Navy SEAL Brandon Webb on Autonomy and Radicalization in America

Today’s episode is a partial interview with combat-decorated Navy SEAL sniper Brandon Webb. Ryan and Brandon talk about his new thriller series Steel Fear which follows the US navy’s first serial killer, the idea of autonomy over making a certain amount of money or reaching a certain level of success, and the radicalization of the American nation and how it is viewed from a military perspective. Brandon Webb is a combat–decorated Navy SEAL sniper turned entrepreneur who has built two brands (SOFREP Media and Crate Club), into an eight–figure business. As a U. S. Navy Chief he was head instructor at the Navy SEAL sniper school, which produced some of America’s most legendary snipers. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Streak gives you tools for email tracking, mail merges, and snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoicFollow Brandon Webb: Homepage: https://brandontylerwebb.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrandonTWebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandontwebb/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your

• 0:45Speaker 00

  journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It's something that keeps podcasters up at night. It keeps me up at night whenever I'm interviewing someone for a book. You know, I've got my little recorder in front of me. You're just petrified of technical difficulties and you can have backups. You can double and triple check everything. But as the Stoics say, it is inevitable that stuff will go wrong. I've been so far mostly spared by this, but we had an episode go wrong recently. I was lucky enough to have the Navy SEAL Brandon Webb on the podcast. He's a great veteran, an entrepreneur, an interesting thinker. I met him when I gave a talk to YPO remotely

• 1:38Speaker 00

  in New York City, which he is one of the heads of. And I was really excited. You know, he's a combat decorated Navy SEAL sniper. He's built two huge media brands into eight-figure businesses. And as a US Navy chief, he was the head instructor of the Navy SEAL Sniper School. So, you know, he trained like Chris Kyle, the American sniper, for example. So there was so much stuff that we wanted to talk about. And we were talking right after that freak, freeze, storm, power outage, disaster.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  That blindsided Texas in February. So I suppose it was inevitable that with everything going wrong, even more would go wrong on top of it. But the result was a bunch of our conversation got cut off. So it wasn't long enough to be a Wednesday or a Saturday episode, but I wasn't going to throw it away. So I wanted to give you the parts that I could salvage from this conversation. And I wanted to tell you about Brandon's new book. He has a new thriller series called Steel Fear, which follows the US Navy's first serial killer. Like I said, Brandon does like a little bit of everything. He's a fascinating guy. You can follow Brandon on Instagram at at Brandon T. Webb. That's

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Webb with two Bs. You can go to his website, brandontylerwebb.com. You can check out SOFREP, which is his website. That's S-O-F-R-E-P. And Brandon has written a ton of books. The Red Circle, Steel Fear Among Heroes, Mastering Fear, Total Focus, The Killing School, and The Making of a Navy SEAL. Like I said, he does a little bit of everything. He's a great dude. I'm sorry, Brandon, that this didn't get recorded perfectly. That is life, as the Stoics say. Prima meditatio malorum. I know a certain percentage of these are going to go wrong. It sucks that it happened to this episode, but I think what's here is still really good. And I can't wait for you to hear my chat with the one

• 3:37Speaker 00

  and only Brandon Webb.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Hey, man.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what happened there. I was showing like I had a good connection. But anyway, we're back.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  No, wait. No, no sweat. You were saying you started thinking about fiction.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I had this idea about writing a novel about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier. But before I was a SEAL, I was a search and rescue swimmer in a helicopter squadron called HS6.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  We had deployed on the big aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, just like a 6,000 person floating city, like three Empire State Buildings stacked next to each other. We had a sexual predator on the boat because he just integrated women onto the ship and this guy was like molesting six or seven women, never caught him. And I always thought, imagine if it was a serial killer, because the Navy is just not structured to deal with complex crime like that. But the point is, to your earlier point about how being a writer is so tough, like, I got good at writing nonfiction for my blog, but writing fiction totally kicked my ass.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And I had this concept 12 years ago, took me like a little over four years ago, I said, okay, I'm gonna start writing it. I had to go back to school and take these classes on creative writing and read Stephen King's book On Writing, which is amazing book. Finished it with the hell, I finished half and then brought in my friend John and we finished it together, but sold it to Random House last year. It's gonna be a series on Peacock called Steel Fear. But 12 years, man, to publish that thing. And I had to just like jam it through. And my editor at St. Martin's is like, yeah, it sounds like a good idea, but you're not a fiction writer, you're a nonfiction. It takes a lot of work.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, so it can't be as simple as if you're not having fun, you quit, right? Because like clearly 12 years, there must have been a lot of moments where you're like, I can't do this, this isn't working, this isn't worth it, but you kept going. So maybe it's a question that no one can answer, but it is this tricky thing. How do you know when to stick and to stick it out? And then how do you know when you walk away so you could fight another day?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  That's a great question, and I think, again, that's where you have to have, sometimes that network comes in and says, look, Because I've had my close friend, John Tischler, who was my attorney on my first startup business. I had, I got out of the military and thought, I'm going to build a racetrack in California, having zero business experience, no development experience. But I'm like, hey, I'm going to do it. We bought a thousand acres. We raised about $4 million, got everything through the entitlement process, which was super tumultuous because we were, Blackwater was trying to build a facility.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, my friend Jeremy Scahill just came out with that Blackwater book and everyone was just, you know, going anti-Blackwater. And we got painted with that same brush. It was, it was gnarly and I got through the entitlement process.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Blackwater pulled out and then the 2009 financial crisis hit. The county approved my project and got sued the next day by the Sierra Club chapter in San Diego, which was very much an activist chapter going after Blackwater. They sued the county and I didn't want to let it go. And John, who was an investor and a partner at Shepherd Mullen, he's like, he's like, Brandon, sometimes you gotta let it go.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  And I was like, you know what? You're right. And it was a huge weight off my shoulders. But with the, with my knowledge, it was, I believed in it so much, like the story. Because every time I told it to storytellers, to screenwriters, to my friend Todd, who's a Hollywood director, he's like, dude, that is an amazing storyline. And so I think that, that kind of support and belief that I had something special.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Kept me going in that, in that case.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  No, I just went through that with, with the, the sort of fable or the kids book that I did, which is my sort of first, it's not really fiction, but it's, it's the first real non, non, nonfiction thing that I've done. I had this idea for, I was really excited and then you bump straight into the realities of my publisher wanted it to be this way. And then they wanted this timeline and then, and then, and then to do it myself, it was going to cost, you know, it costs almost a hundred thousand dollars to do the whole package, you know, it's, it's, so you, you, you, I think, I think what we're really talking about is you have to have some sort of sense of purpose, right? Like if you're, if you're gutting it out for the sake of gutting it out, that's probably not good. If you're gutting it out

• 8:49Speaker 00

  to like stick it to someone, you know, they're like, I'm going to prove them all wrong. That's a bad, that's a bad reason to stick it out. If you're, if you're sticking it out because you've already spent so much money or time, that's a bad reason. But if you're sticking it out because you're like, no, no, no, this is like what I was put on this earth to do. To me, that's a good, not only is that a good reason to do it, but even if you fail, like, you know, as, as you obviously had to train seals to do, sometimes you gotta, you gotta stand and die, right? And in business, that's metaphorical, but you have to go like, hey, look, there's a certain amount of failures that are inevitable in life. I'd feel good trying and failing on this one better than I would quitting

• 9:33Speaker 00

  it and succeeding on something else that's easier that I don't actually give a shit about.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. And I don't mind sharing the numbers with the listeners. Like we, John and I got half a million from Random House. We got Ann Spire and her boss who did the Game of Thrones books, like, and as a first time novelist, that's a pretty fucking good deal for.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's fantastic.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And then right away, when it got a bidding war for series and we ended up going with Peacock because we think that they're they're going to make it because I didn't want it. I didn't want it being just optioned and sitting on the shelf. But, you know, 12 years of toiling.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  Right now, $500,000 over 12 years, suddenly, and the opportunity cost of it. Right, the math, the math. And I think that's it, like, a lot of these things, whether it's, you know, like, obviously, entrepreneurship can be lucrative, writing books can be lucrative, having a podcast can be lucrative, whatever. But I think what people don't realize is that, one, there was all the risks involved. And actually, there are plenty of other easier things to do with less risk, but but proportionally actually higher rewards. So you you have to do these things because you can't not do them. Do you know what I mean?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Like, there were other projects you could have done than the novel that it that it that it since worked out. That has to be like this sort of extra on top. But that's not what gets you through year seven or year eight of the project.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And look, I got a good day job as well, but that was something that was important to me and and is super fulfilling once you do, aside from the money, which is nice, but the just the fact that, okay, this idea that I toiled over and finally finished is is being like accepted in the marketplace, which is nice.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm excited on this fable. It's called The Boy Who Would Be King and it's a fable about Marcus Aurelius who's chosen to be king. It's the only time really in history that someone is chosen to be emperor, like as a kid, and it works out, right? But for me, like the pandemic for us started like, I think, March 9th. I got home from a trip and I was like, oh shit, this is real. We're not going anywhere. But so I started just sort of talking to my son about the ideas and then I ended up telling him the story and then it came the book and I had to do all the work and stuff. But it's going to come out like exactly much shorter than a 12-year lifespan. It's coming out exactly

• 12:31Speaker 00

  a year. It's going to come out on March 9th of this year, which is one of the benefits, was one of the benefits of self-publishing. But I think you get to a place where, like for you, sure, I'm sure the day you cash the check, it's nice. But the day that that book lands and it exists, 12 years from the moment you first thought about it, that's the reward. And whether it sells 10 million copies or 10 copies, that you got it, that you got through, just I'm sure that the graduation ceremony for The Seals was fantastic. But it was really, it was really surviving that was the, that you did the thing you set out to do.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%, 100%.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  So what's next for you? So you do the novel and then you have another novel coming? What's the plan for you?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so writing for me is a great creative outlet. So it's why I keep doing it. But I have a digital media business that I run, software.com. It's kind of like a military, my vision is to turn it into the military version of what Marvel did with superheroes and comics. Because we, you know, we publish, we're an indie publisher of military books. We have videos, we've self-produced like interviews with, you know, Dick Marcinco, the guy that founded The Theme Six. And then we do like an economist kind of, we try and keep it really apolitical on the

• 14:11Speaker 01

  foreign policy, domestic security reporting. So we have like a news component. That, that's my day job. It's incredibly fulfilling to do that, that work. But I'm at a point, like I had an exit. I, I don't, you know, I, I wouldn't say I'm, I'm at my number yet, but I'm pretty comfortable. I'm

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Do you have a number? Is there, is there an idea of what you need? Or

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Where did that come from?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  So I took a course on business when I got out of the military and one of the guys at, this guy Toby, used to work with the G Leadership School, put on this, you know, it was like one of those expensive weekend seminars, right? So I go there and we do this exercise, like how much is enough? And you, you had to write down, like over a hundred of us had to write down, what are perfect kind of lifestyle dream? If we had a magic wand without excess, you can't like say, I want a super yacht and a G5. But what, you know, you want two homes, you want to go out so many times in each, you want to take so many vacations. And so you, you budget

• 15:22Speaker 01

  out what a year looks like. And out of the hundred-ish of us, we got to about 400,000, like everybody was within $10,000 of each other. And you realize that time is finite, money's finite and, and, but, you know, realizing that 400,000 of income is a pretty damn good life. And look, people can say, well, I can get by with half that, which is possible. But then you back into, okay, what do I have to have invested for say, in the stock market to produce that kind of passive income? It's about $10 million. And so, once you realize

• 16:06Speaker 01

  that, you're like, oh shit, like I need to be thinking about things differently. Like, how do I, how do I produce opportunities that could, that could create that kind of liquidity event? And that got me thinking about business. And then also looking at, you know, the, the top wealth earners in this country, generally, the majority are business owners.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  You know, there's, but that's how I got to that number.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Is, is that, is that number, what is that? I'm, I'm always curious because I'm not a person who has a number. What is it that that number would allow you to do that you can't do now?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So that, and that's a great question, right? So I have complete autonomy.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Right now I can get out of bed in the morning and do whatever I want to, to the most, most part. What that number gives me is, is a greater sense of security for my family. Like I know that. And it, and it's shitty that in America, a poor kid would die sooner than a, than a wealthy kid if, if diagnosed with a certain disease. I think that's totally fucked up, but it gives me that sense of security that my family is okay. And that I have passive income to deal with those kinds of life situations which come up. Like the, the shit hits you out of the blue. I found out a close family member has ALS and it totally took me.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  You know, it caught me off guard and, and it just shows you how, how short and precious life is. But that's what that number gives me. I, look, I have, you know, I'm, I'm a little over halfway there.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  It just gives, it gives me security. Um, and I'm, and I'm at a point in my life also where I'm minimizing. I, I haven't owned a car in six years. I, I do, I'm, I love aviation. I own an airplane.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was going to say, don't you own a plane?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  I do own a plane, but I'm just trying. I had two homes. I'm now I'm consolidating into one home in Miami.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  I'm joining the, the rest of the refugees that are from New York and Los Angeles, going to Texas and Florida. But I'm trying to simplify. So I have. I'm doing this experiment to take my personal, my personal burn rate near to zero. So I, I recently I bought, I'm like, I'm gonna move Miami. I was thinking about buying a place cash, but I ended up buying a apartment building and I'll live in one of the units and run out the rest and I'm in a cash flow. So like I, I have income coming in and I have virtually no, like very, very minimal expenses, like probably fifteen hundred dollars a month.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Which I think is, is pretty good. So.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  No.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And I'm trying, I'm trying this experiment to just see, just to minimalize and focus on spending more time with, with, to get more time back to spend with my kids, my, uh, my friends and family, the people I wanna be around and, and I love the travel. So that, that's what I'm up to.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  No, no, I, I know that, I know that place very well where, uh, you want to be like to me, I, I think what's interesting, you brought up the idea of, of autonomy, which I actually tend to find is not what you hear people who have a number really thinking about, right? So to me, like, it doesn't matter, let, let's say the number is fifty million, but if the number is fifty million and you have a life that's scheduled down to the minute and you have to be certain places and do certain things, uh, then, then you're, you're to, in, in my eyes, you're actually not wealthy because you're.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  You don't have any freedom. The whole point of wealth or success to me is to have freedom to live your, your relatively limited life, uh, in a way that's as up to you as, as much as possible. I still think we have obligations to each other and to society, of course, but, but, you know, how free are you day to day? To me, that's the, that's the indication of success or failure.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I share the same philosophy and I have so many friends that like my friend who's a neurosurgeon that he's like, I'm just an overpaid bricklayer. If I don't lay like, perform surgery, lay brick, I don't get paid. And my friend, I have a friend in law that is, loves what he does. Like, he couldn't imagine doing anything else. But most of the people I find who are successful lawyers realize that they have to sell all their time. And they have no, no freedom to kind of take a trip with the family or just be like, you know what, it snowed in Jackson Hole. I'm, I'm out of here. I'm gonna go catch some fresh powder. Like, they just can't do that. And I don't want to ever give that up.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Well, no, and even a lot of authors I know are in the same boat, right? So they're just, they might get large deals, like book deals, but which would seem like a lot of money to any, you know, bystander. But because their books don't actually sell, and because they have a very expensive lifestyle, they're just an overpaid bricklayer. But every brick is a book, right? They have to write two books a year, you know, a book every three years. It has to, they have to sell it for a certain amount, then they have to go on the road a certain amount to, you know, to pitch it. But at the end of the day, if they stop, the machine grinds to a halt, right? And, and so again, to me, success is, hey, if I decide

• 21:54Speaker 00

  not to do something, the, it doesn't grind to a halt. And I think that's where the sort of entrepreneurship and your point about sort of business and wealth. If you have a business that can operate independently of you, or operate with some level of passive income, then you have freedom. If you're someone who has to chase deal to deal, project to project, you're, you're in a bad place.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  All right, last question for you. This is somewhat of a political one, but I'd be curious, given, given the site you run.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Just because I hear from a number of these people and then I sort of watch them, this is kind of what my first book was about. What is your take on sort of people in military, police, this sort of radicalization that we're seeing where, you know, you look at the events of January 6th, sort of unfortunately or tragically sort of veterans or people in police or fire departments seem to be overrepresented in that population. What is operating on the brains of these people who, who are, I think, hardworking, have good hearts, you know, have some sense of patriotism or duty, or they wouldn't have done the original job they did.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  But, but there seems to be something that's either being exploited or something that's flipped and gone sort of toxic that is kind of radicalizing, you know, I guess, members of our, of our armed forces community, but also members just of our, of our, of our country.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, great question, and I actually really enjoy talking about this stuff and sharing from experience because, look, I think first and foremost, the Republican Party is kind of just, what's the right word I'm looking for, essentially just taking over the military as their own, right? So it's, and I think the sad thing is generally, I would guess that in a city like New York or Los Angeles, most people would automatically associate a military veteran with being conservative and Republican leaning, and that's just false.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Like, that's, that's a false way, that's a false bias. But the bias exists, and I think it's because the conservatives have adopted certain, certain things, the military being one of them, and it's created this bias. When I moved to New York City, I applied for an apartment in the West Village. Showed all my financials, which New York and co-ops are like the last form of legal discrimination, in my opinion. The broker called me and says, hey, I don't think they're gonna rent to you. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Well, they found out you're a Navy SEAL and half the building is, has gay tenants.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And I said, look, you just gotta let me talk to this president of the co-op board. So I ended up going and having a five-minute conversation and the guy's like, oh, you're cool. He's like, man, I just, you know, we were just nervous. Like, we thought you were gonna be, you know, hanging the, you know, freaking-

• 25:13Speaker 00

  The don't tread on me flag.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that crazy shit, like, from my pride, from my cold, dead fingers. And that's a sad thing. It was the first time I had ever experienced that kind of bias. And I get it all the time. And so I think it's sad that, you know, we live, and I think that the people that you're seeing, like, these crazy, you know, radicals that are, they've got the don't tread on me shirt and, you know, all this crazy shit, it's like a very small element of the military. Most of the veterans that I associate with think that we need better gun control. They're very moderate.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  They know we, they're very anti-war because they've seen us, like, totally destabilize the Middle East, at least the northern part, like, create the refugee crisis in Europe, which, which Europe was trending towards open border, now everyone's putting up fences. Like, we've caused so much problems in the world with, with not thinking about the long game and how our kind of very schizophrenic foreign policy has kind of played out over the last 20 years. And most of the veterans I talk to, like, they know that. They're, like, extremely anti-war. And I think that would surprise a lot of people.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, those people aren't on Fox News, you know, with the freaking guns and the freaking MAGA hats, you know? And that's, and it just sucks because it just kind of carries on that bias that exists. But look at, look at, I had dinner with him a few years ago, Jeremy Scaillle, the guy that, the director of Platoon, what's his name?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Pretty like left-leaning Hollywood director.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Oliver Stone?

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone is a veteran, man. He's a vet, but he's like a wildly liberal, you know, he's like, yeah, military won't cooperate with me because I'm, you know, because I'm telling it how it is.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  People probably had, would be shocked to find out Oliver Stone is a military veteran. But anyway, that, to, and to answer the part about why does this exist? I think we see ourselves at a time in America where we have this massive income divide and you have

• 27:42Speaker 01

  the, you know, the very wealthy and the, and the big chunk of the poor and politically you've got to service, you've got to like, serve that demographic. And so your, our political views have been pushed to the extremes on both sides. And, and unfortunately, we have a time in this country where it's very hard to, to have a civil debate and discussion around major issues because we have big problems in America that need to be solved and they are not going to be solved by government. It's going to take a lot of smart people in industry coming together to do more. And look, a social cause that a company to donate some money to a charity isn't going to cut it. Like, we have to like, really think about how to solve,

• 28:26Speaker 01

  like, education, healthcare, the income gap. And these are, these are big problems. And, and look, I'll share my personal views on Trump. I, in the beginning, liked the fact that Trump was a political hand grenade in the room of, of Washington. Because I was so fed up seeing through two administrations,

• 28:54Speaker 01

  and I voted for Obama. I was just sick and tired of it. Like, I'm like, these, like, we've created a mess in the world. I lost my best friend in Benghazi, Libya, who was one of the SEALs protecting Ambassador Stevens. I'm like, what are we doing in the, like, in the world? And I like the fact that Trump initially upset the apple cart. And to this day, I think the benefits of him being an agitator.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Far outweigh if Hillary got elected and I somebody told me about this alternative reality series where it shows Hillary winning the election and Harvey Weinstein getting like this presidential award. So I think, but it's an interesting thought experiment, right? Because Trump fucking agitated people so much that they woke woke up a young generation. My son voted, you know, when he was 18 recently in this election. People care like women's equality has been pushed forward much further, I think, under under Trump than in not not that he

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Not intentionally, right?

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Not intentionally, but there it's like the Chinese yin and yang, right? Like you have the swings that occur. He was such a fricking jerk that people are just like all this other like as a byproduct of him. Like all this good stuff happened and and look, I took a sigh of relief when he got the hell out of there. I was like done with it like a year in. I'm like, okay, this is just too much for me.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  No, I think I think what you're bringing up is really important. And when I'm asking the question, I'm not sort of saying like, why are people in the military Republican? Because I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Democrat or Republican. What I what alarms me is the sort of radicalization, the QAnon shit and the three percenters and these sort of extreme groups. But but I think what I think what that is, is the opposite of what you're just talking about, which is you're saying like, look, all these things have happened and they're complicated and they're going to require complicated solutions. And I think it's really tempting to think that there's these sort of simple solutions to them. It's really tempting to sort of retreat into a fantasy world into your media

• 31:09Speaker 00

  bubble where you only hear things that you like and, you know, fall into the embrace of the sort of conservative media machine or or the blogs that you like or the podcasts you like. And I think that's very tempting to go to to go full circle. If you come from a community, a tight knit community that gives you purpose and meaning. And makes you part of a thing. And then you enter the regular world where there isn't any of that and you're on your own and it's complicated and and everyone sucks. It can be really tempting and seductive to get to get drawn back into that in the form of, you know, conspiracy theories or, you know, Proud Boy like gangs.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  It can, it can, it can, uh, it's, it's a, it preys on people. I think that's what these groups are really doing.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would, I would agree with you and also just comment. It's a, you know, it's a minority of these military veterans that are out there. And I think a lot of them have, are suffering from post-traumatic stress. And, and to my point earlier, you know, going back to Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning, like people need purpose. And when somebody, a man or woman gets out of the military. Yeah, they, they, they get back from a deployment to Afghanistan. They lost friends, maybe they're injured themselves, they killed somebody. They go, they realize that there's no purpose behind it.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  And I can tell you, having spoke to congressmen, senators, defense industry executives, there is nobody that can give me a straight answer of why we are in Afghanistan 20 years. And when you come back and you realize, how can I rationalize all this bad shit I just did and saw? And there's a lack of purpose. It creates a lot of psychological issues. And so now you're having this big transition of veterans to civilian workforce. And a few of them that would, that are suffering from a lot of mental health issues find these fringe groups, to your point. And, you know, they're, they're lighting the torches and joining up with the crazies. And that's unfortunately.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  You know, it's a minority, but those guys are the ones making the news, right?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  No, that's, that's very well said. Right. It's, it's like the, no one is joining these groups because they think it's crazy. It seems like it makes sense. It is drawing on something emotionally, mentally, usually because you're in some kind of impaired state or you're coming from a place of pain. That's right. It, that, that, that is a really, that's a, that's a good reminder. You should think about what has happened to this person. You look at, it was Ashley Babbitt, the one who was killed, the, the Air Force veteran, killed storming the Capitol. What happens, what has to break in a person's brain to find yourself doing that?

• 34:15Speaker 00

  It's, it, it's not a malicious place. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a victim who in turn is victimizing other people. And, and unfortunately, that's where a lot of evil stuff in the world comes from.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Brandon, this was amazing. I'm so glad we met. I'm, I'm really glad we did this and let's see each other in person soon.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd love to. Thanks for having me on the show.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to another episode of The Daily Stoic. It's mind blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads of this show. It means so much to me to have all of you listen. If you want to help spread the word about the show, please leave a review on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcasting platform is. It helps a lot. And then of course, click subscribe. That's how we know how many people are listening and that, that makes sure you get the episodes as they come in. So thanks again for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.