Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by Braxton McCoy.
Speaker: Braxton's a motivational speaker, a Colt trainer, and the author of The Glass Factory, which is a memoir of his recovery from a suicide bombing in Ramadi in 2006.
Speaker: Welcome to the show, Braxton.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: So I want to get this out of the way, first of all.
Speaker: You've got just the biggest hard-on for Texas, and I just need to know...
Speaker: what did the Lone Star State ever do to Braxton McCoy?
Speaker: My issue with Texas is that Texans are still living off of the memory of San Yusento and what their great grandfathers did.
Speaker: And they, they act like, you know, somehow that's like, like they're a continuation of that glory.
Speaker: And meanwhile, they've got people twerking in front of their kids in the library and stuff.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I think Texas is the most important state.
Speaker: I think Texas is critical, probably even the most important state politically in the country right now.
Speaker: And I kind of want to troll them into behaving like the Texans that they say they are.
Speaker: I actually love Texas.
Speaker: Every time I go there, I really enjoy it.
Speaker: And I've got a lot of good friends down there.
Speaker: I just want them to be who they say they are.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Like, honestly, I'd like Idaho to be who Texas pretends to be, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: It's, it seems like that's almost all over.
Speaker: Like it,
Speaker: you almost can't get away from it.
Speaker: I, I, I moved back to Texas actually, um, a couple of years ago and, uh, it's like everywhere's the same and you just, there's no, um, you know, the, the culture is just sort of what's going on online, what's going on, on, on the news.
Speaker: And, uh, and I don't, I don't know how you fix that, but yeah, no, I, I, I definitely, um, had some disillusionment from my sort of fond childhood memories of Texas.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: And I think you're right.
Speaker: I think it's at a decision point where a lot could change really fast out there.
Speaker: Yeah, and I don't want to digress too much, but I mean, you say we don't know how to fix it.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's difficult to fix or neither one of us really know how to fix it.
Speaker: Like, I'm with you.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I hate the word conservatives.
Speaker: I'm not in conservatism.
Speaker: I'm not a conservative.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I just don't.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't even like the way that positioning.
Speaker: I think that's a horrible way to position yourself.
Speaker: Like conserve what?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: I do think that whatever this thing, like I'm, I'm quite comfortable to say that I'm on the right, whatever that means.
Speaker: And so the right is in an interesting cultural position for the first time in my life where they kind of can become the new punk rock.
Speaker: And I think that's your best way out is it, you know, everyone always talks about the culture and the culture is important, but if you can make those traditional values kind of, um,
Speaker: embrace the fact that it's dissident to be traditional now and make it kind of punk rock.
Speaker: I think that's a good way in on the culture side.
Speaker: Like we've got to get out of this right wing, especially on politicians or these stodgy bow tie wearing, you know, hall monitors, what you always hear them called.
Speaker: And I think that's pretty accurate.
Speaker: So, I mean, we need to break that is what I think.
Speaker: And that's kind of what I want Texas to do.
Speaker: because they're just in a good position to lead on that front if they'll do it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we, I mean, honestly, I wanted to talk about this.
Speaker: We can just talk about it now.
Speaker: I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker: I mean, I look at, I look at all of the smart, honest, interesting people that I'm aware of right now and
Speaker: there's a lot of them that are not either temperamentally or sort of historically interested in being associated with the right, but they're all having to admit that like pretty much everything that's sort of happening right now that's cool and that's new is like weird right-wing people
Speaker: Anon's on Twitter.
Speaker: To the extent that anything's happening, that's where it's happening.
Speaker: And I know I totally agree.
Speaker: It's a really interesting moment.
Speaker: After the last election and January 6th, it seems like there's a lot of smart money that's just saying,
Speaker: we're not gonna vote our way out of this and we're just getting out of politics altogether.
Speaker: At the same time, after watching the route from Afghanistan and this growing political mobilization among vets like yourself, guys like Joe Kent, I feel like people really are starting to wake up.
Speaker: And you always hear people say that, but I feel like people really are starting to wake up and maybe there's still things we can do.
Speaker: And it seems to me that vets,
Speaker: play a really important role in sort of leading the way on that.
Speaker: And I wonder where you stand on sort of, is there a path forward and what is that path?
Speaker: You, we, we as a nation, well, to the extent that we're even a nation, but we as a nation have got to make people answer for this and not just for the withdrawal, but for the 20 years of lies that we were told for, you know, they lied us into Iraq and then they lied about every, basically every stage of the war, both wars, particularly, you know, we've got the Afghanistan papers that just proved that these people had no idea what they were doing.
Speaker: They knew that it was a failure, but they were lying anyway, or it was always going to be a failure and that
Speaker: that they were failing at the time and they lied about it.
Speaker: And it's easy to say, well, it's for the profits of Raytheon technologies and these companies.
Speaker: I mean, sure it is, but it goes deeper and bigger than that.
Speaker: It's a culture that is willing to give up its youth when they know that they're being lied to is already...
Speaker: in some sense, like ideological prisoners.
Speaker: And like, you're already almost a slave if you're behaving that way, you know, like, well, we all know it's bullshit, but we're going to let our kids, sorry, I didn't mean to cuss there, but we all know it's bullcrap.
Speaker: And, you know, if you're willing to allow your kids to do
Speaker: you know, be put into the meat grinder for a lie, then what would you be willing to tolerate?
Speaker: So I don't think that this, like the whole coronavirus stuff is all that far out of left field really.
Speaker: Cause I mean, we have set ourselves up for this.
Speaker: So a solution, we've got to make some people answer this answer for this.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: Joe Kent is the only guy that's out there saying that part.
Speaker: Everyone wants to talk about the botched withdrawal.
Speaker: And then you've got the Ben Shapiro's out there.
Speaker: They're like, we should have never withdrawn.
Speaker: I mean, whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like Ben had plenty of opportunities to pick up a rifle and he never did.
Speaker: So I don't care too much about his opinion, but we've got to have some kind of commission that goes through every single, every single step of these wars and explain what was going on.
Speaker: So that people know what really happened to their sons and daughters over there.
Speaker: I think that kid,
Speaker: that would be a big, we almost need like a dozen hack horse, I guess it'd be a way to say it and really force the country to look at themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When I, so, so Joe was on a space, I think you were in it too recently talking about sort of his, his views and the way that he sees Ford.
Speaker: And that was one of the reasons why I, I asked him like,
Speaker: you know, who are your allies in this fight?
Speaker: Who do you find interesting?
Speaker: Who's on the way up?
Speaker: And, you know, he mentioned Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and some other sort of figures who, like, it makes sense that those are the people that he mentioned.
Speaker: I just wonder if, like,
Speaker: it seems to me like we need more people.
Speaker: It seems to me like we need more candidates who are willing to push because this group, they get media attention from us, from our little weird sector of Twitter.
Speaker: But it seems like in order for them to become like a meaningful political block without the cooperation of the media, like the squad has on the other side,
Speaker: um, it is going to require a lot more people and a lot more candidates of that stripe.
Speaker: Um, like, do you think, do you think that it's possible to move the needle with things as they are right now, or does it need to grow more?
Speaker: 10 years ago, I would have said absolutely not.
Speaker: You're going to need a lot more support.
Speaker: But after watching what AOC has been able to do to the left because of her ability to garner media attention, I think that we are in an age where someone like Joe Kent that's just really hard to ignore is going to have an outsized impact.
Speaker: And I mean, who knows, right?
Speaker: There's no, like, I don't have a crystal ball here, but I think Joe Kent could be a real game changer.
Speaker: And, you know, you point out the Marjorie Taylor, the his support for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gates, and these people are not veterans, right?
Speaker: I, you know, I think what you're, that the signal that's being sent there, at least to my mind, is that this is a person who's not just, you know,
Speaker: I'm sure he's a Trump supporter and all this, but he's not a sycophant and he's looking for people that he knows are going to be able to get the attention of the media.
Speaker: And I think that's a smart way to look at it.
Speaker: Um, you know, if you can get 3% of Congress that can be in the news all day, you can do more than having 50% of Congress on your side, in my opinion.
Speaker: No, yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker: And I mean, you know, Joe, he's, he's got the look, he's got the pedigree.
Speaker: Um, I honestly, I listened to that space and I immediately tweeted out, you know, watch this space.
Speaker: This guy's going to be president.
Speaker: I think he is.
Speaker: Um, cause he's just, uh, uh, really genuine and, and, and, uh,
Speaker: You know, he talks, he taught, I don't know how to say it, like, because expert is such a bad word, but like, he talks like somebody who really knows what the hell he's talking about and no sloganeering, you know?
Speaker: And, and while at the same time, you know, taking the sort of politician boxes that you need to tick.
Speaker: So, so yeah, no, I, I totally agree.
Speaker: And I think, I think it'll depend on, you
Speaker: sort of the strategy of like how how how hard does he pivot to the center and like how does he how does he generate sort of the the trumpian because the media paid attention to trump because they hated his guts and he had to be like really abrasive and joe's not like that and so it'll be interesting to see his his his strategy and how that moves forward
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he, a thing that he has working against him and he's got people that are much smarter than me helping him.
Speaker: So I'm sure they've thought of all of this, but,
Speaker: with him being a trump supporter they can harness some of the that anger and vitriol about trump against him without using his name they can just say this trump supporter running so he doesn't get the positive side of the media covers they're like they don't have to say joe kent every time and like i say i'm sure they've they've thought of all this but it is it is something worth worrying about i think
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Honestly, I think he's a strong enough candidate that he's going to probably break through that penumbra pretty shortly.
Speaker: But, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's always a hammer that they have to use on anybody who's well, who's not an establishment Republican.
Speaker: So I w I want to switch gears to your business, which is training Colts and, um,
Speaker: That's what we're going to talk about the glass factory and your your physical injuries in a little bit.
Speaker: But like training sort of undomesticated horses cannot be the easiest thing on the body.
Speaker: So I got to think in something pretty profound to you.
Speaker: Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker: I grew up on a little horse outfit in Southern Utah.
Speaker: And when I, when I got wounded, I still of course own some of my own horses and, and all of that.
Speaker: And when I got home, one of the, one of the most painful things was realizing that I really couldn't ride them.
Speaker: And it came from me.
Speaker: you know, everyone told me I couldn't, but I was just kind of like, piss off.
Speaker: I'm going to do what I want.
Speaker: So I saddled up this horse one day and it's kind of basically a kid's horse that was on my old man's place.
Speaker: And I took him out down this lane and the ground was cold and kind of frozen and slick.
Speaker: And the horse fell down and my hip ended up like slipping in and out of socket.
Speaker: And anyway, he just injured me more.
Speaker: I got back on him and rode him home.
Speaker: But
Speaker: you know, I had to sit down and have a real conversation with myself and come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to be able to ride horses anymore, maybe forever.
Speaker: I mean, who knew?
Speaker: And then, you know, I went through and I guess we'll talk about it and everything, but I went through a lot of extensive rehab and about eight years of it.
Speaker: And I ended up getting to where I could jog again and hike and do this kind of stuff.
Speaker: So I went back down to my old man's and, you know, I had sold my horses off and all that by then.
Speaker: And
Speaker: down to my old man's and was helping him start this buckskin colt.
Speaker: And the colt kind of moved funny on me and twisted my, he was, the colt had some issues and pretty serious issues.
Speaker: And I was going to get off him and he, he didn't blow up or anything, but he, he come out from underneath me pretty good and twisted my knee up.
Speaker: So I went to the doctor and he was looking at my knee, telling me what I tore and all this.
Speaker: And then he said, let's look at your spine and everything and see how the, you know, everything's healed up there.
Speaker: And they found that my skull is,
Speaker: it's for whatever reason it's just kind of set off now from the top of my the highest whatever that top vertebrae is it's just kind of pinching the spinal cord a little bit and the doctor said you know if you get bucked off on that you're gonna die you know and i'm like well okay i guess even even after overcoming all this other stuff i really can't ride horses anymore and
Speaker: And then I spent about a year not on them.
Speaker: And my wife and I were talking one day and she's like, just you're miserable, you know, just start doing.
Speaker: So I started doing again.
Speaker: And so, yeah, it's not easy on the body and there's real risk there.
Speaker: But it does mean enough to me that I'm willing to take that risk.
Speaker: Obviously, I try to be smarter about it now.
Speaker: But when I was younger, I don't just climb on them and let them buck.
Speaker: I mean, sometimes they buck anyway, but.
Speaker: as far as the profundity of it, I think what I've found is with the whole PTSD thing and all of that, and I don't, you know, it is what it is, but what really happens is you're living, you're kind of living in Iraq in your head all the time in my case or Afghanistan and some other people's cases.
Speaker: And
Speaker: You know, you build that synaptic loop because you try not to think about it and then that makes you think about it again.
Speaker: And so you're just kind of always stuck there.
Speaker: And I love horses.
Speaker: I just always have.
Speaker: So there's that part that's really just like a deep adoration for them.
Speaker: But also I found that riding green horses, I have to pay attention.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: I can't zone out and I have to live right in the moment on their back of fort, because if I don't, I'm going to get piled up.
Speaker: And I think that really helps clarify my thoughts and keeps me, you know, for at least 10, 12 hours a day, it keeps me from thinking about anything to do with the war.
Speaker: And I, that's just really useful.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's gotten, I mean, I've known it's the market improvement, I guess, that you notice when you're,
Speaker: kind of forced to live in the moment and these things make you live in the moment so those are the main reasons why I still do it I guess yeah that makes sense uh you you mentioned in the book that um the cowboy hat is sort of a talisman for you it's it's it's a a Jungian symbol
Speaker: Can you tell me a little bit about what that means to you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's at the risk of running into the cringe here.
Speaker: When I was a kid watching all these old cowboys and they were just the best people I'd ever met.
Speaker: And they pretty gruff guys that I was around a lot of Mormon guys, but they were still pretty gruff, you know, kind of maybe drank a little coffee here and there when their wives weren't around.
Speaker: And maybe there was some whiskey in the bunkhouse at Brandings, you know, but
Speaker: Otherwise, they were very dedicated to God and most importantly to their family.
Speaker: There was great people and they all had these rotten old hats on their heads all the time.
Speaker: And of course, I had, you know, as a kid, we didn't have a lot of money or anything.
Speaker: So I was always wearing like a $15 straw hat or a cheap felt hat or whatever, just kind of wanting to be that archetypal guy.
Speaker: And it kind of embedded itself into my personality in a way that I had never really experienced.
Speaker: I guess I had just not realized it.
Speaker: Like when I went to Iraq, I took a hat with me that I'd drilled a bunch of bulls in and it was one that I'd kind of had an emotional attachment to or whatever.
Speaker: And then I came home and when I was going through the darker stages, I noticed that I wasn't wearing it anymore.
Speaker: And it wasn't anything to do with like giving up.
Speaker: I mean, I guess, you know what it was, is it was a recognition that I was not the person, I was not like them.
Speaker: I was living a horrible life.
Speaker: I was chasing girls and drinking and doing drugs and all this stuff that I shouldn't have been doing.
Speaker: And so I had kind of taken it off.
Speaker: And then when I started to get a little better, I was wearing it again every day.
Speaker: And, you know, as you start to reflect, especially in writing and you're putting things together chronologically, you kind of notice stuff like that.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So for me, it is definitely in some ways a symbol of my goodliness, I guess.
Speaker: Obviously, I'm still a failure, but I don't know.
Speaker: I just feel like it's a thing that, like you say, it's a talisman.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Like my grandfather was so funny about this.
Speaker: He wouldn't wear a black hat because that's what bad guys wore.
Speaker: He would only wear brown and white hats, you know.
Speaker: So it is kind of there's a cultural element to that, too.
Speaker: Like one time they were at the NFR, my old man and my grandpa, and they were getting ready to go to the rodeo.
Speaker: And my old man was wearing a black hat.
Speaker: And he was like, you're not going to wear that out there, are you?
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna wear it.
Speaker: And he's like, well, everyone's gonna think that we're like bad, bad folks.
Speaker: It's like, so he kind of really believed that.
Speaker: And so maybe I just have a little bit of that.
Speaker: Maybe I'm just sentimental biologically, you know?
Speaker: But it definitely, it is definitely one of those things that's kind of embedded in my soul.
Speaker: And I've kind of, I kind of just embrace it now.
Speaker: Well, I mean that, so that leads really well into one of the things that you mentioned in the book is,
Speaker: is how much of your experience, even in the most, I mean, maybe especially in the most intense moments of combat and basically love and violence, sort of the most intense experiences of life, how so much of that is mediated by our expectations for movies.
Speaker: and how that might create kind of a feedback loop of people acting like movies, acting like people who were acting like movies.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because the whole brown hat, white hat, black hat thing, I mean, that's from like the 40s.
Speaker: That's not ancient, right?
Speaker: That's from TV.
Speaker: Gene Autry.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yet it's become real just because everybody has that expectation.
Speaker: And I just found it so interesting that like,
Speaker: you know, in our, in our lives, how many experiences of like, how many times are you going to propose to somebody?
Speaker: How many times are you going to get shot at?
Speaker: How many times, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: There's like these really pivotal, emotionally intense moments that you're only going to personally experience a handful of times, but you're going to see them in film or in movies like a bazillion times.
Speaker: And so how much does that override the reality of the experience?
Speaker: How much of that is, is, is media and
Speaker: And I wanted to ask, like, that seems like a really profound insight.
Speaker: Do you handle media differently in your house or things you or your kids stay away from, things you encourage sort of on that basis?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My, my kids watch Davy Crockett from like the fifties and occasionally Paw Patrol.
Speaker: And like, I'm, I'm very strict about what they watch.
Speaker: I've got a daughter who's 14 that she lives with us full time now.
Speaker: And she didn't until recently.
Speaker: So it's, she always thinks it's a little bit weird because you know, her mother was not like that, but I don't care.
Speaker: Like I'll, I'll tell you one rule.
Speaker: If,
Speaker: if I come in and there's a cartoon with a bunch of colors that look like they resemble a certain flag that's been hung on embassies, I turn that freaking thing off immediately because I don't even care what the content is.
Speaker: I just don't even want that in their brains, especially since, you know, they're doing it intentionally.
Speaker: It's insidious by it's, it's intentionally insidious.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm really careful about what I have them watch.
Speaker: I mean, and I, you know, some guys are,
Speaker: a lot more comfortable with even violence around their kids than I am.
Speaker: I, I love, we, you know, I did some fighting growing up and I like watching fights with my kids.
Speaker: I'm okay with that because it's a sport, but I don't like, I'm not going to have them watching war movies, you know?
Speaker: Just, yeah.
Speaker: I, yes, I'm very, I curate media pretty strictly in the South.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you, you also have a lot of sort of ruminative moments in the book.
Speaker: where you're watching war movies, and you're watching people do terrible things and have terrible things happen to them.
Speaker: And I wonder if that was was in any way cathartic for you as you were going through that recovery process, or if that was like, probably shouldn't have done that.
Speaker: It's hard to say, you know, because it's almost like a form of
Speaker: Immersion therapy, you know, you could, you could think of it maybe as a form of immersion therapy.
Speaker: So maybe it does some good, uh, you know, of course in, in, um, if you're doing immersion therapy or I guess even cognitive behavioral stuff, you're being monitored by somebody that's kind of helping you through it.
Speaker: And, you know, when you're alone with a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of pills, maybe it's not the best headspace to be in while you're, but I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe it did help.
Speaker: I really don't know.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It's just so hard to say.
Speaker: I know that when I was writing about the darker stuff in that book, I hadn't drank in a long time.
Speaker: And for some of it, I actually went out and bought a bottle of whiskey and got drunk and wrote it drunk.
Speaker: And I honestly, I think
Speaker: Well, I should say, I'm not sure I could have been as honest as I was without removing those inhibitions.
Speaker: So I just don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not an expert.
Speaker: I don't know, man.
Speaker: So I wish I had something better for you.
Speaker: No, that's interesting.
Speaker: On a broader scale, just in terms of like what was good for you, what was bad for you, there's a huge theme in the book of like the darkest times for you are the most sort of detached.
Speaker: where you're detached from your body, from other people.
Speaker: Like in sort of the heat of the moment, you mentioned that like someone's calling out to God and that everyone, when they get hurt like that or when they're in danger like that, almost everyone calls out to God.
Speaker: And it's almost as if like it's because you can't tell if it's you saying it or not.
Speaker: It's almost like it's the body.
Speaker: It's sort of the animal calling out to God, not you.
Speaker: And from that place of detachment and trying to piece yourself together, you know,
Speaker: How has your understanding of God sort of evolved?
Speaker: This is one that I'm working on and probably will be working on for my whole life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You notice certain patterns.
Speaker: And one thing that I saw every time, like you mentioned, is every time someone was dying, they all did call to God.
Speaker: And it's hard not to recognize or not to notice that.
Speaker: And so you're kind of data caching over the years.
Speaker: And then you see stuff happening on the news or whatever.
Speaker: And you know...
Speaker: you know that like it seems like civilians are kind of surprised when they hear people you know shouting oh god or allah or whatever but you know i've seen it and they do and i am like that i remember when i was younger i was born until i was like 13 and i was so into that church that like if i had
Speaker: I didn't have car keys at the time, but just to use as an example here, if I had lost my car keys, I would have called, you know, I would have prayed about it.
Speaker: That's the kind of person that I'd been.
Speaker: And I definitely lost that through the war, but about four years ago, maybe five years ago now, I was running, doing duathlons and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I'd had a really weird pain in my chest.
Speaker: And then I went in,
Speaker: and they look, my, my mother-in-law is, uh, been an EMT for like 30 years.
Speaker: And so she's pretty, you know, she's pretty handy with that kind of stuff, but she's not soft.
Speaker: So I called her and she said, you need to go to the hospital.
Speaker: So I go to the hospital and they run a test and they say, well, you've had a heart attack and it doesn't look like you had a heart attack today, but you've had one at some point.
Speaker: So to stay there for like 12 hours or something, I forget how long it was.
Speaker: And then I go home and,
Speaker: All this time, I know I've got this IVC filter in my body that is basically like a ticking time bomb.
Speaker: And, you know, so there's all these reasons.
Speaker: Sorry, the IVC is to pick up clots, right?
Speaker: It's a it's a filter to to stop getting into your lungs, your heart.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: It's kind of looks like an umbrella without a skirting on it.
Speaker: But yeah, it's in your inferior, your inferior vena cava or interior vena cava camera with that.
Speaker: But anyway, that that gigantic vein that runs up in front of your spine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so I go through this whole thing and then it turns into this process.
Speaker: I'm going to the University of Utah.
Speaker: They're doing echoes and all these different things to check on my heart.
Speaker: And I just had a son, my first son.
Speaker: And my boys and obviously my daughter too, but my kids mean the world to me.
Speaker: And I was holding his hand in bed and I was just sitting there thinking, he was tiny.
Speaker: He was like maybe four or five months old.
Speaker: I was sitting there thinking, I'm not going to never going to see this kid grow up.
Speaker: You know, if you have a heart attack when you're 30, how the hell are you going to live very long?
Speaker: And so I ended, I got out of bed and I got on my knees and I just prayed and I hadn't prayed.
Speaker: I can't even tell you last time I prayed.
Speaker: It probably had been a decade or something.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It had been a long time.
Speaker: And, um, as I was praying, I just was, I became overwhelmed with gratitude because, um,
Speaker: What struck me was that I was upset that I was going to die young, but I could have died 10 years before that or 12 years before that.
Speaker: And so I'd been given in some sense, 12 free years and I was not appreciating those.
Speaker: And I kind of came to that recognition.
Speaker: And now, so every night I pray every without fail, you know, of course, every once in a while I might fail, but I try very hard to make every night.
Speaker: And I just say, thanks, just kind of a gratitude thing.
Speaker: Because, you know, I don't know that I need anything and I just feel like it's worthwhile just saying thank you.
Speaker: And so that's kind of my connection to God at this point.
Speaker: And I'm trying to, you know, I'm definitely trying to deepen that.
Speaker: You know, we have a mutual friend that works on me every day.
Speaker: And I'm, you know, I'm trying.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Gosh, I know, I hope I answered your question in that ramble, but that's a hard one for me because it's, it's not, not trying to say that it's too personal, like how Peterson says, who can dare say that they believe in God.
Speaker: I, I actually do like that.
Speaker: I respect that view, but I don't agree with him on that, but I am.
Speaker: I'm not sure I want to be the guy that pretends to have, I definitely don't want to be the guy that pretends to have a relationship with God that he doesn't, but I try, you know, I definitely try.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that, that, I mean, you talk a lot about, um, sort of radical honesty, uh, toward the end that that was something that really helped you, uh, turn things around as you, you, you confronted, um,
Speaker: you know, embellishing what happened to you and feeling just really despicable about that.
Speaker: And then, and then, uh, uh, an acquaintance or a friend invite invited you to introduce yourself to women at the bar with, uh, I have, I'm Brex McCoy.
Speaker: I've had to kill people.
Speaker: Um, can you talk a little bit about that philosophy and sort of how that has changed, uh, things for you in your life?
Speaker: Yeah, that came from my buddy.
Speaker: He actually since passed away, but he was a really neat guy.
Speaker: After he got out, he was a Ranger and an SF guy.
Speaker: After he got out, he dedicated his life to helping vets try to get better.
Speaker: He was just a really neat cat, but
Speaker: he we were in dc and he pulled me out in the hallway and he was talking to me about it and he's you know he says first of all he wanted me to go to japan and do this weird bushido thing with them and i was like sure maybe i'll do that it was like supposed to culminate with like sword cutting on the chest and stuff and i was like yeah let's go man um but like yeah let's try that i'm down to try anything at this point you know um but yeah he says uh
Speaker: Yeah, just tell people who you are and what you've done and see how that works.
Speaker: And I did it for a while.
Speaker: And, you know, the looks that you get are always, you know, here's what I'll say about that.
Speaker: I don't think that you attract the right kind of girls when you behave like that.
Speaker: So I had some issues with dating that might have been attached to that.
Speaker: But for my own personal well-being on the mental health side, I really do think it helped a lot to...
Speaker: kind of express those demons.
Speaker: Because I think in his mind, obviously I'm putting words in the mouth of a dead man, and I mean that respectfully, but I think in his mind what he saw was that a lot of the problems I was having were coming from that I felt like I was walking around a marked man in a way that everyone else could see, but I was trying to hide it from them.
Speaker: And so just expressing that right up front would, would, you know, be useful.
Speaker: And a lot of this actually came from religion, you know, says thou shalt not kill.
Speaker: And I remember I told my old man that one night at the bunkhouse, we were hanging out and he was talking, he's a Mormon guy.
Speaker: And he was talking about, uh,
Speaker: you know, heaven and religion and this kind of stuff over a bottle of whiskey, no less.
Speaker: But, um, and I, I've had conversations like that.
Speaker: So, so I tell them, I'm like, you know, I appreciate you trying to do all this, but I have done stuff that is unforgivable.
Speaker: And we talked a lot about that.
Speaker: And so I think that that, you know, I was wearing that on my soul, um,
Speaker: and getting it out really helped, even though it, you know, was wildly inappropriate and probably made me look like a crazy person to a lot of people, but I do think it helped.
Speaker: And then it transitioned into other aspects of my life too.
Speaker: And like, especially that book is, I mean, no one's going to accuse me of undersharing and like, yeah,
Speaker: I think it was useful because to the extent that there's anything powerful in that book, I think it's that.
Speaker: So I owe a lot of that to him.
Speaker: And I think a lot of my recovery to him too.
Speaker: And, you know, horses are like that.
Speaker: Horses are incapable of lying.
Speaker: Like this is one thing that people, I really think don't understand.
Speaker: Like a horse will not lie for you.
Speaker: You know, it's part of doing this work.
Speaker: Like you can't ride a horse five times and tell someone you rode at 60 because he's not going to pretend that you rode him the other 55 times.
Speaker: So I think that there's like a commonality there that, um,
Speaker: is felt.
Speaker: And it's probably what, you know, I'm not saying like, I'm this great trainer, you know, I'm okay.
Speaker: But I think that it helps that too, because I treat them with the same level of respect and honesty that they treat me.
Speaker: You know, if you're a jerk to me, I'm not going to be nice back to you.
Speaker: And we just kind of see eye to eye and it works.
Speaker: And I think all of us would do, would do better to try that.
Speaker: Now don't go up to people at a bar and tell them that you've killed people, but yeah,
Speaker: I don't know if you're struggling, try it.
Speaker: Well, and you know, you know, you, you, you stop me if you need to, but do you ever talk to God that way?
Speaker: No, no, you know, and I probably should, man.
Speaker: For me, it's, I don't know how to approach the almighty.
Speaker: I, you know, I work outside and I live in a place where,
Speaker: I can see stars in the trillions, not in the thousands.
Speaker: And so I'm kind of surrounded by majesty all the time.
Speaker: And I spent a lot of time in the mountains and, you know, the indifference of the mountains is palpable.
Speaker: And so I just, you know, I definitely have this feeling where like I'm appreciative and I want to try to become a good and faithful servant at some point in my life.
Speaker: But I,
Speaker: I don't know that I should, like, I'm trying to remain humble, then I don't know that I should be troubling this person that's got, or this, you know, God with these problems when he's got kind of better stuff to do, you know?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That, yeah, that's, that's, that's interesting, man.
Speaker: And maybe this is related.
Speaker: You divide suffering into
Speaker: There are things that just happen because we're finite and the universe is infinite and, you know, just sort of the vicissitudes of life.
Speaker: Then there's stuff that society does to you.
Speaker: And then there's stuff that's your own fault.
Speaker: And you seem to take an approach of, let me take responsibility for as much of this as I possibly can.
Speaker: which I've also read Extreme Ownership, which is a great book.
Speaker: And I think that that's wise.
Speaker: It also, though, I was struck reading the story about how much of that suffering almost seemed just inevitable.
Speaker: Like once you were lying on the ground all shot up in Ramadi or all ball bearinged up, you were going to be
Speaker: in traction for months.
Speaker: You were going to be in an extreme amount of pain.
Speaker: They were going to give you something for the pain that was inevitably going to lead to dependency and withdrawal.
Speaker: And the reason I ask about that is I think a lot of, so I have family that have opioid problems.
Speaker: And I think a lot of opioid addiction is like that.
Speaker: Somebody gets seriously hurt,
Speaker: They're in genuine pain.
Speaker: They get an oxy script that they and their doctor feel they need and then they never get off.
Speaker: And I just wonder, do you feel like if you could have been sort of, you know, not in control like God, but in control like you and your doctor at the time,
Speaker: Do you think there's an alternative to opioids?
Speaker: Do we need to just get better at people helping people walk it down?
Speaker: Or, you know, what do you feel like you've learned from that?
Speaker: I can't remember how the case shook out, but there was a case in the UK that was
Speaker: brought against, I can't remember which, you know, Pfizer, one of these pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker: And the accusation was that the real pain medication in the OxyContin was the Tylenol and that the OxyContin was acting more like a nicotine additive that was actually there just to make you addicted to it.
Speaker: I think that what Pfizer, whoever, I'm not trying to, I don't remember who it was, whichever drug company, I think that what they said was, well,
Speaker: the sort of heroin opioid aspect disassociates and that has some level of, that provides some level of benefit in and of itself, just being disassociated from the pain.
Speaker: So like basically it's what they're saying is it feels really good to be high on a synthetic heroin.
Speaker: And so that provides its own benefit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, it does feel really good.
Speaker: And maybe there's a benefit there.
Speaker: But if you do a cost-benefit analysis, I think, or a risk analysis, or however you would say, then I don't think that the benefit outweighs the risk.
Speaker: I get hurt every year riding colds.
Speaker: Two years ago, I tore my ACL and MCL.
Speaker: This last year, I busted my hand, and I broke just bones on bones.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Every time I go in, I tell them I absolutely will not take, don't write me a script.
Speaker: I don't want it.
Speaker: I'm not taking it, you know, and I take ibuprofen and it works.
Speaker: And usually you'll take ibuprofen for like three or four days, maybe a week or two, broken bone, maybe two weeks.
Speaker: And then you're better, you know, because a lot of the, a lot of the pain is coming from inflammation.
Speaker: And of course everyone's body's different, you know, yada, yada, but yeah,
Speaker: I just think that it's not useful.
Speaker: I don't think it's useful at all.
Speaker: And it's, it's fun.
Speaker: And like, this is one of the things that I think it's not good to pretend that it's not because it is extraordinarily fun.
Speaker: I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker: There's a reason that grown men who've never had it in their life get hurt and they can't stop pushing the, you know, the drip button while they're in the hospital because it's a good feeling.
Speaker: I've been on Dilaudid.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's a ride, man.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And so, no, I think that you should avoid that stuff anytime that you can.
Speaker: And as far as the, the taking responsibility for your own suffering part, the most important element there is if, if your goal, cause I try to look at things strategically, if you, if your goal is to, you know, you're going to have a goal to get from a, get to A to B or whatever.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: If your goal is to get better and more healthy and all of this, then it doesn't actually matter who is at fault.
Speaker: You can't do anything about it.
Speaker: So you might as well turn...
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But yeah, placing blame does nothing unless you put it on yourself because you're the one element of this story that you can control.
Speaker: So yeah, it's like not great that this kind of stuff happens, but it's part of it.
Speaker: And then also you can go back.
Speaker: I'm the one that signed the papers.
Speaker: I'm the one that walked out the gate.
Speaker: I knew what I was doing.
Speaker: So it's still at the bottom, I'm responsible for all of it as well.
Speaker: I mean, sure, this guy blew himself up and that sucks.
Speaker: You know, worse for him than me.
Speaker: But yeah,
Speaker: I just don't think that it does you any good to wallow in that suffering because it's too easy to give yourself a pass once you start doing that, because you can tell yourself truths like, yeah, this, this happened to me.
Speaker: It wasn't, you know, really wasn't my fault, you know, and just start looking for kind of cop out excuse stuff, or you can decide, look, man, I have got myself hooked on this thing and I've got to figure out some way to get off of it.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: Really, maybe it takes, I think it does take finding something that you care about more than you care about you.
Speaker: because your ego will never push you through hard stuff.
Speaker: Like people think it will, it will push you through stuff that regular everyday people think is hard, but it's actually not that hard at all.
Speaker: Your ego will not push you through things that are actually difficult.
Speaker: So you've got to find something that is more important to you and kind of aim yourself at that and then make yourself responsible for that.
Speaker: You know, as a parent, I talked to you on the phone a while back and we both, I think,
Speaker: have to share this view but as a parent your your number one job in life is to be a dad so like i am now responsible for these mouths and i gotta do whatever i gotta do to to take care of these kids and there's if you approach the world in that way you'll be more healthy mentally too i'm sorry i keep digressing there's this i haven't thought about this book for a long time and i'm remembering a lot of a lot of stuff um yeah no i haven't actually expressed
Speaker: No, it's really good.
Speaker: Again, it's a point from Jordan Peterson.
Speaker: He talks about treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for taking care of.
Speaker: And it seems like that circuit, you found that circuit independently in the book, because every time you experience major growth, it's
Speaker: you know, I, I, I need to do this for my grandpa.
Speaker: I need to do this for, you know, the guys who were in the attack, who didn't make it.
Speaker: I need to do it for my daughter, for my girlfriend's kid.
Speaker: Uh, so I can, you know, take him to little league and teach him what he needs to know.
Speaker: Like, uh, so much of this is about stewardship and, and taking responsibility for someone else.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Does that, I mean, you had to, I mean, does this happen to you when, I mean, how old were you when this happened?
Speaker: 20?
Speaker: Yeah, I was 20.
Speaker: I turned 20 in Iraq, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and yeah.
Speaker: it's just unreal to watch you have these experiences that I'm like barely having at 35, you know, when you were basically a kid and all this growing up and confrontation with death.
Speaker: And I think going back to the issue of pain, I feel like, and you tell me what you think about this,
Speaker: I feel like the opioid situation fundamentally is a denial of pain and a denial of death.
Speaker: It's to say we shouldn't have to experience pain and therefore we're going to do this really dangerous and ill-advised thing so that we can detach from the pain.
Speaker: We're going to
Speaker: pretend that it doesn't have to be part of our experience.
Speaker: And when you talk about going into the underworld, and this is, I guess, I guess I'm maybe asking a similar question.
Speaker: I hope it's not the same question again, but like, if someone is going down into the underworld and they're experiencing the pain and they're having their confrontation with death, um,
Speaker: is that something that the people around them can make easier?
Speaker: Or is that something that just, you know, you have to kind of go through alone?
Speaker: It's, it's hard and it's supposed to be hard.
Speaker: You know, Peterson, he talks about how, you know, I'm not trying to relitigate his debate with Sam Harris here, but when they were talking about truth,
Speaker: And he talks about this in lectures and writes about it as well, but says how pain is true.
Speaker: Like no matter what, you can't talk yourself out of pain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We are, so I think,
Speaker: that truth that he's hitting on there, we embody that truth.
Speaker: The only way to like the lesson, like God put the lesson, wrote the lesson on your heart.
Speaker: If you'll just look for it.
Speaker: The only way to get stronger is to break your body down.
Speaker: And then it builds back up again.
Speaker: Like this is what weightlifting is or running or whatever.
Speaker: And you have to experience that sort of pain to get to the next place that you want.
Speaker: So if you are denying yourself that experience, you can't, you can't actually end,
Speaker: you can't actually get the benefits of it.
Speaker: So really it becomes a, it becomes almost a useless suffering and there's nothing worse than useless suffering.
Speaker: Like this is what Peterson talks about all the time.
Speaker: Like this is what the Soviets did, right?
Speaker: They would try to make people suffer for no reason because they know that that's the worst possible thing that you can do to somebody.
Speaker: And we do this to ourselves with drugs.
Speaker: So yeah, I, I think that there is real lessons in the pain and not just in the,
Speaker: The uber macho, which I think is kind of dorky stuff where it's like, oh, just walk it off and toughen up.
Speaker: I mean, all that stuff's good, but that's not helping.
Speaker: I mean, explaining to someone that, yeah, man, it sucks and it's going to suck and it's supposed to suck.
Speaker: You're just going to have to learn to accept that this is supposed to be this way.
Speaker: And if you do, what comes out of that on the other side will be more than you could have possibly envisioned beforehand.
Speaker: When this happened to you, the culture had not dealt with war trauma in two generations.
Speaker: Nobody around you knew how to handle it.
Speaker: And I honestly, I think
Speaker: War injuries are uncommon enough in the general population that I feel like most families that confront this probably still don't know how to handle it because it's something that is being born by a small fraction of the population, has been for decades.
Speaker: But let's suppose that you're back there.
Speaker: It's 06, 07.
Speaker: And you're Braxton's dad or you're his best friend.
Speaker: And you know everything you know now.
Speaker: How do you help him cope with that at his stage of the despair and the nihilism?
Speaker: This is going to go against everything that I just said, but
Speaker: I really think that for, again, it depends on personality types, right?
Speaker: Like that's the other thing that you're confronting is, or that you have to confront here is that not everybody is the same, but at least for the way that my brain works, tough love would have been better than too much sympathy for me.
Speaker: I would have been a lot better off with someone saying, listen, you've got to get your crap together and I'm going to help you do it, but you got to get your crap together.
Speaker: If God forbid one of my sons ended up in a similar situation, that would definitely be the approach.
Speaker: It'd be like, well, you can't do the work that you used to do around here, but that doesn't mean you're not going to work and get them out doing stuff and really force them to endure again.
Speaker: you know, you look at the kids who, there was a kid down where I'm from, got in a motorcycle accident, spinal injury, ends up paralyzed from the, you know, he's quadriplegic or paraplegic.
Speaker: He can't walk.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And he was down for maybe two months.
Speaker: I mean, it's a horrific injury.
Speaker: And then his dad, while he was
Speaker: while he was in the hospital, his dad had one of his tractors set up and outfitted so that he could run it with just his hands.
Speaker: And then as soon as his kid came out, he wheeled his chair out there and helped him into the tractor and put him back to work.
Speaker: And he did it every day.
Speaker: And now that kid is living as good a life as he possibly can.
Speaker: He's doing really, really well.
Speaker: And it's, I honestly think it's because his dad helped him get back to work, that sense of fulfillment from work and also not spending too much time away from who you really were
Speaker: before the injury, I think helps a lot as well.
Speaker: I had another friend who ended up in a car accident and he ended up paralyzed as well.
Speaker: And his dad wasn't quite in the same situation.
Speaker: He's a construction guy.
Speaker: Didn't really, wasn't really in a position to help his kid in that same way.
Speaker: And that kid has a lot of problems, a lot of problems still, you know, 20 years later, still has a lot of problems.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So I think helping them get back to work, I, you know, I know that almost sounds like the walk it off thing, but I don't mean it that way.
Speaker: I just mean tough love in the sense of let's get you contributing again and get you some sense of purpose.
Speaker: No, people have to have a place.
Speaker: They have to fit somewhere or else it's like you're saying the suffering is pointless.
Speaker: If it's not, they need, they need a story.
Speaker: They need a, they need a story to fit that suffering in and, and a justification that, that, that,
Speaker: that makes it meaningful.
Speaker: You know, I honestly, I don't think you even have to get, you know, shredded by an IED to, to face, I think almost everybody who doesn't have purpose faces that same sense of, you know, what's it all for?
Speaker: And, and, and, you know, a lot of those same people, you know, kids I went to school with,
Speaker: they end up addicted to heroin, not because they went through anything traumatic, but because why not?
Speaker: You know, like what, what, what, what high purpose is being defeated by me just going and, you know, getting hopped up on goofballs.
Speaker: And so it, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's way bigger than, it's way bigger than vets.
Speaker: It's way bigger than car accidents.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's the whole society, I think.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think that's why you're saying that
Speaker: the opioid rates in places like Ohio and Akron and whatever, those kinds of areas in Ohio are a lot higher than they are in these rural, you know, at least rural Western communities.
Speaker: There's not a lot of drug use in our area.
Speaker: Now there is kind of a lot of drug use in Wyoming and,
Speaker: in montana but really not here and i'm sure mormonism has plays a role there but it's also that their dads have these big operations that you know they they know what they're doing they're doing that day when they get out of bed i think that really matters i think it matters a lot yeah a lot in fact what was that movie from uh the uk from when we were kids uh it's like the train car diaries or something that's not what it's called um
Speaker: Anyway, these kids, they grow up in, I think it's London is where they're at, but they're kind of going through the same thing that we're going through now where all the jobs are gone and they know that there's kind of, in some sense, no hope for them, at least in their community.
Speaker: And they all end up hooked on heroin and, you know, just being waste.
Speaker: I mean, it's a pretty good film, but... Are you talking about Trainspotting?
Speaker: Trainspotting.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Trainspotting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's kind of the same story.
Speaker: And as far as the whole two decades of separation between us and Vietnam, a lot of this happened in Vietnam, too, and everyone knew it.
Speaker: A lot of it happened.
Speaker: This is maybe something that people don't know as much, but a lot of this stuff happened with the World War II guys, too.
Speaker: They were taking speed and all kinds of stuff and alcohol.
Speaker: It's pretty common, and I really think that it's that loss.
Speaker: I know that it's kind of become the...
Speaker: kind of the buzzword, but I really do think that that loss of sense of purpose is a really, really big problem.
Speaker: And if you don't have God,
Speaker: in your life, which a lot of these kids don't, if you don't have God in your life and you don't have anything to make you really feel like you should get out of bed in the morning, I mean, what hope do you have to recover?
Speaker: I mean, like why recover?
Speaker: Like for what?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Oh, that's exactly it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: What's the point?
Speaker: It's because it's hard.
Speaker: It's unbelievably hard.
Speaker: And what's waiting for you at the end of all that suck that you're being asked to embrace?
Speaker: Um, no, uh, uh, I actually had the opportunity to be at a bit like there were all the bishoprics and the stake.
Speaker: I was an executive secretary at the time in the ward and, uh, elder Bednar came and spoke to just the bishoprics.
Speaker: So it was like just a chapel and elder Bednar.
Speaker: And we were talking about sort of the state of missionary preparedness.
Speaker: And it became this much deeper discussion of like pretty much no group.
Speaker: No demographic in the church was sending out sort of prepared missionaries, not just to be missionaries, but just for life.
Speaker: And he said that basically the exception was rural kids.
Speaker: And the thinking was that...
Speaker: rural kids from an early age are given a task that is not sort of make work, you know, cause you know, the kids in the suburbs get homework assignments and occasionally you're asked to do chores, but like, you know, that was me growing up and there was always a sense that was kind of fake.
Speaker: And it was sort of like, it builds character, but it's not like, you don't actually need me to do this.
Speaker: You're just sort of making me do it.
Speaker: And, but farm kids,
Speaker: from an early age are given tasks that are necessary to the functioning of the family and they have a place and they're, they're important.
Speaker: And that level of that level of confidence and, and self-esteem is the wrong word, but, but, but not knowledge of where you fit in the world is unbelievably powerful.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Well, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And especially with animal husbandry, you can't take a day off.
Speaker: I mean, we can't even hardly go on vacation because you're married to your animals.
Speaker: And I actually think it's spot on.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker: It's not menial stuff.
Speaker: It really does matter.
Speaker: My daughter helps around here and she knows that she helps and she gets the perks of that, but also comes with the responsibilities.
Speaker: You know, you got to water even when it's 20 below, you know what I mean?
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One more about the book.
Speaker: I know masculinity is something you think about a lot.
Speaker: The way manhood's viewed in our culture, the types of men that we're producing.
Speaker: And in some ways it looks like your conception of manhood is pretty conventional.
Speaker: It's cowboy stuff, it's goon stuff, self-reliance, mental toughness.
Speaker: But you spend a lot of this book just getting the macho kind of beat out of you.
Speaker: because you're constantly up against these physical limitations.
Speaker: You're being confronted by douchebags.
Speaker: You can't do anything about it.
Speaker: And it seems like there are cases where you view letting go of that egoism as a good thing.
Speaker: But there are other times in the book where you kind of seem to be fighting to take it back.
Speaker: Like, so you get sort of accosted by these hood rats on your way out of DC.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: There's this scene where you're on the drive back to Utah and you just floor the accelerator and you almost throw the car off a canyon.
Speaker: And I have to think that those two events are very tightly related.
Speaker: It's this domain where you know that you can still confront danger and win.
Speaker: And you're like, I got to get a win.
Speaker: I got to take this back.
Speaker: And later you talk about tuning up this guy who molested a kid at a party.
Speaker: And it's obvious that you enjoyed getting to do that and being able to do that.
Speaker: And so can you talk about sort of which elements of like macho tough guy stuff
Speaker: you were glad to leave behind, which ones you fought to hold on to.
Speaker: I expect that maybe there's some ambivalence and maybe it's still kind of, but tell me what you think.
Speaker: First of all, I've already got the assault charge, so I guess I can talk about that.
Speaker: They can't charge me again.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, I did like beating that kid up.
Speaker: I liked it a lot and I'll do it again, you know?
Speaker: Um, gosh.
Speaker: So I've been, I've been teasing people about crying in church a lot recently.
Speaker: And my daughter's been dragging my butt to church every Sunday.
Speaker: Uh, so I've been, you know, anyway, I've been going over and there's a lot of crying going on.
Speaker: I just don't, you know, I'm trying to use this as a way to answer this.
Speaker: You know, anytime I comment about this, people will say, well, if your mom dies, someone's like, yeah, man, I'm not saying you can't ever cry.
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: Get a hold of yourself here.
Speaker: What I'm saying is you should have, I think it's good to, like, I like to read poetry.
Speaker: I really like poetry.
Speaker: I like to...
Speaker: like play with baby horses.
Speaker: I think it's beautiful.
Speaker: I like to play with my kids, you know, like all of that kind of stuff I think are blessings of God.
Speaker: I think it's, it's ridiculous to pretend like you can't appreciate real beauty, especially, especially God's beauty or our beauty that God has created.
Speaker: But at the same time, I don't think that needs to translate to you being comfortable crying in front of your neighbor because you're
Speaker: of some very trivial thing because you're still especially to be the i mean in the church there's a dishonesty to it like you sometimes feel like people are kind of putting on a show yes yeah yes especially the first sunday of every month and brother it's like so um
Speaker: You're still supposed to be that.
Speaker: I think that your, your duty as a man is to be the patriarch of your family.
Speaker: And God forbid you're a person who wasn't able to have a family for whatever reason you're just, you're still, you should still participate as a patriarch in your extended family.
Speaker: Then, you know, be the good uncle and the good role model.
Speaker: And I don't think teaching your boys that it's fine to put on this waterworks show for no reason is a good thing.
Speaker: I think it's like you say, it's dishonest and it's weird and you shouldn't feel comfortable just crying all the time.
Speaker: You know, the public said my dad, who I don't have a good relationship with, last year during the whole COVID stuff, he got an infection in his spine and it looked like he was going to die.
Speaker: And I hadn't spoken to the guy in years.
Speaker: And I didn't think that that would affect me.
Speaker: I kind of carried it for a couple of days.
Speaker: And then I, one day I was going out to feed at the end of the night and my wife confronted me about it.
Speaker: And, you know, I ended up burying my head in my hat and walking out the door because I started crying.
Speaker: And it was, uh, I guess I wasn't ready.
Speaker: I wanted to be able to say I was very frustrated because
Speaker: that my father was gonna die without me being able to say goodbye to him and tell him that no matter what has happened in life, I forgive him because I did not want that on his conscience when he was going to meet his maker.
Speaker: So like, I think it's not just that I think that there are no appropriate times to cry or anything.
Speaker: And I like, I don't think there's some strict code.
Speaker: I do like the Ron Swanson quote, but I don't think there has to be some strict code about it.
Speaker: But I don't think that you should just embrace
Speaker: behaving like a woman because I don't think you're a woman and like it bothers me it just really bugs me so as far as masculinity in traditional sense I think one of the most overlooked aspects of that is being the guy that gets up and goes and does his chores you know takes care of the stuff that you're supposed to like not everybody is going to be
Speaker: I've got friends that are UFC fighters.
Speaker: They could beat the crap out of me in a fight.
Speaker: If you've attached your sense of masculinity to your ability to beat everybody up, then that's a really weak form of masculinity.
Speaker: There's always going to be somebody bigger and better, the old cliche.
Speaker: Then we do this thing where, at least culturally it seems, we do this thing where if you'll take your shirt off and lift weights in the streets, somehow that
Speaker: now you're licensed to be the leader of masculinity in the world.
Speaker: And I'm just like, this is really weird to me because I don't, there's a wholeness.
Speaker: My father, who I had almost no relationship with, was the toughest man I'd ever met.
Speaker: When I ran, I helped run a mixed martial arts gym for a little while.
Speaker: And we had a heavyweight in the state of Utah that was a pretty dang good heavyweight.
Speaker: He actually passed away two years ago of cancer, but
Speaker: He was a very good fighter, very tough.
Speaker: He was like kind of a top 10 on the regional scene.
Speaker: Very, very tough guy.
Speaker: And my dad got out of prison, came down to the gym and my dad really lit him up in a sparring session.
Speaker: So he was like a great fighter, you know, a really great fighter, but he was never a man.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: You know, so I just think that there, maybe it's something for everybody to find out, but if you're not taking care of your responsibilities, then you're definitely not embracing any kind of masculinity that I recognize.
Speaker: And this whole, this whole time, like I reject the toxic masculinity thing, but not, not because of the way that you see people do it on Twitter, because I think the entire premise is dumb, you know, it comes from Sapolsky, right?
Speaker: And those
Speaker: that troop of baboons and, you know, it's just like, come on, man.
Speaker: It's like, okay, what, anyway, like what, what unite reunited that tribe, if not toxic masculinity or masculinity rather than, you know, rather now he would say, well, once that, that rude guy was out of the way, they were grooming and, you know, doing all these things again.
Speaker: It's like, okay.
Speaker: So your idea of a good culture is like,
Speaker: orgies and no sense of direction.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like we don't see the world the same if that's what, you know, so it's kind of hard to, I definitely don't, I can't really pin pinpoint it, but I do think that you have to be a whole man.
Speaker: And I think that the whole man is like, I'm not obviously some intellectual, I break horses for a living, but,
Speaker: I think being open to reading and discovery and embracing the journey and then practicing some sense of stoicism and taking care of your body and your responsibilities, I think that's what
Speaker: It means to be masculine, you know, being the dad that you're supposed to be.
Speaker: I kind of hate the word tribe the way it's thrown around, but to be like the leader of your clan or whatever, that's what a man is to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe, you know, subject, one of the things that you confront way early in your life is just the fact that like there are hard limits.
Speaker: Like, you know,
Speaker: I didn't work very hard in the gym in my teens and twenties and like, I'm still getting stronger.
Speaker: Like I still haven't found, you know, what I can do.
Speaker: And, but I am getting to the age where like, it's right around the corner.
Speaker: I'm, I'm, I'm going to find it like real quick.
Speaker: And it's not going to be like dramatically more than what I can do now.
Speaker: And, and so maybe the, the, the mature,
Speaker: masculinity because the, the, the teenage masculinity is sort of like, I'm infinite.
Speaker: I'm bulletproof.
Speaker: Uh, I can, I can do what I want.
Speaker: And, and maybe, maybe this mature masculinity is, I know that I'm not going to be, I don't have infinite strength, but I'm going to be as strong as I can be.
Speaker: I'm going to be as smart as I can be.
Speaker: I'm, you know, I'm, I'm going to find my limits and try to push them.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And that's what I see in the book is there's just tremendous strength.
Speaker: And I know that you like downplay, you know, you were sort of embarrassed to film you running a mile for the first time.
Speaker: But like, whatever the limit is, you pushed it.
Speaker: And then you pushed it further and then you pushed it further.
Speaker: And then you sort of, you summit on that forbidden mountain.
Speaker: And that's sort of the...
Speaker: the apotheosis of the book is, is, is making that summit, um, on your, on your, your busted legs that hurt all the time.
Speaker: And, um, so, so that, that's what, that's my read on it.
Speaker: I think is, is that it's, it's about realizing whatever God gave you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I, that's a good, I think that's, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker: I,
Speaker: I still in my mind think I can ride anything with hair, but I don't, you know, I don't, I don't enter rodeos anymore.
Speaker: And even last year I was going to go ride some more bucking horses.
Speaker: And luckily I got hurt and wasn't able to, but like this year I kind of got over it because if I break a bone, my family doesn't make money.
Speaker: So I think that there is some truth to that maturity aspect, but at the same time, when a horse does bust loose on me,
Speaker: you know, it's not like I don't enjoy it.
Speaker: It's still pretty fun.
Speaker: So, I mean, there's obviously there's, you know, it's not, there's always risk and, and pushing the boundary is about risk, but there's also a recognition that there is a boundary, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Um, you, so one of the things you, you, you hide this in a footnote, um,
Speaker: But you talk about letting go of the idea of conquering nature.
Speaker: And I thought that was so interesting because that seems like something that I would almost be tempted to hold on to.
Speaker: Can you say what you mean by that?
Speaker: Yeah, we...
Speaker: If you maintain that mindset, like everyone kind of does this where it's like, well, I'm going to get to the top of that mountain because I'm going to just to win for whatever reason.
Speaker: I think that you learn or you lose.
Speaker: You lose too much along the way.
Speaker: Like if you're...
Speaker: having goals is good and all of that.
Speaker: And that applies even if you're out hunting or whatever, but what happens when, you know, you've, you've decided in your mind that you're going to get to the top of this Ridge or, you know, just to say that you did, and then let's say you're hunting elk.
Speaker: And then it turns out that you see a bull that's down, you know, a different Valley.
Speaker: And you're like, well, I said, I was going to go up because I'm saying this, cause this is totally me.
Speaker: Well, I said I was gonna go up to the top of that so I'm gonna go up to the top of that, and then I'm gonna go back down to get that bull well it's like why, you know it makes it doesn't make any sense and I think that it there's a there's a real Tower of Babel element to that, where you're like trying to prove that you can conquer these obstacles that
Speaker: that God made.
Speaker: It's almost like you're viewing God like when you played Excitebike, you know, and you made like these obstacles in the way and, you know, once you could conquer those, then, you know, that was a win or whatever.
Speaker: And it's all, I think it's almost like viewing God in that way.
Speaker: I really don't, there's just something about it that I find dirty.
Speaker: Because you can't conquer.
Speaker: Like, that's the one thing you will never conquer for sure is nature.
Speaker: So it's like very Sisyphean, you know.
Speaker: And I just think that you miss too much when you view the world that way.
Speaker: And I do think it's kind of gross because I do think it's kind of a shot across the bow of the Almighty, whether you realize it or not.
Speaker: And I don't like that.
Speaker: No, that makes sense.
Speaker: I also want to get into a little bit about the business side.
Speaker: So we started talking about the cult training business.
Speaker: And then I just found the spiritual element of that so interesting that I didn't get into the business side.
Speaker: Are you okay to do a couple questions about that?
Speaker: So if someone wanted to get into the cult training business for themselves, you know, we have several guys that have some land.
Speaker: And are interested in agriculture and livestock.
Speaker: What would it take for them to get started?
Speaker: People in the industry are going to tell you that it takes a lifetime.
Speaker: And that's true.
Speaker: But you can get good enough to get started.
Speaker: You're going to need help.
Speaker: from someone who actually knows what they're doing, not your neighbor that watched a Buck Granman video, but someone who really knows what they're doing to help you.
Speaker: And you can get good enough to build the kind of horse that most people, most people need, like a horse that they can trust to go up and down a trail.
Speaker: So you want to lean, and this is not me trying to,
Speaker: But we're going to start opening up some opportunities to do that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And if you can spare a week to go spend a week with somebody and then keep in touch, like what we're going to do is try to keep in touch with people and help them via Zoom after they leave, help them keep these horses going.
Speaker: That's a way that you could start because you really need to take a couple of horses from...
Speaker: from nothing to never being ridden to being safe before you can appreciate and do a good job on a real good horse, a real expensive horse, a real valuable horse.
Speaker: You just don't ever want to mess one up.
Speaker: So you want to have help getting going, but you can do it.
Speaker: You absolutely can.
Speaker: Now, you're not going to be Dwight Hill, but you can get good enough.
Speaker: It's a conquerable skill.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's, you're going to have that circular pen.
Speaker: What, as far as equipment, are you going to need besides just the ordinary things you need to, to groom and take care of a horse?
Speaker: A good halter and a flag.
Speaker: You can get a lot done with those two things.
Speaker: You just have to really know what you're doing.
Speaker: And then of course you got to have a good saddle.
Speaker: That's where you're going to spend the most amount of your money, but you can do it with a flag.
Speaker: You can just do it with just a broken horse with a just halter.
Speaker: If once you, like I wouldn't advise, I rope a lot of colts.
Speaker: I don't think I would advise trying to rope them because that takes, that does take a lot more finesse and kind of know how, but yeah, a good halter and a flag and saddle and then time with someone who knows what they're doing.
Speaker: You can get, you can start a horse with just that.
Speaker: So basically, I mean, if you've already got, if you're already doing horses and you've already got the equipment you need for that, you're basically there.
Speaker: It's just the know-how.
Speaker: That's what you need to go get.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the round pen's expensive, but you can, there's, I mean, you can build your own round pen for cheaper too, but having a good quality round pen is worth the money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You've warned on several podcasts and spaces and things that meat prices are about to get crazy.
Speaker: Are you considering branching into anything, any other livestock, cattle, anything like that?
Speaker: We raise a few cattle.
Speaker: The problem is margins are so thin on cattle.
Speaker: And as of right now, the problem is more on the supply side.
Speaker: We're not short of cattle.
Speaker: we're short of tackers and supply issues that way okay and then eventually we might end up short of cattle because a lot of small-time guys are going to take a big hit a friend of mine just told me the other day that he's liquidating 80 percent of his hurt because he can't afford him uh you can't get him slaughtered and can't afford him and he lost a hundred thousand dollars on that deal so yeah it was rough um
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So we will, we probably will add in some, but not this year.
Speaker: We'll probably add a few more head next.
Speaker: Well, we're just going to watch the market and see what happens.
Speaker: And then we'll probably add a few more head of cattle next year.
Speaker: But it's, it's a rough time to be trying to do that right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you got land, maybe it makes sense to just get one for yourself.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, it seems like this is just sort of a broader question.
Speaker: It seems like if, if meat prices go through the roof, you know, and other things with the supply chain, lots of things might start to go off the rails in the near future.
Speaker: Just in general terms, how are you preparing and how would you recommend others sort of get ready for what's coming?
Speaker: I'm going to go shoot a bull elk maybe tomorrow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And butcher that and stick that thing in my freezer.
Speaker: And then I'm gonna go shoot a mule deer.
Speaker: My daughter's gonna shoot a mule deer.
Speaker: And then I'll probably shoot a cow or two if I have to of my own.
Speaker: You know, I know not everybody has those options.
Speaker: But like you say, if you've got land, get something that's almost ready to slaughter and finish it yourself would probably be a really good idea.
Speaker: I've also heard that things like generators, refrigerants, you know, refrigerators, freezers, all of that are maybe going to become difficult.
Speaker: So maybe invest in a couple of good chest freezers if you can afford it.
Speaker: And I hope you had a garden this year that you put up.
Speaker: And, you know, some people are in the inflation part, they're going to be okay.
Speaker: It's just going to maybe suck.
Speaker: But if you're in a position where you've got a garden, learn how to can and put that stuff up and
Speaker: dry whatever you can, you know, do that, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Like basically become a Mormon, essentially.
Speaker: You heard it here first.
Speaker: Like, I mean, it's funny, like the Mormon churches and the Mormon people are the most prepared for this of any people in this country.
Speaker: It's not even close.
Speaker: It's really funny.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, make friends with Mormons.
Speaker: That'll help.
Speaker: Roger that.
Speaker: Well, listen, this has been an awesome conversation.
Speaker: I so appreciate you taking as much time as we've taken.
Speaker: This is a really, this is a really great talk.
Speaker: Braxton McCoy is the author of The Glass Factory, which is a great book that contains
Speaker: Lots of other things that we haven't talked about that is absolutely worth checking out.
Speaker: He's got a limited signed hardcover run that is on its way out the door right now that you can go order at BraxtonMcCoy.com.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: Yes, sir.
Speaker: And if you're interested in what we do here at Exit Group, you can check us out at Patreon.com slash Exit underscore org or on Twitter at Exit underscore org.
Speaker: Thanks a lot, Braxton.
Speaker: It's great to have you.
Speaker: Thanks, Ben.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
