[00:00:00.000] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.260] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:00:20.970] - Chris
I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:00:24.040] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it.
[00:00:28.500] - Chris
Oh, gosh. Well, it's actually a very apropos because I was saying stupid things that I don't fully mean. And Dang near got caught on the recording. And then it was recorded. Sensational, provocative things coming out of my mouth, just purely for the enjoyment of Brandon. And lo and behold, we're recording.
[00:00:48.520] - Brandon
Lo and behold.
[00:00:50.000] - Chris
Yeah. So welcome to the Head, Heart, Boots podcast. Oh, goodness.
[00:00:55.740] - Brandon
Dude, I'm going to level with you, man. Last couple of weeks have been weird. I don't know if this is the go-to, we should all be talking about this or not, but I am not. I am completely unsettled about the Charlie Kirk thing.
[00:01:09.460] - Chris
Yeah, me too, man. I am very much so. I think, actually, you asked me if I was okay, because maybe I seemed a little troubled even when we came into the studio this morning. But I think it's hooked me in a bunch of different ways. I did a post where it started for me, apart from the obvious event. I forget how I I actually heard about it. I think I might even been checking LinkedIn and saw somebody say, Hey, Charlie was just shot. I don't recall exactly. But so, of course, I had that whole experience of watching the video and all of that stuff. But then later on that day, I did a Facebook post because... So, background, I'm not a huge Charlie Kirk fan necessarily. Sure. But I was aware of him, and I got turned on to him from my boys. I have a 17 and 14-year-old boy, and He was one of the ones that they watched along with Mr. Beast. Sure. They really thought it was fun to watch him do the debate videos. The debates. I would sit down and watch it with them pretty regularly. I really found them to also be fun and interesting.
[00:02:18.400] - Chris
Frankly, for my 17 and 14-year-old boys, there's aspects of Charlie Kirk that I think are great role modeling for my boys. It takes a lot of courage to invite debate on college campuses, especially just given the current dynamics in our culture. For sure. Yeah. He's very articulate, he's very smart, he's very well-read. He's all these things. I make a post on Facebook to the effect of, Hey, really sad to see the murder of Charlie Kirk. I've been watching him with my boys, and I find him, and I'd mention some of these virtues that I've identified in him and whatever. I don't agree with everything Charlie Kirk believes and thinks and says. I put that in the Facebook post, and holy cow, Within 48 hours, there's 5,000 views of that Facebook post. My liberal and conservative friends are flooding into this post. Then the comments start to turn pretty aggressive. People really pissed off about who Charlie Kirk was in their view and what he was about or not about. To be honest, it became pretty overwhelming. One of my friends texted me and said, Hey, I hope you're... I hope you know what you signed up for.
[00:03:29.380] - Chris
I hope you're to become Facebook moderator. I wasn't, to be honest. I mean, there was some pretty vicious things that people said towards me and the fact that I would watch Charlie Kirk with my teenage boys. It was interesting. Then over the weekend, it was so bad. I mean, I don't know, bad. I mean, it was a little bit startling, some of the responses I got, and it made me question myself. It made me question, God, have I not watched enough of him? Yeah, sure. Maybe I'm just missing huge chunks of of really sinister and bad behavior on his part and terrible things that he's apparently said and whatnot. As my wife and I were coming back from a little getaway this weekend, we actually put on a playlist of his YouTube videos of the debates and stuff. Didn't cherry-pick, just watched 12, 13 videos while I wasn't watching as I was driving. That's an important note. Yeah, of course you weren't. Listening.
[00:04:25.430] - Brandon
That's insane.
[00:04:26.780] - Chris
I think it just made me more confused as to what exactly people saw in him. I was just like, Man, I would never have interpreted the content of his debates in that way. I think it's just been very uncomfortable. Yeah.
[00:04:42.260] - Brandon
You know what I mean? It's interesting. Our house is a mixed politic house. You and I made this joke for a while that you and I are fiscally conservative and maybe socially a bit more libert. Libertarian.
[00:04:57.280] - Chris
I would say libertarian. I would tend to I would say at this point in my life, I tend to be a live and let live. Hey, if you're not harming me, yourself, or other people, I'm not going to judge and try to control you. That's my feeling.
[00:05:10.720] - Brandon
We have a mix of views in my house and a lot of feelers. We have feelers in our home. And politics have never been a real safe conversation, in general. And it's because I can get a little heated and opinionated and all the things. Anyway, as long and story short, I'm used to our home not making politics front and center. And when I heard about the news, again, I'm going to say something similar that you did is, I don't care if you buy into everything he said. I don't buy in to what 100% of what anybody says to include my own perspectives, because those perspectives have changed over the years as I gain more lived experience. The vision for myself, my family, values, they modify over time as I've even gained life experience. I'm not diehard anybody, really, but I'm open to hearing ideas and hearing other people's perspectives. I think I'm sad. I'm sad, and I think where I'm having some tough time communicating that is it's not necessarily the person. I'm not sad because I had some deep relationship with Charlie Kirk. I watched some of his debates from from time to time.
[00:06:30.620] - Brandon
That's it. I maybe have an hour of logged time. I'm not even vouching for him. I'm not doing any of those things. But there's this weird boundary that got broken. That from my perspective, really, it makes me sad. It's this weird boundary where all of a sudden, we are all capable, and from some groups, feel obligated to dehumanize this American who was killed on a college campus in public in broad daylight. From a human to human experience, none of that seems okay.
[00:07:15.200] - Chris
Reportedly, also with his wife and children in the audience.
[00:07:19.540] - Brandon
His daughter was in the audience. If we just remove every ounce of politics, because I don't really even want this to be a... This is me, we're just talking about what the fuck is going on? And I'm just perplexed. I'm perplexed that we're not all unified as Americans behind the idea that someone was shot in the neck in broad daylight on a public campus. I don't care what your politics are. I don't even care what your politics are. When someone is killed for the things they're saying, that's a scary proposition, dude. It is. That's a scary proposition. I'm just struggling to understand how it's possible that we've come a crossroads as a nation, where because of my political views, I'm capable of making someone not human anymore. I don't understand how we got there, dude. It's hard for me to fathom. I've been deployed overseas. I've been in combat environments, in quotes. I've seen evil. I've seen people that actually hate other human beings. I've seen what they're willing to do and how they talk about other human beings. That's very different than someone having a political opinion. I was listening to just a moment.
[00:08:43.100] - Brandon
I think Jocko did a very I think he did a great job. He put out something not long ago. It's about 25 minutes long. He just basically was drawing a correlation of what evil looks like. When somebody's declared evil, like an enemy, and what that looks like. One of the things that he did in that is he just referenced the idea that because we follow the Geneva Convention, because we're an American army and we care about human life, or American military, and we care about human life, that there's rules and protocols. Just because someone does something that's even documented as evil and violent, we still don't get to go rolling into another country and just kill whoever we want at the drop of it. There's protocols, approvals, chains of command, all these things go into play to take place. To deem an enemy combatant enemy and take the action that was taken against Charlie Kirk during that event. If you just slow down for a minute and think about that, how can we possibly be comfortable with what just happened? I'm struggling to even put words to it because I don't understand how violence is equal to words.
[00:10:02.860] - Chris
I agree. It's troubling, obviously, that somebody felt like they had the right to or the need to do what they did and kill Charlie. But then the reactions of people has been equally disturbing.
[00:10:20.660] - Brandon
I think almost more so, dude, because honestly, for a single individual, okay, to have some mental break of some sort to take the action that's marginal at best. This is a one-of-one thing. It sucks. It's ugly. It's gross. Serial killers, gross. Rapists, gross. Those psychotic events, these people who have a mental break from reality and cross these boundaries, sick. It's unbelievably sad. But it does happen, and it has happened for centuries. The response to the action is what is completely boggling my mind right now.
[00:11:00.000] - Chris
I think it's another example of a cultural shift that we as business owners have seen within our workforce for a while. There's been books written about, and I don't think it's just a millennial thing, not even, but we've talked a little bit about it with regard to working with the millennial and these upcoming generations' workforces. There's a cultural norm that's taken hold where you are responsible for my feelings. Everybody else is responsible for my feelings and the resulting behavior that I do in response to my feelings. That's what it feels like. It feels like... Because a lot of the things that were said about Charlie Kirk, again, regardless of what you think about his spirituality or his political convictions or really anything that he said, even if you think everything he said was gross and terrible and awful and bad policy and everything else. Let's just assume that all of that were true. It feels like the overwhelming attitude between maybe two responses was, Yeah, well, of course, he didn't deserve to die, but- Have you heard the things that he said? Almost as though it's understandable that somebody killed him. It's understandable somebody did this because he was so rude or he was mean-spirited.
[00:12:27.100] - Chris
What were the terms? He's a misogynist. He's a racist, a Nazi, he's a sexist. He's all of these things. And so because he has, quote, those things, based on words he said, supposedly, then he deserved it.
[00:12:41.760] - Brandon
It's okay.
[00:12:42.560] - Chris
He provoked his own violence. He provoked the violence against him. I see this throughout our culture. I do. I see this throughout our culture, not with everybody, but it does feel like there's these tribal norms. And this is one of the norms that is being pushed is that if you offend me or make me feel unsafe or all of these different terms that we use now, well, then I'm entitled to react however I react. It's not my fault. It's because you said this. I think the hard thing and the thing has been so confusing and a little bit destabilizing for me just thinking about this is that nobody made people listen to Charlie Kirk.
[00:13:27.140] - Brandon
You know what I mean? It wasn't like he conferences at gunpoint.
[00:13:31.760] - Chris
No, he's on a public campus. Anybody can step up to the microphone and ask a question. I think so for other leaders. You and I have a podcast. It's not like we have Joe Rogan audience or whatever, but it's like you and I are saying things out here. I think the loud message that was sent in the wake of all of this is you're putting yourself at risk. If you speak honestly about what you think about the ideas that you believe in or are trying to promote, because we're all trying to promote ideas. That's right.
[00:14:06.860] - Brandon
It's life 101.
[00:14:07.940] - Chris
It's what we do. It's what people and humans do is, I think this idea is better than that idea, and we try to get that idea to stick. That's what we do. It's what we do in countries. It's what we do in schools. It's what we do in marriages. It's what we do with our kids. It's all the things, right? I feel like there was this message of, if you say something that is contrary to what I think feel, I have every right to try to silence you by whatever means necessary.
[00:14:35.830] - Brandon
I think what's so... Well, just when you say it out loud, it's clearly disturbing, right?
[00:14:40.500] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:14:40.980] - Brandon
But I think what becomes almost nonsensical Is that, oh, man, this is so hard not to get really political, but isn't that what victimhood really is when it boils down to it? It's this idea, right?
[00:14:55.860] - Chris
Full scale victimhood.
[00:14:57.230] - Brandon
It's full scale victimhood, and it's so one-cited. Just think about how one-directional your mental perspective or mental model has to be when... I'm going to be careful to stay out of certain dynamics, maybe. But the clothes you want to wear, the hair style you want to have, the orientation of life, sex, whatever that you want to take. You can do and say whatever the fuck you want, but when someone else does, now you believe that violence is totally appropriate. How does that make any sense whatsoever? Isn't that what many people groups and all of us are fighting for is equality? We want our opinion to count. We want our voice to be heard. That's normal. That's normal social need. I think that's a viable and important value to prop up and to lean into and to ask and have an expectation around. Yeah, absolutely. But as soon as that becomes a one-way door only, we just have to ask ourselves some really difficult questions. And I think what I'm struggling with in terms of the masses is why is that a complicated concept for us to understand? I'm confused, and I'm not being tongue in cheek.
[00:16:26.580] - Brandon
I'm genuinely confused. Why is it okay for one people group to determine that violence is an inappropriate response, is not liking what someone says? I don't understand that. And that's what gets me burnt. That's what makes me sad in my guts is It's not okay for someone to drive an airplane into a public building and kill 5,000 people, but it's okay for someone to get shot in the neck because their opinion is different than mine. How the fuck is that okay?
[00:16:58.520] - Chris
I think what it is, is we have let go. I'm saying collectively, not all of us, hopefully. We've let go of our responsibility for ourselves.
[00:17:07.960] - Brandon
For ourselves.
[00:17:08.980] - Chris
Right. I was, again, I probably should just get off of Facebook because it creates a lot of Man, I don't even...
[00:17:15.750] - Brandon
Dude, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't even make comments on there because I don't want to deal with the comment. I don't want to hear people say things to me that they would never say to my face.
[00:17:29.200] - Chris
Here's the problem, and here's why I did the post. I think this is important. We have a lot of leaders. You and I have a certain measure of influence with the work that we do. A lot of people listening to this have great influence over their businesses, their community our industry, et cetera. One of the things that motivates me in the wake of all of this is if reasonable people like you and I don't articulate our feelings on these kinds of events and on other important matters, the discourse is dominated by the extremists. Yeah, it's true. The people on the far left or the far right or the far up or the far down or whatever. If reasonable people like us allow ourselves to be so afraid of the consequences that clearly are real, if we allow ourselves to be intimidated by this cultural norm, it's going to continue to get more and more more extreme in the culture that all of us are living in. Because I feel like that's exactly what's happened over the last five years, really five or 10 years, is there's been this cancel culture has emerged. I don't know who exactly it started with, but I think when I first heard that term, it was around this canceling of Jordan Peterson because he was not cool going along with all the different pronouns and different things.
[00:18:56.220] - Chris
They're like, Screw you. He's getting taken off stages and all this of stuff. Regardless of your views on any of the social matters and political matters of the day, this cancel culture, I think, made it so that people can't, if they are not in line with whatever the prevailing thought is on media or social media or whatever, all of a sudden now there's a risk. There's a risk to communicating something that is in opposition to that thing. I think that's a very dangerous path, but it's gotten me to shut up most of the time.
[00:19:30.320] - Brandon
Yeah, it's same. It's like I was even nervous about the idea that we were even going to talk about this topic at all. It's silly. I think there's this crazy... I think it comes back to this idea, man, of I want to live in a country How do I want to say this? A lot of hard, scary, dark things have been experienced by many men and women over the centuries to give Americans century, Americans, the freedom to show up in a public space and voice their opinion without fear of being beheaded or stoned to fucking death. I've seen that world, and there's more parts of the globe that you open your mouth and you may not walk out of that room than there's not. The fact that we have seen men and women sacrifice things, hard things, to give us the to be safe, to provide our perspective and our opinion, and get into a dialog, and have disagreement, that's a powerful world to live in, and it is the backbone of what makes America so fundamentally different and important in the world. What we're doing right now through our own actions is deliberately removing the safety that's so so many people have sacrificed to give us.
[00:21:03.540] - Brandon
I think that's what breaks my heart is that at the end of the day, people that have extreme perspectives, let's say, maybe extreme is not fair. Those that believe certain things, the way they've been in the past, aren't right and they want to see them change, the very idea that they have the ability to show up in a public place and speak that is because...
[00:21:28.780] - Chris
It's uniquely American.
[00:21:30.000] - Brandon
It's uniquely American, and it is a right. It is something that was bled and sacrificed for. I am just very distraught that the people, not they, not them, us, people, the fact that we have the right to do that and to get frustrated with somebody because they're more Christian leaning than I am or get frustrated over the fact that someone wants more religious risk-based decision making and not... That very bedrock thing that gives us the freedom to show up and have a differing perspective, we are going to dismantle that because we make it not safe ourselves. Not from the government's perspective, not from a country perspective.
[00:22:17.400] - Chris
Because of how we treat each other.
[00:22:18.340] - Brandon
Because of how we treat each other. We're going to shit all over the most important freedom that we have. That's really scary. That's a scary thought. I know a lot of people talked about a major, almost like civil war backlash, and obviously we didn't see any of that. In fact, I actually am really proud the way that a lot of people groups are responding to what's going on right now. But I just think at the end of the day, man, it's like, I think why this is so difficult for me to let go of is I'm one of the guys that's been overseas and seen what the rest of the world can look like when real evil is in a seat, when real evil and a real lack of human care exists. It's not Charlie Kirk, Yeah. Okay. Let's just be honest. Look, right, wrong, or indifferent, if you don't like him, cool, I don't, fine. He's not walking up to you and your family with a drill and torturing you until you change your opinion. That actually is happening all around the world right now. He wasn't evil. He said things you don't agree with.
[00:23:23.020] - Brandon
Get the fuck over it.
[00:23:24.280] - Chris
I think that's an important point, too, is that our freedom of speech doesn't just protect nice speech. It doesn't just protect things that we like. It can't. It has to include when people offend me. I remember I grew up in the Rush Limba days, but you know who else? You know what else was front and center, too, was Howard Stern.
[00:23:48.220] - Brandon
Sure. Yeah. Howard Stern. They were almost simultaneously.
[00:23:50.980] - Chris
They were. The same era, like the rise of Rush Limba. I guess in some ways, maybe it's appropriate, right? Rush Limba, super conservative. Then you got Howard Stern over here. It's like a clash of the two. Oh, my goodness. Just absolutely ridiculous. I think in many people's eyes, incredibly offensive and whatever. But you know what? I've never, ever felt the inclination to try to... I've never been part of that crowd that's like, Howard Stern should be fired or censored or whatever. It's like, no. Howard, there's people that listen to him and like him, think he's funny, whatever. They find value in that, just no different than the Rush Limbaughs and the... I don't even know all the prevailing names now, but it's like that is part of what makes America great. It is. You vote with your time and your dollars. That's right. In your attention. If you don't want to give attention to something, you don't have to.
[00:24:50.380] - Brandon
Yeah, that's it. You make decisions with your time and your dollars. I think that's a great point. In my mind, I want my kids, I want grandkids to be able to have their own opinion and their own perspective. Many times I won't agree with it. Sometimes I will.
[00:25:07.330] - Chris
I hope mine feel exactly the same way as I do, and they agree with everything I say.
[00:25:11.310] - Brandon
I mean, hope. I hope for that. You want it, right? But I want more than anything, I want them to be able to stand on their own two feet and have perspective. I want them to feel safe in a country that a lot of people have bled for, to have those opinions and those perspectives. My petition to all of us, left, right, center, I don't care. Ask yourself some hard questions right now. Are you attributing to others the same standard that you would hold yourself to? Are you slowing down long enough to realize that the very thing that gives you the ability to have an opinion and be outspoken, that's a gift. It was earned by somebody. It may not be you, but it was earned by somebody. And what are you doing with that? What are you doing with that freedom?
[00:26:04.840] - Chris
I don't know if there's much more we can do with that.
[00:26:08.080] - Brandon
I don't know. We probably don't need to. Let's close that one up.
[00:26:13.120] - Chris
All right.
[00:26:16.020] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[00:26:20.740] - Chris
If you're enjoying the show, if you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.