Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 380: Get Rich Or DEI Tryin (w/ special guest Gaby Del Valle)

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

This week we're joined by writer Gaby Del Valle to talk about the eugenic origins of Trump's attack on DEI, the trad wife phenomenon, the unholy alliance between tech rationalists and Christian nationalists, and many other topics of relevance to our current moment You can read Gaby's articles at the Baffler here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/land-ho-del-valle, and here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/live-free-or-dei-del-valle And you can support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I think what you're describing is something I've seen hinted at in the news recently which is that there is a split between like Bannon right wing and like Musk right wing and it kind of falls on this axis of like, it's like the tech thing, right? Like that's the split. It's the tech thing. It's like the Musk right wing is like of transhumanist and not fully uploading your consciousness into the cloud, but not not that. So I was in Nashville in sometime last summer for the Bitcoin conference, which was a truly

heinous affair. And as I did, like, this always happens to me, like, whenever I'm on a reporting trip is I find like the most right wing guys and fall in with them. And I'm like, Hey, man, you want to hang out? And like, sometimes they're not nice to me. And sometimes they call me slurs, but they let me hang out. And like, sometimes they're not nice to me. And sometimes they call me slurs, but they let me hang out. She's just like, observe them in their natural habitat. Yeah, when I went to see pack these these Nazis kept calling me like, like actual like, breaches

later, who's a Nazi has kept calling me and Frank, I was, I got invited as a strong word. My presence was accepted at a book talk for this guy, Joe Allen, who's like a Bannon world kind of guy. And I forgot what his book was called. It's like something about like resisting the machine, something about God and the machine. I should look it up. But he talked about how like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and all these guys are like demonic and like the actual right wing like needs to resist the allure of like taking their money and like letting them influence the movement. Um, and when I talked to him about it afterwards, I was like, so, so like what's, um, what's up with

that? Cause like you guys are taking their money. Uh, let me find, like, I'm just going to find exactly what he said to me. Cause it was very interesting. Yeah. Joe Allen, don't turn your humanity over to the machine. Um, author of dark, Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity. That's the one. Yeah. So their whole thing is like these people are anti-human, like they fundamentally do not believe in the value of human life. And like that's why they don't care that they're going to make us all obsolete when like AGI comes and AI rules the world. And like, that's like not wrong. Like, yeah, we've been saying that on this show for months, actually.

Yeah. But like their reaction to it is like, and that's why our weird blood and soil MAGA stuff is the future. Um, yeah, so when I talked to Joe Allen, I was like, what's what's the deal? And he said, these guys represent an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to anything like traditional religion and anything like an organic as we would know it existence for human beings. But then I was like, okay, so why are you guys like all in a coalition together? And he said, in the long term, I think we're fundamentally opposed. In the short term, politics is dirty business. Fascinating. I love dumb guy comments like, man, you know, you know how politics is.

Yeah, in their mind. Yeah, that makes them like major operators. They're like, you know, to me, like, like we're, you know, shrewd and cynical. Like we can still crack a couple of eggs to get your tread fucking future omelet or whatever, you know? Yeah, it's so weird. And like it comes up over and over and over again, like all of these things that I go to, there's like a trad wing and like a tech wing and they're kind of trying to like figure out where their points of convergence are. And like to present

this United Front, but like the trad people think the tech guys are like sinners who are going to hell. Like there's no way around that. Listen, I'll be honest with you, I don't disagree with them on that notion. Oh no, me neither, but like it's funny that they're all like, and together we have a beautiful thriving political movement. And the worst part is like they low-key kind of do. Like they won, so. I think that you're. It would seem that your work, maybe this is a good place to like introduce this week's guest.

We're joined by Gabby Delvalle, who's a writer for The Verge, and is also written for The Baffler, which is where Tom and I publish from time to time. And seems like Gabby like your work kind of digs into what would potentially unite these two factions which as It would appear to me the uniting common cause is just straight-up eugenics like that's the way they kind of resolve that contradiction perhaps Often yeah. Yeah.

Part of it is eugenics. Part of it is a fear of what they call like population decline or depopulation, which could be like viewed apolitically, but like kind of isn't. And part of it is a straight up racism. Like just undeniable. I mean, I guess it's like tied in with the eugenics, obviously. Part of it is straight up racism, just undeniable. I mean, I guess it's tied in with the eugenics, obviously. But yeah, it's funny because I actually

came to all of this through immigration reporting. I spent a lot of years just focusing on immigration. And then at one point I was like, right, OK, so these are the policies. But who is driving the policies? And it turns out that now as 100 years ago, it was a bunch of guys who were really into eugenics. Right. Yeah. It's actually, it's funny you mentioned that. This is a slight detour.

I'll get us back on track in just a second. But mentioning immigration, I just wanted to mention, I'll get us back on track in just a second, but mentioning immigration. I just wanted to mention Especially because this is in Tom's wheelhouse Did you guys see that the Pope? released this I'm not Catholic. I don't know how this shit works some fucking thesis about Decree a decree people bowl. I think it might have been a papal bull. Maybe that was what I was like a I think it might have been a papal bull. Maybe that was what I was like a

Papal what a papal people bowl. I think I'm not sure that goes hard I don't know. I don't know what that means a papal is that it's imply the existence of a paper papal bear It's a decree issued by the Pope so yeah, it's a papal bull which is a decree so we're all right We're all correct. We're all correct. We are all correct. It goes hard. I fucking read it. It goes really hard. There's like a good line in there where he says, the son of God in becoming man chose to live the drama of immigration. And this validates Tom, what you said after JD Vance's statement that there's this old Christian concept that you're supposed to love your family more than anybody else called Ordo Amoris or whatever the fuck. The Pope's response was that the true Ordo Amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan,

which is exactly what you said. After. Hey listen, hey. You could be the Pope, brother. You could be the first. Not too late. That's true, I should shoot a little higher than the easy listening DJ from career prospects.

But always convert. It's also a whiffle ball too if you think about it. It's just like, it's the most ubiquitous story in the Bible that everybody, even the uninitiated, knows. It's like, you know, take care of people that don't look like you, don't believe like you, don't sound like you. Absolutely. What would your Pope name be? Like Pope, I mean, last name is sextant? Is there been like a Pope? Sextant Irish to Scott's Irish Pope

All the Johns are I don't know if there's but I mean maybe I'm sure there's been an Irish Pope, but I doubt it I mean, I feel like they're all like Italian. Did you guys see conclave? I did Fun I thought it was But I mean, I feel like they're all like Italian. Did you guys see Conclave? I did. Fun, I thought it was very fun. It was great. When I saw it, there was a guy in the back of the theater who I think had narcolepsy every time he would fall asleep, this blinking light would wake him.

We wake him up. I do think it was like a kind of like Kamala Harris presidency type of thing. Like you're like, you know what I mean? Like, like not, I'm not going to spoil the ending, but like things just worked out a little too easily and cleanly for my taste, but it was fun. I liked the costumes. I agree. I do like the sense of occasion the Catholics have. I do have to say for as much as I've besmirched them over the

Years, I really do like ritual and ceremony, you know, I'm kind of drawn to that kind of stuff So ritual is great. And that's what prevents you from like being overtaken by like guitar band Levitating via string church and levitating via string church. That's the church I grew up in. That's what Terrace grew up in. Gabby, he used to drum upside down in the church. Damn, we had in my hometown, there was like nothing to do

besides like smoke weed at the rec center. So on Fridays, we would all go to tween night at the local mega church. It was crazy. There was an arcade, an in like there was indoor like I guess all basketball is indoor when but like at the time I was like really taken with the the basketball courts. There was a Starbucks at one point. There's pizza and candy and all you had to do is like sit through a sermon about how like sex is so awesome but not until you're married.

And sex is like the biggest gift that God gives us all with your hot sexy wife when you marry her after she finishes youth group. So I have some experience with Protestant America. It was a really fascinating like anthropological time for me. Yeah, it's funny that that same thing is what ruined our church youth group, the sex thing. Yeah, there was, we had something called the basement. It was like, you know, it was billed as like a teen nightclub in the basement of this Presbyterian church and suffice it to say there were some men who were trying to, you know, flout the age limit to get in there. And yeah, some weird things.

Many such cases. Sorry for completely derailing us from eugenics and talking about my tween mega church experience. This is important context. This is all over. Don't apologize. Okay, so yes, getting back on topic. I'm the one who derailed us with the Pope's papal bull.

But it is, I think it is an interesting little data point in everything going on at the moment. It seems like, you know, we're recording this a few weeks into the second Trump administration. And we're still kind of like trying to tease out like what's going on here. Like what is this administration trying to do as opposed to the first one? What is their operating ideological premises? Like the first Trump administration didn't have a Christopher Ruffo.

It didn't have a Elon Musk. You know what I mean? Like these are some new names. It seems like they've kind of got a new operating philosophy and mission. And so I don't know, I think it's interesting to kind of sort of tease some of these threads out. And you know, wouldn't you know it,

like just as the Trump administration comes in and we're starting to see all this, I had read your article, Gabby, in the Baffler, Live Free or DEI. I had read your article, Gabby, in the Baffler, Live Free or DEI. But that's good. Well done on that one by the way. Thank you, that wasn't me. I can't take credit for that.

I'm so bad at headlines. But we have editors. But the article's about the eugenic foundations of the war on woke. Like this is the new thing, right? Like everybody is saying like, oh, there's a new sort of like cultural premise of America now like there's a new cultural basis like it's it We're moving beyond woke. We're leaving that in the past. We're embracing our new techno optimist the satanic future

With all the contradictions. I guess that has on one hand you've got the trans humanists on the other hand you've got the the Bannonites the the pro humanists. I don't know what you would call that But there's there's several different like contradictory forces feeding into this and I think it also offers this a chance to look at some other cultural phenomena that are that are Present in this like for example the tradwife phenomenon I think that as we'll get into in a little bit, like that in my opinion is a kind of like perfect mirror image of what we are seeing with a lot of the new rights

favorite cultural products like Yellowstone and Landman. Like you've got the return of the cowboy, which means you also have the return of the pioneer wife. Like we're speedrunning the 19th century I guess is what I'm trying to say and And that includes yeah eugenics, but it includes frontier politics And maybe it's no coincidence that we are now talking about taking over Gaza So I've been saying this for well over a year now

But that is the primary contradiction in the sense that it triggers all of America's latent psychological traumas about our own settler colonial past. And when you know it, we're about to reengage in the same thing probably. So maybe a good place to start here, Gabby, would be to talk about our audience needs no introduction to Christopher Ruffo.

We have had a personal brush with the fellow He is a to put it to put it lightly that's a friendly way to say rat bastard But yeah, no he our audience needs no introduction to him But I did want to talk about like I think you're your your article does a really good job of unpacking how he presents What DEI is and what? Critical race theory is so I don't know maybe talk a little bit about that Like what is his critique of DEI in the in critical race theory?

How does he see it and how does he present it to the world as something that needs to be abolished? Yeah, I guess I'll use my beautiful home state of Florida as an example. The whole thing in Florida was like, parents have no control over what their kids are learning in school. And like sweet little white boys are coming home and they're saying, mommy, I'm racist.

Mommy, I'm a bad person. And these kids are growing up to hate themselves because they're being indoctrinated. And their parents have no say in the matter. And they're paying for it with their taxes. So it's kind of framed as like a way for parents to have like some degree of control over their children's education. Often framed as like teaching kids like age appropriate lessons instead of like, I mean, the whole

thing was that really young kids were learning about explicit sexual acts, which is not true. And just this idea that there are these highly paid consultants who are advising elementary and grade school teachers to teach kids things that are both like inappropriate, like rooted in like historical grievances and like making kids feel really guilty for things that they didn't do. What the actual goal is, is to completely dismantle public education, take over it, replace, if we're going to call it propaganda, I am not, but whatever, replace one type of propaganda with another type of propaganda and that type of propaganda is actually like maybe the Confederacy did nothing wrong.

Like actually maybe it's fine. Actually maybe there are some differences in IQ based on race, and we should talk about it. And like, I think New College of Florida, where Rufo orchestrated and like led this takeover is a really good example. It's like, it was like, the liberal arts school where like, the one queer kid from your graduating class would go. And he has since taken it over and recruited a bunch of student athletes who were also like kind of victims of like a massive swindle because like they were told that they had all these facilities and all these things and like they don't have shit. Really? Fascinating. I didn't know that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It was like, it really sucks because it's like pitting two groups of kids against each other and like both groups of kids like are just pawns who are trying to get a good education.

And there is like a small ideological contingent of like the girl who founded the Turning Point USA chapter on campus. But like, most of the kids are just like kids who are trying to go to college, you know? Right. But yeah, they like hired a professor who was like, wrote about how maybe colonialism was good for the people who were colonized. They offered, I don't remember exactly if they like, I defors resignations or if they like just other, they're trying to force the old faculty out and bring in new faculty that has a different ideological bent. And

New College was like kind of like this little haven in Florida. And they saw that and they were like, fuck you, absolutely not. We're going to get rid of it. Right. I mean, I think that you you're exactly right. And you're seeing this now with like the Trump administration's moves to dismantle the Department of Public Education. But like, this is, I don't know, without like getting too deep into the weeds of the history of this, like the history of public education in this country basically started during Reconstruction. This was the demand, this was like the premier, like the first demand of the freed slaves was a public education system And as a result ever since then it has been a target of conservatives Unreconstructed Confederates. I mean like we live in the world of

unconstructed Confederacy the And I mean that like not only like as a kind of like descriptor but also literally like I'm reading this book by Melinda Cooper called counter-revolution austerity and extravagance in public finance and like part of what she's talking about in that book is that like several of the actors who came together to piece together a neoliberal framework for the economy were like supply-side economics, but they were also these people in the in Virginia who had They were yeah, dude, they were literally like

plantation economists like they were old South like, you know democratic like one-party state rule economists from the era of like, you know, mono economy agriculture in the deep south. And like their whole MO was like austere budgeting and no public safety net whatsoever, no public education, that kind of deal. So like we do literally live in the world. Don't say. Yeah, we live in the world created by under-constructed people. So that's why I was taught that some slaves were happy, huh?

In public school. No, it's a straight line. These things are all connected. And also furthermore, like a public education system hints at a larger community and that's what these people want to dismantle. I think Christopher Ruffo has even probably said as much explicitly. But like one of the things you point out in your article, Gaby, and I wanted to like kind of dig into, like you go into the like long historical lineage of the attack on DEI.

I mean, and we can even talk about DEI later. I've, as I've told the audience before, I don't even really know what DEI is. I've not worked in an office. And that's on purpose. It's very nebulous on purpose, so it can be anything. Yeah, right. Like it can, and probably the same thing

with critical race theory, right? Like it's probably these like large, just sort of catch-all terms that like can yeah, you can just use it to like paint any kind of policy or or movement demand and So but like I wanted to talk about like this sort of lineage of the attack on this one of the Could you talk a little bit about this magazine? aporia which is a magazine that Christopher

Ruffo recommends heartily to his reading audience? Yes. So while he's going to school board meetings and he's on the news and doing all this stuff being like, I just want parents to have control over their kids' education. He's also recommending this like, explicitly Eugenesis magazine, it calls itself a socio biology magazine. That publishes tons of stuff on the race and IQ connection on the diversity lie. One of my favorite titles is leftism and mutation load.

It was a point counterpoint where one author was like, oh, there are these studies that prove that leftists have genetic mutations. I'm not a scientist, I don't know. But they have something genetic that makes them that way. The other one was like, no, no, that's not true. So they are having a lively and spirited debate on their sub stack. These are some of the other titles, created unequal, unconvenient facts about slavery, the positive legacy of empire, and you're probably a eugenicist.

Yes. Okay, okay. So this is, they're not just saying stuff like the Irish were slaves too. They're like going ho-hog like, yeah, actually. Good thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. My favorite one is actually one that's, I think it's called Elites are genetically different. And it starts with like this long anecdote about the Netanyahu family and how they were just like bred to be great, like all of the Netanyahu boys. And actually, actually Bibi was the least great of all of them. And look at him. He's awesome. Yeah, it's like this insane scene

that I had first heard about, because I went to this pro-natalist conference in December 2023. And one of the speakers at the conference was this woman, Diana Fleischman, who writes for Aporia and is like on their podcast. And her whole speech was like, it was interesting because I did like agree with some of it. I agreed with one part of it specifically, I'm going to say, which is that she was talking about how like, helicopter parents are like making their kids into little freaks and how like people just need to calm down a little bit and like, the external culture is not going to affect your kids as much as the way that you raise them, which is true.

And she had this line, which I thought was really funny. This is where I start to disagree where she said, your genes are more important than drag queen story hour. So she was basically trying to reassure all of these conservatives that like woke was not going to infect their kids because their genes were they were anti woke, like down to their DNA. This actually there is long lineage of this. Didn't the Nazis think that like communists were degenerates like genetically like because of the connection with Judaism, like, you know, Marx and Trotsky and everybody? I don't know, but like, it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, yeah, the like,

there's so much of this stuff that's like tied up in like biological essentialism and like, yeah, like your heredity is your destiny. That would make sense that they want to destroy any kind of public social fabric, because to them, if everything is genes, then like nothing about what constitutes your personality or your personal life or trajectory through it could be determined by external environmental factors. Exactly. And they actually see the external environmental factors. And this is like where DEI comes in, or DEI, like big quotes, as like, messing with like the natural order of things. So they see like diversity initiatives or like the Civil Rights Act as like, not attempting to account and atone for like centuries of racism and inequality, but like, as a way of like boosting up people who are genetically and biologically inferior. And so they see like, one woman in a boardroom or whatever, or like one black person and they're like, ah, biologically, that guy's not supposed

to be here. And so they just think like there's this whole structure in place that is designed to subvert biology and subvert nature, which is also actually where the anti-trans stuff comes in. All of this to them is like, we are shunting God's will. This is just how things are. Some of them aren't religious. Some of them are like, we are ignoring science. And some of them like try to have like a fusion of science and religion. But ultimately, it's like, the government has created these structures to like, they're just

like built an entire society on a lie that all men are created equal. And then they have to put up all of these things in place to sustain that lie, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, didn't you say that the natalism conference that you went to, or the natal conference, wasn't it mostly, getting back to what we were talking about earlier, wasn't it mostly tech rationalists and Christian nationalists?

You know what I mean? It's kind of that Bannon Musk unholy alliance thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was so like so interesting because like there is a glasses couple, you know, the one that keeps getting profiles written about them. Yeah. Yeah, that was Simone Collins. Malcolm and Simone Collins. Yeah. Yeah, there and there were some other tech rationalist people and then there were people like Charles Heywood who's this really rich guy who he hit a shampoo, he's a shampoo magnate and he sold his shampoo empire to fund far right publications and social clubs.

And his whole thing was like about how we need like men's only spaces that we need to repeal the Civil Rights Act. And like there was a woman from the Heritage Foundation, Emma Waters, who afterwards like wrote all these critiques of like tech pronatalism and IVF specifically. And like these like experimental things that don't really exist yet like artificial wombs. And

like this thing that the Collins and other tech people do called the I don't remember what it's called right now. So like special genetic testing for their for their like, embryos, embryos. So they're like, all of their like, IVF embryos, and they like pick the one that has like the highest pot like likely IQ. They like do this testing that is not like super regulated or like proven to pick the highest IQ fetus or embryo.

And like the Heritage Foundation woman was like, this is fucked up and anti-human and like obviously part of it is likeF and other reproductive technologies lead to the destruction of some embryos. So there was an abortion criticism in there. But all of these people were at a conference together. And then that's kind of the thing where some of the people are like, you guys are sinners. It's not just that we disagree on how to make people have more babies. It's like we disagree on the fundamental concept of what human life is and the value of it.

They have a lot of things in common, like they hate woke. And so they kind of focus on how much they hate woke and just paper over the other stuff. Well, you can't let perfect be the enemy of good, I say, you know. So true. Which is ironic for a eugenics Thing it's like is it yeah aren't you going after perfection?

One thing that's funny to me is like for people that believe that you know Your genes is like what determines your trajectory in life It's like they're they're they're like it's like a Calvinism kind of like believing in predestination or something So it's like well Why are you trying to push this shit so hard if it's's just like, what's going to be is going to be if, you know, uh, those of us without like a superior genetics are just going to be, you know, uh, you know, uh, a burden on society and a bunch of big dummies and the ignorant coal, smudge fields of Appalachia or wherever it is.

You know, Calvinism, it's like the Calvinist thought that like, like Satan was so powerful that he actually made it so the predestined to be good people weren't like, I don't know, there's a bad, I'm fucking up this comparison, but like, I think they think that, yeah, like if they had like, like if things just like played out naturally, they think like they would be in charge. But because things are not being allowed to play out the way that they're supposed to, like their their predestiny is like actually like is being meddled with.

Makes sense. I'm gonna give them some sobering news. I have two eyes. Okay. And I'm just going to tell them if things were actually allowed to play out naturally with no thumb on the scale, Chris Rufo at 5'8 is not running society. I'm sorry. It's just not in the cards.

Not short King's Spring hair. Nothing wrong with that if you had the right values, but I hate him. I do. I've got a rear naked choker with that bastard's name all over him in one of these things. Right in front of his kids there. Choking him out in the streets of fucking Newman Claw Washington. Is that where he's at? Yeah, he's from the same town that was the focus of a documentary called The Zoo, which I don't recommend anybody search out much less watch. But no good.

Google Ken Pinyon Boeing executive if you have a morbid curiosity, but I suggest you don't do that either. Turn the Google when you do because there's a yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Should say that too. Yeah, maybe there is a Rufo connection there, perhaps. I just want to know where his whereabouts were on that fateful night, you know? Was that in the 90s? Yeah. How old is he?

Like 45? That's my guess. I bet he's like in his late 30s. He's 40. He's probably 40 years old. Same age as JD, I think. Man, I've said this so many times, but like, I know there's a lot of things that are wrong with that man. But I can't handle four to eight years of like, epic doggo pupper humor from JD Vance.

Like I don't wanna hear this shit anymore. I don't wanna so that just happened to us, like president, like shut up. He will be the president. According to Trump though, he might not be, cause they asked him, I think Brett Bauer asked him like, is JD Vance gonna be the next president? And Trump said no.

Wait, what? Yeah, like he asked him like, is JD likeance gonna be the next president? And Trump said no. Wait, what? Yeah, like he asked him like is JD like your heir apparent? And Trump's answer was no, there's a lot of good people in the Republican party right now, so who's to say who will be the next? So he did not bless JD with the... That's crazy, damn. He even like went further, he was like,

well you know in about two years He's gonna be coming looking for your endorsement. Is he gonna get it? They had a Trump's like Trump's like, I don't know not necessarily Yeah, that's I mean he I mean it's it's fascinating to see the difference between him and pins because like pins with his own, you you know sort of like demonic entity with his own agenda whereas like Vance is such a like simpering like you

know obedient lapdog it's yeah I mean I guess it like kind of speaks to like and says when Trump thought he like he had to really fight for the evangelicals cuz you know like Trump is like I I mean, he doesn't drink. He's like kind of a prude, I guess, but he's still this like gaudy, like probably has paid for some versions. Exactly. And he needed like the evangelical vote, but now he's got that shit.

And I think he needed tech money. Like the Biden and the Harris campaigns like had so much money or I guess they didn't have so much money since now they're like in debt or what? I don't know. They were, I don't know what's going on with that, but, um, I think he like really wanted like JD's tech connections. Uh, but it's weird cause he's also like, he's like more Bannon Trab than he is musky, I think JD Vance.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I don't know That's actually a great question Gabby He kind of almost like fuses the two in like the classic fascist formulation like fascism is an incoherent ideology It generally has like So many conflicting Ideologies packed into it that violence has to kind of become the natural Operating philosophy of it and so like JD does kind of like fuse those two together like he's got the trad Bannonites

In you know impetus in him with the Unholy like any. They say Peter Tiltek, yeah. Exactly, right. And, but like, I don't know, also, did y'all see his tweet after the Super Bowl? He was like, a German Shepherd in a Chihuahua, uh-oh. Like, you know what I mean? I've got questions. He's, yeah, doing like jokes about his own eugenic

like philosophy, like so. Questions he's yeah doing like jokes about his own eugenic like philosophy is like so I Cringe and concerning I have a sneaking suspicion that the way we meet our in Terence's by firing squad and the last thing anybody that witnesses it hears is that just happened What are you gonna do? Yeah, I mean, the JD thing is so weird. Because like, he used to gone all those I mean, all the like, democratic opposition research on him was just like him going on some guy's podcast and being like, Hey, man, have you seen the movie gangs of New

York? Don't you think those Italians had some real problems back then? Maybe we should go back to that. And like that was eugenics, like all those immigration laws were eugenics. They was like where they came from. They love the 19th century. It's like I said, like they're trying to speed run the 19th century with like a techno optimist kind of shame. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard this criticism like a million times

and like I'm not trying to defend the Gilded Age robber barons who were obviously bad people, Pinkertons and all that, but like those guys like built libraries and shit, you know? They were like, oh, like we're gonna make children work 18 hours a day in mines, but like some of them can go to the library afterwards. What the fuck are these guys doing?

Like, that's actually a great point because those Robert Barons understood that for capitalism to work, you still had to have some sort of like societal substrate. Like there had to be society. Baseline education. There has, yeah, there had to be baseline education and even more fundamentally, like you had to have, for you to be able to extract surplus, you have to be baseline education and even more fundamentally like you had to have For you to be able to extract surplus you have to have society because you have to have social reproduction These were these robber barons are so fundamentally anti-social and they're so they've been so indoctrinated with neoliberal ideology that like

They are The main every single one of them is the main character. So they just wanna get out of it what they can get out of it. And I mean, obviously the operating logic of capitalism at this point is the destruction of society in a social fabric as the method of extracting surplus. But- Things so bad we're rehabilitating the Vanderbilts

and the Rockefellers on the program. Yeah, like again, bad people, bad people should have faced a different end, but it almost makes you nostalgic for life. I live by a really beautiful library that apparently was an Andrew Carnegie library, and you know, evil man, but it's a really nice library. Yeah, somebody sent me this article recently. It's from a couple years ago. I'm gonna pull it up because it's one of the craziest things I've ever read. It was about a conference. It's called survival of the richest by a guy named Douglas Rushkoff. And it's about a speed or a conference on the future of technology.

Okay, so like talking about like what things are going to look like event like in the future, like what what we like what tools we can use to make things better, like how we can ward off climate change. And then all these really rich guys started getting to their actual point, which was like, okay, so the collapse is coming. Where do we go? Alaska? New Zealand? Where do we go when the collapse happens? And they kept calling it the event. And then they were like, okay, once the event happens, obviously we have to have a private security force, right? But how do we keep the private security force from turning their guns against us?

Do we control the food supply? Do we put shot collars on them? What do we do? Which, number one, is fucking insane. And number two, answer is this question that I've had for a really long time, which is like, okay, assuming this AI stuff really, really takes off and replaces everybody's job, right? And there's no longer like, people to buy stuff like like, like,

we like, as you mentioned, Terrence, like, capitalism is functioned by extracting surplus value, but also like, people, there need to be consumers, like there need to be like, like you need to be participating in the economy. If you force people out of the economy and out of the labor force, if you've got this federal workforce, or you get rid of all these things, and all of these like, people are just like, bodies in the meat grinder, like, what's the like? What is the end game? Like, how do you even continue to get rich? Like, like from a purely just like selfish.

Yes, that's it. Robots don't buy stuff and they don't eat food. No, but I guess if they're preparing for a collapse situation where like there are private security forces and shot collars, it actually doesn't fucking matter. Yeah, like, yeah, I don't know. It could have something to do with why the economy feels like it's mostly like, you know, cartoon apes

and vapor and, you know, just totally immaterial nonsense. You know? I think that like there has been a very ambient sense of apocalypse that has Kind of pervaded the business elites and the ruling classes for at least like 40 or 50 years ago Once again, like I'm thinking of the Melinda Cooper book She quotes. I don't remember who said this if it was like Alan Greenspan or Arthur Laffer someone in the 70s when they were like looking at like spiraling inflation wage push inflation the the power of unions to strike

and asset depreciation I think one of them said like Like the end is near what we need now is the appearance of God like that's a direct quote like they have had this like They've been in a kind of apocalyptic end game for about 40, 50 years now. It hasn't really looked like that to us until maybe in the last like five years.

But like I really kind of realized this as I was watching the show Land Man, which we've talked a lot about on this program. I don't know if you've heard of it, Gabby, but it's- I've heard of it. You guys are so brave for even attempting to watch. Like, damn. Well, I think that something that that show teases out and that I saw mirrored in this Melinda Cooper book is that in the last 40 years, there has been a gradual concentration of wealth not only in the top 1% but in in family dynasties so like you are you now seeing like the

ruling class as a as a constellation of family dynasties which is not the case in the mid 20th century you had more of a kind of like entrepreneurial capitalism the the and it made sense once I read that, like, and there's a reason for that. It's primarily because the main way to realize value in surplus now is through assets. Real estate, land, homes, yachts, these types of things that can be passed on to your other kin. And, um, and that has to do with the financialization of the economy.

But in Land Man, there's so much emphasis on the value and importance of family. Not for the workers, but for the capitalists themselves, specifically the one played by Jon Hamm in the show. His whole dilemma in the show is, how do I make as much money as possible and get out as soon as possible so I can leave

my kids billions of dollars John Ham is in this shot on him is in land man. Yes Or two it's it's it's very depressing and oh my god Meanwhile the Mexican guys just sort of die all the time in that show that's curious. Yes well in the operating philosophy of that show is that They they blatantly say this many times oil will not last forever This economy will not last forever And so we have to get out we have to get as much out of this as we can while the getting is still good

And I think that that and I've said that on the show the show before, but that imbues a very cynical, pessimistic approach to politics and to ordering society. And when you think about this eugenic stuff, it kind of like rings true there as well, because for them, there's a demographic bomb that is starting to brew, and that is the declining birth rate

so like all of these and I don't think you have a anxiety over declining birth rates in any other mode of production because like capitalism is predicated on infinite growth which means you have to have an Larger growth rate as time goes on and I think that they all see that like the birthrate is declining and like, they're like, oh shit, like what, how are we going to respond to this? Like typically we would let more people across the borders, but we're also a racist. So we have to like get white people to reproduce as much as possible. I don't know. Yeah, the immigration part of it is really interesting,

is if when you ask them like, how do we take care of, like even if population is not declining to like, like zero population, like depopulation levels, like we have a problem where we have like, a massively aging population and not enough people to like take care of them or pay into social security. So like, what do you wanna do about that? And like, why not immigration? And their answers to why not immigration are so interesting.

For some of them, it's that actually, fertility rates are down everywhere. So immigration won't solve the global population problem, which like, yeah, okay, fine. That's true. But what about the immediate problem of a bunch of old people on social security and we don't have home health aids? What about that? Right. The answer there? I don't know.

Or sometimes the answer is like, well, if those countries are also losing population, we shouldn't take their population. Or, or at the NATO list conference, one of the people said like, well, actually, like, once all those people realize that they were brought here to take care of our elderly, they're gonna, they're gonna write, they're gonna get mad, and they're gonna riot against us. And it's like, why would they get mad? Like, people want to come here, like, people are already coming here to take care of the elderly. Like maybe it's not their first choice job, but like, they're doing it. And then, yeah, the answer more often than not is just like, yeah, we need more people, but not those people. Like, that's it.

It's really funny because at the in the 1890s, talk about the 19th century some more, economists were really freaked out by this thing they called race suicide, which was like declining birth rates specifically among like what they called like Americans of old European stock. So like not the Ellis Island immigrants, but like German, French, Dutch, to some degree, Swedish, other Nordic, English, obviously, they loved the English. Those birth rates were declining and they were freaked out. Sociologists would talk about how race suicide was happening because the really high fertility rates of like Italian and Jewish and Irish immigrants like, like, literally shocked women's reproductive systems.

So they just like they couldn't bear to reproduce under such conditions. And also that like, these people had like because of their higher like breeding would not be able to raise their children in like the slum like conditions that like Italians and Jews were raising their kids in. Yeah. So their answer to like the birth rate overall like wasn't even like a problem. Like like the national birth rate was still fine. It was just the old stock birth rate.

So they were like, we got to close, we got to seal the border. Maybe not seal, but like, you know, we have to reduce immigration from this dysgenic European immigration. This is what I started talking about dysgenic immigration a lot. And that culminated in like the 1924 immigration act, which like JD Vance and company love to talk about as like a period of like is allowing for a reset of like who not only who came here but like we had to take a little pause so all those Italians and Jews could assimilate and so after that they say everything was great because we didn't get so many Italians and Jews. You get into this in your article that this is kind of the social environment that you get like basically places like Stanford, which was one of the earliest purveyors of eugenics

and race science and even more specifically like the IQ test. I don't know if a lot of people know this, but like the IQ test is based in a lot of eugenic premises and social millies. Was William Stokely at Stanford? Or was that UCLA? Who is William Stokely?

Oh, I don't know, I'm looking him up right now. The famous eugenicist that came to Eastern Kentucky and said that the American hillbilly was just genic and basically, you know, fruitless in terms of what they could provide society, although they had perhaps helped power of the industrial revolution for more than 200 years at that point, but I digress. Yeah, there was also like a lot of eugenic studies on white old stock families, and they would look at specifically in Appalachia and stuff, they'd be like, oh, this is a dysgenic branch and a eugenic branch that came from the same tree. And they were like, how did this happen?

There was a study from 1912 by the sea gen Genesis Henry Goddard called the Calacac Family, a study in the heredity of feeble mindedness. And it traced like two branches of this family tree basically, one of which was good and the other one of which was bad. And like the breeding decisions that led each branch of the family tree to its conclusion. Yeah, I mean, eugenics, a lot of it is thought of as being this East Coast waspy thing. There was the eugenics record office at Cold Spring Harbor in New York, but like Stanford was, they were really, they were really in that. Like David Star Jordan, the first president of Stanford,

was a huge eugenicist. And he, oh, this is in Malcolm Harris's book, Palo Alto. And I am not remembering it super, super well. So I'm sorry, Malcolm and whoever else has read that book. But there was a- Yeah, I read Paolo Alto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the part about that Stanford professor who had this study of child genius? And a bunch of the child geniuses just happened to end up at Stanford and he was like, wow, that's crazy. And it's because he was pulling the strings to get them into Stanford and get them good jobs afterwards.

I found something after reading that book that I found is that like a lot of like that kind of stuff, like why Stanford is considered a prestigious school and why there is like sort of a racialized, like job cast almost like, you know, is just because like Leland Stanford's wife wrote in Red Book one time that Mexicans were good at cutting grass and Chinese people were good at this and like it's just like kind of funneled like people that had you know just like had well I mean you know they had been in California but had you know into these jobs that kind of like, like

pervade today in, in, in some weird ways. And it's like so much of the way the world is just cause these dickheads just kind of just said, that's how it is. Like, yeah. Cementia. Yeah. Yeah. I, the guy's name was Louis Sherman.

Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, like even then, sorry, this is also just like in my article, but I just remembered, and I think it's kind of funny. They had like their own kind of cancel culture where like you could be a eugenicist, but like not too much. There was this, this professor at Stanford, Edward Ross, the guy who invented the term race suicide, who gave a speech that was like so racist against Japanese immigrants that like he got fired from Stanford.

Stanford, where they were doing eugenics, like Stanford, where they were doing like making, like doing scientific racism, they were like, oh no man, like that's, that's too much, that's too far. It's kind of like when the guy, the Doge staffer this week got fired for saying, like, normalize the Indian hate or whatever. Oh my God. Okay. This is so embarrassing and probably like really revealing of like the kind of vibe I have created in my life.

Um, three different people texted me like that Wall Street Journal article and said, wow, what are your boys? Not that he is my friend, just given my research interests. I feel like I have to say that all the time. I'm always like, I'm writing about how eugenics and how it's bad, and I'm writing about ecofascism and how it's bad. You don't want people to get the wrong idea. And I'm not advocating for these things. Literally writing a book right now where the title is a Nazi slogan and then I have to like very carefully write like draft a subtitle that like makes it clear this is a book about how Nazis are bad.

Like it's fucked up. It's like the meme like I'm reading the book on the subway and shaking my head to let everyone know I just read it. Wait, okay. So below me here, I have my secret pile of books that my guests can't see and again they're like research, they're research books for my work, but um You know how hard it is to take a book? You know how hard it is to take this on the subway? You know how hard it is to take a book? You know how hard it is to take this on the subway? Defending the master race. Defending the master race.

Conservation eugenics and the legacy of Madison Grant. And it's a book about how Madison Grant was not a great guy, to be clear. To be clear. But like, that's not what this... Here, listen, I know what it sounds like and I know how that might be difficult if you're the writer, but look on the bright side, you might get a little more traffic, a little more mileage out of people to get the wrong idea about it. That's true.

That's true. And that's why my book is literally called Blood and Soil. Hell yeah. Check this out. But yeah, back to the Doge guy. Literally he tweeted like, I support a eugenic immigration policy. Yeah.

And then JD Vance basically defended him. And I know there's a lot of, hey, has been made about this. A lot of people have talked about this, but yeah, JD Vance's wife and children are not white. I mean, it's like kind of, kind of a, a very bleak state of affairs, but what you know, what's really funny is that after JD Vance got the nomination and some Twitter racists were complaining about how he doesn't have a white wife. Other more advanced Twitter racists were like actually based on her last name and cast like she is a descendant of like this like ancient

I forget if it was Roman or Syrian or some other shit. They did some crazy phrenology to be like actually she is white. Jesus Christ. It's just like I just That whole thing is so nerd Centric like you have to you realize that like how How scaring the hose it is to talk about to make a case I don't know. I mean, I just can't even It's scaring the whole centric, but then it's also like you've got now this like girl phrenology that is everywhere. Like on TikTok it's like are you doe pretty or deer pretty or are you bunny pretty? And like they're all talking about like the Slavic doll diet

and like how they're all eating collagen and colostrum, which is not just breast milk, but I believe the first breast milk that comes out of someone ever. I had that recommended to me for hair loss. Colostrum? Colostrum, yeah. Who recommended this to you? Ah, it was a friend.

And like when I went to CPOC last year, there was this girl talking about how her fiance had convinced her to start eating like bull testicles and kidneys and like other organ meats. I'm kind of like going off the eugenics track now, but like, it's, these people are all so unwell and they find each other in the end, which I think is kind of beautiful. That's true. Yeah, I don't know what I would do if I had found who I thought might be the love of my life and they were like, you know, there's just one more hurdle to climb here. Bull testicles. There's just one more hurdle to climb here

Bull testicles Well, it's be such a such a hard thing to you know It is we are in a very before we got on we started talking about like the eugenic baby Contests in the Midwest or wherever in the United States like in the 1910s and 20s It feels very much like you saying that about like this girlfriendology, like are you a doe or whatever. It's Slavic doll, that's one of the most satanic things I've ever heard.

It feels very similar. You think it really is, yeah. I think like, I feel like so, like the it's always sunny guy with the red string all the time whenever I talk about this stuff. But like, it's all very sinister and it's all really connected like the tradwife stuff and like, I mean, the Slavic doll thing is like kind of an inverse of the tradwife stuff where like, it's like, one of them is like a healthy milk fed but still pretty skinny woman, like milk and cows, and the other one is like an emaciated

anorexic eating like one little slice of pate. But like both of them are like supposed to be like the paragon of desirable womanhood. Yeah, the eugenic Baby Contest, though. Yeah, those were those were crazy. They had them at state fairs, mostly in the Midwest in the 1910s and the 1920s, I believe. And they they were like the whole point was to teach farmers and like rural people about eugenics. I pulled up this book, which I love. I've read it like four times. It's called Conceiving the Future by Laura Lovett. Chapter six is called Fitter Families for Future Firesides, Florence Sherborne and Popular

Eugenics. And the first sentence of this chapter is the $1911 million dollar parade of prize livestock and other agricultural products at the Iowa State Fair concluded with an automobile filled with preschool children. A runner on the side of the car proclaimed them to be Iowa's best crop. And the whole chapter is about like these little babies being used as tools for eugenic propaganda, including in these contests where families would submit their baby and their baby would be measured and evaluated and the family's heritage would be, they'd answer questions about the family's heritage.

And then one of the babies was the best baby. And that baby got a medal and it said, I am a Goodly Heritage. I hate to break it to Mr. Goodly it said I'm a goodly heritage Hate to break it to mr. Goodly heritage rhyme the best, baby. I Think that this is like an actually and you know, we're at an hour so we can start wrapping up here in a minute but like I think this actually is a good place to kind of talk about the trad wife thing I did want to talk about it because As you wrote another article in the Baffler about tradwives and about the phenomenon, this was back in 2023, when I think it like maybe it

like wasn't quite everyone on everyone's radar as much as it is now. But but I think that you know, you list some of the popular tradwives, like the Neelmans and Ballerina Farm, which we've talked about on this show. Gwen the Milkmaid, Isla Stewart, Lori Alexander, these are kind of some popular. Lisa Barlow, for the Real Housewives, saying something.

All the big dogs. But something that you point out was that like for the tradwife phenomenon, like biological difference is a huge issue. And that mixed with their insane hyperfixation on like nutrition and physical health, like this kind of is the conduit through which, you know, the alt-right have become like sort

of crunchy granola types since the pandemic. Like in my opinion, this kind of really became acutely concentrated during the pandemic. But yeah, like, what are we to make of the rise of the Trad Cat? How does it fit into this larger puzzle of the attack on DEI, the resurgence of eugenics, both overt and implicit? How are we to make sense of that? Yeah, I think with both of these things, I guess I'll talk a little bit more about, or I'll start with the allure

to a normal non-right-wing freak. Is that like, yeah, our food is bad. Our food is full of poison. We eat garbage all the time. And even if you like, mostly eat vegetables and stuff, like, there's garbage in the soil, and there's garbage in the air, and there's micro microplastics in our brains. And like and that is really scary. And seemingly nobody in power is interested in doing anything about it, which then can lead people into conspiratorial thinking. So accepting that that premise is true, that we are fed garbage all the time, there's kind of two routes that you could take with it.

One is that this is because both parties are so friendly with corporations that they have reduced the standards for what we can put into our bodies to such a degree that that's just business, that's what we eat. And the other one is the elites are plotting to make you infertile and gay. And that's kind of where a lot of people end up. Can't rule it out. The RFK. Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just... the microplastics in the brain thing, ever since I saw that thing that said the average American has enough micropl in their head to form like a little plastic spoon

I've not been able to quit thinking about like imagining like my brain in like In like this animated thing with like a plastic spoon just kind of sticking in there You know what I mean? And every time I have like a brain fart where I'm just like, oh wait What's that person's name that I've known for 20 years? I'm just like, that's the spoon. That's not my fault. That's the spoon. That's the spoon. And so yeah, like the woke elites are colluding

to make you infertile and gay ones are like, you know, the RFK contingent there, both like driven by actual like material concerns and just like, I think in some cases, being taken advantage of by these right-wing people who honestly only just want to sell them supplements and raw milk. It's not like they really care about them either. But I guess going back to what I said before about how the anti-DEI, anti-woke people are trying to like restore a natural order. A lot of these like crunchy right wing people kind of believe that if you cut out all the

processed food and all of like the like, there's a word. So okay, now I'm having a brain fart and that's the plastics in my brain. Yeah. But yeah, if you like eat clean and you eat healthy and you eat natural and you like drink raw milk and you, um, you've slunk eggs, but like your body will return to like a more natural state. So like, if you go off birth control, like you'll be attracted to more masculine men and if you like eat healthy and you're on birth control, like your body, your menstrual cycle like

will fix itself. And if you like eat certain foods at different times in your menstrual cycle, like you'll reach like a, like a higher tier of femininity and you'll be more in touch with your body and all of this stuff. And again, like it's all like really biologically essentialist. It's like you can kind of like take the feminism out of your body by eating sourdough basically. It's really crazy stuff. The raw milk guys are kind of interesting. I was seeing it and saw one of them the other day was talking about like well if it weirds you out just microwave it and I'm just thinking my head so pasteurization I'm confused like

what is the value add of raw milk this is probably a dumb question but like what are you not is it like what are you not getting in pastures? Why are you still drinking milk as an adult anyway? Why are you still drinking milk as an adult is a huge question. Okay, so I think they say that the pasteurization takes out good vitamins. I am gonna out myself as both having had raw milk

in the past calendar year, and as having drank a glass of milk in the past calendar year and as having drink a glass of milk at the Minnesota State Fair, which was pasteurized, but I did just drink a glass of milk. It's not something I do habitually, but- What's the review? I'm trying to bulk right now, so I do drink milk. Well, that's different.

That's a bulk of things. That's different. That's different. The raw milk review. Okay. That's a bothy place. That's different. That's different. The raw milk review. Okay, so the first time I had raw milk, I was in Northern Idaho visiting my friend who grew up there and we got raw milk from the local food co-op. So it's from this gay little college town in Northern Idaho that has been taken over by Christian nationalists.

It's really crazy stuff. Like, like, half the town is like, like blue hair pronouns and the other half of the town is like, Christian nationalists. It's really fucking weird. They have like their own university there. But the co op, we got raw milk. And I was really good. It was really good. Okay. I would not risk a bird flu for it. I put it in my coffee. It was just a little creamier than regular whole milk. You see the appeal though from the pure palate standpoint. Yeah, I do see the appeal, but also not enough.

It's really not enough to- How worth it. Bring dysentery back or whatever you know. Yeah. And then, oh my God, when I was in L.A. at Arawan, the famous expensive as hell grocery store, they had something called Dr. Paul's raw milk smoothie that had raw milk and colostrum and raw Oregon meat in it. I did not get wow cuz I'm not a freak. I Wonder how that passes FDA muster That's a good or maybe it's like one of those things like, you know at your at your own peril Yeah, a lot of you can sell raw milk in your state, but you cannot sell raw milk across state lines

Okay, it's like I'm gonna be I'm gonna be a raw milk bootlegger, like my daddy and his daddy before him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing those good microbes to West Virginia. Okay, I wanted to, I think like this is a good place

to kind of start wrapping things up and to kind of like tying a neat bow on it. But like the rise of like tying a needle on it, but like the rise of like RFK jr. As the person to I Just think that like when I think about this stuff, and I hate to sound like paranoid schizophrenic But like genuinely how the fuck else am I supposed to interpret like a Kennedy? the symbol of mid-century American Fortis prosperity not like that person that Kennedy is now leading the charge into the breach of

The dissolution of all of those very things that his family dynasty stood for And like furthermore like it's I think it it You know are of case thing like the whole health fad the whole wellness culture like does kind of present another crude short-term resolution to some of these contradictions because yeah I guess you take enough supplements you can convince yourself for long enough that like you are staving off all the bad things in our food. And you're right, it is diagnosing a real problem,

which is that capitalism does poison us in a myriad of ways. I got a short answer for you is that whereas we all three have a spoon in our brain, he has a spoon and a worm. And a worm. Yeah, so he's dealing with multiple things up there. I'm sorry, carry on.

That worm thing is so good. Yeah. It's just, I think it's just a potent symbol, right? Like in Kennedy, it's now the face of, you know, the dissolution of these things that like held things together for so long. But like, even going back even further in the historical record like the trad wife and

The trade wife phenomenon as I said at the top of the show like I think it's a kind of It's a kind of like resurgence of a distinctly settler colonial aesthetic And it makes sense when you consider some of the most popular cultural products of the moment like I said earlier Yellowstone and Landman. And these, this like insane fixation on acquiring land and maybe this, you know, you're writing a book right now, Gabby, called Blood and Soil. This is where the soil part of this comes in.

It's this kind of insane obsession with conquering and acquiring this land and it having a kind of scientific or irrational or ethnic justification for it. But it is wholly kind of contradictory in ways that are hard for us to even kind of piece together because it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to us. Yeah, I mean, I think like I'm kind of just spitballing here, but I mean, the Treadwife stuff and the Treadwife like aesthetic is like this nonsense pastiche of like, like frontier, like mid 19th century wife with this like 50s nuclear family. That was not

the kind of family structure you saw on the frontier, but whatever. Right. And I mean, it's just like nostalgia for something that is completely made up, a classic fascist thing. Part of what I'm researching right now for my book is the campaign at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century to save the American bison from extinction. And there was this group called the American Bison Society, which was started by a group of conservationists at the Bronx Zoo, which was itself founded by eugenicists. They had a human man there on display in 1906. Not good.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. They called him an African pygmy from the Congo. And so then these two things were happening, like, at the same time, like they were starting the first national bison refuge at the same time that the human man was on display. Right. And it was so interesting. The bison was being hunted to extinction as a distinct intentional policy of Native American

extermination. And so like the same like Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman were members of the American Bison Society. Teddy Roosevelt was the honorary president of the American Bison Society. And he, you know, conservationist, first conservationist president, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, before he was the first conservationist president, he wrote in this book, Hunting Tribes of Ranchmen, about how it's really sad that the bison are basically gone. But they had to be gone, because that was the only way that the frontier could be settled by white men. Like everybody knew,

like, there were treaties that the government had with various Plains tribes that were like, you can have your hunting land so long as the buffalo range upon to justify the chase. And so after those treaties were signed, they were like, all right, boys, let's go shooting. Let's go kill some buffalo. And it was never like, nobody has found proof that this was an official written policy, but it didn't have to be a written policy because it was what everybody was doing. And so all of this is to say, even at the end of the 19th century, they were slammering for a return to this mythical frontier pass that didn't exist.

And now you've got Brad, when the milkmaid like buying like cream at the store to churn her own butter at home, like trying to recreate something that didn't exist the way that she's romanticizing it. It's just happening over and over and over. Yeah. And it's, what is kind of like, and I'm not saying anything

that we haven't already talked about before, but what's kind of astonishing about it is just how cringe it is. You realize how, I don't know how to put this, how kind of bitch-made it is to churn your own butter. What time? So well done. To churn your own butter. So well done. To turn your own butter.

I mean, you don't have to do that. But even furthermore, to tape yourself to tape yourself dates shows how old I am to video yourself doing it with all of the techno and upload it to a fucking social media site like with all of the technological progresses of the of the tech- and upload it to a fucking social media site, like with all of the technological progresses of the current moment, it's just like, we have machines to churn butter. But like we're just gonna use the machines to actually just upload videos of me churning butter as a virtue signal to other people. Yeah, living on the front here fucking sucked. Like it sucked. To write that

Tronwife thing, I read this academic article from like, I think the 70s or something that was like analyzing in your wife diaries and those women were memorable. They wanted to die. Yeah, they hated it. They didn't like it. No, you're building like a sod house with like cow manure. That's a tough sell. Burning cow pies for heat. I could have been a candidate and here I am on the Oregon Trail with your ass. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

Like there's a lot of like there's a lot of stuff here. There's a lot of like threads we've, of stuff here. There's a lot of like threads We've you know opened up teased out. You know closed. I think that like Your work you're writing Gabby has Like I said at the top of the show has revealed a lot of the underlying sort of like philosophical and Ideological premises that these people are working on. It's a kind of incoherent mishmash of nostalgia for the past, optimism for the future,

but only if it's conceived as- Dostain for the present. And very much disdain for the present, which we can all agree on. The present does suck pretty bad. It sucks so bad. But yeah, Gabby, do you have anything you would like to plug before we or anything that we need to address also though, before we get out of here?

In terms of anything I want to plug, my book does not come out for two years and I do still need to write it. So keep your eyes out 2027 If we're all still alive by then and we still have a functioning world No, well, thank you guys for having me. This was so fun. Um Yeah, I love whenever I get to talk about the eugenic baby contest What one thing before we go baby contest. One thing before we go that pisses me off about the trad wife and all these people is their fixation on eating bugs. They're pissed off about that as a source of protein.

One of the things my dad always told me as a kid that when I had to eat something I didn't like, my dad would be like, well, you know, John the Baptist ate locusts. And I was like, my dad would be like, well you know John the Baptist ate locusts. And I was like, I was like all right. So it's like, all right. He didn't even hit you with their starving kids and dot dot dot, he hits you with John the Baptist ate locusts. That's a whole different level. That's crazy.

Yeah, so if it was good enough for John the Baptist, I'll eat the bug protein, I don't give a fuck. Protein is protein, bro. Yeah, and everybody's into protein-maxing now. like you can get it from wherever you can get it. Yeah get it wherever you can get it exactly Yeah, no this this this podcast is pro bug protein. I have some thoughts on protein consumption. We'll save it for the next time Well, I'll put Gabby's articles in the show notes. Go check her writing out there. You're on Twitter as well. So also if you would like to support our show, please go to Patreon.

Five measly dollars a month will get you all kinds of extra content, premium content, and that link is also in the show notes. So, until next time, Gabby, we'll have to have you back on. Yeah, thanks so much, you guys. Thanks, Gavin. The Music