TRASHFUTURE - Damn! Makes You Think!! feat. Hasan Piker and Trevor Strunk

Episode Date: October 12, 2018

We’re having a blast in the Caliphate of Tower Hamlets. Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani) and Nate (@inthesedeserts) met with Hasan Piker (@hasanthehun) from the Young Turks and discussed the important things in life: gaming, posting, and why Trashfuture villain Elon Musk may actually be the platonic ideal of a life lived online. We also held a quick conversation with Trevor Strunk (@Hegelbon) to discuss his recent article about Fortnite, how it relates to scarcity, and why a lot of dads wonder what the hell it even is:  https://theoutline.com/post/6325/fortnite-logic-of-scarcity?zd=1&zi=mm7zhkdo Also, remember that your favourite moron lads have a Patreon now. You too can support us here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture/overview Don’t forget that you can commodify your dissent with a t-shirt from http://www.lilcomrade.com/. Get whichever slogan you want, but get the damn shirts!

Greetings, Trash Future fans, Trash Persons if you're Canadian. This is Nate and just a quick announcement for those of you who have the good fortune or misfortune of living in London. We have an upcoming live show on 30 October at the Seckford in Clerkenwell. The address is 34 Seckford Street, London, EC1R0HA, can't believe I just said that. We'll update with more details later, but for the time being what you do need to know is, as Riley puts it, it's going to be a live show spooktacular. Kill me, free me from this horrible prison.

Anyway, hope you can make it if you're in London and enjoy the episode. Well, I mean, I mean, look, the thing I wanted to say about Elon and the reason why I think he's like a real poster of real posters because like he knows he lives and dies by the post. Okay. He knows that deep down inside, just like we all do that there's a tweet out there that you're going to hit send on that's going to ruin your career potentially when the right wingmob's come after you and concern troll you or whatever the fuck they want to do. But you still hit it anyway.

You can't stop posting because of that, because of that rush that you get when you hit send and you read the replies, you know what I mean? And that's, it doesn't stop you from ruining your life even as a billionaire, which Elon is literally doing right before our eyes. So I just, I have tremendous respect for him and I think everyone hates him because he's hot now and he's super successful and he's having sex with Grimes and they're doing a lot of drugs and it's just, he's baller. Who wouldn't do that in his situation?

Yeah. I mean, I think literally everyone. No one would post if I was, everyone always says I was like, if I was a billionaire, I would never post. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I just wouldn't do that. No, I would.

No, I don't think I feel like I would get someone to post for me. And I would. He literally did. If I was going to, but they wouldn't be under my name, but if I was that dedicated to the craft, I would pay someone who was good at posting and like, we would brainstorm together and be like, Oh yeah, hell yeah. Send that really. Hires Virgil, Texas, you fucking dirt digler, but you know, for Elon Musk, in my life as

a billionaire, I've given up posting for many years, but occasionally on the, on a given day in the middle of the week, it's rainy and it's like the clock strikes 4, 20 PM and my eyes just dart towards the keyboard and I think about what might have been. Just on the subject of like tweets that can end careers, um, I've always been fascinated with like the idea of like having a tweet that's so bad, but it always stays in your drafts and you only use it like in really, like in a really super emergency situation, something as if like, if, you know, if there is going to be like a nuclear apocalypse, then you tweet the worst thing you could possibly tweet.

Oh my God. I love that. Mine is, I already have it on the top of my head. I'll just release it right now. It's a ethno status or Chad Republicans. That's like, that's what I've been, I've been meaning to tweet that out and I just, I'm, I hope no one listens to this podcast. See my elite month, my, I see, I, I alternate between, um, my, I think my favorite possible

joke in the world is the idea that like AC Grayling or one of those sort of super remainder intellectuals, but that are pretty old and have really intense pre-woke periods is just one day going to tweet out, Brexit is gay. My Brexit gay as hell. Mine has always been a dumb joke. And like it basically, you may have noticed the preponderance of veterans who really, really care a lot about one amendment to the constitution and only one, which is the second amendment. The rest of them, you know, the one that says troops can't stay in my house.

They don't care, but they care about the second amendment and my, my, my tweet that's been in my drafts forever that I've never said it'd be like bad news veterans with tattoos and t-shirts. I've consulted a classicist and it turns out Mola and lobby means I eat ass. Anyway, anyone else got any career writing tweets? None of them are. None of them are in a non-searchable form. Well, yeah, I know that's the best part about it, but also it's like, I mean, this is a

podcast or like, I'm sure some journalists can like scrub it eventually and find it. It's just, I don't know what's worse is like on the internet, I don't know if it's the right wing, like, um, alt light, uh, personalities or worse, or if it's like 12 year olds who are stands for a specific person. Cause like, if you say something that offends the alt light, like pizza gators, like they'll come in swarms and they'll like, they have hackers and whatnot and they'll figure out like all of your old, they'll, they'll, uh, what's the, what's the service called when you, um, you can look at time travel.

Like it's a, it's a time travel thing on the internet where they can like look at all of your old tweets, regardless of whether you're deleted them or not. But then if you offend like Cardi B or, or Nicki Minaj, like if you ask them and they quote, to eat you, you're screwed. I'm not even kidding. They, 12 year olds are way more vicious than Mike. Well, it's basically the first, the first person that ever happened to is basically pentheus.

There's a joke for the class that sits in the audience. Yeah, it's going over my head to be honest. Fuck, I was depending on you. Yeah. Well, you fail. I was just, there was a guy the other day who said the exact same thing. He was like, if I was stranded on a desert island, I was going to die and my phone was almost out of batteries.

I would just tweet Beyonce's overrated because they fucking find me. Yeah. Hello and welcome back once again to this yet another episode of trash future, the podcast where I don't say the intro. By the way, I looked it up. SEC stands for short seller enrichment commission, which is totally like a boomer joke that they would make on like, I mean, it was the thing we said on the other episode that, that they, Elon Musk and his fans are so emotionally hurt by

the fact that anyone dares bet against his company in any way that like the fact that people are allowed to short sell Tesla, like just defends them so deeply that like they have to own those people. And because they're the good guys like Harry Potter and we are, we are once again, after that, after that brief digression, we are joined by Hassan Piker, host of the breakdown on the young Turks and general poster posting. I mean, I got like back into Twitter as a public figure, I guess, as a verified blue checkmark kind of person only last year.

And it was the worst decision of my life, honestly. It was also simultaneously the best. Like I feel like now I'm like always engaging with like Maoists and shit. I don't know where they, they were ever before. Like they, they're all telling me that like electoral politics is bullshit. And then I'm, I'm a coward for even engaging in it. And like, I didn't even know that these people existed before I got on Twitter. Um, but you know, it's great.

There's always brawling my brain. That's what I've learned. There's always going to be someone to your left who thinks you're a fascist. Yeah, 100% I mean, as, as, as, as we know, veteran, this happens to me on a constant basis and we are joined by our usual cast of work veteran, Nate. Yep. It's me, Nate. Milo.

Hey, it's me. A lot of people on the, on the tank, he left a very upset still about some articles I wrote when I was a student and I was just a normal and fine thing for them to spend all of their time reading and trapped, trapped in the ball, trapped in Dartford, Hussein. Hi, yes. Um, no one has called me out on all my bad, all my bad university writing. Um, but I'm trying to remember like the last time I really got into trouble

because it was with like a pop culture icon. And I have a feeling it was, it was because of, um, I had said something about Noah Centaneo, the guy, um, on that, on that Netflix movie that everyone loves, um, and basically I tweeted that he sounded like every guy who was selling blockchain technology. And the only reason everyone was giving a free pass was because he had really good hair. Um, so my DMs were like filled with like all these stands who were basically

telling me that I would never be as good as him. And, and they're right. I'll never get as like, you know, I'll never get the boyish wavy hair, but you know, um, you don't need to like keep reminding me about. I was thinking Hussein, also your, uh, your fun brush with fame when you, uh, insulted Michelle Wellebec and all of Gamergate decided that you were racist against Asians. Oh yeah.

So, so yeah, um, I won't, I won't dwell too much on this, but Michelle Hollebec got married to like an Asian woman, like 20 years younger than him. And he went to his wedding wearing a bowler hat. So I basically said that he, um, look, he, he was living every Gamergate dude's fantasy and they all got really mad at me because they said that they would never wear a bowler hat ever in any, any circumstance. And I focus on what matters. Gamergate is that that's the gamers uniform.

The weird overlap between gamers and Oxbridge college porters. So we have, uh, before now we have a bunch of stuff we're going to talk about, uh, today that we're going to, well, that I'm going to go into at, at some point, you don't get to know yet, you will soon. Uh, and then at some point Hussein is going to magically transform and to Trevor Strunk, uh, Hegelbon on Twitter, host of no cartridge, who's going to talk through his new article on fortnight, but first the correct term is Digivolve Digivolve, Digivolve into Hegelbon.

Um, so, uh, I'm, I'm one of the, one of the, one of the dumb things that happened recently before I go into the, you know, the actual criticism, um, was, uh, recently, this happened, I think yesterday, um, a banksy painting called girl with balloon, uh, which is, I think we all know it. It's sort of, it's, it's on every sort of university, um, uh, sort of dorm, dorm room, uh, wall. I think it comes with your admissions on UCAS, uh, was purchased, uh, at Sotheby's, uh, it's a, a, a, a, a G clay print of it or something.

I was purchased at Sotheby's, uh, for the buying price in like a lighted canvas, like in a, in a, in a light box. Yeah. Of a million pounds approximately. So, you know, this is a normal price to pay for a banksy art. Yeah. I like the idea that the price was only approximate. Like the guy bought it doesn't know exactly how much it was.

Well, I just didn't want to say dollars. I didn't basically a million pounds. Yeah. Sure. However, shortly after the sale concluded, um, an alarm went off, uh, and a, the canvas was shredded by a mechanism hidden within the base of the frame with most of the work emerging from the bottom in strips. Uh, as soon as the gavel hit this, then, oh yeah.

Banksy tendies. Yeah. It's an, and the response, um, from the senior director at Sotheby's, Alex, Alex branch, Brent, brexit from the senior director at Sotheby's was we've just been banksy'd. Oh, Kirby enthusiasm, music plays. Hey, I feel like he used to be cooler than this. Like, I mean, I don't know.

I like, this is a cool, uh, Mimi kind of thing that he did. Like it's great. And Banksy obviously has like a lot of, you know, he is, he's been on the right side of a lot of issues for the most part. But like, I don't know, most annoying way. Yeah. I feel like this confirms the rumors that he's actually Robert Del Naja from massive attack, because this is the kind of thing that a 45 year old dad would do.

And it's like, it starts to line up perfectly. It's like, this is the whole, look, this is, this is like the last time we really did, uh, we live in society was when we were talking with Felix about how more people apply to Love Island than Oxbridge. And that's a pointless statistic. This is, we live in society, the art. Exactly. You paid for a thing and now it's been shredded, but it's still have value.

Wow. It really makes you think it's probably doubled in values since then. Because now it has like an experiential component to it. And like, it's just, I don't know. I'm just actually right, uh, because Southern bees followed up where a work suffers damage while in the care of an auction house, it would not normally expect the buyer to honor any purchase and would probably cancel the sale. However, there was speculation after the Banksy sale as to whether the

shredded painting would have risen in value, given its status as one of the greatest pranks to ever have been played in the art market. You can sell it to Elon Musk for $2 million now. That's what it's going to be. Oh, yeah. So is Banksy going to join the team 10 house now or? Franked. He's either the guy from Massive Attack or he's Jake Paul.

Yeah, probably. I mean, that makes sense. No, well, they lost Nick Crumpton, who is famous for the words England is my city. And I love him. And so maybe they'll have the new British guy be Banksy because he's British, right? Yeah. You have to have a British guy.

Yeah. We know he's connected to Bristol and that's a bad and that he is one of either a team 10 guy or the guy from Massive Attack. Maybe, maybe he is Nick Crumpton and that's why Nick Crumpton disappeared. He's going back to his life of pretentious pranks. The team 10s pranks weren't rarefied enough for Nick Crumpton. It was like, you got another Ferrari in the pool, Jake. They come home and Nick Crumpton has just fed that five year old child

through a wood chipper and he's like, pranked. Well, it's just like this whole thing is like, oh, there was a yeah, Banksy is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist art. And I think it sort of goes to show that like any kind of sort of purely symbolic gesture at this kind of thing where it's like, oh, yes. It's basically just ad busters on a canvas. It's just, you know, it's like, oh, damn, these two police are kissing. Oh, they're gay together.

Damn, makes you think. Wow, really, really, really owned the cops there, didn't you? It's how the other thing is like when, when he went to Jerusalem, it was like, I'm going to paint the wall and make into something beautiful. Really makes you think it's like, well, there's still a fucking wall there. And it's still like, you know, armed guards are mating the tower. If you paint a door on it, Wiley Coyote style. Yeah, the gang Israeli soldiers just run into it.

You paint a small Palestinian child with a rock at the end of like a really long time 12 hours later, Barry Weiss has written op-ed about terror doors. Yet again, yet again, palace Palestinian activists are using paint to distract and wound brave IDF soldiers yet again. Activists are using eight, eight ton anvils and dropping them on people's heads causing stars to emerge in circles around somehow doing it with kites. Right. But it's the whole thing, right? Is like, it's the sometimes I think like Banksy is right about a lot of stuff,

like, but like kind of dumb at the same time. I mean, yeah, I think the bar is set super low. I feel like you mentioned that already, kind of where it's like anyone who even like performatively points the finger at the problem is all of a sudden elevated to a wokeness status. Beyond comprehension, I think Jim Carrey does that a lot too. Or his like, his artwork is always like Kaepernick wearing a jersey. And it's like, look, I mean, but then he also does like the Yemen,

you know, the Yemeni children like being bombed with the U.S. with the U.S. military and whatnot. So I don't know. I feel like I don't expect like artists to actually go out and like, you know, save Palestinian children. And we and because Banksy is like so secretive, I feel like we don't know what he does with all the money that he makes off of pest control, because he is technically probably the wealthiest

artist to have ever lived while he was alive. Maybe like barring. This was a Picasso Picasso Picasso was poor, but maybe Mane. I mean, the problem is less. He's worse than Banksy. It's not necessarily I'm saying, I don't think it's that Banksy is bad. It's that everything he does is so easy to or everything he does publicly is so easy to co-opt, you know?

Yeah. So in this case, right? Like we're saying he was, I mean, he might have intended this to be an actual stunt that shows the sort of vacuity of the art market. But because it's a stunt and the art market loves to be shown its own vacuity, it's simply increased in value. It's basically like an object lesson in the Thomas Frank essay. Commodify your descent. I think like Sasha Baron Cohen getting that lady to to shave her pubes

on camera was way smarter of like what you were mentioning than what Banksy did. And that's like a perfect self-own. And then people still were like, because people could point to that and go, well, that's really stupid versus in this one, they're like, well, you know, Banksy, you're you're worth this. This art now just doubled itself in words. Yeah. Yeah.

It's we've never lived in a society this hard. Yeah. It's like it's hard to co-opt. But you know what it is? It's like, I think it's hard to co-opt what like Sasha Baron Cohen does because a lot of what he does actually like has. It doesn't just have a negative political statement. It has also up, which is, ah, haven't you considered that maybe iPhones are too much.

You know, it actually has a positive political statement, which is like, don't forget, white supremacy is alive and well in the United States. Yeah. Like we can get this with this sort of state assemblyman to like, you know, try and touch me with his ass because he's afraid of Muslims. So what you're telling me is you want Banksy to draw a KKK member making out with a black police officer and they're both gay. Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden.

All of a sudden. Owned. I never thought about that. All of a sudden, finally, Tifu is on the Supreme Court and a nation could begin to heal. Yeah, exactly. What about a burning cross, but the cross is made of iPhones? Well, the other thing is like.

Damn, it makes you think. It really makes you think. Yeah. I mean, come on. The burning cross will be made of the Samsung Galaxy S7. Oh, it's like, it's like Halloween. And there's the kid dressed up as a ghost with a white sheet, but the dad's in the KKK uniform. Oh, my God.

Ghost so pointy. Are you Banksy, dude? I'm just this entire time. I'm really thinking now. It made me literally think you got me, guys. You got me until I saw Banksy. I was actually like in a sort of sleepwalking state where I wasn't actually having any volitional thoughts.

And then I saw his piece of art about, like, you know, two police officers jacking each other off on Buckingham Palace. And I was like, holy shit, I've been shocked out of my complacency. And also, I guess it's time to rise up and agitate for something. I mean, I would just say that Banksy's work can be looked at. And you can be like, you know, you can you can see it and think of it as novel or you can think look at it and think of it as political. But it doesn't really make you uncomfortable

unless you're really wedded to whatever particular thing is being is being mentioned. And even then, like the most political stuff that he's done is either like unless you're offended by that, you know, that no cops can be gay or unless like you really have a stake in in, you know, defending Israel's reputation abroad. It's not really going to offend. Whereas Sacha Baron Cohen's work, like I have a hard time getting through all that makes me so uncomfortable watching people own themselves so badly.

And it's always political. Like it's like it's always it's always rubbing in the face. How fucking weird primarily Americans are, but also British people. And also how like weird people randomly get offended about Sacha Baron Cohen stuff when it's not even about them. Like, I remember how angry the country of Kazakhstan still is about the film. And it's like, it's not a film about Kazakhstan. It's a film about fucking America.

And the whole point is that like no Americans have any idea what Kazakhstan is like. And that's how it elicits the insanity of Americans. But the Kazakhs are like, no, nobody has a dildo for hands. This is false news. We do have superior potassium, but that is where the similarities end. Well, it's like, you guys ever see that like the thing about this sale, right? Is you ever see that movie, The Other Guys? Yeah, yeah.

Like, you know how like there's that there's that repeating trope where Mark Wahlberg's character keeps on being like I'm a peacock. Yeah, he got to let me fly. But he's Mark Sonovitch. But he goes crazy in the in the in the in the art gallery. But everyone just keeps applauding him because he's like, he's oh, yeah. So raw and real. He's like, no, I'm trying to say I'm fucking mad.

And they're like, oh, this is a perfect performance of anger. Yeah, it's like it's like a frank and always sunny in Philadelphia. That episode when he's the art buyer and it's like an AC unit. He's like, oh, this is, you know, he does that this is a society bit. Basically, we live in a society. It's like the thing about the art market that's I think that I think a lot of people forget is like they just decide what it's all worth, right? Like, and this is just a gigantic global grift.

Where a group of people are like collectively coming together to say, actually it's shredded and that says more about our society. So it's worth more. Also, the art is painting. No, no, no, knowing this from from previous work in the corporate world. The art market is also a money laundering vehicle for a lot of insane rich people with no taste whatsoever. Yeah, because you can just pay for it.

You can you can you can pick like fucking take a shit and again, which an artist actually did Marcel Duchamp sold artist shit. The original bank. Then you kind of then you can then you can get it appraised at, you know, a million a million pounds. Then you can donate it to a museum and then you can take a million pound tax right off. Yeah, literally, something people do all the time. Yeah.

What was that? Oh, shit. Yeah, I know I went to I went to what is it called? It's Art Basel in Miami. It was like I mean, it was simultaneously one of the best experiences because I was just like high and drunk the entire time with like a bunch of celebrities and it was great and it was a lot of fun, but also the worst because every single person there is literally the worst people on the planet. Like all of those billionaires get together in various parts of the world

called Basel and they essentially buy the overpriced art. But the thing I was going to say about that experience, the worst person on the planet is Alec Monopoly. Are you guys familiar with who this person is? Is that the guy, the monopoly guy? No, no. So Alec Monopoly like makes Banksy look like Banksy's an absolute genius, like best fucking street art person on the planet because he first of all,

he always wears like a bandana, the mask is face. He is the the wealthy fail son of I think the forever 21 dynasty, I guess. Like he and and he just decided that come in Chinese history, the forever 21. Yeah, but he he decided he's just going to be a street artist so that he bought the rights, the monopoly guy. And he just like kind of stencils the monopoly guy everywhere and he works with BMW where he I think he worked with with Audemars, like all of the expensive high end like brands, luxury brands all work with this guy.

And all he does is just like stencil the monopoly man and like different art, different paint splatters on top of like G wagons and shit. Is that a criticism of like consumerism or something? No, no, no, no, no, no, it's literally it's the opposite. It's like for wealthy sheiks who have absolutely zero taste to be like, this is good. You know, I don't know much about this man, but he drives everywhere in a metal shoe, which makes me trust him. Yeah, it's just it's so it's so terrible.

I mean, I urge everyone to go. Look, he's my hate follow of the year of all time, maybe is Alec monopoly. You heard it here, folks, hate follow Alec monopoly. It's great. But I think like the fundamental point I think before we sort of carry on is like that I think that all of this stuff is like, whether it's Alec monopoly, just doing the monopoly man over and over again. Though that's interesting and new and or whether it's Banksy being like,

have you considered maybe your phone might be using you? You know, all of it basically is just sort of your phone might be watching you jacking in. Releasing an unflattering double chin to the public at large. This is why I always put my phone in a car before I jack it. Basically, the difference between all this stuff is it's basically just an investment vehicle. And to think of it as radical, I think, is to mistake where radicalism can be. Look for something more overtly political. But also, I think that it's always going to sell itself like as

whatever it's assessed value is just its absolute value as like a creative work. And that always seems to belie the fact that like it's an investment vehicle. And so really, it's just it has value because people have decided it has value, whether or not it's a complete piece of shit or not. Although you got to say it made us think it did make us think. And maybe we do live in a society. It made us talk. And it made you listen.

It brought us all closer together. Maybe maybe the hacky foe street art was the friends who made along the way. So yeah, thank you, everybody. Carrying on. Now, Asan, you're well familiar with the sort of horrible, hawkish, right wing wing of the Democratic Party, which is most of it. Which is all of it, yeah, for the most part. Yeah, almost 100 percent of it. But we are have you ever heard of progress, capital P, a group?

I have not. This is excellent. This is a true I think of this as a treat. It's not often I get to introduce this sort of awful labor right pressure groups like progress or labor first to people who are unfamiliar with them, because everyone here knows who they are. Because we all hate them because they're all led by people who look like they're snowmen made of ham. Specifically, this one, I think it's either read by a cursed or angel, but they both look like snowmen made of ham. Progress recently posted an article that sort of wants to try and influence sort of a post Brexit foreign policy, especially with regards to Russia and China. And it's called Vietnam syndrome in which my favorite kind of syndrome in which they get better than golf or special kind of disease you can get from sex tourism.

Vietnam syndrome, they write is sort of a press release is not an actual disease Marvin Cowell, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, an international affairs think tank in Washington, D.C. Oh, God, our favorite. Also, the labor the labor party quoting the Brookings Institute, which sounds like a nightclub to be in before the Brookings institution is is not it's not right wing, but it's sort of like centrist and to our eyes it's going to seem center right, but like in the American consciousness. It's actually like, well, there, how dare you, sirs. I used to have a boss who was when I mentioned a friend of mine had gotten a fellowship at the Brookings institution. He's like, oh, so he's a fucking communist then because my boss was right wing. Yeah. And so in that Wall Street Journal reading as kind of like conception of the world, the Brookings institution is a left organization.

Even though it is not radical, radical practice, the Brookings Institute. So they the Brookings institution defines Vietnam syndrome as quote, a fundamental reluctance to commit American and therefore, by extension, British military power anywhere in the world. Now, the modern day parallel is clear. People who support it and oppose the Iraq war will agree that the outcome was tragic. Yet, despite the record breaking protests, the war was relatively popular in its early stages, only becoming significantly unpopular with hindsight. Is there justification? Um, oh, God. So hindsight is always wrong, as we know.

Whereas what you think at the time is always right. It's like the witch trials. What it doesn't take into consideration is like, if opinion polls were supporting the war at the time, then that also has something to do with the fact that there was a lot of false fucking information about why people wanted to have a war in Iraq. Like there was absolutely just a sheer. Saddam Hussein was going to do the rock. So Saddam Hussein literally did 9-11 and was going to do the rock elsewhere in the world if we didn't stop him. Um, he had mobile weapons labs that had, you know, special chemical munitions that could only be starcraft. It was actually flying around that Saddam Hussein and shot two pack and he got a bit out of hand.

I mean, basically there was like a massive disinformation campaign. And so it's like, you know, if your average person, especially American was like pro the Iraq war, it's like, well, yeah, because they were literally being told day in and day out that fucking Saddam did 9-11. Like that was coming from Bush. Like, I mean, I'm not saying like verbatim, but it was it was so heavily implied that not only were they were involved, but that they were going to try to do more unless the US stopped them. So like what they do it because that's like, like, St. Louis is always like, oh, shit, they're going to do a 9-11 to our arch. Exactly. No, nothing is going to own America harder than an arch that has nobody in it just getting blown up. But it's a really theatrical.

But like just just for context for you, Hassan, these are some of the two groups that are most like coordinatedly opposing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. It's like Jeremy Corbyn or these guys. So it's like near Tandon, but but like, yeah. So it's the near Tandon of the UK. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, they definitely need that. Like if you have left genuine left wing populism, that is like proven to work against the the international white nationalist resurgence that you're seeing everywhere. You always have to have a right wing element within that faction to like kind of muddy the waters and and and fight tooth and nail to ensure that we go back to the neoliberal hellhole that that brought us to this problem in the first place.

That's where we are now. Yeah, because otherwise, like if we don't if we don't do that, then like Day of the Dead style, Margaret Thatcher's fist is just going to punch through this through the topsoil. Like Lenin on the Simpsons episode when he comes back to life. I don't know. Oh, there's a Simpson reference to be had. Riley is going to get it. No, I was going to say more like what we need is the other thing of that happened in the Simpsons when Lenin comes back to life. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, but when the clock strikes 1982, that actually comes back to life. Um, so basically it says that, um, that the overall that this was the Iraq war has given us Vietnam syndrome again, and this will surprise you not at all what the article references next, that the slide towards isolationism, which is as Jeremy Corbyn sort of promotes can have or they say is isolationism can have dangerous consequences. The post-war liberal world order is currently in the balance, which people love by the way with Russia and China on the rise, the United States in retreat and the fracturing of our European alliance, our collective inaction when Vladimir Putin made the decision to annex Crimea has only emboldened him to act further learning from the mistake, learning the mistakes from Vietnam and Iraq is important, but and do everybody try to like, you know, clamp down on the steam that's going to come out of your ears in a moment. But knowing when to stand up to bullies is also important. Oh, no. So we're not nothing else from Harry Potter.

So Russia, Russia is all about the haters, man. It's all about taking down the haters, you know, bullies like the situation you're in. Yeah, exactly. It made rice farmers the big they were the bullies. It wasn't us. It wasn't fucking John McCain or like the U.S. armed forces that came in and just like drop napalm on these villages and killed a bunch of people. It was us. They were torturing John McCain.

I was just like giving him swirlies. I was kept in a locker for five years deprived of lunch money. But it's like it's like like like like skinny little uncle Sam is sort of walking through the hallways and just gets his books knocked out of his hands by a Chad North Vietnamese farmer. The thing that gets me about that is it for one thing, Vietnam syndrome. People talked about how, you know, the U.S. was going to be shy on the international stage somehow because we weren't able to force the Vietnamese who famously kicked the fucking Chinese and the Japanese and the French out. We weren't able to also win. Like we've since gone on to try our hand at other unwinnable wars and lose them in other countries. But you guys are so good at that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing about it is we never want to. We always want to say that like there's something that makes us different than, you know, everybody else who sucked because we're clearly the best country on the planet that's ever existed. And so like when we lose a war that the British and the Russians lost or when we are unable to contain, you know, the area that has arbitrary borders drawn by both the Ottomans and the British or. When we can't fucking win in Vietnam, like invariably, like it's because someone in America betrayed us. We're always going to win until we were betrayed because we're not like those other shitty countries that oftentimes were better at military operations. Quite frankly, then we were, but, you know, weren't necessarily as rich. This is the, this is, this is absolutely the like the Midwest dumb guy.

This is the, this is the, you know, I couldn't fight because of any number of reasons. It's the classic like, dude, if they weren't holding me back, dude, you're so lucky we got scared. Yeah, exactly. But also, I mean, the idea that we were going to stand up to Vladimir Putin, it's like Russia has nuclear weapons. So, I mean, any kind of confrontation that you're going to get yourself into, like. That's what we have ours. So we can trade them and end all life on Earth because of principle. I mean, I guess one thing I want to say about Vietnam, Vietnam syndrome is that like for all the talk of Vietnam syndrome, like we invaded Grenada in 1980.

We invaded Panama in 1989. We then fought in the Gulf War and like supposedly then Gulf War syndrome was over, but like the, or the desert Vietnam syndrome was over. But like, I guess the thing that kills me about it is that nothing, no talk about shyness on the international stage has ever stopped the United States from invading countries. When, yeah, when has the United States ever been shy about, about conducting devastating imperialism all around the world? Like, what is it? Were we shy when we were, wait, were we standing up to bullies when we were just unleashed? We were just unleashing hell upon, I mean, in the form of, I guess, fighting communism worldwide. Was that communism was the bully?

Like, or Iran, even when you think about it? They'd be a regional power. Yeah. Basically from the year 1975 to 1982, our books got dumped and we were so sad about that we decided to go get, get Hansh in the gym. That's why we invaded an island in the Caribbean that had literally barely any military. Yeah. Actually, that, that, that island was a nuclear arms superpower. You just didn't know about it.

And we basically, the way that we were every every grenade in his special forces, no one knows the way that we regained our confidence was to whoop the shit out of somebody weaker than us. She's like, see, we actually can win wars. And it's like, but not against rice farmers. Well, that's, but that's the other thing, right? Like, know how they call it a syndrome as though the natural, I mean, the natural state of the US is to be imperialist. And then, and therefore, again, therefore by extension, the UK, because their whole point is Jeremy Corbyn's unwillingness to use Trident and unwillingness to invade Russia for no reason is going to be the you know, the end of us. What do they think is going to happen?

Like, I don't under that. That's the other thing I don't understand. Like, all right, so we're, we're like arming in the US, we're arming Nazis in the Ukraine, right? Like that's our standard protocol as we do with other violent military militant groups that we decide are like somehow going to be favorable to us down the line or whatever. We just like kind of throw them away after a while and then they turn out to be terror cells and fight them again. But like, what's the plan? Like, what are you, what are we going to do? Are we just going to like invade Russia?

Like, what's the UK trying to do there? Like, I don't understand that at all. Well, something else that I point out too is that like, every time you hear Jeremy Corbyn or somebody on the left articulate something with regard to foreign policy or specifically like what you're just saying, like it gets derided as being unrealistic. But I mean, in a way, somebody saying, no, I'm going to categorically rule out getting in a war with another nuclear power. That's actually way more realistic than somebody turning around and be like, no, we have to be strong and we have to stand up. It's like, because what do you, what are you really going to stand out? Like standing up apparently is what Hassan just said. Arming, like using, you know, unconventional warfare and arming factions in these countries and destabilizing them.

But like, it's not actually going to accomplish what you want. And furthermore, I mean, like, I don't think that for one, most Americans could look at our involvement in Ukraine or in Syria and be like, oh, yeah, we definitely made it better over there. Because like, correct me if I'm wrong, but like the border region of Ukraine, like they're still fucking like artillery battles happening. This is, this is the weird thing for me. And it doesn't apply to almost any other conflict, but it does kind of apply to the Ukraine one, which is that like, I mean, there's no reason for the US to be involved in almost all of the conflict is involved in. But like the Ukraine one is like, well, people, I think some people on the left make the assumption that like Putin is playing by any of the rules that the West is notionally playing by and like he is not. And so when people say you have to stand up to Putin or embolden him, I think that is true. That doesn't necessarily mean militarily, but like, I definitely think people don't take Putin seriously enough.

And people are like, oh, it's fine, you know, he's just like fucking around. But like, no, like he has an agenda and like he is not playing by the established like international diplomacy rules. So when people think that like, oh, we can just make an arrangement with Putin, like that's not it's like he plays in a similar way to hit like it's a similar like you don't appease Putin, you like fucking deal with him. But like the rules that we've set up internationally and I'm not a fan of Vladimir Putin. Like I'm not obviously not. I should probably state that. Yeah. Yeah.

He's pretty terrible. We are Putin stands. We're not going to come after you if you say something about him by your DMs. We're not going to make sure that you tweet the worst tweet that'll end your career. Maybe. Yeah. No, what I was going to say is like the international rules of diplomacy are for the most part created by Western like the Geneva Convention is a perfect example of this. Like it's usually created by the Western developed nations to break the rules themselves and only to enforce upon other nations.

And like I obviously hate imperialism in all forms, including Russian imperialism or when China does a similar thing when they're trying to assert global power. But like ultimately the way I think about it is I guess it's like minimum like it's just minimizing a conflict as best as possible. And in that instance, like I'm not saying don't take Vladimir Putin seriously, but but like there's no other there's diplomatic way to deal with it. I guess. And it doesn't involve like trying to stand up to Vladimir Putin and like blame him for all of America's like personal problems. And that's a weird thing, too, is that like that when when somebody like this talks about standing up to Putin, there's a sort of subtext there that is going to like ring bells for Americans. Like oh yeah, because Putin who made America racist and made Donald Trump president as if that wasn't our own fucking problem. He's he's our Gaddafi, but he's our cultural Gaddafi.

We're like, you know, like for people who haven't sort of seen hyper normalization or don't know that history. Gaddafi was sort of created as a kind of cartoon supervillain by the UK and US so they could say that he was a dangerous rogue actor to justify imperialist policy. And then they could further justify imperialist policy or look our imperialist policy made this guy disarm his weapons. And it was like and now it's put but now like I think the liberals are using Putin as a cultural thing. We're like, ah, America was great and made it racist and terrible. I mean, also he's like supposedly a communist, too. You've guys probably seen those. Famously left-wing man, Vladimir Putin, yeah. Famously left-wing exactly.

I look in SJ dub that guy. Putin's influence on college campuses gotten too far. Vladimir Putin triggered his hell by Donald Trump. So I got I got to ask Milo Milo Milo spent a lot of time in Russia and speech Russian and everything. And I'm just wondering like with this sort of discussion taking place, I mean, like people want to make Vladimir Putin into this. I mean, not to defend him at all, but they want to make him into like this all seeing all knowing like world supervillain. But at the same time, like he strikes me as interested in things that are going to benefit him and his government and also hilariously corrupt to the point of kind of being dumb.

And that's why I'm wondering like what your take is because like if you ask the centrist libs in the center, right libs like invariably, it's going to point towards we have to stand up to him militarily. But like who need to agree? I have so many thoughts about Vladimir Putin that it's difficult to articulate them all. The first thing I'll say is I think the main problem with like global opposition to Vladimir Putin is that it's being articulated by people who are fucking dumb asses. And like if the left could co-opt opposition to Vladimir Putin, that would be fucking great and big dick it as hell. Because actually like I do like I don't think you can say like we will never militarily stand up to Vladimir Putin under any circumstances because Vladimir Putin literally uses the military to like attack like there may come a point when that is necessary genuinely rather than being necessary to like deflect attention from like American internal politics or whatever.

And so I think ruling that out is like kind of dumb because it just hands Putin like more power both internally and externally. But another prism through which you have to understand Vladimir Putin is that like he's interested more in internal politics than he is in international politics, which means that he does a lot of international politics, but it's all about how it plays in Russia. And so like he will like he's like the Ukraine is just a way for him to like create fucking chaos around the borders of Russia to cement his internal power. But like as his grip on Russian power like weakens because things keep getting shittier there, he's going to keep doing that more and he will do it in more fucked up ways. And like he's definitely not above starting like major global conflicts and people who like are not taking notice of that are like oblivious. Probably not aware of what happened in Chechnya in the late 90s, early 2000s. I mean Russia is a country where pretty much everyone knows like their security services blew up for apartment blocks full of Russian citizens to blame it on the Chechens.

I mean, those guys are not fucking around. What you will about America, but like those guys are on a new level. Yeah, no, I mean, my point is like I, I, I, I analyze Vladimir Putin from the same framework that I look at. Like that I look at Recep Tayyip Erdogan and like the arguably similar in its brutality and it's also tendency to do like false or false flag operations. And the way I see it is I feel like every global power does this. It's not to justify what Russia is doing. It's not to justify how violent Russia has been or how violent Turkey has been. But I feel like when Western involvement, when when when when the West decides to also involve themselves in conflict that isn't in that region, I feel like, I don't know, maybe I'm just more of an isolationist.

But like whenever they try to do that, especially when it comes to Vladimir Putin, when his economic interests lie in like building pipelines or controlling some form of like trying to try to sell natural gas to Europe, essentially. And maybe I'm maybe I'm doing a really terrible job of describing it and there's like much more. There's there's a lot more than Vladimir Putin wants, maybe as far as like building Russia as a global power. But I feel like it's more so about in order to ensure that the region is not as chaotic as it is right now in order to like ever bring about some sort of peace in the Middle East. I feel like we have to we have to look at Russia as a is not just like a dangerous military state, but as a as a global power that that has an economic interest in the region and potentially deal with them in that regard. Yeah, I think the problem is basically that you're not dealing with like a country that has a stretch. I think that like Putin's interests are like not aligned with Russia's interests. And that's kind of where a lot of the problems come in because like the worst things get economically in Russia, the better that is for Putin because the more he can like spin the story of like we're being fucked over because it doesn't affect him personally.

One of the problems is seeing as seeing Russia as basically just one monolithic thing and there's just Putin, right? Like there are different, you're different levels you can engage with the society on. And the fact that the fact that the fact that the West sees Russia through the prism exclusively of militarism is one that will simply lead to imperial conflicts in the future. And further, I think just pulling it back to this put to what progress is saying, the fact that they're saying trying to avoid military conflict or voicing opposition to military conflict or finding alternatives is a syndrome rather than what should be normal. Is I think very telling that these people are unwilling to think critically about Russia beyond it's a boogeyman that needs to be stopped. And moreover, my wife won't fuck me. So please can we do a charge of the Light Brigade? Well, I mean, I would also say two things.

First of all, that like, I mean, one of the things that I appreciated about Jeremy Corbyn is that he's articulated examples of things where he thought that like a coalition style military operation would be something that would have been a good thing. Like to talking about genocide in East Timor, for example, or genocide in Rwanda or places where like a peacekeeping coalition might have stopped what was happening. He's not opposed that he's he's gone on the record saying I'm not an absolute pacifist. I just categorically reject the idea that our first option should be military deployments. And I appreciate that because I mean, I feel like once you're there having been there having done this myself having been in the military and it's been deployed to Afghanistan. Like if you if you aren't set up in a way where it's very clearly articulated what you're supposed to be doing and not doing then you winds up drifting into you being a belligerent in a region where you have no stake. That's why I'm always laughing when people are like, well, we can't we can't just like tell the Taliban where we're going to leave Afghanistan because then they'll just wait us out. Like, yes, they're going to wait you out in their fucking home where they live, where you're not from.

It's insane. But I mean, another thing that I want to articulate is the the the the the centrist, the kind of like the the the frightened liberal consensus view of of the world involving Russia seems to completely disregard. There's such a thing as Russian domestic politics that the Russian state exists. Putin only exists as a troll to fuck with the West and it completely ignores what Milo pointed out that like a lot of this is done for domestic Russian consumption. Yeah. No, exactly. And I completely agree with what Hassan said earlier about how like there's a huge problem with like, okay, if we agree that like there needs to be some policing done in the world, quote unquote, like who's doing it?

Who is fit to do it? And I don't I don't think like the U.S. in its current form has the tall clean hands or is it? Yeah, I mean, I don't. Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said. I think that like, yeah, also, something needs to be done about this problem. I don't know what it is. It's just definitely it's not this. And like, yeah, and it's fine to have like, you know, Russia is like a substantial regional power, just not when it's being run by like fucking kleptocrats.

Like if you have like a reasonably run Russian state, like the U.S. should be more than happy to share power with it. Like that's not there was literally a problem, you know, for all the talk of like the NATO tension being created, like the NATO build up with Eastern European countries joining NATO. There was a period at which I want to say in like the early 2000s when Russia was actually doing joint military exercises with the U.S. military in Europe, like there was a point at which it was feasible. There might have been this sort of like, you know, I mean, not to say that like the neoliberal consensus was a good thing, but like it was trending that direction before it went the opposite direction. And so it's like, if you had a situation where Russia was not a complete fucking madhouse, then you might see exactly what you've just described understanding that Russia's a regional power is going to have influence in a region in Central Asia in Eastern Europe, not looking at them as like the evil empire, but then also like not necessarily seeing them as like our, you know, the next war we're preparing for. And I just feel like these people who talk about the next war we're preparing for are so divorced from the reality of like what a what warfare is and be like what a war with Russia would look like that like they think they're being reasonable and sensible and they don't realize they're being absolutely insane. And it's just that formulation that you just read out loud where I like that's revealing it to me like just how fucking bananas it is because it like don't let the fear of an imperial catastrophe in Vietnam, which actually happened or an imperial catastrophe in Iraq, which actually happened to trigger you from the next

imperial catastrophe, which might literally involve nuclear weapons. Yeah, people are rubbing their hands at the thought of war with Russia don't realize how much counter strike the Russians have played. I think I think I've got the solution to this guys. Okay. Trump and Putin kissing and it's graffiti. Whoa. Yeah. Fuck and solved it.

Dude. Or dude. Yeah, we've solved it. We've solved it with art that makes you think. Wow. Here you go, sir. Here's $60,000. I'm commissioning this for the New York Times.

The problem is, is that if you if you try to make that into artwork and you sell it as soon as the big the gavel hits, it turns you gay. No, as soon as you sell it, Banksy detonates a claim or mine and completely destroys it and we're back at square one. The idea of feeding Putin and Trump through a shredder kind of gets my dick hard to be honest. You've been doing a lot of talk about feeding shit through shredders today. It's historically important for the it's from the Banksy thing on you haven't been yet you will in the future. No, we talked about a Banksy thing. The shredder is a Banksy thing. How are you this how are you this bad at like holding it holding a theme together.

So just to close just to close this to close this out to close this section out. Luke A. Kirst, who is sort of the big the big ham snowman in charge of this particular group responded to a criticism that basically is kind of what we were saying which is this is basically war crime and this is why we apologize and dressed up in the pseudo intellectual language of imperialist imperialist geopolitics. We don't want blank checks for a war machine. His response and this is why you know these people are smart and good at government is this is just a bot generating random lefty buzzwords war crimes blah blah imperialism blah blah neoliberalism blah blah. None of these things mean anything. Yes, because none of that has ever happened. There's never been any war crimes.

They don't exist. Probably just I bet they're going to do a UK tour and they're going to they're going to have like Chris Leslie on or whatever and be like this brave MP is standing up to Trump and responsible economics where we're not spending the damn deficit and turning into Vena Freakens Waila. I want to know what Nigel Baker thinks about all this. Excuse me. I don't know what a Vietnam is. Did you explain to me? So I guess I just look at it that this this to me is indicative of the kind of reputation washing that people want to do because what is the centrist liberal in Britain?

What is their their biggest problem? Is it Tony Blair is completely tainted because of Iraq? So if you can rehabilitate Iraq, you can rehabilitate Tony Blair and you can rehabilitate that kind of politics, which apparently everyone's just dying for everyone out there. It's like God, I hate this Jeremy Corbyn telling me about things that are going to make my life better. Go back to some shit that literally is so abstract that I can't understand. I was going to say the great was a gymnastics camp. The one thing the one thing you can take from this is that unlike America where this represents the only realistic political tendency to the left of fascism. This has a constituency of like five people and they all work for progress.

Yeah, no, it's awesome that like that people actually held Tony Blair accountable or were like very upset at him even, which is a low standard to set, but we don't even have that in America. And we still pass on military. Yeah, I mean, he just we still exactly we still pass like these insane military discretionary spending bills with. I just got a brain twinge, which is that at one point Hillary Clinton is going to get up and say Congress needs to pass this military spending bill like my honored colleague George Bush passed a piece of candy to Michelle Obama. Oh, Jesus Christ. So sorry. It's just like it's my God. Melania is just throwing such shade.

I want to move. I want to move on. I want to move on to the to the last topic before we before Hussein transforms into Trevor, which is a little like a cocoon. I'm in a cocoon at the moment. This is a digital waiting until I transform into a gamer. So this is some sort of good news, which is that after successful pressure led by Bernie Sanders, who if you ask the near attendants, the world never did anything. He just complains. Amazon has raised the minimum wage for all of its hourly staff to $15 U.S.

Which we can all agree, I think is basically a good thing in an extremely limited way with many caveats. Yes. So Hassan, you're more plugged into into U.S. politics. Have you been you've been following this? I have been. Well, I also have friends that work for Amazon as well. They work and we constantly argue back and forth about the working like the conditions of the workers in Amazon facilities. And this is a testament more to like how unaware the cogs in the machine are as far as like like knowing what class you're a part of in America.

Like class consciousness does not exist. We talk about this. I'm sure you guys have talked about it on this podcast. It exists in Britain, but in its purely cultural. Yeah. But in the United States, like everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and all that stuff. So like we were having this conversation and I didn't know what he did. I'm not going to name my friend.

I don't want him to lose his job, but we were having this conversation about like Amazon facilities and the working conditions of the workers. And he's like, no, no, no, it's totally fine. And only after, you know, they report back to me, like, and they tell me that they love the jobs and they love that they get productivity bonuses and whatnot. And only after like we had this back and forth conversation, did he realize that he was essentially in a managerial position, even though he technically wasn't a manager. Like his entire job is essentially the whip that cracks the back of the Amazon workers. Did he realize that they're probably not like being very open and honest with him and and that to me like that. I and he's like a lefty kind of guy, not like super lefty. But to me, that was really interesting or at least telling that like people are completely unaware of where they stand when they work in these gigantic corporations.

But ultimately, people think that the Amazon thing is good. But like you said, there are a lot of caveats, including the productivity bonuses that they're facing out. I was going to say the company announced Tuesday that it will raise the minimum wage to 15 an hour. But as you were saying, tucked away in that announcement was the fact that Amazon will phase out its bonus and stock war programs for its hourly workers. Right. And I think what this goes to show fundamentally is that the problem isn't low pay. Low pay is a symptom of the bigger problem, which is that a garden gnome gets to decide what like hundreds of thousands of people's pay is going to be. Right. Like you can you can have as many raises as you want. Jeff Bezos is ultimately going to be asking the question what is going to make it so I make as much money next year as I did this year.

Also, I think a point to is that Amazon's incredible anti-union bias is such that like it's one thing if a union delivers this to its membership and that's the concession they're able to grant. It's another thing when all of this is done by fiat at the you know, at the best of the billionaire who runs the company. And so like, you know, the first thing and then we're thanking him and then we're thanking him. Hillary Clinton and every single person is like, oh my God, thank you, Jesse. There's good billionaires. Exactly. And that was one of the things that I think you could contrast Bernie Sanders with Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn's response was like, I actually have this. And so there this is a tale of three tweets, actually. OK, so this is Jolly and mom, who is QC, a again, probably the dumbest person who's had the most education.

He is, I guess, if I was drawn American equivalent, it would be like, who was the American? He is a smart, he is a very well educated sort of centrist concern troll, more or less. That's a tough one. I mean, I would say just be like David Brooks or something. He's like, he's like, he's like two inches to the left of David Brooks. And he's got radicalized by Brexit, like all these idiots did. So he said, there is a significant difference of tone here between Sanders and Corbyn. Sanders happy to credit Amazon for taking a significant step forward and urges others to follow. Corbyn just uses it as a platform to attack Amazon for other failures.

Yeah, there's plenty of failures to attack Amazon. Like I don't understand, we haven't the work hasn't stopped. You know what I mean? Like our struggle continues in this instance, and it will forever probably continue, especially when, like you said, billionaires get to make these decisions. Look, the most telling part about this, for me at least, is the fact that they shifted, instead of taking, instead of redistributing profits, right, in a more equitable way, which is essentially what people want when they're talking about minimum wage being raised to the $15.

Instead of doing that, they essentially worked around other ways that they were already paying out workers and took that away and just said, all right, here you go. You have your symbolic $15 minimum wage. And that is, that's really telling that they're not taking away anything from the shareholders. They're not taking anything away from Jeff Bezos. But instead, they're, even when you're delivering $15 minimum wage to the workers, you're still taking it from the other benefits that these workers were receiving. I think it's anything, what this should teach us, and what countless events like this in the past should teach us,

is that anything a billionaire gives you is basically a wish and a monkey's paw, because they're going to fuck with you in some other way. Except for George Soros, who still hasn't paid me, and I'm waiting on it. It's bullshit. Everyone keeps saying he's paying me. Where is my money, dude? Follow his son, Alex Soros, on Instagram, just so he'll pay me. It hasn't happened yet. George Soros has, of course, lavished us with this office and this cardboard standee of Elon Musk.

I would just like to thank George Soros at the moment for the live wires that are hanging in the other room. Very much. When I was locking up yesterday, I'm pretty sure one of the bulbs exploded in another room. I would like to thank George Soros for that, and in the event that one of us catches on fire. I was thinking about this the other day, how George Soros is the weirdest right wing conspiracy. I guess all of us are paid actors, right? Oh yeah, we're already from a script. That's why this podcast is so tight. That's why we literally have a script, even though some of us, aka me, don't ever read it.

I was thinking about the other day how George Soros is the weirdest right wing conspiracy theory, because there are all these super right wing people who believe that a billionaire is funding a leftist conspiracy to institute communism. It makes no sense whatsoever. I think it's like open society. They do actually promote a lot of left-wing or left-adjacent candidates and causes. I think that George Soros, and I haven't really looked too much into this except for creepily stalk his son, Alex Soros, with hopes that he'll DM me one day and I'll be like, dude, just give me like 10 million. It's mine.

We won't talk about it. I'll go to any protest you won't. Yeah, I'll go to all the fight. Go anyway for fucking free, dude. Give me 10 million. Anyway. Make me freshly dipped in supreme. Yeah, exactly. But it's interesting because I think I believe he wrote something like George Soros wrote like an article back in the day,

like a very long time ago about how like the existence of billionaires is actually like the reason why the system or economic system is broken or something. I don't know. But to my knowledge, like he is kind of a left-wing guy and he does definitely fund like left-wing causes. I mean, and like he, for example, he financed Gillum in Florida alongside our revolution. And that was interesting. They gave him like a last second and Tom Steyer, which was really weird. Tom Steyer, the billionaire fucking California hedge fund guy who was like, we're going to say no to Donald Trump. If you give me your name and information.

So when I run for president, eventually. Oh yeah. Pro impeachment thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know what it is? It's in order to thank George Soros for being such a good billionaire. I'm very excited to make him a millionaire.

Yeah. No, that's, that's, I totally agree with that. But it's, it's really, I mean, it's all projection. Obviously we know this because like whenever Republicans are like, oh my God, you have a shadowy billionaire financing these protests. Unlike us, the Republicans. Unlike us, the Republicans who definitely don't do that. I mean, I can't wait till Wyatt Coke is the shadowy billionaire. He's just going to be wearing his fat guy shirts, like sliding over a bunch of money that he just ate.

Another billionaire, wealthy billionaire son I follow. No, that's what it's going to be. He's going to try to pay, he's going to try to like pay off like, like whoever, like when they nominate, I don't know, fucking like. A literal vampire. When they, when they, when they nominate, like, you know, Jeff Bezos to the Supreme Court, for example. Like, like Wyatt Coke is going to try to pay off someone in chocolate coins. It's going to be great. I mean, I love that.

He would never let go of his chocolate coins. Don't be ridiculous. Wow. You guys are body shaming, dude. I'm just kidding. We do love his incredibly well designed fashion apparel. It's good for the boardroom and the discotheque. Absolutely.

Seamlessly. That's the thing. I feel like everyone stopped talking about Wyatt Coke, the funniest thing that's ever happened. Yeah. No, I still go back and watch that video every now and then. He's like a minor character from one of those 90s James Bond movies who like helps James Bond out. If I like some like minor CIA guy who's like fat and wearing a Hawaiian shirt and he's like. He calls him Jim.

He's like, yeah. The Russians are just over that hill over there. No. Before we, before we. I feel that like Wyatt Coke will end up becoming like the kingpin in the next inevitable Spider-Man reboot. Hawaiian kingpin. So I think before we can end the episode there. Before we before we transition to to gaming, I wanted to just sort of point out that like people listening to this thinking about the Amazon minimum wage fight and how the ownership is structured.

Might be thinking this is good generally, but it doesn't affect me. The problem is it does. It doesn't affect you now, but it might at some point in the future because Amazon has all these programs to get into what it call it sees as every single industry in the world and take it over. I was doing a little more. You'll never take out podcast Amazon. I was doing a little more research and like they have a program called career choice where where what they do is they subsidize and subsidize and subsidize training for employees. Often low wage employees who in many different fields like aircraft mechanics, nursing that Amazon is not in on the basis that they say, oh, we're putting the person above the employee and providing on the job satisfaction. But the real point is that Bezos is willing to spend infinite money for it to operate programs that don't make any money on the basis that he's going.

He can spend it for long enough to take over that industry and keep undercutting the competition and keep just setting himself up as the king of everything. No, it's like it's literally it's feudalism. I mean, I've said this before and I'll say it again, but I think the best way if you want to actually bring about a bloodless communist revolution, you just let Jeff Bezos do whatever the fuck he wants and inevitably nationalize Amazon. So then all of a sudden taking over every industry around the planet globally allow Jeff Bezos to be the multinational like corporation that is the singular monopoly for every industry and then you kill Jeff Bezos. Just take it over. Yeah, just nationalize it and there you have it. Fuck yeah. Full communism.

One person dies. Full luxury techno communism. I think that's actually a good place to transition into that other murder simulator. Okay, I didn't. And that was a joke. I obviously love Jeff Bezos. I have a twitch so I love billionaires whenever they like they're all like nerdy fucking weird guys that definitely never saw the sunlight. And then they become billionaires and they get all the special bells and whistles.

They're all jack now. All the billionaires are jack. What the fuck happened? When did they? What did they know that we don't know? Like I thought when you're a billionaire, like you're, you're, you know, you're working a billion times harder than everyone else. So when like Wyatt Koch becomes a billionaire, right? Is he going to become jack?

I mean, he is. And we are like, see like, Wyatt Koch is just fucking up right now when he goes into his face. He's huge. He's the first 30 years of his life bulking and he's about to shred. Yeah. It's just like their hairline improves, except for Jeff Bezos. I don't know why he didn't do that Elon Musk thing.

But yeah, billionaires can't live with him. I'd love to live. There's no second part to that. Yeah. To that state. Anyway, shall we? Shall we talk to Trev? We should.

We're going to transform you. All right. And so it appears that a couple of things have happened from here. Number one, Hussain is magically transformed into Trevor Strunk at Hegel von host of No Cartridge. Yeah, it's, it's cool to be here in England. Those flights just keep getting cheaper and cheaper and way faster. Yeah.

And faster too. It's amazing. And moreover, we've decided that any running joke that's come up throughout the rest of the fullness of this episode actually wasn't that funny, so we won't be making them from here. Way to break kayfabe, man. Come on. All right.

So, um, It shows just hell for the listeners. It really is. Well, you know, we'll stitch it together in a way that makes sense. So Trev, you recently wrote an article on Fortnite and the post scarcity economy. And I just wanted to know if you could, um, for the, for the benefit of the listeners, let them know what Fortnite is, what the post scarcity economy is, and how the shit are they linked?

Yeah. So, um, Fortnite is, uh, basically the most popular game, uh, in existence right now. It's, uh, um, I, I'm in a group DM with a bunch of dads who were kind of wondering what it was. And the other dad sort of knew, but they asked me, and I described it as a game where you're dropped on an island with 99 other people and you have to murder them all. And, uh, someone said, it also has fun dances. Uh, basically, uh, you, you do a little dance for you after you eliminate one of the other

people on the island, scrabbling for survival. Um, like most battle royale games, it, it short and like sort of like limits the map as you go along. So there's a massive storm on the outside. You have to find all your gear. And there's also a building element. So you can build forts or big platforms and the best players in the game will build and shoot at the same time.

So, you know, watching it has become just as popular as playing it. I almost said almost, but it probably might even be more popular than playing it. Uh, because when you get people who are a, uh, high enough skill level, watching them build and, uh, uh, shoot at the same time, it's just, it's, it's pretty amazing. So are you, are you, are you building shoot at the same time? I, I want to say that I do, but I'm a lot. I mean, I had to quit after a while and then only take it up later, uh, because I did a quick switch between a PC and a PlayStation, but like it's very difficult.

Every 12 year old is like magically better than me. I hate it. I hate it so much. I can't stop playing it. Um, but yeah, I, I want to say that I can build and shoot. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's, it's the whole thing's kind of like Logan's run, isn't

it? Except like, you know, the, the magic, the thing in your arm goes off at the age of like 15. It's sort of like the older you get, the more impossible it is to kind of, it's, it's, it's funny cause it's like Logan's run in a way that like other esports are not where like, you know, you talk about something like, um, uh, Dota or something like that, right? Where as you get older, your fingers can't actually like go the, the right speed

anymore. But in Fortnite, it really is like, I think an older person's brain, and I count myself in this as well. I can't, an older person's brain can't have, can't hold the two thoughts at the same time. Can't be like, I'm building a tower and I'm shooting and I'm doing that at the same time. It's like playing the piano with both hands.

It's just like at a certain point, you're never going to pick it up. Yeah. And one of the things that you sort of talked about in the article was this idea that Fortnite is this, is this sort of violent murder simulator where you occasionally do a floss dance. Um, that also is like extremely popular among like people in the age of 12 and that our reaction to its violence, like comparing to like Jack Thompson of the late 1990s, where he said that like the Columbine shooters trained on this or that game has actually

been relatively muted. The Columbine shooters were the real truth. Actually, I had someone arguing with me about this, um, and we, we, he didn't like the article and weirdly we actually started talking about it, not like yelling at each other. Um, which is, Seems odd. Shocking. Yeah, I know it's weird.

It was, it was an odd choice, but, uh, we, we ended up chatting about it and like it turned out that his problem with my article was like, he thinks that the U S is less puritanical today than it was in the nineties. And that's why there's a muted, uh, quality, whereas I think if anything, it's just more puritanical than the nineties. So like, I mean, given that I think that, yeah, it's really weird that there's like a, an enormous like island, uh, murder simulation. And I mean, yes, you know, one of the, one of the things that makes it popular is it's

free. What makes it popular is like, it has all sorts of fun outfits that you can buy. And another thing that makes it popular is there's no blood. Like it, it hedges its bets. Like, uh, Riley, you said you were playing, you played like, uh, uh, um, PUBG. And like, PUBG definitely is a gritty, bloody sort of mess, which limits its appeal. Fortnite is like fun and colorful. You know, parents look at it and they're like, wow, you know, whatever.

Well, I mean, Trevor, I was just thinking about this from, because the last like multiplayer like 3D shooter kind of game that I played, you know, recently was, uh, I think it was one of the far cry games. I think it was three, if I'm not mistaken, um, but like that just seemed shockingly violent compared to like what I've seen on, uh, for one, what I've seen of like video snatches from Fortnite, but also certainly compared to like, uh, GoldenEye007 or, uh, like games from the late 2000, late nineties, early 2000s, like the, the parents getting mad about Grand Theft Auto or Doom or, uh, I don't know, like any one of those games seems like those

all seem really benign compared to like the level of violence that you'll see in some of like the mature, uh, 3D shooters now. Oh, for sure. For sure. And I mean that, that makes it kind of, that makes Fortnite sort of unique as well. Cause like it doesn't have that as much like it has the mechanic of like, oh, you're shot and you're, you know, you're down, but you're not dead yet. And you need to crawl around to your teammates.

And that's grim, but I think it's not as violent. That's not, that's not like one of those civilians in Far Cry. It's just like hideous and frightening. You know what I mean? Yeah. But one of the things I think that this goes into is like a lot of this violence sort of serves to mask what you talk about as the logic of scarcity, right? Where, oh, it's all very cartoonish, but there is real tendency that it, that undergirds it.

Yeah. So like, I feel like one of the things in the article that I didn't do was kind of give enough of a frame for this where like a lot of the way I'm understanding Fortnite comes from my understanding of like literary and artistic aesthetics. And like, Hey, Luke has a great line about this, where he's talking about Tolstoy. And he says, like, he really loves, he really loves, like, Balzac in order to Balzac and people like that who, if you've never read a Balzac novel, it's basically like, you know, class realism par excellence.

Like he just writes about like what poor people do. Um, but Tolstoy for Lukacs is even better because he says it, it represents the totality of the world without actually like aiming to do so. So his example is this conversation between a lawyer and a judge's wife. And this lawyer has been trying to get his client some sort of like justice the entire book. And finally, he talks to the judge's wife and the judge's wife goes, Oh, yeah, I'll talk to my husband about it. It's no problem.

And Lukacs says at that point, you get to see all of society laid out, you know, bare and it's very interesting. And I think like he's right. That's that is what good art does. But even bad art or like, you know, what you'd call, I guess, Fortnite would be sort of like accessible art or something like that. If it's art at all, it does that, right? Like it, to me, the fact that something is so popular and the basic premise is you

were on an island, there are limited resources, you have to compete with other people to get the resources. And not just that, but if you don't compete correctly, then they're going to kill you and you're going to die. So you better kill them first and build better and build faster. It truly is like, you know, contemporary capitalism simulator. Like you better get good at this. And if you're not good at it, you're going to fall behind very quickly.

And the penalty for that is that you die and have to leave the game. I think as a London resident, I'll identify with it more when you have when they release a new version, where you have to rent and shoot at the same time. So you, yeah, you say that the logic of scarcity asserts, there's a finite number of things in the world that we all need to survive and thrive. And basically only the strong can have them. And that we've basically internalized this. Always ninja or freaking 12 year old.

That's what that is. That does that mean that like only streamers are going to survive in this, in this like devastated late stage capitalist hole that we live in is just, it's a T fall. I mean, ninja is going to be the poet king or the poet, uh, the poet dictator of, uh, of all these 12 year olds. I think we need, we need, no, I think the Supreme court is what we need. He's never, never said anything problematic.

I mean, obviously, look, their, their opinions, like they're, they're all like secretly closeted social conservatives. A lot of those gamers are. So like ultimately it's not going to be that much different than the, than the current makeup of our, of our administration, at least in the U.S. Yeah, that's true. I want to support call this just in favor of he it gaming moments. Finally, they will have the, the, the, the reactionary right wing will have

exactly what they want to, which is make the, make it totally legal to say the N word. As a matter of fact, he'll get promoted if you say it. One time you say it, the high, that's, that's, that's the thing. They call you into your, your boss calls you into his office and you have to say it. If you don't, if you don't say it fast enough, you don't get promoted. It's like, it's like, they're going to release a new version of Fortnite where it's like, instead of unlockable skins, you have unlockable slurs. But no, I mean, like one of the things, uh, one of the things that's true

about the logic of scarcity, though, is that like it's not, there are realities in it. Like for sure, things are less and more scarce in the world, but it's not like, you know, the, the idea that, oh, we have 10 million people. So five million of them have to die. Malthus said so. Like that's just bunk. It's not true. It's based on sort of like racist and, and old fashioned, you know, that's

the nicest way of saying it, uh, ideas about the world. And so like, you know, this idea that Malthusian economics has such sway that we kind of look at something like Fortnite and say like, Oh yeah, sure. That makes sense. Like if you drop 100 people on an island, they have to kill each other or else they can't live. Um, that's weird. Like, but it, but it's so naturalized, right?

Like it's so naturalized and so easy for us to say like, yeah, okay. That's right. Yeah. So, but you go on to say that Fortnite isn't literally about scarcity, but it couldn't have reached its popularity in a world where all this stuff didn't seem obvious. Yeah. And I guess like when I say popularity, I don't mean that like the game is

played because of, uh, of that. Like it's not like people are playing it just because there's like scarcity and people care about that. Yeah, but people are playing it. People are playing it because they, you know, when I say it can't reach its popularity, um, I mean, like it can't reach a sort of like cultural saturation point, right? We're like the idea that it's everywhere and accessible and like people just kind

of are able to adapt to it super quickly. You know, it became popular because it's a fun game and it's well made. But it didn't become like culturally ubiquitous because of that. The reason it's culturally ubiquitous is because it reflects our society back onto us and like it's just very natural. Well, I think that's that then to sort of close it out. This kind of reminds me of what, um, uh, Hideo Kojima said about what he wants to do with his, with Death Stranding, which is every single game he's ever made

has been about sort of sticks about people hitting each other and separating off from one another. And Death Stranding is supposed to be about the ropes that tie them together. I don't know what the fuck he means. I think he might be like an, he might have gone like, he might have gotten otter brain is in about bondage, like, you know, like some otters get like just their, their brains just sort of degenerate because they've been told their genius is one too many times.

I well, let's, let's, I mean, I don't know. Death Stranding does look cool though. Yeah, I believe in Kojima. I don't think he can ever, he can ever do anything wrong. So I think it'll be great. Otacon just calling solid snake a dirty toilet boy and peeing on his face. Good Lord. Oh, this is genius.

I, I, I mean that unironically, just for the record. All right, all right. Well, I got to run you guys and thanks for having me. No, no worries. When I go, when Death Stranding comes out. Beautiful. Hey, as that is, oh my goodness. It's the stroke of midnight.

Trev is turning back into Hussein. Man, it's amazing how that happens. All right. Thanks, man. Thanks, Trev. Cheers, bud. Yeah, no problem. Thanks guys.

And thank you very much to Trev. Hey, go bon on Twitter. Listen to his podcast, no cartridge. It's very, very good. Anyways, we've been in this chili damp basement for long enough. Probably close the door at some point. Warm it back up. So I'm going to say Hussein, Milo, Nate, thank you guys all for coming again.

And Hassan, thank you so much for making your way to the caliphate. Yeah. Thank you so much, guys. It's, I mean, we're bringing about Sharia Law in here. What is it? What did you call it? Lundanistan? Yeah, the caliphate of Tower Hamlets.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very excited. The usual, usual, usual stuff at the end. We have a Patreon. This is the free episode. We have other episodes you can get for five dollars a month, which is an idea we came up with, actually.

Yeah, no, there's no other podcast that's left leaning is ever thought about. I've never done that before. So you can do that. And in fact, you should. Also, if you want it to commodify your descent with a teacher from a little comrade, don't forget, they'll eatable print anything on that almost. Yeah. And finally, don't forget, you can get our theme music is provided by Jin

Sang is here we go. You can find it on Spotify. It's a tune that absolutely slaps and you should be listening to it. 24 Sev. Anyways, everybody, thank you very much for being here, for listening and all that good shit. Let's go live our lives. Thanks for everyone.

Cheers.