The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey
The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey Podcast
The Crucible For Change
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The Crucible For Change

Preface

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If history is a guide, then, presidential greatness only occurs in the crucible of major crises. If Islamic terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb in New York or Washington, or if an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities generated a widespread war in the Middle East, then the conditions would exist for the display of presidential greatness.

--Joseph J. Ellis

This is a story of strength and muscle from both the perspective of an individual body’s anatomical structure, as well as how this functioning model of strength and muscle parallels the function and existence of a civilized society. You see if you didn’t already know my background comes from being a self-employed fitness professional serving as a strength and fitness coach now for over twenty years. 

During this span of two decades I’ve worked with and trained everyone from the novice to professional athletes such as football, baseball, and fighters competing in the combat sport of MMA. 

I only wanted to clarify this about my background upfront to give you some context as to why I’m able to offer this insight in regards to the function of your body’s muscular system and from there demonstrate how to make the connection of how your body’s function is similar to that of the function of society at large.  

In fact, the two are so similar that they basically mirror one another in both scope and result. 

So what exactly am I talking about? 

Well I’m going to come back to that, but first did you realize that quote that I led this episode off with was published in an article by CNN back in 2012, yet how chilling is it that we’re faced with a similar scenario it describes minus the nuclear bomb being detonated in New York or Washington. Thank God for that at least for now.  

However, that nuclear bomb is being pursued by the very terrorists he describes in the quote with Iran being right on the verge of cracking the code to achieve nuclear power status. The even crazier reality is that the current regime in the White House now (Biden) along with the one that occupied the White House back in 2012 (Obama) at the time this article was published helped to finance this very pursuit of the nuclear bomb by Iran. 

The war itself has already kicked off and the world is completely destabilized due to the apparent mass infection of evil Global Communists that have infiltrated the governments of every major super power throughout Western Civilization. 

This current disastrous dilemma would be the most shockingly horrible news imaginable to receive if you had suddenly awakened today from a cryogenic sleep from 1985 which was a time here in the U.S., and the world at large, where we lived in a completely opposite world than the one we find ourselves living in now. 

The only good news described in that quote is the potential for presidential greatness to occur in the crucible of a major crisis and thankfully we already have a great President in Donald J. Trump…as long as we don’t allow the election to be stolen come November. 

We are living in a Fourth Turning and the thing that many people are realizing more and more is that the election coming here in November is no longer a normal political election. No, this election coming in November is civilizational in terms of its significance. 

This is the environment both of us find ourselves in and this is the Crucible that will send the country on one path or the other with one path leading towards totalitarian destruction and the other towards a pro-American 1985 model on steroids. Of these two outcomes I personally prefer the latter. 

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Sherrington’s Law of Irradiation

When examining the human body it’s easy to understand that your body is designed for the function of coordination and movement. However, when examining the movement of the human body as a coach it’s my job to determine whether the body is moving in the way that it is intended to, or if it is compromised in some way which prevents it from functioning in the manner in which it is designed to do. 

Granted, our modern day culture and work environment has actually managed to diminish the lifestyles of most people which is why 90% or greater of average everyday people I work with are unable to move their body with optimal function when they begin a fitness program for the first time.  

There are many reasons for this, but the biggest culprit has more to do with the steady growth in the number of sitting jobs over the course of the last couple of decades. Yes, sitting with a slouched and broken posture combined with a lifestyle lacking in physical movement is the direct cause of most of the health issues that have been plaguing our society now for the last couple of decades. 

You see your body is built to do things and the ability for you to do things is commanded by that computer, otherwise known as your brain, that sits between your ears. 

In order for you to perform a movement as seemingly as simple as making a clenched fist, or gripping the handle of a kettlebell, the reality is that it isn’t as simple as it appears on the surface. 

The truth is that you first must recognize that you either need, or want, to perform the movement in the first place. Therefore, this entire process begins with a stimulus. 

From here the next step in the order of operations involves your brain sending the message, or current, through your nervous system in much the same way as an electrical current travels through the power lines up and down the streets for the purpose of powering the lights inside your house, or providing you with the ability to run your air conditioning.  

Therefore, for the purpose of this discussion we’re looking at how to achieve movement from a stimulus to an action such as clenching your fist, or gripping a kettlebell. 

Now I’m not going to get into the hard science of this entire process because it can get complicated and be a bit hard to follow, but I do want to inject a little anatomical physiology into the discussion here to give you some context. 

Let’s begin by performing a basic exercise as you’re reading or listening to this episode. Whatever you’re doing at the moment I want you to hold your hand out in front of you and simply clench your fist. 

You see, for you to perform this action the message that is transmitted from your brain down your spinal cord and to your hand in order to execute a clenched fist is carried by an excitatory neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine. 

This fascinating chemical substance of acetylcholine essentially excites the nerve cell and causes it to fire off the message to stimulate the muscles of your arm and hand to perform the coordinated action of clenching your fist. Understand that the physiological step by step explanation of this in full can be a bit cumbersome in detail, but this is essentially the ten cent version of that in regards to you being able to perform any given movement with your body.  

Now I want you to understand that’s the foundation of explaining the coordination that goes on underneath the surface in order for you to execute any coordinated movement with your body as it applies to the act of movement. 

I know you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, but please be patient as I’m going to tie this all together into a coherent message that will start to make a lot of sense here really soon. 

Now that you understand the foundation of this sophisticated, yet basic human function I now want to explain the concept of honing that function in order to build significant strength for a given movement. 

Now I want you to do one more exercise as you’re reading or listening to this episode. I want you to stand up and tighten your glutes as hard as you possibly can (by the way that would involve your butt muscles). 

Ok, now I want you to do the same thing, but this time I want you to clench both of your fists as hard as you possibly can as well. If you have to dig your fingernails into your palms in order to do so then so be it. 

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As you performed the second isometric contraction involving the clenching of your fists while also tightening your glutes you noticed that you got an increased isometric contraction in your glutes. In other words, your butt muscles got even tighter. 

What you just experienced in application is what is known as Sherrington’s Law. This essentially means that a muscle that is working hard recruits the neighboring muscles and if they are already involved in executing, or performing an action it enhances or increases their firing capability resulting in increased strength. Basically the neural impulses emitted by the contracting muscle reach other muscles and switches them on in the same way that an electric current starts a motor. (Source: Barbend)

Now the key takeaway from this is that the kinetic chain of your muscular system works together in order to execute a given movement, but to be strong in performing a given movement the chain must be dialed in and coordinated in producing maximum tension by pulling on the surrounding muscles of the primary muscle to execute whatever task is at hand. 

In other words, the success of executing a coordinated movement requires the smart application of tension to be carried out by your entire muscular system with intention and purpose in order to achieve success for the execution of the physical task no matter how challenging it may be. 

The Dead Chicken Strategy

I just recently shared a fascinating article as a cross-post on my Substack titled Why Everything is Becoming a Game. 

This article breaks down the concept of gamification and basically explains how the effort to turn life into a game is being used to convince people to participate in order to get society to behave in a certain way. It points out that this will inevitably lead society to giving away its sovereignty to a totalitarian system that society willingly will do by its own hand in the name of entertainment. It’s a fascinating piece and if you haven’t already given it a read I strongly recommend it. 

However, in the article the author references the history and belief system of Ted Kaczynski. In this piece he points out that when Kaczynski was in prison he wrote a little-known sequel to his primary manifesto that was titled “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How.” 

Within this manifesto Kaczynski outlines his belief that all technologically advanced civilizations are doomed to be trapped in fatal games before they are able to colonize space. The reason he gives for this follows the premise that industry, like all industry, is driven by competition and as such competition favors short-term wins over long-term sustainability. 

This happens because players who care about long-term sustainability will be significantly disadvantaged compared to players within the game who only care about winning. 

To illustrate his point Kaczynski describes an interesting thought experiment involving what I would refer to as the conquest ethic inside a model that he describes with the idea of a forested region that is occupied by several rival kingdoms. 

The idea of his model is that the kingdoms that clear the most land for agriculture can support a larger population which in turn would allow them to develop a larger military advantage based on the sheer numbers of people. Therefore, every kingdom must aim to clear as much forest land as possible, or face the consequence of being conquered by its rivals due to mankind’s desire for the conquest ethic.  

The resulting deforestation eventually leads to an ecological disaster resulting in the collapse of all the kingdoms. Therefore, what each kingdom is doing in order to expand and put them at an advantage in terms of their short-term survival inevitably leads in the long-term to the kingdom’s ultimate demise. Kaczynski called this a “self-propagating system,” because he viewed the model as a negative-sum game that would take on a life of its own that would ultimately end up defeating every player while the system itself would end up becoming the only winner. 

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Kaczynski believed such games drove industrialization while also replacing the sense of  purpose and meaning that industrialization destroyed within society. Because of this the drive of such industrialization makes it inextricable from technological advancement and in a society such as ours it is impossible to stop. 

In my view regarding our current political and technological society we can substitute the culling of individual rights and sovereignty with Kaczynski’s idea of deforestation as we engage in more technological advancement. 

We’re already seeing this occur with the Federal Reserve banks looking to implement CBDCs for more concrete digital control of the monetary system, with the government’s recent approval of the FISA which has been used to spy on U.S. citizens, and with facing the prospect of all of this being helped along with the coming era of artificial intelligence. 

It’s my observation that the removal of the individual (and individual liberty) from society in order for society to be a model that totalitarians and technocrats see fit is the race we’re in with other kingdoms (or countries by today’s standards) that have managed to do the same such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In a more rapid fashion in the past three years individuality has given way to a more technological totalitarian surveillance state and the United States is in a race to match the CCP in perpetuating this game as we both find ourselves in a race towards the bottom of the barrel of collapse. 

The question is in this rapid economic, financial, and societal decline of both the United States and China is who will hit bottom first? The culling of the individual and individual rights is the modern day version of Kaczynski’s rival kingdoms and their deforestation efforts. 

Now Kaczynski believed this couldn’t be stopped and when you look at how our government has been infiltrated with communists who are intent on perpetuating this game it leaves me to wonder sometimes. However, I do believe it can be stopped, but the question is how

After all, when you take a moment to scan over the battlefield it’s easy to see how the communists have literally captured every single major institution within our country consisting of the Administrative State Media (ASM), Hollywood, the Universities, and the federal government. 

However, despite having all of that, the communist left isn’t used to being surrounded by people who they may label as being on the right politically speaking. They’ve become so ossified in their belief structure that they literally ignore reality. This is the biggest cult that has ever existed in world history. 

So keeping all of that in mind how are they to be defeated? 

Well in some instances there will be some people to awaken from their side of the football, however instead of trying to conquer them perhaps we can figure out how we can cause them to lose their taste for conquest. 

Perhaps we can all take a lesson from the founder of the Article III Project Mike Davis. Mike Davis is the former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley. The A3P’s duty is to defend constitutionalist judges and the rule of law just like he did when he dragged Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh across the finish line for confirmation while Kavanaugh was directly under the fire from the communist left with false allegations from an accuser regarding sexual assault. (Source: The Federalist Society)

That alone was a wrongful and vicious attack from the left that they directed towards Kavanaugh, as well as, people like Kyle Rittenhouse, General Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, and Donald J.Trump. As we’ve seen over the last several years the communist left is relentless in trying to conquer every territory of power that exists both inside and outside the halls of the federal government even if it means breaking the law and weaponizing the justice system in order to do so.   

On that note you are probably still wondering: Brandon, how do we defeat them when they basically own every major institution at this point? 

Well, Mike Davis used a very effective strategy to defeat the communist left despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and financially outspent by his opposition during the Kavanaugh hearings. 

During that time Davis said that he perfected an absolute flamethrower of a counter-attack strategy that was effective despite being the underdog in the fight. 

This strategy is what Davis refers to as the Dead Chicken Strategy

Davis said that he developed this approach after having listened to another Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas share a personal story about having grown up on a farm here in my home state of Georgia. 

In this story Thomas spoke about when on the farm there were some instances when the dogs would end up killing some of their chickens. Well, being on the farm they didn’t want the dogs to be killing the chickens so when this happened they would take that dead chicken and hang it around the dog’s neck. As the chicken began to rot hanging on the dog’s neck that dog would lose its taste for chicken. (Source: Throughline)

As Mike Davis points out this is exactly what Republicans need to start doing with the left and Davis employed this very strategy during the Kavanaugh case. 

I’ve heard Davis talk about this and in his own words the idea with the Dead Chicken Strategy is to make the process of how the left chooses to pursue lawfare to destroy their political opposition the punishment. In other words, put them onto their back heel by punching back through forcing them to explain their positions, forcing them to deal with subpoenas, forcing them to deal with a media blitz, burying them in bureaucratic minutiae, etc. The idea is to make the process for them the punishment and be relentless in this until they ultimately lose their taste for the pursuit of lawfare and submit. 

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The Wrap Up

You see the thing that I believe you and I need to keep in mind is that we must continue to grow our understanding of the circumstances of our environment as they develop right in front of us. 

The battlefield is constantly changing and it’s the enemy’s war that wants to draw us into a fatal game where either the enemy, or the game itself only ends up winning as Kaczynski pointed out in his thought experiment regarding how human nature’s pursuit of the conquest ethic drives the concept of deforestation. 

However, the more that patriots across the globe continue to understand the environment, share their knowledge of it with other patriots, and coordinate with each other to be a mechanism of action we can force the enemy to play OUR game.  

You can be the mechanism of action in the same way the acetylcholine is to the act of producing movement with our bodies. The stimuli are our societal problems so it’s up to us to be the substance that produces movement towards solving those problems. 

The good news is that even in moments when we may be outnumbered we even have an effective fighting strategy that involves a dead chicken and it only took one Supreme Court Justice growing up on a farm here in my great state of Georgia along with a Chief Counsel with a warrior spirit in Mike Davis to bring it to our attention. 

The more you get engaged in this fight for freedom this Crucible of Change won’t only result in presidential greatness, but it will lead to civilizational greatness for a very long time. 

Just remember that YOU are the mechanism that gets the muscle to move in that gap between the stimulus and the action. 

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 The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey
The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey Podcast
A map for helping you and those around you to be a zenith during chaotic times.