A Geek History of Time - Episode 378 - Louis Mercier Vega's Rejecting the Legend Part II

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

They mean it is 2 o'clock in the fucking morning where I am. The 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. The layer, the layer of sarcasm involved in that entire delivery is, like I've seen, I've seen, yeah, it's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them, buddies. Now, after World War II ended Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created, oh God, Pembroke Shire, So Pembrokeshire? Pembrokeshire. Okay.

Pembrokeshire. Just please let me just read Latin today. We're way into the 19th century now. I'm sorry. Well, Damien, it's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning. History of time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock.

I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. And this week I have have noticed that I have had to cinch my belt down notably tighter.

I recently cut sugar out of my diet almost entirely and cut way back on the amount of beer I was drinking. So I have had like two beers in the last month.

And I have definitely noticed that things are changing and it created an issue while I was at school because I have found that I have to find a way to discreetly like reach down and pull my pants up because they've started slipping down toward my hips and yeah. Which like as far as problems go, it's a great one to have. But it's something I have to get used to. And my biggest concern about it is that if I get too skinny, my kilt won't fit anymore. And that's a $250 garment that I'm going to have to figure out how to replace.

So that's what I have going on. So it's a definite positive, but it comes with some challenges. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a U.S. history and government teacher here in Northern California at the high school level. And I've had similar experiences with the belt recently to the point where I had to replace it. Because it was, I poked enough holes in it that it was starting to do the old floppy downy thing because there's too much slack. So now I have a belt where I'm like, okay, now this is goals.

Yeah. But I was out to coffee with my partner today and a couple was there with, their baby. And the baby was a seven-month-old. And so I was, of course, flirting with the baby, and the baby was flirting back with me. And, you know, I don't miss that period of time at all. But. But there was some really endearing aspects, too, you know, just sitting there with the kid

and go, pop, blah, blah, blah. You know, and stuff like that with it. So I much prefer my teenage children to any other iteration of themselves. but every once in a while I'm like oh yeah I enjoyed that time too it was just all such a sleepless blur the parts of that that I remember are pleasant mostly because my brain has held on to them and the sleep deprivation made it easy to overwrite the parts that were not yeah yeah so

Anyway Cool Yeah Well when last we spoke I'd finally finished letting you know who Louis Mercié Vega was Right

As well as James Stout Who had translated his His essay Which is titled Rejecting the Legend And in true Damian fashion Lots and lots of background Now we can finally get to the document There we go

So this is again a translation And I grabbed it from two different sources and kind of hodgepodgeed it together where I saw it working better and what have you. So any mistakes are my own. Okay. As we recall, Louis-Mercier Vega

was somebody who went to fight in the Spanish Revolution. Right. And left, having been one of two people to survive a horrific battle, went back to France to raise money, and while he was in France, he noticed a decided shift in the Spanish Revolution to the Spanish Civil War on the left from true anarcho-sindicalists

and a whole bunch of other similar lefty syndicalists into a more coordinated centralized command of left-wing and centrist people who were wanting access to the government again. Right. So instead of just rejecting, oh, okay, yeah, the government. fell, we're going to make things better for ourselves. It was, no, let's go back and make a government again. Right. So, all right.

So here is his essay. Constructed as it was by men, the Spanish Revolution is neither a perfect construction nor a fairy tale castle. The first task necessary for our balance is re-examine, is to re-examine the Civil War, using the documents, using facts, and not to cultivate nostalgia through our exaltation. This is a task that has never been carried out with conscience and courage because it would have resulted in laying bare not only the weaknesses and betrayals of others, but also our illusions and our failings as libertarians. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. So, I mean, just right off the bat, I really like that he's like, no, there were plenty of, like, I want to tell you the worm's eye view where we fucked up, where we got it right. And these are real people doing this, not heroes. Yeah. And kind of by that inverse, all of the heroes were real people. Right. So he talks about Spanish Revolution. Again, not the Spanish Civil War.

This is the reaction of workers to the coup attempt by the monarchists and the fascists who were cooing the Spanish Second Republic because they didn't like the results. of the election. Yeah. And there were irregularities in the election that Stanley G. Payne pointed out to. And where there are irregularities, then there are a tremendous amount of places where bad faith actors can so doubt and then say, and therefore. Right.

A lot of question begging there. Yeah. The Spanish Revolution armed the workers and changed the local framework a lot for local governments in a lot of places. The workers of Spain actually controlled, this is me annotating, the workers of Spain actually controlled over 75% of the economy in Catalonia, for instance. Wow. Yeah.

There are some studies that pin that to the whole country in places controlled by anarchists during the post-Coo times, but socialists actually brought that average down a bit. Really? Yes. So where socialists. were, they controlled less of the economy versus where anarchists were and the workers were. That's interesting. Is there any analysis of cause for that? I think. So my analysis is, and it's kind of based on others, but basically the more localized you had the communities, the more localized

the decision-making was, the more buy-in you had, and therefore, the more people that that entered into it. Whereas when you had socialists come in and say, okay, we are doing a socialism now, a lot of people still were down for the socialism, but you have to do it a certain way, you see, instead of, it's Ho Chi-Men famously said to, with the Vietnam, he famously said to the Vietnamese, will join you. Whereas almost everybody else said, join us. Right.

And I think this is that difference. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Now, agrarian areas were collectivized, which means land reform, and they were run as libertarian socialist communes. Okay.

And having gotten trained by the last episode, I can actually now conceive of kind of what that means. Yeah, we do things around here this way, because we all agree to do things around here this way. Yeah. And our individual rights are being respected, our individual autonomy is being respected, but we have voluntarily chosen to pursue a socialist direction. Yes. So, okay.

That way I can feed my neighbors and my neighbors can feed me. Right. This seems better. Okay. The C&T and the, The UGT ran these. Now, just for a reminder, the CNT was the, oh, where did it go? The National Confederation of Labor and the UNT was the general union of workers.

Okay. So they ran this. Wait, that doesn't quite sound right. That's the UGT. No, yeah, yeah, that's the UGT. I just misspoke. Okay. Okay.

U-G-G-T, not U-N-T. Yes, yes, yes. Got it. So, again, I want you to picture that scene between King Arthur and Dennis in the Holy Grail. Yeah, I keep coming back to that. Yeah. It was working. It was working.

It was in real life. It was actually working. Yeah. Bloody peasant. Yeah. Oh, there's a dead giveaway there. Okay. That's, help, help, I'm being repressed.

Right. Did you see him repressing me? Um, factories were run run by worker committees. Sounds like unions to me. Uh, it sounds like if unions were the ones actually running the shop, but yeah. Um, okay. Well, their worker committees deciding how to do things. Yeah.

Yeah. We don't, we don't need no stinking managers. Right. Um, business owners were dispossessed of their businesses and then the workers ran them instead by a collective committee. Okay. And the business owner was given a chance to join them. Okay. Now, because of what you'd spoken about last time with Orwell and the whole class consciousness

thing and the obsequiousness and stuff like that, you can see why this is unpopular to a lot of landowners and business owners. Well, you know, and it's something that I think gets in the way of some Americans understanding why this would be a problem for a certain group of people. Like, everybody can understand that like, well, you know, I used to be the one that owns this. Right. You know, and everybody can kind of understand that. But the extent to which that would be identity damaging.

Sure. In a society that still had, honest to God, people with noble titles. Yes. You know, being a landowner. wasn't just a, well, you know, I bought this and I own it. It was, no, no, I inherited this from, you know, the last 12 generations of people who were the landowner here, you know. It reminds me of that meme.

You know how that's worse, right? Well, yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying. No, not you. I'm speaking to the 12th, the 12th hand day down. Yeah, the 12th generation. Yeah. Like, you get, you get why that. a problem, right? Yeah, you do understand that. Yeah, but, you know, within within the identity

crisis of that individual, that's, that's not acceptable. That's, that isn't, because it, it, it isn't just like to us, we can understand the economic and to an extent we can understand the social kind of, kind of changed to that. But in a no shit class society, that's going to that's going to be even more seismic. That's a big fucking deal, which is part of the reason why and I think Orwell

being British, which similarly has a class society. Being British born in India. Yeah, which is like... British civil servant parents in India. India. Yeah. You know, so

that's just British class system with an additional race element, you know, lumped on top of it and that many more, you know, social strata to be looking at. So, you know, for Orwell, seeing that evaporating would be, you know, being somebody of his mindset, seeing that evaporating. Yeah. Yeah, it would be amazing.

And then, and then again, spoiler alert, seeing it, you know, reverting back to the way it had been. Right. what must have been, I mean, reading what he writes about it, it's clearly, you know, massively disappointing and depressing, but like, I don't think he could adequately capture on the page. Right. How disappointing it was. And so, like, the idea that, okay, so you no longer own this business because it's our labor that's making it run. Right.

And so we're going to run it now. and if you want to join us, you can. Yeah. Like, you'll make just as much as the rest of us. It's like, yeah. Oh.

Yeah. The, the, the, the, the, literal entitled fury. Mm-hmm. That would, that would be involved in that. Yeah. Now, here's, here's, here's, here's why it's okay. There's like eight of them.

Like, you know. Yeah. You know, there, there's hundreds of. of us who used to work for you, now you can join us. Like, you know, there's eight of them. What are they going to fucking do? Like, and, and, well, the answer, the answer will become manifest. But, like, that's why it was so working.

And, and I get a kick out of, like, when, because I have friends who are like, well, I mean, if you replace the system with this other system. And it's like, yes. Like, and they're like, well, it's going to be problems. I'm like, it's going to be problems for eight people. Right now the problem is for hundreds of people. I'll take that matter. math. Um, but, you know, and and people are, there's, there's a, a thread going around,

uh, commentary going around and I'm trying to remember the exact context of it. But it was, I don't remember if I'm seeing stuff that's coming back from, uh, you know, lockdown, uh, from beginning of COVID or what, but it's, you know, um, everybody was talking about how everything was going to completely fall apart during COVID. Right. And the thing is, a lot of shit did fall apart, but a lot of shit just kept working.

Yep. Because the trash got picked up. Yeah. You know, the infrastructure kept working. Society did not completely fall apart. That's true. And the idea that if we take things away from the billionaires, oh my God, who's going to run everything.

You know, if we cause the billionaires to throw their hands up and say, that's it, I quit. You know, who's going to make shit happen? We all are. Yeah. Like, that's, that's how, that's how this works. That's how this has worked for forever. Yeah. You know, and yeah, it's the same, it's the same thing, essentially looking at it from a different direction.

How are you going to do health care without the insurance companies? Oh, you know, for a long time, whenever anybody would talk about single payer to me, that was something that like I could not wrap my head around. How are you going to make that work without an insurance company? Like, how does that, you know? And it was, it was Gabriel, our guest who did Marx and. Oh, Gabriel, Gipe. Yeah. Oh, no, Gabriel Gipe.

talked about it's easier to picture the end of the world than the end of, in that case, it was capitalism, but the end of, you know, the current regime of whatever kind it is. And then somebody patiently explained to me, effectively sat me down and patiently when someone said, okay, no, this is how the system would work.

And, you know, and you don't need these people in the middle of it. I was like, oh, shit. okay. Oh yeah, I've had similar discussions with people who are like just dead set against loan forgiveness for student loans. You do know we used to do this without student loans. Like can you and I straight up would ask people like can you imagine not having to pay for student loans? Well I mean I'm like no literally can you imagine that and they're like well yeah you know I was like cool then we could fucking do it. There's a way to make it work like we've done it before yeah yeah yeah.

But anyway, yeah, there's, you know, like eight people who owned all the lands in the area. So, you know, get bent. Yeah. But now the collective committees that ran these were largely practical and experimental organizing principles. And what didn't work was not dogmatically adhered to. I love that so much. Right? Like what doesn't work?

You don't have purity of the movement. You just have, we are local. These are our needs. we're going to try to meet these needs. This didn't meet our needs. Let's not do it anymore. Let's do this other thing now. Yeah.

Rinse and repeat. Now, if you combine the CNT and the UGT, you had roughly three million members. Wow. And after that general strike that I'd mentioned above, remember the one that was, you know, for the first two days after the coup attempt. Right. They were able to take over several areas and implement these revolutionary changes immediately. So they didn't just occupy an area.

They restructured the very local government. Wow. Now, the trouble with the revolution was that the Civil War was what the coup was aiming at. The coup wanted a civil war because they didn't want the results of the government. Right. So they wanted a civil war. And as a result, the two issues become braided together, this revolution and the Civil War. And unfortunately, the fascists were ultimately better funded and better supplied by,

people who believed more in their cause. The anarchists, not for any lack of belief in the cause, but they were beset by all sorts of externalities that harmed their efforts. Like I said last episode, the United States specifically passed a law stating that no American could join the cause, which meant that men like Elouard McDaniel, James Peck, James W. Ford, George Sosanco, Ajax Baumler, Frank Tinker, Harry Haywood, and the entire Abraham Lincoln Brigade. would be engaged in illegal activity by fighting against the Franco-led regime.

Right. So we've always been on the side of right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If by right, you mean, you know, wing. Yeah. Anyhow, the, the, by the way, this is like 1936, right?

Just four years earlier, Hoover had sent out the Marines to gas the bonus marchers. Right. The following year, Eleanor Roosevelt came out with T. And what I always loved was they said that Hoover sent the Marines, Roosevelt sent his wife. So, you know, Eleanor got shit done. Just saying. So the communes were remarkably efficient, actually. A lot of people like, again, the trope of anarchists not being able to agree on anything

because, you know, it's the million-man march, but with autism. like, you know, it's, no. Turns out. It's terrible. What is? It's so wrong. Oh, my God. Okay.

Sorry, I'm back now. Everybody's out there, but like with very different causes, you know. Right. Yeah. Here's Batman. Here's the Batman Coalition. Here's the Trains Coalition. Here's the, um,

I guarantee you right now downstairs, My son is very likely watching a video on trains, by the way. Which is why you can make that joke, but I feel bad laughing at it. I don't. Anyway, oh, if you have any hate mail about that, please feel free to direct your inquiries to Damienharmony at clown penis.fart. I won't promise a quick response, but I will promise that the first three of you who send me such an email, you will get into head. heaven. So anyway, moving on. Yeah. Fine. So these communes were actually really efficient and actually improved the lives

of the people living in these areas by measurable standards. This was not just economic or civil. This was philosophical. And in this shift, people gained all sorts of liberties and rights in these areas that were held by the anarchists and the libertarian communists. So everybody's living like that town that Bell lives in at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast. Okay. And it's better. Now that said, the anarchists and communists began to struggle against each other over how they should go about safeguarding these revolutionary changes. The communists guided in growing part by the Soviet Union started to focus on the militarism of the cause.

We have to defeat the Franco-Fascists, the Francos, rather than... just keep the revolution going. And the anarchists largely seem to think that both things were equally necessary. You cannot sacrifice one for the sake of the other. And I get the reasoning behind both. However, as the CNT joined the popular front, they began to consolidate power to their faction

because factions do what factions do, which is a thing that's wholly at odds with the anarchists and their syndicates. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting to me Hearing that described that way There is

It's a it's a truism that any Sufficiently large organization Whether it's a corporation or a government entity Or whatever Becomes effectively sociopathic Yeah Because it's Pools Law of Iron Bureaucracies

If I recall correctly I, yes, I think you're right. And what I find interesting is that it, from the way you're describing it, the ideological DNA of the syndicalist groups because they were basically, I don't want to say anti-growth, but you get what I mean by that. Like it was not the they were localists. I think that's the best way to put it. Yeah, because they were so intensely localist. Yeah. The tendency of organizations to want to achieve more power to, for the sake of the organization

just wasn't there. Whereas the rest of these factions not being driven by the intense localism basically fell into the same pattern as any other, you know, large group of people. acting together. Yeah, by the way, it's Pornell's law. I apologize. Oh, okay. But yeah, you're sleeping and resting after a hard day's work, and these bureaucrats are

finding ways to gather more power to themselves at first because they believe they're the ones who are right, but then later because gathering power to themselves becomes the point of the organization. Right. So, yes. I, the syndicalists, the anarchists remind me of what's, what's his name Bayoran? The Bear guy?

Yeah. Bayorn. Yeah. Basically like, or they remind me of ants in that like, this shit's happening over here. We're going to do our thing and we're going to live true to ourselves. Right. And if you want to join us, that's great. But otherwise, don't worry, we've got this.

Yeah. So, yeah. the result of this consolidation of power, which again is at odds with the anarchists and their syndicates, the result is that they become the dominant party. The CNT becomes a dominant party, leaving behind the principles of the revolution that had enervated them so much the months prior.

Taken more broadly, this is basically Stalin v. Trotsky, but in Spanish. Yeah, that's that makes sense. So that's about the only time I'll mention it. Yeah. But, but, uh, but you see what I mean. Uh, Trotsky wanted a worldwide revolution. Keep it going.

Right. Stalin wanted security. Yeah. Let's protect what we've built, you know. Right. Now, those who wanted to safeguard the state first were wholly at odds. And again, first off, they're saying safeguard the state. Yeah.

Ranarging the revolution. What fucking state. We, we're, we're, local. Yeah. Yeah. Spain, Spain as you knew it is, is, has ceased to exist. There is, there is, and we're going to make a better life for people in our individual places. Yeah. And that's at odds with those who thought that the only way to carry out anarchism was not to focus on the state. The central controlling nature of both Spanish communists and the Soviet Union, one of the only groups who would sell weapons to the Spanish communists, one out eventually by choking off the anarchists using finance.

Yeah. Which just feels extra dirty. And, you know, interestingly, I think that's also one of the really big things that drove Orwell later on. And I keep coming back to him because he's kind of my touchstone for anything having to do with the Spanish Civil War. But, you know, his profound. anger at communism, you know, I think is rooted in that.

Oh, absolutely. This experience led him to riding animal farm on some levels. Yeah. Oh, yeah, clearly. Now, as this withering happened, the Republican held areas reverted to their pre-war situations, which I can only imagine led to folks having less of a stake in the fight. Why am I fighting, after all, if we're not even living by the ideas for which I'm fighting.

Now, by the third phase of the revolution, so we're in January of 1937, the Derrude column was decidedly more militant, and Derrude himself had died under what could be described as suspicious circumstances in Madrid. Okay, I got to ask, suspicious how? It's possible that it was Friendly Fire. Wow, okay.

Now, Friendly Fire does happen, but also, and then they get to keep using his name. Now, Pravda, the newspaper, the organ of the state, the Washington Post of its area, celebrated this shift by gleefully reporting that, quote, the porch of the Trotskyists and anarcho-sindicalists has already begun in Catalonia. It has been carried out with the same energy as in the Soviet Union.

I think it's supposed to be the purge. Soviet advisors, yeah, Soviet advisors were not above recommending liquidation of collectivists and anti-fascists who didn't tow the line. Wow. Now, by May of 1937, the revolution was effectively over. It started with the Republican government banning the newspaper Nosotros, which is Spanish for us, or we, and continued with the seizure of all weapons from Catalan anarchists and other non-military groups. Then in April, they took over all border security, they being the Republican government.

The Republican government led by the communists. And then in May, Juan Negriene Lopez was installed in charge of the socialist government with no support or assent by the anarchist or the revolutionaries. Wow. Okay. And so now they were free to lose to the fascists. Which they did. Yes. In relatively rapid time. Yes. I'm going to pause so I can tell you a thing that I heard, but it's so enmeshed with local politics here in Sacramento.

I neither want to have our podcast on record with it or timestamp us that way. So give me one second. Like I said, now they were free to lose to the fascists. What? the actual like so for for the audience

listening at home or in your car wherever you're listening so Damian Damian told me the thing he said he was going to you know

pause recording for and before I could even process it he said okay so now keep that energy and believe me I am because

what's the actual fuck bro yeah yeah so yeah so yeah No, this is how the fascists win. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. Oh, we would much rather lose to the fascists than anyone to the left of us. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. How? Yeah. Why do you not recognize that you are, see, and this is why.

Monty Python can make jokes like Judean people's front suicide squad attack! Right. Right. Because like, no. Yeah. Oh, God almighty. So, independent Labor Party secretary in Britain, whose name I did not get down, I'm sorry,

but the independent labor secretary in Britain said the following, which I really think captures what happened. He said, quote, there are still some Britishers and Americans who regard the anarchists of Spain as impossible, undisciplined, uncontrollable. This is polls away from the truth. The anarchists of Spain, through the CNT, are doing one of the biggest constructive jobs ever done by the working class. At the front, they are fighting fascism. Behind the front, they are actually constructing a new workers' society. They see that the war against fascism and the carrying through of the social revolution are in

inseparable. Those who have seen and understand what they are doing must honor them and be grateful to them. They are resisting fascism. They are at the same time creating a new worker's order, which I love that, which is the only alternative to fascism. The great solidarity that existed among the anarchists was due to each individual relying on his own strength and not depending on leadership. the organizations must, to be successful, be combined with a free-thinking people, not a mass, but free individuals. Wow. I mean, he's from the analysis you've been doing, he's not at all wrong. And that is a genuinely utopian vision. And it was true in 1936.

Yeah. You know? And, and like he's, he's seeing what is being lost. And he's like, yes, these people are doing all the good stuff and these things are. It's kind of like when people say, well, we've got this workers movement. So if the women could just quiet down. And it's like, no. No.

You were tied. That's, that's not how any of this works. Women's rights are workers' rights. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. Or, you know, I was having a discussion. with a friend earlier today talking about issues of intersectionality and, you know, the issues within the LGBTQ community where there are, you know, different marginalized groups who don't want to share time or space with other marginalized groups. like, you know, the way that, you know, some groups have remarkably high levels of, you know, anti-trans ideology.

Mm-hmm. When you, you know, certainly as an outside observer looking at it like, don't you have an awful lot in common? Like, why are you shitting on each other? That doesn't seem constructive. you know, and it's, yeah, it's the same or similar kind of thing. It's like, you know, you need to, you need to recognize that everybody, everybody involved is needed for the experiment to work. So. So, and again, it's, it's, you know, you can't be for workers' rights and be anti-women.

You can't be for You know Queer folks' rights and be anti-trans like yeah You don't get to pick and choose Yeah you don't you don't get to be feminist and be against trans women Yeah it you literally are choosing two mutually exclusive categories Right so yeah So by August any criticism of the USSR was actually prohibited in Spain

Ha Of course Yeah like I said they were ready to lose in the way that they had chosen. Right. By September of 37, political rallies were banned in Barcelona. Yeah, the betrayal to the revolution that this represented to Merci A Vega was manifest. By late October, the anarchists and the socialist militants had a demonstration in front of a prison

in Valencia, demanding that their comrades be set free. And by January of 38, many of the landowners, whose lands had been. collectivize were demanding their lands back and the collectivization project was annulled by the Soviets. Whoa, whoa, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Wait. Okay.

You want to talk about what the fuck. So the communists, the Spanish communists. Yes. Sorry, by the Soviet-backed Spanish communist. Yeah. Yeah, but the Spanish communists. as I'm going to say clients rather than the P word that comes to mind of the Soviet Union, decided to give land back to the landowners.

Well, we need them, you see. Why? Why? I mean, like, like, from a strictly communist standpoint, that sounds, that sounds wrong. That doesn't, that doesn't sound like your communists. Right. Well, if you criticize that, you go to jail. Okay.

Well, I mean, there's, there's the idea of, you know, the dictatorship of the proletariat. So, like, that's not necessarily 100%, not in keeping with, you know, Marx's kind of, kind of points. but you're again, you're giving private property back to a class of people. Yeah. Who spent all their time exploiting. Exploiting the workers. Yeah. Yep.

You know, and I feel like this whole time we've been having this conversation, I've been saying in subtext, explain it to me like I'm five. Mm-hmm. and and you you have and it doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. Well, like I said, they seemed very determined to lose on their terms. Yeah. So what anarchists like Mercosier Vega noted, and he wouldn't have said he was an anarchist,

he would have said he was a simple libertarian, but what anarchist like Mercosier Vega noted was that Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, that libertarian socialism, that local reorganism, that local reorganization and community developed solutions was working. And that was what was going to beat the fascist attempt at a takeover. That was very clear to him. But others didn't like that at level of individuality

mixing with collectivization. They didn't like the lack of dogma guiding local decisions, and they didn't like the fact that they'd have to trust people to their own decisions. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's the, kind of the lawful neutral, heavy emphasis on the lawful. We have to have rules. We have to have a system. Yeah. Part of Leninism, Stalinism. What they're missing is there was a system.

The system was just more flexible than you like. Well, and it was, it was, yeah, that's a really good point, the flexibility, but it was flat. There's a need for hierarchy, according to these people. Yeah. Okay. In short, yeah, go ahead. Okay. Now, hierarchy is not a Marxist thing, really.

No, but it is a Soviet thing. It's a very Soviet thing. And so is it, would we say then it's a Leninist and then Stalinist thing? I would say it's a Stalinist thing. I am not qualified as to whether or not it's a Leninist thing. Okay, fair enough. And that's just, that's my, my shortcoming there. Okay.

So, in short, there was a cabal that did not appreciate or respect the autonomy of those who chose to fight. And as such, they took over and marginalized the very people who had the most stake in what was happening. They quit the revolution in order to lose the civil war. I love the way you keep saying it like that was their goal. Yeah. It seems like it. like it. Jesus.

So, so yeah. And again, and again, we're going to give the land back to the landowner. Yeah. It's kind of,

how else can we be a tragic story? Yeah. So what you're saying is you're speed running, your own version of the lost cause. Right. Like,

okay. So, so this, I would never, I never thought I would ever wind up saying this. But the Confederate, but the Confederate was actually truer to its ideals than the Spanish communists.

Because the confederacy, a lot of people in the Confederacy assumed, and you already know this, but before the war broke out, before secession, they were convinced that, oh, we're going to get international recognition, you know, instantly because King Cotton. Right. We have a near monopoly on the production of cotton. and Britain needs us for their industry. And, you know, it'll be, you know, the moment we say that we're, you know, an independent nation or whatever, they're going to rush to our aid because we have this commodity that they need. Well, one of the, there's multiple problems with that because they're begging a couple of questions there. But one of the problems with that was, okay, you have a monopoly. If you want to exercise the power of that monopoly, you need to stop selling them cotton.

Right. And individual planters told the Confederate government nuts to that. Right. I want to keep making my revenue. Sorry, no. Mm-hmm. And because the Confederate government had been formed on the idea of absolute freedom of control of private property up to it, including humans. Right.

They could not... They had no leg to stand on. They had no leg to stand on to tell them, okay, no, you can't. We're trying to have a civilization here. We're trying to have a civilization here. No, you can't. And so they never got the level of support that they thought. The Confederacy was truer to their fucking ideology.

Yeah. And the Spanish communists. Yeah. And again, I am assigning a desire to lose to them, which is not accurate, but it seems fair. Yeah. So now, Mercier Vega saw this as a failure and a betrayal, obviously. And he didn't want to look at it through rose-colored glasses of if only we'd won 20 years later, hence him writing this essay.

Okay. So he's like, no, we were betrayed, but that doesn't mean we were saints. We were individuals making decisions. Right. And those decisions, some of them were good and some of them were bad, but we were making them, and that's the important part. We had the right to fail, and it was taken from us. Okay.

So back to his essay. The mania that amounts to us bragging about our acts of heroism and our abilities of improvisation is deadly because it reduces the search for social solutions through an artifice of propaganda to an individual struggle and it erases the situation in which we were able to cope. The tendency to magnify activists of the CNT and the FAA masks our powerlessness to work efficiently wherever we find ourselves or in places where we are working and find ourselves in a position to intervene. Too often, it's used, as an escape from our time and from our world.

Not to mention that the Spanish militants themselves find themselves absolved of their own responsibilities and instead hover like the idols of the saints who know that they are not and frozen in their old postures when they ought to keep acting with their eyes wide open. Okay. So characterizing everything as hagiography paralyzes us in the present. and keeps us from solving. Now, remember, this is the 1950s. Spain is still under Franco.

Oh, yeah. And by the way, like, there's plenty of Nazis who have escaped to places. So he's like, yeah, it's, yes, we defeated the Nazis. Yes, we defeated the Italians. That doesn't mean the job is done. Right. So. Now, he's talking about social solutions, and he's talking specifically about the

autonomous collective decision-making process that he believed in, that he saw working and that he then saw blunted. Merciavega is talking about local control of industry, local collectivization of land use, and the workers and farmers making decisions for their respective realms. He's also talking about women having access to cheap and free reproductive health anywhere where the anarchists were in charge, because women were part of these movements,

and these were the things that they prioritized. Women being treated as equal comrades on the front of, lines, women having political participation guaranteed at the local levels, the only levels that really mattered to Merci A Vega. And to reduce that search to individual struggle makes it seem like, well, it was a good idea, but people's human nature is selfish and so it failed. This is why we need a state. And he's like, no, don't do that.

What good liberals say when they decry that communism and anarchism never had worked, but despite being good in theory, is what he was. is specifically trying to avoid. And his idea of avoiding it is you do not lionize these things. You do not lionize the people who advocated for these things. You speak of them as they were, warts and all. Okay. Now, yeah, go ahead.

I really admire the lack of romanticism. Yes. That's, I think what drew me to this. because you know there's always in the wake of any series of historical events there is a tendency or there can be a tendency

for people especially people who were part of a conflict who are on one side or the other of a conflict to romanticize that conflict and glorify or, you know, otherwise somehow burnish the memory of, you know, their own, their own partisans. And I think particularly in cases where, you know, they were on the losing side and they still, they nevertheless have the opportunity to write the history. There is certainly, there's definitely, I think that tendency is even stronger. you know,

witness the lost cause. And so his, uh, Vega's, uh, clarity in, in viewing all of this and his determination specifically not to do that. Um, I,

I, I'm really impressed with and I admire. Yeah. Uh, so. It's, you know, kind of the thesis statement of this essay form.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it shows the dedication he had to the ideology. Yeah. And to the cause. Yeah. Legends don't live locally. Yes. And he's saying reject the legend.

Yeah. So now the CNT that he mentions is a Confederation Nacional de Travajo, the National Confederation of Labor, as I've spoken. This is one of the main movers and shakers during Spanish Rer. Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. They were founded in 1910 in Barcelona as a progression from the workers solidarity group, which itself was a regional federation of trade unions in Catalonia, which was less successful. I bring all this up to say, working class roots run way fucking deep in Spain.

Like you've got this came out of a this, which actually came out of a this, and they were part of a federation and trade unions in 1910. And it's like, we didn't have shit about. fuck in 1910. Like, I think it was 1903 that the United Rail Workers Association voted as to whether or not to stay segregated or to desegregate. And they voted to stay segregated. And that vote was decided by one vote.

Oh, wow. And Debs was like, you guys are fucking fools. Like, don't do this. Like, you want to do, because they're going to be used as strike breakers. And white supremacy is a half. hell of a drug. Yeah. I think, yeah, well, number one,

the number of times that, you know, white supremacy has led name a faction of Americans to effectively shoot themselves in the foot. Especially so with working unions, though. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The AFL actually was proud of keeping Italians out of their union.

They said, we keep out the pauper made goods. Why not keep out the pauper? Like, that's a direct. quote from the AFVL. Yeah, I know. And they also denied women, you know, whereas the C&T was the outgrowth of all this stuff. But again, I go back to there was a regional federation of trade unions. Like here in Sacramento, we have something called the Central Labor Council, which is a whole bunch of unions getting together and doing cool union shit.

Yeah. This would probably be as close to that as I'm thinking, but that was in all of Catalonia, not just in one town. Yeah, you know, what occurs to me is part of the issue is that all of these movements, socialism, anarchism, all of these things were born in Europe. And so there is just a deeper history to begin with. Yeah. It spreads quicker to these places and then in trenches. You're right. Yeah.

But beyond that, the founding myth of our society in the United States, of the dominant society in the United States is built on this idea of rugged individualism. And that combined with racism, white supremacy. Yep. has made it really hard for any of these kind of ideologies to gain legitimacy. Yeah. In the American public imagination. Yes.

Because we are we are a nation of individuals who don't see. the role that we play in a community as part of our identity, if that makes sense. No, it does. It does. Whereas they literally saw themselves as opting into their communities while maintaining their autonomy. Yeah. And for, in our culture, that's a binary. You know, being part of the community means giving up your individuality.

Right. giving up your autonomy and they're like no I'm keeping my autonomy but I I you know see the benefit of you know you know we can have specialization of labor if I opt into a community and you know Adam Smith's you know talks about you know efficiency and everything can still apply you know if if we're part of a community you know and I can still maintain my autonomy as part of that community, but I'm making the choice to do that. Right.

Where our founding identity myth is centered on this idea of self-reliance. Yeah. That doesn't allow for that nuance. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, uh,

where did I go? So Spanish anarchism grew as a popular idea partly because of the CNT. And now here the CNT is coming around to snuff it. The CNT focused on syndicalism in the beginning, maintaining an international effort, but recognizing that their true strength came in promoting local self-determination

and the lack of need for the state as a concept. That's how the anarchists are kind of carving out within the C&T early on. And then they're kind of, they go off and they do their own thing. The C&T didn't offer much support to the Second Republic ultimately, but they were absolutely on the forefront of Spanish Revolution. Now, the FAAI, the Federation Anarchista Iberica, the Iberian Anarchist Federation, this was largely a Spanish focus group, but as the name hints, they were absolutely set up to be a Portuguese Spanish effort.

They were founded in Valencia in 1927 and were the more anarchist members of the CNT. So the FAAI is a part of the CNT and they didn't appreciate all of the bureaucratic machinery that was growing within the CNT as often happens in such movements. The FAI's goal was largely to keep the working class labor routes true to the movement. As many people in the FAAI saw the C&T. as a growing mediator between labor and capital rather than a force for labor per se. Okay, that makes sense. In many ways, people uncomfortable with anarchy but still wanting labor rights

saw this as their reason towards centralism. And the FAA had many of its members on the front lines against the fascist during Civil War, but the CNT seems to have ultimately allowed its centrist to outplay and make the FAAI irrelevant. Now the Spanish militants themselves that he mentions These were the ones I think by his read on things Who wanted to win this of war and then come back to the revolution Because they were fighting the fascists And therefore they saw themselves as the most correct

And that the Spanish Revolution was an unnecessary distraction On the left that would just weaken them in the face of fascism And because they fought fascists They could claim moral high ground and a layer of real politics politic. Like, you're talking about how to divide up the onions among a village and we're talking about shooting fascists. Like, that kind of a vibe. Okay. Yeah. They would go on to get controlled by the Soviet Union, who was the main seller of their arms. They would suppress the anarchists, both militarily and culturally, all sorts of newspaper bans, censorship and straight up arrest and imprisonments without any due process because, fuck, we're fighting fascists here. So, you know, we have to do that. Yeah.

And then they lost to the fascists. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because like you pointed out, I mean, it was it was they defeating the fascists became an end beyond everything else. Right. And so in order to do that, we have to make this compromise. We have to make this compromise. We have to make this compromise.

And that just led, I mean, you've already laid it out. It just led to everybody else who was fighting the fascists being like, fuck you, if you're going to be this way, why are we still fighting the fascists if you're going to be doing the same shit? Right. You know. And they weren't doing the same shit, but they also were shutting things down in the same way that the fascists absolutely would have if they'd won.

Yeah. So let's beat them to that punch so that then they can't do that so that then we can beat the fascists. Yeah. Now he goes on. We cannot live in disdain for the present in order to argue that what was one, sorry, in order to argue that what once was will never be with pride covering our retreat. Spain did not pop up because of random societal changes any more than it was the only crucible in which individual destinies were melted together. So let's avoid stories that transfigure the past and provide an alibi for our present fatigue. while nothing is left but Images de Pinal,

the betrayal of the survivors is taken for granted. Okay. So he talks about because of random societal changes. Worldwide economic downturn, influenza, end of World War I, rise of mass media culture, just take your pick, right? Yeah. Merci's, Vegas point here is that if it wasn't for these things that caused Spain to have a closely run election,

where people burned the middle, to run to the polls. It wasn't these things. It wasn't these things that led to the military and the monarchists and conservatives to convulse and rejection of the people's will. It was not those things that caused all this. It was people making specific choices.

Okay. And therefore, the failures are because people made specific choices. And just because you failed, it doesn't mean that you were wrong. It just means that the people making specific choices had more power than you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it again.

That doesn't mean that the cause was wrong. That doesn't mean it was doomed to failure. It just means that you got beat. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. What strikes me is the emphasis on individual choices. Is that autonomy. Very, very, very libertarian. Yes.

Yeah. Now, he also talks about that any more than it was the only crucible in which individual destinies were melted together. This only crucible aspect that he's talking about, this revolution and the failure of it also wasn't the only place where the left really gained ground, right, and deeply upset the right. Right. Hungary had the arrow cross.

Austria had the fatherland front. Romania had the iron guard. Spain had its phalanjists. Italy had its fascists. Germany had the Nazis. France had the Cro de Fu. all of these occurred around the same time. It wasn't only Spain that had a far-right counter-movement of people who were bitter that

society was screaming for a leftist solution to the growing economic and social issues that were facing them. Okay. Yeah. And then he speaks of the present fatigue. Now, he's writing this in 1956. The fascists had won in Spain. The fascists largely lost everywhere else, but they were propped up by the United States

and its allies after, World War II because of the fear of Bolshevism. So it's 1956. The only real fascist state that you have anymore is Spain. Spain. Yeah. The most famous examples of other groups that were propped up is probably U.S. is support of the Greek fascist and the Italian fascists as a bulwark against those

countries' communist parties gaining strength. And that's what a lot of the Marshall Plan was for. And the Truman Doctrine, too. Now, this was the basic foundation of the Truman Doctrine, right? So we're going to uphold these fascists because at least they will fight against the communists and the communists are the real threat now that we've defeated the Nazis. Right. So the present fatigue that he's talking about is 1956, is that people are still going on about

fascism. And why are they doing that when we have the Cold War? That's the real issue. The war was 11 years ago, just let it. it go. That's the fatigue we're talking about. Yeah. And any critique of Spain's fascism would absolutely fit into that. Now, he also mentions something called the Images de Epanel. This just is

a French phrase that means brightly colored polar prints. So rendered in this document as heroic images actually. Honestly, it just kind of reminds me of comic books. Okay, that makes sense. And then he speaks of betrayal of the survivors taken for granted. Now this is straight up the Soviet Union and the socialist communists selling out the anarchists and civil libertarians. And in effect, the revolution in order to get weapons from the Soviet Union and then go on and fight civil war in a way that lost.

Right. Yeah. And I find it interesting. that the Soviets, like how much, to what extent, this is a question. The way that Stalin specifically approached Soviet security, do you think there was an element of the guidance that the USSR was giving the Spanish communists that was. that was indifferent to them failing, if you get what I mean. Yeah, it's like a surgeon saying the surgery was success,

but the patient died. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, because you would think they would want to make sure, you know, for the sake of, you know, seeing the writing on the wall that, you know, they're eventually going to wind up having a, to go against the fascists, right?

You would think that the rational actor move would be to make sure that that war effort succeeded and that they wouldn't be giving the kinds of instructions that they did to the Spanish communists. Right. But there's layers of self-eastern. interest involved. And like the usefulness of having another, a communist, you know, a Soviet-style communist government in Spain may not have been as useful to them as just making sure that, well,

you know, this is going to keep the Germans and the Italians busy. Right. You know, I don't know. Just based on my admittedly, you know, just barely past bachelor's level understanding of, you know, Stalin's outlook. Well, I think, I think you're missing the forest

for the trees or you're giving Stalin more credit as a strategist. Remember, Stalin cared more about Soviet security than anything else. Right. But if he's going to, and I mean, he canceled the third international. Yeah.

But at the same time, if he's going to give support to a communist movement, it has to be in his image because he is, after all, Joseph fucking Stalin. Right. Okay. So I don't care what your local culture says.

We're doing it my way. I'm Stalin. Yeah. Okay. Look, I've created a communist state, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

That. Okay. Yeah. Now, back to the text. Yeah. In 1956, when this was written, the hope of a return and revenge assume, perhaps more clearly than in 1936, the form of a beautiful ending rather than an engagement with reality. To the many revolutionaries who flocked to Spain in flames and at war, it was not a hope, but the end of hope. The ultimate sacrifice savored as a defense of a complicated and absurd world, a tragic exit from a world where the dignity of man is violated day in and day out,

completely dedicated to the realization of their individual destinies, I'm sorry, completely dedicated to the realization of their individual destinies, I'm sorry, completely dedicated to the realization of their individual destinies. and he's in a situation where they might give everything, they barely entertained the thought of tomorrow. Okay. So in that paragraph, I can't tell if he is a little bit romanticizing the revolutionary effort, or if he is commenting on the romanticization by people who were in the movement at the time of the revolution. I think it's the second one

because he's saying like, look, yes, we had all these people who flocked to Spain and this is all a very heroic thing and a lot of them died but let's be real. Like, let's look at what actually happened. So don't think about them as heroes

who thought like, oh, I'm building a world for 20 years from now. It's 1956 now. Shit didn't happen that way. So let's be real about this. So. Okay. Yeah.

Now, he's writing in 1956. The war technically started in July of 36 and it was officially over by April of 39. So it's 20 years later. The Nationalist won and the Spanish Revolution was suppressed and the Republicans capitulated at the beginning of April. What followed were thousands of reprisals by Franco's forces against those who stood against him because it's Franco.

500,000 refugees fled to France. Yeah. And then they were kept there in internment camps. So that's awful. Yeah. Okay. Now this is France's third republic. 17,000 of them were actually turned back over to Franco.

And when, when, yeah. So remember, this is 1939, right? Yeah. 1940. When Patan took over. Patan, Patan, Patan? Patan. When he took over, even more were sent to Spain.

Franco then sent plenty on to Nazi Germany. Now, by some measures, the Spanish Civil War, due to these reprisals and due to Franco's efforts to continue killing off former opponents, the Spanish Civil War could be said to have gone all the way through 1952. It just ceased being a conventional or balanced in 1939. and it became asymmetrical political persecution and light resistance by some groups in the high plateau areas, a Spanish monarchy, if you will, carrying on guerrilla warfare against the Franco regime. And what's more, Franco had to let the Nazis have mining rights in Spain from 39 to 45 in exchange for their help.

This stunted economic growth. Yeah. Now, by 1956, the Americans, the United States post-war interventions, included China, Italy, Greece, Philippines, Korea, Albania, obviously Germany, Poland, Hungary, the ever-neutral Switzerland, where there was a list of communists that had escaped Germany far greater than a list of Jews who'd done the same, probably because many of the Jews who'd escaped Switzerland had been returned to Germany already. Neutrality is not as neutral as we'd like to think it was.

More American interventions in Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Iran, Guatemala, British Guiana, Cambodia, India, Australia, Japan, Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Costa Rica, Vietnam, and was getting started on Syria, and that's just by 1956 as of the writing of this essay. Wow. Most, you see, I didn't get into very many African countries at all because that all comes after 1960. Yeah.

Now, most of these countries had a leftist movement to some extent or another and the United States along with the Brits and sometimes the French. wanted to blunt those leftist movements or stop them fully. Sometimes it was setting up a liberal group to sap strength from the left, and sometimes it was funding out-of-work hoodlums to go and attack leftists at their meetings, which should absolutely horrify us, given that that's how Hitler began his rise to power. Yeah.

Sometimes it was just funding propaganda radio in print, and sometimes it was giving aid and comfort to fascist organizations designed to topple the leftist governments that were being put in. in place. And again, if you think I left out most of Africa, it's true because those interventions typically happen from about 1957 forward. Right. So, like, yeah, it's 1956.

You know, he's like, let's let's look at real choices that real people made instead of like, well, this was inevitability or this was destiny or, you know, would have been great just for that, you know, that one pesky guy. It's no, these are all choices. And I think he's laying the blame fully at the C&T's feet in a lot of ways. But also saying, and we failed with them. Right. So back to Mercere Vega.

He says, this is how, in their heart of hearts, the isolation, which is the answer to vomiting and in the promiscuity of a banal existence, returning to July of 1936, is cultivated, like the anticipation of a great and barbaric religious festival. Let's steer clear of such a fate if we want to avoid a life of disappointment and bitterness. The cerebral dynamite of 1936 Spain withered and dies in the sun of misery and revolt. Courage was not to be found only sitting behind the tripod of a machine gun. Heroism was not spent only in the moments of attack. both were etched into the bedrock of daily existence

and gave a framework to the episodic passions of the masses. Today or yesterday as today, they have to contend with the absurdity that emanates from economic formulas and the changing clamors of the crowd. Okay. And I think I'm going to stop us there and we'll pick back up with that paragraph.

But I wanted to just end with that because, I mean, he's really cool. calling it out here, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's steer clear of such a fate if we want to avoid a life of disappointment and bitterness. Right, right. Don't just sit there and worship our heroes who lost.

Yeah. So, and again, heroism was not spent only in the moments of attack. Both were etched into the bedrock of daily existence and gave a framework to the episodic passions of the masses. You were, we were, we were, none of us were heroes and all of us were heroes because we lived our ideals. Yeah. And what I'm going to take away from this, based on that paragraph, I think that's a great place to pause

because in the course of my studies, one of the courses I wound up taking was on the Cold War. and off, off microphone. I talked to you about the class. And one of the themes, one of the things that our professor seemed to really want to try to push was this kind of, I want to say kind of post, postmodern in the context of Cold War analysis. idea that it was, none of it was about ideology, that, you know, this was power politics by two, you know, large powers. And, you know, and they, and they worked, uh, sometimes, sometimes they worked synergistically, you know, because their interests, you know, aligned. You know, it was, it was a very cynical take. in a very, in some, sometimes very conspiratorial take.

And what strikes me in, in listening to Vega, is, no, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's real ideology. Yes. There, there is real, no kidding, true belief on both sides. Yeah. You know, um, and you can't, you can't, you can't redact. reduce history and the actions of large numbers of people, you can't eliminate ideology and ideals from the calculation. Yeah.

You know, as much as you might look at something and, you know, have a cynical outlook on it. And that cynicism can certainly be justified because, you know, people are greedy and venal and everything else. But people also genuinely believe in things. Yeah. And he's pointing out that like at the localist local level, we were remaking society and everybody at that level was believing in it. Yeah. Yeah. And.

And yeah. I mean, I would, I would want to kind of. point to this essay when talking to that professor about like, you know, this isn't, this isn't the Soviet Union, this isn't the United States, but this is ideology being a, a powerful motivating factor and a crucial part of how this effort thrived and then failed. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and so it's a depressing example because of that failure, but it's, it's a depressing example because of that failure, but it's still an example of genuine idealism. Yeah. You know, and I think there's something to cling to there.

Yeah, it makes it more tragic on a lot of levels. Yeah, definitely. Well, what do you want folks to read or watch? Well, continuing the theme from our last episode, David W. Blight, a scholar of race in America and and particularly the Civil War and Reconstruction. On YouTube, there is a series of lectures that he did as part of Yale courses, where, you know, essentially you can listen to the lectures from a Yale course online.

And I really strongly recommend his lecture series, The Civil War and Reconstruction. It is 27 parts. so it really is no kidding sitting through a university course but he is a wonderful lecturer and the points he made the way he elucidates the subject is amazing and he just has an amazing voice to listen to

he has a beautiful somewhere between bass and baritone voice that is that like I wish that they would get him to do narration of stuff. Like anything on the Civil War, like, I don't know if Shelby Foote is alive or dead, but they should

stop asking Shelby Foote to talk about shit and have David Blight do it instead. And part of that is because Shelby Foot, I won't say he's a lost causer, but he leans lost causey. And David Blight is very much not.

And so he has my Yankee, Edmarie. So anyway, the Civil War and Reconstruction with David W. Blight on YouTube. The channel on YouTube is Yale courses, all one word. So strongly recommend that. How about you? I'm going to recommend a couple things.

One is a movie called Guernica from 2016. And it's basically about a American journalist falling in love with a woman who's in charge of censoring the news. So, okay. That's fun. Yeah. So I'm going to recommend that. I'm also going to recommend a book called The Battle for Spain, the Spanish Civil War, 1936 to 1939 by Anthony Bivor.

B-E-V-V-V-O-R, B-E-V-O-R. B-E-V-O-R? Two E's. Oh, yeah, that would be, yeah, I think, I guess that's B-Vor. Yeah, he's written, he wrote a book on Stalingrad. He wrote Why the Allies Won. He's a huge military historian, so. Okay.

The Battle for Spain. Good book gives you some good, background for what we're talking about and what I'm going to talk about. So, cool. Where can they find us? We can be found on the Apple podcast app, on the Amazon podcast app, on Spotify, and on YouTube now, where our archive is growing and growing day by day. And additionally, of course, there is our website at waba, wauba, wababobba.

com. However it is that you came to be listening to us, please take a moment in one or more of those places to subscribe and give us the five-star review that you know we deserve. And, sir, where can you be found? Let's see. First Friday of every month, you can find me at the Sacramento Comedy Spot with my group Capital Punishment. By the time this will air, we are likely 10 years in now. So we have hit the 10-year mark.

Go to sackcomedy spot.com, find the calendar section, and buy your tickets to our show. first Friday of each month, 9 p.m. Sacramento Comedy Spot, myself, Justine, Emily, and four new guests. Come cheer them on, see who's got what it takes to become tournament champion. Cool. There we go. Well, for a geeky conservative time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock.

And until next time, keep rolling 20s.