Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, gracious, it's the podcast Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: that this is that you're listening to right now on
Speaker 1: the internet dot com. Sylvie, how was? How was that?
Speaker 1: We're doing good? We're doing great. We're doing great. We're
Speaker 1: doing good. Okay great? Well with me to help me
Speaker 1: do great is my buddy Carl cassarda from Enranged TV. Carl,
Speaker 1: are you doing I'm doing all right. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: be here again, though I've really enjoyed our last collaboration,
Speaker 1: and uh looking forward to the topic we have today.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, today is gonna be a fun one. We're
Speaker 1: doing another book episode. We're actually going to record hopefully
Speaker 1: to today, although we generally just do one a week
Speaker 1: because this this helps me get ahead for some travel
Speaker 1: that I have planned. And my goodness, Carl, we have
Speaker 1: quite a book uh for everyone today. So I received
Speaker 1: in the mail from a fan a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago a hard cover copy of a book called An
Speaker 1: Tended Consequences. Now, Sophie, Carl knows this book. Everyone who's
Speaker 1: in gun culture is aware of this book. You want
Speaker 1: to you want to describe that that cover to our audience.
Speaker 1: It's a I think I think it's the Declaration of
Speaker 1: Independence on fire? Is that what I'm seeing? That's certainly
Speaker 1: part of it. Yeah, I can only see the top
Speaker 1: of it. Can you say, okay, one sec let me
Speaker 1: get my let let me let me see if I
Speaker 1: can properly here we go. So I'm just gonna google it.
Speaker 1: Consequences book cover. Oh, I recommend people at home check
Speaker 1: this one. I take it back because all I could
Speaker 1: see was the top, which is the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: on fire. But it looks like a soldier attacking a
Speaker 1: topless woman with who's been blindfolded. Yeah. I think she's
Speaker 1: a Lady Justice. You can see her scales, they're right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's like some sort of swat team operative
Speaker 1: attack Lady Justice. And there's nipples you can see, like
Speaker 1: it's full there's full frontal ludity on the cover of
Speaker 1: John Ross's Unintended Consequences. Yeah, it's a super hot Lady
Speaker 1: Justice getting the full Alien Gonzalez treatment with a full
Speaker 1: swat team guy with an MP five. What a choice,
Speaker 1: What a series of choices? Um? Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: he wrote this. When exactly was this published? Um? I
Speaker 1: think actually so, yeah, this would have been right after
Speaker 1: Elian Gonzalez, because I think you're right, Carl, they're very
Speaker 1: clearly like doing because he's the cop on the front
Speaker 1: has an MP five, which, if I'm not mistaken, is
Speaker 1: with the cop who grabbed Elian Gonzalez and that famous
Speaker 1: photo had and it's his his like body language is
Speaker 1: not dissimilar, No, it isn't. But honestly, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of those weird things where the alien Gonzalez
Speaker 1: thing happened after they did the cover art, So it's
Speaker 1: a weird thing where like actually simulated art. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird. Yeah, So in that regard, I
Speaker 1: guess they kind of ailed it, although it wasn't going
Speaker 1: after Lady Justice of course. Yeah, it was going after
Speaker 1: a well trying to escape. Yeah. And it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I think the main influence behind this book and in
Speaker 1: brief this is like a kind of fantasy about gun
Speaker 1: confiscation leading to a civil war type scenario against like
Speaker 1: the evil gun grabbing government. And I think it was
Speaker 1: very directly inspired by Ruby rich Um, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like a seminal moment for a lot of people
Speaker 1: and is life is actually like just so we're clear
Speaker 1: an example of the government doing a lot of really
Speaker 1: fucked up things because they shot a child and his
Speaker 1: mom to death in a raid gun horribly awry. Um
Speaker 1: not to kind of like whitewash the some of the
Speaker 1: sketchy ship that like their their father was doing, but
Speaker 1: like it's definitely an example of government overreach. But that
Speaker 1: Ruby Ridge kind of leads us into this kind of
Speaker 1: explosion of action on behalf of the militia movement, which
Speaker 1: culminates in a big way in the Oklahoma City bombing
Speaker 1: after the Waco UH tragedy. So you've got like the
Speaker 1: series of largely police overreaches with high body counts, and
Speaker 1: it kind of ignites this militia movement and into that,
Speaker 1: into that culture comes a guy named John ross Um.
Speaker 1: Now John is an interesting guy. He calls himself he
Speaker 1: was actually a Democratic UH congressional candidate in Missouri in
Speaker 1: nine but he calls himself a pre Roosevelt Democrat, which
Speaker 1: he defines as a Democrat without the socialism, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because like it's not that far pre Roosevelt that
Speaker 1: the Democrats were the party of slavery. Like, how how
Speaker 1: pre are we going? John? Is a question I would
Speaker 1: ask anyone to find themselves that way. What what is
Speaker 1: your understanding of John Ross, because he's he's he's a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting dude. Yeah, I don't know. I looked up
Speaker 1: some stuff and some interviews with him, and it's very
Speaker 1: clear that whatever he described was all as that. When
Speaker 1: he wrote this book, he was promoting it very much
Speaker 1: to the Republican side of things, um, even back in
Speaker 1: the nineties and early two thousands, which is not surprised
Speaker 1: at considering how firearms centric his content was. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about him in individually, but
Speaker 1: I do know quite a bit about the culture around
Speaker 1: the book and the gun shows and the environment that
Speaker 1: that was written. And if we get into that a
Speaker 1: little bit, because that was going on then in the
Speaker 1: gun community and now I would have to say it
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe it's actually better now than it
Speaker 1: was then, But back then it was it was a
Speaker 1: pretty weird space. Yeah, And this is one of those
Speaker 1: books you would not have found unintended consequences in like
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Like, it wasn't that kind of I
Speaker 1: mean maybe now you can. I'm sure like places like
Speaker 1: Powell's books that make a point of selling absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: sell it. But this was a book that, like I
Speaker 1: started to encounter in the early two thousands, like gun shows.
Speaker 1: It's one of those. It's one of those books you
Speaker 1: would find at gun shows. Um, And it's not it's
Speaker 1: in a lot of people compare it to the Turner Diaries.
Speaker 1: It is not a neo Nazi book, is my understanding. Um,
Speaker 1: although there's some problematic shit in it, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll get into. But yeah, I mentioned, you mentioned that.
Speaker 1: But when you go to the gun shows, like I mean,
Speaker 1: gun shows now are still a thing, right, there's like
Speaker 1: some weirdness there for sure. But back in the late
Speaker 1: nineties early two thousands, a gun show was like this
Speaker 1: kind of dark, denk, musty place with you first walk
Speaker 1: in and there's the guy in the right corner, the
Speaker 1: old man with his Nazi paraphernalia. On the left side
Speaker 1: was the Confederate and paraphernalia, and then there was the
Speaker 1: book vendor. But how'd all the occult knowledge about how
Speaker 1: to make this thing full auto or how to make
Speaker 1: booby traps? And right there next to that was this
Speaker 1: book from John Ross, Unintended Consequences, And it was like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people went to the gun
Speaker 1: show not only for that, but to go pick up
Speaker 1: those crazy books that have now of course been replaced
Speaker 1: by the internet. But you come back and you could
Speaker 1: have that feeling of being the guy in the know,
Speaker 1: and you don't really see that as much at the
Speaker 1: gun shows anymore. Yeah, it's in part because there's just
Speaker 1: so much more money, not just in the gun part,
Speaker 1: but the culture part of gun culture. Right, there's like
Speaker 1: a whole media ecosystem. There's big name magazines, there's large
Speaker 1: obviously large YouTube channels. Um there had there is like
Speaker 1: it's it didn't feel in that there was that period
Speaker 1: of the the late nineties early two thousands where gun culture
Speaker 1: didn't really feel vibrant. It kind of felt like it
Speaker 1: was it was something that was dying and not particularly healthy,
Speaker 1: just in not even in like a not to get
Speaker 1: into like a moral sense, but just in like the
Speaker 1: it did not seem like something that had a bright
Speaker 1: future for a while there. Yeah, this is a topic
Speaker 1: for another day, but I actually feel I think that
Speaker 1: the honestly, uh, the assault weapon ban of actually made
Speaker 1: it more vibrant because it got people to uh, it
Speaker 1: really woke up and maybe some good ways and in
Speaker 1: some bad ways. Um uh, an interesting creation. It got
Speaker 1: people involved in a way that I don't think people
Speaker 1: were that concerned about before the a w B. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that fired it
Speaker 1: back up. It did, And I think you get you
Speaker 1: get a lot of funding from politicians and from political
Speaker 1: action groups and whatnot, from the industry that starts coming in,
Speaker 1: which is responsible for like kind of revitalizing gun culture
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways and moving it out of
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, dank uh jim filled with
Speaker 1: weirdos kind of space that you were describing. So what
Speaker 1: is your understanding about like the overarching plot of unintended consequences?
Speaker 1: Have you read this before? Yeah? I actually I was
Speaker 1: one of those guys that picked that up off the
Speaker 1: counter because I'm like, what the hell is this thing? Right?
Speaker 1: And um and I mean the overarching plot as I
Speaker 1: know it is a guy named Henry Bowman who's the
Speaker 1: protagonist and in it fire call correctly, it's been decades
Speaker 1: since I've read it. Um. It takes and builds up
Speaker 1: an argument based on a number of relatively accurate historical
Speaker 1: events like the breaking of the Bonus Marchers, the Ruby
Speaker 1: Ridge Waco, amongst others, and then guides that up to
Speaker 1: a position in which Henry Bowman gets involved in a
Speaker 1: shooting and which he ends up killing some A t
Speaker 1: F agents, which then he turns into a essentially counter
Speaker 1: culture coup revolt to destroy the A t F. A
Speaker 1: is there the reason, or at least one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that this country is falling into tyranny? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a real simplistic summary, but that's the premise. And
Speaker 1: that's interesting because I my my recollection, like this is
Speaker 1: not an uncommon starting point for kind of novels in
Speaker 1: this space that like the A t F there's some
Speaker 1: big gun confiscation grab. This essentially how the Turner Diary starts.
Speaker 1: But the Turner Diary starts with the assumption that like
Speaker 1: it happened and everything's already been outlawed and uh like
Speaker 1: that that's kind of like where it goes from there,
Speaker 1: whereas this, I think is is kind of more of
Speaker 1: a um, more of a slow burn to the start um.
Speaker 1: And I just noticed that my copy from Accurate Press
Speaker 1: is the publisher of this book, has has Mr Ross's
Speaker 1: signature in it, so oh wow, uh huh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: got a real, um, a real peach of a copy here,
Speaker 1: so thinks I believe the hard copy version of that's
Speaker 1: been out of print for a long time and is
Speaker 1: relatively valuable. Actually, well there we go. Um, I'll take this.
Speaker 1: Let's try to uh trade this for a man liquor
Speaker 1: in ninety four or something like that. What this is
Speaker 1: gonna be interesting conversation because, as I remember in the book,
Speaker 1: this is a challenging piece of work because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of problems here obviously, but there's also a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in it that's not necessarily incorrect. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: definitely not coming at it like, especially on a technical level.
Speaker 1: I think he does know what he's talking about. Like
Speaker 1: it's not one of these we've talked laughed about the
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro books and the things he gets wrong about guns.
Speaker 1: I believe John Ross actually knows how firearms function. I do.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, and I think he gets some
Speaker 1: of the historical stuff true as correct as well. To
Speaker 1: be honest, Yeah, he's a nerd about this, although I
Speaker 1: should note so he had a regular Internet column for
Speaker 1: for a long time. He's kind of an older dude now,
Speaker 1: so I don't think it's still going. Um. But his
Speaker 1: Wikipedia says that his column Ross and Range was where
Speaker 1: he discussed topics that interest him. Quote a recurring theme
Speaker 1: is understanding and coping with women. So and that was
Speaker 1: my recollection of this book too, that like not a
Speaker 1: lot of We're not going to find a lot of
Speaker 1: well written male characters here. Um, but yeah, it notes
Speaker 1: on the back here. John Ross is an investment broker
Speaker 1: and financial advisor in St. Louis. He went to Amherst College,
Speaker 1: which I think might surprise some people. Um, and he
Speaker 1: was an early concealed carry advocate. So this is also
Speaker 1: a thing like when you talk about sort of the
Speaker 1: history of gun culture in this guy's roll in it,
Speaker 1: there was this period of time like now most states
Speaker 1: have some sort of concealed carry. A lot, even in
Speaker 1: California is getting easier to get a concealed carry license.
Speaker 1: I know someone in San Diego who just got their's,
Speaker 1: which was like there's been a series of legal battles
Speaker 1: around that, but it wasn't possible to legally concealed carry
Speaker 1: in a lot of the country like thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh less than that, it wasn't that long A though
Speaker 1: the concealed carry was considered like a pretty crazy concept,
Speaker 1: and as one state after another started really changing to
Speaker 1: the point where we see a number of states now
Speaker 1: which don't even require permits anymore. They're called constitutional carry.
Speaker 1: But twenty something years ago that wasn't the case, Like
Speaker 1: you have to go through two days of training and
Speaker 1: get a background for permit, and you have to apply
Speaker 1: for this and have a background check. And that was
Speaker 1: in a place that was permissive, like Arizona. Other places
Speaker 1: it was considered impossible. But like you said, in California,
Speaker 1: even there are certain counties that I think are kind
Speaker 1: of shall issue now. Yeah, And it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where even in like a place like Texas, which
Speaker 1: has I think most people who kind of aren't super
Speaker 1: aware of the history see is just like always this
Speaker 1: fashion of gun rights, and like the nineties, you could
Speaker 1: not carry a gun in Texas under very most circumstances.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the things that changed that
Speaker 1: I forget the exact year. You may know more about
Speaker 1: this than I do, but there was a mass shooting
Speaker 1: at a Louby's um where a guy killed a lot
Speaker 1: of people and at least one of the people who
Speaker 1: was in the Loubi's during the shooting, like had a
Speaker 1: weapon in their car, but they couldn't bring it in,
Speaker 1: and that kind of ignited the concealed carry uh movement
Speaker 1: within sort of Texas. UM and John Ross was a
Speaker 1: big part of that in Missouri and was like a
Speaker 1: major advocate for it in Missouri. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the context of this, dude, and in which this book
Speaker 1: is written. So there's a lot going on here. Um.
Speaker 1: And now we're gonna We're gonna start this very small
Speaker 1: print book. I should note this is a massive book.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is like the size of the
Speaker 1: first two Lord of the Rings books. Like, this is
Speaker 1: a this is an enormous text. So heads up, I
Speaker 1: don't think we're ever going to get through all of it,
Speaker 1: but this is a this is an interesting piece of
Speaker 1: history here for people who are we see how tiny
Speaker 1: the font is. Oh yeah, Sophie, look at this. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I know this is this is There are
Speaker 1: so many words in this book, so yeah, do we
Speaker 1: have I'm going to look up the word count. Go ahead, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should do that. So it starts with present day.
Speaker 1: It was late afternoon when he finally heard them coming
Speaker 1: to kill him. The wind was blowing gently towards him,
Speaker 1: and it carried the sound well two choppers, he judged
Speaker 1: from the pitch of the engines, possibly three. Henry realized
Speaker 1: that his first emotion upon hearing the sound of the
Speaker 1: rudder blades approaching was an overwhelming sense of relief. The
Speaker 1: waiting was over. His next thought concerned the relatives of
Speaker 1: the men that were about to die. The widows will
Speaker 1: never stand that their husbands died because the government got
Speaker 1: a little too heavy handed after June of nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: He scanned the sky until he spotted the aircraft approaching
Speaker 1: from the north. This isn't that isn't quite right. The
Speaker 1: Kennedy and King killings weren't the first links in the
Speaker 1: chain that dragged us here. No, the death sentence was
Speaker 1: handed down before World War Two. So this guy is
Speaker 1: getting ready to like murder a bunch of federal agents
Speaker 1: coming to his house, and he's thinking about the March
Speaker 1: of tyranny and like debating with himself whether or not
Speaker 1: it started with the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1: And he's shades of Waco too, because if you've ever
Speaker 1: been to the Waco site. There's memorial stones. They're placed
Speaker 1: by the Davidians, and they immoralized not only their own
Speaker 1: lost people, but they memorialized each lost a t F agent,
Speaker 1: which was sort of impressive to see. That is interesting.
Speaker 1: I actually was unaware of that. Um huh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: They pretty much memorialize it as a tragedy all around.
Speaker 1: And there's there's stones there for the government agents that died. Huh.
Speaker 1: I I did not know that. That's certainly like more
Speaker 1: nuanced then I think we're going to get on Waco here.
Speaker 1: Although yeah, um so yeah, it's uh, what is a solo? Third,
Speaker 1: I guess that's the gun he's got here. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a I believe that's the same. Okay. So it's like
Speaker 1: an anti anti yeah, a lotty Like it's an anti
Speaker 1: vehicle weapon, like very big bullet twenty millimeter bullets is
Speaker 1: like the size of a small person's forearm. Yeah that material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for shooting through armored vehicles. So he decides, after
Speaker 1: like debating with himself while he's willing to kill his
Speaker 1: waiting to kill these federal agents, that the thing that
Speaker 1: ended started the end of liberty in the United States
Speaker 1: was a Supreme Court case involving a Moonshiner who was
Speaker 1: arrested in nineteen thirty eight. A federal district court had
Speaker 1: thrown out the charges as being unconstitutional, and the government
Speaker 1: had appealed. At the hearing, something very unusual had happened.
Speaker 1: Neither the Moonshiner nor his lawyer had seen fit to
Speaker 1: appear before the court to argue the case. They didn't
Speaker 1: even bother to file a brief on the Moonshiner's behalf.
Speaker 1: The court ruled for the government, radial precedent was set,
Speaker 1: and the issue was never again heard by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The nineteen thirty nine ruling became the foundation upon which
Speaker 1: many additional laws were constructed. The Supreme Court has been
Speaker 1: ducking that issue ever since. Henry thought, is he strained
Speaker 1: to hear a change in the approaching noise? Well, guys,
Speaker 1: the time has turned. It's time you thugs had a
Speaker 1: little history lesson. I don't suppose you're familiar with what
Speaker 1: happened in the Warsaw Ghetto in nineteen forty three. So
Speaker 1: you're seeing he's drawing like a line here between the
Speaker 1: Nazis cracking down on the Warsaw Ghetto and massacreing Jewish people, um,
Speaker 1: and charges against bootleggers during Uh, that's that's actually after
Speaker 1: Prohibition nineteen thirty eight. That's interesting, Like this is this
Speaker 1: is a weird opening. I'll give it. I'll give one
Speaker 1: thing to him. He's definitely a better writer than Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: like already, um, and if you read the book, he
Speaker 1: knows more about sex in general too, even if his
Speaker 1: even if the way he models his super low bar Robert,
Speaker 1: I didn't find the a word count. But the this
Speaker 1: book is like only has five star reviews. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes well because the only people who read this than
Speaker 1: like Carl and I right now are people who are
Speaker 1: already primed to want to read this book. It's just
Speaker 1: very interesting because normally when we do a book episode,
Speaker 1: it's like the reviews are horrendous. I have not seen
Speaker 1: a review. But isn't five stars? Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1: There's five plus on Amazon and they're all five stars.
Speaker 1: And like there's even like fan art in the room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I'll bet you don't want to look at
Speaker 1: that fan art, Sophie. You simply do not know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but so it's interesting. Is this what I was talking
Speaker 1: is he does get into a lot of Actually he
Speaker 1: does reference a lot of real history, like that US
Speaker 1: versus Miller is that Supreme Court case, and in that
Speaker 1: that moon that that bootlegger had a shotgun that was
Speaker 1: below legal length I believe or something like that. Neither
Speaker 1: of them showed. But the court ruled in an interesting
Speaker 1: way that the gun that they were persecuting him for
Speaker 1: wasn't useful as a militia weapon, therefore it didn't apply. Ah,
Speaker 1: so this is like the start of kind of the probe.
Speaker 1: That's that's where is that where the law against like
Speaker 1: short barreled shotguns came. We're talking about the n f
Speaker 1: A and shotguns. But the moonshiner had a shotgun that
Speaker 1: was I believe was below legal length, and that's what
Speaker 1: this was about. But then when the court ruled against him,
Speaker 1: they didn't rule against him because of they ruled that
Speaker 1: the shotgun really wasn't viable for militia use, Which that
Speaker 1: opens up a weird door about does that mean specifically
Speaker 1: that the that the Second Amendment applies only to guns
Speaker 1: that are for militia martial use, like an r fIF
Speaker 1: team for example. That's where you see this stuff and
Speaker 1: these arguments come out of. That's interesting because with DC
Speaker 1: versus Heller, like there's this kind of understanding. The current
Speaker 1: Supreme Court understanding is that the Second Amenment does protect
Speaker 1: an individual right to bear arms. And it seems like
Speaker 1: in thirty eight they were saying that, like, this gun
Speaker 1: is illegal because it is not something that would be
Speaker 1: useful as part of a militia. And so were we like,
Speaker 1: the individual does not have a right just to bear
Speaker 1: arms for individual purposes, So then isn't legal if it's
Speaker 1: not useful in a militia. So reading this, it says
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court hinted that individual right might exist in
Speaker 1: the concust of a common obligation to possess arms and
Speaker 1: to cooperate in the work of defense, and that a
Speaker 1: sought off shotgun the fire issue in this case, was
Speaker 1: not protective because it had no reasonable relationship to the preservations, preservation,
Speaker 1: or efficiency of a well regulated militia. Now that's a
Speaker 1: fascinating ruling because I think basically everyone today would be
Speaker 1: angry at it, Like if you're pro gun control, then
Speaker 1: you're going to be angry that it's basically saying, like, well,
Speaker 1: weapons that are useful in terms of like fighting in
Speaker 1: part of a militia are legal, like an a R fifteen,
Speaker 1: but like which I think pro gun control people generally
Speaker 1: disagree with. And if your pro gun rights, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: why why would I be able to have an a
Speaker 1: R fifteen but not a much less deadly weapon as
Speaker 1: sought off shotgun? That's like way less effective at killing people.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense either. It's a like it
Speaker 1: is a pretty nonsensical ruling, I think by most standards.
Speaker 1: I know there's more wrapped up in that, because I
Speaker 1: think there was a lot of fear over specifically sought
Speaker 1: off shotguns as a result of like the bootlegging era, right,
Speaker 1: because that was like a famous crime gun um, even
Speaker 1: though they're not not any deadlier than a lot of
Speaker 1: other weapons that people had easy access to, like a
Speaker 1: Thompson or something which would have been pretty widely available
Speaker 1: in the mid thirties, although that was regulated by the
Speaker 1: n f A too. Speaking of being regulated by the
Speaker 1: n f A, it's time for adverbs. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: who's not regulated by the n f A is our
Speaker 1: sponsor the mac ten um. If you want, if you
Speaker 1: want a gun that will you can make out of
Speaker 1: a single stamped piece of metal. That's that's gonna be
Speaker 1: one of your better options. And they're super for a
Speaker 1: gunfight on a phone booth. Oh my god. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: to know. I'm thinking back. We're back from ads. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of my favorite movie gunfights. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the movie? Uh? Gross, point blank, Carl, No, I actually
Speaker 1: have it. Oh, it's got maybe the least accurate gunfight
Speaker 1: where like, uh, what's his fucking name? Um, let's just
Speaker 1: go with John Ritterter it he looks like John ridder Um,
Speaker 1: John Cusack, it was. It's one of the John's. John
Speaker 1: Cusack is in like a gunfight in a seven eleven
Speaker 1: and he's taking he's he's he's dual wielding blocks which
Speaker 1: he's firing blindly and taking cover behind the chip aisle
Speaker 1: at a seven eleven, which provides excellent cover, can stand
Speaker 1: goun rounds. It's one of my favorite movie gunfights. Um okay,
Speaker 1: So started the book December eleventh, nineteen o six. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so we're we're starting with two guys firing there. Boy,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of I think one of the
Speaker 1: reasons this is so popular is this is a lot
Speaker 1: of just very technical gun stuff. Like the opening of
Speaker 1: this chapter is him walking through like firing tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of rounds with a Winchester Model nineteen o three, um,
Speaker 1: which was an old twenty two semi automatic rifle. And
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like discussing how the firearm works
Speaker 1: and how the rules regarding like this early gun sport worked. Um,
Speaker 1: which is a thing I think that if you're buying
Speaker 1: this book at a gun store, you're probably interested in,
Speaker 1: and but not a thing I think most readers are
Speaker 1: going to be interested in. So so we're going to
Speaker 1: skip ahead just a little bit here. Um. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just a lot of oh wow, And now there's
Speaker 1: a picture of a guy on top of a mountain
Speaker 1: of are those skulls? Show us? Show us, show us.
Speaker 1: I want to see standing here. I'm sad that we
Speaker 1: can't see what you're seeing. Oh no, these are target blocks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's he's yeah, it's just kind of
Speaker 1: uh nerdy gun stuff, like he's he's explained in the
Speaker 1: like this guy, I'll read you a representative paragraph and
Speaker 1: the San Antonio Fairgrounds closed in December fifteenth, nineteen o six.
Speaker 1: Add topper Wine using three Semiato Winchester nineteen o three
Speaker 1: rifles had shot seventy two thousand, five hundred wooden blocks
Speaker 1: thrown in the air. He had missed nine. More than
Speaker 1: a half century later, another man employed by Remington would
Speaker 1: hit over a hundred thousand. His throwers, however, would stand
Speaker 1: by his left shoulder and gently tossed the blocks straight
Speaker 1: out along the same path the bullet would take. Tops
Speaker 1: records shot under the rules laid out by another man
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century would never be broken. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, skilled riflemen were universally admired. People like ad
Speaker 1: and Plinky topper Wine spent much of their time urging
Speaker 1: young boys and girls to earn gun safety and hone
Speaker 1: their shooting skills. Um, okay, so he's talking about the
Speaker 1: birth of the gun culture here. That's that's actually quite nice.
Speaker 1: I was worried at first that this was because this
Speaker 1: bears a resemblance to some of the photos you would
Speaker 1: see of like frontier men standing on top of like
Speaker 1: buffalo skulls. But it's just a guy standing on top
Speaker 1: of a bunch of like blocks that he shot during
Speaker 1: some time, a type of old timey shoot contest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going back to like the shooting these wooden blocks,
Speaker 1: and then like Annie Oakley would shoot glass balls and
Speaker 1: it was exhibition shooting, which was almost explicitly done with
Speaker 1: twenty two rifles and it was kind of a cool
Speaker 1: thing and people really did exhibit some amazing skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the next chapter is nineteen eighteen, and we're still
Speaker 1: going into like the birth of gun culture. So he's
Speaker 1: he's kind of framing like the idea of shooting sports
Speaker 1: as a character in this book. Um, again, I get
Speaker 1: why this is is popular among the specific people it is.
Speaker 1: We're not It's not like the Turner Diaries where we
Speaker 1: jump right into there's a civil war and like here's
Speaker 1: my here's my like racist theories about whatever. Like we're
Speaker 1: we're really talking kind of at length about the birth
Speaker 1: of gun culture, um, the creation of the maximum gun,
Speaker 1: but kind of stuff we talked about in our in
Speaker 1: our Behind the Bastards episodes. Um. Now, I think this
Speaker 1: is probably maybe not the best narratively to start with
Speaker 1: you to start your fiction novel with a very long
Speaker 1: but it does kind of, you know, it reminds me
Speaker 1: a little bit of is like um, Michael Crichton, where
Speaker 1: you've got these like books that have this this like
Speaker 1: science fiction or whateverything. But the first like thirty pages
Speaker 1: is him like vamping about chaos theory or whatever kind
Speaker 1: of mathematical thing he's interested in instead of nature finding
Speaker 1: the way, guns will find the way, peace will find
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah. Yeah, But I think in nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: there and nineteen was at nineteen nineteen he gets into
Speaker 1: like this is this book is really a difficult thing
Speaker 1: to discuss because it's hard. It's so it's a bit schizophrenic, right,
Speaker 1: There's this narrative in there of this revolt, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of actual real history in there. He gets
Speaker 1: into the Bonus Marchers, which was a pretty fucked up thing, honestly,
Speaker 1: and he pretty act July sixteenth, nineteen thirty two, we
Speaker 1: get Smedley Butler as a character. Um. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's talking about the Bonus Marchers here. Um. Although I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting like the pieces of Smedley story that
Speaker 1: he does take out here, Like the opening quote he
Speaker 1: gives from Smedley here is take it from me. This
Speaker 1: is the greatest demonstration of Americanism we've have or had.
Speaker 1: Pure Americanism will need to take this beating as you've
Speaker 1: taken at stand right and steady, you keep every law,
Speaker 1: and why in the hell shouldn't you, Who in the
Speaker 1: hell has done all the bleeding for this country and
Speaker 1: this law and this constitution anyhow, but you fellows, which
Speaker 1: is it's interesting because the thing they're taking, and this
Speaker 1: is the period where for people who aren't aware, you've
Speaker 1: got these World War One veterans when the economy collapses,
Speaker 1: who are are owed a bonus that's being paid out
Speaker 1: over a very long period of time, and because everyone
Speaker 1: is in dire financial straits, they're like, we want the
Speaker 1: money now. Can we just get the money that's owed
Speaker 1: to us now? When they have a big march on
Speaker 1: d c Um which is cracked down on via Douglas
Speaker 1: MacArthur using tanks um and before it is cracked down
Speaker 1: on Smedley Butler, who is, like I think still to
Speaker 1: this day, the most highly decorated marine in history. He's
Speaker 1: certainly like in the running for it. He had two
Speaker 1: medals of honor um, which he had very mixed opinions of,
Speaker 1: but he definitely earned them um. And he's he shows
Speaker 1: up to like speak in defense of these men and
Speaker 1: support their cause. And it's interesting because they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of framing what Smedley is doing here is a defense
Speaker 1: of kind of this idea you see Robert Heinlin talk
Speaker 1: about a lot um. This is kind of the thing
Speaker 1: that's come down to us and Starship Troopers. But it's
Speaker 1: something Heinland played with a lot that, like, uh, this
Speaker 1: idea of like the citizens soldier being the ideal kind
Speaker 1: of building block of a free society. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that's actually what Butler believed, obviously, because by the
Speaker 1: end of his life, Butler had come around very much
Speaker 1: against militarism and like I was saying things that like
Speaker 1: I believe I've only ever been a gangster for capitalism.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that they've picked this specific time to
Speaker 1: kind of hone in on Smedley Butler and and turn
Speaker 1: him into a character in this book. Um, because I'll
Speaker 1: check here, but I'm not sure if I think we're
Speaker 1: going to get Butler stopping the business plot. Um. But
Speaker 1: that said, this is a really valid piece of history.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things when we talk
Speaker 1: about like areas where I think it's possible to get
Speaker 1: people on the right kind of in line with some
Speaker 1: of the things I believe. I think it's really useful
Speaker 1: to talk about history, about things like the Bonus Marchers,
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, you can't really trust the government
Speaker 1: and when it comes down to who's going to violently
Speaker 1: crack down on people standing in favor of their liberty,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's these these police forces that you're continually trying
Speaker 1: to like fund an arm heavily, and perhaps this is
Speaker 1: a place where we could come together and discuss some
Speaker 1: shared interests. Gee whiz, guys, maybe if we actually looked this,
Speaker 1: you know, with clear eyes, we'd realize we kind of
Speaker 1: had a mutual problem here, regardless of our particular peculiarities
Speaker 1: as to why so we introduced this character, um cam
Speaker 1: who's this veteran um and who's about to We're told
Speaker 1: at the end of page twenty six cam Bowman did
Speaker 1: not know that the government had its own agenda concerning
Speaker 1: the Bonus Army. Cam Bowman had less than three weeks
Speaker 1: left to live, and then in the next chapter we
Speaker 1: have him getting more murder along with everybody else by
Speaker 1: Um General Douglas MacArthur. Um. The soldiers had been instructed
Speaker 1: by their commander to clear the bonus marchers out of
Speaker 1: the area by striking them with the flats of their
Speaker 1: sabers blades, not the cutting edge. And this was what
Speaker 1: the cavalrymen did. It was like being struck by a
Speaker 1: three foot steel bar, and Lieutenant Cameron Bowman's left wrist
Speaker 1: was shattered like kindling. He did not cry out or
Speaker 1: fall down. But when Bowman saw the soldier prepared to
Speaker 1: deliver a second blow, he finally accepted his fate and
Speaker 1: gave ground. As he made his way to the bridge,
Speaker 1: his ruined wrist beginning to scream an agony, Bowman saw
Speaker 1: three men leading the army troops, and he was stunned
Speaker 1: by what he saw. He did not recognize the two
Speaker 1: army majors, who would both later come to prominence. The
Speaker 1: man in charge of leading the infantrymen, Cavalry and Tank Division, however,
Speaker 1: was impossible to miss. The lesser ranked soldiers were Major
Speaker 1: George S. Patton and Major Dwight D. Eisenhower. The senior
Speaker 1: officer was the Chief of Staff of the United States
Speaker 1: Armed Forces, General Douglas Smith MacArthur. And this is interesting, um,
Speaker 1: because that's very accurate, that that's completely true. Um, it's
Speaker 1: neat because these guys, all these these these figures, both
Speaker 1: of whom would become generals, are all of whom would
Speaker 1: be general. I mean MacArthur was a general when this happened.
Speaker 1: Patton and obviously Dwight Eisenhower are going to be generals
Speaker 1: very quickly, um in World War Two. And they are both,
Speaker 1: I think today, broadly speaking, heroic figures for conservatives, UM,
Speaker 1: particularly pattent. Eisenhower interestingly has a really mixed history there because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, he he's who the John Birch Society focuses
Speaker 1: on him as like a secret communist. So there is
Speaker 1: this longstanding distrust of Eisenhower on the far right. But
Speaker 1: MacArthur becomes a major far right figure, um, especially after
Speaker 1: he gets fired by Truman during the Korean War. UM.
Speaker 1: He's a big part of We just had an episode
Speaker 1: on kind of some of the early like Christian conservative
Speaker 1: movements in the United States and like the reforming of
Speaker 1: the idea of the Fourth of July. He's a big
Speaker 1: part of this. UM. So it's interesting to me that
Speaker 1: Ross is kind of emphasizing his role here, which which
Speaker 1: is a big one, UM, because I don't think that's
Speaker 1: done a lot in uh, in conservative sort of uh
Speaker 1: like far right propaganda these days, MacArthur because he was
Speaker 1: such an anti communist, tends to be heralded. So at
Speaker 1: least this guy so far seems to be pretty consistent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that how how that would have been
Speaker 1: received now versus when it was actually published initially, Right,
Speaker 1: we have a pretty different world from then. But it
Speaker 1: is interesting to note that. Um, I don't know about
Speaker 1: John Ross's thoughts on workers rights, but he's certainly concerned
Speaker 1: with veterans rights because these Bonus Marchers is one of
Speaker 1: the arguments he uses to portray the government is becoming
Speaker 1: an authoritarian regime that doesn't seem to care about its people,
Speaker 1: including its own veterans, and he uses the Bonus marchers
Speaker 1: as or the breaking of the Bonus March as one
Speaker 1: of those examples. And it's really compelling to me because
Speaker 1: obviously that is a really valid point. The breaking of
Speaker 1: the Bonus Army is totally an example of the government
Speaker 1: becoming like doing an unhinged authoritarian thing. But he it's
Speaker 1: also a choice, and John Ross, I feel like, just
Speaker 1: based on what I'm reading here, knows too much history
Speaker 1: for this not to have been a choice to not
Speaker 1: discuss any other aspects of Butler's career or the business plot,
Speaker 1: or kind of the elements of this that are the
Speaker 1: government tilting its hand on the scale in favor of capital. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's because obviously John Ross has his
Speaker 1: own biases here. He's worried about communism. I I it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me that he seems to be tying the
Speaker 1: destruction of the Bonus Army, the massacre of these soldiers
Speaker 1: in with like the creeping socialism in the government, because
Speaker 1: I I really don't see it that way. Um. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure MacArthur wouldn't have seen it that way. Um.
Speaker 1: But also I have to I have to respect the
Speaker 1: fact that he is very astutely identifying MacArthur is like
Speaker 1: part of the problem here. That's really interesting to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is like the first example in the book.
Speaker 1: And he goes through and I and each and every
Speaker 1: one of these, like I said, he'll he'll get to
Speaker 1: Ruby Ridge, you get to Waco, and he uses these
Speaker 1: as an argument that slowly builds up to the culmination
Speaker 1: of this this rebellion that that Henry Bowman actually engages in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think part of what's fascinating to me about this
Speaker 1: is it is I don't think John Ross and I
Speaker 1: have a lot in common, and I don't think we
Speaker 1: would agree on a lot. But up to this point
Speaker 1: he's he's not wrong. I would argue that, like his
Speaker 1: analysis of the building problems of authoritarianism in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government are incomplete, and he's leaving out some really important moments,
Speaker 1: but he's not all. He's also not wrong. And I
Speaker 1: have not noticed any like you know, uh, any racism
Speaker 1: here so far, and I have not noticed. Um, he's
Speaker 1: not inventing things out of whole cloth, which is like
Speaker 1: what you see in the Turner Diaries, right. And I'm
Speaker 1: not comparing these two because they're super similar. For one thing,
Speaker 1: this is objectively a better written book, um. And for
Speaker 1: another thing, the Turner Diaries, by page twenty eight you
Speaker 1: have ingested enough racism to kill a large dog. And
Speaker 1: we haven't really seen any yet out of this. So no,
Speaker 1: I know, and I've been a long time since I've
Speaker 1: read this, so I don't want to speak to the
Speaker 1: nuance that might be in there. Of course, So this
Speaker 1: is not a this is not a promotion for this,
Speaker 1: but but like there's a. I found a interview with
Speaker 1: John Ross later in which apparently Timothy McVeigh, of course
Speaker 1: the bomber of Oklahoma City, said that he was inspired
Speaker 1: by the Turner Diaries and Turner Diaries. It's a terrible, vitriolic, racist,
Speaker 1: Nazi book. It is unreadable if you are not like
Speaker 1: studying it as an academic or a Nazi. And Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh said that if he had read Unattended Consequences, it
Speaker 1: might have changed his approach to the problem. And that's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. So we have these people that of
Speaker 1: course been become I don't know how to put it.
Speaker 1: They got pushed further down the path of extreme, extreme
Speaker 1: beliefs by things like the Turner Diaries. And it's weird
Speaker 1: that Timothy McVeigh kind of argued that the Unattended Consequences
Speaker 1: might have actually tempered him, which is a strange thing
Speaker 1: to think, because this book is a revolutionary kind of book.
Speaker 1: And I've come across that too, and I've always wondered
Speaker 1: did McVeigh mean he might not have carried out an attack,
Speaker 1: or that maybe he would have liked gone because like
Speaker 1: the stuff Bowman does, the Turner Diaries obviously, like the
Speaker 1: thing that inspired McVeigh as they blow up, I think
Speaker 1: it it's literally the Pentagon or in its FBI headquarters.
Speaker 1: They said, I like a big bomb and FBI headquarters,
Speaker 1: which was was something he considered, and he picked the target.
Speaker 1: He did the more about building an Oklahoma city because
Speaker 1: it had a large FBI presence and that was really
Speaker 1: who he was targeting as a result of Waco, although
Speaker 1: he was obviously fine with the fact that it blew
Speaker 1: up like a daycare and a bunch of other things besides. Um.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if he's saying, I don't know that
Speaker 1: maybe I would have liked organized with people as opposed
Speaker 1: to like carrying out a bombing or is he saying
Speaker 1: perhaps I would have liked done what Bowman does and
Speaker 1: carried out like a series of armed attacks specifically on
Speaker 1: federal agents, as opposed to like a bombing campaign that
Speaker 1: was much less discriminate. Um. Like, I'm not sure McVeigh
Speaker 1: saying I wouldn't have done a violent thing if I
Speaker 1: had read this book. But it's also probably if if
Speaker 1: he had patterned his attack off the kind of attacks
Speaker 1: you see an undetendent consequences, probably wouldn't have blown up
Speaker 1: a daycare. I think, Yeah, I agree, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to say that. I'm not trying to say
Speaker 1: that this book would have turned Timothy McVeigh into putting
Speaker 1: flowers into rifle bags, right, but but but it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's an unclear quote. But it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to note. Yeah, I'm not trying to like make a
Speaker 1: broad moral point about like, well, it would have been
Speaker 1: better if he'd been radicalized into just shooting some FEDS
Speaker 1: is supposed to blowing up, Like I'm not. I'm really
Speaker 1: not trying to get into the weeds there. But I
Speaker 1: think if you are interested in like radicalism and what
Speaker 1: causes people to do stuff like that, I don't think
Speaker 1: I I think there might be a tendency to just
Speaker 1: discount what the vey is saying. And I don't know
Speaker 1: that we should because I think it is interesting that
Speaker 1: like when different media radicalizes people, it radicalizes them to
Speaker 1: take different actions. And that's not Um, this is not
Speaker 1: the kind of like thought I would blast out on
Speaker 1: Twitter because it's difficult to get out in two characters
Speaker 1: and it's gonna seem like you're saying something different than
Speaker 1: what you are. But I don't think that's not a
Speaker 1: thing we should think about and study. Perhaps is where
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like art is an interesting thing, and
Speaker 1: books are an interesting and fiction is an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the most inspirational books
Speaker 1: that the Uni bomb are referenced was by all Gore,
Speaker 1: right right, Um. And Timothy McVeigh, just to go back
Speaker 1: to him, was also heavily influenced by fucking Star Trek.
Speaker 1: He was a huge fan of Star Trek and of
Speaker 1: Star Wars. UM and so yeah, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: just interesting to see that. And it's interesting, like the
Speaker 1: different kind of because both Um Pierce, the author of
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries, and Ross, you can see broad similarities
Speaker 1: in that they are both people who advocate for an
Speaker 1: armed overthrow of the government. Now they're both arguing that
Speaker 1: for different things, and I think they both see a
Speaker 1: different world as desirable as a result of that. Um.
Speaker 1: But it is compelling if you're someone who kind of
Speaker 1: studies radicalization to see the different ways they go about it.
Speaker 1: And Ross is really building a much slower case that
Speaker 1: is based on real history about the necessity of a
Speaker 1: revolt against the government. UM. And I think it's important
Speaker 1: that we're like noting the things that he's leaving out.
Speaker 1: But the choices he's making here are really interesting. And
Speaker 1: you know who else makes interesting choices, Carl Monsanto? They
Speaker 1: absolutely so. Carl. Have you ever been driving through like
Speaker 1: a rural part of the country, seeing like beautiful fields
Speaker 1: with corn and other crops, and going I wish those
Speaker 1: farmers would get thrown in prison if the wind happened
Speaker 1: to carry seeds from one field to the other that
Speaker 1: didn't have the legal right to use those specific patented,
Speaker 1: genetically modified seeds. Have you been thinking that, like just
Speaker 1: driving through the country side, I really have. I really
Speaker 1: think that all the food we eat needs more DRM
Speaker 1: around it. Absolutely. That's the problem with food is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't have digital rights management. And that's the beautiful
Speaker 1: dream of Monsanto digital rights management for everything. Um I
Speaker 1: I think that's a beautiful dream. Let's let's hear these ads. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. So you're at him on Santo kick these days? Carl, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of it. You know, ready, round
Speaker 1: up is pretty good on a salad. I do, I do?
Speaker 1: Who was that was that the Monsanto guy that like
Speaker 1: someone tried to get him to like drink weed killer
Speaker 1: because that sounds vaguely familiar. It's so safe. Let me
Speaker 1: chug this. Yeah, yeah, nothing like a Monsanto bong on
Speaker 1: a Saturday night. Oh my gosh, that that does sound
Speaker 1: fun because then also you know you're killing whatever insects
Speaker 1: are on your weed. Nice and safe. Um all right,
Speaker 1: So Carl, page twenty nine. We we are about what
Speaker 1: there's so much history here. So we're nineteen thirty six now. Um,
Speaker 1: we're talking to a woman named Zophia, who I am
Speaker 1: guessing here is some sort of refugee from the bad
Speaker 1: things that are happening in Europe. Um hm, yep, okay, yep,
Speaker 1: that seems to be what's happening here. All right. So
Speaker 1: we've got this lady talking with her mom, YadA, YadA, YadA. Um, oh,
Speaker 1: I think we're okay. So she yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is uh, I think setting up one of our characters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's marrying some guy named Irwin man Um who's also
Speaker 1: a Jewish refugee, which is again, so that's a nice
Speaker 1: bit of change from the Turner Diaries. It does seem
Speaker 1: like a number of our heroes are going to be
Speaker 1: Jewish people. So that's yeah, this speaking. This is one
Speaker 1: of the character here. This is this character becomes, if
Speaker 1: I recall correctly, one of the fighters in the war
Speaker 1: saw got to uprising. And so he's using this character
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the ability of the individual to fight the
Speaker 1: government with small arms. Gotcha, Okay, well that makes sense. Um.
Speaker 1: So nineteen thirty eight, we've got a treasury agent hiding
Speaker 1: in the woods. Oh I think this is him writing
Speaker 1: out the arrest of that moonshiner. Is that what's coming here? Yeah? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, cool, Um,
Speaker 1: So that's fine. Um, let's you know, that's that's an
Speaker 1: interesting note. I mean, I wouldn't say that you should
Speaker 1: read this book like a history book, because that would
Speaker 1: be that would be wildly inappropriate. However, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to get like a basic bullet point timeline of things
Speaker 1: that would be worth further investigation, this book is full
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff to like
Speaker 1: look into here. And again it's it's there's he's making
Speaker 1: a very specific ideological case. So it's incomplete, as we
Speaker 1: noted with like Smedley Butler, um, and probably incomplete as
Speaker 1: we're talking about like gun control and prohibition, because he's
Speaker 1: really focused on this thirty eight case, um, which is
Speaker 1: kind of late in the history of like arms regular
Speaker 1: like thirty four is when we get the n f A.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to me that he's not kind of
Speaker 1: focusing on any I mean, I it makes sense based
Speaker 1: on kind of the ruling here, but it is interesting
Speaker 1: that that's kind of that seems to be where he's
Speaker 1: starting in terms of gun control regulations as opposed to
Speaker 1: going in anywhere earlier. Yeah, the watershed out of gun
Speaker 1: controls considered nineteen thirty four, and then the second, the
Speaker 1: second strike to the core or the heart of that
Speaker 1: is the nineteen Gun Control Act, both of which are
Speaker 1: heavily discussed in the book. Yeah, And I suspect he's
Speaker 1: kind of going for this moment in thirty eight because
Speaker 1: it's a little easier to to build sympathy for the
Speaker 1: audience for this like small scale bootlegger rather than like
Speaker 1: the thirty four gun control in thirty four was heavily
Speaker 1: driven by you have like this this soaring rate of
Speaker 1: organized crime, and you have like these really horrible murders
Speaker 1: in the street. And uh, I think it's probably he's
Speaker 1: probably making a choice as a writer here that like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to put in a lot more legwork
Speaker 1: to get people on to to get people seeing the
Speaker 1: government as the clear bad guy in that one than
Speaker 1: I am. If I focus on this like small moonshiner,
Speaker 1: who's got this sought off shotgun? And it makes this
Speaker 1: easy case that like they're they're kind of making this
Speaker 1: this ruling that I can claim is where like all
Speaker 1: of this illegitimate stuff is descended from like he's making
Speaker 1: he's giving you a very incomplete look at the history,
Speaker 1: but he's making what I think is a pretty smart
Speaker 1: editorial choice by face. He definitely was strategic and what
Speaker 1: he did with that. And it is also interesting to
Speaker 1: note that people that don't know this in the audience,
Speaker 1: UM uh n f A. The National Firearms Act, which
Speaker 1: was to regulate machine guns, short barreled rifle, shortbeled shotguns, suppressors.
Speaker 1: UM isn't actually a gun law. It's a tax law.
Speaker 1: It's actually done through the it's right and so it's UM.
Speaker 1: What they do is they don't make it impossible to
Speaker 1: own these things. But they regulated as a tax stamp,
Speaker 1: which the time was two and was cost prohibited was
Speaker 1: actually more than the value of the gun. But now
Speaker 1: that we come to the future, you can't make more
Speaker 1: machine guns, but you can still buy them, but it's
Speaker 1: still the same two tax But it's very interesting that
Speaker 1: it's a tax law not really unnecessarily a gun law. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really compelling. And again this is something that he's
Speaker 1: kind of like skipping entirely over um And what he
Speaker 1: does here in the next couple of chapters is interesting.
Speaker 1: So after we're introduced to like these these moonshine owners
Speaker 1: and we get like the start of the arrest that
Speaker 1: leads to their case, we have a chapter uh that's
Speaker 1: November nine, nineteen thirty eight in Germany where they're sending
Speaker 1: a bunch of like we focus in on a Jewish family,
Speaker 1: um and who they are sending to Dakow. Right, So
Speaker 1: we've got like the Nazi sending guy to dak How
Speaker 1: we get one page of that and then so that's
Speaker 1: a one page chapter that literally um it ends with
Speaker 1: the line he was going to dokaw um and it's
Speaker 1: talking about like, okay, I'll read the last two lines
Speaker 1: here the watchmakers share to fate with almost a quarter
Speaker 1: million of his countrymen and every single one of his
Speaker 1: relatives who was still in Germany as of November nine
Speaker 1: night he was going to Dakow. And then the very
Speaker 1: next chapter, after that one page chapter, we get a
Speaker 1: district like the basically the minutes of a district court
Speaker 1: meeting for this case United States versus Miller involving this bootlegger.
Speaker 1: So he's really very kind of directly making a comparison
Speaker 1: between the Nazis shipping people off to concentration camps and
Speaker 1: this bootlegger going to court over an a legal short
Speaker 1: barreled shotgun, which is definitely like, this is the most
Speaker 1: problematic the book has gotten so far, at least since
Speaker 1: they're over our reading of it um and you can
Speaker 1: see what he's doing here, right, Like, this is not
Speaker 1: particularly subtle, although it does, I think count is subtle
Speaker 1: within this genre of literature. Yeah, he's setting up the
Speaker 1: argument that gun control lends itself to what we saw
Speaker 1: a Nazi Germany, which is general side, etcetera, which he's
Speaker 1: drawing a direct comparison between the agents of the state
Speaker 1: in both countries. And of course it's a much more
Speaker 1: complex argument to that, but there is some historicity to
Speaker 1: gun control leading itsself to that too. So he's not
Speaker 1: entirely wrong, right, because a lot of earlier and this
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me again in terms of like the
Speaker 1: thing he thinks he does choose to read out this
Speaker 1: is not so far an explicitly racist novel, But he's
Speaker 1: making the choice to not lead at all with the
Speaker 1: history of gun control as it involves the suppression of
Speaker 1: black people's right to carry concealed handguns, which is a
Speaker 1: big part of early laws against concealed handgun was to
Speaker 1: stop black men in the reconstruction area from carrying concealed handguns,
Speaker 1: which they did because people would try to murder them. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's he's definitely leaving that out. He's also we
Speaker 1: just did an episode on this with Margaret Killjoy leaving
Speaker 1: out a decent chunk of like there were a number
Speaker 1: of some of the first gun control laws in the
Speaker 1: country were also passed in order to stop anarchists from
Speaker 1: carrying handguns and as part of the labor movement. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we're not really getting any of that. We are,
Speaker 1: really he is making a really pointed choice by focusing
Speaker 1: on Miller in nineteen thirty eight as kind of the
Speaker 1: birth of all this gun control um. And that's interesting
Speaker 1: to me because it does this is kind of We've
Speaker 1: talked about how careful he's being, and he this is
Speaker 1: a very careful book so far. He is not. It
Speaker 1: is not like an unhinged screen at all, and it
Speaker 1: does not read that way. Um. But he is making
Speaker 1: some really distinct editorial choices about what he leaves out,
Speaker 1: and I think that's really worth kind of highlighting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree, and I don't recall all of it,
Speaker 1: but I don't recall this book really getting into issues
Speaker 1: like the panthers or um or or civil rights in
Speaker 1: regards to firearms in their use, which of course is
Speaker 1: a topic that has been so left off of the
Speaker 1: American historical record that it's been intentionally ignored. It's like
Speaker 1: I call it um uh, intentional um amnesia, where we
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about those things where black people
Speaker 1: use guns to defend themselves and the reason they still
Speaker 1: exist is because they had a gun in their possession.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that being in this book, and it
Speaker 1: would It's interesting because that you're right, it lends It
Speaker 1: would have lended itself even more credibility to his argument
Speaker 1: if he had included it. Yeah, I mean it would
Speaker 1: you you could have slotted that in here and it
Speaker 1: would have like worked as part of the narrative progression
Speaker 1: he's building. But I also think that would have really
Speaker 1: turned off a decent chunk of who he knew was
Speaker 1: kind of And it's also I'm sure this is this
Speaker 1: is also based on like he didn't. I think it's
Speaker 1: very possible Ross doesn't see that as part of really
Speaker 1: the history of of unfair gun control in the United States.
Speaker 1: I don't know the man um so I don't know
Speaker 1: the degree to which that was a choice or that
Speaker 1: was just stuff he was unaware of. But he seems
Speaker 1: so knowledgeable that I do have trouble imagining he wouldn't
Speaker 1: at least know about like the panthers and stuff which
Speaker 1: perhaps we haven't gotten to. But again I don't recall
Speaker 1: from an earlier reading of that book, this book, I
Speaker 1: don't recall that being a part of this. If it's
Speaker 1: in there, it's not heavily profiled at all. And I
Speaker 1: think I would be more along the lines of thinking
Speaker 1: that he knew the audience he was targeting and did
Speaker 1: not want to alienate them, And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things we've talked about in previous work together, is like,
Speaker 1: you know, the community and the gun community is getting
Speaker 1: is getting much more uh as much as it's becoming
Speaker 1: a much larger tent, but it's still a big uphill fight.
Speaker 1: And um that that level of acceptance definitely did not
Speaker 1: exist in when this book was published. So by including
Speaker 1: things like that, I think he would have lost his
Speaker 1: core targeted audience, which is why we see those five
Speaker 1: star reviews on this book, because it's very specifically read
Speaker 1: only by the people that are going to like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the next like forty or so pages of this
Speaker 1: are really heavily dealing with Irwin Mann and the Warsaw
Speaker 1: Ghetto uprising. We're we're getting into a lot of World
Speaker 1: War two stuff and it's going to be in here
Speaker 1: that um I think it's is Bowman's dad that gets
Speaker 1: introduced as a World War two veteran, right, um, because
Speaker 1: he's start he comes in here, yeah, Walter Bowman. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so by page ninety three is kind of when
Speaker 1: we're introduced to the Bowman family, who's going to be
Speaker 1: our protagonist family, and he comes into the story at
Speaker 1: at at right after uh, the end of kind of
Speaker 1: our chunk on the warsaw Get Out Uprising, um where
Speaker 1: we have so so May six, nineteen forty five is
Speaker 1: when we kind of meet the family of the guy
Speaker 1: who's going to be our main character. And I think
Speaker 1: we'll probably come back to that when we when we
Speaker 1: deal with this again. But so that's that's the introduction
Speaker 1: to this book is ninety two pages of what is
Speaker 1: effectively like, um, the history of shooting sports and gun control.
Speaker 1: Like this is a real slow burn of a starter,
Speaker 1: UM And it's different from any other book with kind
Speaker 1: of a broadly similar theme that I think I've gone through. UM.
Speaker 1: I have to say it's probably one of the smarter
Speaker 1: pieces of of of kind of right wing uh militant
Speaker 1: like propaganda literature that I've seen. UM. And it is
Speaker 1: something that if you're not of that ideology, there's even
Speaker 1: aspects of this that you could enjoy, because there is
Speaker 1: like quite a bit of history in here that that's interesting,
Speaker 1: but as we've talked about, it's also very in complete history.
Speaker 1: I do kind of find this fascinating in a way
Speaker 1: that for example, Ben Shapiro isn't right, Like there's actually
Speaker 1: a lot to say about this that's not mocking the writing.
Speaker 1: In addition, like the writing is not it's not particularly
Speaker 1: like inspired writing, Like I'm not going to call this guy. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is not like a toured a force of narrative power. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's not like there's nothing about it that's jumping
Speaker 1: out to me is incompetent or bad at all. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like, I mean, it's definitely like a slow burn,
Speaker 1: but kind of in the same way. You know, I
Speaker 1: get shades of Tom Clancy from this actually, oh I
Speaker 1: would yeah. And and the writing is it's it is readable.
Speaker 1: It's um, I don't know how where would I put
Speaker 1: in terms of qualit like Tom clans is a good
Speaker 1: unc channel pros Yeah, kind of like Stephen King. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it tells the story, but it's not necessarily Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Like it's certainly not You're not like
Speaker 1: I can't think of any lines here that jumped out
Speaker 1: to me is like particularly artful, but nothing like, you know,
Speaker 1: nothing that made it difficult to read. It's just kind of, um,
Speaker 1: it's if you're not interested in this history or in
Speaker 1: the technical details. And this is something I know from
Speaker 1: the book. He really loves getting into the technical details
Speaker 1: about how all of his guns work and stuff, and um,
Speaker 1: even if you like in a way that's very Tom Clancy.
Speaker 1: So if that's your thing, you may find aspects of
Speaker 1: that compelling. I tend to think, even as someone who
Speaker 1: likes guns, that it can be a bit of a
Speaker 1: slog at times. Well, you mentioned what you were a
Speaker 1: page not D six when they just introduced his father.
Speaker 1: I think this book is like five thirty pages, so
Speaker 1: you're like, you're less than one fifth through the book
Speaker 1: and that's just beginning to introduce the main characters for
Speaker 1: the storyline. Yeah, so we'll we'll come back to this.
Speaker 1: But I think it is interesting to talk about how
Speaker 1: this guy chooses to introduce this book that has become
Speaker 1: so influential in US gun culture because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty He makes some pretty intelligent choices here, um
Speaker 1: that I think are going to be surprising to people,
Speaker 1: just based on the cover, which is not a subtle cover.
Speaker 1: You don't you didn't see You don't see this much anymore.
Speaker 1: But like in the in the early two thousand's, this
Speaker 1: book was influential enough that the at the Gun shows
Speaker 1: and on all a bunch of the cars at the
Speaker 1: gun show, you'd see stickers that said Henry Bowman as
Speaker 1: my President. Yeah. Yeah, and this book was a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it makes it makes sense that it is because
Speaker 1: I think, number one, there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are going to be attracted to some of the ideas
Speaker 1: of like revolt against the government and like an armed
Speaker 1: in urgency and seeing themselves as as members of that obviously, UM,
Speaker 1: but aren't going to be drawn to the fact that
Speaker 1: the for example, the Turner Diaries is just a piece
Speaker 1: of genocidal propaganda and is very clearly that from the beginning, UM.
Speaker 1: And it it makes total sense to me that this
Speaker 1: book succeeded in drawing those people in and and providing
Speaker 1: them something to identify with, because I really do get
Speaker 1: why they find this to be an identifiable work. He
Speaker 1: does some very smart work early on to make this
Speaker 1: feel both intellectual to the kind of people who are
Speaker 1: going to be drawn to it, um, and to be
Speaker 1: to make it effectively radicalizing. I see why this is
Speaker 1: is so effective, um. To the people it was effective,
Speaker 1: And I see why a guy like McVeigh would read
Speaker 1: this UM and even feel like, oh shit, I wish
Speaker 1: I had come across this first. Yeah, no doubt. It's um.
Speaker 1: It's uh. I think I said this earlier. It is um.
Speaker 1: It's an. It's an. It's a very hard book to
Speaker 1: put into a category because as as we were going
Speaker 1: through just these nineties pages or whatever, there's real history
Speaker 1: in there, and there are things that people may not
Speaker 1: have ever been aware of that this government has been
Speaker 1: culpable of and other governments have been culpable of that.
Speaker 1: He did his cherry picking on to make his argument,
Speaker 1: but by his cherry picking, um, it's not to say
Speaker 1: that the things that he particularly picked are not true narratives,
Speaker 1: like his discussion about the Bonus Marchers and later on
Speaker 1: in the book other topics are real accurate things. And um,
Speaker 1: a lot of that which I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: for now or some other day, but a lot of
Speaker 1: this falls under the terrible, the terrible regime of Janet
Speaker 1: Reno and some of her actions, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that's in this book. Yeah. Yeah, And and Janet Reno
Speaker 1: definitely deserves to be a bad guy in your history books. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, he really does demonize some people that deserved it.
Speaker 1: But you said it's not necessarily holistically inclusive, and that's
Speaker 1: what's challenging about it. That's the thing too, is like
Speaker 1: if you're um, if you're focusing on these people and
Speaker 1: these moments is like horrible moments in these people, is
Speaker 1: is in these trends as like negative, You're absolutely in
Speaker 1: the right. But also when you when you make that
Speaker 1: out to be the whole story, you're very clearly exercising
Speaker 1: chunks of history and particularly like chunks of um history
Speaker 1: of the oppression of black and Indigenous people that could
Speaker 1: be a part of your argument if they were if
Speaker 1: you were willing to include them as a part of
Speaker 1: the aggrieved classes that you're speaking to. And I think
Speaker 1: Ross clearly is not here. Um. But I you can
Speaker 1: see how people would find this appealing and also be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not a racist and and this isn't a racist book, um,
Speaker 1: And and yeah, it makes sense that this has had
Speaker 1: the impact that it's had. Yeah, it's fascinating. I UM,
Speaker 1: I don't, UM, I don't know. I don't. I wonder
Speaker 1: what its repercussions are until now, because it's been out
Speaker 1: of print for a while, I don't know if it
Speaker 1: ever came back into reprint there was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a sequel. I don't think that ever came out. Um,
Speaker 1: there was never a really bad B grade version of it,
Speaker 1: like Left Behind it with Kirk like Kirk Cameron and
Speaker 1: all that. There was never like there was never the
Speaker 1: Left Behind movie of Unintended Consequences, Right, But I feel like, um,
Speaker 1: I suspect that if that were, if that pump were
Speaker 1: to be primed, I bet it would be successful still
Speaker 1: to this day. Well, I think there is essentially a
Speaker 1: reboot of Unintended Consequences written by a guy named Matt
Speaker 1: Bracken who's a regular on Info Wars Enemies Foreign and Domestic.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with that? I've never read it? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it says, yeah, I have not read that one, but
Speaker 1: I know it. It's broadly speaking, kind of in the
Speaker 1: same narrative terrain that we've talked about, where there's like
Speaker 1: this kind of insurgency, uh, an overthrow of the evil
Speaker 1: American police state that is, of course like a left
Speaker 1: wing police state. They see it as. Um, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: read you the the Amazon for this. Bullets rained down
Speaker 1: upon a packed put football stadium, killing dozens, triggering a
Speaker 1: panic stampede, which leads to a thousand more deaths. A
Speaker 1: police marksman kills the sniper, a mentally unbalanced desert storm
Speaker 1: veteran holding a smoking assault rifle. It's an open and
Speaker 1: shut case, or so America is led to believe in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the stadium massacre and outraged public demands
Speaker 1: and into the threat posed by assault rifle. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then America passes gun control um and the yeah,
Speaker 1: it it leads to a crackdown that leads to an uprising. Right,
Speaker 1: that book was written before that event. But man, that
Speaker 1: is shades of Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because Bracken frames it in his book apparently as like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what leads to like this huge FBI cracked
Speaker 1: down of the militia, and it's unjust, and the militia
Speaker 1: has to find out the truth about this. What I'm
Speaker 1: guessing is like this shooting that was engineered in order
Speaker 1: to create gun control, when in reality we had an
Speaker 1: almost identical shooting and the result was was nothing like
Speaker 1: on a legislative level, I guess, I guess bump stocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think it was. It was Trump made
Speaker 1: essentially a ruling that bump stops, but Eagle. But but
Speaker 1: there's no assault weapons ban, not not from that event. No,
Speaker 1: there wasn't. But it is interesting that all of these
Speaker 1: books hinge themselves, that that the fight for the fight
Speaker 1: against an authoritary and increasingly authoritarian American government is always
Speaker 1: hinged on the loss of gun rights versus some amalgamation
Speaker 1: of all sorts of horrible things that the government has done.
Speaker 1: It's always that one thing, it's always that single platform
Speaker 1: of it. It's the gun rights being lost that caused
Speaker 1: us to revolt, versus here's gun rights amongst many other
Speaker 1: problems that cause a revolt. Like that's interesting to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they zero in so much and there's such certainty too.
Speaker 1: And you can even see this in like some of
Speaker 1: the Alex jones Um conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook, where
Speaker 1: it's like just historically, looking at the last thirty years,
Speaker 1: creating a false flag mash shooting is not a good
Speaker 1: way to get gun control, because most mash shootings have
Speaker 1: not resulted in gun control, right Yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you see Columbine as being the one that did,
Speaker 1: right did, which absolutely like Columbine did where it comes from, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that the argument is that each and every
Speaker 1: and and and and and sadly, so many of those
Speaker 1: events have happened since Columbine, that each and everyone's going
Speaker 1: to be the one that does that. Um. Historically excellent,
Speaker 1: except for Columbine, that has not been the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really. I mean there have been again some like
Speaker 1: state level laws that have been that have been come
Speaker 1: in the result of like mass shootings, but even that's
Speaker 1: not is not super common. Um. It is interesting that
Speaker 1: like that that's still such a focus. UM. I think
Speaker 1: there is probably you could probably make quite a good
Speaker 1: living if you were to rewrite a variation of this
Speaker 1: book that was a little bit smarter about your opening cause, um,
Speaker 1: and that that steered more towards trying to reach some
Speaker 1: of those people on the libertarian left as well as
Speaker 1: the libertarian right. You could probably make a pretty good
Speaker 1: living doing that. You might need to get better cover
Speaker 1: art too than than John Ross picked, although his cover
Speaker 1: art beats the hell out of Matt Brackens, which is
Speaker 1: like a really ay uh uh this you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of now I remember, I think I remember the
Speaker 1: cover of that book. It's like it's like the don't
Speaker 1: tread on me snake with a naifteen or something, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's like clip Yeah, it's clip art
Speaker 1: paste together. You know what it looks like. It looks
Speaker 1: what's the name of that that guy who was he
Speaker 1: was in congress? He was like a TV host and
Speaker 1: then he got in the Congress and then he had
Speaker 1: to leave because he's sexually harassed somebody. What's his name?
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's so many of those, Um, what's
Speaker 1: what's his uh? Al something? You're talking about al Franken,
Speaker 1: al Franken the cover people, right, Yeah, he grouped that
Speaker 1: woman on that plane. Yeah. Yeah, it looks like the
Speaker 1: cover of Enemies for in a Domestic It's like this,
Speaker 1: this like lazy clip art of a snake cuddling a rifle.
Speaker 1: It looks like the cover of like a left wing
Speaker 1: book making fun of gun culture from like two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. Like, it doesn't look like the kind of cover.
Speaker 1: The only thing that to make that cover are better
Speaker 1: or some googly eyes. Yeah, it's it's really a pretty
Speaker 1: lazy cover. Like I wouldn't guess it was a pro
Speaker 1: gun book by the cover art because it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like it's making fun of the Gadsden flag as
Speaker 1: opposed to an ironic, whereas, at least with Unintended Consequences,
Speaker 1: there was no mistaking what kind of like ideological world
Speaker 1: this book inhabits. So you said there was a sequel
Speaker 1: to this enemy's foreign and domestic. I think there's like
Speaker 1: five of them, Max, Oh my gosh, Um, I think
Speaker 1: there's a ton of these books. Um, Matt Bracken Mason, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's at least so there's enemies foreign domestic. There's enemies
Speaker 1: foreign domestic, the ricon Qui stuff, which I think is
Speaker 1: about Mexicans taking over the Southwest. Uh, and then there's
Speaker 1: foreign enemies and traders. So he's got at least three
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. Yeah, So this is the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that would be so pervasive, and maybe it still
Speaker 1: is in some instances. At the gun show we talked
Speaker 1: about at the beginning of this, I could walk in
Speaker 1: there and there was that giant book section and it
Speaker 1: was all sorts of this kind of stuff. And I
Speaker 1: guess the best thing you could say about Unintended Consequences
Speaker 1: is it was the best of its breed. It was
Speaker 1: the most readable, probably the least shitty, if you want
Speaker 1: to say, that of that stuff like, um, if I
Speaker 1: mean on one on one end, you got the Turner Diaries,
Speaker 1: which is like the most vile thing you can think of,
Speaker 1: and then you've got Unattended Consequences, which is much more nuanced.
Speaker 1: And then you had stuff like we're talking about now
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle mostly poorly written quality of a zine,
Speaker 1: but Unintended Consequences had the polish of being a legitimate book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say this is the gold standard of this
Speaker 1: kind of of this particular kind of narrative propaganda. Um.
Speaker 1: It definitely seems to be, which which does not mean
Speaker 1: I think most people reading it are going to enjoy it,
Speaker 1: or that I think it's narratively a well constructed piece
Speaker 1: of fiction, because again we're ninety three pages in and
Speaker 1: we have not really gotten to the narrative yet, which
Speaker 1: is a choice, um. But it's also kind of broadly
Speaker 1: in line with This is being written in the period
Speaker 1: when Michael Crichton is and um um uh Tom Clancy
Speaker 1: are like the biggest authors in the United States, and
Speaker 1: it does seem like very much in line with that. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can't divorce it either from the time
Speaker 1: it was written in what was popular. Then well, Carl,
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna do us for for for at
Speaker 1: least the first episode on Undintended Unintended Consequences will well,
Speaker 1: will reconvene and see if we want to go more
Speaker 1: into this or maybe look at what a Matt Bracken's books. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm endlessly fascinated with this, this species of novel. There's
Speaker 1: like eight hundred more pages of this book, Like literally,
Speaker 1: there's so many more pages of this, and Enemies Foreign
Speaker 1: Domestic is also five hundred and sixty eight pages. So
Speaker 1: we're delving into Jesus a lot. Well, I think, I think,
Speaker 1: I think that we only got this far into it
Speaker 1: does speak to the density of what it is and
Speaker 1: how complex a topic this book is. Like if you
Speaker 1: wanted to describe the if you wanted to talk the
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries, you could. You could summarize that in thirty seconds. Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It is not an intelligent work. Unintended Consequences is,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes it interesting because, Um, whether or
Speaker 1: not want to agree or disagree with any of the
Speaker 1: content in it, anyone reading it, even if you're against
Speaker 1: what it's about, will probably find something out in it
Speaker 1: that they didn't know about. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: promote anything. I'm just saying in that regard, it is
Speaker 1: an interesting work because I'm going from the Bonus Marchers
Speaker 1: to the Warsaw Ghetto to Ruby Ridge to Waco to
Speaker 1: all of those things combined. There's a lot of nuance
Speaker 1: and that like most people wouldn't you know about Us
Speaker 1: versus Miller, that that Supreme Court ruling about that sought
Speaker 1: off shotgun. There's all that's in there. And while it
Speaker 1: is cherry picked, is done in a way that it's
Speaker 1: there's there's there's content there above and beyond maybe it's
Speaker 1: intended point yeah, yeah, And and certainly like it's it's
Speaker 1: not a lazy example of what it is. It's it's
Speaker 1: an exact like he put a lot of work into this,
Speaker 1: and I think did so in a pretty intelligent way.
Speaker 1: And that's that's interesting to study, just as someone who's
Speaker 1: kind of um drawn into this this sort of thing
Speaker 1: and is interested in its impact on the world. Like um,
Speaker 1: it's it's meaningful and worth understanding that, Like he put
Speaker 1: the work he did into this and it's had the
Speaker 1: impact that it's had. Well, Carl, you want to plug
Speaker 1: your plug doubles before we roll out. Sure, um, you
Speaker 1: can find me an range dot tv. I create a
Speaker 1: firearms history and other types of content. It's kind of
Speaker 1: all over the place, but it's all somehow Lynch pinned
Speaker 1: around the concept of firearms and and the history of
Speaker 1: firearms or the civil rights associated issues around them, including
Speaker 1: up until today. So if you want to check out
Speaker 1: my video and some of other stuff, you can find
Speaker 1: all of my distribution points at enranged dot tv. Yeah,
Speaker 1: check out Carl, check out in range TV. Probably don't
Speaker 1: check out Enemies Foreign and Domestic um. But you know
Speaker 1: you can get a lot of the same things by
Speaker 1: watching the documentary trimmers Um, which which is my manifestout.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that guy would have been a character
Speaker 1: in this book definitely. Bert Comer is a character that
Speaker 1: fell directly out of unintended consequences. It is worth it
Speaker 1: doesn't really stand out in the movie, but it is
Speaker 1: worth noting that he and his wife in thirty seconds
Speaker 1: go from huddling in their basement to making pipe bombs
Speaker 1: on the roof. Bert Comer has seven copies of Unintended Consequences,
Speaker 1: all of them signed, one of them with some DNA
Speaker 1: on it from John ross I guarantee you yeah this
Speaker 1: maybe Bert Gummer's copy of Unintended Consequences. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: thank you. Carl. Behind the Bastards is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more from cool zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website cool zone media dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.