The Auron MacIntyre Show - July 17, 2023


Nick Land on Power, Force, and Fiat Currency ｜ 7⧸17⧸23


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per minute

164.77328

Word count

10,506

Sentence count

678

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we re-visit Nick Land's political theory and look at how he and Curtis Yarvin came to understand the role of money in American politics. We re also joined by a live-stream of the Democratic National Convention from Tucker Carlson's live event in Iowa.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:00:31.420 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:32.980 I've got a great stream today that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:38.020 Coming in after the summit in Iowa over the weekend,
00:00:42.220 I know a number of you tuned into that.
00:00:44.720 Thank you very much, by the way.
00:00:45.820 Got a lot of very nice comments.
00:00:47.920 It was very interesting.
00:00:48.840 My first time kind of doing live commentary at an event like that.
00:00:53.300 So that was very interesting.
00:00:54.400 It was a very, very cool experience for sure.
00:00:57.480 Like I said, very nice that so many people were supportive.
00:01:00.680 Really appreciate that.
00:01:02.320 And of course, got in the flight really late the night before.
00:01:06.880 I don't know if you guys have done any air travel here recently, but it is terrible.
00:01:11.400 Everything is delayed like all the time.
00:01:13.780 So I had like eight or nine hours of delays on the way there.
00:01:16.840 So I had very little sleep.
00:01:18.620 I was very tired at the start of the event.
00:01:21.440 You could probably tell.
00:01:23.080 But it was fun overall.
00:01:25.160 Definitely a very cool experience.
00:01:26.940 And again, I really appreciate so many of you and your kind words.
00:01:31.240 That was very cool to be a part of.
00:01:33.440 And very interesting things that came out of that.
00:01:36.280 Tucker ran a very different event.
00:01:37.900 He was asking people in, you know, big questions in a one-on-one format that I thought was very different and much more informative than your average debate.
00:01:48.480 You know, normally these people get on stage.
00:01:50.240 We have maybe 30-second soundbites as everybody tries to interrupt each other and fight for time.
00:01:55.720 And it's just not very useful.
00:01:57.620 It doesn't really do anything for anybody.
00:01:59.720 But this was very different.
00:02:00.980 It was a one-on-one with Tucker, who obviously is somebody who's very on top of kind of where the party's at, where the issues are at, where the base is at.
00:02:10.100 He had a lot of tough questions for people.
00:02:12.920 A couple of campaigns exploded right there on stage in real time.
00:02:16.920 And so that was very different and I think much more informative.
00:02:21.120 I think a lot of people in the base appreciated that candidates were not getting a free pass and that they were actually having time to make.
00:02:27.320 But at the same time, having time to make their points.
00:02:29.640 You know, it wasn't a big gotcha session, but it also wasn't just a big hug fest.
00:02:35.920 We had a nice mix there.
00:02:38.100 And of course, the Blaze did a great job.
00:02:40.400 Everybody over there produced, they threw that thing together.
00:02:43.460 It was kind of outside the normal auspices of kind of the mainstream Fox News managed by something like CNN or somebody type of debate.
00:02:53.360 And so it was very nice to finally see, you know, a different format.
00:02:57.620 But I think I think it went pretty well.
00:03:00.040 But yeah, you had a few people like Mike Pence and Asa Hutchison.
00:03:03.280 They really just kind of kind of blew up there on stage.
00:03:05.640 So that was very different.
00:03:07.760 All right, guys.
00:03:08.460 So today we're going to go ahead and get into the work of Nick Land.
00:03:12.880 We're returning to Nick Land and his political theory.
00:03:17.360 Remember, Land is himself a former Marxist who ended up running into Menchus Moldbug or Curtis Yarvin, as he's now known, and took a very interesting path into kind of right wing political theory.
00:03:33.560 So we're going to see some of his thoughts will still be lingering over from kind of that disposition when we look at the role of money today.
00:03:40.460 But I like to go over Nick Land's work because it's some very formative stuff.
00:03:46.640 It's stuff that helped to build up some of my understanding of politics.
00:03:51.420 And it is a great complement to Curtis Yarvin's work, which I think more of you are probably familiar with.
00:03:57.020 But it's also can be notoriously difficult to get through.
00:03:59.680 Again, we're working from a XenoSystems blog today and the fragments of that kind of defunct blog.
00:04:08.020 And these are a little easier to tackle when we get into them.
00:04:12.240 But I think it's very useful to break these down bit by bit.
00:04:16.160 A lot of you guys come here for kind of the more technical side of politics.
00:04:20.840 You know, if you want people yelling about the latest outrage, you know, I do some of that, too.
00:04:25.740 But there's a lot of that.
00:04:26.820 So I try to make sure to give people some quality here, you know, not just all filler, you know, try to get some ideas on the program.
00:04:37.240 So that's one of the reasons I'm doing this series to kind of flesh out these more complicated theoretical points so we can better understand the issues that come up in the news when they come around.
00:04:48.460 So we're going to go ahead and turn our attention to Nick Land's essay here on power.
00:04:54.200 Many different thinkers have had an essay called On Power, an entire book.
00:04:59.620 Bertrand de Juvenal comes to mind as one of the best.
00:05:02.920 But he is speaking here directly about ideas that concern state power.
00:05:09.280 A lot of people, there's a lot of debate.
00:05:11.820 I'm sure you've probably seen, and I even made a video kind of, you know, contrasting these ideas of power.
00:05:18.080 Or something like Starship Troopers, which famously said, you know, forces violence.
00:05:25.080 And this is where all authority derives from.
00:05:28.160 And then you have places like Game of Thrones, which kind of said, OK, but what is power?
00:05:33.540 Is it the king?
00:05:34.660 Is it the swordsman?
00:05:36.080 Is it the banker?
00:05:37.040 Who really wields power?
00:05:38.600 You know, when we talk about power, what does that mean?
00:05:40.580 And so Nick Land has some ideas on what power actually is and what it looks like in the real world.
00:05:46.540 And so we're going to kind of dive into his thoughts on what power is.
00:05:50.380 I agree with a good amount of this, but not all of it.
00:05:52.560 So we'll get into the parts that I disagree with here a little bit.
00:05:57.080 So here we go.
00:05:58.720 He says, power is an idea.
00:06:02.700 It is exactly what it is thought to be.
00:06:05.900 So from the very beginning, he's saying power is an idea.
00:06:10.360 There's a lot of questions about, you know, how does power manifest itself?
00:06:14.520 How does it get applied?
00:06:16.120 But it is primarily an idea.
00:06:18.340 And he'll get into this, how power and the idea of power coincide, which will become a little more important here in a moment.
00:06:26.020 Even among pre-civilized social animals, where the temptation to confuse power with force is strongest, the need to demonstrate force is only sporadic.
00:06:37.100 And wherever force is not continuously demonstrated, power has arisen.
00:06:42.660 All right.
00:06:43.000 So we're already seeing our delineation here between the idea of force and power.
00:06:47.940 So if you said directly force and power are the same thing, Nick Land is going to say no.
00:06:53.980 And I think if we really look at most situations, we kind of inherently understand this.
00:07:00.800 We know that force and power are linked.
00:07:03.800 Actually, I think the major mistake that many people in our modern world make is to think that force and power are not linked, especially, again, in the United States, where we talk about the power of the government.
00:07:16.720 It's constrained by the Constitution, you know, checks and balances, that's the people that really have power.
00:07:23.740 Well, that's not true.
00:07:25.340 And a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that power and force are disconnected things.
00:07:31.180 Power is whatever something says in a constitution, right?
00:07:35.780 It's whatever is written down on paper.
00:07:36.980 It's whatever the law is.
00:07:38.680 We're a nation of laws, rule of law.
00:07:41.000 That's where power really is.
00:07:44.400 And that's not exactly it either.
00:07:46.980 Power and force are connected.
00:07:48.600 But here, Land is just trying to make it very clear to us that force and power, while they have a relationship, they are dependent on each other, they are separate things.
00:08:00.520 And in fact, he says here, wherever force is not continuously demonstrated, power has arisen.
00:08:07.460 So power in Nickland's construction is what starts to exist when something that wants to own or dominate or control something in regulation or on a regular basis no longer has to continually apply force.
00:08:24.540 So that's going to be the beginning of the idea of power.
00:08:29.320 What is – that is how dominance distinguish itself from predation.
00:08:35.680 So we have dominance and predation.
00:08:38.840 Predation would just be the classic.
00:08:41.420 Again, he starts here with the animal kingdom.
00:08:43.380 Obviously, the lion has – once a zebra, he chases after a gazelle or whatever, takes one down.
00:08:54.220 That's predation.
00:08:55.200 There's no dominance there, right?
00:08:57.140 And he'll go on to explain this in a second.
00:08:59.360 There's no need for dominance between the lion and its prey.
00:09:03.060 It's simply something to eat.
00:09:04.500 On occasion, no doubt, a predator dominates its prey, convincing a struggling herbivore that resistance is futile and its passage into nourishment is already virtually over.
00:09:20.940 Even in these cases, however, a predator does not seek to install an enduring domination.
00:09:27.300 It matters not at all that its command of irresistible force be recognized beyond the moment of destruction.
00:09:35.060 There's no social relationship to establish.
00:09:39.400 So this is the really key part here.
00:09:41.320 What's the difference between dominance and predation?
00:09:44.300 It's that social relationship, right?
00:09:47.480 The lion's going to kill its prey.
00:09:49.800 Once it's killed its prey, it doesn't really care anymore, right?
00:09:53.000 This is not going to be a recurring interaction between the lion and its prey.
00:09:58.720 This is a one and done thing.
00:10:00.880 So predation is simply the act of taking out something, you know, having power over it and then using it up, consuming it, right?
00:10:10.600 However, domination is different.
00:10:12.720 Domination is a continuous social relationship.
00:10:16.600 You expect to go back to this relationship over time.
00:10:21.400 So a state or something else that is exerting power might have to kill someone.
00:10:27.980 It might have to get rid of some person.
00:10:34.020 But in general, it's looking to dominate, not just be a predator.
00:10:39.520 It's looking to have a continuous relationship, which means in general, it needs to avoid killing that which it has power over.
00:10:47.820 So, you know, the animal that's being completely destroyed is going to be lunch, might eventually give up.
00:10:54.940 It might be dominated in a moment where it realizes there's no longer a reason to struggle.
00:10:59.720 However, when you have this more dominant relationship, then that's going to be one that's happening over and over again.
00:11:08.820 You need to establish that.
00:11:09.860 I see someone saying like a farmer and livestock in chat there.
00:11:12.860 And yeah, that's a good example with the animal kingdom, right?
00:11:15.360 Though often you don't even necessarily have to fully dominate.
00:11:19.020 It depends on how domesticated the animal is, right?
00:11:21.560 If it's a very domesticated animal, then minimal domination will be required.
00:11:25.220 If it's a less domesticated animal, the more will be required.
00:11:28.200 But that is a good example that you're giving there of kind of that back and forth, right?
00:11:32.880 If the farmer is going to come back to that animal and milk it or, you know, shear the sheep or whatever.
00:11:41.340 If they're going to continuously glean some kind of advantage, they can't just go out and just completely destroy the thing that they want to continuously gain advantage from.
00:11:51.920 You don't want to kill the golden goose, right?
00:11:53.780 The one that lays the golden egg.
00:11:55.400 You want to continue to lay eggs.
00:11:56.980 And so there's this relationship.
00:11:59.580 And this is also true of governments and people.
00:12:03.340 Now, people aren't going to like that.
00:12:04.660 They're going to say, well, I'm not an animal.
00:12:06.120 I'm not livestock.
00:12:07.980 You know, I'm a free individual who operates inside my society.
00:12:12.940 But there is a relationship here that you need to understand.
00:12:16.380 Don't just be offended by that initial kind of picture there because we need to understand this relationship that he's talking about.
00:12:24.700 Of course, at the beginning, he's just talking about these really uncomplicated relationships, basically, or even a lack of relationship between the predator and the prey.
00:12:34.140 So obviously, he's going to talk about more complicated relationships, more nuanced relationships that tend to be between humans as we move on here.
00:12:43.660 All right.
00:12:43.960 So our next part here.
00:12:46.040 Even the most rudimentary society requires something more.
00:12:50.620 The economy of force has to be institutionalized and power perfectly coincides with the idea of power is born.
00:12:59.680 So, again, power and the idea of power happen simultaneously.
00:13:04.180 The idea of power must exist for power to exist because the economy of force has to be institutionalized.
00:13:13.040 There has to be an understanding that this, again, you must have force.
00:13:17.220 Understand this right away.
00:13:19.440 All governments, I don't care how free you are, I don't care what kind of constitution, rule of law, whatever your founding myth is, that's all very nice.
00:13:28.400 But the reason your government is in power is at some point it settled the question of force.
00:13:36.440 And if you don't think that's true, all you have to do is look at the history of the United States, right?
00:13:41.140 So the United States, we start off with this really loose confederal government called the Articles of Confederation.
00:13:47.260 For kids who don't know, the Constitution is not the first governing document in the United States.
00:13:52.560 That's not what governed the United States for about the first 10 years of its existence.
00:13:58.900 It was the Articles of Confederation that first governed the United States.
00:14:04.520 And what happened?
00:14:05.380 Well, the Articles of Confederation didn't put very many restrictions on the states.
00:14:10.820 It let the states more or less do what they want, which was kind of the whole point, right?
00:14:13.900 The states were supposed to have rights and freedoms.
00:14:16.140 They were supposed to have the majority of the power.
00:14:17.960 They wanted a weak federal government because they'd just gotten rid of a king and yada yada. 0.93
00:14:23.420 And so the Articles of Confederation were a very loose governing document.
00:14:28.380 They didn't really have a standing army.
00:14:30.300 They didn't really have the ability to wield a lot of force against the people.
00:14:34.840 Well, at some point, the government of Massachusetts figured out that it couldn't really pay off its portion of the war debt from the Revolutionary War.
00:14:43.260 And so they decided to tax everybody.
00:14:45.620 If this sounds familiar, that's because that's exactly what happened to start the Revolution in the first place.
00:14:51.820 The government, the British government, the crown, decided to tax Americans after the French and Indian War to pay back all the debts they had acquired.
00:15:03.160 And Americans didn't like that.
00:15:04.280 So they fought a revolution over it.
00:15:05.560 Well, then the American government, or at least the state governments, did the same thing.
00:15:10.760 And they taxed farmers in Massachusetts until basically none of them could pay for it.
00:15:15.960 So what did you get?
00:15:16.680 You got Shays' Rebellion, which was a rebellion of these farmers who couldn't pay their taxes. 0.90
00:15:22.360 They said, we already went to war over this.
00:15:25.260 We're not going to lose our farms.
00:15:26.720 They started by protesting the courthouses where their homes were being foreclosed on, where their farms were being foreclosed on.
00:15:33.400 But eventually, an actual rebellion started to form.
00:15:36.540 And so guess what the government did?
00:15:38.020 They didn't say, oh, well, I mean, I guess that's fine because you're free people.
00:15:42.520 No, they did their best to get to actually the governor of Massachusetts ended up assembling a private army because he couldn't get there was really no United States Army.
00:15:51.000 And the state itself would not raise money for the army, but I don't want to give you guys the whole history lesson.
00:15:56.520 The point is that they put down this rebellion because for all the Declaration of Independence and, oh, whenever, you know, men feel like a government is oppressing them, they can break away and start their own government.
00:16:10.700 It's their duty to have the right of rebellion.
00:16:12.980 Yeah, all that stuff just vanished, right?
00:16:15.940 Just a decade later, it was all gone.
00:16:19.080 And they're like, no, we're definitely not going to let you guys rebel.
00:16:22.360 And so they put down the rebellion.
00:16:24.320 And then they wrote the Constitution to make sure that they could centralize more government power and it would be harder to rebel.
00:16:30.800 And you could tell it was harder to rebel because then there was the Whiskey Rebellion.
00:16:34.920 And George Washington, as the first president of the United States, actually went out and quelled the Whiskey Rebellion.
00:16:40.420 So it turns out, actually, you didn't have the right to rebel and you weren't just a free citizen of the United States who could decide to break away at any moment.
00:16:48.040 And, of course, if we had any question about that, that was settled with the Civil War.
00:16:52.740 And so the idea that, you know, the government does not need to exert force is a fallacy.
00:17:00.060 Obviously, all governments start by securing a monopoly of violence inside their borders.
00:17:06.760 Any government that does not have a monopoly of violence, more or less, inside its borders will be a failed state.
00:17:13.720 That's pretty much the definition of a failed state is the failure to secure a monopoly of violence inside your own border.
00:17:20.580 So, again, violence or force is a critical part of any state's operation.
00:17:28.160 After that question is settled, after the question of force inside the state is settled, then you can work towards building civilization.
00:17:37.720 Once you have settled the question of violence, then you start getting the emergence of order.
00:17:44.100 And then you start getting the emergence of law.
00:17:46.540 And then you might be lucky enough to get the emergence of liberty if you're if you're very lucky and you're in a very specific place in time.
00:17:54.280 But that is the order of operations.
00:17:56.300 This is something that, like, libertarians get wrong all the time.
00:17:59.220 They tend to believe that you first direct the law.
00:18:03.060 First, you get the contract law in place and then order arises from it.
00:18:06.560 That's why they have, like, the non-aggression principle.
00:18:09.440 We'll get rid of violence, right?
00:18:11.060 But that's not how it works.
00:18:12.520 That's not how it works at all.
00:18:14.200 Violence, the question of violence must be answered by the state first.
00:18:18.080 And once it is answered, then the state might be bound to some extent by laws.
00:18:23.720 I did a stream on binding sovereignty also reading from Nick Land earlier.
00:18:29.160 So if you want to go back and learn more about that idea, can we bind sovereignty?
00:18:32.640 Can constitutions contain state sovereignty?
00:18:36.440 I'm not going to rehash all of that because I already did a full stream on it.
00:18:39.540 But if you want to go back and check into that question, you can.
00:18:42.040 Our point here is that violence is always present at the beginning of a state.
00:18:47.540 It must be used to secure a state.
00:18:50.500 If you allow other actors to regularly exercise violence inside your state, you are a failed state.
00:18:56.600 That's why narco states are generally, their governments are shams. 1.00
00:19:00.580 They're there to interface as the legitimate arm, usually, of a narcotics cartel with other entities.
00:19:10.540 But they do not actually own the monopoly on violence in the state.
00:19:14.840 And that's a serious problem.
00:19:16.080 Now, there's always degrees of this.
00:19:17.600 Obviously, we know certain parts of Chicago or other dangerous cities in the United States.
00:19:23.660 The government doesn't have a monopoly on violence.
00:19:25.800 And in those situations, by the way, guess what the gangs start doing?
00:19:30.460 They start acting like governments, right?
00:19:32.240 They provide security for the areas they control.
00:19:35.760 They hand out loans to people.
00:19:38.800 They start filling different things that a government basically does.
00:19:43.600 They do it much more violently with less order.
00:19:46.780 It's not preferable in most cases.
00:19:48.940 But gangs are just small-scale governments.
00:19:52.560 If they control the monopoly on violence in an area, they are kind of the government, a state inside a state.
00:19:59.660 And so that's kind of a relationship between force and power.
00:20:04.860 Power must secure force in the use of force inside the nation, inside the state, to maintain its position.
00:20:16.020 But the continued use of it, as we'll see here in a moment, is a sign of weakness.
00:20:22.920 So like I said, even the most ruminary society must have this institutionalization of force.
00:20:31.220 When power is tested or driven to resort to force or regress to it, the idea has already slipped.
00:20:41.420 Its weakness is exposed.
00:20:42.940 I'll read that again because it was a little disjointed from what I was saying before.
00:20:45.580 So going back into Nick Land's essay here.
00:20:50.800 When power is tested, driven to resort to force or regress to it, the idea has already slipped.
00:20:58.420 Its weakness is exposed.
00:21:00.120 So Land is saying here, if a regime has to regularly resort to violence, it has lost something.
00:21:07.700 It has lost power.
00:21:10.020 Power is the idea.
00:21:11.400 Force is something that may realize part of the idea, but its continued use is a weakness and not a strength.
00:21:21.040 Now, I have a little bit of disagreement with him here.
00:21:24.600 I think that this is always true of Fox-style governments, right?
00:21:29.820 Fox-style governments do not want to use force.
00:21:33.140 Tricky governments in the Valfredo-Paredo idea, the Type 1 residue, they do not want to use force.
00:21:42.560 These are clever people.
00:21:43.920 They rule through manipulation, propaganda, complex systems.
00:21:47.940 They do not like force.
00:21:49.500 And so the less they have to use force, the better.
00:21:51.840 We are ruled by foxes.
00:21:53.760 They do not like using force.
00:21:56.540 And the more they have to use force, the more you can tell they're weak because they're not good at it.
00:22:02.420 It's not good for them.
00:22:03.960 Now, I think that's not exactly true with lion-style leaders, leaders that are from the marshal cast who are clearly generals, field marshals.
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00:22:46.760 Excuse me.
00:22:47.620 Experienced warriors.
00:22:49.120 They are more likely to be okay with the display of force.
00:22:53.960 However, the key thing about it is it is very limited and effective.
00:22:58.400 They might be willing to use force more often than, say, a Fox-style government.
00:23:05.200 However, when they use it, it is swift, it's brutal, it's effective, it's limited to its area, and then they move on.
00:23:12.560 And once they use it, they demonstrate that they don't need to use it very often because they are so competent at it that no one would really want to go up against them.
00:23:22.140 So, for instance, if you want to get the difference between these two regimes, if you protest in Canada, what do they do?
00:23:30.380 They cancel your bank account.
00:23:31.860 Now, as my good friend Black Horse has pointed out on a regular basis, they also did eventually use force on those protesters.
00:23:39.200 So I'm not trying to turn this into just a binary, but I just want to give you a general idea, you know, kind of the difference.
00:23:45.860 So in a Fox-style government, if they want to put down protesters, what do they do?
00:23:50.660 They use surveillance technology.
00:23:53.040 They shut down their bank accounts.
00:23:55.100 They track them with electronic stuff.
00:23:58.740 They make it difficult for them to get jobs.
00:24:01.760 They operate in soft power.
00:24:04.200 These things are still highly effective.
00:24:05.800 They still silence dissent.
00:24:07.100 They are still just as tyrannical or totalitarian when properly implemented as force, but it's a very different approach.
00:24:16.400 As we're in a more martial-style system, in a more lion-style system, they would just immediately remove the threat.
00:24:24.920 Okay, boom, you're gone, right?
00:24:26.600 Like, you disappear or, you know, you get cracked down on.
00:24:30.560 You're entirely removed from the situation.
00:24:33.540 We don't have to worry about you anymore.
00:24:35.040 Again, more swift, more brutal, very effective, but messy.
00:24:40.220 So there's a kind of a visceral reaction people have to the use of force that can possibly delegitimize or destabilize a government depending on how they use it.
00:24:51.820 However, if they're swift and brutal and effective, very few people are going to regularly challenge their power.
00:24:57.000 And so what he's saying here is, again, whether you're in a soft, fox-style government, which is trying to use primarily manipulation and trickery, or if you're in a more forceful, lion-style government, which is very good at force and can use it very effectively and very swiftly and brutally.
00:25:15.680 Either way, if these regimes are strong, they have to use force, because either they're so good at manipulation they don't need to use force, or they're so good at force nobody's going to mess with you.
00:25:28.400 And so the key to understand is, how often do they use it?
00:25:32.960 If they're regularly, brutally using force, whether they're good at it or bad at it, that means that they don't have power the same way, because power is the idea.
00:25:44.020 When power is in place, you don't need to resort to force on a regular basis, because the power is what's holding everybody in place, whether it's the threat of force or the threat of propaganda, you know, manipulation, financial control, whatever.
00:26:00.200 Whatever that tool of the state is, if they don't have to use it very often, if they don't have to use force very often, then they're in a good place.
00:26:09.700 If they do have to use it very often, then you know they're weaker, which is why I think we can probably see, in a regular basis, that many Western regimes are growing weaker, because they used to be able to—and remember, this is internally, guys, not externally.
00:26:23.180 We're not talking here about using force against other enemies, though that is also part of power, right?
00:26:28.880 If you can project power through the strength of your military, you don't have to use the military as often.
00:26:34.000 But what I'm talking about here is internally.
00:26:36.200 We're talking about internal security forces, internal police forces.
00:26:40.260 We can see that many Western nations are weakening because they used to be able to use manipulation, to use finances, to use propaganda to better control their citizens.
00:26:53.400 And some of them are now having to resort to force more often.
00:26:58.100 All right.
00:26:58.820 So let's go ahead and move on inside our essay here.
00:27:02.020 Mere dominance has to regularly reassert itself, rebuilding itself out of force.
00:27:09.000 Under civilized conditions, in contrast, power is exempted from the test of force and thus realizes itself consummately.
00:27:18.240 It becomes magic and religion, perfectly identified with its apprehension as a radiant assumption.
00:27:25.760 All right.
00:27:26.900 So all he's saying here is if you're just going with raw dominance, if your position is unstable, then you have to regularly assert force all the time to show people that you're in charge and they're not.
00:27:38.420 People are willing and able to test your power.
00:27:42.860 And so the only way for you to maintain that dominance is the regular use of force.
00:27:49.000 This is the sign of a relatively weak regime because they constantly have to be tested.
00:27:55.440 People are willing to test them all the time.
00:27:58.000 And so they have to constantly show that they are strong.
00:28:01.060 Now, again, remember, if you have a situation like North Korea and I don't want to pretend to be an expert on North Korea.
00:28:08.420 There are people who know far more.
00:28:09.540 So I'm not going to play at some kind of foreign policy kind of expert here.
00:28:17.060 But if you have a regime like that, that is kind of known more for its force, the people might be terrified of the force that the regime would expend on them if they cross the line.
00:28:28.900 And so they don't cross the line.
00:28:30.660 So you could have a regime that is based on force, raw power, that is not tested, that is strong because the people will not test it.
00:28:42.760 The people are so aware of the ability of the regime, of its power, and its ability to destroy them, that they do not test it.
00:28:51.640 Now, again, I don't know if that's really where North Korea is at.
00:28:53.920 My point is not to pick apart their actual structure.
00:28:57.680 My point is to just say that those kind of regimes exist.
00:29:00.980 But, of course, obviously, when it comes to soft power, the most effective force is propaganda.
00:29:06.800 If people believe that the system is legitimate and that the things that the system does is in their interest.
00:29:13.700 And by the way, those things could just be true.
00:29:15.840 Like the system could just be working.
00:29:18.180 There are such things as good countries.
00:29:19.840 There are such things as good governments.
00:29:23.100 And so there could be that the government's interest really is aligned with yours and you really are flourishing.
00:29:27.320 And so you're happy to go along with everything.
00:29:29.420 But there's also a situation in which the government doesn't feel like that.
00:29:33.660 They have their own agenda.
00:29:35.480 But they are so good at using propaganda that it can convince you that you are being taken care of, that you are free, that you are doing what you need to do.
00:29:45.160 And therefore, they don't need to reexert their force on a regular basis.
00:29:49.200 Their dominance is already secured.
00:29:51.140 And then that dominance turns into power.
00:29:54.700 And this is what he says here, right?
00:29:56.460 It becomes magic and religion, right?
00:30:00.220 These things become built in.
00:30:02.300 Nobody has to talk about them.
00:30:04.280 Nobody needs to analyze them.
00:30:06.300 Nobody needs demonstrations of their power because they exist in a metaphysical sense.
00:30:12.560 They manifest themselves without actually having to be demonstrated through actual exertion of force.
00:30:22.840 And that's when you know that you really have power in a situation.
00:30:28.560 Power is thus profoundly paradoxical.
00:30:31.480 Its truth is inextricable from a derealization so that when it's practically interrogated by forces determined to excavate its reality, it tends to nothing.
00:30:43.980 All right, so what does that mean?
00:30:45.640 It means you can't separate power from the fact that it doesn't actually have to be realized.
00:30:51.620 The whole power that has to be realized, power that needs to be actually manifested and used, exerted in the real world in a concrete way, is already failing power.
00:31:04.180 Like he said previously, the need to exert that force, the need to apply pressure, shows that you are already losing some of that magic.
00:31:14.420 So if you are realizing your power, you're actually losing it in many ways.
00:31:21.560 And we can see this, by the way, I've talked a lot about force here, but we could also see this in a propagandist sense, right?
00:31:27.460 So if the regime needs to tell you a man is a woman, that's a big ask, right?
00:31:34.320 Like that's a kind of a raw power move, right?
00:31:38.320 Because it's so clear that that's not true, that throughout all of human history, it hasn't been true, that your grandparents, grandparents, grandparents knew that.
00:31:46.660 The simplest peasant in the middle of nowhere knew this, right? 0.66
00:31:50.260 So when a regime tries to tell you that you have to believe that, that's quite the flex, right?
00:31:56.000 So if the regime has total power, if it really has that incredible degree of power, it can just tell you that and you'll just say yes, right?
00:32:04.780 You'll just say yes because that's the level of power exerted by the system, by the state.
00:32:11.360 However, if a lot of people say no, as many people are now, and they're pushing back against that, that means either power has made too big of an ask that it didn't have the actual power to make real, or it has weakened and it needs to start applying some of its force.
00:32:33.580 Now, again, it may not do that directly with like stormtroopers, but it's going to need to start pushing soft power in a way that breaks its illusion of control, right?
00:32:43.020 If I see everyone desperately censoring and desperately trying to cancel and everyone desperately trying to push people out of university or whatever who say this out of the medical field, then I know something's wrong.
00:32:55.440 I know that I can see the machine scrambling to control, and if I can perceive the machine, if I can see the cathedral, as it's often called, the deep state, the mind control device, if I can see the mind control device, then it's broken, right?
00:33:12.780 If I can see the reality manipulation tool and perceive it, then it's not doing its job.
00:33:21.360 And so that's what he's saying here is that the power should have perfect control.
00:33:27.460 Like perfect power would have perfect control.
00:33:29.460 Obviously, we never really achieve perfect power.
00:33:31.900 That's very rare.
00:33:34.320 The state rarely has that level of control.
00:33:36.680 It's almost always a lesser version of this.
00:33:39.560 But if there was perfect power, the state would simply say something and it would be followed.
00:33:44.100 Boom, right?
00:33:44.760 And when I say the regime here, the state, remember, we're not just talking about the formal arms of government.
00:33:49.640 We're also talking about media.
00:33:51.900 We're talking about banks.
00:33:53.340 We're talking about all these different corporations.
00:33:57.880 We're talking about these bureaucracies.
00:34:00.040 We're talking about all these different elements that are used to kind of keep power simultaneously.
00:34:06.580 So we want to discard the notion that the state or the regime is simply only the arms of government that are described in the Constitution or wherever formally on paper.
00:34:17.960 It is much beyond that.
00:34:19.560 But if it has to exert that level of control, if it doesn't simply make those orders and they are followed, then that means there's something wrong.
00:34:27.240 It's made too big of an ask.
00:34:28.840 It didn't have the power to do what it wanted to.
00:34:31.900 And then it's losing that, right?
00:34:34.000 So back to the essay here.
00:34:37.040 Even the force that power calls upon when pressed to demonstrate or realize itself has to be spellbound to its ideal.
00:34:47.300 Will the generals obey?
00:34:49.520 Will the soldiers shoot?
00:34:52.260 It is power and not force that decides, right?
00:34:55.940 So this was the question, again, if you've ever seen Game of Thrones, right?
00:34:58.940 Who has the power, the sword, the swordsman, the king, the merchant, right?
00:35:04.920 Who's in control?
00:35:06.240 The answer is it depends, right?
00:35:09.560 It depends.
00:35:10.580 Directly, the swordsman has the force.
00:35:13.180 But the king can command a thousand swordsmen.
00:35:16.560 And so the force of one swordsman doesn't really matter.
00:35:19.540 There's something else that is at play, right?
00:35:23.420 There's something more complex.
00:35:25.740 When the force is called upon, will they respond?
00:35:31.060 When that inevitable check on power comes, when the question comes, will the people who actually hold guns and actually run tanks and actually fire missiles say yes to an order?
00:35:42.020 That's when power is checked.
00:35:44.540 And in case you want to understand who holds power in the United States, when Donald Trump told the military to get out of Afghanistan, they said no, right?
00:35:54.680 The generals have said this.
00:35:56.340 They have said this openly.
00:35:58.340 When they were told to draw down engagement, they just ignored the president.
00:36:02.380 And they did it on a regular basis.
00:36:03.700 That means that he was not wielding power.
00:36:07.480 It means power existed somewhere outside of the president's constitutional authority, right?
00:36:15.220 And so even though an individual soldier might have a weapon or an individual soldier might have a cruise missile, might have an airplane, a pilot might have an airplane.
00:36:27.620 Some guy might be manning a minute man, you know, a silo somewhere.
00:36:32.720 They are still operating on orders, which means that while they have direct control of the force, they do not have the power.
00:36:42.060 And if a entity cannot call upon that force, if an entity calling itself the state cannot call upon that force, then no power exists.
00:36:52.700 So back to the essay here.
00:36:54.240 No surprise, therefore, that power can evaporate like the snow slopes of a volcano, as if instantaneously, when an eruption of force is scarcely more than a rumble.
00:37:06.520 Power is the eruption, not the happening.
00:37:10.620 Or sorry, power is the eruption, not happening.
00:37:13.860 That's really important.
00:37:15.120 Power is the eruption, not happening.
00:37:18.080 Far more than the eruption being contained.
00:37:21.700 So what's he saying here?
00:37:22.620 He's saying that because power is, in many ways, this is this idea, that power and the idea of power are the same thing, the minute that force no longer listens to power, power can evaporate.
00:37:36.760 Poof, in a minute.
00:37:38.100 That's why, you know, things like military coups happen suddenly.
00:37:41.700 It's an eruption, right?
00:37:43.480 And power is the eruption not happening.
00:37:47.580 What should happen directly is that those with force should use it to immediately take what they want, right?
00:38:02.320 Like, in a direct kind of state of nature scenario, those with power would just, sorry, those with force, those with a weapon, those with whatever, a gun, would just go ahead and immediately take whatever they wanted, right?
00:38:20.420 That's what force would do.
00:38:22.440 But power restrains that.
00:38:24.240 It controls that.
00:38:25.160 And in fact, he says, not only does it not contain it, it never even occurs to those that wield the force that the force is actually theirs to control, right?
00:38:35.440 And this is why military chain of commands are so important, right?
00:38:39.180 This is why the United States especially is constantly straining the civilian control of the military because they never want the military to feel like they're the ones who actually own the force, right?
00:38:52.180 They don't want them to feel like they're the ones that are actually in charge of the force.
00:38:56.200 The force is something that you're holding for power.
00:38:59.880 And the power never really even has to constrain the force because the force would never think of acting without power say so, right?
00:39:09.040 That's what makes it power is that its simple existence means that force cannot even imagine a scenario in which it would exert itself without the command of power.
00:39:20.540 And if that's gone, if that vanishes, if that leaves, then that force suddenly becomes its own and power just poof, gone, right?
00:39:30.080 And all of a sudden, it's all about force again instead of power.
00:39:34.720 Now, if you're wondering why it's become really important for the Biden administration to purge those ranks, right?
00:39:43.520 And they said it openly today on Twitter, there's a U.S. Air Force adjacent organization.
00:39:50.740 I think they're like a civilian arm of it, but they're like connected in some way.
00:39:56.120 But they're like, we're basically getting orders from top down, like get rid of white guys. 0.97
00:40:00.580 Don't have white dudes in like positions of authority.
00:40:04.700 We don't need any more white pilots, right? 1.00
00:40:06.940 We need to get rid of those guys.
00:40:08.000 You'll see the same thing when they had the vaccine purges in the military, right?
00:40:14.760 They wanted specifically, they tried to get rid of anybody who wouldn't take the vaccine, but they were also wanting to get rid of after the events of January 6th and everything.
00:40:23.300 They wanted to get rid of anybody who was a MAGA supporter.
00:40:25.280 If you made too many Trump posts on your social media, if you had an NRA membership, you could be flagged as some kind of danger.
00:40:34.080 They wanted to get anybody who wouldn't immediately conform to power out of the military because they're planning to make some moves.
00:40:43.820 And they want to make sure that the military doesn't think that it's independent of power.
00:40:49.420 They want it to be entirely dependent on power and entirely spellbound by power.
00:40:54.300 That's why they want to move more client classes in there. 0.99
00:40:56.940 They want less fit people in there. 0.99
00:40:58.600 They want people, they want to move a large amount of immigrants in there. 1.00
00:41:01.940 They don't want anyone who has a connection to anything except the regime.
00:41:07.300 They don't want somebody who has some kind of connection to the people, to any kind of other loyalty that wouldn't be directly under kind of the regime.
00:41:15.460 And they're doing this for a very good reason, that this is actually just smart power politics, right?
00:41:20.920 You want your security force entirely dedicated to you as the ruler.
00:41:25.100 You don't want them dedicated to you as the people, maybe as the people who don't want to be completely totalitarian, you know, be controlled by a totalitarian government.
00:41:32.960 You want an army or a force that is loyal to you and not to a government.
00:41:38.740 But that's the exact opposite of what power wants.
00:41:41.460 They want force to never think of using itself, exerting itself in any cause except in the orders of the regime.
00:41:50.560 All right, let's move on here.
00:41:54.020 So now we're going to move to the economic side of this.
00:41:56.340 Les, Les, I promised you fiat currency.
00:41:58.440 So you might have noticed that the first one here, you know, it's power, force.
00:42:01.800 And then you're like, the third one is fiat currency.
00:42:03.460 Why is this included?
00:42:04.380 So all the libertarian Bitcoin guys can geek out here.
00:42:08.760 All right, here we go.
00:42:09.440 So to conceive economic power as wealth is to misconstrue it as rationalized force and thus to miss the idea.
00:42:20.800 True economic power is thoroughly derealized, yet authoritative, derealized, yet authoritative standard and store of value as instantiated exclusively in fiat currency.
00:42:35.340 I'll read that again because I kind of broke up there for a second.
00:42:37.700 So true economic power is a thoroughly derealized, yet authoritative standard and store of value as instantiated exclusively in fiat currency.
00:42:52.080 So what is he saying there?
00:42:53.580 He's saying that economic power is not just having stuff.
00:42:57.280 It's not just totally having, you know, all the gold or totally having all of the oil or all the useful widgets or whatever.
00:43:08.320 It's not just having the material.
00:43:11.140 Real economic power is not realized, right?
00:43:16.060 When you're talking about all of those things, you're talking about realized wealth, right?
00:43:21.080 Here, you know, where's your wealth?
00:43:22.900 Oh, I can produce it, right?
00:43:24.540 But the whole reason he went through this explanation of power was actually explaining to you what economic power is, right?
00:43:31.060 So just like you might think of military power as the ability to, like, produce soldiers or government power as the ability to produce FBI agents who have guns and can fight you.
00:43:43.160 He's saying that's not real power, right?
00:43:47.940 Power that has to be manifested, that has to be shown.
00:43:51.100 If they have to use the security forces against your own people, you don't really have power.
00:43:56.360 Your power is failing.
00:43:57.620 He's saying this is also true in economics.
00:44:01.060 He says real economic power is not having to manifest your wealth.
00:44:05.680 Yes, wealth can exist.
00:44:07.780 You can have all the oil.
00:44:09.020 You can have all the gold.
00:44:10.040 You can have all the planes and trains and automobiles and whatever, right?
00:44:15.060 But the need to manifest that is not wealth, is not power.
00:44:20.340 Real economic power is not realized.
00:44:23.520 It simply exists through promises like fiat currency.
00:44:26.640 If your fiat currency is respected, you have economic power.
00:44:31.220 If people will take pieces of paper with no value and no backing to them that cannot be exchanged directly for some kind of specie currency, right, and they will treat that as a store of real value, now you have economic power.
00:44:47.700 Because you don't even have to manifest it.
00:44:50.060 Someone can show up to your gold window with a dollar bill and you can just laugh in their face.
00:44:53.600 You don't need to manifest that economic wealth for them.
00:44:58.620 You don't need to show that to them because you have fiat currency power.
00:45:03.100 You have real power, right?
00:45:05.200 Back to Land's essay here.
00:45:07.080 Monetary signs that are not backed by anything beyond the credit or credibility of the state are tokens of pure, supremely idealized power in its economic form.
00:45:19.560 They symbolize the effective, because untested, suppression of anarchy.
00:45:26.020 Very interesting there, right?
00:45:27.680 They live through the idea and die with it.
00:45:31.160 So he's saying an unchallenged fiat currency is the purest manifestation of power.
00:45:40.080 It is the suppression of anarchy.
00:45:44.100 I can control all economic and even physical challenges to my power because people respect meaningless pieces of paper that I hand out.
00:45:55.740 That is true power.
00:45:57.560 And the idea, as it with power, lives and dies by this.
00:46:02.020 So if you have built your power on a fiat currency, then the destruction of that fiat currency is the destruction of your power.
00:46:12.440 If you built an economic empire on the idea that your fiat currency is the standard and it has not been tested, you don't have to manifest that wealth, and then you have this amazing power.
00:46:24.500 But the minute it's tested, it can evaporate.
00:46:28.620 Again, just like that military power, right?
00:46:31.680 The minute force refuses to respond to power, like the snows on the slope of a volcano, power can evaporate.
00:46:39.700 And this is also true when it comes to fiat currency.
00:46:44.180 Back to Land's essay again.
00:46:46.040 Those who recognize the completion of power in an idea, celebrants and antagonists alike, have no reason to object to its belated baptism as the cathedral, our contemporary political appropriation of numinous authority, served by an academic, journalistic, judicial, and administrative clerisy, prominently including the priest of fiat adoration and financial central planning.
00:47:15.180 All right, so that's a lot of fancy words.
00:47:17.740 What does that mean?
00:47:18.980 He's saying if you recognize that complete power as an idea, whether you celebrate it, whether you're a fan of that idea, or you're against it, if you understand that as existing, then you can't really object to this cathedral.
00:47:34.780 Again, that's Land and Yarvin's word for what many people would call the deep state or the regime or the system.
00:47:40.840 I know a lot of people don't like the phrase cathedral, fine, call it whatever you want, understand the idea, right?
00:47:46.900 Grasp the idea behind it, this decentralized consensus manufacturing apparatus that rules the Western world.
00:47:56.380 And he names all of the ways that it's assembled.
00:48:00.400 So how is this government system assembled?
00:48:02.440 He calls it numinous.
00:48:03.460 He's talking about a religious authority.
00:48:05.740 So he's tying it to a religion, right?
00:48:09.040 And it's served by academics, journalists, the judicial process, and the administrative clerisy.
00:48:15.400 You'll notice he calls basically administrative bureaucrats the clerisy there.
00:48:19.360 He's calling them priests, right?
00:48:21.200 And that's exactly what they are, right?
00:48:22.940 They are those that serve power in a religious fashion. 0.55
00:48:27.080 And he says it prominently includes the priesthood of fiat, adoration, and financial central planning.
00:48:31.920 So in order for this kind of state to exist, central planning must exist.
00:48:36.880 Those who talk about the free market in the Western America are delusional.
00:48:42.940 There is no free market in America.
00:48:45.360 There is no free market.
00:48:46.880 Sorry, guys.
00:48:47.640 Like, I know some of my audience, they're new here.
00:48:49.860 I'm not trying to insult anybody.
00:48:51.000 I know a lot of people came in from, like, Rush Limbaugh and stuff, and they're like, Rush told me about the free market, man.
00:48:57.100 Reagan, he promised to do the free market.
00:48:59.320 Not a thing, okay?
00:49:01.900 Your economy is centrally planned.
00:49:04.140 It has to be.
00:49:04.900 You can't maintain a fiat currency.
00:49:06.460 You can't have a reserve, a federal reserve bank without central planning, okay?
00:49:11.580 So this is not a thing.
00:49:14.460 He says there is no macroeconomics that is not cathedral liturgy.
00:49:19.000 So basically, you cannot control the wider economy.
00:49:23.860 If you're manipulating the wider economy through financial policy, you are buying into the cathedral.
00:49:29.600 You're buying into this operational government, right?
00:49:34.180 No confidence or animal spirits independent of its devotions.
00:49:39.860 No economic cataclysm that is not simultaneously a crisis of faith.
00:49:44.780 A single idea is at stake.
00:49:46.820 So he's saying this is all one thing, right?
00:49:49.540 He's saying it's all one thing.
00:49:50.960 You cannot have this idea of a federal reserve bank and macroeconomics and global financial manipulation, fiat currencies.
00:50:00.920 You cannot have them without it also being tied to the entire existence of power inside of this regime.
00:50:09.740 They are all one thing.
00:50:10.960 They all exist simultaneously.
00:50:13.280 To destroy one of them is to destroy them all.
00:50:15.900 To support one of them is to support them all.
00:50:18.340 They are the same thing.
00:50:19.500 They exist at the same time.
00:50:22.040 They reinforce each other.
00:50:23.680 They support each other.
00:50:28.120 In macroeconomics and macroeconomics, as in politics, more generally, only one systematically inhibited question remains.
00:50:38.500 Do we believe?
00:50:40.340 Well, do we?
00:50:42.180 All right.
00:50:42.520 So obviously leaves us with a cliffhanger there.
00:50:45.020 This is more of a explanatory essay than it is a essay of solutions, which is so often the case, right?
00:50:54.640 Way easier to kind of pick these things apart and explain how they work, explain how the ideas are linked than it is to solve this problem.
00:51:02.260 But in many ways, I think he is telling you how this problem gets solved.
00:51:05.640 Everyone has to stop believing in the system, right?
00:51:08.420 He's saying the whole system works together.
00:51:11.880 It's coexistent and it's coterminous.
00:51:15.420 So if this system falls apart, everything falls apart.
00:51:20.380 If any parts of the system are supported, the system continues in some form.
00:51:25.220 And so he's not directly, you know, spelling out everything that would be involved in this.
00:51:30.100 But this is why I think Nick Land is a big proponent of Bitcoin.
00:51:33.420 He's gone on and on about how important Bitcoin is because Bitcoin does exactly this.
00:51:39.660 It challenges the authority of the state because the state, the authority of the state is backed in this economic system.
00:51:48.220 It is backed in its ability to control currency.
00:51:50.480 If the state can no longer manipulate currency, then it no longer has a string hold on sovereignty.
00:51:57.060 And as we've learned when it comes to the, you know, force part of that, any state that no longer has complete sovereignty that hasn't settled that question is a failed state.
00:52:07.320 If the United States has a bunch of people not using its currency inside of its currency, it's a failed state.
00:52:13.020 And just as if it had a lot of people, a lot of gangs who controlled the entire country, it's a failed country, right?
00:52:18.580 A crypto state and a narco state would have a similar failing, right? 1.00
00:52:23.740 All right.
00:52:24.620 So I'm going to go ahead and wrap that up.
00:52:26.900 Got a few questions from the people here, guys.
00:52:29.560 So we'll go ahead and pivot over here to the super chat.
00:52:35.280 But like I said, you know, guys, I've done a number of these episodes now.
00:52:40.180 If you want to know more about Nick Land's thought, if you want to connect some of these ideas, of course, you know, you can watch my episodes.
00:52:47.500 Also, you can, of course, read Nick Land's work.
00:52:50.400 He has The Dark Enlightenment, which is now in print from Imperium Press, if I am correct about that.
00:52:59.040 Xeno Systems Fragments is something you would have to download off the Internet.
00:53:03.140 You have to Google it.
00:53:04.700 It's a PDF.
00:53:05.260 The site doesn't exist anymore, though.
00:53:07.000 I understand that I believe Passage Press is planning to put more of that into actual print.
00:53:15.760 That's the nice thing.
00:53:16.840 You know, all these things used to exist only digitally, but they're now going to exist physically in the real world since these ideas have become more popular.
00:53:25.040 These thinkers have become more popular.
00:53:26.780 And so you can read them kind of yourself.
00:53:29.260 And then there's also Fang Numina, which is kind of Land's work when he was more of a Marxist.
00:53:37.340 Those are still very interesting, but they are the least approachable parts of his work.
00:53:42.260 I've read Fang Numina.
00:53:44.100 There's a lot to learn there.
00:53:45.880 But just understand, you are you are climbing quite the mountain if you decide to kind of jump on board that one.
00:53:52.540 But that said, of course, if you want to get the easier versions of his work, you can just listen to me because I've explained a number.
00:53:59.260 So let's jump over to our questions here real quick.
00:54:04.200 Let's see.
00:54:10.080 Michael Robinson for $20.
00:54:12.180 It's pretty disheartening to see people I respect bickering on Twitter over who's going to be the presidential candidate.
00:54:17.380 Do right winners have a duty to try to calm the infighting?
00:54:20.340 Does this even matter?
00:54:21.740 Great question, Michael.
00:54:22.980 So I'm with you, right?
00:54:25.980 I have a general preference.
00:54:31.340 My preference is very simple.
00:54:33.480 I am not a fan of democracy, as I have made very clear on a regular basis.
00:54:39.560 And I do not think that democracy is a very good form of government.
00:54:46.820 I think it produces a lot of exactly what we have now.
00:54:49.740 It tends to pit the populace against each other and turn each other into enemies.
00:54:53.600 It makes the ruling class actually more secure and not less secure.
00:54:58.080 They actually become less accountable as people blame their neighbors instead of the government for what's going on.
00:55:05.060 But it is the government we have.
00:55:08.480 And I think that in this situation where we're probably not going to get a lot done at the national level, I think Donald Trump is the best choice because he is basically a rock getting thrown at the cathedral.
00:55:19.620 He's a rock being thrown at the deep state in the media.
00:55:22.360 He is the most kind of disruptive and destructive force.
00:55:26.020 Again, I don't mean policy wise.
00:55:27.460 Donald Trump, he did some good things.
00:55:29.220 Some of the things he did when he was governing were good, but in general, he wasn't the most effective implementation of policy, right?
00:55:36.620 Ron DeSantis, if you think the system works, if you think the system is salvageable, if you think the institutions can be reformed, then Ron DeSantis is your man.
00:55:45.760 If you think the systems aren't salvageable, if you think that they aren't going to be turned around, then I think Donald Trump is your man.
00:55:53.940 Either way, I respect either of those positions.
00:55:56.520 I totally understand them.
00:55:57.900 If you're backing like Mike Pence, I can't help you.
00:56:00.180 You're a joke.
00:56:01.140 But if you hold either of those candidates as viable, I totally respect you.
00:56:09.260 What I don't understand is people who are just trying to tear each other apart online over this stuff.
00:56:14.380 I mean, some of these people I get, like they have a vested interest in this, right?
00:56:17.800 Like their livelihoods are made on whether Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis gets in.
00:56:22.280 There's a whole MAGA crowd that'll never work in a Ron DeSantis White House.
00:56:26.760 And there's a whole kind of like establishment crowd that can never get a job in kind of the Donald Trump White House probably.
00:56:34.880 And so these people are like vested in this for sure.
00:56:38.140 So I guess I get why they are going at each other in that manner.
00:56:42.000 I don't think it's helpful at all.
00:56:43.820 No, I don't.
00:56:44.580 I should be clear.
00:56:45.640 I don't.
00:56:46.040 I'm not saying it's not helpful because we all got to get behind one candidate and we got to protect the sanctity of blah, blah, blah.
00:56:53.660 I don't think it really matters.
00:56:55.460 So I don't think you should debase yourself and destroy like your reputation, your credibility, and your personal relationships over something that's not going to really matter at the end of the day.
00:57:06.820 So my argument is not one of like everybody needs to get together and sing kumbaya because this is the most election of your lifetime and we all got to get out there and vote for the guy who's going to save us.
00:57:17.520 That's not my argument.
00:57:18.400 My argument is just it's probably not going to matter and actually I think guys like DeSantis are way more useful controlling states and local politics and making the push for change there than I think they are like going to the national level and just running themselves headfirst into the deep state.
00:57:35.700 Like if neither Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump is going to dismantle the deep state, I'd rather have Ron DeSantis, you know, doing good stuff in Florida and showing other governors how to get things done and have Donald Trump just, you know, plow into him like a bull in a china shop like he it's what he does.
00:57:51.260 Right.
00:57:51.480 That's why he's loved.
00:57:54.260 So that would be my position on it.
00:57:56.840 I think that it it's going to matter to some extent like the election could matter.
00:58:01.760 You know, people still believe at least to some extent in the power of elections.
00:58:06.540 And so, you know, I think like a Ron DeSantis or a Trump presidency would be better than a Joe Biden presidency.
00:58:13.320 So it's not that it doesn't matter at all, but I don't think it matters as much as people think it does.
00:58:18.960 I don't think it's the the most important election of our lives.
00:58:22.100 I don't think it's the thing on which all all civilization hinges.
00:58:26.060 And I don't think but debasing yourself and trying to destroy other people is really going to be worth your time.
00:58:31.760 I don't think anything I say about that is going to change anything.
00:58:34.620 In fact, I know it isn't because I've already said this ad nauseum like for a year straight and no one listened to me and they're not going to listen now.
00:58:44.080 But that said, you know, there is still some there's some value here.
00:58:50.680 Right.
00:58:50.900 So, for instance, I just spent the weekend in Iowa commentating on a presidential forum.
00:58:57.740 Was that completely useless?
00:58:59.180 I don't think so, because, for instance, guys like Vivek Ramaswamy, who I don't think should be president, you know, he's promising guy, but I don't think he's he's in a position to be president right now.
00:59:10.040 But he did say things during that forum that I think advanced the conversation in useful directions.
00:59:16.040 He talked very forcefully about militarizing the border.
00:59:19.300 He talked very forcefully about the need to dismantle the FBI.
00:59:22.640 Now, I don't think he's going to win, but I think his willingness to talk about those things and get big rounds of applause and move the Overton window in the conversation in that way really matters.
00:59:34.120 I think those things do matter.
00:59:35.420 And so even though, like, he's not going to win his presence in the conversation changes the conversation.
00:59:42.980 And so I do think there are battles to be won there.
00:59:45.420 I think there are things that do matter there.
00:59:47.180 But this, like, knockdown drag out, you know, battle that people want to have over DeSantis and Trump, I don't think it's useful.
00:59:54.920 But again, I don't think anyone's going to going to listen to me.
00:59:58.140 I don't think anybody's going to save their self-respect or their standing.
01:00:03.000 And I guess to some extent, a lot of these things get forgotten, right?
01:00:06.640 I mean, look at how many people who were never Trump were then able to, like, jump back on the bandwagon after that.
01:00:13.360 A lot, you know, some of them were completely tossed off, but a lot of them showed back up.
01:00:17.860 Many of them ended up even inside the Trump administration, right?
01:00:20.800 So these things can be quickly forgotten kind of once everything is done.
01:00:25.520 And so I do think it's important to remember that as well.
01:00:29.480 People who you think might be kind of scuttling their entire chance maybe aren't doing that, depending on kind of how they're managing that.
01:00:37.620 That said, guys, let's go ahead and wrap this up.
01:00:40.120 I want to thank everybody for coming by.
01:00:42.700 Of course, if you would like to get more of these shows, make sure to subscribe to this channel.
01:00:48.760 And if you'd like to get these broadcasts as podcasts, make sure that you are subscribing to the Oren McIntyre podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
01:00:57.440 Guys, I'm happy to say that the podcast has now reached basically the same audience size as the show itself, which is pretty wild.
01:01:06.120 Basically, the audience has almost doubled in the, like, six or seven months that the podcast has been a thing, along with the growth of the show itself.
01:01:14.560 The channel has also grown quite a bit, and that's amazing.
01:01:18.440 So I really want to thank everybody.
01:01:20.020 I appreciate the people who go on there.
01:01:22.420 They subscribe.
01:01:23.780 They leave the ratings or reviews.
01:01:25.820 I know that sounds silly, but it really does help a lot with the algorithm, you know, and so I appreciate people are getting on there.
01:01:33.080 The audience has really exploded in this time, and I have nobody to thank but you guys.
01:01:39.040 So I really appreciate that.
01:01:40.440 Again, it's so heartwarming.
01:01:41.760 I, you know, just while I'm being thankful here, I'll say it one more time.
01:01:46.900 I know guys who have been on here since I was just a JPEG, and I had, like, 100 subscribers on the YouTube channel who are jumping on streams with the blaze, like, while I'm commentating on presidential kind of primaries and being like,
01:02:09.200 that's our guy, oh, great, we're so happy to see him, blah, it's so great to see you're in there.
01:02:13.260 That means a lot to me.
01:02:14.140 That means the world to me.
01:02:15.000 Knowing that people who have been there since the very beginning, who have supported me through all of this, through the buildup, going, you know, alone, and then, you know, joining the blaze.
01:02:25.680 To see you guys excited about that, I mean, of course, it's very cool to have those opportunities, but it really is, I'm just very grateful, very, very thankful.
01:02:38.140 There's been a lot of hard work, you know, I put a lot of time in, but without you guys, it never would have even come close to having a chance.
01:02:45.640 And it's just incredible to watch your community come alongside you.
01:02:50.500 So many people I've been friends with on Twitter and interacted with and, you know, on YouTube and Rumble and Gab and now kind of in real life with some of these Shieldings events.
01:03:01.920 Just having them cheer you on and everything, that's just an amazing thing.
01:03:06.480 I can't tell you enough how grateful I am.
01:03:09.680 So I want to thank everybody for coming by, guys.
01:03:12.080 And as always, I will talk to you next time.
01:03:15.640 Thank you.