Chapo Trap House - 270 - Beto Males feat. Liz Bruenig (12/9/18)

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

We coordinate with fellow operator in the Brotherhood of Bernard, Liz Bruenig, to derail the political aspirations of a certain Texan politician. We also mourn the losses of the Weakly Standard and our benevolent WASP ruling class.

The following is unedited audio stolen from deep inside a political conspiracy that documents an ongoing effort to assassinate the character and take down the potential political hopes and dreams of a democratic politician. The audio has not been edited in any way. What you're about to hear is real and a real political conspiracy. Okay, so guys, obviously this Beto guy is a problem. Yeah, we got to clap this fool. It has to happen.

I mean, no one's ever planned for a German guy who pretends to be Mexican. It's actually kind of the smartest strategy. I keep hearing more about 2020. This guy's young. He's attractive. He's charismatic. He stands for everything that's right and good. He represents, I mean, even though he's white, he represents the interests of POC in a way

that, quite frankly, I'm not with. No way. I mean, he could possibly inspire the entire country to come together and defeat Donald Trump, which that goes in the way of our insane socialist accelerationist plan. I have personally bought three condos in Trump Tower to accelerate conditions. You know, worst of all, he's out here making women's calves cramp all over the place. He's setting up expectations about being a generous giving lover. We can't have that.

No, no, no. We can't have that. We have spent years now setting women's standards very low for what to expect from bearded brocholists. And we're not going to have this guy filling them their heads with dreams of multiple orgasms and fancy dinners out. I heard the Beto or can achieve triple digit orgasms. This has to be stopped. No, no.

Yeah. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to know about it. Not going to happen. And that's coordinate a response. Absolutely. So let's get our agent in the Washington Post on the line. Yeah, let's get one of our shooters on here.

Let's get one of our top shooters on this case, put out the hit on Beto right now. We're putting a stack on Beto right now. Putting stacks on his head, calling up one of our top shooters. Is this Liz Burnig of the Washington Post? Yeah. Hey, is this about taking Beto down? Yeah. Welcome to the political conspiracy.

Hey, thanks so much. I met up with Bernie in a parking lot last week to talk about this at around 3 a.m. And his feeling was that it was just too likely that Beto could beat Trump and we can't let that happen. Can't let it happen, folks. Bernie, he met you in the darkened parking lot as you do in Washington and he said, follow the triple digit orgasms. Follow the wherever, wherever cameras are cramping.

I wasn't going to let a champion for women win last time and I'm not going to let a champion for women win this time. And so he deployed his A-team, including me and David Cerrodo with a couple tweets and Zed Jelani in current affairs. It's wild that we can coordinate so well in that people among us who generally share the same political values and ideas could come up that quickly with such a similar take on why Beto is wanting. Again, and I'm glad I orchestrated all of this because we need coordinated response, coordinated

character assassination. You know, the reality is he's such a great left candidate that everybody on the left was actually supporting him before Bernie decided to put the hit squad together. So I mean, it definitely took a high level of coordination. It's pretty impressive. I know that Bernie has deployed every listserv. He's held multiple meetings in undisclosed locations. You can look for more critical reporting about Beto, especially as he starts to put together

an exploration committee and prepare to run. And of course, none of that is going to be generated naturally by the news process. It's going to be all due to Bernie's work behind the scenes, and I know you guys are in on that. I mean, I just, I hope the slack doesn't leak. We are recording this political conspiracy just for our own files, but I hope it never gets out. Oh, man.

Because now we would be in so much trouble. That would be embarrassing. I would get canned. But, I mean, just, you know, for our own records and files, you know, here and, you know, for our tape, you know, it's like, so we can plot out this conspiracy going forward. You know, just, just what is the sort of case against Beto? Because obviously, you know, we have set on the show as part of this plan, again, as part of this double blind conspiracy backtracking maneuver that we very much wanted him to defeat

Ted Cruz for the Texas Senate seat. He didn't do that. But now people are beginning to say, hey, Beto is, you know, he's going to be our guy in 2020. 2020. He's young. He's charismatic. He's got so many people like him.

So just, you know, for our own records and purposes, you know, even though I know we both know... We got to get the talking points down here. What is the sort of case against Beto as a 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, in your opinion? Well, the problem with Beto that, you know, when Bernie gave me his files seemed to be that he's very wishy-washy on healthcare, right? So he doesn't support either Medicare for all bill in Congress.

He's voiced support for single payer, but he won't put a policy to that. And he's also at other times said he supports universal coverage, but thinks there are a number of ways that we could get there, including something like a public option. So it's difficult to pin down actually exactly where he is. And that appears to be done on purpose, right? So he can kind of pull an Obama and be all things to all people. And then there's the kind of a middling voting record in Congress, right? He's not a progressive Democrat.

He's part of the new Democrat coalition, didn't really do much in Congress and doesn't really actually seem to push much legislation whatsoever, needless to say progressive legislation. And then there's all the real estate dealings in El Paso, where he's from, some of which have put poor old women out of their homes. So you know, that's what we're working with, and we're trying to dig up more. We're talking to the tweeters who are talking about the calf cramping and see what they have. And they may know something we don't.

And you know, it was reported that he just had a meeting with Obama's, you know, old campaign people. So like they clearly see something in him that they saw in Obama, and which is on, you know, honestly, should frighten everyone. Oh my God. And it's a sounding there. They're out in the open about it. There's talking about how excited they are to have another Obama.

And it's like, what do you think happened? He's like Obama won and he got eight years in. Congratulations. And I guess they're just thinking, we just want to win again. And it's just such, I guess that's what happens when you're out of power. Your brain just dissolves because of all of the triggering you're getting from all of every awful tweet and just President Cheeto being an embarrassment every day. But you have to do something once you win and just being vague and offering platitudes

and then governing that way. Guess what? Congratulations. Maybe Beto can beat Trump, especially if he has another well timed economic collapse, which certainly helped Obama win. Even in 48 years, congratulations and welcome President Anastomatic Times Square Elmo, because that's the inevitable result of that. Well, I don't know.

I mean, I think there's some value in continuing to live the exact same cycle of our existence in 12 year cycles every year, but they keep getting worse. They keep getting shittier. And then we just die. It's a mind. I think there's like, I think there's some value in that and just reliving the same things just with more like little marginal factors made shittier every time like, you know, we get to relive 2008, but climate catastrophe is, you know, I honestly think there's some

value to it. And I think you guys are sort of just out of hand poo-pooing the idea of a living purgatory with no end. Hey. And I'm with it, boys. Mutchi baby, eternal recurrence. Let's go. Well, I mean, Liz, obviously, like, I mean, we're joking about this political conspiracy,

but like, you wrote a piece for the Washington Post that was, you know, a very mild piece of, you know, criticism about Beto as a 2020 candidate that was just basically saying like here, pump the brakes on this guy for X, Y, and Z, because describe a little bit of the reaction this piece got and what you think that portends. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, my feeling was after one of my colleagues at the Post reported that Beto was hanging out with Obama at his post presidential offices in Foggy Bottom here in D.C., that, you know, the Democrats were getting pretty serious about Beto as a candidate.

My feeling was, you know, it feels like we only go backwards where we're just picking candidates who are, you know, uncommitted to progressive values or in that new Democrat coalition zone. And of course, I have different politics than that. And so my argument was like, look, if you're someone who cares about progressive priorities, if you, you know, you know, feel like the Democratic Party has an opportunity here, which I do to actually go to the left on some important issues, especially poll really well nationally like single payer, then, you know, Beto's probably not your guy because it isn't as

though he comes from a conservative district, right? He comes from a district El Paso, Texas 16, that I think is 17 points more Democratic than the average district in the United States. So he has the opportunity to be as progressive as he wants, essentially, and Congress hasn't done it. So my assumption is that's just not his politics. And so I wrote that piece and then people said, well, specifically near a tandem of Cap, who was acquainted with my husband, she, she said, you know, this is a coordinated

attack that's coming from, you know, Bernie Sanders supporters, Bernie land. And then after, you know, she made that claim, lots of other people on Twitter sort of echoed it. And I ended up talking to my boss about it and saying, you know, no, I'm not an independent writer. I'm not taking orders. I didn't meet up with Bernie in a parking lot and take a box of files and get to work. I just, you know, this is my personal feeling on him.

But I think that the reaction to the, to what is a very gentle critique, a couple of years out from the general was pretty telling about where the democratic powers that be are on Beto. That's amazing that they fucking made you go out to the pumpkin patch to find the micro film instructions from Bernie on it. That's amazing. Well, I mean, I think what's telling here is it's not so much that like everybody loves Beto or wants to get her, I get, you know, rally around Beto, although I assume some

of it is people are legitimately excited about him because he does sort of seem like feeling like white Obama. But I think it really speaks more to the fact, as far as people like Nira and the Democratic party liberal establishment goes, is they want anyone but Bernie, right? It's Bernie is really what they're afraid of because I think they know that like, you know, they can read a fucking poll. They know how popular he is. And quite honestly, I know, I know this is, you know, we're years off.

He might not even run. Shit. I mean, he's old as hell. I mean, it indicates, it does seem to be like he's considering running. And I really think as if it were held today, like it's his nomination to lose. And I think like, if you want to talk about coordinated attacks, I think they are coordinating all their energy to make sure that doesn't happen. And again, it's doesn't necessarily have to be a conspiracy.

They don't share his politics and would not, they don't want to see the Democratic party go in that direction politically. Right, right. Precisely. I think that they recognize that a big part of Hillary Clinton's problem 2016, she was never able to get the cool factor going, which is no small thing because it allows you to get the youth vote out and it allows you to get sustained attention. Obama was able to both be a centrist and be cool.

Clinton was not able to do that. In Beto, they see someone who can make, you know, sort of centrist blend democratic policies cool. And so, you know, when the left comes along and preemptively rejects this guy they're setting up is like the youth candidate who's going to pull all of Bernie's support, basically, they get really frustrated. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable response to your political plans taking a little bit of a hit.

But, I mean, I also think it's important for the left to understand, you know, this guy just doesn't share your politics. Well they don't think of it. That's what's so amazing watching the responses. They have this weird sense that no one should be criticized, no candidate should be criticized at all, that you just sort of have to let all of these campaigns wash over your totally smooth marble-like brain and then, I don't know, pick one out of a hat or whoever calls your house the most or whoever you shook hands with at a fucking flapjack dinner or something.

There's no sense that you're supposed to come to this decision with actual, you know, political beliefs or policy sort of red lines and that you're going to judge candidates based on whether they meet your criteria. They don't think of it that way. It's just an extended marketing campaign and they bring out the new hot product, which is this cool white guy, but he sounds like he might be Mexican and we're not going to tell you he isn't. And what's not to like about that?

Because as you said, yeah, like slapping a cool coat onto centrism is really all they have because the policies sure as shit aren't going to fucking excite anybody. Well, I think they're like the new strategy, getting me sick of the post in 18 months before they need to. Mission accomplished. Just stop it. Stop posting. Everyone go back to talking about this is us.

Give me, just fucking nominate Chris Dodd. I don't care. Just do it. Be done. Stop it. Stop it. I don't want to see it. Well, Liz, I noticed a big thing in the reaction to your thing and, you know, this idea that

this is all being coordinated, you know, let's grant for a second that it is that, you know, Bernie is like, I want Beto dead. I want his family dead. I want his skateboard broken in half. But the idea is like, you know, the reaction you've gotten to this is like, you know, oh, you're just trying to take him down, you know, like, why won't you support the Democrat or whatever? And like the answer is it just like he they have to compete in a primary to be the Democratic

nominee that and then invariably, we're all guilty into supporting when he runs against Trump. But like he hasn't got there yet. And until he does, it's very much an open contest. Right. I mean, one way you could interpret criticisms from the left is, you know, offering Beto the opportunity to pick up the policies that we care about. But the Democratic sort of centrist response was, you know, how dare you expect him to

alter his policies in any way or try to reach a voting base? And I mean, you know, that's just how primaries work, right? We put our priorities out there, candidates can decide if they want to respond or not. It's not necessarily a destructive attack to communicate in the press. You know, this is what a certain base cares about. But I think, again, the response tells you he's not going to pick that shit up. And the Democrats who are supporting him do not want him to. And I think they're comfortable with him where he is.

And you know, like before Beto, it was like all Kamala Harris, because like, you know, I guess she's kind of young and cool, too, kind of, both of those things. She's probably the coolest person I've ever seen in my life. You know, I, you know, dude, I've seen, I've seen Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, no cool. But like it does seem like the, you know, Beto is in a lot of ways for, for instance, you know, the people who work at CAP, the perfect candidate because for some inexplicable reason people think he's attractive and he has a skateboard and was in a punk band. And I guess like he, like again, like we said with Obama, he can sell that vague sense that

like, you know, he's everything Trump isn't. And it's just like we can pour into him. He's just this container with which we can, the youth of America can pour into, you know, their hopes for a better future because he sort of like looks and sounds like one of us. But again, as you pointed out, like it's very, very, very important, not just for the future of America and the rest of the world, but the future of like, let's say a Democrat winning the White House or being politically successful, that the nominee, not be someone who is cozy

with Wall Street is willing to turn health insurance over to private markets and insurance companies and is not going to basically let the Pentagon and, you know, military industrial complex run foreign policy. And Beto has shown no indication that he's willing to fight or, you know, push back on any of these issues that he'd get in there and be what Obama was, which was someone who immediately bailed out Wall Street, started droning the entire world and created this convoluted compromise that was in health insurance or healthcare that was based on the Heritage Foundation's original, like, you know, sort of private public partnership bullshit.

Yeah. And was politically weak and was shredded. And the only part of it that worked well and that remains are the Medicaid expansions. Right. So I mean, you know, it all seems like we've been here before. And I don't know. I mean, I hope that I don't think it's too out of order, you know, to say that, you know, we've gone down this road and it didn't work.

I mean, there is, there would be a silver lining. If he got in there, you could see all the teacots calling him Beto O'Dork. That's pretty good, you know, they could call him the, the, the Bay Dungler. Oh, okay. How about this? Beto O'Rourke was in a punk band, right? Yeah. He was a figure for like the entirety of the eighties.

He had a name like, you know, Jerry Piss, Jonathan Shit, Craig Vomit, classic punk punk. Steve Puss. Yeah. That's not, you know, and he's going up against a respectable guy who's doing business deals in the eighties who presumably Donald Trump never like signed a loan or anything under the name, you know, Donald Pussy or something. Tommy Scabies.

Tommy Scabies, Rick rabies, any of those. But that's, you know, it's a problem. Sorry, we got to get him out of here. Liz, like, you know, the other, the other big thing that you hear a lot from like the Beto people or like, you know, the, the cap mafia, you know, was it Daily Coast just said this? He was like, you know, like Bernie supporters, like that's just a cult of personality. And like, I don't know if this is projection or what, like, I mean, obviously I, I, I against

my better judgment, I find Bernie to be sort of a charming character, but like, I wouldn't say he's someone that's like overburdened with like a charismatic leader like presence, would you say? No, I think it's like an anti cult of personality where people who support Bernie appreciate the fact that he's sort of unpolished and shows up with like wrinkled suits, kind of like he napped in the car on the way, because it bespeaks a lack of, I mean, it is just it bespeaks authenticity, right? He seems to, and he has the record to prove he actually gives a shit about the policies

he's behind, and he doesn't seem like a workshopped kind of, you know, focus group figure. And so it's actually a cult of him not cultivating a sort of public persona in the way that a lot of candidates do, because that's what, that's what allows the policies to be the leading thing because he does it because his plane of kind of one note and anti charismatic style where he just sort of says the same thing over and over again about corporations and the 1% and all that, it just turns it upside down and it undermines his personal appeal and it makes it expressly about the policy, which for people who are wary, at least they claim to be wary of, you know, attempts for my politicians to use flash over

substance, it sort of disarms their instinctive, their inherent skepticism of a politician. And then they're like, oh, maybe he's actually serious about this stuff because he's not really, he doesn't have anything else. He's not skateboarding, you know, he doesn't have the soaring rhetoric. Right, yeah, he seems to not, he is not interested in developing a personality that can go in the center of a campaign, right, he just wants to put the policies in the center of the campaign and that's really refreshing for a lot of people who grew up with the opposite kind of formulation, politicians who had personalities and personas like Obama and a lot of ways

like O'Rourke, who are very, very vague about policies and kind of try to keep them out of the spotlight. It's more about hope and change and so forth, but you don't really know what you're getting. We are going to go into the White House, we're going to go up to Donald Trump, we're going to say Mr. Trump, ya yeet. But Liz, I know we're like, I don't even know what that means, but it's very humorous. Again, taken for granted that we are all part of the same conspiracy, we're all part of the same hypocrisy, Ms. Brunig, and that hypocrisy is politics and, you know, our preferred candidates.

You know, we've got to tool up, you know, we've got to go to the mattresses for Bernie. So what are some things that you're looking forward to as we relitigate 2016 again in 2020? Like what are some of the best args that we can utilize against the wretched dem? Well, you know, I mean, obviously we don't want women getting into any positions of power. Absolutely. That was the original Bernie Sanders platform, and it's no less important now. You know, climate change is extremely, I mean, it's very pressing, right?

So we don't have much time on it. So aggressive climate policy is more important than it has ever been before. So candidates who take that seriously, I mean, there's just, there's no good conscience picking a candidate who doesn't take it seriously or doesn't favor aggressive climate policy. That's fatal otherwise. And then, and similarly, you know, the economy is not super stable, a lot of people are predicting that a collapse, you know, so unless we want to go to 2008 again with bailing out the bankers and ignoring homeowners, allowing, you know, people are basically committing financial

crimes to get away with it, and then, you know, punish the victims, you have to take a candidate who is ready to sort of go after Wall Street in a really aggressive way. Coming out of this most recent midterm elections where the Democrats did take back the House, but, you know, Matt Karp and others have pointed out that like, while it's good that, you know, stopping reaction is always an important thing to do, and certainly this Republican Party, if you look at how they won back the House, like they really did win with the, you know, the Panera-bred suburban Democratic voters who are mostly, you know, middle to upper middle class, and mostly, you know, moderate to center right in their political

beliefs so that, like, the Democratic Party is becoming, is moving further and further away from being a party of, you know, the working class and more and more a party of sort of, like, educated white suburbanites. It's a political disaster to abandon the working class, and even the sort of lower income portions of the middle class, if you abandon them, someone will pick them up and sort of already have in Trump a kind of table setting for a pseudo-fascism, and so, I mean, you know, you don't have to panic too much or predict too much, but, you know, if you continue to move in a direction that people identify as being sort of elitist and removed from the

people and anti-populist, that energy is going to go somewhere. It's already there, and so the Democrats can decide whether they want to respond to it and channel it and do a movement, or whether they want to ignore it and continue with business as usual and robotize and see what happens. Look at what's happening to Macron, and you're up right now. It's not good. I mean, look, Macron, I think he's going to turn it around, though. In all seriousness, like, he's going to go up, he's going to, like, tell a worker to take

overtime so he can buy a suit, he's going to marry some more teachers, he's going to do what he has to do, he's going to make that crazed look that looks like he's just been drinking amoeba water for 12 years, he's going to say that he's a god. He fucking, you know what, Macron filled up this space in sort of liberal culture that kind of avoid that Kanye left, because he's sort of like Jesus Eric Kanye, I am a god. He's a god. He is, he's a god on earth, he's going to start giving all of his speeches from behind a curtain, just his outline, and maybe his bejeweled hand will come out to wave to the

crowd. Macron is like, you know how we always make fun of the guys who are like, they watch the Sopranos or whatever, and they're like, this is about cool guys. Macron watched Gladiator, and he looked at Joaquin Phoenix's performance, and was like, this is about a cool emperor who's sabotaged to be like him. If he'd only lived, he would have fixed all of Robes' problems. I mean, obviously, whether these protests are, you know, right-wingers meant about an environmental tax, or whether there are generally anti-austerity, I mean, probably a little

both is true there, but I just want to read this one Twitter exchange between someone and, you know, Nira Tandon, as long as we're talking about her. You know, the person who, let's be honest, is like the biggest hurdle to the Bernie conspiracy, you know? You're going to have to deal with Nira eventually. It's tough, man. She just keeps figuring out all of our moves. She's one step ahead.

She's just, her posting is too strong. So I want to talk about some of her posts, and I just want to talk about this interaction that she had with someone on Twitter. Someone's responding to her, and they say, because Macron cut taxes for the wealthy and now he's trying to force more austerity on workers, carbon taxes passed on to consumers are a poor way to pursue environmental policy. Go after the super-rich oil producers who are sitting on billions in oil wealth already. Be fair.

To which Nira responds, in theory, a carbon tax does both. The person responds to her, not in practice, however, because the oil producers were simply passed along the added expense until it hits the consumers, who are already paying through the nose for energy. The French should follow the hashtag Superfund model, where historical polluters are held financially responsible. And Nira responds, no. The theory is that people consume less energy-intensive products, lowering the sales and ultimately

profitability of those companies. Can you identify anything wrong with this line of reasoning, Liz? Well, I mean, the left theory is that aggressive climate change policy has to be a lot more comprehensive than just a carbon tax. The part of the problem is that when you leave these companies alone and instead target consumers to try to get them to stop paying the companies, basically, the companies are still using their huge amounts of wealth to influence policy, example, to lobby against infrastructural changes that would allow people to use public transport or green forms of transport and

to lobby against investment and innovation in green infrastructure. And so if you're ignoring the companies and you don't absolutely aggressively go after them in their profit margins, you're going to allow them to keep doing that. And so the crunch is just going to get harder and harder on working people, who, of course, because they still have to get to work, are going to complain to manufacturers because there's nothing they can do from their level. There's only something that can be done from the political level. So this is the progressive argument for an extremely comprehensive, aggressive climate

policy that targets the manufacturers and producers of dirty energy, which Nerov should know. The idea that the left is less comprehensive is disturbing. Well, no, I mean, it just seems to me that the idea that CAP basically exists to perpetrate and whether it's Beto or Kamala or why I'm deeply skeptical of almost every democratic politician or 2020 hopeful is that they all see these problems like climate change or energy consumption or health care or whatever. And the solutions for all of them involve individual choices in the marketplace.

It's like that can never, ever be touched or dealt with. The state can never actually take action to impose a change in our economy or a change in something. It always has to be individuals making choices in a market. They're there to protect the market. And that's really what neoliberalism means. Right. I'd say, God forbid that there be any interference on the political level with these incredibly

political organizations we know as corporations. Their power is untouchable. Neoliberalism, the corporation, the capital is in control of the politics. That's just the fact of it. Because they can't interfere in the markets, they don't want to interfere in the markets, or they want to totally minimize how politics can interfere in markets, it means that the political powers that we are actually beholden to the hegemony of capital. That's just capitalism.

That's what it is. They're so captured by that ideology that it's reflected in their really cretinous lack of understanding of politics. When they lose, they just don't know what to do. I mean, we're seeing them flail around, and all they can think is, well, what if we just got a white Obama because they can't think in any other terms? Because they can't imagine why people vote other than, well, Democrats are good people and so they vote for Democrats, and Republicans are bad people, and so they vote for Republicans.

Like something like a carbon tax to them, well, yeah, sure, it's going to cost you more and it's going to make your life harder, and you're already at the whims of the market and your wages are flat and you can't afford a bunch of stuff and you have incredible debt because everything has really been put on your shoulders and the safety net's been destroyed, but you should be okay paying a carbon tax because that's going to help the environment and it makes you a good person for doing it. When people say, no, fuck you, you're not going to put another thing on top of me, meanwhile, I could see you using policy, tax policy and regulatory policy to enrich the richest people

right in front of my face and just take that, I'm not going to take it, and their heads just start sparking, they're like, no, that's good, you're a good person, right? And then if you say, no, fuck you, they're like, well, you're bad then, you're a bad person, oh well, I guess we're just going to have to have a few more fucking Beyonce concerts and maybe we'll get a few young people to decide to be good because of literal virtue signaling in mass media. Not only that, it's like, yeah, the fact that they don't support this or they're reacting badly about having to pay extra for gas or whatever, means you're a bad person.

Not only that, trying to design policies or a political program that would appeal to these people who are frustrated and angry is also bad because that means that you're catering to the bad people. Exactly. Exactly. It's a moral vision that trying to design policies to make the lives of the bad people less miserable or hard makes you a bad person as well. Exactly.

They need to be punished. That's why these people start frothing at the mouth every time Bernie says something about rural people. They hear rural and they just imagine fucking just Klansmen and the kid on the portion deliverance and they're just like, oh, those are bad people. Why would you want to make their lives any better? You should be fucking dropping depleted uranium on them, those motherfuckers. You should be turning them into the guys from the hills have eyes and it's like, why do

we lose? It's weird. It's been one of the complaints about the protests in France that some of the protesters are on the right. So the other girls will say like, oh, well, it's sort of a red brown alliance. It's really fascists in the street and then the leftists are helping them. It's like, well, one way that you could diffuse this is to respond to the substance of the protests.

The left is right here for you to ally with. We're certainly more similar, but they don't want to do that. Well, I think France actually is an interesting example because coming up hot on the heels of Macron is, of course, the front national and the actual populist fascist right in France, which got very close to what, like 30% of the vote, but almost right behind their heels was Melanchon, who's an actual communist. So the argument is now that, well, if you're a liberal or one of the good people, then any criticism you're doing of Macron is de facto support for fascism and the right.

If you're dissatisfied with him or pointing out that he actually is a grotesque figure in a parody of everything that people hate about government and neoliberal politics, then that's a de facto support for fascism, where it's like, if you are the liberal centrist, you could always just ally with the left if you're interested in defeating the right. But I mean, this is a tale as old as time, right? Like if it really comes down to it, if, like, let's say the general election was not between Macron and Le Pen, but Macron and Melanchon, oh no, Le Pen and Melanchon, how many of these same people would have been being like, hmm, you know what, as much as we don't like that

the responsible vote actually is for the fascists? Oh, absolutely. And get ready for it. If Bernie does get the nomination, Bernie as well to the right of Melanchon, you're going to see a lot of respectable opinion that has spent four years horrified at Trump, slowly rationalized supporting him, you know, holding their nose, of course. Or maybe not. I think a lot of these people, they won't outright say vote for Trump because they've

gone, I mean, they've gone too far into like he's the most evil president of all time. But they are, after hectoring everyone else, they're probably going to try to vote third party or not vote. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, well, that's the thing. There might be a Bloomberg type thing. And then all these people who spent their entire lives throwing darts at a fucking nader... Or Jill Stein or whatever, yeah.

They have Jill Stein fucking voodoo dolls. All of a sudden voting for, you know, Manlet Bloomberg is, all of a sudden, my conscience requires me to do this. I'm sorry. I can't vote for Bernie. I think that 2020 is, you know, if Bernie gets anywhere near the nomination, there's going to be a lot of corporate money looking for a place to go, and you'll probably get an extremely stupid third party candidate like Bloomberg.

Oh, that's going to rule. Well, we're all looking forward to it, and we love to see it. And Liz, again, you have your orders from conspiracy headquarters. Just, you know, keep doing what you're doing. You know, just keep, you know, taking down, just line them up, shoot them down. Better or worse. Copy that. You know, Kamala, you know, Roger, you were Greenlit for Exville.

Liz Brunig of The Washington Post. Thank you once again for joining us and our conspiracy. Thanks so much for having me on. Well, thanks once again to Liz Brunig. I'm sure no one will get mad about that interview. But all right, let's move on. I want to talk about my favorite news item of the week. And by favorite, I mean, I've been crying and shaking about it for, you know, since

I heard the news. Where were you when you heard the weekly standard is shutting down? I was on the toilet. Reading the weekly standard. Yes. I was actually, I was making a phone call to Snippers, and it's kind of, you know, I'm not a religious person, but I believe in the supernatural, you know what I mean? I mean, we were just got done talking about how, like in the Trump era, aggrieved liberals

have basically found like every way to like almost become entirely right wing as long as it's not Trump. That's the beauty of Trump is that he allows them to differentiate themselves from what is considered popularly to be conservatism or right wingery, but in substance basically endorse all of those principles. And man, you can find no better example that than the fucking, you know, gnashing of teeth and wailing among liberal media and douchebags who are all just like, wow, like I'm seeing a lot of gloating over this.

The weekly standard is actually a very intelligent and worthwhile publication that, you know, we need, you know, we need an outlet for intelligent conservative voices, you know, who stand up for sane conservatism. And it's like, you were talking about the magazine that is more responsible for the war in Iraq than like, and they literally started the war in Iraq. Like that's not an exaggeration. Like these guys were the architects of Bush's war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

If that is sane conservatism to them, like Donald Trump has not done anything in office yet that's even one one thousandth as insane, dangerous or murderous as the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, not even close, not even close. And the weekly standard was the official mouthpiece for George W. Bush's foreign policy. Yeah. And that is sane conservatism. You know, everybody fucks up once in a while. But remember they've, you say that, oh, they had some bad articles, you know, about, you

know, welfare or about 500 about the Iraq war and Stephen Hayes talking about how Muhammad Zata used to play, you know, video games with Uday Kussein, but you're forgetting that they gave a platform to authors like Gumbridge Van Ruynkel and Dingelbert Hofstetter. I mean, these are real thinkers that we got to experience them. You can, you know, say that there was just idiotic crap, you know, Fred Barnes, all that stuff. You can go to Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, but, but what about the incredible articles of Gordau Clownstep and his, you know, you could just open up any weekly standard and there

would be articles from him like, you know, the case for not tipping your maid, you know, why, why backgammon still matters. Just incredible, incredible stuff, just the kind of content that you would kill for. And they did. And they were right to. Yeah. And they literally killed for the weekly standard for sure. They were right to.

They were 100% correct to. It was, we've lost a lot. You know, this, what is essentially like a alt weekly for a febophilic literature professors the Upper East Side, it was a major cultural force. This thing that was read by upwards of 70 people a week, you know, if you take away Will and people who read the articles that Will posts, it's probably constituted 98% of their readership, you know, it just, I may not have agreed with everything, but when I could read a 17,000 word article about, you know, recounting a time where you played bridge with William

F. Buckley and he made like a coy anti-semitic remark and you had fun. It was, it was a good shit, but a good time man. That's what matters. Like the weekly standard has never made money, whether it's like all of these sort of vanity publications, like the weekly standard or the free beacon or whatever, these are just make work jobs for like boys with the roundest skull. It's, yeah, it's the Esplanade from season four of The Sopranos. Yeah.

These are just make work jobs that they literally, like they, like they hire these people and it's like they're, like they're underwritten, so it's like they're paying people to read their articles about why George Bush is a modern pericles. This is spoken like somebody who never read Lemuel Pitcairn's fashion column, sir. Yeah. So this sartorial column from Pitcairn, it was just, I will note, he was witty too. Yeah. Like he unfortunately, he, he was one of the only people, I think the only person in America

in 2015 who died of consumption. But when he said, he, he famously said to Harry, Harry Reid that he dressed like a Welshman. That was like, I don't care who you are. That's funny. Yes. It's witty. Again, I just, there could be, there, there can be no more clear dividing line. Again, if we're going to tell, we were talking to Liz about good people and bad people.

I mean, we all draw these lines for ourselves, but for me, there can be no clearer line. If you think that there, anything of value was lost in the weekly standard shuddering, shuddering, I'm afraid there's no coming back for you. Toilet flush, Simon. I don't, I mean, yeah, yeah, you can, you can do your purity test, but there was no stronger conservative bulwark against Donald Trump than the weekly standard. Who can forget? Whom among us can forget?

When Marshall good cookie bravely came out against Donald Trump and said, he's not serious about solving the Polynesian problem. That was courage. Any Democrat can resist Trump, but for a man like good cookie, like my God, I mean, people had to stand up and take notice. Yeah. He had to, man. You know, even if you read, if you know, if you take seriously the pretensions of these

assholes that, that, that, that, you know, we, you know, it's important that we, there are still be outlets, even though they're only read by 70 people and then, you know, just like make no money in or essentially 70, 70 people, and then however many followers you have. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. Yeah.

80,000 and 70 people. But like, I mean, no one's paying for this bullshit outside like, yeah, like 70 people in Chevy Chase, Maryland, who are all war criminals or a febifiles or have gout. Like that. That's it. The idea that like the idea that the weekly standards stood for like a sane conservative as opposed to Donald Trump. Well, like when people say Donald Trump is like the, oh, this is conservatism gone mad.

Like, okay, what they're talking about is they mean he does nationalistic sort of demagoguery and jingoism. The weekly standard did that to a T. Look up in their back catalog for like all of their articles about like George Bush as a Marvel statue, just a war presidency. You know, like, Rebel in chief. Yeah. Like just how hard their dicks got about him being a war president.

They think, okay, Donald Trump, he just outright lies about things with no compunction whatsoever. Stephen Hayes, the current editor of the weekly standard are now former literally wrote a book called the connection, the connection about how Saddam Hussein was literally in cahoots with Al Qaeda and did 9 11. Yeah. Okay. Then there is that Donald Trump, unlike, you know, sane intellectual conservatism is sort of a crass and vulgar populist.

What? Well, first of all, personally got John McCain to have Sarah Palin as his running mate. And there was a big weekly standard head like cover story on sale of Sarah Palin titled is she the one we've been hoping for? Yeah. Would it surprise you? The answer was yes. Yeah.

She was the one they were hoping for. Well, at least he asked the question. Yeah. It's just, it's like the classic van poppin thing is that when they conjured Palin, they thought this is the person we can use to whip up the rubes enough to get into office. But thankfully they'll be in a subservient position and, you know, our guy, John McCain will really be in charge. So we're going to still have our hand on the tiller and then, oh shit, you know, the Sorcerer's

apprentice that kept it got out of their hands and they turned into Trump and they're no longer, they no longer have that sense that they have final say on policy. It's sort of like, oh no, I was like, sorry, motherfucker, this is what it was all leading towards. And you recognize that. That's why you recognize the, the hollowness of conservatism and the need to inject it with populist vigor. That's why you fucking picked Sarah Palin.

And it went out of your hands because this is the historical process. You're in the dustbin of history. Was a van poppin the guy who wrote their bridge column? No. I mean, it is all the people lamenting it, you know, as a thing against Trump. It's just like, do you know that zoo, zoo cage and lockers monthly has come out strongly against tigers roaming the street and the like the final thing. Okay.

So they outright lied and made up, made literally out of whole cloth, made up a case for going to why Saddam was a threat to the world in America, which involved not exaggerations or misinterpretations, conscious outright lying, which they have pretty much admitted amongst themselves. Oh yeah. They stoked jingoistic demagoguery during the, all the war on terror and about how, you know, anyone who is against it was disloyal or how many fucking covers the weekly standard had some grotesque bearded hippie with a stop the war sign that just said the traitors amongst

us. Exactly. They consciously stoked ignorant Yahoo populism and Stereo Palin. And finally, let's not forget, Trump literally says, you know, shit, like it's snowing right now. What happened to global warming? And I, we're going to have the best air. I have the best air and it's things that are good, which I like.

The air. It's so good. The air is amazing. I mean, and but the weekly standard again had numerous cover articles about like how, you know, Al Gore, the emperor has no clothes like, you know, the Arctic ice shelf is actually growing in size as it drifts closer to Manhattan. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's really funny that conservatism just boils down to a sort of social battle

between two different types of stupid guys from Manhattan and the dumber stupid guy in Manhattan. Yeah. And props to him. Good work. Yeah. He wanted it less. But I mean, like the final point that must be made is they're not good writers, intelligent,

thoughtful or decent people at all. They're every bit as stupid, every bit as vulgar and every bit as ignorant as like any Fox nation TV show is any fucking QAnon Yahoo. They're better educated, maybe, but no one who has ever written for the weekly standard is a thoughtful person or a good writer in the slightest. Not only that, they are all fundamentally indecent, rotten people who should be dismissed out of hand entirely and should be treated as such. And the fact that their evil magazine is getting shutting down because literally nobody reads

it and no one fucking cares is a fate far, far, far, far lighter than what every one of these people who's ever even contributed an article to that piece of shit fucking rag deserves. Yeah. It's like, look at what happened to Julius Stryker and counting your fucking blessings that you just have to retire to the Hamptons. But I mean, just to say, finally, you were talking about how insane it is to see liberals bemoaning the end of the weekly standard.

It's because of what we said earlier. They want things to be back to normal. They want Republicans to be normal again. They want, they don't want this sort of unhinged, pure populism, all of it overseen by this clearly unstable, senile maniac. They want the same. They want a worthy adversary who they parenthetically mostly agree with. And they want to, because the thing is, is that because they mostly agree, it is necessary

for them to keep politics in that kayfabe world that we've talked about, where everyone speaks the language of politics, they, they keep their speech very corralled intentionally within acceptable margins. Because as soon as you start coloring outside the lines, the, the hollowness of it starts to reveal itself. And as soon as popular forces enter the political realm, it just destabilizes that, that system but to the, the, the bipartisan consensus on, on economics from the left and the right, which is why they see them as equal threats, regardless of where they are in this arbitrary,

you know, dyad. And it's, it's like the, but it's up to the left really to, to figure out how to take control of it. Because otherwise you can't let these liberals be in charge of it because they're just going to close their eyes and wish that things would go back and then you're going to blink and the fucking Nazis are going to be everywhere, they're going to be in charge of everything. I mean, I want to give an actual example here of the weekly standard and what I mean that like these people, not only are they stupid, not smart, and every bit as evil as Trump

and in fact, in my opinion, considerably more evil than him, this is what we're losing. This is an editorial written by Robert Kagan and William Bill Crystal in February of 2004, right around the time that the wheels were like really starting to come off the Iraq War, which again, was their creation and their responsibility. Six months had passed and six more months. No fucking weapons have been discovered. It was a really crucial six months. I remember that.

This is called the right war for the right reasons. Oh yeah. Awesome. This is very time to like, to like keep pumping that corpse or million corpses, I suppose. I just want to read others a little bit from this from the, like, this is their best case for it. One reason critics have been insisting the administration claimed the threat from Iraq was imminent, we believe, is that it's fairly easy to prove that the danger to the United

States was not imminent. But the central thesis of the anti-war argument, as it was advanced before the war, asserted that the threat from Iraq would not have been imminent, even if Saddam had possessed every conceivable weapon in his arsenal. So think about what they're saying there, to rescue, like, their integrity, is that like, now, now, it's very easy to advance the case that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat to the United States, but the people advancing that case would have believed that even if they had all the made-up weapons that we said he did.

Exactly. Which, by the way, I still fucking would have. Remember, the vast majority of arguments against the war assumed that he did not have these weapons, but those weapons it was argued did not pose an imminent threat to the nation because Saddam, like the Soviet Union, could be deterred. Indeed, the fact that he had the weapons, some argued, was all the more reason why the United States should not go to war. On Meet the Press on February 8th, Tim Russert asked the president whether the war in Iraq

was a war of choice or a war of necessity. The president paused before responding, asking Russert to elaborate as if unwilling to accept the dichotomy. He was right. After all, fighting a war of choice sounds problematic. Indeed by the Nuremberg standards, it is not just problematic, but a war crime of the highest order. Feeling the gross right now.

But how many of our wars have been strictly speaking wars of necessity? How often did the country face immediate peril and destruction unless war was launched? Was World War I a war of necessity? Was World War II before the attack on Pearl Harbor or afterwards with respect to fighting Germany and Europe? Was the Spanish-American war a war of necessity? Was the Korean War? Never mind Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and

Kosovo. What about the First Gulf War? Many have argued that Saddam could and indeed was contained in Kuwait and that he could have eventually been forced to retreat by economic sanctions. In some sense, all of these wars were wars of choice, but when viewed in the context of history and international circumstances, they were all based on judgments about the costs of inaction, the benefits of action, and on strategic calculations that action then would be far preferable to action later in less favorable circumstances.

In other words, war was necessary to our national interest, if not absolutely necessary, to the immediate protection of the homeland. But those were bad! Those are literally the most optional wars in history. That is the list of massive crimes! Millions of people killed for no fucking reason! He's naming, like, he's like, oh yeah, well, you know, if you say this is an optional war, what about, you know, the war of the Chili's parking lot in 1983?

It's just like the most optional wars, the least essential ones. It's what a great, we are going to miss a lot. I already miss it. In this case, we believe that war would have eventually, would have come eventually because of the trajectory that Saddam was on. Just like Granada! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Haiti.

Or the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic. Spanish-American war, we were just going to get fucking flocked by our mottas. Yeah, they were building a giant slingshot in Madrid that had the power to launch a crate of Madera across the Atlantic. Yeah, if you're eating gumbo instead of paella, think a marine. And he goes, so what about those stockpiles, the failure to find them? And now David Kay's claim that they did not exist at the time of the invasion last year.

This has led many to maintain the entire war was fought on false pretenses. We have addressed that claim. Okay. All right, that's enough for me. All right, let's get lunch. Speaking of the search for his non-existent weapons and mass destruction, and again, in this article, what they do is they focus only on anthrax and chemical weapons and elide the fact that what they were actually selling was a viable nuclear program that was within

days of launching like an act. Oh yeah. However, we don't want the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud, a line written by everyone's new best friend, David Frum. Whatever the results of that search, it will continue to be the case that the war was worth fighting. Good. And the end that it was necessary for the people of Iraq, the war put an end to three

decades of terror and suffering. Whoo! They have rock. That's enough. Okay, yeah. Good thing the war caused no terror and suffering for the Iraq people. People say it's doing the best out of any of the countries. It's more and more people saying it.

You know what? I have a good authority. They're going to revalue the dean already. The mass graves uncovered since the end of the war alone are sufficient justification for it. And what about the ones created by it? Assuming the United States remains committed to helping establish a democratic government in Iraq, that will be a blessing both to the Iraqi people and to their neighbors.

As for those neighbors, the threat of Saddam's aggression, which hung over the region for more than two decades, has finally been eliminated. Mainly on behalf of Iran, which is hilarious, the prospects for war in the region have been substantially diminished by our action. Again, this is written in 2004. Well, I mean, one major war in the region after that. This is all checking out. It is also, this is the end here, it is also becoming clear that the battle of Iraq has

been an important victory in the broader war in which we are engaged. A war against terror, against weapons proliferation, and for a new Middle East. Already other terror-implicated regimes in the region were developing weapons of mass destruction, are feeling pressure, and some are beginning to move in the right direction. Libya has given up its weapons of mass destruction program. Let's go, dude! Call back to the Adam Curtis episode, but for true fans of the show, we'll remember, the Libya giving up its weapons of mass destruction thing was the ultimate kayfabe by Qaddafi,

you know, still number one in our hearts, the Green Book, still the greatest book. His sons are Harry Potter. They literally said, like, we gave up our, we just said that we gave up our imaginary program to get, like, sanctions lifted, or to be, have Tony Blair come and visit the country and be like, they're good now. It's the best lying brag ever. Yo, no shit, I actually had, like, yeah, 1500 ballistic missiles, but I gave that shit up, I'm done with it.

It's the guy who's like, yeah, I used to be in the fucking CIA, but I can't kill people anymore, dude, no shit, I have a daughter. The Libya giving up its weapons of mass destruction program was one of the purest instances of kayfabe, horseshit, in the world, and it was like, Qaddafi, they're just like, well, it's not looking good in Iraq. There weren't no moments of mass destruction, but what if we could get Qaddafi to say he's giving up his nuclear weapons program, and then, and then guess what, it worked. He was Qaddafi for a short period of time, was accepted back into the international community.

Interesting evening with an interesting man. Just recreated Paris and Benghazi with Colonel Qaddafi and his, and his friends from, and this is the closing line from Iran to Saudi Arabia. Federal forces seem to have been encouraged. We are paying a real price in blood and treasure in Iraq, but we believe that it is already clear, as clear as such things get in the real world, that the price of the liberation of Iraq has been worth it. Absolutely.

Just think, like, where are we going to get, where are we going to get these kind of texts? Where are we going to get thousands and thousands, like thousands of words of apology for, you know, probably the greatest disaster of the 21st century? I mean, where are we going to get the articles calling Trump a pussy for not bombing Iran? Or literally saying, hey, if you're going to call the war in Iraq a war crime, then you might as well call Korea and Vietnam war crimes. If we're getting silly, I mean, okay, you can, you can cherry pick articles like that that constituted about 75% of their output.

But you know, what about, what about the literary wit? What about the cultural aspects of weekly standard? Yeah. So many dudes wearing capes going and complaining that people were texting at the musicals that they went to. Yeah. It was the only place where you could get a vampire's perspective of how hard it was to see him matinee.

Dude, where else could you get, you know, PJ, oh, just a delightfully witty PJ O'Rourke column about like, you know, how his son won't stop listening to the damn zoon of P3 Player. Oh, good. PJ O'Rourke is so fun. When he talks about Epic Bourbon, you know, PJ O'Rourke is so funny, has always been funny, is seriously one of the funniest writers, and if you don't think that, if you like actually think that PJ O'Rourke is actually one of the least funny or entertaining people who's

ever existed, then buddy, you're robbing yourself of just good comedy. Yeah. I feel bad for you. Did you know that like his son Beto thinks that he's really funny? Did you know it? Well, you know, now that weekly standards out of business, we will be spending the entirety of our revenue to give a platform to PJ O'Rourke, distributing PJ O'Rourke in every language in the world.

Yeah. Well, sorry, James Zodomi, and we didn't want to tell you this way, but you've been fired all of the cold opens and impressions and stuff. That's all going to be PJ. All hosts are replaced by PJ O'Rourke, all guests, just PJ all the time. You know, you people complain that we need to do more premium episode. We're getting five a week every workday, PJ O'Rourke. Let's go.

Well, I got one last thing for us here today, and you know, again, we will all miss the weekly standard so, so much, but you know, no one will miss more than the weekly standard. Being ruled by wasps, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants folks are just genetically predisposed to be our benevolent rulers, but with George H. W. Bush, he was the last wasp. It's so hard. He was like the last African, like a white rhino was he was the last wasp and now there are no more. And we're going to miss them guys.

And you know, like a white African rhino, he was killed by Donald Trump Jr. I'm speaking, of course, about Ross Douthat, he's we haven't checked in with Ross and Ross in a long time. You know what? I've always said about Ross because I miss him, of course. I like I feel the way about Ross Douthat, the way that Dana White feels about, you know, MMA fighters aren't that good, but sort of lose or win in spectacular, exciting fashion. Ross may not be the best, but he leaves it all out there.

We haven't done a Ross column in a while, so, you know, I think this is a treat for you guys. You know, Ross started out as a major character for us, and I think it's time to bring him back with his opinion piece of the New York Times, why we miss the wasps. They're more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well. Diverse. So he's just complaining that there aren't as many white people in the ruling class anymore.

Yeah, pretty much. Okay. Cool. Good to know. Well, as we know from Ross's book about Harvard, you know, Asians, they may be smart, but they're very clickish and inscrutable. It's very hard. It's like when we're ruled by the meritocratic Asians, because, you know, they're the best

at taking tests, you know, doing math and whatnot, when we're ruled by the Asian ruling class, they may be competent, but again, it's very hard to screwed. Yeah. So what do they want from us? This eternal mystery. Damn, I tried to screw this shit, and I can't. I just love that it's like a cut scene of Steve from Deadwood. Yeah.

They're in there clicking, they won't let Harvard, man. So this is what Ross doubt that has to say in defense of our WASP ruling class. You know, the good old days in America, we just came from Princeton. Wasn't it better? Yeah, like the graduating class of Princeton, Harvard and Yale when we were ruled by the Dulles brothers, the Niles and Frazier Crane of war crimes, industrial complex. We used to be ruled by a different type of cousin guy. It was you would be like, you know, instead of, you know, you know, my cousin fucked

Betty Page. It was like, oh, my cousin knocked over three governments in Latin America for a fruit company, but you were telling the truth. The WASP cousin guys were just guys that fucked their cousins. Yo, no shit. Me and my cousin came all over each other. We don't even need a woman. Okay.

So this is what Ross says, the nostalgia flowing since the passing of George H W Bush has many wellsprings admiration for the World War two generation and it's dying breed of warrior politicians. I love warrior politics. Oh yeah. Just a bunch of William Wallace's. Yeah. I think of warriors.

I think of fucking George H W Bush. The usual belated media affection for moderate Republicans, the contrast between the elder Bush's foreign policy successes and the failures of his son and the contrast between any honorable politician and the current occupant occupant of the Oval Office. All right. For the beginning, we can just this is one of those ones where you just destroy it out of the gate because he says we and he never defines that. And he never, he's, whoa, all these outpours who it's all the media or the only people

who give a shit about this. Well, I think the funny thing to point out is that Ross doubt that is 100% a wasp. Well, yeah. Yeah. I don't take it. He's very proud of it. Well, I mean, he has that his phony religious conversion to his Catholicism, which is like, you know, that that's his one, you know, check mark against it, but I don't really take

that seriously. So he's just like, it was better when people like me from Connecticut ran the country. Yeah. No, you think, but he's saying, but he's, he's dressing it in the idea that he's, he's commenting on this national wellspring of nostalgia, which I'm sorry. Well, entirely the media, maybe like a third of lip democratic voters because they are on that civility shit and they are so traumatized by Trump that they want any, they want any Republican they can kind of grasp onto and think this person's better than Trump.

So that's true. But I'd say the majority of democratic voters are lukewarm to, to, uh, to stay in full of him. Obviously people who don't vote, don't give a fuck who that guy was. Who's that fucking grandpa? That old bitch. And then half of the fucking Republican base thinks that he killed Kennedy. Well, he probably did.

I mean, George H. W. Bush, you may not respect him for, you know, being a moderate, it's never going to be a moderate or anything, bitch ass, uh, World War two, what kind of chump fights and other man's war, uh, kids, sock losers, but he fucking, he capped his enemies and he moved coke. You have to respect the great trafficker in American he was. He had that. Yeah. Yeah.

He was. He was freeways plug. Yeah. He's the greatest of all time. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Undefeated.

Why we miss the plug. Damn. Damn. I missed the plug. Greatest. I mean, we, uh, everyone made fun of Navy Pier in Chicago for putting a big, dumb picture of his old head on our stupid ferris wheel. But I think it's actually pretty cool for Chicago to officially honor the greatest coke

trafficker in American history. But two of the more critical takes on Bush nostalgia got closer to the heart of what is, what was being mourned in distant hindsight with his death, writing in the Atlantic, Peter Bynart described the older Bush as the last president deemed legitimate by both our country's warring tribes before the age of presidential sex scandals, plurality winning and popular vote losing chief executives and white resentment of the first black president that George HW Bush like cheated on Barbara all the time. He was a huge horn dog.

He was a coxman. He was a massive cheater all the time. In fact, it came out during the, I believe the 88 campaign, but it just never caught any kind of, uh, uh, larger thing because you didn't have somebody like Jennifer Blowers who was giving interviews or something, but he was absolutely a known cheater to the Washington press corps. And of course, we're talking about racial resentment, fucking Willie Horton at him and Lee Atwater ran an explicitly racist campaign in 1988.

So in the Atlantic, Franklin, four, four, Franklin, four, a motherfucker wrote an article in the New York Times basically to talk, to respond to Peter Bynart and Franklin four. What if it's the most, okay, I'm just going to call him, I'm just going to call him Franklin. It's just, what are we doing? I'm calling him Franklin who are Franklin who are described the sub like Franklin eight if you feel me Franklin, what Franklin for what New Republic, right? Oh, the Atlantic, Oh, the Atlantic, literally the same thing described all the same money laundering operation for the fight in church of Scientology and the fucking Katari Royal

family described the subtext of Bush nostalgia as a funness for a bygone institution known as the establishment hardened who hit them by me like, but who is, who is having this bygone nostalgia me name, name Felix, Felix, something other than these fucking preppy dickhead. Me, dude, I'm sad. Can I just describe the establishment, how Franklin who are described them? The establishment are people who are hardened in the cold New England boarding school. No, no, dude, stop it.

You can't use that word. My man literally said they got hard in New England boarding schools. Yeah, they were literally molested is that's what he means. Yo, I got dumb brain at Exeter hard. Oh, he means they got richly money. It's the same. It's the brain. They imported the British ruling class style.

I don't know how much exactly they like and over in Exeter copied exactly the British boarding school system. But they also said a culturated by the late night rituals of skull and bones sent off to the world with a sense of nobleness oblige. All right. My friends, my friends have jacked off on me enough and now I feel honored to serve the world talking about a life, a childhood of separation from your family and ritual humiliation by your peers.

And that's supposed to make you a good leader and not a lizard brain psychopath. And that's how you, you know, overthrow the demo or Ben's United Fruit Company. Most of the egg. Yeah. I was thinking of Geronimo Skull when we over through most of the egg put simply Americans mish-bush because we miss the wasps, no, no, every time he says that, I say, fuck you, who says we miss him for who are suggests that this nostalgia is mostly bunk. Since the wasps were often bigots, since their cultivation of nobleness oblige was really

about preserving a place at the high table of American life. And since so many of their virtues are superficial, a matter of dressing nicely while practicing imperialism or writing lovely thank you notes while they outsource the dirty work of politics to race baiting operatives. Correct. However, one of the lessons of the age of meritocracy is that building a more democratic and inclusive ruling class is harder than it looks. And even perhaps a contradiction in terms.

You think? How about we just get rid of the ruling class and replace it with another class? Hmm. I don't know. Maybe a working class or something. I don't know. There's like a different class that could be in charge, maybe. I don't know.

I'm not sure. You can get rid of the social registers and let women into your secret societies and privilege SATs over recommendations from the rector of Justin, which, by the way, they have not done. These motherfuckers are still the headmaster of St. Grotto sex. These guys are the ones who get into these schools anyway. George Bush did go to Harvard, you know, and you still end up with something that is clearly a self replicating upper class, a powerful elite filling your schools and running your

public institution. Yeah. Weird how that works. I know. If only there was some sort of thinker that sort of described how a system of power works and replicates itself such that it actually doesn't matter if it's a wasp in charge or some sort of, you know, weird oak Catholic convert. Yeah.

Sort of like how all class societies are a dictatorship of one class over the other. Ours is one where, what are they called? There's a bee. They're the ones and they have a class dictatorship and that expresses itself in economics and then somehow also in the political class. We're talking about Jay Sakai, right? Yeah. That's the author.

Yeah. If some of Elder Bush's mourners wish we still had a wasp establishment, their desire probably reflects a bladed realization that certain of the old establishment's vices were inherent to any elite, that meritocracy creates its own forms of exclusion and that the wasps had virtues that their successors have failed to inherit or revive. Those virtues included, again, the spirit of no bless oblige and a personal austerity and piety that went beyond the thank you notes and boat shoes and prep school chapel going. No it didn't.

Right. It absolutely did not. Citation, mother fucker. Citation needed. You're putting your cigar out on your fucking saddle boys, fucking forehead. A spirit that trained the most privileged children for service, not just success that sent men like Bush into combat alongside the sons of farmers and mechanics in the same way.

He was a fucking Air Force officer. He was not alongside the sons of farmers. He was not. And he picked it because he thought it would be a great adventure. He said the Knights of the Sky. The Knights of the Sky. Yeah. It was a fun lark for a blue blood shithead.

To be fair, a lot of them did die. The death rate for those pilots. Exactly. Exactly. Not enough of the officer class of the Western powers died in World War II. That's absolutely true. No question. Blah, blah, blah.

The WASP virtues also included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety. A cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man's burden racism, but also sometimes transcendent it. Again, when you just saying it because for every Brahmin bigot, there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanic file. Well, there was another. What's up?

There's another one of those. Yeah. Another file. There's another file. So he's saying that. Oh, they weren't racist. They were things like Arabist. Yeah.

You mean those freaks who would just wear a turban and put Philo dough on their dick and fuck somebody on a Turkish rug? Oh, dude, you think I'm racist? I literally only pay 13 year olds the specific ethnicity to go pee pee on me in a tent. He goes, they understood the non-American world better than some of today's shallow multiculturalists. So Ross is like, have you ever been pissed on, buddy? He's literally talking about like the Lawrence of Arabia figure, like a guy who was administering

imperialism and like put a fucking started dressing like a Bedouin. Yeah. He actually understood their culture a lot better than a lot of these woke people today who actually won't fuck a teenage boy. Yeah. I mean, have you ever paid a Iranian bodybuilder to do a riot so you could overthrow their president? Excuse me.

Have you ever had Latin 10th generation syphilis that breaks when you're 25 and you just walk around in an outfit and going, I fancy myself a son of Siam? Is that ever happened to you? You can study as much as you want, but until you do that, dude, what were their fucking accomplishments? What is it? What is this worldliness accomplished, coups and dictatorships that have created every fucking problem we have now that he's bemoaning our current elite can't handle?

They're all legacies of these motherfuckers from the Central American dictatorships that have gone given birth to the dreaded caravan and immigrant issues to the Middle East being turned into just a giant fucking war zone, that's all they're fucking doing. They were the ones who bequeath all of this to us. Ross talks about some of the problems in wasp habits or whatever, but here's where we really enter his mind palace, and he goes, it's possible to imagine adaptation rather than surrender as a different wasp strategy across the 60s and 70s. Such a world, the establishment would still have admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics

and Hispanics and more women to its ranks, but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite crafting strategy. Dude, I love when I'm crafting elites. When I acquire items to craft a new Hispanic Jewish elite, it still has plus wasp, 10 noblies oblige stats. God damn, the Japanese Indian elite is the hardest item to find in the game. It completes so many quests. So basically he's saying the problem is that not enough people from different backgrounds

were brought to these institutions as kids to have their bare asses paddled with a plank from Nathan Hale's gallows. Whoa, I'm a fucking arabist over here. I'm getting the fucking peepee on me from all these 13-year-old Bedouin boys. It's like Bada Bing, I give them the coin, Bada Boom, I'm covered in child urine. Yeah, I have inbreeding cause mental illness. At the same time, it would have retained both its historic religious faith instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian social gospel and soft pantheism.

Again, this is just all of Ross's own fucking like boogie men that like, the elite now- You're fucking pantheism. I'm just- There is nobody as a fucking pantheism. I'm fucking sick of seeing Kamala Harris praying to the fucking snow god. Every December first. This is like Alex Jones shit. They're worshiping ball.

Shut up. Oh my god, I got invited to the D triple C's Walpurgis knock party. It's fucking sucks. Oh my god, I have to meet Tom Perez at Stonehenge. So he's doing a character build where you could like trade wasp DNA for wasp social characteristics like Protestant rigor and their self denying culture, which is just like again, like that's where you shake, like you said, you shake your wife's hand on your wedding night and then don't talk to her or make eye contact for 30 years and you lose

your like your lips actually are surgically removed from your skull and that you just like just sort of drink gin and pee blood for the rest of your life. It's good dude. It's good. It makes you a good person. And he goes, the goal would have been to keep piety and discipline embedded in the culture of a place like Harvard rather than the mix of performative self righteousness and raw ambition that replace them.

Ross, you wrote a book about your time at Harvard that was all about your performative self righteousness and raw ambition. He is quoted as saying he wants to be the work America's richest writer when he was going to Harvard. I'm sorry. What is your hit all his religious bullshit if not performative self righteousness? Yeah, that's every every common column of his such an effort might also have had a spillover effect on politics is to rigor for liberals to remit the decline of the Rockefeller Republicans

or the kind of yeah or the compromises that moderate northeastern wasp northeastern wasp like George HW Bush made with Sunbelt populism. But a wasp establishment that couldn't muster the self confidence to hold on to Harvard and Yale was never likely to maintain its hold on a mass political organization like the GOP. Whereas an establishment that still believed in its mission within its own ivy bastions might have been seen as a more politically imposing in the wider world instead of seeing its last paladin a war hero and statesman in a grand American tradition dismissed in

the boomer era as a wimp. That is absolute pharmaceutical grade gibberish. He is saying that the that the populist the rise of the populist right that started in the 60s with goldwater would have somehow been stopped if there'd been sort of a hybrid vigor infused wasp establishment to fight it. I can't even a forming words at this point. I mean, how do you what do you think politics is like? What do you really think is the driving factor?

Is it he there's no place in any of this for just the material reality of like the shifts of American economy and and where power flowed when with the rise of you know the energy economy of Texas or whatever the way that shifted financial influence from the East Coast financiers to the West like that is nothing to do with who how many people DC could like lift their fucking pinky finger when they're drinking tea. I mean, these are these are titanic material shifts and that that is what determines the political superstructure. He has this perfectly inverted understanding of politics where it's just the need for wasps

to be imposing enough would keep the rest of us rabble in line. I mean, I think the entire point of this column is that it's just like a giant like what if scenario they're like what if when I went to college like it was still cool to be a wasp and like you know I was as successful as Mark Zuckerberg by channeling all of my college age anxieties into something other than some weird religious mania and New York Times columns. Yeah, instead of you know part of the pantheistic sun worshiping multicultural elites we got at the Ivy League Ross could have been you know accepted by the wasps and he could have been next Zuckerberg except he makes Tinder that connects 28 year old virgins to 13 year

old boys in Western Asia as it is now called. What if what if you hear me out now what if the neoliberal turn hadn't happened and just atomized and dissolved all social bonds and radical and made politics vastly more populist because because people are much more desperate through basically all strata of society except for his precious little grouping Jesus fucking Christ. But there's a special type of white person that wore 17 layers to have afternoon gin with his wife and has sex with her once and it produces seven awful kids all named Neil. I mean he goes on to you know he's just saying like you know we should learn from the best

things of the wasps which was you know all of the democratic governments that they overturned and all the incest and repression that they can't muster a single example an entire article about what actually what actually was good about them being in charge other than just broad values that what he means is like what was good about them being in charge is that like they reflected things that Ross likes to see which is like never enjoying yourself yeah and like being sort of like austere in both personality repressed lunatic yeah while you're like I said overthrowing democratic governments all over the world. He goes on to quote an essay from something called the hedgehog review which I'm not going

to read but he just says if we would learn from their lost successes in our own right era of misrule reconsidering again what were their successes I'm not clear from reading this article, reconsidering this idea that a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is and act accordingly might be a fruitful place to start. I think a fruitful place to start would be recognizing who the ruling class is and getting rid of them entirely. Well that's the thing and that's what's always frustrating about Douth of Columns is because he's pointing out that there is a real contradiction there and that the diversity

solution to the perceived problem of out of touch ruling class is in fact not one because you're just replacing one ruling class with another and that that's the contradictions are still there and that as long as and especially in an era when material conditions are deteriorating and where politics has basically stopped any pretense of being able to control the economic destinies of people that were basically throwing our hands up and said look we'll be your rulers but we can't actually make anything better everything's to the markets to decide sorry about that. That is an unsustainable situation and that's going to get swept away and he kind of has

this vague understanding that that's the case but because he is a fucking diluted dipshit he just can't grasp it so instead he's like well what if we just went back in time and I had made sure killed Jeb Bush and replaced him with a more competent version of himself so that he could have beaten Trump in 2016 and then everything would be okay. I mean I think it just comes down to like Ross is a boss but he'll never really be a part of them but like he wants you know he views himself as an outsider because of his weird religious mania but he still wants to be part of he wants to fuck Geronimo's skull.

Well the thing is is that he probably fucking affects that Catholicism partially to create an aura of being an outsider because that gives him that that's a self it's it's self-regarding because you know to be sort of part of this elite you know you're you're you're a fucking Wodehouse character but if you have some weird thing off you know you don't want to be Gatsby you want to be Nick Carraway right and that he gets to be he gets to be part of it but also have self-awareness and a separation from it and an irony that makes it more interesting than just these boring wasps. It's almost like a shallow I don't know what's the form of politics that's like based on

who you are or like like something like like your your driver's license ID ID yeah your identity identity identity politics meanwhile I would rather be ruled by literal actual wasps giant interdimensional space wasps that had us all work in the sugar caves than these motherfuckers again. I would rather have that wasp from Mandy sting my neck after LSD is dropped into my eyes well they just look like fun actually that that looks pretty dope actually yeah so that's what I'm going to be doing every time Ross stout that writes a column yeah so right in the neck always good to check in on Ross again and always good to check in with you the listener

yeah hi guys hey how you doing I hope you're drinking water all right I think that wraps it up for this week's show but we will talk to you again soon this is top of signing bye bye bye