The Auron MacIntyre Show - Curtis Yarvin on Why Elon Can't Fix Washington ｜ 10⧸23⧸24

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00:00:30.180 Hey guys, how's it going?

00:00:31.900 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.740 I am Oren McIntyre.

00:00:35.860 And before we get started today, I just want to talk to you a little bit about election

00:00:39.740 night.

00:00:40.280 Obviously, every year we hear, this is the most important election of your lifetime.

00:00:45.340 You have to care.

00:00:46.200 You have to be involved.

00:00:47.280 It's an existential crisis.

00:00:49.580 And I definitely don't want to be that guy.

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.

00:01:17.380 You're going to want to know what's happening.

00:01:18.740 Are there shenanigans going on?

00:01:20.720 Are polling places being properly washed?

00:01:23.320 Are votes being reported?

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

00:01:31.460 2024 presidential election.

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

00:01:52.360 Oren.

00:01:53.440 That's blazeelection.com slash Oren.

00:01:56.580 And you can get $40 off your subscription to Blaze so that you can be joining us for that

00:02:01.880 election night coverage.

00:02:03.640 All right, guys.

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.

00:02:16.180 Now, the polls could be all over the place.

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

00:02:31.520 great.

00:02:31.800 However, you can feel the momentum.

00:02:34.620 You can feel the momentum.

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.

00:02:43.640 Kamala Harris is just an absolute disaster. 0.93

00:02:46.380 You can see the desperation.

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

00:02:59.040 poll numbers.

00:02:59.520 She's even seeming to lose ground with some of the demographics that are generally very

00:03:04.700 hardcore Democratic voters like black men. 0.68

00:03:07.680 Now, ultimately, I don't know.

00:03:09.020 You know, I'm always promised that that will shift, that this will be the year that that

00:03:12.720 kind of demographic monolith breaks.

00:03:14.620 I don't know if that's going to be the case.

00:03:15.900 But the one thing I do know is we can all kind of feel that ultimately things are heading

00:03:20.320 in Trump's direction.

00:03:22.040 And so we could do yet another analysis of the polls and, you know, the states and that

00:03:26.520 kind of thing.

00:03:26.920 But I wanted to go over a recent essay from Curtis Yarvin.

00:03:31.260 We haven't looked at his writings in a while.

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

00:03:46.080 another vice president for Donald Trump.

00:03:49.700 He wrote an essay writing about why it might be difficult for them to enact the type of reforms

00:03:54.300 that they want to.

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.

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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

00:05:18.080 comes to these essays.

00:05:18.960 He kind of rambles on about the etymology of Doge, you know, in Italy and these kind of

00:05:24.880 things.

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.

00:05:46.860 It exists entirely in a fantasy world.

00:05:49.400 So obviously we know that Donald Trump has talked a lot about bringing Elon Musk in, right?

00:05:55.060 He's obviously a huge Trump supporter.

00:05:58.540 He's made big commitments to Trump.

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

00:06:09.520 stuff.

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.

00:06:25.040 It's like the Department of Government Waste.

00:06:27.380 It's cutting the government waste.

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

00:06:52.620 and still have a good product.

00:06:54.300 He's looking to do the same thing here.

00:06:56.200 In fact, my buddy over at the King Pilled podcast has even pointed out this idea of the

00:07:03.300 PayPal mafia.

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

00:07:38.360 analysis.

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

00:07:55.100 bros want to kind of put into place here.

00:07:57.680 Mark Andreessen and David Sachs and some of these other guys that are very famously supporting

00:08:03.340 Trump at this point.

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

00:08:15.180 that would look like.

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

00:08:37.440 it does.

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.

00:08:59.240 Oh, Trump is Hitler. 0.97

00:09:00.160 Trump is Mussolini. 1.00

00:09:01.220 Trump is Stalin. 0.97

00:09:02.000 All rolled into one.

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

00:09:30.700 United States against this.

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

00:09:42.520 policies into place.

00:09:43.760 He can make all these reforms.

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.

00:09:57.320 The left definitely does.

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

00:10:10.540 understanding.

00:10:11.900 Republicans and Democrats increasingly agree that they're voting on fascism for or against.

00:10:17.040 Well, I kind of love it in a way. 0.96

00:10:18.840 It's the it is the most ridiculous and a historical thing in the world. 0.96

00:10:22.520 It is a complete total fantasy. 0.95

00:10:24.260 Nothing of the sort is happening or could possibly happen for better or for worse. 0.86

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. 0.69

00:10:38.280 Sure.

00:10:38.540 I love it.

00:10:39.120 Let's do it.

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.

00:10:53.880 Let's look at what we what he would learn.

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

00:11:16.760 he won an election.

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

00:11:26.620 he will reform all this stuff.

00:11:28.460 Now, it's funny because this is more or less what Yarvin has been advocating for for a long

00:11:34.500 time.

00:11:35.280 He wanted an elected CEO.

00:11:37.380 He wanted a CEO king, someone who had this level of power and could make these kind of

00:11:42.180 changes.

00:11:42.600 And ultimately, you know, it's by proxy.

00:11:45.580 You put Trump into place and then you get Elon Musk.

00:11:49.940 Right.

00:11:50.500 So you don't directly elect Musk because you can't elect Musk.

00:11:53.880 He wasn't born in the United States.

00:11:56.420 He doesn't qualify under the Constitution.

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

00:12:10.560 actually was supposed to do.

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

00:12:34.300 much of Western history.

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.

00:12:47.800 Right.

00:12:47.980 You have Trump.

00:12:49.200 He's he's kind of the leader.

00:12:50.840 He's the elected leader.

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,

00:13:00.740 this idea of government reform.

00:13:02.380 And that will kind of solve it.

00:13:03.780 That in many ways lines up with Yarvin's own idea of the way that the United States

00:13:09.540 government will be run.

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?

00:13:33.900 Right.

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

00:13:43.740 he actually wants to do as a CEO.

00:13:46.560 And then that fails.

00:13:48.560 Right.

00:13:48.960 He goes through the normal government processes, treats it as a normal government agency or

00:13:53.860 office, and that fails. 0.92

00:13:55.480 Then what does Elon do?

00:13:56.900 Right.

00:13:57.100 That's that's where things get interesting.

00:13:58.580 But let's let's go back to the essay here because he's going to make some points using

00:14:02.380 NASA and SpaceX.

00:14:05.320 Surely, if Elon can fix Washington, he'd start by fixing NASA.

00:14:09.220 Suppose he wanted to turn NASA into SpaceX.

00:14:12.000 Many aspects of the governance of America are every bit as important as SpaceX, yet have no

00:14:17.560 SpaceX, only a NASA, only a DMV.

00:14:21.060 Moreover, if the IQ of the federal employees were calculated agency by agency, surely NASA

00:14:26.540 would be well near the top.

00:14:28.500 It's always easier to work with smart people, especially for Elon, who doesn't have much

00:14:33.080 experience managing the DMV, DMV ladies.

00:14:36.160 So he's saying, basically, let's just turn this into a microcosm.

00:14:39.220 Right.

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

00:14:48.920 down to this.

00:14:50.040 How if Elon is already successfully in charge of SpaceX, why how would he just properly

00:14:56.280 reform NASA?

00:14:57.360 Right.

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 1.00

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.

00:15:25.440 Why not?

00:15:26.260 Why not have Elon wet his teeth on the relatively easy problem of NASA, maybe by having Trump

00:15:32.340 appoint him as the NASA administrator?

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

00:15:59.120 does not actually have the power to fix NASA.

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.

00:16:15.920 So he's saying or with 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.

00:16:46.840 Back to the essay here.

00:16:48.580 He is purely he is a purely reactive, even decorative fixture who is sometimes given decisions to

00:16:55.840 make as a decision maker.

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

00:17:10.040 close to fixing NASA.

00:17:12.100 Reactive management is not management.

00:17:14.400 It's not even power.

00:17:16.460 So what he's saying here is that the organization does not work in the way that we understand it.

00:17:21.780 And this, I think, is an important point.

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

00:17:39.600 works all the time.

00:17:40.900 That one guy tells other people what to do.

00:17:43.560 That is the form that power takes.

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,

00:18:01.780 then the form of power cannot be that, right?

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,

00:18:15.000 like a dictator on the left, right?

00:18:16.480 And the answer is they can't do that because the structure they've created is an oligarchy,

00:18:22.160 right?

00:18:22.380 It is a theocratic 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

00:18:34.740 way the entire system is structured.

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

00:18:53.160 or monarchy when you have an oligarchy.

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.

00:19:29.200 Back to our essay here.

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.

00:19:39.900 There's obviously no way to fix 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,

00:19:47.100 maybe even SpaceX.

00:19:48.820 Of course, this would be literally illegal.

00:19:51.660 But so would anything Musk or any other NASA administrator would need to do to fix NASA.

00:19:58.040 NASA is not managed.

00:19:59.980 So this is critical.

00:20:01.320 And again, I think this is important.

00:20:02.960 This is a legitimate part of Yarvin's essay.

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00:20:34.840 CRCanada.com.

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.

00:21:00.920 Yes.

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.

00:21:58.780 He would be seen as a criminal.

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.

00:22:55.800 No one is in charge of NASA.

00:22:58.800 No, NASA is operated according to law.

00:23:01.760 And if Elon Musk insists on breaking the law, we can treat him like any other criminal immigrant. 1.00

00:23:07.400 Let's see if South Africa can catch a rocket with toothpicks.

00:23:10.860 That's pretty fun.

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.

00:23:31.880 You can call this one a doomer.

00:23:33.400 I get it.

00:23:34.280 Again, I'm going to disagree with him on here.

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.

00:23:45.200 Spoiler alert.

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.

00:25:27.420 Nothing could be further from the truth.

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.

00:25:48.020 But look at the rule, not the exception.

00:25:50.400 Over time, the exception will go away.

00:25:53.460 You don't really think Joe Biden is in charge, or Kamala Harris could be.

00:25:58.360 Come on, no one is in charge.

00:26:00.660 Not in that sense.

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,

00:26:14.300 a real president looks like a CEO.

00:26:16.100 He looks like a chief executive.

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.

00:26:36.720 But that's not what's happening.

00:26:38.360 The Constitution is not ruling the United States.

00:26:40.960 We don't have an executive branch.

00:26:42.560 We have an administrative branch.

00:26:43.720 And that administrative branch is specifically designed to resist the impulses of any given person elected to the office.

00:26:50.700 They're supposed to be ceremonial figureheads.

00:26:53.140 We can see this from Joe Biden. 0.99

00:26:54.380 You know, as he points out, Kamala Harris is way too dumb to actually operate the United States government. 1.00

00:26:59.900 And Donald Trump was elected with the understanding that he would be president. 0.97

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,

00:27:32.700 then you will make a mistake.

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

00:27:57.620 and the way it's supposed to work,

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.

00:28:07.400 That's all there is to it.

00:28:08.640 The way even the right understands the government now

00:28:11.500 is that Trump should be entirely ensconced

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,

00:28:29.960 as we saw in his first administration,

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.

00:29:15.360 Back to our article here.

00:29:18.900 What we call an executive branch has become a creature of the legislative branch.

00:29:22.820 And this is as unconstitutional as it gets.

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,

00:29:36.200 I just want to return to the Constitution,

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.

00:29:53.360 So the Constitution isn't what we have now.

00:29:56.160 It's what we had once.

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.

00:30:09.060 Moreover, if you believe in democracy,

00:30:11.600 you notice that Congress is ballasted against the waves of public opinion

00:30:16.300 by two very powerful support structures.

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.

00:30:31.200 You know, we call America democracy.

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

00:30:43.180 the popular will in the United States.

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

00:31:02.420 majority public opposition.

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

00:31:30.400 work the way that we were supposed to.

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

00:31:38.220 issue.

00:31:38.820 When I started seeing the migrant crisis in Europe and the way that nobody wanted this, right? 1.00

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

00:31:53.920 might be happening here.

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.

00:32:05.420 Like not even the left.

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

00:32:15.880 majority was against illegal immigration.

00:32:17.780 But also legal immigration was unpopular with the majority of the left until just about 10

00:32:22.540 years ago.

00:32:23.280 And despite this fact, both the left and the right, the Republicans and the Democrats entirely

00:32:28.580 ignored this and continued to push anyway.

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.

00:32:50.980 That's actually what they mean by democracy.

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 0.99

00:33:31.220 other means, but primarily it is that ability to use the media and academia to control public

00:33:37.680 opinion.

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.

00:33:55.580 It is a bureaucratic body, a committee system.

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.

00:34:23.500 It is an entirely different thing.

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,

00:34:43.340 right?

00:34:44.020 In theory, it would get together a bunch of people who represent the interests of different

00:34:48.600 regions of the country.

00:34:49.580 And they would debate the different policies that may or may not be put into place by the

00:34:53.960 government.

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.

00:35:03.200 But that is absolutely not what happens.

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

00:35:19.760 committee hearings and whatnot.

00:35:21.460 And they'll grandstand for the cameras and whatnot.

00:35:25.180 But no one cares.

00:35:26.240 No one's listening.

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

00:35:41.340 my mind.

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

00:36:03.080 so compelling.

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.

00:36:49.740 So we are not dealing with the Constitution.

00:36:51.400 We're not dealing with constitutional powers.

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.

00:37:16.420 Back to our essay here.

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

00:37:26.700 been broken?

00:37:27.840 When it's, when it's plain letter, which indeed states that the federal government has a CEO

00:37:32.580 who is president, no longer operates.

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

00:37:56.740 processes that the Constitution lays out.

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

00:38:09.420 to run under.

00:38:10.380 Machiavelli addresses this, actually.

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.

00:38:47.720 You have to set that up first.

00:38:49.440 Do whatever it takes to set that up.

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

00:39:25.020 is supposed to work.

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

00:39:34.780 you could put it back into place.

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

00:39:49.100 gone.

00:39:49.660 They don't work.

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.

00:40:00.720 There are rules.

00:40:01.440 They're written down.

00:40:02.380 That's the way the government works.

00:40:03.720 We follow them.

00:40:04.800 Boom.

00:40:05.600 We're right back to America being the best.

00:40:08.360 But Yarvin is saying no, actually.

00:40:10.140 And if you follow that, if you operate in that fantasy world, then you will not only fail,

00:40:15.040 you'll put yourself in extreme danger.

00:40:17.760 If this Constitution is not operating at all, if it has zero relationship to reality, why

00:40:22.900 should we try to operate it?

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.

00:41:08.040 It gets worse.

00:41:09.040 We actually do know that Washington can be operated executively because in the lives of those now

00:41:16.780 living, it was.

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

00:41:41.780 of the Budget, Ancestors Today's OMB.

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

00:42:10.000 the US government.

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.

00:42:18.440 But we don't even do that anymore, right?

00:42:20.620 It's just a bunch of continuing resolutions over and over again and omnibus budget bills.

00:42:25.420 We never actually hashed this out.

00:42:27.580 The fantasy Washington that exists in the landscape of politics looks convincing for a simple reason.

00:42:33.540 It used to be real.

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.

00:42:49.180 They used to be actual debates in Congress.

00:42:51.620 Your vote used to mean something.

00:42:54.940 And most important, entropy exists.

00:42:59.340 There is no way to roll time backward.

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.

00:43:24.340 Washington in 2024, the Department of Energy.

00:43:27.240 So here I'm not so sure.

00:43:28.620 I agree with Yarvin that you can't just roll it back, right?

00:43:32.000 It won't be exactly like it was last time.

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.

00:43:40.180 We're just going to take this power back.

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.

00:44:12.240 I'll follow the rules.

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.

00:44:20.120 It's not going to work, right?

00:44:21.300 You have to go in the mindset of this is what I was elected to do.

00:44:25.040 This is what the Constitution actually says.

00:44:26.800 And I don't care what the organization is designed to do.

00:44:30.400 I don't care what the restrictions are.

00:44:31.880 I don't care what laws stand between me and my constitutional powers.

00:44:35.360 Those are my constitutional powers.

00:44:37.160 And any law that is keeping me from exercising those constitutional powers is, by definition, unconstitutional.

00:44:43.500 It is a violation of the Constitution.

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.

00:45:34.720 I don't think he has the ability to 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.

00:45:45.020 So, he's going to keep the illusion going.

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.

00:45:53.460 The power of the presidency is fake.

00:45:56.380 The government is controlled by these bureaucrats.

00:45:58.740 They will not let me do anything.

00:46:00.420 And so, I need more power.

00:46:02.120 I need a different type of power.

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.

00:46:12.460 But he's not going to do that.

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.

00:46:30.760 Back to our essay here.

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.

00:46:48.300 But the Department of Energy state.

00:46:50.560 It's not just that these agencies are inefficiently administered.

00:46:54.560 They are.

00:46:55.040 But for many, even their mission is unclear.

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.

00:47:20.460 We live in the world that FDR made.

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.

00:47:44.060 Back to our essay here.

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.

00:47:59.800 There is no 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.

00:48:26.740 But it has not been around for a long time.

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.

00:48:38.660 No, this goes way back for a very long time.

00:48:41.920 I would say probably until the 1860s.

00:48:44.660 And we have simply not had a constitutionally governed republic since that point.

00:48:50.120 And we have to go back down.

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?

00:49:32.300 Should we gain the power to restore it?

00:49:34.420 These are all really important questions that I think we need to consider.

00:49:39.520 Back to the end of this essay.

00:49:41.380 Is it possible for us to realize this?

00:49:43.560 Well, Elon clearly has not realized it so far.

00:49:46.800 And most of us are not as smart as Elon.

00:49:49.640 So maybe the answer is no.

00:49:51.200 On the other hand, the world is changing.

00:49:53.240 It's not there yet.

00:49:54.260 But maybe the real Project 2025 is Project 2029.

00:49:59.580 Let's not get too high on our own hopium.

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.

00:50:12.300 But I'm not sure that's true.

00:50:15.180 You know, yes, like, Elon and Trump are using the current rhetoric, right? 0.98

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. 0.86

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.

00:50:48.280 You have to get the FBI.

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?

00:51:28.720 We were, we were on a 3D chess.

00:51:30.500 Maybe we can go to 4D chess.

00:51:32.060 Maybe Yarvin does know that, right? 0.94

00:51:33.520 Because Yarvin's not stupid either. 0.97

00:51:35.220 Maybe Yarvin does know that. 0.98

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.

00:51:45.880 I need to run things this way.

00:51:47.840 I need to take action.

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.

00:52:03.020 I don't know for sure.

00:52:04.040 That's all speculation.

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.

00:52:16.360 The momentum is behind him.

00:52:18.160 We'll still have to see what happens.

00:52:19.860 You can join us on election night.

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.

00:52:30.640 There's plenty of people doing that.

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.

00:52:39.000 Let them do it.

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.

00:52:48.060 What would it take?

00:52:49.000 He really does put Elon into this position.

00:52:51.300 Elon and Trump really do come in with the fire to change things.

00:52:55.080 How do they do that?

00:52:56.020 What does it look like?

00:52:56.840 What do they need to watch out for?

00:52:58.060 What pitfalls do they need to avoid?

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.

00:53:18.180 Kingpill.

00:53:22.660 Hey, there he is.

00:53:23.600 He says, my nose started itching suddenly.

00:53:25.700 Thanks for the shout out, my friend.

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.

00:53:52.140 Those are very interesting developments.

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?

00:54:08.900 Yes.

00:54:09.980 Do we think he will?

00:54:12.000 Unsure.

00:54:12.780 It's good enough to just drive our enemies to double their Xanax prescriptions.

00:54:16.980 Or do we need policy results?

00:54:19.140 Right.

00:54:19.400 So this is always the thing, right?

00:54:22.280 Trump is going to drive people crazy no matter what.

00:54:24.940 That's true.

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?

00:54:33.380 We don't know.

00:54:34.260 We just don't know.

00:54:34.940 And you never know with any politician, right?

00:54:36.940 That's just the case.

00:54:38.000 So you can throw your support behind someone, but ultimately, will they deliver?

00:54:41.880 Will they be the leader they promise to be?

00:54:44.280 Always difficult to know.

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.

00:55:08.480 That changes things rather drastically.

00:55:10.940 I'm not hoping for any of that, but I am predicting it.

00:55:13.620 I do think it's very possible.

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?

00:55:23.880 I just don't want the left to destroy my home.

00:55:26.800 I don't want the left to throw me in prison.

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. 1.00

00:55:33.580 Just fix it.

00:55:35.340 And when you get that kind of mandate, now we're talking about real power.

00:55:38.480 And maybe that does actually fix things.

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?

00:55:49.080 I don't know.

00:55:49.900 I don't think anyone really knows.

00:55:51.540 But it does put us in a position where we are on that track for better or for worse.

00:55:57.320 And I think ultimately that will be the case.

00:56:02.000 Tiny Stupid Demon says, 1.00

00:56:03.140 If America is not a democracy, then why is my Colorado ballot so freaking long? 1.00

00:56:08.400 Bonus points for using the term commissarial dictatorship.

00:56:11.280 Well, thank you.

00:56:11.680 I appreciate that.

00:56:12.420 Yeah.

00:56:12.820 No, you get the ballot that is the size of a home mortgage or like a Best Buy receipt, right?

00:56:18.000 Like this.

00:56:19.880 Let's see here.

00:56:21.480 Tiny Rick says,

00:56:22.720 Loved your stream with Dave.

00:56:23.880 Almost finished with the total state.

00:56:25.960 Great work.

00:56:26.400 Well, thank you very much.

00:56:27.180 I hope you enjoy the book.

00:56:28.540 Guys, if you haven't picked up the book, of course, you can still do that.

00:56:31.340 It's over on Amazon.

00:56:31.960 I'm making, I'm working on, we're supposed to be getting the audio book out soon.

00:56:36.660 I've been promised this several times.

00:56:38.280 Hopefully it actually happens this time.

00:56:40.680 But yeah, talking to Dave is always great.

00:56:42.920 You know, we had to pre-record that one because of his schedule and my schedule.

00:56:46.740 But I was glad people enjoyed that one.

00:56:49.120 People responded to it very well.

00:56:50.560 So thank you, everybody, for if you're reading the book or enjoying the show.

00:56:54.840 I really appreciate it.

00:56:55.980 Wouldn't be able to do this without you.

00:56:58.160 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

00:57:00.260 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

00:57:02.100 Thank you for those that submitted questions.

00:57:04.520 If it's your first time on this channel, of course, you can go ahead and subscribe.

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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.

00:57:22.740 By the way, podcast has grown significantly.

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.

00:57:31.340 So really appreciate that.

00:57:33.100 So many people are audio listeners.

00:57:35.260 Those numbers keep growing.

00:57:36.680 So really appreciate people doing that.

00:57:38.280 And, of course, if you want to catch these shows on Rumble and Odyssey, I also upload over there.

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00:57:50.640 All ends up over at Blaze TV as well.

00:57:53.380 Thank you, everybody, for watching.

00:57:54.800 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

00:57:57.320 I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 23, 2024

Curtis Yarvin on Why Elon Can't Fix Washington ｜ 10⧸23⧸24

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