Iran May Be Next, But Our Kids Are Already At War. Are They Prepared? - Connor Boyack

0:01 I think we are in a mind war. Like like think of Matteo. He's 18. Yeah. Okay. Let's say he wants to join the military and there's all these foreign military campaigns in the Middle East and elsewhere, right? Let's say he gets sucked into the Israel, Hamas, and Iran and it kind of blows up, right? He says, "Dad, going to war." And uh and you're talking to him and you you begin to realize that the military has not provided him with body armor, a weapon, knowledge of the enemy, rules of engagement. You you would just be insens like there's no way you're going to a battlefield without at a minimum armor and a weapon and knowledge and the rules of engagement, right? And basic training and training and everything, right? You would never send your children into physical combat to a conflict without those basic prerequisites. My contention is that most parents are sending their children into psychological battlefields without armor and weaponry and knowledge and rules of engagement. And so they become casualties. Like you will lose every war you don't even know is being fought if you're just kind of lolly gagging around. I remember playing Halo in college, right? And I was the guy that would just kind of wander out there and you know some sniper would like because I didn't realize like oh my gosh this is actually a battlefield. I just thought I was running to go get that little life you know bonus or whatever.

1:21 If we don't realize the the the gravity of the mind war that we are in all the influences that are coming after our children. These can be not only political influences but corporate influences and social media and everything else. If if we don't realize what the stakes are, then we're already surrendering our children's minds as a casualty in that mind war. So, I see a large part of of our effort is to kind of red pill the parents and say, "Hey, wake up and realize the true nature of the conflict that we're in um and and you know, get the scales off of your eyes. Wake up and and stand up and and speak out and help protect your kids."

1:54 So, I have a couple I'm of I'm of multiple minds on this. So one reaction I have is to that is it sounds almost like a postmodern power struggle almost Hegelian thesis anti-thesis you know sort of Trosky thing like we're in constant revolution we're always in at battle and it is a war and we are sending our kids out to fight bad guys and so we want our kids to be the good guys and we want to fight bad guys. And the part of that to the extent that it's true, the thing that gets me worried when I think like that or when I sort of embrace that feeling that that's what's going on is it starts to paint a world in which there are good people and bad people.

2:49 and that this person here that says I I believe in the collective good and the potential for us to straighten the crooked arrow of man and I have a kind of what I would say utopian view of humanity and so I believe in communism and Marxism and Mauoism we've uh been looking at what's happening in college in high school debates and in high school debate which you would which is like basically the precursor to becoming a Supreme Court justice half of the Supreme Court participated in high debate. They have been taken over by a critical postmodern Marxist explicitly Marxist uh sort of philosophy. So the judges now put on a public list a public forum and these are freshly graduated or current college college kids that are coming back and we're debate kids. They say I am a Leninist Marxist Mauist and if you so much as discuss rightist pro-America pro-Israel pro pro- capitalism arguments, you'll lose. You lose. You you lose the debate. They like don't even know what the concept of debate is. Then they're like, "No, I'm the judge and I declare victory before the argument takes place." So that's evidence for your claim, right? We're in a mind war.

4:06 And yet, don't we want shared humanity? isn't one of the lessons we want to teach our kids that every person has dignity. And even though they might disagree with you about something you care about a lot, even when they they might you might encounter someone who says something that causes you disgust like you get you feel your temperature rise. That to be an adult and to be a good person is to take a deep breath and say, "This person is probably not a mustache twirling villain. They see the world a different way. There's maybe something I can even learn from that. I don't have to hate them.

4:44 Do you see what I'm getting at here? Like I totally see what you're getting. When I when we frame this as a mind war, that is my worry is that we end up in an actual war. So, let me qualify uh what I mean by that because your points are very valid and I I I share them. I when you look at physical war, uh the scops always the psychological warfare always precedes physical warfare. It's the dehumanization of the enemy because you have to condition soldiers, human beings to kill potentially or actually kill fellow human beings. That's hard to do for a lot of people. And so historically what militaries will do uh and governments is they will dehumanize the enemy so as to oh they're dogs, oh they're subhuman, oh they're inferior, oh they're they're vermin so that you can treat them like you know pets. When you look at how the Jews were gassed, they used a pesticide. They called them pests and it was a literal pesticide that was used. So um so I think the the antithesis of that to use the Hegelian term the the solution to that is humanization right if we humanize the other side uh give you an example about a decade ago when uh Iran there was a lot of saber rattling McCain and others bomb bomb bomb Iran and all this right and I watched a documentary that Rick Steves just real just a little sidebar so here was like the everyone loves John McCain because he's like the moderate maverick and he sings bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran, which is like 150 million people. Yeah.

6:06 And Well, that's not that's not that's the moderate guy. Yeah. Which says something. Yeah. And uh and so I I watched a documentary that Rick Steves uh had put together. He's a big travel guy. He writes uh travel um uh you know, guides and things for when you're going on trips. Very famous guy. And he had done these documentaries. And he got permission to go in Iran. and they had someone shadow him the entire time to make sure that he wasn't like filming in inappropriate places or whatever. He had to like get really special permission to do this. So he ends up producing this documentary with amazing things in Iran.

6:38 I mean just like culture and history and museums and art and all this kind of stuff. And he interviews all these people and this is in the when I was watching it at least was in the height of all this conflict and all this saber rattling a decade ago. And he's interviewing these people that's saying we love America, right? We love Americans. Yeah. our governments don't like each other, but we love you guys. And that was one of my early exposures to to this idea of dehumanization because the media and the government, they're always painting things with whole cloth, right? It's today it' be, oh, all Palestinians are dogs and they all want, you know, Israel dead and these generalizations that dehumanize the other side rather than having some nuance, rather than isolating the bad actors to a narrow few. So, so back to the issue when I say we're in a mind war, uh I'll I'll analogize with the Matrix because I think second descripture, the original Matrix, not the sequels, is one of the closest descriptions of uh of what we're dealing with. And the scene, sorry, spoiler alert, but it's been like 20 some odd years since, you know, you had your chance to watch it 96 or 97. 99. 99.

7:42 Okay, that's so uh the scene when it's the woman in the red dress and Neo takes uh Morpheus takes Neo into this simulated Matrix to help him understand what's going on and you know Neo's bumping in all these people as they're walking through this this busy city street and Morpheus says look around you these people these represent the minds of the very people that we're trying to liberate but they will fight you as you try to liberate them from it these people are asleep they're in the matrix and they are resisting any efforts they're part of the system that attacks you. So when in the mind war, what I'm trying to get at is all these people who are our enemies are actually our potential allies. They are fellow humans like us. They're just trapped in a system of belief that leads them to the wrong course of action. There is redemption for them. They can be unplugged from the matrix. So I hesitate to use the kind of war terminology for the very reason that you're talking about. You don't want it to escalate into anything worse, but rather couching it in terms of saying, "Yes, they are the enemy right now because they are espousing these ideas and trying to oppress me or they're trying to, you know, increase my taxes or they're whatever, right? However, their minds can still be changed and I can still find a way to get through to people like that or I can use our interaction and our debate as an opportunity to educate all these other sideline people um out here." So I would hope and and this is kind of good insight for myself to kind of reflect on how do we how do we set the stage for what I believe is a really big ideological battle that we face with all these different seen and unseen forces but in a way that still allows us to see the humanity in others and recognize that we're really on a mission to change their hearts and minds and not simply do battle with them to achieve some small victory while having a bunch of carnage and collateral damage along the way.

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