40: Degree Studies (Midterms, Musk)

Transcript

Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.

Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.

Speaker: I am joined once again by Degree Studies, our neighborhood fed spook.

Speaker: He's coming back from the Domestic Extremism Podcast where we discussed the federal government's interest in my Twitter account and yours.

Speaker: So welcome back to the program, Degree Studies.

Speaker: Yeah, thanks.

Speaker: Thanks for having me.

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.

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

Speaker: extremism on the internet.

Speaker: So maybe let's start with the Twitter purchase.

Speaker: Now, remind the folks exactly what you did as far as sentiment analysis for the government.

Speaker: First, I had a background in foreign policy.

Speaker: So for a lot of the time, I was doing research that was more interesting and I would say more legitimate about...

Speaker: you know, jihadist groups and their use of social media.

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.

Speaker: I think I mentioned on on my last appearance that people were very worried

Speaker: that like we had lost the online battle to ISIS.

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.

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.

Speaker: And I think,

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.

Speaker: It was a very easy explanation for why things had gone the way they did.

Speaker: I think people didn't want to grapple with questions like, why might this be appealing?

Speaker: Or is there a native constituency for this in the Middle East that would sort of exist differently?

Speaker: regardless of technology, much easier to say, oh, like we're good at counterterrorism.

Speaker: The only thing that's new is these social media platforms.

Speaker: So that's why we didn't have our eye on the ball.

Speaker: So let's go look at it.

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.

Speaker: And then this idea came in that like,

Speaker: ISIS was really effective in converting people to its worldview on there.

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.

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.

Speaker: So in other words, like they said, hey, you were looking at ISIS accounts.

Speaker: You know, we want to see are there like American neo-Nazi accounts doing similar things, you know, recruiting people.

Speaker: And yeah, I think it's, you know, that, as you can imagine, was even more

Speaker: retarded and dumb.

Speaker: Some of the contracts are more interesting and specific.

Speaker: I think I talked to you about this, but maybe not on the podcast.

Speaker: I got on one contract where one of the branches of the armed forces, they didn't come to us with a particularly

Speaker: aggressive take.

Speaker: They were just like, hey, can you guys see how you think anti-vaccine sentiment is moving within our troops or whatever?

Speaker: And, you know, they're very careful to say, like, you know, we're not targeting anyone.

Speaker: No one's going to get punished.

Speaker: We just want like a very broad general analysis of like what you think the attitudes are and what's feeding into them.

Speaker: We just want to talk to them.

Speaker: We just want to talk to them.

Speaker: We're just asking questions.

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.

Speaker: Like putting aside sort of everything that happened with COVID, like the failures of COVID,

Speaker: you know, the failures of Fauci or, or whatever the CDC, like vac skepticism sort of exists.

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,

Speaker: In the military, they had like a certain kind of gun.

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.

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...

Speaker: you know, they didn't have their up-to-date vaccinations.

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.

Speaker: We'll give him eight vaccinations.

Speaker: This guy's missing 11.

Speaker: We'll give him 11.

Speaker: So there were a lot of like, especially older officers who were like, I'm not even particularly worried about this vaccine.

Speaker: I just have like a bad experience

Speaker: with getting vaccinated in the service.

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,

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.

Speaker: Like there's a lot of like, just take this shot and get back out there, son.

Speaker: And they're worried that their real health isn't the concern.

Speaker: So in other words, it wasn't like Russian propaganda.

Speaker: It wasn't Dan Bongino or,

Speaker: or whoever.

Speaker: It was just like a very natural organic skepticism.

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.

Speaker: Well, that's I mean, that's exactly it.

Speaker: It's it's they they take this like technical approach to opinion management like that.

Speaker: You just

Speaker: that they ought to know how to speak the magic words that will inculcate the opinions that they want.

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.

Speaker: Which, you know, it's this very natural, almost understandable progression.

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,

Speaker: public opinion with marketing materials and that that has made way into the public sector.

Speaker: But it's it's they've they've it's led them to like completely ignore like the justice of the cause.

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.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I think, you know.

Speaker: In the defense of the military,

Speaker: like their institution is actually sort of transparently non-democratic in the way that other institutions aren't.

Speaker: So like they might even say like,

Speaker: look, our troops have good reasons to think we're lying, but we want them to not know we're lying.

Speaker: What can we do?

Speaker: Like they will sort of cop to the fact that like once you're in the army, they coerce you.

Speaker: Like that's part of the deal.

Speaker: Yeah, you signed up for some coercion.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But it's the same model for the rest of us.

Speaker: And obviously that's not how it's supposed to work.

Speaker: But yeah, I was – this is a little bit of a digression, I guess.

Speaker: But do you know that spineless rat on Twitter, Wajahat Ali?

Speaker: He's like a progressive journalist.

Speaker: Do you know who this guy is?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So he tweeted something after the midterms where he was like –

Speaker: You know when the brown pundits go into black voice?

Speaker: It's not how they talk, but if they're delivering a certain kind of, I guess they think, soulful message.

Speaker: Oh, they love folks?

Speaker: Or no, they love folk.

Speaker: Singular.

Speaker: Wajahat was really was really like black ministering it up.

Speaker: And he was like, I forget I forget the words, but it was like, listen, y'all like addressing white women.

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.

Speaker: Like, what are we supposed to do?

Speaker: And it's like, well, you're supposed to let them vote for Republicans.

Speaker: Idiot.

Speaker: Like.

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.

Speaker: Like he wasn't even saying like, oh, I really wish we could persuade you.

Speaker: He's saying like, look,

Speaker: the project is like making you not be you anymore.

Speaker: And you're being really slow about it.

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.

Speaker: Like, I'm not happy about this.

Speaker: But I would I would certainly never be like, guys, how many cycles tell you're not libs anymore?

Speaker: Like, infinite cycles, till the end of time.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Who was I talking to?

Speaker: It was like... Oh, no, no.

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.

Speaker: And he was like, yeah, the shitlib just is who he is for all eternity from the dawn of time.

Speaker: It's the same mentality.

Speaker: Yeah, unchangeable.

Speaker: Moldbug has personally traumatized me because...

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.

Speaker: It's like, just, it's just sort of being libs the church, right?

Speaker: Yeah, it's the Gay Straight Alliance, the church.

Speaker: Like, we had the first lesbian ministers.

Speaker: We had all this stuff.

Speaker: But it's like, I used to walk around Boston and see, like, statues of old abolitionists.

Speaker: You know, they've had quotes.

Speaker: It's like old-timey language.

Speaker: So it's kind of like fire and brimstone.

Speaker: And I would kind of have this thought in my head where I'd be like, listen, like, we're...

Speaker: Today we're irredeemable pussies, sure.

Speaker: But like these guys, they had big long beards.

Speaker: Like they were outraged by slavery.

Speaker: Like some of them died.

Speaker: Like these guys weren't pussies.

Speaker: Like these guys were the real deal.

Speaker: And then I think as I got older, I like started to make some connections in my head where I was like,

Speaker: We're the abolitionists.

Speaker: Like, is this the same thing?

Speaker: Like, are radically progressive Protestants, like, always lame in this?

Speaker: exact way.

Speaker: And I'd be like, no, no, no.

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.

Speaker: And yeah, just being like, this is, this is the eternal shit live.

Speaker: They've always been like this.

Speaker: And I was like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: I was trying to like rescue something from this pseudo heritage of mine, but like there was nothing there to admire.

Speaker: This is very traumatic.

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.

Speaker: But but.

Speaker: Reading that one, I really did.

Speaker: Even the Quakers.

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.

Speaker: We are living with all of the consequences of their flaws.

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.

Speaker: Um, and like some of them, you know, really did like pay the cost of their convictions.

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,

Speaker: you know, rabid dogmatic evangelicals of some project or another.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it's it's.

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.

Speaker: Right.

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,

Speaker: he would have ended up like a very persuasive Nazi.

Speaker: And if he was born in 1900 Russia, he would have been like a Politburo guy.

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.

Speaker: to succeed as much as possible in some sort of status, status thing.

Speaker: And usually that's going to mean just sort of siding with the way things are going with status quo.

Speaker: Yeah, man, I, it's, it's especially funny to have that conversation.

Speaker: I actually had that conversation with some lib acquaintances.

Speaker: because I was basically accusing them of that.

Speaker: I was like, look, you know, if you had grown up, you know, in that environment, you would be just like those people.

Speaker: Because we were talking about presentism a little bit.

Speaker: And they were like, no, no, no, we wouldn't have.

Speaker: We would have seen, we would have understood.

Speaker: And they were kind of making this like religious argument that like, you know, my spirit is...

Speaker: These opinions are like central to my being, the sort of ball of light that's at the center of me.

Speaker: And then I sort of steer the conversation toward like the inner city.

Speaker: And I was like, so are those people a product of their environment?

Speaker: Like, you know, are the crime rates there?

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?

Speaker: And they sort of rapidly changed the subject.

Speaker: But it's essentially the same argument.

Speaker: And I actually think I wasn't entirely fair to them.

Speaker: Like, I think I do believe that, you know, you make real choices.

Speaker: But

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?

Speaker: Like, are you just are you just eating boot or not?

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.

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.

Speaker: So it's like a weird, uh,

Speaker: like join the regime in transgressing against.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, I mean, that's kind of the, it's kind of the nature of permanent revolution, right?

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.

Speaker: And then also just mindlessly defending all of the institutions of power that that revolution has already captured.

Speaker: Right, but it introduces an interesting question about what archetypes are attracted to this.

Speaker: Because I think, presumably, there is a sort of fascist kind of bootlicker that is not particularly drawn.

Speaker: There must be a personality that is very willing to lick boots, but is aesthetically primarily drawn to order.

Speaker: And so they can't really...

Speaker: get themselves.

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.

Speaker: That's very unique, you know?

Speaker: And so I think I almost feel, and I think part of what's going on with the dissident right is

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

Speaker: Yes, yes.

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.

Speaker: I mean, I guess Indian Bronson has brought this up a lot.

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?

Speaker: And like, you know, I think that there are lots of reasons why

Speaker: at this moment we should defer that question.

Speaker: But I certainly understood the point he was making.

Speaker: Yeah, no, I'm like an anarchist with respect to this regime.

Speaker: Like, I just monotonically want all of their authority removed from them

Speaker: as quickly as possible, regardless of the topic.

Speaker: If there's a question, should they do this?

Speaker: Should they be in charge of this?

Speaker: My answer is no.

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.

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.

Speaker: Hitler needs me to be his top guy.

Speaker: Like, that's, you know, he's being funny about it, but that is a real impulse.

Speaker: Like, to want to be extremely loyal and valuable to someone who deserves loyalty.

Speaker: No, and I, I mean, maybe this is revealing too much psychologically about me, but, like, I think I really ultimately...

Speaker: want to be an Indian more than a chief.

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?

Speaker: Can I believe in this person?

Speaker: Do they deserve the fruits of my intellectual efforts?

Speaker: And then like ultimately discovering that they were unethical or not that impressive or not that committed, but like,

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.

Speaker: I'd just be so pleased like, oh, there's like actually somebody deserving and accountable in charge.

Speaker: That that would be like such a thrilling thing to find.

Speaker: And I suspect, I mean, this may have something to do with my particular pathologies, but I think you can sense

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.

Speaker: Yes, no, that's exactly right.

Speaker: And I have had the experience

Speaker: once in my life of being really, um, sort of adopted into a household by a mentor that I really respected.

Speaker: And he, he, he had this like, he had this like intense big man energy.

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.

Speaker: And, um,

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.

Speaker: It's a shame that more people haven't had that experience.

Speaker: No, it's a really powerful.

Speaker: I think when I was young, I was always confused.

Speaker: I would often be in the presence of men.

Speaker: like teachers or like my mom's friends.

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.

Speaker: Like he's cool.

Speaker: He doesn't come down on you hard like your football coach or something.

Speaker: And like, I always kind of knew I had contempt for that, but I didn't realize why till I was an adult.

Speaker: And I think it's that I'm like, oh, he was saying he has nothing for us.

Speaker: Like he was sort of saying that it would take care and attention for him to assume authority.

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.

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.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It,

Speaker: And I mean, the sort of the archetype that you have to adopt almost is that of like a. A dispossessed elite, like.

Speaker: Ultimately, like what we're saying is there like there should be a hierarchy.

Speaker: And we should be at the top of it and and not like.

Speaker: Not because we're better, but because.

Speaker: nobody else is signing up.

Speaker: Nobody else is showing up.

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.

Speaker: Like there's not a hierarchy.

Speaker: There's not, they don't have authority figures.

Speaker: And so like, I literally, I mean, part of my sort of vision for what we're doing at exit is to,

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.

Speaker: And then, you know, go ahead.

Speaker: Sorry, go ahead.

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.

Speaker: So like, um,

Speaker: Yeah, so so, you know, you are the you are the priesthood leader in your home as the father and.

Speaker: And, you know, you you.

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.

Speaker: And then your children, you're sort of trying to set them up to be little kings in their domains.

Speaker: And so to me, that's what's healthy.

Speaker: That's how hierarchy should work.

Speaker: Like everyone should have the experience of...

Speaker: of submitting to a, an authority that deserves submission and also leading in a way that, you know, deserves to be followed.

Speaker: Yeah.

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.

Speaker: And I think to some extent, as a man, you just, you have to,

Speaker: step up to the responsibility of, of being a chief in your household.

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,

Speaker: support than leadership.

Speaker: I think I'm better suited to it.

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

Speaker: led by someone else and I'm less comfortable leading the project.

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.

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

Speaker: they won't serve, but they don't get that like they're losers.

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.

Speaker: I think I'd.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Not, not these frigging creatures.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: A hundred percent.

Speaker: Well, I, I want to talk to you.

Speaker: Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker: No, no, you, you, you.

Speaker: I was just going to say sometimes too, it's like,

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I'm trying to describe things non-specifically so I don't dox myself or get fired or whatever.

Speaker: But I would say most of the time at work, this is just a classic example.

Speaker: Most of the time at work, other people are much better at pretending they care than I am.

Speaker: And so it's like a struggle for me because people kind of know I like keep myself at a distance.

Speaker: Maybe I'm a little aloof.

Speaker: You know, I get my shit done, but I'm I'm distant or whatever.

Speaker: And people like resent it.

Speaker: And I get that.

Speaker: It's actually bad to not you're like a bad team member to not be fully invested.

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

Speaker: uh, reveal through some act or statement that they really don't care at all either.

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.

Speaker: And I'm like, I'm only so good at presenting like a dishonest version of myself.

Speaker: Uh,

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.

Speaker: I had I had a my transition from like a standard defense contractor to an intelligence contractor.

Speaker: It was remarkable.

Speaker: How.

Speaker: The culture changed from one of like.

Speaker: you got to do what you got to do kind of cynicism.

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.

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.

Speaker: It was, it was more just like, we're privileged to be here.

Speaker: Like, this is like, just very like,

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's the opposite of what you would expect from the movies.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Cause it's like the chuds in the army are supposed to believe in this shit.

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.

Speaker: The generals are retarded, like turn the truck around.

Speaker: And then, uh, the, uh, yeah.

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,

Speaker: guess he was like a CIA analyst or something.

Speaker: I don't know what he told her he was, but she concluded he was a CIA analyst.

Speaker: And one of the things he said on the date was that January 6th was the saddest day of his life.

Speaker: And I think that that captures like the sort of preciousness you're talking about.

Speaker: But there's something there's something deep about America in that because it's like

Speaker: Here, it's weird.

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.

Speaker: Certainly, that's true in Middle Eastern.

Speaker: But it's like the U.S., which I used to be told and used to believe is like not a propagandized country.

Speaker: It's like, no, it's the only...

Speaker: country that's ever successfully propagandized its own elite.

Speaker: So like, and maybe in so doing it, it like lost the masses.

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.

Speaker: It's so bizarre.

Speaker: And it's I mean, like,

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.

Speaker: They're kind of like, this is the, this is the elite religion.

Speaker: And I, and I think there's almost a theological bent to it.

Speaker: I think it's,

Speaker: I'm not going to sit here and do a class analysis on this, but we have this meritocracy, right?

Speaker: Which, you know, it's not perfect, but like...

Speaker: You do have to be like smart to rise through the ranks of some of these institutions.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, their brains have horsepower.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: They're not like stupid people.

Speaker: Like nobody you like encounter on Twitter is like actually stupid.

Speaker: They're like stupid relative to like this world that we're living in.

Speaker: Like, well, right.

Speaker: Dumb people could never be as stupid as the people we're talking about because like, exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: They don't have the juice to erect all these false universes with like various forms of pseudo evidence.

Speaker: Like you almost, you, you need to be smart to be stupid in the way they're stupid.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: And, and so it's like,

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.

Speaker: It has to be like your, uh, your virtue, your effort, your grit, uh,

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.

Speaker: Well, that's, that's systemic oppression.

Speaker: It's, it's basically, basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like they're hiding the ball.

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

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.

Speaker: Like it's, do you see what I'm saying?

Speaker: Like there's this, there's this whack-a-mole that they're playing with.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And like capacity, all these competing narratives, capacity for self effacement and sort of,

Speaker: conspicuous elevating of colleagues of color or women or whatever becomes like more elaborations of that justification.

Speaker: It's like, I have to be here as a white man because I'm the one, the one white man.

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,

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.

Speaker: And you know, it's, I always want to like earnestly ask, but I can't engage.

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.

Speaker: He's a special boy.

Speaker: Yeah, because it... I don't know.

Speaker: It's very... You know, there's something going on with these fucking people.

Speaker: Well, on that subject, I want to talk to you about the handover of Twitter.

Speaker: And, like, I don't know how kind of close you are to that, like, domestic intelligence world anymore.

Speaker: But, I mean...

Speaker: How much like wailing and gnashing of teeth is there around that in that community do you think?

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: So, you know, a lot of stuff has come out recently about how Twitter cooperated with the government.

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

Speaker: communicating with folks at DHS back and forth about like, what kind of misinformation are you looking for?

Speaker: So like when I was doing this kind of work, I would not actually have been sitting at DHS or Twitter.

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,

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.

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.

Speaker: But these third party guys we hired say that these hundred accounts have been up for a month.

Speaker: So like.

Speaker: So you're you're you're narcing on the narcs like you're a you're a double narc.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: So like, so I would just for example, like I wouldn't be privy to the communications between the platforms and the government.

Speaker: Like I never actually saw anything like that.

Speaker: But I know that it was obvious from working at these places that like, that such communication was happening.

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

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.

Speaker: So I certainly don't notice any huge drop in vigilance.

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,

Speaker: that has not matched with my user experience.

Speaker: Yeah.

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.

Speaker: But he was tweeting all week.

Speaker: He's like, Twitter fired their whole human rights team

Speaker: this puts Tigray rebels and women in Saudi Arabia and all these people in danger.

Speaker: I was trying to ask him, what do you think those Twitter executives do?

Speaker: Because your nightmare scenario is that the governments find out the real identities of these people.

Speaker: Twitter executives can't stop that.

Speaker: In fact,

Speaker: their one possible conduit by which the government would discover the real identities.

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.

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.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: That's total nonsense.

Speaker: They have nothing to do with.

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.

Speaker: But I don't think I don't think that's what these people were doing.

Speaker: And so I was just trying to get him to say, like, what actions do you think this human rights team

Speaker: took that made the lives of those activists or their behavior safer.

Speaker: Cause like, I don't understand.

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.

Speaker: Like you're, you're, you're jeopardizing lives by allowing this discussion to happen.

Speaker: Like,

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.

Speaker: No, and actually I have an even darker story about how this shit doesn't work.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: And like Facebook did it.

Speaker: But every time there was like a 24 to 48 hour turnaround.

Speaker: And I never knew of an instance where the person actually avoided getting in trouble.

Speaker: So, like, it wasn't, like, this smooth-oiled machine or whatever.

Speaker: Like, it's all just fucking nonsense, and it's, like, ugh.

Speaker: I don't know.

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?

Speaker: Yes, because...

Speaker: here's the thing.

Speaker: And like, I'm not a, I'm not like a technical guy.

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.

Speaker: If you want real time observation, uh,

Speaker: of like searching for keywords and taking stuff down in real time, then you need like hundreds of thousands.

Speaker: An intelligence agency.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

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.

Speaker: Like I don't, that's not plausible to me.

Speaker: But I will also say, and this sort of came up on that,

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.

Speaker: Uh, and if that's what he's doing, I'm certainly fine with that.

Speaker: But like, I do think, and I don't know if this is cause he has a spectrum disorder or what, but like,

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.

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

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.

Speaker: I mean, it's very enjoyable to me as a user, but like

Speaker: Yeah, if I was an investor in the company, I'd be like, what is this?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You know, what is what's going on here?

Speaker: Like, this is super weird.

Speaker: I mean, like, unless he's just really confident, he's trying to destroy it.

Speaker: I mean, he would have to just be really confident in his ability to just get the money from the user base.

Speaker: Oops, I can see you're talking, but I can't hear you for some reason.

Speaker: Okay, let's pause this for a second.

Speaker: The impression that I get from

Speaker: the freak out about this is basically the Twitter formed this really important firewall against like wrong opinions, achieving currency.

Speaker: And, and, and basically that it was like just this, this really important, uh,

Speaker: organ of state power that was lost to them.

Speaker: And so like just on the basis of their freak out, I was kind of celebrating.

Speaker: But I wonder what your what your thoughts on are on that.

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.

Speaker: But it is interesting that like,

Speaker: The premise of a lot of this, I'm just going to go through a series of events here.

Speaker: The premise of a lot of this is that the libs controlled Twitter and they suppressed the laptop story.

Speaker: And so then Trump lost in 2020.

Speaker: But it's like now a crazy South African...

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.

Speaker: And then the Democrats do much better than expected.

Speaker: So like, there's, it's just interesting how to make sense of what is the influence of this?

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,

Speaker: I think the actual changes Elon is going to make, or at least so far has made, are pretty small.

Speaker: There is nothing too small that the sort of people we're talking about won't freak out about it.

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.

Speaker: I still see people making threats get booted off.

Speaker: I would say the app overall is like 10 to 15% more spicy.

Speaker: And I think unfortunately, like whether their neurosis permits them to realize it or not, I think

Speaker: the sort of mainstream media can weather that level of spiciness.

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.

Speaker: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the midterms, man.

Speaker: I was, I think everybody is,

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.

Speaker: And, you know, imagine, imagine being the kind of person who votes and thinks it matters.

Speaker: Just can you imagine?

Speaker: And I think, but what you're noticing is like everybody, including those guys,

Speaker: is really volatile right now on Twitter.

Speaker: Like they're all very testy, like something bad happened to them that they're disappointed about.

Speaker: And I, I, I gotta believe that like, there were some real expectations around this midterm that were disappointed.

Speaker: Um, well, right.

Speaker: Cause I think, I think there's only two, there's only two ways to understand it.

Speaker: And both of them are very discouraging.

Speaker: I think,

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

Speaker: like they think Hitler is the worst person that ever lived.

Speaker: And they think like being gay is cool and like probably, and I'm not even saying these are bad things to believe.

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.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Or like outmoded or something.

Speaker: And I think...

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.

Speaker: And to some extent that was true.

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,

Speaker: I did feel this sinking feeling of like, oh, right.

Speaker: At the end of the day, like this is an extremely liberal and extremely libertarian country, like in its soul.

Speaker: And that's going to be uncomfortable for me forever.

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.

Speaker: But it's like,

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.

Speaker: And I think my position is like, I'm maybe more okay with democracy.

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.

Speaker: and being more attentive to what they want.

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.

Speaker: So I think that's the first black pill is like being reminded that

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.

Speaker: And for this, this moment for me was just a time to be like, oh, right.

Speaker: That's not this country.

Speaker: Yeah, that's just on Twitter.

Speaker: Yeah, we have to make political plans with with that in in mind.

Speaker: I think the other

Speaker: black pill that I don't know how deeply we should get into, but like, I'll just put it this way.

Speaker: Some of these results I can't make sense of.

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

Speaker: you know, people who I would hope might take that up or look into it more deeply.

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,

Speaker: Again, talking about the ways in which we think Americans are mature, but actually we're really naive.

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.

Speaker: And I think I...

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.

Speaker: And I'd be like, I don't even want to read this shit.

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.

Speaker: So, so I don't know.

Speaker: And to be clear, like,

Speaker: I think it's totally possible that all these elections are on the up and up.

Speaker: I just know that it's almost not even about that.

Speaker: It's about that the seed of doubt has crept in and there's nobody with the capability or the inclination

Speaker: to convince me my suspicions are unwarranted.

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.

Speaker: That's just, that's just my life going forward.

Speaker: So whoop-de-doo.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Those, yeah, that's, those are probably the two big headings that I would use as well.

Speaker: It's a black pill about what people's real opinions are

Speaker: and a black pill about, you know, do their opinions actually ramify to the outcome of the election?

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.

Speaker: Like, a lot of folks in my church have that,

Speaker: instinct to conform.

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.

Speaker: And now that instinct to conform is in that in this house, we believe no human is illegal.

Speaker: All lives are black lives matter.

Speaker: You know, love is love, et cetera.

Speaker: And it's been really challenging for like my, my like understanding of how human beings work.

Speaker: Because like, it just you know, you sort of looked around at these people who seemed like they really believed in something.

Speaker: And they just they were just able to turn on a dime.

Speaker: And it's like, oh, man, like, I don't even live in this on the same planet I thought I did.

Speaker: And you you brought up at the beginning.

Speaker: Some folks, you know, who I think you were saying that, like, they were sort of saying,

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.

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

Speaker: to just ignore immense suffering and walk past it.

Speaker: And like, certainly we do this in our society and it is a requirement.

Speaker: Like, you know, even me just living in the city, like,

Speaker: there's, there's heroin addicts I have to walk by.

Speaker: And like, there are times where I have like dumb, naive thoughts, like, could I let this person stay at my apartment?

Speaker: Could I help them?

Speaker: Could I ask them if there's a family member I could call?

Speaker: Cause it's like, they're a slave to this substance.

Speaker: And like, I have been socialized to just say, okay, like I can't help them.

Speaker: I'm not allowed to coerce them into going to rehab.

Speaker: The state refuses to do that.

Speaker: So like,

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.

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.

Speaker: And like,

Speaker: There are people who are so troubled by sort of the everyday humdrum moral indignities that they like go insane.

Speaker: But those people are like Ted Kaczynski.

Speaker: Like they aren't, or just like anonymous people that kill themselves.

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

Speaker: mass scale human social activity that like they can't handle it.

Speaker: But all of us who are doing OK, all of us who have jobs like we can handle it.

Speaker: And I think the thing that the thing that bothers me and why I went on this whole little rant is like.

Speaker: I feel like.

Speaker: Part of what they're saying is that like those heroin addicted people don't matter in the same way that

Speaker: people facing historical injustice.

Speaker: Like they're saying like, that's not the same as having to sit on the back of the bus.

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.

Speaker: Just like so obviously wrong.

Speaker: Like there's so much suffering that doesn't give you pause at all.

Speaker: So like, and I think a lot of people are just super comfortable

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.

Speaker: But I don't think it is at all.

Speaker: And I think obviously like people – it's really pathetic but like –

Speaker: Yeah, of course in the future people are going to think we're horrible.

Speaker: Like they're going to think meat eating was as bad as being a Nazi or whatever.

Speaker: Like who cares?

Speaker: They're dumb future people.

Speaker: Like they didn't have to deal with what we have to deal with.

Speaker: It's great that their moral concerns will be more narrow.

Speaker: But like I think – I don't know why I'm ranting so much about this.

Speaker: But I think there's something uniquely pathetic and American –

Speaker: in the fantasy of being like my moral purity would have been consistent in the past and will be recognized in the future.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It transcends time and space.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No one gets that.

Speaker: Why would you think you get that?

Speaker: That's kind of necessary to be the protagonist of the universe, right?

Speaker: Like you have to be the one with the...

Speaker: the true north moral center.

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,

Speaker: Christianity does not take the burden off of you.

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.

Speaker: And I am fighting to build a world in which that person doesn't suffer that way.

Speaker: And like,

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.

Speaker: And that makes you a huge bastard.

Speaker: And like, I really think that part of their advantage in in this situation is that like we actually

Speaker: Our our moral commitments.

Speaker: Are sort of unattainable, like we are.

Speaker: Asking of ourselves something that.

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,

Speaker: live the law of chastity.

Speaker: And we're supposed, like, we have all these commitments that we don't live up to.

Speaker: And so it's very obvious and very easy to accuse us of hypocrisy.

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.

Speaker: And my solutions aren't perfect, but at least I'm trying.

Speaker: At least we're doing things out here.

Speaker: You know, that's kind of their...

Speaker: frame as far as I understand it.

Speaker: And, and like, there's, there's power in that because you sort of always know what to do.

Speaker: Like the answer is always more state power, more tearing down of distinctions.

Speaker: It's like this, it has this internal momentum to it that, you know,

Speaker: that all of our various conservative religious traditions don't have, certainly not in this moment.

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.

Speaker: And I always had a sense that no matter how good I was doing,

Speaker: I could do better.

Speaker: And I knew, and I knew that, but that this sort of moral striving was what God wanted of me.

Speaker: And I'm not saying I feel like profoundly morally inadequate, but I do, you know, I fear God.

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,

Speaker: regretfulness and drive to do better.

Speaker: And yeah, I guess part of what I'm enraged by is sort of people who seem to have totally abdicated

Speaker: that like moment to moment moral self-assessment.

Speaker: It's almost like their universe of morality is like these big political swings.

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?

Speaker: Like, no, that doesn't work with my understanding of morality.

Speaker: But that seems to sort of be

Speaker: what they're saying, like society, like we all perfect society together.

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.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so you, you know, by externalizing all of that struggle,

Speaker: Uh, they've essentially, I mean, it's all of, all of mankind's sins.

Speaker: I mean, the, the homeless person on the street is the product of usually, uh, white supremacy.

Speaker: And if the victim's white, then it's capitalism, which is white supremacy.

Speaker: And it's it by, by nailing everything to that cross.

Speaker: they've got this very like simple worldview that allows them to stand in judgment of, of all reality, everything they survey.

Speaker: And I think that that like there's, there's substantial juice in that.

Speaker: Like, I don't think it's a good thing.

Speaker: It's a big part of what I'm trying to do.

Speaker: I've been thinking about the midterms just from, from a perspective of like,

Speaker: All right, what now?

Speaker: Like, what are, what, what are we doing wrong?

Speaker: What could we build that, that makes things better?

Speaker: So that like in Montana, they're not voting to kill babies when they're born alive.

Speaker: Like what, what do we need to do to make that not the case?

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: And I actually, on the subject of like, does being born after slavery make you a better person?

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,

Speaker: give them inside information on the union's battle plans.

Speaker: So like their material situation had not changed.

Speaker: And all you could do is like, give them advice knowing that they are on the losing side of this conflict materially.

Speaker: Like what, like what could you tell them?

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.

Speaker: Um, but it's also like, it does seem obvious that like, there's some kind of accommodation that ought to be reached.

Speaker: There's some kind of, you know, how, how do you work within that system?

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.

Speaker: And then you look at what happened to those integrated schools and it's like,

Speaker: I don't begrudge someone from wanting to prevent that from happening.

Speaker: Right.

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

Speaker: in the Civil War, that bayonet point picture happens 20 years earlier.

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...

Speaker: what's the word, like un-pacified even after having lost the war as like huge ramifications for American history.

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.

Speaker: And if you told people you're just gonna die for nothing, they'd probably wanna do it even more.

Speaker: I think that was maybe particularly true of the American South.

Speaker: But I also think,

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.

Speaker: But yeah, it's, it's certainly an interesting question because yeah, because I mean, I basically feel like we're there.

Speaker: I feel like, I feel like we're in this situation where our, our worldview, uh,

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.

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.

Speaker: It's like, well, the way you want to live, you're just not going to be allowed to do that.

Speaker: So, so how do you respond to that?

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.

Speaker: Um, all things considered, but.

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,

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

Speaker: federalism that almost seemed bound up with technology and like greater forces of history.

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?

Speaker: And I think that's the thing we can't know about our current moment.

Speaker: And one of the reasons we spend so much time

Speaker: talking about like, what are the impacts of these technologies?

Speaker: What do they imply about how human beings will spend their time?

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.

Speaker: I actually think that doesn't work for more traditionally minded people like us.

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.

Speaker: And so like, right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Like the computer doesn't want you to like have children with another human being.

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

Speaker: a rapidly vanishing ecological circumstance.

Speaker: Like, what, liberalism has eaten absolutely everything on the planet.

Speaker: And it is very highly adaptive to, like, the, not even the current technological circumstances, but, like, the technological circumstances of

Speaker: 50 to 10 years ago.

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.

Speaker: I don't, I, I think this like thousand year, uh, bug eating Reich idea is nonsense.

Speaker: Like the, the, the people that are, that are trying to like,

Speaker: you know, map out my personal connections on behalf of like European intelligence services.

Speaker: These are not people who are like really tightly screwed and under control.

Speaker: Right.

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

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.

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.

Speaker: And we were able to do that in spite of whatever problems we had.

Speaker: But I, I sort of think like,

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.

Speaker: But like the shit I see makes me think like they'll all be brought down.

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...

Speaker: having a competent response to the sort of new cultural, political, economic challenges presented.

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

Speaker: through deliberation and choice.

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.

Speaker: But yeah, no, I, I think the, I think the machinery is just way too sclerotic for that at this point.

Speaker: Like, I don't, I don't think it, I don't think it can adapt in the way that it needs to.

Speaker: And, and I mean,

Speaker: you know, you're talking about these instruments of narrative control.

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.

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.

Speaker: Like, I would have said, like, oh, well, that that's just a cartoonish failure.

Speaker: Right?

Speaker: Like these are people who are absolutely out of control of the media situation.

Speaker: Yeah, you can sort of take our assessment out of it.

Speaker: And I think just say I think I can just say objectively.

Speaker: that when I was a kid, the state seemed to have a much more confident view of itself than it does now.

Speaker: Like, you know, I don't even need to bring my my opinion into it.

Speaker: And like, does that mean it's doomed?

Speaker: Does that mean it's falling apart?

Speaker: No, but I would say that

Speaker: the pace of loss of self-confidence seems unsustainable.

Speaker: So that I think that's what draws.

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.

Speaker: Well, and the reason the reason it's so easy to be.

Speaker: A. Shit poster on right wing Twitter is

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.

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

Speaker: the right protocol to handle this problem.

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.

Speaker: It's like if they were to compromise enough to right the ship, they would cease to be who they are.

Speaker: That would mean the rise of a totally different

Speaker: ideologically and the way they're shoring up weaknesses is by making greater and greater commitments to greedy constituencies at home and abroad.

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.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It's like.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Because I think what you would see.

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 –

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.

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.

Speaker: But I think a much more a much more reasonable a much more reasonable assessment is like

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.

Speaker: And like the last 20 years or whatever has just been trying to put that on the credit card.

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,

Speaker: There's so many obligations and no new sources of revenue.

Speaker: So like, how do you, how do you square that?

Speaker: Well, and, and I mean, what's crazy about so many of these new obligations is it's like the, like NATO expansion.

Speaker: I mean, NATO's purpose as an alliance was to hem in the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.

Speaker: And Russia is a fraction of the military power of the Soviet Union.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: And I know.

Speaker: And this is kind of what I mean.

Speaker: Like there's nobody at the wheel to say stop.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And I think I think there is an argument that like.

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.

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.

Speaker: I think he was just saying like,

Speaker: the level of American obligation to this alliance makes no sense.

Speaker: If it's going to work going forward, we need like bigger commitments from these countries.

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.

Speaker: Just just from like a, you know, a balance sheet point of view, but it doesn't seem.

Speaker: Yeah, nobody's particularly worried about it.

Speaker: There's no appetite for it.

Speaker: Yeah.

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

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.

Speaker: And sort of this, this like, you know, you need to pay up your obligations.

Speaker: I think he was sort of

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.

Speaker: They were sort of like, no, we need to hold on to the sort of the trappings of the empire.

Speaker: And that does mean that we basically are the only

Speaker: military of any consequence in Europe.

Speaker: And go ahead.

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.

Speaker: But I think this is this is to me like the ultimate long term bottom line because

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.

Speaker: Like people love American empire.

Speaker: These ideas are infectious and like, nobody wants to be a Chinese vassal.

Speaker: They want to be an American vassal.

Speaker: And like, all that is fine.

Speaker: It might be true.

Speaker: I just think that original gay empire we built, it was fueled by things like the invention of the internet or,

Speaker: you know, discovery of massive petroleum reserves.

Speaker: I just don't understand, like, what is the next thing that's going to underwrite

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.

Speaker: But like none of this shit happened.

Speaker: Like the only parts of the economy that have supposedly grown are like totally speculative, uh,

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?

Speaker: So like, I, I don't know.

Speaker: I think.

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.

Speaker: Like I I've heard a lot of guys on our corner of, of things, uh,

Speaker: talk about like Islam, like Islam is going to save us.

Speaker: And I've met a lot of Muslim kids and they're, you know, they're going to be dying their hair purple.

Speaker: You know, they might be, they might be 20 years behind us, but they're going that direction.

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,

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.

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

Speaker: is that you think America is all a cart.

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.

Speaker: And I was like, I was saying to my friend, I was like, this is how they get you.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: you're gonna think you're just getting the pie, but they're gonna slip some carrots onto your plate.

Speaker: Like nobody gets away just with the dishes they want.

Speaker: And I think the same thing is true overseas.

Speaker: You have countries that are like,

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.

Speaker: But it's like, no, this is, this is nuclear level cultural hegemony stuff.

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.

Speaker: And, and yeah, I do think Islam, like people saying like Muslims will save us or whatever.

Speaker: I mean, I think,

Speaker: The thing that's interesting is like, you have to sort of, um...

Speaker: I have a big thing.

Speaker: I think maybe I said this on your podcast before.

Speaker: It's like, I don't really believe in scale.

Speaker: I think like everything good is particular and specific.

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.

Speaker: But like the precise reason that it'll never be

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

Speaker: right wing trad homesteader versus solar pagan debate in a nutshell, right?

Speaker: That's yes.

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,

Speaker: to winnow your vision down just to yourself and your family.

Speaker: You're very motivated to say like, no, I want at least something at the community scale to survive this.

Speaker: And I think that I very much admire that, but I also feel overwhelmed by that.

Speaker: Like I often feel like

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?

Speaker: It feels like it feels like it's above my pay grade.

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.

Speaker: It is not that I feel more qualified than anybody to do it.

Speaker: I just I just have five kids.

Speaker: And I am looking at the world they're going to grow up in.

Speaker: And I'm like, I have got to do something.

Speaker: I have got to build something that is better than this.

Speaker: And I feel like I can build something better than this.

Speaker: Like that doesn't seem like too high of a bar.

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?

Speaker: That's incredibly intimidating to me.

Speaker: But it's like,

Speaker: What the hell else am I going to do?

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.

Speaker: And, and, and then, you know, when they're finally introduced to all this shit, they have no antibodies.

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.

Speaker: It it's like, it's like, uh, I, I have to make this my life's work.

Speaker: I, I, I, I can't imagine.

Speaker: I can't imagine tolerating the alternatives.

Speaker: And so it's, yeah, we just, we just have to figure it out.

Speaker: We have to figure it out.

Speaker: And, and so, I mean, we're, we're, we're trying to do a lot of things right now.

Speaker: We're, we're, we're gonna host this natalism convention in June.

Speaker: Um, we're trying to just like learn to code thing.

Speaker: We're trying to create an alternative to scouting.

Speaker: Like we're running all these projects.

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.

Speaker: But yeah, that's, it's not like,

Speaker: you have to, your vision has to have greater scale than just your family.

Speaker: Because we've watched that approach of hiding out fail over and over and over again.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker: I was even talking to my brother about something.

Speaker: My brother has two little kids and we were talking about sort of discipline and he was even sort of saying

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.

Speaker: It's like he was kind of saying like and he's not like a really like yelly dad or anything.

Speaker: But he was saying he's like sometimes you try to draw lines.

Speaker: But if the line you're drawing is just like.

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,

Speaker: Oh, you're out of step with society, dad.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Dad's just weird.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So it's almost like you.

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.

Speaker: And it's very I think for a lot of people, it's very painful because

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.

Speaker: But then to see children go through it is a whole different thing.

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.

Speaker: But watching them pick up like mannerisms and facial expressions that are clearly like these overacted

Speaker: Like they're basically picking up cues from like bad child actors.

Speaker: And I mean, it breaks my heart because I'm like, oh no, like, you know, how deep does it go?

Speaker: How much are you picking up?

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.

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.

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.

Speaker: Well, yeah, I take care of my niece and nephew sometimes.

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.

Speaker: Like morally bad.

Speaker: It's more just like that.

Speaker: It's all so shitty.

Speaker: It's just...

Speaker: It's nothing.

Speaker: It's vapor.

Speaker: It's Cheetos.

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.

Speaker: And I would almost say it's like...

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.

Speaker: If that makes sense.

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.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: It's just great that you exist.

Speaker: And I think like even that is like demented, like it might not set us off in the same way.

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.

Speaker: And like, you know, there's no obligations, there's no sense of duty or whatever.

Speaker: And I feel like even when the content is not explicitly woke, I see a lot of that in content for kids.

Speaker: It's like.

Speaker: the universe is just your mind and like you're the most beautiful creative thing that there has ever been.

Speaker: And like, I don't know, that's like a form of religion, you know, and not the true one.

Speaker: And it's explicitly idolatrous.

Speaker: And yeah, man.

Speaker: So so that's, you know, those are the dragons.

Speaker: Those are the dragons we're trying to slay, man.

Speaker: And and I think it's I think it's definitely worth doing.

Speaker: Um, I don't know what else that's, that's what it comes down to for me.

Speaker: I, I looked around at other things I could do and I just did, I just could not make myself give a shit.

Speaker: And this is the first thing that I've been able to do that.

Speaker: And, and so, um, so yeah, I, I, I think you just, I think you just answered your civil war question.

Speaker: Because it sounds to me like you're getting some meaning out of it sort of regardless of outcome.

Speaker: It's what you want to be doing either way.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Win or lose.

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.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, okay.

Speaker: Yeah, I think we'll snap the line there, man.

Speaker: I got to prepare for tonight's call.

Speaker: But this was great.

Speaker: This was really, really fun, man.

Speaker: And we should do it again soon.

Speaker: Yeah, it's always great to talk to you.

Speaker: I hope the various pieces are easy enough to piece together.

Speaker: But yeah, it was a good chat.

Speaker: All right, man.

Speaker: See ya.