Speaker 1: Hmm, what increasingly emotionally shattered from the collapse of civilization
Speaker 1: and constant exposure to violence. My uh, this is Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it, but at least it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we started, we started the show. Now the beginning
Speaker 1: of the episode, Chris, you could edit out that part
Speaker 1: where I that I cry all the side, but just
Speaker 1: start with robertson true. Also, listeners, I cry all the time.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. Really, I was gonna say, it's a really
Speaker 1: good start. It's vulnerable, it's honest, it's raw, it's relatable.
Speaker 1: I could go on. Someone interrupted me, well, you got
Speaker 1: a edge to it. Little bite, Little Bite podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like we started recording before we were ready
Speaker 1: as if we did. We did. But that's the first
Speaker 1: rule of broadcasting is to never be prepared or ready
Speaker 1: or competent um ever, never check and check. So this
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards. It's normally a podcast about the
Speaker 1: worst people in all of history. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes we like to have a little bit of fun. Uh,
Speaker 1: And and this is gonna be a fun one because
Speaker 1: we're we're diving back into Ben Shapiro's just unfathomably poorly
Speaker 1: written fiction novel True Allegiance. This will be episode three, Yeah,
Speaker 1: failure of prose. I wish that our listeners could see
Speaker 1: the beautific smile that spread across Robert's face as he
Speaker 1: was talking about the fun we will have today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need this. It's nice to see the enjoy through
Speaker 1: the screen. That smile is me thinking about the time.
Speaker 1: Then Shapiro wrote in a character that was the captain
Speaker 1: of the high school football team, and no one knew
Speaker 1: his name, his name, no one knew his name. I mean,
Speaker 1: how could you? How could you know the star football
Speaker 1: player's name make at the back of his jersey. I
Speaker 1: don't know nothing like that. Oh, God in heaven. Um,
Speaker 1: So you may want to watch the first listen to
Speaker 1: the first couple of episodes, But your past, that's good
Speaker 1: to know. I forget regularly because of all of the
Speaker 1: repeated exposure to police munitions. Um Leah. When we left off,
Speaker 1: there was a fun moment where the character that been
Speaker 1: wrote in as the governor of Texas, whose name is
Speaker 1: Bubba Yeah, was talking to the character who is clearly
Speaker 1: based on Ben Shapiro's own wife, who was the wife
Speaker 1: of the character that Ben wants to be who was
Speaker 1: the bear of a man combat General Bret Hawthorne. In anyway, Ellen,
Speaker 1: his wife and the governor we're having a conversation about
Speaker 1: how how bad it is, uh to be a governor
Speaker 1: that the federal government refuses to support during a massive
Speaker 1: emergency that requires the mobilization of all resources. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we were enjoying the irony of that, of of of
Speaker 1: how been actually landed when such a thing happened for real.
Speaker 1: And now we're going to move on to the next chapter,
Speaker 1: which is a chapter about Sola DoD who, if you remember,
Speaker 1: is our She's that rancher who's supposed to be Clive
Speaker 1: and Bundy like fifty and hispanic, uh. And and the
Speaker 1: lady Yeah, really turning that stereotype on its heels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you can't call her racist. If he writes in
Speaker 1: a Hispanic character, then it's not racist then exactly feminine
Speaker 1: for you been non racist, Ben Shapiro, Yes, that's he's
Speaker 1: he's he's he's got it. What chapter are we on now,
Speaker 1: ship it's like seven or eight something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're several chapters in too many chapters, in more than
Speaker 1: one more chapters than this book should have had. Because
Speaker 1: it should never have been written. It should have stayed
Speaker 1: in Ben Shapiro's little head. Uh. When he needed to
Speaker 1: feel like a big man, he could he could think
Speaker 1: about the fake combat general that he invented to make
Speaker 1: himself feel tall. Um. Yeah, and the short terrorists and
Speaker 1: the short little the terrorists who are all short. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: good people are tall. Terrorists are short, except for bad
Speaker 1: black people who are all also very large. That is
Speaker 1: the world that Been Shapiro has created. That is the
Speaker 1: is the that is the cosmology of the moral universe.
Speaker 1: In bench A. Piro's it sounds complicated, but really it's
Speaker 1: quite simple, really simple rules. Yeah, okay, So it starts
Speaker 1: with Sola Dad waking up to a knock on her
Speaker 1: door at two in the morning, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a Bundy's type standoff going on at her ranch because
Speaker 1: she's not paying taxes, because the taxes in the all
Speaker 1: the evil government stuff makes it impossible for her ranch
Speaker 1: to actually work. And anyway, there's this So there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of motorcycle gangsters and militia people calling themselves Sola
Speaker 1: Dad Soldiers, and they're all hanging out and guarding her
Speaker 1: house from the Feds. But they're starting to ah, that
Speaker 1: would have been that would have been it, that would
Speaker 1: have been it man Man, all right, it's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, they've cut off her power and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's it's it's a bad situation for Solo Dad. Uh.
Speaker 1: She says, Oh that we a little bit of talk
Speaker 1: about the some right wing media folks here. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even the occasional big media spread didn't seem to lift
Speaker 1: her too much anymore. She felt like the whole game
Speaker 1: was rigged. She was either hero or villain. She was
Speaker 1: always the story, never Emilio and one. It was always
Speaker 1: Chris Matthews on the nightly news calling her a trader
Speaker 1: or Michael Savage calling her a freedom fighter. It was
Speaker 1: always one or the other. Yeah, I imagine Chris Matthews
Speaker 1: would declare he didn't call Cleman Bundy a trader. Chris
Speaker 1: Matthews is he's getting confused, rampaging leftist Chris man is
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro suggesting that, like there needs to be more
Speaker 1: nuance and how people are described. He calls so many
Speaker 1: people pure evil every day. Yeah. Well, and she's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Solo Dad's angry Emilio and one, if you remember,
Speaker 1: she had to lay off her best worker, and he
Speaker 1: moved to Los Angeles, where his son was immediately killed
Speaker 1: in a gang and instantly, Well, yeah, that's how it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Ben Shapiro understands the chunk of the city literally
Speaker 1: thirty to forty five minutes away from where he lives
Speaker 1: now and a half in traffic. Yeah, uh fucking great.
Speaker 1: Right what you know? Right? What you know? The chunk
Speaker 1: of the city you live in that you have never
Speaker 1: ever in your entire life visited, because it scares you
Speaker 1: very much to think about, right, Like, right, what you know? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know any black people's names, so I can't
Speaker 1: name this second. So I'm just gonna say that no
Speaker 1: one knows his name, right, what you know? Not being
Speaker 1: able to call the black people in my life by
Speaker 1: their names because I never bother to learn them. I
Speaker 1: know that I will write about that fucking bit awesome.
Speaker 1: So uh, Sola, dads, you know, in the standoff with
Speaker 1: the government and every day like the kind of militia
Speaker 1: that's that's arrayed to defend her appeals away a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, because people can't can't hang out all the
Speaker 1: time but the SWAT team stays there, and eventually, as
Speaker 1: things start to dwindle, she gets a knock on the
Speaker 1: door in the early morning and a quote. A SWAT
Speaker 1: officer stood there, his gun down by his side. When
Speaker 1: she opened the screen door, he sidled in without permission,
Speaker 1: holding his right arm out palm facing her, signaling for
Speaker 1: her to keep quiet. He shut the door stealthily behind him.
Speaker 1: I love yeah, because SWAT teams there, they they got
Speaker 1: all that stealth door closing training, like unreal, like just
Speaker 1: from like the reality of it, like okay, no, no
Speaker 1: he didn't. But also, like, what a poorly written sentence.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. It's a terrible sentence. Yeah, it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was this grader, I would say, what a
Speaker 1: precocious tenth grader. You know it needs someone to sit
Speaker 1: down with him and tell him how to write. Well,
Speaker 1: but he's got he's got the he's got the spunk.
Speaker 1: You know, he's got he's got he's got gotten it
Speaker 1: down on the pages. Half the battle. The other half
Speaker 1: of the battle was knowing when not to publish something.
Speaker 1: Still fighting that battle every day, Ben Ben's lost that
Speaker 1: battle for a while. Um, are you dying what he's
Speaker 1: there for. Well, he puts his He places his weapon
Speaker 1: gently on the dining room table. When he took off
Speaker 1: his helmet, she noticed his bright blue eyes. They stood
Speaker 1: out more because they were They stood out more because
Speaker 1: they were red rimmed. Whether from lack of sleep or
Speaker 1: from crying, she couldn't tell. The man stood no more
Speaker 1: than five ft ten, well built Caucasian, A thatch of
Speaker 1: must brown hair, stood neatly on end. He moved forward
Speaker 1: quickly and grabbed her by the arm. She could feel
Speaker 1: his powerful grip through her thick row. Why would you
Speaker 1: do that? That's a weird Okay, you need to get
Speaker 1: out of here. He growled. Now, he growled quietly. He
Speaker 1: growled quietly and gently, like a bear. She pushed his
Speaker 1: hand off her arm. She pushed his hand off her arm.
Speaker 1: Stood up to her full five ft two. Ben is
Speaker 1: just obsessed with people's heights. I'm not going anywhere. Wait
Speaker 1: wait did he wait? Did he just say five ft two?
Speaker 1: He should did? Wait? Wait that was who cares what
Speaker 1: I thought it was? And he's five ft ten she's
Speaker 1: five ft two. Okay, so we know that there's like
Speaker 1: a sizeable difference between them. That's why it's important, Like
Speaker 1: she's been a character in this book already, like this,
Speaker 1: like after multiple appearances. By the way, she's five too.
Speaker 1: What a bad writer, What a bad writer. So she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go anywhere. Uh, And he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't think you understand, Mr Meirez. They're coming for you tonight.
Speaker 1: So this is the this is the good SWAT team guy,
Speaker 1: the decent, decent cop who's like, I've got a warner there.
Speaker 1: The Feds are coming in to murder this um, this
Speaker 1: brave patriot. Um. She looked at the SWAT member, puzzled,
Speaker 1: Why are you helping me? My cookies can't be that good,
Speaker 1: he laughed softly. Maybe they are a pause, or maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just sick of watching people get pushed around. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is you need to get out of here tonight.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought that was masterful. Um. So we
Speaker 1: learned his name is Aidan Foster. Um. What a um?
Speaker 1: And she tells she she tells, Aidan, you ready to
Speaker 1: be a trader? Aidan? He shrugged. She walked over to
Speaker 1: one of the cabinets, opened it, took out a jar.
Speaker 1: Well we might as well split a cookie on that.
Speaker 1: Goddamn god. Beer so much. Uh, such bad writing. Um, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Oh God, damn it, Ben, Um, It's yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: they they do they do the cookie bit for a
Speaker 1: little bit, like real interactions, like human beings do. Oh Jesus,
Speaker 1: so they're they're they're attempted escape seems like a horrible idea.
Speaker 1: Immediately she loads some stuff up in a backpack and
Speaker 1: and heads out with this swat team guy and one
Speaker 1: of his team members like sees that they're doing this. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so Aidan throws a smoke grenade and then starts
Speaker 1: firing wildly is how Ben describes it. Too high to
Speaker 1: hit anyone. Uh. He heard at least two men curson
Speaker 1: scatter in the distance. He could see the lights of
Speaker 1: the choppers flash on. He dropped. By the way, we've
Speaker 1: just switched to Aidan Foster's viewpoint from uh sol it
Speaker 1: adds view point because Ben does that in the middle
Speaker 1: of chapters that are supposed to be viewpoint chapters from characters,
Speaker 1: because he's a good writer. Does he okay, my gosh, okay,
Speaker 1: does he at least at least is it like there's
Speaker 1: a page break and some asterisks. No, it's really jarring
Speaker 1: and weird, and like the next paragraph is just now
Speaker 1: we're in Aiden's point of view. Yeah, yeah, that's see,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's how it feels. Uh yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: how it feels because we can't be it's an action
Speaker 1: time right there, having a gunfight, and we can't we
Speaker 1: can't be in a woman's perspective during a gunfight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's so awkward and weird something that he made
Speaker 1: me maybe didn't even notice he was doing, probably for
Speaker 1: the exact reason that you just said, like his subconscious
Speaker 1: kicks in and he immediately changes the perspective. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: surely she can't describe it. Yeah, it's it's okay. I
Speaker 1: hope I find it well. I guess I find a
Speaker 1: disappointing that when he said that he was shooting too
Speaker 1: high for it to hit anything, that he didn't say
Speaker 1: how many feet and inches? Uh it was yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: of course not Um that that would have been well,
Speaker 1: that would have been good to know. Um, we always
Speaker 1: need to know that's higher than everybody. Come on, Uh,
Speaker 1: it is cool that one of Solida or yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: yells at the cops go to hell you fascist assholes.
Speaker 1: That's fun. Um yeah, so big, you know. And now
Speaker 1: now a fight starts with her militia and all the
Speaker 1: cops uh and Aidan Foster uh tries to get her,
Speaker 1: you know, tells her, Mam, I recommend we get out
Speaker 1: of here is sniper bullets zing around them. We get
Speaker 1: another moment where we learn again, yet again, that Ben
Speaker 1: does not understand anything about firearms. Um, because he refers
Speaker 1: to the rounds being shot at them as heavy caliber
Speaker 1: seven point six to millimeter rounds, which I assume means
Speaker 1: he's referring to like seven six two by fifty one
Speaker 1: nato uh, which is essentially three oh eight which is
Speaker 1: a sizeable bullet, but it is also legally a handgun round. Um.
Speaker 1: That's fun. Um. Yeah, what an idiot. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I was gonna say that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's silly, it's it's just it's well. He's also
Speaker 1: the guy who whenever guns are brought up, like libs
Speaker 1: don't understand guns. They don't even know what they mean
Speaker 1: when they talk about like well, Ben, it's not a
Speaker 1: heavy caliber, it's it's an it's a normal caliber. It's
Speaker 1: like a full sized rifle caliber. But it's it's anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: fucking I'm splitting hairs now. But I know it matters
Speaker 1: to Ben that he'd be seen as understanding guns. It
Speaker 1: matters to him that you know that he's wrong about this. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I did. It does so okay? Uh yeah, yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you have a plan, shielded Foster about the ear splitting
Speaker 1: wine of the bullets? Hell no, he said, but I'll
Speaker 1: bet they do. In the distance, the cavalry was coming Sola,
Speaker 1: dead soldiers least a dunn's dozen bearded gun toting men
Speaker 1: on their steel horses, riding directly towards the swat lines.
Speaker 1: She could see it in the distance. Pick, it's hog charge,
Speaker 1: comparing them the Confederate cavalry. That's goods. Yeah, the good
Speaker 1: guys here. Um My hand's gonna explode. Oh boy, formed
Speaker 1: up and turned to face them. Guns at the ready,
Speaker 1: which is when the chopper began to groan. It's sputtered, crackled,
Speaker 1: and then dropped to the ground right at the swat lines.
Speaker 1: It's spiraled out of controls. I don't know, because Ben
Speaker 1: is a terrible fucking writers. Yeah, it's it's sure does nervous, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kills all the SWAT guys. They're crying for their mothers.
Speaker 1: Ben writes that in SoLIT ads horrified as they burned
Speaker 1: to death. What w they get out of there? Because
Speaker 1: the chopper randomly falls out of the sky and kills
Speaker 1: all the Swat No, no, it turns out I think.
Speaker 1: I think what happens is Aidan Foster, the SWAT team
Speaker 1: member who just couldn't see her get killed, shot the
Speaker 1: helicopter out of the air. Still men wait, So he switches.
Speaker 1: He switches the narrative to talk from Aiden's point of view,
Speaker 1: but cannot describe Aiden doing that to the helicopter. No,
Speaker 1: of course, not just no, we're left too. We're left
Speaker 1: to piece that together after it gets shot out of
Speaker 1: the sky. And if he didn't do that, and if
Speaker 1: we were, if it was so Dad describing the thing,
Speaker 1: it would make sense that she doesn't know what's happening.
Speaker 1: Oh no, the helicopter. And then she looks back and
Speaker 1: she sees him with you know, smoke curling out of
Speaker 1: the barrel of his rifle and tears in his eyes,
Speaker 1: you know. But no, because Ben is again very bad
Speaker 1: at writing, well, I think what's clear to me, I probably,
Speaker 1: I'm probably, I'm sure I've I've said this At other times,
Speaker 1: he's just so clearly writing something that he wants to
Speaker 1: have made into a movie, Like I'm not even thinking
Speaker 1: about this as a book. He's like, Oh, this will
Speaker 1: look tight. Yeah, And there's no The hardest thing when
Speaker 1: you're when you're writing fiction like this is maintaining an
Speaker 1: understanding of space, of geography, of where things are and
Speaker 1: and making it clear to the reader where things are,
Speaker 1: especially in an action scene like that. It's hard to
Speaker 1: do um and Ben doesn't even really try, Like we
Speaker 1: have no idea as these bikers are rushing towards these
Speaker 1: swat lines, we have no clear idea where the swat
Speaker 1: lines are, what they look like, you know, are there fortifications?
Speaker 1: What direction are these guys coming from? Where were they
Speaker 1: before that allows them to be like charging at the
Speaker 1: swat team? Like none, no attempt is made to make
Speaker 1: that clear, just like no attempt is made to let
Speaker 1: us know what has actually happened to the licopter because
Speaker 1: Ben is a terrible writer. Yeah, or why nobody knows
Speaker 1: that kid's name? Yeah yeah, yeah, it's all like it's
Speaker 1: all like weird, Like his idea of what tropes are
Speaker 1: like a lot of they're not even like tropes necessarily.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, and then he says, like they do
Speaker 1: like a cookie bit rightecause people do the cookie stuff
Speaker 1: is Yeah, I do want to see this movie though, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: uh so yeah, Aidan Foster bodily picked her up and
Speaker 1: put her on a motorcycle behind one of the militiamen.
Speaker 1: She clung to his leather jacket as he twisted again.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, where do you get a guy? What? What? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: So basically what happens is a gun there's a gunfight
Speaker 1: going on now. A bunch of the Swat guys are dead,
Speaker 1: and now the militiamen are having a gunfight with the
Speaker 1: surviving Swat guys, and Aidan Foster, you know it, puts
Speaker 1: her on the puts her on the back of a
Speaker 1: motorcycle to be spirited away to safety. And just to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how badly his paragraph is written,
Speaker 1: we start first sentence the paragraph. Foster bodily picked her
Speaker 1: up and put her on a motorcycle behind one of
Speaker 1: the militiamen. She clung to his leather jacket as he
Speaker 1: twisted the throttle and peeled out, spinning it like, oh,
Speaker 1: so it's a militia man's leather jacket, but it's a
Speaker 1: militia man who is the second he in this after
Speaker 1: we started really sentence, Oh that was so uncle even Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's a bad writer, he's terrible, terrible writer. Oh
Speaker 1: when you said bodily, is it bodily like b O
Speaker 1: d I l y, or like bodily? Is that even
Speaker 1: a word like b O d I l y? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he bodily picked her up? As if there's another way
Speaker 1: to pick someone up? How how else wouldn't you pick
Speaker 1: someone up? But bodily? Like the words you're using, could
Speaker 1: you could you pick Maybe you just picked them up
Speaker 1: by the ankle and lift their whole body, but just
Speaker 1: by the ankle, and so then you're anklely picking them up?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Um, hands bodily pick up against gravity?
Speaker 1: Will God damn it, Ben Shapiro, you are horrible at
Speaker 1: the thing that clearly matters more to you than anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good god. Um. Yeah, so the last paragraph of this
Speaker 1: terrible chapter, Um, don't look back, so Dad whispered to herself,
Speaker 1: don't look back. But she did just long enough to
Speaker 1: see in the distance. Some of the flaming men go out,
Speaker 1: leaving nothing but smoking chars of flesh. Horrible sentence. Horrible sentence.
Speaker 1: But she did comma just long enough to see Comma
Speaker 1: in the distance, Comma. Some of the flaming men go out, Comma,
Speaker 1: leaving nothing but smoking chars of you made did not?
Speaker 1: That is how Been? That is Been Shapiro constructing a sentence.
Speaker 1: I don't think he has He's only like he He
Speaker 1: writes sentences as if he's only heard of grammar by
Speaker 1: it being like described to him by a witch doctor
Speaker 1: around a fucking fire like it's He obviously doesn't have
Speaker 1: an editor liked, and sentences are like three words long,
Speaker 1: and they're all these periods. Hey, do you want to
Speaker 1: know who does have have an editor? This podcast? And
Speaker 1: it's time to do an ad break. We're back every
Speaker 1: time we um. Every time we do one of these
Speaker 1: Been Shapiro episodes, I'm nervous at the start that I'll
Speaker 1: just be like reading you guys a chapter and nothing
Speaker 1: entertaining will happen. And every time I am immediately reminded, no,
Speaker 1: Ben is just bad enough that this will never not
Speaker 1: be fun to do. Oh, absolutely there's always some sort
Speaker 1: of a treasure buried in here, not even buried, just
Speaker 1: sitting on the surface surface, just like it's like you're
Speaker 1: trying to clean a pool with one of those little scoopers,
Speaker 1: but it's just like, oh, this's gold everywhere. So our
Speaker 1: next chapter of everyone's going to be excited about this.
Speaker 1: We're back with leve On, our our our gang leader
Speaker 1: who's friends with obviously an Al Sharpton insertion, and who,
Speaker 1: if you'll remember last time, paid a black child to
Speaker 1: get murdered by a cop because that's the only way
Speaker 1: such a situation occurs. Um, good God. Just like the
Speaker 1: nature of his racism is so much more offensive to me,
Speaker 1: And obviously I'm a white guy, but it's so much
Speaker 1: more offensive to me than like an actual straight up
Speaker 1: clans member, because at least that guy really knows he's
Speaker 1: a racist, whereas been Shapiro is certain that he is
Speaker 1: doing the opposite of racism while being shockingly racist. So
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating and frustrating to watch every sentence. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do you not, I mean, you know at some
Speaker 1: level he knows. Yeah, Levan felt the air around him
Speaker 1: crackle with energy. It was something he had felt before
Speaker 1: just before a fight. The switch that went off in
Speaker 1: the brain that notched the senses higher and made them
Speaker 1: more sensitive. Been making a number of things clear. Sorry,
Speaker 1: senses and sensitive can't be right there in the sentence
Speaker 1: the show he said before twice within like five words,
Speaker 1: he absolutely did. It's a terrible sentence and also clear
Speaker 1: evidence that Been has never in his life been in
Speaker 1: a fight. Um yeah, oh god. Okay. So here, the
Speaker 1: switch that went off on the brain that notched the
Speaker 1: senses higher, made the more sensitive. Next sentence, the adrenaline
Speaker 1: flowing through the veins. That's the whole sentence, the adrenaline. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just the narrator in fight club doing
Speaker 1: his little like half sentences because like that's the style
Speaker 1: we're doing. Yeah, the feeling that you'd burst from the
Speaker 1: inside out if the fight didn't commence, and right quick,
Speaker 1: making it sound very animalistic, isn't he? A? Yeah? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, everything yea god, damn it everything. He can't
Speaker 1: do anything. It's just remarkable. Yeah, what the funk? Okay,
Speaker 1: So this felt like those fights multiplied exponentially. That's because
Speaker 1: Levan knew he wasn't alone. It wasn't multiplied exponentially. There's
Speaker 1: so there's it's so dense, like there's so many layers
Speaker 1: of this don't part every single like five word phrase. God,
Speaker 1: but by God, we have to. We just have That's
Speaker 1: because Levan knew that he wasn't alone this time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't him taking on some gang rival or him debating
Speaker 1: some white publican club sucker at the U. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is going to be flames and blood and struggle in power.
Speaker 1: This was going to be death and mayhem and hope
Speaker 1: and glory. This was going to be fucking big. All
Speaker 1: Levan needed was the queue. He discussed the queue ahead
Speaker 1: of time with the Reverend. It would come on television
Speaker 1: during a press conference Big Jim planned to hold with
Speaker 1: the mayor. In the aftermath of the Kendrick Malone killing,
Speaker 1: the killing of another it's bad, it's real bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the killing of another young, innocent black man at the
Speaker 1: hands of the racist white establishment, the police targeting a kid,
Speaker 1: an un armed kid, for God's sake, just because he
Speaker 1: happened to be black and happened to be out at
Speaker 1: night at the wrong time. The shooting had worked out
Speaker 1: precisely according to the plan. One of his boys give
Speaker 1: little Kindrick a twenty dollar bill to go and harass
Speaker 1: the cop. Kindrick, of course, thought it was just a
Speaker 1: piece of good, clean fun. Messing with white cops was
Speaker 1: a rare joy, made you feel like more of a man.
Speaker 1: And with all the big boys telling him how he'd
Speaker 1: be a boss in the neighborhood if he baited the cop,
Speaker 1: he'd been enthusiastic. He probably looked forward to coming home
Speaker 1: and telling his buddies how he told that cracker ass
Speaker 1: pig to go to hell. Stared right at him and
Speaker 1: cursed him to his face, made the pig back down.
Speaker 1: Kindrick knew he was supposed to go for his toy gun.
Speaker 1: They told him it would be a joke, that the
Speaker 1: cop wouldn't do anything, that the cop would pussy out.
Speaker 1: Of course, leave On knew better. No cop could sit
Speaker 1: still when somebody went for the waistband. Police procedure dictated
Speaker 1: what happened next, which ben, you're almost you almost got
Speaker 1: something there. He almost realized something there. He got a
Speaker 1: little too close and then back away. Maybe a system
Speaker 1: in which the only possible response to a child pulling
Speaker 1: out a toy gun is murder has some problems. When
Speaker 1: I hate about this is that he is not aware
Speaker 1: of it. He's like getting so close and he just
Speaker 1: he thinks is okay for our cop to pull out
Speaker 1: their gun in this situation is essentially what he's saying,
Speaker 1: like we're tricking the cops into pulling their guns. No,
Speaker 1: they they did it. They did the thing that they
Speaker 1: shouldn't do. No, it's just like the his that we
Speaker 1: talked about the last time. I think, just like the
Speaker 1: conspiracy aspect of this is just so bizarre and like
Speaker 1: weirdly insulting. Like you could, yeah, a competent writer trying
Speaker 1: to have something similar happen. You know, have a have
Speaker 1: a have a black gang leader who attempts to use
Speaker 1: this as the Q two spark an uprising. Um, you
Speaker 1: could you could just have them try to make use
Speaker 1: of a normal police killing. Judge, have it happened, Just
Speaker 1: just have it thing happened that happened that hand, be
Speaker 1: just a normal tragedy that then a person takes advantage of, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's like that's being closer to like what how
Speaker 1: Ben views everything anyway? So but why manufacture this weird
Speaker 1: like everybody's been is such a bad writer that he
Speaker 1: can't even effectively advance his own bullshit narratives because of
Speaker 1: his incompetence, because like that's actually like an interest like
Speaker 1: that would be baseline interesting in terms of like art
Speaker 1: or like a novel, Like, wow, they're using this thing
Speaker 1: to do this thing. I disagree with this, but like
Speaker 1: this conflict there. Yeah, you could have like a like
Speaker 1: a black Special Forces veteran turned gang leader who's like
Speaker 1: has developed this deep hatred for the American Empire due
Speaker 1: to having his friends die in the PTSD. He's accrued
Speaker 1: and you know, he's he's trained in actually setting up
Speaker 1: an insurgency, and then there's a murder by a police
Speaker 1: officer of a black kid, and he uses it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to like you know, set something into motion
Speaker 1: that will destroy this empire. And then you have an
Speaker 1: interesting character and you have an interesting situation and you
Speaker 1: can like you can actually have a story, right people
Speaker 1: are engaged in like actually struggle with because like some
Speaker 1: sort of like gray area and like the morality and
Speaker 1: ethics in conflict with each other. But he's just like,
Speaker 1: well what if, Like he's just gonna what IF's evil?
Speaker 1: And he pays the people to die paid the boy
Speaker 1: to die because a because an eight or nine year
Speaker 1: old black boy living in the inner city, Uh, wouldn't
Speaker 1: know that pulling a toy gun on a cop would
Speaker 1: very easily lead to his death. Wouldn't know the thing
Speaker 1: that literally every black boy in the entire nation knows
Speaker 1: literally happened. Like didn't come out in like two sixteen. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes it did, Cody like, it's oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So and of course, because everything has to
Speaker 1: be ridiculously contrived, Levon didn't just set up the boy
Speaker 1: encountering the cop. He destroyed all of the other cameras
Speaker 1: but one in the neighborhood that had the right angle
Speaker 1: for the shot he wanted to have played on a
Speaker 1: nightly tv UM one angle one tape, one million replays
Speaker 1: on nightly news. The headline writers couldn't help themselves. Eight
Speaker 1: year old unarmed black boy shot dead by white cop,
Speaker 1: blared the free press. Murderer, screamed the headline on the
Speaker 1: New York Daily News. O um Ben knows how headlines
Speaker 1: is written. Well, the phrase one million replays on the
Speaker 1: nightly news isn't a thing, you know, It's absolutely not
Speaker 1: a thing. That's not how the nightly news replays on
Speaker 1: nightly News is not. But I think what we're all
Speaker 1: getting is that literally the only thing that Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: understands is being Ben Shapiro, a boy who was plucked
Speaker 1: out by right wing billionaires to write nonsense on the
Speaker 1: Internet when he was a child, um, and only understands
Speaker 1: writing right wing nonsense for the Internet and getting paid
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Yes, yeah, right, it was. It's that
Speaker 1: in the combination of wanting to be like a TV writer,
Speaker 1: um and not doing that, and because he's bad at it,
Speaker 1: He's bad at everything. I just thought of all of
Speaker 1: his like super fan boys that have read his books
Speaker 1: and they're like, have you reach a Piro's book? It's
Speaker 1: so good people, I'm I don't. I don't think a
Speaker 1: single person has had that experience. I don't even think's
Speaker 1: been Shapiro fans could possibly enjoy this fucking book. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's so bad. Uh yeah so and then Robert
Speaker 1: hastily read the words with his eyes and then parcularly ocularly. Uh.
Speaker 1: CNN headlined the case the entire day and the next
Speaker 1: one as well. Over on MSNBC, the talking heads could
Speaker 1: barely conceal their excitement. On Fox News, a few anchors
Speaker 1: urged caution, while others talked of the legacy of racist
Speaker 1: policing across the country. Um, the President obviously has to
Speaker 1: get involved in this, and he tells Americans the time
Speaker 1: has come for a great racial conversation in this country.
Speaker 1: Too many black boys have been murdered merely for the
Speaker 1: color of their skin. This must end, um, which is
Speaker 1: obviously a bad thing to do. Controversial. Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: you know the President Obama doesn't know that the kid
Speaker 1: was paid money to die. No, of course not. It's
Speaker 1: not his fault. So yeah, lev On is now waiting
Speaker 1: um outside the Colman, a young municipal center named after
Speaker 1: the former mayor of the city, a man who had
Speaker 1: been a racial pro in his own right. Don't don't
Speaker 1: racial prowess? Are that on? Urine? That's it's written out.
Speaker 1: That's how that's written in the fucking buck. Oh boy, howdy,
Speaker 1: um good, good god. So Levin says, old Coleman is
Speaker 1: going to make one more sacrifice in the name of
Speaker 1: racial justice. Uh if all goes according to plan. Um, yeah, boy, howdy.
Speaker 1: So they're in front of the spirit of the Spirit
Speaker 1: of Detroit statue, which Levon describes as looking like a
Speaker 1: constipated Nordic man um. Yeah, behind Levan stood a solid
Speaker 1: three thousand of his fellow Detroit's, mostly young black men.
Speaker 1: Levin had sent out his boys to round up the crowd,
Speaker 1: and they'd had an easy time of it. After the
Speaker 1: media coverage, facing the crowd protecting the statue and a
Speaker 1: platform set up just before it stood about a hundred cops,
Speaker 1: Levon noticed a particular lack of weapons. He smiled to himself, then,
Speaker 1: really understands how cops work. The unarmed cops showing up
Speaker 1: to this event. Yeah, yeah, I was just last night.
Speaker 1: Two hundred people surrounded up, or not surrounded, hung out
Speaker 1: outside of Portland Police Union headquarters. And yeah, they they
Speaker 1: they had a ton of weapons and used them on us,
Speaker 1: because that's what cops do. Yes, yeah, I like, I
Speaker 1: don't know the first thing I thought when you said
Speaker 1: reference calling his boys. I mean just Ben's never had
Speaker 1: boys to call. He wishes a group of boys he
Speaker 1: could call. He would love to, He would love to,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately Ben Shapiro is incapable of doing anything but
Speaker 1: writing garbage for the Internet. Ben's boys are Dennis Praeger,
Speaker 1: that's who. That's who Ben's calling up. Yeah so uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so leave on smiles when he notices how unarmed to
Speaker 1: the cops are. There's media all over the place interviewing
Speaker 1: the odd protester here. Yeah, the crowd's gonna beat up
Speaker 1: a lot of people, including when he smiled. Did it
Speaker 1: say he smiled quite happily, lipally lipwards? Yeah? Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he says that a couple of reporters are getting caught
Speaker 1: in the melee. Is just how it's going to have
Speaker 1: to be. If they were too well behaved, the media
Speaker 1: would dismiss them. A bit of blood got them hot
Speaker 1: under the collar. A bit of blood made the story hot.
Speaker 1: The way the media worked, the only way they pay
Speaker 1: attention was if somebody did something extreme, then they defend
Speaker 1: the action, blame it on the overwriting anger at an
Speaker 1: unfair society. I have to diagram the sentence out you
Speaker 1: lost me a little. I am reading a sentence to
Speaker 1: you one. Sometimes it's like is this one? Is like?
Speaker 1: The way the media worked, Comma, the only way they'd
Speaker 1: pay attention was if somebody did something extreme, dash and
Speaker 1: then they defend the action, Comma, blame it on overwriting
Speaker 1: anger at an unfair society period. Okay, thank you for
Speaker 1: doing that. Oh my god, that's a sentence. Thinking that's
Speaker 1: a sentence. This is a real illuminating look into how
Speaker 1: he views the current moment in time as an editor. Editor.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, for this book to be like written
Speaker 1: down and then sold in incredible. Um. Yeah. So Levin
Speaker 1: had his men ringing the edges of the crowd, ready
Speaker 1: to prevent any non approved persons from getting too close
Speaker 1: to the media members. No footage of fools, he'd promised
Speaker 1: the Reverend. Uh, and he intended to keep his word tonight.
Speaker 1: Levin intended to be the face on the news. Already,
Speaker 1: he'd done his best Malcolm X impression early Malcolm, not
Speaker 1: that late stage. Islam means peace, pussy ship for the networks.
Speaker 1: If we don't get what we want, he said, if
Speaker 1: we don't get justice for Kendrick, the city is going
Speaker 1: to burn. We've been burning silently for too long. Our
Speaker 1: poverty burns beneath the surface. Our ignorance burns beneath the surface.
Speaker 1: We've been left for dead in this city, just like
Speaker 1: black boys have been left for dead all over this country.
Speaker 1: And this country must pay a price if there is
Speaker 1: no justice, Ben Shapiro, Yeah, sorry, yep, oh god, okay,
Speaker 1: next sentence. So the last thing that Levan says, uh,
Speaker 1: and we're just left to assume he's talking to the
Speaker 1: media now because Ben doesn't actually make that here. But
Speaker 1: but we we can put that together. Uh bye bye. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that sentences and this country may must pay a
Speaker 1: price if there is no justice. End of Levan sentence.
Speaker 1: Next paragraph. The sexy blonde with the short skirts seemed
Speaker 1: turned on at that point. First we're hearing of her
Speaker 1: breathily blonde. What breathly? She asked, Oh, you're so bad
Speaker 1: at writing, And what will justice look like? So he
Speaker 1: threw in a line. That's just the next sentence, So
Speaker 1: he threw in a line just for good measure, justice
Speaker 1: will be done when people like you live in the
Speaker 1: mud you've made for us. Only then can we lift
Speaker 1: each other up. Her eyelashes flooded, fluttered. That ship was magic.
Speaker 1: Leav On new he'd learned it at the university to
Speaker 1: white co ed's majoring in journalism, where a cinch just
Speaker 1: drag them off their civilized perch and let them experienced
Speaker 1: life outside their self proclaimed white privilege. And they let
Speaker 1: and they let you know that you'd be doing them
Speaker 1: a favor. This is amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: you can't even begin to unpack how bad that is.
Speaker 1: The writing awful, what it says about him awful. Every
Speaker 1: other sentence in this is so fascinating on sony levels,
Speaker 1: and like I just want to give it to like, like,
Speaker 1: is his wife read this? Like do people in his
Speaker 1: life know like his his his wife didn't. She definitely didn't.
Speaker 1: She's a doctor. She has things enough time. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think it's very clear that Ben's editor didn't have
Speaker 1: time to read this stuff to do. We are the
Speaker 1: first people to read this. So the mayor shows up
Speaker 1: at the Nordic Man statue to to address the crowd.
Speaker 1: Real quick, you're saying it's his part of the chapter, right,
Speaker 1: it's not his chapter because it's his chapter. It's his chapter.
Speaker 1: It is, okay, so it's not a bouncy thing. Who
Speaker 1: knows that the next paragraph this is a Ben Shapiro book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we meet the mayor. Mayor comes up here. He
Speaker 1: got his job after the last guy went to jail
Speaker 1: for being corrupt. Um. Yeah, yeah, now he raped his pipe,
Speaker 1: tasty white forehead with a handkerchief. He adjusted his glasses.
Speaker 1: He looked down at his notes. I his voice broke.
Speaker 1: I have just met with area leaders as well as
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders across the country. Why is the mayor
Speaker 1: meeting with him across the anyway? Uh? And I can
Speaker 1: say to all of you that our investigation will be
Speaker 1: full and fair, and that justice will be done. What justice,
Speaker 1: leave On shouted at the top of his lungs. The
Speaker 1: shout rang out like a gun report and the cold
Speaker 1: night air. Justice will be done, the mare continued. Officer
Speaker 1: Ricky O'Sullivan has been suspended from duty pending a full investigation.
Speaker 1: This deeply troubling incident has stirred the conscience of Americans
Speaker 1: from border to border. But I promise you justice will
Speaker 1: not rest until the tragedy of Kindrick Malone. What Justice?
Speaker 1: What justice? Lev On was chanting now at the top
Speaker 1: of his lungs. A few scattered voices joined in. Mayor
Speaker 1: Burns momentarily flustered, clutched at the pages of his prepared remarks.
Speaker 1: The voices grew pounding, angry, steady, What justice, What justice?
Speaker 1: What justice? Trying to be heard over the chant also
Speaker 1: terrible chant, trying to be heard over the chant, The
Speaker 1: mayor continued. Now Reverend Crawford began nodding softly, until the
Speaker 1: tragedy of Kindrick Malone has answered. For with truth, we
Speaker 1: must cover all the facts. Burns suddenly stumbled backwards as
Speaker 1: a rock struck him in the scalp, almost in slow motion,
Speaker 1: his arm. Yes, scalp was a weird choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a scalp, and almost in slow motion, his arms
Speaker 1: stretched for air, circling in a nearly comic pinwheel. He
Speaker 1: teetered on his heels for a few things, almost a
Speaker 1: number of things. Yeah. So he falls, um and Ben
Speaker 1: lets us know that he has a large butt, h
Speaker 1: and he falls on it. Um. And then yeah, a
Speaker 1: bunch of people. The whole crowd starts throwing ship Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktails start being tossed. Uh, sail over the smash into
Speaker 1: the statue and get on the cops. People get lit
Speaker 1: on fire, the cops shoot tear gas everywhere. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now we have a big, old, big old riot. This
Speaker 1: is not the first time he's described people being burned alive. Yeah, people,
Speaker 1: a bunch of burning alive. At the end of that,
Speaker 1: that's the most violent thing because he hasn't ever seen violence. Like,
Speaker 1: he's like, it's gotta go, it's gotta go wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, things start to go crazy, random gunshots
Speaker 1: in the crowd, media members jabbering madly into their microphones,
Speaker 1: ducking playing war correspondent, and then Reverend Jim Crawford standing
Speaker 1: tall and proud and his immaculately tailored suits. So the
Speaker 1: fucking al Sharpton guy gets up and yells at everybody
Speaker 1: to stop, and the street, the whole street goes quiet,
Speaker 1: and the riot stops. Uh. And that's apparently the moment
Speaker 1: that lev On engineered was starting a riot that would
Speaker 1: then be stopped instantly by this reverend because everybody at
Speaker 1: the riot new to take this one man's queue to
Speaker 1: stop rioting when they started rioting, because that's the way
Speaker 1: riots were been, has been to riots. Guys. He understands
Speaker 1: crowd psychology. He went to college. He did go to
Speaker 1: a college. He did at hand. You know who else
Speaker 1: went to college? Yeah, the products and services that support
Speaker 1: this podcast. We are we are back. We have returned. Um,
Speaker 1: oh good god, we have returned. Uh returnally they have
Speaker 1: come back. We're in Tehran, Iran, America has fallen. The
Speaker 1: transformation from Dar Alhab to darl Islam has begun. Mohammed
Speaker 1: watched transfixed already, Sorry, go ahead. He brought him a
Speaker 1: Shami's eyes glowed brightly, as they always did when he
Speaker 1: was excited. What it's literally just describing him for a yellow,
Speaker 1: snaky eyes. It was a your quality that attracted many
Speaker 1: of his followers. They saw in that glow of fiery hope,
Speaker 1: warm and consuming hope for a better world. The teacher,
Speaker 1: they said, brought hope. That's good, Ben, he brought hope.
Speaker 1: They brought a fiery hope. The teacher brought hope. Thank
Speaker 1: you for telling us that three times a different yet
Speaker 1: you were repeating yourself. No, no, no. They saw in
Speaker 1: that glow of fiery hope, warm and consuming new sentence,
Speaker 1: hope for a new world, new sentence. The teacher, they said,
Speaker 1: brought hope. Oh oh that that last one. Really maybe
Speaker 1: it's bad, you know, He's probably like, this is good,
Speaker 1: this is good. You you inserted as many hopes as
Speaker 1: possible you have to. Really, that's good writing. Really, people
Speaker 1: love it when you when you repeat the same very
Speaker 1: basic point repeat three times in the space of two sentences.
Speaker 1: That second one wasn't like egregious, like okay, you're like
Speaker 1: being repentitive and it's not great, but it's not like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, be a scholar of literature, and I think
Speaker 1: you know he's a big fan. You all know that
Speaker 1: that that famous Ernest Hemingway, uh short story for sale,
Speaker 1: baby shoes never worn because the baby's dead. The baby
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to wear the shoes. The baby
Speaker 1: never wore the shoes that were bought for it. That
Speaker 1: that one the perfect the perfect story. Uh. I don't know,
Speaker 1: talking too much or whatever. Okay, so here's I assume.
Speaker 1: I assume this is the teacher talking. Ben just jumps
Speaker 1: right into the quotations and we're kind of left to
Speaker 1: figure out that it's the teacher talking. But he didn't
Speaker 1: say the teacher anyway, it's bad writing again. Today's attack
Speaker 1: is ensured that the crippled and weakened infidel giant that
Speaker 1: was the United States will never rise again. That's one sentence.
Speaker 1: The imptinus and degradation of that perverse country has been
Speaker 1: wiped away, and the glorious reign of Allah has begun.
Speaker 1: Another sentence, Those that rejected allaw followed vanities, and allaw
Speaker 1: has destroyed them. Today America has seen that those who
Speaker 1: reject Allah and hinder men from the path of a
Speaker 1: law their deeds will allaw render astray. God damn it.
Speaker 1: Bit that's a sentence. Today, Comma America has seen that
Speaker 1: those who reject Allah and hinder men from the path
Speaker 1: of a law dash their deeds, will Allah render a
Speaker 1: straight That's a sentence. Been, sentence is not a sentence?
Speaker 1: Unreal m Um, What do these fucking people have to
Speaker 1: do with this? Hey, Ben, here's the thing that you
Speaker 1: might do as a writer writing about, you know, in
Speaker 1: Islamic extremist emir preaching. Listen to a single speech by
Speaker 1: one of these guys of which there are thousands on
Speaker 1: the Internet to understand how they actually talk, or just
Speaker 1: or just take from one of them, take from just
Speaker 1: literally altermate a little bit. So times that like writers
Speaker 1: can do that, Ben, But no, he's got a pretty
Speaker 1: good handle on how Islamic extremists talk. Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 1: this goes on for a little while. Uh oh my god.
Speaker 1: A drop of sweat rolled down a Shami's craggy face
Speaker 1: and embedded itself in his scraggly beard. Shami had lost
Speaker 1: weight in his three years in the mountains of Tora Bora,
Speaker 1: but he was finally putting it back on now that
Speaker 1: he was ensconced in his complex in Tehran. The government
Speaker 1: had granted it to him out of gratitude for his
Speaker 1: prior efforts against the Great Satan, with a yearly stipend
Speaker 1: that enabled him to live comfortably, which is funny because
Speaker 1: of the whole Iran was fighting against Islamic anyway, whatever, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 1: the actual history of Iran and Afghanistan does not matter
Speaker 1: at all because Ben doesn't know it. Um. There are
Speaker 1: so many things that have been offensive in these few
Speaker 1: brief chapters, and this is just so offensive to be
Speaker 1: writing about something that he knows nothing, not a single
Speaker 1: solitary goddamn thing about it. Yeah, no, no funny jokes here,
Speaker 1: just well yeah yeah, yeah, so uh yeah, the the
Speaker 1: he does some he does some evil Muslim talking and well,
Speaker 1: actually no, we're just we just continue to describe, uh,
Speaker 1: his his fucking room and ship. And it's it's bad.
Speaker 1: I just can't stand the the adjectives. I can't know.
Speaker 1: They're horrible. They're horrible, like the watery sweat dripped down
Speaker 1: his craggy face, and it was scraggly beard in his
Speaker 1: pointed chin. Just like just whatever, it doesn't matter who cares, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pointed at the camera Mohammed, his youngest recruit, an attractive
Speaker 1: boy of seventeen, struggling to grow with scraggly beard. Only
Speaker 1: wave then knows how to describe a Muslim beard. Have
Speaker 1: you seen any of these guys? They're not scraggly beards.
Speaker 1: They have really fucking big beards. Bed it's kind of
Speaker 1: the thing. It's, oh my god. Also like he really
Speaker 1: wanted to grow scraggly beard, that's the goal. No, he's
Speaker 1: a fucking little kid. He wants to grow a beard
Speaker 1: any bear any and he's he's an Islamic extremist, which
Speaker 1: means he wants one of those big, full beards that
Speaker 1: they put like fucking orange dye in, because that's what
Speaker 1: they fucking do. There's a million pictures of these guys
Speaker 1: scraggly Is it something he would the kid would think?
Speaker 1: It's what then thinks of their beards? Yeah, because because
Speaker 1: a full beard is something been considers manly and is
Speaker 1: probably angry that he cannot grow himself and so Islamic
Speaker 1: extremists have to have scraggly beards like the ones that
Speaker 1: ben gross. That's my that's it. Well, like I mean
Speaker 1: is that it's a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: that one tweet of his right are uh Israelis like
Speaker 1: to build stuff, Arabs like to live in sewage and
Speaker 1: bomb crap. He thinks they all live in dirt, so
Speaker 1: they look like dirt and they have scraggly beards because
Speaker 1: that means there they live in dirt beds. Right, these
Speaker 1: bugget beards their premitive fire. Yeah, uh, it's it's amazing. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So he's talks to Mohammed about how they're going to
Speaker 1: the weapons we got from the infidels in Iraq will
Speaker 1: be deployed, um, which I think is Saddam's weapons of
Speaker 1: mass destruction, which you, if you remember, will emplay. So
Speaker 1: these are um, these are Sunni extremists who were in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan presumably with al Qaeda, and are now in Shia Iran,
Speaker 1: which did, to be fair happen a few times, but
Speaker 1: it was never a particularly comfortable arrangement for anybody involved. Um.
Speaker 1: And they have are getting access to through kind of
Speaker 1: an unclear providence, the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein had spirited out of Iraq and into it was
Speaker 1: either Iran or Syria. None of it makes any sense
Speaker 1: to anyone who like has even the vaguest level of
Speaker 1: understanding Middle Eastern politics. But this is what's happening. Um,
Speaker 1: yeah Mohammed, Yeah, yeah. Also, if Iran is on board
Speaker 1: with this sort of thing, they have chemical weapons, Like
Speaker 1: you don't have to have, Saddam, but whatever you have
Speaker 1: to have, Saddam have had the weapons, because then it
Speaker 1: justifies the war in a rapt Yeah, Mohammed bit his
Speaker 1: lip a Shami sad, I see that you are worried.
Speaker 1: He said, do not fear, does not the current does not.
Speaker 1: The Koran say those who have said our Lord is
Speaker 1: a law and then remained on our right course, the
Speaker 1: angels will descend upon them, saying, do not fear and
Speaker 1: do not grieve, but receive good tidings of paradise. Not
Speaker 1: a super relevant quote, ben, just like picking something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like literally a quote saying like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're on the right course, God will will make
Speaker 1: you feel good about it. Um, But not a particularly
Speaker 1: I don't know It's not the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you would quote to somebody in a moment like this.
Speaker 1: I don't think I did. It just demonstrates him not
Speaker 1: caring enough to do real research. So he googled a
Speaker 1: single passage from the Koran that he felt like was
Speaker 1: vaguely appropriate and threw it in there. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: uh do do do? The sound of the afternoon wasn't
Speaker 1: wefted into the room. He took a deep breath and
Speaker 1: then pulled us disposable cell phone and dialed. A man's
Speaker 1: voice answered at the other end. He spoke with a
Speaker 1: thick Russian accent. Yes, he said, yes, in a thick
Speaker 1: Russian accent. Tomorrow, as Sham said, then hung up abruptly.
Speaker 1: That's their conversation. He turned to Mohammed. Go Mohammed, and
Speaker 1: Allah will go with you. As Mohammed left, a Shami
Speaker 1: knelt on his prayer rug. When he got up, he
Speaker 1: turned to the door and smiled. They're standing before him
Speaker 1: was a large American man in a military uniform. He
Speaker 1: wore a blindfold. Welcome, General Thorn. Yeah, we're well, no,
Speaker 1: actually we're back to We're back to Mohammed because he's
Speaker 1: sipping some classy cafe. Yeah, of course, I would like
Speaker 1: to just point out just another tip to Ben. Um.
Speaker 1: You didn't need to say he pulled out a disposable
Speaker 1: cell phone. Um, And then the conversation you say he
Speaker 1: pulled out a cell phone. You have the conversation happen.
Speaker 1: And then you see him throw the cell phone away, yeah,
Speaker 1: and crush it underfoot indicate to the reader maybe he
Speaker 1: hands it yeah, yeah, he just Yeah, you could have it.
Speaker 1: Even if you want this guy to be really cool,
Speaker 1: you can just hold the phone out and an underly
Speaker 1: nose to take it and destroy it immediately, because like
Speaker 1: that's just the operation this guy has going. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Ben's bad at writing. Um, so let's get to this
Speaker 1: next part. Mohammed glanced nervously around cafe in the dairy
Speaker 1: as he sipped his Nana t It was a classy
Speaker 1: joint and everyone wore a suit. It was a business
Speaker 1: cafe located in the lower level of a hotel. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the kind of place that would kick up any
Speaker 1: sort of fuss in a western city, but in Teo
Speaker 1: Ron it was a rarity. Ben doesn't know a goddamn
Speaker 1: thing about this part of the I've been to Iran.
Speaker 1: I've been to places that are much poorer than Iran
Speaker 1: in the Middle East, and they have a fun lit
Speaker 1: of cafes like that. You know why, because it's a
Speaker 1: huge fucking part of culture in the Middle East to
Speaker 1: sit at cafes and drink motherfucking tea. It's an enormous thing.
Speaker 1: They do it all the time. They have tons of them,
Speaker 1: They're all over the place. But no, this is one
Speaker 1: of the only nice cafes in Tehran, a city that
Speaker 1: prides itself on its fucking tea. Anyway, fucking no, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think you understand, Robert. Um, they live in
Speaker 1: dirt there, they live in dirt. Yeah, they live in dirt.
Speaker 1: And philth clearly yours, Robert. Maybe maybe the people with
Speaker 1: the scraggly beards go to wherever you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: this is a real fancy place. Yeah, it's the last
Speaker 1: non Islamic cafe in the city. It brags about that,
Speaker 1: the last non Islamic cafe in Tehran. Um, that's the
Speaker 1: last one, the last one. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: doing He's having some sort of meeting there. Um, some
Speaker 1: guy named Andre I'm guessing that's the Russian um. It
Speaker 1: also had the benefit of maintaining a solidly anti regime reputation.
Speaker 1: Not a great thing. I I don't so like. What
Speaker 1: do you what do you think Iran has been? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it is it so oppressive that like this is
Speaker 1: the only non Islamic cafe or is it open enough
Speaker 1: that you can have a solidly anti ri like a
Speaker 1: reputedly anti regime cafe exists in the city and it
Speaker 1: be fine? Um? Yeah, intellectuals and writers hung out in
Speaker 1: packs and talked treason. What do you think, goddamn it
Speaker 1: be consistent about your wrongness about a place I don't like. Goddamn, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is intellectuals and writers hung out in packs and
Speaker 1: talk treason. For that reason, regime informers populated the place.
Speaker 1: It was the last location Western intelligence agencies would watch.
Speaker 1: The last location that we're going to watch. Is this
Speaker 1: cafe filled with pull talking trees and against that's the
Speaker 1: last place to watch? What do you how? God, everything
Speaker 1: is so wrong about his conception of the fucking world
Speaker 1: of just like reality and like how like not even
Speaker 1: because it's not even like having specific knowledge about the region,
Speaker 1: although that's clearly a problem. If wrong, if you say
Speaker 1: this thing regardless of where it is, and then you
Speaker 1: say this other thing. They contradict each other, and you
Speaker 1: think the CIA like you think. Okay, So let's let's imagine.
Speaker 1: Let's imagine in Ben's world, the undercover CIA operatives who
Speaker 1: exist in Tehran talking about where they should spend their resources,
Speaker 1: scoping out. Hey, there's this famous anti regime cafe, the
Speaker 1: only non islamict cafe in the city. Lots of trees
Speaker 1: and its intellectuals go there. Probably not worth our time,
Speaker 1: right track, Yeah, that sounds like being spies. Just unimportant.
Speaker 1: Just don't use the word reason two words after you
Speaker 1: use the word treason. Yeah yeah, also bad um, God
Speaker 1: damn it. Ben. So yeah, they're they're they're meeting this
Speaker 1: cafe because nobody's nobody's going to suspect that the cafe
Speaker 1: trees and his people gather is where terrorists will gather. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mohammed had complete faith in a Shami. A Shami was
Speaker 1: the man who had taught him the emptiness of secularism,
Speaker 1: the beauty of belief. He was a master strategist who
Speaker 1: had launched several substantial attacks on targets ranging from embassies
Speaker 1: to hotels to restaurants in America, Europe and Israel. He
Speaker 1: is with Allah and I am with him. Mohammed thought.
Speaker 1: I also enjoy that it's like country, continent, country is
Speaker 1: where this guy's attacks have been. We don't need to specify,
Speaker 1: Like you don't say something like he was the master
Speaker 1: strategist behind the Paris bombing of two thousand eleven, or
Speaker 1: you know the nightclub attack in Spain that claimed thirty
Speaker 1: one lives. We don't, because why would you like a writer? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the kids kids waiting for this Russian. He's got
Speaker 1: a satchel um Yeah, like what, it's got a shaving
Speaker 1: kid that he bought just to avoid suspicion for some reason.
Speaker 1: But he had also tossed it immediately. I don't know
Speaker 1: why been is telling us all this. Um. Okay, so
Speaker 1: he's got a bunch of money either. Yeah, this guy
Speaker 1: is Russian guys late. They're having a trying to have
Speaker 1: him meeting. But this Russian guys fucking late. Um oh god, Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. Had android been followed by the Americans,
Speaker 1: had he been taking it out of play by the Israelis?
Speaker 1: What if every minute he stayed here the Zionists were
Speaker 1: drawing closer. He had heard the stories about the Jewish devils,
Speaker 1: about how they had blown the heads off of nuclear
Speaker 1: scientists with their head rest bombs, about how their computer
Speaker 1: specialists had stifled the Iranian nuclear program. If they knew
Speaker 1: what he was planning, the sons of pigs and monkeys
Speaker 1: would surely take him out of play, using out of
Speaker 1: play again twice in a paragraph too. That's fun, um
Speaker 1: so to culturally sure? Absolutely? Um? Yeah, so okay, I
Speaker 1: guess this guy comes in eventually. Uh do do do? Stupid?
Speaker 1: The Russian? The first thing, The Russian says, he's surprised
Speaker 1: because the Russian short uh. And the Russian says, you
Speaker 1: expected Dolf Lundgren perhaps, And of course Mohammad doesn't know
Speaker 1: who that is. Um. Also not really sure that a
Speaker 1: lot of Russians know who don't He's not like, he's
Speaker 1: not like a famous guy in Russia. I don't think,
Speaker 1: but maybe I'm wrong on that one. I don't know
Speaker 1: much about Russian culture. He's Swedish. H he played a
Speaker 1: Russian in a movie, so so a Russian would use
Speaker 1: Dolf as his immediate go to cultural touchstone for a
Speaker 1: tall person when talking to in his Iranian. You're like
Speaker 1: talking about Iraqi and you're like, oh, yeah, like the
Speaker 1: villain from True Eyes or something like that would actually
Speaker 1: work because they've all seen every American action movie. Fucking imaginable.
Speaker 1: But yeah, um, bad example, bad example. He's Swedish. What
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Yeah, I unreal, Uh yeah, nonsense,
Speaker 1: it's not often I get to eat well in this country.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. Yeah, so the Russian says, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: can't eat well in Iran, a country that famously has
Speaker 1: no cuisine. Um, god, he is such a low opinions Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So they go outside and he hailed a cab, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of just bullshit stuff that Ben is trying
Speaker 1: to make it seem like an exciting spy thing but
Speaker 1: is actually incredibly boring. Oh and then the chapter ends
Speaker 1: with nothing, uh, nothing happening, nothing happening other than this
Speaker 1: guy giving him a suitcase. That's the whole thing. Gets
Speaker 1: a suitcase from this Russian. That's the whole chapters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just the people. Yeah, no one burnt alive in
Speaker 1: this chapter. What the unreal? So we have I'm very excited, guys.
Speaker 1: We have just now entered having finished finished that chapter.
Speaker 1: We have now entered part two collapse. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wait a second, what wait a second? This
Speaker 1: is we're entering part two. We we have just part
Speaker 1: to Cody from like a storytelling perspective. Another word for that,
Speaker 1: the term might be like act too. Yeah. So you're saying,
Speaker 1: is act one ends with a briefcase being delivered? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that boy heading to the airport with the briefcase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a cliffhanger. And ran them insults about Iranian cuisine,
Speaker 1: which is fantastic by the way, Um, anyone saying that
Speaker 1: threshold into advantace deeply frustrating. Also, Part one is before
Speaker 1: Part two is collapse. Great words to choose, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: don't match at all. Two and a half episodes have
Speaker 1: been us getting through before and now chapter one after
Speaker 1: collapse is and you're all going to be excited for
Speaker 1: this bread Hawthorne. Yeah yeah, we are we doing that today?
Speaker 1: Or is that going to be next time? I feel
Speaker 1: like we've got to if we've got the time, we've
Speaker 1: got to roll through a little bit of a little
Speaker 1: bit of a bread h Right. These are protagonists, um yeah,
Speaker 1: and because Ben is such a good writer. He's been,
Speaker 1: he's been like teasing. It's like, pretty soon we're gonna
Speaker 1: get a second chapter with I. He'll bite the empty
Speaker 1: magazine of his gun again tomorrow. The word hung in
Speaker 1: the air for a moment, spoken in Arabic, not meant
Speaker 1: for his ears. Brett was sure of that. Oh God,
Speaker 1: all three separate sentences. He couldn't see a thing dash
Speaker 1: The blindfold over his eyes prevented him from seeing the room.
Speaker 1: But the next words confirmed Brett's worst fears. He recognized
Speaker 1: the voice God, that's a bad sentence. But the next
Speaker 1: words confirmed Breat's worst fears semicolon. He recognized the voice
Speaker 1: fucking horrible. So it's bad. You mentioned they're like bring
Speaker 1: the words, but it's the voice that's the thing that Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: damn it. How can you be this bad at writing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you be this bad at writing. It's like literally bad.
Speaker 1: Like it's not even like you read like sometimes you
Speaker 1: read like, well that's mediocre, that's something special. This is
Speaker 1: just bad. It's one thing. Like it's like it's one
Speaker 1: thing to write a book, and it'd be like, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. The story structure was kind of a mess.
Speaker 1: The character development wasn't super fluid, Like you know, that's
Speaker 1: just a thing. It's hard to write books. Anyone who's
Speaker 1: going who tries, he's going to try to write fiction,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have books where it's like, okay, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know your character to revelment wasn't great, or like you know,
Speaker 1: the pacing wasn't you know, it was off here, off here.
Speaker 1: But like this is just the very basic technical facts
Speaker 1: of how he writes sentences are so bad. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like this bizarre like disjointed, like so like nothing matches up,
Speaker 1: subjects don't match up, and like unclear, like it's it's
Speaker 1: like vaguely clear, like what the intention is. But if
Speaker 1: you take a second, like, well that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: If if if a junior, if I were teaching like
Speaker 1: a creative writing class for junior high school kids and
Speaker 1: someone turned this in, um I would I would have
Speaker 1: a conversation. I would have to sit down with them
Speaker 1: and talk about things. Right, I don't wanna say like
Speaker 1: it's not like a it's not like a shame thing,
Speaker 1: but it's like this is actually okay, we're gonna so
Speaker 1: like there's some some structural things that need to be altered.
Speaker 1: Here about if I were worried about like embarrassing the
Speaker 1: students in front of the other students, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: this is actually a good example of a sentence we
Speaker 1: should look at and like, what is wrong with this sentence?
Speaker 1: And you know, why isn't this doing the job this
Speaker 1: sentence needs to do. Every sentence needs to do a job.
Speaker 1: Let's look at why this one isn't functioning. And you
Speaker 1: can kind of do that with every other sentence. You
Speaker 1: can do that with every single sentence in this book. Yeah, welcome,
Speaker 1: General Hawthorne, said Ibrahama Shami in a clipped accents clipccent.
Speaker 1: But what is damn? Yeah, Bret's captors forced him to
Speaker 1: his knees. He felt them hits God damnit sentence one.
Speaker 1: Brett's captors forced him to his knees period sentence to
Speaker 1: he felt them hits stone what his captors his? That
Speaker 1: is oh man? Then he felt a sweaty hand remove
Speaker 1: the blindfold. That was a sentence, And that was a sentence.
Speaker 1: That's a sentence, a great sentence, but a functional sentence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before him stood the world's most well known terrorists since
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden period smiling. That's the next sentence after that,
Speaker 1: it's just God. Then oh my God, put the puck down,
Speaker 1: Like that's all I can think about when he does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if Chuck Palinuck listened to this episode like
Speaker 1: he would, he would he would feel compelled to correct
Speaker 1: some things in the world. But yeah, I hope you
Speaker 1: weren't too mistreated on your journey here, a Shami said,
Speaker 1: turning his back to him. We wouldn't want a famous
Speaker 1: were hero victimized by how did you put it in
Speaker 1: your interviews? Barbarians? Brett kept his mouth ship. He knew
Speaker 1: how this would go, and he knew that the taunting
Speaker 1: presaged something far more frightening. Instead of listening to a
Speaker 1: Shami's monologue, Brett quietly scanned the room for tools, anything
Speaker 1: he could use. He almost didn't notice when a Shami
Speaker 1: turned back around thrust his face just inches from his own. God,
Speaker 1: damn it, that's a bad sentence. He almost didn't notice
Speaker 1: when a Shami turned back around, Comma, thrust his face
Speaker 1: just inches from his own. Chee Christ Yeah, okay. Brett
Speaker 1: could smell his breath the faint vestiges of Cello koresh
Speaker 1: still on it. General Hawthorne a Shami said, I know
Speaker 1: you and that you are a resourceful man. I also
Speaker 1: know that your country is a paper tiger and that
Speaker 1: your president is a weakling. Weaklings watches the world burns
Speaker 1: around them, thinking they are safe because they have a
Speaker 1: mirror and they are lost in the reflection. But the
Speaker 1: fuck is that ship. That's fucking nonsense. His fucking nonsense.
Speaker 1: Which one of you just snorted, Adora party, I think
Speaker 1: I think this chapter might kill Cody. I don't know
Speaker 1: that he's going to make it out of this, I
Speaker 1: just said Katia text. I was like, I think this
Speaker 1: is the happiest I've seen Cody and Robert in like
Speaker 1: a mom. This is really cleansing my soul. A bit
Speaker 1: hard to have a profound thought and articulated so much,
Speaker 1: so great. This is why your country will lose. Finally,
Speaker 1: Brett spoke, America doesn't lose. We just convinced ourselves not
Speaker 1: to win. You will lose. We don't have to take
Speaker 1: beheadings to frighten people into joining us. Quite a pair
Speaker 1: a lot of things being expressed there. Ben, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: A Shami, to Brett's surprise, laughed up roariously clapped his
Speaker 1: hands into light. That was one sentence. A Shami to
Speaker 1: Brett's surprise, A Shami kama. To Brett's surprise, Comma laughed uproariously.
Speaker 1: Comma clapped his hands in delight. Period. Fucking hell. Oh
Speaker 1: you Americans, you don't understand it all. You're delightfully out
Speaker 1: of touch. I mean delightfully until you stop start dropping
Speaker 1: incendiaries on our children. You spend your life's fat and
Speaker 1: happy eating at McDonald's, imagining yourself superior because you have
Speaker 1: clean shopping malls and manicured front lawns. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been to a shopping mall in this part of the anyway?
Speaker 1: But while you sleep, But while you sleep, while you
Speaker 1: watch your reality television. Your children abandoned like you Americans
Speaker 1: in your food and your your streets. You Americans have streets,
Speaker 1: and we don't like Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, your children
Speaker 1: abandon you. No matter how many patriot missiles she sinned
Speaker 1: against us, YadA, YadA, YadA. You see, we offer something
Speaker 1: you do, not a reason to die. We need not
Speaker 1: frighten anyone. You do the frightening, because you see, people
Speaker 1: are not frightened to die or to be killed. Down
Speaker 1: deep down, deep they are afraid of dying without that
Speaker 1: death meaning any thing. They are afraid that they will die,
Speaker 1: and that a life of playing Xbox and watching your
Speaker 1: American movies and eating your American food and worshiping themselves
Speaker 1: will end in the ground and their lives forgotten. And
Speaker 1: of course they are right. Their lives are meaningless, Brett scoffed,
Speaker 1: and yours, I suppose, are meaningful. Slaughtering women and children.
Speaker 1: A Shammi grabbed Brett by his face, squeezing his jaw
Speaker 1: until it hurt. Brent Brett clenched his teeth and stared
Speaker 1: into his eyes. Oh my god, Ben, Bret Brett clenched
Speaker 1: his teeth, referring to Brett's teeth and stared into his
Speaker 1: eyes referring to a Shammie. God damn it, bit, God damn.
Speaker 1: Like it's sort of like it washes over you and
Speaker 1: you're like, surely it'll makes sense fine, but like, ah,
Speaker 1: we will do anything for a law. That is our
Speaker 1: strength and your weakness. Brett whispered, there, you're wrong. You
Speaker 1: don't know me, and you don't know my countrymen. We
Speaker 1: live for something. We live to kill bastards like you. That, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what makes America great is murdering strangers in the desert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ben gets it. I mean for some people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess it is. He's nailing it, like it's just amazing you.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, this is the way it is, and
Speaker 1: it's actually good. Actually yeah, because the guy, the bad guy,
Speaker 1: is saying like you live for nothing, like by killing you,
Speaker 1: we live for something. And Brett says that's not true.
Speaker 1: We live for killing you, and that's like it so good.
Speaker 1: Oh God, It's like like he he can't. He will
Speaker 1: never be able to realize what he just did. In
Speaker 1: the hands of like a minimally competent author, you could
Speaker 1: have this be trying to say something where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: both of these men are the same kind of man
Speaker 1: who feel and yet a mirror of paragraph earlier, like
Speaker 1: you're you're already evoking this idea, but he doesn't even
Speaker 1: know that he's doing it. Yeah, you have like things
Speaker 1: are complicated. I want like a minimally competent writer, not
Speaker 1: even a good writer, like just a writer who had
Speaker 1: like a second thought, yeah, a single additional just like
Speaker 1: and that thought would be like what if I wanted
Speaker 1: to try to make this mildly interesting, just like the
Speaker 1: bare minimum of an interesting scene. Oh God, I like it.
Speaker 1: So the Shami sends General Hawthorne away, turns to his
Speaker 1: goons and has him taken to a cell, and like
Speaker 1: through crack in the window, Brett sees a tower, um
Speaker 1: and it lets him know exactly where he is in
Speaker 1: Tehran Um because of that dirty scene. Briefly, I recognized
Speaker 1: the dirty tower from my dirty nap, the filthy, filthy tower,
Speaker 1: the scumb tower. Come next to the dirty tower, mud street.
Speaker 1: Goddamn it. Uh. They came for him in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, the better to keep him off balance.
Speaker 1: He'd been trained for such techniques, but too long ago
Speaker 1: to matter, and he'd awoken groggy, head pounding, nauseated by
Speaker 1: the casual beating. Hand it out to him by one
Speaker 1: of a Shami's Lackey's quite a sentence there, ben Um.
Speaker 1: No marks to the face. Of course they're wanted. They
Speaker 1: wanted their victims looking fresh and clean before they saw
Speaker 1: it off their heads. But the big bearded kid had
Speaker 1: worked his torso over pretty well and ground the bones
Speaker 1: of his arm against one another to boot yusef. He'd
Speaker 1: heard one of the others call Umn. He wouldn't forget
Speaker 1: that anytime soon. Every time Yusef had bawled up his
Speaker 1: fist and driven it into his mid section, Brett had again,
Speaker 1: every time Yousef bawled up his fist, Yusef's fist and
Speaker 1: driven it into his midsection, Brett's mid section, like God,
Speaker 1: so frustrating us. Also like I love, like we we
Speaker 1: make sure they're they're they're nice and clean to remind
Speaker 1: us of what we hate. Yeah, Ben a man who's
Speaker 1: clearly watched again a single video of one of these executions,
Speaker 1: like uh, they'd taken his uniform from him, forced him
Speaker 1: into an orange jumps suit, the unifor him of their victims.
Speaker 1: When he'd gone to the bucket that served as a toilet,
Speaker 1: he'd noticed his urine had turned red, like Ali, he
Speaker 1: thought to himself after the thriller. But Ali had survived that.
Speaker 1: Talking about fucking Mohammed Alie, I guess pissing blood. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't. It hasn't been established that Bret's a big
Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali fan. I think that's just coming out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: But okay, this is the literary device that's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because be's a literary Yeah, so uh, Brett's plans not
Speaker 1: to survive. He'd formed a plan after seeing the Azadi Tower,
Speaker 1: engaging the distance from it, realizing that uh, that map
Speaker 1: that he got earlier had I don't know, So he's
Speaker 1: I don't I don't really follow Ben's plan here. Um,
Speaker 1: but it seems like, uh, he blinked a message to
Speaker 1: the boys and intelligence when he did his video, and
Speaker 1: he's hoping that uh Jesus Christ. Um, he hoped that
Speaker 1: the boys and intelligence picked up on the message that
Speaker 1: he'd be sending. So he's, oh, he's planning to as
Speaker 1: he's being executed, blink out the core ordinance of where
Speaker 1: the this terrorist's headquarters are in Tehran so that it
Speaker 1: can be bombed. Yeah, based off I see the tower
Speaker 1: where I am, I know where I am in relationship,
Speaker 1: I memorized in my head what the geographical coordinance are
Speaker 1: and I can now blink them. Yes, Yes, I love
Speaker 1: I love stories. Yes. He just hoped that the boyson
Speaker 1: intelligence picked up on the message he'd be sending, and
Speaker 1: he prayed that the film editor or whatever cave dweller
Speaker 1: familiar with windows movie makers using for this particular production
Speaker 1: didn't chop up the film do badly. Fucking hell whatever
Speaker 1: whatever fucking dirty MSPaint fucking like Oh god, uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: they joke, because the terrorists joke is that kick him away.
Speaker 1: You all out of your hole and downloaded whatever stev
Speaker 1: hell monster to edit this. Oh god. Um. So they
Speaker 1: tell Brett that he's going to be in a movie now,
Speaker 1: and Brett muttered, through gritted teeth, fuck you and your mother.
Speaker 1: Yusef smiled. Brett smiled back. Also your goat, he added,
Speaker 1: God damn it, ben Um. The door at the end
Speaker 1: of the hallway swung open, waiting before a green flag
Speaker 1: sat a sham me, his face bared normally in these videos,
Speaker 1: Brett new the terrorists like to swatch their faces and
Speaker 1: black scarves to prevent identification. For the jihad video of
Speaker 1: a major American general, a shami wanted to take personal credit.
Speaker 1: Yusef and his buddy deposited Brett next to a Shami
Speaker 1: on his knees. General said a Shami, looking down at Brett,
Speaker 1: I hope your accommodations were not too primitive. I must
Speaker 1: say you look somewhat the worse for wear. No, said Brett,
Speaker 1: glancing at Yusef. Nothing I couldn't handle ah. Ever, the
Speaker 1: tough American, Well, the good news is that you're suffering
Speaker 1: will not last much longer years either, bit, said Brett.
Speaker 1: But I will not suffer a Shami said placidly. Remember
Speaker 1: I serve a lot, and no matter what happens, he
Speaker 1: will be with me. I only hope he's with all
Speaker 1: the different pieces of you after we nail your ass
Speaker 1: with the hell Fire missile. Any plans I don't know about, general,
Speaker 1: Brett smiled back. Maybe maybe not. You'll find out soon enough.
Speaker 1: They get down to the business of of of killing
Speaker 1: Brett Hawth. Oh boy, testicles come up here. Let's see
Speaker 1: what happening. UM, let me be perfectly clear. You will cooperate.
Speaker 1: If you say anything we don't wish you to say,
Speaker 1: I will personally cut off your testicles. If you do
Speaker 1: anything we do not wish you to do, I will
Speaker 1: cut off your testicles and then I will slash your
Speaker 1: throat after letting you bleed. Yeah. Yeah, because this guy's
Speaker 1: begin to cutting testicles off of people. Um, he could
Speaker 1: have said it them like this is this is one
Speaker 1: of those situations where like he could have used the
Speaker 1: non specific and then the second time I cut them
Speaker 1: off like simple stuff. So they film it and I
Speaker 1: guess they're not killing him. Um. Yeah, so that's nice. Um.
Speaker 1: They take him back to his cell. Uh. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets down on his knees. He does something he
Speaker 1: hasn't done for years. He gets down on his knees
Speaker 1: and praise Um Jesus, uh dear Lord. He whispered to
Speaker 1: the darkness, thick with the stinch of feces and urine, oppressive,
Speaker 1: with the smell of sweat. You know what he's saying. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just breat Hawthorne has been shipping so much in itself.
Speaker 1: Can't stand it. I love, I can't, Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's good smell smell, the smell of ship and pisses overwhelming, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But then what does he say at the second time,
Speaker 1: that's even in there for a day by the way,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, I can't. I just
Speaker 1: can't breathe with all my days worth of piss and ship.
Speaker 1: But like then the second thing he says is the
Speaker 1: impressive sweat. What you're worried about the sweat? You mentioned
Speaker 1: the piss and the ship, but like, the sweat is
Speaker 1: the thing that so Brett Hawthorne starts to pray. I
Speaker 1: know I haven't spoken with you for a while, but
Speaker 1: I need you now. I may never forgive you for
Speaker 1: what you did to my Ellen while you took our
Speaker 1: baby from us. They say you have a logic all
Speaker 1: your own, and I reckon that's the case, since I
Speaker 1: sure as hell can't understand you were the things you do.
Speaker 1: I know I've tried to do the right thing as
Speaker 1: I see it, and I haven't broken too many of
Speaker 1: the lessons I learned in Sunday School. And you know
Speaker 1: better than anybody that I've never been one for prayer.
Speaker 1: I always thought that some people treat you like a
Speaker 1: gumball machine, like if they pray just the right way
Speaker 1: and say just the right things, that you'll give them
Speaker 1: what they want. And then when when this whole world
Speaker 1: is about something bigger than what any of us want,
Speaker 1: it's about what you want. And I do hope that
Speaker 1: I've done at least a few things the way you
Speaker 1: want them. Really trying to get my head around this
Speaker 1: here is like you're anoy do bad things. Also, it's
Speaker 1: dumb when people pray to you about their own personal
Speaker 1: off because clearly what matters is what you the guy
Speaker 1: that I've just said, I don't understand why you're so
Speaker 1: mean wants I don't know, but that's my issues with Christianity.
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's just like he's just like typing
Speaker 1: so he can, like I'll get to a profound thought. Surely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say now, I'm not praying for myself.
Speaker 1: I'm praying for Ellen because after all this, she's going
Speaker 1: to be alone. Lord, and I just wanted to be happy.
Speaker 1: You took her children away from her. Maybe I took
Speaker 1: myself away from her, but however it worked out. Now
Speaker 1: she'll be on her own. Please let her find someone else.
Speaker 1: Please let her be happy for once in her life.
Speaker 1: Please let my sweetheart go on with her life. Let
Speaker 1: her understand what I've done and why I've done it.
Speaker 1: Thank you Lord in advance. Amen. Brett closed his eyes
Speaker 1: and dropped into an uneasy sleep. And that is the
Speaker 1: end of the chapter. Thank God. Oh goddamn, so unpleasant, unbelievable, shocking,
Speaker 1: goat prayer, bread, painful, painful prose. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever been it put in such physical pain as a
Speaker 1: result of the writing that somebody has that I have read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and briefly for a second there, I kid you not.
Speaker 1: My brain went, Robert, why are you doing this to us?
Speaker 1: That's the only reasonable feeling when you read been Shapiro's
Speaker 1: work for even a moment. Oh it was fun though.
Speaker 1: We had fun. We did. We had a good time.
Speaker 1: And we've got so much more of this book left
Speaker 1: to look forward to. Yeah, we're barely amount of it.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see what collapses. Yeah, part three,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a part four even, you know, if we're lucky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to. I we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to go through all this, this entire book. You're right
Speaker 1: that we do have to. We're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: through it, really, really go through this book. I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to absorb more of it with my ears.
Speaker 1: And I feel, I feel, I feel fundamentally changed. Is
Speaker 1: a human being? Um, you know, I was. I was
Speaker 1: feeling kind of broken down from all of the relentless
Speaker 1: uh police violence. Uh. Getting maced in the face directly
Speaker 1: last night wasn't super fun. Um it's been. It's been.
Speaker 1: It's been tough, and I feel rejuvenated in a way
Speaker 1: that I didn't know was possible. It looks like life
Speaker 1: has been breathed back into you. That glow, that yellow
Speaker 1: glow in your eye that you get only comes from
Speaker 1: trying to diagram a sentence and figure out what the
Speaker 1: fuck Bin Shapiro mid when he was writing it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: do you guys want to plug your plug goobles? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Check out our show together, Worst You Ever, and check
Speaker 1: out and check out Cody and Katie's podcast Even More News.
Speaker 1: Yeah on most Fridays, right right, Katie Fridays. Yep, that's
Speaker 1: right Fridays, and our YouTube show comes out sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: it's called some More News. Um, we've got a Patreon Google.
Speaker 1: Our names were on the internet Twitter wise, Patreon more
Speaker 1: like Treon and that was really good. You can fight,
Speaker 1: you can. You guys can follow Katie and Cody on
Speaker 1: the Twitter and Instagram at Dark Dr Mr Cody and
Speaker 1: at Katie Stoole. You can follow this podcast at Bastard's
Speaker 1: Pod on Twitter and Instagram. You can follow Robert and
Speaker 1: I Right, okay, we have a t public store where
Speaker 1: we have new Uh what is it? What is the new?
Speaker 1: The new the new merk? We are, Robert, what did
Speaker 1: we get it to say? Oh, it's a it's a.
Speaker 1: It's a face mask that says f d A guaranteed
Speaker 1: to prevent all diseases. Um. So that is it is
Speaker 1: a legal guarantee that the FDA will back um. And
Speaker 1: if they don't, they can attack me in my mountaintop
Speaker 1: compound with fire bombs from the sky and that's amazing.
Speaker 1: You can also gets or whatever they sell website to
Speaker 1: get the shirt and you go to like the grocery
Speaker 1: store and someone like you can't come in here without
Speaker 1: a mask, Like, we'll look at my fucking shirt. It's
Speaker 1: FDA approved. Could I have this with? If it weren't
Speaker 1: FDA approved? Note, they would raid the mountaintop compound of
Speaker 1: whoever produced this and burn seventies something children to death
Speaker 1: and his basically getting very Alex Jones. Um. Anyways, that's
Speaker 1: the episode. That is the episode Your Hands E E