I sit down with political cartoonist George Alexopoulos (@GPrime85)—a man whose four-panel strips have shaken the internet and captured the raw emotions of our times.
George shares his journey from doodling in school to creating comics that reach millions. We dive into:
-
Why he refuses to stay silent in a politically hostile art industry
-
How one cartoon about the Ukrainian girl in North Carolina gained 5.4M+ views in just two days
-
The battle between human creativity and AI art
-
Why artists must be truth-tellers, even if it costs them everything
This is a powerful conversation about art, tragedy, censorship, faith, and fighting for truth through creativity.
Follow and subscribe to George on X: https://x.com/GPrime85
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro/Preview
02:21 - How George first fell in love with drawing
07:51 - First viral cartoon, pursuing art as a career
18:01 - Being a conservative artist
24:45 - AI’s impact on art
33:04 - The viral cartoon of the Ukrainian girl in North Carolina
44:25 - Reaction to Charlie Kirk
➡️ Froglogic Training Curriculum: https://www.froglogicinstitute.com/
➡️ Get David’s new novel, “The Poet Warrior”: https://www.ballastbooks.com/ballast-bookstore/the-poet-warrior
➡️ FIRECRACKER FARM: https://firecracker.farm/
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's this argument going on among artists. They're like, oh,
there's no such thing as a conservative artist. They're all leftists,
or you're a silent conservative, that's what is expected out
of you. And I'm not a silent conservative. My name
is out there, It's been out there for a long time.
I don't believe in shutting my mouth. And if no
(00:21):
one wants to hire me, I consider that their problem.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Let's just take that that recent image of the four
box of the girl on the train just tell us
a little bit about how you bring you know, these
these ideas or images to life in your art. One
of the most challenging things, in my opinion, is is
(00:46):
how to capture culture in a way that's outside of
what we're traditionally inundated with with political punditry or you know,
you know, hammering people on you Tube or calling people.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Out, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think there's always a unique way that can emerge
through a medium that I've been passionate about since I
was a little kid, and that's through art, or that's
through writing or poetry or whatever it might be. And
so today's guest, George Alexopolis is I don't want to
call him a conservative artist or a right wing artist,
(01:27):
because I don't think that's appropriate to constrain any artist
in that measure. But certainly Georgia's images have and are
having a profound impact on kind of the social consciousness
of the conservative movement. His last image, that was posted
two days ago was already has five point four million
(01:51):
views on x and it's an imagery depicting the tragedy
of the Ukrainian girl who was murdered in North Carolina,
the transit boss. So you know, George, I can't thank
you enough for coming on and willing to have a
conversation not only about social commentary, but more importantly about
(02:13):
art and what it means to society.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Thanks for the invite. The pleasure is mine. I promise awesome.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Thank you. Can I just get started.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Every artist that I ever have the opportunity to chat
with or to meet, or that I come across, you know,
I always start with the same question, when did it begin?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And how did you know you were passionate about art?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, I guess in elementary school, middle school. Let's start elementary.
I think everybody likes drawing, or almost everybody, and it's
just fun. You play around you tell stories. I think
the only difference between someone like myself and my classmates
would have been that I never stopped. So in middle
(03:00):
school I kept drawing cartoons because I wanted to make
my friends laugh at the lunch table. I would show
them my comics and they were terribly drown but they
would laugh and that would encourage me to keep doing it.
And then by the time high school came around, I
realized I'm not a good I was not a good renderer.
I was terrible. So I had to really practice, and
(03:22):
there were better students than me. I said, I'm not
going to get left behind here. I'm going to work
harder and study. And then by senior year it's like, oh,
what are you doing for your career? And I was like, okay,
well I guess I'm going to go to art school
then and that didn't work out, but I started to
take it seriously. Career wise, I didn't know what to do.
There weren't a lot of career paths open to me
(03:44):
for various reasons, but I still pursued it as like,
let's say eight hours a day of practice or as
many hours as I could, thinking eventually something's going to happen.
So I got a couple of chances at making a
big break, but it didn't work out for various reasons,
like the two thousand and seventy eight crash. I was
working with a publisher they went out of business, that
(04:05):
sort of thing. But I was working in the comics world,
and then I ended up in the indie comics world
and just struggling to get my name out there many
years later through various well, I don't know if I'm
getting off track as far as the story goes, but no,
it's wonderful. You know. You do a couple of comics
that go viral or something and then it's like, Okay,
(04:28):
this is what you should be doing. And I was like,
all right, well, I'll spend my time doing this because
I'm not good at anything else. So that's I just
kind of fell into it. I kept doing it never stops,
so here I am.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I respect that so much. I mean from the same
for me when I was a kid, it was, you know,
my older brother was an artist as well, and we
would sit together and as you know, we were on
road trips with my family in the back of the
station wagon with our giant sketch books. You know, he'd
draw a portion of the picture and then give it
to me, and I draw a portion, and so it
(05:02):
was it was this familial thing with us, and it
was time I got to spend with my brother too,
in this kind of unified endeavor to create some kind
of collective image out of our very thinkly different styles.
And you know, and then and then as it emerged
for me as well, it was like I always drew
(05:23):
these you know, these war scenes of you know, army men,
and and just really had this desire to kind of
capture those images. And you know, and I remember, as
you know, like you said, in that middle school age,
it was it was just keeping the drawing. And for
me it was doodling for many, many years. But I
(05:46):
was the thing that I really enjoyed doing. And I'll
never forget my going into my senior year in high school,
are the guy who ran ap RT and the art
department came to me and it was like, you know, David,
you know, why aren't you in an art class? And
I got I don't know, I didn't think of myself
as an artist.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And the next thing, you know, it was.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
You know, hey, come in and take ap R to
which I got in a and it was like, wow, Okay,
there's there's a structure to this.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
There's a way to improve on it, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
And and that was something that I felt like, if
it if it had been more of that uh you
know education, Hey, these are all the different facets or angles,
not angles, but pathways that you can go down to
discover something some type of professional endeavor, right utilizing art.
(06:41):
Uh you know, I think that would have been a
lot a lot better because you know, when I went
to college and was an art major, you know, I
was taking the you know, three D design, and I
was taking the classes where you're doing the you know,
the live uh what the still life p then you
know the ugly naked people that would come in for money.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I was doing all this.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Though I though a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
But but it's like, all right, how is this going
to manifest?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
In art?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And the one place I think, much like you, like,
I always love the idea of cartoony, right, there was
something that could take place. And as a kid, it
was the Garfield strips. It was, uh, you know, all
of those classic ones that you'd had and then you know,
(07:37):
and I even did my own in college. It was
a character I come up with Steymy, and you know,
he'd sit around and rip bong hits and you know,
hang out with his friends type stuff. And but it
was like, all right, how do I manifest this into
a career. How did you get to the space where
you began to realize whoa this is? This is an opportunity?
(07:59):
Was an individual jewel you met? Was it just you?
There was enough information to go down that route where
you're like, oh, wow, this is a viable form of
a profession that I can make money on.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Can I? If I tell you the truth, like, I
still don't know if it is viable. I'm forty years old.
I can't. Every year is different, Like I'm self employed,
so every year I don't know what my income is
going to be depending on what I'm working on. But
that also part of the blame for that is that
(08:34):
I'm not a good business person. But to answer the
question of when it clicked for me, I was struggling
as an indie creator for most of my twenties, just
trying like I was doing a four panel strips in
the style of like a Charlie Brown, Kevin Hubbs sort
of thing for many years, and it was cute, it
(08:56):
was fun. People liked it. My friends and family were supportive,
but it never like blew up. It was years after
that I was thinking about doing a career shift. I
had just gotten married and I was thinking, well, I
can't be doing cartooning for the rest of my life.
I'm not getting any money off of this, and so
I was fooling around posting strips on Reddit of all places,
(09:17):
and I posted a series of strips that got really
famous for almost no reason. It was like a joke
within a joke. They had made me the number one
cartoonist on the website, and I had joked that you
guys are going to cancel me like tomorrow, and they
did because they realized that I was a conservative person whatever,
(09:39):
and they thought I was putting secret messages in my comics.
Long story, but anyway, so they ruined my career. They
just ruined it. Because I was trying to do business
on Reddit for many years, I was getting commissions. Nobody
wanted to talk to me anymore, and so I had
to rebuild my career on Twitter. At the time, that
was twenty eighteen, and I started doing just comic books whatever,
(10:01):
fooling around, and then I did a couple of modern
event strips. The one that really blew up was there
was this Joe Biden strip where he jokes with not jokes.
There's this black woman. She's like, I'm not going to
vote for you, and he says, well, you ain't black,
and he sucks the black out of her.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that one.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So that was like the big one that everyone like
that blew up a lot. And it was like just
a basic four panel structure and it's arranged in a square,
and that worked so well multiple times. I just kept
doing that, realizing, Okay, my profile's finally growing, this is
what the this is what the market seems to want
(10:40):
right now, and I guess if I'm the guy to
supply it, this is my calling something like that. So
I just kept doing it. And it's been what six
seven eight years, seven years, and I just keep doing it,
and people keep saying we want more, keep at it.
It's like, okay, there's other things I would love to do,
but none of those worked out financially, so this seems
(11:02):
to be the path forward as far as how do
you put it, Like I would joke like, I'm trying.
I keep trying to get water out of a stone.
I keep drilling and trying to find water, and it's like, Okay,
well this is the one place where the water is
coming out, so I'll just keep at it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It's is fascinating, right when you when you have an
opportunity to chat with people within the arts, you know,
they nobody ever imagines that whatever hits for them ends
up hitting right.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And and you know, next thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
You you're you're you know, you're doing this one particular
type of of of of deliverable that people want more
and they have an appetite for. And even though you
know most artists want to move on, you know, to
the next iteration of of or development of their their
their craft, they get locked into this you know, particular
(12:00):
space of creation.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And you know, I would imagine and I do.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Can you describe some of the other characters or books
or things you've worked on in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I saw one video that.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You worked a little bit in gaming, and you were
talking about doing a gaming where you could choose your
own outcome in the games. Can you can you talk
about a little bit of the very ations of where
your craft has gone and what you've chosen or what
you wanted.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Well, yeah, I've worked in the gaming indie gaming, so
I would work with just pals that I met online
and stuff, and it's like, oh, let's make a little game.
There's maybe three of us, maybe ten percent of the
projects ever made it to something that kind of looks
like completion. I've done three D modeling, animation, texture work,
(12:50):
storyboards for movies. I've done comics, published comics. I published
my own comics. I've got children's book coming out hopefully
next week that I spent the last six months on.
It's the sequel to another children's book, and that's for
my wife's business. So that's like on the side. Hopefully
(13:11):
that's decent little income stream. So yeah, I've done pretty
much anything you could do as far as illustration, drawing, animation,
and it's all fun. I like doing it. It's just
the current market is not super fertile ground. There's this
(13:34):
argument going on among artists. They're like, oh, there's no
such thing as a conservative artist because if you work
in the industry where like you're really like, say, I
moved to California or something, They're all leftists, or you're
a silent conservative, that's what is expected out of you.
And I'm not a silent conservative. My name is out there,
(13:56):
it's been out there for a long time. I don't
believe in shutting my mouth. And if no one wants
to hire me, I consider that their problem. I think
I'm talented enough that I would be hirable. But I'm
happy to work. I'm on my own as an independent too,
because I'm so opinionated whatever. But yeah, there's this fake
(14:17):
I don't believe it that there's like no such thing
as a right leaning or conservative artist. I think there's
a lot of us. It's just that we tend to
quit because we realize or we're convinced by our families
rightfully so that like, oh, there's just not a lot
of money in this. And I certainly was told that
by everyone I knew growing up for many years. Like
(14:38):
even when I was thinking about going to art school,
I was told by everybody, don't go go to community college,
get some other degree teaching or something like that, get
a real job. You know, that's the usual thing you hear.
And that's why I get so pissy. I used to
get so pissy. Yet like guys like Matt Walsh that
we talked about. When I hear the echo of get
a real job, I get so angry because I've spent
(15:01):
my whole adult life training for this job. That they
were right, and I hate to admit it, there just
is not a lot of money in it unless you're
in a very specific you allow yourself to be put
into that box of I'm going to be a quiet
conservative living amongst people who hate me and don't let
(15:21):
me talk and see me as like some kind of anyway.
That's another topic, but I don't even remember what the
question was.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
The variable craft that the things you've done, you've explored
with it, and then you know how you've found yourself,
you know, really finding the niche, and I think you
started to move into that, which is, you know, the
distinction between in what was many people consider to be
an overwhelmingly liberal even progressively liberal industry, you know, which
(15:59):
is the irony for me is is profound because when
you think about the places where certain artists have just exploded, right,
whether it's some of the you know, what was it,
what's the couple monster Japanese anime movies that that bebopo
(16:28):
you know Frank Miller's three hundred Since City. You know,
there's there's a there's what, there's an aggressiveness, right that
that's in there. There's an edgy nous, there's a there's
a violent construct that's at at the root of these
social tales that are being told in these heavy stories.
(16:51):
And man, that seems in my mind like a conscious
conservative exposure of reality, whereas you know, the left or
whatever they are, are trying to paint this, you know, uh,
these social justice profiles or whatever they're doing. So you know,
for me, it's like, I never thought of art as
(17:13):
a place where it should be so controlled by one
side or the other. I mean, that's the beauty of art, right,
It's the it's the intersection of of our conscious and
subconscious coming together to uh give commentary about particular events
or ideas within the social hierarchies, to to say something
(17:36):
vividly right. And I think that's what you're for me.
When I first started seeing your stuff, I was like,
oh my god. You know, and I'm a Ben Garrison
guy too. I think it's a lot more. You know,
your your your style is a lot different than his.
I like your style a lot. But it's powerful. I
mean it, you see it and it it. It hits
(17:59):
you to your core with what you're trying to do.
And was there in that process for you where you're
trying to figure out, all right, how am I going
to earn a living doing what I love?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
And then how am I going to earn.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
A living doing what I love in this world that's
controlled by you know, left leaning people? Was it difficult
to just stand your ground and be like to hew
with that, I'm just going to do what I want to.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Do for my personality. It's mandatory, Like I can't I
physically can't be in a situation where like I'm working
for people and I have to shut my mouth while
they're allowed to speak freely. I would not be able
to physically tolerate it for more than a few days
(18:46):
or weeks, I don't know. Like I couldn't be in
an office where they're talking smack about Trump, or let's
say I was working at a place right now where
they were if someone was cheering that Charlie Kirk died, right,
I would be fired immediately after. Like I can't shut
my mouth. I would tell them off so hard, like
I would be yelling until they kicked me out of
(19:07):
the building. If I was working in a place, how
do I put it, I would rather work on my
own and be a starving artist, even though I'd like
to do well and you know, not be a starving artist,
but like it's more important to me as a creative person.
It's like I have to do this. I have to
(19:28):
be this person. I don't know why. I was listening
to your discussion with Sean Ryan. You were talking about
you were studying like van Go and stuff, and that
was one of and even Bokowski too. These are guys
that are like borderline, like they're quite unwell in some cases,
(19:49):
especially van Go, and it's like he just for some
reason needed to do what he did and he never
made money at it, and of course he famously ended
his life. But like there is some germ of that
in my head, not like to that extreme, but I
have to do whatever path that is. I have to
(20:11):
do it, and I don't know why, and sometimes it hurts,
and sometimes I'm thirsty and hungry, but I have to
keep doing it for whatever reason. So when I hear
about Van Goh never selling a painting until after he
was dead, it's ironic to me, but I understand memetically
why that happened. People want to buy pieces of history.
(20:32):
They don't care so much about the art itself. So
when they saw his paintings while he was alive, I
don't think they understood what they were seeing. They just
saw badly drawn, badly painted images that kind of look childish.
But then that coincided with the Sigmund Freud era of
(20:53):
psychology and illustration as a way of illuminating this subconscious
Young was very was not around. They were contemporary or
close to each other.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
He was.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
He was a protege of Freud, actually worked with him
for years.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, and I don't know what year that was. I
want to say late eighteen hundreds, so Van Goh would
have been a few years before that maybe, But when
psychology and art met, that also coincided with the rise
of photography and, in my opinion, death of painting or
the the irreconcilably changed. Painting changed from a photography substitute
(21:33):
to now we're expressing ourselves right, and photography completely took
over anyway, So then people valued Van Goh's paintings because
of the psychological meaning and historical meaning here is this
sad story of a guy who killed himself because no
one bought his paintings. I must have it right, right.
(21:54):
He was the impressionists. His contemporaries couldn't stand him because
he was so well. A lot of the times, I
can't remember who he lived with.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Okay, yeah, I thought it was either what says honor one.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Of those guys. Yeah, he lived with him in Paris.
His brother couldn't Did you read that? Was it theo?
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Like he could not be tolerated. You couldn't be around
him as a person.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Well, he's intolerable, institutionalized the most a ton of times,
like twice three, two times because of it.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But he's regarded as, you know, one of those geniuses.
It's so weird. Not that I would ever compare myself
to that, but it's like, I understand why people like
that do what they do.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You have a lot of choices for cell phone service, man,
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I see new ones popping up all the time. But
here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
There's only one that boldly stands in the gap for
every American that believes freedom, and you better believe that.
I believe freedom is worth fighting for. Because I've done it,
and that phone carrier is Patriot Mobile. The good news
is you can switch to Patriot Mobile today without sacrificing
quality or your service. Now are you worried about your coverage,
(23:17):
Well enough, don't be. Patriot Mobile uses all three major
US networks. If you have service in this country today,
you'll have as good or better coverage with Patriot Mobile.
Think switching is a hassle, Well it ain't. You can
keep your number, you can keep your phone, or if
(23:38):
you want, you can upgrade. Patriot Mobiles one hundred percent
US based team will get you activated in just a
few minutes. And guess what you can do it from
the comfort of your own home. Stuck in a contract
or do you owe money on your phones? Well there's
no worry there. Patriot Mobile has a contract buyout program.
(24:01):
This is how we win, folks by aligning our spending
dollars with our values.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Every single dollar we spend matters when it comes to America.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Go to Patriotmobile dot com, forward slash Rutherford or call
ninety seven to two Patriot Now here's Neil. Use promo
code Rutherford. That's r U T H E, R F
O R D and get a free month of service
now switch today. I'm telling you what that free month
is yours with promo code Rutherford. That's Patriotmobile dot Com
(24:35):
forward slash Rutherford or simply call nine seven to two
Patriot God Bless America. Who yah it is? That's I
think that's the crux of of what so many I mean,
obviously you know, very few people. Although I think it's
(24:55):
it's expanding more now with digital or I think it's
really I feel like the the reach of art, even
though it's been dramatically reduced in our educational system right
uh in K through twelve in particular, I mean obviously
K through four or five there's still art classes or whatever,
(25:16):
but it's you know, the development of art, art history,
that that kind of thing has been minimized pretty significantly
within high school for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I it's I think digital art in anime and man manga, manga.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I'm saying that I always say that wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You know, there's there's a movement, and now with AI,
I think there's a uh you know, maybe it'll be
a revitalization and we'll have more of those people that
are living in that What what would be the appropriate
we are living in that sense of of retract the
(26:00):
capability right where there's this energy inside of them driving
a need to express themselves, but they're not quite sure
how to do it, where to do it, why to
do it, or in what capacity to do it? And
so I feel like now is an opportunity for so
many more people to figure out how to create. I mean,
(26:20):
obviously you see the explosion of creators or whoever on YouTube, Instagram,
you know, all the different social media. But it's like,
is there more and more unique artists emerging through these
new kind of technological capabilities. I mean, you're immersed in
that world. You're paying I don't know if you are
(26:42):
paying close attention to what's popping, what's not Popping's what's
gaining the rounds in terms of views or likes or
what or the markets of what's being sold. But what
are you saying as as the modern era of art
and technological art is emerging, you've seen that's kind of
(27:02):
gaining relevance in your opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
As far as popularity, I mean, obviously AI is making
it's completely shattering, it's threatening to shatter the entire industry,
including mine. So I don't like AI for personal reasons.
It is a tool. That tool that's another hot word too.
People use it and they say that I'm an artist,
(27:30):
and uh, it's it's a whole two hour discussion in itself.
How do I even begin.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I believe it's not going to replace artists. I just
don't think it is. I think I think what it'll
be is there'll be a stamp you know or something
you know, because the art will be could like you
just sit in reference with Van Gogh, the art is
connected to the individual, and I think, like you right,
your art is connected to you. And I think the
(28:00):
more the public begins to get to know you and
understand your stance and where you're at your commentary about
if I worked in an office and someone made a
horrific comment about Charlie Kirk's.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Death, I would go off.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So now those images that people are seeing, and this
is my hope with doing the interview with you, is
that they're going to start to connect the individual with
the art. And I don't think AI is going to
be able to replace that. I think it'll it'll make
a hardcore run at it, but I don't think it'll
reprice it replace.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
No. I think it's something like it will give everyone.
Like naysayers will say photography didn't replace painting. Paintings still exists,
but I would argue that painters had a lot more
opportunities for jobs before photography became a thing. And then
when people realize that I could just take a picture
(28:53):
of my family a it's cheaper, I understand that it's
like a painting. It's better than paintings. Now you can
record people in video. Now it's paintings kind of like
a niche thing. It's It's the way I would compare
AI if there is an artist next to me that
said I'm gonna use AI to help me train and
(29:16):
do better images, and they don't train as hard as
another artist. It's like if I'm climbing a mountain and
then I go on foot all the way to the
peak and I say I climbed this mountain, versus they
take a helicopter up to the peak and say, oh,
I made it to the peak, but did they climb it.
It's not life and death. It's not serious. But like
(29:39):
for the people who have spent their whole life and
want to spend their whole lives dedicating themselves to the discipline.
Like I compare it, this is really corny, but like
I'm a huge fan of this series called Vagabond. It's
a manga series about Miyamoto Musashi, and it's all about
like for him, the Way of the Sword and all
(30:00):
cheesy stuff, but like the whole point of it is
to learn about yourself and gain enlightenment, and it's about
the journey. So you're studying this art for your whole life,
and it is tempering you as a person, and the
whole journey is the point of it. If someone uses
AI to get really good at rendering, that's not the
(30:23):
same thing as devoting yourself to the discipline. It's like
buying a black belt versus earning a black belt. So
I realized, like when someone argues with me that they're
using AI and they're just using it to illustrate what's
in their head.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
If everyone uses AI and clients decide to use it,
then people like me. Let's say I was twenty years
old and I'm losing jobs to AI people, I would
maybe be discouraged from pushing it, pushing my career to
my forties, So I'm losing twenty years of practice whereas
now it's too late for me. I've already put in
(31:01):
the practice. I'm not going to ever use AI. I'm
never going to touch it. So I'm a stubborn middle
aged guy whatever. I'm getting older and I'm never going
to touch it because I value the path of the artist,
the way of the sword. Whatever. Yeah, oh it's true,
but that's you know, I realize I may be one
(31:24):
of the last people who are I think that way.
The generation after me. If you're twenty years old right
now practicing, you may use AI and I don't know.
It's like swords versus guns. Guns will beat swords. But
I'm devoting myself to the sword anyway, even if I'm outclassed.
(31:45):
What can I do about that?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Well, I think there's nobility in that and that that'll
drive more people towards towards you. I mean, there's you know, obviously,
art is a niche thing anyways, in terms of of
people's opinion and what they see as art versus another
person and what they see as art. I think, you know,
(32:07):
the same thing is is potentially going to happen in
music and film and you know, maybe not theater obviously,
but you.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Know, I just I believe.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That there's going to be a large contingency of people
that are going to always seek out, you know, the
guy who cuts his ear.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Off, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
And I think that's just that the correlation of the
human soul and the art is what makes the art beautiful.
And so I, you know, I I hope it doesn't happen.
I think, you know, you're a lot of your your
The probability of it is certainly there. But I also
still think that people are seeking out you know, you
(32:53):
know what what you're doing. I mean, I obviously you're
following is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
How, how when you the process, like let's just take
that that recent image of the four box of the
girl on the train, you know, talk to us about
the process of seeing her video or whatever it is,
(33:21):
how it hits you, what you do and how you
come up, how you go through the process, if you
want to get technical, not technical, how you frame it
out in your head. Just tell us a little bit
about how you bring you know, these these ideas or
images to life in your art.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I mean, I consider these strips diary entries more than
people call Some people try to call it memes or something.
They're not. I'm just expressing. I read the news constantly.
I'm a huge news like freak, mostly because I'm It's
like with nine to eleven, I was comparing the Charlie
(33:59):
Kirkton and now I couldn't stop looking at the news.
I think because subconsciously, I'm so afraid that I need
to have every little piece of information in case I
have to do something. But what am I going to do.
I'm not going to dodge a bullet. So I am
obsessively looking at the news. And last earlier this week
it was the Arena story with she got slashed or
(34:20):
stabbed or whatever, and man, I could not I have
not slept properly this week at all. Like yeah, I've
been crying for no reason, not for no reason, Like
I have this room behind me. I know I'm telling
this story this little quiet room, I have my little
zen room, and I'm just sitting there for I've been
sitting there for hours just staring and listening to the
(34:43):
news and like really like getting emotionally like I'm wrecked.
I can't sleep. So first thing this week was the
Arena story she gets stabbed, and it's just the saddest
thing like I've seen in a long time, and it's
so pathetic and sad the way she died, and it's
like it's bothering me. I need an exorcism. And so
(35:04):
I'm thinking, like, well, I have to draw something because
I need to get this out of me. I need
to sleep. There's something that's trying to come out and
I don't know what it is. And I keep like thinking, Okay,
is this somebody? What if this is someone I love
that got stabbed like that? That's very sad. What if
it's me? So the next thought was, okay, I'll put
(35:27):
myself in her shoes. Okay, we're looking at her POV.
What is she looking at her phone? Next thing, she
knows she's getting hit by something. Looks up, there's this
fucking sorry for cursing, this demon looking down at her.
Next thing, she looks down. She's bleeding to death. Maybe
she's got fifteen seconds left, and then she just cries.
Saddest thing I've seen in a long time. So like, okay,
(35:49):
that's for one, two, three, four, that's four panels. I'll
just draw that, and I treat every strip of the
same couple hours only takes a couple hours to do them,
and then I just draw it, I upload it, and
then hopefully other people get something out of it meaningfully,
you know, they get some meaning out of it, and
(36:10):
in this case, a lot of people were talking about
it NonStop, so it just it struck the bulls eye.
I don't care about the fame, I don't care about
the numbers. I just needed to get it out of me.
And it was so sad. And then of course Charlie
Kirk was like the next no, it was the same
day I put that strip. It was later that day.
(36:32):
So that's been the week. That's been this week, I
have not I woke up at four thirty this morning,
I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
My cat woke me up to.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And yeah, it's just it's been a hell of a week.
And sometimes when you're going through pain, whatever difficult stuff,
the best thing to do is try to try to
manage it. Is to somehow express it, get it out
of you, kind of like a puzzle that you're trying
to solve, just so that it's not bouncing around in
(37:03):
your head. Put it in a physical form, even just
write it down like a poem or a short story.
Get it out and then maybe your brain can say
I can stop worrying about this. I've put it in
a box here, so I'll do my strips there. It's uploaded,
it's done. I'm going to try to not worry about
it anymore. But you know, we live in weird times
(37:26):
where something's always going to be I think it's going
to get worse. Uh, I don't know. So I don't know.
I don't know what's going to keep if it's going
to keep happening. But yeah, I don't care so much
about the numbers, you know, fame whatever, who cares. But
if people get something out of it, I think that's
probably good. If it helps people would message me DM
(37:49):
me and say like your strip made me cry or something,
It's like, well, I guess that's probably good. Yeah, you know,
it helps. It helps with the managing because like I'm
talking too much now, but at a death in the family,
like a a couple of years ago, and I was
not able to cry at the time, and I don't
(38:10):
think that's healthy. I think people should cry, because if
you don't, I think it manifests negatively in other ways.
So it's good to try to get it out. So
If the strip helped people, that's good. That's a good thing.
They're not supposed to be funny. You know, there's no
joke here.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
I'll tell you what. It helped me for sure. It
was one of the first things that came across my feed.
And you know, I did a show that'll that'll drop
on a few days where I had hit a pretty
significant place of outrage. And you know, I think, as
(38:54):
we are viewing, you know this, this vitriol, this insiduousness
that's permeating across our society, and I think into a
granderstin around the world. I mean, I mean take five
seconds and look at Ukraine, right, you know, two million
plus young men have been annihilated over nothing. You look
(39:19):
at what's going on in Israel. You look at what's
going on Scotland, Britain, Scotland, Britain. That that girl, I mean,
that was another one you did with the girl with
the hatchet and the knife, and you know, I did
a little piece and posted that and it's gotten several
hundred thousand views on it, and you know, I think
(39:42):
what it is is what you're feeling. A lot a
lot of people are feeling. I'm feeling it, and I
think the beauty of art is art can encapsulate those
feelings beyond the what is it the surreal horror of
(40:04):
the video we watch? I mean, you know, I remember
I was at a volleyball game when the news of
you know, Charlie's desk with exploding across the net, and
then you know it was the far video and then
there was the up close video of the next shot
and impact, and then you know is massive exanguination. And
(40:28):
this woman was like, oh my gosh, just think of
all the kids who are going to see this. And
I'm like, my kids are going to watch it. I'm
going to to force them to watch it. And she
looked at me as if I was crazy, and I
was like, now, this is the state of things.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
This is our reality.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And I think what really hit me about your piece
and a lot of your pieces for as long as
I've been paying attention, you are a you, and in
this one in particular, you were able to put us
in her seat. And I think, I think, I think
artists have the capacity to do that, right, They put
(41:05):
you inside the emotion, and you know, anybody that you know,
I don't know if I think so many people are
just under what is it, underinformed about what art is
and how it works and where it comes from. Like,
I love that you talk about it. It's just inside
(41:25):
of you. You have to do it like it's the
thing that keeps you up and it's searching for the
answer cognitively, emotionally. Well, when you can do what you
do in those images, man, that transforms people's It deepens
their emotional connection to the moment.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So yeah, there are instances where people would not want
to watch those videos, like you mentioned, it's too horrific.
But then maybe a cartoon is allowing for a level
of abstraction to exist where you're you're taking the lesson
but not It's like putting sugar on the medicine, a
little bit of sugar so that it doesn't taste as
(42:09):
bad or it doesn't haunt you as badly. No, I
don't want to watch that lady get stabbed arena and
bleed out. It's horrifying, it's haunting. But maybe if I
do a little puppet show of it, I can communicate
the horror without having to show people. But there are
some people who just will bury their head in the sand,
(42:31):
and unfortunately I don't think society the world is in
a place where we can keep doing that, because that
just allows the badness to keep growing. I was thinking about,
like a guy, Guys that are in your position, your profession,
with your history and stuff. It's crazy to me to
think like you guys are just as helpless as I am,
(42:53):
even with all your training and everything. I can't imagine
what it must feel like, because if somebody robs you
on the street, it's like, oh, I'll just beat his
ass and get my money back. But there is no
bad guy in front of you. Who are you supposed
to go after when that guy stabbed the lady on
the bus. You can't do anything. You're as helpless as anyone,
(43:15):
and that's especially horrifying. Who do we fight to make
this stop? How do we make ourselves and our families safe?
How do we make a Charlie if someone could get
Charlie that way? We're all vulnerable, which is fine, I
can accept that, but the human mind is not designed
to be under that much stress for that long, especially
(43:37):
without training for that much continuous stress, and people can
go crazy. I'm sure you have a million stories. The
average civilian is not able to handle that kind of stress,
like they end up doing drugs or drinking or who
knows what else kind of just self destructive behavior. Psychologically,
it's like I just want to I'm talking too much. Men.
(44:02):
Men try to hurt other people, and women hurt themselves.
This is a broad generalization, when they're too stressed and
they just need to hurt something. We keep seeing this pattern.
The bad guys need to hurt society, punish society, and
women end up doing self destructive behavior in other ways,
and we just keep spiraling and it's not stopping. And
(44:25):
the only way I can describe it is it's a
spiritual crisis that needs supernatural intervention. So when a guy
like Charlie dies, and I think, okay, if he was
really like a super Christian, he would not want us
to want retribution, at least in terms of like let's
(44:47):
go and get bad let's go get them. He would
say pray for your enemy, just like Jesus would say,
which is a very hard thing to do, very very hard.
But then I think about those passages where it's like Jesus,
we were God's enemies and Jesus died it for us anyway,
So therefore we have to love our enemies. I'm like,
that is so in light of this week. That is
(45:10):
so much harder than it sounds like on text on
a page. Turn the other cheek, but hey, look, we're
going to shoot you in the neck. Are you still
going to turn the other cheek? Oh, that's what happened
to the apostles. They all died almost like they just
let themselves die because that's what Jesus did. It's like, Oh,
that's what it means to be a Christian. Oh, that's
(45:32):
why so many Christians and churches are like falling because
they don't actually believe that. I don't think I can't.
It's hard. I think Charlie did, though.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I hundred percent believe he did. And what I hope
is that, you know, the feeling that everybody's feeling just
makes us want to preach the gospel even more, or
preach even if you can't do that, even if you're
not convint. You know, your conviction of the Gospelism is
(46:03):
where you have the courage to do that. But it's
it's it's bring bring awareness, to bring a dialogue, to
to bring the light right, to expose the insanity of
of the opposition's ideology or the pathology or whatever you
want to describe it, and to bring more attention, to
bring more young people, to bring more UH people. I
(46:26):
don't even know how many videos I saw of supposed
UH liberals saying that's it, I'm done, this is horrific,
this is not okay.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
So you know, you know, in that sacrifice, I e.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
The sacrifice that the apostles all made to martyr themselves
to be spreading the nerd, not to denounce the good news.
You know, that's what Charlie has become an apostle, right,
He sacrificed himself to to bring that that reality to people,
to to you know, to get out there and have dialogue,
to attack these destructive, violent, insidious ideas and dismantle them publicly, right,
(47:08):
to dismantle them in a framework.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
And that's why they went after him.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I mean, that's why he was such a target a
threat because he wasn't advocating for violence. He wasn't trying
regime changes or killing innocent civilians for power grabs. What
he was merely trying to do is say, hey, listen,
you need to rethink about what you're doing, you know,
and I think your your images are triggers for that
(47:34):
because it's and it's a way nobody else can communicate.
Nobody else can communicate the sensation of being in that
seat and being in that girl's mind proposed you know,
I don't know if it's proposedly or I don't know whatever,
but to imagine ourselves in that horror like you were
(47:56):
able to do. And I just, man, I just think,
like that gift and that opportunity, and that's that's your
ability to fight back against these On the other side, right,
it's the the irrational, deranged, delusional thinking.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And on our side, it's it's to temper uh, the
what the the the guttural limbic reaction to want to
seek retribution and revenge violently. I think that's why it's
so important that you continue doing what you're doing and
and and in the ways that you're doing it. Do
(48:37):
you feel any type of kind of that weight to
your work now, especially after this work week.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
I try not to think about it or worry about it.
So like if a strip, if I'm just reading the news,
if I'm submerged in it and something's bothering me, or
if I think of a funny way to twist something,
I'll just draw it as a strip and that'll be
the last time I think about it, hopefully. I don't
(49:05):
want to think about this in terms of big picture
because I think I have a my personality, like, there's
a lot of problems with it. It tends towards narcissism
and pride and stuff. So I don't want to start
thinking like I'm special or anything. I'm not, and I
don't want to let myself think that I am. So
(49:26):
I just do these because I feel compelled to, and
whatever happens happens, I think is going to be my position.
If I'm told like, oh, this is good, you should
keep doing it, and if I'm able financially to keep
doing it, which I am right now, then fine, that's
as far as I care about it. I don't care
about it much further than that. But I do understand
(49:48):
that there's people who are disposed like a Charlie, like
he's a special person. He's got that personality where he
can like I mean, he carries this torch with him,
or carried this torch with him wherever he went, and
people followed, and it's like, oh wow, I'm going to
follow and listen to that guy there's I think I
(50:11):
suppose you could say we all have a role in
this drama, this stage play that we're living in, and
I guess whatever our calling is, just do get up
every morning and do what you can faithfully. I suppose.
I mean that's the way I'm doing it anyway. Charlie
had his calling, if I have mine, fine, So I'm
(50:34):
not I'm not too worried about my role in all this,
but I would like to see a healed world. But
because of my faith, it's you know, it's going to
get worse before it gets better. It's one of those things,
if if the Bible is to be believed. So I'm
just going to continue faithfully as best I can and
(50:54):
not worry about the details because it's out of my hands.
And thank god it's not in my hands, because I
would I would botch it for sure.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, George, I appreciate your sincerity and your comments. I'm
beyond grateful for your talent and what you're doing out there.
You know, where can people go and help support you
and follow you? And then would you have anything coming
(51:25):
in the future other than that job children's book?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Well, I'm on X and Instagram at G Prime eighty five.
I guess I have subscriptions open on x if anyone
wants to subscribe. It's just like a tip jar basically.
And my next project is going to be coming out.
We're expecting the books any minute now, maybe even today.
(51:50):
It's a children's book, a sequel to my first. It's
like a little mouse book for kids. The first one's
called Goofberry Pie. The second one's title has not been
announced yet. So yeah, if you have like kids, I
would say under ten, it's like a fun book to
read to them. They I'm told they love the pictures
and stuff. So yeah, it should be coming out very soon.
(52:11):
We're selling it through my wife's shop, which is at
Polka Dot p O K I d O T Underscore shop.
But we'll be making announcements in the next few days. Well.
With the news being what it is, I don't think
we're gonna announce anything, but it'll be out soon enough.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Awesome, George, thank you so much. Appreciate it. John, keep
art alive. Uh and I just I'm grateful for what
you do, buddy. Thanks for thank you, thank you for
the invite.
There's this argument going on among artists. They're like, oh,
there's no such thing as a conservative artist. They're all leftists,
or you're a silent conservative, that's what is expected out
of you. And I'm not a silent conservative. My name
is out there, It's been out there for a long time.
I don't believe in shutting my mouth. And if no
(00:21):
one wants to hire me, I consider that their problem.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Let's just take that that recent image of the four
box of the girl on the train just tell us
a little bit about how you bring you know, these
these ideas or images to life in your art. One
of the most challenging things, in my opinion, is is
(00:46):
how to capture culture in a way that's outside of
what we're traditionally inundated with with political punditry or you know,
you know, hammering people on you Tube or calling people.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Out, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I think there's always a unique way that can emerge
through a medium that I've been passionate about since I
was a little kid, and that's through art, or that's
through writing or poetry or whatever it might be. And
so today's guest, George Alexopolis is I don't want to
call him a conservative artist or a right wing artist,
(01:27):
because I don't think that's appropriate to constrain any artist
in that measure. But certainly Georgia's images have and are
having a profound impact on kind of the social consciousness
of the conservative movement. His last image, that was posted
two days ago was already has five point four million
(01:51):
views on x and it's an imagery depicting the tragedy
of the Ukrainian girl who was murdered in North Carolina,
the transit boss. So you know, George, I can't thank
you enough for coming on and willing to have a
conversation not only about social commentary, but more importantly about
(02:13):
art and what it means to society.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Thanks for the invite. The pleasure is mine. I promise awesome.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Thank you. Can I just get started.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Every artist that I ever have the opportunity to chat
with or to meet, or that I come across, you know,
I always start with the same question, when did it begin?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
And how did you know you were passionate about art?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, I guess in elementary school, middle school. Let's start elementary.
I think everybody likes drawing, or almost everybody, and it's
just fun. You play around you tell stories. I think
the only difference between someone like myself and my classmates
would have been that I never stopped. So in middle
(03:00):
school I kept drawing cartoons because I wanted to make
my friends laugh at the lunch table. I would show
them my comics and they were terribly drown but they
would laugh and that would encourage me to keep doing it.
And then by the time high school came around, I
realized I'm not a good I was not a good renderer.
I was terrible. So I had to really practice, and
(03:22):
there were better students than me. I said, I'm not
going to get left behind here. I'm going to work
harder and study. And then by senior year it's like, oh,
what are you doing for your career? And I was like, okay,
well I guess I'm going to go to art school
then and that didn't work out, but I started to
take it seriously. Career wise, I didn't know what to do.
There weren't a lot of career paths open to me
(03:44):
for various reasons, but I still pursued it as like,
let's say eight hours a day of practice or as
many hours as I could, thinking eventually something's going to happen.
So I got a couple of chances at making a
big break, but it didn't work out for various reasons,
like the two thousand and seventy eight crash. I was
working with a publisher they went out of business, that
(04:05):
sort of thing. But I was working in the comics world,
and then I ended up in the indie comics world
and just struggling to get my name out there many
years later through various well, I don't know if I'm
getting off track as far as the story goes, but no,
it's wonderful. You know. You do a couple of comics
that go viral or something and then it's like, Okay,
(04:28):
this is what you should be doing. And I was like,
all right, well, I'll spend my time doing this because
I'm not good at anything else. So that's I just
kind of fell into it. I kept doing it never stops,
so here I am.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
I respect that so much. I mean from the same
for me when I was a kid, it was, you know,
my older brother was an artist as well, and we
would sit together and as you know, we were on
road trips with my family in the back of the
station wagon with our giant sketch books. You know, he'd
draw a portion of the picture and then give it
to me, and I draw a portion, and so it
(05:02):
was it was this familial thing with us, and it
was time I got to spend with my brother too,
in this kind of unified endeavor to create some kind
of collective image out of our very thinkly different styles.
And you know, and then and then as it emerged
for me as well, it was like I always drew
(05:23):
these you know, these war scenes of you know, army men,
and and just really had this desire to kind of
capture those images. And you know, and I remember, as
you know, like you said, in that middle school age,
it was it was just keeping the drawing. And for
me it was doodling for many, many years. But I
(05:46):
was the thing that I really enjoyed doing. And I'll
never forget my going into my senior year in high school,
are the guy who ran ap RT and the art
department came to me and it was like, you know, David,
you know, why aren't you in an art class? And
I got I don't know, I didn't think of myself
as an artist.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
And the next thing, you know, it was.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
You know, hey, come in and take ap R to
which I got in a and it was like, wow, Okay,
there's there's a structure to this.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
There's a way to improve on it, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
And and that was something that I felt like, if
it if it had been more of that uh you
know education, Hey, these are all the different facets or angles,
not angles, but pathways that you can go down to
discover something some type of professional endeavor, right utilizing art.
(06:41):
Uh you know, I think that would have been a
lot a lot better because you know, when I went
to college and was an art major, you know, I
was taking the you know, three D design, and I
was taking the classes where you're doing the you know,
the live uh what the still life p then you
know the ugly naked people that would come in for money.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I was doing all this.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Though I though a distraction.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
But but it's like, all right, how is this going
to manifest?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
In art?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And the one place I think, much like you, like,
I always love the idea of cartoony, right, there was
something that could take place. And as a kid, it
was the Garfield strips. It was, uh, you know, all
of those classic ones that you'd had and then you know,
(07:37):
and I even did my own in college. It was
a character I come up with Steymy, and you know,
he'd sit around and rip bong hits and you know,
hang out with his friends type stuff. And but it
was like, all right, how do I manifest this into
a career. How did you get to the space where
you began to realize whoa this is? This is an opportunity?
(07:59):
Was an individual jewel you met? Was it just you?
There was enough information to go down that route where
you're like, oh, wow, this is a viable form of
a profession that I can make money on.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Can I? If I tell you the truth, like, I
still don't know if it is viable. I'm forty years old.
I can't. Every year is different, Like I'm self employed,
so every year I don't know what my income is
going to be depending on what I'm working on. But
that also part of the blame for that is that
(08:34):
I'm not a good business person. But to answer the
question of when it clicked for me, I was struggling
as an indie creator for most of my twenties, just
trying like I was doing a four panel strips in
the style of like a Charlie Brown, Kevin Hubbs sort
of thing for many years, and it was cute, it
(08:56):
was fun. People liked it. My friends and family were supportive,
but it never like blew up. It was years after
that I was thinking about doing a career shift. I
had just gotten married and I was thinking, well, I
can't be doing cartooning for the rest of my life.
I'm not getting any money off of this, and so
I was fooling around posting strips on Reddit of all places,
(09:17):
and I posted a series of strips that got really
famous for almost no reason. It was like a joke
within a joke. They had made me the number one
cartoonist on the website, and I had joked that you
guys are going to cancel me like tomorrow, and they
did because they realized that I was a conservative person whatever,
(09:39):
and they thought I was putting secret messages in my comics.
Long story, but anyway, so they ruined my career. They
just ruined it. Because I was trying to do business
on Reddit for many years, I was getting commissions. Nobody
wanted to talk to me anymore, and so I had
to rebuild my career on Twitter. At the time, that
was twenty eighteen, and I started doing just comic books whatever,
(10:01):
fooling around, and then I did a couple of modern
event strips. The one that really blew up was there
was this Joe Biden strip where he jokes with not jokes.
There's this black woman. She's like, I'm not going to
vote for you, and he says, well, you ain't black,
and he sucks the black out of her.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that one.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
So that was like the big one that everyone like
that blew up a lot. And it was like just
a basic four panel structure and it's arranged in a square,
and that worked so well multiple times. I just kept
doing that, realizing, Okay, my profile's finally growing, this is
what the this is what the market seems to want
(10:40):
right now, and I guess if I'm the guy to
supply it, this is my calling something like that. So
I just kept doing it. And it's been what six
seven eight years, seven years, and I just keep doing it,
and people keep saying we want more, keep at it.
It's like, okay, there's other things I would love to do,
but none of those worked out financially, so this seems
(11:02):
to be the path forward as far as how do
you put it, Like I would joke like, I'm trying.
I keep trying to get water out of a stone.
I keep drilling and trying to find water, and it's like, Okay,
well this is the one place where the water is
coming out, so I'll just keep at it.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It's is fascinating, right when you when you have an
opportunity to chat with people within the arts, you know,
they nobody ever imagines that whatever hits for them ends
up hitting right.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And and you know, next thing, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
You you're you're you know, you're doing this one particular
type of of of of deliverable that people want more
and they have an appetite for. And even though you
know most artists want to move on, you know, to
the next iteration of of or development of their their
their craft, they get locked into this you know, particular
(12:00):
space of creation.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And you know, I would imagine and I do.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Can you describe some of the other characters or books
or things you've worked on in the past.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I saw one video that.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You worked a little bit in gaming, and you were
talking about doing a gaming where you could choose your
own outcome in the games. Can you can you talk
about a little bit of the very ations of where
your craft has gone and what you've chosen or what
you wanted.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Well, yeah, I've worked in the gaming indie gaming, so
I would work with just pals that I met online
and stuff, and it's like, oh, let's make a little game.
There's maybe three of us, maybe ten percent of the
projects ever made it to something that kind of looks
like completion. I've done three D modeling, animation, texture work,
(12:50):
storyboards for movies. I've done comics, published comics. I published
my own comics. I've got children's book coming out hopefully
next week that I spent the last six months on.
It's the sequel to another children's book, and that's for
my wife's business. So that's like on the side. Hopefully
(13:11):
that's decent little income stream. So yeah, I've done pretty
much anything you could do as far as illustration, drawing, animation,
and it's all fun. I like doing it. It's just
the current market is not super fertile ground. There's this
(13:34):
argument going on among artists. They're like, oh, there's no
such thing as a conservative artist because if you work
in the industry where like you're really like, say, I
moved to California or something, They're all leftists, or you're
a silent conservative, that's what is expected out of you.
And I'm not a silent conservative. My name is out there,
(13:56):
it's been out there for a long time. I don't
believe in shutting my mouth. And if no one wants
to hire me, I consider that their problem. I think
I'm talented enough that I would be hirable. But I'm
happy to work. I'm on my own as an independent too,
because I'm so opinionated whatever. But yeah, there's this fake
(14:17):
I don't believe it that there's like no such thing
as a right leaning or conservative artist. I think there's
a lot of us. It's just that we tend to
quit because we realize or we're convinced by our families
rightfully so that like, oh, there's just not a lot
of money in this. And I certainly was told that
by everyone I knew growing up for many years. Like
(14:38):
even when I was thinking about going to art school,
I was told by everybody, don't go go to community college,
get some other degree teaching or something like that, get
a real job. You know, that's the usual thing you hear.
And that's why I get so pissy. I used to
get so pissy. Yet like guys like Matt Walsh that
we talked about. When I hear the echo of get
a real job, I get so angry because I've spent
(15:01):
my whole adult life training for this job. That they
were right, and I hate to admit it, there just
is not a lot of money in it unless you're
in a very specific you allow yourself to be put
into that box of I'm going to be a quiet
conservative living amongst people who hate me and don't let
(15:21):
me talk and see me as like some kind of anyway.
That's another topic, but I don't even remember what the
question was.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
The variable craft that the things you've done, you've explored
with it, and then you know how you've found yourself,
you know, really finding the niche, and I think you
started to move into that, which is, you know, the
distinction between in what was many people consider to be
an overwhelmingly liberal even progressively liberal industry, you know, which
(15:59):
is the irony for me is is profound because when
you think about the places where certain artists have just exploded, right,
whether it's some of the you know, what was it,
what's the couple monster Japanese anime movies that that bebopo
(16:28):
you know Frank Miller's three hundred Since City. You know,
there's there's a there's what, there's an aggressiveness, right that
that's in there. There's an edgy nous, there's a there's
a violent construct that's at at the root of these
social tales that are being told in these heavy stories.
(16:51):
And man, that seems in my mind like a conscious
conservative exposure of reality, whereas you know, the left or
whatever they are, are trying to paint this, you know, uh,
these social justice profiles or whatever they're doing. So you know,
for me, it's like, I never thought of art as
(17:13):
a place where it should be so controlled by one
side or the other. I mean, that's the beauty of art, right,
It's the it's the intersection of of our conscious and
subconscious coming together to uh give commentary about particular events
or ideas within the social hierarchies, to to say something
(17:36):
vividly right. And I think that's what you're for me.
When I first started seeing your stuff, I was like,
oh my god. You know, and I'm a Ben Garrison
guy too. I think it's a lot more. You know,
your your your style is a lot different than his.
I like your style a lot. But it's powerful. I
mean it, you see it and it it. It hits
(17:59):
you to your core with what you're trying to do.
And was there in that process for you where you're
trying to figure out, all right, how am I going
to earn a living doing what I love?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
And then how am I going to earn.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
A living doing what I love in this world that's
controlled by you know, left leaning people? Was it difficult
to just stand your ground and be like to hew
with that, I'm just going to do what I want to.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Do for my personality. It's mandatory, Like I can't I
physically can't be in a situation where like I'm working
for people and I have to shut my mouth while
they're allowed to speak freely. I would not be able
to physically tolerate it for more than a few days
(18:46):
or weeks, I don't know. Like I couldn't be in
an office where they're talking smack about Trump, or let's
say I was working at a place right now where
they were if someone was cheering that Charlie Kirk died, right,
I would be fired immediately after. Like I can't shut
my mouth. I would tell them off so hard, like
I would be yelling until they kicked me out of
(19:07):
the building. If I was working in a place, how
do I put it, I would rather work on my
own and be a starving artist, even though I'd like
to do well and you know, not be a starving artist,
but like it's more important to me as a creative person.
It's like I have to do this. I have to
(19:28):
be this person. I don't know why. I was listening
to your discussion with Sean Ryan. You were talking about
you were studying like van Go and stuff, and that
was one of and even Bokowski too. These are guys
that are like borderline, like they're quite unwell in some cases,
(19:49):
especially van Go, and it's like he just for some
reason needed to do what he did and he never
made money at it, and of course he famously ended
his life. But like there is some germ of that
in my head, not like to that extreme, but I
have to do whatever path that is. I have to
(20:11):
do it, and I don't know why, and sometimes it hurts,
and sometimes I'm thirsty and hungry, but I have to
keep doing it for whatever reason. So when I hear
about Van Goh never selling a painting until after he
was dead, it's ironic to me, but I understand memetically
why that happened. People want to buy pieces of history.
(20:32):
They don't care so much about the art itself. So
when they saw his paintings while he was alive, I
don't think they understood what they were seeing. They just
saw badly drawn, badly painted images that kind of look childish.
But then that coincided with the Sigmund Freud era of
(20:53):
psychology and illustration as a way of illuminating this subconscious
Young was very was not around. They were contemporary or
close to each other.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
He was.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
He was a protege of Freud, actually worked with him
for years.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, and I don't know what year that was. I
want to say late eighteen hundreds, so Van Goh would
have been a few years before that maybe, But when
psychology and art met, that also coincided with the rise
of photography and, in my opinion, death of painting or
the the irreconcilably changed. Painting changed from a photography substitute
(21:33):
to now we're expressing ourselves right, and photography completely took
over anyway, So then people valued Van Goh's paintings because
of the psychological meaning and historical meaning here is this
sad story of a guy who killed himself because no
one bought his paintings. I must have it right, right.
(21:54):
He was the impressionists. His contemporaries couldn't stand him because
he was so well. A lot of the times, I
can't remember who he lived with.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Okay, yeah, I thought it was either what says honor one.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Of those guys. Yeah, he lived with him in Paris.
His brother couldn't Did you read that? Was it theo?
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Like he could not be tolerated. You couldn't be around
him as a person.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Well, he's intolerable, institutionalized the most a ton of times,
like twice three, two times because of it.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But he's regarded as, you know, one of those geniuses.
It's so weird. Not that I would ever compare myself
to that, but it's like, I understand why people like
that do what they do.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You have a lot of choices for cell phone service, man,
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I see new ones popping up all the time. But
here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
There's only one that boldly stands in the gap for
every American that believes freedom, and you better believe that.
I believe freedom is worth fighting for. Because I've done it,
and that phone carrier is Patriot Mobile. The good news
is you can switch to Patriot Mobile today without sacrificing
quality or your service. Now are you worried about your coverage,
(23:17):
Well enough, don't be. Patriot Mobile uses all three major
US networks. If you have service in this country today,
you'll have as good or better coverage with Patriot Mobile.
Think switching is a hassle, Well it ain't. You can
keep your number, you can keep your phone, or if
(23:38):
you want, you can upgrade. Patriot Mobiles one hundred percent
US based team will get you activated in just a
few minutes. And guess what you can do it from
the comfort of your own home. Stuck in a contract
or do you owe money on your phones? Well there's
no worry there. Patriot Mobile has a contract buyout program.
(24:01):
This is how we win, folks by aligning our spending
dollars with our values.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Every single dollar we spend matters when it comes to America.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Go to Patriotmobile dot com, forward slash Rutherford or call
ninety seven to two Patriot Now here's Neil. Use promo
code Rutherford. That's r U T H E, R F
O R D and get a free month of service
now switch today. I'm telling you what that free month
is yours with promo code Rutherford. That's Patriotmobile dot Com
(24:35):
forward slash Rutherford or simply call nine seven to two
Patriot God Bless America. Who yah it is? That's I
think that's the crux of of what so many I mean,
obviously you know, very few people. Although I think it's
(24:55):
it's expanding more now with digital or I think it's
really I feel like the the reach of art, even
though it's been dramatically reduced in our educational system right
uh in K through twelve in particular, I mean obviously
K through four or five there's still art classes or whatever,
(25:16):
but it's you know, the development of art, art history,
that that kind of thing has been minimized pretty significantly
within high school for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I it's I think digital art in anime and man manga, manga.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I'm saying that I always say that wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
You know, there's there's a movement, and now with AI,
I think there's a uh you know, maybe it'll be
a revitalization and we'll have more of those people that
are living in that What what would be the appropriate
we are living in that sense of of retract the
(26:00):
capability right where there's this energy inside of them driving
a need to express themselves, but they're not quite sure
how to do it, where to do it, why to
do it, or in what capacity to do it? And
so I feel like now is an opportunity for so
many more people to figure out how to create. I mean,
(26:20):
obviously you see the explosion of creators or whoever on YouTube, Instagram,
you know, all the different social media. But it's like,
is there more and more unique artists emerging through these
new kind of technological capabilities. I mean, you're immersed in
that world. You're paying I don't know if you are
(26:42):
paying close attention to what's popping, what's not Popping's what's
gaining the rounds in terms of views or likes or
what or the markets of what's being sold. But what
are you saying as as the modern era of art
and technological art is emerging, you've seen that's kind of
(27:02):
gaining relevance in your opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
As far as popularity, I mean, obviously AI is making
it's completely shattering, it's threatening to shatter the entire industry,
including mine. So I don't like AI for personal reasons.
It is a tool. That tool that's another hot word too.
People use it and they say that I'm an artist,
(27:30):
and uh, it's it's a whole two hour discussion in itself.
How do I even begin.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I believe it's not going to replace artists. I just
don't think it is. I think I think what it'll
be is there'll be a stamp you know or something
you know, because the art will be could like you
just sit in reference with Van Gogh, the art is
connected to the individual, and I think, like you right,
your art is connected to you. And I think the
(28:00):
more the public begins to get to know you and
understand your stance and where you're at your commentary about
if I worked in an office and someone made a
horrific comment about Charlie Kirk's.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Death, I would go off.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So now those images that people are seeing, and this
is my hope with doing the interview with you, is
that they're going to start to connect the individual with
the art. And I don't think AI is going to
be able to replace that. I think it'll it'll make
a hardcore run at it, but I don't think it'll
reprice it replace.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
No. I think it's something like it will give everyone.
Like naysayers will say photography didn't replace painting. Paintings still exists,
but I would argue that painters had a lot more
opportunities for jobs before photography became a thing. And then
when people realize that I could just take a picture
(28:53):
of my family a it's cheaper, I understand that it's
like a painting. It's better than paintings. Now you can
record people in video. Now it's paintings kind of like
a niche thing. It's It's the way I would compare
AI if there is an artist next to me that
said I'm gonna use AI to help me train and
(29:16):
do better images, and they don't train as hard as
another artist. It's like if I'm climbing a mountain and
then I go on foot all the way to the
peak and I say I climbed this mountain, versus they
take a helicopter up to the peak and say, oh,
I made it to the peak, but did they climb it.
It's not life and death. It's not serious. But like
(29:39):
for the people who have spent their whole life and
want to spend their whole lives dedicating themselves to the discipline.
Like I compare it, this is really corny, but like
I'm a huge fan of this series called Vagabond. It's
a manga series about Miyamoto Musashi, and it's all about
like for him, the Way of the Sword and all
(30:00):
cheesy stuff, but like the whole point of it is
to learn about yourself and gain enlightenment, and it's about
the journey. So you're studying this art for your whole life,
and it is tempering you as a person, and the
whole journey is the point of it. If someone uses
AI to get really good at rendering, that's not the
(30:23):
same thing as devoting yourself to the discipline. It's like
buying a black belt versus earning a black belt. So
I realized, like when someone argues with me that they're
using AI and they're just using it to illustrate what's
in their head.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
If everyone uses AI and clients decide to use it,
then people like me. Let's say I was twenty years
old and I'm losing jobs to AI people, I would
maybe be discouraged from pushing it, pushing my career to
my forties, So I'm losing twenty years of practice whereas
now it's too late for me. I've already put in
(31:01):
the practice. I'm not going to ever use AI. I'm
never going to touch it. So I'm a stubborn middle
aged guy whatever. I'm getting older and I'm never going
to touch it because I value the path of the artist,
the way of the sword. Whatever. Yeah, oh it's true,
but that's you know, I realize I may be one
(31:24):
of the last people who are I think that way.
The generation after me. If you're twenty years old right
now practicing, you may use AI and I don't know.
It's like swords versus guns. Guns will beat swords. But
I'm devoting myself to the sword anyway, even if I'm outclassed.
(31:45):
What can I do about that?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Well, I think there's nobility in that and that that'll
drive more people towards towards you. I mean, there's you know, obviously,
art is a niche thing anyways, in terms of of
people's opinion and what they see as art versus another
person and what they see as art. I think, you know,
(32:07):
the same thing is is potentially going to happen in
music and film and you know, maybe not theater obviously,
but you.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Know, I just I believe.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That there's going to be a large contingency of people
that are going to always seek out, you know, the
guy who cuts his ear.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Off, you know.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
And I think that's just that the correlation of the
human soul and the art is what makes the art beautiful.
And so I, you know, I I hope it doesn't happen.
I think, you know, you're a lot of your your
The probability of it is certainly there. But I also
still think that people are seeking out you know, you
(32:53):
know what what you're doing. I mean, I obviously you're
following is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
How, how when you the process, like let's just take
that that recent image of the four box of the
girl on the train, you know, talk to us about
the process of seeing her video or whatever it is,
(33:21):
how it hits you, what you do and how you
come up, how you go through the process, if you
want to get technical, not technical, how you frame it
out in your head. Just tell us a little bit
about how you bring you know, these these ideas or
images to life in your art.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I mean, I consider these strips diary entries more than
people call Some people try to call it memes or something.
They're not. I'm just expressing. I read the news constantly.
I'm a huge news like freak, mostly because I'm It's
like with nine to eleven, I was comparing the Charlie
(33:59):
Kirkton and now I couldn't stop looking at the news.
I think because subconsciously, I'm so afraid that I need
to have every little piece of information in case I
have to do something. But what am I going to do.
I'm not going to dodge a bullet. So I am
obsessively looking at the news. And last earlier this week
it was the Arena story with she got slashed or
(34:20):
stabbed or whatever, and man, I could not I have
not slept properly this week at all. Like yeah, I've
been crying for no reason, not for no reason, Like
I have this room behind me. I know I'm telling
this story this little quiet room, I have my little
zen room, and I'm just sitting there for I've been
sitting there for hours just staring and listening to the
(34:43):
news and like really like getting emotionally like I'm wrecked.
I can't sleep. So first thing this week was the
Arena story she gets stabbed, and it's just the saddest
thing like I've seen in a long time, and it's
so pathetic and sad the way she died, and it's
like it's bothering me. I need an exorcism. And so
(35:04):
I'm thinking, like, well, I have to draw something because
I need to get this out of me. I need
to sleep. There's something that's trying to come out and
I don't know what it is. And I keep like thinking, Okay,
is this somebody? What if this is someone I love
that got stabbed like that? That's very sad. What if
it's me? So the next thought was, okay, I'll put
(35:27):
myself in her shoes. Okay, we're looking at her POV.
What is she looking at her phone? Next thing, she
knows she's getting hit by something. Looks up, there's this
fucking sorry for cursing, this demon looking down at her.
Next thing, she looks down. She's bleeding to death. Maybe
she's got fifteen seconds left, and then she just cries.
Saddest thing I've seen in a long time. So like, okay,
(35:49):
that's for one, two, three, four, that's four panels. I'll
just draw that, and I treat every strip of the
same couple hours only takes a couple hours to do them,
and then I just draw it, I upload it, and
then hopefully other people get something out of it meaningfully,
you know, they get some meaning out of it, and
(36:10):
in this case, a lot of people were talking about
it NonStop, so it just it struck the bulls eye.
I don't care about the fame, I don't care about
the numbers. I just needed to get it out of me.
And it was so sad. And then of course Charlie
Kirk was like the next no, it was the same
day I put that strip. It was later that day.
(36:32):
So that's been the week. That's been this week, I
have not I woke up at four thirty this morning,
I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
My cat woke me up to.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And yeah, it's just it's been a hell of a week.
And sometimes when you're going through pain, whatever difficult stuff,
the best thing to do is try to try to
manage it. Is to somehow express it, get it out
of you, kind of like a puzzle that you're trying
to solve, just so that it's not bouncing around in
(37:03):
your head. Put it in a physical form, even just
write it down like a poem or a short story.
Get it out and then maybe your brain can say
I can stop worrying about this. I've put it in
a box here, so I'll do my strips there. It's uploaded,
it's done. I'm going to try to not worry about
it anymore. But you know, we live in weird times
(37:26):
where something's always going to be I think it's going
to get worse. Uh, I don't know. So I don't know.
I don't know what's going to keep if it's going
to keep happening. But yeah, I don't care so much
about the numbers, you know, fame whatever, who cares. But
if people get something out of it, I think that's
probably good. If it helps people would message me DM
(37:49):
me and say like your strip made me cry or something,
It's like, well, I guess that's probably good. Yeah, you know,
it helps. It helps with the managing because like I'm
talking too much now, but at a death in the family,
like a a couple of years ago, and I was
not able to cry at the time, and I don't
(38:10):
think that's healthy. I think people should cry, because if
you don't, I think it manifests negatively in other ways.
So it's good to try to get it out. So
If the strip helped people, that's good. That's a good thing.
They're not supposed to be funny. You know, there's no
joke here.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
I'll tell you what. It helped me for sure. It
was one of the first things that came across my feed.
And you know, I did a show that'll that'll drop
on a few days where I had hit a pretty
significant place of outrage. And you know, I think, as
(38:54):
we are viewing, you know this, this vitriol, this insiduousness
that's permeating across our society, and I think into a
granderstin around the world. I mean, I mean take five
seconds and look at Ukraine, right, you know, two million
plus young men have been annihilated over nothing. You look
(39:19):
at what's going on in Israel. You look at what's
going on Scotland, Britain, Scotland, Britain. That that girl, I mean,
that was another one you did with the girl with
the hatchet and the knife, and you know, I did
a little piece and posted that and it's gotten several
hundred thousand views on it, and you know, I think
(39:42):
what it is is what you're feeling. A lot a
lot of people are feeling. I'm feeling it, and I
think the beauty of art is art can encapsulate those
feelings beyond the what is it the surreal horror of
(40:04):
the video we watch? I mean, you know, I remember
I was at a volleyball game when the news of
you know, Charlie's desk with exploding across the net, and
then you know it was the far video and then
there was the up close video of the next shot
and impact, and then you know is massive exanguination. And
(40:28):
this woman was like, oh my gosh, just think of
all the kids who are going to see this. And
I'm like, my kids are going to watch it. I'm
going to to force them to watch it. And she
looked at me as if I was crazy, and I
was like, now, this is the state of things.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
This is our reality.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And I think what really hit me about your piece
and a lot of your pieces for as long as
I've been paying attention, you are a you, and in
this one in particular, you were able to put us
in her seat. And I think, I think, I think
artists have the capacity to do that, right, They put
(41:05):
you inside the emotion, and you know, anybody that you know,
I don't know if I think so many people are
just under what is it, underinformed about what art is
and how it works and where it comes from. Like,
I love that you talk about it. It's just inside
(41:25):
of you. You have to do it like it's the
thing that keeps you up and it's searching for the
answer cognitively, emotionally. Well, when you can do what you
do in those images, man, that transforms people's It deepens
their emotional connection to the moment.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
So yeah, there are instances where people would not want
to watch those videos, like you mentioned, it's too horrific.
But then maybe a cartoon is allowing for a level
of abstraction to exist where you're you're taking the lesson
but not It's like putting sugar on the medicine, a
little bit of sugar so that it doesn't taste as
(42:09):
bad or it doesn't haunt you as badly. No, I
don't want to watch that lady get stabbed arena and
bleed out. It's horrifying, it's haunting. But maybe if I
do a little puppet show of it, I can communicate
the horror without having to show people. But there are
some people who just will bury their head in the sand,
(42:31):
and unfortunately I don't think society the world is in
a place where we can keep doing that, because that
just allows the badness to keep growing. I was thinking about,
like a guy, Guys that are in your position, your profession,
with your history and stuff. It's crazy to me to
think like you guys are just as helpless as I am,
(42:53):
even with all your training and everything. I can't imagine
what it must feel like, because if somebody robs you
on the street, it's like, oh, I'll just beat his
ass and get my money back. But there is no
bad guy in front of you. Who are you supposed
to go after when that guy stabbed the lady on
the bus. You can't do anything. You're as helpless as anyone,
(43:15):
and that's especially horrifying. Who do we fight to make
this stop? How do we make ourselves and our families safe?
How do we make a Charlie if someone could get
Charlie that way? We're all vulnerable, which is fine, I
can accept that, but the human mind is not designed
to be under that much stress for that long, especially
(43:37):
without training for that much continuous stress, and people can
go crazy. I'm sure you have a million stories. The
average civilian is not able to handle that kind of stress,
like they end up doing drugs or drinking or who
knows what else kind of just self destructive behavior. Psychologically,
it's like I just want to I'm talking too much. Men.
(44:02):
Men try to hurt other people, and women hurt themselves.
This is a broad generalization, when they're too stressed and
they just need to hurt something. We keep seeing this pattern.
The bad guys need to hurt society, punish society, and
women end up doing self destructive behavior in other ways,
and we just keep spiraling and it's not stopping. And
(44:25):
the only way I can describe it is it's a
spiritual crisis that needs supernatural intervention. So when a guy
like Charlie dies, and I think, okay, if he was
really like a super Christian, he would not want us
to want retribution, at least in terms of like let's
(44:47):
go and get bad let's go get them. He would
say pray for your enemy, just like Jesus would say,
which is a very hard thing to do, very very hard.
But then I think about those passages where it's like Jesus,
we were God's enemies and Jesus died it for us anyway,
So therefore we have to love our enemies. I'm like,
that is so in light of this week. That is
(45:10):
so much harder than it sounds like on text on
a page. Turn the other cheek, but hey, look, we're
going to shoot you in the neck. Are you still
going to turn the other cheek? Oh, that's what happened
to the apostles. They all died almost like they just
let themselves die because that's what Jesus did. It's like, Oh,
that's what it means to be a Christian. Oh, that's
(45:32):
why so many Christians and churches are like falling because
they don't actually believe that. I don't think I can't.
It's hard. I think Charlie did, though.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I hundred percent believe he did. And what I hope
is that, you know, the feeling that everybody's feeling just
makes us want to preach the gospel even more, or
preach even if you can't do that, even if you're
not convint. You know, your conviction of the Gospelism is
(46:03):
where you have the courage to do that. But it's
it's it's bring bring awareness, to bring a dialogue, to
to bring the light right, to expose the insanity of
of the opposition's ideology or the pathology or whatever you
want to describe it, and to bring more attention, to
bring more young people, to bring more UH people. I
(46:26):
don't even know how many videos I saw of supposed
UH liberals saying that's it, I'm done, this is horrific,
this is not okay.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
So you know, you know, in that sacrifice, I e.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
The sacrifice that the apostles all made to martyr themselves
to be spreading the nerd, not to denounce the good news.
You know, that's what Charlie has become an apostle, right,
He sacrificed himself to to bring that that reality to people,
to to you know, to get out there and have dialogue,
to attack these destructive, violent, insidious ideas and dismantle them publicly, right,
(47:08):
to dismantle them in a framework.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
And that's why they went after him.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I mean, that's why he was such a target a
threat because he wasn't advocating for violence. He wasn't trying
regime changes or killing innocent civilians for power grabs. What
he was merely trying to do is say, hey, listen,
you need to rethink about what you're doing, you know,
and I think your your images are triggers for that
(47:34):
because it's and it's a way nobody else can communicate.
Nobody else can communicate the sensation of being in that
seat and being in that girl's mind proposed you know,
I don't know if it's proposedly or I don't know whatever,
but to imagine ourselves in that horror like you were
(47:56):
able to do. And I just, man, I just think,
like that gift and that opportunity, and that's that's your
ability to fight back against these On the other side, right,
it's the the irrational, deranged, delusional thinking.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And on our side, it's it's to temper uh, the
what the the the guttural limbic reaction to want to
seek retribution and revenge violently. I think that's why it's
so important that you continue doing what you're doing and
and and in the ways that you're doing it. Do
(48:37):
you feel any type of kind of that weight to
your work now, especially after this work week.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
I try not to think about it or worry about it.
So like if a strip, if I'm just reading the news,
if I'm submerged in it and something's bothering me, or
if I think of a funny way to twist something,
I'll just draw it as a strip and that'll be
the last time I think about it, hopefully. I don't
(49:05):
want to think about this in terms of big picture
because I think I have a my personality, like, there's
a lot of problems with it. It tends towards narcissism
and pride and stuff. So I don't want to start
thinking like I'm special or anything. I'm not, and I
don't want to let myself think that I am. So
(49:26):
I just do these because I feel compelled to, and
whatever happens happens, I think is going to be my position.
If I'm told like, oh, this is good, you should
keep doing it, and if I'm able financially to keep
doing it, which I am right now, then fine, that's
as far as I care about it. I don't care
about it much further than that. But I do understand
(49:48):
that there's people who are disposed like a Charlie, like
he's a special person. He's got that personality where he
can like I mean, he carries this torch with him,
or carried this torch with him wherever he went, and
people followed, and it's like, oh wow, I'm going to
follow and listen to that guy there's I think I
(50:11):
suppose you could say we all have a role in
this drama, this stage play that we're living in, and
I guess whatever our calling is, just do get up
every morning and do what you can faithfully. I suppose.
I mean that's the way I'm doing it anyway. Charlie
had his calling, if I have mine, fine, So I'm
(50:34):
not I'm not too worried about my role in all this,
but I would like to see a healed world. But
because of my faith, it's you know, it's going to
get worse before it gets better. It's one of those things,
if if the Bible is to be believed. So I'm
just going to continue faithfully as best I can and
(50:54):
not worry about the details because it's out of my hands.
And thank god it's not in my hands, because I
would I would botch it for sure.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Well, George, I appreciate your sincerity and your comments. I'm
beyond grateful for your talent and what you're doing out there.
You know, where can people go and help support you
and follow you? And then would you have anything coming
(51:25):
in the future other than that job children's book?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Well, I'm on X and Instagram at G Prime eighty five.
I guess I have subscriptions open on x if anyone
wants to subscribe. It's just like a tip jar basically.
And my next project is going to be coming out.
We're expecting the books any minute now, maybe even today.
(51:50):
It's a children's book, a sequel to my first. It's
like a little mouse book for kids. The first one's
called Goofberry Pie. The second one's title has not been
announced yet. So yeah, if you have like kids, I
would say under ten, it's like a fun book to
read to them. They I'm told they love the pictures
and stuff. So yeah, it should be coming out very soon.
(52:11):
We're selling it through my wife's shop, which is at
Polka Dot p O K I d O T Underscore shop.
But we'll be making announcements in the next few days. Well.
With the news being what it is, I don't think
we're gonna announce anything, but it'll be out soon enough.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Awesome, George, thank you so much. Appreciate it. John, keep
art alive. Uh and I just I'm grateful for what
you do, buddy. Thanks for thank you, thank you for
the invite.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.