Convincing Mice to Vote for Cats

<v Speaker 1>All right, welcome to another episode of the Crime Pas.
<v Speaker 1>But BONDI doesn't podcast. Today, we're doing a podcast that
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have anything at all to do about plants, but
<v Speaker 1>it's with a mind that I greatly respect and admire. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>And I'm always interested to listen to the opinions of
<v Speaker 1>my friend j le Solei, who is half the voice
<v Speaker 1>playing the fucking canceled podcast. He's a writer, he's got
<v Speaker 1>a degree in political anthropology. And yeah, I guess, uh,
<v Speaker 1>I guess film me yeah, fill me in on on
<v Speaker 1>your background.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, totally.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>Well, first of all, thanks for having me. Second, we
<v Speaker 2>we could totally talk about the plants if you want.
<v Speaker 2>I'm always done, Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. I
<v Speaker 2>did my master's degree in anthropology and I ended up
<v Speaker 2>Originally I'd wanted to do some work on the rise
<v Speaker 2>of this kind of like online like hardline anti feminism
<v Speaker 2>that was popping up a couple of years back, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And I got in touch with this guy who was
<v Speaker 2>running like a like a pickup artist group in Montreal,
<v Speaker 2>and I wanted to I wanted to just interview him
<v Speaker 2>for some like preliminary research stuff, you know, because I
<v Speaker 2>was interested in why this was popping up so hard
<v Speaker 2>at the time. What was kind of motivating people who
<v Speaker 2>were behind it and so on. Anyways, I got in
<v Speaker 2>touch with this guy and he's like, oh, that group
<v Speaker 2>doesn't exist anymore, the pickup artist group, and oh yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like okay, like what happened to it? And he's like, basically,
<v Speaker 2>we're not these now. And he had converted his pickup
<v Speaker 2>artist group into an alt right organization that was operating
<v Speaker 2>in Montreal. And he was weirdly like open to talking
<v Speaker 2>to me, which is unusual for people in the far right.
<v Speaker 2>They tend to be very skeptical of academics, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So I pushed my supervisor and I was like, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, this guy seems like he he might talk
<v Speaker 2>to me. And I'm thinking of just and like doing
<v Speaker 2>a kind of political ethnography of his Nazi group. And
<v Speaker 2>my supervisor said, listen, if you can do it and
<v Speaker 2>you feel safe, like go for it, because it's really
<v Speaker 2>rare to be able to get in depth interviews with
<v Speaker 2>this kind of person, let alone like a kind of
<v Speaker 2>ethnographic thing where you're like hanging out with them.
<v Speaker 1>So I wait, really quick, really quick. The road from
<v Speaker 1>pickup artist to straight up Nazi, like that's it. I
<v Speaker 1>can see that. I guess I can see how that works.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, I wrote a whole
<v Speaker 2>thesis about it, if you want to read about how
<v Speaker 2>that works. But yeah, yeah, so I did you know,
<v Speaker 2>I got a haircut, I got a bunch of clothes
<v Speaker 2>that covered my tattoos, and I hung out with them
<v Speaker 2>for like a year, and so it pretended to be
<v Speaker 2>like much more sympathetic to their cause than I actually was.
<v Speaker 2>And then yeah, I wrote my thesis about that. It
<v Speaker 2>was a fucking trip.
<v Speaker 1>God, I bet I bet man the Uh yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>actually I would love to read that, but I I
<v Speaker 1>the reason I wrote out the reason I wrote to
<v Speaker 1>you and wanted to do this podcast was because we
<v Speaker 1>had done a podcast before about you know how I
<v Speaker 1>guess basically the American left has kind of lost its
<v Speaker 1>mind in some ways, like not all of it, of course,
<v Speaker 1>it's a huge group, but there's elements of it that
<v Speaker 1>went this really weird direction of identitarianism and cancel culture
<v Speaker 1>and was tied to you know, having a profile bio
<v Speaker 1>basically tied to being perpetually online, like social media has
<v Speaker 1>poisoned the minds of social media has poisoned the minds
<v Speaker 1>of both left and right. It's radicalized a lot of
<v Speaker 1>you know, a lot of people's grandparents, obviously, But then
<v Speaker 1>there's this whole other element that came out of it
<v Speaker 1>that I started to see popping up maybe ten or
<v Speaker 1>twelve years ago. That turned into just this really I
<v Speaker 1>think what you've called it before, the mean girl attitude
<v Speaker 1>of leftism. And that's so fucking appropriate because it sounds
<v Speaker 1>like rich kid mean girls. It's like this shaming shit talking, condescending,
<v Speaker 1>just fucking mean. I mean, like, if you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>recruit people for your ideology or your movement, whatever, it's like,
<v Speaker 1>I can't think of a shittier way to do it
<v Speaker 1>than to behave like this, and that I you know
<v Speaker 1>what struck me is that because I'm like, I still
<v Speaker 1>I don't care what the fuck someone believes. If they
<v Speaker 1>want to talk about plants there into conservation, Like that's
<v Speaker 1>what I hold up the most, Like, how do you
<v Speaker 1>feel about the living world around you? Do you respect it?
<v Speaker 1>Do you think humans are at the center of it?
<v Speaker 1>Do you think we need to own and control it?
<v Speaker 1>That's what I care about. But at the end of
<v Speaker 1>the day, I mean, I still if you want to
<v Speaker 1>place me somewhere, obviously, I'm I'm left, like I'm working
<v Speaker 1>class left, I'm more socialist left whatever. But all this
<v Speaker 1>identitarian shit really lost me, and especially the attitudes. But
<v Speaker 1>where I live now. You know, three years ago, I
<v Speaker 1>moved to Texas for family reasons, and I knew going
<v Speaker 1>into it was gonna be fucking weird, and it certainly is. Man,
<v Speaker 1>it's one of the most repressed states that I've ever
<v Speaker 1>been to. And you know, there's just like an element
<v Speaker 1>here like just keep your head down, don't get too
<v Speaker 1>loud and whatever, and there's good to that, and there's
<v Speaker 1>you know, bad people are really polite, but then it's
<v Speaker 1>you know, there's really some really weird value systems here. Anyway.
<v Speaker 1>The point is, you know, I'm always paying attention to
<v Speaker 1>plants and rocks anyway, so what the fuck do I
<v Speaker 1>care about the people? But I made friends with people
<v Speaker 1>here who are, like, who are voting Trump. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I love them, They're good people, and they're voting Trump.
<v Speaker 1>They're just working class people. They're fucking school teachers, whatever.
<v Speaker 1>And I just couldn't get because you know, ever since
<v Speaker 1>I was like ten, I was I mean, I saw
<v Speaker 1>this on the fucking Simpsons, Like the right is inherently
<v Speaker 1>the party of the wealthy and the business class and
<v Speaker 1>the fucking side that's fucking the planet into a coma
<v Speaker 1>and you know, ruining, ruining the middle class and exploiting
<v Speaker 1>poor people and et cetera. And it's always just been oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is the way it is. I grew up thinking that,
<v Speaker 1>and to just see working class people voting right, I
<v Speaker 1>just fucking couldn't wrap my head around that. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>what the fuck is I feel like I'm living in
<v Speaker 1>the matrix, like is everybody to hear duped? And then
<v Speaker 1>I but then when I look at what they think
<v Speaker 1>of the modern American left, I'm like, oh, I kind
<v Speaker 1>of understand that. Like, if not that I agree with them,
<v Speaker 1>but if that's what you think of it, if that's
<v Speaker 1>the image that's portrayed to you, I kind of understand it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah totally.
<v Speaker 1>And it's it's and that second and not saying I
<v Speaker 1>agree with it, but it provides some insights. So I
<v Speaker 1>just wanted to know how the fuck did we get
<v Speaker 1>how do we get here? Man? Like? How did how
<v Speaker 1>is this the situation where I feel like the left
<v Speaker 1>is kind of abandoned the working class. Let the movement
<v Speaker 1>get taken over by college kids from wealthy backgrounds, uh
<v Speaker 1>who just like to shit talk online, and then you know,
<v Speaker 1>kind of handed this. I mean, that's the best thing
<v Speaker 1>you could do for for a populist movement, right, You
<v Speaker 1>just you're just giving them, You're alienating this huge sector
<v Speaker 1>of society and handing it over to this, this right
<v Speaker 1>wing populist movement, which is again that's not even just
<v Speaker 1>an America, that's all over the world. Right. But I
<v Speaker 1>just I don't know, I don't know. I'm curious what
<v Speaker 1>you have to say about it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I got a lot to say there, for sure,
<v Speaker 2>I think. Okay, So at first you have to contestualize
<v Speaker 2>it historically, right, and I think that in the US
<v Speaker 2>in particular, but this is also true like throughout North
<v Speaker 2>America and to a similar but lesser extent in Europe.
<v Speaker 2>You have to think about the decades of anti communist
<v Speaker 2>propaganda that was those leveraged against the population during the
<v Speaker 2>Cold War, and they did a really, really, really good
<v Speaker 2>job of re painting any sort of socialist policy as
<v Speaker 2>not just evil, but insane and completely anathema. To the
<v Speaker 2>the values of hardworking Americans or whatever. Right, So, so
<v Speaker 2>right off the bat, you have this situation where like
<v Speaker 2>a very large proportion of the population thinks that're like
<v Speaker 2>any policy that's set up to like benefit working class
<v Speaker 2>people in a direct way, particularly through you know, economic
<v Speaker 2>reorganization is is just evil and crazy. So it's it's
<v Speaker 2>not even something that people want to consider. And like
<v Speaker 2>any any of the vocabulary that you can use to
<v Speaker 2>talk about these things has been poisoned by by these
<v Speaker 2>decades events out of communism, right, And you know that
<v Speaker 2>doesn't just apply to communism communism like Marcus Leninism or something,
<v Speaker 2>but sort of like anything sort of like exaguarly left
<v Speaker 2>the center just thought of that way by by by
<v Speaker 2>quite a large proportion of the population. And then you
<v Speaker 2>have what I think is one of the most elegant
<v Speaker 2>explanations of all this, which is a phrase formulated by
<v Speaker 2>Mark Fisher, the ate Great in his book Capitalist Realism.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean the phrase itself is capitalist realism, and
<v Speaker 2>Fisher wrote this, it's this slim little book you can
<v Speaker 2>read it in an afternoon, called Capitalist Realism. And and
<v Speaker 2>then he basically discusses how the fall of the Soviet
<v Speaker 2>Union was like a downloambal through the Western left. And
<v Speaker 2>no matter what you want to say about the various
<v Speaker 2>kind of like communists and socialist parties that existed in
<v Speaker 2>the West prior to the fall of the Soot Union,
<v Speaker 2>and you can say a lot about them, you can
<v Speaker 2>criticize them a lot. At least before the fall of
<v Speaker 2>the Sod Union, people understood in a kind of embodied
<v Speaker 2>way that there was an alternative to capitalism. It existed,
<v Speaker 2>and it was out there. You know, there was a
<v Speaker 2>different way that you could organize an economic system. Then
<v Speaker 2>you could criticize the way they were doing it, but
<v Speaker 2>it definitely existed, right And after the fall of the
<v Speaker 2>Seed Union, what you get is this kind of situation
<v Speaker 2>where as Mark Fisher puts it, the end of the
<v Speaker 2>world becomes easier to imagine than the end of capitalism
<v Speaker 2>because there is no alternative. There's nowhere in the world
<v Speaker 2>that has, you know, that is really like working outside
<v Speaker 2>of the capitalist system, except for these like bizarre little
<v Speaker 2>holdouts like North Korea, which nobody wants to fucking live in. Understandable, right, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>of course, because I mean it's a totally degenerated, like
<v Speaker 2>fascist like theocracy at this point. But yeah, and so
<v Speaker 2>you get the situation where like alternatives to capitalism are
<v Speaker 2>like not even not even thinkable for so many people.
<v Speaker 2>And what I did on the left in the West
<v Speaker 2>is that a lot of these parties either collapsed immediately
<v Speaker 2>or they pivoted away from anything that resembled socialism towards
<v Speaker 2>a kind of like vague social democracy, which in and
<v Speaker 2>of itself is not a terrible thing, but with like
<v Speaker 2>a huge, huge focus on identity rather than on economic issues,
<v Speaker 2>and in particular class.
<v Speaker 1>I think really quick too with that, I mean the
<v Speaker 1>fall of Soviet Union. But then in the eighties you
<v Speaker 1>got Reagan and Thatcher that are just pumping this sign
<v Speaker 1>randy and bullshit that if you give the rich more money,
<v Speaker 1>it's going to be for everybody you know, and that
<v Speaker 1>business is the best thing you can do with your life.
<v Speaker 1>Go to school for business. Why the fuck do you
<v Speaker 1>want to learn science? Why do you want to study astronomy?
<v Speaker 1>Why do you study Why do you want to study biology?
<v Speaker 1>Why do you want to study the sex lives of quail?
<v Speaker 1>That's garbage, that's nothing. Why not study business and learn
<v Speaker 1>how to fucking run a plastic manufacturing company or fucking
<v Speaker 1>day trade or whatever. You know, just this fucking just
<v Speaker 1>this holding up business is the ultimate aim. And not
<v Speaker 1>only that, like not only is it capitalism, but like
<v Speaker 1>any form of regulation on the rich or on corporations
<v Speaker 1>is you know, it's crazy, it's sacrilege. You can't like
<v Speaker 1>why you can't do that? All hands off the market,
<v Speaker 1>free markets, free minds, all that bullshit. I mean, it
<v Speaker 1>really set the stage. And so that's when, you know,
<v Speaker 1>defunding libraries, defunding health institutions, defunding the fucking post office,
<v Speaker 1>at least in this country, in the United States. It's
<v Speaker 1>just that's how we ended up where we are today.
<v Speaker 1>In Texas where I live now, such a great example
<v Speaker 1>of it. Everything's privatized, the fucking state electric grids privatiz
<v Speaker 1>There's middlemen involved in everything. Our health insurance is fucked.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you're in Canada, you got somewhat decent health insurance.
<v Speaker 1>Here we've got these sleeves back middlemen who are basically
<v Speaker 1>finding out a way to try and gain it. They're
<v Speaker 1>like the fucking mafia. You pay us, We're going to
<v Speaker 1>make sure we don't have to actually pay out.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, absolutely, And I mean, even in Canada,
<v Speaker 2>like there's privatization of healthcare is proceeding. You know, it's
<v Speaker 2>it's really devastating to watch this, this thing that like
<v Speaker 2>my ancestors like thought for. You know, it's it's like
<v Speaker 2>the birthright of the fucking working class is that we
<v Speaker 2>have health care that we don't have to pay for
<v Speaker 2>at the point of service, and they're doing their best
<v Speaker 2>to slowly privatize it. And it's like it's absolutely horrifying
<v Speaker 2>to watch. But you're you're totally right that neoliberalism is
<v Speaker 2>the other part of this puzzle, right, because in the
<v Speaker 2>eighties and nineties, neoliberalism just swept the entire Western world
<v Speaker 2>and it became even more unthinkable to have policies that
<v Speaker 2>would benefit working across people in any material way. And
<v Speaker 2>this effect is like obviously not only parties on the right,
<v Speaker 2>but also parties on the on the quote unquote left,
<v Speaker 2>like the Democrats right. And you know, in the United States,
<v Speaker 2>you're in this particularly sucked position because you only have
<v Speaker 2>two parties and so right now, like both of the
<v Speaker 2>parties are like firmly neoliberal and their economic outlook right,
<v Speaker 2>like there's there's no discussion of wanting to move away
<v Speaker 2>from your liberalism.
<v Speaker 1>Right, you're gonna get it. You're gonna get someone who
<v Speaker 1>supports the oligarchy either way, you're going to get a
<v Speaker 1>war criminal and a friend of a friend of Wall
<v Speaker 1>Street no matter what.
<v Speaker 2>You know, well, absolutely right, And like you know, these
<v Speaker 2>these Democrats, like every once in a while they're they're
<v Speaker 2>they're like, we're going to have like this historic rays
<v Speaker 2>in like the corporate tax rate or something, and they're
<v Speaker 2>raising it to like much less than what it was
<v Speaker 2>like a couple of decades ago. Right, So it's like
<v Speaker 2>it's it's still within the realm of this like total deregulation,
<v Speaker 2>cutting taxes much possible for the rich and so on,
<v Speaker 2>and so for like regular working class people, like when
<v Speaker 2>they look at these two parties, like there's very clearly
<v Speaker 2>not a party that is actually looking up for them,
<v Speaker 2>like you know, it doesn't it doesn't exist. They don't
<v Speaker 2>have anyone to vote for, and so like in terms
<v Speaker 2>of their class interests really, and it's you know, like
<v Speaker 2>one party is sort of like comically evil and the
<v Speaker 2>other party is like evil and somewhat competent. And you
<v Speaker 2>know it's like you know, which evil parties you want
<v Speaker 2>to vote for both of them are going to fuck
<v Speaker 2>over your economic interest So so what you do, and
<v Speaker 2>especially because you have no expectation that any party is
<v Speaker 2>going to look out for your economic interests, you you
<v Speaker 2>look for the party that is sort of saying things
<v Speaker 2>that sounds vaguely like maybe what you think about stuff
<v Speaker 2>you know, and or even just the kind of like
<v Speaker 2>sound like the sound of in general, it's just like
<v Speaker 2>fucking vibes. And I mean, like you can look at
<v Speaker 2>like Kamala Harris just did this big interview I think
<v Speaker 2>it was yesterday, and you know, she really adaptly managed
<v Speaker 2>to just not talk about any policies, right because like
<v Speaker 2>they don't have any it's like nothing that's going to
<v Speaker 2>like particularly help people. Yeah, and so I think that
<v Speaker 2>that more or less sums up when I think about that.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I guess the last thing I would say
<v Speaker 2>about why they're left in the US lost their working
<v Speaker 2>classes because they saw fucking trying, Like they don't particularly
<v Speaker 2>care about it at all, and they don't like to
<v Speaker 2>think about things in terms of class anyway, Like Americans
<v Speaker 2>in particular are very against thinking about things in terms
<v Speaker 2>of class. And yeah, like the two political parties that
<v Speaker 2>govern your country are not interested in really talking about it.
<v Speaker 2>But what is quite interesting is that the Republicans have
<v Speaker 2>been doing I think a better job of paying lip
<v Speaker 2>service to the working class yea, than the Democrats have.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they've they've noticed that. It's it's it's a
<v Speaker 2>kind of like a useful way to sort of grange
<v Speaker 2>job voters who are relatively politically unsophisticated. And yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>I mean in Canada where I live, we're in this
<v Speaker 2>like insane situation where the Conservative Party is about to
<v Speaker 2>crush the next election, like absolutely crush it. And I
<v Speaker 2>think one of the reasons is that the current leader
<v Speaker 2>of the Conservative Party PR has been saying the words
<v Speaker 2>of working class over and over again, and no one
<v Speaker 2>else is, you know, including our like our party that
<v Speaker 2>pretends to be social Democrats. So yeah, it's it's just
<v Speaker 2>a bizarre situation.
<v Speaker 1>And I think I think too. I mean, well, I
<v Speaker 1>first off, I wrote to you when Biden was still
<v Speaker 1>in the race, and I just I can't even look
<v Speaker 1>at this ship. It's like, oh god, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>whole thing. But when Biden was still in the race especially,
<v Speaker 1>and it felt especially disheartening, and you're watching Trump just
<v Speaker 1>surge and you're like, how the fuck do people think
<v Speaker 1>this guy is actually on their side? It's fucking insane,
<v Speaker 1>and you don't want to just be a dick. You can't.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's it's it's so easy to be like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>everyone's a fucking moron who's been duped and played and
<v Speaker 1>you know he's living in the matrix whatever, Like that's
<v Speaker 1>not one. It's not nice too. It's fucking whatever truth
<v Speaker 1>there may be to it, or elements of truth, it's not.
<v Speaker 1>It's certainly not shit you're gonna say to people, because
<v Speaker 1>that's not gonna win them over. But it's just I
<v Speaker 1>felt so fucking twisted. I'm like Jesus Christ, am I
<v Speaker 1>the only one seeing this? Like it was one of
<v Speaker 1>those like Emperor Wears No Clothes moments, Like you're voting
<v Speaker 1>for this dude in a fucking fifty thousand dollars suit
<v Speaker 1>who's been fucking over poor people his whole life, and
<v Speaker 1>you you think he's gonna be your friend. Like you
<v Speaker 1>work as a contractor, you're eating shit for a railroad
<v Speaker 1>company or for a fucking oil drilling company, whatever, and
<v Speaker 1>you think this dude is gonna support you, Like how
<v Speaker 1>the fuck, like, you know, I don't even know where
<v Speaker 1>to start. And then you know, Harris enters the race
<v Speaker 1>and he loses. He like drops down a little bit,
<v Speaker 1>and he did that whole getting shot thing with the
<v Speaker 1>corny fucking holding his fist up, you know, photo ops,
<v Speaker 1>super fucking corny, and uh like someone emblazon that someone
<v Speaker 1>made a meme. They emblazon that over like this typical
<v Speaker 1>American shopping slum scene of like chick fil a drive
<v Speaker 1>through and all the like, you know, all the like
<v Speaker 1>you know, like this is what you're defending or this
<v Speaker 1>is what you're you know, this is America. But so
<v Speaker 1>he dropped a little bit and then it's kind of like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I feel like that's the job of the like the
<v Speaker 1>Democratic Party is like just to and don't get me wrong,
<v Speaker 1>like I hope Harris fucking wins. I don't want religious theocracy.
<v Speaker 1>I want the poison. I know, you know, I don't
<v Speaker 1>want the fucking I don't know what the fuck Trump's
<v Speaker 1>gonna like they got plans they got they want, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they want to replace fifty thousand you know, civil servants
<v Speaker 1>with people they already know, like with just pure people
<v Speaker 1>who are already in their cult. I mean, it's scary
<v Speaker 1>shit like Trump is. Yeah, there's definitely a difference between
<v Speaker 1>the two, at least in some ways. Like it's it's
<v Speaker 1>not you know, I don't know, it's fucking freaky. But
<v Speaker 1>I feel like that's the job of the Democratic parties
<v Speaker 1>to play cap people and be like, Okay, just sit
<v Speaker 1>here while they're the oligarchs, continue to fuck you and
<v Speaker 1>uh and we'll just you know, we'll put a rainbow
<v Speaker 1>on it, we'll smile and we'll you know, And that's
<v Speaker 1>that's what they do, whereas like the right wing is
<v Speaker 1>like they're salesman, they got this whole pitch. They're completely
<v Speaker 1>full of shit, but they've really got a plan to
<v Speaker 1>like drive home the fucking nails deeper, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>really take it somewhere dark. I just I think that's
<v Speaker 1>the That's just the infuriating thing for me, though, is
<v Speaker 1>seeing working class people voting for this dude, and they're
<v Speaker 1>good people. I'm not going to just write them off
<v Speaker 1>and be like, oh, you're a fucking idiot, you know,
<v Speaker 1>or nothing like that. It's just it's more dystopic than
<v Speaker 1>that's like I like you, but like, yeah, I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>you're just confused, man. And yeah, it's like this really
<v Speaker 1>distoper feeling.
<v Speaker 2>I think, like, you know, machine gun into my head.
<v Speaker 2>Probably out vote for Harris, but I wouldn't want you,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if I could vote in the US, which
<v Speaker 2>you can. Yeah, But I think that one of the
<v Speaker 2>mistakes that the left makes, or like liberals anyway, is
<v Speaker 2>like they really believe that the Democrats are so self
<v Speaker 2>evidently better for working class people than Republicans. But I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if that's the fucking case anymore. Like I
<v Speaker 2>really don't know the companies right now. I mean yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like yes, And so if if you come take a
<v Speaker 2>step back and you accept that both of these parties
<v Speaker 2>are like absolutely fucking trash run by total psychos, then
<v Speaker 2>half the people are going to vote for one. Half
<v Speaker 2>people are going to vote for the other, you know
<v Speaker 2>what I mean? Yeah, Yeah, I just I feel like
<v Speaker 2>they're just both based on vibes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I guess that's what it was like Ragan.
<v Speaker 1>You'd working class people voting for Reagan. But I don't know, man,
<v Speaker 1>I look at the modern left and then I travel
<v Speaker 1>to other countries and look at the left there, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, man, they don't the ship we do here,
<v Speaker 1>the ship the left does in the US they don't
<v Speaker 1>do another other countries is as much like this whole
<v Speaker 1>And that brings me to identitarianism, this focus on like
<v Speaker 1>this two dimensional characteristic, Like what, how would you define identitarianism?
<v Speaker 1>Like for anyone that's confused about what the fuck it is,
<v Speaker 1>it still doesn't know, Like how would you how would
<v Speaker 1>you sum it up?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I like to say identitarianism
<v Speaker 2>instead of identity politics. And the difference is basically that
<v Speaker 2>identitarianism is like a total privileging of identity at the
<v Speaker 2>expense of pretty much any other relevant factor, like a
<v Speaker 2>real obsession with identity as the cause and effect and
<v Speaker 2>you know, the only thing that's important about any given topic,
<v Speaker 2>whereas identity politics, I mean, identity politics is just sort
<v Speaker 2>of like any politics or policy that has identity involved
<v Speaker 2>in it, which there's not a bad thing in and
<v Speaker 2>of itself in any way, right, Like, identity definitely impacts
<v Speaker 2>people's lives and it makes sense to have policy. Is
<v Speaker 2>that addressed that in various ways? But is this like
<v Speaker 2>obsession with identity at the expense of every other, every
<v Speaker 2>other characteristic And it really has taken over in like
<v Speaker 2>a huge way, and it's taken over across the board,
<v Speaker 2>which is interesting too. It's not just on the left,
<v Speaker 2>Like I think that the rise of the Old Right
<v Speaker 2>and the rise of like male identity politics are examples
<v Speaker 2>of this. On the right, right, so you have like
<v Speaker 2>this white nationalism and the MRAs and the pickup artists
<v Speaker 2>and the in cells and all this kind of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Is it's also identitarianism, right. It's people who are like,
<v Speaker 2>the defining factor of my life is that I'm a
<v Speaker 2>man and I can't get late or whatever, and they're
<v Speaker 2>trying to articulate politics out of that identity characteristic that
<v Speaker 2>they have. And on the left, you know, we're more
<v Speaker 2>familiar with that, I think because more people bitch about
<v Speaker 2>identity politics on the left and identitarianism on the left.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, so I mean on the on the left
<v Speaker 2>you have this, like particularly in the United States, is
<v Speaker 2>a very very strong obsession with race at the expense
<v Speaker 2>class and are constant the word I'm looking for, the lighting,
<v Speaker 2>I think is the word I'm looking for. But basically
<v Speaker 2>just where you you take one thing and you make
<v Speaker 2>a stand for the other. So in the US, like
<v Speaker 2>constantly when when they are getting close to talking about
<v Speaker 2>something in a way that would make sense, they switch
<v Speaker 2>from talking about class and talking about race, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and it's always about race and never built class, whereas
<v Speaker 2>I mean, actually, in many, many, many cases, those far
<v Speaker 2>more relevant factors become a class with the person involved.
<v Speaker 2>But Americans seem to be like incapable of understanding that
<v Speaker 2>end and articulating things that way.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's it's it's super fucking divisive. It's super divisive.
<v Speaker 1>It's stupid, and it's going to turn off people that
<v Speaker 1>don't understand what you're talking about, you know, Like it's
<v Speaker 1>I think it's I always tell you. I think it's
<v Speaker 1>started from, you know, a critical lens on history, which
<v Speaker 1>is absolutely that's necessary for living in this world. You
<v Speaker 1>have to understand why things are the way they are,
<v Speaker 1>histories of oppression, histories of repression, histories of resistance, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>But so it started up with that, and then it
<v Speaker 1>just turned into this like two dimensional stand in, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and this fixation on like race, which doesn't exist, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>just from a purely biological standpoint, these alleles that code
<v Speaker 1>for melanin production are the result of a population having
<v Speaker 1>spent you know, the past few thousands of years at
<v Speaker 1>a certain latitude and receiving solar insulation and the vitamin
<v Speaker 1>B deficiency you get if your pale skin the lower latitudes,
<v Speaker 1>and the vitamin D deficiency you get if you're melanin
<v Speaker 1>toned higher melanin tone at higher latitudes, and using that
<v Speaker 1>is a stand in for culture, like tying in quote
<v Speaker 1>unquote race melanin content, that's all it is, and tying
<v Speaker 1>that in with culture and not just understanding oh, like
<v Speaker 1>you know, the dominant class of these anglos for the
<v Speaker 1>last five hundred years at least, has been historically oppressing people,
<v Speaker 1>you know, based on their melanin content, which is fucking
<v Speaker 1>asinine and ridiculous. Like these motherfuckers actually thought they were
<v Speaker 1>better than these people, you know, but not just understanding that,
<v Speaker 1>but but turning that into like something else, like this inherited,
<v Speaker 1>like you know, just fixating on this. It's fucking nuts.
<v Speaker 1>And I think that goes so well with social media too.
<v Speaker 1>And I know we've talked about this before, Like you
<v Speaker 1>need something to put in that profile bio. You grow
<v Speaker 1>up in a depressing consumer society, maybe living in a
<v Speaker 1>cul de sac or you know, you're you're you have Noah,
<v Speaker 1>You're deprived of so much that could build a genuine identity.
<v Speaker 1>You cling to these two dimensional characteristics. Well that's not
<v Speaker 1>who you are. Who would you be if you were stranded,
<v Speaker 1>you know, alone for a week somewhere, you know, or
<v Speaker 1>if you if the world ended like that Twilight Zone episode.
<v Speaker 1>I'm always mentioning like where you know, Like the dude
<v Speaker 1>likes to read and the fucking world ends and he's
<v Speaker 1>stuck in a library, and that's like he knows what
<v Speaker 1>he's going to do. Is got endless food, He's got
<v Speaker 1>like what would you do? What art would you make?
<v Speaker 1>What are your experiences? What's your perspective on the world
<v Speaker 1>when you mentally ingest material? What is your reflection back
<v Speaker 1>on it? That kind of thing, and it just went
<v Speaker 1>this really weird direction. Yeah, man, And I had some
<v Speaker 1>guy I posted I made that giving tree, that tree
<v Speaker 1>giving the finger to the little kid post, you know,
<v Speaker 1>drawing a play on shel Silverstein's Giving Tree. And I
<v Speaker 1>had this kid comment and uh, you know, we probably
<v Speaker 1>would have gotten along in any other context, but he's like,
<v Speaker 1>can you can It's only white people that act like this,
<v Speaker 1>And I was like, are you fucking kidding me. You
<v Speaker 1>ever heard of Genghis Khan? Have you ever heard of
<v Speaker 1>like any of the other like five hundred fucking genocidal
<v Speaker 1>maniacs and dictators in the last fifteen thousand years of
<v Speaker 1>human history, Like history is littered with mass graves, Like
<v Speaker 1>you're not thinking about this broadly enough, Like it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>like what about the white people that existed in Europe,
<v Speaker 1>you know before before this weird the precursors to European colonials,
<v Speaker 1>And what about white pelist there before the that culture
<v Speaker 1>wiped them out, like the indigenous white people of wherever
<v Speaker 1>the fuck? You know, it's weird, man, for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Like the flip side of over white supremacy is is
<v Speaker 2>kind of still white supremacy because it just imagines that
<v Speaker 2>there's something very very special about white people, that they're
<v Speaker 2>just bad instead of good, you know. But like there's
<v Speaker 2>nothing special about any group of people. They're all just
<v Speaker 2>like human beings doing their thing, you know. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I mean in the United States too, there's this particularly
<v Speaker 2>like weird way of thinking about race that where like
<v Speaker 2>in particularly like like Black Americans are spoken about as
<v Speaker 2>though they are a race. But I mean, realistically, this
<v Speaker 2>group is an ethnic group. It's an American ethnic group, right,
<v Speaker 2>and but it gets confused with race all the time too,
<v Speaker 2>which is really interesting. And actually there was something like
<v Speaker 2>super funny that happened a while back where like Donald
<v Speaker 2>Trump excused Kamala Harris as like not really being black,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and everybody super mad about this. But it's
<v Speaker 2>really funny because like Trump, even though he was like
<v Speaker 2>only right by accident, is kind of right because Kaalala
<v Speaker 2>Harris does not come from the ethnic group of Black
<v Speaker 2>Americans like her her father, I believe is is I
<v Speaker 2>guess like quote unquote racially black, but he's an immigrant, right,
<v Speaker 2>And the same thing is true of Obama. And so
<v Speaker 2>like the two sort of like major black political figures
<v Speaker 2>in the US are not Black Americans. They're they're the
<v Speaker 2>descendants of immigrants, and they're sort of like I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I hate using this war, but like they're like racially
<v Speaker 2>black or whatever, like their their ancestors descended from people
<v Speaker 2>from Africa, but they're not members of the ethnic group
<v Speaker 2>that is Black Americans who have their own you know.
<v Speaker 2>Even though it's a very large ethnic group with lots
<v Speaker 2>of like internal differences and so on. It has its
<v Speaker 2>own sort of you know, cultural characteristics and like dialects
<v Speaker 2>and so on. Right, but yeah, Americans are continuously very
<v Speaker 2>confused about.
<v Speaker 1>This, like in indigenous cultures is a monolithic entity, not
<v Speaker 1>realizing there were like thousands of tribes and you know,
<v Speaker 1>I see that all the time, same thing like different cultures,
<v Speaker 1>et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. To get back to identitagonism quick,
<v Speaker 2>I think like one of the things that has happened,
<v Speaker 2>and this ties into capitalist realism too, is that a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people on the lest essentially abandoned any possibility
<v Speaker 2>of getting socialist policies passed in any way. And if
<v Speaker 2>you abandon that, what is the sort of point, like,
<v Speaker 2>what what are you going to do next? Then if
<v Speaker 2>you can't have any policies past they are going to
<v Speaker 2>benefit working across people, what can you focus on? You know?
<v Speaker 2>And so what they did begin to focus on was
<v Speaker 2>identity because that was something that they felt that they
<v Speaker 2>could actually make some sort of impact on. You know. Now,
<v Speaker 2>whether or not they've made any sort of like positive
<v Speaker 2>impact is I guess the mays to be seen. Perhaps
<v Speaker 2>some right, but like for the most part, it's just
<v Speaker 2>turned into this circus where you get to sort of
<v Speaker 2>like look at any issue and then apply identitarianism to it,
<v Speaker 2>and you can get so many juicy arguments out of that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and you can find people to blame, and
<v Speaker 2>you can find people who are the virtuous victims and
<v Speaker 2>so on and so forth. And so people are just
<v Speaker 2>pouring their energy into this and like one of the
<v Speaker 2>one of the quote unquote good things about this for
<v Speaker 2>people who are like involved in that world is that
<v Speaker 2>they feel like they can make an impact for real
<v Speaker 2>because they can, you know, go on the internet, find
<v Speaker 2>somebody who said something bad, and then they can dedicate
<v Speaker 2>you know, weeks to like hounding that person down or whatever,
<v Speaker 2>you know, which is like, you know, they can expend
<v Speaker 2>like energy on it and sort of see a result,
<v Speaker 2>even if the result is insane doesn't actually really help
<v Speaker 2>anything in the long run, it's still a result. Whereas
<v Speaker 2>if you look at, you know, the distribution of income
<v Speaker 2>in the United States, like what are you going to
<v Speaker 2>do about that? Like, right, like, how are you going
<v Speaker 2>to fix that? You can't fix it yourself, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And because of the United States, it's just like and
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's not just the US, but I think
<v Speaker 2>it's like most advanced in the US because there's no
<v Speaker 2>possibility of of sort of yeah, like socialist policies actually
<v Speaker 2>taking any any form because there's no socialist party, there's
<v Speaker 2>no organized socialist movement, at least none were worthy of
<v Speaker 2>the name. That's what people just end up focusing on
<v Speaker 2>the identity stuff, right.
<v Speaker 1>That's got it so weird. I mean, Roger Pete really
<v Speaker 1>was right when he said it's you know what, I
<v Speaker 1>was like, what causes this, like this the left eating itself?
<v Speaker 1>He's like powerlessness and a telephone or a telephone, pocket telephone,
<v Speaker 1>And I was like, yeah, basically, but you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>it really struck me because I was I had this
<v Speaker 1>really dumb perspective on things. I was like, Oh, if
<v Speaker 1>anyone is as long as they agree with me politically,
<v Speaker 1>we're probably going to get along. And then I watched
<v Speaker 1>my neighborhood, you know, which had been a working class neighborhood,
<v Speaker 1>get taken over by everyone who seemed like they were
<v Speaker 1>you know, they grieved me. On paper, they had the
<v Speaker 1>signs in the windows, all the fucking you know, the BLM,
<v Speaker 1>whatever the fuck, all this shit they put in the windows.
<v Speaker 1>But they were some of the most obnoxious and fucking
<v Speaker 1>just shitty people, you know, just like really mean. They
<v Speaker 1>were always on that app next door complaining about shit
<v Speaker 1>or or like you know, happy to lecture someone on
<v Speaker 1>that next door app. You know, even if it was
<v Speaker 1>like a working class, you know, black person from a
<v Speaker 1>neighborhood lecture them about something they did, you know, that
<v Speaker 1>was like morally condescend to people like this just is
<v Speaker 1>morally condescending. Running everything through this filter you know of
<v Speaker 1>like this social justice shit that's social justice and name
<v Speaker 1>only it was. It was so weird. It was such
<v Speaker 1>a headspin. I was like, what the fuck, man, Like
<v Speaker 1>this is really you know, and it didn't. None of
<v Speaker 1>them were working class, Like I'm over there working in
<v Speaker 1>the fucking railroad, you know, working midnights, breathing and break
<v Speaker 1>dust whatever. And then seeing the people who are like
<v Speaker 1>causing the who are moving into these I wouldn't say
<v Speaker 1>causing it, the investors caused it, but moving into these
<v Speaker 1>expensive new apartments in my neighborhood, and they look all great,
<v Speaker 1>they're driving subarus, you know, they're fucking you know, they
<v Speaker 1>get they get like I said, they got the signs
<v Speaker 1>in the windows, which that and that alone got an
<v Speaker 1>obnoxious like you know, majority Anglo people trying to like
<v Speaker 1>virtue signal and perform and prove what an ally there,
<v Speaker 1>Like there's few things that are more nauseating than that,
<v Speaker 1>like the self flagellating. Like oh my god, it was
<v Speaker 1>twenty twenty, so George Floyd uh had just happened, and
<v Speaker 1>this was like this was on blast, like they were
<v Speaker 1>this was people were going hard with this and it
<v Speaker 1>was so just like oh god, fuck.
<v Speaker 2>God dude, yeah, I remember, you know, And it's like
<v Speaker 2>when when twenty was going down, like I was just
<v Speaker 2>like he all you people like just learned about racism
<v Speaker 2>or what just what.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like, I'm like, fuck, I've read fucking people's
<v Speaker 1>history of the United States when I was like fourteen,
<v Speaker 1>Like you just learned that, like world is like the
<v Speaker 1>systems fucked? Like what is why do you why you
<v Speaker 1>have such a need to perform? You know, settle down?
<v Speaker 2>It's okay, yeah yeah, and and I mean again, it
<v Speaker 2>like comes down to like what the fuck are you
<v Speaker 2>going to do about it? You know, and like the
<v Speaker 2>Democrats are not going to do anything about it. They're
<v Speaker 2>fucking not like what like you know, they were in
<v Speaker 2>power for the last four years, What the fuck did
<v Speaker 2>they do? But I think they just like shoveled more
<v Speaker 2>billions of dollars to the cops and like beefed up
<v Speaker 2>border security and like I did like the fucking right
<v Speaker 2>wing party that they are.
<v Speaker 1>The same lobbyists are going to both parties, man, the
<v Speaker 1>same fucking companies are the interact. You're you're working for
<v Speaker 1>the companies, they're working for the people. You're working for
<v Speaker 1>the fucking companies. You know, it's it's an oligarchy. It's
<v Speaker 1>straight up and it's you know, so, so what do
<v Speaker 1>people do? They talk shit online and they just perpetually
<v Speaker 1>condescend to people talk to them like they're a fucking
<v Speaker 1>idiot or like they're morally Like, oh my god, you're
<v Speaker 1>like a literal garbage person. That was the fucking thing
<v Speaker 1>I used to see all the time, Like reading the
<v Speaker 1>comments section on some of these posts is fucking noth
<v Speaker 1>And then you know, again running everything through this constant filter,
<v Speaker 1>Like I saw a post where someone was attacking free
<v Speaker 1>to Callo and saying that she like ripped off Indigenous
<v Speaker 1>people and wasn't real fucking I was like, Jesus Christ,
<v Speaker 1>it gives a fuck, Like it's it's one hundred years
<v Speaker 1>after the fact. Let it go, Like there's don't you
<v Speaker 1>have real shit to focus on?
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, yeah, no totally. And I mean it
<v Speaker 2>doesn't it doesn't accomplish anything material, like it never does.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, Okay, so this is like an interesting thing.
<v Speaker 2>Like I guess there's like a little bit of a pivot.
<v Speaker 2>But I'm thinking again about like how the Republicans in
<v Speaker 2>the US have managed to win over so many people.
<v Speaker 2>And I mean I think that there is this like widespread,
<v Speaker 2>sort of nauseated hatred of the elite, right, Like this
<v Speaker 2>is like a lot of people hate the elite, whatever
<v Speaker 2>they think the elite is. And one of the things
<v Speaker 2>that the Republicans have done really really well is that
<v Speaker 2>even though they are very very obviously the elite, they
<v Speaker 2>just talk about the elite all the time. And the Conservatives,
<v Speaker 2>the Conservatives in Canada are doing the same thing, and
<v Speaker 2>they're just sort of like these fucking crazy bad guys
<v Speaker 2>are trying to fuck you over, and they're they're terrible,
<v Speaker 2>and we're gonna we're gonna tear them down. You know,
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna go in and we're gonna just destroy like
<v Speaker 2>all of their their giant edifice of corruption, and people
<v Speaker 2>are like, yes, sounds fucking good, sign me up, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and like, particularly if you're not sort of sophisticated enough
<v Speaker 2>to realize that these cycles are as you eat. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>but it sounds fucking good, popular, right.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, it's what they fucking do. And they play into
<v Speaker 1>the anger, you know, and I think of like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>that fucking Hillary Clinton quote that she had in twenty sixteen,
<v Speaker 1>I almost want to I like, I simultaneously shap my
<v Speaker 1>pants and threw up in my mouth at the same time.
<v Speaker 1>It was when they go low, we go hi? What
<v Speaker 1>No fucking go low? Kick them in the nuts. These
<v Speaker 1>these are devious, fucking villains, Like what you go go high?
<v Speaker 1>Shut up? Like, how's that gonna work out for you?
<v Speaker 1>It was so I mean again, I can't believe like
<v Speaker 1>they ran her too, Like she was so universally hated.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I've been hanging out with occasionally, and I
<v Speaker 1>would rednecks that had been hating her for the last
<v Speaker 1>twenty years. You know. When I got sent to a
<v Speaker 1>fucking military school in Wisconsin, you know, in lieu of jail,
<v Speaker 1>Like there were kids there who's like, who were wearing
<v Speaker 1>like anti Clinton shit, like they fucking you know, there's
<v Speaker 1>like mid nineties, like their dads were had already indoctrinated,
<v Speaker 1>and then with like anti Hillary Clinton shit, not just
<v Speaker 1>Bill but Hillary too, like they've hated her for so long,
<v Speaker 1>like it was you know. Yeah, the Republicans are amazing
<v Speaker 1>at their businessmen, They're amazing at pr and bullshit, you know, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>For sure, and they realize that everybody hates the fucking people.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it's the established political class that has just
<v Speaker 2>been destroying the country for forever. And yeah, they're obnoxious
<v Speaker 2>and they're condescending and nobody who likes them, so it's
<v Speaker 2>a really easy way to sort of like to get
<v Speaker 2>people on your team.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I mean I don't know. I think that
<v Speaker 2>like what's really really needed desperately is another party somehow,
<v Speaker 2>some way for you guys for sure in the US.
<v Speaker 2>And like I don't have any expertise on like how
<v Speaker 2>this could be done, you know, but I'm like, nothing
<v Speaker 2>at all can happen until this exists. There needs to
<v Speaker 2>be a third party that has a reliable chance of
<v Speaker 2>influencing power, right And basically I'm like all the different
<v Speaker 2>tiny lefty groups and like the Green Party and like
<v Speaker 2>the Parties for Socialist Liberation or whatever it's called, and like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, all these lookers they need to like abandon
<v Speaker 2>whatever the fuck they've been doing and join together and
<v Speaker 2>start building up a platform that is palatable to regular people.
<v Speaker 2>And they also have to be doing the populist thing.
<v Speaker 2>I think that it's like politically advantageous, but they would
<v Speaker 2>have the benefit of not being the establishment psychos the
<v Speaker 2>way that the Republicans are the establishment psychos, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And like you need somebody who's willing to get up
<v Speaker 2>there and be like, all of these fucking people are criminals, traders,
<v Speaker 2>they hate you, they fear you, and we're going to
<v Speaker 2>tear down there. We're going to tear down their their
<v Speaker 2>real edifice of corruption and it includes the Republicans here,
<v Speaker 2>you know. So you need a kind of like lestling
<v Speaker 2>populism that is capable and willing of standing up and
<v Speaker 2>being like these people are fucking disgusting. They're disgusting. I'm
<v Speaker 2>not even going to debate them. They're so disgusting, you
<v Speaker 2>know what I mean, Like just like really like nail
<v Speaker 2>it home, like over and over and over again that
<v Speaker 2>these people are cycles and corrects.
<v Speaker 1>And statistics and shit, you know, and yeah, who's taking
<v Speaker 1>money from what company? Et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, absolutely right. And I think that you need,
<v Speaker 2>like I don't know, I think you need green policies
<v Speaker 2>that I wrote an article about this, but you need
<v Speaker 2>green policies that are like really good for poor people
<v Speaker 2>and just absolutely infuriate rich people, because I think that
<v Speaker 2>a lot of people's problem with green policies on the
<v Speaker 2>right is that they note correctly that these won't impact
<v Speaker 2>rich people. Right, They're like, oh, so you want me
<v Speaker 2>to like have my fucking paper straw, but like Justin
<v Speaker 2>Trudeau is going to fly around the world in this
<v Speaker 2>protect year, like spending millions of dollars and blah blah blah. Right,
<v Speaker 2>and they're like, just fucking bullshit, And they're right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're completely corrected as bullshit. But what you need is,
<v Speaker 2>like I don't know, I think it'd be hilarious to
<v Speaker 2>just have a party that's been like that. It's just
<v Speaker 2>like we're gonna ban privateize just like you know what
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I can't.
<v Speaker 1>Even imagine what like, I can't imagine what a third
<v Speaker 1>party here would look like, Like I don't think any
<v Speaker 1>American can like, how would you you know it's and
<v Speaker 1>then how would how would that be gamed by the
<v Speaker 1>companies to just take away votes from whatever, you know,
<v Speaker 1>person they were worried about would win. I mean, no
<v Speaker 1>one's going to regulate the companies to any significant amount,
<v Speaker 1>you know, either party. I think I will say, on
<v Speaker 1>an unrelated note to this, we can get back to
<v Speaker 1>this if you want that. This is something I've always
<v Speaker 1>liked about what you and Clementine are pushing. And I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if this just comes from you know, working
<v Speaker 1>in recovery or whatever, but is being willing to work
<v Speaker 1>with people, not just write someone off because they vote
<v Speaker 1>Trump or because they vote for you know, whatever the fuck,
<v Speaker 1>and and kind of talk to him and work with them.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that was something I got a friend, Uh,
<v Speaker 1>he just retired from the railroad as an engineer. He
<v Speaker 1>was a you know, a labor organizer. He worked on
<v Speaker 1>the South side of Chicago for a few decades. Lives
<v Speaker 1>in the Vada now, and he used to always tell me,
<v Speaker 1>He's like, yeah, man, I'd go in we'd go into
<v Speaker 1>like these these white working class neighborhoods where they were
<v Speaker 1>extremely racist and he would, and he would just work.
<v Speaker 1>You'd work with him. He'd ignore the shit they said
<v Speaker 1>and talk about you know, working working for this company
<v Speaker 1>that hates you and we gotta we got to protect
<v Speaker 1>our rights against the carrier, et cetera. And then slowly,
<v Speaker 1>you know, he wouldn't write, you wouldn't like morally reprimand
<v Speaker 1>them or anything. He would kind of maybe say something
<v Speaker 1>here and there and just ignore or whatever, and then
<v Speaker 1>slowly start putting in bits of anti racist shit like
<v Speaker 1>working on them, you know. And and he he had success,
<v Speaker 1>you know, that's what. But like these I feel like
<v Speaker 1>people today are just so fucking intolerant of you know,
<v Speaker 1>like you're not gonna get you're not gonna get tainted
<v Speaker 1>by talking to someone who disagrees with you politically, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And and like it's very difficult to make someone
<v Speaker 2>stopping a racist, right, Like it's it's a it's a
<v Speaker 2>fucking complicated process. And even if you succeed in in
<v Speaker 2>changing their views, they're probably going to still hold some
<v Speaker 2>bigative views like somewhere in their mind. Right. But I
<v Speaker 2>know for fucking sure that like lecturing people and then
<v Speaker 2>like sort of like cutting them out completely, Like to
<v Speaker 2>fucking do anything at all, right, And yeah, I mean
<v Speaker 2>it's for sure the twelve step stuff that's like insluenced
<v Speaker 2>me in this also the fact that I worked in
<v Speaker 2>homeless shelters for like five years. And I mean you
<v Speaker 2>would be shocked or maybe not at all at like
<v Speaker 2>how offensive people can be when they're like crazy and
<v Speaker 2>trying to deal with a lot of a lot of
<v Speaker 2>shit and they have like no you know, no political
<v Speaker 2>shiscation whatsoever, because you know, they might not know how
<v Speaker 2>to read or whatever it is. And like you know,
<v Speaker 2>people would say like insanely offensive ship like all the time.
<v Speaker 2>But I mean I'm not gonna like kick them out
<v Speaker 2>of the right, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Actually I need to take you aside and lecture you actually,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And by the way, my venmo, you can
<v Speaker 1>venmo me for the emotional labor that I've spent. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And I mean you need to keep it like
<v Speaker 2>safe for everybody, So you have to talk with people
<v Speaker 2>and just be like, you know, this kind of like
<v Speaker 2>language isn't isn't a lot in the shelter whatever was
<v Speaker 2>to just cool it. But you know, I'm not gonna
<v Speaker 2>be like this guy, yeah, like a homophobe and therefore
<v Speaker 2>he can't come in.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>It's like a lot of people are fucking homophobic and
<v Speaker 2>it sucks, and I think it's fucking stupid. But like
<v Speaker 2>the best way for sure to get people to abandon
<v Speaker 2>their most like intense bigoted views is to get them
<v Speaker 2>in in spaces and organizations where they're hanging out with
<v Speaker 2>people about who may have those bigoted views. Right. Like,
<v Speaker 2>one of the best things for anti racism, I believe
<v Speaker 2>is getting people in unions, getting people in unions with
<v Speaker 2>people of other races, and you know, they have like
<v Speaker 2>a clear common material goal absolutely that they're working towards together.
<v Speaker 2>And it really sort of like hammers home the fact
<v Speaker 2>that like people, people can have the same sort of
<v Speaker 2>interest even if they're of different quote unquote races, right,
<v Speaker 2>And that and that their interests are opposed to other
<v Speaker 2>people of their same race who are in a different class.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, definitely. I mean, and you look at where I mean,
<v Speaker 1>where's racism come from. It comes from lack of experience,
<v Speaker 1>probably lack of travel, lack of interaction with other people,
<v Speaker 1>a relatively small world, a small worldview, and and lack
<v Speaker 1>of education. Absolutely lack of education, you know, and so Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's it's fucking awful. But if you really want
<v Speaker 1>to fight it, you don't do you don't just do
<v Speaker 1>it by by refusing to work with people. Get in there.
<v Speaker 1>You fucking view it as infiltrating. You know, you really
<v Speaker 1>want to change shit, Get in there and infiltrate, you know,
<v Speaker 1>hold your nose for some of the dumb shit, then
<v Speaker 1>start slipping in bits. I mean, that's how you that's
<v Speaker 1>how you change people's mind. That's how you wake people
<v Speaker 1>up out of whatever weird worldview they have.
<v Speaker 2>For sure, And and and in particular because like most
<v Speaker 2>people who hold racist views aren't like what you might
<v Speaker 2>call politically racists. Like they're not they're not like invested
<v Speaker 2>in this stuff in like a really intense way, the
<v Speaker 2>way that like a neonatsy is right, They just kind
<v Speaker 2>of believe some stupid shit and they haven't thought about
<v Speaker 2>it that much.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's a lazy minded view. It's a lazy minded worldview.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah exactly. And and you know, whereas neo Nazis
<v Speaker 2>are searching out these people and attempting to convert them,
<v Speaker 2>we're you know, we just like shut them out. Percent
<v Speaker 2>they don't exist percentage they're neo Nazis, which they're not
<v Speaker 2>at whatever, and it just leave them ripe to be
<v Speaker 2>harvested by like the real the real psychos.
<v Speaker 1>You know. Yeah, where do you I mean in terms
<v Speaker 1>of populism, because you see this stuff popping up all
<v Speaker 1>over this kind of reactionary, angry, blunt headed, not very intelligent,
<v Speaker 1>just just mad shit popping up everywhere. I mean you
<v Speaker 1>see it popping up and obviously in Brazil, places in Europe.
<v Speaker 1>Where does man, where does this come? Like the stuff
<v Speaker 1>in the UK, Like it was like, you know, some
<v Speaker 1>immigrant from Africa or the child he was actually born
<v Speaker 1>in the UK and quite clearly just had mental issues,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and and wasn't even Muslim. They started attacking Muslims,
<v Speaker 1>like the working these working class whites in the UK
<v Speaker 1>started attacking Muslims and burn like what the fuck? Like,
<v Speaker 1>where where does that come from? Why are they so mad?
<v Speaker 1>Like why are they so willing to just well, we
<v Speaker 1>know why they're mad. Why are they so willing to
<v Speaker 1>just escapegoat it and blame it? It seems like the oldest
<v Speaker 1>trick in the book that you know, the powers that
<v Speaker 1>be have played, you know, to keep them away from
<v Speaker 1>you you make them fight among each other.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, yeah, absolutely. Where it comes from is kind
<v Speaker 2>of a complicated question, but I mean my go to
<v Speaker 2>you answer is just that people are in enraged at
<v Speaker 2>their in miseration, like they've been made steadily poorer and
<v Speaker 2>poorer in comparison to the wealthiest people in the society.
<v Speaker 2>And they also recognize that the entire game is rigged
<v Speaker 2>against them because it is and you know, the the
<v Speaker 2>the explanations of this that they're that they're fed don't
<v Speaker 2>making sense to them. Like, you know, if you're some
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, racist like white teenager somewhere in like
<v Speaker 2>northern England, and everything sucks, and it's very clear that
<v Speaker 2>like nothing is set up for you in any material
<v Speaker 2>way because you're sucking poor, and people are going around
<v Speaker 2>being like, oh, well, you know, all of the problems
<v Speaker 2>in society are the results of like white privilege. Right,
<v Speaker 2>You're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like
<v Speaker 2>I don't have any yeah, and nobody I know has anything,
<v Speaker 2>so like, clearly this narrative is fucking wrong, right, And
<v Speaker 2>it's like, which which narrative are you? It sounds more
<v Speaker 2>palatable to you? Is it that you and your like
<v Speaker 2>group of like broke fucking guys you hang out with,
<v Speaker 2>or the closet of anything wrong in the world, or
<v Speaker 2>that you are the heir of a race of mighty
<v Speaker 2>conquerors who you know took over the entire planet in
<v Speaker 2>a hundred years. And you know what I mean, It's
<v Speaker 2>like which sounds better until like a seventeen year old
<v Speaker 2>like fucking broke kid much better.
<v Speaker 1>It's just it's so like anti intellect and anti you know,
<v Speaker 1>critically thinking about anything around you. It's but yeah, no,
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's it works. It's just again, it's just
<v Speaker 1>one of those things where it's like the lowest comment denominator,
<v Speaker 1>bottom of the brain stem, no offense to anybody, but
<v Speaker 1>you know, the easiest way out, the sloppiest, laziest minded
<v Speaker 1>way to think about any of this stuff. And you
<v Speaker 1>see the left doing it too, with versions of their
<v Speaker 1>identitarianism shit like this guy that was like it's only
<v Speaker 1>white people that do this. It's like what really, Like,
<v Speaker 1>do you think the fucking alleles that code for melanin
<v Speaker 1>production or lack thereof also code somehow for brutality or something?
<v Speaker 1>You don't think like like what do you where are
<v Speaker 1>you going with this? You know, it's the same the
<v Speaker 1>same shit, and it just ends up playing people. It's
<v Speaker 1>just sports teams. You know. It's like it's fucking it's
<v Speaker 1>so depressed.
<v Speaker 2>And like the the main reason and why this is
<v Speaker 2>happening both on the left and the right in particular
<v Speaker 2>that it's huge exis on race as the explanatory sactors
<v Speaker 2>for sucking everything is that crisis disappears from the fucking equation.
<v Speaker 2>And so like right wing popularism, like let's think about it, right,
<v Speaker 2>what is right wing populism. It's a bunch of like
<v Speaker 2>rich people in elite who are not saying that there
<v Speaker 2>shouldn't be an elite. They're saying that they're wrong people
<v Speaker 2>in elite. They're saying that there's a faction of the
<v Speaker 2>elite that is, you know, it's the enemy within. Right,
<v Speaker 2>there's a cabal so with like QAnon stuffs, like obviously
<v Speaker 2>they're like satanic pedophiles, with like classic anti semitism. It's
<v Speaker 2>that there's a cabal with Jews whatever. And like there's
<v Speaker 2>also you know, there's like the World Economic Forum and
<v Speaker 2>they're like the multi culturalist like you know, communist bankers
<v Speaker 2>are trying to make it so that you own nothing
<v Speaker 2>and be happy or whatever. Right, But it's all the
<v Speaker 2>version of the same thing where they're like, it's not
<v Speaker 2>that there shouldn't be any elite, is that it's the
<v Speaker 2>wrong people. Right. So that's what right wing populism is.
<v Speaker 2>It's one faction of the elite targeting another faction of
<v Speaker 2>the elite and using populist rhetoric in order to do that. Right,
<v Speaker 2>Because the elite has factions, they're not a united modelist.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they're united by class interests, but they have
<v Speaker 2>other other interests as well, like political interests, right. And
<v Speaker 2>so Donald Trump is like, really adapt at this, and
<v Speaker 2>it's also you know, it's been popping off all around
<v Speaker 2>the world. But there is a version of populism that
<v Speaker 2>you can imagine that is, you know, less this and
<v Speaker 2>what that would look like is saying that there should
<v Speaker 2>be no elite. You know, there's no purpose for a
<v Speaker 2>class of parasite to own the entire economy and make
<v Speaker 2>all of the political decisions. We don't need that, right,
<v Speaker 2>we don't need any of these people. And that is
<v Speaker 2>something that I think would be palatable to a lot
<v Speaker 2>of people if it was ever fucking set. But it
<v Speaker 2>isn't right, because the left, largely the ones that you
<v Speaker 2>hear anyway, the lot of voices on the sort of
<v Speaker 2>like so called progressive left are much more content to
<v Speaker 2>say that like their version of like the elite that
<v Speaker 2>has to be a RAS or whatever is just like
<v Speaker 2>white people or like men or whatever, rather than the
<v Speaker 2>easily identifiable group of people who have clear interests, material
<v Speaker 2>interests in maintaining their own power and a method of
<v Speaker 2>doing so, which is that they're they old the means
<v Speaker 2>of production right, and so like. Socialism has a bill
<v Speaker 2>in response to all of this shit, but it's just
<v Speaker 2>been more or less completely abandoned and or replaced with
<v Speaker 2>race as the exponentory aside the.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think you know well, America first off, is
<v Speaker 1>still living in this Reaganesque dream that it's morning in
<v Speaker 1>America and everybody can have their own private fucking golf
<v Speaker 1>course behind their house. And isn't it the dream to
<v Speaker 1>be rich? I mean, the value system here is fucked.
<v Speaker 1>It is the dominant value system. It's utterly fucked. It's corrupt,
<v Speaker 1>it's you know, it's based on wanting these shiny shit,
<v Speaker 1>this shiny shit that leaves you feeling fucking empty. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you can be, you can live, you can accumulate all
<v Speaker 1>this wealth, turn eighty years old being your deathbed, and
<v Speaker 1>then realize you've got no self insight. You never got
<v Speaker 1>to know yourself, You never learned art, you never fucking
<v Speaker 1>you know, had a wealth of experiences. All your half
<v Speaker 1>your friends were phony and only wanted to be around
<v Speaker 1>you because you're wealthy. You know this. It's this value
<v Speaker 1>system that holds wealth. This mindless, primary, evolutionarily obsolete, hearting
<v Speaker 1>complex that we have as the monkeys that we are,
<v Speaker 1>that holds that up is the prime' that's the prime thing. Again.
<v Speaker 1>It's just like this whole value systems fucked, and that's
<v Speaker 1>what kind of enables this. It's like, there should not
<v Speaker 1>be an elite. You say that to people here and
<v Speaker 1>they're like, oh, well, you don't want people to live
<v Speaker 1>comfortably and be rich, No, motherfuckers, I don't want people
<v Speaker 1>to own yachts. Like I want you to be comfortable
<v Speaker 1>and and have healthcare and you know, live in a
<v Speaker 1>decent sized house and have everything you need. But I
<v Speaker 1>don't think people need to own yachts or you know,
<v Speaker 1>or fucking five hundred thousand acres of property or have
<v Speaker 1>fucking servants. I think that's deranged. That's mental illness. If
<v Speaker 1>you want that and you want more, you're mentally ill.
<v Speaker 1>That's a mental illness. That's like obsolete primate neurology fucking
<v Speaker 1>with you. But America is just not ready for that,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean I wonder no one ever fucking says
<v Speaker 2>it to them though. Yeah, yeah, because it's disgusting to
<v Speaker 2>be rich. It's shameful to be rich.
<v Speaker 1>It is to have that much, Yeah, to have what
<v Speaker 1>are you doing, like if you have if you have
<v Speaker 1>that much money, if a responsibility you know, to to
<v Speaker 1>to build schools, to fucking bring people up, that's your responsibility.
<v Speaker 1>If you have that much money, that's an incredible responsibility.
<v Speaker 1>You need to fucking be you know, investing in schools,
<v Speaker 1>bringing What are you doing for your community? Motherfucker? What
<v Speaker 1>you give a couple of months a couple of you know,
<v Speaker 1>million dollars to philanthropic causes, Like that's nothing, do it yourself,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it's it's no one there shouldn't be a.
<v Speaker 2>Leg It's also just a sign that like the you know,
<v Speaker 2>the economic system is fucking.
<v Speaker 1>Broken, right exactly exactly, it's possible.
<v Speaker 2>It shouldn't be possible to accumulate that much wealth, and
<v Speaker 2>in the meantime, we should absolutely be like advocating for
<v Speaker 2>prosperity for everyone.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>And this is like another like annoying thing about certain
<v Speaker 2>segment of the latch where they kind of spetishize poverty
<v Speaker 2>a little bit and and or they like hate America
<v Speaker 2>a lot, right, like a lot of like malice like
<v Speaker 2>this where they're sort of like when you actually did
<v Speaker 2>down to shit, they're sort of like, we actually hate
<v Speaker 2>working class Americans because we hate.
<v Speaker 1>America or whatever, very very charming.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, exactly, And it's like okay, cool, well, good
<v Speaker 2>luck trying to win anyone over with like the idea
<v Speaker 2>that everyone should be poorer. Like I don't think that
<v Speaker 2>everyone should be poorer, I think everyone should be more prosperous,
<v Speaker 2>but like, yeah, it should be absolutely impossible to accumulate,
<v Speaker 2>you know, ten thousand times more money than the person
<v Speaker 2>who works for you.
<v Speaker 1>Right, It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I don't.
<v Speaker 1>That's what it is. It's the America still conflates prosperity
<v Speaker 1>with being rich, like not just comfortable or upper middle class,
<v Speaker 1>but with being rich having way more than you need,
<v Speaker 1>having servants, having yachts, having all this fancy shit. That's
<v Speaker 1>Nut's like again, you can live your entire life like
<v Speaker 1>that and feel fucking empty. It's you know, I feel
<v Speaker 1>prosperous right now because of the people in my life,
<v Speaker 1>the experiences I have, the art I make. I'm still
<v Speaker 1>learning this, you know. I'm fucking forty one. I'm still
<v Speaker 1>learning a shit ton about the world around me. I'm
<v Speaker 1>just generally stoked on life. I'm not loaded. You know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm able to make a living doing what I love,
<v Speaker 1>and that's good enough for me. I don't need any more.
<v Speaker 1>I'm fucking fine, man. I don't want any more. I
<v Speaker 1>don't want the responsibility, you know, to have more and
<v Speaker 1>keep wanting it. That is, it's a fucking mental illness.
<v Speaker 1>But I think again, that's an American thing. That's like
<v Speaker 1>the corrupted value system we have. That's the result of indoctrination.
<v Speaker 1>You know. I put this post up today talking about
<v Speaker 1>how how can one person own five hundred thousand acres?
<v Speaker 1>How can one person own a fucking mountain? And a
<v Speaker 1>couple people and you go to the profile, it's always
<v Speaker 1>the fucking same. Assuming it's not about it's like some
<v Speaker 1>dude posing with this car right you go, and the
<v Speaker 1>people comment thing are like, oh I want I want that,
<v Speaker 1>that's baller status. It's like, God, what a fucking knob.
<v Speaker 1>I don't say this, but I'm just thinking, like what
<v Speaker 1>a dummy, what a fucking empty headed? Really that's what
<v Speaker 1>you want? You want to fucking own? Like that's such
<v Speaker 1>a like bottom of the brainstem fucking value system, Like
<v Speaker 1>I want to travel, man, I want to go have
<v Speaker 1>some crazy experiences. I want to almost die. I want
<v Speaker 1>to almost get rid of I want to have like
<v Speaker 1>crazy shit, not hurt anybody, but learn a ton, make
<v Speaker 1>people happy, inspire people around me, make uard all this
<v Speaker 1>shit Like I could write down a fucking list, you know,
<v Speaker 1>And and all you want is to own some shiny shit,
<v Speaker 1>a new fucking car that makes a roombrom sound when
<v Speaker 1>you step on it, and like and a bunch of
<v Speaker 1>shit that you're not gonna be able to use, you
<v Speaker 1>can't take with you when you die, Like oh man,
<v Speaker 1>it drives me nuts. It's just like, come on, man,
<v Speaker 1>there's more than this, Like aim higher, motherfucker, what are
<v Speaker 1>you doing? You know?
<v Speaker 2>It's yeah, for sure, it's the the ideological apparatus that
<v Speaker 2>has been set up in the West to broadcast the
<v Speaker 2>interest of the ultra rich at the population and convince
<v Speaker 2>them that those are their interests is off the chain, man.
<v Speaker 2>Like they've done an extraordinarily good job of that, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And so it's part of the work of socialists to
<v Speaker 2>try to counteract that. Not easy, definitely not easy. But
<v Speaker 2>we've been failing, really fucked hard. And you know, the
<v Speaker 2>fallow of unionism is a big part of this too.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they fucking destroyed all the unions in the
<v Speaker 2>eighties and nineties, and now no one's in the union, right.
<v Speaker 2>Unions were one of the best ways to make people
<v Speaker 2>understand that their cross position had something to do with
<v Speaker 2>their fucking status in life, right, and that they had
<v Speaker 2>interests in calling with other people of their class. And like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the unions are really suffering right now.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>Well, there is like some movement in that area, which
<v Speaker 2>is kind of cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it's it's not I mean, I worked for
<v Speaker 1>you know, the railroad for fifteen years, and when I
<v Speaker 1>first hired out, the first five years, there were still
<v Speaker 1>a lot of old guys left hired out in the seventies,
<v Speaker 1>which was like the heyday of the American working class.
<v Speaker 1>Like there was like you could you could not have
<v Speaker 1>a college degree and get a decent job then own
<v Speaker 1>a house and things were somewhat affordable. There was some
<v Speaker 1>fucking hiccups along the way, of course, in a decade,
<v Speaker 1>but you know, it was still like there was a
<v Speaker 1>viable working class. I mean you could live comfortably without
<v Speaker 1>being ultra wealthy and also not have to worry about stuff,
<v Speaker 1>and your kids would be okay, et cetera. And these
<v Speaker 1>guys would tell me about it, and they'd tell me
<v Speaker 1>about like the company was different than to the railroad company,
<v Speaker 1>like the it just wasn't the The company was kind
<v Speaker 1>of like intimidated to a degree by the employees, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like they was before all the strike breaking. I mean
<v Speaker 1>it was like and so they would behave, they would
<v Speaker 1>be the company would behave much more respectfully than they
<v Speaker 1>do now. And they knew, like, oh, we already know
<v Speaker 1>you can't strike, you can't do anything. We fucking own
<v Speaker 1>you go. You know, you can go take a hike
<v Speaker 1>and find another job if you don't like it. It's
<v Speaker 1>it's nice to see what's been lost and people have
<v Speaker 1>no idea. I mean some people do, but a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people don't. And you know, again, mice voting for cats.
<v Speaker 1>It's fucking crazy, man.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>So.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, my grandmother was a was a railroad union organizer.
<v Speaker 1>Oh no, shit, did you tell that before? You had
<v Speaker 1>to have I think maybe not. Wow, that's pretty cool.
<v Speaker 1>Where in Montreal.
<v Speaker 2>No, my mom grew up in like a railroad company
<v Speaker 2>town in northern Ontario, and everybody there works for the
<v Speaker 2>mind of the railroad. And yeah, her mom was a
<v Speaker 2>union organizer.
<v Speaker 1>Damn, man, that's cool. Yeah, it's it's a I mean,
<v Speaker 1>they're working for the railroad now is kind of a joke.
<v Speaker 1>A bunch of people have quit. They're trying to consistently
<v Speaker 1>trying to raise health insurance costs so the company pays less.
<v Speaker 1>They wanted to get rid of it entirely. It just
<v Speaker 1>be like, you guys, go find your own health insurance
<v Speaker 1>plan and we'll help you, will help you, but you
<v Speaker 1>guys are on your own. We're not paying into it anymore.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, yeah, because it used to be this thing
<v Speaker 1>they would just deduct it from your paycheck and the
<v Speaker 1>company would pay half no more, like they just it
<v Speaker 1>the balls they have. They just keep trying to take more.
<v Speaker 1>It's insane, man, like, just more and more more little
<v Speaker 1>bites and people or for it, Like you get these
<v Speaker 1>dudes who are just like, well, I don't mind, I
<v Speaker 1>never use it anyway. It's like you're fucking twenty seven.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe you might need use it in fifteen years, Like
<v Speaker 1>this job works on you. I mean, you're gonna get
<v Speaker 1>diabetes from not moving in fifteen years and sitting in
<v Speaker 1>a locomotive cabal day. What the fuck do you ever
<v Speaker 1>think about that? I mean, yeah, I don't know. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know anyway. It's alarming to me. And that's why
<v Speaker 1>I appreciate you making the time to talk to me
<v Speaker 1>about it, because you're always more lucid and more clear
<v Speaker 1>and more articulate than I could ever be about this
<v Speaker 1>kind of stuff.
<v Speaker 2>So I don't know, I appreciate that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what do you think? What do you think the
<v Speaker 1>future is here? Like do you think I mean, in
<v Speaker 1>terms of any of this, at least in America. I
<v Speaker 1>know you're viewing it as an outsider, but maybe that
<v Speaker 1>gives you a better lens, Like where do you think
<v Speaker 1>stuff's gonna go, Like, what do you have hope or
<v Speaker 1>what do you think?
<v Speaker 2>I'm certainly not hopeless. I mean sometimes you look at
<v Speaker 2>it and it's pretty pretty doom and gloom. One thing
<v Speaker 2>that I try to remind myself of is that, like
<v Speaker 2>when things seem like really really stuck, it's often because
<v Speaker 2>there's enormous underlying tension. It's kind of like continental plates
<v Speaker 2>like rubbing against each other, you know, and like we're
<v Speaker 2>not moving, but the reason they're not moving is because
<v Speaker 2>there's all this pressure on them. And then without pressure
<v Speaker 2>gives you get an enormous earthquake or whatever. And we
<v Speaker 2>really get it that way, Like, there is the possibility
<v Speaker 2>for some very great changes to happen in the near future,
<v Speaker 2>near to medium term future. What those are, I think
<v Speaker 2>depends on a great degree on whether or not the
<v Speaker 2>American Last is able to get a shit together, because
<v Speaker 2>if it's not, the change is likely to just be
<v Speaker 2>like a pivot to like full fascism.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah, that's what I worry about. The oligarchs
<v Speaker 1>are not going to give things up easily. They're not
<v Speaker 1>gonna You're never gonna have healthcare without a fight. You're
<v Speaker 1>never gonna you know, it's not. And you've got so
<v Speaker 1>many people that have been duped and brainwashed in the
<v Speaker 1>working class to vote for like the worst of the
<v Speaker 1>too bad options. It's it's I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Man, I wouldn't even say. I don't even like, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know. It's it's interesting because like the Trump camp
<v Speaker 2>is clearly the more it's clearly the one that is
<v Speaker 2>more happy to use kind of like Sashist like rhetoric
<v Speaker 2>and imagery. But interestingly, the Democrats and the sort of
<v Speaker 2>like mainstream political establishment in the US. I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the main the mainstream political establishment in the US are
<v Speaker 2>the ones who you know, assassinated Martin Luther King and
<v Speaker 2>you know, like every single civil rights leader, and they're
<v Speaker 2>they're the ones who are really really intent on holding
<v Speaker 2>on to power by all means necessary. And there's a possibility,
<v Speaker 2>I think that if the Trump camp is too heavy
<v Speaker 2>hand ended with its like attempt to radically reorganize what
<v Speaker 2>the state looks like in the US, there's a possibility
<v Speaker 2>that like the faction of the elite that as opposed
<v Speaker 2>to that could act also in a fascist way, right,
<v Speaker 2>where they like consolidate power and attempt to sort of
<v Speaker 2>like clamp down on on challenges to their own power
<v Speaker 2>right and declare like a state of emergency whatever, like
<v Speaker 2>literally like either side is totally capable of it, which
<v Speaker 2>is another thing that I think a lot of progresses
<v Speaker 2>in the US or just like totally like they don't
<v Speaker 2>want to look at you know, but it's not like
<v Speaker 2>the fucking mainstream political establishment in the US is above
<v Speaker 2>you know, climping down on opposition, right, like even if
<v Speaker 2>the opposition is coming from the right, because like again
<v Speaker 2>you have to remember that like having a fucking like
<v Speaker 2>blood soaked like white nationalist revolution or something is like
<v Speaker 2>not in the interest of like the guys who runt PepsiCo, right,
<v Speaker 2>Like they don't like, they don't.
<v Speaker 1>Want that right right, Right. There's plenty of business interests
<v Speaker 1>that probably don't want Trump too because they realize he's
<v Speaker 1>a crazy motherfucker and he's too volatile and has no
<v Speaker 1>idea what he's doing economically, and he could really fuck
<v Speaker 1>things up for them, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, because he basically makes decisions based on like
<v Speaker 2>vibes and like what he sees on Fox News or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean either way, man, it's I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, it's yeah, it's I'm not trying to be
<v Speaker 1>a doom sayer, but I just that's why I look
<v Speaker 1>at plants. I try not to spend too much time
<v Speaker 1>focusing on it. Again, I just I read the comments
<v Speaker 1>from what seemed to be working class people saying all
<v Speaker 1>this this right wing propaganda, you know, and I'm just like,
<v Speaker 1>I'm just fucking thrown off. Man, I'm so confused, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, how do we get here?
<v Speaker 1>You know? But anyway, I.
<v Speaker 2>Mean again, like my advice to Americans is, like, every
<v Speaker 2>single one of you who care about the shit, you
<v Speaker 2>have to join you're nearest like left the organization and
<v Speaker 2>whatever the fuck it is, and no matter how stupid
<v Speaker 2>it is, and then advocate instantly and consistently for it
<v Speaker 2>to join up with other less learned organizations until you
<v Speaker 2>have something that looks like a coalition party, and then
<v Speaker 2>you need to purge like all the most insane rhetoric.
<v Speaker 2>Stop saying it, Try as much as possible to not
<v Speaker 2>sound insane, like stop race dating. Try as much as
<v Speaker 2>possible to focus on class at all times, because it
<v Speaker 2>is something that even though Americans hate talking about it,
<v Speaker 2>they do understand to a certain degree that they're getting
<v Speaker 2>fucked by the elite right, and you got to find
<v Speaker 2>the right way to talk about it, the right way
<v Speaker 2>to reach them. And you got to say, both the
<v Speaker 2>Democrats and the Republicans are fucking evil and they don't
<v Speaker 2>care about you, and like, here are a number of
<v Speaker 2>proposals that we have there are going to make your
<v Speaker 2>life much much better, you know. And this is like
<v Speaker 2>a medium to long term goal. It would take probably
<v Speaker 2>thirty years to build up like a party that was
<v Speaker 2>capable of really contesting elections. But it is not an
<v Speaker 2>impossible thing. The United States has not always been a
<v Speaker 2>two party system, and people forget that. It's like I've
<v Speaker 2>talked about this on the internet and people are just like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 2>you don't understand America. And I'm like, no, I understand
<v Speaker 2>that it's very entrenched. You have a two party system,
<v Speaker 2>but there's nothing like it's not like in a fucking
<v Speaker 2>constitution or something, you know. And like in the past,
<v Speaker 2>there have been like insurgent parties that have popped up
<v Speaker 2>and fucking you know, influenced power. Right, So it's not
<v Speaker 2>an impossible thing. And and I think that like people
<v Speaker 2>really have to break with the Democrats the Democrats are
<v Speaker 2>not going to say there they never work.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it seems it all seems so hard to break
<v Speaker 1>with that and form a third party. But I mean, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there there's a huge contingent of the modern American left
<v Speaker 1>that's just insane or at least behaving extremely irrationally, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and thinks that, you know, the strategies that they're keeping
<v Speaker 1>keeping up with is actually going to change things. And
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't. Like all you build, all you end up
<v Speaker 1>building is a political culture built on shame and fear
<v Speaker 1>of social ostracization. And you know, it's just it sucks.
<v Speaker 1>It sucks for everybody, and those people aren't even really
<v Speaker 1>they may really have your back. Everyone's just afraid of
<v Speaker 1>getting canceled or shit talked or were not agreeing with
<v Speaker 1>the the towing the line one hundred and everything. It's
<v Speaker 1>nuts again. Just yeah, focus focus on class man, and
<v Speaker 1>the rest will fall into place. I feel like that's
<v Speaker 1>just the number one thing. And yeah, and of course
<v Speaker 1>have a good a good lens on ecology and the
<v Speaker 1>living biosphere around you, which I feel like any anybody,
<v Speaker 1>everybody should have. So anyway, man, well thanks thanks a
<v Speaker 1>lot for doing this.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, absolutely, man, I always amazingly to talk to you,
<v Speaker 2>and I hope the rest of your day it was
<v Speaker 2>really good, okay, all
<v Speaker 1>Right man, Thanks a lot, take care bye,