Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to forty one,
Speaker 1: episode four of day production of iHeart Radio. This is
Speaker 1: a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's
Speaker 1: shared consciousness. It's Thursday, June. What we got Miles's fudge?
Speaker 1: National Fudge? Dad, you fudge? That's what I was. I
Speaker 1: was about to say, a couple of days before National
Speaker 1: Fudge Day, I I get jump around National Fudge Day.
Speaker 1: I'm always uh, you know, so sometimes I miss it.
Speaker 1: But Glen's finally here National Fudge. That do you like fudge? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't dislike fudge. You know. I grew
Speaker 1: up going to the to a boardwalk on the Jersey
Speaker 1: shore on a summer league basis, and that was always
Speaker 1: the free samples of fudge never disappointed, as opposed to
Speaker 1: the saltwater tappy, which exclusively disappointed. So it's yeah, fudge delivers.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's like, aren't some like so I
Speaker 1: feel like so packed with sugar, like one bite, right,
Speaker 1: which is like one bite and you will like start
Speaker 1: hallucinating from the It's wild because I remember vividly once
Speaker 1: eating a piece of it's so fast and like my
Speaker 1: grandmother being disturbed. Yeah, I mean, like, how the fund
Speaker 1: did you just eat all that? And I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: a child who loves sugar and this might be the
Speaker 1: best thing I've ever had. Yeah. Well, anyways, my name
Speaker 1: is Jack O'Brien, a k keeping track of all the
Speaker 1: Mountain Dew flavors and the January six hearings. Call me
Speaker 1: Count Dookup. That's courtesy of Chris Berrera, and I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to be joined as always by my co host, Mr
Speaker 1: Miles Grab. All the other kids with go zumped up scoops,
Speaker 1: better run, better run you're dirt before I hear it.
Speaker 1: All the other kids with go zumped up scoops, better
Speaker 1: run better rum before my Lloyd swears it. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Scouty Magoo. Reference to that really awesome was the
Speaker 1: Sydney Morning Harold going after Morning Harold, we will track
Speaker 1: you out if they were pissed that somebody outed themselves
Speaker 1: before they could go zumping their story. Well, Miles, we
Speaker 1: are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by
Speaker 1: the host of the American Prestige podcast, which is a
Speaker 1: foreign policy podcast about the United States and all the
Speaker 1: friends that made along the way. A really great listen.
Speaker 1: I suggest everybody go check it out. They are Daniel
Speaker 1: Bessner and Derek Davison. What's up, hey, guys, Happy to
Speaker 1: be guys, Happy to be here. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Good to hey, thank you for being here. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: you come to us? From Los Angeles, California? At a park? Okay,
Speaker 1: northern Virginia. I'm the only person living here who was
Speaker 1: in a defense contractor alright, that we know of, My
Speaker 1: understand because you wouldn't be allowed to tell us if
Speaker 1: you were like in the Actually, that's yeah, screw here.
Speaker 1: Today we will try not to gazump it, although you know,
Speaker 1: the defense Department might come through. Had you guys ever
Speaker 1: heard that phrase gazump or that word? I just heard
Speaker 1: it for the first time. Yeah, is it a thing
Speaker 1: the kids are saying? I feel like, why, why the
Speaker 1: funk have I heard gazump before? I can't be alone ever,
Speaker 1: and I'm Professor Madden. None of my kids have ever
Speaker 1: accused me of kazumping or I've never heard each other
Speaker 1: you know each other? Is that bad? I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: you're not cool enough to be gazumping? How dare you? Derek?
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, I mean, Miles is young, and you
Speaker 1: get to an age where there's there's a very good
Speaker 1: chance that like people know not to say gazump to
Speaker 1: us maybe, but they're like this guy looks like no,
Speaker 1: it's like reason, I'm thinking UK English or something, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like that's why we're not here
Speaker 1: because it's not like a cool word. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I just know definitely, Yeah, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: That's really funny cool. Yeah. So Daniel you are a professor,
Speaker 1: and Derek you write about foreign policy. I'll just you guys.
Speaker 1: You guys know your ship, which it's important to establish
Speaker 1: up top. There's a slight contrast where we are not experts.
Speaker 1: We know about we know about mountain dew, we know
Speaker 1: about we know about basketball, and we know something is
Speaker 1: terribly afoot in this country. That's about it. But I
Speaker 1: mean those are all important things to know. Exactly nothing
Speaker 1: on the road to a new level of consciousness. I
Speaker 1: would say, by the way, I do want to just
Speaker 1: kind of put it out there for our listeners. I
Speaker 1: will be doing a mountain dew tasting tomorrow. I will
Speaker 1: have a spit bucket and I will be doing a
Speaker 1: mountain dew tasting of a couple of new flavors, so
Speaker 1: after the headiness of today's episode, you can look forward
Speaker 1: to that. I think we've got thrashed Apple and we
Speaker 1: got another new flavor. So they're doing the extreme nineties
Speaker 1: things still radical Blueberry, the nineties are alive in the hill.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're gonna get to know you guys
Speaker 1: a little bit better in a moment. First, we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell our listeners a couple of things we're talking about
Speaker 1: just off the rip. I'm gonna be like, hey, like,
Speaker 1: is there any hope for a leftist movement in the US? Hey,
Speaker 1: you guys, you guys know stuff. Is there any hope?
Speaker 1: Because yeah, I'm just genuinely curious. That's something that comes
Speaker 1: up pretty frequently, just the lack of a revolutionary imagination
Speaker 1: in the US. So I want to get you guys
Speaker 1: thoughts on that. We'll talk about Coachella Night three. We
Speaker 1: got louder Milk, which is a great name, and he
Speaker 1: apparently gave some insurrectionists a tour the night before January
Speaker 1: six and no big deal, nothing to see here, but
Speaker 1: it says the cops, and you're like, wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: what uh okay? But so we'll talk about plenty more,
Speaker 1: but first we do like to ask our guests Daniel Derek,
Speaker 1: what is something from your search histories? So I was
Speaker 1: searching a book Town, which is an Austrian pastry, because
Speaker 1: one of my good friends, Megan Day, one of the
Speaker 1: best writers on the left today she writes for Jacobin,
Speaker 1: is in Vienna, so I was looking up things for
Speaker 1: her to see. She went to Freud's house, but I
Speaker 1: also thought she needed to get a little sweet in there.
Speaker 1: And that is an opercot filled bun called book Town.
Speaker 1: So if anyone ever goes to Vienna, strongly recommend you
Speaker 1: get it. What's what's the described the bund of the pastry.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a kind of a popover,
Speaker 1: like if a Southern popover, but it's filled with fresh
Speaker 1: apricot jelly uh. And it was at this famous cafe
Speaker 1: I believe called the Cafe Havevelka, where like all the
Speaker 1: Viennese intellectuals used to eat, and it's still around. It's
Speaker 1: in the center of the city and it's honestly the
Speaker 1: best pastry I've ever had in my life. It's truly fantastic.
Speaker 1: Europeans really do a good pastry. Yeah, I believe in
Speaker 1: France and a name for like small patrites is pastries
Speaker 1: is vien Wase because the ends have really good pastries.
Speaker 1: And also I would recommend the zacher tort if you're
Speaker 1: ever there. It's also really good stuffy the Spanish and
Speaker 1: pan Idea is Spain. I don't think it's very known
Speaker 1: for their pastries. But man, that ship is is really good.
Speaker 1: You put you put a piece of paper on it, it
Speaker 1: it immediately becomes c through, you know. But and it's
Speaker 1: filled with things that like don't typically go together and
Speaker 1: my day to day diet like olives, eggs, tuna, tomatoes,
Speaker 1: tomato paste, and it just fucking really goes. It's really good.
Speaker 1: I like that you said that it passed the Simpsons
Speaker 1: dr Nick test, like when home as trying to gain
Speaker 1: the weight. If it's like yeah, I rub it and
Speaker 1: if it goes see through, it's good a wall and
Speaker 1: the wall became yeah that I'll always remember that. It
Speaker 1: turns things through. Derek, how about you with something from
Speaker 1: your search history allow us to pry into your privacy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I googled the plot of the new Jurassic Park movie.
Speaker 1: This is something I do when with with sequels. When
Speaker 1: I've like seen one of the movies, like the first
Speaker 1: movie or whatever, but I have no desire to see
Speaker 1: the sequel. But I'm still like morbidly curious what the
Speaker 1: story is. So I just like spoiled myself. And then
Speaker 1: I have no desire to actually go to the movies
Speaker 1: and say, I have that same morbid curiosity. And it
Speaker 1: drew you in just when you thought you were out,
Speaker 1: miles just and I thought I was out, Hammond's ghost
Speaker 1: pulls me back in. Damn John Hammond. It was so bad,
Speaker 1: wasn't really okay? Yeah, but so so I did the
Speaker 1: right thing then googling, I love a Jurassic Park movie,
Speaker 1: like because the first one is so good. I will
Speaker 1: suffer every single one in the theater. I have the same, like,
Speaker 1: like the same philosophy with Terminator films, like I will
Speaker 1: go to the theater. I don't care. I don't even
Speaker 1: if it's so year that it's bad from the trailer,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's still, it's still, it's still a moment.
Speaker 1: So I go. But this one has like a Tim
Speaker 1: Cook analog in it that is so fucking weird, and
Speaker 1: just the it touches on like what if there were dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: and then we're all back to a contained dinosaur thriller
Speaker 1: like every other fucking Jurassic Park movie, Like like they
Speaker 1: just stick there. They're in the Dolomites in Italy, like
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Italy. There's I'm like, wait, hold on, now,
Speaker 1: we're in fucking Italy with dinosaurs, and I'm like whatever, fine,
Speaker 1: fuck it, is there any cool stuff up top with
Speaker 1: the like world now run by people being like just
Speaker 1: fleeing from dinosaurs. Yeah. The film opens with different news
Speaker 1: stories about our new world of you know, cohabitating with
Speaker 1: dinosaurs and what do we do with them? So like
Speaker 1: first it'll be like little cutie dinosaurs out a parking
Speaker 1: like wow, And than other ones were like a fucking
Speaker 1: stegga source like blows up a gas truck and you're
Speaker 1: like yeah. So it's like that part. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is great, this is great. Yeah, wait is this
Speaker 1: going to be good? Yeah? But you couldn't so for you, Derek,
Speaker 1: like you just saw it and you like it enough
Speaker 1: that you want to know what happened, but not enough
Speaker 1: to subject yourself to two hours. But your i mean,
Speaker 1: your relationship with Jurassic Park sounds like mine. With Star Wars.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen every whatever they've been eleven now,
Speaker 1: even though like you know, maybe two of them were good.
Speaker 1: I've seen everyone anyway, and it's like, weird, how things
Speaker 1: from the eighties or nineties I'll just pledge these blind
Speaker 1: allegiances to and I'm like, I am a guaranteed ticket
Speaker 1: sold for all of your terrible fucking output. And I
Speaker 1: think that's because there's no outlet for politics, so we
Speaker 1: just poured into culture. That's it's really going on there.
Speaker 1: You know, back in the day, people used to find
Speaker 1: meeting and associations and politics, but since there's really I
Speaker 1: think a lack of mass politis x today intact. That
Speaker 1: might answer your question a little bit, is just we
Speaker 1: par all of our meaning into these cultural products that
Speaker 1: we we saw when we were kids, and they made
Speaker 1: us feel good, and we keep on trying to make it.
Speaker 1: We keep on trying to hit that sort of like
Speaker 1: heroin dopamine button, and each time it's a little less.
Speaker 1: It's a little less. Yeah, because yeah, if you look
Speaker 1: at Jurassic Park as a vein, you'd shoot up into
Speaker 1: the first one healthiest ship. That motherfucker was popping out
Speaker 1: and by Jurassic World dominion. You're like, man, maybe there's
Speaker 1: some ship on the bottoms of my feet. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going through the carpet just looking for anything matching
Speaker 1: up little piece of flint stone vitamins on Like a
Speaker 1: good heroin metaphor, I like to just keep it going,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, you know you're running as long
Speaker 1: as possible. Yeah, that's what so I I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you mentioned that because I will be proposing my
Speaker 1: idea to have Ryan Johnson lead the leftist revolution the
Speaker 1: director of the Last Jedi, because there has been more
Speaker 1: anger and energy around uh, the Last Jedi than I
Speaker 1: think maybe, Yeah, any any political movement in my lifetime?
Speaker 1: Whoever directed R R R too? Did you watch it? Um?
Speaker 1: That's just fucking three I'm it's three hours, but it
Speaker 1: flies by five minutes left, so it's but it's all
Speaker 1: that to say, I cannot stop watching it. Yeah, have
Speaker 1: you guys seen our R R? But I hear it's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet either, but I like Danny,
Speaker 1: I've heard the best pretty well. What is something you
Speaker 1: guys think is overrated? Daniel? Let's start with you the
Speaker 1: American Empire. Mm hmm, okay, all right, I mean we're
Speaker 1: we're pro American empire in this podcast. What are you
Speaker 1: trying to say? Man? Whatever? Bro Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the just to get into our little podcast
Speaker 1: a bit. One of the reasons that we actually started
Speaker 1: it is because we think there's kind of a fawning
Speaker 1: coverage in the mainstream media about what the United States
Speaker 1: does in the world, And ultimately there's this belief that
Speaker 1: I I as a historian, think has been empirically proven incorrect,
Speaker 1: that the United States is military and economic power is
Speaker 1: going to be able to make the world a better place.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people really still believe that,
Speaker 1: and they believe that out of the goodness of their hearts.
Speaker 1: But I just think for reasons we could go into
Speaker 1: that that's really not the case. And so I think
Speaker 1: that's really one of the most overrated things in American
Speaker 1: politics today. And do you think people still actually, like
Speaker 1: genuinely believe this. This is actually like I did. I
Speaker 1: did like a twenty minute chunk about how weird the
Speaker 1: like I hadn't listened to MPR in a number of years,
Speaker 1: and then I like started listening to MPR, and I
Speaker 1: was just like so taken by how weird the voices,
Speaker 1: And I think that like there's like some weird cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance like thing happening with neoliberals and like that, I
Speaker 1: think they're like starting to understand like that it's all bad,
Speaker 1: but they can't, and so like now they have to
Speaker 1: like be talked to like this, and they have to
Speaker 1: like have people explain the conflict in Ukraine to them,
Speaker 1: like it's a fun wine picnic that they're planning, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like more and more people it's like creeping
Speaker 1: in a little bit absolutely, because it's just hard to deny.
Speaker 1: I do think there's a big generational gap, but even
Speaker 1: if you look at statistics, I think I might get
Speaker 1: this wrong, but it's something like of millennials still think
Speaker 1: the United States should like run the world. That's pretty
Speaker 1: high still, you know, roughly one and two, and if
Speaker 1: you go to boomers, it's like way higher. So I
Speaker 1: think I think the way that I view it, it's
Speaker 1: more the background assumption the water people swim in the air,
Speaker 1: that they breathe. It's not something that they think about
Speaker 1: because I think very smartly the United States Imperial State
Speaker 1: in the early seventies ended the draft. So if you're
Speaker 1: like a normal person, you're really not going to encounter
Speaker 1: the military and any way, shape or form really in
Speaker 1: your life. And so it just allows the Empire just
Speaker 1: kind of humm along in the back round. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I think there's an unquestioned support or an unthinking support
Speaker 1: for what we do in the world. Another piece of
Speaker 1: propaganda that I think is very reflective this is the
Speaker 1: new Top Gun movie, where wherein it's just they don't
Speaker 1: even pretend to mention another country, Like I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty clearly irun but like they are just like these
Speaker 1: are the bad guys. They can't have nuclear weapons. We
Speaker 1: we blow them up and it's just just baked in there,
Speaker 1: so like faceless. It's like a target range with just
Speaker 1: like bad guy pop up. You know. I think, I
Speaker 1: think so. And we actually just uh we did a
Speaker 1: special episode with Chappo trap House on our podcast. We
Speaker 1: did Top Gun one on their podcast, we did Top
Speaker 1: Gun two or One of the things that's interesting about
Speaker 1: that is that that's kind of how Americans view the world, right.
Speaker 1: It's like it doesn't matter who they are, We're just
Speaker 1: gonna do whatever the fun because we're America, got damnit,
Speaker 1: we're the main character exactly, And so I think like
Speaker 1: that could be read as a form of critique. I
Speaker 1: don't think the intention of critique was there, but you know,
Speaker 1: from a postmodernist, the author is dead, so let's just
Speaker 1: say it's a critique. Let's do it. How about you, Derek,
Speaker 1: what's something you think is overrated? So I didn't, I
Speaker 1: didn't take this as seriously. Danny and I kept with
Speaker 1: the movie, stuck with the movie theme. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: saw that, like the the live action A Laddin was
Speaker 1: on TV the only night, and I just thought, like,
Speaker 1: these these live action Disney remakes, I haven't seen one
Speaker 1: that was better than the like nineteen nineties cartoon. And
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. I don't get that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they make a ton of money. I get
Speaker 1: why they get made, but I just don't get why
Speaker 1: people care to go see them. So I think they're
Speaker 1: I think they're overrated. Laddin, the live action Laddin just
Speaker 1: didn't pull out those heart strings. No, I mean it
Speaker 1: really didn't. And like, I mean, you know, I saw
Speaker 1: I went to see the I remember like going to
Speaker 1: the movies to see the Beauty and the Beast remake
Speaker 1: because my daughter was at that time of the age
Speaker 1: where she was into that kind of thing and just
Speaker 1: watching it, and the whole time I couldn't stop going like,
Speaker 1: why did why did this have to be made like this?
Speaker 1: What was the purpose of making this? And in the
Speaker 1: in the minds of the people who did it, like
Speaker 1: what were they fixing about the the original? And you know,
Speaker 1: you can't think about it think of it? Right? Did
Speaker 1: they mention a country at all? Or is it similar
Speaker 1: like broadly orientalist Space and Aladdin, because selection I don't
Speaker 1: think they mentioned a country. It's a mix between Arabia
Speaker 1: and like Pakistani. Well, the original gotten in a in
Speaker 1: a ton of trouble they had to like overdub lines
Speaker 1: and stuff because it was it was a little bit yeah,
Speaker 1: hey hey it's bar Basis. Yeah, that's where it's from,
Speaker 1: the places called Agaba in the in the in the
Speaker 1: animated version. Yeah, and it's like the taj Mahal, but
Speaker 1: but in Arabia kind of. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: real just a mixing of Muslim cultures. Don't worry over there,
Speaker 1: you know, do you guys remember a few years ago
Speaker 1: somebody ran a pole and they asked like people they
Speaker 1: would bomb a particular country, and they included a like
Speaker 1: a third of Republicans said they would support bombing the
Speaker 1: nation of Agriba. Yeah, making a democracy. You know, the
Speaker 1: the sultan is a monarchy. You gotta turn Agraba into
Speaker 1: a democracy. What is something you guys think is under rated? Well,
Speaker 1: so I can go here because I have actually I
Speaker 1: think I have a serious one for this. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was I when I studied when I was in grad school,
Speaker 1: I studied Islamic history and one of my favorite figures
Speaker 1: in Islamic history is a guy named Hibbin but Tuta,
Speaker 1: who is was a traveler in the fourteenth century and
Speaker 1: traveled farther if if you believe all of his accounts,
Speaker 1: traveled farther than anybody else has ever traveled, basically in
Speaker 1: world history before modern times when you could like hop
Speaker 1: on a plane. And it was just yesterday was his
Speaker 1: the anniversary of the beginning of his hodge, which he
Speaker 1: started from Morocco a tangier and then just kept going
Speaker 1: after he did the hodge all the way to China
Speaker 1: and back. And I don't think enough people know about him.
Speaker 1: I think he's very underrated, underrated guy for having traveled
Speaker 1: supposedly seventy three thousand some something like seventy three thousand
Speaker 1: miles in his lifetime, although it's possible he made up
Speaker 1: parts parts of his parts of his travel loog, but
Speaker 1: we don't know. Yeah, that's my favorite thing about the
Speaker 1: history of like explorers and like, you know, the people
Speaker 1: who we lionize, those great explorers. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this is the case with him, but like a lot
Speaker 1: of European explorers, you know, you look at the things
Speaker 1: they were claiming to have seen and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys are just like professional liars, right right, right,
Speaker 1: And then they were met the three headed people of
Speaker 1: the Amazon who were thirteen feet tall, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's wild man, but you'll never get there. Love Marco Polo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, this guy definitely traveled a lot. But
Speaker 1: there are some parts of his account, like the China
Speaker 1: parts and a couple of other kind of side trips
Speaker 1: that that some historians think he may have just cribbed
Speaker 1: for somebody else's descriptions travelers named Eben, you know, because
Speaker 1: I I studied Viking history and there's uh, who's like
Speaker 1: a big one. Yes, yeah, Eve been his son. It's
Speaker 1: like Ben and here there is. But yeah, I just
Speaker 1: was thinking of him as a guy who's like yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I went up the Vulgar River and met
Speaker 1: the Vikings. You know what the fuck? Yeah, the North.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna put it out there traveler as
Speaker 1: a as a profession just like hello, friend, I'm just
Speaker 1: a fellow traveler. I feel like that's always a nice
Speaker 1: mysterious thing to say that I've never thought too as
Speaker 1: it's hard to do now as I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was able to like go places, and he had
Speaker 1: training as a lawyer, so he or you know, kind
Speaker 1: of judge like legal training, so he was able to
Speaker 1: get like notes of good conduct all along the way.
Speaker 1: To say like this guy knows what he's doing and
Speaker 1: he could get jobs wherever he went. It's like a
Speaker 1: it's a scholar or a judge. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Nowadays people get like go fund memes or something to
Speaker 1: like pay for my trip or whatever. But I don't
Speaker 1: know what the modern startment is of that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: for your travel blog, right, parachhoote sheets pays for your
Speaker 1: travel whatever? How about you ding Derek took mine. No,
Speaker 1: just kidding. I was gonna recommend a book called The
Speaker 1: Tragedy of American Diplomacy. It's a really short book on
Speaker 1: US foreign policy, but I think it really gets sort
Speaker 1: of at the major trends by guy the hell of
Speaker 1: a name, William Appleman Williams. So I recommend people to
Speaker 1: check that out William Appleman Williams. Hell. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from what's for you, what sort of differentiates it
Speaker 1: and why do you why do you suggest it? Because
Speaker 1: it really shows the economic basis of a lot of
Speaker 1: US foreign policy, the search for export markets, uh, the
Speaker 1: search for capital intensive development aid and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so it was really influential when it was released
Speaker 1: in the teen fifties. And it's just like a very
Speaker 1: short and very readable book that explores why the hell
Speaker 1: the United States does what it does in the world.
Speaker 1: So it tells you how the world actually works. Yes,
Speaker 1: how the world. If it was released today would be
Speaker 1: like how how the world actually works? One of those
Speaker 1: like slate pitch titles, how to explain through this one
Speaker 1: cool thing how the United States does everything in the world.
Speaker 1: I believe slate pits that's probably a dated reference now,
Speaker 1: and that's an elder millennial reference. The kids are gonna
Speaker 1: be like what the funk is slate. So we'd like
Speaker 1: to actually make this part of the Freakonomics franchise if possible,
Speaker 1: Mr Williams, it will be Economic Form Market Williams. Mr
Speaker 1: Appleman Williams. Yeah, I mean the apple in his name
Speaker 1: could go with the logo of freakonomics. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: could do w apple w There you go. All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We'll be right back and
Speaker 1: we're back. I was gonna say, and we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1: So something we cover a lot on the show is
Speaker 1: just like the lack of a revolutionary imagination or like
Speaker 1: an imagination for an alternative for how the US could
Speaker 1: work with that without the current form of like hyper capitalism.
Speaker 1: And then we also have talked about I've like kind
Speaker 1: of positive the theory that like they're the public is
Speaker 1: generally just out on the current state of things, like
Speaker 1: after the like two thousand and eight collapse and then
Speaker 1: just the continued persistent like evidence of the like the
Speaker 1: whole thing. It's just corruption all the way down and
Speaker 1: we're being given like I think logically we should have
Speaker 1: two options. One would be leftist alternative or like a
Speaker 1: socialist alternative, and the other is fascism. And it feels
Speaker 1: like sometimes fashion fascism is the only one that's like
Speaker 1: fielding a team in in the modern world, which scares me.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, you guys cover all sorts of
Speaker 1: very interesting stuff. You're you're very learned, but you you know,
Speaker 1: you've covered the history of leftist revolutionaries and you know
Speaker 1: countries that are more socialists in the US. So I
Speaker 1: just I just wanted to like kind of put that
Speaker 1: subject out there too. Yeah. Sure, well, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about this. It's kind of what I
Speaker 1: focus on in my academic work. So I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things you got to focus on. One,
Speaker 1: things that we've been talking about in the general discourse,
Speaker 1: of course, like the Senate and the counter majoritarian institutions
Speaker 1: of the United States, like the Supreme Court are kind
Speaker 1: of baked into the cake from the beginnings, because there's
Speaker 1: a skepticism of democracy and the mass just baked into
Speaker 1: the cake of the American state. And I think over
Speaker 1: the course of the twentieth century, what has happened um
Speaker 1: particularly after World War Two, is that the actually exist
Speaker 1: sting American state that has been developed, particularly when we're
Speaker 1: talking about US foreign policy and US economic policy, has
Speaker 1: been specifically designed in a way to ensure that both
Speaker 1: ordinary people what you just called the public, but also
Speaker 1: Congress doesn't really have that much of an effect on
Speaker 1: on foreign policy and economic policy. And this was actually,
Speaker 1: this is the period I studied. This was actually a
Speaker 1: conscious decision made by American elites because when they were
Speaker 1: looking at the nineteen thirties, they saw the rise of
Speaker 1: fascism in Europe, they saw the rise of you know,
Speaker 1: imperialism in Japan, they saw in response to the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: a lot of labor strikes at home, and they became
Speaker 1: very skeptical of mass politics because it's really in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties when you have the first type of real
Speaker 1: mass politics, like the radio and all of those sorts
Speaker 1: of things allow people to form large collectivities. So over
Speaker 1: the course of the twenties and thirties, they become very
Speaker 1: skeptical of this, and so from the nineteen forties on,
Speaker 1: where they create a state in which ordinary people don't
Speaker 1: really have that much say. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: experience that we're living in today. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: evolved into other directions. And so I wrote actually a
Speaker 1: piece for Derek's Substract Foreign Exchanges called the End of
Speaker 1: mass Politics, because I think one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: everyone feels like they're going crazy today is that all
Speaker 1: we do is talk about politics, but there's very little
Speaker 1: actual road to make political transformations. I said at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the of the show, this is why people
Speaker 1: are really interested in culture, but it's also why people
Speaker 1: are really interested in fighting online, because there's no real
Speaker 1: way to actually channel your political energies into something meaningful.
Speaker 1: So we're thinking about a leftist revolution or a change
Speaker 1: in actual like fundamental structures of the United States. I
Speaker 1: think we need to do like an old school nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties power mapping and see where power lies. And right now,
Speaker 1: in the literal structure of the American state, power literally
Speaker 1: lies with several thousand people living in and around Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Both in the government, like in places like
Speaker 1: the State Department and the Defense Defense Department, and then
Speaker 1: in nominally private institutions like think tanks, which are really
Speaker 1: just analogs of the government. So I think we need
Speaker 1: to really reform the structure before we could even start
Speaker 1: talking about making actual political and policy changes. So I
Speaker 1: think the lack of revolutionary consciousness and the channeling of
Speaker 1: a lot of these energies into you know, ephemeral culture,
Speaker 1: you know, ephemeral arguing is just really a product of
Speaker 1: the literal reality that there's very few ways for us
Speaker 1: to actually shape politics. And I think that is what
Speaker 1: we need to be focusing on right now, actually making
Speaker 1: this country a democracy in a real way, actually bringing
Speaker 1: mass politics back cool. So how do we do that?
Speaker 1: Star One is identify the problem seriously. I think I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of magical thinking on the left.
Speaker 1: I think we we uh. The way that I put
Speaker 1: it in this is a little harsh and being a
Speaker 1: little bit facetious, but like when we don't have an answer,
Speaker 1: we say organized right. But when we say organized right,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? When people were organizing in previous
Speaker 1: moments in American history, they were organizing with like the
Speaker 1: guy or the woman that they spent all day living
Speaker 1: next to, working next to, in a real community. What
Speaker 1: capital has done over the last forty years is really
Speaker 1: reform labor relations so that you have things like the
Speaker 1: gig economy, you have things like where people are working
Speaker 1: three jobs that prevent the solidarity upon which actional organization relies.
Speaker 1: So I think what the first thing to do is
Speaker 1: really just take a step back and look at how
Speaker 1: power actually functions, and look at how society actually functions,
Speaker 1: and from there we could begin to develop actual strategies
Speaker 1: for how we can reform some of these very very
Speaker 1: um significant obstacles to any form of left wing organizing
Speaker 1: or left wing transformation. I think the problem also is
Speaker 1: the fact is that right now the left is really
Speaker 1: concentrated and basically people who went to college, people who
Speaker 1: are relatively highly educated. So there's a significant disconnect from
Speaker 1: the working class base, which is partially a function of
Speaker 1: this reformulation of labor relations that we really need to
Speaker 1: attack head on or there's very little hope I think
Speaker 1: for left wing transformation. M Derek any thoughts, Well, I
Speaker 1: would see us on all. I would kind of grab
Speaker 1: onto something, uh you talked about there, which was the
Speaker 1: concept of solidarity, which used to mean something I feel
Speaker 1: like just like sort of organized. It doesn't mean anything anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: The only times I, you know, most of the time
Speaker 1: I heard the word solidarity uses when somebody is scolding
Speaker 1: the left in the US for not taking some foreign
Speaker 1: policy catastrophy seriously enough. So there was a lot of
Speaker 1: this talk with respect to Syria. You see it sometimes
Speaker 1: with Ukraine. Now, you know, the sort of like, uh,
Speaker 1: you're not doing it right, You're not approaching these issues
Speaker 1: with the right mindset. Well, okay, and then you know
Speaker 1: you sort of say, what do you what do you
Speaker 1: is it that you would like the left to do?
Speaker 1: And the answer is always something like solidarity without any
Speaker 1: meaning behind it, like we're just supposed to feel solidarity
Speaker 1: would feel harder, Yeah, feel harder. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: really what a lot of this is. It's vibes politics.
Speaker 1: It's not real material politics. It's vibes. You know. I
Speaker 1: I I have little hope for a true leftist movement
Speaker 1: in the US, and even less despite you know, I
Speaker 1: know you you guys uh, you know, have talked about
Speaker 1: Gabrielle borich In in Chile and and some of the
Speaker 1: other kind of Latin American leftists that have come into
Speaker 1: power again. It's sort of it's been a little bit
Speaker 1: of a wave of late those those movements are are
Speaker 1: you know that they're great as far as they go.
Speaker 1: They're sort of optimistic as far as they go. But
Speaker 1: it's the United States that, ultimately, especially in the Western hemisphere,
Speaker 1: sets the terms for how far any movement like that
Speaker 1: is allowed to go before there's some kind of pulled back.
Speaker 1: And in the Cold War, you know, that would have
Speaker 1: been a coup and and you know, possibly the murder
Speaker 1: of whoever was being a pain in the as leftist.
Speaker 1: Now it's sanctions, it's you know, Cuba, the Cuba Venezuela model.
Speaker 1: You know, you can you can see it even in
Speaker 1: the leftists who have been elected over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, you know, really like sort of self moderating
Speaker 1: in a sense. You know, they run with these backgrounds
Speaker 1: that are of the left, but they run campaign they
Speaker 1: were on campaigns where the messages don't worry, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna like change that much. I'm not going to nationalize anything.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna kind of make some reforms around the edges.
Speaker 1: And that message is meant for domestic political audiences, but
Speaker 1: it's also meant for the US and it's also meant
Speaker 1: for Washington, like don't worry, I'm not going to rock
Speaker 1: the boat too much. You know, have to treat me
Speaker 1: like Nicholas Maduro or or the Castros so I I
Speaker 1: you know, I think as long as the United States
Speaker 1: maintains the kind of power that it has to affect
Speaker 1: global politics, and I don't mean like geopolitics, like politics,
Speaker 1: domestic politics and countries around the world, you know, there's
Speaker 1: always going to be a cap on on how far
Speaker 1: these things are allowed to go, at least in countries
Speaker 1: that are dependent on the US, whether it's for trade
Speaker 1: or vulnerable to you know, depend on the US for
Speaker 1: military support, or are vulnerable to the U S and
Speaker 1: a sick charity sense, there's always going to be this
Speaker 1: limit on how far they can go. Do you are
Speaker 1: you guys like encouraged by that kind of energy behind
Speaker 1: unions right now? Like I've so one thing that like
Speaker 1: sticks out to me that that I hear from like
Speaker 1: people on the left even is that like the Sanders
Speaker 1: campaign and like the inability to to get Sanders the
Speaker 1: nomination in was like that was the last chance and
Speaker 1: now like it's kind of hopeless from this point forward,
Speaker 1: and like it feels like the just the general you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that we try to track on this podcast,
Speaker 1: the general exeity guys, the Americans shared consciousness like is
Speaker 1: moving in the direction like of socialism. Like older people
Speaker 1: are dying every day, and like young people are turning
Speaker 1: eighteen every day, and like their general outlook on the
Speaker 1: world not perfect means, but definitely more sympathetic and like
Speaker 1: there's more energy on that front, and like that does
Speaker 1: you know that seems to be the thing that fuels
Speaker 1: these sorts of movements, is like the students, just because
Speaker 1: there's like a reputation that like, well, students don't vote
Speaker 1: in America. It's like, well, probably for very good reasons,
Speaker 1: like to this point, but like, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just feels like there are things to be optimistic about
Speaker 1: within America, at least in terms of like improving the
Speaker 1: odds and improving the chances that we can like get
Speaker 1: socialist reform like in the country. But yeah, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I don't have the specifics of
Speaker 1: like how that is done. And it does seem like
Speaker 1: you know the fact that you like identified the deep state,
Speaker 1: well that's something that like is being identified as a
Speaker 1: as a problem and like a holder of power, but
Speaker 1: it's being identified by like the fascists, you know, absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's always room for optimism and
Speaker 1: there's always room for hope, because that's just the reality.
Speaker 1: I mean, the empirical realities that things change over time.
Speaker 1: My historian things change over time, so it's never I
Speaker 1: don't view what we're saying as black billing necessarily. I
Speaker 1: just view it as trying to take a realistic, strategic
Speaker 1: look at the situation in order to change it. I
Speaker 1: think a couple of things need to be recognized. The
Speaker 1: era of you know, great revolutions of the first half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. In the second half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, a lot of that was spurred by literal
Speaker 1: things like starvation and food. And one of the great
Speaker 1: developments of the twentieth century is the green revolution, which
Speaker 1: allowed us to produce a ton of calories for cheap.
Speaker 1: So that's a big shift, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: not that's not something to be to be underestimated. The
Speaker 1: fact that people aren't hungry, the fact that in fact,
Speaker 1: in fact, across the class spectrum you could eat a
Speaker 1: lot of calories for relatively cheap is actually a huge
Speaker 1: obstacle in in in in front of revolution. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that's also true for cheap entertainments. But one of
Speaker 1: my big predictions that I've been making in the isn't
Speaker 1: that the next five and fifty years are going to
Speaker 1: see the legalization of a lot of vice, things like
Speaker 1: sex work, things like drugs, because I think that's going
Speaker 1: to be a solved on revolutionary political energy. Is It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be a conscious choice. It's just going to
Speaker 1: be something that's going to happen. You're gonna have vice,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have cheap food, and that those two
Speaker 1: are really big obstacles in favor revolution of revolution um. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of the of younger people, that that's generally true,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the reason that's true is because
Speaker 1: younger people have time. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: capitalism does very effectively is that the penalty for not
Speaker 1: being in the system is like so bad. It's being unhoused,
Speaker 1: it's not having access to healthcare, healthcare, it's basically being
Speaker 1: considered not a human being. And I correct me from wrong, Derek,
Speaker 1: but I think Tennessee just basically made it illegal to
Speaker 1: be an unhoused person. So I think you're going to
Speaker 1: be see things like that because when you're actually in
Speaker 1: the rat race of capital. You have very little time
Speaker 1: one to think about revolution or two to enact it.
Speaker 1: So before one thing you actually hear throughout history is
Speaker 1: kind of like not the kids are gonna save us,
Speaker 1: but that there's gonna be revolutionary energy and younger generations.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes what happens is as they get a little older,
Speaker 1: that revolutionary energies are diticipated just by the dictates of
Speaker 1: the system. I am encouraged by Amazon and Starbucks unionization.
Speaker 1: I hope that could happen, but I think we just
Speaker 1: need to wait and see you to determine whether that
Speaker 1: indicates like a return to the nineteen fifties where you
Speaker 1: had relatively high levels of unionization in the country. I
Speaker 1: think it's an open question, but it is. It is
Speaker 1: something hopeful, and it's something that hopefully we'll be able
Speaker 1: to build on. My my skepticism is the the institutionalization
Speaker 1: of sort of counter revolutionary impulses is just gets more
Speaker 1: and more entrenched. You know, I mean anything from jerrymandering,
Speaker 1: you know, house districts, to the new hurdle in the
Speaker 1: Senate now that you need well it's not that new anymore,
Speaker 1: but you know that you need sixty votes to do anything.
Speaker 1: A simple majority isn't enough anymore. The court system increasing
Speaker 1: LEAs you know, it's always been counter revolutionary to some degree,
Speaker 1: But you're talking about things that are being instantiated now
Speaker 1: that that are going to take a generation or more
Speaker 1: to be washed out and and to have sort of
Speaker 1: these structures lifted so that there's room for serious change.
Speaker 1: And I think Danny's right. The the the idea of
Speaker 1: the revolution to overthrow these things all in one fell
Speaker 1: swoop is it's pretty far gone. You talk about over
Speaker 1: a longer term, yeah, there, you know, there could be
Speaker 1: some reasons to be optimistic, but then you start to
Speaker 1: run into things like, you know, are we going to
Speaker 1: get another pandemic that's worse than this one? Are we
Speaker 1: going to start I know it's gonna be decades before
Speaker 1: the United States really starts to feel the effects of
Speaker 1: climate change. It's happening already in some other parts of
Speaker 1: the world. But what happens when that really becomes a problem.
Speaker 1: You know, how does that change politics? And I think
Speaker 1: it inevitably is going to reduce the scope of people's
Speaker 1: thinking down to a local level. And you know what
Speaker 1: am I doing just day to day to survive this,
Speaker 1: which makes the possibility of like large scale systematic change.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of atomizes everybody, makes it harder
Speaker 1: to to conceive of anything like that. And I think
Speaker 1: you're going to see a return to liberal federalism where
Speaker 1: liberal states, because this is where populations are so concentrated,
Speaker 1: are starting are going to start to find the federal government.
Speaker 1: And that will be very interesting because for most of
Speaker 1: the last century, the centralized state was the focus of liberalism.
Speaker 1: But I think that it's been captured by so many
Speaker 1: reactionary interests that you'll actually see a return to what
Speaker 1: might be termed the state's rights liberalism. Um, I'm in California.
Speaker 1: I don't know where you guys are, but I think
Speaker 1: you're already seeing the glimbers of that. That will be
Speaker 1: very interesting, that will be something new in our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: I think, Miles, you were making the point recently that
Speaker 1: like a lot of the revolutionary energy we saw with
Speaker 1: regards to police and the Black Lives Matter movement, a
Speaker 1: lot of that started really picking up and getting organized
Speaker 1: and making a like gaining national attention around the time
Speaker 1: that everything shut down, like during the pandemic, and giving
Speaker 1: people time because we took our foot off the pedal
Speaker 1: of capitalism and it wasn't crushing people anymore. And they
Speaker 1: took a breath and they said, fuck my with the conditions.
Speaker 1: The big transformation, I think the big transformation, at least
Speaker 1: for what it's going to be remote work. People are
Speaker 1: gonna that. People are gonna accept that deal. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are. You let me not have
Speaker 1: to go to the office. I really I like work
Speaker 1: all day, but really I worked for three or four
Speaker 1: hours and I could live my life. I think that's
Speaker 1: a deal. That that's going to be a deal that
Speaker 1: capital makes with labor, and I think that's gonna be
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a big thing. And it's not a
Speaker 1: surprise that you see unionization in the workplaces where you
Speaker 1: can't do that, where you can't be a Starbucks remote
Speaker 1: worker or an Amazon remote worker, because most workers aren't
Speaker 1: remote exactly. And you do have to recognize the second
Speaker 1: they could get AI to replace all those workers, they
Speaker 1: will now that and that's coming on the horizon platively soon,
Speaker 1: and we need to be planning for that if we're serious.
Speaker 1: And and this is more than just like a subcultural
Speaker 1: identity like being a punk. We need to be like
Speaker 1: ready for what that transformation which is coming very soon.
Speaker 1: And the way to be ready for that, I think
Speaker 1: we can all agree is just when you see a
Speaker 1: robot and in the wild, you gotta kick it over, right,
Speaker 1: you gotta kick that Yeah, one of those dogs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kaiser now employees. The big hospital conglomerate out here employs those.
Speaker 1: You see them rolling around the city all the time.
Speaker 1: Just kick that ship over. That's probably not what you
Speaker 1: guys would recommend, but that is interesting, right because everything
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like capital always has to find a
Speaker 1: way to kind of be like fuck it all right,
Speaker 1: let's give him that so it's not full blown like wait,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are the bosses doing? We need to
Speaker 1: funk them up? Like what then? I think, because that's
Speaker 1: why so many people are interested in like U B
Speaker 1: I and things like that. It's like, well, if they
Speaker 1: don't have fucking jobs, we can't just have hungry people
Speaker 1: out in the streets because that, like you're saying, those
Speaker 1: are the little bit of seeds of revolutionary action and
Speaker 1: to keep people docile. I'm curious like if that how
Speaker 1: that will be looked at, like how they are going
Speaker 1: to then support a whole other chunk of the population
Speaker 1: who isn't able to work because of automation, and how
Speaker 1: that's you know, how they're going to subdue those people's
Speaker 1: appetites for something better for themselves. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you'd be I as a possibility, but it's going to
Speaker 1: come at a cost, at the cost of something else,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what that is, but it will
Speaker 1: come at the cost of some other part of the
Speaker 1: welfare apparatus. Right. Well, Derek, I know you have to run.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate you joining us. Yeah, sure, thanks you
Speaker 1: let people in. Daniel, you can stick around for great.
Speaker 1: I got nothing going on, man, I'm my teaching is done. Derek.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: there's the podcast American Prestige, which is you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much anywhere you get your podcast, but please come check
Speaker 1: us out. We're on sub stack now. That's our home,
Speaker 1: American Prestige pod dot com. And while you're a substack,
Speaker 1: you can also check out my newsletter, which is Foreign
Speaker 1: Exchanges f X dot substack dot com. Those are the
Speaker 1: two places, and c dot gov right obviously. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't like to talk about
Speaker 1: that open. Yeah, alright, great, great meeting. You thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on, and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Guys have fun in Davos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, and we're back. And So the January sixth
Speaker 1: House Committee Hearing Coochella Coochella primetime event? Was it really
Speaker 1: postponed due to yeah, like that dude not being able
Speaker 1: to make it? No, no no, no, difficult they said, technical difficulties.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, they said, they're I have no fing idea.
Speaker 1: I'm they're fucking ninety years old, dude, Like somebody probably
Speaker 1: misplaced a thumb drive, Like where's that stick with the
Speaker 1: videos on it? You know, like the fuck, we're fucked.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that are gonna fucking oh fuck. But
Speaker 1: yet was postponed due to technical difficulties. And if you
Speaker 1: read the fine print on the poster for Coucella, you
Speaker 1: knew that it was subject to things like that, but
Speaker 1: they did, I think as like a consolation prize released
Speaker 1: some footage of Representative louder Milk from the State of Georgia.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you remember, right after January
Speaker 1: six there was a member of Congress who was a
Speaker 1: you know, former military that recalled another member of Congress
Speaker 1: giving tours. But to them looked suspicious because it looked
Speaker 1: more like recon than it did hey, and this is
Speaker 1: where I eat lunch. It was more like, yeah, man, like,
Speaker 1: look who we're there. Take a picture of this entrance
Speaker 1: to this tunnel, and that sort of raised alarm belt.
Speaker 1: So I believe let me just make sure it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Representative Mickey Cheryl and louder Milk filed an
Speaker 1: ethics complaint against this person against a representative Cheryl because
Speaker 1: of this allegation. In around that time, completely denied giving
Speaker 1: any fucking tours at all. Never gave a tour ever
Speaker 1: to anybody around then the funk you're talking about. Then
Speaker 1: this spring he kind of revealed a little more. He's like, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I may have given a tour to like a family
Speaker 1: with like some small babies or something, but that was it,
Speaker 1: Like there's really nothing to see. And then he even
Speaker 1: went onto uh, Laura Ingram's Racist Shriek Show to double
Speaker 1: down on the fact that he did absolutely nothing and
Speaker 1: this is all just a bunch of hokum, and I
Speaker 1: just want to play you this because things begin to
Speaker 1: change for Mr louder Milk. Then they say, oh, it
Speaker 1: was the Capital complex. There were hundreds of people in
Speaker 1: the Capital Complex, the House Office buildings. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was the Democrat leader ship ordered the gift shop open
Speaker 1: on the fifth because there were so many visitors there.
Speaker 1: So Mickey Sheryl's accusation that there were no tours allowed, well,
Speaker 1: there are no no tours allowed to the capital, but
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people at the House Office buildings
Speaker 1: because it was just another day. And now when it
Speaker 1: comes out, and no mistake about it. The Capitol Police
Speaker 1: were clear that they are trained in looking for suspicious activity,
Speaker 1: and the group I had in the House Office buildings
Speaker 1: had did nothing suspicions. It was a lie. It was
Speaker 1: a smear. They did the same thing to Donald Trump. Okay,
Speaker 1: cut to Wednesday when the headline there on the KROM
Speaker 1: was they smeared good men. Is that is that a
Speaker 1: plan on words that I'm not understanding that like a
Speaker 1: few good men they smeared good men. I feel they're
Speaker 1: they're completely out of ideas over there, because they're like, man,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to fucking look at video. If you're
Speaker 1: as giving a tour in a second. But oh, they're
Speaker 1: just smearing you. I can't believe it. And so cut
Speaker 1: to now this fucking footage coming out, as the January
Speaker 1: six Committee describes it, quote, surveillance footage shows a tour
Speaker 1: of approximately ten individuals led by you two areas in
Speaker 1: the Rayburn, Longworth and Cannon House office buildings, as well
Speaker 1: as the entrances to tunnels leading to the US Capital.
Speaker 1: Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the
Speaker 1: complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases,
Speaker 1: and security checkpoints. So now he's out here being like,
Speaker 1: oh right, so what but they were they were there
Speaker 1: for the gift shop. It had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: any January six stuff, just because that guy was wearing
Speaker 1: a Maga hat. And then you also found out that
Speaker 1: one of the people on the tour was live streaming
Speaker 1: ship or posting ship to Facebook on the six talking
Speaker 1: about We're coming for you Gnadler Pelosi, and those coincide
Speaker 1: with pictures they took in the cap. But so it's
Speaker 1: very it's like one of those things too, Like we're
Speaker 1: saying like that politics isn't like fucking real anymore, because
Speaker 1: this guy is just like he's been lying the whole time.
Speaker 1: He's on another show that's pretending to a certain group
Speaker 1: of the country that it's news and being like it's
Speaker 1: all fake, it's all nonsense. And I even have this
Speaker 1: letter from the Capitol Police that says they didn't see
Speaker 1: anything suspicious, which to me, I think is actually the
Speaker 1: thing that sticks out the most at this point because
Speaker 1: he's like they're trained into identifying things that are suspicious.
Speaker 1: I was like, it looked like some of them were
Speaker 1: taking selfies. Is that suspicious to people who broke into
Speaker 1: their job? So I'm really curious now, you know, they
Speaker 1: say the next day we'll focus on Trump and Pence,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, the more and more we we look
Speaker 1: at it, and as many of us remember watching the
Speaker 1: events on the six being like, yeah, when's the day
Speaker 1: about the Capitol Police, Like do you have is that
Speaker 1: another day to where you'll talk about anything you that
Speaker 1: was determined to be untoward or maybe aiding and ebetting
Speaker 1: what was happening, because that it's weird that this letter
Speaker 1: helps to quote unquote vindicate this guy who's giving a
Speaker 1: capital tour. Now. I don't know if it's because their
Speaker 1: own incompetence and they have to say that just to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, we saw that and was it was
Speaker 1: it was fine. Okay, maybe we completely funked out up,
Speaker 1: but it's the same thing. I don't know. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of how like the police in Texas to ur
Speaker 1: like we can't show you guys bodycam footage. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: I mean this is being programmed. The whole thing is
Speaker 1: being programmed by like an ABC News president former at
Speaker 1: ABC News president who's like in charge of like the
Speaker 1: Martin Bisher interview with Michael Jackson. Like he he's a
Speaker 1: lower cut, lowest come denominator guy. And I think the
Speaker 1: two decisions that it seems like they've made is um
Speaker 1: one to like the thing that really got people was
Speaker 1: like Kimberly Gilfoyle getting paid too much for her speech,
Speaker 1: which is like women making money, Like they know they
Speaker 1: know Americans don't don't like that. So like I feel
Speaker 1: like they're doing all of this with like targeting like things,
Speaker 1: and then they've decided to ignore the role of the
Speaker 1: police in this and just be like, well, Americans love police,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we will put like one woman who
Speaker 1: was like run over by the rioters, like out front
Speaker 1: and center and like put make that a heroic thing,
Speaker 1: because like, I think those are two assumptions they've gone
Speaker 1: on with. They're just trying to program this as much
Speaker 1: as possible, like a Michael Bay movie. I have a
Speaker 1: couple of questions for you guys, if that's is that cool? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So so one, I'm curious what you think of the
Speaker 1: fact that they're not going to do any criminal anything.
Speaker 1: And then two, I'm just so what's your take on
Speaker 1: on the event itself, Like like, so just just to
Speaker 1: put my cards on the table. And this might be wrong,
Speaker 1: but I'm always skeptical about sort of heating up the
Speaker 1: political rhetoric in the society. Uh. And as as someone
Speaker 1: who's studied who studied coup attempts and and things like
Speaker 1: that in the past. I mean, obviously, I think what
Speaker 1: happened was very disturbing, and particularly if you're a congresswoman
Speaker 1: in the building on the Democratic side, I mean, very
Speaker 1: it could it could have been very dangerous and and
Speaker 1: incredibly scary. But I've always been skeptical about calling it
Speaker 1: a coup attempt because it just seems like it didn't
Speaker 1: have any of the features of what a coup attempt
Speaker 1: would need to succeed. Um, and it seems like this
Speaker 1: might be and I'd love to hear if you think
Speaker 1: that I'm wrong. It seems like this might actually like
Speaker 1: channel energies in a direction that is not particularly helpful
Speaker 1: for achieving left wing transformation. Uh, it's basically spectacle. Not
Speaker 1: only spectacle. They're not even gonna do criminal charges. So
Speaker 1: I don't know what from so just away my cards
Speaker 1: on the table. I guess I'm a skeptic in that regard.
Speaker 1: I was just wondering what you guys, what you guys think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm definitely skeptical. I'm skeptical of any time
Speaker 1: the American government is in charge of tackling extremism of
Speaker 1: any kind. So from that aspect, I'm like, this seems
Speaker 1: like a way to just basically try and push public
Speaker 1: sentiment in one direction or another. I mean, obviously, if
Speaker 1: if anything's you know, they're going to wreck up, they
Speaker 1: can recommend things to the d o J. But the
Speaker 1: d o J has their own investigation happening, where if
Speaker 1: anything's going to happen, it's probably out of that investigation
Speaker 1: rather than this like show and tell of like remember
Speaker 1: how bad it was when like they were there. I
Speaker 1: think with like the Coop, I like, I think even
Speaker 1: with naming a couchel is very tongue in cheek, right,
Speaker 1: And I think for Americans we had never seen anything
Speaker 1: quite so brazen on TV like that that it's just
Speaker 1: like people like, what the funk was that? Uh? And
Speaker 1: I think because are like probably are vernacular. The lexicon
Speaker 1: that we used in talking about politics is so all
Speaker 1: over the place that we're not even using the words
Speaker 1: that we even know to mean anything, because we've talked
Speaker 1: about like technical sense they like a democracy even we're
Speaker 1: just like, well, if we really want to pick that apart.
Speaker 1: But I think for me, you know that as I saw,
Speaker 1: it was pretty much the audacity of powerful white people
Speaker 1: being able to say, yeah, there's a way we can
Speaker 1: just kind of keep just do as we please. And
Speaker 1: I think that was what that's how That's what I said.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, they they're the fucking law doesn't
Speaker 1: exist to these people at all, because, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: it was it was the sloppiest attempt at overthrowing an
Speaker 1: election when like drunk Rudy Giuliani is running point. So
Speaker 1: in that way, we were saved by their ineptitude and
Speaker 1: they're just like like weird magical thinking. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I guess that is that isn't a a a
Speaker 1: dimension I had really thought about of like what the
Speaker 1: like rhetorically what that would do, because yeah, I do
Speaker 1: get the sense or it's very clear that you know,
Speaker 1: conservatives are people on the right one of just as
Speaker 1: easily categorize any kind of action from protesters fighting at
Speaker 1: capitalism as like an insert like using all of these
Speaker 1: other words to kind of just like nullify the importance
Speaker 1: or like what people are fighting for for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or like the emergence of new domestic terrorism laws, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that will be used against the left more of
Speaker 1: the time, you know. So yeah, it's just an interesting
Speaker 1: moment because it was obviously so dramatic that it's of
Speaker 1: course it's going to be a central thing. But I
Speaker 1: just I'm worried about sort of the channeling of energies
Speaker 1: into something that's pure spectacle when we should be focusing
Speaker 1: on especially now that they said the criminal thing. And
Speaker 1: I don't think the DJ is going to do anything
Speaker 1: because no one wants to start that precedent. I mean
Speaker 1: when Biden, when Biden losing, when the Dems losing the midterms,
Speaker 1: He's going to be impeached three times. That's gonna that's
Speaker 1: the new norm. The new norm is now the president
Speaker 1: is going to be impeached. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: the d o J is going to prosecute because none
Speaker 1: of them want to go to jail. Let me. That's
Speaker 1: why they never prosecuted Bush, anyone in the Bush administration
Speaker 1: for violating not only international but domestic laws. So I
Speaker 1: think it's a it's a very interesting moment, and it's
Speaker 1: good to be, you know, to be able to talk
Speaker 1: about it in that sense. Yeah, And I think I
Speaker 1: think it's real so important for people to like see
Speaker 1: how disgusting it is too, like how you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: we saw some fucking terrible shit and nothing is going
Speaker 1: to be fixed. And I think getting people familiar with
Speaker 1: that pattern is also pretty important because you will see, hey,
Speaker 1: are you like trying to protect like an unhoused community
Speaker 1: or pushing backs against police violence. They'll fucking shoot you
Speaker 1: in the eye. But if you're there saying maga and
Speaker 1: fucking America, first, you're getting selfies, you know anything that
Speaker 1: and and then I mean that Is that much is clear,
Speaker 1: I think to most of our listeners. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: are there are many other dimensions to it that as
Speaker 1: we I think, because like you're saying, we have most
Speaker 1: people are experiencing a reality where there's no ability to
Speaker 1: affect change. Then we have these weird moments where people
Speaker 1: want to put all their back eggs in the basket,
Speaker 1: where it's like mother time exactly, Russia Gate, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: goddamn Steel Dossier. I do feel myself like pulled in
Speaker 1: two directions because I do worry about fascism, fascism in
Speaker 1: this country, and like a belief that like it can
Speaker 1: get much worse because we can get worse, Like it
Speaker 1: can get worse, and I think it will get like
Speaker 1: that is the path we are on. Is it getting
Speaker 1: way worse? Because like I said, there are two paths
Speaker 1: for America to go forward. I don't think that like
Speaker 1: and it sounds crazy and probably might be a little
Speaker 1: bit like extreme, but it really feels like the energy
Speaker 1: has just gone from the like neoliberal like let Wall
Speaker 1: Street lead type kind of ideal that was considered mainstream
Speaker 1: in America for so long, and now like you could
Speaker 1: go left, like democratic socialist, or you could go in
Speaker 1: the direction of fascism and the like America. Like I've
Speaker 1: been using this metaphor of like having like America having
Speaker 1: an immune system and like America being absolutely allergic to
Speaker 1: anything that is like slightly socialist and being very welcoming
Speaker 1: of things that are fascist, and like I just I
Speaker 1: feel like so seeing these things like I see seeing
Speaker 1: like what happened on January six, like it's still like
Speaker 1: I think it's serious because it's an indicator of where
Speaker 1: things are headed and how much worse things can get
Speaker 1: in this country. Like that, I think that's where the
Speaker 1: seriousness and like my attention to it is coming from.
Speaker 1: Um not necessarily that like they almost they were like
Speaker 1: right there and could have overthrown it, but just like that,
Speaker 1: this this seems to be what the country is more
Speaker 1: comfortable with than any sort of even like soft socialism.
Speaker 1: Absolutely in this kind that's fair. Absolutely yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's that it's all very it all comes
Speaker 1: together and we're just look and we're like wow. Because
Speaker 1: also so you think about all these people, now, these
Speaker 1: maga quing on people who are sending into positions of
Speaker 1: like Secretary of States or being able to now have
Speaker 1: like their hands on the votes and stuff. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like they're really like they're really going
Speaker 1: for it, and yeah, it's it's it's odd to see
Speaker 1: just a lack of urgency about things like that's on
Speaker 1: a very basic level not good to have people who
Speaker 1: are outwardly being like I don't believe reality and I
Speaker 1: will determine who you know, what votes mean, or I'll
Speaker 1: have a lot of influence potentially in an electoral decision
Speaker 1: and those things. Yeah, they all come together. But I
Speaker 1: think with the reason why America's I think it's just
Speaker 1: more open too. Just like when you put two things
Speaker 1: in front of like the American consciousness, it's like, what's
Speaker 1: the one that's more aggressive and dominates the weak? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of more our vibe since the beginning. And
Speaker 1: so anything that's like about empathy or being like no,
Speaker 1: like we need to we need to take care of
Speaker 1: each other, Like what the fund is that I never
Speaker 1: heard of? That? I also think, Uh, an important thing
Speaker 1: to think about is like what looks more fun? Because
Speaker 1: I think generally there's like more despair in American society,
Speaker 1: Like people just feel totally disconnected from power, they feel
Speaker 1: totally not in charge of their lives. And I think
Speaker 1: the big appeal of someone like Trump is that he
Speaker 1: channeled all of those in the direction that seemed like
Speaker 1: almost gest or like you know, like that that seemed
Speaker 1: more more fun. And I do think that we on
Speaker 1: the left need to embrace that element of fun, not
Speaker 1: in obviously a horrible, racist, disgusting way like someone like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or or Ted Cruz or someone both type.
Speaker 1: Cruz is not fun, he just can't fake it. But
Speaker 1: I do think like that's an important element of politics
Speaker 1: that we never talked about it. It has to be
Speaker 1: like exciting when you go to a protest and you
Speaker 1: chant it like feels good, It feels fun, It feels
Speaker 1: good to be part of something. And I think that
Speaker 1: we've we've sort of seeded that territory um and that's
Speaker 1: not I don't think that's good for for political strategy
Speaker 1: or particularly winning over people who don't really pay attention
Speaker 1: to things. But we need to get anything done in
Speaker 1: this country, right, So come to our leftist couch, ella.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a really fun event, y'all. We're gonna
Speaker 1: exchange some radical ideas and marks on the capital Uh, well,
Speaker 1: Daniel has been a real pleasure having you. Where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Follow you all that good stuff? Sure
Speaker 1: on Twitter at d Bessner and American Prestige. Please like, subscribe,
Speaker 1: review listen. Thanks guys, thanks so much for having us
Speaker 1: on UM. Is there a tweet or some of the
Speaker 1: work of social media you've been enjoying? Oh? Yeah, under
Speaker 1: the banner of Heaven? Have you guys been watching that show? No,
Speaker 1: it's really good. It's really good. I strongly recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting and I people should check it out.
Speaker 1: I love Andrew Garfield. I liked the book when I
Speaker 1: read it, and I love any story that takes place
Speaker 1: in the you know, Letter day SAT community, the what
Speaker 1: do they prefer to be called? Uh, there's the Latter Day? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the LDS and yeah this is this is basically about
Speaker 1: a radical group. So it's pretty interesting. Oh oh the
Speaker 1: what Alrea? You talk about the Netflix documentary I blanked
Speaker 1: out for a second, or the book about it? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: just the fictionalized. Are they like like FLDS kind of
Speaker 1: people and this one like fundamental? I don't think they're FLDS,
Speaker 1: but they're they're because they talk about like the differences
Speaker 1: between fl I think, but they're Yeah, they're basically a
Speaker 1: radical break off group. There's so much like LDS stuff
Speaker 1: going on right now. There's like that Netflix documentary to
Speaker 1: about that FLDS community. Miles, where can people find you?
Speaker 1: With the tweet you've been enjoying, Find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Miles of Gray. If you like basketball,
Speaker 1: check out the latest episode of Miles and Jack Got Mad.
Speaker 1: Boost these where we distract ourselves with sports and if
Speaker 1: you want to hear me just tracked myself with reality TV,
Speaker 1: check out four twenty Day Fiance, where you know, we
Speaker 1: just trying trying to zone out on something. A tweet
Speaker 1: I like is from Amy at l O L and
Speaker 1: Louis tweeted, Oh, we're in a bear market. Well I
Speaker 1: think we're in a Platypus store. That's what you sound like.
Speaker 1: That's you all right? Uh tweet I've been enjoying no context.
Speaker 1: Brits tweeted a picture of a big Mac that has
Speaker 1: a label onside that's British and Irish Beef. Then they
Speaker 1: just tweeted the troubles. That was a good one. I
Speaker 1: saw that. Oh, actually, at American Process, we're doing a
Speaker 1: long history on the ira A. So this week on Saturday,
Speaker 1: we're releasing our third episode on the history of the
Speaker 1: i RA. So if anyone's interested in Irish history, please
Speaker 1: check that out. There you go. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist. Were at the Daily Zigeist
Speaker 1: on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website,
Speaker 1: daily ze geist dot com where we post our episodes
Speaker 1: and our foot where we link off the information that
Speaker 1: we talked about in today's episode, as well as a
Speaker 1: song that we think you might enjoy Mile Aslo song
Speaker 1: do we think people might end? This is a group
Speaker 1: called Polo and Pun and they are like a Parisian
Speaker 1: duo and they it's just it's like very cinematic sounding,
Speaker 1: you know. I like music where like when you listen
Speaker 1: to it, like it immediately sets off like your visual imagination.
Speaker 1: And this is a track called Le Jolie shows hey,
Speaker 1: and I'll look, I'm not a good French speaker, but
Speaker 1: I'll say like an American less Jolly's choses. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to google that ship by Polo and p
Speaker 1: A and Pants, but it's this sounds like you're in
Speaker 1: like some you know, French new wave film or something,
Speaker 1: but it's just caught. I don't know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's enjoyed. It's enjoyed. So put that in your ears
Speaker 1: on this wonderful Thursday. All right, Well, the Daily is, like, guys,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio is the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen your favorite shows, You guys
Speaker 1: gonna do it for us this morning. We're back this
Speaker 1: afternoon to tell you what's trending, and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: y'all don by five mm