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40: Degree Studies (Midterms, Musk)
1.2k Plays2 years ago
@DegreeStudies is back to talk about the Musk Twitter purchase, the RW blackpilling in response to the midterm fiasco, and the desire to lead versus the desire to serve.
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett.
00:00:20
Speaker
I am joined once again by Degree Studies, our neighborhood fed spook.
00:00:28
Speaker
He's coming back from the Domestic Extremism Podcast where we discussed the federal government's interest in my Twitter account and yours.
00:00:38
Speaker
So welcome back to the program, Degree Studies.
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, thanks.
00:00:42
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:00:45
Speaker
So I wanted to have you on because it's just been a lot of movements going on in the last couple of weeks.
Social Media and Extremism
00:00:53
Speaker
The Elon Musk Twitter purchase being among them and then also the midterms that I just thought it would be interesting to hear your take from somebody who has had to brief and be briefed by a lot of these people who are very concerned about
00:01:12
Speaker
extremism on the internet.
00:01:13
Speaker
So maybe let's start with the Twitter purchase.
00:01:17
Speaker
Now, remind the folks exactly what you did as far as sentiment analysis for the government.
00:01:26
Speaker
First, I had a background in foreign policy.
00:01:29
Speaker
So for a lot of the time, I was doing research that was more interesting and I would say more legitimate about...
00:01:39
Speaker
you know, jihadist groups and their use of social media.
00:01:44
Speaker
But I think as the I guess it's not as the war on terror progressed, but at a later stage in the war on terror, probably during the Syrian civil war, people got much more interested in like individual social media accounts and online recruitment.
00:02:02
Speaker
I think I mentioned on on my last appearance that people were very worried
00:02:07
Speaker
that like we had lost the online battle to ISIS.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I think their concern was that, I don't even really know what they thought, but the narrative went something like, we weren't attentive to this space.
00:02:21
Speaker
And so while we weren't paying attention, the jihadis created like a very effective propaganda and recruitment, you know, base on the internet.
00:02:33
Speaker
And I think,
00:02:35
Speaker
That's not total nonsense, but it was a little bit of, I don't know, looking for the car keys where the light is shining or something.
00:02:45
Speaker
It was a very easy explanation for why things had gone the way they did.
00:02:50
Speaker
I think people didn't want to grapple with questions like, why might this be appealing?
00:02:56
Speaker
Or is there a native constituency for this in the Middle East that would sort of exist differently?
Surveillance and Domestic Politics
00:03:02
Speaker
regardless of technology, much easier to say, oh, like we're good at counterterrorism.
00:03:09
Speaker
The only thing that's new is these social media platforms.
00:03:13
Speaker
So that's why we didn't have our eye on the ball.
00:03:16
Speaker
So let's go look at it.
00:03:17
Speaker
So, you know, in the early days of my career, I was doing a lot of different research on these groups, like I said, and there was some general interest in their use of social media.
00:03:28
Speaker
And then this idea came in that like,
00:03:31
Speaker
ISIS was really effective in converting people to its worldview on there.
00:03:36
Speaker
And, you know, it wasn't the only thing I did, but sort of consistently a part of research contracts I would get was looking at the social media of terrorist groups and what was happening with that.
00:03:50
Speaker
right after Trump came into the White House, there's a lot more money and a lot more interest in like a similar type of surveillance, but domestic.
00:04:01
Speaker
So in other words, like they said, hey, you were looking at ISIS accounts.
00:04:06
Speaker
You know, we want to see are there like American neo-Nazi accounts doing similar things, you know, recruiting people.
00:04:14
Speaker
And yeah, I think it's, you know, that, as you can imagine, was even more
00:04:19
Speaker
retarded and dumb.
00:04:22
Speaker
Some of the contracts are more interesting and specific.
00:04:25
Speaker
I think I talked to you about this, but maybe not on the podcast.
00:04:29
Speaker
I got on one contract where one of the branches of the armed forces, they didn't come to us with a particularly
00:04:40
Speaker
aggressive take.
00:04:41
Speaker
They were just like, hey, can you guys see how you think anti-vaccine sentiment is moving within our troops or whatever?
00:04:52
Speaker
And, you know, they're very careful to say, like, you know, we're not targeting anyone.
00:04:56
Speaker
No one's going to get punished.
00:04:57
Speaker
We just want like a very broad general analysis of like what you think the attitudes are and what's feeding into them.
00:05:06
Speaker
We just want to talk to them.
00:05:07
Speaker
We just want to talk to them.
00:05:09
Speaker
We're just asking questions.
00:05:11
Speaker
And I think the reason I mentioned it to you is like that was one of the projects I ended up feeling better about because ultimately we just said to them, you know, as far as we can tell, like vaccine skepticism is like incredibly organic.
00:05:31
Speaker
Like putting aside sort of everything that happened with COVID, like the failures of COVID,
00:05:39
Speaker
you know, the failures of Fauci or, or whatever the CDC, like vac skepticism sort of exists.
00:05:47
Speaker
Uh, like one thing I even found totally unrelated to COVID is like, there's all these stories from the Gulf war where veterans, I guess that, um,
00:05:57
Speaker
In the military, they had like a certain kind of gun.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's called like an air gun or a paint gun or something that could get you like up to 12 vaccinations at once.
00:06:08
Speaker
And so a bunch of guys, when the first Gulf War brought out, there were like a lot of people in the military who were not up to...
00:06:17
Speaker
you know, they didn't have their up-to-date vaccinations.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so they would get, especially if they had already been deployed, like, you know, maybe they were in Kuwait, but they didn't have all their immunizations, they would get like, oh, this guy's missing eight.
00:06:31
Speaker
We'll give him eight vaccinations.
00:06:33
Speaker
This guy's missing 11.
00:06:34
Speaker
We'll give him 11.
00:06:35
Speaker
So there were a lot of like, especially older officers who were like, I'm not even particularly worried about this vaccine.
00:06:43
Speaker
I just have like a bad experience
00:06:47
Speaker
with getting vaccinated in the service.
Public Opinion and Manipulation
00:06:49
Speaker
And so, you know, basically, and I think that's even a broader part of like, I guess one sentiment we picked up was that like,
00:06:59
Speaker
soldiers were very suspicious of medical treatment in the service generally, like almost in the same way that maybe you would think athletes would be suspicious of a team doctor.
00:07:11
Speaker
Like there's a lot of like, just take this shot and get back out there, son.
00:07:15
Speaker
And they're worried that their real health isn't the concern.
00:07:18
Speaker
So in other words, it wasn't like Russian propaganda.
00:07:22
Speaker
It wasn't Dan Bongino or,
00:07:25
Speaker
or whoever.
00:07:28
Speaker
It was just like a very natural organic skepticism.
00:07:32
Speaker
And so we just said like, yeah, as far as we can tell, you know, nobody's nobody's casting sorcery on the on the back skeptical.
00:07:40
Speaker
Well, that's I mean, that's exactly it.
00:07:44
Speaker
It's it's they they take this like technical approach to opinion management like that.
00:07:51
Speaker
You just
00:07:53
Speaker
that they ought to know how to speak the magic words that will inculcate the opinions that they want.
00:08:00
Speaker
And if they don't know how to do that yet, they just haven't found the right machine learning algorithm to deliver the right words to the right audience that will create the public opinion that they require.
00:08:16
Speaker
Which, you know, it's this very natural, almost understandable progression.
00:08:22
Speaker
from like traditional marketing to digital marketing to like, you know, there's definitely something to this idea that you can, that you can alter, you know,
00:08:36
Speaker
public opinion with marketing materials and that that has made way into the public sector.
00:08:42
Speaker
But it's it's they've they've it's led them to like completely ignore like the justice of the cause.
00:08:50
Speaker
Like like could it possibly be that some of these people have a point with their grievances like that's not even on the radar for them.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:59
Speaker
And I think, you know.
00:09:02
Speaker
In the defense of the military,
00:09:04
Speaker
like their institution is actually sort of transparently non-democratic in the way that other institutions aren't.
00:09:14
Speaker
So like they might even say like,
00:09:17
Speaker
look, our troops have good reasons to think we're lying, but we want them to not know we're lying.
00:09:23
Speaker
What can we do?
00:09:23
Speaker
Like they will sort of cop to the fact that like once you're in the army, they coerce you.
00:09:30
Speaker
Like that's part of the deal.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah, you signed up for some coercion.
00:09:36
Speaker
Right.
00:09:36
Speaker
But it's the same model for the rest of us.
00:09:39
Speaker
And obviously that's not how it's supposed to work.
00:09:42
Speaker
But yeah, I was – this is a little bit of a digression, I guess.
00:09:45
Speaker
But do you know that spineless rat on Twitter, Wajahat Ali?
00:09:52
Speaker
He's like a progressive journalist.
00:09:54
Speaker
Do you know who this guy is?
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
So he tweeted something after the midterms where he was like –
00:10:01
Speaker
You know when the brown pundits go into black voice?
00:10:07
Speaker
It's not how they talk, but if they're delivering a certain kind of, I guess they think, soulful message.
00:10:15
Speaker
Oh, they love folks?
00:10:17
Speaker
Or no, they love folk.
00:10:19
Speaker
Singular.
00:10:20
Speaker
Wajahat was really was really like black ministering it up.
00:10:24
Speaker
And he was like, I forget I forget the words, but it was like, listen, y'all like addressing white women.
00:10:31
Speaker
And it was like, I know the sisters have been talking to y'all, but like election after election, you keep voting majority for Republicans.
00:10:40
Speaker
Like, what are we supposed to do?
00:10:44
Speaker
And it's like, well, you're supposed to let them vote for Republicans.
00:10:48
Speaker
Idiot.
00:10:49
Speaker
Like.
00:10:50
Speaker
I guess the thing I'm connecting between these two scenarios is like, he didn't feel that he needed to explain that like a big social project is just getting half the country to not be the way they are anymore.
Progressive Ideologies and Historical Contexts
00:11:08
Speaker
Like he wasn't even saying like, oh, I really wish we could persuade you.
00:11:14
Speaker
He's saying like, look,
00:11:17
Speaker
the project is like making you not be you anymore.
00:11:21
Speaker
And you're being really slow about it.
00:11:23
Speaker
And like he felt no self consciousness, because I could certainly have the sentiment of being like, Oh, I looked on Twitter and like libs are still living it up.
00:11:33
Speaker
Like, I'm not happy about this.
00:11:35
Speaker
But I would I would certainly never be like, guys, how many cycles tell you're not libs anymore?
00:11:41
Speaker
Like, infinite cycles, till the end of time.
00:11:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:11:50
Speaker
Who was I talking to?
00:11:51
Speaker
It was like... Oh, no, no.
00:11:54
Speaker
I was listening to Moldbug on the Good Old Boys podcast, and he was talking about the Yankees in the 1850s, right before the Civil War.
00:12:04
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, the shitlib just is who he is for all eternity from the dawn of time.
00:12:12
Speaker
It's the same mentality.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, unchangeable.
00:12:15
Speaker
Moldbug has personally traumatized me because...
00:12:19
Speaker
You know, I'm from the Northeast and though, though my family is lapsed Catholics, like they're, they raised me and my brother in a Unitarian Universalist church, which I don't know if you know about the Unitarian Universalist church, but it's like, it's the most mainline Protestant nonsense new age.
00:12:43
Speaker
It's like, just, it's just sort of being libs the church, right?
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's the Gay Straight Alliance, the church.
00:12:50
Speaker
Like, we had the first lesbian ministers.
00:12:53
Speaker
We had all this stuff.
00:12:55
Speaker
But it's like, I used to walk around Boston and see, like, statues of old abolitionists.
00:13:05
Speaker
You know, they've had quotes.
00:13:06
Speaker
It's like old-timey language.
00:13:08
Speaker
So it's kind of like fire and brimstone.
00:13:10
Speaker
And I would kind of have this thought in my head where I'd be like, listen, like, we're...
00:13:17
Speaker
Today we're irredeemable pussies, sure.
00:13:20
Speaker
But like these guys, they had big long beards.
00:13:24
Speaker
Like they were outraged by slavery.
00:13:26
Speaker
Like some of them died.
00:13:27
Speaker
Like these guys weren't pussies.
00:13:28
Speaker
Like these guys were the real deal.
00:13:30
Speaker
And then I think as I got older, I like started to make some connections in my head where I was like,
00:13:39
Speaker
We're the abolitionists.
00:13:40
Speaker
Like, is this the same thing?
00:13:42
Speaker
Like, are radically progressive Protestants, like, always lame in this?
00:13:48
Speaker
exact way.
00:13:48
Speaker
And I'd be like, no, no, no.
00:13:51
Speaker
And there was no one like putting the history together for me, you know, so I could just sort of like, but then like, that's almost, it's not mold bugs main project, but I think there was something on unqualified reservations where he was just like pulling out quotes from some of the early abolitionists.
00:14:06
Speaker
And yeah, just being like, this is, this is the eternal shit live.
00:14:10
Speaker
They've always been like this.
00:14:11
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, yeah.
00:14:13
Speaker
I was trying to like rescue something from this pseudo heritage of mine, but like there was nothing there to admire.
00:14:22
Speaker
This is very traumatic.
00:14:24
Speaker
I mean, you know, I. I actually reading reading Albion Seed, which, you know, I plug all the time because it's the only book I've ever read.
00:14:34
Speaker
But but.
00:14:37
Speaker
Reading that one, I really did.
00:14:39
Speaker
Even the Quakers.
00:14:41
Speaker
You know, I acquired a grudging respect for some of what the Quakers were up to, even though like basically what I view it as is like because the Puritans and the Quakers won so hard.
00:14:56
Speaker
We are living with all of the consequences of their flaws.
00:15:02
Speaker
And yeah, I guess, I guess the principal difference is like they, they paid the price at various points for, for not having one yet.
00:15:12
Speaker
Um, and like some of them, you know, really did like pay the cost of their convictions.
00:15:17
Speaker
So like, even if we don't share those convictions, you can say like, these seem like people who maybe could have been born into almost any cultural milieu and they would have been like rabid, uh,
00:15:31
Speaker
you know, rabid dogmatic evangelicals of some project or another.
00:15:38
Speaker
And like today, because I do still sort of feel today, it's like if I meet, if I meet a progressive who I think like, you know, might blow themselves up at a post office one day if we win, like there's some grudging respect there, but it's just like most of them aren't that.
00:15:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's it's.
00:16:04
Speaker
You do you do like and it's because it is these like journalists, like bureaucrat like just the safest people imaginable who are producing all this content about resist and and, you know, they really like their self concept is like the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars, literally like that's who they think they are.
00:16:27
Speaker
Right.
00:16:27
Speaker
And I think Moldbug has made this point about this exact person too, but it's like, I 100% believe more than I believe almost anything else that like, you know, I mean, I guess his religious heritage notwithstanding, it's like if Ezra Klein was born in 1920s Germany,
00:16:46
Speaker
he would have ended up like a very persuasive Nazi.
00:16:49
Speaker
And if he was born in 1900 Russia, he would have been like a Politburo guy.
00:16:56
Speaker
Like there's a, there's a lot of people that you just get the sense that something in their soul is like, they have, they have somewhat considerable mental gifts and they were always just going to sort of use those mental gifts regardless of context.
00:17:15
Speaker
to succeed as much as possible in some sort of status, status thing.
00:17:21
Speaker
And usually that's going to mean just sort of siding with the way things are going with status quo.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah, man, I, it's, it's especially funny to have that conversation.
00:17:32
Speaker
I actually had that conversation with some lib acquaintances.
00:17:37
Speaker
because I was basically accusing them of that.
00:17:39
Speaker
I was like, look, you know, if you had grown up, you know, in that environment, you would be just like those people.
00:17:47
Speaker
Because we were talking about presentism a little bit.
00:17:51
Speaker
And they were like, no, no, no, we wouldn't have.
00:17:53
Speaker
We would have seen, we would have understood.
00:17:55
Speaker
And they were kind of making this like religious argument that like, you know, my spirit is...
00:18:01
Speaker
These opinions are like central to my being, the sort of ball of light that's at the center of me.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then I sort of steer the conversation toward like the inner city.
00:18:19
Speaker
And I was like, so are those people a product of their environment?
00:18:22
Speaker
Like, you know, are the crime rates there?
00:18:24
Speaker
Is that if you were born in that milieu, would you have still had that sort of shining, shining little light of truth that would have told you to be better?
00:18:34
Speaker
And they sort of rapidly changed the subject.
00:18:36
Speaker
But it's essentially the same argument.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I actually think I wasn't entirely fair to them.
00:18:42
Speaker
Like, I think I do believe that, you know, you make real choices.
00:18:48
Speaker
But
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, ultimately, the spiritual angle of that choice is like, are you, you know, it's, I feel like such a commie, it's almost like, are you a bootlicker or not?
00:19:05
Speaker
Like, are you just are you just eating boot or not?
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, and, and look, it's complicated, because I do also think in a weird way, there's like a negative image version of this argument.
00:19:20
Speaker
Which is like the deep, the deep irony of our society is that being a bootlicker sort of means you have to be subversive about everything true and good.
00:19:31
Speaker
So it's like a weird, uh,
00:19:34
Speaker
like join the regime in transgressing against.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:38
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's kind of the, it's kind of the nature of permanent revolution, right?
00:19:43
Speaker
Like the way to, you have to sort of defend the permanent revolution by both being like both kind of doing this, like rage against the machine, uh, rebel LARP.
Authority and Social Structures
00:19:56
Speaker
And then also just mindlessly defending all of the institutions of power that that revolution has already captured.
00:20:04
Speaker
Right, but it introduces an interesting question about what archetypes are attracted to this.
00:20:10
Speaker
Because I think, presumably, there is a sort of fascist kind of bootlicker that is not particularly drawn.
00:20:21
Speaker
There must be a personality that is very willing to lick boots, but is aesthetically primarily drawn to order.
00:20:31
Speaker
And so they can't really...
00:20:33
Speaker
get themselves.
00:20:34
Speaker
And like the irony of the people who most like our status quo is like, it's a very bizarre personality to be like, I like being a social conformist, but I also like chaos.
00:20:52
Speaker
That's very unique, you know?
00:20:53
Speaker
And so I think I almost feel, and I think part of what's going on with the dissident right is
00:21:01
Speaker
that's interesting is like we're getting some weird mixed up archetype too because it's like it's the mix of people who who know in their hearts that if there's an order worth following you should submit to it yes that that is not present and so transgression is called for but like the transgression is bad
00:21:27
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:21:28
Speaker
Like, it's like, because I do have this thought all the time, whenever we're as people on the right, like calling people sheeple.
00:21:34
Speaker
I mean, I guess Indian Bronson has brought this up a lot.
00:21:36
Speaker
Like, in reference to the vaccine, he's asked like a good thought experiment where he's like, if you considered your government legitimate, don't you think people should shut up and take the shot if they tell them to?
00:21:50
Speaker
And like, you know, I think that there are lots of reasons why
00:21:54
Speaker
at this moment we should defer that question.
00:21:57
Speaker
But I certainly understood the point he was making.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm like an anarchist with respect to this regime.
00:22:06
Speaker
Like, I just monotonically want all of their authority removed from them
00:22:13
Speaker
as quickly as possible, regardless of the topic.
00:22:17
Speaker
If there's a question, should they do this?
00:22:19
Speaker
Should they be in charge of this?
00:22:21
Speaker
My answer is no.
00:22:24
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, bootlicker is a strong word, but I have always really responded to folklore about the return of the righteous king.
00:22:42
Speaker
And to be able to, I mean, this is fundamentally, this is what Sam Hyde's making fun of when he talks about Hitler needs me.
00:22:54
Speaker
Hitler needs me to be his top guy.
00:22:56
Speaker
Like, that's, you know, he's being funny about it, but that is a real impulse.
00:23:02
Speaker
Like, to want to be extremely loyal and valuable to someone who deserves loyalty.
00:23:13
Speaker
No, and I, I mean, maybe this is revealing too much psychologically about me, but, like, I think I really ultimately...
00:23:25
Speaker
want to be an Indian more than a chief.
00:23:29
Speaker
And like the great, the great tragedy of my life, at least my professional life has been like finding people that I'm sort of like, can I have faith in this person?
00:23:40
Speaker
Can I believe in this person?
00:23:41
Speaker
Do they deserve the fruits of my intellectual efforts?
00:23:45
Speaker
And then like ultimately discovering that they were unethical or not that impressive or not that committed, but like,
00:23:54
Speaker
it has always felt to me that if they really were like worthy of authority, that I would never have the impulse to like usurp them.
00:24:03
Speaker
I'd just be so pleased like, oh, there's like actually somebody deserving and accountable in charge.
00:24:13
Speaker
That that would be like such a thrilling thing to find.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I suspect, I mean, this may have something to do with my particular pathologies, but I think you can sense
00:24:23
Speaker
in the broader culture, in people's personal lives, that this is a big source of the rage that like, yes, American society is free in certain ways, but it's like any submission at all is an outrage when it's to idiots and liars and cowards.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yes, no, that's exactly right.
00:24:47
Speaker
And I have had the experience
00:24:52
Speaker
once in my life of being really, um, sort of adopted into a household by a mentor that I really respected.
00:25:05
Speaker
And he, he, he had this like, he had this like intense big man energy.
00:25:11
Speaker
He was, you know, he was, he was about my dad's age and he had a bunch of sons and I was friends with all of his sons.
00:25:18
Speaker
And, um,
00:25:20
Speaker
And, you know, not not perfect, you know, they weren't perfect people, but like to be sort of enfolded into a really virtuous hierarchy.
00:25:37
Speaker
It's a shame that more people haven't had that experience.
00:25:41
Speaker
No, it's a really powerful.
00:25:42
Speaker
I think when I was young, I was always confused.
00:25:46
Speaker
I would often be in the presence of men.
00:25:49
Speaker
like teachers or like my mom's friends.
00:25:52
Speaker
Maybe it's like a fucking dude with a ponytail who'd be like, you don't need to worry around like Mr. Dunn.
00:25:59
Speaker
Like he's cool.
00:26:01
Speaker
He doesn't come down on you hard like your football coach or something.
00:26:06
Speaker
And like, I always kind of knew I had contempt for that, but I didn't realize why till I was an adult.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I think it's that I'm like, oh, he was saying he has nothing for us.
00:26:19
Speaker
Like he was sort of saying that it would take care and attention for him to assume authority.
00:26:27
Speaker
And he'd rather just hang out, which like he is able to cast as being nice to us, but it's an abdication.
00:26:35
Speaker
And like when you're a kid, you don't know what a, what a big abdication it is, but it, it becomes clear later.
00:26:43
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:26:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:26:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:46
Speaker
It,
00:26:48
Speaker
And I mean, the sort of the archetype that you have to adopt almost is that of like a. A dispossessed elite, like.
00:26:58
Speaker
Ultimately, like what we're saying is there like there should be a hierarchy.
00:27:03
Speaker
And we should be at the top of it and and not like.
00:27:08
Speaker
Not because we're better, but because.
00:27:12
Speaker
nobody else is signing up.
00:27:14
Speaker
Nobody else is showing up.
00:27:15
Speaker
And like, I'm having this, I'm having this issue with, with, you know, my kids right now that they're not going to, there's not going to be an infrastructure for them to plug into.
00:27:27
Speaker
Like there's not a hierarchy.
00:27:28
Speaker
There's not, they don't have authority figures.
00:27:31
Speaker
And so like, I literally, I mean, part of my sort of vision for what we're doing at exit is to,
00:27:41
Speaker
create a situation where they could have teachers and mentors and coaches who are not me and have things to tell them and teach them that I can't teach them and to whom they can submit safely and, you know, and, and, and have those, those transformative experiences.
00:28:04
Speaker
And then, you know, go ahead.
00:28:06
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead.
00:28:08
Speaker
Well, I mean, and then become like, this is maybe a little bit of a theological point for, for like my faith, but like we have this sort of infinite fractal view of hierarchy, like everybody's a chief and everybody's an Indian within these like infinitely telescoping stewardships, if that makes sense.
00:28:32
Speaker
So like, um,
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, so so, you know, you are the you are the priesthood leader in your home as the father and.
00:28:44
Speaker
And, you know, you you.
00:28:47
Speaker
There's like sort of overlapping magisteria, like like the bishop does certain things, but he also defers to you as the father and in most cases and and.
00:28:58
Speaker
And then your children, you're sort of trying to set them up to be little kings in their domains.
00:29:07
Speaker
And so to me, that's what's healthy.
00:29:12
Speaker
That's how hierarchy should work.
00:29:15
Speaker
Like everyone should have the experience of...
00:29:18
Speaker
of submitting to a, an authority that deserves submission and also leading in a way that, you know, deserves to be followed.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:30
Speaker
And I was even saying, I think everything you say is true, but I think just about myself, like, I mean, I agree in principle with the idea that like everyone should be a chief and an Indian in different contexts.
00:29:42
Speaker
And I think to some extent, as a man, you just, you have to,
00:29:47
Speaker
step up to the responsibility of, of being a chief in your household.
00:29:51
Speaker
But I also think like in broader society, like my, my preference or my evaluation is that in a well-ordered society, I'd rather be, uh,
00:30:05
Speaker
support than leadership.
00:30:07
Speaker
I think I'm better suited to it.
Work Culture and Propaganda
00:30:09
Speaker
But I'm just saying like, I also as like a spiritual sidekick or whatever, I'm sort of fucked over by like, because I'm saying like, for whatever reason, I don't know if it's because I'm a younger brother or what, but it's like, I think I'm more satisfied by feeling like I played a part in assisting some project
00:30:33
Speaker
led by someone else and I'm less comfortable leading the project.
00:30:37
Speaker
But like even acknowledging this potential comfort with subordination, I like can't actually get this under current circumstances because like there is no.
00:30:51
Speaker
So because because you could offer and I think some people do say like, oh, these are just these are betas who want to be alphas like
00:31:00
Speaker
they won't serve, but they don't get that like they're losers.
00:31:03
Speaker
And I'm, I'm just sort of trying to say like, no, I would serve, but like, I need to be, uh, I need to see that I'm, you know, serving something worthy.
00:31:12
Speaker
I think I'd.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:13
Speaker
Not, not these frigging creatures.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:16
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:31:19
Speaker
Well, I, I want to talk to you.
00:31:21
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead.
00:31:23
Speaker
No, no, you, you, you.
00:31:24
Speaker
I was just going to say sometimes too, it's like,
00:31:27
Speaker
I don't know.
00:31:29
Speaker
I'm trying to describe things non-specifically so I don't dox myself or get fired or whatever.
00:31:35
Speaker
But I would say most of the time at work, this is just a classic example.
00:31:42
Speaker
Most of the time at work, other people are much better at pretending they care than I am.
00:31:51
Speaker
And so it's like a struggle for me because people kind of know I like keep myself at a distance.
00:31:56
Speaker
Maybe I'm a little aloof.
00:31:58
Speaker
You know, I get my shit done, but I'm I'm distant or whatever.
00:32:01
Speaker
And people like resent it.
00:32:03
Speaker
And I get that.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's actually bad to not you're like a bad team member to not be fully invested.
00:32:08
Speaker
But what happens sometimes is like you see your boss or someone more senior than you who's very good at seeming invested and
00:32:18
Speaker
uh, reveal through some act or statement that they really don't care at all either.
00:32:25
Speaker
And that's like a very significant moment because you're like, okay, this whole time I was feeling bad because your investment seems more significant than mine, but actually you're just like much better at being a liar all the time.
00:32:39
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm only so good at presenting like a dishonest version of myself.
00:32:45
Speaker
Uh,
00:32:46
Speaker
You know, and so then it feels even more like, well, I'm not going to let these people get the best of me because like this is all fake.
00:32:55
Speaker
I had I had a my transition from like a standard defense contractor to an intelligence contractor.
00:33:06
Speaker
It was remarkable.
00:33:09
Speaker
How.
00:33:10
Speaker
The culture changed from one of like.
00:33:15
Speaker
you got to do what you got to do kind of cynicism.
00:33:17
Speaker
And like, you know, we all know this is, you know, this is government and it's, it's slow and it's tedious and inefficient.
00:33:25
Speaker
And most of what we do doesn't maybe matter to, to this, like, not, not this is, it wasn't even like rah, rah, patriotic.
00:33:37
Speaker
It was, it was more just like, we're privileged to be here.
00:33:41
Speaker
Like, this is like, just very like,
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:45
Speaker
And it's the opposite of what you would expect from the movies.
00:33:48
Speaker
Right.
00:33:48
Speaker
Cause it's like the chuds in the army are supposed to believe in this shit.
00:33:52
Speaker
They're supposed to salute for the flag, but really the army, they're all just like, let's not get sent on patrol today.
00:33:59
Speaker
The generals are retarded, like turn the truck around.
00:34:02
Speaker
And then, uh, the, uh, yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
And then, uh, a young woman I'm friends with here said she, she went on a date with a guy who was, uh,
00:34:13
Speaker
guess he was like a CIA analyst or something.
00:34:16
Speaker
I don't know what he told her he was, but she concluded he was a CIA analyst.
00:34:19
Speaker
And one of the things he said on the date was that January 6th was the saddest day of his life.
00:34:25
Speaker
And I think that that captures like the sort of preciousness you're talking about.
00:34:33
Speaker
But there's something there's something deep about America in that because it's like
00:34:40
Speaker
Here, it's weird.
00:34:41
Speaker
Like, I feel like in most countries I've lived in, it's like the propaganda is for the masses and the mark of sophistication and education is like knowing that everything the government says is fake.
00:34:55
Speaker
Certainly, that's true in Middle Eastern.
00:34:58
Speaker
But it's like the U.S., which I used to be told and used to believe is like not a propagandized country.
00:35:07
Speaker
It's like, no, it's the only...
00:35:09
Speaker
country that's ever successfully propagandized its own elite.
00:35:14
Speaker
So like, and maybe in so doing it, it like lost the masses.
00:35:18
Speaker
But like, yeah, those are the only people who believe this, like the only people who believe Russiagate is real have fucking master's degrees.
00:35:30
Speaker
It's so bizarre.
00:35:31
Speaker
And it's I mean, like,
00:35:34
Speaker
the only way that you can really, and you know, this is such a cliche, but the only way that you can make sense of that, like elite self indoctrination is that these are, these are kind of articles of faith.
00:35:48
Speaker
They're kind of like, this is the, this is the elite religion.
00:35:53
Speaker
And I, and I think there's almost a theological bent to it.
00:35:58
Speaker
I think it's,
00:36:02
Speaker
I'm not going to sit here and do a class analysis on this, but we have this meritocracy, right?
00:36:14
Speaker
Which, you know, it's not perfect, but like...
00:36:19
Speaker
You do have to be like smart to rise through the ranks of some of these institutions.
00:36:26
Speaker
Like, let's say, you know, we can talk about them being midwits or whatever, but midwit in this context means like 115, 120.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, their brains have horsepower.
00:36:40
Speaker
Right, right.
00:36:41
Speaker
They're not like stupid people.
00:36:43
Speaker
Like nobody you like encounter on Twitter is like actually stupid.
00:36:49
Speaker
They're like stupid relative to like this world that we're living in.
00:36:53
Speaker
Like, well, right.
00:36:54
Speaker
Dumb people could never be as stupid as the people we're talking about because like, exactly.
00:36:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:36:59
Speaker
They don't have the juice to erect all these false universes with like various forms of pseudo evidence.
00:37:07
Speaker
Like you almost, you, you need to be smart to be stupid in the way they're stupid.
00:37:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:37:14
Speaker
Exactly.
00:37:14
Speaker
And, and so it's like,
00:37:20
Speaker
they're in this position, but they still have this egalitarian meritocratic city on a hill thing where, well, like it's, it's meritocratic, but you can't, you can't be meritocratic by nature.
00:37:37
Speaker
It has to be like your, uh, your virtue, your effort, your grit, uh,
00:37:47
Speaker
And, and then if, if, you know, like there, there is like, you know, you look around, you don't see a lot of black people.
00:37:52
Speaker
Well, that's, that's systemic oppression.
00:37:56
Speaker
It's, it's basically, basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like they're hiding the ball.
00:38:00
Speaker
Like all of the elements of this ideology are an effort to conceal from themselves or tell a story to themselves about why they are at the top and, you
00:38:14
Speaker
Like maybe as a class, we don't deserve to be on top because I'm a, it's because I'm a white male and I'm privileged, but as white males go, I individually deserve to be here.
00:38:27
Speaker
Like it's, do you
Twitter's Influence on Public Discourse
00:38:29
Speaker
see what I'm saying?
00:38:29
Speaker
Like there's this, there's this whack-a-mole that they're playing with.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:33
Speaker
And like capacity, all these competing narratives, capacity for self effacement and sort of,
00:38:40
Speaker
conspicuous elevating of colleagues of color or women or whatever becomes like more elaborations of that justification.
00:38:49
Speaker
It's like, I have to be here as a white man because I'm the one, the one white man.
00:38:54
Speaker
Like I've always, one thing I've never gotten, I mean, I'm sure lots of people have said smarter things about this, but like the, the sort of knowing tweets that people will do white people where they'll be like,
00:39:09
Speaker
you know, it'll be like a white man tweeting and it'll be like, white men sure don't get like da-da-da-da.
00:39:15
Speaker
And you know, it's, I always want to like earnestly ask, but I can't engage.
00:39:20
Speaker
Like, so obviously the implication isn't that you're not white, but like you, you transcend your white guy-ness by having these, by being sort of aware of how white people act collectively.
00:39:35
Speaker
He's a special boy.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, because it... I don't know.
00:39:41
Speaker
It's very... You know, there's something going on with these fucking people.
00:39:49
Speaker
Well, on that subject, I want to talk to you about the handover of Twitter.
00:39:56
Speaker
And, like, I don't know how kind of close you are to that, like, domestic intelligence world anymore.
00:40:05
Speaker
But, I mean...
00:40:08
Speaker
How much like wailing and gnashing of teeth is there around that in that community do you think?
00:40:14
Speaker
Sure.
00:40:15
Speaker
So, you know, a lot of stuff has come out recently about how Twitter cooperated with the government.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so just to explain like how I would fit into this to explain my perspective, like I guess in some of the documents that got leaked after Elon bought Twitter, you saw Twitter executives
00:40:39
Speaker
communicating with folks at DHS back and forth about like, what kind of misinformation are you looking for?
00:40:46
Speaker
So like when I was doing this kind of work, I would not actually have been sitting at DHS or Twitter.
00:40:54
Speaker
I would have been in like a third party research firm that was essentially, I think we didn't always know what our stuff was used for, but like one of the things we would do, I imagine is like,
00:41:06
Speaker
The government would use us to do like a random survey of, say, like how much a G-Hattis group is on a platform.
00:41:13
Speaker
So they could then look at Twitter's self-reporting and be like, well, Twitter says they get off, you know, 80% of the ISIS accounts within a week.
00:41:24
Speaker
But these third party guys we hired say that these hundred accounts have been up for a month.
00:41:30
Speaker
So like.
00:41:30
Speaker
So you're you're you're narcing on the narcs like you're a you're a double narc.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker
So like, so I would just for example, like I wouldn't be privy to the communications between the platforms and the government.
00:41:43
Speaker
Like I never actually saw anything like that.
00:41:46
Speaker
But I know that it was obvious from working at these places that like, that such communication was happening.
00:41:53
Speaker
And I think like, I don't know if you feel this way, but I certainly feel like there is so much gnashing of teeth, but
00:42:02
Speaker
you know, when I follow like the people I follow now, just as a user, people are like, you know, saying the N word and getting kicked off and stuff.
00:42:11
Speaker
So I certainly don't notice any huge drop in vigilance.
00:42:17
Speaker
So like if they're making the argument that, you know, the thousand people that were sitting in there are crucially important to Twitter doing it's like normal purges,
00:42:30
Speaker
that has not matched with my user experience.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:34
Speaker
Because I think, and like, again, trying to engage earnestly with insane people, there's this guy, I won't mention his name, but he appears to be earnest.
00:42:45
Speaker
But he was tweeting all week.
00:42:46
Speaker
He's like, Twitter fired their whole human rights team
00:42:51
Speaker
this puts Tigray rebels and women in Saudi Arabia and all these people in danger.
00:43:02
Speaker
I was trying to ask him, what do you think those Twitter executives do?
00:43:07
Speaker
Because your nightmare scenario is that the governments find out the real identities of these people.
00:43:15
Speaker
Twitter executives can't stop that.
00:43:17
Speaker
In fact,
00:43:18
Speaker
their one possible conduit by which the government would discover the real identities.
00:43:24
Speaker
Like all these human rights teams were doing was like emailing with activists and being like, oh yeah, if you have any problems, if you get taken down, like let us know, we'll try and protect you.
00:43:35
Speaker
But like, that's totally different than acting like the Twitter human rights team is like standing between the mullahs and the protesters in Iran.
00:43:45
Speaker
Like,
00:43:46
Speaker
That's total nonsense.
00:43:47
Speaker
They have nothing to do with.
00:43:49
Speaker
I mean, potentially there are certain like technical things, I guess, where like, I don't know if a government had an opportunity to like seize a server, it'd be good if like an engineer or something somewhere knew that was happening and could sort of like remotely wipe stuff.
00:44:05
Speaker
But I don't think I don't think that's what these people were doing.
00:44:10
Speaker
And so I was just trying to get him to say, like, what actions do you think this human rights team
00:44:16
Speaker
took that made the lives of those activists or their behavior safer.
00:44:21
Speaker
Cause like, I don't understand.
00:44:24
Speaker
Um, and he wouldn't really, it's, it's, it's almost exactly the same as like when they, uh, when they released those like documents, like Valerie plane, like they're treating it the same way.
00:44:39
Speaker
Like you're, you're, you're jeopardizing lives by allowing this discussion to happen.
00:44:45
Speaker
Like,
00:44:47
Speaker
It it doesn't make sense unless there was like way deeper cooperation between like Twitter and the intelligence community than, you know, heretofore has been admitted.
00:44:59
Speaker
No, and actually I have an even darker story about how this shit doesn't work.
00:45:05
Speaker
Back when I was working on serious stuff, I can actually remember a couple instances in which like activists that we knew just socially would get picked up by ISIS.
00:45:17
Speaker
And we'd call Facebook and say, hey, delete this person's account because ISIS is going to look at their laptop and their phone.
00:45:25
Speaker
And if they have like, I don't know if it says they fucking like like a TV show, like they're watching Friends, like ISIS might kill them or torture them or whatever.
00:45:34
Speaker
And like Facebook did it.
00:45:36
Speaker
But every time there was like a 24 to 48 hour turnaround.
00:45:40
Speaker
And I never knew of an instance where the person actually avoided getting in trouble.
00:45:46
Speaker
So, like, it wasn't, like, this smooth-oiled machine or whatever.
00:45:50
Speaker
Like, it's all just fucking nonsense, and it's, like, ugh.
00:45:55
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:56
Speaker
So, I mean, I take it from what you're saying that, like, basically you think this is mostly just bitching and moaning about some loss of ideological control, the ability to purge sort of narratives they don't like?
00:46:13
Speaker
Yes, because...
00:46:15
Speaker
here's the thing.
00:46:16
Speaker
And like, I'm not a, I'm not like a technical guy.
00:46:21
Speaker
So you can, you can correct me if you think this is wrong, but it's like, if you're just going to create algorithms to try and stop racist speech or misinformation, uh, you need, I don't know, a hundred to a thousand coders working on that all the time.
00:46:39
Speaker
If you want real time observation, uh,
00:46:44
Speaker
of like searching for keywords and taking stuff down in real time, then you need like hundreds of thousands.
00:46:50
Speaker
An intelligence agency.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:53
Speaker
So this middle ground where they're like, no, to effectively police misinformation, we need those thousand coders you mentioned, but also 5,000 executives.
00:47:06
Speaker
Like I don't, that's not plausible to me.
00:47:10
Speaker
But I will also say, and this sort of came up on that,
00:47:14
Speaker
good old boys podcast you mentioned with, with Yarvin, uh, that I really enjoyed was like, I do worry that Elon is like my best case scenario for what's going on right now is that he's actually trying to destroy the site.
00:47:31
Speaker
Uh, and if that's what he's doing, I'm certainly fine with that.
00:47:34
Speaker
But like, I do think, and I don't know if this is cause he has a spectrum disorder or what, but like,
00:47:41
Speaker
I mean, I have no problem with anything he's doing, but I do think like it's sort of insane to like just be like mocking people you fired and sort of like all this makes way more sense if he's trying to destroy it than if he's trying to make it profitable like a year from now.
00:48:01
Speaker
And I don't I don't care how he spends his money, but like he seems to have no awareness of like the concept of morale, either with
00:48:10
Speaker
remaining staff or with investors, which sort of surprised me because I thought there would be like an initial period where they jettisoned a bunch of people and then there'd be some sour grapes, but not this sort of like ongoing, very public messing around and sort of like baiting, trolling politicians and stuff.
00:48:33
Speaker
I mean, it's very enjoyable to me as a user, but like
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah, if I was an investor in the company, I'd be like, what is this?
00:48:41
Speaker
Right.
00:48:42
Speaker
You know, what is what's going on here?
00:48:44
Speaker
Like, this is super weird.
00:48:45
Speaker
I mean, like, unless he's just really confident, he's trying to destroy it.
00:48:50
Speaker
I mean, he would have to just be really confident in his ability to just get the money from the user base.
00:48:57
Speaker
Oops, I can see you're talking, but I can't hear you for some reason.
00:49:01
Speaker
Okay, let's pause this for a second.
00:49:05
Speaker
The impression that I get from
00:49:08
Speaker
the freak out about this is basically the Twitter formed this really important firewall against like wrong opinions, achieving currency.
00:49:25
Speaker
And, and, and basically that it was like just this, this really important, uh,
00:49:33
Speaker
organ of state power that was lost to them.
00:49:37
Speaker
And so like just on the basis of their freak out, I was kind of celebrating.
00:49:41
Speaker
But I wonder what your what your thoughts on are on that.
00:49:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I, I don't want to get too into like election skepticism, because not that I don't have some, but I don't know if it's productive.
00:49:58
Speaker
But it is interesting that like,
00:50:00
Speaker
The premise of a lot of this, I'm just going to go through a series of events here.
00:50:04
Speaker
The premise of a lot of this is that the libs controlled Twitter and they suppressed the laptop story.
00:50:13
Speaker
And so then Trump lost in 2020.
00:50:16
Speaker
But it's like now a crazy South African...
00:50:20
Speaker
took over Twitter and he's even tweeting, hey, if you're independent minded, you should vote for Republicans so there's a split government.
00:50:28
Speaker
And then the Democrats do much better than expected.
00:50:31
Speaker
So like, there's, it's just interesting how to make sense of what is the influence of this?
00:50:38
Speaker
I mean, not that anybody was saying there's like this real time, this real time feedback, but I think the black pill I'm sort of offering is that like,
00:50:49
Speaker
I think the actual changes Elon is going to make, or at least so far has made, are pretty small.
00:50:58
Speaker
There is nothing too small that the sort of people we're talking about won't freak out about it.
00:51:06
Speaker
But yeah, as I was mentioning, like it just in terms of my user experiment experience, like I still see things get flagged as misinformation.
00:51:13
Speaker
I still see people making threats get booted off.
00:51:18
Speaker
I would say the app overall is like 10 to 15% more spicy.
00:51:23
Speaker
And I think unfortunately, like whether their neurosis permits them to realize it or not, I think
00:51:30
Speaker
the sort of mainstream media can weather that level of spiciness.
00:51:35
Speaker
So like it's more for us as users, but I don't know that the political sort of feedback or outcome will be significant.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the midterms, man.
00:51:47
Speaker
I was, I think everybody is,
00:51:52
Speaker
And, you know, I think they'll claim they won't because a lot of these guys are like very smug about elections not mattering and it's all fake and it's all bullshit anyway.
00:52:00
Speaker
And, you know, imagine, imagine being the kind of person who votes and thinks it matters.
00:52:09
Speaker
Just can you imagine?
00:52:10
Speaker
And I think, but what you're noticing is like everybody, including those guys,
00:52:19
Speaker
is really volatile right now on Twitter.
00:52:23
Speaker
Like they're all very testy, like something bad happened to them that they're disappointed about.
00:52:28
Speaker
And I, I, I gotta believe that like, there were some real expectations around this midterm that were disappointed.
00:52:36
Speaker
Um, well, right.
00:52:37
Speaker
Cause I think, I think there's only two, there's only two ways to understand it.
00:52:44
Speaker
And both of them are very discouraging.
00:52:47
Speaker
I think,
00:52:50
Speaker
If everyone voted the way we're led to believe they voted, then I think something we might have to come to terms with, and I'm willing to come to terms with this, and I don't know exactly what I think about it, but this has even been a conversation in dissident right spaces, but it's like the boomer Trump people
00:53:15
Speaker
like they think Hitler is the worst person that ever lived.
00:53:19
Speaker
And they think like being gay is cool and like probably, and I'm not even saying these are bad things to believe.
00:53:27
Speaker
I'm saying like there are real, there are political commitments in the majority of the Trump base that like very online young right-wing people would call cheesy.
00:53:40
Speaker
Yes.
00:53:41
Speaker
Or like outmoded or something.
00:53:43
Speaker
And I think...
00:53:46
Speaker
We do have to face the fact that we've been riding high for six years being like, we see these things about reality and we see these things about the populace that the elites don't see.
00:53:56
Speaker
And to some extent that was true.
00:53:58
Speaker
But I did personally feel after this election and particularly with some of the results about abortion, about pro-life and pro-choice stuff,
00:54:10
Speaker
I did feel this sinking feeling of like, oh, right.
00:54:13
Speaker
At the end of the day, like this is an extremely liberal and extremely libertarian country, like in its soul.
00:54:21
Speaker
And that's going to be uncomfortable for me forever.
00:54:25
Speaker
And like, maybe there will be very talented politicians like Trump who can sort of square the circle and get us on the same page.
00:54:34
Speaker
But it's like,
00:54:36
Speaker
even if those boomer Trump people have a lot of the same complaints I have, they're different than me and their political commitments and what they care about is different than me.
00:54:48
Speaker
And I think my position is like, I'm maybe more okay with democracy.
00:54:54
Speaker
Like I'm sort of okay with the idea of like being in a coalition with those people, especially since they're more numerous for the sort of foreseeable future.
00:55:05
Speaker
and being more attentive to what they want.
00:55:08
Speaker
Like, for instance, being attentive to what is it about Trump that is appealing to them that perhaps is not appealing about Trumpism broadly construed that made this election go so poorly.
00:55:23
Speaker
So I think that's the first black pill is like being reminded that
00:55:27
Speaker
the American public is not actually like suddenly into Curtis Yarvin, which like there were certain times in the past six years you could, you know, you could really convince yourself that like someone like that had the mandate of heaven.
00:55:41
Speaker
And for this, this moment for me was just a time to be like, oh, right.
00:55:45
Speaker
That's not this country.
00:55:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's just on Twitter.
00:55:49
Speaker
Yeah, we have to make political plans with with that in in mind.
00:55:54
Speaker
I think the other
00:55:56
Speaker
black pill that I don't know how deeply we should get into, but like, I'll just put it this way.
00:56:01
Speaker
Some of these results I can't make sense of.
00:56:06
Speaker
And the degree to which I can't make sense of them and there's little even there's, it's like sort of
00:56:16
Speaker
you know, people who I would hope might take that up or look into it more deeply.
00:56:22
Speaker
No one seems particularly interested in even having that fight, which of course, on the one hand, that is sort of pro social and, and pro stability or whatever that, that has some value, but that feels discouraging to me too, because, because I think part of my whole, uh,
00:56:45
Speaker
Again, talking about the ways in which we think Americans are mature, but actually we're really naive.
00:56:51
Speaker
I think one of the ways that works is that everybody's a little cynical, but you use that modicum of cynicism to avoid looking too deeply at how rotten things really are.
00:57:04
Speaker
And I think I...
00:57:07
Speaker
I increasingly feel fatigued from like being forced to, it's like certain things would come out about like the eco health Alliance and like Fauci's direct connection to funding covert research.
00:57:19
Speaker
And I'd be like, I don't even want to read this shit.
00:57:22
Speaker
Like I'm, I'm black, you know, like, uh, it's, it's worse than what I could come up with, you know, in a fever dream.
00:57:29
Speaker
So, so I don't know.
00:57:31
Speaker
And to be clear, like,
00:57:33
Speaker
I think it's totally possible that all these elections are on the up and up.
00:57:36
Speaker
I just know that it's almost not even about that.
00:57:39
Speaker
It's about that the seed of doubt has crept in and there's nobody with the capability or the inclination
00:57:50
Speaker
to convince me my suspicions are unwarranted.
00:57:53
Speaker
So it's like, I just, you know, I just live in a country now where I don't know if I trust these outcomes.
00:58:00
Speaker
That's just, that's just my life going forward.
00:58:02
Speaker
So whoop-de-doo.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:07
Speaker
Those, yeah, that's, those are probably the two big headings that I would use as well.
00:58:12
Speaker
It's a black pill about what people's real opinions are
00:58:18
Speaker
and a black pill about, you know, do their opinions actually ramify to the outcome of the election?
00:58:25
Speaker
And I do, what I'm experiencing in my church right now is, we kind of talked about this with the people who have the instinct to conform.
00:58:38
Speaker
Like, a lot of folks in my church have that,
00:58:48
Speaker
instinct to conform.
00:58:50
Speaker
And when I was a kid, that cashed out in like them standing outside the church dance telling girls that their dress needed to be longer or they needed to, you know, button up their blouse and other two buttons.
00:59:09
Speaker
And now that instinct to conform is in that in this house, we believe no human is illegal.
00:59:16
Speaker
All lives are black lives matter.
00:59:18
Speaker
You know, love is love, et cetera.
00:59:21
Speaker
And it's been really challenging for like my, my like understanding of how human beings work.
00:59:36
Speaker
Because like, it just you know, you sort of looked around at these people who seemed like they really believed in something.
00:59:44
Speaker
And they just they were just able to turn on a dime.
00:59:49
Speaker
And it's like, oh, man, like, I don't even live in this on the same planet I thought I did.
00:59:55
Speaker
And you you brought up at the beginning.
01:00:00
Speaker
Some folks, you know, who I think you were saying that, like, they were sort of saying,
01:00:05
Speaker
no matter at what point in history they were born or what society they would know racism was wrong or something, or there were certain moral ills that they'd be able to recognize across time and space.
01:00:18
Speaker
Because like, I think what's insane to me, and I don't want to claim like I'm some super empath, but it's like at any time in human history, in any society, like you are going to be required
01:00:35
Speaker
to just ignore immense suffering and walk past it.
01:00:39
Speaker
And like, certainly we do this in our society and it is a requirement.
01:00:44
Speaker
Like, you know, even me just living in the city, like,
01:00:48
Speaker
there's, there's heroin addicts I have to walk by.
01:00:51
Speaker
And like, there are times where I have like dumb, naive thoughts, like, could I let this person stay at my apartment?
01:00:58
Speaker
Could I help them?
01:00:58
Speaker
Could I ask them if there's a family member I could call?
01:01:02
Speaker
Cause it's like, they're a slave to this substance.
01:01:06
Speaker
And like, I have been socialized to just say, okay, like I can't help them.
01:01:11
Speaker
I'm not allowed to coerce them into going to rehab.
01:01:14
Speaker
The state refuses to do that.
01:01:16
Speaker
So like,
01:01:17
Speaker
what is required of me living in this society is that I just, I witness their slow and torturous self-destruction and I, to the best of my ability, not particularly feel anything about it, definitely don't say anything about it.
01:01:33
Speaker
And like the idea that that's fundamentally different, like that experience, than say like knowing people in your society are slaves, like it's just nonsense.
01:01:45
Speaker
And like,
01:01:46
Speaker
There are people who are so troubled by sort of the everyday humdrum moral indignities that they like go insane.
01:01:55
Speaker
But those people are like Ted Kaczynski.
01:01:57
Speaker
Like they aren't, or just like anonymous people that kill themselves.
01:02:02
Speaker
Like there are people who are so sensitive to just like the cruelty of sort of human social activity, like the collateral damage of any
01:02:14
Speaker
mass scale human social activity that like they can't handle it.
01:02:18
Speaker
But all of us who are doing OK, all of us who have jobs like we can handle it.
01:02:23
Speaker
And I think the thing that the thing that bothers me and why I went on this whole little rant is like.
01:02:32
Speaker
I feel like.
01:02:34
Speaker
Part of what they're saying is that like those heroin addicted people don't matter in the same way that
01:02:41
Speaker
people facing historical injustice.
01:02:44
Speaker
Like they're saying like, that's not the same as having to sit on the back of the bus.
01:02:48
Speaker
And I sort of want to scream like, no, like you're making a claim that you're sort of generally attuned to human suffering and you're obviously wrong.
01:02:59
Speaker
Just like so obviously wrong.
01:03:01
Speaker
Like there's so much suffering that doesn't give you pause at all.
01:03:05
Speaker
So like, and I think a lot of people are just super comfortable
01:03:10
Speaker
They think it's self-evident so much so they can't even make the argument that sort of like bigotry related harms are so uniquely evil that to make the kind of comparison I just did is on its face absurd or something.
01:03:26
Speaker
But I don't think it is at all.
01:03:27
Speaker
And I think obviously like people – it's really pathetic but like –
01:03:33
Speaker
Yeah, of course in the future people are going to think we're horrible.
01:03:36
Speaker
Like they're going to think meat eating was as bad as being a Nazi or whatever.
01:03:40
Speaker
Like who cares?
01:03:41
Speaker
They're dumb future people.
01:03:42
Speaker
Like they didn't have to deal with what we have to deal with.
01:03:47
Speaker
It's great that their moral concerns will be more narrow.
01:03:50
Speaker
But like I think – I don't know why I'm ranting so much about this.
01:03:57
Speaker
But I think there's something uniquely pathetic and American –
01:04:02
Speaker
in the fantasy of being like my moral purity would have been consistent in the past and will be recognized in the future.
01:04:11
Speaker
Right.
01:04:12
Speaker
It transcends time and space.
01:04:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:14
Speaker
No one gets that.
01:04:16
Speaker
Why would you think you get that?
01:04:20
Speaker
That's kind of necessary to be the protagonist of the universe, right?
01:04:24
Speaker
Like you have to be the one with the...
01:04:29
Speaker
the true north moral center.
01:04:35
Speaker
I do think like, I think that one respect in which the libs maybe have an easier time integrating their worldview is that like they at least, the state sort of stands in for God in a way that takes the burden off them morally in a way that like,
01:04:57
Speaker
Christianity does not take the burden off of you.
01:05:00
Speaker
Like they say, no, I'm, you know, it's tragic what's happening to that homeless person, like especially if they're of a historically disadvantaged minority group.
01:05:16
Speaker
And I am fighting to build a world in which that person doesn't suffer that way.
01:05:24
Speaker
And like,
01:05:27
Speaker
it's, you know, that that that consummation is coming and I am choosing to be a part of that and you are not.
01:05:38
Speaker
And that makes you a huge bastard.
01:05:41
Speaker
And like, I really think that part of their advantage in in this situation is that like we actually
01:05:57
Speaker
Our our moral commitments.
01:06:01
Speaker
Are sort of unattainable, like we are.
01:06:07
Speaker
Asking of ourselves something that.
01:06:11
Speaker
We kind of can't do like we're we're supposed to take care of all those people and we're supposed to, you know,
01:06:18
Speaker
live the law of chastity.
01:06:20
Speaker
And we're supposed, like, we have all these commitments that we don't live up to.
01:06:24
Speaker
And so it's very obvious and very easy to accuse us of hypocrisy.
01:06:29
Speaker
And for them, it's like, no, no, no, I'm trying to build a world in which all of those contradictions don't exist.
01:06:37
Speaker
And my solutions aren't perfect, but at least I'm trying.
01:06:42
Speaker
At least we're doing things out here.
01:06:44
Speaker
You know, that's kind of their...
01:06:47
Speaker
frame as far as I understand it.
01:06:49
Speaker
And, and like, there's, there's power in that because you sort of always know what to do.
01:06:55
Speaker
Like the answer is always more state power, more tearing down of distinctions.
01:07:02
Speaker
It's like this, it has this internal momentum to it that, you know,
01:07:09
Speaker
that all of our various conservative religious traditions don't have, certainly not in this moment.
01:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think you really put your finger on something because I think even before I had any religious consciousness, I had a concept of sin.
01:07:32
Speaker
And I always had a sense that no matter how good I was doing,
01:07:38
Speaker
I could do better.
01:07:39
Speaker
And I knew, and I knew that, but that this sort of moral striving was what God wanted of me.
01:07:49
Speaker
And I'm not saying I feel like profoundly morally inadequate, but I do, you know, I fear God.
01:07:57
Speaker
And I think it's like a big thing in my life, sort of walking around, making choices, feeling aware of falling short and feeling some, uh,
01:08:08
Speaker
regretfulness and drive to do better.
01:08:10
Speaker
And yeah, I guess part of what I'm enraged by is sort of people who seem to have totally abdicated
01:08:20
Speaker
that like moment to moment moral self-assessment.
01:08:24
Speaker
It's almost like their universe of morality is like these big political swings.
01:08:31
Speaker
It's like, so you're telling me if you're born after slavery, you have a much better chance of getting into heaven than if you're born before slavery?
01:08:39
Speaker
Like, no, that doesn't work with my understanding of morality.
01:08:43
Speaker
But that seems to sort of be
01:08:46
Speaker
what they're saying, like society, like we all perfect society together.
01:08:50
Speaker
But then of course, once we have, then no one would ever be like blemished because, you know, when the structural problems are gone, there'll be no, there'll be no greed, there'll be no envy, whatever.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:05
Speaker
And so you, you know, by externalizing all of that struggle,
01:09:13
Speaker
Uh, they've essentially, I mean, it's all of, all of mankind's sins.
01:09:18
Speaker
I mean, the, the homeless person on the street is the product of usually, uh, white supremacy.
01:09:30
Speaker
And if the victim's white, then it's capitalism, which is white supremacy.
01:09:35
Speaker
And it's it by, by nailing everything to that cross.
01:09:43
Speaker
they've got this very like simple worldview that allows them to stand in judgment of, of all reality, everything they survey.
01:09:58
Speaker
And I think that that like there's, there's substantial juice in that.
01:10:03
Speaker
Like, I don't think it's a good thing.
01:10:05
Speaker
It's a big part of what I'm trying to do.
01:10:08
Speaker
I've been thinking about the midterms just from, from a perspective of like,
01:10:14
Speaker
All right, what now?
01:10:16
Speaker
Like, what are, what, what are we doing wrong?
01:10:21
Speaker
What could we build that, that makes things better?
01:10:24
Speaker
So that like in Montana, they're not voting to kill babies when they're born alive.
01:10:29
Speaker
Like what, what do we need to do to make that not the case?
01:10:34
Speaker
Um,
01:10:36
Speaker
And I actually, on the subject of like, does being born after slavery make you a better person?
01:10:44
Speaker
I was thinking about like, if you could go back in time to some obviously doomed faction, like the Confederates, and like you couldn't pitch them on automatic weapons, and you couldn't like,
01:11:06
Speaker
give them inside information on the union's battle plans.
01:11:09
Speaker
So like their material situation had not changed.
01:11:14
Speaker
And all you could do is like, give them advice knowing that they are on the losing side of this conflict materially.
01:11:22
Speaker
Like what, like what could you tell them?
01:11:24
Speaker
And it's like, it's not obvious to me that the answer is wave the white flag and, and just give the union everything they want.
01:11:35
Speaker
Um, but it's also like, it does seem obvious that like, there's some kind of accommodation that ought to be reached.
01:11:44
Speaker
There's some kind of, you know, how, how do you work within that system?
01:11:50
Speaker
And, and like, you know, I, I, honestly, like I, I, you look at like the, the pictures of kids being, uh, taken to integrated schools at bayonet point.
01:11:59
Speaker
And then you look at what happened to those integrated schools and it's like,
01:12:04
Speaker
I don't begrudge someone from wanting to prevent that from happening.
01:12:10
Speaker
Right.
01:12:10
Speaker
I would also say that what's difficult about war is that like, I mean, if we're imagining that, you know, we could give those Confederates some pristine view of history, I mean, I think they might argue that, you know, if 10,000 fewer sons of Georgia die in the
01:12:31
Speaker
in the Civil War, that bayonet point picture happens 20 years earlier.
01:12:36
Speaker
You know, even when you lose, there are sort of indelible ramifications and sort of like the whole way Reconstruction went and, you know, the South being sort of...
01:12:49
Speaker
what's the word, like un-pacified even after having lost the war as like huge ramifications for American history.
01:12:58
Speaker
So my first response was gonna be like, you know, that's the most romantic of, I feel like all losing sides in wars are like super romantic.
01:13:07
Speaker
And if you told people you're just gonna die for nothing, they'd probably wanna do it even more.
01:13:11
Speaker
I think that was maybe particularly true of the American South.
01:13:17
Speaker
But I also think,
01:13:19
Speaker
Um, there are real ways in which like the particulars of the outcome of the war had really significant impacts on, on American history.
01:13:28
Speaker
But yeah, it's, it's certainly an interesting question because yeah, because I mean, I basically feel like we're there.
01:13:38
Speaker
I feel like, I feel like we're in this situation where our, our worldview, uh,
01:13:49
Speaker
there are forces that want to extirpate our worldview and they are willing to do it coercively and we don't have the power to stop them.
01:14:05
Speaker
And so it's like, and that's, you know, in the case of the Confederates, it's like irrespective of the morality of either side.
01:14:11
Speaker
It's like, well, the way you want to live, you're just not going to be allowed to do that.
01:14:17
Speaker
So, so how do you respond to that?
01:14:20
Speaker
And I mean, you know, like in the, in the Confederates case, uh, seems like, seems like that, that little cluster of, uh, confederados that ran to Brazil did all right.
01:14:32
Speaker
Um, all things considered, but.
01:14:35
Speaker
But it's also though, I think implied in your question, I mean, I'm curious to get your, your thoughts on this, but like,
01:14:42
Speaker
It seems obvious sitting in the future, though I don't know if I actually believe this, that it's like, you can tell me if you agree with this, but it's almost like the South could have won that war and still sort of ultimately been brought to heel in almost a similar manner, almost because it seems like there were structural things about the industrialization of the United States and a move away from
01:15:12
Speaker
federalism that almost seemed bound up with technology and like greater forces of history.
01:15:18
Speaker
So it's weird because it's like, if they had won, would they have just been doomed to become a third world country that was later annexed when the power differential was more extreme?
01:15:31
Speaker
And I think that's the thing we can't know about our current moment.
01:15:38
Speaker
And one of the reasons we spend so much time
01:15:41
Speaker
talking about like, what are the impacts of these technologies?
01:15:45
Speaker
What do they imply about how human beings will spend their time?
01:15:47
Speaker
Because like, here's, here's a black pill wrapped in a white pill, like, I sort of feel like there's no indication to me, like when I look at human beings, increasing integration with with computers or the internet or whatever.
01:16:05
Speaker
I actually think that doesn't work for more traditionally minded people like us.
01:16:10
Speaker
But I think it also clearly doesn't work for like the status quo that's trying to be managed by the powers that be.
01:16:18
Speaker
And so like, right.
01:16:20
Speaker
And so on the one hand, I feel no confidence that like the new thing that comes into the world will be mine or will be something that I can see as non-horrific.
01:16:31
Speaker
On the other hand, I do think it's up for grabs in the sense that like I don't think or at the very least, like I don't think my political enemies have a handle on it either.
01:16:46
Speaker
But I also think like if I just analyze the nature of the technology, that does lead me to think like, oh, it'll be even worse than this incarnation of reality.
01:16:57
Speaker
of libs because like it does sort of seem like, yeah, it's like the computer doesn't want you to have a gender.
01:17:04
Speaker
Like the computer doesn't want you to like have children with another human being.
01:17:09
Speaker
Like that's, that's what gives me hope is basically that I do think that what we have in the present situation is an ideology that is adaptive to
01:17:28
Speaker
a rapidly vanishing ecological circumstance.
01:17:37
Speaker
Like, what, liberalism has eaten absolutely everything on the planet.
01:17:45
Speaker
And it is very highly adaptive to, like, the, not even the current technological circumstances, but, like, the technological circumstances of
01:17:58
Speaker
50 to 10 years ago.
01:18:01
Speaker
And, and I basically think that it, it is sagging under the weight of its own contradictions and it's going to fall apart.
01:18:10
Speaker
I don't, I, I think this like thousand year, uh, bug eating Reich idea is nonsense.
01:18:18
Speaker
Like the, the, the people that are, that are trying to like,
01:18:25
Speaker
you know, map out my personal connections on behalf of like European intelligence services.
01:18:32
Speaker
These are not people who are like really tightly screwed and under control.
01:18:40
Speaker
Right.
01:18:40
Speaker
And like Hanania and Fisted by Foucault and those guys, they always just talk about the thousand year Reich by comparing us to Russia and China saying like we're out competing our rivals, but
01:18:54
Speaker
if you look at something like the printing press or like different technological epochs, like there is such a thing as like every regime on earth failing to rise to the moment.
01:19:06
Speaker
So like, I don't think, I think the cold war had this dynamic of like, just survive and be the last man standing.
01:19:14
Speaker
And we were able to do that in spite of whatever problems we had.
01:19:18
Speaker
But I, I sort of think like,
01:19:22
Speaker
You could just say the following statement, like liberalism is more deft and adaptable to these crazy epochal technological changes than the currently extant authoritarian regimes on earth.
01:19:36
Speaker
But like the shit I see makes me think like they'll all be brought down.
01:19:40
Speaker
Maybe not in my lifetime, but it's like I would say I don't see a single state or society acting with what seems like competent...
01:19:53
Speaker
having a competent response to the sort of new cultural, political, economic challenges presented.
01:20:00
Speaker
And yeah, and like, I don't even, in some ways, I wish I could adopt the Hanania position because like, I don't, you know, I would much, I would much prefer a sort of proactive transition to a different political system like
01:20:18
Speaker
through deliberation and choice.
01:20:20
Speaker
And I, I'm almost more worried we won't get that because events will sort of make the stakes of things more, more dramatic than that.
01:20:28
Speaker
But yeah, no, I, I think the, I think the machinery is just way too sclerotic for that at this point.
01:20:38
Speaker
Like, I don't, I don't think it, I don't think it can adapt in the way that it needs to.
01:20:43
Speaker
And, and I mean,
01:20:45
Speaker
you know, you're talking about these instruments of narrative control.
01:20:49
Speaker
The idea that the idea that the, the federal government would be really concerned with persecuting Alex Jones would have been absolutely hilarious to me as a teenager.
01:21:10
Speaker
Like, like, even if he's wrong, like the idea that a guy like that would be a serious enough or at least perceived as a national security concern to to the federal government.
01:21:29
Speaker
Like, I would have said, like, oh, well, that that's just a cartoonish failure.
01:21:35
Speaker
Right?
01:21:35
Speaker
Like these are people who are absolutely out of control of the media situation.
01:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, you can sort of take our assessment out of it.
01:21:43
Speaker
And I think just say I think I can just say objectively.
01:21:47
Speaker
that when I was a kid, the state seemed to have a much more confident view of itself than it does now.
01:21:56
Speaker
Like, you know, I don't even need to bring my my opinion into it.
01:22:00
Speaker
And like, does that mean it's doomed?
01:22:02
Speaker
Does that mean it's falling apart?
01:22:04
Speaker
No, but I would say that
01:22:06
Speaker
the pace of loss of self-confidence seems unsustainable.
01:22:11
Speaker
So that I think that's what draws.
01:22:13
Speaker
It's like either someone's got to get a handle on this slide or something really unexpected or bad is going to happen.
01:22:20
Speaker
Well, and the reason the reason it's so easy to be.
01:22:31
Speaker
A. Shit poster on right wing Twitter is
01:22:34
Speaker
right now is that the regime is is committed to a lot of they have a lot of ideological commitments that are just completely absurd at this point that are just completely falling apart.
01:22:53
Speaker
And so it's not like they're it's not like they're they don't have like the technology or like they haven't figured out the
01:23:03
Speaker
the right protocol to handle this problem.
01:23:06
Speaker
It's like in order to, it's almost more like what is happening with religions that are falling apart in response to these pressures.
01:23:19
Speaker
It's like if they were to compromise enough to right the ship, they would cease to be who they are.
01:23:28
Speaker
That would mean the rise of a totally different
01:23:34
Speaker
ideologically and the way they're shoring up weaknesses is by making greater and greater commitments to greedy constituencies at home and abroad.
01:23:44
Speaker
And that's precisely what they can't afford to do, because like the story of of every empire, to some extent, is just a balance sheet.
01:23:52
Speaker
Right.
01:23:52
Speaker
It's like.
01:23:53
Speaker
Right.
01:23:54
Speaker
Because I think what you would see.
01:23:58
Speaker
I think what you would see if this shit was going to work out is some people talking about hard choices because like we don't have the economic growth or the innovation anymore to have like – because it's kind of like –
01:24:15
Speaker
The public conversation about wars we're going to support or new entitlements we're going to pass happens totally distinct of anything going on in the economy.
01:24:26
Speaker
And people just sort of say like, well, sooner or later, like the American economy will be good enough to pay for these dreams we have.
01:24:35
Speaker
But I think a much more a much more reasonable a much more reasonable assessment is like
01:24:45
Speaker
the post-war economic conditions created a level of growth that sort of acculturated America to both like political patronage and adventurism abroad, that there actually was no long-term plan to finance.
01:25:02
Speaker
And like the last 20 years or whatever has just been trying to put that on the credit card.
01:25:08
Speaker
But like, this is my main thing is just like, that I would want to ask, you know, Hanani or any of those guys is like,
01:25:15
Speaker
There's so many obligations and no new sources of revenue.
01:25:19
Speaker
So like, how do you, how do you square that?
01:25:22
Speaker
Well, and, and I mean, what's crazy about so many of these new obligations is it's like the, like NATO expansion.
01:25:33
Speaker
I mean, NATO's purpose as an alliance was to hem in the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.
01:25:41
Speaker
And Russia is a fraction of the military power of the Soviet Union.
01:25:49
Speaker
And, you know, we made these, we made these, you know, rhetorical commitments that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO and, and, and the alliance has just sort of creeped in that direction for decades, ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
01:26:05
Speaker
And it's like, and I don't think that there's any, like, I honestly think it's lower than malice, if that makes sense.
01:26:13
Speaker
Like, I think there's just institutional inertia in favor of we should get bigger and rushes the enemy and, you know, just sort of expand and multiply and consume.
01:26:31
Speaker
And I know.
01:26:32
Speaker
And this is kind of what I mean.
01:26:34
Speaker
Like there's nobody at the wheel to say stop.
01:26:40
Speaker
Right.
01:26:40
Speaker
And I think I think there is an argument that like.
01:26:46
Speaker
certain neocons or certain like pro-American global empire people should have been more pro-Trump because I think actually the stuff Trump did of like going to NATO and being like, you guys got to pay.
01:27:00
Speaker
Like to me, that was the kind of stuff that could actually, like I don't think Trump really gives a shit one way or another whether NATO exists.
01:27:10
Speaker
I think he was just saying like,
01:27:12
Speaker
the level of American obligation to this alliance makes no sense.
01:27:17
Speaker
If it's going to work going forward, we need like bigger commitments from these countries.
01:27:21
Speaker
And it's weirder that no one on the American, like no one in that sort of like, I don't know, you know, all these like patriotic fucks they roll out like Vindman or whoever, like they should have this concern that like we can't keep doing this.
01:27:40
Speaker
Just just from like a, you know, a balance sheet point of view, but it doesn't seem.
01:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, nobody's particularly worried about it.
01:27:48
Speaker
There's no appetite for it.
01:27:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:51
Speaker
And yeah, Trump, I mean, Trump going after China to like, in terms of like, America's why I think what basically was happening, like the tension that was there was
01:28:06
Speaker
Demanding that the NATO countries pay their fair share treats it more like an alliance and less like, you know, like the Warsaw Pact, the, you know, just sort of like it's not your nominally independent countries, but you do what Moscow says.
01:28:27
Speaker
And sort of this, this like, you know, you need to pay up your obligations.
01:28:31
Speaker
I think he was sort of
01:28:33
Speaker
treating it as more of like, and that's ultimately what they accused him of, was sort of withdrawing from America's primacy on the world stage and adopting this much more like transactional relationship to the rest of the world.
01:28:51
Speaker
They were sort of like, no, we need to hold on to the sort of the trappings of the empire.
01:28:58
Speaker
And that does mean that we basically are the only
01:29:03
Speaker
military of any consequence in Europe.
01:29:07
Speaker
And go ahead.
01:29:11
Speaker
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think, you know, another guy who goes on the good old boys podcast a lot, Tinkzorg, he gets a lot of shit because he I think he focuses a lot on like how fake Western economies are.
01:29:25
Speaker
But I think this is this is to me like the ultimate long term bottom line because
01:29:34
Speaker
what I sort of see Hanani and other folks saying is like, maybe you don't like the gay stuff, but it actually plays globally.
01:29:42
Speaker
Like people love American empire.
01:29:44
Speaker
These ideas are infectious and like, nobody wants to be a Chinese vassal.
01:29:48
Speaker
They want to be an American vassal.
01:29:50
Speaker
And like, all that is fine.
01:29:52
Speaker
It might be true.
01:29:54
Speaker
I just think that original gay empire we built, it was fueled by things like the invention of the internet or,
01:30:03
Speaker
you know, discovery of massive petroleum reserves.
01:30:06
Speaker
I just don't understand, like, what is the next thing that's going to underwrite
01:30:13
Speaker
like the sustenance of empire because like our whole lives has kind of been like, Oh, like renewable energies coming online or like the app economy is going to be lit.
01:30:24
Speaker
But like none of this shit happened.
01:30:28
Speaker
Like the only parts of the economy that have supposedly grown are like totally speculative, uh,
01:30:34
Speaker
uh, financialization things that don't seem, I mean, you know, I'm a lay person, but they seem to have very little inherent value and how much can you do with it?
01:30:44
Speaker
So like, I, I don't know.
01:30:45
Speaker
I think.
01:30:48
Speaker
Yeah, I, I'm actually, uh, I'm actually, I, I, I kind of agree with the take that our, uh, our nonsense really plays overseas.
01:30:57
Speaker
Like I I've heard a lot of guys on our corner of, of things, uh,
01:31:03
Speaker
talk about like Islam, like Islam is going to save us.
01:31:06
Speaker
And I've met a lot of Muslim kids and they're, you know, they're going to be dying their hair purple.
01:31:16
Speaker
You know, they might be, they might be 20 years behind us, but they're going that direction.
01:31:20
Speaker
Um, no, you, you see, it's very, it's very difficult and like, I want to be respectful or whatever, but I, I have a friend, a woman I used to work with and I was talking to her about, uh,
01:31:33
Speaker
her daughters, and she's a very conservative Muslim and well, in some ways she's very conservative, she's very pious, but she was complaining that at some like Muslim social organization, her daughters weren't like really getting respect because sort of the dynamic in the organization was like, it's male led or whatever.
01:31:52
Speaker
And what I was saying to her, and I was trying to say it in a nice way, but I was like, the problem you guys have
01:32:00
Speaker
is that you think America is all a cart.
01:32:05
Speaker
Like you, you come here and you're like, Oh, we're going to keep God, but we're going to lose male dominated social life.
01:32:15
Speaker
And I was like, I was saying to my friend, I was like, this is how they get you.
01:32:18
Speaker
Like,
01:32:19
Speaker
you're gonna think you're just getting the pie, but they're gonna slip some carrots onto your plate.
01:32:25
Speaker
Like nobody gets away just with the dishes they want.
01:32:30
Speaker
And I think the same thing is true overseas.
01:32:34
Speaker
You have countries that are like,
01:32:36
Speaker
well, we don't really agree with America culturally, but like if they want to send some fucking Netflix, like some this or that, like we'll let it in.
01:32:44
Speaker
But it's like, no, this is, this is nuclear level cultural hegemony stuff.
01:32:49
Speaker
Like once you, once you let it in and it's in your, your population, in your culture, like you don't have a handle on it anymore.
01:32:57
Speaker
And, and yeah, I do think Islam, like people saying like Muslims will save us or whatever.
01:33:04
Speaker
I mean, I think,
01:33:06
Speaker
The thing that's interesting is like, you have to sort of, um...
01:33:15
Speaker
I have a big thing.
01:33:16
Speaker
I think maybe I said this on your podcast before.
01:33:18
Speaker
It's like, I don't really believe in scale.
01:33:21
Speaker
I think like everything good is particular and specific.
01:33:25
Speaker
And so it's like, I'm sure there are Muslim communities on earth, probably a lot of them in Afghanistan that will never be touched by the globo homo shit.
01:33:36
Speaker
But like the precise reason that it'll never be
01:33:40
Speaker
coerced into this broader global thing is why it's of no use to us because it's like yeah there'll be these five villages in like kandahar that never care about but they're not going to create like a rival news station and like convert belgium like they're going to survive because they're they're five villages you know and that i you know that ultimately is the uh is the
01:34:08
Speaker
right wing trad homesteader versus solar pagan debate in a nutshell, right?
01:34:14
Speaker
That's yes.
01:34:14
Speaker
And I'm, I'm tipping my hand with the scale thing, because I think I've even, I think one thing I like about you and about exit is that like you sort of refuse to,
01:34:27
Speaker
to winnow your vision down just to yourself and your family.
01:34:31
Speaker
You're very motivated to say like, no, I want at least something at the community scale to survive this.
01:34:39
Speaker
And I think that I very much admire that, but I also feel overwhelmed by that.
01:34:45
Speaker
Like I often feel like
01:34:47
Speaker
I have a hell of a time just like trying to protect my own soul, you know, and if I had, if I had kids or whatever, like that would be another thing to like thinking about like, how could we get like a non gay town?
01:35:02
Speaker
It feels like it feels like it's above my pay grade.
01:35:05
Speaker
But you know, again, that's why I said I'm an Indian, not a chief like, No, that's exactly no, I feel exactly the same way.
01:35:17
Speaker
It is not that I feel more qualified than anybody to do it.
01:35:27
Speaker
I just I just have five kids.
01:35:31
Speaker
And I am looking at the world they're going to grow up in.
01:35:35
Speaker
And I'm like, I have got to do something.
01:35:38
Speaker
I have got to build something that is better than this.
01:35:45
Speaker
And I feel like I can build something better than this.
01:35:48
Speaker
Like that doesn't seem like too high of a bar.
01:35:53
Speaker
Logistically, like how the hell do you get, you know, all these people from all over the country to like work together and like figure and like find solutions to all these problems like that?
01:36:09
Speaker
That's incredibly intimidating to me.
01:36:11
Speaker
But it's like,
01:36:13
Speaker
What the hell else am I going to do?
01:36:15
Speaker
Like, you know, am I going to go just get a data analyst job and watch my kids, you know, either, you know, I can either try to like hide them from everything and have them grow up strange and not let them have friends.
01:36:31
Speaker
And, and, and then, you know, when they're finally introduced to all this shit, they have no antibodies.
01:36:39
Speaker
Um, or I can sort of like try to titrate the dose and I, but I've seen a lot of people do that and it doesn't seem to work very well.
01:36:47
Speaker
It it's like, it's like, uh, I, I have to make this my life's work.
01:36:59
Speaker
I, I, I, I can't imagine.
01:37:05
Speaker
I can't imagine tolerating the alternatives.
01:37:11
Speaker
And so it's, yeah, we just, we just have to figure it out.
01:37:14
Speaker
We have to figure it out.
01:37:16
Speaker
And, and so, I mean, we're, we're, we're trying to do a lot of things right now.
01:37:21
Speaker
We're, we're, we're gonna host this natalism convention in June.
01:37:26
Speaker
Um, we're trying to just like learn to code thing.
01:37:30
Speaker
We're trying to create an alternative to scouting.
01:37:31
Speaker
Like we're running all these projects.
01:37:35
Speaker
And ultimately, like the only way that I can think of to accomplish the scale of things that need to be accomplished is just to find people who have the same passion and put them in a room together and sort of give them permission to, you know, issue orders.
01:37:57
Speaker
But yeah, that's, it's not like,
01:38:03
Speaker
you have to, your vision has to have greater scale than just your family.
01:38:08
Speaker
Because we've watched that approach of hiding out fail over and over and over again.
01:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right.
01:38:18
Speaker
I was even talking to my brother about something.
01:38:22
Speaker
My brother has two little kids and we were talking about sort of discipline and he was even sort of saying
01:38:32
Speaker
It's like the way you discipline your own kids can't be that out of step with how other parents are going to interact with them.
01:38:41
Speaker
It's like he was kind of saying like and he's not like a really like yelly dad or anything.
01:38:48
Speaker
But he was saying he's like sometimes you try to draw lines.
01:38:52
Speaker
But if the line you're drawing is just like.
01:38:56
Speaker
you're being way more consistent or way more conservative than say the lady at daycare or the, the friend's parents when they're there, eventually your kid's just going to be like,
01:39:07
Speaker
Oh, you're out of step with society, dad.
01:39:10
Speaker
Right.
01:39:10
Speaker
Dad's just weird.
01:39:13
Speaker
Right.
01:39:13
Speaker
So it's almost like you.
01:39:16
Speaker
And I guess this is just a low trust society thing, but it's like you unbeknownst to you, there is some degree to which the whole culture is raising your kids and you just you have to try and negotiate that.
01:39:31
Speaker
And it's very I think for a lot of people, it's very painful because
01:39:35
Speaker
we consider how all these things affect us and especially as adults, we're like, okay, well, I can handle it and not feel corrupted even if I feel sullied or something.
01:39:45
Speaker
But then to see children go through it is a whole different thing.
01:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, even just like the, my kids don't watch very much television at all or movies and we try to keep it to like old stuff.
01:39:58
Speaker
But watching them pick up like mannerisms and facial expressions that are clearly like these overacted
01:40:08
Speaker
Like they're basically picking up cues from like bad child actors.
01:40:14
Speaker
And I mean, it breaks my heart because I'm like, oh no, like, you know, how deep does it go?
01:40:24
Speaker
How much are you picking up?
01:40:26
Speaker
What's because it's and you know, like, I almost feel like I have to apologize like I'm overreacting or something, but this culture is so poisonous.
Creating Cultural Narratives for Children
01:40:36
Speaker
And, you know, and that's, I mean, that's, you know, we're doing this literary competition, trying to, trying to create some alternative cultures just, and it's not like children's stuff at this point, but I think there has to come a time when like our kids, uh, our kids have really high quality archetypes to draw from.
01:41:02
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know if you as a single guy have actually like tried to like plumb the depths of like what you can show your kids media wise.
01:41:14
Speaker
Well, yeah, I take care of my niece and nephew sometimes.
01:41:16
Speaker
So it's like, yeah, it's not even so much that it's it's not even so much that it's like bad.
01:41:26
Speaker
Like morally bad.
01:41:27
Speaker
It's more just like that.
01:41:28
Speaker
It's all so shitty.
01:41:31
Speaker
It's just...
01:41:33
Speaker
It's nothing.
01:41:34
Speaker
It's vapor.
01:41:35
Speaker
It's Cheetos.
01:41:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, there's something... I think there are some trends going on in culture that get lost when people are focused on the woke stuff or the identity stuff.
01:41:49
Speaker
And I would almost say it's like...
01:41:53
Speaker
it's therapeutic in tone where like one thing I've noticed with a lot of children's stuff is like, it's all about how like you don't have to do anything to have value.
01:42:06
Speaker
If that makes sense.
01:42:07
Speaker
Like, like a lot of it is like, it's like, you're just, it's like making a very explicit point of like, no, you don't have to like be a farmer or like drive a milk truck.
01:42:18
Speaker
Like,
01:42:19
Speaker
It's just great that you exist.
01:42:22
Speaker
And I think like even that is like demented, like it might not set us off in the same way.
01:42:28
Speaker
Because I guess it's like for me, I've always sort of seen the the woke stuff as like, I don't know, a subcategory of some thing about like self-help or self-actualization or like the self as this thing you always indulge and you're always trying to explore it.
01:42:50
Speaker
And like, you know, there's no obligations, there's no sense of duty or whatever.
01:42:55
Speaker
And I feel like even when the content is not explicitly woke, I see a lot of that in content for kids.
01:43:02
Speaker
It's like.
01:43:03
Speaker
the universe is just your mind and like you're the most beautiful creative thing that there has ever been.
01:43:09
Speaker
And like, I don't know, that's like a form of religion, you know, and not the true one.
01:43:16
Speaker
And it's explicitly idolatrous.
01:43:18
Speaker
And yeah, man.
01:43:22
Speaker
So so that's, you know, those are the dragons.
01:43:26
Speaker
Those are the dragons we're trying to slay, man.
01:43:29
Speaker
And and I think it's I think it's definitely worth doing.
01:43:33
Speaker
Um, I don't know what else that's, that's what it comes down to for me.
01:43:37
Speaker
I, I looked around at other things I could do and I just did, I just could not make myself give a shit.
01:43:44
Speaker
And this is the first thing that I've been able to do that.
01:43:48
Speaker
And, and so, um, so yeah, I, I, I think you just, I think you just answered your civil war question.
01:43:57
Speaker
Because it sounds to me like you're getting some meaning out of it sort of regardless of outcome.
01:44:02
Speaker
It's what you want to be doing either way.
01:44:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:06
Speaker
Win or lose.
01:44:07
Speaker
You kind of got to, you got to, I mean, you know, in the context of that metaphor, it's a little, it's a little trickier, but, but, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, there's some things that some things that it doesn't matter whether or not you win.
01:44:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:44:22
Speaker
Well, okay.
01:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think we'll snap the line there, man.
01:44:24
Speaker
I got to prepare for tonight's call.
01:44:26
Speaker
But this was great.
01:44:28
Speaker
This was really, really fun, man.
01:44:30
Speaker
And we should do it again soon.
01:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's always great to talk to you.
01:44:34
Speaker
I hope the various pieces are easy enough to piece together.
01:44:38
Speaker
But yeah, it was a good chat.
01:44:40
Speaker
All right, man.
01:44:41
Speaker
See ya.