Speaker 1: That's how we start the podcast. Are you already recording?
Speaker 1: That's are you recording as you were screaming? Well, I
Speaker 1: was recording. When I started making the noise, I anticipated
Speaker 1: that the podcast would start with that's the beauty of
Speaker 1: that professional I'm Robert. I'm Robert Evans. Welcome. No, I
Speaker 1: don't like it. I'm not I'm not doing it. No
Speaker 1: one else is Robert Evans because nobody else gets to
Speaker 1: introduce my show a tonally and wordlessly. We have started,
Speaker 1: then we have started you okay? Correct? Hi everyone, Hello
Speaker 1: America and parts of Canada in the UK Zealand. No,
Speaker 1: we don't let them on here. Yes we do. Well.
Speaker 1: I love you guys. There are some real strict GEO tags.
Speaker 1: I'm keeping my eye on you. If you're good on
Speaker 1: the list motherfuckers is what I think. Hello America, except
Speaker 1: the Celtics fans of Boston. I don't say hi to you.
Speaker 1: This has been quite the introduction. Um, it's the last
Speaker 1: day of August as we record this. In August is
Speaker 1: a month we did it kind of maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll see the missiles could all start firing anytime in
Speaker 1: the next several hours left. Yeah, we got like nine hours.
Speaker 1: But I did say, I don't know. I started saying
Speaker 1: a few months back that August was going to be
Speaker 1: a really fucking horrible month. And it's been a really
Speaker 1: fucking horrible month. Uh As I like, like this Saturday,
Speaker 1: like two days ago. I guess less than two days ago. Um, uh,
Speaker 1: guy got shot dead in the streets of Portland. Um
Speaker 1: that that was not good. Looks like they're going to
Speaker 1: be escalating a series of heavily armed rallies between left
Speaker 1: ring and right wing demonstrators that are likely to degenerate
Speaker 1: in the gunfight. So September might be even worse, probably
Speaker 1: is going to be. So that's good. Too much time
Speaker 1: until November. So, folks, when things like this happen, and
Speaker 1: when I say things like this, I mean the complete
Speaker 1: collapse of democratic society and to an authoritarian bloodsilk nightmare.
Speaker 1: When things like this happen, we hear it behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: Know of only one way to try to keep people's
Speaker 1: spirits up, try to maintain you know, um, that that
Speaker 1: fighting spirit that we're all gonna need to get through this. Um,
Speaker 1: And that way is, of course reading excerpts from Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro's unbelievably terrible novel, True Allegiance, ah, beautiful prose, Gosh,
Speaker 1: describe it correctly, My goodness. Did I introduce the show
Speaker 1: or Adi and Cody or did I just start shouting
Speaker 1: a totally yeah, I can do it. Okay, what is
Speaker 1: this show, Sophie? This show is Behind the Bastards and
Speaker 1: it's hosted by you, Robert Evans. I am, I am
Speaker 1: your executive producer, Sophie lick Derman. Anderson is the is
Speaker 1: the uh is our ceo um um. And then we're
Speaker 1: joined today by h Katie Stole and Cody Johnston of
Speaker 1: Some More News, even More News, Worst Year Ever and
Speaker 1: just epic nous. That's good, okay, well, great on the
Speaker 1: horse the horse. Everyone is has has boarded the horse.
Speaker 1: So I thought you were going to say the horses
Speaker 1: in the back, and I got really scared that you
Speaker 1: knew a pop culture reference the horse in the bag. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know any of that. What I do know
Speaker 1: is that we just finished, uh, we just finished when
Speaker 1: we last left off, and I recommend there's been like,
Speaker 1: what now three episodes of this before just going through
Speaker 1: and we're just skimming Ben's novel and reading chunks of
Speaker 1: it because it's very funny. Um. The last chapter was
Speaker 1: Brett Hawthorne, combat General and prisoner of terrorist man in
Speaker 1: the City of Iran, which, yeah, short terrorists attacked by
Speaker 1: the bear of a man kidnapped by short terrorists. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Brett Hawthorne kidnapped by terrorists. He just had
Speaker 1: gotten thrown into the cell after having his big meeting
Speaker 1: with the bad terrorist guy. Um the evil terrorist Uh
Speaker 1: drifted off to sleep thinking of his wife Ellen um
Speaker 1: or the TV show Ellen. Um. That's unclear at this point,
Speaker 1: it's unclear. Um, I choose. I mean, I'm praying for
Speaker 1: Ellen to Brett. We all are we all? We all are? Okay?
Speaker 1: So the next chapter is a President Prescott chapter, which
Speaker 1: is again Barack Obama but white, Barack Obama but white,
Speaker 1: and mixed with a little bit of f DR and Hitler.
Speaker 1: I'm Hitler like other parts. Um. Okay, were you asking, Katie?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, did we decide like a prototype
Speaker 1: for him, like like Kevin Costner. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's you know, it seems like Ben is patterning the
Speaker 1: president in this off of the kind of person who
Speaker 1: has not gotten elected ever in democratic politics, but um
Speaker 1: Republicans believe is like, yeah, he's like the fantasy Republican
Speaker 1: democratic president, right, so he's like a little bit of
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton mixed in with a little bit of Hitler.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's what we get with President Prescott. Yeah,
Speaker 1: President Prescott always felt a surge of power through his body.
Speaker 1: He's set in the situation room. This is where they
Speaker 1: had made all their biggest decisions. It's where Kennedy read
Speaker 1: teletype during the Cuban missile crisis. It's where President Barack
Speaker 1: Obama had set watching Seal Team six take out Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden. And this is where Prescott new he'd be
Speaker 1: sitting at the head of the table while American Special
Speaker 1: Operations troops dispatched. It brought him a shami. It is
Speaker 1: kind of unclear in this up until now. I think
Speaker 1: this is the first Barack Obama reference we get very
Speaker 1: unfair for Barack Obama. What the timing has been of
Speaker 1: like American history and Ben Shapiro's alternate timeline. Um, just
Speaker 1: the president right after Obama. I think this is the guy,
Speaker 1: Like what if a random Democrat who was also Hitler
Speaker 1: instead of Trump. That's that's I mean, you could make
Speaker 1: the case that that is Trump in some capacities. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: except for Trump, I don't think he's ever been owed
Speaker 1: by um the weight of a historical anything, because he's
Speaker 1: not really capable of feeling the emotion of awe. But anyway,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so they intelligence figured out General Hawthorne's signal.
Speaker 1: If you remember, he was like being he was on
Speaker 1: one of those terrorist videos and he'd like blinked the
Speaker 1: coordinates of where he was. Then yeah, that's good. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, um Hawthorne had spoken the pre written message
Speaker 1: from a Shami just as a Shammi had written it,
Speaker 1: prompting a national debate on whether Hawthorne had should have
Speaker 1: complied with the propaganda requirements of the world's leading terrorist.
Speaker 1: But intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied under
Speaker 1: their hat. Well, the west rest of the world had
Speaker 1: watched Hawthorne's mouth, Intelligence had watched his eyes. Which is
Speaker 1: very funny to me, because like every time anything vaguely
Speaker 1: like that's that's any that's vaguely a mystery occurs that
Speaker 1: involves like a video clip, that's you know, anytime something
Speaker 1: like that goes viral, whether it's a murder or whatever
Speaker 1: the entire Internet sets to trying to solve it. And
Speaker 1: if this guy had been blinking in Morse code while
Speaker 1: deliver like like, there's a zero percent chance that everything
Speaker 1: he had been saying wouldn't have already been liked to do,
Speaker 1: would have figured it out. My favorite would have figured
Speaker 1: it out was that one sentence that you just read,
Speaker 1: um butt Intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied
Speaker 1: under the Oh wait, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's a few sentences. That's a ok yeah, good good yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: good improvement, improvement. Ben he had a copy editor for
Speaker 1: this chapter, Yeah, he must have, so, yeah, this he
Speaker 1: talked been talks about how Hawthorne had taken the trick
Speaker 1: of blinking in Morse code from a Vietnam era pow
Speaker 1: who had blinked out torture, which is maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit easier than blinking out the coordinates airstrike now and
Speaker 1: then geographical coordinates. Yeah, it's very funny, um. And also
Speaker 1: just that they would know like that that would be
Speaker 1: what the that the government would in stantly agree. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: this captured person has called for an air strike on
Speaker 1: the capital of a sovereign nation. That's got to be
Speaker 1: what we do. Well, not only do we know that,
Speaker 1: that's what he's calling for to do it. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: going to launch. Yeah, well, no, he doesn't know it,
Speaker 1: been doesn't note. The message prompted a full scale debate
Speaker 1: inside the White House. It raised too many questions. First,
Speaker 1: was Hawthorne's location correct? How would he know where he
Speaker 1: was given that prisoners were typically blindfolded and kept in
Speaker 1: windowless rooms before their executions. If Hawthorne was wrong about
Speaker 1: the location and a heavily populated area of Tehran, the
Speaker 1: United States could end up with the blood of dozens
Speaker 1: on its hands and an international mess almost impossible to
Speaker 1: clean up. They could brill him it all in Iranian
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, but after Iraq, the public wouldn't be buying
Speaker 1: that's not that's not the Yeah, that's not the reason,
Speaker 1: not to kill dozens of innocent people that the public
Speaker 1: might not buy it, right, Yeah, maybe we can't get
Speaker 1: away with killing the civilians all the To be fair,
Speaker 1: he has written articles about how he doesn't care about
Speaker 1: civilian casualties, So sure it did isn't very surprising, you know,
Speaker 1: it just occurs to me, Cody because that article he
Speaker 1: wrote about how he thinks it's he thought it was
Speaker 1: stupid whenever people complained about civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and
Speaker 1: it's fine to kill civilians in Afghanistan. He was seventeen
Speaker 1: when he wrote that article. And there's probably a pretty
Speaker 1: good essay to be written by someone smarter than me
Speaker 1: about Ben Shapiro, age seventeen, urging the nation to mass
Speaker 1: murder strangers in Afghanistan and Kyle Rittenhouse, age seventeen, taking
Speaker 1: his A R fifteen across state lines illegally to shoot
Speaker 1: strangers in another city. Probably something going on there, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah yeah. Second, even if Hawthorne was right,
Speaker 1: could the American aircraft breach Iranian airspace to take out
Speaker 1: of Shami? A strike in a populated area would require
Speaker 1: too much pinpoint accuracy for a missile. Military aircraft would
Speaker 1: have to be utilized. Such an attack would surely have
Speaker 1: grave ramifications for international politics, including ongoing nuclear negotiations with
Speaker 1: the Iranian. Yeah. I think you're not going to keep
Speaker 1: negotiating with them if you bomb their capital right now.
Speaker 1: I do suspect that would have an impact, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's logic and reason he's doing logic and reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is also like incredibly boring. It's like basic and
Speaker 1: stuff like, oh, they might shoot the plane down and
Speaker 1: that would be a problem. Like he's he's tried to
Speaker 1: like portray this dude is like this feckless and wildly
Speaker 1: responsible president. But then everything is going through in his
Speaker 1: head is like, yes, these are all things you'd have
Speaker 1: to consider if you were going to bomb the capital
Speaker 1: of a rod Like it's like, what are we what
Speaker 1: are we spending our time on here? Yeah, oh Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So and then he has this thought go through the
Speaker 1: heads of this presume of like supposedly progressive Democratic candidate.
Speaker 1: The Israelis were sitting around waiting to strike Iran's nuclear facilities,
Speaker 1: with the Americans taking action in Iranian soil, they could
Speaker 1: take advantage of the situation to double up with the
Speaker 1: brief bombing campaign, sinking any possibility of a nuclear deal.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, just very very boring, boring.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, it's not like he's not doing like
Speaker 1: a a very legitimate like thought process, but also it's boring,
Speaker 1: like I don't need any of this. I don't need
Speaker 1: to hear this, this internal debate. Um, or if you're
Speaker 1: going to write a scene where they talk about these
Speaker 1: things and you have characters giving a view points and
Speaker 1: then arguing, like, show me two more long paragraphs where
Speaker 1: he just goes back and forth about like this would
Speaker 1: be a good foreign policy triumph and it people won't
Speaker 1: call me a coward. But you know, we could also
Speaker 1: just do it later. And it's just it's it's it's
Speaker 1: again said, reveal things about the characters of the individuals
Speaker 1: in this administration by how they react and discuss the
Speaker 1: different possibilities, Like chances are everyone would have a different
Speaker 1: viewpoint and then I would learn something about each one
Speaker 1: of them based on their viewpoint. Yeah, yeah, do the
Speaker 1: thing like watch a single episode. I normally wouldn't say this,
Speaker 1: but watch a single episode of The West Wing, a
Speaker 1: show that has characters that argue about things like what
Speaker 1: to do and do that instead of this. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: that would be my thought. I never thought not like
Speaker 1: watch the West Wing would be like great advice, but
Speaker 1: just watch the West Wing. Well, he wants to write television,
Speaker 1: so he should know that dialogue is an option he does,
Speaker 1: and it is it's one of the best options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could have dialogue in this momentum. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very it keep just keeps on going. In fact, Prescott
Speaker 1: had been leading and leaving, leaning in the direction of
Speaker 1: leaving things be, but two factors had decided him on action. First,
Speaker 1: Prescott wanted a taste of glory. Just Prescott Prescott. Prescott
Speaker 1: like Ben might a book, write a book, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: have him be a character that does things. Don't just
Speaker 1: like tell us have him like like Prescott like proposed
Speaker 1: to do that. And then one of the characters says,
Speaker 1: like you just want you just want it for the
Speaker 1: glory or like what like obviously not that exactly because
Speaker 1: that's bad, but like have people challenge him or something,
Speaker 1: and then he explains why they're wrong, or he wavers
Speaker 1: because maybe they're right or something. He has to ignore
Speaker 1: good advice, and you like see him make a choice
Speaker 1: to like yeah, yeah, no, instead that sounds like a
Speaker 1: lot more work, Yeah, Or he could write an essay,
Speaker 1: boring essay about it, like all the options. And it
Speaker 1: turns out the president decides to bomb a sovereign nation
Speaker 1: because that would make it difficult for Congress to turn
Speaker 1: him down about his his work freedom program. The everybody
Speaker 1: gets a job program that he wants to ram through.
Speaker 1: Yes that I'm Yeah. Congress famously is a huge fan
Speaker 1: of the United States randomly bombing the capitals of sovereign nations. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you get whatever you want as president if
Speaker 1: you are like, hey, guys, I just bombed Iran for
Speaker 1: no good reason. What Ben is doing here is showing
Speaker 1: us a stunning understanding of our government and how it works.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? Is showing us done? Like he's
Speaker 1: just showing us a window into what he thinks the
Speaker 1: government should operate, Like what he thinks people should do
Speaker 1: in order to get what they want. Yes, that's what
Speaker 1: I actually meant. Yeah, that really is what's going on here. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's so the president who again only cares about his
Speaker 1: his uh like signature piece of social welfare legislation that's
Speaker 1: clearly meant to frame him as a Nazi because the
Speaker 1: work Freedom program are bite mocked fry, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, he already had his. So while he's
Speaker 1: like getting his final briefings for the bombing of the
Speaker 1: capital of a sovereign nation, Uh, he's daydreaming about the
Speaker 1: work Freedom program, and he writes a slogan on his hand.
Speaker 1: This is what Ben calls a slogan protecting America from
Speaker 1: those who would harm it. A broaden at home. And
Speaker 1: that is a lot for a hand and a lot
Speaker 1: for a slogan. That's a lot for a slogan. It's
Speaker 1: it's that Simpson's giant hand character tired of all these jokes,
Speaker 1: giant hand. If Trump had hired been to to run
Speaker 1: his campaign, it would be making America a country that
Speaker 1: used to be better, better than it is currently because
Speaker 1: it's not good enough right now, would be good for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Comma America. Put that on a fucking hat. Uh. Second,
Speaker 1: some right wing bloggers had caught onto Hawthorne signal. Mostly
Speaker 1: they were kookie survivor caught onto Hawthorne, So okay. A
Speaker 1: bunch of right wing bloggers had had found out that
Speaker 1: he was okay, So Ben does include the internet cracking
Speaker 1: the code. That's good. That's good. I got to be
Speaker 1: fair to talking about cookie right wing bloggers, so that's
Speaker 1: good too. Yeah. Mostly there were the cookie survivalist types,
Speaker 1: the kind of folks opposed to conspiracy theories and message boards.
Speaker 1: But the CIA informed Prescott that's such information once you
Speaker 1: get out could jeopardize any sort of attack. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's that. Okay, I'll give Been credit for that one.
Speaker 1: That that was Been that has been understanding a reality
Speaker 1: of the world around him and then using it to
Speaker 1: predict something in a a fictional scenario. Did he did that?
Speaker 1: All right? So that's good, good sentence then. Yeah. Already
Speaker 1: some of those nuts on Fox News had been making
Speaker 1: oblique references to the rumors. Um, be nice to like
Speaker 1: hear what that was? Like, how do you make an
Speaker 1: oblique reference to people online believing that a US general
Speaker 1: is calling for air strikes on till on using morse
Speaker 1: code blinking, Like, how do you like, how do you
Speaker 1: slightly reference that? I guess I'd like to know. That's
Speaker 1: another thing where like show me that. Yeah, yeah, show
Speaker 1: me the tell show me these things instead of just
Speaker 1: telling me them in the least interesting way possible. So YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: We talk about how he decides not to do an
Speaker 1: air strike and the CIA has its own thing that
Speaker 1: they tell him to do and blah blah blah blah blah. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now he's in the situation room. We're back
Speaker 1: around to where we were at the start of this chapter.
Speaker 1: He's sort of explained he didn't really Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: um wait, so like we're it's still we're still in
Speaker 1: the situation room, and now we really happened. They've just
Speaker 1: described like they've just explained why we're here, as opposed
Speaker 1: to weeks of debate or days of debate you know,
Speaker 1: had ended with like you know, he knew that it
Speaker 1: was time for action. You know, sometimes you just can't
Speaker 1: listen to other people's arguments. You have to make it
Speaker 1: because also like you like just in terms of like storytelling,
Speaker 1: that's a that's the chapter that you write, right, like
Speaker 1: you'd like, here's yeah, debate, like it's here all of
Speaker 1: the things that are happening, cryptographer whoever who figures it
Speaker 1: out and informs the government, and then you have like
Speaker 1: the meeting and like now this is again if President
Speaker 1: Prescott and his administration are characters, if there's characters in
Speaker 1: here that we like we can engage with and be
Speaker 1: interested by, even if they're the bad guys, um or
Speaker 1: if they're incompetent, If they're characters, but they're not characters there,
Speaker 1: um yeah, they're they're just like they're for been to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their little wax sculptures. They're a little little action figures
Speaker 1: for him to play with. Yeah, they're little action figures.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Um. Yeah, So he sends in I
Speaker 1: guess a wet work team to go get this guy
Speaker 1: out somehow. Um yeah, the C I A. Um, so
Speaker 1: that's great. So he's told that the CIA success odds
Speaker 1: are less than but he sends in the CIA team anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: I think there's a thanks. Thanks. Let's see here now. Now,
Speaker 1: the CIA operatives, dressed in local garb, set a quick
Speaker 1: burning charge on the outside of the iron work door.
Speaker 1: It flared brightly but the alleyway, but in the only
Speaker 1: way there was nobody to see it. One of the
Speaker 1: operatives gently nudged the door open with its foot for
Speaker 1: for him spread a dark hallway. No lights came in order, check,
Speaker 1: whispered one of the men. They crept down the hallway,
Speaker 1: visibility no greater than ten feet ahead to the sides,
Speaker 1: ran door after Yeah. Okay, so it's been trying to
Speaker 1: write an action scene. The guy identifies himself as police. Um, yadda, YadA, YadA, YadA, yadda. Uh,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of guys doing a doing a boring
Speaker 1: special forces type raid thing. So the team, the team
Speaker 1: finds Brett and he's uh, okay, well kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: So the correct amant tore into the souls of Brett's feet,
Speaker 1: gashing them, but Brett hardly felt it. He hadn't moved
Speaker 1: this fast since high school football. Get the funk out
Speaker 1: of here, he screamed at the Americans standing twenty yards
Speaker 1: above him on this airs. They know you're here. Get out.
Speaker 1: He heard the sound of a couple of safeties being
Speaker 1: switched off, and then he saw the guns pointed directly
Speaker 1: at him. Run you morons, he shouted. The operatives were
Speaker 1: blocking the stairs, standing there idiotically. Then again, he had
Speaker 1: time to think it was covered with blood from head
Speaker 1: to toe. He didn't have time to explain the blood. However,
Speaker 1: he didn't have time to explain the bodies of Yusuf
Speaker 1: and his fellow Thuck. So we don't get any explanation.
Speaker 1: Is he's killed a bunch of people. Um Brett has
Speaker 1: and I guess freed himself. I think, what what has happened?
Speaker 1: We haven't had another chapter of him, so this is
Speaker 1: just yeah, they're just letting us know that, like without Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's already been working to get out. Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1: The next page or two is him explaining again, but
Speaker 1: keeps doing this thing where like he's trying to he's
Speaker 1: he'll have an action scene and it'll spend two pages
Speaker 1: explaining all the things that happened before that action scene
Speaker 1: that he was just at and he keeps doing it
Speaker 1: this way instead of just telling a story. Like hate
Speaker 1: when people do that, not just because bench a hero
Speaker 1: does it, but I hate in general. Scripts are stories
Speaker 1: and stuff where you're like you have to stop and
Speaker 1: be like, did I miss something? I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I don't like it? Yeah, because he wanted he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to like write a complicated scene where
Speaker 1: like this team breaks in and Brett has to like
Speaker 1: free himself, like as they're sort of coming in and
Speaker 1: like clearing the building and its tense. So instead like
Speaker 1: he has them just greet him. Brett's already freed himself.
Speaker 1: They meet him having freed himself, and he warns them
Speaker 1: that it's a trap, and then we go back for
Speaker 1: two pages and explain how he freed himself before this
Speaker 1: all happened, so that we can return to the present.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable and if you're okay, So if you're going to
Speaker 1: do that, fine, don't go back and explain it. Just
Speaker 1: keep moving forward, like if if, if you want to
Speaker 1: do the thing, We're like, oh, he's he was already
Speaker 1: breaking out, and that's that's okay. Move on. Yeah, into
Speaker 1: the last chapter on a night where like and then
Speaker 1: you know, Brett began to you know, sawl Awagh it
Speaker 1: like his his cuffs or something like as the guard
Speaker 1: or something, and then like oh and then we see
Speaker 1: him he's freed him self. Clearly this was set up before.
Speaker 1: I don't need you to go back to pages and
Speaker 1: disrupt the flow of the narrative to detail in boring detail,
Speaker 1: very boring detail of him killing these two Pakistani teenagers
Speaker 1: or yeah, also just the phrase, uh, standing there idiotically
Speaker 1: just right, and they were just standing there. He can
Speaker 1: infer that they shouldn't be standing there doing anything. You
Speaker 1: don't need to tell us that they're being idiotic about it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's And also I should note here that Brett Hawthorne
Speaker 1: stabs the teenage boy guarding him through the eye when
Speaker 1: he is on the ground. Um, where do you get
Speaker 1: a knife? Oh? I don't know it happens. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to read through this whole stupid fight, but he
Speaker 1: stabs a teenage boy to death in the eye. That's
Speaker 1: important for Ben to have happened. You know, who won't
Speaker 1: stop a teenage boy on the eye, your mom in
Speaker 1: the is in America's current political climate, I can imagine
Speaker 1: almost anyone stabbing a teenage boy in the eye, and
Speaker 1: the right circumstances way to make it real. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's fair politics. But it's uh, it's time for it's
Speaker 1: time for an ad Breck, not politics, Robert, it is
Speaker 1: time for an ad break. We're back. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I for one am excited about the next chapter, which
Speaker 1: is going to come after this. So, yeah, we also
Speaker 1: during the President's chapter, we we went back to so
Speaker 1: we cut to the CIA team, uh, freeing him like
Speaker 1: that was So we start with the perspective of the president,
Speaker 1: the perspective of the CIA team, and we immediately go
Speaker 1: from that to the perspective of Brett Hawthorne, which is
Speaker 1: how we end the episode without any sort of like
Speaker 1: clear break. It's bad, it's horrible. Right, you're gonna divide
Speaker 1: your chapters up into characters. Do the thing that set
Speaker 1: up the book to do and you don't have to
Speaker 1: do that. But don't have to do that, you have
Speaker 1: to keep doing that otherwise it's very confusing and awkward.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so I okay, but we know we do
Speaker 1: get back to we do get out of So Brett
Speaker 1: tells the operatives to run, run, you morons, he shouted.
Speaker 1: When the operatives finally recognized General Bret Hawthorne, dressed and
Speaker 1: covered with blood, they turned and ran. They just run
Speaker 1: like he tells them to run, and they trained CIA operatives.
Speaker 1: Just run. Yeah. They smashed their way down the hallway.
Speaker 1: No time for discretion, now, no time for descretion your
Speaker 1: As they smashed their way down the hallway. As the
Speaker 1: basement exploded, rocking the ground beneath them, two of the
Speaker 1: men fell. Brett vaulted them, yelling at them to get up,
Speaker 1: grabbing one button. Good god, what a sentence. Two of
Speaker 1: the men fell, semicolon. Brett vaulted them, Comma, yelling at
Speaker 1: them to get up, Comma, grabbing one by his bulletproof
Speaker 1: vest and virtually throwing him down the hallway with his
Speaker 1: good hand. Period. That might be the worst sentence yet,
Speaker 1: I don't know that is How do you virtually throw someone.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what, I'd like to find out,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of people I'd like to virtually throw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am very upset about that. There's it's Ben has
Speaker 1: no idea how to use the active or passive voice.
Speaker 1: So the very next sentences, civilians heads popped out into
Speaker 1: the hallway as the explosion registered. Semi they pop out,
Speaker 1: they pop up, their heads out, Ben, maybe Brett looked
Speaker 1: over his shoulder to see them engulfed in the flame
Speaker 1: that poured down the hallway like water through a flooding pipeline.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe there's another piece of the secret Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro understanding, and the fact that the civilians don't take
Speaker 1: an action. Their heads just pop out and then they die.
Speaker 1: But it's not their action. Their heads just pop out
Speaker 1: into the hallway. Whereas Brett gets to have a direct action,
Speaker 1: he looks over his shoulder because he is is a
Speaker 1: human being. Um, everyone else is just popping They just
Speaker 1: pop out their head their heads pop out. No, they
Speaker 1: don't pop out, their heads, Cody, their heads popped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just yes, yes, a blest if he rocketed him
Speaker 1: through the door at the end of the hallway. The
Speaker 1: other operatives sprinted ahead. One man behind him screamed inhumanly
Speaker 1: as the fire caught him, but turned back pushed the
Speaker 1: man down into the dust, smelling his sizzling flesh as
Speaker 1: he tried to put out the flames. The man screams
Speaker 1: finally stopped as he fell unconscious. One of the other
Speaker 1: operatives grabbed the burning man by one arm, Brett grabbed
Speaker 1: the other. Together they ran down the alleyway into the darkness.
Speaker 1: And then we're back into the situation room. Uh after all, yes,
Speaker 1: this is the president him in the Joint Chiefs turns
Speaker 1: back to the President and says, they knew we were coming,
Speaker 1: Mr President, They knew we were coming. What do you mean,
Speaker 1: Prescott asked, you were just watching the explosion? And then
Speaker 1: how do you think our guys got out of there
Speaker 1: so easily? Afterwards? The Iranians must have known as Shami
Speaker 1: was there, they've been housing him. They just didn't want
Speaker 1: to fight us directly. That's all they were expecting, as
Speaker 1: shamis thugs to take our guys out, and when that
Speaker 1: didn't happen, they backed off. That's a lot of conclusions
Speaker 1: to draw. Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff based
Speaker 1: on a chaotic video, it seems like it's your job
Speaker 1: to not do that. But Ben needs to inform the
Speaker 1: audience very directly of what just happened, rather than yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's not sure that his prose is clear. You
Speaker 1: got to clarify, yeah. Uh so. But of course the
Speaker 1: President thinks the general silly for being disturbed by this
Speaker 1: and tells him to just take the night off because
Speaker 1: they rescued Bret Hawthorne. So everything's fine. Um, everything's fine,
Speaker 1: rings fine, the people are stabbed and burned, everything's fine. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is Ellen's chapter starts in Austin, Texas. She's obviously
Speaker 1: happy that her husband he's coming home. Yeah, he's on
Speaker 1: he's on his way back. He Prescott. The President has
Speaker 1: just called her to tell her that her husband's coming home.
Speaker 1: Uh she she She notes that he expected praise from
Speaker 1: her and she had to dutifully give it to him,
Speaker 1: just given where we are. Yeah, because he's he's he's
Speaker 1: he's like Barack Obama. He requires the praise. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So she's very happy that her husband's coming home. She
Speaker 1: hasn't seen him for a year. Uh, Prescott's doing a
Speaker 1: big old victory. Lap YadA, YadA, YadA. It wasn't enough
Speaker 1: for the president to make political hay off of her
Speaker 1: husband's rescue after abandoning him in Afghanistan, and now he
Speaker 1: turned Brett's home coming into a case for widespread troop withdrawals.
Speaker 1: She should have figured that would have been the next
Speaker 1: shoe to drop. Really a deep under standing of America,
Speaker 1: like that's how this country works. Yeah, you gotta love
Speaker 1: that Ben is so disconnected from the basic reality if
Speaker 1: the things that he gets angry about that he thinks
Speaker 1: the Democrats have ever supported troop withdrawal in any meaningful
Speaker 1: way from Afghanistan as opposed to what happened under Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: the guy who was president not all that long ago,
Speaker 1: whose record in Afghanistan you can read about. The guy
Speaker 1: he's lampooning. The guy he's trying to make a point about, Yes,
Speaker 1: who massively surged US troop presence in Afghanistan for years. Um,
Speaker 1: yeah cool, I'm yeah, take your word for it, Ben, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good work, Ben, Um Yeah. So uh, Prescott talks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just going through her being disgusted that Prescott wants
Speaker 1: to take bring American troops home from other and again
Speaker 1: like this is all just like I and I don't
Speaker 1: have the book in front of me, thank god, but
Speaker 1: I imagine that what you are reading right now is
Speaker 1: just Ben describing her thoughts and feelings generally like over
Speaker 1: along along with describing what the president is doing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like, write a scene, write a fucking scene, Ben, Yes,
Speaker 1: between them, you know, right her right her sitting and
Speaker 1: watching TV with her family around her, and they all
Speaker 1: react differently, and that gives her something to actually interact
Speaker 1: with as a person, and we can see her mental
Speaker 1: state maybe is announced. Yeah, she's watching it with like
Speaker 1: her mom and her dad or her aunt or cousins
Speaker 1: or whatever, and like some of them are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's such a nice thing for the presidents to say.
Speaker 1: She gets angry and she snaps at them and screams
Speaker 1: at them and reveals her feelings and also the fact
Speaker 1: that she's on the fucking razor's edge. And then you
Speaker 1: have a character like like like a scene and a
Speaker 1: thing that people might want to read. Suggestion. I wrote
Speaker 1: a book and it's bad, which is why I didn't
Speaker 1: publish it. Yes, but it's just like it's like so
Speaker 1: much of this reads like him summarizing what he wants
Speaker 1: to happen. It's summary of a book, Like you think
Speaker 1: your book was bad, the one that I read, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it bad? Okay, I read something nobody else did.
Speaker 1: It is good. I feel special. I feel special. I
Speaker 1: feel It's not the topic of discussion. Now to phenomenal
Speaker 1: writer Robert Evans has been Shapiro's terrible book. You also
Speaker 1: have a published book that everybody should buy instead of
Speaker 1: published nonfiction book. But it's very different. Nonfiction and fiction
Speaker 1: are completely it's phenomenal. You all should buy it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh so, Yeah, but gave gives Ellen the morning
Speaker 1: off because her husband's getting back from Afghanistan, which the
Speaker 1: morning like a lot of time to give off, how general, Yeah,
Speaker 1: even like I won't even let him have a nooner, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I might give him. You know what, if I'm the boss,
Speaker 1: you might get a weekend for that, Like, yeah, have
Speaker 1: breakfast with your husband, your your husband was kidnapped and
Speaker 1: tortured in Iran. Take a three day you know, just
Speaker 1: a couple of you go down to Galveston, catch a
Speaker 1: flesh eating virus. Monday though you're back in this seat,
Speaker 1: or I swear to God I will fire you and
Speaker 1: your family will starve on this, and you're gonna actually
Speaker 1: have to stay stay late on Monday to make up
Speaker 1: for the time that you took off. Yeah, I'm in
Speaker 1: a need like a couple of double shifts Monday, let's
Speaker 1: say Monday through Thursday next week to make up for
Speaker 1: the weekend. Yeah, we got the phone, rang. Ellen hastily
Speaker 1: checked her bedside clock. It read seven fifty six am.
Speaker 1: She'd overslept. She'd taken a sleeping pill to calm herself
Speaker 1: down after the president's speech. Bubba had given it mo Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: They determinate the determinate, the determinedly cheery ring continued. She
Speaker 1: leaned over picked up Ellen Hawthorne. She said, groggedly into
Speaker 1: the phone, It's it's me baby. Involuntarily, tears sprang to
Speaker 1: her eyes. We could just say. Tears sprang to her
Speaker 1: eyes and said like, like, what are what is the
Speaker 1: other option here? Ben? She forced tears to her eyes
Speaker 1: during the call. It seven fifty six in the morning. Whatever,
Speaker 1: Oh god, you're all right, Brett. We don't have to
Speaker 1: tell baby, I'm here. I'm fine. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: where I am right now for security reasons. We're not
Speaker 1: in an American airspace yet. But I need you to
Speaker 1: call Bill. She immediately snapped to attention. Brett didn't need
Speaker 1: the loving wife right now, he needed the partner She
Speaker 1: put on that hat. So many times it spring to
Speaker 1: her without delay, what's going on? I need you to
Speaker 1: conference in Bill? He'll know. Why can't you call him directly?
Speaker 1: I can't explain. I'm your only call. They're monitoring it.
Speaker 1: You got it? So I guess, like, if you're a
Speaker 1: general who gets kidnapped and tortured in Iran, lie somebody
Speaker 1: who gets arrested by the cops, you get one phone call. Yep, yep. Also,
Speaker 1: I just like in such a short paragraph so many
Speaker 1: times he indicated that she was acting hastily and immediately
Speaker 1: snapping to attention very quickly, like, yeah, that's the phrase.
Speaker 1: We get. It doesn't matter care. So the Bill that
Speaker 1: they're talking about is some general named Bill Callier that
Speaker 1: we haven't met before. I don't believe um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: So and again her husband uses his first and only
Speaker 1: phone call, presumably to have his wife call another man
Speaker 1: to deal with problems for him, which I do. Funny, Um, Bill,
Speaker 1: this is Ellen. I've got Bread on the other line.
Speaker 1: I need to conference you in do it? Which is again?
Speaker 1: Now this is the stuff, Ben, you don't need to
Speaker 1: write out. You can just say she added him to
Speaker 1: the conversation. You like clicked the thing on her smartphone,
Speaker 1: Like we don't. We don't need to hear her conference
Speaker 1: in this other guy into the conversation. Yeah, the most
Speaker 1: unnecessary dialogue juxtaposed with like no dialogue that we desperately want. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there's some stupid movie greetings between this old grizzled
Speaker 1: general who I think is the mentor to Brett and
Speaker 1: Brett and then, uh, Bill, I need you to get
Speaker 1: your boys on something. I need them to find a
Speaker 1: known associate of a Shami's names mohammed him down. I
Speaker 1: need you, guys, I need your boys to find a
Speaker 1: guy he has the most common name on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Can you find John yet? I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, but I don't have his last name name Joe. Well,
Speaker 1: why don't you give me something tougher to do, Like
Speaker 1: find a specific Mexican named Juan. He's coming here to
Speaker 1: the United States. He's about five ft nine, one, skinny,
Speaker 1: maybe seventeen years old. Another seventeen year old. You just
Speaker 1: stabbed one to death? Ben, What is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: I want to know. It is weird. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Skinny maybe seventeen years old, blue eyes, angular face, sharp,
Speaker 1: big nose. Get your boys on it. There's not much done.
Speaker 1: So we're looking for a big nose boy named Mohammed.
Speaker 1: Uh get me all the Mohammed's with all the noses
Speaker 1: you can find, you see, Oh god? And then he
Speaker 1: hangs up. That's all the info he gets on. Okay,
Speaker 1: Uh no, No, he's still on the line with with Ellen.
Speaker 1: They just this was a conference call. He wants he
Speaker 1: wants he wants General Brett Hawthorne to only have one
Speaker 1: phone call for story reasons that are unclear as of yet,
Speaker 1: but he also needs him to talk to multiple people.
Speaker 1: So we're doing this awkward hung up, you met Brett Hawthorne?
Speaker 1: Hung up? All right, He's still on the line. He
Speaker 1: also I think he also wants Ellen and Brett to
Speaker 1: be like a badass Patriot team. But the only thing
Speaker 1: he can think of her to do is to act
Speaker 1: as the center of a of a three way phone call. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's worth noting. Like it's like we're talking like
Speaker 1: it's some star Trek nineteen sixty bullshit right before before
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, I'm sure Ben thinks it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: Are you okay, honey, Ellen asked after she knew Callier
Speaker 1: had clicked off the line. She could hear him sigh
Speaker 1: audibly if she could hear him sigh, Bini, it was audibly,
Speaker 1: if you okay, you could She could hear him sigh.
Speaker 1: There's the sentence, you could okay? Yeah, he sighed. So
Speaker 1: many ways to cut words out of this, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: don't help. Yeah. It's like they say, brevity is the
Speaker 1: soul of like you got to use the words, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the soul of all the words colon, the
Speaker 1: words that you gotta use, comma, you gotta use them
Speaker 1: so that people understand what you're saying. The words that is,
Speaker 1: the words that you use breviatari Lee that that's Shakespeare alright.
Speaker 1: So so he she hears him, She hears him. I
Speaker 1: don't know, sweetheart, I don't know what I'm doing here,
Speaker 1: why I'm doing it. What they did to my guys
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. I know, sweetheart, I know that's not a conversation. Um, Ellen,
Speaker 1: I wasn't supposed to live. That wasn't the message I gave.
Speaker 1: I blinked, air strike, not tactical mission, not rescue, air strike.
Speaker 1: Are you bummed that they used a surgical method that
Speaker 1: rescued you and didn't kill dozens of people? Like a
Speaker 1: shami was gone, the bad guy was gone. The air
Speaker 1: strike would not have okay. Like also, he's like mad
Speaker 1: and he's like, I shouldn't be alive. I said, air
Speaker 1: strike on at him to bomb Tehran. But you escaped,
Speaker 1: You did the escaping. Yeah, yeah, were also like you
Speaker 1: stabbed that seventeen year old boy to death. Those CIA.
Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable. Yes, but sweetheart, you're alive. You're coming home.
Speaker 1: I know you feel guilty. I know you never meant
Speaker 1: to leave your men behind, but you alive is better
Speaker 1: than you dead. Me alive isn't better than a shammy dead.
Speaker 1: He was there, Ellen, he was there. I gave him
Speaker 1: the location. I knew they'd have time to take the shot.
Speaker 1: But there's no explanation as to why, because they've like
Speaker 1: film and edit a video and then put it out
Speaker 1: and he's a terrorist whatever. But Prescott, damn him, didn't
Speaker 1: have the balls. He just didn't. And now with Shammi's
Speaker 1: out there planning. He's smart, ellen, smart as hell, and
Speaker 1: he steps ahead of us. We were lucky to get
Speaker 1: out of there alive. If it hadn't been for a
Speaker 1: stupid thug named Yusuf, we'd all seventeen year old thug,
Speaker 1: we'd all be dead, and Prescott wouldn't have an international incident,
Speaker 1: would have an international incident on his hand anyway, dead
Speaker 1: Americans in their body parts spread all over Tehran. Damn
Speaker 1: the man, Damn him again, Like the reason to hate
Speaker 1: this president is that he didn't do an air strike.
Speaker 1: He didn't immediately jump to an air strike based on
Speaker 1: a man blinking. Very cool. Yeah. So, so she's happy
Speaker 1: that her husband's coming home. Oh God, I have to
Speaker 1: read this part, even though I think it might actually
Speaker 1: kill me to say, like, I don't know that I'm
Speaker 1: going to live through this. She found tears in her
Speaker 1: eyes again. Her man's her strong, unwavering man is so
Speaker 1: ready to die. That's not a sentence, not a sentence. Bin,
Speaker 1: But you're coming home, sweetheart, You're coming home. On the
Speaker 1: other end of the phone, she could hear her husband exhale.
Speaker 1: You're right, he said, slowly. I'm coming home. Take a
Speaker 1: bullet for you, babe, She said, take a bullet for you, sweetheart.
Speaker 1: The line kicked clicked dead. Yeah, that's how they end
Speaker 1: all their phone calls. I know, I know. It makes
Speaker 1: it's the worst thing I've ever seen on paper. With authority,
Speaker 1: I can say this with conviction. If I made it
Speaker 1: this far, I would slam the book down here. If
Speaker 1: I made it this far, you wouldn't enough. No. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read just straight up Nazi propaganda that was less
Speaker 1: pain inducing in its prose than that sentence. Like Jesus,
Speaker 1: it's a real slogan. Yeah, we have to take another break,
Speaker 1: don't we. Yeah. Yeah, And in case you're listening, I
Speaker 1: am comparing this unfavorably to the Turner Diaries. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry. He's also written articles that read like the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries too, so he sure, hass yeah, But you
Speaker 1: know what doesn't read like the Turner Diaries the products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. We are we are back.
Speaker 1: We are back in reading ben Ship Heroes Roll Roll Book.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I do want to think. Let's let's
Speaker 1: take a moment before we dive back into the story.
Speaker 1: To think about the fact that Herman Kaine died from
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen after attending a Trump rally, And now the
Speaker 1: people who run the social media accounts he used to
Speaker 1: tweet from when he was alive are tweeting that it's
Speaker 1: not a real virus. And that's that's pretty great. That's
Speaker 1: a hard pivot, but I'm here for it. Yeah, it's wild. Um,
Speaker 1: not not that convincing, But it is art. It is art.
Speaker 1: It's it's it says literally everything that matters about the
Speaker 1: time we're in right now. Um, no one, no one
Speaker 1: even really cares like it's it's not it's not something
Speaker 1: people give a shit about. Yeah, it's gone. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's said done. And God, it's one of those
Speaker 1: stories that um takes my already full cup a little
Speaker 1: bit over the edge in such a way that you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm mad about it. I have to let it spill,
Speaker 1: I have to let it roll down the side this
Speaker 1: container and evaporate. Oh that was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a poetic metaphor, a poeto for a poetoph m hmm.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to this bad let's let's let's let's
Speaker 1: I keep yawning. And it's not because of you guys,
Speaker 1: I didn't sleep well. No, it's the book. Um, are
Speaker 1: we still in the Ellen chapter? Is it? Like? God, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're I think we're yep, we are still okay because
Speaker 1: they're still on the phone, or like they just hung
Speaker 1: up the cutest way possible. And then and then the
Speaker 1: next paragraph just lets us know that Bill Collier got
Speaker 1: a hall from his wife a minute and twenty nine
Speaker 1: seconds later and he let it go to voicemail because
Speaker 1: he was tracking down the man named Mohammed. Uh, how
Speaker 1: does Ellen? And then we're back to I don't know
Speaker 1: that that paragraph just happens, um, with no understanding of
Speaker 1: like how we're aware of that? How are anyway? It
Speaker 1: just is there. And then we're back to Ellen in
Speaker 1: a separate pair notes for his book. It doesn't like
Speaker 1: that unbelievable. Yeah. The first phone call Ellen received came
Speaker 1: from Bubba, which didn't she He told me to turn
Speaker 1: on the television. When she did, she saw the George
Speaker 1: Washington Bridge tilting and low motion. Oh so there's been
Speaker 1: a terrorist attack on the bridge. Um. Yeah, so wow,
Speaker 1: And this just is all one paragraph that the George
Speaker 1: Washington Bridge has been blown up and the President's vowed
Speaker 1: to take care of the perpetrators one single paragraph. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that he's mobilizing National Guard troops to go to
Speaker 1: New York City one paragraph. We learn all of that
Speaker 1: information after Uh yeah, just putstanding. I'm skipping a lot
Speaker 1: of paragraphs, so I might have skipped that one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: then you'd go right to Then she heard a knock
Speaker 1: at her door. Then being after realizing that another nine
Speaker 1: eleven had just occurred and the President had already reacted
Speaker 1: to it and the National Guard had been mobilized. Then
Speaker 1: she heard a knock at her door. When she opened it,
Speaker 1: Bubba was standing there. His face looked gaunt ashen. She
Speaker 1: ushered him into the living room, where he settled his
Speaker 1: bulk into her leather couch. I got a call from Prescott.
Speaker 1: He wants our boys out here. They're a SAP. I know,
Speaker 1: I saw it on the news. I won't send them elon,
Speaker 1: she shuddered, involuntarily. You know by law that you have to.
Speaker 1: The National Guard can be mobilized by the president once
Speaker 1: a national emergency has been declared under the under posse comitatus.
Speaker 1: That isn't totally clear, but this ain't about law anymore.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been for a long time. We pull our
Speaker 1: troops off that border, and I'll have more dead ranchers
Speaker 1: on my hands, more children floating in that river. I
Speaker 1: don't have the stomach for that. I do believe there
Speaker 1: might be enough National guardsmen to both clean up from
Speaker 1: a bridge being bombed in New York and to do
Speaker 1: whatever bullshit they're doing on the border. We kind of
Speaker 1: have a lot of them. Is the whole National Guard
Speaker 1: on the border, just all of them? Huh every hand unbelievable, Um,
Speaker 1: not perfectly believable. I misspoke, very believable. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: so it's just it's okay, So it's the governor of
Speaker 1: Texas is not sending his States National Guard to help
Speaker 1: New York because they're needed at the border. That makes sense, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: use other people. Yeah, they're the only thing standing between
Speaker 1: us and a full scale invasion. The invasion is in
Speaker 1: slow is slow motion? Yeah, the invasion. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: the response to that is the invasion is slow motion.
Speaker 1: That situation in New York isn't um which I guess
Speaker 1: has just been doing some straight up, uh fucking white
Speaker 1: supremacist ship right there. Uh wow, Yeah, it does slow
Speaker 1: motion invasion. They're going to infect us. Yeah, um, that's good. Uh.
Speaker 1: She glances at the television. The rescue pool was crew
Speaker 1: was pulling another body from the water, a young girl
Speaker 1: wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt. It was footage Ellen knew from
Speaker 1: nine eleven that they'd only showed a day during live coverage.
Speaker 1: Then the psychiatrist would explain to the network break Jesus, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Ellen is you know, guilt ridden because she cares
Speaker 1: about what's happening in New York City and she watched
Speaker 1: eleven happen in person, I think, uh, and she's horrified
Speaker 1: that her boss isn't going to send troops to help
Speaker 1: with the explosion that just happened in New York. And
Speaker 1: so she turns back to the TV and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read the sentence here. The rescue crew crew was pulling
Speaker 1: another body from the water. Dash a young girl wearing
Speaker 1: a Disneyland sweatshirt. Period it was footage Comma. Ellen knew
Speaker 1: from nine eleven Comma that they'd only show today Comma
Speaker 1: during life coverage. Dash. Then the psychiatrist would explain to
Speaker 1: the network brass that showing such images was triggering comma
Speaker 1: and the pictures would disappear to spare the sensitivities of
Speaker 1: the American viewer. God, that's a sentence. How did she know? Also?
Speaker 1: What because the nine eleven they showed horrible bloody footage
Speaker 1: and then they stopped showing horrible bloody footage. All the
Speaker 1: time news agencies show things that are not footage from
Speaker 1: nine eleven of dead people and that's bad. Um a
Speaker 1: really dumb question of mine. But did people end up
Speaker 1: in the river in nine eleven? Um? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think the river was a
Speaker 1: big part of nine eleven. This is I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like I don't know. They're yeah, it's badly whole. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think I know what he's saying, but
Speaker 1: not because of his writing. That's fine, we don't need
Speaker 1: to understand it. Let's give it like it's it's like
Speaker 1: the nine like none eleven happened. They showed footage and
Speaker 1: that was damaging psychologically, and and and she knows that,
Speaker 1: and so when she sees this new footage of this
Speaker 1: new it makes her think like, oh, they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: showing this footage, right, is that what he's saying. I
Speaker 1: think that she's saying that there's footage from nine eleven
Speaker 1: of somebody being pulled from a river and they're playing
Speaker 1: that's not She's just saying that the footage from nine
Speaker 1: eleven that was very gory didn't get played enough after
Speaker 1: nine eleven because psychiatrists explained that that's triggering and they
Speaker 1: wanted to spare people sensitivities. And the idea is that, no,
Speaker 1: we should always be aware of how bloody nine eleven was,
Speaker 1: um and never stopped showing people horrible footage. Frum Itt,
Speaker 1: That's that's what is happening there. That's what she shouldn't
Speaker 1: have had to think about this sentence so much. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a bad sentence, which is why would use the
Speaker 1: restaurant trying to figure it out. Yeah, So at the
Speaker 1: end of this, Bubba is like, you know, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to send the National Guard, and Ellen's like,
Speaker 1: what's the president gonna do if you turn him down?
Speaker 1: And Bubbles like, well, he's not going to send the
Speaker 1: National Guard after me because they're all in New York. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's basically where this ends. Uh So next is
Speaker 1: a chapter, so we have learned nothing about Ellen, very little,
Speaker 1: very a pretty cool wife. I don't know everything in
Speaker 1: that chapter that happened just happened to Ellen decisions. How
Speaker 1: many chapters are there less? Uh for a few more episodes,
Speaker 1: that's for darn shure. We're about we're we're about to
Speaker 1: be We're about like the way through part two collapse
Speaker 1: and I don't know about of the book is the
Speaker 1: end of the beginning? I don't know either case. He
Speaker 1: went with the end of the beginning, didn't he? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I been wanted to write this into a series, but
Speaker 1: then it was unreadable. But it was a horrible book. Um,
Speaker 1: don't call your shot like that, buddy. No, don't call
Speaker 1: your shot like that, buddy. Um So Solidad chapter She's
Speaker 1: in Minno, North Dakota now from south uh, southern California,
Speaker 1: which is quite a trek. Uh. They're not close, not
Speaker 1: close places to one another. Um. Yeah, they made their
Speaker 1: way to the farm gradually. Uh, they made they'd made
Speaker 1: their way to the farm gradually. At first there were
Speaker 1: only a few friends and family of the militia members
Speaker 1: and agglomeration of survivalists and nuts. I don't belong here,
Speaker 1: Solidad thought. Then she realized that they were here because
Speaker 1: of her Minno North Dakota lay near the banks of
Speaker 1: the Souris River, a midsized town a forty thousand just
Speaker 1: south of the Canadian border. It was truly the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Solidad thought they'd moved north and north, the
Speaker 1: north some more out of the populated areas outward, would
Speaker 1: take a lot of manpower to track them down. They've
Speaker 1: nearly been tracked down in California. The authorities still thought
Speaker 1: they were there, having originally believed mistakenly that they'd been burned,
Speaker 1: that they'd been burned during the fire at the ranch.
Speaker 1: By the time investigators caught onto the fact that they
Speaker 1: were still alive, they were in Idaho. Every few days
Speaker 1: they moved until they reached Minot and Minno Aiden had
Speaker 1: allies and friends. His parents had come from there before
Speaker 1: moving south, and he still had a pack of relatives. Yeada, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: So this is again We're just gonna like tell you
Speaker 1: summarize an exciting journey across the country while being tracked
Speaker 1: by federal agencies and a couple of paragraphs because like
Speaker 1: we don't have time to care this ship. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want scenes in a book. He should just write
Speaker 1: blot etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, yeah, we just wound up there.
Speaker 1: So okay. They they're hunkering down with Aiden's family along
Speaker 1: with a bunch of an into an undetermined number of
Speaker 1: bikers and survivalists and militia members. Um who was going
Speaker 1: to be the guys that decoded Brett's message? Probably right,
Speaker 1: we're probably gonna learn that. Yeah. Yeah. They start recruiting people,
Speaker 1: local boys who didn't want to be sent oh boy.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, they're all yeah, uh yeah, people who didn't
Speaker 1: want to get called up to the National Guard. But
Speaker 1: I guess legally we're supposed to get called up and
Speaker 1: instead join a militia, which I believe is treason. Um,
Speaker 1: I suspect you could. That's at least like modest treason.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, mild treason, mild treason. So yeah, she starts
Speaker 1: recruiting people and building a base in North Dakota. Uh
Speaker 1: and it builds eventually a small force of nearly forty
Speaker 1: uh Soli, dad knows all of them. She had a
Speaker 1: gift for connecting with people. It was the same gift
Speaker 1: that made her the staple of the evening news coverage,
Speaker 1: and she was truly interested in all them. It flattered
Speaker 1: most of them. All of them were grateful for a
Speaker 1: place to go. Again, we just hear this. We don't
Speaker 1: meet any of these people obviously. Yeah, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: we're reading a constant montage. Yeah, she's riding a great epic.
Speaker 1: We don't have time for the nitty or for pleasant trees. Yep.
Speaker 1: So we learned about her literal little posse starting to
Speaker 1: run short on money. Uh, YadA YadA, uh um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty boring stuff. Uh. We're just thinking about
Speaker 1: how Aiden like goes to a bar after buying groceries
Speaker 1: to to sit and like watch the news sometimes. I'm
Speaker 1: so I know that detail. Yeah great, So he learns
Speaker 1: so I know nothing about this person from that. So
Speaker 1: and again Ben uses this detail of of this Aiden's
Speaker 1: the secret serviceman who shot down the helicopter. So he
Speaker 1: goes to a bar after buying groceries to have a
Speaker 1: beer and like watch TV and and catch up on
Speaker 1: the news coverage. Because they're not they don't have any
Speaker 1: internet access or television like where they're all hiding out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is mainly an opportunity for Ben to spend
Speaker 1: several more paragraphs talking about the foreign policy impacts of
Speaker 1: the raid on Tehran, and Ibraham is Shami's attack and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. Uh, and his victory speech is
Speaker 1: a terror. So it's all just more like news dumping
Speaker 1: shit um as opposed to I mean, I guess this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of something, right, This is actually
Speaker 1: this is actually an improvement for them. I'll give him that,
Speaker 1: because normally Ben just tells us where a character is,
Speaker 1: spend several pages talking about things that just happened that
Speaker 1: we don't see off screen, and then moves on to
Speaker 1: like the narrative. And in this case, he's attempted to
Speaker 1: weave this info dump, which we get every chapter, one
Speaker 1: of these info dumps. He's attempted to weave it into
Speaker 1: the narrative because at least here Aiden sitting at a
Speaker 1: bar getting angrier and he like shatters the bottle in
Speaker 1: his hand, cutting it because he's so angry at the news.
Speaker 1: This is this at least does build something of a
Speaker 1: character and shows him like it's it's a little bit
Speaker 1: better than just giving a dump of things that happened. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it illustrates a viewpoint and like an emotion. Uh. And
Speaker 1: reaction from a character. It is still a montage though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is still a montage. And then Aiden's flipping channels
Speaker 1: after breaking the beer and cutting his hand, and he
Speaker 1: comes across MSNBC covering the streets of Detroit. Um and
Speaker 1: our our friend leave On, You remember leave On, the
Speaker 1: crack dealer, who's friends with whatever. Yeah, things could get
Speaker 1: this could get out of control, the reporter said, a
Speaker 1: hopeful gleam unmistakably shining in his eye. This morning, a
Speaker 1: leader of the uprising, one leave On Williams, posted a
Speaker 1: list of demands on the website of the Fight Against
Speaker 1: Injustice and Racism Movement. That's what they're calling the Fair Movement.
Speaker 1: Here's what we know about Leavin Williams. He's a graduate
Speaker 1: of the University of Michigan with a degree in African
Speaker 1: American studies. No police record, model citizen by all accounts,
Speaker 1: owns a barbership on eight Mile Road. According to public interviews,
Speaker 1: he's done. He came back to the community in an
Speaker 1: effort to bring prosperity home the shooting of Kendrick Malone. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just have this other character who hasn't had any
Speaker 1: direct connection to Detroit learning about the things happening with
Speaker 1: one of the other characters in Detroit through the news
Speaker 1: at a bar, because that's how you write a thrilling novel.
Speaker 1: So now we're just we're just playing an interview with
Speaker 1: one of the other characters that a character who has
Speaker 1: not met that character is watching on TV in a
Speaker 1: completely different location. That has nothing to do with great
Speaker 1: incredible writing. Whose chapter is this? This is? This is
Speaker 1: Solo Dad's chapter. Also, yeah, we're we've moved on to
Speaker 1: someone completely different, listening to an extended interview with someone
Speaker 1: else completely different, because this is a well written book. Again,
Speaker 1: pages go by, and we're talking about Levan's theories for
Speaker 1: how the police force should be redone and like it's
Speaker 1: just amazing. Um, yeah, Solo Dads sitting on the porch
Speaker 1: of a cabin. We're back to her. Yeah, yeah, she's
Speaker 1: she's sipping tea. Uh. An old grizzled old recruit named
Speaker 1: Ezekiel Pope who's black and comes from Los Angeles, Uh,
Speaker 1: comes up to talk to her. I'm sure he's got
Speaker 1: some wisdom here. Um. Yeah, yeah. He was a lieutenant
Speaker 1: colonel uh and he he had been culled into his
Speaker 1: superior's office just after the New York attack, told to
Speaker 1: round up his men and get ready to ship out
Speaker 1: to New York. For some reason, he'd come to Sola
Speaker 1: Dad instead. So he just again there's another dude committing
Speaker 1: some treason to go hang out in North Dakota with
Speaker 1: again like for some reason he did this, talk about it,
Speaker 1: just like have her like show me, yeah, ever explained,
Speaker 1: have him explained, like why he's doing Like she's she's
Speaker 1: you know, having a long dark tea time of the
Speaker 1: soul because she's brought all these people out here and
Speaker 1: everything's getting worse and she doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: And this guy says, you know, I followed you for
Speaker 1: this reason or you know, here's what happened to me,
Speaker 1: and like I decided, like wherever you were going to go,
Speaker 1: that's where I was going to go to. And like
Speaker 1: then she knows she has the confidence to do the
Speaker 1: thing that's necessary next or whatever, like and we the
Speaker 1: reader understand and are slightly more engaged with what's going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but instead, like we make it's made very clear by
Speaker 1: Ben that Solid Dead actually has no controller agency in
Speaker 1: in this situation, uh Aiden said. Aiden said he hadn't
Speaker 1: given reason for the for deserting, but that he's but
Speaker 1: he but he said that Ezekiel was trustworthy. Solidade had
Speaker 1: no option but to trust Aiden's judgment. Ezekiel looked over
Speaker 1: the snow falling silently into itself. He wore heavy work
Speaker 1: gloves on his hand and an m force slung over
Speaker 1: his shoulder, a maroon scarf around his neck. Solidad gestured
Speaker 1: at the gun. What's that for? We're gearing up, gearing
Speaker 1: up for what? Well? You tell us? After all, you're
Speaker 1: the terrorist mama, that's what we're calling you now, you know.
Speaker 1: Ever since the escape, she felt sick to herself. So
Speaker 1: they're just like picking up guns for no reason and
Speaker 1: saying like, Okay, we're all gonna go do something. You
Speaker 1: have to tell us what like. But it's not up
Speaker 1: to you to tell us to get armed in the
Speaker 1: first place. We're just all gonna get armed, and then
Speaker 1: to tell you it's time to figure out something random
Speaker 1: to do. I don't know, none of this makes any sense.
Speaker 1: This isn't how people act. Yeah, that's how they acted
Speaker 1: bread and Bread's Ben's brain. Yeah, I hate Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this guy tells her that the best defense is a
Speaker 1: good offense. Uh. And when you're forces small concentrated and
Speaker 1: hit them, well, they're weak. And she asks who are
Speaker 1: they and he says, the same people who shut down
Speaker 1: your farm, the people who attacked you, um, which are
Speaker 1: back in California and there in North Dakota. UM. And
Speaker 1: he tells her that they have to move or die now. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's very unclear as to who he wants her
Speaker 1: to shoot, or why, or who they could shoot that
Speaker 1: would improve their situation, or how it would be related
Speaker 1: to her farm being destroyed in south in southern California.
Speaker 1: But but that's where this ends. Yeah, is him saying
Speaker 1: we've got to move or die, and we have to
Speaker 1: hurt the people who hurt you, who are thousands of
Speaker 1: miles away. It's it is a great chapter. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I think it's about time that uh we
Speaker 1: call this one the beach. Yeah. I think so our
Speaker 1: next chapters will leave on chapter. I'm sure that's gonna
Speaker 1: be fun. Yeah, well we'll get back to this. Don't worry, friends,
Speaker 1: By the time we get to this next Uh, it
Speaker 1: might just be a full on civil war like the
Speaker 1: one been perfectly predicted here. And once what a nice
Speaker 1: escape this has been It is a nice escape. It's
Speaker 1: a nice escape into a world of people being very wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on purpose, seemingly. Yeah, Katie Cody, would you like to
Speaker 1: plug your plug doubles? Oh? You know it more than anything.
Speaker 1: You can check out our other stuff over at some
Speaker 1: More News, which Cody hosts night produce. We have a
Speaker 1: podcast called even More News, and we also co host
Speaker 1: Worst Year Ever with Robert. We sure do, Cody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a Patreon at dot com slash some more News. Um,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on the social media's dr Mr
Speaker 1: Cody and Katie Stole at Katie Stole. Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: the things Robert is I right? Okay? On Twitter? We
Speaker 1: have social media at Bastard's Pot on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: We have a d public store and book is draining. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have energy. I feel like could be everything,
Speaker 1: but I think it's also it's also Monday. It's sucking
Speaker 1: Monday on the unnecessarily long month of August. So long
Speaker 1: all right, podcast over, y'all wear a mask, wash your hands.
Speaker 1: By the beginning e