Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Operation Three-Eyed Raven

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

ToE's special correspondent Chris tells us the truth about Game of Thrones, Trump, the CIA, and the importance of stories. Chapter seven in the new ToE Failure miniseries.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. Sorry I haven't had time for your show this past year pal but now that game of thrones is totally off my plate i'm gonna have more time for everything game of thrones was actually my secret procrastination weapon probably for like the last four years now i mean i spent hours on reddit just reading fan theories and speculations about the books. But yeah, you know, now that now that the show is over, I'm feeling, you know, to be honest, ashamed, like totally ashamed of what, though. I mean, it was epic television. I mean, 18 million people watch the finale. You don't get to call yourself epic if you don't

have a good ending. And they blew the ending. It sucked. It was a total failure. I would go as far as to say that it is the most epic entertainment failure of our lifetimes. I'm sorry to hear you feel this way, pal.

What, you're going to tell me you liked it? What unites people? Armies, gold, flags, stories. There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. That's Tyrion's big speech, right, from the last episode?

How do you know that by heart? Because I wrote it. I was one of the writers. Well, officially, I was a consultant, but a bunch of my lines got in this last season, especially in the finale. You never told me about this. You consulted for Game of Thrones

How did this even happen? Okay The day after the inauguration Trump went to the CIA Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, this is when he stood in front of the Memorial wall, right? Yes

He came to send a message to everyone In the intelligence community That things were going to be different from this day forward. Now he was going to be in charge of everything, including Game of Thrones. You know, Obama had a totally different vision for the show. If you think back, those first six seasons were all about the promise of a new and better world, right? But as soon as Trump took over, he ripped up all of Obama's original plans, especially his plans for the ending. Trump made it clear he just wanted the CIA to focus on the propaganda, which, you know, to be fair, is the reason why the show

existed in the first place. Wait, wait. You're saying Game of Thrones is propaganda? Come on. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood got their start in the CIA's propaganda division.

And vice versa. I mean, Trump may be our first official reality TV president, but there'll be more. But wait, wait, wait, wait. Game of Thrones, though. How is that government propaganda? Look, we aren't China, right? We don't directly censor artists.

But if someone is speaking to 15 plus million citizens, then, well, the folks in charge of content and messaging, they have to be involved. That's just the way things work. The problem was that Trump came in and totally switched everything up mid-story. Considering how many character arcs had to be sacrificed in service of the primary message, I think it's a miracle we even got a coherent ending. I am so confused. There was a primary message in Game of Thrones? Iran.

When, I mean, okay, I mean if, hopefully it's still if, if we nuke Iran, millions of innocents are going to die. Game of Thrones is a story that prepares the American people to feel justified about this because sometimes to save the world, you have to burn the world down hold on if this was true then wouldn't it make more sense to have had the dragon queen just

you know burn the evil city down at the beginning of season 7 when she showed up in Westeros with three dragons. To be honest, one of the first drafts of season 7, it was like just seven episodes of dragons torching everything. But thankfully, calmer heads prevailed. In fact, they rewarded the guy who talked Trump down with a cameo. Huh? You know how the show was always giving people cameos?

You mean like that singer, Ed Sheeran? Yeah. Well, CIA's former deputy director, a guy named David Cohen, got a cameo in the final season, in season eight. It was the episode where they're getting ready for the big battle in Winterfell. Remember when Sir Davos was passing out soup? Yeah, another meaningless scene.

The one with the little girl who talks about how brave she's going to be and then we never see or hear from her again. Right. Well, she had to have a line so you could see more of david who was next to her in the soup line okay now some folks say he got this cameo because he's married to one of the producers, David Benioff, his sister. But the truth is, David Cohen went above and beyond the call of duty.

He made it possible that the agency was able to both hit all the bosses' propaganda objectives and still bring the story to a reasonably satisfying close. So you're telling me that the radical break in quality with this TV show between season six and season seven is because of the 2016 election of Donald Trump? Yep. But this makes no sense. mean think about it for john snow it seems to me that if trump was in charge then john snow would have had a much more interesting season right i mean he was literally the promised aryan prince shouldn't he have you know ended up on the throne

you're underestimating donald trump okay you're underestimating his ability especially when it comes to communicating with the people that's that's what all epic propaganda messages are you know communications directly with the people and you're saying trump is good at this yeah think about it what it. What is the fate of Jon Snow? First, he was robbed of his destiny of killing the Night King. His little sister

grabs all the glory. All we saw him do was impotently yell at a dragon. Yeah, and then he has to kill his crazy ex-girlfriend. Sure, he saves the world, but no one recognizes this. His fate is determined not by his friends or his family,

but by some illegal immigrant who came north of the border. For the MAGA people, this was like the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a Quran. You're saying these choices were made on purpose to make the fail son, his base, even more angry? It worked, didn't it? But what about

Daenerys? Are you saying her character was butchered to get people angry as well? I mean, why would he even care about triggering the libs? I mean, he does that every day. Okay, think about this. Before season seven, she is like a successful social justice warrior. She won't let her troops kill innocent people.

And even when her dragon eats a kid, she locks all the dragons up. She's in a way set up for what could have happened if Hillary won in 2020. A blonde white lady leading an alliance to rid the world of evil. She was all about using power responsibly. Okay. But after the election, the objectives changed. I mean, Trump wanted to make sure people understood, viscerally understood,

that behind every social justice warrior is an angry feminist who will burn everything down if she doesn't get her way. And this is why it's a bittersweet ending, especially for the Fail Thons. On the one hand, their boy gets to stab the virtue-signaling, crazy social justice dragon bitch in the heart, but he also doesn't get to be king.

He's forced to live out the rest of his days with the wild people. Yeah, and he's kind of forced into going back and being an incel again. But let's talk about who does end up on the throne in the show, Bran. This makes no sense, Chris, because Bran is in a wheelchair and Trump likes to make fun of the handicapped.

Chaos is a ramp. Okay, that's actually one of Trump's lines that didn't make it into the show. But maybe it should have. It's definitely funnier than the democracy stuff that stayed in. You didn't like it when the guy asked if democracy means my horse gets a vote? That was supposed to be funny? Well, I wrote it to be funny.

But the objective was that we were supposed to make fun of democracy like if you have elections then you end up with someone totally unqualified as the king in this case you get some guy in a wheelchair who calls himself the three-eyed raven it's one s or twist of the knife but for the agency it's a secret coded in joke. What do you mean? Do you know about Operation Mockingbird? I do. This was like one of the early CIA black ops, right?

The one with journalists. Yeah. Yep. That's it. It was like CBS, ABC, NBC, Time, the New York Times, the AP, Reuters, Kirst, Newsweek, the Miami Herald. And that's just off the top of my head. The list was long. But all of these organizations worked with the CIA to shape public opinion around some of the CIA's foreign operations, like the 1953 overthrowing of the government of Iran. But then, after Watergate in 1976, George H.W. Bush, who was then

the CIA director, he decided to crack down on these relationships. He made it illegal for the CIA to enter into any paid or contractual relationship with journalists. You can really trace the agency's modern day propaganda operation to this decision. How so? After 1976, the agency turned away from journalism to movies and television. And it didn't even take a year to come up with a blockbuster. 1976? Star Wars? Yep. Yep. And it has been a string of big

budget, big story successes ever since. All the way to the present with Game of Thrones. Wow. And this is still Operation Mockingbird? No. No, they changed the name. Now it's called Operation Three-Eyed Raven

This installment is called Operation Three-Eyed Raven. It was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. And it featured TOE's special correspondent, Chris. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. Radiotopia.

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