Divine Cosplay and Movement Without Strategy

David (00:00) This episode is about movement without strategy. How you can hit military objectives and still have no idea what winning is politically. And then we get into the other kind of performance, the religious cosplay stuff. Jesus great imagery, prayer is PR, and the weird amount of grace people keep extending to it. Quick note, if the audio sounds a little questionable in spots, we promise we weren't recording in a pool. Nobody was floating on a noodle with a mic. We were just dealing with early morning logistics and whatever the internet decided to do that day. is Shrink to Nation. Let's go. David (01:13) Hey, I'm David. I've got 20 plus years in the military. am a board certified psychiatrist. We're recording quite early in the morning. And so I'm drinking just this, I'm going to say pot of coffee, whole pot of coffee. Rob (01:28) Hahaha David (01:29) And it's pretty good, actually. complaints about it. Rob (01:32) Okay, hey, it's Rob. Long time as a psychiatrist, long time has been spent in the military as well. I am also drinking coffee because it is not quite as early as it is for David, but it's early enough. So I'm having some Black Rifle Coffee Company coffee this morning and it is good. David (01:50) Black rifle. My coffee is from, it's from a charity that helps out poor, starving people feed kids. And then they, they also help local artisans. And this one just happens to be a really good blend of coffee called Hope that, that this small farmer produces. So pretty good. I enjoy it. What the fuck? we didn't go into a lot last week. I'd say part of it maybe was just you were traveling. The other piece of it being the news was kind of up and down and rather stale kind of focused on the Iran war, which, you know, it's nice to take a break every once in a while from a topic that's just getting blasted in your head. Hopefully our listeners appreciated that, but we had a really short episode. like 28 minutes. but this week is really, blessed us. think with topics, seems like the, there was, my God, so much that happened in the news. I think every single day my head was exploding from the things I wanted to talk about, but we've narrowed it down to a couple of topics. So What's first up on the docket, Rob? Rob (02:54) here we sit in two more days, roughly, the two week ceasefire comes to an end. couple of weeks with a cessation of active attacks has led me, I guess, a little bit of time to step back from this and think it through. start to finish where it all came so fast and I would pick up these elements and I would think about a military standpoint, places that I just felt like errors were being made or from a planning standpoint, I should say, because from a military standpoint, we were with some exceptions we've had some soldiers die. mistakenly attacked a school and killed a bunch of civilians, children. We had an F-15 get shot down. they did recover the pilots. That's fantastic. Quite the story, I'm sure. But there were some at least equipment casualties in that. So we haven't been flawless, but darn near, the military performance has been spectacular. And where I ended up finding myself stuck guess it took me a while to articulate this or come to the understanding, is that the objectives that the war sort of started with were kind of all over the place. administration had what they would state, this is the reason we're going to war. The State Department had a slightly different take. The Department of Defense had a slightly different take. But finally, it coalesced around these three goals. And the goal was degradation of nuclear capability, degradation of ballistic missile capability, and destruction of the Navy. And that troubled me for reasons I couldn't put together. And what I finally, in this last two weeks, watching the political side take precedence, it finally clicked with me, why that troubled me so, and why it's bothered me, because those aren't political goals. Those are military objectives. a radical difference between military objectives and what those objectives are going to achieve politically. And where we currently sit in this last two weeks is they've tried to come up with some kind of political outcome that allows us to extract is that we're still at a stalemate. We achieved our military objectives, but because there were no goals, there was no sense of how these objectives were going to put us in position to achieve the overall goal, because there wasn't one, or I think there was, but I think it was mostly based on hope, how we're still stuck. So the question that I guess I've been pondering is. did they act before they defined what winning actually was? And I think it leads us down some interesting both military planning discussion, I'm a military planning nerd, I'll admit it. But also the psychology of these decisions. David (05:40) What you just said, I had my brain rolling in, you know, thinking about the fact that The first question I would want to ask is, why? Why did we do what we did when we did it? Why attack when we did? were getting at, at least my perspective, what it sounded like you were getting at was that when they eventually landed on military objectives being the goals, and they didn't start there, but they eventually got there. What it sounds like is that The military typically has action plans for all of our adversaries. Like that's just, it is something that we do. of military, dogma of the military is to be prepared and to make sure that you have some kind of plan. And there are people whose jobs it is to focus on. Rob (06:15) Absolutely. Updated on the quarter. David (06:27) and AOR, area of responsibility. up with some kind of plan that if we were to need to, we could go in there. So what you got me thinking was, if ultimately then the military objectives were the ultimate goals, then the reason that we chose to do what we did when we did was we could. there was plan in place, the same plan that's been updated for the last 47 years. Then they said, well, we can, here are the military goals, but they just didn't have an objective. There was no higher reason than, well, we're being asked to and we can, we have a plan. So what are our goals? Our goals are what their goals are, the goals of the person who's Said, well, if we're going to attack them, here's what we're going to accomplish with that attack. Rob (07:12) So the reasons to engage in military operations end up being usually because something significant changes. there's always risk to engaging in a military operation. There's always cost. That cost weighs heavy, and then we certainly balance that with whatever the risk. that the enemy poses to us, both militarily or if we do nothing, what risk does the enemy pose? So one option is the reason that this kicked off because something changed dramatically in terms of those baseline capabilities that Iran had. So that either they were closer to achieving a nuclear weapon or some breakthrough in their ballistic missile technology that ended up posing a significant risk to Homeland USA. I don't think any of those are true though. There's no evidence to support that. So if we go back to the preconditions, the moment before, we were in kind of a steady state with Iran in terms of their nuclear enrichment. That had been unchanged for a long time actually. If anything, the previous leader, the he was actually consciously slowing them down. So that was a baseline thing. There was no change there. There is no evidence to support ballistic missile technology had changed or improved or was at a breakthrough point. So that was a baseline, something we'd been dealing with for literally decades. So since nothing really changed from a risk standpoint, the other reason that you can go to war is if your strategic position improves for some factors come together that you are in a better position, that you can actually, because it changes the math, the cost-risk ratio changes. If all of a sudden the cost to you is lower and the risk actually comes down because of other factors, that might be another reason. This is something that we might need to do in the future. Now's the moment because we are in a better position. I don't think that's necessarily was the case though. There was no significant shifting of either our strategic position because in fact, I mean, we're facing, we've got Russia and China for some reason, and this may play into it for some reason, even though within military circles, we still see Russia and China as our primary adversaries, as our high risk adversaries. this administration doesn't seem to share that perspective. So it is possible that all of sudden within the administration they thought that we were in a better strategic position to take this risk. Maybe. And then There are the intangibles, the things that you can never, and the things that actually for you and I as psychiatrists fascinate us, that it's nice when you're looking in on a system to believe it is a rational actor, that they are making decisions based on rational thought process, logical evidence-based decisions. But that's really not how humans make decisions. a reason why in the military we build something called a military decision making process, MDMP. We build a process in minimize the individual personality, the human element. We try to minimize that as much as possible. it's impossible to fully remove it because you always have a commander and that commander gets to set intent and goals and then gets to choose what courses of action are going to become lines of effort. So there's always a human effort, but unless you have a very thoughtful process, that human element, and I guess my argument is that because nothing really, the baseline conditions before, none of them had changed. and I don't believe we were in a fundamentally better position strategically to make this attack at this time. So we're left with those intangibles, the human element that's, I think, ended up pushing us forward. David (10:57) it doesn't appear to be military driven decision. And, know, when you think about something like war that could certainly drag the rest of the world into it, the military ability to do something, which would be a ability to attack any country is, you know, thought about. right, as far as our adversaries go. But just because we have the ability to do something doesn't mean that we should. And I don't think that's the intent of the military having a plan in case, because things that are putting the brakes on it are the rest of it's the political stuff. It's the, well, what's the fallout from attacking this country. Now we might. be thinking, well, if we were to go after Iran, what would Russia, China, North Korea do? Which is something we'd always take into consideration. But what we probably aren't spending a whole lot of time, at least from military perspective thinking is, well, what will the voters think? that's that political sphere and that decision that's being made there. it doesn't seem like that was thought through either. Right? was, there's a huge economic burden of this particular war. The voters are obviously not super pleased with it for the most part. So what was Rob (12:06) Well, is one of those world according to Rob moments as I see it and ignorance of something has never stopped me from having a very well-developed opinion about it. So my sense, just based on the fact that the military was intimately involved here. Now I'm not saying, I mean, as you've already indicated, there was already a plan in place. That plan's existed, they update it every quarter, know, whenever our capabilities change, when their capabilities change. But plan for how to conduct this operation already on the books, because we do that. We've got one for... Probably every country in this world, every contingency, there's probably a contingency plan for what happens if Canada attacks us. On the books, ready to get pulled off, right? The maple syrup David (12:51) all that sweet maple syrup. when we run out of wood. we're going to have to attack Canada. So it's going to be a knock on the door. Hey Canada, we need wood. Get out. Rob (12:58) Well, that... Yeah, that sounds dirty. David (13:04) That's what she said. Rob (13:06) Oh, at any rate, do believe that the military planners things that have always been considered the Strait of Hormuz, the second and third order how this could potentially the relationships with Russia, China, et cetera. These are all things that are absolutely included in that plan and thought through, I have no doubt. So I believe all these risks were presented to the decision maker prior to this kicking off. But that intangible, what I think is that we were in an interesting, which is kind of a euphemism for scary, an interesting position in which risk tolerance, the decision makers risk tolerance is unusually high. And, if you follow the career of our POTUS, what you'll see is that he has always been a risk taker. He is somebody who does best when he is in the position of the underdog. Building is something he does really well. Holding, the ability to hold. something he doesn't do so well, which is why he's had what six bankruptcies or something like that. And David (14:15) Six, six, including casino. Rob (14:18) How do you have a casino go bankrupt? Casinos basically print money. How do you do that? David (14:23) You have no advantage in a casino. I have no idea how you lose money in a casino. Rob (14:26) I don't either. But so this is an individual who has a high risk tolerance. My perception is does not sit with anxiety well, default is to action, to doing something. Because the appearance of doing something It fools people I suppose or us wage some of the anxiety so we had a leader who has an unusually high Tolerance for risk even though life should have taught him by this point that risk Bites you in the ass, but apparently didn't ⁓ David (14:57) What, well, pause on that though for a second, because I think what you just said was that the fairly elected an armed the Capitol building January 6th, 2021 vice president. Rob (15:01) you David (15:17) sitting members of Congress in the Senate stop the certification of election that he lost. He was elected. is well, just, I'm just saying that the man who is currently the POTUS people turn around four years later and thought, yes, this guy should be president again. And after seeing Rob (15:24) David, when you say it that way, you make it sound seedy. David (15:38) one of the more questionable responses to a global pandemic that one could possibly have to protect himself from the political fallout of there being deadly virus but they still realize. So what lesson did he learn about high risk, high reward? eventually kind of worked out for him. I mean, he's made himself. a billionaire multi times over after having lost it all because he is willing to take big risks like for instance running for president after being the most impeached president of all time. And it worked. He rolls the dice and people keep rewarding it. Maybe the bigger question should be why do people keep rewarding that behavior? And I'm guessing it's because they're so confused by it. Rob (16:20) Yeah, well this is something that I certainly have noticed. the administration is playing by a set of rules that are completely foreign to us. One could even argue, I mean, you could use the term crazy. They're unbound from the norms of our regular order of politics. They're unbound from the sorts of responsibility that leaders have to their constituents and the fact that usually constituents tend to judge harshly. This guy carries some ability to basically bend reality. into a bubble that keeps his core base not questioning whatever he says, even though objective evidence. I mean, that's one of the reasons why he gets away with a lot that he does, because he does it right out in the open. And our brains tell us if he's doing it in the open, it can't be illegal or wrong. So he does have a remarkable ability to bend space-time. David (17:09) Bye. what you observe is that he doesn't set off the bullshit meter in your brain the way that most people would while they're is an important piece of his success, is just his ability to... say something completely opposite of what he's saying while he's saying it in one sentence. And it's just, doesn't set off the alarm bells because of his conviction to it, the way that he says it. you and if we're making up shit, if we're bullshitting, we know we're bullshitting to the point that we have those like, this is bullshit. When he does it, it's just not there. that's definitely something I've noticed. I've found that listening to him speak is so much different than reading what he says. If you read the words that he says, you go, what the fuck am I reading? But if you listen to him speak, you go, Okay, that kind of makes he's great at it. two greatest gifts are that and shamelessness. His ability to not give a fuck that he's doing this is just a huge part of why, and that's why I broke off onto this was, I mean, you said life should have taught him by now. No, I think life has taught him by now that he's a... Rob (18:13) shame was this. David (18:27) really, really fucking good at this and it's been nothing but successful to him until he has a massive failure, but he bounces back. He just bounces back. He doesn't care. Rob (18:35) Wait, You make a good point because he does end up winning even when he loses because the loss ends up being shifted off on say all the contractors who didn't get paid. And in this case, I will argue that we are seeing the seventh bankruptcy. It just so happens to be a bankruptcy we all get to foot the bill for as the US economy tanks as the problem in the Middle East actually intensifies. It doesn't get better. In fact, I think we Interestingly enough, we've put Iran in a position to become a world power. Iran has always had the capability of controlling straight-up war moves. It always has. It just never took it because the risk benefit wasn't there for them. They didn't want to be attacked in the way that they have been. But now that it's happened, now that we've done our worst, there's no reason for them not to control the straight of our moves. There's nothing stopping them. And their control of the there's only, we either have to somehow accept it and walk away and somehow claim we won. And we did, we won militarily. I'd say at this point, we're losing the war. We won every battle, very similar to Vietnam. so we either walk away and seed control the straight of our moves to them at which point their world influence becomes outsized and they'll just rebuild because that's their history. This attack failed to consider their personality. that their history of being extremists, their history of not bending, their history of being willing to martyr themselves, take a lot of abuse just to get a hit in, and their history of using asynchronous combat capabilities such as cheap drones, such as cheap mines, such as speed boats rather than a true Navy. counter those things. asynchronous to the point that we can't counter them. So either we walk away or they're not fighting fair. They're not fighting by our rules. Either we walk away or we engage in a land war. And, know, I made the call a couple of weeks ago saying within two weeks, clearly I was wrong. There is David (20:25) They're not fighting fair. Rob (20:39) open source data saying that we are sending significant numbers of ground forces into the Middle East or preparing to. so the other option here is that we end up in a protracted ground war. And the problem with a ground war, people will think... Non-military people, non-planters will think, well, we just truck across the Strait of Hormuz, occupy the ground on that side of the strait, and control the strait ourselves. But that area does not lend itself to a usable beachhead. We can put small amounts of troops there, no doubt, but we cannot put the large number of troops right at the strait to control that area to actually make a difference. So what the more likely scenario is, Kuwait up. to southwestern Iran across the southern portion of Iran to get to the street, which will be a slog. It is a maleness country filled with extremists. Could they stop us? Not really. Can they inflict harm? hell yeah. So, you know, now I'm starting to have flashbacks of Afghanistan, Iran, and Vietnam. David (21:42) You weren't talking about just now about Afghanistan you were. And I guess that's where I wonder, and honestly add into it Ukraine. I think what we have to understand. Rob (21:45) Hahaha David (21:54) deeply is that laws of war, the rules that we're trying to follow are all predicated on this history of being able to take over and somehow colonize a country in order control, which how successful has that really been? since Britain was the superpower of the planet, past that point, we live in an age now where just the taste of actually doing that from the political perspective is so low Russia's finding out? Just because you have a better military, a bigger military, doesn't mean you're going to win a battle on somebody's home front. They have pride. They love their country more than you want it. And they're going to fight back. And we've seen that with these smaller countries that we've tried to win is that you're not going to break the people unless you do Alexander the Great did, which is go repopulate their country as much as you can with your own people. I mean, that's pretty much it. And we just don't have the taste to do that because we have soldiers. have all that. Well, we don't have our pillagers, plunderers. We don't have that. we're not the Mongols. We're not, going across and murdering all their men and raping their women and just taking over their villages. We're not doing that. could we possibly? Rob (23:14) We're not. you know, circling back to the lack of achievable So there's three things, the degradation of nuclear capability. We achieved that. However, really long term success there means that not only did we degrade the Iranians are willing to show restraint in reconstituting. And they're not. They have never demonstrated a potential for restraint in that regard. And they're saying to this day, no, we will continue to enrich uranium. There is no agreement that we will fall into because they know they have a trump card right now. that's the straight missile degradation also would be contingent upon them showing restraint rebuilding their David (23:51) Well, why would they? given the fact that we attacked them anyway, why wouldn't they want to have nuclear capability? So I mean, the thing is, what we've seen throughout the Middle East is if you have nuclear capability, we're not going to come after you. if you don't have it, we're going to come after you. If you have it, you're protected. So. Rob (24:07) Yep. The worst has happened and they're still standing. So they have nothing to lose Well, and here's... David (24:12) Yeah. Who gives a shit if you get into the ring with the champ and he hits you in the face and you're like, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I mean, now you're going to stick it out and you're going to fight him, you all 12 rounds. Rob (24:23) Exactly. in the one tell that I think they did actually consider the Strait of Hormuz. It's easy to say they didn't think about given the outcome, but I think they did consider it. And I think the the camouflaged objective that tells me they did consider it because it was always weird to me that one of the objectives was the destruction of the Iranian Navy. The Iranian Navy was already nothing. It was not a threat. It did not. represent a significant power. So I thought it was weird when it popped up, but in retrospect now, I think that's the tell. They really did consider the Strait of Hormuz. Destruction of the Iranian Navy was their shorthand way of saying control of the Strait of Hormuz, but they failed to consider the fact that it wasn't their traditional Navy that actually allowed control of the Strait of Hormuz. It's geography and asynchronous capability. cheap drones, cheap mines, cheap speed boats. what gives them that control, not their traditional Navy. So I do think they thought about the strait. just other piece, and I mentioned that before, hope is not a course of action. I believe the real thing that happened that all of sudden made the risk seem reasonable to the individual who made the call because he's a high risk individual and he has an action bias. psychologically as an action bias. So movement feels like control doing nothing feels like a failure and God knows he doesn't want to feel like a failure. But I think it was the people's protests that the Iranian people began protesting what back in November, something like that, that all of sudden there was some belief inside the administration that if we initiated an attack that the people of Iran would rise up. But that was something we never had control over. And it was something that really was a long shot to begin with. And I fear it ended up collaring all the decisions that happened thereafter because there was that hope and that belief that the Iranian people would rise up. And if you look at Iran's structure, I mean, they have a moral police, they have their regular police, they have their special army, they have their regular army. designed to control their people and the people's ability to take over is minimal. And then we went in and killed so many layers of leadership that if there had been a leader who had been willing to engage in a coup, we took them out. keep talking that we've achieved regime change. Well, I guess theoretically we've changed the leaders, if you want to call that regime change. But if you change ideology, that's not regime change. And in fact, I think we've actually dug down to the hardcore ideological folks who are remaining now. So I think we've actually put ourselves in a worse position. I think this entire operation puts us in a worse position by revealing to Iran just how much power they have, just how much they can withstand what we can throw at them, what we're willing to throw at them. They're now unbound. and I think we'll pay for it in the coming years. David (27:21) what you said it is that we had a plan on what we would do. We knew that taking out the Navy militarily was important piece of controlling the Strait of Ormas. What they really failed to into consideration was that just because we have a plan to attack a country doesn't mean that that country doesn't have a plan on what to do if we attack them. they put their plan into place immediately while we were still ramping up. big issue being that we knew key points that we were going to go after. And maybe it's just part of we have a plan, but we didn't use the full plan, right? Like, as part of the big plan would have been boots on the ground, everything else. But we only after big core objectives and said, that's what we're trying to accomplish. And that's something we could have accomplished really quickly. And we did. But beyond that, having protest, having this thought that, because I've heard this from people who were very supportive of this war. All we got to do is weaken this regime enough The people will rise up. It will happen. Well, it's not happening because We went in, I think before the military was able to ramp up enough to do the full plan. So we just did the parts that we could, like, could we do quickly? And we did that. Now we're out of options beyond just trying to control that entire country. we're not gonna. Rob (28:39) I am sick to death of us over relying on air power and believing air power solves. David (28:46) with the greatest Air Force in the whole fucking world, Rob (28:48) what we do. There is no doubt about that. ⁓ David (28:50) We also have the greatest Navy. also have the greatest army. I mean, we have, but air power is just quicker. It's, it's easier in that, in that way, just drop some bombs. it doesn't change people's I was watching the documentary last night on, on Waco. And this absolutely reminds me of Like they, Rob (28:54) But. It's cleaner. David (29:10) surround a building with ATF agents and start shooting in and just expect them not to shoot back out. went underprepared because they had no idea what they had. They didn't know what their resolve was. And that was the key. That was the piece. It wasn't so much that they were willing to shoot back. It was the fact that they didn't care if they died. And when big bad American government is coming after you guns a blazing. weren't thinking we're going to give up. And neither was I ran like, already killing us. So we're not going to give up. We're just going to fight back until our death. And I think that's where we fail is that we come from this mindset that we have, which is self preservation, if somebody were attacking us on this scale that somehow we think we would we would just be like, okay, let's retreat. They can have it. And the thing is, bullshit too, because what did we do the Revolutionary War? Like what what is it that allowed our country to survive attack from a far superior power and everything else is that we were willing to die for our country. And so were the Iranians. We Rob (30:10) We waited them out. We were willing to absorb whatever the cost. David (30:12) Yeah, until yeah. And that's what Iran is doing. And that's what Afghanistan did. what Vietnam did. That's what Ukraine is doing. we will absorb but we will fight back. We're not just going to stand here and die, but I'm willing to die. And Iran is willing. Rob (30:28) You make it actually another good point is that when you're right. No, when you're when you're making these kinds of decisions, these these kinds of calls and you're thinking through the courses of action, there is a bias to make assumptions about how the enemy will respond. And that bias is that your assumption is they'll respond similarly to how you would respond. David (30:31) Alright, episode over guys. Rob (30:49) their rule set their their worldview is similar to yours. That is a dangerous dangerous assumption I think the belief was That one the people of Iran would rise up. All right, that didn't happen We never had control over that you can never count on something you have no control over but I think we did the other thing that the assumption was is that when we started breaking their shit they to stop breaking their shit. And they're willing to absorb that. think whoever was in the ear of the president or the president himself made some assumptions that Iran would capitulate just based on the fact that we were breaking their shit. David (31:26) it's, I guess funny, interesting about that is that what is it that's weakening our position, probably more than anything, is that there's so much economic and political fallout from this, because we're dying, right? Like we thought we would go in, break their shit, kill them, make them say, we don't want to die. You have to stop. give in. We'll do anything, right? Come in and bully them into submission. But really what's making this so politically dangerous is that economically their ability to shut down this trade of hormones is just is making our stuff cost more. Our cushy quality of life in America is being negatively impacted. to point where $17, $20 bucks for a tank of gas. And that's enough for me to go, fuck that. I'm not willing to spend a little bit of extra they're dying in the streets. mean, funny. Rob (32:23) In democracies, democratic nations, a component of your military power is the goodwill and support of the people. And once that gets withdrawn, your military power gets degraded. Now, your... core military power doesn't change, but it does impact our ability to fight and win this nation's wars if the people are against it. And we've seen this over and over and over again. what you've just highlighted is that Iran, because they're not a democracy, we're not gonna hear from... Bob, the teacher who's living somewhere in the, you know, the hinterlands of Iran his dissatisfaction, that doesn't count. What counts is the leadership and the leadership are ideologically pure and willing to die for this. So the whole country is us because we're a democracy, it does count on what, you know, Joe, the guy on the street thinks or Jill, on the street thinks and our willingness to absorb pain is much less than their willingness to absorb it. David (33:24) I just find that interesting. Rob (33:26) Well, this reminds me of, at a bar and there's someone who's really intoxicated and you don't want them to drive. So you take their keys, because you think you're solving a problem, but then they punch you in the face anyway. the second order of effect there is a predictable one my objective is here, but this is where it ended up hurting. And that's where we're at. David (33:47) I'm sure we'll have more conversations about this and maybe we'll have more in the future. but we got to get to a different topic. And it just, figure out offended. Rob (33:54) Yeah. David (34:01) just, a series of Donald himself. looking. The only way to say it is like Jesus standing before a person with his hand on his forehead light with the sun behind him healing the glowing the glowing this healing the person. ⁓ Rob (34:14) The glowing. He, they did the full halo effect in fact, behind him he was glowing, his hands had power, the sick. David (34:26) was a American flag, there was like a military member in the back. Yeah. Rob (34:30) several and then up top there was actually these four figures that I immediately thought of the four horsemen. So I think it was an homage to the four horsemen even though it was not. was, I honestly I couldn't tell you what they they're kind of blurry, but it had a lot iconography. Apparently he just thought he was a doctor because you and I both know that when we're treating people our hands glow we wear you know David (34:31) in. Rob (34:54) Jesus clothes. That's what, that's standard. I mean, every day I get up and put on another robe. David (34:57) was just a meme for the Red Cross. and this is where I'm struggling figure who should be more offended because Christians were offended depict oneself as Jesus is seemingly a violation of their belief structure, I would imagine. Rob (35:12) I believe it's one of the commandments. David (35:12) They'll shout not worship They'll shout not worship Paul Sitals, a ballsy move to do that. But I guess this is where I was wondering then who should be more offended. So as, as a physician who had to go to school for decade plus Rob (35:26) a while. David (35:28) to earn that title because I think he I thought I was a doctor because that's what I do. I heal people So as a physician, I'd say it's kind of offensive that one, you think that's what it is, but two, having advanced degree. to then depict yourself as something to the people because you make these decisions that have ended probably more deaths than anything. But his, I think his doctoring thought process was inject yourself with bleach or can we just inject ourselves with light or something, I guess. So as a doctor, I think there's some offense there. As a Christian, I'm not sure what's more offensive. The fact that he depicted himself as Jesus, which I think is pretty offensive. But the other one being that his response to there being backlash was to pretend like he didn't realize that He was depicting himself as Jesus. and I don't know which is worse of that, that if he actually did not realize that what he was depicting was a very religious looking photo, the fact that he just did it. I don't know which one, because I think if you're, Christian and you look at that, that's all you're going to see is Jesus. Right. and so I don't know, like is it worse that he just didn't know or is it worse that he clearly knew and then lied about it? What's more offensive? Or being a Christian doctor. Rob (36:50) Yeah, he clearly knew. David (36:53) But let's say he didn't, go with what he said. Like let's take him at face Isn't there something offensive about the fact that he didn't? to a lot of European countries and I have been to countless, countless churches in these countries, beautiful, beautiful churches. Rob (37:08) Yeah. David (37:08) What he did was just short of something that would be in stained glass on any one of their windows. And for him, let's just he was right. I just thought it was a doctor, which I do think is bullshit. But if he didn't think that was bullshit, wouldn't that be more offensive? that it didn't immediately go into his head, being a Christian as he claims to Rob (37:28) certainly would imply that his understanding of Christian iconography and values and belief structure is so in question, which throws into limited, which throws into question whether he's a Christian or not. I think we know the answer, David (37:37) Limited. Rob (37:43) So yeah, that's offensive. here's the question that when I saw it, I was surprised that people were so offended, not because it wasn't offensive. I found it offensive. I found it ridiculous actually. made me laugh. It's so ridiculous. But I do remember. clearly during cycle when he was running, his followers were posting Jesus-like pictures of him. I mean, they posted all kinds He's been every type of hero, every Superman, was Rocky Balboa, he's Rambo, Exactly. David (38:13) He's been Rambo. He's ripped Rob (38:18) And they absolutely, there were images of him sort of taking on a divine nature. And when other people posted it, there was less, if any, outrage whatsoever. The difference was that he's the one that posted this himself. Why caused him to post that at this moment? my sense is, that, back his base, which he does have an evangelical base that support him, they certainly identify as Christians, it's important to them, you know, how do you measure on a... scale what constitutes to vow, but it is important to them. The identity of Christianity is important to them. And he used to have that support base. And I have this sense that he misses that, that all of a sudden he's feeling his base is starting to disintegrate. And he was trying to shore up that evangelical Christian identity population. on his own. He was pushing it out into the universe trying to get these people to remember, yeah, we used to say that he was God's chosen, that God put him here to save us from, you know, woke politics and adventurous wars. And here we are. David (39:28) fell flat. yeah, him pushing it out was would be the difference, right? Him sharing his own and people thinking like, well, why does this guy think? Whereas with other people doing it, can maybe brush it off as being less offensive because it's, fan art at that point, Rob (39:44) Mm-hmm. David (39:45) guess though, the thing got me thinking about when I saw this was, because one thing is I think the people who and a lot of times to happen to be at least from his probably from his own fan base, probably more of the very vocal minority are actually upset about this, probably a lot of people who have posted similar things probably were like, ah, great. I would have posted the same thing. a very loud group that's maybe smaller who is more offended. But what got me thinking about was kind of grace that's been extended to him other people within his circle over and over again. The benefit of the doubt seems to be a place where he lives and And what got me thinking about that was there recent article about the monthly prayer thing that Pete Hegseth does at the Pentagon, apparently, Rob (40:36) Pram Pete. David (40:38) used a scripture verse from pulp fiction, is not a So there's this, you know, iconic scene from pulp fiction where Samuel Jackson starts to say his favorite Bible verse, but it's not real. And Pete chose to use that. Rob (40:42) Scripture-esque. David (40:56) during his prayer. Now he modified it a bit. So it wasn't exact, but it was benefit of the doubt, and I think that's maybe the default of somebody who's trying to not be partisan on this, is that, well, there's no evidence per se that he thought it was real. Rob (41:00) I'm gonna say call sign. David (41:13) He just happened to use it in this prayer. And so we don't know, we don't know that he didn't realize that it was a fake Bible verse because maybe he was just purposefully including this fake Bible verse, this fake scripture into his sermon or whatever the hell he was doing. And yeah. Rob (41:30) Well, and nothing says Christianity quite like the movie Pulp Fiction. David (41:34) I guess that's what I figure out was, so how much grace, how much benefit of the doubt does somebody get before people stop giving it to them? because of cognitive dissonance, the answer is a whole fucking lot, especially for Donald Trump, who has time and time and time again. demonstrated that he lacks the fundamental Christian values that people look for yet because the evangelical right likes him so much, they just continue to extend that grace when he makes a misstep. he read a scripture once and he called it two Corinthians. It's like in Corinthians. know that He consistently talks about, he's not really sure, it, does he prefer the Old Testament or the New Testament? They're about the same to him. can't tell people what his favorite Bible verses are. In with the fallout of this particular he recorded like a two plus minute reading of a scripture. for some big Bible conference that's supposed to be released where they did, where there's like hours and hours of religious content, but he did a two minute recording for it that they're releasing to kind of help him recover from this particular thing. But he's still reading. from the Old Testament. just not getting it, Robbie. How much grace does one get? Rob (42:50) Are you surprised that he selective of the Old Testament? am not. The Old much more hardcore than the New. was an angry god, a jealous god. a follow-on to this. And again, second, third order effects. David (42:59) Yahweh rough dude. Rob (43:08) Maybe this is being driven politically. I don't know. I'm not entirely sure what's driving the Secretary of Defense to incorporate religious iconography and prayer, very Christian evangelical prayer, so prominently in a war in the Middle East against Muslims. That's not helping. is not going to win support from the people of Iran, it's probably a little frightening for them and it has a crusade kind of element to it, which we were really cautious about back in Iraq and Afghanistan. We did not want to make it a religious thing. We did not want to play into that as a justification to fight against whether he's doing it politically, whether There is this lean into this being a religious movement, this war, having religious overtones. it's uncomfortable for me. I think it puts our military in a really difficult place, position. I think it's degrading separation of church and state. And, you know, it's easy to, like most U.S. at least identify culturally as Christians. they don't get offended by Christian iconography and Christian but once you adopt a state religion, then that shifts too. brand of Christian may not be the brand of Christian accepted. And there was a reason why the Pilgrims left England even though they were Christian. So. David (44:30) it isn't necessarily about, Going along with Christianity, the benefits of doing it are that we actually have a very religious country. In the grand scheme of things, we have a great deal of Christians and Christians who are willing to one specific way if the leadership suggests that they do that. think the benefit that I would see, the real value in in making it about Christian it's not the things that you just said, the reasons that we avoided doing it. it benefits this administration to use Christian ideology and iconography is in that it becomes so dangerous to attack that, that it's a very protected position. So if you call into question, their use of Christian iconography, Christian ideology, it's really easy to defend yourself from that attack by attacking the attack. Does that make sense? So your political rivals really struggle with appearing, you know, cause if you say, man, you really shouldn't do that, the immediate response assaulting my religion or you're assaulting the religion. maybe, that's really, it has nothing to do with it. Rob (45:23) Mm-hmm. David (45:38) disliking using prayer and all these, these Christian things to justify it is more of what you just said. It's the separation of church and state, but they've built their entire argument on. We shouldn't have a separation of church and state and you're restricted my religious beliefs. If you say that and you're attacking Christianity, what do you don't love? You don't love Christianity now. It's not an accurate argument, but it's an easy argument to make. And it deflects from the nature of what you're doing. So we're not talking basis on which we built our country. You're not talking about that anymore, right? The separation of church and state was very important in the development of our government. You're talking attacking your religion. So it's a protective stance. mean, I think it's incredibly effective because you can get people on your side like that by saying they don't like you because you're Christian. And the answer is no, that has nothing to do with it. that you're muddying these waters and making decisions that are impacting everybody based upon this false perception of what your religion is. that make sense? I'll have to. Rob (46:41) No, total sense, and you're absolutely right. In fact, the portion of his supporters that are deeply ideologically Christian, that drives some of it. There is, you know, some cost fallacy. They have invested quite a lot in supporting him and withdrawing that support after investing as much as they have both emotionally and otherwise is tough. It's tough and it happens slowly. It's a slow degradation where the support levels just start to gradually decline and then there'll be something that pushes it over maybe $5 a gallon gas or $6 a gallon gas or the fact that can't fly anymore because airlines cutting flights because it's too expensive or Amazon's giving you a surcharge who knows what will actually be the tipping point as zeal that that his followers feel for him declines and each one of these things does eat away at it just slightly. There will be some tipping points. And it's also his kind of repetition compulsion. He's great as an underdog. He's great achieving. But then because of his movement bias and his risk tolerance tends to bankrupt himself. Now he comes out the winner. Other people pay the cost. So you're right. You know what I said earlier, you made a beautiful counterpoint. He does still win personally. It just he doesn't win emotionally. David (48:00) Yeah. Well, and I think... when, you have a bankruptcy, you can be viewed as a failure or you can leverage that into you're taking a strategic position of strength by declaring bankruptcy is saying, no, I'm not a failure. A failure would be sitting with this failure and doing nothing about it. Taking on a bankruptcy is just, is a good strategic business move it's protection but that's, what he's very good leveraging himself. Rob (48:28) We are now dealing with a bankrupting a country. David (48:30) Well, that's that's true. The stakes are always higher, but for him, his strength has always been in convincing people that he's playing 40 chess Rob (48:32) The stakes are higher. David (48:41) Well, the truth is he's playing craps. and that's all he's playing. He's rolling the dice. And when he wins, he's successful and people are happy. And when he craps out, he's saying, good, I was tired of playing and I was ready to walk away. I really needed that. And people are saying, wow, look at the restraint on this guy. Good for him. Good for him tapping out at the right time. Rob (49:02) Restraint. David (49:04) I mean, he lost all of his money, a nice that's the game he's played entire life. was never 4D chess, it was never 5D chess, it was never chess, it craps. He's just doing it with our country now. So that's not scary. always leveraged the position though. And I think that's where the religiosity comes in. He's leveraging a position It's difficult to attack somebody for their faith because there's no measure of it. So you and I can sit here and say, he's not demonstrated. Rob (49:17) Not at all. David (49:33) any of the core principles or values of Christianity. He doesn't appear to know scripture or anything a pastor once, I think jokingly said it, didn't even seem as though he had read the Bible. And his response was, ha ha, well, know. but to question his faith is just something you can't do. In fact, Because you don't know. I don't know what's in his brain. Nobody does, there. It's that benefit of the doubt. It's that grace. He lives zone of, well, I don't really know, so I'm gonna have to assume the best. Because if I assume the worst, then I'm now attacking something that other dear, and it feels like an attack on them for me to question his faith. And I'm not questioning his faith. I'm questioning his morals and values and ethics that he's demonstrated. He can believe he wants to believe in. He just clearly doesn't espouse the principles of Christianity to which he claims to hold dear. And I'm not attacking Christianity. I'm just questioning whether he espouses those principles the way that other people do. Rob (50:34) Well, and I think you just demonstrated where the challenge is, is that there's nothing you've said that even remotely has attacked Christianity, but you still felt like you needed to remind everyone you weren't attacking Christianity because... David (50:45) Because, yeah, because people will feel like I've attacked Christianity, Rob (50:48) Yeah, well, when you're shameless, you would not have even thought about that. So you're not. So. David (50:53) right. Well, do have a podcast Rob (50:55) true, that's true. This is as close to shameless as we get. David (50:58) I some narcissism built into it. right, well, we got any prescriptions, Robbie? Rob (51:03) Yeah, I've got one. is kind of in keeping with how I started things off. America must define what winning looks like before acting. If done can't be clearly stated, it doesn't exist. You're not executing strategy, you're creating movement and movement in and of itself is not enough. David (51:19) This is true. Rob (51:20) Leaders must resist psychological inflation Certainty is often loudest when doubt is the highest. If you need divine validation, you may be avoiding your real questions. David (51:31) So. People need to stop cleaning up for other people when they're just trying to protect their own stance. trap is that decent people will hear a sloppy stunt and then rush to interpret it charitably like, well, maybe they meant something else. No, if they wanted meaning, they could have used meaning. not improving their theology for them. So I'll give people grace, but I'm not gonna underwrite their performance. Rob (51:52) do a lot of that. David (51:52) There we go. Well, I think we do a lot of that as empathizing human beings. We have that tendency to try to put ourselves into their shoes and think about it from the perspective of how would I have done that? What would I be thinking? What would I be doing? Which is fine. I think dealing on a daily basis, dealing with other human beings, it's important to be empathic. It's important to think about things from a clear perspective. But I would challenge anybody that if they're going to do that, maybe think about apply it to that person's life. And if what you can say is, have no idea what this person would do because they've done everything conceivably different than how I would have done it, maybe stop trying to apply your morals to them, to their behaviors, because you don't have the same morals. So as much as I think it's important to give oneself grace and to give some other people grace, give it when it's deserved. And people need to earn grace to some at least once they've lost it. Rob (52:46) Yeah, it can't be a blank check David (52:48) Yeah. is moral bankruptcy. think we've seen that with some people. All right. That was it. Rob (52:54) We're good. David (52:54) We got nothing. All right. Well, thank you everybody for sticking around. Rob (52:56) All right, Sally Forth for our tens of listeners, get out there and do something that cheers you up. David (53:02) Go ahead and hit subscribe, hit like, share with your friends that's it. So let's cue up that music and we are out.