Power, Propaganda, and the Consequences of American Empire | S.O.S. #265

Calling yourself patriotic is easy. Living like a patriot is harder, especially when the facts feel messy and the incentives in politics push us toward slogans instead of responsibility. We sit down with Michael T. Lester, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Desert Storm veteran, and cybersecurity leader, to talk about why he titled his book We Are the Bad Guys and what he means by it: not that Americans are bad people, but that U.S. foreign policy is often experienced abroad as coercion, not liberation. That outside view can be shocking, and it can also be clarifying. 

We unpack how beliefs are shaped through selective information, repetition, and social proof, the mechanics behind manufactured consent. Then we zoom out to history and geopolitics, touching on examples like Central America, Hawaii’s overthrow, and the 1953 Iran coup and why “it came out of nowhere” is often a symptom of missing context. We also connect the dots back home: opportunity costs in federal spending, a growing civic knowledge gap, and why performative patriotism can replace real involvement. 

Finally, we get practical. We talk campaign finance, super PACs, Citizens United, closed primaries, gerrymandering, and reforms like ranked-choice voting and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Most importantly, we lay out steps you can take now: start local, keep conversations nonpartisan, learn who represents you, and hold them accountable in ways that actually get seen. If this made you rethink anything, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people find the conversation.

Stories of Service presents guests’ stories and opinions in their own words, reflecting their personal experiences and perspectives. While shared respectfully and authentically, the podcast does not independently verify all statements. Views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the host, producers, government agencies, or podcast affiliates.

Transcript

Why Truth Tests Patriotism

SPEAKER_04 0:01

There are many of us right now who want to support our nation and want to get behind ways to make positive change. But when we are seeing some of the things that we have seen in terms of foreign policy, in terms of even domestic policy, in terms of policies that impact our men and women who serve in the US military, sometimes it's really hard to know what to do about it and to understand from really a non-political lens. And I can tell you guys, I understand this firsthand, having been somewhat partisan, how that we can come together and unite as Americans to make our nation better. And today I couldn't think of anybody better to have this fascinating conversation than Michael T. Lester. Michael, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

I'm doing great, Teresa. Thanks for having me here.

Meet Michael T. Lester

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Well, thank you so much for having this conversation. I read your book a couple months back. I was blown away. It was the book I needed to read at that moment. And it led to me really making a fundamental shift in the ways in which I communicate to everyone, not just online. I mean, even to my neighbors, even out in town. I mean, I have a chamber event tonight that I'm going to go to. Everything has changed, seeing things from this lens. So thank you so much for writing the book and just can't wait to talk about it. But before we get started, as we always do, welcome to the Stories of Service Podcast, ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I am the host of Stories of Service. And to get us started, as we always do, plan intro from my father, Charlie Picker.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS Stories of Service. Hosted by Teresa Carpenter, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Ann Michael graduated from the United States Naval Academy. He flew combat missions in support of Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield and built a successful corporate career. By every traditional definition, he is one of those good guys. So why did he write a book called We Are the Bad Guys? Well, we're going to talk about it today. This conversation will sit in the tension between patriotism and truth. He challenges the idea that patriotism is something we perform. Flags, slogans, and public displays are easy, but the real patriotism requires involvement, dissent, and the courage to push back. It demands being informed enough to trust the systems we are taught to trust. In that light, nationalism and patriotism are not the same, and confusing them has consequences. And today we're going to talk about how beliefs are shaped, not through obvious lies, but through selective facts, repetition, and what feels like independent thinking. And the concept of manufactured consent runs through his work. We trust information based on authority, consistency, and social proof, but not necessarily truth. And we're going to be talking about a lot of different issues that Michael covers in his book, just kind of giving you a little taste of it, because I really want you to actually read the book. But to get us started, Michael, how are you doing again today?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I am awesome. It's a wonderful day, and I'm glad to be here.

From Naval Aviator To Cybersecurity

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Well, I'm glad you are here. So tell us a little bit about, as I always ask all my guests, especially those who were in the military, where were you born and raised? And what inspired you to become a pilot and join the Navy?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Ah, wow. Out of the interviews I've done, that's the first time I've been asked this question. So uh wow. Yeah. I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school. So I went to Montana State, where I was a philosophy major, specializing mostly in comparative religion and then with a minor in English. And I decided I would be unemployed with that kind of degree. Sure. And I wanted to do something exciting. I didn't know that the service academies even existed. But I found out when I was there and I thought, well, I want to do this. I want to go fly high performance aircraft. That would be an exciting thing to do. And I've always felt like, okay, I'm here in this country. What do I do? How do I support it? I thought this is perfect. I get, you know, I get to do both support the country and do something exciting. I want to go to the academy, right? And that that was a two-year process after that, to get into the academy then. And then from there, I was lucky enough to be able to go to flight school and continue on. What aircraft did you fly? I flew CH 53 Echoes, which are extremely large helicopters.

SPEAKER_04 4:50

Yes. So what made you decide afterwards? A lot of pilots will say, okay, a pilot, this is a very well-paying career. I'm going to go and fly for a news organization or do tour tourist opter flights. I mean, there's there's there's a lot of potential to stay a pilot. Uh, why made you decide not to do that?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

There is, and it's and it's a great career. A lot of guys did it. For me, I was also big into technology. Even when I was, I've got pictures of me sitting in the sand in Desert Storm with a laptop. I was actually writing code, right? So when it was time to get out, I thought, you know, I've been flying high-performance aircraft and now I have to fly a school bus. That's not going to be as exciting, but technology, cybersecurity, and everything is. So I just kind of went that path instead of saying with aviation.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Why cybersecurity? Were you somebody that was always as a child like tinkering with computers and that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Always. Always. I have a master's in electrical engineering specializing in computer architecture because I got to a point with code that I didn't understand enough what the machine was doing with it. So I thought, okay, I'm going to find out, you know, low level how this works. And this kind of gives you an insight into my personality. When I don't understand something, I want to go real deep into it to understand, you know, what's underneath that's making it happen. And that was kind of what happened with the book. And you've described and others have described, you see things happening, and you just think to yourself, this doesn't make any sense. Right. Why, why, who would do this?

How Narratives Shape Belief

SPEAKER_04 6:36

Who would want this? Who would want to can destroy what is such a prosperous empire? Like, who would want to do that? And and that's the part that a lot of people just don't understand. And your book was fascinating in that because you first start off with how you get people to believe something. And that part I found incredibly interesting.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

I and that is the first part, right? Because when you look at people, very few of us know someone who would know something is wrong and still do it. So you have to go into this with a thought of people think they're doing the right thing. And some of them are so sure it's the right thing, they won't even listen to other logic, right? And then you have to go a layer deeper and think, why do they think that? What information do they have that I don't have, or that's been kept from me, or whatever, that makes them think this way. And that's where I started digging into this with the book, where I'm like, okay, it's not just the information, it's partially the information. It's also how the information is presented and who's presenting it. And this starts building a curated narrative for people. And it's different for all of us. We self-select to a great degree. We decide I'm going to listen to this news channel, or I'm going to listen to this person. So we self-select which information we get, and we end up being victims to our own biases, our own self-selection bias.

Why The Book Goes Country By Country

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Yeah. And then I think that explains a lot too why we only tune into certain news organizations or we only follow certain influencers on social media, because then we trust those people. So we think they can't be wrong. And that's that's when you talk about like the social proof and some of these other theories that, of course, communication scholars know quite well, will get people to believe things and then using storytelling and other methods for the for them to believe that. But what I've really appreciated about your book is that you decided to take a country-by-country approach. There's a lot of ways you could have written this book. You could have decided to go through every government organization. You could have done Department of Homeland Security, you could have done Treasury, and you could have found some just major mistakes or flaws in each one of these governmental organizations. But instead, you decided to focus on foreign policy. And I'm curious why you did that.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Because it it goes along with the whole title of the book. So the title of the book is We Are the Bad Guys. And I get a lot of pushback from that title.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Oh, I bet. I bet it's just, but it's you want a title that's going to grab attention.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Right? Right. And what it means is, and I keep telling people this, it doesn't mean that Americans are bad people. Americans are loving, thoughtful, intelligent people. They're giving, right? But America as a country is seen by other countries as not being the benevolent, wonderful place that we think it is.

unknown 9:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

So we got this disconnect where we think we're spreading democracy, we're upholding freedom, you know. That's not the way the rest of the world sees us. So the book is titled that to point out that what we're doing is frequently seen by others as okay, you're the bad guys, not the good guys you think you are. And I I went country by country because it's an international perception. So we have to look internationally. Back to my initial comment. What are other people seeing that we're not? We're inside the system, so we don't see it. But from outside the system, what are people seeing when they look at what we do? Inside the system, we sugarcoat it to ourselves and tell ourselves, again, we're promoting freedom and democracy. That's not how it looks from the outside. And a lot of times it doesn't look that way because we don't give everybody all the information. So that's what the country by country thing does is let's break it down. Let's take things that you think you know that you heard about, but let's give you the rest of the story and see what you think then.

Panama Hawaii Iran And Blowback

SPEAKER_04 11:15

I bet this was such an exploratory process for you personally. So, out of the countries that you studied, was there one particular case or study that surprised you that you didn't know previously that was like, holy crap, they do this? We we did this? Like, was there any of those moments as you were researching?

SPEAKER_01 11:39

You know, more than one. There were a lot of them. I I think back to Central America. And when you you think, okay, we did this, we did that. First, growing up, Panama's always been a country, right? Panama's a country. I didn't realize that it was part of Colombia until the CIA helped them secede. And we put warships off the east and west coast to make sure that Colombia couldn't take them back. And then there are stories in Honduras and whatnot, where what is it? The I think the American Fruit Company, if I remember correctly, you know, owned all of the property. Well, isn't it interesting that the Dulles brothers, one was running the fruit company, the other one was head of the CIA or whatever. And I'm like, I they didn't tell us that. That seems pretty complicit. You know, so as you dig in and you start seeing these things, or again, a great example, Hawaii. Yeah, Hawaii is a state, right? Because it wanted to be a state, they wanted to be part of the U.S. No, we forced them to be at gunpoint.

SPEAKER_04 12:51

Literally, I mean held up their queen, like imprisoned her. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And the queen actually made a statement that said, I, you know, I submit to the US under under duress and only to save the save the lives of my countrymen.

SPEAKER_04 13:07

And and what's sad is I lived in Hawaii for seven years. And there, I mean, there's a lot of native Hawaiians who to this day don't recognize the fact that they are part of the United States. And it's it's a it's a very sensitive issue when you when you live there. And there are there is discrimination against white people sometimes from the native Hawaiians because of this.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Understandably, too, when we took them over, we outlawed their native language. And and we said, you cannot speak this language, you can't do this, you're going to become this. So it's not surprising there's animosity there. And this animosity, by the way, it it Hawaii is an interesting example. But if you look through Central America or look at Haiti or look at Venezuela, these animosities don't go away. When the US does something, and then we think, oh, everything's fine, and then 20 years later, something happens, and most Americans go, Well, that was just out of the blue. No, it wasn't out of the blue. That's been brewing. And you know what? You're gonna find out, you're gonna get me on a soapbox and I'll just keep going. But the the topical thing today is Iran, right? People don't realize that in 1953, we, the United States, CIA, in conjunction with MI6, had a coup to displace a democratically elected secular government. Exactly what we want them to have. We had a coup and displaced. And we did that so that we could access their oil. And then under Shah Pahlavi, we accessed all their oil for what 27, 29 years. Yeah, 26 years. And then in 1979, the Iranians go, enough. You're stealing all of our oil. We're gonna have a revolution. Kicked out the Shah, and you know, the pendulum swings, right? It was one way, now they're like, now we're gonna have a fully theocracy. And then the US goes, Oh my god, look at how bad this is. I'm like, we made it. Right. We're the ones that made that happen, you know. But a lot of Americans just go, Wow, that was weird. That just happened out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Well, because that's the story they're being fed, too. I mean, people are only just looking at what the current headlines are, they're not going back in history and then seeing it. And then the other part of this is that people don't connect the divisiveness that's happening in our major cities to what we do and how we are acting. And so what happens is this rift is just spreading and spreading and spreading. It's why I'm following the LA mayor race so closely, not just because of Spencer Pratt, even though I am a Spencer Pratt fan and I'll admit it, but because it's such a battleground for what is happening in so many of our cities. I tried to stay at a hotel near San Francisco for my grad school, and they said they've cleaned up that city, but they sure didn't clean it up around the place where I stayed. I mean, I'd never seen homelessness like that. And a lot of these corporations and companies, they are using government contracts, I think we talked about this before, they're using government contracts to enrich themselves at the expense of not fixing these problems, whether it be homelessness, whether it be drugs, whatever. And that's also spilling into our foreign policy with our NGOs who are also benefiting overseas from doing action. I mean, and I've seen it. A lot of us who served in the military and worked with USAID and worked with these NGOs, we saw firsthand that this was a very cosmetic approach to developmental change.

Opportunity Costs And Missing Accountability

SPEAKER_01 17:21

We see that quite a bit. And it it is it is pervasive. And that's another thing I I try and cover is we we lose track sometimes of the money. We get into these large numbers that we don't even think about anymore. Well, that's gonna cost 300 billion. Okay. That number has no material feel to me. I don't have a feeling for what that means, right? But we do. We we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on projects or tens of billions of dollars on projects, but we never think what is the opportunity cost of that? And by that I mean if you spend it on this, that means you didn't get to spend it on this, right? And if we look at that and we start looking at what are the trade-offs, we just traded, and this seems like a good thing, we should have this. We traded this for it. Is that what we want? You know, and you start looking at that and going, wow, we just bought I don't know, you there's so many things. Well, we're right now they're in the process of approving a$70 billion budget for ice. Okay, sounds good because we need border security. I don't think anybody disagrees with that. But you look at the number and you're like, if you just do a business analysis and say, what am I getting for how much I'm spending? Right. If I didn't spend it, what's it costing me? And you figure out that, well, if I didn't spend it, it's costing me a billion. I'm gonna spend 70 billion to save a billion. And that 69 billion extra, that is not really doing anything for me, could have, for example, paid for college for every American in in the United States, right? Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:27

But but nobody is looking at that big picture with all of these contracts and expecting results. I mean, I'm I'm just digging, like I was telling you, my my latest you know, rabbit hole is digging into this LA issue with the Palisades fire. I'm reading a book called Torched. It's excellent. I'm gonna have the author on my show next week. Excellent. And oh, it's it's a fascinating book. I highly recommend it. And put it on my list. You should. Jonathan V, and I I don't have the pronunciation of his last name, but Vigilisani. I'll send it to you after this. But he goes into the entire history of LA, the Palisades, Hollywood, how these things got started, how there's this entire fire industrial complex, which is no different than the homelessness industrial complex or the military industrial complex. These are all an American who is an American society who is disconnected from civics and disconnected from politics in my mind, because we get these appropriation bills every every uh section of government. I I would assume I know ICE has an appropriation, DOD has an appropriation, maybe the treasury has an appropriation. But who's really looking at these at these numbers of money that's getting poured into these organizations, whether it be the Department of Defense or otherwise, and then saying we want to see return on this investment. And then this goes back to why are we so disconnected as Americans from civics?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Right. And I personally, I think you the civics, you remember the civics classes you had in high school.

SPEAKER_04 21:07

Sure, how a bill becomes a law. We all had that.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Right, right. And and that's about it. That's about where it stops. I'm always amazed, you know, when I see these things on like YouTube, where they're just walking down the street and they're asking people basic general questions about our government. And people have no idea. They they they literally have no concept of how it's working. And this gets back to our earlier conversation. So they trust others, right? You trust the people that you elect, and you figure, well, they understand it. I'll I'll vote once a year and then I'm done. They can go take care of it because they understand all of this. But that's not fair and that doesn't work.

Civics Illiteracy And Performative Patriotism

SPEAKER_04 21:54

No, and they don't trust it. I mean, we have studies and statistics that say that no one trusts the Government. They just take the lesser of the two evils, or they they go out there and they show up at the polls and they put their little sticker on and it says, I voted. And and I think you talk about you talk about that too in the book, about this whole idea of performative patriotism, where it's not really being patriotic, but it's oh, I've got an American flag in the background of my podcast here, and uh I'm a proud American. And but we're not involved.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

And to be a really good citizen, you have to be involved. You can't abdicate that to someone else. And I differentiate between patriotism and nationalism. And I do get some pushback, people say, well, that's not a good comparison. Like, okay, redefine it. Tell me how you want to define it, and we can talk about it. But you used a great term. One is performative, it's going through all of the right motions and saying, you know, I've I've got an American flag on my truck, and and you know, you know, America, and I wear a baseball hat that says that, and you know, I must I I must be a good citizen.

SPEAKER_03 23:14

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

But to be a good citizen, and our founding fathers were actually all over this. You know, they said you have to hold the government accountable. You can't let it do what it wants or it will run amuck. Right. So a good citizen isn't one that agrees with everything. A good citizen is one that looks at what the government is doing and asks why, talks to their congressman and says, Why did you vote this way? Because this does not this does not support what we want. And you need to explain this to us, the people you're representing. And if they can't do that, then frequently they can't because they're beholden to other forces.

Campaign Money Super PACs And Power

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Yes. And this is a great segue into campaign finance. Okay, so I am in a master's program for public leadership. That is another reason why. And it's geared, it's at the University of San Francisco, and it's geared specifically for veterans who are thinking about taking public office. So I have learned my eyes are like mind-blown at some of the things that I have learned in that course. And absolutely, number one, if you want to see what your legislator, what your senator, or what your congressman did to vote on something, it is a maze. Like you should be able to go to one website and like, I want to know every time my senator voted on veterans' policy.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:43

And it should be so simple to know like where they land, but a lot of times it's chronological. There are websites, and I should link to a few of them at the end of this podcast because I I like I said, I had no idea these pot these these websites existed. There's an FEC website where you can go and look and see who has donated to a particular campaign. And then you say to yourself, oh, wait a minute, there's campaign finance limits. They can only donate this much. Oh, no, no, no, no. They can have a super PAC or a PAC donate on their behalf and give as much money as they want. And they can outspend their opponent just by using PACs and super PAC. And you discussed this on Sean Ryan. Tell us a little bit about what how that works and what would need to change in order to make it so that the person who spends the most doesn't necessarily always win.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

And this is a this is a great topic. And one of the things in my book, at the end, I start talking a little bit about what we can do, but I didn't go very far in depth with that because there's so many things, and it's it's a whole nother book. It's a laundry list. It it is. But but one other thing is campaign financing. Statistically, we can show that whoever spends the most wins 94% of the time. That is statistically significant to the point where you can say pretty much it's a given.

SPEAKER_04 26:15

If you outspend someone, you know, yeah, because you'll get all the airwaves, you'll make all the flyers, you you know, you can pay for all these different endorsements. And what I mean by pay is that you owe these people. So if someone gives you a significant amount of money, there is something that they are going to expect in return. And if that is the way we set up our government, we're in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

And we are in trouble. But but that is the way we set up our government. Whoever, whoever spends the most money wins. And now that we have super PACs, as you brought up, they can they can put as much money as they want and tie that together with a Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court that basically says a company is like a person. Well, that means that whatever a person has as rights, a company has his rights. So it's your right to be able to support whoever you want. Well, that's great if we all have about the same income. But when somebody's making$100,000 and a company is making a hundred billion, and you both can put in as much money as you want, guess what? That company, whatever that company wants, is what is going to drive whatever your representative is going to vote for. And it's just the the data is there. If you just step back and you actually look at it and track it and analyze it, the data is all there. I'm not making anything up or I'm not saying, I think this is verifiable down to decimal points. This is the way it works.

Primaries Voting Rules And Gerrymanders

SPEAKER_04 27:51

Yep. And there's three other things closed, and I encourage you guys all to Google these things. Closed primaries, lack of a rank choice voting, which forces people to smear the other side because of the fact that you can't rack and stack. And so if the number two person, you have to think to yourself, if if your number one runner doesn't get it, then there's a chance that your number two runner will get it. And so you're not going to want to be nasty if you know that there's a rank choice uh decision on the ballot. And then the other, the third thing is gerrymandering, where you can basically redraw the lines in wherever you live to gather as many votes as you can by party. And then close primaries is when you are forced to be in a particular political party. And again, I'm probably you can please correct me, Michael. I sort of have a very basic understanding of those three things, but I would say that those three things also play a big part in why the system is not fair and why the wrong people get elected.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

They do. And and the whole the whole primary system changed. It used to be you would have a you'd have a convention, right? And I I apologize, I don't remember the year that all this changed. But it used to be, quite honestly, the party would get together and almost in a back room, right? The the bigwigs of the party, whoever that is, would pick and choose who they think a good candidate was to represent their party. And then they would present that to everyone at the convention and say, hey, this is who we're gonna have, right? It's a little elitist, but it did allow for vetting. They could vet someone and say, Yeah, this person's popular, but doesn't know what they're doing. Well, then we changed the primaries to now it's a voting thing. So anybody can get nominated by a party if they just get enough people to vote for them, which allows you to get a very charismatic person in that really doesn't know what they're doing. And we've seen this happen numerous times in the last few elections.

SPEAKER_04 30:07

To the point where people lie, they lie about their background all the time. I mean, that's why we have an entire industry of opposition researchers and people whose only job in life is to find dirt on their opponent. And the people that do this work would justify it by saying we're the truth tellers, we're the only ones out there that's really going to say the truth about a particular campaign. But the problem is that even to get this kind of research, to get a pollster out there to test messages and to do all those things, you've got to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in your campaign. So if veterans are the most trusted, I mean, we talked about this, I think, before the call, that veterans, you know, rank right up there with some of the most trusted people out there. And I've always felt that veterans running for office is an amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing thing to do. And it's wonderful that there's master's programs that are devoted to it. But veterans are not rich. They don't have tons of money. And what also disturbs me is that there's this huge pack called vote vets for the left, but on the right, oh no, there's there is nothing. And it's like, why isn't there something that's nonpartisan that exists as a campaign? What would you just call it? Like as a as a as a because I mean, I would think I don't know a lot about vote vets, I'll be honest, but I would imagine they're giving money and they're they're using advertising and doing other things to get their Democrats elected. And it's just unfortunate that it's so divisive like that. Like it should just be, we want to see veterans run for office. We are a nonpartisan organization. We'll have some that are on the right, some that are on the left, we'll have some that are independent, but oh, it isn't like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

I've had some, you're right. And and there's lots of studies right now that also show, touching on what you're saying, we have become more divisive. We we are further and further apart from each other. And that's not just our perception. Surveys and and and you know, studies over and over are showing that that we're further and further apart. Every once in a while I get in a conversation with somebody that I just love. Because instead of immediately just attacking everything and they're like, okay, tell me why, right? Let's discuss it. Let's have a logical discussion, a calm, logical, fact-based discussion. At the end, we might disagree, but at least we're we're smarter for it and we know more about it, and we can have a more informed decision. We're not seeing that as much today. No. No, I trace that personally back to Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingridge, he was in the 80s, right? 84-ish, if I'm not mistaken. But he looked at parties as battles. It you're fighting a war. Anything you can do to attack your opponent and weaken them makes you better. And and that's kind of where we started splitting more and more to where now it's almost impossible to get the two parties to agree on anything.

SPEAKER_04 33:24

Right. And then nothing gets done. Nothing gets done in Congress. Like they can't even pass budgets.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Right. Which is another thing. I I think, you know, one of my things that I I tell people to fix the government is your job is to go past the budget. If I had a job and I was supposed to put together a budget for my company and I didn't, and then I said, you know, I'm gonna go on a two-week vacation, I'll see you later. You'd be fired on the spot. And our congressmen do this. They shut down the entire country and then leave on what do they call it, recess, right? And I'm like, oh my God, if you don't pass a budget, you should be locked in chambers and we'll pass pizzas under the door and but you don't just leave the country, you know, wondering what's gonna happen. Your entire job is to make sure that the country runs. I think some things like that need to change. I have a lot of ideas that need to change. One of the biggest things we're gonna run into, though, is in our constitution. It says that the Congress will meet and operate on the form that it feels is best. In other words, Congress gets to decide its own rules. We have checks and balances in most places in our government. Congress is not one of them. We thought that, or the we, the founding powers, thought that there would be enough differentiation between people that they would self-regulate. They never foresaw people going into the Congress as a profession for life. They never saw anything like a multi-hundred billion dollar corporation. They never foresaw companies being thought of as people where they could donate as much money as they want. They never saw foreign influence through PACs the way that we have it now, because they thought everybody would just reject that. So now we've got congressmen that are, in my opinion, not doing their job because they want to stay elected and they need to keep doing what their funders want, which is not in the best interest of most Americans.

Lobbying Pressure And Foreign Policy

SPEAKER_04 35:43

No, it's not, it's being divisive and then voting for their pet projects. I can't tell you how many times I went onto the FEC site and I would look up a particular congressman and I kept seeing Israel Committee Public Affairs.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:58

And I'm like, why am I not seeing Poland Committee Public Affairs? Why am I not seeing why is this one particular country donating all this money to all of our congressmen?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Hundreds of millions per election. And now they've formed this this rabbit hole goes really deep. If you if you want to go deep on this one, you need to read Mirschimer and Walt's book, The Israeli Lobby, because they just go deep, deep into this. But the Israeli lobby, APAC, you know, has more influence than any other lobby that that is involved in the U.S. And again, you have to step back and look at the history. They started as the American Zionist Organization. And then during the uh late 50s, they were told, you have to register as a foreign agent. You have to declare that you're supporting a foreign country. During the early 60s, they were, they finally said, okay, we're done. You got to do it. And they just shut down the American Zionist Organization and stood up APAC, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Well, they're not doing public affairs, they're doing funding of people. And again, the the data is all there where you can see that if any congressman or senator ever says anything about Israel, that's derogatory. During the next election, their opponent is highly funded by APAC. Right. And now APAC has formed the APAC PAC, which can donate as much money as they want, and it's not tracked. They don't have to disclose who it was. And you know, hundreds of millions of dollars going into these elections. There's a site called APAC Tracker. And I recommend people go to it when it's time to vote. Go find out if your senator or congressman is taking money from APAC. Because if they are, I I can tell you how they're going to vote right now. You don't even need to elect them. We know we know how they're going to vote. Yeah. And it it, like I said, this rabbit hole goes really deep. And it's probably one of the most disturbing things I found. And it is why I I donated or donated, I uh dedicated an entire section of the book to that. Because it is so pervasive in everything we do. It's it it amazed me. It's one of those deals where once you see it, you can't unsee it. You can't unsee it, and then all of a sudden you think, this is everywhere, and you start noticing it. Things that you never noticed before, all of a sudden you start noticing it, and you're like, Why did I never see this? Right. This is this is this is shocking. Right, right, to have an entire other country determining which countries we go to war with, even I have traced us going to war with with Libya, with Syria, with Iraq during the Gulf War, and then later for our weapons of mass destruction, Afghanistan, all of those are traced back to APAC and Israeli influence, and even this current war, war nine rain, like whatever. It's the first time in history the US has ever co-branded an action. Ever. We have never gone to war or whatever you want to call it and said we're co-branding with another country. This time we did. This is the Israeli-American war against Iran.

SPEAKER_04 39:55

Well, what's interesting is that if you go on like media about it, you'll see American journalists interviewing Israeli public affairs officers about it.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:07

And as a PAO, it's like, that's just shocking to me. We're not even using our own spokespeople to talk about this war. We are just saying, well, they're the experts, they're the ones that can drive the narrative on this, on this war. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. And I have a hard time, and I'm sure a lot of other Americans do, not to bury our heads in the sand and say, what can we do? I mean, this is so after I read your book, I was like, I was it explained a lot. It, it, it finally was like, okay, this clicks. And like I said, as veterans, and the majority of my audience are veterans, it really clicks because we all served, or many of us served overseas and saw the the fraud, waste, and abuse. We saw all these hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars going into these development projects that were not getting tangible results, but we were doing it anyway. And we saw that it wasn't making these countries safer. We were working against each other. We were working against progress. Right. And then to read your book and go, oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

That's why that's why we were doing it.

Fraud Waste Abuse Seen Up Close

SPEAKER_04 41:21

That's why we were there so long. That's that's who benefited from it. That's the the companies that made money from it. So it's like it's so overwhelming, I think, to think, okay, what can what can we do? And the only way that I've been able to rectify it in my head as a retiree now and able to go out to the community and make a difference is start local. You've got to start local. And there are things that anyone can do locally. Bring you and your neighbors together. Find something that you enjoy doing, or something that it gives you a space to talk and make it non-political, make it non-partisan.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

And I guarantee the tough part. Sorry not to interrupt. No, no, go ahead. I mean, and and I agree with you, you have to be local. You have to start local. Yeah, quite honestly, try calling your congressman and get them on the phone.

unknown 42:16

No.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Actually, try writing writing a letter and having them read it. They they just won't. It's not going to be.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

Like you were telling me, like a lot of times, AI will just aggregate all the letters. I can't tell you how many times when I was an animal advocacy, I would send letters and and notes and and follow-ups, and I would hear nothing.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

And the worst, quite honestly, it's most convenient for us is email, right? So we send an email or we go to their online website and they say, leave us a comment. Okay. They never see that. I tell people if you want a higher chance of them seeing it, write a physical letter. They have to be opened, scanned, and entered manually into a system that says, here's what this letter is about. I will also tell people, don't have the great idea of I'm going to send a hundred of them, because that'll immediately just get you flagged as this person is not a serious, you know, they're just they're just and you have to make the letter thoughtful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

Bring it back to something that impacts you personally or you feel passionate about. Like they want to know that you actually know the issue and you research the issue, and don't make it your first stop. I mean, I look at like Congress as you write your congressman when all other avenues haven't been fruitful in getting a result and you're not hearing back or you're not getting justice or you're not getting this or that. And what and and they they see that that they can look at your letter and say, Well, you could have tried this, you could have tried that. And so make sure to be judicious about when you write them.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Absolutely. Absolutely.

unknown 43:59

And

Start Local And Make Contact Count

SPEAKER_01 44:00

And again, you you said it. Start local, do what you can. That's the way we we are in our very nature a grassroots country, right? Everybody votes, we should, and it kind of rolls up. Sure. And we need to do that. The other thing I want to comment on that you said is you've got to keep it nonpartisan. It's so easy to say, well, they did that. And well, well, they did this, right? Try having a discussion somewhere with someone where you immediately start the discussion with, Well, you're wrong. Right? And you go nowhere. It's not going to go very far. I get a lot of heat about the book sometimes. Oh, I'm sure. Where I I get told, well, you're a left-wing communist, you know.

SPEAKER_04 44:47

Oh, I know. I love the way people say that about you, Michael. And nothing could be further from the truth.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

I'm like, okay, I get it. You don't like what I'm saying. Right. I get that. So you want to find some way to pitch the message label. And I do put things in there like we again, for example, I say we spent this money, much money on this. That much money could have solved the homelessness problem. Well, as soon as I say that, they're like, oh, left-wing liberal just wants to put all our money into homeless. I'm like, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I you need to have an understanding of the magnitude of what we're talking about. And you do that by comparing it to something that is a little bit more relatable.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

You and you have to do that in a way that people understand it. What and what I also appreciated about your book is that I'm not a huge scholar. I'm not somebody that reads a lot of history. I I'm not that typical voter sometimes with that doesn't have the a lot of information. And you wrote the book in a way that I felt was very, very easy to understand, digestible. The chapters were short, they were to the point. And I'm curious, when you set out to write this book, what was how did you even outline the chapters? Like, how did you decide where to put what? And you can show so show the audience the book as well.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Oh, so here's here's the book.

SPEAKER_04 46:27

We are the bad guys.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

We are the bad guys. Available on Amazon, of course. I do have to tell people if you do read it, please leave a review. Whatever you think about it, leave me a review. It really helps or hurts, whichever one you want to do. But this book was interesting because I started in the Middle East because I saw what was happening there. And I started my degree from the academy is in history. So I started doing more historical research. I have to segue, I have to tell you one of the best courses I had at the Academy on History. Okay. It was amazing. It was a senior year, only history majors took it or whatnot. And we had to analyze information. We would read three different accounts of an event that were vastly different. And we had to synthesize and say what really happened. Right. Interesting. It got even better. One day there's nine of us in a room. The professor comes in, doesn't say anything, points to me, and says, You need to leave the room and stand outside for a minute. I'm like, okay. So I did. And then about four or five minutes later, he says, Come on back in. Now when I was outside of the room, he walked around the room and did things. He would walk around the room and pat somebody on the head. He climbed under the table and came out the other side. Right. Everybody in the room, nine people, eight people without me, had to write down what happened. And he gave him five minutes. He said, take five minutes, write down everything that happened. And then he gave me these eight sheets of paper and say, tell me what happened. And I'm like, okay. Well, there were things that you didn't see. He went under the table, he pulled one person's, you know, pant leg. Nobody else saw that, just the one person. Right. But then you've got to say, well, only out of eight people, only one said this, but it's a primary source, not a secondary source. And somebody else, while they were writing something, didn't see him do something else. You know, it was a fascinating study on how you have to take in information and synthesize it and figure out kind of what really happened. And I started doing that, especially after my time in the Middle East. I started seeing what I'm hearing, what I'm being told, is not what I'm seeing. Right? So something's got to be wrong. So I started digging into it and synthesizing more information. I started writing a little bit on the Middle East. Then it kind of changed into a, well, if we're doing that there, have we done it anywhere else? And I knew I knew a couple of the stories. I didn't know about Hawaii until I started researching more. I I started digging into it, you know, and then it's that it's that pulling a thread, you know.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

I was gonna say that must have been fascinating when you started to pull the string on all these countries and saw the similarities in some of the ways in which we basically bend people over to serve our will. I mean, that that's what it is. We find ways to force people to do to do our bidding, and then we sell it to the world as though they wanted it.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Yeah, they we're we're doing you a favor. It reminds me of that saying during the Vietnam War. In order to save the village, we had to destroy it. And I'm like, how? Right, how does that right in order in order to help the people in in Haiti, we had to overthrow their government and sell all of their land to the US. Right. But now we're now we're going to farm it and and it's okay for you.

SPEAKER_04 50:30

Right. It's basically when our corporations want to go into a country and they want to be profitable, we will find the regime that will cooperate with us and do the best bidding that satisfies the corporations that want to invest in that particular country.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 50:47

The thing is, is that you know, if you pull aside the Epstein files and take away the the the terrible predatory piece of it, there was so much insight on this in the Epstein Files, and people really have missed that because they focus so much, rightly so, on the people who were the victims. But lost in the shuffle were all these other decisions that are being made by our most elite people in government, oh, and in our corporations, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

And if anybody doesn't think that this was a targeted operation, then you don't understand how the system works. And uh another two books I recommend to everybody is Rise and Kill First, an awesome book detailing the founding of Massad and how everybody's heard of Massad. And you're like, okay, what do they do? Well, their number one thing is assassination. That is their number one method of controlling things is assassinating people, and most people don't know that. And then you read the book, and this details like 50 cases of them going into other countries and assassinating people and how they did it and why they did it, right? And you you start seeing assassination as a political tool that that they have specialized in. And the other one is a guy, Perkins, who wrote a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

SPEAKER_04 52:23

I've been wanting to read that. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Now he has been highly criticized for some of his work. People say that's not actually fully true. And I can't comment. I can say that much of what he said is verifiable. Now, it's easy to verify the outcome and it's easy to verify the actions. He gives motivation to that, and I can't validate the motivation, but I can validate the outcome and the actions. And it's difficult to think up a different motivation. Right. When you look at it, you're like, well, why else would somebody want to do that? This seems pretty plausible, and it did happen. So versus, you know, if I don't have any other information, I'll give this a very high probability factor. I'll I'll leave it open if somebody give me other information, but but absent that, this has a pretty high probability of being correct.

Check Bias Then Get Involved

SPEAKER_04 53:26

So getting back to the local angle as we as we starting to wind down the call, because I really and what you can do. I'm all about like it are we gonna be just a doomed empire that's going to fall flat on its face, just like Rome, like any other, like there's probably been other empires that we could compare. Chinese, Spanish, Ottoman, yeah. Okay. So what can Americans do? Now that we see the tide, we see our cities turning into just chaos. I mean, there's a reason why ice is on the street, you know, whether you want them there or you don't want them there. There's a reason why this is happening, there's a reason why homelessness has and drug abuse and all these other things have infected our major cities. There's a reason why we have these Black Lives Matter protests and all these other things. So we're already seeing these little, little, I would call them just like little signs, little, little warning signs, just like in the Titanic. There was like 20 things that everybody missed and then the ship sank. So what is it that you recommend as a citizen that wants to make a difference? Where do you even start?

SPEAKER_01 54:38

You know, I'm I'm gonna quote Michael Jackson. Start with the man in the mirror. You first have to look at yourself and say, am I biased? And everybody says, No, I'm not. But seriously, do you accept alternative explanations for things? Are you willing to listen to someone else and have them explain to you what they think in a thoughtful way? If you're not, then you are biased and it doesn't really matter what the facts tell you. You're you're gonna continue to do what you're going to do. So the first thing you can do is try and take on the persona of being someone willing to learn and willing to look at things maybe in the way you haven't normally looked at them throughout your life. And then again, hold your government responsible, hold them accountable. This is not something where you just vote once a year and you forget who your senator even is. And that's always surprises me. I ask people, who's your senator? And they're like, I don't know. How about your congressman? No idea. And I'm like, well, then how do you know what they're doing? Right. You they're representing you. You personally, they are representing.

SPEAKER_04 56:05

You need to hold them accountable, and that goes for your state and your city as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Absolutely. Because the state and city, again, roll up to the national, right? And things that happen on a local county, yep. School boards, even. Yep. You know, I see decisions made in school boards that you think, oh yeah, no big deal. It's a school. They're affecting your kids, they're affecting the way your kids are learning, they're affecting the way your kids are thinking. You need to be maybe not involved because none of us have enough time to go to all of these things, but look it up. I mean, it's all online. We have a wonderful internet. Just say, you know, what decisions have been made?

SPEAKER_04 56:50

Yeah, find something that interests you.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Yeah. And then find out why was this done this way.

Electoral College And Popular Vote Compact

SPEAKER_04 56:56

Right. And I think that's something that every one of us can do and has a duty to do. Get involved. So, I mean, there's rotary clubs, there's for the people that are the veterans, we've got the American Legion, we've got the VFW. We have organizations at the grassroots level that are committed to making a difference. Here in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, we have a chamber. I mean, there are many ways that we can start trying to be more involved in your community so that you can make a difference. And to that, we also, like you say, on a national level, we have to change the laws, the laws on how people get elected. And there's a few organizations, Veterans for All Voters, is one that could just comes to mind off the top of my head. But look and see what organizations are working some of these initiatives, because there are, or there's even an organization, I can't remember the name, but I got it after a big gentleman from Veterans for All Voters came on one of our webinars for class. And there is an organization that's actively trying to change the amendment that the the Citizens versus United is looking to try to overturn that.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

And before in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04 58:13

Yeah. And before we get off, the one thing that you mentioned, I forgot to touch on this when you were on Sean Ryan, the biggest thing that really struck people's interest was the electoral college and the ways in which our electors determine who wins versus the popular vote.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

And there is a whole program called the Popular Vote Compact, where they only need like three or four more states to sign up for it. And then essentially the electoral colleges no more. I got so much people pushback because people were like, well, without the Electoral College, you know, New York and Los Angeles will be the only ones to vote. Like, that's not really true. And I you don't really understand how this works then. Because right now, if you live in Wyoming, your vote counts 15 times more than the person in LA. That's not fair, right? And it's a lot of this goes back to compromises, right? The Electoral Comp Compact or the Electoral College was a compromise made when they were making the Constitution. It it they had to have it, you know, because of southern states and slaves, and how much did a slave count versus you know a regular citizen? All of this was a compromise that, quite honestly, has no place in our government in 2026 in the age of computers. It's just an anachronism that needs to go.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

And I'm going to get grief from that saying it on your show.

Read The Book And Keep Talking

SPEAKER_04 59:48

Oh, that's all right. That's all right. It'll it'll open up the discussion. And you and I know that you welcome dissent, and that's something that we've lost. And as someone who admittedly was partisan, partisan on the left, I've been partisan on the right. And it wasn't until, like I said, a combination of just where I was in my own personal growth development, my class at the University of San Francisco, and reading your book, I was like, oh gosh, I I have I have been looking at things all wrong and my discussions online. Yep, definitely please read the book. We are the bad guys. And please take the time to look into some of these ways in which you can get involved. If you have any questions, I'm I'm online a lot, as you see. Please feel free to ask me. I'm I'm happy to point you in the right direction. I've just now started some of these things myself locally, and I intend to continue doing so. But Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It was a great discussion.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

It's been my pleasure. I've been looking forward to it. And and like you, I want to say I have a website, michael telester.com. I made a a I made a promise that I will answer everybody that writes. So you can write to me on there. And I'm looking at my email right now. I've got like 24 emails to answer today. But if you have questions or you want to discuss things, I'm happy to hear from you. Reach out and maybe we can give Teresa more ideas for her next podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:18

I love it. I love it. And I'm going to continue to have these conversations. These are my favorite kinds of conversations. This is kind of this is my mission, and I will continue to do this for as long as I need to. And I believe this is this is what we should be doing. So thank you so much. And I appreciate you. And I'll meet you backstage as I go full screen.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:43

All right, guys, that's a wrap. I did see there were another question that came in just as I was getting off. So I will get to that later. But thank you so much for watching the Stories of Service podcast. I will be back at it next week. So please stay tuned for the next episode. As I always do to take to finish out these calls, I just say please take care of yourselves. Please take care of each other and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye bye now.