That's how we start the podcast. Are you already recording? That's are you recording as you were screaming? Well, I was recording. When I started making the noise, I anticipated that the podcast would start with that's the beauty of that professional I'm Robert. I'm Robert Evans. Welcome. No, I don't like it. I'm not I'm not doing it. No one else is Robert Evans because nobody else gets to introduce my show a tonally and wordlessly. We have started, then we have started you okay? Correct? Hi everyone, Hello America and parts of Canada in the UK Zealand. No, we don't let them on here. Yes we do. Well. I love you guys. There are some real strict GEO tags. I'm keeping my eye on you. If you're good on the list motherfuckers is what I think. Hello America, except the Celtics fans of Boston. I don't say hi to you. This has been quite the introduction. Um, it's the last day of August as we record this. In August is a month we did it kind of maybe, I mean, we'll see the missiles could all start firing anytime in the next several hours left. Yeah, we got like nine hours. But I did say, I don't know. I started saying a few months back that August was going to be a really fucking horrible month. And it's been a really fucking horrible month. Uh As I like, like this Saturday, like two days ago. I guess less than two days ago. Um, uh, guy got shot dead in the streets of Portland. Um that that was not good. Looks like they're going to be escalating a series of heavily armed rallies between left ring and right wing demonstrators that are likely to degenerate in the gunfight. So September might be even worse, probably is going to be. So that's good. Too much time until November. So, folks, when things like this happen, and when I say things like this, I mean the complete collapse of democratic society and to an authoritarian bloodsilk nightmare. When things like this happen, we hear it behind the bastards. Know of only one way to try to keep people's spirits up, try to maintain you know, um, that that fighting spirit that we're all gonna need to get through this. Um, And that way is, of course reading excerpts from Ben Shapiro's unbelievably terrible novel, True Allegiance, ah, beautiful prose, Gosh, describe it correctly, My goodness. Did I introduce the show or Adi and Cody or did I just start shouting a totally yeah, I can do it. Okay, what is this show, Sophie? This show is Behind the Bastards and it's hosted by you, Robert Evans. I am, I am your executive producer, Sophie lick Derman. Anderson is the is the uh is our ceo um um. And then we're joined today by h Katie Stole and Cody Johnston of Some More News, even More News, Worst Year Ever and just epic nous. That's good, okay, well, great on the horse the horse. Everyone is has has boarded the horse. So I thought you were going to say the horses in the back, and I got really scared that you knew a pop culture reference the horse in the bag. No, I don't know any of that. What I do know is that we just finished, uh, we just finished when we last left off, and I recommend there's been like, what now three episodes of this before just going through and we're just skimming Ben's novel and reading chunks of it because it's very funny. Um. The last chapter was Brett Hawthorne, combat General and prisoner of terrorist man in the City of Iran, which, yeah, short terrorists attacked by the bear of a man kidnapped by short terrorists. Um. So yeah, Brett Hawthorne kidnapped by terrorists. He just had gotten thrown into the cell after having his big meeting with the bad terrorist guy. Um the evil terrorist Uh drifted off to sleep thinking of his wife Ellen um or the TV show Ellen. Um. That's unclear at this point, it's unclear. Um, I choose. I mean, I'm praying for Ellen to Brett. We all are we all? We all are? Okay? So the next chapter is a President Prescott chapter, which is again Barack Obama but white, Barack Obama but white, and mixed with a little bit of f DR and Hitler. I'm Hitler like other parts. Um. Okay, were you asking, Katie? I was gonna say, did we decide like a prototype for him, like like Kevin Costner. I don't know if that's you know, it seems like Ben is patterning the president in this off of the kind of person who has not gotten elected ever in democratic politics, but um Republicans believe is like, yeah, he's like the fantasy Republican democratic president, right, so he's like a little bit of Bill Clinton mixed in with a little bit of Hitler. That's that's that's what we get with President Prescott. Yeah, President Prescott always felt a surge of power through his body. He's set in the situation room. This is where they had made all their biggest decisions. It's where Kennedy read teletype during the Cuban missile crisis. It's where President Barack Obama had set watching Seal Team six take out Osama bin Laden. And this is where Prescott new he'd be sitting at the head of the table while American Special Operations troops dispatched. It brought him a shami. It is kind of unclear in this up until now. I think this is the first Barack Obama reference we get very unfair for Barack Obama. What the timing has been of like American history and Ben Shapiro's alternate timeline. Um, just the president right after Obama. I think this is the guy, Like what if a random Democrat who was also Hitler instead of Trump. That's that's I mean, you could make the case that that is Trump in some capacities. But yeah, yeah, except for Trump, I don't think he's ever been owed by um the weight of a historical anything, because he's not really capable of feeling the emotion of awe. But anyway, uh yeah, so they intelligence figured out General Hawthorne's signal. If you remember, he was like being he was on one of those terrorist videos and he'd like blinked the coordinates of where he was. Then yeah, that's good. Uh so yeah, um Hawthorne had spoken the pre written message from a Shami just as a Shammi had written it, prompting a national debate on whether Hawthorne had should have complied with the propaganda requirements of the world's leading terrorist. But intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied under their hat. Well, the west rest of the world had watched Hawthorne's mouth, Intelligence had watched his eyes. Which is very funny to me, because like every time anything vaguely like that's that's any that's vaguely a mystery occurs that involves like a video clip, that's you know, anytime something like that goes viral, whether it's a murder or whatever the entire Internet sets to trying to solve it. And if this guy had been blinking in Morse code while deliver like like, there's a zero percent chance that everything he had been saying wouldn't have already been liked to do, would have figured it out. My favorite would have figured it out was that one sentence that you just read, um butt Intelligence kept the fact that Hawthorne hadn't complied under the Oh wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's a few sentences. That's a ok yeah, good good yeah, yeah, good improvement, improvement. Ben he had a copy editor for this chapter, Yeah, he must have, so, yeah, this he talked been talks about how Hawthorne had taken the trick of blinking in Morse code from a Vietnam era pow who had blinked out torture, which is maybe a little bit easier than blinking out the coordinates airstrike now and then geographical coordinates. Yeah, it's very funny, um. And also just that they would know like that that would be what the that the government would in stantly agree. Ah, yes, this captured person has called for an air strike on the capital of a sovereign nation. That's got to be what we do. Well, not only do we know that, that's what he's calling for to do it. Yeah, we're going to launch. Yeah, well, no, he doesn't know it, been doesn't note. The message prompted a full scale debate inside the White House. It raised too many questions. First, was Hawthorne's location correct? How would he know where he was given that prisoners were typically blindfolded and kept in windowless rooms before their executions. If Hawthorne was wrong about the location and a heavily populated area of Tehran, the United States could end up with the blood of dozens on its hands and an international mess almost impossible to clean up. They could brill him it all in Iranian nuclear weapons, but after Iraq, the public wouldn't be buying that's not that's not the Yeah, that's not the reason, not to kill dozens of innocent people that the public might not buy it, right, Yeah, maybe we can't get away with killing the civilians all the To be fair, he has written articles about how he doesn't care about civilian casualties, So sure it did isn't very surprising, you know, it just occurs to me, Cody because that article he wrote about how he thinks it's he thought it was stupid whenever people complained about civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and it's fine to kill civilians in Afghanistan. He was seventeen when he wrote that article. And there's probably a pretty good essay to be written by someone smarter than me about Ben Shapiro, age seventeen, urging the nation to mass murder strangers in Afghanistan and Kyle Rittenhouse, age seventeen, taking his A R fifteen across state lines illegally to shoot strangers in another city. Probably something going on there, right, Yeah, yeah, so uh yeah yeah. Second, even if Hawthorne was right, could the American aircraft breach Iranian airspace to take out of Shami? A strike in a populated area would require too much pinpoint accuracy for a missile. Military aircraft would have to be utilized. Such an attack would surely have grave ramifications for international politics, including ongoing nuclear negotiations with the Iranian. Yeah. I think you're not going to keep negotiating with them if you bomb their capital right now. I do suspect that would have an impact, Like it's it's logic and reason he's doing logic and reason. Yeah, this is also like incredibly boring. It's like basic and stuff like, oh, they might shoot the plane down and that would be a problem. Like he's he's tried to like portray this dude is like this feckless and wildly responsible president. But then everything is going through in his head is like, yes, these are all things you'd have to consider if you were going to bomb the capital of a rod Like it's like, what are we what are we spending our time on here? Yeah, oh Jesus Christ. So and then he has this thought go through the heads of this presume of like supposedly progressive Democratic candidate. The Israelis were sitting around waiting to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, with the Americans taking action in Iranian soil, they could take advantage of the situation to double up with the brief bombing campaign, sinking any possibility of a nuclear deal. It's like, I don't know, just very very boring, boring. It's yeah, yeah, it's not like he's not doing like a a very legitimate like thought process, but also it's boring, like I don't need any of this. I don't need to hear this, this internal debate. Um, or if you're going to write a scene where they talk about these things and you have characters giving a view points and then arguing, like, show me two more long paragraphs where he just goes back and forth about like this would be a good foreign policy triumph and it people won't call me a coward. But you know, we could also just do it later. And it's just it's it's it's again said, reveal things about the characters of the individuals in this administration by how they react and discuss the different possibilities, Like chances are everyone would have a different viewpoint and then I would learn something about each one of them based on their viewpoint. Yeah, yeah, do the thing like watch a single episode. I normally wouldn't say this, but watch a single episode of The West Wing, a show that has characters that argue about things like what to do and do that instead of this. Yeah, um, that would be my thought. I never thought not like watch the West Wing would be like great advice, but just watch the West Wing. Well, he wants to write television, so he should know that dialogue is an option he does, and it is it's one of the best options. Yeah, you could have dialogue in this momentum. Yeah, yeah, it's very it keep just keeps on going. In fact, Prescott had been leading and leaving, leaning in the direction of leaving things be, but two factors had decided him on action. First, Prescott wanted a taste of glory. Just Prescott Prescott. Prescott like Ben might a book, write a book, yeah, Like have him be a character that does things. Don't just like tell us have him like like Prescott like proposed to do that. And then one of the characters says, like you just want you just want it for the glory or like what like obviously not that exactly because that's bad, but like have people challenge him or something, and then he explains why they're wrong, or he wavers because maybe they're right or something. He has to ignore good advice, and you like see him make a choice to like yeah, yeah, no, instead that sounds like a lot more work, Yeah, Or he could write an essay, boring essay about it, like all the options. And it turns out the president decides to bomb a sovereign nation because that would make it difficult for Congress to turn him down about his his work freedom program. The everybody gets a job program that he wants to ram through. Yes that I'm Yeah. Congress famously is a huge fan of the United States randomly bombing the capitals of sovereign nations. Uh. And so you get whatever you want as president if you are like, hey, guys, I just bombed Iran for no good reason. What Ben is doing here is showing us a stunning understanding of our government and how it works. What are you doing? Is showing us done? Like he's just showing us a window into what he thinks the government should operate, Like what he thinks people should do in order to get what they want. Yes, that's what I actually meant. Yeah, that really is what's going on here. Yeah. Uh, it's so the president who again only cares about his his uh like signature piece of social welfare legislation that's clearly meant to frame him as a Nazi because the work Freedom program are bite mocked fry, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, he already had his. So while he's like getting his final briefings for the bombing of the capital of a sovereign nation, Uh, he's daydreaming about the work Freedom program, and he writes a slogan on his hand. This is what Ben calls a slogan protecting America from those who would harm it. A broaden at home. And that is a lot for a hand and a lot for a slogan. That's a lot for a slogan. It's it's that Simpson's giant hand character tired of all these jokes, giant hand. If Trump had hired been to to run his campaign, it would be making America a country that used to be better, better than it is currently because it's not good enough right now, would be good for us. Yeah, Comma America. Put that on a fucking hat. Uh. Second, some right wing bloggers had caught onto Hawthorne signal. Mostly they were kookie survivor caught onto Hawthorne, So okay. A bunch of right wing bloggers had had found out that he was okay, So Ben does include the internet cracking the code. That's good. That's good. I got to be fair to talking about cookie right wing bloggers, so that's good too. Yeah. Mostly there were the cookie survivalist types, the kind of folks opposed to conspiracy theories and message boards. But the CIA informed Prescott that's such information once you get out could jeopardize any sort of attack. Um, so that's that. Okay, I'll give Been credit for that one. That that was Been that has been understanding a reality of the world around him and then using it to predict something in a a fictional scenario. Did he did that? All right? So that's good, good sentence then. Yeah. Already some of those nuts on Fox News had been making oblique references to the rumors. Um, be nice to like hear what that was? Like, how do you make an oblique reference to people online believing that a US general is calling for air strikes on till on using morse code blinking, Like, how do you like, how do you slightly reference that? I guess I'd like to know. That's another thing where like show me that. Yeah, yeah, show me the tell show me these things instead of just telling me them in the least interesting way possible. So YadA, YadA, YadA. We talk about how he decides not to do an air strike and the CIA has its own thing that they tell him to do and blah blah blah blah blah. Um. So yeah, now he's in the situation room. We're back around to where we were at the start of this chapter. He's sort of explained he didn't really Yeah, it's just um wait, so like we're it's still we're still in the situation room, and now we really happened. They've just described like they've just explained why we're here, as opposed to weeks of debate or days of debate you know, had ended with like you know, he knew that it was time for action. You know, sometimes you just can't listen to other people's arguments. You have to make it because also like you like just in terms of like storytelling, that's a that's the chapter that you write, right, like you'd like, here's yeah, debate, like it's here all of the things that are happening, cryptographer whoever who figures it out and informs the government, and then you have like the meeting and like now this is again if President Prescott and his administration are characters, if there's characters in here that we like we can engage with and be interested by, even if they're the bad guys, um or if they're incompetent, If they're characters, but they're not characters there, um yeah, they're they're just like they're for been to. Yeah, their little wax sculptures. They're a little little action figures for him to play with. Yeah, they're little action figures. That's exactly right. Um. Yeah, So he sends in I guess a wet work team to go get this guy out somehow. Um yeah, the C I A. Um, so that's great. So he's told that the CIA success odds are less than but he sends in the CIA team anyway. Um, I think there's a thanks. Thanks. Let's see here now. Now, the CIA operatives, dressed in local garb, set a quick burning charge on the outside of the iron work door. It flared brightly but the alleyway, but in the only way there was nobody to see it. One of the operatives gently nudged the door open with its foot for for him spread a dark hallway. No lights came in order, check, whispered one of the men. They crept down the hallway, visibility no greater than ten feet ahead to the sides, ran door after Yeah. Okay, so it's been trying to write an action scene. The guy identifies himself as police. Um, yadda, YadA, YadA, YadA, yadda. Uh, just a bunch of guys doing a doing a boring special forces type raid thing. So the team, the team finds Brett and he's uh, okay, well kind of yeah. So the correct amant tore into the souls of Brett's feet, gashing them, but Brett hardly felt it. He hadn't moved this fast since high school football. Get the funk out of here, he screamed at the Americans standing twenty yards above him on this airs. They know you're here. Get out. He heard the sound of a couple of safeties being switched off, and then he saw the guns pointed directly at him. Run you morons, he shouted. The operatives were blocking the stairs, standing there idiotically. Then again, he had time to think it was covered with blood from head to toe. He didn't have time to explain the blood. However, he didn't have time to explain the bodies of Yusuf and his fellow Thuck. So we don't get any explanation. Is he's killed a bunch of people. Um Brett has and I guess freed himself. I think, what what has happened? We haven't had another chapter of him, so this is just yeah, they're just letting us know that, like without Yeah, he's already been working to get out. Oh, here we go. The next page or two is him explaining again, but keeps doing this thing where like he's trying to he's he'll have an action scene and it'll spend two pages explaining all the things that happened before that action scene that he was just at and he keeps doing it this way instead of just telling a story. Like hate when people do that, not just because bench a hero does it, but I hate in general. Scripts are stories and stuff where you're like you have to stop and be like, did I miss something? I don't like that. I don't like it? Yeah, because he wanted he didn't. He didn't want to like write a complicated scene where like this team breaks in and Brett has to like free himself, like as they're sort of coming in and like clearing the building and its tense. So instead like he has them just greet him. Brett's already freed himself. They meet him having freed himself, and he warns them that it's a trap, and then we go back for two pages and explain how he freed himself before this all happened, so that we can return to the present. Unbelievable and if you're okay, So if you're going to do that, fine, don't go back and explain it. Just keep moving forward, like if if, if you want to do the thing, We're like, oh, he's he was already breaking out, and that's that's okay. Move on. Yeah, into the last chapter on a night where like and then you know, Brett began to you know, sawl Awagh it like his his cuffs or something like as the guard or something, and then like oh and then we see him he's freed him self. Clearly this was set up before. I don't need you to go back to pages and disrupt the flow of the narrative to detail in boring detail, very boring detail of him killing these two Pakistani teenagers or yeah, also just the phrase, uh, standing there idiotically just right, and they were just standing there. He can infer that they shouldn't be standing there doing anything. You don't need to tell us that they're being idiotic about it. Yeah, yeah, it's And also I should note here that Brett Hawthorne stabs the teenage boy guarding him through the eye when he is on the ground. Um, where do you get a knife? Oh? I don't know it happens. I'm not going to read through this whole stupid fight, but he stabs a teenage boy to death in the eye. That's important for Ben to have happened. You know, who won't stop a teenage boy on the eye, your mom in the is in America's current political climate, I can imagine almost anyone stabbing a teenage boy in the eye, and the right circumstances way to make it real. Yeah, well that's fair politics. But it's uh, it's time for it's time for an ad Breck, not politics, Robert, it is time for an ad break. We're back. Oh my god, I for one am excited about the next chapter, which is going to come after this. So, yeah, we also during the President's chapter, we we went back to so we cut to the CIA team, uh, freeing him like that was So we start with the perspective of the president, the perspective of the CIA team, and we immediately go from that to the perspective of Brett Hawthorne, which is how we end the episode without any sort of like clear break. It's bad, it's horrible. Right, you're gonna divide your chapters up into characters. Do the thing that set up the book to do and you don't have to do that. But don't have to do that, you have to keep doing that otherwise it's very confusing and awkward. Um yeah, so I okay, but we know we do get back to we do get out of So Brett tells the operatives to run, run, you morons, he shouted. When the operatives finally recognized General Bret Hawthorne, dressed and covered with blood, they turned and ran. They just run like he tells them to run, and they trained CIA operatives. Just run. Yeah. They smashed their way down the hallway. No time for discretion, now, no time for descretion your As they smashed their way down the hallway. As the basement exploded, rocking the ground beneath them, two of the men fell. Brett vaulted them, yelling at them to get up, grabbing one button. Good god, what a sentence. Two of the men fell, semicolon. Brett vaulted them, Comma, yelling at them to get up, Comma, grabbing one by his bulletproof vest and virtually throwing him down the hallway with his good hand. Period. That might be the worst sentence yet, I don't know that is How do you virtually throw someone. If you don't know what, I'd like to find out, because there's a lot of people I'd like to virtually throw. Yeah, I am very upset about that. There's it's Ben has no idea how to use the active or passive voice. So the very next sentences, civilians heads popped out into the hallway as the explosion registered. Semi they pop out, they pop up, their heads out, Ben, maybe Brett looked over his shoulder to see them engulfed in the flame that poured down the hallway like water through a flooding pipeline. You know, maybe there's another piece of the secret Ben Shapiro understanding, and the fact that the civilians don't take an action. Their heads just pop out and then they die. But it's not their action. Their heads just pop out into the hallway. Whereas Brett gets to have a direct action, he looks over his shoulder because he is is a human being. Um, everyone else is just popping They just pop out their head their heads pop out. No, they don't pop out, their heads, Cody, their heads popped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just yes, yes, a blest if he rocketed him through the door at the end of the hallway. The other operatives sprinted ahead. One man behind him screamed inhumanly as the fire caught him, but turned back pushed the man down into the dust, smelling his sizzling flesh as he tried to put out the flames. The man screams finally stopped as he fell unconscious. One of the other operatives grabbed the burning man by one arm, Brett grabbed the other. Together they ran down the alleyway into the darkness. And then we're back into the situation room. Uh after all, yes, this is the president him in the Joint Chiefs turns back to the President and says, they knew we were coming, Mr President, They knew we were coming. What do you mean, Prescott asked, you were just watching the explosion? And then how do you think our guys got out of there so easily? Afterwards? The Iranians must have known as Shami was there, they've been housing him. They just didn't want to fight us directly. That's all they were expecting, as shamis thugs to take our guys out, and when that didn't happen, they backed off. That's a lot of conclusions to draw. Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff based on a chaotic video, it seems like it's your job to not do that. But Ben needs to inform the audience very directly of what just happened, rather than yeah, because he's not sure that his prose is clear. You got to clarify, yeah. Uh so. But of course the President thinks the general silly for being disturbed by this and tells him to just take the night off because they rescued Bret Hawthorne. So everything's fine. Um, everything's fine, rings fine, the people are stabbed and burned, everything's fine. So. Uh. This is Ellen's chapter starts in Austin, Texas. She's obviously happy that her husband he's coming home. Yeah, he's on he's on his way back. He Prescott. The President has just called her to tell her that her husband's coming home. Uh she she She notes that he expected praise from her and she had to dutifully give it to him, just given where we are. Yeah, because he's he's he's he's like Barack Obama. He requires the praise. Yeah. Yeah, So she's very happy that her husband's coming home. She hasn't seen him for a year. Uh, Prescott's doing a big old victory. Lap YadA, YadA, YadA. It wasn't enough for the president to make political hay off of her husband's rescue after abandoning him in Afghanistan, and now he turned Brett's home coming into a case for widespread troop withdrawals. She should have figured that would have been the next shoe to drop. Really a deep under standing of America, like that's how this country works. Yeah, you gotta love that Ben is so disconnected from the basic reality if the things that he gets angry about that he thinks the Democrats have ever supported troop withdrawal in any meaningful way from Afghanistan as opposed to what happened under Barack Obama, the guy who was president not all that long ago, whose record in Afghanistan you can read about. The guy he's lampooning. The guy he's trying to make a point about, Yes, who massively surged US troop presence in Afghanistan for years. Um, yeah cool, I'm yeah, take your word for it, Ben, Yeah, good work, Ben, Um Yeah. So uh, Prescott talks. Yeah, we're just going through her being disgusted that Prescott wants to take bring American troops home from other and again like this is all just like I and I don't have the book in front of me, thank god, but I imagine that what you are reading right now is just Ben describing her thoughts and feelings generally like over along along with describing what the president is doing. And yeah, I don't like, write a scene, write a fucking scene, Ben, Yes, between them, you know, right her right her sitting and watching TV with her family around her, and they all react differently, and that gives her something to actually interact with as a person, and we can see her mental state maybe is announced. Yeah, she's watching it with like her mom and her dad or her aunt or cousins or whatever, and like some of them are like, oh, that's such a nice thing for the presidents to say. She gets angry and she snaps at them and screams at them and reveals her feelings and also the fact that she's on the fucking razor's edge. And then you have a character like like like a scene and a thing that people might want to read. Suggestion. I wrote a book and it's bad, which is why I didn't publish it. Yes, but it's just like it's like so much of this reads like him summarizing what he wants to happen. It's summary of a book, Like you think your book was bad, the one that I read, Yeah, that was it bad? Okay, I read something nobody else did. It is good. I feel special. I feel special. I feel It's not the topic of discussion. Now to phenomenal writer Robert Evans has been Shapiro's terrible book. You also have a published book that everybody should buy instead of published nonfiction book. But it's very different. Nonfiction and fiction are completely it's phenomenal. You all should buy it. Yeah, but uh so, Yeah, but gave gives Ellen the morning off because her husband's getting back from Afghanistan, which the morning like a lot of time to give off, how general, Yeah, even like I won't even let him have a nooner, Like, yeah, I might give him. You know what, if I'm the boss, you might get a weekend for that, Like, yeah, have breakfast with your husband, your your husband was kidnapped and tortured in Iran. Take a three day you know, just a couple of you go down to Galveston, catch a flesh eating virus. Monday though you're back in this seat, or I swear to God I will fire you and your family will starve on this, and you're gonna actually have to stay stay late on Monday to make up for the time that you took off. Yeah, I'm in a need like a couple of double shifts Monday, let's say Monday through Thursday next week to make up for the weekend. Yeah, we got the phone, rang. Ellen hastily checked her bedside clock. It read seven fifty six am. She'd overslept. She'd taken a sleeping pill to calm herself down after the president's speech. Bubba had given it mo Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. They determinate the determinate, the determinedly cheery ring continued. She leaned over picked up Ellen Hawthorne. She said, groggedly into the phone, It's it's me baby. Involuntarily, tears sprang to her eyes. We could just say. Tears sprang to her eyes and said like, like, what are what is the other option here? Ben? She forced tears to her eyes during the call. It seven fifty six in the morning. Whatever, Oh god, you're all right, Brett. We don't have to tell baby, I'm here. I'm fine. I can't tell you where I am right now for security reasons. We're not in an American airspace yet. But I need you to call Bill. She immediately snapped to attention. Brett didn't need the loving wife right now, he needed the partner She put on that hat. So many times it spring to her without delay, what's going on? I need you to conference in Bill? He'll know. Why can't you call him directly? I can't explain. I'm your only call. They're monitoring it. You got it? So I guess, like, if you're a general who gets kidnapped and tortured in Iran, lie somebody who gets arrested by the cops, you get one phone call. Yep, yep. Also, I just like in such a short paragraph so many times he indicated that she was acting hastily and immediately snapping to attention very quickly, like, yeah, that's the phrase. We get. It doesn't matter care. So the Bill that they're talking about is some general named Bill Callier that we haven't met before. I don't believe um, but yeah, So and again her husband uses his first and only phone call, presumably to have his wife call another man to deal with problems for him, which I do. Funny, Um, Bill, this is Ellen. I've got Bread on the other line. I need to conference you in do it? Which is again? Now this is the stuff, Ben, you don't need to write out. You can just say she added him to the conversation. You like clicked the thing on her smartphone, Like we don't. We don't need to hear her conference in this other guy into the conversation. Yeah, the most unnecessary dialogue juxtaposed with like no dialogue that we desperately want. Yes, so there's some stupid movie greetings between this old grizzled general who I think is the mentor to Brett and Brett and then, uh, Bill, I need you to get your boys on something. I need them to find a known associate of a Shami's names mohammed him down. I need you, guys, I need your boys to find a guy he has the most common name on planet Earth. Can you find John yet? I don't know what I'm talking about, but I don't have his last name name Joe. Well, why don't you give me something tougher to do, Like find a specific Mexican named Juan. He's coming here to the United States. He's about five ft nine, one, skinny, maybe seventeen years old. Another seventeen year old. You just stabbed one to death? Ben, What is wrong with you? I want to know. It is weird. I don't like it. Skinny maybe seventeen years old, blue eyes, angular face, sharp, big nose. Get your boys on it. There's not much done. So we're looking for a big nose boy named Mohammed. Uh get me all the Mohammed's with all the noses you can find, you see, Oh god? And then he hangs up. That's all the info he gets on. Okay, Uh no, No, he's still on the line with with Ellen. They just this was a conference call. He wants he wants he wants General Brett Hawthorne to only have one phone call for story reasons that are unclear as of yet, but he also needs him to talk to multiple people. So we're doing this awkward hung up, you met Brett Hawthorne? Hung up? All right, He's still on the line. He also I think he also wants Ellen and Brett to be like a badass Patriot team. But the only thing he can think of her to do is to act as the center of a of a three way phone call. Um, so that's worth noting. Like it's like we're talking like it's some star Trek nineteen sixty bullshit right before before you know. Anyway, I'm sure Ben thinks it's a big deal. Are you okay, honey, Ellen asked after she knew Callier had clicked off the line. She could hear him sigh audibly if she could hear him sigh, Bini, it was audibly, if you okay, you could She could hear him sigh. There's the sentence, you could okay? Yeah, he sighed. So many ways to cut words out of this, Yeah, but don't help. Yeah. It's like they say, brevity is the soul of like you got to use the words, right, Yeah, it was the soul of all the words colon, the words that you gotta use, comma, you gotta use them so that people understand what you're saying. The words that is, the words that you use breviatari Lee that that's Shakespeare alright. So so he she hears him, She hears him. I don't know, sweetheart, I don't know what I'm doing here, why I'm doing it. What they did to my guys in Afghanistan. I know, sweetheart, I know that's not a conversation. Um, Ellen, I wasn't supposed to live. That wasn't the message I gave. I blinked, air strike, not tactical mission, not rescue, air strike. Are you bummed that they used a surgical method that rescued you and didn't kill dozens of people? Like a shami was gone, the bad guy was gone. The air strike would not have okay. Like also, he's like mad and he's like, I shouldn't be alive. I said, air strike on at him to bomb Tehran. But you escaped, You did the escaping. Yeah, yeah, were also like you stabbed that seventeen year old boy to death. Those CIA. It's just unbelievable. Yes, but sweetheart, you're alive. You're coming home. I know you feel guilty. I know you never meant to leave your men behind, but you alive is better than you dead. Me alive isn't better than a shammy dead. He was there, Ellen, he was there. I gave him the location. I knew they'd have time to take the shot. But there's no explanation as to why, because they've like film and edit a video and then put it out and he's a terrorist whatever. But Prescott, damn him, didn't have the balls. He just didn't. And now with Shammi's out there planning. He's smart, ellen, smart as hell, and he steps ahead of us. We were lucky to get out of there alive. If it hadn't been for a stupid thug named Yusuf, we'd all seventeen year old thug, we'd all be dead, and Prescott wouldn't have an international incident, would have an international incident on his hand anyway, dead Americans in their body parts spread all over Tehran. Damn the man, Damn him again, Like the reason to hate this president is that he didn't do an air strike. He didn't immediately jump to an air strike based on a man blinking. Very cool. Yeah. So, so she's happy that her husband's coming home. Oh God, I have to read this part, even though I think it might actually kill me to say, like, I don't know that I'm going to live through this. She found tears in her eyes again. Her man's her strong, unwavering man is so ready to die. That's not a sentence, not a sentence. Bin, But you're coming home, sweetheart, You're coming home. On the other end of the phone, she could hear her husband exhale. You're right, he said, slowly. I'm coming home. Take a bullet for you, babe, She said, take a bullet for you, sweetheart. The line kicked clicked dead. Yeah, that's how they end all their phone calls. I know, I know. It makes it's the worst thing I've ever seen on paper. With authority, I can say this with conviction. If I made it this far, I would slam the book down here. If I made it this far, you wouldn't enough. No. But yeah, I've read just straight up Nazi propaganda that was less pain inducing in its prose than that sentence. Like Jesus, it's a real slogan. Yeah, we have to take another break, don't we. Yeah. Yeah, And in case you're listening, I am comparing this unfavorably to the Turner Diaries. Um, yeah, don't worry. He's also written articles that read like the Turner Diaries too, so he sure, hass yeah, But you know what doesn't read like the Turner Diaries the products and services that support this podcast. We are we are back. We are back in reading ben Ship Heroes Roll Roll Book. I don't know, I do want to think. Let's let's take a moment before we dive back into the story. To think about the fact that Herman Kaine died from COVID nineteen after attending a Trump rally, And now the people who run the social media accounts he used to tweet from when he was alive are tweeting that it's not a real virus. And that's that's pretty great. That's a hard pivot, but I'm here for it. Yeah, it's wild. Um, not not that convincing, But it is art. It is art. It's it's it says literally everything that matters about the time we're in right now. Um, no one, no one even really cares like it's it's not it's not something people give a shit about. Yeah, it's gone. It's it's it's it's said done. And God, it's one of those stories that um takes my already full cup a little bit over the edge in such a way that you're like, I'm mad about it. I have to let it spill, I have to let it roll down the side this container and evaporate. Oh that was a little bit of a poetic metaphor, a poeto for a poetoph m hmm. Let's get back to this bad let's let's let's let's I keep yawning. And it's not because of you guys, I didn't sleep well. No, it's the book. Um, are we still in the Ellen chapter? Is it? Like? God, yeah, we're I think we're yep, we are still okay because they're still on the phone, or like they just hung up the cutest way possible. And then and then the next paragraph just lets us know that Bill Collier got a hall from his wife a minute and twenty nine seconds later and he let it go to voicemail because he was tracking down the man named Mohammed. Uh, how does Ellen? And then we're back to I don't know that that paragraph just happens, um, with no understanding of like how we're aware of that? How are anyway? It just is there. And then we're back to Ellen in a separate pair notes for his book. It doesn't like that unbelievable. Yeah. The first phone call Ellen received came from Bubba, which didn't she He told me to turn on the television. When she did, she saw the George Washington Bridge tilting and low motion. Oh so there's been a terrorist attack on the bridge. Um. Yeah, so wow, And this just is all one paragraph that the George Washington Bridge has been blown up and the President's vowed to take care of the perpetrators one single paragraph. Uh, and that he's mobilizing National Guard troops to go to New York City one paragraph. We learn all of that information after Uh yeah, just putstanding. I'm skipping a lot of paragraphs, so I might have skipped that one. Yeah, yeah, then you'd go right to Then she heard a knock at her door. Then being after realizing that another nine eleven had just occurred and the President had already reacted to it and the National Guard had been mobilized. Then she heard a knock at her door. When she opened it, Bubba was standing there. His face looked gaunt ashen. She ushered him into the living room, where he settled his bulk into her leather couch. I got a call from Prescott. He wants our boys out here. They're a SAP. I know, I saw it on the news. I won't send them elon, she shuddered, involuntarily. You know by law that you have to. The National Guard can be mobilized by the president once a national emergency has been declared under the under posse comitatus. That isn't totally clear, but this ain't about law anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. We pull our troops off that border, and I'll have more dead ranchers on my hands, more children floating in that river. I don't have the stomach for that. I do believe there might be enough National guardsmen to both clean up from a bridge being bombed in New York and to do whatever bullshit they're doing on the border. We kind of have a lot of them. Is the whole National Guard on the border, just all of them? Huh every hand unbelievable, Um, not perfectly believable. I misspoke, very believable. Yeah, so okay, so it's just it's okay, So it's the governor of Texas is not sending his States National Guard to help New York because they're needed at the border. That makes sense, Like, yeah, use other people. Yeah, they're the only thing standing between us and a full scale invasion. The invasion is in slow is slow motion? Yeah, the invasion. Yeah. And and the response to that is the invasion is slow motion. That situation in New York isn't um which I guess has just been doing some straight up, uh fucking white supremacist ship right there. Uh wow, Yeah, it does slow motion invasion. They're going to infect us. Yeah, um, that's good. Uh. She glances at the television. The rescue pool was crew was pulling another body from the water, a young girl wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt. It was footage Ellen knew from nine eleven that they'd only showed a day during live coverage. Then the psychiatrist would explain to the network break Jesus, Yeah, So Ellen is you know, guilt ridden because she cares about what's happening in New York City and she watched eleven happen in person, I think, uh, and she's horrified that her boss isn't going to send troops to help with the explosion that just happened in New York. And so she turns back to the TV and I'm gonna read the sentence here. The rescue crew crew was pulling another body from the water. Dash a young girl wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt. Period it was footage Comma. Ellen knew from nine eleven Comma that they'd only show today Comma during life coverage. Dash. Then the psychiatrist would explain to the network brass that showing such images was triggering comma and the pictures would disappear to spare the sensitivities of the American viewer. God, that's a sentence. How did she know? Also? What because the nine eleven they showed horrible bloody footage and then they stopped showing horrible bloody footage. All the time news agencies show things that are not footage from nine eleven of dead people and that's bad. Um a really dumb question of mine. But did people end up in the river in nine eleven? Um? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think the river was a big part of nine eleven. This is I mean, it's just like I don't know. They're yeah, it's badly whole. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think I know what he's saying, but not because of his writing. That's fine, we don't need to understand it. Let's give it like it's it's like the nine like none eleven happened. They showed footage and that was damaging psychologically, and and and she knows that, and so when she sees this new footage of this new it makes her think like, oh, they shouldn't be showing this footage, right, is that what he's saying. I think that she's saying that there's footage from nine eleven of somebody being pulled from a river and they're playing that's not She's just saying that the footage from nine eleven that was very gory didn't get played enough after nine eleven because psychiatrists explained that that's triggering and they wanted to spare people sensitivities. And the idea is that, no, we should always be aware of how bloody nine eleven was, um and never stopped showing people horrible footage. Frum Itt, That's that's what is happening there. That's what she shouldn't have had to think about this sentence so much. Anyway, it's a bad sentence, which is why would use the restaurant trying to figure it out. Yeah, So at the end of this, Bubba is like, you know, look, I'm not going to send the National Guard, and Ellen's like, what's the president gonna do if you turn him down? And Bubbles like, well, he's not going to send the National Guard after me because they're all in New York. Um. And that's basically where this ends. Uh So next is a chapter, so we have learned nothing about Ellen, very little, very a pretty cool wife. I don't know everything in that chapter that happened just happened to Ellen decisions. How many chapters are there less? Uh for a few more episodes, that's for darn shure. We're about we're we're about to be We're about like the way through part two collapse and I don't know about of the book is the end of the beginning? I don't know either case. He went with the end of the beginning, didn't he? Yeah, I been wanted to write this into a series, but then it was unreadable. But it was a horrible book. Um, don't call your shot like that, buddy. No, don't call your shot like that, buddy. Um So Solidad chapter She's in Minno, North Dakota now from south uh, southern California, which is quite a trek. Uh. They're not close, not close places to one another. Um. Yeah, they made their way to the farm gradually. Uh, they made they'd made their way to the farm gradually. At first there were only a few friends and family of the militia members and agglomeration of survivalists and nuts. I don't belong here, Solidad thought. Then she realized that they were here because of her Minno North Dakota lay near the banks of the Souris River, a midsized town a forty thousand just south of the Canadian border. It was truly the middle of nowhere. Solidad thought they'd moved north and north, the north some more out of the populated areas outward, would take a lot of manpower to track them down. They've nearly been tracked down in California. The authorities still thought they were there, having originally believed mistakenly that they'd been burned, that they'd been burned during the fire at the ranch. By the time investigators caught onto the fact that they were still alive, they were in Idaho. Every few days they moved until they reached Minot and Minno Aiden had allies and friends. His parents had come from there before moving south, and he still had a pack of relatives. Yeada, YadA, YadA. So this is again We're just gonna like tell you summarize an exciting journey across the country while being tracked by federal agencies and a couple of paragraphs because like we don't have time to care this ship. Yeah, yeah, we want scenes in a book. He should just write blot etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, yeah, we just wound up there. So okay. They they're hunkering down with Aiden's family along with a bunch of an into an undetermined number of bikers and survivalists and militia members. Um who was going to be the guys that decoded Brett's message? Probably right, we're probably gonna learn that. Yeah. Yeah. They start recruiting people, local boys who didn't want to be sent oh boy. Um yeah, they're all yeah, uh yeah, people who didn't want to get called up to the National Guard. But I guess legally we're supposed to get called up and instead join a militia, which I believe is treason. Um, I suspect you could. That's at least like modest treason. Uh yeah, mild treason, mild treason. So yeah, she starts recruiting people and building a base in North Dakota. Uh and it builds eventually a small force of nearly forty uh Soli, dad knows all of them. She had a gift for connecting with people. It was the same gift that made her the staple of the evening news coverage, and she was truly interested in all them. It flattered most of them. All of them were grateful for a place to go. Again, we just hear this. We don't meet any of these people obviously. Yeah, yeah, I know, we're reading a constant montage. Yeah, she's riding a great epic. We don't have time for the nitty or for pleasant trees. Yep. So we learned about her literal little posse starting to run short on money. Uh, YadA YadA, uh um. Yeah, it's it's pretty boring stuff. Uh. We're just thinking about how Aiden like goes to a bar after buying groceries to to sit and like watch the news sometimes. I'm so I know that detail. Yeah great, So he learns so I know nothing about this person from that. So and again Ben uses this detail of of this Aiden's the secret serviceman who shot down the helicopter. So he goes to a bar after buying groceries to have a beer and like watch TV and and catch up on the news coverage. Because they're not they don't have any internet access or television like where they're all hiding out. Uh. And this is mainly an opportunity for Ben to spend several more paragraphs talking about the foreign policy impacts of the raid on Tehran, and Ibraham is Shami's attack and all of that stuff. Uh, and his victory speech is a terror. So it's all just more like news dumping shit um as opposed to I mean, I guess this is a little bit of something, right, This is actually this is actually an improvement for them. I'll give him that, because normally Ben just tells us where a character is, spend several pages talking about things that just happened that we don't see off screen, and then moves on to like the narrative. And in this case, he's attempted to weave this info dump, which we get every chapter, one of these info dumps. He's attempted to weave it into the narrative because at least here Aiden sitting at a bar getting angrier and he like shatters the bottle in his hand, cutting it because he's so angry at the news. This is this at least does build something of a character and shows him like it's it's a little bit better than just giving a dump of things that happened. Yes, yeah, it illustrates a viewpoint and like an emotion. Uh. And reaction from a character. It is still a montage though, Yeah, it is still a montage. And then Aiden's flipping channels after breaking the beer and cutting his hand, and he comes across MSNBC covering the streets of Detroit. Um and our our friend leave On, You remember leave On, the crack dealer, who's friends with whatever. Yeah, things could get this could get out of control, the reporter said, a hopeful gleam unmistakably shining in his eye. This morning, a leader of the uprising, one leave On Williams, posted a list of demands on the website of the Fight Against Injustice and Racism Movement. That's what they're calling the Fair Movement. Here's what we know about Leavin Williams. He's a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in African American studies. No police record, model citizen by all accounts, owns a barbership on eight Mile Road. According to public interviews, he's done. He came back to the community in an effort to bring prosperity home the shooting of Kendrick Malone. So, yeah, we just have this other character who hasn't had any direct connection to Detroit learning about the things happening with one of the other characters in Detroit through the news at a bar, because that's how you write a thrilling novel. So now we're just we're just playing an interview with one of the other characters that a character who has not met that character is watching on TV in a completely different location. That has nothing to do with great incredible writing. Whose chapter is this? This is? This is Solo Dad's chapter. Also, yeah, we're we've moved on to someone completely different, listening to an extended interview with someone else completely different, because this is a well written book. Again, pages go by, and we're talking about Levan's theories for how the police force should be redone and like it's just amazing. Um, yeah, Solo Dads sitting on the porch of a cabin. We're back to her. Yeah, yeah, she's she's sipping tea. Uh. An old grizzled old recruit named Ezekiel Pope who's black and comes from Los Angeles, Uh, comes up to talk to her. I'm sure he's got some wisdom here. Um. Yeah, yeah. He was a lieutenant colonel uh and he he had been culled into his superior's office just after the New York attack, told to round up his men and get ready to ship out to New York. For some reason, he'd come to Sola Dad instead. So he just again there's another dude committing some treason to go hang out in North Dakota with again like for some reason he did this, talk about it, just like have her like show me, yeah, ever explained, have him explained, like why he's doing Like she's she's you know, having a long dark tea time of the soul because she's brought all these people out here and everything's getting worse and she doesn't know what to do. And this guy says, you know, I followed you for this reason or you know, here's what happened to me, and like I decided, like wherever you were going to go, that's where I was going to go to. And like then she knows she has the confidence to do the thing that's necessary next or whatever, like and we the reader understand and are slightly more engaged with what's going on. Yeah, but instead, like we make it's made very clear by Ben that Solid Dead actually has no controller agency in in this situation, uh Aiden said. Aiden said he hadn't given reason for the for deserting, but that he's but he but he said that Ezekiel was trustworthy. Solidade had no option but to trust Aiden's judgment. Ezekiel looked over the snow falling silently into itself. He wore heavy work gloves on his hand and an m force slung over his shoulder, a maroon scarf around his neck. Solidad gestured at the gun. What's that for? We're gearing up, gearing up for what? Well? You tell us? After all, you're the terrorist mama, that's what we're calling you now, you know. Ever since the escape, she felt sick to herself. So they're just like picking up guns for no reason and saying like, Okay, we're all gonna go do something. You have to tell us what like. But it's not up to you to tell us to get armed in the first place. We're just all gonna get armed, and then to tell you it's time to figure out something random to do. I don't know, none of this makes any sense. This isn't how people act. Yeah, that's how they acted bread and Bread's Ben's brain. Yeah, I hate Yeah. So this guy tells her that the best defense is a good offense. Uh. And when you're forces small concentrated and hit them, well, they're weak. And she asks who are they and he says, the same people who shut down your farm, the people who attacked you, um, which are back in California and there in North Dakota. UM. And he tells her that they have to move or die now. Um. And it's very unclear as to who he wants her to shoot, or why, or who they could shoot that would improve their situation, or how it would be related to her farm being destroyed in south in southern California. But but that's where this ends. Yeah, is him saying we've got to move or die, and we have to hurt the people who hurt you, who are thousands of miles away. It's it is a great chapter. And you know what, I think it's about time that uh we call this one the beach. Yeah. I think so our next chapters will leave on chapter. I'm sure that's gonna be fun. Yeah, well we'll get back to this. Don't worry, friends, By the time we get to this next Uh, it might just be a full on civil war like the one been perfectly predicted here. And once what a nice escape this has been It is a nice escape. It's a nice escape into a world of people being very wrong. Yeah, on purpose, seemingly. Yeah, Katie Cody, would you like to plug your plug doubles? Oh? You know it more than anything. You can check out our other stuff over at some More News, which Cody hosts night produce. We have a podcast called even More News, and we also co host Worst Year Ever with Robert. We sure do, Cody. Yeah, we got a Patreon at dot com slash some more News. Um, you can follow me on the social media's dr Mr Cody and Katie Stole at Katie Stole. Yeah, those are the things Robert is I right? Okay? On Twitter? We have social media at Bastard's Pot on Twitter and Instagram. We have a d public store and book is draining. Yeah, I don't have energy. I feel like could be everything, but I think it's also it's also Monday. It's sucking Monday on the unnecessarily long month of August. So long all right, podcast over, y'all wear a mask, wash your hands. By the beginning e