The Big Rig
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Summary
Joseph Biden Jr. has won the 2020 presidential election, but Republicans aren t having any of it. And that holds twofold for Donald Trump s most avid fans: massive voter fraud, counting machines with communist parts, late-night ballot dumping, you ve heard it all. The Trump team s lawsuits are getting tossed out of court, but the diehards keep on believing. Beyond the allegations, is there something deeper taking place? Is this what civil war actually looks like in the 21st century? Less organized violence but the same level of mutual loathing, mistrust, and dehumanization?
Transcript
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It's Tuesday, November 17th, 2020, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group, an unrehearsed,
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hastily assembled program about metapolitics. Joining me as usual is Edward Dutton. He is a
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golfer, and he is also a conservative. Main topic, the big rig. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.,
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yes, that is his actual name, has won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But Republicans
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aren't having any of it. And that holds twofold for Donald Trump's most avid fans. Massive voter
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fraud, counting machines with communist parts, late-night ballot dumping, you've heard it all.
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The Trump team's lawsuits are getting tossed out of court, but the diehards keep on believing.
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Ed and I take a step back. Beyond the allegations is something deeper taking place. Is this what
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civil war actually looks like in the 21st century? Less organized violence, but the same level of
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mutual loathing, mistrust, and dehumanization. Ed, how are you? Good evening.
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Yes. Good morning. I'm okay. Yes, good morning. I haven't been on the streets of Washington, D.C.
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of late, so all my bones are intact, and no one has stamped on my head. So I'm reasonably okay.
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Yeah. I mean, if I was a big target three years ago at these big D.C. public events, then the sight of
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you, a traditional Englishman, walking around, conversing with MAGA, yes, you would likely have
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I don't think so. As we've experienced in Chicago, I get on very well with the people
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who would have been prone to brutally killing me. So I'm not sure about that. My experience
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when I've met them in real life, IRL, as the young people call it, is that they tend to
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Well, you did, actually. You did. That is true. You did. Indeed, you impressed them a
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But I think that it wouldn't necessarily be quite so bad. It seems to be working class Americans
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that they particularly despise. Those who are members of groups like the Oath Keepers, is
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And I don't know what... It's something about that. That's where the real animosity lies.
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But no, it's been just yet more evidence of the coming apart of the Roman Empire, I think,
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over yesterday in your nation's capital. Or your set-broken-up nation's capital.
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Well, we'll see about that. But I do agree with you that polarization is radical.
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And if anything, people are underestimating it. You hear about polarization in the media. If you
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watch CNN or whatever, it's, oh, this polarized electorate, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they
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actually are telling you the half of it. It's not just we have a bunch of people who want to
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vote for different parties. It's two people who can't speak to each other and who hate each other
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and wildly distrust each other. So let's back up just a little bit. This weekend, there was a
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hastily assembled Million MAGA March. And I don't think they got really anywhere close to having a
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million participants. And maybe that was a bad title to choose for their march. However, they did get,
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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
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of people who were there. I think there were four main rallies that were kind of organically coming
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together. It was all about what they feel to be is election rigging. And they don't believe that what
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they saw on television was real. And I think that's also something that is a real part of this,
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where it's a kind of disbelieving the facts put out, put forward by what are institutions,
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whether it be Twitter, or whether it be CNN, or whether it be the New York Times. These are
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media institutions. No, they don't call the election, but they do have this institutional
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connection to the status quo. And they think that all of this, these things that these institutions
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say are lies. It's not even that you should be skeptical of them. Just by the fact that they say
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them, you should disbelieve them. And I don't think that I'm exaggerating their mentality, because
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in some of the interviews that have come out from yesterday, that's exactly what they would say.
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As you know, I wrote this thing on QAnon. And what was fascinating about researching that is the
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extent of it. It reminds me of the English Civil War, where you really do have both sides,
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one literally and one metaphorically, portraying each other as in league with Satan, with Satan
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being stated in, is it one John or something like that, as being the father of lies. And so they will
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not believe what they see with their own eyes, as far as the level of trust is so low, that all that
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the mainstream media can be presenting them with is a huge conspiracy theory, a huge lie. I have to say,
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much as I might like to believe that Trump has genuinely won this election, and there is a huge
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conspiracy theory. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying, when I look into the arguments that are
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presented in favour of why there has been vote rigging, not minor vote sodding about, as there
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always is in elections in a country which is a little bit corrupt, but on a scale that is sufficient
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to shift the vote. I have to say, I'm not so sure. Academic agent who is a YouTuber and people like
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this have been putting out this idea that it is actually Trump one. I have to say, the arguments,
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look at the arguments, I'm really not so sure. It does seem to be rather more consistent with a huge
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polarisation in whether you voted by post or whether you voted in person, and that being along
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political lines. But the fact that they, what's more important is that they won't accept it. They
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won't accept the phenomenology of the election. Exactly. Exactly. So we, and we don't have to dwell
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on the, the, the, the notion of interference, because these things, there are, there are a number of
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lawsuits, and to be honest, they are getting laughed out of court. I mean, they, they're, they are,
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in some cases, based solely on hearsay. They are, in some cases, their exact allegation or claim of
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damages are ambiguous. Like, there were no poll observers, and then the judge asked them how many
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poll observers there are, and the plaintiff said a non-zero number, i.e. there were poll observers.
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It just, it's, these things are, don't hold a lot of water. So I, I think the likelihood
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that this is going to get to the Supreme Court, and it will be overturned, or the likelihood
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that they will convince the leaders of these states to not certify the elections, because again,
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elections are run by the states. It's a 10th Amendment thing. It's not a federal issue. The
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idea that you're going to get all of these states to not certify the election, and then just put forth
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their own electors, and there are more red states, and there are blue states, they would elect Trump.
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I, I would say less than 1%, and that's maybe being generous, but the point is that they genuinely
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don't believe this, and you can say as a, you know, liberal, CNN-watching, you know, uppity
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jerk, oh, they're just stupid, or it's just a cult of personality, and okay, little bits of truth
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there, certainly with the cult of personality bit with Trump, but the fact is that just the
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phenomenon of them not believing anything that they hear is radical, and they've even taken it to
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kind of new levels, because one of the things I saw being chanted by a number of them was Fox News
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sucks, and so we've, we've kind of, and then they've also, the Proud Boys chanted Fox News sucks,
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and then they chanted Tucker, Tucker, Tucker, who's the star of Fox News.
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On Fox News, and I saw, I saw, I was watching a program, I was watching on YouTube the other
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day something which Tucker, Tucker Carlson, half hour segment on this, on the, on the election
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in which he casts serious doubt on the mainstream narrative, so it's not quite true to say that
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Fox News is completely against them. Fox News is prepared to give a voice to these people who are,
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who are, who are skeptical of, but the thing is, they, they've, they've taken this down,
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they're, they're making these refinements that are, that are somewhat surprising, because
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Fox News was very much behind the Tea Party. Fox News, and, and this reminds me a great deal of
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the Tea Party. This is kind of Tea Party 2.0, and Fox News would, they would just do PR for the Tea Party
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all day long, including their new, supposedly hard news segments, and the fact that they're now kind
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of counter-signaling them a little bit is remarkable, and the fact that they're making these distinctions
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is also remarkable. Fox News came in an kind of early period of polarization, where you were,
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we were through technology, technological development, but also I think through social
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development, we were kind of breaking away from the nightly news model, where there were three
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middle-aged white men who told you the truth, and no one, you know, if you were questioning the truth
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told you by Walter Cronkite, or Peter Jennings, or Tom Brokaw, or Dan Rather, you were a bit of a
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crank. You were likely, you believed in aliens, and, and foil hats, and so on. The vast majority of the
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population would listen to Walter Cronkite, and when he, when he said, when he said something mildly
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critical about the Vietnam War, it actually really affected public opinion in a substantial way after
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he gave a 30-second op-ed, basically, on air about how the Vietnam War is not going so well.
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There, there was just this top-down authority through media, and I think there still are
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mainstream institutions, but they're, they're, they're fragmenting and shattering, and the, the idea
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that there actually is an American population out there that can be kind of, you know, informed
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about through, through propaganda in a broad sense of the word, in a Jacques Ellul's sense of the word,
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that they can be informed, and they can learn how to act through a media apparatus, that is breaking
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down. Well, of course, I mean, first of all, the, the, I mean, as a book I've read recently, I did a video
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on this on YouTube recently, that was very, very interesting, this coming apart by Charles Murray,
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and I know that on, on, on, on quite a few things, Charles Murray has an unfortunate tendency to cut,
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but on, on this, he, he didn't, and it was very, very good, and he basically identified the, the day on
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which, to, to simplify it, the day on which America changed was the 21st of November 63, which I think is
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when, that was when JFK was a SAS date, wasn't it? Interesting, yeah.
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Right. Uh, and, and he was saying on that, around, around that date, you had about four channels,
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um, 30% of the population, 34% of the population were watching one program on one night, I think
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it was called the Hillbill or something. Um, and then in 2010, for 9% of the population to watch
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American Idol, that was, that was good, that was considered a hit, that was something that was
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going well. Everybody has, whether they're working class or middle class, as you call it in America,
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or upper class, had the same lifestyle, the same kind of attitudes towards the legitimacy of
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children, marriage, um, about 3% of households were held by a single parent, um, and everybody,
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no matter what their social class was, basically lived, to some extent, to some extent, the same
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lives, and had the same values. And of course, at that point, they were, what, 85%, 90% white as well.
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So, so it's, it's, it was a united culture. And not only that, it was united in all of
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these ways, even in terms of things that you ate, food, there was no access to sushi or
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Chinese food or whatever, you know. Uh, everybody ate the same thing, everybody did the same
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thing. There was very little diversity of choice and, and everyone, and that, um, simply
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even down to having a diversity of what food you can eat, is going to change things and change
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to the degree to which people identify with each other and are bonded with each other.
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So church attendance was about 60%. So you've got over half of the population united in this,
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what they see as this profound, eternal ritual. Um, and all of this unity, um, which held together
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of this, uh, this America of the black and white films and whatever has, is completely for various
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reasons, part of its technology, of course, and the access to multiple views. Uh, and, uh,
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part, uh, part, part of it is, um, other factors, I think partly even genetic factors, part of
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it is, uh, the breakdown of religion and holding people together. It's all gone. And so then
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at a time of crisis like this, where you have this, this very close election, um, there was
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a very close election in 1960, but both sides are very, very similar to each other in a lot
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of fundamental ways. They're wasps, you know, all these, they're white.
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Interestingly, just a quick, uh, interjection in the 1960 election, JFK referred to himself
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as a conservative and Nixon advertised himself as a liberal. So it, it, and I'm, I mean, that's
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a curious fact, but it just goes to show how close these parties were, you know, in terms
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of just in, in, in how we hadn't even seen that, like, I'm a true American conservative.
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Oh no, I'm a liberal. Like we hadn't seen that just like ossification of two large populations
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that are both whites to a very large degree, but just that total divergence. We had not
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seen that yet. And we've definitely seen that now.
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Yeah, you've definitely, I mean, you, you had it conspicuously in the eighties with the rise
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of the fundamentalist Christianity and whatever Bob Jones, university types, um, and, and fundamentalism
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becoming more fundamentalist as well, which is interesting. So in the, in the sixties
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or whatever, the idea that you, as a fundamentalist Christian, that you rejected the existence of
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dinosaurs or that the world was created old to confuse the non-believer, that was a minority
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thing. Whereas now it's become a marker of that you're a genuine Christian, that you reject
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dinosaurs and that you, you believe in the Adam and Eve creation accounts and you're not
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descended from a monkey and, uh, and all, all this sort of thing. So even on that level,
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because once you, once you diverge, then you, you signal how committed you are to the segment
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of which you're a part by going further. And so the fundamentalists become more fundamentalists
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and the liberals become more liberal. And so, and so you can see how you would end up with
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a total lack of trust, um, and this cognitive dissonance, which the people who have lost the
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election, the, uh, the Republicans are feeling. And the way you deal with that is, is to come
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up with some, uh, like Leon Festinger did when he did his book on cognitive distance, actually
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found this, that when these people that were in these religious cults, when it didn't happen
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the way it was supposed to happen, they would come up with some massive conspiracy theory to
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demonstrate why Adam happened the way it was supposed to happen. Um, and then they would
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just carry on and entrench themselves and become, uh, even more extreme. And so it just feeds into
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this, um, to polarization and coming apart. And I, I suspect it's, I mean, it's just going
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to get a lot worse from here. Um, but let me add, I mean, there's also a level to, to this,
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to which it's kind of fake as well. And in which it's not going to lead to, uh, real civil
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war level violence. Now it already has led to appalling street level violence. Uh, it's been
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doing it's, this has been a trend over the last say four or five years, in fact. Um, and I saw many
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instances last night, just, just, you know, glancing at Twitter of just brazen attacks by
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Antifa types or BLM types on, uh, Trump supporters. I mean, it was out totally outrageous,
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even if I'm going to criticize the cause of these people, uh, what was done to them was
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just totally beyond the pale and, and cowardly. I think that is here to stay. I don't think that's
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going to go away for the foreseeable future. Uh, but there's also a certain degree of kind of
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fakeness to this polarization. Um, I mean, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South,
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they kind of meant what they said and they said what they meant.
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And this did eventuate into a major civil war. Um, a lot of people are, you know, they they've
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been calling Trump a fascist for years now. Uh, and they say he, he, he, they, they think that
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he's the cause of this polarization. I think he's the symptom, but the fact is whether this is going
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to follow through in a way that's an actual civil war, I think is a highly debatable. I mean,
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let's, let's also kind of look at what happened. So Trump attended this rally, quote unquote,
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he did a, he drove by them apparently as he was off to his golf course. Um, you know, just saying,
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but you know, all these liberals are saying like he's, this is a coup and they're, they're going
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to take power. It's the Reichstag's fire situation. And yeah, uh, I think if you're going to engage in
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an actual coup, uh, you should go give a big bombastic speech being surrounded by your supporters
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and make demands and bold declarations. You don't just go and drive by and have a bunch of Trump
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fans, you know, you know, go, ah, kind of like they're watching the Beatles or something. Um, but,
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but there's also this level of, we've kind of seen this before. Like there was a, when Barack Obama
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was elected in 2008, um, almost immediately, certainly before he was inaugurated, there was
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this tea party phenomenon. Um, and I actually, I remember attending some of these things. I was
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living in New York city. I attended a tea party rally in New York city as crazy as that might sound.
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Um, but there, there, it was packed tons of people. Um, certainly thousands of people,
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they were talking about the constitution and taxes and free markets and all this kind of stuff.
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And it didn't really eventuate into anything. It eventuated into voting for Republicans and voting
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in some new Republicans, uh, like Mike Pompeo who became secretary of state or Rand Paul. Uh, there,
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there's this way at which it kind of becomes fake. It becomes kind of a fake revolution and a
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fake, uh, a fake. That is true, but it could be, uh, it could be argued that the, uh, intensity and
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the hatred and the division and the lack of trust is more substantial now than it was, uh, 12 years
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ago. So it's, it's the, the, the anti has been upped to a greater extent. And what these models of
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polarization would predict would be that this will continue, um, until something breaks. Now it doesn't
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necessarily have to be a civil war. The problem with looking at the, the, the, in the sense that
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we know it, um, that civil wars could be, could be regarded as a sort of a, um, a pre-computer age
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phenomenon. I don't know that, that they, they, they, they, they're of, they're of their time. And
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in a society that is more and more and more complex, then to the extent that something like
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a civil war occurs, it doesn't take the same form. So for example, if you look at what's happening
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in England at the moment, there are, there are these people that are trying to set up
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a, a sort of, uh, an ethno-nationalist far-right political party. The way on which they are
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attacked is not to be shot or assassinated or something like that. That's the kind of
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thing that will be beaten up in the streets. Even that's the kind of thing that might happen
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50 or 60 or a hundred years ago. Um, but their bank accounts are shut down. Um, and, and,
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and they are stopped at the border and, and, uh, having their DNA taken under the
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prevention of terrorism act when they, when they enter on holiday or, or they, um, you
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know, that, that sort of thing. So, or, or, or they're continuously not. So it's, it's a
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more subtle affair because the level of the level of control, which the state apparatus
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has, um, is, is stronger. So it won't necessarily be the same thing. The manifestations of high
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levels of polarization will be, um, will be slightly different, but at some point when, uh,
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or considerably different, but when it's, uh, it, it may be that it is the nearest thing
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that we could get, uh, on the way to, uh, some sort of, um, collapse, um, that would
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be the sort of safety valve of a, of a sort of a, a civil war skirmish or something, something,
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something like that. And we are separating as well. I mean, there's this phenomenon,
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the big sort of, um, separating off into red states and blue states in a way, or, or it's,
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it's not quite like that, but it's separating off into red neighborhoods and blue neighborhoods.
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And the, the idea of whiteopia as well as this almost suburban place where you can create
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this simulation of the 1950s and liberals do that as well too. But, um, we, we, we're not
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around each other. We're, we're, we're choosing to be in different worlds and therefore meeting
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different people and marrying them and having children with them. Like we're, we're just choosing
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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,
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it's not exactly clear, you know, people in our movement are, will, will have been talking
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for decades of, you know, oh, it's, it's, there's racial turmoil and distrust, and there's going
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to be a breakdown. And I do think that one of the background, you know, components of
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this, a, an indispensable cause for it is this long-term demographic change. And the chickens
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are coming home to roost in the sense that it's going to be harder to win elections as
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the Republican party was winning elections. Although the Republican party is expanding into,
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uh, diverse populations as well. Uh, but it's not, it's not breaking down just purely on race.
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I mean, the, the GOP for a long time has been kind of the white party. It's been 90% of the
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voting block has been white, uh, and so on, but it's not a racial breakdown. It's something
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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
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that there is a black segment within the, within, as was seen at this rally in Washington yesterday,
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there is a black segment within the Republican party. There are those who are black and, and
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who see their, uh, you know, they're ethnocentric blacks and they want to, um, uh, help the interests
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of the blacks, but also there are blacks who are individualists and who want just right wing
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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.
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.
00:26:27.700
And there was some conservative MP talking in Parliament and she went, scum, scum. And
00:26:34.040
the guy goes, I'm sorry, did the right honourable lady just call me scum? And the speaker intervened
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,
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
00:28:50.280
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
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
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.
00:30:51.020
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
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
00:32:23.280
of sexual perverts and, you know, mentally unstable lunatics. The fact is, most of them
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
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
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
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
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
00:39:58.280
and, you know, most of Hispanics and, you know, the underclass and labor unions. It doesn't make
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
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
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.
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
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
00:43:37.920
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
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
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
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.
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
00:45:51.400
the head. Basically. It's like this, like primal, uh, uh, uh, primal court, uh, where, you know,
00:46:00.860
when, when the, the evildoer did something, you just get to kick the shit out of him. Basically. Uh,