Rev Left Radio - War in West Asia: When A Dying Settler Colony Lashes Out

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Alyson and Breht discuss the unfolding regional war between Israel and literally all of its neighbors, the restrained Iranian response to Israeli aggression, US complicity and contributions to the fascist mass murder campaign, Hezbollah and Lebanon, Russia and Syria, the decrepit war criminals littering the US ruling class, who is actually running the Biden adminstration, Kamala and Trump tripping over one another to declare their love and loyalty to Israel, why Democrats and their ardent supporters are thoroughly right-wing, the looming prospect of nuclear war and how it might happen, how this regional war might spill over into a world war, how US propaganda employed after 9-11 is used today to justify war and violence against Arab Muslims, the lessons learned from the CIA assassination of JFK, why the US and Israel must be defeated for the good of humanity, how resources are taken away from desperate people in the US facing CC-fueled natural disasters and spent on war instead, and much, much more.  Outro Song: "I May Be Young" by MC Abdul Support Rev Left HERE Check out all Red Menace Eps HERE Follow us on IG HERE

Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace. On today's episode, we are recording on Sunday, October 6th, one day before the one year anniversary of the October 7 uprising and all of the fallout that has occurred. since then so we figured it would be a crucial time not only in you know in honor of that one year anniversary but just because things are escalating so quickly um to to come together alison and i and you know do a little bit more analysis let people know where things are talk through some of the events that are unfolding in real time as we speak um i think as we speak there's possibility of another Iranian attack there's a ground invasion in the Lebanon um things are are certainly heating up so that's kind of where we are and we figure this would be an important time to

to jump back onto this topic in particular but yeah alison do you kind of want to just set the table for where things are for anybody out there who might be a little confused there's so much happening every single day just kind of give us a basic outlay of the terrain and we can we can dive into a deeper conversation from there yeah definitely so like brett said we are a year almost now exactly from october 7th which you know was this uprising that really, really, I think, humiliated Israel in a lot of ways, really humiliated the IDF. And we have just seen an intense escalation since then. We've seen a very intense, just like, manifestation of an already genocidal system sped up to its most kind of violent extreme that we have seen so far.

And that, unfortunately, has continued since we've last talked about this. Not only does decimation in Gaza absolutely continue, but now there is a multi-front war being carried out. I would say, genocide being carried out in Lebanon as well. A lot of this really kind of heated up when Israel really started to focus more on Lebanon and engaged in some air strikes, both in the southern areas of Lebanon and parts of Beirut, which unfortunately led to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, one of the very important ideological leaders of Hezbollah, and a very important figure in the axis of resistance. He was killed in one of these air strikes. which represents again this thing that we've seen from Israel, where they say, oh, we want to, you know, be able to end this war, we want to be able to stop the fighting.

They constantly made a gesture towards wanting to make a deal with Hezbollah that could stop the rockets coming over the border, while assassinating the exact people capable of making that deal. There's some discussion from the Lebanese government that Nasrullah had actually agreed to a ceasefire at the time that the assassination took place. It's not clear if that's the case. I'm somewhat skeptical of that claim because he very strongly, held that there would be no ceasefire on the Lebanese side until the genocide in Gaza ceased. But again, you know, it is this like self-undermining thing that Israel always does, where they pretend that they care about a diplomatic solution while killing everyone who could possibly be involved in that. We saw the same thing with the assassination of Haniyah as well. So in addition

to the assassination of Nasrullah, we also have seen an increased offensive against Lebanon. This originally looked like a massive uptick in air strikes, but now has also turned into a ground invasion of southern Lebanon with IDF troops moving across the border. Of course, as always, the IDF uses this ridiculous language of limited campaigns and limited raids and all these small formations, but it is, in fact, a ground invasion of Lebanon, whether or not the IDF or the international media wants to call it that or not. It is very clearly that. And what we saw in addition to that was, you know, an intensification of the war now on two fronts and also of Iran's involvement. Many people had noted a lack of serious response from Iran to many of the

recent escalations, including the assassination of Hania. But we saw that that changed as Iran once again launched many, many missiles at Israel. It remains a little hard to tell what the effects of that were, there's definitely a lot of video of missiles making groundfall, unlike in Iran's attack that occurred in April. It does seem like more were able to break through the Israeli air defense system, and there does seem to be some evidence of military sites, such as one of the IDF's airfields having been damaged from these missiles, but it's very unclear. The media outside of Israel is really not reporting on whether or not any of them touched down what damage might exist. And the Israeli media, where often sometimes you actually get kind of a more honest answer about some of these

things, has stated that the IDF sensors have actually prevented them from stating where missiles hit and what the effects were. Times of Israel specifically said the IDF has kept this information secret. We are not allowed to publish on it. So it is a little unclear, but it does seem likely that this time actually, Perrand's retaliatory strikes did some damage. So, you know, we're a year on and things are escalating still, which kind of feels insane to say, honestly, after the intense, just unbelievable escalation post-October 7th of the genocide, Israel really does just seem to have this almost like death drive hell bent on engaging in a multi-front war. They have not only struck Lebanon, they've struck Syria as well, they have struck Yemen, they are really lashing out

aggressively towards everyone around them. this ideology of kind of settler expansionism that has this almost suicidal violence built into it is just even more unleashed by the day. And so a year out, that's kind of where we stand. And I think, you know, for the whole world, there's a level of horror here, obviously watching a genocide happen. There's also a level of horror just kind of watching a state push the world towards a potential war, right? Towards what really could be World War III. And the United States all along has done nothing to stop this, continues to fund this, talks about, oh, we have a red line for ground invasion of Lebanon, and then the ground invasion happens. And of course, we give them more

weaponry, just like we said there was a red line for the ground invasion of Gaza. We remain completely complicit in this. And now there's even more chatter coming out from Israeli officials that the U.S. pushed for the ground invasion of Lebanon as well, was not discouraging it whatsoever, but actually behind the scenes was telling Israel that it needed to happen. So, You know, we can talk about the violence coming out of Israel, but it is always important to highlight that that is an extension of American imperialism, which itself has the settler colonial imperialist death drive just marching forward as, you know, decaying empires tend to do. So that's kind of where we're at. I don't know if you have any thoughts on any of that, Brett, but things are certainly dire. Yeah, it's what decaying empires do, and it's what decaying settler colonial entities on their way out tend to do, as we've seen time and time and time again.

And so perhaps that is, you know, alluding to some very near future in which Israel might not exist anymore because it is precisely that suicidal death drive lashing out at everybody, you know, completely alienating yourself from the entire international community, only depending on one also decaying empire, right, the United States to prop you up. That seems unsustainable in the long run. And it seems just from an internally Israeli perspective that the best thing for their long-term existence would be to obviously stop all of this, right? Like every time that they invade another country, drop another bomb in another place, destroy another apartment building or refugee camp or bomb another hospital, it's sealing their own fate. And so while this death drive is ostensibly there to just eliminate all enemies, purge all enemies in the region, it's also at the exact same time, sowing the seeds of Israel's own inevitable destruction. And I think that that is part of what the October 7 uprising thought would happen is like, you know, it's in the same way that like Osama bin Laden's 9-11 attack was not meant in and of itself to take down the U.S. Empire. Bin Laden made it very clear. what will happen is that there's going to be this incredibly overwrought overreaction by the

U.S. that is going to weaken it internally, externally, reputational, et cetera. And I think we're still living in the wake of that. But the speed on Israel's doing that exact same thing, I think, is even cranked up to 12 because of their, yeah, just the settler, colonial, fascist insanity that is just, you know, ever present within that administration. But there's, or within the entire Israeli society and government, including the administration. But a couple of things I wanted to add on what you're saying. When they, when they took out Nashrala, they bombed an entire apartment building. So I think what's happening

is, and that's just one instance, right, killing, you know, countless people, injuring countless people to take out, quote unquote, one guy. But what they're doing in Lebanon is they're treating Beirut like Gaza, just indiscriminate attack on civilians, displacing now a million people in Lebanon are displaced from Israeli aggression, bombing, just indiscriminately civilian, you know, areas. And the other thing that's that really jumped out to me is, well, they're also meeting stiff resistance in Lebanon. So, you know, Hezbollah is not some pushover or small guerrilla army. You know, they are very organized, very capable fighting force. And the IDF is already weakened from their, you know, from their forays into Gaza and their inexperience with,

very young soldiers and all of the stuff that we've already seen, you know, from them, propped up, of course, by the military might of the United States, but still taking serious losses. And then they're going into Lebanon fighting an even more powerful force while stoking, you know, even more, you know, enemies in the region. The U.S. has about 40 to 50,000 ground troops in the region right now, some of which have already been there, you know, many of which have already been there because of the various bases throughout West Asia that the U.S. has. But they've now sent, I think, another 3,000 or so, just recently soldiers, as well as many, you know, squadrons of fighter, pilot, you know, fighter jets and various other military machinery and then the boats off the fucking coast are always there.

So, you know, this is picking up and it's very clear that Israel wants the U.S. to come in and help them fight their war. It's the only way that Israel could possibly have a multi-fucking front war with every fucking state in the region. And, I mean, Israel would be crushed tomorrow if it wasn't for U.S. support, backing, deterrence, et cetera. So those are all things to think about. In some ways, we keep hearing, you know, in the news, like, what if this turns into a wider regional war? Well, what would you call this? This is already a regional war. The U.S. already has boots on the ground.

The U.S. is already engaged in every action that Israel is engaged in, whether that's just from an intelligence perspective, a deterrence perspective, a backing up perspective, or active. assistance perspective they're already engaged multiple states in the area are engaged right from yemen um to to iran to lebanon um syria and iraq are also hot beds of of action as they're right in the midst of all of this and there's lots of u.s military installations in that area so we've seen you know we've seen Israel bomb Syria um as well as all those other all those other countries um so we're already in a regional war like the question is does this go from regional war to world war and there are you know there are ways in which that could happen but there's so many question marks it's hard to say for sure where the hell this is going right one one thing i also wanted to

highlight is just the iranian restraint because like time and time again israel is just obnoxiously and belligerently attacking i mean go back for decades right this is nothing new but obviously in the last year or so, just, you know, throwing bombs into Tehran to take out, you know, specific leaders they want to take out completely unhinged. And Iran is still, like even this last, you know, volley of missiles, it only killed one person on accident. All of these missiles were aimed at military installations. While Israel is purposefully targeting apartment building, civilian infrastructure, civilian areas to terrorize these, the people in these countries, and Iran is still showing massive restraint, showing that, you know, far from what we're told all the time that Iran is this destabilizing force in the

region and they're the number one threat to peace and security. No, Israel, the rabid dog of Israel is the number one threat to peace and freedom and democracy and stability in the region. And the U.S. is the number one threat to peace and freedom and democracy in the world. And so they are teaming up to destabilize the entire fucking world. And we have so many problems nationally, internationally, that as a species we need to solve, as various national countries need to solve various problems, all the money that is just being turned into bombs, which is turned into corpses from all sides. It's just a complete waste of everything meaningful while the psychotic Israel state and

U.S. state continue to pursue, I mean, Israeli genocide and then just complete destruction. in the region. So where this is going to go, you know, who knows. But there's that other element too, which you mentioned, Alison, of they keep calling them these limited campaigns, limited campaigns. These are full-on invasions. These are, these are full-on military operations. There's nothing limited about these campaigns, and there's something racist in the very idea that going in to any country or any area that's not your own, I mean, none of that area should be Israel's, and murdering hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of innocent, mostly Arab Muslims of various sorts, that is considered a limited campaign by the U.S., going in and just slaughtering entire

groups of people. Now, when Russia fights back against Ukraine, you know, for all the reasons we've discussed, we have many episodes on this, I don't want to go too off the rails and talk about that necessarily, although we can if Allison's interested, but that's immediately called this unethical invasion of another country, this attack. on the sovereign rights of other countries and attack on borders on the international rules-based order, et cetera, et cetera. And then when the U.S. does it, it's something in between. It's an intervention, right? We're just intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan. But just the way that the words are used is important because they just beat it into your head. If you watch the

news on these subjects, there's certain phrases, certain ideas, certain premises, and certain word constructions that are just beaten into people's head so much that unless you're constantly critically engaged and skeptical, you start parroting them yourself. So I think we should be aware of it on that front as well. But I'll toss it back over to Allison to pick up any threads I might have laid down. Yeah, I mean, I think the language side is part of what is so horrifying, right? I mean, you know, one of the things that I find myself coming back to you and I found myself coming back to you for the last year is that sometimes like looking at media coverage and hearing the conversation about this, I'm like, am I insane, right? Like, am I going crazy?

crazy because there's such an incredible gap between, you know, what is actually happening and what the media is saying, right? There's a podcast I really like called Bad Hasbara kind of makes fun of Hasbara. And this is one of things they always say is it's important to talk about this because we're kind of like getting gaslit constantly, right? We are constantly being lied to our faces in this way that can make us feel crazy, but we're not crazy. There is a fucking invasion of Lebanon happening, right? It is not a skirmish on the border, whatever euphemism anyone wants to use. But we don't see that language adopted in the media at all. And I think one of the things that's been really striking to is just like how much work

the label of terrorist does in kind of justifying anything, right? Because if another country invades you, you are justified in defending your country, right? The military of your country is justified in defending it. I would say even private people are justified in defending their country being invaded. But we saw, I think yesterday or the day before, a tweet from, I don't remember if she's a Congresswoman or Senator Marcia Blackburn, who was like, oh, a horrific thing has happened where a whole squadron of young IDF soldiers have been wiped out by terrorists in Lebanon. And it's like, no, this isn't terrorists targeting the IDF. This is people defending their country from an invading force, right? She is a drooling idiot. And I don't know if it is like,

Is she so ideologically poisoned that she really thinks this way or that her IQ is in the single digits? But every time she talks, I'm just astonish. Sorry. Yeah, it is unbelievable. No, no, you're completely fine. And the reality is that, no, that is not terrorism. That is legal under international rules of war defense of your homeland. Like, there is just this incredible thing where anyone can be marked as completely illegitimate, worthy of being slaughtered and being killed by the application of this term terrorism.

And it really, you know, obviously goes back quite away. Post 9-11, we really saw the development of the anti-terror apparatus. But just the effectiveness of that rhetoric, I think, is so horrific at this point. And, you know, you really do kind of get this language invoked all around this, where Iran gets talked about as like the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, right? And it's supposed to be this horrific thing. Whereas you pointed out, Iran is the army in this situation that is actually acting within the bounds of the laws of war by not targeting civilian. infrastructure when they launch missiles at Israel, right? We've actually become so desensitized to Israeli, you know, terrorism in its own right to its just kind of wild aggression against

everything around it that I saw people being like, well, did the Iran attacks do anything if they didn't kill civilians? And it's like, whoa, wait a minute, actually war is not about that, right? Iran is engaging within the traditional bounds of war where you don't intentionally target civilians. That's what genocidal states do. And Iran isn't that, right? It's really just kind of this horrific situation we've ended up in. So, you know, all of that kind of stands out to me, this language of terror that gets invoked, the way that even our understanding of war has become so twisted by just the blatant, insanely illegal war criminal actions of Israel.

The other thing that I kind of want to touch on, too, is, again, that kind of settler colonial expansionism and kind of suicidal drive. the thing that I think like really scares me at this point is that the ambitions for his really expansion really seemed huge at this moment, right? You know, one thing that really stood out to me during the vice president debate was this statement that Waltz made, which people have said was misspeaking, but he said word for word, the expansion of Israel and its proxies is a necessity for the United States. And people said he misspoke and he was trying to say preventing the expansion of Iran and its proxies as a necessity or something like that. But it really does express what they actually believe, right? Which is that is really expansion is good and necessary for U.S. foreign policy.

And ideologically within Zionism, we're starting to see more ground for that expansionism. You know, we've talked in the past about the history of Zionism where Zionism, you know, historically was largely a secular movement, right? And revisionist Zionism, which was the branch of Zionism, that really, really wanted the most expansionist understanding of Israeli borders was actually, again, grounded within the secular side of Zionism. And one of the really horrific things that we've seen is secular Zionism and religious Zionism kind of unifying around those demands. Two weeks ago, as all of this was really ramping up, the Times of Israel published an article by a rabbi, arguing that actually, if you read the Torah more carefully, Hashem granted the nation of Israel, possibly all the way north as far as Turkey. and south down into Egypt, right? And he was arguing that actually it is a mitzvah to conquer that land in the name of Israel. And so you see this ideological justification, both within the

religious Zionist and the secular Zionist movement for this kind of greater Israel idea, this continuing to annex land idea, which obviously can only bring Israel into conflict with other states. That expansion means going into Saudi territory, means going into Egyptian territory, Syrian territory, on top of all of the areas that they're already engaged in. And so even as Israel finds itself, I think in this increasingly dire strait in a multi-front war, the ideologues of Zionism are looking for more fronts to open up, right? And there really is just this kind of horror of this settler colonial drive that really feels endless to me in a certain sense. And that's kind of where we're at at the moment. It's this very desperate, horrific thing where

you have to wonder, like, how long can this go on? How far can this go? And the settler colonial impulse doesn't seem to show any limit whatsoever, unfortunately. Yeah, and you mentioned this greater Israel concept. Like, in the past, they've used the term greater Israel to like, you know, when Netanyahu shows a map of Israel and completely obliterates the West Bank and, you know, Gaza and just shows the entire, you know, territory of Palestine as Israel, right? And he just puts that up there very casually. Well, now there's this idea of, yeah, greater, greater Israel. which is even beyond those borders which is taking huge chunks out of all

of the surrounding countries it's fucking insane but yeah you're starting to see maps now emerge where Lebanon and Syria and parts of Iraq and that those are all now included in what is now conceptually conceived as as greater Israel I mean it is something psychotic about

it and you made another great point when you talk about the connection between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the U.S. and how that there's ideological momentum there that then is eventually or just immediately applied to this situation. And what it does is it sort of activates the ideological programming that Americans in particular have been conditioned with since those war started, right?

All the terminology, all the ways they framed it, all the lies they spread to get us into it. This idea, once again, that, you know, America is just playing defense after 9-11 and, you know, these lies about weapons of mass destruction. And so when those terms like terrorist, a term, Again, some of our listeners are very, very young. They were infants or toddlers or young children in the post-9-11 era. But, you know, you and I remember that the disterm terrorist was just beaten into our heads relentlessly over and over and over again. And 95, 98 percent of Americans, you know, bought it wholeheartedly.

And now that exact same verbiage, those exact same ideological framings, that momentum is now carried over to justify this war, showing how these seemingly disparate wars are obviously deeply connected and not only just materially by the forces that are engaging in them but ideologically by the ways in which they manufacture consent amongst the populations um i think it's working less than it did back then because we have a whole new terrain of independent media we can see on the ground footage you know Palestinian humanity can be seen on our phones and so they're having a harder time especially with younger um americans and younger people in the west making this work but you know the younger people in the west have no power it is these psychotic deranged super rich super powerful comfy boomers that you know

that have all this power and so they don't really care what you and i think right we don't have a democracy where you know god forbid it would matter what the average american thought you know they will never allow these things to be challenged democratically um no matter who gets to the level of being president you are on board with all of this shit this stuff is not up for debate we can talk about tax rates and you know we can have our little discussions about guns and abortion but when it comes to the empire no democracy input needed or wanted um and and another another um thing that platitude you hear all the time and this is you know crazy making to speak to alison's point about just you know being gaslit all the goddamn time is like these like robot like repetitions of

israel has the right to defend itself well you know that might have worked for the naive or the or Zionist inclined when it's just post-October 7 and they're just talking about Gaza or whatever. But now they're invading Lebanon talking about Israel is a right to defend itself. They're bombing Iran, talking in Syria, talking about Israel has a right to defend itself. I mean, it's just like it's going to, it's like saying as Hitler's taking over parts of Europe, Germany has a right to defend themselves. Against what? You're the fucking aggressor.

The world has a right to defend itself against your psychotic ass. and so yeah it's just it is so fucking maddening and it makes me wish that Iran that Iran had nuclear weapons because what a deterrent that would be I think Israel would have to think twice think three times think a hundred times before they did half of the shit they're doing

if Iran had nuclear arsenal already and this is a huge reason while all administrations right I mean, the Republicans criticize Obama for his nuclear deal because it was too soft in Iran. But obviously, that is a deep, you know, a deep empire strategic move to ensure that Iran doesn't ever get nukes precisely for this reason so that it can never be that ultimate deterrent to Israel. Look at just North Korea. Just the DPRK having nuclear weapons, just that singular brute fact, has stopped it from being invaded and toppled. just that that raw fact nothing else right because they're in so many other ways they don't have

huge you know economies they're not integrated into the global economy they don't have a lot of advantages for them but they had that one fucking secret weapon and that keeps their homeland safe and that is what they did not want with iran so you know they they terror they they program americans and people in the west to think of iran as this horrific terrorist rogue state all bullshit and then they use that to parlay that into we have to stop them from getting nukes because who knows what they'll do with them. And then that actually works. And so now they don't have that major deterrent to stop Israel from doing what it's doing right now.

And so it just placing, you know, in a hypothetical dream fantasy world of mind, Russia and China would just toss Iran a few nukes. And just to how that would change the terrain of what's going on right now would be incredible. But if anybody is going to use nuclear weapons, this unhinged, fascist, Israeli expansionist state, is the most likely to use them. You know, especially that, what is it, Operation Samson, where if Israel is ever truly cornered militarily, if their back is ever against the wall militarily, if Tel Aviv is ever under threat of being taken over, that they're just going to launch nukes and they already have them aimed at multiple capitals around the world, this is an insane state.

And if nuclear war happens, it's not going to be China setting off a nuclear bomb. It's not going to be Russia setting off a nuclear bomb. It's not going to be Iran setting off a nuclear bomb. bomb. It's going to be Israel. And think of what the U.S. would do to allow that to happen, to facilitate that to happen, to cover it up, post it happening, to talk about why Israel had to do it after it happened, to do all the ideological maintenance that comes with such a fucking disgusting use. So it wouldn't be surprised me if in a few decades or a few years or who the fuck knows that the only two countries on planet Earth who have ever used nukes against another country

is America and Israel, proving just even more how fucking insane these countries. are and how they need to be completely dismantled. The world needs to team up and take these rabid dogs the fuck down before they take everybody down with them. And another thing is, Biden has always said from the, you know, when he could string together a coherent set of words, he would talk about his number one priority is stopping a wider regional war. And everything he's done to facilitate Israeli genocide and aggression and belligerents

has always been framed stupidly, but, you know, framed nonetheless. as this dogged attempt by Biden to just prevent this wider regional war as every step of the way the Biden administration has facilitated and helped Israel perpetuate and expand this regional war to the point where we are obviously completely in one right now and there's really no question about it and anybody who obscures that point I think is is ideologically selling you something right because we are in a regional war as we speak and that that might speak to this deep state notion, but I don't know if, Alison, you have anything to say before I go into that. Yeah, we can go to that in a second. I think the one thing I will say is that I'm very

glad you brought up the nuclear weapon side of things, because I feel like this is something you're like not supposed to say, right? But if Iran had a nuke, none of this would be happening. That is entirely the counterbalance that changes this. The fact that Israel is the singular nuclear state in the region and is able to wield that threat, which means that you can only ever retaliate so strongly against them, and means that they can continue to act aggressively against everyone else because there is no nuclear counterbalance is what has put us in this situation. The idea that if Iran had a nuke, they would use it offensively is just absolutely absurd. Again, look at their use of conventional missiles versus Israel's use of conventional

missiles. One of them has used them to target civilians, has used them offensively, the others has only used them in a retaliatory strike and to target military infrastructure. It is Iran that has showed responsibility with weaponry, not Israel. An Iranian muc would absolutely be the counterbalance that would put Israel in its place and stop it from being able to act however it wants. Obviously, that is why, as you said, it has been so absolutely central to American foreign policy to prevent nuclear weapons from, you know, making it to Iran. And now we see ourselves in the situation where one singular nuclear state with asymmetrical nuclear power in the region is able to act essentially with impunity. And it really is just this absolutely horrific

situation. So, yeah, you know, I think there's all that. I'm glad you also kind of focus on the Biden side of things, because the thing that I always want us to be going back to, and I think this is very important, is that everything that we're seeing here isn't just happening because of Israel in a vacuum and is happening because Israel is a client state of the United States, right? At the end of the day, the U.S. is at the core of this. What Israel does is an extension of the United States. It is sanctioned by the United States. It only happens through the funding of the United States. So when we look at horror at all of this, we ought to be looking inwardly at our own government, at our own state, and what it does as well, because that is what enables us.

this. And it also, I would say, is our state that really perfected the settler ideology that then gets deployed within the Zionist context in order to provide ideological cover for all of this. So we really are just profoundly wrapped up, complicit, and implicated within all that is happening. And it is our own government making this happen. I don't know, Brett, if you want to talk about that sort of side of our state, or I can go a little bit more there. But if you had any thoughts there, I'll pass it to you. If not, we can kind of dive in. Well, yeah, I'll get into the state in a second and we can talk about that but there's I wanted to add just two quick

points is that yeah not only has the U.S. worked really tirelessly to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons for this very reason Israel has as well with you know among many other things the decades long assassination campaign against the Iranian scientist you know literally civilian

scientists with families that have just been assassinated wantonly by the state of Israel for years and years and years and just because any of those scientists have within their craniums the knowledge necessary to help perpetuate this process of Iran getting nukes. And Iran wants nukes, not, again, as Allison said, not to go on the offensive. Look at every step Iran has taken has been completely restrained, incredibly muted, sometimes frustratingly so.

But they're operating rationally as a rational actor on the world stage. And they've wanted these nukes precisely to prevent what's happening now. Not so that they could become a terrorist you know power that ends the world i mean that's psychotic that's nonsense only an idiot could believe that only somebody completely boxed in by american ideological consent manufacturing could ever believe something so silly and stupid and childish as the fact that iran wants nukes so that it can go on the offensive against the world no it wants to stop this rabid dog israel who is already a nuclear power backed by the biggest nuclear power and the only country on earth who's ever used nukes against a civilian population, they're trying to protect themselves desperately

from that in the same way that after the Korean War, the DPRK knew that it needed these nukes to prevent it from being invaded once again. You know, the Korean War killed 20% of fucking Koreans split the country in half, caused amazing amounts of misery and suffering, and they knew that that was the only strategy that they could use to protect themselves from that exact shit happening once again. And the other thing that doesn't fail to, you know, know, that I don't fail to recognize is that the, you mentioned the settler colonial paradigm as being this, this map of, you know, fascist apartheid states. And the Nazis explicitly took from the U.S., you know, the inspiration for their program. And now Israel's doing the same thing. And so you see this rotten, grotesque bloodline. And I emphasize blood in bloodline from the U.S. settler colonial state to the Nazi fucking state to the current Israeli state. And those three states have more in common than they have differences, despite the, despite the historical mystification that were taught in school that the U.S. stopped the Nazis and Israel is the most moral army on

earth and they're the good guys. I mean, just get past that cloud of bullshit. And you see Israel, Nazi Germany, and the United States of America standing shoulder to shoulder ideologically and taking lessons from each other, right? So I think that's important as well. But yeah, did you want to move into the U.S. side of things? Yeah. So I think it's worth talking about. the U.S. side of things because, you know, one of the things that has stood out to me as all of this has happened is just kind of the extent to which, like, all of this is about the U.S. as an empire in decline and an empire that is falling apart. And as empires do in those situations lashing out, right? So, you know, the decline of U.S. hegemony has been happening for some

time now. I think if anyone doubted it, pulling out of Afghanistan was a pretty good example of what that looks like, increasing competition in spheres of power and an increasing multipolar world has made the U.S. no longer the clear unipolar superpower. And that, you know, kind of in a sense, poses a threat to the whole idea of what the United States is as the global empire. And this empire in decline is finding itself lashing out internationally. But one of the other things that I think has been really starkly on display at the same time as all this horror that we're seeing is the internal collapsing occurring as well. You know, I think there's no way to ignore the fact that as we're sending billions of dollars to Israel, as we are

funding the genocide that they are engaging in, we also have the east coast of the United States where whole towns were completely buried under floodwater, where people went days without access to clean food or water without power or without electricity, where we saw just devastation within the United States and a completely ineffectual state response to be able to deal with that. And this has led to a situation where within the United States, you have people, I think, you know, rightfully saying, like, there are people dying in the wake of this hurricane. There are people that are trapped in these cities that are underwater. And instead of dealing with that, why are we sending billions of dollars to fight, you know,

genocidal wars overseas? And I think that is like a fair question to ask. And I think it does show, again, this kind of dying empire where all we can focus on is this genocidal lashing out and can't even focus on internal things that are kind of at the core of what the state is supposed to be doing under liberalism, like responding to environmental crises. But on top of that, you know, we have to think about the way that this historic hurricane, you know, has been exacerbated by changes in climate, which are of themselves exacerbated by our own states drive our own imperialist destruction of the planet and resource extraction, all coming home to roost,

sense with something historic like Hurricane Helene in the damage that it's done, and then our own failure to respond to it at all. And I think we find ourselves in this situation where we really do see just what the decay of a imperial superpower looks like, as its people at home are left to die, as it spreads death globally through its foreign policy, sending money elsewhere. And you do just kind of have to wonder, like, to what extent this can continue, right? One of the things that I was thinking, you know, kind of in the wake of all of the hurricane and everything going on is that, you know, one of the ways that imperialism functions, there's sort of like a social contract with the population of the United States, right, which is we get to engage in these imperialist and aggressive wars and spend all your tax money there. And in exchange, you get to have some sort of level, and again, different Marxists will debate this, but some level of quality of life improvement on the basis of imperialist extraction, right? That trickles down to the average citizen. But when people are dying in the floods in the wake of the hurricane, they're not seeing that trade-off, right? That social contract is not being upheld. And you do have to wonder, to an extent,

to what degree the populace of a declining imperial state will continue to support that imperialist aggression, given that, again, that social contract is so blatantly and clearly not being upheld. So we find ourselves in kind of this horrible situation where all the contradictions are becoming obvious, where things are increasingly grim, where the government seems to only be able to focus on funding this war, not doing anything else, not engaging in any of the basic functions that liberalism delineates as within its realm of responsibility. And yeah, I just think it's very stark to look at those images of floodwaters, to look at people trapped on the roof, to hear stories of people who died because the roofs they were on collapsed while all of this

is happening. There is just an incredible horror to it all, and we really do see how, much the promise that imperialism makes to the citizens of the empire is itself a lie as well, right? Everything is kind of being shown very clearly there in that regard. So I wanted to touch on that at least because I think there's this incredible contrast between these images right now that is very important to call attention to. Yeah, it's essential. And it's the basic dialectical way of apprehending the world that you draw these connections and see how they are all deeply and inexorably intertwined. You know, the reason that, you know, that there's like, We ask ourselves, how could it be the case that, like, so many things are falling apart here, that people are suffering in all these unnecessary ways here. And then, you know, these environmental crises, this hurricane just kind of really is an exclamation point on what we already know. I mean, I talk to anybody right, left or center, my family, my friends, my community. Everybody is fed up with the government as such, you know. They might have a little bit more sympathy towards one party or the other, but more or less, like this whole system is failing us. You push any of them.

and just one or two points past their little electoral bullshit, and they'll immediately be like, yeah, the whole ruling class is corrupt. None of these people give a fuck about us, et cetera. And you might wonder, like, well, then how can this continue on? Well, that's because the democratic mechanisms were really never there in the first place, and insofar as any of them were there, they've been stripped away in the neoliberal era, that this neoliberal era in large response to the falling rate of profit through the 60s and 70s understands that giving people real democracy, real democratic input is a threat to profits, is a threat to the ruling class, because surprise, surprise, people want good pay, they want fucking pensions, they want health care, they want to be able to retire, they want a clean fucking environment, they want people in their community not to be so desperately poor and, you know, with deep mental health and addiction issues with absolutely nobody to help them that they're passed out on the street.

so you have to step over human fucking bodies and the richest country to ever exist on your way to work. I mean, nobody wants that, but there's no democratic mechanisms anymore. And what I've come to think of electoral politics in America, it's WWE for adults. It is this choreographed fucking spectacle with no meaning behind it. It's not real in any sense. It's just a mere spectacle of democracy, the mere illusion of democracy. When you get a pick between two people who, who are arguing who loves Israel more.

You know, Lindsay Graham went on Fox News the other day, and one of the Fox News hosts asked him about this, because, you know, he's from the Carolinas or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, the Carolinas have been hit very hard by Hurricane Helene's fallout. And he goes one sentence, he's like, hey, I've been on the ground with people in Carolina, and, you know, it's terrible. But let's not forget what Israel is going through.

You know, and then he goes off on this whole diatribe about Israel. These people in any reasonable structured government, and certainly in anything even coming close to a democracy, would be nowhere near power. These are comfortable, incredibly rich people who are completely buttressed against the real-life impacts that regular-ass working people have to deal with. How am I going to pay my fucking bills?

How am I going to feed my not feed my kids poison? How are they going to have a future at all? You know, how are we going to get health care and not go bankrupt? All of those issues have been completely solved for the ruling class because of money. And so when you have a super comfy, super rich ruling class, ruling class that the status quo is their mechanism by which they have power and maintain it so they don't want to shake the boat at all with regards to the status quo and you have the complete stripping away of any real democratic input turning the electoral quote unquote american democracy into nothing but a w w e style choreographed event spectacle with no meaning under and this is not just me spewing this stuff right there's been there's been harvard studies studies out of major academic institutions which have have shown conclusively and repeatedly that the interest of the average American has zero impact

on public policy. This is in part because of legalized bribery that we call lobbying. It's in part because of Citizens United, which I was against at the time because I saw exactly where this was going, turning an already corrupt fucking political system into just one that is completely bought and sold. These are dark money packs. This is the Supreme Court. These are all anti-democratic institutions to ensure that you're and I,

interests, which are not profitable to the ruling class, right? It's not profitable to make sure that everybody has child care and health care and sustainable housing and mental health and physical health care and education, right? It's not profitable to anyone to make sure that people have a high quality of life. What's profitable is every step along the way for a regular working class person to be robbed. You want an education? That'll be $50,000 to $100,000. You want health care, go in debt forever and lose a house if you have it. You want a house and you're under 40. Good fucking luck. Hopefully you have rich parents or an inheritance, right?

Because if you don't have that, you ain't getting shit. And so it's not profitable to do that. So everything domestically and internationally is geared towards what is profitable for the already rich and already incredibly comfortable ruling class. And so when I see anybody thinking that Trump's going to take on the establishment or Kamala is going to put us on the right track, it just makes my fucking skin crawl. Back in the day, I would engage in the. the electoral realm. I would kind of like be into it. Like even though I was against the electoral

spectacle, when I'm talking to coworkers and family, I would actually kind of enjoy the back and forth sitting down with my conservative uncle and going back and forth in 2016, why, you know, Bernie is superior to Trump or, you know, whatever, having those conversations, now I can't even stomach it. I can't even play the game. If anybody at like a family reunion or, you know, we're out at a bar and one of my, you know, some non-political person brings up politics, it just, I just want to start puking. Like, I have no interest in it, and it's so fucking sickening to see grown-ass adults be emotionally invested. Like, there's anything really at stake here.

The status quo is going to continue. Your little vote means nothing. Your support for this or that candidate means nothing. It is peasants picking which king they prefer, but having no impact on which king actually gets into power and what that king's going to do when they get in power. Capitalism has taken us right back to feudalism in the political. structure and the and the economic structure where we have a small group of incredibly rich comfortable elites and now more and more and more it takes time because there once was something that could be kind of called a middle class in this country but over time that's completely

being depleted to where we just have this broad mass of desperate people living paycheck to paycheck and a small tiny insulated elite insulated from the problems of the regular working class and insulated from any democratic pressures whatsoever, you know, deciding what's best for them in these little, you know, fucking meetings with other psychos that are incredibly rich

and don't have anything to worry about as well. And I feel like we're in this fucking doom loop because in 2005, we had the brutal Iraq war and the Afghanistan war going on at the same time when Hurricane Katrina hit. And we saw the exact fucking same thing, where the empire was completely prioritized

over the people suffering in your own fucking country. And, you know, that's when Kanye West famously said George Bush hates black people. That's when, you know, people were, like, racist gangs were going into Katrina and shooting looters or just killing black people. People were completely emiserated, being displaced with nowhere to go, having to go into that huge football stadium where it was also flooding and falling apart. And there was sexual crimes and violent crimes happening everywhere with no fucking attempt by the government to do anything about it. We're saying it again. And so it's like, it doesn't.

matter? Is it Bush? Is it Biden? Is it Obama? Is it Trump? Is it Kamala? The same fucking shit happens. And we're going to be stuck in this fucking doom loop until the empire is fucking dismantled. And this ruling class in the U.S. is aggressed against, confronted. We need a fucking reign of terror in this goddamn country. We need a French-style revolution in this fucking country to just completely purge the entire society of this ruling class. I mean, I don't even want the American system as a, as a, as a, as a political economic entity to exist anymore. It doesn't do anything for anybody except a small group of already incredibly rich people

and then enough people that are upwardly mobile or have the possibility of it or are in the petty bourgeoisie that are aspirational to joining that class. And that's kind of enough at the moment to buttress against the bottom up pressure of regular working class people. And so, yeah, I just think like anybody that's caught in the electoral spectacle, it's WWE for adults. It's handing the toddler a fake steering wheel in the back seat and the toddler thinks they're driving. And we're stuck in this doom loop from Katrina to today where these environmental catastrophes are piling up. You know, people's lives are being destroyed on every front. I mean, as a father of three, I can't get through the fucking month.

I have, you know, this huge debt over my head for daring to go to college as a non-rich person. I don't have any fucking access to health care. My kids have been now kicked off of their fucking health care. And, you know, that's just one little, one little example. it's all over the fucking country. I don't know how people are doing it. But enough of them are convinced that by getting worked up about the electoral cycle, that maybe they can be something solved.

The Trumpers think if Trump gets in, he will take on the establishment. He'll help the little guy. We already had four years of evidence. He won't do shit. And then the Kamala people think, oh, this is progressive. Finally, LGBTQ people are going to have rights and minorities are going to have rights. And it's like, Obama hope and change all over again. but she doesn't even try to sell it as much as he did, right?

She doesn't even have to. And so they really fucking think that if their person just gets in, things are going to change. And it's like, God, damn it, how many times do we have to go through this fucking bullshit to finally see that nothing is going to change? Because no matter who's in power, whatever face they're presenting to you, it's the same exact ruling class. And Trump was right about one thing. There is a deep state. And it does have control. And it's not democratically elected.

And it dictates fucking policy. not you or I or our fucking favorite politicians right so I think that's something to get into and I want to go a little bit deeper into that but I've been talking for too long so Allison please yeah I mean I really do want to hit on just like seeing past the lie of electoralism right and just this fucking idea that anyone involved in electoral politics and mainstream politics wants a way out of this and I think you know you've hit it but that lie takes like several forms right like on the left there is this kind of like oh Kamala is going to save us like pretty you know save social progressivism, all of these other things. But I think it's important to say, like, there are figures dominantly associated with the left who also are sheepdogging people who are starting to see through this shit towards Kamala, right? You know, we have all had different opinions about AOC, but I hope at this point we can all agree that she's a fucking snake, right?

And she gets up at the fucking convention and says, oh, Kamala is working tirelessly for a ceasefire, as if, as if Kamala is not at the core of what is happening now, as if Kamala would not want to see the continued escalation that we've seen as if she's not fucking associating herself with Dick fucking Cheney, right? It is as blatant, it obvious as it can be. So we see this left-wing sheep dogging that I think is very concerning. For the one like AOC, I think people are more able to see through. But there are a lot of groups in the left that still kind of are auxiliaries to the Democratic Party in work to maintain some level of fealty there. And I think that really just has to be pushed back against. There is no path out through that. And we have to over and over and over, and that the Democratic Party is complicit in what's going on and is actually very much the enemy of the people, right? That just is the case and has to be accepted, regardless of what nice kind of self-identified social Democrats or Democratic socialists in Congress try to tell us. I do think it's the worst thing on the flip side, though, that there are those trying to sheepdog to the right. There has been kind of this, you know, movement to say,

well, if liberalism is just kind of inherently bound up in imperialism and all of these other things, perhaps we need a right-wing illiberalism. But this also is a lie, right? I understand why people see an appeal in Trump on this, right? Because Trump, for some reason, has been able to convince a lot of people that he's like an anti-interventionist or something, right? Which is obviously absurd when you consider his appointment of fucking John Bolton. If you actually look at anyone he appointed. Yeah, right. The entire extent of Trump's cabinet on foreign policy was within the neo-conservative consensus. But there is this idea. that Trump is some sort of like anti-interventionist who will put Americans first. And so when

you see, you know, the flooding that is happening, when you see people being left to die in the U.S., there is this appeal that the right then makes to say, hey, like, we don't care about foreign governments. We'll take care of our people at home. We would do better on this. And it's worth, you know, really pushing back and saying that that's equally bullshit, right? The foreign policy under Trump was not anti-interventionist. It did not pull away from international aggression. And Trump's position on Israel is not that he would stop funding it. It's basically that he would give them carte blanche to destroy everyone else in the area, right? It is an intensification. And when he talks out, oh, I could end this, he means I could end this by

intensifying the assistance and removing any attempts at blocking this aggression whatsoever. So neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party offers us an out here. And this gets at what you're talking about, Brett, where there is a unified foreign policy between these two groups. Regardless of which party you're voting for, guess what? You're voting for fucking neocons, right? That is at the core of both parties' foreign policies. You have people who served under various Republicans and Democrats within these positions who are all pushing for this. The fact that, again, the Cheneas are fucking aligning under Kamala tells you precisely how much, no matter who you pick, the neo-conservative national security state still gets to be the deciding

factor in U.S. foreign policy. There's no vote that gets you out of it. It does not matter which candidate wins the primary in either party, no matter how much they talk about draining the swamp or bringing change to the party, no matter how much they use any of that language. All of them have an absolute fealty to an apparatus of national security, an apparatus of defense contracting, an apparatus of intelligence agencies that share a neoconservative vision of the U.S. as a unipolar or hegemon and that will do anything to continue to do that. And I think that really shows the lie of the

electoral path because you don't have a way to not vote for that group of people. Exactly. And if you're one of these so-called socialist or somebody on the left who's like, you know, being suckered into this once again and voting for the Democrats, less or two evil bullshit, understand that your practical

politics are closer to Dick Cheney's than they are to ours. You are closer to Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney than you are to Brett and Allison or anybody that listens to this fucking show. You are in the same party. You're in a big tent party with hardcore foaming at the mouth Zionist with Anthony Blinkin. You know, you are in the same party as Dick and Liz Cheney. You're in the same party as Fortune 500 company CEOs. You are in the same party as the ruling class. And the ruling class doesn't think that Trump is really going to be an attack on them

economically or even, you know, when it comes to their interventionist neocon bullshit. They just think his style and his way of doing politics is too unstable. And so there's a little question mark based on the instability. And so now you see the ruling class gravitating like the Dick Cheney's one example, but there's many more of the ruling class in general gravitating towards the Democratic Party as the party of stability for the status quo. Not that Trump is actually going to take on the status quo. He would never be where he is if he was actually going to do anything or if his first four fucking years in office, like it's not 2016. There's not a big question. There's not a big question mark about what Trump's going to do.

You know, it's not like we don't know. He was in office for four years and what did he do? Kept fucking bombing countries, took out Salamanian in Iran, gave huge tax cuts to the rich, opened up public land for drilling. I mean, I'll go down the list. He just governed like a normal Republican with a little edgier of a style and rhetoric.

That's it. But there's a certain egoism to him that makes him sort of unpredictable and that unpredictability is the problem for the ruling class. You know, not that there's a specific thing he's going to do to take them on or he wouldn't even be one of the options. And that's another thing about the system. It has gotten so good and making sure that who comes out at the end, what your options are are going to support them

anyway. They would, you know, we go back to the Bernie Sanders thing over and over again, but it's just illustrative of how the system works. Even Bernie Sanders, again, a completely establishment guy. I've been in the Senate for years and years and years and years, you know, has buddy buddy with the Democratic Party and always has been. Even when he calls himself a, you know, into pennies like Joe Biden is a really close friend right he's completely fine um but they wouldn't even the democratic party not even the deep state or the republicans the democratic party thought that that he was too much of a threat despite the fact that he won the first three primaries which anybody in history has won the first three primaries are end up being the candidate and so they had to

orchestrate um the entire field to drop out and go against him and hand it over uh to Biden who was ranking fifth or sixth or seventh in the fucking polls and kamala harris who couldn't even make get to the first primary because she was so unpopular, she couldn't even get past 1% in polls. So this is who we're now presented with as the saviors of democracy. And this is who, you know, people with socialist in their bio and

free Palestine flags in their bio are voting for, thinking that they're doing anything progressive or that there is a lesser evil to vote for. It's just all evil. You're voting for the same system. It's just like, who do you prefer to be the face? Right? What Halloween mask do you prefer the ruling class to wear? And that's

what you're voting for. That's it. So, you And then what makes me particularly nauseous about this vote blue no matter who people are the people that are ostensibly on the left but going for the Democrats is the moral superiority, is this idea that they're obviously morally superior to the Republicans and they're morally superior to the people on the left that are criticizing the genocide, that are saying things like Allison and I are saying, they think of themselves as morally superior than their left and their right, which just shows the narcissistic pathology involved in a lot of these people, you know, personalities and politics. But the one thing I wanted to really make clear is I said this earlier that the one thing that Trump did that was constructive and generative was that he pointed out this entity called the deep state. And there's lots of confusion around that. And some people think it's the administrative state or it's the military industrial complex. But there's no doubt that the deep state does exist, that these are unelected people, many of which we don't even know what their faces look like or their names, that have served under Democrat and Republican

administrations alike and that are constantly pushing us in this direction. And to my Bernie Sanders point, and the system not letting anybody get through, if there was a figure to the left of Bernie Sanders, a real anti-imperialist figure that actually rose to the tops echelons with real popular support, they would be first attacked reputationalally. There would be, you know, op-dumps, there would be attempts to find anything and everything in their past to completely discredit them, both the... the left, the quote-unquote's left, which is just the center, and right-wing corporate media would constantly be attacking them like they did Bernie,

but even worse, right? Look what they did to Corbyn in the UK. They would try that similar tactic first. And if that doesn't work, I mean, there's other ways to deal with these people. And I truly think that if anybody to the left of Bernie ever somehow fumbled their way through this labyrinth of the status quo and stumbled their way into a nomination that everything is on the table to make sure that they get taken out.

And if the worst case scenario, let's say they can't even do the JFK treatment, they get them into office, it would just be a complete stonewalling. Both Republican and Democratic parties would do everything they can to stop this person. The media, both center and right, would be a full-on assault against this person.

The elements within the government and within the deep state would stop working or would fight against them, right? It would just make sure that no bottom-up candidate could ever get elected in the system. So if you want real change, you have to take on the whole fucking ruling class in both of their arms, the Republican and the Democratic Party. And you have to eliminate them as a prerequisite for democracy, as a prerequisite for the possibility of democracy. So don't tell me you're saving democracy by voting for the ruling class once again. You're doing no such thing.

Again, you're the toddler in the backseat with a fake steering wheel convinced that they're driving. And yeah, great points about the millennial Nancy Pelosi. This is, this is, this is who AOC is. This is her job now is to, is to herd people back into the Democratic Party, spending all over time, not attacking Kamala, not attacking Biden, not attacking the Israeli genocide, but attacking fucking Jill Stein. I mean, this is who she is. And if you can't see it yet, if you can't see it yet, you're never going to fucking see it. You don't want to see it. But let's get into, what is this deep state?

You know, there's lots of different directions that we could go. but one thing that I hear over and over again from the left and the right and just like democratic fucking friends and family of mine is Biden is so out of it he couldn't even get through a fucking debate so how is he running the entire government right now and being the commander in chief while a regional war is exploding in West Asia as well as all the other fucking you know low level wars and it's and you know none of us really believe that Biden is staying up till 2 a.m. on the phone with net and yahoo holding his feet to the fire or even on the other side planning to like this is what I'm going to tell the American people but here you go BB here you know we don't even think that he's capable of doing that so who actually is running the government well there's three people that are for sure handling the Israel policy and these people are the deep state these are unelected fucking ghouls that serve under multiple administrations democrat and republican and without a shadow of a doubt why Biden is taking his third afternoon nap these are the ones that are on the

phone that are making the decisions, that are sending the weapons and the money. And these three people, and there's definitely fucking more, but here are the three big ones, is Brett McGurk, the National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. He's served under George Bush, under Barack Obama, under Donald Trump, and under Joe Biden. And he currently serves as the deputy assistant to Joe Biden and the national, as I said, the National Security Council coordinator. He's a fucking psycho. He's, you know, one of these people that have always pushed for war in this direction,

hardcore Zionist, all the stuff that you come to expect. Then there's Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor. He also served under Barack Obama, was Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State, served as senior advisor to the U.S. federal government at the Iran nuclear negotiations and senior policy advisor to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. He's in the Biden administration working on this as well. And then finally, Anthony Blinken, somebody who belongs at the Hague, somebody that win its common sense that what's going on is a genocide will be one of the faces presented as the faces

of genocide. And he is obviously the United States Secretary of State under the Biden administration right now, preceded by Mike Pompeo, but carrying on the same basic belligerent neo-conservative foreign policy. So while Biden is shitting his pants and as MIA, these are the people that are actually running the system. And these are unelected people, right? These are appointed figures. Nobody, the average American doesn't even know their name. Maybe you've heard of Blinking now, but even that is a stretch. I guarantee if I ask my family and friends, have you heard of Anthony Blinken? 99% of them would say no. Maybe a couple would be like, I've heard of them, but I don't know much about them, right? So these are the unelected figures. And this is,

you know, the faces of the deep state, but the deep state obviously goes deeper to the Department of State as a whole, you know, the CIA, et cetera. And these are who are actually orchestrating this foreign policy. And when Kamala comes in, do you think, think she's going to purge the deep state? Do you think any of these assholes are going to lose their jobs? If anything, they'll be promoted. This Biden's cabinet will be her cabinet. And the same policies of the Biden administration will be the policies that she carries forward. Without a shadow of a doubt, I don't even need to argue it, but we'll see if she wins. I mean, we can just, we also have a real life experiment to go off of as well. But I think it's important to name

Brett McGirk, Jake Sullivan, and Anthony Blinken as the unelected deep state figures who are really orchestrating this this regional war and who are you know giving Israel everything everything they mother fucking want and providing importantly cover for them domestically as well as internationally at the UN yeah I think important to add to that too right is not only will the Harris you know administration if they win not do that at this point my money is on them losing right I think it is much more likely that Trump will win and if Trump does win you know again he loves the term deep see he loves to gesture to this idea of clearing it out. And we will see the name Blinken go away under Trump, right? I think that is very likely.

But if he wins, Blinken will just be replaced with someone else with identical politics, right? Who doesn't have some sort of vague association with the Democratic Party? Neither of the candidates have any intent on getting rid of this policy position, which is embedded within these unelected positions. And, you know, again, not to sound too conspiratorial. If they ever did, that's what the domestic security apparatus exists for is to prevent. that, right? Arguably, I think, you know, at this point, I think, like, we mostly acknowledge that's kind of what happened to JFK, right? I think we can mostly just say that on the left of these days. There is an entire apparatus of domestic repression that can target the state, if necessary, in order to

maintain those bounds. So there is no path through either candidate, which is going to get rid of these positions and get rid of the ideologies, which are embedded within the people who are, you know, appointed again not elected to these positions yeah and with the jfk thing like it was one of those things in which the the CIA the deep state they learned their lesson they they don't want it to get that far they don't want to have to blow a president's brains out in front of the whole country right that's a very last resorty-ass move and again like with the bernie sanders thing it's not even because jfk is some fucking radical the dude was an anti-communist he was completely rich he was a part of the establishment and his and his little brother bobby kennedy also got fucking murked um because he was

running after JFK's death, you know, as a progressive candidate. But these are not left-wing radicals. These aren't socialists. These are liberals. These are liberals. And even their liberalism was unacceptable. And why was JFK unacceptable? Not because he was some, you know, pro-communist. No, he was a rabid anti-communist. He was a cold warrior. All that is fine. But he simply pushed back a little bit against the CIA's insane plans for escalation with everybody. Right? He was like, these guys are fucking insane we cannot we cannot allow them to continue to run shit there's a complete deep irrationality with these fucks and again so it's not like he was some left wing hero or anything um no he but again for us from our perspective he is completely establishment centrist

liberal totally everything that would fit into the system just like bernie sanders right yeah he's more progressive than others but he's not a fucking anathema he's not a a crazy you know somebody from the far far left or anything he's still fully establishment but even he is unacceptable and so that's the thing is you don't even have to be a marxist or a revolutionary you just have to go against their insanity a little bit or even threatened to and that's enough for them to do everything they can to make sure you don't get anywhere and again they don't want to have to do the jfk and bobby kennedy thing they would like to do the bernie sanders thing where they just orchestrate a first a reputational assault bernie bro they remember they were calling him

anti-Semitic they were calling him sexist all this shit that doesn't work the people are still voting for him okay Obama gets on the phone make some calls the you know the everybody drops out backs Biden um pull some strings get elizabeth warren to keep doing the the the id pull thing against Bernie calling him a sexist and shit and siphoning off some progressive votes from him I mean that's the strategy it's much better than having to blow a president's brains out in front of the nationally televised cameras right right that's what they prefer and that's what they would do but if Bernie Sanders got through and you know Bernie Sanders he was he was still saying Israel's right to defend itself Israel has a right to exist so he's still a Zionist but he's like you

know this has gone too far I would if I was president I would stop sending arms to Netanyahu right and that would even be completely unacceptable so maybe they would have to have had to go the JFK route with Bernie or you know he's so old maybe they just put something in his drink and he has a heart attack or something everybody's like hey you know but JFK was young and you know there's no way to really do that. So what were they going to do, et cetera? But yeah, I do agree with Allison. That is pretty much fair to completely come out and say that JFK was assassinated by, you know, something associated with the deep state, the CIA, et cetera, for his pushback against that deep state when it came to their insane plans for escalation, particularly with Cuba, but even just in the Cold War more broadly.

Because JFK, not because he had deep moral qualms about doing these things, but because he thought it was destabilizing to the U.S., right? Just like somebody in Israel right now would be like, hey, I actually am a Zionist. I want Israel to survive in the long term. The best way we can do that is get rid of Netanyahu, get a slightly less insane administration, pull back on some of our, you know, invasions and all these fucking different countries, stop the genocide a bit. And that would give us enough room to be able to exist in the medium term, if not the long term. There's a strategic thing there. It's not like they're opposed to the system. They're actually trying to make the system, you know, be more resilient, more robust long term.

and, you know, even that is unacceptable. So that's where we're at. That's where we're at. And another name is Victoria Newland, right? That's another name that I wanted to throw out there as one of these ghouls that is every time there's a war, you know, she's involved and she's pressing for it. But you said, Allison, that you think Trump is, that you would have to put your money on Trump winning this election. I'm not so sure. Like, if I had a bet money right now, I would say Kamala for several reasons.

I mean, the polls are incredibly close. funnily enough in Nebraska we split our electoral votes so Omaha and Lincoln get one electoral vote outside of the state so most states it's either it's either red or blue right and so there is a possible scenario where a really close race could come down to the one electoral vote in Omaha it never actually happens in really close races it's always brought up sure but the Republicans here they tried to end that system that only Nebraska and Maine have where you could have one electoral vote split off from the rest of the state and go toward the other party, they tried to stop it.

And it was actually a Republican, an establishment Republican in the Nebraska political system that came out against it and refused to vote for it because he said long term it would make Nebraska even less of a political player. If they didn't even have to come and earn that one extra electoral vote, then it would just be a red state in the back pocket of Republicans and politicians weren't even have to come here and pretend to give a fuck. so it was an interesting inter-Republican debate that kind of stopped that from happening but you know all that is all that is kind of a side point just an amusing side point but

I've seen if it's a very tight race one of the one of the indicators is whose signs do you see and when it was Biden versus Trump I never saw a single Biden sign I only saw Trump signs and now every fucking block in in the Omaha metro area you know almost always has a blue dot or or Harris Walls sign I went up to Syracuse recently because my best friend lives up there now and I was just seeing Harris and Walls signs it is upstate New York but still

I'm not so sure that Trump is going to win I think he's kind of lost the sauce a little bit that he used to have and yeah so I would if I had to bet money I would bet Kamala but again it doesn't really matter totally but you still think Trump if the election was today he might be able to win it's tough to say right

I think it's all the, the polling is almost impossible to call it at the moment. I think the reason that my guess would be Trump is that it does feel like the Kamala kind of momentum is dying slightly. And so I think if I projected that out all the way to election day, that does seem to favor Trump to me. I also think like, I hate to fucking say it. I think Vance did way better in the debate than Walls did, like significantly better. And I think he looked, you know, this is I think the whole goal for J.D. Vance and very

difficult for him. He looked human enough, I think, to kind of reassure some people that, you know, are upset with kind of the affect of Trump, that, hey, at least there's a VP pick because he's human, right? I actually think that moment where he, like, kind of was like, oh, I didn't know your son was in a shooting. I'm so sorry. He went through that, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was like, I actually think, like, a huge win for Bance, right? That makes it look like, oh, this is like a good, decent Christian guy who can overcome the political division. And there's a lot of people who can't quite hold their nose and vote for Trump, who probably will be persuaded by that, I think, actually. So those are kind of the factors. But again, actually, I think if we're looking at

the empirical data, it's fucking impossible to say right now, right? Like, the polling is extremely, extremely close. I'd put money on Trump at the moment, but I wouldn't feel super confident in that necessarily. We'll definitely have to see. Yeah, but again, no matter what happens, we're getting more of the same for the foreseeable future. Right. And I think, I think the base responsibility of every thinking human being in this country is just to have a complete, unapologetic, uncompromising opposition to both parties, all these politicians, this entire ruling class, and the system itself, and to point out tirelessly, we don't have a democracy. We've never had one in the United States, to be clear, but even the little shards and shreds that we have had, which have been fought and people have died to get things like voting rights, and we should never lose track of that. or, you know, wrinkle over those sacrifices because they were true. The entire American project has been an attempt by the bottom to rise up and get some basic dignity,

some basic ability to have input into the system. But in the neoliberal era, all of those things have been systematically rolled back to, again, these things don't matter. And so you have to stress that to the people, conservative liberals in your lives, that there is no democracy and push them on that. What democracy do we have? If you can vote between two hand-selected members of the incredibly rich ruling class every four years, and the status quo happens no matter who wins, and that's democracy to you? Come on. Let's grow up. Let's have an adult conception of real democracy. And I'm not even saying like socialist democracy where it's in the economy and workplace. That's our vision. But even just the ability for regular people, even in a completely ideological condition society like the U.S. to have a say because even just allowing regular U.S. Americans, as they exist today with all their ideological conditioning to have a say in things would dramatically shift priorities in Washington away from endless war and towards things like a living wage, a pension, unions for workers, health care, affordable education, child care, etc. Just letting them regular Americans today, as they currently exist, pre-cultural revolution, have a say would dramatically shift things in a different direction.

And even that is unacceptable to the ruling class for obvious reasons and the reasons we've laid out. as a way to end this conversation, maybe we can talk a little bit about, I mean, I don't know if you have any ideas, but on the outline, like, can Israel handle a multi-front war? What happens now? Where do things go from here, etc.? Yeah, so this is, I think the tough question is what happens, right? I'll be honest. Before the Iranian strike, I was feeling pretty hopeless, right? Things were looking bleak and it didn't feel like anyone internationally was going to do anything, right? Iran has always framed itself as kind of the leader of the axis of resistance. And so, you know, when they didn't really retaliate after Hania's death, that was kind of concerning when, you know, the invasion of Lebanon began, when the assassination of Nassarala happened, it wasn't clear what was going to happen. But obviously, I think the Iranian strike has revealed that the axis of resistance still exists, is still fighting. Hizbollah is still fighting within Lebanon right now, even with the assassination of Nassarala, even with that fucking pager attack, which took out a lot of people associated with the

party, even with multiple leaders assassinated in airstrikes, there still is a functioning resistance that is occurring. So I think one thing that I can kind of say is that I think this is not ending any time soon, right? The axis of resistance has not rolled over, has not given up, which was a fear that some people expressed and things looked kind of dark in that regard for a little bit. But the fight really is continuing. The destruction of the leadership of these parties, I do not think is going to destroy them. Hasbalah will not be destroyed by the loss of Nasrallah that will not be destroyed by losing its leaders. Those vacuums will be filled. And also, if necessary, the organization will transform as these organizations

always transform, right? Hesbalah has been complicated in that it is a political organization in addition to a paramilitary organization that has been represented within mainstream Lebanese politics. But if that possibility closes because of an Israeli occupation of Lebanon, that only means that Esbalah will change the terrain struggling on, right? And we have seen this throughout the the history of resistance to colonialism, where resistance groups can go underground to even higher extent than they have. They can shift their terrain to different forms of struggle. And I don't think, you know, that this is the end of the resistance in any means whatsoever. And if anything, there will be an intensifying that occurs as a result of that. Israel seems to have this belief,

you know, I've heard it referred to as like an addiction to assassinations, right? That they can just assassinate their way out of this. But that has never worked with Hamas. It has never worked with any of the organizations whose leaders they have assassinated, and it won't work with Hezbollah either. There will simply be a transformation of the organizations into a different form in which they'll continue to be able to struggle, perhaps in ways that are even harder for Israel to combat than a more above-ground movement would be. So I don't think that that is going to end any time soon. I think that the fighting is absolutely going to continue. And I do think Israel is overtaxing itself to a very large degree. It is opening more and more fronts in this

war, and the only thing allowing it to function is that the United States is throwing all the money that we have at it right now. But if there were any faltering in that, I think Israel would be in a very bad situation. Again, I think the fact that any of those Iranian missiles touched down at all shows that Israel's air defense is not as strong as we necessarily thought it was. There was a little less warning that they had this time about Iranian attack than in April. And that seemed to have been enough to make a difference to allow missiles to get through, which really does shatter this idea of the iron dome as this like impossible to penetrate thing. It's very good at taking out the small rockets that are being launched across the border, but it's a little bit different with the kind

of missiles that get sent from further away. So I think Israel is putting itself in an increasingly precarious situation. I think it is taking the struggle in Lebanon from something that was a struggle largely of solidarity of Hezbollah with the people of Gaza to now an existential struggle for Hezbollah because they are defending their own homeland as well. And so I think that will only intensify things going forward. What that means, it's hard to say, right? I mean, Israel does continue to receive funding from us, and I don't necessarily see that stopping, and maybe they can continue to weather this multi-front war, but in the long term, I think they are weakening their position. They are getting rid of any of the diplomatic successes that they had had over the last 20 years. They are getting

rid of any goodwill that they had with some of the other Arab states. And if I'm an Arab state in the region, I'm looking at these maps of greater Israel and thinking, there's no way. to coexist with this state, right? They are eventually going to want my land too. And that is, I think, ultimately going to increase the resistance and is going to increase the situation's kind of tenacity and it will possibly erode some of the neutrality that some of the Arab states have tried to adopt in relation to all of this happening. I don't know how much longer this current intensive phase of the genocide and this current war will go on for, but Israel is not taking a path that is going to be able to get out. It is not going to be able to stop this just by leveling southern Lebanon.

It won't be able to stop this if it's levels all of Lebanon, because then they'll just push further and further. So the situation is increasingly dire, but I think Israel is putting itself in a weaker and weaker and more dangerous situation. And my God, if we could just cut the funding to them, they would collapse overnight, honestly. They are putting themselves in that dire of the situation right now. And so that's kind of where I see things. moving towards. Yeah, that's great points, and I agree with that. And, you know, you mentioned that long term it's weakening their position and as psychotic and short-sighted as the Netanyahu regime and the Israeli state is right now. I think that that is kind of accounted for. They understand that long-term, you know, the long-term trends are against them. There's isolation with the rest of

the world. Younger people in the West are more and more against them. They understand that there is no long-term, really viable path to keep this going, and that's precisely why they're going all out now. I think of the highest echelons of the Israeli murderous state and the Netanyahu administration, it is a now or never mentality.

You have a Biden administration that is a lame duck administration being run by, again, those people I pointed out earlier, Biden is out of it, but even if he was in it, he's a committed Zionist, and he even has said publicly that he does not want to be remembered historically as the president who went against Israel, that he wants to go down in history, even if it means as a genocide air, he wants to go down in history as the American

president who was stubbornly refusing to not back down and continue to help Israel in their darkest times of trouble. So that's his mindset. And that permeates the administration. So you have this lame duck situation. You have this escalation during this lame duck period where if I'm correct about they're going all out, this is the time to do it because you have all the momentum in the Biden administration on your side already. And then what you're going to do no matter who comes into office next, neither of which are really anti-Israel by any means. They're both going to be supporting of you. Then you're going to place in their lap and ongoing regional war. And you are not likely to see any ruling class. This is from Israel's perspective. You're not likely to see the

American ruling class take a dramatically different position in the midst of a regional war. That pure momentum and sunk costs and just the situation as it actually is getting handed into the lap of a new president, whether that's Trump's second term or it's Kamala's first term, the idea that in that moment they're going to do a 180 is just unthinkable. So this is their one chance where everything is more or less as good as it's going to get for Israel to finally do what it's always wanted to do. And that's what they're doing. They're taking advantage of that, knowing long term this is not sustainable. so they're saying it's now or never and that's what you see that's what you see as the insanity from any any reasonable person it looks like pure chaos and insanity but no it is this apocalyptic you know death drive now or never mentality um and it's so interesting because remember when

when putin first went into ukraine i even heard this from the liberals in my family and it was beaten into everybody's head from the media that you know like like hitler Putin is not going to stop at Ukraine. He's going to keep going. He's going to march, you know, he's going to march westward into Poland. And like anybody that knows anything about the situation, including Allison and I laughed out loud at that idea. Like, it's so fucking stupid. Putin has no desire whatsoever to do a Hitler-style takeover of Europe. It's so silly. But to the childish and phantilized American mind, you could convince them of that because, again, of the established Russiaophobia that has been inculcated in our minds. So, you know, you see that groundwork laid hate Iran or, you

Iran hate Russia hate China and then when the time comes where there's military operations they leverage that already inculcated hate and ideological maintenance into their goals this is how they work so you know it works and I had people in my life who follow this stuff convinced like okay you know we have to stop Putin because then he'll keep going through Europe absolutely insane but but we're seeing Israel do that exact thing yeah we're seeing Israel literally do that exact thing where it is its sites are set on the entire region purging it of all of its enemies which is basically almost every state except for a couple, and taking over huge swaths of land, committing genocide. So that's what they're doing right now.

So the hypocrisy point is sort of moot because, I mean, pointing out hypocrisy is like, you know, saying that the grass is green and the sun is shining today. It's just obvious, but it's worth stating again and again and again. So that's the kind of basic outlying situation. But the other question is, could this regional war turn into a world war and how would that happen? and well, I'm not exactly sure if it can or if it will or what exactly will happen. China doesn't seem by any means eager to get into this and is obviously not getting into this. But Russia plays an interesting role because Russia is already being assaulted by NATO in Europe, right?

So they're already in some sense like the gloves are off already. And then in Syria, they are defending and they've actively defended Syria against Israeli attacks by using their missile defense systems to block Israeli attacks on Syria, right? One of the things that happened during the Syrian conflict was Russia is trying to protect this administration from the West's onslaughts. So they're already involved in Syria. And so you could see a scenario in which Russia is pulled in, right? The U.S. is pulled in.

Russia already under assault is pulled in. It's already active in the region, already literally blocking Israeli attacks on Syria, so they're already kind of in it. And you can see that escalating. And then, you know, the U.S. has allies. Europe has to make some hard decisions. You know, are we going to get involved in this? And to what extent certain states, of course, already are.

Other states are trying to be like, whoa, hold on. I think even some things coming out of France and Macron is like kind of gesturing towards this idea that the U.S. is kind of fucking insane. And maybe we shouldn't tie our fucking boats to that ship. So that would force some splits, perhaps. And then Russia has allies, right, around the world. And that would force them to take on different positions. Russia and the U.S. get involved in this conflict.

Yeah, maybe China doesn't enter properly, but certainly China has every interest in maybe helping Russia behind the scenes with intelligence or with funding or with military weapons. And so it's just a hop-skipping a jump from that position to full-on World War III. And if a nuke gets launched in any of this chaos, you know, then it's almost, I mean, who the fuck knows what that's the Joker card, right? That's the wild card. Who knows what's going to happen? but there is a path to World War III and it's very clear and every day it gets worse and worse

and then the very last thing I'll say to Allison's great point about these Hezbollah and Hamas and even you know Ansrallah Allah or aka the Houthis in Yemen they are battle hardened people they are not

naive enough to make their systems so fragile that taking out one leader is going to disrupt their operations these are not people that have the luxury of having any margin of error, right? These are people that have been under assault that knew in some level this day was coming and they understand that the fight continues even if their entire leadership is annihilated because they know Israel's game.

They know Israel does this, this assassination campaigns. They understand that they cannot tie their movement to one leader or a given set of leaders that there has to be on some level a decentralized mode of operation for these organizations if and when the case occurs where their leaders are attacked or taken off the board. And so, you know, these movements aren't going anywhere. You can take out their leaders. These are not fragile movements that are going to be sunk by a couple strategic leaders being taken out. And then the last thing I'll say is that the Lebanese terrain is not the same as it is in Gaza.

Gaza is a flat strip of land on the border with Israel that Israel has surrounded that dictates the food that goes in. the people that go in and out etc that's not the case in Lebanon Lebanon is more hilly even mountainous in some areas and you know driving into a foreign country that country is fighting for their own national sovereignty on a terrain they know very well of course Israel knows southern Lebanese terrain as well but they're not used to operating in it full force like the like Hezbollah and the Lebanese forces are so that's going to be just another example and we've already seen the first you know incursions into Lebanon have not been successes for Israel they have they have they have been pushed back. They've taken high casualties. And there's no reason to think that that's going

to end anytime soon. So Israel is hoping that the U.S. comes, puts boots on the ground and helps them go into Lebanon. And that very well might be the case. And then, you know, then the question of Russia comes into play. The other question of Turkey, a big question mark is also lingering in the background here because Turkey's in the region. Turkey has this right-wing government, but, you know, and doesn't really want to get involved is also part of NATO. But the Turkish population, the people of Turkey, like the people of Egypt, like the people of Jordan, they're against this shit. They want their governments to act more robustly. And so that contradiction is going to continue to play out as well. And so these are the recipes for chaos. These are the recipes

for World War III. But at the end of the day, it is 110% the fault of the U.S. and Israel for starting this, for perpetuating this. And whatever horrors have already happened and will continue to happen in the future, even all the way up to World War III and nuclear war, it lies at the fucking feet of Israel and the United States. And this world will not know peace and stability won't even have the prerequisites for it until these two fucking states are either humbled

and put on their asses or completely eliminated. And that is literally the only options we have for this chaos, this psychotic chaos to fucking end. And that's the situation as we're seeing it right now, one year out, from October 7. I think

there's not much more to be said than that. All right. Well, we'll keep eyes on situation we'll continue to update people as this situation continues to to spiral and in the meantime we send obviously our love and our solidarity to the people of lebanon the people of palestine the people of iran the people of syria the people in the region they have to put up with this fucking insanity and their lives have to be at risk their families have to constantly be at risk little babies you know toddlers grandmas disabled people just regular moms and dads and just regular ask human beings. You know, even a fucking single guy in his early 20s doesn't deserve to

fucking die because Israel wants to take over the fucking world, right? And the U.S. wants to take over the fucking world. And so our hearts are with them. And any single person on earth that rises up to resist the U.S. and Israel is a hero in my book and has nothing but my unapologetic and uncritical support. Because at this time, I don't give a fuck what your criticisms of are of Iran or are of Hezbollah. whatever the fuck. They are fighting for their motherfucking lives, not just as a military apparatus,

but as the fucking civilians of those countries under serious, dire, existential threat from the U.S. and Israel. And they have every right to resist by any means necessary, and I wholeheartedly support them in that struggle. Yeah, again, I don't think I can say more than that. That's a beautiful ending.

All right. Love and solidarity. Stay safe out there. All glory to the resistance. We'll be back soon. Bye. You know what my mission is? It feels like I'm speaking to death fears. Are you listening?

It feels like I'm out of tears. I run off adrenaline. It's been so many years. We had suffered from pillaging. They treat us like animals. Look, we are not citizens. I'm just hoping time hills all with a swing at a pendulum.

At minimum. I got war stories. I got more stories. Seen a bomb hit a building. Now it's four stories. What do you ask from us? We're dying for massacres. Here we're bullets.

Because when they pull it, we can't run fast. We souls in a sniper scope When they hold in the rifles, though Don't know when this life will go I just balance the highs and lows Generational curses Need a million herses All this killing is hurting

I gotta finish my purpose I may be young But I got weight on my shoulders I may be young but I'm a stand like a soldier I take my brothers and sisters And hold them I may be young But all this pain makes me older

Even though I may be young I may be young I may be young I may be young Look When it comes to this life I had to grow up fast And through the strife I had to learn how to laugh

But it's turning me mad Because they want to take a murderous path I'm focused on my future So don't be concerned with my past Look I close my eyelids And hear the sirens to see the violence From all the tyrants I think we need some silence All this trauma has made me wise

I realize through this drama I'm still alive Take my advice Hug your mama just like she's mine I can't cry I got God right by my side So I pray they guns jam And we grow old

I'm a young man But with an old soul I may be young But I got weight on my shoulders I may be young but I'm a stand Like a soldier I take my brothers and sisters And hold them

I may be young But all this pain makes me older Even though I may be young I may be young I may be young I may be young I may be young