Chapo Trap House - 436 - Consider the Lobster feat. David Roth (7/13/20)

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

David Roth’s back to help us continue examining the cursed aesthetics of Trump-world food, the ongoing COVID disaster, the eternal relevance of Starship Troopers, and the Beautiful Boaters. David��s Starship Troopers piece: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-starship-troopers-aligns-with-our-moment-of-american-defeat

Hello gang, it's Chapo back once again for you. It's me, Will here. Joining me is Matt and Virgil, but we are not alone. We have a guest this week. It is time, once again, to check back in with our friend David Roth. David, how's it going? I'm doing all right. How are you all? Pretty fresh, pretty fresh and fly as always. But, you know, David, I wanted to have you on because you just wrote a piece in The New Yorker that touches on Starship Troopers, Total Recall and Robocop. And I just think, like, you know, I saw what you were doing there. It was a pretty shabby attempt to get yourself invited on the show. But I have to

say it worked splendidly. So kudos to you. I do want to talk to you about the age of Verhoeven that we're all living in in a little bit because, I mean, speaking for myself, there is really one thing that the show stands for and, you know, is about, ideologically speaking, it's that Paul Verhoeven is a prophet and his texts must be studied by the righteous man to achieve enlightenment. It's a cheesy pander on my part, but I'm here. So who's to say that it was wrong, really? Well, it worked. But before we get into that, I just want to touch in on, you know, our president. He's my president and yours. And, you know, over the course of the Trump administration,

I've relied on my friends and their ability to sort of channel, sort of imbibe the ether of the current moment and sort of regurgitate it in a way that makes sense to anticipate, you know, the presidency of Donald Trump. And, you know, I turned to Matt and Felix for these things, but also really more than any writer currently working. It's got to be David Roth. It's got to be the Rothman when it comes to just sort of really, I don't know, communicating the character of Donald Trump and what he really represents. And there's been some good stories this week that we should touch on starting with Roger Stone getting his sentence commuted by the big man in charge. Now, Roger Stone is free once again to roam

our streets and recruit, you know, strong, uncut men to fuck his wife. As well, he should be, obviously. I've enjoyed seeing pictures of him. I like his new sunglasses that he has. I have to say that I'm very disappointed that at no point immediately after being having a sentence commuted, he showed up in a playful, like a vertical striped, old-timey prison outfit with the cap. And a big iron ball. A big iron ball chain to his leg and holding a, holding a pickaxe for breaking up rocks. They take off, they take off the prison chain and put on the sex chain.

I like the idea of him getting out of jail and they're giving him his personal effects back and it's just pocket watch after pocket watch. He's got him in a giant sack. These are all yours. Roy Silver is back. Yeah, no, they give him the 80 wristwatches. He, you know, was processed and the Matthew Lesko Riddler suit as well. He's just like, I'm back, baby. The handcuffs are off. The nipple clamps go on. Multiple escape attempts with like an umbrella that has a helicopter come out the top of it, yet he's still free, man, right now.

But, I mean, as an addendum to the Roger Stone sentence being commuted, David, I know you must have seen. I think it's the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, tweeting a congratulatory photo of, I don't know, how should I describe this? The world's most rotten looking lobster to just like, cheers to you, Roger. And it was like, it was like if you cut, you know, sort of cracked into a lobster and it was all just the green stuff and it's, it's shit. I believe it was, Stefan described it as a, just a condom full of sand. Like it is really one of the most seven heck. It is, I don't think that you could make a

lobster look that upsetting. Like it looked like a mitten that had been cut down the middle. You guys, you're, you're embarrassing yourself a little bit because it shows, you're showing that you're not aware of the new Hote Cuisine wave of microwave lobster. The whole picture itself was, I came out maybe Friday or Saturday night and that was definitely one of those moments where I, you know, it's not like I go anywhere anymore. So it's just me and my wife and I showed it to her and I was like, I have to post about this. I'll be back in a minute, which is not like what. You go to the laboratory.

Yeah. It's not what you want, but it's also like, this is to the extent that I have a job right now. It's like, if somebody's going to put, like if some undersecretary of human services is going to put a fucked up lobster on mine, like I need to, to respond. I can't just let that shit go. Uh, Virgil, I've put the lobster photo in the chat. So just, uh, just, just, just peep that at your own leisure. Um, yeah, no, but I mean, like David, you are, yeah, you're, you're a go-to for someone. It's pretty good, right?

It's just bacteria in there. I know. It's the lobster meat. Once again, you're a guys are embarrassing yourself. You guys have been to red lobster too much. You haven't sampled rare, artisanal, Guwanis canal lobsters. The only, the only explanation I have for this is that he's already eaten the lobster and is just sending Roger Sona picture of the, the husk. Yeah. Like this was for you. I'm sorry. I was very hungry. I just put the napkin in it because I thought you'd like that because I know you're into weird shit. I'm sorry about that.

Oh yeah. I'm sure that Roger Stone has incorporated lobster carcasses into the sex play. A little gentleman's evening of lobster play. I think he's not a buddy. I'm into lobster play. Well, it's a very erotic animal. It's one of the most erotic animals. What's good about that add to, is it in the same way that a lot of the really bad Trump food pics are like, it's like a Ben Garrison cartoon. Like there's just a little shit hiding in every corner of it.

It's not like labeled, but it's the little details. It's not just the hideous lobster. It's everything around it. So the other things on the table in that ad are an empty glass of red wine or almost empty, a bottle of water. And then if you look in the, in the back lurking, this is the compositional coup de gras or whatever is just a box of popcorn. Like you'd get at like a bar mitzvah or a golf course. There's also a shot of tequila, like an empty shot of tequila next to the red wine. And there's a baguette that appears to just be somebody popped open.

Yeah. Like a Pillsbury, one of those rolls of Pillsbury and then didn't put it in the oven. It's incredible. And then you go out to like, and here's some uncooked dough for the table. Yeah. You order the lobster, well done, and the baguette extremely rare. The European fashion, you people are showing yourselves to be uncultured rustics. David, you are, you were sort of like the studs, Turkle of chronicling, outrageously

failed meals served at various Trump hotels and casinos. I mean, there's there's the classic martini shot as well, but I remember I remember once it was it was it was at one of his golf courses. He had a he had a steak salad named after his daughter that was just like just just the just a small hill of meat on a very, very like very rare meat piled up on a few pieces of arugula and he was named after his beautiful daughter. The vegetables get treated so rudely because they're basically they're like middle fingers, or less that like you'll get like some steak and it's sitting in like a puddle of like broken butter and then they just like on top of it, just one asparagus beer.

They're like, fuck you and just throw that on top. Imagine like bouncing like in a red lobster ad and then they just keep it moving, send it out to the table. You'd think they'd go like, oh, we hate fuck, fuck vegetables. We're not putting them on. No, no, you you defame and debase the vegetables. You ritually you profane the vegetables. You must go on killing parsley. It's all this like 80s style kind of like luxury golf club stuff. So there was the thing with the lobster was like, I remember after the picture went up and people were responding to it, there's a lemon, a half a lemon in like a little bag of cheesecloth. And that is like how lobster was served when I was like a child. Like when

I saw like my grandfather get it at like a restaurant in Jersey City and he was like, oh, nice. That's a good size of lemon. Thank you very much. That was like 1984. Sometimes sometimes. Yeah, about 11. No, and then the bag will the bag will contain all of those awful lemon seeds. You know, yeah, nice little cheesecloth sack. But a lot of the younger people online were like, what's in the? Why is there like a little bag of marbles on the next to the lobster? And I was like, oh, well, this is like obviously you didn't go to a seafood restaurant when Jimmy Carter was president because like really showing your age, some really glamorous shots of like a shrimp cocktail. That's just like

a couple, a couple shrimp floating in a SpaghettiOs liquid. So the thing that the to me, the archetypal Trump food and David has talked a lot about this is the heat lamp roast beef. Yes, wet. That to me is the that is the Trump meal. It is a hunk of gray beef that is under like a like a easy bake oven, 60 watt bulb, and it's just sweaty and dry at the same time. And it's right next to dinner rolls, the size and color of like those orange soft balls. Yeah. That's the dinner rolls are like, I think sort of the key to all of this because it's like that's an easy thing to not get one that looks like it's made out of like a flame retardant material that's like technically a flotation, which can be fashioned. And yet

like they always every time I've seen a roll on one of his buffets, they're bigger and more fucked up than the last time. Like some of them are like things you can start with like a King's Hawaiian thing. Like everybody knows how to make that work, but then they just keep getting bigger and like orange or so orange. It's upsetting and wet. Like always like the light is always hitting them in a way that suggests that there's a sheen on top. Yeah, but it's supposed to be a roll. I feel like he eats like most of his meals are like that too. Not just because I don't think he like we know that like he only likes like two or three types of food and like doesn't really like he's not a guy that likes a lot

of things. I don't know. He's not like a pleasure guy. He doesn't enjoy anything. Yeah. Yeah. So that like eating a steak is like a thing you do because it's like the most expensive form of food and like imagined in 1987 when he was like brain went into energy saver mode and just moving. Yep. When it comes to great steaks, I've just raised the steaks. The sharper image is one of my favorite stores with fantastic products of all kinds. That's why I'm thrilled they agree with me. Trump steaks are the world's greatest steaks and I mean that in every sense of the word and the sharper image is the only store where you can buy them. That's exactly it. It's like that's what he that's what is that's

denotes classy from what he was a kid. Yeah. So that's what he eats even though he gets no pleasure from it. The stuff that he apparently likes to eat. I don't mean to hijack the podcast with this. Please please. It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to talk about how much Trump loves white rice. David, we are no stranger to controversy here. I know what I was going to say. This is yeah, you're going to get a negative response, but I have to I have to say what I think which is that Donald Trump loves to eat just plain white rice. It is apparently one of his number ones kind of makes so much sense though because yeah it's what imagine the psychic horror of being completely like subsumed in luxury

and having absorbed like the sensualist ethos of like a decadent Roman emperor, but not actually enjoying anything. Yeah, like this is like no wonder he's an insane idiot and like the most unhappy man on earth. I think it's yeah. I think it's why all the aesthetics of his shit are so berserk because like he doesn't he wouldn't know when to stop or like how to stop because he doesn't really understand why he started in the first place. Like I wrote about this back last winter when they did the Christmas decoration video which two years ago Melania did one and it was like all the trees were blood red like it was like pure Kubrick shit. And this time around it's just her walking around like in an empty White

House like sprinkling plastic dandruff onto garlands or whatever. It's just like like I am Jewish. I've been Jewish my whole life. Like I'm married to a Gentile, but like not a religious person like even I know how to decorate a Christmas tree like you just go up to it and put a thing on it. It's not like hard. It's actually a very nice thing to do. And yet like it's just not in the equation for them. Chris just sent in the in the Zoom chat a photo of the the salad where it's just like it's a whole bell pepper smiley face carved into it and filled with like ranch dressing that's leaking out the top like some fucking lobotomy. Also as with as with all Trump stuff, there's

a lot more going on there. You got a salt and pepper shaker on the tray and then you have the massive pastry. Yeah, it's like it's like a salad. It's like a salad eating healthy for lunch. Just going to have some vegetables. You have a plant based meal. But on the side of it you have the world's largest like fucking like I don't know six scone or sort of blazed apple strudel or something. It's it's this mystery pastry that I'm sure would negate whatever health benefits eating the smiley face pear. I know it also has that pepper looks like one of the fucking masks from Halloween 3. You eat that thing and then your face turns into fucking crickets. Your face melts off and you just keep thinking about how Christie

Tirlington was very unfair to you. Very unfair. I sent that specifically in response to the vegetable must be desecrated. Yeah, it's a ritual profanement of the concept of a vegetable. Yeah, this is definitely something that eats like to look at this salad is to instantly be transported to like like Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt standing in the rain wearing hats and seven be like have you ever seen anything like this? Bring you the meal. What's in the salad? What's in the salad? What's in the salad? It goes goes to the library after hours to look through a bunch of cookbooks classical music plays. Like Markie does appetizing. I used to think that lunch was a fun thing and worth fighting for. I believe in the first

part. No, this is it's good. It's like what if Hannibal Lecter was a vegetarian? It really is like it's hard to get. It's like the way that they like that like Jerry Seinfeld's wife wrote a book about like how to like trick your kids into eating artichokes. Yes, this is like how you would do it with like a with Jerry with like Trump. You'd have to be like, it's your it's your enemy. Look, that's a that's a real estate developer that you don't like. Don't you want to? It's Bruce and Nellie or wouldn't you like to eat their face? Well, you bring up Trump enemies. And I think like other than other than Joe Biden and Antifa and all the people, you know, who in the streets right now, I would say Trump's main enemy

at the moment is his own head of coronavirus. Like, you know, that Dr. Fauci, like his own head of the pandemic response team, or I guess Pence is the head of the team, but Fauci is the only one with any like medical credibility. And according to news reports, it just they did an oppo dump on Fauci, like over the weekend, where they just like leaks to reporters like here are all these instances of Fauci sounding like a real jerk or like him being wrong about the pandemic. But it's like he's gotten to the point where he is he's doing he's doing like like attack ads on his own administration. And I think and I think I didn't like from reports on it, like I think like the main thing that bothers Trump about Fauci is that

he's popular. And like the public likes and trusts him for some reason. And then for Trump, like that's just like that's unthinkable to him. Like he he's like no, like the guy who is the US government's like point man for this pandemic response too many people like and trust him. Let's do something about that. That's what it is. There's always been this like undercurrent with the response of the pandemic that like I remember like early on where Trump would talk about like, it's like all these scientists, they're surprised that I get it so much. But I get it. I just get it. I just get this stuff. I get epidemiology. I don't know. Like maybe I just have a good

brain. But like that has always been like the thing that like I think he wants to like secretly be recognized as like the guy that finds the vaccine. Yeah. And I think that like a lot of the most like outrageous things that he said with like the bleach and shit like that. It's just him like kind of spitballing because he like he thinks that he's got a good enough brain that maybe he can help. Maybe he'll just like come up with something like have you ever tried? I don't know. Like like swallow something weird. Like maybe maybe they turns the like that while some like a lot of is a lot of Trump's like more ideologically vigorous supporters. You know, they take his whole war on the deep state as this actual

movement to confront and isolate, you know, elements within the government that are, you know, that persist that have a agenda that is not the same as what American voters would be. And you know, that's a real thing, but it's just so funny that they put it on Trump because for Trump, he doesn't like the deep state because they're people who aren't him, which is why he hates everyone because they're not him. This is like a dog saying it's reflection in the mirror. Yeah. Yeah. This is like he's the reason he's the most miserable person on earth is because he's the loneliest. Yeah. Because he, because all other people are terrifying aliens to him and any happiness that or attention that they get is the happiness and attention

that he should be getting. Yeah. That's like, I think part of why he, he likes things that are grand and scale in some ways is that so that he can like generally like sort of bring them into his orbit. It's that weird thing he does sometimes when there's like a big hurricane and he's like, we're seeing incredible hurricanes, by the way, like since I became president. Yes. Like I'm not the brag, but like they've been huge. Never seen before. No, you're right. It's like, it's like by, by, by investing anything with like both size and majesty, he's like bringing it into his fold, you know, it's like he's sort of metabolizing it in a way that like is under his aegis and command in

a way. Yeah. You know, like, and like ideally he would like cut a deal with the hurricanes or the virus or whatever. And that would be his way of being like, we sat, you know, honestly, I didn't like him, but we sat down together and we hashed it out. We decided 160,000 deaths is fair. And that's like, and that's what we did. But he can't, I mean, like in this case, like you can see like the limits of what he can do. And like, I think it's just he can trick a few, well, whatever, several tens of millions of people into a certain, believing certain things, but he can't like pivot or like, you know, whatever, except that he has to share. If you know, I mean, another example of the suppleness of his brain

and his sort of his his knack for for following others and just sort of putting his own brand on it is that it came out this past week that Joe Biden had taken some sort of like neuro cognitive exam that was administered by a doctor. And then Trump immediately came out and go, I take one every week. And the doctors quite frankly are surprised at how well I do. I ace it. I love the doctors. He also talks about them like shaking their heads and amazement, which is also something that like, I honestly believe is true. Yeah, probably. Yeah, like really, he got five out of five still. Yeah. Or if they're like asking him to count backwards, you know, from like 13, he just

like tells a story about like seeing up Suzanne Somers dress at a nightclub instead. Like you would shake your head if someone did that. You just be like, all right. Yeah, OK. I guess like the the other big, I don't know, political or policy push right now in this stage of COVID that is being sort of woven into the Trump re-election campaign is this is this big and, you know, almost genocidal demand that schools must open in the fall and that like any school that doesn't will be deprived of federal funding if it's a public school. And Betsy DeVos is, of course, talking about, well, you know, if the public schools don't want to open because the teachers are worried about their health and safety

and not spreading the virus, then we'll just send all the kids to the private charter schools that are run by like the DeVos, Eric Prince, you know, Taliban network. It's incredible shit. I mean, it's just like it's astonishing because like, you know, in no way is this country like have a hold on this virus at all. And it's just like when it was seemed like it was just New York, I feel like so many people were just sort of like, it's not real. It's just there. The city's dirty or whatever. But like now, like not just like, you know, Florida or Arizona or California, but like all over the country is seeing like what New York went through in April right now. And the idea like this

is just going to go on. And we're getting to the point where like half a million dead from this disease is like not insane to think about or like to ponder like if things continue according to plan or not according to any plan, I guess. It's so hard to sort of process just the reality of that because I don't think any of that is wrong. It's just also like to see like the way in which the failure happened. Like if you told me that like a good faith effort was made and that like our healthcare system wasn't up to it, or like state governments weren't up to it, like all that's true. And of course, it wouldn't be surprising to see that. But the idea that like there was this

effort, like people did do the right thing for like two months and like lockdown and tried their hardest. And then just like nothing fucking happened. And we pretended that something happened during those two months and tried to start the thing back up again. It's like, it's so ghoulish that like, honestly, like it surprised me, even as someone that's like been paying attention for, you know, the last, I mean, longer than, than it gets maybe 2014 is the moment we take like a sort of a sharp downward turn as a, as a governable country, but I wouldn't have predicted that it could be like this. I, I, I did because I knew as soon as we buttoned up, it's like, oh, I'll go inside. Well,

what's going to happen? Nothing. We don't have the capacity, the social or the medical capacity to use this time wisely or fruitfully. So people are just going to get bored. And that means that the only option is normalizing the deaths. And when you know it, that's what we're doing. That seems to be, I think everybody I know has like some people in their family or their like extended circle who did just like legit get bored of it and stopped acting like it was a thing that's happening. Like I know people who know people at Disney World right now. And it's just like, that's the thing that they did because they were like, I mean,

I guess cause they really wanted to go to Disney World, but also at some point it's not like a partisan politics thing. They're like, Oh no, we did this back in March and April. It's over now. Well, that's what you were told. Well, I mean, when you make a country like ours to, and you, you, you stuff it with, you make the, you make people's actual aperture of freedom in their lives smaller and smaller and then compensate for that by loading more and more emotional energy onto their consumption and, and, and like recreation as the markers of their freedom and you tell them and they

tell themselves all day every day that they are free, but that's the only freedom they actually have is where to go to dinner and whether to go to that Disneyland. When you say, okay, no, none, you can't do any of that stuff either. There is no, there's nothing to fall back on. There's no like social generative meaning to fill the hole. So people essentially go insane or they decide to ignore the fact that there's a fucking pandemic because it's the only way they can assert themselves. It's the only way that they could be the free citizens that they tell themselves every day that they are. Oh, how soon you forget what gaming is.

I mean, I think you can see that with a lot of the like the struggle picks of like reopening restaurants where it's like, it's one thing like I want to go to, I mean, I don't want to go sit outside on the sidewalk like with like vermin running around and eat sushi right now or whatever, but like the places that we care about, like I want to go back to them and I want to support them. But there's pictures. I remember seeing one of people in Chicago, like basically under a tarp eating wings while it was raining. And I was like, this is like a friend point out that they're basically like, it fucking sucks. And like, if that's what you miss about

restaurants is that like someone else fries something for you or like you give someone money and then they just do shit for you. Then like that's the only part of that transaction that is like identifiable as itself because the rest of it is you're like, whatever, sweating in the rain, like hunched over your friends, a chicken all over your face. I mean, it's like just back to like the school openings thing. I mean, it's just, I mean, I guess like it's always more ghoulish when you're talking about, you know, inflicting things on children or just making it so that like, oh, like, oh, you have to go back to school. I guess things are going to be okay. Or, hey, look, you know, kids, hey, they went

to school during World War II. So really, what's the difference is, you know, I mean, Matt, you said that the ruling class was just getting tired of schlepping children down to fucking little St. James to do solid sacrifices. And now that we're just going to do it in every school district in America, like, you know, Yeah, can you imagine? Can you imagine how much Oregon you can accumulate with like 100,000 dead kids, all that human potential and adrenochrome just going into the atmosphere to be to be lustily breathed in by our nation's immortal gargoyle class? But I mean, like, you know, just broader than that, though, I think it speaks to what the how I got, you know, like

how the people in charge, how they how they really view education and public education in general. Because, you know, I mean, like, if you're if you're talking about, you know, they're going to they're going to send kids back and like put them behind saran wrap or make them do classes over zoom or anything like that. It's like, well, they're obviously not learning anything. I mean, like talk to any public school, any teacher at any level who's had to try to like conduct any sort of classroom at any level over zoom, and just like to get a sense of like how much, you know, how much is actually being taught or retained by anyone. But like more than that, I think it's just like a big key to reopening

the economy and sending everyone back to work and that like education is viewed primarily as just a warehousing function for children so that their parents can can work eight or nine 10 hours a day. Yeah, a lot of my friends that are parents have said this that they're like in their kids, you know, we're trying to we're trying to go to school over zoom and stuff. And like, there's like four hours of actual learning. And then like the rest of it is just like keeping them occupied more or less like there's not like classroom wise, especially for little kids, like there's not eight hours of shit to teach them. That's why they like go play recorder in like a music class or go like running circles in a gym

class or whatever. And that serves a purpose to because they're around other little kids. But if they're not around other little kids, then just making them sit in front of a computer for eight hours is cruelty. And you know, one of these one of these the more bright and enterprising young minds will probably you know, what with computers these days find some way to print out sort of like a life size movie stand up of themselves and sit it in front of their laptop and then they'll be running riot will be latchkey kids out of you know, out on the streets causing causing chaos. Every generation gets the fairest beuler it deserves. I think kids are warning one thing

in these zooms zoom classes because remember one of the big things that schools do is teach you how to be an employee. And you know, if everything's going to be zoom meetings, at least kids are learning how to sit in a zoom meeting. Yeah, this also feels like the sort of thing where like the problem of putting kids back in school could it's another thing that like could be fixed if the state was interested in doing it. Like there's a lot of empty space. There are like ideas that you know about how to sort of make this work in a way that's safe for teachers and students. But that's not like what's being talked about like there's not like any data involved or any big plans involved in trying to fix any

of the shit. It's just kind of like, you know, it's getting to be that time of year when you don't want your kids around so that you can go back to whatever selling cars or some shit. And like, and that's grim. And like the other the other really disgusting aspect to all this is like, you know, sort of as an aside to like the school reopening stuff is this debate over, you know, are the unemployment benefits people getting too much? Because, you know, for a certain amount of people, you're actually making more money collecting unemployment than they would working a job. And that of course, you know, that incentivizes not working a job. And we can't have that. But like the debate is always like, oh, well,

like if that's true, then the problem is getting getting any unemployment benefits at all. And not that like jobs just pay way too little and like maybe if you are making more money being unemployed than working a job, like maybe you shouldn't work the fucking job or like also the the insanity of the just the the the disconnect, the the app, the psychopathic inability to really absorb anything that that conflicts with those sort of, you know, supply side nostrums. You don't want people to go to work. You don't want people to leave their houses. Ideally, there's a fucking virus that's killing people and you're spreading it by going out of the house. People have to leave the house for things. But if someone can stay

home and not work, that is in the current situation. Forget all the other stuff that is good. That is better that reduces the likelihood of transmission. And they're like, yeah, but unemployment or late rates of the apparently like one of the reasons that that there was so much resistance to a second round of of unemployment stuff among like the high level Republicans in the Senate and then the Trump administration is that they think they actually think giving people money could caught they could cost Trump the election because it means the unemployment rate will be higher. Like that's how captured they are. This may be the only thing that sanity this may be the only thing that could save his reelection

at this point is if he's giving people a fat fucking check up until the fall. But that's how that's how ideologically captured they are is that is that they're so conditioned to see unemployment is bad and they're so fixated on on the supply side ideas of what causes unemployment that they're like, no, no, even though you could have everybody or a lot of people, a lot of more people staying home and being able to stay in their houses and I don't know not getting evicted and becoming homeless during a pandemic. But that means that the unemployment rate will be, you know, 15% instead of 10 or something and we're going to lose because people would rather be working and it's like that is you want

them to think that but I swear to God most people aren't thinking that way right now. Yeah, I don't think that like this thing is like I mean the most vulnerable people have never been more at risk in more ways like the idea that the debate is like do people have it too easy is psychotic and yet like that's again that's the only conversation they can really have that's the only like valence they get. I mean it's cliche to say it but like the disconnect the disconnect between our ruling class and the conditions on the ground for most citizens of this country is it's fucking pre-revolutionary French. It is not supposed to happen in a theoretical democracy.

Yeah, like democratic institutions are supposed to prevent people from getting that out of touch and somehow they have not. I feel like we're backing into the Verhoeven thing very great. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's go there because David you brought this up briefly and you know we're going to be talking Verhoeven. I got to share with you guys and Chris I just put this in the chat if you could throw that up on all our screens here that'd be great. I just want to share with you guys like the most Verhoeven fucking black pill shit I've ever seen recently which is the the Disney World Welcome Back video.

Oh yeah. Can we just watch that real quick Chris if you could pull that up. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home everyone. Welcome citizens. Okay so I'll just describe at the end there it's just like it's a montage of frontline Disney employees wearing surgical masks saying welcome home which is so disturbing already like Disney World is your home. Welcome. Come play with us forever. You've never left. You've always been the goofy here Mr. Torrance. Okay. So yeah it's just they're all wearing the masks. They're all wearing masks and the hyper hyper normalize shit man just welcome

to the show. No but at the very very end of it it's it's a stormtrooper and then like in the stormtrooper voice just welcome home citizen. It's just it might as well be the end 209 fucking staring at you. They never call anybody do they call people citizens in Star Wars. No I think so. That was a Carly Fiorina thing. Yeah. It's talk about like service guarantees citizenship and citizenship guarantees getting to catch Corona on the fucking magic tea cups. A log flume like yeah mostly to make people like me angry is why you're on the log flume somehow but you're doing it. My favorite thing is that they lock their account after they publish that. I saw the land but lock their account. There's an

edit of that video with the opening theme from the shining in it. Yeah. These things whenever you recut it is just like beat for beat perfectly fine like yeah. No but I like I think in the shining a recut of this it's just they like because everyone has a mask on they can very easily redub the audio and it's just all the workers just desperately saying no stay away. Please don't come here. Save yourselves. Don't come here. But man like this Disney World shit is really really twisted and like you know obviously like it's been a problem in our society for quite some time now of like adult Disney people and but like this is really like this is this is a new height and you know I was just I was reading

about this and it's just like that welcome home thing is like you just heard a refrain from some of these people who are fucking you know lining up to just have like you know other people saliva go into their mouth on Space Mountain. They just kept saying like you know like it just it feels like home to me you know we just had to go home again and it's just oh man yeah no this this is this is the we are in the age of airhoven that is that is that is the theme for this episode it's it's really woo. It's the it's the pleasure principle taken to its logical it's a web it's the weaponized nuclearized plasticized pleasure principle a society divided completely to a notion of democratic indulgence

that that's where you end up with people essentially losing their mind and after being cooped up indoors because of a pandemic deciding to risk their lives so that they can be with the people who are realer to them than anybody else in the world which is their friends from their uh Disney licensed uh properties but like it is definitely it has the verhoven element of seeming uh like just kind of unconvincing on its face like that is like so ghoulish that you would think that anybody watching it would be like why is like a man in a surgical mask doffing his top hat at me like that's supposed to make me feel anything but upset and yet like somehow it works for people like I don't want to say it's like there's no accounting

for taste or whatever like there's certain things that like I think are built into the human brain like that is uncanny enough that you should know that like you've run from that yeah no I mean like and you know let's get into it if we talk we're talking about starship troopers you know and like you know Matt Virgil and I did a screening of starship troopers at Lincoln Center uh I think I don't know 10 000 years ago now but you know one of the things we talked about yeah in the before times and one of the things that Matt I think you talked about in in analyzing starship troopers is that like the joke works because verhovens giving you a version of like the entertainment that the society he's depicting would like display to themselves and like a movie that you would

watch in Buenos Aires after your you know roller ball game or whatever you know and like but the joke is that what he creates is really not at that different at all from like most American movies and like the ease with which people sort of like uh sort of swallowed it or didn't get the joke is just sort of testament to that uncanny valley between you know the third Reich and the fourth Reich America yeah that was I read a lot of the reviews um like just sort of like mainstream reviews when it came out like in the post and Roger Ebert's and stuff like that and the reviews were all like obviously not necessarily getting the gag of it which I think is like the idea that this is basically a movie that would be made in the 23rd century of the federation is like 100% yeah

it's like it's a movie that would be made if the Nazis had won the war basically yeah yeah and so over right down to the fact that like all the the sort of jokes are sadistic and that like there's something about it that's just um that's unpleasant and that like all the reviews noted it without noticing it somehow that they were just like like Roger Ebert who's generally you know it's like as astute as your middle brow critics are you know ever got was like you know it's perfectly competently done the bugs look great you know like whatever it's like edited well but like where's the invention where's the fun like where's the sense of this being the sense of wonder the sense of wonder yeah that's right man like you're getting it now like it's like this is what

it would look like if like you know whatever people with no sense of any of those things are making it I'm honestly you know in a way I think about it for Starship Troopers is actually Verhoeven essentially is too talented and has too much taste to actually do it as much as because like the the the the thing that makes him and his work and the satire to stuff specifically Starship Troopers so great is that he is fully confident in himself which means he never feels the need to wink to the audience yeah there's none of that let them know like why he's in stuff where it's like this is an anti-hate satire by the way I don't know if you I mean the closest the closest Verhoeven ever gets to winking at the audience is when Doogie Hauser just strides in frame in full

SS like the full Gestapo officers uniform that's as close as you get to be like that's at the very end that's like the fly to the movie and he talked about that in some of the interviews that he did too where he was like it was important to be that people not miss the point and so like but I mean it's like you're two hours and five minutes into the movie then before you finally put him in like the big leather fucking like duster and send him out yeah you you include wait so yeah you include a little bit in your piece in the New Yorker about it says when when when studio executives complained that the Federation's banner was a Nazi flag Verhoeven reassured them no it's completely different colors even though it's just like giant eagle crest like clutching a skull or something

it's the first thing you see it is the first thing to appear on screen but but like his his evocation of that culture it's actually they're more tasteful than us because like look at what like starship troopers came out in what 97 yeah within 10 years the transformer movies started coming out and the transformer movies are like our starship like our culture's starship troopers where it's the unironic non satirical version of like what of where like our militarist consumer culture ends goes towards and it's just a kid it's just a fucking it's a quiesan art of just sensory overload yeah and and just CGI garbage and like weird up skirt photography and like John Turturro too for some reason yeah like way more respectful of women even in starship troopers

of this these not this Nazi movie than pay was in any of his films yeah this transformers movies are like kind of a I haven't seen them and yet like bits of information from them will periodically get kind of like stuck in my brain like as they float past I've seen every one of them garbage so they'll be like apparently like Optimus Prime at one point reveals that the transformers were involved in the underground railroad yes slavery yeah I'm so happy to know that not season world war two yeah and they're part of an underground society of like human cooperation that included people like uh Harriet Tubman uh and Frederick Douglass so that we're but they weren't they're not saying that Harriet Tubman was like turned into a car turned into a train he was turned into a

train that's silly he was she was one of the helpers well what I always thought is very disturbing is that they don't talk about if the Autobots were like fighting for the for the you know allies during world war two does that mean the Decepticons were like turning into train Stiles wits there's so much to explore there in the uh in the former's verse I mean well one thing to explore certainly like a parallel that that I would draw between the the original the first transformers movie and starship troopers is that they are both in their own ways parables for the war in Iraq but like separated by the gulf of the actual war in Iraq happening because like absolutely true starship troopers is like it is the best movie made about

the war in Iraq before it ever happened and it like it called every fucking shot culture devouring total like whatever forever war and yet like made at a period of like like Verhoeven talks about like he was concerned about America becoming fascist and you know he's like I see it everywhere around me but it was like in 97 what he was talking about was like George W. Bush executing too many people in Texas that was like the example that that he gave which I mean obviously was disgusting and yet like really feels kind of quaint almost relative to like everything that's happened since then but that's the thing is that the real a true artist is able to sense the trajectory yeah like while the rest of us are like normalizing everything as it happens and the same no this is normal this

is the way things are therefore it's the way things should be and it's fine the true artist has got the antenna going and they're like oh I know where all this leads to and you know having grown up in occupied Holland probably helped him in a way that that's why he's so good and his his the fact that he is an American is why he's the best satirist of America because he has a he remembers something that happened like more than a week before which as Americans we are trained to not to just forget everything as it happens essentially to just like have a hole in the bottom of the bucket of our like historical conception it's a weird end note to his like American career to he made one more movie in Hollywood and then he just went back to Europe yeah and I mean some

of it was that like I guess starship doopers didn't do well or something like that but it's hard to look at a movie that's that like just like suffused with disgust and anxiety about like the direction of things and then just imagine him continuing to make a studio movie every three years right well I mean you made one I made the the hollow man visible man yeah and he hates it and doesn't like talking about it and then he just like went back and made yeah and made blackbook which is like a movie any movie I think I think what happened I mean obviously there's the component a commercial component because hollow man was a bomb and that might have made it harder for him to get the movie he wanted to get made but I mean I and hollow man is not great but I

think what he was trying to go for there the idea of this person losing any sense of morality by virtue of not having any any wreck any consequences for his actions that's essentially the story of America in the 90s and ever since is or said basically since World War two like we are a country who cannot suffer consequences which means we will not we cannot develop a morality and we cannot act morally because we will never have the the pushback of any kind of of negative response to any negative thing we do yeah well David I wanted to ask you just about Starship Troopers because like I said like I've always viewed it as like the a perfect war in a rack movie that like that channels the bush era and like you know Johnny Rico and his

friends just being all like well let's kill them all you know kill all the bugs get them is like you know that that that real let's roll moment where like 90% of the country was just like totally on board for this fucking disaster and then and then we land on Clint Athe and of course it turns into a fucking bloodbath and you know no one likes to think about that but like how does this movie speak to you about like the Trump era where there is no like big ongoing like ground war happening but like at the same time I get the same Johnny Rico feeling from people showing up to Disney World you know like they're just ready just ready to be thrown into the virus fucking like you know meat grinder yeah that's the part of it that I think surprised I hadn't

I'd gone many years without seeing it before rewatching it for the story and it was that part of it I mean I remembered the the you know action parts of it which is basically you know two-thirds of the movie but the it's that feeling of of kind of everything being finished of like this period of like after conflict after dissent and just what you're left with is this kind of like the drumbeat of like propaganda war mass death and then like also the the inversion of everything in the society that remains on earth to like fluffing and resupplying the war machine because everything is everything has been winnowed to the one the actual values of the of the of the society like all the all the inessential things have over time been like just like booster rockets

falling away and the only thing left is the is the is the cone of just militarism yeah and that's the part of it that feels like the the most contemporary and kind of like a grim way is that like the culture as it exists outside I mean you don't see anything on Federation TV there's not like fucking sitcoms or whatever like it's news it's advertisements to join the military it's like fake debate shows about the bugs and that's that and you know obviously we're not 100 percent there yet you know we still our cinematic universe our parents are there yeah I mean I think that is basically what it is that there's like this like you don't want to say that it's like anhedonic or whatever you want to like diagnose it as like clinically or whatever because it's

a silly movie about you know whatever it's about but there is like that is like to me like what we were talking about before with Trump about this like the fact that he doesn't like anything the fact that people that support him most ardently don't really like anything but him and really mostly hate the people that they think they hate that like the the dissolution of anything like interesting or pleasurable into this conflict is the part of it that felt most recognizable and then also like even more claustrophobic than I remembered it feeling because another part of the you know the movie is about how like being in their army and their culture fucking sucks like everybody hates each other and treats each other like shit all the time one of the things

you point out in the article that I guess like you know I sort of felt but never really been articulated like this clearly is that like you know their entire the entire Federation society is you know built around military service and then this like this this total mobilization and war against the bug species and that they've like dedicated like every element of their culture into like you know martial valor and military strength but it you could almost miss that they're all that they're really terrible at those things that their society is suck is unbelievably weak and I guess like I had never really picked up on it like that many times what like I guess like I kind of had but like it is so clear in the movie even by the end that humanity is losing

badly in this war and that like there's what there's one scene at the very end of the movie where it's the last like Federation newsreel you see and it's like a phalanx of like the mobile infantry troops and they're like undoing my part and then like someone turns to the camera and it's just a child in a full battle uniform holding a rifle and he's like undoing my part and it's like they've reached like the red army is a mile outside of Berlin phase of this war by the end of the movie where they're recruiting children into these like human wave attacks against the clubs and like also like that all like the psychic shit with doogie howser at the end where the brain bug where it's like it's afraid it's like dude that's not psychic that all that

psychic shit is bullshit like they're just making it up they're completely making it up and they show the so they capture the brain not to whatever spoiler alert to those who were curious at what was going to happen at starship troopers they capture the brain bug they bring it back and they start experimenting on it and you see a little bit in one of the newsreels of the experimentation and it's just poking it with like a stick that's all they've got that that's that I like that seen a lot because that's that's Verhoeven getting into like the psychosexual terrain of fascism yeah because they they get the brain bug and it basically is a giant vagina and then they take that big uh uh metal thing and when they put it in its thing there's a censored sign over just to like

let you know that this is literally a ritualized penetration of like a feminine coded other and it's also Verhoeven's like a sly attack on like American movie censorship where he's like I've just shown you two hours of the most incredibly grisly violence maybe ever put to film of just like of just a bright-eyed good-looking young people just being getting bitten in half just shredded limb for limb for like 90 minutes and then like anything that's like a vaguely subtly penetrative sexual act is like censored you know not yeah the things that are censored the things that are censored on the federation network are penetrating the brain bug Matthew thank you so much for the opportunity to say that and then also a cow getting eaten

by a spider yeah the rest of it is like the like fucking guys getting killed like live on tv that's you know whatever more that's the cost of the Mormon the Mormon uh settlers who get torn up they're all their corpses are just like in on television like headless bodies like jackson pollock care there's so much stuff like all the the brutality and the failure like it's not a subtle movie but he does there's so much of it in there that they kind of like sneak it in around the margins there's a little bit about a televised execution i totally forgotten that oh yeah uh ed new mire plays the guy that's getting executed oh i didn't know that i didn't know that yeah and there's the one of the first things where like a meteor like they're claiming the bugs are

shooting rocks at earth and they mention you know that it's like this time we were ready and it's just sort of like all right so you lost another city like like the way you're going to lose Buenos Aires just kind of like everybody knows that Rotterdam got smashed like again sometimes it's like that you know how bugs are i like i i one thing that you pointed out that i hadn't really thought about before because i enjoyed the movie so much you know just every time i watch it is that is that especially for an audience that's not you know keyed into it and one of the reasons it wasn't that successful is that the action scenes are no fun either yeah like there's there's no like all that like there's no elegance there's no

tactical uh ingenuity it's just these guys screaming firing off like their entire magazine and then getting bitten in yeah so this is something that i read a bunch of stuff before or i wrote it that was like first of all was good enough that it like set me back a week because i'm like i'm not gonna do like i read the umberto eco essay on fascism is fascism fascism yeah and it's fucking perfect and even more prescient than starship troopers is and like so that like cost me two days because i was like well how are you gonna why would you write anything now about this but there's stuff in there that i i think verhoeven very much incorporated into this and it's not necessarily you say that he was taking

the observation from eco himself but about how fascism insistently and like as a sort of a tenet of its belief underestimates the enemy that it can't believe that they are capable of victory but also you know it can't conceive of a world after the war is over right the conflict is the point of the whole thing and so that first assault on clandestine which is basically just like if d-day if you did d-day at like noon after like sending an email being like we're coming it'll be early afternoon like just show up and get your asses beat at least 300 000 people in a day like you know operation overlord is ready for your say so sir it's like uh yeah i guess we'll do it this weekend whatever right whatever it's um is this important i don't know yeah but yeah like

all of that stuff like the that inability to like think of the bugs as anything but bugs is like somehow the fit and then they are basically just bugs but like that creates this fascination with them but also makes it impossible for them to be defeated i mean i think really good stuff it's like and especially like if you look at like we said robocop and total recall which i mean portray societies that are ruled by a kind of corporate authoritarianism where it's just like you know capitalism and the market are like the only things that like determine the value of human life and starship troopers is more like an explicitly like fascist military dictatorship but i think one of the things that verhoeven gets in his depictions of fascism whether it's

corporate or military or american or whatever is that he i think he really captures like a certain libidinal pleasure for the individual in sort of surrendering themselves to this this larger body politic and especially in starship troopers it's like there's you know like he makes clear that there's like uh there is an act of like sort of self-fulfillment and even like sexual liberation in sort of surrendering your life to this collective yeah where it's like that again this is like another thing from one of the essays like the idea of like fascism is like this fixation with upon beauty but without sex that it's like it's all about like yeah schematics and the perfect the perfect scene that illustrates that is in basic training where they have co-ed locker rooms and

showers and they're all showering together and like everyone's naked and there's you know like when i first saw this movie at 13 i was just like oh yeah this is this is boy this is this is what i want yeah hell yeah so many people responded to me about that being like that was like their formative nude scene which is such a complicated you know it's so it's so great because it's so unsexy and if you listen to the dvd commentary with verhoeven he talks about that scene really illustrating for him uh like the the fascist ideology and mentality of these characters because like yeah like they're all hot and naked and young young dumb and full of cum and they're all thrown in together just soaping one another up but nobody's horny nobody's fixated on on sex

or anything because they're they're so sublimated like their individual bodies are so sublimated to this larger cause that no one's even considering like the sex act whatsoever because then the scene where we're johnny rico and uh what's her name not denise richards uh dizzy dizzy floors dizzy for us the scene where they my wife actually it's a scene where they where they finally hook up you know after they've been blooded in combat as far as far as you know ratchex rangers or rough ratchex roughnecks yeah it's like they only have sex after michael ironside like gives them permission to where he's like yeah he's like we're running out in 10 minutes the officer gives permission to smash he's like permission to not sir permission granted like i was talking about how verhovan

understood like how a society that puts all of its values around personal indulgence will destroy itself and starship troopers is at the other end of that continuum or it's at the end of that process it's after like they say the brought when brad check talks about how democracy brought the world to the brink of chaos here i gotta read this quote that's when the resources are have are no longer tenable with individual indulgence and that's when you get all of that sublimated into this this massive project but it still needs to have an erotic element to it and that eroticism instead of being about sex is now about violence yeah i just got to read the quote from ratchek here where he's a the history professor and he says to his students this year we explored the failure

of democracy how the social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos we talked about the veterans and how they took control and impose this ability that has lasted for generations our beautiful veterans veterans know we folks a beautiful veterans they took control tough dominated the space well i i was like if if trump was if there's a trump-esque character in starship troopers he would be he would be made fun of he would be pathetic he would be like the marshal bell a simpering bitch general who gets who ratchek almost murders and then gets killed by the flying bug likes a civilian as hell man yeah oh yeah citizen yeah he does not have citizenship but but he represents the society that burns out and then and then but without

any kind of intervention like any kind of intervention against the values and against the the mode of production the exploitation at the heart of it it just reconstitutes along less selfish lines but just as destructive only now it's all pushed outward all of our desires turn into the desire to conquer i think that's really interesting because that gets it the one thing for all the you know whatever the like crash course and like famous essays about fascism i tried to give myself before writing it all of them make a big point of talking about the leader and that's like every fascist you know society that we've had at least in the 20th century was like it was based around some sort of like cult of personality and some charismatic central figure

that's not in starship troopers you basically don't see leadership at all you see like a sky marshal who fucks up and resigns and is disgraced and is replaced by somebody who's just as bad yeah like that is no but there's not any sense of like there's no one that people have invested their hopes in or in which like there's some sort of like politics that's like funneling energy back towards the grandizement of any particular individual this is like what comes like after that exactly yeah it's mature fascism if fascism was able to be to be able to be stabilized which it is and it is eventually destroys itself but you know it could hypothetically take over a whole planet but then it will eventually destroy itself in its pursuit of conquest elsewhere which is what

seems to be in the process of happening in the movie like as you said they're getting their ass kicked they put they might worry with that they could be like Berlin 45 with the bugs showing up yeah you know in in in hell sink what's what's that Geneva yeah the bugs are going to be in Geneva in a year you know because it's like nation's pride or something from inglorious bastards but yeah you know like a mature if there was a way to stabilize fascism at least on like a global level you would eventually out you would mature beyond having like the single figure because getting to one would be destabilizing yeah so you would have to have stable higher some stable so a stable like oligarchy of but instead of it being around something as pathetic

as access to you know a capital it's it's military prowess yeah and like this is what I mean about like Verhoeven is the prophet like his texts must be studied by the righteous man because it's like if you follow the trajectory like Robocop to total recall I mean we are living in Robocop right now like without any exaggeration or variation whatsoever and then I guess like total recall will be what happens if we ever like you know if Elon Musk ever breaks these earthly bonds and sets up his fucking you know colony on the moon or Mars or whatever but yeah I think that gets it exactly right like fat the fascism of starship troopers is what replaces capitalism and like this crass idiotic consumer culture when that eats itself

alive and finally collapses yeah with it like as you said crucially without any sort of intervention on the behalf of like humanity and a more like decent equitable like distribution of resources and as you said production like this like the starship troopers universe is what will replace the failure of capitalism and liberal democracy when it eventually crashes yeah nice to think about yeah that's good we love it well we love it we love to talk about it but David you know we mentioned our beautiful veterans and as long as we have you here I gotta ask what is your take on Trump and his fixation with the beautiful boaters I'm so happy you asked will thanks but I think he likes people that likes boats and they have big flags with his name on it I also though I am I

couldn't have dreamt this one up there's definitely and I know that like Matt and I've had conversations about this in terms of things that you kind of like considered were like maybe too dark a gag to make in like 2015 that this like fully happened in like you know 2017 the boaters is like beyond my capacity to imagine it's such a beautiful word for him to say over and over again with quotation marks with quotation marks and it's capitalized so you know but he'll bring it up at like you know he's talking about the real polls that we see and you look at the boaters thousands and thousands of boats down in Florida we're doing very well I think that it's like there really isn't anything that his people can show him at this point that suggests that he's doing a good job in any way

yeah except for like a bunch of like sunburned hogs driving in a circle on a lake in their boats but like you can see that and it's like you know so there's a bunch of boats and they all got the flag that's got your name on it sir so there's no there's nobody else it's just it's just a lake full of boat it's a totalized space of a Trump appreciation on that water so there's a whole type of person that as somebody growing up you know suburban New Jersey like I grew up in a very republican part of the state but it's a different type of republican than the the boat people that like the boaters are a type of I have a buddy from Akron who had a whole like unified theory of lake people of like as a type of like midwestern oh yeah reactionary I can I can

confirm that definitely and I think that that's like so you'd obviously be able to speak on that better than me but is that like a cousin to what we're seeing with the boaters because it feels right to me oh yeah no the midwestern boater is it's it's exactly who we've talked about it forever as the real like not the only people who vote for Trump or support him but the core the altar confers suburban Americans who really enjoy recreational excursions of some kind and who have thick who have who have basically built their politics around defending their specific pursuits now some their leisure differences depending on where they live it's different like some places it might be it might be like four wheeling or hunting or something but if you live

if you've got proximity to a lake it's getting like a like one of those flat bottled touring boats or or a little speed boat and and was zipping around until you just die of sun poisoning and we love it and like I said like that's that because there's no where there's so like you know human expression and human self actualization is such a such a constrained element in America now that that becomes the sink the libidinal sink of your life and so everything comes fixated around around protecting it and and validating it in New Jersey that was lawn shit but it's like it does seem like at some point if you have a lot of money and no actual interests that give you pleasure yeah at some point you just have to find new ways I mean I mean you know but like when

you have the money you have access to more of like like spaces that are yours or can be like you know dominated by you and your recreational pursuits like a lake being one of those like the lawn being the most perfect manifestation of like literally my property yeah the law is like the classic American plot that you own but then if you're also you know if you've got a whole community of boaters then the entire intracostal waterway could be yours it's manifest destiny it's it's just it's individual manifest destiny you tame the lawn and then you tame the lake all right well I'll keep fighting and they'll win yeah keep boating and they'll win yeah the the last thing I want to I want to bring up and this one this is out of left seal but I I need to speak on this

I think it needs to be addressed and I in particular I'm interested in Matt's ideas on this David have you been following the latest QAnon conspiracy involving the furniture company Wayfair yes I mean I would say that the the politically astute answer would be I am aware of the controversy okay I don't really feel comfortable for those who are speaking on it because it's happening so fast yeah for those who are uninitiated in the Wayfair conspiracy QAnon people have like begun looking at items that are available for purchase on Wayfair's website and they'll be things like you know a dresser an armoire a dining table and like you know like Ikea they give these you know rather bland mass produced pieces of furniture like names

and they've been matching the names of like yeah like a like a cabinet on Wayfair to the names of children that have gone missing in the United States recently and they're looking up and they're like what are you telling me that you can spend $16,000 on a filing cabinet named Sandra or something like that and there's also a kid like a you know a teenage girl that's gone missing named Sandra so like I think basically now that they've convinced themselves that Wayfair is shipping children to people in giant boxes pretending that it's furniture so Matt am I am I missing anything with this or is that a pretty accurate summary you got it started on tiktok apparently but yeah and it totally embodies that like the like the the Americans brains have been so conditioned by

convenience as ex-felf expression that they've mapped it on to everything even their lizard people conspiracies where they imagine well yeah of course if you were if you're a member of the cabal and you want a kid you just go online and order one and they ship it to you and I was I was looking at so I was looking at some of the comments on these threads and one of my favorite one was like you know they were like you know a while back a friend of mine you know ordered a an office desk from Wayfair and it wasn't quite right or they had trouble assembling it and they asked to return it to Wayfair and Wayfair allowed them to return it you know and then gave them a full refund and he's like I've always been suspicious of that it points to other sources

of funding for this company so I just like the idea that like a sort of generous customer service is now perhaps a signpost for a satanic child child sacrifice it's always been that way if they're not constantly like ripping you off on hidden fees then where do you think they're where's that money coming from it's coming from the kids that they're selling I'm disguising as you know ottomans and things like that what's incredible about that too is that like that much work to create like a conspiracy there's actually it's not hard to like learn about how trafficking actually gets done it's a real thing like a kind of a disconcerting number of people that were associated with the Trump campaign in 2016 have gone to jail for it the

guy that ran his campaign in Oklahoma did yeah but like this is it's not like a complicated deal and yet like they have to come up with these like perverse stories because they like no one else will talk to them except for the other people that wind them up it's really like fucking grim the idea of like like all that work instead of just a google search to see what this is actually like like I mean obviously it's axiomatic they don't give a shit about it like of course they don't but it's just like there's something really like deadening and gross about like the obvious pleasure that they take in devising this stuff and there's no way to ever intervene on it uh because it Trump I mean the Trump or people respond to Trump because

he is a manifestation of our social pathologies and so we share them to extent lesser extent than him because by his social position and fame he's able to be the most of all of them at once yeah but that what I was talking about that isolation like that that sense that everyone else is is is a genuine alien to you that you are an individual in like the in the sense of being like Robinson Crusoe wherever you are that means that you no one can tell you anything the idea that that knowledge and information is is collaborative that and that we like form reality through consensus that that is so antithetical to the thinking that it wouldn't even occur and if you tried to explain it to someone they would think

that you were a lizard person trying to steal their pineal gland or something I'm Matt you you mentioned that this was uh I found it's um like the early purchase on tiktok and it was uh like tiktok teens communicating this and I I like anything that um you know because we've made fun of it before but this idea that like Gen Z is going to save us and like uh today like you know they they have all the right ideas but I just like the idea of tiktok teens discovering this conspiracy investigating it but but thinking it's cool and like ordering a bathroom cabinet on Wayfair just because they want a friend to hang out with getting a quarantine bud online yeah exactly and then just being disappointed when it shows up and it's just a fucking pointing

to pointing to words or something while like dancing to a douja cat song about now anyone who is like excited for the teens that's a real thing where you know the dog you pointed something and the dog looks at your finger you know like oh look at them they're using epic soviet imagery in communist talk it's like that's like how like birian child soldiers wearing like wedding dresses into battle like it's just it's just costume it's cultural costume the reality of it is being online from the age of zero turn your brain into fucking slurry yeah the idea of people I mean finding some optimism in it is like it's not something that I personally am capable of doing but I think it comes back to again like the same idea of like

not being able to conceive of even the most outrageous perversities outside of like someone delivering you something and giving them a small tip but like in this case it's just like well these kids are gonna they'll take care of it like if you see how good they are at doing the same dances yeah they're gonna get started on social democracy yeah right all right well that is a suitably verhoeven-esque ending to this episode I'm hoping that his next movie will be about a child delivery service uh yeah furniture company masking is a giant human trafficking operation but we need to not worry about that because I do know that his next movie is about a convent in like the 17th century of lesbian belgian nuns so yes yes very excited yes on his

bullshit yes you gotta love it give give me more hook it into my veins I would like to know more like to know more about the belgian lesbian nunnery paul verhoeven please keep it up you you absolute god of a man I mean that's both paul verhoeven and to you David roth oh thanks very much man I appreciate it so uh till next time guys bye bye signing off young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future I'm doing my part I'm doing my part I'm doing my part I'm doing my part too they're doing their part are you join the mobile infantry and save the world service guarantees sr c'est