This week on Stay Free With Russell Brand, host Russell Brand is joined by journalist and author Michael Schellenberger to discuss the devastating fires that have ravaged the California coast over the past week and a half, and the new group show hosted by Brand's friends, Neil Oliver and Lara Logan.
00:04:13.000If you don't know who Michael Schellenberger is, Michael came to prominence during the Twitter files.
00:04:18.000He was one of the journalists that when Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now X, he let in and he revealed the depths to which the FBI and CIA had infiltrated those organisations and were curating and controlling the information that we get, priming us.
00:04:36.000Here's an official bio of Michael Schellenberger.
00:04:39.000He's an American author, journalist, and environmental policy writer known for his critiques of mainstream environmentalism and advocacy for alternative approaches to addressing environmental challenges.
00:04:47.000But he talks about it a lot more than that.
00:04:48.000I guess he's pushed that to the forefront because he's going to talk about those fires a lot.
00:04:51.000In recent years, Schellenberger had continued...
00:04:53.000Has continued to engage in public discourse on various topics, including renewable energy, free speech, censorship.
00:04:59.000He's the first endowed professor, sounds filthy, of University of Austin, serving as CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech.
00:05:05.000He also founded Public, a substack publication that I use a lot and that you should use too.
00:05:12.000We talk about cancellation, my cancellation personally in particular, how that pertains and relates to extraordinary stories in the UK like grooming gangs.
00:05:19.000Of course we discuss the California fires, the unique cultural position of Elon Musk and the requirement for radical spiritual change and the importance of nationalism and decoupling nationalism from racism.
00:05:35.000If you're not a Rumble Premium subscriber, yet become a Rumble Premium subscriber now and you will get to watch I used to chase this kind of thing all the time.
00:06:00.000I mean, you know, 10 years ago, the notion of having a show that had reached this level of success would have been the dream.
00:06:07.000And the meetings that I'm having with people in Hollywood, I would have killed to meet with the people who were working for the people that I'm meeting with.
00:06:48.000Without any further hullabaloo or ridiculousness in this crazy, beautiful world that we all inhabit together, let's introduce Michael Schellenberger.
00:06:57.000We'll be streaming on X and YouTube initially, but eventually we'll be solely available over there on Rumble, which has always championed free speech, and we'll be up on local.
00:07:07.000So please continue to watch us on X or Rumble or, excuse me, or YouTube, that filthy place, wherever you're watching us, but ultimately we will be available just on, excuse me, this bloody drink!
00:07:26.000Should we run through a few potential backgrounds before we get into the content, or should we just start talking about a whole host of pretty significant and important topics?
00:07:38.000Once again, nothing's really going on in the world, right?
00:08:03.000And in Revelation, it's just obviously like, you know, sort of fires and celestial activity.
00:08:10.000Just like, well, this simply sounds like antiquated language describing my ex-feet.
00:08:16.000You know, there's drones in the sky, there's rape gangs across the UK, there's fires across California.
00:08:24.000Do you think that the ability to communicate more instantaneously simultaneously is creating the sense that there's a greater density of events, or do you think that we're entering into some extraordinary end time?
00:08:40.000I mean, just those two events are huge news.
00:08:45.000I mean, we didn't know about the United States.
00:08:48.000I know it was covered a little bit like 10 years ago, but we really didn't know about the grooming gangs until Elon Musk decided that it needed to be on the agenda.
00:08:57.000And obviously it's one of the worst sexual abuse and assault scandals ever, and certainly the worst since the Catholic scandals of the last couple of decades.
00:09:07.000And then the fires in Los Angeles are completely unprecedented.
00:09:11.000The problem is actually much worse than people realize.
00:09:14.000I mean, we are looking at estimates of up to $250 billion, 12,000 homes and buildings destroyed, at least two dozen people dead.
00:09:24.000And Russell, you know because you read public, but the evidence is now overwhelming that it was the budget cuts that led directly to the delayed response and to the lack of prevention that caused the Los Angeles fires.
00:09:39.000And my friend Rich McHugh from NewsNation.
00:09:43.000Just published this devastating video, which shows them, like, literally the proof, hard proof that it took 45 minutes for the helicopters to arrive and just start to dump some water on the Pacific Palisades fire, which is one of the worst fires, the most deadly and destructive fires.
00:10:21.000I do look at your report, and I'm looking at it right now, Public, which is available on Substack, and you're talking about LA Mayor Karen Bass claiming that the fire cuts did not, the $17.5 million cuts, did not impact the LA Fire Department's ability to contain, control, or ameliorate, I suppose, these fires.
00:10:43.000Michael, I suppose that the general shape of debate is this.
00:10:49.000Is California's unique status as the ultra-liberal, inverted commas, woke state, impact...
00:10:58.000In serious municipal matters and emergency matters.
00:11:04.000Now there's a crisis in California that much of the commentary surrounds the connection between, for example, DEI hires and the manner in which this is being handled.
00:11:16.000Do you think it's possible to be objective when a state and therefore issues within that state become so hotly and heavily politicized so urgently and the discourse becomes so dominated by tribalism?
00:11:31.000Do you think it's possible to discern it?
00:11:32.000Is that why your investigation looks at budgetary cuts and the amount of time it takes?
00:11:37.000I mean, look, it's a reasonable question.
00:11:41.000I mean, obviously there's super political atmosphere.
00:11:42.000People are prejudiced against California in general because it's the most, you know, radical left state in the United States.
00:11:49.000But in this case, I mean, here you had the fire chief herself.
00:11:54.000You know, who's a famously lesbian fire chief who didn't want to kind of acknowledge the role of budget cuts, but there was a very feisty local Fox News reporter who just kept pressing her on the issue.
00:12:11.000And she finally said, yes, of course it had an impact.
00:12:14.000Specifically, it was a little confusing at first because she kept talking about they couldn't afford to pay the mechanics.
00:12:20.000And you were like, well, what do you mean?
00:12:21.000What do you need mechanics to fight these fires with?
00:12:24.000They had 100 fire engines that were in the shop that needed to be repaired.
00:12:29.000They could have also had another 100 fire engines.
00:12:33.000You can buy used fire engines for half a million dollars.
00:12:36.000And the idea is you should station them around.
00:12:57.000We know that there's a price to be paid for living in California.
00:13:00.000But that means that everybody down the line, from the governor to the mayor to the fire department, the chiefs, they need to be focused like a laser on this issue of public safety.
00:13:10.000First of all, half of all fires are set by homeless people who should not be on the street creating fires.
00:13:15.000When you're focused on anything other than merit in hiring for firefighting, whether it's DEI or anything else, your eye is not on the ball.
00:14:38.000You don't want the firefighters to strike.
00:14:40.000But I mean, look, they told me stories, Russell, that are just heartbreaking.
00:14:47.000Firefighters are just everything that we imagine from television and movies.
00:14:50.000In 30 seconds, you've got to be out the door.
00:14:52.000You're supposed to have responded to a call in three to five minutes.
00:14:56.000They're showing up 30 minutes after they get called.
00:14:59.000People are having heart attacks and dying in those 30 minutes.
00:15:03.000This whistleblower, this firefighter, told me a terrible story of a child where they were 30 minutes late getting there.
00:15:11.000We still don't know if that child survived.
00:15:14.000But the family, of course, you get there and the family's outraged at the firefighters and the firefighters who are like parents themselves are just wrecked.
00:15:22.000I've covered stories in the past where like EMTs...
00:15:25.000Show up late, try to save somebody, they lose somebody, and they burst out crying because they're just really actually invested in saving lives.
00:15:34.000And when they can save a life, it's just this incredible, natural high, the greatest experience that they have.
00:15:41.000And when they can't save a life that they know they could have saved, it drives them absolutely crazy.
00:15:49.000And so now we have this shortage of firefighters.
00:15:52.000I mean, they are genuinely American heroes.
00:15:56.000I mean, they're just out there constantly.
00:15:58.000They're not taking the breaks they need.
00:15:59.000So, I mean, hopefully this crisis, this disaster, helps to shine a light on the need to take care of our first responders.
00:16:07.000These are the people who maintain our civilization.
00:16:10.000And I think that tells you everything, that the City of Angels has got its head so far up in the clouds that it's failing to deal with the civilization on the ground.
00:16:45.000You know, like the fallen angel, the Luciferian false light, is what's primarily being omitted from that place.
00:16:55.000There's a deep tragedy, I suppose, in the waste and lack of the human resource, because as you say...
00:17:05.000Firefighters and first responders are people that have been drawn to these frontline places of crisis by a deep desire to serve and be of help.
00:17:17.000And what I suppose the California fire example appears to illustrate is a level of ineptitude.
00:17:27.000That means that that resource, the resource of people's goodwill, bravery and courage isn't being correctly served and directed.
00:17:34.000Perhaps any governor or high-profile political figure that has access to media and something of a...
00:17:42.000Profile or legend is auditioning for further future office.
00:17:49.000And it seemed for a minute in the early spasms of democratic decline that Gavin Newsom was being groomed for greater things.
00:17:58.000So I suppose this will likely for some time be seen as the incineration of his dreams to be anything other than governor of California.
00:18:13.000I mean, it's hard to believe he's got a political career after this.
00:18:19.000I mean, there's now a new recall is already underway, a new recall effort.
00:18:23.000There's an effort to force the mayor to resign.
00:18:26.000I mean, you know, for all these catastrophes...
00:18:29.000There's always a series of failures on the way to them.
00:18:33.000I mean, there's also this incredible, the second largest water reservoir that feeds Los Angeles and is part of the, both the drinking water and the fire system are the same.
00:19:00.000If the mayor can't do her job, then the governor has to step in.
00:19:03.000So basically, at every level where all these failures are occurring, you can trace it right back to the governor and the mayor.
00:19:09.000I mean, the buck stops with the governor.
00:19:11.000I mean, he's an incredibly powerful position in the state, and he's just incapable of acting decisively.
00:19:17.000He's somebody kind of at a character level that he acts as though he's a leader and as though he's in charge, but he's always looking to other people to figure out what to do.
00:19:30.000He's always looking for permission to act.
00:19:32.000That's not what you need in situations of danger.
00:19:37.000He's obviously not able to provide that.
00:19:39.000I mean, he is the quintessential, you know, weak leader created by good times.
00:19:45.000I mean, he was someone, you know, really born into and sort of adopted by the Getty family, was kind of handed everything in his career, handed his wealth.
00:19:54.000So he's just not somebody that's a take-charge person.
00:19:58.000And he's just like a lot of the people in Hollywood and a lot of people in Los Angeles.
00:20:02.000just really caught up in ideology, in this identity politics, in this climate apocalypse, and just not really grounded in reality, not really connected to the function of civilization.
00:20:15.000The rest of this conversation will be exclusively available on Rumble.
00:20:25.000You get access to all of my content, including some really interesting and fascinating stuff I've been doing, like preaching in churches, going to Mar-a-Lago, hanging out with Mel Gibson there, extraordinary, shooting on firing ranges, and so much more.
00:21:04.000When we awaken to the continual and perpetual interconnectivity and flow that he grants us, then we are powerful and real change becomes a possibility.
00:23:05.000There's this kind of shared and pervasive sophistry that defined the political debate in the period leading up to the election.
00:23:13.000We're attempts to kind of rewrite scripture or forge from the minds of man new ideologies, new sanctions, to make prohibitions, to cast aside taxonomies, to enter into the domain of God.
00:23:28.000And it's, I suppose, been sort of roundly truncated by the Maga Maha tradition.
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00:24:54.000Do you see your role altering Michael as one of the...
00:25:03.000Appraisers and reporters, journalists, that we rely on, for example, on the subject of the censorship industrial complex, a term that if you didn't invent, you certainly popularised.
00:25:15.000How do you see your role as a journalist shifting and altering post-inauguration and post-Trump presidency?
00:25:32.000Zuckerberg moves from California to Texas.
00:25:36.000Zuckerberg puts Dana White on the board and Mia Culpers his way around Mar-a-Lago.
00:25:43.000How are these changes going to affect people like you and I that work in independent media spaces?
00:25:49.000Do you imagine, do you suppose there might be a risk that we become sort of the conduits for their preferred information as many would contest we already are, the detractors of that movement.
00:26:04.000Excited by the fact that men like Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makari, people that you will have known for the last couple of years and had conversations with and reported on, are now in positions of actual power.
00:28:12.000I think that we're going to see this pressure, for example, on California, I think, as fresh.
00:28:18.000The local news, before anything happened, the local news in Los Angeles, the progressive news, the New York Times, they start out by being like, there was literally an LA Times story that was like, did Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, did she really cut the budget for the fire department?
00:29:15.000And then you may have seen his latest thing.
00:29:16.000He comes out and he says he's seen cancers in kids and he thinks that there's some role from the COVID vaccine.
00:29:22.000And he's not some, you know, he's not a fringe scientist at all.
00:29:26.000He's one of the, I think he's like the wealthiest person in LA precisely because he's a specialist in medical sciences.
00:29:33.000So, you know, who knows what's in store.
00:29:35.000I've heard some very interesting things about things that are happening in FDA. There's a lot there to be revealed, including what happened with the vaccine.
00:29:43.000And as you said, it's like the guys in charge, Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makari, these are guys that had been censored, and now they're in a position to release and reveal what really happened during COVID. Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting, Like personally, like to go from kind of, as you say, faceless, pointy heads, whether that's fact checkers at Facebooks or other entrenched bureaucrats in state roles to suddenly, you know, Jay Bhattacharya, I know whether that's fact checkers at Facebooks or other entrenched bureaucrats in
00:30:17.000Like I've not hung out of him or anything, but there have been moments where I've been talking to Jay Bhattacharya.
00:30:21.000You know, say if you do a Zoom interview, there'll be a bit at the beginning where you're like, hey, like we just had.
00:30:26.000And like in those moments, like sort of Jay Bhattacharya being like, hey, are you okay?
00:30:31.000Like in that sort of seeing his humanity and kindness or say Marty Makari, like meeting him briefly and chatting to him and just sort of seeing like he's sort of like febrile kind of furtive commitment to fact finding.
00:30:46.000Well, these are actually, like, right, decent people.
00:30:49.000To your point about the misinformation within Facebook and the fact-checker story, that they're improving it by deploying technology of aggregation, which is, yeah, diametrically different from...
00:31:03.000Those kind of groups like CRISP and Logically AI that enter into social media spaces and attempt to impose a kind of aristocratic control over information, technocratic, I suppose, more appositely, but both are applicable.
00:31:18.000These technologies of aggregation are precisely what could radically change politics.
00:31:23.000I've long thought why isn't there a kind of political equivalent of Airbnb or Uber, i.e.
00:31:30.000the aggregation of disparate resources.
00:31:32.000Decentralized through communication in order to disperse and disseminate power information and relationships in ways that are beneficial.
00:31:44.000And of course, that's because there's an advantage to centralizing power.
00:31:48.000Now, like, you know, Elon Musk, he continues to be massively attacked and smeared in my country precisely because he's...
00:31:56.000Of his influence and his impact on British politics at the moment because of the grooming gang scandal and his reposting of Tommy Robinson's film.
00:32:09.000And I note that it's the EU and Thierry Breton in particular that are being most aggressive around Elon Musk.
00:32:18.000And I reckon, is it true, Michael, that Elon Musk is an unprecedented figure, even though as an archetype he could be seen as a tycoon entrepreneur, and in particular, I suppose, with regard to his power when it comes to information, although that is on a foundation of financial power that reaches into all sorts of areas.
00:32:38.000And does it interest you that the left have always embraced some billionaires, George Soros, Bill Gates, and regarded their influence as sort of acceptable, and even Zuckerberg, they like him when he's on that side, but they don't like him when he's on this side.
00:32:53.000Is he a new type or is he merely an order of magnitude higher of something that we've always had and just of a different, more libertarian and trickster hue than your Soros is and your Gates?
00:33:08.000What do you think is his functioning role?
00:33:10.000And if you could touch upon the EU, Thierry Breton, the ongoing attacks on Musk outside of America.
00:33:15.000If you could, you could look at some of the stuff that's going on within MAGA, like, you know, Bannon's a little down on him and the impact on British politics. - Yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting.
00:33:25.000I mean, so just first on Elon, I mean, what is the archetype?
00:33:29.000I mean, we know this archetype really well.
00:33:30.000It's just creative destruction, to use the word by Joseph Schumpeter.
00:33:35.000Schumpeter, this great Austrian-American, I think he's from Austria, came to the United States.
00:33:41.000He was this economist in the early part of the 20th century.
00:33:45.000He borrowed from Marx this idea that capitalism really radically transforms things through technological innovation.
00:33:54.000And so he came up with this idea that really economic growth is driven by technological innovation.
00:34:01.000It used to be that we thought about growth as fundamentally about specialization.
00:34:06.000And then through trade, which is really another form of specialization, through Ricardo.
00:34:09.000You get to Schumpeter and it's a completely different picture of economic growth.
00:34:13.000The main event now is technological innovation.
00:34:16.000And, I mean, we've really never seen anything like it.
00:34:18.000I mean, the closest you can get to is, I mean, people compare him to Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford.
00:34:24.000I mean, he's definitely at that level.
00:34:26.000The role in the media is just so game-changing because In the past, you definitely had these tycoons or industrialists having some influence on politics, and I think you want that because you're trying to get rid of all the capture of the institutions that the older bourgeoisie, the older capitalist class had imposed.
00:34:46.000You get these new entrepreneurs that are able to revolutionize politics, and in his case, it really happens through X. I mean, X ends up becoming this, you know, Creative destruction of the news media, where when it was captured by the existing establishment, it reinforced the power of the blob, of the uniparty, of the elites.
00:35:11.000Now you see it playing this incredibly disruptive role.
00:35:14.000He's probably going to help the ADF and Germany to become, to be elected, you know, come in second place.
00:35:20.000And then what is happening at the exact time as all of that is that the EU prevented the Romanians from electing a new president.
00:35:28.000I mean, it's just incredible and nobody's talking about it.
00:35:32.000But it's like literally the EU and NATO blocked a sovereign democratic country from electing their own president because he was so successful on TikTok.
00:35:42.000I mean, and meanwhile, of course, they're all, oh, we have to, you know, we have to save democracy.
00:36:00.000You can see where people stand on these things.
00:36:02.000You've got people that want free speech and democracy, and you've got people that clearly don't want it, and they're not hiding it.
00:36:09.000So I do think, I feel very optimistic.
00:36:12.000I feel much more optimistic than I did.
00:36:17.000In fact, I think if the disclosure happens that we want to see happen on all those different things, it's going to just further destroy the credibility of these establishment parties, and it's going to reveal the ways in which they've lied to the American people and people across the West for decades.
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00:37:45.000I saw Thierry Breton interviewed, Gareth sent it, on a French telly, and he talked about them Romanian elections and sort of just blithely said, you know, he intervened and stopped it, and then I think said, we'll do the same thing in Germany if we have to, all in the sweet and holy name of democracy, with seemingly no understanding or appreciation.
00:38:12.000Of what he was saying, and that's pretty alarming, and that's the type of, you know, to use an outflowing of Hannah Arendt's idea, that there's this sort of banal and unconscious evil that flows forth from bureaucracy that he exhibits so sort of beautifully, precisely because it is so anodyne.
00:38:35.000Further on the subject of Musk, when I look at him, I think of Walt Disney a little bit, because Walt Disney...
00:39:09.000Holograms on the faces of the dwarves, say, that seems a little more mobile.
00:39:13.000But I think he's a Disney-like figure in so much as he's got this Wizard of Oz-type power to create realities.
00:39:20.000Now, on your point of technology, as an economic leader, I suppose it shows that economics...
00:39:27.000It's not necessarily just the movement of currency in terms of fiat currencies or other nominal tokens of wealth, but perhaps power is the true use of the word currency, and of course it's a synonym and is utilised in that domain also.
00:39:43.000And I was considering, and consider frequently, Michael, Andrew Breitbart's point that...
00:39:49.000Politics is downstream of culture, but all of it is downstream of technology.
00:39:53.000And what we're living within is the fracturing of power spaces by the technological ability afforded to you and me specifically to communicate in ways that were just literally impossible.
00:40:10.000Sort of shoot-from-the-hip orators that might be right sometimes and are emotionally correct in ways that sort of resonates, whether it's through a kind of a type of masculine energy that people feel like they've been denied, or nationalistic energy that people feel they've been denied.
00:40:28.000And those people are valuable too as kind of portals, and in those examples I meant...
00:40:34.000But then elsewhere, and more customary in the space, there are people like you, not loads of them, you're pretty special.
00:40:44.000Like, they are able to provide the receipts and the research and the work.
00:40:48.000And that, I think, is the biggest threat because there's a greater sort of crossover.
00:40:52.000With Musk, he, like, you know, one of his most significant acts was his empowerment of you, and Matt Taibbi, and Barry Weiss, and Lee Fang, and all of the other people from the Twitter files.
00:41:00.000So the other thing I think he has is this sort of puckish, maverick quality, where he's once again sort of introducing fallibility in a powerful people.
00:41:10.000And we've got to this point through sort of, like, the weird iconoclastic movements of the left, where Martin Luther King, adulterer, Gandhi, pervert, like, everyone, we're just casting people aside.
00:41:21.000Because of the way that media is functioning now, we're having to reintroduce the possibility of flaws and fallibility and brokenness.
00:41:31.000You know, Gavin Newsom could present as perfect for a while, but how's he...
00:41:35.000what you've done for me lately, baby, when the fires kick in.
00:41:39.000So what we're seeing, I think, through this aggregation of information, as you correctly point out, is happening as a result of technology, is whilst there's a great deal of misinformation, it's the information that's the problem.
00:41:52.000There's so much truth out there that we can't be controlled in the same way.
00:42:01.000I mean, I think the really interesting thing that you just talked about is this...
00:42:06.000Because when we were together in London, I guess a year and a half ago now, one of the points you made is that the problem with wokeism as a religion is that it doesn't offer redemption.
00:42:14.000It doesn't offer a sense of overcoming one's previous self.
00:42:20.000I think the other thing you're drawing attention to, yeah, it's this notion that we've had this idea under wokeism is that you have to be so good.
00:42:27.000And by being good, it meant you had to kind of conform to an existing very...
00:42:36.000I mean, we see it in every single wisdom tradition, right?
00:42:38.000You see it in, Jesus says, you know, you can see the log in somebody else's eye, you don't see the speck in, or you see the speck in somebody else's eye, not the log in your own eye.
00:42:48.000Dostoevsky, the line between good and evil, runs through the heart of all men.
00:42:51.000And then, of course, Nietzsche, beware when battling monsters that you not become one.
00:42:56.000The self-awareness of either our own potential for evil, but also our just existing fallibility, as you're saying, it's so, what a relief.
00:43:07.000I mean, it's like you can breathe a little easier knowing that we can all recognize about ourselves, that we can issue corrections or be like, hey, I changed my mind.
00:43:16.000That that would be more open and welcome in the culture.
00:43:19.000I mean, I think it's fun when Elon will say something that he clearly knows is not true, or he'll ask about it, and he'll just kind of get the community notes to work for you.
00:43:29.000It's such a better model for getting at the truth than this idea that here's the really smart people that understand the true things, and they're going to tell us what's true, and they'll decide whether or not the rest of us, what we can say by what they've said.
00:45:46.000As a famous rich dude, sleeping around, having sex in bathrooms, sleeping with multiple people at once, using the fact that I had massive access to having sex with strangers and was doing it, that was pretty crazy and excessive.
00:46:00.000And there's no question that that is sinful, broken behaviour that hurts people.
00:46:04.000And I beg for forgiveness, and I'm given forgiveness, and I beg for salvation.
00:46:08.000But what happened in this weird liminal space is that...
00:46:11.000Behaviour got metastasised and reformed retrospectively into criminal conduct by competing media companies working with groups like Logically and Crisp, working with legacy media companies, collaborating in an unprecedented way in order to go back...
00:46:30.000To, for years and years, talk to people.
00:46:32.000Like, have you got a story about Russell Brand?
00:46:44.000And, you know, and in some aspects of the culture, a playboy, a womaniser, a gadabout, a player.
00:46:50.000You know, it was suddenly, it was reformed into, no, this guy's not like all those other famous womanisers that we know are out there, that sometimes have to put out injunctions, that sometimes have to pay lawyers a lot of money to keep stories quiet.
00:47:04.000No, you're in this different category here, all of a sudden, of the most appalling criminals known.
00:47:10.000All the while in my country now, There's this explosion that there are Actual grooming gangs that are raping and abusing little girls and young women at an almost institutional and inconceivable level.
00:47:24.000And it appears that the media and government have repressed and ignored those stories for reasons that I find difficult to understand, but there's sort of a loose way of describing it as multiculturalism.
00:47:37.000Now, in that, Michael Schellenberger, how is it that I, as an individual, say, hey, listen, it was...
00:47:43.000I don't think I'm in a discreet category away from lots of other womanizers.
00:47:48.000So I hope you're going to get to their investigation sometime down the line.
00:47:53.000I've got a list of names of other people you might want to look at for womanizing.
00:47:59.000But more importantly, what are we going to do about the morality?
00:48:02.000If indeed it is sinful and wrong to sleep around like that, what are we going to do about, firstly, the massive criminal exploitative evil grooming gangs that Let's get to that.
00:48:13.000The extraordinary number of people in politics that seem to have weird connections to paedophilia or various circuits, groups and rings, whether that's around Epstein or people in Hollywood and Diddy, and that's not just people in Hollywood.
00:48:30.000And what does it tell us about our shifting culture?
00:48:33.000These tectonic plates that have moved around and the people that get caught in the cogs when a culture suddenly decides, you, you know...
00:48:42.000And, you know, of course, I'm going to mention that it happened not when I was, you know, all over the media every day in Hollywood on talk shows, introducing movies, blah, blah, blah, and actually sleeping with loads of women.
00:48:52.000It happened when I started to talk about Moderna, Pfizer, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and exploitation and manipulation at the highest level.
00:49:02.000Yeah, I'm sure it was just a coincidence that it happened then.
00:49:05.000I mean, I think the grooming gangs is such a great example and such a great contrast because obviously, yeah, the system was and the Telegraph was so good in its coverage.
00:49:16.000It just said this was multiculturalism was used as a way to sweep this under the rug.
00:49:22.000And obviously you transgressed the corporate agenda of the blob.
00:49:28.000If you were just out there doing yoga lessons, there's no way they would have gone after you in that way.
00:49:33.000I don't think anybody could deny that at this point.
00:49:38.000It's crazy because it seems like the power of the media to do that has been significantly reduced now by the takeover of X and the rise of Tucker.
00:49:52.000These attacks are sort of the last gasp of a dying media.
00:50:03.000The British newspapers are doing better.
00:50:05.000But no, I think your point is very well taken, Russell.
00:50:08.000And I hope you become a crusader against the grooming gangs because it's definitely a cause.
00:50:13.000It needs some, it clearly needed some leadership that it didn't have.
00:50:17.000Yeah, plainly too, it's an issue that needs to be handled with some nuance.
00:50:22.000And this extraction of nuance from these stories is something that's long defined the maneuvering of media.
00:50:30.000Even, as you mentioned earlier, Michael, when...
00:50:33.000It was Republican neoconservative power.
00:50:36.000When we were talking about migration and immigration then, I used to think this is not very nuanced reporting.
00:50:41.000When we were talking about the causes for the Iraq war, I used to think this is not very nuanced reporting.
00:50:46.000What's been extraordinary is that in the intervening 2030 years, there's been this extraordinary shift that we've discussed many, many times.
00:50:54.000And I suppose now what we're trying to discern is what will happen as these power bases rupture.
00:51:01.000And it looks like a lot of those centralised organisations are going to collapse and we're going to see some extraordinary new alliances made.
00:51:11.000Like, for example, when talking about something like grooming gangs, when talking about something like Israel, when talking about all of these issues that are contentious, I wonder, you know, is it possible or even desirable that we find a...
00:51:26.000So you can discuss grooming gangs without saying I'm implying that all of Islam somehow facilitates the exploitation of children or that all immigration is bad.
00:51:40.000How is it that you find your way through that?
00:51:43.000And have you noticed over time, Michael, that you've found yourself more...
00:51:47.000More easily categorized amongst, inverted commas, the right, Magamaha right at least, than the way you would previously have found yourself inhabiting.
00:51:59.000I mean, I think on that particular specific point of how people will say things like, oh, it's Islamophobic to prosecute.
00:52:10.000You know, Pakistani immigrants for grooming.
00:52:14.000It's like, it reminds me of when they were, like, cancel culture where they'd be like, there's a New York Times reporter who was fired because he used the N-word with a bunch of students in a totally benign way, and the students claimed that it was offensive to them.
00:52:29.000I don't believe for a minute that those students were actually offended.
00:52:33.000Like, I don't think that they really thought that the guy was racist.
00:52:37.000They're clearly just using these things as a power move.
00:52:42.000When you stop believing in decent, basic morality, the golden rule, for example, or you lose some sort of basic commitment to humility or other ancient virtues, truth, honesty, then it basically becomes what Nietzsche described as sort of Will to power and nothing besides.
00:53:08.000There's a hedonic thrill that people get from exercising power.
00:53:13.000I also think it's notable that a lot of the cancellations...
00:53:17.000I interviewed Corey Clark, a psychologist who studies the role of women going into institutions, and it's a very feminine way of ostracizing people.
00:53:28.000The attacks, I think, on you and on others are very much attacks on men and on a kind of man.
00:53:36.000I think, obviously, Andrew Tate, not my favorite person, he describes committing violence against women.
00:53:44.000But it definitely seems like there's been this cancel culture has been driven by a real just kind of unhealthy will to power to basically just ostracize people that don't conform to the existing morality.
00:53:58.000That's clearly, I mean, that's in some ways you would look at it and you kind of go, it might have peaked around.
00:54:04.0002020, 2021, and it's been declining since then.
00:54:07.000I think it's helpful to think of it as like a woke reign of terror that covered basically 2012 to 2024. 2012 was one year after Occupy, is the year of Black Lives Matter.
00:54:19.000And then it was sort of combined with millennials becoming really powerful on social media.
00:54:23.000And you get this just 12 years that was just terrifying and totalitarian in many ways.
00:54:29.000I think we're now reverting back much more to the mean or much more to the norm of the United States and Western Enlightenment countries where you kind of go, look, we're not going to agree on a lot of issues of morality or religion, but we can all meet at this place called the Enlightenment, which, yes, is secularized Christianity, equal justice before the law, meritocracy, free speech, you know.
00:54:56.000I mean, these basic, you know, protection of the family, protection of children, either from predatory medical organizations or from sexual predators.
00:55:05.000It feels like there wants to be a majoritarian consensus and there's a potential for it.
00:55:11.000Obviously, there's going to be some cracks on the right, but really, the right is so well constructed at this point.
00:55:18.000It has so much clarity about what it is.
00:55:19.000There's actually a battle in Britain between are the reform or the conservatives going to be the ones that really own this new nationalist populism?
00:55:27.000But even then, it's hard to tell, at least from a distance, how different those two parties really are.
00:55:33.000And so then really the question is, what's going to happen with the left?
00:55:36.000And how does the left construct itself into something different?
00:55:41.000On the one hand, if it continues to pursue this awful wokeism, this awful racism, this kind of this obsession with gender and identity, it's going to alienate a majority of people.
00:55:52.000But if it abandons that, then it really abandons its base.
00:55:54.000So in some ways, it's like the right got itself kind of reconstructed, and it's in a position to have a governing majority, I think, across the whole West.
00:56:02.000I mean, it's not just the United States.
00:56:08.000Then the question is, what kind of response are you going to get from the left?
00:56:11.000I mean, I sort of go, the right is so powerful now in the United States with Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the death of the conventional news media.
00:56:20.000I kind of, I'm like, God, I wish the left could really get its shit together to sort of...
00:56:24.000...posed some sort of competitive challenge to the right because, like I was saying, I just think...
00:56:30.000I'm looking at young men, like young Gen Z men, my son, 25 years old, and other men like him.
00:56:36.000They're just saying no to all this wokeism, and they're embracing a much more classical version of masculinity and much more classical virtues.
00:56:50.000For example, the assimilation of Maha into MAGA. Note how little that was reported on within conventional media.
00:57:01.000Note the zeal with which someone like Steve Colbert, just for one example, attacked.
00:57:07.000And continues to attack Bobby Kennedy and continues to ridicule him.
00:57:11.000Like, you know, for Trump, it will be the misogyny, the racism, the chauvinism.
00:57:15.000Bobby Kennedy, ah, wacko, crackpot, lunatic, says in Scripture, as a matter of fact, like children in the square for John the Baptist, he's too ascetic for Jesus Christ, King of Kings.
00:57:27.000It's that he's too open-hearted to being around tax collectors and prostitutes and stuff.
00:57:31.000So this globalist power, which I think is at its core godless, and the reason I believe that godlessness is what defines it, is because by denying sublime, supreme, divine power, you can lay claim to the authority that belongs solely you can lay claim to the authority that belongs solely with God.
00:57:51.000Some other curiously rational positions that emerge from it are the kind of pagan and pantheistic worship of the planet, but...
00:58:02.000An odd, grafted-on rationalism that only sees the planet as a kind of human resource.
00:58:09.000It's curious to me how, in Christianity, the relationship between our kind and the planet is a divine one.
00:58:17.000And this process of desacralization, and that's why I suppose I would query, without knowing enough about it, I'll acknowledge your point that the Enlightenment...
00:59:26.000Interesting, and the reason I began this by talking about the Maha and MAGA movement, is if you think about how, like, you know, you've lived in California.
00:59:34.000Think about all those people that, like, were fascinated by shamanism, fascinated by psychedelics, that kind of wellness movement.
00:59:45.000Like, those kind of people, that wellness, I feel, was a kind of solipsistic and somewhat narcissistic embrace.
00:59:58.000My personal experience was, like a couple of months before my coming to Christ, before being saved, and let me own and declare that a significant part of that was being publicly shamed.
01:00:11.000Because shame, I think, is the last flaw before you either commit suicide or...
01:00:16.000Let the self die and become open to what you may find there.
01:00:21.000I'd been running a festival where I was marching around with a staff.
01:00:29.000Shout in Ragnarok and lead in a kind of pagan march and hosting rather brilliant and wonderful people, including like Wim Hof and Vandana Shiva and, you know, people like Callie Means, like brilliant folk, like from media space and from, you know, like an activist like Vandana Shiva, who I see almost like a living archetype.
01:00:49.000You know, she's so powerful and magnificent.
01:00:51.000Anyway, but for me, what I was doing is I'd become completely...
01:00:56.000Self-absorbed without really knowing it.
01:00:59.000Again, without drugs, without alcohol, without sex, I've become once again completely self-absorbed.
01:01:26.000It was that, oh, I saw, oh, if I am taking a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of Sufism, a little bit of Nietzsche, a little bit of this creature, who's in the middle still?
01:01:41.000With Jesus Christ, that guy, Russell, you are down on your floor.
01:01:46.000You are on your knees, broken, naked, weeping, saved, not by yourself, but by his sacrifice.
01:01:54.000accessing now morality and virtue that acknowledges my fallibility and my flaws, aspiring to be the best that I can as an act of my faith and an expression of my faith, not because I will get anything from it because I'm already saved thanks to him, and that not because I will get anything from it because I'm already saved thanks to him, and that I am just, along with everyone else, down on my knees, broken, along with my enemies, with the people that would shame They're next to me, and I pray for them as well.
01:02:24.000And I don't see how without that, we're going to reorganize this.
01:02:28.000And the left kind of fashioned itself around atheism because of Marx and our country, UK. It's always been slightly different because they say British socialism, famously they say, owes more to Methodism than to Marx.
01:02:39.000Therefore it has a bit of John Wesley in the revivification of, you know, socialism because of God.
01:03:03.000Yeah, I mean, it seems like this is a very spiritual moment for a lot of people.
01:03:07.000I mean, we're having a huge UFO moment right now.
01:03:12.000People are looking to the skies because they don't believe in the leadership that we have.
01:03:17.000I think a lot of people are coming back to religion.
01:03:20.000I think that when you get to politics, where we get unity, I believe, is around the core pillars of civilization.
01:03:30.000There's a separate question around one's spiritual journey and this revival of ancient virtues.
01:03:37.000I mean, I look at somebody like Sam Bankman Freed.
01:03:40.000You may remember the cryptocurrency billionaire who was now in prison.
01:03:45.000His parents taught him that he should just orient himself around what's called effective altruism.
01:03:52.000And there's a whole kind of cult of effective altruism.
01:03:55.000And it's just based on this idea that You should rationally calculate how to best help other people, but it ignores all of the virtues other than caring and compassion.
01:04:07.000And so, for example, he would lie, so he would violate the need for honesty.
01:04:12.000He would betray people, violating this important virtue of loyalty.
01:04:18.000I mean, you've got to go down the seven deadly sins, and he commits all of them, cowardice.
01:04:24.000And so I think what we saw is the limits of this kind of extreme secular, atheistic progressivism, which became very mechanical, looking to science for morality.
01:04:39.000Sam Harris is the most famous for this.
01:04:41.000You can't look to science for morality.
01:04:43.000Certainly, the evidence can inform what makes for a good life and how do you get good outcomes.
01:04:48.000We know that people are happier when they have family, when they have connection, when they have community, when they have spirituality.
01:04:56.000And that's part of the challenge for the left, which has been a much more secular tradition than on the right, which has a much deeper grounding in the nation.
01:05:07.000I think for me, when I think about I do think it starts from this picture of the nation, which really is about community.
01:05:16.000I mean, a nation is a sovereign community of essentially equal individuals that share a common identity.
01:05:25.000One of the greatest writers on nationalism is a subject I've become obsessed with.
01:05:30.000She talks about nationalism as a form of consciousness.
01:05:33.000And a way to kind of build relations with each other.
01:05:37.000And so for me that's the beloved community that we need to restore.
01:05:52.000I'm also fascinated by all the UFOs and all the unidentified things that are flying through the air and that people are seeing.
01:05:58.000I think people are clearly not trusting the leaders and they're looking up for some other source of guidance right now.
01:06:05.000I love what you say about nationalism and your fascination with it and the idea that the nation could somehow again be sacred.
01:06:12.000Because the fact is that we all can quickly conjure, even if there may be variation within it, the image of an Italian, a French person, the Senegalese.
01:06:23.000even though these are relatively recent constructs, we do have archetypes in addition to stereotypes.
01:06:31.000And what I suppose we saw with the, in inverted commas, death of the nation through global bureaucracies and through globalist capitalism was the resurgent interest in patriotism and nationalism.
01:06:45.000And maybe there's a version of it, and this again relates to what we were talking about with grooming gangs a little earlier, the idea that a patriot...
01:06:52.000Is a good thing, because that's a loyalty to address that list of attributes and virtues that you kindly took us through.
01:07:02.000These are things, these are aspects of our nature that we need to valorise, access, act upon, and form systems around.
01:07:10.000Because when I was talking about, like, you know, the excitement I felt about the appointment of...
01:07:16.000It does feel like they're the W.B. Yeats poem.
01:07:19.000The best are silent and the worst are full of noise and clamour.
01:07:24.000The worst among us have taken control.
01:07:26.000And beyond personalities is aspects of the personality, the humours or virtues or attributes that might make up a human being, that might be...
01:07:36.000Seen as the fruits of a connection with the divine.
01:07:41.000And I'm interested that you too have gotten interested in nationalism, because nationalism was an idea that's gotten, I guess in my country at least, from the 1980s onwards, been subject to extraordinary attack.
01:07:52.000And that, I guess, now thinking about it, is concomitant with the rise of global capitalism and the unleashing and deregulation of markets.
01:08:01.000So maybe one of the things they had to shut down was kind of that patriotism.
01:08:07.000I mean, the big lie is that nationalism is the same as fascism or the same as totalitarianism.
01:08:14.000What Hannah Arendt teaches us is that nationalism is a barrier to totalitarianism.
01:08:19.000Totalitarianism wants to destroy all relationships that people have except for the one between the people and the state, between the people and the party and the state, which are one and the same.
01:08:28.000And so what nationalism gets you, you know, like in healthy friendships, In healthy relationships, romantic, platonic, you want your friend to be their own person, to be a strong person, to have their own sense of identity, to have an interiority that is strong enough to match yours.
01:08:46.000You don't want them becoming like you.
01:08:49.000You don't want them trying to make you like them.
01:09:03.000I wouldn't say I care about all countries equally, but certainly Britain, we're all in the tradition of the British Enlightenment and this incredible British liberal democratic tradition.
01:09:15.000So when I look at the grooming gangs, There's two things going on there.
01:09:20.000One is this unspeakable cruelty and predation on vulnerable people, but it also reminds me of this really important insight by the scholars of civilization who say when civilization breaks down, it's when the elite, what he calls the creative class of the bourgeoisie,
01:09:40.000the creative class of people that are really running the country, it's when they stop identifying with their own working class and their own people and And I think that
01:10:14.000We've been talking, I think, a little bit about what is the relationship between a kind of political agenda, coalition, etc., and what is your spiritual commitment.
01:10:24.000I do think that there is a kind, I would call it spiritual, if you don't want to use that word, you could say ideological, you could say consciousness, that you need a strong national consciousness in order to be a strong and healthy country.
01:10:47.000Part of the issue in Britain, and you probably understand this much better than I do, I just observe it from traveling there increasingly, is that the United States is much more egalitarian.
01:10:58.000We're much more like, if you go to Britain and you're a university professor, they treat you so much better than they do.
01:11:07.000The United States is like, I don't care, I'm an electrician, you're a university professor, you're no better than me.
01:11:12.000And that's what's so great about the United States.
01:11:17.000That snobbery and that elitism led them to ignore the predation of often these vulnerable girls were poor and working class.
01:11:26.000A lot of them didn't have a parent in the home.
01:11:29.000It's very similar to the kids that are preyed upon for sex trafficking or by the priests.
01:11:47.000It's really more like you have a common ethic and code, but it is so striking that multiculturalism, I mean, this was very clear in the Telegraph's coverage of the Greenman Gangs, multiculturalism was the ideological cover for all of this horrible abuse.
01:12:02.000And so I kind of go, I hope that Britain revives its own national commitment, because I do think that's necessary for Britain to be a strong, independent ally of the United States and for it to protect its own citizens.
01:12:15.000And for us to continue this process of maintaining this incredible liberal democratic civilization that allows us to be different individuals and not be subject to really awful confining totalitarian moralities.
01:12:31.000I mean, what you said about the lack of cohesion means that the vulnerable will end up being exploited was excellent.
01:12:38.000And the idea that If elites of different nations are more allied to and aligned with one another than their own population that falls under their protectorate, that will lead to exploitation.
01:12:54.000Can the concept predate the Westphalian Treaty?
01:13:00.000And of course you can, if tribes anywhere are willing to exploit their own population through slavery or human sacrifice, that will, likely because of trade affinities or affiliations of some other kind with other tribes, regions or groups, that will lead to exploitation.
01:13:19.000But prior, of course, again, now to somewhat go full circle, or at least to include ideas we've already discussed, what has happened prior to the revelation of this mass exploitation, speaking to the grooming gangs, a scandal and a disgrace, is that national identity has been...
01:13:38.000Deliberately unwoven and desecrated, if you consider the nation capable of being sanctified at all, that British people were told, oh, there is no such thing as Britain.
01:13:50.000And, like, that was a personal slur to a lot of people whose grandparents or parents had died as a result of relatively recent wars.
01:14:04.000Now, I recognise it is much more pronounced in my country, but basket of deplorables, you know, could easily be deployed in the United Kingdom.
01:14:14.000And that kind of loathing is, I think...
01:14:16.000What has formed a right-wing nationalist alliance is because there is a centrifugal, there was an explicit centrifugal loathing of working-class people.
01:14:28.000Prior to Brexit, there was a lot of rhetoric around white vans and people that have flags up outside their houses, which is perhaps the...
01:14:37.000They're comparable icons to a red MAGA hat or a bare chest or face paint at a sport game.
01:14:44.000You know, there are correlatives, even discrete though our nations are.
01:14:49.000And, yeah, I feel that what we're seeing now, of course it's obvious, isn't it?
01:14:53.000Even if you're talking about someone of seismic significance, like...
01:14:58.000Hitler, or more contemporaneous and likely transitory significance, like the kind of pop cultural figures of the right that have emerged out of the independent media age even in my country, they cannot have that power unless they are somehow avatars for and totems of an unexpressed feeling.
01:15:19.000The culture and the cultural centralised forces can sculpt Gavin Newsom and send him forth.
01:15:27.000But it takes aggregating powers to create the creatures that are being maligned and attacked in the UK, likely because, as we have already touched upon, they are flawed, broken individuals in some ways that are pretty evident.
01:15:48.000Pull back to the macro issue, that nations need people that come forth and say, we are those values.
01:15:53.000You've forgotten, you've cast too much shadow on masculinity.
01:16:01.000You, in particular, thought you could get away with, and pre-social media you could, just out and out.
01:16:08.000Desecrate and destroy and humiliate the working class.
01:16:11.000And it was no coincidence that it's the Labour Party and the Democrat movements that previously fashioned themselves as the representatives of those class that...
01:16:21.000We've abandoned them in favour of, oh, there's these other minorities, there's the minorities, actually, specifically minorities, these minorities that you don't like, you homophobes, you racists, you misogynists, and because that's so important, we're going to just get on with these projects over here, and that's not to say that all minority groups don't deserve representation,
01:16:39.000support, and love, that, you know, Christianity has principles for that, but when it's one suspects being used to lacquer over the abandonment of your core constituency and the foundation, Because who's going to be in it?
01:17:03.000I mean, I think the final piece of it is that you do need this positive alternative vision for people to want to reproduce.
01:17:11.000I mean, you know, obviously you can maintain and grow your population, you know, either by having more kids or importing more immigrants.
01:17:18.000But if you just import people from different countries that don't share your core culture, of course you're going to end up changing the character of your country.
01:17:27.000I'm not making any generalization about what the implications are of that for immigration, but you just have to recognize there's a real reality to that, that you should come here and you have to, you know, like in the United States, I assume, and Britain too, I assume most countries, you take a citizenship test and you pledge allegiance to the new country's laws and norms and values.
01:17:47.000You don't have to worship the gods of people there necessarily, but you do have to respect those norms and values, including learning the language.
01:17:54.000I do think you have to go another step, though, because I just think there's a lot of young people that were told that the world is coming to an end from climate change, that they're guilty of white supremacy just by being white.
01:18:05.000They were fed and indoctrinated in this awful anti-human, anti-civilization, anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-Enlightenment ideology.
01:18:18.000And it's just so dark and is so depressing.
01:18:21.000Why would you want to bring kids into a world that you thought was like that?
01:18:26.000And Christianity offered that beautiful story.
01:18:30.000When we became more secular, we have this beautiful enlightenment story of human progress and of human promise.
01:18:36.000I'm actually not super into rockets or Mars or anything like that, but I appreciate that Elon is suggesting that there's some ambition there.
01:18:45.000Some sense of human potential and human possibility.
01:18:48.000I love that from the human potential movement, the positive psychology movement.
01:18:53.000You know, when we were kids, Ross, I don't know if it was the same for you.
01:18:56.000But we were taught, and it's probably not true, right?
01:18:59.000But we were taught, like, you only use, like, 10% of your brain, you know?
01:19:04.000They're like, oh, if you untap, you're full.
01:19:05.000But that is such a positive, that is so much closer to, I think, what we want to be at, is that you have so much more creative potential than you're able to realize.
01:19:16.000And we want to be in a society and civilization that helps you to realize your most authentic and also your greatest potentials.
01:19:23.000So we've been teaching children, we've basically been depressing generations of children, overpopulation, nuclear weapons, climate change, species extinction, white supremacy, slavery, genocide, the Holocaust, blah, blah, blah.
01:19:56.000And so let's get on with living a fully potential creative spiritual life that we finally have the opportunity to live.
01:20:06.000And so for me, we need to bring some of the Maha and MAGA do Say that.
01:20:12.000And that's obviously why they were so threatening because they were saying, look, we can achieve greatness as a country and achieve great creativity and potential as individuals as well.
01:20:28.000Did you not see the cloven hoof of Baphomet?
01:20:32.000For surely to say that all human achievement is dark is to yield to the evil one.
01:20:39.000To claim that everything we've done is disgusting and dirty is an outpouring of, as it says in the New Testament, three times our Lord says, you know, it's the evil one who reigns down here.
01:20:55.000We were primed to accept the fall prior to the fall.
01:21:01.000And all of that ecological stuff that you say, that apocalyptic cult that worships somehow the earth somehow voided of sanctity is part of the problem.
01:21:13.000It was curious to me that you said that, you know, yeah, you can worship your own God, but, you know, pledging allegiance to the flag is, I would say, sort of paradigmatically the same as saying you will worship our gods.
01:21:23.000But, yeah, why would you want to come to a culture if you don't like it?
01:21:28.000That is the sort of common sense, I suppose.
01:21:31.000And in scripture it would say, if you're not against me, you're for me.
01:21:34.000So it's sort of, in that, it's like we don't care if you're, like, what you are.
01:21:37.000I mean, Islam, of course, didn't exist yet, although I'm sure that if you weren't Muslim, you'd have a different perspective on that and how the origins of your faith through Abraham.
01:21:45.000But, like, at least chronologically it didn't exist, maybe cosmologically.
01:21:49.000I mean, but anyway, my point is this, is unless you place Jesus Christ at the centre of it, and I say this because I am a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus, don't know if you know this about me, Michael, like, I would say that without him there, you will start to worship false gods, maybe we can go to Mars and conquer new territories, which as an archetype is a transcendent vision of going to heaven.
01:22:14.000Anyway, so, and I feel that those false markers of our progress, and I love the idea of the potentiality, that, you know, we're only using 10% of our brain, that lovely if anachronistic trope, like that, because medicine has in so many ways improved our lives, because technology has in so many ways improved our lives, we have not been observant of the fact that we've been worshipping false idols and heading in the wrong direction.
01:22:38.000And I think the reset of going, wait, we're not God.
01:22:44.000We can't have principles at all unless you have some sort of universal notion, and this is what the post-structure is, of course, if you're aware, deny that there is, that there is not, it's not even a homogenuity.
01:23:21.000I do, because how I came to, not Christ, but how I came to Trump was like, if they hate him this much, there's got to be something he's doing right.
01:23:30.000I don't know what it is yet, because I was on board with it.
01:23:32.000Yeah, you can't say Mexicans are rapists.
01:24:11.000And I think that he might be the end of the kind of globalism that we were fearful of before when we were doing censorship, industrial complex stuff.
01:24:19.000But I just, you know, none of us knows what it will beget.
01:24:22.000And I say without the one true God, you know, I'd be concerned.
01:24:31.000Because it does seem like the wokeism definitely comes out of liberalism, right?
01:24:37.000But it becomes anti-liberal at the same time.
01:24:41.000There's definitely something underneath I mean, there's a spiritual commitment that people sort of forgot about when we embrace a system of constitutional law and of law and order.
01:24:54.000But before you have Locke, you have Hobbes, and you have this kind of deep, underlying community.
01:25:03.000Because one of the things I'm always interested in is how compassion became cruelty.
01:25:07.000How do the people that say they care the most, why do they inflict so much cruelty, particularly on, say, homeless addicts, people with mental illness?
01:25:14.000And really, it's because they're not motivated by compassion.
01:25:16.000They're motivated by power and a desire to control and a desire to feel the hedonism of feeling powerful and control and have some purpose as an identity, as a caring person.
01:25:27.000That's very different from what Christianity actually was because the correction by Jesus to the Old Testament, to the earlier...
01:25:37.000Strictness was a correction, but he didn't want to get rid of all of the beautiful wisdom that came before, including Stoicism, which had been brought into Christianity, God helps those who help themselves, that there's some individual agency that Christianity is not about obeying.
01:26:06.000Ultimately, we've got countries that are set up on secular terms, and so I think we've got to find a way to both encourage people to have that spiritual life, but also I just think at a political coalition and alliance level, we build support in defending the pillars of civilization like law and order, equal justice in the law, fire departments.
01:26:26.000That function, you know, respect for fire departments, respect for the preparatory work of fire departments, and of good education and not depressing children or letting them become subject to sexual predators.
01:26:37.000In some ways, it should be a straightforward agenda because it's so basic, it's so simple, and it's being actively undermined by a particular group of people who are more loyal to foreign elites and foreign people than they are to their own people.
01:26:53.000Yeah, Michael, I think you've summed it up there, which isn't an easy thing to have done, given it was a pretty diffuse, discursive little chat that we just had.
01:27:02.000But I really enjoyed talking about all of them subjects, Michael.
01:27:05.000Thank you for your dexterity and ability to peripatetically wander through subjects like a true garden and pull fruits hither and yon and make sense of it all, pulling it apart.
01:27:27.000Let me know when you're in Austin, and I'd love to see you when I'm in Florida.
01:27:30.000Remember, on Rumble Premium, you get additional content from me and other Rumble content creators, as well as an ad-free experience.
01:27:37.000If you use my code, you get a discount, plus I get additionally paid.
01:27:40.000So it's a real incentive for me there.
01:27:42.000Remember, Break Bread this week will be with Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket, and most importantly of all, Nathan Finocchio, who's made theology accessible.
01:27:53.000If you're a Rumble Premium member, you can join us live for that conversation tomorrow.
01:28:43.000So you all know more about this than I do.
01:28:46.000So, inadvertently, I've been worshipping false idols, the false idol of fame.
01:28:51.000And if you do something like that, if someone's more famous than you, Then you might feel inferior because if you invested, it was Benedict Cumberbatch is who it was.
01:29:00.000In England, it's like they've tried to make Jesus boring.
01:29:02.000No disrespect to the Church of England because I've met some brilliant and beautiful people in the Church of England since coming to our Lord and they've educated me and they've helped me and they've instructed me beautifully.
01:29:12.000But overall, it seems like in England, they're trying to make Christianity seem like it's boring.
01:29:17.000And like when you read from Genesis to Revelation, there's...
01:29:21.000Fire and power and angels and demons and resurrection.
01:29:27.000And amidst us now, beyond the limitations of our senses, surely if we could but see with new eyes, we would know that we are surrounded even now that they are among us, our guardian angels and other forces yet, which if we do not submit, might...
01:29:48.000We've got lots of other additional content on Rumble Premium, like me and Eddie Gallagher.
01:29:53.000Eddie Gallagher is a Navy SEAL that was detained in a military prison after the death in custody of a member of ISIS that he was charged with the care of.
01:30:04.000I don't know how you describe it when it's an ISIS member.
01:30:07.000Anyway, the ISIS prisoner of war died and Eddie Gallagher was vilified and ultimately imprisoned without trial, but ultimately at trial was vindicated.
01:30:17.000The thing is, is they weaponized, in my situation, they weaponized the The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is the military justice system against me.
01:30:27.000Once the government targets you, there is no getting out of that.
01:30:32.000They will go at any lengths to make you look the way they want to.
01:30:40.000A person that can be revered and lionized and celebrated and decorated, I see the amount of medals and ribbons there on you and the cover of your book.