McSpencer Partisan Girl Iran
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 13 minutes
Words per Minute
158.07176
Summary
Tyler Hamilton and Mimi, Partisan Girl, join me to discuss the coming Iran debacle. Taking a step back from the news, we look in depth at the nature of American empire. Can an empire sustain itself when it promises freedom and liberty for all but must resort to invasions, regime changes, and hard power? What does national interest even mean for a borderless, finance oligarchy? And is realism possible when Washington s inseparable ally, Israel, seeks the destruction or subjugation of stable powers in the region? And finally, does Zionism have a future in an increasingly post-white Protestant America?
Transcript
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It's Monday, January 6th, 2020, and welcome back to The McSpencer Group.
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It was 2003. The show Friends was still popular. Poorly received Star Wars movies were in theaters.
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Beyonce was at the top of the charts. And a Republican president, elected on the promises
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of a more humble foreign policy, was preparing for war in the Middle East. In other words,
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not much has really changed. And Washington seems to have forgotten everything and learned
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nothing. This week, Tyler Hamilton and Mimi, partisan girl, joined me to discuss the coming
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Iran debacle. Taking a step back from the news, we look in-depth at the nature of American empire.
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Can an empire sustain itself when it promises freedom and liberty for all, but must resort
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to invasions, regime changes, and hard power? What does national interest even mean for a
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borderless finance oligarchy? And is realism possible when Washington's inseparable ally,
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Israel, seeks the destruction or subjugation of stable powers in the region?
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And finally, does Zionism itself have a future in an increasingly post-white Protestant America?
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I guess the news cycle is no longer boring. We have been launched into something that is
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potentially catastrophic, something that certainly reminds me of an era I would prefer to forget,
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and that is 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq War. Although I think the potential danger for all of this
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is much worse. And I also think this is a time for choosing, as the conservatives like to say,
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this is where the rubber hits the road. And we can disagree about some other things, but
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to be honest, you have to get on the record on this issue. I'm, of course, discussing what's
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been apparently an imminent war, at the very least, a imminent diplomatic disaster in Iran.
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And I have two very important people on board to talk about this with me. So first off, let me
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welcome Mimi, Partisan Girl, from Australia. How are you? I hope you're staying safe. Australia
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is apparently aflame. That's at least what we're learning in the American press. But how are you?
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Thanks so much. Yeah, we're having fires. I'm on the West Coast, so not the East Coast. So I'm safe
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where I am very far away. So I'm on the other side of the country. But unfortunately, yes, we've been
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having unprecedented fires, which usually we're very good at controlling. So it's confusing as to why
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that's happened. Yes, I actually read a statistic that almost half a billion animals and birds and
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other wildlife have perished. I mean, it's, it's truly sad. But I guess we're going to talk about
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another conflagration. Also enjoying and joining me from Canada is Tyler Kent. How are you, Tyler?
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I'm doing pretty well. I'm not smoking the signature pipe like I usually do on your streams. But
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yeah, you were kind of a young fogey the last time. Now you look like a guy at a metal show. So
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it's good that you have personalities and I have to keep people on their toes, right? Exactly.
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Yeah. Um, yeah, the guy at the concert who's not dancing, but standing with his arms crossed.
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That used to be me, actually, you know, the hood on just standing.
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I've seen a number of those. All right, let's jump into it. Jokes aside, I wanted to focus
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on something that just happened, because I feel like it expresses the impossible nature of the
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American empire, just in one thing. Basically, the Iraqi parliament has recently voted to expel
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U.S. forces from Iraq. Understandably, they condemned the recent assassination of Qasem Soleimani,
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the, I guess, legendary general of Iran, a man who's been fighting ISIS, who's clearly beloved
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in the country. And they've, they also seem to feel duped by mafia like tactics of Donald Trump of
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basically, they felt like they were the intermediary in bringing the general to an airport where he was
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drone strikes. And so they totally understandably condemn the murder, they want the U.S. troops out,
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but it brings up this impossibility of the American empire in the sense that America, at least in terms
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of its rhetoric, and I think this is actually part of its deeper ideology, wants to spread democracy,
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and we want to bring freedom and liberty and constitutionalism to the world, except when
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democracy becomes a threat, as it clearly is now, when it actually directly threatens the hard power.
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And so what you have is this, you know, heady kind of Christian-y empire of we just love all people
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and want to help them. And then the rubber hits the road, and you've had Republican officials basically
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say, well, we might actually not respect this vote. Screw you, we're staying, basically, where it's a,
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and on some level, understandably, in the sense that they've got an empire to run with military bases,
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and they want their way. So, but I think it gets at that just impossibility of the whole American
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project. But Mimi, let's, let's just go to you first. What do you, what do you think is going to
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happen here? I mean, in the sense of, if there is going to be a campaign in Iran, presumably,
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the US would want to use Iraq as a staging ground. And Iraq, which is, is, again, now much more
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Shia controlled, much more sympathetic towards Iran is pushing them out. I mean, we might have a
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major battle just right on this issue, uh, right here. Yeah, absolutely. I think the staging ground
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right now would be Iraq. Um, they've already started to attack the Iranian-backed militias that
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defeated ISIS, the PMF, the People's Mobilization Forces, the Hasht. So those people were, were the,
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those people were actually, uh, fighting alongside the United States and fighting alongside the Iraqi
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army. But if the US thought that it had, I think someone like Pompeo would have thought
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that the US has more support inside Iraq, that, like, he could rely on a certain assets, um, like,
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uh, uh, secular Shiites that he's been, you know, pushing to attack the Iranian embassy,
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and he's, like, on Twitter saying, oh, Iraqis, this is your chance to get rid of Iranian influence,
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as if, like, that's a priority for Iraq. And it's just, you know, these rallies on the streets
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compared to any, are larger than we've ever seen before. And it really shows how ludicrous
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that thought was, it was completely delusional, and Iran does have the influence in Iraq. If Iran
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so wanted, they could have gotten rid of the US in Iraq, probably in 2004, which I think is, it shows
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Iran's kind of own Machiavellian strategy here coming, you know, undone. Because I think what Iran
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wanted to see was, um, kind of hold the US hostage at the negotiating table with a gun held
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up against their head, saying, well, if you don't come to the negotiating table, and you don't do
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this and this and this, then you're going to get kicked out of Iraq. And obviously, the US did the
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Iran deal, and then they pulled out, and now they're killing Iranian leaders. So the deal is
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off. And the gun, the bullet has to be fired. And it has been, that's what's happened now.
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Right, I guess, I guess it is the ultimate irony. And it shows a kind of naivete of American strategy
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that Shias began to dominate Iraqi parliament. And I certainly don't, that was certainly not ever
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promised, uh, by the neoconservatives in 2003. And I, I, I'm not sure that's something
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I remember they did promise it. I think they did promise it. But yeah, as far as I remember,
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they said, Oh, you know, Saddam is a Sunni, and the majority of the country are Shiites. And it's
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time for the Shiites to have their own, you know, be able to be in power of their own country and blah,
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blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as a matter of fact, in my view, if they didn't want
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Saddam, then they wanted the Shiites. Um, because the plan was that they get the Shiites in power in
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Iran, and then they get Al Qaeda in power or the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Syria. And then they
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have the two fighting each other. Like that was the plan. But that didn't happen. Syria still is run
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under a secular government. They have no problem dealing with Iraq or Iran. And there's no, you
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know, there's no infighting that they could create. And now there's an alliance that stretches what
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they call the Shiite Crescent, all the way to the Israeli fake borders. And that's, that's the fear.
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Yeah, well, there's even I'll let Tyler jump in. I mean, I can remember this in, I think it was around
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2005 to 2007 era, where Joe Biden was actually promoting a kind of ethnostate strategy, so to
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speak, in Iraq of breaking up, having a Kurdistan, a Shia stan, a Sunni stan. Obviously, I mean,
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Saddam himself was a Sunni Muslim. But I mean, the Ba'ath Party has Christian roots, it's secular,
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fascist nationalism, and it's ostensible ideology, he was able to unite something. And that has absolutely
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come undone. Yeah, I don't think Saddam was a religious man. He's, he's completely secular
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man. Exactly. Yes. I've never seen him at a mosque. It's cool. It's very strong, man. Yeah,
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it's a strong... I can see if you actually own George Orwell's 1984, like Big Brother had
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a mustache. So there's something to it. I think Bashar al-Assad tried to draw one,
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but it's just a failure. He's a, he's just too nerdy a guy to be the strong man character.
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Well, now I feel inadequate with my lack of mustache.
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But anyway, I guess we'll just, to bring it back to my first question, I guess this is,
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this is maybe also kind of a question of the nature of the American empire, because it's
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like, you know, Rome loved the fact that they had an empire, it was about gaining territory,
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they were, they would do it openly, they would talk about it publicly, they didn't say they
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were spreading democracy, they might have said they were spreading civilization or the
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Roman way or something like that. But it was, it was out in the open. And certainly in the 19th
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century, Britain, Germany, France, etc, would be open about it. The United States empire is this
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empire that dare not speak its name. And it's also something that can never really be voted on
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by the public in elections. You could get a Ron Paul candidate or a Tulsi Gabbard candidate who will
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talk about it. But ultimately, no major foreign policy decision is ever really going to be put up
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for a vote. And it is also a different type of empire in the sense that it is based on the to a
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very large degree, the 1944 Bretton Woods accords, with the establishment of the dollar as the global
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reserve currency. It's to a large degree based on NATO, which is a kind of anti Soviet force, which is,
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you know, now having a second life as a global force for good, or something like that. So it's a
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different type of empire, and it's, but it is an empire, nevertheless, and all of this, you know,
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Trump, Trump's complaints about trade deficits, and all this kind of stuff, you know, he was just
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describing what you get to do as an empire, you get to have strong money, and you get to buy cheap stuff
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from abroad, in these countries, and your dollar is worth more just by its very political structural
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aspect of it. And I mean, globalization is not I mean, again, I think the conservatives want to complain
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about globalization. You know, it's destroying American manufacturing, globalization is a political
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military project, the military hegemony must come first. So globalization is a offspring of an American
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world of a unipolar world, and it doesn't go the other way around globalization isn't challenging our
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private primacy, globalization is an expression of it. But at some point, it doesn't, it's not going to
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work, you can't ultimately be a liberal hegemon promoting democracy, and then not expect that to bite
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back. I mean, in my view, they've never really promoted democracy. It's all has been a sham.
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When they do say they want democracy, that means they mean they want a state that can be the leader
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of that state can be changed whenever they they deem it. That's what they mean by democracy, a leadership
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that's easily changed by them. Look at what they did in South America, you know, when Ali Endi was elected,
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elected, or even when Chavez was elected, it no longer became democratic, because they didn't like
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the guy. And when it comes to Saudi Arabia, it's the monarchy. And yet, that's fine. It doesn't have
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to be democratic. So I think it's all sham. But they do support the idea of democracy in that it's weak
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and sweet. A country that is weak, can remain strong by having a dictatorship that is like,
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following the country's own interests. But once you make it a democracy, and the leadership could
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be easily changed, then outside influences can easily change the leadership. But in defense of
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the Roman Empire, when Syria became Roman, just to point out the biggest difference, when Syria became
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Roman, you know, when when Rome took over its territory, everybody became Roman. So Syria became
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Roman, and such that, like Syrian, Syrians actually became leaders of Rome. I think there was two Roman
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emperors that were Syrian. So that we don't have that in the US is kind of empire, or even if we call it
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neocolonialism. It's not even a colony per se, it's just slavery, just pure slavery. And you have no say
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in anything that's happening in your own country or in your own area. That's, that's, and when it comes
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to Zionism, when it comes to Israel, it's not only that, but it becomes like they're just ethnically
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cleansing you and taking over your land. Pure, you know, colony making good, but taking out the
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original inhabitants. And that's what Israel intends to do to Syria as well, not just to
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Palestine. That is their ultimate plan, everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. The first prime
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minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion, said that. So this is, this is worse than any kind of empire we've seen
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in the past. Just, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Rome, the Romans had hegemony over Jerusalem, and they
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would crush them if they ever riled up. At this point, Jerusalem is the kind of center source code
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of the American empire. I mean, that is one thing that is, you know, we can talk about bread and woods
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and finance and globalization, etc. But there is one thing that can absolutely not be challenged. And that
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is Israel, Israeli dominance and Israelis, Israel's identity as a Jewish state. And anything, you know,
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even if Iran isn't a global nuclear power, or Iraq is a bit of a tin pot dictatorship, that kind of
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unified force is a threat to Israel. It is a power in its region, and it must be destroyed. And as we've
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talked about on a number of podcasts that we've done, Mimi, is that I, I think these Zionist
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American powers would prefer chaos to stability. You know, if we, if we were a kind of Bismarckian
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empire, we would look at Syria, Syrian, you know, dictatorship, or whatever you want to call it,
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and be like, ah, yeah, of course, balance of power. Let's have good relations with them,
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we'll trade with them. We want stability here. We don't want a bunch of maniacs, you know,
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jihadists going out of control. But the American Zionist empire would much prefer chaos to any kind
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of established balance of power. We're not dealing in 19th century European, you know, norms. This is
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something radically different. And I think it ultimately does derive from the unipolarity of
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the American empire in the sense that there is one way. And you're, you're either on America's side,
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or you're, you're a terrible person, you're chaos, we're evil. There's no recognition of a competing
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power as an equal. It is pure Judeo-Christian liberalism, you know, just distilled. And yeah,
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that's where we are. Sorry, I have been talking too much. So no, that's, you're absolutely right.
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I think Tyler maybe get a word. Yeah, I was just gonna jump in on the American empire. As I was
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saying, so the American, I was just gonna jump in on the American empire as a financial empire,
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and a liberal empire, in the sense, I've seen the American empire described as an empire that
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produces pleasure in the act of rape, and that there's a moral schizophrenia involved in the
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American empire. So it comes to, for example, that we're, which goes into the rhetoric of American
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imperial adventures is that we're, we're making them free, we're opening them up to democracy,
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we're opening up to the market. But what's going on is this, this move where the American empire has
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material interests that benefit a few of the state actors. And so the, there's this sense where they
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act on incentives, for example, the Middle East to secure their value in the petrodollar to defend
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Israel's expansion. And they run into, of course, opposition. And so they have to act like any
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imperial power would, they can't pitch out on that. They're already involved. It's been the,
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that's been the American empire strategy, going back many years now, is having bases all over the
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world. And they've had this strategy where they need to maintain a presence and a dominance in all
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these regions. And there is no moral language of pushback against this. So when you, you often
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have, say, in the left in America, you have the anti-imperial rhetoric, but the rhetoric that they
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use is largely so within a liberal ontology. So you look at some responses from the left going on to
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the, what's been going on in Iran right now. They've been saying things like, oh, okay, well,
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hey, Iran, look at us in California, we accept all these people, we have diversity, we have freedom,
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they're free from American white supremacist, patriarchal, whatever. They're operating under
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the same framework of liberal freedom and actualization. So the sense that American
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unipolar world, whether you come from the left or right, you're still operating the same liberal
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ontology. And so this empire, which we call our own, our own Anglo empire, is not our own. It's an
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empire of liberal homogenization that benefits a few state actors. And this is part of the problem
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that comes with describing America as a unipolar empire is because it's controlled by various
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international finance actors. And so it's not really our empire or an empire with a base from
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America, but it's international and it's homogenizing the world. And that's what I think
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is the real danger is we lack the moral language to criticize it. And you see this, for example,
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with also, we met, I mentioned the leftist responses, but also the rightist responses. So we have,
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for example, we need to be isolationists. We need to be America first. Well, if you try to pull out
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and you try to push this America first isolationist stance, what you end up with is this kind of naive,
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also liberal idea that you could have an order of sovereign nation states along the world, which
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won't fight or they won't have their own interests. They'll just get along and trade because they all
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recognize each other's sovereignty. And we know how the whole idea of the liberal idea of the nation
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state came about. It was from the so-called wars of religion, which were not really wars of religion
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because those princes changed their religion week to week, depending on which would get the most
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support. But there was a breakdown of empire and it's carving up into liberal sovereign nation states.
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And so we're at the point where you can't simply withdraw from all these ventures the American
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empire has created and say, okay, we're withdrawn. We have these happy homelands now and that we've
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sold it. Well, what America? America is a financial empire. It is always a financial empire. It's birthed as a
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financial nation ever since they put down the whiskey rebellion, right? Like there was no sense
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in which America was anything other than what it would turn into. And so I think that we lack
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the language to critique it properly. And I think when it comes to de-territorializing the American
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empire, re-territorializing it towards something that is a spiritual rebirth of which we could say
00:23:08.820
is our own, is the true task for the dissonant right going forward.
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Yeah, that was extremely well put. Let me, I'll let Mimi jump in. Let me just kind of bring it down
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to earth just a little bit. I think we've all seen some of these Tucker Carlson clips. I don't have
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cable, but I kind of watch the best of on Twitter. And he was basically saying things that I think we all
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agree with on some basic level. What are we doing in Iran? Why are we worrying about this? Let's put
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America's interests first. Let's put America first. And that is a nice slogan that I think maybe in a
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perfect world we would all agree with, but it actually is totally detached from reality. America has never
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operated as a kind of nation state that, you know, secures its borders and, you know, deals with
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diplomatically with other countries. I mean, at the very best, you could say 1924 to 1944, perhaps, when it was a
00:24:15.240
nation state. I mean, I would grant you that. But all that means is that throughout its entire history, it was
00:24:21.080
basically a major frontier and economic platform, resource extraction platform, and then basically had hard
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imperial interests. And then now, and then certainly post-1945 or 1944, really, with Bretton Woods,
00:24:34.000
financial imperial interest. And so it's who's America first. I mean, I think John Bolton actually
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has a better claim on America first than any paleoconservative or Tucker Carlson. He has a
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claim on, you know, I hate to say this, but invading, destroying Iran, in order to create a globo homo
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shopping mall, shopping mall, is actually closer to being the reality for America's interest. I hate to
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say that. I would love if I lived in Bismarck's Germany or something, but I don't. That actually
00:25:12.480
is in America's interest. And all of the Trumpian rhetoric of, you know, borders, ending globalization,
00:25:21.760
getting out of NATO, all this stuff that he said in 2015 and 2016, would have been a kind of
00:25:27.340
extreme radical withdrawal from existing commitments and also from structures that
00:25:34.280
benefit Americans. I mean, they don't, they're obviously not benefiting people in West Virginia,
00:25:39.560
but they are benefiting America as a global power. And so the whole Trumpian thing, you know,
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the rhetoric was great. It appealed to something in us, something good, but it ultimately was
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bullshit. There is no way that the deep state, you know, in a real sense, a military industrial
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complex, financial elites, et cetera, would ever have let him do that. A, and B, doing that would
00:26:08.480
have actually created at least an immediate catastrophe. So this is like, if you want American
00:26:15.660
interest, if you want to put America first, this is what it looks like. And we have to recognize that
00:26:22.500
tragedy if we're going to move forward and not just kind of live in this nostalgia of like,
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oh, let's return to that time that never existed when we were a nation state. You know, I mean,
00:26:33.380
in the 1950s, America was all around the world fighting for global dominion with the Soviet Union.
00:26:40.140
I mean, don't tell me that we were in some different, like, we were a Westphalian nation
00:26:49.420
If I were to understand correctly, what you guys are saying is that these wars are in America's
00:26:55.600
interest and acting as an empire. And it's the, you know, it's the typical, like, a nation does what
00:27:02.720
it's, what's in its interests. Yeah, I, I had, and, you know, leftists say that all the time. They say,
00:27:09.040
oh, well, this is the empire just doing whatever's in interest, even if it kills a bunch of people,
00:27:13.800
and we stand against the concept. But there's two things that I would like to push back on.
00:27:22.320
It just seems sometimes that the US was doing something that isn't in its interests. And it
00:27:28.100
confuses me as to why it would do these things, because, you know, in real politics, you would
00:27:33.260
expect it to do something completely different. And then I've only come to understand it afterwards
00:27:39.040
in the, in the frame of, oh, it's doing something in Israel's interest. It's not doing it in its own
00:27:43.000
interest. That's the only way it makes sense. If Israel, let's look at a scenario where Israel
00:27:50.520
didn't exist. The US would be allied with Syria, there would be no trade problems, you would have
00:27:59.320
US companies inside the country, perhaps it would look something like Dubai. I think Dubai is like
00:28:06.480
the archetypal most Americanized. So when I say Dubai, I mean, you know, Arab Emirates, because not
00:28:12.320
not only does it have all of the American companies, you know, digging up its oil and all of the fast food
00:28:21.680
places, all of the fashion places, but also it's completely and totally multicultural. I think that 70%
00:28:30.000
of the population in the United Arab Emirates are not local. They're from Europe and the US
00:28:37.520
and Asia, you know, it's 100% diverse. And it's like the archetype. But on the other hand, you know,
00:28:47.200
what I seem to notice when it comes to maybe Israel, whatever the US empire touches turns to shit.
00:28:55.440
They want Iraq to go back into the stone age, they want Syria to be in the stone age, they want to
00:29:03.920
destroy and they don't want that. I mean, how it's been 16 years, Iraq's economy economy could have been
00:29:09.920
like UAE, but it's not because you want it to be weak. And why? Because, because of a 5000 year old
00:29:20.560
problem Israel had with Babylon and with Aramea and they, you know, the Assyrians in particular,
00:29:33.200
and the Sumerians. So, yeah, it's also Israel's intent to have no opposition. But basically,
00:29:44.480
the US is saying Israel is the Jewish ISIS, and it's asking all its neighbors, its immediate
00:29:50.240
neighbors to live with that. And it's something that we can't live with. But someone, something like
00:29:55.920
UAE is now more neutral towards it, because it's not directly affecting it. You know what I mean?
00:30:01.600
So if Israel didn't exist, the US empire would be acting completely differently. But what is, what is it
00:30:08.880
getting just from this tiny country? Is it getting anything? And I don't see how much it's getting.
00:30:14.480
I mean, Israel is trading with China and Russia like no tomorrow. It's ignoring US sanctions.
00:30:21.280
It's creating its own like industry. It doesn't have US companies. In fact, Israeli companies are
00:30:27.680
inside the United States, like, you know, Starbucks, for example. So it's, it where it could benefit
00:30:36.480
itself. It's kind of defecating itself. And that is where America First becomes anti-Semitic. It
00:30:45.440
becomes an anti-Semitic term. And that's what we hear in the mainstream media, that America First is
00:30:50.000
an anti-Semitic term that was used before World War II, to, I mean, during World War II, to prevent
00:30:59.360
And it was, I mean, that I do think that, like, Israel is right to fear that term. I mean,
00:31:09.280
in the sense that that was a movement coming out of the 1920s, when the American economy was gangbusters,
00:31:17.200
when after the First World War, very much unlike the Second World War later on, the First World War
00:31:22.320
was viewed as a disaster. And there were actually armament industry people brought in front of
00:31:27.520
Congress and berated and fined and all these kinds of things. And there was a kind of splendid
00:31:33.840
isolationism of America becoming rich. They were in, you know, the top public intellectuals
00:31:42.160
were eugenicists. I mean, I'm not exaggerating here. We were engaged in very way ahead of the game,
00:31:50.400
not only engaged in eugenics and engaged in natural conservation. And there was a kind of like
00:31:59.200
alternative reality that we could have branched off in a very different direction and become
00:32:05.520
Switzerland, become a kind of big, I agree why I would love it. A big Switzerland that is isolationist,
00:32:15.600
has tons of natural resources, rich, the buffalo, roaming.
00:32:20.240
Show me a poor person in Switzerland. Like, show me a suffering homeless person in Switzerland.
00:32:27.280
But you can see homeless people in the empire, you know, you have destitute people in the empire.
00:32:35.200
Well, and we, and, you know, Lindbergh was an expression of that, you know, alternative reality
00:32:41.760
as someone, he was not a Nazi at all. But he, I think he, he grasped the, he grasped where Europe
00:32:50.400
was going. He wanted to stay away from it. He resonated with some of it, but not all of it. I think he wanted
00:32:56.000
America to take a different path. And there was that option. But we have, we're beyond that. We are so
00:33:03.840
beyond it, we can't go back. And, you know, again, we could only go back after a catastrophe,
00:33:11.040
basically. But it's, it's that other America that I think is extremely attractive and admirable.
00:33:16.320
But the other thing that I was picking up on what you were saying that I thought was very interesting
00:33:21.680
was this kind of archaeo-futurist quality to the American order. So, on the one hand, you have,
00:33:30.480
you know, some rich shithead living in Dubai wearing three Rolex watches and hiring prostitutes
00:33:37.760
every night and living in a penthouse on the 200th floor and just suck, you know, sucking off money and
00:33:43.680
having investments around the world, all that kind of stuff. But then there's the other aspect to it,
00:33:50.320
which is the Islamic fundamentalism that is attacking any kind of real opposition to it.
00:33:57.520
And I would say there's, there's this kind of dual level to America, which quite isn't quite as
00:34:03.600
stark, but is still archaeo-futurist. There's America as the ultimate kind of modernizing,
00:34:13.080
post-modernizing empire, forcing gay rights on the world, bringing it, putting a McDonald's
00:34:19.680
in the Vatican City and all this kind of stuff that is ultimately undergirded by a Christian
00:34:27.520
population that votes Republican, believes in this stuff, basically confuses Jesus Christ with
00:34:36.000
the United States, and has a messianic view of the world, views America itself as the ultimate end,
00:34:44.240
the ultimate end of history. There's a religious-like quality to it. And I don't think you can actually
00:34:49.920
really have one without the other. You can't just build a liberal utopian empire. There has to be a kind
00:34:59.200
of, again, fundamentally Christian animus to it that is promoting it and undergirding it and willing to die
00:35:08.480
for it. So we kind of live in an archaeo-futurist presence.
00:35:14.160
Yeah, the evangelicals in the U.S. and their reaction to what's happening with the U.S. and Iran
00:35:20.720
right now is the glee because they are so excited at the prospect of the apocalypse. Because it's
00:35:26.800
an apocalyptic messianic cult that is very similar in his thinking to ISIS and Israeli-Jewish Zionism,
00:35:36.480
so it's the Christian version of that. And they think that by pushing forward to the apocalypse,
00:35:41.440
it's going to bring back the messiah and the world. And so in that case, that's going to prove
00:35:48.080
their beliefs. That's why they're so excited about it. And if you look at the Iran war in that frame,
00:35:55.280
it has a completely different meaning to America first. These people actually want the apocalypse,
00:36:02.880
Well, I mean, they're an interesting case, though, because, I mean, bringing up the Christian
00:36:06.080
evangelicals, it kind of goes to show how strong the influence of Zionism is in the sense that,
00:36:12.000
you know, when you're talking about the Zionists, you have the Christian evangelicals. They don't get
00:36:16.480
what they want when it comes to all the social issues, but they get everything that they want
00:36:20.160
when it comes to wars in the Middle East. So it goes to show how far the Zionist lobby has at stake.
00:36:25.840
And I mean, evangelicalism and the whole notion of the rapture and stuff you see in things like
00:36:29.920
left behind is a very uniquely American phenomenon for Christianity. That's not something you see in
00:36:35.040
theology until the last 40 or 50 years in America, right? So it's an expression, I think,
00:36:44.080
of American Christianity's, the way that's bound up with liberalism and the Protestant work ethic and the
00:36:50.640
like. Yeah. So the interesting thing about the evangelicals in America is that they get
00:36:56.400
everything they want in terms of when it comes to bringing about the Armageddon through Zionist
00:37:00.880
wars in the Middle East, but they don't get anything when it comes to social issues like abortion or
00:37:05.440
against gay marriage and the like. So it goes to show that the Zionist influences in American foreign
00:37:10.560
policy is a lot stronger than the Christian evangelical focus. But another interesting thing to consider
00:37:16.000
with that is that notion, say, of rapture, books like Left Behind, this is a phenomenon in Christianity
00:37:21.440
that's actually unique to America. This doesn't appear in theology up until recent times in American
00:37:26.720
history. And that's tied to the Protestant work ethic, to the way in which the American liberal idea of
00:37:32.000
separation between church and state created this sphere. We have the private individual belief, and they
00:37:38.240
have the public sphere, and you're supposed to translate your religious beliefs into the neutral sphere in a
00:37:43.280
secular language, and there's this tension between the individualist nature of American faith.
00:37:49.920
So you have an example like, this might bother a few Protestants, but the idea of, you know, you're
00:37:54.560
saved by the individual faith as opposed to what we call an apocalyptic theology, the faith of Christ,
00:38:01.440
which is something you see in post-the-world theology, which is, we can go into it another time. But there's
00:38:06.560
plenty of other actors and interests in the Middle East. For example, America defending the value of the
00:38:11.840
the petrodollar, its alliance with Saudi Arabia, and there's certainly a point here where the
00:38:17.200
Trump administration's geopolitical strategy here is deeply flawed. And the reason for that is there's
00:38:23.280
a continued escalation in a hit-for-hit fashion that could push into higher escalating measures that
00:38:28.960
they have direct far-reaching consequences in the region. So one of the things that Iran excels in
00:38:33.680
is asymmetrical warfare. So it's not like a state-versus-state warfare, but rather alliances
00:38:39.200
as a proxy, say, in Lebanon, Syria, and Afghanistan, and Yemen that could target Saudi Arabia as well as
00:38:45.120
Hezbollah of Lebanon. If the fight is escalated, it could target Israel. But what you would have
00:38:51.920
is, for example, Iran's capability for missile and cyber attacks on Gulf oil facilities, and that would
00:38:58.320
greatly hurt the petrodollar and raise the price of oil, which would deeply hurt America's economic
00:39:03.840
recovery. So Trump's strategy here is actually deeply, deeply flawed.
00:39:08.320
Right. But he almost has to on another level. We've been building up to the Iran war for at least 20
00:39:21.680
years. This was one of the targets from the new American century. This has been talked about. I
00:39:29.280
actually thought that Iran would be next in the 2006 era and so on. It just keeps building up to
00:39:38.240
this. And it is going to happen. Iran is so strong compared to anything the US has ever faced ever
00:39:44.000
before. Right. Well, that's one of the things. It's not going to be like Iraq or Afghanistan. And
00:39:49.680
I mean, America failed in those. But Iran is in a way stronger. It's even stronger than Syria. And
00:39:56.400
they couldn't deal with Syria. They're going to deal with Iran. That's why I thought this
00:40:01.680
couldn't happen. But it seems to be crazily enough happening.
00:40:05.680
Yeah. Yeah. But again, there's been so much pressure on this over and over and over again.
00:40:15.920
At some point, it will. I don't know how many stupid conservative books have been published on
00:40:21.360
the Ayatollah and the apocalypse. And the Ayatollah, it's not even a real state. It's just a terrorist
00:40:29.760
organization bent on destroying humanity. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating in terms of
00:40:37.040
the kind of rhetoric you hear. And that also kind of filters its way down to Fox News,
00:40:43.120
where you'll hear something like that from Sean Hannity. Iran's not even a state. It's just a
00:40:48.960
bunch of religious nuts with their finger on the button and the bomb waiting to push it.
00:40:53.520
Hey, you could say the same thing about... You could say the same thing about Israel.
00:40:59.680
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But it almost had... There's so much pressure behind it. It almost
00:41:06.880
had to happen. Even just the very existence of John Bolton in the administration. And I'm obviously
00:41:12.560
aware that he was kicked out. He kind of pushed Trump too far or whatever. I mean, this is someone who was
00:41:19.520
bragging before he was appointed as a national security director that, you know, within a year,
00:41:27.520
we're going to be in Tehran. And there's just this endless pressure pushing at it. At some point,
00:41:35.840
Well, I heard... Did you see the head of Mossad saying that in an interview, he's dead now,
00:41:44.640
but while he was alive, it was about three years ago, that the Israelis don't want to fight Iran on
00:41:54.640
their own. They want the US to do it for them. Right. Because they're afraid of retaliation. And they
00:42:01.520
think that if the US absorbs the blow, then they're going to have less of a retaliation towards them.
00:42:09.520
And you're right. Like that pressure was always there by Israel. You've got to bomb Iran. You've
00:42:13.760
got to bomb Iran. And I think that's part of the reason why they hated Obama. Because he came up with
00:42:18.560
the nuclear deal. And they wanted to go... They wanted just to throw the US empire
00:42:24.240
on to Iran, no matter the consequences. In the meantime, apparently they've been
00:42:32.080
shopping for a new host to Parasite, which is China.
00:42:35.360
I can't imagine that working. Because China lacks the Christian core that this appeals to. I mean,
00:42:46.080
I guess one of the themes that I've been discussing here is that there needs to be
00:42:49.840
an archaeo-futurist or kind of religious element to these empires. And the Chinese,
00:42:56.400
like Israel comes to China and they say, we want you to wage wars on our behalf and
00:43:02.400
you know, support Zionism and the apocalypse. I mean, these Chinese are just going to be like,
00:43:07.440
uh, let me show you the war. It's just not going to work.
00:43:11.200
They thought about that. That's why they've been adopting, if you've noticed the very liberal
00:43:17.120
Jewish families. A lot of them have been adopting Jewish, uh, sorry, Chinese girls and raising them
00:43:23.680
This is not just yellow fever. This is strategy.
00:43:29.120
I don't know. That was, that's my suspicion. I mean, I watch, sometimes I get forced to watching a
00:43:35.200
lot of these, like, uh, romantic comedies or Hollywood comedies, or, and sometimes they're on Netflix.
00:43:43.120
And as atrocious as they are, they have some clues in them. Sometimes these liberal families are like
00:43:49.840
either teaching their child Chinese or, you know, doing something in relation to China. And one of
00:43:55.600
them actually said, China is the future. And I wonder, you know, where is it coming from? I mean,
00:44:00.000
if you look at that serenity, uh, which was, I think a Jewish, a producer created that movie,
00:44:06.080
which is a great movie, just saying, but in it, the U S and China became one empire,
00:44:12.160
like the Americans had Chinese culture. And this is just big, like Chinese element.
00:44:18.800
Even if it, even it's as crazy, it might not even work. You know, you're right to me,
00:44:23.600
I don't see it working, but they obviously think that it can. At the end of world war one,
00:44:28.480
they almost went towards Russia because you know, they were having the kibbutz and Israel was supposed
00:44:35.120
to be a communist haven. Soviet union voted for the creation of Israel. You had like Trotsky, you
00:44:41.440
know, pushing all of this stuff and getting rid of the Orthodox church. But I, but at the end of the
00:44:46.240
day, they went with the U S instead of Russia, probably because of Stalin and because of, um,
00:44:52.080
um, the, the core of Orthodoxy, the Orthodox church inside, um, Russia is always going to have some
00:45:02.240
alliance with the Orthodox church in Palestine and Syria. So that is why they may be thought it
00:45:08.800
was easier to make the U S into an evangelical thing. Yeah. I mean, just to put a bow on this,
00:45:16.480
um, and I, I hate to say this as a, I guess, nominal confirmed Episcopalian and as a white person,
00:45:24.800
but, uh, I, Zionism is only popular among white Protestants and, and white Christians, uh, larger.
00:45:33.840
I mean, it, this, we are the only group that will sustain this as an ideology and we'll see Israel's
00:45:42.000
fate as tied up with ours. And we are the only, literally the only people on earth, uh, like this.
00:45:48.720
And I mean, if we were to, if we were able to gauge world opinion, you know, 7 billion, um,
00:45:55.120
I would say that the vast majority of people have no opinion subjects or tuned out or starving or
00:46:01.920
something. Uh, the only, and, and the, the people who are cognizant of this crisis are absolutely
00:46:08.560
opposed to it and see it as terrible. And the literally the only people who support this are
00:46:14.320
American Christians and American Christians. I mean, it's just, we have to face this fact.
00:46:20.080
Clearly American nationalism and American Christianity are no obstacle to Zionism.
00:46:26.240
Clearly they are actually undergirding Zionism. And we just simply have to face that and stop talking
00:46:32.720
about like real Americans don't support this when clearly they do.
00:46:38.400
Well, I think that I heard Israelis complain that they can't get the same level of support
00:46:44.240
from the Chinese as they do the Americans. Obviously it's going to be very hard for them to change,
00:46:50.240
to change over. But I just did want to mention that at the end of world war two,
00:46:54.480
the Soviet union was an option for Israel. And at that time they were selling themselves as like a
00:46:59.040
socialist thing, a socialist cause, not a religious cause. And they had the kibbutz and you had people
00:47:06.000
like, uh, Senator Sanders and Tromsky in Israel, trying to build this socialist haven. Um, and the
00:47:14.400
Soviet union voted for the existence of Israel. But I think maybe they went with the U S because
00:47:19.920
of the Orthodox Christian church inside Russia. The fact that they weren't able, the Trotskyists
00:47:27.040
weren't able to wipe them out completely. And Stalin came in and kind of brought them back in a little
00:47:31.680
bit. And the Orthodox Christians are always going to be tied to the Syrian Orthodox church and the
00:47:38.960
Greek Orthodox church and the existence of that in Palestine. Um, so that would be a major hurdle.
00:47:47.680
And so evangelical Christianity in the United States, it's much more easier to control, um,
00:47:53.920
in terms of that. But yeah, some people still have this China, Israelis still think they can make China
00:47:59.760
work in case they completely deplete the United States, I suppose. I don't think it's going to work.
00:48:05.600
No, no. Um, I guess we should talk a little bit about what we see going forward. Um, I, I, I don't want to
00:48:16.000
sound like a doomsayer, uh, but I, I think that there's a self-fulfilling prophecy element to all
00:48:24.080
this. And I don't, I don't see how Trump could back down. I mean, Trump, you know, there, there are
00:48:32.160
two times in April of 2017 and 2018 where Trump launched missile, missile strikes, uh, at Syria
00:48:38.480
and people like me were up in arms, but it ultimately didn't, you know, it, it, it ultimately
00:48:44.720
didn't launch a full on war and campaign, et cetera. So we, we do have some precedents of these
00:48:49.440
false starts, but I actually think that they were just that. I think there were false starts. I, I
00:48:54.000
think the level of rhetoric is so intense and the pressure is so intense and the unification. I mean,
00:49:00.920
Trump was in, in engaging in this action, Trump was able to unify a nation. I mean, I am sure that
00:49:09.120
there are major class and ideological divisions in Iran, but you didn't see them, uh, this morning,
00:49:15.580
uh, when I, you know, looked on Twitter and you had millions of people in, in, in, in Tehran, uh,
00:49:22.140
you know, marching on behalf of a man who's a legend and a hero. I mean, he has united a nation
00:49:28.180
against the United States. And I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, real quick
00:49:32.660
in terms of the Iran deal. I mean, I hate to sound like a, you know, centrist liberal partisan,
00:49:39.740
but to be frank, John Kerry and Obama seem like statesmen in comparison with the Republicans. I mean,
00:49:47.940
the Iran nuclear deal as whatever problems there was, it seemed to be working and there was simply no
00:49:56.820
evidence that people can point to that Iran actually was developing a nuclear weapon and it was
00:50:02.760
maybe not the best way, but one way to reach detente and regularize relations. Um, Trump raged
00:50:11.520
against the Iran deal. I mean, we all overlooked it in 2016. We were like, Oh, it's America first.
00:50:16.560
This is great. Uh, but he was raging against that constantly and it became a self-fulfilling
00:50:22.660
prophecy. So it was like, this is the worst deal in history. We've got to get out of it. Uh, you know,
00:50:27.320
they're, they're building a nuclear bomb and then they, they junk the deal unilaterally. And then what
00:50:32.940
do you know, Iran re, you know, engages in, uh, the development of nuclear weapons, which is exactly
00:50:40.100
what they wanted, which is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy for war. And so I actually, I hate to say
00:50:46.720
this, I don't want to sound like a doomsayer, but I don't see how any of this can be deescalated. Um,
00:50:53.020
I, I think that there is going to be a coming catastrophe. I'm willing to say it out loud.
00:50:59.280
I certainly hope I'm proven wrong. Um, you can, you know, from Iran's side, they can't deescalate.
00:51:09.000
Maybe from the U S side, they can. Yeah. And maybe Trump will. Um, but I, I, I, it's just,
00:51:17.500
we are, we've, we're well past the Rubicon. You could maybe walk back across the Rubicon,
00:51:24.080
but I'm not, I, I just, I'm not sure it can happen. And there has to be some response by Iran.
00:51:31.060
Um, and then Trump is saying, if you respond, I'm going to wipe out your historical sites.
00:51:36.720
I'm going to destroy. I mean, you, I know Trump tweets a lot of bullshit, but you cannot,
00:51:44.580
you're president of the United States. You cannot back down from these things. So, uh, I mean,
00:51:50.020
again, I, uh, call me a doomsayer or, you know, gloom and doom, whatever you want to say. I,
00:51:55.480
I basically think that there is no way out of this, you know, trajectory towards some kind of
00:52:02.220
catastrophe. I mean, maybe it's not the worst thing in the world. There is going to be some kind of
00:52:06.480
major conflagration in the next three to six months. I hope Iran also just said threatened
00:52:13.300
that if Trump makes good on his threat to attack Iran's homeland, um, like they would then therefore
00:52:21.320
end Haifa. That was, that's the most recent escalation and escalation is getting out of hand.
00:52:28.400
Um, but I do think now Iran has no choice, but to get nuclear weapons. It's the only way that they
00:52:35.260
can get any kind of respect the same way that North Korea hasn't been invaded because they have
00:52:40.280
nuclear weapons. And, um, it's what you were saying about the like propaganda getting way into the,
00:52:48.300
so far that you can't walk back from it. I mean, now we're being told that Iran was responsible for 9-11.
00:53:01.400
And Benghazi and like all the stuff. It's like 2003. Because as, you know, as crazy as it is to think that
00:53:09.260
Saddam had anything to do with 9-11 because he was the Ba'athist and so Al-Qaeda hated him.
00:53:14.500
Think about how crazy it is to suggest an Iranian general that fought alongside the U.S. against the
00:53:21.580
Taliban in 2002, right after September 11. And who is like, who Al-Qaeda has threatened to
00:53:28.160
completely decimate the Shiites, you know, to, for him to be part of, somehow connected to the Saudi
00:53:34.800
Arabian, um, hijackers of 9-11 is ludicrous. And I love the fact that Pence said there was 12 hijackers,
00:53:44.700
not 19. It's like, he can't even keep up with the propaganda. He just can't, just whatever, you know,
00:53:51.200
just whatever. They were responsible. Just, okay. Just take it. Yeah, I can imagine the tit for tat
00:53:58.840
escalating into something catastrophic. I mean, for example, like, as I mentioned earlier, you have
00:54:03.620
the potential for attacks on the Gulf oil facilities and cyber attacks. But as I was saying, Iran also has
00:54:09.300
this revolutionary ideology that appeals to anti-imperial forces and Shia proxy forces alike.
00:54:14.620
So you could have these militias in Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. They could target Saudi
00:54:19.720
Arabia. You have forces in Lebanon that could target Israel, and that would raise the conflict
00:54:24.080
cause with the U.S., and Israel would respond in turn. And so this could turn to a major
00:54:29.100
catastrophe, bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan. And what this goes to show, and I think the important
00:54:34.280
takeaway message is, there's an ideological veneer that goes to American power, and it's legitimacy in
00:54:40.520
the sense that we think about it kind of in the way Zizek describes ideology when he talks about the
00:54:45.580
ideology of enjoyment. He said, you can enjoy these things without the consequences. So you
00:54:49.520
could drink Diet Coke, so you have Coke without the caffeine. Or you could, you know, to relieve
00:54:55.420
your constipation, you could take a chocolate laxative, but chocolate's what gives you the
00:54:59.060
problem in the first place. In the same way, then, that the drones are, and the striking and
00:55:03.620
assassinations of, like, Trump and them and his defenders, and you see people like Paul
00:55:07.700
Joseph Watson saying things like this, it's just a strike. It's just a tweet. We're having
00:55:12.800
war without war. This is deterrent. But that veneer is breaking through. There is no way that
00:55:18.620
kind of ideological legitimacy of having war without work and sustain itself, it will turn
00:55:23.840
catastrophic. The exact, you know, consequences you can't outline, but I think we've outlined
00:55:31.000
I'm interesting to see where Russia, what Russia will do in all of this, because the Zionist
00:55:39.820
lobby in Russia is also strong. And yet, if Russia was, if we're living in a world where
00:55:47.940
real politics is what governs what countries do, that it would be 100% in Russia's interest
00:55:56.600
They've got to recognize that they're next on the docket. I mean, Russia is a nuclear power,
00:56:05.940
and that is the reason why the United States is ultimately only fighting these proxy battles
00:56:12.600
with Russia, you know, fighting in Ukraine, fighting over Pussy Riot and Edward Snowden or
00:56:18.720
whatever, but not really seriously talking about invading Russia. It's because they have nuclear
00:56:23.840
weapons. Of course, the lesson to all states is get a nuke. Like, you won't be fucked with
00:56:30.880
by the United States. I mean, it's just, it's just simply obvious. People who tried to play
00:56:34.900
the game have gotten screwed. Libya being an excellent example. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear
00:56:40.960
program in 2004 with the first or thereabouts with the first or second Iraq war. Yeah. And
00:56:47.640
then, you know, within a decade, they take him out because he gave up that power. Russia is in a
00:56:54.660
different position. But I think Russia would just ideologically have to, or not ideologically
00:57:00.700
exactly, but just, I don't know, emotionally have to take Iran's side, just recognizing that the rhetoric
00:57:07.480
against Russia is almost as extreme as that as against Iran. You know, I mean, they, they, the
00:57:14.980
American centrist, you know, conservatives and liberals in Washington view Russia as inherently
00:57:21.640
illegitimate, as evil, and, and, and so on. The exact same language. It's not as heated, but it's the exact
00:57:30.500
same language. And if Russia buy, you know, the Kremlin buys, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in
00:57:35.760
Facebook ads or whatever, it's like, oh, they're, they're threatening our democracy or whatever.
00:57:41.040
I mean, it's just such nonsense, but it demonstrates, yeah, it just demonstrates the,
00:57:46.680
the, the degree to which they're on the docket. I mean, at some point they have to fight. I'm not
00:57:50.880
sure they could sit this out. I think Putin could pull a magnificent diplomatic coup by much like he did
00:57:59.680
in the Obama administration with the, the, the red line and so on by bringing people to the table and
00:58:07.060
saying, all right, we're not going to go to war. I'm going to negotiate this.
00:58:11.700
Yeah, he can play good cop. And, you know, I mean, he, he's done, I mean, that would be,
00:58:21.060
Yeah. If it, the reason why is because Iran's relationship with Russia is only existent because
00:58:28.780
of Iran's relationship with Syria. Really at the end of the day, it's Syria that's friends with
00:58:33.840
Russia and Iran that's friends with Syria. Like, you know, Iran recently sued Russia because they
00:58:41.080
didn't come at the international court because they didn't deliver S 300 missiles. So, um,
00:58:47.840
if that is the key and that's what's brought them together, because they're both gas-free
00:58:53.580
nations as well. Russia has the influence in Syria to force them to get rid of their own deterrent,
00:59:01.120
the chemical weapons in 2014, which was a good cop, bad cop game because for Russia, like Syria
00:59:08.620
without chemical weapons is a less independent Syria and one that can more like reliant on Russia.
00:59:14.260
Russia, um, at the same time, you know, they, that was really not something that Russia came
00:59:19.140
up with. It's something that Kerry came up with. Um, they, they didn't really want to
00:59:23.120
go with a, go to war with a weapon of mass destruction in Syria. They wanted to go to war
00:59:28.900
with a Syria that couldn't defend itself, which is exactly what happened after they got rid of
00:59:32.940
chemical weapons. That's when we saw, um, the invasion of Syria, not before. Like, as soon as
00:59:38.440
the last chemical weapon was destroyed, that's when the first U.S. soldiers occupied the
00:59:42.600
northeast of Syria. I don't see that happening in Iran's case, because Iran is far more detached
00:59:48.020
from Russian influence. And in fact, that's why the U.S. was calling Switzerland to try
00:59:52.760
to get them to de-escalate. But, um, they're not going to, that they are too independent.
00:59:57.500
So I don't see that happening. They're going for nukes.
01:00:04.580
All right. Um, sorry, sorry to blow up the last optimistic.
01:00:09.840
Well, it has to end. Like, we, we've, we're all living in, we, we, we've all experienced
01:00:16.420
the unipolar world. We've experienced American hegemony and, you know, all good things have
01:00:22.560
to come to an end. This hasn't been exactly a great thing. Um, but it, it just, there,
01:00:28.380
there has to be a point where the, the, the kind of heady bullshit gets crushed and, and meets
01:00:38.240
with reality. And I, it, it, it, and we're going to see that perhaps in Persia, but it,
01:00:44.060
it just has to come to a, uh, a, a culmination. I mean, this period of history cannot last forever.
01:00:50.460
It's all based on, I mean, I don't want to sound like a Ron Paul libertarian, but just,
01:00:56.360
you know, there's, what are we at? 20 trillion in national debt. And then if you add up entitlements
01:01:03.240
and like existing derivative contracts, there's like, like 200 trillion, like floating in the
01:01:11.260
ether. I mean, it, you know, this will end at some point and it, it, it just, it must,
01:01:18.920
it always has. And I, and I don't think, I don't think there's anything new under the sun. I don't
01:01:23.320
think human nature has changed or the, the nature of political domination has changed. Um, but things
01:01:29.180
have accelerated. Um, I think the American empire will go down much more quickly than say the kind
01:01:35.980
of, you know, 250 year slow decline of the Roman empire, the age of anxiety and rise of Christianity
01:01:43.320
and so on. I, I think something's going to happen really quick and it might actually be a 25 year
01:01:48.320
period. It might even be a two and a half year period. I mean, it's, it's going to happen and
01:01:52.640
this is how it happens, um, throughout history. So it's just, you know, we're watching it unfold.
01:01:58.300
We feel powerless. We, we feel emotional about it. I've been more emotional than I have on Twitter
01:02:04.020
than I have been in months, years perhaps. Uh, but because we, I think because we feel so
01:02:10.400
powerless, we're just watching this global train wreck occur, but we can't stop it. And I don't,
01:02:17.160
I don't think we really want to stop it. This is just a, uh, where it's just the end of a cycle
01:02:22.580
and, um, and it, it will give, uh, it will give us opportunities that last for, for something new.
01:02:31.180
Well, I, I'm also sick of the, the status quo as it is. And I don't, you know, a lot of people are
01:02:39.260
saying, Oh, you know, the best thing, the smartest thing Iran can do is not retaliate.
01:02:44.360
What does that mean? That means like the smartest thing that Iran can do is be decimated without any
01:02:49.760
reaction. That's what they're saying. Because if you're going to knock out this general,
01:02:53.260
then you're going to keep, they're going to keep attacking you. Oh, don't retaliate. That's what
01:02:56.920
Israel wants. No, that's not what Israel wants. The U S when they say, we don't want a war. No,
01:03:02.600
they're right. They really don't. When Pompeo says that it's true, they don't want to war.
01:03:06.880
They want their, the people that are in their way to die quietly. And I'm not ready for that.
01:03:13.180
I I'm not ready for that, for the, there's that to me, you know, that, that is a cause that's too
01:03:17.900
much. And that's coming from someone obviously who, um, Iran helped a lot, you know, Iran helped
01:03:23.860
us in Syria. They, they fought Al Qaeda and they, they are opposed to Israel. So it's too much to ask
01:03:31.700
Iran not to retaliate. It's such a stupid, stupid thing because at the end of the day,
01:03:37.200
there's still going to be people dying. There's still going to be a war. It's just going to be,
01:03:41.000
uh, maybe you're going to say, you know, it's like saying, Oh, um, don't retaliate now.
01:03:47.720
Maybe you're, maybe the bad guy will let you live another day. If you don't try to defend yourself
01:03:53.380
now, that's, that's what they're asking. Yeah. That's where they were three or four years ago,
01:03:59.000
which is totally reasonable, but we're, we're well past that at this point.
01:04:02.640
It's over. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what interests me is what the character of the something new is
01:04:07.120
and the kind of work we need to do to actually think the something new work towards it. Because
01:04:11.120
I know, for example, the solutions that you see in the distant right don't work. Like you have,
01:04:15.500
for example, American nationalists confused as to why Yoram Hazoni would invite John Bolton
01:04:19.920
to the, to the national conservatism conference. And to me, it makes obvious sense. He believes in
01:04:24.980
unilateral world order, defying the UN. But the problem is, is we know that trying to return to
01:04:31.300
an idealized America doesn't work. We know that the ideological veneer, which is sustaining America
01:04:36.320
and its adventures worldwide, isn't working. We know that we have war with war. You can't avoid war
01:04:41.740
just because you're sitting in a gamer room, picking off targets and thinking there's not
01:04:45.720
going to be consequences. There is, but we also see, for example, a lot in the distant right say,
01:04:51.380
okay, well, I support Russia and China because we want to overthrow this evil global home of
01:04:56.560
American empire, which I understand entirely. But the problem is the decline of American empire is
01:05:01.920
not a minuscule thing. That's going to have consequences for American citizens. And it's
01:05:07.240
not something I think is taken entirely seriously. And so when we're trying to work on productive
01:05:12.060
solutions, we have to take into account that we don't have our own home. We don't have our own
01:05:16.760
empire. And that's, to me, is the real danger going forward.
01:05:21.440
Absolutely. No, that's the kind of thing. I actually said this on a conversation I had a
01:05:28.100
few weeks ago, which is that as much as I want to rage against global homo or, you know,
01:05:34.160
tranny story hour, gay rights in Tehran, I mean, and of course, I don't support any of that.
01:05:39.900
Um, I, I recognize that the American order is an order. I mean, the fact is we're having
01:05:46.720
a Skype conversation right now, multi continents. Um, we can travel to places of the, around the
01:05:55.300
world and the exchange rates work. We can order things. I mean, you know, you have to at least
01:06:01.020
give the King his due. You have, you have to accept that, that they're not just a bunch of
01:06:08.680
idiots or, or SJWs or whatever on top. I mean, they have created a world system that we live in
01:06:16.520
and we are ultimately, at least us right now, relatively safe and content. Uh, so it is what
01:06:22.900
it is. And, you know, as much as, you know, I think all each of us here have a certain anti-American
01:06:28.920
edge to us, the end of this thing is going to be catastrophic and we might not survive it.
01:06:36.320
And I'm just saying that realistically, I mean, you know, don't be careful what you wish for
01:06:42.940
in terms of the end of America. And, uh, you know, and just, again, just all of these other,
01:06:49.040
you know, Eurasianism or, you know, China's great or, or whatever, all of this stuff is,
01:06:55.440
you know, castles in the clouds. I mean, this is not real and we, you know, all of this stuff is
01:07:02.520
going to come crumbling down with the American empire or, or a kind of liberal, you know, Ron
01:07:07.220
Paul, liberal world order, all these little nation states trade with each other and get along or
01:07:12.560
whatever, or, or the UN's dream of what all of that stuff is are in their own way, castles in the
01:07:18.480
cloud without a military to enforce it. And so again, the, the end of America is not going to be
01:07:25.360
good, a good thing. It might be necessary, you know, at some level, but I don't think we should
01:07:30.460
actually wish for it. Um, because we might not survive it and our children are going to have a
01:07:35.520
harder time. Uh, so interesting to see what you're saying and comparing it to like a Trump
01:07:43.260
supporting who, we're going to get him like person, you know, if they're only, if they understood the
01:07:52.080
consequences, I wonder if they would, you know, react in that way towards this for your Walmart is
01:07:59.080
going to be empty. Like I, I, that, that is basically where the rubber hits the road for your
01:08:03.960
average, you know, American Yahoo supporting blowing up Iran. Like, you know, if, if you keep
01:08:11.200
pushing this, you know, at some point the, your lifestyle is going to be decimated and destroyed
01:08:21.080
and it might have to happen at some point, but you, you, you, you should not treat this as just some
01:08:27.520
game you're playing. This will have real consequences and I'm not joking. You might have to sell the
01:08:33.080
trailer park. Yeah. You, you, the trailer park won't even exist anymore. But yeah, um,
01:08:40.320
economically, like the gasoline is going to be a hundred dollars a gallon. I mean, it's just not,
01:08:45.720
it'll become Syria actually, because that's what's happened now in Syria because the U S
01:08:51.380
is occupying Syria's gas fields. There's like cars and cars and cars, taxis can't function
01:08:57.460
waiting at gas stations, trying to get fuel. You know, the shopping centers are, the economy
01:09:03.020
is weaker. I mean, Syria has got Jushet. It's got the principle of self-sufficiency. So that's
01:09:08.120
kind of protected it a lot more than it would you, but you don't have that in the United States.
01:09:13.280
So, um, it's not going to be easy. Actually, you do have the survivalists. They might be okay,
01:09:19.140
but, but it's, it's not going to be okay when the new regime sends a tank into their survivalist
01:09:28.920
camp and they're waving a constitution and a shotgun at them. I mean, no, they're not going
01:09:34.240
to be okay. Maybe not, but like they say that, oh, well, Iran is so, it's not, it's nothing compared
01:09:41.980
to the U S empire. They can't reach the U S mainland. Well, that may be true. Economically,
01:09:49.480
they can go all the way, um, especially because it's based on the petrodome. So that's, you know,
01:09:57.400
that's something that's the American people are not being told, just not being told or even asked
01:10:06.160
Yeah. All right. Should we put a bookmark in it? This has been a great discussion. I'm glad we
01:10:14.740
actually didn't talk about a lot of the details because everyone's talking about the details on
01:10:19.500
Twitter and, and so on. People can get that elsewhere. I, I, I think it's good to take not
01:10:26.120
just a step back, but many step backs and, and steps back and, and really look at, uh, uh, what is
01:10:33.260
happening. Yeah, exactly. It's not good. The biggest picture. Yes. This is the discussion
01:10:40.860
with the biggest pictures. Light at the end of the tunnel at the end of the American empire
01:10:46.300
might be an oncoming train. So think realistically and start getting ready for it. My grandfather
01:10:51.760
would always tell me that he would say the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming
01:10:55.780
drain. He always says sometimes when you think you've met a Greek God, he's actually just a
01:11:01.060
goddamn Greek. That was another, uh, famous stick and horse saying. Anyway, Mimi, uh, go hug
01:11:09.380
a koala bear because, um, you know, I, I've heard there's a, I don't say this. It's a koala
01:11:16.240
flaming genocide occurring in Australia. It's horrible. Millions are, millions are dying.
01:11:24.720
Uh, I, those four things. I can't bear it. Um, yeah, I, I, that's why I don't eat mammals.
01:11:33.220
So it's my, yeah, I decided a few years ago after much consideration of how much I hate
01:11:40.460
veganism that at the end of the day, I find I can't morally eat mammals anymore because
01:11:47.060
they're too close. It just feels too much like cannibalism. So, um, yeah. So I have a
01:11:53.720
cannibal myself. Uh, no, I don't eat mammals either. Just, uh, just, just, just humans.
01:12:03.180
Humans are mammals. No, that's, cut that one out.
01:12:07.040
People will take that. You can see that getting exploited.
01:12:18.840
Maybe that's where we're going to be at the end of the American empire. Uh, who knows?
01:12:22.800
All right. Uh, well everyone depressing discussion, but yeah, go and go and appreciate the things
01:12:31.860
in the here and now that are good and just for a little bit, because, um, there, there are
01:12:39.120
some catastrophes on the horizon, but live in the present. Uh, it's a healthy thing to do.