Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 363: Pot Committed (w/ special guest Noah Kulwin)

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

This week we welcome back Noah Kulwin, co-host and co-creator of the podcast Blowback, to discuss their latest season about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. We also discuss the nature of U.S. empire, the role of Zionism in American political ideology, the centrality of race to modernity, and the legacy of Anthony Blinken, among many other topics. Please go check out Blowback here: https://blowback.show/ And support our show here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Music I'm not sure if I'm going to be show this week everybody. We're joined by Noah Colwin of the podcast, Blowback. I think second time we've had you on the show. Yes, number two. Last time we had you on we were talking about the savings and loan crisis of the 80s I believe. Yes, I wrote an article for the Baffler a couple years ago about it and then I went and hibernated and now I'm here. A great place to emerge from hibernation. Yeah, I don't know anything that's been going on.

What's up? I wish I was like you right now, brother. I need to I need a return to some some hovel of my own, you know, probably stay there for like the next like not even a couple of weeks. We're exhausted. No, we're fucking we have been covering

this goddamn election Which is weird because like we are uninterested parties in this basically at this point like in the sense that like Yeah, as we were saying before we hopped on like I am very concerned I very much don't want Trump to win but at the same time When you take Liz Cheney and Richie Torres to Michigan of all states, you're kind of signaling that you're not trying to win Michigan. Not just take, not just have Richie Torres do his like, you know, stump speech, but explicitly talk about the failure and impotency of the uncommitted movement.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like just literally signaling, I mean you might as well have sent David Duke to campaign in North Carolina for the Harris campaign or something. I genuinely, I want to know your thoughts on this. What the fuck is this about? Like I mean my personal knee jerk reaction and I was telling Tom this on the phone last night. I almost kind of feel like it's intentional in the sense that they're trying to

Demonstrate or signal to the Israel cult that like we'll do anything for you like we'll even lose If you're gonna campaign with Liz chain and Richie Torres, whatever that's already bad enough But going to Michigan is really they're dabbing on us obviously, but it's unless you're I don't know. I mean they have like because it lost in 2016 You know like remember Chuck Schumer said I think he was talking about Pennsylvania specifically, but he said that you know for every You know fat Union factory worker, whatever we lose will win like 10 suburban moms, right? That was the theory back then and and now eight years later Like the Union rank-and-file is only more Trump than you know more pro Trump than ever broadly

and in general also I think that the like that sort of like de-alignment play it You know, there is it like like we've now seen Dobbs and all these other like like there are things that you could argue and like the fact that the 2022 midterms went down the way they did that suggests like okay like you know this is the reality of like how the party the two-party system is divided at this time you know like maybe there's something to it but like you know there's such a chasm, there's such a gulf

between that and then deciding, well you know whose ass I need to bring to Michigan. We need Liz Cheney up in there. We need Liz Cheney, we need Richie Torres, the representative with the poorest constituents in the country and who has no legislative accomplishments aside from like constantly talking about the country that is currently committing a genocide and not in a negative way but

in a loving way. Like I think that there is a like I'm not gonna try to pretend like I have a handle on you know the tactical validity of You know running to the middle or whatever at this point in time Like I think it's immoral and and that like lying to people about what's right and what's wrong is like in general like part Of why we're in, you know this mess generally speaking, but you know, it's it's such a to your point like yeah It's dabbing on us. It's making it clear who holds the power It's also like clearly this attempt to like signify that you know, we're the party of everyone But to your point, yeah, it's dabbing on us, it's making it clear who holds the power. It's also clearly this attempt to signify that we're the party of everyone, but that mainly involves really constantly affirming to people who have perhaps ever had a thought

about putting up a thin blue line flag or whatever that we're on their side too. Yeah. It's a kind of impossible situation that has led led me to just like very just be very happy That I live in New York where my non vote will not count You know, no, that's that's a really good point because we were talking about on the patreon about their appeal the Harris's Campaigns appeal to black male voters, you know, which is gone from everything from intimidation Which is like just part of the course, right for Democrats, but intimidation, scolding, ridicule. I mean, all of these things where I mentioned on Patreon that it seems like a signaling

to the right, you know, that like not even just directed at black male voters, but a signaling to the right that they're making this obvious, not just rhetorical shift shift But I mean, I guess the policy shifts have been implicated in within that already But it just does seem does seem like a rightward signaling, you know, I agree I think that it's I like those like that There's like that horribly demeaning ad with like the black guy saying like I'm not voting and then Everybody looking like that fake dating thing, right? Very revolting and everybody like that fake dating thing, right? Very revolting. Yeah, like to me that's like clearly,

despite obviously like the message of the ad is like, huh, we're directing this at black men. Like you should vote if you wanna get laid, which is all right, fine, demeaning and silly. But clearly that's not like who the, like the ad is targeted. The ad as an ad is targeted at. The ad is targeted at like people

who I mean look like I think that it's targeted at people who are gratified by seeing black men get taken down a peg And it's like yeah, you know like I leave it to the listener to decide who that might be right Yeah, perhaps some of you judging from some of the comments Motherfuckers, so we don't care either the general Tenor of this is really strange like Aaron sent us this ad that he saw yesterday that we looked into it's from a P a pack called future ford USA action which sounds like a

Shock troop you know what I mean? Like a- Action with three Ks, by the way. No, I'm kidding. Future Ford USA Action. But it's, after this election, your voting record will be updated and your friends and family will be able to look up how often you vote.

I mean, it is genuinely, the entire thing is geared towards intimidation and fear, I mean, but which is weird. Yeah, but that's like most people, most people, that's why it's also just like, it's like cool, so you wanna like self, like this is where it's like, people always talk about like how the left self-marginalizes by like talking about like bad things or whatever, and it's like fine, like not gonna engage in that,

but there is like a, I cannot imagine what the fuck is more Self-marginalizing than what you just described where it's like yeah, most people don't vote like in fact Most people are completely if they're not like disenchanted then it's because like probably a plurality of Americans They are ignorant because we live in industrialized society We're such creed, you know Like even though we have everybody's plugged into the Internet hive mind or whatever like people got their own things going on Well, that's oh, I think a lot of Americans are kind of paranoid too about the creep of like all this stuff granted I know a lot of us spend all of our time on Facebook and and tick-tock

but I just it's not a winning message to be like you better go vote because if you don't It's your your information won't be online. People will be like, okay, that's good. I don't want my information publicly available. I don't want to go away from that. It's a weird visit. There is also, I mean, just the idea of also like lording that. I mean, I think a lot of that was about,

like if I'm not mistaken, that like there was like a very similar thing with Chapel Rowan where it was that like, that was how that whole like corner of whatever, like how that whole thing came unglued whereas because like a bunch of we're sharing that image like Chapel Rowan you know has not voted and whatever the fuck and I have no idea if the image they were sharing is real or not or authentic or whatever to be clear so miss Rowan if you're listening I don't care if you

voted yeah it's you just it's it's not my fucking problem and Like unless you're a parent doing it to like scold your child, which I think is like kind of funny I think that's a pretty good parent maneuver. Yeah, then like like yeah, that sort of thing is I Mean look, it's also you could argue that I think in addition to being an advertising and like, you know Somehow supposedly being a motivating tool or whatever the fuck, I also think though that it's like part of this process that like we see every election pretty much.

And I'm sure that there were versions of this in Biden too, even though that one was much seemed much more sewn up in 2020. But it's like where you're preparing yourself and the people on your team for the possibility that just maybe in spite of all your best hopes and all the Self-confidence of the justice and popularity of your position that actually you're about to choke and die like a dog in November Right, right You know what you know what two men is that it almost feels as if whether again It's black man, whether it's um, Arab Americans. It feels as if or the left I guess

Generally, it feels as if they are gearing up to blame these constituencies In case they lose and that's wrapped up with the intimidation, you know, I mean 100. Yes, there's completely Good good Tom. No, no, no, no, no, I was just what exactly are they threatening? I just you know, are the pussy hats gonna dangles over a hotel back there? You are going to have to see some of the most annoying posts for like the net like that's what I mean that's what I think it mainly comes down to because this is also in general like I hate like all the fucking talk about how It's like we need to get everybody we need to like, you know, like we need to have like mass action y'all about Palestine We are not talking enough and reaching enough people. We are self marginalizing with these extreme actions and it's like

like I don't know man I'm not really sure that's the issue like yes you know is it possibly that like you sound just it's like that like the whole thing about everybody sounding like Sephiroth you know the villain from Final Fantasy 7 it's like everybody just like sounds so fucking overheated relative to like what their political capacity even if they're talking about like a movement or political force they represent what it has the capacity to do like we're all you know I think like the that like popular power can't like be wielded to punish people in this way is like a very frustrating thing for pretty much

everyone right now. Or like they have like sort of an inflated sense of like their, like their own position relative to the stakes. Like I saw that somebody was tweeting like, uh, uh, ICP endorsed Harris. And then there was like a little meme about how like, uh, you know, didn't think I'd be like fighting Nazis with the insane clown posse. And it's just like, uh, Yeah, man, you're fighting the Nazis. Nazis with the insane clown posse and it's just like You're not paying taxes to a government that's currently sending money to them to fight wars right now that is yeah That's the reality that is your that's your position. That's your that is you as a political subject

You is that is that's your position. You're fighting Nazis. You're not part of the Implicated at all in the system. That's like supporting them I mean, that's maybe that's a good segue actually into talking about blowback. We wanted to have you on the show to talk Talk about your show. Oh, yeah that little thing You know you guys have done five seasons now By my count. I'm pretty sure you've done three seasons on the Cold War and two seasons on the War on Terror.

Pretty appropriate. With some, I will say cross-pollination. Absolutely. Especially Afghanistan. But I think that's a good summary. Yeah, that's very true, right? You don't get Iraq and Afghanistan without the Cold War. No, but it's I mean like objectively like, you know

We're like it's we're half Cold War half. G what as it stands? Yeah one it's kind of an irony that yeah, like it's At this point, you can't really say we're fighting fascism if you're aligned with dick Cheney because that is you know our fascist par excellence with Dick Cheney because that is you know our fascist par excellence. Conflict in turn. But also just listening to the newest season which is about Cambodia. I mean it really gets I mean I granted I know that like every season you walk away with the the unmistakable impression that America is the great

Satan and we have sown great evil into the world But like this season particularly I thought I found very interesting Because of its Because of like how often the the theme and symbolism of evil crops up all throughout it for example We're recording this a week before Halloween. I watched Exorcist 3 the other night. Oh, yeah There's an exorcist tie-in to this season. I mean Yeah, I'd like the Reverend Thomas Dooley's quote in William Peter Blatty's exorcist novel about like the nature of evil and like you know what I'm saying like That was all turned out to be fabricated

He well and not just like fab I'll go further and also say like it's projected like the deer hunters probably the most famous version of this where it's like a lot Of the images and like reforms of torture that we project on to North Vietnamese or communist Vietnamese We're actually things we did or the South Vietnamese that we supported did to them Right, it's like totally. Yeah sounds familiar sounds very familiar with what's going on right now in Israel and Palestine for sure but yeah, no this this is the season was very fascinating because um First of all I have to say that like I'm a product of a backwater provincial failed

educational system So like I was raised I mean everybody on this calls when we think we're pretty much the same age within like probably five or six years I was raised to believe that Pol Pot was And he is he is a singularly evil figure but like I was raised to believe that like oh You know he was a singularly evil figure and the Americans opposed him the entire way because he was a communist He was like this, you know and said's it but it's a very it's

It's a very interesting thing because you know your season points out that not only did the Americans create the conditions to Allow him to come into power. They then supported the Khmer Rouge once Vietnam invaded to You know get them to fucking knock it off Yeah, I mean it's it's a crazy story like the I was raised You know in a more I think I'd be lying if I said it was anything other than like a totally like Competent like you know like well-heeled New Jersey suburban school district Where the only exposure I had to this at all was a friend telling me to watch the Killing Fields Right and even then like the sort of culturally transmitted, and that movie is excellent, by the way,

we can talk about that later, but the truth that gets transmitted is that Pol Pot communism is an evil totalitarian social force that corrupts the minds and countries that it takes over, it impoverishes them, and Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, the most murderous communist movement led by the singularly evil figure Pol Pot, are evidence, ipso facto, of such evil. And that's a very tidy, neat narrative that, like, you know, is like it, I mean, it gets

the geography and the names, right? But I think what is, you know, sort of the, when you, when you peel back the first layer of the onion, we see that the Khmer Rouge only existed as such. They were only relevant as a political force at all because of first the anti-communist actions of the royalist Cambodian government in the early 60s, but then that gets way overtaken by the American government. Because throughout the second half the early 60s, but then that gets way overtaken by the American government because throughout the second half of the 1960s, we do everything we can to upset Cambodia's

neutralist position in the Cold War so that we'll have a new front on which to fight the Vietnam War because the logic, and this was right wing dogma at the time, was that bringing the war into Cambodia would actually be the defeat of the Viet Cong. Vietnamization, right? Is that what Nixon called it?

I mean, that was the other half of it, where it's like, because Nixon had this issue, so he gets into power in 69. And he has, you know, he's promised that we are going to get peace with honor in Vietnam. Like the American people are expecting him to end the Vietnam War. And so as soon as he is in office, like really within the first few months in early 69, he begins developing what emerges as like a synthesis policy.

First there's the bombing of Cambodia, which he, with the help of Henry Kissinger, arranges secretly and totally, like, I mean, it was illegal. It went to the Supreme Court later. But the, you know, this really extreme, but again, top secret bombing of what was supposed to be a neutral country, you know, supposedly targeting Cambodian sanctuaries, but we're in reality, of course, just villages of people. And then the other part of it, as you say, Vietnamization was like withdrawing troops. And the idea was like, oh, we're going to like transfer more of the fight in the Vietnam

War to the South Vietnamese, which anybody who lived through the Iraq or Afghanistan wars and remembers all the headlines about how we were going to have, you know, the Iraqi army that we were rebuilding, or the Afghan National Army that we were rebuilding, how those were going to be ultimately would fight and why we wouldn't need American troops in the long run and so on and so Vietnamization was like the name for that part of it where it's like well, we're withdrawing our troops, but we're relying more on them Which was you know?

Compensated for within you know with an air war this bombing of Cambodia and also continued attacks in North Vietnam and All of that bombing all of that unrest that it generated, because it wasn't just like, it didn't just happen and everybody then went on with their lives or tried to go on with their lives. It put incredible stress on the pressure of the Cambodian government, whose villagers and peasantry, which were not exceptionally

you know, like, bumptious or resistant by the standards of the region, you know, let alone poor and bombed people all over the world, were now beginning to take up arms. And many people who weren't taking up arms were fleeing the war-torn countryside for the capital, which became overrun. You know, it was just, it was too many people there. And it was a, and as, you know, once the Cambodian neutral government fell and an American puppet government took its place You know we begin to see like oh

So like this communist movement the Khmer Rouge the ultimate evil were like they came at the end of all this like I'm halfway Through the story right of how we get to something like the Khmer Rouge And I've already just described what would have been like you know civilization wrecking Violence in any other context as well And so the Khmer Rouge are like this ultimate evil, but the thing is, is that the Khmer Rouge get there more or less by being, you know, like they're an unknown. Even to the Vietnamese who are their hosts and often doing most of the fighting for them,

there's something like that, and there's not a whole lot known about them. And of this tight-ruling Khmer, that's the ethnic group of most Cambodians and of this group, these Khmer men and women, mainly men, at the core of this leadership college, we don't know a whole lot about them. Then when they come into power, they implement this crazy radical leveling vision and so on. But the first people that they end up going to fight with after they trade some blows with America,

briefly, is essentially the Vietnamese. And once the Khmer Rouge begin to have this kind of geopolitical antipathy toward the Vietnamese, then all of a sudden, this doesn't become like a story, right, anymore about communist atrocity. It becomes a more interesting story. It opens up into something that like Bren and I hadn't really like a story, right? Anymore about, you know, communist atrocity. It becomes a more interesting story. It opens up into something that like, Brendan and I hadn't really gotten the opportunity

to do in prior seasons of the show. And that's to kind of talk about how like, yeah, here's the American government now backing the Khmer Rouge once they are kicked out of power by their former allies, the Vietnamese. It's America backing the Khmer Rouge with China, who is now in 2024 our current, you

know, like geopolitical rival. Yeah. So there's like a kind of, you know, circularity, like, you know, the kind of dizzying and pointless pointlessness to the whole thing. Like it's all very, like this whole season, I think it was a kind of like a real trip in going back and just sort of like, you know, re re examining the roots of both a lot of what feels so strange and fraught about like our current moment, but also like, what are the contradictions in it? Like how is it exactly that our numero uno enemy in the world was like our co

conspirator in a whole lot of really important cold war era plots because we had common enemies like Vietnam and the Soviet Union Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing and it kind of gets at like the general amnesia of Americans that like as your show points Out there were ample There were ample examples of like people in the late 80s early 90s like pressing George HW Bush on this Like why are we backing the Khmer Rouge? You know what? I mean? Like I think you even had a clip from Congressman Chester Atkins where he's just like he says something to the effect of like it's a policy of hatred

It's a policy of hatred towards like the V like we're still fighting the Vietnam War the Vietnam War still ongoing But I guess what I'm saying what I'm getting at here is that I was completely unaware that this was a part of discourse in the 90s, that it was knowledge, I don't know if it was like common knowledge, I don't know if people were discussing it at the Dairy Queen every morning, but it was knowledge that the United States was backing the Khmer Rouge. And then, but then you're right, then you get into this whole other aspect of it and this results from the Sino-Soviet split where China is also backing the Khmer Rouge because they see Vietnam as the main threat because they had perceived Vietnam to be backed by the Soviet Union And it's a little work and it shouldn't be understated that like China had a lot of direct antipathy toward I mean like Deng Xiaoping

that China had a lot of direct antipathy toward, I mean, like Deng Xiaoping, who is like the political leader, who is the kind of like the force behind many of the internal changes, like in the post-cultural revolution into the kind of 80s globalization era. Deng calls the Vietnamese the hooligans of the East. And there is a longer standing geopolitical rivalry between those two countries

that is also like, you know, it intersects and is a and collides with the Sino-Soviet split as like a basis for Chinese Vietnamese enmity. You know, just to say that like, I don't want to make it seem like China only thought that Hanoi was doing Moscow's bidding, because that was America. That was what we thought. We thought that like Hanoi was, you know, just like taking orders from Moscow and that this was true well into the 1980s when both Vietnam and Moscow were like had been for years fighting aggressively for American aid at that point. Well, and there's a further contradiction here, which is that the set one of the bases for the Sino-Soviet split was that the Soviet Union was pushing a policy of coexistence

with the capitalist West and China was saying wanted to be more aggressive towards that and then you've got this situation not but 10-15 years later where China is actually aligned with the US against the Soviet Union. It's a very. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's very, it is reflective of also, I think how part of it is, you know, we can, like, I'm not, and Brennan and I do not pretend to be like authorities on like Chinese grand strategy. But I do think that one of the things that we can see is that it made a lot of sense for China's own improvement

and its ability to enter the world as the economic force that it has been for the last 30, 40 years, and in the last 15 especially, it was possible because they looked at the field of the 1980s and they said, we could do well here. We can partner with the US, we can try and ease our relations, we can try and absorb

in time, especially once they acceded to the WTO and there was this like really aggressive push to, you know, obviously, you know, unload a lot of our and or, or just set up new manufacturing capacity there for multinationals. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's kind of a hard thing to consider when it,

you know, coexists with also obviously, and as a part of the strategy where China's, you know, was doing everything it could to essentially like punish Vietnam. The like one of the things that we talk about in our season that's really you know we emphasize and actually Brent and I we traveled to Cambodia and Vietnam was going to look at the you know

in the late 70s when China was backing the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge began to get really like liquid You know they engaged in this crazy domestic program, right? But they also started like, you know ordering raids on Vietnamese villages crossing the border from Cambodia into Vietnam and killing thousands of people and Vietnam at the time kept this pretty secret They were really hush hush about it and only now in in fact there was a new documentary about the largest of these massagers, Qua Chuc, that was released in Vietnam this year. But in general, this stuff is not especially well-historicized.

And it's part of this story, right, of how this new globalized world that is now fracturing came into being in the first place, you know it involved This conflict this you know, like like the America Chinese Cooperation was undergirded by a geopolitical alliance that literally said, you know, like well Pol Pot can go kill some Vietnamese were fine with that and then it became you know Once the Pol Pot government fell, the US was the primary force at making sure that even though it was not Pol Pot's government in Phnom Penh, in the capital of Cambodia running the country, they still had the seat, the Khmer Rouge had

the seat at the United Nations. And that is when we, so that was where the most direct and obvious and public support of the US for the Khmer Rouge movement came from. But then privately, we through China, directly sent military and economic aid to the political coalition of which the Khmer Rouge was a part. Publicly, we said that they weren't getting any aid. Privately, and it was very well documented at the time, there was ample quote unquote leakage and tons of US support went directly to the Khmer Rouge.

Yeah it's it's this interesting thing that like I think you guys point this out in the season but it does kind of mirror in many ways the US support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and I'm just wondering like after five seasons of the show if you can start to kind of like tease out any like after five seasons of the show if you can Start to kind of like tease out any like trends or patterns of what we would call like American imperialism like I mean And I just take a stab at it myself just from listening It seems like as opposed to something like British or French colonialism or imperialism where it was like These overt attempts to split nations and ethnic groups and then set them against each other.

The United States does do a lot of that, but it is also at the same time organized around these like deep ideological differences in trying to empower certain, you know, ideological groups or political groups against others. And I don't know, maybe there's also, maybe that intersects also with drug trafficking and oil, you know what I mean, these other things as well. But I'm just wondering if after five seasons, you know what I mean, if you've picked up on any of these sort of larger themes

or trends or anything. I think one of the, there are a couple things. There's one, Brennan, I think this isn't either, I think this may have even been our second season when we were making that, that are a couple things. There's one, Brennan, I think this isn't either, I think this may have even been in our second season when we were making that, that like we ended up talking. I mean, I think we briefly mentioned it, but something that he and I were both, I think, struck and influenced by was Kwame Nkrumah, the like foundational African political leader, first president of Ghana.

first president of Ghana. In Krumah, he had this formulation of neo-imperialism, sorry, neo-colonialism. The idea of which was that you didn't have states or political authorities like Britain directly imposing a colonial system, you now had intermediary structures, corporate structures. So in the case of Africa, you had, let's say Nigeria, for example, Nigeria is the most oil rich country in the African continent, but it has no domestic refining capacity to process its own oil.

Like the idea of an independent, like the idea that in Nigeria could independently control and protect and export its own oil reserve was really handicapped because of this division of the industry. That's a form that he, that example that I brought up, he is taken directly from his book And it's a problem, by the way, that like still exists to this day. Like I remember reading a couple of years ago a newsletter by Adam Tews, you know, the Columbia historian, a great, great scholar. But it like kind of struck me how it's like he's describing this problem. And it's like, yeah, a thing that was like sketched out 60 years ago by like,

you know, like to me, there's just a kind of, it's sort of emblematic that in many parts of the world, these issues do remain like structurally the same and like how neo colonialism how these things are experienced remains the same. And that kind of consistency of just sort of like how control is administered, you know, through, administered, through whether it's like oil companies owning things in one way or whether it's by, because obviously it was like the American interest and how the Taliban essentially managed control of the country through the 90s

was by like playing or bidding oil companies, some connected to the CIA off one another. Just that like, which all of which is to say that like resource Exploitation and the inability of these kind of subject countries to manage that for themselves is like a astonishingly consistent theme Always hear people refer to as like the resource curse as if there's some sort of cosmic force That's like just what's what's right? You know what? Yeah American burial ground did

they dig up for this to have happen to them? Yeah, and like why is it that like there are countries that do have like vast natural resources that aren't subject to this curse and why are they the United States? No, I like, the other part of it is that's like just like that quality of like resource exploitation And and how it's carried out and how that like unequal exchange to to use the famous phrase is maintained um with the third world and then the other thing I would say is to your point about ideology and like what are sort of the In the kind of in the in the sphere of how do americans understand? Their motivations for doing doing what they do and

then what are the actual motivations. How do Americans see themselves and then if we were to try and say what is the motor here. I think Americans still, they experience their supremacy in the world, in the political supremacy that the United States enjoys as a default setting. The ultimate intermediary structures that I was just referencing earlier, international organizations, the IMF and the World Bank, obviously, those are controlled by America. That's the bank, that's the bank. That's that's the dollar. And then like the butt of the gun is the other half of that equation.

And so like we assume that like, oh, well, we are, you know, neutrally sending tons of fucking weapons all over the planet and encouraging, you know, like, you know, everybody from CC to the Saudi Arabia to make sure that, you know, they, they're you know training those weapons on the correct people You know and obviously the US not the only fucking arms exporter in the world But it's it's like we are the preponderant force in this regard and we arm people with the most deadliest Of weapons and we're also the only state that is like really actively sought to you know, help create other nuclear states, but At least in any event even the thing about all this ideologically to me is that like, yeah, we accept all this as like default. Like there is a degree to which it's like, we consider it like a function of just how

the world is supposed to be. And that's how you can exist in a Cold War context and you can exist in like the 2000s and like whether the trigger is like Sputnik or 9-11 like there is a base assumption of like you know like American chauvinism that like well yeah like this is like we're like we are supposed to enjoy like this latitude and how we operate and because we have that like that's the strength and the power of that assumption uh it blinds us to both like, partly what we're really up to, and then two, to the actual, like the consistent failure in this, at least as far as like

meeting our stated objectives goes. Like we never bring democracy to these places, we never build and leave stable governments, and we don't make the regions more secure or stable. So, you know, to the final part of this lengthy answer is like, all right, well, then like, what is the thing we're actually doing here? If that's not what we understand ourselves to be.

And that is, you know, making like the world safe and stable for like, you know, like the international capitalist order to profit, like rates, yeah, like to make sure that like rates of accumulation, like stay high, you know, I mean, like we're having lots of conversations right now in the US about like growth, obviously, and like how do we regain or re-equalize and re-level growth among people without necessarily considering that like, we are in thrall to just like this, you know,

like rather crazy death machine that may say, well, you know what, Israel has to be allowed to kill a bunch of Palestinians. Paul Pot has to be allowed to kill a bunch of these guys because like the system of which they are a part and that we have to work to maintain, even if these things aren't directly tied to obviously your savings account

getting more larded or whatever, it's part of maintaining that system that we understand to be how those rewards are distributed. And it's not an easy fucking thing to communicate, obviously, which is part of why I don't think there's really ever any point in the show, not necessarily either, because it which is part of why I don't think there's really ever any point in the show, not necessarily either, because it's also, Bren and I don't,

obviously we don't agree on everything or see everything the exact same way, but we're never gonna stop to the show and turn to the listener and be like, and that's what it's all about, because it's like, yeah. Breaking the fourth wall. Yeah, it's like I don't think it's that easy,

like a thing to convey, and that's part of why we do it the way we do, where we're telling these different stories and seasons across time so that people can kind of develop their own, we don't wanna preach at people. We wanna tell them a story and present them facts about a situation and ideally let them come to a conclusion about what it says about how the world is constructed.

Right, right. And no, I just wanted to reiterate, underscore something that you said, because you'll hear this. You'll hear people talk about this a lot. And it's undergirded, obviously, by racism. I mean, I don't know how else to say it on dehumanization. But it's like, as if leaders in these countries, in these African, Asian, Latin American countries,

that they can't be self-sustainable. They can't take care of themselves. They need the United States to intervene, right? To help allocate these resources, to help boost the country's economy, all these things. And I don't know, again, it's just so dehumanizing to think that these people are not, they're not capable of doing that,

of being in charge of their own destinies, right? And their own lives. And yeah, it's not, the neo-colonialism that you mentioned Right of doing that of being in charge of their own destinies right into their own lives and um, yeah It's not it's not if the neo colonialism that um that you mentioned that um Kwame and Krumah brings up is like I think That's so salient because it's no longer exactly hard like military power going in and invading places right or Deputizing right locals right to do the same thing it is done through Multinationals and through aid organizations, right?

Like the IMF and the World Bank. This is something that happened in Jamaica, right? With Michael Manley, so I just want to reiterate that underscore that because I think we're seeing the same thing happen in Palestine right with with the Zionists right that Palestinians are not capable right of their own one They're not it's not possible for Israelis to live side-by-side with them Right because they're barbaric but also to the the question of what happens after Gaza I fucking hate when people say that term in that phrase, right because it just reminds me of this economic reshuffling and rebuilding Right and continued exploitation that we've seen in again Latin America, Africa and Asia

You know, I mean in in this case part of it is like where I think in Israel it's like you're I think you're right to like place the logic it like in in the in this in that situation because to me what's it what seems sort of abundantly clear is that like there is this colonial logic or whatever but just that like Israel and this is where I do feel that like the Nazi comparison is appropriate, not just like for shock value, but for like, what are we talking about when you have like a modern industrialized country with a strong centralized military tradition and all that, but also that has like this, you know, sense of like, you know, in the case of Germany, like they gave up all of their colonies. There was an enormous, in fact,

the first brown shirt uniforms were repurposed uniforms from German troops who had been in Africa. You know, there's a, to me, like in the case of Israel, it's like, yeah, they, like, like they don't have anything to take from Palestinians in the sense that, like of their labor value because Israel has already, they've already cut off Palestinians from serving that role in the Israeli economy. They've done as much to remove any reason that they would have to engage with these

people and because as you say, the height and the barbarity, like the just the aggressive racism, like there is no plan for after Gaza, because what they ultimately plan to take from the Palestinians is what they took from them in 1948, which is their land. And the economic reshuffling is just going to be, you know, like, what has been the main business of the state of Israel and is of most developed countries, to be clear, you know, since its foundation, which is to get, you know, to get bigger, put up buildings, grow the country, grow the pie in some kind of fashion, except like, because Israel is in the the state of society, and it is in the

like, it is the thing that it is, like that logic just means that like, yeah, they're gonna, like if the Palestinians can't be a part of it, then the Palestinians have to be done away with like that like we're seeing the day after plan as it unfolds right now It's like I mean we're learning it's you know like the Nazis created Auschwitz because it was really inefficient to kill people and to deport them and get rid of like like they there's Like it's there's a real like people are not seeing what's in front of them There's a real, people are not seeing what's in front of them with respect to this stuff. They see the photos maybe of people being lined up or whatever, going out and they think

like, oh, that's just how brutal war is, whatever now. But that's just not, one, that's not true, I mean, it's downstream from all the stuff that we've just been talking about in terms of like, it is as like psycho and old world colonial brutal logic as we have, except without any of the political infrastructure or economic infrastructure to support any of it, or to have any way out of it, except for just like fucking mass death.

Right, right. And one thing too I wanted to mention to tack on to that, you know, we've seen CNN, you know, have these interviews of IDF soldiers and, you know, and having them talk about their trauma. Right. And I saw someone mention it. I mean, maybe you can maybe you can clarify this, but I saw someone mention that part of the reason why Nazis started using using gas chambers right was because i mean obviously this kind of medium film this totalizing mechanization right of genocide but it also was

because there were suppose there were soldiers right that was nazis that were so kind of traumatized by the own thing the things that they were doing you know what i mean yeah i mean yes that's a great it's it's very true i mean mean the story you referenced to there was that CNN article that like went viral and And rightfully it was also because the content warning for that article you know warned people about like the suicidal thoughts of the Israeli of the Israeli soldier but it like Didn't really address the fact that like what he was saying was that like oh, yeah I was a bulldozer driver for the IDF and I turned like countless Palestinians into human paste and Like, you know, I can't eat meat anymore because of it for the IDF and I turned countless Palestinians into human paste.

I can't eat meat anymore because of it. That is exactly true. The parallel there with the German soldiers in the 40s is kind of shocking in its directness. Himmler rather famously talked about how it's really hard to kill this many people and still be a good person, just like the toll that it takes on you. Originally, they started with gas trucks, and the process eventually arrived at setting up something like Auschwitz. The purpose of which was, I mean, it was the totalizing mechanization

I think should be meant to include what we're talking about. Like mechanization and these processes of industrial death included the benefit of making it really much easier on the people doing it. I mean, in the same way, Pynchon sort of beats this over the head with rockets and the V2, but that is also, I would argue, and this is related to Dylan Saba, the writer

and my friend's argument about Iron Dome. He wrote a great article about Iron Dome for Jewish currents, but how it's not really a defensive thing because these rockets, this hyper mechanization of these instruments of death, it removes and so totally inures the people using them from the consequences of their action. I mean, the only time that I've ever read about pilots or people dropping bombs talk about like, oh, I saw what it did and it made me sick was in the context of this season.

And that was, you know, because these were people who conducting out secret bombs over bombing campaigns over Cambodia and places that weren't supposed to exist. And it was for a war that was, you know, universally unpopular in a way like no war in the 20th century in America ever has been. You know, so it's just to emphasize that like it's it's so difficult once you open this kind of mechanization of death up to get people to rehumanize as we are seeing now. Everybody, dead bodies are things that exist

through screens, both as consumers of the media object and evidently as the fucking people carrying it out. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Terrence. Well, there's just a few threads I just wanted to tie together before we proceed. The first of which is like you tied you tease this Out earlier Noah. There's an ideological Formation process at work here and part of it in America I

Throughout the last year we have gotten a lot of You know we've gotten a lot of use out of trying to compare America as an idea and as an empire to Israel and you know because these are two settler nations granted they're of different scale a different size you pointed it out earlier I know it's like they've got more of a centralized like military tradition but like we've we've you know've been trying to dig into that a little bit. But you had mentioned this process of ideological formation, and one of which

is this interesting turn in the 90s, you mentioned this in the new season, in the US, towards human rights. All of a sudden, with Madeleine Albright and the Clintons, all of a sudden the US started to become very interested in human rights in Serbia and Rwanda. Well it should be said that the human rights discourse kind of rather infamously began in the Carter years. And in the 90s what sort of happens is that the defining shift in circumstance is that

the Cold War ends, the Soviet Union collapses. And so the primary antagonist of who we used to hit for the cudgel of human rights abuses is no longer there. And so all you have, but if you look around, there's a lot of related problems. And there's also a few lingering atrocities that are still on people's minds. I think the crackup of Yugoslavia and the Balkans wars, the 90s, are kind of the, I

mean, you know, just ask, like, look at the present American head of USAID, Samantha Bauer. Like these are, like the current class of people who, you know, manage, quote unquote, human rights policy for the United States more or less cut their teeth evaluating with and dealing with those conflicts. Cambodia is a little bit different insofar as it was part of yes this broader push to like engage in human rights stuff but also like it was embarrassing man like this guy who was universally recognized as like being up there with Hitler You know like universally there wasn't really much. He was just sleeping in his own bed.

He was able to even fight a war. And the fact that there was even still a civil war in Cambodia in the 90s, which there was, American diplomats witnessed it firsthand. The whole situation was really for, you're thinking about it from like a PR perspective because I'm sure yes there was like an earnest and meaningful American engagement to like you know to like some would even say right the wrongs of past policy by like trying to set up these tributes by trying to set up tribunals by trying to you know by pumping tons of fucking aid into

Cambodia which we did but like it was ultimately, I think, because it was a really shocking thing for many people who were aware of the facts that, oh, wait, Pol Pot is still alive. And in fact, in the mid-'90s, you even had his foreign minister, Yang Suri, surrender to the head of Cambodia, the dictator, essentially when Sen, you know, like these people were walking around as free men. And then the other big sort of turning point in this is then when Pol Pot dies. Because when Pol Pot dies, like that was a media event.

That was a global news phenomenon. Interest in the Khmer Rouge resurgent, there was a massive resurgence. It was, lots of people were asking like, how did this, how is this guy alive? How did he die in his own bed? Die in natural death. Exactly.

Granted, he was days away from being captured. I don't want to overemphasize that point. The human rights part of it, it was cynical. It was this, it was that. But it was also like, it was in this moment when, you know, because the Cold War had ended, and we had, you know, these different, you know, moments of, you know, these different either conflagrations

or past cold cases that we had to settle, as we may have viewed them, it was because there was a new world order and we were the ones running it. And this was part of how you, you know, you emphasize that. Now, do I think it is notable that all of this kind of stuff mainly fell to the wayside around the time of 9-11 and the rise of an entirely new national security paradigm. I think that that is probably worth examining.

But you can kind of get a snapshot of what it was to try and rebuild, or not rebuild, but to build a post-Soviet world order in this time, looking at these cases and why the US gave such a shit about it at that time in ways that it clearly wouldn't now. Right. It's almost like the United States has always needed a sort of mirror, you know what I mean? Like an enemy adversary. And even if one good turns well But I don't even think it's necessarily that I mean you you are absolutely correct, but like the mirror I've got like I've gotten this a lot like reading about like to comes in the Shawnee and everything and like

The things that we did to on the frontier are literally a one-to-one What Israel is doing in Gaza in the West Bank? And the thing is is that America has always had this plausible deniability though because here's an insane thing There's a guy there's a there's a general I think his name was Anthony Wayne who was waging the Northwest campaign against the Shawnee and like the the Why and I and in the pot of water and like so the Wyandotte and the Potawatomi. So Wayne, New Jersey, I believe is named after him. Former hot dog restaurant there called the Anthony Wayne and Fountains of Wayne.

The band, which is named for a store that's there. But so just just so that people know that like colonial memory lives on in your favorite. You're not innocent. And here's the thing, Henry Knox, who was the secretary of war, wrote Anthony Wayne a letter in like the, I think it was like the winter of 1793, where he was like, do not move against the Indians just yet,

because if you do, we will go down in history as just as bad as the Spanish, and we don't wanna do that. Like we're trying to like basically like that that was his exact words, but like what he was implying was that like America has loftier goals and the public won't like that. The public doesn't like to see themselves as a settler state They don't like to see themselves as like Extinguishing entire cultures and civilization even if they. Even if they enjoy the results of that. They don't wanna see themselves as that. Exactly.

Creature comforts that come from, yeah. That's exactly right. And America has had this dual kind of character to it, and this is kind of what I was getting at earlier with teasing out some of these threads and patterns you see in American Empire, where it's like, it has this dual character where it's saying like we have loftier pretensions

towards freedom and liberty and inequality And all this but we are at the same time carrying out mechanized routine genocides At this time it was on the frontiers That I think that like if you dial that down to like the micro personal level like my great-grandparents probably level, like my great grandparents probably participated in that. That means like I was raised by people who were themselves traumatized, like we were saying earlier, by turning other people into human paste basically. And they also existed in a society with people like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles

Sumner who are like, well we have better... So this is what I'm saying, you know what I mean? Like we have these conflicting contradictions in our, even our own personal subjectivity. I mean, I think of it, the way I think about that is like I go a generation after yours and I go to my granddad who like worked in, his eyesight sucked and he ran a brick factory. But when he was in World War II,

his eyesight, because it sucked, meant that he had to,, meant that he couldn't do combat duty or anything. Also if our bodies and semitic health is anything alike, then we really should not have been in the military. He worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland where he worked on the like he worked on like a 100 millimeter mortar and he also worked on like the firing mechanism for the barrels of guns so that they like you know it's it looks like like two two two two like one moving back and forth and

To listeners I was doing a thing where like one finger was like put your index fingers next to each other and slide them back and forth Yeah, watching history channel documentary or like cartoons or if you watch Babylon 5 and this sci-fi Oh, yes, he's got like that. He's got like that too. So like I know that somewhere Like my aunt or my brother. I think my aunt actually has the actual patent That he holds or he held that he sold or like what you know, he sold to the government for one dollar You know as a measure of patriotism and whatever but like I remember seeing it in the house like framed the dollar the letter from the government and the thing when I was a kid and You know, I think that that is sort of like to your point Terrence like, you know

Somebody's great-grandparents may have been like the shock troops of this dispossession, but increasingly and even in the recent past, like, you know, like that man I just described, his wife grew up in a house in West Virginia without running water. Like, it's like to me, the story of development in America is like the process by which like, yeah, like more and more Americans became people who did things like my granddad did, which are, you know, in a time, you know, and in a context in World War II where like we say, yeah, fucking good. I'm glad he made those guns, get rid of the Nazis, get rid of the Imperial Japan, Japanese forces.

But I think it's sort of like clear now as like in the gutters like the guns to butter ratio has gone You know totally, you know psycho. Yeah Like we are now in a position where like well, you know, like maybe like even the white-collar, you know mechanized Dispossession is creating like, you know incredible psychic discomfort for all of us because I mean that's my theory Is that like this is I we're approaching, I think in general, we're circling like Indian burial ground theory about America in general, which is that like, yeah, like there is no escaping that like dispossession

and it's attendant like, you know, self damage are like the actual story, like the damage and then the, you know, like the consequence of it that we experience ourselves as the ones remaining alive is like the thing that gets passed and retransmitted. Right. It's like we're all enjoined through this sort of, not even, I mean this continuous process of genocide and exploitation. And neocolonialism I guess, right? But that doesn't mean that you necessarily are the one holding the gun and being sent, you know sent to another country This could just mean that you sit in a fucking office and work for a company

You know what I mean? And and also doesn't mean I think people are like they feel that being implicated in something means that somebody's saying that like they're The biggest culprit or whatever that they're the biggest, you know Yeah, it's like it's like the like idiots you always get like really upset when like they see a PSA like Conserve gas maybe drive 10 miles per hour less or something on the highway. I think that it implicates everybody is precisely what makes it,

is what gives it a kind of, is what makes it such a powerful concept and idea that it is not just this, there isn't an opt out. I'm not clean, but none of us are Yeah, I speak for yourself boys as you know Scott's Irish Hewlett Without spotting boy, I know I'm not clean with a sneaker collection made through pretty much slave labor, so you know Well, I think the thing is is that in America it manifests as a very specifically morbid and I don't know, macabre politics because this is the thing and I imagine that this

will probably, this is probably true for a lot of settler societies but it's like you mentioned your grandmother in West Virginia without running water. It's like this is what we dispossessed people for. Like we're not even, there are pockets of America where like you don't even enjoy the spoils of the dispossession. You are yourself pushed to the periphery and then exploited. And I can tell you you were one of us, Cole,

and I just, something about you, it just, you know, I recognize it. Yeah, this is what I've noticed It's just this is like the led to this very specific kind of like I genuinely feel like a lot of American Conservative Americans just feel like they've been duped, but they don't know like exactly how or why they're just like wait like you know like I've I don't know it's a lot of guys will tell you straight up how they've been duped I mean this is why I actually I'm grateful for like the Peter Thiel like flying car shit because like like that whole line about How like we were promised flying cars like which I just love as a premise like by whom?

Why were you promised you watch the Jetsons? That was gonna be a reality, but no one ever talks about who lives below the city, right? Oh, I mean Well, this is I mean, this is where it gets though to like, okay like you were promised all this shit and so like the resentment that you have is that like Reality like quotidian life in in the world today is you know It doesn't have any of like the drama or panache that like you're looking for and you know You can be a you can be like a pretty fucked person You can own like your Dodge Challenger payment could be five months late.

You know, you could be like in real fucked position by even the standards of, you know, like what it's like to live in, in a pretty affluent country. But like I think that it's, you know, it's it's a testament to like the power of like whatever like reigning American ideologies like prevail, that people are like, oh, that's not me. Like I'm a small business owner. Like, it's like, oh, that's not me. Like I'm like, or that's, I don't see, you know, that to me is where, um, like there's

just such a, like, yeah, like that's what it's, that's what it's all about. You know, that's a very unique American privilege man to be like that's not me I'm not I'm not I'm not guilty of this. You know, what an historical amnesia to I mean, this is a crazy thing I'm gonna sound like a total dumbass saying this but like I just not really looked into this I did not know prior to listening to your show that the reason Nixon was impeached was the Cambodia bombing campaign It wasn't watergate. I mean like was, they lumped it all together into one, but like by the time the impeachment actually went through, they had struck the Cambodian bombing campaign

from the impeachment thing. So it's just this thing where it's like, it's acknowledged openly, but then we all just memory hole it. You know, everything. There's no way that you can, I think, like justify, I mean, cause like, look, right? like people can watch a movie they can watch actually here Oh, this is like probably like it or this is a great place to share this anecdote

Like I'm not a huge fan of the new Dune movies. They're just they don't push my buttons. That's fine Same the second one though. I was I went to the theater and I was there opening night and Because you know, I love the movies and and I'm sitting there and like there's that fucking scene where Like timothy chalamet is like, you know shooting his like, you know space RPG, you know near the like like the the The silk machine or whatever and it's like oh wow. Here's like like the most like mujahid Arab Muslim coded resistance fighter, imaginable. And like we're rooting for him.

We are rooting for him. This whole crowd, you know, this whole room is going nuts for it. And the moment they leave this theater and they look at their phone, how many of them are gonna be rooting for the people inhabiting the closest real life analog position of that today?

And what that implies about who he's fighting and who supports them. And so I got to, you know, like it's like the the the force of which like like modernity or at least contemporary American life is is this, you know, experience of like being confronted with all of the ways in which like, you know, there is, you know, like like the things that you experience in culture in movie are happening and the heroes are other people who you are told are like actually the bad guys, is like it's the defining sequence, like that dissonance and the consequences of it

feel to me like, yeah, that's like the prevailing like psychic ailment that all of us are afflicted with, that like, you know, like we're being Ludovico technique, like style subjected to this, you know, reality in which it's like all things are possible, all truths can be realized, you know, like we're being Ludo Vico technique, like styles subjected to this, uh, you know, reality in which it's like all things are possible. All truths can be realized. Uh, you know, we can, you know, like all this and then like you open up your fucking phone for just a minute and the facts that you're presented with, you know, even through filtered through our horrible media system, just tell you like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, it'd be

the other way around. Yeah, man. Yo, that's, I don't, I don't want to get stuck on the, the, the sci-fi examples zone, but everyone knows, no, no, no, it'd be the other way around. Yeah, man, yo, that's, I don't wanna get stuck on the sci-fi example zone, but everyone knows, people know I love Star Trek, I love Deep Space Nine. And that show is, I think, one of the best, I mean, science fiction depictions of colonialism, because you have two species, the Bajorans, who are,

I mean, these are real life examples, inspirations that the writers use. They're pretty much the Palestinians. The Cardassians have occupied them for 50 years, right? And they're the Israelis. And I mean, there are fans of the franchise who, I mean, I know this for a fact. I mean, people who are even involved in the franchise, like Anson Mount, who plays the new Captain Pike on the Star Trek Stranger of the Worlds, that guy's an insane Zionist,

right? And it's just like, it's insane for you, right? And I mean, I'm not even just saying, as you're saying, I'm not even just using a specific science fiction example, but the way that you can divorce, right? Like reality from this kind of like, this kind of projected fiction that you want to be real, but you don't really want it to be real, because when you're faced with the analogies and read the real-life analogies you turn away From them, you know, and it just feels like a uniquely American privilege that just exists I mean just throughout all ideology and kind of like culture, right? That is kind of like that we enjoy that we all enjoy it, right? I think it's also I would add to that that like

Like Zionism tests that especially because again like it's an old world ideology. It is a nationalism as constructed in the 19th century with no ifs, ands, or buts, no qualifications that requires a kind of purity of nation that we are now, the consequences of which that we're now seeing unfold. And I think that for people to experience that, for people to experience that, you know, and I'll say this as like somebody like, you know, grew up going to Israel a lot, thought of myself as somebody who would live there one day as an American Jew and so on, and then experiencing it firsthand and seeing that things were different than how I had thought them to be. At least when I started going in an older, like, you know, older teenage

years, I think what sort of really struck me was this idea that like, you know, older teenage years. I think what sort of really struck me was this idea that like, you know, you can have like all of these like universal moral values and all these things or whatever, but like part of the seductive power of nationalism and of these ideologies like Zionism, especially when they're just like so well supported in culture and you know, through like so much institutional leverage and all

this stuff is that like they allow you to create these you know like almost like heuristics of thought that are like constantly exceptionalizing about how it's like well the thing is though is that like the Jews never had a nation and so you just get started on like these would sound like ridiculous jags of thought, but that because there is a whole scaffolding, a whole thing meant to support this, that you're like, oh, well, this may sound, may feel a little bit funny coming out of my mouth, but because it's just received wisdom for all these people around me and for all these, the old world quality of just how fucking brutal this thing that I'm saying sounds,

you know, I mean, it gets lost. I think that to me is like a particular thing. I think Americans live with like a more passive dissonance that like flares up at different moments. But I think like Israel is like the fight or flight like activated like constantly. Like what is passive, what is, you know, more passive about like, you know, like, you know, I mean, great like constantly. Like what is passive, what is you know more passive about like,

you know, like you know, I mean great, obviously and also actors and people obviously star in shit all the time that they wouldn't necessarily back or agree with. But like in this instance, I think that there is this like, yeah, Israel in particular, like all that shit just gets heightened because it's the most like extreme thing we're confronted with in terms of like the gulf between the values in our daily life or the you know that we would hope to you know Like to hope to display and hope to pass on to our loved ones and friends and so on And then just like what it is and and and you you know Like it's you have to actively engage and like really

And you have to actively engage in really powerful in a streams of denial, very well supported ones by other people and institutions to sustain that. Yeah, and Zionism offers a hack, an easy way out of the question of indigeneity and settler colonialism, like for the American it activates a very specific narrative of Christianity and of you know manifest destiny and all this. It's just it's just a fascinating thing that like it's an ideology that allows a definition of indigeneity that like goes back two thousand years but like doesn't look at anything that happened in in between that and

Again for America what that does to the like Christian Zionist American mind is it said it you know it allows you to allied everything that happened In the last because I mean it's like a fairy tale. It's like a story tale for children. You know yeah I mean, it's something that's very simplistic, but it does have like this moral center to it You know like almost like an ASAP fable, you know what I mean? And it I mean just to add on to that like there is one real thing to it though That's like really important and and it's the reason you know without which Israel as it is now would not exist Which is the Holocaust? Yeah, and that is like, you know is the part where like all of that fluffy kid shit, you know,

like the Jews were kicked out by the Romans 2,000 years ago. No historical proof for that. You know, like all that stuff, like it's not, and by the way, if you want to check my sourcing on that, check out the invention of the Jewish people by the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand. But the like, like all that kid stuff is like that gets a pass or at the very least is treated with more seriousness or whatever, however you want to say it. Because there does exist this very real extenuating circumstance which was, well, what do we do

with the victims of Nazi Germany? Because it was politically inconvenient to reinsert them where they had lived You know all their lives before and you had you know, I mean, I think it's now pretty clear There was the Zionist movement saw the end of you know saw the Holocaust You know as a tragedy. Yes, but also as a tremendous opportunity And so like the state building of Israel, you know Like what they view as their foundational myth was that it was built out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Story I remember. And this is like a part of Zionism that I think has, you know, gone from

expanded from Israel outward. But like, you know, to give an example, though, I remember a poll that I saw years ago that has like stayed with me for many, many years about how Israeli teenagers on average think about the Holocaust X amount of times a day or whatever. It's a part of their curriculum. It makes sense, whatever. But that the students whose families had no part in the Holocaust, the children of Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews who were not part of the European, or were not part of European Jewry that had been targeted. They thought about the Holocaust even more.

There's a Christopher Hitchens quote that, and that's a guy who said a lot of wrong stuff in his life, but he had some good quips. And one of them was that people on the fringe of an identity are often those who cling the most tightly to it. And he, I think, I think was right about that in the, in, in, at least as it applies here, because like the narrative of the Holocaust as like

this founding crucible of the state, like just because the Holocaust happened, doesn't mean that like Israel should have been created, but also like the idea of like, oh, we had this horrible thing happen to us, and that has got to be like our national story. Not that like, not literally anything else in the world. For a long time, I think that that made people think, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the case for reparations, it made them believe that Israel had some measure of authority and sophistication

in how it understood its role in world history. When the reality, as we obviously know Is that in fact that like this historical experience if anything? Probably primed the Israeli public in many ways to be capable of dishing it out to someone else You know one of the like world's worst historical perversities imaginable. Yeah Well, I was just gonna say it's an interesting thing that like, I have been a little disappointed. I mean, like, granted, I understand why, like, during the current genocide, we don't want to, like, center, you know, certain narratives of anti-Semitism, but at the same time, like,

race in the construction of a racial ideology is a central tenet of modernity. And it's, you don't really understand modernity in like the capitalist mode of production without understanding the construction of race and racial ideologies. And it does kind of concern me sometimes if we just like, if we don't really examine like the roots of like where the Holocaust and anti-Semitism came from because like this is a kind of like central part of understanding how like a settler identity gets Created in the first place, but I don't know I do think I will say like there are where I feel like hopeful

I won't say hopeful but like where I feel like, you know we've talked a lot about how like in culture and in reality and like shared discourse like people are not really able to Talk about this or inter like that everything's wildly misinterpreted that the images and ideas are appropriated and not engaged with and so on and like that's true like 100 percent but Star Trek Deep Space Nine is pretty good and also I would add that like you know I think a lot I think a lot about like like the I mean I'm excited to see the new Brady Corbett movie, the br... Oops, sorry one second.

You're gonna have to edit that, my screen saver popped on. I think that there is also a rather astonishing consciousness in literature and cinema that like really does suggest to people though, like actually we can interpret and kind of make sense of the truth of this fact of modernity as you were saying, Terrence. The books that I think, I mean like Pynchon and sort of Gravity's Rainbow is like, you know, that was famous and perhaps most difficult to get through of like books that are kind of, you know, grappling with this at the scene of the crime. In his case at World War II. But I also think a lot about Roberto Bolaño's 2666 because, you know, one of the undercurrents, strong undercurrents of that book that becomes by the end a major current is like the struggle,

you know, of like the German psyche is he is he presents or the German spirit in this kind of, uh, you know, and he does it in like an exciting and rather poetic way that at least for me, it was like helpful and like re centering because it meant that I, you know, just, just to not have to think about this shit in terms of like, Oh, well, if I look at like Dylinka today and all this, you know, it's like, yeah, like I understand that sucks and they're horrible but like if you want to have like um a place to learn about these kinds of things in a more poetic and interesting play in an interesting way like

I do feel that like yeah, especially even though and these are works of art that are resurgent and that people uh give a shit about Even more than you know in the last few years I mean, I think it's not a zone of interest maybe the most historically cons conspicuously timed movie, or auspiciously timed movie release, you know, in the last like 10 years. And that to me has felt like I will say like kind of like gratifying. I don't I feel less alone when I think about like the broad spectrum of people who are trying to like represent this stuff and like provoke and, and, and, and, you know, provoke feelings of identification, shame, recognition, and so on in their audiences with all this stuff. Tom, are you about to say something?

You look like you were loading. I just wanted to say what a hero Jonathan Glazer is. He serves a lot of credit. Yeah, he's a fucking man. Well, we're we're over an hour here I just had one question left in it relates I really you know, sorry for keeping you for so long Noah, but I just had one question left in it And it relates to this It relates to everything we've been talking about this season, but also the question of Israel

In several different characters that are recurring throughout the entire show are Kissinger and it's a big new Brzezinski and I kind of just wanted to you know suss out your thoughts and like where does Anthony Blinken fall in the spectrum of these guys? What is his legacy going to be? What is his whole fucking deal? I guess is the question Yeah, Blinken is a funny deal, I guess is the question. Like, what is- Seriously. Yeah. Blinken is a funny one.

I mean, I think of, so Blinken was Biden's foreign policy guy, which is why he has this position. And he is, I think it's fair to say probably like maybe like the lightest weight Secretary of State. He surely we've had in my lifetime, but I would wager maybe as far back as like William Rogers who was not a lightweight, but it was rendered a lightweight because by circumstance because he was outmaneuvered bureaucratically. Like Blinken has no signature diplomatic initiatives. The thing that he stands for and that he will go down in history for

aside from his complete uselessness in resolving many spaces of global conflict is the fact that there, him and Jake Sullivan deserve a certain amount of shared credit for this was that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, they, you know, as they see it, you know, they moved quickly to coordinate and organize, you know, Europe and NATO wide support for Ukrainian forces fighting Russia.

And if you read in Foreign Affairs, if you read in, you know, the New York Times or Time Magazine and wherever, you know, the New York Times or Time Magazine, and wherever the guys who actually carried out this policy articulate their theory of what Biden policy is and all this stuff, they view it, they view that as the crowning diplomatic achievement. I think for most people, when you think of diplomacy, you're thinking of conversations to be used in lieu of force or to arrive at solutions that, again, increase peace, let's say, just

to speak very generically. Antony Blinken and his cohort have so wholeheartedly endorsed the idea that the role of the State Department is to support ongoing theaters of conflict and national security grand strategy that we may not ever recover. Like it's a it's it's I don't think he's responsible for this shift singlehandedly, but I think that he embodies what is like a really grave turn that not even Trump was able to effectively carry out or do in his way, you

know, in fact, in a lot of ways, because Trump took over, there was a lot of internal resistance with units. This is not this has happened before as well that because the conception of the State Department from Republicans and others, Nixon, this was true as well, is that it's a bunch of like, you know, like sissies who can't do their jobs and care about peace that they get cut out, but like actively integrating even more than it already was as you know, like sissies who can't do their jobs and care about peace, that they get cut out, but like actively integrating even more than it already was as you know, because it's the State Department that signs off on arms export

control and all these other things, like integrating them into the war machine and making them enthusiasm, enthusiastic and visible part of it. I think that's his legacy. I don't know if it's going to be a legacy that pops from the page like five years from now or ten years from now But I'd be willing to wager that like when they're trying to periodize this stuff based on like the scale of the disorder That's like sort of like clearly now like stalking the globe that like that's gonna be that's gonna be his that's gonna be his present That that's just so interesting man, because we heard that

You know part of one big thing that Biden had said is that he's going to restore the prestige of america on the world stage And I guess that really meant just like by bombing the shit out of everyone, right? And just by killing as many fucking people as possible, you know, I think it's even worse, man I think it's that like I don't even think he thought about restoring the prestige by doing bad or doing good I think it literally was a matter of like i'm not donald tr. Yeah. No, you're right. It was an aesthetic thing. It's like we're going to make, which is ironic because it literally, he is senile, like, right? Like he's not any better of a face for the empire than Trump. I mean, it's, they're both seen. That's what's so, I mean, that's what I found like so funny is because now that Biden is out,

like we are getting credible stories about how like, oh yeah, Trump is basically the same. He's just like better on camera because he spent 30 years doing it. I mean also too when you have like, when you have someone like Kamala Harris, you know, side by side with Donald Trump, when it was just two old guys, you know, it was just which old, which, which guys more demented than the other one now it's like, okay, there's one demented old guy on stage, you know, it was just which old which which guys more demented than the other one now. It's like, okay There's one demented old guy on stage, you know and and the Kamala like part of it to me

I mean, I guess I could kind of close it out here because I want to add one like as I think that like Aside from telling your fine listeners where to get the show and all that like there is I think with Kamala something kind of interesting in that like I can't think of somebody who has sought the office of president but with You know so much like Obama clearly had ambitions that were very like self-gratifying and we all know that now but I think in the case of Kamala like She still is kind of like a cipher in that respect like she's like an immature political Personality in the sense that like I don't really trust anybody

who claims to know what her deal fully is. At least. She's like Pol Pot in a sense. It's like, who is this person? Yeah, absolutely. She's been a Pol Pot within the Democratic, with the, yeah, exactly. You heard her first, Kamala Harris is Pol Pot.

Yeah, within the, and that makes Biden the Viet Cong, by the way, in this analogy. Yeah. Cause now she's cut free. Within the by and that makes by it in the Viet Cong by in this Because now she's cut free No, I think that she is like this, you know, it's We're going to see just like how much can happen without like somebody at a driver's seat and not because they're senile But because but kind of by choice like if there is stuff that we do know about her That sort of is what I was winding up to it's that she doesn't like she doesn't particularly give a shit about foreign policy She doesn't like to take Intel briefings. She doesn't like like like that style of briefing to begin with

She doesn't have strong opinions about like the way the world operates but Everybody in her inner circle seems to be like a fucking horrible little vulture. And the people who enter in a circle like Phil Gordon, whom people were saying, oh, well, he's much more reasonable than anybody in Bidenland right now, are clearly being forced to contort to whatever it is that's around them. And so I think the idea of a president who is, well, just the president void is a novelty to me. And that's kind of like, if she wins, that's how I see it. Yeah, very interesting.

I mean, Tom and I were laughing about this last night, just thinking about Trump. Trump was talking about her going to Michigan with Liz Cheney. What did he say, Tom? He was like, I don't know why she did that. It was something. He's like, I didn't expect, like he was taking a bet.

His statement was, it was hilarious, like a hilarious Trumpian statement. It was like people are saying they don't know why she did it I don't know why she did it. It's very strange I Will say like him his brain getting cooked has been pretty fun, too Like I was like do podcasts now. He just wants to go a podcast now He wants to he wants the Theo von guy to make him laugh, you know, he wants that he's like, give me the where's my Theo von I need my Theo von Before I forget I do want to tell people about the where to get the show. Yes, please show

Yes, please plug where they can get the show at so blowback is available right now You can get the first episode anywhere you get your podcast of the new season You can get all of the old seasons. That is the Iraq war the Cuban Revolution the Korean War and the Afghanistan Wars They're all available for free Wherever you get your podcasts however If you really like the show and if you want to listen to the whole of the Cambodia season right now, as well as an ad free catalog of all of our past seasons

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Terrence could do it that anybody literally if I can do it literally anybody I like the side her sure you guys listen to it the other day when I was working out It's just kind of fun. They like you make sureall call in on the landline like it's you know He's well no that is dressed. It's that is his cell phone which I've seen Keys it's one of the most cracked screens. I've ever seen No size size the best and I'm really really happy that we got to make him a part of the season too Well go go Subscribe to blow back. Well put the link in the show notes and go subscribe to our patreon

We're still cranking out all kinds of analysis and bullshit over there And as we get closer to the election I'm sure you will all want to subscribe and hear all the things that we don't want to say Not behind a paywall Because when Kamala loses and she probably will I don't want to be on the other one. I don't want to be in Guantanamo Bay We're just kidding I'm I'm just kidding we already will be on the hook let's But um anyways, please go to patreon and no, I thanks again for joining us today We'd love to have you back on again for us for the next season season. Oh, yeah. Thanks. Oh, hell

Yeah, well, we already know what it's gonna be and I'm not telling your listeners, but trust me It'll be a goodie and I definitely want to come back on to talk about it with y'all. Oh, yeah Thanks, brother. Cool, sweet. Thanks, brother. Well, thanks again for listening, everybody. We'll see you all on the Patreon. Goodbye. Music The you