The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The US is Trapped in Iran, and It's Not Their War | Scott Horton

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Scott Horton - editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of the Scott Horton Show, and co-host of Provoked - joins the CBP for a candid breakdown of the US-Iran war, how Trump got maneuvered into it, and what the cost of American empire looks like from the inside. Oil is now over $100, what does this mean for the war, and for you?We cover:Iran war/US strikesIsrael's influenceTrump being manipulated into war Iran hitting US bases HypersonicsRussia-China-Iran pactWar propaganda failingThe true cost of empire and American declineScott's links: https://x.com/ScottHortonShowBooks: Provoked | Enough Already | Fool's Errand - https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B074V91F35🇨🇦 THE CANADIAN BITCOINERS PODCASTNew episodes weekly. Conversations with the sharpest minds in Bitcoin, macro, and finance — from a Canadian lens.Sponsors:easyDNShttps://easydns.comAnycast DNS, domain registration, web & email services — fast, reliable, privacy-focused.Pay with Bitcoin.Use coupon code CBPMEDIA for 50% off your first purchase.Bull Bitcoinhttps://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbpThe CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for buying Bitcoin simply and securely.Use the link above for 25% off fees for life.256Heathttps://256heat.com/Heat your home, garage, or office while earning more Bitcoin than it costs to run.Book a call with a hashrate heating consultant today.🔔 Subscribe & hit the bell so you never miss an episode!👍 If you enjoyed this conversation, smash the like button — it helps the algorithm show this to more people.💬 Drop a comment below — where do you think Canada is heading?———📲 Follow us:@CanadianBTCPod on XCanadianBitcoiners.com———⚠️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing discussed should be considered financial advice. Always do your own research.

Trump and the US would be crazy to join this war. You've called it Israel's war. What are the sort of less obvious forces pushing America into these sorts of conflicts? Remember, he fired his national security adviser because his national security advisor had made a secret deal with the Israelis to push him into war with Iran. So he fired him and replaced him with Marco Rubio,

his secretary of state, who was also hired by the Israelis, push him in a war with Iran. Right? So... Especially because we're in this situation, now I say we really, the United States and a few of its allies. The situation with Iran, we should start there. Welcome back to the CBP, everybody.

Today's guest really needs no introduction. Scott Horton, probably the most vocal anti-war and critic of war of the modern age. Is that a fair description, Scott? What do you think? Oh, I don't know. There are a lot of people doing a lot of good work on this stuff. But yeah, I'm an anti-interventionist. Absolutely.

And I think if I look back at a lot of your appearances, whether it's Tucker or Lex, your books, your other podcasts, your articles on anti-war, you know, you deserve some flowers. You've been right about so much. And especially because we're in this situation now, I say we, really the United States and a few of its allies, the situation with Iran, we should start there. You know, you've gone on the record in 2025 saying that Trump and the U.S. would be crazy to join this war. You've called it Israel's war. What happened here? How did he miss this, in your opinion?

And what are the sort of less obvious forces pushing America into these sorts of conflicts? Well, look, I mean, I don't know exactly what's going on, you know, with him or around him. Remember, he fired his national security advisor because his national security advisor had made a secret deal with the Israelis to push him into war with Iran. So he fired him and replaced him with Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, who was also hired. by the Israelis to push him in a war with Iran. Right? So Rubio was Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. And, you know, Heg-Seth, of course, is a big, you know, loud mouth, no nothing, know-it-all,

you know, Fox News type. And I think, you know, look, Trump's instincts are pretty hawkish, probably 60% of the time anyway. He tends to know better some of the time. but he's not, you know, he's very much like W. Bush in this way, right? Where he's just lazy, right? He's not really interested in wanting to be the master of any of these subjects. And so then even if his instincts are right, which I'm not saying they are in this case, but even if they were, he's easily talked out of those kind of points of view by people

with a vested interest in making him see it the other way. And, you know, it's almost kind of comic book to point it out, but it really is true. I mean, he tweeted the other day, it was true social, thing. He said, I am getting so many compliments from people who are happy that I'm doing this, right? So Laura Lumer and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin and all these guys are slapping him on the back and telling him he's great. And he really likes hearing that, you know? And it's a huge part of, you know, you think about John McCain, for example, where Bill Crystal would tell him, you know, you really remind me a Theodore Roosevelt.

And he'd be like, wow, really? I remind you a theater Roosevelt. Like, all these guys are kind of like that, you know, big egos. And after all, if you're the president, you are going down in history. You know, Mark Thieson wrote this thing for The New York Post, a W. Bush guy, about how Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, these are our America's greatest presidents because they led us in war, you know, which he left out Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson and whatever.

But anyway, that's how to be a great president is to win a great war. And so that's the kind of thing that appeals to Trump. You know, he's building this giant arch of triumph in Washington, you know, basically a monument to himself and this kind of thing. He renamed Mount McKinley, Mount McKinley. And like, you know, he wants to take Greenland. I don't know if you know this, you probably do. But Greenland is actually like one 12th the size of Brazil.

Yeah. But on the map, it looks huge. It's bigger than the Louisiana purchase or something on the map, right? So there's greatness there if you fall for the illusion. You know, and I think that's basically his thing here. The idea of figuring out how to actually help the American people and go down in history as the kind of guy who prevented the most powerful from screwing the rest of us. It's never really occurred to him.

He's one of them. And so how do you go down in history? You do something big and something horrible can still be great. You know what I mean? They call them, you know, whatever the great is they call them total monsters, but they just did great things, as in large things, you know. And so then I think Netanyahu tells him that, that look, W. Bush didn't have the courage. He didn't have the stones to do what you know has to be done. Barack Obama. Don't get me started on that pro-Muslim traitor, you know, zombie corpse, walking Joe Biden. You're the great leader of the new. era, you can finally rid the world of the evil terror masters and go down in history as the decisive man who did the big thing to bite the bullet and do what must be done and all that. That's the kind of crap that appeals to him. And I'm sure that's exactly the kind of crap that Benjamin Netanyahu and his agents in the White House and surrounding Trump were saying. And I don't really have any

reason to believe. It just doesn't ring true to me at all that Donald Trump is like compromised, abusing a child with the Epstein ring or that kind of thing. He likes Netanyahu. Net Yahoo flatters him. And Net Yahoo tells him, man, you're so big and tough and strong and tall and handsome and wealthy and successful. You should bomb Iran. And he goes, yeah, all of those things sound right to me, you know?

And I, you know, I think that's it, really. And he doesn't have anyone to say, well, pardon me, Mr. President, you should know that here are some things about the Iranians that means that they could have a say in how this war goes and it might not all be as easy as they promise or whatever you know I don't know

how recent this is or actually even the real origin of it but I did see a picture that apparently someone had gotten through the window of the Oval Office of Trump screaming in Pete Hedgesse's face and presumably telling him hey man you said this was going to be easy What do you mean they've hit every single base that we own in the region?

You know, and in fact, he said there's a direct quote of him saying that he is surprised that Iran hit these bases. And it's like, look, man, there's not a single person who's been reading antiwar.com in the last 20 years who didn't know that they were going to hit those bases, dude. There are anybody who cares enough about this, especially to be critical about it, could have told you that all those bases are at risk, that no, you cannot shoot down. every single one of their incoming rockets. And if you go after the regime and make them feel like they had nothing to lose, use it or lose at all, then they're going to overwhelm your defenses and they're going to hit your bases. And that's exactly what they did.

Like luckily, the casualties are low because they haven't just targeted our guys in their barracks, which I think most of them have been withdrawn anyway or whatever. But they have hit our bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi, UA, E, Oman. I mean, all the way up and down the Gulf. They're hitting economic targets. they hit a refinery like the all-important refinery in Bahrain today. And they're just showing that, you know, it's the old Mike Tyson thing about everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the mouth. You know, everything is fine until actually it turns out that you're not in control of this.

Which, by the way, just because I'm old and I've been doing this for a long time, I can tell you that I know that in January 2007, they brought W. Bush to the Pentagon down to the basement to the tank, they call it, the big skiff down there. And the chiefs essentially read W. Bush the Riot Act. And they told him, look, we'll escalate the surge in Iraq. We'll do that. But we don't want to go to Iran. Don't make us go to Iran, Mr. Brousen. And they don't usually do that. They usually say, hey, you tell us what to do.

We'll figure it out. They told him, no, man. Listen, if we do this, they will have a say in how the war goes. It will not be like beaten up Saddam Hussein. It'll be a real fight. And yes, we'll win, but they will kill a lot of. our guys too. They will mess up. And at that time, we had 150,000 guys on the ground in Iraq embedded with Shiite forces. So that was a much bigger risk even at the time. But the commander of

Sentcom at the time was a guy named Admiral Fox Fallon. And he made it clear that this will happen over my dead body. We're not doing this. And that was what stopped the war in 07 was the Pentagon, telling W. Bush. By the way, at the time, the Navy and the Air Force said, let us at him, Uncle Scooby. We'll kick their ass. No problem. But it was the army and the Marines. and the Special Operations Command that said, no, we're the ones who got to die in this thing and we don't want to. At that time, it was, you know, they had bitten off

more than they could chew in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, and they really did not want to do that. Their criticism and reluctance may have been more muted this time. And after all, no one ever said we got to invade with ground troops. I think back then the idea was that we'd have to send in SOCOM guys with laser designators to take out all the anti-aircraft. But now

they can just hit most of everything they want from standoff ranges and not really worried. too much about that, I guess. That's the way they're fighting it now. And so, you know, we've had a few guys die, six people on our side killed so far. I've heard rumors,

but I don't think there's any reason to believe they're covering up the casualties. I think the Iranians are trying to hit. If you look at what they're hitting, they're hitting like a radar dish. You know what I mean? They're not taken out an entire installation. They're like pinprit strikes on specific military

material. You know what I mean? So, but anyway, they're showing that they can stay in this fight at least for a while. Now, on the other hand, I don't think anybody should doubt that, I don't think anybody does doubt, that American fighter bombers and bombers can put power onto targets and destroy them. So, and it's also true that with our satellites, we can find every time they launch a rocket, we can find that rocket launcher and hit them back. So how long the Iranian, I mean, whatever, there are various warehouses, full of stores of different sizes of these missiles.

I had no idea what they used to have, how many they fired, how many they have left their ability, you know, the number of launchers that they have for the number of missiles that they have. All this is unknown to me. And I don't know whether the DIA knows, you know. So far, they're able to keep firing. I mean, they're hitting our targets with drones.

They hit the CIA station in Saudi Arabia. Saw that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, it's so funny. I see right wingers on Twitter still saying, why won't you admit that this is going great and we're getting the bad guys

and this is going to turn out fine? I'm like, dude, this thing is already a total disaster. They've hit every single base in the region. You know, except I guess in Jordan. They haven't hit our bases in Jordan yet. But like they even got at least one hypersonic off on Tel Aviv, which Americans do not, I do not believe, have operational hypersonic weapons.

They have tried and tried. They can't get, you know, Lockheed and them have been trying and they can't get them to turn without exploding. And they've had the worst of luck with that. The Russians got it figured out, and apparently even the Iranians got it figured out. And people say, oh, the Americans, they have them, but they're just holding them in secret or whatever.

Well, that doesn't make any sense. If Americans have hypersonics, their purpose is to deliver hydrogen bombs, and they make no good as a deterrent if the enemy doesn't know about them. Okay? It makes no sense whatsoever to develop a doomsday weapon and then not tell the other side you did. We've all seen Dr. Strangelove. You know, hey, guess what, Russia?

We have hypersonics, too, is what they'll say the day they have them to, right? Otherwise, there's no purpose in even having them, really. They are a H-bomb delivery vehicle, meaning they are for deterrence. They're not for using. They're for making sure the Russians never give us cause to use them. That's what they're for. The same is what the Russians hypersonics really were developed for deterring us. And so I don't believe that they have a secret, you know, arsenal of these things.

that they've yet to deploy would make no sense for them to keep that secret. So it looks like the Iranians are even ahead of the United States on that. And the point being that there's no way in the world to shoot down these hypersonics with our Patriot systems and so forth. So that's systems and the rest.

So it's pretty ugly and it's out of control. And you know, the Pentagon leaked to the Politico that they plan on the war lasting through September. So how do you like that? Yeah. A couple of pin for strikes, huh? Well, I think they got a little over their skis after the snatch and grab from, you know, a month or so ago. Yeah, it's,

it's a different animal entirely. You know, I don't think a lot of people realize that there's this sort of, I don't want to call it an agreement or a pact, but like this sort of pseudo-handshake, you know, we'll use the word agreement between Iran, China, Russia, because they're all sort of marching under the same banner to some extent. And so you make the point there about the hypersonics. You know, what is the likelihood that Iran developed those weapons alone? I, I would guess it's almost zero, right? Tell people about this sort of under the table handshake that's gone on that not a lot of people are really talking about. Well, yeah, first of all, there I would only be able to speculate, but I'm sure you're probably right about that, that the Russians and or the Chinese help them to develop those.

The Iranians have been helping the Russians in Ukraine, mostly with the Shahed drones. There are accusations by the Americans that the Iranians have supplied missiles to the Russians to use in the Ukraine war as well, although I don't think that's proven. Larry Johnson, the former CIA officer, pointed this out to me. I had missed this, and quite honestly, I haven't had a chance to catch up and read about it. But he told me on the show the other day that just a few weeks ago, Russia and China and Iran signed a tripartite pact. And it was not a NATO Article 5 war guarantee, but it was a promise of tech. technical support. Should Article 5 is the, if one is attacked, all are attacked is like a retaliation

element there for people who don't know. Yeah. That's under the NATO treaty. So it was not a war guarantee that we promised to come fight for you. But it was a promise that we'll give you technical support to the degree that we can. I think, I mean, man, I don't want to like sound like the empire too arrogant here or anything. But I think people probably overestimate Russia and China's friendship with Iran. in reality they don't need Iran that bad you know Iran is really a competitor to Russia as far as

being a hydrocarbon exporter and an overall you know materials exporter so you know they're kind of always been rivals and I don't think Russia really has much to lose if Iran gets their clock clean one way or the other for example we've seen Putin because he's been the same leader in charge of Russia ever since the year 2000. We've seen him over the years side with Bush and side with Obama against Iran when it comes to UN resolutions on their nuclear program and things like that. So Russian commitment to Iran may be overblown. I'm not sure exactly. Also Iran and China, I think now China is especially a hydrocarbon importer, but they've got Russia for that. They don't really need Iran.

I don't know the exact number, but maybe it's a lot, but they can adjust and get their hydrocarbons from Russia. They have a huge pipeline there, and they keep expanding it more and more now ever since the war in 22. So the Chinese are not stuck without Iran. So they're not going to bend over backwards to cause trouble with the United States in order to help Iran. On the other hand, I think they're probably happy to help supply Iran with enough to stay in the fight, give them, you know, I don't know if they, need money or whatever technical assistance that they can provide them. I wouldn't be surprised that there's some of that because it makes sense from an idiot's point of view, meaning a government's point of view, that like if Chairman She is Joe Biden,

then he's going, ha, ha, ha, we'll inflict on them a strategic defeat. Go ahead and invade. And we'll back your opponents and it'll cost you, right? And so can America defeat Iran overall? Yeah, just like Russia can defeat Ukraine. eventually. But if we support Ukraine and if China supports Iran against us, it'll take longer and it'll cost more. And so they can, you know, sit back and laugh at that. There was an onion article years ago during the W. Bush years even that showed an al-Qaeda guy just sitting on the couch and it says,

Al-Qaeda plotting to just sit back and watch as America destroys its own. You know, it makes a lot of sense. That's Sun Su says, do not interrupt your opponent when he's making a mistake. And that's all America does is make mistakes. So it would be foolish for the Chinese to make too much of it. You guys go on ahead. You want to me? You want to swim in that sewer? Get yourself some dysentery. What do we care? Where do you come down on? Maybe we would talk a little bit about the war propaganda and then, you know, we're going to wrap around 30 minutes. And so I want to ask you another question after this. But the onslaught, man, of propaganda. I'm in my late 30s. And so this sort of Ukraine conflict and maybe some of the minor engagements, you know, minor the same way heart

surgery is when it's happening to someone else. It can be minor. When it's happening to you, you may not feel the same way. It's really the first war I've paid a lot of attention to in terms of the messaging around it. And because of the ease of access, the governments have to stuff like Twitter, YouTube, whatever, between Zelensky and now Netanyahu posting, it seems like every week, if not more frequently, you know, on a greater cadence, messages in English, clearly geared toward American or European observers about the rationale for the wars that they're entering into with America,

the rationale for continued deaths on the battlefield. You know, the Ukrainian meat grinder at this point has become a meme, dark one, but a meme. What do you make of this? It's not working at all. And yet it persists, right? What is the deal with that? Why are they doing this?

Well, so first of all, Although it's not working. You know, the way it used to be was you got the Times and the journal and the post. And then you have ABC, CBS, and NBC who read the Times, the Journal, on the Post and then tell you what they said. And that's all you get. And if you get to shout something at Dan Rather from 100 feet away, you're lucky, right? And there's just no pushback at all. Now the media is so equalized where, you know, they wanted to ignore us for a while.

You know, like when Twitter was kind of brand new, you could get a CNN personality to respond to you, right? Then after a while they wouldn't because they were like, well, there's just way too much of the, how do you say it? They're killing us. They're killing us. They're killing us. Yeah. So just try to ignore them and they'll go away. But then they don't, right?

The alternative media podcasters just keep getting bigger and bigger. Our audiences, not ours, but there's a lot of times challenge CNN numbers and this kind of thing or even, you know, far surpass their. kind of numbers. So now they do kind of have to answer to us. And you see, you know, politicians and media people where they wouldn't before, they would have resisted. And they did resist as long as they could. But now they deign to have to respond to us. So you see, for example, Ted Cruz striking out at Dave, Dave Smith, right? Because he feels like this has to be answered. And of course, he can't answer to it. He's having a real hard time. But they know that they have to somehow face this accountability because the narrative is going on without them.

But the problem is that those of us out here on the outside, we've been honing our message based on actual reality this whole time and debunking the lives that they tell and the horrible things that they do. And so they're really just not prepared, right? If Ted Cruz would ever to dare go on the Dave Smith show, it would be an absolute humiliation and he knows it. Dave knows his facts a lot better than Ted Cruz does. No question about that.

And so, and that's just one example, you know, so they're, they're really scrambling. So that's why they're even on Twitter in the first place is they think that they do have to answer you. But then, wait, to the second part of your question, well, oh, wait, so sorry, just to finish that thought real quick. But then, see, they suck at it, right? Because they before they were never held accountable. Now they're accountable.

And they cannot match the criticism. They cannot withstand the scrutiny. But then the second part of your question was, but then how come it persists anyway? And the answer is because of legacy, money and power. wealth and entrenchment here. It ain't public opinion that makes the difference, is it? It's the special interest. And then more and more, just as it's really always been, but now more and more in the polls, you can see where it's just the special interest versus the population of the country. Why is it this way? Because they want it this way. Never mind what you want.

Do you know what's funny? I don't know if you know this or not. You probably do, but I'll tell you anyway. The rationale, obviously, for the war is the nuclear threat, right? This video of Bibi, going back to when he had, you know, he looks like Elvis Presley from the forehead up when the first time he said that Iran was, you know, a week away from getting a nuclear bomb, right? And now he's like a feeble old man saying the same shit 30 years later, whatever it's been. You know what's funny? Last summer when they, when they carried out this sort of tactical strike, when the U.S. carried out the tactical strike in Iran, they put out this press release to counter the narrative from, I would guess, the left and maybe just like anti-war

people saying, you know, look, this isn't going to work. The U.S. White House put the statement on White House.gov about how they had gotten all the nuclear facilities, the bomb was no longer a threat, blah, blah, blah, blah. To give you an idea of how little they know about the information environment. Do you know that that, even though, as we've heard over the last week, the nuclear threat was the reason we have to do this invasion, do you know that note about no nuclear threat is still up on the White House website? I didn't know that.

I'm not surprised, though. Their comms has been a total disaster. It's crazy, man. It's just a total disaster, man. It's crazy. Let's finish on this. There's a cost of empirical thinking in the United States that is really coming home and becoming tangible for a lot of people there, a lot of people here in Canada.

And I would say Europe as well, Western Europe specifically, there is no free lunch. And the U.S. has been trying to maintain its power all over the world for the better part of 75 years at this point. And it feels to me and many of my peers that much like the Romans, the Americans will be the last to realize that the empire has been defeated. And it'll be too late by the time they come to that conclusion. In your view, you're an American and you're very much anti-war, but I get the feeling talking to you and having listened to you and read you for the last little while. You're a proud American. And I want to know how you think about the cost of empire at home, abroad, and not just the economic cost.

There's a spiritual cost to the American Republic for this sort of. a thing where do you come down on that how do you feel about that these days well it's the most obvious thing in the world i guess to me the worst part of it is the frustration of just knowing how obvious it is to me and to so many other people and why it isn't so apparent to every other person too that empire is murder suicide dude we're our country is acting like one of bin laden's men blowing himself up to get at the other guy and it's completely crazy and stupid to do it i mean what would you have to tell a 22 year old to go and do that, a bunch of crap, right, to get them to, you know, accept that fate or to get them to believe that it's worth the cost.

And so America as a whole, our society is dying. And I mean, even if you just take the political division between left and right where people don't respect each other at all anymore, they really think of each other as commies and Nazis and just want to see each other shot and whatever, like that's all because of George W. Bush. George, you know, and Bill Clinton was as horrible as he was. American politics was extremely divisive in that time and all of that. No question. But when W. Bush came and lied us into that war and in such an obvious way,

what he did was he essentially in the minds of his supporters, he turned the other half of America that knew better into traitors by lying to the right and telling the right that Saddam had done the 9-11 attack, which made right-wingers think that anyone who was against the war was a traitor, not just a hippie, but a kami and a pro-terrorist traitor, when in fact, everyone not just on the left, but libertarians and people on the right who knew better, were saying, no, you stupid, Saddam didn't do it.

That's why, right? And so you had like real, you know, level 11 type hatred between the sides there. And then when Bush got caught torturing people to death, the right immediately was like, oh, this is terrible. And then Bush said, no, it's not. It's not torture. It's just enhanced interrogation.

And all good American patriots and Republican voters support it. And they all said, yes, we do support it. And all the Catholic priests and Protestant ministers got up there on their pulpits and said, good American patriots support torture. Right. And then so the people who didn't, the people who knew better than that, who refused to go along with that. And in fact, why were they torturing people to start with? It was to get al-Qaeda guys to lie about sedent.

Dom. Like, why not just make up the lie yourself? You got to make up the lie and then put it in this guy's mouth and then torture it out of them? What the hell? But anyway, that was why they did it. And they got people to sign up for that. And which to everybody else was just, you know, it just drove the division between the two sides to such a great degree. And then, of course, Barack Obama comes. And the first black president is a Democrat. Now, if the first black president, been a Republican, things would have been a lot different. And there were black presidential candidates running on the Republican side. But the first guy to win was a Democrat, which just meant that the left got as sanctimonious as they could possibly be to the wokenest degree that

you just want to hang yourself, right? And then every Republican took a step back and turned into his grandfather on his opinions about racial issues in America and just got that much more divisive. I mean, a whole, just so much of that. And why did Obama become the president? It was because he was the opposite of W. Bush, supposedly, because he represented the oops, we're really sorry about that. So now we're going to make up for it by nominating this guy instead on the other side, where Obama would have never, if W. Bush had just been a normal president in a normal time, Obama would have never existed. There would have never been any of this stuff. And so just a huge part of the divisiveness in the country goes back to then. And quite seriously, like, if you really

sincerely believed in your government and your leadership and you sincerely believe that they told you very clearly, in fact, you might have been reading between the lines a little bit there, but if you really believe that they were really very certain when they told you that Saddam Hussein had done 9-11, and that's why we have to do this war, and you can see half the population doesn't want to do the war, you might hate them. Like, what do you mean that you don't want to do anything to this nation state that attacked our country and killed thousands of our people? What kind of Kami, terrorists, loving traitors, are you people anyway? And that hate was real.

It was just based on stupid. It was based on lies, but it was very sincere. It turned families, tore families apart, turned neighbors against neighbors, best friends against best friends. It was a horrible thing. And I just think, and it just completely corrupted the spirit of American conservatives, too. I mean, I always have been a talk radio junkie, man. And I remember AM radio when Abu Ghra broke.

And they were absolutely disgusted. They said, listen, we went to that war to help these people. What are we doing, torturing them? This is America. This is George Washington outlawed torture in 1775. We don't torture people. What in the world? This is what would Jesus Christ say if he knew that this is how we conducted our war?

They said that they meant that. They were sincere about that. And then by Friday, they were like, well, that's how it is. That's America. That's who we are now. That's what we must do. what our great patriotic Republican leadership does and says, and after all it says Romans 13, when Republicans are in power, you have to do whatever they say. And just, you know, this kind of thing.

And, you know, I still carry a bridge over that because I still see it as maybe more important than other people do. But I think that a huge part of the root of America's problems in this, in this century stem from just the incidence of W. Bush being our leader at that time. and getting this millennium kicked off in this way. And then you mentioned the money. It's funny. Sometimes people say, oh, libertarians, to you, everything is just dollars and cents. Well, how about the actual material, like real world costs two people of destroying $10 trillion

dollars that they otherwise could have invested in their own lives, living in a better neighborhood, putting their kids in a better school, feeding them more nutritious breakfast, giving them a vacation in the summertime or sending them off to a good college when it's time or whatever it is that they were not allowed to do, invest in their own business instead of keeping their crappy wage job that they always wish they could break away from. All those opportunity costs that were involved.

And that's just this century. If you want to go back to the end of the Cold War 10 years before, 12 years before, you're talking $20 trillion just obliterated. If you read the book 1984, there's a section in that book where our hero Winston Smith, the bad guy, his torturer, before he reveals himself as his torture and is pretending to be his friend, gives him the book of how we do it. This is how we screw over the people.

And it's supposedly written by Emmanuel Goldstein as like the tract against Big Brother. But what he says in there is we build these rockets so that we can blast the excess wealth that the people generate off into space where they can't get it. We build the floating fortress and then we sink it so that we take the excess productivity, the wealth of the people, that they otherwise would spend improving their own standard of living. And we take that wealth and we destroy it because we have to keep them desperate. We have to keep them on edge.

We have to keep them hungry. You have to somehow alleviate all this upward pressure on wages in this inflationary economy. And so this is how we do it. tax them to death and take their extra wealth that they would have spent on their own family, on their own business, on their own life, and we destroy it to keep them miserable. And so in 1984, if that's how they do it deliberately, that's the program. And that's what we're living through today. You know, you can at least, even if it's just the side effect, you can see just how

important that is. And how much of American political division comes down to economic stress and division where left-wingers just cannot, or liberals, whoever on the left, cannot countenance what the right spends money on when they're in power and vice versa. But they all just increase the spending overall, no matter what, when they get the power. So now that we're almost $40 trillion in debt and facing national collapse. And, you know, as you said in the setup to your question, the American people will be the last ones to know. I mean, that may be right. And then if we have a real crackup boom and the actual destruction of our currency,

then, you know, run for the hills, Ma Barker. I don't know. I hope you got a lot of ammunition, not just for currency, but to protect your neck because things can get extremely ugly around here with a currency collapse. And that is exactly the kind of fire that our government is playing with right now. I sincerely hope as a Canadian, Scott, and I know I speak for a lot of my, you know, fellow Canadians, you guys really are the sort of beacon on the hill for a lot of different things, whether it's freedom of speech, although that's waning, personal rights and separation of church

and state, you know, in more ways than just the technical sense. We need you guys to get it right here. You got to come out of this, you know, to the other side, because if you don't, we're not going to and no one's going to. And it's going to be nasty. So I know it's a, you know, it's a difficult conversation. It's important one. I appreciate you take time today, by the way. I know you've had a busy week. So I know I'm grateful for that. Before we go, if people don't know, you know, where they can read or listen to Scott Horton, you're on a couple of podcasts, you're writing all the time, appearing on different things. Give people a little bit of a lead to where they can find more

about this. I'm sure the Bitcoin crowd is interested in as much of this kind of anti-interventionist content as they can get their hands on. And I want you to tell them where they can get it. Sure. Well, the easiest thing to do is just go to X.com slash Scott Horton's show. That's my handle there on Twitter, Scott Horton's show. And then you'll see there in my bio is just links. Got my academy, my institute, anti-war.com, my shows, the Scott Horton show and provoked, and then my books, provoked, enough already, and fools errant, the great Rome Paul and hotter than the sun. All that stuff is there at X.com slash Scott Horton show. Excellent. Thank you, sir. Thank you for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you. soon.