2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Two Army veterans—one left, one right—unite for the ultimate mission: tackling real-world problems with common sense, logic, and a healthy dose of military humor. 2 POGs Save the World isn’t your typical political podcast. Hosts Kj Bradley & Lance O'Neil bring unfiltered discussions, sharp debates, and tactical solutions to the chaos of modern society.
From politics and national security to sports and pop culture, no topic is off-limits. With battle-tested insights and zero tolerance for BS, these two POGs (Personnel Other than Grunts) prove that you don’t have to agree on everything to find real solutions.
Join the fight every Sunday at 8:30 PM EST, where the only thing sharper than the takes is the wit. Mission: Common Sense. Execution: Hilarious. Victory: Inevitable
🎙️ Listen. Debate. Disagree. Laugh. Take Notes.
2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Calloused Hands, Tender Hearts: John David Graham on Second Chances and Speaking Truth
This week on 2 POGs Save the World, KJ and Lance welcome the incomparable John David Graham-a former truck-dwelling preacher turned award-winning author, nonprofit leader, and unapologetic truth-teller. From surviving homelessness to building a $2 million reentry program helping thousands reclaim their lives after prison, Graham brings a unique blend of street-tested faith, social grit, and raw wisdom.
We'll dive deep into the dangerous crossroads of faith and politics, the rise of Christian nationalism, and why the church must reclaim its purpose outside the halls of power. Oh, and don't worry-we've still got plenty of the usual political chaos and POG-level shenanigans.
Whether you believe in second chances or just want to hear from someone who lives them, this episode will challenge what you thought you knew about justice, faith, and the fight for something better.
what do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:the same thing we do every night. Pinky, try to take over the world all right, yo let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Try to take over the world you're preaching freedom and greatest chaplain in the world. Trying to take over the world.
Speaker 1:What up, what up, what up. I'm going to do my best. Kj impression hey, what's up? Do you know where your pogs are? It is 8.30 on the East Coast. Kj, as you may have noticed, is not with me at the moment. Kg will be here. He is doing the wonderful travel and fighting traffic. So tonight we're going to be talking with John Graham who is the founder of Good Samaritan Home. He's an author all around, seemingly interesting guy. Let's see if he's as interesting as I hope he is. I think we are. We're just talking a little bit off stage. John's big thing. John, tell you what? Why don't you introduce yourself and just give everybody kind?
Speaker 1:of an idea of who you are, where you're coming from and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Well, I won't give you any pretentious nonsense. Let's say that. Let's put it this way. I sense let's say that let's put it this way. I've made a lot of career detours before I got here, and it took me about 35 years to find something that I was actually good at, and so I'm very sympathetic for people who make detours like I did. I believe heartily in second chances, third chances and, in my case, eight chances.
Speaker 1:That's like let's see Colonel Sanders and Hers my case eight chances.
Speaker 2:That's like let's see Colonel Sanders and Hershey's, I believe both had Actually it's very similar except I didn't do chicken.
Speaker 1:As you say, there's still time, right? I'm sure there's somewhere in the market. There's only so many ways you can do chicken apparently. I think great sympathy in Colonel Sanders living in his car for a while, yeah, and I think Hershey, the guy who went bankrupt multiple times, I want to say Walt Disney struggled early on for quite a bit as well. Some of the big names really kind of had problems and just were major challenges before they found what their track in life is. And it sounds like you kind of went along that path.
Speaker 2:Well, actually, you're actually touching on the heart of the issue. In our culture, we like to think that you're successful at 20, 25, and you make a million by 30, and you can retire and live large at 40 in the south of France, and I found that, at least for me and I have a feeling I'm typical it doesn't work that way. It takes a long marathon to reach a degree of stability, let alone success.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I agree, and the crazy thing about how the world is now is you can even make it worse because of the influencers who hit it big. So here's a few people like Mr Beast and some of the other kind of weird podcaster influencers and they do. They make a ton of money because they were early in, they found a niche and they went with it. But now kids come along and think, oh well, that's all I have to do. All I have to do is be popular on YouTube and I can drive a Lamborghini and live on the South France if they want, and I don't think the kids these days understand that. That's not normal.
Speaker 2:Well, we have. I'm part of the generation that grew up thinking that if we stand in front of our microwave and say, hurry up, that it'll somehow uh, whereas our mothers used to spend all day in the kitchen and that was actually the whole point of it was to spend all day doing something together.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, for sure. So, john, I assume you belong to the boomers. Is that your age group?
Speaker 2:I was. I grew up in the 50s. I came to age in the 60s. I made a lot of mistakes in the 70s and 80s. I finally hit stride in around 2001. So let's put it this way Late bloomer is being kind.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's funny about that with the boomers. I'm Gen X, but my dad was born in 1935. So my guess is our fathers are actually pretty close as far as age goes.
Speaker 2:And truth is that in some respects we are at a disadvantage because we grew up in the success of the 50s and 60s, and particularly in the 90s, where everything seemed to be doing so well. We were making money, hand over fist, and greed was a good word, gordon, gekko greed. But our parents grew up knowing how to sacrifice, knowing how to work hard and delay and to do community events in the Depression to survive, and they knew what it meant to ration gasoline in the war, ration meat, and we had no understanding of that. So in some respects I blame a lot of the issues we're dealing with on my generation, which felt entitled.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I blame your generation too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good man, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So delayed gratification. I read here that you had 200 rejections for the book you wrote. I want to hear that story.
Speaker 2:You spoke before about the young people thinking they can be instantly successful. And I kept reading people who sent out a query to an agent and suddenly they were picked up by six or seven agents. They made a great royalty and they were a New York Times bestseller with their first novel. And that's all crap. It just doesn't happen that way. Statistically, most books and I'm talking about the vast majority of all books published sell less than a thousand copies over their lifetime. The average book sells less than 250 copies, so nobody makes money at books.
Speaker 2:So I determined that I was going to tell a story that I felt was important and my goal was to publish it. And so I wrote what I felt to be a good story and it kept getting rejection, rejection, rejection. And I hired an editor who was about a third of my age but twice my intellect third of my age but twice my intellect and he taught me how to write emotions. And I was trained as a journalist and there's a tendency to make your writing dispassionate, make it unemotional, which is actually a good thing for journalists, but it's very bad for fiction writers. So my editor looked at my book, he read it and he said you know, I just don't like the character. So my editor looked at my book, he read it and he said you know, I just don't like the character, I find him to be offensive. So we we rewrote him as a real emotional person and it turned out it changed everything.
Speaker 2:After 10 years of writing we connected with Don Quixote Press, an outsider publisher, independent. We call it. Yes, an outsider publisher, independent, we call it. And that book took off and it's garnered 33 awards and sold literally 12,000 copies, which is unheard of for a debut novel, particularly for an old fart like me. So my point was that you write just to write and if somebody reads it and likes it, fine. But you do what you feel you have to do and that's tell your story. And I'm extremely relieved and pleased that others out there have read it and identified with the character and felt the emotions in it.
Speaker 1:Now, what is the name of the book?
Speaker 2:The name of the book is called Running as Fast as I Can, and the idea is that there are some of us who grew up in a situation because of birth or circumstance Maybe it's abuse, maybe it's a lack of education or structure, or maybe it's poverty but we don't have the structure or the tools to make it in what we consider to be normal society. So going to college is something we may not have ever understood or afforded. So we feel like we're running as fast as we can, but we can't catch up because we have a limp. And what I learned was that we like to think life is a sprint, where you run fast and you're successful, but what I learned was that life is a marathon, and if you keep running, even if you're slow, just keep running you can reach your goal too. And so I published when I was 75 years old.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah, KJ and I, we're both military and that's one of those things when you go on those heavy ruck marches is they just say, just lean forward and just keep moving your feet and eventually you end up at the end.
Speaker 2:That's right you just keep editing. Just keep writing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so few of us can go out and win a sprint. We can, we can all run a hundred meters, but a lot of us, a lot of us aren't very fast. But you can train for a marathon, you can train to, to go the distance, and so it sounds like that's kind of the core of the book is just keep going until you make it.
Speaker 2:Well, what happened?
Speaker 1:was.
Speaker 2:I was trying to share the story of the work I do is with Good Samaritan Home, which is a nonprofit I started when I was 53 and which, after all these career detours and I'm being very polite when I say that, but at 53, I decided to use our house as a homeless shelter to help people who were struggling more than I was, and that turned into working with the Department of Correction to help men and women coming from prison for housing and mentoring, and we started off with our own house and we ended up, uh, over the next 24 years we have now 21 houses and we've helped almost 2,500 men and women restart their lives.
Speaker 2:And what I found is that, if I talk about helping people from prison, that's a nice theory, but with the novel I wrote it about somebody like you and I, and he, he, he went through the same struggles as somebody coming from prison did, but he never, never was involved in criminal activity. So my, my theme was that we all are struggling to catch up with normal people in some way, and so when I talk about second chances, I'm not talking about men and women from prison only. I'm talking about you and me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's interesting that you say normal people, because what jumps in my mind is what is normal. Everybody talks about this idea that there's this normalcy and yet we're all on our own. Nobody can really understand what path we're on. I've jokingly said that, to put it in common terms, that we're all player one in the video game and everybody else is an NPC, Because we don't know what the non-player character is like. Like John, I don't know your life. All I know is you're another character who's in my game right now and vice versa, and so it's very difficult to truly understand what somebody else is going through. We can try, but there's just no way to actually have that understanding. We can have empathy, but understanding is something completely different.
Speaker 2:And I think that the Facebook and the Internet has made normal look like some perfect, particularly AI. Now that everybody can be normal and with enough AI manipulation, I can lose 20 or 30 pounds without dieting.
Speaker 1:And you can make the walls behind you bend.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. But this idea is that we look at normal, particularly women. This idea is that we look at normal, particularly women. I think it's an awful, extraordinarily difficult time for a woman, because everything is geared towards what I call the hard body look. She has to look perfect all of her life. A woman can never age, but a man looks dignified as he ages. And you know, talk about sexism. If I were a woman, I think I would be royally pissed at the way society offers that.
Speaker 2:It's just not fair, it's just not fair.
Speaker 1:The crazy part about that and I've had this discussion with people is most men look at women as they age and kind of go, okay, they're getting older, it's no big deal. It's the women that look at other women and go, oh, look, how old she is. At least that's been my experience. The fashion industry to me is not a bunch of men going, oh, we need to have the perfect woman. Most men are kind of like, yeah, I mean, if you look at actual polling and actual some of the polling that's been done, one of the things I thought was really interesting I remember seeing a poll that it said what is the most attractive age and for men you'd think it would stay at that. You know the girls 18 or 19 year old girls. But as men got older, the girls got older. So by by the time a man was in his 50s or 60s, the most attractive women were in their early 30s, where women consistently were 18 year old men consistently. It didn't matter what age the women were. They wanted to eat, they want to look at the 18 year old boys. So I think it's interesting that just the difference how men are seen as visual and we clearly are, how men are seen as visual, and we clearly are.
Speaker 1:But at the same time I'm with you, john. I look at women. I go gosh, you guys have to do makeup and you have to do your hair. I don't care. My wife I can't tell you how many times I said, hey, we need to go to the store. And she goes no, I'm not ready. I'm like why? You look great, just let's go. No, I have to change my shirt, I have to put makeup on. I go look, it's just me and you, nobody knows. This doesn't matter. I think you look great and she goes well, it's not for, it's not for anybody else, it's for me.
Speaker 2:I have to be very careful. I can't speak as an expert on the role of men and women, or particularly women, but my limited observation is you're absolutely correct that women are competing against women and men are far less critical than the women are of themselves.
Speaker 1:And men are, I think, as funny as it sounds, because of how society is, I think society looks at it, the men are very critical, but most men whether it's men towards women or men towards other men, we just kind of go, yeah, OK. Whether it's men towards women or men towards other men, we just kind of go, yeah, OK. I mean my, my judgment of how handsome a man is is pretty simple. It's if I wished I looked more like that person. He's more handsome than I. Am Pretty simple, but but that's not how it really works.
Speaker 1:I think we're men are portrayed as this. We just think everybody's wrong and I think men are very generally just like hey, it is what it is, we don't need to make all these changes. I feel, like I said, I feel bad for women in the, in the way that society has forced the hard body. Look, as you said, because it's just not fair as a woman gets older. You just there's a show right now called Hacks on HBO and it's about an aging female comedian and she's. It's a wonderful show, it's very funny, but she talks about how she's.
Speaker 1:You know, she's about 75 in the show and just hasn't had a piece of cake in years because she just has to keep her figure. She just has to and she gets everything done. Her young assistant sees her after a year and she says the young assistant says to her, or you know, she says, oh, you look great. And she says back to the older lady well, you look the same. And she goes that's, that's the idea. You can't have any change. And it's really tough because, like, we get gray, we get old, we go, hey, no big deal. And women, unfortunately, they feel like they're being judged or seen in negative ways by whether it's weight or sagging or, you know, the gray hair. Hopefully they don't have the gray beard going on.
Speaker 1:They probably feel bad about themselves. But yeah, I do think it's interesting. The judgment is very different men, how men judge and how women judge, especially on appearance now I'll be fair.
Speaker 2:Uh, that women, when they dye their hair, look they do a far superior job than when men try to dye their hair. I have never seen a man dye his hair that it looks real.
Speaker 1:No, I'll 100%. I agree with that. It looks like a cheap hat, so this is the real deal, yeah. Well, and that's like my family says why don't you? You know you're going gray, why don't you color it or whatever? I'm like, I've earned all of this. I don't I don't need to color it. This is I've got 50.
Speaker 2:I remember when I was a young and handsome and a hard body and I was pretty stupid too. So I, if I had to trade and say old body, young body and stupid comes in the mix, I think I'll go with the old body.
Speaker 3:Yeah, easily easily to be young and dumb again. I don't wish that on anybody.
Speaker 2:No, that's why this, this concept we all men joke about. Well, when I reach a certain age, I can get a young girlfriend, but you've got to talk to that young girlfriend. It's not worth it. I mean, what do you say after Hi? How are you doing? What sign are you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't understand this dating, the idea of dating these days. It just it's so far beyond me. Simply because, from what I understand, you talk so I deal with soldiers and they get in trouble for it. Or I won't even say that they won't get in trouble because they won't do it. They are so scared to even approach a male or female. You know that they want to date because they're so worried about the whole me too thing of oh, it's going to be taken the wrong way and I'm going to get reported. And I just wanted to ask him out on a date.
Speaker 1:I remember reading an article a few weeks ago. Somebody that used to be on the Fox show, gutfelt, I guess he was a guest here and there. He asked out one of the girls on the show that was I don't know what. She was a PA or somebody Asked her out for coffee and he got rejected by the show because they looked at it as a potential sexual harassment. And he's like I just asked somebody out if they wanted to go to coffee. She had every right to say yes or no. But isn't that how you date? Isn't that how you get to know people? And nowadays, if it's not online. It's not the app.
Speaker 2:Back when I was single. I was a fireman at one time in suburban Detroit and I was the only single fireman, so they assumed that I'd be living the single life. But I wasn't that interested in doing the bar scene. But I had one guy convinced me to go with him to a single bar and he was married, which made it even stranger. But I was really ill equipped for that sort of thing because I was more academic and I didn't fit into that semi-military culture of fire department where you you sit around and fantasize about your life that you've read about in some porn magazine but it's not really true. So we were at this singles bar and I was trying to be cool and fit in this was back in 1973. And and I said I saw this girl there and I said, excuse me, I was trying to be suave. I said, what do you?
Speaker 1:think of Kissinger's foreign policy. You know, it seemed right, it seemed like a normal discussion starter.
Speaker 2:Hey, baby how about that? Kissinger? Yeah, he had a hot wife. Needless to say, I went home alone.
Speaker 1:But the irony of that is the irony is it's probably better that you went home alone, because at that point, like you said, after you get past the initial stuff, what is there to talk about? But if you're talking to somebody, you say, you know, what, do you think about Kissinger's foreign policy? And she goes yeah, I just don't know what they're doing in China. Now you're like, oh, this is somebody. Immediately you know, this is somebody I want to talk to well, it usually doesn't happen in a singles bar probably not.
Speaker 3:I immediately just played the scene from Coming to America in my head Like where do I meet good women? And he's like oh, you can't go to no bar to meet a good woman.
Speaker 2:Well, I met my wife and I've been married 48 years but I met her in a church. I went back to visit a church because I was living in my truck at the time and I was traveling the country and I wanted a free meal. And these were good people and I figured I'd get a free meal and she invited me to come for a dinner and I came back one night, came back the second night and I kept coming back for free dinners and it wasn't long that I said coming back for free dinners and it wasn't long that I said I think this is better than living in my truck.
Speaker 1:So I married her. What was her reaction to? Here's this guy who's coming to dinner and he lives in his truck. What was her reaction to that?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very interesting question. She was very. We had known each other as acquaintances for several years, but not intimately. We were not. I didn't know any details about one another, but we sensed. But we spent our time talking. We sat at the table and talked for hours and hours and hours, or went for walks for hours, and that, to me, is the key.
Speaker 2:But her friends all said you shouldn't get serious with him. You know he's a rake and a rambler or he's, he's, he's going to be a bad character for you. And then, when it was three months later, like Johnny Cash said, we got married in a fever. But three months later we said we're going to get married. So he went to her pastor and he refused to marry us. Oh, wow. So I found a college roommate who was a minister and I blackmailed him. I said you marry us or I'll tell your wife what I know. He married us. So on our 48th anniversary I sent out cards saying all her friends who said no. I sent out a card that said no, no, no, no, no. We made it.
Speaker 1:Two more years and you get to do the whole diamond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're planning on 50. Well, there's some days she said she's never considered divorce, but she has considered murder.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably true of our wives. Yeah, it's funny you say that I I got married. My wife and I met online.
Speaker 1:This was early days whoa yeah, and and we're both lds and she came, she flew out that night, we knelt down and prayed if we were supposed to get married and we both felt like, yes, we needed to get married. We were married within two months and we've been together 25 years. And so I jokingly say it's an arranged marriage, just not by a human father, it's a, it's a heavenly father. That that made sure. And, and once you realize you're with somebody that you're meant to be with in that way, it's a lot easier to deal with any any other problems that come along.
Speaker 2:Actually, you've touched on something very important that we, uh, we don't see much of, and that's the religious, spiritual element in a relationship, because that that gives us a sense of, of, of purpose and bonding, and it's it's. It's hard to explain because it can be abused and often is abused and uh, but we would not be where we are without some sort of spiritual connection. Yeah and uh, yeah.
Speaker 1:As a chaplain, I'm not sure I can agree more with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's uh, yeah, I uh, I've, yeah, I've seen the abuses within the church. I've seen the abuses without the church. So I think abuse is part of life. It's how we. We just have to keep looking for the truth and you keep, we struggle through the those who disappoint us. And it's interesting, you should mention LDS, because that's a very interesting microcosm in our country. It's almost as if you could plan a place for a study, an extensive study, in religious community. It would be the LDS, I think. What is it? 80% of Utah? Is that what it is?
Speaker 1:It's something about. Yeah, it's something along those lines. If it's not, it might be going down from all the people in California moving in because they want to get away from California and then they vote the same way, which is a bit ridiculous. But yeah, it's interesting. I see these things against LDS. But then you look at the numbers and you go we've got, if not the one of the lowest rates of divorces, we've got one of the highest birth rates. We do more charity than anybody else the LDS church. It's funny that I've seen the argument that, oh, the LDS church has $ hundred billion dollars. It's like, yeah, and every year they donate somewhere around two billion dollars every single year in relief. I saw something. It was a million dollars. I think it's a million dollars a day in relief to helping other people. And that's before you even get to the service of helping other people on your own.
Speaker 2:I think it's not without reason that one of the clearest voices to come through all of the political conflict the past 10 years has been Mitt Romney, and that because he has a he has a spine and he's he, he's able to look beyond politics and that to have somebody with moral fiber in Washington can make a difference, and that's critical right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a really big supporter of Mitt Romney when he ran in 2012. And since then, I mean I can disagree. This is the thing that bothers me. I can disagree with Mitt Romney politically, but when people say he's not a good person, when he's not a good person, when he's not a good man, that's where I have a problem with what the media did to him during that election. I thought was beyond malpractice. The whole story.
Speaker 1:The big ones were binder full of women. Well, if you remember what the question was, they were talking about people in his cabinet as the governor. He said, hey, why don't we have this? Why don't we have more inclusive? Why don't we have more women? And they brought me a binder full of women. And so I was looking through trying to find people that I could bring into my cabinet and that got spun into this really weird, disrespectful, yeah yeah, and it just became really ridiculous. And so the quality of person that Mitt Romney is. I have no doubt I can disagree with Mitt on different policies, and that's fine, but as a person, I think we would be in an incredibly different place in this world if Mitt Romney had won. And, going back to you, you've got a journalism background. I've got a little one, too. Background I've got a little one, too. If the media had done its job in 2012 and actually vetted Mitt Romney instead of attacking him, I think we'd be in a very different place.
Speaker 2:And I think, the media, as most people do. They look on people who are committed to their faith as being somehow suspect because they assume the worst. They assume that all priests are pedophiles, and it's not the case at all. Most priests 99% of them, would be above reproach or dedicated period. It's just in the same thing with the Baptist. You hear stories, but it's not the norm. But we like to find reason to blame somebody rather than saying how can I learn from him, how can I assimilate some of his characteristics? We like pull him down to my level and I think we're seeing what we call David Brooks calls tribalism today, where we were dividing and pointing fingers. Rather than trying to look at policies and wrestle with policies, we're pointing fingers and saying you're white, you're black, you're green, you're from Utah, you're from California, god forbid. And the tribalism, I think, is the greatest barrier that I see right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and just to go back to 2012, I think Mitt Romney was the right candidate at the wrong time.
Speaker 2:Good way to put it.
Speaker 3:I don't think in 2012,. I don't think nobody's beating Obama, I just don't think. But you bring him in in 2016 on a fresh ticket where you have a fresh Democratic politician or fresh Democratic candidate, I think he blows Hillary Clinton out of the water easily, I mean just on principles and morals. By then, hillary's reputation had been degraded so much that that mitt, I think, would have been an absolute phenomenal candidate. I think he was just four years early, you know. I mean, he, just he pulled the trigger too early and I, just I, I, you know, it's weird enough. I thought he'd be a great president. Um, simply because he had the he, he had the moral compass and the empathy to say well, why I don't agree with you, I can at least work with you to find a resolution, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, and he was successful in Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah, many of the things he did there were the things that worked. Eventually, I believe his health care policy was started before Obamacare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was yeah, and yeah I was, and I think I'm not alone that there seems to be a dearth of candidates in the past decade. That's made it very difficult, occult, and if I could point to one thing that's the hardest for me to deal with right now is the immediate backpedaling or flip-flopping from good people who were doing things that 10 years ago they said they were sincerely opposed to. But they said I have to or I won't get elected. I have to support that and we feel like politicians are being led instead of leading and that I think if we're not careful, we're going to lose faith in the system itself. And coming from somebody out of the 60s, you know I've been through it all. Yeah, I've seen. I've seen the civil rights protests, I've seen Detroit burn, I've seen Watts burn, we had campus bombings almost on a daily basis regarding Vietnam, and we survived Watergate too. But now there seems to be not just a distrust but a disdain for the rule of law and that, to me, is foundational. That's very, very concerning to me.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's funny because and it depends on what side of the political aisle you're on you can justify it, you can say it's wrong, it's right, whatever, but I will say yes, the rule of law. And for me and don't get me wrong, I'm not a MAGA, I'm a conservative, I'm a conservative libertarian. I left the GOP when Trump was nominated in 2016. But then I voted for him in 2020 and 2024, mainly because of who he put on the Supreme Court, and one of the things that I consistently kind of laugh at it are, like you said, the flip flop. So, 2029 or 2019,.
Speaker 1:you see Bernie Sanders just railing against illegal immigration and saying, oh, we can't have all these illegal immigrants, it's bad for the country.
Speaker 1:And then five years later oh, look, how racist is Trump trying to get rid of these, you know. And so it's like wait a minute, you just? We don't have to go back that far to find, at this point, almost any politician who has done a 180 on almost any anything. There's some people that are very, very good about. Hey, this is what I believe. Certain things it's tough to flip flop Like.
Speaker 1:I think pro-life is one of those things. If you were pro-life in the in the 90s and the aughts, you're probably pro-life now. But as far as immigration and some of the financial things, even some of the war, like I, I'm not a big fan of going and fighting other people's wars. I'm in the military, I'm willing to do that, I'm willing to go where I'm ordered. But at the same time I'm not sure it's the best situation where we're going into other countries doing their policing, basically because we need to get their mineral rights, and to me that's just, that's something that derelict in the duty of the president, and I appreciate that honestly that the Trump is keeping us out of wars, but at the same time then there's the threat of oh, are we going to go to war with Iran or whatever? Unfortunately, that's the world, though.
Speaker 2:I think it was Brett Stevens, new York Times, who said that there were several things, many things, that Mr Trump got right, that he felt that the American people were resonating with. One was the gender issue confusion. There are certain things about gender that are basic science and you can bring in sociology, but science has to be the primary reason for your belief. And and then the other thing was immigration. You know, we had chaos on the border. We had we had seemed to be leadership that wasn't leading particularly towards the end of the term.
Speaker 2:It was downright embarrassing, I thought, with some of the Democrats, the end of the term. It was downright embarrassing, I thought, with some of the Democrats. And so my granddaughter, who's 18 years old and voted for the first time, said I think Mr Trump is strong, I think he'll make a good leader and I think that's what a lot of people voted for. Whether he's right or wrong, he appeared to be in charge and what we're finding now was last I heard it was 159 executive orders, but it's probably more that he's simply running the gamut of radical change. That may or may not work and it's happening so quickly. It's creating a great deal of confusion and chaos and it can undermine the basic rule of law if the courts are not involved in the process. That's the big picture. If you agree or disagree with these policies, it's still the rule of law.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the things I find that's very interesting is the idea that Trump is unprecedented what Trump is doing. But at the same time I saw something for the New York times. They went through and they said here's all the things that are unprecedented. And then it was like Trump's done 150 executive orders in his first hundred days. Now Roosevelt he did 3000 during his term. But that's different than what Trump is doing. So it's like are we really getting that nitpicky to say, well, that's the difference. It's unprecedented just because Trump has been in the first 100 days, as opposed to the entire term. And that's where I have a problem. I think that's where it's disingenuous.
Speaker 2:You raise a good point, a good point about Roosevelt's first 100 days, because he created the alphabet soup of agencies and at one point he even wanted to double the Supreme Court I think it was up to 13 because he wanted to have more persuasive votes in his favor.
Speaker 2:So if anything, he was very similar in his approach to mr trump. But when I started thinking about that that, what were the programs that mr uh roosevelt enacted? They were all about creating jobs, helping the poor, relieving suffering and in some ways pulling us out of a major depression. And what I'm seeing now, based on this limited time, is the policies seem to be punishing the poor, they seem to be denying support, more so to the poor than to the wealthy around the world. So his first 100 days now seems to be asking the poor to pay the price of cost saving, whereas Roosevelt was trying to rescue the poor. And I may have disagreed with many of his policies, but on the whole he probably saved us in 1932 with those policies, you know to be fair, a lot of those executive policies came like 38, 39.
Speaker 3:And you know, if we all remember the timeframe, there was something very significant happening around the world that you know caused for expert because the united states was not in a position to not only defend itself but also participate in the war. So a lot of those executive orders that roosevelt did sign was in in preparation and ramping up the country to go to war. So when we, when we say those things, we got to be careful, we got to be careful with with how history plays right, because trump, you 47 and his executive orders are not quite equal, like two things are not the same. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that's not what I'm arguing. I'm just saying that there is some nitpicking and one of the things that John said was what Roosevelt did with the court packing was basically he was getting younger judges and he said I'm going to attach a younger judge to this Supreme Court justice and then we're going to add to the court. So he was, he was court packing in a way that actually got shut down by the public because it was so unpopular, because it was so unpopular. So I think one of the things with, for example, with tariffs, I look at it and go it's so short term so far. We don't know what's going to happen. The tariffs basically came in April 2nd.
Speaker 1:My argument has been and we had Greg Easterbrook on a couple weeks ago and my question is is the whole point of the tariffs, especially when it comes to China, is trying to get them to be a fair trading partner, which they have not been? When they came into the World Trade Organization, the idea was that was going to get China to do to be fair, and they haven't since day one. So I've had friends that say, well, it doesn't matter, we've lost that war to China. Well, I don't want it, I don't want to look at it that way. I don't think we have lost the war. I don't think there's any, that it's unchangeable. And so if, if it means that this is what it's going to take to try to get on a little bit more fair footing with China, I'm willing to at least try something that we haven't been doing since Nixon and Kissinger opened the door to China in 72. So could this be the right move? Maybe I just look at it and say it's just too early to tell, and I honestly I hope, I really hope that Trump is right on tariffs, because if he's wrong, it's a major blunder and it could be very, very painful for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:But I will say one more thing, john, and I want to hear your response to that. As far as the poor go, as a chaplain I have a lot of sympathy and a lot of empathy for poor people. But I will say this the United States is not responsible for the rest of the world. For the rest of the world and I think it's criminal that we have kids going to sleep in our country that don't have food and that aren't able to put food in their bellies but it's not the responsibility of the United States to make sure the kids in Nepal and Kazakhstan and Ghana and wherever everywhere else, make sure that they're taken care of.
Speaker 1:There's a point where you have to take care of your own house, and if you're not able to, if you don't take care of your own house, then how do you help others? So so, for example, john, let's transition to what you're doing. You could have said, hey, we're going to open up our house and we're going to, we're going to start the Samaritan home, and, and we're just going to let anybody in. But my guess is you still had some rules and you still said these are our limitations. We can't just take everybody, we can't make everybody coming out of prison, we can't be responsible for everybody. And that's where I think it's great what you've done, I think it's incredible, but at the same time, you have to have you have to have some limits, without Absolutely we.
Speaker 2:We're not a halfway house, it's not a punitive house, but it's in conjunction partnership with the Department of Corrections. So the parole officer is actively involved, although we are not the punisher officers actively involved, although we are not the punisher. However, what we do say it's a Navy SEAL tactic, where we start the morning by saying you need to make your bed, so that when you go out today you are going to be rejected for a job six times over and that's just today. But when you come back tonight, you're going to see your bed made and you're going to say at least I did something well today, and that gives you control. And so that idea is that you're accountable and your fate is actually in your hand. We will try to help you, but you're the one who's going to decide if you make it or not. And so I absolutely believe in accountability. But let me, let me throw this one, and I'm not saying halfway house in any negative.
Speaker 1:I just look at the term and I'm not an expert by any stretch. I just look at halfway houses, a transitional phase, not as a punitive and I didn't mean it to come off that way.
Speaker 2:Well, just in dollars and cents, it costs $109 a day to keep somebody in prison. So you take that, times 50,000 men in Ohio and you're getting into the billions of dollars in just Ohio. And then the recidivism or return to prison rate is upwards of 50 or 60%, and in California it might be 70%, because when you get out of prison if you don't have housing, 70 percent, because when you get out of prison if you don't have housing, you're going to go where you can. You'll do what you can just to survive.
Speaker 2:So Ohio developed what they call a community rehabilitation program, where they we offer with it's a DRC program, but we offer temporary housing with mentoring, oversight, accountability, and the idea is we don't charge this person but we expect him to be looking for a job and his own place. And it's a soft landing, is what it is. And the idea is that if they pay us a third of what it costs to be in prison, then the taxpayer is actually benefiting. The inmate is benefiting and his family, because he's now paying child support, because he's working. They are benefiting and therefore the community benefits. And that's how.
Speaker 1:I look at USAID and you're not doing this in terms of you've gone to 21 houses. You're not doing this in terms of you've gone to 21 houses, so, as you have more people and you're having more funding from the state, you're not taking that and putting it in your pocket.
Speaker 2:You're reinvesting it into the broader program, which I think, oh, absolutely yeah, because because our we have more staff, of course, but it the idea is, how do we serve more people? Because the truth is that we're the only housing program in this whole section of the state, because we're held to such a high standard that it took a great deal of training to get where we are and we're held, we're audited in multiple ways, by the state and by the accountants, because you're dealing with state money, so therefore you must be accountable for that. But think of it this way Think of what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Well, think of what we're doing, like the USAID money that's going to Africa. If Africa, we could go over to Africa with our diplomats and say think of democracy, I want you to have democracy here, I want you to elect your tribal leaders. But if people are starving, or if they don't know how to plant their crops effectively in their climate, or if they have AIDS or other diseases measles for example and if we can help that, they see democracy in action. And that's what our homes are about. It's about rehabilitation in action. So if we don't show Africa what democracy looks like, china's going to come in and show them what their form of government looks like.
Speaker 3:Which is exactly what's going on. So, john, we got a question from the audience. He says is the Samaritan home a 501c3?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, we've been a 501c3 for 24 years and, believe me, uncle Sam watches us closely.
Speaker 1:Hey. So, John, we're at 45 minutes. If you want to stay on, I think that I'm more than happy to keep chatting with you, because I think this is I'm cranked, we're fine, okay.
Speaker 3:Great. So I want you to tell me a little bit more about that process and setting up the 501c3 and the I guess the whole, because some people find it to be a daunting process trying to set up a nonprofit. Do you have any tips or best practices in your experiences?
Speaker 2:Well, during George Bush's faith-based initiative, there was a lot of funding put out to get faith-based nonprofits to get involved. So some people went into this whole work like this, thinking they could get a lot of grant money. But it's not that simple. So what we had to do was we had to set up with the Secretary of State a non-profit corporation. Then we had to set up with the IRS a 501c3 application and so we could be tax exempt, not so much for donations, because the state required required we be a nonprofit approved by the IRS to keep us accountable. And so we couldn't even do this with Ohio without this. But it took. It took about, I'd say, a full year to run through that process and the IRS scrutinized us more than a proctologist did. And because you can't put it in religious terms, you can't say I'm doing this because I'm doing God's calling, because the IRS man in New York, who may or may not believe in a God, all he cares about is how are you legally set up so that you don't take advantage of our state money? And so we had to dot every I and cross every T, and we had to go back and back and back. And now we are.
Speaker 2:Of course, you're audited with your tax forms every year, and that's good because all our taxes are public. So I would say you have to have a board of directors. You can't run your own show and you have to meet regularly with your board of directors and produce minutes of it. So what it did was the state requirements made me more accountable and it made me and Good Samaritan Home a much better organization. And we also are audited by the state, the Department of Correction. They'll come in every year and they don't look at our finances. The accountant does that. What they'll look at is our performance, so we can't offer slums and take advantage of people. My attitude is what I live in that house and we try to do that accordingly.
Speaker 1:You and I were speaking before we came live. We were talking about insurance and some of those challenges. So what all does Good Samaritan House when somebody comes to you and they are able to come in the door? What services and what care do you provide for those individuals to help them transition from a bad position to a better position?
Speaker 2:What I've learned is we can only do what we do well, but not everything, because we'll never do it well. So we are very fortunate. Ohio is probably one of the most progressive states in the country regarding rehabilitation. They started off about 25 years ago with what they call the Ohio Plan, the idea of targeting what is the need for men and women coming from prison and how can we meet that need, but yet not simply throw money away. And what they found was that in the community is the most effective way to see rehabilitation, not in prison.
Speaker 2:When you go to prison, you do your short time, you come back and in the community you have a parole officer, but you also have services, and so we partner with those services and we are the housing partner and we are held accountable and we hold them accountable to maintain a safe house for us. We don't we don't lock down, but we do monitor, and that means if you want to leave my house, you're welcome to leave. You just make sure your PO knows that. But if you want to stay, we will help you stay, and we've had some people stay. They stay beyond the program and they actually stayed into our long-term rentals for 14 years. Oh, wow. I've had people stay with us for five, 10, 14 years, and one man died in our house because he was 81 and he just died of old age, but this was the only home he ever had in his entire life. Wow, so, and that that, to me, said it all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's tremendous man. That's a great story. Are you guys actively taking donations or can you take donations?
Speaker 2:We don't take donations Because number one I would rather get people to get involved in some level. The truth is, the reason I wrote the book was to get people to understand rehabilitation or second chances. So if somebody wants to donate, I would suggest they buy the book, because it's a very readable book. It's a damn good story.
Speaker 3:We got the link, if you do say so yourself.
Speaker 2:If I do say so myself. No, actually, the readers have said that the reviews have come through. Amazon rates things on a five scale and the reviews are at 4.6. And what people are saying is I felt Daniel's story, I lived Daniel's story, I laughed and I cried. But what I want people to do is understand how important second chances are. And if somebody could read the book and say, wow, I'm not alone, I can.
Speaker 3:And when somebody comes and asks for another chance. If you'll give them that chance, that's the best donation I've ever seen right there. That's awesome man, I am I am in awe of the entire program and I just I was able to catch up as I was logging in. I was able to catch up a little bit on your author's journey and how you were talking about the, how you first got published, and I think you said seventy five, seventy six.
Speaker 2:I was ten years to write it and I was seventy five when I published it. Yeah All right.
Speaker 3:So going in depth, for because we have a lot of we have a lot of creatives in our, in our audienceking more in depth about that author process. I know you kind of touched on being rejected and perseverance being a key to pushing through.
Speaker 2:Can you go into a little bit?
Speaker 3:more about that journey and then what it looks like.
Speaker 2:Well, my training is academic training. I have a doctorate in theology, so I'm trained to be a researcher. I was a journalist for a time, so I'm trained to present facts. So I wrote the first draft of this story and it took me three years and I thought it was a good story, but it had no emotion whatsoever. So I sent it out to agents, and the agents are the gatekeepers to the publishers, and the agents are the gatekeepers to the publishers, and the ones that wrote back said it doesn't meet our needs, which is a polite way of saying your writing's like shit. So, and so I went back and I have somebody review it.
Speaker 2:I would, I would hire an editor to review it and they would give me advice and I rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it, vice, and I rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it and then finally, after eight years, I found an editor who caught the feeling of the story and he was only 26 years old, and but he was, he had, he felt Daniel, and so he worked with me for two years. And here's this kid, a third my age, teaching me how to write emotions, because, coming out of the 60s, we are always taught to keep our emotions in, and so he taught me how to express those emotions and at the end of two years we ended up with a story that readers are saying I laughed and I cried and I couldn't put the book down, and that that, to me, is not just the message of second chances, it's the message felt of second chances. Think of it like Forrest Gump. It's it. You look at all that happened in Forrest Gump's life and you look at Forrest and at the end, when Jenny dies, you cry with him. And that's what I want.
Speaker 2:I like to compare it to Titanic. Titanic, when it was boiled down, was a story about lifeboat safety and if I were to tell you we're going to have a documentary, we're going to get on a boat and we're going to watch a documentary about light boat safety, you would fall asleep. But if I brought in Jack and I brought in Rose and I brought in an iceberg, now suddenly light boats are so emotional that today we're still talking about why didn't Jack get on that door in the water with Rose? Because we felt that story. That's what I want to do with Daniel and that's what readers are telling me.
Speaker 2:They felt Daniel's story and they cried with him and they laughed with him. And when he was out hitchhiking through San Francisco and he met Sunshine and Mello, you can picture them they laugh with him. And then, when their his friend James died of a heroin overdose, they cried with Daniel. And then, when he met Kate and fell in love, they got excited with Daniel. That's that's the reaction I want. Sorry, I I get emotional, I get carried away on this.
Speaker 3:Listen, that was just the the, the iceberg safety video illustration, just the imagery of just putting that together, man I am, that is a level of writing that I am trying to get to myself, so I just I just sit back and just enjoy it. Man, that was, that was phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Well, what I had to learn to do and I'm doing it now with the sequel is I'm trying to take the story and I take that was phenomenal a crime of rape that he didn't do. But in 1963 in Cleveland a young black man had very little options because Cleveland was in the midst of its own race war and he spent 20 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit. So now in the sequel we're picking up Charles story. So I'm trying to write what's it like growing up as a black man or black boy in Cleveland in 1963. And so I have to say Daniel or Charles, white or black, they are both emotional.
Speaker 2:Tell their stories with emotion and don't let the color be the only factor. Tell the story of a young boy and when, when Charles loses his father to a mill accident, or when he's, when he dates a young white girl who's slow mentally, they immediately assume that he's he's guilty of rape. But he didn't do that, but he has no defense and that's something we all can identify with. So that's how you write emotion. You don't try to tell the story, you try to get the story to tell itself.
Speaker 3:Wow, wow. That's pretty powerful man. So how has going through that journey? I know you said so the 26-year-old kid was teaching you how to write emotion. Were you able to take those lessons and apply it to your life as you were building out building out the Good Samaritan home, or did it affect you in any way personally?
Speaker 2:Actually part of Good Samaritan made me stronger for the book rejections. Because when we started Good Samaritan home and we had our first man coming to our house you're going to actually live with us from prison and, uh, word got out in the community that we were bringing an, an ex con, into our house. And of course then you factor in race, and this is a rural white community with nobody says the word, but it's always there. So there were petitions, there were calls to the city council, there were ordinances passed, there were threats. It got so intense that I had police protection at one point and ultimately, ultimately, we had to sue the city three times to fully establish our program. But today the city calls us for referrals because we save them money.
Speaker 2:So but what it taught me was that you don't give up on your dream. You keep doing your job and in the book you just take one scene, one page at a time, and then you just keep writing and keep editing. So I edited my book and I edited my life and that, to me, is the real lesson You're always editing your life.
Speaker 3:I think that's the perfect way. All right, so we are at the one hour mark, john. Thank you so very much for coming.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Yeah, like George Costanza says, leave them laughing.
Speaker 3:That was a phenomenal story. You guys Running as Fast as I Can is available now. You can go to HTTPS, johndavidgramcom. Go get the book. I'm going to buy it. It is phenomenal. I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2:By the way, if you're on Kindle Unlimited, it's free right now. Enjoy. Well, there you go.
Speaker 3:Kindle Unlimited. I definitely had the account, john. It was great man. Anything you want to say outside of that or any any last words?
Speaker 2:I would say that I'm 76 and I never thought I would be here doing this today, but I would be nowhere else. So you never know where life's going to take. You Just go down that road and don't be afraid afraid to try something new.
Speaker 3:Man, I appreciate it. Thank you so very much, James. John, excuse me, John.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you my pleasure. I'm very glad to be here today. My grandkids were here today and talking to you guys, it's like having a couple more kids around me.
Speaker 3:Keep us informed about the sequel, because I definitely want to stay in touch and stay connected, so we can definitely check on that.
Speaker 2:The book. I'm hoping to finish it in about two years at most, but it's called Requiem. The book I'm hoping to finish it in about two years at most, but it's called Requiem. But check out the website and you can actually contact me through the website if you ever need to Got it. You got it, john. Thank you so much. Readers can contact me there. My pleasure.
Speaker 3:Thanks a lot, guys All right, have a great one brother.
Speaker 2:Chappy, that was an amazing.
Speaker 3:That was an amazing interview. I am so, so excited. Shout out to John man, that was a great interview. I am. I'm floored, man. What up, though? I wanted to apologize for my tardiness. Traffic was a little bit rough. We went out and celebrated May the 4th at the Columbia Fireflies game, and they didn't come out with the victory but the kids got to run around the bases, so they're happy and they got a free hot dog.
Speaker 1:Was it a Star Wars-themed night? It was.
Speaker 3:It was. It was they did a May the 4th celebration in conjunction with the reading awards that the kids got for the year, so all the school had their readers there and it was. I mean, it was just a great time and we we enjoyed it Plus got a chance to get it out and get some sun.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily, they weren't necessarily into the game.
Speaker 3:Well, neither was my wife, but we got a chance to see the game so hopefully you know. My play is that I'm trying to build up the tolerance to get them so we can get down and turn the field. But we'll see how that plays. I don't even want to talk about it, yeah that does not surprise me.
Speaker 1:The little kids in baseball don't generally go.
Speaker 3:Oh my son was done. My son kept asking me at the end of every inning what's the score now? What's the score now?
Speaker 1:Can we leave? Is it done?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, can we go yet, yeah, no, but yo, you ready to get into our thing, man, you ready to do our thing?
Speaker 1:Let's go we can let's keep it short. I'm tired man. I hit the wall during that. I was going along like, hey, what's going?
Speaker 3:on. We got 30 minutes. We got 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:You want to go full 30 more you got it.
Speaker 3:It's going to be fast. I promise. Quick fast, quick fast. We got to talk about POTUS. Do we have to? Yeah, potus and his grand parade, which is in conjunction with the 250th, which is fine. I got it. Price tag and estimates are saying it's going to cost us $100 million to do the parade.
Speaker 1:I don't know know, have you ever wondered about stuff like that? Like, okay, you're going to do a military parade, right, you're going to, you're going to basically have a couple of I don't know a division, maybe two, and some gear march down the middle of the street. How in the hell does that cost $100 million?
Speaker 1:Now I understand you say well, you have to have the parade route and you have to have security and all that stuff, but $100 million, like? How many military parades have you been part of? I've been part of several where, even if it's just at the end of basic training, where you get off the field and you go and you have to do that, right? Yeah, you know, right, you can. You can do that and literally you could probably do to an entire military parade with full military units for the cost of you know you have to, you have to pay for cleanup afterwards, you have to provide port-a-johns, you have to provide security and gas for the vehicles. I don't understand why you couldn't do all of that for somewhere around $100,000 to $200,000.
Speaker 3:I'd imagine you could. But then you throw in the conjunction with POTUS celebrating his birthday. Then, you know, cough goes up man Birthday party. You know, diddy set the standard with my sweet 16, man. It just you got to pay to play. You know what I'm saying. So it's going to be a grand spectacle. They're going down Pennsylvania Ave. I mean, you've been to Washington, right, so you've seen the logistics of trying to get that. The logistics of trying to get that is going to be.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I have no problem with the parade. I have a bigger problem. When the New York Times comes out and says their headlines or Drudge I think I posted this on Drudge was Trump's birthday parade will cost $100 million. It's $100 million. Trump's. Trump's birthday parade will cost one hundred million dollars. And then in the article it's one hundred million dollars. And then it says the the military celebration for the 250 years of the army or whatever it is you know, and it happens to be on the same day as Trump's birthday. So Trump happened to have been born on June 14th, right? So to me, I think it's pretty silly to be calling this Trump's parade. If it was Harris doing this, and it was the 250th year parade and 250th birthday of the US Army, and she was having a big parade, I'd be like, yeah, cool. I mean absolutely. Why not 250 years? That's a big deal.
Speaker 1:I don't know when Harris's birthday is. So but to tie the two, I think it's just. I think it's just another thing of orange man bad.
Speaker 3:Instead of going. I mean, it's another case of are you mad at them for reporting it or are you mad at POTUS for saying it? He's kind of took the lead on. This is going to be my parade and this is going to be the.
Speaker 1:This is Trump. Here's Trump saying you're going to have.
Speaker 3:But if POTUS says, hey, I'm going to have a military parade for my birthday, right, and then any reporter comes out and says, well, Trump's military parade is going to cost a hundred million dollars, I don't know how you can get upset at them reporting it that way when the POTUS himself is saying his military parade for his birthday, you get what I'm saying. A lot of this is self-inflicted damage, where if POTUS just shut the hell up, we'd be a lot better off.
Speaker 1:But he can't seem to be yeah, but I mean, we've talked about this ad nauseum Trump's egomaniac, his narcissism, any president's narcissism, right. And so for him to go oh, this is my birthday parade. I mean, yes, 250 years for the military, but that's for my birthday. There's a level of look, there's a level of tongue in cheek and people I do think people I'm not sure people realize how good of a troll Trump really is. I think Trump does this stuff on purpose to get the reaction, and then it's like oh see, I knew they were all going to think it was really my parade, but this has been planned. Planning for this parade didn't start last month. This started two years ago, for the 250th.
Speaker 1:This is a long time.
Speaker 3:The parade, yes, but the route, no.
Speaker 2:The parade was never in.
Speaker 3:Washington DC. I'm just being honest with you. It was never designed to go down Pennsylvania Avenue until Comrade Trump said hey, we're going to have a victory parade for my birthday. I got it. I'm just telling you. That's just how it works. Now, whatever the reasoning for changing it was, I don't know, but I'm just saying that what it is. I'm just saying it's starting to look a little. You know, I'm starting to get a taste for radishes. You know what I'm just saying. It's starting to look a little. You know, I'm starting to get a taste for radishes. You know what I'm saying. I don't have a problem with it Because it is. It is definitely. Yeah, thank God it would be it would be one thing.
Speaker 1:Honestly, it would be one thing if, if two, there would have to be two real missing pieces to this to me to have to make it a big deal, missing pieces to this to me to make it a big deal. One doing it on his birthday that wasn't June 14th, and two not being the 250th. So if he was like, oh, we're going to do a big military parade on my and it's going to be on my birthday, which is on in August 23rd, and we're going to do a big parade on that day, and oh, yeah, well, you know it's, the military's been around for 237 years and so we're just going to do a big parade, I gotcha. But this is, I mean, to me this is a non, really, it's a non story and unfortunately it's also the price tag of it has has been made political too. Why are you cutting funding for X, y, z, but you have the funds for this?
Speaker 1:And the problem with that is, I mean, all this stuff is. It's kind of like what my kids, with my kids, when they say, hey, we're going to, we're going to the store and I want to buy, I want that toy, right, I want that squishy toy and it's only $5. And you go, yeah, but that's, that's $5. I don't want to spend. And they go well, look at how much you. And then you go through the checkout and they're like well, you just spent $180. Why couldn't I get my $5 toy? It's like because that was $5 more. Like I could, I could do it, but like I have to buy these groceries, we have to buy the food. There are certain things we have to do.
Speaker 1:So a parade, that's a hundred million dollars. Again, I don't know where the money's going or what it would. It would have been less under Harris, I don't know. My guess is it probably would have been still a pretty significant price tag, but it looks bad. Like you said, yeah, it looks bad. But again, when we're talking about the money that is thrown around by the federal government, I have a Would I rather see $100 million build 100 new units for family housing on Fort Eisenhower that will serve 100 families for the next 20 years, instead of a parade? Absolutely, but I don't get to make that choice because it that's, it's just one of those things.
Speaker 1:It's 250 years they did it for. I don't know what all celebrations, but I mean I remember 1776 I was three years old and I know, I know that was a big deal the bicentennial for the constitution. I so, yeah, and 1976, yeah, I mean if we do something, if honestly for the, if we do something honestly for the Constitution, if we do something, ok, let's say, instead of instead of doing it this year for the 200, 250th anniversary of the Army birthday of the Army on June 14th If this same parade was being done July 4th of next year, which is the 250th of the signing of the Declaration of Independence or what we go by Right, even though it was historically that's not really accurate. But let's just go to what everybody kind of assumes, what everybody accepts as the birth date of America, which is July 4th 1776. Ok, so if this same parade was going on next year, I don't think anybody would be having a big deal, nobody would really care, it'd be like hey, yeah, whatever the.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what's 250 years called the bison quaternion? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I have no idea. I don't necessarily think people have an issue with the parade, right, because, like I said, the parade itself had been planned and people, you know they were cool with it. I think it's again POTUS is a magnet, for you know, he's a microphone magnet, right. So whatever he says is going to get amplified. You know, good, bad and different. So when you start, you know and I'm sure the planners of the parade when they first heard it, it like oh no, this isn't Trump's parade, this is the army's parade and you know, potus just happens to be POTUS right now. But when you start giving, I guess, giving the media a narrative to spin for you, you know they're going to do what they do.
Speaker 3:But I got to say man, it is just, I've come to the realization that people are set in their ways, one way or the other Blue, red, green parties and there is nothing. We're at the point to. There's so much distrust in the nation where I don't know if we can get back to commonality right without, without a massive Reshaping incident. Ok, you know, I don't use that word.
Speaker 1:I know what you mean. But speaking of I want to, so we've got about 15 minutes. But speaking of I want to, so we've got about 15 minutes. I want to talk to you about this. We've very recently had Canada double down on leftist policies. They left Trudeau and went with another far left guy, Australia. They had snap elections or whatever their elections. They went in another lap, England. The UK went with what's called the Reform Party, which I've seen some people say, oh, that's pretty far right. I think it is. I think it's legitimately not conservative the way Brits use it, but actually conservative. As an American I would call it. And then you had Germany and France. France has banned Le Pen, which is a far-right populist movement. Germany AFD they, the German intel agency, has called them a far extreme, far right, even though right now they are the highest polling in Germany. And if you look at the some of the things they do, you know it's, it's funny, the Intel guys and the journalists. That's just Nazism 2.0.
Speaker 1:But if you read what it is, it's like it's, it's conservative, it's far right in terms of shutting down the border, getting rid of the, the, the problems, and you know minus, minus the elon musk advocating for german heritage and stuff like like I mean minus the minus the the nazi isms.
Speaker 3:sure it's conservatism. You've got to understand for a country like Germany when you start hearing people talk about isolationism and country pride and then you start having Elon Musk talking about hey, don't be ashamed of your heritage, now's the time to embrace it. It's okay. What you did back then wasn't wrong.
Speaker 1:I mean a reasonable person would think it was wrong.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, no. He said it wasn't wrong and you shouldn't be ashamed of it. That's why I got major headlines, but then they blamed it on him.
Speaker 1:He said you didn't do it, yeah, he said you didn't do it, but he still.
Speaker 3:But he also said it wasn't wrong and that's what caused the head.
Speaker 1:I didn't read the wasn't wrong part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's what caused it, Because it was right after the whole. I love you with all my heart bullshit.
Speaker 1:So the same thing is going on in France. Like France is banning Le Pen, they're going after Le Pen, um, through taxes. So here here, okay, let's, for argument's sake, let's go there. Let let's, let's say AFD says you know what, screw it, we are Nazis, we are. Screw it, we are Nazis, we are. We think Now, we don't want to kill. You know, we're not Holocaust, you know we're Nazis.
Speaker 1:To point out where the nice Nazis were, we believe we've evolved. Yes, we're Nazism 2.0, which means we believe in certain things that Hitler wasn't down with. We're not blaming the generals and we're not just out of World War Two or, I'm sorry, world War One. So so we believe that that a Nazi party's time has come in in the world to protect us from the horrible things that are coming in from other countries. It's Germany's time to say, hey, it's okay to be proud to be a German and all that. Let's say that happens, sure, and Germany is polling. They have the highest polling of any party. At what point do you go? Well, if that's what they want. I understand there's levels, because we get involved as Americans. We get involved and we say look if the Taliban wants to take over Afghanistan and they want to keep little girls from going to school and they want to castrate little girls and little boys that aren't doing what, and they're going to throw homosexuals off of roofs and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:If they had not given safe haven to Osama bin Laden and bin Laden had not attacked the World Trade Centers. Right now, afghanistan would be exactly what it was in 2002. We would not have gone into Afghanistan, we would not have bombed them. We would look at them like any other country that we look and go oh they are really Gosh. It's really bad what Rwanda did to half its population, that's bad. We're going to put some sanctions on them, but as far as going in and actually destabilizing the country militarily, I'm probably not going to do it. Destabilizing the country militarily, eh, probably not going to do it. So, with Germany especially being a first world country, at what point does America say, or even the world, do they go? Well, I mean, if that's what they want, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you Burkina Faso, right? So that brings up a great point, right? So you know, you know what's going on in.
Speaker 3:Burkina Faso with the, with the leader right it's, it's American du jour to to name him public enemy number one, and the reason why is because he has a lot of Gaddafi-isms right. He believes in a united Africa based off of the gold standard, this, that and the other. So that has kind of piqued the interest of America, so much so to where you have the general of the Marine Corps calling. I forgot the brother's name, but they call him existential threat, right.
Speaker 3:So if it's okay, you know, to say, well, if that's what Germany wants, we should let Germany go, then I think it should be equally okay to say, all right, if that's what Africa wants a united Africa we should also let them go. But we don't do that as a country and we haven't done that as a country historically.
Speaker 3:We've seen to give acquiesce to those extremists, those Nazisms, those, those extremist views turn a blind eye to certain regimes, but we put our thumb down a little harsher when it comes to, you know, our interests or people who violate our interests.
Speaker 1:Which is it's absolutely. It's absolutely about our interests, right. Absolutely, it's absolutely about our interests, right. So the reason we are, the reason we are so invested in Ukraine the way we are, is because we want the minerals, yeah, and Africa there's, there's a lot of untapped natural resources in Africa, and that's the point. And so it's not it idea that we're going to go into Africa or different countries in Africa just because it's for freedom. They need freedom, they need freedom. But, by the same token, china's not trying to go in and they have very strong footholds in Africa.
Speaker 3:Yeah, over the last 20 years they they've established a significant foothold in Africa, and I think that's where the United States kind of I guess they fell asleep at the wheel and China just I mean, it's so much so that the Chinese culture and African culture are intertwining and I'm just like, oh, that is some scary shit.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I'm not sure how much it was, they were asleep at the wheel as it was. They were spending tens of trillions of dollars on Afghanistan and Iraq without anybody going seriously this is the dumbest part Without anybody ever saying, hey, what does victory actually look like here? Like, what do we need to do to actually get out of Afghanistan and Iraq? And so when Obama came along and he got us out of Iraq for the most part, I was like, hey, that's something I can agree with biden pulling us out of afghanistan, something I could agree with, how certain things, the mechanisms, no, okay, disagree but but I think trump should, honestly, trump should have never got.
Speaker 1:I don't think trump should have allowed us to stay in afghanistan and trumping to the wrong people who said we need to stay Okay. Yeah that, historically, every country does things only based on their own interests. There's not a single country I don't care what country it is has ever said oh, we're going to do this for you, just out of the goodness of our hearts and and we don't want anything.
Speaker 1:And so it's not an American thing the fact that America has become a superpower in 250 years compared to some of the others. And now China the funny thing is we made China a superpower. China in 1972 was struggling when Nixon came in, and so you know there's a lot of arguments, a lot of failure, and you know the businesses and all that stuff that we can talk about, and that's a whole other thing about how America went in, and you know we gave carte blanche to our business people to let our companies basically move out of the USs to help china at the same time. You know china we've both seen the video china china didn't set this plan up. It was the us going hey, hey, who wants to take our jobs so that they can do it for cheap? And if it had been mexico, if mexico had said, hey, send those factories down iphones, hey, we'll build iphones down here, right outside of Mexico City, you think they would have been done in China? Nope, they would have been done in Mexico City, whoever had the best deal. And so we've done that. We have become a country that is based in the service industry. We are not a manufacturing country anymore. I think we can be a manufacturing country again.
Speaker 1:But I think again, going back to kind of the original point, is at what point do we let people have their opinions and their ideas and at what point do we need to step in? Because communism, as much as we talk about Nazis and killing 6 million people, not Jews, but also homosexuals, criminals and other people that were not, quote-unquote, acceptable communism in the 20th century killed over 100 million. Stalin, stalin it was almost like stalin saw what and I I'm not saying this lightly or facetious it's almost like stalin looked at hitler and said, oh, that's what he's getting away with. Cool, that means I can do just about anything I want, and he did. And Mao was the same way.
Speaker 1:And the Khmer Rouge, where this? You know the level of death, and I don't see these far right. I don't see Le Pen, I don't see AFP advocating for the murder of people. And that's, I guess, where the frustration for me in terms of history comes from. When you have, if you look right now, you and I have talked about this and you say are there any political parties right now that are actively advocating for genocide?
Speaker 1:The only one I can think of is in South Africa and it's advocating for the genocide of white farmers, and that's not okay either. But there's a point where, look, if I'm a white farmer in South Africa, I'm probably trying to figure out how to GTFO, how to get the family out. Probably, looking at, I'm probably trying to figure out how to GTFO, how to get the family out. Yeah, you know, there's still that personal responsibility. There's still that like if I'm living in downtown Minneapolis right now and my entire neighborhood has turned Muslim Somalis and I'm saying, oh my gosh, I don't feel comfortable here. There's too many Muslims, there's too many Somalis. Every time I drive down the street, they yell at me, they give me the finger, they do everything short of violence.
Speaker 1:Okay, at what point do I go? I probably need to sell my house and get out. Should I have to? Well, no, but nobody's forcing you to, as long as they're not breaking the law. You know you have those people. Oh gosh, you know they do the call to prayer every morning in Minneapolis, okay. Call to prayer every morning in Minneapolis Okay.
Speaker 1:I mean, I wouldn't want to live in Minneapolis, but I know a lot of people who are not LDS who don't want to live in Utah because of the Mormon influence, so move. You have that personal accountability and I just. It's one of those things that's really interesting. I think it's going to be a very interesting next five to 10 years, not just in America, not because of Trump, but because the world, as much as we look at Democrats and Republicans, this is a worldwide red and blue that people are getting to such extremes that it's going to be interesting to see what happens moving forward in the next 10 years. Are we going to turn into? Is Palestine writ large, or are we going to basically go? Well, you know what? Let's get over it, let's just live together, let's be happy and just go from there.
Speaker 3:There is definitely a fight for the soul of the nation, one that we've done a couple of times now. We've done it a few times now. I am not concerned as much about the future of the nation, because one way or the other, the nation kind of rebuilds itself. This one is just different. This one is just different, right, this one is different.
Speaker 3:This was using the tactics that we learned and perfected in the 60s, evolving them and then using them on the American populace Manipulation of the media, turning the populace against them, infiltrating government systems. It's not party specific. Both parties do it. You know what I'm saying. Both parties are guilty of it. But those are my final thoughts, man, and that's an argument for another day, another week. Man, happy May the 4th. Enjoy yourself, man, enjoy your relaxation. We are out of here. Unless you got anything else, chappie, we up out of here. See y'all boys next week. We are out of here, and I got to remember to take the banner off this time. Boom, wait, there we go. Good night, liberty. See you next week. Good brother, talk to you later.
Speaker 1:Bye Chief Mayne, what do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:The same thing we do every night Pinky Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:Alright, yo, let's get into it. Try to take over the world. You're preaching freedom to the public Try to take over the world and bring this chaplain in the world. Mr Lance O'Ne, mr lancan, take over the world.
