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Before You Speak | Episode 28 | The American Military · Before You Speak

• Derek Peterson: What's up y'all welcome back to the Before You Speak podcast. I'm your host Derek Peterson who is just processing the fire hose of my newsfeed with this guy over here. Elwyn: Hey everybody, I am Elwin and the ⁓ fire hose from my newsfeed is filled with bright blue paint, the excess from the Lincoln Memorial, from the reflecting pool outside the Lincoln Memorial. We're just spraying that shit everywhere. Derek Peterson: Yeah, the doesn't matter that it was one way forever. And furthermore, I think pretty confidently they I was listening to Pod Save America yesterday and I guess the guy that got the contract was just some dude that used to take care of Trump's pools. And he quoted him like 13 million for the ⁓ for the for the work and they just no other bids just yeah, we'll go with that one. Elwyn: Yeah. Yeah, it's his pool guy from Bedminster. It's literally the guy who's done his pool at Bedminster. And I think the original budget was 1.3 million. And then the guy was like, no, how about 13? And we're like, yeah, sure, whatever. Derek Peterson: He's like, he's like, I'm ready. I'm ready to retire. I don't want to do pools anymore. Yeah. 13 million. Elwyn: guy got off the phone he was probably like, fuck I could have asked for 113 it wouldn't have mattered. Derek Peterson: Well, our fearless leader is ⁓ heading to China this week with a bunch of tech executives. What are your thoughts on this trip? Elwyn: You Which one is the fearless leader? Like honestly, right? Like, you know, Trump is going to China for this big thing with Beijing, with Xi and President Xi and he's got Musk and Tim Cook and, you know, Jensen Huang from Nvidia and all the 17, there's like a trillion dollars in potential capital expenditure and investment for China on the plane with him. So. Whose interests are being represented in this meeting? Because I find it very difficult to believe that it's ours. I find it very difficult to believe that Tim Cook and Elon Musk need to go with the President of the United States to China to talk about Chinese investment in the United States. I just don't see that's how it's working. And when Trump says, we're going to open up China to all these companies, like, great, how does that help Americans? You this guy, he ran on America first. He ran on bringing back jobs. He ran on bringing back manufacturing. He ran on all this shit that would help the United States. And every time you turn around, just look to oligarchs, see what they're doing, see what they're saying, follow the money, and you can see whose interests are truly being played here. you know, I don't think that it's wrong at all to look at this trip and be like, Wait, I'm not comfortable at all with who is going with him. mean, Eric and Lara Trump are with him. Eric Trump owns ⁓ World Financial or American Bitcoin, fucking Ponzi scheme Bitcoin company, which is partnered with a company called Bitmain, which is owned by a Bitcoin company out of China. And he's on that trip. The corruption, the grift. The selling out of our interests on this trip should be just the number one story on every newsfeed. Why are these people on the plane with Trump? Why are they going to these meetings? What is the net positive for the United States in having Tim Cook in China talking about opening up China? How does that help us? And for a year and half, we've heard like, no, we're going to bring back all these manufacturing jobs. Kevin Hassett was like, we're going to have people doing the tiny little screws. They're going to, those are going to be American jobs. No, they're not. No, they're not. And this trip is going to show it. So that's what I'm on today. Derek Peterson: Correct. And dude, for the record, maybe we need to go back in one of these episodes and every deal that ⁓ was ⁓ celebrated last year after Trump took office about all of the investment that these companies are funneling back to the US, we need to go back through maybe each one, list them out and see. see how those have progressed over the course of a year and see how many of these people have actually invested in manufacturing back in the US or if they're all just doing what we all thought they would, which was fodder for Trump. Elwyn: No, it's all, it's, it was bullshit in his first term too, right? Foxconn, the company that builds the iPhones basically, they announced this huge, $2 billion plant in Wisconsin. They were gonna build this incredible, I think it was 1.8 billion, this incredible manufacturing plant in either Wisconsin or Michigan. That never happened, right? A year later, buried on page 15 of the newspaper. is Foxconn withdraws plans for building plant in the United States. It's all horseshit, right? It's all to win a news cycle. Derek Peterson: Yep. Yeah. And I think we can, you know, we, we've seen this across the, you know, the grift, you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about the, ⁓ the golden dome that's now projected to cost $1.2 trillion and likely, ⁓ not going to be, ⁓ do anything that it was actually expected to be able to do. ⁓ and then, you know, we, we talk about the grift with the ballroom. you know, hey, this is going to be taxpayer free and now taxpayers are funding the bill and it's quadrupled in price. Of course it did because you know, it's taxpayer money, right? For them, I feel like they look at this as just a blank check. And we're all paying for it over and over again. Meanwhile, you know, my Costco bill, everything I bought at Costco today was anywhere from $2 to $4 more expensive than it was three or four weeks ago. So yeah, it's... things are getting worse ⁓ continually as far as all of this stuff goes. And it's just, the grift is just, it's brutal. And at some point the stuff has to boil over, right? Like at some point, like the grift has to end because it can't just continually get worse for everybody while the top just gets better. And it just continues on like that. At some point, this whole thing ends. and it ends usually with poorly for them when the majority of people are in our shoes. Elwyn: Yeah, it ends in, right, it ends, if it were to not stop, it ends in bloody revolution. ⁓ You know, that's how these things get taken down. it is so obvious. it's, you know, there's a lot of sort of things that are all popping right now that are all totally connected. And I think that people see it too. ⁓ You know, there was a poll that came out from Atlas Intel, which is the most accurate polling company in 2022 and 2024, they had on the congressional, the generic congressional ballot Democrats up by 15, which is gerrymander all you want. You're not winning. If it's a 15 point swing to Democrats, Democrats are taking the house and they're taking the Senate. So people I think are waking up to it, but they're not hiding. Trump's not hiding it anymore. You know, he's the DOJ announced yesterday that they might ⁓ authorized settlement of Trump's lawsuit against the IRS for revealing his tax returns. So the IRS let out his tax returns, Trump sued him, Trump is now president of the United States suing his own government and his own government is going to be like, yeah, let's pay the man. That shit is corruption. That shit is a grift, right? The pool we just talked about is a grift, the ballroom. Derek Peterson: Mm-hmm. Elwyn: I don't believe for a split second that those if there were 400 million dollars in private donations and now we they want a billion in taxpayer money that 400 million in private donations is going right to a private pocket right and in the meantime inflation is up 3.8 percent that came out yesterday for the first time in decades I think or certainly since 2020 and for decades before then inflation over the past year has outpaced wage growth for the last year which means if Your wages grew 3.3 % in the last year. Inflation grew 3.8%. Doing nothing else, you lost money. You make less money because of inflation. And what's Trump's response when asked about that? When asked, know, hey, when you're thinking about Iran and negotiating a settlement with Iran, how does the economic plight of Americans figure in to your calculus? He says, not at all. I don't think about that at all. I don't care about that at all. He's saying this shit out loud on tape. said it. He said it a month ago, right? He said, we can't afford health care because we need to have this war in Iran because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Bro, fuck off, okay? I'll buy them a nuclear weapon if we can get some fucking health care in this country, right? Derek Peterson: All of it, yeah. And I think I'm at the point now, you know, like the younger libertarian version of myself was always like, you know, the private sector can manage, you give people the space and the ability to build companies where there is a need, that need will be met because you can make money doing it. it's, you know, capitalism at its best, right? And I I believed in that idealistically for a very long time. It's not until the last 10 years or so that you realize like, dude, if you don't have guard rails on, on all of this stuff, then the top, once you, once you have acclimated or accumulated enough wealth, then you just begin the process of protecting that wealth and trying to control it as much as you possibly can and collecting more. And the byproduct of that is that you just squash your competition and competition is the only thing that is good for the American people. Like if you want all of this to actually work how it's supposed to work, cannot alleviate or you cannot remove competition. ⁓ That's what drives prices down. It's what makes things. And not only that, it's everything, right? Job growth, all of it. When new companies are starting, they're hiring new people, they're building out... ⁓ you know, they're renting commercial spaces or it's all of it. It just seeps into the economy. But when you allow these big businesses to just continue to roll over everybody and then become best friends with the president and fly to China to advocate for their companies to China so that they can do all of the things that they've been doing and continue to be unregulated. You know, like it's just, I hate it all. And ⁓ the grift is just showing through more and more and you can just see this dude doesn't give a shit about anybody. And that IRS story is also, ⁓ I saw some reporting on that that was also saying that part of the deal that they're trying to strike with the IRS is also that Trump and all of his family will not be audited. like all of the audits will go away, ⁓ and potentially like some kind of deal where it won't happen again in the future. I'm like, Dude, this is like, all right, this is like the equivalent of Scientology at this point, right? It's just like, just call this a religion. That's really what it's. Elwyn: E? I'm laughing because I'm reminded of the scene in Armageddon that when they're making their ass, all the oil drillers are being like, here's what we want. I want to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom. And the last one is like, we never want to pay taxes again, all of us. Those guys were going up to drill a nuke into an asteroid. This fucking guy wants to never pay taxes again and never be audited again, and he's selling out American interests. The interesting thing, though, is There's just tension, right? Capitalism relies on competition. what you said is exactly right. Like we need the capitalistic spirit is being throttled by these incredible high costs of health care and of housing and of food and of gas, of course, now. Right? And then you get into these like policy wonky conversations about someone like Mamdani or the progressive left, you know, who are saying, hey, free buses, we want free buses and we want to do five grocery stores and you're how, you're just giving free shit away. And I think what people of our generation, know, were raised with the opportunity to go out and start our own business. I've done it a couple times, you've done it as well. You know, my cousins have all done it, my whole family basically has done it. I think the 25 year olds now are just looking at it going, yeah man. I don't give a shit about the argument about whether or not free bus fare is a net good or just too much of a giveaway and throttling innovation or whether or not grocery stores are going to put some bodegas out of business. I can't afford food. And not having to pay bus fare is going to help me afford food. Right? And maybe if I can eat three meals a day, I can invest my energy into starting a new company, which will then employ people. But I think that I think that's where the line is right now where they're like, no, I don't care about, you know, ⁓ an entitlement society guys. can't eat and I can't pay rent. You know, call it whatever you want, but that's that's. And in the meantime, Trump is on the plane with the 17 richest CEOs of a trillion dollars worth of expenditure flying somewhere else with that money to another country with that money. ⁓ yeah. Derek Peterson: Change has got to come. At some point, again, the grift can only last for so long before people get to a point where this stuff boils over. like I said, I think what I'm realizing now is that the system actually works if we follow the rules. The system breaks down when people stop. And it's just greed, right? It's like, I need... billions and billions of dollars rather than just, know, and I'm not on the, I'm not on the hype train of that. They're billionaires shouldn't exist. I, I understand the sentiment of people are saying, but I also don't think that that connects with most people. think if you actually get to the root of a lot of human desire is, is everybody wants to be rich, right? So we all wish we could own the nice house and we see it flaunted in front of our faces more than ever before. So the thought process of saying like, none of this should exist. I don't think works. It's, Hey, let's start talking about the opportunities that we can provide to help people that want to get to that place, get there. How do you compete with an Amazon? How do you compete with a Tesla? How do you build a company that, you know, competes and can be on par with a lot of these other companies? Those are the conversations that we need to be having. And I just don't. Honestly, I don't hear almost anybody having them right now. there's a, with the Democrats right now, you know, I'm, I'm still, I'm still up in the air because I think that there are some strong democratic candidates coming up the ranks. I still don't like the talking points. I still don't like the messaging. I still don't like that. There's not, I don't feel like somebody is like really, really fully wrapped their head around what people are looking for. And that's the. That's the part of this that still makes me a little bit nervous. Elwyn: Yeah, I think the billionaires shouldn't exist argument is like to me that's just frustration. know, where it's just, you know, we don't need to compete with Tesla. An entrepreneur doesn't need to compete with Tesla. There's Rivian, there's Lucid, and there's Chevy making EVs. know, company like Tesla and Chevy and defense contractors, you know, they contract out to thousands of companies which employ hundreds of thousands of people. That's the space. Right? And I think people, that's the space where innovation happens and that's the space where people can start a new business and put their ideas into play and grow and be acquired or acquire. ⁓ And I think the billionaire shouldn't exist thing is just pure frustration at the fact that it seems very clear that the billionaires operate on an absolutely different set of rules. If a billionaire wants it, they get it. know, Jensen Wong, ⁓ Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: found an interview with him like credit to him. The interviewer said like, hey, you paid something like eight billion dollars in taxes last year. How do you feel about that? You know, and it might have been Nvidia's paying taxes, not Jensen Wong's. And he was like, you know, we pay it. It's like, I know every year they tell us we have to write a big check and we write a big check. And do I wish taxes were lower? Yes. But, you know, I love this country and this country has given a lot to us and You know, this is one form of giving back. And so I think people see that and it's like, yeah, bro, it's fucking stupid that a billionaire pays less tax than me. You know, like that doesn't make sense as a percentage rate. Don't tell me about the net dollars. Okay. I don't want to hear about the net dollars. I don't want to hear about your $238 million central park apartment. You know what? Fucking sell it. I don't care if you sell it. Someone else is going to pay the real estate taxes on it. Doesn't have to be you, okay? Like, I don't want to hear about that. But I think that's where the billionaire shouldn't exist stuff comes from. I don't think that it's really a policy play. Derek Peterson: Correct. Yep. Yeah, I agree. but the billionaire conversation is a critical one. So like the billionaire is not existing. You know, like I don't necessarily stand behind that because I promote like, you know, if you can, if you can build a business that's worth that amount of money, like, know, what Jeff Jeff Bezos has done with Amazon from a garage to where it's at now ⁓ is literally incredible. So like, ⁓ know, ⁓ the, they're doing absolutely. amazing, but I think more than anything, the conversation we should be having about billionaires is that, you know, ⁓ Scott Galloway coined this the other day on a podcast and I thought it was brilliant. He's like, dude, billionaires don't use our planes. They don't use our healthcare. They don't use our schools. They don't use, they are not connected. So everything that matters to a working class, normal human being, they are not connected to because they don't use the same things. They fly private. They do like. They travel differently, their families are differently, they don't even use the police system. They have private security. So all of the things that they care about are not the same things that we care about as people. And we've lost representation at the highest forms of government and just about everybody in the White House and are surrounded have no idea what actually matters to the American people. And if there hasn't been a situation quite as obvious as this one since I have been alive and in the US. this is lack of representation for white middle class people is more evidently clear than ever before and which is weird to say because you know, God knows black and brown people don't have representation they need ⁓ and many minorities don't so and that's getting even worse. Well, let's jump into our conversation for today. We're going to talk military. And this could go a number of different ways, but you know, when we talk about the military, the, you know, the U S has over 300 million people in it and around a million people are active in the military at the moment. So less than 1 % are actually serving, which brings me to the point. And this was kind of the thought that I had going in today's podcast is that most Americans deeply respect the military. You'll hear it over and over again. ⁓ But they have little to no direct connection to it. so why I think let's start with this, know, like military is obviously important, but you know, what's its purpose and, know, does it even exist at this moment? Elwyn: Yeah, think there's what's like, it's an ideological to me discussion. Like what do we believe its purpose should be? What is its purpose right now? And ⁓ what does our use of military and our military in this country say about our priorities in this country? ⁓ So, I mean, the purpose of any military quite frankly is fairly obvious. It's defense. The issue is when you talk about defense, where does that defense happen and what form does that defense take? We are uniquely situated geographically in that we have the two largest moats in the history of the world on either coast. The only two countries that can attack us directly are Canada and Mexico. Every other country has to either go through them or cross 3,000 miles of ocean. It's an incredible geographic advantage that we have. So for us, when we talk about using the military in this country, almost always we're talking about using it very, very far away. And then you have to start asking why? What's the purpose? What's the policy that we're using this military for? know, World War II, pretty straightforward. You know, that was a... and we didn't go into World War II until we were bombed. You know, we didn't go into World War I until it was basically year from being over. ⁓ But, you know, it was pretty clear that we needed to step up and defend ⁓ democratic values in Europe. And we were just fighting Japan because they fought us first. ⁓ But if we go, like, after that, it's really hard to find uses of our military that... show a clear and defined purpose that helps us in the United States. So we've talked for years, was defending democracy and we had the Cold War and spheres of influence with the USSR. And that's why we had to go into Vietnam because we didn't want communism to spread. And it's why we had the Cuban Missile Crisis and all of this. And that probably worked for a time, to be honest, although we did it poorly in Vietnam. Right? So no, it didn't work there. Then from that point on, it's kind of like to me, what are we doing? Why do we need to have a military budget that reflects 35 % of all military spending worldwide and that is larger than the next eight countries combined? For what? Because if you have that, you're going to use it. So why do we have it? I don't know. I don't know what the purpose is anymore. It made sense, I think, 20 years ago, but I think in 20 years we've pretty much blown all that shit out of the water, like what our purpose might have been. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I mean, I remember growing up and at the earliest ages, right, you're playing with army guys and GI Joe's and, know, there was the there was being in the military was always looked at as a very honorable, lot of people I know that went into the military are some of the best human beings I've ever met. And a lot of them did it because they they decided it was the best option coming out of high school. But like the military has always held this aura of like, man, if you serve, like you come out with like the, utmost respect, right? And the utmost respect because of the valor of protecting our country, the thought of like, man, you're out there putting your life at risk for, you know, my freedoms. Like, thank you. I don't want to do that. So thank you for doing it. ⁓ Elwyn: Well, in theory. Derek Peterson: And in theory, yes. And so, and that's what was sold to us from at least to me for the majority of my life. Elwyn: Mm-hmm. No, I agree that that has been the pitch. Derek Peterson: Yeah. The pitches that, you know, we, you know, to defend and serve, right? That's what our, our military was, was built to do. And, know, like world war II, ⁓ you know, obviously what happened there with, ⁓ with Germany and us getting involved in the war and then dropping, ⁓ nukes on Japan, ⁓ like everything, everything that, ⁓ transpired from all of that was probably necessary to some degree. And. To be honest, us dropping nukes was probably the beginning of us setting off, setting us off as the, the, the world powerhouse as far as, the world police, ⁓ policemen, know, ⁓ for, ⁓ military use. Then we go to Vietnam, right? And Vietnam was interesting and I didn't know much about it, but Vietnam was really just, ⁓ you know, the Northern Northern Vietnam was attacking Southern Vietnam basically to Reunite them as a fully communist country and you know my initial thought when I started to read about Vietnam was like what did the u.s. Have to gain from this like what economically like why are we going in they don't have oil like where we did was there something else of value and it looks like no it looks like that was really actually in you know, I did ideal ideology Something however, you say that word I don't Yes Elwyn: Yeah, that was capital of freedom versus communism. can't let communism spreads there. What's its next step? It's like a virus, right? If it infects Southeast Asia, is it going to infect Japan and the Philippines and go down to Australia and work its way? It was just an antiviral that lasted 10 years and killed a whole bunch of people. Derek Peterson: Yeah. And every person that you've ever talked to about Vietnam that was there or participated in any way, or form ⁓ said it was awful. Like I I've never heard somebody that was like, yeah, this was a good idea. ⁓ not, not a single person. So, you know, then fast forward to Iraq, right. And Iraq, you know, ⁓ that, you know, everything that happened after nine 11 and Afghanistan, you know, that just kind of reinforced. the military rhetoric for a lot of people, especially my generation, right? Protect and serve, protect and serve. You know, this is what our military is for. Then we're attacked. We see it. It's the first time we see news on the TV all day, every day, round around the clock, cut coverage of planes flying into towers, killing, you know, thousands of American citizens. And we're like, yeah, we can never have this happen again. So then the military kind of reinforces all of that, right? It's hey, This is the most noble thing you can do. ⁓ And then we go from Afghanistan to Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction. then it starts to get foggy, right? Then it starts to, this is where for me the shift started to happen because I'm like, what are we doing? Is our military a special interest group now? we go from Afghanistan to Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction. then it starts to get foggy, right? Then it starts to, this where for me the shift started to happen because I'm like, what are we doing? ⁓ Is ⁓ our military a special interest group now? ⁓ Elwyn: Yeah. Yeah. Derek Peterson: I because it feels like it's being used more for the sake of billionaires gains than it is to protect and serve the American people. I because it feels like it's being used more for the sake of billionaires gains than it is to protect and serve the American people. Elwyn: Yeah, I think I agree. I think that there's again, because of geography, I think it's rare that our military will ever have to be used to protect and serve our people in the same way that let's say Ukraine's military would, where at any point you could see Russian soldiers lining up across the border and know they're coming in. Same with Israel, you know, and any country that has a bunch of countries bordering it where there's thousands of years of tension. ⁓ We don't really have that. That's not a threat that's imminent, certainly at all. right. So, you know, the issue then becomes, okay, how can the military be used to protect our standing in the world? You know, we are unquestionably, or we, five years ago, I would have said, we are unquestionably the strongest power in the world. ⁓ Derek Peterson: Not at the moment. Elwyn: So how can our military be used to sort of foster that and also to maintain world order? Because look, the truth of matter is there was a world order for, you know, let's say the sixties through the 2020s that kind of worked. It worked for us. I mean, we as a country did really, really well. We had our own problems. Absolutely wasn't perfect, but we were making a lot of money. We were all the people wanted to come here. All the businessmen wanted to come here. All the med students wanted to come here. and all of the investment that flows with that. The world order was working for us. So can the military be used to preserve that? Yeah, sure it can. And I think it has in a couple of places. Like if we look back to Grenada in 1983, we had the 70, we come out of Vietnam. That was a disaster. Then we had Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis. And basically we were at a We were at a pretty weak point. Our aura of strength had been diminished greatly. So, alright, let's find an opportunity to beat the shit out of a small island, right, that has a military coup and there happen to be some American medical students on that island. Great, let's send some soldiers there, fuck everything up, okay, win the battle in six days, and next year, the next year there's a democratic election and now everything's fine in Grenada. Now everybody's like, oh wait, America has this military and they just used it and they beat the crap out of somebody and they got out pretty quickly. So we don't want that, right? If we're a bad regime, if we're a military regime that wants to take over, that could happen to us, right? It happened in Panama with Noriega. We went in and in the course of a couple of days played Tom Petty Refugee really loud for a few days, surrounded his building, arrested him, boom. done in out American military strong powerful taken out the bad guy leaving the country alone okay and there's plenty of places along the way that we weren't leaving the country alone that's not the point now ⁓ same thing kind of in Kuwait in the first gulf war right we went in with a huge force 400 000 people on the ground right and we we went in beat the shit out of iraq there's their soldiers are waving white flags all over the place we get saddam hussein and you know we didn't get him That's why we went into Iraq the second time. We don't get Saddam Hussein, but we get the hell out of there and we leave it reasonably intact. And yes, I understand that's reductive. I get it. Okay. ⁓ but these are all uses of an American military might that make people pay attention. We don't get in deep enough to get fucked up. We don't get in deep enough to take too many shots to the nose to get bloodied up. We get in. Derek Peterson: Correct. Elwyn: We blow a bunch of shit up, we flex our muscle and we get out. Right? And then everybody knows they can do that. And now, you know, the state of warfare is quite clearly different. Right? I don't know if Iran has won this war, but they sure haven't lost it. And we sure haven't won it. And I don't think we won the Iraq war, you know, and Russia is not winning the Ukraine war. So. You know, this question about like, it's interesting. You said it's a special interest group. It kind of is. You know, it was the military arm of Halliburton and Dick Cheney in the Iraq war, right? It's the for hire. I don't think it's incredible to say it's the for hire military arm or mercenary arm for Israel in the Iran war. You know, but what it doesn't serve us any purpose. And when we use it like this, it's all potential negative. The only thing that can possibly happen is what's happening exactly now. People see, if I launch a fuck ton of drones and I close a waterway, now all of a sudden America don't know what to do anymore because they don't want to drop another nuke. So hard to see. Derek Peterson: Yeah. When dropping in another nuke, yeah. Dropping in another nuke would be the biggest mistake we've ever made because now the world is much more armed than it was, ⁓ you know, ⁓ 70 or 80 years ago. But the, that was the point that I think that I was trying to, to kind of wrestle with this week was just that, yeah, you know, when you're signing up to, ⁓ when you're signing up for the military now, It is a much different process than I think it would have been even 20 years ago in that the nobility of being in the military ⁓ was there, right? There was a lot of respect for it. And now with as much as we know about it, it's a different story. know, like it feels like if you sign up to join the military in any way, or form, you're signing up to be a force for you know, some CEO that's going to make a lot of money off of, you know, whatever they just, whatever move they decide to make to ⁓ collect resources for whatever business that they run. And that's, that's been the, the kind of theme since I've been an adult is just like, man, we're, we're just collecting resources at this point. And it's, it's ugly. ⁓ Elwyn: But the military in the way you describe it can serve a very, very important purpose, which is to give people, particularly people, underprivileged people from neighborhoods where they don't have the best schools, the opportunity to go serve, to sign up, and learn skills and learn technology and learn on the cutting edge of all these fields and make connections and see different parts of the world. That's an incredibly valuable purpose of the military that still exists except we're Derek Peterson: Well, yeah. Elwyn: We're squandering it by using the military in these idiotic ways. Derek Peterson: Well, and that's where I wanted to go next with this conversation because, know, so what it's used for today, in large part, I disagree with because yeah, my there, I don't necessarily agree that we should be involved in the world affairs like we currently have been, unless we're going to be consistent with it. You know, like if we're overthrowing dictators and, you know, like we did in Venezuela with Maduro. then let's look at what's going on in Africa and let's look at what's going on in a lot of the other parts of the world where there's some really fucking terrible people killing a lot of other people in their country that could be turned over. So if you're gonna start one, one, let's go for another. But ultimately where I kinda wanna get with this conversation is what does a healthy military in the United States at some point actually look like? What should the goal be for what our military is and how it operates? Elwyn: So, yeah, I'm not a military expert, so this is pure my opinion. You know, we don't need to be spending the amount of money that we're spending on military. It doesn't work nowadays. Now you need, I feel like you just need highly technological, unmanned ⁓ instruments and weapons that can be deployed pretty much anywhere in large numbers and at low cost. That's what's working. in Ukraine and that's what's working for Iran. You know, we've got Tomahawk missiles that cost 10 billion, 10 billion dollars to make or whatever insane number it is. And they've got thousands of drones that cost 25,000 to make. And you know what the thing is? If a drone blows up on your barracks in Iran, it's still something blew up in your barracks in Iran. I don't think it matters if it was a Tomahawk or a cruise missile or a Patriot missile or some other missile, some other ICBM, the boom is still the boom and that's the thing. you know, I think we need to adapt our military to what is working now and what is clearly the next generation of fighting. And I do think that we need to re rethink its purpose. Now, I do think that I'm going to, I'm like, I'm going to call myself out here. Okay. Because I find it hard to give Trump any credit when something happens. in the moment. My initial reaction is always going to be to find something bad about it, why it was bad. But if I look back on this second administration, if our military had been used to set back Iran's nuclear program 30 years and then to depose the extremely corrupt and unpopular socialist dictator of Venezuela and install an actual government, take, not try to annex the country, right? What happens next matters. But if we had done that and done it the same way we did in like Grenada, let's say, and then we went in and we took out the Ayatollah and then got out. Well, now our military is like, ⁓ wait, they can go anywhere at any time, blow a bunch of shit up with a high degree of accuracy, take out a bad guy and Yes, they're doing it for their own interests or for the interests of their allies or for the interests of their corporate executives. that's, but that's, that's a second layer to the conversation. You know, there, there is this world in the last year where Trump is sitting at the helm of a country that has taken out Maduro, taken out the Ayatollah and taken out Iran's nuclear program in 18 months. Man, I probably wouldn't be saying it if that had happened. I probably wouldn't be giving him kudos, but I would certainly be having a hard time. coming up with an argument against it. So, you know, I think that our military has to be repurposed for the 21st century. And the other reason that has to happen is because when it comes to a budget, a budget is a priority document, right? Our choices reflect our priorities. We, it sounds trite and people use as a talking point all the time and I don't care because it's fucking valid. Somebody has to knock this talking point down. Why are we spending Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: almost a trillion dollars on the military and we can't provide health care for our citizens. Right? That is a choice that our government is making on our behalf. And I don't think that the people of this country agree with that choice. And the military, think has to be repurposed to fit in our society in a way that the people recognize, okay, that's worth it. That amount of money is worth it for the valor. Derek Peterson: Correct. Yep. Elwyn: for the flag waving, for the history, for the we support our troops, for all of that borderline Psyop stuff, okay? That has a cost and we'll pay 500 billion for it because we also got some fucking healthcare, right? And I can afford a house and I can afford gas and I can afford my college education without going into the army for a GI bill that doesn't reflect anything that I wanna do with my life. So... You know, that to me, when we're talking about our military, someone has to knock that talking point down in a credible way, because until then, it's worse and worse and worse and worse. And we just have, yeah, the military industrial complex making a whole bunch of choices with our money that don't help us. They're just taking our money for themselves. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on where I think we should go from here in that it's changed so much. if we could just hit reset from the start, especially with the advancement of AI and advancement of technologies, weaponry, all the stuff that you just talked about, most of this stuff should be done. people-less ⁓ as far as our combating like any kind of actual physical combats go at least at the start right ⁓ until man actual manpower is needed but then so then my thought is is okay like well what happens if we start investing less than our military what happens to our country if we you know it doesn't feel as safe as it maybe once did and my initial thought is is man like One, we're treading, we're walking into a timeline where half of the generation that are Gen Z that's coming up right now is addicted to their phones. There's some statistics that just came out around how like ⁓ alcohol sales have plummeted. ⁓ Like I think across the board, almost like 10%, some companies worse than others. But in large part, the ⁓ consensus is just that, people are ⁓ drinking less and lonelier because they're not going out. They're at home stuck to their screen and they can't, you know, literally in some instances can't even watch a TV show without checking it. God knows they couldn't read a book, right? That's going to be ⁓ ancient if attention spans stay, continue to do what they've been doing, getting shorter and shorter. And I noticed for myself, it's that way too. So. We had brought this up on a previous podcast where like, if, you know, young men have the option of serving two years, ⁓ in the military locally, ⁓ in whatever state they're in, doesn't have to be some big ordeal where they're shipped off. But, ⁓ but if you, if you do that two years that you, your college is fully paid for your colleges, ⁓ or your trade school, or maybe the time that you spend in the military is actually learning a trade. Maybe you go and you actually learn to become an electrician, a plumber, a builder or something like maybe we start to reconstruct the framing of all of that and use the military to do it and offer people a free ride to do so. Like this is something that I could get behind as far as funding. Was it the GI Bill? Elwyn: But isn't that the GI Bill? I mean, it's basically, the GI Bill is that principle. You come and serve for two years or four years and we're going to pay for your college. Derek Peterson: Yeah, but they fucked all that up. Meaning there needs to be a clear path about what that is. And then furthermore too, the other side of that is that the money that we are investing in our military, I wouldn't be complaining about the tax dollars being spent on the military if the people that have served in our military are being taken care of. If those people had jobs and came back and they were getting the best healthcare. and they were getting taken care of and they had access to, you know, ⁓ mental health clinics and for PTSD and everything else, I would be much less against, the military spending that we currently have. But yeah, I mean, we're not doing the fundamental thing that matters the most to me, which is taking care of people that are actually putting their life on the line. They're coming back and then getting shit on because a, a lot of them are like, what was I doing there? questioning that be also then replaying all of the bad shit that they had to do while they were there ⁓ and feeling, you know, ousted by society and then not having not because of what's going on with them mentally, not being able to get a job and not being able to, you know, do things that regular Americans do. And historically, our federal government would hire these people in, you know, moderately paying jobs because, you know, we cared for our veterans at least enough to pretend and now all that's been axed as well. ⁓ And so, yeah, like maybe it's just a revisiting the GI Bill, getting the like reforming it and making it something ⁓ more modern and a little bit better. I don't know that I would require it. Not yet. But like there is a point that we get to with all this shit with iPhones and AI and technology that, yeah, maybe maybe we get to a place where, you know, military service a year without a phone. or a couple years without a phone, it benefits everybody, right? Elwyn: Yeah, there's a ton of benefits to mandatory service that, where like I'm extremely open minded for that conversation. I will say this though, like where I would differ with that because the only thing that I differ with in what you just said there is there no world where I accept this level of military funding. And here's why. I feel really confident. that if we dropped our military, if we cut our military spending in half, if we cut it from 900 billion to 450 million, and they just proposed 1.5 trillion, right? If we cut it from 900 billion to 450 billion, I don't think any of us would notice at all. We would not notice for a second except for Derek Peterson: Not a single person. Elwyn: we're spending $450 billion less a year. And if that's debt service, we're not servicing that with debt. Or if we invest it into universal health care, which from what I've read in the past, and it was a while ago, I'm pretty sure that we could do like universal preschool, universal child care, and universal health care for like 100 billion. We could still have 300 billion left over. Derek Peterson: That's that that those numbers are insane to me. It is absolutely insane that we are not doing this already. And it's because of the insurance lobby and companies like Lockheed Martin and Palantir and all these money, all these companies that are getting the investment, they're getting the government contracts, you know. Elwyn: Yeah. Yeah, so to me it's just the number, the first thing. The first thing is that this choice reflects our priority. That is not my priority. 900 billion on defense to go to bullshit, you know, to go to be poorly used in losing wars around the world is not my priority. We need healthcare. And that, you know, we said it at the beginning of the episode and I'll say it at the end of the episode. Trump said outright, we can't have healthcare because we have to fight this war in Iran. Fuck you. fuck you all the way. We don't have to fight the war in Iran. That is a choice, man. That's a choice you made. And it's not even the choice that you ran on. You were elected on not making that choice. You were elected on helping people here. And now every choice that's being made is to spend our money somewhere else and then turn around and tell us to our face that we don't have the money here because we need to spend it there. Right. So Derek Peterson: Correct. Elwyn: To me, the whole conversation, if we're not talking at the day one, minute one of meetings about, great, we're cutting your budget by 50%, respond, right? If that's not the opening salvo, it's not a conversation worth having. Derek Peterson: Agreed well, we'll leave our military conversation There for today because we're probably going to be discussing the military quite often for a very long time considering ⁓ This may be ⁓ this may be the beginning of a forever war heart with Iran so the Yeah, so who we telling to shut the fuck up today, Ellen Elwyn: Yay. Forever Wars, yay. you Alright, so today we're telling everybody over the last, like let's say 2020 to 20, let's say from when Trump got elected, 2016 to 2022, everybody who said stop calling everything racist. Everything's not racist. We're telling all those people to shut the fuck up because we know now from what we've seen in the gerrymandering and the redistricting that it is all fucking racism. Okay. It's just all racism. It's just, we're not walking down the street. You know, with a sign like Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3 saying, kill all the N words, right? It's just not that obvious. It's one level below. It's still fucking racism. Okay. Now here's the thing though. Okay. And this is the last shot. All those people need to just shut the fuck up. You were wrong. You were wrong at the time. I fucking knew it at the time. And I decided not to fight that battle because it seem worth it. And it was clearly a losing battle, but fuck you. You were all wrong and you should shut the fuck up. But here's the thing, okay, and I'm tying this back to Jews in America again. The other day there was a march down a heavily Jewish Orthodox neighborhood in New York of pro-Palestinian activists. Okay, they marched in daytime, a lot of them are wearing kafias covering their entire face, waving flags, a couple Hamas flags in there, hundreds of people marching down the street past the houses of all these Jewish people. It's a residential neighborhood, this was not. like an economic statement. And I watched this video and I'm struggling to convince, like talk myself out of the analogy between that and a bunch of people wearing white hoods walking down a black street in the sixties because the look of it was the same. Wearing a mask of an organization that sets out to kill you. Walking down the street. of the people who they would set out to kill. That is a message and it is fucking Jew hatred. Okay? In the same way that it would be racism to wear a hood and walk down the street in a black neighborhood. In the same way that it's racism to gerrymander black congresspeople out and dilute those votes. In the same way that it's racism to shoot Ahmaud Aubrey, the runner in the back. In the same way that it's racism to let George Zimmer get off killing ⁓ the kid he killed, I'm sorry I forgot his name. ⁓ All those things were racism. So is this. It's just in the form of Jew hatred. And Democrats, if you don't fucking wake up to what this is, then you're making the same mistake that you made before. Which is to have a different set of rules for yourself and for everybody else. You cannot allow a set of rules where it's okay to be racist against Jews. But you're screaming about racism in every other form. You're either for it or you're against it. You either allow it or you decry it. And when you watch a video of a few hundred keffiyeh wearing, you know, as a mask, they're wearing their keffiyeh as a mask, people walking down a Jewish street in New York and you don't decry that for what it is. And instead you say, well, Israel's bad. We don't like Israel. It's not about Jews. It's about fucking Jews. OK, it's racism. It's Jew hatred. It's the same shit. And if you don't wake up to that, man, you're going to lose me at some point. How can I defend this shit any longer? OK, and you're going to lose everybody else that sees right through this bullshit like they saw it in 2020 and 2022 and 2024. And you're going to fucking lose elections. And it's going to be your fault. So. Derek Peterson: Shut the fuck up! Elwyn: Shut the fu- or speak the fuck up, Democrats! Derek Peterson: I agree man, and that's shitty because you're right ⁓ that if there was a bunch of guy in white hoods walking down a black Black neighborhood street that would have been all over every news TV everywhere Yeah Yep agreed ⁓ and also sorry for on behalf of giant white guys everywhere ⁓ Elwyn: The easiest thing in the world. This is no different. Derek Peterson: If I can be, sorry for that. Elwyn: I don't think there are many giant white guys in that crowd though, I will say that. Derek Peterson: Well yours, yes ⁓ Fair fair point well Elwyn: You Is that a Jews or short joke? Did Jews make a Jews or short joke? Derek Peterson: Yes, and that is a stereotype I will, every Jewish person I know is like five foot four. So, I look even more giant next to all of my Jewish friends. You actually might be the tallest Jewish friend, I know. Elwyn: I'm fine. ⁓ I like nothing more than making someone feel uncomfortable about the joke they just made. Derek Peterson: Um, yeah, you could make me uncomfortable sometimes. I think that's a fair point. the, I'm, uh, I'm always like, was that okay? That wasn't, that wasn't too far, was it? Elwyn: It was okay, your joke was good. Your joke was good. It's just my jujitsu way of being a dick. Derek Peterson: That's all right. So what are we talking about next week? Elwyn: We are going to talk about, so next week my oldest daughter graduates high school a couple hours after we're going to record. And I've been thinking a lot about just when you stand literally at a moment in time that in which you enter a new phase of life and the reflections back and the hopes for forward. And you can tell I'm not like I'm emotional already talking about it, but just like, yeah, like that. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I like that. Elwyn: the trip and the trip to come and what you do as a dad, as a parent for 18 years and then what you do when you set them free. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I can see it man. Well, I'm excited for next week episode. I think that's going to be fun because I'm only a few years behind you. the be good, good prep work for myself. So we'll see you all next week. Adios. Elwyn: See you next week.