EXPERIENCE 156 | Whiskey Taste Testing, Boston Trip Reflections, and Creating Content on X (formerly Twitter) with Aaron Everitt

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Aaron Everett was back in the studio for our quarterly check in, fresh off a trip to Boston visiting a college with his son. We started our conversation with a whiskey taste test, featuring Blanton's bourbon gifted me by Matt at Wilbur's, Smoke Wagon uncut the younger bourbon, And Stellum Rye. We talked about Boston and some founding father stories. We talked about the border crisis and Ukraine funding. We talked about new developments at Logistics Co op, Aaron's company and sponsor of the Loco Experience podcast. And, we talked about At Lonely Hipster, Aaron's ex handle, and the incredible amount of content he has created on the platform in the last few months. There are now 35 of Aaron's recent essays, with accompanying video on the Lonely Hipster's x page, each of which is 5 to 15 minutes long, and each minute takes about one hour all in to create. He's been writing about light topics like war, inflation, and government's god complex, among many other topics. Some of his posts have referenced the independent candidacy of RFK Jr. And the RFK campaign has taken notice, sharing and reposting several by this point, and Aaron has over 3 million views on X in January. If he gets over 5 million, he can monetize. We didn't talk much about real estate this time, but filled our conversation with controversial topics and common sense, which you don't often hear in a public forum. So I hope you'll tune in to my conversation with Aaron Everett. button. Well, cheers. Cheers. Yeah. Good to be back. What's uh, what is it today? Is it like the 5th or something? Uh, 5th of February. Uh, here we are. 6th. Actually, it's the 6th. 6th of February. Here we are. Yeah. Um, so I, I thought we would start today. Welcome back to the Loco Experience Podcast. Uh, Aaron Everett is back in the studio and, uh, we're just anxious to get talking about all kinds of topics. Uh, But the thing I have planned for us to begin is a taste test. Yes. Uh, Aaron is a moderate bourbon, uh, aficionado. Yeah, I enjoy bourbon. I know when I've stayed at your place, there's lots of different kinds of bourbons to try there. Yeah, well most of that comes because people like, it's this really, it's been this interesting thing. People do this give and take thing, so they will, they see when they like there. And they'll consume it and then they feel guilty and leave me two bottles. So I think I did something. It's worked out great. I just had like a fourth of five different ones while I was there and left you two bottles. So it was pretty much a break even actually. It's worked out really well. I have lots of bottles of new whiskeys and scotches and all sorts of stuff to try up there. So yeah. So today. You've got something for me to try today. We have, uh, cause I, my whiskey supplies were depleted. I had just a little bit of Blanton's left that, uh, that, uh, Matt from Wilders brought for his podcast. Then we've got a Stellum rye and we have a smoke wagon. Uh, Uncut the Younger is what it's called, bourbon, American bourbon. And, uh, so yeah, we're gonna be like So you know which one these I know which one each of those three is. Okay. And, uh, I would say try, you can give tasting notes if you'd like and stuff, but you don't have to guess until you've tried all three. All right. We'll, we'll give it a whirl here. And then you can guess which one I've chose too. That'll be harder. Okay. That's, uh, that first one has a little hint of, uh, of heat to it, so I'm going to push it towards the rye category. Okay. All right. Although that one might be a little hotter. I don't know. That one has, uh, that first one had some nice caramel in it. Very good caramel notes, um, and I liked, I definitely liked overall. I wish people could enjoy this with me, now that I'm not talking. I'm just sipping bourbon. We're just anticipating. I'm like, I should be filling this time if I was a better host. Okay, I think that one is Blanton's. You are correct. The last one I just had. Yeah, smoothest one, really good. Yep. Um, really high caramel. It's excellent. Yeah, yeah, super tasty. Of course, that's I can't believe I haven't drank all of it already. I, I think, I think I'm gonna go with Smoke Wagon in the middle and, The rye as the first one. That is incorrect. Ah, I flipped. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Very cool. Um, I, this, so I, this is smoke wagon? That is smoke wagon. Okay. So. And it's not like the cheap smoke wagon. It's like a middle of the shelf kind of thing. Not their intro level one. It's good. I, I, I can, there's a little bit more, um, wood flavor in that, that I'm, yeah. I would say it's got a little more age. Yeah. Uh, to it. Yeah. I like Rye Whiskey. Do you know the, the old Rye Whiskey song? Well, I know one by, um, Cor Blund. Rye Whiskey, Rye Whiskey. Yeah, that's the one. Rye Whiskey, I cry. Yeah. If I don't have Rye Whiskey, I surely will die. Yeah. I don't think you're supposed to sing it with an Irish accent, but that's the way it feels right to me, even though that's not really the homeland of rye whiskey. So, I, we found this great, uh, musician. So, this is a great, I mean, this is an interesting story. We go on a fishing trip every summer. I've talked about it a number of times on the show. Yeah, you and a bunch of guys. Whatever, a half dozen more people. Yeah. So, two summers ago, we found our way to Sheridan. Where I stayed with some folks. Yeah. Last summer and explored. Yeah. Great town. Wonderful place. Uh, and the Y. O. Theater, which is a really fantastic theater that was actually a functioning theater when I was a kid that lived there and they've kind of fell into disrepair, went out of business. And then the town raised a bunch of money and put together this sort of community organization to restore the Y. Okay. The Y. O. Yeah. Like a community foundation. Yeah. Type of effort. Great Art Deco theater. They redid it and and now they have music performances or you know plays a little bit like they did with the theater in Cheyenne Yeah. Very, very similar to that. So kind of cool. But anyway, we were on our way up and we were meeting a friend who was flying in and we were early in the morning driving up and it was kind of making up this whole Saturday. We weren't going to go fishing that day. So we sort of had all these things that we were going to go do. We wanted to go see polo, which if you haven't seen polo and Sheridan is a really fun course. Polo for real. Like for reals polo every Saturday they run matches starting in the morning and then they have an afternoon match. You bring about big picnic basket full of stuff, cool and drinks and just sit on the lawn and then fix divots during halftime or whatever they call it. Yeah. Really fun. So we went and did polo. We ended up sneaking in some fishing and then came back to town and realized that this guy Cor Blund, who I'd heard of, which is a, he's a Canadian singer. Okay. Super funny. Almost a humorist in the, in the genre of the humorous cowboy song, sing, sing song guy, he was playing at the Y. O. And so we had this. We didn't know any of his songs, but we walked in and everybody in the room seemed to know all of his songs. Was he an old guy? No, he's, he's older than us. So I mean, he must have been, cause that's a classic, the one I know, like my dad used to sing that one when I was a little kid. So he must know it from the past or whatever. Canadian artist, really funny, if you're looking for great And how do you spell that? C O R B L U N D. Cor Blund. Um, funny guy, great music, so we had a great night. So that's my memory of rye whiskey. Sweet shot of Corblan. Ah, good ol Corb. Yeah, so this is delicious. I actually really like the, uh, Smoke Wagon. I like that one. Well, because we're not always going to spend a hundred dollars or whatever Blanton's costs to put that on the shelf. But it is the best. It is really good. I will say that. It is really good. So yeah, welcome back to the local experience studios and thanks for being our sponsor. Yeah, we Rerecorded your commercial it didn't make it on the last podcast because Alma was really busy, but it's gonna be on the next one Well, that's good for logistics co op. Yeah, that's been going very well. That's a cool little Sidebar story I suppose on some on some level of what we've been doing We just continue to try to keep pushing into places that we can help local businesses succeed. How do we help them compete? Um, you know, the people who are dominating our world right now. Well, that's the government. Yeah, well, that too. How do they compute this? But we've had a good time, uh, with that. We've seen a lot of, actually a lot of growth on the brewing, brewing side of things. Picked up a brewery called Brewery X, um, which is a, brewery out of L. A. and now, uh, then one out of, uh, Minnesota, uh, Brauhaus, B R A U H A U S. And they do really cool stuff, but, um, they're the ones I was telling you about that have the N. A. stuff and then the T. H. C. stuff, but then also just regular good beer. Oh, I didn't realize they actually did regular beer too. Yeah, so we, we've, uh, picked them up and started, started selling those and we've had you know, starting to see good success with that, but also just from a inquiries on a daily basis of people that are actually say, Hey, what, I heard that you could help potentially. And yeah, yeah. Um, those have been really good conversations. I just talked with somebody from the real deal today who's a pickle guy. Yeah. So could we help him? For his supplying of stores and things like that. So, some of our listeners, believe it or not, haven't listened to every episode. Yeah. So, why don't we just talk about, like, what Logistics Co op and Best Craft do? You're, you're not a distribution company in the classical sense, more of a delivery company? Logistics is a delivery company. Yeah. Um, we have our distribution license for alcohol. Okay. So we can do that. You can buy stuff and then sell it. Yeah. Like some do. Yep. We can do that, but we also, so we kind of have two wings to it. One is the distribution wing and best craft and they, their, their side of the aisle, I guess, is really more about trying to figure out how to take small breweries who, you know, there's a lot of breweries in Fort Collins in Windsor, all these places that have opened up and most of them. You know, they function fairly well as a tap room, but if they ever want to sort of get to the next stage, they've got to try to come up with this distribution, either have to self distribute or be too small to really qualify for the larger distribution companies. Yep. So they either have to decide that they're going to put their energy and time into their tap rooms or. And try to grow those and expand that footprint to see if they can make their revenue that way to sort of pay for all of the equipment and staff and everything like that, or they go into distribution. And a lot of times the distribution deal is, which is both kegs to restaurants and stuff and other cap rooms and stuff, but then cases to liquor stores and whatever else. Yep. And I think one of the things that's. Probably most unique about small breweries is that they, they can't really do the volume they need. They're doing single cans. They're, you know, their canning operation is pretty weak at best. They haven't put any money into that equipment. It's expensive and, and challenging. And so. We, that group, that best craft group goes in and sort of helps those breweries that are in the midsize, that sort of wanted wanting to break out of being just the neighborhood tap house and break into that next arena of getting into the liquor stores or getting it into bars and restaurants. And so there's a sales team of five or six people that run around and do that. And then logistics. does all the deliveries for them. I see on a contract basis, basic per case or per keg basis. Um, but we've also just seen, you know, a number of people that over the year, over the last couple of years are also needing deliveries that aren't in the liquor space. So they just, whether it's spices or that's the pickle guy or whatever, there's cheese, there's all sorts of things, steaks, people that are needing stuff delivered and want to, want to have that outlet. And, but don't have a good ex, don't have a way to do it other than UPS or FedEx, which is just really too expensive. Does that go straight through Logistics Co op then? That goes through, that just comes straight to Logistics Co op. Right, right. Yeah. And so you, if you're an, if you're a downtown operator and you need a delivery tomorrow, all you would do is fill out our form on our website at logisticscoop. com. Right. And then that gives us the information. It's a quick kind of. 2 minute, what address are we taking, picking it up from and where are we going to. And then we go and put that in our list and take it, take care of it. Use case question. They've got the Shamrock wholesale store there still. Or even the U. S. Foods big warehouse. Yeah. Like. And I guess, because restaurants have like a Monday and a Thursday delivery or something like that, but if somebody needed other things, they could even have you do that if they were far enough ahead of the game. That kind of hotshot stuff that would be the next day, we could, we could help. Right. So, yeah. Interesting. Lots of different places for us to find, and every time I'm talking to somebody, this seems to be something that comes up, people want to know more about it and what's happening, and I think, you know, just on a bigger picture perspective, I, I think we're getting tired. I hope we're getting tired of the consolidation of our, of our choices and corporations. And I'm hopeful that we get tired of that to the point of which you can actually see some life within the neighborhood community. Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm hopeful for that. I don't know. I, yeah, philosophically, that's the world that we want to see in the future. Certainly the one I'd like to build, uh, and tell the story towards, but I. You know, I don't know that I don't know that but you don't have the outlets. They're not there yet And so hopefully stuff like this can help people feel like we're you know, there is an opportunity to compete Yes, it's gonna cost more money than if you order it from Amazon, but so does everything yeah, I think the glorious thing about like globalism is that there's some things that other places can Remarkably do far better. Yes, right and talent can move around and things like that and like Localism has its own set of extremely positive merits, you know, and if we can feed ourselves and do those services inter region, uh, and which we can here, Northern Colorado is uniquely qualified, we've got all the energy we need, all the, um, You know, education, we need all the medical things. We need all the food. We need all the everything. Yeah. It's all, it is all really here. And that's kind of, we could use more water. We've talked about that before. It's I think what's fun about this town in many ways is that. We really do have, not only do we have those kind of natural resources that will allow us to do those things, I think we have a spirit of people that actually have a little leftover of pioneering or whatever. And I think they embrace it, want that to be a part of their story, and I think that makes it compelling on many levels. As to why we might be a place to showcase some of those leading edge innovations towards localism. Yeah. Um, yeah. And maybe I'm, you know, I don't, I don't like, maybe I'm naive. I certainly don't like the Apple goggles, so maybe I'm just a Luddite at heart. But the reality is I think we have to find a way to scale back to humanity if we're going to escape this just sort of horrible future. Right. Right. There's like, like 30 percent of. 30 year old men right now are just willingly single, not looking, got, uh, my hand and my X Box and I'm happy. Yeah. It's dark. And, and, and whatever the, the, what's the app where you can Tinder? Yeah. You know, or what's the other one? Grinder. Yeah. Unfortunately. Well, I think it's a thing and I think it's a real, there's, there's lots of demographic issues in the United States. I think there's a lot, but so much of that is because we don't even want to have. Um, we've just been so isolated, we've moved ourselves to isolation with our, with our ankle monitors that we walk around with, um, our glorified ankle monitors, uh, we've moved to isolation where everything we, I think we talked about it, not, well, it was one of the places we'd last talked about it was we read white noise, um, which is just this great thing. And it's just been so resonant with me that the, the one scene with the dad who just will not. Like, he's like, it's raining outside. And the kid won't admit it's raining because it hasn't shown up on his projection device yet. No, it's not raining yet. It can't be raining. It can't be raining. Cause it doesn't say it's raining. It's like, it's hitting the windshield. Well, but it doesn't say it on my thing, my phone. So I think there's some, there's some aspects of that, that if we are to try to figure out how to get. through some of this stuff that's, I think, feeling dystopic, that's probably the best way to do it is to try to relocalize it, bring it back to face to face interactions, try to bring it back to something, and we might have to do that incrementally, and it might include things like logistics co op that try to help Bridge this strange gap between convenience and isolationism and community. You know, there's a quote, uh, from the history of Fort Collins, and you might even know this because you're nerdy that way, but, um, I believe Susan Kirkpatrick, I believe, shared the quote, but it was not her quote. It was a predecessor mayor of the city of Fort Collins, and I can't remember who it was. Um, but she shared it at a Rotary Club, and it was something like, you know, as, As Colorado goes, so goes the nation in many respects. And as Fort Collins goes, so goes Colorado. Yeah. Like we, and I don't know if that's, you know, just a funny thing to make a cool town like full of itself. But like, honestly, the, like, even like the marijuana legalization, you know, Colorado was a lead horse there, you know, Colorado has, you know, become gone from purple to blue with exceptional rapidity. And so maybe that's a bellwether even of our nation. But frankly, whether we're red or blue, if we can be localized in our intentions and in our funding mechanisms. Like, I'm, I'd be, I'd rather, I could really support a lot of the democratic causes of helping humans and things like that if it was driven from a local precept or even a state precept and not a national one. Oh, absolutely. I think it, this is probably way too personal, but like my My family's been a pretty Republican ish family for most of my life, um, but my grandpa always voted for Roy Romer. Oh, yeah. Democrat guy, but, um, he felt like that was the best, you, you know, he was the most tuned in to what was best for business in Colorado. Yeah. And I think, um, I think Fort Collins does lead the way in many cases in terms of what does this town, it's got an an interesting amalgamation of a lot of different kinds of people. You have ag folks, you have tech, you have tech folks, you have beer folks, you have CSU, you have energy folks, you have, you have all this mix of folks that are living here and working here. Relatively harmoniously. Pretty pretty harmonious. We haven't had any riots. No, it's a very good place to live And when you know you go around town, you'd see people and you know people that makes it so that whatever policy might be done with government Could be more manageable, especially if it was localized. And I had the ability on a local level to talk to people representing those interests. Yeah. I don't have that at the national level. Certainly don't feel like I have that at the state level. And so then it becomes harder to, it's, it's much easier to make a boogeyman out of somebody you can't talk to. Right. Which is our current representative. And I think the challenge to that is if you localize it. Too too much. You can't it's not effective. The money isn't there. Yeah, you're sterling, Colorado and you're like, how do we reinvigorate our community? Yeah, or whatever but but frankly and if there was I don't know How do you how do you like then I take it back to the super urban, right? Because those are some of the biggest rot spaces within our nation right now. Obviously, the education systems are completely broken There's no local jobs. You can't even you know, walk 15 blocks to get a not very affordable grocery store. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And I think some of that is, um, you know, you could look at someplace like San Francisco and you could look at someplace like Aspen. So San Francisco is, was at least one of the most. wealthy cities in America for most of the 20th century. Um, the real estate is still hyper expensive. Real estate is still very expensive, but it's a lot to pay to scoop poop off, but nobody wants to, it's a hard place to think that you want to live there when all of these obstacles are in the way. Aspen, on the other hand, probably votes very similarly to San Francisco, but you have this small demographic of people, right? It's much smaller community who now. Basically fund so many things up and down the Roaring Fork, all of the RT, the RTFA, the, the big bus system that goes up and down between Glenwood Springs and Aspen is all funded by Aspen taxes, for the most part, in terms of property tax and the rest of the things that come out of that. Right, because all the value is there. Which is a great benefit for Glenwood. It absolutely is. Yeah. So there's all this, and there's, so this secondary benefits that come from it, but it's all small. You're thinking about things like that, even when you bought property in Glenwood Springs. Uh huh. Sure I know, duh. Who wasn't? Uh, no, I, I just had a realization. I'm like, well, duh, that's about, cause Glenwood is being Aspenville. And if Aspen's property values are freaking 8 million for a 4, 000 square foot. Mixed use building in downtown or 20 million. Yeah Anyway, I digress. Yeah. No, it's true. And I'm smarter than I give you credit for sometimes. I do think That's for sure, too Yeah, no, I that's that's a really great aspect of of what we are up against you know, I I think our world is really up against some very challenging times and I don't think You know, I heard a great speech the other day, and it was the king and queen come to the balcony and they look out over the, over the people and they realize that the people are squabbling with each other and they go back inside the house and pop their champagne because they realize they're not coming over the gate for them. They're fighting with one another, yes. They're fighting down below, they're never going to come over the gate. Did you see the, uh, Jesse Ventura? I did, I happened to watch that last night. Oh good, yeah, I watched it today, uh, Indoor Star of Kay Jr. Yep. And my My favorite part of that was, uh, and I think he was quoting somebody else, but that, uh, we are a nation, uh, with a dictatorship of two parties, basically. Yeah. Yeah, which is true. I mean, They're all happy. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter what is the actual policy implementation. And we're seeing it with the border conversation, some of the things that are happening there. They're both just fine with this fight. As long as they have power and a boogeyman. Yeah, it makes us on the other side of the wall, look at each other and fight amongst one another. That doesn't happen if you can localize things or it's much harder to do. It's much harder to make it challenge, you know, to make those things happen when you're trying to push that into a smaller. Uh, sample size that every time you do that, I think you, you end up in a better situation. And I, I'd be with you. There is a role for government. I, I don't, the more that, the more that it kind of understand it or try to embrace this conversation around what is the role of government. There is one. Yeah. And it's certainly not, um, it isn't just to be authoritarian. I think the role, there is a role, we, we establish a role of government based upon our need for the security of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Right. That's, that's what those are established for. We definitely need a new, uh, naturalization of citizens, uh, department. Yeah. Uh, what would we call that? How many? This can't be three letters because three letters are just yucky these days. And C? I don't know. I feel so badly for, I feel so badly for us as a country. It's a self induced suicide, but in many cases, I feel so bad for us because we don't know how to see our way through these things because we think that we have to overcomplicate them. We think that immigration needs to be overcomplicated. We think that, um, All of the stuff at the airport, I flew to Boston this weekend to take my son to go look at schools and you're going through TSA and, and the whole time I'm thinking, what is this for? Yeah, that's a huge mechanism. What is this huge mechanism for other than to collect data on me and what I do? And, and then that feels To inspire fear too. Yeah. And to, to, to put fear in the hearts of the people that are paying attention. You know, there's now eye scanners and biometrics that are part of that whole thing. And I had a TSA guy said, I want to opt out. And he said, well, you're getting your picture taken everywhere else in here. And I said, well, can I opt out of that? Right. You know, I'll just wear a ski mask. You should just wear your mask, Aaron. It would be less easy to recognize sunglasses and a mask. You would just it. I just find the whole. thing so hard. And I feel, I feel sorry for us on many levels because we just, we just keep hoping that another layer of this cake will make it so that it all feels like we can go back to a peaceful life. The reality is, is I just don't think we can go back to a peaceful life without first addressing these major issues, which are that we're way too, we're way too big. We're way too consolidated in terms of our corporations, in terms of our, our monies, our power structures, our bureaucracies. Would we be better off as five smaller countries united for defense? Well, sadly, we have the mechanism in place. We have 50 small countries. Right. We're supposed to. Right. There's supposed to be states. There's supposed to be 50 small countries that are more in line with the, the two that are more in line with the people that you're most connected to. And if we were 50 small countries, actually, we wouldn't be this. big swinging dick in the global community, like, Oh, there's another fight over there. Well, let's see whose side we should be on and sell them weapons. The, the mechanism is all there. The problem I think stems from, you know, a lot of things happen, but one of the last sort of nails in the coffin was when Nixon basically said, in order to get your funding, you have to send your money. to us first, right? And then we'll send it back to you after we decide what we're going to do with it. And we'll redistribute it more equitably, according to all things, because everything relies upon the amalgamation of all. Yeah, Utah had a movement to like decide if they were going to forward federal income taxes to Washington at some point in time. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Did that, I don't know what happened with that. I can remember that happening. I would probably, you probably would have heard more about it had it won. And I do think you're so married to this, right? The system's there. You know, we'd be giving up on, we'd be the only have to have a constitutional convention that actually recognized the blight that Washington DC has become on the collective States. Yeah. Um, and from that, and, and maybe it's even almost time for a rebalancing. Yeah. I wonder, you know, could, should certain states kind of bond together so that they have a similar population and resource base to others and things like. Yeah, you, you could see, and it doesn't necessarily even have to go along state lines. Maybe there's time to redraft those things, right? That maybe there's a smaller sliver of California that's much more in line with itself. And then other ports, parts of California are more in line with Nevada and Oregon and whatever else. Idaho becomes way wider to the west. So all of that stuff could be happening and that could be a part of what's, what's going on. I, maybe that's, maybe there's a time to reassess that. It could be time for that. A realignment of things wouldn't hurt at all. Um, man, if we had a constitutional convention, can you imagine how corrupted it would be though? There would be so many freaking people looking for the piece of that pie. You'd have lobbyists and lawyers and freaking companies. And oh gosh, one of my favorite lines from an old Ken Burns, I think it was from the civil war one, um, is Shelby foot talking about, uh, Who's a great historian. He's passed now, but he was a really great civil war historian. And he said before the civil war, everyone said the United States. are, which is grammatically correct, the United States are. We are a multitude of states. After the Civil War, everyone said the United States is. And so there is some sense that potentially what was happening before the Civil War and the things that were complicated about it, there are, there was enough justification Um, for Lincoln to do what he did, I'm, I don't know if he was right or wrong in the end of the whole thing. I think the, the tragedy of slavery and the things that were going on with that were absolutely worth it. Uh, but I don't know that that was the best methodology. Right. Were there other solutions? Could other things have been exhausted prior to a war? Maybe. But it's hard to say. I wasn't there. I wasn't living at that time and I don't know. England eventually freed their slaves and, you know, Yeah, yeah. So there is, it's hard to say, but all that said, but the destruction of the notion that there was 50 little countries or there was whatever, 26 little countries at that time or 40 or whatever. Yeah. 35 probably 35 ish. Yeah. Yeah. The idea that that, that was not, that also needed to be abandoned. Right. Um, I think is problematic. And I think doesn't lead us to enough, there's not enough competition between those states to keep everybody honest. Right. Well, and we've seen this with like Texas and the National Guard and stuff and, you know. Like it was always a standing joke, even back in the day when I was growing up in North Dakota, it was like, you know, Texas is kind of cool because they, you know, used to be their own country and stuff. And if the government gets too crappy, because they just tell them F off, we're out, you know, you know, there'd be most likely candidates still, uh, in some ways. And then North Dakota, we would say, you know, we'll just become part of Canada. And it was like, well, yeah, good luck with that anymore. But, uh, Oh, sadly, I just, I think we're so. Like, because everything's been so destabilized, the only thing that we really lean into is like, well, the government is stable because everything else feels unstable. Our money feels unstable. Our inflation, it's crazy. Yeah, well, and everybody be so much more honest, like at, at local think tank and our memberships, we don't have any. Contracts, really. You know, if you don't want to be here, we don't want you here. Right, like, that should kind of be the same deal with the states. Honestly, it's like, you know, if you want to just go be your own country, North Dakota Have fun, like it's going to be harder. Yeah, and you're not, but shouldn't have to be obligated to this, if you don't want to. Now, I, I, I do think that idea that the United States as an entity on its own has a lot of merit. For sure. It's way stronger that way, like North Dakota would be a wasteland in some ways, you know, without the reinvestment of the federal, you know, and they collect way more taxes from bright blue spots than they do and send it to red spots so that we can have roads that go across these faraway places. For sure. There's, there's struggles that would come up that would be unanticipated. And I think most of the red meat guys that live up there would tell you why we'll just go do it ourselves. Until they find out that it's got, it's just too, there's so much marriage between it all, that it would be really hard to unwind. It's probably unpractical at this point to unwind it, but I do think a reassessment of that is probably in order and it's probably time to have a conversation about are we really, is all of Colorado mostly aligned with Colorado or Um, are there other parts of Colorado that are more aligned with Utah or they're more, are there parts of Colorado that are more aligned with Nebraska or Wyoming? Is Wyoming more aligned with Montana? Or I think that conversation should be happening. Um, if you go back East, the States are tiny, you know, Rhode Island is tiny, tiny, tiny, and yet still has this crazy voice. Now there's a lot of people that live there. One big city, you know, and a lot of people that live there, but it's a small area. And so, so let's talk about, uh. Yeah, obviously you've got, um, founding father thoughts in your mind here. You're, you're touring Boston cause one of your kids is going to go to some fancy college out there? It's not Harvard. It's not Harvard. Okay. No, uh, well, yeah, one of my sons is a really great violinist and wants to go play music. Oh. And at least Get some, you know some shot at that. We kind of said, yeah, that's fine But you need a scholarship for it because I certainly don't want to pay to have you go learn how to play more violin I support you, but that's right like at some point you there's a reality to this too You're gonna be like in the top 5 percent to have a sustainable income as a violinist Yeah. So let's be realistic about that. But this wonderful little school, Gordon College, um, in just outside of Boston was really interested in his playing. And, and he went out this weekend for an audition for a scholarship. So, um, we had a lovely time. It was a great city. Boston was actually really lovely. It was a wonderful place. Um, far, you'd never been. I'd been before when I was probably his age, 20 years old. He's a little younger than me, but that, that time, but I probably, when I was 20, 21 years old and it was an overnight type of thing, whereas I think it was flying to London or something, had a night or two in Boston and, um, got a great time. Then. But I was, I wasn't paying attention to the things that matter to me now. So that was really cool to go and see all of it and go, you know, we had dinner in the oldest functional restaurant in the United States and had, um, you know, got to see these old pubs and all of the history stuff of there, but also really get to see some awesome, you know, it's just a great city. It really is. Yeah, that's right here. I've never been. Not it's clean and the subways were great and you know, everything about it was really, really nice. Yeah, you didn't. Like this, the, the BLM riots and stuff that ravaged a lot of the country, you didn't really see that, like the Boston, the subway bombings and, you know, different things, marathon, but that didn't really suffer that same. No, I don't think so. And I, and I, I think they've done a pretty good job of just trying to keep it. You know, they understand what they have, which is this kind of very unique, uh, feels small, but also has lots of things going on. Huge influence of academics. Um, yeah, the ocean is right there. The mountains are very close. It, it's got a lot of wonderful things about it as, as far as an East coast city goes, I would give it a 10 out of 10 and certainly rate it higher than any of the other, uh, cities that I love Philadelphia. That's probably my other favorite city on the East coast, but it's rough. It's a hard edge, blue collar place, straight out of Philly, it's a real thing. Right, right. Um, but I really loved Boston. That was really fun. We had a great time. It was really good to be with my son. Um, you know, just the two. Yeah, it was just the two of us. And so we stayed downtown in the financial district and then went all around and had a great experience with that. Went to the school a couple of times for the tour and the, and the audition and, and everything that was going on. And, um, it was good. I, you know, it's a parent, it's a parental existential moment of crisis, but, uh, yeah, but that's what I think we're all up against that if we have kids and it's part of what we get to, it's part of the adventure we get to go through. So he's graduating in May or whatever here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll be, I think, after this weekend, I think that's where he'd like to go and if the scholarship, he nailed it on the audition. He did. He actually did. He really did. Well, I get to hear it. I didn't get to see it. They didn't let you in, but I could stand in the foyer and listen to him. And he, he was excellent. He did a great job. And I told Anna after it was done, um, my wife that I would give it a, I'd give it an 85, which for, for that kind of situation, uh, is pretty high marks. Cool. So, yeah. That's a pretty special thing, right? Like, you're, like, preparing for your kid to leave the nest. Yeah, I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I had multiple, multiple moments of tears. Yeah. So, um I don't know. Just different conversations to have with your son, you know, I, I kept encouraging him to think about and actually came out of loco, which was a really great thing when Kim sort of said, Hey, envision the person you want to meet that yourself. And I think she used 20 years, but I use 10. Yeah. And I said, who, who do you want to, if, if Sawyer, who's my son, if he walked, if 10 years from now, 28 year old Sawyer walked in the door tonight to have dinner with us, what would you want to ask him? And what would you want him to look like? And what would you want him to be like? And that goes both ways, right? Because if 28 years old Sawyer walked in and said, yeah, I have two kids and I lived there and I do this and I have all these things going on and I'm making a bunch of money. And you asked him, well, what did you do with your violin playing? And he said, I don't know, I gave that up. Would you be happy with that answer? After all the time and energy you've put in on this side of things. And so it was great. It was just great. That's pretty awesome. Lovely dad. I spent a little time with Kim today. She's smart as a whip. Yeah, lovely dad son thing that kind of came out of those conversations. And I'm, yeah, I would, I'd be telling you a dishonesty if I didn't tell you that I was had many moments of waking up early and going down to the lobby with a cup of coffee and kind of losing my marbles. But that's okay. You know, I mean, I think that's part of life. I think it's part of what I would hope for. I don't want him Is this one of your twins? I don't want him to be on the one side of it. And trying to make sure that we still stay happy with what we're doing. Because of his decisions. I want him to go fly. Yeah, he do you. Yeah, I really do want him to fly. Do you so hard. Yeah, please, please go be whoever you need to be. I don't do this because of me. Right. I, I've spent a lot of my life wondering if I'm living up to things about, and we've talked about this a number of times. I'm wondering over and over, well, am I really living up to the expectations of who I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to, you know, all the successes and failures, whatever. I don't want that for my son. Right. I'd actually don't want him. I don't want anything to do with that for us. So I, I would like him to live on his own and soar. And I want that for all my children. But, but particularly in this instance, this weekend, while we were there in this magical sort of place, this just historic, um, Um, you know, the center of academia and the United States and, and also just sort of the center of all the intellectualism around the revolution between there and Williamsburg. You don't know. I think that's, I think that's it. I think Patriot. Yeah. Like that's it. So to be there and be inspired by those things and know that that's on, it just, it was really meaningful to be there with him. And it was really good for me to sort of think about like, well, what does this look like to be a dad of somebody that you want? To go and go be successful and go have a good life. What does that feel like? And what does that look like? And, and I think, um, You know, we'll see, but I'm, I'm very grateful that at least at the end of it, he was like, I really want to come here and that was good. You know, I'm going to call a quick pause and then I have a, uh, topic I want to continue on to a lot up front. So as you were describing that conversation and, and, and really life. Yeah. Uh, I was reminded, uh, I went home. Last weekend, two weekends ago for, for my brother's 40th birthday, and I helped my mom babysit my 11 year old twin niece and nephew And not babysit. They're not babies Make sure they didn't fall into harm. Yep, and Anyway, I spent some time with my dad Really the day I left and we were talking about we're talking about loco think tank, you know as an organization and you know I'm like, you know if we can Do this, here's where we are now. And if we can do this and this and whatever, just sharing with him, kind of, cause he's a farmer, right? There's no local think tanks or anything, even closest things, a coffee shop. Exactly. The elevator is this next number two. Um, and that gave him some appreciation and he was talking about, um, how it might be, if I'm looking for something to do. Or whatever, because I've talked about, you know, back in the day, being an Uber driver or a bartender or something, it's like, you know, I think it would be good for you to go cook one or two nights a week, um, because you live in this kind of world where almost all of your contacts are like all these business owners and these retired business leaders and they're, frankly, they're kind of the, the smartest and strongest and most capable of putting themselves through tough things, people. And, you know, Like, you're kind of at risk of building a detachment away from the real reality, you know, and if you had to work in a kitchen with the people that restaurants are hiring these days and stuff, it might help ground you into the world that we are actually in today a little bit. Yep. Uh, and, I didn't say that very cleanly, and it's certainly not, no disrespect over anything. Um, but, I do live in an ivory tower, I suppose, and it's not, it's not a white ivory tower, it's a, you know, whatever, a privileged, Place. Yep. Um, anyway. Yeah. Well, I think about that. We, we talked about that actually in this, in our time there, because I, I said, one of the dangers of coming to a place like this is that, and you can see it everywhere because everything's so institutionalized that they have just continued to perpetuate themselves as a, as academic. institutions, not, not the school he was necessarily looking at, but, but the others certainly have. I mean, Harvard is massive and right. It's endowment is like the fourth biggest asset in the nation. You know, all of it is just really incredible in terms of like what it offers and the different things that are going on there, but you, you can feel that to some degree that. You know, the rest of the country sort of suffers under Bostonian principles in relationship to what they see as their world. And in their world, everything's utopia. Right. They live in academia. Right. Yeah, they never, it's kind of like Fort Collins in a way, like we don't see no crime, hardly, you know, I've had some shit stolen, but not enough to really worry about it. And we, you know, we can walk down to the corner market and we can go to this great dinner and we can do all this stuff. I don't know what the rest of the country is talking about, you know, what's wrong with the, of course there's New York, but nobody goes to New York, right? There's an arrogance around all of it. And I think that was one of the things we talked about was there is a sense that in this process of you're growing up, you have to be tuned in. I think it's one of those, you know, not to go all the way back to some of the Kennedy stuff, but we went to the JFK museum while we were there as presidential libraries there. It's really good. Um, Really, really fascinating to go through that and go see that, you know, just in the three, really three short years of a presidency, not even really three years, not three full years, the, the stuff that he was trying to accomplish, the things that actually did happen. Um, you know, the. And one of the segments is on our RFK as the Attorney General and the whole conversation around desegregation of Southern schools. And then, you know, you hear the different stories about RFK later when he's running and talking to his children at the dinner table and saying, You have to know the people in Appalachia as much as you know the people in Harvard. You, you, you're. You live this privileged life, and so you have this great responsibility to go try to understand people who don't come from that place, who don't have that chance. And I, that was one of the things we talked about a lot while we were on the trip, which is, look, you're, you have more opportunity than most. Right. There, there aren't a lot of kids flying in here this weekend to go have a, an audition. Right. You know, playing violin, that you've had the luxury to do because of the way we chose to school you, because of the way that all the things. We've had enough resources to invest. Yeah. Like, how many dollars of. Violin lessons. Have you paid for it? I don't want to ask. My wife certainly knows. Exactly. And I guess I feel kind of privileged maybe to occupy that space because I grew up in poverty, really, you know, and my dad was an entrepreneur and that's part of why I do this podcast is I want to inspire more people to try to live the American dream, like build. A machine, an enterprise, not just find a job working for the man. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think that's an important aspect of what we need to be as Americans. I think we have a really high responsibility not to just live within our own world. Of course, people that live on campus in Harvard think nothing's wrong with the world. Right. Um, and well, unless they get called out for Yeah, plagiarism, but that thing's been torn apart other, but it shows the, I mean, freaking Claudine Gay definitely lives in a higher ivory tower than I do, uh, despite what color her skin is. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a, there's a real sense that on, on many, many levels, the stuff that's going on in that place is just so isolated that they can't even run of the real world. They can't really even understand why anybody's upset about it or attacking it or thinks that's an issue because that's what academics is. It's just regurgitation of things. And so if somebody just chose to do it, but they were sloppy with their citations, it's forgivable. Because students are forgiven all the time for this kind of, I guess, I mean, I think that's what, I think that's, what's rolling around in their head. I think it's not, I don't think they see it as anything more than just this, you know, an honest mistake. And it was just, but I also think that's part of like, I think it's part of what we have a very heavy responsibility to do is people reach into places. Where people would be like, I would lose everything. I'd lose my job, my house, my family, my life, everything. My livelihood would be destroyed if I got, if I would put it against the same scruples as this, well, like my father's farm was built. Basically from doing a good job. You know, he never advertised looking for more land, he never bid on land. He had landlords come and ask him if he wanted to farm their land when the other guy got booted off, or they decided not to keep farming, or He was a good farmer. He was a good farmer. Which is hard to find. Yeah, we are what we do. I didn't write that into my blog from last month, uh, but He is what he does. He's a good farmer and therefore he's a good farmer. He's one of the largest farmers in our little county in North Dakota. Yep. And because of that, and that's what everybody can do. Yeah. Like that's what everybody listening out there, whatever you do, you don't, might not be a good farmer, you might not even have a green thumb, but you can do something and do it really, really well for quite a while. Yep. And build something. Yeah. The steady stream of something in the same direction, typically in this, in this country does allow you to do something great. At least for now. At least for now. And you can, and you can do it. So, all that said, yeah, that's a good conversation. It was certainly something that was part of what we were talking about while we were there. I don't want him to fall in love with academia. I want him to fall in love with learning. Of course, that's always been an objective of mine. So is he studying something in addition to violin? It's not a music school, right? No, I mean they have, it's a liberal arts school. So, um, so, I mean his current interests of course are literature because of what we've done. His interests are music, so that would be a part of what he would want to do. But I think the cool part about the school was that they, they have, uh, they pride themselves on placement in careers after someone finishes school there. Yeah. So they actually currently have 100 percent placement in music education, which I think is pretty good. Yeah. If he chose to do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one career you can actually pay the rent with, is teach other people how to make music. And music's so good for everybody. Yes. So. And not as many people are doing it, right? They're much more interested in video games than your previous example, right? Right. And that's a real thing. You know, churches suffer from not having people that can play music. Our arts culture is softening because there aren't, there just aren't as many people pursuing it. And you, you, And you see it in symphonies, you don't, it's a hard, yeah, it's a hard deal and people don't value it. Right. So, um, yeah, anyway, it was a great trip. We had a lovely time. I was really grateful to be with my son. I'm, um, I'm probably am not through my existential crisis on my child leaving, but, um, it was good to do. June will be the real start. It will. Yeah. Um. Should we talk about Twitter? Or X? Uh, Lonely Hipster continues to be Like you had just blown up with some No, you hadn't blown up yet. That was just a conversation. We didn't have a podcast recently. Yeah, no, we hadn't had one in a while. I had I had one Tweet that kind of went or whatever post that got posted by RFK Jr. That had kind of done some things it since then. Yeah, there's been quite a number of Um, yeah, it's been it's been kind of fascinating. I mean i'm up to I think I was working on essay 33 today Okay, so you want to set the stage again for like first time listeners? Who's this there and every guy? Yeah, so I guess I decided to do this in the fall. I suppose it was in september I've always loved it, right? Well, i've always loved it, right? So this whole video aspect and using X kind of all came together this fall. It was somewhere in September. Tucker Carlson had done his thing where he was like, I'm just gonna go post my stuff on X. And you've done 34 since this September? Mm hmm. Holy shit, so you're doing like three essays a week or something? Well, it's gone about that pace. I'm, I'm now like one a week right now is about what I can do. Um, just mentally, it's a lot. I thought it went back farther, like back to last April or something, but it's just really recent. No, I wrote an article last April about RFK, but that was, that and I just Yeah, but those essays, the early ones, like taxes and inflation and some of those Those were all from like September beyond. Wow, yeah, so I've been spending time on this stuff. I, I'm still not monetized on it. I don't, you have to have 5 million views and I'm not there yet. Um, but it's been pretty great. Well, you didn't do it for that. And I didn't do it for that, right? I really, I don't have any interest in I actually don't have any interest if I make money or not. Like, I'm proud that I could squeeze out a four to five thousand word blog each month, and you're doing, how many words are your essays? Uh, they're somewhere between sixteen hundred and two thousand. Okay. I try to keep it around there. A little concise, yeah. Yeah. But, if I do that How long did it take you? So, it's Are you using AI? No. Well, I do for a couple of things. Pictures and different things. pictures things that I have used to try to help create Well, that's not cheating, but So, you know Rayno, Caesar? Yeah, yeah. So, Rayno told me forever ago, um, he was like, Do you know why you're a good loan officer? And we're like, I don't, not really, you know, because people like me, but anyway, he said, because, because you can write these loan requests and you can sell the proposition that you're selling and you've thought through it, it's obvious that you've thought through whether this person can pay back this loan or not, by the way that you write this thing and writing is thinking. That was ultimately the, the thing, because I find it sometimes easier to think when I write than just to. Yeah, well, I enjoy, I enjoy putting it down to paper if I'm thinking out loud, right? Yeah. That's a good place to do it. Do you dictate? If I'm driving, I do. But I, I actually have found more enjoyable moments lately just grabbing my computer and sitting down with an idea and then just trying to, Hash that out. Yeah, it's construct it form it go through it But the videos are somewhere between 8 and 10 minutes each probably every time maybe they're a little longer maybe a little shorter 33 You're kind of crazy, which is part of why I love you. But, uh, Oh, it's so much creativity. Like it's, and I guess it's like keeping a diary and then releasing it to the world. Right. It is a lot like that. The, it takes me an hour, a minute to make the video. So it's, that's what I've kind of gotten it down to. Okay. So if it's an eight minute video, it's eight hours of work. Um, so you've been doing 10 to 20 hours a week for a while. On this. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of silly, but I, but I like it. I think it's so cool. It's an outlet for me. I'm proud of you. Thank you. It's an outlet for me. I enjoy it. I've had a lot of interesting responses and dialogues from it. I mean, and it is kind of whether you like the guy or no, and whether you like the guy or not to have somebody who is running for president, that's competitive in the race, actually using your stuff. Yeah. And using it at his rallies, using it as his, uh, using it in his tweets, or posts, or his YouTube, is kind of a cool thing. Now, question about this, like, my perception is, from the first 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 videos, at least, and maybe up to, like, even 15, that you perhaps had come to support RFK Jr., but those ones Didn't necessarily directly tie to his campaign or him in any significant way. Yeah, honestly, most of them don't. Right. I mean most of them are topical. They're topical. This is yeah Yeah Now a couple of them have tied to his campaign one I did because the then the group there's a group of supporters on exit Asked me if I would be willing to do it Right, which was sort of craft a video for his birthday a 70th birthday. That's the one that went And that one was pretty crazy. Um, and that was, that was just recently, but then another one I did just the other day, which was just him in his own words. Oh yeah. That one also. Trying to break through the stereotypes. Yeah. Of certain things. He's this, he's that, he's this other thing. Right, right. Um, a lot of that. I just. And by, by the way, that was the most challenging one I've done because trying to get him down to 90 seconds, I limited myself to 90 seconds per topic of him talking. Right. To get him to say what he needs to say at 90 seconds is challenging because he's a very thoughtful person and he goes through a lot of things, long form answers. It's lots of hours of watching podcasts to try to find enough section of that to feel like, okay, I can get this. Is it the same hour a minute? That one was not, that was more than that. That was more than that by a long shot. Cause I was watching a bunch of them again. I knew where they were or I, and actually I had a guy on Twitter, reach out and say he would help me with kind of assembling at least the chunks of the podcasts where he knew that they were. So he helped me at least get to the right podcast. I wasn't still trying to figure out, remember which podcast it was on that he said that. So that was helpful, but. Yeah. He used that. Um, he used the one for his birthday. He used one. Um, there was one that was about generation X that, that he used and is on his website. And so it's cool. I mean, it's cool to think that somebody that's nationally recognized as somebody that's in the campaign. I mean, today's, today's polls, NBC, he said, um, or the, the one that's kind of phrased funny, but would you consider voting for a third party candidate? And there's 34 percent of the people said they would specifically him. Oh, interesting. As a third party candidate. That's a bigger number than we've seen. That's like, in the mix. You know, if he got 34%, he would win the election in most states. If, assuming that the other two, Yeah, if both, yeah. Honestly, that's true. Because if they all take their chunk, Now, would you consider it as different than would you actually? For sure. Um, it's a start. Yeah, no, I, I, uh, how do I say it right? Like he seems a little bit too much of a fixer, uh, for me to really appreciate. And he's challenged some of my views on fixers and nixers and the relative utility of trying to fix certain things. Like, frankly, like I, like if we spent 60 billion trying to rebuild the economic. Uh, infrastructure of inner city USA. I would vote for that in a second. Yeah. Um, not like 60 billion to the Zelensky that he's going to get, like Biden's going to get 8 billion. Zelensky is going to get 6 billion. And then. The rest is Raytheon gets the rest, right? Lockheed Martin and whoever builds the fucking missiles and bombs and whatever Here's here's what I've been challenged with because I'm a I'm a just I was always a burn it all down like this This is unfixable can't be fixed. Yeah, nothing redeemable about this. Yeah, let's just go into start winter and start over start over It'll be weird. I think the more I've looked sparked with hope. Well, I think the more I've looked at the revolution And, and tried to understand what the American revolution, what led us to this place. You had people ahead of time feeling like they could, um, they wanted to petition the King. So. They, they sent all of branch petitions to the King to basically say, what do we need to do to stop? We don't want to do war. We don't want to do this. We need our, you know, we don't want to give up our sovereignty, but we also Elon Musk's 2019. Yeah. Yeah. What do we do to not go to war? And the King always comes back with this sort of self aggrandized vision of himself that he's appointed by God to be this thing. And so, so there's just this impasse. Those guys know. They knew that that was the nature of man when they wrote those documents, right? They understood it and they knew that what you couldn't you could not be that far removed when you're writing the Constitution to remember What had happened with the king what had happened with with the Empire? You would remember that and you would build in mechanisms Which I think are in our documents that will allow us to do these things now. Yeah, I think the government's we've I've abdicated so much over the years that I don't think that it has the same teeth. I don't think the 10th amendment means anything to anyone, right? I don't think the 4th 10th amendment center newsletter, but, but nothing happens, right? What are those guys? Another think tank, right? It's another, it's another chance to tell everybody how the 10th amendment should be more valid. Nobody's doing anything with it. And there's no, there's no, but those mechanisms exist. This Texas challenge to the Supreme court was like the biggest states rights thing in a generation. Yeah, for sure. Um, and so, and so we're, we're at this doorstep, my goal, and probably it's selfish because I have four war aged sons is I don't want to be through it before it gets, I don't want war. I don't want violence. I'm not a violent person. I don't think solving things with violence is the way to do it. So if somebody is going to come to the table and say, I think I have some rational solutions about this. We got to try it. Yeah. If the King comes back and says, it's impossible. The king being the Democratic and Republican parties? Yeah, if those, or if the government itself, who now believes itself to be a self aggrandized king, fully appointed by God to be in the position that it is. If that, if that monster comes back and says it can't be done. Right. Then, then, then we may be there and that may be what ends up happening is that there has to be some sort of realignment and that may include things we don't like. I mean, we might not have a single debate before our election in this country. Well, they don't want to. Like neither Biden nor Trump has debated anybody. No, no, and they're not talking that they want to debate. Anybody either. Right. They don't even want to debate each other. And, and if the rules stand, which you'll never know because they'll always move the rules. But if the rules stand, anybody over 15 percent is automatically included in the debates. Right. So if RFK is at 20. Yeah, they'll change those rules. For sure. They'll just either change the rules or just say, well, we don't, you know, we don't validate these. His candidacy. Yeah. And so then that becomes a different conversation and how do you solve that problem? But to me, he's savvy enough and smart enough to say, well, then we'll just buy some national television time and I will do, I'll talk to them. I'll basically say both Biden and Trump. Suck, they're old, they won't even debate me, vote for me. Here's their empty podiums. Right. Who chose not to show up tonight and have a conversation about what might make America better. Yeah. I want one more olive branch. Now maybe I'm a fool and maybe I shouldn't want that, but I want one more olive branch and I want to do it in a way that leaves us with some, some hope that there isn't violence at the end of this. We're close enough to think that that could happen. I mean, there are many, many indicators on the horizon that say that people are that fed up with that many things that violence becomes their only alternative. And I don't want that. And if I think when I hear our fight a civil war, I don't know that I don't know that you can at this point. I don't know what happens. You know, I don't know other than just. Mayhem in the streets. Right. Localized fighting and anger and, and rage. Yeah, nothing good. Nothing good can come from that. Iraq economy. Nothing good. Right. Nothing good can come from that. So, it's the most compelling piece for our, to me, for RFK. I, I do think he's um, You know, I, I, I, when I listen to him, I don't find him crazy. The narrative of people that say that he is, I, I think, is wholly irrational to people who are just, you know, well, he's not his dad and he's not his uncle, and he's not these things. It's like, oh, whatever. So if, well, neither are you. Neither am I. Yeah. And the idea that he's just gonna take our guns and he's this and he's that, it's like, yeah, yeah. What do you, what do you think about that? That was, that was probably your weakest segment. Mm hmm. Was. Yeah. Well, I included that. But I think his fear of government has probably starting to override his opposition to guns. So here's, here's what I would say. I included the line where he says, I'm, you know, I'm personally for gun control because he says that. And I didn't want to exclude that because somebody is just going to say, well, you just edited out the bad part. I wanted it included. The reality of it is if I look at that guy's life and I say, my uncle's murdered by a gun, my dad's murdered by a gun. I might not like guns. Right. So personally, I might want something to stop that sort of thing. His, the real part that I couldn't get to in that, that I think is his most compelling argument for the conversation around guns is the whole overmedication of our society. And the, the stuff that has come out of guns with the use of guns. Related to drug use in our country from prescription drugs, antidepressant drugs, marijuana, Ritalin, all the stuff that the kids are in, like that, that are part of that stuff. All of those things to me are things that I think need to be addressed and are part of the conversation. That to me is, does he want to take, he's, I don't think, I don't think he's the kind of person that would say, I think I get the chance to override the Bill of Rights. Well, and. Like, what are you going to do, really? Like, there's probably a hundred million Americans that will shoot the person that comes to try to take their guns. Absolutely. Something like that. So the other piece of this is like, the stuff that they make us fight over, abortion, guns, you know, pick the list. None of those are consequential to the actual end of the way we are living in relationship to a government, right? None of those things currently are on the table, right? I mean, abortion had its court date. It's, it was the state's right thing now back to the states and all six states that have had red referendums on abortion have all that were like on the edge. Well, they were all states that basically said no abortion at all. All the referendums lost. They didn't, the people of the state did not do a good job arguing their positions if they wanted total abortion. They didn't do it. They didn't make that argument. And so, there is a reality in a country that doesn't have any centrality towards Life and God that abortion is a pragmatism. It sucks. I hate it. I don't want anything to do with that. It makes me sick to my stomach, but it is the reality of the country we live in. And so at some point people are going to address that the way that they need to address it. And if, if there's, if the government is involved in that particular aspect of things, um, it's a, it's a fight we don't. It's a fight we don't need to have. It has no consequence to the daily life of government's relationship to us. It, it is. It's a tough one because I, I, for myself, I'm, would say every life is sacred from the minute that it starts, from the minute that it happens. The hard part in our country is that that's not the belief and it's not the prevailing belief of the majority of people. So what do you do with that? When the majority, when the majority doesn't believe you're, Your idea. It doesn't mean the majority is right. There are many, many instances in this country where the majority has not been right, but it also means that there's a job we have in front of us. If we really believe that to advocate for those positions, to go persuade people that their position is incorrect, that takes effort and energy. And you can't rely on a politician to fix it. So I'm thinking about drifting into a dangerous topic here. Uhoh, how are you with that? I'll go. Um, well, I'm thinking about your wife actually. And maybe my wife. Yeah, probably my wife too. Like your wife and my wife are two of a very small subset that might be to the right of us or to the more conservative of us. Mm-Hmm. in. Many topics, whereas basically all of the 50 year old women in America are like progressives now, except for my wife and your wife and six other ladies. Um, but like, talk to me about that maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, um, you know, I, I think there's a number of people that got really tripped up in COVID. So I do talk to a number of men who have said my wife got lost in podcast land Right, like they were researching and they're trying to figure out what was happening and they just got sucked into this vortex of Information and worry like they got red pilled or they got maybe maybe both. I mean, I don't know They got killed. They got they got very very worried and and embraced fear in that moment much more than And, and it was almost like an irrational way that you could not talk and speak well to it. And I've talked to a multiple men that are in that position. Um, and we were there for a minute for sure in our family. I mean, I think that was definitely something that we both battled with, which is like, how much value do you put on these things? What can we do about them? Almost nothing. You know, we can stand up to them. We can speak out. It's about what we have left. We can say, we don't want to do these things. We can, you know, live within our bodily autonomy and choices that we could at that moment, you know, we could do that. I remember having a dinner party with. You guys, uh, during that season, and, and she was like, you know, if you inject our kids with this shit, like, you're out of here. Yeah. Almost. Bad stuff's gonna happen. Right, maybe that was it. But she was very vigilant. Yeah. So, I do think. Um, that happened for a lot of women that are, that they won't wear here or there or whatever, whichever road they chose to go down. And maybe some of them chose to go in this direction of progressivism where it was like, you know, my choice to protect my children is going to be about masking and, and, and the science and all of that stuff. You have a whole group of people. I think that with the other direction that we're like, I'm defending my children, screw your science and all the rest of it, you know, that kind of stuff I think happened. The reality for women in America is that I do think that there has been enough. conversation around feminism. This is not a negative around feminism, but that there's been enough conversation around their role as feminist leaders within our community that, that, that that's important, that it's an important aspect of, of life. This co equality kind of stuff is an important aspect of our culture. Yeah. And I think that also has its. bristling points when they're when that's resisted upon and abortion probably is the bellwether of that for most of those folks Which is that you can't tell me what to do with me Right, and and I think that the spirit and sentiment of that is rooted in a whole lot of other complicated things that come from sort of feeling like You know, they're, I was listening to a podcast today, um, which is an excellent one, by the way, which is, uh, climate change on trial, which is just so fantastic. I haven't heard of it. It's about Mark Stein and his particular battle currently about free speech. But one of the things is that the guy that's accusing them of defamation has an email that this of course came out and discovery that he was like, she slept her way to the top. He's defaming another woman who's actually now a key witness for the defense, Mark Stein and his. They're the people on trial. And she's basically presented this as evidence that this guy has actually ruined her career, not the other way around through this defamatory email about her sleeping her way to the top of her academic world. I think a lot of women actually are. Up against that in many cases, I don't think men have been exceptionally good in that space over time in terms of how they have treated women and especially in the workplace and how they view women. And I think they view women much more as a commodity than it, than they do an asset to their company. Um, I think we hear it when we're at our, you know, within our think tank, we hear it often from the women that sit around that table who are just like, we're beleaguered and battered in this particular space, not necessarily with clubs, but with the way we are treated now, is it fair? Is it always fair? Is it always true? No. But I also think there's this quick trigger when someone has been If that, if that ever happens, right, if you're ever abused, your, your, your trigger goes from zero to a hundred so quickly. I think when they hear people, old white men in Washington talk about abortion, the trigger just is instantaneous. So I think that's a good part. So it's kind of like my instinct when I hear somebody telling me what to do. Might be. I just say fuck off. It might be. Do I? A little bit. Now I, like, I don't want this for our country. Cause I don't really think more women actually think we should make a practice of killing babies than men. Like that. No. It, it seems insane to me. And how do I, like, cause that's actually the, the reality of the situation is a lot more women are pro abortion than men are pro abortion right now. And that seems. Contrary to motivation, motherly instincts, right? Or anything related to that. Kind of. Yeah. No, I understand, but I think it comes, I think it comes upstream. Don't tell me what to do kind of thing. I think it comes way upstream of that. I think it comes from a long sort of. Well, and frankly, patriarchy, like I'm not, it is a real thing. It really wasn't like, I don't want to, not everything can be just blamed on everything. Right. And I don't think that's fair, but also don't think it's. I don't think it's irrational for somebody to say, well, I don't know that we got the best end of this deal at the moment. Right, right. You know, and I think, again, in a society that doesn't have any aim towards God, doesn't have any aim towards, Like we are created, these are the values that we need to reciprocate when you don't have anything oriented to that and you have a society that's detached from that, then all of the other things that come from that, which are pleasure, right? And, and, and, and insistence upon pleasure and insistence upon sort of monetary homo economicus power, whatever power, those things that are all in that world, then if there's any inhibitor to that, It gets pretty easy to just say, I'm, I'm going to go in that direction. Again, I don't think I, I don't agree that I ate it. I think abortion is a terrible thing. I think it's an awful tragedy for, in all instances. Yeah, but it's really a response to that. longstanding suffocation of power in some ways. We, we are receiving it as a culture. Well, I'm, I'm thinking back to my earlier years in banking, like when I was 28, 30 something, you know, and in two or three or four, probably four different times, there were female bankers that were peers of mine. And cause I wrote. Quickly, I was a young succeeder and they were, they were, they expressed like, you're not nearly as misogynist as everybody else that we've worked with as our peers historically, or be, or that were our bosses, right? Cause I, I try to value people for their productivity, their merit. Um, and like that was both, that was two ways. It was like an affirmation to me that I was like. At the right time and a confirmation to me that shit hadn't always been so good. Yeah. All right. And so that's fair. Yeah. So I don't know. That's probably more of why, what I see in it, that's, and again, you know, you circle it all the way back to politicians and in our world and how do we solve these problems that were, that are out there. You storytellers and long form conversations because that, what we just walked through isn't, is. You can't even get there without 10 minutes of discussion. You can't, you can't. Know that like as a believer and as a Christian that I who I am that it's everything in me That's abhorrent that I can't imagine that a life Right that a life would be taken simply by the choice of someone else because they feel like that life isn't as valuable as theirs It's abhorrent to me Pragmatically and realistically in the world we live in we do not live in this. I do not They are not me. The world is not me. They don't have the same values as I have. And so to then to project that upon it and say that I have, you, you're obligated to these same values. Uh, then, then I don't know that I, I feel, I feel pretty strongly that that's something we have to have a discussion about. Well, if you're a libertarian. And a Christian, like, you can't make people think like you do, or believe in God, even. No, I don't think you can. Or the natural right of humans. So, it's a troubling spot, but it's also one of the things that I think is most Again, I keep coming back to the same guy, right? He's compelling to me because he's at least having that long form of discussion. Right. He's saying Being willing to have that. Yes. And say it in a format that's like, look, I don't, I don't like abortion. I think they're terrible, but I've also spent my whole career fighting for bodily autonomy in vaccines and medicine and all these things. I understand it. I understand where the rub comes for folks that are just really struggling with these particular things. You know, interestingly on his campaign, he's got a very pro life person out of Atlanta that's on his advisory team. And, and he's, he's got people around him that are very uniquely for him. different than him. And I think that's, that's a great, it's a great aspect of the campaign. I'm, uh, you know, I'm a sucker for it. I'm certainly sold on it. So let's see what happens. I've got, uh, I got 50 bucks on him getting 20 percent or more of the popular vote. I think that's a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I feel I'm 50, 50 on it, you know, I think that's a real thing. I, uh, if, if the thing breaks, right. You know, if the whole thing breaks as this, as I think it might, which is that Trump will either end up in jail or is going to be on less than 50 percent of the ballots in the United States. Yeah, that could change it a lot. It's going to change a bunch of things. And I think, you know, simply by indictment or whatever, if you think that they'll really do that, they'll keep Trump off the ballot. Civil war. They, Lincoln was not on, he was not on 16 states ballots. No shit. No, he wasn't. He wasn't even on the ballot in the South at all because yeah, they don't know what this, it was a four way race. In, in, in 1860, it was a four way race between Lincoln, um, Douglas, who was a Democrat. You also had a Whig who was running, and you also had, uh, you had one other, there was one other party. Anyway, there were four, kind of, two almost Democrats and two Republican y type of candidates. Okay. And basically, Lincoln, the South, the states are in charge of their ballots. So, you know, whether I think Oh, so you think Trump could, should be excluded, even. Well, it's up to the states. I don't, I don't know that I agree with the decisions. And I think it's really stupid. Right. It's a real, a fool's errand to take in law. And I think it's prudent, actually, of the Republicans To today introduce a notion of Trump is not an insurrectionist Mm hmm, like if they can just label him an insurrectionist then they can also label who it's not an insurrectionist. Yeah So there's all powerful. There's all these nothing's been he's the 14th. Amendment is really not it's not a great argument, I don't think, but it is up to the states about who they, how their ballots are run. You're finding it as Kennedy's trying to get on the ballot in all these places. They have all these different rules. If you're listening out there and you're not in this state, help Kennedy get on your ballot. Yeah. Like why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you, you know, I mean, unless you're just a diehard person for one of these guys that just don't want to see it happen that way, but. Give the choice, man. America should have more, more opportunity to have more choices. But anyway, I Lincoln was not on the ballot in the Southern states and he still won the electoral college with a majority because there were four people. And so they, they, all you have to do is get a majority of the electoral college. Right. Well, and if Trump was off of a portion. Well, yeah, who knows who knows, right? Who knows? So then does Biden get to 270? Probably not But he don't hit 81 million this year Yeah, I don't know where to go from there well it's I do Sort of the last thing I want to just visit on real quick. And we got more topics if you want, I got time. One thing I want to try to, I want to go back to the local conversation. Oh yeah. The things I want to think about. I am really compelled by, um, I think one of the things that's probably our hardest thing in the United States is, is what's happened to our food supply in terms of how commoditized that's become and how very, it's very consolidated. Right. Lots of, you know. If you go across the middle of the country, so many of the same farmer operate the same thing. And it's, they're very large corporations that either do that or, and there are, it's a very industrialized deal. It's, it's full of sort of GMO stuff in terms of you do this. And because it's easiest way to do that and operate it at the most efficient. Deal based on the devaluation of our dollar and based on how much they get for a bushel. Uh, I understand the farmer's plight in that I, and I, I'm sympathetic to it, but I'm wondering how much aptitude or attitude there would be towards something that was like a local locally supplied, um, food store that was, I could get. I could put these, all these things together that are part of my world, this delivery business and sales and retail and all this stuff. And you had a person that could go around and get these things delivered that are local farms, local groceries brought in to a small footprint. And people could come to that place and they could know that their dollars were going to stay locally within a community. So that's basically. Food, especially, had to be created there, so like, local food distribution, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Uh, But also, but also with a retail outlet, because I think that's really critical. That's what I'm saying, yeah. One of the things that I, I took one of my sons around, uh, the other day. That was, and we went to, uh, Dean's a good friend of mine at Welsh Rabbit, and, um, We've done stuff with him in the past, so we went down there and did the cheese experience. Yeah, yeah. Then we went to the bakery, and we went to the butcher over at, um, Scotch Pines. Yeah, yeah, uh, Nick. Nick, yeah. That dude is cool. Great guys. Like, I don't know him as much as I'd like to, uh, but I think he's really cool. Really cool stuff. I need to get him on the podcast, actually. You know, we spent all afternoons off. Awesome experience. I went to the cheese shop and tasted cheeses and great stuff. It was wonderful. Did all of that. And then, you know, got to the, got to the end of the day, we spent four or five hours doing that. And I asked my son, I said, you know, did you like that? He said, this is amazing. This, this was nothing like grocery shopping. Right. It's nothing like grocery shopping. Right. Right. Cause we're actually talking to people and we're actually having conversations with folks and we're learning about the cheeses and the breads and the, you know, You know, what's going on and tell us what you like here. And you know, what, what's going on. That was really a compelling experience, but I, I thought, you know, the reality is, is I live pretty luxuriously in that regard. I've got time. I can do those kinds of things. I can take an afternoon off because of my job to go do that kind of stuff. Um, I don't know that everybody has that opportunity. So if you knew that you could go to one place that you could get your breads and your meats on your Produce and your eggs and your dairy and it was all stuff that you knew where you're getting just from right around here, right? Would that have any legs and would that have any traction and could you use could you utilize this system of distribution to go get? That stuff and bring it here to solve that problem for the farmers. And so also yeah Does Welsh Rabbit make cheese? No, but there are people here who do. Right. You know. So, okay, I just want to make sure, like, that, to me, that would be the exciting concept, is like, everything you buy from this store Is from here. Is from here. Yeah, that would be Like, the revenues would come back, it would just go back into It just goes right back into this, doesn't go overseas. Whether you're buying dog treats, and maybe they import dog treat ingredients from some way. And we ship them somewhere, but we make them here and we ship them in little shapes, whatever, whatever, but it's all, yeah, the idea that it would stay here, everything that we're doing is staying here and it's a truly a local market. I think that could be big. I don't know why I'm compelled by it. I can't get it out of my head. Yeah, I think it could be really fun. I think it could be dynamic. I think I think you'd want to do. I hate to say it, but you probably want to do Windsor. Well, that's that's part of what I'm thinking about, right? Because what's the real estate isn't quite so crazy. It would be like the northern Colorado local marketplace when you have Like, I know the person who's selling steaks and meat currently for beef, and they're literally processing and raising that right there in Windsor. Totally. Eggs, and duck eggs. Cause Windsor's like the middle, it's like the hub, it's like the center of the diamond of Greeley, Loveland, Fort Collins, and all those three communities. Yeah. Like, Loveland's full of art, uh, so you could have like a total. Art wing, or whatever, right, actual, real, local, we casted this piece of pewter, bronze, art right here, all the way to, we raised the chickens here that lay these eggs, and here's these eggs. We went out to a farm the other day, and, you know, it's a right to farm state, of course. And we went out to farm and he had duck eggs and he had quail eggs and he had chicken eggs or whatever. And I was like, yeah, we'll take the duck eggs. Sounds great. You know, I was looking for one anyway, and I was looking for that anyway. So I think there's something there. I don't know. Well, and if you actually have the infrastructure to get there. Yeah. You know, if you can build a route of 35 or 55 suppliers. Well, and I think if you could sell things like, uh, Colorado wines, or you could sell, you know, um, maybe you had a section on Colorado beer. I would recommend actually the outlets, broken down outlets location, like, geographically that location is great. You could take a giant chunk of that for not too much and put a Amazing Northern Colorado market. So maybe by the next podcast, I'll have a new adventure. Perhaps. It wouldn't surprise me. I'd like that idea. Like, and you have to have a test, right? Like what's the, what's the boundary line for where you can. Have your stuff here. I just, you gotta think there's people supplying cool things or doing cool things like. Oh yeah, well you've handled it all the time. Yeah, this guy's making pickles and jellies and cheeses and you know. Like Old Town Spice Shop can't sell their chili spice. Because they just import that from somewhere or whatever, but they're no mistakes, everything shake that they selectively mixed for loco think tank, you know, they can sell that. And there was one in there the other day that I've never seen anywhere else was like alder smoked sea salt. Right. Why, like that, if you had this curated experience, it was like. Yeah, if you created this thing. Yeah, maybe. Do it. Even if you even had it manufactured somewhere else, right? Like yeah, I would love to see farmers here have this outlet That's a farmer's market that's always available to them But also, you know, I think it would encourage them to use things where they you know Maybe they don't have greenhouses But they could right and this would give them a chance to sell that or have that outlet or those things Maybe there's something there or maybe we maybe it is more Customary to this time of year. You're looking at roots of stuff, right? Like that's what's available. And, and maybe that's, you know, I don't know if that's the best idea, but yeah, but there's some. More extraordinary makers than that, like over time, you could, you could build a place, all sorts of stuff, so many things, like if you want to like virtue signal to the local community, yeah, that's a good way to do it, we can do it right here at this market, so that's my latest idea, we call it the Everett virtue signal market, that's local virtue, EVS, LV, whatever those letters are, We've been drinking too much bourbon. I'm sorry. I over poured us tonight a little bit, or at least me. If we are this far in and somebody likes that idea, they should call me. Yeah. Yeah. And me. We'll, we'll figure it out. I think it'd be kind of cool. Call me. Anyway, that's, that's what I've got tonight, Kurt. I love it. Okay. Till next time. Till next time.