The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1243: Remembering Who We Are w/ Andy Edwards
Episode Date: July 22, 202569 MinutesAndrew Edwards is a father, husband, and author of the book, "King of Dogs: Life Is the Training Ground for Death."Andy joins Pete to talk about the themes in his book and how real life trag...edy and triumph inspired them. King of DogsAndy on Twitter/XPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinjohnia.
I'm here with Andy Edwards. How are you doing, Andy?
I'm very well. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, first time on the show. You got to do it. You got to tell everybody a little bit about
yourself. Okay. I am, I'm Gen X. I'm a seventh generation Oregonian and I'm a father of three.
You know, maybe that's enough to start with. Is there anything else that?
that you'd like to know.
No. That sounds great.
We can get into it because we're going to talk about the book that you wrote King of Dogs.
When did you write that?
It's been out a little while, hasn't it?
Yeah, it was published in right at the end of 2019, so pretty much 2020.
And it had been floating around with me since about 2008.
It took quite a while to complete.
And, you know, there's a long, and we can get into that if you want.
The whole publishing of it was quite a saga.
Sure.
Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your background?
Let me ask.
Were you in the military?
No.
No.
I'm...
You're in the military?
No.
I...
Okay.
I get that question a lot because there's...
there's a lot of overlap in, you know, in the details of the book.
And somewhere around 2010 or so, when a lot of the GWAT guys were cycling back,
civilian training became a real thing.
And you could get, and you still can, obviously, right now, get,
you know, some of the best quality tactical training in the world. I mean, I tend to think that
there are civilian just dudes, you know, computer programmers, salesmen, what have you, that are
running around America that if you cobble them together, you know, their skill sets far exceed
probably, you know, many militaries around the world. So I did, I have to be able to, I have,
have the opportunity, I got really lucky to dip into a ton of training.
So, you know, a lot of that was guns.
A lot of it was just more survival tracking, these types of things.
And like I say, it comes up a lot just because it's, it's a, you know, you read the book,
it's a big piece of it.
Why write a book?
So, you know, my idea, if I was ever to write a book would be probably humorous.
to tell everybody what I, you know, how smart I am,
trying to explain how smart I am to everyone and, you know,
what I've learned over the years and try to distill it down into something that,
pretty much anyone could read, but still while trying to sound like the smartest guy in the room.
But that's usually not fiction.
When someone writes fiction, they're usually doing it for a reason.
So why write fiction?
That is a good question.
Not for the money. I'll tell you that. It's not, I think that, I mean, I think about this a fair bit because, you know, I'm pushing 50. And this is the life path that I'm committed to. And I committed to it way back in about 2002. When like the prevailing wisdom was, you know,
kind of hedge your
you have two options
like you can hedge your bets
and try and be like a professor
or something like that
or you can just burn the ships
no plan B
and as far as I could tell
starting out like the only
the only people who really pulled it off
by pulling it off
I mean wrote a novel
that was really worth your time
were those that
didn't have a plan B
and that's like a tough thing
to sell to like a prospective wife or your parents or, you know,
in many ways, Pete, I would not recommend this to most people.
And you hear this, you know, in like established, well-established novelists will tell people,
like, you should really be, you should really question your motives.
And that's not to make it too grandiose thing.
I mean, in the end, it's just stories.
But what motivated me, I think, was a combination of something true,
like a belief in the medium, a belief in literature,
those sorts of kind of high-minded ideals.
And then another aspect, which is just purely,
you kind of come around to like, well, I don't know that I can't.
do much else so and then it turns out that a lot of novelists will actually
support this idea it kind of occurs to you at a certain point well I'm not a lawyer
I'm not a pro athlete I love movies I love books it could I take a shot at this
and along the way it's you know like I say it's quite it's quite a journey
like I'm pretty happy with the way with the course I've taken though it's been extremely
difficult in ways that I could not have imagined, which is like any, you know, sort of journey or
saga. I mean, you start out like, yeah, I can do this. And then about halfway through, it's like,
man, I'm not sure I can do this. Then that sort of rolls over into, into its own internal
element, well, you better find a way to do this, Andy, because this is what you committed to.
And I know that's kind of an odd answer. It's not maybe, you know, a singular thing. It would be
very hard for me to isolate one reason why a guy would do this. Because you're not just going to say,
hey, I want to change culture or, hey, I want to get rich. None of those make any sense.
There are much more direct paths to do those things. And so it really ends up being a strange catch
of like internal and external motivations, I think.
We'll get into the, you know, like themes of what you wrote about,
but you dedicated it to your son.
Yeah.
Are those overarching themes in there?
Is that why?
Is there a connection there?
Yeah.
Yeah, there are a number.
One, I think that in trying to understand, going back to your earlier question, why would a guy do this?
I remember as a kid, I grew up, you know, mostly in the 80s.
And I would see my dad work a long day, you know, have dinner, come home and then apply himself to a book, you know, lay in bed and read a book or lay on the couch, read a book.
and I think looking back on it, there was something about him doing that that probably led me to believe, like, this is more important than just drinking beer or maybe catching up on sleep or even, you know, maybe other things he could have been doing.
But I think it starts there where there's like a circuit, you know, between father and son.
I'll skip through, you know, some of the, some of the details of my own personal life to say that now I am, I have been incredibly lucky. I have three sons, young, you know, all under the age of five. And, you know, I've been in this thing that we're all in, you know, our thing, as we call it, since maybe 2010. And so it's been a while that I've been looking out at the land.
landscape in America and saying, what are the prospects are, you know, for three, you know, above average intelligence,
white guys with blonde hair? And it's looking better right now. But, I mean, when I was writing most of this in,
you know, say 2015, 2016, like things were not looking at good. And so I think that part of the,
the motivation with fiction in general.
And again, I don't mean to be too high-minded about this stuff,
but it's kind of like you're trying to reach beyond normal sort of topical life
and yank something back to give.
Because if you as the reader, you know, maybe you listen to the book,
it's 10 to 15 hours of your life.
And so if my presumption is like, yeah, what I'm giving you is,
worth it. I think that entertainment is just fine. I love, you know, sort of profane stuff as much as
the next guy. But if you're going to take a stab at it for real, which is what my intention was,
I feel like you got to bring something back. And if I did, it does relate to this father,
son type of circuit. Like, what is our responsibility? How do we, and not just to my boy, but how do I,
or my boys, you know, how do I
honor my father as well?
And my grandfather.
And, uh,
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Well, in the book, you're basically describing like a crumbling American Empire,
chaos, rural areas or can be untouched,
but still you're getting encroaching threats from, you know, like Merks and,
and cartels. Is that what you saw at the time? Is that what you felt was coming? And that's why you were
writing about it? It seemed, it still seems like a distinct possibility. And it always has.
And I think that maybe again, going back to one question previously, being in this thing of ours
for quite a while on seeing some ups and downs and seeing trends come and go a little bit.
I remember being a little bit worried when I put the novel out that people would sort of
associate it with like prepper level sorts of concerns, fantasy.
And I think that the unfortunate facts maybe of our situation are such that while things
look to be on the upswing right now.
They're still, like, incredibly tenuous, probably.
And I don't, I could never, I did my best, honestly, with King of Dogs to try and think,
what maybe could happen, you know, like, is it realistic that,
like, say, Mexican cartels are just going to overrun America?
Well, no, probably not.
what's realistic and I ended up kind of arriving at what you're describing there where it's a
mixed landscape of just general chaos where there's there's not a lot to turn on or turn to
but you also don't have that almost like a relief valve to say well it's obviously the apocalypse
and I could probably just phone this in and quit like everyone's going to die anyway.
way. There's a novel, you know, most people are probably familiar with The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
He has this bit at the beginning where the main protagonist, who else is also a father,
describes his wife, the mother of their son, essentially, you know, coming to him and saying,
there's no hope, it's total despair,
and while I love you guys,
and, you know, I'm done.
And she just kind of disappears into the night.
And it's left to the father.
In the most dramatic of possible circumstances,
or like kind of stark circumstances,
to determine, okay, well, is she right?
Like, you know, I don't know what you're cussing,
if I can use swear words,
but I think it's okay.
Do you just say fuck it?
Yeah, fuck it.
I mean, do you just say fuck it at that point?
And I, you know, I think the sad thing is that a lot of people actually do will, would, in those circumstances, either bring themselves around to admit like, yeah, fuck it.
Or find a way to sort of justify it along the way and effectively also saying, fuck it.
But I'm, I think that I look down on that.
You know, I can't, it's hard for me to empathize with that.
And I empathize more with the guy who's going to say, despite every odd, whatever the odds are,
I'm going to put one more, one step in front of another and keep going.
And, you know, there's also the element of I got to kind of make it an interesting book for people to get through.
Well, before we start getting into, like, characters and I'll try to make some.
you know, asking about parallels.
It really seems like water rights and like corporate mercenaries, you know, like corporate mercenaries
or something that you're concerned with, or at least at the time you were writing this,
you're concerned with.
I don't know if you saw this, but Newsweek is reporting that a Chinese millionaire, like one of the
wealthiest men in China just bought up a ton of acreage in New Hampshire, which just
just so happens to have the reservoir that basically provides water to the whole state.
So you're one, you know, two of your main themes in there were water rights and corporate,
like corporate mercenaries. So I mean, that's something I think we've been thinking, a lot of us
have been thinking about for a while. And I guess that was going to have to make it in there, right?
Yeah. I, you know, um,
The corporate mercenary thing, like, I gather you're kind of like myself.
We sort of went through maybe a libertarian phase where, you know, does this make sense?
And I don't know entirely where I would stand on it other than to say maybe it is situational to some extent at this point.
But that said, I mean, I, there was no one in particular that I was thinking of.
Like, I would never, I joke actually a lot that if I can get this thing made into a movie,
I happen to be just for whatever reasons, mutuals on X with Eric Prince.
And I would if, I would almost try to insist that he play a real.
role, you know, like a cameo. I think it'd be hilarious to have him on there because he gets,
he gets such a bad rap. So setting him aside, just so we know I'm not like really at all targeting
him, you know and I know that there are going to be some serious shitbags out there that,
and I tried to complicate it a little bit in the novel by making it more of an international
corporate entity, which actually I think is more likely.
You know, I mean, what is the UN?
You know, there's probably an argument we can make where in the end,
this is substantially a corporate sort of body that just wants to process things.
And it has, you know, it doesn't care about human rights or legalities or anything like that.
And with the water rights,
I like I said I'm a seventh generation Oregonian I think that sort of just bled in
from being out here and being on ranches and such uh it's a big deal you know I there's plenty of
people who are still shooting dudes you know their neighbors out here on occasion over over some
little dispute and if we did come to a point where um where law and order or
or the American way, you know, the projections that we've seen come and go about
balkanization of America, which still seems entirely possible to me in some ways.
If that were to play out, you know, the people who who don't have water and are relying on
elaborate, you know, legal mechanisms and deals and payoffs and all, all that shit would
break down, I would imagine, and, you know, force would assert itself. As well, I tried to sort of insert
maybe like an insinuation that there would be, you know, there may be a technical need for
water. There may be certain entities there that, and I'm not a computer guy really. Maybe they've
solved the, you know, the cooling issues where, uh, with these, these data centers.
But, um, a lot of times with fiction, I think that if you can allude to these things without
totally committing, it sometimes is, um, it's a better read, um, you know, for, for the reader.
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On Doonbiog, Kush Farrague.
it. Yeah, no, I get it. There seems to be a lot of also Spanglerian themes in there, like, you know, just decline of empires, the cycles. And are you, is that Spangler someone you've read in the past? Or am I just reading into that?
Yeah, I did a little time with them. I'm not, no scholar. You know, I couldn't even quote. I don't think there. There are very few Spangler squads.
scholars. It's difficult reading. Yeah, it was it I had this I slog through stuff like that anyway,
but you know, I go, I go back and forth on this all the time and I make fun of it on, on, on,
you know, in talks and such. Uh, is it like, is it some sort of metaphysical cycle?
is it just simply
is it spiritual
is it just totally beyond
the human capacity to sort of look at
at where they're going and say hey guys
let's pump the brakes
because shit's starting to break apart a little
you know it's getting like any
like you and I would if we were running
a hot dog stand or something and we weren't
making numbers we'd be like hey
let's go have a beer and see what we're doing wrong
And a lot of the excuses for that, you know, well, it's scale and it's, they're understandable to a degree.
Like the arguments about globalism being this hyper vulnerable system with all, it's not, you know, as they say, robust or what have you.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And there are a lot of good explanations.
I don't know that I could really subscribe to any of them.
I'm just sort of always, I'm looking at it, you know,
I look at the world like, man, why do we have to fuck this up so much?
You know, like, this doesn't seem like it should be that hard.
And I know it is, but, yeah.
So with Spangler, I mean, he makes some great points,
but I don't know that the, like, the Dorian arc or, you know,
his various ideas about architecture or whatever.
It's like, yeah, I can see that there's something there,
a nice observation on his part,
but I just don't see how I'm not satisfied entirely
with those sort of totally intellectual explanations.
So I do tend to sort of wind up more on the spiritual side of it,
which is, again, a thing in King of Dogs that's kind of,
I worked very hard to not, while I wanted to make my hero explicitly Christian, I also wanted to make him very complicated, which is how I am.
And, you know, a lot of probably your friends and mine are their relationship with Christianity in particular or whatever religion.
It's complicated.
It's not, it's not, we don't, we just don't have the context anymore, the social.
capital to rely on these types of like feedback loops where it's like Pete you have faith yeah and you
have faith yeah okay let's let's let's go um we're just we're just mired in so much like uncertainty all
the time that um it was very important that i try and try and sort of convey that and uh and also convey
without being overwhelming that
my read on the world at least is that there are many,
many forces in play.
And I,
you know,
I'm sure you tuned in to our pal,
you know,
last night,
Darrell and Tucker,
two masters,
I mean,
probably the best in the game.
And I think that both of them do a good job.
They did a really great job,
actually,
of alluding,
like covering,
all the facts meticulously so well while also allowing for their and I don't mean to read too
much into what they said but I think that both of them share this idea that there are other forces
at play and some of those are evil and some of them are good I think it plays that and everything in
life you know when you when you look at like our the administration right now it's very easy to see
that there are different factions vying for power.
And there's always different factions vying for power.
And if that's the way it is in the real world,
then that's the way it's going to be in the spiritual world.
It's just going to, everything is a mirror.
Everything down here is a mirror of what's happening in the world we can't see.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that was the next question I was going to be is,
whenever anybody writes a main character,
it's always somebody they're close to or it's them.
I guess Grayson is a representative of you in some way, huh?
Well, yeah, I mean, there are parts that are definitely lifted right out of,
like everything in the book is ultimate.
There are some characters that I think I maybe I have done a better job of,
I don't know what the term is, but like writing beyond myself maybe, not just kind of sinking to this.
But in his case, I'd have to cop to that, Pete.
I'd have to say a lot of his motivations and the way that he behaves are, yeah, things that I believe in.
you know, back to the to the Pito thing, but I don't mean to, you know,
jump around on on any outlines you have, but this plays a part in King of Dogs.
I mean, I'm absolutely of the belief that that is, that's not just like, oh,
you know, they need to be punished. I mean, I think they need to be,
they need to be executed publicly in the most, like, brutal, possible way.
And I'd have no problem copying to that.
I really think that that's how I, as a father again, you know,
with all of this stuff constantly swirling in our inner, like, public lives and what have you,
you kind of, I have to think about these things, just like any father would, I guess.
Like, well, if I'm put in the situation, what,
exactly am I going to do? And, you know, I'm not going to talk about what I'm going to do,
but you know just as well as the next guy listening. I think that's how it has, how it always had
to be handled. And that's how, you know, there you go back to the, how, why is that so
difficult for us to work? Because for a while, like, shit, everybody from the judge to the DA,
to the dad or the family involved in these horrible things,
they knew what the proper procedure was.
And it was brutal and swift.
Yeah, I think that was probably the most difficult thing
about listening to that almost three hours yesterday
was knowing that no one was being held accountable for it.
It's just enraging because there was a time
when there were there have been people who've existed in this world before who knew that that
was going on accepted that it was going to happen but also knew that they would have to be
punished and that they would have to be punished publicly and the fact I think probably the
worst part of it is, is that you and I realize that this has to be punished publicly in order for it to,
in order for people to understand what order is all about. But then when you listen to exactly what's
happening, you realize that it's not being punished publicly.
It's being flaunted and almost bragged about publicly.
Yeah.
And what do you, you know, I think more than anyone,
probably women watching that last night would probably be,
I would hope they'd be way more disturbed than we would be.
I think you're right.
I've said, I think that's a really good point, actually.
So you know how in our service,
we're always hearing about the difficulties that the youngsters are having with
regard to finding a wife and a maid and dating game and all of this stuff.
And that's that's an aspect that I don't think it's touched on enough is those guys are in a
spot where and they know this, but where if they take responsibility for the
masculine role in its in its entirety protective um you know and i i i think that vengeance justice
these things there's kind of a fine line perhaps um but that's part of that role and um you're right
so all of those women who are watching it and they have to wonder about the chain a chain of command or
of possession of the responsibility along the way,
how many hundreds of men, you know,
passed the buck and looked the other way.
And who could expect those women then to respect,
whether it's a brother or a husband or a boss or a coworker or whatever,
that just readjusting that one piece would correct,
I think all kinds of things
you know all kinds of problems that we're having
I
like a lot of I don't know
you know what your situation is with
I don't know if you're married and have kids or not
but I mean
just
okay so just protecting your wife
is
in certain circumstances
you know is a thing you have to take
seriously you know if you live in a really safe neighborhood
great good for you not everybody does
I don't constantly
had to travel through super safe places.
And then you add the element of children.
And it's like, it's, it's a minor military operation in some ways if you're taking it like seriously.
You got to, I've got to do intelligence.
I've got to do logistics.
I've got, you know, forget about snacks and baby, you know, diapers and all the other thing.
That is so much additional stress that are, you know, frankly, our, our forefathers.
fought and died for again and gave their lives, even if they were just architects or what have
you, to ensure that we wouldn't have to do shit like that, that we could have some amount of
like a reasonable opportunity to be safe and comfortable.
I can't, I mean, you must be right, that the women, and then who do they even turn to
talk about it? They're not going to turn to their, to Instagram.
That's something else I was going to bring up is, you know, a lot of people when we talk about this,
talking about my buddy D.E. and my buddy Charles, we do, with our friend Jose, we do something called the Thought Crime Syndicate.
And D.E. and Charles have been talking for, you know, for almost a decade now about the Fix It.
and fix it is not women stepping up to solve our problems, but it's women getting to a point in society,
and this has happened in the past, where they look at their men and they go, fix it.
Don't tell me how you're going to fix it.
Don't come home.
Please don't bring it home with you, but just go fix it.
And we're not at the fix it yet.
so you hope and pray that shows like that yesterday help to push the fix-it to get us to that
fix-it moment because when the women say just go fix it then all bets are off 100% absolutely yep
yeah in large in large part i in fact maybe just in total that's probably all
all it takes. So living through this stuff, you know, one more week of, of solutions being
stretched out and put off, or one more year of it, or one more term of it, at the national level,
it, yeah, when does it, eventually, I think you're right, it just comes down to. I'm going to
steal that to fix it yeah that's what that's what men men have to hear yeah 1936 Spain
maybe 1933 Germany just go fix it please don't tell me how you're going to do it but to move on
because there's another theme that I think is really important and it's not really touched upon
I hope that my show and, you know, organization that I'm a part of is helping with this.
But like the bond between Grayson and Jack and then later Phil drives a lot of the story
and basically shows how male friendships like reflect themes of loyalty and sacrifice.
And that seems to be pretty central to it.
So we could probably talk about this for a while.
So why don't you talk about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
That was, as I, you know, I don't spend a lot of time going back to the period in which I was writing this.
But what I have found is that I can pretty reliably pull up.
It's as if a filtering process occurs over time where all of the other stuff just kind of goes by the wayside.
And I do remember that loyalty specifically was kind of the main, it will, a theme for sure.
And a series of questions kind of surrounding loyalty, once again, there's a contextual aspect where without this social capital that
that we you know has been largely just intentionally dismantled it's it's difficult to maybe to even
understand what loyalty is now when you and i were growing up i think we had my friend actually
he's still my friend he's been my friends since i was in sixth grade and he just the other day
he pointed out that we're probably the the last generation to
to kind of fully experience the American dream,
or at least, you know, if it wasn't in my life or your life,
like we could walk down the street and find it, probably.
And we're the first ones to see it dissolve.
And also it ties back to the fix-it thing.
You know, it's almost impossible,
and that sort of speaks to the action film element of King of Dogs,
but it's almost impossible to affect,
you know, the sort of change or solutions or outcomes that we may want alone.
Even in, you know, just a simple, you know, tactical scenario,
you're much better off with two or three other guys, you know,
who you, as the meme is like who you can call it two in the morning
and who are going to show up with shovels.
like that's a real thing and it always has been a real thing you know i think that
i'm not i'm not one to there's plenty of hate that goes to the boomers and it i apply a lot
myself but i'm not sure that they had it you know i think that they think they had it and i've
noticed in watching them you know people close to me here or there um they thought they had it and
it's kind of sad actually to watch them wake up in their in their older years and realize well
fuck all this time i thought these were my guys and if there's a there's a lot to be hopeful for i
hope that um i'm jumping around a bit but i think i can drag this back for you king of dogs
what it really was was a way to like can we go through hell and then get the treasure and
come out on the other side for readers.
To understand, like, in the closest and deepest analysis, there's still hope, and we can win.
This is not a game over man sort of thing, but it's going to be nasty, and we're going
to have to look at, like, really uncomfortable things like, do I have to have one or two or
three people in my life that will drop what they're doing?
and let's just say it, you know, go do things that, you know, don't do crime, basically.
You can, you know, put it in, I'm a novelist. I'm not really advocating anything.
I'm just saying, will they put skin in the game in a real way?
I think when that, when those bonds of loyalty are reestablished, it may be one of those
things where a type of wildfire, you know, is ignited, where there are enough small groups
of men that once again understand, well, the time has come and it may turn out bad,
but I'm going to have to exercise my rights as an American, you know, in the whole hierarchy
of meaning there, rights, the spiritual inheritance we have, and whatnot.
but yeah we could go on about this forever because there are again like logistical and tactical
and psychological considerations but the way I handled it in the book is is twofold maybe the one to
point out that grace and my hero is choosing in many ways to throw his life
or caution to the wind to sort of prove a point to maybe only himself as almost everyone around him
betrays him.
And I have found, and maybe you've noticed this too, that as we've marched through maybe the past
10 to 15 years, a lot of the betrayal comes from maybe people who we thought were on our side,
Maybe people who look a lot like us, who come from the same places as us.
It's not always, you know, some super alien, you know, a Somali coming in or something where it's like,
obviously I have no relationship with this person.
I don't know what language he's speaking or what his morals are.
So it's kind of a dicey thing, you know.
And I think that even though it's dicey, we're still going to have to wade through and find
some ways maybe under, you know, urgent sorts of circumstances, but maybe also this plays out
in ways that are much more manageable. Like we, we can reinstill some of these things in our
sons and, you know, live, embody these qualities, transcendental ideals, you know, exchange between
each other along the way. But I think that there's something true about if you do that a few times.
I hate to say that the phrase like the universe responds. I don't think it's, you know, I think it's
God, looks at that and is constantly forgiving us, our sins, you know, of not trusting each other
or not actually being a trustworthy person made. And maybe just walking that back a little bit will go a long way.
Just looking at it from like a secular practical standpoint.
I mean, technology is really what deracinated us.
I mean, you formerly grew up in a community where everyone knew, knows each other.
Your grandfathers knew each other.
I mean, families live next to each other that have known each other for, you know, for centuries in some cases, not here.
centuries here, but more so back in the old country.
And you basically as technology made it easier for people to leave,
as people became more financialized.
And we need to get closer to the city so we can make money
and we need to chase the quote unquote American dream,
which talk about a term that has changed definitions numerous times.
And I don't even know.
I have never even looked, like, looked at the, the genesis of where that came from.
But something tells me it came out of an ad agency somewhere.
The, it just seems like the more deracinated we become, the more, the easier it is to control us.
I mean, I say all the time, I think we're controlled by like 200 people.
There's like 200 people in, in this, in the world that control everything.
everybody. And the only reason they're able to do that is because they come together and they
cooperate and have a guild where it's like, we're not going to allow, if one of us goes off
to reservation, we'll sacrifice that person. And we don't have that anymore. That's the way
people used to be. If somebody's horse got stolen, everybody, everybody got together to go
figure out who did it because your horse was next.
Well, everything, you know, organized law enforcement, technology and quote unquote
advancements has taken all that away.
And really, I don't know if getting smaller, you know, because I do believe mass and scale
has just basically killed, killed most everything.
you being able to rule over 350 million people is not not even plausible and it wasn't the it wasn't the
idea from the start but it just seems like until you have until people get back to that fraternal
and even family you know we i've talked about this numerous times in the show and it always makes
people insane arranged marriages you know and it's not like oh you're going to
marry this guy. It's like, no, there's five choices. You choose one kind of thing.
You know, until we get back to that, the people who are actually doing that right now,
I mean, think about the show last night. We're watching Tucker, we're watching Daryl,
connect the dots, and everyone he talks about is one degree away from everyone else that he's
talked about. That's how they have the power. That's how they can flaunt what they do. That's
how, you know, where we think that these people should be, you know, that Vlad, you know,
that Vlad the impaler had the right idea. These people are bragging openly and mocking us
with what they do. And I think until we get back to becoming more tight-knit and that being
real power, we're just irasinated and lost. I would agree. 100%.
And I have noticed, even in the last six months to a year, something like a deeper coherence about related to that idea emerging.
I don't know if more people are, if again, there's some filtering process that's happening or maybe are, maybe are like aggregated.
spiritual power is some sort of factor here.
David, I think his name's David Rothkop.
And there's a book called The Superclass.
It's probably 15 years old.
And he's like half an elite himself.
I think he's got some blue blood ties and whatnot.
But he wrote this book called The Superclass.
And at that point, he was saying was 5,000 people.
And I think that that number is, yeah, a factor of 10 at least too big.
500 or something would be much closer or 200.
You know, I'm willing to live with that, sure.
And it's funny how, you know, the jock nerd thing that we've talked about,
this flaunting of, because if it were you and me, or just anybody,
mostly normal, were to have the chutzpah, I think they say,
to try and pull something like that off.
You know, I would feel constantly paranoid,
constantly ashamed and afraid that I was going to be found out and caught out.
And it's something, it's just diabolical, but so obvious.
It's as if God is, it's almost like the thing can't be set up such that if this happens,
it's like in nature, you know, oftentimes poisonous things will be a bright color,
like a red coral snake or what have you.
It's as if these people cannot help, but just advertise themselves as,
yeah, that's, that's like a main, this human being is a main spring.
in the control and like general apparatus of degradation that that's that's fucking us all up all the time.
With the Podesta brothers, that whole thing about how, um, Daryl, you know, they, Daryl and Tucker
were both going back and forth about how if this was the type of art that you liked, you know,
little kids in awful degraded situations, okay, I, I.
I mean, that's crazy enough, but it's a whole other level of crazy to then advertise that and invite people over.
And it really seems like they're almost begging to be managed themselves, if you know what I mean.
In some way for, for, and, you know, this is all pretty well understood, I think, you know, in our circles that just good, normal right.
There is a level where that's actually pretty simple.
And we don't need to read Spingler about it.
We don't need to write up whole treatises about why this was wrong or right or any of that sort of thing.
Yeah, it's quite a situation, Pete.
Well, let's finish on this because I think this is something important.
This is something that's really bothered me over time is the book's called King of Dogs.
And there's a human animal bond in it.
and, you know, Liebenberg's idea that tracking is a scientific and empathetic act.
And something that's really bothered me is the, in my lifetime, and I don't know that it was so,
maybe it's just because of the internet, but just the abuse of dogs and like the dog fighting rings and things like that.
that's that's not white people that's not european that's like coming from first of all it's demonic
second of all it's coming from places like africa and india indian tribes or you know central
american and south american indian tribes that's not a white person thing and i really think that
you know when you when you think about some of the great novels
historically, main character has a dog that's loyal to them.
And it's always been there.
And really, when you look now, like, I remember the first time I started reading about
dog fighting rings.
I mean, that affected me for days to just know that that existed.
And, yeah, so why don't you talk about the bond there?
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a guy who doesn't get as, he doesn't seek, you know,
I don't think he has much need for, for acclaim or whatever.
But he's in our circles, he's been in our circles for quite a while,
named James Bowery.
And he's the one who first sort of clued me into this idea that it may very well be,
and this is in King of Dogs.
it's probably the case that for the northern European
there was a bottleneck in population at a certain point
where it's nothing short of divine.
I mean, it's nothing to me and probably others.
It's the dog, the domestication of the wolf into the dog
It was a gift that literally preserved the species by way of,
he expanded, you know, our hunting capacities.
He's an alarm.
He's warmth at night.
And it's, and if you're not, you know, like an evolutionary guy, that's fine.
I'm not 100% evolutionary guy myself.
But I saw the same.
you know, similar stuff. I remember when, I mean, I'm on X a fair amount and I've tried to balance
social media, but this notion that, you know, it kind of operates as a type of a source of trauma.
You know, some stuff comes across your timeline. It's like, geez, I wish I had not seen that.
And it does. It affect, I remember when I saw a dog.
being cooked alive in a walk by some Chinaman.
And this was 15 years ago.
There was no AI involved.
This was not a fake.
This was some,
it was filmed on like a peanut phone.
And it was some of the most heinous shit that I've ever seen in my life.
I've seen a lot of really heinous shit too.
Like in my real life and sure on videos,
we've all seen it.
But when I saw that video, similarly, it affected me for, it still affects me today.
When that image passes through my head, I see red.
I want to, you know, crush skulls in a sort of, like, cartoon manner.
I mean, I want to, I want blood.
I want vengeance right now.
And in the book, it emerged as a theme over time as I started to,
like understand tracking in Liebenberg and and you know my experience in writing long form is that
or doing any sort of long long form project is you you have the internal creative you know the
goals the criteria that you might hold and then you have you know your your actual life and
And I found that by letting my actual life inform that and maybe vice versa, it's been very useful to me.
And so that's just to say, the dogs that have come and gone in my own life, you know, I've lost, I think, one pretty tragically, pretty rough, you know, and a couple, when I was, when I was, when I was,
a kid we always had dogs um but even then you know i had boomer parents and they and for all of their
faults and they instinctively knew you know to honor that that dog it wasn't it was never um
like a light a lighthearted sort of thing well the dog's dead get over it or anything like that
it wasn't over the top we didn't make an altar to him or anything like that but there's
something that goes extremely deep with the dogs. And again, in the novel, it's approached from many
different angles. You know, you have the hero being hunted by some dog handlers. You have him coming to
know, you know, a dog at a different stage.
There are dogs coming and going throughout the book.
Ultimately, you know, it's a tool.
It's like a literary device to tie us back to loyalty.
Because the real thing about a dog to me, where it's heartbreaking, that all the dog,
here's another example, I'll try to kind of wind it up on this, is that I had a buddy.
I still have this buddy
and I was talking to him
about a dog of mine
that had an injury and he was saying
well you should just put him down
and I was like
well I'm not putting the dog down
and he's like well you can't afford this
you know say elaborate surgery for the dog
the last thing the dog wants in his heart
is to be a drag on you in
and it was like
fuck you just
he hit me with the truth
so hard. I didn't, I didn't put the dog down. I refuse to do that because it's not, he's not in
pain or anything like that. But that's really the case. Like the, the love of the dog is so pure
that it, it almost shames me in a way. And so, um, that's, you're right. That, that is not a thing
that is like a universal amongst the races or across various nationalities, what have.
And many people now, it's kind of popular to do the backlash thing of like, all right, all right,
but, you know, the dog love's gone too far.
They shouldn't.
I'm like, I don't think it's the dog love that's gone too far.
It's the rest of the weird cultural trappings and effects that we've onboarded that are, that
a retarded, it's not the fact that some old lady is lonely and has a dog and wants to take
her on the airplane.
Like that's just, her problems are so much bigger and more fucked up than that that it's not
really about the dog, you know?
So I'm, yeah, I'm a die hard.
I will, that's a line in the sand where, if I see animal abuse or anything like that,
there's going to be problems if I'm around for it, for sure.
You know, growing up through the 80s, I strangely had it pretty easy.
You know, outside the house and everything.
Through the 90s, once you move out and everything, the 90s was a little chaotic,
but there was a lot of fun you could have.
You know, I enjoyed the 90s a lot.
Things really changed after 9-11.
and that slowly was like that started bringing me to more cynicism and more, you know, what people
would say, blackpilling.
The Michael Vick thing, like, put me over the edge because it wasn't, it was the dogs, but it
wasn't only the dogs.
The stories about them taking so much pleasure in killing dogs, it wouldn't fight.
Yeah.
It just made me realize that those dogs were basically a stand-in for humans.
That these are people who are so nihilistic and so murderous and such.
They don't even deserve to be called animals because a lot of animals are very loyal and, you know, worthy of your admiration.
but that after that it was just I was like I think this world is completely fucked and it's just
survival at this point that was right around the time I really started like practicing
practicing with guns with pistols and rifles I mean it's just that put that that put me over
the edge having arguments with people who were saying it was no big deal and I and you know just
Yeah.
You know, when on that on that same line of thinking, when Christy Noem, I think is her name,
when the business came out, maybe whatever that was a year ago, where she, I mean, I'm, you know,
I'm not in charge.
I'm not making any decisions.
But no matter what she does, I'm not going to trust her.
There are other ways to manage whatever her problem was.
the dog I have now is uh yeah here's the thing she said oh the dog were the dog was killing the chickens
and everything okay separate the dog from the chickens send the dog to send the dog someplace to get
adopted where there are no chickens where it's not going to just because the dog's killing chickens
doesn't mean it's going to attack children it doesn't mean you you wanted to kill something
that's it you wanted to you wanted to end a life yeah and that's it
And you had the chance to do it and you did it.
This isn't trophy hunting.
I understand trophy hunting.
I understand hunting.
I understand that hunting really helps the environment.
I mean, you have to understand.
I mean, like I live in Alabama.
North Carolina gets overrun by deer and they pay people to go out there and shoot them.
Or else the ecosystem is going to be screwed.
But just, I mean, there are so many things.
she could have done to avoid that. And she did that because she wanted to. I agree. That's like,
if she can't manage that situation in an upright manner, why would I trust her to manage some giant
federal agency? And I don't. And to the same point, I think that she had a wirehaired pointer,
which is a certain type of like a very good hunting dog. That's what I have. And I got him. I drove
I don't know, three states, let's say.
I found him online and I drove three states away.
And they had this very good program at a prison where strays and, you know,
unwanted animals were taken to the prison.
And they try and sort of, you know, give these guys an opportunity maybe.
I mean, these are awful fucking people, you know,
this is not like the guy who wrote bad checks.
These are themselves people that probably shouldn't be alive anyway.
But they try and rehabilitate them to some degree through a process of kind of giving these dogs a second chance.
And I went out and I got this dog, Riker is his name.
And the story is basically that he was not fit to be like a high dollar hunting dog.
So somebody bred him, and then it turned out, you know, he had different personality.
And that's what Christy Nome could have done that.
She could have released that dog or that puppy to anybody who just wants, you know, a companion.
But to drag him out in the sandlot and fucking blow his head out, that's exactly.
I agree.
She's, she had some fantasy, some twisted thing in there was completely unnecessary.
And yeah, I get very emotional.
And again, I don't feel bad about it at all.
I think it's, I think it's part of the, if you will, you know, the way God intended it.
We're supposed to kind of have a hand in, especially with dogs.
I mean, we kind of chose to bring them into our world.
And it's one thing, if it's a cougar or something,
But we changed the course of their, you know, that species history.
And so we're responsible for it, in my opinion.
Well, I'm about ready to wrap up.
Do you have anything you want to say anything further you want to say?
Here's your chance to sell the book.
Yeah.
You know, I'll just say it's been out for a while.
It's got very good reviews.
is it's it's a far cry from your normal kind of novel that was put out in our thing
nothing against those books but um it's exceptional what can i say i mean it's mine i like i did a
good job and uh yeah i would certainly appreciate it if you check it out um it's on
amazon you can find me on x it's uh golden goat guild or or andrew
Edward's.
But yeah, if any of this is intriguing, I would hope that your listeners would check it out.
But mostly, you know, I'm glad I got to talk to you.
It's been an actual pleasure.
So thank you very much.
Yeah, it has, we need to have you back on where we can just talk about life.
I think we're pretty close to the same age.
I think we've got through a lot of the same shit.
I'd be thrilled to do that.
And we don't do that enough where we just take a little time to say, you know, because you mentioned the 90s.
And it's like, yeah, I know what you're saying.
There was, and it's gone.
And if we don't have those chats, maybe we'll forget it.
So I'd be thrilled to do that at any time.
Thank you.
All right, man.
Thank you very much.
You too.
