RadixJournal - The Big Rig

00:00:00.000 It's Tuesday, November 17th, 2020, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group, an unrehearsed,

00:00:07.440 hastily assembled program about metapolitics. Joining me as usual is Edward Dutton. He is a

00:00:14.400 golfer, and he is also a conservative. Main topic, the big rig. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.,

00:00:22.900 yes, that is his actual name, has won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But Republicans

00:00:29.740 aren't having any of it. And that holds twofold for Donald Trump's most avid fans. Massive voter

00:00:36.840 fraud, counting machines with communist parts, late-night ballot dumping, you've heard it all.

00:00:42.780 The Trump team's lawsuits are getting tossed out of court, but the diehards keep on believing. 1.00

00:00:48.420 Ed and I take a step back. Beyond the allegations is something deeper taking place. Is this what

00:00:55.300 civil war actually looks like in the 21st century? Less organized violence, but the same level of

00:01:02.660 mutual loathing, mistrust, and dehumanization. Ed, how are you? Good evening.

00:01:11.520 Yes. Good morning. I'm okay. Yes, good morning. I haven't been on the streets of Washington, D.C.

00:01:20.380 of late, so all my bones are intact, and no one has stamped on my head. So I'm reasonably okay.

00:01:31.340 Yeah. I mean, if I was a big target three years ago at these big D.C. public events, then the sight of

00:01:40.080 you, a traditional Englishman, walking around, conversing with MAGA, yes, you would likely have 0.92

00:01:50.040 been brutally killed. 0.95

00:01:52.160 I don't think so. As we've experienced in Chicago, I get on very well with the people

00:01:59.080 who would have been prone to brutally killing me. So I'm not sure about that. My experience

00:02:03.240 when I've met them in real life, IRL, as the young people call it, is that they tend to

00:02:10.820 rather like me. So I'm not so sure about that.

00:02:12.660 Well, did I not get along with them as well?

00:02:16.040 Well, you did, actually. You did. That is true. You did. Indeed, you impressed them a

00:02:19.940 great deal with your basketball skills.

00:02:22.240 Yes.

00:02:22.920 But I think that it wouldn't necessarily be quite so bad. It seems to be working class Americans 1.00

00:02:33.420 that they particularly despise. Those who are members of groups like the Oath Keepers, is

00:02:41.200 that what they're called?

00:02:42.560 Yes.

00:02:43.660 And I don't know what... It's something about that. That's where the real animosity lies.

00:02:49.640 But no, it's been just yet more evidence of the coming apart of the Roman Empire, I think,

00:02:56.160 over yesterday in your nation's capital. Or your set-broken-up nation's capital.

00:03:04.200 Well, we'll see about that. But I do agree with you that polarization is radical.

00:03:10.560 And if anything, people are underestimating it. You hear about polarization in the media. If you

00:03:17.120 watch CNN or whatever, it's, oh, this polarized electorate, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they

00:03:21.560 actually are telling you the half of it. It's not just we have a bunch of people who want to

00:03:28.400 vote for different parties. It's two people who can't speak to each other and who hate each other

00:03:34.340 and wildly distrust each other. So let's back up just a little bit. This weekend, there was a

00:03:42.900 hastily assembled Million MAGA March. And I don't think they got really anywhere close to having a

00:03:51.500 million participants. And maybe that was a bad title to choose for their march. However, they did get,

00:04:00.500 I don't know, maybe at the very lowest end, 50,000. And at a high end, 150,000 or 200,000. It was a lot

00:04:09.660 of people who were there. I think there were four main rallies that were kind of organically coming

00:04:15.700 together. It was all about what they feel to be is election rigging. And they don't believe that what

00:04:26.620 they saw on television was real. And I think that's also something that is a real part of this,

00:04:33.840 where it's a kind of disbelieving the facts put out, put forward by what are institutions,

00:04:42.400 whether it be Twitter, or whether it be CNN, or whether it be the New York Times. These are

00:04:48.000 media institutions. No, they don't call the election, but they do have this institutional

00:04:52.620 connection to the status quo. And they think that all of this, these things that these institutions

00:05:00.040 say are lies. It's not even that you should be skeptical of them. Just by the fact that they say

00:05:06.880 them, you should disbelieve them. And I don't think that I'm exaggerating their mentality, because

00:05:12.860 in some of the interviews that have come out from yesterday, that's exactly what they would say.

00:05:20.300 As you know, I wrote this thing on QAnon. And what was fascinating about researching that is the

00:05:30.920 extent of it. It reminds me of the English Civil War, where you really do have both sides,

00:05:38.060 one literally and one metaphorically, portraying each other as in league with Satan, with Satan

00:05:43.640 being stated in, is it one John or something like that, as being the father of lies. And so they will

00:05:49.540 not believe what they see with their own eyes, as far as the level of trust is so low, that all that

00:05:56.080 the mainstream media can be presenting them with is a huge conspiracy theory, a huge lie. I have to say,

00:06:02.640 much as I might like to believe that Trump has genuinely won this election, and there is a huge

00:06:07.360 conspiracy theory. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying, when I look into the arguments that are

00:06:15.740 presented in favour of why there has been vote rigging, not minor vote sodding about, as there

00:06:21.980 always is in elections in a country which is a little bit corrupt, but on a scale that is sufficient

00:06:28.020 to shift the vote. I have to say, I'm not so sure. Academic agent who is a YouTuber and people like

00:06:35.480 this have been putting out this idea that it is actually Trump one. I have to say, the arguments,

00:06:40.680 look at the arguments, I'm really not so sure. It does seem to be rather more consistent with a huge

00:06:45.860 polarisation in whether you voted by post or whether you voted in person, and that being along

00:06:52.920 political lines. But the fact that they, what's more important is that they won't accept it. They

00:06:57.720 won't accept the phenomenology of the election. Exactly. Exactly. So we, and we don't have to dwell

00:07:06.460 on the, the, the, the notion of interference, because these things, there are, there are a number of

00:07:12.360 lawsuits, and to be honest, they are getting laughed out of court. I mean, they, they're, they are,

00:07:17.960 in some cases, based solely on hearsay. They are, in some cases, their exact allegation or claim of

00:07:28.160 damages are ambiguous. Like, there were no poll observers, and then the judge asked them how many

00:07:33.840 poll observers there are, and the plaintiff said a non-zero number, i.e. there were poll observers.

00:07:41.640 It just, it's, these things are, don't hold a lot of water. So I, I think the likelihood

00:07:46.660 that this is going to get to the Supreme Court, and it will be overturned, or the likelihood

00:07:52.700 that they will convince the leaders of these states to not certify the elections, because again,

00:07:59.980 elections are run by the states. It's a 10th Amendment thing. It's not a federal issue. The

00:08:05.020 idea that you're going to get all of these states to not certify the election, and then just put forth

00:08:10.180 their own electors, and there are more red states, and there are blue states, they would elect Trump.

00:08:14.040 I, I would say less than 1%, and that's maybe being generous, but the point is that they genuinely

00:08:23.500 don't believe this, and you can say as a, you know, liberal, CNN-watching, you know, uppity 1.00

00:08:33.120 jerk, oh, they're just stupid, or it's just a cult of personality, and okay, little bits of truth 1.00

00:08:41.640 there, certainly with the cult of personality bit with Trump, but the fact is that just the 1.00

00:08:47.480 phenomenon of them not believing anything that they hear is radical, and they've even taken it to

00:08:54.060 kind of new levels, because one of the things I saw being chanted by a number of them was Fox News 0.97

00:09:02.400 sucks, and so we've, we've kind of, and then they've also, the Proud Boys chanted Fox News sucks, 0.70

00:09:09.160 and then they chanted Tucker, Tucker, Tucker, who's the star of Fox News. 0.99

00:09:13.480 On Fox News, and I saw, I saw, I was watching a program, I was watching on YouTube the other

00:09:18.920 day something which Tucker, Tucker Carlson, half hour segment on this, on the, on the election

00:09:25.160 in which he casts serious doubt on the mainstream narrative, so it's not quite true to say that

00:09:30.840 Fox News is completely against them. Fox News is prepared to give a voice to these people who are,

00:09:36.640 who are, who are skeptical of, but the thing is, they, they've, they've taken this down,

00:09:42.480 they're, they're making these refinements that are, that are somewhat surprising, because

00:09:45.960 Fox News was very much behind the Tea Party. Fox News, and, and this reminds me a great deal of

00:09:54.300 the Tea Party. This is kind of Tea Party 2.0, and Fox News would, they would just do PR for the Tea Party

00:10:02.340 all day long, including their new, supposedly hard news segments, and the fact that they're now kind

00:10:08.380 of counter-signaling them a little bit is remarkable, and the fact that they're making these distinctions

00:10:13.500 is also remarkable. Fox News came in an kind of early period of polarization, where you were,

00:10:22.460 we were through technology, technological development, but also I think through social

00:10:27.620 development, we were kind of breaking away from the nightly news model, where there were three

00:10:33.020 middle-aged white men who told you the truth, and no one, you know, if you were questioning the truth

00:10:40.420 told you by Walter Cronkite, or Peter Jennings, or Tom Brokaw, or Dan Rather, you were a bit of a 0.96

00:10:47.080 crank. You were likely, you believed in aliens, and, and foil hats, and so on. The vast majority of the

00:10:56.920 population would listen to Walter Cronkite, and when he, when he said, when he said something mildly

00:11:04.500 critical about the Vietnam War, it actually really affected public opinion in a substantial way after

00:11:11.060 he gave a 30-second op-ed, basically, on air about how the Vietnam War is not going so well.

00:11:18.180 There, there was just this top-down authority through media, and I think there still are

00:11:23.900 mainstream institutions, but they're, they're, they're fragmenting and shattering, and the, the idea

00:11:30.360 that there actually is an American population out there that can be kind of, you know, informed

00:11:37.000 about through, through propaganda in a broad sense of the word, in a Jacques Ellul's sense of the word,

00:11:44.140 that they can be informed, and they can learn how to act through a media apparatus, that is breaking

00:11:51.280 down. Well, of course, I mean, first of all, the, the, I mean, as a book I've read recently, I did a video

00:11:57.640 on this on YouTube recently, that was very, very interesting, this coming apart by Charles Murray,

00:12:03.520 and I know that on, on, on, on quite a few things, Charles Murray has an unfortunate tendency to cut,

00:12:08.240 but on, on this, he, he didn't, and it was very, very good, and he basically identified the, the day on

00:12:14.380 which, to, to simplify it, the day on which America changed was the 21st of November 63, which I think is

00:12:20.380 when, that was when JFK was a SAS date, wasn't it? Interesting, yeah.

00:12:23.280 Right. Uh, and, and he was saying on that, around, around that date, you had about four channels,

00:12:29.380 um, 30% of the population, 34% of the population were watching one program on one night, I think

00:12:36.500 it was called the Hillbill or something. Um, and then in 2010, for 9% of the population to watch

00:12:42.440 American Idol, that was, that was good, that was considered a hit, that was something that was

00:12:47.740 going well. Everybody has, whether they're working class or middle class, as you call it in America,

00:12:52.660 or upper class, had the same lifestyle, the same kind of attitudes towards the legitimacy of

00:12:57.200 children, marriage, um, about 3% of households were held by a single parent, um, and everybody,

00:13:04.740 no matter what their social class was, basically lived, to some extent, to some extent, the same

00:13:09.580 lives, and had the same values. And of course, at that point, they were, what, 85%, 90% white as well.

00:13:15.340 So, so it's, it's, it was a united culture. And not only that, it was united in all of

00:13:21.360 these ways, even in terms of things that you ate, food, there was no access to sushi or

00:13:26.900 Chinese food or whatever, you know. Uh, everybody ate the same thing, everybody did the same

00:13:32.240 thing. There was very little diversity of choice and, and everyone, and that, um, simply

00:13:38.260 even down to having a diversity of what food you can eat, is going to change things and change

00:13:43.060 to the degree to which people identify with each other and are bonded with each other.

00:13:46.820 Yeah.

00:13:46.940 So church attendance was about 60%. So you've got over half of the population united in this,

00:13:53.380 what they see as this profound, eternal ritual. Um, and all of this unity, um, which held together

00:14:00.200 of this, uh, this America of the black and white films and whatever has, is completely for various

00:14:05.620 reasons, part of its technology, of course, and the access to multiple views. Uh, and, uh,

00:14:11.060 part, uh, part, part of it is, um, other factors, I think partly even genetic factors, part of

00:14:16.100 it is, uh, the breakdown of religion and holding people together. It's all gone. And so then

00:14:20.880 at a time of crisis like this, where you have this, this very close election, um, there was

00:14:27.160 a very close election in 1960, but both sides are very, very similar to each other in a lot

00:14:32.760 of fundamental ways. They're wasps, you know, all these, they're white. 1.00

00:14:37.120 Interestingly, just a quick, uh, interjection in the 1960 election, JFK referred to himself

00:14:43.960 as a conservative and Nixon advertised himself as a liberal. So it, it, and I'm, I mean, that's

00:14:49.460 a curious fact, but it just goes to show how close these parties were, you know, in terms

00:14:55.640 of just in, in, in how we hadn't even seen that, like, I'm a true American conservative.

00:15:01.240 Oh no, I'm a liberal. Like we hadn't seen that just like ossification of two large populations

00:15:10.120 that are both whites to a very large degree, but just that total divergence. We had not 0.83

00:15:15.080 seen that yet. And we've definitely seen that now.

00:15:17.400 Yeah, you've definitely, I mean, you, you had it conspicuously in the eighties with the rise

00:15:21.420 of the fundamentalist Christianity and whatever Bob Jones, university types, um, and, and fundamentalism

00:15:27.280 becoming more fundamentalist as well, which is interesting. So in the, in the sixties

00:15:31.040 or whatever, the idea that you, as a fundamentalist Christian, that you rejected the existence of

00:15:35.080 dinosaurs or that the world was created old to confuse the non-believer, that was a minority 1.00

00:15:41.480 thing. Whereas now it's become a marker of that you're a genuine Christian, that you reject 0.99

00:15:47.240 dinosaurs and that you, you believe in the Adam and Eve creation accounts and you're not

00:15:51.000 descended from a monkey and, uh, and all, all this sort of thing. So even on that level,

00:15:55.120 because once you, once you diverge, then you, you signal how committed you are to the segment

00:16:00.640 of which you're a part by going further. And so the fundamentalists become more fundamentalists

00:16:04.700 and the liberals become more liberal. And so, and so you can see how you would end up with

00:16:08.720 a total lack of trust, um, and this cognitive dissonance, which the people who have lost the

00:16:14.400 election, the, uh, the Republicans are feeling. And the way you deal with that is, is to come

00:16:20.020 up with some, uh, like Leon Festinger did when he did his book on cognitive distance, actually

00:16:25.140 found this, that when these people that were in these religious cults, when it didn't happen

00:16:28.660 the way it was supposed to happen, they would come up with some massive conspiracy theory to

00:16:32.380 demonstrate why Adam happened the way it was supposed to happen. Um, and then they would

00:16:36.080 just carry on and entrench themselves and become, uh, even more extreme. And so it just feeds into

00:16:42.700 this, um, to polarization and coming apart. And I, I suspect it's, I mean, it's just going

00:16:48.280 to get a lot worse from here. Um, but let me add, I mean, there's also a level to, to this,

00:16:56.640 to which it's kind of fake as well. And in which it's not going to lead to, uh, real civil

00:17:06.540 war level violence. Now it already has led to appalling street level violence. Uh, it's been

00:17:14.980 doing it's, this has been a trend over the last say four or five years, in fact. Um, and I saw many

00:17:21.040 instances last night, just, just, you know, glancing at Twitter of just brazen attacks by

00:17:27.300 Antifa types or BLM types on, uh, Trump supporters. I mean, it was out totally outrageous,

00:17:34.880 even if I'm going to criticize the cause of these people, uh, what was done to them was 0.68

00:17:39.700 just totally beyond the pale and, and cowardly. I think that is here to stay. I don't think that's

00:17:46.240 going to go away for the foreseeable future. Uh, but there's also a certain degree of kind of

00:17:51.540 fakeness to this polarization. Um, I mean, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South,

00:17:59.200 they kind of meant what they said and they said what they meant.

00:18:03.080 And this did eventuate into a major civil war. Um, a lot of people are, you know, they they've

00:18:10.140 been calling Trump a fascist for years now. Uh, and they say he, he, he, they, they think that

00:18:16.620 he's the cause of this polarization. I think he's the symptom, but the fact is whether this is going

00:18:22.340 to follow through in a way that's an actual civil war, I think is a highly debatable. I mean,

00:18:28.980 let's, let's also kind of look at what happened. So Trump attended this rally, quote unquote,

00:18:35.440 he did a, he drove by them apparently as he was off to his golf course. Um, you know, just saying,

00:18:43.780 but you know, all these liberals are saying like he's, this is a coup and they're, they're going

00:18:47.760 to take power. It's the Reichstag's fire situation. And yeah, uh, I think if you're going to engage in

00:18:54.480 an actual coup, uh, you should go give a big bombastic speech being surrounded by your supporters

00:19:01.100 and make demands and bold declarations. You don't just go and drive by and have a bunch of Trump

00:19:07.940 fans, you know, you know, go, ah, kind of like they're watching the Beatles or something. Um, but,

00:19:14.080 but there's also this level of, we've kind of seen this before. Like there was a, when Barack Obama

00:19:21.320 was elected in 2008, um, almost immediately, certainly before he was inaugurated, there was

00:19:28.600 this tea party phenomenon. Um, and I actually, I remember attending some of these things. I was

00:19:33.660 living in New York city. I attended a tea party rally in New York city as crazy as that might sound.

00:19:39.300 Um, but there, there, it was packed tons of people. Um, certainly thousands of people,

00:19:46.700 they were talking about the constitution and taxes and free markets and all this kind of stuff.

00:19:53.160 And it didn't really eventuate into anything. It eventuated into voting for Republicans and voting

00:20:01.940 in some new Republicans, uh, like Mike Pompeo who became secretary of state or Rand Paul. Uh, there,

00:20:09.560 there's this way at which it kind of becomes fake. It becomes kind of a fake revolution and a

00:20:16.160 fake, uh, a fake. That is true, but it could be, uh, it could be argued that the, uh, intensity and

00:20:24.640 the hatred and the division and the lack of trust is more substantial now than it was, uh, 12 years

00:20:31.600 ago. So it's, it's the, the, the anti has been upped to a greater extent. And what these models of

00:20:38.560 polarization would predict would be that this will continue, um, until something breaks. Now it doesn't

00:20:45.480 necessarily have to be a civil war. The problem with looking at the, the, the, in the sense that

00:20:49.780 we know it, um, that civil wars could be, could be regarded as a sort of a, um, a pre-computer age

00:20:57.360 phenomenon. I don't know that, that they, they, they, they, they're of, they're of their time. And

00:21:03.460 in a society that is more and more and more complex, then to the extent that something like

00:21:07.960 a civil war occurs, it doesn't take the same form. So for example, if you look at what's happening

00:21:13.160 in England at the moment, there are, there are these people that are trying to set up

00:21:16.200 a, a sort of, uh, an ethno-nationalist far-right political party. The way on which they are

00:21:21.160 attacked is not to be shot or assassinated or something like that. That's the kind of

00:21:24.680 thing that will be beaten up in the streets. Even that's the kind of thing that might happen

00:21:28.160 50 or 60 or a hundred years ago. Um, but their bank accounts are shut down. Um, and, and,

00:21:34.040 and they are stopped at the border and, and, uh, having their DNA taken under the

00:21:39.720 prevention of terrorism act when they, when they enter on holiday or, or they, um, you

00:21:46.760 know, that, that sort of thing. So, or, or, or they're continuously not. So it's, it's a

00:21:50.960 more subtle affair because the level of the level of control, which the state apparatus

00:21:55.920 has, um, is, is stronger. So it won't necessarily be the same thing. The manifestations of high

00:22:01.860 levels of polarization will be, um, will be slightly different, but at some point when, uh,

00:22:06.720 or considerably different, but when it's, uh, it, it may be that it is the nearest thing

00:22:11.940 that we could get, uh, on the way to, uh, some sort of, um, collapse, um, that would

00:22:17.060 be the sort of safety valve of a, of a sort of a, a civil war skirmish or something, something,

00:22:22.540 something like that. And we are separating as well. I mean, there's this phenomenon,

00:22:27.020 the big sort of, um, separating off into red states and blue states in a way, or, or it's,

00:22:33.480 it's not quite like that, but it's separating off into red neighborhoods and blue neighborhoods.

00:22:38.280 And the, the idea of whiteopia as well as this almost suburban place where you can create 0.66

00:22:43.420 this simulation of the 1950s and liberals do that as well too. But, um, we, we, we're not

00:22:50.860 around each other. We're, we're, we're choosing to be in different worlds and therefore meeting

00:22:57.960 different people and marrying them and having children with them. Like we're, we're just choosing 0.96

00:23:02.140 to create different races in a way. Because I think one of the remarkable things is that this,

00:23:08.720 I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting to talk about how race plays into this because it's,

00:23:16.180 it's not exactly clear, you know, people in our movement are, will, will have been talking

00:23:21.240 for decades of, you know, oh, it's, it's, there's racial turmoil and distrust, and there's going

00:23:27.140 to be a breakdown. And I do think that one of the background, you know, components of

00:23:33.420 this, a, an indispensable cause for it is this long-term demographic change. And the chickens

00:23:40.300 are coming home to roost in the sense that it's going to be harder to win elections as

00:23:46.780 the Republican party was winning elections. Although the Republican party is expanding into,

00:23:51.460 uh, diverse populations as well. Uh, but it's not, it's not breaking down just purely on race.

00:23:59.180 I mean, the, the GOP for a long time has been kind of the white party. It's been 90% of the 0.65

00:24:04.200 voting block has been white, uh, and so on, but it's not a racial breakdown. It's something

00:24:09.720 different. I'm not sure about that. It's a, it's a conservative party. And so it's the party

00:24:14.700 of those that are, who have these five moral foundations where the emphasis is on authority,

00:24:21.020 on, uh, disgusts of purity, uh, and, and, and, and in-group loyalty. And that's why you get

00:24:28.460 that there is a black segment within the, within, as was seen at this rally in Washington yesterday,

00:24:34.080 there is a black segment within the Republican party. There are those who are black and, and

00:24:39.480 who see their, uh, you know, they're ethnocentric blacks and they want to, um, uh, help the interests 0.77

00:24:45.520 of the blacks, but also there are blacks who are individualists and who want just right wing

00:24:49.720 candidates or whatever. Um, and, and those kinds of people or Hispanics or whatever, um, will be

00:24:55.680 inclined towards the Republican, the, the Republicans, um, and, and will perhaps marry white Republicans

00:25:01.580 and whatever. That's the kind of process you would, you would, uh, uh, would occur. And similarly,

00:25:06.320 you get, of course, white people who, who are very, very rich and whose interests could be regarded

00:25:10.600 as being a Republican government. But, um, the opposite is the case. They're these childlike

00:25:15.140 people that mentally haven't quite grown up. And so they become involved with the Democrats. 0.83

00:25:19.560 Um, but, but so I think, yeah, the point is that increasingly you, you'd have them working

00:25:25.020 together. I mean, this idea that they go on about that when George, uh, George Bush lost the

00:25:29.260 election in 1992 and he left a nice little message for Bill Clinton. And that's the way it's,

00:25:35.620 that's the way it's supposed to work. And you work together in parliament. You had this

00:25:39.240 in Britain as well. You labor. There was a TV series in Britain in the eighties called

00:25:42.920 Yes Minister. Um, and the, the, the character that was about Jim Hacker, uh, remains friends

00:25:49.860 with the person who was the minister in the old government that he was the, he was the shadow

00:25:55.380 opposition to, and then meets up with him for lunch and says, look, the civil service I have

00:26:00.540 to deal with when you were the minister, what did you do? How do you, how do you, how do you

00:26:04.440 beat them? And he said, my dear fellow, if I could beat them, I wouldn't be in opposition.

00:26:08.200 They're like friends, even though they're different parties. And that used to be how,

00:26:12.860 to a certain extent, how it was. And that is just, in Britain now, that's decreasingly

00:26:17.440 the case. You have people in the Labour Party who despise the conservatives, hate them.

00:26:22.840 There was this woman who is a shadow, a member of the shadow cabinet called Angela Rayner. 1.00

00:26:27.700 And there was some conservative MP talking in Parliament and she went, scum, scum. And 1.00

00:26:34.040 the guy goes, I'm sorry, did the right honourable lady just call me scum? And the speaker intervened 1.00

00:26:39.260 and told her off. That's the level it's at, even in Britain, worse in America, of just

00:26:46.140 mutual loathing, whereas it used to be. And I find it's kind of one way, if I think about

00:26:50.480 it from my own experience, particularly since over the last couple of years, I sort of came

00:26:54.200 out as a person of the right in a pronounced form. The research by Haidt indicates that

00:27:03.740 the level of disgust is higher overall among people that are on the right. But the level

00:27:09.080 of moral disgust, in particular, so there's these different kinds of disgust, sexual disgust

00:27:13.800 and disgust about illness and whatever. And the level of moral disgust, uniquely, is higher

00:27:18.840 among the left. And that is why people that are on the left are so intolerant of those

00:27:25.240 that have different views from them, because they have a disgust, a visceral, blah, for

00:27:31.140 people that disagree with their opinions. And so it's kind of one way. I remember when

00:27:38.220 I was at university, you'd have these fundamentalist Christians. And at the time, lovely people,

00:27:43.180 I have to say, I was a screaming atheist at the time. And I would mock them and, you know, 0.98

00:27:48.360 well, you believe in the fairy in the sky, whatever. And they didn't care. They were

00:27:51.880 like, yeah, whatever. We disagree. We disagree. Let's be friends. That meme you have on Facebook

00:27:56.340 of Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. Oh, I voted Republican, you voted Democrat. Never mind. Let's be friends.

00:28:01.800 That's really what they're like. That's not what the leftists are like. That's not what they're

00:28:06.660 like. Their attitude is the other version of that meme, which was, hang on, no, you voted

00:28:12.080 for Brexit. I didn't vote for Brexit. We can't just be friends. You've messed up our future

00:28:16.200 forever, which was actually, which came out of that. So you're dealing with people that can't

00:28:21.180 tolerate other views. And that's been the nature of the left throughout history, really, that they

00:28:27.020 will portray, even go back to the Reformation, that you've got the Protestants, or basically the

00:28:32.440 left, the new and the change and the equality, portraying those disagree with them like the Pope

00:28:38.420 as Satan. And that's in a really visceral, nasty form. And so when it gets, that's an element that's

00:28:49.080 there at these times of crisis.

00:28:50.280 I agree. I totally agree. I mean, in terms of people who have, you know, yelled at me in public

00:28:56.540 or something, it's 100%. Well, I would say this, 99% leftist in the sense of just randos coming up to

00:29:05.660 me and yelling at me and being nasty and stupid. 99%. I actually have had a conservative do that 1.00

00:29:11.200 once.

00:29:12.520 With the conservatives, though, I would, the one caveat I'd make is that one of the things that

00:29:17.500 is associated with mental instability is periods of fervent religiousness. And so when you might

00:29:23.380 get people who go through periods of very fervent conservatism, who are kind of mentally unstable 0.68

00:29:29.720 as well, and who are insecure about it, and if you question it, because they're a bit sort of,

00:29:34.180 sort of a bit sort of, what's the word, they have sort of an unstable, there's a scientific term for

00:29:41.500 it, but sort of an unstable sense of self, essentially. And those people will have a number

00:29:47.480 of symptoms, one of which is that they will react very strongly to the slightest specific

00:29:51.380 criticism of them, which includes a criticism of their worldview. They will engage in what's

00:29:56.040 called splitting, where they'll see the world in a very dogmatic way, either good or evil,

00:30:00.240 if you disagree, you're evil. Borderline personality disorder, that's what it's called.

00:30:04.980 And so I have, I can think of a case on my field work with fundamentalist Christians, where

00:30:11.020 there was this, this rabidly fundamentalist sort of missionary, basically, who they'd invited

00:30:18.620 to speak. And he was trying to say to me, oh yeah, you should believe in God, there's such

00:30:23.460 thing as God. And I said, well, look, I don't find any of the arguments for the existence

00:30:27.440 of God convincing. You'd have to, you'd have to, you know, he'd have to appear before me

00:30:32.580 or something like that. And he snapped, oh, if he appeared before you, come up with some

00:30:37.060 idea, wouldn't you? That he, that you were seeing things or something like that.

00:30:41.600 Right. Probably true.

00:30:43.900 Probably true, yeah. But anyway, no reason.

00:30:47.120 No, but I see your point. Yeah.

00:30:48.920 It kind of happened the other way around.

00:30:51.020 Yeah. But, so, granted, but I guess what I'm getting at, because I'm looking at this more

00:30:57.860 from a political angle than not just personality, is that it's like, that's true. And I think

00:31:06.000 there is a natural conservatism where you and I would probably, we would at least appreciate

00:31:12.500 and maybe be more likely to want to be around the kind of people who would be attracted to

00:31:17.940 the MAGA March rally. They're decent, they're normal, they're mentally stable, etc. But they're

00:31:25.320 in this kind of new position of resentment. And it is, I don't want to sound too much like

00:31:31.280 a liberal here, but it is a kind of resentment politics. And the sense that they're not, with

00:31:38.580 the Tea Party, you saw this as well, and you definitely see this with this new burgeoning

00:31:42.880 movement, which might become Tea Party 2.0, we'll see, is that there's no real claim of,

00:31:48.860 say, political dominance or policymaking or a vision of the future. There's simply, you

00:31:57.260 cheated, you're a bad person, you're taxing us too much, you're a socialist, you're blah,

00:32:03.500 blah, blah. It's all this kind of negative resentment politics. Whereas the left, and I 0.72

00:32:10.640 sometimes, I mean, I sometimes think you kind of, we are we, but you also, we kind of overestimate

00:32:17.740 the degree to which the left are a bunch of blue haired weirdos and just, you know, a bunch 1.00

00:32:23.280 of sexual perverts and, you know, mentally unstable lunatics. The fact is, most of them 1.00

00:32:31.780 are not like that. Most of them actually are stable. They might be uppity and annoying in

00:32:36.920 their own way, granted, but they're not just crazy people. And they actually are a hegemonic 0.96

00:32:45.000 entity in the sense that the liberals are slowly putting together a large coalition that can

00:32:53.100 actually win elections and rule. And what's standing in their way is this resentment coalition

00:33:01.480 of the normal people in America. And, but those people don't have actually any vision for power

00:33:10.540 there. They are protesting right now on a highly dubious claim about the fact that they actually

00:33:18.080 won the election. Back in the Tea Party days, they were just talking, they were almost like

00:33:22.960 libertarian anarchists when you would listen to them, even though they didn't actually believe

00:33:26.560 that, just pure constitutionalism. And so it's all this negative energy. And even within their

00:33:33.000 coalitions, you have these kind of hot button things. I care about abortion. I care about gun

00:33:37.180 rights. I care about taxes, you know, whatever. Now it's free speech. Oh, they're doing all

00:33:42.180 these bad things to us. You know, I can't believe that they're censoring the president of the

00:33:46.540 United States on Twitter. It's all this just negative energy. It's resentment politics.

00:33:52.000 Whereas the left in their own imperfect way are putting together a ruling political coalition

00:34:01.580 with actual policy visions. And so it is very asymmetric.

00:34:07.620 There was a colleague of mine that made that point and he compared the far right, whatever

00:34:12.100 you want to call it, these kinds of people to actual like Nazis, actual who were on the

00:34:16.180 extremes. And he said that those people are more dangerous, although they're totally fringe

00:34:21.480 and irrelevant. But they are in a sense more dangerous than these kinds of people because

00:34:25.860 those people, it's not just saying this is bad. They actually have a vision. We want to

00:34:33.080 do this to society. We have a plan. Our plan is to get in power to destroy all our enemies

00:34:39.280 and then build a society that is like this. And I think you are right that that is what

00:34:46.900 these people on the right, that's what Margaret Thatcher did to some extent, although a lot 0.98

00:34:50.680 of people that are supporters don't like Margaret Thatcher. It wasn't just that, oh, the Labour

00:34:55.740 has created chaos and nobody has any money and we need to do something about it. It was I

00:35:01.180 want to create, I want to create an owner, a house owning democracy in which everybody

00:35:07.420 has a financial physical stake in that democracy. And I want to reinstitute traditional Victorian 0.99

00:35:16.520 values in this way, but not this way, because it aids that democracy. And that was her vision.

00:35:21.980 Whereas it was Labour that was the politics of resentment was to say, oh, let's tax the rich,

00:35:26.680 the rich too rich. For example, at the height of Monty Python, the Monty Python people were

00:35:34.080 paying 83% income tax. So that was the level of income tax in Britain in 1979 if you were

00:35:40.100 a top earner. So you're right, the Tea Party as well, it didn't really have a vision. These

00:35:46.760 people who are these fundamentalist Christians, I suppose you could argue they kind of have a

00:35:51.840 vision. And bring that, they instantiate that in certain small ways in the areas of America that

00:35:58.080 they run, like Utah or something, where they used to have special blockbuster video type chains with

00:36:04.560 censored videos, things like that. Everything you watched was a sort of little house on the

00:36:11.480 prairie sort of level of wholesome Americana. You know, even Michael Moore, Michael Moore

00:36:19.140 documentaries, like Fahrenheit 911 would be censored to be in line. Wow. So that kind of thing, I think

00:36:26.040 it's closed down. I think it's called clean flicks. But well, erotica is more erotic when it's a

00:36:35.200 little bit censored. Well, yeah, I mean, I actually, they've got it right in a weird way. Like, you know,

00:36:41.180 just a little bit of, a little bit of nipple right there. That's all you need. That's, that's 1.00

00:36:47.460 titillating. Yeah. A look across the room can be more, more arousing than a, than a, um,

00:36:53.880 It's been some graphic pornographic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think you're, you're right. It would be

00:37:00.160 good. Yet the constant, the whole move is based around, um, we want to get Trump in because it's just

00:37:06.920 so unfair. Uh, he's tenuous. I can't, I'm trying, I really am trying to be open-minded. You know,

00:37:15.820 it's, it's in my nature. I like to be contrarian. Even when I was a child, I preferred to have the

00:37:20.640 skeletal toys rather than the He-Man toys. I like to be contrarian, but, but, but I, I can't bring

00:37:27.280 myself to accept the arguments that are being propounded for why this was stolen to the extent

00:37:32.720 that he would win. Right. Exactly. I really can't. I'm sorry. I can't. They don't make any

00:37:38.800 sense. Of course, there's going to be a Biden bounce if they, if they, if they, uh, start

00:37:43.720 counting the Biden votes overwhelmingly after they start counting the Trump votes. Why wouldn't

00:37:50.060 that? Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I totally agree. But, but I, I guess that's what it's,

00:37:55.360 that's what I, to go back to what I was saying about 15 minutes ago, it's, it's like, I, I,

00:38:00.900 I totally agree that there is that the polarization is radical. I mean, I, I, when I put out my

00:38:07.620 election forecast, I actually found some of these things which were remarkable, which is that people

00:38:12.620 true conservatives are more concerned about their daughter marrying a Democrat than someone of

00:38:19.160 another race. Now, granted, that's what they told to a pollster. So they might be censoring

00:38:22.880 themselves a little bit, but, um, you just, and, and you see the same thing with liberals. So a,

00:38:28.040 an uppity liberal living in Northern Virginia, if they learn that their daughter is marrying a

00:38:33.120 Republican, you know, they, they, it's scary for them. The, the idea of having him over to dinner

00:38:39.260 would be terrifying. Um, so we, we are reaching this radical polarization, but I guess what I'm saying

00:38:44.920 is that it's, it, I'm not, I don't really see full on civil war. I see full on street violence,

00:38:51.640 thuggery. We've already seen that. Um, but I, there's no, they're there. There's not

00:38:57.880 going to be a Trump coup. He's it. We're not living in the twenties or thirties. And I don't

00:39:04.340 know if we're going to see something like that again. And there's also this just extreme asymmetry,

00:39:09.900 which is, is kind of discouraging or demoralizing, I think for the right in general, because there's

00:39:15.880 just no, they're there. And we, we kind of look at these people and we say, Oh, look at,

00:39:21.460 they're good and they're decent. They're kind of state. They, they're, they're what we want,

00:39:25.740 you know, America to look like and so on. But you, you actually do have to say something

00:39:31.620 beyond resentment, or you are, you are going to be in this hamster wheel for the rest of your

00:39:38.720 political days, just reacting to the latest thing that the left does. But the thing is the left is

00:39:45.440 the ones that are actually doing things. They have put together a kind of coalition, which is

00:39:51.640 incoherent. It includes upper class white people, you know, on board with African Americans in Chicago 0.82

00:39:58.280 and, you know, most of Hispanics and, you know, the underclass and labor unions. It doesn't make 0.87

00:40:05.040 sense in some way, but neither did their other liberal coalition of, uh, of, of the FDR era for 60

00:40:13.440 years. They ruled with Southern, Southern segregationists aligned with eggheads in New 0.69

00:40:19.660 York city and, you know, some, the urban poor and unions and farmers. So you can do this. You can put

00:40:26.220 together these coalitions, but also what I see in the left is an actual vision. And, you know, I have

00:40:32.680 a vision for what the world is going to look like. You know, you have a vision for what the world is going

00:40:37.460 to look like. You have to have something. You have to have a kind of platonic ideal of where we're headed.

00:40:43.440 They need to put together more overtly. I think a religious coalition. I mean, that's as far as I

00:40:47.900 can see what it could, what it could divide along down in America. Anyway, a coalition of those who

00:40:52.660 are, who, who have these monumentalist eternal values and those who don't of all races and does

00:40:58.940 have to be of all races because of the, which people are inculcated with, uh, multi-racialism and

00:41:05.720 the, and also just the demographics now of America. So for the time being, that's how the coalition has

00:41:10.720 to be. And there are some movements in that direction in, in the sense that there are,

00:41:14.400 there are people in the Republican party who are not white. And Trump, of course, has attempted

00:41:19.500 to appeal to black people in particular saying, look, I've, I've done this to black unemployment 0.99

00:41:23.660 or whatever, but somehow it has to, um, has to have more urgency to it. It has to be that

00:41:28.900 they have to stop identifying as black. They have to be, Margaret Thatcher tried this as well. 1.00

00:41:34.520 She put a poster with a black man saying, Labour says he's black. The conservatives say he's

00:41:38.880 British. Um, and that was, that was part of her, her, uh, attempt at this. But I, I think

00:41:44.820 that the, the conservative party. You hear that all the time in America. Yeah. I don't see

00:41:49.040 color. Um, that, that, uh, that they, the Hindus, for example, are really, really, really into

00:41:55.300 the conservative party. They, they, they, they, they, they use. Yeah. So, so, so I mean, it can

00:42:01.820 be, it can, it can be done, but the problem is, is this fundamental problem where the, the,

00:42:06.720 the story of history, it seems to be that things move in a left wing direction until there's total

00:42:13.660 chaos. And it seems that at the moment, because people are so rich, I guess, um, even, um, the

00:42:22.220 chaos that you have with BLM or whatever is just not enough to, and also another problem

00:42:28.640 is the polarization of it. So if you, yeah, if you live in these kinds of places like Chicago

00:42:33.380 or whatever, then, and you're white, then you experience chaos and it's awful. But what 0.63

00:42:37.960 if you live like where you live? Um, what if you live in North Dakota? Yeah, exactly.

00:42:44.520 It doesn't impact you because there's racial polarization in America. Okay. They try and just

00:42:49.720 mess it up by putting in refugees in Minnesota and refugees in Maine or whatever, but, but,

00:42:55.580 but, uh, which actually would benefit that then the right in that sense indirectly, but, but, um,

00:43:01.020 they're kind of protected from it. And so they don't, they don't really, they don't really feel it.

00:43:05.920 Whereas in a small nation of the European kind, if it's happening, it's kind of happening in

00:43:11.720 nationwide. Um, and so it allows a change of government to occur with America. It's much more

00:43:18.000 complicated because you're holding together all of these different, uh, really very different

00:43:22.980 places. So, um, I don't know, but what my, my, uh, expectation is that this will just get worse

00:43:30.100 and worse and worse until the level of chaos is so bad that something breaks. And that's what

00:43:35.640 normally happens. Even, I mean, okay.

00:43:37.920 There has to be something there and there, there, there has to be something that can take over.

00:43:42.980 And I, I, again, I, I, I'm, I'm the one who's always kind of most critical of the right because

00:43:49.040 I feel like that's what we have to criticize. Uh, if we're going to get it right, we have to

00:43:54.300 criticize conservatives and, you know, we know the left sucks. I mean, it's, I could spend my entire 0.98

00:43:59.580 day tweeting about, you know, SJWs in California, but it's just, it becomes old after a while. But if

00:44:06.260 there's nothing there to actually assert itself, if all you have is ultimately a resentment coalition,

00:44:14.780 then the left will learn how to be hegemonic because, you know, the liberals, I, I, cause I,

00:44:22.760 you know, you hear a lot of this on kind of the far left, like raging against Nancy Pelosi and Chuck

00:44:28.000 Schumer as, Oh, they're, they're conservatives and they're, they're in with the wealthy and they're not

00:44:32.600 going to actually do these things we want. Well, that's true, but, and they're bought off to some,

00:44:37.500 some extent. Sure. But they also know how to govern and they don't want endless BLM chaos and they will 0.98

00:44:46.680 crack down on these people at some point and they want stability. And so what I see with those types

00:44:55.380 is an ability to govern, an ability to use power and not just want to grab power for your little

00:45:03.660 cause or whatever, or not just want to grab power to reduce it or whatever the conservatives say they

00:45:08.540 want to do. They want to grab power and hold onto it and govern. And there is something admirable

00:45:15.340 about that. That's one way that you could see the BLM stuff as, as a sort of punishment beating 0.80

00:45:20.380 on the population for having voted the wrong way. So look what we can do to you. We're going to do

00:45:28.700 this to you and we're going to keep doing it to you unless you vote Democrat. And now you've voted

00:45:33.500 Democrat. And so therefore, therefore they may reign in the punishment beatings. 0.65

00:45:39.900 Yeah, I think it's, I think it's deeper that it's just a kind of like taking your little pound of

00:45:45.000 flesh. Like it's just, you did, you, you know, you enslaved grandpappy and I'm going to hit you over 0.99

00:45:51.400 the head. Basically. It's like this, like primal, uh, uh, uh, primal court, uh, where, you know, 1.00

00:46:00.860 when, when the, the evildoer did something, you just get to kick the shit out of him. Basically. Uh, 0.99

00:46:08.460 I think that's where we are.

00:46:13.720 Hmm.

00:46:15.000 Hmm.

RadixJournal - November 17, 2020

The Big Rig

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