In this episode, I speak with my good friend Dave Green about the 250th celebration of the United States and the role of music and other forms of cultural expression. Dave and I have long been friends and long-time fans of each other, but we ve had some disagreements on the direction that should be taken for American culture going forward. I thought it would be a great conversation for my audience to hear.
00:10:56.420But I think there's two things that come to mind when that is set, even though it is somewhat intuitive.
00:11:03.500The first one is this is assuming that the cultural centers will always be the cultural centers forever,
00:11:10.100that they have to remain in those areas there is no way for them to shift now i'm not saying that
00:11:15.780there is a lot of good development for red uh america when it comes to these cultural cultural
00:11:22.100centers even something like nashville which is the center of country music is in a red state
00:11:27.020you think it would you know sprout a right-wing counterculture if any place would and if you go
00:11:33.960to nashville it's full of pride flags it's yeah of course it's all left coated in the middle of
00:11:39.080tennessee uh so even in those spaces where you should you a deep red you know area where uh you
00:11:45.360know country music is is the primary art and that has at least a a good veneer of of right-wing
00:11:52.300coding in it you still develop a left-wing culture and a left-wing art scene and everything in those
00:11:58.280centers so there are many challenges and i'm sure we'll get to why that is in a minute but the other
00:12:03.680problem i have is really how deeply what you said speaks to the dire nature of blue states at this
00:12:11.560point it's not just that blue states are less enthusiastic about america it's not that they
00:12:17.080just you know they're not feeling it because donald trump's in charge it's that they really
00:12:21.540really really hate the country like they would if if they had capacity they would fight another0.99
00:12:28.220civil war and wipe out the chuts like they really despise red america and when you have a population1.00
00:12:35.680that is that soured on the nature of the country itself its history its heritage its traditions0.96
00:12:41.400everything else while they might have the intellectual or you know financial capacity
00:12:49.240just the concentration of populations and things to produce these cultural centers
00:12:52.960how is that ever going to become something that celebrates america honors america is an american
00:13:00.500culture again i mean you have your entire culture it's it's kind of like uh you know canada's entire
00:13:07.420political identity is hating america and not being american and the entire blue state culture at this
00:13:14.000point is we are basically the only thing containing nazis from taking over the world and the nazis are
00:13:20.360everybody in the country we don't like and that like is that is their entire cultural uh outlook
00:13:25.900you look at what was that uh one one battle after another movie right like that like that yeah you
00:13:32.020know i it's an otherwise good director too right right right he knows how to make good movies right
00:13:38.120yeah it's made with some of the one of the greatest movies of all time right but like he
00:13:41.360but he can't escape he can't make good art because now because his entire culture is consumed by just
00:13:48.180hating america and so i guess while i understand that the capacity is there how do you solve that
00:13:54.940problem because i i would think it would be easier to train red states to make culture
00:13:59.220than it would to treat blue train blue states to stop hating red states at this point well it is
00:14:04.440the problem for a they won't so the majority of blue america is just going to descend into
00:14:10.720cultural death uh what will come from it the optimistic prediction is that a nucleus of blue
00:14:16.800state of america will emerge and and come in a direction that is healthy you know like like sort
00:14:24.140of the dime square scene but like better actually healthy yeah well yeah like less less kind of
00:14:32.880infested with this millennial irony and more sincere and more in it for the long run and
00:14:38.320more dedicated to an artistic vision um so the you know you kind of answered it yourself the reason
00:14:43.860why the reason why uh there is not a counter red state elite it's not any of this richard hanani
00:14:52.020stuff about elite human capital and you know calling me calling me an uneducated chud when i
00:14:58.100have multiple graduate degrees um that's not the the reason why there can't be a red state counter
00:15:04.660elite it is very much just situational and locational so first of all counter let's have
00:15:10.020to come from cities uh it's just a matter like organic culture grows from life and the people
00:15:17.380have to be close enough together and there's this sort of a certain critical mass people need to be
00:15:22.420close together to actually generate an organic culture and not just be kind of one-off genius
00:15:28.180hermits even online doesn't really fix this problem uh there would have to be a monastery
00:15:33.860if not a city right and i i'm not ruling out monist like neo monasteries you know mary harrington's
00:15:39.780Thoughts on this is absolutely correct. That's thinking in the right direction. But it can't be geographically distributed populations. While red states are ultimately healthier and they're geographically distributed, they're not conducive to high elite energy.
00:15:53.780and things like nashville nashville and these other kind of hypothetically red cities that are
00:16:00.160not they're stuck in a very weird position uh you know nashville in particular this is a
00:16:08.040cultural space that is coded red even though it is deep blue and the elites kind of prepared for
00:16:14.460them they're not surprised by anything that comes out of the country music scene and moreover the
00:16:20.740artists and the intellectuals to operate in that scene are very conscious of falling into a
00:16:25.120stereotype that predismisses them as being a cliche and kitsch and that is the reason why all of these
00:16:33.320spaces tend to kind of swing in the other direction and become bluer than the bluest place uh you know
00:16:39.280like i know i'm not i don't live in san francisco or new york city i i never well i guess i have
00:16:44.840lived in a very blue city in in uh in new jersey but it was uh you know look i mean these places
00:16:53.160are having deep problems inside of them and they're deeply deeply stagnant um but but just
00:16:59.800because of where they exist inside sort of the american physical map and the american cultural
00:17:05.160map make some kind of these indispensable properties and i i don't i think that the the
00:17:09.800idea of the internet is like we're totally it's kind of funny right it's kind of funny because
00:17:14.440internet is like okay well we we're so detoralized that now we can fight we can fight the the forces
00:17:22.080of detoritorialization uh by by being detoritor territorialized ourselves but very ironically
00:17:30.460there's a dimension of elite formation that is necessarily territorialized and uh you can't just
00:17:36.140discard these kind of uh choke points that exist in the center of america and or in the center of
00:18:04.720there's a reason why every interaction you have with kind of neoconservatives
00:18:09.080has them coming off as, I don't insult anyone here,0.96
00:18:13.140But you do a lot of interactions with neocons and these propositional nation people, RN, and they always end up looking to almost everyone who's onlooking like they're absolute doofuses.
00:18:25.220Case in point, you know, your interactions with James Lindsay, this has not gone unnoticed by the left side of the internet.
00:18:32.980They talk about these interactions on Blue Sky, and they're not making fun of you.
00:20:49.440In many ways, the wokeness was a response to their own cultural bankruptcy in other areas,
00:20:55.300and in some sense, their own financial bankruptcy.
00:20:57.940And so it is totally unclear to me is what happens when this narrative expires, but the sort of engine of production is still in place where these people are occupying these institutions and have no justification for why they're there.
00:21:13.900If, for instance, it becomes incredibly clear that their erstwhile allies among the third world and among sort of minority populations inside America are not actually on board with their larger progressive vision as white people have imagined in the 20th century, then this could cause a huge identity crisis on the left, which would totally devour American culture.
00:21:38.660And I'm not so sure what will happen from that identity crisis. It's unclear because every answer I can come up with, Sam's like it couldn't possibly happen. And I'm not really coming on your show with any answers to how to deal with this. But I, again, how can I know what comes after something that I don't know what will happen?
00:21:57.600Well, I have a feeling that the spark of sort of a new narrative for North America will emerge out of the identity crisis that occurs in these blue areas, largely among white leftists.0.79
00:22:10.080Now, it's going to have to reconcile itself in conversation with Red America, and it will be massively smaller because what we're talking about is, you know, imagine kind of the vision of the few who are saved from the apocalypse in something like the Book of Revelations.0.69
00:22:26.780that's what we're talking about here right a remnant will emerge but that remnant will be a0.72
00:22:33.100critical component of any kind of revival of what it means to be american there's so much i could
00:22:39.360say about this but i should like i should actually uh stop my monologue here yeah you you you are
00:22:45.940used to having a good three hours to yourself when you're on a podcast so entirely understandable
00:22:50.880i mean i think there's a lot of truth there i think after the last trump victory i felt like
00:22:57.580jane goodall kind of watching the blue states and you know the kind of blue america and that
00:23:02.340reaction uh the funniest thing of course was they realized that they had a giant man problem like0.98
00:23:08.020they could not they simply have nothing to say to men other than uh die alone and you deserve it
00:23:13.520and so then they like paid some morbidly obese woman 20 million dollars to go find out why they0.99
00:23:20.360had a man problem and the answer she came back is with men are evil and they deserve it and of
00:23:25.860course you know like we're doing the right thing so like it's very clear that even at the moment0.54
00:23:30.860when the democrats and the the left look at white people especially white men like they see at some
00:23:37.420level they are sealing their own fate like they recognize at some level that they are pushing0.79
00:23:42.600people out of the coalition that will doom them uh at the same time they are literally incapable0.56
00:23:48.360of making any alterations to their religion that would allow for the existence of white men like0.99
00:23:55.160that literally their religion is just they all white men must die that is the basis of their0.97
00:24:00.200belief system everything else is just is just yeah the marxism is great sure whatever but like0.93
00:24:05.220this is actually where it's at and so uh there there just seems to be no way to escape that
00:24:11.040downward pull that said uh i i start to wonder then how they can revivify this in any way i
00:24:20.380would say that you know get we're all good elite theorists here you know pareto reminds us that
00:24:25.660every new elite is made up with remnants of the old elite we never get we might get rotations
00:24:30.560circulations of elite but we are all there's always a remnant there so i think you're on
00:24:34.860strong footing saying like there will be uh you know a a decent amount of interaction with
00:24:40.300whatever's left of white progressive America when this whole thing is over. But I'm not sure what
00:24:46.260is left, and I'm not sure that it will dictate the terms, I guess, is more where I'm coming from.0.81
00:24:52.920I think that most of American identity is now contained in red states. I think that anything0.78
00:24:58.840that's recognizably American is now red. If you ask people what America is when they leave,
00:25:06.800they don't tell you about new york uh and the culture of new yorkers yeah they tell you about
00:25:12.500the south they tell you you know we we just had a a friend from the uk over i'll keep his name out
00:25:18.460of it just because uh of everything going on uh but uh you know we he came over and he went through
00:25:24.180new york and he said oh this is this is mumbai this is the third world and then he walked into
00:25:28.960tennessee it's like oh this is america you know we've had all these europeans coming over and in
00:25:34.320my experience whenever you're in europe uh the song that everyone associates with the united states
00:25:40.220is take me home country roads it's a song about living in west virginia that that's what that
00:25:46.320it's the unofficial like i've been in you know fairs in england where all of a sudden out of
00:25:51.240nowhere a guy starts playing take me home country roads and like the entire uh you know event just
00:25:57.440stops dead in their tracks and sings along like that is america to i think a lot of people
00:26:03.140and many of these things are seen as below or beneath you know blue america for a lot of
00:26:08.600reasons one of them is they're white coated uh but um you have this moment where uh you've even
00:26:15.260talked about the revival of bluegrass music and how often it was uh people from new york or you
00:26:21.940know other areas who were doing it i don't think that could happen today i don't think you could
00:26:25.940have blue america 10 years later pick that up so when you have that level of hostility it feels
00:26:31.000like even if those blue state refugees those that remnant who will i think at some level be part of
00:26:36.980that spark they're going to have to adapt almost entirely right-wing culture in order to have any
00:26:42.200connection to america yeah and in essence right you are correct stating it like blue america is
00:26:49.360just not america anymore in any meaningful sense and the anti-whiteness thing that is a huge utility
00:26:54.660for us at this stage that is the catalyst that is going to tear apart the leftist coalition and make
00:27:01.900something make something that is post-left almost necessary and you know insofar as people like
00:27:07.400Hassan Piker play a role he's kind of trying to hold back I mean actually Hassan Piker has done
00:27:14.240more for the moderate left than they actually know because by framing this as sort of like
00:27:19.440this revolutionary um you know this this communist revolution he can momentarily hold back what
00:27:26.120essentially is just revenge against white males and you know the fact that he's turkish kind of0.55
00:27:31.280makes it more subtly ironic being kind of uh on the intersection of of of of non-white imperialism
00:27:38.380itself against white people while at the same time still plausibly having white genetics himself but
00:27:42.840But, you know, this is the – like I said, Blue America is in a total state of contradiction.0.80
00:27:48.940And you are correct that currently there is no real authentic Blue America that is – it's all a lie, I should say.
00:28:05.220But he needs to be turned into an adjective because all – and this is where you get into the whole Lomez and Christopher Rufa versus Curtis.
00:28:12.840Yarvin thing. All of the symbols of classic Americana are basically just giant scams in
00:28:19.960blue America. In blue America, anytime someone brandishes a flag, he's looking for your vote.
00:28:25.920He's looking to con you into doing something. Nobody who uses the American flag as a sincere
00:28:33.760symbol is actually sincerely the client of the people who brandish it in blue states.
00:28:38.580It is a tool of scamming. It is a I can do this thing and therefore you'll give me the power that I need to get into office and then serve my real clients, which is, you know, bankers, international global globalist leaders.
00:28:53.320And of course, the various minority clients that they also are in a more subtle way of scamming.0.78
00:28:59.560But for that reason, the American identity in blue states is is a scam and is seen to be a scam.0.91
00:29:06.280and everyone knows it's a scam and so playing into that identity makes you look like a mark it
00:29:12.160makes you look like an easy mark in that situation if i were to unironically be a blue stater who um
00:29:19.120you know if i wasn't doing this as sort of like an art community like dime square if i were to just
00:29:24.220unironically be really really patriotic in one of these highly blue areas people would think that i
00:29:29.640was a sucker because you're playing into this big k-fab the blue america is playing to make it seem
00:29:35.640like they're still authentically American when they are absolutely not. But you can't help but0.97
00:29:42.800notice that there's this huge pressure building up in these areas. The fact that all of these
00:29:48.900people are essentially disowning their heritage does not make that heritage go away. It does not
00:29:55.600make the legacy of that heritage, of these blue areas, less a thing. And it doesn't make the
00:30:02.520contradiction that exists in their their actual communities go away so you know you are right
00:30:08.540there is only one authentic america in the present era and everyone in the present
00:30:13.020period i should say era sounds too long but you know in the last few decades there has only been
00:30:20.300one authentic america and that has been right america but the problem is physically speaking
00:30:25.660as a cohort, as a population. That's not true. A large part of your population history is not
00:30:33.960described in what is Red America. And a large part of sort of the cultural choke points of
00:30:40.520any kind of restoration also run through areas and run through things that are not,0.58
00:30:45.180strictly speaking, Red America. This creates a tension that, again, I think is this going to0.72
00:30:50.200explode and i have no idea what direction that's going to go in uh but i don't know part of me kind
00:30:57.740of wonders if yarvin isn't correct if what are the things that stops blue america from kind of
00:31:04.500melting down faster is red america it is the presence of red america that allows white
00:31:12.040progressives to keep on playing the shtick where they convince everybody that they are some kind0.69
00:31:18.020of necessary component in the political elite that otherwise would consider them to be otherwise
00:31:24.380totally anathema to its larger purposes and i i wonder what would happen you know if if
00:31:31.800you know one interesting thing i hope this doesn't happen but let's say that trump loses power and we
00:31:37.680get another round of you know the reign of gavin newsom that will trigger an identity crisis among
00:31:44.480white progressives will it be worth the oppression probably not but it does sort of facilitate and i
00:31:51.340don't want something like an accelerate accelerationist it does sort of facilitate a
00:31:55.440cultural shift that just needs to happen to just so thoroughly needs to happen and uh i see that
00:32:04.860every time i i go into a blue area that this needs to happen yeah there's a there's a lot there uh
00:47:54.620If in some way the ultimate solution is just kind of walk into the distinction between the two groups, I think that if it's very, very clear that what difference is between when we practice Christianity and when someone like Stephen Colbert practices Christianity,
00:48:16.200this has been sort of the the um the it needs to be said that in all ways progressives are
00:48:25.540decelerationists they want to essentially prolong the long 20th century at this stage their hope
00:48:31.780for sort of a 21st century that belongs to them is more or less a larp at least if you're a white
00:48:37.940progressive at this stage it all exists in confronting problems that they do not directly
00:48:43.240address because they can't look at them. Now, the big obstacle of this is that we just have this
00:48:48.740huge layer of phoniness that's strewn across everything. Like, I have to pretend that Stephen
00:48:53.060Colbert is actually Catholic. Now, I know that Stephen Colbert is not Catholic. I know that
00:48:59.420Stephen Colbert is not Catholic. I know that he does not believe the doctrine. I know that he does
00:49:04.160not follow the catechism. And now he's admitted it. Like, the other week, he admitted, what did
00:49:08.920he admit exactly? I can't exactly remember, but he said something like, Todd is just some kind of
00:49:13.160vague energy that is the universe or something to that effect like the einsteinian god which is
00:49:19.000a direct contradiction to the nicene creed but that's not how stephen colbert prevented presented
00:49:25.120himself and always when you're getting into this conversation about what catholicism is
00:49:30.080more than a few times progressives will bring up the fact that stephen colbert is devout devout
00:49:34.940catholic and he doesn't agree with you about what catholicism is well yeah that's because he's not
00:49:39.340actually Catholic, right? This person is posing as this thing. And because of that, we are not
00:49:44.980having a hard conversation about what we actually believe and what is the path forward to the
00:49:49.700future. Because it's obvious that what Stephen Colbert believes is a complete dead end, not only
00:49:54.200for America, but for the human race generally. And I don't know, is there a way to accelerate
00:50:00.740blue America and decelerate red America? That's an open question. I think that to a certain extent
00:50:07.400that's going on as this is what the real advantage of mimetics is in my opinion is that the ontological
00:50:14.980category is kind of become more separated the fact that all of the left like zero percentage
00:50:22.880of the left are actual christians but they are a hundred percent composed of christian concern0.65
00:50:27.400trolls i have never met a leftist that was not a christian concern troll not as well not the most1.00
00:50:33.400rat the most radical crazy you know i want to deconstruct the patriarchy kill all white men1.00
00:50:41.080the most radical communist the the most authentic marxist which is a contradiction in terms because1.00
00:50:47.000there are very few authentic communists in the modern world at least authentic white ones and0.87
00:50:53.720they are all concerned trolls from the most moderate to the most radical that's a universal0.88
00:50:57.800property of them. And that is because they are trying to, they know that they have a moral
00:51:04.420contradiction at the heart of their ideology. And so they're kind of trying to scaffold
00:51:08.060off the existence of your morality to justify theirs. And so Christian concern trolling is a0.83
00:51:14.540critical dimension of what it means to be a progressive in the 21st century. And I think0.89
00:51:21.400that if we ontologically realize and that sounds like like a bunch of a bunch of hogwash or a bunch
00:51:28.960of jargon but but i think it's important that's why heidegger yeah exactly uh i think as as these
00:51:36.940two groups become more clear that um then i think that the game will kind of dissipate and i'm
00:51:45.520hoping that it will be really really obvious that people like james talrico are frauds
00:51:50.400and they're not authentically what they actually are that that they're opposing i think it's very
00:51:56.160very clear that that's what stephen colbert is that that is what um all of these kind of concerned
00:52:00.800trolls are is that they are pretending to be something that they are not to avoid discussing
00:52:05.040what they actually are in in the modern world and they're deeply ashamed to be what they are and and
00:52:11.280And this sounds horribly abstract, but it is just that kind of realization and representation that kind of offers us a way to get past this very weird moment in history.
00:52:28.020I like asking progressives what they think it means to be an American or if they're proud to be an American and what their relationship is to history.
00:52:36.740They struggled to answer that question in the 21st century.
00:52:39.680and yeah i imagine yeah i mean well but yeah i mean this is this is something that um i uh i feel
00:52:49.040like the more authentic and the more grounded and the more personal the conversation is with
00:52:53.940the progressive the closer they are to kind of seeing what the crisis is in their midst that
00:53:00.120they they can't really occupy their own skins in a very comfortable way and i feel that it is sort
00:53:08.780of our job to kind of accelerate this process and uh i i don't know i i think that nothing i say to
00:53:18.600this point is going to sound satisfying at all aaron and this is just a cultural journey that's
00:53:23.560going to have to be accomplished separately in red states or in not really red states but in red
00:53:28.640areas that it is in blue areas i think that red red states and and they need to be comfortable
00:53:35.280with who they are and having a nationalism of who they are as a people and kind of developing
00:53:40.420developing a way to be proud but also developing a way to kind of be better and and and kind of
00:53:47.180live up to the legacy that it was bequeathed to them and i think blue america just needs to have
00:53:52.680a mirror held up to its face they need to have a hard look in the mirror about what they have
00:53:58.620actually become in the 21st century because it is very, very, very, very ugly. And I do not know
00:54:06.220who can hold that mirror to progressivism space. All I know is that the flag and the symbols of
00:54:13.040old America actually make it, make them less reflective about who they actually are. I think
00:54:18.680functionally America is two different countries at this stage. I mean, it's just obviously it is
00:54:23.620white america is two different places and uh one is kind of rapidly deteriorating under the weight0.56
00:54:30.320of its own uh of its own politics and i kind of want to save it but uh you know that that is a
00:54:36.900very difficult task in the in in the era we live in right now it'll be interesting to see what
00:54:41.880happens when trump leaves the scene um i don't know it might trigger some interesting things but
00:54:47.400i have no idea what those things could be because it's literally standing on a nice edge i feel like
00:54:52.640it's possible that white america could just die in progressive areas just flat out there's like
00:54:57.740there's no legacy whatsoever but i i consider that to be it would be a major blow to the
00:55:03.640continuation of america and it would be uh i think it's actually kind of unlikely well and you know
00:55:09.920this is a lot of people will just say oh well you know or and you live in red america your family's
00:55:14.080in red america why do you care you know what does it matter you know just hunker down in your state
00:55:17.880and wait for those things to you know do whatever they're going to do and and uh you know just uh
00:55:22.460kind of uh grin and bear it until it's done but the problem is of course that everything in blue
00:55:27.360america is impacting red america as well you know obviously this is where much of the entertainment
00:55:33.240comes from but also uh you know due to uh the the fact that we basically have like built in uh you
00:55:39.760know uh fail libs and hic libs that have to move into our areas because uh you know the the university
00:55:45.760system and libraries and all these places only hire blue-coded people uh you know the things
00:55:51.940like drug epidemics and transgenderism and things you know they flow through the influence of blue0.60
00:55:57.800america so blue america has these problems collapses is still sending these agents of chaos in0.83
00:56:02.620then we don't escape the effects of of you know what happens to blue america plus also it's still
00:56:08.720america so i still care so you know all of these things are critical but to be fair i didn't think
00:56:13.680we were going to solve this problem tonight uh it's a good conversation but this is a a massive
00:56:18.560uh issue for us to address so uh probably won't get there to the end uh but i do think it was
00:56:24.680just valuable to to air this and uh you know develop this further and i'm sure it's something
00:56:29.440we'll be talking about for a long time eventually you know i just want to get to the point where
00:56:33.080we can put dave green as the military dictator of area one uh you know what formerly known as
00:56:39.120california uh for the reconstruction when it begins you know i think that's it's important
00:56:43.880that we have men we can trust in those positions uh but uh guys again we don't have uh questions
00:56:49.620today because we're not live but dave can you let people know where to find your work
00:56:52.920uh yeah so uh my main website is at this point substack where i blog at letters from fiddlers
00:57:00.120green or fiddlersgreen.substack.com i'm also known for a youtube channel called the distributist
00:57:06.720although i have no idea really how to use youtube in the modern world it seems in kind of a weird
00:57:12.140space as a platform and that's just the distributist where i do kind of live stream lectures and
00:57:16.900very occasionally a video but i'm still trying to figure that out and uh you know hopefully we'll
00:57:24.020pull this together but a little treat guys we might be might be trying to do a little bit of
00:57:27.960streaming of game workshops games as we talk about them so i'll let you guys know if we get
00:57:33.840that going but uh that said of course if it's your first time on this channel you need to subscribe
00:57:37.940click the bell notifications all that stuff so you know when we go live if you want to get these
00:57:41.900broadcasts as podcasts you need to subscribe to the or mcintyre show on your favorite podcast
00:57:45.860platform and if you do leave the rating or review it really helps with the algorithm magic thank you
00:57:50.220everybody for watching and as always we'll talk to you next time