Anarchonomicon - Ep 8 ＂The Twentieth Century＂ w⧸ Sultan

00:00:00.000 Canadians, do more than is your duty.

00:00:04.920 Expect less than is your right.

00:00:07.500 Daniel Byrne stars as William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's greatest politician.

00:00:12.920 By New Winter's Day, I will be Prime Minister of Canada.

00:00:16.480 May the best man win.

00:00:17.860 It's the flaming saga of a hesitating young man's rendezvous with destiny

00:00:22.260 and the woman whose love would sweep him to immortal heights.

00:00:26.140 Come, give your mother a kiss.

00:00:27.780 And a world torn between tenderness and fury.

00:00:30.840 A world for which there is no escape from the 20th century.

00:00:37.360 I happen to believe that politics is about building a better world.

00:00:41.320 A better world?

00:00:43.760 There is no better world, Mr. King.

00:00:48.440 Every minute of my life has been wasted.

00:00:52.580 Like everything I've ever believed has been a monstrous lie.

00:00:56.100 You are a puppet.

00:00:57.320 in a terrible game to destroy the future.

00:00:59.940 I would have no choice but to formally charge you

00:01:02.140 with crimes against national dignity.

00:01:05.000 Please, Your Excellency, I beg you.

00:01:07.420 I like it when you beg.

00:01:09.520 Mother, give me strength.

00:01:12.460 Make me equal to this moment.

00:01:14.060 Canadians,

00:01:16.360 long have you smoldered in disappointment.

00:01:21.600 The time has come

00:01:23.080 to unleash your fury.

00:01:27.320 Forgive me.

00:01:38.440 Hello, hello, hello, glorious listeners.

00:01:40.940 Welcome to another exciting episode of the Anarchonomic I'm Tellingcast.

00:01:44.600 I am your host, Catgirl Kulak, and I am joined today by the Sultan of Swing.

00:01:50.760 Say hello, Sultan.

00:01:52.180 Hello.

00:01:52.780 So, Salton, I can't recall if you introduced it to me, or if I introduced it to you.

00:02:04.100 This was something that you introduced to me.

00:02:08.000 As I recall, yes, it was a showing that you were doing on a Discord that we happen to have in common.

00:02:15.380 A showing that you were sort of nominally doing to the group, but I think I was the only one who turned up

00:02:21.060 because of the uniquely canadian subject matter and just for some first just for some personal

00:02:28.260 background i am a united states citizen who has been living for the past almost five years in

00:02:36.940 canada still feel a little bit like a stranger in a strange land uh but a strange land in a part

00:02:46.620 of a country that exactly

00:02:48.540 butts the U.S. and was settled

00:02:50.400 by Americans.

00:02:53.540 You're a Texan

00:02:54.620 in Alberta, come on.

00:02:56.900 Yes, but just in turn

00:02:58.340 well

00:02:59.300 nah, it's fine. That doesn't narrow it down

00:03:02.580 all that much. There are a lot of Texans

00:03:04.440 in Alberta.

00:03:06.200 Fair enough, fair enough.

00:03:08.040 Yes.

00:03:08.460 As far as that goes

00:03:11.180 in terms of like

00:03:13.200 bridging the remaining

00:03:15.480 like maybe 2.5 percent of persistent cultural difference between canadians and americans i feel

00:03:23.680 like the 20th century the film is probably like one of the most useful cultural artifacts and one

00:03:30.040 of the most revealing and hard-hitting uh introspections into the canadian psyche

00:03:35.140 which is why i'm here to talk about it today all right so listen that home the 20th century

00:03:43.040 a film that is not set in the 20th century uh so the 20th century is this like relatively

00:03:52.140 obscure canadian film that like came on the past 10 years and is the most bizarre like cultural

00:03:58.680 artifact to maybe ever exist it will if the annexation goes forward it'll certainly be like

00:04:08.120 what are the strange last quixotic gaps gasp of um canadian identity but um the 20th century

00:04:17.180 is basically you know south park how in south park uh they visit canada and it's this bizarre

00:04:27.840 munchkin land where all the characters are animated differently and all the all the like

00:04:35.920 cultural artifacts are like wrong and strange and like the weird blend of the wizard of oz with like

00:04:41.720 some beaver dream of like old old europe but like with all these bizarre symbols that's the 20th

00:04:49.940 century that is what the 20th century is exactly going for it was almost certainly inspired by the

00:04:56.840 south park canada bits but but the 20th century is a the strangest biography ever made it is a

00:05:06.180 it is a 19th century synth wave data is symbolic symbolic biography of canadian prime minister

00:05:20.620 William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was the prime minister of Canada for 25 years and a prominent

00:05:28.840 Canadian political fair much longer than that, who was the Canadian equivalent of FDR or Winston

00:05:37.160 Churchill or, I don't know, Stalin or Hitler or Hirahito. He was the prime minister in charge

00:05:42.940 of Canada during World War II, and he was maybe the most significant prime minister in Canadian

00:05:46.980 history and and yet he's like basically Canada has like no cultural conception of them aside

00:05:57.060 from like the weirdest stuff stuff to do with him so so William Lyon Mackenzie King was famously a

00:06:05.920 a bachelor for life he never married no one knows why he never married it's heavily speculated that

00:06:13.880 he was that he was gay or there was something profoundly wrong like like his equipment or that

00:06:22.900 he had he was like heartbroken deeply young or that he had a deep psychological problem that

00:06:30.040 made him unable to relate to other people or he was just that incredibly autistic which is like

00:06:35.900 also very plausible and from this he also went like

00:06:42.860 barely insane like uh it never affected his performance in office but in his personal life

00:06:53.440 like he was he was completely ruled by his mother and was like um so like emotionally dominated by

00:07:03.280 her that after she died he held seances to her ghost to ask advice and also held seances to

00:07:11.960 to speak with his deceased dog and like all this weird occult stuff stuff to do with with this then

00:07:21.660 the other stuff and this complete bizarre man that most canadians only know the bizarre stuff

00:07:32.260 to do with him like we only know the like oddities of like what was wrong with his sexuality why

00:07:38.640 why was he holding seances to his mother like like this weird this weird dysfunctional man

00:07:45.920 and yet he's actually the most important person in canadian history you cannot understand the

00:07:50.060 canadian like identity or the canadian character or like um anything to do with like urban canadian

00:07:58.360 life or canada's relationship to the crown without understanding william wyne mckinsey king this

00:08:04.340 strange strange man and this strange strange film is an even stranger adaptation of that his life

00:08:13.560 because of course william wyne mckinsey king defines canada in the 20th century he defines

00:08:19.760 basically what canada is going to be and become throughout the entire 20th century

00:08:26.320 he rules canada at the point of crisis he's a prominent political fair throughout the entire

00:08:32.760 first 50 years of the 20th century guinean life but the film the 20th century the biography of

00:08:40.260 william ly mckenzie king is not said in the 20th century the film takes entirely takes place

00:08:48.180 entirely within the year 1899

00:08:51.380 and is it entirely this

00:08:54.500 interpret this data is like

00:08:58.540 bizarre self-parking interpretation of his

00:09:02.460 youth which of course bears no relation to

00:09:06.320 his actual youth in the british empire it's this like fever dream

00:09:10.100 of victorian canada canada

00:09:14.200 that is

00:09:15.980 look at the trailer of the film

00:09:20.520 and you will begin to understand

00:09:22.480 how bizarre this is.

00:09:24.540 And yet it...

00:09:25.820 A lot of stylistic elements

00:09:28.480 intended to make the film

00:09:30.960 look as though it was produced

00:09:34.920 on very aged or poorly preserved film.

00:09:40.420 I know that a point of comparison

00:09:42.620 that often gets drawn is...

00:09:45.980 First of all, the director, Matthew Rankin, is from Winnipeg, and stylistically, the film

00:09:52.000 seems to be a take on fellow Winnipegger of Matthew Rankin, Guy Madden, famous surrealist

00:10:00.400 Canadian filmmaker. You can look up his short film, The Heart of the World, about six minutes

00:10:07.020 and gives you a good idea of his style. And a big part of his approach to making film

00:10:12.560 was shooting it and then like deliberately exposing the film to several like weathering

00:10:20.180 processes intended to make it look additionally like aged or kind of just sort of degraded

00:10:28.500 in the process of like generating that old school film reel style look with modern uh like modern

00:10:37.200 filming equipment and just sort of modern methods and so you get that vibe along with several other

00:10:45.400 vibes in the 20th century you get the sort of like hand-painted title slate that it opens with

00:10:52.520 um it's the kind of movie where if you weren't explicitly told that it was made in 2019 it would

00:11:00.780 be easy to guess that it was made in like 1965 or something yeah there's a lot of stylistic

00:11:08.300 choices that are like very consciously like calling like uh aping something like german

00:11:15.240 expressionism or um uh it reminds me a lot of like it's live action but reminds me a lot of like

00:11:23.280 the playmation christmas movies that you maybe saw on your tv and we're like what is that and

00:11:29.640 And no one remembers, like, the titles of these works.

00:11:33.480 There's, like, a Rudolph, and there's, like, several other of these.

00:11:38.020 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like the Snow Miser, Heat Miser.

00:11:41.880 Yes.

00:11:43.400 Yes.

00:11:45.860 The entire film is, like, in three, four aspect ratio.

00:11:50.000 It's like a, it's really, it's very similar in like kind of its stylistic movement to Roger Eggers' The Lighthouse, but entirely different.

00:12:03.600 But like this imagining of like a story or film that would be made by like a much older cult for about a much older, older time, a being all these techniques and conceits, seats of it.

00:12:21.760 You get these gorgeous, gorgeous sets that like look like cardboard, look like cardboard, like children's picture books, books.

00:12:33.440 But yeah, people moving around in them, these like bizarre freshness settings, climbing stairs to like ski lifts that go between cities and like this bizarre, completely bizarre settings.

00:12:51.440 that like you actually look quite gorgeous it's like a again like a children's fantasy book

00:12:58.500 very visually distinct settings as well like the primary stuff that you mentioned is i guess

00:13:05.760 implicitly in ottawa if uh it's where the uh toronto it's mostly sent toronto and then he

00:13:12.900 like ventures to ottawa which um in the conceit of the film is like more a neighborhood over

00:13:21.940 from his home in uh his mother's house in rosedale toronto i see yes and there's also the interesting

00:13:31.100 creative conceit that the united states are never mentioned to exist at any point in the film

00:13:39.500 And he's also seen making the voyage from Toronto to Vancouver by boat, which implies either crossing the Panama Canal.

00:13:51.500 No, I thought that was that mean, voyage from Toronto to Winnipeg.

00:13:56.480 Maybe that as well.

00:13:57.840 I can't remember when I'm going to Vancouver.

00:13:58.980 He definitely went to Vancouver because that was where Dr. Milton Wakefield's clinic, his secret clinic to treat the pervertedly insane was.

00:14:10.500 Oh, yes, yes. He goes there to get treatment.

00:14:13.660 Yeah, Vancouver is just shown as like a completely clear cut mountaintop.

00:14:19.000 Just nothing but tree stumps.

00:14:21.820 Yes, yes.

00:14:22.760 I think Montreal was like the glacier with the softly lapping waves.

00:14:28.980 Yeah, yeah. Winnipeg is like the massive

00:14:32.480 the flesh pits of Winnipeg. Exactly, exactly.

00:14:37.080 You can tell that the director was having fun with that being from Winnipeg

00:14:40.960 himself. Ah, yes. Well, that

00:14:44.740 is Winnipeg. That is Winnipeg. If you've ever been there, you know this.

00:14:49.640 But no, the

00:14:52.280 the choice to, like, never mention

00:14:57.160 the united states existing at all in the film is like a wonderful wonderful choice uh so of course

00:15:07.180 canadian history 101 canada was part of the british empire it had this incredibly british

00:15:13.660 culture and cultural cultural values right up until the 1960s with the death of the british

00:15:21.880 empire and then turn out senior bring about bringing in multiculturalism as an official

00:15:27.820 state policy and like trying to basically destroy all reference to like the crown and like

00:15:35.380 canadian identity as it was like canada canada was maybe maybe the close of prox

00:15:45.240 approximation was like

00:15:47.240 Protestant North

00:15:49.220 Ireland in terms of how extreme

00:15:51.600 the

00:15:52.360 the like political

00:15:55.500 identification with

00:15:57.040 the British Empire was

00:15:59.460 like

00:16:02.160 the

00:16:02.820 the percolation

00:16:05.480 of Union Jacks and like

00:16:07.360 other symbols of the British Empire in Canada

00:16:09.660 was more extreme than

00:16:11.020 anywhere else in the empire like

00:16:12.860 London, England did not look like a lot of towns that exist in Canada for the extremely arch, ultra-nationalist British identity that existed.

00:16:27.140 And to some extent, that still persists. I want to say that approval of the monarchy is consistently higher in Canada than it is in the actual UK.

00:16:38.620 Oh, yeah, yeah. Canadians don't actually have to interact with the monarchy.

00:16:42.860 you know exactly exactly at the very least that because because so much of canadian identity

00:16:49.660 uh which wisely is not touched on in the film but uh the part of canadian identity that has to do

00:16:56.480 with defining themselves in terms of not being americans has them kind of leaning in deliberately

00:17:03.640 to the non-american parts of canadian cultural heritage where the um well one of the principal

00:17:12.100 ones of those is obviously being a part of the commonwealth i should say yeah and of course

00:17:18.960 because the monarchy and the royal family is not actually here and doesn't show up that often

00:17:23.780 and like only attends like like events as foreign visitors when they do show up uh you don't have

00:17:30.820 like the tabloid culture that like takes the sheen off the monarchy you don't uh canadians

00:17:38.080 do not have the fact that like prince andrew was raping sex traffic children like shoved in

00:17:44.620 their faces every day like the british do do um there are not photos of jeffrey epstein and

00:17:51.760 gisley maxwell on property that the canadian state has purchased for the monarchy it's this

00:17:59.000 like distant idealized wise thing that like if you said if you just replaced it the portraits of

00:18:08.680 charles the third or um queen elizabeth the second and just like put up a portrait of king arthur

00:18:15.880 like no one would notice but uh the the um the choice to not depict america is very interesting

00:18:26.220 because it turns all like the bizarre like like canadian pathologies into like these completely

00:18:36.660 mysterious traits but like the complete inferiority complexes that dominate basically

00:18:43.860 every institution every part of canadian canadian life uh the extreme like lack of identity which is

00:18:52.820 Of course, hilarious in, like, this bizarre stuff, Parkian, like, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz world, that, like, none of these people have, like, a sense of identity or, like, desperately clinging to, like, some future in which they matter is completely inexplicable in the film.

00:19:20.660 which uh yes but to the extent yes to the extent even that the flag in the film which honestly

00:19:31.740 looks like a really cool design for a flag i i find it's a shame that it isn't the actual

00:19:37.260 canadian flag but they refer to the flag as the disappointment and also uh yes allude to

00:19:46.500 the disappointment as just like a pervasive state of affairs in Canada, which on an existing

00:19:55.380 review of the movie by the YouTuber JJ McCullough, his take on that gave and gave like essentially

00:20:06.060 a perspective on Canadian national identity that filled in quite a lot of the gaps for

00:20:12.740 me as as i said a stranger in a strange land the self-conception of canada as a disappointing

00:20:20.560 country run by me or men oh entirely and we we see this in the film where um where repeatedly

00:20:32.540 it is it is threatened that that like someone of like some exceptional character or like moral

00:20:40.260 worth or like youthful

00:20:42.580 exuberance or like in

00:20:44.260 inherent nobility of

00:20:46.300 spirit like worthy of like

00:20:48.300 the empire and the symbols

00:20:50.160 and the

00:20:52.220 quite frankly beauty that

00:20:53.600 pervades the film like there's this

00:20:56.060 persistent there's this recurring

00:20:58.200 threat that's so naturally worthy of that

00:21:00.020 might actually become important and then

00:21:02.260 something horrible happens to them

00:21:04.080 this repeats

00:21:06.300 and repeats throughout the film and

00:21:08.280 the all these

00:21:10.200 worthier figures and like more

00:21:12.220 interesting people and

00:21:14.240 more interesting men

00:21:15.280 men and women come and go

00:21:18.200 throughout the film

00:21:19.900 as we're slowly left with

00:21:22.360 the

00:21:23.780 the like

00:21:25.780 weak

00:21:28.000 effeminate autistic

00:21:29.220 William Y. McKenzie King

00:21:32.980 yes this

00:21:35.780 arch neurotic figure William Y. McKenzie

00:21:38.320 King

00:21:38.780 um the actual the final shot of the film is all this has occurred like uh the final

00:21:48.660 like a final battle of types has happened yes all this action has occurred all this tension

00:21:55.960 the rival has sacrificed himself uh in a purely altruistic endeavor

00:22:01.880 these people will be watching it

00:22:04.180 but the

00:22:04.820 all the woke Netflix has occurred

00:22:08.680 and of course

00:22:09.360 the last shot

00:22:12.240 which this shouldn't be a spoiler

00:22:13.840 this is real history

00:22:15.120 is William Ly McKenzie King

00:22:17.260 kind of being called by his mother

00:22:19.560 and disappearing back into

00:22:21.440 his

00:22:22.700 mother's bedroom to tend to her

00:22:25.920 and her overbearingness

00:22:27.480 that

00:22:28.560 it's almost like a symbolic shot of

00:22:31.540 return to the womb in a way very much so uh you dark soul plans out there uh do a symbolic

00:22:40.660 assessment of it but uh but of course um in real life uh of course the the film the 20th century

00:22:51.460 which is not said in the 20th century that the central geopolitical event of the film that um

00:22:57.660 is defining young William L. Mackenzie King's life

00:23:01.540 is the Boer War,

00:23:03.740 the war against that villain Kroger,

00:23:06.960 against the scum race of the Transvaal.

00:23:09.800 Yes, which we should clarify is presented by

00:23:13.720 most likely the best character in the film,

00:23:18.340 played with all gravitas by Sean Cullen,

00:23:24.060 the Governor General.

00:23:25.640 yes if only real governor generals were quite like this individual lord is like

00:23:35.600 depicts this bizarre blend of like um of like he's a big brother almost like if there were

00:23:44.900 20th century totalitarianism and and like almost uh uh like russian aristocratic

00:23:55.380 Like, you'd believe this man in the Kaiser service.

00:24:00.320 You would not believe this man in the British Crown service.

00:24:04.480 But, uh...

00:24:04.980 Delivers some of the best speeches in the film.

00:24:08.200 And includes, like, a truly venomous and awesome delivery of the word,

00:24:14.220 Bores, as...

00:24:15.200 which i had i i had to share a video of his speech to a mutual friend of ours of uh

00:24:27.180 boorish heritage himself which uh kind of left him in stitches just from laughter

00:24:33.000 uh for for records for those of you out there who don't know the elaborate and

00:24:40.020 and majestic history of the british empire the boars were a white african african race they were

00:24:49.760 um dutch settlers so it settled in africa in like the 1600s in in south africa and had a series of

00:24:58.440 of like on again off again alliances and conflicts with the british who who eventually like uh

00:25:07.840 claimed the Cape Colmy and South Africa for the British Empire,

00:25:11.460 but the native white population of this part of Africa

00:25:17.420 was the descendant of these Dutch settlers, the Boers.

00:25:22.920 And part of these ongoing, like, conflicts and alliances

00:25:27.520 against the Zulu blacks culminates in the 1890s

00:25:33.000 with the Boer Wars, in which...

00:25:37.840 Basically, the British Empire launched a genocidal race war against the only white population in Africa.

00:25:47.140 Like, this is when the concentration camp was first used against the civilian population, is against the Boers in South Africa.

00:25:56.360 the british empire would not allow like a white settler call me who were very explicitly

00:26:04.520 like um used a lot of symbols of the american revolution and called out stuff like that of

00:26:11.660 this would repeat for like the next hundred years um rhodesia would be explicitly like

00:26:17.180 arcanning to the american declaration of independence when they declared independence

00:26:22.360 from from the british but the poors were were making like relatively reasonable demands as like

00:26:33.700 a a well-established like european population with who had settled the land and who were on an

00:26:42.120 extreme frontier and were like very developed they're like relatively poor and like

00:26:50.840 Femi-nomadic, but, like, educated and part of the world system.

00:26:55.940 And the British invented the concentration camp to crush these people.

00:27:01.340 This is one of, like, the defining moments of British history.

00:27:05.800 Winston Churchill was in action during this and was captured and, like, by all counts, traded, like, pretty well by the Boers.

00:27:17.340 And if you meet white Africans today, occasionally you'll meet one who will have a story of how it was actually his great-great-grandfather who captured Winston Churchill or met him while—or met young Winston Churchill while he was in captivity.

00:27:36.840 but uh you but it's insane to consider that like the one real like like totalitarian race war

00:27:46.720 that the british empire ever pursued was a genocidal race war against white south africans

00:27:54.300 and we see that in this film like like all the rhetoric that is used to persuade young canadians

00:28:02.340 to go off and fight against

00:28:04.160 the boars

00:28:05.860 is basically as ravenous

00:28:08.600 as it was in real life

00:28:10.200 which is of course absolutely

00:28:12.300 insane the atrocity propaganda

00:28:14.180 to get

00:28:15.300 that's depicted in the film and that exists

00:28:18.280 in real life to get

00:28:19.180 it's a very two minutes hate sequence

00:28:22.540 you see

00:28:23.720 well just the literalization of the

00:28:26.260 half man half

00:28:28.040 elephant with them having

00:28:30.180 elephants trunks

00:28:31.120 swilling several glasses of beer

00:28:35.220 in quick succession

00:28:36.540 and wielding a shotgun

00:28:38.300 pointing it into a baby stroller

00:28:40.640 cackling with glee

00:28:42.440 as they shotgun the infant baby

00:28:44.740 that's going to be my image

00:28:47.960 for this episode

00:28:49.280 that's going to be on the podcast

00:28:51.140 is the shotgun

00:28:53.540 pointing to the front

00:28:54.360 the most iconic still

00:28:55.340 the only one that could compete

00:28:59.420 with it would probably be

00:29:00.980 King shoving his face

00:29:03.200 into a shoe.

00:29:05.360 Uh, yeah,

00:29:07.140 but that doesn't communicate as well.

00:29:08.860 That isn't a dramatic outline.

00:29:11.520 He's deeply

00:29:12.220 neurotic. Well, yes.

00:29:15.120 Who knows? It's possible

00:29:16.980 that the real William Lyne Mackenzie King

00:29:18.980 was a shoe fetishist, but, uh...

00:29:22.200 Well, the real...

00:29:22.640 I suppose only history will know.

00:29:25.920 The real William Lyne

00:29:27.200 Mackenzie King was, like,

00:29:28.420 probably one of like the most important men in history in terms of like lives saved he was a

00:29:36.060 he was a big confidant of u.s president herbert hoover who had lost the presidency but was still

00:29:44.260 like a prominent figure throughout the 30s 40s and 50s like uh died in the 1960s um his book

00:29:53.160 freedom betrayed was only published in 2010 but he had written throughout the post-war period

00:30:00.320 about world war ii and that's his secret history of world war ii where he lays out all the crimes

00:30:06.760 committed by fdr all like the horrors of how like the allies betrayed uh all of eastern europe how

00:30:14.400 u.s policy results in the the needless deaths of tens of millions if you out there dear listener

00:30:21.240 are a are a like think you are a pill or want or want a take on world war ii that's like

00:30:30.700 not quite the far right like like uh neo-nazi or like or like authoritarian right revisionism

00:30:40.380 but also think that like like the post-war liberal order is full of shit read u.s president

00:30:48.160 herbert hoover's freedom betrayed trade and read the history of just like a post-war

00:30:56.900 uh like small government liberals take on how fdr destroyed europe and destroyed

00:31:05.200 for you to destroy the world and killed tens of millions of people through like his

00:31:10.500 through, like, really horrifying policies

00:31:14.400 that allied with totalitarian communism.

00:31:17.780 Like, this is a book that, like,

00:31:22.660 retells the story of how the post-war American right

00:31:30.760 saw World War II.

00:31:33.960 And Herbert Hoover was a good friend

00:31:37.480 of William Lyme McKenzie King.

00:31:39.960 And in the post-war period from, like, 44 to 48, they actually might have saved maybe 10 million German civilians by preventing the, like, combined Truman-Stallun blockade of the former Axis powers.

00:32:04.400 That if you're at all familiar with the Morgenthau plan or like the shameful history of the people betrayed at Yalta and like the deportation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians and like alleged Soviet citizens who had fled the Russian Civil War back into the Soviet Union, back into communist control in 1940.

00:32:34.400 where they were worked to death or executed if you know any of that history you

00:32:39.080 you'll be interested to know that it was william y mackenzie king and herbert hoover who worked

00:32:48.300 to bring about the end of a lot of the morgenthal plan styles style um style policies that were

00:32:57.780 going to essentially starve millions of germans to death to death after the war and did institute

00:33:07.020 a massive hunger blockade that resulted in in at least hundreds of thousands of deaths um depending

00:33:14.120 on who you ask ask these were it might have been millions it might have been you know if you

00:33:21.680 official numbers like like vary a lot by what you include or not if you include like the sedaten

00:33:29.180 germans and the diaspora germans of the east like some people will get some historians will quote

00:33:38.280 like numbers in the millions of germans that died in what was normally peacetime at the end of the

00:33:45.220 for so in a lot of ways like in a lot of ways more than like his policies are actually fairly

00:33:55.440 decent in terms of like preventing conscription in canada till the last possible moment in a

00:34:00.980 lot of ways king was probably one of the best leaders of the 20th century and it's insane

00:34:07.860 because all the things he did that were like very good and really advanced like

00:34:13.260 not just canadian interest but um or or british imperial interest but like the interest of

00:34:20.860 humanity like all that gets like you swept aside very hard because he represented the old like um

00:34:31.500 like conservative classical liberal faction pre-war and to praise any of the things that

00:34:38.300 he did that were like insanely good would be to admit all the crimes that like the post-war regime

00:34:44.560 was commit complicit in so he's very much uh william y mckenzie king is like the question

00:34:55.600 what if coover had had been the one to win four elections in a row in this the states instead of

00:35:02.940 fdr that's like the carifactual of king yeah i forget is king does king have the record for

00:35:10.640 longest serving canadian prime minister oh yeah by by miles by miles oh yeah it wasn't it wasn't

00:35:17.980 all consecutive like um he did he did he was prime minister in the 20s and then

00:35:25.780 bennett was prime minister for a while and i think another one but there's like

00:35:31.180 it adds up to like it's either 24 or 25 years total if i recall and and in terms of like him

00:35:40.380 being the leader of a major political party like he was one of the most prominent canadian

00:35:45.860 politicians for like close to 34 years yes i mean the main thing that i had heard uh william

00:35:54.120 lyne mckenzie king's name in relation to before actually seeing this movie is oddly something

00:35:59.560 that never is uh featured in it or ever addressed uh that being the king bing affair between the

00:36:07.300 prime minister and the governor general which i think was a um i'm sure you know more about this

00:36:14.040 than i do but a bit of a crisis no i do not tell me about this it's it was i believe a bit of a

00:36:20.840 crisis on the question of powers of the governor general who is nominally the acting uh regent

00:36:30.760 isn't quite the right word but acting on behalf of the monarch in canada and therefore serving

00:36:36.700 the function of the head of state as compared to the prime minister's head of government

00:36:43.720 so this King Bing

00:36:46.300 affair, Bing

00:36:48.060 spelled B-Y-N-G

00:36:49.820 not like the search engine

00:36:51.440 yes, a constitutional

00:36:53.900 crisis in 1926

00:36:56.400 ah, so

00:36:58.260 the governor

00:36:59.860 general refused the

00:37:01.820 prime minister's request to dissolve

00:37:04.120 parliament and call a

00:37:05.980 general election

00:37:06.960 and I think that was considered to

00:37:09.940 be the crisis that

00:37:11.900 kind of

00:37:13.720 settled in the current paradigm where again correct me if i'm wrong like the governor

00:37:19.320 general is considered to be a bit of a ceremonial office as much as anything yeah so um

00:37:27.360 so the the role governor general um it says it right in the name governor governor general it's

00:37:39.060 a continuation of the like british empire's like governor governor titles that were like

00:37:45.880 applied to colonies uh if you watch pirates of the caribbean uh uh jamaica or royal uh

00:37:55.700 elizabeth's father is governor governor there like uh this is like one of the oldest titles

00:38:02.520 in the british british empire is the title governor and what slowly happened in basically

00:38:10.280 every commonwealth colony is is power transferred from the governor of the governor general

00:38:16.840 general to the the elected uh prime ministers and other figures and you know it may rebelled

00:38:27.300 or if they declared independence or left the Commonwealth,

00:38:32.540 they might give themselves a president who may or may not be more or less ceremonial

00:38:37.680 or may or may not be elected or appointed.

00:38:41.340 But everywhere that, like, officially remains part of the Commonwealth

00:38:45.420 and kept the queen as the official head of state

00:38:50.020 has something equivalent to the governorate general rule.

00:38:53.840 and and in basically every commonwealth colony there is a question of well how much power does

00:39:02.360 the governor have that's like officially appointed by the queen who's like not a

00:39:07.440 actually a powerful figure in the uk and like has like no prominent power there that we know of

00:39:15.620 know of but uh at least allegedly officially in the uk like almost all powers concentrate in like

00:39:25.400 the parliament the house of lords and the prime minister but there's a question

00:39:29.820 all the colonies because you know all of them can trace the time back to when the governor was like

00:39:36.820 basically a direct military governor and directly in charge so so in canada the king

00:39:44.540 bang affair from what you're telling me is like one of these periodic like our struggles between

00:39:51.400 the um british imperial uh levers of power and and the elected government which of course would

00:40:00.240 be like very prominent in a country that would just like while the empire was still standing

00:40:07.400 and in a country that had just fought World War I.

00:40:15.060 I know in, like, Hong Kong and, like, several other colonies,

00:40:19.800 the governors were, like, fairly powerful into, like, the 1960s and 70s.

00:40:27.140 That the governor general and kind of the executive,

00:40:32.720 it's not the word for it but like the executive branch the imperial branch of like these

00:40:38.460 commonwealth's colonies became like kind of a center for like the unelected elites of the

00:40:44.040 colonies to like maintain coherent power and like kind of sideline the elect elected parts of the

00:40:54.160 government if those existed or to constate power in like the foreign policy establishment to tie

00:41:00.800 this to contemporary events uh it's still the case that uh the governor general of canada is

00:41:10.160 the one with the vested power to prorogue or suspend parliament uh hence why outgoing prime

00:41:19.380 minister as of this recording uh justin trudeau uh has indeed prorogued parliament for like the

00:41:26.980 first three months of the year uh it's set to reconvene on march 24th i believe and yeah which

00:41:36.500 is which is quite the scandal when you consider that it hasn't reconvened in relation to uh

00:41:43.820 trump's tariffs and stuff this is a recurring thing with um canadian politics is that

00:41:49.640 effectively the government is is run out of the prime minister's office

00:41:56.500 almost entirely like the prime minister's office like has near dictatorial power in a lot

00:42:05.660 a lot of cases and and parliament is supposed to oversee that but the canadian party system

00:42:13.500 gives insane insane amounts of power to their party leaders who become prime ministers

00:42:18.860 so the there's this recurring uh outrage and struggle of like parliament should be in session

00:42:28.240 parliament should be in session this should be debated which of course all the opposition parties

00:42:33.100 repeat and latch on to and like use as talking points despite the fact that like parliamentary

00:42:40.560 debate is like not how politics is like determined in canada at all like parliament is basically

00:42:49.460 like like parliamentary debate exists so that there can be soundbikes around the debates and

00:42:57.360 then like maybe maybe the parties themselves will like have a power struggle that like topples the

00:43:06.880 government or like mps will betray their leaders etc like this happens once a decade like once

00:43:16.040 every like five eight years something like this happens and the broguing power of the governor

00:43:25.440 general is like almost entirely ceremonial like in my lifetime i can't recall the governor general

00:43:32.220 ever doing anything that wasn't explicitly pulled to him or her to do by the prime minister.

00:43:39.320 However, it is hypothetical that because this power is vested in the governor general,

00:43:45.020 that if there were like one of these inter-party coups or one of these like

00:43:50.080 Westminster style take-ups and power struggles, that like they could get the governor general

00:43:58.880 to reconvene parliament behind the prime minister's back but to have those things read me like

00:44:05.440 three factions in a row to all line to like topple the one faction that's unified and like

00:44:14.980 default has all the power yeah and if that were to occur it'd probably be like constitute a

00:44:22.140 constitutional crisis on the level of the king being a fair because that was a bit of a similar

00:44:28.460 uh case of the prime minister requesting the governor general to dissolve parliament uh so

00:44:37.520 as not to permit like a vote of no confidence that would have toppled his liberal government

00:44:44.300 and the governor general refused requiring king to temporarily resign because naturally

00:44:53.760 If you look at King's reign, there's like a exactly three month gap in 1926 where he stopped being prime minister and then he comes back three months later and he's prime minister another three, four years.

00:45:13.340 yes just to to um elaborate to the americans in the audience on the difference in kind of like

00:45:23.640 cultural freight of canadian prime ministers as compared to u.s presidents

00:45:32.620 that one of the key things is that it is necessary to like play specifically party

00:45:42.420 politics in order to become prime minister in canada there are very very very limited opportunities

00:45:49.760 for a true outsider to come in just because of the structure of the westminster system in general

00:45:55.780 would you agree uh yeah so populism um canada actually does have like a fairly sizable history

00:46:06.340 populism um if you go to like like the rebellions of the 1830s um um the various

00:46:17.800 anti-immigration parties that exist in the 19th centuries the um the rise of social credit uh

00:46:28.240 quebec nationalism like there the trucker convoy protests like there is like a fair amount of like

00:46:35.600 populist energy in canada that erupts like quite dramatically but there's basically no avenue for

00:46:42.780 it to get into federal politics like uh the quebec separatists have to take over quebec

00:46:49.440 regional government and then like push for referendums and the bloc quebecois the federal

00:46:58.460 Quebec Sephardist Party like they form and they wouldn't seat but because because of the structure

00:47:06.220 of confederation like they can only form a block within parliament which depending that might be

00:47:14.180 a powerful block if uh it's a weak minority government where um all the other parties

00:47:20.880 can overpower the main party if they choose to but uh that's a no confidence vote if that happens

00:47:28.980 so that would immediately start an election which what's the bloc quebec law going to do in election

00:47:35.520 they can just win back their seats and go back and still be a minor party in the government so

00:47:41.660 they usually are able to like bargain with that position like get gimps for quebec which like

00:47:48.520 actually doesn't help their cause because it like the more concessions they get for quebec the more

00:47:54.840 that makes the argument that quebec is better off in confederation like milking the federal teat

00:48:01.540 and you see this with like uh the social credit populism on the prairie which is like this weird

00:48:09.900 like farmers like hasn't like kind of socialism kind of not that um advocated for all kinds of

00:48:21.200 social programs and financial reforms to protect farmers uh back in like the 20s and 30s that was

00:48:27.980 like quite prominent but like again uh because it's like regionally locked they could never

00:48:35.580 when powered because it's regionally locked and they can't join one of the major parties without

00:48:43.500 um without basically signing away and giving all their power to like a party leader they have to

00:48:50.120 form their own party which gets region locked and can never form a government government silly

00:48:55.800 unlike the u.s system where you have the primary runoffs where you can have like like an extremist

00:49:01.460 minor faction like if they play their cards right like like we saw with um doll trump that like

00:49:08.880 like a dissident faction and seize the power of of a like major u.s federal party and ride that

00:49:19.020 even into the white house or and like presumably if trump could do that in 2016 it would have been

00:49:26.740 possible for ron paul or like another figure to do that before or after after if the car should

00:49:36.700 come up exactly right or they had the right energy behind them that is basically inconceivable

00:49:42.400 in canada you might win like some regional politics which which canada has strong strong

00:49:50.240 provinces like that could be very impactful but the Canadian federal system basically

00:49:55.380 locks it down to no matter what the prime minister and like all the powerful of the

00:50:02.820 federal government is going to wind up in the hands of a a like uh centrist uh main party

00:50:10.400 mainly mainly the liberals like uh yeah uh this is this is one of the things where like

00:50:18.760 english canada is a like vastly more conservative country than like canada as a whole like if

00:50:26.900 english canada was its own country and you took out quebec but you all of canadian politics would

00:50:33.380 shift you have to radically array like it'd be like canada would be closer to um

00:50:38.880 montana or michigan than what it is currently because um

00:50:45.380 english canadians vote like americans americans and if it were not for like their left the left

00:50:56.780 wing canadian party a getting to brand a centrist but be having this well of like

00:51:03.580 supporting quebec that will always always always support the most extreme left-wing policy

00:51:09.920 and will will just drag all canadian politics leftwards like like uh gun control is almost

00:51:18.860 entirely a quebecois political issue like it plays in like three cities and quebec that gun

00:51:27.040 control is a major concern outside like uh broad english canada it's as much a vote loser as a

00:51:34.800 vote vote winner and it like like would be an aggressive losing issue because um english canada

00:51:44.480 like gun owners are one of the special interest groups that like actually organizes them will

00:51:49.760 donate and like interact with each other and talks but as but as far as um political leader

00:52:02.120 selection in canada and just so you don't get completely unmoored from uh the piece of media

00:52:08.660 that uh this episode is nominally about uh one of the reasons i was eager to discuss it uh right

00:52:16.300 here and now, is as we record this, and presumably when this goes up, we are shortly expecting

00:52:24.320 a race for leadership of the currently in government Liberal Party, where one of the

00:52:34.900 most memorable sequences in the film, the 20th century, is a similar race for leadership of

00:52:42.120 implicitly the liberal party since that's generally uh who king represented done up in

00:52:49.500 how would you describe it like uh decathlon of uh very uniquely canadian activities

00:52:57.740 uh yes um actually the the race in the film resembles the race in real life also in that

00:53:08.940 it's like effectively a coronation being decided by an opaque and like completely detached from

00:53:16.480 any mechanism like authoritarian system that like uh like the canadian liberal leadership race

00:53:25.560 is basically already over and is like a coronation of mark carney this globalist banker who hasn't

00:53:33.180 even been in Canada or like held any office in Canada or had gartered any votes from anyone

00:53:39.620 anyone that being that being said I feel like it's actually one of the ways in which

00:53:46.160 the 20th century is a bit more utopian than real life Canada is it portrays it at least as on the

00:53:55.400 surface a meritocracy there's at least some level of like actual evaluation of performance in all

00:54:04.160 of those ranked events let's see what we have we have leg wrestling which apparently not in the

00:54:12.240 modern day but in like prior generations in canada was considered like a very common gym activity

00:54:18.820 was leg wrestling uh we had being cut on or yeah being cut in front of in line and having to gently

00:54:26.420 correct that person by clearing your throat and not to do something as rude as start an actual

00:54:32.540 confrontation uh there is the ribbon cutting challenge where it was the challenge of actually

00:54:40.040 being able to cut the ribbon with the dull scissors and then uh the ones who actually

00:54:46.160 manage it to get ranked from like adequate to just the judge being in near tears at the beauty

00:54:55.300 of their ribbon cutting form and then of course uh baby seal clubbing uh probably the most important

00:55:01.800 canadian national pastime wouldn't you agree uh naturally naturally yes but uh i i wish that uh

00:55:09.560 you had like an event with say christia christia freeland competing against the other liberal

00:55:15.660 party aspirants as to who can play whack-a-mole with baby seals oh man that that would require

00:55:23.060 all them to show up and be sober at the same time it would be yeah i don't know has that

00:55:29.520 ever happened in in any canadian political history has it ever happened that all that

00:55:35.880 a gathering of politicians have all been sober in one place because it certainly was not the case

00:55:41.720 when the Articles of Confederation were drawn up.

00:55:45.500 Yeah, no.

00:55:47.180 Famously, the first Canadian Prime Minister,

00:55:50.260 Johnny MacDonald,

00:55:51.720 vomited on the floor of the House of Commons.

00:55:55.260 And when challenged and insulted

00:55:59.620 that he was an irresponsible drunk,

00:56:03.220 he retorted that he was not drunk,

00:56:05.760 that his opponent's argument

00:56:07.000 had merely disgusted him that much.

00:56:11.720 but uh which is a great comeback you can see why that man was prime minister

00:56:18.020 yes what while they're uh while canadian politics may be short on truly great men

00:56:27.540 there is no shortage of memorable names in canadian politics definitely john a mcdonald was

00:56:35.240 one of them uh what one thing that i have character but you might be a character

00:56:41.340 exactly one thing that i find regrettable about um the names that feature in the movie the 20th

00:56:52.480 century some of which are quite obscure references like the fact that um the nurse of will yeah the

00:57:02.820 family nurse of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Ernestine LaPointe, was named after, uh, Quebec

00:57:11.620 City MP Ernest LaPointe. The fact that the, um, sinister doctor who's there to treat his

00:57:19.480 perverted condition, Dr. Milton Wakefield, is named after the, uh, I assume that he's named

00:57:26.960 after this fellow because it seems like far too specific a name just to make up but milton wakefield

00:57:34.360 was an mla for saskatchewan in lloydminster from 1999 to 2007 which makes me think that he must

00:57:45.060 have had some kind of personal connection to the filmmakers for them to uh reference a name that

00:57:50.080 minor yeah especially that unattached that period um yes and and one and one individual who does not

00:58:00.080 even physically appear in person but uh somebody with enough familiarity with canadian politics

00:58:06.640 would recognize the name is when king frequents a an establishment named dieffen baker's women's

00:58:16.060 undergarments, to buy a

00:58:18.100 present for, I believe his mother,

00:58:20.120 a present of women's undergarments, just

00:58:22.040 because that's the kind of person that he is.

00:58:25.980 He is, uh...

00:58:28.200 Yeah.

00:58:29.480 Real shortcoming, the fact

00:58:32.060 that John Diefenbaker

00:58:34.000 is not physically portrayed in the movie

00:58:36.140 because, I guess,

00:58:37.680 the real-life individual...

00:58:40.100 I have met people in the trash gear

00:58:40.620 who are still

00:58:42.900 enraged at John

00:58:45.420 Diefenbaker and what he did

00:58:47.380 The Avro Arrow

00:58:49.840 and also for coining

00:58:51.560 the term a Canadian is a Canadian

00:58:53.780 is a Canadian

00:58:54.680 I guess he got that from

00:58:59.220 Gertrude Stein or maybe

00:59:01.140 Ernest Hemingway because I know Gertrude Stein

00:59:03.680 said a rose is a rose is a rose

00:59:05.540 and Ernest Hemingway replied

00:59:07.460 a bitch is a bitch is a bitch

00:59:09.020 so he's at least

00:59:13.480 doing the same construction

00:59:14.820 as those two. America has much

00:59:17.420 greater people, much lesser

00:59:19.540 people than we have.

00:59:21.680 Granted, John

00:59:23.180 Diefenbaker is

00:59:24.540 definitely

00:59:26.400 one of the all-time

00:59:28.900 characters to be televised

00:59:31.840 given that he was

00:59:33.640 I believe the first Prime Minister

00:59:35.320 to be properly televised.

00:59:37.840 It's just

00:59:38.580 extremely jolly,

00:59:41.860 extremely mad-eyed,

00:59:43.140 uh just the perfect description of him is john dieffenbaker is a madman who thinks he's john

00:59:50.900 dieffenbaker i need to look up from videos of him i i've seen

00:59:58.720 i've seen some insane characters on canadian tv over the years yes the ones you've seen like

01:00:10.460 their saying are, like,

01:00:12.520 the most terrifying of them I consistently

01:00:14.420 find.

01:00:17.460 Ah, yes.

01:00:18.960 The ones who are mad are properly

01:00:20.500 registering the existence that they've

01:00:22.420 found themselves in.

01:00:24.400 To be Prime Minister of Canada?

01:00:27.080 It does seem like

01:00:28.360 an ever-precarious position.

01:00:31.200 As is shown in the movie, like,

01:00:32.660 because even when he's...

01:00:34.700 Even when Mr. King is nominally

01:00:36.580 serving as Prime Minister, he

01:00:38.500 still finds himself a bit of a pinball caught between lord muto on the one hand and uh the

01:00:48.120 infernal ornithologist joseph israel tart on the other and finds that he has like very little

01:00:55.100 personal power in the process a reoccurring theme of the film and the country in general is just like

01:01:03.800 how perverse wanting to be an important person here seems like uh like if you're an ambitious

01:01:12.680 canadian you go to america what kind of person wants to become an important person

01:01:17.520 within canada either you have to be an incredibly mediocre person like uh someone who can't make it

01:01:27.880 elsewhere you know you know a cbc comedian a uh a well don't be so harsh on rick don't be so harsh

01:01:36.680 on rick mercer he's he's done some genuinely brilliant satire at least uh the greatest

01:01:44.680 canadian comedians left for the states like there's a reason norm mcdonald was not a cbc figure

01:01:51.200 True.

01:02:21.200 delusion of grandeur or having a um or having a weird inferiority complex combined with a

01:02:30.900 grandiosity combined with like a sense of grandiosity that cannot find find any like

01:02:39.940 sane expression. There's a good joke. A child walked up to their parents, an American child

01:02:54.040 walked up to their parents and said, I'm going to be present someday. And the parent beamed with

01:02:58.820 pride that had the thought that their child could aspire to be present. Indeed, they could be if

01:03:06.740 They put their heart and soul into it.

01:03:09.820 A Canadian child walked up to a Canadian parent and said,

01:03:13.520 I want to be prime minister someday.

01:03:15.800 And he said, and the parent looked, and their father looked down on them.

01:03:20.760 Okay, okay, just don't say that in polite company.

01:03:25.920 Yeah, as I've brought up before, just the idea,

01:03:30.940 just the differing cultural conception between what the president is as a figure in america

01:03:39.760 and what the prime minister is as a figure in canada because um even like in terms of the most

01:03:51.100 disliked u.s presidents they're considered to be like important people with a lasting effect on

01:03:59.120 the country uh and like who is the most disliked president is going to vary depending on who you

01:04:05.580 ask and generally if you ask canadians it's usually the case that the most disliked president

01:04:12.280 u.s president is whichever one is in office right now

01:04:15.340 but uh you you compare that to canadian prime ministers and so many of them tend to kind of

01:04:26.320 come and go without much fanfare like i'm thinking particularly about say kim campbell

01:04:33.980 in that in in that office uh and i would i would assume that in all likelihood unless uh unless

01:04:44.800 trump's tariffs have really driven the voting public back to the liberal party that the whoever

01:04:51.480 is picked to replace trudeau is going to be in the position of kim campbell uh just sort of set

01:04:58.380 up in the position as party leader and prime minister only to face the music of a devastating

01:05:03.980 election turnout that sees a change in government we can help never never never underestimate the

01:05:13.280 ability of this country to disappoint even more than you imagined i'm grateful to kim campbell

01:05:22.360 simply because her existence in office for one month means that the talking point of oh we've

01:05:32.060 never had a female prime minister has been permanently defamed in canada because you have

01:05:39.640 had a female prime minister she was in office for one month and was generally considered to

01:05:44.500 be terrible in the office yeah no the two prime ministers i've heard like respected in my lifetime

01:05:53.320 like modern prime ministers who like guard some respect were jean chrétien because he was disabled

01:06:00.580 and people were like look at that he he's doing all that even though he's disabled and um

01:06:06.780 and Stephen Harper largely because Stephen Harper branded himself as the most boring man

01:06:13.800 in the world like he branded himself as like the most ignorable uh nondescript accountant

01:06:21.520 to ever exist and there was like some weird respect for that like but yes this is how little

01:06:28.340 we should be concerned about who's occupying the office of prime minister he should be an accountant

01:06:33.980 whose name you forgets until tax season comes around i i i should mention at this point i have

01:06:44.060 met in the flesh precisely one former canadian prime minister that being the recent the fairly

01:06:56.400 recently deceased like a year ago uh brian mulrooney uh came to speak at an event i attended

01:07:03.940 and my my impression of him was actually that he was quite a good storyteller and uh quite good at

01:07:11.720 delivering a punchline which means that you'd think that he could have followed notable

01:07:18.660 canadians like norm mcdonald into uh the profession of stand-up comedy but instead widely perceived as

01:07:26.160 very corrupt and and like something of like a trair to english canada because ian mulroney

01:07:34.340 writing the name like like he's an anglo but he's an anglo from quebec and he like

01:07:39.920 uh the meech lake stuff is perceived as him like sullying out anglo-canadian

01:07:45.480 interests them a lot of

01:07:47.420 Canada

01:07:48.780 I have friends

01:07:53.240 who were part of

01:07:55.440 a frat that Joe Turner

01:07:57.340 was part of. Apparently

01:07:59.220 Joe Turner showed off to

01:08:00.920 drink with them well into the

01:08:03.360 early

01:08:03.560 well into the morning

01:08:06.500 and they thought

01:08:09.220 this was interesting. Oh, we went out

01:08:11.120 drinking with the former Prime Minister

01:08:12.800 so I told this story to

01:08:15.240 like a political friend friend of mine who was who work on campaigns within like Canadian

01:08:23.980 conservatism and she just clicked her tongue and nodded her head yeah yeah that's a that's a sad

01:08:30.020 story you know he never he never recovered from having his like hopes and dreams crushed and like

01:08:35.880 only being prime minister for like a year he's been an alcoholic ever since yeah that's that

01:08:42.400 seems to be the pattern that you see is like long-serving prime ministers punctuated by

01:08:49.860 prime ministers with extremely short tenures uh sometimes like the long-serving prime ministers

01:08:58.360 have a couple of non-consecutive terms and that's that's the reason why contrary wise to the u.s

01:09:07.200 system of enumerating presidents where like trump is the 45th and the 47th etc they don't really

01:09:14.240 bother calling like pierre trudeau oh he's the 15th and 17th no they just say that he's the 15th and

01:09:21.820 served two non-consecutive terms or not rather not even non-consecutive just like served two

01:09:29.880 terms in office because serving two terms implies that there is an interruption which implies that

01:09:36.000 your party lost the uh government at some point yeah i i don't know most canadians could not

01:09:47.080 number an individual prime minister to save their life they'd they could maybe like like a very

01:09:53.980 patriotic canadian will remember that sir john a mcdonald was the first prime minister

01:09:59.440 maybe a one in a hundred could tell you who the second was

01:10:04.120 yeah and surprisingly even um even with the theoretical no minimum length of term

01:10:14.700 of a prime minister there have been quite quite a lot fewer prime ministers in canada's 150 years

01:10:23.640 since Confederation

01:10:26.820 than there have been

01:10:28.920 U.S. presidents in the roughly

01:10:30.500 250 years, and a lot of that has to do with

01:10:32.780 the lack of term limits, meaning that

01:10:34.660 individual prime ministers,

01:10:36.540 if they're the kind of ones

01:10:38.460 whose, like, government defines

01:10:40.720 like, say, a decade or so,

01:10:43.040 can be in longer than, like,

01:10:44.740 the prescribed eight-year

01:10:46.300 maximum that U.S. presidents can have.

01:10:50.060 Yeah,

01:10:50.780 there's

01:10:53.640 I don't know. Anyone who becomes Prime Minister of Canada is, like, inherently suspect in so many

01:11:00.740 eyes. Like, the thing is, being Prime Minister of Canada is a poison chalice, because Canada is,

01:11:09.640 like, such an internally divided country. It's, you know, there's the Quebec-English divide,

01:11:18.000 there's the east-west divide there's the massive cultural divides within the country like um

01:11:24.960 even in western canada which is the most unified part of the country like the difference between

01:11:31.120 bc and alberta is like tremendous it's like you have it's like montana versus california

01:11:42.120 for instance well it's not even montana versus california it's like texas california yeah

01:11:49.620 exes versus washington states would be the analogy or texas versus oregon that like uh

01:11:57.880 that like because alberta has like the oil oil culture and the oil oil rigging and is still like

01:12:06.880 like one of the great frontiers of the earth where young men go to make their fortune

01:12:12.840 fortune it's like maybe one of the like most right-wing masculine places on earth and then

01:12:19.260 of course bc is like like a real estate bubble wrapped around an old hippie commune wrapped

01:12:29.180 around a heroin problem like uh it's an extreme extreme contrast so if you become like if you

01:12:40.020 were to become a premier of one of the provinces like you could you could spearhead some like

01:12:48.760 very interesting uh very important projects like um if you were

01:12:55.200 well if you're a premier quebec or premier of alberto like you might have a sense of

01:13:03.480 achievement that like you've really advanced the interests of your people that you've really

01:13:08.040 advanced your identity identity uh ontario is like a ruin so of course the the current

01:13:19.140 pre-Nearham Ontario, you look at his physical form and it's also a ruin.

01:13:24.020 Like Doug Ford might not survive another 10 years.

01:13:27.960 God help us.

01:13:28.760 He does.

01:13:29.940 But you look at the federal government.

01:13:34.560 It's like, why the hell would you want to be in charge of that?

01:13:38.660 You know, you're going to be spent.

01:13:40.800 You're not an important person.

01:13:42.300 Like, you aren't, like, actually, actually, like, prominent in any, like, international sense of it.

01:13:52.260 Like, you're crippled internally because all the provinces have all this power relative to you.

01:13:58.480 Like, the Canadian Prime Minister has no authority to set any policies with regards to health or education or several other topics.

01:14:07.320 topics that canada is functionally a vetoocracy wherein the power is like so divided that uh

01:14:16.340 that you can't really reform much of anything and the culture of the country and the internal

01:14:24.100 divisions with the country are such that basically your entire term aside from the usual like

01:14:30.500 political nightmare of like calculating everything out to appease various special interest groups

01:14:37.440 and like um constantly be wrestling with your public approval uh the entire

01:14:42.960 the entire country itself is such that if you like try to achieve any grand project you're just

01:14:50.760 going to set off one fact one corner of the country which does have the power to like completely

01:14:55.700 cripple you and you're going to be spending your entire term historically most prime ministers have

01:15:00.740 spent their entire term setting out like little regional fires we've had like two independent

01:15:08.540 track randoms um a terrorist movement in the 70s uh a constitutional crisis in the 90s followed by

01:15:17.320 another independent referendum like like brian mulroney was technically like one of the most

01:15:23.940 successful prime minister is he got like naffed in this like big restructuring of the national

01:15:29.460 level economy going and every canadian hates him for it you know you know it's like oh you ruined

01:15:36.440 the country right or ruining it's like he's the only one who like actually did anything

01:15:41.880 anything uh trudeau he created this cultural change which

01:15:50.080 like basically destroy the country like the only reason you'd want to be prime minister is if you

01:15:56.620 want to like achieve that power to commit evil with it like that's the only way that like you'd

01:16:02.880 get anything um this is why the trudeaus are so prominent within canada because um trudeau senior

01:16:09.980 was like like a closet of homosexual and communists like to the point where u.s intelligence firms for

01:16:16.400 like were like one declaring canada like a middle power fire whatnot between far too friendly with

01:16:26.100 castro you know yeah exactly that they were like like his loyalty to to nato and the west itself

01:16:34.060 was incredibly suspect of course he spent his time like tearing down the mark and then his like

01:16:40.720 faking gay version of canadian identity you have the nightmare of like poutine and maple

01:16:48.260 maple leaves and beavers and and a canadian is a canadian is a canadian

01:16:53.840 we're trying to bank really hard onto like the anglo-franco or like somebody equally with a

01:17:05.700 foot in both worlds of the english and the french that kind of like mythical figure that

01:17:12.220 canadian politics is a long spot here's the thing though like that mythical figure with

01:17:20.620 a foot in both both camps we have that they're called anglo quebecers they're called like the

01:17:27.460 bilingual class of montreal and they're the worst people in all the country like uh like they're a

01:17:35.020 lots of people i didn't realize there were many of them left i thought that the linguistic

01:17:39.660 sorting was almost complete i mean i've met english speakers in montreal but a lot of them

01:17:46.600 have have left a lot of them stayed they've adjusted themselves but like like that class

01:17:53.880 of people the bilingual class like like the montreal the quebecois who like learned english

01:18:01.720 did everything or the anglo beckers who like define themselves off of quebec despite the fact

01:18:07.880 they're like quebec tried that and could plunge them cleanse them they're all bureaucrats in the

01:18:13.960 federal government like that's what they do for a living that's their main industry is the federal

01:18:18.980 government la percolating through all these roles that require a bilingual person person to fill

01:18:26.280 And, no, you can only hire me to fulfill this role within this mediocre, nowhere federal government of this, like, E-tier country.

01:18:38.780 You can only hire me because I speak both English and French to a fluent enough standard.

01:18:45.440 You have to hire me for, like, the crappy CBC job that these people are, like, the parasites.

01:18:52.640 they're like finding

01:18:54.760 Quebec and the rest of the country

01:18:57.700 together because they get to siphon money

01:18:59.680 out

01:19:00.080 out of the bastard

01:19:03.320 amount they create

01:19:04.980 they're the parasite

01:19:05.840 you know they're the lost

01:19:08.860 plaga

01:19:09.560 zombie virus

01:19:12.560 that's been injected

01:19:14.060 if only it was that cool though

01:19:16.660 that's been injected into

01:19:18.800 Frankenstein's monster to bring it to life

01:19:21.100 you know

01:19:22.500 they're they're just feeding while they're now now you've got me picturing now just like

01:19:27.520 that every canadian at a certain point will have their head like come into two and like

01:19:33.420 bladed tentacles will emerge uh to slice and dice any hapless bystanders you can't just be throwing

01:19:41.500 like an awesome analogy like that out and have it uh just sit there that's why make sure whenever

01:19:50.500 one of these like upper middle

01:19:52.580 class Canadians all suddenly speaks

01:19:54.440 fluent French. All of a

01:19:56.660 suddenly I'm like, fluent

01:19:58.500 unaccident French. All of a sudden I've

01:20:00.620 just seen them

01:20:01.680 Their head is split open.

01:20:05.200 The paneling peristite

01:20:06.480 of this like

01:20:08.120 normal face bear trap.

01:20:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:20:13.360 Oh, oh, you're

01:20:14.640 a monster between English

01:20:16.840 and French. You're a half-breed.

01:20:18.780 You're a

01:20:19.260 you're a

01:20:21.400 you're a skin changer

01:20:22.760 you're a shapeshifter

01:20:24.080 a wendigo

01:20:25.980 like

01:20:26.520 this is

01:20:29.800 like I can never be truly anti-semitic

01:20:32.920 because

01:20:33.360 nothing that has ever been said about the Jews

01:20:37.100 could possibly be worse

01:20:38.500 of when I think of bilingual Canadians

01:20:40.640 yeah I guess that's the question

01:20:47.300 is when was the last

01:20:48.580 canadian prime minister that did not speak french did stephen harper speak french

01:20:54.800 oh yeah yeah uh every every politician can uh has like a linguistic a linguistic requirement

01:21:04.200 you need the french vote to have a chance at the highest office yeah no that that's been like um

01:21:12.920 um that's part of the reason paulia was selected for the leadership is because um

01:21:19.880 even if he's from alberta he's got the he's got the french name yeah yeah he's a he's an

01:21:28.320 actually i don't think he's ethnically french because he was adopted so he might be like a

01:21:33.800 holy so pierre is his adoptive name then yeah yeah he was raised by like french school teachers

01:21:41.360 in alberta which is like odd odd life's background for sure yeah which is like

01:21:50.660 like weirdly promising for the albertan nationalists because he might like trick

01:21:57.720 trick eastern canada into voting for them but like feel no loyalty to them this is the dream

01:22:04.640 of the of the eternal albertant but uh like indian politics is like such a mess and like um

01:22:13.820 basically you can see the stuff from like christia freeland and others where they're like

01:22:20.820 dreaming of turning canada into like a globalist ukraine against trump's america in the role of

01:22:28.220 russia that like they're going to turn it into an economic bureaucratic bridgehead to like

01:22:35.180 screw with america and like christina freeland has even used like null touristic language like

01:22:43.040 as long as we're allied with the british they have nuclear weapons i can check the americans

01:22:48.000 and it's like completely you completely laughable in terms of the uh global geosecurity alliance

01:22:55.380 against america like all all trump would have to do is declare trudeau a tyrant and that he

01:23:04.580 intends to try him for crimes committed during lockdowns and like right when canadians would

01:23:12.100 overthrow the government with canadian arms for with american arms for trump like like trump just

01:23:20.000 has to like threaten the possibility that like someone at the federal government could be held

01:23:26.620 accountable for their crimes and canadians themselves would overthrow the federal government

01:23:32.360 like it's it's one of the most despised governments in the world which is like in in like the nato

01:23:40.380 western alliance which is like saying a lot with how how despise most global discover and sorry

01:23:47.600 Like, like, there's a real question as to whether whether Canada, the UK, France, Germany, or or whichever country is going to collapse into like a constitutional and national crisis the second the second the Ukrainian government collapses.

01:24:08.680 yeah i mean there's there's uh there's history there as well that uh is probably too much

01:24:19.180 history for us to get into in the space of one single podcast episode i certainly know somebody

01:24:25.000 who will uh talk at long long length uh with you on that exact topic though oh yes uh i i think i

01:24:34.080 know who you're talking about i'm meaning to to get him on pick his brain yeah i think he was

01:24:40.840 interested in a different topic though but potential future podcast guest absolutely

01:24:48.380 absolutely anyway have we exhausted the 20th century i guess we have we've gone from 1899

01:24:57.800 all the way to 1999

01:24:59.140 I guess one final note

01:25:02.200 is if you're

01:25:03.900 attempting to look this up make sure

01:25:06.000 you get the one with the word

01:25:07.900 the in front of it because

01:25:10.220 searching for this film

01:25:12.020 gets a lot of interference from a

01:25:14.100 1934 film which is

01:25:16.000 just called 20th Century

01:25:17.380 which is about a railway

01:25:20.140 line called the 20th Century

01:25:22.060 Limited

01:25:22.460 it's about well

01:25:25.540 just i've actually seen that one as well but uh it's one of those really old screwball type

01:25:32.440 comedies probably not as funny as this but uh interesting historical artifact but nothing to

01:25:39.460 do with canada so really only worth mentioning uh to note that this is if you're attempting

01:25:45.720 to look up this movie make sure to put a the in front of the title yes uh i actually shocked that

01:25:54.220 The Canadian historical film is not the 20th century film about a train.

01:25:59.860 Like, that would be by the entire epoch of early Canada's

01:26:08.020 bind by the struggle for, like, braiding rail links

01:26:11.480 to bind this completely artificial stretch of North America

01:26:17.520 together into a political unit.

01:26:22.040 Oh, yeah.

01:26:23.100 Well, I guess this one just happens to be named after, again, the actual 20th century limited passenger train between New York and Chicago, and therefore had to be, by necessity, American.

01:26:39.260 It wasn't taking a route from New York to Chicago that happened to pass through Ontario or anything.

01:26:45.160 Right, right.

01:26:45.880 It's a very cool looking train, though, so as not to get too far afield.

01:26:51.360 just

01:26:53.160 one final note on the film

01:26:55.540 The Twentieth Century is that

01:26:57.060 it happens to

01:26:59.260 in that like

01:27:01.660 expertly executed

01:27:03.700 parody that manages

01:27:05.480 to take on all the qualities

01:27:07.520 of the original manages to capture

01:27:09.780 the

01:27:10.420 overly earnest

01:27:13.640 presentation of Canadian

01:27:15.860 history like

01:27:17.400 when I discovered

01:27:18.500 on the

01:27:20.240 entertainment options on a WestJet

01:27:23.440 flight, a collection of Canadian

01:27:25.100 heritage minutes, I said

01:27:27.060 something like, I've got

01:27:29.420 to see these to see for myself

01:27:31.240 what this is

01:27:32.800 doing a take on, and just like this

01:27:35.540 extremely

01:27:37.200 like, officially condoned

01:27:39.000 way that Canada represents

01:27:41.380 its history to itself

01:27:42.980 tends to be a lot like

01:27:45.400 oh

01:27:46.620 this size unless they

01:27:48.660 practice a high degree of

01:27:50.880 compartmentalization again

01:27:52.840 oh

01:27:54.500 never mind that

01:27:57.000 uh

01:27:58.220 in any case uh just

01:28:00.940 a

01:28:01.840 extremely kind of

01:28:04.880 contrived way

01:28:06.940 that they managed to like within

01:28:08.900 the span of a single minute

01:28:10.420 portray something that

01:28:12.780 is taken

01:28:14.920 officially to be of historical

01:28:17.420 importance in Canada, like

01:28:18.840 the invention of insulin.

01:28:21.600 We invented the Avro

01:28:22.960 arrow, and then canned it.

01:28:26.640 We exiled the Acadians.

01:28:30.640 That's

01:28:31.400 part of our Canadian history.

01:28:33.740 I say are.

01:28:35.120 Have you ever seen the

01:28:36.740 American

01:28:38.120 history documentaries about

01:28:40.920 the Civil War, or like

01:28:42.600 the film Gettysburg?

01:28:44.920 and ever thought wow they're laying this on like really thick they're really making the music swell

01:28:51.260 and they're really really lingering over this this is almost embarrassing and awkward awkward you

01:28:57.220 know like like uh keep your pants on come on come on this is ridiculous imagine that level of of

01:29:06.020 historical like sentimentalism and like self-importance and and like lionization

01:29:14.660 for like someone inventing a new type of paper clip or someone in or someone uh publishing a

01:29:26.820 news newspaper or someone doing the most innocuous ordinary like boring things that happen in any

01:29:35.380 country country but this person was canadian and they like did something ever so so minor like uh

01:29:43.920 i think they had a history minute for like carrie fox and that's like the only one that ever like

01:29:51.320 honoli worked because like the man ran like 10 000 miles on one leg but like like aside from that

01:30:02.400 like like these are like complete self-parodies in and of themselves like people would try to

01:30:08.140 joke about canadian heritage minutes and like the jokes would be less ridiculous than the actual

01:30:14.920 than the actual filmic versions as is perhaps this movie although it gets pretty close

01:30:22.220 yeah well this one is very intentionally like trying to create the self-tart version of canada

01:30:31.100 but going even deeper uh they they do they do make an ice flow joke yeah as part of the lasting

01:30:40.380 south fact contribution of if you care whatsoever about this family you will take her out to the

01:30:46.840 ice flow and leave her there uh there there are several moments like at uh king livery walks

01:30:57.460 around for part of the film hiding his place in a cardboard bag

01:31:03.140 a brown paper bag to hide his shame it's it has to be seen to be believed the visuals of the film

01:31:14.800 are just extraordinary i'm looking at the screenshots again la it i had it seared into

01:31:21.220 my eyeballs and i'm still taken aback so if it gets again just look up uh the 20th century film

01:31:29.620 and look at the stills of it and you will you may never look you may never look at a cactus the same

01:31:38.180 way again no certainly not yes but so it's not to give too much else away uh we've spoken a little

01:31:50.060 bit on the film the 20th century and quite a lot about canadian politics in general

01:31:56.480 uh but so as not to give everything away uh just if anything we've said here

01:32:06.000 saltan do you have any projects that you'd like to redirect the listener to

01:32:16.400 not at the moment no uh all right then to yep all right then signing off with

01:32:26.600 salt in our man man of mystery stay glorious out there dear listener

01:32:31.860 that was excellent thank you so much thank you yeah i was uh surprised it seems like

01:32:43.940 Well, do you feel like you got re-energized?

01:32:46.240 Because it seems like you were able to go on at a reasonable amount of length for quite a lot of that.

01:32:53.780 Uh, yeah, yeah, no, you get me spurting and I will, I will go.

01:32:59.340 Oh, yeah.

01:33:00.920 Get me in solving godforsaken cursed land and I will, I will find the energy to curse it again.

01:33:09.480 Yes, indeed.

01:33:10.300 War. A foreign menace emerges, and the fate of our country hangs in the balance.

01:33:20.700 Our troops spring into action.

01:33:22.780 You shall fight for all that is right, and you will not stop until the world is perfect.

01:33:27.920 But could one man be destined to save our great nation?

01:33:31.780 Never has the dream been more vivid, my dear son.

01:33:36.380 You shall govern this dominion.

01:33:40.240 And now I come, give your mother a kiss.

01:33:50.120 Dear young sirs, today's examination shall establish who among you is best equipped with those essential talents to lead our fledgling nationality into the 20th century.

01:34:00.440 Mr. King, when you become the Prime Minister, will you make tuberculosis against the law?

01:34:11.360 You know I'll try my best, sweetheart.

01:34:15.720 I want you to follow me.

01:34:18.300 Yes, Doctor.

01:34:19.800 One, two, three.

01:34:26.680 My eldest daughter is returning to Toronto.

01:34:29.640 I'd like very much if you and she would spend some time together.

01:34:35.180 This one's mine, she's.

01:34:37.640 So back off.

01:34:39.700 Remy knows.

01:34:45.120 Believe me, it'll be my pleasure to ruin you.

01:34:51.100 Please, Your Excellency, I'm begging you.

01:34:53.420 I like it when you beg.

01:34:54.640 I happen to believe that politics is about building a better world

01:35:00.420 You will either carry the fury of this country

01:35:05.040 Or you will be consumed by it

01:35:09.500 We are here today to introduce a young man

01:35:18.940 In whom I've taken a great deal of interest

01:35:21.900 who by his own excellence

01:35:26.140 has risen to the rank

01:35:28.160 a leader of tomorrow

01:35:30.800 who will guide this country

01:35:33.000 to its frightful glory

01:35:35.240 in the new century.

01:35:43.100 Good night, children.

Anarchonomicon - March 18, 2025

Ep 8 ＂The Twentieth Century＂ w⧸ Sultan

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