US/Israel's Holy War with Iran Explained with Leigh Larson

0:00So welcome back to the outdoor minimalist podcast. We have a special bonus episode for you this Friday with Lee Larson, the host of the Follow the Leader podcast. She studied international relations, African studies, and environmental science, among other things. And today we are going to be talking about the illegal war in Iran with the United States and Israel. So I'm excited to talk about this not because I think it's a good thing, but because I think a lot of people are having a lot of anxiety about the ongoing conflict. There's a lot of confusion and a lot of propaganda coming out of the administration per usual. And one thing I want to highlight because a lot of our listeners are climate advocates is that while I do believe that this is a climate war and that war leads to more climate issues in any geopolitical crisis, not just this one, right? That is not necessarily going to be the focus of today's conversation. It's going to be more of an overarching conversation. But I just want to preface

1:02that for everyone. So welcome Lee. I know I gave a brief introduction, but if you want to give a little bit more background on what you've been studying and also your thesis, which will be very relevant, I think, to today's conversation. Thank you, Meg, for having me. And howdy folks, my name is Lee Larson. As stated, I run follow the leader social media and podcast, but yes, I did study international relations, African studies and environmental sciences, my undergrad, and I wound up going into ministry into seminary and serving in the United States Air Force Reserve Chaplain Corps. I served as a candidate, which means you're a chaplain candidate until you graduate seminary and go in. While I was in seminary, I was serving in the Air Force and chaplain corps and there I had two specific commanding officers that really made my life and the other women female chaplain trainer, you know, candidates that were serving with me challenging. I took it personally out of leaving the faith entirely, going into tech and trying to have a stable

2:05job until I replace me, of course, but I kept in touch with those women and none of them are still in the military chaplaincy. So that's when I was like, this isn't a personal thing. Like, I need to look into this and I wound up writing my master's thesis for seminary on a Christian nationalism in US military chaplaincy. And from there, that's really what I focused on. Yes, Christian nationalism, project 2025, project 2025 has a whole section on defense and what they're going to do with the defense department. So that's where I really leaned all the way in was A, because of my personal experience and then also this is real and to document that now I'm expanding it into a book and I'm working with chaplains and military folks to write it. It's very heavy and intense, but it needs to be done and I'm really thankful for the support I've received. Including you, Meg, thanks for having me. I'm so glad that you could come on. I know it was kind of short notice, but I feel like a lot of people are trying to cover this from different angles and a lot is happening very fast. So I think let's just start by catching people up. You know, I think a lot

3:06of people are aware of some aspects of what has been going on, but for listeners who maybe have tuned out or feeling overwhelmed with the content context of this war, like what actually is happening? And that's where I'm going to leave it. What's going on? Absolutely. So we're all witnessing a geopolitical war that has very, I don't know, typical, quote unquote, circumstances. You have a bad leader. There's issues of trade, oil, control. There's all there, those are real, right? The reasons that quote unquote people have gone to war in the past are there. What is particular and unique about this situation is that the people that are in charge, either they were elected or appointed. Many of them are carrying a very specific Christian dominionist theology that really grew out of a response to the civil rights movement. A lot of conservative evangelical Christians did not like what the civil rights movement did for women, for queer folk, for people of color. They didn't like segregation of schools. They didn't like

4:09teaching science in public schools. They wanted to teach evolution. There's, there's just, there's been the steady cultural social pushback. And for a lot of us, I think we just kind of thought that was French. Or, you know, we kind of wrote it off as like, yeah, well, that's great. But what this dominionist Christian theology takes is a, the Bible very literally, including the book of Revelation about Armageddon in times, things like that. But it also argues evangelical theology that I'm talking about, argues that because the Hebrew Bible slash old testament, that whole chunk is all about the Jews being the chosen people, searching for their homelands so that they can be in divine peace with their Lord. And that book kind of ends, also right around King David, who is then bloodline connected to Jesus Christ. Basically, their theory is that their argument is that we need to Christians need to support Israeli Jews in reclaiming their homeland because once they reclaim their homeland, it will trigger the return

5:14of Jesus the Messiah. It will also create this Armageddon book of Revelation type in times. So this is the literal interpretation that folks are are using is again, it seems French, but it wasn't. Really, you think about someone like James Dobson or Mark Driscoll to very evangelical conservative men who really drove home, not necessarily this exact theology, but how important it was for evangelical Christians to get politically involved. That was always in this thing, is that society is broken and the only way it can be saved is a good conservative evangelical Christians like us can fix it. Like I said, they have problems with women's rights, queer rights, people of color, and they saw all of society is broken and they weren't going to stand by. You can, at what point in history do you really look, but we know that by the 90s, this was fringe, but not anymore. We see how it's like getting organized, getting aligned, and now all

6:15those kids from the 90s have grown up. They've carried that theology and that's why you see like on social media a lot of ex evangelical creators waking up and talking about it. And now we have these very passionate zealots that are in office. They brought all their buddies into office and they've also got AI intertwined with it too. So it's just, it's not just a typical war that Americans are used to. This has some heat that is dark behind it. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's interesting to hear because I think it's an observation a lot of Americans are kind of waking up to like you're expressing. I would include myself in that group as well because I think in a lot of the coverage that I've done historically is centered around climate, around resource extraction, around those types of things. And I think in a lot of geopolitical conflicts, that's what I look for. I'm just like, well, what are the resources in Venezuela? What is it in Greenland? What is it in Iran? What is it in Nigeria that we are seeking to acquire? Not necessarily like the ideological

7:19motivations, you know? So do you think that most in the motivation behind this war is genuinely rooted in religious ideology? What we have found is that of MAGA and Trump supporters, 33 to 39% of them identify as conservative evangelical. So with that data, we can say that maybe a third of the people in the room agree with what he's of his support. It's not a third of Americans. It's a third of those who support Trump. And so yes, there are those that die hard believe it. And they die hard believe in such a way that it's not really something you're going to question if you want to be in the room, you know? So it kind of puts you in like a, well, like, I'm not going to fight with a third of the people in the room. And then also like it puts you into a sort of compliance or maybe someone else has a vested interest in this war because war is very profitable. Whether that's AI technology or oil, etc. So it's a perfect storm of having a fringe group that's no longer

8:20fringe. Now having power and influence, having that political pressure, they can put on people who may or may not agree. And then the people who may or may not agree are like, well, I'm just here for the financial ride. So and then you and I can talk about all day what AI and oil does to the environment. But that's why it seems like everyone else is like these people are crazy. Why aren't they call it and it's because they have something to gain from it? Yeah. And I mean, if we look at some current events, because we're recording this on Thursday, March 5th, to be released on Friday, March 6th. And this week, the first week of the war has been very strange. I was young. I will say I was young in 20 2001. But I remember like the start of that first conflict with George W. Bush. And even then like what I would hear from my parents and stuff was always a little bit different than what I'm experiencing now probably because I'm an adult and I can conceptualize it better. But one event that especially was like disgusting to me, it made me physically ill to see this video.

9:23And I think you posted about it was yesterday, March 4th, there was a US Marine veteran who said that US military personnel don't want to be dying on behalf of Israel. And of course, Montana, Senator Shihi then broke his hand or his arm. And that was all caught on video. That was especially disturbing. And before that, like the day before that happened, there was also that speech about Armageddon, which you mentioned. And so all of that together makes sense and is aligning with what you're explaining with this religious ideology. And so how do you think this Jewish nationalism is playing into this doctrine as a whole? Because being a Jew and being Christian, they're related, but they are different things. Yeah, absolutely. And I really like to just stay in my lane and keep calling out Christian nationalists because I'm like, it gets catchy when you start saying Jewish and Muslim nationalists and like, yes, but that is what's going on. It's the most radical of each of these Abrahamic faiths that are calling the shots for all of us. And that's a

10:28scary place to be because Pete Hegseth fully believes in what he's doing. He's locked in, he thinks he's definitely appointed to be the general leader of the Armageddon. I mean, it's kind of gross and so masculine, egotistical that it makes you sick. And then in regards to someone like Senator Shiki yesterday, that would, I mean, like you said, there's no words for that. Google, any political official to see how much money they have accepted from APAC, this particular Senator has accepted half a million. As people are going to have to get, we're going to have to do research. We're going to get knowledge, we have to get knowledgeable about who's being supported. Now, when you talk about Jewish nationalism and Judaism and Christianity, I don't care if you were Christian, Jewish or Muslim, I don't want anybody's theology being the law of the land. And especially any sort of law of the land that then gets us into a global religious war. I have read Pete Hegseth's book. He wrote six years ago. It's titled American Crusade. It is titled

11:28that for a reason. It is his manifesto of how he believes that Christianity has been lost, how the liberal Democrats have ruined it for us since the 1960 civil rights. And we need to go and reclaim his argument. And he has a whole section on his disdain from Muslims. And he talked, I mean, you talk about Minnesota. Like, I mean, you're reading this. And I'm like, he talks about Minnesota Muslims. And now we just haven't all that with ice. And then he also just talks about Muslims that large about, you know, this whole caricature of them. I mean, he essentially likens them to vermin the way he talks about how they breed. And it's dehumanizing. All that to say, he has aligned Christianity and the Judeo faith to say that they need to be alliances so that we can take care of this once and for all. And so there is just outright religious hate coming from these Christian nationalists who are aligning with Jewish nationalists. What else? He also has brought in his head pastor, Doug Wilson, as kind of establishing. He's brought him into Pentagon

12:29meetings, prayer breakfast, Bible studies, this pastor that Pete Hegseth as defense secretary. I'm not going to call him more secretary because no, that's my protest. The head of the DOD is not supposed to be running around pushing a faith. It's supposed to be a very secular position. He can have a faith. He can mention like, oh, like prayers for our troops. And Americans are generally okay with people having a faith and talking about a god as long as you don't try to define it any more than that. That's not what he's doing. He's having Bible studies. He's having prayer breakfast. He's inviting defense contractors, AI tech, a political allies, literally anybody. And he's posturing that this is this is where we're at. This is the guy we're listening to. This is the Christian motivation behind it. I agree with it or not, but we're doing this. And it should outrage us as citizens because he has gone so much further than even what George Bush did after 9-11. And 9-11, he got a lot of flak because I think George Bush meant I think he got caught up in a speech or

13:32something, but he called it a crusade and people in the Middle East freaked out because the United States president was saying crusade. And so he got flak. He had to come, he had to like calm down his language. He had to do a few photo opportunities with Muslim leaders to show that this isn't a Muslim thing. And like he had to smooth that over, but that's not at all. What is going on here? This is the voters that 33 to 39% that I mentioned. They voted for this. And they fully support what Hexeth is doing. And a lot of it is because they bought the very anti-Islamic sentiment since 9-11. That's been all over the media. So it's, it's just a culmination of all of our worst fears. Yeah. And I think that you've alluded to this multiple times is that this has been building for a long time, right? Like this wasn't a, I mean, it kind of feels like an off the cuff impulsive decision on Trump's part, but the conflict itself has been building for a long time in, I'm glad

14:33you brought up the crusades because that's immediately what I thought of when I was doing a little bit more reading about these things. And I was like, this feels like the crusade wars. And so I guess if we're putting it historically, what led up to this with that sort of framing, and how has religion been influencing the United States policy? The hard part about the United States is, yes, we've always been a secular country. We've always been, quote, majority Christian, Protestant Christian. And so we used religious symbology, Christian symbolism since the beginning. Like it's like not necessarily in our governing, governing documents, but that was culturally. And then you, you really start to see in the 1900s a combination of things, this sort of shift you see early 1900s, like this like evangelical take on it. And then you also see a sort of more progressive that eventually unfolded into the civil rights movement. And that itself was was really hard for like I said, evangelicals to grapple with. But in terms of

15:38what they did about it, very quickly, if you look at civil rights era, not long after there was a leader, a southern Baptist good old boy named Jimmy Carter at a Georgia here in for office. And some of these Christian folks thought he was going to be their hero because he talked about Sunday school on the campaign trail. He talked about Jesus. They loved that. But once he got into office and he didn't go down that super conservative fundamentalist way and was like, you know what, no, I'm not going, he didn't make any lies or anything. But I think he there was a whole group. They really thought he was going to overturn segregation of schools in some way. He was going to put prayer in schools. Creation isn't like there were people that because he said Sunday school and Jesus, they were like, oh, you're going and he didn't. And so that kind of further radicalized them. That's what led eventually to Ronald Reagan was like, we need someone who will do this. And who better than an actor who just needed a script. And if you look at Ronald Reagan, you see the

16:39rise of the evangelical right. This is also where you see the rise of the Heritage Foundation, moral majority. And it's the first Ronald Reagan was the first president to where they have what it's called the Mandate for Leadership, which is a document. It's a policy handbook for conservative Republicans for the administration that says, this is where we're going for this administration. And since then, every Republican administration has had this mandate for leadership. I'm not new. What is new is that they rebranded it as Project 2025 for the 2025 election. So Project 2025 is just a nickname for the mandate for leadership. But this has been going on right since since Reagan and like I said, civil rights, Jimmy Carter. It helps put things into perspective for me at least in terms of like, what led us here? Those are often the questions that I like to ask. It's like, how did we actually get to this spot in history? And how do we think it will play out with what we now know? So I guess that's my next question. Great question. I mean, the the evolution

17:43of Trump is is concerning if you have studied other leaders rising to power. He uses the same rhetoric. A lot of us have been calling this out since 2016. If a man is appealing to David Duke and the KKK, that's a red flag. And this sort of rhetoric of at least appealing to the Christian evangelical right has been there since 2016. And it's weird to see because like all of us were like, what are you talking about? There is a certain also. There's a few biblical scripture stories that talk of a non-Christian man rising to power. A few different examples and some evangelical Christians have used that to justify him. Like, oh, well, actually, it's okay that he's not Christian and he's actually bad because we do have examples in the Bible of bad kings rising to power and then something amazing comes from it. Like, maybe all of this and so you it's like, there's so many people that from the get go have been like, oh, yeah, with Trump and power, we can accomplish our Christian dreams. He has his first term and then it goes the way it does. The country votes in Biden, Biden

18:46gets COVID and then COVID obviously massive. So then Biden and the Democrats can't be trusted whatever. And they go back to Trump. But at this time, this Trump 2.0, he has already made claims that the election was stolen that COVID was in it. Like, he played, he used those four years to keep sowing. There are some valid points. He made them not going to dismiss that at all. It's that he mixed half truths with lots. And so it confedals. So then you see like this Trump 2.0, the Democrats are falling apart at this time. The Democrats also don't have anything to offer except hate for the MAGA movement, which is fair. But like, if you're a working class person, you got to do something. So you see the failure of the Dems, you see the rise of the religious right and it just continued to snowball. Whatever happened with the election, there's lots of claims and statements out there about Elon Musk being a part of it. And essentially, I mean that, that they voted him in. One thing that I know that Hitler foot stomped in his rise to power was how Jews were corrupting the Protestant

19:49Catholic faith of the Germans, the white Germans. These Jews are going to taint society. The Jews at that point were 1% of the population. The same exact rhetoric that Trump and hegs at the whoever that is anti-Muslim. Muslims are 1% of the United States pop. They are not a threat to overthrowing us culturally. They are not a threat to overthrowing our Constitution and implementing Sharia law. But it doesn't matter when you have already convinced your audience using a combination of truths and lies. And the Democrats don't have or, you know, the other party, whatever you want to call it, doesn't have something else to offer. You wind up creating a worldview where that Donald Trump is the guy who can save you somehow. And we are seeing a huge number of folks walking away this year because the promises he made on this last campaign trail are not coming to fruition. The Epstein files, of course, were extremely damning. But the big thing about people who follow this magazine got really swept up into it. I've heard a few people leaving. And the

20:51reason why she left was because the rapture didn't come true. Like that's the reason and she's gained. She's going viral. And like, here's the deep bite. You and I can't do anything about that. Like I can lead a horse to water and show her every fact and evidence to convince that person to come just like, this man's a con man. Don't listen to him. But she had to be cons specifically on her own Christianity because it's mixed into Trump. That's why it's so hard for people like you and I to break that. It will need ex-magah folks to keep showing that to other magah kind of the same way that if you're struggling with alcohol, your friend who can handle alcohol fine telling you to stop isn't probably going to help, but it's going to be another alcoholic who got sober that is like, hey, you're doing exactly what I did and I woke up. So we need those people who left and why I know that sucks. None of us are excited to embrace someone who created the conditions for this country. I want to make a point though that those are also going to be some of the best allies

21:52for more and more people leaving. Handle that as you wish audience. Like I'm not going to tell you what to do, but just keep those things in mind that this is truly religious psychosis for some people. And it's very scary. It's very sad. I mean, you're watching people on TikTok have full on existential crises. The other day I made a video about how Tucker Carlson who has claimed to go rogue and independent isn't actually that rogue and independent because his son is working press secretary for the vice president who is backed by AI giant Palantir Peter Teal at $20 million. So it's like, we can't trust a lot of people, Meg. It just feels like it's all of them against us. And I don't know what that looks like, but I hope that we can continue to be find some sort of unity. And also a big fear I have is that as this escalates, we're going to see more anti-Semitic, anti-Christian. We're going to see attacks on soil. Are people attacking other Americans for their face? That's a possibility. It's a possibility that there's a retaliation strike

22:55when the military is announcing globally that we're having a crusade. Pakistan, like any of those countries that are listening, they have nukes, like they have militaries. Like I would be scared if I was a Pakistan president and military commanders of the US are calling this a holy war. Yes, like religious fanatics typically have that built-in to like it could always be a holy war at any time. But this administration has not discredited those military commanders. They've doubled down on it. He'd hex that doubled down. So we're fully signaling. We're going in this direction. And my fear is retaliatory strikes for anyone else who was maybe on the fence about joining a religion. Might not like it. We might see an exit even harder of people from organized religion when all of us witness a global holy war together. So I don't know how that it will shape American safety in the next few months. It could be false flags. There could be so many things that this escalates. I don't like that they're signaling globally and not discreet. I mean, like I

23:56said, the military commanders made those statements and then hex up, double down. So we're not even shutting that down on the American side anymore. We're fully acknowledging it. And even if we do survive it, we've got to look at how we're going to get through it spiritually as a community. And how do we not turn on each other? And it's not a Jews versus Christians versus Muslims thing. It's a radicals and them playing it. I mentioned the point about this woman leaving Christianity in MAGA because of the rapture. I want to talk that the rapture specifically. The rapture specifically is based off book of Revelation, which is the final book in the Christian Bible in the New Testament. The phrase Bible is kind of confusing because there's a lot of translations, interpretations like the Bible's not really an inadequate thing. So you have this book of Revelation and you have people that take it very literally. But the thing is is that first of all, that text was always written. It was and has always been written for the Roman Empire at the time for Emperor Nero. So that passage was not necessarily intended to be some consistent, you know,

25:00you pick what it is that it was like this was going to happen. So it was written for a specific on a specific time. For the bulk of Christian history, for the first 1500s, they weren't operating on the Bible like we have. Like this, this consolidation is like yes, there were texts in Stuart, but you know, between the printing press, between a literacy up until like the 1800s, global literacy, most people were ill-literate until public education. Yes, people probably had in times and whatever. But also in the Gospel of Matthew, it says we do not know the time or date of Jesus return. So a lot of people were like, whatever that book says, like the Gospel of Matthew already said that we're not supposed to know. So we're not going to act. We're not going to create it. We're not going to act like it. We're going to live this way and welcome the return of Christ, whatever. I'm just trying to say like there are people that are like acknowledged what that text was for what it is and how they've coped with it and how they've handled it and like why not every single Christian is out here doing that? Because they're not taking it a literally. Yeah. They're having some historical criticism about the text itself. Also looking at like this is really something that

26:01was kind of compiled altogether in the 1500s and organized in the way that we see it. Like that's kind of the cut off of the way the whole book is set up. And then about in the 1800s, there is a pastor Darby who said, I know it, you know, basically that Jesus will return that we have to make it so and we can only do that through individual salvation and taking care of yourself. He almost like rejected that society could be saved. So he was like society can't be saved. Just worry about your own souls. Try to convert other souls, but like you don't need to we don't need to bring in such like it there was just a weird I feel like I'm even kind of butchering it because of how much I've jumped around in this in this story. But the point being that rapture really came about in the 1800s, not even an age-old Christian thing. Rapture is a relatively new concept that was kind of making inroads with fringe and rural Christians. Definitely struggled in urban areas where there's, you know, universities or higher education

27:05emphasis. But again, that 1960s Jim and Carter Ronald Reagan when those fringe groups began to just outright distrust American society and government, they started picking up steam and unfortunately, I don't think anyone from either side believes or trusts, you know, they're elected officials. You know, we always have like some skepticism, but this was a yeah. And outright distrust by a fringe group that kept some for valid reasons like why they would distrust the government others for a sense of control. But yeah, so I feel like I just were vomited quite a bit. But no, it's interesting. My point being is that this is not some archaic thing that all Christians forever have always believed. It's just not. It just sucks that a group of people based on something 150 years ago of Christians, I can always speak this for Christians because I know that the Jewish nationalists and Israel's like it's own other story. But that's not our story. And that's not what we've been running around doing. And it's preparing for the rapture.

28:05We would be able to see that in Christian history. I mean, we have other scribes and notable people, bishops, priests, and it's just not there. So you see the rise of it. And then of course, World War Two, I didn't mention the Israel part. Sorry. Are y'all okay audience? We're jumping around. How's everyone doing? How's everyone doing? So 1800s, right? This is like post-civil war time, 1800 civil warish. That's when they're like, hey, rapture, we actually need a prepare for Jesus coming. We need to worry about our individual souls. It also, I think ties in that hyper emphasis on individuality blends very nicely with capitalism, blends very nicely with degradation to the environment. We don't have to care because once Jesus comes back, then the world will be made new. But until then, this world is bound for hell. So just take and grab whatever you want. No respect for stewardship for the environment. You see how this fear of hell and Jesus returning, not returning, Armageddon, all of it starts to play in how they see their lives on this earth. In my tradition, we look at those texts, we look at those words of Jesus

29:10and we say, yeah, let's bring heaven to earth, meaning that we're going to care for the widow, the sick, be good stewards of the environment. It's a very generalized, like, yeah, like Jesus cared for the sick and needy, we should care for the sick and needy. But when you have changed the theology that it's not about caring for your society, when they start with, like, actually don't care about society because it's broken, just worry about yourself and worry about your own faith and worry about converting people to bring come to us. It's a totally different beast and that that wasn't helped at all by the 1954 post-World War II. Obviously, Jews were looking for a homeland. We see the creation of the state of Israel, which was a very Western-backed political controversial political move back in the 1950s of establishing a state of Israel. Here we are now. And so it's a very hard topic to talk about because in no way am I diminishing or discrediting someone's faith or their stories or their motivations or their faith, really. But it's become,

30:13it's just become state and political. And at the end of that, I just, I don't want religion to rule. I don't, like, that's not what I'm here to do. I've already gotten hate, like, oh, that you must hate Jews or you don't, like, muzzle, like, I'm like, well, I'm not even talking about you guys. I just don't want my taxpayer money to go fight a holy war for someone else's government. Like, that's it. That's the bottom line here. And it's just scary. Or I've been told that I'm not a follower of Jesus. Like, they're like, I mean, just, like, how can you speak out against this? This is exactly what Jesus wanted. And you're like, where? It's so messy and heated that I'm just concerned for everybody moving forward because I feel like I'm a very genuine, respectful person who makes my very direct claims. And yet I'm still getting hit with, I'm anti-Christian or I'm anti-J, or I'm anti-S, and I'm just unnoticed. I mean, that was the whole point of the separation of church and state. And we're not seeing that we haven't been seen at all through the Trump administration. And this is inciting a holy war as a whole another level of disrespecting that doctrine. And one thing to back up, a recommended reading that I have for

31:17listeners is called The Cult of Trump by Steve Hassan Hassan. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but I'll link it in the show notes. I read that at the beginning of this first of this second term of Trump. One final question that I have for you, which is probably going to ruffle some feathers. So be ready. There are a lot of people who perhaps rightfully because of the shock of the Epstein files are saying, well, this is just to distract us from the Epstein files. I personally don't believe that. I think that two things can exist at the same time and be related, but one is not necessarily because of the other. And I don't think that starting this war and inciting this war is to specifically cover up the Epstein files. But I guess if we're thinking about all of this Christian theology and extremism in religion and all of these things, how much do you think these people actually believe it? And in these people, I mean the government officials, so Trump and the Department of Defense and these military leaders, are they actually

32:22indoctrinated into this religious extremism? Or are they just puppets to move things forward? Because I think the argument goes like so many different ways of like, what is the reason behind this war? Is it to prop up the state of Israel? Is it resource extraction? Is it who's profiting from it? There's so many questions flying around. And whenever I think of this religious aspect with someone like Trump, who is so vile in terms of his actions and especially towards children, you're like, no true religious person who believes in Jesus Christ and his teachings would be doing these things. So like, how much do you think they actually believe this? That's a very long question, but you know where I'm going. Well, I don't want to circle back to the very first statement you made about, yes, I saw that quite a bit from major accounts over the weekend that, and it was all along the lines of like, I can't believe we're going to war and to distract from the Epstein files. Or like, what was in those Epstein files that we blew up we want? Like, yes, timing maybe. I mean, you can also argue that

33:27he needed the state of the union, which we like, he was going to do and he also needed the Olympics. He wasn't going to do that before the Olympics. We wouldn't have had an Olympics. So there's a number of things. The Epstein files are horrendous. I've read them, but it also, if you have read them, it demonstrates that there are people in this administration that have been in bed with Israel for a long time. And including Donald Trump's son and law Jared Kushner is one of the leading real estate developers for the destruction of Gaza. And last January, a year ago, they posted how this was going to remake into Trump Gaza. It was like, a whole AI video was very disturbing. Elon Musk was in it. Donald Trump was like, shirtless with Netanyahu, drinking cocktails, but it was like a vision. And that's what this administration always does. It always tells us what it's going to do. So a year ago, they launched this AI video. Jared Kushner has been running real estate and all sorts of stuff with Israel for a very long time. And so it's this mix of like, you have the family that's in charge literally in his son is Jewish too. And I think his daughter converted to Judaism. So you have

34:29that have that skin that Israel Jewish skin. I don't know if Jared Kushner is fully blown Jewish nationalist. And like, I don't know if it's religious or if he's just like, yeah, like the Jews should have Gaza. And we're going to make it a real estate opportunity like Dubai, right? So the theality. I don't know the opportunity. Yeah. Right. Trump is all about taking advantage of other people's motivations to profit on the side. So between those two. And then of course, Trump and Epstein. But like, D.O.D. Yeah. Um, Pete Hegseth fully bought in. And we see that not even, and you can be like, you know, just like dressing this up. No, we, I have studied him going back to his college writing for the Princeton newspaper like this guy. He showed up on campus at Princeton University, a very, you know, a liberal left wing higher education institution. And was like, I'm here to be an agent of chaos. And he started, I think in the first few weeks, could something called the God squad. It was just white Christian students, the conservative students. So this from the beginning,

35:31he was like, I am here to do this. And then JD Vance is, yes, Catholic, which doesn't jive well with actually evangelical. And if it came down to it, Hegseth and Vance would not support one another's faith. We've already Christians on my side have already done that. We've already had the Protestant Catholic Wars. There is animosity between evangelicals and Catholics at the end of the day. Right now, they're just, they have enough in common to where they support one another. There is this whole other thing. There's the evangelical Christian nationalism. There's also Opus Day, which is the Catholic nationalism. Through the Catholic church somehow, we are going to have Catholicism and be the world religion. I am not Catholic, so I haven't studied that one too much. But, point being, there are some JD Vance in interviews, has talked about how much Peter Teal and his AI, Catholicism, transhumanism, ideology has deeply impacted JD Vance. So again, his JD Vance truly believes that the Catholic dominion over the world is the right, I don't know, but like he's definitely in bed

36:35with the guy that's going to make a bunch of money running AI surveillance and military. So, do we have crazy people? Yes, maybe, but they're all also multi-motivated. Yeah, I do think that that's kind of where I'm sitting right now with my understanding of what's going on. And then like, listening to you speak about the motivations of religion and theology, all of that is that there's likely multiple motivations that, yes, maybe it's a welcome distraction from the Epstein files. Like, yes, there is money involved. Yes, there's resources involved, but also there is religion as a baseline. And kind of like a marketing tool. They're using it a lot for marketing. And we did something similar during the Cold War with Russia, and we were secular Russia and the Christian American democracy is going to save the day. And that's where you see a kind of revivalism and Protestant Christianity kind of people rallying around the flag, but it didn't last long. Then it went into civil rights, and then we went into the Vietnam War, and that was super unpopular for a lot of Christian denominations. They quit

37:39supporting military chaplaincy as much, because the Vietnam War was just so disgraceful. So that's another thing. Within the military chaplaincy specifically, a lot of Protestant chaplains, Christian chaplains have stopped. The Catholics are still in it very much. It's like evangelicals and Catholics dominate the chaplaincy. But like the Lutherans Methodists, the Episcopalians, a lot of those, they're still there. They're just far fewer, because instead their denominations didn't outright, you know, they're not pacifists, but they just were like, yeah, if you're going to be a chaplain, go be a hospital chaplain, go be a prison chaplain. You don't have to, like, military is a different animal, because then you are now aligned with whatever the state is going to do. And so a lot of progressive, a lot of progressive denominations since Vietnam War, were like, you know what, you can go if you want. We'll support you, but we're not going to emphasize it. And so because they haven't been emphasizing it, that paved the way over the 90s for those very evangelical folks to grow up and essentially take over the chaplaincy. I mean, since post 9-11, it has been heavily evangelical chaplains and caused a lot of harm within the

38:40military chaplain, which is what I set out to write about before it like exploded into this. Like, I was just here to be like, hey guys, like this is how bad it could get. And now it happened. No, like, I don't know who is my book. Well, now it's already happening. I don't know what to do with this. Yeah. Well, it's important information. And I feel like we could talk about this for a very, very long time. There's a lot to unpack. I'm very grateful for the time and energy and research that you've put into this topic. And that you're willing to share it. I know for our listeners that maybe it was a departure from some of the topics that we typically cover. But I felt like it was important context because there is so much information flying around and so much confusion about what is happening. And so like seeing the positioning of Christian nationalism and how it can influence politics and war. Very important. So thank you so much, Lee.