Listen

Description

The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”

― Carl Sagan

I don’t know about you, but I personally view life as a war, particularly during this current period of time that we’re living through right now.

If you really slow down to think about it this is not a cynical viewpoint at all, but rather a simple observation of reality. After all, no matter where you are on the economic spectrum when you wake up in the morning to start your day the chances are pretty solid that you’re going to have to go on the attack in your life in order to get something done.

Whether you’re self-employed and having to figure out how to make payroll for the month, or if you’re a construction worker aiming to complete a project on time and within budget, you’ve got battles to fight in order to make it happen.

This is not cynical. This is not trivial. This is reality.

So why am I beginning today’s discussion by framing the vantage point of life in this particular manner?

Well the reason I’m choosing to tackle this particular topic today is because even when life is operating in a manner that you might consider to be smooth it’s still challenging enough as it is.

In other words, there are always bills to pay, there are always medical emergencies, there is always loss of life, there are always accidents, and there are always shortfalls. In short, there is always a battle looming out over the horizon.

It’s because of those unseen battles that are looming around out there in this experience that we refer to as life as to the reason that I view this experience as warfare.

Once again, this is not cynical, but realistically it is more of a way to navigate this adventure that we recognize as the human condition.

Now having said that, I don’t want you to think that I view life as this gloom and doom experience. I don’t want you to interpret this as me walking around with this overwhelming sense of dread and misery because I’m just sitting here waiting to fight whatever battle presents itself to me in this unique life experience that I’m referring to as warfare.

If that is the image that popped up inside your head regarding my perspective of this then you would be incorrect. However, to be fair to you this is exactly why I am choosing to broach this subject in today’s episode.

Now for further clarity, I don’t want anyone hearing this to think that I’m trying to cheapen the meaning or experiences of brave men and women that have actually served in the military while having to endure the horrifically violent outcomes of kinetic warfare. Of course, this is not my intent, but it is my intent to point out that life is still a form of warfare, even though the active soldier’s experience of it may be the most physically and psychologically extreme version compared to many other professions.

The goal of this discussion is to point out that my perspective of viewing life in this particular manner has more to do with my own attempt to rewire my brain for the purpose of living a more disciplined life to the best of my ability.

In short, by comparing life to a form of warfare it changes the way I approach it. In this regard, I’m now looking at life through a different type of lens which has forced me to adapt to my life experience in a way that I believe better prepares me for its unseen outcomes.

You see, I figured out long ago that how you look at a scenario often determines how you will react to that scenario when the moment arrives.

In order to enlighten you on this perspective I’ll use a pop culture reference with the iconic movie Die Hard in order to help illustrate my point and drive it home. There’s a key lesson that I want to point out with this in order to highlight the significance of achieving psychological advantage.

Now, I realize that we’ve just gotten past another Christmas season and are full steam ahead into the new year. However, during this past Christmas season I’m sure you might have had some family members that made a request to watch a Christmas movie.

When this happened you may have heard some friends or family recommend the very popular action movie Die Hard.

Now I’m not here to debate on whether or not you view the movie Die Hard as a legitimate Christmas movie, but if you’ve seen the movie then you understand that it’s quite a thrill ride from the start to the finish.

The point I want to make here with the movie Die Hard is substantial so please be patient with me as I work to point out an interesting lesson to you that I got from this movie.

In the movie our main character John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) thought he was walking into the Nakatomi Plaza to simply visit his estranged wife during a Christmas Eve party.

However, the evening quickly experiences a seismic mood shift when our New York City police detective, John McClane, becomes entangled in a terrorist takeover on his Christmas Eve outing.

As McClane arrives at the Christmas party and is forced to do his best to settle in and try to use the event in order to reconcile with his ex-wife, he ends up walking away to wash up after a long trip.

In his absence a German ex-radical named Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman) ends up seizing the tower and taking everyone hostage except McClane.

Now I’m not going to go on with a deep dive into the plot of this story, but after McClane recognizes the type of situation he’s in he quickly understands that he’s outnumbered and outgunned, but despite this he also realizes that the terrorists aren’t aware of him and who he is at the moment that they seize the Nakatomi Plaza.

Because of this McClane recognizes that he has a tactical advantage over his enemy and in this dangerous Christmas Eve scenario that element of stealth is about as much of a gift as one could possibly ask for. However, in McClane’s case he’s able to leverage this element of surprise for an even bigger gift in the movie that turns the tables on Hans Gruber and his unjolly band of terrorists.

You see, eventually the terrorists are alerted to McClane’s presence and one of the terrorists named Tony is sent to go after McClane, but after a fight on the stairway McClane ends up killing Tony by breaking his neck.

Now it’s the next scene that I wanted to point out to you here as to the lesson that I took from this movie long ago. Even though it’s sort of a bit of dark humor, it does drive home an important message in regards to the strong psychological trigger that the scene is conveying from our protagonist, McClane, to the antagonist, Gruber, in the film.

After McClane kills Tony, he then places his body in a chair and puts a Santa hat on his head. He writes a message on Tony’s sweatshirt in red ink and sends Tony down the elevator to Gruber’s floor.

On the lower floor as Gruber is continuing to threaten the hostages all the sudden the elevator dings and opens up displaying Tony’s dead body wearing a Santa hat and a personalized message for Gruber on his sweatshirt.

As you can imagine Gruber and his unjolly band of terrorists are shocked to see Tony’s body, but what disturbs them even more is the message that’s written on Tony’s light gray sweatshirt that reads, “Now I have a machine gun. Ho, Ho, Ho.”

So why am I going to the trouble of pointing this out to you?

The reason that this is significant is that John McClane just gave every single one of us one of the greatest lessons in psychological warfare.

You see, up until this point in the movie McClane and the hostages were the ones that had been hunted and preyed upon. However, when McClane delivered the dead body of one of their own with a personalized Christmas message, this was a seismic shift and major turning point in terms of the circumstances in the movie. The hunted had become the hunter.

In short, John McClane managed to turn the tables on the terrorists by shifting from a defensive posture to taking on an offensive posture against the bad guys.

The Cult of Personality

In shifting gears for the moment, I’ve written and talked about how there seems to be an obvious psychological characteristic that dominates among the most radical leftist that I’ve encountered or witnessed throughout life. This characteristic that I’m referring to has to do with the lack of self-awareness.

So what is self-awareness?

Self-awareness essentially involves the conscious knowledge of one’s own feelings, character, and personality. When one possesses self-awareness they are aware of how their behavior impacts the people in their lives and the environment that surrounds them.

Conversely, the complete opposite of someone who lacks self-awareness is someone who possesses strategic awareness. A person with strategic awareness has a deep understanding of their internal strengths and weaknesses while also possessing a solid grasp on the external environment and their role within it.

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

–1 Timothy 4:16

People who have strategic awareness are able to identify market trends, opportunities, competitors, anticipate threats, and to make informed long-term decisions for success. In short, people with strategic awareness are 360 individuals who possess a Zenith mindsetand move forward in life as they intelligently navigate the situations they are in until they are able to achieve victory, or at the very least, a fair and livable outcome. In short, these people who possess strategic awareness are antifragile.

It is said in psychology that there is a strong link between self-awareness and empathy as those people who lack self-awareness often struggle with empathy due to the fact that they lack the mental mapping ability of their own emotions, which is necessary in order to navigate the feelings of other people.

As a result of lacking this mental mapping ability, it often leads these people who lack self-awareness to taking actions that negatively impact others while they also demonstrate that they have no concern of how their actions impact those around them. In fact, even when their actions prove to be harmful to others they often believe that they are still justified in those actions. As a prime example of this take a look at the recent actions of Don Lemon and the leftist protesters in Minneapolis that stormed the church and harassed the families and congregation during their worship service.

This was a classic example of radical Marxists who have a complete lack of self-awareness. In fact, they even demonstrated that they felt completely justified in carrying out a set of actions that were obviously wrong, and even criminal in this particular case.

This lack of self-awareness is a very dangerous trait and such a trait can be so dangerous that it can literally lead a nation down a path of destruction, especially when people of power suffer from this issue and use their power and influence to amplify their own cult of personality.

In a recent interview that I saw with Steve Bannon and author Chris Rufo this topic was explained very well by Rufo involving his analysis of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. One great example of this according to Rufo was with Fink’s involvement with his push and development of ESG and DEI initiatives throughout the corporate world.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you probably remember the infamous Bud Light moment when the beer company made the Trans-activist the face of their brand. You probably also remember the ESG initiative involving that whole message of toxic masculinity with Gillette, and how the men’s razor company completely forgot about who their customers were when they approved that absurdly stupid ad campaign. You also saw another more recent example of this with Cracker Barrel’s abysmal ESG ad campaign when they attempted to remove Uncle Herschel from their classic logo.

So, why is pointing all of this out to you significant, and what do all of these absurdly woke ad campaigns have in common?

Well the reason it’s significant is because the one guy that was the driving force behind all of those failed ESG and DEI campaigns was Larry Fink.

As I previously stated, Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock and he is literally the world’s largest asset manager. He’s a globalist and currently sits as the Co-Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Fink is one of the architects for developing a system that the globalists love to employ known as stakeholder capitalism. This is an economic system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all of their shareholders rather than focusing on bottom line profits.

Larry Fink has used his position leading over $10 trillion in assets to pressure and coerce companies to adopt Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) along with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This is what is known as stakeholder capitalism which has often been referred to as woke capitalism.

Now obviously these ad campaigns resulted in those companies experiencing massive blowback and financial loss due to the actions of the informed public. The part of society that made the difference in confronting the fascistic behavior of this woke capitalism understood that such behavior had nothing to do with a company running itself as it saw fit, it had nothing to do with individual liberty, and it certainly had nothing to do with free markets.

What it really involved was Larry Fink leveraging the use of his position of power and authority to wage a coercive and fascistic form of stakeholder capitalism against corporate America in order to drive the appearance of social justice. Even more disturbing, is that it was done primarily to satisfy his own personal pursuit of status incentives. This is basically what Chris Rufo pointed out to Steve Bannon.

So why is this important to know and understand?

As Rufo explained, when it comes to people like Larry Fink, personal convictions may either be nonexistent or malleable at best; therefore, when it comes to utilizing pressure and public opinion to stop certain behaviors—such as ESG and DEI initiatives—the thing to do is to talk about how those things impact their status.

Once again, with a cult of personality like Fink’s, the way to move the meter is to drive the culture towards how those things are not beneficial for personal image, rather than trying to appeal to his personal convictions—as those may not exist or may remain in a constant state of flux due to the type of person that he is and what drives his central motivation.

Since a significant portion of the informed public realized this back when Fink was really pushing the ESG and DEI initiatives, those who were informed exposed and made enough noise to pressure Fink to back away from these initiatives as they no longer served as status incentives that he felt bolstered his image.

As a result of this, Fink went quiet for a bit; however, he recently popped up again in Davos at the WEF, posing as a sort of reasonable and more moderate figure as he searches for the next shiny object.

The Wrap Up

The reality is that in this current age we are living in a time where the cold war portion of WWIII is now fully engaged in unrestricted warfare. This involves economic, cultural, information, legal, and cyber activities. These strategies are being utilized by foreign and domestic enemies to create multiple systems of degradation in order to weaken our country from within.

With big money players that sit in powerful positions of influence, this is essentially the new battlefield and all citizens of the United States are enemy combatants. This is exactly why it’s more important than ever to possess a Zenith mindset in order to combat these mega-dollars and the nefarious people who weaponize those dollars against American citizens.

This may seem overwhelming when you think about someone like Larry Fink and that mountain of $10 trillion in assets, but as a reminder John McClane was also outnumbered and outgunned, but he demonstrated what it meant to be a Die Hard by winning the battle of psychological warfare against his enemy.

Of course, I’m certainly not talking about taking violent measures as John McClane did in order to achieve this outcome. However, I am talking about the significance of knowing the enemy and recognizing how to gain a psychological edge on that enemy—such as tainting the status incentives that drive their motivations.

The goal here is for us to elevate society’s intellectual temerity to a point that more people recognize the power of their individual ability. This is critical so that both you and I can exert our personal agency in a way to effectively impact the world around us so that we can produce an environment free from tyranny.

The more we grow and expand society’s intellectual fortitude, the more we all become an army of John McClane’s to crush every leg of unrestricted warfare, and to turn that pressure back on the opposition.

In most cases, the thing that you and I have going for us that guys like Fink typically do not possess is the self-awareness to figure out our limitations, which will eventually lead to us developing more strategic awareness so that we can individually figure out how to put a stop to guys like Fink.

The development of this strategic awareness is the catalyst for you to shift yourself away from a defensive posture and into an offensive posture. Because of these systems of degradation that have been put into place by the Marxists and the globalists, making the shift back towards your individuality is the action that is needed for you to thrive during these chaotic times.

Do you believe the intellectual fortitude of society is growing and expanding during this Fourth Turning in history?

After President Trump’s visit to Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF), did you feel like many of the globalists are admitting the death of their stakeholder capitalism?

Please make sure you leave your feedback in the comment section below.

John McClane didn’t hesitate to take on an offensive posture when he waged full blown psychological warfare on Hans Gruber.

Life is challenging enough you’re taking incoming from the cultural Marxists and the globalists. It’s time for you to flip the script. Move from getting pinned down to going on offense.

The Zenith Roadmap isn’t just content; it’s a strategic bypass for the noise of 2026.

You deserve a reliable roadmap to navigate the chaos.

I created the Zenith Catalog to be that dominant precision tool. It filters four years of my tactical insights into actionable pathways.

Much like McClane, you now have a machine gun; my tactical insights are your readily available ammunition.

Procrastination equates to destruction. Just as Apollo Creed said in Rocky III, “There is no tomorrow!”

Unlock this powerful Zenith Roadmap to transform your life now.

Remember that this is a reader supported publication so make sure you give this article a like, subscribe, share, and comment to support the message.

Also to connect with me please make sure you join me here on Facebook, GETTR, Truth Social, and now Substack’s new social media called Notes.

Stay strong. Stay focused. Stay active.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brandonrichey.substack.com/subscribe