Violence is a Language

Brian Marren, Greg Williams

Okay Greg, so today's overarching theme of the show is going to be called, "Violence is a Language." And this is something that you've kind of alluded to or said several times before in the past, and I think we even wrote something about this a while back. But I wanted to discuss it with our listeners on what you mean by it and get into a few things.

I know for those of you who've been to our class or even just listened to the podcast, we like to say, "Most people want their say, not their way." Most people just want to get something off their chest. They want to complain to the manager. Whatever the situation is, it's a psychological sociological imperative. But some people want their say and their way, and that's kind of what we look out for. Is this person acting up and just being a person who acts up? We all do sometimes. Or are they acting out? Is there something else that's going on here?

Because when we say the danger lies in the people that want their say and their way, that's where we get into what we do. How do you then determine this is a person who wants their way versus someone who wants their say? We talk about demonstrations of intent, but I don't want to go down that pathway. I kind of wanted to just get into what we mean by "violence is a language" because we use that as an overarching theme for some of the cases that we discuss, some of the things that we see on the news, and how these things occur.

Where other people look at the different factors and their motive and what they did, and how they were upset about something, and what group influenced their way of thinking. A lot of that stuff, I get why we analyze it, and it seems significant, but it's typically significant for that moment in time. Maybe this is a group I was inspired by, but in five years that group doesn't exist anymore, or there's a different one, or there's something. So, you can't look at those contributing factors sometimes because I think they're they're almost they're a little bit arbitrary, and because they just fit this general mold or thing that we can point to, when a lot of times the factors are a little bit different.

So, that's kind of a lot, but we'll start the conversation there. What I guess, maybe start by however you want to define what you mean when you say, "Violence is a language."

Yeah, so we'll start there, but we've got to dance around a little bit. "Violence is a language" whenever an individual feels overwhelmed or unable to handle the situation constructively. Violence becomes a maladaptive coping mechanism. In other words, it's not where you should go, but it's where you do go. And I feel that it's amazing that we're having this discussion on the 6th of January. It just dawned on me when I looked at the clock behind you there.

Martin Luther King in 1967 said, "A riot is the language of the unheard," and that's my starting point when I say, "Violence is a language," because when I talk about maladaptive coping, when we don't know how or what to say in the moment, then violence is always on the tip of our tongue because that's how we are raised. That's part of our foundation. It's a fundamental underpinning of humankind.

So really quickly, to go back to what you said about people want their say, not their way. It's been a couple of years since we handled a podcast on that and deep-dived, but what we need to know about that is most people like to express their opinion or their perspectives on any matter at hand. They want to be heard. They want to know and feel that their specific opinions are being considered, but most people don't go around insisting that we accept their opinions or follow up on their perspectives. That's huge. That speaks directly to "violence as a language." And then we also understand—

No, you brought up a great word that you use, and I want to kind of stress that to everyone listening. You said we want to feel like we're heard. That's very different than actually being heard, and this is why—

You're exactly right.

But I want to get that because that's part of what people want their say, not their way. This is also why social media works so well and why everyone can comment, "I need to feel heard. I need to feel better. I need to—"

Exactly.

I may not actually—the situation may not improve for me, but the electrochem feel like it is. I just want to stress that point. That's great that you do that, because sometimes I go at the speed of Greg, and that's not the speed of retention or understanding all the time.

Well, you're also getting on and off the freeway and making frequent stops, sometimes to rob a liquor store, sometimes to go to the bathroom. So, wanting their say and not their way, that's your expressive side and your feeling. And so then Brian talked briefly at the very beginning about "actions speak louder than words." We did an entire episode on that, but these are the three that are important to you:

• Acting up: That's being loud, disobedient, misbehaving.
• Acting out: That's being disruptive. That means you're moving things around and touching people.
• Then what I like to call acting in: That's your human behavior signifying that you want to be left alone. You've gone internal.

And I need to know about all three of those if I'm going to read the room. I've got to read the tea leaves. Brian, gestures are so essential, communicating that we make them even when we're alone, but on a phone speaking with somebody else, we can all see that when we're alongside a car because everybody's texting and speaking, and you see the people show aspiration or they're trying to be demonstrative with their hands.

So the next likely thing to that—words are important, but a pointy-talkie chart got your son or daughter or husband through Iraq and Afghanistan during a war. Trade happened in the world even though we didn't speak the language or understand the culture, but then Pidgin English and Pidgin language came up as a language of trade where we took those key things that we understood and put them together.

I don't know if you've ever seen The Sopranos, but they had a Johnny Cake episode on it. And every time that Johnny Cake episode played, I laughed because Johnny Cakes, everybody knows what they are on the East Coast, a very East Coast thing. That's not where they came from. They came from places like Trinidad and Tobago, where they were called Journey Cakes, and people were mispronouncing "journey"—the hardtack that you had in your saddle when you were going to different places. So all of our language comes from us defining what those words mean, not the word "the rose by any other name." Do you get it?

So violence is always there. And when it's like if you think about certain things—when push comes to shove, "Hey, let's put that on a punch list." "Hey, adding insult to injury, let's take a stab at it." All of those things are violence-born. Why? Because when you felt that you were being misunderstood, not understood, you couldn't get your voice heard, then you resorted largely to physical actions. And if it wasn't a physical act, then it certainly was intentionally causing harm through words. That's violence too. And there's a whole school of thought out there, Brian, that would tell me, "Oh no, that's not the way things work. If it's not a physical act, then speech can never be violence." I call [expletive]. I call people that, like you and me, that have chronic exposure to violence, Brian, are much more prone to resort to violence to be heard when we feel that we're not being heard. And it's a character trait perhaps, or maybe it's our maladaptive response to humans, but that's what we do.

Yeah, and you called it the maladaptive coping mechanism. And it's, I look at it as it's not that I see this kind of misexplained or misunderstood a lot of times, because when people do this, we're just a few steps away from complete chaos and people fighting in the streets. And it's like, "No, no, we're not." How I know that? Because it's not what ever happens. When [expletive] goes down, people band together, and they work together as a tribe, or a clan, or a family, or community, or city, whatever. But in a sense, you are saying that it's kind of at the tip of our tongue more for some people than for others, based on their life experience and training, and a whole bunch of other different, or lack of self-control, or lack of emotional regulation, lack of critical thinking skills, brain damage. There's a bunch. So some more than others.

But what do you mean when you say it's like it's kind of at the tip of our tongue? It's almost, to me, I explain it like the easy button is to get angry and bash you over the head when I don't like something. That's actually easier than working it out and compromise, right? So, to kind of, before we get into some of the examples, really define that. That "violence is a language." If I'm trying to tell you something and I'm not getting through to you, Greg, I may hit a threshold where I know what'll get through to you, because violence is a language that every human being implicitly understands. They don't have to be taught it, right? Maybe you haven't been. And so, the first punch in the face goes, "Oh wow, probably shouldn't have said that." Everyone should have that experience. I've had it many times.

But the idea, meaning, it's so ingrained in human survival that it sort of is right underneath the surface. It is. Some people it's got to get deeper under the water, some that's right below the surface. But some people who have it right at the surface are actually better at controlling it and using it in areas that they find necessary. But to understand this "violence as language," I literally look at it as that. It's like, "Well, I have to speak to you in a way that you understand," and everyone understands this.

I mean, that's just law. And so, this is when we look at the different cases. That's no different to me from a domestic violence situation, a young kid who's a gangbanger who's just shooting it out in the streets against some rival gang and he doesn't even fully know why. Or something like, "Hey, I'm going to pack my rental truck full of explosives and gasoline, and I'm going to make a big to-do about it because I'm not being heard."

To me, when it comes to this, look for the simple connections. Everyone wants to make these extravagant, whatever, and not blame the actual person who did it. "Well, that kid didn't know he's only 14, and he was raised that way in the streets." It's like, "Okay, but there's other kids who go through the same thing." And then, "Well, this guy didn't understand this situation, and he wasn't fully informed, and you've got to understand he had a lot of mental health issues." It's like, "Yeah, but a lot of people fall into that category, and they don't go and do those things." So that's part of the difference too. And when we talk about people who want their say versus people who want their say and their way, that's a different threshold. It's a small amount of people, I would say, right? It's a very, it's statistically insignificant almost sometimes. However, everyone else also fits into that continuum somewhere, right? You're all in it somewhere, at some point on there. And raising to that next level is going to be dependent on a number of different factors, but they're typically internal and not external factors. Meaning, it's not that it was ISIS, because if ISIS didn't exist, that guy would have found a different group to associate with, right? It's not the Trench Coat Mafia, because, "Oh, well, that's not even around anymore, but there's still school shootings," right? We can pick whatever thing that we want to do, but it's a little bit deeper than that. And that's where you kind of come up with why I like the phrase, "Violence is a language." So, what do we need to know about that then, or how do I understand that better?

That's great. So, I would say if there was a talking point that occurred before that, because "violence is a language" is one sentence, and it's very meaningful to me, and I've used it ever since we've known each other. I would say that the preceding sentence would be, "De-escalation is as essential as the ABCs to language." And we have created de-escalation as a thing, but we don't understand that de-escalation has been around just as often as gestures for speaking. It's a part of how humans are built. We normally de-escalate because it's in our favor to make friends and make tribes and make groups and make love and do all those wonderful things. So clearly the defense mechanisms don't come up autonomically unless we see a sign of danger or additional opportunity.

So the idea there is that we try to make de-escalation a module, a thing. Well, it's how we're built. It's how our chemical structure works in our brain. That's like face recognition. It's there because we look at a person and we see the emotion on the face and we go, "Well, generally, unless I'm being fooled, this is a good situation and I think this person would fit in in my tribe, or clan, or pants." We have to be very obvious with that.

And the idea back in the late '70s, Brian, in the dojo, when we had the logo made for the karate school, it had the letters stylized, SMOBM. And wear your big boy and girl pants out there, it meant, "Show Me or Blow Me." Because every dojo that I was going to as a black belt, there was a lot of theory, Brian, but not a lot of people throwing it down on the mat. And the idea was, "Okay, well, if you're thinking that this situation can be resolved without violence, show me. Show me how that works."

And what happened is people didn't understand the gift of time and distance. And that was literally the beginning of this, "If I don't carry a gun, what does that mean?" "Well, that means if I need one, I'll take yours." "Well, guess what? How do you defeat that, Brian? Gift of time and distance. I can't get to your gun." Do you see what I'm trying to say? The strategy didn't change. And you say, "Well, I'll wear nine winter coats over my gun so you would have to cut through me with a machete." You see what I mean? It's the idea of how you do it.

So look, it's January 6th. The lawmakers hid beneath their desks. What should they have done? They should have been out talking to their constituents. That's the only way that you can decompress a situation is to face the situation with logic and understanding and try to calm it down. And if you can't do that, what do you meet it with? You send out a larger volume of well-aimed fire or a higher degree of explosives.

Brian, why did the guy commit suicide in front of Trump? He felt that he was being marginalized. He felt that nobody was listening to him. Why did a cop put his uniform on and drive to work and park in the sally port and blow his brains out? Because he felt like, "I'm done now with this part of my life, and I have to leave you with a message that you won't forget because that's me. I want to control that narrative."

And that's the big—you brought up one—the big thing is time and distance to get to the point where you're going to use violence as a language, where you're not being heard, no one's understanding you. So I look at it with the terrorist little guy, right? He's 18 months old. But like you were saying, we communicate all day long. I know what he wants, I know what he needs. We work on "do-you-pointy." Greg taught him some basic sign language so he understands it, then he can conceptualize it.

Like, first we taught him "more" when he wants more food. But then when I was playing around with him, and I was throwing him up in the air and I stopped, he went "more," like, "I want that!" And I was like, "Okay, now he understands not just more food, he understands a concept of 'more.'" So he goes back and forth. But when he gets tired and he gets frustrated, he gets [expletive] angry, man, because he's trying to tell me something, and I'm not getting it, and he smashes things. And so it's like, I just look at it as a very, very primitive response to something.

But for an 18-month-old, that flash to bang is right away, because this is the worst thing that's ever happened in their life because they're only 18 months old. So let's get in the world of adults then, or you're grown up, at least. What is that time and distance? What are the factors there? How does it take meaning? Like, to get to the point where, "Okay, I'm going to go build a VBIED (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) and blow it up. I'm going to go into the office and kill a bunch of people. I'm going to kill this person." Because it can happen. That rage can happen right there in the moment, but that's different.

Like a rage attack, road rage is a perfect example. I've got all this stuff going on in my head, I'm pissed off, you cut me off, "[Expletive] you, I'm going to shoot you and kill you," right? Well, that's different than carrying out an attack, because there's no—that's the flash to bang is right there. They're in the moment, and boom, it's rage, we see red. We have different interpretations of that, even legally. But that's different when it's something planned. So, when you get into the time and distance, that's where things get—they can get complex because it's different for each situation. Is that true? Or how do I delineate these different situations? Because we like to lump them together under one concept. So, how do I understand that?

Just so I reinforce your final point before I reinforce this point, Z is six months younger than Brian's "terrorist." So Z was with us, Shelly and I, on Saturday, and every kid loves Shelly. There is something that Shelly exudes, whatever the pheromones are, that there's not a kid that doesn't come running to Shelly even the first time that they see her. She's like a magnet.

And so we had changed the water filters on our filtration system. So I was playing with Z, and then Shelly came up out of the basement. The noise caused Z to orient and immediately saw Shelly and wanted nothing more to do with me. Now, moments before, we were having a great time. To Z, at just 12 months (just under a year, a week under a year), she pushed with her legs to get my arms open, then she pulled away from me, and then she was headbutting me and actually bit me with the two teeth that she's got coming in. And I looked at Shelly and I go, "I wish you were videotaping this." Because what it was is she didn't want to cause me harm. She was acting out, being disruptive, moving things and touching me to tell me that she was unhappy with the situation because she had no other way to do it. She didn't have the words to do it.

So I would say if somebody's acting up, you can handle it. If somebody's acting out, you can likely handle it. If somebody's acting in, that's where the danger lies. Because if somebody, how many people have engaged, that are listening to us now, in drama? We have a couple of drama queens, Brian, that we deal with all the time that are on the teams. "What's up?" "Nothing." "Are you having a good day?" "Fine." "Here we go." What you're doing by acting in is you're begging me to pay attention.

Most people don't want to do that. Most people's psychological de-escalation quotient is so low because we play all our games on the phone, or streaming, that we've forgotten that it's a human that's right in front of us at the water cooler. And this is where we're supposed to let our guard down. This is where the shields are supposed to come down, and we should say stuff like, "No, really, what's bothering you now?" "Well, I got a divorce, and I lost my job, I'm not feeling good, and this toothache is not going away," and all those other things.

Well, Brian, if a certain amount of those get to a certain threshold, then I'm going to act out. I'm not just going to act up. I'm not just going to be a drama queen. I'm not just going to act in. I'm going to vent, just like Vesuvius. And when I vent, sometimes the control mechanism (mine, my personal control mechanism, or the social ones around me) aren't going to be able to encapsulate that.

We just watched this thing on Nola (New Orleans), and the newest thing that came out is the guy wearing these GoPro video-style glasses while he's doing his rehearsal. He's driving around and taking a look. And you're going to get some pundit, some security expert, that's going to drive on and say, "Well, right there, that was demonstrations of intent, and somebody should have caught it! Somebody should have caught it in the thousands of people that were biking around wearing glasses that day!" No. What you've got to do is you've got to look for that leakage. You've got to look for those statements. You've got to look for, Brian, "How long does it take to build a VBIED?" Some people would be wicked fast at it, but what does it take? Well, if you build it out in front of everybody, somebody's going to shoot you, or take you to jail, or call the cops. So what do you have to do? You've got to conceal that. What about the items? Well, most of the items to do illegal acts are illegal in themselves, or you've got to invent street tools, which means you've got to go to certain sites or ask for the aid of others, or write a manifesto. Brian, those things take time. So, it's usually flash to bang of simmer then boil, rather than so bad to be as remarkable as what we call road rage, right? That's the rage that hits you right now, and it has to run its course and abate, but they're still rare. We don't see incidents of road rage in my streets every single day. There's something that manifests itself.

Yeah, and to kind of give your cooking analogy you started doing there, it's like that the simmer to the boil. It's that simmer, but then if I come by and I put the lid back on that pot, it's going to raise that temperature in there and it's going to increase the pressure in there, and it's eventually going to start maybe boiling higher than I really want that temperature to go. And so if you don't release that, release that heat, it's going to continue to boil over.

But one of the things you mentioned that I kind of want to jump into, because this kind of fits into all the different subjects. Like you said, it's about, if I look at violence as a language, and why I may choose that as a mechanism for release, or relief, or getting my message out, you talked about controlling the narrative. Is part of that violence as a language? Is it a control mechanism? Meaning whether it's the road rage incident or it's some sort of attack, a domestic violence thing? When I'm getting in there, let's say this person is, what I'm trying to get, sorry, kind of tripping over my words here this morning, but if I'm going to control the narrative, I can use violence as a language where the road rage one, it's still an element of control in a sense, because it's like, "You cut me off! I'm in my lane!" It's like, "Dude, this is [expletive] highway, man! It belongs to whoever's on here," right? But it's still that the internal factor of loss of control seems a lot more powerful and a lot more significant than whatever [expletive] group I'm following, ISIS, radicalization. You get what I'm saying?

Would you agree with me, may I depose you? Would you agree with me that some people are just [expletive], and some people will find a reason to make your day miserable just because they like it? There's something about a situation or something. And we see them a lot because we're out in public more than other people, and we travel a lot, and I've seen it in the airline industry. Amazing amount of stuff that people go through to give you a hard time. Like, "Pardon me, brother." "I'm not your brother." "Oh, okay. This is where we're starting." You get what I'm saying? Because it's on now. Now that may have worked with the seven people before me, but Greg's here now, and I want to introduce you to my psychological brand of warfare.

The idea, Brian, is that when we take a look at Nola and we take a look at the attacker that was there, of course that could have happened. Of course it was a manifesto. But when you get an angry person that's full and they're done, they're going—like I'll give you one, there was a judge on Christmas, New Year's, one of the holidays, and it doesn't matter which. Read our book and look up the how the seven-step works and the cognitive rule of threes if you want to go deeper. But there was a judge that showed up for his last day of work. At the end of the last day of work, he put his robes on, he sat at his bench, and he shot himself. I cannot tell you in my career how many I've done, at least a dozen, that I know that have done that exact same thing. Why? Because he wanted to control the narrative. It was a place he felt comfortable, and this was the place he wanted to return to more than anything else. And when that was denied him, this was his.

Now look, he could have shot a defendant, he could have shot the BFF, he could have gotten a shootout with security at the court, but that's not his brand of "violence as a language." His violence was directed against himself, because he was closing the chapter of the book. "My life is at an end right now." And then the lights go dark, right? Your Nola guy said, "Man, I'm in pain, so I'm going to spread the wealth. I'm going to spread the pain to a whole lot of people, and you're going to have to read it now because I'm going to put an exclamation point on the end of it." Now, Trump's guy did the same thing, but I don't think Trump's guy was an intent to kill anybody because he had an hour of driving around the building. You get what I'm trying to say? And yeah, he could have pulled up in a parking lot, he could have pulled up in the airport parking garage. He had the capacity to do that.

So you've got two capers that seem intertwined, but when we get down to the nitty-gritty, it's about the human at the end of the equation, and that's where we need to start. We need to talk about humans, humans to humans. And when I have a shitty taste in my mouth, I've got to take a drink to get it out of my mouth. And sometimes that drink is alcohol, sometimes it's drugs, and sometimes it's the muzzle of a gun. And sometimes I feel so bad, Brian, I want to share that pain. And how do I share that pain? Domestic violence. How do I share that pain? "You're going to take my kids from me, so I'm going to show up and meet you to exchange the kids, and I'm going to kill the kids and kill myself and be a family annihilator." That's the spectrum you should be looking at. And you need training to understand if the person in front of you is exhibiting signals that—

This is a good explanation of how we said it before. Where I always talk about, whether it's a person who comes in and shoots up the school or kills themself, it's the same idea, right? One has gone internal, and it's sort of like, "Well, I'm the problem here," or, "I know how to deal with this situation, I'm going to make sure I'm heard," whatever. Where the other one is, a lot of times it's, "Well, this isn't—[expletive] all of you. You're the reason why you're this." And so it becomes that that's still a lack of control. It's a different coping mechanism. Either way, they're both maladaptive, right? They're not—they're not correct. They're certainly not logical. But meaning, they're not in keeping with even just basic biology and survival of species, right? It's not supposed to be that way. There are certain factors, it should be about survival, right? Is what we're priming for. So if I'm not in a survival situation and I'm killing someone, well, that's kind of a little bit different than what I'm wired for as a human being, right? And so it's just an incorrect, like I like how you call it that, a maladaptive coping mechanism. It's not salting and everybody gets it. Well, yeah, and it's because it's—I think a better way of explaining it than saying a lack of critical thinking, or a lack of coping skills, or a lack of this. It's like, "No, you have coping skills, they do, just it's just a very, very different manner."

So, without—we don't have to talk about those two specific cases—but you're talking about the family annihilator situation, you talk about the judge committing suicide. I brought up, the kid gangbanger ran up and got caught up supposedly in the act of doing this. So on that spectrum, I guess, of people acting up versus—or excuse me—acting out versus acting in. What are like those typical things? Because there are some typical things that you see across those. Or is it, as I look at it, when the pressure's on, as we know, when the stress is on, whether it's psychological, physiological, it doesn't matter what it is, I fall back on what I know. So if I fall back on my lack of critical thinking because I'm a kid and I'm a gangbanger, and all I know is violence, that's what I've seen. Well, that's a viable solution for me. If I've seen other people carry out attacks and was fascinated by them, and I know I'm going to lash out at everyone, well, now that seems like a viable solution for me.

So what are the other—what are their indicators, in a sense? And I'm not asking for a list of things to look for, because that doesn't really exist. But what is it about what typifies that behavior in people that you don't see in other people? Because it's not just there in that one thing, because what I'm saying is, if I'm carrying out a highly organized attack, I'm likely organized in other areas of my life. That's not a bad thing. Maybe that makes me a better employee, maybe that makes me better. So it's like, how do I take the comparisons that are good in a sense, that aren't a bad thing? Do I have to look at them as being, "Well, how would this person use that in a negative way?" Or what other things do they show that I see someone leaning towards that area? Because we get—we get asked our opinion a lot on different cases or things. We have clients that reach out, and this is basically what it comes down to. "Is this the guy that's going to come in and do this because they're hitting all of these other areas?" And that's the hardest part to do because it's so case specific. I mean, it's so specific to that individual sometimes that it gives the appearance of it being a lot more complex than it actually is. Does that make sense?

So I would say nothing is more complex than a Brian Marren six-pronged question. You put a lot of thought into that. That's a great—

I didn't put any thought into it. My question was a consciousness. That's why.

But let me tell you right now, there's so many landmines in that one. So I'm going to have to navigate very carefully. I started to walk towards one. I was like, "I don't want to put you in a landmine." I kind of like this. No, no, no, you—I'm in the Chinese swing right now.

Here's the thing. I want three comparisons I'd like to make. The first one to what you said initially, and it's why there are social constructs that are also physiological constructs that dredge from sociology to physiology to psychology. Murder is wrong in every country on the face of the planet. Committing murder because it's not a good thing to do, dropping somebody from the count when you need a good, rich, wide group of people to procreate. But every country on the face of the planet has justifiable homicides. And they also have war where—and even the religions say there's certain times that you can fight. That's an important distinction, folks. Dig into that. There's an answer there.

Compare that—the opposite side of that same coin—to incest. Incest is not a viable gene pool, so no matter how good your second cousin looks (I don't know what the numbers are, or whatever), there's a thing inside of you that makes that revolting, and that's a good thing. And there's no country on the face of the planet that says, "Thou shalt sleep with thine youngest." That's [expletive] because that doesn't go towards procreation. So if you take a look from law, or from science, or from genetics, you're going to come up with the same answers, and we like that, Brian. You and I both like things that are simple in science. They're not binary necessarily, but they're simple. They're simplified, elegant. So simple, they're elegant.

So that takes me to master manipulators. And I'll explain this. If you attempt suicide and you don't complete it, there's a very low chance you'll ever try it again, because many times the people that attempt suicide are screaming for attention, and negative attention is attention nonetheless. And what I mean by that is, if you have or surrounded yourself or met a master manipulator, your kid's going to be either really, really smart but doing shitty in school, or they've got you thinking that, "Look, the only thing that's going to make me come back around for that birthday is that handgun we've been looking at on that wonderful first-person shooter." What's happened is you've encountered a person that's so cognitively based that they're thinking so many steps ahead of you that they're already planning their school shooting or suicide or whatever is in their narrative, but they're on chapter 17 and you've just cracked a book. And as a parent or as a teacher or as a counselor, you're missing these cues. And why are you missing the cues? Because you're so close that you're up and out or down and in, and you can't balance those against what's in front of you. Master manipulators will steal the radio and leave you the music, and you won't notice it. Why? Those are the signs you should be looking for.

If I've got time to brood so deeply that I'm writing a manifesto and going on my Facebook page and updating it, and still amassing matches and fireworks and all this other stuff, Brian, that takes a lot of time. You've got to be out of work to do that. I don't know anybody that can maintain a normal 9-to-5 and go home to Mom and Dad, or the kids, or whatever (Mom and Mom, whatever your relationship is), and pull that off. Take a look at the people that we've seen do that. They are acting in. They've dropped themselves from the radar because everything's internal. So they can't hold down a job, they can't hold down a marriage. Maybe they've got other things that are competing with them. Because your high-functioning person is also going to be a manipulator, but guess what? They're going to be in the band, and they're studying new interests, a new instrument. They're learning origami for whatever else, and they've got a new language going.

Every time somebody goes, "There was no sign of suicide before it happened. There was no sign of this." I bet you if you look deep enough, there was a whole bunch of signs, but you misinterpreted those signs. And that's okay, because we're humans, because that person fooled us. They wore another mask, and when that mask was on, we missed those cues.

Let's take a caper that everybody knows about, and I'll go out on a limb with you, because where I go, you go on that limb. You know, the sheriff that shot the judge in his chambers. That sheriff and judge knew each other. It was in Tennessee or Kentucky. Ongoing relationship between them where they knew each other, they worked together. And then something occurred. And they're still working out what that something is, but something occurred that was parallel to a case they had running where a deputy was fired and charged for using his office to gain sexual favors at some point. And then there was an allegation that the judge had recording equipment in his office. That's how they discovered one situation. But that may have led to the discovery of the judge himself. (I'm talking about rumors, folks.) Was involved in some clandestine, surreptitious sex for free bail or something. But there was also a recording of those things.

Now, at some point, the sheriff is either (again, speculative, your honor) involved in some degree, or is so insulted by what's going on that he confronts the judge during that lunchtime meeting. The judge brings up, "Hey, you better watch your P's and Q's, because this is going on, or I'll end you," or whatever else happens there. And now that conversation goes back to the private chambers. The judge doesn't understand or see how important this is to the sheriff in the moment. He's lighting a cigarette, he's smiling, he's making light of it. Brian, the sheriff is at road rage. He's in the red. And he all of a sudden goes, "Well, I need to take over this narrative. There's no way this is going to end well. This is a [expletive] sandwich, and you're making light of it? No, that's not going to happen." Pulls out a gun and starts shooting.

Had the gun not been there, he would have choked them or beat him to death. Had there been an axe or a knife, he would have stabbed him to death. So the vehicle happened to be a mass casualty-producing, fatality-producing weapon. But if he couldn't have done that, he'd have built a Molotov cocktail, [expletive]. You can go to Looney Tunes and learn how to build one of those. Those are on kids' cartoons in the morning. You see what I mean? So it's the violence that's the language, not the means. And it's a means to readjust what we've been talking about. It's like hitting that little cat and you've got little balls and you're trying to get the balls in his eyes and his mouth. That's what you're doing, but you're doing it to a human. "No, no, no" means "no."

And guess what? We get caught up in that. So if I've learned that behavior over time, that violence is a language, you've had that in your life, I've had that in my life. My dad, the Marine Dad, my mom and my aunt, the Twin Towers. We've punched and beat and bit and kicked a lot. And so guess what? Do you think the first thing is when I get angry and mad? I have to slow myself down. I'm starting to throw [expletive] around and tip stuff over, and I'm acting out. So if you're asking for what types of those behaviors underscore maladaptive behaviors, if you are maladaptive in other ways of dealing with these situations, you will resort to violence more quickly than a person that doesn't. A person that is adaptive, a person that is flexible. There are a thousand words for that, where that person understands that there's a coping mechanism other than using those harsh words, that harsh language, or waving a gun around.

And it's that it's not always going to maybe rise to the level of significance, like this, like that meaning the suicide or the violent act. Like that's the—that's the last thing obviously that you can do. So it's the last resort. But like you said, you'll see the maladaptive behaviors, in a sense, you'll see consistently throughout that person's life. Maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit here, maybe a little bit here. Meaning, it becomes, it builds and builds and builds and has to go somewhere.

It's even like relationships where people ask me relationship questions. "Why?" I don't know. I tell them, "Look, I'm the—for obvious reasons, I mean, obviously, don't ask me about that. Like, a poster child for relationships." Talk all about human behavior, you want to get into relationship dynamics between people dating or whatever. Like, "Look, I did not—not my thing." However, someone was asking me about this person they knew, it's like, "Well, what do you think he's going to do?" I'm like, "He's going to continue to do the same thing because what he did was, he was married, had a kid, was cheating on that person, they got divorced. Got married, had a kid with the next girl, and then they got divorced, and now he's going to the next." I'm like, "But it's going to keep happening." "Yeah, but these are all failures." "How does someone continue to fail?" And I was like, "Well, from their perspective, that wasn't a fail. They actually got with a different person and they ended up getting married to them. They ended up like, 'Okay, I'm with this person now.' Then they met someone else, and, 'Oh, okay, now.'" So it didn't really fail. It's like their relationship sort of got rewarded, in a sense, and it was just a different way to look at it. And that was just one example. They're like, "So what do you think? Is it going to change?" I'm like, "Not unless there's a lot of work to be done. I can predict that your past behavior is going to be future behavior."

But in these situations, it escalates. Most people don't raise that level. Like, the biggest thing is, you see some attack happen like this, or like a school shooting happens, what usually happens within the next week or two right after that? There's usually another one because someone's sitting there on the edge of that precipice, right? And they're at that point, and then it becomes very simple because you are in a very simple survival state at that point. It's like, "It's like the monkey see, monkey do." It's like, "Oh, okay. That person did it. I can go do this," right? If they could do it, I can. And that's kind of what pushes it over when you see that. But you brought up the difficulty in seeing that, not seeing the forest for the trees sometimes, because we really don't expect these things, even though every day there's another example or something you can point to. It goes down.

And which is why we're always making these arguments about how we analyze a situation because if I just look at it as what education they had and whether or not they were abused as a child or they were on drugs, okay, well, what if none of that existed? What if that group didn't exist? What if there were no drugs or all these things? These things would still happen. Meaning, we pick these random things to blame, where you're saying here with "violence is a language" is like, "Okay, that person lacks the ability to effectively communicate what their thoughts and feelings and concerns are," right? So before they even get into whether or not they're valid, it's like, they're not feeling that they're being heard because they're not being heard. Now, whether you're going to fix that on the person, it doesn't—I don't care. That's not what we talk about. They talk about—we talk about the recognition of where that person is at. It has to go somewhere. You have to get it off your chest. If you lack the critical thinking skills, if you lack the emotional maturity to do that, you still have to be heard. Like, you have to complain to the manager, you have to do these things. So it's that it's not always, it's a normal part of the human condition under abnormal circumstances or coping mechanisms.

Exactly. So, Detroit relationship. I knew Cavor, and I knew his attorney, Figuer (Doug Fieger), and some of the other people associated. And also, his brother's famous on The Knack, "My Sharona." But yeah, it's his brother. So yeah, folks, look it up. Go out there, do your homework.

But one of the things is that Cavor, in a theater of waiting for going on trials and stuff, people talk, and you're sometimes with a defendant or a prosecuting attorney or listening to somebody's deposition because you're in the same place ready to go on. And you hear it, and it's, "My suicide is going to be assisted. Assisted suicide because I'm in pain all the time. My skin hurts, my hair growing makes me vomit. I can't sit or move. When I blink my eyes, the amount of ambient light causes nausea." And you feel for these people.

Then all of a sudden, I can tell you thousands of suicide notes that I put in envelopes and evidence bags where I was on the scene, the first officer. And they read, "You cheated on me. You caused all of this. Well, I'm going to show you. I'm going to tell—" you know, "those things that you did. This is how I'm going to pay you back." And that poor person never understood that all of those actions that they did didn't equal those words, Brian. They didn't show anybody. And then there were the others where the person is sitting across from me in an interview room and they're saying, "Well, I knew that they would be in the bar, and I walked in, and sure enough, they were dancing with somebody else, so I shot them, but I ran out of ammo before I could shoot." So people have a story. It's his story, "history," or her story. We haven't gotten to that part yet, I hope we do, where people understand the etymology there.

But the idea is that if we take a look at that, that's important to a person. Your ego system is fragile. And what happens is some people it's so bent on retribution that they can't think past that. They think, "I got handed a shitty hand, and I can't fold it in, so I'm all in." And if I'm all in and this happens, I'm going to commit suicide. If it's all in and this happens, I'm going to ram people on a sidewalk. You get what I'm saying?

But Greg, and that's why I said earlier, why I call it the Easy Button, because if I—it goes back to if I have something or someone to blame, that's the cause of all of this pain, physical, mental, emotional, whatever it is, that's easy, because then I don't have to take the responsibility for it.

Listen, you remember this, this is a personal thing. I'm attacking you personally now. In Iraq and Afghanistan, you saw body bombers, and you saw them up close, and you still have tinnitus because of it. Many of the body bombers that I saw explode, detonate, conflate, not die sometimes—horrible situations, or kill other people, even more horrible situations. When I was in those situations, a lot of the research at the end of it demonstrated that those people were the most vulnerable people in our society. They had incurable illnesses, they were mentally ill, or were young kids. And guess what they were? They were impressionable. And so that religion, or that song, or that situation that they were exposed to made them think this was a way that I could be remembered past my story. And some of them, it was a sort of a hero's journey because they were guaranteed—they were giving money to their family or something. Zealots that they bought into it. They were vulnerable to that belief system.

Now, as many as there were, it wasn't everybody in that town, and even in those towns that we were in, that didn't want America, and they didn't want democracy, and they didn't want us walking around, they didn't become suicide bombers, snipers, or insider threats. So it takes a special person to take that step. And am I categorizing a suicide bomber with your husband or daughter that committed suicide? No, I'm not trying to say that, but I'm trying to say that that person wanted to use a felt-tip marker and put an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence because they felt that they weren't being listened to, and this was a way for them to say, "Are you listening? Can you hear me now?" And I know how horrible that is, Brian, but that's a thing that we have to come to. And look, flash to bang is different now, but it wasn't all that different when Ben Franklin was around. It wasn't all that different when Hammurabi was around. So there's periods when things get a little bit rough that people resort to that stuff, and then things tend to even themselves out. But there's still that person in the corner that's smoldering and the fuse was lit, and they're burning, and they're going to do it no matter what.

I mean, Brian, just at the top of your mind, could you come up with five or six people that you've studied their capers extensively, and you knew that that was a bad scene, man? That fuse had been lit when they were a kid, and it was just waiting for an outlet.

But it's so rare, thankfully. Even when you see it before they get to that, it is rare. But if you haven't been properly socialized by the age of about seven or eight, it probably ain't [expletive] happening for you. And it's sad when you see that where you're like, "This person is unlikely to survive."

But master manipulators, they fooled everybody. They fooled a judge, they fooled their probation officer, their parents. Exactly, Brian. So when we look that far, Bath Township, the massacre. When we take a look, Andrew Kehoe, Brian, he was an angry guy sooner or later. Whitman, the Texas Tower, angry, angry guy. He had a voice in his head and he had an aneurysm. But guess what? And those say it's a tumor, if you were talking to Dr. Schwarzenegger. But at least that guy was—he even wrote in his letter, "Cut me open and see what's going on." He hurt, and he hurt so bad, he wanted to show he was right. He literally had a brain science in the Kael case. That guy was innocent. No, but this is what we're talking about, folks.

Look, Brian, I'll invoke Hobman one more time. At the very beginning of the year, on January 6th, when this is being recorded, you have to take a look at the 360. You have to imagine what that person—like if a person kicks off their shoes before they go in a house, are they a Muslim or did they just get new carpet? Those things are significant to me: artifacts and evidence in support of a reasonable conclusion. And the more information I know, the less anxiety I have in dealing with other people. Not everybody's out to kill you. Not everybody is planning and rehearsing.

Well, the way we do it is, I go back to even just our first principles. And one of the things is, whether it's with a person out on the street, whether it's my wife, whether it's the baby, it's like, "What is this person teaching me? What are they trying to teach me? What are they—" Don't listen to the words, they don't matter. What are they showing me? What is it saying? Because that's helped out, I mean, for relationship stuff, because that's how my wife, Micha, gets sometimes, where she goes a little bit internal when she's dealing with a lot of stuff because she doesn't want to be affective. But it does either way. And I'm like, "Alright, normally she does it. What is she teaching me with this? What is she saying and what she's doing?" What is a little guy who's 18 months old, he's teaching me? He's showing me, and he's trying to explain. You see the frustration. So if I go through enough—he's 18 months old, so there's only so much he could be asking for, he doesn't know a lot. But think about the contextual situation. Okay, he's a high school kid, what could he possibly be teaching me? What could he possibly need? Or he's a person in this situation. Okay, well, there's only so many things or so many outcomes to this situation. What are they teaching me about where this is going? And it just helps you kind of dial it in a little bit. It helps you get rid of the stuff that don't matter.

Stop the stigma with the gift of time and distance, where you're closing your ears because you want to remain a white belt. What do I mean by that? Gifted time and distance can be used in any situation, just like the Hobman, to avoid Jack the Surprise, Jack in the Box. What I mean by that is there's certain situations where I need to close the distance quickly to stop the event from occurring. I need to get in there and ask that person, "What are your intentions? Because your behavior is out of line in this scenario. This context isn't working for me." And Brian, that's a form of de-escalation.

And there's the other one where we need to distance ourselves and remain behind cover and slow time down. Where are you on that space-time continuum? Well, guess what? If you're unable to read human behavior, you're going to be at the right of the event, which means at "bang" or right after "bang." And everybody that's ever read the A on my training, "left the bang," will understand that those guys were operating in white belt and yellow belt, and they were doing a good job. But is that where you want to stay?

The gift of time and distance means you have to be able to read the tea leaves. You have to take a look at the situation, just like determining what the weather's like tomorrow and saying, "I need snow chains," or, "I need a jacket." When I'm at the bus station, "My kid needs a hat." Those are the type of things you need to be doing every day. And what happens is social media has increased our distance. We think that news is faster and being absorbed faster, but we're not getting as much FaceTime (not the type you're thinking about) with real humans. And so you have to look for leakage differently. We used to be able to look somebody in the face and be able to tell what's going on. Now we have to look at writings, and it's just so much more noise, and it's happening faster. So you get—everyone's talking one sentence about 20 topics, rather than 20 sentences on three topics. That's how we're wave tops only when it comes in like that.

But that's also why people crave longer. I mean, it's also the reason why someone listens to an hour of us talking because they want to know that deeper.

No, listening anymore, I'm so hopeful at this point. But both of us know, Brian, there's a part of us that knows, and we're crying on the inside, folks. No, but what I'm trying to say, "violence is a language," and so that language, whatever the new thing is that comes out, it's going to be found there. So if social media is a new thing that's going to stick around for a while, it's going to be there. If AI, Brian, is the new language that's going to be around for a while, guess what? Violence will be found there because it's a vehicle, it's a tool, it's a way to communicate.

Okay, yeah. I think we covered a lot. I appreciate you explaining in depth about what we mean by "violence is a language." And I actually—because there's so much study about language, which is really cool. There's some good accounts actually I follow on social media, guys like an etymologist. He tells you where the different meanings were and this came from here and then it changed this. It's just cool, fascinating stuff because we don't—most, we don't know most of the stuff, at least 90-something percent of the words we even use, where they came from and all that. But Johnny, if I look at "violence as a language," I can use that like almost communication studies of like, "Well, how have other people studied how languages occurred?" It puts it in a different light versus just saying, "They were inspired by," or "self-radicalized." I mean, these terms are just [expletive] meaningless. I don't know, but it's just a better way to do it. I like that term. And so it's all about controlling the narrative. So on that, Greg, I'll let you control the narrative and give any final words if you have them.

Yeah, I'll repeat what I said: If an individual feels overwhelmed or unable to handle a situation constructively, then violence is an immediate tool that they can resort to. So thinking of that, think of your desk, your room, the hallway, the office, the parking lot, your house, the basement windows. Think of all of those things in those terms. If you're a security person, then open that up to your client. If you're a parent, open that up to your kids' car, your kids' room, their trash can. And Brian, that becomes a way of assimilating information because in that communication, we're going to see what that person's aims are, where they're headed. And that trajectory can tell us a lot, and that is predictive analysis 101, and that can increase your time-distance gap in your favor. That's it.

All right, that's it. Holy [expletive].

I'm sweating just getting through that. I went through a pace, you didn't breathe once. You might want to sit back and take a breath.

I don't think—I don't think. Grind my gears. Exactly. All right, I think that's good to end on. Thanks everyone for tuning in. There's always more on the Patreon site, so check us out on there. You can get right now, you can still for another week or so, get a month free on there if you want. But yeah, check us out on there.

But thanks everyone. Before you bring it to close, I'm so sorry. Bobette's in the hospital. Everybody, pray for Bobette. She's a fan, she listens to the episodes all the time, her and Richard. So shout out to her. And real quick, I apologize to take your time for this too, but if we think of Kevin Castle, Kevin's out with that triple knee surgery, bypass, all that other (health issues). He listens all the time, so he just got out of the hospital, is on rehab. Say a little prayer for those folks, keep them in your thoughts, folks.

That's good. Appreciate that. All right, thanks everyone for tuning in and don't forget that training changes behavior.