The Daily Stoic - Daniel Barkhuff on Restoring the 4 Stoic Virtues to Leadership

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

On today’s episode Ryan talks to Daniel Barkhuff about his path to the Naval academy and becoming a Navy SEAL, our individual obligation to each other and to serving the common good, Admiral Stockdale and restoring the 4 Stoic virtues to leadership, and more.Daniel Barkhuff is the president and treasurer of Veterans for Responsible Leadership. He attended the United States Naval Academy and served 7 years on active duty as a member of Naval Special Warfare and completed multiple combat tours. Upon leaving active duty he attended Harvard Medical School and is now a faculty member and Emergency Medicine doctor at the University of Vermont, and the father of three small girls.GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. If you’ve never donated to GiveWell’s recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $1,000 before the end of June or as long as matching funds last. Just go to GiveWell.org/STOIC and pick podcast and The Daily Stoic at checkout. Streak is a fully embedded workflow and productivity software in Gmail that lets you manage all your work right in your inbox. Streak gives you tools for email tracking, mail merges, and snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency. Sign up for Streak today at Streak.com/stoic and get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan.Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic Follow Daniel Barkhuff: Veterans for Responsible Leadership: https://vfrl.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DBarkhuff See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage justice up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. My guest today is a Navy SEAL medical doctor, combat veteran. I loved this conversation. I reached out to Daniel Bark of maybe four months ago and didn't really hear back, so I followed up, I followed up. I kept chasing it because he was someone I really wanted

to talk to ever since I saw a viral video of him, which I won't spoil because I really want you to listen to this interview. So, Dan attended the United States Naval Academy, graduated in May 2001. He spent seven years on active duty as a member of Naval Special Warfare. He completed multiple combat tours. And then after medical school, if that wasn't enough service, and if that wasn't an elite enough group, he just went ahead and attended Harvard Medical School.

And then he attended his emergency medicine residency at the University of New Mexico. And he's now a doctor of emergency medicine and a faculty member at the University of Vermont. He's the father of three young girls. He's dipped his toe. I don't want to say into politics. I would say he's dipped his toes into public leadership.

He's the founder of the Veterans for Responsible Leadership. I don't think it's a partisan organization at all. I think it's actually very much needed. It's an organization that's trying to restore ethics, responsibility, ownership, accountability, wisdom, you know, actually those four-store virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom to leadership at the local level, the national level, and he's calling on calling on veterans who, I think, more than us civilians have had some very special training in, not just leadership, but in one's sort of

constitutional obligations, right? They swear an oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States, to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic. And Dan, you can tell in this interview, takes that very, very seriously. It's a great interview. We talk about COVID. We talk about our obligations to each other. We talk about his path to the naval economy, to the seals. And then we do talk politics, but again, we talk about it through the lens of what is great leadership look like, not Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, but what

does leadership look like? What does it mean to be a serious person, to be responsible, to be honest, to serve something greater than yourself? Dan knows a lot about that. We talk about Admiral Stockdale, We talk about the great influenza. We talk about a lot of stuff. I think you're really gonna like this interview. I felt so fired up after doing it.

You can check out the Veterans for Responsible Leadership. Their website is vfrl.org. If you are a veteran, he really wants you to sign up to become a member. You can also donate to support this wonderful organization, and you can follow Dan on Twitter, which I do. I think he's great at ATD Barkof, that's ATD, and then B-A-R-K-H-U-F-F. So check it out, and check out his viral commercial. He did a commercial for the Lincoln Project, actually two. And then he's written some great articles for the Daily Beast.

All great stuff. And there's also a great profile of him in the New Yorker. If you're getting triggered from this, because you don't like it when I even vaguely dip my toe into politics, I don't know what to tell you. The Stokes were involved in politics. They were involved in public life. I'm certainly not dragging Marcus Aurelius, or Santa Cato into the political realm.

I mean, this is where they made their living. This is what their job was. So if you are triggered, I would ask you to be Stoke and listen to this interview. I think you can learn the most and I think we'll all leave being inspired by Dan. I'll leave you this quote that he tweeted. It says 49 minutes ago. He says, there's no tangible policy or benefit worth sacrificing one's honor.

Nothing comes close, nothing. I think it's totally right. You're good in encapsulation in today's episode. Here's my interview with Dan Barkov of the Veterans for Responsible Leadership. So I was curious about your path into the Navy. It seemed like you've been somewhat unassuming about it, but clearly you had your act together a little better.

You wouldn't have gotten into the Naval Academy, right? Yeah, so I was, you know, one of those kids who just was interested in the military, you know, from an early age. So, you know, reading books and, you know, all that kind of stuff and was sort of, well, still am a history buff of sorts. You know, and I only applied to the service academy, so I applied to Air Force West Point and Navy, and that was it. And I always had my heart kind of set on one of those.

And the Naval Academy at the time seemed, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do besides where uniform, so at the time, the Naval Academy can do anything in the Navy plus anything in the Marine Corps. So it seemed like the most the broadest set of choices to make it to simplify it. But you don't come from like a military family, right? No, we're not a military family.

I think, you know, I just like everybody, I had a grandfather who served in World War II, but my grandfather was stateside the entire time, you know, to hear him discuss it. He worked on some radar sets in Michigan, and that was his wartime service. My other grandfather was a scientist, a chemist,

and I think he did some some peripheral work on the Manhattan Project. And then my parents were, neither one of them were military. Yeah, so not a military background at all, just kind of always just was interested. Yeah, I've been looking up to speak at the academy, I think twice, once to the Stockdale Center. And what I'm always blown away by when you meet these kids

is like, you meet a regular college kid and they're young, they have ambition or whatever. But there does seem to be sort of a seriousness and a maturity to them that when I think back at where I was at 18 years old or 15 years old when you're starting to think seriously about it, it's almost incomprehensible to me. Where did that drive in you come from? Or where did that sort of sense of, was it duty?

Is it responsibility? Is it called to adventure, what draws you there? Yeah, good question. So it's actually an interesting question. When you think about military recruiting at all, one of the things that fascinates me is this issue of having switched from a conscription-based force in Vietnam in 1973, we ended draft and switching to an all-volunteer force.

And you get this selection bias, right? So there's, I don't mean the term bias in the, you know, as a late person, but scientific bias, where if you're trying to recruit volunteers, you have to appeal to them in some way. And the military has done that pretty well for the most part, you know, through a couple of different means. One is, you know, sort of socioeconomic incentives, right? You come in, we'll pay for college.

You know, you get a free college experience and into a lot of folks that was, you know, attractive. That's why they joined the military. Or, you know, it's simple to get out of their small little town and see the world and all that kind of thing. And then you have a cohort of folks who really are interested in, for lack of a better term, the adventure of it.

So they wanna fly a jet. They wanna jump out of an airplane. They want to go to a combat zone. I started at USNA in 97, so we're four years pre-9-11. The only show in town at that time was like Bosnia, a coast of oak. And so choosing the seal teams in part was a natural tendency to be drawn towards an area of conflict. So the naval academy was just something that just seemed really cool to me. And I wish I had a deeper,

I think they inculcate values of duty and honor and responsibility, but that's not why I went there, I went there because I wanted to fly jets and jump out of airplanes. Well, that is an interesting part of it that I feel like, again, only from my experiences, I also talked to the Marine Recruiting Command two or three years ago.

And I was talking to one of the recruiters and he was like, one of the things people don't understand about this is he's like, my job is to poach kids who otherwise would have gone to Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or UCLA. Like, I didn't really, again, it was so outside of my experience. I didn't really think about like, this is the elite of the elite. And so it's not like these kids that end up at the Naval Academy were otherwise gonna go to community college. Like these are some of the best kids in the nation.

Yeah, and the service academies are really, really good at appealing to kids who were wired, like I was wired, right? So, you see it, and you see it even in their recruiting commercials, right? You've got the Marine Corps, the guy is the handsome young man who climbs the mountain and slays the dragon and all that kind of stuff. That's appealing to a certain demographic, right?

That's appealing to, there's self-selection there. That's not something everyone's gonna want to do. The vast majority of the population has no interest in climbing the mountain and slaying the dragon, but to a certain subset of people who are attracted to that adventure and being part of that tribe that deals with national security problems.

That's a compelling, compelling message. Yeah, I was watching this, that college admissions scandal documentary on Netflix, and I read a book about it too and it was just strike. You know, you can sort of lump all kids in together and then I was just thinking about like, you know, not only were not all kids trying to cheat their way into USC, but certain kids were sort of passing up, you know, options to go to these great schools to go to one of these service academies. The other thing I was going to, I was curious to get your opinion about on the academy. And it's just another observation I had. You know, obviously it was somewhat controversial

for a long time whether they should allow women, whether women should be in certain roles. One of the things that struck me is like, the young men were very impressive. But maybe it's the maturity difference in the genders at those ages. But every time I met a young woman at the Naval Academy or in one of the armed difference in the genders at those ages, but every time I met a young woman at the Naval Academy, or in one of the Armed Forces, in any position of sort of

young, but in a position of going places, you're just like, wow, you know, like there's just a, there's a real, like you can just feel the maturity and the seriousness on this person. It's an interesting sensation that I, again, I haven't really experienced in what would you call it, civilian life. Sure, yeah, that's a great point. So, you know, I mean, when I think of, you know, the women that I was privileged to serve alongside,

you know, all the hardships and dangers of a military existence during wartime that I experienced that any one of the military, the danger of eating an IED on route Irish, the danger of just being away from home and you're loved ones for years on end and dealing with that, the dangers of TBI, the dangers of psychological injury, they have all that plus on top of that, they're dealing with systemic sexism, right? So, at least if, even if the command climate is, even if you've got the best commanding officer and the best

command sergeant major ever and they're all about having enabling women, it's still, frankly, there are difficulties of gender that exist probably in any profession, but they're still there in the military. So on top of all the hardships of military life, they're also signing up to join, you know, a male-dominated organization, right? So, you know, it takes a special kind of citizen to, you know, to sign up for that. And I couldn't agree more. I'm very impressed from, you know, all of my experiences with women in the armed forces. So, you mentioned briefly that maybe you don't enter one of these branches or these academies with the fullest sense of duty and honor and responsibility and leadership, but these

are values that you get hammered into your school almost immediately. Talk to me about the sort of, I think, especially the Naval Academy, the code of conduct. This seems like one of the things the academies do extremely well is teaching principles and sort of core values. Yeah, so the Naval Academy, and I would imagine, although I don't know this for sure, I would imagine the Air Force Academy and probably West Point as well, though it's because of the experience of the Vietnam POWs, and a large number of them were pilots. I'd imagine Air Force and Navy,

even more so than West Point, really kind of inculcate their new recruits with this messaging. And what I mean by that is, you go to the Naval Academy, forget exactly when you start, let's say you start July 1st Academy, you know, forget exactly when you start. Let's say you start July 1st, and you're there in Pleab Summer.

And within 24 hours, you know, people are talking to you, the oral tradition of the POWs in Vietnam, is part of your daily existence, you know, you talk about the rope trick, you talk about the rope trick. You talk about the Hanoi Hilton. You talk about the tap code. You know, you hear firsthand, you know, people like, you know, coffee and McCain and Stockdale. You know, these people come and, at at the time they actually spoke to us.

I remember Admiral Stockdale come into lunch one day and just talking about, you know, duty and honor. And you know, you do absorb those lessons and you see, you absorb them not just through like wrote repetition, but you absorb them because you see, you know, first hand that your peers are trying to do the right thing, trying to live up to that. And, you know, it starts in small ways. It starts when, you know, I obviously didn't go to normal college, right? I went to the service academy. People are not, people are not cheating on tests, right? People are not telling lies.

They're not lying about where they were, when they missed curfew or the like. They're telling the truth. And when you see other people doing that, when you see your peers doing that, when you see your friends doing that, there's a positive peer pressure to ethical conduct that I think the service academies have just mastered kind of getting people to buy into that. And after a time, you

realize that that's how you want to live your life. It's weird writing about stoicism because it's this sort of ancient thing. It's dusty. It's these names from history, a lot of which people struggle to pronounce. What's so fascinating about Stockdale is it wasn't that long ago.

I mean, you met him, but it feels like he's from another age and then at the same time he's very much of this age and made, you know, like a difference for you and all your classes and all the classes since. I just, I find that to be both sort of reassuring and very inspiring at the same time. Yeah, so Stockdale is just, he is just, you know, the definition of an American badass, right? Like so the dude, the dude is a POW and smashes his face in with a chair, so he doesn't get put on camera.

They take his chair out of his room, he cuts his wrist because he's like, nope, I'm not doing it. And he led those men through years and years of torment and captivity and loneliness. And he did it, I mean, I don't know how familiar I was, Dr. Hill, but I think you've heard this. He did shot down and that's his floating down to earth. He's like, I have now entered the world of epictetus, right? So he's like, I've now entered the world of epictetus, right? So he realized

immediately, immediately, that he no longer had control over much of his existence. But what he could control is the way he saw it. It's very David Foster Wallace of him to recognize that seconds after being blown out of the sky. I spoke to his son maybe about a year ago, and I'd always been under the impression that Stockdale was the highest ranking prisoner. And what he had told me is that sort of strictly speaking, that wasn't true. That there were a handful of other pilots, not a handful, let's say one or two other pilots,

who for whatever reason either didn't want to be identified as the highest ranking, or maybe they knew something, and it was important that they weren't identified as being higher ranking. And he said what he felt encapsulated who his dad was as a person was that he decided like he stepped into that role. So it's not just like like, hey, he's the highest ranking. So, you know, there's certain responsibilities and he's going to accept that. It's more, it's

almost more of a DeGal situation where, you know, the leadership had collapsed in some form or another, or it wasn't clear who deserved the ball at that moment. And what I think is so badass about Stockdale is this sense that no, no, he called for it. Like, he took it because it was there. When you're at a point where you recognize something that needs to be done and you realize that you have the You know, you have the the hoots bar and the and the you know qualifications to do it and you decide that you're due to use to do it that's

That's you know in my opinion that's that's the standard. I mean, that's what it means to be a man. And I don't mean that women can't do it as well. Of course, I mean, to recognize your duty and to do your duty despite consequence is fascinating. And my heroes, whether they're, whether they're fictional like Robert Jordan or whether they're real like Admiral Stockdale, they all aspire to that.

And I aspire to it, though, if everyone's imperfect, but that's what I would like to be remembered for. No, I wanna to talk about that too. I just know if we touch it on the beginning, certain people will turn off. So I want to warm up to it. No, to me, what Stockdale does in that moment and what I think great leaders do, it's some sort of reverberation of that question from Hillel, you know, if not me, then who? Or, you know, Moses asked himself in the Bible, like, who am I to go to the Pharaoh? And the answer is like, the fucking guy, you're the guy. Like, if you don't do it, it's not going to get done. And I think

what leaders do when stuff breaks down, or there is no, you know, when things have bogged down or gotten stuck, a leader steps up and says, here's the direction we're gonna go follow me. Yeah, and the reason these ideals are so powerful is that they apply across time and space, that they're not unique you know, they apply across time and space, right? They're not unique to a particular culture. You know, when I think of, probably my closest friend that I lost in,

in the wars was this guy Nate Hardy who was, he was killed in 2008. It's just absolute stud. I was just shocked, along with so many other people when we found out that he was killed. And he was just a lion. Like just an absolute,

like the last guy you would have thought, just good at everything, just incredible at everything, incredible operator it, everything, incredible operator. And when he's buried now in Arlington, and I still have the flyer from his funeral, and it's, but who will go for us, right? Like who will go for us? Here I am, send me.

That is people who view challenge like that, um, is, it's, it's a powerful, it's a powerful and, and eternal and universal, uh, good, you know, humankind recognizes, um, the, you know, the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good as, you know, something noble. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Is this thing all?

Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all. I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo, just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started.

And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad.

I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Yeah, and speaking of Arlington again, we'll just dance around this first part, but you know, the sort of infamous question of a certain leader standing in Arlington saying, I don't get it, what's in it for them.

What's striking to me about that is, is that that question kind of works both ways, right? Like you can say it in this sort of sneering like a sucker implication, but also what's so majestic and inspiring and heroic about every one of those gravestones and not just the gravestones, but also, you know, the life of someone like Stockdale who did make it home, is that there wasn't anything in it for them. And yet they did it anyway. But greatness, to me, one definition of heroism

is when you do something good that's not in your self-interest. Like I like writing books, I write books, it's also in my interest, that can't qualify as heroic because like my interests with it are aligned. To me, heroism is when you do the hard thing, even though you bear the brunt of the consequences of that thing.

Sure. I mean, I would push back a tiny bit and say that, you know, what's in it for them or what was in it for them, well, a lot was in it for them. They chose to stay truth to their oath. They chose not to drop their shield. And they're immortal for that. And it's a very stoic thing to say these external consequences are of less important than the internal consequence. So in a way, it's for the actualization of sacrifice in wartime is the most stoic thing imaginable.

No, I think that's right. Stockdale said something like, you know, it's not that the stoics don't feel pain or are invulnerable to harm. It's just the shame of violating the principle, the commitment, the sense of duty, the obligation, the responsibility is actually more painful. In fact, perhaps even more painful than dying trying to do the right thing. So I agree, your point, that there was some intrinsic rewards for these people who did the thing, but what I'm saying is that they were willing to sacrifice

everything for that bigger thing that they don't get to now enjoy we get to enjoy it and abuse it and take it for granted but you know they will not grow old as the poem says yeah no I agree with that 100% I mean you know Tim O'Brien you know old as the poem says. Yeah, no, I agree with that 100%. I mean, Tim O'Brien, the things they carried, if you're listening, you haven't read that, I mean, you just gotta read.

You just gotta read the things they carried. But he talks in that book about, soldiers dying because they were too cowardly not to, right? And, you know, that's a way to look at it, but, you know, I would take issue with the cowardly part, but, you know, of course, what he's really trying to say is, you know, people choose the honor of not letting their comrades down over personal safety. And that's just, it made forever, has just been an incredibly powerful thing for young men and women who step into harm's way. Is they are not, they choose danger over being thoughtless. So you mentioned that idea of dropping the shield.

And I love that. I was my friend, Stephen Pressfield, wrote a great thing at the beginning of the pandemic, where he said, you know, for the Spartans, if you lose your helmet in battle, if you lose your sword in battle, if you lose your shield in the battle, no problem, they'll replace it, they know you lost it fighting. But if you came home without your shield, it was the end because that meant that you dropped your most valuable asset, which is the thing you used to protect the people next to you. Basically, it means that you abandon your duty, your spot in the failings. And so his point was in the middle of this pandemic, probably the closest to wartime that your average person is hopefully ever going to get. The mask, social distancing, now the vaccine is that form of the shield or even just, you know, talking of friends who are, you know, going on their fifth vacation during the pandemic, you know,

not doing certain things because, you know, I was talking to a friend who's like gotten a massage every, you know, twice a week for the last year and a half, just like, you know, that's not good for you and it's not good for the person who's having to give you the massage, right? Like not being able to understand a duty and to be able to sacrifice even like the smallest amount. Why is that so fucking hard for people? It's a great question. You know, we've asked you for nothing.

You haven't had to get drafted. You have it like like my grandfather, like yours fought in World War II, you know, we've asked you for nothing. You haven't had to get drafted. You have it like Like my grandfather like yours fought in World War two, you know, he landed at Normandy He you know He had to do so much all I had to do was wear this piece of cloth on my face and get my groceries delivered instead of going inside the store and People can't do that Sure, I think it I you know, I think it has to do with almost a deeper question of like,

what really is freedom, right? So, and how is our society set up to enable freedom? The guy who doesn't wanna wear the mask, right? It's a small thing You know, it's and his argument is that no, no, this is this is freedom But what he's what he's missing is you know real freedom is is living in a society that You know allows dissent and but it's allows dissent.

But it's not dissent to simply, say I'm not gonna do it. I mean, that's what my three-year-old does, right? I won't want to get in the car. I'm going to throw a temper tantrum about it and you can't make me. Well, that's not a real freedom. Real freedom is being able to, you know, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness in a way that, you know, I would argue that there

has to be modified with some degree of personal and collective responsibility. So, you know, it's very simplistic thinking to think that your rights or your freedom is impinged by being asked to wear a mask for, again, most of the time, not for your sake, but for others. I work in the emergency room and we're lucky. I'm in Vermont and we've been spared the worst of the pandemic. In part, Vermont's one of the best states in the country, right? As far as I've never responded.

In part, that's, you know, responsible leadership. In part, that's, you know, a population that I think takes public health more serious on the average. But we've had our first share of COVID and it was brutal on the nursing homes, and people died up here, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people across the country, millions across the world have died, because folks don't wanna make,

it's not even a sacrifice, it's just an adolescent kind of simplistic view of what your rights are to say, I don't want to wear a mask. The vaccine, I get that there's hesitation, I get that there are certain groups with historical distrust for good reason of the medical establishment. But the vaccine I get a little bit more, but the mass stuff just blows my mind.

It's such a simple thing and you're going to kill someone's grandmother. That's what strikes me about it. Stockdale said, the flip side of freedom is that I am my brother's keeper. And I was thinking about that actually on Monday, I had lunch with a person. I know there's like a well-known person. Like if I said this person's name, you would know who they are. You've seen them in many things before. And, you know, I was talking about, I've gotten the vaccine, I volunteered a handful of times at this vaccine clinic down the street. And I was talking about it and he's like,

oh, this would be a good time for me to tell you, I'm not going to get it. And I said, why? And he said, well, he's like, I'm young, I'm healthy. There might be negative side effects. Why should I risk it? And, and I, again, I thought back to my grandfather. It's like, do you know what the prognosis was for, like, for Normandy? Like, it was not good. It was, it was like, most of them were going to die. And it might not even work. And you can't even take a vaccine that primarily protects you and then definitely protects other people. You can't, you can't even do that because what, like, zero and 150 million people have been harmed by the vaccine so far.

It struck me not only as insane and then doubly insane. This person was off to an acupuncture appointment afterwards. And you're just like, the science versus acupuncture versus vaccines, I mean, come on. So it's so baffling to me. I thought you of all people might have some insights. Yeah, it's, you know, so there's there's certain, um, a vaccine is a, is a, you know, being told to take this new vaccine is a new thing. So, you know, my, you know So for me, the greater blame lies with, so people turn to whom they trust, right? So some people trust physicians,

so they turn to the physicians. The physicians say, hey, get the vaccine, okay. Now, there's been issues with vaccine, the vaccine in, for example, communities of color. So American community, well, when you think about the context of Henrietta Lacks and Tuskegee, that makes sense. But some people are trusting, for example, Fox News, right, and Tucker Carlson. And, you know, they're doing, you know, they, those are a trusted voice. And, you know, even, even, you know, and I'll give credit here to, you know, the Mike

Pence and, and Mark Rubio and all these people who I politically oppose very deeply, but they went on camera and got a vaccine. Yes. And they, I like to think that they did that to help, you know, negate the falsehoods coming out of a lot of right wing media. And, you know, but it's a new thing. People turn to who they trusted for information on it and some voices that are trusted by people,

you know, just came back with a bunch of bullshit and said, don't get it. So that's kind of what happened. And, you know, Joe Rogan, right? You know, Joe Rogan the other day said, hey, you know, if you're a young person, don't get the vaccine, well, that is just universally selfish. That is, you know, people, young people, you know, should think of it almost the other way.

Like they should be ashamed not to get it. I would be, I would be ashamed to know that I think. It's like a draft dodging. It's like a draft dodging, but at least not wanting to get shot at in the jungles of Vietnam, especially if you're of certain communities, at least there's the self-interest argument there. Right. Right.

And people are saying, well, it's this new, and I get that people don't understand the science, and it does, and move the medical establishment to, you know, try to explain, you know, mRNA vaccines, in a way that makes sense. But, you know, it's, there are trusted voices who are saying the wrong thing.

That's just as simple as that. Yeah, I have a small bookstore here outside Austin and I put out a thing about it and I said, look, you know, massive required vaxes preferred and somebody emailed him and they said, you know, let me know when you lift your policy of discrimination. And I said, you know what, man, the no-asshole rule is going to be true well through the pandemic, because that's, I think, really the issue actually has less to do with what the pandemic is very important. The vaccine is critical because we've already lost. It took World War II, you know, four plus years to kill the same amount of people the vaccine has done less less than a year and it's still going. But like, to me, I think you mentioned with your kid, this sort of petulant, like you can't make me,

I would rather other people die if it allows me to own the other political party. I think I'm smarter than everyone, I'm more important than everyone. I will not allow my personal plans to be disrupted in any way. Who are you to stop? It's such a preposterous understanding of what freedom is. And I think the irony of it is like the only reason there's mask mandates is because people aren't voluntarily wearing their masks.

You know, like if in March, if in March, everyone fucking got their act together or if, hey, people were socially distancing and cases were low, they would be able to repeal the mandate and just suggest it. But like I'm amazed, I would be curious for your medical opinion, like if we've had 100 million vaccines, plus, or is it 200 million, we've had a very large amount of vaccines, of millions of people have gotten the cases, have gotten cases since March of last year.

Who are these 100,000 people the day that are getting it? Like it's almost amazing to me that I assume a good portion of them are people who have no choice. They're forced to work this place or that place is lack of options. But, you know, the people who have options who are getting it now, it's almost baffling to me. Yeah, no, it's gonna be interesting to unpack this and you know

it people are gonna people are gonna look at this right so you know this is the books the books and the scholarship that's gonna come out of you know our national responses you know whoever writes the book I'm gonna buy it you know it's it's gonna be the psychology of how we ended up here. Have you read the great influenza? Yes, I have. Incredible book. It is an incredible book. And it's fascinating that what came out of that, right? It led directly to the discovery of DNA and all this sort of stuff. If you're, as far as like lay people books, that's one of the best ones to understand what happens in a pandemic and what can happen with,

in this case with the flu and the first world war. Yeah, it's sometimes, if you feel like this is too political, one of the best things you can do is go read historically and get a sense of, oh, this has happened before. I mean, obviously, I write about Marcus Aurelis. He has this amazing quote that he writes during the Antenine play. He says, look, a plague can take your life, but the one you got to worry about is the pestilence that destroys your character. And I think it's very clear a good chunk of society

unfortunately is caught something worse than COVID. Yeah, no, that's true. You know, it's, there's a lot to, there's a lot to unpack there. You know, the mistrust of expertise, the broad, small-dead democratization of knowledge on the internet is incredible. It's great, and I use it all the time. If I want to change a light switch in my house, I go to YouTube and I'm like, yeah,

this is how you change a light switch, right? But people think because we can Google something now that that makes them an expert, I would never try to, there are certain electrical problems I definitely would call an electrician for. Right. know, there are certain electrical problems I definitely would call an electrician for, you know, but yes, it's in part, you know, the way that we're connected now and the way that people get their information is it's got issues with it and, you know, broadly there are many, there are many wonderful things about it, you know. Anyone with a laptop or an iPhone can essentially find out

anything, right? But it's not the same as expertise. And I think this is a bit of a tangent. But I think a large part of the problem, both with COVID and to perhaps a lesser extent, the wars is people don't see it. So we have HIPAA, right? So HIPAA of course is a good thing.

I shouldn't be able to see a patient and then talk to my neighbor about someone's heart of black or something like that. But one of the consequences of that is people don't see Mr. Smith who can't breathe, that has an O2 set of 72% and is literally turning purple. They don't know what that looks like. They're like, yeah, I don't know, I heard some old people in the nursing home got it. And, you know, without, you know, human beings are visual creatures without really seeing what this means, what 600,000 body bags means. You know, it's, it's, I'm not arguing for TV

cameras and hospital wards necessarily. I'm just saying that, you know, if we don't, if we don't draw people's attention to what is actually happening, in part, that's, you know, that's part of the problem. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. No, I'm very glad you brought this up because I think it's true. And in a weird way, it has the show, stay tuned. No, I'm very glad you brought this up

because I think it's true. And in a weird way, it has the extra, I don't wanna say benefit, but it has the extra side effect of really revealing just some of the fundamental flaws in equities in our society. I was reading about Carl Anthony Towns, the NBA player. He nearly died of COVID, his mom died of COVID.

And I think like seven or eight relatives also died of COVID, right? So different communities. If you asked your, you know, if you asked someone who's a black American, they're almost certainly going to know someone who died of COVID. If you ask your average privileged young white person, they're probably not going to know anyone. And so, you know, and also depending on what state you live in, you know, so Vermont does it pretty well, if you live in El Paso, you know, you probably definitely know someone. So the inequities are there. And what I would

urge people to do, and it's a habit I've sort of picked up before before COVID, but like, go to the New York Times of Bituaries, they have like a whole section called like the people we've lost or those we've lost that's just obituaries of people who have died of COVID. I was reading a 40 year old, a sort of bio researcher, a 41 year old, like the loved preschool teacher. It can be very easy to think,

oh, the vast majority of people who have died have been old. But I think the reality is like, six figures of the deaths are people like 50 and younger. It's like, these are appalling numbers that your filter bubble can prevent you from comprehending. And you have to actually actively go look for the information so you're not able to dismiss what you don't want to hear or think about. Yeah, of course. And I mean, you know, if you stacked 600,000 people, that's enough.

You know, if you stacked those bodies end to end, we're, you know, we're 600, 700 miles of just dead people. That's the civil war. That's the whole civil war. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, and you know, we're just talking about deaths, right? Which, obviously, is what is most important. But, you know, a little example, I did my residency at University in New Mexico

in emergency medicine and great program, great place, love albacrukey. The, there was a co-resident of mine who stayed in New Mexico and became, he's one of the physicians there and works in the ICU and the emergency department. He got COVID last summer and last time I talked to him, which was around Christmas, he was still on oxygen. This is a healthy 35 year old male. He was like a rock climber, mountain bike, outdoorsy type stud athlete, absolutely like stud athlete in the best shape of anyone I know just about. And he is still walking around seeing patients

dragging an oxygen tank, you know, and there are, for, you know, all of these deaths, you know, there are, there's tons more sequela that's common, you know, people are going to have permanent lung damage, people are going to permanent heart damage, you know, it's, it's, we don't even talk about that, you know, but it's, it's, it's massive, it's just massive. Well, and that that's where this sense of you know fighting for the person next to you is so important Some of the my listeners and fans have you know said that I've overreacted because I'm young and healthy and that we live out in the country So we've just been like in our bubble like we haven't really done anything I'm gone anywhere. I've been on an airplane our kids aren't going to take care because we can do all those things

We took every precaution we could. And have there been rule things that I've missed out on? Have there been opportunities to make money on things that I've, yes. But to me, I would, and even though the risk to my children, for instance, is extraordinarily low, I would just never forgive myself

if I, because I had to go sit at a bar with my friend, that I negatively impacted my child's future, right? And I think the Stoics talk about this idea of our sort of circles of concern, right? And so first, our first circle of concern is yourself, your family gets bigger and bigger. But I try to work myself to a place where like, yeah, I just don't know if I could live with myself. If I had to have a call with someone and said, hey, look, we saw each other. I had been being safe, you know, you're now exposed. And then something were to happen to them. I think people have struggled with being able, they just don't want to think about the fact that they're making decisions that are fine for them, but negatively externalizing serious consequences or potential consequences on other people.

Of course, I mean, what you're describing is just duty, right? You know, that's duty. My duty to my to my fellow citizen, to people I care about, and, you know, to a stranger I don't know. But the duty we feel, and don't get me wrong, there's, I bet there are lots of people. And I mean, this in an incredibly positive way, I bet there are lots of people, thousands of people, millions of people who are not

at risk for the vaccine and they know they're not and they got the vaccine anyway. And thank you for that. You know, they are, they're like, oh yeah, it's a panda, but I got to go down to the, you know, to the clinic and I got to get a shot and then I get another one in a couple of weeks and I watched a, I watched a little old lady sit in her car for 45 minutes, she's terrified of needles. I watched her work herself up the courage to ask for a wheelchair to ask to be pushed inside to get this thing that she did not want to get. You know, it's better for her, she's not super healthy as you're saying, but like, you know, they're, yes, we should be celebrating too, the quiet courage

of the people who have gotten it. Yeah, yeah. I've started to see lately more and more of these millennial Gen Z type, come in with a spray and dangle or whatever in the emergency room and we routinely ask, you know, are you vaccinated?

And they're saying yes. And that's fantastic. Like, you know, people are taking, you know, this, this, they're taking their own personal safety seriously, but they're also taking the safety of their, you know, their friends and family and fellow citizenry seriously. And that, that should be lauded, yeah.

No, I love that. I love that sort of quiet, ordinary courage. I think it's, George Elliott said, we lionize all form of courage, all forms of courage, except for that which we can show to our closest neighbor. You know, we do celebrate martial courage, but just the, hey, I'm going to be a good person, raise my family, pay my taxes, fulfill my obligations.

This is also courageous and heroic. Absolutely. So, let's talk about your sense of duty that draws you into something, and maybe I'm making this up, but I get the sense that you were reluctantly drawn into the political realm, particularly with the stands you've had to take. Like you didn't seek it out, but you felt it was seeking you out.

I think that's fair. You know, the, I've always kind of like followed politics, right? You know, but my, not to the degree I do now, but I always had a least sense of what was going on in Washington and this and that. And again, back to the Naval Academy. One of those things was you had to read a newspaper every day. So when you're a plea, I think I got the poster or something, you know,

delivered, and you had to, you know, every morning to open your door and there's literally a newspaper there and you're expected to be able to be conversant about, you know, it couldn't all just be sports. You had to be able to talk about, you know, kind of the issues with, you know, your fellow classmen and that sort of thing. So, I got involved, I started this group, Veterans for Responsible Leadership, pretty quickly after Trump was inaugurated. And I just found him, in addition to just sort of, disgusting for lack of a better term.

Like just as a human being, I mean. It's just a human being. You know, he, it really started with the original Michael Flynn stuff. Sure. You know, it was, it was Michael Flynn lying to the FBI and, you know, and lying to vice president Pence. And, you know, we complaining, and one of my fellow Naval Academy I was complaining on Facebook or something about it.

One of my fellow Naval Academy grads, the guy who actually was my original co-founder, is like, well, are you going to do anything about it? Or just complain about Facebook? And so, and it initially, I'll be honest, probably started as almost a vanity project. You know, I wanted to be able to look my daughters, I have three daughters. I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, hey, I tried to do something about this misogynistic racist president. And-

That doesn't sound like vanity. Well, I felt I owed it to them to try. And so, it gathered some support. And we kind of organized largely on social media. And we're looking for funding and all this kind of stuff. And then, of course, the Lincoln Project stuff happened. And I did not want to do those videos. I live in Vermont.

And it's a super blue state. And I chose the most conservative parts of my personality and my story to highlight deliberately to try to tip the needle against this guy. And VFRL is an organization that, now is much bigger than me. There was, there was about 18 months from so where VFRL was me sitting on my couch. And, you know, now we've got thousands of members and we're, you know, we're trying to, we've gotten out of the start of phase and we're trying to, you know, we're in the growth phase, really. And, you know, but the binding glue is people who believe that their oath did not come with an expiration date

and their role as a citizen, their duty as a citizen requires them to get involved. And that is something that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of. And I like to say that VFRL has, we have no opinion on your opinions, except for loyalty to the rules of the game. So, if you're, we're endorsing this kid Michael Wood down in Texas. And he is running this. Senator, what is it?

Congress. So he's in Texas six and it's this jungle primary. It was for the congressman who was elected and then died of COVID. And the special elections coming up. And you know what, I don't agree with him on a whole lot of stuff. You know, he's worried about China. He's big pro oil. He's worried about China, he's big pro-oil, he's ardently pro-life.

I identify as personally pro-life, but I wouldn't change laws regarding that. He would as sort of a supply and demand issue. But he would restrict abortion access and things like that. But you know what he does? He tells the truth. He says, hey, Donald Trump lied to you. I'm not gonna lie to you. Donald Trump is full of it. He is lying to you.

Fox News is lying to you. And he's an Adam Kinzenger Republican. And we need to support that. We need to have honest debate in this country. We need to talk to people we oppose politically using the same set of facts, right? And that's what this kid represents. And, you know, that's what VFRL represents is, you know, we've got people who are Bernie Bros in VFRL represents is, we've got people who are Bernie Bros in VFRL.

And we've got people who are like pretty hard core conservatives. And we all agree that the rules of the game, the constitution of the United States, requires us in informs our duty as citizens. It's interesting because sometimes I'll take hits from my audience for, you know, why do you have to drag politics into this? And I live in a very red state. And I, you know, I, I like guns. I don't like guns. I have guns. I hunt, you know, I, I like low taxes. I like to be

left alone. So it's, it's funny because people sort of make up certain assumptions when you, when you sort of talk about these things. But it's interesting, like most of what you're talking about, most of what I talk about, I don't actually see this as political at all. To me, this is like bedrock, social contract stuff, human decency stuff, truth stuff. Like to me, politics is like, do you support,

you know, like school vouchers or like, what should the budget be? Or, you know, like, do you support the infrastructure bill? Yes or no? To me, like, I'm, I have no interest. I don't even think I'm smart enough to have an opinion about a lot of those things. But I do feel like it is the basic human obligation to call a spade, a spade. I mean, one of the, one of the original suggested slogans for the United States instead of E. Polarova's Unum was, and I'm forgetting

the Latin expression, it's just rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. That's what America is about. It's supposed to be like calling a spade a spade, drawing a certain line against authoritarian impulses, excesses, et cetera. And it's ironic to me that the people who can't wear a mask to not infect their neighbor to death are also totally silent on like legit, you know, violations of the Constitution you're talking about. Yeah, and it's, it's, you know, we have to, we have to agree on the facts to have an honest debate, right? And so, you know, that's where we are. Like that's, that's why VFRL has, you know, taken off, that's why there's a role for it in the national discourse is because

we've devolved so much that we can't decide if it's cloudy or sunny outside. And when you get to a space like that, the special thing about this organization is it's full of folks who already once raised their hand and bought into that higher calling. And now they are taking their citizenship equally as seriously. And we're trying to, we have to move the national dialogue back to actual, factual things, because we have real adversaries internationally. We have real problems. We have an aging population. We have China and Russia. We have the forever wars. We have global warming. We have all these challenges that nothing is going to happen on any of them until we can agree what is true.

So, you have a good definition of what responsible leadership is or like sort of the model for responsible leaders because I think sometimes maybe I feel like part of the reason Trump was able to to to mask a raid as certain things to certain people as we've we've we can't point to a stockdale because he doesn't loom large enough in people's minds to be like, that's what a leader or a man or an officer behaves like. Yeah, no, it's a great question. The, you know, for me, a responsible leader is, so first of all, it can absolutely be someone I disagree with on a particular policy, right?

But a responsible leader recognizes that there will only exist for the greater good of the group. And they are someone who politicians, they like to be in politics, right? They like the bright lights, they like the cameras, all that stuff. That's fine. And if that's your incentive, sure, but your job is to look after your quote unquote followers. That's the reason leadership exists. And so a responsible leader is someone who for starters takes that seriously. And they think about how their actions will affect the people

that have elected them. So a good example of this is someone like Senator Romney. Right? Like, you know, you can see what he's going about, Mitt Romney. And, you know, maybe you like his particular policy on this or that, but you know, he's a guy who really thinks through decisions and doesn't always do within his personal best interest

when it conflicts with what he views as his duty. He's a serious person. Yeah, yeah, that's a great yes, simplistically put yes, he's a serious person who takes governing seriously. Can you keep going a little bit by the way if you have to jump? I tell you. No, I don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, that's what we need more of. And, you know, it's frustrating to see, you know, it's frustrating to see how that, you know, not everyone wants that. I want that. I suspect you want that. Many, many people want that. But some people just want, you know, the show window on the lips and, you know,

all that kind of stuff. So, what is with the attraction then? So, we, I interviewed you, I guess you call him former colleague, Dan Crenshaw. Last year, he and I had a mutual friend. I thought maybe he would be a serious person. I've worked with Eric Grytens before. Again, thought, this is a serious person. I'm fascinated by two things.

One, what do you think is making these guys tick? And it's not just guys, there's some obviously very unserious female leaders out there. What is going on there? And, but I'm also more interested in not more interested in how are they fooling people? Like how do people not see now that it's been laid bare sort of what is going on there? That's so strange to me. Yeah, it's no, it's a great question. So,

gradients is kind of a special case, so I'm gonna set him aside for a second. Okay, you know, Dan, so first of all, I'm gonna preface this statement. I did not serve with Dan Crenshaw in the SEAL teams, but everyone, you know, one degree of separation, it'm going to preface this statement. I did not serve with Dan Crenshaw in the SEAL teams, but everyone, you know, one degree of separation, it's a small community. Everyone in the court has said he served honorably while he was on duty and, you know, clearly has the wounds to, you know, to back that up.

And I've had one conversation with Dan Crenshaw ever in my life and it was when Viaferal was starting and he was running for Congress, and it was during his Republican primary. And I just think Dan is kind of a classic politician. You can see Dan's, you can see his impulse come out, you can see his better impulses come out sometimes. You know, he'll say something,

he'll make a real argument for a conservative principle that I have to, you know, he'll say something, he'll make a real argument for a conservative principle that I have to, you know, sit there for a second and be like, okay, that's, I don't agree with that maybe, but that's a fair argument that is based in fact, and then you'll turn around and, you know, tweet something about, you know, you know, the election fraud or what have you, you know, so, Dan. Sometimes you wonder wondering, maybe like somebody is doing that for them. It's so discordant that it's almost unfathomable that the same things could come out of one adult with a decent education and a decent track record as a human being. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, is no more hypocritical than many other politicians, right? He's a guy who wants his cake and he wants it. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. And I get that. Okay, that's Crenshaw. Grindens is a straight-up sociopath. He was one-bugs class in front of me and I didn't like him then and everybody's ever worked with the guy. Here's the thing about Eric Grendens. Eric Grendens was the most flaming card carrying liberal. He was not liked in the seal teams

because he never really served as a Navy seal. But in addition, at the time, he was sort of this like liberal left leaning, loved like loved Obama. And then he realized, wait, I'm from Missouri. This is not going to get me elected. And he just turned into the shill Republican, like Magi guy. And I think I know he's running again, and we'll oppose him.

He's legitimately a true sociopath in my opinion. Well, that goes to the stockdale thing we were talking about earlier. I think what's remarkable, actually, kind of in both cases, but more in greatens, is the shamelessness, right? Like, I'm not saying if you cheat on your wife and you get caught and you have to resign and disgrace, you know, you should be shunned from all society forever. I actually thought it was admirable that he, you know, he re-enlisted in the Navy. But that struck me and was like,

oh, that's what, that would be the right move when you've exhausted all your other options. The idea that like three years later, you would be running for public office again, actually having gone more, like gone further from the center and then sort of pretending that you're somehow a victim of all the things that have happened to you. Like there are there are some things worse than death being shameless and you know that to me is a thing worse than death. Yeah. So here's what I'll say about Gregg's who boy he's smart

He really is smart and he's smart, you know, he's book smart But he's he knows this is his way back in right like he he is You know, he's calculating he's manipulative and he knows that he can pull this off and it's I mean It's terrifying to me that he can pull this off. And I mean, it's terrifying to me that he can pull it off. But he, you know, so you asked a question, do, you know, how does this happen? Will it happen? Yeah, why can't he pull it off?

That's like, why will people allow him to pull it off? That strikes me as nuts. The reason this is happening is because of you because you and I are having this conversation. There are people who, more than anything else, they want to own the lives. They want to, if you went to college or know, high and mighty and, you know, what have you and they, they, you know, they disdain expertise. And those people exist and they love Donald Trump and Grytans realizes that he's like, yeah, he's like, this is just, this is just populism, right? This is just national populism. This is, I'm going to go anti-as-anti-alit as I can. And the fact that it makes Dan

Barker's mad that I'm up in the polls, people are going to like that. That's the attraction is he pisses people off. Yeah. And I guess shameless, I was thinking about what is Trump's superpower, right? Trump's superpower is like, let's say you had done the locker room talk and you had, you had been recorded saying horrible things about women. And actually, I actually know Billy Bush, and so I'm pretty fascinated and familiar with this whole conversation. But let's say, somehow unwittingly, wittingly, you say the worst possible thing you could say on camera, you get caught, you're humiliated in front of the whole world. Your your side of you that you would never want

to be seen is revealed. Like, you know, that's where like a human is commit, that's where a normal person is committing Harry, Carrie, going underground, right, ending your political career. But Trump's superpower was that second debate, whereas you and I would have gotten up and said, I'm out, sorry. Right. He said, you know, he was not only able to go up in front of 70 million people, but he could, he could go up in front of 70 million people and make it everyone else's fault but his own. That shamelessness is to me the virus

that we have not figured out how to fight yet and our society, especially the way the founder set it up, the whole system was designed, the ultimate check in balance was restraint, was caring about your reputation, was your word mattering to you. And we're kind of defenseless against these like super bugs who are sociopaths or totally shameless.

Yeah, I know, it's a great point. I think, you know, I, during the pandemic, I read the turnout book on Hamilton. And, you know, it's the, you the, the profile on Aaron Burr is, you know, he's sort of, you know, he's got some Trumpy aspects to him, just this lack of, you know, caring about, you know, what other people think, no matter how disgraceful his own personal behavior is. And, you know, there's a thing line between having a thick skin and like really not actually caring. And so I agree with you. I think Trump went through a million things that would have

destroyed any other politician in our national history. I mean, Nixon Watergate, he lied about breaking into the DNC. Trump did that. Trump, there was no way Trump would have resigned. Trump did it. Trump did it. It would have been a footnote. And it just highlights the where we are, I think, as a society, that some of its reality TV, some of its, you know, just how kind of cushy and easier society has become, you know, in general. And I think it's fascinating. It's absolutely fascinating. And what about the even more extreme characters?

Right? Let's not even name them, so we don't give them more name recognition. But at least Crenshaw or Greatens, they did serve their country. They have done things in real life. They are legitimately intelligent as well. Josh Hawley has degrees from real schools, right?

Then there's characters even further afield from him. And I've noticed this also in the sort of the police brutality debate, too. There seems to be this obsession or tolerance with this sort of pseudo warrior culture. Like, I think about this sort of like the you know, like the thin blue line flags. And it's like, you're not the thin line between between chaos. You are the chaos. Like, and I say this as a person whose father was a police officer, like, you had people waving

thin blue line flags as they beat police officers nearly to death when they storm the Capitol in January 6th, what is this screwed up, like, distorted, sort of, martial culture that doesn't actually seem to be emanating from people in the military at all? Yeah, so a great question. There's, you know, you can unbe, you know, this, this, this would take out to talk about, but, you know, the, the, the short answer. So I actually wrote a piece, a few years back for the Daily Beast. You can probably find it, but, you know,

I've got it. It's a great piece. Yeah, about guns and stuff. And, you know, I think that, and stuff. And I think that in part this is because of my community and what happened with 9-11 and Marcus Latrell and killing Ben Laden and all this sort of stuff, and it's not just maybe seals, but we're probably the most egregious example of it. But the gun community got 20 years of free advertising every night, right? Everyone wanted to be, you can even see it with beers, right? I truly think beer started because people wanted to look like cool guys in Afghanistan,

and now everyone has a beard. And, you know, that, the NRA, you know, really doubled down on, you know, we're instead of hunting and fishing, we're talking about, you know, self-defense, and then, you know, the natural step after self-defense is what you need to defend yourself from the government, too. And so, you know, there's this martial worship that, you know, people who join the military don't expect. I hate it when people are like, you know, thank you for your service. Like, I get the sentiment behind it, but it's not, I didn't do what I did.

So a little old lady in the grocery store can say, thank you for your service, right? Like that's not, it's almost embarrassing. And, you know, but we've had this just sort of explosion that in my opinion goes back to, you know, again, the end of the draft. Like this is, this is what happens when you have a volunteer force that fights two decades worth of war.

You know, this is, this hasn't happened in American history before. We don't have a precedent for this. You know, we've often been a conscription-based force and we've never had a war that lasted 20 years, even Vietnam didn't go on that long. So, you know, this is kind of new, uncharted territory for us, but we've got this, you know, the Pendulums swung so far the other way. You know, you hear this Vietnam story, you know, Karl Marlant, who's talking about, you know, came home and there were protesters and I had to change in civilian clothes, so

I didn't get spit on. And, you know, you hear, you know, that's a common Vietnam era trope, even if it's not entirely true. But, you know, the pendulum came all the way back where you can't say anything to criticize anyone in the military. You know, people in the military experts on anything, right? You know, let's put, you know, some junior officer who did 12 months in a war zone and all of a sudden he's got a fox gig. You know, that stuff is harmful to our society to worship this, you know, one aspect of state

sponsored violent power. Yeah, and, you know, it's's like if you ever do martial arts, the whole thing is about how you're supposed to never have to use this stuff, right? And what's weird about gun culture? And I say this as a person who not only owns guns and hunts, like my house in Texas, when I bought it, came with a walk in closet that had been turned

into a giant gun vault. Like I'm not anti-gun in any way. What I do find insane is why anyone needs a semi-automatic, high-powered rifle. I say this as someone who has an open carry permit that I never use. But the idea that you would want these massively destructive and dangerous things around your house that you would talk about, that you would feel that it's okay to brandish them around as a form of political protest. It's literally the opposite of what this country was about.

The whole point of civilian, the distinction between civilian and military control was not so civilians would walk around openly brandishing weapons. I mean, the Wild West was a hellscape. We don't want to go back to that nonsense. Yeah. And, you know, the one thing that came out of the Trump, and I'm very proud of this, though, I'm proud of this as an American, not Dan Barker

to get anything to do with this role. But I am proud that the military in our country, the uniformed military, the senior leadership refused to become political and said that we have no role in our elections. We are here to preserve democracy, not to practice it. And that, I think, when we look back, when we think about how close we were, if we were in Burma, the general in charge of the Air Force would have been like,

yeah, cool, let's do the coup, right? Right. And that didn't happen here. And that, I believe is why, you know, I truly believe that in large part, that's why Trump left, ultimately left more or less peacefully is that the military said, we're not, you know, cause you know,

I, there had to have been overtures, you know, what are you gonna do if we don't leave, you know like what you know that right? So you want to talk about deterrence there was a quiet deterrence there that that wasn't gonna fall as easily as the other American institutions. Yes, and You know, and that speaks to you know people in that speaks to, you know, people's sense of duty. And, you know, back to the stoic virtue, it speaks to people who took an oath and took the responsibilities of that oath seriously and quietly held the line. Yeah, no, it goes to the the maddest thing probably our closest and most explicitly well-known modern stoic, you know, sort of hold the line, stand up for what you believe in,

you know, just because the world is crazy doesn't mean you have to get sucked into it. And in fact, you know, the Marcus really talks about being, he says, be like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around. I think that's what duty does. People go crazy, people lose their mind, the mob gets, you know, stirred up. But if good people hold the line, people step up and do the individual small and big sort of roles, they feel duty prescribes, you know, hopefully eventually things calm down and we can get back more on even footing.

I could not agree more. Dan, thank you so much, not just for talking to me, but for your work, I imagine it did not, although it's probably in fun and challenging in some ways I imagine it was scary and did not involve And involve some personal risk and so I appreciate it and and your distinction I've read in a piece between moral and physical courage, you know my argument is Anytime you put your ass on the line figuratively or literally that's what courage is and and I think you did that with Veterans for responsible leadership and and I really you did that with veterans for responsible leadership, and I really appreciate it. Thanks, Ron.

I appreciate it. Guys, check out VFRL.org if you're interested, and if you're a veteran listening and you like what we're talking about, please join. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference and of course every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us

and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.