Retired U.S. Army Col. Douglas McGregor is a retired combat veteran and CEO of Our Country's Choice, a non-profit organization that helps veterans and their families navigate life after the military. In this episode, we talk about the state of the military, the role of veterans in society, and what it really means to be a hero in the eyes of the public. This is a powerful conversation that I'm so excited to share with you, and I'm sure you'll agree that it's a conversation you won't want to miss. Use the code I surrender for a month free if you use the code ISURVENDER, and also, while we're on the subject, why don't you get yourself one of these farting crow mugs 25% off this week, and every penny of it that we get we use to support people with addiction issues. You're going to love it. Stay Free Today! - Russell Brand And it's great to be with you. That's a brilliant conversation, and it's one you'll really love. You'll want to join us when these conversations happen live, but not just that - but you can join us live when they happen. You'll get to see these conversations live, and you'll get a chance to see it in its glorious entirety. So if you want to see the conversation live, join us over in that sweet stream of freedom that we call home, you'll have to go join us. And if you're interested in seeing the future, you're gonna see the future. - you're in for a ride. . Stay free today! - Stay Free! And you'll love it! You're gonna be a better place to be part of the movement, and a community of like-minded people, like us, and people who care about freedom and freedom, like you're part of something bigger than you know what we're doing it, and they're gonna love it, right here? Thank you, and you can help make it so much more than you can be a part of it. - And you're not just one of us, but you'll be a friend of the community, and we'll be there to support us, too. If you're ready to join in on the ride with us in the ride, let us help us make it, we'll give you the chance to be there.
00:02:32.000Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:02:35.000I've got Colonel Douglas MacGregor on the show.
00:02:38.000This is a significant and powerful conversation that I'm so excited to convey to you.
00:02:43.000We're talking to what I would call a proper military expert, a general.
00:02:48.000This is a person who understands the ins and outs of battle.
00:02:50.000There's moments in this conversation where you can see he's just Burbling, bristling, bridling with desire to talk about military strategy, exactly how these things work, about how the ingenuity of war has been lost and replaced with a kind of minder system of execution, that there is no strategy, that there is no glory, that the American military is being hollowed out from within in the service of the military-industrial complex and globalists, that to be a patriot now
00:03:18.000He's almost to be a revolutionary, and we all remember how America began.
00:03:22.000This is going to make any of you that are interested in true change very, very excited indeed, because I got the sense that we could be reaching the point where the military might side with the people against the government.
00:03:36.000What could be more exciting than that?
00:03:37.000We'll be on YouTube for the first 50 minutes.
00:03:39.000You'll get to see a little bit of this conversation, but to see it in its entirety, and I recommend that you do, you'll have to join us over in that sweet stream of freedom that we call home.
00:03:48.000Now, many of you will have seen Colonel Douglas McGregor before when he's been on Tucker, but I love this conversation.
00:03:58.000Use the code ISURRENDER and you can join us when these conversations Happen live, but not just that we do exclusive videos this week We've got a brilliant one on fluoride in the water that you'll just love I can't get into because I'm so excited to get to Colonel Douglas McGregor But we'll give you a month free if you use the code I surrender and also while we're on the subject Why don't you get yourself one of these farting crow mugs 25% off this week and every penny of it that we get we use to support people with addiction issues now
00:04:57.000One of the things I noticed in your country on a recent visit is when I was speaking to a Lieutenant Colonel, who's obviously a West Point graduate, and several other members of military families, I sensed a great deal of discontent and dissatisfaction from, in this case, servicemen, that were deeply patriotic, as you might imagine, obviously, and yet have serious questions about the American government's activities, in particular, obviously, their military activities.
00:05:32.000What does it tell us about the state of a nation when those that we would assume to be most patriotic are at odds with the leadership of their nation?
00:05:45.000Well, remember that soldiers normally, we'll say for discussion purposes, soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, but I normally think in terms of soldiers, they're men of action.
00:05:58.000And men of action have as good as very little conscience.
00:06:03.000In other words, they're people who are prepared to act quickly and decisively, you know, on the orders of their government.
00:06:11.000And I think that that's been true for most of our history.
00:06:14.000The problem at this point is that I think we've reached a turning point where people are actively questioning, what the hell are we doing here?
00:06:24.000I mean, the average soldier gets off a plane in a place like Iraq and he spends about 15 minutes there.
00:06:32.000He looks around and he says, there's nothing here.
00:06:38.000And very shortly thereafter, he concludes, there's nothing here worth my life, so I'm going to make damn sure that I come home, because I don't want to die in this godforsaken place.
00:07:20.000I mean, we could do those things, but that's not what we exist to do.
00:07:24.000So I think you're dealing with people who are questioning the very rationale for what they do in the military.
00:07:31.000Once the phrase support the troops, Colonel, was an easy way to silence dissent.
00:07:38.000Now it seems to support the troops would mean to oppose the agenda of the American establishment and, if I might offer, the military-industrial complex.
00:07:52.000So What does that suggest has altered in the last 30 years?
00:07:57.000And I suppose intuitively I might imagine, based on your answer and your citation of Iraq, although I'm sure much of that is based on personal experience, did something change around the time of that conflict?
00:08:10.000Or is this something that's been happening since the end of World War II?
00:08:13.000When did the idea that supporting the troops meant patriotism and shut your mouth and get behind the agenda, when did that idea start to disintegrate?
00:08:23.000Well, I think we've been through this transformation or evolution, whatever you want to call it, twice.
00:08:30.000We certainly went through this in the 1960s with Vietnam.
00:08:33.000And I remember the violent arguments in my own home between my mother's generation and my grandparents' generation.
00:08:42.000And she would say repeatedly, I don't like Lyndon Johnson, the president, but we have to support the troops.
00:08:49.000And my grandfather, who had been in the First World War, said, well, if you want to support the troops, get them the hell out of there and bring them home.
00:08:56.000But of course, he thought World War I was a complete waste of time and had been a terrible mistake.
00:09:02.000So I think we've been through this several times.
00:09:04.000The difference now is that it's not just a question of what we're doing overseas, it's a question of what we're doing at home.
00:09:11.000Americans are coming back and saying, well, what's happened to my country?
00:09:16.000I went overseas ostensibly to defend the interests of the United States, and no one here is willing to enforce the law.
00:09:54.000Has then an evident fissure emerged, not only as has been observable and palpable for a long time between the interests of the establishment and the interests of what you might call ordinary Americans, but a fissure has emerged between the interests of the American establishment And the American military, which you've just indicated is something that's almost rhythmic, that it's happened before, after the First World War, there was cynicism about subsequent wars.
00:10:29.000And I wonder now, if in this age of information and instantaneous communication, with the ability for dissent to be so widely spread and proliferated, if it's impossible to sustain the kind of uh... dominion that was plausible before. Many of the
00:11:31.000No, I think we're reaching more than just a tipping point.
00:11:35.000I think we've sort of walked off the cliff and are headed into an abyss right now at high speed.
00:11:42.000And I think lots of people in uniform senses.
00:11:45.000But keep in mind that the senior ranks are highly politicized.
00:11:49.000In other words, the ruling class in Washington, and you can call it whatever you like, this globalist neocon class, whatever you care to call it, is effectively owned by donors.
00:12:02.000So we talk about donor occupation of Washington.
00:12:05.000In other words, Washington used to be a place where we said corporate interests occupied it.
00:12:13.000We have our own version of oligarchs with billions and billions of dollars.
00:12:18.000They are capable of buying up members of Congress and have effectively done so.
00:12:23.000I mean, on one of your previous shows, you had a gentleman on and you pointed out that only 21 People had voted against this latest legislation, sending billions of dollars overseas and at the same time disenfranchising us from the Bill of Rights, essentially saying that you can conduct surveillance without a warrant.
00:12:44.000Well, it happens because there's no incentive for the people on the Hill in Washington, D.C., in the Capitol, to respond to their constituents, to respond to the average American.
00:14:40.000I wonder, Colonel, do you feel like a kind of personal apostasy, making such declarations of anti-war sentiment, when previously it was assumed, if I think of that great American satirical artifact, Doctor Strangelove, Like the military leadership are the most priapic and the most gung-ho and the most, as you indicated earlier, and I recognise this not as a pejorative remark, that soldiers are men of action and thank God that they are.
00:15:18.000But now it appears to me That we are at the point where the rudimentary requirement that a state has for a military in order to conduct the kind of foreign exercises that you and I are both critiquing, criticizing and questioning here, that's one aspect of the military.
00:15:41.000The other one is of course to Illicit demand and require that the domestic population understand that the rule of law is backed by violence.
00:15:53.000always seemed extraordinary, paradoxical and an evident tension that, broadly speaking,
00:16:01.000the majority of military personnel are drawn from the communities that they would be required
00:16:06.000to subjugate in the event of an uprising. Now you've evoked the memory of Oliver Cromwell
00:16:12.000and ultimately we're discussing, or at least circling, the subject of revolution. It seems
00:16:20.000to me that with a donor class dominating Washington, with another $95 billion bill being passed
00:16:27.000concomitant with the C702 unlimited and near unlimited surveillance powers that were granted
00:16:33.000by that, we are on some kind of precipice where even the idea that it's a national elite
00:16:41.000that are controlling America seems questionable.
00:16:46.000It seems that, in a way, the The idea that the political class represent the people, for some time people have suspected, no, they represent the donor class.
00:16:58.000The idea that the military serve and protect the people.
00:17:01.000No, actually, now it's clear that they are operating on behalf of these interests.
00:17:06.000Well, now all of this is starting to come to the forefront.
00:17:09.000Do you think we could be approaching a time where the military were supportive of a movement extraneous to the government?
00:17:21.000I think what you've got now is the realisation that's beginning to sink in with most Americans, period, whether they're in uniform or not, that it doesn't make a great deal of difference for whom you vote, you get the same bad outcome.
00:17:51.000I think, if anything, the current ruling class has tried to populate the senior ranks with people who would try to order us—in other words, those of us who are not three- and four-star generals or admirals—order us to suppress internal dissent.
00:18:43.000First of all, you can't turn around and tell some 19, 20-year-old male in the United States who wants to be a combat soldier that Susie or Betty or Mary over here, who weigh all of 120 pounds, can do anything he can do.
00:18:58.000He takes the position, well, if Mary and Susie and Betty can do anything, then you don't need me because I'm not going to be part of such a ridiculous organization.
00:19:09.000You've got to understand, it's just absurdity what we've done to ourselves in that sense.
00:19:13.000This is part of the social engineering that's been going on for decades.
00:19:19.000Now we're being told, You know, your performance doesn't count.
00:19:22.000Character, competence, and intelligence don't count.
00:19:26.000It's your ideological fervor, your commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity.
00:19:31.000Well, most normal Americans look at that and say, well, that's crap.
00:19:36.000You know, if I'm not going to be evaluated on the basis of my performance, and I'm not going to be advanced inside a meritocracy, which the military, more than perhaps most institutions in the United States, has tried to achieve, then I don't see any point in becoming a member.
00:19:51.000So that's part of our recruiting problem.
00:19:53.000And then finally, you have this repeated abuse of people in uniform.
00:19:58.000Year after year after year on rotation after rotation in a hellhole like Afghanistan.
00:20:05.000Now just what is it that we are in Afghanistan to do?
00:20:18.000They don't even want me in their country.
00:20:20.000All of these people hate me and want me to leave, so what do you want me to do here?
00:20:24.000And that's when the soldier becomes interested preeminently in survival.
00:20:28.000And if a soldier is more interested in his survival than anything else, he's not much good to us anymore.
00:20:34.000So we've demoralized the armed forces on multiple levels right now.
00:20:40.000And the best thing that we could do would be to bring our forces back to the United States where they belong, because frankly, contrary to popular belief, there is no existential military threat to the United States.
00:20:51.000There are no massive armies gathering to invade us.
00:21:33.000And now the problem is, well, if you want to defeat The forces of evil that are killing 110 or 120,000 Americans every year from fentanyl poisoning, you do that by attacking China.
00:22:28.000And I'm told that that number that I just gave you is probably on the low side, in terms of an estimate.
00:22:35.000But we won't stop human trafficking across the borders.
00:22:38.000We pretend it's not real, or that we can't detect it, but you can ask the border patrolman to look at these so-called families, and they'll tell you right off the bat that a lot of these children don't belong to the people that are bringing them into the country.
00:22:53.000You know, we're not enforcing our own laws.
00:22:55.000And so these are the things that people that come back from multiple deployments overseas look at and say, why am I in the armed forces?
00:23:05.000The demoralisation and social engineering are both fascinating aspects of this because it suggests that if there is a kind of entropy and decline within the American armed forces it is part of a deliberate process and it's interesting to speculate as to why an institution would deliberately undertake deleterious action against itself
00:23:31.000and of course we will cover the domestic issues that are affecting your
00:23:38.000nation I hope over the course of our conversation. I am interested in the escalation
00:23:43.000of conflict across the globe and its apparent motivation.
00:23:47.000After the Afghanistan conflict, it appears that very little has been achieved by America's involvement other than the two trillion dollars spent and what the eventual destination of much of that expenditure may have been.
00:24:01.000Of course, obviously and notably, the military industrial complex companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who do, it appears, employ top military personnel who frequently appear on legacy media shows to endorse ongoing conflict.
00:24:19.000I wonder is it your personal and obviously professional opinion that events in Ukraine are Significantly different from the version that is commonly rendered through legacy media.
00:24:34.000What is the significance of NATO impeachment on former Soviet territory?
00:24:39.000What is the significance of CIA involvement in the 2014 coup?
00:24:43.000How important is it that there are 10 or 12 CIA bases in Ukraine?
00:24:49.000And indeed, how Involved are the United States military in a variety of ways, whether it's through special forces or military advisors, obviously the provision of armaments, diplomatic advice, and of course through guiding and indeed sabotaging potential peace talks,
00:25:12.000Is it clear that the United States has an agenda or the United States establishment have an agenda when it comes to Russia?
00:25:21.000And is it essentially that the United States do not want regional superpowers like Russia or China?
00:25:31.000Are the American people and the world at large being sold a kind of unipolar power project as variously humanitarian or in support of democracy or a variety of other smokescreens?
00:25:46.000Well, in answer to the three or four hundred questions you just raised, I would say the following.
00:25:53.000You have several things happening on different levels.
00:25:55.000On one level, you have a population in the United States That admittedly likes to think of itself as the center of the universe.
00:26:04.000We're not very different from the British population before the outbreak of World War I. You know, the attitude was, we've got the men, we've got the guns, we've got the money too.
00:26:16.000In other words, we're the richest, we're the strongest, and we can effectively impose our will.
00:26:23.000It took Britain 50 years to destroy itself through two world wars.
00:26:29.000I would even start earlier with the Boer War, probably.
00:26:46.000Americans have been told repeatedly, we're the greatest.
00:26:49.000You know, it's a sort of a terminal case of national narcissism.
00:26:53.000That we're the greatest, we're God's gift to mankind, and so forth, and we have to bring liberty, justice, democracy, and the American way to everybody.
00:27:02.000Most Americans are not interested in doing that at the point of a bayonet.
00:27:07.000And originally, Americans thought of themselves as a people where if we're good, if we're successful, if we're prosperous, others will imitate us.
00:27:28.000The second thing is that Americans are waking up to the reality that you mentioned.
00:27:32.000In fact, somebody you should bring on and consider talking to is Nassim Taleb.
00:27:37.000Nassim Taleb wrote a book in which he describes in great detail this concept of the black swan, the notion that you have black swans swimming around in the financial sector and it's only at some point the black swan shows up and destroys everything and you have a major crisis.
00:27:56.000He tries to explain how this happens and how people ignore it.
00:28:00.000His point is that the people at the top don't have skin in the game.
00:28:05.000And you've got to keep in mind, nobody has skin in the game in Washington.
00:28:09.000The only skin they're concerned about is themselves.
00:28:11.000In other words, they're not going to be committed to anything overseas to fight for anybody under any circumstances.
00:28:57.000Part of it is the fact that we haven't faced anybody militarily that we could not easily dominate for a long, long time.
00:29:05.000The last time we fought an organized enemy in the field, it was the Iraqi military.
00:29:10.000And that military obviously was in no position to withstand us under any circumstances.
00:29:15.000But you've got to go all the way back to the Korean War, where you saw an American army almost driven into the sea by a North Korean force.
00:29:25.000We ended up in this thing called the Pusan Perimeter.
00:29:28.000And then, of course, MacArthur comes out of mothballs and ultimately retrieves our chestnuts from the fire with Inchon and so forth.
00:29:37.000But we almost went out of business as an army at that point.
00:30:32.000And most of the money you were talking about will never get there.
00:30:35.000It's simply sent through the washing machine over to defense and then to the defense industries, and then the donations flow back to the Hill.
00:30:43.000So it's not a question that we're sending $60 billion.
00:30:48.000And putting it into Zelensky's hands now.
00:30:51.000Now Zelensky and his friends will profit, no doubt about it.
00:30:54.000Let's not kid ourselves, they'll get some of it.
00:31:35.000Well, because we've decided that we want to strip Russia of its resources.
00:31:40.000So we turned Ukraine into a battering ram designed to stab Russia in the heart.
00:31:47.000The Russians woke up, not completely, but at the last minute and decided, well, we probably should intervene here and stop what's happening and signal just how serious this is in our estimation.
00:32:00.000So they did, and they found out it's much worse than we thought.
00:32:04.000The force is much larger, much better trained.
00:32:44.000There won't be any fighting forces of any kind.
00:32:47.000And the Ukrainians can live there and they may have some form of administration, but they're not going to be permitted to ever again present a direct threat to Russia.
00:32:56.000You pointed to the CIA stations and laboratories inside Ukraine.
00:33:46.000He's going to vanish here over the next 30 to 60 days.
00:33:50.000Whether he succumbs to whatever the Ukrainians decide to do with him on the ground, I don't know.
00:33:55.000I'm sure that his foreign mercenaries that are surrounding him, special ops types from the United States and Britain and other countries, will do everything they can to keep him alive.
00:34:05.000But at some point, even they may abandon him.
00:34:08.000But the narrative persists because the media is an arm of the government.
00:34:12.000This is very similar to what Noam Chomsky wrote about during Vietnam.
00:34:17.000Manufactured consent creates the illusion that this is something we all want.
00:34:24.000We didn't ask anybody to open the borders.
00:34:26.000We did not ask for millions of people that we don't know and know nothing about to come into the United States.
00:34:32.000And what do we do with millions of people who can't find work, especially if we go into the serious financial crisis that every sane person on the planet is predicting is coming?
00:34:46.000I wish I could paint a positive picture!
00:34:49.000Amidst the many staggering horrors that you beautifully, if somewhat gothically, illumined for us there, Colonel, this one stands as the Everest, is that what you lucidly and eloquently and with experience and understanding describe aligns terrifyingly With my intuitive sense of what's been happening, that the United States has provoked Russia into this war, using as a playbook the understanding and now broken paradigm that had been deployed in the previous half century in proxy wars fought in
00:35:34.000Southeast Asia or wherever but this time it's a lot closer to home and the injury is a lot more severe and the consequences could be catastrophic is not a word that does it justice perhaps only apocalyptic is.
00:35:53.000Again I'm going to sort of heave in your general direction a battalion of potential inquiry if I may sir and uh among them uh Among them.
00:36:05.000Do you see a sort of a correlative, as plainly you do, between the lax border controls and these foreign adventures?
00:36:14.000And do you consider it to be a favourable advancement with the United States to alter their position thusly?
00:36:25.000We are not only going to not be involved in interventionism, in conflicts in the South
00:36:32.000China Seas or in Europe or the Middle East, and therefore we are not destabilising world
00:36:39.000populations, and also we're not going to corporatise those spaces or allow organisations that are
00:36:45.000tethered or anchored in the United States to disrupt the economies or exploit the resources
00:36:49.000of nations included in these various regional disputes, but also down in Central and Latin
00:36:57.000America which is obviously more closely connected to the border crisis.
00:37:01.000And because America is going to become, well, let's just use a word that detractors might, more isolationist, more contained, the idea that America doesn't have to bear a burden of an influx of migration makes more sense.
00:37:18.000That America will control their own borders and as part of that pact not disrupt Economies and populations elsewhere, because for a long time it seemed like the general consensus, and this may not have been the consensus, maybe media could be manipulated and managed differently, was that it was okay for America to get involved in Libya or Sudan or Iraq or Afghanistan, and then when it came to population explosion or migration or whatever, hey what are all these people doing here?
00:37:48.000What's causing all this disruption and unrest?
00:37:51.000is a like not acknowledging that these two things are intricately connected. I wonder
00:37:56.000if you'd take that on for a moment. I just want to acknowledge that when you said at
00:38:00.000the beginning of your last answer that the washing machine and Zelensky it just was so
00:38:08.000vividly real. They kind of made me feel a bit sick. There's a lens. He is a sort of
00:38:12.000a propped up contained figure that money's not getting to Ukraine. It just was just getting
00:38:28.000So what do you think about the relationship between border control and foreign, like you know, like IAEA, it could be a massive reimagining of what America's role in the world is and what, and yeah, you know what the questions are.
00:38:40.000Well, we're in the grip of a suicidal ideology that we want to make America the first state without borders, without identity, without a discernible culture.
00:38:54.000In other words, this is the Trotskyite dream of the radical Bolsheviks when they came to power in 1918.
00:39:03.000They thought that they could change the world.
00:39:06.000Reform this world into an amorphous mass of sedated consumers who would march merrily in whatever direction they wanted them to go.
00:39:14.000That all fell apart, but that was the original idea that goes all the way back to the French Revolution.
00:39:19.000They wanted to carry it across the world and do the same thing effectively.
00:39:24.000Uh, it boils down to, I think, finance.
00:39:28.000Oftentimes, uh, I would ask when, when I did teach at the military academy, I would ask people, when did the British leave India?
00:39:37.000And everyone, uh, you know, I, it was a sort of thousand miles stare from the average cadet who had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
00:39:47.000And I said, when the debt to GDP ratio reached 240%.
00:39:54.000Churchill bankrupted the British Empire, bankrupted the country, and destroyed its national power.
00:40:00.000So suddenly, after having theoretically fought tenaciously to defend the great empire, they abandoned it because they couldn't afford to stay.
00:40:12.000They had to restore some measure of stability and prosperity to Great Britain.
00:40:17.000I think we're going to face something similar to that, and that will cause the public to make a radical reassessment of what's been happening.
00:40:26.000And then I think you will see a public ready to embrace harsh measures.
00:40:30.000In other words, to do whatever is required to, quote unquote, save the republic.
00:40:36.000But when we go into this process of saving the republic, remember, Number one is the Bill of Rights.
00:40:41.000That's what really separates us from everyone, and that's the best feature of the American political experiment, the Bill of Rights.
00:40:50.000Secondly, the Constitution was designed in the 1780s for a very different country from the one that we have today.
00:41:01.000We ignore the Constitution on a routine basis, and everyone is very upset about that, but the truth is, it doesn't fit our needs any longer.
00:41:09.000How we govern ourselves is going to have to change.
00:41:14.000You know, this little 50-state paradigm, where all these little 50 states make decisions.
00:41:20.000These borders were made, you know, 100, 150 years ago, based on all sorts of considerations that have nothing to do with us today.
00:41:28.000We've got to sit down and look at the country from the standpoint of regions.
00:41:32.000You know, what makes sense economically in one region may not make sense in another.
00:41:37.000In other words, we've got to re-examine what we're doing.
00:41:40.000No one has wanted to do that for a very long time.
00:41:44.000It's the financial crisis that will compel it.
00:41:47.000And there was a man named John Kenneth Galbraith who wrote a great book on financial crises.
00:41:54.000And he made the point over and over and over again that you go for decades in a bank and nothing happens.
00:42:00.000And then suddenly you discover the bank isn't solvent.
00:42:49.000And that's a lot better, by the way, than the French revolutionary path, believe me.
00:42:54.000Tell you what, I wish we could do a conversation where we talk about military strategy, the nature of revolutions, the inevitable problems of revolution, how by your analysis you conflated Trotskyism with consumerism, when on the surface of it that would seem entirely antithetical to that model, even though I acknowledge that Marxism Even in its proposed, egalitarianism places economics at the heart of all projects, rather than some ethos, some divinity, something sacred, something that people can organize around.
00:43:26.000Contrast that with something like National Socialism, for all its evils, of course, place folk and the land at the core.
00:43:33.000Very mobilizing, were it not for the horrific genocides and bellicose nature of many of Hitler's, you know, I don't think we need to get into defending Hitler, but my point is... Now then, let's revisit.
00:43:44.000But I also wanted to say, on the point of India there, that when Nehru gave the declaration of Indian independence, it was given in English.
00:43:57.000And to me, the implication was that somehow, and this is a bit sort of maybe project paperclip, that somehow the necessary and relevant institutions are able to withstand the superficial narratives of victory and loss.
00:44:20.000If you're going to discuss that, then you're going to have to be prepared to deal with the Indian view, which is obviously different.
00:44:27.000It's almost the same as talking about the blessings of British influence and occupation in Ireland.
00:44:33.000That never gets a positive reception either.
00:44:41.000By your reckoning then, a sort of a Cromwellian event, which is a sort of a, well, it's a military revolution where the oligarchs or monarchy are overthrown by a, you know, a sort of a soldier risen to the rank of general becoming Lord Protector.
00:44:57.000It's difficult to look beyond Donald Trump for a candidate for that role.
00:45:04.000And there are a lot of people who are going to figure that out.
00:45:06.000I mean, the fact that he endorsed and supported this last bill is enough to drive away substantial numbers of his base.
00:45:15.000And remember this stalwart paragon of manhood, Senator Lindsey Graham, publicly thanked Donald Trump for his support because without Donald Trump, this bill would never have passed.
00:45:29.000Well, that's frightening because it's antithetical to everything that the people that support Donald Trump believe in.
00:45:36.000So the suspicion now is that he too has captured By the donors.
00:45:41.000You know, sometimes we call it the swamp, then you have the deep state.
00:45:45.000Just view it all as essentially one amorphous mass of trouble.
00:45:49.000And he seems to have been infected by it too.
00:45:51.000I hope not, but it looks that way to me.
00:46:02.000He did something that most generals never do.
00:46:04.000He sat down and read all the books on military affairs, and so he was self-taught.
00:46:10.000But he was self-taught because he had to be.
00:46:11.000And remember, he created an army of supporters, Puritans from scratch.
00:46:17.000And of course, you know, his event provoked a lot of people.
00:46:21.000And in fact, my ancestors that came to the United States in 1681 were former Puritans who were appalled at the excesses of the Cromwellian forces in this revolution, and so they became Quakers, which is how I ended up here.
00:46:40.000So, all these things are kind of interesting.
00:46:43.000I'm very much an American and I'm familiar with all the various streams of consciousness and thunderstorms and difficulties that have afflicted us over the years.
00:46:53.000I think we'll come through all of this.
00:46:55.000Because at the heart of the country is a recognition that we really are not interested in meddling in other people's affairs.
00:47:04.000And we really want a government that's going to tend to our needs here at home, not to become a substitute for ourselves.
00:47:11.000In other words, not to become the ultimate nanny state.
00:47:15.000But to enforce the law, to create order, stability, and an economy that is conducive to prosperity.
00:47:25.000But we're a long way from that right now.
00:47:28.000Yeah, you talked about the potential regionalisation.
00:47:32.000Do you mean a different take on federalisation?
00:47:36.000Because when you talk about law and order, and you did sort of fleetingly mention that executing drug dealers were like, bloody hell, we're going steady on, Colonel, I made some mistakes as a younger man myself.
00:47:49.000Hopefully you were not a salesman for the product.
00:47:53.000I may have on occasion in order to meet debt made some choices that put me in a position of disfavor.
00:48:03.000But what I wanted to ask you is do you believe that in order for law and order to be observed and enforced they have to be Consensual and the will of the people rather than what we're experiencing now is authoritarianism increasingly being centralized in a sort of Huxley-esque nightmare where we're told for convenience and safety we have to become compliant, that God is not real, that nature is not real, and that the only things are real are these sort of ever-shifting sets of values often oriented around the protection of the vulnerable when I sense that that is not the true motive.
00:48:42.000So do you believe that in order to diffuse certain aspects of what is widely referred to as the culture war, that some form of decentralization of power and representative democracy, being precisely that, representative of the people rather than of a donor class, has to be part of this revolution that it appears you're advocating for?
00:49:49.000They want to plug the holes, pump out the water, and if at all possible, change the ship, modernize it, make it better and more effective.
00:49:58.000You can't do that if you're trying to decentralize everything.
00:50:03.000In other words, the pendulum has swung in one direction so far that to bring the pendulum back to the center, it's going to have to be shoved harder to the right.
00:50:15.000Then it will eventually end up where you are.
00:50:17.000There's a great book that explains this very well.
00:50:32.000But it makes the point that what revolutions do is that they radicalize and push in one direction so far That there is a reaction to it and the reaction pushes it back in the other direction until finally the pendulum again goes back to where it was to begin with.
00:50:50.000In other words, you get the status quo that you destroyed, albeit somewhat better and somewhat different.
00:50:57.000And I think this is the process that we're now part of.
00:51:18.000The reason that the transitions are so radical is precisely because of centralization.
00:51:23.000If you didn't have such a strong centrifugal force, the subsequent polarities would not be so radical.
00:51:29.000Ergo, what I'm proposing Is, other than in certain municipal projects where centralisation would be to a degree necessary, I suppose, border control, a transitionary preservation of law and order, decentralisation is precisely what's required.
00:51:45.000In fact, that pendulum motion, I know eventually a pendulum slows down, but that presupposes that there will be no external events that solicit further momentum.
00:51:58.000And we don't know what kinds of external events may occur between now and the restoration of what I would call a more moderate status quo.
00:52:08.000We may end up seeing more events that cause us to move in different directions.
00:52:13.000None of us can predict the future, and I'm certainly not a prophet, but what I'm trying to say is if you look at that book, Anatomy of Revolution, eventually you come through this process and you end up at the other side, much as Great Britain did.
00:52:29.000You have to look at what happened before, during, and after Cromwell.
00:52:33.000You had a restoration, but the restoration was different.
00:52:37.000And ultimately what a lot of people don't understand is that Cromwell, whatever his faults, was the foundation for the United States of America.
00:52:46.000I mean, yeah, when you say his faults, I know that some of our Irish brothers and sisters who have been given a nudge already might not welcome this deification or at least attributing of the Great American Project to Cromwell along with Paine and the likes.
00:53:04.000I mean, that's That's pretty exciting and pretty interesting.
00:53:07.000Colonel, may I pass on one or two questions from our community?
00:53:56.000He's handed speeches and told what to say.
00:53:59.000And when he's allowed to speak on his own, he talks about his uncle's brains having been eaten by cannibals in New Guinea during World War II.
00:54:09.000So whenever he's off script, he makes remarkable statements that suggest that he is less than competent.
00:54:17.000It seems to me you are not paying proper attention to many of his visits to ice cream parlours, where he is able to wear sunglasses with little to no external support.
00:54:30.000I wonder then if you will answer this.
00:54:51.000No, I think that's true. We have people sitting in jail for alleged crimes that I think serving
00:55:01.000sentences of many years that make no sense at all.
00:55:05.000We have, on the other hand, people that committed terrible crimes during 2020 in the name of Antifa and BLM and other things, causing billions of dollars worth of damage, and they were all let off scot-free.
00:55:24.000Having said all of that, I think as we approach this election and it becomes increasingly clear that our hopes for this election will not be fulfilled, we're going to see cracks in this edifice.
00:55:37.000In other words, people on the inside of this structure are going to come forward and say, we can't do this anymore.
00:55:44.000I've already seen evidence for that, and that's the first thing that happens in any revolutionary setting.
00:55:50.000People on the inside say, thank you, can't do this anymore, and walk away.
00:55:55.000We're not there yet, but we're getting there.
00:55:58.000So I would tell the individual that raised that question, I don't disagree with him, and I understand the concern, but I would say keep your powder dry, and keep your hopes up, because I think things are beginning to move in new directions.
00:56:12.000Over the course of this conversation we've addressed the fissures that are emerging and the disparity between the governed and the governing.
00:56:19.000You've mentioned the necessity for amendments or transformation or changes to the constitution.
00:56:25.000I've been thinking throughout this that one of the things we have to consider is the end of the formerly accepted taxonomies, i.e.
00:56:31.000left and right, to look at how peripheral ideologies might unite against this corrupted centre with a degree of urgency that comes neatly to the
00:56:41.000forefront with Drew Parloop's question. Can you ask Colonel McGregor if the US will plan
00:57:37.000Now, I'm not saying that no one has considered anything or there aren't any discussions about it, but I think the majority of the people that I'm familiar with, that I've had some exposure to over the years, it is too terrible to contemplate.
00:57:53.000Julian Assange, still in Belmarsh without trial, awaiting potential extradition, is wanted under the Espionage Act explicitly, according to the Biden administration, but also Trump and also Obama, because of the revelation of documents that could have put American personnel at risk, although no one has ever been able to prove that American personnel were put at risk by any of those revelations.
00:58:19.000What is your view I thought when Donald Trump left office that he would pardon Assange and end this travesty of justice.
00:58:23.000think his actions were that of a journalist? And if Assange is
00:58:26.000guilty of espionage, then the New York Times, The Guardian, The Spiegel, and a whole host of other media organizations
00:58:59.000We went through this with Daniel Ellsberg.
00:59:03.000Ellsberg was provided with the information, he released it.
00:59:06.000And people were offended at the time more than anything else, and I think that's what's happened to Assange.
00:59:11.000If you offend people in power and they wield authority, they'll try to use it against you.
00:59:17.000And that's what's happened with Assange.
00:59:19.000So he should be released, in any case.
00:59:22.000Do you hold a similar view when it comes to the matter of Edward Snowden, whose revelations, in a sense, are somewhat heroic, that revealed the degree of corruption and illegal surveillance of the American people, which is, of course, only being exacerbated, as we've touched upon, with the updated version of C702?
00:59:39.000Do you think that he shouldn't be in exile in Russia?
00:59:44.000Yes, I think that's another individual that has been treated badly and unfairly and should have been given a hearing.
00:59:50.000I would end that isolation of Snowden immediately.
00:59:56.000Keep in mind that you're now touching on two areas beyond the scope of our discussion.
01:00:01.000One of those is the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence agencies in general.
01:00:09.000It's been effectively a rogue organization for a very long time.
01:00:13.000And there are others who know a great deal more about it than I do.
01:00:16.000My focus for most of my life has been on the military and foreign policy, but not on the intelligence agencies.
01:00:22.000But there are others that you should consider bringing on, people like Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, who are both longtime intelligence officers, worked with and inside the CIA, and they can talk about these things, and I think your audience would enjoy listening to them.
01:01:08.000It's been such a privilege to have your company and expertise today.
01:01:12.000I would love the opportunity to speak with you again and focus more on military strategy, revolution, and the potential of those old ideas being resurrected and deployed as part of the necessary transformation that we've been skirting around for much of this month.
01:01:31.000I think we made a pact where I would be able to interview you in the future.
01:01:36.000You have a lot of fans in our country, Our Choice.
01:01:44.000They're very pleased with what you've done with this program, Stay Free.
01:01:49.000So we would like to interview you in the future.
01:01:53.000And then you'll have an opportunity to talk about what's really important to you in the context of Stay Free.
01:01:58.000Well, that'll be fantastic when I'm a guest on your show, and you certainly won't be getting any announcements with the concomitant humility of, oh well, there's a better expert you should ask about that.
01:02:38.000Some are bloodless, as you know, from 1688.
01:02:41.000So hopefully, you know, we can get through this, but I think we need some kind of convulsive event to right the ship, if you will, because the ship is listing badly.
01:02:53.000Your naval friends in the audience will love that.
01:03:04.000I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Colonel Douglas MacGregor.
01:03:07.000I found it illuminating and exciting and I'm really looking forward to going on his show, Our Country, Our Choice, which is the movement he's the CEO of.
01:03:16.000You can visit ourcountryourchoice.com.
01:03:19.000That's what Colonel Douglas MacGregor would like That you do.
01:03:22.000I'm pretty excited to go on that show where I will toast sweet freedom in one of these glorious farting crow mugs.
01:03:29.000What could be more patriotic and more glorious?
01:03:31.000Remember, you get 25% off these all week.
01:03:35.000And indeed, I can tell you that every penny goes to supporting people with addiction and mental health issues.
01:03:50.000Early access to interviews, like the one we just had with Colonel Douglas MacGregor, you notice that several community questions were put to him.
01:04:08.000Or when you look at the facts, Like, people put pollutants in the water all the time.
01:04:13.000Is it likely, possible, plausible that they do that?
01:04:16.000In fact, it reminds me a little bit of yesterday's guest, Dr. Nels.
01:04:20.000You should watch that show if you haven't already, and how he talks about how neurological toxicity is part of our programming and conditioning.
01:04:28.000Members of our community that have already seen that include Timper72, Mgem12, Francis Pord, Gerard Food, Mole, an extraordinary Jabberwocky-like litany of guests right there, and next week will be even better!
01:04:43.000Join us then, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.