00:23:49.980But if you look at the kind of the narratives, the stories that that we kind of internalize as society, they're really they're really based on things that the left considers positive values.
00:24:07.060Um, the idea of hierarchy is kind of, is, is kind of taboo now, you know, the idea that there, there is a certain order to society that makes society work best is kind of a bad, you know, it's considered a, it's considered a bad thing.
00:24:27.280um and i think that because the left is in control and there are so many musicians that
00:24:34.060kind of have the uh a a left-leaning perspective you you don't have that kind of rebelliousness
00:24:41.320because what are they going to rebel against you know it's very easy to find you know um
00:24:45.600artists that'll say you know f donald trump or what have you um but that's not particularly
00:24:52.720rebellious against society um and so i think that that the fact that the music industry is
00:25:01.440so dominated by the left you you they still kind of wear the outfit of rebellion but they don't
00:25:09.340have the content there um i think that part of the reason also you know like metal music used
00:25:15.600to be underground right but there is no more underground it used to be where when when something
00:25:20.500was underground, you'd have to go seeking it, right? You'd have to go look for it. When I was
00:25:24.200a kid, when I was, you know, 15 years old, there was this little store called the Music Outlet that
00:25:30.080was probably 35, 40 minutes from my house. And I would have to get my mom to give me a ride down
00:25:35.860there. And I would go through the CDs and I would go and pick them out by what the cover looked
00:25:41.600like. And I didn't know if I was even going to like it. You know, I was just like, this looks
00:25:44.800cool hope i like it you know and and nowadays you know there is no more underground because
00:25:50.460everything's just a google search away there there isn't anything that you actually physically have
00:25:55.980to leave your house go to a specific place to see if you're going to discover it not just like
00:26:03.460go to get it it's one thing it would be one thing if it was like oh i heard about this and i'm going
00:26:06.700to go and buy this because i know that i'm gonna like it but again it was like it was like you
00:26:11.740were going and trying to discover something and you know when you're a 15 year old kid and you
00:26:16.360spend 20 bucks in 1990 on a cd uh you know that was a lot of money and it it was just like you
00:26:26.500if you didn't like it you were like ah well that was a waste but you still kept going back so i
00:26:30.760think the fact that there's no more underground nothing's hidden away i think that makes it
00:26:35.460difficult for for bands to be subversive the way that they used to be um you know so i think that
00:26:42.940that that contributes to the fact that things don't seem you know there is doesn't seem to be
00:26:49.480people raging against the machine anymore they're out there um but i mean i'm one of a very few
00:26:55.900people that are are outspoken on the right and in a metal band there's a lot of people that
00:27:00.980agree with me but they don't talk about it because it's it's just talking about politics
00:27:06.820either way right whether you're right or left it it's going to turn off a certain segment of
00:27:11.900the population and and i understand from a marketing perspective and from a business
00:27:16.400perspective to be like you know don't touch politics that's that's just something that
00:27:20.120people are too heated and too charged about um i wish it was like i know i'm not sure it is though
00:27:25.440phil i think people do touch politics but only if they're on the left i think if they're on the
00:27:29.560right they quiet down because like you know this will this will destroy my career but throughout
00:27:33.280you know the Biden administration we had people on stage wearing masks taking a knee for BLM
00:27:38.920like the whole they were with the establishment and so now that Trump's in they'd be like F Trump
00:27:44.180but it's because he's right wing it's not because he's the president like they're not anti-government
00:27:47.600they're not anti-establishment they were very much for the establishment when it was someone
00:27:51.360that was on the left and so it has become this weird divide and I wonder what are the audiences
00:27:56.640thinking about all of this um well again i think the audiences make you know the audience is very
00:28:04.720broad right uh politically if you're talking politically um it's easier to not talk about
00:28:12.300your politics or or what have you uh and i think there's a lot of music music fans that kind of
00:28:18.160don't really care strongly about the politics obviously there are people that are very far
00:28:23.260left and and there are probably some people that are very far far right that that you know are in
00:28:28.280the audience and yes the people on the right are going to be you know quiet about their beliefs
00:28:33.680um far more than the people on the left and the people on the left are going to attack you if
00:28:38.340you're not like specifically they you know i mean i'm sure you've seen it whether it be someone
00:28:43.520that's a political commentator or what have you if you if you voice opinions that go against what
00:28:48.680what's politically correct or whatever
00:29:10.860one-sided. Because I get kids all the time
00:29:13.060that come to me and they're like, man,
00:29:14.820I really agree with the stuff that you said on Twitter.
00:29:17.040I really, you know, I agree about this or blah, blah, blah.
00:29:20.260So I do think that there's a very, very broad opinion.
00:29:24.860It's just that, like you said, the people on the right are still, you know, still really pushed on by the left because they tend to have what they believe is the moral high ground.
00:29:37.920So your social media content has become very anti-communist.
00:29:47.040um so i've always been on like i'm i'm i was a guy that was you know around before the internet
00:29:55.780and as soon as the internet kind of became a thing um you know i found myself on websites that
00:30:01.320were talking about music generally but i ended up on the message boards and i would talk about
00:30:05.920politics people would you know again with very different views they would they would
00:30:10.000you know put you know say something or what have you and i would i would either push back or i'd
00:30:14.540say i agree or what have you and and and that was just in i mean there's this one site lambgoat.com
00:30:21.200that i uh that i used to be on all the time and and would talk politics there and this is in the
00:30:26.680early 2000s you know and then as soon as twitter became a thing uh i joined i joined twitter in
00:30:32.160like 2009 and so that was it was something that i was doing but when it comes to like the idea of
00:30:37.620like anti-communism like the the record that put us on the map was this record called the fall of
00:30:43.280ideals. And that came out in 2006. And I titled that record because I felt like the values that
00:30:50.800made specifically for me, the United States, but as I've learned, it's more broadly the West,
00:30:56.000but the values that made the United States a special place and made us unique had kind of
00:31:02.520fallen out of fashion. And this is, you know, like this is 2006. So this is, you know, before,
00:31:06.640before the woke thing kind of became a thing right like it was it was just kind of a sense
00:31:14.140that I got and I didn't I couldn't articulate it um I didn't study philosophy or anything like that
00:31:20.420I I was you know I finished high school and I you know tried to get into into bands and start
00:31:25.640start a music career so I was I wasn't uh well versed on what it was that I was seeing or what
00:31:32.900I was trying to articulate but I could feel it you know as far back as 2006 all the stuff that
00:31:39.120I thought was important about you know about our my country and and and the ideals that we kind of
00:31:48.300looked at as the values that we considered good the ideals that we considered good they they were
00:31:54.120no longer as important to people and nowadays it's you know it's kind of totally flipped right0.94
00:32:00.520Like if you say, we were talking last night on IRL, if you're a person that is married to someone of the opposite sex and you have a kid, that's enough to be called trap, right?
00:32:17.000And it's like, just because you're a normal person doing what normal people do, that's enough to be called trap.
00:32:24.940So all these things that we had for all my life and all generations before, leading up to this flashpoint in the United States and the West more broadly, all these things that we considered good, integrity and honesty and family and all these things that you consider, I mean, I guess they could be called traditional values.
00:32:52.940But all these things have been flipped on their head and there's no more or it has fallen out of favor to be self-sacrificing.
00:33:02.360It has fallen out of favor to look at your life as a way to serve other people.
00:33:08.100It's fallen out of favor to look inward for strength.
00:33:13.140And now people are looking for someone else to rely on and some way to have their needs met by another person.
00:33:22.940Um, the, the idea of rugged individualism that, you know, the United States was kind
00:33:27.920of built on, that's become, excuse me, that's become, you know, kind of cliche and, and
00:33:33.700you see it now, obviously it's, it's very, very easy to see now, but in 2006, that was
00:33:39.600kind of the, the thing that, that I was trying to articulate.
00:33:44.580And, you know, since then I've done a whole lot of reading and, and I've learned a lot
00:33:49.420more about why things are the way they are and what's happened and the narratives that we've
00:33:54.260we've kind of taken uh as as important here in the u.s and and what that means for society and
00:34:03.300i mean unfortunately i i feel like i was a little bit of a of a i guess i was predicting the future
00:34:10.800a little bit um and it hasn't exactly worked out in a positive way but it's it is nice to see that
00:34:18.480people are saying things like, I mean, just from Donald Trump himself, he's specifically saying
00:34:25.080communism, right? He's calling out communism. He's calling out the ideology that the leftists
00:34:31.480hold. You see it from Margot Rubio. You see it from a lot of people in positions of authority
00:34:37.640in the US government. And I think that people in the UK, you know, they look at the way that
00:34:43.020the Labour Party is and the Green Party now. And they see it as well. It's something that
00:34:49.820can and will destroy a country or not even just a country, but a society if you allow it to. And I
00:34:56.800think that people are noticing and it's nice to see them joining the fight. So I have a little
00:35:03.240more hope than I did maybe 10 years ago, but that's kind of the driving force behind me being
00:35:08.800in politics or involved in political commentary overall. You know, communism is a terrible
00:35:17.220ideology. I am partial to the argument that communism is a religion more than a political
00:35:23.820ideology. It is something that people internalize and use to find meaning in their lives. And
00:35:32.740And it is, there is a lot of argument that it is anti-Christian and not to get too, I'm not a particularly religious guy.
00:35:43.860So I don't want to, I want to tread lightly here because I don't want to offend anyone.
00:35:47.040But, you know, when you talk about things that are opposed to what we kind of all have or what we had kind of considered as good,
00:35:56.940And you see that the left has kind of inverted that.
00:36:02.100The argument that, hey, you know, these people are anti-Christian, like it's a very compelling argument.0.99
00:36:08.220Whether or not they believe that they're anti-Christian, as kind of a guy standing outside looking at it, it's like, well, look, the Christians, they've got their crap together.0.97
00:36:19.820And you look at the way that society was when the Christians were in charge and you didn't have suicide rates that we do now.0.98
00:36:26.780You didn't have the divorce rates. You did have a growing population.0.99
00:36:30.860You had all these positive things that happened for society1.00
00:36:34.920were happening when Christians kind of controlled the narrative.0.98
00:36:37.200And now that we have people that are not Christians controlling the narrative,0.93
00:36:40.260you know, debauchery reigns and things are falling apart.1.00
00:36:44.060It's so true. We spent the better part of the 20th century fighting communism.
00:36:48.540And it seems in the 21st century we've embraced it.
00:36:51.000It's very odd to see it happening in front of our very faces.
00:36:53.720i happen to think the uh problem was inclusivity because you mentioned some of the things we we've
00:36:59.300always known to be good and ordered such as the family structure of a husband and wife mother and
00:37:04.480father having children that's a stable family we moved past that to her but they can be there can
00:37:10.080be alternative families and we can have we move past that to actually the alternative is better
00:37:14.980and the normative needs to be smashed it's like wait how do we go from a to c and it's because
00:37:19.840of B. We tried to be inclusive of things that we knew weren't necessarily good, weren't
00:37:23.840necessarily ordered, weren't necessarily the ideal. And we very rapidly, over a number
00:37:28.520of years, not even decades, just over a number of years, switched to getting rid of what
00:37:32.420was normal and good. And so the question I suppose is, how do we return to that? How
00:37:36.200do we, because right now, that is metal, right? That is hardcore, that is kind of rebellion,
00:37:40.620just being normal. So is that how we do it? Just by saying, yeah, we're rebelling against
00:37:45.360the system by being normal, being a father and having a nine-month-old son.
00:37:49.840So there's one point or one thing that you said that I really want to point out and I want to put a pin in.
00:37:54.760You said that, you know, you were talking about the alternative lifestyles and stuff.
00:37:58.960One of the things that is pervasive on the left, they use this phrase, they want to center the margins,
00:38:06.580which it means to take the people that are on the margins and make them to be looked at as the norm.
00:38:12.860And that is a terrible, terrible idea, right?
00:38:16.000Even if you are a person that doesn't have a strong desire for traditional values, it's very easy to understand that if you make the alternative lifestyles, the focus of your government, the focus of your society, and you put the normal lifestyles.
00:38:37.700And I do use the phrase normal intentionally, the normal people that have children and that,
00:38:43.060you know, men and women that have families and stuff.
00:38:45.240If you put the normal people on the margins and don't focus on them and don't hold them
00:38:49.720up and make, and don't make them the most important thing of your society, you're going
00:39:06.380I think that there are a lot of people in the younger generations that are looking at the dysfunction of older Gen Z and millennials and they're saying they're rejecting it.
00:39:19.160I think that society and technology make it harder for the young population.
00:39:25.000I think people that are, you know, young Gen Z and Generation Alpha, they're thrown into a world that is very, very different than the world that I grew up in.
00:39:34.360Like I was, I was an adult or essentially an adult before the internet was ubiquitous, right?
00:39:39.380Like I think that the, when the, the internet became on your smartphone, um, that was when,
00:39:47.400when the internet really became ubiquitous.
00:39:49.580And now there are people that, you know, they don't remember there that are adults that
00:39:53.840don't really remember a time before the smartphone don't remember a time before social media.
00:39:59.100And, and there's, the changes have been so dramatic that human beings haven't been able to figure out, I mean, we haven't figured out what this all means. I mean, Jordan Peterson, I remember he was, he was having a discussion. He was saying that, you know, we don't know if men and women can work together. And the person that he was talking to kind of laughed that off.
00:40:18.980And he was like, well, hold on, you know, it's only been a handful of years, you know, or, you know, a couple of decades since we've kind of integrated, integrated workforces the way that we have where women go are in the workforce and stuff.
00:40:30.640And he went down a litany of things that happened because of it. And it's real that we don't, it takes us time as a society to process these gigantic changes.
00:40:46.100And whether that be, you know, women in the workforce or social media in your pocket, that not just being in your pocket, but literally notifies you, pokes you, vibrates and tells you every time someone approves of something that you posted, or every time someone sends you a message, or every time a friend of yours posts something, it literally vibrates.
00:41:06.000It's like poking you saying, hey, pick me up.
00:41:08.380We don't know the ramifications of that on not just individuals, but society as a whole.
00:41:15.380And so it's something that we're learning.
00:41:16.920And right now, we've got a situation where there's all these young people that we're
00:41:20.960running this massive social experiment on.
00:41:23.440And there are some, and I think it's the smart ones, that are kind of rejecting that constant
00:47:36.240And you can actually tell it to have a bit of a personality.
00:47:41.720But it is a lot like talking to a person.
00:47:44.400So your concern about not interacting with human beings, I think that that's a real concern.
00:47:50.080because this is, you know, these agents, these AI technologies, they're as bad as they're ever
00:48:00.020going to be, right? If now they're convincing enough to seem like a person where you can
00:48:06.080actually have a conversation, which I've had legitimate conversations, I ask a question about
00:48:10.280something and will, you know, some idea, whether it be philosophy or cooking or what have you,
00:48:15.720And the interaction, it feels like I'm talking to a person. And this is the worst it will ever be. It's only going to get more convincing. It's only going to get more human and more like another person.
00:48:30.200And so I think that you're right to be concerned about, are people going to decide that they would prefer to engage with an AI than to engage with real people?
00:48:41.580And I think for a lot of people, the answer is going to be yes, because again, like I said, it's a little more complimentary than I like.
00:48:47.800I tend to, I think that that maybe makes me smell the inauthenticity of it or the inhumanity.
00:49:54.200But if you're just using, say, ChatGPT,
00:49:57.200or if you're just using, you know, Claude, you know, whatever, whatever version you prefer,
00:50:04.360they are not the same, right? My, my agent knows me. So when I set it up, I was like,
00:50:12.460these are the things that I think. And basically I just ended up talking to it about things that
00:50:16.500I think. And, and I went through, you know, a lot of my personal opinions and stuff. And so
00:50:21.940it's not particularly woke right like it doesn't provide me with information that that is always
00:50:31.340the approved information because i trained it like that when you go to just the browser and
00:50:38.120you type into chat gpt without that that uh the filter of the the open claw and and there will
00:50:44.940be other filters out there that you can use but um if you're going just directly to the source
00:50:50.600They are very heavily biased to the left. I haven't actually used a lot of Grok, but I hear that Grok is better about it. I think if you're heavily opinionated towards the right, you might still consider Grok to be kind of left-leaning, but I think that speaks more about the user's opinions and preferences than Grok as an AI model.
00:51:17.760But if you're kind of a center person and you look at the things that, say, ChatGPT produces or Claude produces, those are heavily left-wing bias.
00:51:29.180I think my biggest concern is the fact that China is making AI models that are open source and not free, but they can be cheaper than some of the U.S. models.0.58
00:51:44.860And that, to me, is a significant threat to, at least to the United States and probably to the West more broadly, because China has no compunction with using technology to gain either an advantage or to try to sway a population.
00:52:04.820So I think that I agree with you, you know, about the concerns about what information you're getting from the USAIs.0.72
00:52:13.720But I think that China is probably a more clear and present danger because the AI race is it's a real thing.
00:52:20.500And just today I saw that, like, for instance, the state of New York has put a moratorium on building data centers.0.62
00:52:29.740And so right now, the left is trying to prevent people from expanding AI, and they're using the argument that it hurts workers.
00:52:39.580But in my heart of hearts, I don't believe they want to prevent AI from being developed.
00:52:44.360I think they want to prevent AI that they don't control from being developed.
00:52:49.240Yeah, which is a concern because obviously most of the AI companies, which are public-facing at least, are left-leading.
00:52:56.260I think Elon Musk is the only one that's a centrist.
00:52:58.140and i do use grok and i do find it argumentative uh and also it often provides additional context
00:53:06.060that i don't need like it editorializes if i ask a straight up question it will give me the facts
00:53:10.300but they'll say but don't think this because you know it's not the jews that kind of thing
00:53:14.980it's like it's always giving you a bit of there's always a bit of extra in there that i didn't need0.61
00:53:19.400and i think that that's going to be part of the problem but you're right there is a race there is
00:53:23.760an AI race it's almost like a cold war because if America wins it or if China wins it the world
00:53:30.340is going to be different after that and this is not just for the modular AI we're using now it's
00:53:34.760also for the singularity which will be probably developed in our lifetimes so everything is going
00:53:40.140to change again which brings me back to the start of our conversation in that prior to the internet
00:53:47.360prior to smartphones we all knew what was ordinary we knew what was normal we knew what was good
00:53:51.880and life took a certain pace, a certain cycle.
00:59:21.720There will be, you know, terrible things that, that do, but, or that are done, but that's because of the humans, right? That's not because of the messages that are, that are, that are sent from, you know, specifically in, in, in this context, in the Bible, right? Like the, the, especially when you're talking about Christians, right? Like Christians that focused on, focused on the teachings of Christ.
00:59:45.260Like, it's really hard to come up with a bad thing, you know, when you're focusing on, on living a Christ-like life, right? It's really hard to say, oh, that Jesus guy, he was, he was a prick.0.99
00:59:59.600You know what I mean? It just wasn't. The entire teachings of Christianity are to be selfless, to be of service, to not allow your insecurities and your vanity and your human impulses to control you and try to live in a Christ-like way.0.98
01:00:27.860like there's nothing bad about that. So people can criticize the church or they can criticize
01:00:33.680religion, but everybody finds it real hard to, to criticize Christ. And so I think that that,
01:00:40.220you know, to, to honestly say that I was religious or that I was, that I was, that I'm a believer,
01:00:48.800I would have to actually, I feel like I have to actually believe and I don't know,
01:00:52.840which is probably why i say agnostic because i i you know i don't know and i'm i'm nowadays i kind
01:01:00.420of am starting to think that maybe even people that say they're believers uh don't actually know
01:01:07.520and they're just relying on faith and i i guess it's just that i don't have faith and and and
01:01:13.800i i would i would like to be able to say that someday i do but i you know i'm not sure that
01:01:20.000how I get to the point where I feel like I do. And I feel like if I said that I did,
01:01:23.900I would just be lying to people and I don't want to do that. So I'm, I'm very fond of,
01:01:29.780of the Catholic church. I'm very fond of Christians. I'm very fond of the Christian
01:01:33.240religion. Um, but for myself, I don't think that I have faith and without faith, I think that,
01:01:40.000that, that any, any, if I were to say that I, I did, or I was a Christian, I think I'd be,
01:01:45.560be lying and i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to you know start a religious journey
01:01:51.140on a lie you know what i mean we're all on a journey and that's a good word to use because
01:01:55.440none of us are at the end goal uh but it sounds like you you're at least open to the idea uh but
01:02:00.940i think a lot of that will come from your childhood and having having been raised catholic
01:02:04.980you've kind of got a foundation to fall back upon and i think you're right to point out also that
01:02:09.960you know christ being the perfect person very hard to find something wrong with him and his
01:02:13.320teachings but it's not the same for all faiths and all religions you know no it's not i think1.00
01:02:18.060islam is probably bad for the west because there's a lot a lot in islam that is bad whereas
01:02:22.780christianity i think is generally good and so to flip this onto a question i'm curious1.00
01:02:27.920will you give your son a similar background to what you had growing up
01:02:32.100uh we we want to get him baptized um i've spoken to my sister about being his godmother
01:02:38.800um you know uh so i do want to have a uh you know i do want him to have some kind of religious
01:02:46.700foundation i went to catholic school until i was in seventh grade and stuff so i don't know that
01:02:50.860he's going to have quite the same um religious background that that i did um we intend to
01:02:56.760homeschool because i don't want to put my kid into government schools um so you know i don't
01:03:02.400think that it'll be the same um but i do think that uh i do i do think that the the foundation
01:03:10.200that i got um is is something that has made me an emotionally healthier person
01:03:18.860because of the you know the values that were instilled in me and and they're they are you
01:03:25.760know the christian values so i i that's something that i do want uh i want you to have i want i
01:03:30.800I want them to have that kind of foundation.
01:03:34.800I want them to have that kind of understanding