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0:37
This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:51
Let's get into it. Our guys today, we've got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Clint
0:54
Emerson. So he is a retired Navy SEAL. He spent 20 years in service to the United States of
0:59
America overall, and he is the only SEAL ever inducted into the International Spy Museum. So
1:04
that'll give you a little hint as to what he did after he retired from the Navy. But he continues
1:08
to serve by empowering good people with safety and security skills at home, work and abroad,
1:12
and his services have helped Fortune 500 companies and politicians and celebrities,
1:16
and we get into all that in the show. But also, he is a New York Times bestselling author of
1:21
several books to include 100 Deadly Skills. That's actually an entire series of books and his memoir,
1:26
The Right Kind of Crazy. But he has a new book out called The Rugged Life, The Modern Guide to
1:30
Self-Reliance. And so we talk about that quite a bit in this episode. But the one thing about
1:34
this episode that I felt like was really, really important for him and also for the audience,
1:39
is he gets asked the same like 10 questions in most of his interviews, okay? So he gets asked
1:44
about, you know, why did he want to go into the military? Why did he choose the Navy SEALs? And
1:47
man, was it terrible being cold, wet and sandy on the beach in Coronado 20 something years ago?
1:51
And oh gosh, what was it like when you became a spy? And oh gosh, what was it like when you
1:55
decided to become an author? And oh, you know, about this book and that book. And the one thing
1:58
that I wanted to do in this interview is not that. And so I asked some of those questions,
2:03
but from the beginning, we talked about the situation in Uvaldi because he's got a very,
2:06
very unique perspective because he trains people in these scenarios. We talked about the
2:10
situation in Ukraine. We talked about the situation in Afghanistan. We talked about,
2:14
you know, the changing of standards in the military, how the military seems to be obsessed
2:18
with wokeness now and not with lethality. We get into all that. But then we get into
2:22
the books and we get into his military career and his spy career. But then even towards the
2:25
end of the episode, we got into his faith because when I went on his podcast, it was actually really
2:29
funny. He kept like, give it ribbon me and give me crap like Bible Thumper and all that. And like,
2:33
I wasn't offended at all. I just thought it was funny, right? So that kind of shows you like,
2:37
when you have that comfortability with somebody, you can kind of poke at their worldview and all
2:40
that. And it's not this nefarious thing. It's just kind of like a funny thing, right? But towards
2:44
the end, I was very surprised with his answers whenever I was asking him about his spiritual or
2:49
religious worldview, kind of how he came to that type of worldview and how that manifests in his
2:55
life. So you're going to make sure you stick around till the end of the podcast. I will tell you to
2:58
anyone out there listening with sensitive ears around mild language warning. So Clint just kind
3:01
of talks how he talks. And again, I don't edit for content. But yes, mild language warning on this.
3:06
But guys, it was a great interview. I had a lot of fun and I'm not going to keep him from you any
3:09
longer. So without further ado, let's get into it. Clint Emerson, welcome to a daunted life of man's
3:14
podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Finally, I know we finally made it happen.
3:19
I mean, I came on your show like a year ago and I only got nine out of 10. You know,
3:23
if you guys don't know about his podcast, he asks you all these, you know, crazy scenario-based
3:27
questions and you got to try to get them all right. Or you're an idiot. And so apparently,
3:30
I'm still an idiot. I only got nine out of 10, right? One of these days, we'll see if we can
3:34
correct that error. But as I was kind of talking with you off off air, Clint, there's a lot of
3:38
things that people want to talk about in terms of what you do with violent nomad with your books
3:43
and all that stuff. And don't worry, guys, we're going to get into that red meat here a little bit
3:46
later on the show. But I do want to talk about some things that I think you can give us a unique
3:50
perspective on because as a civilian, as someone that hasn't really had experience in some of
3:54
these areas, I think you'll be able to shed some light in a little bit of a better way than just
3:57
some random pundit on, you know, on Fox News or CNN or somebody on TikTok or something like that.
4:03
The first thing I want to get into is the situation in Yuvaldi, Texas. And so by the time this podcast
4:08
comes out, we will likely get even more information about the shooter, about the situation that
4:12
happened, about the timeline, all of that. So we're only going to be speaking off of what we know to
4:16
be true at this point. But from your perspective, having a long career in in military, also in
4:22
preparedness training, and the stuff that you did for Uncle Sam, that was not military related,
4:26
which we'll get into a little bit later, you know, a lot about such a situational awareness,
4:30
you know, a lot about active shooter situations, you know, a law about law and a lot about law
4:34
enforcement, way more than me and most of the guys in our audience. So I guess just generically,
4:39
what is your overall read of that situation? And then what you've seen kind of coming out of this
4:45
on the back end? Yeah, that's a good question. And it actually relates to my day job. So what
4:51
most people may or may not know is I have a company called Escape the Wolf. And we do crisis
4:56
management planning and preparedness for fortune 500s nonprofits, you know, places of worship and
5:05
along in private schools, mainly because public schools will not put the money into it. So and
5:12
that's that's first first piece of the answer, right? Money. A lot of these school districts and
5:17
superintendents tend to put an emphasis on safety and security, but very rarely put the money towards
5:25
it, which is really the biggest issue. On top of that, every school needs its own individually-based
5:34
assessment so that it can then have customized policies, procedures and best practices. You can't
5:40
just say, hey, run, hide, fight and just throw it and stick it and it applies to every school
5:45
across the country. I mean, a lot of these schools are either a single standing building
5:52
that's it's spread out by, you know, like my daughter's high school is literally a quarter
5:57
mile if you walk it from end to end one building, or you have the more campus-style buildings where
6:03
you've got, you know, multiple buildings, multi-level spread out over, you know, serious acreage. So
6:10
it really depends on the facility in itself and that's why it needs customized policy and procedures.
6:18
Okay, so that's that's the second piece. And that takes once again money, it takes experts to come
6:23
in and look at it and then develop it. And then the most important piece, training, training,
6:28
training, training, right? I mean, these teachers across the board needed on a more regular basis
6:34
than what they were getting. You know, with Uvaldi, I think the reports already come out that there
6:39
was two different active shooter training pieces over two years. So that's that's once a year.
6:45
Once a year is not enough to create good muscle memory, you know, being able to perform under stress
6:52
when you have zero time, increased stress, or you're going to make the right decisions,
6:56
probably not not with the one hour, one day of training or whatever it was they received
7:04
per year. And then a check system that then supports that the procedures and the policy that
7:13
you put together are actually being followed, right? So are all the doors closed once the bell
7:18
ring? Is there one point of entry in and out? Does that point of entry have an auto locking
7:24
mechanism that can only be unlocked from a receptionist desk? Is there a camera there where you have
7:29
to present your driver's license and ensure that only one person that person is coming in and they
7:34
have good reason to be there? There is a lot of great procedures generally speaking that these
7:39
schools can follow. But once again complacency and the reason you need a check system is to
7:47
ensure complacency doesn't kick in. So, you know, we've already heard the reports that a door was
7:52
left open after the bell came off and a lot of other things that, you know, I'm not sitting in
7:59
a right seat to be judging it. But, you know, those complacency overall usually is our biggest enemy.
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8:38
When I think beyond that, I remember growing up in Oklahoma and once a year we would do a fire
8:42
drill and once a year we would do a tornado drill, right? And we never had to put those things in but
8:47
those situations aren't as kinetic as an active shooter situation. So, you would think that you
8:51
would need more training as you were just kind of talking about in those areas. And I ran the math
8:55
Clint on this whenever I talked about it on my show about a week and a half after this went down,
8:59
the $40 billion we sent to Ukraine. And before anyone starts screaming, yes, you can aid what's
9:04
happening in Ukraine. We'll get to Ukraine in a second and you can deal with school shooting and
9:09
school safety here in America. But I ran the math. There's about 130,000. I think these numbers are
9:13
correct. I'm just going off the top of my head. There's 130,000-ish K through 12 schools in America.
9:18
That's private, public, the whole nine yards. If you divide 40 billion by 130,000, that would
9:24
give each school and again, that doesn't make sense because some schools are tiny. Some schools
9:27
are huge campuses, right? Each school would get $308,000 that they could put towards security systems,
9:35
towards refurbing their school to have a single point of entry towards training school resource
9:42
officers, like towards whatever they wanted. Because again, we just like pull $40 billion out of our
9:47
rectums and just send it over to Eastern Europe. Like it was nothing, right? But we just keep hearing
9:52
about how there's no money. There's no money to take care of these situations. So, how do you feel
9:56
about that when you constantly hear these people saying basically attacking the instrument of evil,
10:01
which is in this case was a firearm, right? But they don't want to actually talk about
10:06
fortifying the schools in any way. Yeah, I think it's important to identify what is usually the most
10:13
common problem in security. And that is the human factor. Human factor. You can put up the, I mean,
10:22
on your networks, you can have the best firewalls in the world. You can have the best fence lines
10:27
in your, in the more physical security world, but it's always going to be the human that screws
10:34
it all up, leaving a door open or clicking on that link. That is it 99% of the time. It is a human
10:42
factor issue that ruins the best of security systems out there. So, the money, yes, I agree,
10:49
it needs to be dumped into training, training, training and beating it into everyone at all levels
10:55
within school districts so that it is taken seriously and becomes muscle memory. Let's face it,
11:01
I always kind of relate this stuff to seat belts. There was a time when we didn't have to wear them.
11:06
And then when we did everybody bucked and brawled and like, what the [inaudible], I don't want to do this.
11:11
But now you put it on, you take it off 20 times a day and you don't even remember doing it now,
11:17
right? And that's why you kind of got it. You've got to get teachers to that point as it relates
11:22
through the best practices that they implement within their classroom, within the school hallways,
11:28
you know, and then the lost man drill, right? Like, hey, I've got a kid, when the attack happened,
11:34
one of my students was in the bathroom. Okay, that's something you need to train. You need to have
11:38
the answers for that. And the kids need to know it as well. And it's just unfortunate, it's
11:43
unfortunate across the board that you've actually got to put all this effort towards something that's
11:49
just so freaking violent and stupid, you know, but I agree, you got to take money and put it in the
11:56
right place. And I would love it. This is what I love. I love a politician to come out and say,
12:02
hey, we're going to give you a Scantron, something simple, right? Scantrons, you're going to go in
12:08
and send it to you in the mail, you're going to take your number two pencil. And on that Scantron is
12:12
going to be all the categories in which tax money can go to. And you as an American can bubble in.
12:18
Okay, I want my, I want my, I want Clint's tax money to go. Yeah, defense, education, you know,
12:26
really a domestic column and then a foreign column. Right. And my guess is most Americans with bubble
12:32
in all the domestic stuff first. And if there was any money left over, then yeah, maybe you give
12:38
some to the international side, depending on what that is. But, you know, and for me, it would just
12:45
be peace of mind. Even if they threw the damn Scantrons in the [inaudible] trash, I would, you know,
12:50
fine. So be it. But at least I feel like I'm getting used where my money goes. It would be,
12:55
that would be an overwhelming, great feeling. Yeah. And that's where, you know, some Piffy,
13:00
you know, Dan Crenshaw was talking about this, he was talking about, hey, guys, can we help you
13:04
crane and take care of the southern border? Can we help you crane and, you know, do the baby,
13:08
baby formula shortage? And I felt like he missed the point. The point was not that we don't want
13:13
to do both that. We don't want to support both. But to the mom, like my wife, we have a three-month-old
13:18
right now. And luckily, you know, she's able to, like, thank God she's able to breastfeed. But
13:22
what if she wasn't? Like, because we had a friend this morning that literally came over to our house
13:25
and got over a hundred ounces of breast milk because she can't find the formula that she needs. And
13:30
she's waiting on it to get shipped over from Europe. And so it's the domestic concern versus
13:34
the international concern because it's really, really hard to care about the plight of Ukrainians
13:38
when we've got all the stuff going on here. One thing I wanted to say on this before we move on
13:41
other subjects, at my daycare that I have our kids in, which you don't need to know where my kids
13:47
are because I don't want anybody to know where my kids are right now. But they, the week of the
13:51
U of all the shooting, I showed up to the school about a half hour early to pick them up because
13:55
I need to go do something. I need to go ahead and grab them. And I walk up to the door that's
13:59
supposed to be locked. And I just opened it. It was completely unlocked. So I walk in,
14:03
I'm just walking around for a little bit. Here's classrooms to my right, classrooms to my left.
14:08
Anyway, so obviously it could have been an issue. You know, all that I let the person that runs
14:12
the school. Now I say, Hey, I showed up today about 30 minutes early unplanned. The door was
14:17
unlocked. Can you please explain this to me? And can you please explain to me how you will ensure
14:20
that this will not happen in the future? Obviously considering what we just saw happen in South Texas.
14:25
She's like, Oh my gosh, we did the soccer thing today. And we were in and out all day. And I guess
14:29
it just got left open. No big deal. Well, yesterday, Clint, I go about it, you know, about 40 minutes
14:34
early for the same reason to pick my kid up. And I'm like, surely the store is going to be locked.
14:37
And I walk in, open the door, nothing. Now this time, I decided to make a little bit of an experiment.
14:43
I just walked around for a few minutes before I let anyone know I was there. And I was concealed
14:48
carrying at the time. And it's like, what if I wasn't a good guy? What if I was a bad guy? I had,
14:53
I had time to barricade any other exits and do whatever I wanted to those children. So that's my
14:59
encouragement. I'm sure you would echo this. Parents, check your kids security yourself.
15:04
Show up unannounced at their school. Show up unannounced at their daycare.
15:09
Because that's my first question at any daycare we go to is the security protocol. But
15:13
you're right. The locks are great. When people lock the damn door. But if they don't lock the
15:19
door, it doesn't matter. So I did just want to kind of throw that in there. Because yes,
15:22
the human element is incredibly important. And we need to put an emphasis on training.
15:26
Now, I do want to go and talk about Ukraine a little bit, Clint, because we've talked about
15:30
that a lot here. You know, obviously it's a very kinetic situation. It's changing a lot. It's hard
15:34
to know if the information we're getting is real, because it could be propaganda from this side or
15:38
that side. We all know that Ukraine's a deeply corrupt country. Some people think we're sending
15:42
money over there just so we can launder it back here. But again, I'm not Alex Jones. I'm me. So
15:47
I can't make that connection. But from your perspective, knowing what you know about protecting this
15:51
homeland and all that, this overwhelming focus on what's happening in Ukraine, is there a direct
15:57
linkage to protecting us here in this homeland? Do you think that we should be flying Ukrainian flags
16:03
and supporting them in the way that we do? Because, you know, I tend to say, yes, we should be
16:08
supporting them. But to the detriment of what else is kind of my question, what are your thoughts on
16:13
what's happening over there? Yeah, it's a double ledge sword. I mean, you look at it from one angle.
16:18
Yes, it's taxpayer dollars going and supporting, you know, another country's issues and cause. And
16:24
we tend to do that, right? America's always been the police of the world. And, you know, there was
16:28
times even when I was serving, I'd find myself in a country doing something wazoo and crazy and
16:34
going, why the hell am I doing this? But at the end of the day, there's usually a greater good to it.
16:39
So the beauty of a proxy war, which is what we're in right now, right? We're using
16:45
US technology and military arsenal against the Russians is that this is a very rare opportunity
16:51
to learn everything we need to know on how Russia responds, how Russia fights, Russia's technology,
17:00
Russian armor, Russian ordinance, right? We're collecting all that, trust me. So proxy war gives
17:08
you the playbook of an adversary that you're not fighting yet. And so that's why we do take
17:17
advantage of these moments so that we can collect, collect, collect, and then apply that to creating
17:25
new technologies, better TTPs, you know, and have a better strategic playbook if and when we do have
17:34
to go toe to toe with Russia. And it's the only good reason to get ourselves into these types of
17:43
scenarios is is so that we can then keep a tab in the pulse of our adversaries
17:50
through these through these proxy wars. That's really the best answer I've got for you. And that's
17:56
how I reason it and I and the only reason I would support it because it does give us this huge
18:04
advantage in the future if we ever have to go head to head. Absolutely. And as of the recording
18:10
this podcast, it looks like, you know, the conflict over there might be turning in Russia's favor.
18:14
We don't exactly know that. Of course, the entire international community was just absolutely shocked
18:19
that they just didn't get ran over immediately. So it's an incredible thing that they've held out
18:24
this long. But just one more quick question on this. And again, you're not like reporting to be
18:28
some sort of like, you know, world policy expert or any of those types of things. But I am interested
18:32
because we are seeing these reports and these ideas that Vladimir Putin might be ill.
18:36
And here we are. We've got kind of this currently failed military campaign. Generals are dying in
18:41
the field like they're losing tons of planes and tons of people and all that. But they do have a
18:45
lot more to kind of wait this thing out. One of my concerns that I feel like no one is talking about
18:49
is let's say Putin dies at some point in the next few months, maybe in the middle of this conflict,
18:53
maybe after they have a little bit more success, the power vacuum that would be created in Russia
18:59
by by a dictator dying. That's the thing that scares me a little bit more than the dictator
19:04
being in power. I'm concerned about both, but I'm a little bit more concerned about the vacuum.
19:09
Do you have any sense of what would happen if something were to happen to Vladimir Putin?
19:12
I don't have anything specific, but it's a great point. And it's something that is always
19:18
concerning. It was it was a concern when we went into Iraq and you take down someone like Saddam
19:23
and his two his two sons are far worse than he ever was. And so then it's like it's a domino
19:30
effect of targets that you ultimately have to take out until you get to the until you get to a
19:35
point where you can literally put in a government that will hopefully be more democratic than
19:41
communist and and hope for the best like we've done a couple of times now. So if Putin went down
19:49
which, you know, at the strategic national level, you know, this stuff is already looked at that
19:55
playbook is already built. And they already know who's going to take his spot. They already know
20:00
how they would deal with it. I mean, these are these are things that, you know, our intelligence
20:05
agencies have, you know, most of the time a 50 year, sometimes a hundred year plan, right? DoD
20:12
looks at things at six months. Okay, we want to drop the hammer and squash everything in a six-month
20:17
deployment. Whereas your intelligence agencies tend to have this more long-term strategic look,
20:24
50 to 100 years, which forces them to know that how many they probably have racked and stacked all
20:32
of the leaders that would come up and potentially take Putin's place. So I do have faith in those
20:39
systems out there just from my own personal experience, you know, roaming those hallways at
20:44
the different intelligence agencies. Excellent. So I'm glad to have that perspective. And it does
20:48
give me a little bit of, even though I do have this generalized distress for people that purport
20:54
to be experts and then they're seemingly shocked by the outcome of something. But I do appreciate
20:58
that perspective. We should probably go ahead and back into talking about Afghanistan as well.
21:02
So here we are about a year ago, the pullout from Afghanistan. I've heard a lot of different
21:06
opinions from people that have served in the military. And you know, you obviously served in
21:11
the Middle East, you were a seal, you did some, you know, very kinetic things for the government
21:14
thereafter. But obviously, as a civilian, I look at it as a tremendous failure, as a tremendous
21:20
missed opportunity, as one of those opportunities to where, hey, we have thousands and thousands of
21:25
troops stationed all over the place, all over the globe that are in an active war zone. And I think
21:30
it would have been hard pressed for you to say that what was currently happening in Afghanistan
21:33
at the time of our pullout was an active war zone where we were having tons of, you know, American
21:38
soldiers lost on a regular basis. But as somebody that has served as somebody that I'm assuming has
21:42
lost men, you know, in Afghanistan, that spilled blood in Afghanistan, what are your overall thoughts
21:48
on what happened there in terms of our pullout? But then now what we're seeing in terms of the,
21:52
you know, impending humanitarian crisis there, not just with, you know, women and girls losing
21:56
their rights, but just with a terrorist organization like the Taliban running an entire country in the
22:01
Middle East. Yeah, that's a complicated, you know, question, as you know, number one, what we learn
22:10
from World War two and World War, World War one and World War two is that, you know, in order for
22:15
a democracy to really stick, you have to look at the generation that's not born yet, right? You need
22:24
a generation of kids to see, feel and smell democracy, the entire existence of their life by the time
22:34
they hit adulthood. That's when you're just now starting to get democracy to stick, right? Think
22:41
about it in terms of like social media, right? We just now have what is it? Generation X or Z or
22:47
whatever the hell they call themselves is the first generation to actually be born into social
22:52
media and still, you know, that's all they know, right? They thought that it's existed forever for
22:58
the most part, right? That's what you have to do to a certain degree if you want democracy to stick.
23:05
And so pulling out early, yeah, I've got my reservations about that because going back to World
23:13
War one, World War two, we have stayed in Europe, we are still in Europe, and people don't like it
23:18
calling it an occupancy, and it was a different situation blah, blah, blah, but at the end of the
23:23
day, we were able to get democracy to stick in certain variations depending on the countries in
23:30
which we have bases. Plus, it also gives us that strategic capability, right? Having airplanes,
23:37
helicopters, and men in different areas of the globe is a good thing for America.
23:43
So, you know, strategy-wise, we probably should have stayed, and then you sink that flag,
23:51
and you never pull it out of the ground, and you try to get democracy to stick, starting with that
23:56
unborn generation, and then staying in for the long haul. As far as the pull out, you know what,
24:03
there wasn't going to be a good situation on that. You know, we knew two years prior that we were
24:10
going to start rolling all of those forces out, because it takes time. It's not something you do
24:14
overnight, and so that's what was happening, right? We were pulling them out over a period of two
24:20
years, and we get towards a tail end, and it wasn't until the tail end, the [inaudible] media decides to
24:26
start pointing cameras at it, and giving it all this unnecessary attention, and when you do that,
24:34
anytime the media concentrates on that one thing, then of course, right? Bad guys love cameras.
24:41
We know that, so you put them out there, you give it a global stage, then yeah, you're going to have
24:49
a [inaudible] up situation. At that time, too, it's not going to matter if it was a Republican or a
24:53
Democrat or whoever. The media puts their cameras on something, then you're asking for trouble.
24:58
And I think the thing that we're going to see, Clint, is we don't really know the ramifications of
25:03
this, and we maybe won't know it for years. Same thing with you, Volley, same thing with Ukraine.
25:07
Like the body count in you, Volley is going to be more than 21. It became more than 21 within two
25:11
days of this whenever one of the teachers' husbands had a heart attack, so the body count was about 22.
25:15
But some of these kids, they literally watched their best friends get executed right next to them.
25:20
Like there was a grandfather that talked about his grandson, who watched his best friend get
25:24
executed, and the kid hadn't set a word for a week. He's completely in shock that he can't even
25:29
verbalize anything whatsoever. And so I think we're going to see that as we get further away from
25:34
that situation in Afghanistan, obviously hindsight is 2020, and you can't connect the dots looking
25:38
forward only looking backward. But I think that that entire area is going to be in a world of hurt,
25:42
and I think that we're going to look back on the summer of 2021 and say that is when a lot of
25:47
this nonsense started, because we will have that hindsight. I do also want to get your perspective,
25:52
Clint, on the changes that are happening within our United States military. So again, as a civilian,
25:58
not being in the military, I'm only going by what I can see and what people in the military are telling
26:03
me. So whenever I get a guy from the Air Force that's sending me an email about, hey, my people
26:09
are telling me that I have to put my pronouns in my email bio, like what should I do? And they're
26:14
asking me, I'm like, I'm a radio show host, I'm a podcast. I was like, well, what the hell do you
26:17
mean? Like, I can't answer that question for you. But kind of the wokeness, some of this marks us
26:22
ideology, the LGBTQ stuff, the United States Marines posting that thing on to start, you know,
26:27
pride month with, you know, instead of, you know, bullets on the helmet, they were like rainbow
26:30
bullets, they look like rainbow crayons, kind of playing into the whole societal thing,
26:34
the lowering of standards for the military, so that trans people can be included or so that
26:40
women can be included in more, you know, spec ops, more the spec ops community, those types of
26:44
things, even though if those women go down range, it'll not only be horrible for them will be
26:49
horrible for everybody else, if anything were to go wrong. So I want to get your perspective,
26:53
because again, I didn't go through any of these trainings. I didn't go through any of these
26:56
workups. I didn't go through any of these deployments. I have not seen the standards in action.
27:00
I just know as an athlete, the fundamental and biological and physical differences between me and
27:05
the opposite sex. And I also know that if I'm worried about my pronouns and my bio, I may not
27:10
be worried about the bullet that has my name on it. So just take that wherever you want to go with
27:13
it. Yeah, it's a I'm just glad I retired when I did. Okay. Number one. The other piece of that is
27:25
roughly what is it? Six to seven percent of the entire armed forces. I think are queer, gay,
27:34
lesbian, whatever, whatever the name they give themselves. That's a really small percentage
27:40
to then make such a big deal out of it. You know, and that's that's kind of where it's I don't,
27:47
that's where I have a problem with it. You know, it's it's there's there's more people that ride
27:52
motorcycles, for example, in the military than there are that give themselves a label of queer,
27:57
lesbian or gay. But yet we don't have a full on national motorcycle day in the military.
28:02
And there's a lot of different, you know, lifestyles that military members choose
28:10
where you just I don't think it's necessary to make a day or a big deal of it or to feel like
28:18
the political pressure or the cultural pressure to somehow include yourself into the pride stuff.
28:24
I just I think the military is the one place where they don't have to pick aside the military is a
28:32
non-political organization. It is you do what you're told, you go do it, you do as best job you can,
28:39
and then you wait for the next order. And that's the way it always has been. And I think as soon
28:43
as you start to bend that piece that throw in politics into the military, then you're gonna find
28:50
yourself with a whole lot of other bigger issues later where people start to question decisions and
28:57
orders. And, you know, that it's the military is not a democracy. You are told what you do,
29:04
you volunteer to be told what to do. And if you don't like that, then when your contract's up,
29:10
you can leave. That's that's the other. There's always an exit. So, you know, I think that certain
29:16
ranks within the military would be nice if they just held their ground and say, no, we're not
29:20
doing this political horse [inaudible] just to satisfy, you know, a cultural, you know, pressure. I just
29:27
don't think it's necessary. I think the military should be able to, you know, just do what they're
29:32
doing without political influence the way that the way that it's been going. It doesn't look like
29:36
that's that you, as soon as you crack the seal, you know, the military is now going to be,
29:41
you know, put into different positions now where they've got to make decisions that they just
29:46
shouldn't have to make. When I remember even just five years ago thinking, okay, all this woke
29:51
nonsense in this leftward drift, it's never going to hit big corporate business. It's, you know,
29:56
and it's never going to hit the military. And then here we are in 2022 and we're sitting in the
30:00
middle of a recording this during pride month. And it's just like everybody is trying to outpride
30:04
one another and it becomes a social contagion. But also it's like as a city, I think the military
30:09
should be obsessed with lethality. But here we are, we're obsessed with making sure we don't offend
30:14
anybody. The military, like the butt kicking element of the United States government is concerned
30:20
about offending somebody by using the wrong pronouns. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I
30:24
hope cooler heads will prevail, but I don't exactly have a whole lot of hope that that is going to
30:29
happen. But I do want to kind of go back and I appreciate letting us kind of get into all those
30:32
other different areas. We do need to kind of reverse back to the very beginning, because every
30:35
time I talk to somebody that served in the military, as someone myself that did not serve, that is
30:39
kind of like a gaping hole that I see in my past, it's just not the way that my life, you know,
30:43
wince, not the way, you know, that God, you know, put out for me. But you decided that you
30:47
wanted to go towards military service, you decided to go towards the Navy and you decided to go
30:51
toward the seals. So in a nutshell, what kind of sense you in that direction?
30:54
It's kind of multi-pronged. I grew up in Saudi, right? Most extreme religious place you could ever
31:01
grow up. And I was there from the second grade all the way to high school. So going back to when
31:06
you talk about the kids of Uvaldi, and where it's yet to see how this will affect them,
31:12
that what you said applies directly to me. As a kid growing up in Saudi and being treated like
31:21
crap by Saudis, I grew up saying, hey, I want to come back and kill these [inaudible] someday.
31:28
And I'm an American. And remember, that's the child in me that was talking, right? Sure. And a
31:35
child that has opportunity, right? You can grow up to be a lawyer, a doctor, I can, you know, in
31:40
America, you can do whatever you want. But yet, that just, that childhood kept me on a path, you know,
31:48
and that pathway to joining the military. And of course, I had influences along the way where
31:54
I met a guy in the Frankfurt airport, you know, Saudi doesn't allow anything owned by Jews,
32:01
invented by Jews, you know, into their country. So Coca-Cola happens to be one of those products
32:07
that was not allowed into Saudi for quite some time. And so anytime we get out of Saudi, the first
32:13
thing I'd do is I, you know, 10-year-old, 11-year-old, 12-year-old Clint wanted a [inaudible] coke, you
32:18
know. And so I would go, went to the bar at Frankfurt airport, order a coke, there's a guy sitting there,
32:24
he's got tattoos, he looks cool, ask him what he, you know, as a curious kid, I ask him, you know,
32:28
what he did. Long story short, I finally get out of him that he was a seal and he tells me some cool
32:34
stories. And that, that definitely helped light the fire, like, oh, I want to do what that guy does,
32:40
right? And then back then, that's the 80s, you know, there was nothing about seals in the 80s,
32:47
much less than the 90s when I joined. So it was a leap of faith. And I just had a passion for it.
32:54
I tell people all the time, whatever it is you choose to do in life, make sure you're passionate
32:58
about it. Because there will be, you know, obstacles and failures and letdowns along the way. And
33:05
it's the passion that allows you to just pursue and keep chasing it and win, you know. And if you're
33:11
not passionate about then all of those things that get in your way will definitely defeat you.
33:16
So anyway, I ended up in Bud's class 203, you know, went through the, you know, cold, wet and
33:24
sandy thing that we're talking about, like every other seal. And, you know, you get through the
33:29
misery with some buddies, you make great friends, you end up end up at seal team three, which focus
33:35
solely on the Middle East. So there you go, my childhood dream, like, you know, hey, look at what
33:42
happened. So, you know, and then the grown up version of Clint goes back to these different
33:48
cultures and you realize culture is culture, you know, and as long as they're not trying to sell
33:53
their culture to us over here, then I'm good to go, you know, Saudi can do whatever the hell they
33:58
want, just like any other country can. But don't think for a second that I'm going to abide by any
34:04
of its influences right here in America, you know. So I've run into some folks, you know, from here
34:10
in Texas from that side of the world. And I've got a short fuse with those [inaudible], you know, like,
34:15
nope, I'm not putting up with this [inaudible]. You think you're going to cut in front of me in line or do
34:18
anything? I'm the first guy that's going to tell you to go to the back, you know, because they think,
34:23
you know, they have this certain cultural hierarchy, especially Saudi men, they think through at the
34:29
top of the food chain. And I'm one of those that sets them straight every time, like, I have an
34:33
opportunity. So there you go. I, from childhood to the SEAL teams, you know, but key takeaway here is
34:42
those kids and you've already definitely have had a very impressionable moment in their life.
34:47
And it can take them the legal way or the not so legal way in life. I chose to go the legal way
34:54
of, you know, following through that childhood statement. You know what I mean? So,
35:01
yeah, I've actually, no, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I actually have talked to several people that
35:06
were kind of in similar positions to you, whether they were in the spec ops community, you know,
35:09
dev group or different things like that. And it's like, you know, if I didn't do this, I would just
35:12
be a probably a really good criminal, you know, or I would be in prison or dead because you kind of
35:16
have that bend. And so you have to kind of filter it. But I do want to say something about that you
35:20
talked about passion. So I constantly get asked by people is like, how do you remain so passionate
35:24
about filling the blank? Or how do you remain so, you know, motivated about exercise or something
35:28
like that? I was like, it's because I'm not passionate or motivated. I'm disciplined. And so I'm sure
35:32
you would cosign that statement to where it's like, that passion has to lead to something,
35:36
because you know, a lot of people, because I know a lot of people that are really, really passionate
35:39
and their energy is directed nowhere in particular, right? It's only whenever they get that disciplined
35:45
approach because I'm not I was not passionate about going and working out in my garage when
35:49
it's 100 degrees in Oklahoma this morning. But it was required of me because of discipline. Same
35:54
thing with these these kids that we just talked about is having a disciplined approach to how they're
35:58
going to build a life around their decisions makes it very, very important. So I did want
36:02
to kind of throw that in there as well. And so for you, apparently, you didn't get enough
36:07
of serving Uncle Sam whenever you were in the seals, you decided that you still want to do
36:11
some kinetic work, I guess you could say, but you were going to be doing it on behalf of Uncle
36:16
Sam, but just outside of the SEAL teams. And so talk a little bit about after you left the SEAL
36:20
teams, kind of what you were doing in to still serve the United States of America.
36:25
Yeah, I, you know, as it says in the bio, I say with the classified parameters or unclassified
36:33
parameters of, you know, so I had the opportunity while I was in to get really good at what you
36:39
call CMOE, which is clandestine methods of entry, you know, sneaking into, you know, targets. And
36:44
that can be, you know, vehicles, vessels, containers, structures, you name it. So you get a very
36:50
in depth knowledge of locks and alarms and all that kind of thing. And, you know, I built a little
36:56
bit of a reputation around that in a very small group, you know, and had a lot of, you know,
37:03
successes. And then anyway, that, that allowed me to then when I retired out of a Navy to continue
37:11
that line of work for different agencies that, you know, required it. And, you know, I did that
37:19
for a while. And now I kind of let most of that stuff go and concentrate mainly on the things I
37:26
have going. And as you know, you know, if you, if you wear too many hats, then you're really
37:30
not good at anything. So I'm one of those that has to, I'll say yes to everything, you know,
37:35
like a hooker. And then I have to kind of go, Oh, wait a minute. I'm not, I need to, I need to,
37:39
I need to, you know, focus on this, this and this, you know, that's about that, that maxes me out.
37:44
Because as soon as you obviously put too many things on your plate, things start to fall off,
37:48
and then you're not good at anything at all. So, and I felt like, Hey, I've done 20 plus years,
37:54
you know, providing to my, to the government and for the greater good of America. And my daughter
38:02
definitely became the number one, number one priority in my life. And it's been that way for
38:09
quite some time now. And, you know, you bring up discipline. One of the things I've been talking
38:14
about lately, especially as we approach Father's Day, you know, discipline is the number one
38:22
trait skill characteristic you should give your kids. And it starts with saying no.
38:28
And you should say no until they can say no to themselves. And once they start saying no to
38:35
themselves, and you have just achieved self discipline with your children. And that is the best thing
38:41
you can give them because that is the one tool that will drive them to [inaudible] success, no matter
38:48
what they pick in life is self discipline. And the ability to say no to themselves is so important.
38:54
And unfortunately, you got a lot of parents that just aren't parenting these days. So there you go.
38:59
Well, because they're so concerned about being their kid's friend, they want their kid to like
39:02
them and all that. And I grew up with a couple of parents that couldn't have given less of a care
39:08
about whether or not I thought they were my friend. There was a discipline approach to what we were
39:12
doing. And we knew that we knew the score, we knew the consequences, and we knew the expectations.
39:16
People think this is extreme when I tell them this. But if I came home with bees on my report card
39:20
in a class where I was capable of an A, I was grounded, right? There was no ithans or buts,
39:25
there was no, oh, let's celebrate the five age you got and not the B. The only B I never got in
39:30
trouble for was AP chemistry, because I escaped with the B in that class. My parents knew it,
39:36
so they let me slide on it, right? But it's just knowing the score and knowing the ramifications
39:40
that really helps as we kind of kind of move forward. You know what I want to actually ask you
39:45
about that, because you say you have a daughter, you don't have a son? No. Okay, but I'm sure that
39:50
you could still speak to this because you were a son at one point, you know a lot of people that
39:54
have sons. In our culture, we do not usher young men into manhood anymore. Now there are small,
40:02
religious sex here or there that will do that. But we don't tell our young men, hey, you are a man
40:09
now because of this reason, this reason, and this reason. Here are the things in your personality
40:13
that I think are going to be great about you. Here is also the things that I think that you're
40:17
going to struggle with. Also, here are the expectations on who you are to be in this community now. We
40:22
don't do it. But now that I have two sons, I have a two year old and a three year old. I'm obsessed
40:27
with rights of passage. I'm obsessed with my boys knowing that they can be a man if they do these
40:32
things. They will be expected to be able to do these things as they move forward, which I think
40:35
dovetails into your books, which we'll talk about here more here in a second. But for me,
40:39
I'm so obsessed with that concept because if they don't know, they will self actualize. They will
40:45
self identify as a man after they buy their first vehicle or have sex for the first time or move
40:51
away from home or fill in the blank. They will figure it out for themselves. So what's your overall
40:56
thought process on that? Again, I know you're a father of a daughter and it's slightly different.
41:00
But for fathers with sons about how we can usher them in to a greater understanding of what is
41:04
expected to be a modern man. Yeah, no, you're right. I have a daughter, but I did raise my little
41:11
brother. We're 11 years apart. So my dad passed away early on, way too early. And so I ended up
41:19
carrying the torch for him while I was in the SEAL teams. And so raising my brother, I had a lot
41:26
of lessons learned there because I was still a kid as well. I'm in my 20s raising a high school
41:35
kid basically is what I would have pulled it down to. And I agree. I think for me, I had to,
41:44
frankly, I had to kick his ass a whole bunch of times in order for him to see the light.
41:50
And now he too works for the government and does great things. But if it wasn't for
41:58
kicking, literally kicking his ass so that he would be more disciplined in life,
42:03
he could have gone down the wrong path 100 different times. And I feel like he saw what I was doing
42:12
in the military. And as he grew up and got older, he started to then really understand the value of
42:19
discipline and the other things we've been talking about. And then started putting himself through
42:25
different rights of passage. So he became an ultra runner. I mean, this kid was running 100
42:29
mile plus races on a regular basis, and starting and finishing. And he started, and then of course
42:38
college, right? I mean, he went to school. He got his degree from George Washington University there
42:46
in DC. And so he was able to pull off different things. But if it probably hadn't been for a little
42:52
bit of the ass weapons and then me staying on his ass, and then just letting him observe, you know,
42:58
my life, then who knows, right? And I think, you know, every boy needs that every boy needs their dad,
43:05
every boy needs discipline, you know, and every boy needs their energy to be directed in the right
43:12
direction. I think that's an important point. And whether you set out to do this or not, I think
43:17
your career as an author has really helped this in a lot of ways. So after you left the military
43:22
and after you left service to United States, you did what no other Navy SEAL has done in the history
43:27
of history. And that is you wrote a book and became a selling author. So the first book, at least
43:32
that I know it was 100 deadly skills. This is an amazing, fantastic book. And that went into, you
43:37
know, the survival edition, which I have right here. But there's a puzzle edition, there's an
43:40
activity book, there's a combat edition, which I don't have, I need to fix that. But then you had
43:44
your memoir, the right kind of crazy and all that. But then we have your new book, which I'll get to
43:48
here in just a second. And so it's interesting that you decide to kind of go that route.
43:51
I was talking to a guy here recently. So he has a Christian organization that, you know,
43:56
AIDS fathers and sons, as they develop their relationships and helps kind of usher young men
44:01
in demand hood. And he asked me because he knew you were coming on my show, I was like,
44:04
which of these books do you think, you know, would be appropriate for our kids? And I was like,
44:09
well, the 100 deadly skills one probably not best for seven, eight, nine year old boys.
44:13
But the survival edition, I said absolutely buy this book and apply that because one thing that a
44:19
lot of these young boys aren't learning how to do is just about everything that's in this book,
44:24
right? Everything that's in all these books. Because, well, I guess here's my first question
44:28
on these books. So I'm calling you out here. There's so much stuff in all these books,
44:31
so much stuff to know. Like, do you know how to do all these things? Like, I'm just going to flip
44:35
to ran a page. All right. Number 67, make an improvised explosive device. Keep going. Number 84,
44:42
discretely clear a flooded scuba mask. Like, do you know how to do all this? This seems insane.
44:46
You know, believe it or not, in the first couple of books, yeah, because I was digging into personal
44:53
experience as a military guy, as a little bit of being a seal, but there's really not
45:01
some spills in there that relate directly to being a Navy Seal. You know, everybody thinks that, but
45:06
it's just not the case. You know, I grew up when I got back from Saudi, I landed in the United States.
45:14
One, I'd been doing, I was an avid boy scout over in the Middle East. It was like the only thing to do,
45:20
along with scuba diving. And then I had a fascination for magic, right? And so I got back to the states.
45:27
I continued my scuba quals. I continued the boy scouts. And then I started, that was when I started
45:33
my first company doing 20 minutes of magic for 50 bucks. I'd wear a black roller shirt jeans,
45:39
and I had my little suitcase of sleight-of-hand tricks. And I was booked all [inaudible] weekend,
45:45
right, in Plano, Texas. And so between, what people don't get is a lot of times, magic really holds
45:55
so much value in how to distract and then do something right in front of somebody's face
46:01
without the members seeing it. And you apply a lot of that historical stuff into those books
46:08
in different forms or fashion. You know, so, and also, you know, learning from what criminal,
46:13
there's a lot of criminal tricks in these books, right? I feel it's very important for people to know
46:20
what do the bad guys do? Because once you know their tactics, then their tactics become useless,
46:25
right? So, depending on the book, depending on the skills, most of that stuff, I either learned it at
46:33
some point, was familiar with it, or I heard about it, I went and researched it, you know,
46:38
obviously make it digestible, put the illustrations and make it easy for people to get up off the couch
46:43
and go do it, which is really the goal. And, you know, I hate the fact that, yeah, Navy SEALs have
46:48
written a lot of books. But for me, it's not about the book as much as it is giving you skills, right?
46:53
I just, it just happens to be a very successful way to deliver the information happens to be in
46:59
the form of a book. And then also, you know, the different videos I've done for like 5/11
47:03
and stuff like that that you see out there. But yes, skills, skills, skills, because I feel like
47:09
that's just one of those things that a lot of kids just aren't doing anymore, right? They're paying
47:16
so much attention to those thumb and finger skills on their phone. But they're really not
47:22
getting outside and doing enough. And unfortunately, I mentioned the Boy Scouts. It too has been crushed
47:28
by politics. You know, it's not Boy Scouts anymore. It's scouting, and it's nothing against females,
47:35
because yeah, include them. But I don't think you need to change the dynamics and the curriculum
47:39
and all that to somehow make everyone on this planet happy, because that's not what scouting
47:44
was developed for. People don't realize that the Boy Scouts started in England and was started by
47:50
a spy so that we would give our boys basic soldiering skills before manhood, and so that they would
47:57
have that experience and that foundation early in life so that they could potentially be better
48:02
defenders of the homeland in case there was another Nazi, you know, Hitler out there. But,
48:09
and he also happened to be a crossdresser, by the way, the guy who found it scouting. So,
48:14
some people wonder, was it because he didn't know where he stood sexually, or was it because he had
48:21
this extreme fascination with disguise? Who knows, right? But regardless, we've lost the skills,
48:30
and I feel like it's my duty to get them out there in a creative way. Sometimes I throw taboo
48:36
stuff out there because, unfortunately, that's what the media, you know, locks their little
48:41
talons into. So, when you put how to bury a body or a rectal, the rectal concealment, right? Yeah,
48:49
should kids know about that? I don't know, that's up to the parents. But, you know, when the Wall Street
48:55
Journal wanted to write an article about the book, guess what they concentrated on? It was the tab,
48:59
right? And so, that part sometimes is tactical in nature, so that the book gets the attention
49:06
it deserves. Sometimes you got to go out and put some extreme stuff in order, in order to attract
49:12
that kind of stuff. I like that you're paying it forward with the skills that you've learned,
49:18
that US taxpayer basically funded your ability to learn those things, because I love the books
49:24
that are, and there I was, and then they talk about the mission. I love those books. I think
49:28
they're wildly entertaining, but if I can't take them and apply them to my life, then they're
49:32
just entertaining. They're just mental masturbation. It's just fun, right? But if I actually have
49:36
the tangible skills, that's great. And another thing, and by the way, the name of that organization
49:41
is called Santa Stone. That's the organization where they're kind of taking these kids out on these,
49:44
hiking and camping trips and all those different things. And I think you kind of hit a new level,
49:50
because the skills books are incredible, but your brand new book is called The Rugged Life,
49:55
The Modern Guide to Self-Reliance. And so right from the intro, you kind of give
49:59
us an idea as to kind of what you're doing this for. And you say this, I'm moving beyond survival
50:04
to how to thrive over the long term for months, years, even a lifetime by being self-reliant.
50:09
And that starts with learning how to be a modern homesteader. Okay. So the sections of this book,
50:15
because this is incredibly practical stuff for people like, you know, Santa Stone trying to
50:18
get, you know, create these skills for boys, you know, for families that are wanting to do
50:22
stuff like this or trying to be, you know, the next Bill Raypier or something like that and kind
50:25
of live out in nowhere, middle nowhere Idaho and kind of do their thing out there. But the sections
50:29
of the book are Be Your Own Builder, Be Your Own Power Grid, Be Your Own Farmer, Be Your Own Butcher,
50:34
Be Your Own Hunter, Be Your Own Homemaker, Be Your Own Protector, Be Your Own RTO,
50:39
that's radio telephone operator, Be Your Own First Responder, and Be Your Own Handyman.
50:44
And I just got to tell you, this is just like the skills books in that it's very visually appealing.
50:48
It's very easy to read, but just like this, I've never felt less talented, Clint,
50:53
than reading your books. I'm like, I don't know how to do anything. It's a miracle. I can tie my
50:58
shoes in the morning, but it's just such an incredible resource for people because don't just read it
51:03
like a novel where you just go from page one till the very end and, you know, just go along for the
51:07
ride. This is a good reference guide. I feel like this is a good thing to kind of, you know,
51:11
kind of dog ear the page and come back later. So tell me about the shift you kind of made from
51:16
the skills books, did a little memoir, and then ended up with the rugged life.
51:19
Yeah, it was pretty easy because I truly believe in being a consistent, constant student and always
51:28
learning, right? So that is the beauty of this post-military career that I've picked is I send
51:35
to myself, I just want to continue learning. So for combat edition, I went around, traveled
51:41
the United States during the pandemic. The highways were empty. It was awesome. And I went and visited,
51:47
you know, 15, 16 badasses in their own vertical of knowledge and then took the skills that they gave
51:55
me and put them into combat edition so that the average person can, one, have a catalog of great
52:02
American dudes that teach really awesome stuff, right? So if you're looking just for a catalog of
52:08
instructional courses, that's combat edition. On top of that, it gives you the skills from hand
52:15
to hand, blade work all the way to pistol rifle, basic marksmanship from experts. And then I was
52:22
like, you know, here we are in this, you know, quote unquote pandemic and this virus. And we know that
52:28
anytime there's a virus, it's the direct cause, but it's the indirect effect. The indirect effect is
52:34
the economy, right? The economy takes a big nose dive and, you know, supply chain issues. All this
52:41
stuff was very predictable, because like I said, with my company escape the wolf, we were doing
52:45
pandemic plans before pandemic was cool. And so my, my guys that worked for me were the pandemic
52:54
planners for DHS and the White House and stuff like that, long before coronavirus came along.
53:02
So anyway, I kind of saw this, right? I saw that, wait, you know, I'm giving people how to survive
53:09
seconds, minutes, days, right? But I haven't given them just like, not survival, just how to thrive
53:18
on their own, because in itself, it isolates you and insulates you from all this catastrophe and
53:26
crisis, right? The more things you do for yourself, the less the outside world can affect you. And
53:34
so that was the major goal of the book was give everybody the ultimate backup plan. Give everybody
53:41
options. It's okay if you want to pay electric bill on the grid, but make sure you've got a
53:48
secondary power grid for yourself, right? It's okay to go buy your meat and vegetables from a
53:54
grocery store, but make sure you have a secondary plan for resourcing meat and vegetables. So I felt
54:03
like no one had a backup plan, right? Especially when toilet paper was like the crisis. That really
54:11
said everything that I needed to know in order to put the rugged life together. So just think of
54:17
that book of, it's just a book of options, a book of backup plans. And if you want to make some of
54:24
those plans in the book, your primary, by all means do it, because then nobody can affect you.
54:31
You insulate yourself from crisis when you do these things for yourself. And that's the biggest
54:37
takeaway and the reason why I put it together. And by the way, once again, I didn't know all that
54:42
stuff. I went around to people who are living on grid, off grid, and some that are kind of like a
54:48
hybrid and said, what are the things you're glad you're doing for yourself, and that you feel like
54:54
are most beneficial. And that created over 100 skills in the rugged life that anyone can now
54:59
get off their couch once again, go do it right now. Well, the thing that I found that was important
55:05
is during the pandemic, whoops, I mean, pandemic, we were kind of like, you know, that was where a
55:10
lot of these seeds were planted. And then reading a book like the rugged life kind of, you know,
55:16
elevated my sense of awareness about the things that I don't know in terms of what would happen
55:20
if this were no longer available. But this is something that literally has just been on my mind
55:24
since last night and it goes right into what you were saying about food being available. So last
55:28
night I see a video in Kansas of 10,000 head of cattle that all died at the same time. And they're
55:36
claiming it's because of the heat wave, the heat index being up and humidity and all that. And a
55:41
week or two ago, 3000 head of cattle died in Missouri. Again, they're saying it's because of
55:47
the heat wave. Now, ignoring the fact that cattle live in South Texas and Arizona and New Mexico,
55:52
and they're not dropping like flies. And we don't usually see mashed casualty events for cattle
55:57
because of heat. It's worrisome to me. And then Abbott, which is the baby formula place out in
56:03
Michigan that, you know, we had all the problems with, it was only online for 11 days. And then
56:09
today it just broke news broke that there was a flood. They're having to shut down the factory
56:13
again. And then we're all we're all we all know now that Bill Gates owns more farmland in America
56:18
than anybody. And he's producing all the elements to create, you know, unbelievable meat or whatever
56:23
they're calling it fake meat. And he's also very, very big about getting rid of meat consumption in
56:27
this country. So I'm not saying all that to scare anybody to be like, Oh, you know, there's an impending
56:31
doom coming, but talk to any executive or listen to any executive in a food production industry. In
56:36
the last two years, magically, there's entire farms full of chickens that have died. There's
56:42
entire facilities that have burned down or flooded to where they had to get rid of all the food.
56:46
So I say all that to say to not say to put on your, you know, tin foil hat, but just like,
56:51
let's say there is an nefarious force out there that's affecting the food supply. The way that
56:56
affects you is your ability to eat, your ability to give your wife or your husband or your children
57:03
food. So it's more about keeping your head on a swivel. Does that, does that kind of make sense?
57:06
Yeah, yeah, it makes perfect sense. I hadn't heard about all that stuff going on. But it certainly
57:12
backs the back gives good reason for everyone to have their backup plans or contingency plans
57:19
figured out ahead of time, you know, because I think we just take it for granted that every time
57:24
you go to the grocery store, there's going to be what you want sitting on the shelf. And that's just
57:28
not the case. It's starting to prove true for the first time in history. You know, and since the last
57:33
time this all happened, you know, is basically the Great Depression when, you know, our grandparent,
57:38
my grandparents, I always wondered, why does grandpa always got them? Nothing but drawers and
57:42
drawers of batteries around here. Like everybody [inaudible] drawer had radio shack batteries, you know,
57:48
and it was because that's how they were raised. Like you got to have like all your backups figured
57:53
out. I mean, they were jarring their vegetables. They had, you know, a deep freezer full of meat,
57:59
and they were always kind of like stocking up on things and being very conservative on what they
58:05
used and how they used it. Right. And I think we've lost that because we've become a society of
58:10
convenience. And we can have things delivered to our front door using these magic little apps.
58:17
And, you know, that's all great. And I'm not saying not don't use it. I'm just saying, hey,
58:21
just make sure you, you know, you've got a plan when when some of that stuff doesn't work out.
58:26
Right. We've gotten very, very fat and happy. And so that's why I book like the rugged life is so
58:30
important. But I want to ask you about a quote that's right on the the inside cover of this.
58:34
Because you have several quotes from from Emerson and from, you know, other smart people that,
58:39
you know, I'm not smart enough to read their work. But there was something in this quote that kind
58:43
of caught me askew. And so I want to ask you about it. So here's a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
58:47
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and
58:53
relations of men in their religion, in their education, in their pursuits, their modes of living,
58:59
their association, in their property, in their speculative views. So that was the first page of
59:05
the book that I read. And I underlined the word religion. Because when I was on your show, which
59:11
I enjoyed the heck out of that. I love talking with guys like you that obviously come from a
59:14
different worldview, you know, you took a few lighthearted shots at me, called me a bible
59:19
thumper, which I thought was hilarious. And you know, but you and I had a very cordial
59:23
conversation. It's very similar to a conversation that I had with Mike Ritlin, you know, over three
59:27
hours last year on his show, which by the way, just to go back to the beginning, if you guys
59:31
want to know a little bit more about some of the stuff that Clinton did for the federal government,
59:34
you just had an appearance on Mike Ritlin's show, Mike drop here like a month ago or something like
59:38
that. It was fantastic. You go into a lot more detail. So I'll try to remember to put that in the
59:42
show notes. But the word religion being included here, again, it's not your quote. It's Emerson's
59:47
quote, caught me off guard because I get the not so subtle sense that you don't have a Judeo-Christian
59:52
worldview that you don't have a godly worldview. Maybe you're somewhere between agnostic and
59:57
atheists. And you just kind of filled in a few of the blanks earlier talking about your upbringing
1:00:01
in Saudi Arabia, seeing, you know, kind of this religious setup and Sharia law and you're kind of
1:00:07
around a lot of these things. And it kind of may be jaded your viewpoint. But I don't want to
1:00:11
presume anything and categorize you incorrectly. So where would you say that you land on all of
1:00:17
that stuff, categorically religion or spiritualism or whatever air quote thing you want to call it?
1:00:22
Yeah, that's a good question. And yeah, I'm glad you can. That's what's great
1:00:26
about you is it can kind of have fun with it, you know, with the bible stuff. Yeah, you know,
1:00:33
growing up in Saudi, certainly put a bad taste in my mouth as it relates to religion holistically,
1:00:40
right? When you look at wars, fought, you know, it's either got a real estate foundation or a
1:00:46
religion foundation to it. And it's, you know, and don't get me wrong, the pinnacle of any
1:00:52
seal's career is war, right? The last thing you want to do is train for 20 years and never get
1:00:57
to pull the trigger, you know, that's just suck. And there's a lot of seals that had to endure that
1:01:02
and I feel for them. But, you know, for us, it's going to war. And, you know, and when you look at
1:01:08
these wars, it's either religion or real estate. And so it makes you wonder, like, what the [inaudible]
1:01:12
is going on with this planet, right? I think religion is great when it's, you know, used in the right
1:01:20
way. I feel like, like, my daughter, for example, goes to church with her mom. And I'm all for it
1:01:28
because I know that there is, there is safety there. I know that good moral and ethnic foundation is
1:01:34
always going to be, you know, placed inside the church's education system. And so I support all
1:01:41
that. I really do. I just never found myself, you know, fallen in love with it. I tried. I had a
1:01:50
mother-in-law that boy, which she, she tried. And I would go to church and I'd stand there and not,
1:01:58
you know, and people are speaking in tongues. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I just, I'm just not
1:02:03
feeling this when the people on the front row are, I was just like, what the [inaudible] is going on?
1:02:10
You know, it was a little, I've had extreme versions of religion, you know, put in my life.
1:02:17
And it's hard to kind of see the light to a certain degree. Yeah, I have nothing against it,
1:02:23
though, by any means. I feel like, for the most part, it, it puts people in a good place. It puts
1:02:30
people, it gives people their left and right flanks as they, you know, travel through life.
1:02:35
I just personally haven't, you know, been, let's see, overwhelmed by it or got the feeling or,
1:02:46
you know, that moment when faith kicks in because something happened in your life. None of that
1:02:53
stuff's ever happened to turn the religious switch on for Clint. That lightning bolt moment. I know
1:03:00
we're running up against time, but I did want to kind of do a few follow ups if you're okay with that.
1:03:03
So you're using a word that I also have a problem with, which is religion, because there are a lot
1:03:08
of religious people out there that aren't even following the, the dictates of the religion they
1:03:14
support to follow, right? So it's like, if you have read the Quran, if you understand the Quran,
1:03:19
if you understand the ninth surah, which is the bloodiest and least abrogated of all the surahs,
1:03:24
then you would look at what would be called a moderate Muslim and say, well, you're not acting
1:03:27
like a Muslim. Because if you go back to your magic book, here are the things that you're supposed
1:03:31
to be doing. And you saw that firsthand in war and growing up in Saudi. So we don't need to go into
1:03:36
too much detail with that. The one thing that I would throw out there to you, and this is a problem
1:03:41
within the Christian community as well, is this this reliance on feeling. So I don't know if you
1:03:47
ever went to church camp as a kid or all that, I didn't grow up in church. And so it's like,
1:03:50
I didn't really have those experiences until I was a little bit older. But you get this feeling,
1:03:54
right? It's when they sing the chorus of that one Christian worship song for the 14th time and
1:04:00
you really feel it this time and the tears start coming and the preacher was really funny. And then
1:04:05
he flipped the switch on you and said, there's a bunch of volcanoes and there's a bunch of earthquakes.
1:04:09
And that means Jesus is coming back and you're like, Oh, no, I don't want to go to hell. And you
1:04:13
have this emotional feeling. The problem with depending upon that emotion is the same thing we
1:04:18
talked about earlier, which is depending on passion or motivation. It comes down to discipline and
1:04:24
reality. Because here's the thing, Clint, Christianity is either true or it's not. It's not both,
1:04:30
right? Jesus Christ was a real person that lived in history or he wasn't. He was literally a
1:04:35
Middle Eastern Jew that died at the behest of the Jews on a Roman cross or he wasn't. And also,
1:04:41
he was either resurrected on the third day or he wasn't. There is no in between. There is no gray
1:04:47
area. There's no your truth. There's no my truth. And so I guess a question I would have for you
1:04:52
is if Christianity were true, would you believe it?
1:04:56
If it were true? If it were true, would you believe it?
1:05:00
I mean, well, then that's easy because if it's something that's true and it truly has a tangible
1:05:06
background, then sure. I mean, what I, you know, I don't know if we got into it, but when you have
1:05:12
some any of any of these religious books, you know, we're for the most part written
1:05:19
decades, if not centuries after the fact. And in most of the stories were told by, you know,
1:05:26
40, 60 plus people that make up that one book. And you compare that to today's communication
1:05:33
capability where we are very advanced and we have the ability to accurately convey information,
1:05:39
right? Supposedly. Right. And even with today's technology and communication at the speed of light,
1:05:45
that information still gets exaggerated, whether it's the right or the left or just the media playing
1:05:51
games and doing what they do. So it's very hard for me to go, all right, something that was written
1:05:57
that far back, written that long after an event, how accurate is the information. And you get the
1:06:04
feeling from my point of view and how I've always looked at it from the outside is men or people
1:06:10
as a society just needed rules. And, you know, in religion kind of gives them, like I said,
1:06:17
that with the right and left flank. So I can't really, I don't knock it. I just, I just don't see
1:06:23
it the same as everyone else. No, I completely. And here's the thing that that's why I like, you
1:06:27
know, now talking to you about this, but talking to Mike and talking to other people that are in
1:06:31
this area to where it's like, okay, you seemingly from an outsider's perspective, you seem to be
1:06:37
trying to be intellectually honest. You're trying to be intellectually consistent. You're trying to
1:06:42
do those things. And you don't currently have a rubric where something like Christianity,
1:06:46
for instance, fits into that, right? But the one thing I would tell you in this, I told Mike the
1:06:51
same thing is you're asking a lot of questions. And even the ones you didn't verbalize that have
1:06:57
answers that for thousands of years, people have been asking these same questions. But the answers
1:07:03
are knowable. But the reason why I asked, you know, if Christianity were true, would you believe it?
1:07:07
Because there are people that are so white knuckle about their atheism that even if they had every
1:07:14
single one of their questions answered, they would still not believe, like, because they just can't,
1:07:19
they have no capability for it. So that's why I was kind of asking that question because a lot
1:07:23
of the questions you're asking Clint, there are answers to and not philosophical answers. There
1:07:28
are archeological answers. There are historical answers. Because again, what's written down in the
1:07:33
Holy Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures, they either happened or they didn't. It's the same thing like
1:07:37
there. But then there are some things in the Bible, for instance, that is poetry or allegory,
1:07:42
not everything is meant to be taken literally. And so I guess to wrap up, maybe this would be
1:07:47
the last question of the day. Are you even open to getting some of those questions answered?
1:07:52
Or is it a subject matter that you're so disinterested in that you could give a careless?
1:07:57
I've been open. Like I said, I literally would go to church and try to get there to that point.
1:08:06
And I'd tell people all the time, "Well, it just didn't work on me."
1:08:11
You didn't get a heavy enough dose of whatever it is that they were serving that day.
1:08:18
Yeah, maybe just somebody needed to be a little more evangelical. I can't even say that word.
1:08:24
It doesn't even matter. Yes, I needed a better sales person. Maybe I needed you.
1:08:30
Oh my gosh. We see the funny thing about that is when you get into these discussions with people,
1:08:36
again, establish that truth is truth and there's not your truth and my truth. But it comes down to
1:08:41
a comparison to where it's like, "Okay, let's say I'm talking to an atheist and they're convinced
1:08:45
of it and I'm a Christian and I'm convinced of it. Let's say he's right and I'm wrong.
1:08:49
We both get to the end of our life. I will have wasted a lot of time, energy, and money trying to
1:08:53
convert people to something that's not true." But we both have the same outcome. We're worm food,
1:08:57
right? But if he's wrong and I'm right, eternity is at stake. And so that's why I tell people I was
1:09:03
like, "You don't have to come to church with me. You don't have to figure things out the way that
1:09:06
I figured it out. You don't have to go and search for that feeling. You just need to discover the
1:09:10
answers. You need to have your questions answered because it's way more important than your next
1:09:15
fantasy football draft. It's way more important than the next podcast you want to listen to,
1:09:19
our next Netflix series that you're going to binge is knowing the answers to that so you can at least
1:09:23
have some foundation for your belief system. But I do appreciate you letting us get into that topic
1:09:27
and really into everything. We're already over time. I've made you late for the next
1:09:30
next thing. Don't tell your assistant that it was my fault. Tell him it was your fault.
1:09:33
You can have the Miyacopa. But as for now, that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to
1:09:37
get off your chest? No, it's all good, man. Love the conversation. Great discussion. I appreciate
1:09:43
all the more detailed questions than I usually get. So I appreciate that. Thank you. All right,
1:09:48
good. Clint Emerson. Thank you for coming on Daunton Life and Man's podcast.
1:09:52
Nah, thanks for having me, buddy. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed Clint
1:09:55
Emerson's appearance on the show. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience
1:09:58
boost. Adam Daunton Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
1:10:02
for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience. I've got a lot of links for you today. I've got a
1:10:06
link to Clint's website. I've got a link to the company that he talked about from the top,
1:10:09
which has escaped the wolf. I got a link to the new book, The Rugged Life. And also,
1:10:12
I've got a link to my appearance on Clint's podcast last year. All right, guys. Thanks so much for
1:10:16
listening to the show. We do appreciate it. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
1:10:19
right? And leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event or on
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1:10:37
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1:10:41
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1:10:45
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1:10:50
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:10:56
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:11:15
Life!