Badlands Media - Badlands Story Hour Ep 158: Warfare (2025)

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Chris Paul and Burning Bright break down the 2025 film Warfare, a brutally realistic portrayal of modern combat reconstructed from the memories of the soldiers who lived it. Rather than glorifying battle, the film strips away the mythology of heroism and focuses on the chaos, confusion, and irreversible consequences of war on the men caught inside it. The conversation explores the film’s unique production style, the psychological toll of combat, and the uncomfortable moral questions that emerge when war is viewed from multiple perspectives. Along the way, Chris and Burning Bright connect the story to larger themes about narrative control, propaganda, and the information war shaping public perception of global conflicts. From the Iraq War to modern geopolitical tensions, the episode asks whether the stories societies tell about war reveal truth or simply reinforce the narratives people want to believe.

of the Badlands, explain those Badlands. That's a hell of a name. All right, everybody. Before we get started, we have a word from our pal, Jordan Saither, and his company, Conscious Strength. Maha yourself with supplements that don't suck from Conscious Strength. Founded by Badlands very own Jordan Sather in 2019, Conscious Strength products are made in America and won't break your bank. like other online brands. Their lineup includes collagen for strengthening joints and hair, electrolytes to get rid of those cramps, greens powder that tastes good and mixes easy,

shillogic gummies, methylin blue, zeolite, and more. Flip the finger to pharma, be your own doctor, and get supplements that you can trust from conscious strength. Go to badlandsmedia.tv slash strength to shop now. One more time,

badlandsmedia.com slash strength, and the link will be in the description below. I'm actually a fan of those electrolytes, and not because they cure my cramps, although they might do that if I had cramps, just because I appreciate being well-hydrated. Yeah, man. It's good stuff. Something wrong with that.

All right, everybody, good evening. Welcome to Badlands Story Hour. I'm Chris Paul. That is Burning Bright. And tonight we are discussing warfare, written by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, starring DeFaro Wunitai, Will Polter, Cosmo Jarvis, and a bunch of guys who I think are making one of the early appearances

in their acting careers. Really interesting movie, but I'll let you tee it off. Yeah, I had heard this was very good. I've had this actually on my hard drive for like a year since it came out. I just had not watched it. So I figured with the... the Iran war and war of stories going on. It's relevant.

I don't know how much we'll talk about that too much. This one, and I had a feeling this would be the case going in, so it wasn't like this blindsided me. Not a plot-heavy movie. It was even less plot-heavy than I thought it would be. I had heard that this was considered one of, if not the most realistic war movie ever made, arguably. Ray Mendoza,

who you mentioned is that for anybody who's not aware, Ray Mendoza is one of the soldiers, one of the seals in this scene. And every single aspect of this movie is true, reconstructed by the collective memories of the men who participated in that battle. But Ray Mendoza, I believe he's the Hispanic comms officer in the movie, the kid who plays him, played by Pharaoh Wunitai, as you said. So that's the real life guy. And again, not plot heavy, which is why I think a lot of what we'll talk about is, you know, war and some of the macro themes here.

But this might be one of the episodes where instead of just doing a five-minute courtesy, what do we think of the creation of this movie and the choices that were made, we could spend a lot of time on that. I figured I would like it. I figured I would be impressed by it from a, you know, craft perspective. But man, this one really, like, it's one of those movies that I liked it the whole time I was watching it. I was liking it more and more as I was watching it. And then I just have not stopped thinking about it. I watched it yesterday and just kind of really intense, obviously. There's a lot of craft things they do here.

One of the easiest examples is no music in this movie. movie aside from the opening scene. There is no score at all. It is all sound effects. And you mentioned the actors. I was actually familiar with a lot of these guys. It just happened to have seen various. I did realize after you said that, that they're kind of,

most of them are at the beginning of their careers. A lot of them are TV guys, and I happen to have seen a lot of the shows they're in. So like Will Polter is kind of making a big name for himself. Joseph, yeah, sorry, go ahead. He's the only one that I have seen though. Yeah, I know he's kind of broken out a bit more than some of the others, really impressed with him. But some of the others, Joseph Quinn, who's the guy who's screaming a lot, who gets his leg mangled. He was really made a name for himself in Stranger Things.

He was in season four of that and kind of stole that whole season. And then Cosmo Jarvis, who is the other guy who gets severely injured, who you think is dead for most of the movie. that's Cosmo Jarvis. He is this star of Shogun, which was produced by Hulu, which is incredible as a one-season TV series from the last couple of years. But anyway, the reason I wanted to say I was really impressed with the actors is because in a movie like this that has essentially no plot and very little dialogue, they seem like they really committed and just kind of,

kind of melted away into just being the guys. And because there's such brutal situations, like Will Polter in particular, he was having to portray not just a soldier in this situation, but the leader of the group and one who was extremely badly concussed while it's going on and like can't even talk correctly. And I was just blown away by how he was portraying that. Like it really is one of those movies where you are forgetting like, oh, I'm watching actors. And so if that's the opening take is that that's what Mendoza and Garland were going for, I heard one, I watched an interview with a Special Forces soldier talking about how much this movie affected him watching it.

And he said, you feel like you're in the unit. And like every 10 minutes, you just want to like reach in and be like, hey, grab this guy or do this thing. and it's not common that a war movie is going to do that, I don't think. Yeah, I am totally with you. I think that the production elements deserve some significant time. And we kind of had another one like that a few weeks ago when we did Lost in London, where it's, you know, the style of filmmaking itself is what is really kind of remarkable here. The story, I think, is an interesting one too.

and it is very much in line with the film that Alex Garland made the year before this, which we have also done Civil War. Kind of the point in both of them, one of the major takeaways for me at least, is that in some sense, no one wins. You know, they're over there ostensibly to watch some position in Iraq where terrorists are meeting, maybe trading weapons, plotting terrorist acts against the United States in their country, which is already kind of weird. Obviously, you want these guys to remain safe.

They're in someone else's house with the downstairs people there. The upstairs people, we kind of don't get what happened to them. Were they taken down? They were brought downstairs into the same room. They put together, right. Okay. And so they've had their house taken over. and now it's just a base of operations so that they can monitor activity in the streets and then

take action if something is required of them. So we're already in a very strange situation. And it's got to be strange for these guys, too. The fact that they kept being, and I'm saying broadly our soldiers throughout this period kept being put in these situations. We're not exactly sure why at this point. You know, the ultimate takeaway from what happened, what was depicted in this film was that something went wrong, all hell broke loose. The results are that people lost limbs. They had to evacuate the position. And then the people who already lived there retook their town destroyed as it was. It's like nobody wins. Yeah, and you know, this has always been a tricky, tricky theme to approach these kinds of things. And when I say that, like, I would have been more confident approaching this kind of topic 10 years ago in my liberal youth and somewhat naivety and just very strongly asserting positions about these things.

This is wrong. We shouldn't be there. You know, war bad, like all that stuff, right? Now, I still believe those things. But I think it's not just this movie, of course. It's like knowing people like Cancun and Alpha. Once you really know people, and I had an uncle, I have an uncle who served did two tours over there. So, of course, I would get anecdotes from him.

His son, who I grew up with, I've mentioned, was in military intelligence. He did a tour in 2017-18. So that was during the Trump administration, didn't face quite the same horror. but still not a fun sort of thing. But my uncle was in the Battle of Fallujah, which, you know, a lot of this stuff, like the real shit of what these guys are in. And I can understand now, having gotten a bit older,

why the, you know, the controlled opposition dynamic that you talk about so much, one of the words I've used that's kind of term I came up with a few years ago was the Patriot Pendulum. And it's basically a way I try to reconcile feeling the way I felt as an anti-war liberal for good reason, while now understanding completely why the way I would have carried myself at that time would be disgusting and heartbreaking to guys like this.

And it's not just as simple as like, hey, they were over there and they were terrorized. You understand that if you're not a total shithead. like you get that it's hard for those guys to hear things like that, given what they went through. But I think more so, I think my stance on it has matured to the point where nobody really wins, as you point out, but the war of stories refrain we talk about all the time really holds in these situations. And one of the notes I'd written down was the brilliance of these Hegelian nightmare situations that the military industrial complex all over the world is really good at getting young men into is that once they're in it, it's not just that it doesn't matter anymore, whether it was right or not to get there. It's that the reasons all occur

after the war has begun, right? Like, when you're those guys, you're not there for whatever reason they're arguing about on TV or on Twitter. Like, the story becomes, you and your team surviving, and it doesn't matter what the morality or lack thereof was of you being deployed there. It's like, they're shooting at us, and now there's a whole story, and then one of your friends gets blown up, and now you've got like real animus and actual revenge motivations. And then, you know, this is what's controversial, but I just say it anyway these days, because we're all mature enough. And credit to Alpha and CanCon, they're fully willing to have conversations like these, you know, having gotten enough distance from this stuff. But the Iraqis,

we don't know. You know, we see the Iraqis here that are the evil bad men throwing grenades into this building and like mercilessly attacking these Americans from all the rooftops and really just taking no prisoners. And it's like a horror movie, right? But one of the other notes I wrote down was devil's advocate wise, this is a horror movie on multiple levels for multiple perspectives. in the movie and one of the ones you mentioned there is imagine that family being woken up by a platoon of navy seals invading their home they even the way they say it i like this house we're going to take it they go in there they take this home by the end of it they completely destroyed that house uh on purpose and then for all we know the men in the town know that family and are not just waging a jihad and are not just waging a jihad Like, it's possible that they're waging some sort of ideological jihad, right? Maybe they're ISIS guys. Not at this time, but, you know, the precursors.

Or they're like, my fucking neighbor is in there. And there's a bunch of trained killers in there with my neighbors and we got to get them. And again, that's why, like, the best, the best example, or I should say, the most effective examples of the controlled opposition dynamic is when both sides of the controlled opposition really, really. really feel justified on a like mortal level in every single move they're making. And I think it's always been very easy to explain away like, man, why are these Iraqis fighting so hard? Like, is it just because they're flea-bitten savages who really care about the Quran and Allah? Like maybe, maybe that's what happened with ISIS a decade later after this happened. But maybe it's that these guys had their nation invaded by the most ruthless, cunning, and efficient killing force in human history.

We just happened to be seeing it from the perspective of that killing force. Yeah. So last week we did a few good men. And one of the issues at the heart of that was the value in responding to orders from the higher ups and the importance of having this code. and there were different interpretations about how those things should be taken. It is totally, I think it's the right thing to understand that the guys who go and volunteer to go serve and put themselves in these situations are overwhelmingly doing that out of good faith and patriotism and wanting to protect their friends and family at home, the interests of their nation, good motivations. And they go over there and they do their jobs with all those motivations driving them to do their jobs well. And they probably do most of them an excellent job and do everything that is asked from them. And many go well above and beyond all of that. But in a few good

men and kind of in the background of this film is the question of whether or not the higher are directing them to do good and right things that take responsibility for just how competent and faithful the men who are going to carry out these orders actually are, and that honors the risk they are taking in these situations because that risk is extraordinary and you can see it displayed here. I have no doubt that some version of this story happened very much like it's displayed on the screen. Now, that has to take in the fact that people's memories are imperfect. There are probably things about that day that maybe they don't want to talk about

and wouldn't make it on to the film. And sometimes those are the most important things and end up skewing what the story means. But otherwise, we have people who were put in a place to do a job. They're doing that job to the best of their ability. And the fact is, they've been put into a terrible situation. without the proper backup behind them. And a terrible situation where no one wins, again, is the result. And I'll just pause there and send me that.

And another point on the controlled opposition dynamic, I kind of mentioned with ISIS, for example, and I'm by no means an expert in the history of these things. But what we've absorbed, even like society writ large, generally understands that there was a basic let's use the central narrative and sort of how the collective American mindscape has absorbed and sort of marinated on the last 25 years of the U.S. and the Middle East. We've talked about as liberals at the time that this stuff first happened, the early 2000s, there was never any unification on what was going on. It wasn't like everybody agreed that we should be doing it. There was very real immediate pushback about these decisions, but there was also a huge portion of the country, maybe 50%, maybe 60%, who knows what it was, that was gung ho about this, including many of the soldiers, because of the stories we were told on the back of 9-11.

And whatever the truth is for the next 20 years, the even Normie accepted and military accepted, veteran accepted framing. has found a good degree of common ground. One of the kind of weird and interesting things about the current narrative with Iran, and we can talk all day about what's real and what's not, according to the central narrative, we have preemptively struck a sovereign nation for fear of what that nation was going to do to us based entirely on what people that we, myself included, like very much, are telling us on television that they were going to do.

You know, and at the time, in 2001, et cetera, conservatives liked the Bushes very much and they told them that this is what happened, et cetera. So you could apply that to Donald Trump. And again, I'm just using normie speak with this kind of narrative. But the reason I say it's interesting is because there is more bipartisan outrage against the process. of putting American troops on the ground, boots on the ground, as they would say in Iran, circa 2026, I would say then we saw in the aftermath of 9-11 by a large margin. Of course, we're seeing some idiots just breathlessly cheerlead for whatever it takes. And, you know, you want to tap them on the tin can a little bit and say like, whatever it takes,

just anything, right? Are we, you were here 25 years ago and in the interim, right? Like, isn't one of the big cells of the MAGA community that they are not the Republicans that they had been in 2004? Because just like we learned from the Obama communism era, they ostensibly learned from the era being depicted in this movie. I was told that that's what they learned. There are ways to have consistent first principles frameworks and still like Donald Trump, such as, I think he's disarming a war instead of arming one. But that's my opinion, and I could be wrong about that. But anyway, all that just to be said, the other example of the controlled opposition dynamic I wanted to mention is that there is also a fairly agreed upon sort of dialectic that whatever the good guys or bad guys were,

in that first decade, let's say, of involvement in the Middle East, the ISIS that grew out of that or was fomented out of that and assisted out of that was not there at the beginning. And was something that grew partly out of the events we're seeing depicted here. And I guess I'll flash to the very end of the movie, a really effective thing before they do the whole montage at the end. When the soldiers leave, they just kind of leave. And all the Iraqi soldiers just sort of mill around in the street a little bit. And I was overtaken with just a feeling of like, man, how many of the Iraqis died in that firefight and how many of their eight-year-old boys are the guys that in 10 years are the true,

true believer, death to all Americans that the machine arguably was. wanted to create in the first place. So you've got the soldiers, but you've also got these soldiers are inadvertently creating the next generation of insurgents that are going to kill their kids. Yeah, that's, that can't be ignored. And again, that last shot, I agree. That was kind of a powerful scene there. It was like, okay, well, you can take back all your buildings now, but whoops, they're destroyed. I mean, that was, that part of it in particular was crazy. And then that, you know, we talk about flipping this stuff around all the time.

And we've kind of hinted at it in some of our comments already tonight. But let's play it out a little further, right? So if we are looking at the situation here and we kind of reverse these sides, because, and I think that this stuff is important because we are having, all sorts of things flipped around. I mean, my grand theory on what is happening now in general is that we have had this abstraction layered on top of our reality. The map that we have been told represents this underlying base layer reality doesn't actually match the territory. And it's actually a reversal of that thing, a combination of definitions between the thing itself and the opposite of that thing,

get conflated so that the enemy can go whatever direction they want at any time and always have a truth claim and the claim toward consistency because it either matches the reality or it matches the map and they have both conflated right so I think that we're unwinding that and as we unwind from that if we want to know what the unwinding looks like well we have to start flipping things around and like reverting them right they're not inverted you have to take them back to that to that normal way. That's the big pattern that's happening now. So when you see a film like this, knowing that this is based on a real situation that occurred within our lifetimes, this is in the 2000s.

Yeah, 20 years ago. So as this stuff gets flipped around, who are the people with the military force outside occupying their homes, shooting at them if they try to defend their homes? I mean, there have been times in the last few years where, and I don't think that we are ultimately headed toward one of these times, but it's been something worth considering in the last few years, whether or not that's where America was going. And I think a lot of people in our audience probably felt like that in 2021 and 2022 when they were having, or even 2020, I would say too, when they were having their jobs canceled, when they were being coerced and forced into getting vaccines.

when they were being told that they were terrorists for questioning the results of an obviously stolen election. And then when you see the Biden administration pursuing Americans, it's like, well, wait a second, this, we understand that the neocon regime that started the Iraq war, that is globalism everywhere. That's their program. And they have no problem turning that program against us. In fact, that's their plan. So when is it our turn is the question? Well, and I would also say, again, this is based on the current run of narrative. And you and I have used similar terminology in framing with some of this stuff going back to 2025, like the nuclear bunker buster scenario, the Top Gun Maverick Trench Run, as you were talking about at the time.

one of the terms that I think we both used was disarmament, a narrative disarmament. One of the things I had wrote about at the time was I think we're watching a denuclearization narrative leading us to a re-nuclearization actual. That second part is like always just kind of humming along beneath the surface level narrative. Like they're talking about this week, there are like all these nuclear deals being done, energy deals while we are denuclearizing and getting rid of all the scary narrative of why nuclear bad so that we can have permission as, you know, little infantile society members to be like, I can turn light switch on now? Yes, nuclear. Nuclear good now because the Iranians are gone.

So there's a lot going on there and I agree with you about the unwinding. But one of the one of the strange things I've noted of late is just I've said I've never felt more like a quote unquote former liberal in the truth community than right now. And it's not even to be a shithead about it. It's to say that we're getting hit with a lot of like, don't you trust Trump for being critical of the story surrounding Iran. And whether or not that's the right thing. The irony right now is that I do trust him. And one of the things I've been writing about is, I think I might know what he's doing more than the people

who are trying to struggle session me for not trusting him enough. And what I mean by that is, I trust that Donald Trump is who he said he was and is not going to get us embroiled in a new forever war. And I have learned by observing him, I believe I've learned by observing him, that whenever it seems like he's doing exactly that thing that the machine that you're talking about wants him to do,

he is usually doing the opposite of that thing. He is disarming the bomb, right? Like he's cutting the wire. But it's a very tense and scary moment. If you've seen any movies about bomb cuttings, I'm sure they're very accurate, that he's cutting the blue wire and they were going to cut the red wire.

And it's like up until one of those wires is cut, that's a really tense narrative. And, you know, one of the things that kind of had this thought experiment recently of thinking, man, if there are real tests being sort of administered, administered to the collective mind and to segments of the collective mind, one of the ironies that you and I have discussed a little bit lately in private chats is, man, the liberals are, doesn't mean they're right or wrong with all these different things, but they are kind of operating from the same consistent framework

they were two weeks ago. And many conservatives are, they're like, we've talked about Julian rum making all these waves lately kind of has the same opinions two weeks ago that he does today and many people do not and yet when it turns out that trump does not commit us into a forever war i believe that a lot of the people that would be totally fine with it right now will say ah there it is the master at work uh but the people saying that right now are being called you know doomers and i think it's relevant to a movie like this because you can understand why people involved in these things directly get their heads totally scrambled, you know, sometimes literally, but definitely emotionally.

But the idea of having come through this whole era portrayed in this movie is that the next time somebody was going to spin one of these up, you'd actually, I think if you're Trump and the Patriots, if they are who we think they are, you would want the response that they have largely seen out of the Norby-Hybe mind of like, listen, Donnie, I fucking like, you but I better be right about you and so help you God if I'm not right about you right and you should be able to say that because again what a movie like this does a good job of better than any firsthand real true account that somebody tells you is you know how dare you tell people to openly question the appearance of the

beginning of a new American war in the Middle East, especially if you're somebody who has respect for American troops and lives. The idea that that is what we're struggle sessioning people about. I'm old enough to remember when I was being struggle sessioned about this when I was 15 by Republicans of saying, I don't want you or your kids to die over in the Middle East. And they're like, you're on American, right? So now we're in. anti-maga for saying like, listen, I don't think this is what Trump is doing. But it sounds like if you think it was what Trump is doing, you are totally on board. As long as it's not you that suffers the consequences, right? It'll be guys in the movie that they make in 2046 that you

can watch and say, ah, thank God we're not going to make that mistake again. Yeah, I mean, the other unfortunate part of that is that there probably are a lot of people who really would go serve and do so again, competently and faithfully, based on these stories. And that is a lingering danger of how powerful these stories are. I mean, Iraq was a war that people largely believe we were lied into, or at least a war fought on many, many false premises. You don't even know what the premises of the Iran thing are. Now, I think they're changing every day. They are changing every day. And we had 19 of them delivered to us at the beginning. And I was joking the other night. You know, you can choose any of those or you can actually just choose all of them and then give them up one by one as it

becomes clear that that was not the reason and that that goal is actually not being achieved. To just talk about the story elements of it this week and linked to what you were just saying regarding the nuclear elements. They are fighting to keep that alive. And we talk about narrative warfare. Well, what's the point of narrative warfare? Your narrative winning, the enemy narrative losing. How do we know if we're dealing with enemy narratives? How do we kill enemy narratives? If we can't tell whether or not it is an enemy narrative, should we just be believing stuff because it sounds good? You could actually defeat all narratives by not believing them. And so if you just don't believe any of it, you are sure not

to believe any enemy narratives. And failing to believe the good guy narratives has to no downside. Isn't it amazing? But check this out. So they're trying to restore some of their necessary war narratives. This is from CNN, Natasha Bertrand, who was the lady responsible for the 51 former intelligence officials say that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. That story in Politico, that was her. Fifty one intelligence officials. So here she is. CNN, capturing Iran's highly enriched uranium would require. require a large U.S. ground force, sources say. So they have this huge amount of enriched uranium.

And no, they're not developing a magical bomb, but they could want to develop a magical bomb at some point. And now they have the material all set so that they can put that magical bomb on Operation Warp speed and get that thing out there real fast, posing a desperate threat to all of Europe and Israel and us too or something. Okay. So that's the story we always get. Now, hop down here. The logistics and risk involved would be prohibitive. They know U.S. military airstrikes alone can't penetrate the Isfahan tunnels, primarily because the facility does not have ventilation shaft openings like some of Iran's no golden eye for you. Yeah. If you remember Donald Trump said that the ventilation shaft was key,

that's where the missile went right down. That's what blew the whole thing up. He said that they thought they were going to be able to use it for breathing, and it turns out that they just used it for bombing. And so this place doesn't have that. Therefore, no dice on attacking from the air. So to get this enriched uranium and halt that threat, we're going to need ground forces.

Now, when the ground forces don't actually get sent in if they don't, what happens to the story about the, the enriched uranium. Well, it's still there. We weren't ever able to get it. We couldn't get it out because we didn't send ground forces in. So the not having sent ground forces will be the proof that they still have enriched uranium, which we have no idea whether they have. And it can just keep going on like that forever. There doesn't actually have to be anything there because none of us require it there to be. It's amazing. I mean, I would wonder loud if this facility, though, is still vulnerable to the discombobulator because the discombobulator, it seems, is a weapon with many

applications, and I believe it can be deployed by ground troops or air troops or by no troops at all, and by all troops at once. So the discombobulator, you know, still is in play. I wouldn't dismiss it. And I also want to bring up to your point there, Donald Trump, and, you know, this is just one of his great truth to me. Sometimes it's the little ones that just get me. They get me in the right mood. If you want to share my screen here. So the reason I love this truth is because this really is one of those ones that I imagine other people who are very earnestly like paying attention to every Natasha Bertrand article as if it is the plot of the new very true and real story and the tension and his nuclear war going

to break out. They will read this a certain way. and be astounded that I read it in the complete opposite way. But the reason I want to lend a little bit of an argument to why I read it the way I read it is because to your point about the CNN narrative there, Donald Trump's truth here is literally responding to media reports. And this is why we always talk about our different ciphers that we apply to the war stories and to the Info War. They matter not because they mean we're necessarily right.

but because they demonstrate a consistent framework with which we approach the stories being told. So why do I dismiss the story of Iranians littering the Strait of Hormuz with minds? Because it did not come from Donald Trump. It is something Donald Trump is responding to. Now, if the media apparatus, the Bertrans of the world, the CNNs of the world, are the ones deploying the narrative, whatever that narrative, narrative is, do we think they are doing it to be honest and true and to give us all the information we want? Or are they trying to get us involved in the very war that Trump is trying

to get us out of? So in that statement, he says, if Iran has put out any mines in the Hormu Strait and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed immediately. If for any reason mines were placed and they are not removed forthwith, the military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before. If, on the other hand, they remove what may have been placed, it will be a giant step in the right direction. Additionally, speaking of discombobulators, we are using the same technology and missile capabilities deployed against drug traffickers to permanently eliminate any boat or ship attempting to mine the Hormuz straight. So Trump says here, just in case anybody got a little discombobulated by that message,

he says reports are out there that the Iranians are doing something. We, the U.S. military, who would know much more than the reporters, have no evidence that this is happening. But if it does happen, we'll be very upset. about it. But I don't think it will happen because we have technology that makes it impossible for it to happen. And as you just showed on the screen there, he followed that out by saying, the thing that we said did not happen, would not happen, and could not happen, did happen, but we already took care of it. So, you know, people think we're the crazy ones. And yet it looks like a lot of

people are a lot of media people are trying to take away all of Donald Trump's off ramps from kinetic war with Iran while Donald Trump is just responding to all of those and saying, we actually solved that. So we don't have to go to war with Iran. Yep. And, you know, again, what is very ironic, especially just in light of how a movie like this should hit you is we're the bad guys for saying we think Trump is engineering a master stroke to get us out of something like this happening again, while everybody in the media and unfortunately, a lot of people in Donald Trump's base are basically trying to pull him kicking and screaming into the story he's trying to disarm in my view. That is 100% accurate. And yes, and that job is being accomplished by gatekeepers in the truth community.

And, you know, people have not wanted to admit that this was a problem, but it is a problem. And now we are seeing the problem. If Donald Trump wasn't making this story so intentionally confusing and he wasn't presenting such difficult messaging for the mainstream to deal with, would there be any serious anti-war effort whatsoever? Would there be any of those voices out there? or would we all be funneled right back in to the mainstream neocon Fox News style narrative? Certainly, the people who have had the loudest voices in the Trump movement over the last

eight, nine, ten years are pushing that direction. So I'm with you on all of that. The fact that he released this particular post, like 10 minutes within a half an hour, within a half an hour after the post, you just read, which was itself already edited. In one of the versions, I think maybe the first version, he said that if the Iranians are helpful and don't mind the Strait of Hormuz or tell us and then remove the minds, well, then we'll have a nicer time with our negotiations. And that'll be looked really kindly upon.

And so all that has to happen is the thing that isn't happening doesn't happen. It's not happening. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, he is. is out there trying to disarm not only these enemy narratives as they're coming out in real time, but these, many of these, are long-term enemy narratives that can be used to push us to the brink of war with a number of countries anytime they want. And they've used it over and over and over and over again for decades, often in the same places in rotation. Why do they keep

choosing those places? Those places don't go along with the same. global regime agenda that everybody in MAGA has said they're fighting against for this entire time. It really is just baffling where we are right now. And, you know, truthfully, we operate in a different headspace about these things than most people do. Because we have chosen to operate in that headspace and actually take seriously the idea that this is informational war and narrative warfare because it is. The discombobulation seems to really be melting down some people who have not taken things that way. Yeah, you know, and I guess, and I've talked about this a lot lately, both on shows and privately, but I shouldn't say it's surprising to me, but I guess it is.

And one of the revelations is that despite most of the truth community being built on the idea and the recognition of that at the very least, the fact that we are in an information war, they call it the info war. Every single person in our audience calls it the info war. One of the markers I've often said is if you know the term info war and use it, then you're in it. You're probably engaged in it on some level, right, for better or worse. People know that, and yet it seems like a lot of them, not all of them, of course. There are certainly a lot of people in our audience who do see things discomboboted this way.

But there are a lot of people in the wider truth community, acute community, etc., who I think, I mean earnestly, I think what they thought fifth-gen warfare meant is there's an actual war that then stories are told about. But that's just actual war. That's always been war. There have always been stories told about war. That has always been the case. There's a difference between that. we are told by the military there is a difference between that and fifth generation warfare. And the difference is that fifth generation warfare is warfare taking place entirely within informational terrain.

That doesn't mean it doesn't then have effects on the real world, which is why you would do it, right? Like it's just amazing that these things even have to be explained. But the idea that the truth community, whether they came through Q or Trump, or whatever understands and was woken up by the fact that there was an informational war going on, don't then think that Donald Trump is fighting in one. They think like, well, yeah, all the stuff that we're being told is obviously happening as we're being told it. And then people are lying about stuff.

What are they lying about then? What are they lying about if they're not lying about any of the stuff you're reading? What do you guys think they're lying about? Like, they're probably the first thing that they would probably lie about, about is what's happening. Yeah. It's, it's just amazing. Like, I, and I guess that's a revelation to me of being like, I thought people knew by virtue of

calling themselves digital soldiers that what you are being told is not true. And, you know, the funny thing is, I always say, I've said, I've been consistent on this for four years, Donald Trump, let maybe lie is too strong a word. Donald Trump is also engaged in this narrative warfare. I believe his intentions are good. I believe he is a master at this. And this is, I've been calling it his Kobayashi Maru, and I do think he's Captain Kirk.

And I think he is navigating it with an impressive mix of expertise and good cheer and good nature while he's doing it. I guess it's just unfortunate that a lot of his crew doesn't know what he's doing. He's piloting them through this, and they're all just like, yeah, you know, set phasers to kill, Captain. And he's like, well, I'm not going to do that. Guys, remember, I'm steering us over there.

They wanted to steer you over there. But, man, I guess he's just going to, he's going to have to drag most of the crew kicking and screaming. And I'll hand it back to you, but I guess, you know, you and I have talked a lot about, like, over the years, is just the morality of siops and the lack thereof. And I guess you could argue this on either side of that moral divide in the current situation. But at the very least, what I would submit is the reaction from Donald Trump's own truth community base of what he is doing right now demonstrates at the very least that it is actually way more difficult to disentangle these siops if you are.

Donald Trump, then maybe we thought it was because I certainly thought like his info warrior base would respond differently to some of the things he's doing. Yeah, that part has been particularly shocking. We are still told by a certain set of people that all of this is just a project to wake up the normies. And I am not entirely convinced that the people who need waking up are, or that the, that the, The Normies are the people who, the people, there's levels to this and I'm not saying it well. But I think it's important to remember to make sure you wake yourself up before attempting to wake up the normies. That's great. Always.

Always a good thing to remember. One last little thing to add on Donald Trump and the Discombobulator and then we can get into a commercial is last night, he was, they said to him, sir, you're telling us that the war. is very complete and Pete Hegseth says that this is just the beginning. Which one is it? And Trump's like, well, you know, I'd really say it's both. Amazing. It's amazing. Yeah.

And people are like, yes, I trust you. It's both. And again, the irony is I do trust him, but I think I'm taking him. You know the funny thing is, Chris, for people that are calling a lot of this stuff fake, I am taking Donald Trump literally when he is also calling it fake and all the people saying it's real are like, surely he didn't mean that. He was like he might have just meant that it's not happening. Just like he might have meant there are no Iranian minds in the Strait of Hormuz. But if there are, we're going to get them out of there real quick.

And so what is the basis that on which they're saying Donald Trump is just joking about that? Well, Trump is saying the same thing that Fox News is saying, and because Fox News is saying, saying it's true. So then when Trump says it, it's like, well, it's, I mean, it's a double true. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's pause for a second for a word from Burning Bright. Legend says on St. Patrick's Day, a beard without oil is just a chin with ambition. But a beard with soft disclosure beard oil, that's true treasure. Spiced Vanilla, naked, smooth as a lepricon's getaway plan.

Soft enough to impress your barber, bold enough to confuse a baby goat. And this bore bristlebrush tames your beard like it holds the crown coin. Every bottle is American made, which means when you buy soft disclosure, you're supporting six American small businesses. That's not luck. That's capitalism with cheekbones. And while you're at it, try our mint-green deodorant, because even legends need fresh pits. soft disclosure go for gold visit soft disclosure dot com and use promo code tiny bright of 15% off he seems to not been evaluated by the fda promo code cannot apply to that is back when i was happy in the old country hold out we have uh we have one more it's finally here our second annual

mega sale this sale only comes around once a year so take advantage of the best offers ever while you can for example save 50% on our geese dream bedsheets as low as 2998. And for the first time ever on TV, My Pillo mattresses and My Pillo Mattress Stoppers as low as 9998. And you save 50% on our Luxpeer six-piece tall sets. Regular 6998, now only 3998.

And our best selling standard, My Pillows, regular 4998, on sale for 1798. Way not it. Mega sale, only 1498. So go to mypillow.com or call the number on your screen. Use this promo code to take advantage of our second annual mega sale. But wait, there's more. To make the mega sale even more special when you order right now,

your order's going to ship absolutely free. Oh, right. I have most of the things in that promo. I can vouch for MyPillow mattresses and toppers. Well, that is great to hear. I can as well. I have had them and have them. And I don't have a topper now because I got a different bed and I don't need it.

But the topper was very good while it lasted. Also, guys, we have GART coming up in just a couple weeks. And before that, we always lead into the Gart with the live, the exclusive live streams for ticket holders and for virtual pass holders. And the first one of those is going to be in a couple of days on Thursday afternoon at 2 p.m. Eastern. We're doing the first exclusive live stream for Gart Nashville and in-person and virtual ticket holders are able to join that. You can get your in-person and virtual tickets by going to badlandsmedia.tv.tv slash events. I think I have that correct yes i do all right and there is a special early bird price on virtual tickets for

40 or sorry it's uh i think it's 30 bucks right now and then the regular price kicks in at 40 bucks starting the 15th badlands media dot tv slash events okay cool so we made our way yeah through that that was its own straight of hor moose yeah holding mine straight of hormoos disarmed and armed the same time. I wanted to hit something here. That's a little fun on a lighter note in this movie that I actually thought was brilliant. I wish I didn't know about this before watching the movie because I would have liked to know what my reaction would have been. But the cold open of the movie, I already had seen it on YouTube months in advance, is the Eric Pride's Call on Me video. Now, if you are a Were a man or a boy of a certain age at this time in 2006, that movie, I mean, that music video was on loop among the guys that I knew.

The guys we were hanging out. We were doing high school parties. And that video was just on loop for an entire summer. And I've read a lot of comments from soldiers after watching this movie that they could not believe how it opened. because when they were deployed, this video was on loop among all them. Even in 2006, it wasn't like the internet was that ubiquitous among like everybody yet. But over there, they would watch what they could and that video was being shared and they were having all these dance parties in the barracks and stuff. But I thought besides it being funny and it sort of does that, it almost does the opposite of the saving private Ryan, right?

where the cold open of saving Private Ryan is famous in cinematic history for not only being very well done, but for being extremely jarring, violent, and sobering. And then you get some sort of breathing room for a little while after that like 20 minute opening sequence from Spielberg. Warfare basically does the opposite. It gives you like a 10, maybe 20 minute, I guess, after this, cold open of these kids watching a video with hot chicks and dancing. And it's such a great example of good writing. I don't know if this was Alex Carlin's idea or not, but he's a great writer. I imagine maybe it was. But it shows you everything you need to know about the guys. You don't need all the scenes we're used to in war movies of, well, these two have tension with each other.

And these two are friends who grew up on the south shore of Boston. And these two, like, this guy's going to save this guy by the end of the movie because they need to, like, have catharsis with their rivalry. And it's like, they're just guys. They're just guys. They're kids. They're guys and their kids. And one of the things I like about that scene having now seen that scene before the movie and then seen it again, during the movie is uh once you watch the movie you kind of know who the leaders are uh will

polter and a couple of the other guys that are clearly commanding officers and at the beginning of that scene they're sort of looking at each other like is this okay and uh then they all start joining in and having fun and everything and there's just a lot of salty to that like it's this fun stupid scene but i think it it again it eases you in and then the tension builds and you basically get a beach scene from Savick Private Ryan for an hour and a half, which is unrelenting and brutal. So it does that, which is effective. But I also think it does a great job of juxtaposing what a lot of other writers would be like, how do I really craft these characters to really portray the innocence of youth and how it's being lost over here and what these boys have been sent into?

Show them dancing to an Eric Pride's video and having probably the one moment of happiness that they had had leading up to that for months and then certainly following that when their lives are irrevocably changed and some of them ended after that in absolutely brutal fashion. So I just thought it was a jarring in the best way kind of scene and totally was not expecting it, you know, at first. Yeah, well, that that transitioned right into the scene of them out in the streets at night, figuring out where they were to go and then taking control of that house. And so, it immediately got pretty serious. But even on the walk over, one of the, one of the guys is kind of goofing around and laughing

his ass off. And that's good. They're kind of light mood. Some of that signals that maybe they were a little nervous about what they were doing and just trying to, trying to break that. In terms of the filmmaking stuff, I thought it was so interesting that there's not like, there's no, there's many heroic acts in the movie. But there's not like a singular hero.

There's not a major hero. moment where one guy, you know that guy's the guy that saved everyone. I think there was a scene where I think it was Ray actually who pulls the soldier with, I think that's Elliot, pulls him back inside, inside the house from the street. His legs are practically blown off. They kind of communicate how terribly painful that is for all these guys. I mean, that stuff was absolutely brutal. Joseph Quinn was brutal with that stuff too in a good way.

Yeah, that was the closest thing. I think to like a hero moment in the film. There's no backstory on any of the guys. You can kind of guess some of it based on their rank, based on some of their attitude. You know, they had the one character who kind of you could tell he was like a little bit more scared than the other guys.

He was more hesitant to do things. So there wasn't any major character building, no backstory and no hero moment. There's just like a lot of parts of films, especially war films that we come to expect, just weren't in this at all. Yeah. And that's a great point because it's one of the things I was so impressed by, not just how it was, you know, constructed. And Ray Mendoza, as we said at the beginning, I was watching some stuff on this.

and you can see in that little montage at the end. I mean, he was literally walking the actors through like every step. I don't believe that Ray Mendoza was going to be credited or planned to be a director on this movie and that they ended up making it essentially a co-directed movie because he was so instrumental in literally every move that the actors were making, how they were moving, what they were doing, asking him what the different guys were saying or thinking or feeling during these situations. But one of the reasons I I the leadership or the lack of obvious hero structure and and leadership dynamics that were going on is as the situation kind of develops, even if you're not a military guy, which obviously we are not, you can start to see. Okay, Will Poulter. I didn't know what the very beginning of the movie was, you know, a commander. But you can start to see there's a lot of guys looking at him with a lot of guys looking at him with a lot of. lot of stuff. And that's why it was such like a loss or a discombobulator in a real way when he was

all effed up from the grenade having gone off. Even that was so well done because we've seen, how many grenades that we've seen go off in movies and it's either like blows everybody up in a big fireball or even the ones that are realistic and they're concussive because grenades do not have fireballs. That's what everyone in the military will tell you. You know, you'll you'll get You know, we've even seen scenes in movies where you get the guys have the hearing that's gone and you get the ringing in the ears. Like there are a lot of realistic war movies that do that. But this one was realistic and that it just keeps it going. Because guys are like, yeah, that's not a one minute cinematic vignette. That's like a grenade just went off. And that's how you are now for the rest of the day, maybe forever. What I read about is the guy. Cosmo Jarvis plays, Elliot Miller there, who was dragged in and his feet were all messed up. He lost the ability to speak after this. So you see him in the wheelchair afterwards. He's not only wheelchair bound after this, but he can't speak anymore. And it's because that, you know, that

concussive blast that went off. So Will Polter plays that. And I thought what was also interesting about it from a leadership perspective is you can imagine that even if these guys during training, and these are seals, by the way, so they're not just like basic grunts. They're high trained guys, their specialists, basically. Maybe they, maybe in their training modules, it would have been a little more structured. Maybe when that thing happens in a training module, this specific guy is the one who gives all the commands and everybody follows him and this is the second in command and the third in command and the fourth in command.

And I think what was realistic about this movie is that they don't devolve into chaos. They're very well-oiled. Like they don't lose their shit. But you can tell that nothing is really planned that much. Like even the leader, even Will Poulter, he's giving commands, but he clearly doesn't know exactly what to do as the situation is unfolding, which is realistic. Because it's like, man, the second I order one of these guys out of that door, like they might die. And sure enough, he does order a bunch of them out the door. and one of them blows up instantly and two of them are forever changed, including maybe himself.

So it just was, I think, a refreshing and realistic take there. And one more thing on the chain of command, a little detail that I made sure I looked up afterwards to see if I was understanding it correctly is that the guys ask for air support when the second unit comes in. They had been asking for air support. They're denied it because of the IED threat, I guess, where they don't want to send in, or sorry, they asked for the tanks to come back in to extract them. And the chain of command is delaying because the first time they tried that, they got hit, right?

So all Will Poulter is trying to do is get his guys out of there. And the only way he's getting them out of there is through one of those tanks. So when the second unit comes in, the second unit commander agrees to have his communications officer impersonate. a guy from Central Command, which is why they get the other tank there. And it's like a quick moment, but they all know each other's voices because they've all been communicating

and asking air support. So Will Polter says, like, we need to get out of here. And there's a good moment. The kid's name is Charles Melton, Jake, who kind of comes to rescue them. I thought he was really good, had a really good presence in this. But when he kind of assumes command because Polter is so messed up,

one of the decisions that you can tell he struggles with for a moment is he clearly breaks protocol and or military law and does that because he's like, well, I'm just trying to get these guys out of here. And maybe you get the impression he would have refused that if he wasn't assaulted with just the pure scenes of humanity and misery that he walks into there. And he's like, what am I going to say no to these guys? So there's a lot of great stuff here. It's just it's all so fast and chaotic. but I think this would be the type of movie that would probably reward rewatches, even though it's pretty brutal to watch. Yeah, you mentioned when they were sent out the door.

I thought that was an interesting moment with the way that they were treating the Iraqi soldiers that were kind of part of the squad. It was very clear that those guys were being sent out first and in the smoke, of course. And they actually held back the American soldiers while. the Iraqis went out there, waited to hear if they were shot at, and when they were not shot at, they sent everybody else out. And I guess they just kind of had them all lined up for the shot or the IED where the Bradley was stationed and hit them all at once, which was, I guess, very tactically strong response from the enemy in that situation. But I just I couldn't imagine being a person who is fighting in his homeland against a foreign invader from their perspective and then see people on the side of the foreign invader or to join that foreign invader. And who are you joining the foreign invader against?

Well, your own countrymen. And that is what civil war would look like. If it came here, we talked about that a bunch when we covered Garland's Civil War film, but there is a global entity occupying the federal city in Washington, D.C. That global entity has support all around the world, cartels, UN peacekeeping missions, whatever it's been over decades, intelligence units, et cetera, that global force could be brought here. They would then recruit people from America to be on their side. and some Americans would join them.

And that's kind of the history of how these events always go. Well, what's interesting, too, on that point in this movie is, you know, they're not naming al-Qaeda or the Taliban here. Well, I guess they are the Taliban. They could be. But it's just the catch-all term insurgents, Iraqi insurgents. Now, how can one be an insurgent in one's country? is that were the Americans insurgents against the British crown? The British crown said that they were, as a matter of fact.

So that might give you an indication there. But speaking of earlier, you were talking about kind of the unwinding and the disentangling that's going on. And certainly one of the biggies that's very relevant to this movie is the Kabul withdrawal. And, man, it is astounding to me, too. speaking of just where people are at in the truth community, but a lot of people I know and did respect at that time who have done entire shows and written papers about how the Kabul withdrawal was a consummation of the Doha agreement and an unwinding of the damages done by the Americans and an agreement between Donald Trump, the consummation of an agreement between Donald Trump

and the Taliban, essentially a maya culpah of like, listen, we invaded your country a little bit for 20 years. Sorry, I didn't mean for the sound to go. Killed countless members of your country, et cetera, insurgents, branded your country terrorists and traders. But not only was it all very real and as portrayed in the media at the time, but a lot of us, certainly, believe that part of why it was done in this way is that given the narrative and the actual that movies like warfare portray, you can understand why Donald Trump and the Taliban would participate in a mass siopping of both the Iraqis, and the Afghans in this case, and the Americans, because maybe Donald Trump can't hold the press conference.

and say, listen, forget all that. We're going to arm the Taliban so that they can kill the bad guys in the Middle East. And we're going to give them their country back, by the way. You can understand why some of the most red-blooded Trump MAGA guys in the world would go absolutely apoplectic if he had a press conference like that. And maybe on the Taliban side, you could understand why they would feel that way but to your point about the interpreters and the uh the iraqis and the afghans well the afghan

military that we put in charge uh not well liked by the people of afghanistan not well liked by the taliban and if you want to look up some videos of american soldiers who were stationed with them as peacekeeping forces turns out not well liked by the americans either because they were traitors to their countrymen, tyrants, and in many cases, sick bastards. And these are not like conspiracy theories. This is like, you can watch Marines talking about how they caught Afghan soldiers raping Afghan children because they were just in charge of the towns now. And so a lot of us believe that when the Taliban, by the way, who were blown up at the gate where we're told the American Marines were blown up. It was Taliban that were guarding those Marines. So, you know, again, whatever you can

believe or not out of there. But you can just see why that's such a narrative and psychological bomb to disarm of all the damage and pain that has been caused to the Americans and by the Americans and why people are just not smart enough or plugged in enough or wise enough to say like, yeah, we spent 20 years killing each other, but in order to stop, at some point, somebody has to stop. And it just so happens that instead of Trump saying that and talking to everybody like their adults, he has to say we accidentally, Joe Biden, our boy blue, left behind $80 billion of military equipment that the Taliban then used to systematically hunt down the remnants of ISIS on our behalf. Yeah.

But, you know, otherwise. It would be great if he could just tell everybody straight up. And, you know, I'm of the mind that maybe we should go ahead and try that at some point, you know, because that hasn't really been happening. And it hasn't been happening from anyone aside from Trump, which makes it more difficult. It's not always, Trump's not always telling us the straight and direct truth. I think that Trump's biggest supporters can understand that that is still the case. I wish that we could just be told the truth. Regardless of what we are told from the top down,

it's still our responsibility to tell the truth. It's not our responsibility to repeat the false things we're being told from the top down. If they have a reason for saying something deceptive or not quite true or injecting disinformation or chaos into the discussion, they can worry about that stuff. It is not then our responsibility to repeat those lies or those falsehoods or whatever you'd like to call them to our friends and loved ones, to convince them that the world actually looks the way we know it doesn't just because somebody else is saying that.

Why in the world would we take that upon ourselves? Why would we think that a president who says he's returning power back to the people would want us to do that. Why would we think that a plan that encourages us to lie to our friends and loved ones is a good plan? What is it we're trying to preserve in the first place? Well, man, that's a great point.

And to the second part, I would say that this is why I still say that for me, the effect of the cue drops on me was the opposite of that. And I always took it this way. It doesn't mean it was the intent, right? But to your point, there's a, you know,

refrained throughout the drops that civilian military alliance or mill civilian alliance right in the context of information warfare well to everything you just said what is the logical reason why that would be the case is it so the military and the civilians could do the same thing they cannot do the same thing by definition they cannot do the same thing legally they can't do the same thing which the drops specifically say, by the way, they say we literally cannot violate national security laws, which is why we're doing this and why we can't do other things, which to me, the way I took that was you, you who found this, you need to do the thing that we can't do. And instead, it seems like, again, this is my interpretation, but it seems like the people who felt that they were deputized,

by the plan, believe that even if you were, that means just becoming one of the military guys when it tells you, you're the civilian part, and we need you to do something different. And like you said, why would you think that the doing something different is pretending to know what they are doing and trying to mimic the thing they're doing that we don't know? instead of perhaps telling the truth. Like the we are the news thing. It's like, no, maybe that just means telling the truth and moving forward telling the truth. And yeah, to think, you know, it's possible.

And this is, I guess, a white pill or a black pill depending on who you are. For me, it would be a white pill and probably for you. To your point about I wish we could just tell people or they could just tell people. You know, it's also possible that all the different game theorizing that has probably gone on with this information warfare, it's possible that Donald Trump and the Patriots are looking out at the mindscape in a similar manner to that we are right now and going, okay, boys, we tried it A, we tried B, we tried C, maybe there is a little bit more Band-Aid ripage than we thought needs to occur, or maybe the way you would frame this is get that hose primed and ready because, you know, they probably, or I shouldn't say probably, They might not have thought things were going to go this way when it came to mass psychology.

And, you know, I'd like to think that the people saying the truth as we know it are not the ones interfering with the plan. Maybe the only ones carrying it out, which is the height of irony. If the truth was interfering with the plan, it would be a bad plan. Okay. And again, this is a plan where we are told nothing can stop what is coming. and then we still don't take it upon ourselves to tell the truth. Instead, we make excuses for why a certain class of people is allowed to lie until we can retake political power through fake elections to lord it over the people that we are worried

if that side of the uniparty wins fake elections, then the whole country is going to fall apart. It's a uniparty supporting any part of it. of it is the same thing. Oh, man, it is, it's absolutely crazy that we are, that we are in this place. If the purpose of all of this was to teach the American people how to interact with the sources of information as they come in from that top down centralized authority, the, the understanding that everybody must reach is, oh, hey, that's fake. Oh, hey, that's fake. Oh, hey, that's fake. They're lying to me again. Look at how they're lying to me. I can see the entire system of how they're lying to me. I know how their lies interact. I know what story they're trying to tell and how to

respond when that lie is being told. That would be the point of it so that we could not then be overcome by information war and narrative warfare over and over and over again for the next 250 years. And the people making it impossible to do that are the ones who call themselves truthers. It is mind-blowing that we have come all the way back around. I used to think that horseshoe theory of stuff was ridiculous. And now it's like, oh, yeah, of course. These guys, these truthers are obviously statists engaging in commie struggle sessions. Man, and one more point on that would be I wrote the article about a month ago,

the cult of Morpheus that you named. And the premise of that, I really wanted it to be an appeal to cue people in particular. particular because I still consider myself one. I'm just kind of a jaded one in certain ways. But, you know, the idea is that so many people in the info war, and especially in that section of the Info War, kind of fancy themselves neos, right? Or Neo would be an archetype for them. And they fancy Q and or Donald Trump, maybe in similar terms, as Morpheus, one who showed you the pill, who showed you the door and showed you the truth. And I would agree with that. Except, I don't know if they watched the Matrix, because in the Matrix, both Neo realizes

and Morpheus knows from the beginning, then in order for Neo to awaken, he must literally disobey Morpheus and awaken on his own. And not only does Neo awaken when he disobeys Morpheus, but the irony and the beauty of that film is that his act of disobedience is, to rescue Morpheus from the matrix. And I sometimes, and what does Morpheus say? He's beginning to believe. What is he doing? He's beginning to believe. And, you know, I like to sit and think like Donald Trump right now and he's looking out over the mindscape. Is he being kept in the matrix by the people he is trying to awaken? When the people he is trying to awaken could be the ones responsible or with the power to help pull him out of it.

Like Trump needs you to come back for him, guys. The agents have him. You have trapped Donald Trump in the Matrix, and he is asking for you to send an Apache helicopter and stage an awesome action scene and get him out of there. Instead, they're like, look, they're going to rebuild the Matrix in Trump's image. Just like we all hope. Let's just wop, eat popcorn while they build it. All right, everybody. We have to wrap things up there.

Please go ahead and hit that thumbs up if you are watching or listening on Rumble. Theoretically, that it helps us. DefCon Zero is coming up next on Badlands Media. So please stay tuned for that. And the movie for next week, I have been once again attempting to write the informational time travel chapter of the book I'm attempting to write. So I've been thinking about time travel a lot lately. and I was deciding which time travel movie to go to next.

And I had to choose the classic, Back to the Future from 1985 starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Leah Thompson. So, yeah, that'll be fun. Thank you all so much for watching. We will be back. We do have a rant from Polly, Matt. Oh, we do. Oh, that's right. Yes.

Sorry, Polly. I wish I didn't have to work in five hours. I'll catch the rest of the show then. Thank you, Jensen. Thank you, Polly. That's going to be an early morning. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching.

We will see you next week for Back to the Future. Good night. Thank you so much for joining us. And don't forget to hit the thumbs up on this video. And a special thank you to all of our advertising partners. Please remember to shift your dollars to support those businesses that support Badlands Media.