DailyJim: National insecurity and the rise of leaders who want to look strong

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Monday, February 3rd, 2025, and I want to talk about national insecurity and the rise of leaders who want to look strong.

So you've probably heard the phrase very often of national security. This is an issue of national security. I believe that Elon Musk, who could never be president because he was not an American, he was not born an American, a natural born citizen, is acting like a president in the U.S., trying to come in and slash Treasury Department, slash spending, slash all these programs that the U.S. is doing. I'd say often under the guise of Donald Trump is telling him to do this, I suppose.

But to get to the real core issue is I think a lot of programs in the U.S. Are being cut under the banner of national security. This is an issue of national security. This is an issue of national security.

What I'm starting to see is that a lot of people who talk about national security, national security, national security, especially when it comes to like.

Paying for free HIV treatment for young people in Africa so they don't die. When I hear people say it's national security, I actually hear national insecurity because someone who is constantly talking about the need for security, I need security, I need security, I need security, is not somebody who sounds like they feel very secure.

It's also, you know, people who constantly are striving to have, to say, look how powerful I am. I am so powerful. I am the strongest. I am the most powerful. Are not necessarily the people who actually feel powerful. They're just trying to give the impression, or maybe they're just trying to give the impression to you, or maybe to themselves, that they're actually stronger than they actually feel.

And so I think what happens is that we often focus on the things that we don't feel very confident or strong in and maybe we'll say, oh look, beat our chests and puff ourselves up like, oh I'm so good at this the fact that you talk about it all the time means you're not that good at it because if you're good at it, you probably wouldn't talk about it so much or if you did, you wouldn't I don't know, just be seeping of like shame. And this is not to denigrate anyone. I think this is common with most of us. It's just that I see in the US and I see in other countries, the people who tend to puff out their chest the most and say, we're going to make America great again by, running away from all of the other nations and letting them take care of themselves and by just shrinking and penalizing and seeking vengeance and retribution and punishment towards our best friends around the world. Those are not people who sound like they feel very confident in themselves. They don't sound very strong. They sound like they're in a bad place. They sound like they may want you to believe or want me to believe that they're in a good place, but I can read right through it, man.

And so someone who goes on Twitter and shouts in capital letters and starts saying, oh, these radical left communists, da-da-da-da-da-da, it's like, dude, you don't sound very strong. Because the strongest people, the ones who feel the most secure, don't have to attack other people. Or if they attack other people, it's with love. It's like more loving than other people. Instead of saying the radical left communists, you can say, hey, these people that, you know, I've had a disagreement with, but I really care about them. And yeah, I really disagree with them on this issue, but it's because I care so much about them instead of denigrating them with childhood names. I mean, it's just, it's like using synonyms and adjectives to say that the person is evil and that they don't care. Somebody who believes that other people cares about them, doesn't say such things like this. So it says to me that this person doesn't believe that other people care about them. And that doesn't say, that's not a position of strength. That's not a position of security. It's a position of insecurity.

And so this is not to say, oh, I am better than thou. It's more to say, can we at least be just really honest about what's going on?

When people, when we get political leaders that come in and they say everything is about national security, or they come in, I just saw this on a TV show, it says everyone's been deceiving you. When someone tells you that everyone is deceiving you, it's highly likely that that person is also lying to you and probably lying to you more than the other people. Because to believe that 99% of people are deceiving or 100% of people deceiving you and not even just the deception is not the lying, it's the intentionally lying to harm you or to not care about you. To believe that is one of the fastest routes to insecurity, to constant fear and paranoia and anger and bitterness and rage, basically hatred or indifference. We either are filled with hate and we think the world's out to get us, so screw them, we're going to be out to get them, or we're filled with indifference because we think nobody cares about us, so why should I care about anyone else? The irony is that we can't actually be filled with indifference, I believe. I don't think we can be alive and filled with indifference. What happens is we try to achieve this indifferent state, which means we just become filled with hatred. We fight against ourselves. We start to feel a little bit, I shouldn't feel that. I shouldn't have any good feelings towards this person because they don't care about me, so let me try to squash all these good feelings. Let me even squash these bad feelings because they don't even care about me. So what happens is we start fighting our joy. We fight the anger. We fight the curiosity. We fight so many things that happen within us, which means we end up fighting ourselves. So this is a bit rambly today, but I think it's just like I'm so tired of us just not having an informed conversation on this. Just having an honest, real, raw conversation on it. Why did somebody like Donald Trump get elected? Because we have a lot of people feeling very insecure in the nation of the United States. That's why. We have a lot of people feeling that way. Why is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, so damn insecure? Probably because it's really hard to be the richest man in the world. I mean, you get attacked in so many ways. You get so much attention. You get attacked with hatred. You get attacked with indifference. You get attacked with love. Some people say you're God. Some people say you're the devil. Some people don't even know your name. And sometimes that hurts even more because you're like, I'm the celebrity. Everybody should know who I am. You're used to people knowing who you are. And then when somebody doesn't, it could be a pleasant surprise or it could be like a ruinous surprise.

So I'm not here to say that these people who have come to power are evil. I'm not here to say that they're bad. I'm not here to dehumanize them. Frankly, it's more about humanizing them and realizing that it can be really hard to be at the top. But man, if the people at the top don't feel secure in themselves, if the people at the top aren't able to take punches and still respond with love, then those behaviors, I strongly believe, will trickle down. And then we get filled with a nation of people who run away from conflict, who escalate conflict, but who don't know how to resolve it, don't know how to address it, don't know how to come together and actually resolve resolution coming back to a solution, coming back to being together. I believe solution and chemistry is like united together. Salt and water, when you mix it, is like a solution.

And so, yeah, I just...

I hope when you hear the phrase national security and you hear somebody talk about it over and over again, the desire for national security talks about a current state of feeling insecure. Somebody who wants more security probably in the moment doesn't feel, doesn't believe they have a lot of security. And so when you hear people talk about that, please, I hope you just remember, often what people are talking about is the desired future state. Even when they say they're very strong, sometimes what people are saying is, I want to feel strong. Not that I am strong, it's I want to feel strong. Or I'm so rich. It means they want to be rich, not that they currently are. A lot of times, if you ask somebody how they're doing, they say they're fine. It doesn't mean they're fine. It means they want to be fine sometimes. So just trying to pay attention to whether the person's actually currently in that state of what they want, or if it's a desired future state and they're in the opposite state of the moment. And I believe a lot of the leaders that we have in society and a lot of culture right now is shifting to feel more insecure because you know what? We went through a global pandemic that killed millions of people, that locked millions and like billions of people in homes, frankly, and disrupted our lives to a level that we've never had our lives disrupted across the planet as a species.

And we're not even talking about it. And so the fear, the anxiety, the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the doubt, all of this stuff is still with us. And then we end up electing people who show the state that we want to be in, but aren't necessarily in it. We fall for the pretense of it. We fall for the facade of like, I'll puff up my chest and I look strong. It's like, no, man, the one strongest is the one that can take a punch and still stands and says, okay, I still love you. That's a really strong person. And you punch somebody in the face and they grab your hand and they say, dude, dude, dude, I love you. What's going on, man? Instead of like, screw you, you asshole. You never cared about me. That's not a strong person. Not a very strong person. The strongest are the ones that can take the punches and still respond with love. And so if we want to go to a world where we have national security, security in the nation.

Let's talk about real security feeling really secure it doesn't have to come from the environment it can come from internal feelings and come from our perspective on the world and how we see other people's intentions towards us how we see our own intentions towards ourselves it matters more than almost anything in the world i believe so if you want to get better at that please listen to more podcast episodes, reach out to me, um, do some of the audio exercises I've come up with, ask me questions on how to get better at emotional combat. Like this system, something I care about so deeply and I want to see people actually feeling secure. Okay. Take care.