you must have strong feelings about current events and politics
generally given your experience yet you remain silent on this
issue why to appeal to a larger audience or the soldier's mentality of not
criticizing the commander-in-chief is that why do i have strong feelings
on current events and politics uh sure i do but
they're more broad so i have very strong broad feelings
on current events and politics i am a patriotic person i believe
very strongly in individual freedoms of human beings i believe in having a very
strong military i believe in having a small government
so i have strong feelings about those things however
i don't have strong feelings about the nonsense and micro dramas that are on
the 24-hour news cycle that are just cons and social media just
constant things and we talked about this last
podcast things that don't matter so much of the current events
don't really matter in the big picture to me or even to the
country and you know i was uh on ben shapiro show and
you know he was i basically said look look like overall americans have sort of
the same goals and he said i don't know if i
believe that and i said well i
work with all kinds of companies with people all over the country
and the people that a guy like ben shapiro
hears from he's just he's just bombarded by the extremes on both sides 24 hours a
day i don't want to be in that position of
getting bombarded by these extremes 24 hours a day
i said ben you're right there are some people in the country that believe
the far left or the far right i said most people are concerned about
their life and doing a good job and you know building their business
or you know paying down their mortgage that's what they're concerned about and
so they're not like freaking out about the little
every little micro drama that gets unleashed into
the press and social media every single day
and so so why do i not join into that because i don't
want to join into that and also i don't want to make a podcast
i don't want to spend all my time making a podcast that's that's
out of date the day it comes out like i don't i don't want to invest my time in
that i don't want to and guess what there's
there's literally giant multi-billion dollar news media
outlets and guess what they do that's what they do all day
that's what they do all day they make a story about this thing and that thing
and this thing i can't react fast enough it's just dumb
so if we were to be talking about current
events then by the time the podcast comes out the
current event has been over some people are listening to this podcast and it's
it's it's 2022 right now right now
some someone is listening to this podcast right now and it's 2022.
no there's there's no topic of current events that we could talk about
or barely any that actually impact what's happening four years from now
people i meet people every day now i meet people that are that say hey oh
man i've been listening to podcasts i'm on
28. um that's that's two years ago right that's two years ago what was the
what was the current events two years ago they were
it's totally different than they are now yeah so
so there's that so that's why little current events thing as far as appealing
to a larger audience that part of the question
well if my goal was to appeal to a large larger audience then i think i actually
would talk about the trendy stories of the day
and put out little little clips of the sound bites of all this stuff and
instead of instead of doing what i do now which is to read a hundred year old
out of print books like that's a great way to build an audience
or let's talk about the rwandan genocide or let's talk about the holocaust so
let's talk about the rape and dan king or let's talk about the meli massacre
that ought to build a great audience so so the idea that oh i'm trying to build
a larger audience it's like no actually people that want to listen to
this want to listen to it i'm not trying to
i'm not trying to build an audience by manipulating what what i'm thinking
about no i'm actually i'm i'm talking about and i'm diving
into what i find important and what i
think i can learn from and i get more out of this podcast than
anybody i mean i know a lot of people say oh i've got a lot from your podcast
i get more out of it than anybody because i get to dive deep into this
stuff and really look at it so
no it's not the trying to appeal to a larger audience in fact if i want a lot
of larger audience i'd do exactly what
you're talking about as far as the soldier's mentality of not
criticizing the commander-in-chief i actually don't agree i don't agree
that that's a soldier's mentality and i don't believe that it should be a
soldier's mentality the soldier should question their
leadership and now should they do it tactfully
absolutely because i don't want to be surrounded by yes man that's that's
wrong also if you what am i trying
this is just a general leadership principle what have i said a thousand
times on this podcast i'm trying to build a relationship with the person
above me in the chain of command so when i was a in the military if i
wanted to have influence over my boss over my
commander-in-chief would i outwardly criticize them and make
make them think oh this guy just doesn't like me i'm going to take my first
chance to get rid of him or not promote him no i'm actually going to
play the game and i'm going to look and say okay boss
hey i see what you're doing here i want to support what you're doing but does
this make sense can we do it a different way
so i'm trying to build a relationship with my boss up the chain of command i'm
not trying to ostracize him by by making them look bad or by openly
criticizing my boss in in uh you know in the open
because what have i done is my boss going to listen to me no actually my
boss is going to listen to me at all so i don't want to be surrounded by yes
men but at the same time if someone's making
a bad decision if someone's doing something that's immoral or illegal i'll
call them out on it all day long now the other thing that happens here is
this is a new world and it's a and this is a binary world
of sound bytes that's what we've done we've created this bina
binary world of sound bites when most answers that you want to give
as a human being aren't one sentence or two sentence on
the far left or far right or far light or far dark like there's
going to be you have to explain things a little bit
more and but when you take these binary sound bites
everyone's immediately thrown into an extreme category
on the far left or the far right as and as soon and here's the bad part here's
the really bad part as soon as you get thrown into one of
those camps then ha the other camp stops listening
to you completely you know they stop listening to you
anything you say so you could you could
make a great point but if you're on the other side
doesn't matter no one's listening they don't want to hear it because you're on
the other side you're the enemy it's a binary world
you're either with me or against me and there's no in-between so that's kind of
what we've created and what i would rather do is have
people actually listen to what i say broadly and make their own choices
rather than me trying to force an opinion down their throat this is the
way it is this is the way it should be and by the way just like leadership you
can't force people you can't force an opinion down someone's throat it doesn't
work you can't sure it'll work for 30 seconds
it'll work for five minutes it'll work for five days in a leadership session
yeah you better do what i say my way is right eventually you that kind
of leadership does not work and it's the same thing with trying to
force an opinion down someone's front throat
if you listen to what i'm saying you can form your own opinion and i would rather
have you do that because that's going to be stronger than
some opinion that i tried to force down your throat which doesn't work by the
way so i would rather people listen to me
and not just sound bikes and see where i'm coming from holistically
and see where they can agree and disagree and see what feedback they give
me because by the way i could be wrong about something which i have no problem
with but i would rather do that i would
rather have that approach then join the pack whichever pack that
is join the pack on the street and bark loudly like the
rest of the dogs i have no interest in doing that so
there you go
agree dang bro
and it's funny man you're you're like one of the few
people who i mean i you know like that whole thing i mean to sum that up i mean
i've heard that before where someone would be like hey i'm you know i'm like
this one but it's so very it's so few people
that actually do that the way the way you do even in real life like
in real life like you you don't even when political stuff will come up
it's real obvious that you didn't jump into any net specific group
yeah so well this this really ties back to last week's podcast
of getting involved in things that don't matter
and there is there's just so much out there that doesn't matter
now where you have to be careful is that that there's so many things that don't
matter but what i am not saying that little things don't matter you see
what i'm saying there's a huge disparity between those two things
there's a lot of things that don't matter what i am not saying is that
little things don't matter because there are little
things that do matter and the classic example that we
brought up over and over and over again on this podcast it's like oh
the russian soldier's not shaving in chechnya and how that led to their
eventually okay not gonna shave now we're not gonna clean our weapons now
now we're not gonna stay awake on a watch now we're not gonna keep the
missions we're being told to do now we're getting beat there are little
things that matter but if i'm barking all day long about
things that don't matter then we have a problem we have a problem
now i'll tell you something else there's been some issues that have come up
lately there was one issue that i was going to
address on the podcast but and i still might address it because
it's a small problem that i see as being a more
significant problem and if it continues down the road but but
luckily at this point there's there's a whole pack of dogs
barking about it it wasn't like it wasn't like i noticed
this problem and no one else saw it it was like i noticed this problem
so did millions of other people and they all those dogs start barking okay so now
what am i gonna do bark with them yeah it's like okay now
if there comes a time where all of a sudden i realize there's one of these
small things that matter or big things that matter
that i don't see getting the traction that it needs
well then i will absolutely say hey this is what i think
about this situation generally there's so many people barking and
they're barking about the same thing they're barking about a lot of things
that don't matter they're barking about some things that matter
and right now unless i mean what do i say all the time the less
the less you speak the more people listen yeah so if i want to give my
my opinion on the daily news every hour on the hour
no one's listening to anything i've got to say and then it's a waste
it's a waste it's a waste of my time because there's more important there are
more important things when we can when we can dive into human
nature through the lens of war through the lens of leadership
through the war of atracity we can learn and teach people about the past so we
can prevent it from happening in the future
that to me is infinitely more impactful than barking about
some current event that's happening that's going to be gone
in a week it's it's amazing how f how fast stuff comes up on the radar
it's all over the headlines and in a week it's gone
in a week it's gone yeah so i'm just not gonna play that game
i have i i don't there's no point in doing it
that's a really good way to put it it's like these current events
most of the time seem to be shaped in a way to just
for dogs to bark about you know like that's what it is like here
and then then they bark and the next thing you know yeah okay bark about this
now the the sound bite thing is really
interesting too everything is a sound bite and it either
puts you in one camp or the other camp and the fact of the matter is you can't
put me in a camp you can't yeah because i got beliefs
that you don't understand on one side on the other side yeah you
know and so you can't talk to me about that kind of
thing you can't not that you can't talk you can't put me in a camp but the
instinct of the world right now is take that person and
put them in a camp i'm not going in the camp that's what's
happening if you want to figure out what i'm
thinking listen what i'm saying about listen to what i'm saying
in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours where i talk about
human nature right if you want to figure that out
and then you want to ask me a pointed question about something cool ask it
bring it if it's something that's gonna if it's if it's a bark
if you want me to bark about something i'm probably not gonna bark about it
so what throwing you in a camp all you'd have is a whole lot of unhappy campers
no you throw me in a camp if you put me in one camp
the other camp doesn't listen anymore yeah
and that and that means their minds are closed so they're not gonna
and is the fact the matter is there's there's good people in in both camps
yeah and and both people can be
can be can change and can accept new ideas
if their mind is open if their mind isn't open they're just stay in their
camp and everyone else i mean when you watch
the extremes of either camp right now it's it's like it's like really it's
it's bizarro world yeah it's kind of odd yeah so you you just
sit there and say okay what why am i going to play that game
yeah let's just become better people that understand people better and will
make better i'll make the place make the world better
can't disagree okay yeah the whole unhappy campers
those mean more making a joke i dig it um
yeah i know it was a good attempt at humor uh well actually no it wasn't
it was a failure but that's cool uh what was the
the other point you made uh sometimes it's better to just
just try you know and and oh they see whatever thing
yeah yeah yeah see what up now i know yeah now you know don't try that again
yeah no more jokes from echo learn from my
my mistakes anyway