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00:00:01
May You Live in Interesting Times
80 Plays28 days ago
In this episode Patrick and Andrew are joined by Lee Enfield of Enbloc Press to discuss how information is disseminated, the modern state of the news, and how it drives politics.
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Transcript
Introduction and Inspiration
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begin begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and slaughter return
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Copybook Headings podcast. If you're a new listener, just joining us for the first time, this show is inspired by the poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. And every week, we take an old saying, proverb, or maxim, and we break it down to see what we can learn from it and see if there's still any ancient wisdom in these old problems that's relevant today.
Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:50
Speaker
I am your host, Patrick Payne, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Andrew Stevens. Andrew, how you doing, buddy? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you?
00:00:58
Speaker
doing excellent because it's another episode with a guest. We have got the great Lee Enfield on with us today. For those of you who may know him from X, Lee, how you doing, bud?
00:01:14
Speaker
ah Sorry about that. i I'm doing well. Off to a great start here. thanks sureria thanks for Thanks for having me on to start off with my mic on mute. Not a problem. Hey, thanks so much for coming on. um ah yeah i've been i've been ah Those you who don't know Lee, like I've been following you get you for quite a while and um I will say there's like not i get I subscribe to like a lot of newsletters and stuff, email newsletters or whatever. There's only maybe two that I never miss or always read and yours is one of them. So if if you're into, you want to tell us a little bit about it and what what what what you do and and what what it's about.
Lee Enfield's Newsletter Focus
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, sure. ah so I write a newsletter, it's called In Block Press, um mainly focuses on politics, guns, 3D printing, current events, that type of thing. ah Occasionally, I release a podcast episode or two. ah With that, it's it's mostly paywalled stuff, kind of higher effort content than just the freebie shit posting on Twitter.
00:02:16
Speaker
um But yeah, if youre if you're into guns, politics, um particularly like DIY, kind of more in the weeds, details with firearms, um check it out. It's E-N-B-L-O-C-P-R-E-S-S on Twitter or the website. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's ah it's great. And you're um your what you want to tell people your handle on X, too, so they can find you?
Origin of 'Interesting Times' Proverb
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, short mag S-M-L-E. So it's at short mag S-M-L-E.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, ah really good content there as well. So yeah, really wanted ah really grateful that you were able to come on. I was kind of throwing a couple different ah proverbs at you because that's kind of the the shtick of the show, right? We do a we we always do a proverb. um Sometimes it's just like ah um you know something that we think might be relevant to the topic or the guest that we have on.
00:03:09
Speaker
um This time, i I kind of suggested, may you live in interesting times. And you thought that was you know appropriate for for for what we're going through. um So I did a little bit of digging onto it. I guess it's a what I found is that it's an old Chinese proverb. Did you find anything on that, Andrew?
00:03:29
Speaker
yeah ah yeahly i think too yeah Yeah, I it looks like it's ah apparently like the it doesn't have a super clear origin, but apparently it's kind of meant as a curse. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what you got, Andrew? Yeah. And that's that's an interesting. I don't know that we've had one like that. We've discussed a ah ah saying like that. Have we? That's kind of negative, you know. So.
00:04:01
Speaker
ah Yeah, maybe live in interesting times as a curse. Yeah that um the peaceful uninteresting times are what you want and um And you might not get it so ah Yeah, what what did you think like why'd you pick this one Patrick? What what? What'd you think about it? Well, you know, I i feel like there's sometimes a ah trend for people to want to live in interesting
Desire for Engagement vs. Overwhelm
00:04:28
Speaker
times or they think they do. You know, when things are boring, they're like, you know, there's the the meme nothing ever happens, right? Nothing ever happens, you know, and ah until things start happening. And then sometimes people wish that it would just go back to normal because things can get
00:04:41
Speaker
Things can get out of hand pretty quick, but no I mean I just I want um I thought it'd be a good one for to have Leon because he does a lot of talk about you know current events um Some of the craziness that's been happening and I thought we're definitely living in interesting times whether we want to or not and I thought it'd be interesting to have him on and and discuss some of those interesting times so um What did you think about it, Lee, when I when i threw it through your way? Yeah, i ah you know it's ah it's one of those phrases that you grow up hearing and that kind of thing. and i Until we talked and I kind of looked into it, I'd never really interpreted it as a curse ah or you know like a
00:05:21
Speaker
You have a negative sentiment, um but I suppose that holds up makes it makes a little more sense that way, ah especially, you know, the Chinese portion, according to Wikipedia, like the the early Chinese version of this is that,
00:05:39
Speaker
uh you're better off to be a dog uh you know and like ah's it's like a weird you know chinese thing it says you're you're better being a dog in like peaceful days than human in like a time of chaos or something uh something weird like that, you know, I'm assuming something was lost in that translation because, you know, or maybe I'm just too dumb to to understand the ah the Chinese philosophy behind that. But ah it's nonetheless, it's kind of kind of a, you know, amusing thing to think about
00:06:16
Speaker
and consider ah because it does juxtapose well with like the nothing ever happens meme. right like like We are kind of living in a time where ah some some very strange, interesting novel things are taking place, but simultaneously, it it kind of feels like maybe nothing ever happens because the attention span of ah like the The global consumer base is like four hours long now instead of ah you know measured in like generations or decades or periods.
Media's Focus on Trivial Stories
00:06:55
Speaker
Now it just trends for one day on Twitter.
00:06:57
Speaker
and then that's it I mean we've we've had tremendous, I mean there's been two assassination attempts on ah on a presidential candidate in like a month and it gets like 12 hours of media attention ah before it becomes just something that kind of leaves the water cooler talk.
00:07:16
Speaker
um And so it's kind of interesting in that sense where ah we live in, I'm sure you've heard the term like attention economy, right? Where, you know, social media controls everything. There's this layer of like hyper reality as like an extra social layer. And so you can be anything but boring, right? as As far as social media, content creation, news, you know, anything that's public facing.
00:07:45
Speaker
It doesn't really matter what it is as long as it's not boring. ah and so it it like the The mandate is that it has to be interesting. right so you know There's like this mandate that our times have to be interesting ah and it it kind of creates this overwhelming effect where because everything has to be interesting at all times, ah you ironically cannot live in interesting times and therefore you end up with nothing ever happens.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, um it It feels like there's I mean a lot of this has to do with the media I think and and their You know willingness and unwillingness to cover various things and the the the various agendas that go into that Because I feel like you mentioned the two assassination attempts. That's real news That's something that really happened and probably should have been talked about for quite a bit and then there's these absolute nothing stories that are just complete fluff that The media seemed to latch onto and they'll just repeat over and over and over ad nauseam forever. And ah clearly they have some some some reason for doing that. ah You can speculate as to what it is, but it seems bizarre in that way. I've i've i've noticed that. I don't know what about you guys. Yeah, that's interesting. um
00:09:03
Speaker
That's giving me a lot to think about. Yeah, it's it's that nothing nothing ever happens, but is is that is the inversion now? Is it just that um all happenings are nothing in the current yeah economy?
Modern Media's Narrative Manipulation
00:09:15
Speaker
and And to what you're saying, Patrick, that they're trying to you know force non-issues to be issues, right? it's it's all It's all twisted up. is that Is that your read on things, Lee?
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, more or less. like the As these systems of interest evolve ah and some you know kind of tend to go away, lose prominence, um and others rise in their place. ah like like If you look at legacy media right now, i mean they're traditionally, the job of like ah major press, like corporate press has been consensus making.
00:09:56
Speaker
That's how it it gets used. And what was yesterday, Kamala Harris came out and did a like a three minute press briefing on like, you know, all net, all channels that she heard somebody say that he he thought he said that Donald Trump said that somebody might need in general like Hitler. ah And it's very serious times and I won't be taking any questions that she like scurried off into her house.
00:10:22
Speaker
It was like a a three-minute press release to say ah quite literally nothing. like there There's nothing there that's ah compelling at all. like there's Frankly, there's there's no reason to believe that something like that happened. ah If that did happen, it's it's not really all that interesting because I think Once you ah you know move past the ah devastating emotional trauma of hearing the word Hitler, you realize that having general officers that that are loyal ah is a totally reasonable thing for a commander in chief to expect.
00:10:59
Speaker
ah It's three minutes. There's no way to engage with it. There's no reason to believe it. It's not that interesting ah at all. And yet it probably costs tens of millions of dollars worth of like time and effort of several networks and publications and outlets and all this type of stuff to go in.
00:11:18
Speaker
And nobody even cares about it, but 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 100 years ago, ah these are the institutions that people will be looking to, ah to define the times, right, like these, these, like the New York Times or something like that is, you know, the paper of record.
00:11:36
Speaker
ah And now it largely gets kind of laughed off by anybody who who really pays attention to stuff. it It's basically a tabloid at this point. And ah so yeah, and in a sense, it's like the the things that define what is of interest.
00:11:53
Speaker
ah These will continue to evolve because you get you get a lot more traction now ah From things that are still pretty meaningless ah like like you will get more click-through and engagements and attention and interest ah saying something about like uh girls versus versus boys or cats versus dogs or like you know that type of content like like ah i mean how many times do you open twitter and you see a post with like 10 million views because uh you know ah some woman was like
00:12:31
Speaker
Oh, I hate it when my boyfriend, I don't know, uh, eats the last piece of bread or something. And it, you know, it turns into like a five day long engagement, like, you know, circle jerk, basically. Uh, but something like president getting shot, uh,
00:12:50
Speaker
ah you know any Any of the things that are ah what would previously have been considered interesting or important or relevant ah doesn't get that type of click through. And so it's kind of shifted the landscape of what is interesting and what is compelling. And it's it's a strange time, to say the least.
Trust Decline in Traditional Media
00:13:13
Speaker
Do you think that's a function of of like that all conversations now are channeled through the same outlets?
00:13:21
Speaker
Whereas throughout history, you know, you're like, this is, this is, you know, this is commoner stuff, right? Like talking about the, the, the latest outrage, the latest celebrity thing, or, you know, the cats and dogs. I mean, how that's not much different than.
00:13:37
Speaker
you know keep you know the the serfs talking about the weather, it's just that the the nobility were off in their castles talking about other things, right? like is But all all the streams now are are merged and and it's taken over, but I think there's still, I mean, these other conversations are still taking place. People are still talking about the the happenings, right?
00:14:02
Speaker
uh yeah but it feels like um like if if you like a lot of what gets published uh at this point is just slop like if if you're looking at um like a new yorker article now will be about you know, ah why a Puerto Rican girl is sad that she went to college and there wasn't enough like salsa music during study hall. And now she felt alienated from, you know, her home country or something like that. I mean, that's like a real article, right? Yeah, yeah I remember that one. Yeah. Yeah. when it's like ah You know, I went to college and, you know, all all these kids in the library, they just don't want to have loud conversations while we listen to music. And it's like,
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, ah study hall like this is a no-brainer There's no content here. Why is this being published in like, you know Look to New York or the Atlantic or the New York Times or something like this like the the you know, these these institutions it previously were considered highbrow and you know have kind of done this to themselves because the the credentialism that kind of safeguarded them and gate kept them from mediocre writers and mediocre thinkers and mediocre conversations ah is now meaningless because the elites, ah you know they don't really have anything that's very interesting to say. like there's There's kind of an inversion now where there is still of course the the low effort like boys versus girls stuff that gets a lot of clicks.
00:15:36
Speaker
um But anything that's interesting that's that's really worth ah like consuming or you know chewing on and considering and ah weighing, having you know more serious discussions about ah basically happens on the fringes of polite society at this point. you know These are things that you see from ah you know small publishing companies, independent writers, guys writing blogs, things like that.
00:16:03
Speaker
ah much more now than you would see from a a previously ah like prestige institution. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like most of the interesting stuff is either on Twitter or sub-stack these days. And that's where all the all real thinking is happening, where people are are actually challenging some sort of status quo or some sort of ah you know existing ah existing norms. But yeah, but you know as those like my boyfriend ate the piece of bread or whatever. This always made me so mad because sometimes you know you'll write a tweet that you think is pretty pretty decent.
00:16:38
Speaker
They'll get 12 likes and then someone will post something like that and you're like, what the heck? So ah yeah, it's it's definitely true. And you know a lot's been made of the the legacy media kind of dying, but we're you know it's it's it's really interesting to watch in real time because we're... we're Like you said, this, the the emotional impact of invoking Hitler, you know, I mean, that that stopped having an emotional impact on me somewhere around 2016 or somewhere, they just kept hammering it over and over. And yet they're still going back to their same playbook, you have a press conference, and then you say these, the scary word, and then everyone is shocked. But it's just not, it's just not working anymore. And that's not how how people get information. That's certainly not not the information that they trust. And we're watching this kind of ah
00:17:24
Speaker
I don't know, we're watching the world change and right in front of our eyes, and I think it's remarkable. Yeah, it's a yeah it's it's very much, ah you know like you said, Substack is a good place ah for people who are doing like more serious writing and things like that. There's still, of course, a market for that. right like There are a lot of ah big writers on Substack, and there's still people who... ah you know There's still a demand for like actual journalism and things of that nature.
00:17:54
Speaker
You know, which is fine. That's good. ah You know, healthy even in in a sense, right? I mean like the concept of journalism has ah been degraded to the point now where it's just, you know, it's it's like a shameful profession. It's sad what happened to it, yeah. You know, especially like you could argue that, I mean, at this rate it should be, right? Like if if you… If you follow like you know the New York Post, every other article is like, you know ah here's the ah way to save money on like the best deals on toilet seats on Amazon, and stuff like that. ah you know And so like guys who do decent work um can post on Substack and there's you know people to consume that and that's good.
00:18:43
Speaker
But I feel like overall like the it's it's got to be on the way out ah and and I view that as like the optimistic position because if it if it stays it's just going to be ah You know like the New York Post had an article today about a camera that goes into your toilet to take photos of your poop and Then it uses artificial intelligence to predict whether you have like health problems so You know, like, I don't want that to be what rules like the airwaves, right? Like that's yeah like, like, like, like, you know, can you picture like, like your grandpa waking up on Sunday and unfolding the paper and just, you know, really digging into like the latest headlines about what robots are taking photos of your poop for you. You know, while he drinks his coffee, like that it's embarrassing. Uh,
00:19:44
Speaker
you know, to allow these things to to define the times. ah And so social media and ah independent publishing and things like that, for as much of that stuff is terrible. And like 90% of it is slop that, you know, isn't very good.
00:20:01
Speaker
ah
00:20:03
Speaker
That is where anything that's interesting is is going on, at least.
Obsolescence and Skepticism in Media
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, and the crazy thing is it's not like there's a lack of real stories that good independent journalists could be digging into. I mean, ah we know there's crazy things happening, you know, every so often some some story actually will break and um and you're yeah you know ah sometimes it makes me wonder what what Why didn't we hear about this a long time ago? You know, why was nobody digging into this? Or you find out about a bunch of people who knew about it. I mean, the Epstein thing, of course, is the the obvious one that comes to mind where, you know, you didn't know investigative journalists hear rumors about that and want to dig get to the bottom of it. Or were they afraid of ah lawsuits or I mean, you know, it's like, it's like there there are stories to investigate. I mean, there's there's crazy stuff going on. There's crimes that are happening. There's there's things. And and I
00:20:59
Speaker
And it seems like ah have the whole, you know, principle journalistic, you know, integrity class of people are somehow gone and we get we get these nonsense stories, but it's it's. um Yeah, man, it's it's. I have a hard time wrapping my head around how that happened. I don't know if you guys have thoughts about that, but that's it's ah it's crazy to me.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's, um, yeah I mean, obviously most of this is just inside baseball, right? Like if, if, you know, the, I mean the Washington post, uh, you know, I mean, it's basically, uh, owned by the same guy, you know, it's it's Jeff Bezos, right? So like.
00:21:44
Speaker
ah Most of the legacy like newspapers publishing, like a they are up against some very legitimate ah disruptions in the sense that like no one really reads physical newspapers anymore. yeah so There's just a legitimate thing where it's like, yeah, you're kind of the ah it kind of out luck there.
00:22:06
Speaker
and
00:22:09
Speaker
That of course serves them well because like not everybody can just start their own newspaper, but anybody can go start their own blog. and so if If you have ah something interesting to say or a unique perspective or something like that, there's no real barrier to entry ah to publishing that information.
00:22:28
Speaker
Whereas previously you would have to go to a newspaper and say like, Hey, will you publish this? Uh, you know, you would have to go make a pitch to somebody and, uh, you know, because you, you could not just go print the papers yourselves like in this, in the way that you can basically now. Right. So they're running into, um, I mean, they've already run into it. it I mean, they're past to this point where.
00:22:53
Speaker
ah there's There's a degree of obsolescence that occurs because all of this is consumed on the internet. ah It's also extremely open to public criticism, right? ah When the newspaper landed on your doorstep, and it's something that you just kind of read at your house in the morning, ah you couldn't see the 30,000 comments of people saying that this is retarded. um Yeah. and so you know it you know unless you came to the conclusion that this was dumb and low status on your own, ah there was there was not like a social reinforcement of that. you know It was just like, yeah, this is the paper, this is what you read. right ah so you know The actual model of like a newspaper ah is functionally obsolete.
00:23:45
Speaker
they've done they've They've done such a good job of eroding trust in what they do. ah through just very open malfeasance and bad faith operating that, ah you know, everyone knows that they're basically full of shit at this point. And that's a hard thing to come back from, where like, you don't have a business model that offers a real comparative advantages, right? ah Like that's gone. So it's like, Oh, no, I'm i'm a journalist, I whatever I have a PhD in
00:24:18
Speaker
You know, any, any of the stuff, uh, or, you know, that that maybe people would have previously been considered experts in, um, you can see this stuff fall apart in real time. Everyone saw this with COVID, right? You had.
00:24:33
Speaker
random guys on the internet who ah maybe work in the medical industry, some some ah you know physicians operating anonymously, ah people who just looked at the data and said, hey, this you know this doesn't match what is being presented through like the legacy press. ah And so like early, and and through most of COVID, there were plenty of people offering legitimately interesting and valuable insights about the situation.
00:25:04
Speaker
that you know you you could get fired for for saying this. like you You would get called an extremist and an idiot ah for ah You know, I mean, you guys remember when it was like, uh, even suggesting that COVID-19 originated in the COVID-19 laboratory, it was like a dangerous right wing. Just, this is something that only like the world's biggest and moron would think that COVID could have come from the COVID lab. You know, no way it came from the wet market right next door to the COVID, let you know, and this is like a dog ate my homework level.
00:25:44
Speaker
ah you know, s thing to tell people and yet people loved it. They couldn't get enough of it. People would, you know, call your boss if they heard you saying that, you know, you thought this came from a lab or that, you know, in any number of things, right. And so they lost a lot of good faith. and They lost a lot of public trust ah through that and they should have, they deserved it, ah you know, especially after the initial month or two of uncertainty, you know, like,
00:26:13
Speaker
Uh, like I can grant anyone, you know, a period of uncertainty when it was like fresh and new and nobody knew what the hell was going on. And, you know, it was like a very uncertain time, but once, you know, data starts to emerge and things like that, and, you know, these people really, uh, show that they.
00:26:31
Speaker
probably weren't worth trusting. And that sentiment has spread to basically any other topic, right? You start seeing stuff about, ah you know, I'm a PhD, and I have a dissertation about why ah The African-American community is disproportionately affected by climate anxiety. and so We need you know ah a trillion dollars to study this, ah to offset the horrible legacy of like colonialism and you know whatever. and it's like this is This is nothing. this This is not anything that's worth reading. This is stupid at face value. ah it's It's probably plagiarized. If it's not plagiarized, it's probably generated by AI.
00:27:19
Speaker
And this is terrible. And so these things that, uh, and these outlets and these, these forms of, of defining what is interesting and defining the times, right? Because that's, that's, you know, the things living in interesting times. Well, what defines interest, what defines the times? Well, it turns out that, uh, when it's just an endless stream of retards supplemented by machine learning AI.
00:27:49
Speaker
You actually don't live in interesting times no matter how interesting they actually are. Yeah.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think the two big things that really kind of shook up everything was was the Donald Trump coming on the scene, of course, and Covid. ah And it makes me wonder, like, was was the press always so beholden to whoever was writing their checks or whoever, you know, their advertisers or whatever? And we just didn't know it because there was no social media. Or did it get this way?
00:28:27
Speaker
um over time, you know, did it get worse and worse? Or was, you know, Walter Cronkite really better, you know, like like people think is, you know, it reminds me of that time when ah I don't know if you guys saw that time when it was right in it, it was in the thick of COVID. When Jon Stewart went on that Stephen Colbert show, and started joking about the, he started riffing about, you know, COVID coming from a lab.
00:28:52
Speaker
And, and like, like, it was obvious. And he he wasn't allowed to say that, you know, it's like, ah to his so to his credit, even though he's, you know, not always, right but ah to his credit at that at that one moment, he said that the Emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. And his buddy Colbert was like trying to, trying to handle it. It was hilarious. I mean, did you guys see that part? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they they do this. Some of these guys, like they'll give you just that little crumb of like,
00:29:20
Speaker
just like walking right up to the line, like once a year to, to you know, and then walking it back and they never quite crossover it, but it's like just enough to hook a little bit of attention from people. Uh, you know, I mean, they're, they're skilled at what they do sometimes. I mean, uh, it's, it's not good that they operate this way, but yeah, that that is you know what what happens from time to time. And it's, it's insidious. Like I think.
00:29:49
Speaker
It probably always has been this way. like As a mode, it's probably always been this way. Whether it's been this bad and this obvious and flagrant, maybe not ah because there was less visibility and and and information moved less quickly. right like like Things move faster now ah exponentially than they did 100 years ago.
00:30:14
Speaker
and so you know know There's also, like I said, it's it's easier to publish. You have to have a 24 hour news cycle. like You have to be churning out content. right like There's not a network that... you know <unk> It's not like back in the day you know where like your TV, just there's just nothing on. i You could turn on CNN at at at three in the morning. you know They're going apeshit about ah Donald Trump's hair or something like that. so they the like ah By necessity, the quality of what's coming out has gone down ah because instead of
Biases and Fact-Checking Complexities
00:30:53
Speaker
filling like a newspaper, like hey just one Sunday edition or something, you've got to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week. and so that That's yeah going to dilute things to say the least. so Just by virtue of volume, you hadn't thought about that. What do you think about all that, Andrew?
00:31:09
Speaker
Well, I was wondering, you know, is, is the, the loss of trust in legacy media, is that really a deal breaker for most people or ah at least a lot of people, um, thinking of most other countries in the world where they have a really robust state controlled media and news platforms or otherwise party affiliated, you know, you, you go.
00:31:38
Speaker
Like you're in Italy and one paper is, is one party and another paper is another party. So you know what you're getting as far as the slant in America. We've had this long time illusion that, that news is, you know, right down the middle. Um, and clearly that's not the case, but our people are just going to be like, okay, well, I'll pick my side and, and take my news from, from the people who agree with me. I mean, they're kind of already doing that implicitly. and Do you think that will happen explicitly?
00:32:07
Speaker
Um, I think that that's probably, uh, I mean, yes, like I think that that's going to be the model, uh, moving, moving forward. you You already see this to an extent with, um, like I think the daily wire is a good example of that. Right. Like, uh, you know, I'm not like a daily wire.
00:32:31
Speaker
subscriber, like I'm not, you know, it's a little normie and it's not, not really my thing, but it's like their production value is there, right? They take it seriously. They're not, they're not just shit posting. And so they, it's a high production value, uh, type of deal. It's a subscriber model. You basically seek them out and explicitly say like, Hey, this is the type of content that I want to consume. Right.
00:32:59
Speaker
And I'm willing to pay like a premium to do this. I'm willing to pay ah ah whatever whatever the daily wire costs, $10 a month, $15 a month, something like that, um because this this is what I want to see. right I want to see ah Ben Shapiro own the Libs. I want to see Jordan Peterson put on his crazy jacket, you know and what whatever else goes on on the daily wire.
00:33:25
Speaker
ah And, you know, that that's a reasonably high budget operation, it's a profitable company, it's a good model. ah You know, and so I think yes, I think that's probably the future because, you know, people know like CNN,
00:33:43
Speaker
Their viewership is down, their revenues are down. ah It's not what it used to be. And people know that when when they watch CNN, they're going to get some pretty low information stuff, some pretty low quality stuff.
00:33:58
Speaker
ah And you know that's fine if you're if you're running like um like a waiting room at an urgent care center or something like that. if a court lobby yeah Right. you know ah But i mean I don't know. I assume that somewhere there's some very, very sick people who who turn on CNN inside their own homes. ah ah yeah I mean i ah shudder to think what goes on with that. but It's yeah, I think that's what's going to happen. That's kind of what's taking shape you even see this ah With the platform itself right like if you look at Elon Musk buying Twitter ah You know the the libs don't control Twitter anymore
00:34:42
Speaker
And there's been kind of an exodus where now they go and they post on like blue sky or mastodon or or reddit or something like that because ah they're not in control on twitter anymore and That's platform specific, not just ah outlet specific. so So it's starting to just be delineated. It does ah divide like the social fabric of things, right? Like they're they're very much like, hey, this.
00:35:13
Speaker
This is a Reddit person. ah you know This is this is like a distinct persona ah versus a TikToker or something like that. right and so You see these these platforms start to ah create their own like ah personality types of users, ah which ah That's so fairly new. i mean you know and In terms of social effects, I don't know that ah you could necessarily find a one-to-one precedent for this ah historically. like ah
00:35:54
Speaker
you know so that's That's an interesting side effect of this. um so yeah i mean I think in the long term, like you know I don't know if CNN is going to be here in like 50 years, ah but there will be some type of, I think, some equivalent of social media more more closely resembling what we see today on like Substack or ah Twitter or something like that.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, I, i've I'm curious to know how, um you know, for lack of a better term, it's a stupid term not to reuse the fact checking is going to work. ah Because even with all the flaws of, of legacy media, one thing that they were good at, at least at one point in time is making sure that they had sources lined up and And, you know, they could they could just substantiate rumors or things like that and say, you know, with a level of reasonable certainty that this is probably what happened. Whereas ah we're kind of in the wild west right now where there's a lot of information flowing flowing around and it can be really hard to kind of ascertain what
00:37:04
Speaker
what is accurate and what isn't. um i I've found in myself that the more you see it, the you get better at and spotting stuff that you that is you know nonsense, that you might not, it wasn't so clear at first, but um I'm curious to see how that how that's going to evolve because I there's clearly going to be a market for for some sort of I know and I know X has like their community notes. So maybe it's going to be kind of a crowdsource thing from like that. I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah, that's a um that's an interesting question because the the fact checking thing ah is like a prime example of something that
00:37:46
Speaker
at first blush, it's like, oh, that's a great idea. Let's do fact checking because so much of this has become ah partisan or or biased or, you know, any of those types of IDW style complaints where it's like, okay, no one's just telling it like it is or or giving this a ah reasonable shake down the middle or something. ah So ah a lot of people start out that way and they say, yeah, it would be great if there was like a fact checking thing that was reliable, something that could just call bullshit on this. And that got scooped up very quickly by
00:38:22
Speaker
Uh, like things like real clear politics, uh, you know, and it's terrible. Like it's, it's atrocious. It does a very bad job. Uh, and it, it, because they, they operate, uh, in bad faith, they're not, they're not operating in this the way that like.
00:38:41
Speaker
You know, one of us might do it, right? like Or that just a reasonable person who's interested in doing a good job would do this. They they operate this because they want to maintain ah basically liberalism and in the broad sense.
00:38:55
Speaker
ah But if you look at like some of these fact checks, where what you know it'll be like, ah Donald Trump lied 600 times. like He said ah he's got the most beautiful wife in the world. And scientifically, there's no way to even prove that. He's trying to mislead you. right And it's like, yeah, man, the guy's from New York. like I don't know if you ever met a guy from New York, but this is how they they talk. Everything is hyperbole. Everything's the biggest, the most beautiful, the fastest, the slowest, the dumbest, the whatever.
00:39:26
Speaker
Like Donald Trump doesn't speak in concrete terms one way or the other. So doing things like fact checking, uh, adjective use is a waste of time. Uh, there will also be, you know, this, this type of like laundering, uh, this ideological laundering. We're like, if you look at something, uh, like recently with FEMA, right? There is this complaint. Okay. FEMA has spent all their money on illegal aliens and now there's no money.
00:39:55
Speaker
ah for people affected by this hurricane, right? And that went around Twitter for like a day or two and the White House spokesperson came out and said, no, no, that that's not true at all. ah We didn't spend all the money from the emergency fund on you know migration. ah That money was previously set aside for migration. So, ah you know,
00:40:18
Speaker
this is totally misinformation. And it's like, well, it's it's not misinformation. like it it It is objectively true ah that like hundreds of millions of dollars of the FEMA budget for 2024 went to resettling foreign migrants into the United States. And the source for that is fema.gov. like This isn't like some shit that is made up. like This is what your website says. And their position is like, ah and no, no, no, you're misinterpreting this.
00:40:46
Speaker
ah like we were always going to give seven hundred and fifty million dollars to migrants ah so the fact that the
Journalists as Narrative Enforcers
00:40:54
Speaker
emergency budget for like disasters ah is depleted, it's not because we gave this money that it had to migrants, it's because ah we basically didn't give it money to begin with. So boom, you're owned. like Now you've been fact checked. And it's like, you understand that that's not any better, right? like That's terrible. And so the fact checking thing, I think the reason it hasn't ever actually
00:41:21
Speaker
worked out, I don't think it will ever ever work out is because, ah frankly, I don't think anyone anyone wants it if you're on the side of like power, right? If if you approached a newspaper, and you said if if you if you went to a newspaper, a university, a medical research center, ah a government, a military,
00:41:45
Speaker
Anything that is powerful and needs to rely on public trust, ah consensus, and you said, hey, I have a really good idea. Let's make a system where we can prove that you're lying. They're going to say no to that. Right.
00:42:01
Speaker
Right. like there there There is no incentive for the Pentagon ah or for FEMA or for Congress or for the New York Times or for CNN or for Boston you know Consulting Group or for ah you know Johns Hopkins or anything like that to say, yeah, I'm going to give you guys this this golden ticket that will let you prove that we are wrong, let you prove that we are lying, let you prove that we're making this up. um And so I think fact checking Uh, I don't know that it's going to work out. Like I think, uh, like the, the, the instinct is right to say like, Hey, this, you know, I'm a reasonable guy. I would really prefer it if there was just like an objective third party that could, you know, speak to the actual like truth on this. Uh, but even though the instinct is right, I just don't think any of the incentives are there for it to actually take shape in like a meaningful way.
00:43:00
Speaker
And maybe that's kind of just wishing for a return of something that never existed to begin with because, um you know, the the people in these institutions, I mean, we we know from declassified documents and stuff, some of the crazy stuff that went on, even during the golden age of journalism, when everyone was supposed to be super, you know, objective and good and and made everyone feel happy. Maybe that's all they were doing, because we know all all sorts of crimes that were going on underneath everyone's nose. and And their sources at all these big institutions that where they were supposed to be fact checking didn't work. yeah Yeah, I think some of it, like for sure. ah I think you're right on a lot of that. ah But you also have to remember,
00:43:42
Speaker
Like two, two big things have changed since like the, the, the before times. Right. Cause it, cause I mean, uh, we're all old enough to remember, like, you know, the world before the internet was everywhere, right? The world before like smartphones, high-speed data, high-speed internet everywhere, apps for everything. Like I remember a period in in my life where like, if you wanted a paper.
00:44:12
Speaker
ah You know, you would have to like walk to the end of your street and put a quarter into the machine and open it and there was your paper, right? So people aren't gonna like put on their bathrobe and walk to the end of the street and drop a quarter in a slot.
00:44:27
Speaker
ah to read an article about a camera that automatically takes pictures of your turds. You have to at least seem legitimate. like if you If you think back to like um you know guys like Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, that era of like nightly news guys who came across as serious, who came across as credible,
00:44:50
Speaker
who are way less ah sensationalizing ah you know the things like the headlines for the day. ah you know You actually had to like burn a couple of calories and and spend a real physical quarter to access this information. and So they had to make it somewhat decent. like No one you know is is going to do that if what they're serving is just complete slop. They had to at least give you the courtesy of making it look and seem a little bit more legitimate ah But now, ah that barrier is gone. Most people read the news while they're taking a dump right or when they have nothing better to do. It's like a throwaway activity. ah like like Think about it, at least for me. like like When do I check my phone? I check my phone when I've got like two minutes between meetings.
00:45:38
Speaker
ah you know When I'm on the John, when I'm bored because there's just nothing going on and I've got like two minutes to just hit the timeline real quick and just look at the headlines. right It's not something that I set aside real time for. like I don't like get up in the morning, you know sit down and quietly read the news for a half hour ah because it's all super low quality and and it's not worth investing the time in that.
00:46:04
Speaker
right so like That's what works against it. In in the the previous age, the stuff had to look legitimate. It probably was more legitimate. um you know People have stepped down over major ah flubs when they've been discovered to be not true. right And now if if you just say, Hey, this, you're 100% making this up. This is not true at all. Like you could get suspended from Twitter for that before Elon Musk bought it, right? Like, like, you know, people, the New York Times could say, uh,
00:46:38
Speaker
COVID came from a wet market. ah If you don't believe in the vaccine, ah where you you shouldn't even be part of society. and If you went on Twitter and said, that's not true, you you you guys are you have no evidence to substantiate this about the origin of this virus.
00:46:55
Speaker
ah like you know Not only did nothing happen in the New York Times, but you would just get suspended from Twitter for even suggesting that, right? And so there's, in a sense it has always existed, but now it's it's undeniably obvious and it's more prevalent ah than ever where journalists are enforcement agents. Like a legacy media outlet serves as an enforcement apparatus to the state.
00:47:25
Speaker
that is how it generates consensus by force ah in the same way that a cop generates consensus in like a social setting. right When a cop shows up to the bar because there's a bar fight, he doesn't generate consensus by hashing things out. He generates consensus by saying, if you guys don't start acting right, I'm really going to fuck your life up.
00:47:44
Speaker
The New York Times does the same thing. you know So does The Guardian. So does The LA Times. Think about how many how many large publications have written docs articles about guys who run small right-wing blogs.
00:47:58
Speaker
yeah Yeah, right. that that That's that's a policing action. That is an enforcement action because you have violated the program that the media working in conjunction with the government working in conjunction with, you know, other consensus making bodies. If you are counter to that narrative, if you are having an impact, you're going to get a hit piece written about you saying that you're a Nazi or a white supremacist or the the worst guy on earth or you know something like that. right And the message there is that ah we are the ones who define what's interesting. We are the ones who define the times. ah What you will find interesting is this camera that takes a picture of your poop. And if you really don't like that and you take a big enough issue with it and you make enough noise about it,
00:48:45
Speaker
ah we're going to find out who you are and we're gonna make sure that you probably lose your job probably have some maybe some type of social hit ah potentially you know it costs you relationships or or you you know access to banking services or something like that ah you know and and we're seeing this kind of level off a little bit now that you on musk is owns twitter and there's a little bit of ah Energy and in the the proper direction at this point But there I mean we have seen this at least since the Obama years, right? It did didn't take them very long for technology like ah Digital news, you know social media to become ah You know prevalent it did not take them long to realize hey we can use the press and as an enforcement agent, right? I mean, you you saw this even even if you think back to like during GWOT, right? You would have the New York Times ah getting approval before they ran certain stories because they knew that if they published something ah that maybe the federal government didn't want them to publish.
00:49:50
Speaker
then maybe they would lose access to certain sources or you know first access to information or something like that. right so That relationship isn't new, but in the social media age, ah if you reject them too hard and you do something individually ah that is not just like a boys versus girls post,
00:50:09
Speaker
ah they They all come at you and that that becomes their their business model.
Erosion of Journalist Authority
00:50:14
Speaker
is is basically a ah you know They don't have jurisdictional limits ah to steal from Polpo. the you know Journalists are just cops without without limits to their jurisdiction. and That is kind of the evolution of a lot of their role, you know that and of course telling you the latest deals on Amazon.
00:50:36
Speaker
When do you think that started, Lee? like When do you think the journalists became the the enforcers rather than... mean was it Has it always been that way or what what do you take what do you think? i think um
00:50:48
Speaker
I think when when we started to tell them to learn to code, you know like when when these when when these's you know when this became a low status job, like like these people think of themselves as ah like intellectually elite. right like like These people, I'm a journalist, you should care what I have to say about this. like I have the correct opinion about this. I can't believe you would doubt me. We are in a climate crisis in ah you know The most racist time to have ever existed in Adolph Hitler's about to take the rings of power. What do you mean? ah You're fact-checking me or or you you know, you're making a comment about me here something like that and I think a lot of that is what is what did it when they realize it like hey this is
00:51:35
Speaker
like people think you're a retard ah and your job is actually kind of a joke. ah I think they realize like if I'm not going to have power through deference, I'm going to at least have some type of power through the ability to impose ah like, like ah you know, create a risk for people to oppose me. um And so I think that's kind of how that relationship has has evolved. Like there's a very big incentive uh you know people want power especially like journalist type personalities most of them right and i'm not talking about like uh you know actual like like journalists i've been talking about like like tayb or somebody like that i'm talking about people that are just writing hit pieces
00:52:22
Speaker
DEI promos, things like this that that don't have serious thoughts, don't have intimate you know you know novel things to say, they don't have interesting things to say, but they feel like they should be doing this type of work. ah that's That's who does this, right? like This is the type of relationship that gets fostered ah when you have to give these people jobs, they go to these institutions, they go to college, they get They get their degree, they get their PhD, they get told that they're an expert and they go online and some guy who they hate who just is wearing a MAGA hat or something like that says, hey, I found a problem with your study here. It turns out this whole thing's fake. You actually don't really know what you're doing. That's when the journalist began to hate.
00:53:11
Speaker
ah And they certainly are stupid now. i mean i just just it it seems Much has been made about like the competency crisis nowadays, and they certainly are less intelligent. i mean They have a specific skill set. They know how to speak clearly and and tell and ah articulately without saying, they know how to talk over people who are getting off track. But in terms of actually thinking and having a conversation, and mean The few times you see journalists forced into a situation like that, it's it's really ugly. Yeah, yeah. It's it's tough to watch. you know I ah get little glimpses of this sometimes. Like I don't... you know ah and Like millions of people, I don't even pay for like cable. i don't even you no yeahs It's not even a service that I use, but ah you know i I travel quite a bit and
00:54:01
Speaker
You know so like i'll turn on the tv in my hotel and shit like that and I mean it is terrible out there I mean it is brutal like like you're you're turning on A panel discussion between A bunch of people who have like like a 90 iq Uh are reading off of cue cards for four minutes at a time saying the dumbest shit you've ever heard Uh, and then you're getting like five minutes of herbie's ads and obesity ads uh and shit like that and you know, then it's back to them. And I mean, it it's it's terrible. It's disgusting. Yeah, I'm kind of the same boat. I I travel for work and I'm the same thing. I'll turn it on in my hotel. And it's the same thing. They say night in and night out. And I i like this is these people are living in hell. Like they they they have yeah all the trappings of, you know, the legitimacy and intelligence, whatever. That's got to be the most mind numbingly awful job ever.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah, living in hell is a good way to describe it because ah the it's i mean that's perfect. like these They get paid to psych themselves out about a threat that doesn't really exist. right like every every Every day they go on and and for 24 hours, they have to pretend that they're ah about to be you know ah like subjected to turbo Hitler at any moment.
00:55:29
Speaker
uh and then it's just like right around the corner uh and you know it's ah you know unfortunately it's not true and uh it's it's one of those things where it's like you guys are just lying you're you're just making this up like uh you know if if you're looking at uh like i watched the theo vaughan interview today with uh uh jd vance It's like if you can watch that interview and then just be like terrified of JD Vance being the vice president, like you are divorced from reality. right like yeah yeah and like In hell is ah is a fitting ah way of describing this because
00:56:11
Speaker
ah it like Hell can be described as like losing access to God. right like there there is in in a In a religious sense, like you know ah hell ah you know in Christianity, is like ah youre youre you are cut off from God. You have lost access to God.
00:56:29
Speaker
And for a journalist, they have lost access to reality. And there this is probably analogous to them that they are in a type of hell because their job ostensibly is to report on reality and the the interesting times that we may be living in. And yet ah through their own through their own you know nature, their fallen nature, they are denied access to reality by merit of being a journalist. Yeah.
00:56:59
Speaker
And and they're yeah, they're not allowed to talk about any of the topics that actually are interesting. And they have to just keep repeating the same thing. Yeah, it's it's a it's a purgatorial state, if nothing else. Yeah, for sure. um Andrew, what do you think? We've been talking a lot. What do you think? Oh, I've just been soaking in. It's been very, very interesting. um So um I don't know. I don't know. I've got a follow-up right now. OK, no worries. Well, yeah, we're actually coming up kind of kind of close on time. But yeah this has been this has been really good.
Lee Enfield on Firearms
00:57:33
Speaker
I wanted to talk just a little bit about um and we but mostly talking about journalism and truth and and politics and stuff. ah You you talk you write a lot about guns, your your pseudonym is a is a firearm. ah My my dad has one I grew up shooting at Lee and photo ah three or three British I love that gun.
00:57:53
Speaker
Um, so, um, what do you, what do you, um, obviously, you know, uh, part of the American gun culture, what, what, uh, what made you kind of start writing about that kind of stuff? Um, just, just organic interests. I don't, you know, it's that simple. It's it's just, you know, something that I enjoy. Um, it's just something I enjoy researching, talking about, learning about, uh, that type of thing. I mean, it's, uh,
00:58:21
Speaker
Really that simple. you know not not you know I wish I had a better answer, but I just think guns are cool, and that's that's pretty much it. Yeah, they are. Well, yeah, if you're interested in ah politics, current events, and firearms, freedom, generally speaking, of any of that ah variety, ah yeah, definitely check out Lee's ah newsletter and um I guess what would i wanted to I wanted to get before we go, maybe maybe we can end on just a prediction. What's going to happen? but What do you think?
Political Predictions and Concerns
00:58:56
Speaker
ah In these tumultuous times that we live in, we live in interesting times, for better, for worse. ah What do the next few months hold?
00:59:03
Speaker
um I think a complete decisive Trump victory and I think the Libs are getting 10 million years in the the crystals. crystals yeah
00:59:15
Speaker
um i I've been genuinely fearful for the man's life. ah Yeah, me too. Yeah. Because they're getting extremely desperate. Yeah, they really are. like it it feels like I want to get ahead of myself, but it feels like the campaign is coming apart for the the blue team.
00:59:33
Speaker
ah you know i mean the the thing is that Kamala Harris is not a good politician. like she's just not like ah of you know like I don't agree with her ideologically on virtually anything, ah but I also recognize it. like There are more skilled politicians ah in the Democrat camp. She is ah not good at this stuff. I mean, this this has really been a nightmare. It doesn't mean she's not a risk. It doesn't mean she can't win.
01:00:06
Speaker
ah because a lot of people who vote Democrat, they do it for a living basically. like like Most of the Democrat coalition ah is made up of government employees or people who receive substantial government assistance. and so It doesn't really matter who runs because you know it's like, hey man, you you need to go vote if you want to pay your rent because this this is where your income comes from or ah your your supplement comes from. but ah That relationship exists somewhat on the right, of course, but not to the same degree. and It's not as explicit. ah And so she's she's still a risk, you know, any anyone is. ah But she has been very underwhelming. She's done a very bad job, I think.
01:00:54
Speaker
Her public speaking is is not very good. Her running mate is not very good. Uh, she's not likable. She does not come off as relatable. Uh, so she's got a lot working against her, but it's, it's a powerful machine. And so I don't want to just call it, but I, I think Trump, uh, if the election is, you know, uh,
01:01:21
Speaker
I don't know. Did you upload this to YouTube or anything? Because i'm I'm going to say the election is probably fake, that our electoral system is deeply flawed, but I don't want to get you like kicked off of YouTube. We should be doing ours on YouTube. and i've I've thought about that, but I have not, yeah as of yet, we're just on Spotify and like Apple.
01:01:36
Speaker
Okay, well, i I fully anticipate this will be the the safest and most secure election of our lifetimes. And if it is as the safest and most secure election, then I think Donald Trump should win because that's, by all indications, what is going on right now.
01:01:55
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, I'm fearful for like a Hail Mary, uh, some type of third attempt on his life, something like that. Um, because in a lot of ways, like the the left, especially on the fringes, uh, really is a party of derangement. Like a lot of these people, yeah I mean, this is like the official political party of like people with severe mental illnesses. Uh, like, like it it just is. And and i' I'm not even saying that to be like a smart ass or anything. i mean I mean, it's just like.
01:02:23
Speaker
Oh, are you are you like fucking crazy? You should be a Democrat. ah you know that's that's that We love you guys. like that's what That's part of this coalition. you know And obviously not all of them, but like that's where crazy finds its home. right ah like The psych ward votes blue. And so it it's a lot more unpredictable there.
01:02:43
Speaker
Um, hopefully we can have Trump win. Hopefully we can have a peaceful and uneventful transfer of power. Um, and hopefully Trump will be more successful in a second term, uh, at overcoming the bureaucracy. And, uh, you know, hopefully we can, you know, I don't know, get, get back to some type of sanity or get get back on track with, uh, having some semblance of a halfway real country.
01:03:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, hey, I think that's a good, it's good, good, a place as I need to leave it, but thank you so much Lee for coming on. This was a, you were a fantastic guest and this was a really interesting
Final Remarks and Farewell
01:03:20
Speaker
conversation. So anything you want to plug or anything you want to say before we go? Uh, no, I appreciate coming on. Uh, it's been nice talking with you guys. Um, anybody listening, like I said earlier in block press, E N P L O C press dot.com, go subscribe, uh, or just follow me on Twitter at short mag S M L E.
01:03:36
Speaker
Okay, thanks so much. Thanks, Andrew, and thank you guys for listening. We will see you guys all next week. All right, we'll see ya. Bye. There are only four things certain since social progress that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins,
01:04:06
Speaker
When all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sin, As surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, The gods of the copy were hidden, with terrors of water.