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The End of History: Trump’s NATO Exit and the Future of Totalitarian Regimes · Bourbon & Rum

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There is a revolutionary impetus at the heart of the American
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that's where we are we were A and I don't think that the
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founding fathers were itching to pick a fight.
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If you. Go through the 6th floor museum
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in Dallas. You if you go in there believing
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every word of the Warren Report, you're going to walk out of
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there like Alex Jones. What percentage of China's
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economy is US buying? Like knock off Tupperware in
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shipping containers from them? Did they did?
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Did they want us to go through the Cultural Revolution and stop
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buying things? I don't think so.
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Welcome to Bourbon and Rum, the podcast dedicated to civil
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conversation. I'm Kent, I like rum and I'm
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from the left side of the aisle and I'm Kyle.
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I like bourbon. I tend to be a little more
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conservative. We're brothers talking politics
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for bourbon and rum. What are you drinking Well.
1:10
I'm drinking bottles on my shelf that have one drink left and so
1:15
this last one I had was a there was a little bit left of A179212
1:21
year and then assuming our conversation goes well, I've got
1:24
a little bit left in a bottle of bland.
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So I'm trying to clear shelf space here.
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What are you drinking? Excellent.
1:29
Well, I I got something delicious tonight.
1:32
This is Plantaray is the brand used to be Plantation and they
1:38
changed the name to Plantaray. This is called Stiggins's Fancy
1:44
pineapple infused dark rum. It's pineapple infused Barbados
1:50
dark rum. Oh yeah, You know, I got my wife
1:54
a bottle of that. She really likes spiced rum, but
1:59
I got some of that pineapple rum and man, that is that makes for
2:03
some good cocktails. That's good.
2:05
Yeah, it's pretty good, Sipper. Well, interesting times.
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We're just a little ways removed from the ill-fated White House
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correspondents dinner and and maybe kind of talking about
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that. What break that down.
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What did you I I'm so pleased that nobody was hurt.
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I guess that an agent got a couple of pellets but no serious
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injuries that, you know, that could have been really, really
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bad. Yeah.
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Well, just. I mean, yeah, a few
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indiscriminate shots and a crowd that size and somebody could
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really, yeah, get hurt. Yeah, agreed.
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I don't know quite what to make of it.
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I, you know, Trump points out that people have shot at him
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because he's the most consequential president.
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I did see somebody who noticed that Gerald Ford had two similar
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attacks within a couple of months of each other.
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So I don't know if that if if the consequentiality argument
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really holds well the other. Thing I found funny as I saw you
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know, several people quoted in the days and week after and
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they're like well you know we still don't know why he did this
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really he. Basically told the world.
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Why he did this but you know. I mean, I would think 1's
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manifesto would be a piece of evidence.
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I just have no idea how this could have happened.
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Yeah, I'm it. It's insane.
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We we need to get past this thing.
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But I have to say, I wonder, you know, you can write it down.
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I'm not usually the agree with Trump about anything type.
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But yeah, I I've said before, I think that we, you know, for all
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the griping about the ballroom, I I think it's crazy that we've
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been setting up a tent on the South Lawn for big dinners for
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this country that that seems beneath us.
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And why, you know, this isn't the only big event that you'd
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have in the nation's capital. And so a secure place to hold it
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seems to make total sense to me. Yeah, and it I think they'll
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figure that out eventually. You know, you think about the
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the spaces that are in the original White House, like the
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the East Room and that they hold for events.
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And it's like, you know, they're, they're working off the
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scale of 200 years ago. Exactly.
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Size standpoint, you know, so right, yeah, I mean.
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I think. One way to think about this,
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though, and and it does go to the degree of the rhetoric piece
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of hate and, and you know, people say whatever they want.
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We've gone down the free speech path.
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I'm not in in favor of limiting how people characterize a
5:26
president or they hate the guy and they think he's Hitler or
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they think he's this. But the part I'm interested in
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exploring a bit is I don't, I mean, this guy, you know,
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probably find out, you know, he there was some mental and
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emotional challenges. But you know, if you read his
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story and read what he's saying, he seems like he's the guy who
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was leading a fairly contained to life.
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You know, he's a teacher and he's going to church.
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I mean, he seemed like a an upstanding member of society.
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And I guess where I'm going with this is, you know, and I think
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everybody has to make this decision for themselves of at
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what point am I going to take arms in defense of the
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constitution, in defense of the country, in defense of what I
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believe in? You know, in fact, they did AI
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saw some article today that they asked the German population.
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I'd have to pull the the reference, but it was something
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like 6 and 10 said they would not take up arms to fight for
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their country. Like, no, I mean, no matter what
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happens, I'm not fighting, you know, or something.
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And I don't know what the question was.
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You know, it's probably more nuanced than that.
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But at some point, does every person have even a
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responsibility or a duty? At what point do you take arms
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and go fight against the corruption?
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And if that individual believed that Donald Trump was, you know,
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much of what he's made out to be in certain circumstances, there
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are people and and there is probably people that would that
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will and probably have justified an active action like this.
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You know, so then it becomes like, is there a point at which
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any government that somebody says, you know what, it's time
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I'll take a rifle or a gun or whatever and go race out Now, I
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don't, I don't think obviously, I'm I'm not condoning obviously
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this in any way, shape or form. I guess I'm just asking the
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question that if you lived in a you know, we talked talk about
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being in our own media worlds. If you're in a world where the
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devil is the president and he needs to come out for you to
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defend the Constitution, you know, is that is that is this a
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problem we're going to see more of?
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I think it's a fairpoint. My I, I, I do think that, I
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mean, there are, you know, when in the course of human events,
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it becomes necessary for one people to separate themselves
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from another starting line of the Declaration of Independence.
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You know, I mean, we had King Charles speak to Congress and,
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you know, 250 years of kind of smooth things over.
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But that's exactly what the revolution was.
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And and I don't know how this is going to play this all me need
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to be edited out. There is a revolutionary impetus
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at the heart of the American. That's where we are.
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We were A and I don't think that the founding fathers were
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itching to pick a fight. I think what they would have
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preferred is that the British just packed up their tents and
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went back home. But there is a it it's
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undeniable that there is that that there is that stream
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through our history. And, you know, I've, I've
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thought about it. Not not like I'm contemplating,
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but yeah. I mean, is there a line at which
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I would fight for something? I don't know if I'm like the
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never fight for. But this is a whole different
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rabbit hole that we'll go down in a minute.
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I guess what I would say is this, to paraphrase Aragorn from
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The Lord of the Rings, there may come a day when the thugs are
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knocking on your door and you got to fight back to keep your
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country, but this is not that day.
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We're not there. And I and no, no rational
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person, you know, I, I, I, I know you think that Trump gets a
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bad rap in the media. I think that he cultivates
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everything that he gets. But I, I've not heard or seen
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anything certainly in my news feed, which is pretty liberal,
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that would lead you to, first of all, I, I don't think we're at
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the political violence stage. But moreover, what the hell
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would killing Trump do for us? Like, yeah, like, you know, I
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got a lot of personal problems with the guy, but those really
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are personal. I, I'm, I, I would have an
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equal, maybe not the same, but as vehement a reaction to a
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President Vance or a President Johnson or, you know, I, I'm not
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like there's nothing on the horizon that I'd want to trade
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for, so no. Well, yeah, and I and I'm not,
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you know, and again, we've got to be honestly extremely careful
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with any type of discussion of this sort.
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You know, we don't want to, we don't, we don't want to meet our
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local Secret Service agents. Of course, you know, there's,
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there's certainly, no, we we certainly condemn this violence.
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I guess I'm just thinking about is that is it a risk that others
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who are mostly rational people get worked up enough into a
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frenzy to go do something like this?
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And how do we prevent that risk? And I, I think, you know, we're
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both, you know, you take your most extreme left position.
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I take my most extreme right position.
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I think we're all more sensible human beings.
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And we're like, look, I mean, you know, now if if there was,
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you know, you know, people compare Trump to Hitler and I
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and you know, we can go down a rabbit hole of why people do
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that. If the comparison was because
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millions of people were being exterminated.
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I, I think, OK, we got a pretty good, we got a pretty good
12:23
justification to be going and taking them arms for ourselves.
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But I think the reality is of whoever's in charge, there's
12:33
going to be a degree, a group of the population that is unhappy
12:36
with it. I'm just thinking about, are
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there other people that are not like, you know, like Unabomber,
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mad, crazy, but actually relatively sane folks, but are
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so worked up from an emotional standpoint and their little
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niche feed that they go and they do something, you know, like,
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you know, like not worried about imprisoning these people, but
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it's like you hate for somebody to be successful.
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And it could happen just as easily with the right, you know?
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Well, I think it there's examples of it with the right,
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the guy who went to go shoot up the pizza place, you know, he'd
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been reading and was convinced that this was the the hub for
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all of these people abusing kids and right, because.
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I I think the scary part of this is, and I think we do a
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disservice if we say, hey, you know, these people are all
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crazy. Well, crazy is a continuum.
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And, you know, if I look at Ted Kaczynski and Cole Allen, Cole
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Allen is not Ted Kaczynski. I mean, he may not be rational
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enough to have a podcast with somebody with different
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political views and have a civil dialogue, but he's not, you
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know, straitjacket either. And so, you know, if you lay out
14:07
that continuum, there's probably a degree of folks who are at
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risk. Well, I don't know.
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I, I, I think that to that degree, is there culpability on
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the media for catastrophizing? Yeah, probably, probably some.
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Well, but you're not going to fix it with the media.
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No, people are going to say whatever they want to say.
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But I was also going to say, I mean, one of the things that
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bugs me most about Trump is, is it's it's because of his nature
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that the world is enemies or people that do what I tell them
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like, and it's a binary for him and.
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Are you, are you referring to Trump or are you you're
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referring to the famous speech on the floor of the Senate?
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You're either for us or you're against us.
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Well, I'm just saying that that everything like everything comes
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down to there's there's no degree with him of you.
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You either do exactly what I tell you, you find me the 20,000
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votes, Brad Raffensburg or you, you know, you do what I tell you
15:24
or you're dead to me. And that attitude, I think
15:33
that's a, that's an obstacle in our debate these days.
15:38
I think it's part of what makes political debate so so toxic
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because the tribalism. People like their identities in
15:47
crisis. If you disagree with somebody, I
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don't know, I just think that's a factor in the kind of toxicity
15:57
that gets some at least surface apparent non hermit in the woods
16:04
guy to take a gun to a hotel. Well, and I guess that requires
16:11
more research, I guess. But then you do wonder about, I
16:15
mean, the other, you know, other people that have tried to do an
16:21
assassination in the past. I mean, John Hinckley, obviously
16:24
he was a little bit out there. But some of these folks, like, I
16:26
don't know the stories of these guys who went after Ford or, you
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know, there's been other plots throughout.
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It's just it and I, you know, yeah, we may learn more about
16:38
this guy, may not. I don't know.
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I mean, like, I kind of feel like we're not going to learn
16:41
anything about it. Like that dude that took a shot
16:45
at him and or shot him in Pennsylvania and heard a damn
16:49
thing about that guy for. I mean, he like went completely.
16:55
There's no media reports or anything.
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I don't know why that is. It's really odd to me because
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you think, like, John Hinckley's getting books written about him
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for years and that kid that shot him in Pennsylvania is like,
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right, completely. Out of the picture almost erased
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Yeah. Well, and that fuels you you
17:20
should you should have my YouTube feed for a week.
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You there's you know, there's a there's a sizeable contingent of
17:29
people and. And this is not really a left
17:31
thing. I think this is a detached from
17:35
reality thing, but people talking about, you know, that
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there was something staged to that.
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I saw somebody breaking it down and I, you know, I thought it
17:48
was BS. But he's got like frame by frame
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and it's like this press guy is there and the shots fire and he
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goes away for five seconds and he comes back with a bunch of
18:02
media photographers that he brought out there.
18:07
And that's when the picture was captured of Trump with his first
18:10
raised. I I think when stuff goes crazy,
18:15
I think people, I think stuff just looks crazy.
18:17
So I, I mean, I didn't think much of that, but there's people
18:20
that are like, see, that was a setup.
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Well, and there's also what I see, what I see a lot on the
18:26
right is when you have mass shooters or assassination
18:33
attempts, if those persons ideological views don't fit the
18:38
narrative that the mainstream media is hoping they'll fit,
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you're going to see a lot less of that.
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You know, So like when you've seen some of these trans
18:48
shooters, for instance, well, it's like crickets.
18:51
And because nobody really wants to talk about something that may
18:54
impact, you know, I mean, to some degree that would be
18:57
natural of a, of a group of people that they don't
19:00
necessarily want to talk to that, you know, it's easy.
19:03
And that's why I think it it to some degree, it's a lot easier
19:07
if somebody is batshit crazy because then he's like, well, I
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mean, see, it has nothing to do with anything else.
19:16
Well, something that we've. The next bottle?
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Talked about extensively outside the podcast given the proximity
19:23
of your residence to Dealey Plaza is the whole Kennedy thing
19:27
and and why did that generate such a level of conspiracy
19:33
theories and I we've talked you've.
19:36
Been OK? Have you gotten the tour of the
19:39
6th? Floor Museum.
19:42
Well, you know, honestly, I think the best summary of that
19:46
whole thing was our old man who his perspective was that he
19:53
thought that it's it's possible that Oswald was just kind of a
19:59
rogue guy. The problem was that the
20:04
establishment thought it was a setup deal and they were so
20:07
worried that there was some kind of cover up out there that they
20:12
wanted to cover. We, we don't really know what
20:15
happened because their whole goal was to obfuscate and just
20:20
hide it. Yeah, yeah.
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Well, that there that and I, and you know, I mean, case of point
20:30
of that is if you go through the 6th floor museum in Dallas, you
20:35
if you go in there believing every word of the Warren report,
20:40
you're going to walk out of there like Alex Jones.
20:43
I mean, you're going to think there's six shooters and like,
20:47
it doesn't make any sense. You know, you just see, you just
20:50
see where the guy shot him, you know, because all the trees they
20:53
showed in the pictures that they cut those trees so that they're
20:57
the exact same size that they were in the day.
21:01
And you see him where he had to weave through those trees to hit
21:05
him in the back of the head when, I mean, he had shots
21:09
galore that would have been, you know, a kid could take.
21:13
Yeah. It's just crazy.
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Yeah. But I think I'm kind of with,
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I'm kind of with what you're saying now it to me, a lot of it
21:24
is it's I hate to say it, I'm going to say the E word, but a
21:30
lot of it's like the Epstein thing.
21:32
I think everybody's wanting a smoking gun, you know,
21:39
explanation that's going to shock everybody and lay it all
21:43
out there. And I think you're going to be
21:45
disappointed. Well, yeah, 'cause wouldn't it
21:48
feel better if that whole thing was the culmination of a 50 year
21:56
experiment by the Mossad to control the world's most
21:59
powerful people? And you realize, no, maybe it's
22:03
just a Jackass, right? Like that's more, that's more
22:10
disturbing. The fact that it took the Mossad
22:12
50 years to hack us. OK, well, that's not terrible.
22:17
Some goofball from Brooklyn, Yeah, figures out a thing that
22:25
people are into and he monetizes it and he buys an island.
22:29
Like that's kind of hard to swallow.
22:32
It's. Funny, almost full circle, kind
22:35
of this Coal Island thing. It's like if it turns out he was
22:40
just somebody that got hyped up reading the news and pissed off,
22:44
and other than that he's a fairly normal guy.
22:47
I think that's scarier to grasp. Then you know, he was hired by
22:53
the Mossad or he was a you know, there's some crazy explanation,
22:58
right? I want to pursue something
23:03
because that comment by the German people, the.
23:07
That really comment that right can't so I don't screw that up.
23:11
But it made me think about something like, you know, we've
23:16
talked extensively about the nature of warfare changing, and
23:23
it kind of makes you wonder if you live in Germany, if you're
23:29
my age and you live in Germany, you were either in East Germany
23:34
or West Germany back in the day, right?
23:36
So you've lived under either a divided Germany or a united
23:42
Germany. If you're older, you might have
23:47
lived under 3, you know, But like, one of the things that I'd
23:55
be thinking is like, who are we fighting to protect our 16%?
24:03
Wow. Would definitely take up arms.
24:05
Would definitely. Yeah.
24:07
But OK. So one of the things you got to
24:11
think about is the adversary, like if they're thinking, all
24:15
right, we're either Germany or the French and the Brits come in
24:21
and we make a united Europe and they want to conquer us.
24:24
They're like, well, I don't know.
24:27
I go to France every weekend. I've been to Britain three
24:30
times. It's OK.
24:32
Who cares? You do.
24:34
You know what I mean? Like the difference?
24:35
Is what's the impact? Or is it going to be, you know,
24:40
we're going to be. I was watching Seinfeld rerun
24:44
last night and I forget the title episode, but Elaine is
24:50
dating it, this guy. And she's describing him to
24:54
George. And he's like, yeah, you know,
24:56
he wears drab clothing all the time and he doesn't like to
24:59
spend money. And he's, he's a part of this
25:02
strange organization. And George like he's a
25:04
communist, you know, and then he goes down this whole path.
25:07
And yeah, of course, the guy is a communist.
25:08
And they get in this argument because she wants to buy a
25:11
striped shirt for him. He's like, oh, I just want, you
25:13
know, olive drab colors you. Know well, OK, so little thought
25:20
experiment here. I mean, I'm going to invalidate
25:25
a lot of things that I've said over the years.
25:27
But like we're worried that China wants to take us over.
25:35
What would that actually look like?
25:37
Like if China, if we just waved the white flag and said, China,
25:42
we're we're all yours, you're in charge.
25:47
I mean, what percentage of China's economy is US buying
25:52
like knock off Tupperware in shipping containers from them?
25:56
Do they did did they want us to go through the Cultural
26:00
Revolution and stop buying things?
26:04
I don't think so. Like, what would they want it to
26:08
be? I am not arguing that we would
26:10
just roll over and let China take over.
26:13
But but really, what does conquest today look like?
26:19
I mean, the whole Ukraine thing comes down to this.
26:22
And it's one of the ambiguities that I think it's hard.
26:25
There's people that live in the western or the eastern provinces
26:29
and they're they're probably like, well, no, I'm a Ukrainian.
26:33
I want to be in Ukraine, but I don't know as long as the
26:37
grocery store is open like at some point, what do you what do
26:42
you care? Well, yeah, and I think you kind
26:46
of hit on it earlier. I think a lot of it is the
26:51
American viewpoint, which is far different than other countries.
26:59
Yeah, I think, you know, those countries takes us over economy
27:03
could be great. Hell, we could be making more
27:05
money. There could be all that's going
27:07
to be good. But the But the part that I
27:10
think America cherishes the most are the things that would be in
27:16
jeopardy. Like you used to be a pastor.
27:19
Try being a pastor in China right now.
27:21
I mean, as long as you you use their abridged Bible, which
27:25
probably replaces like, you know, the emperor instead of God
27:29
or something. But, you know, freedom of
27:32
speech, all the Bill of Rights things, you know, freedom of
27:34
assembly, the Tiananmen Square situation that is important to
27:38
us. But if you're in a place that
27:41
that largely doesn't exist or isn't that widely enforced.
27:45
Yeah, you're a great point. Like Germany.
27:49
You know, I was reading something, I don't know the
27:53
source, I could pull it out, but something that they were talking
27:56
about, you know, many countries have a Bill of Rights, but
28:01
they're mostly meaningless because they're not really,
28:05
they're not part of the, they're not core of the constitution.
28:08
Like freedom of speech here is actually freedom of speech and
28:11
it's a constitutional right that's guaranteed.
28:15
You know, we talked about England, for instance, you know,
28:17
they got this law. They arrested 15,000 people last
28:20
year for social media violations.
28:22
Well, if you're living in a place that's going to arrest you
28:24
for a Facebook post, to your point, China takes over.
28:29
OK, Well, I mean, I know, I know I can't do this or I can't go to
28:33
church. What they do and I it, it's
28:36
really that apathy, that developments, I think in these
28:40
areas where the government is already got too much power.
28:44
Yeah, well, again, I'm I'm not arguing for it just is
28:48
interesting. It makes me.
28:49
Know it's a great angle to talk through.
28:53
It makes me think about a book. I guess it was actually
28:57
technically an essay, and I'm looking it up so that I get my
29:01
facts right. The End of History, which is
29:04
written by Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist,
29:09
and he wrote it in 1989. And so it's 1989.
29:14
Think about the setting, right? This is after the fall of the
29:18
Berlin Wall, but before the Iraq war or before the Gulf, Gulf
29:25
storm, the first Gulf War. And like, it's, it's like the
29:30
only time you could have actually written this book.
29:33
But his point was kind of this after the communism falls, his
29:38
point was like, you know, they have different values and stuff.
29:43
But the bottom line is that you look at the way the economy goes
29:48
and honestly, American style Western capitalism is so far
29:56
superior in effectiveness, maybe not morality, but in
29:59
effectiveness than anything else that's comparable.
30:04
His point was like history's over the struggle between people
30:09
trying to, you know, dominate their will to things.
30:12
That's kind of my point. Like if China took us over,
30:17
whatever else they wanted us to do, whatever freedoms they
30:21
wanted to take from us, they want us going to Costco on a
30:24
Saturday morning, whatever else happens.
30:28
And in other words, that like that.
30:32
And, and his point would be broader than just economics,
30:36
that freedom itself. And, you know, candidly, China,
30:40
for all of its flaws, is a hell of a lot more progressive now
30:44
than it was in the era of Tiananmen Square, right?
30:47
Like, again, I'm not papering over their flaws, but even they
30:54
have, you know, they've come around way more and they're
31:00
still struggles, you know what they're doing in Hong Kong.
31:02
But even they've kind of concluded, you know, well, if
31:06
you let the people do their own thing, it kind of works out
31:10
better. Yeah, I don't know.
31:13
I mean, I think that's still a pretty repressive place.
31:18
Of course, I and you know, I think that also then is there a
31:27
relationship between a fully free society in a less fully
31:32
free society in terms of consumption and productivity.
31:36
You know, and I, I don't know, I mean, China is certainly a
31:44
pretty productive place. There's a lot getting
31:46
accomplished there. But would they be who they are
31:50
as an economy without us as the consumer?
31:53
Yeah, Yeah, I think it's a good question.
31:58
You know, I, so I'm going to admit this, I don't want to
32:04
sound like an asshole, but, or more of an asshole than
32:07
normally, but you know, we, we grew up in Michigan in the auto
32:11
industry. There were a lot of people that
32:13
were really that buying a Japanese car was considered a,
32:23
you know, kind of a mortal sin. And, you know, a mentality that
32:28
says look for the Made in America label on everything.
32:32
And, you know, I love this country, but I've always
32:37
resisted. I'm like, I'll buy if it's made
32:41
America, if it's made better, if it's an like, I believe in the
32:45
market economy. And I'm not going to give
32:48
somebody a pass to make crap just because they make it in
32:51
Detroit rather than Mexico. Like, no.
32:58
But you know, when you put it like that, it makes me wonder
33:05
more and more. I think about a lot.
33:07
I think about it more than I act on it.
33:09
But what what does my purchasing and investing power, you know,
33:14
how is that governed by my values?
33:17
And should I buy American not because the stuff is better or
33:21
because I'm just approaching A protectionist regime, but to say
33:26
no, I'm not going to buy cheap crap out of a shipping container
33:30
from China because cheap crap out of a shipping container in
33:33
China was made by people that are arguably unfree?
33:39
Yeah. But in in, I think that's I
33:44
think that's a lofty aspiration. The problem with that logic is
33:51
you start going down that rabbit hole.
33:53
I mean, you know, the only answer is we all go out and live
33:58
in the woods someplace off a grid because everything you're
34:02
going to touch is going to be tainted by some either, you
34:05
know, the sweatshop doing it or corporations that are operating
34:10
in a way that you don't agree with or they're sponsoring
34:12
people that you don't, you know, because I, I'm always seeing
34:16
these, what was it just recently?
34:18
Somebody's like, well, we need to boycott Starbucks.
34:23
And I'm like, OK, I mean, I don't even, I don't know what
34:28
they were pissed off about. But like, you know, you start
34:32
playing that game, you're not going to buy a damn thing from
34:34
anybody. Right, Right.
34:36
Because that presumes that Starbucks is any more villainous
34:43
than Caribou or Big B or nothing.
34:48
You know what I mean? Like, that's the problem, is the
34:51
knowledge of it or the visibility to it.
34:55
Yeah. Yeah.
34:56
I don't know. I'm, I'm not arguing in favor
34:59
of, you know, I, for one, welcome our new Chinese over
35:03
Lawrence. But it it does make you think,
35:09
you know, how much of this are we running and how much of this
35:12
is circumstantial, too? Well, and, but I think to me,
35:17
the bigger question that raises is, you know, there's not,
35:26
there's a lot of places that are not going to be willing to
35:28
fight. And, and it kind of goes back to
35:30
this whole, you know, this old NATO thing, you know, and Trump
35:35
wanted to exit NATO. Well, there's a reason these
35:38
people aren't spending much on defense.
35:39
Most of their people don't even want a, a defense.
35:42
Like they, they don't care, you know, and so then it's like, who
35:46
are we alliance, alliance with that they they don't even care
35:51
if I mean, the majority of the population be fine getting to
35:55
get taken over by Russia. It's like, what the hell are we
35:57
fighting for? Well, but then how much of it,
36:00
how much of that security, you know, we would flatter ourselves
36:06
to say that, oh, you know, they know the United States is going
36:09
to come in and protect them. I don't know.
36:11
I look at what Putin's done or not been able to do in Ukraine.
36:17
I think even a even a anemic German, French, British military
36:26
probably are a sufficient deterrent that he's not going to
36:29
try to run troops across Poland, go after him.
36:33
You know what I mean? Well.
36:34
I mean, I think, I mean, honestly, I think the strongest,
36:40
the the strongest argument for why NATO doesn't need to exist
36:45
anymore is Russia is not the all powerful nation everybody wants
36:48
to make them out to be. I mean, they can't field an
36:50
army. Everybody's, you know, sucking
36:54
down vodka and can't, they can't accomplish anything.
36:57
I don't, I don't think we ought to be that worried about now you
37:01
want to say, hey, we want to form the NATO of Southeast Asia
37:04
or maybe maybe there's some containment that goes on there.
37:08
But yeah, I don't know. We tried that that game a couple
37:12
of times in the past. Well.
37:14
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
37:18
Maybe we've. Go to a small nation that's in
37:22
Southeast Asia, Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
37:28
It's, it's just a interesting thing that end of history is an
37:34
interesting idea. And of course it just got
37:36
laughed out of the world, you know, right after it was
37:39
published, because then we went into the Desert Storm and you
37:43
know, that this, I mean, we've been at war in the Middle East
37:48
since 1990 to 1° or another, right?
37:52
Or maybe. Before that though, there is a
37:56
relation there and I talked about it a little bit a couple
38:00
podcasts ago, in that the anecdote or the antidote, not
38:07
the anecdote, the antidote to my terminology, right?
38:12
The antidote against the totalitarianism of the old
38:17
Middle East is free market economies, right?
38:20
Even if there's some totalitarianism like, you know,
38:23
the UAE or Saudi Arabia or what have you.
38:25
I mean, the success of those countries compared to the old
38:30
guard of Iran and Syria and some of these is really striking.
38:35
And and I and I, you know, you know, we're following the Iran
38:43
situation. We hope, you know, I'm hopeful
38:45
this is successful. Not sure if this initiative is
38:48
going to do it or not, but I don't I think the days are
38:51
numbered for these totalitarian regimes that are solely reliant
38:56
on totalitarianism and the ruling class and the ideologues
39:02
just because of the I mean, to me, the Gulf nations are a
39:08
testament to like and those are those are just as challenging of
39:13
a cultural barrier to the stable country is Iran or Iraq.
39:21
But and even Iraq now is come around because of largely
39:25
because of that investment and because of that stable economic
39:29
success. I I really think how long the
39:34
rest of these you guys who stay in power, who knows, but their
39:38
days are numbered. Yeah.
39:40
And even China, I mean, look, you know, we're talking about
39:42
strategically opposition to China and everything else.
39:45
But part of why we haven't been at war with China and the part
39:50
of why we have peace is because everybody's going to Costco and
39:55
buying crap that's made in China, you know?
39:57
You know what I mean? It's like these economic factors
40:00
are what keeps the world moving in a lot of ways.
40:04
Yeah, yeah, you, you know, as recently as World War Two, there
40:11
was a lot less of that global networking of stuff.
40:17
And so how much does that fabric just act as a security blanket?
40:21
To a degree. Hey, thanks for joining us on
40:28
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40:30
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