This three-minute video of a bunch of modern wussy males illustrates perfectly what most “enlightened” Americans think in our feminized culture: there should be no differences between men and women.

I strongly disagree for two reasons.  One is life-or-death.  One is quality of life.  Those are pretty big deals.

First, the life-and-death reason. When the Collapse hits, trying to pretend men and women are not different will get people KILLED and RAPED.  All those feminized males out there will assume the gangs roaming around freely (because the cops are gone) will treat women with the same respect the hipsters have for women.  Wrong.  Deadly and tragically wrong.

How can “smart” people like the well educated hipsters be so wrong?  Easy.  All these upper-income, sheltered, weak males have no idea what bad people are like – they’ve never met any in their nice subdivisions or hip urban apartments.  Worse yet, these brainwashed wusses actually think the only bad male behavior in the entire world is done by “rednecks.”  Like in the (icky, icky) South.  The feminized males think the only thing keeping women down is traditional American male values.  (Traditional men are actually great for women, but that’s a long blog post for another day.)

Here’s another practical way that wussified thinking will get people killed and hurt after the Collapse: the fear of being “macho.”  A fair number of modern males (I can’t call them “men”) will feel guilty or weird about defending women.  That’s acting “macho,” which is the absolute worst thing a wussified male can do.  During the Collapse, feminized males will hesitate to raise their voices – let alone raise an (icky, icky) gun – to defend women.  The gangs will laugh, kill the men, and rape the women.

The second reason I disagree with the idea that men and women aren’t different is quality of life – for both men and women.  (This applies now, before the Collapse, but will also apply during the Collapse.)  Most men want to be men and most women want to be women.  In general, men like to be masculine and women like to be feminine.  It took decades of public school and TV sit coms to drive this (natural) way of thinking out of us.  But, when no one is looking, most men like a good steak.  And most women, when no one is looking, like to bake cookies.  I mean, cookies are delicious.  I rest my case.

Trust me: Men and women are much, much happier in a relationship when each one can act like his or her gender.  Ask a woman who unsuccessfully nagged her husband but then gave up and let him go be a man – life is better in the house.  Most men will treat a woman like a queen when she treats him well.  Both are happier (and the sex is better!  For both of them!)

Oh, and for anyone thinking I’m some caveman who thinks women are inferior, I note that my wife is a doctor.  She’s very tough and very smart, and can do tons of things I can’t do.  And that’s OK.  I’m a man and can do tons of things she can’t do.  You see the picture?  Men and women are different.   And that’s OK.

Wow.  I didn’t think I’d have this strong of a reaction, but I did.  The Gun Dudes Podcast is ending after seven years.

I was thinking: It’s just a podcast.  Am I seriously saddened by this?  Yes.  Big time.  Here’s why.

I changed.  Entirely.  Starting in 2008, I went from a fat suburban go-along, get-along sheeple “male” (not man) to what I am today.  When my transformation started seven years ago, I simultaneously started listening to this podcast done by three UPS drivers in Salt Lake City who talked about guns and joked around.  The Gun Dudes.  They were hilarious.

They were just like me.  I instantly “knew” them just by listening to them.

Over the last seven years, the Gun Dudes did what I did: We grew.  We changed (for the better).  We became “famous” (in our little world, that is).  We became what we wanted to become.  That’s an amazing sentence, so I’ll repeat it: We became what we wanted to become.  We transformed together and at the same time – 2008 to the present.  What a ride.

Once I had an amazing conversation with the lead Gun Dude, Carl.  We were talking about how much time the books (in my case) and the podcast (in his case) take and the effect it has on our families.  Then one of us (I forget who) said, “Not everyone will understand this but: We have so many cool things we can do with our time that it’s really hard to do normal stuff, stuff we should probably do.  We have cool people to know, cool stuff to do.  Gun classes.  Meeting Massad Ayoob.  Going to SHOT Show.  Shooting with Special Forces guys.  Talking to Jack Spirko.  We never expected any of this.  This is a good problem to have.”  Very true, Carl.  Very true.

Probably the most profound effect the Gun Dudes had on me was confidence.  Sounds weird, I know: confidence from a podcast?  But when I was (painfully) transitioning from suburban softie to a gun guy, I wondered if there was something “weird” about me.  The Gun Dudes, episode after episode, showed me that us gun guys are funny and laid back.  We’re just normal dudes who like guns; nothing weird about that.  It was amazingly comforting.

Here are couple of my Gun Dudes memories that will make you smile.

I’ll never forget the first time the Gun Dudes read one of my emails on the air in 2009.  It was way before I wrote the books.  I couldn’t believe that “celebrities” read my email.

The next amazing Gun Dudes memory I have is also from before I wrote the books.  I emailed them and told them that I was thinking about writing a novel and they were in it.  (They are: the Stan, Carl, Tom, and Travis characters who help Special Forces Ted move the equipment out to Marion Farm.)  They read it on air and were, like, “Wow.  We might be in a novel.  How cool is that?”  I told them I was putting them in the books, in part, to force myself to finish the books.  I knew that if I told them I would put them in the books, but didn’t finish the project, that I would have let down the Gun Dudes.  I’m serious.  It motivated me to finish the books.

Then I sent them each a copy of the books.  They couldn’t believe they were in them.  I was blown away that these “celebrities” thought it was cool that I – little ol’ me – put them in a book.

I was on the show five times.  Each time we recorded an episode, I would tell them, “I can’t believe I’m talking to the Gun Dudes.”  They’d say the same about talking to “Glen Tate.”  It sounded so amazing to hear that.

A last fantastic memory about the Gun Dudes is when the narrator of my audio books, Kevin Pierce, recorded hilarious promos for the show.  The main one said, “You’re listening to the Gun Dudes, which is a free podcast.  You get what you pay for.”  I smile every time I hear that.  A big, hearty, down-to-your heart smile.  God, I love those guys (purely heterosexually, of course, as they would say).

I will miss the Gun Dudes.  Fortunately, I have their contact information and a standing invitation to come down to Utah and hang out with them, which I plan on doing.  What else are you going to do that’s fun in Utah?

My final thought is a huge, huge thank-you to them.  I know how much work it is do stuff like a podcast or write books.  I want to thank the Gun Dudes for putting on an amazing and life-changing – seriously, life-changing – podcast.  Tens of thousands of people benefited from you guys spending your Saturdays goofing around in front of a microphone.

 

Whoa.  The title of this blog piece will offend a lot of good people; maybe you’re one of them.  Here’s why I say that the Fourth of July means nothing to me.  It has to do with the difference between America and Amerika.

The Fourth of July is a celebration of America – “the land of the free.”  In America, people could live their lives without ever thinking about government because it had such a small role.  Free from ridiculous government intervention, people started businesses or worked at good jobs, raised their families, owned modest but comfortable houses, put their kids through college, lived in a decent and moderately religious society, and could feel proud that they lived in the greatest country God ever created.  Seriously.  The greatest.  I know this because I used to live in America and saw the goodness of America with my own eyes.

But America is no more.  I won’t list off all the reasons.  But you know – deep, deep in your heart – that America doesn’t exist anymore.  You hate to admit, but it’s gone.  Gone.  The sooner you come to that realization, the better off the transition will be in your mind to what is coming next.

What replaced America?  Amerika.  Much like the difference between the two spellings, on the surface Amerika pretty much looks like America.  We still have malls and professional sports teams and all that.  But when you look past the surface, there are enormous differences.

Amerika is about “free” stuff from the government.  Health care and welfare and mortgage assistance and … the list goes on.  Amerika is about how people can get the government to force other people to pay for their stuff.  In the process, Amerika has become materialistic and shallow.  Amerika is also about a staggering loss of civil liberties.  Amerika kind of looks like a capitalist economy, but it’s actually a liberal corporate elite making huge sums of money from foreign workers while people here can’t find decent jobs.  That’s Amerika.

I hate Amerika.

When I see people waving flags on the Fourth of July, it looks like a celebration of Amerika to me.  Now, you might be waving the flag and celebrating America.  If so, I have tons of respect for you because you’re keeping the dream alive about America, and we’ll need people like you to remember America to give us a template for when we rebuild Amerika after the Collapse.

I look at flag waving on the Fourth and – with great remorse and sadness – see Amerika.  The country currently represented by that flag is Amerika, not America.  There is nothing to celebrate about Amerika.  In fact, seeing that flag reminds me how much we’ve lost.

As readers of the 299 Days book series know, I pretty much chronicle what happens in each of the 299 days of the upcoming Collapse.  The entry for July fourth is just another day in the lives of the people in the books; they do not wave the star and stripes.  In fact, most of the people in the books reflect on July fourth about how America turned into Amerika and they’re deeply saddened.

That’s how I feel and why the Fourth of July means nothing to me.

I miss America.

Whoa.  These turned out even better than I thought they would. Here’s the link to them if you’re interested.