RadixJournal - October 04, 2016


Fish Out of Water


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 18 minutes

Words per Minute

173.76352

Word Count

13,676

Sentence Count

847

Misogynist Sentences

23

Hate Speech Sentences

41


Summary

In this episode, we talk about how the alt-right has grown over the past year and a half, and what it means for the future of the conservative movement. We also talk about the rise of the "alt-right" movement, and its impact on the political landscape.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I know that there are people out there in networks that do read us, that do message us, but to explain the ignorance that's out there within organizations, and not just at the grunt level, but at folks who have positions of somewhat power.
00:00:15.600 I was talking with somebody who, several years ago, they ran a campaign for a U.S. senator, and they ran it for a successful campaign for a Republican senator.
00:00:25.460 And I was talking to him about the voting coalitions, and I said, you know, well, right now what the Democrats have is a high-low barbell coalition.
00:00:36.640 And I pointed out, you know, here's what happened in 2012 where the extremely poor vote and then the extremely high-income earner, high-net-wealth donor, they partner up against the middle.
00:00:48.500 And when I explained it to him, it was a few minutes, and I walked him through some basics.
00:00:52.580 You know, he looked at me, and he goes, you know, that's amazing.
00:00:56.780 I've never quite looked at the angle.
00:00:58.560 Like, I've never looked at that angle before.
00:01:00.920 And I sat there stunned that this is a man who ran a successful Senate campaign who did not know the basics of voter coalitions.
00:01:09.980 He did not know at the ground level who and what he was supporting or who and what he was trying to gin up participation at the voting booth.
00:01:18.260 And there was somebody else who was a county, not the county chair, but in the county organization for the GOP that I was talking to.
00:01:28.020 And I said, well, you know, maybe if you read Steve Saylor or maybe if you know Glenn Reynolds' Instant Pundit, he posts some of these things.
00:01:34.960 And this was after chatting for eight to ten minutes.
00:01:38.480 And I swear to God, they looked at me and they said, Glenn Reynolds' Instant Pundit.
00:01:42.640 Who is this Instant Pundit?
00:01:44.260 I mean, they certainly didn't know who Steve Saylor was.
00:01:48.340 That's maybe forgivable.
00:01:50.860 And so when they're looking at, you know, when you think about the reach that we might have, I mean, the idea of the last 12 months that memes and ideas and slogans have been leaking out from whether it's near reaction, alt-right, the right stuff, whoever, that's huge impact.
00:02:06.400 Oh, sorry, that's a huge effect compared to the idea that a few years ago folks on the right would have no clue what they're looking at for their voter coalitions, what are the ideas that they have to do battle with or that they should be pushing.
00:02:19.120 Right.
00:02:19.660 I totally agree.
00:02:20.740 And as we were just saying, I think a lot has changed recently with the explosion of the right stuff and so on.
00:02:29.660 And I would say this, that I think all of this is very positive.
00:02:35.060 Because even when people are, even when some people on the right stuff apparently don't like me very much, I think even that is fine because it's building awareness.
00:02:45.460 And I also think even the whole Milo, Gavin McGinnis, and a couple other related people, maybe you could throw Lauren Southern in there, this kind of alt-right light, really light in many ways.
00:03:01.340 But at the very least, interested in the alt-right, interested in playing footsie with the alt-right, interested in stealing some of our ideas here and there.
00:03:10.620 I think even that is positive because they're not leading us and they are at the very least getting our memes and just the notion that there's something else out there, that there is an alternative.
00:03:23.740 They're getting that idea out there.
00:03:25.520 And a lot of people don't like this, but there really is no such thing as bad publicity.
00:03:31.380 Of course, there is on some edge of if people are accusing you of being a murderer or a child molester, yes, that's probably bad publicity.
00:03:42.500 Yeah, that's the old Huey, that's the Huey Long.
00:03:45.000 You don't want to be caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.
00:03:48.680 Huey Long said that 75 years ago, so.
00:03:51.060 Right, yeah, no, that's, when they open up your trunk, you don't want a dead woman or a live boy in there.
00:03:59.640 Yeah, but, so obviously there is bad publicity on the extreme edge, of course there is.
00:04:07.820 But generally speaking, I don't think there is.
00:04:10.100 I think every time Chris Hayes tweets something about the neo-Nazis and the alt-right, I think that's good because that's one more person that has that little germ of an idea in their mind.
00:04:22.240 And so I think what's happened, you know, I've said this many times, I think what's happened over the past year, year and a half has really been amazing for all, you know, variations of the alt-right.
00:04:33.920 Well, I think one thing that's happened with, you know, American discourse is that when you have folks protesting a second-tier fried chicken joint, you know, with Chick-fil-A a few years ago.
00:04:49.600 Yeah, yeah, right.
00:04:50.100 And it was all over one executive's donations to one, you know, one political organization.
00:04:56.120 I think that that helped a lot of people go, what is going on here?
00:05:00.420 You know, what am I not allowed to say or to say?
00:05:02.960 And seeing the left get just completely the bloodlust come out in almost every regard, whether it's trans, gays, race, immigration, the bloodlust they've had.
00:05:15.620 And then when reality hits, when you see a Muslim shoot up a gay bar and the left doesn't go into their bloodlust after a Muslim, when they go into bloodlust over a random pizza joint that answers a reporter's question that they wouldn't provide pizzas to a gay wedding, you know, you can throw it right back in their face.
00:05:35.540 And, I mean, I even do this on Facebook, and somebody on MPC said, if you start saying these things in the open, you're going to find out that there are a lot of people who wish they could say it, but they don't, and you're going to get support.
00:05:48.660 And I stated to the folks that said, hey, I'm looking forward to all the nationwide kissings that will happen outside of mosques.
00:05:56.900 It's going to be sweet when you guys do that.
00:05:58.960 Aren't you guys going to get right on that?
00:06:00.260 And, of course, I would say the best mark, you know, in Twitter, there's likes or retweets.
00:06:08.340 On Facebook, the sign that you've struck a nerve is when nobody responds, when not a single soul on the left responds, because they know that you got them by the balls.
00:06:19.340 Yeah.
00:06:19.920 That's how, for all those years that I was writing things that no one recognized or read, I should have just been telling myself, this means that I'm becoming wildly popular.
00:06:30.620 And powerful.
00:06:32.200 Well, then.
00:06:33.280 No, no, I get your point.
00:06:34.560 But you're striking fear in your enemies.
00:06:37.180 I totally get your point.
00:06:38.800 I was just making a quip.
00:06:41.020 Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
00:06:43.660 You know, one thing that I would add to it is that I think a lot of normies, for lack of a better term, you know, mainstream conservatives or people who don't even care about politics that much.
00:06:55.560 I would say that previously they used to say things like political correctness is lunacy or it's stupid.
00:07:03.720 It's so ridiculous.
00:07:05.180 What are they going to do next?
00:07:07.380 You know, protest a Chick-fil-A for something the CEO said.
00:07:11.940 You know, they thought of everything as ridiculous and as unfounded, as irrational and things like that.
00:07:18.040 And, yeah, sure, you can find plenty of crazy feminists like, you know, Jigglypuff or something that, yes, they fit that stereotype.
00:07:26.300 But I think what really hits people over the head like a ton of bricks is the fact that it is so rational and that it is this natural evolution and that it is a kind of totalitarianism that infects every aspect of life.
00:07:43.120 And it is consensual in a way.
00:07:45.080 There's no one is no one is really pointing a gun at anyone's head and forcing them not to say something or to say something.
00:07:52.720 You know, the most I've ever seen was my adventure in Hungary.
00:07:57.760 And even at that point, at no point did I feel fear that I was going to be brutalized, not to mention killed.
00:08:06.680 You know, we live in the end of history in a very Pacific, you know, we live in a big safe space in the West.
00:08:14.160 But I think people are recognizing the rationality of this totalitarian system that we live in, that it's not ridiculous.
00:08:21.840 It's actually all too rational and it has a logic and an evolutionary logic to it where at, you know, two years ago we would be pointing out Caitlyn Jenner as the former Bruce, as the, you know, this brave, amazing, moral human being.
00:08:40.660 And then, you know, two years later we're criticizing him for being a fascist and, you know, being of white male privilege.
00:08:48.980 That it's not, that kind of evolution is not just some, you know, schizophrenia.
00:08:55.120 It actually has a logic to it and that we are living in a kind of totalitarian environment.
00:09:00.660 I think also the, the, the Confederate flag controversy that happened just around a year ago after Dylan Ruth apparently murdered those people.
00:09:12.020 The, the fact that just within a 24 hour period there, you know, cause there was, there was like a, a 48 hour period of a limbo.
00:09:21.620 And people didn't quite know how they were going to pitch this.
00:09:24.120 You know, is the right to blame is, is, is our, is it a gun rights issue or gun control issue?
00:09:30.220 And then they, they fixated on the Confederate flag.
00:09:33.180 And once that was chosen, it was like this hive mind just, just sprung into action and worked in unison.
00:09:41.100 So within a 24 hour period, you could not buy a Confederate flag on amazon.com.
00:09:46.920 Uh, it wasn't just that you couldn't buy it.
00:09:49.860 You couldn't search on Google for it.
00:09:53.000 You'd get zero results.
00:09:54.520 Cause I ended up tweeting that, that Google took on the Stalinist, you know, strain and said, you will not even get a result for it.
00:10:04.040 And you are right that that hive mind behavior is, is ballistic.
00:10:08.600 It is scary.
00:10:09.820 The other thing I'd point out is that that was, I mean, that was the week of fags and flags when there was gay marriage.
00:10:15.760 And then that shooting happened all in one week.
00:10:18.620 But within that, for me, I think the lesson was that you saw one, the, the GOP roll over incredibly quick, um, with the gay marriage thing.
00:10:30.340 And then two days later, take the voters that they've been earning their, their bread from and eating fat off of, and just threw them under the bus over a flag that really had nothing to do with the shooting.
00:10:42.280 Yeah.
00:10:43.600 Yeah.
00:10:44.040 Um, and you, you do see what they could do if they really spring on us.
00:10:50.160 Um, just that Google thing.
00:10:51.480 I mean, this gets to a, a topic that I I've talked about and, and others have, have talked about this as well, but, uh, the shuttening and how the kind of totalitarianism we're going to be facing, uh, is, is a very different form than what people were facing.
00:11:07.820 Uh, in, in, in say the 20th century and, and in the, the 1930s in particular, a lot of this is exaggerated, of course, but we, we do have images.
00:11:16.240 And a lot of this is based on fact as well, uh, of, you know, uh, dictators having censorship squads and, you know, removing things from, uh, newspapers or, you know, someone said something ideologically incorrect.
00:11:29.380 And he was airbrushed out of a photo and things like that, that kind of stuff did happen.
00:11:33.720 Um, and, uh, we, we like to point to that as just the ultimate expression of evil and that would never happen in America and so on.
00:11:41.120 And it probably won't happen in America.
00:11:42.900 I don't think what's going to happen in the coming decade is going to be, you know, president Clinton, um, sending me to a, uh, rock breaking gulag and, and, uh, in Nebraska or something.
00:11:54.380 I'll, although who knows things do change.
00:11:56.600 I think what will happen would be something like Google censoring search results and where if you Google, um, Neo reaction, or if you Google Richard Spencer, if you Google the alt right or something, you get, you know, no entries.
00:12:11.120 That, that, and, and it's, it's a kind of worse totalitarianism.
00:12:15.200 It's a consensual totalitarianism, but it's actually worse in terms of the, the, the thought prison, uh, that it can create.
00:12:22.040 That, I mean, that we're already there with the, the 1984 that Winston, Winston Smith, you know, ministry of truth who goes back and constantly has to readjust the past to fit whatever now is.
00:12:35.880 And to bring up somebody you've already mentioned is that, uh, Bruce slash Caitlyn Jenner, the moment that he, you know, came out of the trans closet or I don't even know what they use for that, but the moment that he revealed that he was trans, you saw the little squads, the volunteer squads go on Wikipedia and completely rewrite his history.
00:12:56.000 They changed every pronoun, they changed all these, all these bits in his life and that were on his Wikipedia page.
00:13:03.540 They went in and they changed every single thing.
00:13:05.520 So it would fit what it says right now.
00:13:07.780 I mean, we do get that.
00:13:09.860 And yeah, you can do that digitally in a way that you can't do that to a book.
00:13:14.060 Like, you know, famously in the Soviet union, there were, there was airbrushing of, you know, ideological M&M's or Trotskyist or something.
00:13:21.520 That's actually hard.
00:13:22.760 Got airbrushed the moment they had to have him take the fall for Stalin.
00:13:27.000 Right, right.
00:13:27.760 Exactly.
00:13:28.180 I mean, that's a good example.
00:13:29.060 I mean, but that, you know, that's actually difficult to do.
00:13:31.420 You know, you, are you going to airbrush, you know, 10,000 copies of a book or something or, or cut out, take out a page of this book.
00:13:38.400 It's difficult to do.
00:13:39.740 You're, you're always going to miss something.
00:13:41.500 The fact that we know about it demonstrates that it's difficult to do, but digitally it's not difficult to do because we live in a digital world of infinite reproducibility.
00:13:51.500 And so you change one little keystroke and that has changed everywhere.
00:13:56.020 And of course there's the way back machine and so on, but you get my point over, you know, you can, there's a kind of consensual digital totalitarianism, which is much more powerful than anything Stalin ever dreamt of.
00:14:09.480 Yeah.
00:14:10.100 Yeah.
00:14:10.380 And, you know, you, you can look at it with Joe Cox, that the parliament member who was a shot.
00:14:18.340 And didn't the media run with that?
00:14:20.520 The shooter screamed Britain first death to traitors.
00:14:24.400 Right.
00:14:24.760 Yes.
00:14:25.100 Like that was the first 24 hours.
00:14:26.840 Then you had every image out there, everything online.
00:14:29.040 And then I believe the police came out and said, no, he didn't say anything like that when he shot her.
00:14:35.440 But that was out there and it was a complete, you know, propaganda move for, for 48 hours to set the narrative.
00:14:41.620 If, um, if they ever did say, have to go back to something like that with Joe Cox, it's out there on the record or even, even things that would be released saying, no, this never happened.
00:14:51.380 It can be easily changed.
00:14:52.640 I mean, I think the running man had it with, with the edited video of, of proving Arnold's, uh, Arnold's evil deeds.
00:15:00.320 Hmm.
00:15:00.520 Yes.
00:15:01.500 The documentary known as the running man that, uh, that we've grown into the future accurately.
00:15:08.320 We have completely grown into it's either that or the fact that RoboCop, um, hit the nail on the head about Detroit, uh, 2019.
00:15:15.980 That's well, he, he didn't, he, it was RoboCop was a very optimistic film, uh, in a way.
00:15:23.580 So express that eighties optimism that everything's going to be okay.
00:15:26.800 Detroit's far worse.
00:15:28.500 Yes.
00:15:29.140 Yes.
00:15:29.440 Uh, well, Ryan, why I wanted to have you on, um, I'm, I'm interested in just talking about the varieties of the alt-right, um, where you're coming from, uh, how you as a neo-reactionary might differ in, in important ways from say an identitarian or, uh, or the, the alt-right shitlord on Twitter type guy.
00:15:54.140 Um, and I, I just wanted to have a conversation about these, these basics.
00:15:58.140 Um, so why don't, why don't we just go into that?
00:16:02.360 Um, it's, it's often good to start out with the personal.
00:16:06.120 So, um, you know, you, you, you use a pseudonym, which I completely understand and support, but, uh, just talk a little bit about your, uh, pseudonymous career and, uh, where you were coming from intellectually and where you've gone and, and things like that.
00:16:21.440 Uh, I was, uh, I was, uh, I was probably your classic, like Alex P. Keaton, you know, young conservative kid from a purple state growing up.
00:16:30.520 Um, and then as the GOP changed, I, I also changed, um, became more of a libertarian and cap type, um, and found the corruption a little disgusting on both sides.
00:16:43.680 And then eventually, when was that, uh, that was probably mid two thousands during probably the peak of the W lot delay years.
00:16:55.200 Right.
00:16:55.780 Um, when they were overreaching and on top of that, just being, uh, outright, outright disgusted with, with the way the left already was anti-white.
00:17:04.180 Um, but like once you, you see a little bit of how the sausage gets made through friends who are on campaigns and trying to figure out like what's, what's reality down there.
00:17:13.240 And then for someone I've already mentioned, um, I discovered, uh, Steve Saylor's writing and then Steve Saylor and, and mold bug kind of came together and being able to look at history from a different way, going to primary sources really got me thinking of, okay, you know, the, the fish doesn't even know it's in water.
00:17:32.200 So you have to know you're in water and me understanding that, okay, I'm a product of, um, not just a democratic nation, but a nation, a world system where that's the dominant world system.
00:17:44.140 Yeah.
00:17:44.500 So how do you even, how can you even tell if it's, if it's has value or if it's worthy?
00:17:49.040 Um, I also saw, uh, I was critical of Francis Fukuyama's, um, the end of history.
00:17:56.720 I remember in college, I had a couple of professors who were all gaga about that.
00:18:00.460 And, and I already kind of saw that as no, it, no, it doesn't seem, doesn't seem right.
00:18:06.160 And that never fit well with me.
00:18:08.400 And then, you know, kind of looking at the way that the system is, is that, you know, there's a, the left has a stranglehold on the media.
00:18:17.580 There's the inner party, the Democrats, the outer party, the GOP, and there's false opposition.
00:18:22.240 They own academia and the media.
00:18:25.240 So I've been drawn to the idea of, you know, you have to delegitimize their institutions, point out their mistakes, point out their lies, but then you also are going to have to build parallel institutions.
00:18:36.380 You can't just criticize.
00:18:37.880 You're going to have to build.
00:18:39.440 And, and if you're going to talk about the truth, you got to, you got to provide it.
00:18:42.260 You got to deliver it.
00:18:43.920 Um, but if, go ahead.
00:18:45.540 Yeah, no, there's, there's a lot to, uh, to chew on there.
00:18:49.220 I would just mention real quickly in the end of history there, you could, of course, read Fukuyama against the grain.
00:18:55.680 Um, you know, the subtitle of his book is after all, and the last man, um, there's a, there's maybe a secret longing for the return of history and a, uh, an accurate depiction of this kind of like ideological, uh, ossification.
00:19:11.180 And closing off of other possibilities and options and ways of life that, that has occurred.
00:19:19.000 I think it's difficult to argue, you know, I, I think you can argue around the edges about the end of history of, of whether we're, you know, whether we're really there.
00:19:27.200 There are actually all these contradictions and conflicts within the global system.
00:19:31.700 And of course there are, um, you know, uh, NATO and, and Russia being a obvious example, the, the war on terror and, and all these little conflicts within the Middle East that are very complicated and no one understands.
00:19:46.040 I, I, I think that's all true.
00:19:47.520 Uh, but in a way it was an accurate depiction of a, uh, global collective nihilism that we've descended into.
00:19:55.320 So with, with, with what Fukuyama was going at, I, I mean, it's, it's that period where we had finally beat the bad commies.
00:20:03.540 Yeah.
00:20:03.740 But somebody had once explained to me, cause, um, there was someone who said that the Cold War was technically World War III.
00:20:11.540 And there was somebody I remember having a conversation with.
00:20:14.400 I came up as a professor.
00:20:15.580 A lot of neoconservatives would, would use that terminology.
00:20:18.800 Uh, Dame Zaburnum also used that terminology.
00:20:21.480 Yeah.
00:20:21.680 Um, but there was either one visiting professor or somebody came and gave a talk in my college who said that what really happened was that right after World War II, when America set up its system, it actually had to fight the old European powers to get rid of their, their, their, their empires.
00:20:40.300 So really World War III was America beat, because the Soviet Union was decimated after World War II.
00:20:47.680 So really it was America beating France and, and England and Spain and Portugal into submission and coming into, under American heel and American rule.
00:20:58.840 Right.
00:20:58.980 And he had cited the Suez crisis along with getting the French to just finally surrender in Vietnam.
00:21:04.540 Um, um, um, that decolonization was, was a war that America kind of fought against European powers.
00:21:10.800 And then after that was done, America kind of could focus on the Soviet Union as a rising threat.
00:21:16.800 That's an interesting perspective.
00:21:19.100 Um, I, I think there's a lot of truth to that.
00:21:21.760 Uh, and you could say it's also a battle between two or three globalisms.
00:21:27.020 Um, one of which was communism, um, which, you know, the, the Soviet Union, what I, I, I, I think a lot of, when we look back at it now, I think people tend to, we can now understand that people exaggerated the Soviet Union's ability to dominate the globe.
00:21:43.680 But I'm granted we see that in hindsight.
00:21:46.500 Um, but that, that was a globalism.
00:21:48.360 There, there was seemingly two other globalisms, one of which was, um, uh, the old colonial model, the old imperial model, the British empire being first and foremost, but certainly many others.
00:22:00.480 Um, and, uh, and then there was this other global model, which really was the American global model.
00:22:05.740 And I think to, to go back to that metaphor of a fish in water doesn't perceive that he's in water, um, it's very easy for us to look at the, uh, the, the, the old models, the, the, you know, the, the, the British empire and say, oh, that's just totally backward.
00:22:23.860 You're screwing over all the poor people who are subjects and, and so on.
00:22:27.680 Um, but you, you, when you, when you see it that way, you, you don't perceive the kind of hegemony that America was bringing forward, which is a neoliberal hegemony, uh, based, I would say first and foremost on the dollar is the, uh, currency reserve in 1944.
00:22:45.680 Uh, but also, you know, all these related institutions like the world bank and the IMF and all that kind of stuff.
00:22:51.140 Um, and, and so it was really kind of a battle of globalisms and there were there, you could say maybe there were three of them.
00:22:57.020 Um, one of them was, was damaged, but not down.
00:23:00.380 And that was communism.
00:23:01.800 Another was, was fatally wounded.
00:23:04.560 And that, that was, uh, the European imperial model.
00:23:08.700 And the other one was kind of young and resurgent.
00:23:11.400 And that is, uh, the American model and the American model one.
00:23:15.620 Yeah.
00:23:16.180 I, you know, when you, when you talk about like European imperialism, there was somebody who once told me that the French never got rid of their empire.
00:23:24.100 They just changed how it was administered.
00:23:26.220 And so they, their lesson, and this was mostly also because de Gaulle was a tough, a tough nut.
00:23:33.720 Um, but what they did is that they pulled back from having overt, um, very open control of their colonies to having their colonies basically be controlled by French banks.
00:23:45.620 Hmm.
00:23:46.060 Interesting.
00:23:46.320 And the French banking system could always kind of pull the strings of what was going on in those countries.
00:23:51.400 And yet those countries would retain the French language and often seek help from French trained experts or would be trained in French colleges.
00:23:59.640 Uh, so they tried that type of, uh, kind of like hidden sovereignty, if you will.
00:24:04.940 And that that's how they got around it with, um, with the American, uh, hegemony.
00:24:09.020 Um, but, but, you know, you could argue and say that now that so many of the former French colonies are switching over their official language to English that, that that route ended up losing because it didn't have direct control.
00:24:19.920 Yeah.
00:24:21.040 Yeah.
00:24:21.640 It wasn't, it was kind of a halfway measure and, and wasn't the full on neoliberal global hegemony that America achieved.
00:24:31.940 Um, I, I, I think it's kind of interesting when we talk about this because we're now almost in a new limbo period where America, America still has a great deal of legitimacy and that that's different.
00:24:43.600 Remember, legitimacy is very different than power.
00:24:46.600 Um, you know, the legitimacy is the basis for power.
00:24:49.920 And you can't just point guns at people that, that works to a certain degree, but that's going to fail at some level.
00:24:56.960 You know, similar to the Soviet Union gained legitimacy when it became, it started to tap into energies like Russian nationalism.
00:25:05.140 When it started to tap into structures like the Russian empire, it, it gained legitimacy that I, I don't think a, an extreme violent Bolshevik regime would ever have.
00:25:15.100 So America still does have some legitimacy.
00:25:17.440 A lot of people still want to come here.
00:25:19.400 They want to go study at a university.
00:25:21.660 Uh, they like, uh, American movies and music and, and things like that.
00:25:28.220 So there is a lot of that soft power is kind of legitimacy.
00:25:31.680 Um, it does seem like hard power is, is waning and that legitimacy is waning.
00:25:38.080 There's just so much, you know, it's, it's, it's the difficulty of being the top dog when global America is on top.
00:25:45.060 There are going to be more people aiming at it, more people seeing their liberation as liberation from the U.S.
00:25:51.020 And, um, so I, I think we definitely are seeing the decay of both legitimacy and power.
00:25:57.900 Um, but no one knows what's really next.
00:25:59.900 You know, I don't, is, is, is, is, is ISIS next?
00:26:04.260 I mean, I, I don't, I certainly hope not, uh, but I, I don't also think so.
00:26:08.840 I, I think that's a kind of like a, I think Romain Bernard described it as he, it's, it's almost like extreme reaction, like photographic negative of Americanism.
00:26:17.900 And it's not really, um, I, I don't see, I, I certainly hope that that is not the coming world order.
00:26:23.980 Um, but I, I, I don't think it is, uh, realistically speaking, but, but what is next?
00:26:28.800 Um, obviously there's a lot of nationalism that's resurgent, but you know, I, I, I, I've been a very, I, I, I certainly count myself as a, as a skeptic of a lot of the, you know, the Brexit stuff, the Euro nationalism, which is clearly, it clearly has legitimacy, clearly is on the rise.
00:26:46.420 As kind of a skeptic of it, I, I think it has a ceiling, A, but B, uh, it, I, the degree to which that is a real challenge to American hegemony, I, I think is questionable.
00:26:58.200 I, I, I think there has to be something else, but we don't know what that is.
00:27:01.220 And I guess this gets, gets back to what, you know, gets back to this, you know, a metaphor of fish and water.
00:27:05.460 Like we, we take for granted American consumption, American consumerism and, uh, democracy, whatever that means.
00:27:16.840 You get to vote every couple of years and send in your local sociopath so that he can accomplish nothing, maybe some evil things, nothing much good in parliament or something.
00:27:27.800 But it's hard for people to think outside of that.
00:27:30.560 That's the only way we, we know how to perceive the world.
00:27:33.400 That's the only way we know how to rule the world.
00:27:36.460 Well, that's the point that you brought about the difference between legitimacy and power in, in, there's something about the American system with pitching it.
00:27:44.740 And part of it is that we just pitch it all the time to everybody that, you know, you vote.
00:27:49.060 And if you participate, that gives you true legitimacy.
00:27:51.980 That's something that even when the, the Chinese, uh, when they have statements, when they talk about things, they still fall into the framework of, well, maybe democratization will happen.
00:28:03.400 And we're not ready.
00:28:04.520 Or they still kind of give it credence while simultaneously they tell foreign countries, we will respect you no matter what form of government you have, just as long as you keep the raw materials coming.
00:28:15.200 That's, that's, that's something where once the Chinese stop giving into that frame, once they stop falling into that frame, uh, and go with their, you know, author, authoritarian capitalism, whatever blend they have.
00:28:29.640 Once they run with that, you know, you have then somebody that you can kind of look to and go, okay, this is an example.
00:28:36.460 Yes, they're a mega state.
00:28:37.620 Yes, they're going to be part, one of the big poles of a multipolar world, you know, but they're, they're an example of what we could do and how you could live a decent life.
00:28:46.600 Like, as you mentioned in, when you were talking about America's material wealth, and yes, we still pull in people and we have that dominance, that, that intellectual sovereignty, that consumer dominance, uh, selling the American lifestyle.
00:29:01.120 Yes, that's a big pitch.
00:29:02.560 How long does that last, and especially in an open borders world, how long does that last until, say, America's, I don't know, 35% Mexican-American?
00:29:12.600 Right.
00:29:12.740 And there's probably going to be a ceiling on that, um, that, that's a problem, and, and that's something where I'm big on just watching around the globe for looking for, whether it's a smaller state like what's happened in Hungary or a larger state like what's been going on in, in Russia or China,
00:29:29.100 paying attention to what happens out there, um, I mean, even, even one interesting nation that, that I found since their coup was, was Thailand, and when you look at what Thailand's done, and when you look at how Thailand's looking at the, the global chessboard, you know, as you said, we're in a period of flux, and we probably won't have things settled for a couple years, but there's a lot of interesting actors out there.
00:29:52.380 Or a couple of decades.
00:29:53.520 Or, or a couple of decades.
00:29:54.600 I would say, maybe a hundred.
00:29:55.780 But, you know, there, there are, there are people who are making moves that it's interesting to take a look at what they're doing, how they're doing it, see if you can apply, you know, if you can apply that, and then on top of that, if, if a country like Thailand says, nope, we're scrapping voting because too many folks were voting, forgives me that's, in Thailand, um, and look, they're, they're still a competent country, they're still a country where, you know, it's not anarchy, it's not wildness,
00:30:21.200 And that you don't need the power of just casting your ballot, as you said, to send a sociopath to a state capitol or to DC, you don't need that to have a, a competent state.
00:30:32.340 Yeah, I, I agree.
00:30:34.580 I, I would push back a little bit on that, just in the sense of, maybe, maybe the ultimate, the ultimate outcome is a kind of authoritarian capitalism and authoritarian consumerism.
00:30:49.180 Or you could even say consumer socialism, uh, where the government, the government basically takes, it does not believe in any kind of free market or open marketplace of ideas and products.
00:31:01.140 It, it, it basically believes that we need to pacify masses, probably even transnational migrating masses and keep them happy buying stuff and strapping on their VR helmets and, and so on.
00:31:15.820 And, and that in a way that the Chinese model isn't an, isn't really a, a contradiction to Americanism taken to its logical conclusions.
00:31:26.980 And that these are both just two kind of variations on nihilism.
00:31:32.880 Uh, and there's, there, there's nihilism with Chinese characteristics and there's nihilism with American characteristics.
00:31:38.820 And in, in, in, even someplace like Russia, which has certainly had, it has an imperial, uh, consciousness and a national consciousness, uh, and those things are different.
00:31:51.260 Um, but even, even a country like Russia isn't really challenging this.
00:31:56.460 I, I think someone like Putin, or you could say Viktor Orban, who's, who's similar.
00:32:01.020 Um, I think they're kind of, they're, they're navigating the world and, and they're, they're kind of like, it's almost like they're, they're on a sinking ship, but they're still kind of able to maneuver it and turn it.
00:32:13.280 But they're not, they're not really offering a world alternative, uh, to this consumer nihilism that we're all kind of trapped in.
00:32:21.940 And that's, that's a good point about like them navigating a, a sinking boat.
00:32:28.140 Maybe the boat's not sinking as much.
00:32:29.920 I think that's a huge indictment of just how far the West has gone when people will look to the former communist bloc as a possible salvation area.
00:32:39.820 That, that's, that's a damning indictment of the, of, of the West.
00:32:44.560 And it's, it's a horror.
00:32:46.300 It's an absolute horror to, you know, to go back to something we were saying earlier.
00:32:50.780 When you see folks, for me, if somebody comes out as trans, I mean, yes, I'm disgusted by it.
00:32:56.960 But if somebody comes out as trans, the people that I'm more horrified by are not the folks that are coming out of the trans closet.
00:33:03.900 It's the person that, that says the first comment, the first statement that is, is like the person who won't stop clapping for Stalin.
00:33:11.220 You know, they, they sit there and like, this is the greatest thing on the, on, on the face of the earth.
00:33:14.440 This is brave.
00:33:15.240 This is courageous.
00:33:16.680 You know, I, I want to give you a big hug.
00:33:18.300 Like that's the person that I'm more frightened by and that we have them in such great numbers now in the West.
00:33:24.480 Yeah.
00:33:25.100 Yeah, absolutely.
00:33:26.220 I mean, that's the kind of thing, this fish out of water, I think is a good title for this episode.
00:33:30.160 And, and it's, it's a really good metaphor because it's, it's so difficult to see things.
00:33:35.120 Like, you know, I, I remember there's a, there's a joke that is, that I, I, I often find quite amusing, which is that Stalin was, was at a, a, a, a small party conference meeting of, you know, a hundred people.
00:33:48.000 And, uh, he was talking and someone sneezed and he said, who, who, who sneezed?
00:33:53.400 And no one raised their hand.
00:33:54.680 And he, he looked to his guards and he said, okay, machine gun the first row.
00:33:57.720 And they do that.
00:33:58.580 And he goes, all right, I'll ask again, who sneezed?
00:34:01.440 No one raises their hand.
00:34:03.240 And they, they machine gun the next row.
00:34:05.340 And then finally a good comrade just who did not sneeze stands up and said, you know, uh, comrade Stalin, I sneezed.
00:34:13.620 And he was prepared to sacrifice himself.
00:34:15.840 And Stalin says, ah, gesundheit.
00:34:19.240 Jesus.
00:34:19.640 That's, that's, I don't know if that's apocrypha or not, but it's as realistic of anything you've heard from the guy.
00:34:25.760 Yeah.
00:34:26.260 No, I mean, he, you know, it's, it's, I mean, maybe something like that, uh, vaguely happened, but it's, it's.
00:34:32.480 Did you ever, did you ever read Court of the Red Czar?
00:34:35.740 Ah, I've never read that book.
00:34:37.100 I know of that.
00:34:37.640 Is that Montefiore?
00:34:39.040 Yeah, it is.
00:34:39.980 It is a phenomenal biography.
00:34:41.940 I would, uh, I would recommend it to all your listeners.
00:34:44.560 It's a phenomenal biography that doesn't paint Stalin as a cold technocrat, which so many people have been accused of writing biographies of him and portraying him that way.
00:34:54.680 I mean, he's, he's portrayed as a horrible human being, which, which he was, but a three-dimensional horrible human being.
00:35:01.100 Yeah.
00:35:01.760 No, I, I, I will definitely check that.
00:35:03.740 I, I've, I've seen that book.
00:35:05.720 Um, but, but we can look back on Stalinism of that kind of totalitarianism and that kind of fear and conformism.
00:35:12.700 And we can laugh at it in a, in a morbid type way, but we, we don't see the shocking conformism of today.
00:35:21.780 Like what you're saying that people claiming that you're brave if you come out as gay at this point, or, um, you know, the, uh, one of my favorites was a couple of years ago, some state university is literally offering undergraduate degrees to people with mental retardation.
00:35:38.680 And, you know, it, so there was this horrible video, uh, I'll go find that, um, of this kid, of someone suffering from down syndrome or some kind of serious mental ailment.
00:35:51.980 And he gets his acceptance letter from, you know, the university of Tennessee and, you know, he, he starts jumping around hooting and hollering like a kind of a monkey.
00:36:02.900 Oh, I got in, I got in.
00:36:04.280 And, and it's, it's, it's like, to look at that, it's just so awful.
00:36:09.520 Like you're, you're, it's like you're, you're dealing with someone who, even if they're mentally retarded, they're still a human being.
00:36:16.240 You're, you're treating them like an animal.
00:36:18.720 And this, you're, you're basically putting their parents are going to now take out student loans so that their retarded child can go attend some mock university lecture.
00:36:30.160 Just for, for who knows what reason, it's just the, it's the most shocking, like American egalitarian consumerist socialism I've ever imagined.
00:36:40.240 And I remember looking at that oftentimes comments are good.
00:36:43.820 Like, you know, comments in the New York times, you'll get a lot of shit loads going in there, the national review, but all of the comments on, on YouTube was, this is just the most amazing thing you've made my day.
00:36:54.460 This is just so, I'm, I'm inspired, I'm going to try to, and it's, again, it's all those, all those subjects, like saying who sneezed, everyone's quiet.
00:37:04.400 You know, no one's pointing out what is shockingly, patently obvious, which is that this is a evil and stupid system that we live under, where we are taking out debt in order to send retards to a fake university.
00:37:20.480 Well, but I'm, I'm going to stop you for a second, because I want you to think about, I want you to think about it from a different perspective, because I agree with you that that's egalitarianism gone, gone nuts.
00:37:31.040 But who is that, because they'll say, well, this really helps, um, the self-esteem for disabled individuals.
00:37:38.800 Whose self-esteem is truly being prodded?
00:37:42.520 Exactly.
00:37:42.540 Is it, is it the individual or is it their parent?
00:37:44.840 It's their parents and the society.
00:37:46.680 I mean, the university wants money, the financial world wants to give out more loans, and they've reached, like, peak undergrad, and so they want to find new undergraduates, and they're going to people with mental disabilities.
00:37:58.740 The person who's, the kid who is retarded has no self-esteem problems.
00:38:03.380 That's one of the benefits of being mentally disabled, is that you don't get depressed, or you don't, you know, record podcasts about the end of history, things like that.
00:38:13.000 You know, he was not depressed, he was jumping around, you could have given him a toy, or, like, gone out and played kickball, and he would have been equally happy, you know.
00:38:23.200 I bring this up because I've, I've heard this more and more from people who either have a sibling, a relative, or whatever, that is severely disabled, and not just physically in a wheelchair, or has to use crutches, or whatever.
00:38:36.620 Somebody who is, like, cannot talk, cannot communicate, and they talk about their relative going to school.
00:38:45.680 And I'm like, oh, are they kind of in a program that's going to help them adjust to, you know, interacting with regular folks, or maybe prepare them if they have mild downs, maybe prepare them to have a job and live on their own.
00:38:57.180 And it'll be, no, no, no, my cousin's, like, three foot six, has severe mental and physical retardation, and they go to school every day, and they'll get a certificate for completing.
00:39:07.560 And I look at that, and I hear it, and I have people in my social circle who have gone through that.
00:39:13.780 I'm like, so is the certificate for the child who has no clue, or is the certificate for the parent so that they can go, okay, this is my struggle as well.
00:39:22.920 I'm being a good parent, I'm doing this.
00:39:26.580 Yeah, to ask the questions, to answer it.
00:39:29.180 Yeah, it's, for me, it's completely bizarre, and especially since we're just a few decades away from where doctors would go to people and say, you're going to have this gigantic burden.
00:39:40.040 You know, you have two children.
00:39:41.360 You know, your newest baby has these severe disabilities.
00:39:44.820 You know, if you sign this paper, you can visit this child all you want, but they're going to be taken care of in a medical facility.
00:39:51.640 And people used to do, people used to agree to that all the time, and it seems like now that switch where folks keep that in the house, and then it becomes this burden on everybody in the home.
00:40:03.320 It becomes a shared experience.
00:40:05.020 Yeah, yeah.
00:40:06.380 I'm reminded of idiocracy where, you know, it's no big deal, my wife is tarded.
00:40:11.320 She's a pilot now.
00:40:12.620 Yes, yes.
00:40:13.540 But I guess it also gets to this sense where there's really no limit.
00:40:19.960 Like, people really do live out their ideologies.
00:40:22.480 And this is where a lot of white nationalist or similar type people will talk about some things that, well, once there's an economic collapse or even a major downturn, well, then at that point, you know, people will stop living these lives of luxury and letting in immigrants and refugees and sending retards to college.
00:40:42.880 And we'll start to get down to brass tacks and so on.
00:40:46.420 And I actually don't agree with that opinion.
00:40:49.780 I guess I am an idealist.
00:40:51.680 I think that the mind changes and then the world will change.
00:40:55.420 I think even if Germans were starving, they would still be allowing in refugees because the ideology is taken hold to such a shocking degree.
00:41:09.820 And that doesn't mean that a lot of people wouldn't change.
00:41:12.480 That doesn't mean that some people wouldn't rethink things if there were an economic collapse.
00:41:17.060 But I don't think something like that is really an answer to anything.
00:41:23.500 You know, I talked about this in this speech I gave a couple years ago called Why Do They Hate Us?
00:41:29.060 And when you think about people in Rotherham who would rather children be raped by a bunch of Muslim savages, then they be called a racist.
00:41:44.780 They literally made that calculation.
00:41:47.440 Maybe even somewhat consciously they made that calculation.
00:41:50.400 And I think that just gets to this whole, A, the degree to which we're religious beings.
00:42:00.880 We're ideological beings.
00:42:03.400 And we do have thought patterns that reproduce themselves over and over in our minds.
00:42:10.520 And that leads us to pursue lifestyle, ways of life, you could say.
00:42:16.440 I don't like lifestyle.
00:42:17.240 Ways of life.
00:42:17.800 And that it's really those kind of like religious-like fundamentals that we hold are all important in determining how we act and how we view the world and so on.
00:42:29.940 So at some point, like even if there's an economic collapse, these Americans are going to still be sending retards to college.
00:42:37.520 Because they're just so gone.
00:42:40.080 And that doesn't mean that things don't change.
00:42:42.520 I think clearly religious outlooks and ideological outlooks, clearly they do change.
00:42:50.040 And maybe it has to be a die-off.
00:42:52.180 Maybe a generation is going to be better or at least different than the last.
00:42:56.100 Maybe you just have to go through this process.
00:42:59.180 But I do think that we're going to have to go through a total psychological reorientation.
00:43:04.680 I don't think this is just something about, you know, changing some policy or, you know, oh, a depression would save us or something like that.
00:43:15.140 I think it's going to have to be a very profound, deep psychological change.
00:43:19.640 It's going to have to be on the level of being in the world and being.
00:43:24.140 It's going to have to be that deep.
00:43:25.960 Well, there's going to have to be a struggle.
00:43:27.920 Yeah.
00:43:28.160 Like an actual pressure and struggle to survive.
00:43:31.820 And then you're going to have your fight.
00:43:33.300 You know, the folks are going to fight and the folks are going to flight.
00:43:36.800 I mean, you could.
00:43:37.400 For the folks who will die.
00:43:38.700 Yeah.
00:43:38.880 And you could argue that even within states and just total fertility rates for, say, whites in different states, that that's what's been going on.
00:43:47.480 And some folks are choosing to cocoon, use their adult coloring books, never have kids, never really have an adult relationship.
00:43:55.400 And then they just kind of they're going to live out the next 50, 60 years, I guess, like that.
00:44:00.400 And then there are other folks who are like, no, I'm going to build a family, build a community.
00:44:04.100 I think for.
00:44:05.300 But even those people can often be really cucked.
00:44:08.160 Oh, God.
00:44:08.620 Like the state of Utah, for instance.
00:44:10.620 Yeah.
00:44:11.120 Or that Christian couple that had the three black embryos, the triplet girls that was on the Washington Post.
00:44:18.220 I mean, it's ridiculous.
00:44:19.340 But that guy had the husband had total cuck face.
00:44:22.380 The thing that I'd say with because you were asking minutes ago about, like, say, a difference between the identitarian movement and alt-right and your reaction, all that.
00:44:33.080 I think they're the identitarians.
00:44:36.200 The way I view it is this way, is not all white people are white and not all white people are white people.
00:44:43.040 I don't want to live in a state full of Massachusetts individuals.
00:44:46.480 And no offense to yourself.
00:44:47.560 I know you're originally from Massachusetts.
00:44:49.060 Right.
00:44:49.540 But I don't want to live with a bunch of mass holes.
00:44:52.140 And that's what we call them when I grew up in Maine.
00:44:53.860 I mean, when I go back to Massachusetts, the bizarro way of their life and their religious, the way they kind of view progressive, the progressive beliefs as in their religion.
00:45:05.300 I don't want to live with them.
00:45:06.560 But that state's, you know, 85 percent white or so.
00:45:09.540 Yeah.
00:45:09.560 You want to live with townies, though.
00:45:10.940 They're, you know, they voted for Trump at 85 percent clip.
00:45:15.280 Yeah.
00:45:15.860 The yeah.
00:45:17.480 Beyond the 128, more of the more of the 290, I-495 crowd.
00:45:22.340 Maybe that's it.
00:45:23.460 But but like there's that's something where I don't just purely view the white identity thing in that way.
00:45:30.260 I I'm proud to be white.
00:45:31.720 I love being white.
00:45:33.540 But that's kind of where I split off or where I see near reaction splitting off.
00:45:37.200 The the other big split, I'd say, is I think that and I love that all these all right memes are out there.
00:45:44.100 But I think that the all right folks are more of a mass movement.
00:45:49.400 Let's get out on the streets.
00:45:50.620 If there's blood on the streets, we go for it.
00:45:52.960 But and that they still believe that there can be change in the ballot through the ballot box.
00:45:57.560 Yeah.
00:45:57.840 Yeah.
00:45:58.000 And I believe with near reaction, it's more carving out a space.
00:46:02.040 One, even if you win a vote, it's going to get overturned somehow to timestamp this.
00:46:08.180 Yep.
00:46:08.560 Hillary Clinton might have done a bunch of things that would be illegal and would get normal people sent to jail.
00:46:13.140 Well, but shucks, we're a banana republic.
00:46:15.080 She gets off scot free.
00:46:17.180 The reaction crowd is going to carve out a space for an elite to say for the elites to look and go, here's a system we can design.
00:46:26.400 Here's a sword.
00:46:27.420 Here's Excalibur that you can use.
00:46:29.480 You just have to wield it.
00:46:30.700 Because when the Russians gave up, you know, big C communism, they only gave it up because they had Western capitalistic democratic government to switch to.
00:46:42.220 If we can design a system or carve out a space that has a system that can pull in enough folks who, whether they're tastemakers or just folks who are, say, a positive socioeconomic status, the elites.
00:46:58.560 And someone, say, recently who's been getting a lot of heat just for funding a lawsuit against Gawker, someone like a Peter Thiel could go, whoa, whoa, whoa, this makes some sense.
00:47:08.580 And have a safer space for them to go to and be able to withstand the heat.
00:47:12.800 I mean, all the hate that he's received in the media the last month and a half, whether it's being a Trump delegate or the Gawker lawsuit, you carve out a space for one of them to defect from the current regime.
00:47:26.500 Then others will follow.
00:47:28.560 And they need, just like a little college suit needs a bit of a safe space, yep, even multimillionaires need a safe space.
00:47:35.740 Yeah.
00:47:36.460 No, I agree.
00:47:38.620 I think a distinction could be made between certainly white nationalism.
00:47:45.640 I think white nationalism is, I don't want people attacking me, more people attacking me.
00:47:53.160 I think white nationalism has kind of run its course.
00:47:57.620 I don't, I think in, someone who's really WN of this kind, it does sound, sometimes when they talk, it sounds a bit 90s.
00:48:09.480 It sounds like something that's, you know, a bit curdled milk or it's never gone anywhere.
00:48:14.860 It's too, it's too populist.
00:48:18.180 It's too, you know, we've got to stop the illegals.
00:48:21.720 Our race is under threat.
00:48:22.760 It doesn't, it doesn't seem like you're really solving the full issue.
00:48:26.320 I would say identitarianism probably has, at least identitarianism as I understand it, probably has more, a deeper connection with neoreaction, even if we might disagree here and there.
00:48:39.480 It's just in the sense that this is going to be a holistic problem that we're going to have to solve, that identity is not just your genetics.
00:48:47.440 Identity really is a spirit.
00:48:49.380 It's a social form.
00:48:50.760 And that social form is not about the people finally having their say.
00:48:56.500 Every society is going to be hierarchical and the elites of various, of variations with obviously economic elites, but political elites, military elites, cultural elites, spiritual elites.
00:49:09.120 These people matter more.
00:49:10.520 These people inform society.
00:49:12.420 And they create the forms that normies operate in, that all of these things need to be changed.
00:49:20.880 I would say, you know, one, if we say the alt-right, I mean, I kind of think of the alt-right as a big umbrella, but if we think of the alt-right as, you know, the Trump hats and the shitlords on Twitter and so on, I think this is an overwhelmingly positive phenomenon.
00:49:41.520 Don't get me wrong.
00:49:42.980 That being said, I think they could be in for a major disappointment once the election occurs, whether win or lose.
00:49:53.920 Certainly, if Trump loses, I think that would be demoralizing.
00:49:56.740 And I don't want Trump to lose.
00:49:58.860 But Trump winning could be equally demoralizing because Trump might not really get it at some level.
00:50:07.040 And Trump might not really, you know, we're not going to, we're not just going to kick out the illegals and, you know, get better trade deals.
00:50:18.260 We're not going to enter a new world.
00:50:20.280 And I think it's actually important that we have, like, you know, identitarian groups, neoreactionaries, and so on, who are willing to say these kinds of things and willing to push us forward.
00:50:33.060 Because I do think that we're going to be, we're going to be in a different point in, you know, when is the election, November 8th or something?
00:50:41.040 We're going to be in a different point on November 9th.
00:50:43.100 We're going to be in a new world.
00:50:45.960 And whether that's a Trump loss, that's going to open, that's going to probably immediately open a lot of possibilities.
00:50:52.300 Because I think there, people will start to grasp that we're not going to win this with a ballot box.
00:50:57.020 But a Trump win, I think that's going to, we're going to have to have leaders pushing.
00:51:02.760 Because we can't just buy into this idea that, you know, we need a better trade deal or we need to kick out the illegals.
00:51:09.580 Like, the problem that our race and civilization are facing is so much deeper than this that we need to keep pushing and we need to keep going further.
00:51:20.360 And I think that's where leadership comes in, to be honest.
00:51:24.960 Well, part of that goes into, it's the hole in the soul of Western man and woman that is just a hole.
00:51:32.620 And we can't fill it.
00:51:33.800 There's no struggle.
00:51:34.900 There's nothing that we have to fill it.
00:51:36.280 And that's where when I've witnessed, you know, firsthand the response people have to Trump is this is a casino magnet, a construction reality television star.
00:51:47.760 Yeah.
00:51:48.000 Who's just going out there and saying what so many people wish they could say and could say on camera and have it be broadcast to America.
00:51:57.400 And that, you know, I thank him for, you know, opening the Overton window.
00:52:01.400 I thank him for touching every single third rail in politics, this this election cycle.
00:52:07.080 And it's amazing to watch it happen.
00:52:09.420 And I think that if, you know, wherever you are on the alt right, there's going to be a day that's going to come where a true governor of any state is going to say, this is the weekend that we kick out the cartels.
00:52:23.240 And it would be they probably have to call the National Guard for assistance and it would be, you know, a bloody weekend or whatever.
00:52:30.400 They'd have to do full access to folks in the media to say, look, I'm going to be here.
00:52:34.320 This is our crisis center.
00:52:35.880 You know, you'll be able to see us in action.
00:52:37.420 And that person in whatever state it is, is going to get rid of the cartels.
00:52:42.260 They're going to give a great speech about why they did it.
00:52:45.320 And they're going to encapsulate just the decay of so many small towns, heroin, what's happening, what's happening in schools, what's happening in small towns.
00:52:53.900 They're going to wrap that up.
00:52:54.660 I thought you were referring to the media cartels.
00:52:56.440 Go on.
00:52:57.300 Sorry, I was talking about the narco cartels.
00:52:59.100 I know.
00:52:59.800 But once they go after that and when that governor, and I assume it would probably happen, when that governor in the Midwest or out West does it, there's going to be a huge upswell.
00:53:11.320 There's going to be a huge surge of, you know what, you're going to have to take a stand at some point.
00:53:16.600 And like I said, fight or flight, some won't.
00:53:18.960 And they can just curl up with their adult coloring books and their video games and die off.
00:53:23.780 But there will be a lot of folks who will stand up and fight.
00:53:27.980 And, I mean, one thing I'd say, too, that's a strength of the alt, right, in general, is it is decentralized.
00:53:34.800 Yeah.
00:53:35.160 It is decentralized.
00:53:36.340 And that's something that I think is fantastic because it's like catching – it's like trying to, you know, catch – slap a butterfly with, you know, just a fly swatter or catching a butterfly in a net.
00:53:49.540 When you're in net and things fall in, you can wrap around a lot quicker.
00:53:52.920 The rapid reaction that folks have, whether it's social media, writing, and then amplifying a signal, it's amazing to see – it's amazing to see that I think Ricky Vaughn might have said it or tweeted it, that roughly, you know, a thousand anonymous accounts, maybe even fewer.
00:54:12.140 But like a thousand anonymous accounts and one billionaire destroyed the GOP, you know, pundit class.
00:54:17.940 And that's just kind of a strength of it doesn't matter what time of day it is.
00:54:23.600 You know, if you say something, you're going to be called out by 10 to 500 accounts.
00:54:30.120 And it pierces their bubble.
00:54:31.840 And that's a huge thing to let them know because the regime and the regime press, they live in that bubble where they think everybody loves me, this is perfect, oh, just they're uneducated if they don't accept me or they don't believe what I believe.
00:54:43.740 Once you pierce their bubble, you show that they're vulnerable.
00:54:46.620 So, yeah.
00:54:49.440 Yeah, I totally agree.
00:54:52.340 That is why I think the neocons and other conservatives are right to be terrified about Trump.
00:54:59.120 I think one could make the argument that, oh, this is so overblown, you guys should just go along with it.
00:55:04.100 Obviously, people in the Republican establishment are going along with Trump and they're just kind of saying, okay, well, we're going to probably lose this time.
00:55:11.680 But, you know, don't worry.
00:55:12.800 We'll hit the reset button and we'll be back to talking about family values and capitalism in 2018 or something.
00:55:19.800 But I don't think it really happens that way.
00:55:22.740 I think there is a way where you open up space and you can't really go back.
00:55:27.540 And I certainly hope that's the case.
00:55:31.660 If, what's his name?
00:55:33.760 Who's the Japanese anime guy?
00:55:36.600 The Republican pundit slash media consultant?
00:55:41.760 Oh, Rick Wilson.
00:55:42.860 Yeah, Rick Wilson.
00:55:43.540 If people like Rick Wilson and others, if we do go back and they become re-employed or something, I would be pretty depressed, to be honest.
00:55:55.560 But I generally think that that doesn't happen.
00:55:57.960 You don't really go back.
00:55:59.620 Things change and something new is going to take their place.
00:56:04.680 Well, that brings up a good point because I think something that's been so powerful about Trump's campaign is the failed rally in Chicago.
00:56:16.380 It's the rallies in California.
00:56:19.440 And something – there are some of those photos in California where it is just a family of three, four, five.
00:56:25.980 They're going to a rally, and they're just walking in maybe with a Trump shirt, maybe with a Trump sign, and they're being shouted at by a smorgasbord of ministry meets and minorities.
00:56:41.520 And it just strikes me that something has fundamentally changed in America.
00:56:46.560 Something has fundamentally transformed.
00:56:49.060 And California, there's – it's fantastic that it's showing these folks.
00:56:53.300 No, that America from 1950s that the GOP pitches to you, that's gone.
00:56:57.660 It's not coming back.
00:56:59.380 Do you think that white conservative normies don't grasp that?
00:57:07.140 Because, you know, one thing that I would say about white conservative normies, they're very naive people, very good-natured, conformist in their way,
00:57:18.640 people who want everything to just work out, people who deal – they deal with you in good faith, and they expect and assume that everyone else is dealing with them in good faith.
00:57:32.860 Do you think that they grasp, you know, the kind of edge we're on?
00:57:39.260 I mean, I think sometimes they do.
00:57:40.500 Even the Tea Party phenomenon, which, you know, it devolved into this Glenn Beck nonsense.
00:57:46.900 But just the fact that it existed was an expression of people – people were perceiving that something was going wrong.
00:57:55.740 But do you think that they grasp that they're on the edge and that they – we can't go back and that it's not going to be okay
00:58:03.500 and that there's going to be a crack-up in their world?
00:58:06.840 We're not – it's not going to be a Norman Rockwell painting because it seems like liberals get it more than conservatives in that sense.
00:58:14.960 I do think that – I do think you're right about there's that – the blinders are on for some conservatives.
00:58:22.580 And I wouldn't – I would not blame them as much for the folks in Michigan, the folks in Pennsylvania,
00:58:29.240 who might not be exposed to what's been going on in, say, in the Southwest or giant immigration states like Florida.
00:58:37.200 Exactly, yeah.
00:58:38.100 And that's something about –
00:58:39.120 They're isolated.
00:58:39.980 Yeah, and that's something about Trump going to those states to show the people in the Big Ten states,
00:58:45.180 to show the people in Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, this is your future.
00:58:49.380 Yeah.
00:58:49.740 This is your future if this keeps up.
00:58:51.500 But I do think some of them have their head in the sand, but I do think that some of them – it's just genuine atomization.
00:58:59.580 I mean my parents were teasing – my parents are middle-of-the-road boomers, like right in the middle of that generation.
00:59:06.900 Yeah.
00:59:07.080 And they were teasing some of my younger male cousins about – who were age 21 to 25 about, you know, when are you going to find a good girl?
00:59:16.560 When are you going to do this and that?
00:59:18.260 And so one of my cousins turned it around to them and he goes, define a good girl.
00:59:22.780 And so my parents, you know, threw out some traits.
00:59:28.000 And my cousin goes, I've never had a girl even offer to cook me anything.
00:59:32.280 And my mom was like, wait, what are you talking about?
00:59:35.680 And he goes, I don't even think most of the girls I dated could cook more than like mac and cheese and ramen.
00:59:41.580 And it was kind of shocking for a boomer who's completely out of touch with the dating game.
00:59:47.360 And then he showed them Tinder and he said – because I had mentioned my parents were like, oh, yeah, there's dating apps that are really just sex apps like in Logan's Run.
00:59:57.840 And, you know, my parents were like, what?
00:59:59.360 And my cousin who actually had a Tinder account was showing, you know, all I have to do is message and I can get sex.
01:00:08.400 And his big pitch to my parents was I can get sex anytime I want.
01:00:12.100 To get a girl to stay longer than three weeks or four weeks, that's the challenge.
01:00:17.760 And it's not, you know, like that's not my parents having their head in the sand.
01:00:22.280 It's just my parents being completely detached from that.
01:00:25.040 And that's part of that atomization between regions, genders, generations.
01:00:30.880 Very few folks truly know what someone else is going through.
01:00:34.960 And then the only people they're hearing it from are folks in the media.
01:00:38.180 Mm-hmm.
01:00:39.320 Yeah.
01:00:41.280 Yeah.
01:00:41.840 And just this default notion that it's going to all be okay.
01:00:45.940 I think that we probably evolved to have something like that.
01:00:51.920 I mean, white people evolved to have longer time horizons.
01:00:55.940 That's very important of, you know, you actually invest, you plant, you reap it later, so on.
01:01:02.780 You make it through winter?
01:01:04.480 Exactly.
01:01:05.060 We had to make it through winter.
01:01:06.500 We didn't.
01:01:06.620 Come on.
01:01:07.280 If you make it through winter, man.
01:01:09.020 It would be nice if we were just lounging about and, you know, bananas are falling off trees and things like that.
01:01:14.680 And we could just go, just live off the land like that.
01:01:19.020 But no, we had to make it through winter.
01:01:20.700 We developed a long time horizon.
01:01:21.960 But we also probably evolved a certain kind of naive optimism of collaborating with others, conforming to a degree.
01:01:31.000 Conformism is very important.
01:01:32.780 It's a little bit silly when, I mean, even when I was bashing the conformist to people on a YouTube comment, well, you know, humans are going to conform.
01:01:40.820 I mean, we can't, we would never have evolved to where we are if we were this race of atomized individualists who were, you know, all a bunch of hipsters contradicting everyone at every possible outcome.
01:01:53.040 I mean, that's not going to work.
01:01:54.780 But I think also we probably did evolve a certain optimism that it's going to be okay because that is a motivation to keep getting on, keep on getting on or whatever the phrase is, keep on chugging along, keep on doing what you're doing.
01:02:10.580 It's going to work out.
01:02:12.220 And that is important for society.
01:02:14.180 We probably evolved to have that trait.
01:02:15.900 But we see the dark side of that in a moment where there is going to, about to be a paradigmatic shift or a major collapse.
01:02:25.560 And people just don't want to grasp that, the kind of threat that is before us.
01:02:32.760 And again, we don't have an elite that tells them about threats.
01:02:36.760 I mean, a tribe, you need people telling them about the barbarians at the gate or the other at the gate.
01:02:46.240 We don't have that elite anymore.
01:02:50.060 That was probably fundamentally a military elite.
01:02:53.300 You know, our military elite now are a bunch of, you know, doofus football coaches who go out and bomb some Iraqi village and then rebuild it.
01:03:02.440 We don't have a military elite really talking about the other.
01:03:06.080 And we don't have that.
01:03:07.840 We have a media and political elite who are hopeless progressives.
01:03:12.760 That's we are the empire.
01:03:15.000 We run the global empire now.
01:03:17.320 And globalism looks for clients.
01:03:19.960 It looks for deepening ties.
01:03:22.460 And one thing that why the left got in on the global intervention, it wasn't just the old Wilsonian, let's export democracy.
01:03:31.400 There was the idea that the business interests, Bob Strauss, I think it was Robert Strauss, was a lawyer and a huge kingmaker political connector on the left.
01:03:43.320 And he helped orchestrate the 76 Democrat convention, kind of lining up everybody for imagery to be behind Carter to unite and win.
01:03:53.280 But his law firm made tons of money off of consulting and doing things with international clients.
01:04:01.300 So the idea that you make more trade agreements and more trade agreements will eventually become, if something happens with the internal politics of that nation, you know, you then have an actual interest to go back to the seat of the seat of the empire's power in D.C.
01:04:16.420 And go, we need to intervene here.
01:04:18.340 We need to do something about this.
01:04:19.800 I'm losing money.
01:04:20.680 I'm one of your donors.
01:04:21.880 Yeah.
01:04:21.980 So part of it's the political system.
01:04:24.320 We're not truly ruling and reigning our vassal states.
01:04:28.980 You know, we're doing it through intermediaries and then only when stuff hits the fan do we jump in.
01:04:34.400 And it's not that different from when, you know, when the Brits had, when the Brits switched over from, you know, colonialism and stuff to imperialism.
01:04:43.740 It's not that different.
01:04:44.980 And if you look at even what Cromer went through, Lord Cromer went through in Egypt, you know, the immediate intervention in Egypt was this weird unification of the jingoists and the super patriots.
01:04:59.260 And, you know, it might sound like an echo from today, these left wing folks who want to spread the great ideals and the joys of British civilization to the Egyptians.
01:05:09.340 And then quickly, within a couple of years, those folks on the left all turned on that intervention.
01:05:16.360 And then Cromer was constantly spinning plates, did a fantastic job with it, but he's constantly spinning plates.
01:05:21.380 So it's not that different from today.
01:05:23.080 It's just that, like, the scale of what we can do for damage and destruction is so much greater.
01:05:29.840 Well, put a bookmark in it.
01:05:33.060 This was interesting.
01:05:34.440 A very theoretical conversation.
01:05:36.280 You should come back.
01:05:37.040 All right, well, thank you for having me.
01:05:40.040 I have to ask this, because you do these, like, 5,000-word reviews of James Bond films.
01:05:46.600 But what's your favorite Bond film?
01:05:50.700 Oh, I thought everyone knows that.
01:05:53.080 I would say my favorite is On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
01:05:56.740 Oh, my God, are you kidding me?
01:05:58.380 No.
01:05:58.760 Really?
01:05:59.720 No.
01:06:00.560 I think that's the best made Bond film.
01:06:05.960 It's not my favorite.
01:06:07.180 My favorite's Goldfinger.
01:06:08.900 Okay.
01:06:09.260 But that's more because I view looking at Bond films not from what the story is, but from kind of the idea of a little bit of the cheese, a little bit of the themes of Bond.
01:06:22.600 Whereas On Her Majesty's Secret Service, you are right.
01:06:25.200 It's the best actual story.
01:06:27.700 Yeah.
01:06:28.140 Yeah, it's the best story.
01:06:29.060 Goldfinger cemented all the icons and all of the tropes and the aura of Bond that wasn't quite there, because From Russia with Love almost feels more like a John le Carré tale or something.
01:06:43.440 You know, it's a little bit more shadowy, although you're in Turkey, it's less of the splash and exoticism and fun.
01:06:54.320 And Doctor No, I think, is actually a brilliant film.
01:06:56.680 But that, you know, that was very low budget and so on.
01:07:00.500 It was Goldfinger that cemented it all.
01:07:02.220 But I don't think Goldfinger is the greatest movie.
01:07:05.320 I think its story kind of, I mean, it has all the, it has some brilliant elements, like, you know, the man himself and some of those scenes.
01:07:13.460 But the story is, I don't know, it doesn't really, it doesn't really excite me.
01:07:18.960 Whereas On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it definitely touches me, the story.
01:07:23.800 And then also, I don't know, just, it does, there's this kind of mythic element of, of there's a dragon, there's a dragon up in a castle.
01:07:34.980 And you have to go slay the dragon up in the Alps and save the princess.
01:07:40.500 There's something kind of, you know, deeply mythic about it that I like.
01:07:43.080 On Her Majesty's Secret Service, first off, if Connery or Moore is in that film instead of Lazenby, then that is the Bond film from the 60s, 70s that is always on TNT or whatever.
01:07:57.920 You know, that's always a Sunday matinee after the NFL is done.
01:08:01.820 That, if it was just a different lead, because it's probably the most realistic, probably the most believable guy and girl get together and fall.
01:08:12.560 Yeah.
01:08:13.460 Like, the one time where you're like, Bond is not just nailing some exotic foreign tail in, like, five-word pickup, you know, or a five-line pickup.
01:08:22.280 Like, there's an actual development of a relationship.
01:08:24.620 Yeah.
01:08:24.860 And I think Lazenby is believable, whereas Moore would have, I mean, I like Roger Moore.
01:08:32.400 I am a Roger Moore defender, but only in the sense that I don't take him that seriously.
01:08:37.240 Like, I like the fact that it becomes wild and stylized and ridiculous and cartoonish.
01:08:43.860 He kills a snake with his hairspray.
01:08:47.780 You've got to love Roger Moore for that.
01:08:50.520 But I love how Lazenby doesn't, in OHMSS, doesn't the British, because he goes up there and it's the rare diseases.
01:08:58.740 Yeah.
01:08:59.360 It's all these hot chicks with rare diseases.
01:09:01.120 You know, not like realistic, like it'd be ugly chicks.
01:09:03.280 And that British, blue-eyed, super-Brit-looking, maud girl writes in lipstick on his inner thigh because he's got a kill top.
01:09:13.320 And that's brilliant.
01:09:16.260 And Lazenby plays it cool.
01:09:17.980 Yeah.
01:09:18.160 He plays it cool, and I like that about him.
01:09:20.300 Are you okay?
01:09:21.320 A slight stiffness coming on.
01:09:22.560 Yes.
01:09:23.140 Yes.
01:09:24.120 But see, I do a killer Sean Connery, and I do it all the time.
01:09:28.380 And I will do it here.
01:09:29.400 I haven't even been drinking.
01:09:30.560 Okay, go for it.
01:09:31.220 Hold on.
01:09:31.780 You can't trust the communists, whether they're Chinese or showbiz.
01:09:37.500 So there you go.
01:09:38.240 That's one of my Connery lines.
01:09:39.580 But if I'm drinking...
01:09:40.940 Which film is that one from?
01:09:42.020 I don't recognize...
01:09:42.280 No, I just made that up.
01:09:43.220 Oh, you just make it up.
01:09:43.920 Okay.
01:09:44.120 I just made that up.
01:09:44.840 That's from some imaginary James Bond film that should exist.
01:09:48.660 Yeah, or he'd be like, the Japanese.
01:09:50.580 They have small women.
01:09:51.700 Like, he's...
01:09:52.300 Just you bring out the Connery voice when you need it.
01:09:55.300 Yeah.
01:09:56.020 And he's such a, like...
01:09:57.580 I mean, again, I love Connery, too.
01:09:59.740 But, you know, he has this animal sexuality where, you know, he almost...
01:10:06.740 You know, there's one line where he says something like, you know, why do Chinese girls taste different than Japanese girls?
01:10:11.960 Or he says that, you know, there's something about him that's just this animal, like he consumes women.
01:10:18.360 Whereas Roger Moore, like, you know, makes love to them.
01:10:22.740 You know, Connery just ravishes them, basically.
01:10:26.740 And so, whereas Lazenby does seem to be a...
01:10:31.520 He's a more genuine person.
01:10:33.680 He seems uncomfortable in that film.
01:10:37.180 I don't think Moore or Connery ever seem uncomfortable.
01:10:39.920 They're always wildly arrogant and confident.
01:10:43.100 Lazenby is actually afraid.
01:10:44.800 He doesn't really know what he's doing.
01:10:46.240 He makes mistakes.
01:10:48.220 And that's why I think, in a way, Lazenby is the perfectly cast.
01:10:52.740 And you can't just plug someone else into that film.
01:10:56.400 That it really was a more realistic...
01:10:58.800 It was definitely more of a Fleming Bond.
01:11:00.280 Because Fleming's Bond is this kind of unhappy, broken, young man who has bad relationships.
01:11:09.380 And, you know, it's a very different person.
01:11:12.940 But look at MI6 and CIA.
01:11:14.780 You got...
01:11:15.580 That's believable.
01:11:17.220 That's totally believable.
01:11:18.600 What do you mean?
01:11:18.960 Today?
01:11:19.520 Or...
01:11:19.760 Can't...
01:11:20.120 No.
01:11:20.340 But couldn't you just see MI6 and CIA guys being completely miserable human beings?
01:11:25.120 Oh, yeah.
01:11:25.500 Definitely.
01:11:26.260 That's the kind of dark side to his character.
01:11:28.280 Is that he's a...
01:11:29.520 He is this, you know, person with good instincts and a healthy outlook.
01:11:34.920 But who's in this kind of dark, modern world.
01:11:38.320 I mean, the Fleming's Bond is a lot closer to, like, a John le Carré world than you might
01:11:45.760 imagine.
01:11:46.240 If you go to the books fresh and you don't go to the books after just watching the movie
01:11:50.540 and then you kind of, like, project the movie onto the books.
01:11:54.400 If you go to the books fresh and you try to, like, discover them for the first time, it's
01:11:57.940 a very different world.
01:12:00.800 But, yeah, that's why I think Her Majesty seems to be the best combination because it
01:12:06.460 has, obviously, like, the flash and the class of, you know, going out to the Alps on some
01:12:13.160 skiing adventure.
01:12:14.160 I mean, it has that.
01:12:15.380 It has a real genuine love story.
01:12:18.540 It has tragedy, obviously.
01:12:21.100 And it was much more of a Fleming Bond.
01:12:24.940 So, I...
01:12:26.180 That's the one that I'll return to.
01:12:27.680 There's some other movies that are certainly good.
01:12:30.840 Casino Royale is a really well-made...
01:12:32.820 I'm talking about the 2006, not the 1966.
01:12:36.680 Okay.
01:12:37.200 But, yeah, basically, Daniel Craig's First Effort is a really good film.
01:12:43.020 And, yeah, those are what I would say.
01:12:46.100 But, you know, it's funny.
01:12:46.780 I don't watch Goldfinger that much.
01:12:50.100 See, I will watch it if it's on.
01:12:53.060 I mean, I will just listen for Shirley Bassey.
01:12:55.560 Oh, yeah.
01:12:55.880 Just for that completely ridiculous theme song.
01:12:59.180 Yeah.
01:12:59.540 But, I mean, if you saw Skyfall, I mean, that theme song that Adele sang is just cut from
01:13:06.620 the cloth of those early years.
01:13:08.980 And just whether it was Nancy Sinatra or Shirley Bassey going completely over the top, selling
01:13:14.640 you on this action film.
01:13:16.180 Yeah.
01:13:16.740 Yeah.
01:13:17.340 Yeah.
01:13:17.620 I mean, I know that there's been criticism, whether it's, you know, Black Money Penny or
01:13:21.660 a decade or, sorry, 20 years ago it was Female M.
01:13:25.120 I mean, yeah, that kind of pause seeks in there.
01:13:29.060 Well, Live and Let Die might be the film where it, I kind of, I don't watch that one as well.
01:13:35.720 Um, just, but that, that, that seems like they wanted to jump on the counterculture and they
01:13:40.860 wanted to jump on blaxploitation movies, which is a very weird thing to do.
01:13:45.000 Um, but, uh, yeah, no, the, the, the series can get paused, but I think that, I think ultimately
01:13:53.200 Bond is this, you know, like myth of mid-century, of the mid-century modernity.
01:14:00.740 And in that sense, he's, he, he's both kind of progressive if you look at him in the context
01:14:07.260 of the fifties and sixties, um, but he's, he's very regressive from our standpoint and
01:14:11.940 kind of, you know, wildly conservative and out of place, like a fish out of water to go
01:14:17.000 back to this metaphor, um, where, you know, the, the whole Bond film is this indulgence.
01:14:23.080 You're indulging in this idea that you have a, a mid-20th century kind of some, semi-aristocratic,
01:14:28.900 semi-modern fish out of water, but he's still saving the world.
01:14:33.000 And, you know, 2015, the last one, and that, that's the fantasy.
01:14:39.220 Um, and, and that's why I, I, it's, it's interesting that in a way James Bond is still so relevant
01:14:44.960 and so resonant.
01:14:46.500 Uh, like how many people, whenever you, if you just Google James Bond, you'll see all, they're
01:14:52.140 like tons of blogs or even news items and like the telegraph, oh, who's going to be
01:14:56.760 cast as the new James Bond, who, who's going to sing the theme song?
01:14:59.580 Like everyone's focused on it, obsessed with it.
01:15:02.420 And I, I think that that says something about society that we kind of need that.
01:15:07.120 Uh, still, I will say this.
01:15:09.180 I know that there was the, cause they always joke if they're going to make Bond black or
01:15:13.680 a female, I think the one opportunity they had to do, say like a one shot, let's make
01:15:20.420 Bond female would have been if they had set it up instead of a golden eye, instead of it
01:15:26.120 being, um, Pierce Brosnan, they brought in Liz Hurley for one movie.
01:15:31.380 You know, you know, you would have lined up for her in a plunging neckline dress doing witty
01:15:38.180 things back and forth.
01:15:39.580 You know, she's, she still has to kill women because now they're her sexual competitor.
01:15:45.320 And I mean, that's something you could totally do that.
01:15:47.800 Like, you know, some, some Russian, she's got to shoot, you know, in the back of the
01:15:52.080 head or whatever, like taking her man or whatever.
01:15:53.980 It's the same thing.
01:15:55.160 I think that was the one shot that would have done it.
01:15:57.560 Right.
01:15:57.780 And you're being very, you're being very insightful because a female Bond, it would be different.
01:16:02.380 Like Bond ultimately does this for England.
01:16:06.000 You know, there's the, I love my favorite scene is when he's just before this great
01:16:10.700 scene from Spy Who Love Me where he skis off a cliff, uh, where he's with this, you know,
01:16:15.900 hot Scandinavian babe in a cabin.
01:16:18.640 And then she's like, but James, I need you.
01:16:21.040 And Roger Moore goes, so does England.
01:16:22.820 Uh, Connery says other things like, oh, the things I do for, the things I do for England
01:16:29.080 when he's about to like, you know, have sex with this dangerous German woman.
01:16:33.360 But anyway, um, he still is dutiful.
01:16:36.500 Like he still, he still supports the regime at some level.
01:16:41.820 And, um, I, I think in a way what you're saying is very insightful because if it was a,
01:16:46.580 if it were a female Bond, she would be like killing her sexual, female sexual competitors.
01:16:51.980 Like she would have no sense of, of true duty or, or sense of nationhood.
01:16:57.180 It would be, it would be like, uh, trying to, trying to murder female agents who are
01:17:03.500 competition, uh, for the, you know, the affection of a man.
01:17:07.660 Um, I'm sad to say, but no, I, I wouldn't have liked that.
01:17:11.380 I mean, Liz Hurley is obviously hot, but, um, I would have even me when I was like 12,
01:17:17.860 I'd be like, no, I'm doing the math in my head.
01:17:20.960 You would have been a teenager, Liz Hurley, 1994, you would have been all over it.
01:17:25.880 You can deny it to the listeners, but I know what would have happened.
01:17:29.140 I was, I was a very sophisticated young man.
01:17:31.740 I would have opposed this and I'm glad they haven't done it.
01:17:34.920 If, if the Eon and if Brock, the Broccolis and, and, uh, Michael Wilson weren't in charge
01:17:42.060 of the franchise, this would have happened long ago.
01:17:44.600 The fact that this family controls it is the reason why we still have this mid-century
01:17:51.700 fantasy going on that we're just replaying over and over.
01:17:55.380 If, you know, if, if Fox controlled it or who was that horrible, uh, Amy Pascal or something
01:18:01.360 who was, she was suggesting that Bond be, Bond be black.
01:18:03.840 Like if, if those types of producers, and she, she's also the producer of the new Ghostbusters
01:18:08.900 film, by the way, uh, if those type of horrendous women were in charge of Bond, he would have
01:18:17.340 been Dwayne Johnson or, or, you know, it wouldn't have even, it wouldn't even have been Idris Elba
01:18:23.680 who, who's kind of an interesting actor.
01:18:25.960 Like I want him to be a Bond villain.
01:18:27.960 I think that'd be cool, but I certainly don't want him to be James Bond, but, uh, it wouldn't
01:18:33.580 have even been Idris Elba.
01:18:34.960 It would have been, you know, Dwayne, the Rock Johnson or Lil Wayne or like Chris Tucker
01:18:39.520 in the rush hour, rush hour era, Chris Tucker.