Episode #226 - Alex Krainer and Navigating Out of the Tyranny of Safety - Gold Goats 'n Guns Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hello, and welcome to the Gold, Goats and Guns podcast
for August first, twenty twenty five. My name is Tom
long Ago. We have a lot to talk about, and
we do and it's going to be fun today because
I have a great pleasure of catching up with my
good friend Alex Craner, who I haven't spoken to in
nearly probably a little over months. It is the last
time we did Crypto Richest show. Alex. How are you
how you been.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Doing really well? Tom, Thank you for the invite. Good
to be with you again, and as always Warren Greetings
to your viewers and listeners from Croatia. This time excellent.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So you're so, are you back home or are you.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Just on a semi vacation. You know, my kids, it's
it's school vacation, so take advantage to spend some time
with the family. For the first time in five years,
I've actually done something vacationing. I went on a little
sailboat and we just hopped from Island Twiland for a week,
which was really nice.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, you know, it's funny, Alex you say that. I
I remember when we were up in Calgary, and I
remember we were at dinner, like multiple multiple nights, You're like,
I got a run. I can't go out to I
can't go back to the bar to or go back
to the hotel. In chapters, I've got work to do.
And it was like eleven o'clock and I looked at
you at one point of Alex, it's time to slot out,

(01:37):
my friend, Like, seriously, I used to work like you,
and I know what that looked like. But I you know,
when I was in writer Dimo, back when we first
started Gold Goods and Guns, I literally worked seven days
a week, thirteen to fifteen hours a day.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's good Jesus. That's my life, tom
right right life. So I, yeah, this is this was
so deliberate because I was, you know, I was. I
was feeling myself on the verge of a burnout actually
at some point, and a few people actually warn me,
you know, you don't want to do that, because you're
gonna have a very hard time putting yourself back together.

(02:11):
So I I thought, you know, I I need to
I need to like cut myself off a little bit
at least for a for a week and take well,
you know, vacation. It means I did two to three
hours of work a day and the rest I was
cut off. And it was it was actually brilliant because

(02:33):
we went, you know, hopping from island to island, of
which they are about a thousand. In Croatia, there's about
a thousand islands, so there's no shortage of where we're
gonna go, right, and it was it was really nice
because some of these islands are it's like a like
a world in itself, you know, it's it's it's it's

(02:54):
on it's own place. It's like time stopped at some
point seven his eighties, nineties, I don't know when. But
so we we hit this island called is right, it's
spelled I Z with a little with a little v
accent on top of the z I H, let's say.

(03:15):
And the place is it's a tiny island and the
place is famous for the Chris Novoselch, the bass player
from Nirvana, is from there and he lives there now.
And we spend the day there and the you know,

(03:36):
first thing I noticed is there's no bars on any
houses anywhere. You know, the windows, even on the ground floor,
they're just windows. They're open. There's no bars on doors.
There's like nothing. And then in late afternoon evening hours
until late late in the evening until practically eleven midnight.
The place is chock full of children, so it's like

(03:59):
children every where. I thought, like, gosh, and you know,
like free roaming children. There's no parents taking care of them.
They're just like going everywhere by themselves. And I thought,
these people really feel safe here, isn't That's strange? And
and and and and then the next day we go
out for a coffee and asked one of the locals, like,

(04:19):
how much police is there on this island, and you know,
the number is zero. There is no police on the island.
So I thought, huh, these people feel perfectly safe here,
yet there is no police there. And you know, it

(04:40):
made me think because the way, the way we gradually
lose our freedoms in the West, little by little, inexorably
for decades now, is they always do stuff for our safety.
You know, we're gonna force you to make wear a
face mask for your safety. We're gonna force you to

(05:00):
take a vaccine for your safety. We're gonna disarm you
for your safety, and on and on and on and
on and on, and then we're gonna stick you into
a fifteen minute city for your safety. And we're gonna
force you to have a digital ID for your safety.
And then we're going to force you to use CBDCs
for your safety because guess what, the criminals and the terrorists,

(05:23):
they fund their activities by using cash, So we're gonna
eliminate cash for your safety and so forth.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
You see what is yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
No, And you live in a police state under surveillance.
The cameras are everywhere, your your smart device is keeping
track of everything you do. They're listening to every word
you say, and so forth, all for our safety. And
then you know, like you find yourself on this island
where safety is not even the remotest concern of everybody.

(05:55):
Their concern is just chilling, and the children are just playing,
and the whole rhythm of life is I you know,
slow is not the right word. It's not that it's slow.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
It's that the scheduling of activities is subordinated to the
requirements of life rather than the inverse.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
You know, like life is subordinated to the requirements of
your scheduling, and everybody feels perfectly comfortable and safe. Well
I shouldn't say comfortable, because I don't know. Maybe you know,
maybe there are people there that struggle with this and that,
who knows, But nobody feels unsafe, and nobody's worried, like,

(06:44):
oh my god, where's my kid. I don't you know?
My kid's not in my visual field? Right, everybody's like whatever.
The kids somewhere on the island, they'll they'll come back
when they're hungry or right. Yeah, And so that really
made me ponder, that really made me say, you know,
and I wrote on my blog, on my on my

(07:04):
substack a few articles I think on the whole question
of freedom, what the hell is it? And you know,
when you're there, when you're in it, then you realize,
uh huh, yeah, this kind of this kind of feels
awful like that, you know, like like stepping outside of

(07:28):
the matrix. Anyway, anyway, I thought I thought i'd share
that because you know, all our discussion kind of vaguely
revolve around these things, because you know, we pay we
pay attention to the monetary issues, to the government issues,
to all of these things because why because we want
a better life, because we want to be free, because
we want to be prosperous and so on. But we

(07:50):
are face to face with this giant, ugly juggernaut that
is like penning us in tighter and tighter and tighter,
all in the name of our safety. But safety isn't
really an issue. I mean, like, if you live on
an island where there's zero police and nobody feels unsafe,

(08:13):
we got something wrong, you know, something got inverted on us.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah. Yeah, No, this is a great, great, great discussion.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
So it's taking me back to the to the days
when I was I really spent a lot of time
thinking about and trying to really hone in on all
the consequences of what you would consider quote unquote the
good parts of libertarianism and freedom and all, and the
individualist ideology and and you know, and then there's the there,

(08:44):
there's the end, there's the weird purity spilt portion of it.
But it's this, it's that it took me back to
thinking about, you know, what are laws, Why do we
have them? What do they do? You know, at a
at a kind of functional level, at a very practical level,
what's a law state? For you? It states the limit

(09:06):
of which you're allowed to aggress somebody else. Everybody thinks
of it from the top down. What are we stopping
people from doing, which you have to think about is
from the opposite perspective. It's the limit, and the easier
way to look at it is to say, the easiest
way is to talk about pollution. For example, like, you know,
the law says you can have you know no more

(09:27):
than you know one part per billion lead and you're
drinking water. Okay, great, That means that anybody can pollute
up to one part per billion. There may be people
out there who want half a part per billion. There
may be people out there who are okay with poisoning
themselves with two parts per billion. But at the end
of the day, we wrote a rule. Now you can
make the argument, we have to come up with some
practical limit, YadA, gada, YadA. But when you start to
use that, when you define that limit, and then you

(09:49):
can write a law, and then you empower lawyers, and
then you empower cops, and then you empower people to
enforce that law. All of a sudden, now they become
the folk of the law and not the intention of
the law itself, which was to stop people from drinking
poisoned water. We can lose the mission, cre we lose
the point of the mission, and so so much of

(10:11):
what you and I talk about, and what I try
to try to remind everybody about when i'm you know,
when I'm on on the microphone, is that's what we're
dealing with here, right. Everybody wants to hear what we
have to say about what's going to happen, you know, tomorrow,
what what Trump said yesterday or this or anything else.
But that's not what the goal is. The mission is
to highlight where we've gone wrong as a society and

(10:34):
where those what I what I like to call power
gradients exist to separate the people from their rights by
inserting middleman in that get to take all the power,
arrogate all the wealth and then tell you what to do.
And that's and then when you get an object lesson
of oh, I get to sit here in an on

(10:56):
an island off the coast of Croatia with zero cops
because you know, you basically found the Croatian version of
the Shire where you know, if you look, you know
from Tolkien, like the sheriffs and the shire like there
were a couple of them and no one who really
listened to them. If you listen, if you read, if
you if you go back and read Tolkien. He talks
about it like the sheriff is this guy that kind
of goes around and collects, you know, any of the problems,

(11:19):
the complaints that people have with each other, sits them
down at the pub and they hash it out over
a pint. That's old you know, the old English, you know,
and that's the metaphor there. It's the same kind of
thing if you you know there inevitably there are going
to be conflicts between people. You know, it's going to happen,
you know, and you know what we should be figuring

(11:39):
out is conflict resolutions should be as individually based as
possible and situationally based as possible. In the moment between
the people who are there, they get to determine what
is and is not, you know, aggression or crime or this,
and the community can then reinforce what you know, the

(11:59):
where that idea lies. Right, So you have might have
one big I might be the curmudgeon and says get
off my lit right that guy. I may be that guy,
and you may be the guy. I was like, you know, look,
it's just my kids. And then did they harm anything?
And then we do this thing? And then I complained
to this year if you and I get together and
we have to hash it out and the community stands

(12:20):
around and goes, Tom, you're being a dick like Alex,
isn't you know? You know, Alex's kids aren't hurting anything.
You know, this is what we're gonna do here, So
you're you're not You're not wrong because it's your property.
But at the same time, dude, you know, chill the
fuck out, you know, and and and you know, I'm
gonna bear the social consequence of treating your kids battly

(12:41):
by everybody not talking to me, and then eventually that's
why that's exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
That's exactly it. So you see the reason why, well,
you know, I thought about this, and I thought, the
reason why everybody's so chilled out with like their kids
being somewhere on the island whatever with their friends, you know, playing,
is because if somebody harmed the child, the locals, the

(13:10):
parents would find them and beat them to a bloody pope.
So nobody dares. If somebody broke into somebody else's house,
the same would happen. So that's why you don't need
bars on your windows and you don't don't need police
for that. And it's not like everybody. Every week, somebody
gets beat to a bloody pop. It's understood. So nobody

(13:30):
even does it. Nobody crosses the limits, which brings you
back to how do we even get along? We get
along because we've got the natural law baked into our system.
It's hardwired in us, and it's a very simple thing.
It says, act with honor and do no harm. And
so you know what it means to act with honor

(13:54):
in everyday life, and you know that you shouldn't harm
your your friends, your names, people around you. And so
nobody does and everybody understands that if somebody does do that,
they're gonna, you know, ruin the things for everybody, not
just for themselves, and they're going to pay the consequences.
Whereas you know, like if you if you where we

(14:16):
are in the western world now we have a kind
of a two tier justice system where if you're if
you're a certain class of person, you can practically count
with impunity no matter no matter what you do, and
if you're an ordinary person you might end up with
the prison sentence for shoplifting and like like a stiff one. Anyway,

(14:40):
you know, you're right.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
You used to call this an arc tyranny rules for
thee and not for me. Right, yeah, and and what's
it what what? What's what's important on all of that
that you you just touched on, Alex is that the
idea is that you know, as you know, you create

(15:04):
that limit of you know, aggression that people are to have,
and then the people can hide behind the limit of
that aggression. So you write the law. I think you
and I were talking about this before we started the
before we hit record. I use the example because and
to the example that I've been using for a long time,
because I used to be a bench chemist and analyzing
people's water. So pollution, for example, is a perfect example

(15:27):
of how, you know, how how left this left style
status will argue that we have to regulate the society.
I've run into this many many times living just north
of Gainesville, Florida. I used to do libertarian politics in Gainsville,
Florida with open communists sitting on the commission. And so

(15:47):
perfect example of you write a law that says we
can't have that there's the upper limit of lead in
your drinking water is one part per billion or something
along something along those lines. Now, let's let's make it
five parts per million because that's actually dangerous. Right, So
you write a law that's that level for whatever reason
at the time. It could be, you know, for technology,
technological reasons, we can't see it down that low, or whatever,

(16:10):
but there it is. You write the law, and now
all of a sudden, you might you may not want to,
you know, have five pp park PPB in your drinking
water issued by the city. I might be good with
ten because I don't care, because I hate myself and
I don't give it. I don't care, and I like
neurological damage. So you know, the person what the rule

(16:31):
does is said, well, if I'm the lead, I'm the
guy dumping lead into the wastewater, and I'm the guy
working the wastewater treatment plant, I won don't even care.
If it's all I care about is that the number
comes up below five, even though four point nine is
still just as dangerous as five point one. Right. So
now you've empowered an entire group of people. Right, You've

(16:55):
empowered the bureaucrat who and the analyst that you to
be me that you make, you give them make work
jobs to test all this water. And then then you
empower the lawyers and the cops and the county commissioners
and the water management districts and the state legislatures and
the governor and all of these, and you set in
motion off one little rule, this whole chain of events,

(17:19):
everything that you just describe, all in the name of safety.
But what you've done is you defined a limit of
how badly people can dump water to get dump pollutants
into each other's water, Okay, And that is and we
all look at it from the top down. Oh, we're
limiting the amount of damage people do because because collectivists

(17:41):
in general like to like to hit you with fear.
Whether they right wing collectives or left wing collective, this
doesn't matter. They want to They want to keep you
in a state of fear of the other guy doing
something terrible, as opposed to looking at it from the
ground up, of oh, from the other side, which is
how badly how much can I get away with? And
that's the situation. And and then then they write rules

(18:04):
that say you have to clean the water up. You
can't dilute it out, I mean, And then it just
becomes this entire mess. And then we wind up with
the we then we wind up with the regulatory state
that we have today over all of these things and
you know, the one last thing and then I'll pop
it over to you. You opened with safety. How many
times have I heard Mike Row, the American commentator and

(18:25):
TV hosts, say, you know, on dirty jobs when he
was doing he's doing this to show dirty jobs, and
he was just highlighting what these guys did for a living,
you know, shoveling, pig ship, cleaning out sewers, this and
everything else. He said, you know, we had a rule
on the set, safety third, not safety first, safety third.
Why because we have to get the shot and we

(18:45):
have to tell the show. And if we and if
we make safety the the the overwriting concern, we're not
going to be able to produce a television show. And
so his rule and he keeps using that. Today we
have we are obsessed with safety culture. Yes, and it's
it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
So yeah, okay, So contrast, I live I live in
Monaca right when I'm not on vacation, and so Monica
is in the south of France, and south of France
is you know, France. It's it's all these rules of
safety go by accretion, and it's it's it's frustrating. To

(19:30):
see it happen, because I did see it happen. So
thirty years ago when I came there, I became a
member of a local sailing club because you know, you
can go to the beach, but you could have a
locker there, a changing room, a shower, and you could
use you know, kayaks and windsurfs and stuff like that.
So I've been you know, buying membership in the club

(19:54):
for good part of the last thirty years. And in
the beginning, I could just let's say, come to the
club one day, pick up a kayak, and go wherever
the hell I wanted to go with the kayak. You know,
it was like go east, west, south, out whatever. And
then little by little they started like, oh, you can't

(20:16):
go east, you can only go west. Why, oh, well,
you know it's for safety reasons because there there's bigger
boats and the helicopters that land nearby, so you can't
go there. Okay, fine, And then one day they're like,
I go off and the guy from the club's running
after me. He's like, you have to have the safety

(20:38):
how do you call it the life vest? You have
to have the life vest. I'm like, excuse me, I've
been doing this for like like last fifteen years. I
never used the life vest. I'm still alive. Why do
I have to? Oh, it's the new law. It's the
new law. Of course, the law is for my safety.
But how annoying. And so it's just like that one

(20:59):
thing to another, and I wonder, like, how does that
even happen?

Speaker 1 (21:03):
How?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Like who spends time thinking how can I make people
more safe? Because if they go on the sea, they
might drown. So I want to prevent them from drowning.
So I'm going to force everyone to wear a life vest.
And so I've been you know, like you're going out
on the kayak. Kayak itself is a flotation device, right,

(21:24):
you don't need another one. It'll be like walking around
with with the with the seat belt on, you know,
like a kayak. Yeah, I thought, how how does this happen?
And I thought it must be coming from the academia,
you know what I mean? Because then they they they

(21:46):
they will they will quantify how many people drowned last
year and the year before, and you know, so on
and then maybe they can show that more and more
people drown every year and the reason why they drown
is because they don't life vest and then they bring
you know, like a like a bill to the to
the how.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Do you call it the parliament or the local governliament.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
The legislature, and they're like, so many people drown and
you know, we want to pass this law to prevent
people from drowning. It's always about saving lives. And then
next thing, you know, the next year, you have a
law that says, like, when you go out on a kayak,
you must have a life vest with you and yeah,
and then they explain to me, you can't. It's not

(22:35):
like we have to police the law, but if something happens,
we're liable because now it's tied to the whole insurance thing.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yes, that's the way, you know. It's no, you're no,
you're you're hitting on it right there. That Actually there's two.
There's two. There's two reasons. Like as you were talking,
I'm like, I'm don't even tell myself, don't interrupt Alex
on the finished this point, finishing point, because I guess
there's two things are really important. I want to jump
in here is I've been talking. I've been thinking about
this stuff forever in a day, you're hitting I got
these are all big trigger points for me to like

(23:02):
get get this stuff out of my system. Though seriously,
two things. One, Yes, insurance is very important. Is a
portant and important part of this right they're you know,
I have I've argued this with you know, classic American
liberals of this type for a long long time. I
used to have, like all of my friends in Gainesville
were coming out of college. We're very much of this mindset.

(23:25):
That's that kind of prevention principal mindset. Well, we have
to find we have problems and we have solutions in
search of problems, is really what it comes down to.
They think they're problems in search of solutions, and they
want to prevent bad things from happening in order to
stop the contagion. Effect of this leads to this, leads
to this, leads to that. So we have car insurance

(23:46):
that's mandated in the United States, and eventually, because it's mandated,
therefore now the insurance companies get to turn to the legislature.
So in order to get everybody's insurance premiums down, everybody
needs to wear seatbelt. Seat belts are a good idea.
Not telling you that wearing a seat belt in your
car isn't a good idea either, but caveat mthor and
all that stuff, helmet laws for motorcycle wearers, YadA, YadA, YadA.

(24:09):
And when you argue these points with people, they get
they don't want to. They think that's more important than
everything else, and they decide that their priority of trying
to prevent the downstream effect of their rising insurance costs
is costing them an extra fifty cents a year, and
therefore they have the right in insurance, they have the

(24:31):
right to tell you to wear your seat belt because
and I'm like, no, you really don't, because if we
had an open market for insurance car insurance, then that
wouldn't be the case. But then we have socialized medicine,
and we have we have we have public hospitals, and
that's putting pressure on the public hospitals. I'm like, yes,
so maybe we shouldn't have public hospitals. Maybe we maybe

(24:52):
we should shouldn't have a healthcare system where the where
anybody can just walk up to the and see room
at any time. I'm not saying we shouldn't as a
society be rich enough to provide those services anyway, and
we probably would. The problem is, of course, is the
second problem, Why is everybody so worried about the money

(25:13):
that we're not rich enough to be able to handle
the natural ebb and flow of the two percent of
people or three percent of people who can't pay to
you know, when they get themselves in trouble. Why Because
we have a corrupt monetary system that's leaching all the
out of the bucking society, that's why. And everybody is

(25:34):
getting poorer. And because everybody's getting poorer, they're becoming more
anxious about the about these little costs and what the
my neighbor, and they care about what their neighbor is
doing on your little island of each is isa Ish sorry,
off the coast of Croatia. No one's worried about the
insurance costs of a kid skinning his knee.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. And you know this,
I think that this is how they kind of slowly
but surely inundate us with this safety culture. Yes, because

(26:12):
you know, life is full of risk always. You know
you're gonna if you're gonna go play football outside, you
might get hurt. If you go to the children's playground,
you know, the child, the child might get hurt if
they go riding a bicycle, they might get hurt, and
what of it. It's just part of life, right, we

(26:34):
all went through it. But it's come to the point where, oh,
if this activity might result in someone in harm, then
we have to eliminate it. And then I don't know,
you know, in the United States, I lived in California,
they tore out all the children's playground yep, all the

(26:56):
children's play I was like, what is this, where where's
the where's the playgrounds? They tore them out because children
can get hurt. And I thought, okay, but you know,
if if they play, they can get hurt. So what's
your solution to prevent them from playing? That's your solution.
And so of course then the next thing, they're all
obese and they're all out of shape.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
But anyway, you know, I think, Alex, I'll tell you
and how crazy this idea is. I'll give you a
perfect example how crazy this stuff is. So when I
built my house in two thousand and two, I built
my whole house out of pressure treated lumber because I
was building on two by six stud walls. And you know,
at the time, two by six stud walls were not normal.
It was all two by four construction. So the cost

(27:41):
of an unpressure treated two by six and a pressure
treated two by sex was a dollar. So if I
spend an extra five percent in the cost of my house,
I could basically turn my proof the frame of my
house right. So I didn't spend five to six dollars
at two by six. I spent seven dollars at two
by six. And and that was all CCA treated lumber.
That's copper chromated arsenate. Arsenate. Now that stuff plus southern

(28:07):
yellow pine, which is what we build with here in Florida,
which has all the which has is like Douglas fir
in terms of its its properties. It's amazing stuff. It
also drinks CCA as if it lives on it like
it loves that solution, so it so pressure treating those
logs is easy. It's complete. And we live in a

(28:28):
mold and termite infested Florida where everything rots. We ban
our CCA treated lumber in America because of the EPA
because arsenic was the number one pollutant in the United States. Well,
it's because we use oursenical style poisons everywhere in order

(28:48):
as herbicize as rat poison. As I mean arsenic is
incredibly good at killing mold, fungus, vermin, all sorts of things, right,
and and for protecting houses. So we went with this
other stuff which is basically copper, which is garbage. And
when you go and you know, I used to I

(29:09):
always do post and beam construction, and I would you know,
the one I went to build my addition. I'm getting
to a point here you'll see. You'll see where I'm
getting at in the second is you know, I built
my addition and this and off the house was. You know,
I pulled the shed roof off and pulled in some
and then you know, laid some headers over four by sixes.
When I went to cut the four by sixes, the
length we had changed over to this a c Q

(29:31):
garbage and the center of the four by sixes were yellow,
not green. Okay, they hadn't even been treated. So the
outside of the post is treated, the interior of the
post is untreated. And eventually those posts are going to
rot out in you know, some amount of time, and

(29:51):
I'm gonna have to replace them, and it's gonna be
it's gonna be ridiculous. I'm gonna have to pour. I'm
gonna have to I'm gonna have to redo it, right.
That's what everything is being built with now, so all
the childhood playgrounds. And you know why they did this.
They did this because they were worried. And they and
then and then the County of Blachwa tore down all
of the playgrounds in Gainesville and replaced all of them

(30:16):
with new lumber, you know, with new wooden posts, all
treated with the new stuff because they were they got
rid of the arsenic because they were worried that the
kids were going to sit on the ground and eat
the and the arsenic leaches out of the out of
the posts and then into the into the soil, and
then the kids are going to eat the soil or
they were going to chew on the things or whatever,
even though these things are all you know, like you

(30:39):
are treated with like the kids are not going to
do this right. Moreover, while I worked at UF for
five years, the woman I worked for, the researcher I
worked for, had a project out at Austin Carry Forest
just north north of Gainesville studying the the leeching of
copper chromated arsenate out of telephone poles that had been
going on since the nineteen fifth fifties. Those poles have

(31:01):
been out there since the nineteen fifties, and we went
out every quarter and sampled the water column and around
these poles, and you know, and there's no appreciable it's
like within six inches of the pole and it doesn't
go down, and it didn't go down the water table.
And all these fears and all these problems and solutions

(31:22):
in search of problems still on. We wound up with
some political decision in the United States to ban cca
treated lumber, and now we can't and now all of
our houses are going to and on all of our
pole barns and all of our and all of our
and all of our barns and everything else, we're all
going to ride out in twenty years and we have
to rebuild them all. It's like planned obsolescence for yeah,

(31:44):
wood based building.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
It's insane.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
And we had a perfectly good system with the right
lumber and the right material and the right stuff, and
we just we destroyed it all in the name of
and they sold it to us in the name of safety.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Safety. And again you had somebody who had to go
out and show that, oh, you know, this could be bad,
and uh, you know, show like numbers something uh, contrive
a study that shows what they wanted to do anyway,
m and uh. And the result is that the they

(32:25):
foised some kind of a new law on you that
nobody asked for m hm yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
And and and you know, and the and I remember
the massive ad campaign for this stuff. It was massive,
and it was so so thoroughly like the industry and
the government spent so much of our tax money to
propagandize us that the new yellow wood was just as
good as the old green wood. This went on for years,

(32:52):
and I'm like, uh uh, I mean that we had
a short term you know, spike and black market lumber
and and it's frussure treated to lumber in America until
the until the supplies ran out like it, you know. Now,
you know if my if if if I were ever
to like tear my house down, I would salvage all
that lumber and build a barn with it. You know
what I mean. I wouldn't let that stuff go. It's

(33:14):
like precious now oh.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Ye yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Insane Okay, Well,
I guess yeah. The the thing I gathered on my
on my on my sailing vacation is that we don't
really need safety from the government. We are safe. M hmm.
How about that?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Well, or how about this. We will not get back
to regulating our behavior if we don't. You don't regulate
people's behavior by banning behavior. You regulate behavior by having
people go do things, find out that, oh they're bad,
get the object and physical lesson that, oh that's bad,

(33:57):
and then they learn not to do it again. It's
the first first role of parenting, right but around and
fight out. It's the first roaring. I mean, your your dad,
You've got what but three boys?

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Two?

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Two boys? I never remember it's two or three? I
have a girl. You know, what, what are you supposed
to do as a parent. You're supposed to, you know,
let them slowly learn how to do things and and
feel the consequences of their actions so that they can
learn discernments exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
And and you find you you learn really quickly that
that's what they want. And it's not like they wanted
a little bit. It's intense, you know, like the minute
they figure out that they can do something for themselves,
they they really need to do it. And then if
you let you know, like when they say, like, hey
can I go to school by myself. And if you say, yes,

(34:56):
oh my god, it's like Christmas, now go by myself
and they yeah, it's like that all the time. And
so I think that's probably natural. And for parents if
you feel, if you don't feel like some sense of
great danger, then you kind of want to.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Let them go.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
You want to let them go to you want to
let them experience, you know, like the whole adventure. Oh
my god, I'm going to do this, oh by myself.
I'm supervised with my friends, you know, right right. The
other day, my kid comes home at like two o'clock
in the morning, he's fifteen, and I'm like, whoa dude,
where were you? And he's like, I was at the

(35:39):
beach with my friends. I was like, you're at the
beach at two o'clock in the morning. I was like, yeah,
what were you guys doing? And he's like, we were fishing.
I was like, okay, no, no, they were fishing. And
I was like, okay, well did you catch anything? And

(36:00):
he's like, yeah, we caught a moray eel. I was like,
all right, and what did you do. Then he's like, well,
we built a fire and we ate him. So do
you know, so that's a Can you imagine for a
bunch of fifteen year olds, this was like a whole thing,

(36:23):
And isn't that better than keeping them indoors safe?

Speaker 1 (36:28):
That's a right of way passage.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, exactly exactly, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
For me anyway, no, no, for me, it was I
mean I ran into this all the time my mom.
I was the last of four and growing up in
the seventies where things were starting to get you know,
a little dicey. There's a reason I think I've said,
I think I've mentioned this in the past, that there's
a reason why we moved out of Long Island where

(36:55):
I was born. I was born on Long Island and
then but my parents had already bought the property and
we're having the house built that I was going to
grow that I wound up growing up in in Upstate
New York because my dad, the cop working in Brooklyn,
was like, yeah, we're leaving full stop, right, And so

(37:18):
you know, I'm born in February. We move up there
in June as an infant, and I grew up in
the suburbs in Upstate New York in a relatively dangerous
place because all the place is like built out of
the side of the mountain and where the kid's going
to play, and like, you know, we're throwing rocks at
each other because you know, it only snows four months
out of the year, so the other eight months out
of the year, we're throwing acorns and rocks at each other.
We're having fights, you know, we're building three forts and

(37:39):
all sorts of stupid shit. Right. But my my mom,
you know, kind of tried to shelter me a little bit,
and I was that that, you know, the and but
she failed miserably. But when I finally got my driver's license,
and I didn't get my driver's license and I was
almost eighteen for you know, or because I made a

(38:01):
big mistake when I was fifteen, and and I didn't
want to learn how to drive until I was I
thought I was ready for it. But in the interim,
I made some new friends. I became a musician, made
some new friends, and we used to go out. I
used to go out to my friends would pick me up,
we'd go to band practice. We'd go over to his house,
my friend's house. We played play all night long, and

(38:23):
then when we were done, we'd go to the diner
in the local town, then the Greek diner in town. Now,
I was the kid that were living at home. You know,
I did all my stuff at home. I listened to
music at home, I you know, I watched movies I didn't.
And all of a sudden, I'm going out all the
time every night, right, And my mom was like, what

(38:43):
are you doing? And I'm going out until eleven. This
is my junior and senior year. And I know she's
like getting all PTSD because this is the same arc
that my oldest sister went through and she eventually wound
u running away from home for as you know, right
after high school. And and and so my parents have
honestly got trauma over this, and fair enough a fair cop, right,
but and like I finally told her, I'm like, you know,

(39:07):
what are you doing? Like every night when you're going out,
I'm like, well, one, we're just driving around and talking
to each other, or we're going to the diner. There
are nights when we were just trying to get lost
and you know where we were. We'd just get to
an intersection and flip a coin and either go left
right or you know, and then try try to get lost,
and we always wind up like you know, in our
road that we knew and like on the backside of
mid New York and go, let's let's drive back to town.

(39:28):
Let's go to the diner, and let's get some coffee
ntil three o'clock in the morning, and they go. They
go to school the next day. This is what we
were doing. And I'm like, Mom, if you're not sure,
if you don't believe me, you can call the diner
and I'll be in that booth over there with those
two boys drinking coffee and eating a poutine. Like that's
what we're doing, right, you know, like if you're worried

(39:51):
about it, like that's all we're doing. Because I actually
have friends I can talk to that I like and
that you know, we all have the same interests, and
you know, what are you doing chatting?

Speaker 2 (40:01):
You know? Yeah? Interesting? You know, That's what I used
to do with my friends when I was that age.
We would just hang out and talk. That was the
you know, the probably the central thing. And I imagine
that's what young people feel very intensely that they need
to do, you know, just socialize. That's it.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
My daughter is we live out in the middle of nowhere,
and my daughter and all of our friends are kind
of online. They sit in Discord all my chatting. Well,
they might even be playing a game together. They might
be doing like a group activity in a game. They
may be like literally just each individually doing the thing
with that headset on. And I hear her there's cackling
until all hours with her friends doing exactly that. Right,

(40:42):
And then and they play D and D like tabletop
D and D over Discord Connection and they have a blast.
And she comes downstairs every once in a while when
she actually wants to get like real human contact and now,
and she's like talking to and then she comes downstairs
and tells us what insanely stupid shit they did in
their D and D game. And I'm like, because she knows,
I'm I'm I I eat the stuff up because they

(41:04):
you know, because we all did. Because Tomi and I
both gamed a lot when we were uh role played
a lot when we were younger. So yeah, you would
just tell us these stories. And I'm like, oh, that's hilarious.
You guys, like I want to play in your game,
Like that's hilarious. You guys are fun. But I would
never want to write, never want to do so but yeah,
it's it's it's you know, findings as we're getting older,

(41:27):
she's getting older. What I'm finding is that she's now
realizing she's looking for opportunities to spend time with her
parents in ways that she hasn't before because she can
feel that everything is about to change. And I'm like,
and I've been telling her, I, you know, I it
would be fun if you came back to play World
of Warcraft with us, even though it was just a
couple of days a week, simply because you be in

(41:49):
the chat channel with us, I can sit and chat
with you. We can do the thing. You can be
a different version of yourself. I like, get you know,
and I'll and I'll pull police and I'll police the
boys and make sure they don't you know, say anything
really dumb, like you know what I mean. Like, so
let's just go with it, you know, because it is
It's one of those things. As you get they get older,
you're going to you know, everybody's going to feel that
that loss. And last, the worst thing you want to

(42:11):
do is shelter them that they don't have anything to
have any experiences to them, you know, and have any
ability to talk with you about when there's going to
be a crisis or a problem, and you know so correct.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Cool Tom. I don't know how to segue into this,
but I was dying to ask you sure about the
trade deal? The greatest trade deal ever? On concluded on
the greatest golf course ever built in the Milky Way Galaxy,

(42:47):
Milky Way.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Galaxy, and he's hilarious with me.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah, what did you think of that? I?

Speaker 1 (42:56):
I thought, huh, what a shock. Finally found that, we
finally found out that the European Union has no cards. Now,
I think he got to the point I've been saying
for a couple of days. You and I haven't spoken,
but I have said this in a couple of other
podcasts that have done.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
That.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Isn't it interesting how Telsea Gabbard went on London a
couple of weeks ago. Yes, and then and then all
of a sudden everything has changed. Yes, Yeah, and that's
all I think. I think. I think I can leave
it there and you can go with it from there.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
I think you'll you'll, don't do we know what Tulsa Gabbard? Do?
We know what Tulsa Gabbard did in London? Did she
visit the c I a station in London. Did she
go to see M I six G C h Q
Foreign Office. We don't know.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
I really don't know, because no one will report on it,
only knows that she went. And when something like that
happens and nobody says anything about it, that usually meant
usually means something big happened that no one wants said,
wants you know what I mean, The absence of the
absence of direct reporting is usually as tell that you know, yes,

(44:10):
you know, ultimatums were put, were given. Let's just put
it that way, okay, because what I think is what
I honestly what I think is that what she did
Alex was you know, she's got the goods on them
on Obama Gate, on the twenty twenty election, on the
twenty twenty two election, I'm probably even twenty twenty four.

(44:34):
Amidst and the biolabs in Ukraine and all the things
that we think that we've all talked about and talked around.
I think they're in the hands. I think they're in
the hands of a woman who was, you know, not
working for them, and it's not being a gatekeeper in
an information silo er and she's actually and I want.
I've looked at some of this Sundancer. Conservative Freehouse has

(44:56):
been doing great work to chronicle and inspire other people
to chronicle what Gabbart is doing with the within the
intelligence services, getting rid of and firing the people at
the second and third tier who were all the information stylours.
They're giving everybody above them the plausible deniability to say, oh,
there's nothing to see here, this is all this is

(45:16):
all a crazy Trump conspiracy. Now, this ship's real. What
I what I from what I can see and from
the reflections of that, that's what I think is going on.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
So yeah, I thought it was also extremely interesting. I mean,
it's actually extraordinary. It's not just interesting that he didn't
Trump didn't go to ten Downing Street, yes, and he
didn't go to Brussels.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
He just summoned the President of the European Commission and
the Prime Minister of Great Britain to his own private
resort in Scotland and they turned up like obedient lapdogs,
and vonder Land committed to the most humiliating, kicking the

(46:14):
crotch kind of deal. I mean, do you know, like
just days before all the Europeans were oh no, you know, wait,
the europe four hundred and fifty million consumers, affluent, sophisticated,
blah blah blah blah blah. At best, Trump is going

(46:34):
to have to agree to a zero for zero terif regime.
And whoa, what an absolute humiliation she had to accept
on his golf course. It's like, come between my two
golf games, I'm gonna we're gonna make this deal, and

(47:00):
you know, off you go run along, you.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Know, yeah, And then he brings Cares Starmer to that
same place on the US on a US helicopter. Okay,
Starmer doesn't show up with you know, on British within
a British you know asset. He shows up on Trump's

(47:27):
American helicopter and then has to bend the knee publicly.
And Trump's got the freaking I got a great shot
of this of Starmer and his wife walking up to
Trump standing at the top of the stairs, you know,
walking up to the place. And it's a side shot.
It's not behind Trump or to the you know, or
behind Starmer trying to looking up to try and make

(47:48):
Starmer look good or what, or from the top down
trying to make Trump look bad. Oh no, it's very obvious.
It is Trump is in charge. This guy is not.
That's where the camera was placed. That's the optic, right,
h The bunch of things I think are going on,
alex And and I'm gonna throw a couple of them

(48:09):
out out at you and I want you to drive
off of them and see what you can what you
make of them. But my I've been suspecting this for
a couple of months now, and which is that. I
think Trump is the grand plan here is to isolate
the European Union and take the English Commonwealth back from

(48:32):
the colonials. And he's you know, and what Starmer and
Bondo and are both doing is just running trying to
run interference for as long as possible to forestall that
from happening. And yeah, and I don't think they can
get that done now. The one thing that is a

(48:53):
little too easy or too pat about all this is
that this happened. And then there's the way he's trying
to force a resolution on Russia Ukraine, the way he is.
And you know, when I spoke to Martin Armstrong yesterday,

(49:15):
you know, Martin kept reiterating the point is like, look,
war's coming, whether we like it or not everybody is
gearing up for war across the entire continent. The you know,
and the way the Russians have been prosecuting the war
in Ukraine. They've been putting very little actual, you know,
top tier men in materiel into the conflict. They're mostly

(49:38):
just fighting this as you know, drones one hundred and
fifty five milimeters artillery shells and you know, and and
they're you know, and this get and rotating troops through
in order to get them battle hard and while they
take some some territory. So everybody is like gearing up
for this, this potential conflict that's in the future. And

(49:58):
the way Trump is acting right now now it feels
it's it's clearly obvious that it's intended to make us
feel like he's selling us out and he's going to
get involved in the war that NATO wants. I'm still
not convinced to this because of everything else that's being done,
But I don't know, you know, or is it possible

(50:20):
that he doesn't. It's such a you know, it's such
a stretch at this point to think that he's not
in control after what he just did to Vonderland and Starmer. Yeah,
and what he's doing to Obama, Brandon Comy and Clinton
and everybody else. And the way Gabbard is dripping out

(50:40):
the information that she has, and she's using a classic
Andrew Breitbart trip drip trip James O'Keefe style. Hey, we're
going to introduce you know, here's two hundred documents. Yeah,
go ahead and respond to those and purjare yourself again.
Here's two hundred more documents to prove that you just
purchased yourself yet again, which recess the statue of Limitations
on treason. Because she went out in publican and said
thing ask like this is there's this is this is

(51:06):
like mob. This is classic mob politics at a at
you know, in a way that we've never seen before.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah. I tend to agree, Tom, I think this is
I don't know what his what his game is with
respect to Russia, but the idea that he pivoted and
that he now is going back to being the Grand
Protector of Ukraine and the and the leader of the
Western Alliance against Russia, that just makes so little sense.

(51:36):
I I just don't even see it.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
I I.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
It's it's too idiotic. Because the West is defeated. The
West is defeated. Ukraine has been defeated. And you know,
it seems to me that just yesterday. So what's today
is first of August yesterday apparently put in order the
massive offensive and they they they launched the biggest ever

(52:06):
drone and missile attack against Ukraine, something like more than
seven hundred and fifty missiles on various targets in Ukraine,
mostly Zaporosia. And so stuff's going on. And I don't

(52:26):
see that Trump is that Trump changed, because I don't
know why he would.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
You know, his.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Since he got the big beautiful bill passed, his political
standing is much much more firm than it was before.
Yes to the point that he felt comfortable with the
Epstein thing, which you know, to everybody it feels like
a betrayal, and it is kind of But I, you know,

(52:57):
I always thought, like the Epstein thing is it's just
too big. There's no way they're gonna let that go
because it's you know, why did Epstein even bother with
all that? There's a lot of trouble to be developing
this extensive network of all these powerful people and putting

(53:22):
together the comprom at against them. Why would you even
bother doing that? Well, you would, because it's an extremely
extremely powerful political weapon. Yes, for whoever gets to wield it.
And now it's in Trump's hand, is he not gonna
wield it? Is he going to give it away? Because

(53:45):
you know, like if it goes out in public, it's
rendered useless, right, It's no longer a weapon. It's just
like got all your powder wet and then and so
I didn't think he was gonna do it anyway, but
I did think that it was it was going, you know,
some token heads were going to roll for you know two,

(54:08):
you know, to keep the public happy. And so where
are we with that? Well, the the Russia Gate documents,
I think are orders of magnitude bigger than Epstein files.
Why because they go to the heart of the Western Alliance,

(54:31):
which is basically, you know, the mortar is in the
city of London. And I think that the Russia Gate
files are the kryptonite that that break that all apart.
And then you know how it is in in in
the in the two tier justice system, they always, you know,

(54:54):
even even if you file lawsuits, they always they pressure people.
They pressure lawyers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, jurors, judges, They bribed
them or they or they blackmailed them, or they killed them.
Remember I forgot her name. Now, the judge who was

(55:18):
assigned the the anti money laundering case against Deutsche Bank
in New York. Remember what happened to her?

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, no, I don't actually, Alex said, Well.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
They dispatched, they dispatched an assassin to her house who
killed her husband. No, who killed her son and severely
wounded her husband. And he didn't kill her because just
randomly she decided to run a quick air and like
like run over to seven eleven or something, and so

(55:53):
she survived the attack. But this is how they fight.
And so you can't you can't win in by law
fair because the whole legal system has been set up
to protect the ruling establishment. Yes, so if you're going
to go into that fight, you're going to need something
like the epstin files mm hmm, you know, because you're

(56:14):
going to need to you know, this is this is
not this is not matlog, This is not Perry Mason world,
where you know, you go to prove your case and
then the judges rule fairly and.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
And and and everybody and everybody has to like to
accept the everybody has to accept.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Because that's the yes, exactly. The magical working of the
of the uncompromised judicial system doesn't bring that way at all.
So you do need that comprom at if you're going
to fight that fight and win. Uh. And so I
think that that's the that's going to be the function
of of the of the Epstein files, And this is
the reason why he didn't release them, and all that,

(56:56):
all that, the Epstein files, the big beautiful bill that,
the release of the Russia Gate documents, all of that
is making Trump more and more and more powerful. Yes,
So why would he who could possibly turn him away

(57:17):
from what he decided to do anyway, and he decided
to break away from the post World War two global order,
the rules based global order, and to go in the
direction of multipolar integrations. Why would he now that he's
in a much more powerful position that he was two
months ago? Why would he now pivot one hundred and

(57:39):
eighty degrees and make himself the errand boy of the
British establishment. That doesn't make sense to me, And so
that's why I don't believe it. And I think that
all of this rhetoric is kind of like the same
thing that we had in his first term with North Korea. Remember,
between him and Kim yongun, there was a period of

(58:03):
time when it sounded really ugly and he thought like,
oh shit, you know, he's going to go bomb North Korea.
And instead he already had dispatched a delegation to Russia,
sorry to China, into South Korea to prepare for the talks,
which happened then. And then we had the talks, and

(58:25):
then the talks went really well, and he was the
first president of the United States who went to the
demarcation Zone between North and South Korea, and then the
North and South Koreans agreed to start demining the.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
DMZ exactly.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
So for a little while, everything looked really, really good,
even though the rhetoric leading up to it was just awful. Yes,
and so now I think we're in the stage where
the rhetoric is going in the seemingly wrong direction. But
a dead doesn't necessarily mean that it reflects on Trump's intention,

(59:05):
because he often does this. Yes, he trash talks this
way and then he moves that way. We'll find out.
I know.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Remains remains somewhat skeptical of that framework because it hasn't
come to pass yet. We have some history as a guide,
and we also now have things much more desperate on
the part of the old European establishment. You know, the
difference between then and now, Alex and I'm sure you

(59:38):
agree with me on this, is that he's won a
lot of these fights that they thought they were going
to be able to extend and pretend. So now they're
going to have to lay the next card on the
table or the next card, and that means the potential
for a false flag or something that's going to tie
his hands that he can't All the things that we've
been worried about for the last year and a half

(01:00:00):
Visa v. Russia Ukraine is now are now on the
table that much more so because of the potential of
them being rolled completely. And this is the fear of
this is the Martin Armstrong's fear, and it's it's worth considering.
I'm saying, it's you know, I assign your probability cloud

(01:00:21):
to this however you want, but these are all these
are scenarios you have to you have to consider, right
the things that give me hope on this behind the scenes,
or the little things that have happened that we didn't expect.
Trump has lifted sanctions on Russian civilian nuclear energy development

(01:00:41):
and the banking system across so that the Russian banks
can do can do the work necessary, because civilian nuclear
is the means by which to also end the reliance
on so much oil going around the world, and you know,
all of this stuff. So allow Asia to come out
of then eineteenth century and begin the process of building

(01:01:04):
you know, a proper electrical grid across the you know,
and allow that to happen. And that's a big deal.
That's a very very big deal. And you know, again,
you know, one of the things that that I haven't
spoken to you about this, I've spoken to the I
mentioned to other people about three months ago. I think
it was just before Israel Iran and the twelve the

(01:01:24):
quote unquote twelve day war. Dexter White and I were
having a conversation behind, you know, privately, and he said,
you know, it's beginning to feel like Putin and Trump
don't necessarily trust each other, and they shouldn't because they
you know, they shouldn't trust each other, but they each
have a parallel to do list, Like I've got, you know,
these things that I'm going to get done, and we
agree that these are the five things that we're each

(01:01:46):
going to try and get done. And as long as
we keep knocking things off the list, we can then
then we can get to a point where we can
get we can get to a point where then we
can create some kind of an agreement.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
And now the question is has either of them gotten
off task or been forced off task or whatever? And
it's a big question. I don't know, but I wonder,
you know, if you know, Trump bombed Iran, right, which

(01:02:17):
he's supposedly not supposed to do. And in the wake
of the bombing of Iran and the quote unquote and
the end really of that conflict, which was, you know,
which we're all should be for the most part thankful for,
it's still simmering, and I still think London is trying
to gin up a conflict again. I'm not saying it's over,
it's just brought. It's been brought down to a more

(01:02:42):
manageable level. But after that is when Putin started the
more intense bombing campaign against Kiev. So the question is,
did Trump betray Putin's to do list by bombing Iran
and you know, green lighting the attack by Israel? And
now saying, look, I can't I don't know what to

(01:03:02):
do with this guy. I need to assert backs on
the ground in Ukraine that are necessary. The other side
of that is that, look, it's the summer in Ukraine.
If you're going to do a military campaign, it's this
is when you do it in order to take the
territory that's necessary in order to this is you have

(01:03:23):
four or five months or six months where you can
actually do you know, warfare. And you know, this is
just the reality of light of the geography of eastern
of central Ukraine, so or west of east of the
Deeper River. So there are all these little things that
are to be factored into, you know, these discussions. But

(01:03:45):
I don't know. Like Trump's tariff new tariff schedule that
he put out today is very aggressive on the countries
that did not make a deal. I think that there's
the people really worried about what he's doing with India,
and uh, I just I wonder, you know, I don't

(01:04:06):
have a I don't have a read on some of
this stuff at this point. I wish I did, so
I don't maybe anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I don't think anybody does. Tom. You know, that's the
whole point, you know, his a I think, as we've
discussed in the past, and and you've discussed it with
Ian Berling game and I have also m Trump's at
war actually, you know, and how do you wage war?
You where you waged by deception?

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
And I think that if I'm reading this correct, he's
taking on the most powerful people in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Yes, And so your.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
Deception has to be dan convincing. Otherwise it's not. It's
not deception.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
So that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
That pretty much says it that you can't read him correctly.
And if you read based on the public statements and
disclosures that are coming out for everybody's it's it's almost
certainly not going to be correct, you know what I mean,
it's absolutely what they're giving out in public is the

(01:05:21):
deception is the syop. So if you you know, take
the example of the tariffs. He wants to introduce tariffs anyway,
that's his that has been his objective for forever because
part of his mission is to reindustrialize the United States,

(01:05:43):
to bring manufacturing back. And so if you're going to
bring manufacturing back, you want to introduce terriffs because you
want to protect the the the American industries, American market, right,
And so he's using the days, the political hot button

(01:06:06):
issues of the day to justify that, you know, because everybody,
you're like, everybody can agree that we should hate the Chinese,
we should hate the Russians, we should hate everybody who's
trading with them. So make it simple. I'm going to
use that sentiment to justify doing what I've already intended

(01:06:29):
to do anyway, and I don't have to explain it
in any more complex terms than just saying, oh, you're
trading with the Russians, Well, we're going to slap sanctions
on you. We're going to slap tariffs on you. You're
you're trading with the Chinese. We're going to do this
to you. It doesn't matter you're Brazil, China, India, whoever.

(01:06:50):
We're going to punish you. And everybody who thinks that
they should hate India and China and Russia is going
to say like, yeah right, oh yeah, maybe, well sounds
good anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah yeah, right, you know, and the other and on
the other side of it, he knows full well that
he can't enforce those sanctions anyway. Yeah, exactly mean, I mean,
they're they're unenforceable. But I you know, when I thought
about this, I'm like, you know, the Chinese by Russian

(01:07:21):
oil off the es BO pipeline that you know goes
to the camp Tact of Peninsula and it's poor Cosmo
and then there's a coffee and cake run between that
between there and you know, and and the Chinese coast.
What are we going to do resort to piracy on
in you know, in Russian and Chinese international and Chinese
national waters or whatever. We're gonna, We're gonna, We're we're

(01:07:44):
gonna resort the piracy to enforce these sanctions like of
course not you know if and with the remittance for
those oil payments not even going through swift Like again
that's your that's your argument. The same and in many
ways the same thing is happening for and or with
India as well. So you know, like it's I look

(01:08:07):
at this and I say, there's something else at play
as to why he's pressuring India the way he is.
And I would argue, I would make the argument that
he's trying to get India not to break with the bricks,
but the break with the Brits that the old issued
the Old This is just popping into my head. Now

(01:08:28):
I'm going I'm just vamping now, so I'm gonna throw
it back to you in a second. But you know,
there's an old, old network of influence in India, and
India is constantly it's like it's like Turkey. They constantly
I walk back and forth between Oh, we're part of
the West. No, we're part of the East. No we're
part of the West. No we're part of the East.
Can I have can? I need a deal? I need

(01:08:48):
a deal. I need a deal. I need a deal.
Turks and Indians they're they're you know, I hate the
sound racist here or anything, but that's kind of the
way they operate. And you know, normally this is what
they do. And you had heard again for example last
week's it's it's excuse me, it's imperative that we joined
the EU immediately. Why what's he trying to do? And

(01:09:12):
so it's like like Ertigan is looking more and more
unstable in in Yes, yeah, and Mody has to basically,
you know, put up or shut up? Who do you
work for? And you know you can and I think
the deal that Trump would be maybe putting him in
front of him, you can and I'll is, Look, dude,

(01:09:33):
you can straddle the world between east and West all
you want, but you don't get to do with your
city of London.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tom. I have a question
for you. Sure do you reckon that the war of
words between Trump and Powell? J. Powell is real or
is a theater?

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
It's a bit of both.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
What I think is going on is the following that
Powell is the guy who was brought in by Wall
Street and by the American as I've always said, brought
in by that group of people to implement sover get

(01:10:22):
us off the eyebore, remove our remove the and remove
the center of American financial power back on shore. I
do not necessarily believe and to shrink the balance sheet
and to try and undo the sins of the Biden
administration under COVID and well the Trump administration under COVID.
He is not the guy and does not want to

(01:10:44):
be the guy to shepherd the reforming of the FED,
which is desperate and needs to be done. So he's
a convenient pincushion here now literally, as you and I
have been speaking, the latest you know, manufacturing, pm I,
employment data, construction, spending. All that stuff just hit you know,

(01:11:04):
just hit the news wire, and it's all bad. It's
it's all bad, it's all red. Right, So, you know,
is Powell too late? Should he have cut rates the
other day? Probably? Is he going to cut rates after
Jackson Hall? Yes, this is what he's going to do.
Powell is going to finally acquiesced to changing monetary policy,

(01:11:28):
and he's going to do so with his speech at
Jackson Hall's what I what I suspect, and he may
even go so far as to fall on his sword
and say it's time to move forward. But what Trump
is really doing is setting the narrative to the normies,
because you and I are not normies. Our audiences are
not normies. We're all like way off way, you know,

(01:11:50):
way ahead of the curve on all of this stuff.
And that's the niche that we we operate in, and
that's the audience that we that that we curated and cultivated.
And it makes sense, and it's also why there's so
much anxiety right and within our communities and the feedback
that we get I certainly get, but for the rest
of the world, they don't even know that. The federal
words ever exists, right, They have some vague idea of

(01:12:13):
what the FED is and what it does and everything else,
and what is Trump doing. He's literally just showing that
that it's just another corrupt government organization or quasi government organization,
while he's getting ready to rest control of monetary policy
and a fiscal policy and put it back under the
purview of the Treasury. But you have to set the

(01:12:35):
political agenda, and you've got to seed this into the
narrative because he's got to put a FED chair in
that replaces Powell, that is not part of FED culture,
which is decidedly one anti Trump, two left, you know,
to you know, beholden to Democrats and Golbalists and you know,
and all of that, and the culture inside the FED

(01:12:57):
is bad and Powell was never able to or maybe
he never even tried to reform it at all. I
don't know. That's something that Caitlyn along and I discussed
yesterday and in the previous episode to the podcast. So
for people who are interested in that, they should listen
to Caitlin's because she's got a very different take than
I do on this. So but I presented this to

(01:13:18):
her and she's like, yeah, he might be right about that.
So you set the narrative that way, because what if
Trump really wants to go off the board. What if
he wants to put somebody in his FMC chair that
isn't part of that culture. What if he does want
to put Judy Shelton in as Powell's replacement. So you
think he's going to get that through this current Senate
before the midterms without a fight. You think they're not

(01:13:42):
gearing up for that fight in every way, man of
shape or form, you know what I mean? It makes
sense that if he is attempting to do something along
those lines and go outside of that culture and not
promote from within that, and that would be consistent with
everything else that we're saying. So that's what I think

(01:14:04):
in the broad stream of things. And uh and yeah,
and Powell's gonna have to probably cap fifty basis points
in September.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
Okay, Well, that's that's really interesting because Powell got nominated
by Trump. Yes, and Powell managed the basically the return
of American monetary policy back to the United States where

(01:14:36):
it belongs, which is for you know, for for the
everyday person doesn't even register on the on the on
the radar. But it's it's the most it's it's it's
one of the most important, if not the most important.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
How do you call it?

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Elements of your of your sovereignty, the ability to manage
your monetary policy, because without it you cannot manage your
economic policy. And that they rested, rested away, wrestled away
from the City of London, agreed. So Powell has done

(01:15:25):
an enormously important job there. He's played an enormously important
role there. And you know what, I what I wonder is,
how did they even know to do that?

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
You know, I don't think Trump. I don't think I
don't think Trump was brief on that plan back in
twenty seventeen.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
I don't think that Trump. So you don't think that
Trump was even in the loop?

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
No, no, I do not. I think That's why my
argument has always been that Wall Street handed him Powell,
and Trump said he talks about it. I was like, yeah,
they recommended this guy Powell to me, I went with
the recommendation and he started out to be terrible. And
why because Donald Trump likes to like likes to is
is a borrower, not a lender? Right in the classics

(01:16:13):
and so and that's why he and Powell have always
been in odds. But I think that the commercial banking
interests of the United States and the and the sovereigntist
wing of the United States, and that's probably how they
were able to get this to Trump. He's like, look, no,
Powell's a good guy, He's an American, and he's gonna
and he's gonna, you know, he's gonna help us and

(01:16:36):
that and that was gonna have to be good enough
for Trump in early twenty seventeen, not knowing any better.
And then you know, all the other evidence is very
clear that the Obama wing of the of the American
political system tried to get rid of him and tried
to make sure that he didn' get a second term.
City of London tried to get wrestle all that back
and you know, kill so for in the crib right,

(01:17:00):
and or at least if they would not kill it,
at least control it, right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Okay, So here's why I'm bouncing this off of you,
because I have a very vague notion of all this,
but I think that ballpark I might be on the
right track. So I want I just want your confirmation. Sure.
So all that being the case, that would imply that

(01:17:27):
actually the the resistance to the City of London, to
the to the European colonialist oligarchies is actually coming from
Wall Street, or at least part of Wall Street.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
Right, yes, yes, ah, okay, because my thesis, that's that's
been my thesis for a while a while, that there's
certain banks that are and there are certain banks that
are not.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Are not, yes, okay, And so which ones are? It
looks to me like JP Morgan is and I can't
tell who else. But because I can see that Bank
of America is.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Not correct, They're not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
City Group is not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
I yes, I've always put City in the I'm not
sure category because they're so I think their balance sheet
is so impaired that they even if they wanted to
get out from underneath that they can't. So I've always
put City on the on the phone, right, they could
go either way?

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Okay, okay? And what's what's been surprising to me? But
I can't, you know, like I don't have enough thoughts
to connect like a coherent picture. Sure, like some of
the statements coming from Jamie Diamond, I would think he'd
get fired for that, but he's not getting fired for that,
because like he's making particularly unbankerlike statements and he's getting

(01:18:51):
away with it, which tells me that there's got to
be some critical mass of that financial power who's saying
we're on the freaking road to tradition. Yes, we got
to turn course because it can't be just Trump. No, No,

(01:19:12):
he's too small, he's too weak. There's got to be
a bigger power behind him. And I identified that bigger
power initially with some European banks, one particularly, that one

(01:19:33):
one particularly, But that's just one. There's gotta be more,
Okay anyway, So you uh, okay, So you confirmed some
very vague ideas I had, But.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
I can I can add, I can add some more
color to that. What I've always said was I and
I have said this for I don't know if you
and I have talked about it, and if I did,
I did mention to this you in the past, Alex.
There's so much shut that we talked about that it
may have just yeah, and you know how I like
the shotgun the fucking world right. I've always identified it
as JP Morgan, Golden Sachs, Morgan, Stanley, and probably Wells

(01:20:07):
Fargo are on Team America. And Wells because of because
of their extreme exposure to domestic housing. On the other side,
you would have BofA Bank of America, Bank of New York, Melon,
you know, and possibly City Group and and you know,

(01:20:28):
a couple of the other A couple of the other
banks are Republic Bank and and other and other ones.
That's where I would that's that's kind of the the
layout the Civil War, Yeah, the Civil War. Like and
BOTHA is definitely the snake in the garden up on
Wall Street, wholly aligned. And I think again it's either

(01:20:50):
because they're you know, all in on this stuff and uh,
and they're you know, tied in deeply with Deutsche Bank
and or and or like I n G and and.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
And they're also the controlling the controlling interest in in
in Blackrock. Yes, and you know, George was born Friedrich
to all of these people who suddenly are running the show.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
In Europe, of course, but I do believe that that's
kind of where we are on the on all of this.
And uh, and Diamond has absolutely been I've been saying
for a long time that you know, during the Yelling
Treasury days, really Jamie Diamond was was the real Secretary
of state for the United States, trying to undo all

(01:21:38):
the damage that Anthony Blincoln was doing while he was
running around the world everywhere, you know, whenever Blincoln went somewhere,
Diamond seemed to show up about two months later or
six weeks later to calm everything down with especially with China,
by the way, uh and uh and and remember the
Diamond is also setting up his his succession at JP Morgan, right,

(01:21:59):
he's he's getting right to retire and his succession plan
that's been That was an interesting cocking point of about
a year ago when he put out his succession plan
and there were a couple of names on the list,
one in particular that weren't in his plans. And the

(01:22:20):
big one was Mary Urdos, who who he brought to
Davos the last time, by the way, and that's a
kind of a keep your friends close and your enemies
closer kind of thing because and there's somebody else I
can't remember the person he was working with, but they're
the ones that ran JP Morgan's Epstein accounts. Oh yeah,

(01:22:43):
just just throwing it out there, like because you know
and you think that you know Epstein and Diamond. This
is part of the reason why I got really angry
with Whitney Webb when when they when they filed this
that stupid Epstein related to lawsuit out of Porto Rico
about Jamie about JP Morgan, and they immediately tried to

(01:23:05):
do the guilt by association saying that you know, Diamond
was the one handling that, and then of course people
just ran with it as a guilt by association thing,
and I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't track like Jamie
Diamond didn't. I doubt he even ever metch Epps, to
be honest with you, because what didine How much money
did Epstein actually have ever run through? And he had

(01:23:27):
bank accounts with everyone, So it's like, you know, and
that's and that's covered for status kind of thing, as
im Berlin would put, you have bank accounts with everyone
in order to be able to then when you burn
that guy, you'd be able to use him and the
guilt by association thing to try and make that stuff stick.
So while you when you go back in the history
on that, there was a there was a moment where

(01:23:50):
it became very obvious that London Slash the Colonial's plans
for the legislative said I shouldn't have failed. I think
it was right after Bill back Better failed or whatever.
That's when that came out, like right on, right on schedule,
and I was like, oh, look, right on schedule. I
theorized that it was Diamond with his hand on the

(01:24:12):
back on the shoulder of Kirson Cinema and Joe Manchin
who killed Bill back Better, saying don't worry about it,
We've got you covered. You say no to this bill,
You're not letting this out of the Senate. And then
that's when the whole Epstein Diamond thing got thrown out there.
And then you know the and you know it was
chummed in the waters and the and the you know

(01:24:33):
people who frankly just don't have the you know they
And I don't even blame people like the web for
running with this story because well it's it's good copy,
and it's worth and it's and it's worth some money
and it's worth chasing down. But until you understand how
all of this stuff works, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Don't hang anybody. Don't hang anybody just yet, right, don't
hang anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Just said you really need to do some there's a
bigger picture here. Then you know you're grasping at and
and and that's the and you know it's it's funny
like when that was happening, I found it, you know,
I found the silence that you know, I'm not saying
I should be on everybody's guests in their podcast, but
knowing full well that I'm the guy, like the only

(01:25:16):
guy talking about this stuff at the time, the fact
that I didn't get called by a variety of people
on this issue speaks volumes. That's all I'm going to say,
you know what I mean. Even if even if it
was just a DM, like somebody would reach out to me, go, dude,
you know, what do you think about this? I would
have been like, this is what I think and vapor
and you know, I don't have to like go under

(01:25:37):
show or anything like that. But you know, like I
get dms from people all the time that ask me
questions about this, and I'm sure you do as well, Right,
what do you think about what's going on here? Alex?
I don't know, like I. You know, and when you
don't get those calls, you get those texts or those
emails or whatever. Where we are in the you know,
at the level that we're at, that's that in and

(01:25:58):
of itself is notable, right, so I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense to me. Well it's
getting interesting and interestinger.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
Yes, yeah, that's that's one way of putting it right.
But the but the real goal is monetary reform, because
monetary reform is how we get back to the things,
all the things you talked about so eloquently at the
beginning of the podcast. And and you know, it's funny,
you know, I said to you before we started recording,
you know, when we were in Calgary and I heard you,

(01:26:30):
you know, constantly having to like beg off to you know,
be social and hang out with us and and whatnot
because You're like, no, I have to go back to work.
And I'm like this a lot that I clock at mind,
what the fuck are you doing working? And and I said, no,
you can't do this, because I remember what that was
like when you're really building the business out and you
you know, you can't sacrifice yourself. You know. One of

(01:26:52):
the things that I've been told by many, many people,
many of my subscribers, certainly by the Extra White, my
wife and others, is that, look, you can't sacrifice your
body for this. We you know, you're valuable to us.
We want you here for the long term. And it
was said to me, and it was very touching, and
it was something that you know, when I came back

(01:27:14):
from Calgary and I was talking to my therapist about this,
and I said, this is odd. I had a whole
I finally felt for the first time in my life
that I had people around me who actually cared about
my existence beyond my wife and my best friend, which
is you know that that we're looking out for me.
Never had that. And all I can say is, you know,
as your friend and as your as your you know,

(01:27:35):
podcast partner, my friend, I want you here for the
long term. You know, you're you're too valuable to all
of us to burn yourself out. So find find the
right balance and uh and be here for this and
so that you can be there for your boys.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. Yeah, well we're working
on that too.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
Good good, good, good good good good. No, I'm not
I don't know. And it was really hard for me.
I'll tell you when I first stopped, you know, when
things got a little easier, right right after I got
rehired by Newsmax and a couple other things, I felt
so guilty not working fourteen hours a day. I'm like,
oh right, I felt so guilty. I'm like, there's this

(01:28:19):
thing happening that I know people, and I felt the
responsibility and a burden. But you know, slowly but surely,
I was able to quell that. And then I started
instituting the twenty four hour rule, and now it's kind
of the seventy two hour rule. Something weird happens. I'm
going to wait seventy two hours before I comment on it,
because it seems that as things get caught crazier, the

(01:28:39):
more time you take to digest it, less talking, more thinking,
or more reflecting, Yes, the better week.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I also have to say I
also resist jumping on stories that just broke, even if
I have a strong opinion of them, because you know,
so many times if you let a day or two
or three laps you you come to a different conclusion
that you than you than you initially thought was the case.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Yeah, it's it's hard, and it's very hard when when
people are are asking you for you know, your your
take on these things. This is this is just this
is you know, I'm we're talking about this here, I'm
talking I'm bringing this up now because it's is very important.
It's something that the Dexter and I have have identified
as you know, as we go forward, we have to

(01:29:32):
be I mean, this new media space that exists in
order they're trying to get us to replicate the old
six o'clock news and the podcast space becomes the new
six o'clock news. We don't want to be there. That's
not where our value is to anyone. That's a recipe
for disaster when we're in learning, when we're like if

(01:29:55):
you're in really intense learning mode. I know when I
was doing Brexit, I was covering Brexit every day, like
two or three times a day. I was doing that
publicly because I was trying to figure out what was
going on and I wanted the interaction yeah yeah, right
in real time to like disabuse me of my notions
of what I thought was going on. But as you

(01:30:15):
get older, as you as you've got a good basis underneath,
it's almost like you're trying to alleviate your imposter syndrome
that you're feeling like, you know what I mean, You're
trying to like, I want to be better at this,
So how do I do that, well, I'm going to
interface with people who know things that I don't know
as much as right. And now as you get older

(01:30:36):
and you've you've got more experience, you can just you know,
you can take a step back, think about it a
little bit and chat.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
Sound good, good stuff, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
So with that said, mister Craner as always lovely to
talk to you. Let everybody know where you can be found,
and all the happy jazz and UH have a great weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
Likewise, mister Longo, always good to join you, Always good
to have my mind expanded broadened. How do they say? Yeah?
I have two publications on substack. One of them is
called I System Trend Compass Daily trend following newsletter. The

(01:31:21):
other one is a personal substeck called Alex Kraner's Substeck,
where I publish a bit less frequently, but let's say,
maybe more thoroughly researched and somewhat more refined texts. And
I'm active on X. My handle is at naked Hedgy
and that that's about it. I have other stuff, but
easy enough to find from there.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
Yes, I am TfL seventeen twenty eight. On X, you
will find Alex and I doing the thing on a
daily basis. So if you and you know, of course
patron slash called dotes and guns, if you want to
sign up to the newsletter or anything else. So with
that said, we're out. This is the end of episode
two twenty sive s, which I never actually identified at
the beginning of the podcast, but hey, you know, the
conversation did what it did. Alex, you have a great weekend.

(01:32:06):
We'll talk to you, my friend. You to take care
of my body, all right, keep your stick on the ice, folks.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
M

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Episode #226 - Alex Krainer and Navigating Out of the Tyranny of Safety

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode #226 - Alex Krainer and Navigating Out of the Tyranny of Safety