RadixJournal - McSpencer Partisan Girl Iran

00:00:00.000 It's Monday, January 6th, 2020, and welcome back to The McSpencer Group.

00:00:08.100 It was 2003. The show Friends was still popular. Poorly received Star Wars movies were in theaters.

00:00:16.820 Beyonce was at the top of the charts. And a Republican president, elected on the promises

00:00:22.360 of a more humble foreign policy, was preparing for war in the Middle East. In other words, 0.66

00:00:28.640 not much has really changed. And Washington seems to have forgotten everything and learned

00:00:34.580 nothing. This week, Tyler Hamilton and Mimi, partisan girl, joined me to discuss the coming

00:00:41.440 Iran debacle. Taking a step back from the news, we look in-depth at the nature of American empire.

00:00:49.660 Can an empire sustain itself when it promises freedom and liberty for all, but must resort

00:00:55.180 to invasions, regime changes, and hard power? What does national interest even mean for a

00:01:01.400 borderless finance oligarchy? And is realism possible when Washington's inseparable ally,

00:01:07.640 Israel, seeks the destruction or subjugation of stable powers in the region?

00:01:12.980 And finally, does Zionism itself have a future in an increasingly post-white Protestant America?

00:01:19.460 This and more we discuss.

00:01:21.900 I guess the news cycle is no longer boring. We have been launched into something that is

00:01:30.200 potentially catastrophic, something that certainly reminds me of an era I would prefer to forget,

00:01:38.820 and that is 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq War. Although I think the potential danger for all of this 0.99

00:01:47.140 is much worse. And I also think this is a time for choosing, as the conservatives like to say,

00:01:54.840 this is where the rubber hits the road. And we can disagree about some other things, but

00:02:01.000 to be honest, you have to get on the record on this issue. I'm, of course, discussing what's

00:02:09.960 been apparently an imminent war, at the very least, a imminent diplomatic disaster in Iran.

00:02:20.860 And I have two very important people on board to talk about this with me. So first off, let me

00:02:27.240 welcome Mimi, Partisan Girl, from Australia. How are you? I hope you're staying safe. Australia

00:02:34.720 is apparently aflame. That's at least what we're learning in the American press. But how are you?

00:02:43.240 Thanks so much. Yeah, we're having fires. I'm on the West Coast, so not the East Coast. So I'm safe

00:02:49.660 where I am very far away. So I'm on the other side of the country. But unfortunately, yes, we've been

00:02:55.400 having unprecedented fires, which usually we're very good at controlling. So it's confusing as to why

00:03:01.900 that's happened. Yes, I actually read a statistic that almost half a billion animals and birds and

00:03:09.600 other wildlife have perished. I mean, it's, it's truly sad. But I guess we're going to talk about

00:03:16.880 another conflagration. Also enjoying and joining me from Canada is Tyler Kent. How are you, Tyler?

00:03:24.660 I'm doing pretty well. I'm not smoking the signature pipe like I usually do on your streams. But

00:03:29.500 yeah, you were kind of a young fogey the last time. Now you look like a guy at a metal show. So

00:03:36.360 it's good that you have personalities and I have to keep people on their toes, right? Exactly.

00:03:44.260 Yeah. Um, yeah, the guy at the concert who's not dancing, but standing with his arms crossed.

00:03:50.640 That used to be me, actually, you know, the hood on just standing.

00:03:53.680 I've seen a number of those. All right, let's jump into it. Jokes aside, I wanted to focus

00:04:02.140 on something that just happened, because I feel like it expresses the impossible nature of the

00:04:12.500 American empire, just in one thing. Basically, the Iraqi parliament has recently voted to expel

00:04:21.440 U.S. forces from Iraq. Understandably, they condemned the recent assassination of Qasem Soleimani,

00:04:33.300 the, I guess, legendary general of Iran, a man who's been fighting ISIS, who's clearly beloved

00:04:41.800 in the country. And they've, they also seem to feel duped by mafia like tactics of Donald Trump of

00:04:50.980 basically, they felt like they were the intermediary in bringing the general to an airport where he was

00:04:59.180 drone strikes. And so they totally understandably condemn the murder, they want the U.S. troops out,

00:05:07.600 but it brings up this impossibility of the American empire in the sense that America, at least in terms

00:05:14.700 of its rhetoric, and I think this is actually part of its deeper ideology, wants to spread democracy,

00:05:20.340 and we want to bring freedom and liberty and constitutionalism to the world, except when

00:05:26.280 democracy becomes a threat, as it clearly is now, when it actually directly threatens the hard power.

00:05:33.340 And so what you have is this, you know, heady kind of Christian-y empire of we just love all people

00:05:41.840 and want to help them. And then the rubber hits the road, and you've had Republican officials basically

00:05:48.740 say, well, we might actually not respect this vote. Screw you, we're staying, basically, where it's a,

00:05:56.340 and on some level, understandably, in the sense that they've got an empire to run with military bases, 0.87

00:06:03.260 and they want their way. So, but I think it gets at that just impossibility of the whole American

00:06:12.240 project. But Mimi, let's, let's just go to you first. What do you, what do you think is going to

00:06:20.940 happen here? I mean, in the sense of, if there is going to be a campaign in Iran, presumably,

00:06:27.120 the US would want to use Iraq as a staging ground. And Iraq, which is, is, again, now much more

00:06:36.040 Shia controlled, much more sympathetic towards Iran is pushing them out. I mean, we might have a 1.00

00:06:43.740 major battle just right on this issue, uh, right here. Yeah, absolutely. I think the staging ground

00:06:54.320 right now would be Iraq. Um, they've already started to attack the Iranian-backed militias that

00:07:02.860 defeated ISIS, the PMF, the People's Mobilization Forces, the Hasht. So those people were, were the,

00:07:11.920 those people were actually, uh, fighting alongside the United States and fighting alongside the Iraqi

00:07:19.120 army. But if the US thought that it had, I think someone like Pompeo would have thought

00:07:26.220 that the US has more support inside Iraq, that, like, he could rely on a certain assets, um, like,

00:07:34.240 uh, uh, secular Shiites that he's been, you know, pushing to attack the Iranian embassy,

00:07:41.300 and he's, like, on Twitter saying, oh, Iraqis, this is your chance to get rid of Iranian influence,

00:07:49.440 as if, like, that's a priority for Iraq. And it's just, you know, these rallies on the streets

00:07:56.600 compared to any, are larger than we've ever seen before. And it really shows how ludicrous 0.60

00:08:05.220 that thought was, it was completely delusional, and Iran does have the influence in Iraq. If Iran

00:08:13.740 so wanted, they could have gotten rid of the US in Iraq, probably in 2004, which I think is, it shows 0.77

00:08:22.720 Iran's kind of own Machiavellian strategy here coming, you know, undone. Because I think what Iran 1.00

00:08:30.180 wanted to see was, um, kind of hold the US hostage at the negotiating table with a gun held

00:08:39.400 up against their head, saying, well, if you don't come to the negotiating table, and you don't do

00:08:44.640 this and this and this, then you're going to get kicked out of Iraq. And obviously, the US did the

00:08:51.180 Iran deal, and then they pulled out, and now they're killing Iranian leaders. So the deal is

00:08:57.000 off. And the gun, the bullet has to be fired. And it has been, that's what's happened now. 0.99

00:09:04.180 Right, I guess, I guess it is the ultimate irony. And it shows a kind of naivete of American strategy

00:09:11.700 that Shias began to dominate Iraqi parliament. And I certainly don't, that was certainly not ever 0.98

00:09:18.280 promised, uh, by the neoconservatives in 2003. And I, I, I'm not sure that's something

00:09:23.660 I remember they did promise it. I think they did promise it. But yeah, as far as I remember,

00:09:29.680 they said, Oh, you know, Saddam is a Sunni, and the majority of the country are Shiites. And it's 0.96

00:09:35.300 time for the Shiites to have their own, you know, be able to be in power of their own country and blah, 0.99

00:09:43.160 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as a matter of fact, in my view, if they didn't want

00:09:49.000 Saddam, then they wanted the Shiites. Um, because the plan was that they get the Shiites in power in 0.99

00:09:55.080 Iran, and then they get Al Qaeda in power or the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Syria. And then they 0.81

00:10:00.440 have the two fighting each other. Like that was the plan. But that didn't happen. Syria still is run 0.95

00:10:07.660 under a secular government. They have no problem dealing with Iraq or Iran. And there's no, you

00:10:13.520 know, there's no infighting that they could create. And now there's an alliance that stretches what

00:10:19.440 they call the Shiite Crescent, all the way to the Israeli fake borders. And that's, that's the fear.

00:10:27.460 Yeah, well, there's even I'll let Tyler jump in. I mean, I can remember this in, I think it was around

00:10:32.540 2005 to 2007 era, where Joe Biden was actually promoting a kind of ethnostate strategy, so to

00:10:39.960 speak, in Iraq of breaking up, having a Kurdistan, a Shia stan, a Sunni stan. Obviously, I mean, 0.70

00:10:47.040 Saddam himself was a Sunni Muslim. But I mean, the Ba'ath Party has Christian roots, it's secular,

00:10:53.440 fascist nationalism, and it's ostensible ideology, he was able to unite something. And that has absolutely

00:11:01.300 come undone. Yeah, I don't think Saddam was a religious man. He's, he's completely secular 0.83

00:11:08.720 man. Exactly. Yes. I've never seen him at a mosque. It's cool. It's very strong, man. Yeah,

00:11:20.320 it's a strong... I can see if you actually own George Orwell's 1984, like Big Brother had

00:11:26.200 a mustache. So there's something to it. I think Bashar al-Assad tried to draw one,

00:11:31.080 but it's just a failure. He's a, he's just too nerdy a guy to be the strong man character.

00:11:40.220 Well, now I feel inadequate with my lack of mustache.

00:11:43.520 Yes, you should.

00:11:46.140 Me too.

00:11:48.280 There you go.

00:11:51.700 But anyway, I guess we'll just, to bring it back to my first question, I guess this is,

00:11:57.520 this is maybe also kind of a question of the nature of the American empire, because it's

00:12:03.260 like, you know, Rome loved the fact that they had an empire, it was about gaining territory,

00:12:09.860 they were, they would do it openly, they would talk about it publicly, they didn't say they

00:12:14.920 were spreading democracy, they might have said they were spreading civilization or the

00:12:18.800 Roman way or something like that. But it was, it was out in the open. And certainly in the 19th

00:12:23.920 century, Britain, Germany, France, etc, would be open about it. The United States empire is this

00:12:31.280 empire that dare not speak its name. And it's also something that can never really be voted on

00:12:37.360 by the public in elections. You could get a Ron Paul candidate or a Tulsi Gabbard candidate who will

00:12:43.400 talk about it. But ultimately, no major foreign policy decision is ever really going to be put up

00:12:50.840 for a vote. And it is also a different type of empire in the sense that it is based on the to a

00:12:59.300 very large degree, the 1944 Bretton Woods accords, with the establishment of the dollar as the global

00:13:06.620 reserve currency. It's to a large degree based on NATO, which is a kind of anti Soviet force, which is,

00:13:14.040 you know, now having a second life as a global force for good, or something like that. So it's a

00:13:20.500 different type of empire, and it's, but it is an empire, nevertheless, and all of this, you know,

00:13:27.420 Trump, Trump's complaints about trade deficits, and all this kind of stuff, you know, he was just

00:13:33.220 describing what you get to do as an empire, you get to have strong money, and you get to buy cheap stuff

00:13:39.980 from abroad, in these countries, and your dollar is worth more just by its very political structural

00:13:47.100 aspect of it. And I mean, globalization is not I mean, again, I think the conservatives want to complain

00:13:53.660 about globalization. You know, it's destroying American manufacturing, globalization is a political

00:14:00.000 military project, the military hegemony must come first. So globalization is a offspring of an American 0.64

00:14:10.280 world of a unipolar world, and it doesn't go the other way around globalization isn't challenging our

00:14:17.340 private primacy, globalization is an expression of it. But at some point, it doesn't, it's not going to

00:14:25.580 work, you can't ultimately be a liberal hegemon promoting democracy, and then not expect that to bite

00:14:33.160 back. I mean, in my view, they've never really promoted democracy. It's all has been a sham.

00:14:40.300 When they do say they want democracy, that means they mean they want a state that can be the leader

00:14:46.880 of that state can be changed whenever they they deem it. That's what they mean by democracy, a leadership

00:14:52.980 that's easily changed by them. Look at what they did in South America, you know, when Ali Endi was elected,

00:14:58.480 elected, or even when Chavez was elected, it no longer became democratic, because they didn't like

00:15:03.680 the guy. And when it comes to Saudi Arabia, it's the monarchy. And yet, that's fine. It doesn't have

00:15:09.440 to be democratic. So I think it's all sham. But they do support the idea of democracy in that it's weak

00:15:16.400 and sweet. A country that is weak, can remain strong by having a dictatorship that is like,

00:15:22.760 following the country's own interests. But once you make it a democracy, and the leadership could

00:15:29.720 be easily changed, then outside influences can easily change the leadership. But in defense of

00:15:34.900 the Roman Empire, when Syria became Roman, just to point out the biggest difference, when Syria became

00:15:47.660 Roman, you know, when when Rome took over its territory, everybody became Roman. So Syria became 0.91

00:15:54.040 Roman, and such that, like Syrian, Syrians actually became leaders of Rome. I think there was two Roman 0.59

00:16:03.060 emperors that were Syrian. So that we don't have that in the US is kind of empire, or even if we call it 0.94

00:16:11.500 neocolonialism. It's not even a colony per se, it's just slavery, just pure slavery. And you have no say

00:16:20.460 in anything that's happening in your own country or in your own area. That's, that's, and when it comes

00:16:26.920 to Zionism, when it comes to Israel, it's not only that, but it becomes like they're just ethnically 0.60

00:16:33.760 cleansing you and taking over your land. Pure, you know, colony making good, but taking out the 1.00

00:16:40.260 original inhabitants. And that's what Israel intends to do to Syria as well, not just to 0.79

00:16:46.420 Palestine. That is their ultimate plan, everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. The first prime 1.00

00:16:51.680 minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion, said that. So this is, this is worse than any kind of empire we've seen

00:16:57.480 in the past. Just, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Rome, the Romans had hegemony over Jerusalem, and they

00:17:04.920 would crush them if they ever riled up. At this point, Jerusalem is the kind of center source code 0.51

00:17:13.680 of the American empire. I mean, that is one thing that is, you know, we can talk about bread and woods

00:17:20.200 and finance and globalization, etc. But there is one thing that can absolutely not be challenged. And that

00:17:27.020 is Israel, Israeli dominance and Israelis, Israel's identity as a Jewish state. And anything, you know,

00:17:36.180 even if Iran isn't a global nuclear power, or Iraq is a bit of a tin pot dictatorship, that kind of 0.96

00:17:46.400 unified force is a threat to Israel. It is a power in its region, and it must be destroyed. And as we've 0.99

00:17:56.160 talked about on a number of podcasts that we've done, Mimi, is that I, I think these Zionist 0.66

00:18:03.360 American powers would prefer chaos to stability. You know, if we, if we were a kind of Bismarckian

00:18:10.620 empire, we would look at Syria, Syrian, you know, dictatorship, or whatever you want to call it,

00:18:15.500 and be like, ah, yeah, of course, balance of power. Let's have good relations with them,

00:18:20.440 we'll trade with them. We want stability here. We don't want a bunch of maniacs, you know,

00:18:24.960 jihadists going out of control. But the American Zionist empire would much prefer chaos to any kind 0.90

00:18:34.040 of established balance of power. We're not dealing in 19th century European, you know, norms. This is

00:18:41.960 something radically different. And I think it ultimately does derive from the unipolarity of

00:18:47.080 the American empire in the sense that there is one way. And you're, you're either on America's side,

00:18:54.340 or you're, you're a terrible person, you're chaos, we're evil. There's no recognition of a competing 0.67

00:19:01.520 power as an equal. It is pure Judeo-Christian liberalism, you know, just distilled. And yeah,

00:19:13.400 that's where we are. Sorry, I have been talking too much. So no, that's, you're absolutely right.

00:19:18.700 I think Tyler maybe get a word. Yeah, I was just gonna jump in on the American empire. As I was

00:19:23.800 saying, so the American, I was just gonna jump in on the American empire as a financial empire,

00:19:31.340 and a liberal empire, in the sense, I've seen the American empire described as an empire that

00:19:36.660 produces pleasure in the act of rape, and that there's a moral schizophrenia involved in the

00:19:43.560 American empire. So it comes to, for example, that we're, which goes into the rhetoric of American

00:19:49.420 imperial adventures is that we're, we're making them free, we're opening them up to democracy,

00:19:53.860 we're opening up to the market. But what's going on is this, this move where the American empire has

00:20:00.560 material interests that benefit a few of the state actors. And so the, there's this sense where they

00:20:06.240 act on incentives, for example, the Middle East to secure their value in the petrodollar to defend

00:20:13.020 Israel's expansion. And they run into, of course, opposition. And so they have to act like any 0.93

00:20:18.940 imperial power would, they can't pitch out on that. They're already involved. It's been the,

00:20:22.780 that's been the American empire strategy, going back many years now, is having bases all over the

00:20:28.980 world. And they've had this strategy where they need to maintain a presence and a dominance in all

00:20:33.680 these regions. And there is no moral language of pushback against this. So when you, you often

00:20:39.580 have, say, in the left in America, you have the anti-imperial rhetoric, but the rhetoric that they

00:20:44.180 use is largely so within a liberal ontology. So you look at some responses from the left going on to

00:20:49.980 the, what's been going on in Iran right now. They've been saying things like, oh, okay, well,

00:20:55.000 hey, Iran, look at us in California, we accept all these people, we have diversity, we have freedom,

00:21:00.460 they're free from American white supremacist, patriarchal, whatever. They're operating under

00:21:05.240 the same framework of liberal freedom and actualization. So the sense that American

00:21:10.360 unipolar world, whether you come from the left or right, you're still operating the same liberal

00:21:14.900 ontology. And so this empire, which we call our own, our own Anglo empire, is not our own. It's an

00:21:21.020 empire of liberal homogenization that benefits a few state actors. And this is part of the problem

00:21:26.300 that comes with describing America as a unipolar empire is because it's controlled by various

00:21:31.660 international finance actors. And so it's not really our empire or an empire with a base from

00:21:38.320 America, but it's international and it's homogenizing the world. And that's what I think 0.93

00:21:42.880 is the real danger is we lack the moral language to criticize it. And you see this, for example,

00:21:47.260 with also, we met, I mentioned the leftist responses, but also the rightist responses. So we have,

00:21:52.140 for example, we need to be isolationists. We need to be America first. Well, if you try to pull out

00:21:57.500 and you try to push this America first isolationist stance, what you end up with is this kind of naive,

00:22:02.580 also liberal idea that you could have an order of sovereign nation states along the world, which

00:22:07.140 won't fight or they won't have their own interests. They'll just get along and trade because they all

00:22:11.500 recognize each other's sovereignty. And we know how the whole idea of the liberal idea of the nation

00:22:16.200 state came about. It was from the so-called wars of religion, which were not really wars of religion

00:22:20.980 because those princes changed their religion week to week, depending on which would get the most

00:22:25.220 support. But there was a breakdown of empire and it's carving up into liberal sovereign nation states.

00:22:30.720 And so we're at the point where you can't simply withdraw from all these ventures the American 0.98

00:22:35.800 empire has created and say, okay, we're withdrawn. We have these happy homelands now and that we've

00:22:40.640 sold it. Well, what America? America is a financial empire. It is always a financial empire. It's birthed as a

00:22:46.800 financial nation ever since they put down the whiskey rebellion, right? Like there was no sense

00:22:51.820 in which America was anything other than what it would turn into. And so I think that we lack

00:22:57.260 the language to critique it properly. And I think when it comes to de-territorializing the American

00:23:04.420 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.

00:23:12.500 Yeah, that was extremely well put. Let me, I'll let Mimi jump in. Let me just kind of bring it down 1.00

00:23:22.880 to earth just a little bit. I think we've all seen some of these Tucker Carlson clips. I don't have

00:23:31.160 cable, but I kind of watch the best of on Twitter. And he was basically saying things that I think we all

00:23:39.020 agree with on some basic level. What are we doing in Iran? Why are we worrying about this? Let's put

00:23:45.840 America's interests first. Let's put America first. And that is a nice slogan that I think maybe in a

00:23:51.620 perfect world we would all agree with, but it actually is totally detached from reality. America has never

00:24:00.060 operated as a kind of nation state that, you know, secures its borders and, you know, deals with

00:24:07.400 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

00:24:29.180 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

00:24:41.440 has a better claim on America first than any paleoconservative or Tucker Carlson. He has a

00:24:49.740 claim on, you know, I hate to say this, but invading, destroying Iran, in order to create a globo homo 1.00

00:24:58.900 shopping mall, shopping mall, is actually closer to being the reality for America's interest. I hate to

00:25:05.700 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,

00:25:47.760 the rhetoric was great. It appealed to something in us, something good, but it ultimately was

00:25:53.980 bullshit. There is no way that the deep state, you know, in a real sense, a military industrial 0.98

00:26:01.660 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 0.98

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,

00:26:27.500 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

00:26:46.080 60 years ago. That's just nonsense.

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 0.89

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. 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.98

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

00:30:57.200 the United States from entering that war.

00:30:59.360 And it was, I mean, that I do think that, like, Israel is right to fear that term. I mean, 1.00

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.

00:32:32.400 So, what do people gain?

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 1.00

00:33:37.760 every night and living in a penthouse on the 200th floor and just suck, you know, sucking off money and 1.00

00:33:43.680 having investments around the world, all that kind of stuff. But then there's the other aspect to it, 0.97

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 1.00

00:34:19.680 in the Vatican City and all this kind of stuff that is ultimately undergirded by a Christian 1.00

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 0.96

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,

00:36:00.960 and they're running the unipolar world.

00:36:02.880 Well, I mean, they're an interesting case, though, because, I mean, bringing up the Christian 1.00

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 0.92

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. 0.79

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 0.88

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 1.00

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 0.87

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 1.00

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 0.98

00:39:38.240 this. And it is going to happen. Iran is so strong compared to anything the US has ever faced ever 1.00

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 0.89

00:39:56.400 they couldn't deal with Syria. They're going to deal with Iran. That's why I thought this 0.98

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 1.00

00:40:21.360 the Ayatollah and the apocalypse. And the Ayatollah, it's not even a real state. It's just a terrorist 1.00

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. 0.99

00:40:53.520 Hey, you could say the same thing about... You could say the same thing about Israel. 0.99

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,

00:41:34.800 something happens.

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 0.99

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 0.88

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. 0.83

00:42:35.360 I can't imagine that working. Because China lacks the Christian core that this appeals to. I mean, 0.99

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 0.93

00:43:02.400 you know, support Zionism and the apocalypse. I mean, these Chinese are just going to be like, 1.00

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 1.00

00:43:23.200 as Jews.

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 0.99

00:44:35.120 to be a communist haven. Soviet union voted for the creation of Israel. You had like Trotsky, you 0.66

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 1.00

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 1.00

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. 0.79

00:46:26.240 Clearly they are actually undergirding Zionism. And we just simply have to face that and stop talking 0.92

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, 1.00

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 0.55

00:46:59.040 socialist thing, a socialist cause, not a religious cause. And they had the kibbutz and you had people 0.57

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 0.59

00:47:19.920 of the Orthodox Christian church inside Russia. The fact that they weren't able, the Trotskyists 0.98

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 0.95

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 0.81

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 0.61

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. 1.00

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, 1.00

00:51:44.580 you're president of the United States. You cannot back down from these things. So, uh, I mean, 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.97

00:52:35.260 can get any kind of respect the same way that North Korea hasn't been invaded because they have 0.84

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.

00:52:55.020 It's just 2003 all over again. Yeah.

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 0.99

00:53:34.800 Arabian, um, hijackers of 9-11 is ludicrous. And I love the fact that Pence said there was 12 hijackers, 0.70

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 0.99

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

00:55:29.020 what they would look like quite adequately.

00:55:31.000 I'm interesting to see where Russia, what Russia will do in all of this, because the Zionist 1.00

00:55:39.820 lobby in Russia is also strong. And yet, if Russia was, if we're living in a world where 0.90

00:55:47.940 real politics is what governs what countries do, that it would be 100% in Russia's interest

00:55:54.440 to back and run a war with the United States.

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 0.99

00:56:34.900 the game have gotten screwed. Libya being an excellent example. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear 0.98

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 0.94

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.

00:58:09.780 You mean he can play good cop?

00:58:11.700 Yeah, he can play good cop. And, you know, I mean, he, he's done, I mean, that would be,

00:58:16.060 that's like the best case scenario, you know.

00:58:19.240 That's not going to happen. I'll tell you why.

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 0.75

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 0.62

00:59:28.900 with a Syria that couldn't defend itself, which is exactly what happened after they got rid of 1.00

00:59:32.940 chemical weapons. That's when we saw, um, the invasion of Syria, not before. Like, as soon as 0.53

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 0.64

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.

01:00:00.480 Hmm.

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 0.97

01:00:38.240 with reality. And I, it, it, it, and we're going to see that perhaps in Persia, but it, 0.91

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 0.89

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. 0.61

01:02:44.360 What does that mean? That means like the smartest thing that Iran can do is be decimated without any 1.00

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, 1.00

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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, 1.00

01:05:34.160 tranny story hour, gay rights in Tehran, I mean, and of course, I don't support any of that. 1.00

01:05:39.900 Um, I, I recognize that the American order is an order. I mean, the fact is we're having 0.71

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 1.00

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 0.58

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 0.92

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 0.97

01:09:41.980 to the U S empire. They can't reach the U S mainland. Well, that may be true. Economically, 1.00

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

01:10:04.020 if they care or if they want this.

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 1.00

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. 0.73

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.

01:12:00.340 No, uh, that was weird.

01:12:03.180 Humans are mammals. No, that's, cut that one out. 0.66

01:12:07.040 People will take that. You can see that getting exploited.

01:12:13.520 Yeah.

01:12:14.220 Probably didn't say it's hot stuff.

01:12:16.300 Hot stuff.

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.

01:12:44.800 Absolutely.

01:12:46.340 All right, gents and lady. 0.96

01:12:48.860 And thanks, gents.

01:12:51.040 Talk to you soon.

01:12:52.300 Talk to you soon. Bye.

01:12:54.260 Bye.

01:12:55.440 Bye.

01:12:56.120 We'll be right back.

RadixJournal - January 06, 2020

McSpencer Partisan Girl Iran

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