Whether you re pleased, excited, disoriented, disappointed, or whether you ve reached a kind of transcendence - either through misery or despair - that grants you a perspective where you can recognise that, while this spectacle is extraordinary and at times exciting, is it as important as, for example, a potentially impending nuclear war? We ll be talking about the dearth of ideas in conventional politics, and the requirement to continually stimulate the imagination. In this video, you re going to see a different kind of me - a more optimistic, more hopeful version of me. In the chat, let me know in the comments. - Russell Brand If you re a member of our Staying Free AF community, you can join us continually for our chats and conversations. We don t use free speech to criticize, condemn and condemn, but to unify and bring people together. Because it s my opinion that the midterms will not meaningfully impact the lives of ordinary Americans, and real change is what we ought to be demanding and demanding in order to achieve. - Katie Halper Why do people care so much about the Fetterman result? - Why is it so important to put our temporal differences aside? - Is Trump engorged with rage? - And why do we need a cultural differences? - and why is that a good thing? - What are you going to do about it? - and what are we going to achieve by putting our thoughts and feelings on it? - is it possible to be a better than that? - And what are you gonna do about that? - Let me know what you're talking about? - I'm not sure what you re talking about, I don t know? - or do you re gonna do? - can you help me know about it, I'm gonna do it, maybe do it better? - Do you're gonna help me help me do that, right? I ll be helping me know it, do you're not? - do you know me, do I know that I'm talking about that, or do I need a better of it, or a better job of it? -- can I help me? do you have a better chance of helping me do it more of that? -- do you need to help me better help me out? -- do I have it better, or am I a bit more of a ceeeeeeeeeeayeee? ?
00:01:39.000Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand, where you could be forgiven for thinking
00:01:51.000that the most important thing in the world are the results of the midterms.
00:01:56.000Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat whether you're pleased, excited, disoriented, disappointed, or whether you've reached a kind of transcendence, either
00:02:04.000through misery or a kind of ongoing despair that grants you a perspective where you can
00:02:09.000recognise that while this spectacle is extraordinary and at times exciting, is it as important
00:02:16.000as, for example, a potentially impending nuclear war? We'll be talking about the dearth of
00:02:24.000ideas in conventional politics and the requirement to continually stimulate...
00:02:28.000Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
00:02:30.000Do you think Big Pharma will be meaningfully impacted?
00:02:32.000pro-gun, anti-gun. Meanwhile the deep machine continues to throb and hum. The
00:02:39.000interests of the powerful continue uninterrupted. Do you think the military
00:02:44.000industrial complex will be meaningfully affected by today's results? Let me know
00:02:48.000in the chat, let me know in the comments. Do you think Big Pharma will be
00:02:50.000meaningfully impacted? Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments. Do you
00:02:53.000think big media will be meaningfully impacted?
00:03:31.000I nearly inadvertently sort of repeated the information you gave us in the mic test, which I believe included your childhood address, which I've just sort of stopped myself doing because I imagine that's not the kind of thing you want recited on the internet.
00:03:44.000Katie, Even though you're a person who's had a contentious relationship with the mainstream media and even online media, what do you take primarily from last night's results?
00:04:10.000I think, ironically, the biggest reason that they didn't do as well as they thought was because they kind of did what Democrats are so adept at doing, which is criticizing the opponent without offering any actual alternative plan or messaging.
00:04:26.000So the Republicans were really hammering the Democrats on inflation.
00:04:29.000on crime, on manufactured hysteria issues, I would say as well, but they didn't have any plan.
00:04:37.000I mean, inflation is terrible, but what are you going to do about it? And they never had an answer to that.
00:04:41.000Possibly also there's a sense that politics itself is becoming kind of a zoetrope of nostalgia.
00:04:51.000Retrograde politicians emerging, figures of the past dragged out on stage, the current president a sort of cadaver.
00:05:13.000If you're watching this on YouTube right now, jump over and see us on Rumble, where we have the ability to speak freely.
00:05:20.000And we don't use that free speech to criticize and condemn and divide, but to unify and bring people together.
00:05:26.000Because it's my explicit opinion That spectacles like the midterms will not meaningfully impact the lives of ordinary Americans and real systemic change is what we ought be demanding and in order to achieve that we must put aside our temporal cultural differences.
00:05:41.000Katie, why do people care so much about the Fetterman result, for example, and why is Trump engorged with rage?
00:05:52.000I don't know about Trump being engorged with rage.
00:05:55.000That's probably something left for a psychoanalyst to talk about.
00:06:03.000I think that Fetterman, it was this interesting race where the fact that Oz was close at all, I think was shocking to people because he is kind of a, well, we can't curse.
00:06:13.000So I'll just say he's kind of a quack.
00:06:15.000He didn't even really live in Pennsylvania.
00:06:17.000I mean, he was totally a fake Very out of touch.
00:06:27.000Fetterman, you know, it's funny because some of Oz's people tried to make him out to be some kind of imposter or inauthentic, but Oz was not even a Pennsylvanian.
00:06:38.000I mean, he was a total husk of a candidate.
00:06:45.000Gareth, you're squirming in your chair, you're filling up with opinions, you need to unburden yourself, what are they?
00:06:50.000I just think Trump's, it's amazing how influential Trump seems to still be in terms of American politics and yet, you know, Draws huge amounts of people to his rallies still and yet the candidates that he endorsed didn't do well including Dr. Oz and I'm just I'm just wondering how do we know how influential Donald Trump still is or do his endorsements just not mean as much as he himself?
00:07:15.000Yeah, I think it's really hard to isolate those things.
00:07:17.000People like to talk with a lot of confidence about it, like the Trump effect, but there's so many variables that it's hard to isolate it, which is not a very exciting response.
00:07:25.000I know I'm coming on here with a very definitive take on that and be able to point to exactly the effect of the Trump endorsement.
00:07:32.000But I do think that we'll have to see how other endorsements pan out.
00:07:36.000There's certainly not enough on their own to make someone win an election.
00:07:40.000I think that Ron DeSanctimonious, as he likes to call him, Has it been a bit of a, in a sense, has it been a bit of a damp squib of an election?
00:07:49.000Let's remember that Joe Biden was saying that democracy itself was at stake, which means that democracy is essentially over, that Trump suggested that this was going to be sort of the fluffing of a coming priapic eruption that was going to be his 15th of November announcement, when really what we've got It's in a sense a kind of rather tepid and ordinary election and I feel that we should be demanding more of democracy.
00:08:14.000If I could just draw your attention, Katie, to some of the pledges that have been broken.
00:08:18.000I'm not blaming you for these because you aren't Joe Biden.
00:08:23.000Some of the pledges that were made in the election campaign that have not been delivered on And I mention this only to remind myself and our community that we get excited by spectacle.
00:08:35.000We get amped up over needless, empty, vapid information forgetting what the facts of the matter are.
00:08:42.000For example, Biden said there's that famous cannabis law, which meant that zero people
00:08:50.000He was going to establish an offshore tax penalty, no tax penalty, targeting foreign
00:08:54.000operations included in the final bill, introduce a constitutional amendment to eliminate private
00:08:59.000dollars from federal elections, no sign of constitutional amendment to ban funding of
00:09:04.000elections, end for profit detention centers, little change under Biden, lower cost prescription
00:09:10.000Biden takes steps to lower drug prices, but odds are long for achieving his promised 60% reduction.
00:09:15.000Now, I'm not a pro-Republican person, I'm not a pro-Donald Trump person, I'm not even a pro-Ronda Sanctimonious person, although we watched his campaign video and I like him a bit more after that.
00:09:24.000We're no longer on YouTube, guys, so we can relax a little bit now.
00:09:47.000No, I suppose what I'm saying is, when so many pledges are continually broken, how are we getting it up?
00:09:56.000Just for the mid-term, I'm going to call them elections.
00:09:58.000Just to jump in, literally, just to summarise what you're saying, I think even through PolitiFact, they noticed that going through all Biden's election promises after a year, and Trump's, they were both around 22 or 23% promises kept, which is like a fifth.
00:10:12.000So, exactly as Russell says, when we're getting whooped up about these things, you might as well just announce, by the way, we'll only do, at the most, one in five of these.
00:10:20.000You only need 22% of your enthusiasm right now.
00:10:25.000I think that the most ambitious thing you can say about the Democrats, like if I'm being the most
00:10:30.000pro Democrat that is possible, you can say that their harm reduction, maybe on some issues,
00:10:37.000not on war, nonfarm policy, but it's not enough to be a harm reduction party.
00:10:43.000And they're certainly not across the board harm reduction.
00:10:45.000But really what they do constantly is they just crap on Republicans who deserve that.
00:10:51.000I mean, they should be crapped on the Republicans.
00:10:53.000But they don't really provide any systemic, as you said, Russell, systemic changes, radical changes, which is what is actually needed.
00:11:01.000When you work, working in media as you've done, print, online, etc, do you feel that the media's role in maintaining a limited spectrum for potential change inhibits even the scope of our imagination?
00:11:17.000People aren't saying, oh, let's decentralise power, let's punish the banks meaningfully, let's limit the military industrial complex's ability, let's ensure that we, you know, these ideas are never even discussed, so ultimately you have tyranny anyway.
00:11:31.000Yeah, I mean, especially when you talk about the military industrial complex.
00:11:35.000I mean, it was just embarrassing and disturbing to watch the media cheerlead for a no-fly zone.
00:11:41.000I mean, you actually saw the Pentagon and Biden sound like reasonable anti-war voices compared to what the media was demanding.
00:11:48.000I mean, there was this famous press conference where you had just one voice after another
00:11:53.000expressing impatience with what the Biden administration was doing.
00:12:29.000Yeah, that's what Tulsi Gabbard said, of course, famously, and she certainly reiterated that when she came on this show, and that interview's up in full now.
00:12:35.000Biden said he would take... This is another pre-election pledge for Biden, of course, before the presidential election.
00:12:41.000Biden said he would take steps to demonstrate the Democrats' commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons.
00:12:45.000The Biden administration's first defence budget included initiatives to retain A low-yield warhead that was outfitted on a submarine-launched ballistic missile in 2019, and to initiate research into new sea-launched cruise missiles.
00:12:57.000So more expenditure, and let's not forget the tiny fact that we've been brought to the very precipice of a nuclear conflict, with it being more likely, many argue, than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:13:08.000So why is it that we're getting jazzed up about Fetterman or DeSantis or Trump with egg on his face when actually we could be facing a global crisis.
00:13:20.000How is it that we occupy such a narrow psychological space when there is a plain reality unfolding before us?
00:13:28.000I mean, I think that you saw this disconnect in terms of how the media talks about this a lot when they were covering the elections last night.
00:13:36.000Even you had Dana Bash on CNN shocked that the top five issues for voters did not include democracy, as if people sit around thinking about democracy.
00:13:47.000But that's what the media thinks about.
00:13:49.000They have this very kind of aesthetic based analysis and they're obsessed with norms.
00:13:54.000And that was what they were offended by with Trump more than policies.
00:13:57.000They didn't care about his war-like policies.
00:13:59.000They just cared that he was kind of boorish and gross.
00:14:02.000Could you pull up that Ryan Vance graph, please?
00:14:05.000Because what I like about this is it demonstrates, evidently, at least according to polling, the voters' interest in sort of emotional and moral issues.
00:14:20.000So it says that when looking at people that voted for Ryan, 41% liked the idea that he is honest and has integrity.
00:14:29.000When it comes to Vance, 56% said he shares my values.
00:14:34.000What's curious about a poll like that is how general it is and how emotional You know, when you think that ultimately what we're being sold through congressional or contemporary western politics is the idea of rationalism, we're being given rational arguments, it's interesting to see how ultimately we're making decisions on an emotional basis, on a visceral level, fear
00:15:16.000Now you could argue that some of the great 20th century Dictators, I mean great in the pejorative sense, were reliant primarily on charisma, but ultimately this sort of reductivism that's in politics, the baffling bureaucratic language, has meant that a figure like Trump with his rhetorical ability, or you could argue a figure like Obama with his elan and charm, paper over a lack of real distinction between these two parties and a lack of real alternatives for ordinary American people.
00:15:47.000Yeah, and the media does a terrible job at what they should be doing is really bringing out these policy differences and highlighting that.
00:15:54.000But instead, they get obsessed with personalities, charisma, lack of charisma.
00:16:00.000Again, with Trump, it really was they were just offended by his style.
00:16:26.000These people, I mean, it's just shocking to me, by the way, that all these members of the press
00:16:30.000who claim to care about a free press, who were so offended by Trump's attacks on the media, are silent on Assange.
00:16:37.000I know that's something that you guys talk about a lot, luckily, but it's just a disgusting example of how these things are just trotted out.
00:16:52.000Yeah, also, coming to talking about the media, you know, there's a report out this week that since early 2021, corporations that have played a major role in pushing inflation to a four-decade high in the United States have swarmed Capitol Hill with lobbyists to prevent Congress from passing legislation aimed at curbing companies' ability to price gouge consumers at will.
00:17:10.000This includes Big Pharma, the drug industry, and also oil as well.
00:17:15.000So, two of the areas in which, like, you know, voters really do care about the fact that prices are going up massively in terms of With drugs, which they've continued to do despite the Democrats passing some small changes in that regard, and gas and food.
00:17:30.000What's not being reported by the same media that are ever so interested in this midterms at the moment is behind the scenes what's really happening is the lobbyists that they are themselves a part of are actually the ones pulling the strings with government.
00:17:47.000Lobbying that big media is a part of actually ensures that The voters, whoever they vote for, are not getting the things that they need.
00:17:54.000Yeah, that's a really important point.
00:17:56.000The way that inflation is presented is as if it's this almost science that's inevitable, as if it just comes out of the blue and there's nothing we can do to control it when it is the result of price gouging.
00:18:11.000The inflation story is corporate greed, but it's presented as so often economic issues are presented this way as kind of being free of ideology and just the facts and it's just the reality out there.
00:18:23.000People don't look at the way, as you're pointing out, these decisions are made and they have major impact on people's realities.
00:18:31.000It's not like inflation is this thing out there that's in a vacuum.
00:18:35.000It's the result of corporate greed and price gouging, as you mentioned.
00:18:39.000So I suppose ultimately where this conversation has taken us, Katie, and is a destination that I often find myself heading towards, the idea that perhaps The terms left and right are becoming increasingly redundant and we almost have an obligation to become disciplined in our discernment, recognising that what the media do in conjunction with state officials and pundits is escalate the sense that what we are determining between are significantly different organisations when in fact
00:19:14.000It all rests upon a plateau of unchanging machinery that's able to pursue financial and military agendas over decades rather than terms.
00:19:25.000Katie, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
00:19:29.000I know that you are a participant in the Useful Idiots podcast.
00:19:35.000And also, where else can we follow your work?
00:20:03.000Aaron, when I said to him the very same thing, when you're going to have us on our shows, he simply looked out the window and claimed that his leg was hurting.
00:20:26.000Katie, thanks so much for joining us on the show and giving us insights that we couldn't possibly glean ourselves because we are but humble English folk still regretting and resenting what we call the mistaken revolution that you guys conducted a little while ago.
00:20:40.000We've got a king now again, by the way, if you're interested.
00:22:23.000That's where the announcement is going to be coming from.
00:22:26.000If you've seen our take on Ron DeSantis' sanctimonious, or Ron DeSanctimonious as Trump amusingly calls him, we did a great analysis of that video.
00:22:36.000That should be up on Rumble about sort of... It's up!
00:22:41.000Don't watch it now because you're here with us right now.
00:22:44.000Later on in the show, the philosopher and expert in violence, Brad Evans, is going to be on.
00:22:48.000We were supposed to be talking about a new book in our book club, but we can't because we want to analyse the spectacle of contemporary American politics.
00:22:56.000What I feel is our job on this show is this.
00:22:59.000It's to awaken individuals, myself included, and bring people together so that we can start getting beyond our senseless bickering.
00:23:07.000To help us to recognise that so much of contemporary rhetoric is hollow and empty, take for example COP 27.
00:23:14.000COP 27 sponsored by the world's biggest polluter.
00:23:18.000COP 27, where edicts are suggested that will ultimately impoverish you and inconvenience, and bankrupt, farmers, while allowing corporate elites to carry on pursuing the same economic ends.
00:23:34.000Ultimately what we're interested in doing is exposing media lies, establishing government hypocrisy, pointing out the power of the corporate world, and enabling ordinary people, ordinary communities, to come together as much as necessary, accepting our differences, in order to unite against a common enemy in pursuit of a common goal.
00:24:00.000So, I suppose we do have a video where I brilliantly investigate and explore the nostalgic and retrospective flavour and hue of contemporary American politics, but I think that you and I can do a little better than that.
00:25:06.000That's the reason to watch mainstream media.
00:25:09.000If I get it, they can't both win at the same time, unless we're in a multiverse where everybody wins, or one of them schools, like, where they don't let the children lose because it's bad for their esteem.
00:25:54.000That would have been, I think, a mistake.
00:25:56.000Unless you were going to be a dignified military man looking out of the window, a reflective gentleman who was actually tortured by the horrors of war.
00:26:08.000Not a sort of go-getter Trump lieutenant looking for ISIS in the bits of the internet where they're plainly hiding out.
00:26:16.000No, I'd have been useless in this current conflict.
00:27:05.000So the US has fought more than a dozen secret wars over the last two decades according to a new report.
00:27:12.000According to the new report there's been how many wars?
00:27:14.000They've fought more than a dozen secret wars over the last two decades.
00:27:18.000This is a report from Brennan Centre of Justice at New York University School of Law.
00:27:22.000Through a combination of ground combat, airstrikes and operations, the US proxy forces, these conflicts have raged from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, often completely unknown to the American people.
00:27:32.000And with minimal congressional oversight, so brilliant, brilliant.
00:27:36.000So this is CIA, this is all the things we're talking about, this is Afghanistan, Cameroon, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, the list goes on.
00:27:43.000And so I guess relating it to what we were literally just saying about Russia and this not being a, you know, a proxy war obviously between Russia and America.
00:27:50.000These things go on all the time, we don't know anything about them, but these wars, secret wars, do go on.
00:28:11.000Because of the pledges that Biden broke while campaigning for the presidency, and you can go back and look at the content we were making at that time, I was saying, really, look, even if you're an anti-Trump person, can you really get yourself that jazzed and excited?
00:28:25.000Do you really think it's going to be any different?
00:28:28.000I think, well, I feel that we are penalised by our inability to recall the past.
00:28:37.000We can't recall what happened during the pandemic, you know, let's declare an amnesty, let's declare amnesia, more like it.
00:28:43.000We can't recall that, essentially, there is a continuum that's broadly uninterrupted.
00:28:48.000We don't seem to be able to hold politicians to account because the system is designed in a sense to be untenable while, and the midterms is a good example of this, while presenting the sort of appearance of a meaningful spectacle.
00:29:04.000I suppose what we have to do is just sort of track What is actually happening?
00:29:09.000The old Jesse Polaris has gone from talking about Jesus Christ to saying ISIS were created by the CIA.
00:29:14.000And in a sense, that might sound like an incendiary and not true thing to say, but we know for a fact that... It's certainly good that we're not on YouTube anymore.
00:29:22.000We'd be in all sorts of trouble for that.
00:29:24.000But certainly there has been CIA involvement in the, you know, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
00:29:30.000Like, when you start looking at some of that stuff, man, it's a bloody, it's a dreadful business, the way they've carried on.
00:29:36.000The infiltration, the provable, demonstrable infiltration of American secret services in big tech, their involvement in the various campaigns to arrest sort of enemies of the state and terrorists, it's a demonstrable mess.
00:29:50.000But for a moment, let's focus on what Shall we focus on Armageddon for a second?
00:29:56.000We heard that pre-election pledge was to de-escalate the potential for nuclear conflict.
00:30:02.000Yeah, we will not fight a war with Russia and Ukraine, Biden said.
00:30:05.000Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent, he said.
00:30:11.000And now, whether it's through extensive military aid, whether it's through the assistance in planning and execution, it seems like there is a very real proxy war going on.
00:30:24.000And I suppose, look, even if we... should we give politicians a pass and just say they've always been like that, perhaps they always will be like that?
00:30:31.000Why are we not able to hold the media to account?
00:32:35.000The general assumption that people are idiots and can't be included in those kind of conversations is de rigueur, accepted, unquestioned.
00:32:44.000And I suppose when you're living your normal life, the idea that you would be invited to ponder whether or not there ought be a nuclear war does seem somewhat abstract.
00:32:53.000But if there is one, it won't seem abstract.
00:32:57.000Yeah, I think also, we've spoken about before, but when it comes to military spending, I think what often gets used in the kind of propaganda side of it is military people themselves.
00:33:15.000you'll see people in uniforms and people with their families and the people that
00:33:19.000actually go out and defend us. But those people we know from our own work and
00:33:23.000investigations that have been done are really suffering at the moment. People within
00:33:27.000the military themselves can't afford all sorts of things.
00:33:30.000They basically can't afford to live. Young Putin, pull up how many homeless
00:33:34.000people in, what percentage of homeless people in the United States of America are
00:33:38.000former... Well that's veterans but even people currently in the military aren't
00:33:42.000being looked after I wear a, you know, it's Remembrance Day over in this country coming up.
00:33:48.000That's, you know, when we commemorate service people over the world and in particular those that gave their lives in the First and Second World War.
00:33:56.000And as a person that generally speaking is opposed to violence and a kind of fan of Gandhi and the idea of satyagraha, I can't say it properly, it's like a Hindi word I guess that means, you know, non-violence, the sort of philosophy of non-violence.
00:34:14.000Generally speaking, I'm not down with war.
00:34:17.000But the reason I wear that poppy... Can you bring us a poppy up as a matter of fact, please?
00:34:22.000The reason that I wear that poppy is because I think, oh my god, think of the values of the people that actually fought in that war.
00:34:32.000In a sense, what did old Jordan Peterson say?
00:34:34.000Never assume malevolence where ineptitude We'll do.
00:34:38.000Why would we operate on the assumption that the warmongery of the powerful is actually played out in the lives of the ordinary service people, most of whom are... Yeah, give us it.
00:35:08.000So Biden said, will you not seek a war between NATO and Russia?
00:35:13.000The United States will not try to bring about Putin's ouster in Moscow, but went on to pledge virtually unlimited US support for Ukraine and did not answer the more difficult questions about US endgame in Ukraine and the limits to US involvement in the war or how much more devastation Ukraine could sustain.
00:35:30.000This contrasted with the fact that 19,000 veterans experience sheltered homelessness and 13,000 veterans experience unsheltered homelessness.
00:35:43.000So while all the pro-military rhetoric is being espoused At the arse end of that is poverty, abandonment and homelessness for people that are cherished and prized as heroes when relevant and necessary, which I consider to be comparable to the pandemic.
00:36:01.000During the pandemic, key workers, health workers, doctors, prized, even sanitation workers, necessary vital work while the rest of us are safely locked down.
00:36:12.000When it's no longer convenient, unvaccinated, irresponsible, get rid of them, sack them.
00:36:18.00034,000 key workers lost their jobs in New York alone, fighting to get their jobs back, and the New York state opposes it.
00:36:24.000This level of hypocrisy, I don't mean to be carooming, tangential and ancillary, but I'm afraid it's the way that I think.
00:36:30.000I can't help but spot this continuum of dreadful patterns.
00:36:35.000Empty hollow rhetoric, invited to pursue meaning in narrow spaces, meanwhile there's this
00:36:43.000sort of nihilistic abandonment of people
00:36:46.000whenever it's convenient. Yeah, in a sense it's no wonder they have to
00:36:51.000spend record amounts on these midterms. Right.
00:37:30.000It seems like it might be time to bring a legitimate, genuine philosopher and friend of the show, first ever guest of the podcast and great advisor and mentor that we have here, Brad Evans.
00:37:41.000Gareth, I suppose you're going to shuffle... why don't you shuffle a bit?
00:38:00.000You're gonna have to sit very close to Gareth like on a talk show, Brad, otherwise your philosophy will be just disappearing like vapour into thin air.
00:38:09.000Now, the reason that we have you is not just because, as you know, I've many times called you the George Clooney of philosophy, not just because you are an expert in violence, that mic's directional, so sort of if you aim it at your mouth, as if it were a gun, the perfect metaphor.
00:38:24.000Yeah, because I could have gone for another image system.
00:38:27.000You just didn't talk about pornography.
00:38:28.000I did, and it was quite vivid what I did, actually.
00:38:31.000I compared propaganda to pornography, saying that we're continually stimulated into a priapic state, because when you're in that priapic state, and I speak from personal experience, you don't think straight.
00:38:40.000It's like we're continually roused and jazzed up into what amounts to idiocy to prevent us from discerning the clear reality that these midterms, that while there has been record spending, there will not be significant, let alone proportional change.
00:38:57.000It's not like, oh well, but as a result of that, look at all the things that are going to happen in your life.
00:39:01.000Which begs the question, you know, the simple rational materialist question, they could have spent that money better on a thousand things that would have improved the lives of ordinary people.
00:39:09.000They could address the existential threat that the whole world is facing.
00:39:13.000Brad, why are we seduced by spectacle and so unable to address what's palpably real?
00:39:32.000I think that let out was kind of how I felt kind of just going through the results of the election today.
00:39:37.000And this is how the spectacle works, right?
00:39:39.000It kind of creates this kind of almost like, you know, this untouchable kind of glare and you expect, oh, this is actually going to be a bit special.
00:39:47.000And then the next moment, it's just a deflated whimper.
00:39:50.000And you kind of go, oh, well, it wasn't the greatest election in history.
00:40:08.000You're less involved in Empire than anyone.
00:40:10.000But if you listen to the rhetoric, you're kind of saying, well, you know, according to this election, you know, the fate of the world is on the line, right?
00:40:17.000And then next minute you kind of go, well, actually, you know, we'll move on to tomorrow and then the next day and things will stay the same.
00:40:22.000But obviously we know things stay in the same.
00:40:25.000That's the real shit bit about it, right?
00:40:27.000Because, you know, speaking in a deep philosophical way, because I think that's where, you know, you're talking about, you know, A couple of points about, first of all, the continuation of war and violence.
00:40:36.000And we know these continuations of war, you know, there's almost like this rhetoric around, OK, that, you know, the Republicans are the warmongers, the Democrats are not.
00:40:43.000Well, history shows that's not the case because the Democrats are equally love war built, you know, Clinton's bombing of Yugoslavia under NATO.
00:40:51.000You know, so there's this kind of history of a continuum of war which kind of filters through.
00:40:56.000You know, I remember Gareth talked about this kind of, you know, we're in an age today where
00:40:59.000war is no longer even being declared, right?
00:41:02.000So we're in an age where we might call it beyond war.
00:41:17.000This sanitization of violence, this presentation of violence as irrational and necessary, this
00:41:25.000sense that the Democrat Party have become, you know, by Tulsi Gabbard's own analysis,
00:41:31.000a party of warmongers and, you know, she regards them as more egregious than the Republican
00:41:38.000Party, which tends… 10, 20, 30 years ago, you know, the Cheney, Wolfowitz, great, you know, next American century kind of era, you would have regarded that as implausible.
00:41:48.000What does this tell us about the deep psychology of the American imperial project and how necessary violence is?
00:41:58.000And also, what about the unwillingness to Adjust to the fact, the plain fact, that when Russia is your opponent, as opposed to one of the Middle Eastern nations that you can normally shove around for a little while and do a regime change on the sly, how can they not recognise that this is a significant difference and why do they refuse to?
00:42:23.000It's the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, right?
00:42:25.000So we have this moment in history of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
00:42:29.000We're now bookended by kind of saying, well, did anything really change, right?
00:42:33.000Because we now have what looks like kind of like a new Cold War, but is it?
00:42:37.000Because we don't really know who the key actors are in this war, really.
00:42:40.000And I think there's something really at stake here when we're thinking about, you know, we talk about I'm absolutely with you.
00:42:46.000I think you're spot on when you say the categories of the left and the right no longer mean anything.
00:42:49.000In the context of domestic American politics, we could say, well, it still holds a certain validity maybe around abortion rights, which of course we know is a very fraught topic in itself.
00:42:58.000In terms of international politics, I have no idea what those terms mean anymore.
00:43:02.000The Democrats are the ones who are really pushing for the acceleration of a militarization of Ukraine.
00:43:07.000Now, the condition in Ukraine, I'm just finding increasingly bizarre and dangerously bizarre.
00:43:13.000You know, first of all, you know, who knew Ukraine was so important?
00:43:18.000The only thing I thought Ukraine exported well was Shevchenko.
00:43:24.000And all of a sudden we've been told that Ukraine, because of what's happening there, the world is collapsing in terms of crop prices, energy prices.
00:43:32.000So if Ukraine was so important, why did we not believe that nations didn't have a geopolitical interest in there prior to this conflict?
00:43:40.000And I think the second point about the war then, we know from history there's very few wars which end by the total obliteration of the enemy.
00:43:50.000Now we cannot possibly do that with Russia because they're in nuclear power.
00:43:53.000So how do we then think about what does a political solution to this look like?
00:43:58.000There seems to be no impetus from what we might traditionally associate with the left to engage in a political solution to a problem which could potentially bring the world to ruin.
00:44:08.000And that's a real dangerous situation.
00:44:09.000Brad, I remember once you said that with the fall of the Berlin Wall we lost a kind of dualistic perspective of global events and had a kind of unipolar reality for a while.
00:44:24.000What does this new charge in geopolitics suggest?
00:44:29.000Does it, for you, Is it a kind of precipitation of new tension?
00:44:37.000Is it potentially... you know like there's a sort of narcissism in thinking we're going to live through Armageddon or at least experience Armageddon more like.
00:44:47.000Or do you feel that these movements, like you say, the bookending of like, you know, the end of the Cold War, you know, because when we spoke to Jeffrey Sachs, he said that the pledges were made at that point that NATO wouldn't impede or infringe upon Russian borders, which have been, you know, sort of broken in Georgia and Ukraine.
00:45:04.000And so sort of militarily and politically, you can see that what this encroachment looks like.
00:45:15.000What does it mean philosophically, the sort of amping up of these tensions?
00:45:19.000What does it mean, like, and I take your point about sort of abortion rights, and of course the significance of such a matter, if it personally affects you, can scarcely be overstated.
00:45:30.000But when compared to an existential threat for, you know, for a species, I suppose that you would need to include, this conversation should be better promoted, and I mean literally this one, although why not?
00:45:42.000I mean, this subject ought to be better understood.
00:45:46.000The idea that you would need a vision for a marriage and wouldn't have one for a nation seems kind of bloody ridiculous to me.
00:45:51.000Yeah, the point that you talk about in terms of, first of all, this clamouring for a kind of certainty and truth to knowledge.
00:45:58.000Now, you know, the point about the Cold War, as you say, there was very clear divisions that kind of, you know, categorised the world in very, you know, of course, you know, there was complexities within that, but it was an age of certainty and that certainty was mutual assured destruction, which was, the acronym was MAD.
00:46:13.000Now, we're in an age today where actually You know, everybody's clamouring for certainty.
00:46:17.000Trump came to power promising to bring certainty to the American people.
00:46:21.000Kind of lasted for a while, but then kind of faded.
00:46:23.000And I think there's this constant clamouring for certainty, but in a way where, you know, the moment we just scratch beneath the surface, we realise that all those claims to certainty break down.
00:46:32.000You look, for instance, what I find completely bizarre in the United Kingdom is the utter writing out of the mainstream press of the way in which pretty much every single leftist Latin American leader We're talking about Lula in Brazil, Fernandes in Argentina, Ortega in Nicaragua, López Obrador in Mexico, are all basically saying we need a political solution to the Ukraine conflict.
00:46:56.000None of them are saying let's accelerate the violence of NATO.
00:46:59.000They're all, but the leftist media in the UK is not discussing that at all, even though they're just cheerleading Lula as being successful against Bolsonaro in Brazil.
00:47:09.000So I think the cartography of international politics is far more complex.
00:47:12.000And I think the point is, you know, those old geopolitical rivalries, which used to be invested on the idea that the nation state was the dominant standard for power, that no longer exists.
00:47:23.000So how can we then claim for truth in the nation state when power is no longer there?
00:47:28.000And I think that's where we break up that kind of illusion.
00:47:32.000Every claim to security now just falls apart.
00:47:35.000With the abandonment of those kind of ideals, with the kind of loss of the security of the nation state as the kind of container of our ideals and our identity, and this...
00:47:45.000evident push towards globalism and the kind of feeling of being untethered and lost that that creates for people.
00:47:54.000It's kind of understandable that one of the consequences would be a re-emergent ethno-nationalism, a kind of collective nostalgia that might have a punitive and indeed xenophobic component.
00:48:05.000It's a sort of understandable reaction.
00:48:08.000In a sense, in a way, a sensible reaction, not one that I would personally endorse, But I like the way that you are identifying, Brad, that certain ideological tropes are extracted when endorsing certain aspects of, you know, let's call them left-wing politics for simplicity.
00:48:26.000Someone pointed out to me, I don't know if he was one of the people you listed, that the Colombian president sort of said, like, what the fuck are we doing?
00:48:39.000And this point of the clamour for security, there's a good history to this.
00:48:43.000We see in the late 1960s the arrival of globalisation and the sudden return back to religion because people want to suddenly say, no, actually, you know, I want to have some kind of grounding in a truth or rootedness in existence.
00:48:55.000Now, in terms of ideology, we talk of ideology today, but I don't think we have a grasp of what that means anymore.
00:49:16.000Do you not feel, Brad, that it's kind of, in a sense, because everything feels like it is mechanical and data driven, there is an attempt to impose like a mask that eats into our face a Data-led and information model.
00:49:31.000It's like we're becoming these machines.
00:50:18.000Yeah, well, this is what's driving global politics, is basically the mining of humans now as data.
00:50:25.000And that is perhaps the ideology, and that's what's leading to new forms of, you know, human kind of extraction.
00:50:32.000And we're trying, as you say, you know, the face becomes, but it's even more than data, because what we're now, for instance, with complex algorithms today, that they can now, you know, wearing, you would think like wearing a mask under the pandemic, The technology is already so advanced it can detect your inner self so the faciality no longer matters.
00:50:49.000So we're in a state that is even beyond faciality because it's already deep into the body.
00:50:54.000The data sets are already mapping us in much more complex ways.
00:50:57.000And I think your point about then what it takes out of us is basically life, you know.
00:51:02.000I know you and Gareth are really fond of the podcasts you do on football, and I think a good example of this would be football.
00:51:08.000Football has been so fascinated by all this data, all this quantitative analysis.
00:51:12.000Watch the film on Zidane, one of the most beautiful films ever made.
00:51:16.000He barely touches the football all game.
00:51:18.000Statistics would tell you nothing about how a brilliant, beautiful individual could change history in a second.
00:51:24.000By doing something spontaneous, something which is human, right?
00:51:30.000But I think that, you know, because I think the deeper point around this is about, you know, what's at stake here is basically what it means to be human.
00:51:36.000And all these wars are basically waging war on what it means to be human.
00:51:40.000And I think that's really the crux of what's taking place today.
00:51:45.000But many people argue, and one of them is Jung, that the hero's journey is ultimately the transition from an egocentric perspective, i.e.
00:51:53.000the self, the ability to assert your will on the world, the ability to fulfil your needs, ultimately primal drives, or some variation on these primal drives.
00:52:02.000That the hero's journey is the demonstration, the telling of the tale, of movement from egocentric, egocentric self-centred energy to a transcendent, capital S, self-oriented reality, i.e. a
00:52:16.000kind of, I don't want to use the phrase cosmic consciousness because it sounds a little
00:52:20.000bit silly, but kind of a sense of communal connection, a sense of oneness. And often this
00:52:27.000kind of heroism, the idea that we can put something else first, that we're willing to sacrifice, is
00:52:33.000brought about in odd times of crisis where people seemingly irrationally, seemingly
00:52:38.000unpredictably, outside of the wheelhouse of their ordinary act,
00:52:44.000Actions and behavior will do something beyond the bounds of the normal.
00:52:52.000Be willing to die for something that they believe in.
00:52:55.000This mystery is, I think, difficult to chart.
00:52:59.000I think it's by its nature somewhat submerged.
00:53:01.000I think by its nature it's beneath, beyond, ulterior to the persona.
00:53:06.000It's something That suggests the unitary.
00:53:09.000Even heroism as an action suggests, like if I'm willing to give my life for my children or if I'm willing to give my life for my fellows or for my nation or for my beliefs, I have transcended self.
00:53:20.000I have transcended the modality of my job here is to procreate.
00:54:07.000Beneath the surface then, it has to retain something of the secret.
00:54:11.000You have to reveal something you've never revealed before about yourself.
00:54:14.000Something which no algorithm can kind of predict, because that's what makes us at heart human, as you say, in a very, you know, what philosophers would call, you know, the poetic way, which links to what, you know, other philosophers would call the ineffable.
00:54:26.000Things we can't always quantify, put into words, even put into language, but we know is true.
00:54:31.000Friendship, love, all these kind of key categories which bring us together, which are so essential to the human condition.
00:54:38.000I'm going to throw myself into the religious life, that's it, that's it.
00:55:00.000The reason I'm unfulfilled is that I'm clinging on to some sort of Old idea that it's difficult to find a spiritual path.
00:55:08.000You know, when we talk about the media stimulating us into states of disorientation, I think about it in a kind of abstract way, when forgetting that I am a victim of that.
00:55:17.000I'm a person that lived a sort of, gosh, forgive the phrase, a celebrity lifestyle, that I pursued the goals of my age.
00:55:24.000In a sense, I was devout, like a devout devotee of materialism.
00:55:30.000Addiction is sort of devotion to the material.
00:55:33.000The idea that some external thing can provide salvation, can provide fulfilment.
00:55:38.000And I still find it really hard right now to just let go.
00:55:43.000To let go and become the thing that is waiting to be born.
00:55:50.000I will also add that Rumble has no algorithm, so that's why it's vital that you press Rumble right now, that you subscribe and you turn on notifications when you're using this platform because otherwise you won't find us here.
00:56:01.000It's not like on YouTube where they'll suggest stuff to you.
00:56:05.000Do you think it's ideological or do you think they just haven't got round to it yet?
00:56:39.000Is it like when Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank sits between, like, Roy Keane and Gary Neville and there's, like, sort of an argument and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank has to just sort of sit there with incredible thighs?
00:58:45.000And what I would say is that satire is a particular aspect of the comedic, which is somewhat...
00:58:51.000I would say part of the political sphere, when you think of the great satire boom in our country and geniuses like Peter Cook and brilliant broadcasters like Frost, in a sense became part of the establishment.
00:59:02.000Maybe Cook was too mercurial ever to be truly part of it, but he kind of went mad.
00:59:07.000Well, not go mad, I don't want to be dismissive of Peter Cook.
00:59:09.000I love Peter Cook, but I think it's safe to say an alcoholic
00:59:12.000and sort of lost his way and become disoriented and almost bored of everything about the age of 20.
00:59:19.000And even someone like Chris Morris, who's like a brilliantly radical satirist
00:59:23.000or Amanda Iannucci, they have a kind of an affection, I think, for politics.
00:59:28.000They're like, I mean this dismissively because I have nothing but respect
00:59:31.000for these brilliant, brilliant, incredible comedians, but they're kind of like nerds.
00:59:35.000Whereas I feel like we look at it like, In a sort of slightly more punk way, if I dare say.
00:59:43.000That there's a type of ridicule that's more like conventional clowning, like seeing it as like absurd, absurd, rather than sort of satire, I think, except like it ridicules it from within its framing, I reckon.
00:59:58.000We're sort of clowning it, and that's why I think the sort of Aspects of the right have become empowered and like in sort of talking from the perspective of the medium we're working in now, they meme better.
01:00:09.000Because they have this sort of punkish, angry radicalism.
01:00:13.000Some of the people that we find ourselves agreeing with their anti-establishment rhetoric and not necessarily with some of their cultural views have got a kind of vivacity That's entirely been neglected by the left who have become ultimately or if you you know my opinion is that they've become authoritarian and in a sense the new conservatism is coming from the left they're the ones are saying just do what the government tells you they're the ones that are saying don't question this war you know what if you just look at that little clip that we watched the other day and we could check this out actually poots is like there's a moment where like someone's heckling Barack Obama saying what you will
01:00:48.000What about your actions against Ukraine?