L.O.G. 112 Symbolism Youre Reading It Wrong

All right, buddy, I'm going to hit the "go live" button. Let me know when it shows up.

It is live.

Okay, that is good. Hello, everyone! We are recording this on a Friday morning, and I have decided to bring back something I haven't worn in a while, which is the Hawaiian shirt for Aloha Friday. So, if you're just listening along, you don't get the pleasure of being able to see that, but it is a lulu, Brian. It's a doozy.

Yeah, I bet.

All right. So today, I want to jump right into the topic. We're getting into symbolism and iconography. I know this was something that a lot of people are into or get interested in, and often the reason why we're talking about it is we often see things misinterpreted. Whether that's a symbol, graffiti, tattoos, symbols, message clothing, regular clothing, hand and arm type signals, salutes, waves, words that people use oftentimes get misinterpreted or misrepresented.

There's a reason some of the stuff changes over time, but sometimes these things have meaning. Whether it can be a tattoo or a symbol, or something like a swastika, which gets what I call "hijacked by history." It's a term I use for a lot of these things where at one point it meant one thing, and then someone took it and started using it, and now it took on a whole new meaning. So, that's another discussion point.

But I want to get into this because a lot of times people take these things out of context. They see someone wearing a pin, or saying a certain word, or wearing a certain color, and automatically attribute an extraordinary amount of value to it. Sometimes it's just the only clean pair of shorts that person had that day. I mean, and I get that all the time with the clothes I wear to the gym. All my gym clothing is either like free t-shirts I got from somewhere, or something I ordered a bunch of supplements and they threw in a free t-shirt for their thing, or it's from here or something there. Someone's like, "Oh, you went to that event or something?" I was like, "No, man, I got this t-shirt for free. It was free."

So, everything has to be put into context. Just because something means something to you doesn't mean it means that to the person either demonstrating that symbol, wearing that clothing, having that tattoo, or holding that sign, or using that term. Those things change over time. So rather than saying, "Oh, this person said that, or that person has a tattoo of this on them; that means this," you can't do that. You don't necessarily know what it means to that person if you don't put that observation into context. The saying that I like to use is, "Sometimes it's just a book about a whale," you know what I'm saying? So, I want to just frame the discussion as that, and we're going to jump into a number of different areas, but the overall overarching theme is symbolism and how it can be taken wrong. Greg, I'll throw to you to start off. I just want to get that brief intro and get going.

No, no, that's wonderful. And welcome, everybody. Brian, that's a masterful shirt, man. It takes some balls to wear a shirt. I have a lot of confidence to walk around, I'm just saying.

So, listen, Brian, when we frame stuff, we always look for precedent. We look for case law. We look for a legal or a scientific standard, and we try to dig deep from there, rather than opinion-based testimony, which always blows, and it's always going to be interpreted or misinterpreted. So, I look to Occam's Razor, and we take a look at William of Ockham. You've got parsimony, and you've got a situation that says, "You know what, usually the answer that you're looking for is the simplest answer," rather than this complicated League of Nations leaning on dominoes amongst competing hypotheses, right? The simpler one is usually the right answer.

So, I'm framing that up, and the reason I'm framing that up is that we talk to a lot of people when we're on the road, and we're recently on the road, and we talk to people that say, "Hey, listen, couldn't it be this, that, and the other?" Yeah, it could be that, and it could be this, and it could be this other thing, but you know, most often it's a stress fracture, it's this that happened, it's the ice was too thin to support the weight of the person. So, when I would go to investigate a homicide, Brian, I wouldn't look at all these crazy things. I would look at what the evidence is tending to show me, and then I would say, "Okay, rather than putting a round peg in a square hole, let's follow that evidence."

So, what we've got now is we've got these things where I'm scared to death. First of all, I'm a former copper. Second of all, I'm a white guy. And third of all, you know that I'm always using my hands and using some sort of symbology or iconography when we're in class, and I'm petrified that somebody's going to mistake my peace sign or thumbs up, or, "Hey, it's okay," (Greg gestures the peace sign and thumbs up for the watching audience) to get what I'm trying to say, my urban sign language, and think that I'm calling out a coup. And that's not what it is, and we've created this hypersensitivity, I think.

Yes, towards these symbols and these icons, iconography.

Well, hypersensitivity is a good one, right?

We become, you know, kind of—I don't know what the term is to use it—but the idea is, if I look for meaning in everything around me, I'll find it regardless of whether or not there's meaning in it or not. I mean, and we often get it wrong. I have the flag hanging up right behind me. If you're just listening in, I've got my Chicago flag hanging up on the door in my office here, and there's a throwback to where I grew up and where I skinned my knees and all that, and I love that city, and it's dear to my heart. But someone came on here one time was like, "Oh, you were a police officer in Chicago?" And I was like, "No, why?" They're like, "Oh, you have the police flag up." I was like, "No, no, that's for the City of Chicago. That has nothing to do with the police." But right away, you jump to those conclusions, and it's just another example of how we do this.

Right. And the coppers do, Brian. The coppers do have that patch on there, yes, because they work for the city.

Yeah, yeah. So, the person glommed onto that one factoid and said, "This is now going to be my opinion." And that's a rush. That's a rush to an unreasonable conclusion.

One of the things we found, especially with, and we did a webinar on this, about graffiti specifically, so graffiti is a great one. And this is where a lot of symbolism and iconography—graffiti falls under that category of symbolism iconography. It's been around forever, for as long as, you know, since cave paintings. That's a version of graffiti. Like I always say in class, PowerPoint is just a modern-day version of that same thing. Here's some stuff I want you to look at, and I'm going to tell a story with it.

One of those things was, a while back, I think we had some phone calls from folks. I believe it's down in Texas, I couldn't remember, but it doesn't matter, where they had a bunch of swastikas at a school, and this is what was going on. They were spray-painted, and everyone went, "Oh my gosh, we have this horrible, you know, we've got some white supremacists out here. This is a huge threat. We had no idea what was going on in our neighborhood." And it was really a couple of 13-year-old kids who were spray-painting on there. And you go, "Well, do you really think they fully understood what that meaning was and what the message it was that they were delivering at 13 years old with a can of spray paint?" I'd say that's unlikely.

Right, right.

Didn't know you had a white supremacist problem in your neighborhood because there isn't one. These kids are jackass kids who need to be taught that what they did was wrong, and here's why it's wrong, and here's what that symbol means to others, and this is... but meaning those things, we also get hypersensitive to those things. "Well, I saw this and I know what that means." You don't know what that meant to me. You have no idea what I meant by that, and I think that's important too, especially with tattoos. Tattoos are a huge one, right? I've got private tattoos. You can only see, like, I got one on my leg, and that's it. You can't see it unless I'm wearing shorts, and I only do that in certain situations.

You have the one of the, was it the dolphin riding the unicorn on your…

It's actually… yeah.

Okay, got it. It's the unicorn riding the dog.

Yeah, the color is better. It's beautiful. But the point is, like with mine, you don't… you can look at a symbol someone has and say, "Oh, I know what that means, and they're into this," and they were… It's like, dude, or, you know what, I mean, you got the story of the Marine who, if you paid for it, he'd get it tattooed on his body, so it was complete nonsense, right? So, I think it's putting those observations into context and understanding that, hey, maybe that's not what it meant to them, and you're only going to know what it means to them either by further observation, gathering other artifacts and evidence, or asking them. You don't necessarily know.

So, you're exactly right. Let me give you two different perspectives that come to an unbelievable, undeniable conclusion. So, when we first bought the ranch, we had a farrier, and the farrier that came out, we didn't hit it off at hello. I thought he was brutal to the horses, didn't like the way that he was trimming down the hooves, just didn't like the guy. So, I went to Shelley, because Shelley's the voice of reason, you know, the CEO of our company now, and I said, "Hey, get a read on this guy." She goes over, she doesn't like him, bounces, and we get another farrier. The farrier that we got was a foul-mouthed, had the cinches in his mouth kind of thing. And watching him move, it took us a couple of times, is what I'm telling you, to get the right farrier to put the shoes on a horse. Well, what he would do is when he started saying certain words, I noticed the horses would move away from him. And so I go, "Hey, what words were you using when it was that?" And he goes, "Well, I've done these horses for so long that when they hear me say the F-word or gosh-darn word or this, they actually start tensing up and they move."

Well, listen, that same reaction happens in kids when they put the swastika on, sometimes backwards, sometimes on a garage. They might not know the history of it. They might not have ever been to the Holocaust Museum, right? They might not understand about National Socialism and its historical perspective, Brian, but they know they got a reaction. Yep. So, that reaction drove the catecholamine lube, so they want to go and do it again. The brain's chemistry is firing, so that's what drives that.

Now, the other half of that is Pat Ross, my mom (Shelley's mom—I've got a number of moms, I'm an orphan, folks—my stepmom). She was at Meijer Thrifty Acres, and while she was walking through, a guy had a face mask, which is the new billboard now, and it said "Arbeit Macht Frei." Sorry for my weak German. She called right away and she said, "Hey, you speak German, what does that mean?" And "Arbeit" is work, and "frei" is free, so "Work will set you free." The problem is that message was hanging over Dachau and Auschwitz and the goddamn concentration camps back in World War II. Now, here's a time where you think about, yeah, you have the First Amendment right to wear that, buddy, but do you understand all the hate that you're emanating around and the fact that you might run into the wrong person whose cup's full that day? They decide to tune you up or shoot you in a hat or whatever.

So, Brian, what I'm trying to say is that we forget how important iconography and symbolism is. And sometimes we get bent out of shape when it means nothing, and we have to avoid that. But also, we have to educate folks on, "Hey, here's the five or seven symbols, for example, that are always going to evoke a violent reaction," do you know what I'm saying? And this is one that's going to drive rage, and we should talk to our lawmakers, and if those are out of line, Brian, we should bring them in. That's why there are amendments to the Constitution, right? We should say, "Hey, these certain things provoke images that we don't want to do." So, it's a very fine line between free speech and using an icon, iconography or symbolism, to piss somebody off.

You said it the other day, we were having a gradual conversation, and you drew back the swastika back to ancient China. You drew it back to ancient Egypt, and many of the people that used it as an eternity symbol, not unlike the Mobius Loop, for example.

Right, right, right. No. And so, this gets into it. Is that how do I know, how can I determine someone's intent understanding context, right? How do I know? Because that's what it's about. It's, what does this person intend? What do they mean by it? Because, yes, don't put your own meaning on it, right? The idea is, how do I do that when I see symbols or I see graffiti? How do I know what's serious, what's some punk kid, what's a public message, what's a private message? All that stuff. Because that's the important part of this stuff. If I wore that with an intent behind it, or if I put on a certain colored piece of clothing with an intent behind it, there has to be, so there's likely some other artifacts and evidence I can glean to help support that idea, right? Because otherwise, it's just a t-shirt or something.

So, how do I do that when I see this stuff? Because, and I don't want to get too—there's so many different examples, I don't know what a good one is to use to start with—but like, I mean, even clothing and stuff, people go, "Oh, you wear this type of clothing, so that means this." We get interesting comments on our Instagram page, we do. But I did one, and it was some kids, not kids, they're older, but in Huntington Beach, and they're all dressed exactly the same. Like, I mean, to a tee. Your brain could not tell the difference: black shoes, black and white shoes, black pants, black shirt. They're kind of skater-type kids or whatever. And the whole idea was, you know, "Hey, look, they're dressing the same, that's called homophily," that's all that stuff. And then someone's comment was like, "Yeah, you don't know they're not doing anything wrong." And I was like, "Okay, well, I never said they were doing anything wrong. I just said, 'Look, there's a group of individuals, even at a great distance, with what they're doing, you can use artifacts and evidence to support a reasonable conclusion that they're likely working together, and you can establish somewhat of a hierarchy.'" That's all the point was about. I didn't say they were doing anything. And their comment was about, "Well, yeah, it's like anytime I see a bunch of frat bros walking down the street with their Sperry hats or this, that, or the other thing described it, I know there's some impending date rape." And I'm like, "You, you, no, you don't know that. You don't know any of that. You don't know anything. You can't jump to that conclusion." Well, yeah, it was like, he was like, "Oh my God!" And then, of course, one person commented like, "Hey, is there something you want to talk about? Did you have a bad experience with some frat guys?" But like, that's the whole point is that you can't jump to that conclusion because that happens on both sides, for good and bad. You go, "Oh, they're dressed this way, they must belong here," or, "Look at how they're dressed, they must be in a gang." And I think that's a huge, huge problem that we have when we're trying to understand this stuff.

Unreasonable jump to an unreasonable conclusion at a high speed without intervention by comparing it against the environmental and societal baseline. Stop.

Okay, so here we were. First of all, shout out to North Macedonia. Here we were on the island of Chania in Greece, and we love Greece, we love everything about it. All of a sudden, we started seeing these Nazi symbols. And then there were these spray-painted "coppers" with helmets and face masks beating the people that were protesting and covering up. And I've seen that before, I know what that graffiti tends to show. So, I warned everybody to increase your security posture, make sure that you increase your visibility and SA (situational awareness). The very next morning, we came up, and the streets were empty, and we had to get to training. And so there's a little coffee place that we went to all the time. So, I'm pushing Shelley out, going, "You know, they probably won't take her." And so, "Hey, Shelley, go see what's going on." And she goes out in the street, you know, "Be very, very quiet," like the Bugs Bunny episode, right? And what happens is the Communist Party was staging a protest, a rally. And so here come the big sticks with the big red flags and the big red hats.

Listen, take things in context. When I was in Detroit, and I'm still a huge Red Wings fan, if you were running around with red and white, that meant that you were a Wings fan, and they probably played that night before or were going to play tonight, and you were a fan. This context in Greece, at this time, with the elections coming up, meant something very different, Brian. We could have gotten killed. We could have gotten beaten to death with those big sticks. And maybe if you're wearing red in Compton, it has a different thing. Maybe if I'm wearing a Pittsburgh baseball cap in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, you said it best, the best way to do is ask. And you're saying, "Should I always ask the person?" No. There's an ultra-violent person that I see, and I'm not going to tell you where, but all the time, and wears this long scabbard and a knife on the side, and it's tatted up and it's always angry. I've always wanted to go up and interview the guy, but I also don't want to get shanked.

Yeah, you don't want to get stabbed.

I'm trying to say. So, somebody right now watching or listening, Brian, is saying, "So, why don't you go up and ask him?" Well, obviously, my fear. So, what you can do, you can go to community policing, or you go to the mayor's office, and you can go to the city attorney and go, "Hey, listen, I'm seeing a lot of these red jackets out in public. What does that mean?" And they go, "Oh, no, no, no, that's Western University, the alumni. They all wear the red jackets or something." Or maybe it's a gosh-darn Home Depot worker.

Huntington Beach the other week—by the way, Brian lives in Huntington Beach for you stalkers (Brian laughs)—yeah, go find me. So, the same thing. I started seeing a lot of younger, you know, 20, early 20s, late teens kind of that age. And a lot of them were walking around, they all had like a trucker-style hat, but it was for Bass Pro Shops. And I'm like, "Okay, well, that's not very popular in Southern California, just given the context." Now, I'm in the South, I see Bass Pro Shops, or in the Midwest, not really a big deal, right? And, well, one, the hat's usually going to be dirty, it's not going to be clean, like all these hats were very clean. And so I was like, "Okay, well, whatever. That's odd." I just took note of it.

And then later on, we were at an establishment that serves adult drinks, and we were hanging out. And this guy sits down right next to me with his girlfriend, and he's got one of the hats on. So, I'm like, "Well, all right, I gotta ask." They were sitting there having a good time. I said, "Hey, bud, you know, sorry to bother you. I'm just curious, man, I'm not from around here, and I've seen like a whole bunch of people all wearing the Bass Pro Shops hat." And he kind of leaned back and smiled. He's like, "Yeah, so here's the thing." And this guy was really cool. He's like, "Dude, I played college football in Texas. I went there this, and like all my buddies down there, we just like Bass Pro Shops was like a normal thing. Like, I didn't think anything was like a work hat." Like, and then didn't ever thought anything of it until I came back here. And he's like, "I came back here now in Southern California, and I see all these other kids, young guys, like wearing a Bass Pro Shops hat. I'm like, 'What the heck?'" I was like, "The closest Bass Pro Shops to here?" And he's like, "Well, there actually is one. It's like an hour away." And I was like, "So, what are they?" He's like, "It's just like a cool fashion thing. Like, 'Oh, I'm going to wear a Bass Pro Shops hat to be ironic.'" I was like, "Are you serious?" He's like, "Yeah, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." I was like, "But that's what I'm saying." To him, he had a dirty hat that he wore on the farm that he worked at over the summer in Texas with his buddies that were down there. And then Dirty Mike…

Right, right.

And the boys were wearing the hats here just as a fashion statement. So, the whole thing was, it just seemed odd or different or unusual to me. Found a guy, randomly had to sit down next to me, and was able to ask. But sometimes that's all it is. But sometimes a hat's just a hat. Like, that's it.

Brian, how can… how can a small segment of society co-opt and hijack the peace sign or the okay sign? And folks, I'm giving them (Greg gestures the peace sign and thumbs up for the watching audience) on the show that, for the watching, to be demonstrative. How can they take that from me who doesn't know better? And then somebody comes in and goes, "Oh, wait, you can never use that signal again because this small militant faction uses it." Hey, you know what? Go after them! Tell them to kiss my ass! Because I use it as a means to communicate non-verbal communication. Anyone who's ever done any diving anywhere in the world, that's the international sign for, "I'm okay." I mean, that's what it is. So, isn't that what we use it for? I mean, in cultures that don't speak English. But what that is, that's why I always say context matters, right? It depends on the context in which you use something like that. And what a lot happens is, like, we want to strip away the context of the situation and go, "Nope, this is what it means. That's where it is."

And so, you've either got, on one side of the aisle, you've got people that pick apart every little thing someone says or does or wears and it's, "See, I told you they were part of this international cabal of child sex trafficking rings, harvesting adrenochrome. I told you everything, so you even know that, you creep!" So then the other side of the aisle takes it and goes, "Oh, see, they said these words here. Look, this word means that you're a racist!" So it's like, you're one or the other.

United.

Yeah. And so, I'm in none of those camps, by the way. Help me, because you're a Ph.D. in street. Help me. So, this, and I don't know if I can call him a douchebag or an… so I won't. But the Shaman Guy from the D.C. (referring to the 'QAnon Shaman' from the January 6th Capitol riot), oh God, stuff. Okay, perfect, exactly. Go ahead, paint it up, all this other stuff. That guy lives in his mom's basement, he's got mental health issues. Like, here's my thing: if I saw that guy… oh my God. If I saw that guy in a stadium, and he came out through the big paper thing, and then they were flying off, he would fit perfectly.

Yes.

At what point does somebody go, "This guy's got it going on. He's a thought leader in our group?" No, he's not. No, he's not. And dude, if that's you, wash your face, okay? Because that stuff will give you acne. And put away the hat, man. I mean, what happens, Brian, is sometimes, like, I'll give you two quick examples. One in Grosse Pointe within the week, and one at Crested Butte. Both times, people snuck into a place that was very prominent and put up swastikas. And the swastikas, by their clandestine nature and the reveal, were meant to be shocking. Yes. And therefore, if they were meant to be shocking, and the venue within which they replaced the environment, then it's likely to assume that those people were using it as hate speech. And even though it's protected, it's horrible, it's cowardly, it incites and invokes bad things. And we got enough bad stuff. Let's look at some good stuff.

You know, Brian, iconography, when I was in Iraq, I used the Bart Simpson stickers all over Iraq to show everybody to stay in Cooper's Color Code Yellow. I wasn't trying to be insulting. I wasn't trying to… it was a reminder, as a member of the reminder.

But, but let's take the other side, because sometimes these do mean, and there's a lot of great databases, a lot of people who research a lot of this stuff work because, you know, a lot of gangs, narcotraffickers, human traffickers, a lot of illicit activity, they'll have their own form of communication. Some of that with using symbols and iconography like that, or numbers, or letters, or words. And they have a certain meaning. So, it is important, remember that in those contexts they absolutely do. And there's great, I mean, there are people who document that stuff, especially graffiti. I mean, yeah, that's like, there's so much that has gone into graffiti that's a whole language in and of itself that has changed over time, and it's incredible. Like, I always love seeing new graffiti or something I haven't seen before. "Look at that style," because it's just, it's a new thing, it's a language. But that's the thing, it's meant to send a message. So maybe that message is, "Hey, I just want to shock you or do something to piss you off. I want to make you angry," or, "I'm marking my territory," or, "I'm saying this is," or, "I'm paying homage to someone," or, "This is my art, this is how I describe myself, this is how I express my personality." There are all those different meanings, so you can't always take one and jam that square peg into the round hole.

Yeah, and so Will Atkinson, call sign "Teacher" (we both love him to death), his new baby, Henry, is now probably 18 months old. Henry has a wonderful wife, Jacqueline. Shout out to everybody down there in Dallas. So, Atkinson is a tattoo extraordinary. I mean, he knows about the art that goes behind him, from Banksy to the street stuff, or with the graffiti. But he has personal tattoos and private tattoos and public tattoos and all this stuff, and we would argue all the time because what he would call "street art" to me was "malicious destruction of property." So, it's hard for me, Brian, you know that because I'm an old guy, it's hard for me to look at graffiti and go, "Oh, that's beautiful art." But it's changed and adapted.

So, it's the same thing when I see like tats. Back when I was growing up, there was a guy across the street that was named Cappy, and tattoos meant you were a Navy guy or you did this or that. And now it's like, everybody's got one.

Yeah, well, now you got like 18-year-old girls going with their moms to get their first tattoo.

Right. It's very different than it was. Even different, it's different. And so, I have a hard time with that, and so that creates a degree of anxiety. So, the best way to do it is to research it. There are still libraries with books. There are still people that you can call, or you can go to a tattoo shop. The cool thing about a tattoo shop, it's a public, habitual area where you can walk in and sit down and go, "Look, I don't want a tat, but what does this mean?" And you know what? The tattoo artist, Brian, I guarantee he'd be glad to tell you what that is. So, knowledge is power. And sometimes when we feel like we're being hyper-vigilant, we're going to do something stupid, we can actually back off a little bit, you get what I'm saying?

And say what? Like, last thing, listen: that Meijer Thrifty Acres, the guy with "Arbeit Macht Frei" on his mask. That's hate speech, buddy, and it's protected, I get it. But I cannot think of a context where that wouldn't be, you see what I'm trying to say? So, be aware of what you're sending because you'll reap a whirlwind. And that's not a threat. I mean, sooner or later, you'll run into the wrong situation at the wrong time, even if it's God going, "Hey, that wasn't so funny." You know.

Yeah, no, no. And that's an important thing to remember too, especially, you know, colors are a big one, right? Meaning, you know, colors have a lot of… they do. Especially when flags or logos of groups are important because there's meaning in there. Or, most of the time there is, unless they're just a, whatever, just very amateur group. But anything that's been around for a long time, stood the test of time, all of that stuff does have meaning to that group. Colors are a big one, but they're almost universal, right? We always talk about, like, you look at our flag, right? Red, white, and blue are the colors. Well, red being sacrifice, white symbolizing purity usually. And then there are different meanings behind these colors, but that's almost universal, right? And you'd see that, like, I mean, even overseas when you see stuff like the people flying, "Oh, they got a black flag at their house, they're an ISIS militant or they're part of some terrorist group or insurgent group or this." Or it's like, "Oh, or a family member died." And you're like, "Why would you hang a black flag?" It's like, what color clothing do you typically see when you go to a funeral? Yeah, it's black, right? That symbolizes death, that's martyrdom, that's a person who's gone on, you're grieving. Like, it's no different.

So, I think we sometimes attribute the value that we want to see it mean rather than taking it for what it is. And all of these examples are a good one, but clothing is a huge one, man. I mean, that's how people describe it. It's another way to express themselves, right? Or to transmit what's important. So, what I'm wearing and how I wear it is also a part of who I am, right? So, if you look at it that way versus, "Oh, you wear this pair of shoes, that means you know you do that." It's like, "Oh, man, you don't know that about me." So, I think that's important to remember.

So, listen, I'm not a gourmand. I will eat whatever's put in front of me, and for as long as it's put in front of me. You know that I'm not a clotheshorse. I wear whatever I happen to have that feels comfortable. As a matter of fact, I used to start… first of all, I wore Sears Husky because I was always a little on the chunky side. Don't tell anybody that. But in addition to that, back in Detroit, it was PantsCo, our five-dollar store, "Have we got pants for you!" So, you could go in and buy a handful of pants, Brian, for five bucks. Do you get what I'm trying to say? Well, a handful of pants, one pair. Listen, anybody right now that's writing that down and thinking about a handful of pants, it's a great business.

But the idea is that, Brian, so when people look at me and they say, "Okay, he's normally disheveled, wearing stuff that's got frayed edges." It's because I believe that clothes talk to me, and these clothes have been around for a long time, and they're my comfort zone. So, I retreat to my geographic anchor point, which happens to be my clothes. When we go out to a restaurant, when we're on the road, you could anticipate exactly what I'm going to get on a gosh-darn menu every time. So, when you're comparing that, there's no message there. That's just Greg, and he doesn't have time to put molecules and dendrites together to determine what's on the menu. Okay.

But if you see somebody that's putting a mission focus, and they're putting time against a project, and you see them consistently coming out with those, and then when you're talking to the person, they go, "It doesn't mean anything. It's meaningless." That's when you've got to be suspicious. And what I would say is, you reap just what you sow. Somebody said that, and I'm sure they were famous. So, be prepared to reap the whirlwind on those. And I don't mean a punch in the mouth or somebody running you over, shooting you—those things happen every day. But I am saying you might lose a job, you might… and people are going, "Oh, yeah, that's protected." Listen, there are ways around everything. If a person wants to get you out of a job, or let's say that there was an opportunity, Brian, somebody walking by and going, "This person would be perfect for my shoe ad or whatever." You might miss some of that, right?

Oh yeah, well, free speech laws are about the government's control of free speech, not the company you work for. They can make, when they… when you sign that paper that you didn't read, that says, "You will not post A, B, C, or D on social media," you will say, "Yeah, sorry." They can hold you to that because you signed it.

But you brought up a great point about time, and I think that's an excellent way to look at some of this stuff. And, you know, when someone takes the time to put a lot of effort, whether it's into what you wear, like my wife would go out to a nice dinner, man, she takes an hour for her to get ready. She's putting a lot of time into that. She really cares about how she looks when she goes there, and she wants to spend that time because she's getting dressed up, and we don't go out too much. And it's been, you know, just because of COVID, and we're so busy and all that stuff.

So, it's meaningful.

It has meaning to her. So, I, well, in that case, I have to make sure I'm putting some meaning into it as well, so I'm meeting her at some level so she doesn't get pissed. But the idea is that that's a great point. So, some of the stuff that you see with people wearing, or tattoos, or the different articles of clothing, or the symbols that they use, or what they're using to display those symbols, man, when you put time into it, it's like when you get someone who is always working on their car, or they have some special thing that they do, they're a car guy or girl, right? And they're always wrenching on, and they've got the newest thing, and they've got the decals on there, and people want to like, "Oh, look at that guy with his little rice rocket burners." Like, dude, that guy takes a lot of time and care into that vehicle. And now you can gather…

When you see that on the outside, look through that window, it's clean in there, everything's put away, right? That's what's so important to them. And that's the takeaway from it. So, I can gauge their behavior. I can gauge their organization level. I can maybe gauge their sophistication level. But of course, I can't tell you what their political ideology is.

No.

But I can tell you this, Brian, I can tell you that if I'm consistently provocative or consistently evocative, I'm consistently poking a bear, which we call that on the street, that that's trouble, and just go away. And that's what I mean by, you know, "the reap the whirlwind" things. You're going to lose some friends. I'm not going to be your friend if you're engaging in hate speech. You know, Shelley showed up at the class at one time with the F.U.F.F. (referring to a provocative shirt that says 'F*** You, You Fing F') shirt on. She did it specifically to be evocative, and you remember the incident, and it worked perfectly because she got everybody's attention immediately. And then she started talking about that, about how you can see the atmospherics around a person that's wearing that and what they're doing. Listen, nobody likes to be scared. Nobody likes to be frightened in public. Nobody likes to feel anxious when they're going to the Meijer's shopping, you get what I'm trying to say, which is like our city market. So, stop that, because if you're engaging in that, like a beard can be a form of safety. Somebody we know called the beard, you know, he can hide behind that, and that's where he retreats when he needs a little psychological break perhaps. (not talking about Brian, in that shirt, but just generally)

You know why I… So, folks who don't know why I always have a beard, is I got very drunk in Mexico and got a tattoo of a beard on my face, so I actually grow a real one to cover up the tattoo.

And we never know which one is what we're seeing, folks. But no, but the same thing, Brian, with my weight. My weight is… I used it to insulate me when I was feeling bad. Literally, it insulates you, keeps you warm up there. But psychologically, Brian, I retreated to those things, and I created that big, fat, jolly surrounding when I was hurting real bad. And now it's taken six, seven years, you know what I'm saying, to get back down under 300 pounds. Boy, that's fun. So, that speaks right to what's important to people. And if you follow me around now, you know that I'm not the same person that I was. I've changed. So, people can change, but you're not going to change anything when you're throwing back to iconography and symbology that was hate speech for 3,000 years, millennial, right? You've got organizations that people belong to. They've got a secret ring, or they're Stonecutters. You know, we do, and you should applaud that, because inclusivity and diversity are amazing things. The framers of the Constitution knew that, Brian. Instead, you got these gosh-darn asses that decide to go out and pick the one that pisses people off and just wave it under their nose, and it makes me as mad as you.

But here's the thing, is what you're saying is just not as interesting or fun as watching The Da Vinci Code. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'd rather read a Dan Brown novel and go down that rabbit hole versus actually putting things into context because that's exciting.

Exactly. But, but you know what, the Hollyweird, Bollywood crap that's out there, most of it's wrong anyway. And so, stop putting a round peg in a square hole, Brian. Artifacts and evidence support reasonable conclusions, and you can determine from that a most likely course of action, or most dangerous. And there are some signals that can be dangerous. You can wear the wrong goddamn sport outfit to an event and somebody beats you to death. That happens all the time. That happens all the time. You know, just how you dress and like you said, the colors and the symbols that I wear. And there's always somebody coming up with something that you've read it. Each year, Walmart comes up with a little kid with a shovel and a pail, and there's some saying on it, and then some group comes out and goes, "Oh, that was the, you know, Anti-Christ hate group from whatever else." Stop being so hypersensitive, but educate yourself, educate your community on it, and you won't be as anxious. You won't be as afraid all the time.

Well, so, you know, we put a lot of… I forget where I was going to specifically go with this after the Walmart comment. But no, you don't remember that. Well, we… it would be two sides of a coin with this when we get into symbolism and iconography. So, the one side would be, one, I have to understand that I don't necessarily know what you mean by this, Greg, when you're wearing something or you're flying your flag or repping your set (representing your group or gang) or your crew or whatever you're doing. But I also have to be careful, like you said, of what I'm doing. That what I'm wearing or saying or doing might have meaning to someone else that I have no idea of.

Yep.

And that's when you get like the little, you know, if anyone's like overseas, little cultural differences. A lot of that stuff where he comes from, or you walked in the wrong door and everyone's yelling at you, and you're just like, "What the heck just happened?" That you have no idea what's going on, and people are freaking out because you said something wrong or did something with the wrong hand. Those little things are what we're talking about. But, you know, once you see it in context, you, "Oh, I see, from your perspective, this is what that means. I had no idea." And I think it's good to remember that when we're looking and trying to nitpick everything apart that people are saying or wearing or doing, which is amazing, just because they just look at their behavior or their actions, or the best way to do it. Not necessarily the pin on their collar or the color tie they have on.

Yep.

Or the tattoo that they have, because I mean, you don't know necessarily where that came from. Now, you can, like I said earlier, through sustained observation or other artifacts and evidence, you can then start to maybe put something together, but it takes a lot, I think.

Yep, yep. And when in doubt, sit down for a minute and read something. And read something like the Constitution. Everybody knows I got one on the visor of my truck, and if you're a smartass, I'm going to bring it out and tap it on your head and tell you something. Congress says, "Listen, you can't force me to choose a religion, or you can't prohibit me from exercising my religion." They said, "Listen, we're not going to pass any law that stops your speech, and that includes your hate speech." Right? "Yeah, we're not going to influence the press. They can say whatever they want, even if it's something that pisses me off. And you have the right to assemble." But the big word right in front of that is "peaceably assemble." You have the right to peaceably assemble. And if you don't think that you're getting a fair shake, you have the right to redress your grievances. Okay, so all of those things are amazing.

And somebody's going to say, "Yeah, but it was written a couple hundred years ago by a group of white men that were slave owners." And this, stop for a minute. Okay, we get that into history. There's nothing that we can do about that. At that time, that's the way things were. But read those words again. Read some of the great literary stuff. Listen, sit down for a minute and think of how they were projecting that out, Brian, for a thousand years. They were thinking, "This is good for everybody. Nobody should do that. We should never have soldiers billeted in our private homes." Think of all the great stuff that's in there. If we start using those things as a guide, we'll get back to center. I don't like any extremist views. Anything that's extreme, I don't, you know, and I'm vanilla, man. I'm Ben & Jerry's Vanilla.

Yeah, well, that, I mean, and then that gets into again. I mean, you bring up the Founding Fathers, and, you know, don't get me started on the Ancient Aliens episode I watched yesterday about the Founding Fathers.

I got another good show for you too. Brian, write this down: Paranormal Caught on Camera. Because it's so diligent, and I can't watch it. So many of my issues, Brian, I gotta tell you, I can't watch it. It's too bad. It's my favorite.

You know they've never, you know how many seasons in, they haven't actually caught one on camera, have they?

No, they have. You think they're going to? No.

But when you, especially with historical stuff, with people who aren't alive and can't explain what it meant at the time or defend themselves, yeah, that really, you know, especially back then, you get a lot of symbolism and iconography. And we're like, "This stuff, you look at the dollar bill and you look at what that came from, and you look at how the Capitol was designed and what the framers had in mind with the Constitution." And all these like, everyone gets to put their own spin on it, and no one rarely do people actually put into historical context and say, "Hey, this is what that meant to them at that time," circa late 1700s. Like, things have changed slightly since then. So, I think that's another great way when you get it to look at it, when you get into the historical ones of, "Hey, what's the meaning behind this?" Because it's easy to look at it and go, "Well, this sounds really bad," or, "Hey, I don't really get this." Well, look at the time, this is what that meant to them, and I think it helps explain some of these a little.

I think you're right, Brian. I think if we come off the gas and we take a look at a comparison and compare that. So, you know who Frank Lloyd Wright was?

Yeah, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Yeah. There are a lot of times that we're in an area and I go to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house because I'm pretty impressed by that.

Yeah, he's a designing architect ahead of his time.

Yeah, sort of like a hundred-year designer. You know. Yeah. So, think about what he's done. And he epitomized what man, meaning man, woman, male, in between, wherever you are, I don't give a damn. If you wanted to be remembered, you built something above the ground that somebody had to take a look at. And he put it with water and stone, and he cantilevered and had flying buttresses just to show off his amazing intellect and his amazing ability and all of this wonderful stuff. Brian, that's all we want to be is we want to be remembered. So, if you want to be remembered, you have to decide, do you want to be remembered for something wonderful that'll go down through the ages as an amazing thing that you were part of, or do you want to be remembered for hate, violence, anger? And there are those people right now, they're not listening to this show, likely, but there are those people that just want to do that. And you know what? You're going to burn out like a supernova anyway. That's a good title for a movie, perhaps. Burn out like a supernova. Or just Superman. I mean, you're going to get crushed, or somebody's going to hate you, and you're going to be living in your own filth alone. I mean, who wants that? You know what I'm saying? It's right back to the soup kitchen with Dirty Mike and the Boys.

Yeah. And this, again, you know, I always stress the historical context for all of these observations and where they go into. Because, one, it's important to investigate and understand some of them. And some of the symbolism and iconography with, like, everyone gets into, I mean, they're big ones, like Pyramids, the All-Seeing Eye, the Pentagrams are these major things. But in the one we talk about, the swastika, like that stuff changes over time. So, don't open up the encyclopedia, pick one era and go, "Oh, see what it means right here in 600 A.D.? That's what that guy means right there." And you're like, "Well, that guy might have never looked in this book. You might have just said, 'Hey, that's a really cool design, can you tattoo that on my face?'" You know what I'm saying? So, that's the problem I always see with tattoos, and they're tough. And, you know, some people get it for just, "Hey, this is how I thought it was cool." Some people have some deep meaning behind it. So, I have to look into more.

So, I don't know if you have any other…

Yeah, I just tell everybody to stay current. Brian, listen, one of the great ways to stay current is the Supreme Court is always publishing their capers. SCOTUS is always out there putting this stuff. You know, "There is no hate speech exception to the free speech that is listed in the First Amendment." Mattel v. Tam, 2017. Read that. Go out and read those because, Brian, that's another thing: anxiety. "That's against the law." "Burning the flag is against the law." Now, urban legends. Find out what the truth is before you start beating on the bandwagon and screaming. You have the right to say anything you want, but wouldn't it be nice to have it be the correct thing once in a while? I'm just saying.

You'd think so, but no, everyone wants to believe that they're right. Shout out to Shaman Boy! Oh my gosh. How many… You know what Occam would have done to him? Occam would have used the razor on Shaman, I think. That he would have said… I've never done the literal sense of this term "razor." But here we go. Yeah, that's interesting.

But, all right, so don't jam a square peg into a round hole.

You want anything else to add here, Greg, on symbolism and iconography? Because we've seen a lot of people go really, really in depth with it, and I went, "Wow, you just did a lot of research that makes absolutely no sense and does not apply to the situation."

Exactly. So, just, hey, listen, folks, don't be a hater on my immense chair. (referring to his large chair) That is a huge chair, it makes you look like a small boy. They've got my head, you're normally laying at the bottom, kicking. No, but Shelley, Shelley's got the identical chair, and she looks like a Chucky doll. Her little feet stick straight out, and she's like in the center of the chair, and every once in a while I forget and I sit on her and I hear, "Tee!" until I get up. It's terrible.

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