950: Is Gen Z More Conservative Than Millennials?

Unknown Speaker  0:00  
Music. Instead of

Brian Nichols  0:07  
focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there folks, welcome to another fun filled episode of The Brian Nichols Show. I am, as always, your humble host joining you from our lovely cardio miracle Studios here in sunny Eastern Indiana. The Brian Nichols Show is powered by our amazing sponsors, amp America. Get the news you need to know without the corporate media bias or fluff. Amp america.com Also, The Brian Nichols Show is powered by yes cardio miracle, which is our yes in fact, very phenomenal studio sponsor, and cardio miracle is the best heart health supplement in the world. So if you want to learn more about how to lower your blood pressure, lower that resting heart rate, while improving your pump at the gym, stick around. We're gonna talk about more later on in today's episode, but first, we're gonna go ahead and talk about Doge, because Doge has been leading the headlines. But one narrative that I've been seeing pop up time and again is that, well, all these members who are taking part in Doge, there's a bunch of young kids, they don't know what the heck they're talking about, and I say blasphemy. So to join us here on the show to discuss why that is, in fact, blasphemy. Joining us here from young voices. Ethan Watson, welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. How you doing? Man,

Unknown Speaker  1:26  
pretty good. Thank you so much for having me on Brian Absolutely.

Brian Nichols  1:29  
Ethan, thanks for joining the show and thanks for writing this awesome article over at the Detroit News where we talk about why Doge is youth is a feature, not a bug. But before we do that, Ethan, do us a favor. Introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience. Who are you and what is it that you got you so passionate and focused on talking about the youth movement that is taking part over at Doge fire

Speaker 1  1:49  
away, definitely. So my name is Ethan Watson. I'm a writer for young voices, which is a network of sort of freedom oriented, libertarian and right leaning contributors. I've been with them for about eight months now, in my spare time, or my my day job, rather, is, I am a prospective law student. I've got a couple degrees from University of Kansas, accounting and political science, so I'm based out of South Kansas City, and I really got involved in politics during the COVID 19 pandemic. I looked around at my senior year of high school, my freshman year of college, really formative, important years of my life. They were told, I was told I was told that it was going to be some of the best years of my life. And I just saw, you know, one by one, all the things that I look forward to being taken away. And I was thinking, you know, who are this who are these government leaders that are telling me how I can live my life, and what's behind this, this policy making process, and how can I get more involved? I started looking into it, and I got really frustrated with it, and I decided to start writing and speaking out and trying to encourage people my age to go out and have a voice, which is why I feel so strongly about what the doge team is doing, because Elon Musk's team of worker bees are the perfect example of smart, dedicated young people going in and trying to change government for the better. And that's exactly what I'm trying to do, and that's exactly what I'd like to see more people in my generation doing

Brian Nichols  2:59  
love it. Ethan, well, well, let's address the elephant in the room in this case, and that is the young support, not just of Doge in this case, but also Donald Trump. When you look at a generational breakdown, it is the younger generation who is in quite a large majority supporting Donald Trump. I saw a recent poll that I think it was a CBS poll, 60% of young folk between the ages of 18 and 24 supported Donald Trump, and that's stark contrast relative to the boomer generation, who I think the numbers in like the low 40s, maybe high 30s. So there definitely seems to be something that has happened behind the scenes. And I want to just first start there, Ethan, because I have been told for what years, a decade plus, at this point that Brian toss in the towel party's over. Like the younger generation, they're a bunch of leftist progressive gobbledygook goofballs. Like, don't waste your time going after them. They're going to be voting left, like lock step for the next 60 years. And yet that just doesn't seem to be the case. So Ethan, we're hearing this right now as the narrative, but the numbers, as our good friend over it at the PBD podcast, the biz doc says, No, was it word speak, but number screen, something like that. Numbers are screaming here, right? What's the actual I guess, boots on the ground. You know, word of mouth that you're hearing as, dare I say, a young a young folk, right? Um, like, where, where did we in the older generations, the millennials, the Gen Xers and the boomers? Where do we get things so wrong? Well,

Speaker 1  4:32  
I think youth, by nature, is rebellious, right? And so we think back to the 60s and the 70s, the counterculture movement. That was the cool thing to be a part of, right? The hippies were protesting the war, were against the administration, all that stuff. And then even, even as recently as 2012 with Occupy Wall Street, that was like the trendy social movement to be a part of. But these days, the the dominant cultural movement, has been woke, sort of leftist hegemony for as long as I've been politically active. And so it's, it's rebellious, actually, to be. Conservative or libertarian and say, hey, you know, I I believe in a smaller government. I believe in more traditional values. That is the rebellious counterculture movement. And I think especially for my generation, and young men in particular, we felt a little bit left behind by that leftist, sort of woke ideology, you know, going through high school and college, and all I hear about is toxic masculinity and privilege. You know, at a certain point it's like, you know, I look around and my demographics not doing great. I mean, I mean the suicide rates, the deaths of despair among people that, just like me, are insanely high and and so I think a lot of people my age are just waking up and saying, Look, this isn't working. We need to make a change. And I think especially as Gen Z comes of age, and a lot of my peers are the point now where there's trying to get married, they're trying to start a family, buy a house. Think about that. They're looking and they're saying, you know, I think this is increasingly difficult, and for reasons that it just doesn't need to be, my paychecks are being taxed into oblivion. My culture, I still, you know, want to be a traditional kind of guy, and the culture seems to have left me behind. And so that's why I think Donald Trump carried that movement because he is against the establishment. He's against this, this sort of leftist mono party blob that's been running our country and education and entertainment and everything for the last you know, I mean 3040, years, and this is just the counterculture movement of the

Brian Nichols  6:15  
day. It's wild to think about the voting Republican and voting for Trump is counterculture, like it's cool, and that's right there, right? It's cool now. And you just hit on something that I think we could just end the episode, right? Because that is at the end of the day. I think the the biggest elephant, porcupine, you know, donkey, whatever you want to call it in the room, is that what was considered cool back in the day is no longer cool. And and now voting for Trump is cool. And I guess, you know, you mentioned the counterculture, right? Like we see this back in the 80s. You know the old movies of, like the Breakfast Club, or like bears the other day off, like, stick it to the man, right? And like, that was during the era of Reagan. And you know, you fast forward to the Clinton and the bush. And let's name the Clinton the Bush years. It was very popular to be anti war. You know, he was the worst thing ever. And then you go into the Obama years, and I don't know what happened Ethan, it's just like everybody, all of a sudden, got their marching orders. It's like, okay, we did it. We did the thing. We got Obama. He's this charismatic black man, we're never gonna, you know, lose a minority vote in the future. He's speaking to the young folk. We're never gonna lose a young voter in the future. And it seemed like for eight years. And before I continue my thought, how old are you again? I'm 2323 Okay, so, man, how old? How old were you in 2008 help me do math. I was six years old. Jesus Christ. Okay, so when you were a literal kid, right? Like we in the older millennial generation, we're watching Obama and like, we're being told like this, this is politics, right? Like this is how it's done. And all that counter culture disappeared, like you had the Tea Party, which, okay, like that was more of a Republican response to Obama, not so much a counter culture thing. And then beyond that, like there was something behind the scenes that was happening with with Trump Right. Like the sentiment was there, Tea Party found it. Maga movement kind of carried it forward. And then Trump loses in 2020 and Biden takes over, and then you have the COVID pandemic. So let me ask you this Ethan, is it that Like from from Obama to, we'll say 2024 so i

There we go. I lost Wi Fi. I don't know what's happened there. All right, so I'll pick my thought back up. Where I left it off. Um, so Ethan, is it? Is it from like that 12 year period from like Obama to 2024 we'll say so 2008 to 2024 is it that? Is it just like that the left had such control over the institutions of the messaging and communication platforms that they were able to contrive this, this vibe, right? Of like, it's cool to be a Democrat, it's cool to be a leftist, it's cool to be a progressive. Is that it? Or am I missing something here? No,

Speaker 1  9:47  
that's absolutely what it was. I think the whole Dei, sort of woke blob that was running everything was really a paper tiger, and, and, and it just was not authentic at all. It felt totally astroturf, not grassroots. And. And I think people, you know, young men, especially my age, they're pretty apolitical, generally speaking, they just want to go along to get along. You know, they like football, they like movies, they like video games. They're not super politically aware, and they just noticed it's starting to invade those spaces, right? Like, you couldn't turn on the NFL without getting a political message. You couldn't racism, right? Every time. And it's like, Dude, I just want to break for one Sunday to watch seven hours of commercial free football, and that was not even a possibility anymore, or Star Wars movies or video games or, I mean, I remember the fiasco with one of the Battlefield games where all of a sudden we had women of color fighting World War Two. It's like, wait, wait, wait a second, like, you know? And I think, I think everybody in my generation just looked around and said, This is ridiculous. We're being told to think the Certain Way. I wondered, what else is out there. And also, I think it's kind of a hollow message to give people that your country is bad, your religion is bad and oppressive. I think, I think people started looking around thinking, I'm not very happy. I'm missing something in my life, and they retreated back to these traditional values that are, you know, not perfect all the time, but are certainly tried and true, and true and have led to a pretty good civilization. I think that's what, what my generation is looking around and doing,

Brian Nichols  11:05  
which is just wild to me, like and just the fact that I'm hearing you say that, and I mean, Obviously you

I've literally been on meetings all day, and I've had no issues. I have no idea what's happening. I'm gonna

Speaker 1  11:45  
try. I'm running a little speed test on my end to see if there's something going

Brian Nichols  11:49  
doing my phone too. Was running a speed test. I was like, this is redonkulous. Hold on. It's either me or it's, I think it's stream yard. It's one of the two. Let's see. Okay, I think we're safe for now, so I'll continue. Okay. I even heard on this very show, past guests, one of whom I'll, I'll throw them under the bus, because I really don't care anymore. Josh eagle was on this show back in like 2022, and he was a former libertarian who now has taken a, you know, very, very deep dive into a short part of the pool in promoting leftism and progressivism in the name of something. And he was on this show saying, you know, the young generation, we believe in civil rights and we believe in social justice, and they believe in, you know, ending climate change and like that. It was just predetermined. Like, this was where the tides are heading. And it's just like, I look at the outcomes in 2024 and I'm like, uh, I think you might have, I think you might have been wrong a little bit there. Josh, so like, where, where did we? I say we, where did the narrative versus what was actually happening behind the scenes. Ethan goes so wrong.

Speaker 1  13:02  
I would say, I would say it really changed when they started moving into cultural spaces, like, like things that young men enjoy, like, like football and entertainment and things like that. It felt so oppressive. And really this, this sort of sneering and talking down to anyone who wasn't, you know, in lockstep with this liberal agenda, if you weren't 100% on board with the trans issues, if we're 100% on board with the LGBT issues, they would they wouldn't just say, hey, we respectfully disagree with you. They would say that you're an idiot, you're a bitter clinger, you're this uneducated room. And that reached a boiling point during COVID, because if you looked around and said, Hey, like, I don't know what this cloth mask is doing. Like, can I ask questions about or is this vaccine going to actually work. You were told you are the problem. Sit down. You want grandma to die or something like that. And and I think a lot of people just just, I mean, naturally, they looked around and they said, I think, I think I'm being led here, led led astray here. And so I think, I think really the sneering and the talking down. And we heard that with Obama with the bitter cleaners. We heard that with Hillary Clinton with the basket of deplorables. Joe Biden did it with the garbage people. I mean, you could make a highlight reel of Democrats and leftists sneering at people who weren't 100% in lockstep with them, and that was their their own demise, because they cast out RFK Junior, a hero of the left and a Kennedy to say the least. They cast him out because he asked some questions about the vaccine. They cast out Tulsi Gabbard, who was a Bernie supporter because she didn't want to be a warmonger like they became so hegemonic and so puritanical with their ideas. They weren't a big tent party anymore. They were a tiny tent party. And I think Trump's GOP just really managed to seize that moment and welcome in a coalition of people that hey, let's just get back to the America that we heard about from our parents and grandparents. Let's make that happen for people again,

Brian Nichols  14:40  
let's get back to that America we heard about man that's that's a pretty profound statement, Ethan. And you know what it is young men right now, like you, who are actually helping make that happen, right? And this goes to your your article you wrote. So it is the younger generation. It is young Doge. Doge, employees, Doge. Members. I don't know how you'd want to classify them, but Doge, which is Elon Musk, Department of government efficiency, going through all of these different federal bureaucracies, line by line, department by department, starting to tear things apart. And it is predominantly young men, young young computer men. I say computer men, as if they're like nobody. I'm getting old, geez. But like, you know, more technically savvy, shall we say, in the younger generation who are going through these archaic systems, right? And, I mean, nobody who's listening to this show is sitting there being like, no Brian, our technology, the government, is so great. Like, we've all been to the DMV. We've all had to, like, if you Well, if you haven't gotten married yet, you've all been going to, like, get a marriage license. Like, it is insane the bureaucracies of how slow things are and like, just the fact that there are so many folks in the left who argue with a straight face in favor of these bureaucracies, as if not every single American citizen has watched or experienced firsthand how terribly inefficient they actually are. But that's a different conversation for a different day. But let's talk about these young men at Doge, because obviously they saw an opportunity to make a difference, which is pretty darn cool, but now they're doing so with, quite literally, the world's richest man going through the world's largest bureaucracy. So Ethan, how did we get to this point, and what are we seeing behind the scenes now with these young men helping Elon Musk dismantle the federal bureaucracies. Well,

Speaker 1  16:25  
this definitely originated in Elon's background. Elon comes from the world of big tech, which is all about innovating and disrupting. They're not about doing things the traditional way, the legacy way. They want to shake up systems. Elon did this with x right? He bought it, he burnt to the ground, and he built it right back up. That's how Elon operates. And I think he just puts so little stock in legacy systems, legacy institutions, that he saw a group of talented, highly intelligent young people like these are not your average, you know, 20 year olds. I mean, at least in my friend group, there's no one who's decoding ancient Roman scrolls using AI, for example. Like these are incredibly intelligent, talented, qualified people. They're just not qualified in government, which is the big bugaboo for everybody in the media. But I think that's the beauty of it is because when you have an intractable situation, you need to bring innovative ideas to the table. That's what this whole Trump administration has really been about. And I'm really glad you brought up the political sort of genius of these Doge publications, because every day we're seeing these ridiculous expenditures, right? Dei programs in surgery in Serbia, or transgender surgeries in Guatemala. And to be fair, we're not saving the national debt by cutting, you know, a billion dollars to a billion dollars there, but it's incredible marketing to get the American people on the side of cutting waste, fraud and abuse, because you're making your opposition go out there and say, Oh, I saw Chuck Schumer. He said, Oh, what's next? They're going to come for the IRS and the post office. Like, no one likes those ever. No, really, no one like this is not a winning argument. Yes, plant your flag on the post office. Who couldn't figure out that we had moved locations for six months and we had to drive 20 minutes to get our mail every day. If you're gonna plant your flag with that institution, then you're going to lose a lot. And so it's genius, and these young people, especially, it's a beauty that they're involved with this. Because my generation, we're the people that have to live in this country with all the spending and all the programs for the next 60, hopefully more years. And it's our nest egg that's being stolen. It's our paychecks that are being taxed before we even see that money, and it's not even being funneled to things that, generally, on a human level, I might support, like, you know, disease prevention or things like that. It gets just the most absurd expenditures known to Manda, a transgender comic book in Peru. It's absolutely insulting. And again, I just, I look at my paychecks and I'm like, I can't believe it's going a gun to my head. Is taking that money and making me pay for things that are abhorrent to Me, morally and logistically.

Brian Nichols  18:43  
It's the meme. I forget the where it came from. Oh, good, the nine, nine maybe, but it's like the lady talking to the guy, and she's like, No, no, no, no. They're talking about back with Gaza, they found the condoms going to Gaza, and they're like, no, no. It wasn't the it wasn't condoms to Gaza near Israel. There's Gaza over in Africa. And the guy goes, you know that? You know that's worse, right? Like, you know why this is worse, right? There, that is, by the way, memes, like memes, have played an amazing role in helping reach the younger generations. Because traditionally, like more like, just hoity toity, deep, dense political jargon and bureaucratic jargon, like it just gets broken down into the common man language, and all of a sudden you take sometimes very complex and hard to understand things, and you break it down so it's super simple, and your average person can pick that up and understand but like, when your average person sees this and they're like, wait, I'm watching right now, as California is, you know, well, At the time, they're burning to the ground, South Carolina right now is our recording is burning to the ground. You go, you know, you see Maui. The Maui fires. You see the just, I mean, the destruction across the country, whatever it may be, natural disasters. Does Flint have drinking, drinkable water at this point? I don't know. Right? Like you see all these issues. Issues. And we're like, Why? Why can't we fix this? And then I see $300 billion going over to Ukraine, or I see, you know, $40 billion going to Israel. And I'm like, Well, that would have been nice to help the communities here in America who actually you know, are American citizens, our taxpayers, and they need help. And for a while there Ethan, there was this preconceived notion that really led the narrative. And it was like, you know, we have to, you know, we have to sacrifice as Americans to help everybody else. And then you look around and you see, oh, wait, no, Europe, they're living high in the hog because they don't have to do anything to pay for their defense. They're basically being subsidized by us so they can sit there and have I'm gonna, I'm gonna not work today. I'm not, I'm not gonna work at all this week. It's like what, I have to work double overtime to pay my bills. And then some dude in France is gonna be able to take a long weekend, just because he doesn't have to, actually, you know, build anything of value, because he's having his entire economy subsidized by the US government help. It makes sense. And this is where so many folks are starting to wake up. And let me ask you this Ethan, because again, you have much more of a pulse on the ground with the younger generation being one of them. Is this something that is, is is tangible for the long term, or is this one of those flash in the pan things? What do you think? I think it's

Speaker 1  21:21  
definitely tangible in the long term. Thanks to social media, we actually get to see a lot of the brutality, especially with these foreign conflicts. You talked about, we're funding the wars in Ukraine and also in the Middle East, and so with social media, we can see all the devastation going on in those conflicts. It's very much in our faces every day. And I'm with you there. People my age, we look around and we're like, I don't want to fund any wars ever. I want to secure our own border, you know, I want to, I want to use American troops to do things that help America. I don't want to be funneling money to the Israelis or the Ukrainians or anybody and and I love that. You brought up this point here about how we're subsidizing the Europeans, because we saw that with Zelensky in the Oval Office. This sort of entitlement. They feel like they have a claim to the fruits of American labor, and then they sneer at us when we try to say, hey guys, like you're being authoritarian censors. I think my generation in particular just looks around. And we're finally getting a peek under the kimono with this very transparent Doge administration. And they're looking and they're saying, none of this money is helping Americans. And thanks to social media, we're able to see the circumstances that Americans are in. Wow. We're also simultaneously seeing our dollars flowing to all over the world, you know, Asia, Africa, Europe, everywhere. And I think it is tenable. I think people are really, really upset. And as long as we don't see, you know, too much daylight between the doge team and the Cabinet members on Trump's end, as long as they all stay sort of on message, in lockstep, I think we're going to see this last and I really hope we can take this and use it as momentum to go attack some of the more serious issues driving our debt, like entitlement programs, need based, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, because that's truly how we're going to liberate our grandchildren from paying off this massive, massive debt that We've got ourselves into, okay,

Brian Nichols  23:01  
Ethan, here's a tough question for you. Not sure if you're prepared for this, but I'm gonna lay it. Lay it on you. Anyways, talk to me about the gender difference, though, in the younger generations, because I see this in the millennial generation, like my wife's friends. Actually, I'll tell you a fun story. I remember this one dinner party. It was my wife and two of her her co workers. And they, the two co workers, are very much politically on the left. And they're, you know, they're millennials, so they're right now. They're in their, like, mid 30s, ish, somewhere in there. And my wife, she's more or less, like, politically agnostic, like she genuinely is, like, I don't know what I believe, which is hilarious. Having me as a husband, you think she'd, she'd figure things out. I need to go talk to her. No, but like, I'm sitting there at the dinner party, and just the when they would start the conversation, right? Or they would start, like, on, on a topic. It was never a oh, let's have a conversation. It was oh, man, this guy is terrible. Like, Trump is the worst. Like, and it was always whatever the issue was, yo Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist, like you go through the laundry list right of whatever the headline news was the day, and they were just regurgitating the leftist talking points, right? And I see this by and large. It's a gender it's a gender difference, like I can go and have a debate or a conversation, or, you know, a heart to heart with one of my guy friends, one of my bros, or whoever it may be, and like, we can, we can have a disagreement, and that's okay, whereas it felt like more on the the female side of the spectrum that it's not okay To have a difference of perspective. So that's my obviously anecdotal evidence and perspective on my end. But let's bring it down generation. Is this continuing forward in the younger generations? And if so, is that something that we should be aware of? And if so, what can we do to help. I'm not trying to say, you know, fix it, because it's like, they're not trying to fix people. But like, how do we help change the narrative a little bit? Can we change the narrative with more of those younger female voters? You're right, Brian,

Speaker 1  25:11  
that is a little bit of a curveball, but I have thought about this. It's absolutely the same case among my generation, right? There's a very strong gender divide between young men are curving off to the right. Young women are sort of curving off to the left. And I think it's just because about what kind of message appeals to the different genders. Because we're wired differently. We think about things differently. We view the world differently, and young women, especially are very susceptible to emotional appeals. They're more moved by these images of of, you know, the kids in cages, and regardless of whether the kids in cages image was taken during Obama's tenure, which it was, they're more susceptible. They're more moved by that. They have a stronger knee jerk reaction to that. And so I don't that's not like a fault again about women. That's actually part of the beautiful parts about their their sort of maternal nature. That's that's what makes us different. It's a beautiful, nuanced thing. But we need to be aware of that, because we need to realize, how can we reach that other half of the population that is more susceptible to a different type of messaging? And so the way we need to phrase this is we need to move almost away from the facts. Don't care about your feelings line as much as I love that line. I think we need to frame it like no, no. Those of us sort of on the right side of the spectrum, we value compassion a lot more, but we're placing our compassion with the people within our country, within our neighborhoods that are ravaged by mass migration or mass trafficking of drugs or or the homeless veterans. We need to frame it from that emotional standpoint as well, because there's plenty of compassion and empathy to go around on the right side as well. We just haven't taken advantage of that, and we've spent all this time, quote, unquote, dunking on the limbs, which got the young men over and won us over. But now we need to shift messaging a little bit and say, Hey, we need to reach this other side of the demographic, and I think that's how we do it. Recognizing that difference as in all areas of life, understanding that men and women are different is a key thing, and very frankly, that's where the left lost the ball when they try to tell us that men and women are the exact same in every way, shape and form. So shape and form, that's just a lie. And we need to also recognize that that our messaging needs to shift as well. Even

Brian Nichols  27:09  
you're making an old sales guy proud, because on The Brian Nichols Show for at this point, well, I mean, we've really been focusing on how to sell your ideas, how to communicate messaging since like, 2019 and that was when we took a hard turn towards like, sell liberty, right? And one of the things I've taught many a time here in the show is that, and this is why I teach my sales teams, and I'm doing my coaching, my coaching gigs and such. We in the sales world. We make our buying decision based on emotion, right? We don't make it with facts, figures and logic. It doesn't. We don't make a decision based on Ben Shapiro saying, and, well, facts don't care about your feelings, right? It is entirely on emotion, and that what we do is, by the way, once we've made that buying decision with emotion, then we use the facts, the figures, the logic, the reason afterwards, to justify it, not only to ourselves, but to others around us. So it does speak to I'm so glad that you're talking about messaging, because at the end of the day, so many folks are just they are so intoxicated by the movements, by the policies, by the principles, by the ISM, whatever it is, you know, the libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, but they forget that it's Not what you care about, it's what your audience cares about, right? And in this case, you're very right that men and women Shocking, I know, have different messages that will resonate more effectively to them, right? And if we ignore that, we're only going to get more of the same. So to your point like, Yes, we did get the bros on board with with the campaign here back in 2024 and I would say a large part of that is due to not just the counter culture that we talked about here today, but also, I mean, look at the men who stood up and started speaking out in the younger generations. You have your pod, your podcast, bros, right? Which they use that term from the corporate media. They use that term, like, like, you know, like, you podcast bros, but the podcast bros, we're talking to, guess what, young men, and when all of a sudden you have Andrew Schultz standing up and saying, Yeah, you know what? I don't, I don't think I'm gonna vote for Biden. I actually think I'm gonna start voting for Trump or or Jake and Logan Paul or Theo Vaughn. Like, what these guys not only are talking to Trump, but now they're talking to Trump, and then, in turn, talking to their audiences, like, that's profoundly impactful. And we do need to figure out, like, this is a this is my big red flag for the right in general, is we do need to figure out how we're going to target the messaging towards women going forward, not just into the 2028 election Ethan, but more more recent than that, it's gonna be 2026 midterms, right? Because if we do not speak to that larger voting demographic and start to get some of them on board, all it takes is a few of those men stragglers are like, Oh, well, my. Girlfriend said that if I go for a Democrat, I'm not getting into this week. It's like, okay, bro, like, Well, you go have fun, I guess, like that right there, though, that's where we we're gonna have to focus. And let me ask a tough question, is the doge effort potentially gonna have some unintended consequences with that voting base. And here's the context of my question, Ethan, because a lot of these organizations have promoted themselves, these non profits that were getting the slush fund right the billions of dollars through USA Id like they were promoted as doing good, of helping people, you know, and that and that right there speaks to the emotional component that does, in fact, help drive a lot of women to make a decision. I mean, they're watching right now is Elon Musk is like, you know, he and those are cutting things left and right. Is that a threat? Is that something that we need to address? And if so, how do we address it? Well,

Speaker 1  30:57  
I think it's certainly a concern. And there are, you know, there have been some fiascos on the doge side. They've cut something they shouldn't have, or they've misunderstood something they're cutting. So we need to, you know, move with a little bit of caution 100% but yeah, it is totally these. A lot of these, you know, NGOs, they are charities right at a certain extent. And, and I think finding for women, especially who want to find that sort of compassionate outlet, is just promoting alternatives. Like people on the right are very charitable, as is, like we give of our own volition all the time, but we just do it in ways that that is how I want my money to be used. And so promoting that sort of alternative is key. And I also think that that showing women on a more broader scale, that actually what makes young men happy and fulfilled in the long run, which is families and children and things like that. That's actually also what makes women happy. I don't, I don't pretend to be an expert on what makes women happy, or else I'd probably be married right now, but I suspect that even I

Brian Nichols  31:52  
don't mean to interrupt, I'm married, and I'm not an expert on women either, so no issues there, my friend.

Speaker 1  31:56  
But I suspect that what makes young men happy, which is, you know, the idea of providing and creating a family that's fulfilling, I suspect that works in some sort of mechanism for women as well. And so showing that all these policies are making it harder for you to have that house with the white picket fence, two kids and a dog, showing that angle and how this, this this reality, this this picturesque image of what it means to be an American is, less attainable because of all this wasted spending going that route is, I think, how we can try to reach that demographic is just saying we're not taking away your compassion. We just want to direct it towards the people around you. In your close community, we've seen a lot of talk about the Ordo, and we're amorous, right? What JD talked about, you should first have concern for your family, and then your community, then your countrymen, and then beyond that, then we can worry about the rest of the world, and I think really hammering that, that start with what you can control, and then move on slowly out radiating circles. That's how we reach young men and young women alike and show them that no this, this will actually lead to a better life. And on a side note, we really do need to bring the inflation down. We need to get those numbers down. We need to start walking the walk. Start walking the walk a little bit on that. But I think if we do that, we'll be just fine. It's It's

Brian Nichols  33:07  
funny how like themes of the episode correlate together, and they're entirely unintended to do so I had an episode that I recorded on Saturday that I have not yet released, Ethan, that literally talks about the importance of controlling what you can control. And I, you know, I told the story about my old sales team, and I had my one SDR, David. And you know, he'd come into the room every, every week, and he'd be like, oh, you know this sales guy that might got my deal. He's not moving it forward. Like, oh, X, Y, he had, he found this

Speaker 2  33:37  
issue with it. I'm like, dude, David, Show Control, what

Brian Nichols  33:41  
you can control. All you can keep doing is booking as many appointments as you can, qualifying the heck out of them, and just keep being an animal dude, just like, keep finding it. And you know what? Now he's one of the company's top sales guys, right? So that speaks to exactly the point you're raising Ethan. And then how about this? I'll do my final thought, and I'll turn it over to you, bring us home. You mentioned something here, and it, it sparked, um, sparked a memory. Slash, a little frustration. Slash, I need to get it off my chest. I have been hearing since Doge started all my my small l and big L libertarian friends who they're, they're just, you know, they're upset with Elon, they're upset with Doge because of the process, and then you know, they're also upset because, well, where we're destroying these institutions that people rely on, Brian, and that is why, going back to what you said, and what I've been saying on this show since, literally, the day we started in 2018 there's going to come a day. And this is what I said back in the day. I said, there's going to come a to come a day where we're going to get to the point where we're going to have a seat at the table, right? We're going to have the chance to actually start doing some libertarian stuff, right? I didn't say stuff. I said the other word, we can do this stuff, right? But what we need to do between. Now and then is start building solutions outside of the government ecosystem, right? If you see, you know, we want to get rid of Medicaid, all right, let's start building alternatives in the private sector to a Medicaid like solution, right? Oh, you want to get rid of Social Security, awesome. Let's start building solutions outside that we can start to bring to the table when the time comes that we say, okay, we're turning the button off. We're pulling the lever like no more social security. Here's this, right? And that is why Ethan for let's see 2018, to 2025, it's almost 7007. Years. God, I'm getting old. Seven years of this show, I have been having entrepreneurs, I've been having business owners, I've been having leaders of nonprofits, all that and more on the show promoting the solutions that they're building outside of these government infrastructures, right? And to show folks that there is, in fact, alternatives out there that not only are checking the box in terms of solving the problem, but even better, they're outside of the purview of these government bureaucracy bureaucracies. So when we get to where we are in I don't know, 2025 where Donald Trump is back in the White House, and all of a sudden, Elon Musk is leading this organization called Doge, the Department of government efficiency, going through these bureaucracies and slashing things left and right, suddenly we're not going to have to sit there and say, Oh no. What do we do to fill that up? We can say, Oh, by the way, remember all those folks I had in my show. Here we go like, it's go time now. And that right there speaks to not just, why was that my microphone? Why we just, we need to continue doing that, building these solutions that are at the very least parallel to the Government Solutions, but be ready to start selling those solutions to a public who is absolutely afraid, right? Like if you are just your average everyday person, and you rely on this, this system, for good, or for worse, doesn't matter to me. All of a sudden that turns off right. You're gonna be concerned. You're gonna have red flags. You're gonna be looking to say who's causing this right, instead of the the call to action from the left, saying it's Elon Musk, get him like we can on the right say, Listen, Social Security is super inefficient. Anyways, you can triple your investment over here, right? It just, it's a different dialog, because you change your away from a fear based conversation to now a value conversation. So that is Ethan, at the end of the day, why this show has existed for, yes, seven years, apparently. But also to my friends in the, you know, the more conservative libertarian camp, who they're, they're freaking out over the processes. This is why we've been doing this on this show, because there was going to come a time when push comes to shove, when rubber meets the road. Throw in your favorite analogy here, like we have to start doing libertarian things. We have to start doing conservative things. If we think that we can just continue to go along, just to get along, it's going to be in for a bad time. And by the way, we've been in for a bad time. We're what, $36 trillion in debt, some stupid number that like to even conceptualize $36 trillion like it's it's not even in the context or purview of an average person, like, there maybe is, what, a billion and a half blades of grass in the field across the road I can see from here, right? Like, maybe, or more. I don't know. I'm not a botanist. I feel like that Supreme Court justice. I'm not a biologist. Woman is, I'm sorry, but like that number is so astronomically insane to comprehend, and yet we approach it and just poo poo. It Like It's nothing. And that right there speaks to again, why what you're doing, what Doge is doing, is so freaking important, but more importantly why the cultural change has been such a blessing, but also why we need to pay attention make sure we're not taking for granted this change and continuing to propel this change, not just to those who already have changed. Right? If we already got folks singing from the same sheet of music from us. Ethan, guess what? I don't need to try to convince them that this sheet of music is even better. We gotta start getting the folks who are over there singing a different song, and we gotta start showing the value of starting to look at things differently. So that's my final thoughts for today, than my mini rant. Let's be honest. Ethan, bring us home. What do you have for us? And of course, where can folks go ahead and reach out to you if they want to continue the conversation

Speaker 1  39:41  
today, absolutely. So you can find me on x at er Watson 13. And I have two sort of mini final thoughts, one of which goes off of what you were just saying about doing what you can, where you can do it. I think that is super important for you know, right leaning, or even libertarian people like us. Government is one mechanism, one lever of power, but there's all kinds of cultural institutions we can be. Uh, working within to change for the better, education, entertainment, the news, media, wherever you can affect change. Do it? Speak your message, speak your mind, and especially the people my age, especially if you're on a college campus like I was for four and a half years, it can feel super isolating to be of our persuasion. You feel like you're the only one. I'm here to tell you that you're absolutely not. I was just back in my alma mater. Over the weekend, I saw tons of people who would never say it in public, but they are totally on board with what I'm saying out here. So come out, be loud, be proud. Say what you think, because you really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So definitely be bold and do what you can where you can do it. That's my final thought.

Brian Nichols  40:37  
Good stuff, buddy. And yeah, by the way, the folks who are saying that stuff behind the scenes quietly to you, our goal is to get him to start saying it out loud, right? So that is part of the process here. Hold on, cough, I had a drink of water, and it's got a little stuck in the flipper. But anyways, Ethan, where can folks go ahead and follow you if they want continue

Speaker 1  40:54  
the conversation? Sure you can catch me on x at your Watson 13, you said that already. I just

Brian Nichols  40:57  
want to make sure I heard it. And hey, even better, because now the audience gets to hear it again. Ethan, this has been honest. This has been awesome. I truly enjoyed this conversation, and folks, I know you did as well. So please go ahead give Ethan a share or a follow, and then give today's episode a share. When you do, please go ahead tag Ethan and also tag yours truly. At B Nichols liberty, can find me on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram and for the podcast, you can find on your all your favorite podcasting platforms. We're on Spotify, we're on YouTube music, we're on Apple podcasts. Anywhere you get those podcasts, hit that subscribe button. And of course, The Brian Nichols Show is also a video show as well. So all the podcasts have video behind us. You want to see Ethan's smiling face, because let's be real, you're tired of seeing mine. Head over to your favorite video platform, which is, yes, YouTube, Rumble, I think we even have video on Spotify. Now, is that true? It is true. Okay, we have video on Spotify. And also you can find the video versions of the show over on x and over on Facebook. You can find us all at B Nichols, liberty, Eden has been a great conversation. And yes, I do believe that Doge youth is, in fact, a feature. It's not a bug. And I think that's going to be the reoccurring theme here as we move forward, not just into looking at what's happening at Doge, but also into election results for many years to come. So with that being said, Brian Nichols, signing off here on The Brian Nichols Show for Ethan Watson from young voices, we'll see you next time. Thank you, Brian.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai