Chapo Trap House - 558 - 9/11 Era, Pt. 1: The Pussification of the Western Male (9/14/21)

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

We celebrate 20 years of 9/11 by taking a 2-part look at the political and cultural insanity of the era immediately following the attacks. Today, we look at the hysterical jingoism, veneration of idiotic leaders, politically enforced censorship, and the seminal war-blogger classic “The Pussification of the Western Male” We’ll continue on Thursday’s ep with looks at TV, Film and Culture from the era, plus another canonical 9/11 reading series. Stay tuned!

Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. What do you make of the statement Iraq has no weapons of non-destruction and is not developing their line? You're either with us or you're with the enemy. That's clear. I think we should actually level, level six countries. Saddam Hussein and his regime will stop at nothing until something stops here.

Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil. You're almost certainly the first American to be killed in a deliberate, abstract attack. Saddam must love you and I'm sure you must admit that. Don't even, don't even try and do that inflammatory. I'm not a Saddam chain of power. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into here. Unforgettable.

You've got five seconds. That's it. We'll put up the hand in your ass and say American way. Who the fuck knocked our builders down? Who the man behind the World Trade Massacre? Step up now. We're the four planes out. How else should we say piss?

Fly that shit over my head and get blowin' the bitch. Okay. And you believe it's been twenty years. Twenty years since the world and America changed forever and uh, 9-Eleven. 9-Eleven. This would, this will be part one of a two part 9-Eleven, 20th anniversary episode where I think, um, what we're going to do is obviously, um, we talked about the, uh, you know, the political ramp and geopolitical ramifications of all the, uh, the wars and deceit and lies

that, uh, gave birth to 9-Eleven and the war on terrorism and everything that came after it. But I thought for these next two episodes, we would do a favor, particularly to our, our listeners, those of Gen Z, who may not remember or may not even have been alive at the time, uh, that the world changed forever and we all watched those towers fell on TV. We will not be talking about anything lame like, oh, what you, oh, you, you mean you were also having a totally normal day until that happened? Please do share.

No, we will be talking about sort of what, what America felt like and the ways in which, like, our, our culture, politics, media, movies, music, everything, uh, responded to, uh, being attacked by terrorists. And I guess, like, I, I, I bring this up because, you know, on the 20th anniversary, um, we are entreated, uh, I saw it, this happens every year, but I saw it, I saw it, um, over the weekend as well. We, um, we are entreated often to, you know, at a time when we've never been so divided. Um, we are encouraged to remember the way we all felt on 912 when the country really

came together. And I would just like hopefully emphasize over these, uh, this, this series here that, uh, that feeling that we all had was one of absolute insanity. Um, just, just bloodthirsty rage, stupidity, ignorance. And I like it, I know, I know it's, it's, it's hard to say now post Trump, post COVID, uh, I think we'll make a pretty good case that America has never been stupider than right after 911. And just like the, the ensuing years and just, just, it's just everything that, that, that,

uh, this moment in our culture helped midwife into existence. And I think the, the way to look at it is we'll be going through this and a lot of it seems ridiculous. And when I was putting together my outline, uh, for everything we're going to talk about, I think the thing that struck, struck me the most is how totally inadequate all of these big cultural shifts were and how, I mean, they've lasted in ways that are unexpected, but like the full force of the like jingoistic post 911 cultural moment, uh, mostly dissipated in the second Bush administration.

And it hasn't really come back since, right? I mean, it's come back, but in ways that are unexpected and sort of mutated hybrids of that original moment. But we all fell, I mean, the thing was everyone really thought the culture had changed forever. And I think in going through this, I think we're going to learn that the culture really didn't change at all. Or if it did, it did in ways in which the people trying to change it was not their intention. So, but before we get into that, I think we would be, uh, remiss if we did not talk about

over the weekend, the current 911, the current 911 anniversary, the 20th anniversary, which was marked by, uh, all of the former living presidents other than Donald Trump meeting at ground zero to, uh, speak words, give inspirational speeches and, you know, remember that moment. And the most recent living president, Donald Trump, doing color commentary on what is essentially a bare knuckle boxing match that's held in a barge in international waters because it's can't be sanctioned by any state boxing commission. Did you guys catch any of the, uh, Trump doing color commentary for the Evander Holyfield Vitor Belfort boxing match Evander Holyfield, by the way, uh, what is he 65 years old?

Yeah. No, he should, he should 55 something like that. Mentally, he's like, well, yeah, you know, pick one either 190 years old or newborn. Like this is not a man who should have been sanctioned to fight much less against the Vitor Belfort who was allowed to shoot this, uh, synthetic test into his, uh, blood again. And for people who don't know, Vitor Belfort was, he was sort of like a prodigy UFC champion back in the very early days of the UFC, um, had a pretty bad tragedy happen to him. His sister was kidnapped and killed in Brazil, in his native Brazil.

Uh, he becomes a board again Christian and he also, uh, gets sanctioned to shoot synthetic testosterone into his body. It's called testosterone replacement therapy and he went on quite a run in the early 20, early to mid 2010s and then eventually like he got to a real athletic commission and eventually they were like, that doesn't seem like we should let you do that. And then the run ended, but he's back doing what he was doing. I, I didn't see if he, he comes out to a pretty funny walkout song where it's like the theme from 300, but himself screaming in Portuguese over it.

The only guy who does something like that. But yeah. Now, um, shouldn't have happened, but, uh, honestly, so Trump was in the booth with Junior Dos Santos, who's a former UFC heavyweight champion. And as you would guess, absolutely loved JDS. JDS is a big, strong guy and just totally ignored his son while JDS was talking. Yeah, it was, it was, it was Trump and Don Trump, Junior were paid to do, uh, yeah, color commentary for this like, I mean, honestly should not have been licensed boxing, boxing match.

Um, and I have a quote here from Trump. Uh, the, the fight only lasted about like a minute and a half or something. It didn't even go one round before Evander Holyfield was knocked out, was knocked out or the fight was, you know, just called. Um, during, during it, while it was going on, Trump said, they say there is a lot of people watching. I can't imagine why. Oh man.

Uh, yeah, I like missing. Yeah. That was, it was, it's cool that like Don Jr. probably was like thinking about this for weeks and weeks. Like, oh, I mean, I've like learned so much about MMA. I'm friends with all these conservative MMA fighters now and all these boxers. I'm going to show my dad that I'm like good at something now. And then they get there and Trump, like the only time Trump would acknowledge him is when

he would cut like Don Jr. would kind of fuck someone's name up. And he'd be like, no. Uh, just, I mean, the only color commentator who would be like, why is anyone watching this crap? He's, oh, and it's during his favorite week of the year, New York fashion week. I didn't see, I didn't get to see the entire thing. I don't know if he referred to New York fashion week at all. I know he's had a lot of opinions on that before, but I gotta say it, it does feel like

he really wishes in his heart that he were doing color commentary at a runway show. That's really does feel like more what he, his heart would want. That's why this was such a good event because it's all like, it's a perfect example of like the Trump world trying to slot him into things they already like, but it's like, that's not really like Trump's been involved with MMA before he's attended a lot of USC's. He's friends with Dana White. He was involved in his own MMA promotion that in fact, Michael Cohen was the COO of Affliction. But like that's, he wants to be, Donald Trump wants to be sitting in like a booth above the floor

of a Virgil Abloh party and like talking about who's a star and who isn't. Doing commentary for like the Met Gala or something. Yeah. Right. I mean like, I just, the contrast could not be more marked though between like the, the speech that everyone was like talking about how stirring and how moving it was, which is of course George W. Bush, dating to show his face at the 9-11 Memorial. I mean, one of the chief, the chief villains of 9-11.

I mean, he showed up there and gave a speech that like, you know, the MSNBC said is creaming themselves over because he connected the terrorists to attack the Twin Towers with the terrorists who attacked Congress on 1-6. And it just made it be that like, you know, like these violent extremists, they don't share many beliefs with the ones that attacked us on 9-11. But, you know, like our true enemies are at home now in America. And he said like this, this idea that like, you know, we've lost something as a country. We've lost that, that 9-12 moment.

I mean, and this is coming from a guy who, as Donald Trump himself said in response to George W. Bush's comments the other day, Trump was asked about it and he said, he shouldn't be lecturing us about anything. The World Trade Center came down during his watch. Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn't be lecturing anyone. And I got to say, when he's right, he's right. Because this, the fucking gall of this asshole and the fact that like, I mean, and this is

the other thing I would like to underscore with this series here. The absolute gall of anyone pretending to like George W. Bush or like, or contrast him favorably with Donald Trump, given everything that he did and given even just 9-11 itself. If he had done nothing else in his presidency, just the utter and complete breakdown of our national security and, you know, you can slot in your reasons for why that happened. And, you know, feel free to follow those conclusions anywhere they may lead you. But the idea that George W. Bush's reputation has all but been salvaged, largely because of Donald Trump and now the capital insurrection is stunning.

But there's one other man here who is honestly even more than George W. Bush. Mr. 9-11. And of course, I'm talking about Rudy Giuliani. Now, Rudy Giuliani, he was America's mayor. We all remember that. But wouldn't you know it? He showed up on this most previous, recent 9-11 as well. And this is a headline in the New York Post.

You cannot have a friendlier outlet to Rudy Giuliani than the New York Post. This is their headline. Rudy Giuliani calls top general an a-hole for Afghanistan shambles in 9-11 speech. Ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani at a 9-11 commemoration on Saturday called the top U.S. general an idiot and an a-hole, imitated Queen Elizabeth and distanced himself from Prince Andrew. She said, you did a wonderful job on September 11. And therefore, I'm making you an honorary knight, commander of the royal something rather. I turned down a knighthood because if you took a knighthood, you had to lose your citizenship.

I know Prince Andrew is very questionable now. I never went out with him. Ever. Never. Never had a drink with him. Never was with a woman or a young girl with him. Ever. Ever.

Ever. One time I met him in my office and one time when we had the party. Right, Bernie? You were there. Did you listen to it? He sounded absolutely shit-faced. He was hammered. Well, it's a 20-year anniversary.

After he saved all those lives, he is PSD. I got to tell you, when he was on top of the world right after 9-11, when he was on the America's mayor front page of New York Times, if you'd been able to come back from 2021 and tell him that in 20 years, he will be spending all of his time smoking cigars with names with guys named like Garbo Privman or whatever the fucking waiting for an indictment to land and never having been president or like God Emperor, like I guarantee you thought was going to happen, he wouldn't be, he would be bombed. I was, I mean, I would be happy.

I was like, the Giuliani shit drove me insane even as a young boy. Like it's like, it was pretty insane to watch. It was insane to watch him go on Saturday night live and all these good liberals like fawn over him and demand he be mayor for life, but like, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself like, no, this guy is going to be indicted every week for trying to do Ukraine with a bunch of guys who look like all the three Stooges mixed together. Like, no, I, it is, I'm really, I really enjoy this. Like some Trump stuff you get sick of, you know, like the Nellie Orr stuff or like the,

when he would, the Colonel Vindman or whatever the fuck, you're like, shut up, I've seen enough of this. I can't get enough Rudy stuff. It's so gratifying for me. It's like, he is absolutely the least respected man in America. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's what's incredible about it.

And that's why I want to begin, I want to begin this reminiscence with the figure of Rudy Giuliani because there is, there is nobody who has done a more, just like, like monumental 180 in the level of like national public respect than Rudy Giuliani in the last 20 years. But this is the point that I want to underscore the whole, the whole, everything we're talking about here is that Rudy Giuliani is exactly the same guy now as he was on the morning of 9-11 and everything and in like the days, months and years that followed. He is the exact same person, he's just maybe a little bit sweatier and a little bit more senile, but he is like, but nothing has really changed at all.

But like the monumental cultural and political acclaim and respect that this guy fucking got, unearned by the way, because many of the, most of the firefighters who died on 9-11 was because of his fucking incompetence. Yeah. They didn't, yeah, like the radios didn't fucking work and this is a problem that him and Bernard Carrick didn't fix from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And he put the emergency response headquarters for the city in the fucking trade center. Yes.

Well, I mean, after the 93 World Trade Center bombing, they had the New York City Emergency Response Command Center for disasters and terrorist attacks and things of that nature was all set up and ready to go and they personally made the decision to change the location from a, you know, a secure location to one directly under the Twin Towers. So all of that CNN, all that news footage of him wandering about the streets covered in ash looking like a leader was just purely an accident of his own incompetence. And again, everything rhymes here. Everything that we're going to talk about is an accident of our own incompetence.

But like, it's so funny, like Giuliani, like I said, the monumental shift in him going from being probably one of America's greatest heroes and our most respected leaders across party, geography, race, class, gender, whatever to now probably the most lampooned and buffoonish figure in American history is stunning. But he's exactly the same guy. And we can look at a lot of things in our culture that like seems to have changed wildly, but we are still exactly the same people with exactly the same brains and exactly the same essential programming.

And I don't know if you've gotten dumber or what, but it's hard to believe we were dumber now than right after 9-11. Well, that the thing is, is that now, yes, everyone's an idiot, but they're all, everyone's pursuing their, their mind palaces in the digital sphere. And they're all free to be whatever kind of idiot they want. In the waning days of monoculture that that were still existing at that point, there was like state mandated idiocy. Like there was, there was one way to be stupid and you had to be that way.

You had to be dumb as fuck to be a, to be able to make a public statement of any kind. Yeah. Yeah. You were, unless you, for like the first three years after I want to say, you would be drummed out of public life unless you were like, we need to invade Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria. It was, it was mass hysteria. I think that's a good way of thinking about it, Matt, because like we live in a, we live in a culture now governed by a seemingly infinite number of discreet idiocies.

Whereas after 9-11 and like the first Bush, the first term of the Bush administration and the dawn of the war on terror, we were ruled by one mega monolithic idiocy. Which was the flag, the troops, the brave first responders. And then yeah, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and like from the moment that Bush showed up with the megaphone at the Twin Towers or Rudy Giuliani, you know, this is the first thing I wanted to talk about was the SNL after 9-11 where the cold open, the cold open was like all 9-11 first responders, which is like, you know, these guys had like for like the past two weeks been like digging bodies out of the fucking wreckage.

So like, I mean, it took a moment of like, yeah, like a general genuine trauma and a feeling of respect and admiration for the firefighters and rescuers who were, you know, who either lost their own lives or were, you know, working in the recovery effort. But it was all, it was like, it was a cold open and it was just like, like the stage of SNL was all police and firefighters. But right in the middle of them was Rudy Giuliani. And it was this like sort of moment of silence until Lorne Michaels took it upon himself to ask, to ask Rudy Giuliani, is it, can we be funny again?

Saturday Night Live is one of our great New York City institutions. And that's why it's important for you to do your show tonight. Can we be funny? Why start now? And once Rudy Giuliani officially bestowed permission to Lorne Michaels, they were like, okay, yes, we're ready to laugh again. And then proceeded to have like, you know, 90 minutes of the least funny shit you've ever seen in your life.

But I'm like, and then the other thing I like to frame this is bad, bad food restaurant and sissy, a sissy entrepreneur, Graydon Carter, he was the one who was coded after 9 11 as saying the end of the age of irony had arrived. And then another quote here attributed to Roger Rosenblatt of Time Magazine wrote, one good thing that could have come from this horror, it could spell the end of the age of irony. And there was this like, this idea that sort of cynicism, gallows humor, and just sort of like a distrust of authority. And like that kind of, that, that, that, that Gen X like, hey, we're cooler than everything.

Like that vibe had been like, it was, it was this expectation and really like, they weren't responding to anything that had happened. It was an admonition and a demand that like, that's where we're not now. We're no, no more irony, no more, no more snickering in the back of the classroom, no more cool kids. There was an, this was an age of patriotic correctness. And holy shit, like it became hegemonically enforced and like, it's, it's so funny now to like think about cancel culture now, because there is never like cancel culture was so

rigorously enforced during this era, like from the top down, like actual, like the state canceling the state and like powerful like institutions, canceling people for completely anodyne. And honestly, like looking back, you know, as we all should have known at the time, totally sensible humane thoughts about like, are we overreacting to this? Or like maybe we should not, maybe the answer to this is not just go to war with the rest of the world, because like maybe that's one of the reasons that this should happen in the first place.

But it's basically this idea that like this patriotic correctness and, and, and this idea that irony was dead, it was like, it was imposed on all of us, but it basically ultimately failed and led to even weirder and more insane forms of cultural expression. And like I said, this world of discrete insanities that we all live in now. Yeah. I mean, people, there are definitely like examples in the past few years, people getting canceled for like, you know, things that are like in retrospect kind of stupid, but it was not quite like this where you would get canceled for saying, I don't think we should

invade another country. I don't think we should kill a million people. And by canceling, it meant like completely drummed out of public life. And in fact, everyone was incentivized to hate that person. They fired poor Phil Donahue. Yeah, Phil Donahue's last show on MSNBC was him and Pat Buchanan. They were supposed to argue about a rock, but they both agreed on it. And MSNBC was like, fuck you, we're going to hire Michael Savage for six weeks until

he tells a caller to get a, you know, another example of someone being canceled for something they shouldn't have been. Yeah. We, we, uh, everybody complaining about cancel culture, uh, and trigger warnings and all that shit. It's like the old, uh, uh, anti-drug commercial. I learned it from watching you, dad. Yeah, literally.

This whole thing, this whole cultural, uh, dynamic was forged after 9-11. Not coincidentally the exact same time that internet culture was literally being created, where, uh, the assumption was, is that you had certain things you were not allowed to say because it would upset people. It would remind them of the horrors of the towers and you were, and, and if you were insufficiently, uh, solicitous to the victims, and if you were insufficiently bloodthirsty to pun, punish the perpetrators, you were committing violence against people, uh, and you needed, you, you, it was the responsibility of, uh, the people to, to rebuke you.

Uh, and that's been with us ever since, like that model of how to respond to the media and the world around us as like this parade of traumas that we have to avoid being triggered by, that's all, that context is set by 9-11 and, and the response to it. If anyone, yeah, everyone remembers last summer where this thing starts out as like a genuine social movement and then like within a month it just be, like, unfortunately things get filtered through our media consumption culture and it, the way that most people end up seeing it is like Totino's being like, we're posting a black square. And that like people, a lot of people correctly identified this as, uh, ridiculous and at

the same time go back 20 years, this was happening every day, except it was like, the Disney channel supports our war efforts in Iraq, like, I'm sorry, a thousand times more ridiculous and insane. I mean, I've seen people bring this up again, there was an Amanda Bynes movie where they edited, edited the billboard for her not to hold up the peace sign because that would be offensive to people who want war. Hey, yeah, you don't, you don't know if somebody has trauma from watching 9-11. That may offend people.

They need to fantasize about blowing up Arabs. It's necessary for them. Yeah. It's part of their, it's part of their therapy. They need to exercise their trauma by doing 9-11 every fucking day for 20 years. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, I think like, uh, like trigger warnings are a very funny way to think about all this because, I mean, you remember from, uh, hypernormalization when Adam Curtis had

that montage of like every summer movie that came out in the years preceding 9-11 that was just like a fucking, just a carousel of like skyscrapers in New York City imploding on themselves or being wiped out by some gigantic alien force or Godzilla and it was just literally bodies thumbling out of fucking office buildings streaking to their deaths on the street below. It was this, this rehearsal of like all of our sort of like deepest fears, but really our fondest wishes because like we love nothing more than seeing America get destroyed. And then immediately after 9-11 happened, all of that shit had to be like sort of like

cleansed from our culture. Like we couldn't like, like anything that like, um, showed anything that was like, uh, an act of violence similar to 9-11 or a catastrophe of a similar nature, anything that, uh, portrayed cops or firemen losing their lives, that became triggering. It became triggering to the entire nation and had to be erased. I mean, you remember, uh, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man, the first trailer for that movie featured bank robbers in a helicopter, like escaping from a bank job, being ensnared in a giant spider web that was laid in between the Twin Towers and they had instantly had to edit

that out of the movie. I mean, I guess for obvious reasons, but here's, here's another example. There were, um, over 164 songs that were banned from the radio by Clear Channel after 9-11. This is now not iHeart Radio, but you're talking about like the corporation that owns something like 60% of the radio stations in America. And here were some of the songs that were deemed lyrically questionable to play on the radio after 9-11. They include, uh, seven ACDC, ACDC songs, including, uh, Dirty Deeds, Highway to Hell,

Safe in the, Safe in New York City, TNT and Hell's Bells. Also, Alanis Morissette's Ironic was banned from the radio. As the plane crashed down, he said, well, isn't this nice? No, Alanis. It's not nice when planes crashed down. It is not nice when planes crashed down into the Pentagon and into the Twin Towers and into Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Ma'am.

That, yeah, the thing that's very funny to me about this is like, like any conservative who's like, they're like 40, 50, 60, like, you know, going on about how annoying college campuses are. And it's like, sure, you're right. Yeah. Uh, to an extent. But to a person, go back, I really, I like, I can't, I really can't today. I went to Times Square in 1998.

Yes. I can't see this right now. I can't listen to Pat Benatar right now. I got thrown out of the New York, New York casino for trying to take a dump on a blackjack table. Uh, my, my, my cousin is a firefighter in the upper peninsula of Michigan. That's also in the Eastern time zone. I'm going to throw up like some of these songs you would never, never get the Beatles ticket

to ride. I guess that would remind people of, you know, airlines, uh, Bruce Springsteen's I'm on fire and Bruce Springsteen's going down that, that was Banff 3 obviously cat, cat Steven's songs are banned from the radio. Yeah. Yeah. Buster Rhymes. I'm going to do, uh, 30 jackknife turns in front of the Pentagon, I think my favorite

is not an hour. I think my favorite is the Bengals walk like an Egyptian, it's not pilot, a plane like an Egyptian. What the fuck? Well, that's what Muhammad Ata was doing down the aisle. I hear, here's another great example, um, uh, Louis Armstrong's, what a wonderful world and Don McLean's American pie were also banned from the radio, uh, Louis Armstrong's is banned because they didn't think it would be appropriate to play a song about how nice

everything is after 9 11. Is everything okay? No, it's not fucking okay. An American pie, I guess is just too sort of, uh, bittersweet. Well, no, remember that song is about a plane crash. Oh, you're right. Yeah. It's about our beloved heroes dying in the field of Minnesota in an airplane.

So basically every song that had to do with like, uh, the gap band, you dropped a bomb on me. Uh, Frank Sinatra is New York, New York. Any song that referenced like, uh, air, uh, airlines, explosions, uh, fire, um, or just having a good time in New York City, in New York City, uh, I'm back in the New York grove. That was banned. Um, yeah, uh, those, those are all excised from radio. And then of course, like the, the, the ur example, of course, was the, uh, protests in

which, uh, Dixie Chick CDs were, uh, says here in, uh, uh, using a 33,000 pound tractor to obliterate compact discs and other items, a few hundred protesters in bossier city, Louisiana, referring to themselves as backers of US president George Bush and Barksdale Air Force Base. Last back at Natalie Maynes, lead singer of the Texas based country act, the Dixie Chicks over a recent comment. And talk about how this is an enforced and imposed national stupidity. Of course the government is doing everything to push that, but they're doing it in concert

with this new, uh, monopolistic media environment. Thanks to 20 years of deregulation of telecoms and stuff, meaning that the clear channel at that point, as you said, has 60% of the radio stations in the country. Uh, there are only a few, um, media companies own any local news stations or newspapers. And they all have the same, uh, goals as the White House, which is to impose just a constant screaming panic about this thing that could be, could have in a different world have been processed with some degree of, uh, proportion, but instead becomes this daily, uh, emotional apocalypse because it's very, very useful for everyone if that's the way it is responded

to. Um, in talking about like the disproportionate reaction to a threat or a traumatic event, I mean, um, I've noticed people bringing this up on Twitter, but I mean, it is interesting in light of living now continuing to live through COVID, um, the disparate reactions between like, you know, 9 11, a discrete event that killed 3000 Americans. If you had, if you had, you know, suggested at the time, do you think our like reaction to like the sort of like just pure, just pure like the running the numbers on like the likelihood of you being an American citizen in America being killed by a terrorist attack versus

the, you know, trillions of dollars and millions of lives or lives were going to waste on based as Dick Cheney explicitly said on the 1% doctrine, if there's even like a 0.001% chance of a terrorist attack happening in the future, then literally anything we do is justified in, in, in like, theoretically, you theoretically prevent, prevent an imaginary terrorist attack up to and including starting several wars, uh, legalizing torture and like I said, killing about a million people, do you think like the, the, the, the people like the people who are, I mean, like COVID has been killing a 9 11's worth of Americans about every day for a year or so now.

And it just doesn't, it seems like our, our, our, our ability to, um, assess risk is, is severely broken because like that, like the more you cared about 9 11 and the more tears you get in your eyes, looking at flags, like the angrier you are at any suggestion that your life should be altered in any way because of COVID, whereas everyone's life had to change forever because of 9 11. Well that's just it though. It did it. I know it did it.

What did we have to do? If, if you were on the inside, if you were rooting for Team America after 9 11, the beauty was you didn't have to do anything differently. You got to badger your, uh, uh, your liberal neighbors for being insufficiently patriotic. You got to root on America's military as it flattened Middle Eastern countries, uh, you got to enjoy jingoistic programming and the most patriotic thing you could do according to your own president was go shopping. Yeah.

Whereas COVID requires you to be like dealing with COVID requires you being a citizen of a country and that's just antithetical. Like we, we, we were in like not the late nineties we've talked about, we talked about Woodstock 99 episode is this doldrum. It's this question of like, well, what the hell are we even doing as a, as a nation? Like what is this project and 9 11 gives us an answer and the culture reinforces that and it's sit back and watch us just destroy the goddamn world. And you get to continue the empty consumer experience that, uh, defined your life in

the nineties, but with a new verb and meaning behind it, not a challenge, not that doesn't require you to do anything differently, but that gives the things you do more meaning like go to fucking Disneyland and put a fucking W bumper sticker on the back of your car or or have a fucking yellow flag in front of your house or something. Those magnetic yellow car ribbons were everywhere. Those are everywhere. Yeah. Do you remember like everyone's sort of like memory hold this weird period that was like

the very early March sort of late February where like no one really knew what the virus was and like the bungalow was like, we're not like there's no virus. Everyone go to restaurants. Yeah. It was like that, but for like seven years. Yeah. And it worked for, uh, for at that point because, Hey, this is the plug and play empire. Like it's a volunteer army.

You don't have to do shit, but like an actual virus that has an actual impact on people. If they get it and transmit it, that that it doesn't work the same way. And so, uh, all of those signals just break down. Well, yeah. And it was, I mean, the great thing about a volunteer empire and the plug in or the volunteer army and the plug and play empire is that it's, it's sort of Schrodinger's war. You, you don't have to sacrifice as a civilian. In fact, you, you're supposed to do the opposite of sacrificing.

They're fighting for your pigish way of life. You don't have to keep living it every fucking day, but anytime that you raise some concern about Gitmo or civil liberties or anything, just anything at all going on in the country, we are at war. I mean, the perfect example of that was like, I remember there was this, uh, sort of like a furtive attempt to, uh, begin to question, uh, the, the, the American lifestyles reliance on cheap gasoline as maybe being the source of some of our problems. And then at the same, like that moment, like that was suggested for even a second.

It was like, no, fuck you, we're having the Hummer now. Everyone is driving a Hummer after getting 50 miles to the gallon. That is like the new, like that is, that is fucking like, yo, if you have anything less than that, you're a fucking pussy, you're a traitor, you're fucking, you hate the troops. Everyone's got to drive gigantic gas guzzling SUVs now. The Hummer is so perfect. That's the perfect emblem of 9 11 culture. We're going to war.

We're going to have a clash of civilizations to defend our way of life. Not me personally, uh, all the, all the dipshits that went to high school with me, uh, I am going to buy a military vehicle and drive it to, uh, fucking fud ruckers and pretend that I'm doing like a patrol of Baghdad. The H two, one of the ugliest cars ever created. And it was supposed to be like, I remember when, I remember in the nineties when fucking Arnold had a Hummer, like as, as, as his car, yeah, like the actual like military speck Hummer.

And I was like, damn, like Arnold's the coolest motherfucker alive. How he like only Arnold gets to have a military car and drive around smoking cigars. I'm ballsy. I could drive my Hummer a pocket wherever I want. But then the H two became, it was like every suburban mom could have one of these hideous gigantic cars. And it is so funny because the Hummer of course was like the signature vehicle of the US military. And during the Iraq and Afghanistan war, it became the signature coffin and fucking

just fucking death trap for every fucking soldier who had to be inside one when an IED went off. But here at home, of course, the, the, the H two just killed other people on highways because that was like the, that was the real invention of these like tank, like SUVs is like, oh, like, oh, like they only kill other people if you get in car accidents, you'll be fine. And I guess like it's, it's this, it's, it's the, it's the magnetic yellow bumper sticker. And it is this like, like I said, this, this patriotic correctness that was all focused

around originally. And you know, like not, not, not unwarranted, it was originally about first responders is about the FDNY, the paramedics, and also the NYPD, but like to a large degree, it was like a, you could understand the reaction of like wanting to, to valorize like, you know, first responders or people who lost their lives or tried to save lives. But then it immediately became they, they, when what they went through became immediately connected to Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush. And then of course the policies of the Bush administration, which became the troops.

And the troops really, this is what it all hinges on here. Like, I mean, like this is what was so enforced, like from like, from school kids to everyone. Like we just, and I think a big deal about this is that like, certainly not all Americans, but if you're talking about the media, academic, intellectual, and political elites in America on 9-11, the vast majority of them were baby boomers who lived through the Vietnam War and opposed it or got out of it and then spent the rest of their lives basically feeling guilty about it. Yeah.

And they, like, even though they, like, they, they, they protested it when they were, when they were in college or whatever, and they like, you know, I guess correctly at that time it says that it was an unjust war, but of course it was one that they had skin in the game in. Exactly. Yeah. The draft. I don't want, I don't want to go.

Yeah. I don't want to fucking go to Vietnam. But I think a lot of them, despite sort of that being the crucible that formed their politics, I think a lot of them were kind of embarrassed about it and, and, and then as they like became older and more successful and became like, you know, the sort of mandarins of American culture, felt a sense of shame about that, about not serving, about not heating the, the bugle call. And I think it was like, and then 9-11 became their opportunity to relive the experience

of Vietnam, but in, but in which we were the good guys and that we finally had post Cold War an opportunity for America to define itself and answer that question that would sock 99 pose that you brought up earlier, Matt, like, what are we doing here? What the fuck is the point of this all? Like why are we even here? And then 9-11 gave them the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that. And it would be, it would be an opportunity to show that America was good. And most importantly, it allowed them to support a military action that, you know, they had

no, they were not going to be involved in in any way other than being, being on and watching the news. Yeah. And that became, that became a signal identity for Americans ever since, like that is one of the defining types of person you have emerge after 9-11 is somebody whose identity is formed around their news consumption and the way that they respond to that. I know that's what I ended up doing. Like, well, I'm not, I'm sure shit not going to go fight the war.

I don't, I don't agree with the war. I'm horrified by the war, but I don't really can't really imagine doing anything effectively to resist it besides, you know, impotent protest. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pay a shit ton of attention to the goddamn news. And you know, in the, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, all of the major networks went four straight days of nonstop commercial free news coverage, estimated they forfeited around $200 million worth of advertising in the process. But I guarantee you they gained that back in the long run by just sort of like, finally

the news mattered again. The news mattered again and people in the news media understood that like, to the extent to which they mattered again, it depended on their ability to channel these feelings that were being enforced in the top down about how everybody is just on board with this war and this new struggle and this new, this new sense of purpose and this sort of revitalized messianic mission that has always been a part of America's DNA, but that we had lost and that they, they were going to feel their oats again, they were going to rekindle that feeling and get over their shame and trauma about not fighting in Vietnam.

And to that end, I mean, then again, you then you get things like God bless America having to be sung at baseball games. Oh, God. That's one of my least favorite, least favorite thing that's still around. Oh, yeah. It's still around. Oh, but only the Yankees, though, it's just not doing it every game, fucking Steinbrenners. And then, you know, obviously, even worse than 9-11 was, of course, the Yankees losing

to the Diamondbacks in the World Series in Game 7. Well, that absolutely ruled. That was very appropriate, because it's like, hey, guys, this is New York's year. No, this is really about people in Arizona. Yes, it's true. It's perfect. It's true. It's absolutely perfect.

It's true, because I mean, I remember feeling like annoyed, having been a lifelong New Yorker, that like all of a sudden, the entire country just regards themselves as New Yorkers. And everything's about a New Yorker, whatever, after like, you know, let's be honest, like, we hate you and they hate us. Like, let's keep it that way. That's the way it should be. But you're right. It was never about people in New York.

It was about people in fucking Arizona. Yeah. They were the fucking winners. They were the fucking winners. Yeah. I mean, New York was the site of, I mean, a lot of American major cities were, but New York was the site, I think, of the biggest counter-Iraq war protests in the nation. Yeah.

And it's like, fuck you, pal. It was the 2004 RNC convention, which was held in New York City. I think roughly half a million people turned out to the streets of Manhattan to protest the Iraq war and the Bush administration. Yeah. And they threw them all in jail. And, well, I'm sorry, not in jail. Concentration camps.

Just Pierce. It was the Chelsea Pierce, basically. Just one other forgotten bit of 9-11 ephemera. This is one of my favorites. And I remember when I heard about this, I had felt a very spine-chilling feeling that I don't like where this is going. I don't like the people who are in charge. This seems like a different country.

This seems like I do not like the direction we're going. And this was, of course, when John Ashcroft's Justice Department spent $8,000 to cover the tits of a statue. That was classic. It was because he didn't want to just have the blind justice. He didn't want to have one tit just walked out when he was giving... People are going to get so warning that they're going to just run into the statue and break their dicks on it.

You can't have that. And he said it was because he didn't want him to be framed by tits when he's giving very serious press conferences about how our color-coded terror alert had to be raised from orange to red. I mean, that's even more than freedom fries. Harold did a new era. And then I guess the other thing that's been completely forgotten about the 9-11 and the immediate aftermath of it is that not even a week after the Twin Towers came down, people

started getting anthrax into them in the mail, including Tom Daschle and CBS. And five people died and 16 people were gravely sent to the hospital, almost died because of it. And basically, the FBI closed the case in 2008 after their main suspect killed himself. Yeah, they just said, yeah, he probably did it. And the guy there originally, whose name was put in the media, Stephen Hadfield, I think his name was, that ruined his life, but of course, he was exonerated almost immediately after.

Richard Jules-Style. Yeah, Richard Jules-Style. But the main guy, I think, killed himself in the FBI Closer investigation. And they closed it because he worked at Fort Detrick, Maryland in the bio weapons division. Which is where the fucking anthrax came from. That's where the anthrax came from. They came from the Army's own bio weapons labs. The anthrax attack is forgotten now, but I really do think that it was incredibly important

in keeping the hysteria after Nyland had been going. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, yes, these towers going down was just this absolutely psychically traumatizing event that all culture revolved around. But there's only so much, if you're living in Des Moines, that you can work yourself up, that Al-Qaeda's going to come and blow up the corn palace or whatever the fuck. But once there's fucking deadly bacteria in the mail, then literally anybody who's

deadly could be killed by terrorism. And then, yeah, we don't know who did this, probably Iraq or this guy. He's dead now. Never mind. Yeah, I was made in a government lab. What are you asking about? No, but that's exactly right, Matt. It was so crucial into universalizing this fear of terrorism and the idea that the next

terrorist attack was going to happen, not a question of if, but when, as Donald Rumsfeld famously said, that any corner of America was gravely, gravely in danger of suicide bombing or the next 9-11 from every small town, suburb, city, every corner of America. People were just waiting, just waiting for the fucking next terrorist attack to happen, even though realistically, if you don't live in New York, L.A., or D.C., or Chicago, it's like the terrorist attack happening to you. Pretty fucking small. But I said the anthrax attacks universalized this feeling of absolute terror and fucking

trauma and prolonged it to a great degree. And then what do you know? Of course, in the run-up to the Iraq war, it was Saddam Hussein's anthrax and his mobile biological weapons labs became a huge, you know, a piece of evidence to justify the invasion. But I guess the news became important again, but I'd like to talk about now, and I'd like to close out part one of this episode with a reading series that deals with sort of the rise of the Internet, Internet-based news and the blogosphere, because that was the other thing.

Because Matt, you mentioned all of this was happening at a time when Internet culture was just beginning to start, and then all of a sudden the news became the most important thing in the world, and because of the Internet, we saw the creation of these kind of civilian journalists as they were, as they called themselves, as opposed to be like the ones who got very successful originally with this were all shrieking bloodthirsty ghouls. These are people from whom Fox News and CNN and NBC were not doing enough to support America's role to just kick the shit out of like every other country in the world and kill as many Arabs as possible.

The opposing pole to that, the liberal blogosphere, which also came up at the same time, people forget guys like Ezra Klein and Matt Iglesias, a lot of these names that are common parlance now. They were not conservative or reactionaries, but they all were going for that audience. Not that audience. They wanted to get a link from guys like Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundant, and to do that, you had to be psychotically devoted to this clash of civilizations like fucking just absolute mania and hysteria.

Everybody. That was reasonable. That was the minimal standard for being a serious person. That's the thing. It's like it looks back, look back through it now, it's like, yeah, this was insanity. This was taking a thing that happened and turning it into an existential threat in a way that made no logical sense, making it the pole of all foreign and domestic policy in a way that was just wildly out of proportion.

Believing that was the minimum requirement to be considered a serious person. If you did not accept that, all those assumptions, you could just be safely written off. For a lot of these guys, no matter what they thought about it, that was the incentives. They had to give homage to this point of view or else they couldn't be accepted as a rational interlocutor. For guys like Maddie and Ezra, I'm sure they feel embarrassed about it now, but it worked for them. They're fucking millionaires off this.

If they had said, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this shit, they wouldn't have been funneled through the take, shoot to become August men of letters. They would have been written off as cranks. Go hang out with Janine Garofalo. They wanted to get linked to by the big boys. That's how you come up. My big boys, I mean here, I'm thinking of one guy, I mentioned Instapundit, who, like, here at DeFour was this law professor based out of Tennessee, who's most of his writing

and intellectual output was based on his idea about how feasible it would be to upload his brain into a computer and live forever, and also about sex bots as well. But just like this, a libertarian techno futurist who really rose to the moment and became a man. And just in one sentence, hyperlinks would just be advocating genocide in the Middle East. And he became a serious thinker. That is something that we've completely memory-hold.

Just how okay it was to say that, say, we need to kill 10% of all Muslims in the world to send a message. Howard Stern said that after 9-11, he said we should nuke one random Arab city. Yeah. No. It's totally okay for a pretty long time. Until the 2010s, this is where you could be a mainstream person and say this and really not get that many consequences for saying it.

But okay, so I have, from my reading series here, this may seem an odd one to like do on a 9-11 episode, but I don't know, like, if you're not of a certain age and we're not plugged into the political plot of the sphere, this will seem insane to you, but what I'm about to read, but consider it's even more insane because this was considered like a ground, like a game-changing essay that like defined an era. And when this guy died recently, people like Megan McCartle were singing his brazers. I'm talking, of course, about the famous internet screed, The Pussification of the Western Mail by Kim Duttois.

Kim Duttois. Kim Duttois. Let's talk about that Pussification, Sr. Duttois. When you get that estrogen in the drinking water, the jackrabbit gonna kiss a grizzly bear. This was a much celebrated, much shared sort of like call to arms among the America's armchair warriors, the war bloggers. And I think you see the DNA of a lot of like contemporary conservatism in this essay.

But I mean, it's a great example of like the writing style and like mentality of this era. And like I said, and like the liberal bloggers and like people who are trying to do this from like a, not even, not a left wing, just like a pro-democrat perspective. I don't think they wanted to be this guy, but I think they wanted his approval. Like this was the baseline that was considered reasonable and like the new dominant point of view among like American culture that had to be respected or at least acknowledged. So keep that in mind when I read this essay to you.

Okay. This is the Pussification of the Western Male by Kim Duttois, who was a very big war blogger of this era. We have become a nation of women. It wasn't always this way, of course. There was a time when men put their signatures to a document knowing full well that this single act would result in their execution of captured and in their forfeiture of their property to the state.

Their wives and children would be turned out by the soldiers and their farms and businesses, most probably given to someone who didn't sign the document. There was a time when men went to their certain death with expressions like, you can all go to hell. I'm going to Texas. In parentheses, Davey Crockett to the House of Representatives before going to the LMO. Davey Crockett, by the way, absolutely did not think he was going to die. Davey Crockett got executed after the battle the whole time.

He was like, no, man, come on. I was kidding. There was a time when men went to war, sometimes against their own families, so that other men could be free. There was a time when men went to war because we recognized evil when we saw it and we knew it had to be stamped out. There was a time when a president of the United States threatened to punch a man in the face and kick him in the balls because the man had the temerity to say bad things about the

president's daughter's singing. We're not like that anymore. That's the beginning. It captures the absolute giddiness of a basically a house-bound anime thing. Kim Dachau, after he retired from political blogging, would just simply post photos of Lolli and the anime schoolgirls and shit like that and be like, this one's my favorite. The palpable giddiness that they felt about not them being at war, but America being at war, which means, de facto, they are at war.

The lives of every fucking 18-year-old that we sent into Baghdad and all the people they killed over there, that was just fodder for this certain kind of, like I said, boomer to Gen X personality that had been like, their entire lives up till 9-11 was one giant failure to be a man and that now this was like, America now had a sort of like, all the world is a stage and it is like, and then you watch the news to see evidence of your own masculinity and to the extent that we succeed or fail in the war on terror is a psychic tabulation of your own masculinity. Christopher Hitchens admitted it.

He said, when I saw the towers go down, I got hard. I mean, basically, that's what he said. There was a, what was the word he used? He said he was exhilarated. Exhilarated, yes. I mean, that was the first hard-on he had in years, fucking gin-soaked wretch that he is. But yeah, he says, we're not like that anymore.

Now little boys in grade school are suspended for playing cowboys and Indians, cops and crooks, and all the other familiar variations of good guy versus bad guy that helped them learn at an early age, what it was like to have decent men hunt you down because you were a lawbreaker. Is that, is that the lessons that kids learn from playing cops and robbers? I mean, you know, I always like to be the robber. I root for the bad guy. So does Kim Duttois.

Yeah. Now, men are taught that violence is bad, that when a thief breaks into your house or threatens you in the street, that the proper way to deal with this is to give him what he wants instead of taking a horse whip to the rascal or shooting him dead where he stands. Like, I like, look, okay, like just look up an image of Kim Duttois when you're reading this. The idea that this guy has ever been the victim of or done violence to anyone in his life for any reason is laughable.

It's insane. Kim Duttois kind of looks like he could be like movie Bob's dad. Yes, he does. He absolutely does. Now, he goes on. Now, men's fashion includes not a man dressed in a three-piece suit, but a tight sweater worn by a man with breasts. It's like, dude, you have tits, you realize that, right?

He's got some sweat. He's got some tingles. But like, okay. See what I mean? Like, you can see the DNA of Trump in here because he's just like, it starts out like, we used to horse whip cattle wrestlers around these parts or just hang them high. And then he's like, fashion today is so messy. What happened in a three-piece suit?

Why don't we... No stars. This is the genesis of Roman statue guys happened in the embers of 9-11. Yeah. Now, he says, now, warning labels are indelibly etched into gun barrels as though men have somehow forgotten that guns are dangerous things. Now, men are given riddlin' as little boys so their natural aggressiveness, curiosity and restlessness can be trolled instead of nurtured and directed.

And finally, our president, who happens to have been a qualified fighter pilot, lands on an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit and is immediately dismissed with words like swaggering, macho and the favorite epithet of Euro girly men, cowboy. Of course, he was bound to get that reaction and most especially from the press in Europe because of the process of male pacification over there is almost complete. How did we get to this? In the first instance, we have to understand that America is that America is first and foremost a culture dominated by one figure, mother.

It wasn't always so. There was a time when it was father who ruled the home, worked at his job and voted. So yeah, you see the DNA of the manosphere and incel. This idea that the most oppressive force in American life is the gynocracy. It's mother telling you to clean up your room. It's mother telling you to eat your vegetables and that this has made America weak. And again, the people least suited to the task were now going to take up arms to rekindle patriarchal authority, masculine vigor, running roughshod and being brave and bold and spitting

and shooting and chewing among a set of people who would get winded walking down a flight of stairs. He goes, in the 20th century, women became more and more involved in the body politic and in the industry and in the media and mostly this has not been a good thing. When women got the vote, it was inevitable that the government was going to become more powerful, more intrusive and more protective because women are hardwired to treasure security more than uncertainty and danger. It was therefore inevitable that their feminine influence on politics was going to emphasize

lowercase s, social security. I am aware of the fury that this statement is going to arouse and I don't give a fig. What I care about is not a single fig. Yeah. I'm in NORAD looking at like eight screens. We got a problem major. We thought he was going to give a fig. There's no sign of a fig.

He's fresh out and we're looking for signs of him giving a care. He's not even doing that. This fat boy is crazy. I came here to eat figs and to kick butt and I'm all out of figs. And I have a cyst in my lower leg, so I'm just going to write this article. I'm going to illustrate this by talking about TV because TV is a reliable barometer of our culture. Of course you're going to talk about TV.

It's all you do. You don't have any other points of reference. What an anthropological research. Click. What else would you talk about? What else do you know? Yeah, exactly. You guys, I'm going to talk, you know, I'm going to talk about like a place in my life

where I see masculinity disappearing, the packaging of frozen dinners. There used to be a strong man putting the hungry man into the oven and now it's some bitch. Felix, you joke, but like listen to where this goes. He goes, in the 1950s, the TV dad was seen as the lovable goofball, perhaps the beginning of the trend, but he was still the one who brought home the bacon and was the main source of discipline. Think of the line.

Wait until your father gets home. From that, we went to this, the Cheerios TV ad. Oh my God. These guys haven't gotten a new act in like 30 years. What the fuck? He goes, now for those who haven't seen this piece of shit, and now here's just another thing I'd like to point out about Kim Titois. He cusses in this article, but he misspells the cuss words.

He spells shit here, S-C-H-I-T, sort of like the Zodiac killer. I mean, I don't know, like apparently actually writing a curse word is too rough and tumble and masculine for him because he can't bring himself to just write shit. He has to, he has to sort of like, he's like, I don't know, this is a family blog. Yeah. The kids come here to learn horrific blood loss. I don't want them to expose the bad language. Now, for those of you who haven't seen this piece of shit, I'm going to go over it from

memory because it epitomizes everything I hate about the campaign to pacify men. The scene opens at the morning breakfast table where the two kids are sitting with dad at the table while mom prepares the stuff on the kitchen counter. The dialogue goes something like this. Little girl, note, not little boy, daddy, why do we eat Cheerios? Dad, because they contain fiber and all sorts of stuff that's good for the heart. I ate it now because of that. Little girl, did you always eat stuff that was bad for your heart, daddy?

Dad, humorously, I did until I met your mother, mother, not humorously. Daddy did a lot of stupid things before he met your mother. Now, every time I see that TV ad, I have to be restrained from shooting the TV with a 45 cult. If you want a microcosm of how men have become less men, this is the perfect example. Kim, you're right. If you want an example about how men have become pussies, that previous sentence where Cheerios ad makes you man enough to shoot your television with a gun is a perfect example

of the phenomenon you're talking about. And guess what? Did you shoot your TV with a gun? No, because you want to watch more TV. Yeah, exactly. How am I going to watch my programs if I shoot my TV? Okay. And he goes on to keep...

Okay. He talks about TV for so long here. And he goes... He goes... Now, every... I goes, what dad should have replied to mommy's little dig? Fuck you, bitch! He's coming up with...

He's coming up... He's coming up with zingers that the dad in a TV commercial should have fucking slapped back with. Being such a bitch that you can't even do this for your own life. You can't even come up with comebacks for your own life. Yeah. If I was that guy in that commercial, let me tell you what I would have said to that. That piece of work.

If I had a wife who corrected me, this is what I'd say to her. Yes, Sally, that's true. I did a lot of stupid things before I met your mother. I even slept with your aunt Ruth a few times before I met your mother. Hell, dude, that's all psychotic. Why would you say that? The most manly thing you can do is take out your psychoses on your kid. Yeah.

And he goes... Then he goes, you know what? Some women deserve to be single moms. He goes... What's up? He goes... He goes, that's what I would have said anyway if my wife had ever attempted to castrate me in front of the kids like that.

Dude, homie, you just got castrated by a Cheerios commercial. If your wife took your balls, they're already in a jar, man. Just give up. I mean, this is what I'm saying. This is why this kind of person, this is where their absolute bloodlust to commit genocide in the Middle East comes from. This is the only way that they could feel a little twinge and a little worm in between their legs.

This is the only way that they could just sort of accrue for themselves some feeling of strength, potency, and like fucking masculinity at all, these guys. And this is the way they went about doing it because, like I said, at the end of the day, he's being riled up by a fucking Cheerios ad and feeling castrated by it. It's like, dude, you don't have a dick to begin with. You haven't seen your dick in 30 years. That's why we have to kill every Muslim person on the planet is because of a Cheerios ad this guy saw.

He goes on here. He says, when I first started this website, I think my primary aim was to blow off steam at the stupidity of our society. Because I have a fairly set view, because I have fairly set views on what constitutes right and wrong. I have no difficulty in calling Bill Clinton, for example, an effing liar and hypocrite. But most of all, I do this website because I love being a man. Okay, stop the ad, that's it, that's like, okay, we found it.

That's American conservatism. I'm a webmaster because I'm in the tradition of Davey Crockett, the Green Berets. There we go here. Most of all, I do this website because I love being a man. There you go. That's the last 20 years, folks. Those are the pamphlets we should have dropped on Baghdad. It's like, why are we doing this?

This is why. This is who we are. This is us. There is still quite a bit to this essay. Why don't we stop here and save part two of the pushification of the Western Mail for episode two? So let's wrap up here. I do this website because I love being a man.

Keep that in mind and we will join you on Thursday for part two of 9-Eleven. What a long, strange trip it's been. I will be finishing the pushification of the Western Mail. We will be talking about movies, TV, and music and the weird ways in which they tried to channel 9-Eleven and failed miserably. And of course, I will be closing things out with, I mean, honestly, I should do this every year on 9-Eleven. I mean, I do it for myself, but I'm going to share it with you.

The baseball cranks, memory of almost being killed on 9-Eleven. So tune in on Thursday for part two of the pushification of the Western Mail, more 9-Eleven retrospection, and the baseball cranks essay about nearly being killed by Al Qaeda. Till next time, guys. Till next time. Bye. Let the mighty eagle soar, like she's never soared before. From rocky coast to golden shore, let the mighty eagle soar.