RadixJournal - 9⧸11 Nostalgia

00:00:00.120 The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing,

00:00:07.900 have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger.

00:00:16.900 These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat.

00:00:22.420 But they have failed. Our country is strong.

00:00:26.060 A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.

00:00:31.860 Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings,

00:00:35.500 but they cannot touch the foundation of America.

00:00:39.680 These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

00:00:45.120 All right, Ed, how are you?

00:00:57.200 Good evening. Good afternoon. Hello. Yes, I'm...

00:01:00.360 Good morning.

00:01:01.340 Good morning. Yes, of course. I forgot how far to the west you are.

00:01:06.740 Yes, I'm okay. Yes, I just had roast chicken for dinner, which was very nice.

00:01:11.760 And I've... Yes, it was all right.

00:01:16.800 Well, I just recovered from a violent illness.

00:01:20.300 As you definitely know, some of these super viruses seem to incubate in child environments

00:01:28.040 like playgrounds and bowling alleys.

00:01:31.520 And when they hit an adult, you spend about 24 hours in furious vomiting.

00:01:37.680 I won't go into too many details, but I somehow survived.

00:01:41.960 Is that the virus of drinking heavily the night before?

00:01:45.320 No, it's not a virus of I'm lying and I was actually...

00:01:48.840 I'm actually... I was actually down at the blue moon getting wasted.

00:01:52.680 No, I actually got a virus.

00:01:56.220 It's one of those 24-hour things.

00:01:58.320 Yeah, I remember visiting my nephews many years ago for Christmas,

00:02:02.940 and they would always pick up some virus.

00:02:06.960 And because the child's immune system is so powerful, which is a great thing, obviously,

00:02:12.760 they would recover in like three hours.

00:02:15.060 So they would vomit and then, you know, be out skiing or something three hours later.

00:02:19.140 And I would be in bed for 24 to 48 hours.

00:02:23.580 But that's the way life is.

00:02:25.100 I used viruses like that when I was in my late teens, early 20s.

00:02:27.740 And on one occasion, I went to the doctors about it.

00:02:30.980 I was in this pain, and the doctor said, look, male doctor, old guy,

00:02:34.740 just said, look, were you by your child's piss last night? 0.78

00:02:37.320 Didn't you fall over there? 0.69

00:02:38.740 And I had to admit that, yes, I was.

00:02:41.260 They said, yeah, just have a warm bath and you'll fill it up. 0.82

00:02:43.640 Yeah.

00:02:45.380 That's my answer to everything.

00:02:46.760 I know what you mean.

00:02:48.020 But anyway, speaking of people that are, or things that are ill and falling over, America.

00:02:55.820 Yeah, well, I genuinely believe that we are at the end of an era.

00:03:05.020 And you can look at this in a lot of different ways.

00:03:08.720 You can say that culture is so played out that it's almost become a parody.

00:03:15.940 You can say that that American dream of a universal middle class lifestyle is, again,

00:03:23.020 becoming something unreachable and that we have a kind of returned almost class consciousness

00:03:28.940 on some level, at least at the very least resentment.

00:03:32.680 You can look at this in terms of population decline, which is obvious, just a general population

00:03:38.520 decline and slowly declining immigration, interestingly, and then a white population decline

00:03:46.020 that is in real terms.

00:03:48.540 But I think all of this is dovetailing with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

00:03:55.880 And I wanted to kind of go back to September 11th and look back at that from 20 years, because

00:04:03.800 we both experienced that in our early 20s or late teens or whatever.

00:04:09.140 And it was obviously one of the most impactful moments in time.

00:04:13.820 But I do feel like we're at the end of an era in the sense that fewer things are now possible.

00:04:20.900 And there's just a general mood of withdrawing, coming home, leveling things out.

00:04:30.880 We can't do this.

00:04:33.340 Less things are possible.

00:04:34.680 I feel like this is very significant.

00:04:39.440 The fact that we're, again, coming up to that 20th anniversary of September 11th is pretty remarkable.

00:04:45.880 But you could do all kinds of things.

00:04:49.620 I mean, if you wanted to, you could wipe Afghanistan off the map. 1.00

00:04:53.440 I mean, you could destroy it.

00:04:54.720 Sure.

00:04:55.800 I mean, you could.

00:04:56.980 And that would be the end of that.

00:04:58.260 You could do that.

00:04:59.360 But there isn't the will to do that.

00:05:01.800 There isn't the desire to do that.

00:05:03.220 There isn't the feeling of superiority that enables one to do that.

00:05:06.920 There isn't the feeling of there being a future and America being chosen by God and being superior to all the lesser nations that used to be there.

00:05:16.680 And which used to incentivize you to massacre Native Americans or whatever.

00:05:22.200 I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it was a sense of your own importance and superiority.

00:05:27.260 You know, do what you want.

00:05:29.060 I mean, if you were in a major war now, would you knew Kiroshima?

00:05:31.820 You were probably not.

00:05:32.600 You would just let it go on and on and on.

00:05:35.400 And so I think that's the change.

00:05:38.440 It's the change from a feeling that you're the best people in the world that are blessed by God with a special mission to a feeling that you're nothing and you're nobody and you're not important.

00:05:46.920 And not just that, you're bad.

00:05:47.960 Not you're worse than not important. 1.00

00:05:49.380 You're bad people. 0.98

00:05:50.320 Yeah, and a real toxicity about being an American. 0.97

00:05:54.880 And again, I'm looking at this objectively.

00:05:56.440 I'm trying not to get into one of these polemical battles.

00:05:59.660 But just the prevalence of critical race theory just kind of waned a bit, but it was hotly debated there for a few months.

00:06:10.120 And I think conservatives, I mean, they might not have fully understood what CRT is about or they couldn't explain it or whatever.

00:06:20.960 But they did sense in their bones that it was a toxic ideology that wanted to diminish America.

00:06:31.640 It wanted to kind of look up the skirt of America.

00:06:34.460 It wanted to demean it.

00:06:36.360 And I think they correctly perceived it as a toxic brew.

00:06:42.500 And the fact that those kinds of things are so dominant, as opposed to an American exceptional narrative, is remarkable.

00:06:53.580 Well, I don't find it remarkable at all.

00:06:55.580 I mean, it's an ideology of humiliation.

00:06:58.260 So it's an ideology which compels you to say things which you know aren't true as a means of indicating its power over you and the power of those who are the authors of the ideology over you.

00:07:13.200 It's like communism.

00:07:14.440 Right.

00:07:14.800 But wasn't American exceptionalism similar?

00:07:17.400 That made people say a lot of things that weren't true.

00:07:20.520 Well, at least those things weren't true, but they were inspiring.

00:07:23.900 Right.

00:07:24.320 Yes. 1.00

00:07:24.760 Whereas these things aren't true and it's like putting down the things that do inspire you and having to say that you're rubbish, you're no good, you're awful, you're sinful. 0.59

00:07:34.280 And the only way that you can, you could never find, you've never removed those sins, but you could, like a sort of Catholic church, you can go through occasional cycles of repentance and get your sins washed away a bit before they come back again. 0.98

00:07:47.400 And you do this forever, but the sinfulness and the evil of you being white will always be there. 0.99

00:07:53.140 And it must be there because it cannot be the case with any of these problems, these inequalities or anything to do with genetics.

00:07:59.120 That just can't be the case.

00:08:01.080 And therefore, it must be your fault and you're bad and you're inherently bad.

00:08:05.300 And that worldview, that kind of idea comes along at the end of empires.

00:08:09.920 It comes along during the winter of civilization.

00:08:13.460 That's when you have it.

00:08:14.820 And that's why I'm not shocked by it.

00:08:17.080 So it takes over.

00:08:18.920 Europe, in a sense, came into its winter before America did.

00:08:22.500 So we had communism and things like this in our winter where America didn't.

00:08:28.240 America kind of rose up out of the ashes of World War II and was the dominant nation and whatever.

00:08:34.680 And now your winter is here and you have your communism, which relates to your racial history.

00:08:40.020 And you had the fall of Rome.

00:08:41.800 You had Gnosticism, which was a very, very dominant ideology, very, very influential, which had even aspects of non-heretical Christianity.

00:08:51.760 The world is evil.

00:08:52.780 It's an evil place.

00:08:53.860 It's inspired by Satan. 1.00

00:08:55.820 You're inherently bad. 0.90

00:08:57.660 You shouldn't have children. 1.00

00:08:58.700 You should just feel awful and you should say how awful you are.

00:09:05.780 And that's what this ideology is doing. 0.97

00:09:10.060 And the white people that advocate it, like this D'Angelo woman, it's quite fascinating that she is white.

00:09:17.020 She is herself white.

00:09:18.340 And she talks about, if you've read her book, she talks about it almost like a Damocene conversion where she realized the sinfulness of her own whiteness.

00:09:29.500 So although she is white like you, dear reader, and it's aimed at white people, she's a better white person than you because she's had this realization.

00:09:38.220 She's had this epiphany of her own, like she's seen the face of God, who's black and lesbian, and she's aware of her own sinfulness and you're not. 1.00

00:09:50.600 And come along with me on the journey of my book and you will have the epiphany as well.

00:09:54.680 Do you think to extend this theological frame, do you think that a comparison could be made between total depravity and the critical race theory ideology or white fragility? 0.62

00:10:11.020 D'Angelo is a little bit different than CRT, but they are kind of of one kind.

00:10:15.740 But there's this sense of total depravity that it's a notion no one is sinless.

00:10:22.140 Not only were you born in sin, you bear Adam's curse, effectively.

00:10:28.380 But you have, you know, each of us have, even after we woke up, even in the short time that I've been awake this morning, I've lied.

00:10:36.120 I've expressed ambition.

00:10:38.520 I've wanted, I've had sexual lust in my heart.

00:10:41.980 And that in some ways that this anti, the, the, the, whatever we want to call it, white critical right studies or whatever, that it's, it's actually kind of deeply Protestant on some level and, and, and could even be kind of compared to Calvinism.

00:10:59.940 Yes, I think, I think it is, I don't know if you, yes, sort of.

00:11:06.240 I mean, with, with, with Calvinism, you have this idea that the key thing about Calvinism is there's an elect.

00:11:11.680 Right.

00:11:12.520 And there's a, there's a saved elect.

00:11:15.360 And I, I guess you could argue that, um, this is not.

00:11:18.940 They're the elect.

00:11:19.540 They're the good whites. 0.53

00:11:20.480 Yeah, they're the, they're the good whites. 0.96

00:11:21.580 But it's, it's not, it's not some, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, oh goodness me, what's his name, that Dutch theologian?

00:11:29.000 It's Arminian, that's it, in the sense that, in the sense that it's not, it's not predestined.

00:11:33.880 All of you can, um, if you have your epiphany and realise your true racism, um, be saved from the evil of whiteness. 0.65

00:11:43.000 But the problem is that most of you don't seem to understand that you people think you aren't racist.

00:11:48.200 There is this structural racism in which all whites unconsciously participate.

00:11:52.320 And one way in which they participate in it is by disagreeing, um, with what D'Angelo is doing.

00:11:59.120 Uh, by simply by disagreeing with D'Angelo and saying she's wrong, they are attempting to maintain their dominance within the racial hierarchy.

00:12:05.760 So they either have to accept the gnosis, uh, that D'Angelo has to offer, or they are, they are, they are, they are, they are failing to understand that deep down they are racist.

00:12:17.040 It's like in Monty Python, only the true Messiah denies his divinity.

00:12:20.800 What kind of chance does that give me?

00:12:21.940 Okay, I am the Messiah.

00:12:23.300 And it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's like that.

00:12:25.540 And she has risen above it.

00:12:27.720 She is a prophetess who has, um, managed to rise above this, this situation.

00:12:33.800 Um.

00:12:35.760 You know, it's funny, um, I, uh, this wasn't exactly what I was planning on talking about, but I think this is a very interesting discussion.

00:12:43.260 I remember about 10 or 15 years ago speaking with the, uh, idiosyncratic and rather grumpy blogger named Lawrence Oster.

00:12:56.520 Were you ever aware of him or have you become aware of him?

00:12:59.460 Um, he was a, uh, very, very shrill blogger and, and highly prolific.

00:13:07.720 Um, and he started to attack me, although I guess everyone attacks me.

00:13:12.760 So that doesn't really single him out.

00:13:14.760 But, um, I actually had lunch with him one day and it was very interesting.

00:13:20.400 And he said, he, he said that he was on a bus at one point in New York City and he was surrounded by non-white people.

00:13:31.460 And again, he, he is Jewish and was, um, fervent about his Jewish identity, but he also identified as a white person as well.

00:13:39.380 Um, and I believe he's like one of those that converted to Catholicism or something in his deathbed or something like this.

00:13:46.680 But, um, he, he said, I was on this bus and I was surrounded by people.

00:13:52.760 Some were speaking Spanish and they were Puerto Rican.

00:13:54.860 Many were black and they were talking to each other.

00:13:57.200 There were maybe an Orthodox Jew over here and so on.

00:13:59.720 And he kind of saw all of these people and he basically said effectively, it's okay to be white.

00:14:05.660 This is me.

00:14:07.340 And there was a kind of level, he just talked about it in a very genuine manner.

00:14:10.820 There was a kind of level of reflection that he had where he accepted who he was and then could actually move forward with it.

00:14:19.520 And I, I feel like with, with people like D'Angelo and company, it's almost like there, there are two paths that you can take.

00:14:28.820 Um, if you're living in 1950s America and, um, the, there are really race isn't really something that is pressing on you outside of certain circumstances.

00:14:46.120 Granted, there was some ethnic, uh, bigotry and rivalry.

00:14:50.440 And obviously there is the African question, which has been important in America for, since it's beginning.

00:14:57.400 Um, but if you were growing up in a small town in Ohio, um, race isn't ever present.

00:15:04.840 It isn't there.

00:15:05.560 And thus you don't really reflect on it.

00:15:08.440 And I think people are kind of reflecting on their identity and in a, in a way that might actually be very positive going forward.

00:15:18.040 And so is D'Angelo and she's kind of taking this path towards self overcoming and repentance and, uh, uh, redemption or so on.

00:15:29.640 But that actually is a path that everyone has to take at some point, almost to give her too much credit perhaps, but everyone ultimately has to reflect on that in a way that they didn't have to reflect on that.

00:15:43.740 Even myself growing up and, you know, being in Dallas, I can remember going to Highland park in the eighties.

00:15:51.100 It was basically like a simulacrum of the 1950s, little burger joints and, uh, milkshakes and baseball card shops. 0.51

00:16:00.860 And so it was the widest damn thing you could ever imagine.

00:16:04.680 And we kind of protected ourselves from, from reflecting on it. 0.98

00:16:09.300 She is getting beaten. 0.62

00:16:10.720 She's aiming her book at people, not particularly thoughtful people, obviously, um, who are content to be white. 0.96

00:16:17.100 They're content that I'm white. 0.93

00:16:19.040 Um, and I'm better than these other bad whites because they're racist and I'm not. 0.97

00:16:24.040 Right. 0.97

00:16:24.660 And what she's telling them is, no, you are racist. 0.76

00:16:27.280 Um, you, you, you, you actually are extremely racist because you have an inherent racism and all kinds of little things that you do and that you contribute to it and take part in make you racist.

00:16:38.660 And isn't that true in a way? 0.64

00:16:40.720 Yes, that probably is true. 0.88

00:16:42.160 So in a sense, you could argue she's confronting them with their, with their own hypocrisy.

00:16:48.260 Yeah.

00:16:48.460 But by doing so, then you could argue she's simply upping the ante and, and having them, and having them say, Oh God, yeah, I thought I was saved.

00:16:56.040 I'm not saved.

00:16:57.280 I'd better be even more fervent.

00:16:59.420 I'd better be even more anti-racist, even more than I already was. 0.97

00:17:02.900 And I already was the kind of person that would, you know, dismiss someone out of hand and say stupid things like, Oh, well, don't you know that racism is a social construct? 0.99

00:17:11.020 Um, I already have that kind of idiot and I'd better be even more of an idiot or else I'll feel terribly, terribly bad about myself and I won't be able to cope. 0.98

00:17:17.620 So I think she's just making it worse, um, by, by, by, by, by, it's, it's a runaway anti-racism in which she is taking part by saying, I am, I am even more anti-racist than you by virtue of my realization, which then makes people, uh, further signal it, um, until you get to pulling down statues and, uh, uh, just the idea that anything white is evil. 0.99

00:17:41.900 And then beyond that, I don't know what, I mean, I'm waiting.

00:17:44.640 If there was another revival like there was in 2020, as I said to you at the time, I'm waiting for a white suicide cult, uh, or suicide cults of white, but you know what I mean? 0.97

00:17:54.340 A white suicide cult based around whiteness. 0.90

00:17:56.540 Um, and I didn't think that's a coincidence either, that suicide cults are often a white thing. 0.75

00:18:01.560 I don't think that's at all a coincidence.

00:18:03.520 No.

00:18:04.160 Because, because of the sense of guilt that white people have, because of the sense of group conformity that they have, because of the extent to which they can be indoctrinated, because of the, the neuroticism level that they have that is, and so on, that is not combined with, uh, being highly ethnocentric. 0.52

00:18:20.280 And therefore they can be taken out of it, which is the way, or we call these demons out, and therefore you end up with these suicide cults.

00:18:25.840 Yeah, I mean, suicide is the ultimate expression of conscious will, in a way, in the sense that you are overcoming even your, your instinct to survive, which might seem to be the most powerful instinct.

00:18:39.180 You are gaining control in perhaps the most powerful way possible.

00:18:44.620 Um, but, yeah, okay, so we got off on a interesting tangent there.

00:18:52.080 Uh, I think I might just leave that where it is.

00:18:54.540 This will be a rambling podcast today.

00:18:57.440 That's good and fine.

00:18:59.220 Um, so let's, let's think about the path that we've tread over the past 20 years.

00:19:06.300 Um, do you have a 9-11 story?

00:19:09.540 I, I remember with my parents, everyone had a story of where they were.

00:19:14.620 When JFK was assassinated and, and even if it's, it was a mundane story, like I was, you know, eating breakfast and I saw it on television.

00:19:23.960 It, it, it, it was something that was just burned into their memory.

00:19:27.140 Do you have something like that with regard to 9-11?

00:19:29.860 Surely I told you my 9-11 story.

00:19:33.440 Well, yes, but there's a difference between the reality, reality and podcasts.

00:19:38.060 So you're going to have to tell the audience.

00:19:39.880 Oh, well, there was this thing at Durham University called the Milk Ground.

00:19:43.100 And they would, they would come there and they would get people from elite universities.

00:19:47.380 And they would try and get them to get a job in, in finance, basically.

00:19:50.380 They would try and get people in finance.

00:19:52.700 And so one of the, and the holidays at Derby University were between, uh, the end of June and the beginning of October.

00:19:58.800 And so, um, at the end of my, um, second year, the, the, the, the Milk Ground were there and, and they offered, um, this company that had offices in New York.

00:20:09.760 And so, um, and so they would pay for you and you'd have like a hot summer holiday of working, not very well paid.

00:20:16.440 And they'd pay all your expenses and stuff.

00:20:17.940 And you'd work in New York.

00:20:19.300 So that's where I was on September the 11th, um, 2001, working in New York.

00:20:23.640 Um, and, um, and I wasn't, um, I was, I was working as a, um, I was working as, as a journalist, as a, um, well, it's funny.

00:20:32.800 Cause I was actually at a flight school, uh, I was working as a journalist, as a, uh, work experience as a journalist for a local newspaper in London.

00:20:44.880 And, uh, this is 2001, so it's amazing to think it, but there was no internet yet in that newspaper.

00:20:52.580 Everything was done by a fax machine.

00:20:54.340 Um, and there, and there wasn't even a telephone, sorry, television.

00:20:57.720 There wasn't even a television in the office or there was no television.

00:21:01.860 It's just radio and a fax machine and a computer with no internet.

00:21:05.640 And then someone from who was, who was, there was two floors.

00:21:08.860 One was the journalists on one floor.

00:21:10.400 The floor below was adult advertising.

00:21:11.920 And one of the chaps stopped advertising coming from running upstairs. 0.81

00:21:15.140 He's got the radio on downstairs that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

00:21:20.460 Um, I never heard, it was about three o'clock in the afternoon or something or two o'clock in the afternoon.

00:21:25.240 And, um, I, I'd never heard of the World Trade Center.

00:21:28.220 I was like, where's that?

00:21:30.020 Uh, New York.

00:21:30.880 All right.

00:21:32.500 Nevermind.

00:21:33.700 Um, and then we just got on with it.

00:21:35.320 And then he comes running up again.

00:21:36.440 How long after it was, another plane has crashed into the other World Trade Center.

00:21:41.000 Um, and people, I didn't know what the World Trade Center was.

00:21:45.180 I hadn't, I couldn't even visualize what it was.

00:21:47.900 And then we put the radio on upstairs and all you could hear was the radio broadcaster saying,

00:21:53.080 Oh, I just, it's so hard to put this into words.

00:21:55.760 I didn't know how to put this into words.

00:21:57.760 Yeah.

00:21:58.060 It was kind of his job, really, because it was radio.

00:22:00.060 And so, and so, yeah, that was, that, that was it.

00:22:03.340 And then the next day when I got back to the office, the guy that had come running upstairs

00:22:07.660 and were excited about it, had bought a copy of every single newspaper, um, because he thought

00:22:13.380 this was like the biggest thing ever in his lifetime.

00:22:17.360 And he wanted to, of course, no internet, so no, no belief that you'd one day be able

00:22:22.120 to find it was online.

00:22:23.240 That was not understood.

00:22:24.820 Um, and so, and so, yeah, he bought one copy of every single newspaper and he was terribly

00:22:28.740 excited about it.

00:22:30.240 Yeah.

00:22:30.760 I was actually in New York for 9-11.

00:22:33.660 Um, and I wasn't involved directly in any way, but, um, I guess everyone was touched

00:22:41.640 by it, but, uh, I was actually working at this internship in Brooklyn and I was living

00:22:48.160 in Park Slope, which is a very nice kind of bougie part of Brooklyn, but I, uh, I would 0.98

00:22:53.900 walk to work and it was about a 45 minute to hour walk.

00:22:57.020 And I would just get a good exercise, you know, in before that.

00:23:00.160 Um, and, um, I was walking down seventh Avenue and I remember people started, uh, pull parking

00:23:07.820 their car and then opening the door and turning on the radio and it was talk radio, but it was

00:23:14.320 almost like they, again, it was pre smartphone.

00:23:16.720 So it was kind of like, you guys have got to hear this.

00:23:20.600 And, uh, they talked about a plane hitting the towers and I was, I was just thinking, oh,

00:23:25.320 that must've been some commuter plane that got into some accident or pilot error.

00:23:30.160 Yeah.

00:23:31.160 I, I just, I was just kind of like, oh, that this is, this is odd.

00:23:35.100 And, um, as I kept walking down seventh Avenue, the, the, the tension just in the air was rising

00:23:42.980 and I began to kind of sense that something was happening.

00:23:47.200 And, uh, and, and again, you hear a lot of people, they were coming out of shops aghast

00:23:52.080 and you have people, um, blaring their radios.

00:23:56.080 So it was, it was, it was this weird communal thing.

00:23:58.660 Uh, and then I turned onto Atlantic Avenue where you can directly see the towers and I'll

00:24:05.060 never forget it.

00:24:06.000 This, um, black lady came up to me and she just grabbed me and she says, they've got the

00:24:13.060 towers.

00:24:13.560 They've got Washington.

00:24:14.760 We're at war.

00:24:16.100 She was holding my hands. 0.99

00:24:17.320 And then she, she left and I, yeah, I mean, I was kind of like, holy shit. 0.96

00:24:25.080 Uh, and then at that point I could actually view the towers and they were a smoking mess, 0.94

00:24:31.640 but they had not fallen yet.

00:24:32.980 Um, and then I went to work and everyone was kind of in this zombie like state of working

00:24:41.360 while, uh, being totally discombobulated and having their mind on other things.

00:24:47.800 And then smartphones and the internet, a bit like that.

00:24:51.820 Yeah.

00:24:52.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:53.320 Where they're looking.

00:24:53.960 Yeah.

00:24:56.400 But I, I, again, that it was a crazy time.

00:25:00.600 The anthrax craze was going on.

00:25:03.560 I just assumed that there would just be mass panic and rioting going on.

00:25:10.180 And in some ways I was, um, you know, overjoyed to find that things were actually pretty regular

00:25:18.580 people kind of got out of the city.

00:25:22.460 There were people who, you know, walked from Northern, you know, the tip of Manhattan, the

00:25:26.900 North down to the South.

00:25:29.120 I mean, it was just a remarkable, uh, time.

00:25:30.920 I've done that.

00:25:31.420 I've done that.

00:25:31.460 I've done that.

00:25:31.520 I've done that.

00:25:32.020 I've done that.

00:25:32.060 I've done that.

00:25:32.460 I've done that.

00:25:33.040 I've done that.

00:25:33.260 I've done that.

00:25:33.540 I've done that.

00:25:33.800 I've done that.

00:25:35.300 It's actually a good walk.

00:25:36.900 You should, everyone should do it.

00:25:38.360 It's a good way to see the city.

00:25:39.500 Like go up to a hundredth street.

00:25:40.520 No, it's not a good way to go and see the Grand Canyon, which is very boring.

00:25:44.080 Oh.

00:25:44.420 Because there's, there's, there's, there's stuff going on.

00:25:46.880 People and life.

00:25:48.400 Yeah.

00:25:49.340 Yeah.

00:25:49.860 Yeah.

00:25:50.720 But, uh, anyway, it was remarkable.

00:25:53.520 I think I mentioned this on the last podcast, but I, I remember seeing things that there

00:26:00.280 would be like hipsters.

00:26:01.680 There's so this was in part, say Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I was spending most of my

00:26:05.660 time.

00:26:05.900 Certainly I wasn't going into Manhattan after this, uh, you know, disaster and there would

00:26:12.200 be hipsters doing candlelight vigils and I can just remember them.

00:26:16.720 So these were young people in their twenties.

00:26:18.440 They're my age and they had candles in plates, like little, they would stuck, stuck through

00:26:25.200 the paper plate to catch the wax and they were holding American flags and they're like

00:26:29.720 lighting vigils and it was just this overwhelming sense of communal mourning and unity, even

00:26:41.540 among people.

00:26:42.360 I mean, it's, it's, I think it's something that I don't think is even possible at this

00:26:47.940 point.

00:26:48.660 You saw a little bit of it with the death of Steve jobs, I guess, but that, that was almost

00:26:52.940 like a parody of what this was.

00:26:54.500 Uh, but there was just, I don't think there was anything where people were unified behind

00:27:02.340 one cause in an, in a completely unironic manner.

00:27:06.600 And in a completely non-polemicized manner.

00:27:10.520 You get it, you get it, you get it, but like when Diana died in Britain.

00:27:14.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:27:15.100 If someone that everyone likes dies, you get unity.

00:27:18.160 Or if you're on a war, if you're under attack, then political, you know, you get unity.

00:27:23.640 A lot of civil wars that happened before World War II in Europe were solved, where the damage

00:27:30.300 was lessened by World War II because it united the people.

00:27:33.240 Uh, so, so it's, um, yeah, it would take, it would take something like that to do it.

00:27:39.060 But the, the, the, the hideous thing now, as we go into this, what I see, I mean, I don't

00:27:44.660 think it's unreasonable on every single marker.

00:27:47.160 We're going into the winter of American civilization. 0.99

00:27:49.740 Plus you have other markers as well, such as the decrepit silly, silly person that's put 0.99

00:27:55.440 in charge. 0.99

00:27:56.000 You've got that in the winter of Rome, you know, Nero and Caligula and other nutty people 1.00

00:28:00.480 in charge of Rome, you know, mad people were put in charge.

00:28:03.920 You've got them at the Soviet Union with a succession of elderly secretaries of the

00:28:07.960 Communist Party.

00:28:09.200 That's where I think we are.

00:28:10.540 I think Biden is a kind of out of touch elderly person, but someone who is facing reality in

00:28:17.140 a way that others aren't.

00:28:19.020 Um, and I, I also see the, I mean, he did this at the end of the day, he withdrew from

00:28:25.440 Afghanistan, knowing that fewer things are now possible and that this is humiliating.

00:28:31.120 And what I see interestingly among a lot of conservatives in this reaction to it is a certain kind of

00:28:39.020 nine 11 nostalgia.

00:28:40.640 that I, although they don't exactly couch it in those terms, but this, either this kind of rage

00:28:49.280 about, let's just go bomb the hell out of Afghanistan, or we've left people behind. 0.84

00:28:54.440 We need to go just, they want, or why are we leaving right now?

00:28:58.320 Why couldn't we have just extended it?

00:28:59.940 There's just kind of delusional procrastination of not really wanting to leave, recognizing that

00:29:07.080 leaving is an admission of failure.

00:29:10.180 It's telling, it's, it's cognitive dissonance of the highest order because they don't, they

00:29:15.040 have to accept what you're leaving because you have to leave because you can't do this

00:29:19.160 anymore and there isn't the will to do it.

00:29:20.980 And so, um, you can't, just can't do it.

00:29:24.700 Uh, and so this is diminishing for America's place in the world in a very obvious way.

00:29:31.900 And you could just about cope with it in the, uh, when there's the evacuation of Saigon

00:29:36.640 in 75, something like that, you could just cope with it then because that was around

00:29:41.560 the time when you were also doing other brilliant things like going to the moon, which you'd

00:29:45.720 done only a couple of years earlier, 72 was the last time you went to the moon, um, or

00:29:50.240 all these other things that showed you were going somewhere.

00:29:53.100 So this could be portrayed as a blip in a, in, in, in an otherwise, uh, forward movement

00:29:58.020 of progress and success.

00:29:59.440 Um, but this is worse because this happens in a, in a context of, of decline, of obvious

00:30:05.440 decline of the presence of European people in America, of two years of rioting and disorder

00:30:11.440 and whatever, of four or five years of intense polarization within, within the country, um,

00:30:17.760 and so on. 0.94

00:30:18.720 And then you get the election of this dodgy, seriously dodgy president and his neo-Marxist 0.90

00:30:25.300 government. Um, and, and then this, um, and, and so it's, uh, it can't be dismissed in

00:30:33.020 the way that you could, Nixon having to resign or, or, uh, uh, the evacuation of Saigon.

00:30:39.300 It's, it's, it's, it's more Congress with the narrative whereby it's just general decline,

00:30:44.880 whereby America's day in the sun is over. Um, and, uh, America is being taken over by, by, 0.86

00:30:54.300 America basically has a president who is America, who is a white American, who has collaborated

00:30:59.620 with foreigners, whatever you want to call new Americans, non-white Americans, um, to 0.71

00:31:04.980 get into power. That's how he's got into power. He's collaborated with outsiders. Um,

00:31:09.600 well, it's true. I mean, that's what that's...

00:31:11.300 To a degree. He, I remember, uh, Hillary Clinton won more Hispanic, more higher percentage of

00:31:17.400 the Hispanic vote and higher percentage of the African American vote. But there's no question 0.51

00:31:21.480 that Biden is kind of keeping at bay certain woke forces and kind of humoring them and so

00:31:29.860 on. Um, while not, well, I don't think anyone thinks that he himself is really captured by

00:31:37.280 them. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I, I think that again, the comparison I would make is, is Brezhnev.

00:31:44.000 It's just this, um, this person who's in some ways a realist, but, uh, who is just a, a kind

00:31:52.340 of geriatric overseer of, of a, of a corporation that's, that's clearly seen its best days.

00:32:01.620 Yeah. Um, possibly so. Although, although Gorbachev, I mean, you could argue that, um,

00:32:07.920 he kind of inspired people and made them feel positive again. He was quite, you know,

00:32:12.000 down to the time. So he was more like an Obama. Yeah. The parallels don't quite work, but, but,

00:32:18.960 um, but, but, but yeah, that is, that is, that is, that is sitting. We had a Gorbachev and then we

00:32:24.380 elected a Brezhnev. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You had a Gorbachev, then you elected a Brezhnev and now

00:32:30.360 you have a Cherenenko or an Amazon. Yeah. Uh, and so after that, it's, uh, it's curtains, 0.61

00:32:36.420 but I think, um, I didn't see how there's any coming, it's just so humiliating. He's lost,

00:32:42.640 he's lost the goodwill, even of a lot of the left wing, well, most of the newspapers are left wing,

00:32:47.100 but even a lot of the left wing newspapers in America just can't leave us. Uh, and, and so he,

00:32:53.140 and so he's, he's lost all authority. Um, not that he had that much authority to begin with.

00:32:58.440 I mean, he only had that authority because he was, he was, he was the, he was put up on a pedestal

00:33:03.240 by the left and they wouldn't treat him fairly. They wouldn't critically investigate what his son

00:33:07.660 was doing and the laptop and all the other stuff. They gave him such an easy ride to make sure he won.

00:33:13.660 Um, and, um, and so I don't know what, I mean, was he, you know, is there really going to be three

00:33:19.540 more years of this, this, this daughter in geriatric, just hanging around with him sort of

00:33:25.680 in charge, sort of not, I mean, well, I think there might be seven more years of it because I just,

00:33:30.800 I don't know what else is, is quite tolerable. I mean, after Biden leaves office, the, I mean,

00:33:39.780 the kind of, and all of these geriatric people, I mean, we have all the, you know, Nancy Pelosi is in

00:33:46.840 her eighties, uh, Chuck Schumer's in his seventies, Biden is 80. I mean, we have these, this old

00:33:53.380 generation of Democrat. Um, and I, after that, once there are millennials in charge, I mean, it's, 0.87

00:34:05.280 it's going to be very different and very nasty. I don't understand that. You don't get this in

00:34:11.400 Britain or lots of other countries. Why is it that America has geriatric leadership? Is there really

00:34:16.140 nobody younger who I don't really understand? Is it just your system that did it? Because it's mainly

00:34:21.280 old people that voted in primaries. And so that's why he put in as a candidate. I think that has a lot

00:34:27.020 to do with it. I think on some poetic level, it expresses the kind of age of the empire. And Obama felt

00:34:34.700 very young. Um, I mean, he just turned 60, but he, he felt like a, I don't know, it's like a guy in

00:34:41.280 his thirties. He was a kind of Gen X icon. Um, and, and I think there was a, a kind of, I don't know,

00:34:48.800 there was an anti-war, a very strong anti-war push with the Obama campaign. And, uh, I think there was

00:34:55.140 a kind of like sense, I don't know, maybe an Indian summer, you could say just a kind of a sense of

00:35:00.200 rebirth. There's just something new. He's going to shake things up. Um, and I think people don't

00:35:05.840 even bother pretending that they want that anymore. Um, I, I, yeah, I don't know. I, I don't want to

00:35:13.960 There was something reasonable, not that I supported his politics, but there was something reasonable

00:35:19.160 about Obama. But as a foreigner, I quite liked the Obama seemed like a kind of reasonable kind

00:35:24.840 of guy thought things through. I remember there was this debate between him and John,

00:35:29.420 um, McCain. And he was asked, what do you think about abortion? Should abortion be legal?

00:35:35.480 And he, and he said, oh, well, you know, this is a difficult question. Obviously there's

00:35:39.760 a lot of issues we have to, but that's what, that's what the intelligent person says.

00:35:42.980 Yeah. He always, he, he was thoughtful.

00:35:44.700 But McCain, when does life begin? McCain just goes, at the moment of conception.

00:35:50.020 And I'm like, right, okay, shut up. Um, so, so, so, so there was, there was something reassuring 0.66

00:35:55.800 about that, but, and now, and now it's just, uh, and now it's just gone. Uh, just, just,

00:36:01.940 there's nobody, there was an article that was published by, um, Anne Widdicombe, who used to be

00:36:06.120 a shadow cabinet minister in the UK. And she just said, like, is there basically, do we have anyone

00:36:12.200 now in charge of the Western world? And she said, the answer is no, there's no clear person

00:36:16.460 that's in charge, you know, who would aliens negotiate with? 0.93

00:36:20.020 Well, but this is one thing that I've been thinking about. So I can remember the cold war

00:36:27.200 and I, I, I can remember this out and in concept where the, the, the world was divided pretty

00:36:37.660 starkly between communism and Americanism or freedom or whatever. And you could be out of

00:36:44.060 someplace and you could be in someplace else. And in 1989, where there was this crisis of

00:36:51.120 confidence in East Germany and a bureaucrat at a press conference just basically said,

00:36:57.680 yeah, I guess you can cross over to West Germany. We won't stop you. I mean, it was, it was a bizarre, 0.99

00:37:02.980 miraculous moment. And that just led to a, a flood. And it was, again, it was a, a lack

00:37:10.160 of legitimacy.

00:37:11.160 And he said, when, when will you be able to go through Brandenburg Gate? And he didn't

00:37:15.400 know. And he was under pressure and he just went immediately, I think.

00:37:20.340 Right. It was almost like a, just, there was this pent up, there was a pent up urge. And

00:37:27.860 then there was also like a pent up lack of legitimacy. And when someone, you know, fails

00:37:33.720 at a crucial moment, it just, it just all breaks. And I, you know, it's, it's kind of interesting.

00:37:41.360 Like when you, I, I did this experiment with my daughter where you super freeze water. So you get

00:37:46.980 pure water and you get it really cold and you actually get the water below zero degrees Celsius.

00:37:55.900 And then you slowly take it out of the freezer and then you smash it or you hit it. And so you create

00:38:02.060 a little impurity and then the whole bottle freezes. It's a kind of fun experiment. You should

00:38:09.160 try it at home, guys. You should watch my new podcast, Mr. Wizard. But I feel like that's how

00:38:16.240 politics works. There's just like a, something is like below freezing, but you don't know it's

00:38:21.480 frozen yet. It does, it doesn't know it's frozen yet itself. And then you kind of remind it and it

00:38:26.320 goes, and that was what happened in 1989. And so there was a, there was, there was a lack of

00:38:34.840 legitimacy, but there was something that you could go to. So there was a dominant paradigm

00:38:39.200 that was also existing. So there was this battle for the soul of the world between America and

00:38:46.760 Marxism. And then when Marxism lacked legitimacy and failed and was just viewed as just hopelessly

00:38:54.720 behind and backward, there was something to go to. So you could say, okay, now Russia needs to 0.82

00:39:02.400 de-nationalize, privatize and become and enter the West and so on. And obviously these things are

00:39:08.880 never happened perfectly. That is more or less what happened. It entered the capitalist world.

00:39:15.820 And I feel like at this point where we are in the late American empire, there's no other in a way.

00:39:22.940 There's no, you could argue that Eastern Europe is kind of culturally an other.

00:39:29.780 And the Islamic world certainly is to the extent that you've had cases of people literally defecting

00:39:36.180 to it. I mean, defecting to Islamic stuff. So that's definitely an other, although it's a small other. 0.97

00:39:41.640 But not as just opening. I mean, when communism fell, there was a kind of open embrace of enter the

00:39:48.940 new world with us. We're the big kahuna. Now, yes, Islam is another. Eastern Europe is another to a 1.00

00:39:55.540 degree, although that's all part of the American sphere. But I don't know. There's no system that

00:40:02.700 you now go to. I think we're kind of flying blind and no one knows what's around the corner.

00:40:09.040 Or it was a long time before communism, where there was no system that you could go to. Or at least if

00:40:15.640 there was, the perception was that what treason was to the West was to turn more. And you had these,

00:40:22.980 the must have go to Islamic world. So you'd have these people that would be taken as slaves in the 1.00

00:40:27.960 17th century by corsairs. And the one thing they didn't want to do was become Muslim because that 1.00

00:40:32.880 was to be circumcised or whatever, because that was considered kind of just this unspeakable

00:40:37.620 treason against Christianity. So I suppose you did have a period where it was Christianity 0.98

00:40:42.820 v. Islam, and sort of a period where it was Catholicism v. Protestantism. But then various

00:40:50.120 periods where there's no clear divide like that for a very, very long time, up until World

00:40:58.880 War I and the creation of the Soviet Union.

00:41:01.580 And well, certainly World War II, because then you have, then off it goes. So yeah, there's

00:41:08.580 nowhere now, I mean, the nearest thing I could think of would be throwing your lot in with,

00:41:14.360 as I say, the more robust aspects of Eastern Europe, like Hungary and Poland and Russia.

00:41:20.340 And they have a different way of looking at things. And that may become more stark as time

00:41:27.080 goes on. I suppose China is not a possibility because of the cultural differences or whatever.

00:41:33.080 We do get cases occasionally of South Koreans. That's America's film that was defected to

00:41:37.080 North Korea. That can't happen. But again, that's a tiny little enclave of communism.

00:41:45.540 But you know, what is, you know, like, there was this fascination with Hungary recently in America

00:41:52.240 with Tucker. But you know, what is that exactly? Except like, I want to have a little homogenous

00:41:59.800 country. And there's nothing, I don't know, I just I don't find anything mildly inspiring about

00:42:08.320 Hungary or Viktor Orban. It's not, it's just kind of declining more slowly. And in a place like Poland 0.68

00:42:17.100 is just clearly within the American orbit. Hungary, maybe a little bit less so. So I just, I don't,

00:42:24.600 I do agree that there's a kind of yearning for that. But it just, it seems to kind of lack

00:42:32.700 something. I mean, we, you know, we, don't we need to battle for the soul of the world?

00:42:39.480 Like, who's going to be history itself? And who's going to be in the dustbin? I mean,

00:42:46.040 these are the kinds of things that inspire people. I think only Islam has the possibility of, 1.00

00:42:52.580 of activating those kinds of things.

00:42:54.620 They've seen other countries do that. And they know they don't want that. They want their own

00:42:58.620 little patch of their own little quiet country where everyone gets on with each other and

00:43:02.540 it's homogenous and they're left alone. They kind of want like Bhutan. Bhutan, but in Eastern 0.98

00:43:10.160 Europe or Central Europe. That's, I think, what they have in mind. They don't want to. They're

00:43:14.620 not like British people or Americans or French or want to go out of the comfort of the world.

00:43:17.960 They've never been like that, the Eastern Europeans. I mean, Russians have, but not the other 1.00

00:43:21.860 Eastern European countries. They just want their own little ethno state. 1.00

00:43:25.400 The, the, I agree, but the, I mean, Russians, I mean, whatever they, however they are now, 1.00

00:43:32.420 I mean, they at least had a sense of destiny, um, throughout the 20th century. Americans had

00:43:38.660 that sense of destiny. Obviously Germans did, uh, French or maybe, maybe outdo everyone in some,

00:43:46.680 to some degree. Uh, uh, but, you know, is there, have we kind of lost that, like, impulse?

00:44:00.220 Because is, is there nothing else there?

00:44:02.780 I think so. I mean, I think in, in, in theory, you could do things like, you could, in theory,

00:44:08.060 not that now, but probably 20, 20 years ago, when they're less stupid. Uh, perhaps you could 0.99

00:44:13.500 have gone to Mars or you could have gone back to the moon or you could have gone to Venus. Well,

00:44:18.060 you couldn't land on Venus, but you could have floated above Venus. You're just, just to do it,

00:44:23.040 just, just to show that you can do this amazing thing. But now we, we, we can't, we're not going to do

00:44:29.080 this thing now. So, so, um, and if there was a time machine ever invented in the future, people

00:44:35.360 wouldn't come back by now. So it obviously hasn't been disappointing. Um, so, so no, I think it's the,

00:44:42.760 the, the light will, will move elsewhere. And this, this, uh, what's happening in America,

00:44:48.260 unless this is a complete aberration or something, um, is a, is a sign of that. Um, I think the next

00:44:54.680 thing is the, is the breakup of America. And I'm saying this to you a year ago or so, the breakup

00:44:59.160 of America, and you laughed in my face and said, stupid, that'll never happen. But I think, I think, 1.00

00:45:03.600 I think it certainly could do. If you've got people that hate each other this much, and you've got

00:45:08.280 this complete lack of a sense of unity and this complete lack of a sense of, of, of togetherness

00:45:13.360 and wanting the same thing, um, which is what inspired America to break away from Britain in the

00:45:19.120 first place, a sense of American-ness, um, um, then it will, it will come apart. It will lead

00:45:26.020 people to create new policies. And that's what I think they're going to do. Um, and it would be

00:45:30.260 interesting to watch that. Um, yeah, I, I, I, I, I just think secession is, uh, pretty fantastical

00:45:39.320 and, um, it, America still is a dominant power, a planetary power. I mean, Afghanistan, notwithstanding, 0.88

00:45:47.480 it, it remains a planetary dominant financial power. The idea that that kind of entity would

00:45:54.100 just allow its rump state to start falling apart. I mean, I think it's in a way more likely

00:46:01.360 that we'd experienced some kind of collapse scenario than we'd experience like a velvet

00:46:06.560 divorce or something.

00:46:07.540 No, it wouldn't be a velvet divorce. No, it's not going to be nice, but that's what, that's

00:46:10.680 what, that's what the Soviet, Soviet Union was exactly the same. Soviet Union, they all just 0.86

00:46:14.360 gradually started with the Baltic states that were peripheral and that were quite culturally

00:46:19.100 different because they weren't Slavic or whatever. Um, they, they, they, they, they,

00:46:23.180 they just all sort of broke away. And, and there was a leader that just didn't, they just

00:46:29.280 didn't, how they just couldn't, people just couldn't be bothered anymore. And I wonder if,

00:46:33.200 if somebody was to declare the independence of the starting off with some, some small American

00:46:39.700 redneck state, whatever I know that nobody cares about, what would they do? Are they, 0.98

00:46:44.360 are they really going to send in the U S army? So I think I would look when I was out in Eastern

00:46:51.800 Montana this summer, I mean, we drove by nuclear silos. The, the idea that, I mean, uh, if you

00:46:58.200 want a backwater state, I mean, I, I obviously love Montana, but if you want to almost come up

00:47:02.980 with a caricature of a backwater state, it would be Montana. And there are massive nuclear facilities

00:47:09.840 stationed out here. So the idea that Washington would just be like, go on your merry way. Good

00:47:15.820 luck to you all. I mean, I just don't buy it. I absolutely don't.

00:47:21.640 What if Alaska did, what if that group would they care then? Huge reason, oil resources. 0.98

00:47:27.480 Is there anywhere that they wouldn't care? And it doesn't have huge oil resources.

00:47:31.720 Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to think of one actually, because there is so

00:47:37.480 much of strategic value that you don't want to give up and places like, I think in some ways,

00:47:44.360 and I said this earlier, I think there's going to be this battle of what is an American.

00:47:48.000 There's this kind of weird way where the places that are getting more and more dissociated from

00:47:55.800 the new America are the ones that are the most hyper patriotic. So Texas is almost like the America

00:48:03.840 within America, or you could say that maybe about Alabama. You have the highest levels of patriotism,

00:48:09.700 the highest levels of military participation. Well, that's when you get it. You get that with

00:48:14.460 the Amish. So you get people that are breaking away from the Amish and setting up new Amish 0.74

00:48:18.740 communities because the old ones aren't Amish enough. They're like hyper Amish. They're 1.00

00:48:22.860 like setting up new communities in Mexico, where you're not allowed to have clocks or whatever.

00:48:28.120 So, so, so, so, so, you know, maybe that's, maybe Texas wouldn't, maybe that's the real America.

00:48:34.780 That's what they'd say to themselves. I don't know. But it's, I don't think it's likely to hold

00:48:39.080 together. That's why I said, I think Britain's likely to hold together because all these other

00:48:43.540 things that are assigned to the end of empire that we've got, one of the things is, is, is

00:48:48.120 the, is smaller policies. That's all that's what happens. It's what happens. But Britain, at one point,

00:48:54.240 the Roman Empire was literally ruled from Britain. Yeah. And Britain, with the exception of Scotland,

00:49:00.220 was, because they never got, they never conquered Scotland, was a unified place within a few hundred

00:49:05.420 years. It was about 20 different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Yeah. Well, we'll see. End of history.

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00:49:40.240 You

RadixJournal - September 02, 2021

9⧸11 Nostalgia

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