QAA Podcast - Episode 121: Secret Society of the Spectacle feat Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Matt Christman leads us further into the blinding light of our society of the spectacle. Are human beings truly well-suited for their role as "homo economicus"? And how do belief systems like QAnon and concepts like the "deep state" play into all of this? We hector Matt with the help of Liv Posting. ↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓ https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Follow Matt Christman: http://twitter.com/cushbomb Follow Liv Posting: http://twitter.com/livposting QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by Pontus Berghe, Matthew Delatorre (http://implantcreative.com), Doom Chakra Tapes (http://doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com)

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Boy, boy. Welcome listener to chapter 121 of the Q&ON anonymous podcast, The Society of the Spectacle episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields,

and Travis View. The long shadow of the deep state cast itself across the the crowd gathered to finally hear the seven trumpets sound. But as they gaze up at their monolith-shaped savior, in the minutes pass, the statuesque man emits no call. Murmurs make their way through the dark masses. Is this not the end? Has the storm been delayed? Soon anger erupts, not at the president, of course,

but rather at the shadows blanketing the crowd. People turn on one another as they scramble for the thinning slivers of remaining light. Grifters and merchants, once talentless nobodies, spring up from the crowd to emboldened and monetize the despair and fury. Then a solitary sound, like the dying note of some ancient instrument. The masses watch in horror and elation as their Savior's body begins disintegrating. And for just a moment, faces in the crowd are illuminated by stray beams of light. But not for long.

Just as the president disappears, a smoke-like miasma fills his space, hanging malevolently. In it, faces appear, cycling wildly. H.W. Bush, Richard Brennan, John Foster Dulles, Jared from Subway. Furious, the crowd bays at the shapeless monolith, demanding the return of the shadow cast by that other guy, the one they like. Soon they are fighting among themselves in the darkness once more. But the monolith remains. This week we've invited Matt Christman of Chappo Trap House to lead us further into the blinding light of our society of the spectacle. Along the way, we'll touch on disputed concepts like the deep state and fighting disinformation, but also the current rifts

forming in the Republican Party and the possibility of a new collective project in spite of our current homo-economics-shaped prison cells. And Liv Posting will be joining us. She had some questions for him as well. But before all that, QAnon News. First up, Senate Democrats request a threat assessment of Q&N from the FBI. A group of 14 Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, wrote FBI director Christopher Ray to request a full accounting of the threat posed by QAnon. They also requested analysis on, quote, the role of foreign influence actors in nurturing and amplifying Q&N. Chuck Schumer posted this tweet after the request was announced.

QAnon is a threat to our democratic institutions. Their disinformation has amplified hatred and violence. We are demanding that the FBI be upfront about the threat to our democracy and national security posed by QAnN movements, foreign and domestic. So, I mean, this might be a genuinely interesting pivot for the Biden administration is that they may look more deeply into right-wing extremism, you know, in the U.S., and that might mean, we're going to get captured by the deep state, you know, finally. We'll see. For my next story, Sydney Powell's final cracking lawsuit dismissed by the courts.

Oh, the final wet fart in just a long, humiliating series of squeakers. The last tentacle of the Cracken has been severed from its behemoth body cast out into the sea. The Q&N lawyer, Sidney Powell, has filed lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin as part of a campaign to overturn the results of the election. The last of these Crackin lawsuits, the Wisconsin one, was finally dismissed by U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper in the 45-page ruling. That ruling says this in part. Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country. One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often hairy litigation, the court is no closer to answering the why.

But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks. After that ruling, Sidney Powell retweeted a tweet by Q&on promoter Major Patriot, which says this. I don't want Trump to win as a result of a court rule. ruling? I don't want Trump to win as the result of military action. I want Trump to win when Biden and Harris not only concede, but also confess their crimes on national television in order to avoid capital punishment. Hashtag, we have it all. Offly baffling for a lawyer to say, I don't want a win in court. That doesn't matter to me. Adding to the legal failures of the allies of the Trump campaign, the Supreme Court rejected a suit filed by Texas seeking

to prevent Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from casting their electoral votes for Biden. Adding insult to injury, none of the three justices appointed by Trump dissented. That's what happens when you appoint someone to a lifetime position and then you can't take it back. Like, they don't give a shit. Yeah, they don't give a fuck about you. They can say fuck off forever.

Especially if your, yeah, your latest, I guess, attempt to do something in politics is just an enormous humiliating pant shitting show. this development evidently demoralized a lot of digital soldiers so one of the original Qaeda promoters Tracy Diaz aka Tracy Beans took the periscope to berate anyone who felt like it was over and Biden really was going to be president in a war when you lose a battle you don't cry in your cheerios and go home we would never have gotten anywhere in this country if we acted that way when we have lost a battle. If you want to keep fighting for what is right,

this election was rightfully won by President Trump. If you want to keep fighting for this country, until the very last avenue that exists is gone, stay here. If you don't move out of the way and stop demoralizing the fellow soldiers that are standing on the battlefield who still have the fight in you. Stop demoralizing.

everybody. Stop it. There's this weird, I don't know, mindset in MAGA world where like acknowledging reality as a kind of defeat, like just recognizing the fact that, you know, I guess, I guess we fought as good as we can, but it's just inevitability. That's a kind of weakness or a failure in their mind. Like, it's like they think of like the Trump presidency as Tinkerbell. If you stop believing in it, then like it goes away. It dies. I guess it was always here, but they've sort evolved into sort of like independence day speech it like platitude just like we will rise on the battle to keep fight like it's there's no substance there it's pure emotion yeah they just want to

feel like warriors they want to feel like victors and like in like believing that there's some sort of miracle that Trump is going to pull off to make him magically win the election is just part of you know getting that good high feeling of like you're on the winning side so what's next for Q1 on followers many are holding out hope that the military will swoop in and save the day to prevent a Biden administration. They often point to a 2018 executive order signed by Donald Trump titled Executive Order on imposing certain sanctions in the event of foreign interference in the United States election. Among other things, that executive order requires the Director of National Intelligence

to submit a report on foreign election interference 45 days after the election. So the deadline for that is this coming Friday. Oh, boy. In the Q&N imagination, this coming report will show that China interfered with the election so severely to effectively invalidate it. And this will cause Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and cement his power via martial law or something. There's a lot of yada, yada, yada, honestly, with these explanations. Like there's this report that's going to come out and it's going to be explosive and then Trump wins. Qaeda followers that are obsessed with these disposable heroes.

First, they thought that, you know, Jeff Sessions was going to rush and then save the day. And then they said trust Ray, and then they thought Barr was going to do it, and then Horowitz, and then Durham, of course, is now a special prosecutor, apparently. And then they hope that Ellen Wood was going to do it. And, of course, Sidney Powell. And, of course, they've all let them down. And so finally, their last sort of ditch effort is the director of national intelligence who is going to write a required report. And this will somehow save the day. And honestly, what's most likely to happen is that the report will come out, and it'll

say, just like in 2016, they'll say, yes, there were instances of interference, but it was not enough to, you know, move the needle of the election or affect the election outcome in any ways. At which point, the QAnon people will dig in and they'll say, well, but there was interference, because that's never happened before, you know. Other Q1N followers are more accepting of the inevitability of Biden's inauguration. For example, I spotted this tweet thread from a popular Q1on follower named Anon 661. What if a Trump's second term was never actually part of the plan? We know Trump was merely the face of the alphabet team, not the mastermind.

So hypothetically, let's say Trump loses all of his court battles. Bynan Harris step in, and, quote, the plan officially begins. At that point, military intelligence could really show themselves and officially take over the shadow government. Trump couldn't be blamed, he and his family having served on would be someplace safe while the real battle takes place. You're spitballing here, but when you spend as much time thinking about this shit as I do, your brain starts working overtime. Admittedly, this line of thinking is well outside of the box,

but I'm just curious if anyone else has wondered this as well. Has Q ever mentioned a Trump second term? I love this because I've been waiting for it. I've been waiting for the plan that will finally get become real during the Biden administration. and I see a little, I guess, a little trickle of that kind of thinking coming through in the Q&A community. Let's see how popular it gets. Yeah, I think this Punisher's Skull wearing a Santa hat has a point. Matt is a co-host of the Chapel Trap House podcast and has been publishing solo vlogs for a while now as well.

Welcome back to the show, Matt. I think it's the third time. I believe so, baby. I'm in the three-strike club. I am now out. Speaking of the three stars, the three strikes, Michael Flynn has been on this kind of tour of of like far right media outlets. I sent you a few clips.

There's like Bongino, of course, but he also went straight up on one of the oldest QAnon shows in The Matrix and Shady Groves show. And I mean, what do you think of this development, this new Flynn? Get the digital army going. You digitally arm it. You do it, guys.

You digitally do it. You're going to digitally make it happen. I'm proud of you guys. You're all digital warriors. What I was struck by most of all, is just how familiar he sounded in just that he sounds like everybody on every side of the political spectrum who is undergoing the task of trying to convince people that there is any reason to pay attention to politics that they have any effect on it and it's it's this combination

of of just con artistry of saying keep it paying attention keep watching most of importantly, keep funding whatever I'm doing and paying attention to me, and then self-delusion, this sense that if we keep doing this, it's going to lead to something. But I think whether or not they're aware of it, and really that's the only difference you have is a degree of self-awareness among these people. Everybody is at base just trying to monetize directly or indirectly the continued delusional American faith that the political system is in any way vulnerable to the concentrated will of its citizens. Even things as powerful as memes.

I mean, the power of memes is as a as a saparific and as a placebo. You're blasting out memes, you feel like you're accomplishing something. And as long as everybody around is invested in telling you you are accomplishing something, including people who you hate, who take those memes seriously because it justifies whatever scam they're running on their credulous supporters, then they are powerful. But they'll never do what they're telling you they'll do, which is actually change anything. But there has been change in terms of the sleight of hand just getting shoddier. I mean, how shoddy can the sleight of hand get? Well, if there's no alternative, it'll get as bad as it's allowed to get, which will be very, very, very.

bad. The spectacle is so important that like even the right is doing like basically stolen valor for posting. Like they want them to post so much that it's like you are like a soldier. Yeah. This is your war. It's amazing. Yes. This is your war. This is your war.

On the left, that's what people are being convinced of all the time that there's activism involved in tweeting and posting and in listening and and absorbing media. That it has a tectonic relationship. In on that interview with Matrix and Shady

Groove, I mean, it sounds like Flynn sort of hints that he's launching some kind of online platform for the digital soldiers. Watch this space. On re-listen, I think he was basically kind of taught. He's just very bad at speaking, just bottom line.

Forming sentences. So the digital soldiers thing, I think he meant to say, like, you are the digital soldiers. That's just his code word for the cue on people, like that entire fucking mass of screaming people. And then, you know, They're going to get some capabilities soon. And I think he means I'll give you the intel so you can go and fucking unleash the means and go to protest.

Yeah. You will have, I will give me the money. I will give you the arm. I will arm you for the digital battle to come. But what is the fraud that, I mean, a guy like Flynn, his success comes in his probable, the fact that he doesn't even know that he's scamming these people. he's as much scamming himself as anybody because he has the brain of a fruit fly but the essential fraud is the idea

that there is any kind of relationship here and what's amazing is that with this with the election you are seeing in real time that the relationship between Q&N and the Republican Party is essentially mirrored to the relationship between the left, whatever you mean by that and the Democratic Party because here it like there is an ask here

stop the steal and you have all these Republican politicians saying we want to stop the steal we will stop the steal we're going to do it and you guys are going to help us do it but it's not going to happen because the actual interests of the

institutional Republican Party have nothing to do with keeping Trump in office and everything to do with maintaining the fiction of the system as such with both parties signing off on it and so they will in their face over the next month, waiting up until

inauguration day, string these people along until they're all just standing there with their mouths open watching Biden be inaugurated and that will be the closest thing to a great disappointment, Millerite come to reality moment as we're going to see.

And then the real question will be what comes after that? A new narrative where Biden is actually Trump now. That would be amazing. Behind the scenes. Give them two months of

cyberpunk, they absolutely will think that. There is no depth. I mean, they already believe in clones. They already believe in microchips. I mean, it's just,

it's just whatever, whoever, whatever random Chan poster, Twitter person or Reddit, Reddeter comes up with the best plot line for, you know, 2020 to 2020. Trump is actually like a chloroform

like looking piglet, you know, that lives like Cuato inside Biden's belly now. And you can tell because of the way that Biden's eyes twitch and he repeats words and stuff like that. I want to talk to you also a little bit about, you know, lately we've seen social media companies and other corporations

basically allying with the government and the intelligence apparatus to fight what they call disinformation and conspiracy theories, which I consider that like our podcast covers that, but I somehow am cringing at their definition of it. So I mean, what do you think we're looking at here? Well, I mean, what we're looking at here is an attempt to put the genie of a post-authority media landscape back in the bottle which i mean you cannot do it just it will not work whatever whatever they're trying to try how are they going to try to manufacture some sort of consensus reality it will not take because the the strings are too visible everyone knows whose side is on who is who is on what side everyone knows what platform and which politician and which media company

everyone knows in their mind what or they think they know what they stand for and so there will be no accommodation, like all those little notes that quitter is putting on all of Trump's posts to say, this is disputed. None of that impacts anyone's actual beliefs about what's happening and can't. And there will always be

there will always, because there will be this alienation from the official narrative, there will be a huge demand pool for alternatives. And as long as the technology exists to provide people with that, it will be satisfied. And it does seem like the technology is advancing, but at the same

time there's more surveillance. There's now like a denser network of cell phone like GPS locations through 5G. So do you think that the acceleration of technology will will have that democratizing effect in any way? Like they can keep fleeing to parlors and clones like that or... Well, it's really, it's less about whether or not they actually stamp out these beliefs and change the mind of any of these Republicans than whether or not they're able to, to themselves and their shareholders and to some imagined public justify themselves and they'll be able to thanks to their hegemonic control and like the monopolization of media and technology they'll be able to do that at whim their their attempts even to assert it is really more about just pride

honestly and and about advertising their own power to themselves and to the people within like the greater sphere of like the enthralled masses who actually do listen to official narratives than about changing the opinions of anyone outside of that because at the end of the day, all our I aren't opinions. All these Q&N people, except for, you know, the most febrile tendrils of instability, are just consumers like everybody else. And their contribution to politics, no matter how alienated they get from the established, version of reality will amount to purchases and will amount to spectacles of of indulgence like

going to these protests or wear a shirt or annoying their family members but nothing that cannot be absorbed and recuperated within the greater system yeah and it seems like even like the leaders of the movements are themselves sort of subsumed into the spectacle as we see with how much reality TV Trump watches and like something you mentioned before about how like Flynn there's a certain element to Flynn that is sincere or not cynical, that he sort of believes it too. And it seems like that's a very particular phenomenon, I guess, of the Republicans. Like, it seems like a lot of the Democrats still have this sort of cynical distance to the base. But, you know, inevitably, it seems like they will also be like subsumed into the spectacle. Now, everyone has to be subsumed.

Even if you're a part of this machinery at any level of power, you have to have a story you tell yourself every day about why you're doing it. And with Republicans, you see the process since Reagan of the true believers getting like slowly marching up into the highest echelons of power. They're not fully there yet, but you can see the move. And that's that's because the, there's less cognitive dissonance between being a Republican elected official or media figure and carrying out like the Republican agenda, the actual one, as opposed to the public face of it, whereas there is an inherent tension and conscious tension among Democrats between what they're telling their supporters and what they know

is possible, which means that they will take longer. But, I mean, they're also hostage to their own ideological insanity, the idea of pragmatic progressivism that they take seriously. And that's as delusional as the Republicans' belief in, you know, the secret bases and the lizard people. But more boring. The function is the same. It's this, you do this, you end up filling the same roles in the same system.

I wanted to talk as well about the, the, the, the, concept of the deep state, which is now just way more common. It's not just Alex Jones talking about it. You hear it on the left, you hear it on the right, and everybody has like a totally different definition for it, basically. Do you think it's a useful word at all? I mean, I think it's kind of here to stay anyways, but, you know, what do you think of the different conflicting versions? Well, I mean, at this point, deep state just means the deep state is the remainder for the math problem of living in an America that has certain values that you assume are enduring and real and that you are a part of and that you are an American people that you imagine yourself psychically to be part of and America as it's lived and experienced and that you are alienated from. How can these two things be? And the answer is, well, there's this deep state. And the thing is is that that's actually accurate. That is true. Like the difference. between America as we understand

it to be as a project and its manifestation in the world are the functions of the state alienated from the political process that endure regardless of political outcomes but there's no there's nothing beyond that

because even their alienation is immediately rendered sterile by its investment with the narratives of QAnon or or any of the other sort of political fairy tales that we tell ourselves because there is no like the solution what's the solution to the deep state post

I'm sorry you're telling me that there is I'm sorry you're telling me that there is a cabal of people who are actually right next to the the most material expressions of American power in the form of its clandestine services it's military its surveillance capabilities it's monetary structures. It's judiciary and media superstructural elements.

And you're going to post them out of office? You're going to post them out of their ride holes? Well, I mean, there's posting and then there's journalism, right? Writing an article about PRISM. Is that a form of posting? I mean... Yeah, it's all just posting. Like, okay, now you know about PRISM.

Now what? Yeah, right. Oh, you know, oh, what if it just came out? Yeah, you know those deep underground military bases filled with dissecting? aliens and cloned celebrities and kidnapped children. Yeah, that's real. Now what? Well, you're right, actually, because the thing is, is like, okay, now you know about Prism.

Now what? Well, the now what is that you build the narrative that builds off one piece of truth of prism into something that is completely fantastical, you know, more interesting, like underground bases, like all of that stuff. Not just one humming server farm. I mean, we see that with QAnon all the time where they'll take one thing that's true, you know, like all the Epstein shit. and then say that, well, because that is true, it is also true that Hillary Clinton has mole children, you know, buried under her, you know, Chapatiaqua, you know, farmhouse.

They know that the server room is a boring setting, too, because they had to have a CIA versus, what was it, the police fought the CIA. No, it's the military raid in Germany. CIA versus Army shootout at the Surmer Farm in Hamburg. Absolutely my favorite story of the Q&N election era, for sure. Yeah, tell me about this map. this map is it good is the is this server farm map good and like what happened there with the CIA I know you're you've been following this closely so I want to know what was that battle like it was intense man there there there was a heavy kinetic engagement between

patriotic white-headed defense department special operators and CIA contractors who from Afghanistan who were there to protect the servers the stolen Trump ballots yeah the aliens, all of the celebrity clones. Actually, they had to pour chlorine in all the celebrity clone tanks. They lost a whole batch that's going to put them back significantly for next year. You sort of elaborated before about how QAnon fits into relation to the spectacle for Republicans. But it's interesting how you mentioned how posting on the left relates to a sort of a similar relationship to the Democrats. which reminds me a lot of

the DOJ spent like billions of dollars trying to like spy on anarchists on Twitter in Portland and the only thing they found was who was canceled it had literally no actual reference to like real organizing on the ground which like the... Just finding out who can't show it up to the cookout.

Exiled from the cookout. This is the raw stuff. This is the raw intelligence. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe. Maybe we can hold the DOJ accountable if they understand the arguments of why those people are canceled and they can do better in their own lives. I got to say, it would be funny if the anarchists ended up bringing down the deep state just because they observed this culture of total distrust and paranoia and self-seeking. And it just slowly infects, like, through the first through the people who watch it, you know, in the server farms for the NSA or whatever.

and then they just slowly bring that into their office politics and before you know it everyone in the deep state is denouncing each other for problematic content and for acts and there's just no one there to operate the the chemtrail machines and the fluoride brainwashing mechanisms anymore to a certain extent more of the political bureaucracy is being integrated into this and i think especially with like trump and i wonder what the the conclusions of this sort of aestheticization of politics at the the upper levels in like a really more sort of cohesive sense we'll have on politics but I guess to a certain extent it'll just embolden the spectacle because you know Trump was amazing for the spectacle oh yeah he has he has posting brain he is purely online and it was it only accelerated it yeah and I mean you might actually get if it goes far enough you could get a thing where some of this QAnon stuff about like different factions of the government being controlled by different political factions, that might end up coming true, you know, and they might end up start competing with each other on explicitly ideological grounds, but the end result will be the same. It'll essentially

just be a further lobotomization of the state's capacity for organization, which we're already saying. Like, the state is supposed to be the executive committee of the bourgeois. They're supposed to take the interests of individual capitalist enterprises and express their collective self-interest and transcend their, you know, specific desires that they can't see past. Well, you know, the entrepreneurialism of American politics with the breakdown of party discipline means that now everybody at every point is acting like a capitalist within the state structure itself for the political angle or at the political level. And then over time, that's inevitably going to filter down into the bureaucracy.

And all it will mean is that the state will continue carrying out its role just less competently. So, like, as conditions get worse, as crises accumulate, the state will be at every level, from bureaucratic to political, be less able to meet reality as it is emerging, and instead it's going to be, like, outcomes are going to be determined by this spectacular ideological contest that's not actually connected to any of the real questions and crises that need to be resolved. Yeah, you've mentioned that Chinese capitalism with Chinese characteristics seems to have, like, a competent, state structure that they aren't dealing with a lot of these issues. Do you wonder if that will be an issue for them in the future? Is this an issue that's eminent to capitalism and capital acceleration? It is a inevitable outgrowth of capital acceleration, but the difference really more than anything comes down to the conditions of capitalists emerging in United States versus in China and more specifically the fact that the United States is the most capitally developed

country. It was the one that wound every other country around itself, especially after World War II, basically, and re-shaped the entire global economic order around itself. And China got on board, but way later. So its social structures have not been liquefied the way that ours are, which means that that state capacity to manage capital interests can still be exercised. And it seems like they're actually doing that. I mean, I don't think it means something that billionaires can get fucking blown away in China. If you do two, if you're the wrong billionaire who does the wrong type of corruption, they will take you in a room and blow your brains out,

which is a inconceivable outcome in the United States. Not just go to, I mean, just go to jail as an inconceivable outcome. And when you have, I mean, that is a difference in state capacity to regulate capital. that is a distinct difference. But, I mean, if China takes over, they become the new headquarters of global capitalism. If they were able to avoid, you know, just the accelerated crisis,

just reducing all social order into, you know, cantons of hyper exploitation, and they were able to stabilize something out of this, eventually it would happen to them too. But it would take a while. It would take a long while for them to get the where we are. Right, right. Their QAnon would be more like a metal gear plot line.

With like ghosts and vampires. It would be, I can't wait for that. There would be the hopping vampires would be involved. Yeah. But it would all be structured like dark souls. There would be very little. You can't really ever understand what's happening. Yeah, I would much rather believe that.

If that, if Chinese QAnon emerges, that would be my ideology when I'm like 70. Absolutely. Very nice. Can you elaborate on? the pervasive concept of homo-economics, both in general American politics and online relationships. So, homo-economics is this term for human nature as conceived by American libertarian economic theory that took over completely after 1980 and is now like the hegemonically enforced conception at the elite level through college and through politics and through media of what

it means to be a human. And the premise of is that the human being is a self-seeking economic agent. Individual humans exist to advance their own personal economic well-being. Therefore, what flows from that and the prescriptive element of it is, therefore, we need to have institutions that allow for human nature to express itself. And the only way to do that healthily is to create a totally frictionless market whereby people can seek that economic advancement. Now, the thing about that is that that's insanity. And in madness, and it's literally brainwashing gibberish as a description of like some fundamental facet of human nature.

But what it is is this is an accurate description of what humans act like when you put them in a system that is completely dominated by market relationships. So what those economists did was not to discover some truth about human nature. It was to provide philosophical and political and ideological justification for turning us into that. And the thing about it is that a society govern that way, especially one that has access to the technological capacity that Wehu will destroy itself, will destroy its biome.

Because if you are not connected to anything but yourself, then everyone will seek their own advancement at the expense of others and at the expense of our collective environment and ecological biome, which is not a owned by any person, which is why Homo Economicus is an insane concept, because we are embedded in biological relationships that transcend our individuality, and a society that forgets that

will destroy itself. As to whether we can overcome it, I don't know, but if we do, it will be because people essentially deprogram themselves, and the only way that's going to happen, it can't happen through self-contemplation, it can't happen through

exposure to media or conversation. It can only happen through lived experience of connection. And those connections breeding a alternative understanding of the self and one's motivation and one's reason for being that allow for coordinated activity. And coordination of regular people is the only thing that can defeat a structure that depends for its continuation, everyone can. continuing to act in a lobotomized conception of self-interest. This is like a reverse therapy session where I'm getting satisfying answers to questions

that worry me, but I coming out of it feeling much worse. I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. No, I mean, it's true. I see it in my own life. I mean, even just these two years researching QAnon, you're observing this sort of existence loneliness and the people that are trying to fix that within themselves are just going down a path that like, like you said, is never going to result in any kind of meaningful change or happiness. And it's because we've been told and taught and programmed that like if you want to really get the most out of being an American, like you have to do it by advancing your own sort of personal status and and collecting wealth. Yeah. Yeah, GTA. That's why the political, the political thesis and antithesis that is now driving our population. politics are the figures of Obama and Trump, which are two alternating, conflicting visions of how to do that, how to actualize through the pursuit of self-advancement.

One is play by the rules, and the other is fuck the rules, and that's it. And now we're going to fight over that. But the basic premise of both is the same, because they're both psychopaths. Like, both Trump and Obama got where they are because they embodied the sociopathy of the moment. They're like those Hegelian figures like Napoleon who embody what the times demand, which is to be fully motivated at like a spiritual level, but by only your own advancement, which does not come naturally to us and which we fight and which is what makes life in this thing miserable for so many people. It's not just because people aren't equipped to succeed

cognitively or something. That's part of it. Another part is that we spiritually seek something else And there's a conflict between those things that hinders us. It makes it impossible to put all of our energy towards that goal. For Trump and Obama, they have a fully sociopathic view where they have completely disconnected themselves from anything beyond themselves. And that means that they can put their entire soul, which they have. We all have souls. They can put their entire souls into a thing that for the rest of us, we just can't do that.

Because there's a vestige, there's an echo. There is a humanity that we could hear. There's not just a humanity, but a connection to everything that is there, like, faintly in the background. And guys like Obama and Trump represent those who have most successfully adapted to the homo-economics model. But we can hear the chance of Pandora. Yes, we live on Pandora. We can bring it back. I mean, yeah, essentially we need some sort of meaningful, antithetical, like, world historical figure movement that actually acts.

in relation to other people. Yeah. I know you've mentioned like John Brown which is sort of an ideal of this character, somebody who transcends their individual relationships

for a greater moral cause. Yeah, because like John Brown, there were two ways to be against slavery broadly in the antebellum America. There was the middle class moral objection to slavery

that people like William Lloyd Garrison had. And then there was the working class and small holding farmer material objection to slavery, which was generated by the fear of being, having to compete with slave labor

or having in the future where the South is victorious having you or your family rendered slaves because of your inability to become a master because you don't have access to the capital to do so. And the moral case was correct but it was disconnected

from the lived experience that use a horrible word of these people like these comfortable Boston Brahmins who could just sit around and drink tea and think about how bad slavery he was. For a rude mechanic or a small-holding farmer, their convictions were fired by actual daily struggle and pain and alienation. But that pain and alienation was because it was so personal, it was not connected to some theoretical idea that black people are in some way

you, or some way part of you. John Brown was able to be the catalytic figure he was because he married the the moral spiritual middle class objection to slavery with the the small holding personalized misery he was a guy who who was a poor man his entire life wildly in debt struggled to avoid going to debtor's prison his entire life and so had that agony but that agony did not manifest in a mere concern for him and his family he translated that pain into a universal suffering that he saw that needed to be addressed and it was because he was in that position of lived experience of alienation and pain that that moral objection to slavery could be expressed through a practice that actually accomplished something besides selling newspapers

and filling lyceums across the northeast i wonder which like potential issue has the capacity to do that in a modern context. I mean, like, given, I'm thinking, like, a lot of prison abolitionists think that, like, prison abolition is an extension of the abolition of slavery. And, like, given how important anti-black racism is in, like, the politics and even, like, consciousness of America, this has really been the catalyst of the recent protests. I wonder if the modern contemporary John Brown that might lead us towards a potentially anti-capitalist position could be in relation to, like, police violence,

I don't think so. And I think the difference between now and that era is that slavery was the signal issue in politics. It was the issue that the political parties could not accommodate because it was sectional. And that was because you had these two distinct political cultures in the north and the south. We don't have that now. I would say that the slavery of the now is wage slavery. As anti-slavery people like John Brown and Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips said at the time, they said first this, August Village, the German communist who became a Civil War general, we fight to end slavery so that we can advance the cause of the worker more broadly. And then that cause advanced for a bit, then it came back. And the American history has been the backwash of that failure to advance the struggle to the next stage of conflict. And that, if there's a meaningful task politically now, it is to sharpen that actual

conflict and I think the challenge then is what is the issue and I don't think it could be police violence just because of how siloed it is and how how its experience is mediated like it is a it's racialized without there being a a planter class basically you know what I mean like there is no planter class of the police state or of the car surreal state there is a planter class of wage slavery of capitalism and it's literally the ruling class but what like how what that will be i don't actually know but i do know that the the fundamental issue will be the fact that we are that those without access to capital are being told every day of their lives that the future will be immiseration for them that their children's lives will be worse than theirs and worse in ways

that they can't even imagine and that the only thing that will stop that is if we change the way that the economy is structured. And I guess, yeah, it needs to be an issue that can't be subsumed into culture warship. Exactly. Because as soon as it's into the political spectacle, then it's just like, it's melt, all the substance melts away. And you have polarized working, the working class people too, because they're observing this thing and they're absorbing all of the symbols, the collision of symbolic orders and of

and of values, all of which are fake, but all of, but are the entirety, the sum, of like a political identity in this country and that anything that that reinforces that will end up just dissolve because what was the end result of the summer's uprisings? It ended up being vote for Democrats and it kind of has to be because it's a question that can be answered that can be funneled into the partisan conflict like but but but the questions of like distribution of resources cannot be because neither part of wants to redistribute shit. Right.

Like they won't even make the, the, the, um, the overtures or the public displays, uh, like, uh, the Democrats and their cultural allies will about police violence and racism. Right. Um, slightly unrelated question, but, uh, we're seeing a pseudo split in the, or at least an aesthetic one in the Republican party between the more like hue oriented fringe and the sort of establishment Republicans manifest itself in, for instance, Sydney Powell saying Republicans should not vote in the January 5th runoff. Amazing.

If the Georgia governor doesn't out flip the state for Trump, is this like a meaningful division in any sense? And like what is it going to look like do you think after Trump leaves office? I honestly don't know. It depends on a lot of things that I'm not. I mean, like Trump himself is going to determine a lot of this. Like it's really up to Trump in a lot of ways. And I don't know what he's going to do.

It looks now like he's just going to decide that the way, because all of, it's so funny because all of this, this entire crisis, is entirely precipitated by his refusal to admit that he lost something. It's pure ego. It has nothing to do with any meaningful political project, which is why the idea that like Trumpism can be some vehicle for working class alienation is absurd. It's entirely bound in one dude's ego, one old COVID-ridden freak's ego that cannot be translated into anything beyond that. And so he has been negotiating essentially with himself on how to accommodate losing in a way that will not break his brain. And right now it looks like the only way he can do it is if he essentially acts like it's of his presidency, something that is happening without his involvement, but that he can resolve by winning again. And he'll just, it looks like he might just spend his entire term running for re-election.

And if that's the case, the only thing I can see coming from that is the Republican Party just finally and irrevocably revolving around like the specific desires of Trump because they know that that's what his voters like. The one thing I could, I sort of assume is that whatever that form that takes, the Republican establishment as such will find a way to accommodate it as they have so far. Right. Because they're not pushing for anything that they can't say yes to. They're not pushing for anything that is non-negotiable, which is not true among the left, which is not true among those who are trying to, you know, challenge the Democratic Party. Well, we're fucked. Until we're not. People talk about fucking George Soros.

They love to do the little puppet thing where it's like he has the strings. There's not being a guy in recent history I can think of than Trump who can against his own party, against anything. He can just move a large amount of the population into anything he chooses. I don't know. That's kind of, is it unique, do you think, matter? Is that just, is a repeat of history? We are in new territory just because of how quickly everything gets absorbed into our understanding of reality and have how much we can pick and choose which reality to live in.

So, like, Trump has definitely accelerated to a new point, the degree to which consensus versions of reality have broken down. But the thing that freaks out a lot of liberals about that, and they say, this is terrifying that I think is, it's in its own way delusional, is the assumption that that has some sort of resonance that has a meaning beyond just the personnel and who makes off with the money, who secures the bag, because none of it can change anything. So you heard it people. He is saying you need to get online and post the Trump Dr. Manhattan meme. And so that understanding will be out there and we'll understand it and it'll be good and it'll change stuff. The funniest possible result is that like the establishment Republicans, which I guess they wouldn't want to do this, but they fully, you know, they see the Trump contingent, like with Sidney Powell saying that you shouldn't vote for the runoff as like a as an issue that they don't want and they sort of try to push it off. And then Trump or some some sort of relation to Trump attempts to make some sort of third party, which is like a third point in the spectrum. almost. Yeah, you can imagine a world where Trump, like they seat Biden and Trump

feels betrayed by the Republican Party and decides to destroy it, but he's not really a politician and never has been. He is a guy who likes to be on TV. If he's going to try to create some third poll, it'll be around a different media outlet. Yeah. It would not be a political project. I mean, what if... And then maybe if it became like dominant enough, it would create its own third party. But as I said, I don't think any, any of the content, any of the political demands of whatever that third epistemic reality created around Trump

any of it would really be non-negotiable for the Republicans. They would just absorb it. I guess Trump fundamentally is just like a dog chasing his own tail. He only cares about himself. And the only way to explain the way Trump moves is in relation to how his

post-COVID sort of on energy saver mode brain would imagine would imagine there be like a benefit. Exactly, yes. I could imagine him thinking, like, oh, well, I love doing rallies because people come out and say they love me.

Yeah. No, I can see if just keep doing rallies forever, but, like, they don't have to be for anything. He just wants to go there and have people say that he's nice. If there's going to be a third party energy in this Biden-hunger chancellorship, and I sure hope it happens, it'll be on the left because the left demands are not absorbable into the Democratic Party, which means that if some poll opposed to Democratic prerogatives emerges it will be inherently antagonistic so it'll have to have its own party structure

in opposition to the democrats i can imagine both happening too that honestly yes it would be easier for the second to happen after the first oh yeah no if the if the democrats if the republicans if there's some like trump party that starts eating into the republican base that would definitely give a lot more democratic voters a license to vote for a fourth party because they wouldn't have that disciplinary mechanism in place of you're electing Republicans by definition if you don't support Democrats. Where the last party was destroyed through the wigs was over like an explicitly material issue.

The ironic twist in history would be that like one of the parties would be destroyed or that other parties would grow out of purely aesthetic issues. Yeah. Although that's clearly less of a likelihood. Yeah. But I mean if we have a fully aestheticized politics

maybe it makes sense that they will break up on aesthetic lines. Yeah. Matt, I have a question that relates to how difficult it is to sort of like even discuss any issues with Q and on followers, like individually, one to one. And it's the fact that their imagination is so limited. Like, when I try to get them to entertain the idea that their whole Q&O world view is mistaken,

they don't, they still, they can't, they still believe then basically in the adrenochrome farms and, you know, Hillary Clinton eating babies and like there's just 100,000 people who have committed a crime so heinous they deserve to go to Gitmo. They still believe all that. But they stop believing that there's going to be any justice. They stop believing that there's going to be a solution. And in that sense, I feel like they're only, the only things that they can see in their imagination is either Q coming to the rescue or complete existential despair. Like, why are they, why do you suspect they are so constrained?

And there's any way to, like, you know, get someone who's like in that situation to broaden their horizons. Maybe there are greater possibilities about why they feel this way. why they're in the situation and possible political solutions well because where would they encounter it where would they encounter any alternative explanation for why things are the way they are where would they encounter one that would have explanatory or persuasive power in their lives not anyone they know not anyone they talk to day to day certainly nothing they see in their media feeds that they would never encounter it will not come spontaneously and it never does it comes from cooperation it comes with people discussing things, comparing notes,

understanding mutual experiences of alienation and oppression. And we don't have those in this country. We have boutique consumer experiences. And that means we're only ever on our own to figure out what's happening. And what that really ends up meaning is we are at the mercy of the media we consume. Cool. So cool. It's just great.

I would also imagine that like cute people really like a simplistic understanding of the world. because the world is incredibly complex, difficult to understand. And something like Hugh, it's almost like theological. It gives you like, they're good guys, and then they're bad guys, and they're fighting. And then there's all of itself. Everything in culture tells you that's how the world works, including the mainstream culture. Everything in culture tells you that's how the world works. Where will the intervening conception come from?

It has to come from talking to people who you have a shared experience with. and we don't do that anymore. We can't. It's not even a choice. It's not something that our day-to-day lives accommodate or can assimilate.

But I hate ending on a terrifyingly depressing note. Let's see this one. How is you gonna reel it back in? The way I reel it back in and the thing is this is what freaks people out when I say this

is because they think, shit, well, then we're fucked because where else could it come from? We are still human beings, you know? we do still live lives we still have struggle we do still know each other and conditions change are the conditions of our lives change not for the better but they change and those changing conditions create in every moment new opportunities for people to come together in little tesseracts and little little fractals and then to generate new understanding of the world that they can operate from and it to say it can't come from the media is liberatory. It means you can consume media as it's meant to be consumed

as entertainment, not fraught with the idea that it's going to somehow change the world depending on which thing you click on, which thing you choose to believe. That's going to come from sparks flying around you, not in the ether of your media

consumption. So like I said, the Dr. Manhattan Trump memes armed them digital soldiers. We're heading out to battle. At Cushbaum is your Twitter and they can find Chappo Trapp House, obviously, wherever the podcasts are. And how do people get into the Kush vlog? I know there's like a live schedule, but then they also get archived.

They're all archived on YouTube. That's probably the easiest place to see them. Because I don't have a set schedule, and it's kind of when I have time and I can sit down. But they all end up on YouTube at our Chapo Trappos. And please subscribe to the YouTube page because our poor producer, Chris, he puts them all on there, he edits them, and he really wants this thing that you get from YouTube when you have a hundred 100,000 subscribers. It's a big award shaped like the YouTube arrow.

It's like a curio, like a paperweight or something. He really wants one. So subscribe to the YouTube page. Yeah, help them build some sort of curio museum for traphouse fans. Yes. Is there anything else you wanted to plug? Avatar. Watch it again.

It's really good. Yeah, go rewatch Avatar. You can listen to the Chapo episode about that, which was a good time as well. Prepare your bodies and minds for when the VATHAs, vaccines hits and Avatar 2 and 3 us, usher us out of these dark times. Every tentacle in every hole. It's going to rule, man. I can't wait to dock with every person I meet just in the street. We're all going to be coming out of that theater docking. Space docking our way to freedom. Just docking tongues in each other's bodies.

I just want to find some other Americans with shared life experience that I can commit Zahalu with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We can. can connect our ponytails together and have a better understanding and maybe things won't be so bad. Yeah, let's do it. Thanks so much for coming on again. It's always a pleasure, Matt. Yeah, great time. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Q&on Anonymous podcast. Please go to patreon.com slash Q&on Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free and editorially independent. We usually stream twice a week at Twitch.tv.

And for everything else, we have QAnonanonymous.com where you'll find merch, a link to our Discord, access to the lost episodes, et cetera. Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact. And now, today's AutoCube. 1. In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

2. The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomous images, where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the non-living. Three, the spectacle presents itself

simultaneously as society itself, as a part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is ostensibly the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness. The unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation. 4. The spectacle is not a collection of images. It is a social relation between people that is mediated by images. 5.

The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, that has become an objective reality. 6. Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the present mode of production. It is not a mere supplement or decoration added to the real world. It is the heart of this real society's unreality. In all of its particular manifestations, news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment, the spectacle is the model of the prevailing way of life.

It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content, the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle is also the constant presence of this justification, since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the modern production process. The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Dibor. Gigi Dibor Gigi Dibor