Latest / The Junto Podcast / E20: The Unexpected Legacy of 'Have Gun, Will Travel'

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E20: The Unexpected Legacy of 'Have Gun, Will Travel' · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining us.
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Music.
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Hello, America, and welcome to episode 20 of the Junto podcast.
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Thanks for sticking with me. So, today we're going to talk about an unusual topic.
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We're going to talk about an
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old TV western that I watch weekly that I thought was ahead of its time.
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And it was called Have Gun, Will Travel.
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This show was groundbreaking, in my opinion. It ran from 1957 to 1963.
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So this was a time frame kind of before counterculture really sucked in and
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the hippie culture of the 60s and things like that.
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And we're going to break it down into segments. And then we're going to kind
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of explore Paladin, the main character Paladin, and his frigging,
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the profound depth of the character and the sharpness of the character.
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And then for each segment Then we're going to see how the themes That we're
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talking about in the show Why it was ahead of its time How the themes kind of
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echo What's going on in modern social and political,
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Environment And personal issues and stuff like that So.
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What made the show Pioneer Have Gun Will Travel I thought was a trailblazing show Pun intended,
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They kind of, the writers kind of skillfully merged Old West action with intellectual
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and sort of like cerebral exploration.
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They got into some fairly deep psychology on that show.
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And most of the acting and stuff, I mean, yeah, the show was a 60s show.
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It was a 50s and 60s show. There was still a little bit of, you know,
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it was a television show. So they didn't go into kind of depth that movies go
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into with like necessarily the acting.
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I thought the acting was good, but you know, it was a little campy at times.
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But the psychology and the depth of intellectualism they got into,
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I think it was ahead of anything else in its time.
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Now, Wanted Dead or Alive was also pretty introspective.
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The character josh randall yeah he was a pretty complex guy
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but so the creators of
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the show kind of fashion paladin was
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acted was portrayed by richard boone
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and richard boone was well he was a well-known actor well he did a lot of westerns
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and stuff like that he was also heck ramsay in a different in an older series
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or newer series well newer compared to this one but But the paladin,
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the main character of the show,
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was like a refined sort of gentleman gunfighter.
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He was like a dandy, right? He lived in a hotel, a swanky hotel in San Francisco.
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Now, the time frame of this show was post-Civil War.
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Not probably post, probably 1870s and 80s is when this show was meant to be happening.
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So he was a bit of a dandy, right? When they showed him in the beginning of
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every episode, you know, he's wearing very dapper clothes, very ornate and dapper clothing.
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And he's usually wooing some woman near a piano or in the luxurious lobby of
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this hotel that he lives in. But...
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But he was a gunfighter, right? That was it. And every episode he pulls out
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his business card and it just said, have gun, will travel.
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Wire Paladin, San Francisco. It was pretty awesome. I've got some business cards
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made up, very similar to it.
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But anyway, and he charged, you know, if somebody was wealthy looking for his
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services and he charged them,
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but also he worked, you know, he'd work for pro bono really for the,
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for like poor folks, oppressed folks.
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And usually this stuff kind of, this is, they developed throughout the, the episode.
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And this dynamic, though, this sort of mercenary for hire, gunfighter for hire dynamic,
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what it did was it facilitated like this just real profound analysis of like ethical conundrums.
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Conundrums, you know, like real deep right and wrong and things like that,
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including justifications for violence and a desire like Paladin always sought
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for a more peaceful and equitable resolution for these conflicts.
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And these themes got deeper than just the superficial shoot-em-up action of
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the cowboy pictures of the day, the hero and villain, where it was just very,
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very clear hero and villain. You know what I mean?
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Like it was, was that guy right or wrong or what? It was, yeah, it was kind of crazy.
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So these ethical issues,
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these conflicts, these ethical conflicts with sort of gray area,
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right and wrong stuff, kind of puts me in mind today, what's the big ethical topic of today?
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And it's got nothing to do with gunfighting or anything like that.
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I think there's a lot of ethical debates around AI right now,
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especially as it pertains to warfare,
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combat, and then also local policing, law enforcement.
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And then also where you know the advancement of technology the rapid almost
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out of control advance of technology clashes kind of with the moral uh use of
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it and it's getting scrutinized but.
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Nobody's putting the brakes on it. And the reason nobody's putting the brakes
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on it is because for everything bad that you can probably imagine that AI is
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going to do, that you can also point out something good that AI is going to do.
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And, you know, I can't say that I'm on either side or one side or the other completely because,
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yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's probably
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going to lead to a totalitarian surveillance state, I would guess.
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And speaking of that, I have said this before, but Atlanta specifically is the
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most surveilled city in America.
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Did you know that? How bizarre is that and we'll get into that in another another episode,
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So I always say to my wife and she you know, i've been watching have gun will
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travel for all my life, but It's on there's a streaming service called pluto,
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and I And pal and have gun will travel is on there and I watch two episodes every sunday.
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At least two. Well, normally two. Bright and early Sunday morning,
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I'll watch two episodes just to put me in the right frame of mind there.
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But I always told my wife that Paladin has all, he deals with complex social
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issues, man, that were complex, that are complex even for today, but especially in 1957.
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And so that series very cleverly engages with frictions in society, man.
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And they talked about, back then, they talked about discrimination and marginalization
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of people well ahead of when they became like real nationwide issues.
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And one of the writers of that show was gene roddenberry and
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if you don't know gene roddenberry i'm pretty sure was the creator of star trek
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and you know star trek had some sort of unique subject matter in there as well
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never mind all the science fiction stuff but they they kind of wrote in these like,
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allegorical narratives that they kind of champion the rights of the of the oppressed
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and disenfranchised populations.
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And on that show specifically, they talked a lot about Native American sort of marginalization.
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They talked a lot about immigrants and women's rights and religious minorities.
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And they didn't, I don't remember so far an episode. I don't really remember
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much where they get into like the African-American racism and stuff like that much.
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But again I have not seen that entire series
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in its in its totality I watch
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two episodes every Sunday starting at
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season one you know a couple maybe last year or something and obviously I miss
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some Sundays but I'm on like season four man like back in those days a series
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for a season would have like 80 odd episodes they're like these days where a
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season is like 12 or 18 episodes,
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Man, they were working back then. You know what I'm saying?
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On the studios and the sets in Hollywood, they had Western setups.
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Boy, they were filming nonstop, man.
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But yeah, they talked on issues about marginalized communities.
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And it's interesting to look at that now to see it from that time.
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And this was prior to the, you know, the big, the civil rights movement and
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stuff like that. This was before that.
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Paladin was an educated man, the character. And he sometimes would,
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because they talked about anti-Semitism even back then.
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And, you know, he was proficient in Hebrew language.
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And he knew scripture of the Torah and the Bible.
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But Paladin dropped quotes in every episode from ancient philosophers,
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classic literature, authors, biblical quotes, like deep quotes, not just one-liners.
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I mean, like some serious business.
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Back then, there was an episode addressing a female who was a physician.
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Yeah, a female doctor in the late 1800s.
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You know amid this wild west sort
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of patriarchal you know angst over
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a woman doctor you know what i mean crazy stuff like that it
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was awesome there was support for women's political
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aspiration one of them was a woman was running for mayor in a place that was
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you know out of control and they they tried to run roughshod over so the plot
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lines man they were just so deep
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and and they kind of mirrored issues that existed in America at that time,
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but it persists today, though. Man, it's crazy.
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So let's connect that to today.
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There's ongoing conflict against, you know, systematic or structural racism.
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There's conflict with the stringent immigration enforcement.
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Now, I happen to be for stringent immigration enforcement, but more so immigration reform.
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And then these days, I'm sure if Paladin existed today, there would be,
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he would somehow try to possibly, yeah, I don't know, let me skip that framework.
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There was a lot of politics sort of intermingled with there,
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but it was usually local level stuff.
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There was a lot of issues of like bullying, right?
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Going on there, which are things that go on today. Voter fraud.
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They talked about voter fraud back then, because I've said this before and I'll
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say it again, folks, there has been, I'm a hundred percent sure that there has
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been voter fraud since there has been elections.
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You know what I mean? So yeah.
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Talked about deep issues that are still persistent even today.
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So Paladin himself, the character, and then the show, there was a sort of a, it was, it had depth.
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It had intellectual depth and it was witty.
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I mean, it was legitimately witty.
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And sometimes it was maybe
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a little sardonic there was a lot of
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philosophical introspection on the you know on on ethics and and behavior and
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this sometimes in the old west you know this was before some places before they
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were even really civilized you
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know what i'm saying wild west rules still applied during this timeframe.
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And the show really, really pushed reason and reasoned and ethical negotiations
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and dealing with people in a fair and equitable way,
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like on an individual level and from a sort of political level.
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Do I want to say it was, I think it was a very libertarian show.
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I think we could draw some parallels to that, but they talked about and have gone well travel.
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They talked about a lot of human interdependence, but also independence.
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And they did talk about the results and ramifications of, of prejudice.
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And this show was kind of looked at like, I also used to watch the wild, wild west.
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And if you know what that is, it was a very, very campy, very,
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there was a lot of widgets and gadgets. It was like the, the cowboy version of James Bond sort of.
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And I kind of compare it to, if you guys remember the old school Batman show back in that day.
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It was, it was colorful and silly like that.
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You know, there was some, it was good guys versus bad guys. And the bad guys
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were always like, kind of like
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James Bond villains, except from the old West. It was real. It was good.
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Complete opposite of this. And so of the two, Have Gun, Will Travel and Wild
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Wild West, like Have Gun, Will Travel was the adult Western.
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You know what I'm saying?
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And in the episodes that Roddenberry wrote, there
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was a big emphasis on
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nonviolent conflict conflict resolution and
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sort of moral conflicts and and
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you see that kind of stuff in the in the star trek seasons where
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there were there was a lot of well non-violence right they tried to avoid violence
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at all costs so yeah there was some social commentary that was without being
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overtly political was very tangible so yeah i think well have gun will travel
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as well as star trek but you You know,
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Star Trek, I think if you guys remember, there was the first interracial kiss
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was on network television, was on Star Trek.
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So, and it wasn't a political context whatsoever or even talking about racism.
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It was just an interracial kiss. And they sort of, you didn't see that kind
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of depth just on network television, man.
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You just didn't see it. And so I think those shows specifically have gone well
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travel kind of paved the way for shows.
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Now, these days, you know, shows are very preachy about not only did they start
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addressing and making commentary on social issues.
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Now they start kind of getting deep into how you should be thinking about them
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and the way you should start kind of preaching a little bit these days.
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It kind of gets out of control now.
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But today society's polarized on almost
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everything almost everything and that's
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just driven by friggin like i talked on my
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last you know misinformation there's conflicts
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all over the globe right now it's hard to really it's hard to really with a
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straight face as a as a politician to talk about nonviolent conflict resolution
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when you're funding two wars right now,
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at least two wars that we'd know about, nevermind the secret things.
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Mental health crisis, that's a big deal today. Guess what? They addressed that in those days.
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But the mental health crisis that we see today and a plethora of things cause
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these mental health problems, just any number of things.
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They scratched the surface on that stuff then. And the way they do is just so great.
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I said Paladin was a dandy. well he
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wasn't a dandy he he was an ex-military man and
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he was very educated and and he was sophisticated and he was very he had depth
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he had depth but he had personality and he was approachable.
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And you saw that in his demeanor and the way he talked to people.
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And he talked to the servants, just like he talked to, you know, the mayor or whoever.
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And that was kind of the centerpiece of the show was just his charm. Yeah.
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Now, I'm not going to tout West Point, But that's his backstory, right?
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He was a Union cavalry man in the Civil War, a West Pointer.
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But throughout the show, man, he drops scholarly wisdom on people,
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especially at the height of whatever moral conflict they happen to be in.
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And he carries a custom-made pistol with a chess piece knight sort of emblem
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on the butt of his gun and on the butt of his rifle and on his holster.
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And he dropped Shakespeare on people and Milton and Aristotle and biblical quotes
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from Psalms and the Old Testament and blew people's minds.
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And in one piece, he talks about Don's assertion of communal diminishment through
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individual loss and to advocate empathy.
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Or he talks about Job's temper and the way Job, before his trials,
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you know what I mean? He talks about his arrogance.
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And it's so enlightening, man.
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It's so enlightening because even in, I don't know, I don't even watch that
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much TV these days. It's very, very...
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Very little that I find just palatable, just entertaining, just thoughtful or anything like that.
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Because like I said, with the news outlets, everything is owned by someone.
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And those people who own these production companies or these streaming services,
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they have agendas and it shows in their shows today.
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But Palin's intellectual depth, and he would break them down in a relatable
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way, just these huge, enormous, complex concepts.
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And he would apply them to the, to the topic of the day or the dispute or the
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conflict that they were having.
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And, and he always pushed nonviolent resolution over violence,
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but very often in the show, he had to, he had to kill people. He was a gunfighter.
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That was, he was, he was a quick draw. And it was all that stuff.
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But he always, always attempted to go with the nonviolent resolution first and
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the fair and equitable resolution first.
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And every time at the end of every episode, when he was riding away,
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man, the town was just left like in deep thought,
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examining themselves or the situation and just left thinking like,
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man, what just, what just went down here.
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That character in today's world kind of aligns with good leaders of today and
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good individuals of today who draw on ancient philosophy in order to empathize
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and to help others empathize,
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especially still we're dealing with racial disparities and sex disparities and things like that.
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But genuine leaders of today, you can see that their technique,
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they might have even taken inspiration from Paladin, for all I know. I do. I did.
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Even now in my adulthood, I'm like, man, I would like to be like that, a real version of that.
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And on the range, I'm very adept at gun handling. Right.
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I want to be intellectually and philosophically smart enough to drop these nuggets
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of wisdom when it's appropriate.
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And we see that with people who, well, quality leaders.
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And look, I keep going back to libertarians. Ron Paul.
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I see that in Ron Paul, right?
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Because he looks at things in a fair and balanced way.
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And modern issues like criminal justice reform, for instance,
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debates on mental issues and economic issues, and the Fed,
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Ron Paul, yeah, and, you know, he looks at those things, and he has pragmatic
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ideas and based in profound philosophy.
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So you can see echoes of Paladin in some of the good leaders of today, for sure.
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And I know it might seem kind of superficial to kind of take inspiration from
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a television character.
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But look, and the media, and when I say the media, I mean media.
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I mean, like streaming services, anywhere you can consume movies and television
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shows and clips of this, that, and the other.
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Back in the old days on television, when television emerged in the late 40s
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and early 50s, you know, it was heroes and villains. And everybody had their hero.
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And the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers and stuff like that
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was, they were prominent.
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But they, the early, earlier ones didn't just, they just didn't have the depth,
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man. They just didn't have the depth that Paladin has.
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So Have Gun, Will Travel kind of changed the paradigm on the Western for sure
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by kind of intermixing it with some profound intellectual and scholarly knowledge and insight.
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And that right there did leave an imprint. For instance, I'll give you a for
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instance, my wife watches a show possibly called Criminal Minds.
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It's got Joe Mantegna in it. I think it might be called Criminals.
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And in that show, I don't care for the show, but they always drop a quote from
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some philosopher or some deep classic literature.
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And I think they probably draw that directly from Have Gun, Will Travel.
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Now, I happen to know, and here's why I think, here's why I put that really directly together.
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Joe Mantegna, if you guys don't know, he's a big gun enthusiast and a Second
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Amendment advocate and a strong military supporter.
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He's always on some gun shows. You don't see the gun shows too much on live television anymore,
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but there's American Rifleman and, I want to say, Guns and Ammo TV.
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And there's some shows out there that Mantegna has been on, and he's got a gun
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collection and all those things.
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So here's what I imagine, is I imagine that Mantegna, as a youth.
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Probably watched Have Gun, Will Travel, and it relates today.
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And it shows in the simple act of them dropping some profound quote from some profound thinker.
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So it was ahead of its time on the issues that it talked about.
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These days you can turn on any TV show and it's talking about whatever other
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issues, climate justice and whatever kind of social justice and geopolitics
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and this and that and the other.
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So everybody's trying to get in on it now. Now, so you can either look back
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at Paladin as being a good influence and creating awareness or being a negative
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influence that now every TV show is preaching something to you.
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So I encourage you to watch the show. Yeah, it's on Pluto, on demand.
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Just have gun, will travel.
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Reads the card of a man.
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And watch a few episodes Start from episode one,
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man And see what you think He wears black And this was probably around the same
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time Or maybe just before Johnny Cash became the man in black,
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And I think, I think there might be a little connection there,
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but Paladin wears black. I know. I don't know. The show's in black and white.
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And, you know, if you see some old colorized photos, it's got kind of a blue,
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blue tint to it, but he wears black, you know, and it's pretty damn good.
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It's pretty damn good. He's a mercenary. He's a gun for hire,
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but every episode he's, he's, he's in his hotel playing cards,
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reading some literature, wooing some, you know,
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lady sophisticate from wherever.
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And he will read an article in a, in a paper that some small town in Missouri
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or whatever is having trouble with cattle rustlers or this and that.
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And then he will send a card and via telegraph or mail.
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And then, and then he'll send messages via, and then he'll go show up in this
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town all by himself, all by his lonesome, run into him, meet whoever,
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the sheriff, or you'll see whatever conflict has kind of taken place, right?
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And then he'll interject himself. And a lot of times in this show,
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the people who hire Paladin to do a thing are oftentimes,
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mistaken about his nature, and they think that he's literally just a gun for hire.
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And but he's really you
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know he's there to find the justice in it all he does the right thing all the
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time every time and it's it's magnificent it's magnificent even if he has to
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do something brutal even if he has to do something brutal it's it's freaking
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brilliant have gun will travel,
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Richard Boone, Paladin, it was his name.
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Are there any, I'm not advocating you go watch TV too much.
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I used to be very enamored with Hollywood personally, especially back in,
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well, obviously I didn't live back in those days, but one of the things my dad,
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you know, he loved movies and he loved the old war movies and the old Westerns
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all the way up through, you know, the John Wayne days and stuff like that.
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And I think, you know, there were lessons in some of those movies back then
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that you, you, the lessons these days, there's no lessons these days.
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They're just very complex. And.
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Highlight some, some issue, or I guess sometimes movies that these days,
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movies that don't preach or don't have lessons to be learned are the better
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movies because it got so out of control. Do you know what I mean?
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But I'm going to, let's go back to a comparison of Have Gun,
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Will Travel TV show to the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns.
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And I mean, the early ones, fistful of dollars a few
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dollars more the good the bad and the ugly um
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those were they
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complex were they deeply complex it depends
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on how you look at it and what perspective you look at it from man because blondie
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he never had a name in any of those except have gun rule travel and he was just
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blondie or blonde the he was clint eastwood he was the he was the main character
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he was the technically the good guy,
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but he was like kind of emerged in that time.
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Right. And so that was the mid to late sixties.
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That was the mid to late sixties. So Paladin went off the air in 63.
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Now Clint Eastwood did Rawhide. Right. And that was hero, you know,
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that was the struggles of, of, of cattlemen, you know, getting herds across
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hard terrain. And then they would have problems with whatever town or whatever.
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But, and Rowdy Yates was...
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Was a young guy. Clint Eastwood was young back then. But I think Paladin might've
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been like one of the original anti-heroes.
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Well, not the original. If you look at different types of movies,
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you had a lot of the Humphrey Bogart type movies. He was kind of anti-hero as well.
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But I think Paladin was really an anti-hero.
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And I think the Spaghetti Westerns picked up on that.
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And I think Clint Eastwood kind of built the anti-hero into those where he was
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a, he was always a bounty hunter usually in those movies, which,
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you know, has a negative connotation, especially amongst lawmen.
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But the general public, even now, if you say the word mercenary,
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people have a negative connotation with it.
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But, but he all ultimately he did things for the good, right?
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If there was somebody in his proximity who was downtrodden, suffering, oppressed,
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being abused or getting run roughshod over by the local bad guys,
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the local, you know, thugs or local gang or whatnot.
32:55
You know, he would kind of step in, become an obstacle for the local gang and
33:03
just create general havoc for them,
33:06
alleviating the pain on the oppressed without directly saying,
33:11
yeah, I'm a good guy here to help you.
33:13
He kind of inadvertently helped them by not necessarily helping them,
33:18
but becoming an obstacle for the real bad guys, you know, so...
33:28
If you look at antiheroes throughout other movies and throughout other genres,
33:33
man, like, you know, they're supposed to they're they're complex characters.
33:36
Some of them are profoundly smart and they have depth and they have some psychological
33:42
scars and they've lost love or a child or whatever.
33:50
Josie Wells, for instance, is one of my all time favorite movies. The Outlaw Josie Wells.
33:56
And if you know that movie, you know, he lost his wife and kid to some of the Union redlegs.
34:05
And he wasn't even fighting in the Civil War until the Union,
34:12
the redlegs came along, burned down his farm, killed his wife and son.
34:17
And brutalized him, left him for dead.
34:19
And he took arms with the Confederacy.
34:23
Not for the confederacy just it was a it was a convenient avenue to hunt down the the red legs,
34:32
and he was complex man and then
34:35
at the end and at the very end well never
34:39
mind the speech that he has with tid bears the indian which was freaking deep
34:43
man it was awesome listen to it again when you're watching it you go oh clint
34:48
eastwood but then that whole dialogue well actually monologue between Tin Bears
34:54
and Clint Eastwood, and Clint Eastwood lays it out.
34:57
I came here to die with you or live with you.
35:01
Man, that stuff was deep. That stuff was deep.
35:05
And he was a notorious outlaw. And it was only because, well,
35:11
not only, I mean, he killed a lot of people, but,
35:15
because they were either after him and his reputation grew larger than life and he was profound.
35:21
But at the end, another one of my favorites from that movie specifically is
35:26
he's, he's back at the bar in Silver Creek Canyon or something like that.
35:31
He's back at this pub after having, he had gotten shot,
35:37
gotten into some kind of, some kind of gunfight and a couple of bounty hunters
35:43
come in and he's kind of standing in the shadows and one of the bounty hunters.
35:51
Says you know hey i'm looking for josie wells well
35:55
we don't know him he you know whatever and he goes back out but he
35:57
recognized josie wells and then he walks back in and
36:01
he says i had to come back and and josie
36:05
said i know you did but but before you can rates man dying
36:08
ain't much of a living and he gives him a chance to
36:10
leave and the guy leaves but then he comes back says i
36:13
had to come back and he says i know you did and then he blasted him yeah and
36:17
then at the very end one of the main guys who was a who was a
36:21
confederate guy with him who then started working with the redlegs to to track
36:26
josie down you know he came looking for him and he found him but josie was going
36:33
under the name of Wilson right so this guy Fletcher he knows full well who Josie Wells is,
36:39
and Josie Wells pretty much knows full well that he knows he knows right he
36:45
knows who he is and but they have a little you know interaction at the end man
36:51
and and Fletcher was just like look,
36:54
you know if I had a chance to tell him anything I'd let him know hey it's it's
36:58
over just you know Nobody's looking for you anymore.
37:02
Just let it be.
37:05
And Josie was like, yeah, I reckon so.
37:09
So, man, it was more complex than you might imagine.
37:13
It was more complex. Now, Josie Wells didn't ride around dropping Aristotle
37:18
on people or Shakespeare, but...
37:22
He was a simple guy. He was a farmer and, and basically driven,
37:26
you know, out of anger and revenge, but he was smart.
37:29
He was very smart and, and clever.
37:32
So from the have gun, will travel into the spaghetti Westerns and on the anti-hero man.
37:39
That's, that's what I'm, that's what I'm, that's what I'm dropping on you right
37:43
now. I started out talking pretty much just about will have gun, will travel.
37:47
But ultimately, that's the anti-hero.
37:50
The guy who doesn't go around touting his skill or his expertise or his profound knowledge,
38:01
he just says it and uses it when it's called for in a way that doesn't draw attention to himself.
38:14
The anti-hero usually is always humble, man.
38:19
Yeah, always humble. It didn't go to his head because he's experienced pain
38:25
and loss and all these things, and he's been grounded.
38:30
He's been humbled by pain and life.
38:36
So when the the anti-hero
38:39
speaks he's speaking
38:42
from from an experience that
38:45
maybe we do we don't know and he's speaking with some profound wisdom that was
38:51
hard-earned and man it sends the message so much better than than just the hero
38:58
villain sort of stereotypes because heroes fall folks Heroes fall.
39:05
We see it all the time. They're...
39:10
Talking about Marvel. Well, some of the comic books get deep.
39:15
That's one of the reasons I liked. If you guys ever read or watched the movie,
39:21
The Watchmen, that was a good, it was heroes, but they were all effed up, man. They had issues.
39:29
They were kind of anti-heroes and some of them not for the good.
39:32
But heroes fall.
39:36
We see it all the time when your favorite somebody or the good guy,
39:42
the good deacon at your church or the good cop that you know gets busted for
39:49
frigging child porn or having relations with a 12-year-old girl and crap like
39:57
that, man, or embezzling.
39:59
You know, and you find out that this person who you thought was perfect,
40:04
which is partly on you, by the way, nobody's perfect.
40:08
And then they and you see them fall with the antihero. They've already fallen, man.
40:14
They're they're they're working from a place of of low stature, of low humility.
40:22
They're not they're not heroes. They're not above anyone. They don't pretend
40:26
to be. They don't care to be. They certainly don't care to be.
40:30
The anti-hero is working from a place of humility, of low, low,
40:37
lowliness, pain maybe, maybe revenge.
40:43
A lot of the stories that you see, that's kind of, you know, the Punisher.
40:48
The Punisher is purely revenge, purely vigilante revenge.
40:53
And it gets gratuitous. It can be deep. The Punisher, if you read old comic
40:59
books and look at stories, it can be kind of deep.
41:04
And then this, this mad, the violence and all that.
41:08
Anti-heroes, you know, don't, don't, don't always look for the,
41:13
the violent answer. Always.
41:16
Some, it, it just comes that way. The anti-hero don't always look to enlightened people.
41:22
You just kind of get it by default.
41:25
Because, and here's my opinion. The anti-hero, he just lives, he just lives who he is.
41:34
And is living an example, not wanting to be an example.
41:40
He's an example, and he doesn't want to be. He just is.
41:45
And people who look a little deeper than just surface level,
41:50
man, they see this, and it's profound sometimes.
41:54
Sometimes once you go one or two layers deeper than just what's on the surface,
42:00
then you see some really true greatness.
42:04
Some really true greatness. So yeah, man, look at, look at the guys who might
42:10
be a little more complex.
42:13
Now Paladin and say Blondie or Josie Wells, they're not similar in a way that
42:19
the way they interacted with people.
42:21
Yeah. Paladin was an intellectual. He did dress nice and he did do rich guy thing.
42:28
He had, he had plenty of money, but it wasn't about money.
42:31
That that's, that's the one of the greatness one of
42:34
the greatest things of his character is that
42:37
money was irrelevant to him yeah he
42:40
charged a thousand bucks for a job and
42:44
back you know imagine a thousand dollars in cowboy days in 1870 you know but
42:50
half the time you know he he didn't he either didn't accept money excuse me
42:56
or if there was a sum of money involved in this conflict you know some bank robbers or whatever.
43:02
Ultimately he would, he would eventually distribute the money back to the,
43:05
to the downtrodden or whoever the, the, the, you know, the victims either direct
43:11
or indirect victims were and things like that, man, it was just so brilliant.
43:15
So yeah, he, he lived a sort of a flashy life when he wasn't working,
43:22
but when he was working, yeah, it was all black And it wasn't dandy at all. It was just black.
43:30
And he kind of, you know, he looked like a gunfighter.
43:35
And that was it. And that was good because a lot of guys just mistook him for
43:39
just a typical gunfighter.
43:42
Man, it was just so much more than that. It was good. So I'm rambling now. I'm rambling.
43:47
Please watch it, man. You know, if you, you know, give it, watch it.
43:51
Give it, give it, give it five or six episodes and you'll be hooked.
43:55
And if you're not, you know, tell me that was garbage.
43:57
My analysis was all, was all wrong.
44:02
But I think it was one of the greatest, greatest TV shows out there.
44:07
And yeah, so there's that. Give me the feedback, folks. Yeah. Give me the feedback.
44:13
I'm always eager and I've, I've only got, you know, some, some of the folks
44:16
listening have given me a little bit of feedback.
44:20
I'm always interested folks. I want to hear what you have to say.
44:24
And cause I look again, everything I say here is opinion.
44:29
Literally everything I say here is opinion. And, and the things I drop as fact
44:35
are things that I, I truly do believe to be fact.
44:38
And because I do check my work, I do check my work.
44:44
So if you have differing opinions or something that's something you feel strongly about, please hit me up.
44:49
And if you want to write something about a topic, please send it, man.
44:54
Send it. I will put it on the show or not on the show, on the website,
44:59
the dejuntoepodcast.com.
45:01
I will put your blog or your essay on my blog section.
45:07
Now, again, within the parameters of fairly good taste,
45:15
not a whole bunch of expletives unless you just have to have them to make the
45:22
point and throw it on there. And I'll do a disclaimer.
45:26
Hey, this is from whoever or whatever screen name you want to use.
45:31
Well, no, that's not true. I don't want anonymous stuff.
45:35
I'll post it as anonymous, but I want to know who it's coming from because I'm
45:40
not just going to have a bunch of...
45:43
Stuff just being sent in. But I do want feedback, good people.
45:49
I do, because why do I want the feedback?
45:51
Not to drive clicks or whatever. I want to hear, I want to,
45:57
essentially, I want to do my own AAR, my own after-action review for myself
46:02
to see if I'm hitting the mark or not. All right.
46:08
So, thank you for bearing with me on that breakdown of have gun, will travel.
46:14
I know it's not necessarily topical, but it kind of is.
46:20
Pluto on demand. Okay, folks, what's coming up training-wise?
46:25
Osprey Shooting Solutions. We have a couple of things in August.
46:28
A pistol workshop, I want to say August 23rd, and a wildcard day, August 30th.
46:34
September 1st, a Monday, Labor Day. we have an action pistol match and we're
46:41
going to run those with like USPSA style rules,
46:44
and you can potentially win a free course out of that or a free private session.
46:53
And a friend of mine named Tim has taken lead on putting together some training
47:00
And he has enlisted the efforts of my friend Dennis at Force Solutions,
47:06
and that's forcesolutions.co.
47:10
And they are putting on a medical training class on 13 September.
47:18
Correction, 20 September. It's a Saturday, September the 20th, from 8.30 to 5 p.m.
47:26
Cost is $200. And this will take place in Rome at a training facility for the
47:34
fire department in Rome.
47:37
And registration closes on 13 September for this.
47:41
And they will go over scene safety, carry methods, the way to carry your little
47:48
IFAC or medical kit or your tourniquet, stopping the bleed or severe bleeding,
47:53
airway management, shock,
47:57
hypothermia.
47:57
Burns, and types of equipment to put in your little personal medical kit.
48:03
All the equipment will be provided. You just bring a notepad and pen and be
48:08
ready for a full day of training.
48:10
I'm sure they'll break for lunch or have some snack time there.
48:14
And again, that's my friend Dennis with Force Solutions.
48:20
So please give that a look. And I've put that on all my socials, by the way.
48:26
And then folks, please go check out twoteamguys.com.
48:34
Very much to sort of get that going with a little more volume than what we've done so far.
48:41
We've got a land nav course coming with a small group here in August.
48:46
We've got a bigger land nav course coming, hopefully in September,
48:52
date yet to be determined.
48:54
And that's the big one there. That's the three-day. That's coming up soon.
48:59
We have a situational awareness course, which is very, the academic portion of that is very robust.
49:08
That's a two-day course. That's one day in the classroom. And then that's one
49:12
day in downtown Atlanta.
49:15
Now, for those of you who are scared to go to Atlanta, don't be.
49:19
I will be, I have, I am there vigilant and I have people there and vigilant for your safety.
49:32
Situational awareness. Yes, it's not a counter-surveillance class, but guess what?
49:38
I get a lot of the foundations from counter-surveillance doctrine or anti-surveillance doctrine.
49:44
And it will help you to be able to move about a little bit more safely in a
49:50
city, in an urban environment, or even in a suburban environment, for that matter.
49:56
And it's an excellent course.
50:00
Search and rescue mountaineer. Again, that's a great one. That's a three-day,
50:03
and that is what it says. Very technical search and rescue mountaineer.
50:08
Skills will be taught there with teamwork and leadership as the thread.
50:14
We have long-range evasion. Who knows what long-range evasion means?
50:19
Well, yes, that's very much a sort of military-sounding term.
50:24
But again it's it's a it's scenario
50:27
based and you are meant to literally evade
50:30
a you know
50:33
opposition team who's who's out looking for you to find to find and capture
50:38
you right so we start that out in in atlanta in the city and as a as a team
50:44
you have to move from your start point in Candler Park and you will get to eventually Rome,
50:52
Georgia by different methods and different modes and all the time trying to
50:57
avoid being captured by surveillance teams.
51:00
It's pretty awesome. I took that folks, I created that course right out of the
51:04
pages of the news, you know, about four or five years ago.
51:09
And it's a good one. And then we have a special mission skirmish.
51:15
Now that It's meant to be sort of a primer for the small unit missions,
51:20
but it's force on force and it's two teams against each other trying to execute the same mission,
51:28
trying to capture and exfil the same human.
51:32
And it's meant to really give you an opportunity to, for all you tactical timmies
51:38
out there, give you an opportunity to see if your tactics hold up under some stress.
51:46
And not only is it team against team, but then there's a unknown third party
51:51
who will test your tactics.
51:54
So it's kind of good, but it's meant to be more fun. It's meant to be more of a competition.
51:59
And we provide the UTM ammo and bullets for that and gun bolts for that.
52:06
Airsoft guns with that. And then we have the small unit mission.
52:10
And that is a fully immersive two-day scenario where you're coming on as a member
52:16
of a private security team.
52:17
And this is a course that's going to challenge teamwork and leadership under
52:23
sort of no-fail conditions.
52:25
And you're going to train on some marksmanship, some live fire.
52:29
You're going to train on some team SOP development.
52:32
And you're going to sort of build your team SOPs. And you're going to train
52:36
on time-sensitive planning,
52:38
and then you will make a plan and execute that plan under heavy time constraints,
52:46
and you'll do the mission, and you will fail or succeed, and we will do an after-action report.
52:53
Very teamwork-oriented.
52:56
And if you come out here as a corporate team, folks, if you are a big boss of
53:02
a corporate team or division of some big company and you come out here with your own people.
53:10
Is we choose either the newest or I hesitate to say weakest leader of the team,
53:20
but I will go out and say someone who might have some timid sort of characteristics
53:28
and we will put them in charge,
53:31
and give them the tools to be successful and lead and see how it shakes out.
53:38
They might be in their zone, man. It might be the best mission ever.
53:44
Eight minutes on the objective, bam, boom, get the people and move out.
53:48
And they might miss their ride and not even make it to the objective.
53:52
All sorts of tasks in there that help you with your time management,
53:56
to help with supervision, and to help to lead, to get people to want to accomplish the mission.
54:04
And then finally, we have a Surviving Captivity course that is,
54:09
now folks, it's founded and it's rooted with U.S.
54:13
Special Operations Seer Doctrine, but it is designed very specifically for people,
54:21
business people, and civilians who travel internationally often.
54:27
And especially if you're in one of
54:30
these NGOs or if you're a church missionary or if you're one of these salesmen
54:37
with an ambitious company who's trying to get into a market that has yet to
54:41
be really developed and it's in the middle of some unstable region and you want
54:48
to send your salesman down there all by himself.
54:50
This is designed for people who travel to places So that they are prepared,
54:56
aware of the threats and wherever they're going, aware of how to sort of move
55:04
about in that environment without bringing attention to yourself and without
55:09
being the ugly American and that kind of thing.
55:13
And the instructional portion of that and the presentation of that is,
55:19
man, even if you just had that portion alone, it is just so valuable. It is just so valuable.
55:27
And then you will have, you know, some captivity there that you have to deal with as well.
55:34
So that's what's going on. Please get into that stuff.
55:37
Check that stuff out. All you need is a group of four or more people,
55:41
and then we can set it up. We can sure set it up and get you going.
55:46
So please check out the website, twoteamguys.com. And then, of course, the Juneto Podcast.
55:51
For those of you who are listening, thanks for listening. Thanks for staying with me.
55:55
If you like what you're hearing, please let me know. If you don't like what
55:59
you're hearing, please let me know.
56:01
If you've got some issues you want to hear over the air, over the podcast waves,
56:07
or that you would like to see a little bit of other perspective on some research
56:13
and some other perspective,
56:14
reach out and let me know because I'm always looking for topics and subjects
56:19
to get into because I love doing it. Okay, good people.
56:24
I appreciate you. Thank you very much for listening. Thanks for staying with
56:28
me. Be good to each other.
56:30
Yep, be good to each other. All right. I love you guys. Take care. Be safe.
56:35
Music.