Chapo Trap House - 572 - The McGloughstein Group feat. Daniel Bessner (11/1/21)

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

We’re joined by Daniel Bessner, co-host of the American Prestige podcast, for a remarkably focused and thoughtful Will-less episode. We discuss Trump’s recent statement about Israel “owning” congress, Josh Hawley’s thoughts on masculinity, and the Lincoln Project’s bungled attempt at a false-flag operation to make a Republican appear more racist. Then Matt and Danny tell us about their new Chapo mini-series “Hinge Points,” which will explore some great historical “what-if” moments. Hinge Points will be posting on our Patreon for all subscribers on Fridays, starting 11/5. DECEMBER SHOWS: Catch us at Asbury Hall in Buffalo, NY on Wednesday, December 8th https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-house-tickets-201713088277 And at Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY on Thursday, December 16th (with music from 95 Bulls) https://www.ticketweb.com/event/chapo-trap-house-warsaw-tickets/11487515?pl=warsaw (NOTE: these ticket links will go live sometime Tuesday, 11/2. Do not complain about the links not being live now. We will make dedicated posts on Patreon and Twitter with the links when they go live.) MERCH: Check out new merch and restocked favorites over at shop.chapotraphouse.com. New merch goes live 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, 11/2. SUPPORT HOLLYWOOD FOOD COALTION: Go to https://hofoco.org, click donate and leave the note “Mandy Challenge” to support Josh Olsen’s fundraiser. AMERICAN PRESTIGE: Finally, make sure you go check out Danny and Derek Davison’s podcast American Prestige: https://www.patreon.com/americanprestige

What's up, everybody? It is Monday, November 1st, 2021, and this is your chapeau trap house. It is another classic, tight and disciplined Will-less episode. Will is returning to his ancestral homelands in western Mass. The islands. Will is reuniting with his brother, the other island boy, to taking off that ridiculous wig he wears, letting his real hair bond dreadlocked nugs. Every year, he has to sing the island boy song with his brother, or he'll die. Every state has an island boy set of twins, and that's like midsummer is real. The religion from midsummer is real, but it's centered on island boys. It's not centered on a woman who cries a lot. That's ridiculous. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? No, the island boys don't have the role of

the crying lady. They have the role of the inbred kid whose finger paints are their holy texts. Okay, I'm going to be honest with you. I've not seen the movie. I just saw a lot of pictures of the woman crying, and I was like, oh, she's like their god. All in on this chick crying to sell that movie. Is wild. Well, yeah, I mean, everyone, but because like everyone in the world is like, oh, what's my favorite thing about being with my girlfriend when she talks about her job? Yeah, it's great. What if there was a movie about that? What if there was a religion where that was the main thing? Where boyfriend got sacrificed for not asking, how was your day and media? Yeah, if communion is, you go up to the girlfriend priest and you're like, how was your day? He's like, Jan is still a bitch.

And they don't like, if the president's a bad boyfriend, they're like, he shouldn't have communion. Am I a communion to the bad boyfriend president? If I was president, I'd be like Joe Biden, where they'd be like, all the girlfriend bishops are like, he's like, he's like, never remembered a girlfriend's birthday. He's like, terrible. Yeah. But he doesn't remember anything else either. Come on. Well, I don't remember anyone's birthday. It's like not important to me. Well, before we get too far into Island Boy communion birthday magic, let's finish introducing the episode. We have here to make up for the lack of will we have, of course, it's Danny Bessner, one of our favorite friends to have on the show. Welcome back to the show, Danny. Thanks for having me,

guys. Appreciate always being back. And do you consider yourself an island boy? I am an island boy, a long island, but nevertheless an island. That's an island that counts. No, that, yeah, yeah, you could, I mean, I could see you reaching the rank of island boy. Oh, that really means a lot. Thanks, Felix. I know you wouldn't just say that. Well, I mean, I do have, I have a brother who like, we're not twins, but we do like look alike. We were at the true and on show and it was really funny seeing our stupid, stupid idiot fans, like not figure, just be like, oh, are there two of them? See a double here. He looks like slightly better than me. Yeah. But you know, we could be island boys. If we want to, we look alike enough. That's true. You just need the

March Simpson hair. Yeah. And that's really just patience. Yeah. Patience and the same unwillingness to take a bath as a golden retriever. I think they look like, I don't think they look like dirty. I think they look cool. They've certainly got more dedication to an aesthetic than I will ever have. And for that, I applaud them. But then there is some other business that I need to address at the top of this episode, which is boys. We are going back on the road. We're doing some live shows again. I'm very excited to announce this this December. We are doing the better back in the New York grove tour of Buffalo, New York and New York City. That's the city in the world anywhere else. That's it. Those are the two cities off the middle chunk, the bird over

district. Get out of here. Oh, Nida, get the fuck out of here. No, I'm calling this the the Erie Canal Terminus Tour. The Witt Clinton tour. If you're from one of those bullshit ass West Chester towns that's called like Hungle Lake, where the average income is $750,000 a year, especially fuck you even though you're statistically 80% chance of subscribing. Fuck you. And also, allegedly, Metro North trip into the city if they wanted to say yes. So Wednesday, December 8th, we will be appearing live at Buffalo, New York at Asbury Hall. And then the following Thursday, December 16th, we will be back here in Brooklyn for our first New York based showing God like three and a half years, something like that at Warsaw up in Green Point. That'll be a very

fun show. The 95 Bulls will be playing with us there. We'll be a little live music. If you didn't catch them during frequency, 95 Bulls fucking rip. And I'm very excited for them to be playing with us. That show is going to be a lot of fun for people not from Ohio. Also known as the 95 Bulls Bulls. Listen to you. Bulls. Adorable. Damn. Warsaw is sick looking. I didn't look it up. I don't know. We just got to pray that no light bulbs go out because I don't know if there's enough hands on deck to take care of it. I read the irony. The irony of us playing there is not lost on me. Believe you me. Our walkout is a little slower there because they do need to have an onsite staff of 300 in case any stage lights go out. We are really going to have to like

work out our road. We don't have a complicated writer, but it's like when we say Coke zero, there's just going to be nothing in the refrigerator. And then I said, you said zero coax. It's like working with Amelia Badelia. So that those dates again, and these will be in the show notes. And eventually on some kind of website, though, I am still trying to wrangle our website back into working proper order, but I will do what we can to get these show links or links out to get tickets. That's Wednesday, December 8th in Buffalo, New York at Asbury Hall and Thursday, December 16th, Brooklyn, New York at Warsaw. We will continue to be walking here for the first time since like 2018. Very excited. Anyway, so the second part of the show is going to be talking

with Danny and Matt because they have a new project coming up called Hinge Points, which is a mini series that we are going to be hosting on Chappatrapa. So we're going to talk about that in the back half of the show. But Matt, you've basically programmed the top half here. What's going on with this Trump thing? This just dropped today. Our beautiful boy was on an interview with somebody I've never heard of, some right wing radio slug named Ari Hoffman. And he decided to complain about how the Zionist occupied government just isn't as Zionist-ly occupied as it used to be. And that's a real shame. Should we play the clap that shit? Well, you know, the biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress. You understand that 10 years ago,

15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite. You have between AOC and Omar and these people that hate Israel. They hate it with a passion. They're controlling Congress. And Israel is not a force in Congress anymore. I mean, it's just amazing. I've never seen such a change. And we're not talking about over a very long period of time. But I think you know exactly what I'm saying. Israel had such power and rightfully over Congress. And now it does it. It's incredible, actually. So he's saying it's a bad thing. I love that look at it. It's just one fucking adverb between that and like unacceptable anti-Semitism. Is him just adding, good, they should be in charge of Congress.

And the thing is, that is the mindset of everybody who yells about anti-Semitism is that the basic premises of it are correct. It's just that it's good. And you should like it that Israel's in charge of Congress. And Trump is just parroting all of the people that he's surrounded with. Sort of the over 65 class of New York City is clearly very pro-Israel and actually thinks it's a good thing. So it's interesting because he's just, you know, again, there's no subtext. It's just all text with Trump. And he's just saying what they believe and what they've been telling him for years and years and years. Well, that's the difference between right-wing Zionism and liberal Zionism. Right-wing Zionism is going like, no, we did or we still kind of do control

Congress and we'll like just get you drummed out if you even question the orthodoxy. Not even like something like stop recognizing Israel or cut off military aid. Just like don't give them every single dollar they ask for. We'll try to end your career. But that's good. And then liberal Zionism is doing that, but pretending it's happening and crying when people say that that's what's happening. But you're always, always closing with, but I'm against the occupation. It's so funny, though, that any like real anti-Semitic based reactionaries ever trust, ever really put faith at this guy because they just fundamentally didn't get that he doesn't care about any of your bullshit. Like he does not care about any issues, any principles. When he sees

the influence of Israel in Congress, he's like, yeah, they're good. They're good to business people. They make good deals. Why shouldn't they be in charge? You're going to let the Palestinians be in charge? They make terrible deals. Yeah. His position is that he read the Meersheimer and Walt Estan was like, these two guys are amazing. What's the problem? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no, he's, I mean, you can't get him on any of the big like online right wing guy issues, like Zionism. And you can't even get him on like the smaller ones, like brutalism. Yeah, exactly. Or like buildings look bad now. What do you think their buildings look like? It really does remind me of how the Nazis, when they were allied with the Japanese,

sent the protocols of the elders of Zion to leaders of the Japanese government to let them know what they were dealing with in the Jews. And they read it and they were like, we got to get these people over here. Yeah, they thought it was impressive, right? If I recall correctly, you're like, whoa, yeah, these guys know how to make you got to get them in here to help us make deals with these guys. Yeah, they were like, they studied, they studied really hard. Now they can like buy all these kids. These guys are all because there's just like no cultural contact with Jews in that culture. That's like, I mean, the subtext is like, is like, they didn't like no Japanese guy knew like an annoying Jewish guy ever. So just reading that

like all like every anti-Semitic conspiracy theory on paper, you just imagine like the coolest, smartest man ever. Exactly. Yeah. And not like this guy is going to be a pimp. He's going to show up and just make money appear out of nowhere while being suave about it. Whereas like a German guy who's like already predisposed to be anti-Semitic, like believes most of that shit, it meets like he has a higher likelihood pre-Holocaust of meeting like a Jewish guy who's annoying or like whatever. And you know, he's like, like he meets a guy who has allergies and he's like, oh my God, and, and he like, and he made it so we lost World War One. I'm so fucking mad. Yeah. It's kind of funny that he used the word owned. Like it seems like even he would be kind

of aware of that one. That's just classic Trump. Look, people own things. That's, that's the business. Yeah. That's how we've used things. He's owning Pete things and then trading them with other people's owned things. Yeah, it's his world view. It's the same thing. Yeah. And he, and the reason people liked him at first is because he said that kind of stuff. But the implication that a lot of people heard because it seemed like he was talking to them was that he was going to let them in on the scam. And so they're like, yeah, he's, he's showing that this is all bullshit, but he's going to use that knowledge to help me. Right. I just like the whole Trump foreign policy thing is interesting to me because it's like more like guys who are trying to make more of like the online

all right thing. It consists in ideology, which was always a fool's errand. Pretty quickly we're like, okay, this guy's letting neocons run the show. But for the people who more slowly got disillusioned or still held onto the Obama bought for DHS thing, like what did they, what is the rationale? Okay, it's cool that he goes George W. Bush, like he fucked up 9-11 happened. Okay, what do you think when he hires everyone who helped allow 9-11 to happen or fucked up in his opinion? I'll tell you right now, you could do 9-11 even better. Yeah, yeah, that is more effectively. I'll tell you, we're not going to have a plane crash in the middle of nowhere. I'll tell you that right now. If we want to hit the capital, we're going to hit the capital. Okay, folks. Well,

it was like the early ration, the early thing that came up with when he would hire like Bolton and then all these like, you know, these people who are just regular neocon neoliberal foreign policy consensus people from before was like, oh, they're in the Jared and Ivanka faction, like they were hired by Jared. And it's like, okay, well, this guy's still like just led his ultra Zionist son-in-law like half 80% of his administration. That's how much he gave a shit about any of this stuff. Yeah, he did it. I think that's fucking son-in-law in charge. I think that's the big story of the Trump administration. I think like we don't even know what the hell was going on on the ground and all these bases around the world. I think like

the whole system was just sort of functioning without a head and who fucking knows what was going on where US troops are stationed where Trump didn't even know where they're stationed. And then people tried to delude themselves at the beginning when he appointed Mattis and when he appointed HR McMaster that, you know, he's going to let the professionals run the show. But by the end of the administration, it was just all the typical neocon psychopaths that we know and love. And this just shows he didn't give a shit about any of it. And then frankly, no one really gives a shit about foreign policy as a whole anyway. So he could essentially have done what he wanted the entire time, but he didn't care enough to do anything. How many times in the four years

he was president, do you think Trump said to an aide something along the lines of, we've got guys there? Why the hell do we got guys there? Why are there people in Mali? What is this? You probably didn't know that we had guys in Mali until a reporter asked him about the dude that they left there to get eaten by vultures. No way. He had no idea. I bet my life on it. No. I mean, the thing is now too, like, I think there's like, it's stupid to call it now because like who knows what can happen a few years from now. But I'd say there's like at least like a 15% chance that he could be president again, right? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I'd say high. At the very least, like being very conservative, but it's like he's never, he'll never change his stance on Israel

because they've done the most important thing, which is be nice to him. Yep. They would have to be mean to him. And they'll never, they have enough message discipline to know to not be mean to them. They know that they can be mean to Democrats and Democrats will essentially say no hard feelings. I mean, look at what just happened. They had almost unprecedented situation with the elected government of Israel coming down on one side in an American presidential election. And then Biden gets in there and he's like, no hard feelings. You want to keep the embassy in Jerusalem? Go for it. No problem. You want us to not reinstate the Iran deal? Absolutely. We're going to, we're going to say, make up a bunch of bullshit to fail to actually act on that just

like you want. That's why we want us to restock the missiles in the Iron Dome. Yeah. Like literally pay for us to reload, which is the hilarious, of course, like the funniest thing of what he says is when he goes and they don't have it anymore. AOC, this is their charge. And that's literally because he saw people mad about them on Fox News and decided that means that they were actually doing something, which is how politics works on the brains of like actual partisan invested people in this country is they watch like the pathetic shadow play of fake arguments and unenforced demands and then decide that like just the fact that it's happening and that somebody that they like is mad about it means that something fundamentally is moving somewhere. He's the only

guy in the world who saw the tax the rich stress and was like, oh, the taxes on the rich went off. Yeah, exactly. He's the only guy that worked. Yeah, it's like that's what they do now that they announced the laws of the pair of the dresses. And by the way, it looked terrible, honey. He would actually be a good Met Gala correspondence. That was what he was destined in like the best universe that exists in a hinge point. We're all of us. We should do a hinge point on that. Yeah, where we get to be like the best versions of ourselves possible. Like the best version of Trump is still an awful, awful person. Of course. The Trump who was like awfulness is least consequential and harmful to others is when he gets to be a bitchy New York fashion and gossip

monger. Yeah, and he loves it too. The best Trump we could have gotten still awful, but in completely harmless. VH1 should have given him a nightly show in like 2007 and that every word would be better off for that. Okay, so you guys mentioned a few times offhandedly like the failed and flailing attempts to like build some kind of ideological national conservatism off of Trump and why it doesn't make any sense. I have two clips pulled up from two of these types of guys that I think are very telling about this that I wanted to play you guys. And I think that the main thing I want to get out of these is a boy is listening to these two guys like putting a drill into your temple. This is Josh hallway at some kind of national conservatism

conference talking about being a man. We'd be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem that their manhood is the problem. More and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games. I found the comment by one young man to a Wall Street Journal reporter, particularly evocative and particularly heartbreaking. He said, I'm sort of waiting for a light to come on so I can figure out what to do next. This is the first time in history that there have been needs. That is bodies and spaces talk. Like it's amazing how people who have spent years fixating on every filigree of neoliberal PMC mystification around race and gender are incapable of seeing it

if it's about a white guy. It's amazing. Well, that's why he's Elizabeth Warren. The whole way is Elizabeth Warren for the right. Uncharismatic dork standing for a completely online opinion held exclusively among frantically neurotic office bound dorks who make up a fraction of the fucking electorate. This is the equivalent of when Warren said she would let a trans child I would let a cancelled comedian pick the secretary of labor. So like there is a problem about like discarded and like bad feeling young men, but it's not like his. So according to him, it's that like the same idea as when liberals say like a comedy special or something is killing people. It's because they saw a post by like at shut up

Jenny to following two hundred fifty seven point six K followers since 2012 post like something about her husband not finding the clit. He saw Jenny Johnson high five tweet and was like, I give up. So he saw men are fucking done. He's like, I'm finished. I'm finished. He saw a kid, a child. You think it's funny that a child saw a dick is abundant in low value and is now deciding to just jack off instead of get a job. You think that's like there was a conveyor like we have a idea of male identity and values that was premised on a world where if you were a guy, you could get a job doing something and now you can't. Now you can't. You have to be part of a new economy that values more female associated like norms and traits and values and stuff like we feminine. We have

feminized the economy. But the thing that did it was not posts or or episodes of Cagney and Lacey. It was fucking deindustrialization. And all these guys, all these guys, if they're leading with the bad posts made white boys feel bad, then they are by definition doing the same mystification of class and material politics that PMC Libs do. No, it's absolutely. And it's coming out of this sort of longstanding conservative critique of culture, which really took off in the 1970s, which is precisely when neoliberalism took off. That's where they locate history, whether they're talking about, you know, black American families or this shit. They're always talking about culture because they're they're also doomed. They're also part of the system. And there's nowhere

for them to go. And it's kind of interesting. He's essentially adopting the position of General Secretary Xi with regards to video games and things like that, you know, it's the same shit all around the world dealing with the same crisis to avoid symptoms not causing causal focuses that are out of political control. And that's what nobody from G to anybody can admit, which is that our system as constructed cannot change in a fundamental enough way to affect this kind of stuff. These the general trend of culture, the and all the things you're horrified by the engine, the the the the wheel has been lashed to the mast. It's not moving. We would have to break up our political structure and reorganize it's fundamentally to actually address

this stuff. No one can say that, not even G for fuck's sake. And at least G has the power to make it so like, yeah, you can't play games. If that is true, at least that's a thing you can do instead of just complain about it and promise that when I'm president, the kids are going to play less video games. If if hallway somehow got elected and like had a working majority of like, let's say 60 national conservative senators or just senators who will go along with him, his bill and if he was really pushed to like make a law based on this, it would be like, oh, well, we can't really like tell companies what to do. Like that's out. But what we can do and we can't like reorient the economy. We can't make it so that every job, you know, isn't like service or like a white collar

job for a company that loses $700 million a day. What we can do is make it so that there are more acts throwing bars. Yep. The government subsidizes. Right. It would just be like bullshit. It would just be it would be like Obamacare for masculinity. Yeah, some nonsense thing. And this is why all of this like, Sturman drawing over politics. It's in a real sense anti political because it's making people feel like they're participating in something and they're just consumers. It's just like the rest of the American economy. They're just consuming nonsense. So it's not only like apolitical, it's actually anti political because it's engaging in that precise process that Matt is talking about this mystification process that makes you feel like you're doing something,

whether you're on the right or the left, when you're just doing absolutely fucking nothing, but consuming this nonsense. Oh, wait a minute. Excuse me, though. The thing you're forgetting about these national conservatives is sure they might make references to culture war stuff to bring in an audience and to and to play the smart game of triangulating towards the real felt opinions of Americans. But they also want to bring the jobs back, which of course is nothing that Democrats haven't fucking said off and on. How many fucking presidents have vowed to get tough on offshoring? John Kerry said he would bring back manufacturing. John fucking Kerry, everyone in the 2004 Democratic primary said it from fucking Wesley Clark to John Edwards. Yep. And Obama talked about how we're

going to we're going to get tough on companies that send jobs overseas. Never happens. Can't happen. If it did happen, it would be some fig leaf bullshit to give an illusion of progress. It is it is more pap for the rubes. And it is astounding that anybody accepts this stuff. And the fact is it's you accept it if you need to believe. If you need to believe this matters, if you need to believe that there's real stakes in national politics, you have to convince yourself that there's some good side here. And if you squint hard enough, you'll find it and you can support it somehow with your attention and your posts and your just will for them to succeed. It will matter somehow. And this is why we might actually see something like a UBI,

because I agree it's unlikely to say the least that manufacturing jobs are going to come back. But this global order of which we sit atop absolutely relies on American consumption. Oh, yeah. So if we don't consume here, that's built in. Yeah. So what the fuck are they going to do? They're going to have to start paying people to buy shit. So I think that's why you might actually this is this is why Grimes, I'm sure you guys saw this. Game UBI. That's honestly more plausible. Fucking E on the head. This is the thing. If you assume that we maintain our constitutional order, like, obviously, we could and should have something else that, you know, that can affect real change and fundamentally alter our economic structures. And maybe that'll

happen. But if it doesn't, the most likely scenario for any sort of redistribution is, yeah, some Bitcoin, my Bitcoin mining UBI, because that you can imagine actually like passing through the baffles of like market preference in the system to like become actual policy, nothing more interventionist can can be made can happen. Like we are watching in Washington, the most stark example of the fundamental dysfunction at the level of expressing any ideological preference through legislation. You can't do it. Yeah, they're not even trying to resolve the crisis, which is different than the depression. Like people tried to do shit. Now they're just sort of running and they're running away. Yeah, it cannot right. They can

listen. The algorithm has become conscious. Right. They can only distract from it. And so somebody is going to be like, yeah, we're going to step in and pay kids to to mine Bitcoins by slaying orcs. And then we'll do it. And that'll stave off the collapse for the next generation, which is all that can be planned for now is emergency adaptation to decline and deteriorating condition. Yeah, because they're not able to address that the structure of capitalism, they're unwilling or unable to address it. The other the thing that we'll keep making more of the more that like the the standard of what makes someone a human, and especially like what makes someone a man for these guys, the further that slides, the more

time the more that it goes from 12 hours a day, sitting down to 16 hours a day to 18 hours a day to you are just you're in like a sort of diagonal craftmatic bed for gamers. Yeah, mine's Bitcoins. The more that slides, the more that that's just everyone. That's everyone. And then Uber drivers or the slave drivers from this invisible slave class, where it's so that's literally the only two things. Yeah, it's just Salvadorians and permanent guest visas. And then those guys, the more that slides, it's wally. But the robots are humans. It's wally. But the robots are humans. And the humans are like arguing about like, oh, yeah, you you fucking PMC's could never could never stand like doing your Bitcoin or gaming at a 45 degree angle. You've been at a 120 degree

angle your entire life. Yeah, you know, we could we call you softbacks. Yeah, it'll just be all like increasingly bullshit, stupid cultural things. It's like, it's like what makes that's like plankton burgers? I'm sorry, cook. I only eat 100% cocktail, cockroach meat burgers. Okay. Yeah. And they'll they'll post pictures of like gamers from now who had dual monitors set up sitting upright and vaping instead of just taking and taking taking their government administered nicotine pellets and be like, this is when this is real, man, we need to like go back to this. This guy had sex one time every 3.7 years, unlike our once every seven year breeding period, like the Vulcans. Yeah, this guy was a real play. This is before me too, too.

It'll just yeah, it'll just give this standard will keep going down until we revert to amoebas. And then there's like, you I guess you can't really just you if you're all just batteries in the matrix, it's like there you can't really know who's based or who's not. But we'll find a way. We'll figure it out. That's that's the only thing we distinguish the base from the cringe is really all we have. Yeah. But then there will be people there will be people who are in there like permanent lying down, like mining stations who are like, I'm actually I'm unionizing as a Bitcoin. They're union like they did so far gone, like no one knows what a union is anymore. Like not that they really know now, but like, especially like 40 years from now. And it's like,

um, we you have to like you have to give us one more nicotine pillow. Yeah. Well, an app is like holding their putting chalice up to their face and they're posting this. Well, that that turned into a much more productive discussion because I mainly wanted to bring bring up Josh Hallway to say zero swag. Oh, absolutely. I was just going I was this I I want it so bad to be him versus Kamala because literally the bottom of swag hollowed out the hollowed out husk of like the most cynical ID Paul for both parties. Yeah, for both. Yeah, it's perfect. 30,000 people vote in the entire I want the I want the most demoralizing election of all time. Like they're trying so hard. They're

getting like the island they bring xxx and tossing on back to life to tell people to vote because they need like song legitimacy and just know everyone's like what no, no, I don't want this. It comes down to one subdivision in northern Virginia. And they're like, they're like, fine. I guess I like the National Bay Stack. Yeah. And then you have to read all these articles that are like, why everyone likes Josh Hallway, even though like the least amount of people ever voted. Why he swept the nation. They literally do that movie swing vote, but it's only because one person only showed up to vote. But I was on Donald Trump's website looking up his statements, trying to find a good one to read

in comparison to Josh Hallway's like mealy mouth thing. And the thing that I really want to bring up is you see that the statements clipped and posted to Twitter. But do you do you guys realize that John Donald Trump is using his website to basically just yeah, yeah, he's doing long form tweets. He's basically pasting it. No, they're not even long form. I'm just I didn't know he was doing regular tweets to damn he's keeping the discipline respect. Yes, I'm on a like from two days ago, you click on it, you go to the news site, you find the links, you click on a link, and it takes you to a whole dedicated page that just says in all caps, inflation nation exclamation point. And that's the whole post. And I just thought that was funny. Well, anyway,

do you want to talk about this project thing or should we go? Yeah, we've got this Republican party that looks like they're going to do pretty well in the near term because they've learned how they've figured out all the new ways to talk about cultural anxiety in a way to rattle up their base. They got their CRT and all that. But thankfully, there's the Democratic Party who by their own real admission, tested or otherwise, have only one real strategy for gaining power, which is lose power, have Republicans take power. And because they are a fringe party of maniacs at the grassroots level, have them govern in a way that is alienating to the majority of people, and then retake power after people get grossed out. And it worked like a charm. And in

addition to beating Trump with the help of the disgust of the Americans, comfortable suburbanites who watch television and politics from an aesthetic remove and basically got sick of him on his way out the door. He helped sully the halls of Congress by letting hooting rubes destroy the escunchion of American power. This is like supposed to be, you'd imagine this would be a gift. Oh, we can now really go nuts here because they've been discredited. And so now we've got the first real test of the two party coalitions here, because the Virginia governorship is up always in odd years, and it is in between the election, the presidential election in the midterms. And Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bag man and a one term governor of Virginia, they're all one term governors because

they only allow one term at a time, is going back for a non consecutive bite at the apple against this guy, Gary Otherkin. I don't remember. I believe in a simple Virginia where if you feel like a target, you're a target. And so this guy, this guy, this guy, Otherkin, he emerged from the nominating process, having done enough to assuage the Trump base of the electorate that he is one of them without being too crazy, because this is Virginia after all, which at the national level is turning from a purple to a red state, or I'm sorry, from a purple to a blue state. And he can't really afford to alienate all those Northern Virginians who had voted for Biden. But he'd had some positive things to say about Trump and all that. So the Democratic Party

unable to sell Terry McAuliffe to anyone because who would buy decided to run a campaign about how this guy is basically Trump. This guy is Trump's Virginia excretions. And somebody, the Lincoln Project claims that they did it, although they could be taking the hit for somebody else, honestly, because it's such a monumentally terrible idea, paid a bunch of interns to dress up like unite the right marchers with the tiki torches and the polo shirts and the polo shirts and stand in front of the other can campaign bus. And of course, when this initially happened, a bunch of incredibly credulous, hyper neurotic libs who are so Trump, who are the ones who really were traumatized by Trump's presidency in their own minds anyway, freaked out and took it

for real, which led to the Lincoln Project coming forward and saying, yeah, that was us. Sorry. Actually, no, they didn't say sorry. They said we will. What did they say? It's something like we will always stand up to note the similarities between Trump and Yonkin or whatever. Yeah, it was like political education. And this is Guardian article that I pulled up. Their statement is, we will continue to hold Glenn Yonkin accountable. Thank God. Good job. They literally did a false flag to try to gin up some fucking juice about an event that is farther back now farther back now, what, two years older than an even more large scale event, the January 6th riot that has already been fucking forgotten. I mean, you really see the difference between like

Carl Rove and the guys who were working for him. It's like you really don't have. He was carrying the team. He was really like you. He was Jordan on the Wizards. Yeah, no, like Steve shit. Steve has zero rings. He only has Mickey Mouse rings. He's a choker. It's also interesting, like America is pretty bad at political propaganda, at least recently, because there's no actual political parties. So people don't get trained in these things. So everything they try to do comes across as so ham-handed and shitty. It's like there's no space to do really fun political propaganda, which I think why Trump was so refreshing and entertaining for so many people, because it wasn't propaganda propaganda at all. He was just saying what he thought in such a charming way

that I think that diverted people's attentions from what otherwise would have been a real message. I do also, as I'm going through this article, the way that that young Ken is able to spin it, I think is also instructive, is basically playing one of the major cards the Republicans have, which is turning agreement on its head and being the agreed party here. They'll do anything to win, he said, young Ken said. And he's doing anything to win. And so he's paying people to show up and axillate our, you know, being able to say, look at how they treat us. Look at how unfair these things are. And I got to say, it's pretty unfair. That was not a thing to do. The complaint from the right has been that all of these accusations of white supremacy and extremism

among Republicans are made up, are fake news. And this is literally fake news. Yeah. It's kind of the worst way you could have executed this, the literal word. This is kind of what you would do if you wanted young Ken to win. Honestly, yes. But aren't the Lincoln Project Republicans? They are. And honestly, guys like Gary Blumkin are who they want because he's not a movement guy. He's a guy you can work with. So honestly, it wouldn't be above them to do. Honestly, maybe it's too competent for them to do like some real double-sided tapes. Yeah. Yeah. A false flag. Yeah. A double false flag because like they don't actually care if Grumpkin becomes governor. In fact, they probably prefer him on a lot of issues because like he is a regular Republican who kind

of did the bare minimum to appeal to the chuds. Yeah. Well, I think I've been following a lot of the Virginia race. I do think like Greg Blumkin is interesting. His campaign is interesting to me because he like, I remember earlier this year when we were talking about CRT, like what they were doing in February, not very interesting. Like they had like, they would just post about like New York private schools and it was like, okay, you're going to have to show me something. You're going to have to show me something because this is, Joe was riding strong. It's like, this isn't it. But now, now that Joe's taken a little bit of the hit and they found their distance, they have a little bit of a fifth round comeback. They found how to make CRT a salable issue.

And it is, again, taking a cue from bodies and spaceshit where they're going instead like, oh, isn't this ridiculous what they're doing at like the $120,000 in New York private school? They're going, oh, they're already doing CRT and white children are coming home hating themselves. Yep. Yep. You're making my child feel unsafe and feeling like they want to sell farm. It's, it's perfect jujitsu. Yeah. And, and now it might very well get this guy to be the governor, which really is very instructive. You've got all these significant crises unfolding of the pandemic politics, which are very viscerally felt everywhere really, but I guess less than a state like Virginia is able to have this governor's race come down to one side, trying to get people not

thinking about their uninspiring candidate, but thinking about the prospect of their precious codees and, and Madison's feeling bad about themselves in school. And then the Democrats trying to give everybody trigger everybody's PTSD about the Trump years. It's really interesting how they embrace safe spaces, you know, that whole no space safe spaces thing. It's just the right is always just so good at taking sort of the lib PMC tactic and turning it totally on its head and doing it better. It's, this is exactly right. Because absent material politics, you end up having to make your politics into some version of that. And somebody has to initiate and then somebody has to have the, the antithesis, somebody has to establish a thesis and really sense Obama,

the Democrats culturally have been establishing the thesis. Right. Yeah. And then the Democrat, the Republicans, they take a while to like figure it out. And then you get this, this phenomenon of a grassroots swelling against ideas that they'd never heard of before that are all channeled by actual money, which is like putting together the organizations to create talking points that get disseminated across the media. And then all this, and then they are given that and now they care about it. And that's really interesting because historians always talk about like the new deal order giving way to the neoliberal order. And right now we're still in the sort of neoliberal material order, but the politics of culture have genuinely changed since Obama. So what you have

is sort of that substrate of what's actually driving history totally unaffected, but the language by which one uses to describe it is totally, I think driven by the liberal side of the political spectrum. So the order is the same, but the superstructure is totally different, which is unique in American history. Usually the material conditions have changed every, you know, 40 to 60 years, but here it's only the culture that is totally transformed as opposed to the base. Yeah. What I think is very interesting about it is the broadly like liberal side does have a structure that they can propagate ideas through. That's how they, that's like how you get like, you know, someone, someone somewhere far away from any mass media market, like reading white

fragility, because that structure is like, okay, this is what we have to talk about for like a month. And they are able to get the right amount of people and the right people in the right places to care about like January 6. They will never use that structure for like, you know, pushing for the build back better agenda or whatever. Like that's not what it's for. But they like, they're equivalent on the Republican side. They have a sort of like a coordinated political messaging machine that goes through several layers in the way that the Democratic one doesn't. But it uses the form of, of the liberal version, the cultural form of what they're doing. And so they'll take, you know, from like, like they're do what they're doing now is like, they're holding

up the book from their tank. They're holding up white fragility and going, I read your book, you son of a bitch, using their political, their lockstep political communications and media bodies that actually coordinated actually coherent goals using that with the liberal form. And it's, I mean, you know, it does show that we still learn a lot from each other in this country. That's genuine bipartisanship. The difference, though, is that the over time, the Republican version of this ends up being more effective as an actual, like electoral political power mechanism, because it's directed by actual like money, like the CRT, the reason that that became a punchline and a term and a slogan for people to fixate on and go to their, their town

school board meetings about and to run for Congress talk shooting bottles, shape like and all that is because it was a propaganda, it was a, it was the result of a bunch of people paid by like the Koch brothers to sit down and do this stuff with the liberals, the stuff that actually permeates is all just the individual actions of cultural producers who are socially liberal and therefore on the side broadly of the Democrats. And they do culture. And they just put it out there and then everyone else responds to it, but it's not in coordination with any political project. The way that the Republican one is the one that the way that it is, the Republican project is like wired into activist communities and people who then like vote based on that stuff.

The Democrat stuff is just all about the artists making themselves feel better about being rich and then the rest of us just absorbing it passively. And it also with it on the left, on the liberal side of the equation, you have that class of consultants who use this to basically sell shit, which is absolutely crucial and sort of run around to these basically unwinnable races, but use this cultural language to basically enrich their coffers. And there is a professionalized right, but I don't think it's quite the same thing of what the Democrats have swirling around them. Well, the ones, the Democrat ones are just pure rent seekers. Like they don't know for any value. I mean, that is why I really hope there are books written about this on the future,

why I think what happened last year with the George Floyd protest is so crucially important for understanding this. And one of the most cynical, awful things I've seen in the last decade in American politics is you had real anger about real things, both police brutality conditions that predominantly black neighborhoods are in. People took that and took like genuine rage and critical mass of people. And we're like, Oh, these are new things we can plug into the liberal culture machine. These are new things that we can have the consultants say. This is a new thing that we can use to raise money for Jamie Harrison on his way to losing to Lindsey Graham by 13 fucking points. Right. And then the beauty part is, is that when you do all that,

collect all that money, eat shit, which was always the point, who cares, you're just there to pick up a check. And then maybe your voters are a little pissed off at you. You can have some other guy show up and tell you, Oh, it's actually the fault of those activists for doing that activism that made the Democrats have to take all these unpopular positions. When the reality is it was all a cynical after it was all a cynical play after the events. And there's nothing they could have done about it anyway. Like there's no connection between these things. All you're doing is providing an alibi for one group of people of why they should still give a shit about the institutional Democratic Party. And then for the other people who are all in on the connections

to, you know, the fight for justice, you just scare monger them that the Democrats are the only thing standing between you and Republican rule, which will be worse on those things in every way. And they become increasingly professionalized. The way that the media filtered that, like, there are two layers to it. The way that the like consultant class and the Democratic Party absorbed that and use that as a new new part of their arsenal. But also, the way that like liberal aligned media responded to all this turned off more people than like any protest ever could. When you just when you take this like legitimate rage, and you turn it into like, Hey, everyone, this is really important. We're like, Frazier is going to do a land acknowledgement.

Hey, guys, we're doing a special fucking, we're doing a special fucking episode of like Gossip Girl, where like, we're taking two episodes that we think like we think were anti black out of rotation. And you just take like stupid, normal people who see that go, Oh, wait, was that what these protests were about? Yeah. Oh, I like hate it now. I don't care. And it's like it completely, it didn't just like defame a lot of it, it like actively harmed it. It said what the liberal the liberal superstructure response to it like actively harmed it. Yes, actively brought so much of this shit. It actively said all this backwards when it looked like we might be at a breaking point with a lot of these things. And then as you get that sort of broad disillusionment,

you get the increasing professionalization of the activist movements, which just separate them further from the, you know, the ordinary voter who's looking at them, because then they get amalgamated into this corporate structure of the Democratic Party. They don't want D Ray, because he's so good, like they didn't like look at him compared to the guys of the cops, clandestinely killed in Ferguson and go, Oh, well, this D Ray guy is more likeable. Anyway, they'd like him precisely because he isn't more likable. Yeah, because it completely marginalizes this movement and like, because like a big enough percentage of people will be like, Oh, like fuck this guy. Well, and also because the person who takes that spot willingly is a fucking

husk. And that means that they are not going to be able to effectively communicate to people because they at the level at like those grassroots level of activism, you don't have all the bells and whistles and smoke and mirrors that conventional politics affords to an empty suit. So you just have an empty Patagonia vest rather. Well, this has been a very high minded and thoughtful discussion. Good job, gentlemen. But we are. Yeah, well, how did we how did this? Oh, very weird. Yeah, I blame Danny. I'm sorry, you know, you guys know how I want to sign people to 360 deals and like control them with pills, but also like help their careers and make both of us a lot of money. Yeah, the most honorable way to manage an artist. Yeah, I want to be like the bird man

of new media. Well, I have like, I do have plans for everyone, everyone I know, everyone I don't really know on how I could make them make more money in media. But I have a fucking amazing thing for D Ray who hasn't really been out there that much. Like you haven't seen a lot. Yeah, since each shit in the Baltimore mayoral election, he has been off the grid. Check this out. What if he did a thing where he's like, OK, hey, guys, you may remember me. If you don't, I invented Black Lives Matter with the out started and you go. But there's like there's like a bigger injustice going on. It's in China. Yeah. That's how that's his comeback. Yeah. Yeah, get some of that new Cold War money, baby, because the Taiwan guy in Hong Kong, too. We're going to see a flood of that.

I feel like, you know, I support your quest to become the Tommy Metola of new media figures. But with the time we have left, let's transition to why we have Danny on today to talk about hinge points. And I will set up what exactly is going on here, which is hinge points is a new series done by Danny and Matt that we are going to be hosting on Patreon starting this Friday. It's just going to be a nice mini series that is going to go up for six straight weeks starting on Friday. New episodes go up Friday afternoons. And no additional cost, I should say. No additional no additional cost. Part of the part of the package. We've been enjoying doing these series with Stitcher and thank Blowback very much for opening that door for us. But I am happy to say

it's coming home. Tears in our eyes. New series are coming home to the Patreon. So that's the premise here. Matt and Danny, what is hinge points? Well, I guess I'll start. Basically, I think this came out of conversations that, you know, Matt and I have been having for a while about the present condition of the United States, the present condition of the world and how it seems is the way we often put it that the algorithm has become conscious and whether there were, you know, other moments or where things could have either gone a bit differently or maybe things couldn't have gone a bit differently. And these where we are today is over determined. So what we decided to do is basically start essentially a conversation podcast where we look at particularly

important quote unquote hinge points in history where things turned in a particular direction. So what we really do is we zoom in on one particular moment and then zoom out to see the structures, the personalities, the events and the processes that led history to go in a particular direction. Sometimes we decide that, you know what, it kind of seemed like things were going this way. And nothing could have really changed it. And other times were like, you know what, maybe if this event happened, if that guy's brain had exploded, then things would have gone in a different direction. So what we're hoping to do here is both give a sense of the complexities of history, the contingencies of history, because ultimately I think we both believe that one of

the fundamental commandments of Marxism generally and left wing thought is to really understand history and understand your moment and moments that came before you to see what we could do to change things. So it's definitely not a black pill by any stretch of the imagination, but it's exploring, you know, how we got to where we got and whether things could have gone a bit differently. Yeah, it's essentially an autopsy for human civilization. Like we just take the assumption that whatever you want to call this, it is a next stage of capitalist development in which capitalism has essentially overridden the traditional prerogatives of like human agency. Now that's not permanent, but it is the current condition. And so with that as sort of

the wrap up of what you might call like one attempt to create like a human project, a human civilizational project, we're trying to look back at it and say, well, all right, how did this end up here? Where were the places where maybe if a contingent event that just a different combination of causal elements could have changed, you see something, a possibilities open up that could put a trajectory that maintained human agency, I guess I would put it that, the broadest sense, as opposed to eventually see it in the late 90s and arts closed off. Right. And I think this is also comes from the fact that like we grew up in an era where contingency was just off the table. And I think we're trying to, at least I could speak for myself,

I'm trying to deprogram that a little bit and sort of examine these moments where if we thought more strategically or again, some random event happened, things could have gone differently. So I know that the first few apps that you're putting out are going to talk about the German socialists in World War One era, you've got kind of two angles on them. And just as an example of like what people can expect from this, you guys want to talk about what brought you to those moments and, you know, a little bit about what your your discussion in those episodes are like, SPD and the vote for war and whatnot. Well, we both agree that that the early 20th century, specifically, the crisis of World War One is really the culminating crisis of modernity

and the emergence of capitalism and the final abolition of feudal relations in Europe. And that that as a result, a lot of things open up in that moment. And that is why you saw the Bolsheviks in Russia seize power when they did because they saw this moment as crucial and saw this as the chance for that working class that had been coming into awareness over the past 70, 80 years to to make its historical debut onto the world stage. And the socialist movement in Germany, the place where people like Mark sort of theorized to be the most developed part of capitalism and therefore the place where revolution would would be carried out first, failed to create a permanent revolutionary situation. There was an early revolution that

overthrew the Kaiser and instituted bourgeois democracy. But there was no secondary push. There was a secondary push rather for a socialist revolution that was defeated largely through the internal intervention of big parts of the labor movement. And so we are looking at this moment to see where was the potential, the realistic potential given the conditions that we obtained for something else to have occurred. Precisely. And I think those, you know, four or five years from 1914 to 1919, 1920 are really a lost moment in the history of the international left, which is I think if you had asked Marx, for example, in 1865, if the working classes of Europe would have annihilated themselves in a world ending war, he would have said probably not, right?

And so we're examining this particular moment, these particular moments, at least in those first couple of episodes, and then later on, with the Soviet episode to see whether that was overdetermined or whether things could have gone a different way. Because I think Matt and I agreed to some real sense, we're all living in the aftermath of 1914, where the workers didn't do what we would have liked them to do. And we're exploring why that happened, the various contingencies and complexities that led that situation to arise. That is, I am really interested to see what you guys do with that, the general period of 1914 to about 1920, because that is, I mean, not just in Europe, I mean, there are so many pivotal things that happened in America that like, permanently

fucked us, like, there was a like, fledgling parallel black economy, there was a chance there, like, that was the shot for like, we were far, far enough away from like, the robbed reconstruction where it was like, okay, we're finally like, getting something together. Blacks were like, black, black Americans were in the process of like, being becoming Jews, they had the opportunity to do what Jews did. And then they was just taking, there was a national project of like, a growing socialist political movement in the form of the Socialist Party, which was gaining offices and legitimacy at the grassroots of white America. And then this, this early burgeoning of, yeah, a black economic engine that could have created like a meaningful black electoral and

political machinery. And they're both at the same moment, basically the same summer in 1919, smothered. It's precisely right. And it's not an excuse that like the Tulsa race massacre that has become famous since Watchman happened in 1921, because it's that that post World War One period where all these alternative possibilities are closed off, you know, you have the first red scare in the United States, you have the, you know, the, the rise of the so-called second Ku Klux clan throughout, throughout the country. And so I think that moment is really critical. And I believe that three of our initial episodes actually focus on it. And we hope, you know, if people enjoy it, we could do some, you know, deeper histories, go back to Rome, you know, the rise of Christianity,

the Middle Ages. And so, yeah, I want to do a whole Napoleon episode. Oh, absolutely. We could do, we could do three on Napoleon, just like the very, you know, the revolution has rise and then, then the wars. So yeah, that's because I do have a weird, crank belief that if someone could have beaten the British before like, before the, what the Council of Vienna, then something could have been different because it really, the capitalism really is an English disease in its foundation. Yeah, especially the form that was globalized when Britain in the United States made that made that empire made that sort of Anglo-American empire that that dominated the last 150 years of history. So yeah, that's the type of shit we're going to look at.

Not to go back to the late 1910s and the 1920s, but most importantly, like we're talking about some really important stuff here. That's when Germans in America lost their swag. It's true that it is when they were like, well, fine, we're just regular Americans. It's true. It's when they, it's when they acceded to calling sauerkraut liberty cabbage. It's when they changed German street names. And when they changed like the pronunciation of things, like there's a town, there's a suburb of Milwaukee called New Berlin. And I bet you have million dollars that was not pronounced that way in 1915. They decided, no, no, no, it's Berlin. That is amazing. Like this, like one of the biggest immigrant groups ever. And you have this war that no American should ever

have given a fuck about. And they're like, you have to give up your entire identity. And they're like, okay. Yep. Even though they were like a lot of the spearpoint of that socialist party and movement, they were just, they got, they got buckbroken is what happened. They really did. I mean, and you think about across the pond, the Mount Batten's become the Windsor's, right? This is a global phenomenon. The Germanification of the Anglo-American world really happens in the teens. Yeah. But like, Hitler, Hitler wasn't even like, he wasn't even the guy, he wasn't even like a hotel for Germans. He was like, he was a Nordicist. Yeah. He wasn't into like real German bullshit. No, he looked so uncomfortable in that one picture of him in Lederhosen.

Looks like he wants to die. He looked like a cat in a costume. He did not know how to have a good time outdoors with a giant beer. That's how you know he's not German. Yeah. It was a vegetarian. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. He was on real Bohemian. Yeah. All right. Exactly. Yeah. So in the last few minutes of the show, I think that's a great description. Obviously, you guys are going to get into a lot of like, you know, pretty, pretty deep and interesting stuff about, you know, the early 20th century, middle 20th century. I've got some more recent ones that I want to throw at you and maybe, you know, get some off the cuff. What ifs from you guys and also feel free to say that any of these are stupid questions because I would just came up with them right before we

start recording. All right. So here's the first one I was thinking of because I've been noticing my man more and more popping off on Twitter. John Hinckley Jr. He's out there releasing his songs. He's getting into beefs with my beloved Divo who, from what I understand, did pay him the royalties that he was due from the song they collaborated on in 1982. So stop yelling at Gerald Cassell. But anyway, here's my question. What if Hinckley hadn't missed? Ooh, what if a good one? He didn't miss, by the way. He shot him right in the chest. If he had used anything bigger than a 22, he would have got the job done. A 38 or 9 millimeter would have done it. Of course, my favorite, my fantasy, it was a deagle. Oh my God. Oh, they're Reagan's. You never get to see those photos,

though. No, he's leaking. He's fucking a guy that old, a 50 Kale around, a fucking exit wound the size of a basketball. Yeah, you're never like you like Nancy's looking through the whole and waving at you. It's like when Goldie Hong gets shot and death becomes her. Yes, exactly. All right. So that's actually very interesting. Yeah, so what if it's George H.W. Bush would have obviously become president and George H.W. Bush was the, he was essentially the vestigial tail of the Republican Party along for the ride during Reagan's populist revolution. It was all very personalized. In fact, so in 84, which was obviously a massive landslide victory for Reagan, that's an interesting election, though, because not only did it have not really much congressional

coattails, like the Democrats kept the house. George H.W. Bush was considered by the entirety of the press corps and the media who really mattered then to have had a terrible campaign, to have looked bad in comparison to Gerald E. Ferraro and Ben, the pencilnecked geek that everybody had always thought he was. And him trying to sell Reaganism, which saw a massive recession in the first two terms of two years of his term, which is the Volcker shock kicking in basically. But without Reagan's great communicator facade, I think there's a real chance that election is much different. That's interesting. Also, does he do more traditional Republican economics, right? He's the voodoo economics guy. Does he stay within the New Deal order or is

capital pushing him in such a direction where he has to fully embrace the neoliberal revolution begun by Jimmy Carter? I think that's an open question. Yeah. And you got to figure he would have much less negotiating a hand of reason of E. Congress than Reagan did. I also, if that happens first for one thing, I don't think Mondale is the nominee. Honestly, you know what I think happens? Gary Hart gets the nomination as like all the hippies trying to think they're voting for McGovern or RFK. And then he ends up doing Reagan's, or I'm sorry, doing Clinton's terms a few years early, early Hart, who was considered like the sort of anti-establishment insurgent grassroots guy was also one of the premier neoliberals of the Democratic Party. He was the leader of the

Atari Democrats who came in after Watergate based in the affluent professional suburbs who wanted to suffocate, who wanted to completely sever the connection between organized labor and the Democratic Party and to emphasize like regulatory competence and administrative ability over any kind of class-based appeal. And yeah, I could see Gary Hart getting in in 84 and just doing Clintonism early and also probably giving arms to the Contras. Well, that was my next thing. What does this mean for the Deep State? Because George H. W. Bush was able to play that thing like a symphony. So does the Deep State become even more powerful? Do you get an earlier Iran Contra? Do you get Star Wars? Because that's not a traditional Deep State thing. That's kind of like

a psychopathic populace on behalf of Reagan. So maybe you get the continuation of the Cold War. I mean, what Star Wars was was it was a way to sell the underlying policy, which was military expansion. Like it was just a way to give money to the military sector. And Star Wars was the way to get rubes on board with that. I mean, it didn't have to work, not like just like all the other shit that the fucking Pentagon makes. So the question is like, I don't think there's no way Hart does Star Wars because it's antithetical to him aesthetically and to his voters aesthetically. But I certainly don't think that there's any real move towards reducing the military outlay. I think you probably get a you might get like a heart presidency with like an accelerated

neoliberal timetable and maybe less military spending. So does that mean Gorbachev could focus on internal Soviet dynamics and the Soviet Union never collapses because he doesn't have to spend all of that money because that would be a whole different thing in Eastern Europe. But I mean, you do have like growing like ethnic conflict at the periphery of the of the USSR. Right. That's just happening no matter what. Yeah. So maybe you have like a more violent protracted fall of the Soviet Union. I don't know. Right. Like a civil war, like like a real war affair. I think I I'm not in this here. I will say I think it's a hit to the deep state because I like George H. W. was so good at building that thing as being not the guy. Right. And hit the

amount of energy he had to put into just acting normal in front of everyone was so great that it like, OK, this isn't totally because George H. W. was president and couldn't play the deep state like a like a symphony. But like when did we find out about Gladio when he was president? Right. Well, that has more to do with the like with the formal end of the Cold War. But like also do you think he lets that happen? Right. If he's lurking in the shadows like always probably not. All right. So let's go on and do one more because I know we got to lose that we're going to lose Danny in a second. Here's one that I think is interesting to me. But let me know if you think so. The financial crisis happens one year later. So after the 2008 election, it happens

in 2009. What if we get one more year before the before the big breakdown happens? Does that mean Clinton wins in 2000? Who's president in this scenario? I mean, that's the question. Yeah. Well, the thing is, I think Obama won the nomination because of Iraq. So I think Obama's the nominee no matter what. And so I think it's still Obama McCain. The result of that was going to be Obama wins. I do think, though, that that's very interesting. I think Obama wins. I think Obama wins pretty much. I agree. It's a good question. It's much closer than it ended up being. It's more like Trump Biden than, you know, it's one of those. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. And so then I think he still does nothing. I mean, like I still think that the same thing

happens in terms of bailouts, maybe even a little bit less because they were able to cover the large initial bailout because Bush had initiated the first one. So maybe that actually makes it more difficult to do as large of a bailout as Obama did when he was in office. And well, you would have the partisan, the partisan response to the crisis would be much different, obviously. And I think that that could make carrying out the full package of bailouts harder because there would be less incentive for Republicans to sign off the way that they did precisely because it started under Bush. And it really was this baton handed from the Bush administration to Obama. And everyone sort of understood certainly at the top levels

that they were all on the same side on this. Because of course, this is deeper than bullshit politics. This is like the actual economy. This is this is the thing that they're really there to serve. So I think you have probably a harder time getting it. You have a deeper, probably a deeper decline. Because I think like you have even less of the you have a smaller probably you have a smaller democratic majority to work with. You have a unified GOP to try to minimize the degree to which the Democrats could effectively respond to the crisis. So I think you probably have a more prolonged like recession, like contraction going longer, taking longer for, you know, the fake recovery to start. And probably like, maybe Trump becomes like the nominee in 2016,

instead of in 2020. I'm sorry. That's what I was thinking as well. Because you get the earlier populism, you get a more radical, less astroturf tea party. But then do you also get an earlier Bernie? See, that's under Obama. This is the big question. Does he come have like an accelerated before 2015? It took a while. It took a while for there to be any coherent, like left populist response to the crisis, like Occupy doesn't happen until two years after the crisis, the crash. Like it starts after the tea party does. But with a smaller bailout, all that might happen earlier, basically, like if you heighten the conditions, that is more extreme. And it's earlier. And I think you get a Bernie earlier. And I think you get a lot of the things we see now

more radical problem is that if you have Obama in there, then Bernie's challenge isn't going to go anywhere near as far as it did in 2016, because an incumbent president has just a smothering, but influence over its nomination process. Certainly among the Democrats way more than the Republican. It's not against Clinton. But maybe Bernie then runs again in 2016 after Trump wins. And the Democrats never, they didn't quite build the thing they did, where they're able to trick him into hiring some of the people he did. Hiring the Warren Barbershop guy like he did. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm serious. Like, I don't know. Because then you get into so many what ifs. Because Ferguson is like, that's when Democrat,

that's the first time Democrats like saw a black president. And we're like, we're going to use some of that. Don't worry, we're not going to do anything, but we're going to use it to call Bernie races. And also, again, the smaller ballot leads to more radicalism everywhere. So that also opens up an entire new possibilities that would otherwise never shut off by the larger ballot that we actually got, the genuinely bipartisan one. Yeah. So this is basically the show. It's obviously silly and gibberish. We're talking about things that never happened. So we can only say so much and none of it is really that meaningful. But it's one fun. And two, I think in the course of having the

conversations, you are exposed to like what really matters, you can kind of sift out the chaff from like the historical moment and find the real armature, the real structural stuff. And I would just add to that in professional history, counterfactual thinking is actually really critical, because as Matt said, it helps you identify what really matters and where and I do think this could have a useful purpose in helping people think about our own moments. Where are the hinge points in our own histories? Where should we focus our energies? Should we focus on force the vote or not? Should we pay all of our attention to what's going on in Congress or not? Or what are the larger structural factors actually driving history? And I hope, and I think we did get

out a lot of those issues. Yeah. Well, I think this has been a very successful episode. Usually when we're not here, we spend about 40 minutes talking about like fast food preferences or positive that this was the episode we were going to talk about like if elf was Polly or something. Well, we'll save that for the next time. This has been the, there's been much more of a PBS news hour roundtable type five to it, but I appreciate that because it makes me look slightly more confident. We're here with AFL CIO director George Meany, and we're discussing collective bargaining agreements. No, this is, this is McLaughlin group where the dominant religion is Jewish instead of Catholic. Finally. The good McLaughlin group. The McLaughlin group.

Next year in Jerusalem. Well, Danny, thank you for so much for coming on. The show is hinge points. It will be available to all Patreon members starting on Friday. And I believe we'll actually just make the first episode of it public public and then the remaining ones will be on Patreon. I think we can tease now that we're going to keep doing these mini series. This is Sus. We'll be returning shortly after as a Patreon mini series. It is happening. I have the first, I have the recording of the first episode on my computer. It's coming. I think we're going to be doing something with Will. I think about movie mindset. So yeah, expect more of these in the new year and one more announcement coming up. We finally, finally, finally are going live with our

deep state line of merch tomorrow morning, Tuesday at nine a.m. shop.chapotraphouse.com fully restocked for the holidays. Zapata oil hat. We have a wonderful fly air America to the Golden Triangle shirt from at Apocalypse. We have a wonderful Gladio P2 Lodge company softball t-shirt from John White there plus some restocks of our classic gear. So shop.chapotraphouse.com shows in Buffalo, New York, December 8th at Asbury Hall and Thursday, December 16th in Brooklyn at Warsaw. I will have those ticket links up somewhere probably hopefully in the show notes. Finally, finally, and I promise this is the very last thing we have a brief plug from our good friend Josh Olson of the movies that made

me podcast and of course the West Wing thing with Dave Anthony. He writes us that he is doing a fundraiser for the Hollywood Food Coalition, which he writes it's a great group for over 30 years. They've been serving hot meals to L.A.'s on house and food insecure population. They're nonprofit and everyone volunteers. So contributions and donations go directly out the door to people who need it most. They currently serve between 250 and 300 people per day. So what Josh is doing is a fundraiser for them with the movies that made me to tie into our Halloween or their Halloween parade episodes. They're doing what they call the Mandy Challenge. If they can raise $2,500 by November 5th, Josh's lovely wife Nancy will finally summon the courage to watch Mandy and the viewing

will be documented. Mandy, great movie. Very upsetting though. If people want to help, they can go to HTTPS colon slash slash H O F O C O dot org click donate and in the note section write Mandy Challenge. I will put that link in the show notes as well again. That is for Josh Olson for the Hollywood Food Coalition. Alright, that's our last plug for the episode. Lots of plugs this time for space watchers. This is a big episode. Everybody who's been watching this space and all posted today. So, thanks guys and I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.