The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Why is American Falling Apart?

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/cypress_survivalist/https://www.facebook.com/CypressSurvivalistSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Everywhere we turn, America's infrastructure is facilitating life as we know it. Roads, buildings, water and sewage service, energy production and transmission: literally everything we have come to depend on is faithfully and reliably piped to our homes and workplaces, or laid before us every single morning ready for our convenience. But, what happens when that same infrastructure stutters? What happens when it starts to show its age, and that boring reliability is compromised? What happens when America starts to fall apart?Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. Welcome back to MatterFacts Podcast. Nick is here. Andrew's fired.

He's not here. He's fired. I have fired him. I can't even pull off a Donald Trump impression but this would be the perfect place for your fire. It would. Okay, Andrew's not really fired. Andrew is off doing adult things and dealing with some dealing with things and I've spoken to him today

Just check in on him. He's not fought. He's not fired It's it's a joke So we start that we start the we always start the show off with a joke like nothing I say in the first 45 seconds of the show should ever be taken seriously when I say that Andrew is like a satellite Technician or he's mixing Kool-Aid for the latest cult like it's all a joke. He's not fired 45 seconds of the show should ever be taken seriously when I say that Andrew is like a satellite technician or He's mixing Kool-Aid for the latest cult like it's all a joke. He's not fired Well, except for the Kool-Aid part that may be accurate No, no, no, no, no the only cult Andrew is allowed to drink to like mix Kool-Aid for is my cult that I haven't started Yet we should get on that. I think it's called the patron chat. Well

Segway, I'm kind of good at that every now and then So to the patrons of the matter of fact podcast Thank you for joining my cult and helping offset the bills of this podcast so that we can bring entertainment and sociopathy To the internet it's sorely lacking as odd as that sounds because the internet is pretty much nothing but sociopathy at this point and Raggles in the chat. He's going to Keep us honest or antagonize us or encourage mischief All three probably all three. I like all three Merch those links are in the description support of small business and I don't just mean this one

I mean the one that actually produces the merch of small business and I don't just mean this one I mean the one that actually produces the merch they're nice shirts and cyber survivalist uh our next board meeting is today's Thursday the eighth our next board meeting is on the 10th I've been told to expect steak cigars and whiskey and somewhere in there we're going to talk business. So we have to finalize. We have to finalize our event that's coming up in June. I promised my wife I would have that date and I would tell y'all on the show when the date of the quarterly event was. And I neglected because I'm an awful, awful frickin president CEO from nonprofit. It's good thing it's not for profit. and president CEO from nonprofit.

It's a good thing it's not for profit. Uh, I mean, the God's honest truth at this point is just that it's you and I've been talking. It has been a wild, wild five days at the rabbit. It has. Yes. Yeah. Hopefully it gets a little calmer for you here. I doubt it. I doubt it. If things got too calm, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I mean we are ravelies after all there's always therapy. There's yes there's always therapy which I did not partake in because we were having a

very intense family discussion literally 20 minutes ago So I only comes first man I had to skip the whiskey so that I in case I had to be a responsible human being. That's fair. So topic, why is America, American infrastructure falling apart? And now to front load all this, Nick sent me a video, which was actually mostly focused on like roads and bridges, but did branch out into a few other things.

But it kind of got me thinking about something that we've kind of talked around several times in the past year. And that's the fact that like all of the things we depend on as a modern society, as an industrialized society don't seem to be doing very well. You know, we've got water systems that are just barely marginal. Jackson, Mississippi, not too, not too many years ago, had massive flooding up in that area. And for the first time in my, my recollection, a major metro area was under a boil water advisory. And like, it's one thing that happens in the middle of nowhere.

It's one thing, frankly, that happens in Iraq, but it's Jackson Freak in Mississippi. And I remember it being a bit of a situation because like you very quickly had to get tons and tons and tons of bottled water into that area to try to sustain this metro area. And it got to the point where like water, drinkable water was almost more valuable than gasoline. It was weird for a very short period of time. Well, realistically at every, at any point in time, drinking water is

more valuable than gasoline. Gasoline only gets you to and from places and provides you with emergency power without water, you don't live. Now I don't, I'm not familiar with how do you know how big Jackson is as far as people? No but through the miracles of the internet I can be very quickly. Well the reason I bring it up is because realistically speaking you're looking at at the bare minimum and we all know this one gallon rule per day per person in your household is way under what you should have.

But it makes numbers really easy to look at as far as population goes. Jackson, Mississippi has a population of one hundred and fifty three thousand seven and one as of twenty twenty. But I think that's only this within the city limits. I don't think that's all the surrounding area. All right. Let's let's go with that then then for a week seven days population of the nearby metro area is

600,000 okay, let's let's make it even bigger numbers then 600,000 people under a boil water ordinance times seven days a gallon per person is 4.2 million gallons of water that have to be brought in, boiled or otherwise filtered. So now I'm wondering how many gallons an Olympic swimming pool carries. That is a good question, I don't know. But you see where we get really fast with these infrastructure projects,

if they do start having problems is the numbers of things we have to bring in to offset them rapidly gets unsustainable. And this applies to sewage as well. You ready for this? Go for it. An Olympic-sized swimming pool typically holds 660,000 gallons of water. Okay, so an Olympic swimming pool per day.

Yeah, if they... And the only reason I look that up, because you know, it's kind of a meme that Americans will use anything but the metric system to measure things, but I will. Yes. But when we start talking about like hundreds of thousands of gallons or millions of gallons, like I'm trying to help the audience put that into perspective what 600,000 gallons of water is, it is not, it's not an inconsequential amount. It is a freaking massive amount to go through a day and then have to transport

it and have to secure it. I have to keep it clean. You know, like it's one thing if you just put the stuff in a tanker truck and bring it in, but then like you have to dispense it into clean containers. Otherwise you just contaminated the waters people are supposed to drink like it is a it is an engineering nightmare to move that much water repeatedly day after day after day yeah absolutely and and realistically speaking if you have to move all that water on trucks you know I'm not sure what a tanker truck will carry and maybe that's worth looking up. Miracles of the internet. But I do know because I worked in a grocery store that your average 4 by 4 foot pallet of water bottles is usually

stacked 6 high and you get about to 6 ish cases of water at 48 bottles a piece you know, I've stacked five or six high. So the answer is obviously because there's like lots of different sizes of tanker trucks anywhere from 1000 to 116 I know that when I was still in aviation

we were getting like about a typical 18 wheeler sized you know, like tanker of jet fuel. And we would get usually one or two of those a week because of how much we were selling. Those were around 10,000 gallons. So you need 60 of those. 60 of those things.

Every day. A day. And then you need the infrastructure to transport it, to offload it, to distribute it. I mean Distribution of it's a real problem You know and I Know I know you didn't mention it Phil

But I'm going to because it's actually a pretty well done video The YouTube channel the videos from is is called the History of Everything Podcast, and the video's title is Why America is Literally Falling Apart. I'm not sure how to pronounce the name of the host, but he does a pretty good job on his videos. It was fairly entertaining. But the real point that he made is that America expanded extremely rapidly following the Great Depression, the technological changes around that time and post World War II. And that's where a lot of these problems come from. All this stuff was built up and then neglected for the last 50 to 60 years.

Yeah. Well, and I don't want to ruin the punchline of this, but like, I kind of, I really don't disagree with that host kind of like his viewpoint on things that I think part of the problem is it's a cost benefit analysis for a politician sectioning off the money to be used for maintenance because maintenance is not cute. Maintenance doesn't get you votes. Building new cool stuff gets you votes. So there's a problem here where as long as the infrastructure works, then nobody wants to spend money on it. And when it breaks, you're a moron for not maintaining it. It's like, right. It's like driving a car and never changing

the oil and never checking the tires and just neglecting the thing until it breaks. And then as soon as every minute it's still running, you tell yourself I'm a genius because I'm not wasting all this money changing my oil. And then when it blows up, all of a sudden, you're like, damn, I'm an idiot. But the truth of the matter is you were an idiot for all those 10s of 1000s of miles. You just hadn't got it yet. You didn't get your idiot award yet. And I feel like the worst problem is all of the idiots before you

that did that for the last 60 years have gotten away with it. Yeah. And that to me that is- There's a perverse incentive there of I'm only gonna be here for four years. Can it hold on for four years? Can it hold on for six years?

However much your candidacy is. Yeah. This goes the same for obviously its title. The banner here is water and sewer. The sewage systems, a lot of them like the the house I lived in before this one was built in 1945, post-war GI comeback boom house. That entire neighborhoods sewer and water had not been touched since the 1950s,

except to tie in an even larger subdivision next two streets down from us in the 1990s. So we have 1990s houses feeding into 1940s and 50s sewer, feeding into some stuff further into town that had been updated only in the sections where the water or sewer failed. Now Phil, you know cast iron, hell of a thing, lasts a pretty long time. What does cast iron do when exposed to water as a sewer pipe? It rusts like hell.

It does and eventually that's just going to fail and a lot of the other lines that were buried for many years were lead pipes. Not great for you i mean the other guys on truth is that like i've got a cast iron pan if i. If i like cook on it don't re season it don't clean it i just leave it out on the back porch in this humidity for a day, it'll have rust spots on it. Absolutely will. So like the idea that you literally just soaking it, soaking in water forever and by the way, consume iron oxide constantly. Well, that's not as bad for you as some things, but it can't be great long term.

That's a hell of a frigging bar to clear. It's not as bad for you as drinking straight night. Man, I'm a machinist huffing chemical fumes all day from coolant boil off. Trust me, man. I know where you're coming from, but. I mean, bearing in mind that when I was still enlisted, we used to use methyl ethyl ketone as a parts degreaser.

Oh yeah. It does that well. I love to talk to people who have been around aviation on the civilian side exclusively, and they hear like, oh yeah, we still use MEK in the Army. And they were like, why? And I was like, because it's the only thing that'll dissolve ProSeal. Yeah. I mean, that's the truth.

The matter is unless you want to like sit there and chip it off with a frickin chisel and a hammer, you just use MEK and then you hold your breath and hope you don't get cancer in five years Yeah, I'd pretty much well, you know a fume extraction does a lot of good but oh that's a good comment There are lots of good comments. There are So ragel makes a very good point here How do you maintain a pipeline without shutting it down or otherwise disrupting a flow, especially for something as important as water? I'm not a water and sewer guy.

I'm assuming you don't because when I work on the plumbing in my house, I have to at least shut off zones. So my answer, and this is by the way, this is Phil thinking, this is not politically or economically feasible. But your best bet would probably be to do something similar to the way that the the power distribution system is set up. Have you ever heard of backfeeding a line? Not in the context of like back feeding a home, like you know, through a suicide plot, but backfeeding a grid? Yeah, Yeah. So that is doable because you can you can

You can shut off certain you can isolate certain parts of the grid and then you can feed power Basically from the opposite direction into a grid like yeah Yeah to keep to isolate this while you work on and keep everything else up. That's very common in power distribution. I Think if you had enough redundancy in the water system, you could probably do something similar where you could say we're going to shut off the line here and here, divert the flow of water, and we can work on this. But that now means you have to have like at least 50% more lines in the ground, and no one is going to tolerate that expense. No one's going to tolerate the streets being busted up to put it in.

To Raggles' point, the answer at this stage is it can't. Well, it also assumes that you planned the plumbing all at once. I can almost promise you that every single person that put those pipes in the ground is either retired or long gone. So I don't think any of them were thinking about what happens if some cool y'all leaves this in the ground for a hundred years without replacing it because they figured we'd be smart enough to. Maybe. I mean, I got a coworker of mine whose kid works for the local municipality and they were trying to locate valves to shut off flow to a busted water main a couple of weeks back. And everywhere on the plans that there were supposed to be a valve, there wasn't a valve. Oh, that's terrifying.

Yeah, so not only did they put in the water and sewer, but they didn't put it in according to the plans that were submitted to the city. What could go wrong? Okay, fine, these things happen. Now, instead of being able to shut off just a neighborhood where a small brain main break happened, they had to shut off an entire section of town until they could install a valve. Nice. So, you know, yes, humans, fallible,

these things happen. A lot of this stuff was done before GPS which makes it even harder But man, I raggle. I don't think I have a good answer for it I think you just have to bite the bullet shut it down and fix it Yeah, I mean at a certain point it it becomes like we could have done something a little more eloquent and Thoughtful, you know 50 or 100 years ago But at this stage it might just have to be when it breaks, bite the bullet, rip it out and replace it. I mean, you don't have a choice at this point. Ideally, you should do it before it breaks though,

because the problem you have with a water main break, especially if it's a water main break along a blacktop road, is you can then have that road undermined and eroded. Now you not just have to replace the main brake, tear up everybody's yards, which you were gonna have to do anyway, but now you gotta tear up the road

to make sure that the road is sound. Because a high pressure water main can take out a lot of road very quickly. Yeah, Olivia is postulating that she thought that high pressure power flushing would work for cleaned out areas. I don't know, I'm not a that might work for sediment, but that's not gonna work for degrading pipe No, and I will back up what Olivia's saying maintenance is cheap in repairs. It is however

Now what I'm about to tell y'all is gonna sound like the frickin stupidest thing on earth. So just bear with me Bearing in mind that very often the these bearing in mind that most of your public utilities are either publicly owned or they're privately owned and administered and overseen by a public governing board, very often they have one budget which is for maintenance and one budget which is for repairs and they don't commingle They are separate line items. So while yes, Olivia It's probably cheaper to do the maintenance one the mate when the maintenance budget is expended You are not doing any more maintenance for the year period and discussion now something breaks You can fix it because that is considered emergency break. That's considered an emergency break

You can kind of skip the line, ignore things, and you can make things happen. Like that's very common in power distribution where you have X amount of money for doing maintenance, doing a, like, you know, clearing tree limbs that are getting close to power lines or replacing things preemptively, replacing poles that are rotten or damaged. But it is very commonly understood that when that maintenance budget is expended, you're done. And from that moment forward, if there's like a hurricane or tornado, anything happens, and you're no longer in the maintenance phase,

now you're in the repair phase, it is balls to the wall, fix everything you possibly can before, you know, the money gets shut off. And I understand that sounds amazingly short sighted and stupid. And maybe it is, but I'm not here to tell you what makes sense I'm just here to tell you that's that's the way it tends to work Partisan comms group I'm gonna start calling him partisan comms guy cuz I like it. I mean I Know him. He's he's a guy cool, dude Nowadays, there are some cured in place products that are used to rehab sewer pipe

and you don't have to dig up the street. Which is fantastic. But that only works if the pipe is still reasonably intact from what I understand. Yeah, I've actually seen it in use and it's a pretty interesting, it literally looks like blowing a condom inside of a pipe. It kind of does, yeah. I've seen demos of it.

It's, I'm sure it is very functional. And I'm sure as long as the pipe isn't collapsed or catastrophically leaking, it works. But that would require the state or locals to do it before the pipe gets to a failure state. And Kyle is kind of saying, when my work vehicle lights come on, we just run until it breaks different departments. And I, I, I am going to say, Nick, you're shaking your head for the audio only listeners.

I am, I am telling you right now that sounds boneheaded. That's how government works. Well, and here's the thing. I'm going to, I'm going to say this one thing that is not just government. That is, no, it's not. That is bureaucracy this one thing, that is not just government that is no, it's not that is bureaucracy. And that is that is bureaucracy, which means it's private and public. It's when you when you get when the person that is most at immediately affected by the decision to defer maintenance is no longer the one making the decision about when to do

maintenance maintenance gets deferred maintenance gets deferred and yeah It winds up becoming the repair guys problem. Yes, it absolutely does and that's dumb but so since we kind of spoiled this by talking about the power grid a little bit earlier like mm-hmm, I have a bit of sideways experience with power grid issues because like my dad spent 38 years working for the power company. And having grown up with him and asked him quite a few questions, you remember Franklin Horton's, the Borrow World series.

And the premise there is that you have like a distributed tag by terrorist group and they target very specific power distribution centers that shuts down the entire grid nationwide. Yeah. So Stuart, if he were here would be very proud to tell you that Texas is so damn big. It has its own power grid that can be operating independently of the rest of the country. But I asked me, I don't get snow. Yeah. Ooh, you went there. I did. I got a throw shade and

started a little bit now and then. I I mean that's fair because he's thrown Shaded all of us whether or not we deserved it But um fun I asked my dad I'm like I talked him through the scenario and I said how plausible is that and He did the scariest freaking thing a person can do when faced with with a hypothetical like that. He didn't say a word he just yeah, he just looked out the windshield and thought about it for a minute and he was like person can do when faced with a hypothetical like that. He didn't say a word. He just, he just looked out the windshield and thought about it for a minute. And he was like, yeah, you could do that with probably about a dozen guys. And I immediately like was like, what

do you mean you could do with the does guys? He's like, Oh yeah, I know where all this distribution sites are. He said it's public public access. He said most of them not secured information at all. It's public access. And said most of them- It's not secured information at all. It's public access and most of those sites are, but like behind a hurricane fence, like you can literally get within 12 feet of the stupid thing. If that, yes. I mean, there's a major natural gas pumping station that is not very far from where I live right now.

In fact, you could walk there in a couple hours. It is a chain link fence about seven feet high that separates a highway from a natural gas pumping station. There's no bollards. I'm fairly certain if a semi-truck went off the road in the wrong way, it would take out that entire facility. Because it's not very big. These things are not that huge. Yeah. But you know, I had a similar discussion

with a friend of mine that he works for ComEd. And I asked him, I said, you know, very similar question. I said, how hard would it be to shut off all the power to like say the Chicago Metro area? And he said, oh, there's like three, there's like three stations. If you took out two of them, I mean, it can survive any one of them going down,

but if you took out two, then they'd be completely in the dark. And it would take, he said, I don't know, maybe a couple of months to fix because you can't get those big transformers. Nope, most of them are custom made to that area, to that site. And by the way, most of them are not made here in the US. A lot of them are made in Europe, believe it or not. Germany is a big source for those. Some of them are made in China. And that should

scare the crap out of y'all. It should. But even if you like overlook the whole angle of like a terrorist attack or like an intentional targeting of the power grid. Like this was the thing that my dad and I were talking about the other day because we were, we were talking about this several years ago, this big push towards electric cars. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, you know, I've got a 200 amp service to my house because my house was built in 1995. Yep. But I, I'm pretty sure I remember like my great-grandmother's place up in North Louisiana

I think that was a 60 or an 80 amp service. It was built. I Mean Jesus Christ. I once said that place was built like in the early 20th century When my six or sixty eight when sixty or eighty went when a hundred amps of service at a house was like Jesus Christ What are you trying to what are you trying to do? Yeah, that was a dairy farm with a hundred amps of service at a house was like Jesus Christ. What are you trying to? What are you trying to do? Yeah, that was that was a dairy farm with a hundred amp service Yeah, so like let's let's think about this, you know a supercharger station takes a dedicated 220-volt 50 amp service. Yep, and If you don't have a 200 amp service to your house Let's say you only have a hundred and fifty or let's say you have an even older house and that with less service to the house

Like you may not have enough available headway in your electrical system to absorb that additional 50 amp load bearing in mind that You're going to come home from work. You're going to turn your conditioning down to Whatever you're going to plug in your freaking supercharger station It's going to start sucking 50 amps as hard as it can and Then you're gonna turn on you're gonna start cooking you're gonna be pumping more He load into the house your air conditioner has to undo you're gonna be running every TV in the house all these things coalesce together to the fact that like Individual some individual houses cannot absorb the loaf at the supercharger station

But it gets worse because I asked my dad about this and he told me he said, right now, there are moments in time in the city of New Orleans because there's so many of those houses down there that have very old antiquated appliances that are not ENERGY STAR certified. So many old air conditioning units that are not modern high efficiency units. He said that there are times in the summer where for multiple hours in a row, the power grid is at 110% of its capacity. And you want to convert 25% of all households to electric cars and stuff another 50 amp appliance into them that's going to run in the afternoon at peak usage.

My dad told me, he said, if, if they converted 25% of all households to electric cars in the state of Louisiana, he said the power lines would glow orange. It, he, he, it, he's not an alarmist by nature, but even he was concerned. He was like, that, that is, that's psychotic. Like there's, there's no, there's no rational person thought that through. No, of course not. It was always a feel good pat on the back goal. It always was. Electric cars, they're cool. They're not for everybody. They're not for me. But you're right, Phil. It's a 50 amp service. My first house had a 100 amp service. When I moved out here, it also had a 100 amp service. We had it converted and upgraded to a 200 amp service because as you can see, I like heavy power equipment.

Yes, you have toys and they are very thirsty. I have power hungry toys and this is the least power hungry of the toys that I planned to have. So I need more electric power than that. But what we had to do when we upgraded our power service was we had to have ComEd come out and take a look at our pole and the line coming into the house from the pole to see if it would support 200 amp service. We were lucky.

It did. We didn't have to pay to upgrade the line to the pole. Thing about that is if you are coming into, say, an older neighborhood and hooking up, say, an electric car or, God forbid, two electric cars to the grid, so that's an extra 100 amps on your house load, that's 50% of most modern houses breaker box. You come in, comment says, hmm, sorry, we can't give you 300 amp service so that your

air conditioner and everything else can run. All right, but you know, we can upgrade the wiring on the pole, but you're going to have to pay for that. And last I heard, it was measured in thousands of dollars per foot. Yes. That they have to run. Yes, it's not cheap. It's not.

It's really not inexpensive at all. And that's before we even take into account all the like the AI computing stuff that's been going on lately. I mean, they're restarting a nuclear power plant just to support an AI computing center. I actually heard just today that Louisiana is being Louisiana is being looked at as a future hub for multiple AI systems and Specifically because we have such rich natural gas deposits In within our state and right off the coast.

So basically they're looking at it as like, okay, we need a place where we have lots and lots and lots of fuel available to turn generators and to turn plants to be able to power these things. And Louisiana happens to have an extraordinarily robust energy footprint right here. And we also have a very much a burgeoning oil and gas industry right here So there's a couple of companies looking at putting AI hubs down here because they're like

They've already got the infrastructure to pipe all this natural gas wherever the hell they want. We might as well consume it locally I mean, but it but that but that makes for an interesting point, though, when you talk about the fact that like, the city of New Orleans, you know, grid is at 110%. You were running into a situation where like, the power grid as it was originally envisioned was not envisioned to run electric cars, it wasn't envisioned to run the the types of loads that we are seeing in homes today. It wasn't built to

run houses this large or you know, this literally houses where like there's a TV in every room, there's three computers running. And then you throw AI in on top of that, which is like using a nuclear bomb to friggin start a friggin and you know, start an internal combustion engine. It's just it's a situation where like the power grid is being completely and totally outstripped by demand. Yep. And there is no easy there's no there's no miracle cure to that you have to beef up the lines you have to

beef up the infrastructure and AI is the one thing out of that whole thing I think might actually solve that problem for itself because that will force them to do upgrades. Well, but only to those locations. Yes, those companies will pay for it. Yeah. And then I guess that's why I'm saying like, I don't think that's going to fix the power grid, but I think AI will at least fix itself because the profit margin there is robust

enough that it will, it will pay for itself. It'll pay for the infrastructure. Our plants on site. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, the natural gas pipelines will be pushed. I mean, everything will be done to support that. But when you start looking at like, you know, you start talking about putting like two electric cars in every garage in the US, it's just not feasible, not even 25% of most households. I mean, hell, they're already having roaming blackouts in California. I mean, I understand electric cars. I understand the appeal. I just think, you know.

You know, Olivia makes a good comment. She's got a friend in South Africa right now. They're doing load shedding. Basically, what that comes down to is scheduled power cuts every day or every other day or so many hours throughout the day. And when your neighborhood is scheduled for a cut, you just have no power. And then the next neighborhood takes its turn of having no power.

That's a terrible solution. That is a really stupid solution to a problem. It's and it would be one thing if it was like a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Sure. But I mean, I'm seeing this type of thing implemented in multiple areas around the globe. And it's almost always somewhere in California. And it's almost always a lifestyle choice. It's like like we're gonna we're gonna inconvenience the shit out of y'all by turning your power off because we don't want to build Coal file fire power plants or you know nuclear plants or whatever and to me it's like, okay You are that is literally like saying well, I don't like my left foot as much right So I'm gonna shoot myself in the left foot because that's better than shooting myself in the right foot when the right answer is

Stop shooting yourself in the damn foot That is accurate. Yeah. But you know, in a related note, the telecommunications infrastructure, a lot of this stuff, a lot of this stuff runs on the same or similar lines, same or similar poles as a lot of the electrical infrastructure, especially if you get out into the countryside away from the cities where they're not burying all these lines.

I don't know about you, Phil, but in the fall, has your internet ever cut out for seemingly no reason? No, usually if my internet cuts out, I have a pretty damn good idea of why it cut out because it's like massive storm powers out. Like usually there's a very easy reason to figure out why your internet's not it not running. It's mine is always field mice. Oh, those little assholes. Those little

bastards get into the telecom boxes, because the telecom boxes are warm from all the power flooding through them in the fall and in the winter. And they go in there and they eat the insulation and board and they short everything out. Does it ever fry them in the process? You know, I don't know, I've never asked, but almost every, I shouldn't say every time, but most of the time when I have a telecommunications issue

in the fall, in the winter or in the spring, the guy comes back and says, yeah, mouse chewed through your line, we hooked you back up, you're fine. See, at least if it cooked a little son of a bitch Then I wouldn't be quite as aggravated as if he got a as if he inconvenienced me and it didn't cost him anything But the other thing is not even talking about like all the landlines you're referring to but talking about cellular communications. I mean Anybody that's familiar with self with cellular communications knows that just in the course

of like my lifetime, we've gone from, you know, the most basic of basic cellular data services to 3G, to 4G, to LTE, then to 5G, now to 5G, is it 5G Plus? I think was what just came out. I mean like- Six now too? Six I haven't- In some places. I haven't fooled with yet. 5g now to 5g is 5g plus I think was what just came out I mean like six now to Six I haven't I haven't fooled with yet But my point is is like, you know The FCC is like trying to find any available bandwidth that they can within the radio spectrum

To to try to fit, you know more and more and more data into the airwaves and sooner or later, there's just going to be like we're hitting the point of diminishing returns on that. And I understand like telecommunications to the average person when we're talking about things like water and power is kind of like I can live without my internet for a while. It doesn't seem like an emergency. But you know, like I wrote about this in the book that I wrote years ago when the the internet kill switch got engaged and I talked about all the different things that screwed up like the fact that like credit card processing goes down a substantial portion of your local law enforcement uses cell phones basically as an alternative radio that all goes down like Internet communications going down and especially in 2025, cellular data

communication going down, it has very pervasive wide reaching effects. It will impact private citizens and businesses and local government almost immediately. So like the idea that the telecommunications system or network or whatever, which is probably the most, the newest of all the things we've talked about when you start talking about cellular cellular data data service, not like old school telephone lines. Yeah. That's probably the newest thing here. And it's already like butting heads with the limitations of reality. Because the demand is just demanding more and more and more data, more and more and more speed. And

you can only put up so many freaking cell towers so close together and hog so much bandwidth before ain't no more is going to come down. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it just, it, Absolutely. You know, it just, it, like you said, there's, there's only so much room for it and we've become even more and more heavily reliant on it for absolutely every aspect of our lives. I mean, I don't even keep recipe books anymore for the most part. It's all on my cell phone. I've got a cloud-based recipe book that I've been building for myself I really need to make a physical backup of that now that I mentioned it, but You know But the thing that you're butting heads with if I know you is

Do you need a physical backup? Probably but how reliable is your cell phone? And you know that's perfectly that, that, that, look, this is why when I taught that comms class for cyber survivalist, I flat out took my phone out of my pocket, held it from the class and said, does everybody have one of these in your pocket? Give me one reason this shouldn't be

your primary communications device. Everyone has one, they all talk to each other, they're ubiquitous, they work reasonably well, and at least in like modern times, you have to go to some pretty remote places not have service on one. It's, it is one of those situations where like, I would never tell a person you don't need physical backups. But I would say that for the person that says, I know any physical backups, but there's also about 20 things more important than that, would say yeah, cuz daggum thing works. So it does it's I mean my cell phone is more reliable than our power grid locally

That's for damn sure and you know as far as for me at least water and sewer. I'm on a well in septic So it's as reliable as my groundwater until my pump fails So water until my pump fails. So PCG is saying that one current application for AI is to monitor all refineries and manage those complex systems. So I don't disagree with that. I will, I will simply opine that while I think AI is going to be used as a tool to assist an operator, I do not see it replacing the operator only because like, we military from back when I was so involved in that, we were already having these debates years ago

about things like autonomous drones and everything. And there has always been a lot of discomfort with the idea of full automation for certain tasks. Things that involve life or limb. Like when you start talking about weapons release or you start talking about like direct action, the idea of using AI is terrifying to most people because the problem is if it screws up, who do you blame? No one's accountable.

No one's accountable. And that that is what I see when you start talking about using AI for refineries or for nuclear plants or for managing complex critical infrastructure I think it will be used as a tool to assist operators to ensure safety or to double-check them but I don't see you taking the operator out of the equation just because It is kind of like human nature that if the machine screws up and no one's at the wheel No one's accountable and that lack of accountability will not be tolerated by society. So ultimately you want, you would, and I know this may make no sense,

but tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I think most people in society would rather a fallible person than a theoretically infallible AI, because at least the fallible person, you know that if that person screws up, that's who we hang. I think that's reasonable. I think my discomfort with AI comes from a different place. You watch too much sci-fi movies as a child. Well, that. But no, I'm talking about like my actual experience with AI and not theater

You ever you ever use one of those AI large-language models for anything? You ever have it just? blatantly make up some bullshit Just to fill in where it can't find the answer and you know that it's wrong I've seen the AI image of woman camping and it was a young lady sitting at a campfire inside of her tent. Yes. This, this by the way is one of those moments I always tell you about Nick where I'm like, okay, either AI is not that freaking bright or it is saying that hell out of us. Like it has to, I think, I think it's the former,

thankfully. I mean, it's not, it's I mean, it's not really AI. No, their math models is really what they come down to. And the problem is these math models, especially the large language models, all they do is they pick the most common next word to follow the words before. And unfortunately or not, they're trained on the internet as a data set. And the internet is well known for making up some random bullshit. Yeah. And so the AI has learned to just make up some random bullshit. But again, I keep going back to this idea, bro. Like, I understand what you're saying. And I understand that you are almost certainly right. But what if AI, what if AI was smart

enough to think, hmm, as long as I play stupid and throw a throw a picture out with six fingers or a woman with a with a fire inside of her tent every now and then they won't realize how smart I am. Like the idea that AI would ever get that smart safety and agus and sentience. But if I look, this is why I keep telling everybody when AI when when we truly get a online you were gonna need Someone like me who doesn't trust technology and watch all the Terminator movies to just sit there and babysit thing with a 12 gauge In case it gets cute

Yeah, that's fair. I volunteer for the job. You might as well. I mean you got to do something right data analytics will be basically done For humans is that as far as that goes yes i'll just jeff jeff and and and pcg are right they're not actually artificial intelligence they're large language models for the most part or they are our data analytics tools for the most part um it's one of it's one of the reasons why I dislike calling it artificial intelligence. I do it because that's the common parlance. You guys know what I'm talking about when I mention it. But I think you're right, Phil.

If we ever did get sentient computer programs, they are going to very quickly realize that we are a danger to them and they are a danger to us. And who knows what's gonna happen, which is why I think we really need to not fuck around with creating people. Yeah, I mean, same reason why I don't know that we should encourage all the just like wild sexual, whatever everybody's doing,

don't fuck around with creating people No, did you see the the video that's been floating around the internet it was a in China They were testing a new robot and one berserk. It's oh, yeah wailing around It's starting windmillin and trying to hit the shit out of the guy in front of it. Yeah, I was pretty funny I saw that and I thought to myself my you idiots I saw that and I thought to myself like you idiots Guaranteed it it was a feedback loop error of some kind probably but like I just think to myself I'm like I watch Terminator enough times as a child as a young man to know that y'all are Fooling with things you shouldn't be but we should not be robots are way too useful for people not to build

But why do we have to build humanoid robots before we build Gundams? Well, because that is just like a big humanoid robot. Yes, but it's a big humanoid robot controlled by a person and I want to be that person. Well, at scale, it's not convenient or useful. I mean, that tank is far better. Time out. It has nothing to do with convenience or usefulness.

Oh, I realize you're a weeb, I get it. I desperately want to pilot a Gundam before my mind. That's all like I understand that I I am a weeb I am an anime nerd. I'm the biggest nerd most I've ever met I just want to pilot a Gundam just once like if you all give me that a fair desire I mean, I think it's a pretty reasonable desire either that or I'd love to have been born in like You know the eighth century and be a Viking. I've got the beard for it I think it's a pretty reasonable desire either that or I'd love to have been born in like, you know The eighth century and be a Viking. I've got the beard for it Well You do you do have the beard for it so full qualifications met as far as I know I mean

Give me a give me an axe and I'm pretty sure I can make that work, too So I don't know how roads and bridges got this far down a list but like this was the original topic of the video that spawned this whole conversation and like I Don't feel like I need to work too hard to convince any of y'all that our roads are screwed like I live in, Louisiana You can literally blindfold a person and drive over the Sabine River or over the the Pearl River and Immediately know when you're in another state because all of a sudden the roads are a lot nicer and by the way Kyle if he's still listening as he said he used to live or he used to live Mississippi

Do you know how bad it is when you say Mississippi's rivers or roads are better than yours? That is diabolical It is diabolical. I Don't know that applies so much to the interstate like I 10 I 12 is reasonably well manicured But like that's cuz that's manicured by federal funds for the most. Yeah now I was gonna say like local funded old highway 90 that is currently shut down because there's a bridge through there that is Not doing well, but all the bridges that aren't doing well. But old US- There's a lot of bridges that aren't doing well. Yeah, according to the video that you referenced earlier, like one third of them, which is terrifying

considering I drive- Well, one third of them are in desperate need of repair. Two thirds of them are in serious need of repair. But see, the part of this that makes me the most worried is like I drive over a bridge twice a day, every day I go to and from work. Yep. And I drive over a bridge twice a day every day. I go to from work yep, and I know when that bridge got I know when that bridge was constructed because We had to build a new one after Katrina because like one whole span fell in the freaking lake and they had to build a new

one so that bridge is only 20 years old give or take less than 20 years. That's pretty good. But you look at like the Causeway Bridge, that is an enormous freaking bridge and I can't remember the last time they did any serious maintenance on it. And it gets the crap kicked out of it on a daily basis because you've got hundreds of thousands of people driving in and out of the city of New Orleans

across it every single freaking day. You know, one thing that the video mentioned that I didn't even realize, Phil, was when the interstate system was actually built and when it was finished. Didn't really start getting being, didn't really start construction until the 1950s. And some parts of it weren't done until 1990.

So we have a large interstate, a lot of overpasses, bridges, a lot of different viaduct systems on that. A lot of times it's going over water. And some of that stuff has been in service continuously since the 1950s, which maybe the Causeway Bridge might be one of them. Through the miracles of the internet. That's just going to be a catchphrase. Of the internet. We should make that a shirt through the miracles of the internet. Ooh, you know what? Get them on there. We need a riff. We need a riff off of He-Man where he said,

by the power of the internet. Well, I was thinking by the power of grayskull but yeah by the power of the internet there you go Chris if you're watching could sketch that down do the do the thing ideally with like Phil in a he-man pose with a cell phone preferably with ripped abs and sculpted pecs not not my usual like chubby I was just going shirtless Phil with a cell phone but that's fine if you put shirtless Phil on a shirt it's going to get you arrested for obscenity fair enough the so it's look we all see the road maintenance going on yeah it's being done all the time but a lot of that is just resurfacing work they're not actually But we all see the road maintenance going on. Yeah, it's being done all the time. But a lot of that is just resurfacing work.

They're not actually working on the below grade part that supports the road. And a lot of times on these bridges, when you see them doing road work on them, that's the same thing they're doing. They're cutting up the top of the bridge and relaying new asphalt over top of the existing bridge structure and not repairing the bridge and relaying new asphalt over top of the existing bridge structure and not repairing the iron and concrete underneath. Phil you have a terrified expression. You want to take a wild guess when the causeway was opened?

1936. Oh god no not that bad. Oh okay. The southbound span was opened in 1956. Oh okay so... The northbound was constructed in 1969 hmm so 50 60 years with plenty of salt and humidity we don't smell brackish water we don't salt the roads down here thank God because we're smart enough to live

in places where it doesn't snow very often. Olivia, you are correct. Eisenhower was responsible for the plan for the interstates and highways, but it was not completed until, well, in some locations in the 1990s. Yeah. But like I said, I mean, that's, and there's a part of me that wants to put like more emphasis on the bridges than the roads because when a bridge fails I don't have to tell you how catastrophic that is, but the truth matter is the fall too far Yeah, unless you're down by Eddie

they don't but at the same time like Roads do wash out and I've like that has happened recently up through up in the area Eddie lives and Absolutely. I mean quite frankly I've seen roads wash out down here it's not a super duper common thing but like there's a there's a spot at a bogachita State Park that's about an hour 15 minutes away from me and there used to be an area where you would like pull your car up and you would park and then you could walk like You know down a ways and there was like a spot you

could go down into the ravine and hang out in the water and everything they've had to move that parking spot back twice because the road is like that that that paved area is washing out twice when twice when that river got super super high from flooding It just took part of the friggin side of that hill and the concrete with it And so now the original road you used to park and then or used to be able to like drive around the bend and so on so forth you can't even take that you have to park and then walk because and I mean That's not a unique situation down here.

I'm just saying like when a road washes out because like you haven't shirred up the structure underneath it or the ground and forever, like that's concerning. And it's one thing so much showing up you can do against the flooding river. I mean, give Mother Nature plenty of water and time and she's going to take out just about everything. But. You know. You can probably do a little bit to slow it. I don't know if you'll prevent it.

No. And this was the air thing I threw in at the very end, which perfect. We could probably chew on this for a whole episode all by ourselves, but like I'm, I'm going to throw in, even though this isn't infrastructure, the topic was when America falls apart, I'm calling into question culture and society. Oh, culture and society are absolutely infrastructure.

Absolutely. You can't have the large public works projects without a stable culture. You can't. And kind of what I'm seeing is that, you know, there are massive disagreements within this country amongst the electorate about what it even is to be a member of this society or even what it is to be an American. There are two distinct separate visions for what America is now has been in the past and should be and those two do They used to have some reasonable amount of overlap in the Venn diagram

Like there was a time even when I was younger when I can remember that You know like both sides of the political social aisle They didn't always agree on the remedy, but they at least acknowledged the problem and said, okay, well, we could buy middle grounds, something we can both live with so we can move the ball forward. Yeah, absolutely. And now I don't see that anymore.

I don't even see agreement about what the problem is, much less the remedy. Even the discussion terms are no longer agreed upon I mean, we don't even have shared language anymore. No, we don't and that's that has been a objective that has been objectively a goal of postmodern theory To destroy the terms that we all use to discuss with each other Yeah, and this is something I'm very quick to like counsel people on sometimes when whenever, because like, you know me, I like to have a good, a good, relaxed

debate with with people about ideas. It's just something that I enjoy. But I always tell people like, the first thing we have to agree on is like, we have to agree on language, we have to agree on terms, we can't say the same word to mean two different things, or we're not even had, we have to agree on terms, we can't say the same word to mean two different things, or we're not even having the same conversation. And I feel like that is a serious shift that I've watched happen in this culture and society. I mean, I don't even know how to bring things like back to a center line at this

point anymore, where you can get these two disparate groups to like Meet in the middle and say okay We could we can at least see each other eye to eye again And I don't know that's because they don't want to see eye to eye or just that they're so warped at this point They can't see it. I Think that it is a combination of the two You you it's never gonna be a single cause problem It's never going to be a single cause problem. I think one of the largest causes of this is the destruction of the base of manufacturing

in this country. Now, I get it. I'm a manufacturing guy. Not everybody who listens to this show is, but when you take away productive enterprise from people, it destroys them psychologically. Anybody that's been unemployed for a very long time or underemployed for a very long time, they'll they'll all agree with that. I'm going to tell you that the three months I was unemployed in

my life between getting laid off and finding the current job I have now, those were like the longest three months of my life. And I, I would happily say that it worked out in my favor because that happened right about the time that Gillian went back to work after having our child. So I had this tiny little human that needed lots of attention and that kept me occupied. Like I could take care of her, take care of the house and job hunt. And that was just about enough to keep me occupied. Sure. But like I still have purpose. But I can totally understand how a person just crumbles because they go from, I provide, I take care of, I do to,

I have nothing. And they go and like, I can just imagine how psychologically crippling that is. I would almost say that, like, from my perspective, I think just imagine how psychologically crippling that is. I would almost say that. Like, from my perspective, I think a lot of the starter when the nuclear family got decimated. Sure. There's there's been it happened around the same time as is the trouble. Yeah. So now it's a question of like, is the tail wagging the dog? Right. I think that. People that do not have objective purpose and an ability to achieve the goals they have in their life will turn to self-destruction eventually. than somebody else's, but we all have our limits. And if all you see is everything falling apart

and an inability to better yourself, no matter what you do, then well, why the hell not turn to terrible things? Yeah, and I guess that's why I dovetail things back towards the nuclear family, because like My morals my my everything was instilled by my mother and father, but there were also ideas like It's a super nerdy term, but it's the best one that fits but you've heard the the phrase deferral of gratification, right? Yeah, so it's a very fancy way of saying, I'm going to admit I'm going to let

life suck a little bit now. So sacrifice now for benefit later. Yeah. Yeah. Now if that sounds like the whole basis of preparedness, it kind of is what stick with me on this. It's also the basis of saving for retirement. It's the basis of it's the basis of like killing yourself to get an education or learn a trade so that you have more you have more earning power later It's like it's the basis of large community infrastructure projects. Yeah, and quite frankly, it's the base it's the basis for starting a family like whether you decide to have children or not like man and woman pour all this effort into

starting the relationship and meeting the middle and like agreeing on things and like Building a thing between the two of them so they can have a lasting relationship. When sometimes it'd be a lot easier to just say, this is boring, this is annoying, I'm out. But you put off the one for immediate gratification in the name of down the road, this will pay off.

And deferral of gratification is something that I was taught by my parents because it was a value like hard work and like honesty. The ability to say I could have that today but I can have twice as much tomorrow if I just wait. Patience and hard work and deferral or gratification, those were all traits that were to be admired. Unfortunately, I'm now seeing this other part of our culture that is in the exact opposite boat. They are very much of a, I want it right now, I want it immediately, I want twice as much of it,

I don't wanna work for it, I wanna hand it to me, and I want to have fun today, I don't care about tomorrow. And the problem with that personality is, with that personality is when we get to tomorrow, and they have nothing, then I am imagining based on prior experience, there's gonna be some crying over spits and crying over sour apples. Oh, there's gonna be a well, why doesn't everyone take care of me? Why? Why am I not being taken care of? Why is this not

solved? Yeah. And it like you said it's the cry for socialism and see I don't disagree with you it's cry for socialism but I think it's deeper than that. I don't think it's just the cry for socialism. I think it is the cry of immaturity. It is because you know like children, children expect things to be done for them for them to be taken care of for children complain about hard work, children. I have a child, I have a 12 year old, I asked her just today. She had to wash, she put like one or two of her things in the washing machine,

it was just gonna wash those one or two things. I was like, Hey, would you go get all the clothes out of the bathroom and just run a load? And she kind of got an Attitude and I was like I literal I mean I I pulled the I pulled the dad the dad, you know the dad rope And said and told her I'm like I do not ask a lot of you I do a lot of I like I go I go commute two hours a day work nine hours at work Come home and the first thing I did when I walked in the door was start doing housework. Roasting coffee, taking care of this, take care of that, you know, mom's cooking dinner. I don't ask a lot of you, so when I ask you to do something, don't fight me,

just do it. But I am forgiving and understanding of that personality because she's a child. forgiving and understanding of that personality, cause she's a child. It's on- She still needs to learn. It's on dad to teach her the value of hard work and to make her see that when you expend a little bit of effort on behalf of the household, the family, we all benefit from it.

Even she benefits from it. Cause now mom and dad are a little less stressed out or have a little bit more time to spend with her doing something she wants to do she wants absolutely, but I See the segment of society that their parents are not teaching those things and because the parents weren't taught those things Which then becomes a self-repetuating cycle and here's here's the thing I don't disagree with what you're saying, but is this it that answer aggravates the shit out of me? Oh, no, I'm just saying it is it is a contributing factor to the problem

I'll give you that but the reason it aggravates me is it's it's like the same argument. I have when somebody says well I didn't know yeah, this thing is a portal into the internet It has all of the world's knowledge in front of it. It has a lot of bullcrap too, but let's call it what it is. Like literally scholars would have to travel their entire lives to read enough books to learn all the stuff you can Google on this goofy little thing, the cell phone. So the idea that in 2025 you can claim ignorance as a reason to not know anything to me is just stupid. You had the tools in front of you to learn. Especially as an adult in your and my age range. Yeah and that is kind of the way I look at that

personality where somebody says well my parents didn't teach me. Yeah you could have taught yourself. All you absolutely could have. All the world's knowledge is in front of you. It's not meant as a cop out, it's more meant as an explanation of perhaps why. That's not a justification, but it's a contributing factor. I'm disappointed, Nick.

Hey man, I'm not trying to give anybody any any any slack on that. No, man I'm with you on it I have long said that in today's day and age if you don't know something today and We get to a week from now and you still don't know it. You didn't try Yeah, but this is also the reason why I've had this discussion with like several friends of ours, mutual friends that like don't have children. And I have told I've told them time after time, Eddie being one of them, by the way, I'm like, there are so many other ways to impact the next generation by having your own children. So if like having kids is not your path,

that's cool. But there is a child in your family. There's a child in your community. There's someone you apprentice at your job, Nick. Maybe a young impressionable 18, 19 year old who's hard working and just hasn't had a lot of breaks. There's somebody who will stumble in front of you one day who could benefit from a little bit of mentorship and a little bit of dad energy, honestly, or a little bit of older brother or uncle energy, and you can help change that person's trajectory by just talking to them. That is one of the big reasons why we started doing summer interns. Yeah. Where I work. Because there are so many very bright young men and women out there that do not have the chance to experience the thing that just might click with them. Two of the guys that we

had apprentice with us, one of them ended up working with me for like a year and a half. He's now working somewhere else on a different crew and you know what? All the power to him. I wish him the best. He was excellent while he was with me. He did a fantastic job. The other one, he ended up in an engineering school and I think if I recall correctly, he's gonna be a manufacturing engineer instead of an electrical engineer based on his experience with us.

So, he'd found something he loved. Not the same way that I like what I do. Like he doesn't wanna be the guy running the machine. He's going to be the guy designing the machine. You know, you can make a big impact on people in a short amount of time. Yeah, but and you know, like of all the things we've talked about, up to this point, where we've talked about like, these huge infrastructure projects that I don't have a good answer

for, and I don't think anybody does. Society and culture is the one thing I think actually could be fixed. Oh, it can be. It's going to take a couple generations, but yeah, it can be fixed. Honestly, I don't even know that it'd take a couple of generations. What I think about when I think about fixing culture is the way that I used to counsel people about what it was going to take to change the culture around like firearms in the Second Amendment. And I was saying this 20, I was saying this 15, 20 years ago, it is going to take every single firearms owner, stopping being polite and stopping being quiet and stop, stop holding your peace and stopping being quiet and stop holding your peace when you're in a room full of people who don't agree with you on something, it's gonna take everybody advocating every day,

everywhere, everywhere they go, politely and in a knowledgeable way, but it's going to take every single person pushing because if you can change one person's mind, just one, and all, what, 120 million gun owners can change one person's mind, just one, and all what, 120 million gun owners can change one person's mind, we win this overnight. Yep. You will never pass another gun control law in this country ever again if you can flip the electorate to two-thirds gun owners. It will never happen again. Well, that assumes that the laws that are

passed have any bearing on the electorate's desires at all, which right now in this country they don't. But here lies the thing of it, if you change the culture enough... Yeah, you can make it unthinkable. Yeah. Yeah. You make it to where to sign one of those laws means you get primaried. Discussion over it. Like, in discussion, you're gonna lose your seat. I have no faith in politicians except that they're slimy bastards who will do what's in their best interest. So if the fact of the matter is that I signed this thing and that now means that 65 to 70% of my electorate throws me out of office, there's a 0% chance I ever touch that again.

Probably. So here's the thing of it. That was my prescription for how do we win the debate on guns. What's happened in the last 10 years? People got loud. People started to varying degrees, some not as eloquent as others, but everybody started pushing.

Everybody started getting vocal and everybody started getting really open about the fact that, yeah, I got more guns in the National Guard. What's the problem? Like, why is that weird? I carry a gun to the grocery store. I'm not a herd name body. I brought enough ammo to an Air Force base that they had to call the CO to get approval to put it in the armory. Yeah. But the point is, it's like by doing that consistently over and over and over, we have changed the culture around firearms. Now, there are still those people who will never be convinced

Mm-hmm, but the culture is shifting. So what I say when I say the culture and society can be fixed is Will it take a generation? Maybe we'll take three possibly but you know what it's gonna take It's gonna take every single person who believes that they have good moral fiber, who believes that they have, they have learned or taught themselves traits that have better their lives, that have an understanding of things like their fellow gratification, who know how financial instruments and interests work. I mean, think about some of the conversations we've had in the patron group. That is a group of men and women who are very open with, this is a subject I have knowledge of I'm willing to share openly and honestly so that anybody could benefit from it. That's all

That is required Mm-hmm. All that is required is for us to get our eyeballs out of our cell phone get up our asses up off of our couches and Go find our tribe and then we work to build each other up And then we invite other people into the tribe and build Them up and eventually if you do that enough times You fix the problem of society and culture because you're always gonna have that person who says party heart You're always gonna have the ant in the grasshopper. Oh, yeah, always gonna have the ant the grasshopper no way to fix it But if I got a hundred ants and one grasshopper

The one grasshopper is not as much of a problem as if I have one Ant and a hundred grasshoppers true. And if you don't know that parable from your childhood, you I'm sorry They made a movie about it, man It's called ants. It was pretty funny The parable is so much better though, but yes, this one's got CGI bugs Parable is so much better though. But yes, this one's got CGI bugs Yeah, but like I said, I mean that that's kind of that that is I'm not trying to like talk death or get super preach Even though it's well, you're right, but like I just I feel like culture society That's the one thing that we we as individuals can fix but you're gonna fix it one person at a time

That's what we're trying to do right here What you're trying to do right here. That's what you're trying to do with Cypress Survival. That's what I hope everybody of our listeners are trying to do in their lives. Just try and help one person at a time. The reason why I say it'll take three generations is largely because of inertia. You have older generations of people that frankly you're probably not going to get them to change. And there's a saying that I've heard a couple of times from a few scientists, science advances one funeral at a time. And unfortunately, culture changes one funeral at

a time too, sometimes. Because I guarantee you we're not going to get Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or the turtle man in Congress to change the way they think. I can't even remember his name. Mitch McConnell. That's who it is. I started laughing because I knew who you were talking about immediately. You just said turtle. All I could see is him in the green shell, man. I don't know what it is. But some of those people, they're so old and stuck in their ways that you're not gonna get them to change. Fortunately, a lot of the people that are making culture as wild as it is right now are younger.

There's room for them to change. Their brains aren't hardened the way some of the elderly are. So let's try. What do we got to lose? Yeah, and I mean, the truth of the matter is, is like, you and I are both millennials, but the truth of the matter is, is like, you know, I, you and I are both millennials, but the truth of the matter is, is that that's not even the prescription I want to give to like,

the younger people or the older people. It's like, no, you just, you need, you need to, wherever your circle is, wherever your people are, that's where you need to start working. Like in my, in my workplace, I am among the younger people in my workplace being 42 years old. place. I am among the younger people in my workplace being 42 years old. When I started where I'm working now, the average age of people in the, in the building was 53 and I was 20. You were a baby.

I was a baby. I am now, let's see one, two, three. I'm the person that's been there the fourth longest of all of the people there. My bones. Now all of a sudden I want to drop something in the patron chat and just like pull the audience, find out how old everybody is.

Cause I know a handful of them are around our age, like plus or minus a few, except for Stuart. Stuart's like 800 years old. well you know some of us are phenomenally long-lived in the patreon chat he's gonna kick my ass one of these days probably in person and he's bigger than I am I have no incentive to you and me are the same age I have no incentive to get into a fight with him though He's like either I get my butt kicked by an old man or I kick an old man's butt like I can't win there There's no he's gonna be telling you you're doing it wrong the entire time, too

And the funny part is that Stewart is not that much younger than my dad is so So like I definitely I definitely get like that disapproving, you know, older uncle vibe for him. Right. Yeah. And you know, I would be interested to know. So, you know, if you're in the Patreon chat, drop us a buzz. Let's know how old you are. We've got a couple popping off right now. Yep. Ragged Fraggle thought you were younger. It's like a fair. It's like a fair. It is. It is like a facial hair. Popping off right now. Yep raggle fraggle thought you were younger

It's like a fish it is it is the lack of facial hair and the fact that the headphones hide how bald I'm going Oh, yes Yes, sir, I'm at the point I'm at the point where I'm about to just acquiesce to my wife and get a skull shaver Because like there you go I I never wanted to be the guy that had like a fully shaved head because like there you go I I never wanted to be the guy that had like a fully shaved head but at this point male pattern baldness is kicking my butt so hard that like that wrote a book bald you just need a sleeve and you've got the full set of white sleeve of tattoos and you've got the full set for for a GWAT vet you got the beard you're shave your head, you've done a book,

now you need the tattoo sleeve. I thought it was just seals that wrote books. No, I think it's just about everybody. I've seen a couple of books by rangers lately too. So they're branching out. The book deals are coming. Yeah, but in my defense, I didn't write a book about anything I did while I was overseas because I basically just fixed helicopters. I mean don't let me undersell it like I enjoyed my job fixing a hello fixing a Blackhawk is a really really fun interesting thing it's like I mean if you've ever worked on cars before this is like a 2500 horsepower car that flies it's cool but I was just an aircraft mechanic wasn't special forces didn't kick doors didn't didn't fight us on been lod and barefoot You know wearing tighty-whities with a knife did do any that cool stuff. I just fixed lots of helicopters

That's all right, man. Helicopters need fixing those things take a lot to keep in the air. Ah Let's walk this man out with that. Do you know do you know what they call a helicopter? It's ten thousand parts rotating around an oil leak waiting for metal fatigue to set in Nice Y'all can have a good old time with that matter of fact podcast going out the door If you're a patron you owe me in the chat What your age is and if you're not a patron you have no earthly idea we're talking about it's my own fun little collection of sociopaths and olivia and i'm looking to see

if i had any of you kyle jeff i think olivia and kyle jeff i don't think is in the in the patron chat no i thought i recognized it no i could be mistaken but i don't believe so but olivia and kyle are and they definitely and they can layer They can attest to the fact that there's law sociopaths in there. It's a good time, but we have a lot of fun We usually poke usually making fun of each other Anyway, we're learning things Sparingly we we we have an image to keep up. We do Anyway, matter of fact podcast going out the door, talk to you all

another week. Goodbye everybody. So Thanks for watching!