Schools, War, and Religion - 3 Massive Failures Explained

Ultimize. Hello and welcome to Ultimize. I am TJ Walker. This is The Filtered program, part of the Ultimize Network. Thank you so much for being here today. I hope you had a great weekend. I had a great weekend except for one thing. As you know, all last week I was talking about the No Kings rally. I was looking forward to it. It was by all accounts a huge success, peaceful around the country. It's always hard to tell exact estimates of crowd control because anyone in the media, anyone in the government who makes an official estimate is then criticized roundly by people who wanted the number either larger or smaller. I've seen some estimates at 8 million or more. Whether it reached the threshold of 3.5%, which is used typically as a standard for when tyrannical regime's fall. I don't know if it got that far. I, I didn't see any evidence of that. Now you're going to hear me say something that sounds almost like a joke, but it's not. But I have the absolute lamest old guy Florida excuse ever for not attending the rally. I was planning on going. I was excited about it. I was talking to you about it, and I injured my ankle playing pickleball. At 9:30 in the morning, right before I was about to head on to the rally. So I didn't make it. I was hobbled up with my, my ankle elevated on ice the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend, and still today. So anyway, I'll be fine, but I missed the rally. Anyway, on to bigger news today. We're going to dive right into the top stories of the day. The biggest education mistake of the last decade wasn't giving kids too much technology, It was giving them technology before teaching them how to think. According to a New York Times report, in today's time, schools across the United States are now pulling back on laptops and classroom technology after years of heavy investment failed to improve academic performance. One middle school in Kansas actually took back school Chromebooks entirely, shifting back to handwritten notes and limited intentional use of technology after teachers found students were distracted by YouTube. Video games, and even using school tools to bully classmates. Now let me translate this into plain English. Schools spent tens of billions of dollars on devices and got kids watching YouTube in math class. That's not innovation. That's a very expensive babysitting system. Here's the real problem, and nobody wants to say this out loud. Technology didn't fail schools. Schools failed at teaching thinking. You can hand a kid a $300 Chromebook, but if they don't know how to focus, analyze, question, and explain, you've just given a distracted mind a faster distraction machine. That's like giving a Ferrari to someone who doesn't know how to drive and then acting shocked when they crash into TikTok. Now let me be clear because I'm not some back in my day we used chalk and suffered kind of guy. We absolutely need— and we did use chalk. We absolutely need technology in schools. Kids need to know how to use artificial intelligence, to research online, to code, to communicate digitally. But here's the order we've completely screwed up. First, teach thinking, then add technology, not the other way around. Right now, most schools are doing the opposite. They're saying, here's a laptop, Here's Google, here's multiple choice, and then wondering why kids can't write clearly, speak confidently, defend an idea, or even pay attention for 10 minutes. Let me give you the simplest fix in the world, and it costs $0. Every child in every class should be required to stand up and speak for 3 minutes. Maybe not every day. But once a week they could explain the concept, teach it back to other kids in the class, and defend it. Because here's the truth nobody wants to admit: if you can't explain something out loud, you don't understand it. This is the real scandal in modern education. We've created an entire system where students can pass tests without ever proving they can think. Click, guess, submit. Congratulations, you've mastered the art of recognizing the right answer when you see it. That's not intelligence, that's who wants to be a millionaire without the lifelines. And don't tell me this is about technology, this is about comfort. Schools have decided no one should feel uncomfortable, no one should be put on the spot, no one should risk being wrong in public. Little Timmy might feel uncomfortable having to stand up and speak or do show and tell. This is complete and total nonsense because the real world is nothing but discomfort. Job interviews, speaking. Meetings, speaking. Selling an idea, speaking. Leading people, speaking. We're graduating students who can swipe but can't speak or think. Now to be fair to teachers, this isn't all on them. They were sold a fantasy. Big Tech came in and said, this will democratize education. This will increase engagement. This will improve outcomes, and schools bought it. Why? Because it sounded modern, it sounded progressive, it sounded easy. And here's the dirty little secret: technology often makes classroom management easier while making learning worse. Because when every kid is quietly staring at a screen, it looks like learning, but it's often just distraction, passivity, or low-level engagement. The schools now pulling back are discovering something shocking. When you take away the screens, kids talk more, focus more, interact more, and yes, even learn more. What a concept. Now here's where I agree with you 100%. Schools need environments with 100% attention. I hope you agree with me on this. No phones, no distractions, no, I'm checking something. You want real learning? Create a space where attention is mandatory, thinking is visible, and participation is required. And yes, use technology, but use it intentionally, not as a babysitter, not as a substitute for teaching, not as a replacement for thinking. Here's the bottom line: a Chromebook can help a kid code. It cannot teach a kid courage, focus, or how to stand up and explain and defend an idea without hiding. That's the job of education, and right now that's the part we've been skipping. Now I wish someone, and perhaps it's already out there, we need some technology that doesn't simply block YouTube and TikTok from computers in schools. We need something where at certain times of the day, maybe the beginning of every period, it's impossible to access the internet at all for anyone other than a teacher. I think that would be a good first step, but we got to get away from this binary thinking of we're either all technology or we're all back to finger painting on caves. There has to be a mix of the two. We'll be right back after this break.

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You'll never wing it again. 50,000 American troops are now in the Middle East, and if that sentence sounds familiar, it should, because we've heard visions of this before. According to the Times, US troops levels in the region have surged past 50,000 as the administration considers expanding military operations against Iran, including the possibility of seizing strategic territory tied to global oil flows. And if your reaction is, haven't we seen this movie before? Yes, and it never ends well. Every Middle East war starts the same way. This will be quick. This will be limited. This will be strategic. And then years later, it's none of those things. Just expensive, bloody, and impossible to explain. We're watching the trailer again for a movie that always ends in disaster. Let's do a quick history lesson. 1983 Lebanon: U.S. troops sent in as peacemakers. Results: barracks bombed, 241 Americans killed. 1991 Gulf War: quick victory, okay, but left unresolved tensions that set the stage for decades of conflict. 2003, Iraq. This will be a cakewalk. Those were the actual words used by officials. What followed? 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives lost, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost, and a region still unstable. 2011, Libya. Another limited intervention. Now a failed state with open-air slave markets. Afghanistan. Longest war in US history. Congratulations. And it exactly how? With a chaotic withdrawal and the Taliban back in power. And now we're doing it again, but this time with Iran, a country of 90 million people, far more complex, far more dangerous. Invading or escalating conflict with Iran is not Iraq 2.0. It's Iraq multiplied. Bigger population, more resources, stronger military. If Iraq was a quagmire, This is quicksand with rockets. And here's what makes this even more reckless. There's no clear communication of the objective. One day it's about retaliation. Next day it's about deterrence. Next day it's about controlling oil resources and routes. That's not strategy. That's throwing darts while holding a match. Let's talk about global perception, because this matters a lot. Right now, the United States is not being seen as a stabilizing force. Increasingly, we are being viewed as unpredictable, aggressive, acting alone, and in many parts of the world, yes, even as a rogue nation, even as a destabilizing force. That's not me saying it. That's how international perception shifts when actions don't match clear, consistent messaging. When your allies are nervous and your adversaries are energized, you're not projecting strength, you're projecting chaos. And chaos is not a strategy, it's a warning sign. Now let's talk politics, because this is where things get truly bizarre. Normally, a deeply unpopular war destroys a president politically, but here we're in uncharted territory. Approval ratings for Trump already around 34%. So before the war even started, he's at historically low approval rating so low there's almost no political floor left to fall through, which creates a dangerous illusion that there's no cost to this Trump war. If your approval rating is already in the basement, you can light a fire upstairs and not see much change in the numbers. That doesn't mean people approve. It means you've already maxed out on the disapproval. And then there's the economic reality. This is where it gets even uglier. More in just a moment.

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So what's the economic reality of this Iran war? Well, let's look. The Strait of Hormuz, roughly 20% of the world's oil flows through it. If this conflict escalates, oil spikes even more, gas prices spike even more, everything becomes more expensive. We're talking $6, maybe $7, maybe higher for a gallon of gas. And what then happens? Recession becomes a real possibility. It's not a joke anymore. It is absolutely real, and we're going to have to deal with this. Folks, at some point you have to realize whether you love Trump, whether you hate Trump, you have to acknowledge this is his baby. This was not thought through, and this could in fact destroy the worldwide economy. Now, I like to think of myself as an optimist. I am an optimist. I do see a silver lining here. It does seem like this could have a very similar ending to Trump casinos, to Trump Stakes, to Trump University, to Trump's professional football league. It can have a very similar ending in that it just completely melts down into nothing. Now, I don't hope economic harm on anyone, but if this imbecilic war doubles the price of gasoline and creates a worldwide recession, and that results in the midterm elections going to an opposing party, and Trump's party is swept out of office, not only in the House of Representatives but the Senate, then at that point, I'd have to say, Worth it. If that's what it took to wake Americans up to some semblance of sanity, and we can finally neuter this corrupt rogue regime coming out of Washington, then it will be worth it. I'm sorry it took this, if this is what happens, to wake up Americans. But at some point, uh, you pay the prices for really bad decisions. People know that in their personal life. If you quit school and smoke pot every day for your entire high school career and end up graduating without being able to read, well, you pay for those decisions with a lifetime of low earning power and probably bad health and unhappiness. If you elect someone who has never been serious about anything in his life and has basically destroyed every business he's ever touched, then you do in fact should not be surprised if the entire world becomes chaos. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. There's more to come. Filtered is brought to you by the following.

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Okay, we are back and ready for more fun. Final issue that jumped out is Pete Hegseth trying to be a preacher, like a TV preacher. He's trying to send the message that the United States is a theocracy, and it's an ugly, ugly look. I'll have a full discourse on this in just a moment. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show, whether you're watching or listening. New episodes drop every single day. And if there's a little notification option where you are now, go ahead and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. Okay, my friends, I'm having a little trouble with my teleprompter. I'll be full disclosure here. I've had some problems with my teleprompter today, so that's why I cut to an ad early and I just want to get to the right spot. I am giving you my own ideas. Based on research from available news sources. And then I do have it edited with artificial intelligence, and then I use a teleprompter for you to make the whole thing a little more efficient and a little tighter. That's what I'm doing. But for whatever reason, the teleprompter just is giving me slight difficulty today, so I had to stop it, start it, restart it. I do recommend that if you are doing new content daily for something, teleprompter can be very helpful. If you're just giving a presentation or doing a media interview, no, I wouldn't use a teleprompter. Okay, let's dive in right now. Pete Hegseth has now taken one of the most dangerous steps an American defense secretary can take in wartime. He's blurring the line between national defense an sectarian religion. According to the Associated Press, at a Pentagon worship service held after the Iran War began, Hegseth prayed that every round found its mark, asking for overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy, and closed in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ. AP also reports that historians and legal experts say the specificity of invoking Jesus Christ Christ and a particular form of Protestant Christianity from the office of the Defense Secretary is new. This is not a minor etiquette problem. This is not, oh, so some people are offended. This is a constitutional, moral, military, and philosophical disgrace. And in my view, it makes Hegseth look contemptible, un-American, and grotesquely unfit for a job that is supposed to represent all Americans. Including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, and every service member who does not belong to his particular church. The United States military is not supposed to be a church with tanks. The Pentagon is not a revival tent with better parking, and the Secretary of Defense is not America's national pastor with air support. When the Defense Secretary starts sounding like he's auditioning to be the manager of the Crusades reboot, That's not patriotism. That's not leadership. That is a man taking one of the most religiously diverse institutions on earth and saying, in effect, God is on my side, and by coincidence, my side also controls the bombs. That's obscene, because the moment you wrap a war in divine certainty, you make dissent sound like heresy. And that is exactly what the Constitution was designed to stop. Let's do the constitutional part, because Hegseth and his fans always want to pretend this is just about religious liberty. No, it's about the government not putting its thumb on the scale for one specific religion. Article 6 says, quote, no religious test shall ever be given or shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. The First Amendment bars laws respecting an establishment of religion, and James Madison argued that religion, quote, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. He also warned that rulers who wanted to subvert liberty had often found an established clergy to be convenient auxiliaries. That is Madison basically saying two centuries early Don't let politicians use religion as a sidekick. And that is why this matters so much in the military. The chain of command is coercive by design. If your boss is the Secretary of Defense and he's holding government-branded Christian services in wartime, government employees and service members do not experience the same way they would experience some guy privately praying at home. Even Americans United, which is sued over the services, says there is pressure on federal employees to attend in order to appease their bosses. This is not free exercise. That starts to smell like soft coercion with taxpayer-funded carpeting. And military experts are not exactly shrugging this off. The Washington Post reports that former senior military leaders and experts on religion and law say this approach violates the Constitution and undermines the mutual respect and cohesion that are essential in wartime. Retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson calls Hegseth's actions totally violative of prior norms, and retired Major General Randy Manner says chaplains who do not identify with Hegseth's approach feel marginalized. That is the exact opposite of what a defense secretary is supposed to do. He's supposed to unite the force not turn it into a denominational food fight with missiles. And let's talk history, because this country did not spring from the forehead of an evangelical talk show host. The American Revolution would have been unimaginable without, for example, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which helped electrify the case for independence. And yes, it's Thomas Paine who was the same sort of subversive who wrote In the Age of Reason. Here's what he wrote: My own mind is my own church, and all national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. Thomas Paine, one of our founding fathers, also wrote: The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. In other words, one of the key intellectual midwives of American independence was not saying, "Let's run the republic like a Bible study with bayonets." He was saying almost the opposite. It doesn't mean Paine hated Jesus as a moral leader. In fact, he wrote that Jesus, quote, was a virtuous and an amiable man, whose morality, quote, has not been exceeded by any, but he was scathing about organized religion, specifically Christianity, being used as a system of power and profit, which makes Paine weirdly relevant here because Pete Hegseth is doing the old magician's trick of taking spiritual language and using it to drape state violence in divine approval. Paine would have recognized that hustle immediately. He probably would have called it priestcraft with a Pentagon badge. Thomas Paine helped launch the American Revolution, and Thomas Paine's message was not, "Please let one sect of Christianity run the war machine." It was reason, it was conscious, it was liberty. Pete Hegseth looked at the inheritance and apparently thought, "You know what this needs? More Old Testament vibes from a livestream at the Pentagon." This is not honoring the founders. This is cosplaying as a medieval warlord with federal benefits. And then there's an even deeper philosophical problem. Once political leaders start implying that God specifically endorses their violence, their moral brakes come off. The Washington Post quoted one longtime Pentagon civilian asking essentially, if troops are trained to believe God is on our side, What precludes us from doing anything we want to win? Exactly. That's the danger. Because now your war is not merely strategic or tragic or debatable. Now it is righteous. Now the enemy is not just an adversary. He is an enemy of God. And once you start talking like that, atrocities become easier to rationalize. Scrutiny becomes easier to dismiss, and humility leaves the building wearing camouflage. This is why serious democracies have tried so hard to keep the state from canonizing itself. It's not because religion is bad necessarily. It is because governments are dangerous when they think they are holy. Every democracy needs room for believers and non-believers to serve together under one flag without being told that one faction has a private hotline to the Almighty. The moment a defense secretary starts acting like his theology comes bundled with the targeting package, every non-member of this sect gets demoted symbolically, no matter what the formal policy says. And can we just pause to admire the spectacle, the spectacularly bad judgment of using more explicitly war rhetoric while fighting a Muslim-majority country Donald Rumsfeld changed Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Enduring Freedom after 9/11, specifically to avoid making America sound like it was fighting a religious war. That was one week after the worst terror attack in modern American history, and even then they understood the danger. Pete Hegseth, by contrast, seems to have looked at the caution and thought, what if we did the opposite but louder? There's a Woody Allen line from Hannah and Her Sisters: "If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up." That line is old, acidic, and still weirdly useful here. Because if you strip away the theology and just ask the basic moral question: would a faith centered on humility, mercy, and love of neighbor, when its name used as branding copy, for every round find its mark? You do not have to be an atheist to answer, "Probably not." Okay, if your conversion, or if your version of Christianity sounds less like Sermon on the Mount and more like the trailer for Call of Duty, Deuteronomy, maybe, just maybe, you're not defending Jesus. Maybe you're using Jesus as a mascot, and that is the part that's so foul. Not faith, not prayer. The cheapening of faith into a prop for power. Now, I want to be fair in one narrow sense. Hagseth absolutely has the right to be a Christian. He has the right to pray. He has the right to worship privately and publicly as a citizen. But when he acts in his official capacity as Secretary of Defense, while standing atop the chain of command, Well, troops of many faiths are being sent into combat, the standard changes. Then he's not merely a believer, he is the state. The state in America is not supposed to preach one denomination's God while preparing to kill people abroad. So yes, make the moral plea, but his conduct here is, in my judgment, despicable, not because he believes in God, because he's trying to fuse state violence with sectarian certainty. That is contemptible in a pluralistic democracy. It's unpatriotic because it betrays the constitutional design of a nation with no religious test and no established church. It is incompetent because it damages troop cohesion and hence propaganda gifts to adversaries. And it's a betrayal of America's values because this country was supposed to protect conscience. Not conscript it. The United States can survive a bad speech. It can survive an embarrassing cabinet secretary. What it cannot safely normalize is the idea that our wars come with official sectarian blessing from the top of the Pentagon. That is how republics get morally stupid. That's how wars get dirtier. And that is how faith itself gets degraded into a weapon-shaped campaign slogan. Pete Hegseth should be reminded loudly and repeatedly that he swore an oath to the Constitution, not to a creed, and in America, that distinction is the point. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Thanks for joining me today. Please stop by tomorrow. If you would like a free copy or free access to some of my online communication skills courses or personal development courses, go to ultimizeyourlife.com. Thanks. See you tomorrow.