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speaker-1: Sam and I are always talking about being prepared, whether it's hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in California, flooding in Arizona, or supply chains disruptions. Exactly, Chuck. When pharmacies shut down, it does not matter how tough you are, you still need access to critical medicine. That's why we trust Jace Medical. The Jace case comes with five life-saving antibiotics and key over-the-counter meds so you're covered when things get disrupted. And Jace goes beyond just the Jace case. They also offer first aid kits, daily prescriptions, and long-term nutrition with Jace Pantry. Don't wait for the next hurricane warning or natural disaster. Take control of your health and peace of mind today. Visit Jace.com and use code FUTURE at checkout for $10 off your order. That's FUTURE at J A S E dot com. To run a successful business, you need one thing, customers. And how do you get customers? You get them through advertising. You get them through lead generation. But what happens if the leads don't exist or they don't have valid contact information? This is a familiar story all businesses deal with. And they call these leads who don't exist or they're bad numbers or they're not in their service area. Argus101 verifies every lead before your team picks up the phone. It's a real person in your area and a neighborhood that matches your ideal customer. Your team only calls people worth calling, thus saving you money. Free trial at argus101.com. That's arguus101.com. Help your business expand today. Go to Argus101.com. ARGUS101.com. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Our first guest up today is going to be Bode Swanson. He is an author, healthcare executive, and entrepreneur. He has a new fantastic new book out, Great Souled Men Reclaiming Aristotle's Vision for Building Character and Virtue, which dives into the classical philosophy to offer a framework for modern character development and personal integrity. And before we get going with that, folks, I gotta remind you, we have this amazing show ahead. One quick favor, leave Breaking Battlegrounds a five star review and share it with someone who needs to hear it. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts and follow Breaking Battlegrounds on social media for more. All right, Bode Swanson, welcome to the program.
speaker-3: Sam, so great to be here. Good to meet you.
speaker-1: So tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the book. ⁓ you know, where are you from? How did you head down this path to writing this book? 'Cause it's it's an interesting subject.
speaker-3: Yeah. So I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. ⁓ I I I was in Columbus ⁓ until when and then I went to Ohio University down in Athens, Ohio. After college, the only thing I cared about was politics. ⁓ so I thought that I would go to DC and ⁓ start my path there and eventually become a senator, which is ⁓ yeah. We're young and idealistic. We think we're gonna conquer the world, but ⁓ I was humbled.
speaker-1: Yeah. Y you know, I I I I grew up dreaming of being a major league baseball player, which is as a like high school baseball player, the chance you're gonna go on to the major leagues is like one in about ten thousand, right? I think you picked a a more difficult one path for that one. There I mean there's a you only get a hundred of ⁓
speaker-3: You only get a hundred of ⁓ and but I when I got to DC, I would I quickly and this is I actually talk about this in the book, but that I was quickly humbled by ⁓ the level of competency and a lot of the young people who, you know, it's it's a little scary to think to to look under the hood at DC and to realize that our government in a lot of ways is being run by interns. At least very young, inexperienced people who are very smart and capable.
speaker-0: Or at least.
speaker-3: But ⁓ but young. And ultimately after ⁓ after DC, I spent some time in in Chile and ultimately made my way to ⁓ Southern California where I now live. ⁓ I've ⁓ live in Laguna Beach with my wife and four kids.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's awesome. Beau I mean, Laguna's amazing. Beautiful.
speaker-2: We just we'll play.
speaker-3: It's it's a great town.
speaker-1: So what got you into writing this book?
speaker-3: Well, I had ⁓ I had a tough time navigating my twenties. I think the twenty twenties is a is a tough decade for for young men. I mean you're you gotta make a lot of big decisions, ⁓ life decisions, with very little capacity to actually make them well. Right. We don't have a lot of experience. Our prefrontal core t text probably hasn't closed out yet. And and I I made a lot of bad decisions and ⁓ as a father with boys who are approaching their twenties. You know, obviously I love my boys, but not only do I love my boys, I love all their friends. And I love all my friends, the guys I went to high school with and their sons. And and I just started thinking more and more about this generation who I spent a lot of time with and wanted to leave something that I helped that I hoped could help them navigate their twenties a little bit better than I did. So the The book really, it's to my sons. I wrote it to my sons. ⁓ and and that generation extended. That's why it's called Great Soul Men. Obviously, it's it Aristotle's philosophy is universal, but I I think that there's a real crisis in America right now with our young men. And I think they need
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maybe a voice or two ⁓ to speak to them. And instead of just wringing our hands about all the bad statistics that we read about, you know, how they're faring. Contribute something that is solution based.
speaker-1: Well, and you you hear from the left a lot of about toxic masculinity. And and, you know, I think there is generally I think that's a ridiculous term that's massively overused. But I think when you look at some of the influencers who have become very, very big figures within, you know, the the circle of 20-something males, you know, you look at a guy like Andrew Tate, he's not a great role model.
speaker-2: No.
speaker-1: And and so I I love this idea that you're presenting it sort of a more classically honorable role model as opposed to that. ⁓ you but also it it's it's about achieving success throughout their life, right?
speaker-3: A hundred percent. So I think one of the things that I don't know that we realize is, you know, this isn't a philosophy book. It's not it's I'm not trying to explain Aristotle Aristotelian philosophy. What I
speaker-1: People have written that book. People have tried people have written or at least tried to write that book a few times.
speaker-3: What's that? P I know. I'm not smart enough to do that in a way that anyone would actually want to read it. ⁓ but I d but the principles that he lays out in Nico McKeon Ethics, which is just a series of his lectures that were compiled into a book, basically say this. Here's his here's his premise. If we as people can learn how to master 12 virtues, we will grow in happiness, we will Grow in our ability to flourish is his word, or I would say prosper, more common word. And I would also add, we grow in our ability to be serviceable to our community. So really basic stuff makes sense. Who wouldn't want that? What's interesting is Nicomachean ethics was used in classical education throughout Greek and Roman ⁓ history, the Renaissance, on up through ⁓ our f the the early colonies and ⁓ and our founding fathers. So our founding fathers were totally fluent in these virtues and the importance of learning how to live this kind of life. So for example when when George Washington was a young man, he was brash, he was ⁓ was pursuing fame, he was he was probably acting a little bit ⁓ outside of his ⁓ of his scope because he wanted honor. He wanted to he wanted to be great. And it and he learned hard lessons through those early wars, the French Indian War, that that tempered him and cultivated him and and pointed him to, he says, ⁓ these this philosophy that he learned through classical training that enabled him to develop a more more patience and a more rich character that ultimately led to the George Washington that we know and love. So, you know, philosophy is important, but if it doesn't involve action or direction, it's just navel gazing. So Washington is a great example of someone who was able to apply it in a way that made him a great man.
speaker-1: Well, and and you have to start with that foundation of of ambition at it attempting to achieve, right? And one of the things that I like in your book, you call the framework the prosperity loop, ⁓ sort of ties together that personal vir virtue and material and relational success, they're not separate things.
speaker-3: No, they're not. You know, it's it's funny. the prosperity loop simply is what I what I initially talked about, where you have Aristotle's premise that if if you live these virtues, if you know and practice and live these virtues, you grow in happiness and prosperity. So the loop is as I commit myself more to becoming more courageous, more patient, more temperate, more friendly, ⁓ more prosperity. ambitious in a in a proper way, more wise, then I grow in happiness. And with that increased happiness, I d I point myself back into the virtue. I try to refine the virtue even more because I'm getting this positive feedback. So the loop is iterative, right? And and ultimately, you know, I I was thinking about this on my way out to ⁓ here. I'm I'm from California, as I said, but I'm in Ohio for for a funeral and my the funerals for my uncle. My uncle I was my Boy Scout leader growing up, and my grandfather was my Boy Scout leader before him. And just a great man, but a man of few words, wasn't a rich man, wasn't known by the world ⁓ in any meaningful way, other than our little scout group. And it reminded me of something I wrote about in the book, which is simply this idea that we can be So much of you mentioned Andrew Tate and some of the the Manosphere influencers right now. So much of what they're focused on is on getting girls, right? Or or power or fame.
speaker-1: Cars, money and power. Yeah.
speaker-3: Which are kind of lost highways. They're like these empty kind of pursuits that don't really contribute anything to the world and certainly don't make us happy. so I had this realization one in my late twenties or mid-20s where I realized I don't have to chase those things. I can be a good man and be needed and wanted in a career or in my community for that alone. Just by being a good man. And that was my uncle. He was a good man and I trusted him. And all of me and my my buddies all trusted him and sought his advice. And and those are the kind of men we need in the world. Not so much the the ones who are, you know, pursuing fame and riches.
speaker-1: Well and and that's a man who had regardless of his own material success, he had an enormous ⁓ you know, actual real world material however you want to phrase it's ⁓ impact on the lives of a huge number of people based on what you're talking about, being a scout leader and doing these things. How do we refocus society on the benefits of those things? Because I I n I think this is maybe a little bit out outside your book, but but also not. we get caught up in this material obsessive loop. And and and material success is important. I I'm not going to deny that. But totally agree. But at the same time
speaker-3: Totally agree.
speaker-1: How do we revalue some of these things like the works your uncle and grandfather did with all those scouts over those years?
speaker-2: Okay.
speaker-3: That's a great question. I mean, I think we need more people talking about solutions and not just as I mentioned, wringing our hands over the plight that our young men are in. We need institutions. I mean, you and I aren't going to build a new institution, but we need maybe we need the existing institutions to be filled with more men who think like this or for To train this generation of young men coming up right now, like my sons who are you know 18 and 20, to develop these kinds of virtues or this worldview that sees importance in being virtuous and good and honorable so that ⁓ so that ultimately there more of these young men are able to teach us. Cause right now, outside so once once scouting kind of went away, not to get on a scouting soapbox.
speaker-1: No, yeah.
speaker-3: And some and you know, sports is great. We get a ton of of ⁓ of virtue training in sports, but since a lot of the institutions in the world are kind of dying off that built courage and then a lot of these virtues, what are the what i there's just a vacuum? What are they being filled with?
speaker-1: Well, and and as someone who is an an absolute sports nut, we have just about thirty seconds and then we're going to break here. We're gonna be coming back with more from Od Swanson in just a moment. Folks, you can find his book, Great Sold Men Reclaiming Aristotle's vision for building character and virtue ⁓ in stores here. I is it already on shelves?
speaker-3: ⁓ it's on Amazon.
speaker-1: On Amazon. Okay, fantastic.
speaker-3: In my ⁓ website, great soldman dot com.
speaker-1: Yeah, I and last thought I had on the way out, you're talking about sports, that is becoming more individualistic at the high school and under level as it's focused on, you know, not teams so much, but traveling teams and individual players. So we got a ton more to get into with Bode Swanson when we come back. All right, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, did you know private student loan debt in the US now totals over three hundred billion dollars? Forty-five billion of that is distressed. Why Refive? Refinances distressed or defaulted private student loans that others won't touch. They can get you a rate under six percent. It's not a debt settlement company. They work with each borrower individually, tailoring each loan to your specific situation. You will not be calling a faceless call center. They do not care what your credit score is. So again, Check them out, yrefi.com. So go y-re-f y dot com or give them a call at 877-400-9989. All right. Continuing on with Bode Swanson, he is the author of Great Sold Men Reclaiming Aristotle's Vision for Building Character and Virtue. Right when we went to the break, I I brought up a point. We folks, I I some of our best conversations always end up seemingly happening off air between these things. I want to rekindle part of that conversation. I made the comment as we were going out that sports is becoming more individualistic, some of the things that they're doing, training kids, and and Bo, you jumped right on that. So ⁓ tell ⁓ talk about that, 'cause I grew up in this world, it really bothers me how the aspect of the team has been put aside, how the aspect of community has been put aside, that the entire focus is now just on the one individual achievement of that kid.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-3: It it it's crazy. And and I I admit a heavy degree of guilt in this. I mean, I I have four kids and with my older boys, I mean, we we we fell into some of these traps. And I don't wanna judge any parents who are doing this. I mean, I it's it's tough. Raising kids is tough, and especially with all the messages we get from society and but anyway, that the what we were talking about is the this culture that we now have where kids are being put into instead of like community sports teams and being a three sport athlete or or whatever, you know, we're asking kids to specialize at a very young age and they're they're traveling to Arizona and Vegas and Florida and New York for tournaments and putting huge strains on the family and huge financial and times constraints on the family. And but more perhaps more ⁓ importantly, like we're losing that sense of community. As we put these kids on these travel teams and we get them trainers and we get them specializing. I had my oldest son, we had I kind of did this with we're we're on a travel team and he had a pitching trainer. And when he was 11 years old, one day he walked off the baseball field after, you know, an outing or whatever, and he looked at me and said, Dad, I hate this. ⁓ huh. I never want to come back. And I was so surprised. Like, this isn't a kid that You know, expresses a lot and for him to say that, like, I think the grind of it just like completely burned him out.
speaker-1: Turning it into a job.
speaker-3: It's a it's a total job and it's not fun. And he wasn't with any of his neighborhood buddies and he really just wanted to surf. And we live in California. He just wanted to skateboard and surf and hang out with his buddies. And I got him running all over the place. So but perhaps the most important lesson I I learned from this is what kind of value as a parent am I putting on sports as the ultimate end, all be all of life or the purpose and meaning of life? Like If that's if we're making all kinds of sacrifices in our in our community and and our for sacrifices in our faith and religion and school just for the sport, I think it's no we shouldn't be surprised when the kids think that life is all about sports. And maybe when they get to college and they don't get that scholarship, they're devastated and they don't know what to do with it with the rest of their life.
speaker-1: Yeah, and it's such a rare path to go become a professional athlete.
You're you know, you're you're if your focus is on having a great time as a as a kid and and competing and enjoying work playing and working with your friends, you're gonna get a ton out of it no matter where you end up.
speaker-3: Well more and more college coaches, ⁓ I've heard Urban Meyer say this. I've heard ⁓ your coach I would assume it's your coach. Is it Kenny Dillingham?
speaker-1: Yeah, w well, so I I am not necessarily when we first moved here, ⁓ my family we moved to Tucson. So so so he is not my coach. I wanna be clear for all of you out there. That that is the ASU coach, we have a we have a little issue with them.
speaker-3: Well he we love him. We we we've we've
speaker-1: He's a he's an amazing man. I I mean look yeah
speaker-3: And he's gonna do great things for that program. But a lot of the coaches that are recruiting, at least in football, are saying like they're looking for three sport kids. They don't want kids who specialize for a n any number of reasons. But feels like the pendulum might be shift swinging back a little bit there.
speaker-1: I hope so. ⁓ getting back to ⁓ some of the stuff directly from your book, your book covers twelve virtues from courage to magnanimity. Is there one of those virtues that was hardest for you to write about, honestly? Like what are you still working on in your own life of those?
speaker-3: All twelve of them. I mean it I I I have to get out. Like one of the fears I had about writing the book is that I would be misperceived as someone who's saying, Hey, I've got this figured out. I I wrote this because I am the most in need of it. and I I I get vulnerable. So the the the way I wrote the book was I present the virtue, I tell a personal story about how, you know, I have worked on or struggled with or have have had success in any of these virtues. And then I'll use either a h a historical figure or a contemporary figure like a Steph Curry or a Keanu Reeves. I use ⁓ Tom Brady. I use ⁓ Ray Lewis, a lot of athletes ⁓ and and some actors. ⁓ but I'll I'll use those people to to help to tell those stories. Not that they're perfect or that they were perfect in the virtue or they were perfect men. They weren't. We're all flawed. ⁓ but To answer your question, I I do get vulnerable in the book and probably share more it's things about myself that make me look bad. but it's okay because I wanted to use my experience as a vehicle just to just to be honest and tell the story. So I I do tell the story about one of the bugs of being a dad is helping ⁓ kids with math homework. I think
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓
speaker-3: experience when my ⁓ when my oldest son was little and and I I kinda lost I I lost my temper with him when he was little on math because he would just I I I thought I was teaching him well and then he would just guess. And I'd re-explain it and he would guess again. It made me so mad that he wasn't getting it and that he kept guessing and I lost my cool. And you know, I stepped away and I came back and I apologized and I swore to myself I would never lose my cool with with that again. ⁓ it and I and I haven't, but I think mostly because the kids now go to their mom for math homework. ⁓ but I I still go back. Occasionally I'll think about that and I I'm so ashamed that I I lost and I'll I'll still apologize to him one time, but patience is one that I think we all struggle with. No matter how experienced in life we are, no matter how devoted we are to cultivating that virtue. It is that is a vexing Virtue to master patience. I'll tell you so at the end of each chapter, I have a little ⁓ practical application section, which challenges the people to go in and think about the virtue, write down some thoughts on the virtue, go practice the virtue in three or four different ways, and then reflect back, report back to someone that you're accountable to. And that's the best I can do is just give someone a challenge to to work on it. And it's The book is supposed to be a field guide that you can come back to often in life. ⁓ so hopefully that gets us all a little bit closer.
speaker-1: Bode Swanson, thank you so much for joining us. I love that. I I think this is brilliant. Everyone needs to check out this book, but especially if you're working on raising young men, I think it is absolutely an essential read. Get it at Amazon, GreatSold Men, Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back here in just one moment. To run a successful business, you need one thing, customers. And how do you get customers? You get them through advertising, you get them through lead generation. But what happens if the leads don't exist or they don't have valid contact information? This is a familiar story all businesses deal with. Then they call these leads who don't exist, or they're bad numbers, or they're not in their service area. Argus 101 verifies every lead before your team picks up the phone. It's a real person in your area and a neighborhood that matches your ideal customer. Your team only calls people worth calling, thus saving you money. Free trial at Argus101.com. That's arguing.com. Help your business expand today. Argus101.com. A-R-G-U-S-101.com. Hello Breaking Battlegrounds listeners. Did you know that private student loan debt in the United States totals about $300 billion? That's with a B. About $45 billion of that is labeled as distressed, which means people are behind on payments. Why ReFi, who is a proud sponsor of our show, refinances this distress or defaulted private student loans that others won't touch. They don't even care what your credit score is, they provide you with a custom loan payment. Based on your ability to pay, YReFi is not a debt settlement company. They work with each borrower individually to tailor a loan that meets your specific financial situation and helps you pay this loan off. So, folks, if you would like to learn more how to put your mind at ease and your budget back on track, call YReFi at 877-400-9989 and tell them Sam and Chuck
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speaker-1: Sam and I are always talking about being prepared, whether it's hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in California, flooding in Arizona, or supply chains disruptions. Exactly, Chuck. When pharmacies shut down, it does not matter how tough you are, you still need access to critical medicine. That's why we trust Jace Medical. The Jace case comes with five life-saving antibiotics and key over-the-counter meds so you're covered when things get disrupted. And Jace goes beyond just the Jace case. They also offer first aid kits, daily prescriptions, and long-term nutrition with Jace Pantry. Don't wait for the next hurricane warning or natural disaster. Take control of your health and peace of mind today. Visit Jace.com and use code FUTURE at checkout for $10 off your order. That's FUTURE at JASE.com.
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speaker-2: Secrets untold the truth gets set free when be gets a hold. Crimes where killers from are free. There even ones where they get caught in the scene. From co-case files to headline news, she's breaking it all down just for you. So come take a seat, don't miss a bee. Bees crying corners where the stories go deep.
speaker-1: All right, B, what do you got for us? Okay, so we have another case that's really similar to the Lindsey Clancy case that just happened. Unfortunately. So this is Kylie Erhart. Yeah. Sh this happened in North Dakota, August 6th, 2026. ⁓ police responded to a home on South Frontier Trail around five forty-two PM and ⁓ authorities said that twenty two year old Kaylee Ehrenhurt er or Hart, however you pronounce that, sorry about that, had locked herself inside of her house with her three children. There was a five month old, a one year old, and a three year old and police say that all three were killed with knife cuts to the throat. Well actually one survived. This is where it kinda gets confusing because Lindsay Clancy's case, she killed all three, but in this case she Attempted to kill all three but only killed two. The one year old actually survived and underwent surgery and is expected to physically recover. Now, before the police arrived, according to the police affidavit, she allegedly confronted the children's father and the father's mother with a handgun and they ended up getting the gun from her. She chased the father and the father's mother out of the house with a knife while holding one of the children and telling him, like, say goodbye to your kids. Pretty much telling ⁓ she's gonna kill them. And she threatened them, got them out of the house, ended up locking herself in the house with them and killing these three kids. Now it is so much debate right now about if this is the same as Lindsay Clancy. But I mean in this case this woman showed signs of mental illness. She actually had made a post in April about after the birth of her ⁓ her youngest about how she was dealing with postpartum depression, but she was getting through it, she was feeling stronger, and then this happens. So I I feel like this is in this case this man that the father needed to be more aware of this and take stronger action because clearly the action he took was not strong enough. She straight up said to him, I'm gonna kill your kids and He let it happen. Wow. So yeah. One count of attempted murder, two counts of terrorizing with a dangerous weapon, three counts of aggravated assault, one misdemeanor count of domestic violence, so nine total charges. So the case stands where she's remaining in jail with a three million dollar cash bond and her preliminary hearing is scheduled for October sixth.
speaker-0: So
speaker-1: Yeah. This not seen a lot of feminists gathering around this one though. Right? You know, I the whole Lindsey Clancy thing is gross. It's it's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah, it is. I just watched my sister go through like having a baby in the postpartum depression and really it's it takes a certain mind to let that win and take the steps of killing your kids. Post postpartum depression is hard. It is very hard. Yeah. No doubt I I will say the one thing that came out of that trial that I you know, I was like the number of meds they had her on. Yeah. And she had bipolar disorder. Yeah, I mean so she's guilty and and I'm not in this camp with any of these women who are trying to excuse this in any way, shape or form. Let's not even pretend to go down that road. ⁓ yeah. But another discussion needs to be had about the medical industry continuing to overprescribe and cross prescribe things in ways that are really, really stupid. Yeah. I feel like they let her down in a way. Like she's guilty, but they let her down. She was let down by a lot of She was receiving a lot of medical care. Yeah. But it w does not appear to have been well coordinated, conscientious care. Yeah. I mean it it
seems to be and one of the problems I think in general with medicine these days, right, is that post Obamacare, they were all vertically and horizontally integrated businesses. So you might be dealing with a nonprofit hospital, but the reality is the people who run the hospital run the drug company, they run the testing companies, they run all the other companies around it. They rake in a huge amount of profit. And the focus is really just on that. Like I'll use a silly example, folks. My dermatologist, right? I get skin tags. They'll remove ⁓ with this little cold gun thing. Mm-hmm. Which I don't like 'cause I have sensitive skin. It leaves big welts that last like two to three weeks. ⁓ wow. And they're very painful. So I'm like, ⁓ screw that. Just give me a you know, chop it off. Get it get the scalpel out, numb it down, chop it off, put some bacytracin on it, call it good. Well, they can't do that. They won't do it because if they do that, they have to send the tissue sample for a full lab test. ⁓ yeah. And I'm like, But you're on y you're a dermatologist. You know this is not cancer, you know this is nothing. And they're like, ⁓ but this is our policy. And I think she by policy got prescribed a lot of garbage that she should not have been and went through went had a lot of treatments undergoing that she should not have been. This is a mess that we have to clean up that's a lot bigger than Lindsay Clancy. Yeah, and it's showing. It is showing. It is. Breaking battle rounds coming back with more show in just a minute. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up today, Corey J. Ruth, is a Republican political strategist, economist, and CEO of Mergence Global. He is also the forthcoming author of Double Click, What the Numbers Really Say About Black America out in February of 2027. Corey J. Ruth, welcome to the program. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing in this 2026 election cycle and what's driving this socialist surge because
speaker-4: for having me.
speaker-1: Boy, they're gaining traction like we haven't seen since really the nineteen twenties.
speaker-4: Right. And and you know, they're not saying anything different than they've been saying since the thirties, you know, free healthcare, free, you know, university, free daycare. But what's propelling their ⁓ momentum here I think is what I call information overloads, just that the American people are just flooded with information from AI, from the internet, ⁓ from podcast and twenty four hour news coverage and all of this analysis is ⁓ you know it's hard to sort of cipher through and figure out what is right. And what MAGA does and what DSA does very well is they speak in plain language, they tell you exactly what they want to do, and then when they get in office they do it. So you can have a high confidence in what is happening. And so I can pull a hundred people over randomly and say, hey, what does Donald Trump want to do for the country? ⁓ he wants to build a
wall, ⁓ he wants to to renew tariffs, he wants to do this. I could say the same thing for Mandani. Anywhere in the country. I can say, What does Mandani want to do? ⁓ he wants to open up free grocery stores, he wants to have buses. And so they do that very well. Now, I could not do that for an Obama or Mitt Romney or any of the sort of mainstream type candidates, even the ones who have run more recently, like Nikki Haley. We don't we don't know what she wants to do. But we know what DSA wants to do and we know what MAGA wants to do and I think it's become a safe space for American voters.
speaker-1: Has there been too much change too fast? This is something Chuck brought up and I I thought he was spot on with this. Voters just citizens of the world have been exposed to this unbelievable period of change. I mean, starting with Trump's first election through COVID, now into AI, like the world is changing at light speed, and people are I I think they're just really unsettled right now.
speaker-4: And scared. And I don't think there's any national leader that's sort of speaking to that. Say, hey, I know there's a lot happening with AI, and nobody's really talking to you. I know there's a lot happening in terms of the change of the world order. Nobody's really talking to you. There's a lot happening in terms of our social order, right? ⁓ trans youth is up to twenty five percent in some places in America. Nobody's really talking about the impact of those things. We're still speaking to each other in sort of political campaign speak. And nobody's really talking about it. Don't take this word too s too ⁓ seriously, but pastorally. Nobody's really talking about it in a way that says, how's this impacting you in your life? And I think the party and the candidate that does that first, ⁓ that kind of brings that sort of Bill Clinton, I feel your pain ⁓ is gonna be a big beneficiary of it.
speaker-1: You know, I agree a hundred percent. I'm worried though, with what you see from the far left, is they're doing, quite frankly, whether it's AOC or Mam Dami or these others, these are effectively media trained personalities, and they're doing a great job of scripting them away from the things they're actually doing when they get in office. How do Republicans kind of push back and expose some of that?
speaker-4: Yeah, I mean think about it. Mandani's cool. So is El Said. I mean, these are cool people. ALC they're and and it it's really hard to compete with. We're going to have to be very clear in our language that socialism historically leads to fascism. If you go back and you look at the Nazis that stand for national socialists, if you go back and you look at that sort of golden age of fascism
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-4: you'll find that all of those movements started with socialism and the mechanics behind that is that all of these great things that they want government to do requires them to hyper fund government and also bring in regulation which basically provides the government with police dictate and oversight. So you are really making this centralized government very powerful and very ⁓ in in and sort of omnipresent in in your life. And when you do that, that has historically led to fascism. And so we have to remind them of that. I know it's I know it's ⁓ on garde for intellectuals and and professors to say that these guys were right wing. We gotta remind the world that no, these guys were socialists.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. 100%. You touched on something there about government it its reach and kind of the imposition on citizens. I w I want to touch on that in a broader way because right now I'm very concerned that this confluence of socialism, fascism, all the things that that come with it, is maring into a system that now has unprecedented power to surveil. And control citizens through technology. And obviously flock cameras have been a big story in the news lately, but more importantly, when you add flock cameras, mass surveillance, robotics, drones, all these things, government has a possibility of taking control in a way that it really never has had before.
speaker-4: You know, ⁓ you mentioned that ⁓ the CEO of Mergence Global, we led the we designed the blueprint for surveillance in the city of Atlanta. We ⁓ back in twenty twenty I think it was, ⁓ we assessed their current state, ⁓ where their cameras were and and and what the capabilities were. We we ⁓ you know, went out and looked at all of the modern capabilities around the world. We ⁓ recommended what they ought to do. And so I know ⁓ in ways that ⁓ the public is just finding out what what kind of power we have given to the government. And during that time we said to the city of Atlanta, like, look, you know, hooray, you have this new surveillance power. You're not unlike China. But because we're a democracy and because we're a free society How should we be doing it differently? And you know, I think that starts with, you know, a governance layer that performs assessments. You know, are you surveilling this community more than that community? Does somebody have the ability to ⁓ track their ex wife? You know? All of those things need to be thought about. ⁓ and you know, you may remember the rise of ESG. Now this is a place that ESG would be good. Like we need to do an environmental or social and a governance assessment to see what that posture looks like. But then in addition to that, what people don't know is that behind those flock cameras is a real time crime center. And so not only are the cameras able to pick up ⁓ video, but they're also able to pick up gunshot detection and license plate readers and and those types of things. Then they get fed into an aggregate ⁓ real time crime center that synthesizes that data and it can show my migration through the city even though I'm going through different cameras. ⁓ I can put in there that I'm looking for someone with headphones and a white hat and it could find everyone in the city
with headsets and and a white hat on. And so this is tremendous amount of power and I think in the American society in a free society we should consider ways that we can share that ⁓ capability with the American people. So you're surveilling me, but I also want the ability if I'm walking down a dark road and I'm going around the corner to see the feed on that camera so I know what I'm walking into. So I think there's a way that the government can share that that information. Obviously that there's some cameras that can't share and things of that nature. I get that But they need to be able to share that information and allow us to crowdsource on it. The same way we do with Waze, right? We say, hey, there's a cop over here or there's a roadblock over there. We need to be able to say, hey, there's a strange guy walking down the street here. ⁓ or yet yes, there's a cop over here. So if you need help, you you know where to go. So I think there's a way forward. We're starting to have the conversation. but we definitely need to figure out a way that we're going to do this. differently than China does it.
speaker-1: I love that because you're talking about something I haven't heard in the public discourse around this, right? Which the public discourse obviously, like everything else, very polarized. It's either, well, these things are good, they prevent crime, they help us, you know, maintain c ⁓ order in society, or these things are terrible because they're s a mass surveillance state with all sorts of abuse. But you're laying out a path that I think is a very important because these things are coming. We're not going to be able to entirely stop these things. And what you just talked about is laying out a path of transparency. How much do you think transparency, whether it's in in this discussion about surveillance with flock cameras or with AI or all these other things that we're dealing with right now, how much do you think that really those discussions would benefit by real transparency on the part of the policymakers?
speaker-4: I mean one hundred percent. I mean it's it's what it's the conversation that we had way back in twenty twenty with the peace department here in in the city of Atlanta and at the time it just it was all greenfield so no one, you know, saw this coming this this sort of mass public pushback against this surveillance power and so at the time they were like, Well, maybe later. ⁓ but now it's later. And so it's time that every city, every town, and this is something that needs to come top down, right? It needs to come from government because this police department are not going to compromise their capabilities. So it's gonna have to come from the elected official saying, Yeah, you have to do this. You have to submit to an annual or quarterly, you know, ESG assessment and audit. ⁓ and you also need to ⁓ be able to have a data flow diagram we need to know like if you capture me on camera, how's that thing flow through your system and when does it get deleted and who do you share it with? We need to know that and that needs to be available in a report annually to the ⁓ to the the American public. And then also you need to share some of those capabilities with us. If there's a gunshot and you have a gunshot detection, why can't I get an alert saying somebody just shot a gun a hundred yards from you? So Some of that capability needs to be shared with the American people. And I think if you do those things, you'll see the temperature ⁓ decrease.
speaker-1: Open source is a great way to take down the temperature across the board with these things. Absolutely. We have just a few minutes left here. You have the book coming out ⁓ this February. what what was the most surprising bit of economic data that you mined for that book or the insight that you came away from it with?
speaker-4: Well, I was at London School of Economics and we were talking about emerging markets. And I started to, you know, challenge the definition of emerging markets, which is normally nations, right? China's an emerging market. But I was saying, but saying hi in Beijing and Hong Kong aren't emerging markets, they're as mature as New York. And the US is a mature market, but Atlanta and Phoenix, these aren't mature markets, these are emerging markets. And so I was like, what if we what if we measured emerging markets by min by metropolitan area? And I used Atlanta as a pilot and when I did that I started getting involved in a lot of black data because Atlanta is the only city in the entire Western world that is run by black people, primarily politically, corporately. and socially. And so I started looking at this black data and and it I was able to map black economic metrics on top of emerging market metrics. And I said, so black America is an emerging market. It's a market of people, 47 million, about the size of Spain, about the size of Canada, and it has a economic output about the size of Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. And it is only had freedom, full freedom for less than sixty years. And so this is an emerging market. I was ⁓ I I took a different approach. I think a lot of ⁓ economists tr compare black ⁓ people to white people and there's two hundred million white people in America. So if America was just this white population, it'd be larger than Russia. And so y it's hard to compare a a population that size with a population the size of ⁓ black America. So I started comparing black America to emerging markets, ⁓ particularly to BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Amazing insights.
speaker-1: I I cannot wait to read that book. I'm I'm gonna be pre-ordering it here momentarily if I if I can't. Can I pre-order it on Amazon now? Pre order. I'm doing that first thing. Corey, Cory J. Ruth, I'd love to have you back on the program to continue this discussion. ⁓ we have much, much more to talk about. Really appreciate you joining us today. This is fantastic.
speaker-4: In October we'll be a
brief. Thanks so much for having me.
speaker-1: Thank you so much for being here, folks. Make sure you stay tuned in. Breaking Battlegrounds has plenty more coming in the podcast segment right now. Sam and I are always talking about being prepared, whether it's hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in California, flooding in Arizona, or supply chains disruptions. Exactly, Chuck. When pharmacies shut down, it does not matter how tough you are, you still need access to critical medicine. That's why we trust Jace Medical. The Jace case comes with five life-saving antibiotics and key over-the-counter meds so you're covered when things get disrupted. And Jace goes beyond just the Jace case. They also offer first aid kits, daily prescriptions, and long-term nutrition with Jace Pantry. Don't wait for the next hurricane warning or natural disaster. Take control of your health and peace of mind today. Visit Jace.com and use code FUTURE at checkout for $10 off your order. That's FUTURE at J A S E dot com.
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speaker-1: Hello Breaking Battlegrounds listeners. Did you know that private student loan debt in the United States totals about $300 billion? That's with a B. About $45 billion of that is labeled as distressed, which means people are behind on payments. Why ReFi, who is a proud sponsor of our show, refinances this distress or defaulted private student loans that others won't touch. They don't even care what your credit score is, they provide you with a custom loan payment. Based on your ability to pay, YReFi is not a debt settlement company. They work with each borrower individually to tailor a loan that meets your specific financial situation and helps you pay this loan off. So, folks, if you would like to learn more how to put your mind at ease and your budget back on track, call YReFi at 877-400-9989 and tell them Sam and Chuck sent you. You can go and look into them at YReFi. refy.com to get more information. They will help you reduce your monthly payment and guarantee interest rates under 6%, ensuring financial relief to you as you pay off your private student loan. Jump on that website or call them today. All right, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up, Congressman Dusty Johnson. He is a ⁓ South Dakota's lone voice in the U.S. House of Representatives, like us on this program. He is a policy guy. He works hard. He's knowledgeable and tries to, you know, look, I I want to say that these things are common among all of our members of Congress, right? That they all put in the time, the effort to really learn this stuff and dig in. But the reality is that's not always the case. And we love having someone like Congressman Dusty Johnson on this program because he does that work. So Congressman, welcome back and thank you so much for joining us once again.
speaker-0: Gosh Sam, with an intro like that, how can things go wrong from here?
speaker-1: ⁓ they're definitely gonna go all straight downhill, right? We're we're we just set ourselves for the fall from the top of Mount Everest. Someone is gonna find our remains fifty years from now. It's gonna be terrible. But in the
speaker-0: That got dark in a hurry.
speaker-1: We're swinging highs to lows here today, Congressman. ⁓ but talking about highs, you've been working a lot on the farm bill. tell us a little bit about that progress. I you know, you know, look, beef has been a big issue and obviously coming from South Dakota, one you know well, one your state is critically involved in. So what's going on there? What do people need to know about what's coming?
speaker-0: Well, yeah, and I'll talk a bit about that, but just to to back up a half of staff, I mean the farm bill is really important, but I think our difficulty in getting a farm bill done is really more illustrative of the fact that we're kind of struggling to even do the like the blocking and tackling the meat and potatoes of government, right? I mean, we should have a highway bill done this year. Will we get it done? I don't know. We need to get a farm bill ⁓ done this year, will we get it done? I don't know. We need a funding package done. Will we get that done? Well, obviously at some point we'll get it done, but how many potential shutdowns will we have to avoid between here and there? We are just in an environment where the voters are really angry. They are more inclined to vote for people who seem like they're good fighters rather than, you know, good legislators. And that means that the ingredients in the congressional stew are maybe a little bit spicier than we're accustomed to. ⁓ spice is kind of fun in ⁓ a lot of cooking, but in ⁓ in DC it ⁓ makes it harder to get things done. So anyway, farm bill, yes, lots of good stuff in there. This has always, ⁓ forever and ever been a strong bipartisan work product. Those are the kind of things we don't do well in this era.
speaker-1: ⁓ so I want to go back to something you just said about you know, members coming in. Right now it's a spicy environment. Voters are looking for people who are more combative. These folks are showing up, they're ready to fight. How do you bring them down to earth a little bit and say, hey, listen, that's great, we'll fight, but we've got to do the basics. We we have to govern.
speaker-0: I wish I could tell you I'm like the new member whisperer, Sam, and I'm able to get them, you know, to be functional members of the chamber. ⁓ but it's a little more complicated than that. I mean,
really, for two reasons. Number one, by the time somebody looks around and says, out of seven hundred and fifty thousand people in my neighborhood, I'm the very best person to represent our area on the board of directors of the United States of America. Like these are guys and gals who have egos, they're accomplished. Many of them think they know it all. Not all of them. A lot of them are good, humble people. But some of these people are not open to coaching. Number one. Number two, all of the incentives in the system reward bad behavior. So yeah, Dusty Johnson's been in the US House eight years, a little bit of a senior member. ⁓ there are buddies of mine when they come in that I'm able to kind of let them know hey, here's how you actually get things done to make America better. But ⁓ kind words from a veteran member, it's hard for those to outweigh all of the incentives in the broader political system that say, be loud, be noisy, be ⁓ you know, uncompromising on anything. If you just fight hard enough, you will get everything you want, which of course is utter balderdash.
speaker-1: Who i and I know ⁓ obviously we don't always like to talk about this, but there are people still on the Democrat side who are in this camp with you and saying, hey, we have a ton of disagreements. We disagree on 90%, but here's the 10% we agree on. Let's work together. That seems to be a very dying breed. Are there any of those left on on on the Democrat side in the House?
speaker-2: Thanks.
speaker-0: There are, absolutely. ⁓ you know, ⁓ Shamari figures from Alabama. ⁓ he's a guy, and by the way, you know all these people I'm gonna mention, they have very different political views than I do. Sure, yeah. They ⁓ they they wouldn't vote for me for president, I wouldn't vote for them for president. But ⁓ Shamari knows how to he actually wants to get things done for his people. ⁓ Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey, Richie Torres from New York. These are really smart guys who understand, they're smart enough to understand the math. The only way you can make people's lives better in America if you're in Congress is by getting two hundred and eighteen votes in the House and sixty votes in the Senate. Anybody who ignores that math has chosen to give up. And those are members of, you know, ⁓ Dan Davis would be another example ⁓ of a guy who knows how to get things done. I mean, they're they're fair, Nikki Basinski of Illinois. ⁓ these are serious legislators.
speaker-1: I I think what's disappointing is that the people you're talking to you're talking about aren't the people who would be most known, right? And that's kind of the opposite. The people who are most known tend to be the ones who are blocking getting good things done rather than being the ones leading the charge to accomplish actual works.
speaker-2: Thanks.
speaker-0: ⁓ that is exactly right. Because all of the incentives in the system reward bad behavior. I mean, if if you want to make a point ⁓ rather than make progress, ⁓ it's a lot easier to get on MSN now and Fox. If you want to have a long form conversation about how we advance good policy in this country, I mean, you know, breaking battlegrounds is I guess you can get on there.
speaker-1: Well, we always love to talk to anyone who brings good policy on the program. So we appreciate that. ⁓ talking about that, I want to get back to to one of the things we touched on early because beef prices have been kind of a thing. what's going on there and is there light at the end of the tunnel to get to a place where beef is more affordable again? Because I I'm hearing this from a lot of folks and not necessarily folks Just at the bottom end of the economic spectrum, a lot of middle class folks are saying, you know, I like chicken, but maybe not this much.
speaker-0: Yes. I wish every single one of my colleagues, and frankly every American, you know, had taken a microeconomics course and a macroeconomics course, because it's amazing how much good public policy you can get when you understand the laws of supply and demand. I mean, the reality is we still have very high level demand, levels of demand for steak and beef. People view it as a premium product, even though the price is up fifteen percent in the last year, the amount of reduction in demand is only a half a percent. Wow. And so you get increasing demand, you have fixed supply. This is going to cause a price mismatch. And the only way you're going to fix that is by reducing demand for American beef, which we do not want to do, or by increasing the supply of American beef. And the best way to increase the supply of American beef over time is, and I know this hurts, and I know this is not fun at the meat counter, but high prices do send a message to these ranchers.
speaker-5: ⁓
speaker-0: That they should increase the size of their herd. But this is a really hard way to make a living. I mean, it is every single day. These cattle don't take Sundays off, which means that the ranchers can't take Sundays off. Right. And so ⁓ if you're gonna go buy a bunch more pasture land, that's incredibly expensive. If you're gonna go buy more mama cows so you can have more baby cows, that's very expensive. Heifers are very expensive. And the only way you can have confidence as a rancher.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: That you're going to be able to pay back those bank loans is if you have confidence that price is going to be high for kind of a long time. And that's the environment we're in right now. I do think you're going to see more American ranchers, more ⁓ add more head of cattle. And over time, that is going to put us back in the
speaker-1: Do we also need to focus on i in improving the availability of processing?
speaker-0: Yeah, that's huge. ⁓ you know, I'm a free market guy. So for me, ⁓ you want many buyers and many sellers. And when you've got a a free market like that, then ⁓ everybody kind of keeps everybody elp else honest, right? I mean, no gas station ⁓ in
your town or mine is charging eight dollars for a single twenty ounce of soda because they know they can't get away with that, right?
speaker-1: Well, thank goodness neither of us live in California.
speaker-0: Well, right, yes, things might be different, or who knows what Mam Dani's ⁓ bodegas are selling soda for these days, right? But the ⁓ the reality is we don't have in the cattle market many buyers and many sellers. ⁓ we've got four large packers who control 85% of the market in beef, ⁓ also really sizable percentages in pork. And that is bad news. Adding more processing capacity outside of the big four. I think would make for a fairer market over time.
speaker-1: In terms of the rest of the farm bill, what are the most important elements that are being worked on right now? Because we we've heard a lot about how American farmers are really struggling in this environment where their their outlets are limited like you just referred to. There there's limited competition for on the processing, production, and distribution ends.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean mo when we talk about the farm bill, the thing that most the people who really care about the farm bill, they generally care about one of four things. They care about crop insurance and Title I. Those are two. Those are risk management programs that producers ⁓ kind of help them ⁓ avoid a tough year ⁓ or or minimize the damage of a tough year. You've got food stamps or SNAP, that's about eighty percent nutrition's about eighty or eighty five percent of the spend of the farm bill. And then conservation programs. How do we take care of the land, water, and We did all of those in the one big beautiful bill. That's not to say that there's not important stuff in the farm bill, but this is really a skinny farm bill. We took those big items and did them in reconciliation. So ⁓ the stuff that I really like in this skinny farm bill is related to increasing trade, increasing market access for American agricultural goods. ⁓ I like the stuff on rural broadband. and I like the stuff that makes it easier for young and beginning farmers and ranchers to get into business. by increasing some of those loan limits. ⁓ those are all those are all really good, strong bipartisan policies.
speaker-3: Yeah.
speaker-1: How important is right now for us? It's been in the news again a lot lately. ⁓ the issues that we Donald Trump and the administration, the conflict with Canada. Obviously, your state does a lot of trade and business with Canada. We need to r r re you know, re reconnect that relationship because they are an important ally and important trading partner. But at the same time Like some of their trade practices have been really predatory towards American markets. So how do we reset that and start working together again?
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean it's hard to overstate, you know, what a good partner Canada is in many ways. I mean, you know, I I wouldn't want to rank them, but if you were gonna have top tier of ⁓ you
know, the four or five or six best allies we've got, I mean, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Israel, ⁓ I mean Canada is right there. They're right there. And I hate to see this fighting. I I don't I don't I hope that it serves some broader purpose. I mean you could
speaker-1: It doesn't seem to so far. You know, look, for people may get upset. I'll be the one to criticize Trump here. It publicly the perception of this is not good. And it it is not helping us. And as you said, Canadians are our allies. They are some of our most important allies around the globe. They're our friends. We need to act like that.
speaker-0: Yeah, this has not been how you and I would do business. ⁓ you know, I think you negotiate with friends a little differently than you do ⁓ strangers, right? Or people whom who you have ⁓ an adversarial relationship with. It doesn't mean that you can't drive a hard bargain with a friend. Sure. It does mean though that you want to make sure that all of your interactions back and forth in a bilateral way have respect and admiration at their core because this is not gonna be the last deal you're doing together.
speaker-1: Yes.
speaker-0: We're doing a hundred more deals. Right. And and and we we have the same love of liberty, freedom, markets, ⁓ at our core. And that it's not Canada versus the United States, it's Canada and the United States versus the bad guys. Right. Versus Iran, China, Russia, North Korea. And we are much stronger together. you know, this isn't how I do the deal, but hopefully we end up in a good place. I don't get so nervous about What's going on in the third or fifth inning of the ball game? Right. Provided we end up in the right place at the end of the night.
speaker-1: Well, and Trump does have a knack for that, right? Like there's there's often in his nego his his negotiations with foreign allies and adversaries these sort of apparent public setbacks in the middle, but then you end up getting to a good place at the end.
speaker-0: Yeah, progress ⁓ with Trump's negotiations are not a straight line.
speaker-1: I I don't imagine any negotiation with Donald Trump is a straight line. And and that's clearly a tactical decision on his part, right? ⁓ but in terms of of hit ⁓ negotiating what comes next, ⁓ y as you mentioned, you guys have a lot of very important fundamental policies that are on the table in front of you now. What are the most important priorities for you and for the people of South Dakota? What needs to get done in this next coming session?
speaker-0: I mean, I think from a big picture policy perspective, everybody's talking affordability and I think that's true, although there's no easy fix there. ⁓ I mean if we really want you know, the trend lines of costs to be more manageable, we need to make sure we got enough workers. I don't think we're doing a particularly good job of that. I mean, I think we've got a skills gap. We still have plenty of people who are on the sidelines. ⁓ I think some of our assistance programs, while they're doing a better job at getting people off the sidelines and in the really, you know, the I mean It's hard to live a life of meaning and happiness and consequence if you're a twenty-seven-year-old guy who's not contributing, right? Right. And that's just that's the reality. ⁓ you know, clearly I think there's some things we could do on the legal immigration side, smart tweaks and policy to help make Americans richer and more prosperous. I think we have an opportunity to have those conversations now that we've got the southern border secure. ⁓ but energy, we also need to continue to move toward affordable energy. If we don't have workforce and energy sorted out. Affordability we can fiddle around the edges all we want, but the affordability problems are gonna be real.
speaker-1: It it seems like there is a renewed and for me at least incredibly welcomed push to get back into expanding nuclear energy perhaps with some new type of new new types of nuclear reactors. How realistic is that on the horizon over the next ten or twenty years?
speaker-2: Thank you.
speaker-0: Well, I mean, people are out building them. I mean, this is is not not a thought exercise any longer. It takes ⁓ a lot of years and an insane amount of cash to build the first generation ⁓ in a fleet of anything, whether it's you know, nuclear submarines or flat screen TVs or ⁓ or nuclear power plants. So, you know, kudos to the companies. ⁓ you know, mostly in the south where they've got a a ⁓ a far b bigger inventory of nuclear power plants ⁓ that they've been managing for a long time. ⁓ a number of these companies have stepped up and they're they're doing nukes. The the the cost will come down ⁓ over time, and I think you'll see more and more people do it. People talk about small ⁓ modular nuclear reactors, and I'm I'm I'm bullish. I feel good about the future of SMRs, but they're not gonna be the dominant technology here in the next few years. ⁓ they're they'll they'll get there.
speaker-1: Is there any hope? I one of the things I that I've been seeing across the country really the last few decades is we we haven't been able to achieve the sort of large-scale infrastructure projects that we were in the past. How do we we need to? How do we get back to doing?
speaker-0: Yeah, that is that would be the best thing that we could focus our legislative efforts on. ⁓ of course we want to get a farm bill done, the highway bill done, we want to get the spending packages done. We wanna make sure that ⁓ we get rules of my bill that would put rules of the road around digital assets and crypto in a place because we're the only big country who hasn't figured that out yet. Would love to ban members of Congress from buying and selling stocks, and I think we will ⁓ here soon. But permitting reform. ⁓ we are we are uniquely bad at this now, at citing large projects. Us we used to say that America, you know, the story of America was the story of big dreams and big
projects. If we don't get our head on straight, we are gonna struggle to have the next century be an American century.
speaker-1: Yeah, because it seems like this is an area we've fallen behind even you know, obviously China's in an entirely different league, but it seems like Europe, ⁓ for all their dysfunction is actually still able to build some of these larger scale projects while we're struggling to to get them off the ground.
speaker-0: Yeah, we we we are worse than any developed country. I mean the same energy project that you can get done in two years in Canada and Australia takes you seven years here. The same highway project you can get done in Italy and France in two years takes you seven years to get done here. I mean, when when France looks like a paragon of regulatory efficiency, you're doing something wrong. Boy are
speaker-1: Are you? Wow. Yeah. ⁓ Congressman, anything else you want you wanna touch on before we let you go today?
speaker-0: No, thanks for ⁓ having a great platform for ⁓ smart ⁓ listeners to try to find out what the what is really going on behind all of the howling at the moon in modern American politics.
speaker-1: Congressman Dusty Johnson, always a pleasure having you on the program. We definitely need more people with your approach in Washington, quite frankly, and we love having you here. So anytime we would love to have you back. Folks, follow Congressman Johnson on X at Rep Dusty Johnson. Breaking Battlegrounds. Back with more in just a moment. All right, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our final guest up today is Max Klinger. He studied in the academic department at Cambridge that later employed Jason Arde. He came to our attention because he wrote an article and some some various pieces out there, but the Substack specifically about I studied in Jason Arde's department at Cambridge. Here's the crap that I was taught. We've put this up on our social media before. We're gonna repost it following this program. This is a substack piece I think everyone needs to read because. The focus has been on Jason Arde, but Max Klinger, this is much, much bigger than one individual. We have a a real issue that probably needs to be dug into in universities across the world.
speaker-5: Yeah, that's exactly right. Thanks for having me on. ⁓ yeah, basically you're right. The the reason I wrote that piece is because I had studied social sciences at Cambridge, like of quite quite a few years ago, way before he Jason Arday joined. But it felt to me a bit like the conversation was obsessing too much about the specific faculty that he was in or and ⁓ or the specific the specifics of him personally. Right. And obviously that stuff is mental, but what it ha what the real issue is what it highlighted about a state of academia more broadly. And I studied sociology at Cambridge. He was a sociologist at Cambridge. So obviously in that respect, I had literally done pretty much exactly the discipline that he focused on. But what I
was trying to convey was that even if I'd done it somewhere else, w really I would have been encountering roughly the same set of ideas, which are largely just activism and often very, very kind of silly and obviously non-rigorous intellectual endeavours which are just packaged as if they're really meaningful and essentially essentially like almost unquestionable objective fact, which is just not the case at all. So that's what I was trying to convey in the piece.
speaker-1: How did we how do you think we got to the place where you know I came up obviously in a different time. I I went to college in the 90s. You could see some of this coming into the system, but it wasn't baked in. ⁓ how do we get to the place where this is really kind of a universal problem at the university level across the world? It's it almost kind of boggles my mind because As I was raised, you thought of university specifically as a place of contesting ideas, not as a place of homogenizing.
speaker-5: Yeah, ⁓ I think I I'm somewhat skeptical that it was ever completely free and open minded.
speaker-1: No, it I'm I d I don't mean to to make that much of an assertion. It had its best
speaker-5: Yeah, no, no, no, I I get that. Yeah, no, I don't mean you specifically, I mean I a lot of people have been making that point to me and I I definitely agree it's obviously got quite a lot worse. But I think to some extent the discipline has always been kind of ideologically pious and in in many respects all these academic fields have kind of just been a vehicle for whatever the progressive activism is of the day. But I think it's got much worse in the last probably like fifty years, but then also specifically in the last twenty years and even more so in the last ten years. Because things have just become like exponentially more woke in loads of different ways. ⁓ and so obviously post 2020, when mega wokeness kind of exploded, then those departments were leading the charge on all of that and just doubled down even further. So definitely it's it's kind of followed in line with the general trajectory of society. But also the thing about these departments and these universities is that they're really at the cutting edge of this stuff. So these ideas don't just come out of the ether often they're being pushed by these universities. I don't want to boil it down so simplistically that it sounds like everything in society in that respect can be blamed on the universities, but they definitely play a massive role. So they're kind of just at the cutting edge of what people think about in society more broadly.
speaker-1: Well, i in the role they play is is critical and foundational because for example, and we're we're seeing this here in in Arizona where we broadcast from, these theories have long since crept into the teacher training programs, right? And the way to succeed in a teacher training program is to parrot these ideas and then to take them to the kids. So you're you're taking them from university down to K twel, and then they're being reinforced in in really an uninterrupted cycle. How do we break that cycle?
speaker-5: That's a good question. I mean, yeah, that's the kind of the whole point as well, is that this stuff seeps into wider society, and one of the main ways it does that is through the education system, not just for university students, but also for kids. Actually, in some respects, the kids one is even more sinister because they're so young. the way to break the cycle, I'm not quite sure exactly how to, but I have a feeling that if people were really aware of exactly how this stuff is operating in universities and just how much of a grift it is. Like the amount of funding that these people are getting to study complete rubbish and the amount of what's presented as evidence is actually just pure ideological output, which has no real reality in terms of its actual claims. It's just output with really bad unscientific methodology behind it. Yeah, then there would at least it would at least make a dent in making people understand it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I thought when I read your Substack there was the the analogy or or example you took from one of your classes where the teacher in an anthropology class was saying that Native Americans ⁓ literally flew through the treetops. Yeah. In in ⁓ I
speaker-5: I don't know if it was Native Americans. I can't remember what tribe it was, which it was so long ago. But basically it was some tribe somewhere other. ⁓ we basically it was my fur one of my yeah, my first year we had an anthropology seminar where the tea where the lecturer, who was a the very esteemed lecturer, was talking about this tribe's behavior and going into detail about things that they did and thought. But the way that they were presenting it was they've got this way of doing stuff like this in these departments. Like she it was in a in a deliberate thing that they don't say, ⁓ you know, it's maybe some of these anthropologists do, but this person and many others said, instead of saying things like, ⁓ they believe they're flying through the trees. Sure. And they she was saying like, and They do this and that, and then their soul leaves their body and floats through the treetops and they can see the world around them, or like, you know, things like that. That's how she would present it. So it wasn't being presented in this way, which is like, okay, well, obviously these people have these kind of funny beliefs, which we don't believe, but that's kind of what they believe. True. It was being discussed deliberately in this kind of slightly vague way, but which ultimately gave the impression that, well, if you read it without understanding it and you got through the jargon, you probably conclude that they actually were floating above themselves out of their bodies and understanding the world from above themselves because of these shamanistic rituals. So I even I was a young kid, I was always really like a rational
thinker, like a rationalist. I also just say things exactly as I see them. So I remember stopping in the seminar and also afterwards talking to her and saying, well, I don't really l understand why you're saying this in that way. Like you're not being clear here. And to the extent you are being clear, you're making it seem like they're actually doing magic, which obviously isn't true. And then her response is like very patronizing, kind of dismissive, which was essentially that I'm being closed minded and have no right to say that because in their world it's just as real. And so who's to say essentially they probably are flying through the trees because that's their experience of it. And they may have a better understanding of the reality of the world than we do in our Western, you know, West through our Western lens or whatever. Which I remember thinking, okay, that's that's nuts. But it's considered unbelievably legitimate, which is in my opinion it's not
speaker-1: No, and what is the incentive to take on that sort of fantasticism?
speaker-5: that it's all bound up in this kind of broader ideology. There is actually a lot of like just woo-woo and kind of like new world y new age kind of hippie ish thinking in some of it. But I think the broader point is there's kind of this belief system that everything western, everything to do with our civilization, everything to do with the existing structures of our society and so on is just obviously the starting point, is that they're all bad, and that anything which runs counter to that is probably more legitimate and has to be kind of like sacrilised. And so the native people who are much less civilized and have much less of an understanding in their world of, you know, the scientific method or things like that is taken as a kind of deep wisdom. And to subject those beliefs to any s scrutiny is considered kind of a Western imperialist outlook, which obviously is bad. That's kind of the underlying ideology. And obviously not everyone involved in those fields thinks exactly like that, but that's just how I would summarise their basic way of thinking.
speaker-1: You know, I I remember reading a quote ⁓ many years ago from a guy who'd been a Soviet general. and obviously to have any sort of position in in the Soviet Union you had to go through the party structure and go to the monthly meetings and do all those sorts of things. And he said he learned very quickly that there were two groups in that meetings. There was the people like him who they'd sit there, they'd mouth the slogans, they'd try not to fall asleep, and mostly they'd spend their time checking out the cute girls. ⁓ and then there's the true believers that were at the front of the room totally bought into this. Which of those are we dealing with in academia or is it both?
speaker-2: So
speaker-5: ⁓ I think it's both, basically. Yeah, I think it's just both. As in you can't what I have definitely noticed when I speak to these people is that they
are almost very, very often one of their defining character traits is a desire to have a particular viewpoint over and above a desire to actually understand the truth. And that's partly why they're able to make it in academia, because their ⁓ starting assumption, the guiding principle in their life is to essentially practice how to mirror elite thinking. And so they're doing that as successfully as they possibly can. And so when they try to write about stuff, they they don't think from first principles like what's actually happening here. They think, well, what do the authorities on this say is happening? And how do I make sure I demonstrate that I'm part of those authorities as well and I mimic the same ideas. And so it's just all the self-reinforcing thing. But then I also think that they kind of do believe this often because they really buy into the belief system. I think it's a combination of both.
speaker-2: Yeah.
speaker-1: In terms one of the things I always hoped for at least as a counterweight to this was that these theories obviously matriculate out of the social sciences. And I figured, okay, they're gonna run into the hard sciences and real scientists are gonna say no, that the people can't fly, right? ⁓ unless they're in an airplane. ⁓ but that isn't sort of happening. That that was happening. It seems to be retreating in the and and a lot of these kind of Just wacky ideas are now being invaded into the hard sciences space. Are you seeing or hearing any real pushback there? Like we are seeing some little examples of it. Like I think it was UCLA or ⁓ Stanford, I think recently just said, you know, a bunch of professors came out and said, Look, these kids can't even read. What are we doing?
speaker-5: Yeah, I think that part of the reason for that is that a lot of the people who are in the in the non social sciences type type of space, they still they don't necessarily think too politically, so it kind of isn't something they think about too much until it actually affects them personally. And they might not have the political framework to actually understand what's happening really. So they just kind of it just sounds really moral, you know, it just sounds really moral moral to say Well, we're just implementing this new policy that's in order to make things fairer and more equitable. So people think, ⁓ great, well, I'm clever, so I obviously support the most moral thing, which is that. But that's obviously they're just using language to reframe something that's actually nothing of the sort as something else. So I think that's part of the what's going on. But on the other hand, I also think that there are people who just reject this stuff, but they're they don't really speak out about it that much. That's why I've started this literally this week I've started asking people to get in touch with me and I've had loads of academics messaging me. As part of this broader project, just basically whistleblowing on what's going on and telling me
that they're really uncomfortable on what's going giving me loads of anecdotes about how their departments and their universities are getting swamped by this cultish belief system, and basically asking me, please, can you do something about it? Can you please bring attention to it? And it's got it's getting some media attention now, which is good. So yeah, people seem to be irritated by it. It's hard to tell how many, but definitely quite a few people that are willing to speak out.
speaker-1: Y you know, you you you alluded to the the sort of morals of the situation. I one of the things I came away from the whole Jason Arde situation with is I I felt bad for him at the end, right? Because this is a guy who when he was exposed, he was trapped, he had nowhere to go. Because the he was allowed to build up this life that didn't effectively exist, this you know, reputation that should never have existed. And
speaker-2: Okay.
speaker-1: It's like the system in its desperate attempt to seem moral to people who are viewed as outsiders by this ideology. It created a situation in which it effectively in in one sense committed a murder and and will be committing more if they cannot turn this around and start having honest conversations in academia again.
speaker-5: Yeah, that's true. I yeah, I think there was kind of the I think the focus on Jason Arde was just a gateway into a wider understanding of what's happening. And in in some respects the commentary on it kind of missed the point a bit because yeah, he was kind of an i I don't actually think he was like that unlucky, isn't it? He told a b well, he seemingly told a bunch of just complete lies and fabrications and also apparently plagiarized loads of stuff. I mean I don't know all the
speaker-1: The the one interview he had when someone pushed back on one of his most fantastical claims, I forget what the claim was, but the the interviewer pushed back and said, ⁓ come on, that d was that real? And you know, I mean it was deer in the headlights, you could see him. Well I d he said, I I just expected you to believe me.
speaker-5: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, because more and that's actually just a broader point because this whole ideology had already seeped into society so much and all the media outlets are so are always so desperate to suck up to people who they view as, you know, like almost like holy figures because they fall into this certain the correct type of DEI bracket, someone who has the exact right ideological worldview, is in the right ethnic minority group, says exactly what the party line is, then they basically just make them into these almost like heroic figures. Whereas if you're someone from the same ethnic minority group who says the opposite, then they basically hate you and don't have you on. It's like it's the most patronizing thing ever. So they basically did that with him and then turned him into this massive figure. There's a big article about the BBC's coverage. The BBC is like the biggest load of crap ever, but the BBC's coverage of him was literally endlessly positive and just free taxpayer or free license payer funded publicity for this guy. And then even when he was being criticized, their coverage made it seem like he was probably being really unfairly criticized. And the actual problem was Nathan Kofanas, who's the guy who was criticizing him. It's just a complete racket, the whole thing. and yeah, ultimately he got blown up into a massive figure. And then there was an a a huge amount of scrutiny on him personally, which in some respects was legitimate because he had been blown up so much by the same media to begin with. But then it kind of missed the point, I think, which is yeah, he's just one guy. But really, there are loads even even if he'd been a really good academic and he hadn't plagiarized anything, and he was legitimately good at that stuff, you're still being good at. talking rubbish. So I don't really think that side of it matters that much. It's kind of a side issue.
speaker-1: ⁓ 100%. Max Klinger, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate having you on the program. Folks, follow him on X at Max E2 Review. and on his Substack, MaxThinks.com. ⁓ maxTinks.substack.com. Definitely check that out. Max Klinger, thank you so much for joining us. Fascinating discussion. We'll look forward to having you back on in the future.
speaker-5: Alright, no worries, thanks having me.
speaker-1: Fantastic. Alright, folks, thank you so much for joining us on Breaking Battlegrounds today. For all the crew here, we really appreciate having you ⁓ be part of this program. If you haven't given us that five-star review on Google, on Yelp, on wherever you can find us, just look up Breaking Battlegrounds and give it five stars, because you'd love us. Come on. We'll see you next week.