Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 10- Listener Q & A

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

On our 10th episode we go to our Emails to answer all the questions that have been sent to us over the last couple of week. Nick finally admits reenacting is cosplay, Joe loses his damn mind about Vietnam, and Nick nearly has a heat stroke. Follow the podcast on twitter @lions_by Follow joe on Twitter where you can watch him laugh at russian bots @jkass99 Follow nick on twitter for weird memes @nickcasm1

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance the military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. This is Nick. And we are on our 10th episode. 10 episodes. How you feeling, man? Who knew? Yeah. Who actually thought we would make one episode, let alone 10? We were drunk that night. Yeah, I think we drunk ordered all this shit off Amazon. Yeah, we did. So

how you doing right now? Doing pretty good drinking old crow yeah we're we're working our way through the bottle of old crow and it's not good i feel like i am full of mexican food like i ate way too much before i got here and uh our room that we record in our studio slash office slash guest room um is slash layer yeah it's about 90 degrees and I'm not sure if I have meat sweats from fajitas or it's just from Washington simultaneously fucking combustion. Fajitas aren't good. Fajitas are delicious. You shut your mouth.

What do you know about Mexican food? Fajitas aren't good at all. What do you know about Mexican food? Where I'm from. I'm pretty sure LA has the worst Mexican food. You're a fucking liar. I might be a fucking liar. Jesus.

So on our 10th episode, we're doing something a little bit special. I know I bothered everybody on Twitter, and I was also sent questions before then, and I kind of held on to them. So we're going to answer your questions, some at length, some with stupid jokes because they run the gamut from being super serious to being ridiculous, which is exactly what we like. That's pretty much our shit. It's kind of our thing.

It's in our ball field. Yeah, it's our only game. I don't know if I could be more serious, or I could be serious for more than 10 minutes. I guess we'll find out. So we could start off our first question. All right. Joe, what made you interested in military history?

That's a good question. I think, so I have a little bit of a militaristic take on why I got interested in military history over regular history. I always liked regular history. Growing up, pretty much all I did was watch the History Channel back when the History Channel had actual history on it and not fucking ancient aliens and shit like they do now. You don't like Pawn Stars? No. There's so many fucking pawn shows and why are they all named after sexual innuendo?

Like, because when I think hawking gear for drug money, I don't think... Sexual innuendo. Fuck you. Like, when I'm hawking a stolen TV for meth money i'm not thinking like this is gonna make a really good porn fucking pun anyway so i watched that shit my whole life it's why i wanted to go to college for but because i grew up poor shit i had to join the army instead and then i got to go visit all these places that were steeped in history. But all of it was, you know, history is formed at the end of a sword or at the barrel of a gun for the most part. America wasn't formed until we shot people.

Europe wasn't formed until a lot of people got stabbed and shot. And Nazis got killed, which we can always get behind. It's not a bad deal. Yeah. which we can always get behind. It's not a bad deal. Yeah. I mean,

in history is full of a lot of that going wrong, like we're seeing today. Right. And, and, you know, I think we're past the point now in history where we're going to see like legitimate, you know,

fights for the greater good. I don't think those really happen anymore, but I feel like it's the study of how we got here today. And other than old men talking, which is part of history, but all those old men talking

don't make history happen unless there's young men dying. True. And that's how we got here. How about you? How I got into it? Yeah. Well, as a young boy, did like history in school that was literally my best grade and i was like oh maybe i'm really like this oh yeah me too it's like the only class i could ever play is right and math good luck english fuck c's b's i was good at english which benefits me now but it'd mean nothing then. No. Nothing means anything to me now. It's just a hobby I do.

Your whole life is misery. And then towards the end of middle school, I started getting into reenacting and whatnot, and it made me go, wow, history. It's not fucking cosplaying. So I got into the reenacting scene, and it made me open my eyes up to more things about history because there's these different events called like marching through history or old fort

macarthur days and you have the roman times with the centurions and yeah all this other like rev war civil war it's pretty fucking cool yeah and like for instance like i'm staying up real late now because i'm a night owl and i'm working on a new book and everything like that but somehow I end up falling into a YouTube wormhole about how Roman armies operated or how pimples are popped that happens sometimes too I feel like

if you follow my YouTube page it's going to go through like all of the great war YouTube and like a whole bunch of chiropractic neck cracking videos interesting I'm curious. It's weirdly satisfying watching other people get healthcare because you can't afford it. Guys, knee explodes.

Interesting. Fail video, you say. I like it. I ended up finding out how Roman Army formations worked and how the youngest... I, the youngest, I knew the youngest guys would fight first.

And then they would like rotate. Right. Because the veterans are worth a lot more. But I didn't know, have you ever watched the show Rome? Rome? Yeah, on HBO. It's from probably like 20 years ago now.

No. It's really good. You should watch it. But, it's apparently the clip that they show the Roman army fighting there is shown in like classical college classes to show how the army worked. That's cool. So like the guys in the first row would fight.

Their commander would blow a whistle after about five or so minutes. And they would literally just like turn sideways and shimmy back through the legion. And the next row would come up and fight. And they would do that and rotate through. These guys made line dancing happen. Fuck yeah. They conquered the made line dancing happen fuck yeah they conquered the world line dancing their show some people but it was just really interesting to see um like someone actually got um like classical military history correct on a primetime show it

doesn't happen no it didn't happen often because game of thrones is not historically accurate those motherfuckers didn't even really have dragons. What do you say? And once I found that out, I was really disappointed. I thought the War of the Roses, which is what George Martin based that whole thing on, would have more dragons in it instead of just had a whole lot more incest. And Game of Thrones has a fair amount of incest, so that's saying something. I haven't seen a single episode of Game of Thrones.

Why are you the way that you are? How have you never seen Game of Thrones? Eh, just doing stuff. No, you're not. Yeah, I am. You were in the guest room with me, yelling at the internet. Just doing stuff, you know. What's our next question before I hit you?

Alright, this one I can feel a rant coming from our fucking host over here. So, do I get to hit somebody? Is this the smin' one? However you take it. But I'm always down for that. So, history can always be spun by those who win the war or the dominant religion during that time. Do you think it taints the accuracy

of the written record from the start? Now, your personal opinion on that. I don't deal in opinions. I deal in facts. But no, everybody, I said this earlier, and I think me and Tom touched on this for a few seconds on our interview last week. But the saying is like,

victors always write history. And that's just not always true. Sometimes the losers have a hand in how history is written, and sometimes the victors will revise history to fit their needs. I think it is really hard to find any non-stilted historical record of anything. And, you know know that's hard to say because you know we're so everything we know off uh like classical times and ancient times is based on um historians of the time but you know they're they're steeped in horseshit because they'll talk about like i think it was a king of england who displeased the pope, you know, his dick magically rotted off.

Like, we can probably assume that is not a historical fact. Most people's dicks do not just rot off. And that can go into religions playing things, playing history the way they should be written. And then we get into out-and-out historical visionism of things that just didn't happen. We'll talk about that a little bit more on one of our other questions. But in this, I think you get it from people because history is based in cultures.

And people base their entire cultural identity on history sometimes. You'll see that a lot in the southern United States. People are like, you know, like the Daughters of Confederate Veterans still exist. I mean, they're basing their entire culture on a long dead idea that was criminal from the get-go. And they'll say that it wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights, when it was absolutely incontrovertibly about slavery. And then you'll hear, you know, the lost cause theory, where, you know, they were, the soldiers were fighting honorably for a lost cause, which makes them honorable soldiers.

And I'm not here to shit on, you know, Billy Ray Tucker or whoever from the fucking Virginia Infantry Regiment. You know, there's a good chance that a lot of people fighting thought they were fighting for something that they weren't. But history says otherwise another good thing that you see this in and and this is one where the the defeated people will

write history and it will be used uh for governmental purposes in uh germany uh the bundeswehr was created on the back of the clean Wehrmacht theory. The theory of the clean Wehrmacht, I think I've probably brought it up a dozen times now in ten episodes, but the clean Wehrmacht theory is that the regular German army of World War II, the Wehrmacht, did not take part in Nazi atrocities, and they were just a regular army. And the real enemy here is the SS. And that's just not true. The Wehrmacht took part in countless atrocities

all across the Eastern and Western Front. And it was documented by unit, and pictures were taken by people in the SS, and by people in the Wehrmacht, I mean. The people in the Wehrmacht were not ignorant of the things happening. They worked hand-in-hand with SS units and Eisen Group and death groups. Was everybody involved? No, of course they weren't.

But there's a large group of SS people that also weren't involved in atrocities. But that does not mean they're clean. There was an institutional level of atrocities happening. But that theory was taken and used and spun to nationalist means because the U.S. needed another armed ally in NATO standing against the fucking Warsaw Pact. Right. So how else are you going to get Western Germany to have an army

with some kind of tradition? Well, the Wehrmacht wasn't so bad, but they knew it wasn't because they fucking changed the name. Yeah, like if the Wehrmacht was so good, they would not have changed its fucking name. And then you'll see another thing we talked about last week a little bit where people will say this person wasn't so bad or that person wasn't so bad when they pretty much always were. You hear about Robert E. Lee. Well, he didn't own any slaves.

You're right. He technically didn't. He just inherited them. He definitely did though. He also instituted the Confederate policy where when Confederate units took over northern states and they came across freedmen or freed slaves, they captured them and put them back in slavery. That happened under his command.

So, yeah, he probably did agree with the right to own slaves. In Germany, you see Erwin Rommel get the historical treatment where he wasn't a nazi he was just a loyal german officer when if you look at his diaries he not only praised hitler he was absolutely loyal to him and he had nothing to do with klaus von stauffenberg uh hitler was just afraid of a fucking powerful general and had him kill himself yeah and you know he was loyal to hitler because hitler told him to fucking kill himself and he did it fucking took a shot i mean don't get me wrong he was going to die either way and if he did not kill himself his family probably would have been killed too but it's an awful lot of loyalty to fucking off yourself on command um you see that in in japan as another way of how the defeated can spin history so you don't look so bad

they don't learn about world war ii the way we do or the pacific war and and for their part is they don't talk about atrocities at all. The rape of Nanking didn't happen. Unit 271, where there was their version of a death camp where they did medical experiments and torture on people, didn't happen. Them dropping plague bombs on Japan didn't happen. Say what you will about modern-day Germany, and there's lots of political things that can be said about ongoer merkel's government everything else about germany but

they do not shy away from teaching about nazi germany no i mean i think a lot of that has to do with our very very very in-depth ownership of western germany and it was that they were not going to get away with not teaching about Nazism. Right. Um, because we were right. I mean, we were,

we were there in Japan too, but Japan is a much less important cold war satellite state of ours. Um, but you know, Japan, there's a shrine called the Asakuni shrine that still has, uh, pictures and honors several war criminals.

Um, you're not going to see many people honoring, I don't know, fucking Joseph Mengele in Germany. And if you do, they're probably the same people. You're going to the wrong part. You don't want to be there. Yeah, and if you do, they're probably the same people who shave their heads and call themselves proud boys here in the United States. They're fringe characters.

But I could go on about this fucking forever. Historical revisionism is poisonous. Oh, for sure. It is both harnessed by individuals. Like, you'll see Holocaust deniers, Armenian genocide deniers. And that's a state level denial by turkey um there's state level denial of the holocaust that's the middle east um i think what was it the palestinian or was it iranian i can't even remember he denies the holocaust that was all

together former iranian leader mahmoud ahmed yes yeah he denied it all together former Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yes yeah he denied it all together he also denied that Iran had gay people

so and we see it here in the United States too in our civilized union states

in the north where I went to school and I grew up history books don't talk about the Native American wars

they gloss over it real fast they don't't talk about the Native American wars. They gloss over it real fast. They don't really talk about the War of 1812. You might get a sentence or two about Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears and then it's like, well, let's get this fucking show on the road.

I'll tell you the only thing we learned about with the whole Battle of 1812 was the White House got burned down. Yeah. That's about it. A whole battle of 1812 was uh the white house got burned down yeah that's about it and great example that is uh vietnam we didn't lose we left oh yes i heard that a lot very um and now you still hear it yeah and now when i hear that i'm like please show me saigon on a map point it out to me um and me. And you see that in all sorts of little things here and there. And, I mean, we see historical revisionism in the political arena as well,

about the formation of the KKK and Reconstruction and Democrats owned slaves and Republicans didn't and Lincoln was a Republican. you know, Democrats owned slaves and Republicans didn't. Lincoln was a Republican. And, like, people will harness these things for their means with no grasp of historical relevance at all. And the only thing you can do to try to beat back on that is, one, don't mind making a lot of people upset because history is unpopular when people get unpopular facts from it. Right something they don't like that they don't agree with yeah and even if they're

absolute incontrovertible facts um you'll see a lot of douchebags we live around a military base nixon the army we see a lot of people with spartan symbols on their cars with Spartan symbols on their cars. More on Lafayette. Yeah, more on Labia. And when you point out the Spartans loved fucking some boys, and it was institutional boy rape, they get really upset that this inconvenient fact is hurting something that they like.

You see that in Vietnam veterans. My stepdad is a Vietnam veteran. He doesn't mind because he's normal. Oh, my grandpa as well. And he'll be the first to tell you, no, we fucking lost. It takes a lot. I've fought in Afghanistan.

We might still be in Afghanistan, but we've lost. That war is lost, and it has been. But it takes a lot for people to accept unpopular things especially if like you have to evaluate your own culture like japan is never going to accept that they were probably more evil than the nazis for what they did in china they just it just will never happen um it just won't you you see that in russia today people are trying to rehab stalin's image um yeah what i swear to god

so they they recently came out with a movie called the death of stalin it is fucking hilarious watch it um i watched it a couple days ago. Is it on Netflix? No, it's you can get it on demand. It might be on Amazon, Amazon Prime. But it is a comedic, not necessarily historically accurate take on the death of Stalin and the things that happened immediately afterward. It's fucking hilarious.

Has Steve Buscemi in it. Yeah, Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev. Is it supposed to be like a legitimate comedy or it's supposed to be a black satire movie um but it stalin's alive in it for all of five seconds and he's dead um and then the everything else is about everybody fighting over who's going to take over what what everybody's going to do it's about the worst part of the Soviet Union's history. Modern day Russia Banda movie. Jesus.

Right. I cannot see any reason why anybody would do that other than they're trying to save some kind of historical face. Yeah. Next question. We're just going on.

So I have one for you take any leader in military and all of military history whether it be classical times modern times your current commander don't say that you might get in trouble um fuck that guy or don't don't say donald trump uh who would you like to slap like if you Donald Trump. Who would you like to slap? Like, if you... Maybe not slap. Who would you like to just physically fucking assault? And it doesn't even have to be for a legitimate reason.

Like, it doesn't even have to be, like, they were a terrible commander. Maybe you just don't like his fucking face. So check this out. I'll go off a former, past episode we've had. We'll do it on Hague Oh that's our second episode Our least popular episode Actually And honestly

People did not like that one I like World War I Oh it's one of my Favorite points in history I'm gonna go with Hague Here's the scene He's in his fucking War room

He's playing on his sand table Wiping out his own men With his own fucking hand Oh like in Black Eyed Yeah He's playing on his sand table wiping out his own men with his own fucking hand. Oh, like in Black Eyed? Yeah. He's just fucking... I fucking kick open the French doors

and I look at him. His trench has French doors. Basically. Kick open his French doors. They're really nice. After I kick him open, grab the nearest scotch. Take a shot of it.

Look at him. Cock slap him. Cock slap. What do you do after the cock slap? I basically, uh, start, either,

I think I go off on a whole tangent, like a, kind of like an American Psycho monologue. So you're going to make him listen to Huey Lewis and the News? Basically. And, uh, after that,

I probably have to see, like, go through his mind, like, if he's trying to dick measure with Cadorna, at the see, like, go through his mind, like, if he's trying to dick measure with Cadorna at the time, like,

who can kill the more, like, more of his own men type of shit. So, yeah, Cadorna's our first episode, and,

uh, that is the episode I think we did the worst, because I couldn't pronounce Cadorna to save my fucking life. I couldn't either. And you kept calling Austria,

Australia. I did. I kept, I fucking corrected myself every time, though. I say Australia. Fuck Austria. So, in case somebody here isn't familiar with World War I, isn't familiar with our first or second episode,

why do you hate Haig so much? Why do I hate Haig so much? Yeah, Douglas Haig. First Earl of Haig, by the way. I'm really biased on the British side of World War I just because I just love the history that they're involved with on World War I. And I loved it. So just reading about the butcher of the Somme and him being so incompetent during his time leading

these guys. It's fucking shitty. Yeah. So, it should be noted that Hague was all about sending cavalry into machine guns. This motherfucker.

And had people slow walk. Horses are the shit. He had people, by order, slow walk across No the shit he had people by order slow walk yeah across no man's land in the psalm and the french were ordered yeah just go take the trench go ahead and they did a lot better way better and the british no we're just walk you'll be good we artillery the fuck out of them we shelved the shit out they them. They should be dead. And they weren't. They totally weren't dead. So, mine, my person, I would just love... Sorry, I'm full of Mexican food, and I'm having a hard time not burping into the microphone, and I'm afraid that I might vomit fajitas everywhere.

Don't do it on our fucking desk. Yeah, I'm just going to puke on the carpet. Hands down, I wish I could beat the ever-living fuck out of George S. Patton. So, get this. Joe used to wash Patton's balls way back in the day. His little statue. It wasn't a little statue. It was a large fucking statue.

I would get in trouble. George S. Patton's little balls. And his horses. They actually had horse balls. Really? Yeah. That's some detail. They went out of their way.

Shaft and everything. So for people that weren't aware, and I'm sure a lot of people are, George Patton was an armor commander during the Second World War. He was a cavalry commander during the First World War. And he also led a governmental charge against the Bonus Army, which is two episodes ago,

which were unarmed, poor World War I veterans. He led a sabers-drawn cavalry charge at unarmed people. Yeah. So, he, sabers drawn cavalry charge at unarmed people um yeah so he at the same time during the bonus charge he was uh the bonus army charge he was confronted by a guy who saved his fucking life

uh pulled him out of fire and and saved his life he just told him to go fuck himself uh he would physically abuse soldiers who were suffering from ptsd during world war ii and um you know i a lot of people explain that away he's like well nobody understood ptsd at the time of course they did people don't understand ptsd now but nobody else is fucking beating their soldiers for being mentally broken right um nobody was general omar bradley actually yelled at him and like pushed him around and shit for it um so he was just being a dick um so outside of that he was also a racist an anti-semi and he also had a long hot love affair with his own niece. Just... Oh, it gets better.

Oh, niece loving. Yeah. I guess it can't get better. It only gets worse. His niece killed herself because he didn't want a relationship with her. That's really complicated.

It's really fucked up. Holy fuck. And the whole time, Patton was married. Nice. Wasn't he a fucking alcoholic? Yes. To go along with that?

He was a fucking vicious alcoholic. Right. And probably one of his most grievous infractions that can be put on him is not something he ever actually gets credit for. Have you ever heard of Task Force Bomb? Most people haven't. I didn't actually either until I was doing research for this. So, he had a son-in-law who was in the Army who was captured.

So Task Force Baum was a task force put together by Patton to rescue American POWs in Germany. It should be noted that everybody said this was a bad idea. Every officer in the task force said, this is stupid, we don't have enough people to do this. They had about 290 people, about 50 vehicles. Not a huge group of men for World War II. No.

Not a big group of people for the area of World War II. And not a big group of people to usher in what they assumed was hundreds of POWs. What it boiled down to was Patton put this whole thing together because he knew his son-in-law was in that camp. I feel like he was playing on a sand table as well. You know he was. Explosion.

So everybody in this fucking task force, to include Captain Balm, the guy he was named after, was like, dude, this is a fucking terrible idea. It's not going to work. Patton said, go do it anyway. So the task force set out. They reached the camp.

Pretty much the only thing they did was accidentally shoot a couple Yugoslavian POWs, and then pretty much everybody in the entire task force was captured and killed by the Germans. If they would have just waited a week, they took the camp. Uh, never heard of that.

That sounds like a big clusterfuck. So, like, everybody was like, hey, it's in our route of advance. What the fuck? Just, like, take a knee, bro. We'll be there. Patton's like, no, no, no, no, no. This has to happen.

So, after the attack, his son-in-law and every other high-ranking POW was moved further to the rear. So, when the Allied forces actually reached the camp, he wasn't even fucking in it. And then later on, when they finally

did find his son-in-law, they sent a plane, a private plane, chartered by Patton with his personal physician on it to go make sure he was okay. I never even heard of this. What the fuck? Most people haven't. So, do you think I can beat Patton?

Now, here's the tale to take. Here's the tale to take. All right. He's 6'2". What era of Patton are you trying to beat up? I'm saying peak Patton. Peak Patton. Patton out of a fucking fight camp.

He's been hitting a bag real hard. He's cut weight pretty effectively. Are we going street rules or what are we doing? I don't care. We can put a fucking cage around us, put us in the street, stuff us inside of a tank. I don't care. We can put a fucking cage around us, put us in the street, stuff us inside of a tank. I don't care. Peak Patton versus Peak Joe. So he's about 6'2".

Almost the same size as me. I'm 6'3". But he only weighed about 170 pounds. Okay, get this. Mech Patton. Mecha Patton? Yes. He's talking like if Patton became like a Gundam.

Like a Mech Warrior. So like an off-brand Gundam? Yes. So like Rob if Patton became like a Gundam. Like a Mech Warrior. So like an off-brand Gundam? Yes. So like Robo-Patton? Yes. Alright, so here's my thing. Robo-Patton, per time of his day technology, I think he can take them. Yeah, you just throw mud somewhere on it and it'll fucking go down.

Because Robo-Patton would have the computing power of less than my cell phone. Less than your fucking watch. And, you know, I weigh about 230 pounds and I can squat about 400 pounds. I think I can take Patton. I think I got him in any day of the week.

He's probably a scrappy little fuck because the time he grew up he fought in plenty of wars. He knows how to kill people. It's fine. But one-on-one, nine-ounce gloves, whatever, bare knuckles,

some fucking duct tape, I feel like I can take Patton out. I feel like I've got a good chance. Nice. I think I got him. I feel that. Yeah, I can see that. I'd put 50 bucks on me.

Yeah. I like that. Maybe his niece can be the card girl. And I mean, have some respect for the incest dead, sir. Yeah, I like that. Maybe his niece can be the card girl. And I mean, we're... Have some respect for the incest dead, sir. And also, you know, we were both tankers, so both of our knees and backs are equally fucked up.

You know? Like, we'll be equals. I like my chances here. I'd say I'd win the interim belt. Nice. The interim abusing soldier cavalry leader belt. Incest. I don't want to win the incest belt. Nice. The interim abusing soldier cavalry leader belt. Incest. I don't want to win the incest.

I don't think anybody does. Actually, I hear that's how you get elected governor in West Virginia. Oh! Sick burn. Sick burn. Finger guns. Our next question was actually sent to us by the same person that sent the last one.

If you could pick one leader through all of history, who would you like to get fucked up with? So, this is also on another past episode. And this is like drinking or drugs. It doesn't matter. You're just partying. You're just fucking partying. You're raging with this guy. So, I would want to rage with Lord Lovett.

He was in our last, I think our fifth episode, Bill Mullen. I think Bill Mullen was our third episode. So, it was a long time ago. Yeah, I don't know either. So, tell us a little bit about

Lord Lovett and Bill Mullen first since that episode is a long time ago. So, these two guys, they went across fucking, what was it,

Sword? Yeah, Sword Beach. Sword Beach. They went across Sword Beach. Lord Lovett led his commandos ashore and brought fucking bagpipes and his dude Bill Mullen was playing them

all across the fucking beach. Yeah, he forced a dude to play bagpipes into D-Day. Honestly, I don't think it was kind of forced. It was kind of Bill's fault as well. He was his personal piper. We go into it. It was his own job.

It was kind of Bill's fault as well. Because Bill's like, Well. We go into it. It was his own job. It was kind of Bill's fault as well. Because Bill's like, Well, Bill's just being a smartass like any other soldier in human history. Yeah, I'd rather fucking take cover instead. No, he was like, You want me to fucking go up and down the beach and do the flight du hast across it? I would love to find a bagpipe version of du hast. If I find one, that's the intro song.

That's going to be the intro song. We haven't found an intro song. No, we haven't. But anyway, so he basically, that was his personal bagpiper during the Normandy landing. And after that, Bill Mullen got to take part as a commando after that and actually did commando shit. But, I want to party with Lord Lovett

only for the reason that Bill Mullen would be there to play some sick beats while we're getting while we're raging and i know he had some french girls that he was banging on the side of normandy and when you watch all the fucking interviews with him he still looks dapper as fuck like dude he has a sick fucking turtleneck he does he's wearing this like turtleneck vest combo drinking fucking scotch in a room full of leather-bound books, and just, like, talking about this time that, yes, I totally made this teenager

march to shore playing a fucking sack full of screaming Scottish wind. Dying cats in a sack sounds really good on the beach. So, if I... Yeah, well, who would you want to get fucking trashed with and rage and uh cause uh mayhem mine is going to be captain jean dan joe of the french foreign legion that's a fucking great one so for people that didn't listen to our second mexican empire episode jean dan joe uh was the captain of the French foreign legion at the battle of Cameroon and he knew how to party. Not only did he know how to party, he knew how to party at the worst time possible. Surrounded on all sides by Mexican infantry and dragoons and artillery,

he decided to pop open a couple of bottles of wine and get his 40 or so dudes in there drunk as shit and swear a life oath on his dead wooden hand that he carved himself because he lost it in the Crimean War. So you can imagine one dude carving out one hand. The fingers aren't proportioned. It was kind of weird. It was like fucking... Chubbs.

Yeah, Chubbs from fucking Happy Gilmore. But, you know, and his thighs are probably just full of knife wounds, because he had, like, the two-by-fours sandwiched in there. And his fucking nub is just... And it doesn't have a good grip, because, you know, it's a nub. He probably was a righty, and he lost his left hand. You know, he got fucked up. It's almost like he's trying to hold it with a fucking sub sandwich.

That's kind of what it looks like. A sub sandwich. If you want a good image. You just need to steady it. I don't know. It's like a fucking nub sandwich. So he made everybody get tanked, swear an oath of loyalty on his fucking hand, everybody get tanked swear an oath of loyalty on his fucking hand card hand and then died like immediately afterward like that would be like having the most badass part of your life flashing

in front of your eyes you're the life of the party you're like you just threw the touchdown pass at the fucking super bowl lost your hand once you threw it because you know you're a righty your hand came off with it and then you just dropped dead. So like, there's no bad words to say about you because you died at your peak. That's the way I want to go.

I want to get fucked up with that French dude and some shitty hacienda in Cameroon shooting at your family and then drop dead. Full of wine. Yeah, dude, get fucked.

So, how are you going to drink it? How are you going to drink with him? We already discussed it. I'm going to assume that Captain Don Joe is going to upend the bottle at forearm height and is just going to drip down his one hand and he's going to make me drink it off his fingertips. Like R. Kelly, except it's not pee.

It's just shitty wine. Drip, drip, drip. Piss on you. Except, you know, except it's not pee. It's just shitty wine. Trip, trip, trip. Piss on you. Except, you know, it's wine, hopefully. So, do we have another question? Yeah. Yeah, we do. What is it?

All right, so what bit of history... It goes back into revisionism. We already went into a long one about it, so I think... We can do that one. What bit of historical revisionism bothers you the most? Fuck. One that bothers me the most is, like, pure idiocy, or one that bothers me... Try to do it in five minutes or less.

That doesn't work for me. You can't play me off. You can't wrap that shit up, B. You're not going to play me off the Dave Chappelle playoff box. I'll try. I'll do my best. We're at 430 now.

So is it like the part of historical revision that just like pisses me off based on pure idiocy or a part that like... I want to see pure idiocy. Pure idiocy. Oh, dude, definitely Holocaust denial. You fuck!

It's definitely Holocaust denial. You fuck! It's definitely Holocaust denial. It makes no fucking sense! Yes! It makes as much sense that people who claimed the

Nazis went to the moon, or like, burrowed to the center of the earth! I mean, we did take technology from them.

They're not bald people, Nick! I'm pretty sure there's a swastika on Apollo 11. Yeah, fucking, dude's just like, one more for the fewer and stop. A really small one.

Yeah, dude, it's definitely Holocaust nihilism because it requires so much wanton ignorance. There's overwhelming evidence that it happened. Denying the Holocaust is like denying the existence of oxygen. You were surrounded by evidence every day. All you have to do is look for it. And the way they explain the way is just so

dumb. Like, oh, not that many people died. It wasn't an engineered ethnic cleansing. Or like the gas chambers didn't kill anybody. That was just a rumor. You can't be strong enough to kill anybody. There's no video of anybody dying in a gas chamber.

I'm sorry that fucking CCTV didn't exist yet, Hans. And, like, there's just overwhelming evidence. And they're saying that the death camps that are out for museums now are manufactured for that purpose. I mean, if you go to a death camp, I've been to a death camp. I went to Dachau. Is there a gift shop? There is. There is a fucking gift shop, I swear to God.

Really? Yes. That's really interesting. People complain about it a lot. And across the street there's fast food and shit, but if you go to if you go there and you look at the gas chambers and you can

walk into the gas chambers and it is fucking spooky. There is engraved marks on the wall of where people who were suffocating to death were scratching trying to get out. And their fingernails fucking flayed off. Like there's just, there's paperwork.

Yeah. From the Nazi government. They even apologized about it. Yes. Because they know they did it. Yes. So, even, this is weird. This goes back into the whole reenacting, not fucking cosplay.

It's cosplay. It's fucking cosplay. Are you going to talk about the fucking Nazi guy? I'm going to talk about the Nazi guy. So I have this buddy, he's a Nazi dude. I don't even call him a buddy. I'll call him's fucking cosplay. Are you going to talk about the fucking Nazi guy? I'm going to talk about the Nazi guy. So I have this buddy. He's a Nazi dude. I won't even call him a buddy. I'll call him a fucking...

I hope he has friends that are Nazis. No. I just know of him. And he knows of me. He's just really interesting to talk to because I don't understand why he thinks the way he thinks. And he's a denialist? He's not a denialist. He knows it happened. He just thinks the Nazis he thinks. He's a denialist? He's not a denialist. He knows it happened.

He just thinks the Nazis are really fucking cool. So he just explains it all the way like, yeah, it happened and it was a good thing. It's like the Jews had it coming. Yeah. I don't even know what to say to somebody who says that. You kind of don't say anything.

You're kind of just like, okay, dude. I mean, I know a lot of, like, proto-fascists these days, especially because now it seems like they're coming out of the woodwork. People are much more brave about expousing their disgusting ideologies, but I've never heard... I get more of, like, a yada, yada, yada, but, you know, National Socialism is still cool.

That's mostly what I get from people. They don't try to... I don't know, what's the fucking word, rationalize the Holocaust. They don't deny it. I don't know. I personally don't know any deniers. No, I don't know either. I just know people that go, yeah, it happened,

and it was the sickest thing. Like, this dude's fucking weird. But their uniforms were cool, Nick. They wouldn't do anything mean. Yeah, basically. But anyway, back to the reason why I bring him up. Is he has a Zyklon B container that they used in the gas chambers. And he's like, look, it was used.

And we're like, dude, we're at like a public event where kids are around. He brought it with him? Yes. Was he cosplaying as Eitzen's group in? Dude, he cosplayed fucking anything SS. Oh, you said it! You said it!

It's cosplay now! Oh, with him cosplaying SS. Alright, look here, fucker. After Old Crow goes through my system, I can't think straight.

It's on tape? You said it! We drink Old Crow right here, so... You know, another part that bothers me in history is it's not so much as a denialism

because you don't get the denialism from anywhere other than, like, Turkish people is the denial of the Armenian genocide. I'm Armenian. Everybody who knows me on Twitter knows I'm Armenian because I got into a huge pissing contest with the Young Turks over this and their name and the host being a complete fucking plot but um explaining it away as like a byproduct of war is exactly like explaining away the holocaust

is a byproduct of war ethnic cleansing is not a byproduct of anything other than fucking bigotry and hatred. Like, anybody who tries to explain any of these, and this includes American genocide against native populations, is a piece of shit. They are not to be listened to and they are not to be debated with because you cannot reason someone

out of a position they did not reason themselves into you cannot try to explain the holocaust or the armenian genocide or the trail of tears to someone who is so fucking thick-headed that they just don't believe it happened like it just can't happen that's like trying to explain to a flat earther oh Oh, yeah. I mean, it's fucking pointless. I might as well scream at the wall. I know plenty of flat earthers. Why do you know so many flat earthers?

I don't know, dude. Like, I'm from California. It just happened. I'm from LA in California. That's the worst spot. I fucking promise you. Are they just like hipsters? I don't know what they are, because they go off to that, and they go,

so why do you think the Earth is round? This, this, and that. And I'm just like, dude, I'm just trying to eat. You know, and the same thing that I hear from flat earthers is like kind of the same thing with historical originals,

and we're kind of going off into tangent, that's fine, is like, who has anything to fucking gain from this? Who's making money from a round planet? Like, who has that trademark? At least people who think Big Pharma has a cure for cancer

have a fucking argument. And that's stupid, and it doesn't make any sense either. It's a lot better than Flat Earth, though. Yeah, because at least it can be explained with, like, money. And there's, like, a money. And there's a product. Nobody's selling a globe. Like, it's a big

globe. Well, there is a motherfucker who's selling plots of land on the moon. That guy's a fucking genius. He is. That guy's as big of a genius as the person who invented the pet rock. So there's probably a guy who owns the fucking Earth that got to it first. Uh... Like, they purchased it? No, because this dude didn't even purchase the moon.

No. He just went on the internet and said, I'm selling plots of the moon. In that case, I'm selling the entire state of Oklahoma. And when you buy it, you won't notice any of the people living in it because it's Oklahoma. I'd go with the Dakota state on that one.

Those have oil. Actually, it says Oklahoma too. Yeah. Forget everything I it because it's Oklahoma. I'd go with the Dakota estate on that one. Those have oil. Actually, so does Oklahoma too. Yeah. For everything I said, it's stupid. Yeah, it's like,

nobody has any money to make from saying the earth is flat. This makes no fucking sense. You know, this is why you, and a lot of this

has come from a couple like, rappers and a couple basketball players, I think. It does. Was it Kyrie Irving is one? Yeah, B.O.B. is one.

He has this one song. He has a song. And I fucking refuse to call him B.O.B. His name is fucking Bob. His name is Bob. Fuck you, Bob. He has a song about the flat earth. Yes.

I hate him. What's it called? I'm going to look it up for everybody. I don't know. Because it's actually like, you'll listen to it and you'll be like, he'll talk about Neil Tyson and, like... He's a hate... He's spitting fire at Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Yes. An astrophysicist? That's fucking great. I fucking hate everything. I'm ready for the heat death of the universe so bad. Like, we just need to unplug it, shut the whole thing down. At this point, the human race is like your shitty old tower computer. You just need to turn it off, turn it back on, hope things work out.

So, the song is called Flatline. Oh, God. It's by B.O.B., it was made two years ago. It's by Bob. And then there's a part two. Oh, fuck. It's Flatline part two. The electric boogaloo.

Yes. The flat earthening. And earth is spelled just like how B-O-B is. E. Period. A. What's it stand for? God damn it.

We need to move on in front of fucking aneurysm. Alright. So we got... Here's another one. What historical myth or one that pisses you off the most? What is your favorite? My favorite myth? Historical myth.

Oh, man. My favorite myth. Not the one that pisses me off the most. Just my favorite. Yeah, just do your favorite because we don't need you pissed off again. I'm going to get pissed off. I'm angry. I'm fucking sweating Mexican meat right now.

I'm sweating too. I'm angry. I'm fucking sweating Mexican meat right now. I'm sweating too. My favorite myth. So my favorite myth is probably that the United States won World War II. Fuck! How did we do this? Maybe because we spent entirely too much time together and talked about fucking historical facts. So we sleep over a lot, and we hang out a lot, we play video games a lot. I only own one mattress. Yeah.

You can imagine on the hot days. So I'll pick another one. I'll pick another one. I mean, we can at least talk about it. Okay, so... You might have something different than I do. Alright, so I'll go with the different than I do. Alright, so, um... I'll go with the United States did not win World War I. Okay, yeah. I see that one.

Uh, so... As anybody who knows, as the United States entered World War I, at the end of it, they took part in two major battles and lost about 50,000 people killed and wounded. I might be a little off on those numbers. Probably. I'm not. I'm completely winging it.

I'm going to say around 50,000. This is 1917-1918. It is the very end of the war. They mishandled their troop numbers so badly. They sent all their black soldiers to fight with the French because, you know, can't miscegenate in the trenches.

Pershing wasn't that good of a general. He sent troops into Belleau Wood completely unprepared with their flanks unsecured. The only thing the United States was good for was for existing on paper. flanks unsecured. The only thing the United States was good for was being, for existing on paper. The Germans were absolutely

beaten at this point, but they weren't broken. But their army was tired, and so was everybody else. The people who won World War I were the French. Hands down. If it wasn't for the French, the Germans would have steamrolled all of Europe.

The Russians were a footnote. The Brits would have had nowhere to go if France didn't hold on to its fucking territory. And without Verdun and the Marne and Kaiserschlacht being stopped, the war's over. France was OG. Yeah.

And that goes in a lot to my other favorite historical myth. I don't know why I didn't say this. That is France did not fight in World War II. They just collapsed. I agree with that one too. They absolutely fought. They lost around 100,000 soldiers in a very short amount of time. The problem was that they were poorly

led their leadership yeah and their organization um their military's organization was completely backwards and their dependence on the imaginal line was flawed it wasn't bad people say it was bad but it wasn't bad it was flawed because one they didn't cover the Ardennes, and part of the fucking wall was supposed to come down from Belgium, which Belgium just didn't build. They didn't have to. I'm not bad. There's no reason to bash on Belgium for that. It's like their country, their thing.

Belgium only exists to be invaded! That's the whole reason it was formed, is so Germany and France get together and fight out wars there. They don't have to build a wall for France. Anyway, France didn't even think that fucking German military could make it through that dense forest. And the problem was that where their forces were deployed,

there was supposed to be even more soldiers guarding the Ardennes. It's not like they just thought nobody was going to make it through. They didn't think armor could make it through there. Right. So they didn't think anybody was going to make it through there. But they were supposed to have a large contingent of troops guarding it. And they just didn't. The only real problem with the Maginot Line that is incontrovertible and was Achilles' heel was it made them depend on defensive warfare.

and was a Achilles heel was it made them depend on defensive warfare. So, best case scenario, let's say the Germans attack the Maginot Line. French fight them off, push them back. Then what? They're still in the fucking line. They have no maneuver forces. Their tanks were better.

Their Char B1 was better than the German Panzers. They had more of them. But their organization was shit, but that does not mean that the French did not fight. Charles de Gaulle's unit was fucking mauled, and the only reason he couldn't hold out longer is because logistics and supply were horseshit.

But a lot of it has to do with the French literally lost an entire military and generation fighting in World War I, and the last thing anybody wanted was another war. And I know what you're saying is that Germany just went through the same thing, but because of the treaty, they had something to fight for. Like, the restrictions put on Germany were terrible, that's why I forget who it was, but immediately after signing

them, they said, this is in peace. It's an armistice for 20 years or 30 years, whatever it was they said. And they ended up being completely right. The Germans were fucking pissed. They wanted a war because they actually had something to fight for while the French were just dead tired.

But people don't give them enough credit because they're cheesing surrender monkeys, throw up the white flag, and you can't really help people are that stupid right I mean America wouldn't be independent with the French so straighter but I will go into why I don't think the USA today there were two now people might not agree with me

well it's just my opinion on it. It has facts with it. Suck it. Alright. I believe the Soviet Union had more to do with it than we did. Absolutely. I mean, they did. 80% of Wehrmacht casualties were on the Eastern Front. Yeah, very.

We didn't... We had something to do with it. No. But we did not win a World War II. Exactly. So I'm not saying we didn't have a play in it. We had a big part. It's just we didn't save the day. No.

Like what people think we did. Like if we weren't there, this would have happened. No. If you would have taken us out of the war completely, Germany still would have lost. Yeah. The second Operation Barbarossa started was the second Germans lost that war. Yes. There was no way

that Germany was ever going to beat Russia. There was no way they were ever going to make it to England. No, they fucking botched that shit. Operation Sea Lion, that was called, was completely unrealistic. And the Battle of Britain

was the dumbest shit. I mean, Hermann Goering, who was in charge of Luftwaffe, was a fucking idiot. And he was so goddamn fat, he couldn't even fit in a plane. But still had a sweet uniform. You know, it had to be tailored after a dozen smaller uniforms.

And the only thing people can argue is that, well, the U.S. was the logistical force of World War II. That's absolutely correct. It was. It was in the U.S. was the logistical force of World War II. That's absolutely correct. It was. It was in the beginning. I would say, like, say Normandy, most of our supplies ran from the British. Most of the ships in this channel were British. Most of the landing craft were British.

They made up most of... But we probably built and sold those to them with Len Leesacks. Possibly. I'm not sure on that. I mean, they were fighting with our tanks and mostly our uniforms and equipment and everything else. Not uniforms. And same... Sorry,

you're forgetting the subject matter. But the... Tanks, yes. Well, the Sherman was better than their tank, which is saying something because the sherman was not a great tank it was great numbers but um you know the len lease act saved england and saved the soviet union absolutely but that being said without the len lease act england may have sued for peace but the soviet union would have eventually turned itself into an industrial power i mean their leader had no uh obstruction in his

ways stalin could just make things happen by sheer bloodlust and anger. Yes. And that's what he did. Is he an asshole? Yeah, absolutely. Who is it that said that he's a bastard, but he's our bastard? Yeah, that's exactly what he was. But to say that we won World War II... Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite myths.

We won World War II about as much as England did. Sure, we took Normandy, but there was a reason that the Germans were running west to surrender to us. A lot of people would be upset about that unpopular opinion. Oh, no, they really are. The Soviet Union steamrolled Germany.

The biggest battles in human history and in the war took place in the Eastern Front, and the Soviets won all of them. Very. Yes. Kursk, Stalingrad, Berlin, all Soviets. Yes. And, I mean, think of it this way. How would that war have looked if the Soviet Union had lost?

Germans would have won. They would have had an unlimited material, man, and fuel supply. Because you can think of 80% of Germans' military casualties lost on the Eastern Front. Imagine all of that, all of the resources and material and soldiers just relocating. I mean, just Operation Barbarossa itself. It was a million-man army. So all of that just relocating. Western Front. Imagine if we go to land in Normandy, but the Germans have the same

military output that they put into Kursk. And then they're in space? Space Nazis? Yes. I thought they lived in the middle of the planet. We're talking about Moon Nazis now, or the Lunar Fourth Reich? That'd be fucking sweet. It would.

It would not be sweet. Space Nazis don't really work for me. Especially because they're rocketsuck dick. Yeah. Cool, when you aim at a whole city, it's hard to miss. They're all made of slave labor. The V2 was... Was it the Buzz Bomb?

I think it was pretty cool. It was made of slave labor. It was incredibly unreliable. Was it? Yeah, they were all made of slave labor. I believe that. No, I believe slave labor. I just didn't know it was unreliable.

I mean, they were flamed out of an entire island. How are they going to fucking miss? I think they could miss really bad. I mean, they were flinging that at an entire island. How are they going to fucking miss? I think they could miss really bad. I mean, they did. They did, but when you're aiming at the entire city of London, the only thing the V1, V2, whatever rocket programs

did was, just like we talked about last week, was drain resources away from shit that they actually needed. It was a cool propaganda weapon, but it didn't take long for that war to be far away from the importance of propaganda and like, no, we actually

just need stuff. And they just go, let's just keep building these fucking rockets. Oh, it's almost like a lot of the shit that they tried doing, all the bullshit experiments with the giant, what was it, the mouse tank? I'm pretty sure you guys talked about it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

We talked about that at length. That thing was fucking stupid. Their whole weapon development was stupid. They were the only country that as war went on, their weapons development went back in time.

Like, the only cool thing they ever did is the 262. The first operational jet fighter. And then they turned into a fucking bomber. Oh, holy... I guess I can get into it later.

I'm not even going to get into it. But that is my favorite myth, is that we did not save the day. We did play a big part. We just didn't save the day. We saved... I will staunch some of the haters here. We saved the day in bits and pieces. We did not win the war.

If we would have stayed out of it physically and continued to supply them like we were, we would have been fine. The Nazis still would have lost. The only thing that would have happened is that there would have been a whole lot more red going across Europe. Yeah. So I guess we can move on to our next question.

And this is one that is, there's no funny to it. It's a pretty serious, deep question that somebody sent us. Right. And honestly, that one, I left for Joe because I feel like he'd be better off to talk about it. And it's a great question. Oh, yeah, I loved it. I might chime in with some stuff I have, but honestly, I want to hear what you have to say because I'm really interested in it. You chiming in stops me from fucking biting my mic in half in fucking pure rage.

No, yeah, which is great because I really am interested in what you're going to say. So I'll read this question verbatim as was sent to me via Twitter. And I'll actually say what this guy's Twitter handle is because it's funny. Centurion squirrel? Awesome. So on our next question, they asked, Vietnam met with a lot of pushback from the domestic audience at home for a myriad of reasons. Why do you think that Afghanistan has not gotten the same amount of pushback?

Because clearly the situation there is not improving. If anything, it's worsening, and the war is closing in on 20 years. So, since we're just talking about Afghanistan here, he did not bring up Iraq, I have to ignore the massive protests that happened right before Operation Iraqi Freedom started. They were massive. Not that anything, but I'll stay to the subject at hand. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that Vietnam was fought through and through with a conscript army.

They instituted the draft almost immediately, which was normal back then and is normal through a lot of countries today. Though I'm not going to go the Sebastian Junger route and say we need to bring the draft back because just no. I still love him, though. Oh, Sebastian Junger is one of my favorite writers. I still fucking love him. But interesting fact.

Favorite documentarian. He's great. Oh, yeah, he is. World War II had more draftees than Vietnam did. I'm not surprised. A lot of people are. A lot of people are. Are you talking about in total or at once?

Because, I mean, Vietnam went on for... 11? 11, 12 years? Yeah, something like that. And basically, what was it? Two-thirds of the army during World War II were draftees, and then two-thirds of the army during Vietnam

were enlisted. Interesting. So, I don't know if it's all at once. I know a lot of people... Did you rip one? No. Was that fajitas? It's fajitas. I know a lot of people... Did you rip one? No. Was that fajitas? It was fajitas.

I know a lot of people, I heard individual stories of Vietnam, when they knew they were going to get drafted, they would enlist, because you get to pick what you did. Right. I've seen a lot of that, too, but I have had, I think, five or seven family members go to Vietnam, which is a shit ton in one family. And they all enlisted.

And I don't know if that plays into it or anything, if they wanted to pick their job or if they just wanted to enlist. You know, I've heard a lot of people explain it different ways. Some people wanted to just go and do it. I fell into that part. I wasn't even drafted to go to Afghanistan,

but I was 17 years old and didn wasn't even drafted to go to Afghanistan, but I was 17 years old and didn't know what the fuck else to do with my life, and I thought war was cool. I was 17. I did not know better. The recruiters certainly weren't going to tell me that. I feel like a lot of people saw an adventure. The 60s and 70s is the time where people are trapped in suburbia hell for the first time um i was trapped in like ghetto suburbia hell

i didn't know how to get out of my city they didn't know how to better themselves or do anything better i certainly wasn't going to college um how else can i have an all-expensive adventure exactly and i was in the the barrio back in the day, so back in East L.A. And there wasn't really much going on. So I sucked at school, along with the school system sucking as well. So I joined the military because I didn't really have a plan. And it's funny how I joined the military. I mean, that's kind of a common story that you hear from everybody.

But, you know, Vietnam was fought through and through with the conscript army, with the draft. Everybody had a family member or neighbor or someone they knew that went to Vietnam. Almost everybody knew somebody that was wounded or

killed or just didn't come back. Everybody was ripped out of their everyday life and kicked out to the middle of nowhere to die for no reason. And everybody saw it. It impacted every level of society. I mean, you see rich people found ways out with college deferments and medical deferments, and maybe one of them is president right now. But you see it more and more and more. Anybody who knows me knows I'm absolutely against the war in Afghanistan. I served two tours in Afghanistan. I've written a book about the war in Afghanistan, which comes out on August 9th, by the way. I would like to think

I have a fairly decent grasp on the war. But whenever I bring up how stupid the whole thing is, with anybody, fellow veterans, obviously you aside, co-workers, my parents, who hate the war because they kept having to fucking send me to it, whenever I bring it to anybody, you get weird looks, or they try to change the subject. Nobody wants to engage in the conversation of why this war is so bad. And one of the things I get is somebody goes, well, you volunteered for it. And even though it's a fucking stupid response to a foreign policy criticism, they aren't entirely wrong. Anybody who enlisted with a few people that was, I, my first deployment to Afghanistan in 2008. So the vast majority of people who I was with had enlisted after 9-11. There was onesies and twosies that had been around forever, but they were normally

Master Sergeants, Sergeant Majors, First Sergeants, shit like that. They didn't exist in my world. So everybody enlisted knowing they were going to go fight. Or at least there waslisted knowing they were going to go fight. Or at least there was a possibility they were going to go fight. We were 17, 18, 19 years old. You can't expect me to make good choices.

Part of this is the intense, decades-long guilt trip. Veteran service organizations, Vietnam veterans themselves, and the government themselves have engineered into some stupid response for the massive anti-war movement during Vietnam. You see this everywhere. Like, oh, I didn't get my parade. I didn't get my parade. People spit on me, call me baby killer. Nobody appreciated our service which it needs to be said that there is

no widespread incidences of anybody getting spit on by anti-war activists during Vietnam it's an urban legend and needs to fucking die sure it may have happened a handful of times but you know what weird shit happens to everybody when they return from time to time one time i had a homeless guy asked me for a cigarette that happened everybody probably not i had i walked into protesters twice nobody called me a killer nobody fucking spit on us and you know you have to look at um some of the anti-war movements back then and some of them now where they were much more militant back then. But you have to understand why. They were being actively against something

that was going to affect their life. Their dad, their brother, their cousin, or them was going to go fight in a war that was fucking pointless. That did not affect America at all. The only reason it affected America is because America was there. Literally, to extract themselves from the situation where it no longer affected them, they just had to remove the American military. Which, thankfully, they eventually did. But there was no systemic spitting of veterans. This didn't happen.

People didn't get their parades. People didn't get their fucking veterans discounts or whatever. But this is some weird guilt shit thing that's been rolled in for decades that people have been trying to make up for ever since. Everybody has stupid fucking yellow ribbons on everything and ribbons around trees and there's discounts everywhere and thank you for your fucking service. It's like this giant fucking nationalist circle jerk that's been going on ever since to try to make up for this stupid shit and they spun it perfectly in that that the veterans themselves are the sacred cow that you cannot possibly say anything against when these kids adults and veterans themselves who

protested against the war had a reason to do it people were burning down rotc buildings they weren't like assaulting veterans or fucking trying to keep them from going home they hated the system that sent them there right they hated the whole military industrial complex they hated the government they had the draft They hated everything that could put them at risk, that put the dudes in uniform at risk. They didn't hate the people in uniform. Just like, for the most part, now, except I hate a lot

of my fellow veterans, because a lot of you are fucking insufferable. I'm insufferable. Listen to me. I just hate everybody. Yeah. They hated the system that sent them away. The system that forcefully conscripted people into government, effectively government slavery, to go fight in this war. This myth turned that huge circle Jerka has talked about,

and the government has been riding this way hard as fuck ever since. Think of it this way. All right. How have they silenced opposition to anything to do with truce? Anything. If you disagree with the war, you just sign their sacrifice. I mean, look at all the blood that's been shed. Look at all of our dead and wounded. This is the exact same fucking line of argument that the Empire of Japan used to defend the puppet regime in Manchuria before World War II. It's fucking stupid. It makes no sense.

It's like the lost cost fallacy or the sunk cost fallacy. Well, you put this much shit into something, can't give up now. In reality, you need to cut your fucking losses. Another reason I think people at home can't seem to grasp realities of the war enough to totally turn against

it is the massive clampdown on the freedom of media operating in the theater. See, I like that one. I mean, think of it this way. You've seen We Were Soldiers. Of course. Have you read the book? No.

It was written by Joe Galloway, the reporter in the movie. It was played by Barry Peppers or Brian Peppers, whatever his name is. That's pretty much all factually correct. He didn't have to do anything to get to a battle. He just showed up and was like, hey, do you have room on your helicopter? And the helicopter pilot said, yeah. And then he's in the Battle of fucking Ayadrang Valley.

That simple. No limitations were put on him. He took pictures of the fighting, the dying, and the killing of both sides. The mangled remains of both side soldiers were splayed across the news lines. Every day. You can find footage on YouTube. Yeah. And you will see a lot of shit shit you were seeing how the fucking sausage was made and the sausage is fucking ugly and you know what the people knew they made that connection and they made they made that personal connection

every day on the news when that fucking ticker tape of names was splayed across of all the dead because they knew there's a good chance they are gonna see someone they fucking knew either with the high school with that they're fucking related to that were there they and they were seeing fucking suffering on the news now let's compare that do you remember you pretty young because I know you got your couple years in with me do you remember 2008-2009 there's some worse when someone had the balls to post a picture of flag-draped coffins? Yeah. Do you remember the fucking livid outrage about it?

They were showing a box. They were showing 15 boxes on an airplane. How dare they? Yeah. You weren't seeing shit! You weren't seeing anything now you're labeled some kind of terrorist sympathizer Sebastian Junger

who we just talked about caught hell for showing a soldier's body who was draped with a poncho and restrepo you didn't see shit except his boot it was one of the most powerful fucking parts of that whole movie for a reason you were seeing what it costs it was like when everybody

says like uh well if you save money if you uh if you spend only cash you withdraw cash out of an atm and you make all your purchases in cash because you see everything you're fucking spending you're seeing it in front of your eyes you're not just like swiping through like operation during freedom like you're seeing the fucking cost of this shit do you remember when soft rep published this is only a couple months ago that fucking ambush good

I'm glad I wish they didn't censor it and you know what sure that must be really fucking painful for those loved ones to see that must suck I don't know what? Sure, that must be really fucking painful for those loved ones to see. That must suck. I don't know what that feels like. But the people of America need to know what is being done in their name. They need to see what we see, what they saw, and what they did.

I'm not discrediting the honor of the fallen guys in that video. Right. Or any of the fallen in Afghanistan or Iraq or in Vietnam. But when you deploy. And you go and fight. Your body is a check. And it's being cashed. People need to know what it looks like on the other side.

People need to see how the fucking sausage is made. War is fucking ugly. They don't know what it's like i mean people want our military to fight forever people want our military to go out to yemen and saudi arabia and fucking uh somalia and niger and mali and afghanistan and iraq and wherever the fuck else forever but they want to be ignorant of the cost of the fighting. They don't want to know the thousands of faces that their loved ones will never see again. You know what?

They fucking need to. They need to see the cost for international cowardice of always wanting to be safe all the time, of fighting some fucking stupid abstract thought of international terrorism. What is that? What does that fucking look like? I mean, think back a couple months when we attacked Syria with the cruise missiles. All you saw on CNN and Fox and wherever fucking else, BBC,

you saw the cruise missiles leaving the ship and you saw the fucking streak of fire going into the night sky. And I actually saw people on CNN and Fox talking about how beautiful it looked going into the night sky. How beautiful a cruise missile looked. How fucking ridiculous is that? Think back to 2003 when we invaded Iraq. All you saw was these sparkling smart bombs exploding in the night sky. I is that. Think back in 2003 when we invaded Iraq. All you saw was these sparkling smart bombs exploding in the night sky. Those cameras never panned up.

You never saw what a fucking 500 pound bomb does to a family of six. You're not going to see what that cruise missile did, which thankfully they were at a cruise missile strike on an empty airfield, but they're talking about how beautiful this is they're not talking about how fucking ugly and disgusting it is the media has lost its power to tell the truth think about um ted offensive in vietnam this why was it considered a lost cause it's not because the vc and the nba showed that they could launch this countrywide offensive. Right. It's because fucking Tom Brokaw went on the news and said Vietnam is a quagmire. And Wes Moreland said, fuck, if we lost him, we've lost America.

Yeah. And it was true. But we don't have that anymore because nobody has the fucking balls. Because if you show a dead soldier, you're an ISIS. Or you're this fucking horrible soldier hater. No, man. It's not what it is. People need to see the cost.

No, I agree with that. Yeah. People need to see the cost of their color-shaded warning systems and the cost of their chicken hock bullshit. Until that day comes every single person that that says we need to send soldiers here we need to strike here or that cruise missile is beautiful or you know shouting down uh so and you know i don't like sofra i don't they're jingoistic jingoistic nationalist assholes And they are fucking dog whistle racist most of the times.

But in this one instance, they showed some balls. And they never retracted it. No, they didn't. And every single person that shot them down is a piece of shit. Because any single person that does that, they need to be publicly fucking shamed. Because the deaths that happened, the deaths that happened this week last week and all the way until 20 fucking 90 when we leave afghanistan it's on them because we as american people i know this is gonna blow a lot of people's mind we can vote people out sometimes

we should not give a pass for anybody who voted for this and continues to vote for it. I don't care what party they're in. I'm a fucking socialist, but I would not vote for somebody who would ever support this. That's the reason why I could not forgive Hillary Clinton and vote for her in 2016 because she voted for the Iraq war. She's guilty. It's a fucking war crime. And it is because we as Americans just don't care.

We're so disconnected, so fucking disconnected from the military and from the operations. And I think the government wants it that way. Because this war doesn't touch any level of society except mostly the poor people who have to join the army to afford to go to college. except mostly the poor people who have to join the army to afford to go to college um but for the most part nobody knows somebody personally that died in the global war yeah i know a few and i was there um most people don't know anybody who were wounded most people might know somebody from high school that joined the military that's the most that's about it yeah um and you don't even stay in contact with that person and there's there's no sort of there's never been some kind of personal connection from the society itself to operation enduring freedom it does not

exist i mean when somebody dies there maybe tomorrow there'll probably be someone that was born two years after 9-11 but nobody's gonna make that connection nobody gives a shit no nobody's i mean nobody's going to wonder what it's like that your loved one's not going to come home because they don't have to deal with it right um and you know in the book tribe sebastian junger talks about this a lot um but his solution is to bring back conscription it is the great equalizer in society to bring the two sides back together and my answer is stop fucking fighting in afghanistan as much as much as i respect sebastian junger and as much as i love his work he is incredibly wrong in that um because we as the united states don't know what to do with the world's most powerful military we we see everything um what's the saying is when when all you have is a hammer everything looks

like a nail no um Don't know that one. But that's where we find ourselves. That's why... So think of it this way. Say tomorrow, me and 10,000 other people out of nowhere, march down to Seattle and demand the war of Afghanistan.

What are people going to call us? Well... It could be me and 10,000 other fucking veterans. What what are people gonna call us well it could be me and 10 000 other fucking veterans what are people gonna call us the majority yeah some might call you patriots others might call you fucking warmongers it depends like if me and 10 000 other people a ton of people that would call you patriots i I don't know if I've ever met one. I don't think I've ever seen that in person. Or maybe someone believes it, but they're so worried about this national guilt trip. They still believe in this whole, like, oh, we need to go get those guys. Right.

But what guys? They don't even know. Who are we fighting? They don't even know. That's the thing. And I know plenty of them. I really do. It sucks. I know a lot of people think the same way. It's like, well, They don't even know. That's the thing. And I know plenty of them. I really do. It sucks.

I know a lot of people think the same way. It's like, well, we haven't won yet. No shit. No shit we haven't fucking won. That's the point. I believe the same thing. We just need to cut some load. I mean, you can say what you want about the war in Iraq.

You can argue about that one all day, though. I think we all know the war in Iraq. You can argue about that one all day, though I think we only answered that, but in the beginning there was a legitimate reason to be in Afghanistan. I will say. To give back to Bin Laden. Even my anti-war ass can agree with that. He attacked us

first. I feel like that is a war of self-defense. Right. Because he definitely would have attacked us again. That motherfucker's been dead for almost 10 years. Yeah. He died one fucking day before I deployed on my last deployment.

And that was like 7 years ago. Yeah. So, I don't want to go into that anymore because I feel like I covered it really well and I have enough stress in my life I'm losing enough

of my hair but that's pretty much what it boils down to there's some kind of societal disconnect between like it's some abstract thing like Afghanistan is a different planet or it's some abstract thing like afghanistan is a different planet or um it's just so far removed

from everyday life um vietnam touched all of american society and people felt so strongly against it that when the national guard shot them down at ken state they kept protesting against it they were actively fucking murdered and they did not slow down the protest. People burnt down ROTC buildings. People took to the streets and got their ass rolled on by cops and then slowed them down. These days people are so disconnected and there's so many different reasons why they're so disconnected that they can't get over the fact that it might be windy out. And even if they could organize,

I don't know if it would do anything. I don't think it would do any good. No. Because if college kids are getting slaughtered during Vietnam, and that didn't end the war, nothing is going to end Afghanistan until

we end Afghanistan. That's something, uh... You got nothing on that one? No. Yeah, there's like... You don't really know, like... Like, we don't have a goal um anymore i mean the same can be said for westmoreland and vietnam and um you know when you start failing

or you and you fail so hard you don't know what the goal for success is anymore. We've been failing consecutively in Afghanistan for what the guy said almost 20 years. But we haven't moved the goals for success. We haven't moved those goalposts back into the realm of reality. We still want some Jeffersonian democracy to spring up in Kabul and the Pashtuns and Uzbeks and everybody else to join hands and fucking sing Kumbaya. But it's not going to happen.

And it's cost us immensely to the point that we have our own lost generation now. I mean, we didn't lose 50,000 people and some change like they did in Vietnam. But, you know, we have tens of thousands of wounded physically and however many tens of thousands more mentally wounded that will never be treated for, will never be taken care of. So we have our own lost generation. And with that, I think I need another drink. God damn it.

That is our final question because we're coming up on almost an hour and a half our longest podcast the longest one so I guess we'll sign off for that one thanks for listening thanks for making the last episode the highest rated episode that we've

ever had hopefully this one will keep you interested hopefully you can follow the podcast on Twitter at lions underscore buy. You can follow me on Twitter at jcast99. You can follow me at nickcastm1. And thanks for the questions. Yes, thank you.

I mean, keep sending them to us because we're going to do these from time to time. Because they're fun. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with this one. My book is available for pre-order. It is called The Hooligans of Kandahar, and it comes out August 9th. It has a ton of pre-orders and a lot of really good reviews and awards, and I would really like to pay my mortgage. So go and pick up a copy.

Hopefully get them an AC. Yeah, maybe I can afford a fucking window unit in this bitch. It's fucking hot in here. I am literally sweating bullets. I have a few drops on my fucking laptop that I need to wipe off. So that's our show. Please

rate, review us on iTunes and have a good one. Later.