Chapo Trap House - 506 - John Smick (3/15/21)

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

We take a look at Stars And Strife, a new Starz documentary by David Smick (“macroeconomic advisor to a select group of prominent global investment funds”). It’s a documentary cautioning against the dangers of populist extremism, featuring the sober, reasonable analysis of James Baker, Leon Panetta, Rahm Emanuel, Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers, among others, and is honestly just as wild and deranged as You Me Madness. This completes a kind of inadvertent trilogy of films exploring inside the dream world from the POV of the middle class (Can’t Get You Out of My Head), the wealthy cultural elites (You Me Madness) and now, economic-political elite (Stars and Strife)

But you know it's sad that when people come out, you invited me on here. You feckless ****. They're the enemy. No, I will not be here. We're going to bring this country to its knees, not the American way. Why? I'm worried about our country gorging on hate. Something's gone very wrong in the fabric of American society, which leaves people vulnerable

to the appeal of the political hate industry. We've always had partisanship. We've never had this level of dysfunction. But both of our major political parties contain a lot of old people, and before people reach the stage of dementia, they often turn nasty. Are you stupid? Oh, damn time! We live in a zero-sum world.

We are absolutely convinced that for one side to get ahead, the other side has got to lose. We do face this real danger of a center falling apart in the country being guided by the extremists on both sides. America is like a dysfunctional couple on the way to divorce Korea. So this fucking documentary, I didn't think it was possible, like because we did a humor me madness just last week, and I was like, there's no way, like that's the worst thing. That's the most violently awful, nauseating spectacle I've ever had to endure for the show.

But man, this fucking movie, this was so much worse. I'm worse in every way. I'm just saying, Louise Linton's view of herself as a cool girl boss serial killer is more morally acceptable to me than David Smick's view of the world. That is because I really think that this movie is the other, it is essentially a sequel to me you madness. It is the movie made, so me you madness is a movie made by a super rich trophy wife kept by a rich finance Dracula.

And because she used to be an actress, she thinks of herself as an artistic person. And so she has access to tons of money, but she doesn't actually make any. So what her big film project, her big vanity film project is, is look at me and how hot and good actress I am and how good my dialogue is and how great my Scorsese references and my zooms are or whatever, just like trying to appeal to her physical and artistic vanity. Now the guy that she marries, Steve Mnuchin, right, is basically in the same class as this David Smick guy. So David Smick is the other person in that couple.

And so while she is making her me, me, you madness, what movie is this guy making a guy who is just as rich and just as cut off and just as psychopathic with power and money as her, but actually has his hands on like the wheels of power because he's like an actual finance guy, he's making money in the overclass. So when he decides to make a vanity project, it's not going to be some fucking piffle, some meaningless drivel about some murderous lady and her boy to I know he's going to solve all the fucking problems. He's going to show the world what's wrong with it and he's going to fix everything.

And because he has money and because the only people he's ever spoken to are people who are rich and who are as rich and diluted as he is, or who are poorer than him and want something from him. He thinks this is a great idea and he gets it made and they are bookends. This is like, this is the nightmare couple that runs America. It's Louise Linton and David Schmuck. I mean, this wasn't just like the actual thing they made though. Like this wasn't just the worst documentary I've ever seen.

Like, I don't know anything that comes close because even like a bad documentary can usually be kind of funny. This was like, this movie felt like how I imagine it must feel when you like OD, you're given Narcan and then you like take more opiates. It was just, it was the most overpowering, like awful feeling. It was the feeling of like having a log turn around in your stomach, then eating, just eating like a Jimmy John sub while you're shitting it out. It was this horrible simultaneously thing of being too full and too empty.

I probably about 30 times during this movie without exaggeration, I like press a little cursor thing to see how much time I had. It was brutal, but it was also completely hollow. And I felt as though it was, even when you watch a bad, even when you watch a shitty thing, you remember things from it. But I like everything that I remember for this, I had to write down because I was like, this is the exact type of thing that my brain will flush out like poison. Yeah.

There's no content here. It really does. It is the worst documentary ever. It makes Hillary's America look like Gates of Heaven. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, all right.

Let's start the show officially. It's ShapoTrap House. It's me, Will Menaker joining me as always, Matt Christman and Felix Biedermann. Hey. I mean, we were just too fired up, I mean, too chomping at the bit to discuss this movie we watched for today's episode, which is, in addition to being a compelling companion piece to me, you, Madness, I think it also makes like an interesting juxtaposition with can't get you out of my head because-

Yes. Absolutely. That's what I was thinking the whole time. Yeah. Because, you know, in both movies, like essentially attempt to explain why everyone feels so bad right now and why everything sucks and like, but like, you know, the Adam Curtis movie, it just, artistically, it makes for such an interesting companion piece of this because they both rely on like stock footage and like clips from old movies to like accentuate

like his sort of montage, Maison Sain. But the thing is like this guy, David Smick, and we'll talk about, we'll talk about Smick in a second, it just, like his selection of images and footage to like accentuate the points he's making is the most literal minded one-to-one thing I've ever seen. It's like- Yeah, yeah, yeah. A character will just be like, it's like George Orwell's 1984 and he'll just show a clip from the film adaptation of 1984.

But even as we grasp the victory, there is an answer, an evil tune growing, spreading in our midst. It's stunning. This movie is 90 minutes of the most unadulterated drivel and jive being spouted by some of the most poisonously hateful and awful human beings that this planet has ever produced. But they're selling you in this idea that like America's best days ahead of us, if we just get past partisanship and go with common sense solutions- If we just listen to Larry Summers!

Yeah, yeah. This is like, not only is it like making a movie about pedophilia where it's like, listen, some kids are sexy. But it's also like having, it's like this is a movie about pedophilia and its victims and it's like you do a seance where you fucking bring Jimmy Saville back from the dead, Gary Glitter, just like every pedophile is in it and they're like, well the problem with pedophilia- Yeah, I have a good review of this movie though, if you want to hear it.

If you want to hear like the type of person that really likes this. Okay, let me just- Because there are people that really like this. Let me just introduce this. The film we're talking about is the new documentary that was just released on the Stars Network that is the just absolutely absurd and noxious vanity project of this gigantic ham-faced buffoon named David Smith who I've never heard of before this movie and hope to never hear of again.

It is called Stars and Strife and it is a movie about how in today's divisive political climate and where everyone is upset and angry and it feels like the problems are getting worse, how we can come together to like solve our problems as Americans and have a better country for everyone. So Felix, drop that review. Yeah, yes this video does show the good of BLM. Hence the whole point of the video is to bring Americans closer together. Just because some people in BLM have been extreme does not mean that the movement doesn't

have any valid points. Now I am a Trump supporter and I believe the deep state has been shutting down the voices of right-wing conservatives and I am 100% against any type of censorship. I also at the same time believe this video is very interesting and hear the message our politics need to be more centered. The doc also breaks down the differences between good capitalism and what some of the big elites are doing which is destroying our world. I personally do not see this as a left movie but a great center and an idea that we need

to do work more at getting rid of extreme left and extreme right. Now many Democrats I know hate Republicans because let's face it they can be a bit cold hearted and extreme right. Just the same way on the right who hate socialism. This movie is more centered and I enjoy the talking points on moving center and working together for unity and peace highly recommended even if you don't agree. That is that's like why is that like a review from Amazon of this movie or something is like a user.

That's on IMDB but it's by Tasha's cookie treats. It's like I was because I was like obsessed with this after seeing it like how how well it felt like a post script to the Holocaust it was like how did you let this happen. Do we blame the people who did it or like who permitted this but there it does have like a kind of high rotten tomato score just because like if you are reviewing things on rotten tomatoes you are just like you're like this there's just candy in your brain cookie treats you're just you're just like you watch this and you're like you know America has all types of people everyone from you know black guy to weird woman.

But if we come together we can help we can help this this guy in Lord of the Rings who is killed for his cowardice David Schmidt. We can help Larry Summers. It's a feel good movie if you're just like you're you this is a this is a movie for oblivion non-player characters everyone who like this movie they're caught in a dialogue loop and walking into a door. So yeah like if I could like so my my my like my elevator pitch for this movie is 90 minutes of obscene jive and drivel that attempts to explain what's wrong with America by highlighting

the thoughts of a group of individuals who have each done on their own in public life more to cause violence misery economic oppression and political polarization than every terrorist and hate group in the world combined. And it's just like the movie begins and it's just like this montage of people going there's so much hate in America today we're so divided by hate. Hate is like a drug where did all this hate come from and then it shows you the faces of Niall Ferguson Francis Fukuyama James Baker and Larry Summers and you're like hmm where is all this hate where did all this hate come from why do people hate why do people hate

so much. I mean James Baker in there was an incredible choice oh absolutely it's like he for his first they first introduced him and he's he literally says in my day that's the first words out of his mouth and he goes in my day we went to Washington to do the people's business and it's like yeah what like fucking strangling Craig Spence in a fucking hotel bathroom. Yeah no he's like yeah he goes out there and he's like it used to be you get a Republican and a Democrat and everyone's happy and then like Cortrice Lumumba's pinky falls out of his pocket.

It's yes like in the beginning it sets up like you know they're like America seems more divided than it's ever been before and to illustrate that he goes through just clips of those of just hens on the view yelling at each other and like that's it people on TV sure see our angry and that really is like the point of view of this movie is that the problem with America is that too many people are yelling at each other. But that's what's amazing is like they take the view like that like just even their basic premises idiotic because it's like well yeah like 60 years before the view there is the show called firing line just like all these guys who like were so drunk they couldn't

stand up would be like I swear to God I'm gonna kill you you fucking homo take you behind the studio and plug you and like it's just hasn't like hasn't that always existed hasn't there always been a yelling you know they used to be guys in suits yes it's always existed though but here's the problem like what this movie is really concerned with is not so much that people are yelling at each other or that there is political partisanship or division in this country what they're mad about is the rise of populism they're mad about the idea that like that people are angry at like at the center and even though that they claim that like the center makes up the two-thirds majority of this country they're

mad that like a third of the country is just politically motivated and angry at the people in charge and you know like it's never explicitly mentioned but what they really mean is like Donald Trump on one end and Bernie Sanders on the other and they're like we just need to we need to stop listening to the angry loud voices in the room and listen to the calm sensible voices in this movie which like you know include Alan Greenspan, Arthur Brooks the head of the American Enterprise Institute, Amy Chua, the Tiger Mom, Rahm Emanuel, this is the list of fucking talking heads in this movie is a murderer's row of murderers. Frank Langevin founder of Home Depot has in my opinion he was so good he was so crazy

he says one he was awesome he was he was like he is like the chair he was sitting on probably like contains like extra organs that he needs to stay alive he is like just hanging on he's like his nails are gripping into the linoleum as they're trying to drag him to hell but he's like I need to be in this movie and like but he says he does one of what I consider the most sociopathic cutaways in this movie. We can get I mean I wonder if it's the same one that I wrote down because Ken Langevin the Home Depot guy is like I mean it get presented as a sensible voice of reason about and an example of what makes America great says like as Felix says some of the most sociopathic

comments I've ever seen and like you mentioned earlier that like this movie is all about like how did America come to be such an unequal place full of so much anger and hatred and you said it's like like a documentary about how dangerous pedophilia is where like they interview Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter as examples of like of people so whose advice you should follow it's just like along similar lines this would be like the people highlighted in this movie and and and it's point of view that that they should be taken seriously or that they're being shut out of the debate in our society is the equivalent of like doing a movie on the crisis and parenting today were Joseph Fritzl directed it.

But you know I've gone down the list of talking heads in this movie and there are some pretty big names involved. Oh Leon Panetta. Leon Panetta. Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, James Baker. They got fucking Otto Scorsini with a Ouija board. And like you know like some of these names are pretty big names in like in government and like academia and politics or whatever but more than anyone in this movie the guy

who was featured talking in most of it is the director and writer of the film which is an odd choice for a documentary is again we mentioned it for his name is David Zmick and how shall I describe David Zmick? He is David Zmick. Wretched Ham-O. Yeah, he looks like he looks like he looks like a guy who like one of the Hobbits who stole another Hobbit's lunch. He is this gigantic headed Oaf as Matt Loot too but like I would describe him sort of

like sort of like the blue-pilled Steve Bannon but the funny thing is like what he's advocating for in this movie is basically the exact same thing Steve Bannon does which is like a main street focused capitalism that like lifts up the little guy rather than big international corporations. But like the only difference between him and Steve Bannon is he's like we can do that without fomenting hatred against immigrants and minorities. That's the only difference between their two world views. He's like so is Steve Bannon.

And they're both absolutely diluted because capitalism is all consuming at this point. You cannot fight it from within but yeah their difference is one of them is like yes, harness the dark forces of reaction to do the job and the other is what if everyone just is nice and I got to say even though they're both dead ends the one that is less delusional is the Steve Bannon idea. This is pure cloud cuckoo landery. There is no basis for this at all and as the movie goes on you just see oh this is there's nothing here it is literally what if people were better what if people decided to what

if people with power decided to be nicer. Everyone in this movie is guilty of this but nobody more than David Smick. Every single thing he says is just volley after volley of cliché like every line of dialogue. He does the cow thing. When he did the cow thing like 10 minutes in everyone knows the cow thing because everyone had like a fucking middle like room temperature IQ social studies teacher who did this. And it's the thing where you go oh well capitalism is when you have two cows and you saw one

to your neighbor. Socialism is when the government takes the cows and there's no milk. Fascism is when they kill the cow and spill the milk. Corporate capitalism is when they do financialization with the cows. Main street capitalism is when you buy a bowl and there's more milk and it's like. And you drink it's home. That's main street capitalism. You milk a bowl and drink it's fucking nut.

Yeah mainstream capitalism is when the guy comes in the room the bowl and you're in the corner jacking off David when David Smick was doing the cow thing I was like you that's you that's you and your family you are a cow. But like yeah he's this is I hadn't heard the mainstream capitalism thing in a while but I love it because they do this in this movie where they're like yeah somewhere around like the 1980s is when governments started making laws that favor companies and it's like no yeah going back to like the Dutch East India Company that never happened. Yeah that wasn't like part of the whole deal.

They say that they're like you know capitalism used to work when it like helped out the little guy but slowly but surely like you know bad actors in the system began gaming like they began taking over the regulation of the markets themselves and like doing special favors for themselves through lobbying blah blah blah and then prior to this David Smick in his own movie fucking touts the fact that he was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan. Yeah Ronald Reagan got deals though one of the big moments of bipartisanship that he points to as how things used to work was the 1983 Social Security compromise which they love pointing at because it's it's pointing in the direction of one of their great dreams

which is a grand bargain on entitlements getting people how just the idea that these people's politics is getting Americans to accept the destruction the final destruction of any kind of safety net in exchange for maybe what a baby bond maybe some UBI and help getting a loan for some like fucking vape based small business but otherwise being totally on your own but you're gonna get people to accept that not with any populist appeal not with any emotional appeal you're gonna get them to agree to a reduction in their standard of living on for for their own good that's the that's I guess the dream of liberalism is that you can just convince these people that it's for their own good that they have

to live with less I just thought just a little bit of background on David M. Smick it says this was Wikipedia say it just says he's a macroeconomic advisor to a select group of prominent global investment funds and a nonfiction author he is the chairman and CEO of Johnson Smick International a financial advisory firm in Washington DC he is the Smith wrote the acclaimed book the world is curved on the financial perils of civilization in response to the world is flat by Thomas Friedman David Smith this guy should be this guy should be sentenced to live in the airports that they sell his books in he should never be allowed to leave he should be banished there so it says David Smith's most recent book is the

great equalizer how Main Street capitalism can create an economy for everyone the book reach number eight on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list our book reach number six by the way and was praised by both House Speaker Paul Ryan and former economic advisor Larry Larry Summers so yeah this guy this guy's got plays from both Paul Ryan and Larry Summers must be a really out of the box thinker but it just goes on here to say the book identified the conditions that led to the unexpected rise of both 2016 primary candidate Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump so yeah I mean this is this is what he's really worried about and I just I just some supplement I was just like just watching

some interviews with him about why he made this movie and he says here the whole country is facing a hate epidemic and I got very worried about the future of our country when you see the lack of empathy a lack of any goodwill towards each other and then like I said like to illustrate that point he produced a list of people that would just be like let's just say I have all these names on the list in my house as well these these it's like if he had just gathered people by like okay these are the least apathetic these are the like the least empathetic people I could find these are the least empathetic people that like would respond to me and would be in a documentary because I gotta say they might all be monstrous

criminals who are fully responsible for the horror of the conditions that they're decrying I mean this entire movie is just the hot dog sketch from I think you should leave this is like it is we're all trying to find the guy who did this and give him a spanking but and they all just might be soulless sociopaths but and lying directly to your face but at least they're hot they are really they're very hot yeah like that that brokes into too many David Smith actually David oh my god David Smith being the director he is when Leanne Panetta first comes on the screen he does tell people to pause because it's gonna be an extended talk with Leanne Panetta and you're gonna want to jack off before that

oh god it's like and half of the movie is looking at Smith's disgusting fucking head it looks like somebody puts so much oh it's so big the biggest like fall way back in it his head just looks like a fucking baked ham like in the oven glaze yeah he looks like a guy like if you if you like chop down the wrong peach tree he appears as the spirit of the woods he's like answers riddles to leave it's like if somebody dropped Frosty the snowman's magic hat on a fours head deli case so again I can't I can't stress enough how weird it is that the director of a documentary is its most prominently featured talking head like the epitome of fucking like vanity that is like yeah I wish I had done that I wish

in fighting the age of loneliness I took out all the fights and it was just me sitting in a chair near a movie and hopefully you would have under your name what he has under his change maker change maker he is a change maker introduce it introduce everybody who is interviewed with their name and their job you know financiers come back child murderer under him they put change maker and yeah I don't do they mean to say like has a pacemaker yeah and then after after change maker I don't know if you caught this it just like a flashes on screen a few lines from his CV and a couple of them were early advocate of urban enterprise zones and advised leaders of both parties so you know he's good yeah it's great because

later in the movie they go like and and yeah the only reason that both parties come together is to benefit corporations and it's like come on David no this is a vibe that this movie very heavily gives you is the like I gave you all the clues Mr. Policeman like a fucking serial killer haunting their victims and the police or they're just like how did America get so fucked up let's hear from Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan about how to get out of this mess this is like David Smith really there's a lot of people giving up the game and fucking up in this movie but I think no one more than Smith because I had no idea who this fucking no clue never never never heard of him and now he's like I'm spending

the rest of my time that isn't recording the show like trying to beam negative thoughts into him trying to scatter us his ass yeah yeah I'm trying to make a fucking Hiroshima 10 event by making his head blow up giant head blows up millions killed so let's let's go let's go into the film itself because it bears going through yes and so like it so it opens with one of one of the one of the copious fucking film clips in this movie and like long film clips because like this asshole is so rich he can just pay for the rights to put like feature films in his documentary over and over again to like to punctuate what are otherwise crushingly banal fucking like ideas and points of view absolute problem yeah

so it begins at this long clip of a Frank Sinatra movie I think it's like the house I live in or something like some old Sinatra movies looking really young and it's just like it's a black and white movie and there's some kids in the neighborhood and they chase it they're chasing this other kid and they're gonna beat him up and then old blue eyes stops him and he's like talking to these ragamuffins and he's like well you know why how come you don't like Johnny and they're like we don't like his religion and then Sinatra gives these kids a lecture where he's like don't you understand kids it's ring a ding ding for you bozos this is America a country where there's hundreds of different ways to go to church or to to

be an American and we're all Americans and like what's he got smallpox or something we don't like his religion his religion look mister he's a dirt hold on I see what you mean you must be a bunch of those Nazi werewolves I've been reading about not me I'm an American well what do you think we are Nazis like I said like that is the level of thinking that this movie is operating on and I think it's telling that the movie begins with Frank Sinatra lecturing a group of children because like this is how this guy views himself he thinks of himself as like a cool you know for a Frank and Dean type of dude who has to waste his time or like on this this idiotic fucking ego ego abortion to lecture a bunch of children I eat the American

public so I think it's going to be stuck oh David Ignatius of the Washington Post he's in this movie he says here to speaking of Germany and they're you know of course showing like you know stock footage of the Third Reich and you know Nuremberg rallies and shit like this and David Ignatius says of Germany bad things can happen to good countries because of populism essentially it's just like yeah like Germany was an otherwise good country and like then he says but like even in good countries they find that there's this yawning mall of fucking hatred bigotry paranoia and like violence on just underneath the surface of otherwise good countries no yeah nothing was wrong in Germany before that really yeah

just don't ask about Southwest Africa whatever you do and we're of course another totally innocent country yeah yeah yeah you know but we have the germ of populism inside us and that's what's causing all this hatred and so then we get to David Smith and like I said like I can understand like even if you're a dumb person wanting to see a movie we're like you know someone like genuinely important and consequential people like Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan like share their ideas on what's wrong with America and how to fix it but then this Smith asshole just keeps showing up and the idea that anyone would fucking care about like he starts telling you about his life and he's like you know you know my

grandparents were Norwegian immigrants and they didn't have it so easy when they came to this country and then I swear to God that was the top that was called the middle passage to America and he goes great migrate we know why are we wasting so much energy on hate instead of doing amazing things and he got then he goes I'm said I'm sensitive to the for simon phil killed the wrong square head this this absolute fucking hog man goes you know talking about like he you know very serious and like terrible misery that is like afflicting so many people in this country he goes I'm sensitive to the notion of change because when I was 14 our house burned down and I lost all my baseball cards he says I lost my baseball

That killed me that killed me because like the idea of like being like my house burned down and everything's been fucked Yeah, no, that's dude want to know I have such a dark outlook. I'm like life because I lost everything Everything is a four-year-old when my house burned down and he was yeah It's like everything about that's great like that entire segment. I love it because it's like look you may think I'm a pretty impressive guy but actually my great-grandparents came came from Norway and Yeah, so that and then an immigrant's path my great my great my great grandfather Ate too much of a too much grain in the village trick him into selling to America

But then yeah, it's like look I understand like how bad it is to like lose your job And you're like your son dies in or in the Iraq war and you're addicted to pills and you just you don't even remember last time you Look forward to anything you You're everyone in your town is like dying or leaving. There are no even markers for your own life anymore. I lost Roger Maris card When my house burned down because I tried to make drosty's hot chocolate And I just like I have to give people a sense I know I said before like that this this movie is just such a barrage of cliches that it like it

It it's almost designed to like destroy your mind like honestly like as propaganda like it It beats you into submission with its endless repetition of totally banal thoughts Presented with this like smirking knowing kind of like did you know that? Did you know that the deficit is a big problem? And it's like no did no smick? I've never heard that shit before so like listening to him talk It's like he like at every like interview segment with him He says shit like you know, we're on a roller coaster ride of uncertainty But United we stand divided we fall and remember Rome wasn't built in a day

But it fell at one and and it's like being on a roller coaster first you're up and then you plunge down real fast and you know and now you know announced the Prevention is worth a dime of crime. What a long strange trip. It's bad Just I can't believe I ate the whole thing and then he says we have to end this clown show And then there's a montage of people yelling at each other in Congress and then just and then actual footage of actual clown Yeah, you got what I thought I just want to like there's one thing in the sort of prologue to this movie that I thought was very Telling what they're talking about, you know Are Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute says a lot of people are getting rich making us hate each other

And I'm like well, then why are you in this movie David? I mean sorry Arthur cuz like it just you sharing your thoughts in public is what is causing hatred to exist at least in my heart But then before that I forget who said it but they were talking about like, you know America is a great country. We're a powerful country But there's only one thing that can take America down and that's politics And that's that's basically that's the view of this movie is that like if it weren't for all the politics We could do extraordinary things again. It's it is in fact idealism. It is just yep Yep, there's no structural conflict in any way. Yes, it's all just we just all we just start feeling bad

And if we all just took a breath and and settled and started and and just shook hands We'd all be okay because for guys like this It's all a game because it is all fake. It is all ideal. He lives on a cloud So of course he thinks that that's where the real change happens is in people's hearts because he's never been compelled to do anything by economics the the Politics is getting in the way that thing it did zero in on like the one thing I actually you know how Okay, like I liked me you madness because it was it was novel Well, this isn't novel, but I like it for one reason and that is I feel like

Now we have identity to identify identifiable like superculture voices, right? There's the broadly liberal one. I was talking about this on you can't win with a Donald and Tom yesterday The episode's out now, but about like there's this sort of like broad Liberal cultural singular cultural voice you can identify, right? You see it when you open those like Netflix accounts that are like, you know net Netflix Jewish uncles and all the shits like yours. So you're so you look so great and you're so awesome today that I can't even think you know, I love you. It's good to take a break Just like you know Barney, but vote for Democrats

You can identify it when you see it, you know, it is then there's the right wing thing and it's like, you know When Ted Cruz tells a joke or like the Babylon be this sort of like smug like, uh, okay, internet Let's see what you can do type thing like sort of a wedding crashers and Reaganism aesthetic, but this is like this is like uncovering an ancient evil This is like you need a certain amount of insight to see this because this is something that I haven't seen in a while And this is the singular cultural centrist voice. Yeah. Yeah, and I had not seen that since like the two the early 2000s and it was like it was an evil

I never thought we killed but I thought like we've seen enough of it for now But it just came up and of course it I lost all my sanity points seeing it Well, I mean is it so it in some ways more repulsive It is it is infinitely more repulsive and here's the thing like In this movie identifying populism and as a stand-in for hatred and divisiveness in our culture what it's really concerned with is that the Sensible centrist point of view has no purchase in the culture seemingly anymore and that everyone seems to hate on social media Yes, like that is why this guy when he says our country is facing an epidemic of hatred. That's what he's talking about

He's mean is it like views like the view of James Baker Leon Panetta and Alan Greenspan Used to be fairly uncontroversial But now every time you voice it you get like a tidal wave of shit in your mentions or like people just Flinging feces at you or wishing you dead because they Justifiably loved you and everything about your existence and like he just he just feels that like the centrist view is shut out of our culture And that's why our culture is so divisive not that like the left and the right are united In fact, we want to bring people together. We should unite them in their hatred of these people. Yes. Yes, like it should be There should be like a mass event protesting David Smick

So who else I so I'll say okay James Baker shows up and similar to how Smick Smick is labeled a change maker James Baker is labeled as the miracle man, which I thought was So chilling and just so fucking blood blood curdling to think about that the miracle man. He stole an election. Yeah Yeah, and then he stole the fucking election and then what is that? This guy this guy with more blood on his hands than like almost any other American that I can think of who's alive today He said like what does he diagnose the problem in DC being he says or nobody brings their families to Washington anymore And we use we used to socialize with each other

So it's just like and then it's a stupid idea that like if only is the Reagan-Tippon eel fucking fetishism They're like oh if only Louis Gomer it's fucking like dunce ugly children could fucking like meet Alexandra Pelosi and hang out Then maybe we could get some compromise bills to cut social security through the house if clay Higgins brought his family of talking Have a deficit anymore Yeah, like yeah having James Baker is like the first guy he throws to where he's like yo, I'm giving you the rock Slam this shit James. It's so awesome because yeah, if George H. W. Bush from our poppy series if he's Don Corleone, this is like

Tom Hagan, right? Yeah, he was he was the guy You know, it's he was the fucking guy, you know, it's funny feel like you bring up the godfather because every other Interviewee in this movie just does a fucking repetition of the opening monologue and godfather where it's like like the mortician Oh, God, yes I believe in America and I raise my daughter in the American fashion except it's Amy Chua saying the same thing Yeah, she's I raise my daughter in the American and Chinese fashion. Okay, so yeah the tiger mom She shows up and she says here a lot of students today Don't know what it makes what makes America distinct and special and then she doesn't say what makes it distinct and special

The movie just shows you a montage of people marching in parades and then tanks and military planes So once again, they're kind of showing their hand a little bit too much here Alan Greenspan. Oh, no, wait, there's one more thing that James Baker says that's fucking stunning James Baker says we won three hot wars and one cold one and would never ask for anything in return And that's why we're loved the world over Yeah, that was Yeah, he put he punched me with a kiss Yeah, that's a tiger mom also says of America

She says the founding fathers did own slaves But at its best America is a place where you can be a Croatian American and intensely patriotic Especially if you came here in Amazing choice of nations there. I just I can't keep track of all the fucking cliches in this movie But like I'm just a few of them Americans are dreamers We're the good guys. It's I think it's in our psychology. It's part of the American character I believe in an idealistic American idealistic America by the way

Nobody else thinks they're the good guys in history all other countries and people think that they're actually bad Yeah, if you go, yeah, if you go to Italy, they're like we're supporting characters We're here to help you Sell you wares The way to the back village. Yeah. Yeah, do you want to upgrade mr. Baker? Yeah, Europe is the is the hunter's dream for Bloodborne. It's the hub station that you start in Okay, there's another guy another guy featured in this movie is a guy named Hawke Newsome Who's the president of Black Lives Matter New York as president of Black Lives Matter?

I love that Hawke Lives Matter New York and I'm sorry is like one of the biggest dunces in this movie because he oh Absolutely, and I'll keep saying really con artists. Yeah, he keeps saying shit Like I believe like I like I support Black Lives Matter because I believe in the American Constitution and the Bible and it's just like What like who the fuck who the fuck is this guy like he keeps saying shit like I like I believe in American And I'm an idealistic American. I'm like, well, why what the fuck like what is going on here? And he he's he recounts and that the show movie recounts with just absolute A moment by moment detail this thing that he clearly thinks and I guess he convinced David Schmuck is

Incredibly epic and powerful viral moment that has persisted through time. Yeah, which is him going to some Dumbass maga rally that they I mean I remember this because it was called the mother of all rallies and the joke ended up being that like 500 people showed up and so Apparently he went to it to like counter protests with BLM and they invited him on stage And he got a warm reception and it was like maybe viral amongst grandpa Twitter for like 25 minutes of people like going It was a Ron for me a bait like look yeah, we can have dialogue

But then of course like everything else it disappeared into the ether But they act like this is like the Kennedy assassination in national importance And it actually ends with this hawk Schmuck going. I guess it went viral like kind of trying to be Self-deprecatingly understated about like dude, I don't know who you are. Yeah, I've never seen this video No, never even heard it. It's so funny about it is like they're like This is the biggest viral start star of all time and it's like I see 99.99% of things they all go through my pool skimmer, you know, like no one No one can send me anything. I haven't seen and it's like I

Never saw this. Yeah, never even heard about this. Yeah, no that the hawk knew some guys like he says shit like you know Americans are tired of the divisiveness and polarization, but we need real solutions So that's how I ended up addressing a crowd at a Trump rally with the most bullshit speech imaginable Like he gets up there and says my guiding principles are the Constitution and the Bible and he gets a big fucking applause for that And it's like like so it's like so you got up there and you catered to the fucking like the easy cheap heat from like the dumbest like most most like just repellent people imaginable and he's like, yeah, I reached out today and Abortions for some miniature American flags for others. I know he said like he says in the viral clip He's like America is a great country because when you see something wrong, you can change it and that's what our Constitution is about

I'm just like this is Absolute pablum like what like this is this is oh my god Everybody in this movie is captured by a self delusion that they're able to Perpetuate even though it is totally Orthogonal to reality because they're in a social position that allows them to maintain it And so like these people are all just speaking Through these prisms of delusion to one another and then watching it from outside. It's just jaw-dropping What like yeah, this guy's vision of himself like he clearly thinks that he's stokely Carmichael 2.0 and and and

You just see the chasm between what he thinks he's talking about What the world is he thinks it is and anything like what you recognize and that's everybody in this movie all of it under the Direction of a guy who is basically the kid looking in the fucking Snow globe at the end of St. Elsewhere. So yeah, we'll see we got we got Larry Summers shows up again and he says We've got our problems, but I'd rather play our hand than that of any other major economy in the world It's like yeah, no shit. I bet you would like yeah No shit you'd rather play America's economic hand than Italy or fucking like the Netherlands or something No shit the country with the World Reserve currency. It's like yeah, I'd rather play the video game with

Infinite lives. I would like that. Yes. So then we get we get this we get this other woman named Alice Rivlin Who was the budget nice row under Alan Greenspan and as a like a fellow at the Brookings Institute? She says I believe in American exceptionalism, but I also believe that too much debt is a problem But also too much inequality. Thanks Alice And I think it's like that line about American exceptionalism because this movie clearly like wants to bring back American Exceptionalism and views it like as a way out of our current like cultural and economic morass It's just it made me think of the Adam Curtis documentary Which does have a whole section on American and British exceptionalism and like his whole point in that movie is that you can't have

any kind of like Exceptionalism for a nation without a concurrent strains of deep deep-seated paranoia and violence towards everyone else and then eventually yourselves Yes, because something has to distinguish you that makes you exceptional and you have to affirm it through Domination so yeah, it's he Smith comes back and he says and he starts sharing some more of his like family stories and like again The idea that anyone would be impressed by Interested in or enlightened in any way by this schmuck's life story is astonishing to me and he says, you know my parents experienced economic anxiety and but my dad was a really good guy and you know at his funeral people people said that he

Would always he would always hold love and he would always love even even the ununlovely and he says and then smick says We need to learn how to do that how to love the unlovely like an immigrant for example And he goes we can't afford to be a country with just cities and coasts and small towns and I'm like what does that mean? What are you talking about? You're like, okay, so we should just all have you should all just be the suburbs And we should all live in like, you know, I'm not a coastal part of the country not the middle But just sort of halfway there. We should all basically live in like I don't know Virginia or Maryland or something like that or your Pennsylvania, you know It's sort of a coastal state, but not really. It's just where is the ideal place to live Schmuck?

Well, I think it's hovering it's it's it's hovering in a in a quantum state between all of them Yeah, which is essentially how these rich guys live. They're always flying around So it's like you should be doing that at one point one of his dumbass non-solutions is give people vouchers to move to where the jobs are I mean by the way, David Brooks has praised this guy's being quote clairvoyance in his analysis of the problems But uh, then Arthur Brooks the AEI guy shows up and he says of course He says to me the most interesting question isn't economic inequality. It's opportunity inequality and it's just Shit like this. It's just it's every one of these bullets just gets fired directly into your brain Like of just like absolute like non-thinking fucking like just poison and it's a movie that

It like and then Schmuck comes back and says capital is not our problem. It's human capital And it's just like this is a movie that attacks elites By communicating like the most hegemonically held ideas of the American ruling elite like to a popular They're the bad elites the thing is at some point we got bad like he really does go. There's good billionaires like the grotesque Home Depot gnome and then there's bad million billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg who make money by profiting from division and hate. It's like yeah, it's capitalism, bitch There's money to be made. Yeah, I know it's a market mark Distinction is based on like with the industry and they're all gonna be spots that are filled if there's fucking money to be made

Yeah, yeah, it's like like Mark Zuckerberg is bad because he profits off like clicks that implement hatefulness But Ken Langone is good because he profits off the shattered bodies of Home Depot employees Yeah, speaking as someone who sells division and hate Yeah, I'm just I'm fulfilling a market need I pay my taxes like anyone else So then here's where Smith gets into his like Like he's like oh like you know Capitalism isn't the problem. It's corporate capitalism that we have going now and he says Algorithms not people are driving the stock market like in in this bygone era when it was just fucking Gordon Gekko and fucking Patrick Bateman

Running Wall Street like that was okay, but like oh no the algorithm has taken over what was what was once before a very Rationally run system that benefited the algorithm is capitalism. It's always is running it. Yeah It's just a question of how much crisis it's in and like yeah You know things were better back when we had more money to give the poor people so they wouldn't get mad now Or people without economic like power now. We can't give them. We don't want to give them our Other cat the profit maximizing principle won't allow us to give them any more because there's less to be had and now they're all pissed That's it. He says here a free market. This is David Smith talking He says free market capitalism has gotten top down instead of bottom up large corporations

Overwhelming small enterprise and manipulate patent laws tax breaks and stifle competitors in the battle between David and Goliath David doesn't have a chance. This is like Adam Smith meets the twilight zone and then he gives you the fucking the cow metaphor Yeah, then he gives you the cow metaphor about well blue under capitalism You have two cows and then you can have more cows when you sell them And then I just right here might as fuck this guy is stupid and then he said we need a capitalism for the little guy It's just what planet do these assholes live on who does he think he is money? They live on the money planet where they don't ever interact with anybody who isn't as dumb and fucking costed and is Committed to diluting themselves about what they actually are as they are

Yeah, the only difference between this guy and like the evil capitalists is that the evil capitalists are not mystifying and bullshitting Themselves about what they do they get up and they fucking destroy the world and they make money at it And they have figured out a reason that that's okay in their head this oath is Is because honestly, I think it's because he's from a little bit farther down the food chain Like he's an investment advisor and shit like he's not a cat. He's not a real like He's not an inner ring Dracula so he gets to fucking spend his time with his thumb up his ass waiting to board a fucking first-class flight to Raleigh Durham

imagining himself to be some sort of fucking statesman and and And that he's going to fix all the problems that he is the beneficiary of and it's because he only talks to other idiots in His class all the other assholes waiting for that same fucking flight Yeah, no Matt you said earlier when we were talking about this movie that this guy has not had a conversation with anyone Not as rich and stupid as he is for like probably 50 years So like that's why he's able to express. He's able to just give voice to the most mouth-breathing canards imaginable, but he always says it with this knowing little smirk like he's explaining it to you for The first time ever did I just blow your fucking mind things like hatred hatred leads to anger, you know

And it's just like Yoda said that you fucking idiot. What do you like? He's just spitting these truths like it's just like I bet you've never seen a movie like talk to you as really as this is about fucking How it's just it's astonishing. It really is Yeah, this is the opposite of grim truths No, these are not every every yeah, these are lighthearted troops because like yeah every grim truth They give is like did you know people are more likely to find something in common with each other than bad Was another good one. Um, so I was gonna say some other ghoul says here It's funny young people can see the climate problem 10 to 15 years out, but they don't care about the debt problem

Yeah They're but they're both gonna kill people. Yeah, they're both cataclysmic Whiteout level events. Oh, can we talk about I want to talk about the lingo and scene Oh, I'm coming up on lingo But first I want to talk about Nile Ferguson who I find to be one of the most rancid human beings alive But he shares some absolutely some wonderful Homespun observations about America from like an outsider's perspective and he talks about how like oh well, you know growing up in Glasgow, you know Catholics and Protestants really hated each other

But you know and then I came to America and was shocked to find that like, you know There'll be you know America doesn't have these problems and then he says no one in Boston really hates the Yankees And I was just thinking of him walking by that bar in Boston to the viral clip And you know the the barstool guys yelling at him. It's like no one. Yeah, no one in Boston really hates anyone from New York Oh, then then he interviews it the The the ex got the ex-godson of David Duke like a reformed neo-nazi Like yeah, yeah, and that guy's story was funny because he literally gets blue-pilled by going to a liberal arts college Like that's it. That's all it took

Yeah, he's really telling them every he's telling every American Magaparent like do not do it. Don't Brooks says or someone says, you know talking about like how Facebook and the internet sort of like gamify Controversy and intense emotions and he says as someone says here our brains light up when we see the other side lose or get hurt And I was just I heard that line I was trying to imagine how much like a Christmas tree my what my brain would look like if every single person in this movie Went to a softball game It would be it would be like the first time you ever like

Take the law on it in a hospital It would just be like a shot of that while your kid is being bored and then Nile Ferguson says something like we just got a Snap out of it like like Cher said no no no no lady says we got a snap out of it like Cher said and then the movie plays the clip Of Sharon Moonstruck going snap out of it snap out of it. It's like some brilliant filmmaking here Now Ferguson also goes on to complain that she literally says Centrist don't get retweeted and that's a problem Oh, yeah, no, they have this big thing about how if you're if your tweet has emotional words in it You'll get retweeted more but centrist don't like if you use the words like destroy and hatred and blah blah blah

You'll get more retweets which like seems like the not a problem at all like who gives a shit But it's portrayed with the same weight as they portray like deindustrialization or like people not having health care Yeah, like another big another big canard that they bring up in this movie is that like because of Facebook and Google and the Algorithm conservatives and liberals never hear from the other side, which I think is complete horseship because I think thanks to the internet We hear entirely too much from the other side of political that's what drives us all That's what's making everyone insane mad about like that's why nobody wants to hang out on fucking parlor Unless they're like planning crimes. It's because they want to see the Libs and get mad at the Libs and know that the Libs are mad at them

Yeah, the during this good this Google parts insane the Google Facebook parts insane because they're like I don't like we don't We shouldn't break up these companies because China is also inventing tech and like we need to Unlike uniting against immigrants. We need to unite against other countries outside of America. Yeah, that's that's good But we will just we'll tell them to not keep people in their own ideological Bubbles and they'll make less money, but they'll still be the two biggest companies in the world And it's like that is so that's like they'll break their rule of like government directing business what to do So so like a Lib will read David Brooks But like nothing else not like not like oh, maybe Cobra shouldn't cost like

$8,000 a month like also Maybe maybe it shouldn't be six figures to give birth in a fucking hospital Maybe none of this should cost so much But like, you know, you should see all types of bad hill op-eds and it's like either yeah They want he's he complains that oh these tech companies They're making all this money off hate and then they if they we make them stop then they could still make money Like I'm sorry. What do you want him to do like start selling scrimshaw on Etsy? Like that's the whole fucking profit model That's literally the industry is is is manipulating

like mental attention and And and hate to whatever you want to call it emotion is how you do that because people are trying to get emotional Attachment from the internet because they don't have any in their actual lives So it has to be hateful it has to be all the things you don't want it to be so no You're telling them that they have to be destroyed and accept that but you are too up your own ass to realize it You know and like and like they're using Facebook and Google as an example of like why capitalism has gone crazy But like Smith's only problem with it is that like in this marketplace of ideas his No less hateful ideas than any other one being shared or promoted by the algorithm are simply not gaining purchase

They simply there's not an audience there for them outside of like his the people in this movie being interviewed And like that's essentially his problem with Facebook and Google is that they're they're making billions more money than like these sort of Traditional like capitalist firms are but they're doing it but they're making money from bad things unlike for instance James Baker or Alan Greenspan and Let's see there's another there's another line here Okay, let's talk about the Ken Ken Langone section of this movie because like he yeah The Home Depot gnome is a pretty incredible figure in this movie He's like one of them one of the most wrecked one of the most just like

Just vile billionaire is imaginable and he's held up as an example like contra, you know Sergei Brin or Mark Zuckerberg or whatever like Like like Ken Langone is one of the good guys And he says one of the things he says here is all the money I give politicians should not be used by them to enhance their status and then left unsaid is it should only be used to Enhance my status and that's why I'm giving them the money in the first fucking place. Yeah, Lincoln's thing is Completely insane, but he does something later in the movie that I find It's like they talk about giving up the game. So I'm telling you the NYU. Yeah, the NYU thing where he was incredible Yeah, where this was fucking unbelievable. He goes to NYU medical school and he's like I've been doing philanthropy

for 37 eons Just talking about all the bullshit tears here. He does but he goes to NYU and he made there was a big speech and And he's like NYU Medical Center will now be called Lincoln Medical Center and I'm Everyone everyone in this class right now. You'll have no student debt They all cheer for him and he's like that was the greatest moment of my life when they all gave me their life force And it's like but that's it That's that's why private charity exists because it's like you could just as easily not make medical school not cost $200,000 you could just do that you could just make it so that like

He let go in his big like oh, they won't they won't be weighed down by this debt They won't have this awful onus on them and it's like no there's no reason for it to cost that much You just decided it should cost that much and now you get to be a good person Because you just you cut off some of your like gold hide and toss it to them Just the cushions in your couch like a few million dollars and now they're indebted to you forever now They love you. Yeah, the thing you actually want. You're a fucking site. It's like one of the most darkest things I've seen It's like me and all my fucking Child child zoo owning friends made this among other things we did made this thing cost

Made college education postgraduate education always a six-figure endeavor But you know, maybe if you're lucky Uh, I'll I'll pay off like two years of classes if you can rename the entire building after me and pledge Felt it to me in the afterlife shit. This shit is the public-facing side of the of the Epstein Ritual cannibalism where they consume the flesh and this is literally consuming the souls of The people that they are dominated he says you will love me for my destruction of you for my domination of you He says something pretty incredible where he says here of his gift his generous gift like one and again

You're talking about a hundred people that there's a hundred students who like, you know He wrote off their debt and he says of this you can never take this moment away from me Look at it those hundred kids free from debt and half of them are females It was a redemption that was like when he said you can never take this moment away from me That's what that's what the last line. He says before you find the cathedral. He's isolated and kill him for his soul stone That's like this is the moment keeping him alive in Dark Souls 4 the the kingdom of Langone No, and he also says he also says a couple other incredible things He says um, he goes I sleep so well at night. I sleep so well

But I get up every morning terrified of being broke That's how I live my life and then at the very end of the movie He says something which puts his gift to a medical school. It colors it in a certain light He says at the end of this movie. I hope I live to be 200 years old. He's not hoping that he's planning for that He's for that. He wants to live. Yeah forever That's what these that's what these billionaires want. That's that's all you can do the final frontier for like their creases like well They are they're going to turn Kenling going into a dragon Mortal scale dragon. Yep, and he's gonna make all the virgins who he fucking burnt burns alive with flame love him first

Yeah, getting them like fucking quiz nose coupons. Yeah, this that was like that was so fucking dark I had to like walk around after that. That was like grim one of the most evil things I've ever seen depicted Speaking of another really chilling line in this movie. I mean it jumps around a lot It doesn't really spend a lot of time with one person the only person that spends any considerable time with in a sustained way is David Schmuck, but there's there's another really telling line where Alan Greenspan says through what sounds like a mouthful of marbles He says if we ever had a problem we would send James Baker to solve it. I'm just like Just a great way to wow. Wow. Yeah, I mean like nope. No person. No problem as Stalin said Yeah, and in the same way that Luca Brazzi

Yeah, and him Rahm Emanuel shows up in this movie for like two seconds Which is funny because he's like, you know a literal accessory to murder and he just gets out there And he's like I believe in getting things done and when we came to power He was like the purist thought I was a slime whore He says that he says the purist in the party thought I was a slime whore. Yeah, see that Why would you say those words about yourself in a documentary unless you know you are? Yeah, and you love it Well, Rahm Emanuel's thing is like the the governmental the policy version of what Lingon does because he's like Oh, they were saying I was bad because the ACA didn't do enough, but now they're fighting to keep it

It's like yeah because you like you gave them so little after them having nothing for so long Of course, they're gonna fight to keep like a moderate improvement. It doesn't mean it's fucking good But just like the fact that people don't want it taken away like vindicates Rahm Emanuel Just like it vindicates Lingon. Yeah, the guy who's average fucking employer a salary is at his fucking home depots Is $12 an hour which is this is the alternative to the awful Global capitalism that like Steve Bannon this fucking moron are trying to hold up It's it's it's local capital by people whose entire fucking just like Zuckerberg's a business model depends on hate clicks

Langones depends on hyper exploiting people at the point of their their labor I'm just gonna just gonna go through quickly here. There's just some other just astonishing fucking Nuggets of idiocy in this movie Arthur Brooks of AEI says Americans don't want to hate each other It's a crummy product and what I love best about democratic capitalism is that it means we won't put up with a crummy product for very long It's been it's been 250 years of this shit. It's just the product stinks. It's never going away coming products How did it happen? Like this movie does not tell you it does it's trying to do this Adam Curtis thing of like We're gonna tell you what's going on and then it just it spends like 15 minutes talking about the rise of partisanship and

Polarization and all of these horrible things and that says what we used to do have the good deals and then what happened? No, no even attempt to explain it. It's just people guys people just got bored and mean with each other I guess they just they forgot what matters. It's just pure childish bullshit Smick says at one point we need a new party from the center that represents 60 to 70 percent of this country And when he says 60 to 70 percent of this country, he's not talking about the 60 or 70 percent of the country that wants Medicare for all like Yesterday he's talking about the 60 for 77 percent of the country that wants Entitlement reform and to do something about the damn budget and then you say they use this example of like if someone says that

I think it's Arthur Brooks or someone says if you want to feel optimistic about America's future look to the states and then they use the example of how gay marriage like started in state Legislatures before becoming a you know passed by the Supreme Court as an example of social progress But like what they're really talking about is like right to work laws if you look at like what American states are like actually up to You're talking about like Alec legislation and fucking the fact that like yeah Like like state legislatures are even more captured by fucking capitalism and big businesses Yeah, then any anyone in like the House of Representatives in Congress Well, yeah, this is like the final part of the movie is like electoral reform and they get really big into rank choice voting

Like they think the problem with American politics is plurality voting So we should do rank choice voting and it's like Susan Collins won by a fucking Lance She destroyed Sarah kiddie in yeah, but they like they probably would say that yeah They like Susan Collins is an example of working across the bounds of partisanship Collins is like yeah, she's as far left as they go. Yeah, they're like see she won Yeah, all their all their their Policy recommendations are amazing where you got rank choice voting You've got jungle primaries. You've got a centrist third party

Yep based around the economic principle of lay back and take it is supposed to get popular support outside of those fucking Delta Lounges that these guys hang out in yet Of course, that's absurd to everyone outside of it, but they don't interact with those people the guy who's thinking who's like really big Into the centrist third party is Stanley Druckenmiller. Yeah, he's a former money manager for George Soros Currency manipulator yeah, George Soros. Yeah, and it's like This movie should be like this is a sawmoo. Yeah, this is meant to torture you This is meant to drive you fucking insane like if you have a

QAnon mom or dad and you're like you really want to like I don't know inherit some Humble figurines or something Just show them this movie and they will go out in a mass shooting. Yeah Well, this movie is propaganda not in the way that this guy wants it to be but in the way that mean you madness is and that it is Yeah, a vulgar display of power like he is showing you look. I am a rich guy I'm actually supposed to know what's going on in the world and yet. I'm able to walk around with my head filled with fucking cob salad And nothing and I'm not only not punished for it. I get so up my own ass I think I could make a fucking movie that's gonna solve all of our problems with fucking paste

With fucking baby food that's been like beurgitated by the same group of Pete Peterson fucking Centrist frauds for 30 years Because I can because I have the money to do it I can make a professional documentary with my name in the title as a changemaker and I Assume that you know who I am and you can't do anything about it. And that's the real propaganda. It's a propaganda of just hopelessness It's like watching the fucking the imperial starcruiser fly over your head in slow motion I mean the movie ends with they try to end on a note of optimism and David Smith Chooses the highlight what he describes as his favorite thinker, which is wouldn't you know it Warren Buffett?

And he said he's he poses a question to all the interviewees where he's like Warren Buffett recently said America's best days are ahead of us Do you believe that and then of course they all say he says it's safe to drive They all say yes, and my favorite is like the black lives matter guy goes He goes. Yeah, like he's like he's like, yeah, I'm betting on I won't on Warren Buffett I'm betting on Warren Buffett and it's just like after they show a picture of him marching shoulder to shoulder with Andrew Cuomo Yeah, it's like Warren Buffett's not worried. I'm not worried. Yeah That's because these people all have blood bags and bunkers and they have escape hatches

And they're gonna be the last people to be touched by anything bad. Of course, they're not sweating The black lives matter guy like he was awesome because he's like the only guy I've ever seen where it's like God I hope you know you're not because if you're not that's so fucking sad. Yeah, just a total door. They're just absolute dope Yeah, oh man I mean, I guess like the only silver lining to this movie was like watching that last scene We're like all these people are like, you know Our best days are ahead of us But we need to get on the right track and we're not on the right track now

But once we get on the right track and get put start putting country ahead of party or we will be in a new golden age The only silver lining to watching this movie is knowing with absolute certainty that every one of these people is a hundred percent wrong And this country is doomed president G. Please you may fire one ready Yeah firewood ready because this movie like this proves that it really it proves how You can get a system like we have where the powers that be are Undermining the long-term stability of the system that they profit from and that they presumably want to Hand off to their descendants unless they've all convinced themselves. They're gonna be in robot bodies on the moon forever Because they aren't at a certain level. They lose any even

Connection to the world outside of themselves because they're as isolated as we are they there is lumping as the rest of us And you can have a guy like this who should know better Anybody who is as close to power and money as this guy is should be embarrassed to say this shit in public because he know He would know better Because he's fucking seen it but he gets to live in a little fantasy bubble where he's actually Fighting for the little guy and he can operate off of Fundamentally delusional assumptions about how the world works while still being in charge and having his power and the power of other delusional idiots Like him totally unchallengeable from below and so you're just gonna of course are gonna steer into the fucking iceberg

Yeah, no this movie when America is ruled by a Portuguese Chinese conglomerate this movie will be hilarious to watch Yeah, I honestly a movie like this. Yeah, it's like we're fucked But it does make you think that if when it comes to it the Chinese might have a chance They I think they could take us and then and you know I'm gonna give every like empire after this an accelerated timeline

You know to to sound like one of the guys in this movie things happen so fast nowadays Yes, in a hundred years a hundred a hundred years from now when they make the Chinese version of this movie where it's like We need we need guys like Hu Jintao By the way at the beginning of this movie Leon Panetta says he goes we know from history What happens to Empire is when they lose track of the good values that they founded themselves on it's like yeah Slavery and conquest of the world like what the fuck Like yeah when Rome started getting away from family values. That's when things really went bad for them That was one of the most insane things in the movie

Yeah, that was wild just watching Panetta former defense secretary and CIA director just saying yeah, we're an empire Yeah, yeah, and then now we're a good one like all the ones are yes all empires are Yeah, that's my heart. That's why you're charged. So of course you're good You get to decide what good is everyone's sad when the Empire goes away Mark of power like you get to decide what good and bad is yeah So of course it's good and that's why now Ferguson shows up again And he says here the key to our time is the complacency after the Cold War ended and the Iraq War failed We want the girl that we say says we want the world to go away

But we have to get over that and like left on said is like we want the world to go away And we're retreating from it at a time when we should be ruling it like that's Nile Ferguson's view of everything Our ability to rule is being undermined by our decades. It's just a neoliberal. It's neo neo conservatism Like guys like him weren't favor of the Iraq war because they thought it would give us national Purpose but instead because we could outsource the thing to to interns and drones It's just another thing to alienate everybody it and and and and flame Disillusionment but it cannot provide any meaning because we're not doing it There is no collective actor anymore because we've been totally atomized into consumers

Just one of the last things David Smick says as he says one reason one thing that makes me optimistic We're currently living through one of the great productivity booms in world history because of the cloud And it's just like oh boy everyone's known we're more productive than ever everyone back to the mask of the red death Everyone keep dancing that that clock is never that big productivity it sure is It sure is being that productivity the value of it is sure being shared by the people who produce it aren't they oh wait a minute You're saying that they've been Denied any of it for the past 40 years that might have something to do with why they're so pissed well Matt

The problem is that they don't have a quality of opportunity. That's what Arthur Brooks said It's just the opportunities well, that's the thing or evenly there there's two there's two tracks and solutions He gives one is the dumb political one we said but the other is give people bonds so they can Give people bonds at birth so that they can essentially just be all stockholders Yeah, he says we need to make everyone a capitalist Yeah, and it's like that means you're all fucked Oh 25% at best chance of rising in life. That means 75% of a stagnating and but that means falling realistically But hey, that's better than nothing and don't you want to fucking roll the dice?

Literally saying you need to get them to believe in the propaganda. You got to get them to believe in the fantasy of capitalist Advancement again, and I'm sorry if the fucking till is empty you guys took all of the fucking cookies There's no way to do that anymore. The cookie treats are all gone. They've all been taken by fans of this movie Oh, yeah, like that. Yeah, he says he says he wants to give everyone a loan at birth So it's like before you're even alive. You're in debt. Yes, you're literally Literally what sovereign citizens say about how like we're all enslaved by the debt of like the Federal Reserve He's like, yeah, that's good. We should make that explicit and just one last quote here for me Like I what I want to highlight is that Larry summer it says he goes like in his horrible like grouper fish face

Just like blurts out that the first rule of ditch when your first rule of whole digging is to stop digging And I'm like no Larry keep digging that holes for you So that does it that stars and strife I would say comprehensively if you really comprehensively the worst movie I've ever watched for choppo if you want to really like if you feel like you need it to really like see the Serpent at the bottom of the well, I would suggest just getting fully ripped watching this and meme you madness back to back And you will understand who we are ruled by Like you will you will know them in a way that you can't just by observing the culture that their money produces I would recommend watching doing the me bit madness boss fight first. You'll get your level high enough to do this boss

Yeah, this is an ancient evil. You may go mad if you watch it without the proper leveling Oh, man sanity points rapidly depleted zero We have to start you see it's bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm gonna be a cockney boot black. I'm gonna. Yeah I'm gonna be James Baker. Yes. Why not? Yeah, you can't beat him. You can't beat him be him All right, I'm not holding up our Baker character sheets right now. I'm gonna be now Ferguson. All right gang Till next time Out of the tree of life, I just picked me plumb You came along and everything started into hum

Still it's a real good bet the best is yet to come Best is yet to come and babe, won't that be fine? You think you've seen the Sun, but you ain't seen it shine Wait till the warm ups on the way wait till our lips have met And wait till you see that sunshine day you ain't seen nothing yet The best is yet to come and babe, won't it be fine?