RadixJournal - The End of Ideology

00:00:00.000 hello nima how are you i'm good i'm glad you survived your reported uh your reported death

00:00:14.180 richard oh due to massive weight gain or due to the fact that i am an indeed a muslim cleric

00:00:21.140 which one was it i don't know i saw it i was like actually i swear i was like you look looks just

00:00:26.520 like richard with his mustache you know okay i thought that was ai of me but is there actually

00:00:33.500 a guy who's like my doppelganger it's it's genuinely uh an iranian cleric who was killed

00:00:40.520 i can't remember what position he held and he just looks like you it's not ai it's literally a

00:00:45.660 different man so wow well everyone has a doppelganger you know it's just a matter of

00:00:52.160 numbers you know at some point this you know enough 80 percent of the same genes are going

00:00:58.200 to combine in the same way and so there's someone out there i remember as an aside when i was actually

00:01:05.960 living in virginia at this time this was about 20 years ago and i was in a coffee shop and i saw this

00:01:14.240 man who was identical to mason who was my apartment mate at the university of chicago and he was a

00:01:25.520 redhead with the beard we're in two different academic settings i i was in charlottesville it's

00:01:31.960 like 2005 or whatever he was we we were flatmates in 2003 and 2004 at u chicago and i went up to him i was

00:01:40.300 like mason what's up man why i can't believe we linked up and he like looked at me like i he was

00:01:45.820 afraid and it was a different person apparently i've always been convinced that maybe mason just

00:01:51.440 didn't like me and he like pretended to be but uh it's it's just kind of an eerie situation like

00:01:57.700 doppelgangers are real you sometimes do run into people absolutely absolutely and uh before we start

00:02:04.360 our conversation richard i have to uh i have to mention that uh people are probably excited to have

00:02:09.360 me on as being half half iranian and all the rest of it i have discovered in the past uh week uh

00:02:15.080 through the various forces of cringe seeing the behavior of iranian diaspora and so on uh that i am

00:02:21.240 not in fact half iranian i am claiming now to be the last elamite and i'm going to through a series of

00:02:28.320 elaborate dna tests prove uh actually that um my father's people actually predate the persians in the

00:02:36.080 area because i cannot take the dancing parvalist activist class anymore uh and i also can't really

00:02:45.180 i mean i i also saw the uh the mourning of the uh of the ayatollah and it was all very it was very

00:02:52.480 performative it was very kind of externalized and uh i've always thought you know you know i've never

00:02:59.260 got on well with iranians i'm very i'm kind of an introverted anti-social guy they're very outgoing

00:03:04.760 people they love a party they love to dance they love to uh socialize and host and they're very warm

00:03:12.440 and friendly uh whereas i'm very kind of uh cold and and and so i don't know i've always had a kind

00:03:19.220 of temperamental clash and i'm starting to wonder if there's a genetic reason for this that uh you know

00:03:25.820 maybe the elamites weren't like this but so there we are uh it's been very interesting situation it

00:03:31.220 makes sense well speaking as a white american i feel like i am just reliving 25 years ago though in a

00:03:43.800 compressed series of events and it's funny that i remember that anecdote about mason's doppelganger

00:03:52.360 came to mind because that that was occurring during this period but the cheering and celebration

00:04:00.000 of the diaspora of persians is analogous to the tearing down saddam statues or it's now in in 2003

00:04:10.740 or it's analogous to these hijab wearing muslim women in afghanistan going to undergraduate university 1.00

00:04:18.120 for the first time they could they could finally um learn about the wonders of underwater basket

00:04:24.300 weaving or whatever they were deprived of and what i remember watching just an interview last night

00:04:30.700 between sean hannity and bibi netanyahu and we're just back it's the same people in fact saying the same

00:04:40.440 exact thing as if nothing happened in between they're talking about the the iranians are in a war

00:04:48.000 against civilization that yes it might be hard now but the amazing benefits that america will accrue by

00:04:55.960 getting rid of this regime and all of the good people of iran hate the ayatollah which might have a 0.54

00:05:03.000 kernel of truth to it to be fair but it's the rhetoric we we have a there was chalabi back in the iraq war

00:05:08.960 days uh now we have a descendant of the shah who's making the rounds on television are they going to 0.81

00:05:16.660 implant him in there will it work out about as well as the chalabi uh coup worked out it i could go on

00:05:24.600 and on and on and i guess one of the things that i've recognized is that the terror war paradigm the

00:05:33.500 hard pro-israeli anti-muslim interventionism with some humanitarian rhetoric and elements wars against

00:05:44.800 civilization the fight against the terrorists this has been an enduring paradigm since the end of the

00:05:53.740 cold war and i don't think in fact any as botched as it was in implementing as illegitimate as it is

00:06:03.260 in the minds of intellectuals and a lot of the public it remains an enduring paradigm for organizing

00:06:12.700 the unipolar world if you want to call it the pax americana post the cold war and we're back

00:06:22.620 but maybe we never left so what are some of your thoughts uh around this i mean you're a little bit

00:06:28.640 younger than i but you have experienced all these things i was around in that period as well and i did

00:06:33.980 for my own sin support the iraq war partly i mean partly because uh all my friends were going on

00:06:39.820 anti-war marches and i remember i was in college at the time and they were giving out free sandwiches

00:06:44.940 and people who were just kind of on the fence they went to have a free lunch basically and i was like

00:06:50.240 there's something something up here and i remember i remember reading richard uh robert kagan's paradise

00:06:55.800 and power and i still have that book you know i mean i'm still kind of known around places of

00:07:01.940 you know a machiavellian if you want um and so i kind of i i understood some of the arguments

00:07:07.840 and i was into machiavelli even back then and i've always had a soft spot for tony blair as people know

00:07:13.300 so i kind of like talked myself into it all the way back then i kind of supported it partly on

00:07:18.480 you know intellectual ground partly on contrarian ground uh but back then i remember distinctly

00:07:23.400 thinking well you know our leaders have a plan uh all of this there must be an actual reason for it

00:07:28.860 whether it's oil or strategic or something you know obviously i was 18 19 so i wasn't to know better

00:07:34.800 i was kind of naive in a way and and so i i supported it back then i will say there is a difference though

00:07:41.380 there is a difference and um and i would say you know they say that the first time is tragedy the

00:07:46.560 second time is farce you know you can say what you want about the og neocons right there's this

00:07:51.980 one picture of bush in his cabinet you know his classic vanity right and um yeah and in a way the

00:07:59.840 same in this country as well where it's uh like tony blair and alistair campbell and peter mandelson

00:08:05.200 who's now destroyed disgraced of course but they had like cool aesthetics in a way and they had

00:08:11.620 this air of i guess like ruthless efficiency you know this air of kind of like yeah we're not

00:08:17.440 macking about so you can you can kind of do hard machiavellian max politique you could call it right

00:08:24.480 if you're going to do it with a bit of pizzazz unfortunately this version of it neocon 2.0 is 0.98

00:08:30.700 just retarded and incompetent and you know it's not this crew it's not that old crew it's you know 0.98

00:08:38.620 chud pete hexeth and marco rubio and trump babbling about curtains and so it to me it has a very late 0.98

00:08:48.840 empire feel where it's almost like you might look back and be like well you know these were the five

00:08:54.100 good emperors and it's like clinton and bush and bush one you know i mean but it feels like we're in

00:09:00.020 we're in gorbachev zone here or even boris yeltsin zone yeah i yeah i think the yeltsin is maybe a

00:09:06.440 better comparison even yeah it's interesting because oh i have two things to say and first off i'll ask

00:09:13.920 you a a kind of a harder harder in the sense of brass tacks hard and then i'll ask a kind of deeper

00:09:22.800 or maybe more highfalutin question so like what is the plan exactly because they seem to be pursuing

00:09:30.000 these different differing rhetorical strategies to different audiences because trump has outright

00:09:38.560 said as clear as day we are going to annihilate their military they didn't just fire in military 0.68

00:09:47.000 targets they fired directly on political targets in fact they killed the head of state and did they

00:09:52.500 kill akhmed denejad as well or was he appearing on podcast apparently he's gonna be on patrick bat david

00:09:58.200 is he literally or spiritually dead that's the question both perhaps he'll appear on pbg or pbj's

00:10:07.080 podcast as i call it pbj's podcast he'll just appear dead on the body and just let you know patrick

00:10:14.400 continue to talk at him but okay so they say it's this very contradictory thing so they are going balls

00:10:23.700 to the wall on the one hand yet their messaging on the other reminds me of vladimir putin's

00:10:31.420 declaration that he was engaging in a special military operation they're using the same words

00:10:36.340 but in both cases you know you're in for a penny you're in for a pound there there were little actions

00:10:44.720 in the donbass region for a decade between ukraine and russia and in you could sort of say it was a

00:10:52.300 war of sorts but once you go in and you i mean putin certainly wanted to kill zelensky or at the

00:11:00.900 least capture him and put him on trial or something like this he wanted to denazify the country who knows

00:11:07.220 what else he was claiming at the time but it was it was depicted as a special military operation this

00:11:13.960 little unique thing it's very precise we're going in but the fact is it can't be like vladimir putin

00:11:22.560 is engaged in a four-year long war of attrition at this point in order to quote denazify ukraine or

00:11:30.120 whatever he was claiming at the beginning and i feel the same as well with the united states in the sense

00:11:38.080 of yeah this is a little bit more than what we did last summer but you know maybe it's not regime

00:11:46.280 change maybe it's not boots on the ground but again you're in for a penny you're in for a pound i mean

00:11:52.460 i don't know how you get out of this without doing a regime change or how you would do a regime change

00:12:01.480 without boots on the ground so i i just feel like there's some and i guess maybe i'll ask the more

00:12:07.160 highfalutin question along with this one since i'm i'm rambling a bit but it's like bush and cheney

00:12:15.400 and the neocons from u chicago they studied philosophy etc they were able to create an ideology

00:12:27.500 even a sort of theology about what they're doing in the middle east we every human heart yearns to

00:12:35.140 be free that is basically what there was bush literally said that in 2005 we are bringing

00:12:40.040 democracy and democracies never go to war so our greatest ideals and our hardest realism are the

00:12:46.200 same that that that was how they pitched it it's kind of brilliant in fact it's it almost it's hegelian

00:12:52.100 it's like the ideal is real and the real is ideal i mean and again it's coming from these

00:12:57.200 philosophers you know in the pentagon which is i guess not surprising that they would couch it

00:13:03.720 in this way and yet they never went into iran they were politically neutered by 2006 in the midterm

00:13:13.760 election they were seen as illegitimate they were made fun of on various comedy shows they were willing

00:13:21.940 to go all the way to destroy iran which was part of their long-term objectives you know even in the

00:13:29.400 late 90s and now we have trump who and the trump administration and the pr wing who can't message

00:13:38.740 to save their life who are saying just blatantly contradictory things to different audiences they 0.93

00:13:45.080 don't care they don't know they're just dumb all of the above and yet they've done it they did the thing 0.65

00:13:53.280 that cheney feared they did the thing that that was probably a bit too much for john bolton i mean he 0.96

00:13:59.940 would he i mean he's kind of like whoa we might want to slow down here with the war stuff which is hilarious

00:14:06.960 and and ironic but so we're in this like contradictory situation where there's no justification no

00:14:15.580 legitimacy and yet they're going farther than the people who as you rightly point out seem competent and 0.76

00:14:25.120 dare i say cool in comparison with these assholes so what are your thoughts on that well on the plan 0.97

00:14:33.100 i mean obviously i've been racking my brains to try to figure out what the hell they're doing 0.98

00:14:36.780 for the past uh well like all of us for the past four five days now and um i mean i think it's day

00:14:42.460 four as we're recording this and uh i mean they've changed the reason every single day in fact i watched

00:14:48.900 a marco rubio press conference where he seemed to change the reason about three or four times within

00:14:53.240 the same press conference so that suggests to me that something hasn't gone something has not gone to

00:14:59.560 plan whatever the plan was has not gone to plan otherwise you're not getting this making up

00:15:04.100 reasons on the fly business and the mission creep you know originally it was about nuclear stuff and

00:15:10.020 regime change then it's uh kind of somehow transformed now into you can't allow iran to have short range

00:15:17.520 missile capability uh which on the face of it is an insane doctrine that i don't think they can

00:15:23.860 not even convinced it's in the remit of american power to enforce i mean essentially what you're saying

00:15:29.420 there is iran is not allowed to have an army or not allowed to have a defense which you know i don't

00:15:35.480 think was the original purpose which means i honestly think to do regime change you know i mean

00:15:40.560 they've just sort of painted themselves into a corner i honestly think we should uh it is as simple 0.96

00:15:46.780 and as stupid i'm afraid to say as they went in there thinking that they create conditions for the 0.97

00:15:53.840 people to rise up and overthrow the government and when that didn't happen and iran started fighting 0.99

00:15:59.880 back and fighting back in a way that i surprised me i mean all the stuff with gulf states and

00:16:06.180 hitting uh you know hitting the the strategic assets in the gulf and so on has surprised even me 0.95

00:16:12.160 with how quickly they're able to do that i think they're like oh shit what do we do now and they're

00:16:17.300 scrambling and there's a lot of signs that this did not have unlike the bush wars or bush blair 0.61

00:16:25.260 or if you want to go that way unlike those wars there are lots of signs that this does not have

00:16:31.600 what i would call regime consent which writ large by which i mean the media clearly are not as on side

00:16:39.220 as they were in the iraq war i've seen critical critical segments on cnn and on bbc and

00:16:47.260 you know i i listened to the shitly radio station here and there's also i mean the memory of iraq

00:16:52.620 one looms very large but also i get the distinct sense that the media is not quite sure that the

00:17:00.520 democrat party i saw that speech from chuck schumer earlier on was being like what's going on why haven't

00:17:05.940 you why haven't you asked for congress uh approval for this what is the actual plan taking us to war

00:17:13.220 we don't even know you haven't even told congress what's happening you've got the pentagon leaking

00:17:18.140 against the administration so i think there's a lot of telltale signs richard that um the trump

00:17:24.560 admin has gone a little bit rogue and the rogue action was precipitated as marco rubio said

00:17:31.780 by israel and that in a way israel has gone rogue and it trump admin that one part of the american

00:17:39.840 system has gone rogue with it in a way that the rest of the even national review which is neocon

00:17:46.560 central were saying like hold up here you know when people like john bolton and national review

00:17:51.000 are saying hold up are we sure about this you can tell it hasn't had the normal kind of they haven't

00:17:57.900 gone through the normal protocols uh also foreign policy magazine which is another i guess establishment

00:18:03.640 talk they also are not sure in this country it is extremely unusual for our establishment for the

00:18:12.000 british establishment for the british government or former generals and things like that not to be

00:18:16.620 100 on board in my entire lifetime whether if afghanistan or iraq or ukraine okay it was complete

00:18:23.980 consensus on in our media okay you get the occasional jeremy corbyn or peter hitchens or

00:18:29.700 something but generally they're all on board in this one all week they've there's been very senior

00:18:35.740 voices former ambassadors former generals current generals the actual government being like yeah we

00:18:42.960 don't want any part of this because so that's all of that suggests to me that something unusual has

00:18:47.600 happened here this is not normal quote unquote neocon war i think it's very much uh an israel

00:18:53.540 trump admin at the risk of sounding like rachel maddow are we living i mean not that stopped me before but

00:19:01.340 are we sort of living in a dictatorship i mean in the sense that now i know that according to the

00:19:10.740 constitution congress should declare war and so on but since

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RadixJournal - March 04, 2026

The End of Ideology

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