In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by my good friend Alex Blumberg. We talk about the Iran situation, the Venezuelan situation, and the Iran crisis. We also talk about how the right is in decline and how the left is not.
00:00:00.000So I was thinking today, I keep hearing these warnings from the populist right or like the center populism, like breaking points or something.
00:00:12.960They're like, it's going to be a regime change war.
00:00:16.420And there was, I got another notification from an article in the Wall Street Journal that I read.
00:00:21.240But there's more hardware in American hardware that is in the Middle East than there has been since the Iraq war days.
00:02:55.080And these other countries are more incompetent.
00:02:59.360They're more incompetent basket cases than we are, in fact.
00:03:02.280And so while I am quite hesitant to endorse regime change war or an extended war in Iran, I'm just going to sort of hand it to the Trump administration that they actually are able to do things.
00:03:21.000And I'm not going to kind of like come up here and be like, oh, it's going to be nuclear Armageddon.
00:03:42.760I mean, I I wonder the degree to which Iran and countries like Iran are run by the same decrepit boomers with dumb millennials staffing the bureaucracies.
00:03:56.760Gen Xers have checked out, so they're we're not even a factor, but boomers and millennial run states that we actually can go and slap people around and get out and they're not going to do anything.
00:04:18.560My professor at one point, John Mearsheimer is like, you know, it's going to be a total land war that we won't win.
00:04:24.960And I'm not convinced by any of these things, actually.
00:04:28.020So am I naive or am I getting at something?
00:04:30.540No, I don't think you're naive because because this is another useful utilization of the distinction between the American nation and the American empire, where the American nation is certainly in decline.
00:04:40.220But the American empire, when you talk about, you know, Ukraine or Venezuela, it's like the American empire is doing totally fine.
00:04:48.900It's whatever, you know, it's as strong as it's ever been, whatever the case may be.
00:04:52.180But I do think there is like a kind of distinction to be made between Venezuela and Iran, where we didn't do regime change in Venezuela.
00:05:00.820We kind of did administration change, right?
00:05:03.080We just took out it was a we have the vice president taking over and then, you know, welcoming the whatever American official on stage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:05:12.860But it's I think it's different for a couple of reasons with Iran, where one, to make the case that the vanilla intervention was about Jewish power serving Israel's interests, whatever, was a stretch.
00:05:28.940Because us going to war, doing some kind of regime change, decapitation strike, whatever the case may be, in Iran is purely an Israeli geopolitical aim that we are effectuating, right?
00:05:40.040And then secondly, it's not the same where if you think about Venezuela having a kind of constitutional republic structure with a president, a vice president, whatever.
00:05:49.680You have the vice president take over.
00:05:50.980If they do what we want, then it's OK.
00:05:52.380If they don't, we'll do it again, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:05:54.520The structure of the Islamic Republic is different.
00:05:57.480And it's like, OK, so you take out the Ayatollah and the top brass or whatever.
00:06:02.260It's not necessarily the legal, the composition of the state is different, right?
00:06:07.560So I don't know if it can easily be done one to one in the same type of way where it's like, OK, we get rid of the top level and the next ones rise up and we work with them, whatever.
00:06:17.900That being said, I don't think we're going to do a protracted ground invasion, whatever.
00:06:22.620Nick's show, I think, last night was all about Iran, and he talked a lot about this.
00:06:25.940And he's like, yeah, we are building up very much in the regions, do maybe prolonged airstrikes, whatever the case may be.
00:06:33.020I don't think it'll be – I don't think, again, it'll be a regime change war.
00:06:37.760I think it'll be a war of really trying to degrade infrastructure to really make them incapable of retaliating.
00:06:46.080But having to – we'll still have the same, if not the same administration, definitely the same regime.
00:06:53.880Yeah, much like Venezuela is what you're saying.
00:06:56.160I mean could they not decapitate the Islamic revolution?
00:07:00.820I mean there are existing sort of constitutional, nation-state-y, democratic institutions that are in Iran.
00:07:10.320Yeah, but they have like the council of jurists.
00:07:14.940So are you going to take out every jurist?
00:07:16.840Are you going to take out the whole – it's more like saying like rather than just taking out Maduro, you're taking out Maduro and the Supreme Court.
00:07:24.440You're taking out the president and the Supreme Court and the congressional leadership.
00:07:27.960It's like it's a little bit more of a bigger lift.
00:07:53.420The buildup to Iraq in terms of criticism, dissident criticism coming from libertarians and leftists, not coming from liberals, by the way, and this prolonged buildup and legitimization of the Iraq War.
00:08:10.480I don't think we're – we've not seen anything resembling that.
00:08:14.700I think that was almost like a holdover of the 20th century, and at this point they're like, we don't give a fuck, actually.
00:08:32.060The culture is like these wars don't exist.
00:08:35.020It's like it just exists on the screen, exists on your phone.
00:08:38.800If you ignore your phone, there's no war, et cetera, et cetera.
00:08:41.420I think the culture finally now actually reflects it in a way that Baudrillard was speaking about something nascent.
00:08:48.700But I think it's fully matured at this point where I think the general population feels this kind of just aloof detachment from it where it's like, all right, whatever.