Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 326: The Failson Crusade (w/ special guest Kate Wagner)

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

If you don't want to hear us rant and rave about the Hofenstaufen dynasty, Frederick II, and how Prince Andrew of Hungary was the Hunter Biden of the middle ages, then fast forward to about minute 17. This week our old pal Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell) joins us to discuss the pope, AI-generated content, conspiracy theory-fueled wildfires, the ecstasy we apparently felt at electing Joe Biden, and the latest designs at Neom. You can support Kate at the Duchy of Patreon: www.patreon.com/mcmansionhell And us too: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

so yes okay you've been uh you've been going down the holy roman empire rabbit hole huh you've been you've been going down the Holy Roman Empire rabbit hole, huh? You've been doing Hohenstaufen deep dives. Yeah, I have actually. What is it about it? I mean, because honestly, you know a little more about this than me. I think it's funny. I think that you and I have sort of started approaching the Roman Empire, but from two different um

uh from two different entry points like you're kind of at the high point and i've been reading a book about like thomas muncer and like the hussites and that's like more towards the you know closer to the end even though it like managed to hold on for like another 300 years i think it ended with the with napoleon i'm pretty sure but like it was like that's the that's the thing like things can decline a really really long time they can languish yeah they really languish i feel like yeah for me the holy roman empire stuff for me actually started when i was working as a cycling journalist uh and i was covering the Tour of Slovenia. And I live in Slovenia for three months or so every year. And we went to Ormoz, which is a like tiny wine growing town.

And the press room for that for that stage of the Tour of Slovenia was in the museum of the Petulia Ormoz Regional Museum. It's like while I was there, I picked up this like little book that they had. And no one was the funny thing was no one was working in the museum. So you just and it was like you could just go in It's like while I was there, I picked up this like little book that they had. And no one was, the funny thing was no one was working in the museum. So you just, and it was like, you could just go in there and like no one was there. It was really weird. I just, I read this book and it's just like discovered like, like little secrets about this one noble family that was really important in the politics of the great interregnum, which was between Frederick II and the last toe andenstaff and Rudolf of Habsburg,

the first Habsburg. So you see like a real illusion of empires. But what so interests me about like that period is that that sort of class politics of it. For I think that like when most of us think of the Middle Ages, we think of like these very already hierarchical and very strictly hierarchical class structures that we see in france and england by this point but in germany it was very very different obviously you had like an emperor and like at this time like during the hohenstaffens like they're trying to merge the like sicily and like parts of italy with germany to become like a holy roman empire and this is like this grand kind of imperial fantasy yeah but like on the like day-to-day life part of that there was they basically had a bunch of middle

managers running the country uh running like managing castles like basically doing the bureaucratic work of you know a not quite it's not a state and if it was a state it would be the most dysfunctional state that ever existed yeah wait so okay you can manage you could have a job as managing a castle oh yeah you were just so like there was this incredible like kind of subclass that only shows up in the holy roman empire called uh the ministerialists and the or ministerials in in english but ministerials were these kind of they were this fascinating group of people who were half noble and they were noblemen, right, in social and material status and really in terms of power, but they were politically unfree, which meant that they were bound, for example, to like a certain suzerain,

usually like a duke or like an archbishop, sometimes the king. But anyways, like they, because they were politically unfree, like their marriages were planned for them, like they because they were politically unfree like their marriages were planned for them like they couldn't act in their own self-interest but of course they did anyways and so there was always this tension between like the political and material reality of this class of people versus their legal status and like that to me is just like deeply fascinating because there was a little bit of upward mobility in in this in this society whereas like if you were really just good at doing war like as a like a landowning peasant like it's like a vassal right like you could become a knight right you were a knight if you

were really good at being a knight like then you could like someone would put you in some dumb castle and make you a burgrave and then if you're really good at being a burgrave like by that point you're already probably a ministerial but then you can marry some noble woman or whatever and then you're really cooking wait a burgrave wait wait hold up a burgrave what's a burgrave like by that point you're already probably a ministerial but then you can marry some noble woman or whatever and then you're really cooking wait a burgrave wait wait hold up a burgrave what's a burgrave burgrave is just the german word for castellan so like so that's a step up from a knight yeah yeah well yeah okay okay i like the the knights were basically just like basically their job was to just plunder and, you know, go at banditry. I think that's like why they had crusades in the first place, right?

Because they had all these knights and they were like, we got to put them to use somehow. Let's just send them to the Holy Land. That's fucked up because it's always the case that whether it's a class in a video game or whether it's like a, you know, a retelling, right. Of some historical event. Knights are always presented as, I mean,

you get knighted. They're always presented as noble. You know what I mean? As truthful, as honorable. It's almost the opposite. You're telling me they were plundering. No,

it's totally not true. Yeah. It's horseshit actually. Yeah. But the, but what's really funny about knights is that like, okay, first of all,

the knighting thing is so funny because like they needed so many goddamn knights that it would take forever to like actually knight each one individually so they would just like have them all come to a field and be like okay you're knights now one massive sword they would just get a massive sword like a trebuchet and just fucking like the sword from isaac delion imagine if you are really excited to get knighted because you think you're gonna personally get knighted and instead you just open a field with a bunch of motherfuckers like yeah i'm obsessed with this like well like it's funny because like all that courtly culture shit was basically like you can think i kind of think of it as two ways like one it's like a completely like fictionalized like idealized society made up by poets and

because poets are like what we have to go on in like the annals of history or whatever because like all the noblemen at a time were pretty much fucking illiterate and not writing and you had like you know you had chronicles who detailed like historical events but like not with any like you know literary flair and so like you just have the works of these like poets who were making shit up and like entertaining noble people that reminds me kate i saw this hilarious post the other day it was like i don't know some like horny housewife i guess in a bit one of bill ackman's replies and it was like a photo it was like some cartoon someone had made maybe even an ai thing of like a busty woman like uh standing in front of don quixote who was like prostrate in front of him and and she was like look at the noble knight he fights for his his his lovely his love and all this and it's just

like people were like i think you missed the point the funniest part of that post was that she's like you're like a sane and modern don quixote which is like the two things don quixote is like very famously not he's not sane and he's extremely not modern right if you know anything about the character he's definitely not saying at all he read so many like romances he went insane like he the guy like that's the whole critique of the book the whole book is like this guy like these fucking romances sucked like yeah it's it's on oh it's it was that fucking killed me and there was like windmills in the background i just like it's crazy like like new frontiers of posting like people finding ways to like unironically say that don quixote is like a no-brainer it's like it never happened yeah well well you know you know what it is man i think this

is a recurrent theme in the show the fact the past few uh weeks or a month or so even um it's just that the loss of meaning you know the loss of and how like how that meaning has become inverted you know what i mean so instead of like the the donkey jote and the famous character traits right of of being delusional actually not being in touch at all with reality you know what i mean someone could read that and be like well actually you know what i mean maybe that guy should be president you know what i mean that's a sensible man right there. I don't know. Oh, man. Dude, I feel like this is a certain subset of, like, return guys, you know?

Like, return guys, like, track guys, are really, like, kind of modern Don Quixotes, like, in their own way. Oh, yeah. Like, except for, like, if Don Quixote was, like, craven and, like, a racist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If Don Quixote had a prodigious use of the N word. Indeed. Yes. Oh, man. Oh, God.

Yeah. But yeah, like. Well, that's another thing. Actually, that's very topical, though. Like, isn't Frederick the second? Like, isn't he kind of like this almost like a sort of chimerical figure in the sense that like people are always adopting him for their own purposes? Like, like, isn't I seem to remember, like, I'm not an expert in this period of the Holy Roman Empire. But like, I think he like multiple people claimed to be him after he died.

And then I think even the Nazis like tried to recuperate him or like try to co-opt him into there. So he's like an MLK type of figure in the halls of recuperation? Like where the motherfuckers, where the worst people of all time claim that. I don't know. From what I understand, he was an interesting character in the sense that he was enlightened. He was constantly battling with the Pope. But I don't think he was necessarily a good person. He wasn't like Dante enlightened. Dante puts him in hell.

Oh, does he? Oh, yeah, he's big time in hell. He's in hell with the heretics. Because Frederick II was a really interesting guy. Because Frederick II was a really interesting guy. Basically, he was raised in Sicily, which was a very multicultural place at the time that was alternatively under Muslim and Christian rule. Yeah, they were still Muslims. It was kind of like the Bosnia of Italy at that time, I guess you could say.

Yeah. But anyways, he received a very extensive education. He was extremely brilliant. Like, even, like, the more skeptical accounts of his childhood basically, like, say he was extremely precocious. He could speak, like, a billion languages. He basically invented modern falconry as, like, through a text that is still used. Dude loved falcons. I mean, he was cooking.

He loved birds more than people it's like absolutely true he was terrible to his wives like him and franzen him and franzen would do a long cry dude no no no frederick ii fucked dude like let's let's make this extremely clear like he was not a donathan franzen like wilting daisy type kind of figure. He was, like, a belligerent, like, baddie. I mean, he was, he could be, like, a total fucking tyrant. I mean, he was at times, like, terrible and at times spectacular. And, like, capturing, there's, like, a mythology of Frederick II that, like, plays on these elements that, like, existed basically up until, like, the end of the 20th century. these elements that like existed basically up until like the end of the 20th century and part of the reason why that is is because there was this book that was written called

frederick ii by ernst kantorowitz and this is a bit of a rabbit hole but ernst kantorowitz was in like i'm just gonna like abbreviate this extremely extremely quickly like he was in like this group of like weird like conservative but like libertine poets in the like at the in the in the uh weimar empire yeah there's like in between and he was like longing for like a big daddy emperor like this is like a just completely like you know nationalist longing and like you know and kantorowitz was not a nazi um but like he the nazis let him because he was jewish like and the nazis like kind of let him cook longer than other people because like they loved that book about frederick the second so much because it's about longing for like a big german daddy um and so like it's just

this it colored the historiography of frederick the second forever but the funny thing is it is like because he was hanging out with poets and all this other shit i won't get into like the weird occult stuff or whatever you can google google this because it's really strange um but anyways like he the book is really beautifully written like it's like i think one of the great conservative works of art like there are some there are occasions where like there are conservative writers who are really just fucking good at doing doing it you know oh yeah and i think was a total ghiblin like was so good at writing about frederick ii yeah like you hate to see it but that's the thing like i think that for the way i understand it like a lot of people after frederick ii died thought he was still alive right because yeah the the is it joaquin de fiore right like he had uh come up with this like sort of schematic of like you know the ages of man and like there would be an

upcoming apocalypse but it never came and i think that like maybe people thought frederick's the second was the person that was going to reconcile all these sort of contradictions and like bring apart like you know bring unto earth the coming heavenly kingdom perhaps or something like that yeah i mean i think that's like the kind of part that i am not like as familiar with like in but in terms of like when he died it like the shit show it caused was unreal like it is i think one of the greatest political shit shows of all time like we live in uncertain times now but like jesus christ if you were like in in germany austria bohemia like any of these places after the death of frederick ii you are

having a really bad time like the number of like coups and power struggles and like you know all of this like i mean you had the dukes of austria like fighting the hungarians who were fighting the mongols who were fighting i mean the mongols devastated hungary which was like really important like and then like like there's this guy frederick ii of babenberg who was just like he was known as like frederick the belligerent because he like couldn't stop fucking picking fights with people and so like he just like continuously like picks a fight with hungary until like he dies. They just kill his ass. Oh my god. He dies in a battle.

But he has no fucking kids and so now there's a huge power vacuum in Austria. I feel like you also can't be belligerent without having children. Without having tragedy. You know what I mean? Because you always got shooters looking out for you.

That is so true. I kind of think he was an idiot dude like i think he was fucking stupid like there are some historical figures who i think are just dumb as shit like in the holy roman empire like you know cinematic universe like i think my favorite historical character who's dumb as shit is probably king andrew ii of hungary who was just a like a fucking wastrel fail son i mean just like a real piece of shit like his father is like andrew my second son here's a bunch of money i need you to go on crusade to the holy land because i'm religious and very catholic and good and so andrew who is like a piece of shit wastrel fail son is like i'm going to blow all of this money basically on like hookers and blow he pulled it he pulled the hunter biden pretty much yeah he basically he's like the hunter biden of hungarian history but like really he was just like pissing it away doing like tournaments or whatever the fuck people were doing like that

to like piss away their money okay i'm king of hungary now and he's like well i'm going to just like sell off all of the hungarian treasury and like all of the royal assets to have like these noble people for the shortest term political gain and so he bankrupts the country and then the pope is like andrew there's too many heretics in your country you're giving too many jobs to the muslims and jews like we're gonna excommunicate you if you don't fix this and he's like dude but fuck dude the muslims and jews are so good at math god i fucking hate the pope he's always in my business he's always emailing me about my brother and like how i should be nice to my brother it's like what the fuck does the pope know about my brother like and so eventually he's like pissed

off but eventually it's like fine fine i'll go on crusade and he goes on the hugest fail son crusade that ever existed which is the fifth crusade and so he goes with like his he's like yeah he goes with like his dumb guy buddy like the duke of austria who is actually like extremely smart and intelligent and glorious and like one of the greatest Dukes of Austria to ever do it, Leopold VI. And I don't know why Leopold is, like, friends with, like, this piece of shit, Andrew II. Like, they're cousins, I think. But anyways, like,

Andrew's, like, his dumb cousin, you know? Like, the one that goes and smokes weed on Thanksgiving with you, like, by the lake by your parents' house. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. And so, like, they besiege Damietta, come back to Palestine, I think, and then, like, they lose horribly. They, like, they like it just is like a huge shambolic like stupid idiot crusade and like andrew takes it deeply and seriously though the others a little bit more sincere and he comes home and he's like okay i went on crusade i did like well that's the one i think

like frederick ii got in trouble for that one, right? Because he refused to go. Because, like, I, you know, just from playing, like, Civ V or whatever, like, you get in trouble if the Pope tells you to go on a crusade and you don't go. You got to go. Oh, it's a big time, big time, big trouble. Yeah. Like, his grandfather, Frederick Barbarossa,

died trying to drown fording a river during the crusade. And so I totally understand. If your grandfather died drowning trying to cross a river in the crusade, you'd be like, this is giving me the ick, dog. So he didn't even get to fight. No. He died like the dog of Trenchfoot. You know what I mean? World War I before you get far for shot.

Henry's dad was about to go on crusade and then just got some fucking pestilence and died before like and so it's just like if you're frederick ii you're like god damn it dude i just like became emperor and you want me to go on fucking crusade uh but eventually actually the funny thing about frederick is he does go on crusade like the pope is like wants to excommunicate him for like imperial reasons now not because he didn't go on crusade but like the crusade is an excuse for like bringing in frederick ii's like ballerness or whatever but he does go on crusade and you know because he's frederick ii and can speak arabic or whatever he goes and negotiates with like all with like the muslim rulers and makes

peace and no one dies it was the diplomatic crusade yeah and he got in trouble the pope was like, what the fuck? You're supposed to kill heretics. You're supposed to slaughter these people. Yeah. What do you mean make it peace? Dude, okay.

This is the thing, all right? Like, this is the weird thing. Like, so like, if you look at the news today, when I was like growing up, what we were always told was that the Antichrist would rise out of the revived Roman Empire. But like, I'm starting to think that the antichrist would rise rise out of the revived roman empire but like i'm starting to think that the antichrist is actually going to rise out of

the revived holy roman empire i think this is i think this is probably far more because like tom has had this theory for a while that netanyahu might actually be the antichrist yeah i would agree with that i would concur with that assessment but like israel kind of feels like the holy roman empire like it's like it's a crusader state oh man i feel like no also the fact that germany is involved right and germany is involved exactly dude and and like america and like i don't know it's like yeah like it feels like it just yeah it feels like all these things just recycle like over and over oh no not again right crusade the pope okay so like all right so just getting into the yeah that you know 20 minutes

of hohenstaufen content you know that's that's the good shit right there like uh that's what i wanted to really talk about but um but just getting into like the news this week like there's like been four separate like headlines of like the pope um he what's up with the pope let's go to my boy yeah what do you do now he said he said um well the first thing that got him in trouble was that he said marxists and and Christians have a common mission. Pope Francis wants the courage to step outside the box and an opening in dialogue for new paths. Christians as well as socialists, Marxists and communists

have a common mission, said the pontiff, which got him in a lot of trouble because obviously American Catholics are... Are trying to invent Protestantismism too yeah yeah like where's the okay where do you think what what are y'all's bets on like where the new antipope is going to be located like surely america america will have an antipope right dude it's got to be dallas texas specifically specifically dallas texas yeah like dallas texas will become like the vatican and become like an autonomous region, an autonomous state.

That's what they want, dude. That's what Texas wants, dude, is to be its own country. Yeah. I'm just fascinated, Terrence, by the idea of an anti-pope. Oh, yeah. That's a fascinating concept. Is this like a long-held concept? Is this something that's like cropped up in the past few years?

No, it goes way, way back. This is fascinating. Yeah, yeah, various people. Middle ages. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and then there's like, there was at one point, like when they moved the papacy to like Avignon, there was like- Oh, Dante hated that.

There was like a third pope. I think at that time there was like oh dante hated that there was like a third pope like that i think at that time there was like three different popes running wait yeah three popes battling something like that i could be wrong kate would know more about this than me but yeah this is like getting past the period that is my like autistic special interest same this is okay so that's the other thing the pope said this week that got him in trouble he said that he likes to think hell is empty and that's catholic doctrine so that got him in a lot of trouble because like catholics like to think hell is fucking packed to the brim like busting at the seams why is that no protestants like to think that protestants like

to think that okay protestants like to think that i shouldn't speak for catholics i do know for for from experience we protestants love to think hell is packed yeah what is the what is the logic there is it to make people feel as if at any moment you could join the legions in hell yourself yes okay i mean if like so hell is hell is not vacant hell is like a club that everybody wants to get it's the friday night saturday night spot that everybody wants to go it's just like i read several wants to be in i guess you want to think i read several different like thing pieces on various catholic websites that are like to think that adolf hitler is not in hell absolute heresy it's like that's what they always you don't think the worst person who ever lived is in hell? What's wrong with you?

I think that, yeah, okay, there's like, hell has like three people in it. Like, Kissinger, Hitler. Henry Kissinger, Hitler. And who is the dude that was in charge of, was it Belgium? Oh, King Leopold. King Leopold, dude. He's so in hell. Yeah, those are the three people. It would be funny. It would be funny if you arrived in hell

and it was pretty fucking empty. There was like six or seven people. Someone's like mopping the floor. They're like cleaning some wood. They're like, hey! As soon as you show up, they're like, oh shit, we like hey as soon as you show up they're like oh shit we got someone new we got another one we got another one what did you do man how many how many billions okay i feel like hell like being empty is totally within like catholic catholic ideology because like the idea of like this of like the forgiveness of god is like one of the most like important ideas in christianity but like right you know like i think in the catholic faith

like god is not nearly as stingy as in the like in the protestant faith like yeah i mean you really gotta suffer in the protestant faith to get the fuck out of hell you know like you gotta speak in tongues or whatever they do over there oh yeah but like i mean catholics man you just got a confession like this is penance penitence on earth is what is important this is um what i'm learning of reading my book on thomas munzer is that like a big reason that they did not support infant baptism is that they thought that like faith could only be derived through suffering and struggle and that like if you were an infant you therefore could not understand those things so just being born in itself and just being like this actually the womb sounds like a nice place it's warm and dark and but just the experience

of birth in itself is not a struggle struggle in itself that's unfair that's unfair to the baby that's good i don't know about you aaron but i just did this when i came out i just braced myself and i knew it there was no struggle for me uh yeah my mom says always says that i came out looking like i got out of the ring with mike tyson she showed me like pictures of like after i was born and you know that was not an inaccurate description like i was like black and blue man like i really got my fucking paces just baby baby Kate. Just like fucking...

That set the course of my entire life, dude. I have been a belligerent little fuck ever since. Came out looking at the doctor like, what did you say? That's the thing. The Protestant reformers didn't understand that some of us, to make it here, we have to go through a struggle.

Birth isn't just... It's not just a walk in the park for everybody. Maybe it was for Martin Luther, but. Not everyone is born on a silver platter. That's right. Or with a silver spoon in their mouths, whatever the metaphor is. The craziest type of birth struggle, this total tangent, is to be born in. Birth struggle?

The craziest type of birth struggle is to be born in call. Do you know what that is? It's like when you're born. It's when you're born inside the placebo. When you're by a zoo or some shit like that? You're born inside the placebo or the placebo, the placenta. Jesus Christ. Women's health hour here.

You're born inside the placebo. It's a placebo. I should let uh should not let the not male uh person on this call explain this um yes that's but they're actually there's probably very little struggle there because it's basically like you're born inside an egg right it's like you're born inside like dude i wish i was an egg baby god damn yeah see see my dumb ass was thinking about like uh uh as another male thinking about like what do you mean are you born in like is that being born in like a ziploc bag like what are you talking

that kind of looks like it just google it it kind of looks like that you know i don't want to google that sounds terrifying i'm good yeah yeah no actually i think birth is terrifying like i'm at the age now 30 where i'm like maybe I should start thinking about having kids. And then I like think about giving birth. And it's like, dog, I don't know. I'm like, I'm good. I'm like, I have to sleep with like an orthopedic pillow for like minor neck pain. Like, I don't know if I'm cut out for this one. Then I look at the middle ages and you're like, Jesus, man, like that, Christ, you know, it really fucking sucked to be a woman. Like, just, it always sucks to be a woman. Like, I fully believe it sucks. Like, I like being a woman, and I would never choose otherwise.

Like, even, like, I'm proud to be a woman, and, like, you know, and all of the kind of feminine attachés that come with that. But, like, it sucks. Like, to be real carrying a living carrying a living being inside of you for nine months being one of the many things uh yeah that's terrible like they'll probably people they have this glow you know they really like are like i'm so excited to welcome this baby to the world and i'd be like and i'm just like i feel like i'm like a fucking eight-year-old in their present you know presence like being like wait like it but doesn't it hurt yeah and you're

like can i touch it that's insane like my god meanwhile i'm like also like yo i'd be probably fucking miserable well it's taking your nutrients too and it's giving you heartburn so like for me i'm selfish it's like those are my nutrients and yeah a little parasite inside of me sucking off my nutrients and shit the um that's my nutrients the the the pope though it's like he's kind of been all over the place this week all right so like he said that there he doesn't he likes to think hell is empty he said that christians could work with marxists and socialists but then he said that peace requires respect for the universal declaration of human rights attempts to introduce new rights which are not always acceptable lead to instances of

ideological colonization that create divisions rather than fostering peace as in the case of gender theory i don't know what the dorno is some shit this is the pope like what the fuck say that shit again pope adorno dude dude no man that's like look he's still the goddamn pope he's still like fucking catholic like sorry yeah it's gonna take like another 20 years for the catholics to get around they just now started blessing gay people dude it's not a it's not a fast-moving religion yeah when are we getting upset about that pope altus error i'm upset like i was like no dude were cooking, and now it's like, oh, fuck. It's like when you see a stand-up comedian, me, riffing,

and then you hit the end of the stride of riffing, and then it's just, like, kind of petering out, and you're like, oh, fuck, dude, it's collapsing underneath me. Like a daunting realization to people's eyes, like, yo, this person actually sucks. What the fuck is this? It's like, she can't keep going. It's over.

Yeah, he's like the dude who wrote, like, True Detective. It's like the first season, banger. Second season, like, okay. And then, like, it's just, okay, all right. You just got lucky the first two times. Okay, so we've got the Pope. Let's see. This is another Holy Roman Empire-esque story.

This is courtesy of 404 Media. Google News is boosting garbage AI-generated articles. 404 Media reviewed multiple examples of AI ripoffs making their way into Google News. Basically what it is is that every time you type something into google the top results come back will be usually a written by ai so here's one example was a new site called worldtimetodays.com i laughed before i heard that because i just heard some fucking, like, it sounds like one of the fucking, one of the magazines that you find, like, inquires some shit like that you find, like, at the checkout of a supermarket that has, like, that boy on the cover. World Time Today.

What is the name of this fucking publication again? Oh, World News Today, right? World Time Today's. World Time Today's. World Time Today's. We are studying the world at this time today well today's it's plural actually world time today's do we even have those magazines anymore i feel like i haven't seen one in fucking forever um i think they do world news i think they still sell those depends on where you're at in east kentucky they do but we're you know we're kind of behind the rest of the world so no man

we need to break those back baby yeah yeah no that was a great literary institution of the 90s totally okay indeed um so yeah one example was a new site called worldtimetodays.com which is littered with full page and other ads. On Wednesday, it published an article about Star Wars fandom. The article was very similar to one published today earlier on the website Distractify with even the same author photo. They even tried to change it. One major difference, though, was that worldtimetodays.com wrote, let's be honest, War of Stars fans. Let's be honest, Star Trek fans.

War of Stars fans. Let's see. Another article is a clear ripoff from a piece from Heavy.com. WorldTimeToday.com did not even bother to replace the heavy.com watermarked artwork. That's awesome. Gary Graves, the listed author on World Time Today's, has published more than 40 articles in a

24-hour period. Gary Graves. His name is Gary what? Gary Graves. This motherfucker got an AI-sounding name, and how much does he produce, you said? In 24 hours? 40 articles in 24 hours. articles in 24 hours his motherfuckers ai himself man come on dog i don't know man i have uh i just have as a and we're all writers here but um we've talked about it before but um and i've mentioned this on the

show before man about my greatest fear um is that concern is that when you google something like you google an artist right and instead of finding that artist's work right you find like just get weird ai version exactly yeah exactly the first images and results and it's like we talk about the show man just this recursive this culture of recursion that we live in where everything is like a copy of a copy of a copy yeah but it's like thinking about news in that aspect i mean not that it's funny but i mean like not to say that not to do the the kelly young conway alternative facts or fake news but like we do live in like like these like silos and echo chambers you know what i mean of news you know what i mean so it's just kind of interesting to see this technology be

applied to naturally i don't know just do the function of propaganda itself you know what i mean i don't know if any of that makes sense you know it does i think so yeah i think like also for me like this is so so fascinating i think there was a tweet that was like yeah we had like access once to like the greatest repository of information ever and then like we destroyed it to make like three guys rich and it's like this is the most greek myth shit i've ever heard in my entire life like this is just such this is mythological to me like yes this is like the kind of story you would tell is like the this is this is the tower of babel if we're gonna get biblical in a way like

yeah you know or this is like or icarus or whatever i mean like such an incredibly like human error story and like human hubris and human greed and yeah it is like it is giving a little medieval and it's like yeah okay we're gonna enter a second dark age which means what comes after that is neo-medievalism totally and it's like yeah okay i made this tweet the other day that i thought was really funny like i'll I'll repeat it because, like, I think I'm funny and that's my most obnoxious quality. But, like, I said, like, born too soon to, like, retire on a $1 million union pension after writing, like, 50 columns a year for a major newspaper. Or born too late. Born too soon to see the successful conclusion of the struggle for socialism. Born just at the right time to be an e-minstrel in the duchy of patreon that's what it's true that's where we all are we are we are in the duchy of patreon yeah me too mcmitchell hell yeah uh yeah like yeah like you read those

medieval romances right and like like the like i like my favorite is parsifal because i think that's the best one um because there's like actual like moral conflict in that one but anyways like the like parsifal like like when wilfred van eschenbach tells parsifal he like tells it like he's he interjects all the time with like basically shouting out his patrons like in various ways he's yeah, shout out to the Landgrave of, like, Thuringia. Like, great court, dude. We need to start doing that. We need to start doing, yeah.

Mid-episode. Just read off patrons? Yeah, read off patrons. Like, shouting them out. Yeah, but, like, in a medieval way. Thank you, Derek M. None of this could be possible without your support. Thank you for the turkey like yeah well this is the thing it's like you're both right like what it is it's it's i mean just it is very greek mythological in the sense that like we built

this we built this thing that is not only like a repository of all this information and knowledge, but also theoretically could have the technical ability to aggregate things in truly innovative ways and to be able to provide it in ways that is never before been seen on planet Earth. Instead, we've just populated it with bots machines that like make the content and then bots go and then view the content so that no i mean i guess this is

like dead internet theory but like it does seem like there is truth to this that like we're getting to a point with the internet where like very little of it is actually created or consumed by humans and then you just drop ads in the middle of it and then just you know cash the check off of the revenue from that so we're people we're just paying ourselves at this point or not we aren't i guess but i mean it's just it's just so absurd and this is a probably a like uh you know a moot point that people made before but i don't know you know you think about ai when i was a kid and i was reading like popular uh science magazines and all that shit you know they talk about ai like doing like the jetsons man like

doing all of the things that people didn't want to do yeah you know what i mean like but now it's like art you know whether it's writing or visual art and And I mean, like, I don't know, man, it's just to think about like, not to say that the internet, because, you know, there's this idea that the internet was this horizontal, like modern symposium. And I mean, you know, that's true and not true. I mean, there were weird, quirky libertarian guys that definitely had profit motives in their designs for the internet you know but or for social what will become social media but like you know it's just like this this amazing repository of information where from one kind of vantage point you could view all of social cultural history you know and instead it's being kind of just defiled with this technology all for the purpose of like so that you could make spongebob fly to the world trade center like i don't know you know what i mean like i don't like and what's fucked up to me is the thing is like you know i get that everything is derivative right and like you know there's the idea of um uh i can't i can't pronounce

the french word properly but denouement i guess you know it there's the idea of, I can't pronounce the French word properly, but denouement, I guess? You know, it's kind of like recuperation, right? But, you know, from the leftist perspective or Marxist perspective, I guess. But what I don't get is like, why would you want to reproduce shit that already exists? You know what I mean? Right. Like, I have more respect for people that do AI shit where they

just come up with memes that are just actually, if they're derivative,'re yeah they're insane they're original you know what i mean homer like homer singing zombie by the cranberries that was dope yeah that was really that was my friend is obsessed with that video he cannot stop he's like yo did i show you this already like dog you did he's it sounds better this way i'm like you're right it actually does like it does i love that video did the way it started playing in my brain fuck i mean it's like yeah that's i mean that is bottom of the barrel content you know but like

so what so was like fucking business cat yeah yeah like i mean that's a part of memes is like this constant like reproducibility like until they like become passe or like meaningless or whatever and it's like i'm gonna listen to like podcasts i'm on like that where i'm always just saying like let him cook or whatever or like slay or whatever and i'm like jesus christ dude like what why the fuck are you talking like that you know but this is like the part of like mimetic culture you know yeah it has a very short it is like the it's like you know how moths like silk moths are born without mouths and they cannot eat and then they die like 12 days later because their only purpose is to reproduce and die like that is kind of what a meme is it's like a silk

moth like oh wow that's pretty that's a really good analogy yeah i didn't know that i didn't it's also a horrifying existence. That is a horrifying existence. Well, yeah, they live actually the most of their productive lives as caterpillars making silk. I am a silk moth and I must scream. Damn. Fine-ass textile. Yeah, I think they boil

the caterpillars to make silk or something. I don't know how it works. God damn! Like, yeah, I think it's actually a really gruesome process but i don't remember i'm not a textile expert here but i think it's really gruesome um but yeah but then when they make if they make it to adulthood then they just have no mouth and cannot feed and die in 12 days and it's like yeah that's yeah their purpose is to fucking die okay so speaking of breakdown of knowledge and natural disaster and holy war crusades in a part of the world that has been contested for the beginning of time, the beginning of time. Actually, this this story doesn't really have that much to do with that aspect of this. Although it is driven by almost messianic conviction about the world.

I don't know if you guys realize this, but you remember like six or seven months ago when Canada was on fire and all that fucking smoke kept coming down into New York and made it look like some Blade Runner 2049 shit? I don't know if y'all knew this but like some of those fires were started intentionally by an arson who was convict convinced that uh global climate change was a conspiracy theory and uh so he wanted to prove what what was he trying to prove that the fire's not real? Like an anti-Prometheus kind of figure?

This is interesting. It's like, I just watched... Dumb guy Prometheus. I just watched Oppenheimer, right? And it's like the analogy is like, oh, he's like Prometheus. He brought fire down to earth. But we are now at the point where it's like

we have anti-Prometheus. It's like we are trying to... This is like dumb guy Don Quixote the point where it's, like, we have anti-Prometheus. It's, like, we are trying to, like. This is, like, dumb guy Don Quixote, too. Like, it's all the same. Like, actually, we didn't make any of this progress. We didn't do any of these things for the last couple of hundred years that has fundamentally transformed the way that this planet looks like. No, these people. Actually, yo, that's a really good point, dude.

That's a really good point. Yeah, no, no. It's, like, we. The thing about prometheus is that the gods killed him for bringing fire to earth and i guess that means that we are now gods because we are killing the people that do bring the actual innovative process progress to earth uh anti-god we think we're gods we're not actually gods we think we're the avignon gods we are the avignon gods for the this is okay let me let me read through this story uh this is in the guardian canadian man

who claimed wildfires were a confid were a federal conspiracy admits arson um a canadian man who claimed the amazing title by the way a can Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country's record-breaking wildfire season. Brian Paré admitted to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in central Quebec. Isn't arson always a disregard for human life?

No way, is this a fucking guy from Quebec? He's from Quebec, yeah. Wow, I totally thought he would be a guy from like, really like... From the six? Toronto? You think he'd be like a Drake? Montreal? No, I feel like he would be like a Vancouver kind of

Silicon Valley, like, you know, like, real freak, you know? Like a kind of just like excel like accelerationist like deranged weirdo or something like i really was like he's gonna be from the west coast dude no i was up in um northern i was up around buffalo one time around the canadian border like right on the canadian border like canoeing and there were these guys in in there fishing i've never had like such a like out of body experience in the sense that like we you know passed these guys as they were fishing

and they were like talking quebecois like french but in like a hillbilly accent almost and i was like what kind of a fucked up reality like reality kind of bash mashed worlds and universes this is right now um all right so like our friend brian paray he like was convinced he was convinced these like wildfires in canada were started by the government to prove that climate change is real and so in an attempt to i guess prove them that they were man-made he started making the fires as well wouldn't he expect that the government was gonna stop it and say hey buddy that's our job like they're gonna have like a unit it doesn't make any cohesive sense man he said after he was arrested in september he admitted to starting nine fires

and claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not he told the court let me let me let me find out if this thing is possible by actually starting does wood burn does wood burn what is hot and dry that's amazing dude this is like that's amazing historic levels of dipshit it's amazing this is guy there's this guy in this county that tom and i live in there's this guy that's like had a startup like meteorology uh influencer thing and wait what yeah he was like trying to be a meteorologist like in the influencer way not like on tv what do you make his own weather balloons and shit like that he had his own like

online weather station and anyways it was found out that he was starting forest fires intentionally and then going and reporting on them like uh this is johnny mullen's weather service we've got forest fires right here dude like what i mean okay, five or six years for arson. Dude, I mean, this is not comparable. I mean, it could be comparable, because what if you started in, like, you know, like a densely populated area, but, like, I don't know. That's just like, you know, like committing, like, a shooting.

You know what I mean? And then stepping out of a fucking news van that you parked outside. You know what I mean? I heard gunshots. We're here first on the scene as far as we know we have seven dead inside like i think that's like a fucking kafka story for christ's sake that's kind of what this guy was going for he's like look this is this is all man-made and like i just made it but he didn't say that it was him at first

i i'm really in love with these kinds of stories because like they are almost like parables and i know what kafka has to say about parables and like his kind of like jokey recursive parable bit but like they are kind of like parables about like the the hubris like not even hubris there's just a sheer stupidity of people and like yeah you know like they really are just like almost like moralizing tales about why you should get an education right but like the one about like the one about the influencer is so kafka like it is so ridiculous it's it's it's whimsy it's like what it is is the story is like kind of this like indictment of how like i don't know this breaking

down of meaning you know what i mean because like i mean it's like it's on the one hand i mean he's starting fires right to prove that these wildfires are man-made when actually like you are a man dude and also because of human human engineered climate change like he's not wrong but at the same time it's just like i mean i don't know the climate deniers just amaze me dude because in the year 2024 now the fact that you would deny something that's not even just so irrefutable but that we're actually living through like it's not something that's like a far-off projection you know but i guess that's what makes it easy to dismiss if you're a normal guy because it's happening so slowly around you that you don't even realize right but like it's

just the lengths that people will go to you know i mean we saw this during the pandemic you know like people that died because they didn't want to get vaccinated and dude that's a whole other conversation and look there were reasons especially the reasons why people in the black community for example didn't want to get vaccinated that i could understand right so that's a whole other conversation but like the microchip people yeah dude yeah it's just a complete rejection of i mean it's not just a rejection of reality it's almost like i don't even know how to put it man it's almost like, a warping of meaning and also something that, I don't know, lends injury to yourself. You know what I mean?

Right. You know what I'm saying? I know exactly what you mean because there is a contradiction here in the sense that his argument was that these fires were man-made. And he meant that literally. I think he literally thought that a government official, Justin Trudeau himself, just went out with a Bic lighter. With a Bic lighter? They hired people and paid them with Bic lighters.

What is the point? Why, though? I guess because it's a... I think the reason why, Kate, is because the media was saying that the fires were a result of climate change and he was saying no the government went out and made these fires

to convince us all that it's actually climate change and so like I don't really understand though why he went out and then did the same thing I guess you want to know if it was possible to start a fire like he was doing science, Kate.

That's how you do science. This is a world of historic dumbasses. Like, I mean, just like, it goes, that goes, like, that's a mix of, like, huge idiot brain and conspiracy brain. That's a really dangerous mix, you know? Oh, it's very dangerous. It really is. It really is. It really is.

is it really is uh well and it's also kind of like this i don't know it is this weird thing where like um a lot of people they dematerialize climate change in the sense that like i think they literally think that i don't know we've got this kind of like weird perversion of like materialism now we're like people simultaneously they can't believe that like these larger forces would be going on above us like maybe perhaps like ecologically or whatever or in the atmosphere right like everything to them has to be a result of like a direct human like a literal hand on every single thing and i can kind of sympathize with that in a way because like the whole entire liberal bourgeois scientific rationalist project has been to show that like look there is no secret hand behind everything like you know there's no invisible hand there's no metaphysical reality everything is material but at the same time it's like they they then take it to this absurd like almost like hyper realistic uh sort of manifestation of that where

like everything does have to have literally someone holding a bick lighter and lighting some yeah well i think it's i think it's also too it's because like i mean i mean i don't even know where i'm going with this but just sort of this implementation of meta narratives you know what i mean yeah and the rejection of metanarratives. So it's like even science in and of itself is science, right? Like big science, you know, like capital B, capital S. It's almost like used as an excuse to launder like a liberal propaganda or agenda is essentially what these people believe in, you know? And the lengths that they're willing to go to prove that as such it's committing arson i mean it's just it's just as you were saying kate it's just like kafka it's kafka it's unreal is what it

is yeah it's just it's very surreal you know it is it 100 is um well okay so this is one more story I just wanted to hit on before we leave. No, it is not the story in the New York magazine. About polyamory. About polyamory. Oh, God, is there a polyamory piece? There is another polyamory piece. Yeah, but it's not that one, right? No. Is there a polyamory piece? There is another polyamory piece. Yeah, but it's not that one, right?

Because, like... No. Are these... I think people should write more about having affairs. Ignoring polyamory. I think, like, people should write more about having affairs. I agree. Bring back 70s, like, John Irving. Having an affair is like the smoking a rolled-up cigarette version

of, like, multiple partner having. Like... Yes. polyamory is like like you know like it is like a like a very complex volcano vape you know takes a lot of setting up

very like scientifically precise can't take it anywhere like because it's like it requires like extraordinary planning to operate yeah people come in there they're like what the fuck is that yeah yeah like you're that's like real stoner hours but like having an affair it's just like smoking a rolled up split with like mids you know yeah yeah yeah that's oh it's like og like 100 agree kate 100 agree sorry okay but what's the article no i was that just spoke to everything kate thank you for that i was just i was just joking i was referring to jonathan chait's headline do you

remember the ecstasy of electing joe biden um wait is that real that is i remember the crushing like weight of the world and like riding my bike until i puked on the trainer how are these people just not dead from constant aneurysms, yo? This is insane that you could just write something like that. Let me read the, I just, I'm not going to read this article, but let me read the first paragraph. We danced in the streets when Joe Biden was elected. Do you remember?

American cities staged the greatest spontaneous outpouring of joy since BJ day with cars honking and strangers high-fiving one another on an unusually warm november weekend when i ventured down to a black lives matter plaza in washington dc on a sunday night a day and a half after the election had been called the street party was still going that was just three years ago i just love i just love that i mean it all we gotta hook black people yeah yeah exactly it's like by the way the blacks were happy i put my arms around one brother no but like dude what i love though as well is just like i mean we were just talking about like you know climate change and just the

fact he's at an unusually warm november weekend like i just think like i don't know like just as sort of like a harbinger the obliviousness yeah yeah the obliviousness i guess you know that this guy is uh just getting inaugurated elected at possibly the most chaotic time in human history uh one of the most chaotic times in modern human history and yeah just like no this is so liberal you know where it's just like it's like opening it's like we solved democracy and by the way also like like you can't argue against that because black people were happy yeah right my one black man's first paragraph like it's like the black lives matter human shield of liberal commentary you know dude this yeah it is it's a weird week man because they like trump just won the iowa caucuses and i opened up about that i opened up this new york times article um for biden another trump nomination presents

opportunity and great risk let me just read the first couple paragraphs of this one to be clear no one in president biden's white house would ever root for donald trump to a person they consider him in an existential threat to the nation. But as they watched Mr. Trump open the contest for the Republican presidential nomination with a romp through Iowa, they also saw something else. A pathway to a second term.

Yo, these people are forever fucking losers. This is insane. This is insane. Trump is gonna smoke Biden if he doesn't stop being like, I love killing children. This is the thing, Kate. You mentioned earlier Greek mythology, right? Like everything I have learned growing up from Western canon literature is the fucking perils of hubris.

It's like nothing I've been told tells me that biden's hubris here will pan out it always i mean dude dude it's like i think like there's just the classic as you said the classic story if you let me know icarus you're flying too close to the sun yeah or mcbeth just this i mean i think we saw this with the whole what is the pied piper strategy you know what i mean where the clintons at least to some extent elevated trump because they thought he would be easier to defeat and it's just like dude this is i've said this before but this is like that scene in children of men you know what i mean where they're in the fucking car you know what i mean and they're doing the ping pong ball back and forth and then fucking a second later julian moore gets a fucking top blown off you know just unexpectedly you know what i mean these people are so delusional it's insane

yeah this but okay so like those two images right like jonathan chait like we were dancing in the streets when biden won i don't remember that but then again i live in east i remember puking very distinctly i remember not voting and feel feeling pretty secure in that fact i don't mean to vote i remember feeling very much like people always people always say that um like jonathan chait in his article goes on to like invoke weimar germany because he's lazy and that's what everybody does um like oh like oh uh you know biden winning you know we got all these social democratic gains and it's very much like what we didn't what what in the world are you fucking talking about we got nothing still there you piece of shit yeah like kill yourself i remember getting very much like july monarchy vibes from fucking biden winning it's just like

this is obviously a placeholder not in the weimar germany sense like yeah can i can i like bring this back to the holy roman empire real quick please in. In terms of just delusional shit that happened that panned out completely the opposite. Yes, please. So you know the Habsburgs, right? Right. The fucking Habsburgs who ruled Austria and Hungary for a jillion fucking years.

Those Habsburgs, you know. Yes. That lasted from like 1278 to like the 19 1278 to, like, the 19th century. Really, like, the 20th century. There are still some still alive today. Oh, yeah, and they're making terrible meals and posting them on social media, which is really so fitting. But anyways, so, like, the Holy Roman Empire, before, like, the rise of the Hohenstaffens, like, was considered, like, an elective empire.

Like, the most important of the dukes and, like, the archbishops and, like, you know, the palatinate and wherever, like, they would get together, the margraves, they would get together and, like, elect the king. Right. And so, like, Frederick, or, like, Henry VI, who was a lesser-known Hohenstaffen between Barbarossa and Frederick II, like, he wanted to make that a hereditary um a hereditary position that was like inheritable only through his family normal thing for emperors to want to do but anyways like once the hohenstaufens get completely fucking nerfed after frederick ii like dies and like they basically try and they basically kill all of

his sons like because like it is extremely violent like they do not want any ho and stop and bastard ever in fucking power ever again but anyways like there's a great interregnum and there's like just all these people fighting for controls of the various territories of the empire and so like after about like i don't know 30 40 years of this everyone is like for the love of christ we just need a fucking emperor and so like but the ministerials and like you know all of the like fucking dukes and kings and whatever, they're all petty as shit. And they're like, no, we need to pick some fucking bumpkin-ass count that we can kind of control in order to just, like, kind of keep doing our bidding. So, like, they elect Rudolf of Habsburg, who is, like, just really a minor figure at this time.

at this time like he is you know just like very much just like an elite kind of ruling class like guy but is not particularly like insane about doing war or food or whatever he's just like a guy that they elect essentially like compared to the guys who are vying for power who are like really like i mean real king that's real king shit like real dukes real like i mean this power struggle and he's like we'll just pick someone outside this conflict what could possibly go wrong and then the habsburgs rule austria for like how like what like 700 years like just completely insane so what you're saying is that we're looking at a trump dynasty yeah exactly 800 years exactly it's just like it's just like he's just fucking Rudolph of Habsburg like some fucking idiot like what could like he's you know what could possibly happen how could that

possibly backfire yeah go ahead no you go ahead no no no I was just I was just I don't know I was just thinking that um I don't know I was just thinking like how like we live in this, you know, we've been talking about rational, semi-rational actors, you know, in previous, you know, political, historical times, you know, that at least acted somewhat rationally in an irrational system. I mean, these are people who prevented nuclear war, right? Realism. Real polity. Yeah. At the very least. Exactly. Exactly. these are people who prevented nuclear war right realism real polity yeah exactly exactly and um how how much of it and i guess you could say power has always been this way but how much of it now with a decaying sort of uh empire yeah empire and economic at least as as neoliberalism right as this sort of heightened mode of production, right?

How much of history is just motivated by people that, I mean, it's like that scene in Uncut Gems, you know? This is how I win, you know? And they're just getting blasted in the face, you know what I mean? Like, it's just how much of it is geared by dying men presiding over dying empires or dying entities that you know um are putting it you know putting all their chips in the bag man it's you can you can see that it's become extremely decadent

in the sense that like they don't have i don't know how to put this like and maybe this is a trite and cliche point but they've gotten spoiled like they can't even do like machiavellian power politics anymore they just kind of coast on their credentials and like on the accomplishments of their predecessors so like i went to yale exactly and you see this with like blinken right it's just like a very obvious example with him it's just like the guy clearly has no and that was the that was the comedic almost absurd surreal thing about the time profile of them it's like you literally made a profile about how this guy was supposed to reconcile all the difficulties of diplomacy in the modern age and then provided six examples of him

just falling flat on his fucking face and not accomplishing any of these things and they just passed that off like it was like it was you know like great account like profiles of history or something it's like dude it's like well it's like it's almost like merit meritocracy has um sort of atrophied any political project at all any political project that maybe even existed you know what i'm saying but now it's like i mean i guess there's also the iron law of institutions right like you know this idea that everyone there is just within these institutions is just trying to enrich themselves right you know so look at like media too like it's just like these terrible writers like jonathan chait like these i mean it's we live in an empire of failed sons who went to yale like yes whether that's blinkin whether

that's jonathan chait or whatever like it's all just you know that sounds like an extremely trite thing to say but it actually is just like elitism is so sclerotic that it is like willing to like destroy itself through mediocrity and like you know it just complete fucking in a then it is to like give up power to people who are like in any form of actual merit meritocratic system right like it's about those concentrations of like institutions like in the hands of a certain type of people certain types of people and so like that's like you know maybe that is not necessarily like a marxist analysis but in terms of like just like just a social observation right yeah? Yeah. Like,

it stagnates everything. I mean, it stagnates culture, it stagnates writing, it stagnates art, horribly, it stagnates art. I mean, it is abysmal. Like how, like, just like the fact that only rich people can afford to go to art school stagnates art, like, or can afford to be artists, like rich, like, because like like if you have no struggles in life like how are you supposed to make anything that matters yeah yeah like yeah i mean so yeah yeah no no the fail son thing is so good man because i think people think about that like fail son is like an individual thing you know yeah but their fail sons because they're upholding this failing like necrotic system you know their own their own role within it and they're upholding this failing, like, necrotic system, you know,

their own role within it. And they're proliferating this, you know what I mean? They're proliferating this, like, this sort of, like, I don't know, this, I don't even know what to call it, this decadence, you know? Yeah, it is decadence.

It's decadence. And what's so fascinating, what I find so fascinating about, like, von Mises and, like, Hayek and, like, the early sort of architects of neoliberalism and neoliberal ideology is that their defining model of a pristine functioning society was the austro-hungarian empire this was in the 20s after the austro-hungarian empire had ended that like that's how big like that's how wedded to like loserism they

were they were like we need to put restore this fucking society that collapsed that sucked yeah yeah you know that makes me think about the return guys it's like it's like it's just like people that i mean or i mean anyone who wants to like return to some um sort of um national history historiography whether it's like people that want to wave the Confederate flag, right? Or people that are like... Or like Ernst Kantorowicz writing about Frederick II as a big German daddy. Right, right.

Yeah, it's just like, why are these... I mean, it's one thing to be wedded to the past, but you're right, Terrence. It's like they're wedded to loserism, man. Yeah, it's loser. It's almost like these people see glory in losing, you know? Like, they lost because they weren't strong enough or they weren't seen as noble enough.

Oh, I have it. Yeah, listen, say it. I have it, I have it, I have it. Okay. This is so important. In the 19th century, like, which is where, which is the kind of, a lot of, like, the origination of a lot of this bullshit

is actually, like, the 19th century. Whether, like, either the 18th century or the 19th century. Like, whether you're talking about, like or like racism or like like like race science or like you're talking about like but there is like back in the day like in the 19th century like the ruling class loved ruins like this is this was an important architectural like moment in an arch and like artistic moment like if you look at like high romantic art from the 19th century like it is just like basically ruin porn of like these great lost empires and like you know the ruling class used to go on these grand tours of italy

and spain and you know wherever to stare at a bunch of fucking rocks pretty much yeah exactly so like fantasize about like the the death of like these great empires right and like that's what like like medievalism is like which is like the the kind of this is what don quixote is a critique of is like these like returning this like nostalgic longing for like an unreal like a totally fabricated courtly society that was invented by poets in order to like entertain rich people and also because like the actual society those people lived in was extremely violent and extremely depraved right like i mean and so like in some ways like all that stuff is also like a kind of

trauma response to living in that world like believing that you're killing people out of love for women instead of like the fact that it's just petty fucking land wars yeah it's like like it is a coping mechanism for like the horrible realities of like feudalism and so like you have like and even in that time it was fake like the courtly culture shit was fake like when it was being made and then you have like 19th century guys being like this was the greatest of all times and even motherfuckers back then it wasn't real you know what i mean yeah exactly like i mean and it is like actually like the high romanticist like ruin porn is a kind of like that these are the original kind of trad guys like they're they're losers and even the hohenstaffens like looked at like roman architecture and like wanted to be holy roman empires and they made these castles which are gorgeous i mean really

fascinating castle del monte like any of these any of the hohenstaufen castles like that invoke architectural motifs from the roman empire mixed with the gothic and they're really eclectic really strange buildings and it's like there's always been in like a kind of ruling class affliction for loserdom yeah all of it all i'm saying is that as a guy who like you know is sort of um you know obsessed with i guess hauntology and somebody who posts retro sci-fi or if you feel like you got to look at a bunch of rocks to feel reinvigorated with some sort of national or social identity you're a fucking loser dog yeah i'm just gonna tell you you're a fucking loser it does seem to be endemic

not only just among the right and like the return thing but among the liberals as well like absolutely yeah i thought that like ryan grimm had a tweet yesterday that was like interesting because it kind of articulated something that i've thought too he said early on in this conflict he's talking about israel palestine i told myself that many of the people who were refusing to condemn what israel was doing to palestinians and denouncing it critics of it as an anti-semitic would wake up when tens of thousands of people were dead and the scale of the slaughter was undeniable with some noble exceptions that hasn't hasn't happened he's right and it's like there's people people have dug in and i think that like part of the reason that people have dug in is because they are under their own sort of fantasies, and they can't really understand that, like, obviously—

Something like this could happen. Yes, exactly. Like, the magnitude of it is so phenomenal, and, like, a lot of the terms and actors, a lot of the historical baggage is so loaded that we can't even really grapple with it but a big part of it is the leaders ostensibly in charge of all these things are also operating under fantasy and so like they can't even be real with their own um people with their own like the people that they lead yeah because like i really do think that if like biden and them and they were just honest about this and actually tried to like buck up to israel you would see a lot of people kind of come to their senses and say like oh my god like this is awful it's a blind leading the blind right exactly

it's exactly like that's what i don't get like i understand like from like a kind of political perspective like about biden or whatever in israel but if you look at like did you ever see that like article i think like what is his name like edgar moody or however the fuck you say i posted it about like how like hillary was like i fucking hate netanyahu yeah and like and like fucking and like she tried to like intervene like and then biden just like as vice president goes out and like fucking blindside turn it's like yeah let's give net it's like he just always has been insane about this particular thing yeah it's like well even like more like in like less insane like but still deeply insane warmongers like if you have a warmonger like hillary clinton being like then yahoo is like off the rails like what does that

make biden and like this is the one thing that like i cannot like i understand like the structures of power in society but like i actually like just don't understand why he is so particularly insane about this thing or like john betterman it's like why yeah like what about this has made you so deeply fucking unhinged like why are you so bloodthirsty about this particular issue like why do you like like even when other actors are like who are terrible horrible people like who have killed like like cost many their lives are just like this is kind of nuts like and it's just like this this unexpected frission in like the kind of high neoliberal power structures that i i actually like on a human level kind of don't understand yeah like on on a social level i understand it but like

on like a human level in terms of like what like biden, like, a human level in terms of, like, what, like, Biden is, like, like, but why, you know? Yeah. I sound, I sound kind of stupid, but, like, no, no, no. We've spent, we've spent the past couple weeks since this has started trying to kind of figure out what is it about this. Dude, why is he so insane? To be truly, we don't, like like we don't get it either i think honestly the more this develops like i just woke up today to news that like pakistan like retaliated against iran um so like you've already got like low-grade of shit building, like, boiling, right?

And then I saw this, like, article, and obviously you should take this with a grain of salt, but these two analysts were who, you know, according to the tweet I saw, two analysts who are not known for, like, saber-rattling or alarmism are, like, very concerned with a lot of the moves that kim jong-un has been making um yeah i already launched a ballistic missile apparently yeah and i think that like i really do genuinely think and this is the terrifying thing i really do think that there is probably some sort of global conflict global arm conflict uh i guess you could call it world war whatever you want but i do think that like we've reached the historical conjuncture that we've

all known is coming and I think that like if you probably went back in time to like 1913 and 14 you would probably see global actors doing and saying the same things they're so dug in to the world as they want it to be they're so dug into the fantasy of the

world and they can't like accept like what was really the stakes you know the world and they can't like accept like what was really the stakes you know what i mean they can't really accept like the stakes of what is on the table and what it might mean that they really are kind of like like you said kate the blind leading the blind they're sort of like slow walking us into the wood chipper so to speak um i did i think that that's probably i don't know it's just, it does seem that like people, and again, I saw you, I saw you mention this the other day, Kate, uh, on your Twitter, um, the Rebecca West book, um, Black Lamb, Gray Falcon.

Uh, and the, there's a lot of different criticisms you can make of that book, but like, she's got some fucking excellent passages in there. And one of my favorites. Yeah. It's gorgeous prose writer. Um, one of my favorite is like at the very beginning and she's talking about like how people without even knowing it can get slotted into these like tracks in life and then just kind of be like be pushed along and it is a very like sort of like determinist like materialist analysis of things um but i do think that that is true i do think that like world events kind of like pull actors along on these tracks without them even really realizing it

what it is that pulls them towards it and i kind of think that's the case with biden and i think that's the case with blinken that's the case with all these um leaders right now who are not grappling with the implications of this um especially And it becomes especially more and more absurd every time you see a TikTok video of IDF soldiers hollowing out a Palestinian's home and using it for a pizzeria and fucking playing with their toys and destroying their heirlooms and stuff.

This is real shit. And they don't live in that world where this is real. You know what I'm saying? They in the it's almost sort of like fantasy construction of it i feel like there's a wrong way i think a common theme of this whole podcast is that there is a wrong way to get into history like that's especially true of like medieval time shit which is why like don quixote exists yeah like but it's also true in the roman empire like statue guys and like you know ruined porn fetishists from the 19th century and like jonathan chait like i feel like it's all just the wrong way of of looking at history like it is just

it is like getting into history for the wrong reasons. Well, I would tack on to that. There is also a wrong way to make history. And honestly... We're doing it. Yes. Honestly, one of the best examples of that, to kind of throw it back to your wheelhouse, Kate, just this past week, I think the organizers of Neom,

who we had you on to talk about, you know, we had you on to talk about last year, like they unveiled their like plans for like the 10 planned regions of Neom. And like the fucking, it is wild. If I had to like say there's an aesthetic,

it literally looks like they just watched the Villanueva Dune movie and we're just like, yeah, that's good yeah it's like basically plagiarized from that like they're gonna do like the most bland bleak boring yeah looking shit that i've ever seen i mean it looks great but it looks very boring and bland fucking idiots like i there's like an evil version of me like it's like like imagine like like just like the dark version of me like dark kate and like imagine like, like just like the dark version of me, like dark Kate.

And I, I just see her in my head, like wearing an eye patch, like telling them it's time, like, like talking to blink and being like, hit the button on Neom. Like, and like the global world conflict. Did Kate, did you see the, um, so the, I think the headline grabbing thing was the upside down skyscraper, which is dumb as fuck. Yeah, that's stupid. Hold up. So wait.

It's an up... I don't... So the base is smaller than the top? Trying to make sense of it, Aaron. Physics? Dude, okay, I understand how physically you could create maybe a counterweight to this. And this has been done many times in plinth skyscrapers, and it creates very... But not one I understand, like, how physically, like, you could create maybe, like, a counterweight to this that is, like, and this has been done many times in, like, plinth skyscrapers, and it creates very, but not, like, one where it's, like, actually all the weight is, like, pushing down on, like, a central point, like an inverse pyramid or whatever.

Yeah. But, like, the thing is, is they're trying to do this in the fucking sand. Right. Like, you're not talking about, like, a fucking stable substrate here. There's literally. You're talking about the fucking desert. A biblical parable about a man building his house on sand. Yeah.

Like not to be like it's in the Bible, but. The funniest fucking one, Kate, is Epicon. It is a pair of jagged skyscrapers. And this one is like when they try to do like the glass line or whatever the upside down skyscraper i feel like they try to obscure the fact that they're building it on sand the design for this one is just straight up like it just shows the sand like a hundred and a 225 meters high i mean 120 room hotel on sand and you could you should see it it's like they're on stilts like it's just like these weird jagged lines that's just all gonna look like this the statue of liberty at the end of planet of the apes when they get done with it you know

like just like it's just gonna be sunken in there like i mean it's just like oh man we want to talk about some icarus shit like trying to build an upside down skyscraper on sand like dude you're mixing icarus and the bible you are doubly fucked like i'm just also curious how much of the uh how many of these people are inspired by like science fiction whether it's like cyberpunk or like you know it's gotta gotta be that's insane man yeah but it's like the point of fantasy like and from an architectural standpoint is like it's it's it's it's fantasy i mean like those buildings like we do not physically have the technology to build them right like it like that's what makes them so spectacular as visual images and why they hold their weight as visual

images if we could construct them they wouldn't be as spectacular yeah they wouldn't be as futuristic like how many times i pose a piece to art people are like well actually technically in real life this wouldn't be i'm like dude this is why it's a piece of art yeah that's why it's awesome that's why it's cooking something could never be shaped like that some guy came up with it and said that'd be cool on a book cover yeah that would look slay that's what he said yeah um but yeah i think about this all this all the time and it's like look that they did an ethnic cleansing to make new neon like i mean we're just we're just doing nesting ethnic cleansings now like right it's insane man yeah i think they're being alive dude they're also trying to

do a um they're called the oxagon they're trying to do like a floating seaport they can just name shapes just baby shit it's like imagine a sphere that's like island that's what that sounds like that's the floating island where they have deaf matches stupid like it's just like okay we took something that someone made that's cool and we made it like dumb which is essentially like a manifestation of the entire tech industry at this point like like i actually like there's something to be said and something that i'm writing about in like the book i hope to write next year about like how all these star architects and stuff like really have just taken all of their their shit from the tech industry yeah like

their rhetoric they're like you know sort of startup talking and like their you know their imagery it's all like just completely 100 lifted you could say plagiarized if you want oh no bill ackman come get your ass we can't we can't get into this we are so we are so we can't get into bill ackman dude i know dude we can't get into this i know we're going long this is a whole other conversation to kate but you just made me think about like that intersection between architecture and the tech industry and sort of it's all undergirded by like this talk of like the future you know and sort of like our future you know this yeah i mean they're futurist in the fucking fascist way. You know what I mean? But how it's all sort of the sinew is like this sleek, futuristic design.

You know what I mean? That's like, I don't know. It's like kind of like. That's how it was in the 30s, dude. The Italians are doing modernism while everyone was doing Roman column shit. That's what fascism was like. They're like, yeah, you know what's awesome? Technology and really loud shit like engines. You know what's, yeah, you know what's awesome? Technology and really loud shit. Like, engines.

Yeah. Like, you know what's really cool? You know what's really fucking cool? Like, simple forms. And it's like, that stuff was, like, architecturally innovative, but it was still fascist. Right. And that's like, well, all the other fucking Axis powers were doing, like, fucking return guy shit. Like, Italy, like, as real, like a real real fascist you know like the og

like capital f they invented the word right like they were like they are more like techno fascist they were like actually fascism exists in the sleek and modern future exactly exactly it's about it's about the uh the inexorable uh uh advancement of technology by all by all means necessary you know right yeah and it's uh yeah man and that's what neom is like really i mean that is like almost a contrite thing to say because it's like you know this is a historical thing that happened and also like within its specific artistic context but like i mean the spirit i think is is so similar yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. It's not run by, it's not being built by a,

um, it's not being built under the guise of like this, like false community or like proletarian nation theory as like articulated by like Mussolini and shit. It's literally just like all of our hotel. Well, yeah, it's just like,

it's like, it's like rich, it's dumber than fascism. It's literally dumber than fascism like it's dumber than fascism it's literally dumber than fascism it's dumber than fascism it's like oligarchs who made their money on oil and are running a holy kingdom so it's like holy roman empire on oil money dude it's like neon that is almost insulting to the holy roman empire you know i i want to just take a fucking like okay you're right you're right.

You're right. But like, there was more. I feel like there's a little bit more fucking dignity there. Yeah. Well, it just I don't know, man. It reminds me of I'm in love with the show. Apple Plus show for all mankind. Ronald D. Moore is the showrunner of Star Trek fame.

And I don't know if this is a thing that uh von braun actually said um but in the show um a character talking about their relationship says that von braun told me that progress is never free and this was in response to him being questioned about whether he knew that that um there were uh jews dying in the labor camps when they were building the v2 rockets right but his his you know rejoinder is that well progress isn't free and i just think that there were Jews dying in the labor camps when they were building the V2 rockets, right? But his rejoinder is that, well, progress isn't free. And I just think about the fact that I've mentioned this many times, the fact that more people died building those V2 rockets than people who died from the rockets themselves. Right.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And just that sort of concept of just like, well, I mean, we're going to have to throw like how many ever slaves at this hotel in the desert. You know what I mean? Like, well, progress isn't free. Right. Yeah.

I think that's a good note to end on, maybe. Yeah, I think so, too. It also sounds like a line that would be in Yellowstone. I've been watching a lot of Yellowstone. It sounds like John Dutton would say progress isn't free. Progress ain't free. Cigarette voice. That's pretty good.

That's pretty good. All right. This is a good place to end on. Kate, do you have anything you'd like to plug? I would like to plug the same shit I usually do. You should read my column at The Nation, which is called Raising Hell now. It has a title now, which is called Raising Hell, as in R-A-Z-I-N-G.

Hell, yeah. Hell, which is the architecture column. So that is now like a big critic with a column in a magazine and stuff. Hell, yeah. So check that out. My next one is going to be about the destruction of everything in Palestine, uh like the destruction of everything in palestine herbicide which is not a pleasant subject but um like what like there's a lot there was like outcry over like the destruction of mosques and stuff but like also like the destruction of hospitals like university it's all part of the

same program like there isn't like an architectural exception for things that are like considered that's part that's why herbicide is the way it is is like it does not make any kind of like artistic kind of distinctions right i mean those things it's all part of the same project so that's the next column so read that and then hopefully i'll be writing about like fucking interior design or something again but probably i'll be on the gaza's thing forever because it's terrible and horrible and shouldn't know when very few other people are writing about it so um yeah despite the bleakness of the subject matter i'm uh i'm looking forward to that uh that article coming out because it definitely feels like uh i don't know just destroying architecture you know as um you know one of the methods of ethnic cleansing right well in culture history

and art you know what i mean and and honestly the ecological cost too and i'm not trying to make turn it into like a doomer thing but like i just saw this article the other day about the amount of co2 that's been released just from like the bombing and stuff so it's like yeah it is all of one all of one piece yeah yeah yeah yep um all right we'll go check that out at the nation you can also find Kate on twitter at at McMansion Hell so Kate thanks for filling in today for Tom we always love it when you're on

yeah we appreciate it you're the best alright gang well please go support us on Patreon as well if you can p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. And a lot of good content. The Duchy of Patreon.

Yes. And you also have a Patreon, right? Yep. It's McMansion Howl. It's my ugly house blog. We're all at the Duchy of Patreon. Hell yes. E-minstrels at the Duchy of Patreon.

Hell yes. All right. Well, go support us there, please. And we will see you next time. Peace out. Bye. Ciao. And what are you going to do to stop the crazies?

I am scared as heck. Yeah. Which is why I'm traveling our country. You know, there's an old saying that there are only two ways to run for office. Either without an opponent or scared. So on all of those points, yes, we should all be scared. Thank you.