Chapo Trap House - 442 - Battle Without Honor or Humanity feat. Derek Davison & Patrick Wyman (8/3/20)

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Will’s away, but we’re joined by fan-favorite Derek Davison and host of the Tides of History podcast Patrick Wyman to discuss shrimp supply chains, the ongoing effects of the Bolivian coup, Israel and America’s militaries & the decline of empires. Derek and Patrick’s new writing substack: discontents.substack.com Bath Iron Works Strike Fund: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/LocalLodgeS6

So I'm gonna put the uh, I'm gonna put this Tyler Cohen article in the chat Yeah That's how you know it's good Hey everybody Reason you're hearing my voice this week is because will men occur has been captured and executed by patriots Or the crime of green a crown harvesting Menickers assets are have been seized and will be distributed to the bravest and most injured police officers in the states the show has in turn been given to me and

As part of this new era of chop oh and this new area of patriotism and victory over the deep state We're welcoming a Returning guest, but also a duo that we have not had before we are here with Derek Davidson returning champion But also Patrick Wyman. Hello gentlemen. Hey, thanks for having us. Thank you for having us on appreciate it our pleasure our pleasure seriously, um so We have a reading series one of the last things that will left us before he was immediately renditioned Are you guys familiar with that Tyler Cohen? Oh boy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I got thoughts

Yeah, Tyler Cohen Well, first of all the first way he gets used by thinking his name is Tyler Cohen, but he's actually Irish That's really active trip. Yeah. No, uh, if the W is in there, look at that thing. Isn't it Cowan? Yeah, it's Cowan. Yeah, but you were saying Cohen. No, I said Cowan. All right, whatever Another thing I'm doing gas landing Matt New thing we're looking forward to the results. You're insane. What are you looking forward to nothing will happen? There's no results. You're fucking crazy. What do you need to go to the hospital? No, uh, so he is George Mason professor and economics, which is like those guys are always awesome

the George Mason it produces a certain type of mind because it's sort of the epicenter of coke funding and Right-wing economics and academia. I really thought you're going with a different direction with it. It's the epicenter of coke I don't think they do coke at George Mason. I mean, but let's see. I don't know the overthrow of South American Governments, I mean this there's a connection to be made. Yeah, I don't know I just like I mean, maybe maybe Nova's changed since the last time I was there, but I feel like the Yeah Like I feel like the main thing you do there is like, yeah You drink like imperious bastard IPA and try to buy a woman off the dark web

I always think of George Mason to sort of like the party school answer to the University of Chicago That's exactly. Yes. You're like too Libertarian for Chicago economics department you wind up with there's Mason I mean if you just like scroll through if you just like scroll through the Twitter accounts of the George Mason Economics Department, you're gonna find some real some real shit in there. There's the guy who's very big into like homeschooling and free-range children There's the guy who's there's the guy who's very into a slavery was actually inefficient Like you just you really get all of the best Particular brands of right-wing crazy like that's all just there and then they've got like a couple of really good economic historians

Which is weird. So just gotta free-range children. I tell you that's the only way you're gonna get the top dollar value in the market when you bring The town square at the end of the month if they're if they've been sitting in a cage They're gonna get all stringy. They're gonna be underweight. You're not gonna be able to get a decent price Yeah, I didn't want to go to a restaurant. I can tell like the eggs. I'm having her from the cage child There was the guy for George Mason who like went to Venezuela and shot at protesters chill. Oh, no, that was chili Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, he moved to chili because chili was like his obviously that's the dream country That's that's that's that's where their boys did all their their beautiful work under Pinochet

And so he moved there to like start some sort of Bitcoin and slave trading company And then when the when the anti-government protests started, he just drove out and just started shooting at them Yeah, this is this is the freshwater school for guys who listened to Rogan But I consider Cal and the alpha of George Mason and you know How you mentioned the slavery is an efficient guy. This is definitely an article about slavery This is well some piece of advice. It's a Bloomberg opinion. So, you know, it's good Best opinions are yeah, how not to fight modern-day slavery What it surprised you to be by ending it

This is this is This is an article about bill proposed by Josh Hawley the slave free business certification act of 2020 Which is it's basically like if there's slavery in your supply chain, like you have to be Investigated companies get penalized blah blah blah like it's a it's a perfect howly thing because it doesn't really go far enough But it's enough for people who get paid for this sort of thing to be like, oh the howlies the populist Republican But this utterly because he's against slavery. Yeah, exactly There's where the bar is right there well Cal and he's I mean the like the first sentence of this piece

Is really just like sets the table. Yeah, and the fact that it continues after Is is something else? Yeah, so the Uh, it's okay as the general principle companies should cut off commercial Relations with any known sources of slavery yet this law calls for mandatory corporate investigation and auditing backed by CEO certification with Significant penalties for non-compliance the investigatory process is supposed to include interviews of both workers and management in the supply chain Such a get-tough approach has a superficial appeal yet placing the any an investigative burden on companies may not lead to better outcomes Consider the hypothetical case of a US retailer buying a shipment of seafood routed through Vietnam

It fears that some of the seafood may have come from Thailand where there are print credible reports of temporary slavery supply chain Well, I mean it's temporary everyone. Everybody dies eventually. Yeah, technically all slavery I am there's no slavery and perpetuity because we do don't exist in perpetuity. Yeah, yeah temporary I just didn't really know what to say there Like it's like the argument is like well, we just kind of kidnap them and it's sort of like an extended prank show And then we let them go again. It's it's an apprenticeship. I mean we It's like yeah, it's like the mandate system like we have to you know

Give them some skills and then we let them go and they can make me with the irish free state of slavery How does it how does it find out if those reports are true? Yeah, how do you know if anything is true? I mean, what is the card? Macartals music right there. Yeah, why do you know? Why do you know that's a chair? Is that really air your breathing? I'm asking it's Vietnamese business partner who may not even know the truth and the truth It might be reluctant to say if it did is unlikely to resolve that it's yeah, no, I mean why ask anyone anything It is unlikely that businesses even larger and profitable ones will be in a position to hire teams of investigative journalists for their international inputs I

I like that's not how you write. I love the idea that like the journalists are gonna act as international OSHA Yeah, they're gonna get daily beast people who recap them are on this They'll get they'll get credible wonderful journalists Who's? Whose companies all depend on ad dollars from the company that's hiring them. It's perfect Yeah, what I what I loved about this is like I instantly thought of Stephen Donziger the guy who suit like represented the suits against Exxon mobile and yeah, it's like well The large and profitable companies seem to have more than enough resources to dig through that guy's fucking

Garbage and ruin his life. Yeah, you know why they couldn't do this Yeah, how many how many money do they drop on destroying a guy whose crime was beating them in a lawsuit? Yeah, I mean look you can you can snap up. There's a lot of reporters who have rage quit their jobs recently You could snap up Andrew Sullivan, Barry Weiss. I mean, you know really really big names Yeah, a lot of people with a lot of deep investigative skills. Yeah, exactly Yeah, I love the idea but like Barry just like waddling around like a Manufacturing plant and Shinjin just being like hey, is this fun for you? Like just seeing like I don't know how she would even I I don't think she knows what work is so she's starting out from like a

Real disadvantage anyway, but in her at the idea of her interacting with other people You know what make it a show. I'm not saying that this is a good idea But I'm saying I do want to watch it you're what you're describing is like that the 2020 equivalent of the simple life But with Barry Weiss and slavery bring it back. Those were more populous times I tell you what? I am picturing Kevin D. Williamson descending from the rafters upside down No, like it's like a vampire which is what he is No, yeah bring back the simple life, but

Yeah, either they will ignore the law or they will stop dealing with poorer and less transparent company countries So rather than buying shrimp from Southeast Asia that retailer might place an order for salmon from Norway Where it is quite sure there's no slavery going on Awful if we stopped dealing with poor country There's a terrible terrible price to pay though, right Felix right no So I'm not gonna like the this entire thing is written. It's very dry like Cohen protect Uh, he writes like an economics textbook, uh, just a very dry boring if Style but his main argument is that

The global race to the bottom in labor prices that sometimes includes temporary slavery and supply chains is good Not only because it supposedly increases the wealth these poorer nations where labor cost pennies But it does the most important thing the most important possible thing that we can do Which is lower cost for American consumers never mind that for shrimp for shrimp We're sending fucking shipping vessels halfway across or entirely across the world and back as long as it costs like You know 40 cents less proof shrimp. It's worth Felix. It is the leanest protein. What do you want us to do? Yeah, no, there's no there's no coastal area area in America you can get shrimp from or Max is already we're closer I mean, this is this is of a piece with a

tendency in libertarian kind of right-wing economic discussions To set up this false choice for people like you can either care about the poor and Disadvantaged globally or you can care about the poor and disadvantaged in the United States But you can't do both Because if you do something to alleviate poverty globally, it's going to raise prices for people in the United States if you you know something to Undermine, you know if you if you want to protect poor people you have to keep the Walmart open and shoveling out cheap schlock So they can afford to buy it, but that means that the poor globally have to suffer and it's because we can't ever consider like

raising taxes on rich people and funding, you know Uh, you know kind of redistributing wealth. We can't that's beyond the pale So it's either it sets up this competition between, you know a domestic Underclass and the global underclass. Yeah, well, we're not going to give them decent lives or or you know any democratic control of their workplace or You know a more egalitarian economy But the shrimp will be cheaper and that's really what it means to be a free working class american Oh, it's the only vector of

Of real freedom anybody has that's why everyone's free so many people are freaking out about being asked to curtail things like shopping and going out because that is what it is to be free in america It's the only thing it is to be free in america and the lubricant for it is cheap fucking consumer products And everybody else has to has to bend to that because we are the big Gnashing mouth at the end of the global supply chain and if we're not consuming everybody's surplus the entire thing falls apart It's the most advanced form of this like artificial imposition of scarcity Where like if you if you're making this argument on a grand scale like you because obviously there's enough for everybody If we try like if if you did even the most minor forms of redistribution

You people would not have to go hungry. That's like it's it's very straightforward. The math is not hard They could have shrimp. They could even have shrimp and shrimp is delicious, man. Like so So but you have to do this like elaborate ideological dance that you don't even recognize as ideology in Tyler Cowan's case where you have to pretend that we have a shortage of resources In order to justify squeezing absolutely everybody for it Like because otherwise the like if you're just like, oh, no, there's there's enough here Then the entire argument is ridiculous on its face. It's ridiculous for a lot of reasons But like like on an a priori level the whole argument is ridiculous

Right. Well, and then and then creating creating the the conflict like, you know, we said earlier like it's it's completely absurd to say that like The lowest tier of American workers, which is a shit ton of people Benefit from the exploitation of the third world the exploitation of developing countries Is literally what is used to screw over The most vulnerable American workers like and I think it's really depressing how we We the broader kind of I don't know left-ish politically oriented people

Have totally lost sight of that since like the just total Failure of like the anti globalization movement since that I'll just like shit out Like nobody really has a sense of It's like basically we walk we lost the kind of uh The the war with trade And now the only people sort of talking about it are weird bright-wing populace that aren't going to do anything about it at all But we'll pay basic lip service to it about we're gonna bring jobs back And uh, it worked it worked. I think one of the reasons that that argument was given up on and you know

The left's position in trade in a lot of cases is sort of the left and left is in stasis in a lot of cases is like You know this article is interesting to me because it's incredibly ideological But not quite in the way that kawin thinks it is the I mean the fundamental ideology of this free free trade economics, which is Incredible it's you're a good person for buying these cheap goods from these exploited workers in these incredibly poor charity Because right right like kawin says oh well, you know if we if we make it so that you can't take part in any supply chain That has even temporary slavery it

It uh takes away Western capital and attention from these places so like not only not only is it a fundamental right that You know shrimp should cost you know fucking three dollars for a pound because you brought them in across the world Which is a completely sustainable thing we can do in perpetuity. Uh, you should feel like a good person because the act of buying That shrimp from someone in thailand who's a temporary slave It increases awareness of thailand It makes them rich and it makes them it makes them rich I didn't know I didn't know it was a thailand Yeah, yeah, it increases it increases the uh, their wealth so they won't be slaves, which is you know always how slavery works

Well, that's I mean that's the other part of it is there's this perpetual like If we stop doing this if we you know try to actually take steps to to divest from from you know Bad countries or countries that uh engage in practices or companies that engage in practices that we find Unfavorable will lose our leverage to influence them to be better But we never use the leverage anyway, and and you know, I mean this is sort of this is the leverage that you Yeah Is the leverage and and then you get them to change and it's like we can't ever exercise The leverage that we have but we also you know if we give gave up that leverage it would somehow be worse

It's almost like we benefit from the horrifying policies that were constructed to adapt to us global hegemony There's I my favorite thing about Tyler Cowan is that there's just absolutely no thought in his mind That a corporation would ever act in a way. That's not blatantly psychopathic That like the idea that you could create a series of incentive structures to get corporations to Not rely on slave labor like that that just would that like given a choice and Tyler Cowan's mind They're always going to go with the slaves if that's a possibility like that there is absolutely nothing you could do There's no amount of a probrium you could heap on them to make them be any other way

No, I mean he in some ways he does have a point. He's like, well, they're not gonna not use whatever not use slaves Like and the only thing that's gonna stop them would be actual Like legal and and financial penalties for doing it. That's it. Yeah, but he doesn't want that We have like far fewer. I mean like we can do that domestically and you know it being Overseas and out of sight and out of mind We can turn a blind eye to it and also like even if we didn't even if really you know I don't care if that's slavery business Like it's not like we could do anything about it. So that's great. We can say oh our hands are tied

That's totally true though what Patrick says about how like so, yeah If you're saying no, it's no good to use actual legal mechanisms Then yeah, there needs to be some sort of like social cost for doing something like participated fucking slavery and his Underlying assumption, which I think is valid is no the profit seeking maximum will mean that corporations will always seek slavery And it's like well that means that you just made an argument why it must be abolished Like there is no That you yourself are saying this is a system that will only seek the most psychopathic and and and immoral outcome Agreed upon by all like those certain like don't get postmodern. We know what that means slavery is a good example

How is that in any way? A defensible system because if enough money is spent on a product that is built in part by slavery You will raise awareness of it people will put slavery ribbons on their car And then before you know someone will record a fuck slavery video and before you know it Done in thailand is just as rich as america and then we keep going to poor importations until we find the mole people Cunan is looking for and they are the permanent Uh lowest cost labor on the supply chain. Hmm. I think you're on to something. Yeah. All right. Well, that was um you know con always interesting always thought provoking but uh

The mention of the gmu professor went to chile made me think of another uh Another land american nation that has experienced some george mason style reform Uh, bolivia the ania's government has postponed the elections setting Concern of corona virus though. I don't think that's completely the reason derek. Could you talk a little bit about? What's going on in bolivia both their response to the corona virus and uh, Maybe maybe a little wall. They're pulling over everyone's eyes with us. Yeah, so I mean the ania's government Uh, you know janin ania's came to power last fall when yeah after a coup

I think we can all agree at this point. It was a coup Uh forced evo moralis out of office forced him out of the country um Her her mandate if she had one, I mean she really kind of seized power There was no like it was later ratified by the supreme court, but there was no like formal constitutional process by which she became president um

But she she did become president now. She's serving in this interim capacity with the goal uh Her entire reason for occupying the office is to get bolivia to a general election And elect a legitimate government again. Um, she has now postponed the election twice um, it was supposed to happen in may Uh, and then bolivia went into lockdown over the the pandemic Uh, and then it was supposed it was rescheduled for september

um The ostensible reason why it's been postponed again is that bolivian authorities suddenly found hundreds of dead bodies in uh, Santa Cruz and lapaz that were um, oh, oh look, they all died of the coronavirus I guess that means the the outbreak is is still bad. Uh, this seems very fishy to me, but okay Uh, so now they've decided they can't possibly have a safe election um

On september 6th, and they've postponed it again Uh until october 18th. The real issue. I think is that polling Indicates that the candidate uh for morales movement for socialism party, uh, louis arché Uh is likely to win The election or at least to finish first in a first round Um, he may not be able to avoid a runoff, but he seems to be the favorite Uh to become the next president and this is of course, um, you know, they they just engineered this coup to get morales and his party out of power

Uh, so there is a uh a concern That I think that uh, you know, they don't want to hold the election again and just kind of return M.A.S. Uh to power now, uh, there was a letter Uh that one of the real right-wing uh freaks who were involved in the uh, uh the coup Fernando Camacho Wrote to oas recently asking and this was before the uh the revelation of

Uh these dead bodies that we just discovered and oh my god, we can't have an election Um prior to that he wrote a letter Uh camacho is running for president. He's not very popular. He's pretty fringe, right guy Um, but he was very prominent during the coup He's he wrote a letter to the organization of american states Which if you you know recall back in in back last year played a Significant role in kind of building the case to to oust morales Wrote a letter to the oas asking the oas to step in and do something to prevent

This election from happening sighting Uh among other things The idea that that the election was just going to return M.A.S. to power and oh my god, we can't have that So that was a little bit of a seems like a little bit of a mask off moment Um, but that's where things stand. There's now supposed to be an election on october 18th I suspect it won't happen then either Um, and they'll try to pull it up push it off again um

There is a substantial has been a substantial outbreak of the coronavirus in bolivia Uh, a lot of that seems to have been due to agnes's government's Um in competence. It's failure to lock down properly. It's decision to reopen too fast um, so yeah, there's there's a a a a lot of Not great stuff happening. Uh, and doesn't seem like we're moving toward a resolution anytime soon um Fuck I like these notes are completely out of order. Sorry um

Mr. Bean is hosting today's episode of chapeau Can you talk briefly about uh, the agnes government has It's accused dozens of elected ma s officials and social movement leaders of sedition charges. Uh, There's started it's sort of like a ergonican light type deal the perpetrators of the coup accusing everyone of cooing the government Particularly patricia archa Bayer of vento Has been hit with those but I've also I've also seen that in response to the

Uh, the postpone election that there are significant strikes like the a lot of labor movements promised a general strike I haven't been able to see anything after The ultimatum are I know that the uh teachers are on strike over privatization. That's a different thing How is there any word on how the strikes are going if they could pressure the government into Holding elections, maybe or maybe just like not harass Uh, ma s officials with the show trials. Yeah, I haven't I mean I haven't seen much about

Uh, this there have been some strikes. There have been some Demonstration since the announcement that they were postponing the vote again um I haven't seen Uh, like a move toward a general like mass Uh, mobilization, but I think it's building to that Um, I've only seen kind of reports of a demonstration here. There was something in uh, Al Alto, I think

Uh, last week You know, I've seen you know, kind of reports of that I think you know, I I want I don't know if there's going to be anything bigger than that in the You know in the lead up to what's now supposed to be the october election I I do think uh, this is this is you know, it's building toward a crisis is building toward a breaking point um, and if as I suspect

Uh, they try to push it off again like we get into Early september and they're like, well, sorry. We can't you know, it's still not ready to hold an election Um, that that's when I think things will really start to get combustible now I I could be totally wrong about that and it could happen Uh sooner, but I I think it's probably You know, I I don't know. I mean maybe the third time's the charm or something like that, but um, I think that that that There is some frustration About the delay, but I don't see it

getting Really bad Unless they try to do it again, which I think they will so it will get bad Yeah, get bad how like you mean full-blown civil war or just uh, no I think you'll see a return to a lot of the stuff that happened right after Morales was ousted. You'll see uh protests like more violent kind of energetic protests that are um countered with some heavy

Uh police and and security violence on the part of the agnes government Again, that's that's a step on the road to the kind of thing you're talking about. I don't I don't know that we're Uh close to that yet though. All right. Well good times ahead every every western president I've seen of this by the way is just um completely straight and yes calls off election over coronavirus fears Yeah, I mean it's sort of I kind of swallowed the uh, the line from them that that oh well the the pandemic I mean they can't have an election obviously Uh, it's been yeah, there's been no kind of interrogation of that much in the way that there was no

uh real interrogation of the All the evidence that's come out since Morales was forced from power to suggest strongly that this was an engineered Uh cool and and you know upending all of the media narrative that we saw when it happened Uh, there's been very little kind of reflection about that in the press And these are the same people who are just have kittens every time they just imagine trump even suggesting Things postponing the election. Yeah, they're like what what they could do it. What do you want? And this isn't even I mean, you know, I'm not going to defend donald trump

But but the anus government is completely illegitimate at this point. There is no justification for her still being in office Um, she had one job When she came when she kind of took over Which was to get bolivia to a new election and instead she's made you know substantial changes to its foreign policies She's been, you know, uh putting down protests violently She's been chasing mas members around threatening to throw them in prison Um, there's no justification for any of this that she really uh, there's no um, I mean Had she you know held an election in one then you could say, okay, that's a legitimate government

but it's it's uh even worse i think in bolivia's case because there really is Uh such a desperate need for an election as soon as possible Uh to put a real government in place Well, there there is some lighter news On the other side of the world matt mentioned mr. Bean and The most moral army in the world. They had a mr. Bean moment Uh about a week ago in uh the mount dove area uh israel, um

Well, they had first claimed that uh Uh hezbollah shot a cornet missile at a mercava tank, but what happened after You know as they say in up worthy videos Was uh, it will shock you israeli troops shot at each other Because they were they were convinced that uh Members of the unit other responding units were members of hezbollah and completely freaked out But uh derrick, can you talk a little bit about the uh The tensions between israel and lebanon and hezbollah right now because it's i did uh

I did see that israel is claiming that they will hold lebanon accountable for Hezbollah hitting at them at all But how much of this recent this recent flare-up is just israeli incompetence how much of it is just them trying to Sort of trump up this border threat for political reasons It seems to me to be mostly incompetence um and maybe um Kind of accidental although i i hesitate to use that word with in in this context, but the the israelis have been

Uh, you know engaging in airstrikes missile strikes drone strikes in syria Pretty much it will uh for the last several years always targeting uh iranian forces in syria or iranian-backed militias Uh in syria, but they have been um for at least A couple of years it seems like i mean i i don't know the the extent of it but Because nobody will really talk about it, but they seem to be uh have been taking a uh a A more kind of kid gloves approach to hezbollah fighters and so there have been incidents like um

You know the israelis doing a drone strike on a on a vehicle that was carrying hezbollah fighters where they did this kind of A weird double tap with a like warning shot first That gave the the fighters time to like stop the truck and get out and then they bombed the truck Um, there was a an israeli drone strike in uh southern beirut a few months ago That was meant to target hezbollah, but it was done in such a way as to avoid Causing any casualties and i think the the reason is uh, you know the israelis want to destroy Uh, hezbollah's war material, especially in syria. They want to break any iranian supply chain to hezbollah

Um, but they don't want it might it might have you know parts of it might have been produced by slave labor Well, yeah, I mean that's obviously the reason yes uh But they don't want to do something that forces an escalation and part of the reason for that is the last time Israel and hezbollah had a real confrontation in the mid-2000s. Israel didn't come off very well Um, and I think they would rather avoid uh a repeat of that Um, so they seem to be you know, they seem to have been trying to avoid causing casualties Um, but they carried out a strike

um I think uh a couple of weeks ago Uh in near demascus Uh in which one hezbollah fighter was killed And this is where I again I said like I hesitate to call it an accident because this is an intentional air strike an intentional missile strike or whatever it was Um, but I I I feel pretty strong that they didn't intend

To catch a hezbollah fighter in in in this strike. They they probably Uh, we're looking at another iranian group or maybe some iranian personnel Um, and this guy may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time from the israeli perspective Uh, but that immediately of course, you know raises the issue of of a counter strike Uh by hezbollah, which which sort of You know has to do something. I mean it would be Uh detrimental to hezbollah's I think Uh image reputation

To just kind of let that go and and not do anything and this is where you get into sort of uh, You know scuttlebot about you know, is there's some kind of secret arrangement between the israelis and hezbollah to kind of leave each other alone For the most part and of course, nobody can actually say that because it would discredit, you know, they'd be embarrassed by it And I don't I don't that's speculation, but it's one of the things that I've seen written about recently um, so You know, this kind of forces You anticipate some kind of response from hezbollah. Hezbollah leaders have said, you know, we will retaliate for this

Um, but it's unclear, you know, what what form that retaliation is going to take And I think israel's been on a little bit of a high alert in the north Neither neither party really wants a conflict right now, which is again kind of why I think It was not this strike was not intended to kill any hezbollah fighters There's there's no upside. I mean the israeli government is a wash in protests over Uh, you know, benjamin netanyahu's corruption trial. It's it's struggling with the uh, the coronavirus because netanyahu reopened the economy too fast and Uh, you know, it's it they've seen a huge spike in cases

Um, there this isn't a great time for him to be starting a war because it's not clear that he has Uh, the full support of the israeli public behind him hezbollah is in a similar boat, uh, you know, lebanon is in complete implosion Politically and economically and hezbollah has been trying for several years now to become Uh, more politically oriented. I mean, they still have obviously an armed wing But they've really been trying to function more and more as a political party, which consequently means that they're Uh, they're suffering for the political chaos that's happening in lebanon and, uh, you know, there've been anti-government protests going on since october

Including protests against hezbollah um, and so they're in a position also where Um, like any any conflict between israel and hezbollah is going to pull the rest of lebanon in Uh, and so, you know before they get involved in something like that, you know, hezbollah Uh, leadership needs to be sure that the rest of lebanon is going to actually follow them into the Into the breach and this isn't a situation where I think they can be confident Of that. So I I don't think Either party here wants a full blown war, but they may

Be on a sort of tit for tat kind of roller coaster for a while Yeah, I saw yesterday that israel claimed they had stopped a four-man cell from planting ied's on the border It was one of those like, uh Sort of very it looks like a modern warfare 2 montage video that the idf account tweets out But I don't know the veracity. Yeah, that was that was in golan. It's it's yeah, it's hard to say. I mean they make They claim some things they don't claim some some things that are obviously, you know, uh, israeli attacks And it's hard to go by what the idf, uh claims at this point One thing that I think has been kind of interesting about this is israel made one of those shitty videos about lebanon

And it was uh, it actually got copyright strike, which was pretty I guess dmc Is the only thing more powerful than any nation or any president because it's happened to trump so many times but uh it The new thing seems to be well, they've they've done this with iran for a few years But I had not seen it with lebanon before which is israel in america saying Whoa, uh, you know You're experiencing brutal austerity brutal poverty hyperinflation sex like

It's because all your money is going to fighting us which is I mean like look, there's the fun gaslighting you do with your friends and then there's this Any american aligned I thought it was it it actually it made me think a lot about um Patrick what you recently wrote about imperial wars coming home uh Just any imperial Any imperial power or like imperial proxy like israel accusing anyone else of that Oh, god, it's just like it's hilarious especially because to speak to some of the stuff that derrick was talking about with israel

Like whenever you have anybody who's trying to be a hegemon Or whether it's a global hegemon or a regional hegemon like you're domestic in your foreign politics or intimately tied together to the extent that like if you have a regime that's on reasonably shaky ground internally any sort of For like like you run the risk with any sort of foreign entanglement If it doesn't go the way that you want it to go that you under that you totally shoot your legitimacy at home too So like so yeah, so it makes sense that like you might have some sort of special arrangement with hezbollah if uh If if you're afraid that if that goes even a little bit south You're gonna end up with people on the streets protesting you and I don't know. I mean, I just think like

It's it we're in a we're in a weird time in a weird place given the us's position as a pretty Obviously declining global hegemon and so that does weird things with it all of its proxies to overseas and it's just like It creates a global context where there's just a lot of weird stuff happening and a lot of points of friction and opportunities for stuff to happen I mean to put it to put it broadly you talk about the the periphery coming back into the empire and I I almost brought this up earlier with that just brilliant galaxy brain Cowan article but The first thing I thought I when he said that was just like

Oh, this is if we talk about peripheries, you know, the chicken's coming home to roost. Yeah the guest worker program Is just a perfect example. It's like oh, okay. Well, we are We figured out kind of like a a free trade where we could like massively exploit people in developing countries But what would be more efficient than doing that? massively exploiting people from developing countries

In our own country, hey Hey, this is because you don't have to like, you know, it's kind of a it's kind of a door-dash approach to it just bring them here It's super convenient. I mean, it's it's everything. It's it's for it's policing. It's trade It's all just sort of saturating and bleeding into everything and some of it's by design and some of it's an externality, but It's amazing and you just can't be an imperial power without there being domestic consequences of that whether they're like literally material like it's just like When you see dudes on the streets of portland or any other city wearing camo holding m4s Um with optics on them like you're you're just literally using the equipment that you've developed to fight imperial wars

on the streets of american cities So there's the material aspect of it but then there's also like the series of attitudes that go along with having an empire and Have it and feeling the need to define and police the border like it's not just that like border patrol and dhs gets all of the really like Gung-ho like like fucked up people out of the out of the military It's also that like when when you just when you task an internal security service with policing imperial boundaries Like you're gonna get

sets of attitudes and like ideas about exclusion and inclusion and who gets to count as who That that are gonna blow back. I mean, I think that's like it's like you're just creating the structural circumstances where that's where that's inevitable I mean, I I'm really still sort of like Rolling around this idea in my head But one of the things that also sort of occurred to me was that I wouldn't want people to look at something like portland and come to the conclusion that You know that kind of repression is taking place because the people they're repressing are some kind of an actual legitimate threat to power and I feel like the

mistake that people Make a lot of the times when this happens Is to think oh well, they're cracking down on them because they're running scared from you know These like left disanarchists that pose a real threat and it's like come on like use your head like we would never Think that about any other country about any other conflict in any other country like They don't start fights that they don't think they can win First of all, they know that they're weak

It's not a testament to the threat of some kind of organized left. It's a testament to the to their weakness We wouldn't for example say oh, wow. Look how ruthless the state of israel is being to palestinians Wow, the palestinians must really really be a threat to them. Wow. They must really, you know They must really be challenging power and you know be uh be very close to sort of like a destabilizing kind of israeli control over Over their territories. It's like no this is happening because we are very much on the back foot and because it's easy it's easy they they're Doing this stuff because they think they can get away with it not because there's any kind of like

You know organized left that poses any real threat to You know an increasingly authoritarian right coming from uh Coming from you know inside the house if you want to have an a an internal security service a genuine honest to god Internal security service you need to create the kinds of conditions that justify having one right like you have to You have to create the sets of images that you can use as a legitimation of your Uh as a legitimation of that it it sort of made me think of uh the thing john dole and said about uh How militaries that are mainly used for uh

Internal security specifically the idea of how they start to falter after a few generations how The way they're used becomes very evident when they're fighting against uh, uh A an enemy outside their own borders. I mean specifically thinking of israel in lebanon Uh in 15 years ago And how you know those expensive mercavas everything they just heard it to fucking death traps they Now how they just end up shooting at each other out of sheer terror um

I guess it's sort of a little bit of i don't know It's a little bit of the opposite thing in america where we do have this military that in a conventional war like uh You know the first couple weeks of iraq or afghanistan And it does what it's supposed to do it uses the trillions of dollars of technology and and uh overwhelming manpower to Roll over forces that it should roll over on a conventional battlefield But it slowly bled out and just bleeding money and blood like a stuck pig for generations Acting as an internal security service

so When yeah, the war comes home and the same the same technology the same people in a lot of quick cases is uh have brought up Are used for internal security Yeah, the only thing they can do is sort of Do this thing that's actually quite similar to what israel does militarily what they've done In syrian a lot of cases, which is just sort of like cherry pick these targets that they can Look terrifying striking like if you watch them like if you watch those dhs guys or like whatever kind of mishmash of federal agencies

Or whoever these people are exactly I mean some combination of like some combination of like three or four different federal agencies, right? Like if you watch them operate you're not looking at like tactical geniuses here Like these are not people who are like these are not guys who are who are reading through citities or like are like You know, what do we really do if we get face to face in a failings? Like how are we gonna handle that like they're not watching for like they're not watching for threats That's the most amazing thing about it is that it's just like there's nothing particular like they're not fucking You know brown shirt militia like they're

paul blart portland soldier like it's it's really kind of Deprofessionalized, I guess is the word. I don't really know how to describe it. It feels it feels more Slapped ash and I mean some of that too. I think maybe has to do with sort of the general decline of like The military is sort of like a like a unified Uh, I don't even why would anyone join the fucking military at this point like the number of you know, congratulations Here's your gun. You're on food stamps. And also there's the thing with like an expanding uh a huge expansion in the number of

Uh of federal police offices like the dhs in the last couple decades is largely, you know expanded And ice and stuff Like there's there is an actual there of course in america is no limit to You know the hotdog neck psychos who would like to beat somebody up and not get in trouble for it And in fact get praised but there is a actual limit on the number of people like that who will have other Like attributes that you would want in an employee like competence basic intelligence impulse control uh, you know weight uh in a mad negligible care category and There clearly is more demand for just people whose

bottom line uh Qualification is desire to carry out violence from on behalf of the state than there is any underlying Uh other standards because from what I've heard the dhs guys are like the guys who couldn't get anywhere else Yeah, and think about like it are actual military The way that that functions as a purveyor of violence is a increasingly automated Via drone strikes or b outsourced to a very specific Uh group of people who see a great deal of combat like is like special ops guys Who are going on tour after tour after tour after tour after tour and doing a lot of stuff

And then you have just kind of the mass of dudes So if you're dhs and you're recruiting um, and like you maintain recruiting offices at all the major military bases Like you're not getting the special ops guys because they can go on to a lucrative career in Private security. Um, you can work as a bodyguard. You could I mean if you're if you're one of the navy seals And you've got a knack for branding you can become a leadership consultant Uh, like those are not the guys who were joining epic You could do epic uh instagram shit with like a shirt where like kelvin is pissing on a karan Exactly, it's like you sell uh, you sell coffee for a 500 markup that you got from yeah

I mean you've got you've got your own cb you've got your own cbd brand Like that's how you know you've made it and the in the that in the tactical instagram world But like those are not the dudes who are joining dhs and going and like hitting hitting the 50 year old disabled cb three times and failing to make it that Like that's like those are not like you're not getting the soup the super scary Uh, like that's the thing when I saw that video. That's like I thought he was like a big husky team And I was like, oh man. Yeah, he's probably like a foot. He's probably like a high school football player and then came on Yeah, he's like 54

That was that is a guy who like makes polite conversation at home depot and they didn't move him an inch No, like I mean he was in fairness. He was like he was a collegiate wrestler And so those guys have a slightly different attitude toward pain sure at the same time. You probably enjoyed that He's like he's watched vision quest one too many times and so But but like I mean you've got a baton and you're you've got two hands on it And you're really getting into it and you can't move the guy like that's a you problem at that point Maybe you could practice on a pinata Well, I mean one thing I think has always has

fascinated me about like the operator aesthetic that we've gotten in the past few years is operators sort of I'm obsessed with seals like I love I have a like every few weeks I like just search for seal arrested because there's so many stories of like a navy steel Are there any like adorable misunderstandings where they're like, oh, no this this little sea world guy wandered into a shopping mall Um, unfortunately. No, there aren't there. There aren't that many cute stories about, you know, the cute kind of seal Getting a DUI or anything by accident, but uh

The navy seals love The uncute kind, you know Stealing $6,000 of them killing three guys to cover it up Going to prison forever, but I think it's interesting because they replaced uh The james jesus engel tins the frank carlucci's people like that the sort of old network of ivy league spies that would You know in bezel millions of dollars and go to libya or show up at literally every assassination of the uh middle part of the 20th century and

Those old guys the carlucci's the engel tins the wilson's They represented their era in that they were part of this, you know Uh, so they were part of this social network, uh, they They exemplified sort of like post-war social bonds and uh, the marriage of old american families and sort of like new post-war striver types and they Used both sort of like america's incredible economic might at the time and also, uh Uh, constantly misused this technology to try and kill castro with exploding underwear and shit like that

But the new guys their replacements the operators They're interesting to me because they're lionized In a way that these previous guys weren't and they're also Their main thing seems to be like they will kill anyone at any time for any reason That's the thing that's that is lionized and I think that this isn't that this the idea that that they're like Kind of like cowboys. Yeah, you know or like samurai that like don't have a They don't have a feudal lord. They're like free like it that's kind of the myth of like a

Of a gun for hire, which americans sort of love. I'm curious as to I want to bounce something off y'all I'm curious as to what you think of this is like that there's a particular way in which operator culture and like the tactical stuff that you see on That you see especially on instagram that like it's a weird outgrowth of a particular kind of bro culture So like bro culture is deeply intertwined with it Which means that there are some deep insecurities intertwined with it and some like there's just some weird Psychological stuff going on that I don't know if would have been there a couple of decades ago I just I'm so I have I have a theory that that was actually cultivated by those institutions Mm-hmm and brought in because like they needed a I think

Like they they meaning whatever that the state apparatus is that that now benefit from sort of outsourcing the military to more less accountable kind of Organizations, they needed this to look appealing in some way. I mean like I have no idea But I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me Like if you think about it that lacks all the dignity and respect in the things that like your relationship to um civil service all the things that people Sort of like that. I think come from a noble place

About uh about the idea of the military, you know in so far as it has ever even for a moment represented that Like the operator thing if you were to like 20 years ago You know pitch that to some, you know farm boy who was like, you know, I I want to serve my country You know, I want to have a sense of purpose Because he's 18 and dumb and doesn't know what the military actually does But it you know, it occupies this myth and they're like, well, what if he did this instead? He'd be like, what the fuck is that? So I think it's my theory that the bro thing is totally astroturfed in

By the state in order to make this like, okay Well, you don't get the kind of dignity and respect that we generally associate with the military Right, but you get to be a fucking cool badass cowboy. No, I I agree with that I think it's a modern invention and like a modern effort by the state Because it's the only way they can make a military career seem individualistic in a way that will appeal to a certain type of young person right Well, they're replacing the Like the the the thing that amber's talking about like the thing about

About purpose and and you know the dignity of serving your country like that the the the the the sales pitch there is like you're part of a team But the whole pitch of the operators is that they're special. They're tier one They're the elite and that means you have to create an entire specific culture around that to make it Yes, attractive in an individualistic way and that reflects the the shift of like the social order towards like Towards a point where people can't even really like metabolize any kind of Pitch to them that is not on the level of this will make you cool. This will make your life better because Social like values have sort of been suffused out of the public space. Yeah, I mean the way that they The way that they made like they marketed being the tip of the imperial spear for Americans in 50 60 years ago

Or just the western spear was like, you know spy movies. They Change spies like the actual guys the wilson's and the Angletons who are just like Dour Mormons and other types of freaks who just sort of wordlessly shuffled around the globe Jacking off in the corner while they executed Patrice Lumumba and Embezzling money. They made them into like these cool guys who have sick gadgets and get laid and always say the correct cool funny thing And yeah, similarly for these guys who I think What do you think? What do you think an actual operator is like someone who is? Killed countless people and just dead in things inside that make you human. They're probably

Incredibly fucked up volatile and Live kind of a joyless lives But yeah to market that you have to make it so that yeah, they're the only ronin led They're the only ronin led. They're the only individuals left in this country. I always think about that Did you ever see that navy commercial where it's like do you want to be buying a minivan for your fat family? Or would you like to be a seal? it's like

Did you it's one of the most ideological things I've ever seen and it's like I'd rather be with my family But those are the two genders. Those are the two genders in In late imperial America is you either get to be a fat slob with a minivan Like you get to be broadcasting from your from your shitter as I am at the moment or you get to be a navy seal That's what you like. That's what you get the I mean all I could think about is we're having this conversation about the operators Is the dudes with the hatchets? Like that's what you become you become the dudes who are getting issued the tactical hatchet to to kill unarmed people Like that's the like the crazy 88 like I don't yeah, I don't actually

Yeah, no, there so there was a there was a great the hatchet part you did. Okay. Oh, I thought everybody everybody knew the hatchet part No, there was a there was a one team of navy seals They decided their thing was going to be that they had hatchets They had like tactical hatchets and that they were going to use those to Yeah, that they were going to use That's yeah, it was like 2007. So it it was in the immediate after it was in the kill bill era Uh, so yeah, no, that's like it's it's entirely plausible. Yeah So but like that's how you end up with with the guys with hatchets

Um, the only the only like uh navy seal that I ever met in person Was a former olympic swimmer, uh, who was the dumbest motherfucker I ever knew Like he was like he could barely make it through A school that was designed to get him through it on an athletic scholarship like and and that now he's like now He's a businessman. He's a successful businessman Yeah, fish brain fish brain. Yeah, he knows the business secrets of uh, of uh, jesse ventura and all the operators Yeah, look like I can watch it. I can watch choco willing. I can I can watch a choco video and enjoy it a great deal I watched a 16 minute video of him talking to uh, one of his buddies about uh, about squats

Just like do you do you just fucking get after it or don't you? Do you do it or like and I love that like I like I'm a I'm a proud bro I could I could watch that all day But um, I think if you're building the tip of your imperial spear out of those dudes You're gonna end up you you in you inevitably end up in the hatchet place I think too like it's not just that you're building your Imperial spear out of those dudes. It's that you're building those dudes. I think there's a there's a an element of this that um

It's becoming harder and harder to pretend that The wars that that we wage are are somehow in defense of something uh, and are not just purely imperialist offensive conflicts like 40 or 50 years ago during the cold war you could pitch somebody join the military and like you're defending the country There's a threat. We're under threat even as recently as 9 11. You could make that appeal. It was absurd, but uh, you know These 20 guys flew planes into okay. We're under threat. It's an existential threat. We're gonna, you know, we're all in in mortal danger

Defend the country. You there's there's no Pitch for that anymore and yet here we are in you know, eight countries fighting, you know variations of a video game conflict uh that have no basis in in defending anything and and your pitch I think Uh, it has to be something else like that. You can do this and it'll be cool Like you'll you'll you'll get to go crack some skulls if that appeals to you or you get to go like do extreme You know extreme sports shit, whatever it is like whatever appeals to you on a sort of personal level Because there's no motivation anymore for uh, like, you know, do you want to defend your country?

Do you want to you know defend your family that that's absurd? There's nothing there's no conflict like that happening and it hasn't been for a long time But we've run out like we don't we can't even pretend anymore Uh, that there's something like that that there's a component of that that's that goes into uh to serve and the Right and it shows it shows that they're like enlistment numbers because like, you know You had like again cold war stuff. It was also sort of coercive, right? And so is like the post 9 11 stuff because you could be like, well, what you don't you don't want to protect us It's really dangerous. There's foreign threats. There's threats abroad and now they're like do you want to protect your country?

Like the you know, whatever 18 year old farm boy that they that they were pulling from to the whatever That's a cliche. There are no farms left. But you know, like he would be like from who? Like who I fuck it like it doesn't work at all like china like I'm keeping my eyes on my own paper right now. I you know, they seem to be doing well, but I don't care This isn't a you know a salutatory and is fine economically That's not appealing to the sort of people who they They used to pull from to get to join the military. Like it's just the conflict isn't Justifiable one of the real ironies of it is that like the the real reason to join the military is that you're joining

one of the few functioning civil institutions in the united states and the thing that most closely resembles the kind of like supportive state systems that existed in this country like in the post world war two era But that's not a pitch that works on 18 year olds like that's a pitch that works on 35 year olds who have two kids Like that join this and you're gonna have great insurance. You're gonna get a pension You're gonna have job training. You're gonna be you're gonna be set up for a wonderful life afterwards Here's some money to go to college that stuff that works on people who have a stake already Like that's there that would be like that would be your your real pitch But that doesn't work on like a 17 year old convenience store clerk who's looking to get out of who's looking to get out of like

Odessa, you know sure and they they are not I think also they figured out that like the You know what used to be sort of a mini welfare state in the military Is just pretty much gone So I think like if you have any experience if you come from a military family or whatever It's just like well, they're all in fucking food stamps. Like what am I even getting out of this? Like it's just such an obviously raw deal. I mean, you know Good, but like no wonder like 18 year olds are like, yeah, I'm not fucking doing that

And so yeah, you end up like it ends up being all of this stuff We talked about like ends up coming back together right because you have fewer and fewer people That you're recruiting to do the actual fighting Which works because you have fewer and fewer of them to start with And you're either doing war by automation or you're doing war with the operators like those are those are your two options I yeah something that I've always found interesting is Both parties obsession with drafting veterans to run for office

Um since 9 11 and the increasing diminished returns They seem to get out of that like when a veteran wins it seems to be incidental like it's either Like it's in a safe blue or red seat. There are other things about the candidate that are attractive But how many candidates especially by democrats have been selected just because of the military background and I think, you know Like like Derek said, there's a subconscious realization among all americans that none of our wars are Heroic or even really have any point to them And there's so there's just like a rejection like even though the military pulls high people's opinion of the military pulls

It's still there's still this subconscious rejection of it as this heroic path or do just every everyone Deserving of this special adulation thrust upon them I mean the people the people that actually get that are sports figures. That's who's going to replace veterans in office That's the only thing americans actually find heroic or know anything. It's president the rock in 2024 Like that's like i'm not even I don't even think i'm joking like I actually think if he ran for president He would win in 2024 But absolutely

I don't know it makes me wonder because I spent a lot of time working on the roman empire over the years And I spent a lot of time thinking about like roman frontiers and barbarians and the roman army like Did the roman army have Like and I I mean the evidence isn't good enough to really be able to say for sure But did the roman army just have like the dudes who went out and did the actual killing and then a bunch of guys who Worked desk jobs like I think they kind of did uh

and so I wonder like The extent to which the collapse of the roman empire then has a lot to do with the guys who did the actual killing Um deciding that they were going to be the ones who ought to have some stake and have some say And like what does that say for our future? I guess I don't know it's like Because like the roman the frontiers of the roman of the roman empire was where they actually recruited the soldiers Toward the end like they recruited them mostly from the other side of the border so And like to the extent that there's no real

Difference like which side of the frontier that you were living on It's basically the same culture and the same people and lots of people are going back and forth and like You know if you were born on the roman side of the border Well, your family probably came from a village two days ride further the other direction, right? And so as the roman empire falls apart It's just these people who are on the frontier who may or may not have been in the roman army at some point or another um Like picking up stakes and moving to the interior as an organized army

And so then that just becomes theirs and I I don't know I like I don't know where I'm going with that But it's it does make me wonder like in this age of a professionalized military that increasingly has a very specific group of people Who do the actual fighting like where does that leave us? I don't know. I don't know that I have an answer, but I well, maybe I Maybe you get your older man or city councilman. They're a former member of the taliban That would be that would be very exciting. That would be I would I would love that that would but that's like look man Shariah now, that's yeah, you know, like I don't I don't support like, you know They're adventures abroad, but like you have to respect the troops, you know, like it was this was a service member

So like to what extent like how long did the ideological afterglow of the 50 year like the 50 year anniversary of world war two stuff last So like if that's the lens through which we view saving private ryan and like band of brothers and all that stuff And like that carried us through the early years of the war on terror and the war in iraq like Like at what point did that officially wear off? Was there like 2007 2007 absolute? Yeah, okay? Because 2007 2008 that was the end of the grand the bargain and the bar like the basic bargain of america is that you suffer all these awful indignities and just Cruel like just cruel shots of luck You can really just lose the lottery and everything can be fucking ruined because you can have this standard of living

And culture that you know, you think is above anywhere else You could be born even though there are a lot of other industrialized nations where there's a similar standard of living Even if a lot of the cases these european nations don't happen to believe in air conditioning like we do but um I think 2007 where the way that we had to expand credit and uh All these things that allowed everyone to be a homeowner that That the the skimming off the top It's sort of when it sort of it started to come back on people when people had these subprime mortgages That started to just collapse under them when properties started to go under water

uh That's when the basic post-war bargain that was the end of it and I think Once that said that basic bargain and that standard of living couldn't be guaranteed anymore to Like I guess very broadly middle-class people. That's when the prestige wore off and uh, I mean Stuff from that year that time period is incredibly interesting to me because it's the last dance like up until that like those last um that first I'd say yeah three years after bush's reelection

Are it's an amazing cultural snapshot But from any given day where it's like, you know, you drive to you you wake up in your mansion that was built two years ago That's 4,500 square feet and has a hot tub with neon lights in it that you paid $370,000 for that For you know a mortgage that can go to 33 percent apr But you've been paying $700 a month for it because the interest hasn't kicked in yet and you're like only the only way it's going is off The only way you drive to work in your fucking Chrysler 300 and your wife With her LG chocolate sends you a picture of like some shitty fucking

Rachel Ray red velvet cake because that's all everyone ate back then and it was just I no one really knew it was all it was all gonna come crashing down and all that imperial prestige and that post-war glow that you mentioned it was just It was on its last legs, but Yeah, no, I would say that's it Yeah, I think people were were uneasy Like prior like I remember being like I have to take out

How much money just to go to like a like an urban satellite campus? That doesn't seem sustainable, but I mean like they say that's the thing I need to do to get a job. So we'll do it I guess and Well, people are buying houses like, you know people I you know, I know who don't make a lot of money and like Scenes kind but I think everyone I knew who was either like a first-generation college attendee or You know came from a low-income background was just like I'm a little nervous about what's gonna happen when I graduate

And then you know, I graduated in 2008. I was like I fucking knew it. I fucking knew it And the whole time there was of course like this subtext of Our total inability to sort of reel in American Empire Which was the last great sort of political battle that like we had on the left It was like I feel like we're not in charge of anything and this Might not actually be what we were promised because there seems to be a pattern of that going on since you know

9-11 and and then yeah, like uh, like the the the last you know I think Felix is right. I think like the last Moment when we thought but you know, maybe it'll be okay It was just before like the financial collapse and they were like shit. I knew it. I fucking do it And the fight that financial collapse is so interesting to me specifically because everything that caused it was It was people who knew the jig was up trying to squeeze the last bits of water from the stone The fire stay like yeah, yeah, it was like what is why would you why would you you know package and issue subprime mortgages? Why would you do why would you overbuilt like people did?

Why would you do any of this unless you knew? You know time is up soon You know, there there's this sort of last breath of some type of middle class in america One last thing I can do to squeeze them And it's to tell them that they can become rich by buying some fucking Monstrosity that was built in 2004 and has seven and a half bedrooms. No, it's it's literally insane I think that's as good a note to it on. I mean I want I think that biden If he's running on anything, I feel like he's running on red velvet cake McMansion like just that

Fiat feeling like it's 2005 forever again, but Yeah, we'll see. I think he's running to make america great again. Oh, yeah 100% 100,000 percent. I mean, I think it's all gonna look really funny after that first term because like I Yeah, you just you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube for all this I don't know. Uh, how have you got my email, but I am really enjoying if you guys been getting emails from biden camping

Oh, no, what are they like? What are we working with here? Oh my god, they're marvelous My favorite one. I can't remember all of them. I mean like his team are very I can't figure out who his fucking team are like it definitely doesn't have a millennial Kind of been to it, which I kind of appreciate it. I'm I'm slightly disgusted by reading political messaging from NGOs and candidates that sound like, you know a sub way ad for spanks But I hate I I hate that shit. I hate it so much. It's disgusting But biden I remember one

That he sent in the subject line was I hate having to do this Which just sounds like he's Taking off his belt to beat you, you know, like this hurts me more than it hurts you Uh, yeah, but they're really they're really weird. They're weird old man emails. They actually do unlike most of these uh Kind of email blasts Sort of capture his essence Yeah, um, I've seen some of them and it's like, yeah

It reminds me of the emails my 100 year old grandmother sends that are like It's like half of a copy paste of an article that she was reading and then like try to send the article couldn't buy I love you That's adorable And you know what I'm proud of her for trying Is that's that's the vibe of the biden campaign though. We're proud of you for trying Like we're proud of we're proud of you that you're just gonna you're gonna sit in a basement and say as little as possible You know what he had a good day. He got out today. He had a walk

He got some frozen yogurt. He talked with his friend on the park bench It was a really good day for him like I mean, but I really wanted to at least do one of these emails where he goes Listen here. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. That's the whole no That's it's not sorry The same email and then he still sucks. Yeah, I love shucks. I love it when he says I shouldn't have said that No, like that's how you know, he said because like no Politit like no one in public life ever says that no, that's an insane undermining of your of your authority

I'm running for president and you can't even guarantee that you're gonna be able to get a sentence out and have any confidence halfway through it I mean, I'm sorry. What what does it say though that like you could you could spin that positively in comparison? You could be like that shows at least he admits he's wrong. Yeah, that shows a modicum of self-awareness What I said before is like, you know, the personal appeal of biden is that he is Definitely a real person He is not polished It's a battle between two ways of getting old and demented you either Deny it furiously and insist that your brain is as sharp as ever like donald trump or you just sort of slowly

Realize. Oh, oh no, everything's getting a little darker. Oh boy And that's joe biden and he's leveling with you and then there's a certain there's something appealing about at least He's being honest about his clear mental decline And that that roof and that therefore he also is fully aware of our national decline Which seems like it would be a more soothing way to go than the raging against the dying of the light trump's Going to do like no, we'll go war with china just to like go out and glory It's like why don't we just do like edward g robinson in silent green And just go with uncle joe into the room and watch the nice video of the of the plants in the trees

And maybe some old sitcoms maybe like an old episode of mad about you And then you just slowly get Uh get get euthanized Uh, I'm sorry. Ah, jeez I shouldn't have said that. I guess I guess that is Well, that's like my Close to that. I guess like that's my theory of biden and culture that The four years under biden, they're gonna be so culturally wonderful because

Like our president. We're going to be having the dying memories of our life like we're gonna have like well g4 We'll be back on tv like all the Literally, it's coming back like all the child soldiers will wear snap bracelets all these like weird specific things We remember from our childhood and adolescents will flow through us As as we're just bleeding out in the last burst of dmt is going through our brain. We'll be like, oh, hey I remember that I remember that I remember the like it's all Yeah brass brass bathroom fixtures are going to be back in That's how you know so the so the one biden the one biden term we get will be him just doing a family guy

Hey, do you remember montage to the rest of us as we slowly Asphyxiate because there's been a nationwide gas leak that hasn't been repaired for the last 50 years Yeah, and then yeah The child will put down the snow globe and america ends and we realize it's been turkey all along Oh, we didn't uh, we didn't actually get a chance to talk about turkey Um And we are at 130. I don't want to like you for super long. We can cut some but yeah I ran it. I ran it. Yeah, I ran it doesn't mr. Being troubled with my notes in the middle

We pulled back the oak So, yeah, let's do the plug. Uh, yeah patrick and uh derrick. Thank you so much for uh for doing this Uh, is there anything that you guys want to plug as we close out? Well Uh, we have a we have a new, um Collaborative, um substack effort going on involves patrick and myself and uh a number of other people Um sort of on the left of the the the political spectrum who don't just cover politics There's a wide variety of things. It's called discontents

Uh, you can find it at discontents.substack.com Uh, and it's at the right now. It's it's a weekly newsletter We've all got our own things going on at substack. It's sort of a way to kind of bundle That together and you know, you can check in see what we've all been working on Uh, it's not like a uh, I know that there's a trend now to kind of recreate the publication Through these outlets like substack and and have a bunch of people like writing under the same Um, kind of mass head. It's not that we're all still doing our own individual stuff, but we were kind of Uh, you know trying to put together a more

communal kind of collective Uh structure, uh on top of that. I don't know patrick. You can yeah, I mean, I think say more it's a really Uh, it's it's a really good group of writers if you like kind of left perspectives on everything from movies and tv to Like I'm writing about the ice age right now. I'm literally writing about Pleistocene megafauna Uh, if you like that or uh, if you're into stuff on immigration if you're like public defense if you're into Thoughts on empire general cultural malaise like there's somebody doing stuff like that on in discontent

So if you're looking to be exposed to some new and interesting writing, um, this is a great place to find it And you will be producing all of this content from the toilet all of it. Yes every day. Mm-hmm. That's the patrick wyman promise Hey, where else do you guys do your thinking? Yeah, well, yeah, that's why you have to get the uh, 33 mortgage to get the place of nine bathrooms That's what you come up with most ideas. No, uh, I uh, we'll have the well the link to that in the uh, show description as well as, uh Individual newsletters and everything. Uh, yeah, no, I mean I I cannot recommend that enough I mean Derek is I think still holds the record for Returning guests on this show. Uh, I think brendan, uh, brendan, he doesn't count actually. Oh, okay. All right. It does not count

Then that that's in any way. No absolutely And we talked about this I had him and and uh, no on a couple of weeks ago to talk about Blowback and and we were like comparing like looking at them. No, no, don't listen to him count. How dare he? How fucking dare he act like that counts? No, come on Yeah, if that counts then like any like ours count like Come on, uh, uh um, and I've known patrick for like fucking like eight years now

Yeah, when when the first time that you and I met you were I had never been exposed to like weird twitter or left twitter at all And so you had listed you listed yourself as the uh, bright bar bright barred sports Uh columnist and I did and deep cut Yeah, and I did not know if that was serious or not It took me it took me like a solid two weeks to figure out that that was a bit I had no idea that was that was like eight or nine years ago. Yeah, that is so old school Such a fucking long time. I swore the villain era. Yeah, what it was. Yeah, yeah I went like six months with my twitter bio reading

Uh associate professor of a seriology at prager university I do not believe The number of people who actually thought I worked at prager and and ridiculed me for that Well, that's what you get for lying. I don't really have any sympathy This second time I got suspended was because I said I was mark curts press secretary Like you can't do that anymore. It sucks, but um, no I mean like two of my absolute favorite writers both on historical topics and contemporary ones I cannot recommend it enough like I've been reading both of you guys for yeah

Very fucking long like, you know seven eight nine years and I cannot recommend it enough to people So thank you guys so much for coming on uh Yeah, no, uh, guess we'll have this up later tonight All right. Thank you so much. Also, uh, just at the very end here I just wanted to give a shout out to the uh workers at the bath ironworks in main who are currently Uh, uh, carrying out the longest strike in america Uh, this is the seventh week that they're entering Uh, and just letting they uh wanted to get people aware that there's a strike fund

Which uh, we'll put a link to the in the so description All right, we will see you guys in the middle of the week where we will provide you the minutes from willmenikers trial and execution Thank you and see you soon. There's some shocking fucking uh cameos there Jack Hughes Orville Redenbacher you're actually still alive. What? And you've been directing your cue. Oh my god JFK jr presiding over the tribunal. It's just insane All right. Thanks guys Hey, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure