Alex of The Cost of Glory joins us to talk about his new podcast and what it's all about. We also discuss the Miami MK Ultra Dolphins and why it's a bad idea to match your clothes to your sneakers.
00:03:52.060And now I am a guy on the internet and a podcaster.
00:03:58.540I have the Cost of Glory podcast where basically I'm trying to showcase some of the greatest leaders from Rome and from Greece in their biographies, kind of in technicolor.
00:04:12.840But the object of the Cost of Glory is to kind of get people to maybe not fall in love with Julius Caesar, but at least appreciate who he really was.
00:04:24.980And people around him, like Pompey and Cicero, but also famous Greeks like Pericles.
00:04:32.860I said I was like a historian of Roman Greece and a student of philosophy.
00:04:38.380Well, there's this ancient philosopher, Plutarch, who I'm following, who basically thought that biography was the best way to kind of become a great man.
00:04:46.600Like you study biography, you study their lives.
00:04:49.500And it's not just about it kind of being great in magnitude, but also about being good, too.
00:04:54.780So that was like his angle on how you can become your true self.
00:05:04.340And I'm trying to kind of recreate that for people today who may have no point of reference for ancient Greece and Rome and try to make it accessible.
00:05:12.740And I do some other programs around this.
00:05:14.720Like we have a little online rhetoric school and we do retreats in Rome and Greece in a couple of weeks, actually, we're going.
00:05:22.620And so we're interested in those kind of like and for men, too, in particular, we do like men's only stuff, which I think is really hard to find these days.
00:05:31.420And that's one of the reasons I thought is important.
00:05:36.760And you're talking about strong leaders and you're talking about you leaving academia, right?
00:05:42.580Yeah, the men only part really does resonate with you leaving academia, because from the I mean, some previous studies that I saw, like I think women are way more likely to graduate from college.
00:05:53.080They do much better all throughout school.
00:05:55.320And it seems like a program that's aimed at them and has ignored men.
00:06:00.440But I have a question about what do you mean by you do a retreat about rhetoric with men?
00:06:25.560And it was this kind of discipline that was developed in first in the great democratic cities of of ancient Greece, especially Athens, where public speaking was the quintessential skill for success in life, especially in the public arena.
00:06:44.580You know, persuading assemblies and courtrooms and and it wasn't just about kind of like, you know, developing confidence as a speaker and persuading people.
00:06:53.720It's it also grew into this whole art of like developing your character for public life, too.
00:07:00.480And and so it it's it's a discipline that also encompasses the study of history, because, you know, a lot of what you do in a great political speech then as now is is to draw on great historical examples and inspire people with them.
00:07:15.740You have to kind of build that data bank and so what what we think is really lacking in my friends and I in education is this like emphasis on becoming a public man through cultivating the ability to, you know, speak in front of crowds.
00:07:32.020And so we we do we go and we see some sites in, you know, the morning, for example, and then in the afternoon, we just like have debates and and impromptu speeches and study some of the, you know, the the techniques by which you can persuade, analyze the occasional speech, have like Jeffersonian dinner kind of experiences where we just like enjoy male camaraderie.
00:07:57.640But in a serious vein, where we're kind of like standing up and making arguments and debating things of interest.
00:08:02.980And it's it's so it's kind of like fun, but also self-development at the same time.
00:08:07.660And I think that's what one of the things that we've lost.
00:08:10.860We used to have institutions like this.
00:08:16.240Toastmasters used to be like super cool and I don't know, like like a fraternity almost.
00:08:22.020But if you go now, it's that's not the vibe at my local Toastmasters.
00:08:25.680I mean, it's useful, but it's not the same thing.
00:08:28.280And so you can see there is there is a huge need for this.
00:08:33.520And you could see people trying to fill that void.
00:08:35.920But you get weird stuff like somebody just mentioned the men in the river holding each other like where they grab each other and they scream in each other's faces and then they sob and they embrace each other.
00:08:48.080It's it's almost like this masochistic kind of a thing where you're you're paying a dude to scream in your face and then belittle you.
00:08:57.540And then and then you have an emotional breakdown with what Alex seems to be talking about here with with biographies are learning about the different archetypes of men and how to embody them.
00:09:08.240And these guys, I mean, it's all over the place.
00:09:11.720People are embodying female archetypes.
00:09:15.380Yeah, the male archetype is already kind of fractured in the minds of most young people where they don't really know what it is.
00:09:30.340You get like an Andrew Tate who has like, you know, some redeemable qualities.
00:09:33.720But then he's also telling you have sex with the Hiram of women.
00:09:37.600The Lamborghini is the most important thing.
00:09:40.060You know, he's not got a family that he's raising or anything like that.
00:09:42.820It's just it's just this like really cartoonized version of masculinity.
00:09:47.660I think it's important what what you're going to tell us probably today.
00:09:50.220Can we can we go through the common archetypes that were in ancient Greece from the actual philosophers that we probably should be drawing some inspiration from?
00:10:47.540He has the choice to either live a life of peaceful obscurity, a long, prosperous life back in his home country.
00:10:59.220And he actually thinks about leaving the battle at some point.
00:11:01.260He gets insulted by Agamemnon, the kind of leader of the Greeks at Troy.
00:11:06.060And it's like, screw you guys, I'm going home.
00:11:08.960I'm going to go live my long, happy life with, you know, wealth and hot women.
00:11:13.620But the other side of the choice for him is to have a short life, but everlasting glory.
00:11:21.500And and he eventually chooses the everlasting glory route.
00:11:25.380And famously, he gets shot in the heel by Paris later.
00:11:28.220This is after the narration of the Iliad.
00:11:30.560That's that's what happens to Achilles.
00:11:32.340And so that's one of these paradigms of like, you know, flaming out in this grand, you know, inferno of of of of excellence.
00:11:41.980For the sake of maybe a higher goal or maybe maybe it's, you know, on behalf of the Greeks, maybe it's kind of on behalf of your own reputation.
00:13:05.940And his wife has been there kind of fending off these suitors and kind of trying to stay faithful to Odysseus.
00:13:15.600And all of these men are around her saying, hey, baby, he's dead.
00:13:18.700You know, pick pick pick a winner, you know, and she kind of keeps them at bay.
00:13:23.840And meanwhile, Odysseus, his son, Telemachus, is, you know, he was an infant when Odysseus left.
00:13:30.460So they don't know each other, his son.
00:13:32.260And and and and so he comes back and he kind of clears the suitors out of his house and reclaims what is his.
00:13:40.820And it's a kind of a he's a model of like how, OK, dying in battle and glory is a good thing, but also like founding a legacy that's going to live on generation to generation to to reclaim what you built.
00:13:54.160You know, it's I think Odysseus is kind of a hero of like building this this society around a great household.
00:14:00.180So so these are like two two options in life that I think are equally valid and and maybe suited to different times and different characters.
00:14:13.940Sometimes there's no great war to fight and you you build a legacy.
00:14:17.340And there's many more archetypes like the the philosopher archetype embodied by a guy like Socrates questioning the the kind of corrupt values of his society, rejecting the whole.
00:14:33.260Game, the kind of roulette table of honors that seems to promote people up to high office that don't deserve it and don't don't really know any any better how to run a state than than your average Joe on the street and kind of getting ridiculed and eventually murdered or executed by your own people for that reason.
00:14:56.400And, you know, one could spin out spin off many examples, but I think that one one of the big takeaways that people, you know, the classics used to be this foundation piece of education in the West in America as well as Britain.
00:15:10.740And, you know, I got a little bit of classics when I was younger, but I kind of got to college.
00:15:15.160I felt like I realized that I knew nothing of what people were supposed to know 100 years ago.
00:15:20.660So sometimes somehow I discovered this, what I think it gave you is this library of of examples to choose from of like manly excellence, various manly excellence.
00:15:32.140Yes, scaffolding that you could kind of pick your path.
00:15:35.180And I think we've lost that and we're kind of grasping at straws now.
00:15:38.380This is why you get these weird, you know, scream into a pillow, sweat lodge men's retreat experiences like what is masculinity?
00:15:44.840And, you know, ask, ask, ask, ask a psychology professor what what masculinity is and, you know, maybe they'll come up with something, but it's not it's not grounded in this deep historical experience.
00:16:13.080Because of a thing that I think is only allowed to propagate when you remove strong male archetypes, in other words, the very thing that's rotting academia from the inside out right now, and we've been watching this for a while, is a thing that.
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00:16:55.440That exists and couldn't exist without you creating this idea of toxic masculinity, without you shaming men for being men pretty effectively for the better part of almost two decades.
00:17:11.740I guess technically you could trace it back.
00:17:17.040And now this thing that you have escaped, it's leaving academia, it's entered the real world, and it's affecting average people at their jobs and at their dinner tables.
00:17:33.540What exactly was the straw that broke the camel's back?
00:18:53.540They said other things and they, they eventually got, you know, they kind of assembled this list of grievances that had, you know, the typical thing, you know, white supremacy, you know, patriarchy, misogyny.
00:19:10.020But it was just like normal dudes trying to hold a business together, you know, and like, so, so, so, so untalented people would not get promoted.
00:19:24.120And, and so, you know, it, it, it, it, it, but I think that those, those accusations were kind of, you know, an excuse that was really about this resentment of, of like kind of male friendship and like strong leadership.
00:19:40.980Um, and, and, and also this kind of ideological programming that you get from basically K through 12 and a lot of even public schools.
00:19:51.800Um, some of these kids were kind of cushy private school educated, you know, at the typical kind of white leftist profile, uh, in, in the, you know, Ivy league environment.
00:20:02.840And, um, there, there was eventually like a, an open letter published, you know, decrying all of the crimes of the, the Institute.
00:20:10.840And, um, we, we were involved in, with, um, a lot of the top classics programs in the U S and in the UK too.
00:20:18.500And, you know, they were sending students to us in the summers.
00:20:35.180And, and so there, there was a cancellation and, um, I, I, I didn't suffer from it like it heavily, but one of my friends was the co-founder and he eventually got like forced out of this institution that he spent 10 years building.
00:20:49.240Um, it was, it was, uh, it made me so mad.
00:20:55.760So peak woke before the, the resistance started, you know?
00:21:00.360And, um, so that was kind of my personal experience of seeing, like seeing the character of a lot of the most, you know, respected, prominent classicists, uh, experts in Greece and Rome.
00:21:13.040And, you know, the gatekeepers, these Ivy league professors, you know, writing op-eds in the New York times, these kinds of people.
00:21:19.580And I'm like, can I ask you, does people suck?
00:21:30.120Um, it's, it's still worth, worth going to if, if they run, they run tours.
00:21:35.880I think it's, it's, um, it hasn't, it's, it's struggled to kind of recover from this.
00:21:41.420Um, but, uh, my, I, both, there were two co-founders.
00:21:45.300One of them was a conservative Catholic and that was, you know, why he became the kind of Girardian scapegoat,
00:21:51.900but the focal point of all the ire because he was kind of an unapologetic conservative.
00:21:56.260And then the other guy was, was a sort of New York kind of center left liberal guy and, uh, who has since moved and pushed like, you know, as he says, I, I was a liberal that got mugged by reality.
00:22:10.220And so he, um, he, he eventually is kind of pulling, pulling himself to the right.
00:22:16.180I shouldn't say that too out loud because he tries to be kind of conciliatory, but, um, so it, it still exists, but it's, you know, it's, it, it doesn't have the cachet that I think it used to, um, hope my friend will forgive me for saying that.
00:22:30.120I think he knows that it just did a lot of damage.
00:22:32.720And now I think a lot of the professors after suddenly woke is like not cool or it's, you know, it's questionable.
00:22:38.880A lot of people are like apologizing to him and, um, for, for how it all went.
00:22:44.660I, I just, the whole thing gave me this impression of like a lack of character among, among elite academics, you know, and this, this maybe ties into the general objection that I had, which was, I just felt like there was, there was no leadership in the discipline.
00:23:00.860And, and, and, you know, classics is this, this used to be this grand, you know, super prestigious, like Greeks, Greek and Latin are really hard to learn.
00:23:11.680You got to work hard and, uh, very meritocratic, you know, um, and, and very culturally influenced, influential.
00:23:19.780I mean, look at all the sword and sandal movies, you know, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, that kind of comes from this tradition of people knowing stuff about Greece and Rome and, uh, knowing what the great stories were.
00:23:30.000Um, and, and like, we've, we've lost so much of that discipline has shrunk so much that, you know, budgets are getting cut.
00:23:39.580Programs are getting terminated and all the people with these cushy jobs in the Ivy league schools are like, oh, you know what our real problem is, is, is, is, you know, colonialism, white supremacy.
00:23:51.400And yeah, like you aren't, you're, you're, your discipline is not going to exist.
00:23:56.460And you are basically, I felt like I was on a ship where the captains were, you know, um, drilling holes in the bottom of the boat and getting drunk and saying, well, it's good if the ship sinks because it's a bad ship.
00:24:08.860Um, so I don't know, it, it seems futile to me.
00:24:12.700Has there, uh, I mean, I, through your studies, has there been any kind of, uh, similar point in Roman history where people have done this to themselves on purpose?
00:24:24.880I think that, um, I think that, that modern leftism is really a novel phenomenon that there's a, there's a, there's a right and left in Roman politics.
00:24:34.840Um, but like the left wing of Roman politics is Julius Caesar.
00:24:39.700It's like very manly, soldierly, uh, it's like populists.
00:24:44.940It's like tough guys, tough, tough soldiers versus, you know, squishy aristocrats who are, you know, sitting on their laurels.
00:24:55.000Um, and, and that's just not how it's, it's almost the opposite today.
00:24:59.900Uh, so, you know, I'd have to think hard about, but there are, there are, you know, there's patterns of resentment for sure.
00:25:07.040Um, in, uh, in, in, in Roman history and in Greek history, you see, you see the kind of like sort of left wing.
00:25:14.940Resentment, the kind of hatred of greatness, uh, or the hatred of the powerful, uh, always throughout history.
00:25:25.040Thanos is this, this emotion that, that makes people want to just like not, not follow the great, but hate them because they're powerful and suspect that, oh, if they got up in that position, they must have bribed somebody.
00:25:40.240It's just really toxic to a culture when, when you get those kinds of divides.
00:25:43.740Yeah, because it's a reductionist point of view, right?
00:25:47.060You didn't get there because of hard work and discipline and good ideas.
00:25:50.400You got there because you are a member of an exclusive white male patriarchy that only promotes from within.
00:25:58.340And if you're outside of the club, then you can't get in.
00:26:00.980And what that does is it diminishes any great achievement.
00:26:03.800And then when you look back in history and you see anything that resembles that, then all of the history that built the very country that allows you all the things that you have was built off of exclusivity to a white patriarchy group, right?
00:26:17.100And so it has no merit, despite how much the fruits of, of the tree that it is have, have, you know, been good.
00:26:26.760None of it has any merit and all of it should be torn down.
00:26:29.920And, but that's the thing too, is, you know, flawed argument, but it gets even more flawed when they go and what should it be replaced with?
00:26:39.340And there is no real idea about what it should be replaced with.
00:26:42.660The idea is kind of just like diversity.
00:26:44.720I think there's an idea. They have a clear idea of what they want to replace with.
00:26:48.540They just won't necessarily say it out loud because I don't think they have the idea.
00:26:52.580Like these, these average, the people like, let's say, you know, I've been arguing on Facebook for a couple of days with people.
00:27:01.340They're like the people that are the professors within the college understand exactly what they want.
00:27:07.320I don't know if they're so explicit with the general population.
00:27:10.600They might be with their, their students.
00:27:12.760Yeah. Their cohorts, right. In private sessions when they're speaking about where, you know, they ultimately want this to go and they'll say it in jest.
00:27:20.240And we're seeing a lot of that now it's manifesting as actual violence on the world stage.
00:27:24.180I mean, it's, it's manifesting as, uh, I think it's, I think what a lot of them have said and what they've promoted has manifested as a celebration of what happened last week.
00:27:34.920You'll see people kind of like laughing, smiling. And it's like, oh, which is the normal talking about this for a while.
00:27:39.560It's the exact thing that you would expect to get from something that, that has its roots in just disdain.
00:27:45.340Well, it's, if you have disdain for the white male patriarchy, then obviously you will celebrate when the thing that you disdain is murdered in, in grotesque fashion on the world stage.
00:27:55.560Would you say that that's the embodiment of Achilles, but on this like weird perverse left-wing side, because they are.
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00:28:26.900Seeking glory through, it's almost like war, whereas now the people on the right are still trying to embody, I guess, the Odysseus side where they're, let's engage in debate.
00:28:40.460Let's have this conversation. How can we organize a structured society?
00:28:44.460And I'm struggling right now to see, like, I'm struggling to determine which way is the right way or does one lead to another?
00:28:52.540Yeah, no, I do think that a lot of the left-wing leaders now kind of fantasize about, you know, murals of them painted on brick walls, like Che Guevara-esque, you know, like, man of the people, yes.
00:29:10.840But I don't know. I kind of go with Dave on this. I think that there is a real lack of vision fundamentally. And there's just not a hopeful future. You see kind of center-left people saying, ah, we need to get back to abundance.
00:29:28.220And, you know, there's this recent book about this. And I don't know. I don't think that they're really willing to lean into building a future enough to have that vision.
00:29:42.220Because to build any ambitious vision, you need stuff like hierarchy and merits and structure and patriarchy, what they would call patriarchy.
00:29:52.220So, yeah, I think that what, and one of the other things that they've done to kind of hamstring any attempt at building a better society is to make people kind of allergic to history.
00:30:08.700Like, that's the practical outcome of this, as you put it. It's logically incoherent, the idea that the entire foundations of society are built on this evil, you know, racist patriarchy.
00:30:24.380Therefore, there's no reason to look at it and learn from it because all you're learning from is monsters.
00:30:29.020Exactly. And that's precisely the thing that you need to do to build an ambitious future.
00:30:35.780You need to study the past, not just study it for lessons, but, like, to get inspired by it.
00:30:40.720This is the kind of paradox of studying history and what I would call the classical spirit.
00:30:47.860You know, you look back into the past and you find these examples of men whose achievements still echo hundreds of years later.
00:30:55.320You're like, all right, how can we do things that will echo hundreds of years later?
00:30:58.280Well, you don't really get that kind of expanded imagination if, like, year one is 1967.
00:31:07.860You know, it's just really fascinating because it actually shows itself in the physical, in our architecture.
00:31:14.100We're like, we actually can't build anything.
00:31:16.740Yeah, our McDonald's, which is now just a gray cube with, you know, some wood paneling.
00:31:22.960And I would love to talk about, you know, the architectural implications because I think that that's huge.
00:31:29.040I think there's something to the psyche when you look around and you see these beautiful, inspirational things and you want to achieve for higher.
00:31:35.280But I also want to say that it's fascinating to me that we have made a relatively cushy society.
00:31:41.240And we've now allowed people to have such a disdain for the white male patriarchy to the extent that they're willing to remove it, not just statues, not just history, but also by way of violence.
00:31:56.360But these same people, because of the comforts of society, have zero relationship with violence.
00:32:03.740You're talking about leaders and warriors, and we are being cast aside by the pudgy and the disgusting.
00:32:15.140I mean, honestly, that's what it really is in so many fashions.
00:32:18.640It is morbidly obese individuals who have never been in close proximity to violence, wishing violence upon others and are even willing to engage in it.
00:32:29.860And I think that is what happens when you don't have a healthy relationship with violence, when you don't really know what it is, when your violence comes from the media, when you see it in your movies, when you see it in your shows,
00:32:41.620when the 90-pound blonde white chick does a backflip and kicks the crap out of a dude in an action film and you go, that doesn't even make sense, that can't happen, it actually lulls, it hypnotizes these morons into a false understanding of the realities of violence.
00:32:59.560And so they're willing to advocate for it, they're willing to engage in it, you know, to some degree, and I guess there's just not been very many rude awakenings.
00:33:09.460It's just very bizarre to me to watch this phenomenon.
00:33:11.960I've been a martial artist for a long time, and as somebody who has an intimate relationship with violence, I don't engage in it in real life, because the implications are pretty well understood.
00:33:26.880It's actually terrible when you watch somebody's head bounce off the concrete and they start seizing and you go, oh no, a human life is in jeopardy now, but these people don't have that.
00:33:37.400And they are glorifying it, they're calling for it, and when it happens, they celebrate it.
00:33:41.720Yeah, it's, I think that's a good way to frame it, and to me, as horrific as the events of the last week have been with the assassination, which affected me very deeply.
00:33:54.780You know, the one bright light on this, besides the fact that I feel this is galvanizing a lot of good people, serious people, and making a lot of people kind of center left say, what the hell, what party am I, who are these people?
00:34:14.960You know, that the left wing right now, they've totally lost the kind of spirited, strong young men, and example after example in history shows, I mean, even in the 1960s, the spirited, kind of manly young men are the revolutionary element.
00:34:39.120Like, if you want to actually achieve some kind of dramatic change and, like, have a fighting chance at some kind of inner turmoil, you have to have those people.
00:34:49.700And that's precisely the people that the left have been pushing away for years, and there's just not a lot of, like, vigor.
00:34:57.420It's kind of a Potemkin village, it's like a paper tiger now.
00:35:01.000And so, you know, I think that we're still going to see these probably, sadly, more kind of random acts of, you know, leftist-inspired violence.
00:35:10.840And I hope this is the last time, but it's like a dying animal clawing at, lashing out without a lot of, like, real effectiveness.
00:35:23.760I want to say this when it's, oh, go ahead, go ahead.
00:35:27.060When the animal's at its most dangerous, it's like it's in a corner.
00:35:29.940The idea of the transgender idea, I mean, this is also, if you really want to.
00:35:35.120Oh, now we're going to have to get off of YouTube.
00:35:37.900Yeah, and before we do, though, I do want to say on that topic, it's very strange to me that they don't have the wherewithal to realize that the trained individuals,
00:35:48.020the armed individuals, and the actual people who are capable of physical combat almost exclusively exist on the right.
00:35:56.420Well, there was a great meme going around of, like, it's like this really, it's like soyjack face, but his face, like, resembles a demon.
00:36:52.460You know, it kicks off and it's a knee to the forehead and the whole thing's over instantly.
00:36:56.960I think that's what they would find out.
00:36:58.100Anyway, before we do this, guys, if you want to continue watching this, patreon.com forward slash Nephilim Death Squad is where we're going.
00:37:05.000Otherwise, just give it about a week and it'll release for free on, you know, YouTube, etc.
00:37:11.040Yeah, I mean, what do you, what do you think about that, Alex, this idea that these people are, are poking and prodding the side that actually is, if there were any remnants of strong leaders and masculine men, they exist on the right.
00:37:29.320Yeah, I think that the, the, the rights, there's a post by Curtis Yarvin on this recently that the, you have distinguished being between violence and force.
00:37:42.820And the left's version of force is kind of, you know, grassroots political violence.
00:37:50.740The rights version of force is law and order.
00:37:53.400And, uh, I think that, that the response to, to Kirk has kind of shown like, you know, contrast the Floyd riots in, in 2020, you know, that we're, we're not seeing massive eruptions of, of violent mobs, but, um, but like calls for action.
00:38:11.340I mean, you can only call for action without seeing results for so long before people start to get like, oh, nothing's going on.
00:38:19.120We got to do something, but I, I don't know.
00:38:20.380I think that, that, that that's the response that people generally want on the right, like some kind of legitimate, maybe not military cracking, but like a legal reckoning, you know?
00:38:33.280Um, and so I, that's, it's kind of a difference in mindset, you know?
00:38:56.680Like this is, I think something that Jordan Peterson really nails the order, the distinction between order and chaos and the right wing, the masculine, the true masculine is order.
00:39:07.000It's that firm hand of like, when you grab your child and you're like, we're not doing that versus what I think the feminine thinks the masculine response should be.
00:39:16.460You see this a lot with, uh, lesbians who have like the highest violence rate against each other or women who are embodying this masculine tone to teachers, you know, people like that, where they'll, they'll overdo it.
00:39:28.620And they'll, they'll cross that line into what they think is supposed to be masculine.
00:39:32.820And it just turns out to be nasty violence.
00:39:35.040Like, like it's like a mass coming off, like a demon underneath.
00:39:39.820But yeah, there has to be a strong response from the Trump administration, which they have not had as of yet, but it's still, it'd been a couple of days.
00:39:46.660You have to satiate your side to keep them calm because if not, I don't know where this is going to go.
00:39:55.760And so I, you know, you're talking about, uh, order and, uh, order and, and chaos.
00:40:00.640What about the idea of order out of chaos, right?
00:40:03.300Um, you have historical precedent, um, you know, the Bolsheviks creating what, what looked like grassroots revolutions, uh, you know, to kind of disrupt the, the cultural fabric of a place.
00:40:15.520Uh, I wonder if there are examples within, uh, Rome that you could point to, but what do you think about the idea that this is a, a subverted, um, sort of, uh, uh, cultural manipulation to pit one wing against the other so that out of the chaos order could be birthed.
00:40:46.100Uh, I mean, I, uh, I, I, I try to talk to smart people, um, and, and figure out what's going on today, but I can, I can say about, about Rome that one of the distinctive features of the late Republic, which is a period that I am focusing on a lot in my, in my show is, um, that you can kind of hire a mob to, uh, to, to do something.
00:41:07.860You, you, you, you can hire a gang of thugs, but you can also kind of like pay a mob to, to show up and, and be, you know, the people, you know, clamoring against whatever and, and make it kind of seem grassroots without it.
00:41:23.060When it, when it's actually on the kind of payroll of some, some oligarch and, uh, you know, great example of this is the.
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00:41:58.640Um, the, well, the, all the late Republic, this is happening in the, in the kind of final years of, um, of the breakdown of the, the transition from Republic to Empire.
00:42:08.660Um, we'll go into it a little bit, but in particular, the, the Catalinarian conspiracy is a really interesting kind of place to zoom in on some of the,
00:42:18.460how these, um, how these patterns play out.
00:42:23.540So for, for just a little bit of background and, uh, kind of in a nutshell, what we're talking about, Rome is a collective government, right?
00:42:32.300They have consuls and praetors, elected officers.
00:42:36.740They have a kind of aristocratic council, the Senate, and, um, no one man runs the show.
00:42:44.840But after, um, kind of debate when the actual point happens as a 46 BC is a 31 BC, but basically Julius Caesar gets himself involved in this huge civil war, um, as a general of Rome, as, as one among many leaders of Rome.
00:43:04.300And by the end of it, he's kind of the, the most, he's by far the most powerful man in Rome, not clear that he wanted to establish a monarchy, but he might've been thinking that that was the solution to this kind of years of turmoil.
00:43:19.220And then it's, it's, he gets assassinated, of course, famously.
00:43:22.160And then his son, uh, son and adopted son, Octavian Augustus becomes the first emperor, um, by fighting some more civil wars.
00:43:30.760And that's this huge transition from, you know, this kind of collective government that the American founders really looked to for how we should establish our own constitution to this monarchy.
00:43:43.060That is what Jesus was born under, right?
00:43:46.080Like the, the emperor, you know, revered as a God and Christian martyrs saying, no, I will not burn incense before the emperor.
00:43:54.360And when they, you know, get thrown to the lions, that, that world was very different from Caesar's world.
00:44:00.180And so, um, one of the things that you have in the late Republic is this massive wealth inequality and, uh, you know, the, the, the top citizens of the oligarchy are getting huge troves of treasure from foreign wars.
00:44:19.880They're getting all kinds of, um, you know, political gifts given to them to, to plead the case of so-and-so provincial, um, they have all these clientele, just sweeping, um, sources of like political influence and revenue all across this huge, really Mediterranean wide empire.
00:44:38.780And then the poor people of Rome or the average people even are not getting a share of the cut, even like the kind of upper classes, but not high, like upper middle, let's say upper middle class versus the top tier.
00:44:53.280There's a massive chasm in, in power and influence.
00:44:57.040And so there's a lot of discontent about this inequality.
00:44:59.720And, um, and, um, and this, this man, Catiline, uh, famously tried to stage a kind of coup, a revolution.
00:45:08.680It's happened in 63 BC and, um, it failed.
00:45:14.660It got caught and, uh, you know, Catiline ends up dying in battle.
00:45:20.880But very interestingly, the, the people that were thought to be behind Catiline's revolts.
00:45:30.160So Catiline is this indebted aristocrat.
00:45:33.420He's sort of down on his luck, doesn't have a lot of money or influence.
00:45:37.780Um, but there, so there were powerful backers behind him who did have the money and influence.
00:45:42.340One of them is Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome.
00:45:45.980And another one is at, at least some people thought Julius Caesar himself, a young Julius Caesar.
00:45:52.880He's sort of mid thirties at this point, uh, kind of hasn't made his rise yet.
00:45:57.100Hasn't fought any of his great wars, but you know, people have got their eye on him.
01:12:09.620So, um, that's, I think that's where I think we should go after the stoicism thing has run its course.
01:12:16.620Like you can still be a stoic and then admire these guys and, and, you know, add something on top of it.
01:12:23.620It's interesting because, you know, there's no place to go after the stoicism.
01:12:28.620Uh, and what you're saying is a good direction, but it was in response to this subversion, this ideological subversion of America.
01:12:36.620And after you armed yourself with the tenants of stoicism, there was no battle to fight because the nature of the subversion was one that only took place in dialogue.
01:12:47.620And, and then they, they managed to effectively shut that dialogue down, right?
01:12:52.620So the dialogue was no longer taking place in the town square, but it's taking place on the internet where the censorship moderators can remove you from the conversation entirely.
01:13:03.620So, um, the stoicism should lead you almost to the public square of dialogue, right?
01:13:09.620To now express these ideas and these values, but then you're, you're being turned off.
01:13:53.620Do you think, do you think that's why there's been a concerted effort?
01:13:56.620I mean, we'll talk about like white men.
01:13:59.620Um, there's been a concerted effort to spike the idea of being white.
01:14:04.620Uh, people are not supposed to be proud of it.
01:14:06.620And then that gets mixed up with white pride.
01:14:08.620And, you know, obviously there are extremes of this, but we have a generation of people who.
01:14:13.620Are, I think that they were, or are still ashamed of either their skin color or what people have told them what they are and their, their fathers and their, their family are called the monsters and conquerors and racists and homophobes.
01:14:27.620Right. But now, now there's a movement in the other direction, which is kind of like these ideas of Aristotle.
01:14:33.620But I'm also careful with like, even with myself, with that idea of like, what do I deserve as, as a man?
01:14:41.620Because I know when I was younger, I might've thought I did not, you know, I was like, man, who am I to, to deserve this thing?
01:14:50.620And guess what? You're not going to get that thing because you're, you've already told yourself, like, I don't deserve this.
01:15:07.620You manifest, you get those nice things, but there is also a slippery slope of, I deserve, I am, therefore, and then your ego, like I, you've got to check.
01:15:20.620If you suppress that in a, in a, in a, let's say a race, like the white race enough, could you theoretically create the sentiment of supremacy as, as a disproportionate snapback?
01:15:32.620And this is what I struggled with recently where it's like, and you've seen it or I'm like, I got to dial it back because I'm like, I have, with things that I've created and then people who have, you know, kind of wronged me.
01:15:44.620In a sense, I was, I was very humble deal within dealing with them, but then the reality was, wait a second.
01:15:52.620I created the thing that you're using now for success, but I never threw it in your face, but I also have to realize that I created that thing.
01:16:24.620So one of the ways that he just kind of refines this concept of greatness of soul is to distinguish it.
01:16:32.620All of his virtues are kind of means between two extremes.
01:16:35.620So like courage is this mean between the extreme of cowardice on the one hand and like rashness on the other hand.
01:16:42.620And, and so greatness of soul is a mean between vanity on the one hand, and then what he calls smallness of soul, which we might say is humility.
01:16:54.620But I think actually real humility, even like Christian humility is about knowing fully who you are.
01:17:03.620And when you, when you look at yourself in relation to the omnipotent God, you realize you're, you're less than a worm, but you should also realize where you stand in relation to your fellow men.
01:17:15.620And all good things come from God, but you know, you might actually deserve that job more than the other guy.
01:17:20.620And, and, and to recognize that is not contradict humility.
01:17:25.620And so I think that greatness of soul can kind of actually probably should coexist with, with humility in that sense of like knowing what you, who you are, like having a really.
01:17:36.620Accurate opinion of your own capabilities and your own achievements and your own virtue, which people tend to overestimate.
01:17:44.620People tend to overestimate yes on, on the vanity end, but people also tend to underestimate it.
01:17:48.620And I think that actually the characteristic vice of our day has a lot to do with exactly what you were talking about.
01:17:54.620That people, you know, especially the sort of like white, especially males, probably especially white males have been told.
01:19:08.620So yeah, without that, if everybody is moving around with, you know, smallness of soul, then nobody is going and, and, and fighting the monster.
01:19:28.620And at least, at least the vanity, there's like some clay on the table you can work with.
01:19:32.620Like you can mold that into, into a proper kind of desire for, I, I, I should actually deserve this.
01:19:38.620Like somebody that, that person can have a conscience and say, all right, I got to actually earn this and they can learn from their mistakes.
01:20:10.620It seems that we've reached and given all of your historical context, um, a lot of people will look at, we were talking earlier before the show started.
01:20:22.620How often do you think about the Roman empire?
01:20:24.620And I, I would put a little caveat on that.
01:20:26.620And I say, most people, if they are, are thinking about the fall of Rome as it applies to the, the, you know, the American empire.
01:20:33.620Um, I think that that is probably been the droning thing that's been on people's mind.
01:20:38.620Um, but not, I mean, throughout this conversation, the parallels and not just this conversation, but ones we've had with Jeremy Ryan Slate and, you know, just thought about previously the, the correlation and between Donald Trump and Caesar.
01:20:57.620I think even the left nails it with like years ago when they did their play of Donald Trump being assassinated the way Caesar was, it's almost an admission of what they, what they're seeing and what's being played out.
01:21:09.620Um, and I, and I was telling you about that whole correlation.
01:21:12.620It's like the first emperor of Rome ushered in what was called the golden age.
01:21:16.620And, and Trump is talking about this golden age.
01:21:19.620And then he just happens to be the first sitting president at Caesar's superdome.
01:21:23.620He's the first president at a super bowl.
01:21:25.620Uh, so there's a lot of weird kind of like, um, themes, these themes and, and, and given the arc of history, it does seem that history has a tendency to, to rhyme.
01:21:34.620Uh, and so I don't, I mean, where do you put us in comparison?
01:21:40.620Do you have a lot of, um, optimism about the direction that America is headed, especially given recent events?
01:21:46.620Uh, or is history teaching you maybe to be more cautious with that optimism?
01:21:52.620Well, it can always blow up in your face.
01:21:55.620I, I tend to be an inveterate optimist by disposition, but I do think that we, you know, like if you ask people in Britain, we've got it better.
01:22:05.620We're, we're, we're like the last hope.
01:22:09.620Britain just had that, like, there's like millions of people marching in the streets of England right now.
01:22:16.620Uh, and it's fascinating to watch that unfold as well.
01:22:21.620And, and, uh, I think that they're, they're kind of looking to us to lead the way.
01:22:26.620And it's funny how the, the cultural direction is sort of switched across the Atlantic.
01:22:32.620But so I, the reasons for optimism don't necessarily involve a civil war like they do in Caesar's case.
01:22:42.620I think they, they don't and they shouldn't.
01:22:44.620Uh, but if, if you look at Trump versus Caesar, um, some interesting parallels include, you know, Caesar is a populist.
01:22:55.620He is building his constituency with the, the, the have nots, not necessarily the dirt poor.
01:23:02.620You can only do so much with the dirt poor, but it's with the kind of competent, you know, just middle class.
01:23:12.620Sons can be soldiers, go fight for Caesar, the, the, the middle to upper middle class versus the, the super elites.
01:23:21.620And he's building a really wide power base.
01:23:23.620So one of the things that he does, um, is to, to, to foster his rise that is sort of un-Trump like is he, he goes and he wages this great campaign in, in France.
01:23:37.620And he conquers basically all of France for Rome, the Gauls or this, you know, tribal people that, uh, had occasionally invaded Italy.
01:23:46.620And they actually sacked Rome 300 years before Caesar's day.
01:23:49.620So, you know, they were, they were a real formidable force.
01:23:52.620And, uh, Caesar found some excuse that they, you know, they were pushing some ally of Rome around and he kind of goes in there and he fights a battle.
01:24:01.620Establishes the beachhead kind of, it works out from there to kind of gradually conquer the place and make it seem almost like an accident as the Romans love to do in their conquests.
01:24:13.620They're just like, you know, defending their, the interests of their friends on every separate occasion, but it's an incredible achievement.
01:24:20.620And, um, you know, a lot of, a lot of lives lost, of course, but the Gauls love to fight battles just as much as the Romans.
01:24:28.620So, you know, it was a, it was a fair game, I think, um, to put it bluntly, but the, the, what this did for Caesar is it gave him this, this power base of, um, of people that respected him and saw his competence and maybe, and it kind of made a name for him.
01:24:45.620And I think Trump's rise was very different.
01:24:48.620Of course, you have the real estate empire and he's already kind of a, a celebrity in New York, even before he starts the apprentice, which just becomes this incredible kind of training ground for him to develop that like camera readiness.
01:25:04.620And, and, and, and the kind of meme power that he has kind of quick witted, you know, Twitter game that he's got, uh, so much of his like public persona that he had that.
01:25:34.620But, um, but I think that illustrates that.
01:25:38.620So Caesar's an anti-establishment figure.
01:25:40.620That's, that's, you could argue that's kind of leftward and, and Caesar's an heir of the Gracchi who are these great populists who wanted to redistribute land, not to the dirt poor again, but to the kind of left out middle classes.
01:25:52.620And that's a lot of what Trump has been doing.
01:25:57.620There's some interesting, uh, differences.
01:26:00.620So Caesar was, uh, an advocate of granting more citizenship to the, um, to these certain, you know, loyal provincials.
01:26:15.620Um, people in Italy and like Northern Italy that had not had Roman citizenship, uh, but had fought in his wars.
01:26:22.620He wanted to expand citizenship to them, but it wasn't about, you know, flooding Rome with, uh, with kind of dependent clients.
01:26:31.620Uh, that would be, you know, social, social program, uh, you know, spongers for, for the rest of their lives and like permanent political clients of the, of the party.
01:26:44.620But, you know, they were people that had, they were kind of from the upper classes.
01:26:47.620And, um, so I think the immigration or the citizenship issue is like plays out really differently in Rome.
01:26:55.620Uh, but, but the way that he ended up as the first man in Rome is because the oligarchy refused to accept him as a, like a legitimate deserver of his honors.
01:27:10.620Like they, you know, his enemies, especially Cato, he's off in Gaul fighting this incredibly, terrifically difficult war.
01:27:18.620Um, and he wants to come back and, you know, get the honor that he deserves from Rome.
01:27:26.620He wants a triumph, you know, big triumphal procession.
01:27:29.620And he wants to run for consul again in absentia.
01:27:33.620And, um, you know, we don't need to get into the constitutional details, but basically his enemies and, and his former friend Pompey say, no, you can't come back to Rome unless you basically lay down all of your armies and put yourself at the mercy of the current government.
01:27:50.620And, um, Caesar said, well, essentially you're, you're asking me to give like to, to, to concede all of the dignity that I earned from, from my conquests and you're, you're punking me.
01:29:20.620And, you know, the sort of thing that, I mean, it's, it's comparable to the way that, you know, if Trump had lost in 2024, you know, he would have, they would have hounded him in the courts.
01:29:32.620And he was, you know, a negative net worth of a billion.
01:30:05.620So, you know, there, since, since that happened, I think there's hope that we can perform things internally.
01:30:17.620But we have a lot more working against us than the Romans did because we have, you know, these civil conflicts tend to just eat away at the bonds of trust and, and culture already.
01:30:29.620But we've just been spending the past half of a century telling people they don't need to read history, telling people that the basic social institutions that have been around for millennia are corrupt and need to be rejected.
01:30:44.620You know, marriage and children and gender and all this stuff.
01:30:48.620I almost feel like a lot of rebuilding to do.
01:30:50.620I feel like we could do a lot of that rebuilding if we gave men back their spaces and, and we eliminated these sort of party line, ideological lines that separate us and keep us from talking.
01:31:04.620Honestly, and I know it sounds because it's a kind of kind of comedic bent to it.
01:31:08.620Get women out of the room, get these guys together.
01:31:12.620And I mean like, you know, the thin armed men with the ponytails that are blue, as well as military vet, get them in the same room and get them exchanging these ideas.
01:31:25.620The dialogue was kept from being, you know, had from, for a long time.
01:31:30.620Like I said, by these moderators, the public spaces, the public dialogue spaces, the town squares cannot be digital exclusively.
01:31:39.620They need to be physical rooms where I can sit down and share these ideas.
01:31:45.620And it needs to happen repeatedly until we can come to some sort of a general agreement where these bad ideas can go to die and good ideas can rise to the top.
01:31:56.620This, this, this sort of civil war thing is inevitable if we don't have spaces like the ones that, you know, were subverted that you were a part of previously and now are, are, are, you know, continuing to do.
01:32:08.620But Alex, do you think, do you think that 2024, um, by taking the reins of political power, do you think that that was enough?
01:32:18.620Because at the time I said, I don't want to sound like a, I guess I don't care if I sound like a political extremist, but I saw it and I said, yeah, that's the only way for this to go.
01:32:28.520Because if, uh, the right wing does not take back power, the left is playing for keeps here.
01:32:33.940I feel like we're at a point where if you, as a, as the right wing of politics, if you do not take power decisively for the, I don't know, for the, the, the time being.
01:32:47.720A generation, maybe it's, it takes a while, right?
01:32:53.980And it's a lot more difficult than Rome because we have the apparatus that we're using now, which I, I firmly believe like an, just an MK ultra, uh, program, this form of mind control, this soft form of mind control through psychedelics, through medicine, through whatever, whatever you want to call it through programming television.
01:33:11.320And it is, I mean, man, it is ingrained in our culture and it's not fair to even hold an election and, and, and tell these people to make a conscious decision.
01:33:21.940But the point is, is that, you know, Donald Trump wins this election for another four years, you have control.
01:33:29.620He's still battling within, and I don't even really know his true intention, but is that, is that far enough to avoid, uh, a civil war?
01:33:39.460Because it seems like that quelled it for a time where you can kind of hold this together.
01:33:45.080And it's like, you know, it's not easy to hold this thing.
01:33:47.680It's struggling, but then we have another four, we got another election cycle coming up as a matter of fact, in two, by 2026, like these issues that we should be dealing with are going to be off the table.
01:33:58.100And it's just going to be, how could I get elected the next time?
01:34:00.600Or how could my, uh, you know, JD Vance get elected for the next.
01:34:16.260It's why I'm like, you know, you start looking at monarchy and he was like, yeah, I get, I, I, it's a long time.
01:34:21.020At what point did Julius Caesar, uh, decide like, like, you know, he's like, I don't want to do this civil war thing, but like, we're going to do this.
01:34:28.260Like, was there a deciding factor because I'm looking at like what it may be here.
01:34:34.020The, um, well, just to go on to your earlier point, I, I, it, it occurred to me that one of the problems that we have is this, uh, managerial bureaucracy, which is, tends to be very,
01:34:45.380very feminine in the way that, that it works.
01:34:47.280You know, these like large bureaucratic institutions kind of like feminine qualities are often HR office.
01:34:55.200And also just like what, what, what the, um, what the ancients would look at it is kind of like the rule of eunuchs, you know, these, um, yeah.
01:35:03.900You know, the kind of cadre of, uh, of, you know, bureaucrats and courtiers, many of whom, you know, get castrated on purpose because that means that they can inhabit the bureaucracy without ever having the hope of rising to the top.
01:35:21.280Cause nobody wants to be the subject of a eunuch and then do you know that?
01:35:26.260And so they're just going to kind of like operate behind the scenes.