Curtis Yarvin on Why Elon Can't Fix Washington ｜ 10⧸23⧸24
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.29561
Summary
On today's show, Oren McInnes talks about what would happen if Donald Trump were to win the 2020 election. He also talks about why it might not be so easy for Trump to become the next president, and why he thinks it s a good idea for him to run as a third party candidate.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners,
00:00:03.740
I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?
00:00:08.500
Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag.
00:00:35.860
And before we get started today, I just want to talk to you a little bit about election
00:00:40.280
Obviously, every year we hear, this is the most important election of your lifetime.
00:00:51.680
But at this point, you do have to recognize that the things that the Democrats are saying,
00:00:57.280
that they're doing, the open borders, everything else when it comes to the sovereignty of the
00:01:01.420
United States, obviously, you should get out there and support Donald Trump.
00:01:05.720
But also on election night, you're going to want to know what's happening.
00:01:09.500
And we've already heard from many different media outlets that you can't know what's happening,
00:01:13.380
that they're going to be counting votes for the next, you know, several weeks or whatever.
00:01:25.020
Who's going to be the next president of the United States?
00:01:27.460
So you're going to want to join us over at the Blaze for the election coverage of the
00:01:33.160
We'll be running the election night coverage with all of your favorite Blaze hosts.
00:01:37.640
I'll be there live from the studio as well on one of the panels.
00:01:41.580
So if you want to follow all of the things that are happening and get the best election
00:01:45.320
breakdown, including yours truly, then you need to head over to blazeelection.com slash
00:01:56.580
And you can get $40 off your subscription to Blaze so that you can be joining us for that
00:02:04.720
So today I wanted to talk a little bit about what happens if Donald Trump wins.
00:02:10.640
So we know that the polls seem to be showing a lead for Trump.
00:02:19.300
We've had many, many different incorrect polling results the last few Trump elections, though
00:02:24.420
they tend to be against Trump and not in his favor.
00:02:26.700
But either way, we know the methodology of the polls right now has not necessarily been
00:02:35.540
Trump is doing these kind of great programs, reaching out.
00:02:40.120
Obviously, he had the McDonald's thing that was very relatable.
00:02:48.220
They're putting her on anything and everything.
00:02:50.540
Before, she was just failing, hiding in the bunker like they tried to do with Joe Biden.
00:02:54.640
And now they're trying to put her out there in the hopes that that will solve her sagging
00:02:59.520
She's even seeming to lose ground with some of the demographics that are generally very
00:03:09.020
You know, I'm always promised that that will shift, that this will be the year that that
00:03:15.900
But the one thing I do know is we can all kind of feel that ultimately things are heading
00:03:22.040
And so we could do yet another analysis of the polls and, you know, the states and that
00:03:26.920
But I wanted to go over a recent essay from Curtis Yarvin.
00:03:35.000
And Yarvin wrote about why it might be difficult for Trump and Elon.
00:03:40.080
And he's really treating this as kind of a package deal that you're getting Elon as almost as
00:03:49.700
He wrote an essay writing about why it might be difficult for them to enact the type of reforms
00:03:54.920
I think some of it makes some good points, but some of it is also off a little bit.
00:03:58.400
And so I wanted to go through this essay and break down this analysis.
00:04:02.060
But before we do all that, guys, let me tell you about today's sponsor.
00:04:05.900
Hey, guys, if you're looking to break into the world of fully remote jobs, I want you
00:04:11.580
There's a new job stacking program focused solely on how to land remote jobs, even if you
00:04:19.280
The new remote work mastery program is designed to get you to successfully implement the strategies
00:04:24.540
that allow you to leverage your current skill set, whatever that happens to be, into a fully
00:04:30.880
No need to learn any new complicated skills like coding or finance.
00:04:34.920
This is all centered around what you already have experience with.
00:04:39.060
There are a lot more remote job opportunities in today's marketplace that go beyond the typical
00:04:44.620
The job second team will walk you through the entire process of identifying suitable
00:04:49.600
remote positions that adjust to your experience, optimizing your resume and acing your job interview
00:04:55.800
so that you're set up for success in the world of remote work.
00:04:59.360
So if landing a remote job is something that you're interested in, go to jobstacking.com slash
00:05:04.440
master remote and schedule a call with Rolf today.
00:05:08.140
All right, guys, so let's just jump into the essay here.
00:05:12.620
I've gone a little bit ahead because Curtis Yarvin tends to do a lot of framing when it
00:05:18.960
He kind of rambles on about the etymology of Doge, you know, in Italy and these kind of
00:05:25.540
So I'm trying to jump in a little bit more to the meat of the essay here, but I will begin.
00:05:31.200
He says, what's neat about the idea that if that if the Republicans win, Trump will appoint
00:05:37.980
Elon to fix the government is like my vision of Elon taking Constantinople, perhaps with
00:05:42.960
some kind of airborne airship born FPV robot army.
00:05:49.400
So obviously we know that Donald Trump has talked a lot about bringing Elon Musk in, right?
00:06:00.320
He's appeared at rallies, big financial donations.
00:06:03.460
He has worked to get people to sign, you know, these pledges and vote for Trump and all this
00:06:10.160
And Trump has said that he wants to work Elon into this, you know, into this administration,
00:06:16.160
especially in an office of, you know, of department.
00:06:20.120
I'm trying to remember the entire acronym at this point, but it's the Doge as Elon created.
00:06:28.860
Elon is famous, of course, for having cut a large amount of the Twitter staff and still
00:06:32.400
having a product that continued to work properly.
00:06:36.660
In fact, in many ways better than it did previously.
00:06:40.140
And so, you know, looking to do the same thing here.
00:06:42.440
The man who can initiate like SpaceX and have it compete against NASA.
00:06:46.260
The guy who can bring, you know, Twitter kind of under control and cut its costs and its staff
00:06:56.200
In fact, my buddy over at the King Pilled podcast has even pointed out this idea of the
00:07:04.260
You can go back and take a look, Matt, if you want to.
00:07:08.260
My talk with him about the PayPal mafia and the idea that several of the CEOs in Silicon
00:07:13.120
Valley, including guys like Elon Musk, are interested in kind of installing Trump this
00:07:19.720
time as kind of an avatar for their ability to run a functional country.
00:07:23.860
They see how terrible the Democrats are and they want to install somebody who won't make too many
00:07:30.600
waves for them and ultimately allow them to do what they want.
00:07:34.060
You can judge yourself after that conversation if you feel like that's kind of the correct
00:07:40.980
But it is very interesting in light of kind of what Yarvin is saying here.
00:07:44.640
Yarvin seems to kind of acknowledge in many ways this arrangement that Trump will just kind
00:07:49.400
of be a figurehead for the reforms that Elon and some of these other Silicon Valley tech
00:07:57.680
Mark Andreessen and David Sachs and some of these other guys that are very famously supporting
00:08:04.240
And so I thought this essay was very interesting along those lines because he takes a look and
00:08:09.680
explores the possibility that this is what ultimately the arrangement will be and what
00:08:16.280
And if it's possible for Elon and kind of the other tech bros to step in and change
00:08:20.280
something, he makes a reference back to something he said earlier here.
00:08:24.900
This is the course of the, of course, the fantasy world of the 95ers, which was more, which
00:08:31.120
has more in common, I feel, with the fantasy world of the 68ers than it, than it thinks
00:08:38.340
This fantasy world is the world that most Americans vote in.
00:08:41.760
They seem to relatively relatively okay with it.
00:08:45.060
Even despite the experience of the last Trump administration, we all seem convinced on both
00:08:50.720
sides that electing Trump in 2024 means electing some kind of American Mussolini.
00:08:56.360
Now, obviously the left will just say this outright.
00:09:03.140
Actually, there's like an Atlantic article titled that.
00:09:06.380
But his point here is not that Trump is Mussolini, but that ultimately both sides are acting
00:09:12.680
as if Trump is going to have this massive amount of power, right?
00:09:15.460
Kamala Harris just did a press conference before we went live talking about how Donald Trump
00:09:22.240
is going to turn the military towards his will and use it to punish his enemies.
00:09:26.100
And he's going to be this incredible dictator who's going to deploy the entire might of the
00:09:32.060
And, you know, the left is obviously thinks of it this way, but the right is also acting
00:09:37.860
as if as soon as Trump is elected, he can just flip a switch and kind of put all of these
00:09:45.220
He has this incredible power that he can just wield because he was elected to the presidency
00:09:49.460
of the United States in the same fashion as a dictator like Mussolini would.
00:09:53.920
So the right doesn't see Trump as like the ascendant Mussolini.
00:09:58.800
But the right does treat him as if he has those kind of powers.
00:10:02.060
That kind of influence, that ability to go ahead and put it immediately into play.
00:10:06.640
And a lot of this article is going to be Trump kind of pointing out the fallacy of this
00:10:11.900
Republicans and Democrats increasingly agree that they're voting on fascism for or against.
00:10:18.840
It's the it is the most ridiculous and a historical thing in the world.
00:10:24.260
Nothing of the sort is happening or could possibly happen for better or for worse.
00:10:29.060
But in this ridiculous fantasy world, it makes perfect sense to elect Donald Trump and go
00:10:34.880
have him put Elon Musk in charge of the U.S. government.
00:10:40.260
The question is not whether or not it will work.
00:10:42.760
The question is when it doesn't work, what will happen?
00:10:45.640
Or maybe when it doesn't work, then what will Elon do?
00:10:49.220
Perhaps this is the point where options like Constantinople start to open up.
00:10:57.120
Of course, it's kind of puzzling because you think he knew these things already, especially
00:11:01.320
with respect to the state, Oregon, that does kind of basically the same thing as him, NASA.
00:11:06.920
So basically he's saying, look, everyone is acting as if the minute Trump gets elected,
00:11:11.600
he's going to have this incredible top down power to reorganize the government simply because
00:11:17.700
And he'll put Elon Musk in place and Elon Musk, because he's so competent and has the
00:11:21.980
ability to operate these organizations that he will just kind of step into that role and
00:11:28.460
Now, it's funny because this is more or less what Yarvin has been advocating for for a long
00:11:37.380
He wanted a CEO king, someone who had this level of power and could make these kind of
00:11:45.580
You put Trump into place and then you get Elon Musk.
00:11:50.500
So you don't directly elect Musk because you can't elect Musk.
00:11:58.160
But you will basically be getting him put into the place as a CEO dictator in charge of
00:12:05.540
reforming all of these issues, which, by the way, is what the original type of dictator
00:12:13.680
You know, the dictator in Rome was assigned for a certain set of months, usually six months
00:12:19.040
to solve a particular problem, often warfare, but sometimes something else.
00:12:22.860
And if you want to read Carl Schmitt's, you know, exploration of the concept of a dictator,
00:12:28.120
he goes on to outline how kind of commissarial dictatorships are actually rather normal throughout
00:12:36.440
And it's very common for, like, say, a king to place a momentary dictator and place over
00:12:41.700
a specific issue and have them resolve that issue inside the king's government.
00:12:45.900
And so in that way, you could kind of see it that way.
00:12:52.040
He's the formal leader of the United States in the sense of the process.
00:12:55.380
But then you have Musk come in and he's specifically assigned a dictatorial power over, you know,
00:13:03.780
That in many ways lines up with Yarvin's own idea of the way that the United States
00:13:11.320
But Yarvin's fear really in this essay, I think, is that Musk and Trump don't recognize
00:13:16.920
the necessity of that kind of power and that they will attempt to run this as if a normal
00:13:22.280
election has taken place and a normal shift in power has taken place.
00:13:26.780
And when they apply that stuff, then they're going to find that it doesn't work.
00:13:30.320
And his question, as he points out here, is what does that mean for Elon?
00:13:34.160
Like if Elon recognizes that he needs something, a vehicle like Trump to get him into power
00:13:39.840
so that he can then correct the government so that he can then go on and do the things
00:13:48.960
He goes through the normal government processes, treats it as a normal government agency or
00:13:58.580
But let's let's go back to the essay here because he's going to make some points using
00:14:05.320
Surely, if Elon can fix Washington, he'd start by fixing NASA.
00:14:12.000
Many aspects of the governance of America are every bit as important as SpaceX, yet have no
00:14:21.060
Moreover, if the IQ of the federal employees were calculated agency by agency, surely NASA
00:14:28.500
It's always easier to work with smart people, especially for Elon, who doesn't have much
00:14:36.160
So he's saying, basically, let's just turn this into a microcosm.
00:14:39.320
We could talk about why it might be difficult to reform the entire government, but let's
00:14:43.220
just look at something Elon already does and already does well and boil the whole experiment
00:14:50.040
How if Elon is already successfully in charge of SpaceX, why how would he just properly
00:14:57.600
If he already knows how to run a successful space agency, which is already launching rockets
00:15:02.640
better than than NASA, surely he could just reform NASA and the people at NASA are smarter.
00:15:07.920
They're not like the kind of the dregs that have been brought in by the Democratic Party
00:15:11.480
to operate your average government bureaucracy.
00:15:13.840
So if he can fix this bureaucracy with smart people, then perhaps there that that will give
00:15:19.260
him a plan for fixing kind of a larger set of the government apparatus.
00:15:26.260
Why not have Elon wet his teeth on the relatively easy problem of NASA, maybe by having Trump
00:15:34.660
Once he has made NASA work as well as SpaceX, he'll start to take on the rest of DC.
00:15:39.740
Sure, I think this would be an excellent way to start.
00:15:41.760
So, yeah, you just put Elon in charge of this one agency to give you an idea of what it
00:15:46.160
would look like to actually reform a government agency.
00:15:48.660
And once he's conquered this bureaucracy, you can widen the process out.
00:15:52.260
Of course, what would what he would find is that NASA administrator that the NASA administrator
00:16:02.440
He doesn't have one one thousandth of the power to fix NASA.
00:16:05.480
He's not at all in charge of NASA the way that a CEO would be in charge of NASA.
00:16:10.260
That is given twenty five billion dollars a year and told to explore space without it.
00:16:17.660
So he's saying the first important thing to recognize is that you could put a Elon in the
00:16:23.700
role of the mass NASA administrator and give him the powers of the NASA administrator.
00:16:29.000
But that would not actually give him the tools he needs to fix NASA because NASA is specifically
00:16:34.160
structured in a way that is fundamentally different from a CEO.
00:16:38.040
And so if he attempted to use the same powers, he would find that he didn't have them.
00:16:42.300
If he tried to exercise the same level of control, he would find that it didn't actually work.
00:16:48.580
He is purely he is a purely reactive, even decorative fixture who is sometimes given decisions to
00:16:57.880
In fact, he is more of a judge than an executive.
00:17:01.040
Yes, some of these judgments are real and do matter.
00:17:05.540
If Elon made all these decisions correctly for a thousand years, however, he would not even come
00:17:16.460
So what he's saying here is that the organization does not work in the way that we understand it.
00:17:23.820
I will disagree with Yervin here later on, but I think this is an important point.
00:17:28.720
A lot of the time we look at power and we say there is one way power works.
00:17:34.260
And we think of a king or a dictator, as he was pointing out earlier, and we say this is how power
00:17:46.320
And so any reform would happen under this type of setup.
00:17:50.200
But Yervin is saying you need to understand that the structure of the organization is critical.
00:17:55.420
And if the structure of the organization is not monarchical or is not top down in the CEO style,
00:18:05.320
A lot of people will say, well, why do they keep putting guys like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in power?
00:18:10.180
Why don't they just put someone competent who could kind of rule the United States like a Democrat,
00:18:16.480
And the answer is they can't do that because the structure they've created is an oligarchy,
00:18:24.060
And that form of power prevents the application of monarchical rule.
00:18:29.720
Even if you had someone capable of it, you couldn't actually implement it because of the
00:18:37.300
And so what you need is not just the replacement of one figure inside an oligarchical structure.
00:18:42.540
No one person is critical to an oligarchic structure because no one wields that type of power.
00:18:48.120
And so you can't imagine a scenario in which power flows the same way it would in a dictatorship
00:18:56.160
And he's pointing, he's basically saying the same thing here, right?
00:18:58.480
Like Elon Musk could not act as a CEO, even if he was placed as a CEO in the role of the head of NASA,
00:19:05.440
because NASA is fundamentally not designed to function the way that a corporation actually functions.
00:19:12.940
If he attempted to use those powers, if he attempted to use those strategies,
00:19:16.300
the form of the organization would deny him that type of power,
00:19:20.420
even though he is that kind of leader and has that level of ability, right?
00:19:25.180
That's what he's trying to, the nuance there that he's trying to highlight.
00:19:31.160
As an executive with the authority of a CEO, Elon Musk would look at NASA and see the simple truth about it.
00:19:41.960
Or rather, there is one way to fix it, liquidate it, and hire some of the employees in a new organization,
00:19:51.660
But so would anything Musk or any other NASA administrator would need to do to fix NASA.
00:20:06.160
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:20:16.820
Fast free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:20:31.340
Wi-Fi available to airplane members on a quick flight.
00:20:35.860
You cannot use the powers of the CEO or dictator or, you know, whatever to actually change NASA
00:20:43.980
because the bureaucratic nature of the organization, the form of power, prevents it.
00:20:47.980
So the only thing to do is to scrap it and start again.
00:20:50.660
But trying to scrap it and start again would literally be illegal.
00:20:54.880
It would violate the law because of the way that we have structured our government.
00:20:59.040
And because of the way we have structured our power.
00:21:01.400
In the original constitution, the president did have this type of power, but we have rearranged
00:21:07.780
the constitution over time to basically stop this type of power from being utilized.
00:21:14.080
So even though that type of power would be constitutional in its original meaning, there would be nothing illegal or immoral or out of character with the American form of government to have a vigorous executive exercise control over the executive branch.
00:21:28.780
While that's true historically, practically today, the way that the law is written and the way that the government is actually structured, not just the way it's structured in the constitution somewhere, but the way it really works, this is functionally illegal.
00:21:43.180
And that's why, and I've said this several times, if Donald Trump acts like a real president, like just acts as a president in the constitution, not violating any of the parts of article two, even if he did, he would be seen as a dictator.
00:22:00.280
He would be accused of breaking the law because he would functionally have to break the way that the United States government works now, as we understand it, in order to make it the work the way it was supposed to.
00:22:11.920
And so even without violating any constitutional principles, Donald Trump would effectively be breaking the law and looking like a dictator just by acting as a real president.
00:22:20.980
And Yarvin is basically making the same point here about Elon trying to reform things, right?
00:22:25.080
By actually acting as a CEO and a real person in charge of the organization, he would be functionally breaking the law as we understand it now, and he seems unwilling to do that as of now.
00:22:37.520
Now, the interesting thing, as he pointed out early in the essay, is maybe Elon will gain that courage, right?
00:22:43.100
Maybe Elon will see this failure and eventually gain that courage.
00:22:46.580
But if he's following the rules as we understand them right now, he would not be able to properly do what is necessary to reform an organization like NASA.
00:23:01.760
And if Elon Musk insists on breaking the law, we can treat him like any other criminal immigrant.
00:23:07.400
Let's see if South Africa can catch a rocket with toothpicks.
00:23:11.440
The real power over NASA is, of course, the Hill, which micromanages its spending on everything.
00:23:21.860
The relationship between the Hill staff, the lobbyists who surround them, and the agency itself is the real structure of power.
00:23:29.040
And again, this is the heart of the Yarvin essay.
00:23:36.040
But I do think he is right to encourage people to understand the real form of power in these organizations.
00:23:42.080
Even if you do think that Elon can change this, and I do.
00:23:46.140
I do think that he is wrong and Elon can change this.
00:23:49.880
But in order to do it, he must recognize many of the things that Yarvin is saying in this essay.
00:23:56.260
And so I think it's worth going through because while I think some of the conclusions are wrong,
00:24:00.840
I think that the argument being made about the form that must be understood and the way that power must be approached is really critical.
00:24:10.460
Because if you go in there thinking we can just use the process as it exists now, then you'll end up failing.
00:24:16.720
If we zoom out a little bit, we'll see the real power over Washington is Congress.
00:24:21.620
The fantasy world containing Elon and the voters, one hallmark of the 95ers is their belief totally unfounded,
00:24:28.540
so far as I can see, in the principle of Vox Populi, Vox Dei, which is the voice of the people is the voice of God.
00:24:35.780
Sadly, Elon, the hoi polloi, and the elites can both be out to lunch, is a fantasy primarily in one way.
00:24:45.940
So he's trying to explain that Elon, Trump, the Republican voting base, they still seem to kind of have this understanding
00:24:55.000
that they are in charge, that by like electing Trump, they will be in charge of things.
00:24:59.580
But Yarvin is trying to lay out actually know that the connection between the actual voting of the people,
00:25:04.760
the actual will of the people, and the things done in the name of people are vastly different.
00:25:09.420
And without understanding that, you'll fall back into a trap that many people, many Republicans,
00:25:14.600
many people on the right have fell into very often.
00:25:17.160
It indulges the false belief that the U.S. government has an executive branch,
00:25:22.320
that we elect a president, and we are electing the chief executive of the executive branch.
00:25:29.640
We have an administrative branch for whose policy, budget, and personnel, Congress is responsible, not the president.
00:25:38.360
And when we elect a president, we are electing a ceremonial figurehead, who has some residual powers, sure.
00:25:53.460
You don't really think Joe Biden is in charge, or Kamala Harris could be.
00:26:02.040
While we are supposed to have a president who's like a CEO, we actually don't.
00:26:06.040
And so here he's making the same point I made a little earlier, which is that, yes, according to the Article 2 of the Constitution,
00:26:17.460
He looks like someone who has complete dominion over the executive branch.
00:26:21.200
And so if you believe the Constitution operates as intended right now, up to this day,
00:26:27.340
if you actually believe the Constitution governs the United States,
00:26:30.500
then you believe in the system of reforms that Elon could impose, that Trump could impose.
00:26:38.360
The Constitution is not ruling the United States.
00:26:43.720
And that administrative branch is specifically designed to resist the impulses of any given person elected to the office.
00:26:54.380
You know, as he points out, Kamala Harris is way too dumb to actually operate the United States government.
00:26:59.900
And Donald Trump was elected with the understanding that he would be president.
00:27:03.420
But we quickly learned that actually, while Trump was capable of making some changes,
00:27:08.520
ultimately he was defeated by the swamp, by the machine in Washington,
00:27:13.260
because actually, while he was trying to use the powers in Article 2, like he's constitutionally elected,
00:27:20.480
the real power does something entirely different that's not listed in the Constitution.
00:27:25.200
And so if you act as if these things are real without understanding the underlying mechanisms of power,
00:27:34.480
Now, the thing that I want to make clear here, the thing that I disagree with is,
00:27:38.520
you ultimately do need to elect someone as if they can do this.
00:27:43.160
And he'll kind of allude to this here later on.
00:27:45.480
But you actually do need someone like Trump who does believe he has that power,
00:27:49.440
but also has the clear-eyed ability to see how power works now
00:27:52.880
and being willing to tear down anything between the way that power works now
00:27:59.140
the power he should have as a legitimately elected president of the United States.
00:28:03.920
But again, doing that will make Trump look like a dictator.
00:28:08.640
The way even the right understands the government now
00:28:15.040
and kind of these restrictions that the bureaucracy brings to the table.
00:28:19.900
Most Republican politicians totally believe that.
00:28:22.680
Some people on the base don't, but the people in the government do.
00:28:27.300
And so he would have to go up not against just the left,
00:28:31.520
but the right as well in an attempt to actually do the job he was elected to do.
00:28:35.560
And you have to go in clear-eyed with the confidence to say,
00:28:40.020
actually, these are my elected powers, and I am going to exercise them.
00:28:43.740
But also understanding what would stand between you and the exercise of that power, right?
00:28:47.620
Like, okay, I believe I was elected this office.
00:28:50.520
The people who voted for me believe I was elected this office.
00:28:53.120
I know that under Article 2, I have these powers.
00:28:56.080
But I also know that the entire system is not governed by the rightful document governing the United States.
00:29:01.320
And therefore, I have to be ready to tear down any barrier between the lawful powers
00:29:07.620
that should be given to the President of the United States
00:29:10.460
and the way the system actually works in the current day.
00:29:18.900
What we call an executive branch has become a creature of the legislative branch.
00:29:26.160
So like you said, you know, this is an unconstitutional development.
00:29:28.880
You know, the fact that this is how power works now is real politique.
00:29:32.760
But to be clear, if you're someone who stands on constitutional principle and says,
00:29:37.720
we can have a longer discussion on why that might be difficult.
00:29:40.400
But at the very least, we can agree that even a basic return to the Constitution
00:29:43.960
would require what would be seen as basically extra-legal action.
00:29:49.420
It means the Constitution is literally describing a different form of government.
00:29:57.240
Maybe it's what we could have again, but it is not what we have now.
00:30:01.020
The Constitution and Article 2 do not accurately describe the way
00:30:04.700
that the branches of government, especially the executive branch, work today.
00:30:11.600
you notice that Congress is ballasted against the waves of public opinion
00:30:20.040
The first is the incumbency rate, 95% in the House and 90% in the Senate.
00:30:24.040
The second is the seniority system in committee assignments.
00:30:27.720
This is a point I made in my book, The Total State.
00:30:33.180
We say that popular sovereignty is supposed to rule the United States.
00:30:38.380
But all you have to do is look at just the basic organs that are actually supposed to represent
00:30:45.140
And you recognize pretty quickly that actually the structure of those organs is to deny the public will
00:30:51.720
or shape, more importantly, the public will at every opportunity.
00:30:54.960
This is why unpopular policies, such as mass immigration, can continue despite persistent
00:31:05.220
The public's opinion does not matter, even if the powers that be can't change the public's mind,
00:31:11.540
though usually they can change the public's mind.
00:31:14.260
And this change, or this is called change, and it is the most sacred kind of democracy.
00:31:20.960
So like I've said a couple times, this is my original red pill moment, right?
00:31:25.140
My, like the thing that really red pilled me on why, and on why the government just doesn't
00:31:31.840
Eventually COVID really pushed me over the edge.
00:31:34.100
But the first thing that really triggered my, hey, what's up with this, is the immigration
00:31:38.820
When I started seeing the migrant crisis in Europe and the way that nobody wanted this, right?
00:31:44.480
And it was highly unpopular, and yet the leaders kept pushing it onto people.
00:31:50.300
I decided to take a look at the United States and say, hey, I feel like something similar
00:31:54.920
And I look at the public polling for decades, and the public polling is very clear.
00:32:00.060
It says that the American people do not want mass immigration at all.
00:32:06.760
Like even the left was against mass migration, not just illegal, but legal as well.
00:32:11.880
Everyone was against illegal immigration, like even the left of the majority by the vast
00:32:17.780
But also legal immigration was unpopular with the majority of the left until just about 10
00:32:23.280
And despite this fact, both the left and the right, the Republicans and the Democrats entirely
00:32:32.700
And so you can see that the incumbency rate in, in, uh, you know, uh, Congress and the Senate
00:32:37.960
really shows you, uh, why the public opinion never really shifted this, but also he makes
00:32:43.260
the really important point that ultimately for the Democrats and the Republicans, democracy
00:32:48.380
is about their ability to dictate public opinion.
00:32:52.940
So when the Democrats are talking about our sacred democracy and why elections might be a
00:32:57.340
danger to our sacred democracy, what they're trying to say is, uh, that we, democracy is
00:33:03.640
really our ability to manipulate, which you believe, right?
00:33:07.180
It's our ability to change what the public thinks and anything that Donald Trump or anyone
00:33:13.060
else would do that would hinder our ability to manipulate public opinion is a, uh, attack
00:33:19.340
on democracy because that's actually how we are controlled.
00:33:23.780
We are controlled through the manipulation of public opinion.
00:33:26.460
That's how the ruling class actually keeps its power along with financial manipulation and
00:33:31.220
other means, but primarily it is that ability to use the media and academia to control public
00:33:38.060
And so that is really what the ruling class is trying to defend.
00:33:43.160
Even in article one, the constitution is describing a different form of government, a parliament,
00:33:48.380
a parliament is a democratically elected debating society.
00:33:52.020
Congress is not in any way, a parliamentary body.
00:33:58.840
Most politicians elected to Congress are fundraisers, not statesmen, and leave all the actual legislative
00:34:04.720
work to their staffs who farm it out to lobbyists and activists.
00:34:08.580
The result of this work is a system of monstrous, omnibus bills that no one reads in toto and which
00:34:14.960
does not in any way resemble any historical sense of the word law.
00:34:19.820
In short, the real government we have has nothing at all to do with the constitution.
00:34:24.940
And that is, I think, the main point that needs to be sunken in this essay, right?
00:34:30.120
Even when it comes to Congress, even when it comes to the democratic representative form
00:34:34.700
of government or the branch of government that is supposed to represent at least that aspect
00:34:38.500
of our government in our mixed constitution, Congress doesn't do what it's supposed to do,
00:34:44.020
In theory, it would get together a bunch of people who represent the interests of different
00:34:49.580
And they would debate the different policies that may or may not be put into place by the
00:34:54.760
And then they would institute the things that they come to an agreement on as the best
00:34:58.700
outcomes for the United States in its entirety.
00:35:05.100
As Yarvin points out, there is zero debate in the Congress, right?
00:35:08.580
You know, GOP congressmen will get up and hold, you know, give speeches.
00:35:14.200
And, you know, senators will address the Senate and filibuster and hold, you know, these different
00:35:21.460
And they'll grandstand for the cameras and whatnot.
00:35:27.100
No one is sitting there listening to Mike Lee's speeches, you know, even if they're really
00:35:32.460
good or, you know, Rand Paul's speeches or something like that.
00:35:35.960
Thomas Massey, no one is listening to those and saying, oh, well, that man has changed
00:35:42.220
And now, because I am a statesman, I'm a leader, I am more interested in the good of my people
00:35:47.300
and the well-being of the country as a whole than I am, you know, in particular, you know,
00:35:52.760
foreign interests or influences or powers or ideological agendas.
00:35:57.480
I'm going to change my mind to vote and encourage others to vote because this argument was just
00:36:03.640
Like, no, like the marketplace of ideas has nothing to do with Congress.
00:36:07.780
Congress is a bureaucratic body that has a, at its core, just a working committee system.
00:36:13.940
And this is how laws actually get passed, right?
00:36:17.160
They have very little to do with the back and forth of guys who, let's be honest, make
00:36:22.460
all, you know, they're good at raising money and maybe doing Fox News hits, right?
00:36:26.220
Like, they are not people who are actually good at grasping the intricacies of policy,
00:36:32.320
debating those, and then putting them into practice.
00:36:34.940
That's just not the way that the government actually works, which means the two branches
00:36:39.220
of government we've already discussed, which are the legislative and the executive, neither
00:36:44.920
of them actually operate in any way that the Constitution says they do.
00:36:52.920
We are dealing with a very different system with a very different set of rules.
00:36:56.960
And if you try to step in, like many people do, like, you know, Republican politicians and
00:37:01.960
even Donald Trump did as they step into their offices.
00:37:04.520
If you step in and say, I'm going to change the world by using these duly elected powers of
00:37:08.860
my office, you do not understand what is happening.
00:37:11.840
You do not understand your role in all of this.
00:37:17.880
If you believe in constitutions, which I kind of don't, that is the right thing to do when
00:37:23.500
the Constitution, what is, or what is the right thing to do when the Constitution has
00:37:27.840
When it's, when it's plain letter, which indeed states that the federal government has a CEO
00:37:35.280
Most people would say the right thing to do is to correct the error and restore the Constitution.
00:37:39.260
But when all existing institutions are so blatantly unconstitutional, the right thing in this
00:37:45.120
sense means enforcing a fantasy on the real world.
00:37:48.700
Again, this is something I address in my book, The Total State.
00:37:51.980
Many people who just want to restore the Constitution want to do so by going through the exact same
00:37:59.880
But if the system the Constitution lays out is already broken and you can't use it to run
00:38:04.420
the country, then you probably can't use it to restore the rules the country is supposed
00:38:13.320
He talks about how all city, all city states or civilizations are founded on basically these
00:38:22.620
immoral acts that didn't then create a situation in which a moral society can be built.
00:38:28.760
So you have to do things outside the law, things that would be unsavory to kind of the average
00:38:34.140
person, the rules of the game as we understand them, to create a society in which we can actually
00:38:38.960
have rules of the game, to have a society in which we can actually be ruled by the law,
00:38:45.420
by the Constitution, by principles, by these things.
00:38:51.000
And then once it's in place, you can go about it.
00:38:54.100
And he says specifically in this passage, Machiavelli, that if at any point, and this
00:38:59.400
often happens in the life cycles of a civilization, that civilization starts falling off the rules
00:39:04.980
that have already been established, that the system that was governing it kind of falls
00:39:10.000
away like it has in the United States, then basically you have to return to that moment
00:39:14.100
of someone being willing to do what it takes to restore that.
00:39:17.260
Even if those things are outside of the law, outside of the actual way that the government
00:39:26.240
And so in a very real sense, Yarvin is addressing the same problem here and saying, look, if
00:39:30.320
the Constitution has fallen off and you can't actually govern under it anymore, then maybe
00:39:36.120
But even if you are a Constitution respecter who wants to put it into place and go back,
00:39:40.240
you must be willing to go and work outside the systems of the Constitution to reinstate the
00:39:44.960
systems of the Constitution, because as they are now, the system of the Constitution are
00:39:50.380
You can't follow those rules and get the result that you're looking for.
00:39:53.500
And again, this is something very frustrating to conservatives because they're like, no,
00:39:58.160
I just want to follow the rules the Constitution set out.
00:40:10.140
And if you follow that, if you operate in that fantasy world, then you will not only fail,
00:40:17.760
If this Constitution is not operating at all, if it has zero relationship to reality, why
00:40:24.740
What basis do we have for believing that it works well?
00:40:28.460
Perhaps it doesn't work at all, which is why it wasn't being operated.
00:40:33.240
And this is just the Spooner argument restated, right?
00:40:35.560
If the Constitution could have prevented the growth of government, if the Constitution could
00:40:40.500
have prevented the devolution of the moral character of our leaders, if the Constitution could have
00:40:46.320
protected us against where we are now, it would have.
00:40:50.220
And so if it didn't, whatever its merits, whatever the reasons it was put into place originally,
00:40:56.660
it's not the way in which we are operating now.
00:40:59.160
And it can't be the way we're going to operate in the future, or at least until we have restored
00:41:03.880
things to a state where you could have that Constitution be re-implemented.
00:41:09.040
We actually do know that Washington can be operated executively because in the lives of those now
00:41:18.340
FDR was a real CEO and ran the executive branch like an executive organization.
00:41:23.240
To really learn why this is not possible, learn from FDR.
00:41:28.860
If Elon Musk with the Doge wants to explain in authentic Washington terms how to make Washington
00:41:36.000
efficient, laugh out loud, he can look at the story of Harold Smith, who ran FDR's Bureau
00:41:44.680
The old Bureau of the Budget put the equivalent of McKinsey Consulting in every nook and cranny
00:41:49.320
of USG and had the power to just zero out anything Harold Smith thought was useless.
00:41:54.620
That's why they called him the general manager of the US government.
00:41:58.180
Of course, in those days, the president actually set the budget.
00:42:01.480
Now, there is no budget at all, really, just omnibus bills.
00:42:04.740
The president's budget is a stunt and a press release, and there is no general manager of
00:42:11.280
Yeah, I remember at some point, we actually passed budgets in the United States.
00:42:15.740
It's been a very long time, and even then they were kind of fake.
00:42:20.620
It's just a bunch of continuing resolutions over and over again and omnibus budget bills.
00:42:27.580
The fantasy Washington that exists in the landscape of politics looks convincing for a simple reason.
00:42:34.920
So he's not denying that at some point, this was actually how the government worked.
00:42:38.720
This really was the way the American government worked.
00:42:41.440
It's not that the Constitution never worked, but it just hasn't worked this way in a long time.
00:42:46.220
The president used to be in charge of the government.
00:43:01.560
There is no way Donald Trump can just give Elon Musk the power of Harold Smith.
00:43:05.880
You might say that Elon Musk's plan is realistic because it is something Washington has already done.
00:43:14.200
But Washington in 1944 is not Washington in 2024, and there is no way to roll it back.
00:43:19.660
Washington is in Washington 1944, Manhattan Project.
00:43:28.620
I agree with Yarvin that you can't just roll it back, right?
00:43:34.140
You can't just say, oh, now we're going to do this thing, and it's going to be exactly the same way as it was before.
00:43:42.180
But I'm not so sure that you can't create a new version of this office.
00:43:45.460
Again, this kind of commissarial dictatorship, people are going to take that out of context, but I'm using it in its technical term.
00:43:52.060
You can put someone in charge of this aspect of the government and have them cut through the red tape as long as they understand what they are actually doing, as long as they really understand what should be going on.
00:44:07.300
If they go in saying, oh, well, I'll just use the powers of the government as I understand them now.
00:44:13.280
When someone tells me I'm breaking a rule, I'll back off and find another way forward.
00:44:17.240
If you go in with that mindset, you're going to lose.
00:44:21.300
You have to go in the mindset of this is what I was elected to do.
00:44:26.800
And I don't care what the organization is designed to do.
00:44:31.880
I don't care what laws stand between me and my constitutional powers.
00:44:37.160
And any law that is keeping me from exercising those constitutional powers is, by definition, unconstitutional.
00:44:46.080
So, therefore, I need to be ready to go in and stop pretending that the government works the way the Constitution says, and instead say, I'm here to restore the way the Constitution says.
00:44:56.200
The tragedy of Trump is that he is not there to break this kayfabe.
00:45:07.520
He is not there to tell you his job is not real.
00:45:10.360
He is there to make it real, which, since it cannot be done without breaking the law, which he has no intention of doing, it will not happen.
00:45:18.280
He will, therefore, choose the second best option, and that is to do his best to pretend it is real and say what you want about Donald Trump.
00:45:27.340
But no one has ever been better at acting as if.
00:45:32.020
So, he's saying, look, I don't think Donald Trump can do this.
00:45:36.600
Even if he goes in there and tries to implement this, ultimately, he's not willing to tell the truth about the state of the U.S. government.
00:45:47.360
He's not going to come to the American people and say, look, I know you elected me as president, but Washington is fake.
00:45:56.380
The government is controlled by these bureaucrats.
00:46:03.420
I need a power that you have not given to a president before because even the powers of the president as they should exist cannot fix this problem.
00:46:13.640
He's going to stay within the bounds of the system.
00:46:15.220
He's going to continue the myth that the Constitution, as it is now, is the thing actually governing.
00:46:21.180
And so, therefore, all he's going to do is fake it.
00:46:23.320
Because if he had to do the real thing, he would have to speak truth that he's not willing to speak.
00:46:28.340
And he'd have to take steps he's not willing to take.
00:46:31.960
Moreover, this analysis severely understates the dimensions of the problem.
00:46:37.560
It's not just that it's impossible to fix NASA or any other agency.
00:46:42.120
At least any agency less prosaic than, say, the Coast Guard.
00:46:45.480
The Coast Guard could probably use a full reorganization.
00:46:50.560
It's not just that these agencies are inefficiently administered.
00:46:58.920
What would the U.S. in 2024 actually be doing about its international relations?
00:47:04.540
We have many assumptions about this question, which seem to have last been fully reconsidered in 1945, if not 1919.
00:47:12.860
So he's saying, look, we've got this post-war consensus.
00:47:17.100
And we've been operating on autopilot ever since.
00:47:23.020
And no one is willing to question the underlying structures of power that would be necessary to change any of this.
00:47:29.200
And so even if we did have full control of these agencies, which he doesn't believe that we're going to get,
00:47:33.200
then we wouldn't be able to change these things because we're not even willing to reconsider the fundamental conceptions that underlie something like the post-war consensus.
00:47:46.100
What Elon will learn, I hope, is that the question of how to manage NASA and the question of how to govern the United States can only be answered from first principles.
00:47:56.560
It is not even possible to restore the Constitution.
00:48:00.960
It is a dead letter, and it has been our whole lives.
00:48:05.100
And until we realize this, nothing at all can be done.
00:48:11.840
So, pretty bold assertion, but I think pretty fair assertion, which is that we have never lived on a constitutional republic in our lifetime.
00:48:19.980
There was a country called the United States at one point that was a constitutionally governed republic.
00:48:30.080
And it's not just going back to, like, when most conservatives are like, oh, man, we stopped following the Constitution in, like, 2010 or something.
00:48:44.660
And we have simply not had a constitutionally governed republic since that point.
00:48:51.960
We have to strip it all down to the brass tacks and say, okay, how do we actually govern this system?
00:48:58.000
If we can't govern it with the Constitution, how do we govern it?
00:49:01.120
And again, he doesn't address this here, but there's a larger conversation of whether we are even people who can be governed by the Constitution.
00:49:10.900
Because the founding fathers themselves recognized that the Constitution was for a specific type of people, a specific people with a way of being, a religious understanding, a community, a history, a shared tradition that we simply do not have at this moment.
00:49:26.280
Now, we should probably move back towards that tradition.
00:49:28.720
But until then, can we even be governed by the Constitution?
00:49:34.420
These are all really important questions that I think we need to consider.
00:49:54.260
But maybe the real Project 2025 is Project 2029.
00:50:02.000
But, so, at the end here, this is my other problem with Yorvin's assertion.
00:50:09.580
He asserts that Elon doesn't understand the problem.
00:50:15.180
You know, yes, like, Elon and Trump are using the current rhetoric, right?
00:50:21.320
But I don't think Elon is stupid, as he points out here.
00:50:23.740
And I think Elon does realize that perhaps many of these organizations are fundamentally flawed and that they cannot be recovered, that they cannot be repaired.
00:50:34.520
And so while you do have to go through the motions of saying, oh, well, okay, here's the president.
00:50:38.760
We're appointing this guy in this department and he's going to have these powers.
00:50:42.880
I'm not sure that Elon doesn't recognize that part of those powers have to be dismantling these organizations.
00:50:50.040
You obviously should just get something like NASA and replace it.
00:50:53.740
Many of these organizations are openly hostile to the American people.
00:50:57.760
They are willing to destroy conservatives, the GOP.
00:51:02.560
This is the truth about many of the organizations in the American government.
00:51:06.640
They have to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up with people who are loyal and people who care about the United States and people who will actually govern and operate organizations in the interest of the American people.
00:51:21.580
Well, I'm not sure that Elon doesn't know that.
00:51:23.600
Now, maybe, maybe this, you know, we could go another, we could go 4D chess, right?
00:51:36.900
And he's saying this specifically, hoping that it reaches Elon's ear, right?
00:51:41.820
Hoping that Elon hears this and says, oh, I need to step up.
00:51:48.960
Maybe this piece is for Elon in like the sense that the prince was, you know, for a specific ruler.
00:51:56.140
Maybe that's why he's writing this is ultimately he wants Elon to take this understanding and he's trying to reinforce this.
00:52:05.380
My point is, as it's written here, I'm not sure he's correct about Elon and the way he would approach this.
00:52:10.160
So that's kind of what I wanted to read through.
00:52:13.580
Like I said, things feel like they're heading in Trump's direction.
00:52:21.120
I'll be anchoring one of the desks during the whole thing.
00:52:24.140
But ultimately, I want to focus beyond the election because we can sit here and be like, ah, the campaign commercials and whatever.
00:52:32.140
I don't, I don't think that's interesting content of, you know, for me to do the ninth time over.
00:52:36.280
There are people who are much better at doing it and God bless them.
00:52:39.580
But I wanted to look at this because I do think it's interesting to look at what would actually happen if Trump was in power.
00:52:51.300
Elon and Trump really do come in with the fire to change things.
00:52:59.840
What do they need to realize about the true nature of power in the United States government and how it can be influenced?
00:53:04.920
I think those are all things that are at least pointed to in this essay.
00:53:08.540
And so I think it's valuable in, in that way, even if I don't agree with all of its assertions.
00:53:14.280
All right, guys, let's head over to the questions of the people here.
00:53:27.280
Beating me to the punch on the Yarvin live reading.
00:53:29.660
Yeah, I mean, I feel like this really does align very directly with the, you know, the theory of kind of the Silicon Valley tech bro alliance trying to use Trump to break in.
00:53:43.320
Again, maybe it's all speculation, but the fact that these developments have occurred and, you know, that Yarvin is giving advice directly to Elon as if Elon is actually being elected.
00:53:53.400
They do speak to a particular, you know, possible political reality that Kingpill has laid out on this show and his own.
00:54:05.000
Robert Weinsfeld said, do we want Trump to fix immigration, inflation, et cetera?
00:54:12.780
It's good enough to just drive our enemies to double their Xanax prescriptions.
00:54:22.280
Trump is going to drive people crazy no matter what.
00:54:26.220
Will he, you know, actually implement some of the things he promised last time or hopefully even more because more has become necessary?
00:54:38.000
So you can throw your support behind someone, but ultimately, will they deliver?
00:54:45.360
And it's not like Trump has the most amazing track record.
00:54:47.660
But as you point out, he does drive people crazy.
00:54:51.440
And in a way, and I've said this several times, the response the left will have to Trump's election is far more important than the election itself.
00:54:59.200
If Trump is reelected, the way that the left tries to push and shape the American public, the way that they are probably willing to turn to violence, they are turned to these things.
00:55:10.940
I'm not hoping for any of that, but I am predicting it.
00:55:15.280
And if that happens, a lot more things go on the table, right?
00:55:18.880
All of a sudden, people are far more willing to say, just fix it, right?
00:55:28.400
I don't want the left to destroy my family, my kids.
00:55:30.960
I don't want my nation flooded with illegal immigrants.
00:55:35.340
And when you get that kind of mandate, now we're talking about real power.
00:55:40.180
So will Trump be the person who actually makes the change happen?
00:55:45.120
Or will he be the catalyst that brings about the guy who does make things happen?
00:55:51.540
But it does put us in a position where we are on that track for better or for worse.
00:56:03.140
If America is not a democracy, then why is my Colorado ballot so freaking long?
00:56:08.400
Bonus points for using the term commissarial dictatorship.
00:56:12.820
No, you get the ballot that is the size of a home mortgage or like a Best Buy receipt, right?
00:56:28.540
Guys, if you haven't picked up the book, of course, you can still do that.
00:56:31.960
I'm making, I'm working on, we're supposed to be getting the audio book out soon.
00:56:42.920
You know, we had to pre-record that one because of his schedule and my schedule.
00:56:50.560
So thank you, everybody, for if you're reading the book or enjoying the show.
00:56:58.160
All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.
00:57:04.520
If it's your first time on this channel, of course, you can go ahead and subscribe.
00:57:09.060
Make sure you click the bell, notifications, all that stuff, so you can actually catch the streams when they go live.
00:57:14.640
If you would like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you can do so by subscribing to The Oren McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform.
00:57:25.680
The audience, whatever you're seeing on YouTube is like double or triple with the podcast and all the other outlets.
00:57:38.280
And, of course, if you want to catch these shows on Rumble and Odyssey, I also upload over there.
00:57:46.220
You can catch anything that ends up being censored or anything like that.