Chapo Trap House - 608 - The World’s Mack (3/7/22)

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

We’re back from the first leg of our tour of the South and here to look at the responses to war in Ukraine brewing in the foreign policy op-ed world. We’ve got reading series by Shadi Hamid in the Atlantic and our old friend Max Boot in WaPo, both asking “well, yes, American foreign intervention has been very bad in the past, but maybe this time it would be very good?” Tickets to Houston, Dallas and New Orleans shows still available at: https://www.chapotraphouse.com/live

Only Ukraine will win. Only Ukraine will win. Fuck Russians. We'll kill everybody. For our land. For our land. Okay, guys. You see what people have to say about that.

All right. Greetings, friends. It's Chapo Monday, March 7th, 2022. We are now back from the first leg of our tour, but we're about to hit Texas and Louisiana. Starting next week. Gentlemen, how's your recovery going? You know, I mean, I'm fine.

I did not poison myself with alcohol. So I'm fine. No alcohol at all. That's true. Yeah, you can do anything if you don't drink. And I can't, ever, until they make the impossible pancreas, which seems farther and farther away every day. But, you know, I've just been eldening my ring. How's your character build going?

Pretty good. Eshin the Swag Saint is coming along. I'm in a castle covered in mucus and pus right now. Sounds good. Yeah, I'm trying to get a gross sword. Trying to get a sword that, you know, we've all had that time in our lives where if you walk around our apartments barefoot,

our feet are totally black. That's the type of dirtiness and sinewy pus I'm trying to impart on my blade. A castle covered with mucus and pus? What is this? Queen Elizabeth's bedroom? That's right. New photo of her today. Really? They did a proof of life?

Yeah, well, I mean, this might be old. I just saw it's a picture of her with Justin Trudeau. And, yeah, okay, I mean, it looks like the Pygmy Kings from Dark Souls 3 right now. I mean, it's hard to like really make fun of her because she's like, what, 100? Basically, yeah. Yeah.

But at the same time... I think you could round up there. Yeah, at the same time, like, fuck you. You're the biggest drug dealer on earth. Fuck you. It's for listeners to listen to. Just give them a little insight into your character class. What kind of stats are you going with? What weapons are you working with?

I am a samurai. That is the starting class I picked. I'm doing a dex and intelligence build. I'm going to be a sorcerer, a samurai, modeled off of Ishinashina from Sekiro. Right now, only at 22 dexterity, but the bleed damage has been incredible. For those of you out there who are still quality build cucks,

try a dex build because when you bleed an enemy, that's like a free one-third of their health bar. You can see why girls keep periods a secret. You know, men are like, oh, she's PMSing. Well, yeah, you'd be in a bad mood too if you lost a third of your HP. You know, a bleed damage. I mean, I hate bleeding.

It's just one of the worst kind of damages that a body can take. Yeah, your blood. It's supposed to be on the inside. What the hell? Yeah, I've been taking blood thickeners so I don't bleed as much. Yeah, so you get cut.

So it comes out like soft-serve yogurt. Yeah, yeah. Slow. You can easily pinch that off. Yeah, no. I have a sort of Dairy Queen-style blood. Well, I'm glad you're getting in some gaming time. I have a little bit of respite this week, but then we'll be back out hitting Texas and Louisiana

very much looking forward to that. Before we get into today's show, I want to give a special shout out to everyone who showed up to our live shows in Charlotte, Atlanta, and Nashville. Everyone I got a chance to meet after the shows. Everyone we got a chance to hang out with. You guys really made this one of the best first half

of a tour we've ever done. It was a really special time. You showed us a wonderful time in the South, and I'm really looking forward to Texas and Louisiana. Yeah, it's going to be lit. Yeah, no. What can we say? It has been so fucking fun to be back on the road.

It's been two years. We've done live shows, but touring is a totally different experience. Let's face it. The audiences in New York take us totally for granted and hate us. That would cigarettes on us. Yeah.

Talk about pus. They throw buckets of shit at us, like inmates. Like unruly inmates. But no, it has been very fun. Every crowd has been amazing. It's been a joy, and it's been our pleasure to meet everyone, and these are some of the best shows we've ever done.

We don't really get... Anyone who gets nervous before any type of live performance, they're either lying to try to sound humble or they suck and shouldn't be doing the thing they're doing. But, you know, we weren't sure. We weren't sure, because it's been a while since we toured, but, you know, everything has been a blast,

and we want to thank everyone for coming out, and we're so excited for the second half of the tour. And also a special shout out to the true all-star of this Southern tour, Matt and Amber's dog, Boris. Yeah, yeah. He's just a high-quality service animal, keeping my anxiety and depression levels very low.

Very low. Just give him a little kiss, little squeeze. You're loving it. He's the new mascot. I mean, everyone loves Boris. Everybody loves Boris. Can't get enough of him. Boris is probably the best small dog I've ever met in my life.

Most small dogs have kind of a shitty attitude, you know, because it's tough. You know, you were over hundreds of years, you were bred to be a small little bean, and so you have to yell all the time. So your mom will put you in a purse that you live in. But Boris is gregarious. He has the attitude of, like, I'd say a 50-pound dog.

He's friendly. He, like, jumps up on your lap, and, you know, most dogs, when you're eating, they're going to put their wet mouth on that. No, he just looks at you, but you, like, just put your hand on his chest, and he's like, oh, OK, I get it. Yeah, he's very chill.

We love him. And he made this tour a very special experience. But Texas, next week, we're coming through. We're really looking forward to that. Yeehaw! But we're, OK, well, so we're back in regular show mode, back in recovery mode. So let's hop in for today.

And I guess I've got to begin once again with Ukraine. And where do I begin this? It's like, I don't know, man. It's just, it really does seem the war fever in this country is getting back to, like, 2002, 2003 levels, you know? I mean, like, the media and just the general attitude of anyone who expresses any skepticism towards escalating this conflict,

or, I don't know, rendering a historical explanation about, like, how, why and how it's happening right now is... Or not validating, like, with absolute childlike credulity, literally anything that comes out of, like, the Ukrainian side of the war, it's wild. Yeah. My favorite feature of all American war fever, all American media coverage of any war we have anything to do with

is when people go, well, you know, America's done bad things, but we're not, you know, we're not responsible for every bad thing that happens. When you hear someone say that, they mean nothing. They mean don't bring up anything America has ever done at all, especially not in relation to this specific conflict. Well, I mean, let's just jump into it, because I got two reading series today

that render that critique that Felix was just describing that renders it in vivid clarity. And, you know, like, the people who are saying this, like, oh, you know, there are worse things out there than America are the people who did all the horrible things that are being used now to muster some sort of, I don't know, skepticism for, like, the American, you know, state department or, you know, politicians who, you know,

or just anyone who, like I said, expresses any kind of skepticism is now being accused of being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin or being pro-Russian or something like that. And, I mean, it just feels all exactly like the way it did in the war on terror. And the war on terror's biggest boosters are back to remind you that the war on terror never happened, and it's like, it's 1998 again.

Yeah, no, all this shit is the only way it can leave your lips without you fucking crumbling to a pile of dust, like in Last Crusade, is if you decontextualize it to a point where it's beyond meaning, where you make it so America is just, it's just a normal country, it's just any other country, that there isn't some special onus or responsibility or weight to your actions when you have been the world's only

superpower for 20, 30 years. Well, let's go in the first one here. This comes courtesy of the Atlantic, surprise, surprise. This is by... Atlantic Council Magazine. Yeah, yeah. North Atlantic Treaty Organization Magazine. Shadi Hamid, who's of the Brookings Institute.

Oh, boy, another... Yeah, I mean, once again, Richard Nixon, he was a lot of talk, no follow-up, that's all I'll say about the Brookings Institute. But yeah, okay. So his article in the Atlantic is titled, There are many things worse than American power. Blaming US hegemony for global problems has been easy, but Putin's invasion of Ukraine offers a preview

of a much more dangerous world. So he begins by saying, If there was any doubt before, the answer is now clear. Vladimir Putin is showing that a world without American power, or for that matter, Western power, is not a better world. For the generation of Americans who came of age in the shadow of the September 11th attacks, the world America had made came with a question mark.

Their formative experiences were the ones in which American power had been used for ill in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Middle East more broadly, and for much longer, the United States has built a security architecture around some of the world's most repressive regimes. For those on the left, this was nothing new, and it was all too obvious.

I spent my college years reading Noam Chomsky and other leftist critics of US foreign policy. Good for you! And they weren't entirely wrong. I read Noam Chomsky in college. That's the new I have experimented. I read Noam Chomsky, but I did not inhale any of his lessons. I only like his linguistics work.

I've seen that in the bio. Oh yeah, I've seen that too. I read Chomsky for the linguistics. On balance, the US may have been a force for good, but in particular regions, at particular times, it had been anything but. So brave of Shadi to admit this at the beginning of his essay.

Guys, I mean, he's saying like, in just very discreet times and places, America has not been a force for good in the world. And by the way, the Brookings Institute supported all of these instances wholeheartedly. And including Shadi, if you go back long enough in his CV, I couldn't find anything on Iraq, but he was a huge booster of the war in Libya

and a regime change for Gaddafi. So I mean, you would think that Shadi, that's one discreet example in the world in recent memory that you supported in which US power was used to make a situation vastly worse than it was before. So congratulations for reading Chomsky. It hasn't helped you in any way.

Well, this is part and parcel with the, well, you know, I know America's done bad things. All those bad things were, you know, about 10 years ago. If it's a real bleeding heart like Shadi, it was 10 years ago. But they don't count because we've, I guess we've instantly lost superpower status.

I don't know, either due to wokeness or, you know, polarization or whatever you want to say. Well, I mean, it's also like this. I think for people like Shadi, it's sort of like, yes, in certain discreet times and places, like Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East over the last 20 or 30 years. Yeah, America has been anything but a force for good.

But I really think for these guys, it's sort of like, okay, yeah, we screwed up, but our intentions were so good. Whereas, you know, Vladimir Putin, he has evil intentions. He just wants to conquer a country and take it over and destroy its people. Whereas America, yes, we conquer countries and destroy people, but we did it to help them. And it was just like our...

It was for their own good. It was for their own good. And like, and they screwed it up, you know, like they were the ones who chose violence over peace and security that we were offering. And, you know, America, we just, we were just so naive in our good intentions. We thought the world would embrace all the good things

that we were offering them at the point of a gun. Well, okay, so they're doing, they're doing, oh, well, this is what a big, ugly, sad, scary, multi-polar world looks like. But the bad actors in the multi-polar world are directly traceable to things we did when it was monopolar world. So what the fuck are you talking about?

We put fucking Putin in power in the first place. Well, okay, he goes on. He writes, blaming America first became all too easy. Yeah, you're goddamn right. You're goddamn right it's easy because we're the ones that fucking fall. And also, I'm a citizen of the United States of America. So goddamn right I'm gonna blame America first

because this is the country that I'm at least in theory responsible for as a citizen of a democracy. And you know what, a lot of these liberal hawks are getting real nasty in their fucking, in their portrayal of the Russian people and like Russia as a country. Like they're just like, it's a country of orcs and, you know, like they need to be made to feel pain

because they're not all turning out in the streets to fucking protest this war. And it should be noted many, many Russians are. Many Russians are opposed to this war and many are risking a lot more than people do in this country to fucking protest it. But like, but yeah, like they need to be collectively punished because they haven't done it like a,

they haven't risen up on mass to overthrow their brutal, brutal dictator that rules their country. So, I mean, that is the Osama bin Laden rationale for why it's okay to kill American civilians during the war on terror or to do 9-11. It's because, you know, in a democracy like, you know, people choose their government and like the citizens of a country are responsible for the actions

of those governments. So, at least you, so like if you believe that about Russia, you'd have to admit to yourself that America is no more, as either no more or less a democracy than Russia is or that like, you know, that America, like we bear the sins of our own country and like, and even our civilians can be held responsible for it. Because, you know, if we're a democracy,

that's got to be the case. And you can't hold two standards for Russia and America. If you're taking this point of view, again, to condemn the people of Russia, because they're not, they're not, you know, haven't done a revolution yet to overthrow a potent, but we haven't done a revolution overthrow our government either. So, it's like either no one's responsible or everyone is.

Well, yeah, no, I've seen, I've noticed that a lot in the Russiaologist, the Russia specialist field who, oh my God, I bet it was a sad two years after Russiagate, but they're back in business more than ever. The main role of the Russia expert now seems to be convincing like normal, good-hearted people that Russians support every single thing that Putin does. And even if they're not explicitly supporting them,

they are by not protesting. So, you could do whatever you want to them. And, you know, you can point to the kind of, the rise of kind of a, like a terrifying and violent nationalism in Russia that's certainly being stoked now by this invasion, but like, take a look in the fucking mirror. I know, I would never want to blame America first here, but let's get our own house in order before we start fucking,

you know, condemning entire countries full of people for not having the right politics. So, he goes on here, he says, after September 11th, U.S. power was as overwhelming as it was uncontested. That it was squandered on two endless wars and made it convenient to focus on America's sins while underplaying Russia and China's growing ambition.

For his part, Putin understood well that the barren balance of power was shifting. Knowing what he knew, the Russian president wasn't necessarily irrational in deciding to invade Ukraine. He had good reason to think that he could get away with it. After all, he had gotten away with quite a lot for nearly 15 years ever since the Russian war against Georgia in 2008, when George W. Bush was still president.

Then he annexed Crimea in 2014 and intervened brutally in Syria in 2015. Each time in an understandable desire to avoid an escalatory spiral with Russia, the United States held back and tried not to do anything that might provoke Putin. Meanwhile, Europe became more and more dependent on Russian energy.

Germany, for example, was importing 55% of its natural gas from Russia. Just three weeks ago, it was possible for Derspiegel to declare that most Germans thought peace with Russia is the only thing that matters. The narrative of a feckless and divided West solidified for years. We as Americans were feeling unsure of ourselves,

so it was only reasonable that Putin would feel it too. In such a context, and after four years of Donald Trump and the domestic turmoil that he wrought, it was tempting to valorize restraint and limited engagements abroad. Worried about imperial overreach, most of the American left opposed direct U.S. military action against Bashar al-Assad's regime

in the early 2010s, even though it was Russian and Iranian intervention on behalf of Syria's dictator that bore the marks of a real imperial enterprise, not just an imagined one. They have very successfully made it so America did absolutely nothing in Syria. Yeah, right. No, he just said it.

That word direct is the load-bearing frame of that sense. Oh, no, people were opposed to direct U.S. military invasion of Syria, other than, I don't know, arming half of the fucking country. Yeah, I would say that we spent probably just an impure dollar amount, a comparable amount

to Russia. But nonetheless, I want to go back a little bit to Afghanistan and Iraq, and I've noticed this a lot in the Brookingsphere, that they have successfully branded Iraq and Afghanistan as blunders, as missteps.

You know, when any other, when any of these other bad countries in the multipolar world do something, it is a deliberate evil act to dominate, humiliate, and extract. When America does it, it's, oh, whoops. Oh, whoops, we accidentally occupied this country for 20 years.

We accidentally, we were accidentally bodyguards for the pedophile warlords of Afghanistan. Whoops, we accidentally extracted wealth and just did a fucking circular embezzlement scheme in Iraq. We accidentally did all this.

Who knows how we did this? Maybe we left our keys in the car and we ended up over here. We accidentally wore our gray sweatpants to the Vaz Museum and got a boner and knocked them all over. Oh, jeez. Oh, sorry, guys. Also, he's saying, I mean,

the litany here is like Putin's aggression was sort of encouraged by our failure to intervene in Syria, right? I mean, as we said, we did intervene. We intervened short of the Iraq-Afghanistan solution, which had been direct

military invasion, which, according to him, were blunders. So why would Syria have not also been a fucking blunder? Matt, this is exactly the thing, because the Brookings Institute were probably the strongest voices of liberal institutions that were

incredibly hawkish during the war on terror. They supported the Iraq-Afghanistan wars every step of the way. But the problem is, both of those were colossal fuckups for the U.S. geopolitical regime. And everyone recognizes that. Well, and also, like, fuckups in a certain sense in that it made us look bad

and everyone has to admit that they were mistakes now. But they weren't fuckups so much in, like, we got a lot of what we wanted out of those countries. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? And how is this Syria too? We're occupying right now the most oil-rich portions of Syria. And so, like,

that's a fucking win, you know? We talked about this a little bit on our previous shows, but, like, they're just so sore that they have to admit that the things they supported were mistakes, even though they haven't been punished for it or faced any consequences for them whatsoever. So, and, like, don't

get this twisted. If Iraq and Afghanistan had gone better, like, in terms of public opinion, they absolutely would have invaded Syria as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the only thing holding them back was these so-called blunders that their innocent naivete

led them to believe would have a better outcome. And I think what their assumption here is that there is a gap between what we did in Syria and invasion. That if we had gone to that point, right, if we had gone a little bit further, then it would have worked somehow,

right? That's the assumption here. The delusional assumption underlining all of this crackpot realist blob thinking is that America can, if it wants to, determine any outcome. And if it doesn't determine an outcome, it's because it didn't want it hard enough.

But I'm sorry, Syria is the consequence of the failure of America's imperial overreach in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the consequence of that failure is that you don't get to decide who's in charge of Syria. And you can throw money in there and arm

every psycho in town and destabilize it and make it ungovernable. And assure that you have, you know, able to ability to influence like the chaotic swirl. But you can no longer, that's a power America doesn't have anymore. And

that is a reality that Putin reckons with and recognizes. But it's not because any of us lost our faith in the project. It's because this is what decline looks like. And anyone who can't recognize that this is what

decline looks like is fucking delusional. And it's terrifying that all of the smart realists who have positions of influence are all gripped by the exact same mania that we have an ability as a state, as a project that we no longer possess.

And like to the extent that we no longer possess it or ever did have it in the first place. I mean, never had it begin with Kumar. Yeah. I mean, but like they blew their load on Iraq. Yes, that was a shot. It's shot. That was that was there. That was that was going to be the fulfillment

of everything that they were hoping for a new American century on the liberal and neoconservative side, which is basically at this point, the same fucking one. And like whether we had to begin with is the point is like, I think these people really believe that all it takes for us to get it back is that we just got to start believing in ourselves again. We have to believe

in the rightness of our cause and our moral authority to dictate terms to the rest of the world. The Warrant Iraq was our attempt to extend the concept of American sovereignty in the face of a fully not globalized

capitalist order that by definition was going to reallocate power elsewhere because America was no longer necessary as a center point because you've gotten to an actual global interconnected system. And the Warrant Iraq was an attempt

to resist that reality by seeing how far America's military power could be extended. It's sovereignly controlled military power. And we hit our fucking limit and we found out that that power no longer existed. We'd given away the store.

And now Putin is in a similar situation faced with the total dissolution of sovereignty in the face of a global market and trying now that America is no longer there to prevent other countries from acting like us is going to make his growth die. So he's probably going to get the same fucking answer that we got

because it's too fucking late. And, you know, for Shadi to talk about like, oh, Russia and China's ambitions or their imperial interventions in Syria, you know, either directly or through proxies, it's just like, well, look, we're not intervening directly in Yemen

either, but like through by proxy, we're carrying out the single greatest fucking humanitarian catastrophe on the planet now and not just over the last 10 days or 14 days, over the last three or four fucking years. You're talking about millions. What are we doing? I mean, my God, Afghanistan,

it's literally just being choked to death. We closed Afghanistan in, remember at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasion with the Northern Alliance through all those Taliban guys and sealed container ships. We basically did that on the way out the door to the entire fucking country

by just taking their goddamn money and now we're just letting them starve. We're helping the Saudis, a genocide Yemen for the past, what, eight years now. I mean, we have, there is literally no leg to stand on other than the fact that there are victims are less

recognizably human to people inside the wire. That's it. And if you bring this up, if you bring this up as people have been want to deal with good cause over the last two weeks or so, you're increasingly being accused of doing whataboutism

and engaging in a Russian propaganda effort. And to that, I had two points. The first is if you don't think that this whataboutism is relevant to the moral or ethical standing of the people demanding things of you

now, here and now, if you can't assess their previous conduct, if you can't use their previous conduct to assess their current behavior and opinions, then I don't know what the fuck you're even paying attention to the news or history or anything. The second point is,

and Felix, we talked about this a little bit. If you think that we, Chombo Trap House, are engaging in whataboutism on behalf of a Russian imperial project, or we are apologizing for an aggressive war, you know, invasion of another sovereign country by Russia or whatever, don't listen to the fucking show.

That has been my favorite thing is someone saying, hey, I'm a fan of you, but I think you're using genocide. Like, I mean, if you really think that, like... That's a yikes, my dude, but what about the, what is

what Saddam's doing to the Kurds? How is it not the exact same fucking argument? I mean, to that end, it's like, yes, Russia's doing bad things. I'm glad that that's one group of people doing bad things that we are, you happen to not be sending weapons to. Yeah, and it's just like, yeah,

like, yeah, if you think that, like, oh, you can't talk about America's past sins while Russia is currently sinning, then it's just like, don't listen to the fucking show. I'm sorry, but I'm an American and, like, I feel a little bit more responsible for this country's conduct than I do about Russia's. And, like, yes,

if you want to hear it again, oh, I loudly and strongly condemn Putin's invasion of fucking Ukraine. Congratulations. So are you, is it safe for you to continue listening to this show? Because let's get back into this fucking Brookings Institute, asshole. Well, yeah, no, and this always comes up, not when you're, you know,

not, you know, saying, oh, well, Russia, Russia has just caused Russia, you know, Russia showing restraint. You're not saying any of these things. You're not saying the things that you see in, you know, the Americans whose job I do not envy now working for, like, press TV or something.

You are saying this is bad, but I fear we are going to see a repeat of so many bad outcomes these past eight years sending fucking God knows how many weapons that

ended up God knows where in Ukraine. If you say that at all, you're excusing genocide. I'm skipping a little head here on Shadi, but he writes here, America's low opinion of its own capacity for good and the resulting desire to retreat or disengage hasn't just been a preoccupation

of the far left. The crisis of confidence has been pervasive spreading to the halls of power and even President Barack Obama whose memorable mantra was don't do stupid shit. Instead of thinking about what we could do or what we could do better, Obama was more interested

in a self-limiting principle. For their part, European powers content to bask under their US security umbrella could afford to believe in fantasies of perpetual peace. Europe's gentleness and lethargy. Oh yeah, Europe's been so fucking gentle. What a gentle fucking continent, the EU.

The president of France is no prince of Andorra just out of pure affinity. It says could afford to believe in fantasies of perpetual peace. One popular Twitter account at ISEU concerned devoted itself to mocking the European Union's propensity to express concern

but do little else whenever something bad happened. Suddenly the EU has been aroused from its slumber and the parity account was rendered temporarily speechless. This is no longer tepid concern but righteous fury. Member states announced that they would send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Germany for the first time

said it would ramp up its military budget to 100 billion euros. On the economic front, the EU announced some of the toughest sanctions in history. My podcast co-host, an Atlantic Council senior fellow likened it to a Holy War European style. Boy, when in situations like that I've run it up badly.

European Holy War, sign me up. Let's get Europe involved in another Holy War against Russia. Good job. Sometimes unusual and extreme events mark the separation between old and new ways of thinking and being. This week Berlin based journalist Elizabeth

Zorowski remarked the current moment reminded her of the memoir The World of Yesterday written by the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig as World War II loomed. In it he recalls the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with an almost naive fondness. On the first day of the Ukraine invasion, I happened to be

speaking to a group of college students who had no memory of September 11th. I told them that they may be living in history. Those students like all of us are bearing witness to one of those rare events that recast how individuals and nations alike view the world they inhabit. God, just like the fucking just the enthusiasm

these people have for another World War is really something. Cause like to them it's not about millions of people potentially dying. It's about like that feeling we all get as history's actors. Also, hey you know if everyone gets duked one way or another we have solved this whole crisis of sovereignty and power

right? Cause those supply chains will be good and snapped once and for all and people can reconstitute power at a geographically fixed way and we hey maybe you'll be on top of that. But like at this point a war is the only thing that's going to stop

any of these fucking countries from slowly seeing their ability to assert any independent authority over events completely evaporate. I mean right now it's mostly illusory and the few things they still have control of are pressing the buttons on the military machine and they're hoarding

their fucking they're very jealously guarding that power cause it's increasingly the only one they really have left and the danger we all face is that people are going to be more and more incentivized to press them and see what happens just because the alternative is so grim

and unavoidable through any other action. And I just like I also I also hate the glibness with which people like Shadi talk about oh like America we've lost our confidence and we have this need to draw inward and retreat from the world

it's like America is the most wealthy country in the world it's the most powerful country in the world but we got a lot of fucking problems here at home maybe now is not the best time to be remaking the world in our image maybe we should fucking fix some of our own problems here and like that you know

but you're going to abandon the rest of the world to torment and enslavement by aggressive states it's just like what you're demanding is that we enslave the world by being an aggressive state. Well we finally have something more degenerated and perverse than Straussianism

something more perverse than the world should be gun smoke because unless there is a constant struggle of good versus evil us being good you know we'll fall apart our institutions will crumble the institutions have already crumbled but guys like Shadi want a version of Straussianism

but where you know instead of good versus evil or else the institutions collapse it's just Friday night lights we need to have the big game we need to have the big game all the time so I feel kind of good

I don't just take well-beautred. Clear eyes, full hearts I need a pageant I need a spectacle that I can engage in that can give me some sense of power it's like a fucking Viagra commercial.

He closes out the essay by saying in any number of ways Russia's aggression has underscored why Biden was right and why authoritarians and the authoritarian idea itself are such a threat to peace and stability. Russia invaded Ukraine a democracy because of the recklessness and domination of one man

Vladimir Putin. The countries that have rallied most enthusiastically behind Ukraine have almost uniformly been democracies chief among them the United States America is lousy disappointing and maddeningly hypocritical in its conduct abroad but the notion of any moral equivalence between the United States

and Putin's Russia has been rendered laughable and if there is such a thing as a better world then anti-imperialists may find themselves in the odd position of hoping and praying for the health and longevity not of just the West but of Western power God just let that marinate for a second because I just love the way

the E is with which he can say yes America's conduct has been disappointing and sometimes maddeningly hypocritical in its conduct abroad but it's like okay you can't admit that America killed about a million people in the war on terror as a whole and

birthed many of the subsequent crises and humanitarian catastrophes that are bedeviling this planet you can't admit that and then just be like but yeah like we're still a force for good in the world we killed a million people for no fucking reason certainly nothing to do with our own

security or safety what I want to know is what specifically has really changed about the structures of bureaucracy and administration and decision making that made that horrible mistake

in Iraq what has changed about them between then and now to give you any belief that the results would be different this time oh we have a different president yeah the absolute one who voted for the war in Iraq who thinks that he's arguing with MacArthur

about crossing the 38th fucking parallel no these people are excited they have no shame and what they're seeing and I note like again if you bring up any of this stuff you're accused of having an America centric vision of the world right you're like you're just focusing on America not everything's

about America but what these people see here is an opportunity to just make America great again but in a liberal sense but at the end of the day it can't be done like nope because the capacity is gone and when you consider how insulated from public opinion

and democratic accountability of any kind foreign policy is there's no way you can argue that there's anything about national mood or will in like the general pop culture sense that is influencing the decision making and has since the end of since Obama

was in office and decided not to enforce that red line in Syria which is the original scene according to a lot of these people at no point can you realistically say that a public opinion is making these decisions these decisions are being made by fucking bureaucrats by the deep state by people

who are operating off of cost-benefit analysis and what's possible what we can get away with they are doing and have been doing everything they can the idea that there's anything that they haven't been doing out of the goodness of their heart or because they're spooked by some

crisis of confidence does not exist that is a fantasy you know what that spot is that's fucking Havana syndrome for these fucking people that is the fantasy exterior cause of an internal malady that they can't address

and for them it's that it's that failure of America's power and so they assume no there's a thing we could be doing that we're not doing and if we did do it we'd win but no that capacity has been degraded and they can't fucking face it

there's been a lot of crying about people who got exactly what they wanted if you go back in time long enough you will see people complaining about that Americans have a simplistic dumbed down version of foreign policy

that always defaults into some sort of low IQ isolationism which I would always argue is better than whatever this is but they have gotten what they wanted by design Americans do not give a shit or want to give a shit or ever want to

think about foreign policy that is the only way you can have this world but what is the consequence of that the consequence is that not everyone is going to rally around the idea of invading Europe to make you feel good

and the reason you're not doing it by the way the reason you're not going to do it is not because people aren't supportive enough of the idea because they can be made to support anything once it happens it's that it would not work it would either be a humiliation

or escalate to a nuclear conflict and to the extent that Obama allowed Assad to cross that red line and this original sin for these people everything after that America

we've shown our confidence to shake it we need to get back in the game the thing is like we didn't fucking go balls deep into Syria despite going significantly more than just the tip let's put it that way but the reason we didn't invade Syria

or do regime change to Assad is not because US public opinion was fucking soured on these things there was some overwhelmingly anti-war or anti-imperialist block in public opinion or certainly not in Congress it's that the Pentagon looked at it

and was just like sorry not going to happen our capacity to do it is just not there it doesn't make any sense for us to do it at this time but had they had that capacity they would have fucking done it exactly they would have fucking done it

because Iraq had happened and we had seen what happens when you go in there and that was not an acceptable outcome so we had to get back in the game and send in all the money and fucking support they could to get what they could out of it which has not been nothing

let's move into the the second one alright this is so let's check in on maximum boot if Shadi wasn't enough for you we got to check in on what maximum boot wants we'll put a boot in your ass it's the American way

this is max boot writing in the Washington Post in its righteous fury America has sometimes overreached don't make that mistake in Ukraine beware the fury of an aroused democracy his warning was apt the United States would mobilize to defeat

both Germany and Japan but in later years that same war like impulse would lead us into misbegotten conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq the fury of an aroused democracy needs to be carefully channeled and controlled lest it draw America into wars that we don't need and can't win

got an aroused democracy that's what aroused these people are right now they're fully engorged they're terrified that they're going to get left just with blue balls just edging his hot hat blew off his head and spun around

he continues US attempts to overthrow or kill foreign leaders during the Cold War seldom achieved the results we were aiming for when such plots failed as with Fidel Castro they resulted in embarrassment for the United States and a dangerous escalation of tensions

the Cuban Missile Crisis was triggered in part by a Soviet desire to safeguard its Caribbean client from being ousted by the Kennedy Administration former New York Times reporter Phillip Shannon even argued in his book A Cruel and Shocking Act the Cuban agents in Mexico City

encouraged Lee Harvey Oswald to murder John F. Kennedy because they knew JFK was trying to kill Castro hands off of Cuba hands off of Cuba I just love the idea that he's just sitting there in Mexico City you know what I'm not going to do I'm not going to kill Kennedy

then the Cuban guy is like don't be a pussy he's like fine I'll do it I love this theory because it presupposes that the Cuban agents were like who's the best guy we have Oswald he was a former Marine that bag is drawers

but yeah like no I'm loving it's like when Oswald was coming back from defecting to the Soviet Union they're like so why do you want to come back to America I'm hoping to kill the president on behalf of Fidel Castro so he goes here the only thing worse than

US plots that failed were those that succeeded in Soviet Vietnam the United States backed coup plotters who killed President Rafael Trujillo in 1961 and DM in 1963 resulting in instability that eventually drew in US troops

yeah it resulted in instability that's what drew in the US troops they drew them in you know you catch more flies with instability than you do with a rapacious need for global markets and client states so it goes here

the historical record gives anyone any confidence that the US government could either succeed in killing Putin or in managing the fallout loose talk of assassinating the Russian tyrant especially from a US senator sacrifices America's moral high ground and undermines our strategy I mean once again like these guys

the fact that they're just assuming as red that America has any moral high ground here or strategy to begin with is I mean I guess we do have the strategy but like these people just take as red like everyone in the world feels the same way about America that they do which is that

we have the moral high ground and like we said if we do whoopsies then it was just it wasn't intentional it was just good intentions that led to bad outcomes so he goes here we need to make clear to Putin that he is better off withdrawing from Ukraine than fighting to the death trying to kill him

won't work and doesn't help for the same reason now is not the time for war crimes prosecutions of Putin save him and offer him a no fly zone is another extraordinarily dangerous idea let's be clear about what this entails US aircraft firing on Russian aircraft radars and surface to air missile sites

the Russians would fire back there would be casualties on both sides and war fever could easily get out of control are we really prepared to go to a war with a nuclear armed state? the United States wisely resisted that temptation during the Cold War even when it meant standing by and washing Russian tanks snuff out rebellions in Hungary in

1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 the same calculus applies today this is slightly less than maximum boot here so he's saying no fly zone moderate this is a moderate amount of boot

alternative minimum boot see that means he's being reasonable that's the thing is that this is proof now because he's not calling for World War 3 he's being reasonable and you have to listen to it and he's also saying US interventions in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam were also those are mistakes

those are baddies literally everyone we ever do is a mistake but that doesn't mean the next world will be okay is this moderate maximum boot is that you you're saying we don't want to risk a nuclear conflict with a state like Russia

okay but let's say what can we do so he goes here and he goes and no we wouldn't be saved by former President Donald Trump's childhood suggestion to paint F-22s with Chinese flag that was

honestly let's do it let's give it a shot huh he missed the calling you know not being more of a neocon I mean he governed his one for the most part born policy but he has a team B style creativity in whimsy

that was missing from the neoconservative movement since the 70s he got us from watching the sum of all fears just scrolling he saw that TNT and the thing where they're like oh they get they do a false flag to get Russia and America to blow each other up

like hell yeah that's an idea I mean I think painting the F-22s with Chinese flags that would you know pretty good, pretty good false flag but the thing is they're still shaped like F-22s so on radar

I think they would you know I mean well I know they're supposed to be you know like not show up on radar maybe stealth fighters is that what the F-22 is I think so right it can't fly in the rain that's all I know the F-35 can't fly in the rain the F-22 is like I'm pretty sure like a Texas

hail storm would probably flush it down the toilet but it is less of a boondoggle than the 35 oh that's true yeah the F-35 is the real the real winner but you know the flags are only going so far you gotta have the pilots themselves be communicating over radio

like an Andy Rooney style Chinese caricature yeah and then if they get shot down they can just you know like just do like racist Chinese stereotypes people will be like god damn these these perfidious Chinese for bombing

Russia so it goes here here's boots actual prescription but just because we're not willing to risk World War 3 doesn't mean that we can't effectively oppose Russian aggression look at US support for the Afghan Muhajadin in the 1980s

Ukrainian troops are using missiles such as the American made Stinger to shoot down Russian aircraft Russia will never be able to Russia will never be able to claim air supremacy as long as the flow of Stingers continues Eastern European NATO members should also provide Ukraine with Soviet

fighter jets from their arsenal while the United States should lead the way and embargoing Russian oil so I mean are we all we're already doing all of this right like I mean oh yeah this is pretty much on the prescription table but okay so obviously the using the example of the you know

the brave Muhajadin fighters there's a Rambo 3 to skull them I know people are going to go to that make the obvious the obvious joke here which is like okay and then what happened but I do want to shout out Twitter account Marina Oswald that I think made a quite a good point about that

which is that you can't really own these people by pointing to 9-11 is the blowback from arming and supporting the Afghan Muhajadin during their war against Russia because 9-11 was what these people wanted to happen yeah and they got everything they wanted out of 9-11 so shout out Marina

him or her I don't know who they are but a good account it's just it's not it's like it's not it's she's made the right point it's not the it's not the own that people think it is to say that oh well we got 9-11 out of arming and supporting the Muhajadin because these people wanted 9-11 to happen and every

and every place where some concentration of right-wing fascist psychos with guns is able to assert like territorial sovereignty that is just that's a chrysotunity for Washington that there's so many things you can do with that it's a it's a

it's a gift that keeps on giving there's no downside yeah in five in five years when there's like some awful act and you are called the same names that you were being called now for not wanting further escalation for not wanting to take part in that conflict yes it will be

because they have gotten what they've wanted yeah like imagine if like some some fascist not neo-nazi rump government in part of what used to be Ukraine decides to start doing World War II style pogroms that's another

opportunity for America to assert its leadership role in the world yeah and anytime anytime America can like has the choice between like an independent not even adversarial nation but essentially like any kind of

nationalist project that is seeking to stand on its own and utilize its own resources as best they can and you know trading as equal partners in a global market we would much rather take a charnel house of several decades of just unparalleled slaughter in like you know if that is the

choice on the table we will always go for the latter rather than the former and going back to Marina's point this is already happened they've already done this they've already done this many years before everyone changed their abys to the Ukrainian flag

they will do nothing but get what they want for the most part because they've already done it so it goes here boot continues some are alarmed that if we don't get directly involved in fighting Russia NATO states will be next but Russia is so bogged down it's impossible to imagine Putin attacking

anyone else anytime soon and while Putin is evil he isn't suicidal he is so eager to safeguard his own health that he makes his own aides sit at the end of a preposterously long table he isn't going to attack NATO territory because the result would be a war he couldn't win and probably wouldn't survive

the US and European reaction to the Russian invasion has sent a clear signal to Putin and other despots such as Xi Jinping be aware of the fury of aroused democracies don't undermine the effectiveness of our current policy with sabotaging acts of overreach yeah

once again if America is going to give advice to Putin here don't sabotage yourself with acts of imperial overreach you definitely don't want to do that I mean they have no they're going to do it because we did it everyone's going to do it everyone's going to

find themselves at the back against the wall and then they're going to try to throw the fucking dice and see if they can change the board conditions the only country that has a chance at doing that is of course China but honestly I don't know if that's a guaranteed thing either but

everyone's going to come to the limits of their power and then have to deal with the reality of just declining sovereignty in the face of a totally algorithmic global economic order that just doesn't need your fucking inputs and you know I mean I don't know

has America taken in any significant amount of refugees from Ukraine at the current moment I mean a lot of European countries that were setting up fucking just a few months ago were setting up moats and fucking barbed wire fences

and calling out the military to prevent refugees from entering are now just open in the doors so I'm sure there will be a similar change in attitude towards refugees that will coincidentally occur here yeah particularly interesting to watch Poland

they have Lubega serenading the fucking border patrol like three months ago I mean like and they they don't have a storied long friendship with Ukraine exactly but you know when

they run that shit I mean why did it white enough good enough yeah and like and of course we've all read the stories about like you know African like student people with student visas like who are studying in Ukraine just being like hold off trains and like you know just just basically kept an internment camp

you know like they've been you know forced into like standing circles and are getting beaten for like walking out of it it's very grim but like you know that would be an example of something America could do to help like in a humanitarian sense is I don't know just

make it easier for people to escape a war zone I don't know I'm just just an idea here but actually the people in conflict zones if you guys I know you guys been following our boy Terrell in oh my god Terrell is the Russian star

he is honestly he has become the star of this war you know I mean I know everyone says oh it shouldn't be all about America but you know I got to follow my guys what are my guys up to and Terrell has been absolutely just I mean to accidentally report on war crimes your first week

in the country is I mean he's like he's like he's the he's the new Russian my opinion and you know what if he doesn't step on a mine or run into the wrong right-wing militia in a bad mood and gets out of it alive he's going to have a huge career

he's I've seen him on MSNBC I think it was Ari Velsche that guy he was he said after after they were done he says to the camera he's like doing incredible work here we're really we're really indebted to him like just pouring it on for this fucking idiot so yeah this is going to be

another fail upward type situation that really helps explain exactly how we're all in this situation we're in I mean I yeah I don't know what else to say other than like just because like another country is behaving like America it doesn't it doesn't mean you have to

lobotomize yourself as to the very people who made America you know such an evil country in the first fucking place but at the very least it means when they're counseling you to take a course of action or scolding you for not demanding more action I mean I'm sorry like that's you can say it's ad hominem

or whatever but like I'm people's character really and records really do count when they're when they're the people with the they're the ones trying to influence outcomes in a world that they've created like I said nobody nobody wants to get what they wished for

and also at the very same time that they demand us to rally around the flag for this war and insist that America is not up for discussion any of its acts they're supporting the fucking the petro politics that fuel literally

this entire conflict like if we spent the last 30 years or so maybe trying to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels we might not have a geopolitical chessboards laid out the way it is where this kind of like inevitable at the end of the day resource

conflict becomes the only like action states can carry out in their own interest we wouldn't be in this fucking situation yeah well I mean that doesn't for me on Ukraine today I mean these are just like I said two very clarifying examples

of you know the very people responsible for everything that this country has done that is exactly like what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now is you know out in full force to remind you that you know they're the serious sensible people and that they should always that you know and again like

I like who where is this like where is this groundswell of people in America or the West or anywhere in the world coming out like strongly in favor of Vladimir Putin and like you know fondly wishing him the greatest of success in this current war he's waging I mean

there are some people I guess like Tucker is out there enraging them every night and then there is like some native largely right-wing sympathy for the Putin project but none of it has any influence on anything it's absolutely beside

the point in every way is like you're not saying anything to anyone when you own the tankies you are just reaffirming your allegiance to a master narrative that has only one real outcome you know escalation of conflict

I mean the like at best at best what you're doing when you write a fucking article about the tankies is showing other writers how normal you are and believe me they do not think that of you you're winning no points for the left

you're winning no points for yourself no one thinks you're normal everyone just sees the fucking anxiety dripping off you when you do it and you know I guess I'll close bringing this up and like I don't mean to be like I don't want to like this isn't doomsaying on my part because these people

thankfully have almost no influence as well but I have been I gotta say I don't think it's going to happen but I've been let's just say a little bit disturbed by which the ease with which a lot of like you know liberal hawks and these are people who don't really have like media purchases but people like

hearing on this war who have now adopted the position that like a nuclear exchange between America and Russia would be like not that big of a deal I've seen people say that nuclear winter is only theoretical and like you know they actually actually I've read some studies that say

you know that wouldn't happen it's everyone's turning into Buck Terjitsen and it's just like look I like I don't think these people have any real influence thank God and you know Biden doesn't seem to be too into the idea of a no fly zone either so I'm not

I'm not worried I'm not worried I hope I don't eat my words on this but it is nonetheless disturbing to see the ease with which people are like we shouldn't let you know like there's a lot of people who are like we shouldn't let a fear of world war two deter us from doing what's right here I mean world war three

regardless but it's just like no like that's a that's a pretty good reason to fucking that's a pretty good deterrent here you know what I mean I uh I gotta say thankful for Brandon thank you Brandon I mean it's it's just recognizing reality

it's just it's just seeing the actual window for like realistic action which is never the same as what we have to tell ourselves in our public discourse that we have because you know we can't face that level of neuteredness but within that

window this is the only game in town you know just hope you can drain the Russians and avoid an escalation that just you know and put the hurt on them so that they have to come to the table or at the very least are

significantly weaker I mean it's got its own significant risks in terms of you know from from the realist perspective dealing with the mess that's now been created it's the only only real way forward but you know these people are gonna refuse to believe

that and and and assert their uh their denial uh in their pointless mulling about the failure of national will to do what needs to be done I am and also to see if uh we talked about this uh this weekend

if Russia takes the role of the world's Brandon the world's Mac and if 10 years from now it's it's like okay Russia really had to take one on the fucking chin and just get cut out of everything if you're using

Apple pay the you know the floor fell out from under you and you're dropped underneath the Moscow subway uh as the need the the needed uh impetus to get everyone off the dollar and if there was if there was some internal talks where

China was like well you know no one wants to like no one wants to take the first step in this but I I mean what's one country on our side that is ready to suffer not the one with a burgeoning new middle class I don't know it'll be an interesting

next 10 years and you guys also like on this if you if you follow the way in which like uh the blob has been treating uh that guy John was a beer shimer the realist the realist foreign policy guy and like look I mean like they're pointing to it like uh like a paper he wrote in

2014 that basically laid out like basically just saying like Ukraine like don't trust all this bullshit that washington is pushing you into because when push comes to shove they're not gonna they're not gonna have your back yeah like that they're leading you down a as he said I said primrose path into disaster with your phone

who this yeah and you know I mean like in in DC in the blob there is no sin worse than being right mm-hmm and like they're trying to say that like oh like if you hear like the uh what's his name Lavrov the Russian foreign minister like he approvingly cited Mirshimer's paper

so so it was Mirshimer actively doing Russian propaganda it's just like I mean this is this is this is the fruits of Russia gate man this is the fruits of like every looking at every problem with America and just saying oh Russia did that to us well the reason anyone anyone who says any truth about the world is

just like it's gonna be suspect some of his little blog larvae students like wrote to the fucking teacher wrote to the the dean or something making because he made them feel bad he gave him a tummy egg oh yeah they want they fucking went to the principal god yeah

the you Chicago kids yeah bugs um yeah I mean and the reason the reason they're like particularly fucking angry at Mirshimer is he gave up the game which is what does America do but gas you up make you give up fucking

just fucking oceans of blood lose your children your brothers your sisters your parents uh in a war that we will I mean we'll send you some guns we'll make sure they end up with the worst people in your entire country but we're not really gonna be there

with you that is the real thing they don't want to hear because it's a nasty fucking evil thing that America does gas people up and then we're not really there for them when shit hits the van and that is the real reason that everyone from these the blob elders to

the people who will be the blob elders these you Chicago students really fucking freaked out on the on him because they know they've either done that or will do that and also he tells of something that they all understand at some level but just spend all of their days ritually disavowing

which is that hey rush is a country with power and interests and it will yeah pursue them him pointing that out they really think that's doing propaganda to bring this up because no what Putin does is up to us

we get to determine what he does no he gets a say in this and what ends up happening is a negotiation between the fucking powers that if my definition has to be like that's there is no we don't possess the ability to negate his entire range of action

that and that cannot accept that and you know like I mean yeah this is the thing I'm like look it's not like the you know University of Chicago realists foreign policy school offers like you know too many jewels that I would counsel heeding their advice but the thing is there's by the fact that it's in the name

realists I mean like if if you were arguing or out laying out a case that like look America we're gonna have to have to take our medicine we're gonna have to swallow this pill and fucking deal with the world as it actually exists that it like that is gonna put that that is dangerous

you are going to be slandered before that and like what we said here is like like America doesn't have to do any of these things like we could begin to negotiate a way out of our empire and our way out of being a global military hegemon

that thinks that like yes what Putin does is up to us we could use our considerable wealth and influence to negotiate a way in which we are one of not not the indispensable nation but one of several nations that you know in concert with one another like has to make

concessions and like there's a given a take that we cannot just another have the the will the capacity or the right to continue to pretend like it's you know like 1950 all over again or even 1998 it's just it's not there and are we gonna

are we gonna choose the path where we're gonna escalate every conflict in the world by client or proxy or directly so that we can like you know and hang on to whatever morsels of like geopolitical dominance that we have left to us or are we gonna take a different

path and one that you know sometimes involves you know the meaning that that we're not number one anymore or there are there are there Russia and China's ambitions are no different than the ambitions of this country well I thought I thought that was one of the absolute best reasons to support Bernie was that

he was someone who could negotiate America's step down from the single power in the world something that is coming no matter no matter what you say no matter what feelings you have inside no matter how much you warn people the multi-polar world is scary and pointing fucking gross

that it's happening right happening it's happening there's nothing you could do about it except for negotiate our exit and create the conditions for there at least be some type of piece try to do it first and they fucking stitched them up for it and have it ever since instead we are going to get

delusion and we are going to drag everyone else with us on our way down and we will not we will not get the things that other empires that ended their empires got which is at least a glut of social welfare policies at home we will not even get that we're going to get delusion

right down to the cinders and you know them and that is the terrifying thing about all this because like you know like we have not reached the acceptance stage yet and we haven't even done bargaining we're just in anger at this point and I really feel it's going to

how many other people in other countries are going to die so that we can hang on to these fucking illusions and we can continue to tell the rest of the world you know what is good and evil yeah no you're seeing all the old all the tricks the empires are always done

gassing up this group of people over there giving X amount of weapons that end up with god knows who always end up with the most extreme groups because guess what moderate groups don't last that fucking long in war leave them high and dry leave them out but with the new tools of

being called a heartless and a scumbag if you if you don't participate in the gassing up we'll light a billion fires around the world as we always have done but just with worse articles than ever just fine yeah yeah

all right I think that does it for today's show but before we go a few a bit of house cleaning a few announcements regarding our upcoming Texas jaunt hello yes I do have some good news about the for all of you who are not able to

enter our or win our ticket giveaway contest for the south by southwest show I have been informed by patreon that there will be a certain amount of free general admission spots held open for our south by southwest show this coming Sunday March 13th

at cheer up charlie's at 4pm at Austin now spots in this venue are going to go to south by southwest badge holders first and are guaranteed 50 people who won our contest but the total space there I'm told is something like

600 people so whatever amount of people you think will show up by south by southwest to see us speak 600 minus that there will be that many spots left available so if you want to show up and wait and see us for free for general admission that is a possibility

no guarantee of if you will get in but I can't imagine that we're going to get 600 south by southwest badge holders out for this so yeah no we don't have any our panel will not discuss any ways to nft buy anything so I doubt it so

that is available and hope we get as many of you guys in as possible but if not we will also be at long play lounge east on the 16th we might have some extra spots for that if we can get extra people in at the door I will announce that in some of the next few shows and of course

still a few spots remaining for dallas on march 18th a few spots remaining for houston on march 22nd and many spots remaining in new orleans please come out to that show that's going to be fun we might have some special guests for new orleans

so we'll keep you posted on those as well new orleans is on of course march 24th those are my announcements hopefully see you guys as many of you as possible at cheer up charlie's in austin on 4 p.m. this sunday we cannot wait we're so excited to go to texas to adhere to the local

bbs laws this is going to be this is going to be a tour to remember at south by southwest I will be introducing my new completely black souls of my feet in the metaverse the first dirty floor in the metaverse

there's going to be a lot of fun I think I don't know what we have like your best shot is in new orleans everywhere else is everywhere else we're approaching sold out on everywhere else yeah yeah new orleans is a significantly bigger venue though

yeah we'll see you there texas and louisiana we'll see you soon hey bye guys