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All right, everybody, welcome back to the channel.
We're going to do a video today.
You know, I've been busy.
I've been doing some work.
I've been doing some fishing.
I don't have any good fishing stories, unfortunately, for you, because it's been pretty slow.
It's been pretty slow, unfortunately, so hopefully that'll turn around.
But, you know, it's really hot, and sometimes the fish are a little finicky when it gets hot.
But in any case, I wanted to do a video because a couple of people have pointed out to
me that, and the way they presented it, of course, was like a gotcha.
I gotcha.
See, you're inconsistent.
You don't know what's going on, specifically regarding the abortion abolition thing and
voting for people that aren't going to abolish abortion and stuff like that.
I thought it was worth talking about because I'm not like a political
expert or anything like that.
In fact, I don't really care for politics all that much.
I do like Trump, you know, and he brings a lot of entertainment value to politics,
but I'm not the kind of guy that's going to watch a Trump speech or a Trump rally or debate.
I don't do that kind of stuff.
It's just not really part of what I do.
I don't really care.
But my opinions on politics and Christians engaging in
politics have actually changed, and we've talked about it on the channel a little bit here and there, but I
figured I'd do an entire video just kind of explaining my thought process on it, and maybe you'll find it
helpful.
I don't know.
Maybe you won't.
I mean, what do I know?
But, you know, when I first got on YouTube, and up until fairly recently, I mean, I don't really know
exactly when I changed, but it was, I don't know, probably within the last couple of years, maybe a year, I don't know.
But I really admired the Covenanters, right?
There's a lot of things about the Covenanters that I still do admire, but I remember one time
talking with my church about their position on voting, and the Covenanters, they don't vote.
Well, at least the ones in the time period that I was thinking about.
They don't vote because they think it's unfaithful to vote,
and they've got their reasons why the nation should be in covenant with God and all these things.
I'm not going to get into that too much, but that's really kind of what my perspective was.
It was more of like a purity thing, right?
And I sympathize very much with the abortion abolitionists who, you know, they'll fight
against things like heartbeat bills or things like that.
It's like that kind of perspective where it's like, look, if you're not going to treat the babies with equal
protection, then I'm not going to support what you're doing to try to save some babies.
It's just completely inconsistent, and you're going to be legally enshrining the murder of some babies
by doing this kind of a heartbeat bill.
I have a lot of sympathy for that argument, and actually I do believe fundamentally in that argument.
I think that's actually true in many ways.
But I've changed my view on politics, because politics is not an all -or -nothing kind
of thing.
It's not like the Super Bowl, right?
Like, politics is not like the Super Bowl.
One of the reasons people really like the Super Bowl is because it's just one game, right?
And you go for broke, and like you lay it all on the line, you leave it all on the field, you do whatever you
have to do, because there is no tomorrow.
There is no next game.
And so you've got to just do anything you can to win that game.
You play to win the game.
And so every trick that you have, everything that you that you,
any lever that you have, you pull that lever, you know, all that kind of stuff, because there is no next game.
There's no tomorrow.
And football is kind of like that all the time almost, because, you know, there's only, what is it, 16 games?
Or they think they added a few games.
I'm not really that big.
I mean, I follow the NFL, but not like that closely.
But there's not that many games.
So, like, every game is like the end of the world.
If you lose the first couple of games, there's no coming back from that.
Like, it's like, that's the end of it.
I mean, I'm speaking just colloquially.
Of course you can come back.
I'm just saying, like, there's so few games played that every game is a massive deal.
And so you got to do everything you can to win that particular game.
And that's kind of how, you know, some people view politics, where it's like, well, this is the most important election of our lifetime.
It's the end all be all.
If we lose it, then it all, all hell breaks loose and stuff like that.
And so it's got to be pure.
It's got to be absolutely pure.
It's got to be all or nothing.
It's all or nothing.
And I don't view politics like that anymore.
I don't view politics like that anymore.
I think that politics, just by its very nature, is about compromise.
It really is.
And so you've got to determine kind of what your goals are.
You have to have a goal in mind.
And then you have to take a look at, you know, the steps that it would take to get there and the conditions that need
to exist in order to get there.
Because for me, you know, my goal and what I would prefer, and I think what the ideal goal
is for our country, is that we would have a country that would, in its founding documents,
acknowledge Christ as Lord.
I think that would be good.
It would be good for us to be, as a group, as a nation, intentionally saying, look,
we are a Christian nation.
We're doing Christian things.
And we're going to acknowledge the Christian God.
We're going to acknowledge Christ in everything that we do.
And so it's like in that movie, Office Space, where he's having that boring meeting.
And he's like, you got to think with every decision, is this good for the company?
You know what I mean?
We should be doing that as a nation.
Every decision that we make, it would be good.
This is the goal.
Is this helping us to honor Christ as Lord?
That's the ideal situation.
But that is not the situation that we find ourselves in.
And so I think that having a very honest appraisal of your current situation,
in light of your goals, I think really helps you kind of figure out politics a little bit more.
Because politics, especially in our situation where we've got so many divergent
interests, and everyone is looking to have some kind of influence, we got to figure out,
OK, what would be the situations that I could accomplish today?
What are the steps today that I can do that will lead to my eventual goal?
And here's the thing.
You've got to separate this, I think, from the actual politicians themselves
sometimes.
I can say without any hesitation that
Trump's kind of squishyness on abortion and stuff like that, and the
Republican Party, they've softened some of the language around abortion, they've got different goals than they
used to after this new thing came out, whatever.
I can objectively say that that's not good.
That's not good, and it's not good for them.
As a leader, they're not honoring Christ, and that is not good for them as leaders.
And if I was magically made emperor of the United States, I have to do things
according to what God wants me to do.
I can't justify
compromises in my role.
I can't get away with saying, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, God, but the people wouldn't really like it that much
if I abolished abortion or reversed women's
suffrage.
They wouldn't really like it that much, so I can't do it.
God, you see, I can't really do it.
I wouldn't get away with that.
My action in politics is not that of a leader.
It's not that of the president or the king or whatever it is.
My actions are different.
They're of a different kind.
They're related, of course, but they're different.
And so you can support President Trump knowing that
he's going to accomplish, or thinking at least, that he's going to accomplish conditions that are better
for your eventual goals than the other guy, or in this case, Carmela
Harris.
You can do that knowing that, yeah, he's going to do a mix of good things and bad things, but
overall, this is going to be helpful for my eventual goals down the line, essentially.
It would be better if he was just an emperor and he could do everything right that I want him to do.
That's not available.
That's not an option available to me.
Here's how I think about politics.
It's a lot less like the Super Bowl, and it's more like the regular season in baseball.
Some people really don't like this about baseball, but I do like this about baseball.
There's 162 games.
There's a game every day, essentially.
If you lay a stinker out there one day, there's a game tomorrow, too.
You instantly have to get it out of your head and move forward.
There's always a game.
And because there's always a game, you manage the games differently.
In the NFL, you basically try to win every game.
You have to go for broke all the time.
In baseball, it's not like that.
There are situations in baseball where you've got a starter who
gives up five runs in the first inning.
If you were just trying to win that game—and this happens in the playoffs in baseball, too, where it's more important that you win every
game—you pull that starter.
He obviously doesn't have it.
He's having a bad start.
He's giving up five runs in the first inning.
Maybe you watched him play the second inning.
He already got a few hard -hit balls.
You pull him right away if you need to win that game.
But in baseball, in the regular season, you might leave him in there, knowing that this is going
to make winning this game a lot harder.
It's going to make it a lot harder.
But because there's a game tomorrow, I have to manage my bullpen, my relief
pitchers.
I don't want to use all my relief pitchers because I don't want to get them too tired for tomorrow.
Tomorrow's game might be much closer.
The starter tomorrow is probably not going to lay an egg.
We're going to need some guys in the sixth, seventh, eighth inning to pitch.
I don't want them to be all tired from pitching four innings the day before.
You've got to think about the future.
You've got to think about the next game.
You've got to create the conditions.
Sometimes you have to accept less -than -ideal outcomes for today in order to
manage the next game.
You've got to manage the whole entire 162 -game season.
There's going to be situations where Carlos Rodon laid another stinker.
He's five runs in the first two innings.
I have to leave him out there.
I have to.
You talk to the pitcher about it.
I'm going to leave you out here.
I know it's tough, but you've to give me five innings or whatever it is.
I need you to get to five innings.
We can't use our bullpen.
They're tired.
You've got to think about setting yourself up for success for the rest of the series or the rest of
the week or whatever it is.
The Mets are a perfect example of this.
We have a lot of decent starters.
They don't give up a ton of runs necessarily, but they always throw a lot of pitches and they walk a lot of batters.
The problem is that they're out of the fourth or fifth inning because they've thrown too many pitches.
We're always in that bullpen, and that bullpen is always gassed all the time.
What ends up happening is we give up a lot of runs late and we lose a lot of games because our bullpen is just
gassed all the time.
Carlos Mendoza, the manager of the Mets, he's got to figure out how to work that out so that it's not like that all the time.
Politics is more like baseball in that way.
You've got to think about setting yourself up for success in the long run.
It can't just be about the big game.
It can't just be about the big election.
It can't be like in the Super Bowl, where it's just one game and you leave it all in the field.
If you don't win, that's it.
Politics is never like that.
But I think sometimes we treat it like that, where it's like, if we don't get everything, that's a loss and that's it.
That's it.
I mean, we just lost.
We can't support that.
And sometimes you've got to accept less than ideal choices.
And that's the thing.
I'm pretty sure it was Andrew Isker who said, politics is always
just the choosing between options.
There's a handful of options.
Usually in our country, it's just two.
There's two options.
And you've got to consider, OK, what are my goals?
What are my options, my realistic options?
And then how do I set myself up to get those goals?
Given my options right now, given the cards that I've been dealt, how do I play this
to my advantage in the future?
And it can be hard to see that, too, because as a lot of people have noticed, at least when it comes to the
issue of abortion, for example, the differences between the parties, they're there, but they're not as
big as they used to be.
They're still pretty big, in my opinion, but they're not as big as they used to be.
And so it can be difficult to think through that.
But that's the game.
That's what you've got to do.
You've got to think like a baseball manager.
How do I set my team up for success in the future?
And here's the truth about the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is a wide tent.
It's a wider tent than a lot of us would like.
And guess what?
Christians are a smaller part of that party than we would have liked.
That's a fact.
We have a seat at the table.
We've got a significant seat at the table, but we're not running the show.
We are not running the show.
That ship has sailed.
We've given that up a long time ago.
I've seen a lot of guys that I wasn't expecting acknowledge that fact.
We gave that up.
That's our bad.
But we have a seat at the table, and it's a significant seat.
And so we need to consider it that way.
We need to consider what we've been dealt.
Okay, we've done this.
We've put ourselves in this situation.
This is the hand we've been dealt.
We still got to eventually win, and we've got this hand.
So what do we do?
What do we do?
And so when it comes to abortion, to me, I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence, especially my abolitionist
friends, because I totally understand where you're coming from.
And I'm not trying to get you to vote.
I don't care if you vote or not.
I'd be very hypocritical if I was like, oh, you have to vote.
You have to do your Christian duty, because I know what that's like.
I've been on the other side of that.
I don't think it's like you're Christian.
You must vote to be faithful.
I'm not saying that.
But what I am saying is that the difference between Trump and
Carmela, it's not as stark as it used to be, but it's still pretty darn stark.
Because one side is like, yeah, we got to leave it to the states, and I'll
talk against some of the more draconian abortion things.
Not good.
Not good for him.
He's got to answer to God for that.
I'm not saying that's good.
But that's what one guy is saying.
And then the other guy is saying, oh, yeah, we've got to bring back Roe v.
Wade, and we've got to make abortion a constitutional right.
We have to do it.
And they will do that kind of stuff.
That's the kind of stuff that they are effective at doing.
They'll do that.
They'll make it a constitutional right.
That's what they're trying to do.
Maybe they won't be able to, but I think they probably will.
And at the very least, they're going to ignore all of the precedent.
That's what they do.
There's going to be more abortions, and they're going to be more legal and more celebrated and more proud and all that kind of stuff.
Now, here's the thing.
So you've got those two options.
That's a pretty stark difference, even given the fact that it's not as stark as it used to be.
And so you've got to think to yourself, we want to abolish abortion.
I want to abolish abortion.
Yeah.
I think it should be criminalized.
I think that women who get abortions, the abortion doctor should be
charged.
I think the women should be charged.
I think the men who take their women there should be charged.
I think all of that should happen.
It should be just like in those fear commercials where the police comes and the girl's all scared
and they holler away.
That's what I think should happen.
I think that should happen.
But you got to think to yourself, like a baseball manager.
Okay.
So today's game is, we're not really going to win today's game.
Like it's the seventh inning.
We're down 11 to one.
But I want to save some of my pitchers for tomorrow because I've got a game tomorrow.
In politics, there's always a game tomorrow.
So what I'm going to do, I'm going to, I might not win this game, but I'm going to put in my second baseman to pitch a
few innings.
They do this.
Baseball managers do this.
They'll put in a position player to pitch a few innings because they're trying to save their bullpen.
It's not something you would do under any circumstances.
If you had to win today, if you had to win today, you'd pitch all your starters until their
arms fell off in order to win today.
But in baseball, there's always a game tomorrow.
And in politics, there's always a game tomorrow.
So you want to set yourself up.
And so maybe Trump, in your view, this is not my view.
I'm just saying, maybe in your view, it would be like putting in the second baseman to pitch a few innings, which,
by the way, what I always find amazing is when they bring in a position player, a lot of times these guys are getting outs.
What are these pitchers doing if the second baseman can come in on a moment's notice, no practice, and get some major leaguers out?
I don't get it.
Maybe Mark Dewey can help me with that one.
How's that happen?
I think the hitters are trying to just hit home runs on every pitch so they get outs.
But anyway, you've got to think to yourself, okay, so maybe Trump's not ideal.
I agree.
Trump is not ideal.
I think he's ideal for many things, but he's not ideal for abortion necessarily.
But is it going to be easier for me to accomplish my goals if we've got the guy and
we decide as a nation, we get the guy who put in the judges, who got rid of Roe v. Wade?
I know you guys don't think that matters.
I don't care.
I don't care about that.
I'm not arguing that.
But it is a symbolic move.
You have to agree with that.
Symbolically, that was a W.
Would it be good as a nation to say, yes, that's right.
He put those judges in and we want him back.
We want him back.
Would that be easier for you to accomplish your goals or would it be easier to accomplish your goals if the next
guy, or in this case, Carmela, leads the charge to
make Roe v. Wade the law of the land or to make an amendment or to make it federally
protected to kill your kids?
Would that be easier or would the other one be easier?
Does that move the ball forward or does the other one move the ball forward?
I think, honestly, I think the answer is very simple.
Now, I know a lot of you guys say, well, I would be compromising myself if I vote.
Fine.
I'm not telling you to vote.
But I think when it comes to politics, that's kind of how I see it now.
I don't see it like the Super Bowl anymore.
I don't see it like I've got to have
complete...
I have to have purity in my own heart before the Lord.
I get that.
And so you guys, too, you do what you got to do, right?
But I don't see politics as an arena, really, for purity.
I don't.
I don't think it's possible given the nature of our current situation.
And so the nature of our current situation kind of requires us to
build for the future, to think like that baseball manager.
The nature of our current situation is that we're losing one to 12.
We've got one run.
They've got 12 runs.
We're losing.
That's the nature of our current situation.
So we've got to figure out, OK, well, we're probably not going to win this game.
And the good news is we don't have to win this game.
This isn't the Super Bowl.
What we do have to do is be faithful with what we've been given.
That's what we do have to do.
And so when we've been given, you know, one talent, we have to use that
one talent to turn some kind of a profit.
We've got to do business with that one talent.
And that doesn't mean that we failed if we only got the one talent and we didn't make 20 talents.
That's not what it is.
What we can't do is bury it in a little bushel and maybe get a little bit of interest here and there
and then hand that to God and say, God, here you go.
I knew you were severe.
I didn't want to do anything wrong.
I wanted to be pure.
I wanted to make sure that you were whole.
How could I risk the talent you've given me?
I wanted to make sure at least you were whole.
Here you go.
What you have is yours.
There you go.
In the parable, God does not look too kindly on that kind of attitude.
In fact, very harsh against that kind of attitude.
We've got to think like baseball managers.
That's the thing.
And so I'm not, again, I'm not telling you you need to vote.
I'm not going to say that.
I've never said that about anybody, anything.
I'm never going to say that.
That's just not going to be me.
Oh, I can't say never.
Who knows?
Maybe I'll change some more because I have, I have changed my opinion here.
I used to look at it more like I've got to have total purity.
I can't risk anything to move the ball forward.
I can't.
That's how I used to look at it.
I'm not saying that's how you look at it.
I'm saying that's how I used to look at it.
So please don't get crazy on me.
I still support you.
I'm still an abolitionist.
I'm not in your club.
I know that I'm not in your club.
I know I'm not an official abolitionist, but I still believe in abortion abolition.
And if I was king for the day, I would abolish abortion.
If I was king for the day, but, but, and I don't want to be king for the day, by the way, just, just so
you know, but, but I look at the, I look at, I look at politics now, in my opinion,
as I need to win, but I also need to engage with the situation that we've been given.
I need to engage in reality as much as possible.
And the reality is as much as I hate this, Christians don't have the cache or the influence
that they used to have.
We still have got to be faithful with the influence we do have because it still is significant and we can move the ball
forward.
We've just got to move the ball forward and it's going to be, we're going to have to eat a little humble pie
with some of it.
It's as simple as that.
We're going to have to eat a little humble pie and the Democrats, you know, platform is still
top to bottom evil all the way down at every point.
That's still the case.
And even when I used to say, you know, you can't, you know, Democrats should be church discipline.
I still believe that of course, well, my case was never just because of abortion.
It was because it's top to top to bottom evil.
It's not like, well, you know, I'm going to vote Democrat.
Like I don't really like the abortion thing, but all the other stuff is totally good and holy.
It's not like that.
It's completely upside down morality.
It's, it's, it's evil from top to bottom.
Republicans, you know, platform is not as good as it used to be, but it's pretty
much the same as it used to be.
I mean, let's just face it.
I mean, Republicans haven't been great on abortion either, but it's not officially, it's not as good as it used to be,
but it still has good.
And there's still plenty of things that you can throw your support behind a hundred percent.
And not only that, but they're not against Christians.
They're not run by Christians and they're not, you know, tiptoeing around Christians anymore.
And that's not a good thing.
It's that's, that's not a good thing.
They're not doing that anymore, but they're, they're not against us.
And they actually are, they do want us to participate.
They want us to be part of it.
They're not against Christians.
They're not against Christianity.
They're not, they don't have a completely upside down morality.
I'm not looking to them for advice on morality.
I know that they don't have it for me.
I get it.
I don't, I don't, I don't worship, uh, you know, the Republican party, obviously I don't worship Trump.
You know, I mean, this is the thing, like it's still possible to look at Trump and say, Hey, bad move on the
abortion thing.
Not a great, not a great move, JD Vance, but still throw your support behind their candidacy.
It's not that you're endorsing every position that they have, but it's kind of knowing your, your place, you
know, knowing your role in this and knowing that we have a game tomorrow too.
It's not the Superbowl.
We've got a game tomorrow too.
And I've got to move the ball forward.
We've got to win.
We will win at some point.
We need to manage the resources we've been given just like Carlos Mendoza, just like Aaron Boone.
Although, you know, he's not that great.
We've got to manage the resources that we have to have a successful, you know, entire campaign,
a successful 162.
There's a game tomorrow, guys.
There's a game tomorrow.
There's a game beyond this next election cycle.
And we need to think about that game.
That's my, that's my take on politics.
It has changed.
It's completely changed.
And I think that I was viewing politics.
If I had to put it in a nutshell, I was viewing politics kind of the way I view theology where,
you know, you, you know, there's, there's a clean, you know, correct and
precise answer for you.
And, you know, you, you need to have pure thoughts about God.
You need to understand God and you, you, you desire to not be wrong about anything.
You know, you think you're right about the things about God, but there's, there's an exactness to it.
There's a precision to it.
Politics is not like that.
It isn't.
And it doesn't mean that we have to leave it in the muck and the mire for forever.
No, we want it to be more pure than it is, but politics is a messy game.
And you got to deal in reality.
We're dealing with people.
It's just, it's a, anyway, I think I've made my point.
So I don't view politics the same way I view theology.
That doesn't mean they're disconnected.
So before anyone gets crazy, I'm not saying that they're disconnected and that theology can't inform or doesn't inform
politics.
I'm not saying that, but they're different.
And I think we need to acknowledge that they're different.
In any case, yeah, I'm still voting for Trump.
That's right.
I'm voting for Trump.
I don't really know a whole lot about J .D. Vance.
I do know that he wrote that book, never read it.
But I, I, my main data point on J .D. Vance is that he's kind of angered all the right people.
And in my book, that counts for something.
So my contrarian indicators are saying that J .D. Vance was a great pick and they're going to be
going up against Carmela and who knows who else.
I mean, a lot of people think maybe Booty Gig would be, would be really funny.
I think Booty Gig would be funny.
That would be a good one.
But in any case, that's my video.
Hope you found it helpful.
God bless.