Musketeers movie that came out in the nineties. And so we decided we wanted to make, you know, a musketeer short. So we took some just, it was just some bits of iron and stuff and fashioned, these blunt, you know, rounded just, you know, steel, steel bar swords. Oh, we beat the crap out of each other with them.

Sir Gene: 1:31:17

Damn.

Sir Ben: 1:31:17

Yeah. And then we, we would set up traverses they had a traverse at their house. I had one at my house, so we'd do stuff like that. You know, we'd, there was a waterfall, not too far from my house. We'd hike down there and play around that, go hunting, fishing, just, yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:31:33

I think that's extremely healthy. Did you, do you happen to listen to Tina and the keeper

Sir Ben: 1:31:38

Yeah. Some. Yep, yep. Kerry and the keeper.

Sir Gene: 1:31:41

hurry and the keeper? Yes. Did you listen to the last step episode?

Sir Ben: 1:31:44

When was the last episode

Sir Gene: 1:31:46

So the, the story was from Adam's childhood where. He was talking about living in Netherlands when he was a kid outside of Amsterdam in kind of a, a gray village. And one of the, is this ringing a bell at all,

Sir Ben: 1:32:00

remember the story. So go

Sir Gene: 1:32:01

And one of the Dutch traditions they had was there was some day during the year where the kids were allowed to like make noise and wake everybody up early that day. And I'm sure there's some historical connotation for it. But Adam was talking about how as living in this village, you know, he and the kids enjoyed that tradition. And, and each year they would want to escalate it slightly. And then at certain age, they were old enough that they discovered that farm chemicals can be used to make explosives, which would be pretty loud and wake people up. And then they discovered those explosives. If you mix the right chemicals could actually blow things up. So they started blowing up all kinds of things, cuz it was fun cuz that's what boys do and

Sir Ben: 1:32:52

to this

Sir Gene: 1:32:52

yeah. And and that, that is how Adam ended up in jail is because they were picked up for blowing up street signs and he and the rest of his little crew ended up spending the night in jail to teach them a lesson. So the, the police you know, let,'em go after that. And obviously the police called everybody's parents to said, Hey, we're gonna teach these boys a lesson. So don't pick'em up until the morning.

Sir Ben: 1:33:19

yeah,

Sir Gene: 1:33:20

And back then parents would actually say that's a good idea

Sir Ben: 1:33:23

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you

Sir Gene: 1:33:25

They would be suing the police department for holding their kids longer than 10 minutes.

Sir Ben: 1:33:29

which is a problem and, you know, I, I, but I, I remember a story. My dad was when, you know, he was teaching me lessons that he, you know, didn't want me to repeat about one of his friends getting pulled over by a cop because he was driving drunk down at the beach, which highway 87, going down to crystal beach is a long, long, straight road. and it's surrounded by marsh and what the cop did was say, you know what? You don't need to be driving. So he took his keys and threw it out in the marsh. And he said, when you're sober enough to find them, you can drive.

Sir Gene: 1:34:01

Yep.

Sir Ben: 1:34:01

And you know, but today that cop would be, you know, have no choice, none, but to arrest him and had the cop done, something like that to someone today, they'd get sued.

Sir Gene: 1:34:14

yeah, no, it's almost safer. The cop to TA the person than throwing in the back of the cop car with you know, chains on than it is to throw their keys away.

Sir Ben: 1:34:23

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 1:34:24

Absolutely. But of course also the cop would do that. Just as you walked out of a convenience store and on your way to your car, because you clearly have an intent of driving.

Sir Ben: 1:34:34

yeah. Well, again, you, you know, where I stand on the drunk driving

Sir Gene: 1:34:37

I do.

Sir Ben: 1:34:38

you, the intent is the, the way they use intent is really bad. At this point in.

Sir Gene: 1:34:44

I don't like intent in any laws. It, it, it, it generally shows pre-crime

Sir Ben: 1:34:50

yet. Yes.

Sir Gene: 1:34:52

and just because you may be thinking of something, or you may not be how the hell they know, and just because you're acting in the matter that is maybe demonstrating some intent, it doesn't mean that you would do that. Like, you know, plenty of people wanna murder their wife at some point in time after the way that their wife acts. Most people don't actually go through with it little, tiny, little sliver of a percent actually do, but the vast majority don't, and that goes for wives, murdering their husbands as. If you were to start booking people based on their actions and suggesting that they may be wanting to murder their, their spouse, there could be a lot of people in jail for no good reason. Don't think.

Sir Ben: 1:35:42

Yep. I, I think there's a lot of people who are in jail because of crappy pre-crime laws all the time. And again, I'll go back to the definition of a crime.

Sir Gene: 1:35:52

Intent to distribute a controlled substance.

Sir Ben: 1:35:55

Yeah, well that there shouldn't be anything called a controlled substance, but regardless, a, a crime is harm to one's property, Liberty, or self, anything short of that,

Sir Gene: 1:36:08

mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:36:09

isn't a crime.

Sir Gene: 1:36:11

How about suspicion?

Sir Ben: 1:36:13

I, I don't think sedation should be a crime.

Sir Gene: 1:36:16

Mm-hmm I agree with you. I think that, that there ought to be plenty. And instantly if I wanna people think, oh, you're just, you know, you're, you're kissing Putin's ass. I think that the, the new legislation that came out post invasion of Ukraine is absolutely horrible in Russia. The prevention of people's expression of discontent with the the military actions. It's understandable why they wanted to ban it, but it's horrible that they actually went through with it, like preventing people from demonstrating against the war is a very authoritarian tactic. And it, it makes the country look more like the way the west wants to paint it, which is

Sir Ben: 1:37:02

but the west did that in the sixties during the Vietnam war.

Sir Gene: 1:37:05

And that was wrong as well.

Sir Ben: 1:37:06

Absolutely. You know what a Kent state was a great example of, you know, us being pretty DYS.

Sir Gene: 1:37:13

I remember during desert shield and desert storm in 91 walking around selling buttons that said, make money, not war.

Sir Ben: 1:37:23

mm-hmm

Sir Gene: 1:37:24

And having both the lefties and the Raiders be pissed off at me.

Sir Ben: 1:37:33

yeah, well, you know what I would say Iraq is actually, so I I'm gonna say something that I'll get you to disagree with me on, and then we can do a couple more things, but, so I think it was a moral imperative at one, some point in time, I don't know that it should have been when we did it or why we, the justification we used, but we needed to take Sadam Husain out as the United States. And the reason why is because we were morally responsible because we were the ones who put him in there.

Sir Gene: 1:38:02

Well, there there's some truth to that. But we put in an awful lot of dictators

Sir Ben: 1:38:08

yeah. And we have a moral responsibility to go in and correct those those those problems.

Sir Gene: 1:38:13

So really to be consistent with your moral thought, we should be coming in and taking out Zelensky right now.

Sir Ben: 1:38:20

Absolutely.

Sir Gene: 1:38:20

Cuz he was absolutely put in there by the

Sir Ben: 1:38:22

And you know, what we should do is we should also make amends with Iran and apologize for propping up the Shaw as long as we did. We should, you know, yeah. We should do a lot here. You're absolutely right.

Sir Gene: 1:38:34

I think that it's complicated issue that I would love to somebody to point me towards a study. Or maybe just some historical text that shows a country that has embraced the change in government of its neighbors. Instead of trying to push back on those changes, like when and it doesn't have to be something as big as China going communist, it could be some African countries or something, but when there's a revolution, when the government changes. You may be were friendly with the previous government, but I think there's something to be said for, instead of like pledging your undying loyalty to the previous administration to just say, well, the will of the people in that country has shifted, or maybe the, the disinterest of the people has now been expressed in a new, desperate coming along because I believe every country has the government that deserves. But is there a country ever that has embraced that change quickly and recognized that change right away versus holding on to the well, the the actual ruler in you know, the what's the phrase? It's like the government in exile, I guess, is the phrase. Well, we're, we're gonna still hold the government exile as the official government of that country. Rather than the new government that

Sir Ben: 1:39:57

I mean, you could talk about the Jacobins and I think you could talk about the French revolution,

Sir Gene: 1:40:02

So was, did everybody recognize the French revolution and the new government very quickly? Or did somebody

Sir Ben: 1:40:07

fairly,

Sir Gene: 1:40:09

yeah,

Sir Ben: 1:40:09

and I think they recognize Napoleon fairly quickly as well.

Sir Gene: 1:40:12

they did that. Yes.

Sir Ben: 1:40:13

So, you know?

Sir Gene: 1:40:15

But I wonder how much of that was strategic because they, they weren't particularly friendly with the governments that were replaced versus simply just going along with whatever the new government does.

Sir Ben: 1:40:28

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:40:29

I'd be curious. So I'm, I'm not again. I'm

Sir Ben: 1:40:32

was a very good strategic move, but.

Sir Gene: 1:40:35

well, I, I, I don't know that it would've been better to not recognize Napoleon.

Sir Ben: 1:40:43

Hm.

Sir Gene: 1:40:44

I mean, I don't think it would've been good to not recognize Hitler either. I mean, you, it it's like, this is reality. If you don't recognize reality, if you fight reality, You tend to be either sucked into a conflict, which you have no business being in or have some other adverse actions happening.

Sir Ben: 1:41:02

Well, yeah, I mean the UK recognized the, the Confederacy. In fact, there was a Confederate embassy in London,

Sir Gene: 1:41:11

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben: 1:41:12

so Hey Jean, I've got some good

Sir Gene: 1:41:15

I think that's legitimate. What's that?

Sir Ben: 1:41:17

I have an ultralight ABB on the way.

Sir Gene: 1:41:20

No way you finally scoured the planet and you found the one last unit that was

Sir Ben: 1:41:25

Dude. I, so there are a couple on eBay, but they're going for used 800 something bucks, new, new they're going for over 1200 bucks.

Sir Gene: 1:41:34

There's still some new available. Wow.

Sir Ben: 1:41:36

I I tried to get a, there was a 6 24 AVB, which it doesn't have the wireless capability, but has pretty much everything else. I lost that bid earlier in the week. And I, I, I almost paid 450 bucks for that, which would've been too much, but

Sir Gene: 1:41:51

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:41:51

But yeah, I found one on Craigslist in New York.

Sir Gene: 1:41:55

Oh my God.

Sir Ben: 1:41:55

for 500 bucks and he offered to ship it for 5 25 and do PayPal. And I just got confirmation of

Sir Gene: 1:42:03

That's well, that's cheaper than what I paid new, so,

Sir Ben: 1:42:05

Yeah. And it looks brand new, man. He's got the box and everything. Apparently he was doing uh, some gigs and then stop. So yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:42:12

Hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:42:13

So Woohoo.

Sir Gene: 1:42:14

I, well, that congratulations will we'll see how happy you still are when you have to learn how to configure it.

Sir Ben: 1:42:22

I don't think it'll be a problem.

Sir Gene: 1:42:24

oh, okay. Okay. Mr. Math and science. We'll see.

Sir Ben: 1:42:27

Hey, you know what? I've dealt with. Switch configurations and patch panels and virtual patch panels and things like that a

Sir Gene: 1:42:33

and this makes it just all those look like child's play

Sir Ben: 1:42:38

Okay. I, I I'll have to show you some of the lab configurations

Sir Gene: 1:42:41

Okay.

Sir Ben: 1:42:42

where, you know, automated switch switching and patching changes based off of lab, environmental conditions. So

Sir Gene: 1:42:48

Yep. Yep.

Sir Ben: 1:42:49

same sort of thing, you

Sir Gene: 1:42:50

we'll, we'll see I'm available for help, but you have to first request it because I don't want to provide you with any templates before you have a chance to get stumped.

Sir Ben: 1:43:02

I, I will say that when it comes to EQ settings and so on, I will definitely take your, and Darren's advice.

Sir Gene: 1:43:08

Oh yeah. Darren's over mine too. By the way. He's he's spent a lot more time fiddling with this stuff than I have. I tend to use a very basic queue setting. I just, I I've grown to like the sound of my voice after changing the equipment enough times to getting to the one that I'm currently on there, three 20 I sound the most pleasant to my, myself on this mic versus all the other mics I've had, including thousand dollar like really a lot more expensive mics. Like I got the.

Sir Ben: 1:43:39

Neiman.

Sir Gene: 1:43:40

Yeah, the Newman the same mic that Howard stern uses. I bought one of those because I thought, well, if it makes him sound good, it'll make me sound good. It does not. so, yeah, I really think the, and I tried the the re 300 as well. The three 20 is the one that I like the sound of the most

Sir Ben: 1:43:58

Well, it sounds good to me. You know, I I haven't tried as many mics as you have, but it's definitely an improvement over the little USB headset I was using before. So,

Sir Gene: 1:44:07

Yeah. Yeah. So, and I guess, I don't know if I have any other topics after that. I you have anything else you wanna bring up this week?

Sir Ben: 1:44:15

No, I, I think we're good. You know, we've done right here at two hours, so not a bad show link.

Sir Gene: 1:44:21

Yeah, that's pretty good. All right, guys. Well, hopefully you enjoyed this episode and. Remember, the best thing you can do for us is not necessarily sin as PayPals, although we do have that address, but definitely share the show with friends and leave ratings, comments, whatever, apple, Google, all the, all the places that allow you to post something about the show, cuz that's the thing that actually gets more new listeners. And that is the thing that we would like to get the most. Just keep growing the number of listeners.

Sir Ben: 1:44:51

know, the ironic thing is early on. I think CSB posting and saying things on no gen social. Got us more attention. So come on, CSB. You gotta, you gotta make some comments about gene and Putin.

Sir Gene: 1:45:02

Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I played the Polish national Anthem on the lasting.

Sir Ben: 1:45:07

There you go. There

Sir Gene: 1:45:08

Yeah. I, which I don't know if that's gonna make'em happier or even more pissed off that I'm playing the Polish national Anthem on there.

Sir Ben: 1:45:16

well, the only other thing I would say is any suggestions on show titles and,

Sir Gene: 1:45:20

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:45:22

you know, give us

Sir Gene: 1:45:22

Yeah, we've been doing this long enough that we're gonna do the same thing that Darren and I did with branching off a show that he had previously and then starting unrelenting as a brand new show title. So Ben and I are gonna do the same thing. And so, and we'll keep giving you notices it happens, but we'll come up with a new name, we'll have a separate website, then we'll call this a separate show. And then Ergen speaks will kind of remain as my, whatever. I feel like jumping at behind the microphone and saying something kind of show.

Sir Ben: 1:45:52

Cool.

Sir Gene: 1:45:54

All right, guys. We'll catch next time.

Sir Ben: 1:45:56

All.