Badlands Media - The Narrative Ep. 61: Sovereign Prime

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Burning Bright welcomes Jonathan Drake back to The Narrative for a philosophical deep dive into power, leadership, and the evolving role of Donald Trump in his second term. Framed around the idea of ���Sovereign Prime,” the conversation explores whether Trump is redefining presidential authority or exposing the deeper mechanics of how power actually flows in the American system. Burning and Drake examine media narratives, the concept of collective mandate, and the idea that the government “machine” ultimately draws its power from the people it governs. Along the way they unpack the difference between perceived authority and real authority, debate how Trump challenges traditional constitutional norms, and explore the possibility that the most lasting shift may be psychological rather than political. The episode blends humor, philosophy, and narrative analysis in classic Narrative fashion as the hosts ask a deceptively simple question: where does power really come from?

Let the badlands, explain those badlands. That's a hell of a name. We were sleeping. I've been sleeping. I've been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face. There is a wound that won't hear at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything we want us. We let it grow. Now it's here.

I wish you good fortune in the wars to come. Now it ends. What's up, guys? Welcome to the narrative, episode 61, named this one Sovereign Prime. Went back and forth on a few names in my head. Some of them were pretty convoluted. Ended up with this one. And I think it's the best distillation of what I think we were going to talk about at one point in time. But as always, with the narrative, we'll see if we end up talking about anything that we originally laid out. I think we actually will on this one. But before I bring my guest on, I'm going to spurge out just a little bit.

So if he needs to pee or anything like that, he can do so. And I'm going to thank our sponsors and all that kind of stuff. But a couple little items. I want to cross off the list. This was inspired by Mrs. Bright. Some of you may know her as real Mrs. Bright. I am preemptively calling on

the Badlands audience to join us in a timeline revolt in 2026. Originally in my head I was joking about this but I think it's low risk and high reward and by doing this we can actually test some of our hypotheses

about Donald Trump, Patriot plans, you know, how much power, how much power projection we as sovereign Americans, would be sovereign Americans, actually have in the War of Stories. So what I mean by the timeline revolt is, obviously we lost an hour tonight, right? I'm okay with it because in New England we gain a few precious hours of fog-laden sun. so I'll allow that any day of the week I'll make that trade but I don't want to go back I've decided this time that when the fall hits I don't want to go back it's gay it doesn't make any sense it makes everybody depressed throughout the winter everybody's like man just wait until the first week of March and then you know you'll get that sunlight back and

you'll you'll want to kill yourself just a little bit less when that comes around And, you know, what's funny is in the summer, like in July, I don't think you're sitting around a summer campfire or having some smores on the beach. And you're like, you know, I'm really looking forward to November, whatever the fuck. When we have some of the few precious minutes of daylight stripped from us so that imaginary farmers from 1682 can yield a better cross. I don't think any of us are going to say that in July. So what I propose is that you as a bad land, if you do not do this, I will no longer consider you a bad lander. I will shun you, bully you perhaps in ways both direct and indirect, consider you not one of my friends. I think that all we need to do is act as though the clocks are not turning back.

and that when anybody in Normieville just acts like, oh, yeah, daylight savings, that whole thing is happening in November, just act completely incredulous. Treat them as if you have never heard of something more ridiculous and then force them into a position where they have to defend that stance with a mix of logos and first principles and see if any of them can without appealing to authority, which is actually related to the topics of tonight's show. The only other thing I wanted to Spurge about, which is not really, it leads us into what we're going to discuss tonight, but it's not really about that. It is a victory lap, and I don't really care that it is. A couple little tweets for my preview of Wednesday night.

When is regime change, not regime change? Interesting rhetorical question there, burning. bright? How about this one from, what was this, January 14th, Maduro's entire government remains in place. Maduro's second in command is currently in charge. Trump says this is good enough for him and looks forward to a spectacular partnership because he executed a fake regime change op to derail the real one. If you know, you know. In a piece on January 11th, I said the following. First Venezuela, next, Iran. Another hotbed of regime ops that is currently in the midst of its own color revolution, many even in this otherwise discerning audience, have fallen for. Is Trump going to spirit away Khomeini only to leave the rest of his ruling party in

control while rug-pulling the global regime's planned version of the change event? weird kind of rhetorical question to ask there back in January about Venezuela, like thinking somehow that would have something to do with Iran seven weeks later. Totally crazy thing to suggest, I suppose. And then, oh, what's that tonight? Iran picks Kamani's son, also known as Kamani as Khamini as the next supreme leader. of Iran. Wow. So it sort of seems like the people that for the last seven days, just as was the case in the first seven days of January at Badlands Media, there's like three or four of us, that accurately predicted every single aspect of what was going on in advance, while saying that we were not going to actually be getting into a new war, we're right. Again.

And that all of the people calling us doomers for saying we were not going to get into a new war because we actually didn't think we were corporate bombing Iran, but that we might be pretending to affect a regime change in order to circumvent the globalist planned regime change were right again. And we'll see. I mean, maybe Little Kameney, as I've been calling him in private chats, is just a character for Sunday and Monday.

And then Trump will bomb him too on Tuesday. But either way, my baseline prediction of the very real and definitely not at all fake, because that would hurt people's feelings, who spent all of their waking hours discussing siops on the internet, it would hurt their feelings to learn that they have been subjected to a sciop that was extremely obvious to see the entire time. I think that the new regime will have a lot of similarities to the old regime,

except Donald Trump will just be able to say, the new regime is a regime that I like. And if you wanted any other hints of that, besides the new Khomeini regime being the Khomeini regime, then the other hints of that would be Donald Trump saying he's not actually concerned with whether or not the new regime is not a fundamentalist Islamic religious monarchy. In fact, he said, I get along quite well with religious monarchies. So, you know, I don't know.

At a certain point with these things, you may glimpse the biting sarcasm of my tone. But don't take that for cynicism and don't mistake that for cynicism. What happens is people who believe in the truth community, they are being optimistic by thinking Donald Trump is actually carpet bombing sovereign nations to affect regime change. It turns out, guys, that those people are not the optimists. The people who think we're not actually doing that and that we're actually engaged in sciops to teach people a thing or two about this shit and to disarm actual carpet bombing campaigns

might be slightly more optimistic than the people who traded in their truth. for regime change operations and forever war campaigns in the Middle East based on preemptive strikes toward nations with unprovable capabilities for weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it is amazing to me that my former liberalness has come so full circle to the point where I could unironically say that 90% of the people I know in the truth community have been unironically cheering

for the thing that they all said they learned their lessons about 25 years ago. And it turns out I actually did trust Donald Trump, even though I'm being told I didn't, because I didn't think he was actually doing that. I thought he was actually

rug pulling the establishment and honestly, for a lot of people in the truth community that need to look in the mirror, Donald Trump held that mirror up to you over the last seven days. And I would imagine over the next few weeks, it will become clear to a lot of people, just as I will imagine that a lot of truthers who have been unironically beating the war drums against the regime in Iran will start writing opeds and doing shows about how obviously Ali Khomeini is definitely the right pick rather than the other Kamani who was the wrong pick. Anyway, just, you know, it turns out that when you just approach these things with a consistent framework,

you don't have to do all these maya culpas or change your framework before every stream you do or every post you write. You just get to be lambasted by the same retards over and over again, and you get to keep going forward and applying the same sort of lessons and ciphers to everything you're looking at. because they kind of work after a while. Otherwise, I look forward to hearing from one or two people in chat why thinking the war was not real is the doomer take, where thinking the war was real is the optimistic take,

especially after Trump announces a new peace deal with Iran. I don't think that's going to happen on Monday, by the way, but I do think it's going to happen relatively soon. All right. And first couple sponsors for tonight, starting with our friends at Patriot Protect, major companies like TurboTax, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, banks, insurers, hospitals, and retailers are all using AI powered by your personal data. Names, addresses, phone numbers, jobs, family details, scraped from data brokers, and people search sites without your consent. They call it innovation. It's really them profiting from your info, leaving you exposed to cybercriminals.

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My guest tonight, assuming I didn't rustle any Jimmy's in advance, it's going to be John Drake, his second time on the show. We plan to talk about Donald Trump a lot tonight and a little bit of a lead-in. The lead-in I just went on. there about how thinking Donald Trump is lying to the American people about some of these things,

I don't think is a cynical take. I think it's understanding what Donald Trump is doing on a greater level than a lot of the people that tend to follow him. We're going to talk about the definitions of power related to Donald Trump and what is meant by the idea of sovereign prime. We're going to talk about presidents. We're going to talk about elections a little bit, but that's not what we really want to get bogged down in. We're mostly going to talk about power, power paradigms, collective mandate, and, you know, that certainly factors into the war of stories. But without further ado, how's it going, Rick? Hey, hey, good to see it. I would like to go on record by suggesting it's Ayatollah Khamini now.

Chamin? No, no, Khamini. Before it was Khomeini. Now it's Khomeini. Now it's Khomeini. Now it's commini since it's his son it's like the mini me version sounds like some propaganda to me i don't know i like to just throw some boston out like camany whatever the mini me version of them you know so they're we're replacing the old one with just a smaller version of them that's exactly what i said in the in private shot a couple of weeks ago or one week ago little camany yeah little canini will be the guy it's commini like am i and i am i and i i like it okay commini so well what do you think to start things off I mean, we don't know if this current narrative is going to hold. I mean, it's Sunday night.

But what do you think of the idea of the new Ayatollah being little Kamini and whether or not you think that's going to hold, et cetera? Well, I'm not going to pretend I can predict geopolitical events of things happening 6,000 miles away. I'm not going to be that guy. But I like your stories of those events, though. Right. Oh, yeah, the story. I mean, with Venezuela being the template as you've laid out, that makes a lot of sense to me that that is what we're seeing. If in the larger picture, what we're observing is a complete destruction of an old world system,

while still kind of allowing a soft landing so that people aren't just completely uprooted and have to navigate a new system like all at once. Because we don't tend to do that very well as human beings. you think about the progression of technology as it has been in the last 150 years you know 150 years ago the fastest you could the average person can go be like on the back of a horse and then less than 100 years later you could get in in a plane and go faster than the speed of sound that was a you know a hundred year span or less and then now even in the last 20 years we've gone from like everyone having a desktop with dial-up to a

having your your phone and having high-speed internet pretty much anywhere and we we don't really adapt we I don't think we've adapted well to that kind of a quick change so I think that under looking at the the nature of what's going on in the Middle East with Trump's you know pre you know first presidency with the you know the world tour that he did and establishing the sovereign alliance and working all these things and it's It's been like this 10-year period and we all get fresh. Like, well, when is this going to happen? This needs to happen now.

We don't really want it to happen overnight simply because we haven't handled the adaptation to these things very well, very quickly. I mean, go to a restaurant and look at all the families that are glued to their screens instead of sitting there talking to each other. Yeah. Human beings don't adapt well. So I think that the nature that it's playing out is in a way to soften the blow, so to speak. And so having templates like Venezuela where, I mean, I wonder how much, I don't know the degree to which the, the normie mind is approaching it in that like, wait a minute, we got rid of Maduro, but it's the same governments there. But for those that are trying to pay attention, those are telltale signs that something else is going on. And that's the thing I fall back on with, you know, normally friends of mine complaining about Trump going to war.

Man, I just, I don't like that he's doing that. And it's like, yeah, that's what's actually happening. I don't know that from an objective standpoint, I'm not pro-war. I don't think we should be going over and doing military operations if you don't want to call it war or whatever. But the way it's being done, even if it's just a story, we can see that it's like tearing down this system that we've become accustomed to. And it's in a manner that is like bite-sized little pieces. Like we had Venezuela. Now we're getting Iran.

This is a little bit bigger of a story. Let's see if we can handle this one. And if at the end of the day it comes out when there's a peace deal and we end up with Comini, then that's kind of a marker that, okay, what we think was going on is actually going on, that there is a shift in the transition to a different system. And it's probably good to get yourself in that mindset that it's not just going to be the way things were. Like sovereign alliance taking over the world and carving it up into regions of responsibility, responsibility and all of that, that's not the only thing that's going to change.

And adjusting ourselves to that mindset, I think, is a good way to, you can do that beforehand, so it's not a shock. Yeah, you know, you said a few things there that, obviously I go on my rants and it's clear that some things bug me. I'm somebody that gets bugged by things. You know, the irony of that is I think you're not in the truth community or info or one of the kind of markers I use in this kind of whole world is like if you know that there's such a thing as the info war or the truth community, there's been some level of sifting you've already

subjected yourself to, right? I feel that I have seen some regression. Granted, like when I'm saying that most of the time, if you're still watching a show like this or the power hour or the Trees and Pot the No Trees and Podcasts or whatever, like anything on Badlands, We're not the only ones, but you're probably not the people we're talking about. But there's been a clear attempt in my view. I don't even know how to describe it, but there's definitely one of the little markers I've looked at. Like I'm big on language and I'm big on narrative, obviously, the name of the show. But the reason that I fell into a lot of this besides being a writer is that's what I tend to recognize first.

like when I'm kind of looking over the mindscape and looking over the battle space of the info war, I notice macro narrative formation. Like that's kind of the thing I've noticed that I notice. So you could show me an article from The Atlantic and Politico and Axios and the New York Times and Fox within the same 48 hour spread with four different headlines or five different headlines. And I will probably immediately stitch together what is the same. deployment out of the five of them. That's kind of what I do automatically. And I do the same thing with groups. And one of the problem areas that I feel I've noticed in the truth community, quote

unquote, is that a few years ago, it was kind of like a funny little joke among Gart people, among Badlanders, when I would say like, yeah, me and Chris are the token liberals, the token former liberals of the Badlands audience. But part of the knowing joke there was saying like, hey, we used to be retarded. And then we figured out we were retarded. But there was also like a degree of the audience laughing at themselves as mostly Republicans and saying, yeah, we used to be earnest Republicans who voted for Bushes and Cheney's and McCain's. And that's what I thought the exchange always was of like, Yeah, you know how like I was retarded and like you're retarded too? And now we all kind of figured out that we used to be retarded.

And now we're trying not to be retarded. And recently when I say, you know, narrative pattern recognition, part of that comes down to just sequencing of words and the overuse of certain words. And man, I swear that since 2017, I have not seen the truth. community use the term Republicans and Democrats more than I have seen in 2026. It's it almost feels to me like man, the lesson that you took out of four years of Joe Biden and the devolution term and the queue drops and the plan to save the world and the great awakening and Donald Trump coming in and putting the uniparty on blast a million times was that we need to defeat the Democrats?

Like, and I'm not saying we don't need to, but... Democrats and... Man, it's insane to me, and I know that's a lot of the stuff that you talk about, and I do genuinely understand that there's a good part of our audience that gets frustrated with this, because they're like, well, you know, it sounds negative, it sounds cynical. The reason I wanted to start the show the way I did, even though it sounds fiery and like me bragging and whatever is to say yeah it is to say that

despite people thinking that this kind of rhetoric is annoying or cynical imagine how it feels to comment in advance on the fact that you believe a geopolitical conflict that is incredibly controversial is not what we're being told it is, and that that is good. Imagine saying that over and over again, and the whole time you're saying that, the people that put fifth-gen warfare in their bios and post-Q drops for a decade and talk about the plan to save the world,

call you a dumber the entire time for questioning the central narrative, then it turns out you're right, and that we weren't actually carpet bombing the fucking Middle East for the reasons that people said we were or Venezuela, right? We're already out of there. The oil's already flowing. But that's not what the truth community thought in January.

They thought like, yeah, we're going to go to fucking war. We're going to do whatever we need to do. Right. Bush shit all over again. So to be like, I understand where people can get annoyed at this kind of rhetoric because they want everything to be like, prayer circles and like trust the plan circles. But the irony I've said a million times that I genuinely believe people who think most of this

stuff is fake and sciops understand the plan more than the people saying that you're disrupting the plan by talking about these siops. And to your point, you just kind of ended with, there are, we are never going to be 100% sure that we were right about something. But when we in advance lay out certain markers like, hey, if there was a fake regime change operation going on in Iran, probably what would happen is that Khomeini would be replaced by a Khomeini and nothing would change at all. Right.

And Donald Trump would say that everything has changed and we no longer need a war. And then when that happens, all these people that call you a doomer for two fucking months get to come in and say they knew it was going to happen when they were unironically cheering for American boots on the ground and whatever it takes in the interim there. So it's a long rant, but it's just the reason I bring up a former liberal framework is like, I have never felt more like a former liberal than I have over the last week of being like, man, guys, there are a lot of liberals right now that are. unironically engaging in more first principles logic about what's going on right now than most of the truth community. You know, it just goes to show that progression is not linear. It's not even just up and down and all the way to in one direction. Sometimes you kind of loop back around like, hey, I've been here before. This looks familiar. But you're you're chained for the experiences that you've had in the meantime. And so you're not the same person there. I was thinking too that the I mean I remember conversations with people back in the day

when I had sort of had my awakening to the evils of American foreign policy and you know the early Ron Paul days and it's like what are we doing over there and you talk to people and there's like bond the motherfuckers yeah how could you possibly say that and then fast forward to today and there's a lot of people with that same mentality and it's so disheartening to see I'll admit that but I'm also I'm wondering if there's a parallel to with the recent push, it seems, about highlighting how dangerous Islam is and how we have to, that people have been kind of conditioned into accepting this aspect of whatever the, you know, the sciop is or something to think, to be okay with. I'm not saying Trump is doing this.

I'm just saying, you know, the concept of drafting. Someone else is drafting off what's going on. And they're just getting people back into that mindset of it. I just, you know, the cool glass, the desert after October 7th, you know, a few years ago. And people have, they've learned nothing. Like, it's, it's not, not saying Islam. I'm a Christian. I think Islam is the wrong way to go. There's a lot of lovely Muslim people.

I've lived and worked in the Middle East, parts of my life. But Islam is, I don't think it's the right way to God. So I don't think that justifies bombing people, though. You know, and it's crazy to me that people are able to, in the context, of a plan that they don't actually know being okay with that because somehow it's part of the plan that they don't actually know. It's just it's mind-blowing to me that people are able to do that. And to me, it demonstrates that you're, if that describes you, I can treat you with love and respect, not you, generally you. I can treat with love with love, love respect because that's what I'm called to as a Christian and I will, I will conduct myself that way to the best of my abilities.

but you are fucking insane. Dude, imagine principles. Imagine if you are somebody that's been watching this for a while or following this stuff and you believe there's such a thing as the sovereign alliance, right? Let's say you're one of my followers

who's like in that little rabbit hole of like righteous Russia, special military operation in Ukraine, right? And then you're told a story that Putin hit San Francisco with a ballistic missile and X number of hundreds or thousands of Americans died. Imagine then being like, well, you know, had to be done. Sovereign alliance. And now there's probably like three people watching the show who were like, yeah, what do you mean?

It's just San Francisco. there aren't they all gay Satanists there right um that kind of thing right but most there's you know we use the term cognitive dissonance a lot and i've been thinking about that term a lot recently because never has it been more apparent to me than right now with the iran situation you know chris paul often uses the term reruns to determine what's going on here right and this is a rerun of of course the beginnings of the forever wars they're in the middle east in the 2004, et cetera. They're even using the same terminology. The irony is people like me and Chris think that they're doing that, that Trump is doing that, to disarm the next forever war.

Yeah. The term, I don't know if I invented it, but I certainly used the term, and I think Chris did too, or at least something similar in the summer of 2025, narrative disarmament. Chris has used that terminology saying they're taking the air out of all the balloons. Yeah. Right. Like these are plans we think they had. And to your point about the Middle East or glassing the desert, there really is this like, and when I'm bringing up liberals guys, by the way, I'm not saying that the liberals are right right now or they're morally superior to conservatives.

Far from it. I'm using a specific story, a specific narrative, and saying that, imagine if you're an earnest liberal who's actually trying to like come in and talk to the Maga Corps right now. if you talk to one of us, you're probably going to come away being like, those guys are still crazy, right? They think that there's a lot of sciops going on and what we're being told is happening in Iran is not happening. I am not claiming that my explanations of the Venezuela model and what is going on in Iran and what Donald Trump is navigating here would land with Normies. I don't think it would. I have stopped trying to wake up.

If I've tried to talk to do about that, look at you like you're, you know, you have three heads. Totally. Yeah. And the reason I say that is because, but imagine the alternative. Imagine the Normie liberal

who talks to one of the truthers or MAGA, who thinks everything we're being told this happening in the Middle East is happening as reported and loves it. And if you've been on Twitter, at all in the last week. You've probably seen like anti-Trump propaganda. Oh, yeah. But that is

pretty effectively using 10-minute reels of him and all his cabinet members in 2024 talking about how we are not going to get into a new war in the Middle East and specifically saying we will never attack Iran. And if you let the wrong people in, they are going to attack Iran and they are going to tell you that they're doing it based on a preemptive strike. Like Donald Trump has said this word for word for years. So when we see that

and we're faced with that cognitive dissonance for the sales us, we're left with two choices in my mind. Either Donald Trump is full of shit the whole time and the liberals are right about him or what we are being told is going on is not what is going on. I lean toward the latter, but that's the stuff that I think a lot of,

a lot of the MAGA and truth community has demonstrated that they've lost sight of. My example of Putin and San Francisco is like, man, that proves cognitive dissonance, because if you could say like, oh, yeah, yeah, that wouldn't hit me right. Like, Putin wouldn't do that. That wouldn't be part of the Sovereign Alliance plan.

It shows that you have legitimately and fully dehumanized people in Iran. You have completely dehumanized and othered people in the Middle East to a degree to which you do not believe you have if you actually think that Trump and patriots are glassing them and blowing up children's schools and all this shit for the benefit of the plan. Like, and again, the thing that is disturbing is when,

when your average ex-formly Twitter, Normie, liberal, whatever, brings up something like that school. And they're responding to it in a humanitarian way. Like, I can't believe that happened. Like, I remember being frustrated by this back in the really early days of the Iraq war, kind of before I woke up to that aspect of things. And being annoyed at the list. liberals trying to point out the evils like, what's happening?

Look, but they're killing all the, you know, they're killing children and stuff. And then being annoyed with them that they're nitpicking on stuff like that. Instead of being like, you know what? Like, if that stuff's true, then yeah, we need to have that perspective. But I think it was Chris recently made the point of how war has been turned into content. It might have been, it was something I heard recently where, you know, you swipe up, there's a cooking video. You swipe up, there's a video of a drone falling on a Ukrainian soldier and oh, you know, or whatever.

And war has become this, these sensitized content that we consume. And it's disturbing how people lose touch with their humanity so quickly. And it's disturbing to me also that you have people that in another theater will say, absolutely, there's, well, they can't release that because there's investigations going on behind the scenes that we don't know actually. anything about that's why they haven't released anything or that's why they're not telling us this stuff so they're assuming that something else is going on behind the scenes that's not being shown to us in the public but no over here this is actually happening in all exactly and that's a great example of the and i might not be right about what i think is going on iran right when i when i take a victory lap

about little kemany and again he might not be the the the legit leader the legit new leader that's codified in the central narrative but right now that's where it is is as of the recording of this show. The reason I take a victory lap on that is because that would map onto a reading of events that they are not as we have been told they are. And to your point, exactly, the thing that frustrates some of us these days in the bad land sphere about the wider truth community is exactly what you point out. It's not that we're dealing with people who do not believe where there's a war of stories going on or sciops or that there isn't misinformation as necessary. Like it's totally insane that you've got maybe millions of people or hundreds of

thousands at the least who were fundamentally altered by engagement with the Q drops, mostly in positive ways, including myself, who a core tenant in the drops is disinformation is necessary, which is not just applying to the drops themselves, as you guys know, but the operation that the drops are alluding to, right? Donald Trump, the Patriots, the government, the plan to unwind the entire paradigm that we've been living through. I'm okay with all that. There are some people I know who are not okay with any of that. And I think it's totally reasonable to not be okay with any of that. When I say I'm okay with it, I understand, I think, why I've said last week on Wednesday night, you know, I always leave open the possibility that if I was in the room with these people who have access to information we do not have access to, that they may have information that's like, guys, if we literally did the thing you say we should do, which is tell people X, Y, and Z at this time, this would be the result.

And it would be awful. I'm open to that. And I'm not saying. it's a moral defense, but I think it's a logical defense. And you can de facto make it a moral defense if you say, hey, like, your like, you know, first principles, truth above all else stance makes you feel really good. But the same way we're talking about glassing the desert, if that great truth or first principle stance results in a net effect of catastrophic death upon a certain number of people, we're not going to make that decision. And we're going to tell people a bunch of stories that hopefully get them closer to where you're at, right? Like, I can engage with all that. But to your point, what drives me nuts is people that talk about, oh, well, you know, any contradiction they come

across in the info war is just because we're not being told the full truth, right? Right. But then if you say, hey, guys, hear me out here. I think maybe we're not being told the full truth of what's going on with the Saran operation. And I think maybe we're not even glassing the desert. I think Donald Trump might not even be getting us into a new forever war. I think this is mostly fake. And it's like you, doomer, you don't trust Trump.

Well, it's like, you know, it's just such a weird spot to be in where you're like, man, I, yeah. Like I think I think better of Trump than maybe you think of him. I think maybe Trump is the guy that he's been telling us he is for the last 10 years. Yeah. And that's going to put a lot of people's thoughts about Trump to the test. This is probably one aspect of what he meant about taking the slings and arrows. He's willing to be thought of as one of the worst people on the planet by a lot of people

in order to affect the change that he believes is necessary. And, you know, that is, you know, kind of dips my toe. into some of the topics that we've talked about going into later but that you know in the position that he's in uh there's a a mandate that goes beyond i think even the mandate of the people and that is the mandate of a higher standard and a higher law and he is in a position he was able to get into that position somehow to where he can affect real change on a level that you and i can't and this goes back to something that i think we had talked about last time was on your show show that Trump will do what Trump will do because only he can do those things.

We can't, you and I have no way of rooting out the deep state, the global regime in Iran or in North Korea or in Venezuela or anywhere else. We can't do that. But he can. And so he's going to do that. and when it comes down to personal choices for what we do in our own daily lives, our attitude towards truth, our actions in accordance with the things that we say we believe, that's all we can really control. And that's kind of what I've decided on doing as it's fun in a way to pay attention to the

info war. It's also incredibly frustrating at times. it's also it's beneficial to be in a community like badlands where you can have conversations like the ones that we typically end up having uh as we you know iron sharpening iron as we get you know deep further and further up and further in uh i know you know a huge c s lewis fan but that's one of my favorite lines from uh the last i respect c s louis tremendously i'm not a big fan of c s louis fiction right well i'm a big fan of c s lewis writers the the line in the last battle for further up and further in as they're just like going on towards paradise or whatever.

And that's a rallying cry. Like don't be stagnant. Don't stay still. On your own personal level, make choices that are in accordance with the things that you wish that Trump would do. You can still do those things on your own. And if we are sitting around and waiting for them to be like, hey, you guys, here it is,

then we haven't actually progressed because we're waiting for the authority to come in and tell us, here's how you shall live now. We can do that on our own. And then when it comes to the geopolitical upper elite level where you're talking about thousands of year old, like, dynasty fighting each other as what seems to be happening. This is just the latest. I mean, yeah, talking about Lord of the Rings at some point which we will. And you made that comment in the private chat about it. Maybe it's more of a true history than we realize.

the thing I love to burgh out a minute on Lord of the Rings the thing I love so much about Lord of the Rings is that the way that Tolkien wrote that it's like he just sort of went you know what I'll tell that story out of a pantheon of real history that he had imagined and he just selected that one so you know what we are in the the war of stories in 2026 you know in the 21st century in the third age or whatever and that's the story we're living in and it's going to be in the annals of the tales of Middle Earth at some point. And we just happen to be in this current iteration. So Trump is, he's one fighting the battle that's on a scale that we can't possibly fathom. But on individual levels, we can still make choices that lead towards our own personal sovereignty if that's something that we value, which we should. Yeah, and we are going to talk about Lord of the Rings copiously tonight, especially in the third hour.

So Drake is in for a marathon tonight. Because we're 49 minutes into the preview of the show. I am on a night shift schedule currently, so I can stay up as long as you want. Yeah, we'll go about three hours. We'll take you guys to the after hour show. But I like that you actually mentioned it. It eliminated one of my notes. We got it out of the way early, which was I wrote down in a different chat this week,

the slings and arrows refrained that you mentioned Donald Trump. And I wrote down that exact point. I don't know if we talked about it, you and I. But yeah, that's funny. Then we both were thinking about that same thing. I think it was in a chat with Chris and John. I had said, like last night or tonight, maybe the slings and arrows that Trump was talking about were not what the truth community thought. And the way I had framed it was what would actually hurt Trump, like on a just emotional level or spiritual level?

Would it be the mainstream media lying about him? Or would it be a good portion of his base being mad at him for something he's doing to get them to the place where they need to get? And I wrote down like true slings and arrows. What are the true slings and arrows? And, you know, I'm not saying this is the only moment that we're going to see this. But I know there are grifters out there. I know there are conning people and I know there are a lot of opportunists in the fog of war right now that are looking at the narratives against Donald Trump with Iran and are taking advantage of that,

which is why this is such a difficult, this is such a difficult moment to talk about these things in. But I also think that there are earnest, normal people and info war people. Julian's rum, my old friend Julian's Rum is a great example of this this week. I don't agree with Julian's Rum in terms of his conclusion. And what I mean by that is I think Julian's Rum is kind of reading the Iran situation as it's being translated and is unhappy with it, right? I don't think that it's being translated accurately. But I admit that my stance takes an extra leap of faith that his does not need to. to right um but to see people pile on him when he's just reading the info war and what trump

is doing as it's being translated to him and saying man i'm like like to to have a lot of frankly to have a lot of new motherfuckers like people i've never heard of before retweeting julian's rum and talking about how that guy's a dumer and like he doesn't know what's going to on. Again, I'm leading this by saying, I don't agree with Julian's take. I did a show with him for a year. Like, I consider him a friend. I don't know him that well, despite that. Like, that's the context in which I know him. We've spoken. We've spoken privately. I think he's a good guy. He's got a family, et cetera. I wish nothing but the best for him. But to see people look at the stance he's forwarding this past week and say, that guy was never a real truth.

do you have any idea what he sacrificed given the following that he achieved you think he made money on that following this was before Twitter was monetized guys that Julian's rum became Julian's rum if Julian's rum became that in the era of Twitter monetization what we would see is Q people using GROC to summarize and change other people's takes and monetize them in accordance with Q drops which is pretty much what all of them are doing right now, and I can see this because I know how that works, but to call a guy like that a Dumer,

like, again, you don't have to agree with his endgame. You can think that Trump is playing 5D chess. The irony is, I think he is playing 5D chess. And maybe Julianne's Rum doesn't think that anymore, right? Or he's just sick of it. Maybe he does think he is playing 5D chess, but he's sick of it. And to think that that is not a principled stance for him to say, if Donald Trump is actually getting us embroiled in a new massive conflict in Iran that is going to have U.S. troops committed on the ground in Iran, that is a principled, consistent, morally logical stance to advance.

And the people that are piling on him do not look good. You are not defending the truth community by piling on the fucking OG of Q people. and calling him a doomer to make yourself in your little fucking communist struggle session feel better about your decodes. Well, and something else to think about, you know, I occasionally will mention natural law. That's once in a while we'll talk about that. The essence of natural law, if you distill it down, is treat other people the way you want to be treated, which happens to be spoken by a man of certain notoriety. You know, Jesus Christ happened to say that, you know. Known disinfo agent.

Yeah. If you are willing to write off someone like Julian's rum and call him a doomer, say he was never a truther, you just happened to have lasted this long in the info war. But what happens if you end up spinning out? like you general and then people start piling on you and you're like fuck you i'm just i'm just i you do it i got family got kids like all the things that we you know we deal with in life and some people just need a break and some people don't want to play the game anymore and guess what if you were the people out there ripping into julian's rum you you you are going to be judged by the same standard

that you judge yeah and that's one of the things going back to my point just a minute ago about living in accordance with personal sovereignty choices is living in a manner that natural law that's the science of justice that leads to peace live in a manner that that that up that is that lives up to that that standard because it will be judge you will be judged by that standard how you judge others you will be judged and you know people take that when jesus says it oh jesus says don't judge he says judge not say no judge not lest you be judged for the same manner you judge others you will it'll be judged on to you. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that from Julian's Rom. It was like, wow, dang, man. But then it's principle. It's something that should be taken seriously. Yeah. I think Julian's rum, you know, I knew him, obviously, but long before I was doing this stuff in any sort of public manner, I followed him.

You know, he is a true OG. I mean, Donald Trump retweeted, I don't remember if it was 2020 or 2024. I think it was 2020, that he had a, he put together. like a hype video for Donald Trump on Twitter. Oh, in Trump. Yeah.

Yeah, Trump tweeted it out. I haven't thought about that. When that happened, I had message, I damned him on Twitter and he replied. I was like, oh, crap, it's Julian's room. And I was like, hey, dude, like, he was going to take a screenshot of it. And I told him I'd make him a frame. And then it just never worked out. But it was, because I think it was 2020, but it might have been 24, but I think it was

2020, but either way, like I'm just saying, obviously Trump retweets a lot of stuff, but that's the standing he had in this kind of community. And, you know, I know people think like, John and I kind of said this. Maybe it was Chris and I on Tuesday night, said, like, if you guys think, if you guys think it makes us more money to have the stances that we do, it does not. But it does make you a lot of money to only talk about positive things all the time, even if those positive things completely contradict your previously held stances, which is what a lot of the truth community has become. It has been what will get the most retweets, what will get the most rumble rants, what will get the most likes on Twitter, etc.

It's not what do you actually think. And that's what, even if I don't agree with the end state of what Julian's Rome was saying there, what I respect is that he is putting out his earnest thoughts in the moment of what he feels while looking at the info war. And what you have is most of the truth community now, or the influencer class of the truth community, waiting, and I've been saying this for months, we have transitioned into a meta. in the truth community now where it's a thing, the truth community is a thing,

it's a market, right? It's basically a market now that has a certain predilection for what it wants out of you. And we know this better than anybody. We've been in it for a few years now. It's its own party

of false decorum to coin Christos. Exactly. And what it wants from you, to make the most money, what it wants from you, is not what you think is going on what it wants from you is what it thinks of is what it wants you to think is going on yeah that's what the truth community wants the truth community does not want people watch people

and some of you are going to this is going to hit some of you some of you some of you some of the people you watch you're not watching because you agree with with their takes on things or you want to be challenged by their takes on things or because you might come away disagreeing, but the way they frame things makes you think of things differently. You're watching some of these people because you know there's a high degree of likelihood they're going to say something in a way

that gives you permission to feel the way you already feel about that thing. And that's not what Julian's Rum did. And he made a cardinal mistake there of doing that. And credit to him, he tripled down on it in the following couple days and said, this is how I feel.

And he always used the caveat if this is what Donald Trump is doing. Right. And if that is the case, it's true. Yeah, it's worth gaming that out. And comparing, a friend of mine and I were talking about this, kind of back and forth using the Marco Polo app.

And he was wanting me to condemn the actions. I'm like, well, dude, I don't know what's actually going on over there. I don't know if it's actually even going on. It could just be a story that we're being told. And so I don't feel the need to emote about something that is probably not even happening, or at least it's not happening the way that we're being told. And he wanted me to like give a value or moral judgment on what, well, if Trump is doing this, then that's bad. And it's like, okay, yeah. If Trump is getting us

into a new Forever War, then absolutely I'm against that on principle because I didn't like the last time we did it and I wouldn't like it we did it this time and it's not really a principle if you can like if you can maneuver your way into being okay with something that you're yeah yeah as you shouldn't swap out the characters yeah yeah uh which that being said there there are meta narratives at play that there's going to be actions that i mean to your point about being in the room and here's all the information we have and while i might end up making the same choices which just goes back to at the end of the day, you have your principles and you have your own life and you have the only thing you actually have control over is how you're going to respond and what you're

going to do in your day-to-day life, which at the end of the day, what's happening in Iran is probably not going to have a dramatic impact on our daily lives, at least in the immediate sense, maybe long term, depending on what's going on, you know, with sovereign wine and stuff. But personal, I mean, that's all we have control over is what we what we can do. we can make choices in the immediate sense so let's get into some of our notes for the next 30 minutes or so i want to hit some kind of current stuff on a actual basis which is always pretty soft when i say it and now we're going to get into lord of the rings all lord of the rings nothing lord of the ring no it's going to be donald trump lord of the ring if you got i've been waiting for the type of show

where i can just unironically relate donald trump to a lord of the rings analog and jonathan drake is going to help me do that that's going to be the sovereign prime section of the show but right here um what i what i really want to communicate with this episode is again the irony of being framed a duma and everything and i don't want to be too defensive about this i want to now be more active about it and say i love what donald trump is doing i love what i think donald trump is doing right like my interpretation of what he's doing. But part of what I want to get into, the first half of the show I named in my notes, definitions of power. And I think this is one of the most interesting ways to look at what Trump is doing right now, especially in 2026, a little bit in 2025 as well, but his second term.

One of the big trends I have noticed, and that I think a lot of our audience has noticed, is Trump challenging historical and especially recent historical norms of presidential action and behavior. Specifically, as that behavior comes up against congressional and judicial authority. You know, if we talk about the three branches, the co-equal branches, the checks and balances, like that's what we're all kind of raised on, constitutional authority, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty clear that whether you're a MAGA person or a normie, one of the core defining narratives or themes of Trump 2.0 is the challenging of presidential authority. And I think that's pretty interesting.

And before I pass it to you, I just want to lead off with there are many gems over the last week or so. Speaking of a narrative pattern recognition, there are many gems in the media recently. But this one really took the cake for me. This is from Political Magazine. The title was Trump Buries the 20th Century. This was by Alexander Burns. Now, I often use reverse indicators and quote unquote enemy narrative as, I don't know, their signal to me.

And I thought this was interesting. So this was obviously in response. This was March 2nd. This was in response to Trump's actions in Iran, as we're being told about them. and there were some pretty interesting quotes out of here. The biggest one was this one. Across both his terms as president and in so many different areas of policy and governance and culture, his signal achievements have been acts of demolition.

So there's a lot more to that article. But one of the things I said in my Overton's Goal Post article from like three years ago is when the enemy starts saying, your opinions, but from inverted framing, you're in a good spot. And I feel like a lot of us have been saying, man, I don't think Donald Trump is going into that system to restore it. I think he's going in there to take it apart from the inside. And now we have the machine saying, you know, I think Trump is really kind of like dismantling this whole thing. But I wonder what you think of that, you know, 2025 and 2026, just kind of what he's been doing on an actual level with all that stuff. Well, so this dovetails into our first conversation back in December and that when Trump first came in and he upended the political speak, the gravitas era of the way you're supposed to do politics and the way you're supposed to talk about people.

And he completely just flipped that up. So that was definitely an early marker of like, okay, that there is something. That was an act of demolition. You know, this stuff is ridiculous. Let's just call a spade a spade. Let's call people idiots. Let's call them, you know, all the things that he calls people. And then when you look at the way, like I love the way you and Chris frame things, especially

when Chris was framing, you know, the judicial stuff. When you look at the, uh, the doctrine of judicial, judicial supremacy and, and Trump is, is blatantly challenging that by continually doing things that make them, you know, establish a position, make them come out and stand and contrary to, like, the tariffs thing I think is a great example of that. Thoughts on tariffs aside as a tool to educate the populace as far as who is actually on their side. You know, I'm, you know, if you're Trump, like I'm bringing billions and billions and

billions of dollars into this country that were previously just floating away, that were given away, because all this stuff that we are importing used to be stuff that we manufactured here. And so by shifting that power dynamic and forcing the court to weigh in and say, no, you can't do that. That's one act of demolition is exposing and pulling back the curtains on. These people are not in, they're not working for you. They're supposed to be your servants, but they're not actually working. for you. They're supporting and enabling a system that is stealing from you and selling you down the road as basically tax slaves, because that's what we are, to where we can't even generate our

own wealth, we have to borrow it, which gives them the excuse to tax us. That's the way that whole system works. So even on something like tariffs, that's pulling back the curtain on that ridiculous power that the Supreme Court just took for. itself. And it's demonstrating that here's that he is willing to, I mean, Chris talks about, you know, how far back, you know, going back to the original constitution or even before, but even if he's just going back to the original constitution, you know, the president was authorized or empowered to interpret the constitution for themselves and make actions that were in line with what he thought was the best thing for the country. And Trump seems to be doing that, that your interpretation of

Venezuela and potentially what Iran is, the way that he deals with. world leaders, even the way, you know, going into the Middle East, going into China in the first term when he went the Forbidden City, you know, that's an act of demolition as well. Yeah. Stepping across the DMZ into North Korea, that's an act of demolition as well. Like all of those things, and I know that's previous administration, but it's all one long. It's this era, the Trump era. Yeah.

And that, but those are, those are tearing down the previously, in previously established norms of presidents looking over, you know, with binoculars and, ooh, that's scary. there and Trump's like, let's go over and talk to him. And that's a low impact way of demolishing things. And going back to my earlier point of kind of slow rolling it so that people can adjust and accommodate so that when you bring up things like, oh yeah, remember when Trump crossed the DMZ and went into North Korea, like, oh, yeah, boy, that was pretty crazy. And it allows people to come to grips with the fact that the way things have always been,

or in our lifetimes, that's different now. And he is the catalyst for that. And I find that interesting, and I find a lot of parallels with the way power was structured in a portion of history that I've become interested in recently in the Anglo-Saxon era. And that the nature of the government, the nature of the monarch at that time, was to act as protector of his people, was to act as bestowing, like he was the one that gave gifts,

they called the ring giver. And this is stuff that, you know, again, dipping my toe into the Tolkien stuff. Tolkien loved that concept of the ring giver. The king was a ring giver. Highly values loyalty and values merit and what can you do for my country.

And Trump seems to be doing, So in the way that he's constructed himself as president, tearing down, it's taking down this global system that we've been sucked into. I mean, I don't necessarily how to phrase it. It's fascinating to watch. He's a wrecking ball with the way that he charges in. And like Chris is framing of how he will pitch both sides of an argument, get people discuss. that's an act of demolition as well. Like, nothing is sacred.

He's willing to... I mean, the fact that he put voting with transgender is kind of funny. Well, you know, that even brings up that I think some of the frustration inherent in what we're dealing with. Chris often refers to it as the sifting. And I think certainly what I've learned and many of my private conversations of late are that, wow, the sifting is much more intense than I thought it was going to be. You know, I used to think the sifting was going to be like, there's the truth community. and then the normies.

And that's the sifting. And it's like, no. Nope. I think Trump has provoked a much deeper sifting of first principles versus the term I use often in my writing is systemites. And I like the term systemites because it's bipartisan. And I don't even mean uniparty, right? Like if you're a Democrat, politics. politician, you're a systemite. If you're a Republican rhino, you're a system. No, no, you could be like a truther and be a systemite. And by that I mean, if you believe that the solutions to an inherently corrupt system that woke you up in some way, or that Donald Trump, to your point, signaled to you and highlighted to you, if you believe the solutions to that system lie within that systemic

apparatus, I don't know how to help you. I don't know how to help you on a cognitive level. I don't know how to help you on a spiritual level. And I mean that. I'm not trying to be a dick. Like, if you think that your local court is corrupt, appealing to them to root out their corruption is utterly insane. It is insane. And it doesn't mean that I don't think, like, I don't know where the future lies with what, where we're going with Trump.

I don't know how much of this system is going to remain. I don't know what I'm going to be right about or wrong about or all that kind of stuff. But to think that the era of Donald Trump, which as you described it, and as the media is accurately describing it, is all about demolitions, and disruption of the classic system, if you think the end game of the era of Donald Trump

is to vote red from now on every 24 months and in the 23 months in between voting red on on the 24th month, you talk about voting red? Oh my God, what a depressing encapsulation of what you believe American sovereignty and the era of Donald Trump was about. I would challenge anybody who believes at that's the point. By the way, despite the fact that we're being lambasted with this constantly now, I am not advocating for anybody to not vote. I voted in the last two elections. I plan to vote in the next one. I'm not going to judge you if you don't. I'm just saying my point is that if you think the era of Donald Trump was to try to get more people.

people to vote, I just don't think you've been watching the same thing as me. Because I would challenge you to talk to any 2002 Fox News snorting, just laying out rails of Bill O'Reilly, just snorting that shit up and putting four flags in the bed of their F-150. like if you think there's any difference between what that person was saying in 2002 that you in the audience think you've woke it up from being and your current self, if all you're doing is struggle sessioning people into talking about voting over and over again, I just don't think you've actually been paying attention to the Trump era. and to your point, a lot of what he's doing here, like, you know, one of the,

this is all Lord of the Rings theme tonight, but one of the refrains I use often is inspired by Baramir, and it's the weapons of the enemy refrain, which you kind of alluded to there. I don't know how far this should go or will go, but it seems to me that there's a lot of things Trump does that where he uses systemic power, established power of the system,

to upend plans the system has. And in so doing, it's almost like it's a win-win scenario for him, where he either gets the end goal he wants, leveraging that power he's leveraging to do it, or he forces the system to challenge the authority by which Donald Trump is doing that thing. And tariffs is a good example of that, right? where it's like

Trump might go on Twitter and say I'm really mad that the Supreme Court is challenging my authority to levy tariffs but I would just ask the opening yeah well I would ask the opening question too is he actually mad that he's being challenged on these things

like I'm not so sure he is right well and with demolition if you're demolishing something and then you turn around and use the same materials to build it back up again you really haven't demolished anything and that's that's the problem I have with with using the system to fix the system and I know people are really really uncomfortable when when anyone says not just me I'm not special but representative government

I'm convinced of this at this point representative government is their system it's been about eight it's been in play for about 800 years that's when English Parliament really started about 800 years ago started getting representatives from the people and we have gotten less free, less liberty over that time. Little blips here and there, but that's their system because going back to the oath that kings would give when they were crowned. This is going back, it started in I think 1245 or so, and this was, so these are Norman kings. They were, uh, the oath was, uh, the oath was. was written in accordance with what the Anglo-Saxon kings even would have done a couple hundred

years earlier. This lasted until the 1680s or so when Parliament changed it. But listen to what the king would swear to. The king would swear to, and the archbishop would be the one administering it, and the archbishop would say, do you concede that the just laws and customs, which the common people have chosen, shall be preserved? And do you promise that they shall be protected by you and strengthened to the honor of God according to your powers? And the king shall answer, I concede and promise.

Compare that to the way Parliament changed in 1688. So now the king was made to swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England and the dominions there to belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on. And that subtle shifts. Like, well, we have our representatives in Parliament. Yeah. Spooner was writing 150 years ago and he called elections fake 150 years ago and newsflash Dominion wasn't in existence back then they had same-day voting they had paper ballots they didn't even have registration the way we have it today that is so easily

manipulated you know Scott Pressler's job is to inflate voter rolls so that voter fraud is easier to accomplish but in Spooner's day 150 years ago they had they had they had as their common practice, what we look to as the solution, and it was still fraudulent, according to his perspective. So in my mind, that is their system, that is, it's, they're able to, well, these are now the laws that we, the parliament, that we, the Congress, because we're representatives of the people, because we got elected somehow. And that's just not the way the power is established.

That's not the way leaders are chosen. And I don't want I I we all want the same thing we want liberty we want to be free I've been talking on the last couple episodes that the nature of statutory law as it has become in this country where statute determines criminality not intent and that the problem with that because especially it's shrouded in a in the civil layer so you're it you're not technically a criminal because it's on a civil layer but you're losing your property, you're losing your money, you're losing your time, you're being thrown in jail in certain cases, through statutory law, which means most people, when they go to start a business,

or if you go to build something on your own property, or if you go to do anything on your own property, we are trained like Pavlov's dogs to go, am I allowed to do this? Do I need permission for this? Do we need a permit? doing the license that's asking permission to do what we by god-given right have a right to do as long as we're not hurting anyone and you know that's yeah the obvious that's natural law

but that's the nature of the system that we have been handed down after in this country 250 years of the electoral process and that's the problem i have with it is like those are questions that i'm wanting to ask and people don't seem to appreciate that But hey, if what we believe is true, if what you believe is true, in general you again, if what you believe is true, and I said this on my show tonight, and it goes through the refiner's fire, the sifter, whatever you want to call it, if it's true, it will stand up to the questioning. Yes. And the questions aren't scary.

They're only scary. The people will get what the people want. Yeah. Right. And that's the irony. And I think that it's a, you know, it can be positive or negative depending on how you're looking at it. The people will get what the people want. The people will either get that through active participation or apathy.

Right. I think Chris used the term or the phrase consent through compliance in reference at the time to COVID and lockdowns and everything. One of the things I've said many times on shows with him is that for all the people in our audience, including myself, who talk about the COVID pandemic as being largely illusory or largely narrative, I certainly believe that. The pandemic effectively was real. You know, like when I tell my kid about the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns in 20 years, it will have been a real thing that his mother and I experience. in every other way but for there being a life-threatening global pandemic, right? But otherwise, everybody will have lived and operated as if there was a pandemic. Why?

Was it because the government said something? Sure, that's part of it. It's certainly they were a prime originator of an amplifier of the narrative. Right. But why did we all feel like we lived through lockdowns? Because people complied and lived as if the pandemic was real. Or even people that didn't think the pandemic was real, lived as if consequences for not living as if it was real were real.

Right. So people shut down their businesses. At some degree, there was because family and friends, we've all had those stories of being castigated and, you know, cut off. And there was a real personal, at least in a relational cost to that sort of thing. Which I, the concept of consent is, I think there's a lot of layers and nuance to what consent actually is. I understand what Chris is saying there, consent via compliance. Spooner has a lot of thoughts on what consent actually means in his no treason essay section two. if you want to check that out.

It's specifically about voting and what consent actually means. Consent is such an integral part of human interaction. And it is not loving to violate, so therefore it's against natural law, to violate your neighbor's consent. And understanding what consent actually is, what constitutes consent, it's part of the conversation. Because in most people's right, well, voting equals consent. Well, no, it actually doesn't. No. And he's got 10, he has 10 reasons in Section 2 as to why voting does not equal consent. And those are things that I don't hear anyone talking about. It's just, it's binary. It's,

you voted or you didn't. And that and I get to call you. Yeah, you're not even supposed to talk about things anymore if you didn't vote or if you didn't vote in the right way. Yeah, and I get to call you certain things because you're saying the thing that I don't like, even though, clearly, if anyone has listen to my show for any length of time, I'm not a flippant person. And I'm not, which, you know, argument from authority or whatever. Like, you know, people don't know me. I'm a stranger on the internet. That's fine.

Go read the stuff I'm talking about. You realize Spooner wasn't flippant. And that the dude was brilliant, well-spoken, well-read, and well-written. And you realize stuff that you thought was just cut and dry and simple is actually not. And it's not just a binary. Like I said, he's got 10 reasons as to why voting does equal consent. And the next section after that is why paying your taxes doesn't equal consent either. And that one's easier because your tax, your money or your life, that's not really giving consent to the robber that you preserve your life rather than keep in money.

But, yeah, go ahead. Well, if we're in a truth community and, someone speaks what they believe to be the truth and then you get shouted at for that that's that's unbelievable to me yeah it's insane it's insane the level that we've gotten to um i'm frankly a little bit shocked by it uh and i think you know when it's earnest when i use the word earnest um a lot of people sort of uh conflate that term with like true right earnest as true or right uh and that is definitely not how I use the term earnest or how I think that term is intended. I use the term earnest to say people are well-meaning in their actions.

Ironically, I think we're at a state in the truth community, quote-unquote, where people are earnestly subjecting other truthers to struggle sessions because they earnestly believe that doing so will result in the, in the codification of a plan that they do not believe anything can stop, but that as Chris often points out that somehow you're questioning of could potentially stop if they don't subject you to a communist struggle session, that's a big problem. The fact that they are... Let's have a conversation about it.

Yeah, right. Instead of just labeling someone as being a certain thing without, having tried to engage in a good faith debate on something. And I think people, you know, the more people get to know me, you know, those that have talked to me at Garts and stuff, I'm willing to have a conversation. And I feel like I'm a generally good-natured person. And in like the Gart chat on Telegram, I don't feel like I'm a disrespectful person. I would respect someone a lot more if you ask questions, like, okay, I don't like the

thing you're saying, but you clearly believe it. strongly let's let's talk about it because maybe I'm wrong because that's the other thing too you know Chris Paul talks about you know the idea of the joy of being wrong or having learned that you were wrong we could all be wrong about literally everything that's that's an entire possibility and if you don't hold that in your mind not because I could totally be wrong about the things I believe I don't think I am because I don't think there's any value in saying something that I believe to be true as if it weren't true to soften the blow for people that can't handle the truth.

Let's ask me questions. And I, you know, give me, you know, give me an opportunity to defend myself instead of just writing me off because you don't like the thing that I'm saying. Well, you know what? This is the nature of, of the struggle session overall that we're in. We're trying to find the truth. And look, I want liberty, damn it. I do.

That is my driving, like I want my children to grow up and not have to, worry about, I told the story on G's show, about the firefighters coming over because the geometry of my fucking firewood was not triangular. It was rectangular. It was rectangular because I was using scraps for my wood shop. And that was apparently a violation of fucking city code. I don't want that for my children. I don't want my children to grow up and then they know that 30 or 40 percent of their check is gone like that. I don't want that for my kids. What that, what I want is freedom. We all want that. And I'm suggesting maybe what we've been doing for the last 250 years that has gotten us to this point, by the way. Going back to the comment that you made last year at Gart, which is an exact mirror of Spooner's mic drop quote at the end of no treason, that whether the Constitution be one thing or another, it has either created the government that we have or it was powerless to prevent it. Either way it's undet to exist. That is really uncomfortable for a lot of people to handle. But damn it, that's the fucking truth.

and so let's and then Chris always gets frustrated when people are like well you don't have an answer so therefore your identification of the problem it's like that's unbelievably stupid there is an answer to that so I've been going over the last 12 weeks on my show of what people did who were the most legally free I would argue in human history the Anglo-Saxon culture because they understood that a authority is not the source of law like power like the you know the king or whatever that's not the source of law he's a protector of law he's not the source of law we the people are the the source of justice and the sooner we re we relearned that

and we bring it back because we had it and it was taken just like judicial supremacy was just declared by fiat by the supreme court so was the gutting of trial by jury by chief justice joseph story in the 1830s boom went like way like that and nobody raised finger because by that time people have been comfortable with well we've got our representative form of government we got our Constitution we're good that's that's why I think it's like man we go and maybe at the end of the day I'm wrong and actually we just need to do it right and we can do it right going forward but we're not going to figure that out until we at least have an honest conversation

about how the fuck we got here in the first place yeah and that's a great you know and I had said that at guard I had never read Spooner but I think those are encouraging things you know when you kind of come to the same. Yeah. Oh, I love you. I was like, yeah. Yeah, like when you employ your, your just first principles logic. And I got a lot of shit for that. I still get a lot of shit for that of saying, you know, somebody who advocates for like constitutional law and the founding fathers, you know, by and large, compared to where we're at now in terms of the vision, many of them laid out, rather. When I said at Gar, for anybody who doesn't know, I said at Garth,

you know, last year or the year before, whatever it was, if the Constitution was going to work, it would have worked. Yeah. And, you know, it is astounding the number of people in the truth community who appeal to the Constitution by recognizing that it has been subverted. Right. But then think that returning to it will prevent its subversion. in the future, right? It's like, okay, guys, if an innocent person is like molested or killed, it doesn't impugn their character or intent that that happened to them. What it denotes or proves is their lack of power projection capabilities to stop that from happening.

Right. So people get so in their feelings about a document that people wrote 250 years ago that, by the way, they didn't agree on. And if you, like, it's amazing to me that it's like breaking news in 2026 to read Benjamin Franklin's statements coming out of the constitutional convention. Right. Where they were like, are you happy with what went on in there? And he was like, actually, ma'am, no. Like, I'm pretty fucking pissed. I'm not saying he's the paragon of virtue.

I'm just saying the founders were not just, we could have got some things better, but I think all on all, we got things right. They weren't happy. They came out of the constitutional, which is actually what gives me more respect for some of them. It's not that they came out of that and they were like,

I think we're in a good spot. A lot of them came out of that being like, well, we'll see. Yeah. And, you know, like the fact that we're still leaning on that, again, I'm not even saying that if they all unanimously agree that that would magically make it the perfect answer. Right. I'm just saying that there's this codified myth in the truth community and the Republican world and the MAGA world that like the founding fathers were unified. They killed each other in duels about this shit.

Are you fucking kidding me? Like the next person who talks about the founding fathers. Did you know some of them killed each other? Did you know a lot of the other ones wanted to kill each other? Because they disagreed so vehemently with each other's views about the codification of natural law that Drake is talking about, that they were willing to die or kill each other in order to preserve or prevent a vision that ended up in the Constitution. That's before we even get to what the Constitution says. And again, it's this instinct of people outsourcing their authority to perceived betters because they're 250 years ago, venerable. And this is one thing.

One more point is the reason that liberals lambas, the founders, is retarded. But the irony is what they are right about is that when people, appeal to the founding fathers as if by virtue of being the founding fathers, they are inherently better than you and get to determine the future of you and your progeny and all future peoples that come forever and on is absolutely ridiculous and is not an appeal to first principles. Yeah, and when people typically mention the Constitution and then the next words out of their mouth, it's the amendments. Those were amendments. They had to correct the perfect document, John.

Exactly. They had to correct it right out of the gate because the problems that are inherent in the first one, which weren't solved, by the way, that being the power to borrow, the power to tax, and the speech and debate clause that removes all the, to hold anyone accountable for violation of natural law while being on the floor of the House or or Senate, which means you can't, if someone violates your free speech, they put forth a bill or they vote on a bill that would take away your right to bear arms, a violation of the law of the land, you can't actually hold them accountable. Well, you know what that does? That creates absolute irresponsible authority and power, which is the power of private property, by the way, which means they declared ownership of everyone by doing that.

That's a real problem. And so the concessions, the amendments, they're concessions. We have to amend this thing. And here's the thing, too. I think when people refer to the Constitution, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt, because that's just the way I am. What they really mean are the principles of liberty that we actually do agree on. They want freedom. They want liberty.

They want the things that natural law actually offer. And what I've come to believe very strongly, after reading Spooner and going through it as deep as I have in the last number of months, is that those things aren't synonymous with each other. That actually, if you go back to the founding ethos and the principles that drove the founding fathers to become the founding fathers, the principles that drove them that they wrote extensively about, including trial by jury because it is the palladium of liberty, the protection of liberty, they then turn around and created something that violated.

And I don't know all their motivations. I don't know why. Maybe they just, well, pragmatism won the day or whatever, but that's fine. We want the principles, not the system. If the system can be revived to protect the principles, I'm on board, but the principles are what I care about the most. And I am not convinced that the system that was created, the system that we have now,

is capable of doing that. Because I think the system that we have now, going back to the demolition thing, if you demolish a building and then you want to reuse the same rubble to build a new building, you're not ahead. You're going to have your asbestos and your mold and your lead and all the other stuff that's in there. Get rid of that stuff. But keep the principles. Keep the foundation. Because the foundation is good. Just what got built on top of it undermine the whole thing. And that's my perspective on it. And again, I could be wrong. I don't think I'm wrong.

I have yet to have to encounter someone to take Spooner's arguments point by point and be like, here's where he's wrong, here's where he's wrong, that does not immediately rely on, well, that just can't work because of XYZ. Yeah. That's not principle. That's pragmatism. And I reject that wholly. And again, I want the same thing.

I want liberty. This is something that appeals to the, or rather, makes me think of the misunderstanding a lot of people have about some Bitcoin maximalists. When I say maximalists, I mean the people who are philosophically aligned with Bitcoin maximalism. is that they'll call people like that doomers again they'll call people like you a doomer or me a doomer we're talking about the constitution and the way we're talking about it the irony is that people like us are like hold on so we're thinking like what if we go back to the first principles of the founders and think is there a way we could approach this given everything we've learned that they didn't have the opportunity to learn right after seeing the next 250 years

some of them by the way were very prescient and did think that this was going to happen uh the adams by the way all the boston boys were like you guys are fucked but like we're good for now and we'll just fuck up the british the next time they come into the harbor but like your kids are screwed um pretty much everybody that signed the declaration from the northeast were like this is not good uh but uh anyway if they had the opportunity if they had the operation um opportunity to look back on that, they probably would come to different conclusions. It's the same thing. You know, saying something like that, you would think it's, this is a proactive, optimistic stance. I think it's possible to build something that does adhere to the codification of first principles, natural law and God, God given rights. And the, again, it's the great irony and I think sin of what has become of large swaths of the tooth community that they're like well it's the best we could do shut up right after you get back in your box we're going back to the old system we're just going to

put a red guy in there instead of a blue guy and it's like okay you let me know how that works in 20 years you piece of shit when the trumps are gone and like we're we're dealing with like jd vance's indian nephew's cousin who has a contract with palatier and is running in the the 2036 election. It's like that's not, I don't think, what the point was. I'm going to hit a couple ads. Go for it. And now we're going to come back to the Lord of the Rings, which is why everybody's here. Oh, yeah. Starting with ourselves and myself with soft disclosure. 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.

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All right, we are also brought to you by ourselves again. John and I will be in Nashville on April 9th through the 12th. Hope to see many of you there. I know a bunch of you will be. There will be no controversial opinions at all. There will be only unity, prayer circles, hats on the back. I can bring my guitar to sing Kubei. Right.

Well, isn't that a contradiction, right, inherently, like in the truth community? But like, thank God we're all unified in not only what should happen, but what will happen and what is happening. But we should all get together and advocate for the thing that we all know. is happening and is going to have, right? What I'm saying is we wouldn't need to do these events and you guys wouldn't come to these events and we wouldn't need to have these conversations if everybody thought that everything was preordained.

It's not. We have to take action. We have to do these things. Part of that action might be you guys coming there and heckling the shit out of John Drake. Bring it on. Whatever he is talking about there. So you have the right to do that. Badlandsmedia.tv slash events.

Well, hold on. It's not the right to do that because they do have to pay to be there. That's true, actually. Yeah, it's not the right. If you want to cuck yourself and pay us for the right to then do that by pay us, I mean, pay the venue. If you want to pay money to come yell at me, I'll accept it. Right. We will put a dunk tank at one of these.

I don't know if it's going to be in Nashville or not. We're also brought to you by what could be, just speaking from no experience at all, our greatest sponsor of all time in one that there are 3,054, four of you watching live, I'm sure will be patronizing this and the 3505th person who just turned this show on. And that is this little independent company called Burning Bright Publishing. The filthy savages of Badlands Media helped make the launch of Burning Bright Publishing, a scrum truelessent success in 2025. And now we're back with all the rights to the original IP due to your support following the limited edition hardcover saving soul the first book in the sword punch

sword punch sort punch sort punk trilogy is now available in digital and audio formats the audio book was produced in partnership with sound booth theater it's not some a i i i i read aloud crap it's a full-on audio theater production featuring a cast of professional actors original music and high-end studio polish i think it represents the best vision for the sword punk aesthetic in the best package for this audience bringing the story of Akio Prince and his war against the deep state to life in vivid detail. If you're into cyberpunk ninjas, epic fight scenes, 80s action pulp and criminal conspiracies, pick up your audio copy of SavingSoul today. Head over to Badlandsmedia.com to listen to a free sample and download the full

audiobook for 25 bucks. The Kindle edition is six bucks over on Amazon. We're in a war of stories. We have better writers. I botched my own ad. worse than anybody else has botched it. But yeah, guys, thank you for the support. Got the full rights back, not just to Sword Punk,

but to my other IP, which I will announce in the future, which is much more Tolkien aligned, my other IP. But yeah, check out Sword Punk. It's fun. The leather bound hardcover was 75 bucks because of how expensive that was to produce and ship and all that kind of stuff. 25 bucks, a third of the price, go check it out.

And I've said before, I've said before, I am not usually a fan of graphic audio, which is audio with multiple actors and sound effects and stuff. But we actually intentionally did that with this one because the book was originally written as a screenplay for a movie. And didn't end up as a movie, but it sort of sounds like a movie. The way these guys did. They're great again is what you're trying. Yeah, man. It's cool.

It's cool. I was nervous. I was like, this is going to be corny as hell. So check it out. And you know what? It's a good way. I've even heard some people in my audience say that they've kind of like slipped it to nephews or normies that just like genre fiction. And it's like, hey, there's some deep state elements in there, but it's not on the nose. So check it out, badlandsmedia.tv slash swordpunk. And if you guys do read it and like it, leave reviews for it. It's always good. And one more sponsor before we get back into it is our friends at Rumble. or sponsoring this show, which doubles as another means of supporting us and all Rumble creators, and that is Rumble Wallet. They can cancel your accounts, freeze your cards, decide what you're allowed to buy, say, or support.

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for good true ownership true protection true financial freedom thank you to rumble wallet and yeah that actually is perfectly in line with what we were just talking about and which is all political power as it is called rests in the matter of money there you go and only guarantee a man has for him to secure his own liberty is to keep his money in its own pocket it's the bitcoin world whether or not you think that it's going to be the future monetary system the Bitcoin maximalist world is a great little sub-community for first principles dialectics like the one we're having now just more on sovereign power because the idea behind Bitcoin is one central question what is money what should money be

And Bitcoin maximalist, the irony of a man like G money is a man that many, many people see as the ultimate encapsulation of a doomer because he's anti-elections and anti-God kings and anti this and that. And, you know, many of the things he says I don't even agree with. The irony is from a maximalist framework, he is more optimistic than most MAGA people because he actually thinks that you don't need. other people to exercise your own sovereignty, which leads us into the rest of our discussion that will lead us into Lord of the Rings. But, you know, if the Bitcoin maximalist community talks about what is money, and that's sort of their, um, their North Star of a question to orient their movement around, that I think maybe ours as Americans, as truthers, is something like, what is freedom? What is sovereignty?

And to me, to pass it to you, I think if there's going to be a great legacy of Donald Trump, it's not going to be defeating the deep state because I think there's going to be debates about how or whether that was accomplished. I think one of his great legacies will be provoking that question writ large across the battle space, right? Like reintroducing that question. When's the last time the American people like on a large scale? we're saying how much power should the government have better or worse right sometimes that argument's being levied against Donald Trump but often it's being levied in favor of Donald Trump as the representative of the people and that's what John and I were talking about in DMs for the last week is this idea the reason I named this episode sovereign prime was this idea of Donald Trump ironically challenging institutional power while also representing

the will of the people in a way that maybe we have not seen in quite some time as Americans. I wonder what you think about how he's done that. Yeah. Well, first, the concept of what is liberty and what is freedom. And I think that's been lost by large. We will say things like we're the land of the free. we celebrate 4th of July because we think we're a free country

and the like the point I made earlier about asking permission to do things that is yours to do by virtue of being a human being that you know some of those things that were codified in the Constitution's winner has a problem with the things being actually written down

I actually went over some of that tonight in my show but when I talk to people and they're content with the way things are because it's kind of a luxurious slavery that we live in. The economy is usually good enough. We all drive cars, whether they're nice cars or not. It's still a car. We all live in, for the most part, homes that our forefathers couldn't possibly imagine with electricity and running water and plumbing and you don't have to go to an outhouse when it's 10 degrees outside. Yeah, we can communicate to anybody instantly. Yeah, I mean.

Right now, thousands of people. You have unfathomable tools at your disposal. And I think we equate like the luxuriousness with somehow being free. But again, if you go to try to start a business, if you go to try to build anything on your property, and you immediately find out that you have to get permission to do pretty much anything. if you have scissors and you've learned to cut hair you still have to get permission from the state to do that for money that's not freedom so that's one of the things that bothers me when you know people talk about you know about the future i mean we haven't had any

kind of a conversation about let's let's actually define what we really mean by liberty by freedom and then the problem of looking to someone like Trump to be the source of that I think that's part of that that's a problem as well I think he's our ally but he's not going to be the source of that that source that going back to that the the oath that the king was made to give that the the king was to protect the law that the people had chosen we decide what our right and our liberties are. And we work that out as we interact with one another.

And in the same way that children on a playground figure out the basics of, this is how you act among people if you don't want to get your nose boxed in or punched in. Or you don't want to have your toy taken away from you. You learn that stuff as a kid. And so we've kind of lost that because we've delegated that power to the state. and I think that's an unfortunate thing of looking at Trump as being like just the continuation of that. And so going back to the demolition thing, if Trump is tearing down all of their systems, whether that's geopolitical structures, NATO, UN, all that stuff.

And then he's also tearing down a perception of what the government should be by just doing, getting rid of departments potentially, calling certain other branches of the government to the carpet, treating them with utter disdain you know how important is how how important is the senate i love chris paul's taking it how important is the senate really if trump keeps taking the slim majority we have and siphying it off to fill useless positions in the administrative state that's telling you something it's not really that important that's that's part of the demolition too so as far as like trump being the the trump ultimately as like the sovereigns so to speak like not sovereign like the sovereign right yeah he can project the he can project the

power i think in tearing down those systems and he can project that power in bringing in the economic you know through the the trade deals that he's been doing how many billions of dollars that he's got committed to be invested into the to the people and in some sense i don't really think he needs permission to do that i don't think he needs to ask for permission i don't think he needs to wait until people tell him it's okay to do that which there's instead of being a causal relationship between the people and the president or the king or what do you want to call him instead it's more of a symbiotic relationship he exists in his sphere and does what he thinks is best and then we exist in our sphere and if we're waiting for permission to exert our power

then what on earth are we doing if his speech we you know giving power back to you the people was in earnest which i think it is what power is he talking about and i think that's a conversation that needs needs to be had what is what is it really mean to have power as the people i was literally going to use that quote as the follow on from what you said and you know we've said this before but maybe people think we're being pedantic or something when we bring that up but again this is the great irony of being called of many people in our audience being called doomers for talking about things like this the or for being called anti-trump or anti-maga right for talking about things like this when the irony is we are looking at what Trump said and what he decreed as his promise to the

American people and taking it literally and I was going to say when Trump says it's in the intro the devolution power hour the most famous speech probably that Donald Trump has ever given certainly to this audience certainly to his core core hardcore base um written by Steve Bannon, FYI. I like pointing that out for all the people that every 30 days switch back and forth between Steve Bannon being evil, bad man, deep state, Trump traitor, super-based Steve. Look at this Steve Bannon rant. I'm going to retweet.

There's a lot of people out there who do that. Wrote that speech, collaborated with Trump on that speech. And to your point about, where does that power come from? I thought of that of, you know, when Trump says I'm giving power back to you, the people, it's almost like a lot of his base and a lot of Americans have been so reduced in their godly capacity that they believe that Trump has like this power over here that was the people's power. And he's like, guys, you know all that power? power. Yeah, you know how all that power you used to have? Remember the founding fathers? And they were like,

you guys all have this power. And it's gone and it's been taken from you. I know where they're keeping it. And once I release it, you're going to get it. Right. But that really is how a lot of people think of it. I know they don't think of it like a comic book and superpowers. But in a manner of speaking, a lot of people do. they think like oh well once trump strips away for example these bad laws and these bad policies more of our power will be returned to us and like in a if i'm being um sort of generous i can understand where that mentality comes from right if you're like hey if we got somebody in the house if we got somebody in the machine who is limiting the power of the machine and if the machines, if by virtue of the machine's existence, it siphons power away from me,

then that will have a net effect of giving me more power and autonomy. I would agree with that. But I don't think people take that to a far enough conclusion, which is to say that once Donald Trump has revealed to you that the machine that is the United States government exists to siphon your power away from you to perpetuate its existence, which is why we call it the machine, then I would argue that the way, the best way, the most lasting way that Donald Trump could return power back to the people would be twofold. One, affecting something of a controlled demolition from inside of the machine, which might be the more actual. side of things that we talked about at the beginning here.

And two, more importantly, to our interests, especially on the narrative, to remind the people that the machine's power is their power siphoned away and to challenge the people with that knowledge. You know, and I really just, it's like people that think we're disrespecting Trump. by saying these things. My opinion, this, I don't know the man's heart, but my opinion is that if Donald Trump is the man I think he is,

and I have a very high opinion of him, he would love these kinds of conversations and would be sitting there saying like, yes, you have the power. You have always had the power. I as your sovereign am beholden to your power, your authority and your mandate.

And again, that's why I named the episode Sovereign Prime. It's not to say, he is the prime sovereign. He has the most power. When I came up with that terminology, the way I thought of it was he should be the ultimate representative. And instead of using the term representative like you were talking about earlier as a pejorative of like, hey, now I'm in charge. I've got all your power now. All your collective power is mine now. I'm your representative.

The way I think of it is more like you, the people, have vested in me the leader, the prime mover of your movement in this time. I'm not saying that that's the end game, best case scenario. But you and I talked a lot the last week in DMs. It might be a hell of a lot better than the shoots and ladders bullshit we've been dealing with in the system to consider Donald Trump as a righteous Anglo-Saxon king. acting as the people's sovereign prime, aka king, then going through layers upon layer upon layer of bureaucratic systemites

who exist solely to keep our power siphoned away from us. Yeah, so tying into that, the Anglo-Saxon thing, because I've really been keying in on that a lot lately in my own mind, especially because Tolkien modeled his concerns, of Aragon after those kings. You became king in the Anglo-Saxon era, sometimes because of birthright. But that wasn't a guarantee. The crown didn't belong to you because you happened to be born to a certain person.

The crown belonged to you because you were the best man among men. You were the person that led the charge. You were the person that won the battles. and that was back during a time when kings would die in actual battles because they were actually swinging swords and they were actually fighting and killing people with their own bare hands the king as i mentioned you brought this up earlier that the the nature of the the way the king would protect the realm and would position the realm to be economically you know advantageous which at that time was basically just let people do what they will do

and keep off the bad guys. And so if you look at what Trump is doing in that framing, honestly, I mean, this sounds crazy for your average American, but if Donald Trump lived until he was 115 or 120 years old and stayed as king for the rest of that time, we would be better off. Yep. Then waiting until the 2028 fucking election cycle.

The caveat there is if we're waiting for him to fix all of our problems, on a smaller level than we're the minute he dies were well even during the entire time we're we're going to be in in a bad situation because the king was not really involved in the day-to-day administration of justice in the anglo-saxon kingdom trump is not involved in the day-to-day administration of justice in america that's our job and you're talking about having a reservoir of power that he's like doling out no we already have that power we just keep giving it away we got to stop fucking doing that and there's well how do we do that how do we do that money all political power boils down to the power you know the matter of

money the only guarantee you have your own liberty is to keep your money in your own pocket so find ways to be sovereign over your own money make choice like you know on a personal level because I'm not just preaching of people. I'm trying to do this on my own. I currently work for an employer that I've talked about before. And I don't want to be. I don't like the way they do things. And so I am working.

There's a number of things I have to do to get to that point, but I'm working to be able to go out on my own and start my own business, doing home remodel stuff. That's one of my passions or whatever, just making stuff in general. But then I'm also trying to transition my financial situation to be, more sovereign. So I'm not relying on, I have to be at a certain place at a certain time to appease this

certain employer. And then I'm in a position where the majority of my actual financial wealth is in a way that I can keep it secure, Bitcoin. Those are things I can do. And then to the education of people, trying to educate people to the methodologies that the Anglo-Saxons did and how they projected their... power of administrating justice in their in their communities and recognizing that it's not a top down it's a bottom up approach and if you're delegating that away and hoping that some representative

is going to do it right then you're you're just giving your power away and you're just hoping that they treat you right instead of live free and and be sovereign now obviously you can't just walk out right now, I don't think, unless you're willing to suffer the consequences, you can't just go out there and exert that power and not expect some blowback because the system is still pretty much in control of the local level, especially. But I don't think that it's exerting our power, and I don't think we're really doing Trump any favors either by just continuing on in the same system. That's not exerting power. That's the process of giving it away. and if he's an anglo-saxon king type when we get people all their panties in a wad calling trump a trill oh you know chris paul was doing that well we'll go from we'll go from being uh domer's and anti trump to those guys were talking about trump like the god king and it's like well which is it right

that's that's the uh bi-camera approach and then ask yourself this too like you know monarchy is so terrible we got away from monarchy that was so terrible it's like okay i would be willing to bet you that the average person living in England under King George was freer than we are today in a legal fence because they hadn't grown to that point yet. And it goes, I mean, I've been talked about trial by jury a lot and you and I have not really gone back and forth on that specific topic and whatnot. But the concepts that Spooner brings forth in how people exert their authority through the administration of justice, Because a law is essentially meaningless until it's enforced.

And if the people are the ones that actually decide what gets enforced, that's a lot of freaking power. And then going back to what I said earlier about asking permission to do what's yours by by natural right, that's a lot of power just to live, to be, to do. And then knowing you're in your community, yeah, this is the way we all think. I'm not going to get for building a shed without a permit, I'm not going to get in trouble for that. And there won't even be that statute on the books anymore because they know they can't. actually enforce it yeah I had a I had an anecdote kind of tangential to this from today a buddy of mine that I grew up with shout out to anybody who's divorced

especially as a guy I'm not but my buddy has gone through a rough divorce over the last couple of years and generally speaking of course this is from my perspective and his perspective but what is a marriage it's a contract right now it's a legal contract these days, but like even the most classical sense of what a marriage is, is a contract, right? It's an agreement. So in this specific situation, the wife broke that contract. However, you think she broke that contract is probably how that contract was broken, right? That contract breaking resulted in the dissolution of this marriage.

Now, my buddy bought the house that they... live in that they lived in he bought that house several years before they got married and before they even were together so this was his home got married to this woman years later you know obviously married her moved her into his home had a son with her and then 10 years later she broke their marriage contract they had a divorce and he literally texted me today suicidal which now i understand a little bit more of how people talk about that of like the epidemic of like divorced men and suicide. And you know, you hear the anecdotes of like, oh man, men really get screwed in this stuff. But holy shit, I really didn't understand how bad it was.

And I thought I knew even like, oh, she gets half your shit. And it's like, oh, no, no, no. She gets half your shit to a degree to which you wouldn't even believe. If you've not gone through this. And he couldn't believe it, even though he's been going through this for two years about all this process. And the reason I bring this up is, you know, my wife and I were talking, you know, she was a good friend of my wife's who my wife completely is like on my buddy's side on this whole thing because it's horrible seeing what's happened. But it's related to all this because, you know, what I said in the car today driving around with my wife is she gets to hide behind the state with. responsibility of what is being done to him through this process and the state gets to hide behind her

right so the state is like we're not doing this to you your wife is doing this to you right and your wife is like i'm not doing this to you the divorce laws are doing this to you right and long and short of it is she got um alimony and child support for the next you know 10 years or whatever right which hey whatever debate the debates can ensue about that Right. Again, she broke the contract. She has a boyfriend. She had a boyfriend during their marriage.

That doesn't matter. That doesn't factor into anything. Yeah, the notes of divorce is that came, one of those laws that changed in the 70s just absolutely screwed people over big time. Yeah, and I don't know a lot about it. I have heard that it's state by state it matters. I don't know how much it matters. But Massachusetts, you're probably going to get raked over the goals extra. Illinois is especially that way, too.

Yeah. So, you know, she gets half the shit. Some things I did not expect that he did not expect. She gets half of his pension that he vested during the time that they were together, which is like 15 years. And this guy is the hardest working guy I've ever met. So like he was working 80 hours a week out of prison, sleepless nights, literally. for over a decade she gets half of that pension when he retires and then today what he found out and the reason he was like joking with me but he's like oh you know you're going to this thing on Saturday

yeah man I see you there he's like well if I don't kill myself first which he's not the type of guy to say that type of shit I was like oh you're joking around he's like not really so he was forced by the state to sell the home that he bought

she got half of the proceeds, which you'd expect because this is how things work. Then he finds out today he owes capital gains. Oh my gosh. On the sale of the house, including her portion of the proceeds from the house. So he has to pay the tax on her. On her proceeds, but she gets the full amount. Oh my gosh. So in other words, let's just say, I'm just totally picking these numbers out of thin air,

and they're not the exact definite numbers from this situation. But let's just say that he made $320,000 on the sale, the forced compelled sale of his home, which is what he did. He had to split that with her. So she gets 160 and he gets 160. So that's a tough pill to swallow. But he accepted it. The state says, hey,

you had a capital gain of $320,000. Oh my gosh. And he said, well, actually, no, I had half of that and she had half of that. And they said, no, no, no. She didn't get a sale of a house. You got $320,000. And then you were compelled to give her half of it. So for her, it is not a taxable event because it is government authorized theft

of an asset. But for him, he needs to pay capital gains on his proceeds and the money that is being stolen from him by her. Insane. So anyway, like this is obviously Land of the premium. But it's like, yeah, to look at that,

to look at just as a mic, there's a million different microcosms of this. And I know people can say, oh, we could argue with this. Yeah. You get a better lawyer, maybe, maybe not. But like the idea that we exist in a system, and the reason I thought of that is you're bringing up trial by jury, but let's even get beyond trial by jury. The philosophy of the trial by jury system that you talk about, to me, not having dug into it, is largely rooted in the trust of a community of sovereign-minded individuals, right?

And if I think of like, if you took the 12 people that him and his wife knew best and the best knew them in their community, and you were like, what is fair in this situation? Do I believe she would get something out of his assets? Yes, he made way more money than her. She left a job for him. She stayed home. Like there are there are arguments to be had there. But do I think that she would end up with more of his wealth after having broken the contract than he is left with? A 37 year old guy who's one of the more successful guys I've met is living with his parents while she just bought a house with his money.

Yeah, that's not justice. You know, that's not justice. And we have allowed that to happen over. I mean, we personally haven't allowed that. That system, you know, got entrenched over a period of time through in the same way that judicial supremacy was established. That type of stuff used to be commonly before juries for hundreds of years in England and then even in the U.S. in the early days. And there was just a shift in the 1830s when it was just like, eh, nope, nope.

We're going to let the court decide what the law is. We're going to let the court decide what justice is. When in actuality, when we as natural law living people, because natural law is not some standard or statutes. It's just the way things work if you want to live in peace with people. That's just, it's just, if you want to have friends, don't steal from them. Like that, that's kind of simple, you know. And it's not like this standard that gets, you know,

applied by some, you know, uh, judge or whatever. It's we, we as individuals, we understand basically how, how things work between us as, as friends, as neighbors,

like I said, good fences make for good, or I've said that I think on my show. Good friends make for good, or good fences make for good neighbors. Like, we understand that stuff basically. And so if you just took a,

even, not even 12 people they knew, if you did a random sample of 12, because that's what it's supposed to be. The way juries are selected day is an absolute abomination. But it's a random selecting of 12 people. And you ask, does this seem fair? And they're all going to be like, no, that's not fair.

And so that's what justice is supposed. That is the way justice used to be accomplished in this country up until about 1830. It was probably dying out prior to that because there wasn't really much of a fight put up when it just got, you know, next. And where the judge started telling the jury, this is what you're going to think and all that. Right. And so it, that's, but going back to the power projection aspect of it, and it's like, well, how do we get there? Like, well, we didn't get here overnight.

We're not going to get there overnight, but we're certainly not going to get there by people just going, well, let's just keep continuing as we've been doing and hoping it somehow changes. That's not the way it works. Yeah. And this does lead us into, shockingly, the Lord of the Rings. Both of us, each of us has a sword in his background. I believe yours is an unnamed.

Peasant. There isn't a name for it. Carried by Strider. It's because it's not technically canon. Yeah, yeah. Because Sprider carried around the shards of Narsal with him. Right. Or the hilt of Narsal at least with the blade on it.

He didn't actually carry a sword around. So they had a- Mine is a named sword. Oh, I know. Wielded by Fingon during the first age. But later passed to Gandalf, and that is glamdering. but this does connect to Lord of the Rings and you mentioned earlier like we talked about Anglo-Saxon kings etc Trump as the the Maga King and you know how you just ended there

reminds me like one of the arguments I used to make long before the info war and long before I was even a Trump guy I used to say if you can't make an argument that can convince a child then you're not making an argument now does that hold up I don't know but that's what I used to say. And at the time, I didn't use terminology like first principles or epistemology and things like that, right? We've got, we've got more weapons in the cognitive toolbox these days to communicate these things. But by and large, it's that distillation. You earlier said, do unto others, as you would have done unto yourself, right? What is that? Well, that's the golden rule. And what is the golden rule? the first thing you are ostensibly supposed to teach children who are capable of learning these things.

And my son is 14 months old, right? So, like, he's not at that point yet. But he's just getting to the point where he's doing shit that's bad on purpose, like where if you pick him up and he doesn't want to be picked up, he'll try to hit you. And but we're already like, all right, I don't know if he's going to understand what I'm doing here. But when he does this, I'm going to grab his hand and say no. and stop him physically from doing that thing. And when I do that, he does look at me and it's like, huh, I don't like the sequence of events that just happened.

Right. Right. And it's like, well, he's a smart kid already. He'll probably figure that out soon enough. And you know, the golden rule, it's like you're appealing on a baseline to the selfish nature of human beings. Right. And the irony, the genius irony of the golden rule is eventually that selfish nature and the natural law built on that selfish nature becomes a recursive loop that perpetuates an altruistic system. Where you actually then, it's like the fake it till you make it sort of thing.

It's like, hey, do this because you don't want it done to you. And then eventually you won't want it done to other people either because you actually care for them, not just for you. And the reason I think of Lord of the Rings is that you and I talked this week, like the analogues between Trump and Aragorn. I see the memes. They've been going on for 10 years. But I don't think people have been literal enough about the analogs between Trump and Aragorn. And you, in our private conversation, when I referenced to them, nailed exactly what I've been thinking. When you talked about Trump as basically a servant of the people, a warrior king, a man who led in battle, and something. you said in one of your earlier rants tonight the best man yeah and he's a great analog i think to the

story of donald trump i'm not saying don't trump is riding into battle right or fighting in front of the black gates oh it'll be a lot more if he did yeah it's a code date and in a manner of speaking the way i would lead it off is saying one of my notes was uh what's the donald trump on donald Trump's rise in the true meaning of MAGA, one of my notes was the culture king, destroyer of taboos, and Overton windows. It's like, really, when Trump came onto the scene and really emerged under the geopolitical zeitgeist, it was a warlike posture that he adopted, and it was toward the system, and it was on behalf of the people. And what many, many, many, many, many people have forgotten as that it was against the Republican establishment and not in favor of the Republican

an establishment. But, you know, I wonder what you think of that. The analogs there of, like, rising up from the people as this culture king rather than being anointed from on high. Well, and, okay, so the analog with Aragorn to establish what people may not understand. Because the movie doesn't really flesh out, the movie, like, Return of the King, or the whole trilogy, doesn't really flesh out the whole story of Aragorn the way the books do. and you know he's the he's the rightful heir by blood maybe trump is too who knows um he's so aragon

is the rightful heir by blood he's you know numinorian descent you know that's the high blood of the you know the western man all that and uh he is the first thing he's the first to he's the first to the he's the first to charge he's self-sacrificing in the books he's there's a prophecy about the return of the king and that the by the his the king's hands the people be healed or something that effect he's going to be a healer he's going to be caring for people and so uh you have this this progression of also you have the fact that the the people of gondor are being uh taking care of by the steward of gondor who rule who oversea sees Gondori in the name of the king, but is not the king, and that's been going on for a thousand

years. Gondorian devolution. What's that? Oh, yeah. And of course, Denethor, you know, the steward is, is, he basically has become a tyrant himself because he doesn't really want the king to come back. But there are multiple opportunities where Aragorn could have stepped in and said, I'm the king by right, and I'm going to take it.

And he didn't. and he's written as this humble self-sacrificing courageous healing badass like sage of a man who has spent the better part of the last 50 years of his life in the wilds defending the shire from don't know that he's doing that we have no idea right and so when the final battle happens happens. You know, he, he gets the army of the dead and all that. And then he defeats the corsair fleet, never asked for accolades, kind of just like hangs in the background almost. Defeats Sauron, then he's crowned. The whole time he is like eschewing the king, the kingship. He's not seeking, he's not wanting it. And the people are like, you are the king. Please become,

the king not a perfect analogy to what we're going on here but when you uh Tolkien had written about um the it was a concept of no nolo episcopari something to that effect as i will not be bishoped and that was his concept of what an anglo saxon king the reason why they should be king is they're like i don't want it you might argue that well Trump likes the limelight and all that but trump likes the limelight and all that but Trump was asked if we believe the Q drops. He didn't seek it out. And you think back during the interview of him in the 80s, you know, when he's, you know,

why don't you win for president? And he has this very thought. He's like, well, I could. Yeah, he's like, could, you know. And all of his ideas were pretty much the same back then as they are now. He saw the system for what it was back then. So, like, the dude didn't even start seeking it until he was in his 70s. you know, Errone was like, what was he like 80 something or whatever in the books?

I think it was 87. Yeah. So, I mean, it's not a perfect analog, but when you understand the way that Tolkien wrote the king, which was based on the Anglo-Saxon concept of a king, to the point that, and I just learned this recently, and I need to find this essay, but Tolkien has an essay called B.O.E. Bail Wolf the Monsters and Critics. And it's apparently a famous essay in which he analyzes

the Bail Wolf story is a, you know, a, you know, it's not historical narrative per se. It's myth, but it's sort of bringing out the concepts of what kings should be and all that. He was deeply fascinated with that era of human history. At high respect for the way that they valued liberty, the way they valued authority,

or like the types of figures that should be in authority. And so that's how he wrote the character of Aragorn. And so it's not that difficult to make the parallels between the way Trump is doing things and Aragorn because you think of even the way that Aragorn empowers the people that are around him to be their best selves. You know, the way that, you know, he following, being part of the fellowship with the hobbits and bringing the best out of them, I mean, the movies do a fun job with that,

with they're like training him how to fight and stuff and like those are like a little small vignettes but they kind of speak to a larger the larger character that everyone that is around eragorn wants to be the best possible version of themselves because he's the best possible version of themselves i mean think of boramere too in the way that their relationship you know culminated and i don't know i i think that there's there's a lot there uh and i'm interested to just kind of hear your your your yeah as well no i love that and you know and i totally agree and i'm trust me as a as a as a fantasy author myself, I'm usually the first to be like, this was the, this was the books version, which you're right to point out that there's a lot more depth to Aragorn's lineage and choices. I will say, I think that that Peter Jackson trilogy is a real masterwork. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And not just in terms of how it's crafted and everything, but I actually, especially with age, when I was a kid, I was really taken with the action and all that. I still am, but I liked Aragorn.

I really liked Legolas. I was really into the elves when I read those books. I really thought the ethereal nature of them was really interesting. They also thought the Legolas character was interesting from a philosophical perspective of being like, man, isn't it interesting that you've got this immortal creature who has lived for thousands of years and his people are basically like, we're out. Like, this is all you guys. but he is risking his immortality to join them.

I actually always thought that was an understated aspect. Tolkien, speaking of his letters, had a famous letter to a critic where he once remarked on, he was asked, who do you think the most underappreciated member of the fellowship is? And he said, Legolas. And he said, by my own admission, Legolas, you could argue, accomplishes the least of any member of the fellowship. He has no deeds of great renown besides his martial deeds. He's widely considered the best or among the best in the fellowship at fighting. Kind of gets them through a lot of shit that they wouldn't have got through.

But he doesn't really accomplish anything. Like he isn't known besides being that guy. But he said, you know, they get the sacrifice that he was making where like there's no afterlife for the elves. Like if they're dead, they're dead. like that's the great gift that men have is that they could go into the halls of menway kind of like Valhalla or heaven and the elves though immortal don't have that so in a strange way for elves to risk their immortality in battle in defense of humans is kind of this purely altruistic thing but as I've gotten older I've really appreciated more and more and

more the writing of and performance of Aragorn in those movies because you know you mentioned vignettes and everything and we're talking about leadership and especially in the analog to Donald Trump especially in the fellowship of the ring there's um like after Gandalf falls in Moria nobody decrees Aragorn as leader uh but he immediately becomes the leader as i've gotten older one of my favorite scenes in Lord of the Rings is immediately following the fall of Gandalf, they're on the white stones outside of Moria, and the hobbits are crying, and everybody's despairing, and even the warriors. Yeah, even the warriors are despairing. And Aragorn says, get them up. Legolas, Gimli, get them up. And Bar Amir says, by knife, I mean,

give them a moment for pity's sake. And Aragorn, I know every line on these movies. I'm sure many of do and Aragorn says by nightfall these hills will be swarming with orcs we must make for the woods of Lothlorean and it's like just a direct command and they all follow it they immediately follow it and then they get to Lothlorean and the elves who should recognize Legolas as the leader as far as they're concerned by their customs immediately recognize Aragorn as the leader of the company because it's very obvious that that's what's going on. And then furthering that, and I think this is more of the analog to Donald Trump, during Helms Deep, Aragorn is not only not the king, but the king is in the battle that he's in. The king of those people of Rohan is commanding and leading that battle. And yet, that is when Aragorn becomes king. And that's my. argument when you especially when you rewatch those movies I think they do a great job with it our gorn is the leader of rohan in that battle the men start the battle where the men are looking to theodon and the elves are looking to arragorn and as the defenses break down and break down and even though theodin fights and he's brave the men start to look to aragon sure for what they should do as things are getting crazy and crazy.

And that was how he carried himself in that battle as well. Exactly. And that's my point. And there was a number of amazing things that he did. And that speaks to Tolkien's vision of the king being the best men among men. And to your point about, you know, they just automatically started following him. That's just, that is the way human nature is. Like there is always going to be someone in the room that just is that guy.

and we don't need to fight that concept. It's okay to go with that concept because that is like human that is encoded in the way we are. We follow greatness. And following doesn't mean you're necessarily being subservient in a like a feudal serfdom sense, but just recognizing that that guy is forging a path and I want to support what he's doing. And if he asked, you know, if error going to get them up, that's not something that. they want to do. That's a distasteful task to do

but you must because orcs are going to swarm these hills by nightfall. And so to that point, Trump giving power back to the people. The orcs are swarming these hills by nightfall take your power back. You get up and let's get moving. Let's not stagnate. Yeah, pragmatism

and hope. And again, Helms Deep is really, I think, the true like fulcrum through which that whole trilogy hangs like that beginning it proceeding it and following it and before the battle um he sees the young boy who's got this shitty old sword that he's swinging around or it's not swinging around he's just like i don't know what the fuck to do right and he turns to aragorn sees him it's a great little scene in the movie and and the boy says the men say we won't live out the night. And he says there's no hope. They say there's no hope. And he takes his shitty sword and you know it's a shitty sword and he swings it around like a badass. And he

tests the weight of it and he hands it to him and he says, this is a good sword. And there's always hope. Nothing else. Right. Like it's one of my faith, it brings tears to my eyes as a grown man now. Because he doesn't tell him they're going to win. He just says this is a good sword there's always hope are we all going to die probably we're probably all going to die but we might not

and like inherent in him saying there's always hope is this is a good sword like you got a fight you have to fight and I'm going to fight and all these guys around here are going to fight and as long as we do that

there's hope and there's this I think it's that mix that Aragorn has of hope and people in but like put things into him that aren't there necessarily they they project things into him um but he's also pragmatic and it's like yeah we got to fight our asses off yeah to even have any prayer here and in the same battle speaking of legolas and irogon another understated scene i think from that series is when legolas despairs ahead of the battle not because he's afraid and that's actually in addition to the movie There are some little additions that they make that I think are good in keeping with the theme.

And Legolas despair is not because he's afraid because he looks around at all the Rohan people. And he's like, these guys can't fucking fight. Like, we got no badasses here. Like, there's three or four badasses here. And then we're going to get smoked. These guys are going to get smoked. And Aragorn knows that all these guys are looking at Legolas as being like, we've got Legolas. We've got Aragorn.

We've got Gimley. We've got Theodon. So by Legolas voicing that, Aragorn knows that he is affecting the legitimate chances of victory of all of the guys in that room. And by taking Legolas down a peg in that scene, he imbues all those guys with hope. He says, I'll die as one of them. And again, he's not saying we're going to win. He's just like, you know, and I just think, and I do think there's real anales. to Trump with that stuff where it's like he he has I think even though there's still these

struggle sessions going on I think a lot of what Trump did was say like no we can we can redefine what American politics has been for the last hundred years and what you know your Fox News Huffing Republican grandparents have been telling you as conservative values like we can redefine all that we can yeah I can be a New York City Democrat and run as the most based Republican of all time and redefine what being a Republican even is anymore. And he got a lot of former liberals on board. And I think that that's just a testament to like him fitting that coming out of his mandate that he always talks about truly did come out of people engaging with the dialectic and the story. story of Donald Trump as he put it off rather than just something that was imbued into him like from on high.

Yeah, I love that scene that you highlighted there. I was thinking about it. You're talking about the good, this is a good sword scene because that takes the the sword scene takes place right after he says the national die is one of them, I believe. Because he's like he's kind of filled with angst and it's in a way. I mean, this is so sacrilegious. Like, in a way, it's kind of like Erdogan's passion, you know, in the garden kind of thing. Speaking of, like, the passion of the Christ, not the Christ. Just make sure people understand that I'm not making that direct analog.

But we're like wrestling with the moment, like you said, that's kind of when he becomes king, that that's like the point in his character arc, at least as way it's portrayed in the movies, where he starts to take ownership of his destiny. in a more real and physical sense. And yeah, that's powerful to watch. And thinking of Trump, taking and going back to the slings and arrows kind of thing, I'll die as one of them.

They won't indict me a billion times and put me in prison for the rest of all of our lives. Then, you know, fine. Let's go to it. Let's go to battle. I mean, maybe that was all narrative stuff too, but it's story.

It works. It communicates the same truths that are underlying his character of who he is. And think about this. I'll play it. It's a short scene. Oh, yeah. Think about this, too, as like a philosophical exchange between Donald Trump, you know, our chosen sovereign, right? Our chosen king, our chosen leader, at the very least, the most in arguable and uninsulting, feelings hurting term is Donald Trump is the leader of our movement.

and think of this kid here as like the Anans, the Maga base, the American people. Give me a sword. By the way, this kid's fucked. We don't see what happens to him in the battle, but I don't think he made it. He wasn't riding out with him at the end. What is your name? Hollis, son of Hamillane. The men are saying that we will not live out the night.

He see that it is hopeless. This is a good sword. Harley, son of hammer. And, you know, it's a great scene. Vigel Mortensen is such a badass actor, by the way, because you can see him making the decision. He believes it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You absolutely can. Oh, my God, Alzheimer. And it really is. There are so many great performances in that trilogy. Ian McKellen's great. There's so many great ones. But, like, Vigo is really the glue of that whole truce.

Yeah. But yeah, the, the reason I think of sort of the truth community, the Q community, MAGA, whatever, the American people who are willing to embrace Trump or have at any point in time, what I like about that analog, that's seen as a microcosm, is I think the people who call people like us Dumers or they say we don't trust the plan. You know, I call them trustees. their version of that scene would be that kid looking at Aragorn and saying, Aragorn's in control. Aragorn is a better fire than me. He's a leader among men. He knows way more than me. He's been in these kind of battles before.

He's got friends in high places. He knows the elves. He knows what's going to happen here. He's in control. and I trust him. And that scene, I think, is the mix of hope and pragmatism of Aragorn saying, like, yeah, I am more capable than you. I do know more than you. I have been in these situations and you have not.

And I'm probably going to be way more important to this than you. But if you sit on this wall and try. trust me to save you, you are going to die. Yeah. If you pick up your sword and fight and follow my lead and push in the same direction as me, you still might die. Yep. But you might not.

And that's kind of how I see like Maga and Q and the truth community is like, listen, we're giving you the sword and we're giving you the information and we're giving you the inspiration for a lot of people. Certainly for me, the cue drops and Trump arrived at a place when I was totally blackpilled and really pulled me out of that in different ways. And we too. But I think I've come to the point of the real gift being they inspired us to pick our swords up again, against peacefully. To start being like, wait a second, there was a time when men were free, right? There was a time when we were defending ourselves. There was a time. when the government could do this shit to us. Where the fuck did these guys get off, thinking they could do all this stuff to us? And, you know, it's kind of like after Helms Deep, I wouldn't want to be the next army that wants to fight Rohan after that. Well, we found out what happened after that. Ballot of Pelaner Fields. Like after Helms Deep, the Rohan army was pretty well geared,

even though a lot of them had died, to charge into battle against Mortor. Which is My favorite scene of that entire story. It's incredible. It is, if you don't get goosebumps watching that scene, then I have no hope for you as a person. Yeah, you're done. You know what's the best thing about that scene in my view? The best thing about that scene, in my opinion, and that's Theoden, giving his speech, who you could argue was inspired by Aragorn in the Battle of Homs Deep.

he even says it was aragorn not theodon who led our people to victory uh but in palinor fields one of the great little details of theodin's speech is he says for for death for glory for the red dawn and then his their battle cry that like a lot of people you can't pick up on because they're they're just people think they're just yelling yeah they are screaming death uh over and over again before they charge into the army of Mordor and again they're not chanting death to the

enemy. No. They're chanting death to themselves and that they have fully embraced that they are going to die in that battle which completely terrifies and demoralizes the enemy. Well and that's a

yeah if that's the penultimate which I'm I've never been in the military so I'm probably speak out my ass here but a person who has nothing left to lose is a very dangerous person um have you i got to believe you've heard Tolkien reading that that that that line that that part of the book because he does a great job reading that too it's yeah and that itself is all inspiring as well but yeah you know one of the things you wrote down in your uh notes to me earlier this week about Aragorn and Trump was, you know, the servant king.

That's one of those ideas. But prophecies fulfilled was one of the things you write down, which I thought was interesting. Yeah, that was the hands of the king or healing hands or something like that. And that's like, which I, yeah, well, according to the book, you know, that part is, is left out in the context it is when he's in Gondor after the battle with of Minnestireth. you know, Palinor Fields and all that, that, that he goes around, because there's a lot of story that is, like, as they're getting ready to then march on Mordor, you know, to draw out, you know, Sauron's attention. There's a lot of wounded, and he goes around.

He heals A-O-N. He heals Pippin. I think he also heals Faramir as well. And a lot of people, he just goes into the hospitals. and like they're trying like where is he's in the hospital area it's like jesus analogs well yeah exactly and that speak to that's a servant that's a servant king that's the healer king but there was there was a prophecy in the the gondorian legends of of the king being a healer and um i mean i won't make any i i know there's people that talk about guys like kim clement or whatever making prophecies i personally don't subscribe

to those um for that's a whole other conversation but uh the the truth of what Aragorn fulfilled is something I think that Trump could there's analogs to what Trump is doing too Yeah and I thought in a destiny kind of sense You know we talk about the the The culture eves and flows and kingdoms

Rise and fall and there's there's almost a prophetic sense and like This can't go on like this forever It something had to to give and it makes someone like Trump to be the thing that just kind of goes, bink, and then pushes that domino that collapses the whole thing. Obviously, I think he's doing more than just pushing a little domino. You speak also of, you know, in the sword scene, he's a much better fighter than that kid. Well, Trump's obviously not wielding a sword, but the dude knows how to cut deals.

Oh, yeah. He knows how to manipulate economic systems. I think it was you and Chris may be talking about how the, you know, I think it was you talking about there was an economic publication, market publication of guys who think they're in the know and they even realize that like the market's fake. Yeah, that it's all being guided based on the dueling narratives of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping essentially. And so there's like two guys are in charge of the world economy. Yeah. based on whatever they say in a game day so you have that aspect of it too that's that's trump wielding a sword you know that those are those are his weapons in in battle and that's the battle

that needs to happen because you do need you do need an aragon you do like as as a as a as a race of people, human beings. We need an Aragor in which the analog to that in real in real life would be Jesus Christ. We need that. We need a champion because we keep trying on our own and we really keep screwing up over and like natural law is a standard that we can use to guide our interactions, but we keep failing at those interactions. It's a it ultimately ends up being a mirror to show us how screwed up we really are and that we need the war. warrior king to come in and save the day, so to speak. And on a spiritual sense, Trump can't be that way.

On the spiritual sense, that's what we have Jesus Christ for. But on a physical sense, the here and now, people can rise to that in a geopolitical, economic, whatever kind of sense. And I think Trump is definitely doing that. You know, one other thing on the prophecies angle, it made me think of when you said that, good and bad, but like the Q drops. There's people that sort of... Future proofs pass. Yeah, future proofs pass. And again, I was very influenced by the Q drops. And I do think that there's a positive framing of looking at the sort of prophesizing going on there.

Propheifying, I think, you know. Prophecying, yeah, of essentially saying, okay, let's take it at base value and say that these drops were put out by people in the know. with means that we do not have and knowledge that we do not have, and most importantly, perhaps, will, goodwill to try to accomplish the things laid out in those drops. That there is part of that, we can see the power of it. Sometimes it's good, sometimes I think it's bad, or it can be turned to bad and weaponized, where there is a massive community of people who essentially, whether they're talking about Kim Clement or not, or whether or not they are conscious of this or not,

they are essentially prophesying about Donald Trump on a daily basis. None of these people think that that's what they're doing. Chris sometimes refers to it as divination. But instead of looking at... He talks about, too. Yeah. And, you know, yeah, the hyperstition concept.

And, you know, I think that there are positive aspects of that, and I think that the drops laid out the framework of a story that we were going to be told and that we have largely been told, I do think there's room to abuse that and that people have filled in some of that gap to abuse it by sort of forgetting, in my view, that the point of this largely was to prophesize something and say like, hey, it's possible to take back our country. It's possible to have a golden age. It's possible to do these things. Oh, right. In the future, you're going to see these markers hit that should fill you with hope.

And to me, should motivate you to get up and get moving and whatever. And then there's people that have just been like, all we got to do is keep divining and figuring out what the people that have power are going to do next for us. But, you know, I think there's that aspect of the prophesying as well. This will probably get me in trouble a little bit. Ghost isn't here, but I can shit on the Jews for you if you want. We kind of talked about this a little bit last time. The problem that the Jews, well, they weren't Jews, they were Hebrews,

because Jews are from the tribe of Judah. But that aside, the problem... I've said many times I don't know what a Jew is, and people think I'm joking, but I still am not entirely sure. Right. In theory, it's a descendant of the tribe of Judah, at which point at this point in human history none of them can make that claim because it's all been all the records have been lost but anyway leading up to Jesus appearing you know being you know the virgin birth all that sort of stuff

they had they had as a religious community subjugated by world empires for hundreds of years at that point had settled into a familiarity with their rituals to the point where the rituals themselves became more important than the thing the rituals were pointing to. So that when the culmination of all of the mosaic law and all of the prophets and all of the scriptures that they held to the point where they wouldn't even touch them with their hands, they'd use a pointer with them

and had impeccable devotion to the nitty-gritty, to the point where they made up new nitty gritties to protect the nitty gritty details of the law. Because in the Old Testament, there are 613 Levittical laws, Levi being the tribe of the priesthood. 613 laws that they had to follow. Hyper, hyper-detailed laws.

And they became so obsessed with the law that rather than recognizing it as a mirror like natural law is to expose their sin, expose their brokenness, they looked at that as being the end-all, and the Apostle Paul says that the law was a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. There's never an end of itself.

Now, make the correlation to the Q-drops. If the Q-drops are a form of hyperstition, fake it till you make it, self-fulfilling prophecy type of a concept of instilling a move. and we if we do this we have an idea that this is what's going to end up happening and if you're stuck on that then you're like the first century Israelites who are obsessed with keeping the law and completely missed what the law was pointing to yes and that's one of the reasons why I'm I'm so focused on Spooner's writings because I kind of feel like it's getting back to the point of what the what this all was with with everything

was about what the American experiment was about and if we get stuck on the cue drops if we get stuck on the system went back to our earlier conversation about the Constitution and we don't recognize that it's the things underneath it that were the foundational layer which there's an expression that the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed and the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed it's a fulfillment of everything because you read the Old Testament through the lens, the New Testament, you're like, oh, man, that's, that's pretty wild. How a lot of the ceremonies are actually just, you know, prophetic foreshadowings of the life of Christ, the path over being a huge one.

You know, you died on. I mean, look at the Roman Catholic Church and all this shit. And, you know, I'm by no means a biblical scholar or anything like that. But the irony is, as I pointed out many times growing up in South Boston, I was disillusioned by Christianity. you could argue by virtue of the rituals that I was subjected to. Now, maybe I wouldn't have taken to it anyway, but I distinctly remember finding the ritual very distasteful.

And a big part of it was that none of the adults involved in the ritual could explain the meaning of the ritual to me, or what we were doing, or why I felt bad all the time, and everything was so negative, et cetera. You know, there's many different examples of this. But I think it's a great analog you bring up of the ritual aspect there. Just forgetting what the point of the ritual is. And if you want to, we are ritualistic people.

Yes. We do. Which means I don't think it's inherently a bad thing. But if you lose the point of what you're doing the ritual for, then you're, there's no point in doing the ritual. but if you maintain if you that's why I think if you you know making the analog back to the Q drops like I think the Q drops do have value yeah it's you you you can't say they don't and um but if we get if we don't if all we do is hang out in Q drops we're I think we're missing the point of of the Q drops and I know there's people that's not what I'm doing then I'm not talking to you right yeah exactly but there are the people that feel the need to attack based on you saying anything like that, then you're probably one of those people. And, you know, I would actually draw like a strange analog to the martial arts world. This is something I noted in my youth that I learned over time.

A lot of similarities to organize religion in the martial arts world. There's all these different styles of fighting, right? Different styles of combat that originated in different countries and different teachers within those styles and dialectics, within dialectics and all that kind of stuff. And I was very influenced as a young man by the writings of Bruce Lee, actually, who admits he himself was taking the writings from a bunch of different philosophers and thinkers and amalgamizing them all into his own philosophy. But the one that stuck with me the most was Bruce Lee's philosophy was take what works, leave the rest. And there's a story he tells of where Bruce Lee was this incredible kung fu master. He had several real fights when he was young in China, done well,

and he had never lost a fight or anything like that. And then he came to the U.S. And he was teaching in California at the time and he was teaching Americans Chinese martial arts. He was a very talented guy, obviously. And then one time, an American wrestler came into his dojo and asked if he could spar with him. And Bruce was like, yeah, sure.

And the wrestler, Bruce, by all accounts, beat this guy up. but it took him like eight minutes to get out from under the guy because the guy just shot a double leg on him and took him down and kept him down he couldn't do much damage to him Bruce got on top of them they ended up getting separated but instead of taking that and going ah my style kung fu has prevailed over this American therefore it was better what he realized was I've never been double-legged before holy shit this is a problem

and started training with American wrestlers to understand how wrestling worked. And again, doesn't mean Bruce Lee was the best fighter that ever lived or any of that hero worship shit that goes on. It was that he had a first principles approach to fighting. And he started saying like, all right, if this doesn't work, then it doesn't work. And I'm going to get it out of my style.

And it was considered extremely, it was basically blasphemous in the martial arts world. And I remember growing up with that. I started in Taekwondo where it was all about kicking. And like, yeah, when I graduated from that school and went to what became the school that I thought professionally out of, I had the best kicks there. But I couldn't box my way out of a paper bag.

And the reason I ended up signing with that school is the first time I went there, they were like, what are you best at? And I was like, oh, I'm a pretty good kicker. So they're like, oh, show us, right? So I'm hitting the heavy bags. are like, yeah, you're the best kicker we've seen. So I'm like feeling myself, right? I'm like 16.

Like, yeah, damn right. I'm the best kicker you've seen. So the lead trainer takes a two foot long piece of yarn and he ties my ankles together and puts me in a ring against their best boxer. And he goes, if you lose the fight, then you lose the fight. And if that string breaks, then you lose the fight automatically. So it meant by definition, I can. not only couldn't kick because if I threw a kick, I would break the string.

But I couldn't even get into a wide stance, which is what kickers like and feel most comfortable in. So it essentially put me in a phone booth and I got my ass kicked by this guy. And I could have come out of that and been like, well, if I could throw kicks, it wouldn't have mattered. And their whole point was, you're not going to be able to throw kicks in every fight. And if you get into the corner by some guy who can beat the brakes off you with his hands, you better know how to react. And I draw this, you know, you're talking about the cue drops. And it's like, man, if your first instinct toward anything somebody asks you about the info war is to defer to a cue drop, you might think of a cue drop. And it might have led you down the right rabbit hole.

at the right time to the right conclusion. But if your answer is to defer to that practice, then I could argue you might have missed the point of what that practice was trying to guide you toward, right? It's like if you're in a fight and you get punched in the mouth, to use Mike Tyson's analog, you don't start appealing to your trainer.

You start trying to figure out what to do based on what your trainer taught you. And that's how I see Q is like the trainer. That goes back to the first principles that you're talking about with Bruce Lee. And, you know, to kind of brush back up against the voting topic, it's like, okay, we've tried that for 250 years.

We tried it harder. We tried it harder. And maybe we recognize that, you know what, that didn't really need. lead to us achieving the first principal goal of we want liberty for us and for our prosperity. So let's, we need to read about, we just got punched to the mouth, all the plans that went out the window. You know, what are we going to do about that?

And then going, going back to like the Q post thing, I have a thought when you're, you're, you're bringing that up, that if you, if you think of a Q, oh, the Q drop made me think of, you know, or I thought this thing made me think of the QPOS thing. drop, you know, Chris talks about playing match online or whatever. Like, all the Q proofs have pretty much in my opinion have been out there. Like, there's no reason to prove them.

You don't need to prove them anymore. So if your goal of playing match online is to prove them, like, let's find a new use case. Right. And it's possible, I mean, John's shown this, it's possible to

come up with a highly intelligent, well-reasoned, deeply wise perspective on the nature of what's going on, without resorting to Q-Drops. And I think you could say the same thing for Chris as well. I don't think Chris came to where he is because he read a Q-drop somewhere. Are they useful? No, absolutely. Yeah, and some people did because of the Q-Drops.

Again, it's like it's another Bruce Leism, and it's not only him, but many paths to the mountaintop. Like that's that age-old philosophy of like, hey, how did you get up here? I took this path over here. It's like, okay, I followed the Q drops down here. Right. Or up here. That's great.

But again, if you're like, you must do this. And back on the trail at this point, there was this marker. And it's like, well, yeah, anyway, we're all here now. Right. So now what do we do? Yeah, we don't want to pay it's a local scavenger hunt. Let's make up our own list. There's also something to be said, and again, as a martial arts analog, that different styles work for different people, too.

Mm-hmm. Right? And I tried this when I was fighting because I transitioned from kickboxing to MMA before I got injured a fuck ton of times and had to stop all that. But I was like, it got in my head of, well, I'm a striker and I need to learn how to grapple like an expert in order to deal with these wrestlers. And the truth was I didn't need to become an expert grappler. I just needed to know enough to stop them. And that's what a lot of fighters end up learning like later on in their careers like you know what my my trainer said this my trainer's trainer said this he said you know the most effective fighters are not focused on what their opponent is going to do they're focused on

what is the thing that the opponent is afraid of that you can do and you know it's kind of like and i remember i had an opponent actually tell me like hey man after uh i had fought one of his teammates and wasn't was not in this tournament he said like oh man now that you're not fighting today i can say like everyone in this team hates the idea of fighting you because of those kicks and i had lost to a guy on his team so you know it's not like oh you're invincible or whatever it's just like well if you win or lose you're going to get kicked really hard in the head yeah during this back and forth right so and again it was just that kind of like i had a trainer that instilled that of like hey you might lose you might win but like you got to remember and i think trump does operate in this way where it's like

remember 10 years ago there were Republicans being like if only he was more professional and courteous and political it's like that is not what gives Donald Trump and the Dunrow doctrine it's power so I love when he

fully leans into that which is just to say when you talk about truthers whether it's me or you or Chris or John or anybody who follows the drops and that's their prime focus as long as you are using whatever your fighting style is to push people toward first principles and awakening, I consider you an ally.

Whenever I see you using whatever you've learned to actively gatekeep people from moving in a first principles direction, that's what I consider it sort of a threat to the larger mission. Yeah, for sure. Now, as they talk about Trump and people wanting him to be respectful, it made me think you guys did a few good men, which is such a good movie. I love that on Story Hour. Love that conversation. And the clip that you guys played of me's like, but you have to ask me nicely. Trump's like,

throws the table like, like, I'm asking nicely. We need more of the Trump energy for sure. Like going back to the Q stuff and going back to demolition, you know, tearing the whole disease,

temple down. Like that was such a refrain in those, those hot and heavy Q days, people playing that clip from law abiding citizen. I think that's that movie. And it's like, dude, we have, like, I just don't understand. Like, you can't fix the system within the set.

I just don't think you can do that. It's not possible. You have to tear. And we're not pretending we have the answers as to perfectly how to fix the system. But having the conversations about it, I think, is important. And it's crazy that we have to say that these days. But we do. All right, Drake, it's been a good one.

Again, have to have you back. Let me grab some rants here. And then we will get out of here. May I read one of Tolkien's letters. It was that quote I sent you as a sign-off. So this, we're not as cool. No one is as cool as J.R.R. Tolkien. I can't remember what both the Rists stand for.

I know one of them is like Ralled or something. This is a letter he wrote to his son when he was 18 years old. 1943, he had been called to service by the Royal Air Force. height of battle Britain and all that stuff and this is signing off a letter to his son well cheers and all that to you dearest son we were born in a dark age out of due time for us but there is this comfort otherwise we should not know or so much love what we do love i imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water also we still we have still small swords to use i will not bow down the iron crown or i would not bow before the Iron Crown or cast my own small golden scepter down have at the orcs with winged words fighting darts but make sure of the mark before shooting based time getting that letter from your dad i know like i said we just nobody writes like that anymore no it's amazing personal letter so yeah yep and a i can't replicate that shit well it can

replicate it but it can't create it right uh which is some great shit all right man i will bidge you A do. Oh, actually, there's a couple rants that might mention here. So we got Tom Terrific. Sent 25 bucks over for the cause. Thank you, Tom. Will to push to Ward? Badlands, this is worth checking into. Try to communicate to redonculus about the divorce courts,

along with the administrative violence used against men. He's highly informative. Look that up after the show. Thank you. Space Monkey. 10 bucks. Jonathan, have you ever read Eva Tells the Law of Nations or principles of the law of nature applied to the conduct and affairs of nations

and sovereigns. I wonder how you would compare it to Spooner. What was the name again? Vettel, E. V-A-T-T-E-L, the Law of Nations. And then Beth, 50 bucks. Thank you, Beth. Amazing show, gentlemen, thanks for this. Must watch to understand the Jews. I love how we got featured. I'm not going to play that, but thanks for sending it. We got featured on Rumble at the moment. decided to transition us into the Jews. So hey, it's great stuff. Tattooed teacher, 10 bucks at the wire. Enjoyed the conversation tonight. See you in Nashville. That's right, batlandsmedia.tv slash events. Go to Nashville, buy a ticket and then go to Nashville and hang out with us and argue with us there. And before we get out of here, we do have a word from our

friends at Rumble once again, who have featured us, which is very swelled. of them. And that is 1775 coffee, as I'm drinking my coffee right now at 12.14 a.m. Eastern time. Still haven't tried 1775 coffee. Now's your shot. The 1775 starter kit just dropped only 1,000 units. You're getting the bold, dark roast that hits hard, the smooth medium roast, and the vitality mushroom coffee for clean energy and laser focus, no crash, all single origin, small batch, toxin-free and mold-free. Plus, you're also getting a gold. spoon clip because freedom isn't scooped with plastic. A froth are strong enough to stir up your coffee and your mother-in-law's opinions and a black 1775 tumbler. $170 where the coffee and gear

yours for 99. This is for the ones who've been watching 1775 blow up on Rumble. Wondering if it's actually worth it. Spoiler it is. Go to 1775 copy.com slash studio and grab your starter kit before they're gone. Bold beans, clean fuel, and a morning routine that stands for something just like Rumble does. So thank you to 1775 copy and thank you to Rumble. You know what? It is low-key, not even low-key.

Rumble does not get enough credit for featuring these kinds of conversations on their homepage. Now, do they know what we're talking about every time they press that little button? Oh shit, turn it off. Do they sometimes regret putting us into these positions?

I am certain of it. But they've never pussyed out. And for that, I am grateful. The talk back is that fresh and fit rumble, come on. Yeah, yeah, that's the Overton window, right? Like, as long as fresh and fit, we may, we may sometimes ridicule the Fresh and Fit Brigade, but they are necessary because as long as fresh and fit remains, we are safe in whatever. They're the canary in the minds.

Exactly. But gassed up mids, as long as we got gassed up mids, screwing around at midnight on the feature page. then I think we are safe talking about constitutional stuff and the fourth age of middle right that's what I have let me double check here we are all caught up all right thank you guys for watching thank you to our sponsors thank you to Rumble thank you to do you Jonathan Drake you're burning break and watch John Drake's show before this show on Sunday nights the no treason podcast and your show is one of the better ones to go into the archives on not just

because it's you but because the format of your show it's progressive yeah is one that is very progressive not in a gay no and it progresses yes it progresses forward in time there is a structure to the show yeah it's not really predicated on what's going on right now so i would highly recommend that if any of this tickled your fancy and the most important thing to do after this is to buy my audiobook badlandsmedia dot tv slash swordpunk that's that's the key that's the key and uh anybody who comes up to me in Nashville who has not bought that prepare for me to silently think you're the worst but anyway all right thanks guys thanks John I'll see you later as always I

will outro with the intro and I will say remember the war's a story the story is a war act accordingly see you next week I've been sleeping. I've been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face. There is a room that won't hear at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust. Into everything we want us. We let it grow now at sea.

How many men have you killed my love? I don't know. 50? 100? Countless. Countless has a nice room too. How many lives if you're safe? Arthur Millie.

Population of King's Landing. Tell me if you're precious brandy I've commanded you to kill your own thought and stand by thousands of men when killed and burned to life. Would you have done it? You've kept your old dead. Our time has come.

We prepared. We grew stronger. Were you rested? rested in your cradle of power. You were trusted to lead the Republic. But you were deceived. You assumed no force could challenge you. And now, finally, we have returned.

The visions are clear now. I see possible futures all at once. Our enemies are all around us. and in so many futures they prevail but I do see a way there is a narrow way through it's not a prophecy it's a story that you keep telling

but it's not their story it's yours they deserve to be let by one of their own people did to this world is heartbreaking we gave them something to hope for that's not hope we have survived by hiding from them by running from them but they are the gatekeepers

they are guarding all the doors they are holding all the keys, which means that sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them. You wish they could have this had happened. So do all live to see such time, but that is not for them to decide. All were you weapons? Forgive me. I did not sit. I have fed you all.

You full brain. I do not know what strength is like that. I swear to you, I will not love.