The Auron MacIntyre Show - No, the US Empire Isn't Over： Responding to Academic Agent

00:00:00.700 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I am Oren McIntyre.

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00:00:32.460 $20 off your subscription today hey everybody great speaking with you want to go back to a

00:00:40.940 classic uh format that i haven't uh treading a little while the uh the old response video uh my

00:00:47.520 buddy academic agent recently made a video about how the american empire is over it's done for

00:00:53.920 uh trump has failed america has failed and it's war in iran the whole thing is going down and the

00:01:00.260 entire global american order is going with it now i do think that there are some interesting points

00:01:06.000 made in the video i don't necessarily disagree with everything that academic agent said but i

00:01:11.280 do think he very much overstates his case and conflates the idea of the american empire uh with

00:01:17.800 kind of the current maga coalition which is something that academic agent usually doesn't do

00:01:22.720 He's usually pretty careful with his analysis in these kind of areas, the academic areas, even if he's a little more bombastic in his overall political rhetoric.

00:01:31.580 So I wanted to dive in and kind of pull this apart, see where we agree, where we disagree.

00:01:37.240 Because like I said, I do think an academic agent is somebody who, whether you agree with kind of his current political trajectory or not, is ultimately a guy who does have important insights.

00:01:47.680 He's somebody who has studied political theory, specifically elite theory, quite thoroughly and regularly comes away with some important things to say on any given topic.

00:01:56.980 So I want to go ahead and play this.

00:01:58.880 Now, I have cut a few minutes from the beginning and end of the video because he just kind of talks about stuff he has coming up and different books and that kind of thing.

00:02:06.260 So if you want to go and watch his entire video, feel free to do so.

00:02:10.000 But I did actually keep pretty much the entirety of his commentary in, you know, kind of in context.

00:02:17.880 I wanted to make sure that I wasn't clipping out anything and pulling out anything that would kind of give you the full idea of what he's saying and what his argument is.

00:02:26.600 And I am, of course, somebody who has commented repeatedly on the American Empire.

00:02:30.980 I've actually dedicated a decent amount of my work to kind of understanding its ramifications and whether or not it should be something we're embracing here.

00:02:39.120 So to say that I have mixed feelings about the overall American empire would be an understatement. But the point is, we don't want that to get in the way of our analysis. In fact, academic agent is often kind of famous for saying he does value free analysis.

00:02:56.580 And so I think it's important that however one might feel about the American empire, it's important to properly analyze where it's at.

00:03:05.160 We don't want our current feelings about whatever administration or war or anything else.

00:03:10.620 We don't want that to color our understanding of the actual facts on the ground and what that implies for kind of the future of what is, let's be honest, the global hegemon.

00:03:21.420 So it matters quite a bit whether or not it's going to come apart.

00:03:24.500 So let's start with Academic Agent, and then I will go ahead and respond when I think there's something that we need to discuss.

00:03:31.260 uh glub pasha uh in his famous book the fate of empires argued that empires typically have a

00:03:39.900 life cycle of 250 years the british empire roughly 250 years and this year 2026 is the 250th year

00:03:51.100 of the existence of america starting it from 1776 and there's always been

00:03:58.620 some debate over when should you start the u.s empire like did it really start in 1776

00:04:06.940 um but actually if you look at the history of america it does map pretty well onto this

00:04:15.500 narrative of how empires start with the spark how they uh you know it begins in the frontier

00:04:23.340 and you know the first half of what you might call the american empire is simply the americans

00:04:30.540 i mean basically british colonists settlers if you want to put it that way um colonizing

00:04:38.760 all of america and then taking over the land of the native americans or the indians uh you know

00:04:45.400 often by force as they swept west you know they started on the east coast and they swept west

00:04:50.480 so the period of cowboys and indians the frontier the wild west was the spark if you want to put

00:04:58.240 it that way in terms of the building of the american empire so some things are right here

00:05:04.600 and some things are wrong here he is of course correct that the united states was a british

00:05:10.040 colony uh beforehand uh but it is a little confusing on the date here so i i the the 250

00:05:17.360 uh year uh life empire empire span uh life lifetime span for an empire is often repeated

00:05:25.380 and for the reasons he said there and i don't think there's uh you know i think there is a lot

00:05:29.460 to be said about uh that number it does uh approximate uh what we see many life cycles

00:05:36.020 kind of go through. But the question, as he says, is where to start the understanding of the

00:05:41.560 American empire. And he's saying, well, because America came in and kind of conquered this area,

00:05:46.480 that's the beginning of the American empire. But I don't think that's exactly right. As he points

00:05:52.040 out, you had British citizens there for hundreds of years before America, the United States,

00:05:58.020 I guess, is the proper way we should refer to it when we're trying to understand this,

00:06:00.860 When the United States was becoming a nation. So we have a long history of British settlers defeating Indians and taking over the area in which they live well before America is declared its own nation.

00:06:16.180 The United States is declared its own nation. So we wouldn't start the clock just when British people started taking over chunks of North America.

00:06:25.480 That doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think even academic agent would start the clock there.

00:06:29.840 So I don't think that the clock then suddenly starts because America declares its independence.

00:06:35.400 No new imperial behavior has really been established at that point.

00:06:40.660 Now, I have made the case that America has always, to some extent, been an empire, and I do think that that's true.

00:06:46.460 But I think it kind of matters what we're talking about there.

00:06:49.740 I think most people, when they think of empire, are thinking of a wide spanning kind of a country with the goal of expanding as far as it can, really kind of becoming almost this globalized force.

00:07:03.740 When people think about the British Empire, they're usually not thinking about the time in which Britain, you know, took over Wales or something.

00:07:11.300 They're usually thinking of it as kind of a more expansive look when it starts moving to other continents, when it starts moving well beyond what many people think of its natural boundaries.

00:07:20.600 Now, America is, of course, a continent-sized empire.

00:07:25.500 It doesn't have the entirety of the North American continent, but it does have quite a bit of the North American continent.

00:07:31.440 And for some people, that might seem, I don't know, ambitious.

00:07:35.600 But ultimately, I think that is kind of the natural domain of the United States.

00:07:40.020 I think it just makes sense that the United States has that area of control.

00:07:45.900 And so I'm hesitant to say that the American empire begins just because people are moving westward.

00:07:53.300 I think that is not the right way to understand that.

00:07:56.720 I think America really becomes an empire later.

00:08:00.460 Again, I'm comfortable with this, I guess, using the term empire earlier on.

00:08:04.480 But I think the notion of it as this kind of world historical force really doesn't kick in until at least World War I, which I think he's going to talk about in a second.

00:08:15.000 But I think that means he's got his timeline moved up at least 100 years at this point.

00:08:20.500 And so I think this is not the greatest way to frame this analysis.

00:08:24.620 Again, if simple expansion by British, you know, kind of Anglo peoples into North America counts as the beginning of the empire, then we need to start the empire in like the 1500s, 1600s.

00:08:38.000 And so it doesn't, it's not really a good definition of understanding when the empire really begins.

00:08:44.460 And if you think about the United States, by any normal consideration, it is an empire in and of itself, i.e. the country itself.

00:08:54.620 as it exists today the usa is already an empire by any normal historical standard

00:09:01.260 and they made that empire by you know conquering all the surrounding land which were occupied by

00:09:09.660 native americans again this is kind of true so uh one of the things that people talk about is

00:09:16.780 the conquest of america and and you know there's certainly a good bit of that it's not that uh

00:09:21.420 American Indians were not a formidable foe when they were in combat.

00:09:27.240 Obviously, many people to this day still revere American Indians and their ability to fight,

00:09:32.940 but they were very low in number.

00:09:34.780 This is a misconception.

00:09:35.960 Many people think that settlers from Britain came over and they just started killing large

00:09:41.940 amounts of Indians and wiping them out and forcing huge established populations off their

00:09:46.520 land.

00:09:46.840 But the honest truth is that most of these civilizations were relatively isolated.

00:09:52.580 They were not very large.

00:09:54.200 Even the largest Indian nations didn't really have a large amount of people.

00:09:59.140 In many cases, Americans were simply occupying unoccupied land.

00:10:03.460 They were simply moving into land that otherwise was not held.

00:10:06.400 Now, the nature of kind of these nomadic peoples, as the Indian tribes often were,

00:10:12.200 meant that they didn't really hold territory in a traditional sense.

00:10:15.220 And so it becomes difficult to kind of understand when conquest is occurring, you know, in kind of our Western mind, we understand settled land, controlled land, land that is defined by barriers as that which is owned by peoples.

00:10:28.140 That tends to not be the case with more nomadic tribes and understandings.

00:10:32.020 But I just think that ultimately the idea that the United States kind of became an empire by conquering all these Indian nations.

00:10:39.840 Well, yes and no.

00:10:41.420 Again, it's a little more complicated.

00:10:43.260 I don't think it works quite as well when we're trying to understand perhaps European civilizations and the way in which they take land or define an empire.

00:10:52.980 So this is why I think that the term empire could be used.

00:10:57.560 I understand what he's saying traditionally.

00:10:58.920 But again, would we call the British Empire the British Empire before it leaves the British Isles?

00:11:03.680 I think for a lot of people, the answer is no.

00:11:05.820 Just because England goes ahead and incorporates other nations into itself to make Great Britain doesn't immediately turn it into an empire. It's usually people thinking once Britain has left its coastline and starts incorporating other foreign territories away from its kind of natural dominion of the island, that's when it really starts to see itself as an empire.

00:11:29.600 I'd say that something similar happened with the United States, where, yes, it is expanding.

00:11:34.220 Technically, it is taking land that was in some way occupied by Indians.

00:11:39.320 But ultimately, I don't think we really see the imperial stage until America leaves its natural shores.

00:11:46.520 And then later, America starts after a period of isolationism where they consolidate the home empire.

00:11:55.020 they start to expand out and roughly speaking it's the period of the world wars starting with

00:12:01.880 Woodrow Wilson and going on into FDR and the treachery of Winston Churchill that basically

00:12:09.000 means that America inherits or takes over from the British empire as the new global

00:12:18.200 hegemon it takes over lots of territories in some cases quite literally just taking over the base

00:12:24.800 or being given the base, you know, by the treacherous Churchill.

00:12:32.340 So this is where I think you can see more of the American expansion, right?

00:12:36.020 When you saw perhaps, you know, America taking territories from Spain,

00:12:41.000 moving into the Philippines or into Cuba,

00:12:45.200 when it's looking for kind of this expansion beyond North America,

00:12:51.160 this is where we really start to see the beginnings of the American empire.

00:12:55.560 And that carries on then into World War I and World War II, especially after World War II.

00:13:00.660 It's very clear that the Europeans have expended a large amount of their blood and treasure,

00:13:05.220 and they can't really maintain that global hegemony, especially through an empire like

00:13:10.840 the United Kingdom. And this is truly where the transfer of power takes place. A lot of people,

00:13:15.640 including Oswald Spengler, have compared the United States to kind of Rome following after

00:13:22.400 Greece. So you have, you know, the British are kind of our Greece. They have kind of the core

00:13:27.680 of our civilization. They're the inspiration for many of our folkways, understandings, cultural

00:13:33.440 kind of continuation. But we kind of make it all bigger. We turn it into the global hegemon.

00:13:41.180 So you could say that there was a Greek empire, I guess, at some level, but most people really

00:13:46.240 recognize that, you know, it's the Roman Empire's expansion that truly brings it in, you know,

00:13:50.860 kind of that Hellenic civilization transfers into Rome and is spread even further.

00:13:56.060 Obviously, you had Alexander Great spreading Hellenic civilization, so they're not the

00:14:00.760 first to do so.

00:14:01.840 But I think that's when it truly becomes a global project.

00:14:04.920 So maybe we're just looking at globalism, maybe ultimately, you know, global hegemony

00:14:09.860 is what we're looking at maybe we're just quibbling over terms at that point i don't know like i'm

00:14:14.240 saying what i'm trying to get at here is i think uh he just started the clock of empire too early

00:14:19.220 i'm not disagreeing that ultimately uh empires ultimately do seem to have this lifespan i just

00:14:25.240 think that he has uh perhaps shifted it a little too much in order to kind of fit with this

00:14:31.080 narrative do you want to know that history uh there's a very good book by um uh major general

00:14:38.700 richard hilton i'm seeing if i have a spare copy of it here uh where is it um i don't i don't have

00:14:46.420 i don't have it here but uh see i definitely left all the context and i even left him kind of

00:14:51.100 pointing around at the back of uh books there you know looking for library books so you know

00:14:55.500 i didn't cut anything uh major general richard hilton uh the uh imperial obituary uh which is

00:15:03.460 now available it's not being reprinted and I wrote the introduction to that

00:15:07.780 book so if you want to know about the treachery of the Tories and of Churchill

00:15:12.580 and various other characters like Eden and Macmillan in the downfall of the

00:15:17.620 British Empire and the Suez Crisis read that book because it it you know it's

00:15:23.220 warts and all it doesn't try to dress it up and it seems like with the current

00:15:32.700 war in iran the president trump has bitten off more than he can sheen and this is starting to

00:15:41.080 look like the straits of hormuz is starting to look like american suez crisis so this this is

00:15:50.580 kind of the beginning of where i run into the problems here so of course uh you could say uh

00:15:56.520 that iran is a misstep for american global hegemony that that's possible we still don't

00:16:04.500 know yet it's a pretty early to guess that uh there's still a lot of possibilities donald trump

00:16:09.820 could uh kind of declare victory or walk away uh donald trump could ultimately you know successfully

00:16:16.000 control the area i don't think that's going to happen just because i don't think the united

00:16:19.600 states is going to put boots on the ground and that's what it would require to ultimately truly

00:16:23.920 control that that zone but we don't know if the united states is going to get pulled into this

00:16:28.440 later war yet it's possible i've warned against it i think it would be bad i'm certainly not

00:16:32.980 discounting it as a possibility but it's far too early to declare this you know oh well this is the

00:16:37.940 crisis that's going to end the american empire if for no other reason then america and you know i

00:16:43.280 hate to say this but we've either fought to a stalemate or just left several wars for decades

00:16:50.300 now. I mean, we did this with Vietnam. We did this with Iraq and Afghanistan. We've done this

00:16:57.540 in a lot of places. And that has not been the end of the American empire. You could say that

00:17:04.660 the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think actually very easily could say that the Biden

00:17:09.140 withdrawal from Afghanistan is far more of a humiliation ritual and far more of a pivotal

00:17:14.900 moment for the United States to reflect on the nature of its empire than currently successfully

00:17:21.300 bombing Iran. Again, I am fully aware of the possible downsides of fighting in Iran. I have

00:17:29.500 talked about them rather often and to the dismay of many people who think that we should be just

00:17:36.400 cheering this no matter what. But again, we need to be reasonable. We need to have an objective

00:17:42.900 analysis of what's going on here. And I think this is honestly not that. I think this is

00:17:49.500 not a value-free analysis, but a value-filled analysis. Because if failed military incursions

00:17:57.380 were going to topple the American empire, well, then that would have happened in the 1970s.

00:18:02.820 But that hasn't been the case. So I think we're prematurely looking at a conflict that is not

00:18:09.400 anywhere near Vietnam or even Afghanistan and declaring it to be the end of an empire,

00:18:15.040 even though those things did not end the empire. Again, I'm 100% behind the idea that this could

00:18:21.300 be a disaster. And I have counseled against that very enthusiastically for that very specific

00:18:26.400 reason. But when we come in and we just say, oh, well, that means the empire is over.

00:18:30.780 I think that just cuts against all evidence we have at the moment.

00:18:34.760 And in a minute, I'm going to go through exactly all of the ways in which it's starting to look like that.

00:18:41.760 In fact, there's an argument to say that American incompetence here vastly outstrips what was happening in the Suez Crisis,

00:18:50.760 because the British at that time militarily actually acquitted themselves quite well.

00:18:56.760 It wasn't like a mess up in this way. It was actually an intervention by the Americans that led to the humiliation of Suez.

00:19:04.760 A little bit of cope there. I mean, it's America's fault. We're here. You know, okay.

00:19:12.000 Anyway, before we get to all of that, you can now have a look at my brand new book here, Foundations of Shakespeare.

00:19:20.100 It is officially released in two days' time. If you own the course, Foundations of Shakespeare, of which many, many people have bought a copy now,

00:19:28.660 you you can send the publisher the receipt and get this for half price as i said i did the event last

00:19:35.920 week see here's how generous i am i'm even leaving the book commercial in and by the way uh academic

00:19:41.580 agent many people don't know this he was a shakespeare scholar uh before he got started

00:19:46.160 talking about economics or politics uh so he is actually very knowledgeable in this subject i've

00:19:51.460 actually spoken with him about this uh so uh you know uh he does have the bona fides on that he's

00:19:56.720 just pulling it out of nowhere this is a beautiful edition and it's got all i mean it really is um

00:20:03.760 and i'm not just saying this because i wrote it i know what's out there in terms of introductions

00:20:09.440 to shakespeare you are not going to get you are not going to find a book that explains the what

00:20:16.720 the renaissance is for example or how um you know medieval and feudal and chivalric structure

00:20:26.720 worked and the great chain of being and I mean you're just not gonna find that

00:20:32.660 book is not out there how do I know because in writing this I consulted

00:20:38.180 everything that was out there and you know you pick up a modern a modern kind

00:20:43.820 of guide to Shakespeare like this you know and it's all going to be well it's

00:20:50.560 all written by feminists and Marxists and so on and so forth who do not go into

00:20:56.600 that sort of detail do not actually give you the nuts and bolts in the way that i do there

00:21:02.440 as well as uh some of the all right interesting ways of play um he said right so somebody so

00:21:10.760 nicolo soldo's got this idea of turbo america that actually this is the moment where the american

00:21:16.680 empire can just go for it and show dominance total spectrum dominance across the board and see off

00:21:23.880 the kind of emergence of the multipolar world that's a nice thesis from soldo and in theory

00:21:31.960 it looked like that might happen but now we're seeing the practice and i say and that the nation

00:21:38.520 that is the nation of america the usa might march on but the empire is done can't defend its colonies

00:21:48.040 it can't muster support it cannot make good on its threats the projection of power the aura of

00:21:56.120 invincibility that america always had when i was a kid okay i mean it's i'll get into how difficult

00:22:05.800 it is to get your mind back into like living in the 80s and how invincible and amazing the

00:22:11.960 the americans looked and how actually so again this is kind of a historical the united states

00:22:18.220 had already taken a significant loss in vietnam that was kind of the whole point it made america

00:22:23.700 bleed and this was well before the 1980s so the idea that america has just looked invincible on

00:22:30.340 the world stage and has never shown weakness previously could not be defeated that just

00:22:36.740 obviously isn't true and it only becomes less true as time goes on when you look at again Iraq

00:22:44.300 Afghanistan these kind of things that was kind of the whole point of the first Gulf War it was it

00:22:48.580 was this idea that oh Americans can be okay with war again because look how quickly we dominated

00:22:53.120 Saddam Hussein that's literally what guys like George Bush senior kind of said about the Gulf

00:22:58.580 War that it was kind of getting Americans away from this fear of foreign conflict that they had

00:23:04.860 had since vietnam uh so what we're really seeing is more of a seesaw of american uh interest in

00:23:11.860 empire and this has really been true of america throughout its history america has gone through

00:23:16.420 periods where it's very interested in empire and desires its expansion and uh wants to go out and

00:23:22.940 prove itself in the world and then it kind of circles back into these moments of isolation

00:23:27.640 wanting to look inward wanting to address its own issues this is more of an american cycle than it

00:23:33.140 is some kind of direction that America is moving. And I think that it's more important to understand

00:23:40.060 it in those terms so we can properly look at where we're at now. America just had a very

00:23:46.420 successful, well, at least as far as we can tell, successful action in Venezuela. And off the back

00:23:53.400 of that successful Venezuelan action, it is kind of building momentum and people are once again

00:23:59.620 interested in the idea of america as this muscular geopolitical force uh this comes after

00:24:06.420 many people were very worried after the withdrawals from places like afghanistan

00:24:11.380 that america more or less was not able to continue this kind of thing so i think we're really seeing

00:24:16.760 more this cycle of american behavior rather than we're seeing this general direction of american

00:24:22.260 imperial decline now i'm not saying that the american empire might not life by the ocean

00:24:28.140 means embracing the fog as it rolls in when the whole city goes fuzzy and nothing is sharp or

00:24:34.640 precisely defined while you're here you too might fall in love with misty halifax mornings

00:24:40.840 fog can muffle the noise of your expectations help you focus on the moment right in front of you

00:24:47.440 it can give you a whole new perspective if you're willing to let it cloud your judgment

00:24:53.160 discoverhalifax.ca trend towards the decline eventually all empires do in fact we might be

00:25:01.380 at the beginning of that in some level but ultimately the idea that american empire is

00:25:05.400 done that this is it that this is over or that this is the turning point look again if you're

00:25:09.760 going to call a turning point you'd have to call it vietnam and from there maybe we're on our on

00:25:16.220 you know well into the decline by you know however many years have been since then don't make me do

00:25:20.980 math on the internet live uh but ultimately the point is i think we're overstating our case here

00:25:26.920 in the hopes that this will be the definitive blow or he he's hoping it's a definitive blow

00:25:31.440 uh not me uh but ultimately i think that's kind of the the thing we're projecting into this moment

00:25:37.660 if we were going to accurately assess when the american empire really took its first really

00:25:43.000 powerful bloody nose well you know it's certainly going to be the vietnam war it's not going or it

00:25:49.080 would have been iraq or afghanistan it's definitely not here even like even me growing up in the in

00:25:55.620 the 80s and 90s i you know my heart and soul was over there i loved it and now it's all gone it's

00:26:02.700 cooked cooked that aura of invincibility that that kind of notion that everybody wants to be like

00:26:10.880 them it's gone this what we're watching here is american suez and let me just go into some of the

00:26:18.180 ways so first of all you know on the front cover i've got that picture of trump holding the holding

00:26:24.980 the massive you know text scroll of doom let's have a look at some of the people saying that

00:26:32.120 trump is dead and the foul serpent of levant wears his skin that's milo okay so now we're kind of

00:26:39.240 moving into going through twitter and looking at hot takes now don't get me wrong i like twitter

00:26:46.380 and i i issued hot takes on twitter and i even do shows in which i look at hot takes on twitter

00:26:51.360 uh but i don't think that these are powerful ways to explain why we are in like the suez crisis of

00:26:58.280 america um i think we're just going to look at like people being angry at donald trump and that's

00:27:04.640 fine if i think if this video had been labeled something like this is the end of maga or the

00:27:10.280 downfall of maga you'd have a better case i still don't even think that's probably true but at least

00:27:16.220 you would have had i think a stronger case but i think just going through people's twitter feeds

00:27:21.400 and looking at the fact that they don't like donald trump going to war and saying well that

00:27:25.920 means the american empire is over i mean again massive protests happened for vietnam like

00:27:32.200 life-changing protests happened for me vietnam people died uh it went insane the entire country

00:27:38.320 destroyed itself richard nixon basically won his presidential race on the idea that he would stop

00:27:44.920 the insanity that was coming from leftist violence and protests in response to the

00:27:49.580 Vietnam conflict. So we're not getting any of that with Iran. Like I haven't even seen a protest

00:27:56.020 on the street about the Iranian war. I mean, like, I'm sure there are 10 hippies somewhere

00:28:02.980 holding up signs, but there's just nothing comparatively to what was happening in Vietnam.

00:28:10.280 In Vietnam, we were calling up just hundreds of thousands of Americans, drafting them into the military, sending them into very dangerous situations they had no interest in getting involved in.

00:28:20.400 And this created a massive protest movement and really rendered the social fabric in the United States so desperately that it transformed the United States pretty much for the worse.

00:28:28.640 and the idea that that is not the inflection point of the empire but like some people getting

00:28:35.040 angry on twitter over the current iranian war is i'm sorry like that just doesn't make any sense at

00:28:41.120 all you can say that president president trump is losing support you could say that the iranian war

00:28:46.560 is unpopular i think those are all valid conclusions to draw but the idea that a war

00:28:53.100 in which the united states is dominating its enemy uh and in which uh donald trump's you know

00:28:59.680 still enjoys a good amount of support from his base i think this is just not this is this is

00:29:05.220 wish casting like there's just no evidence for this i don't think scrolling through twitter and

00:29:09.580 pointing out that people don't like what he's doing that that in any way amounts to you know

00:29:15.020 We had truly kinetic opposition to a war in the Vietnam era, like just socially changing.

00:29:23.300 They're still making movies today about how tumultuous this period of upheaval inside the American empire was during the 1960s.

00:29:33.440 But for some reason, guys on Twitter saying they don't like Trump anymore, that's more or less the same thing.

00:29:39.140 I'm sorry, but that that language just doesn't or that logic just doesn't hang for me.

00:29:43.520 If you remember Milo, he was one of the OG, one of the original MAGA from back in 2016.

00:29:50.160 Why is he saying this?

00:29:51.740 Because in the middle of this war, in the middle of one of the greatest American crises,

00:29:57.640 okay, since America's been, since we've lived in Pax Americana,

00:30:01.960 and the possible end of the empire, as I'm talking about,

00:30:07.020 Trump takes time out in his busy schedule to start white knighting for fucking Mark Levin.

00:30:13.520 right white knighting for mark levin and what we're going to do here we're going to go up my

00:30:18.320 timeline and i'm going to show you exactly why the wheel i mean the way maga is done trump is done

00:30:25.060 okay this so again like that's possible i i think he would have been on more solid ground if that

00:30:32.060 was the premise of the video that uh the maga movement has serious problems that it's fractured

00:30:37.900 in a very important way i think there would be some case to that i still think it's probably

00:30:42.860 overblown again donald trump still enjoys relatively good approval from his base now i think

00:30:51.280 what donald trump has the possibility of losing or might have already lost is that more extended

00:30:56.420 coalition and i do think that conservatives or cheerleaders for the current trump policy

00:31:02.020 who are just pointing to to polls of fox news viewers and saying well that's the only thing

00:31:07.280 that matters that's the real number for donald trump's support like that's dumb obviously we

00:31:12.760 would never have that much of a siloed poll in any other situation so the idea that you're cutting

00:31:18.300 out all of the moderate trump voters all of kind of the the new trump voters who came in from the

00:31:23.640 bernie sanders uh areas or the the maha movement or any of this other stuff even the anti-war

00:31:29.500 movement many people shifted even libertarians voted for trump because of his promises for

00:31:33.820 anti-war you could say that that extended coalition is shattered and i think that's entirely fair to

00:31:39.420 say uh but it's very clear that some form of maga is going to continue so even calling maga dead in

00:31:46.280 this instance i think might be dicey now he recorded this video before joe kent uh issued his

00:31:52.320 uh letter resigning uh from the trump administration and i think after that letter you probably have a

00:31:59.720 better case that there's a serious fracture inside but he issued this beforehand uh you know so that

00:32:05.340 that evidence wasn't wasn't there uh but either way none of this equates to the american empire

00:32:10.660 being over uh i'm sorry but again we had far more significant factions inside not just you know

00:32:17.720 one party's coalition or the other but the entire country in previous conflicts even when you look

00:32:24.380 at something like iraq or afghanistan we had far more significant street protests we had far more

00:32:29.920 significant division inside the nation and this might just i mean maybe you could say that

00:32:34.860 ultimately it's the apathy that's an issue inside the larger american public maybe the fact that

00:32:40.100 most americans barely seem to really care that you're in war with iran in any serious way maybe

00:32:46.040 we could say that's kind of the death of the american spirit and it's a excitement about

00:32:50.900 kind of global politics i think those would be fair assertions uh but what it's definitely not

00:32:56.160 is is you know kind of proof that ultimately the iranian conflict itself is like just such

00:33:01.120 a disaster that it's it's going to collapse the american empire total and again you might see the

00:33:05.420 collapse of american empire is good for the for america i think there's a case to be made at some

00:33:09.800 level for that this is not for or against this is simply noticing the reality on the ground right

00:33:16.720 If we're going to do value free analysis, I don't think we can just look at this and say, oh, well, ultimately, this is the one rock on which America is going to smash its empire.

00:33:26.500 If it didn't smash it in Vietnam and it didn't smash it in Iraq and it didn't smash in Afghanistan, then I don't think this is going to be it.

00:33:32.660 I mean, maybe it will be again.

00:33:34.080 I'm I am worried about the conflict.

00:33:36.180 I am worried about its possible ramifications.

00:33:38.800 I have done many shows and articles and been on Twitter talking about this.

00:33:42.920 Many people are very angry at me for doing so.

00:33:44.900 so this is not me saying don't worry the iranian conflict will be just fine it's not a threat at

00:33:48.940 all but i just think we're really overstating our case based on like twitter posts this is it i

00:33:55.240 mean there's no basically there's no almost nobody coping left apart from captive dreamer and dr

00:34:01.500 steve turley and literally like ben shapiro this is what we're down to at the moment okay

00:34:06.340 come on don't don't don't don't lump the great dr turley in with these other guys come on i mean

00:34:13.440 Look, Steve is going to make very excited, pro-patriotic content no matter what.

00:34:19.080 If you haven't seen Dr. Turley's channel, then you know that's what you're getting.

00:34:23.660 Academic agent has been a huge Steve Turley fan for years.

00:34:26.620 So let's not turn on the great Steve Turley in this moment.

00:34:30.360 Because Trump is coming out on the side of, like, literally Mark Levine's getting cyberbullied.

00:34:36.740 And this is the most important thing in the world at the moment.

00:34:40.460 Cooked, I'm telling you.

00:34:41.800 Trump is done.

00:34:43.440 there's the meme there's the meme on the front from the front cover lots of people doing that

00:34:49.240 again i do think that this entire episode is very embarrassing i think trump coming out and

00:34:56.200 insinuating himself into like the podcaster beef like directly while there's a war going on is

00:35:01.720 embarrassing to say the least uh but you know this is something trump has done several times

00:35:07.920 like it's not like trump hasn't stepped in it or you know said like really bombastic stuff or

00:35:12.260 inappropriate stuff at different times before. It's always, oh, it's over for Trump. It's over

00:35:16.840 for Trump. This is the end. And maybe this one will be the end. But since it didn't end the last

00:35:21.320 20 times, I'm noticing a pattern. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, the joke where they

00:35:27.140 had Bashar al-Assad, it's like, you know, this is the end of Assad, right? And this is the end

00:35:31.480 of Assad. And they had the joke of like, every time someone would say Assad's over, they end up

00:35:36.000 losing their position. But eventually Assad did obviously get deposed. But that running joke had

00:35:41.760 some staying power and i think trump has a similar scenario at some point trump will go too far maybe

00:35:46.780 will push himself out of the situation but i'd just be careful about running around and declaring

00:35:51.740 this is the end of trump and to be clear even if it is the end of trump that is very far from being

00:35:56.520 the end of the american empire like radically far from being the america the end of the american

00:36:00.660 empire so i think we're just yeah again i think we're hoping that some level of you know being

00:36:07.520 disgruntled on twitter thereby translates to the downfall of a global superpower and i'm just not

00:36:12.980 sure that the evidence is there um mass censorship going on uh pete hegseth is an absolute lunatic

00:36:20.200 laura loomer is trying to get tucker carson arrested i mean that's a whole separate video

00:36:25.320 that we can get into later in the week perhaps um he is claiming that the footage of the ayatollah's

00:36:33.120 funeral and all of those marches that we're seeing in tehran he's claiming that they are ai right

00:36:39.260 here he is claiming that the iranian government is using ai footage of tehran because he refuses

00:36:45.860 to believe it okay he's basically arguing that the attacks on the u.s bases are fake right i mean this

00:36:53.140 is we're talking a level of gone here a level of freaking out and panic that it that has never been

00:37:01.560 seen before so this is one of those information silo scenarios so it's absolutely true that a lot

00:37:07.540 of people are kind of just being one-shotted by ai uh they get out there and they see a video they

00:37:12.800 don't know what's going on they get weird reports but to be fair this is happening pretty much of

00:37:17.480 all of modern warfare we saw this very much with the ukrainian conflict how difficult it was to get

00:37:23.000 a realistic understanding of who was winning and who was losing remember forever we had uh you know

00:37:27.860 the the ghost of kiev and he was taking over everything and people were falling for sam hyde

00:37:33.100 being uh you know this fighter pilot that was completely annihilating the russians who were on

00:37:37.660 the run and will collapse at any moment and that just turned it out to be entirely not true but

00:37:42.440 then the russians put out like lots of propaganda also turned out to be entirely not true the

00:37:47.320 conflict in ukraine did not go as the russians ultimately hope they might win that because

00:37:51.460 they're going to win it at quite a high cost and so uh you have a similar scenario here where i

00:37:56.360 think uh you know we had all the people on uh on kind of the anti-war side uh showing pictures of

00:38:02.440 benjamin netanyahu saying he's dead because look these videos are ai and he's not really alive and

00:38:07.900 he's got seven fingers and too many teeth in these videos and no like in a lot of cases it was just a

00:38:14.260 shadow that kind of looked like a finger for a second and so there are a lot of people doing

00:38:18.500 this in both areas and uh you know sorry to be the the sensible centrist and say both sides here

00:38:23.620 But really, both sides have put themselves in these silos. The United States is completely winning with no problems. The Iranians are completely dominating with no problems. It's all over for Iran. It's all over for the United States. It's all over for Israel or Israel is dominating. It really just depends on who you're talking to.

00:38:41.600 And that's because we're really in that fifth generation warfare stuff where it's the battle is not just on the battlefield. The battle is for the minds of the public. Because when you have this mass support machine, when you have these scaled up regimes, especially with liberal democracy, you have to keep people believing the same thing in order to maintain support.

00:39:02.580 And so you've got to kind of propagandize your own people. That's always been true of war. But now with the rapidity of media cycles, you have to do it constantly. You have to do it more aggressively. You have to gatekeep that information very, very much so.

00:39:15.880 And so I think we're really just seeing both sides doing this simultaneously, which makes it very difficult to gauge where we really are at at the war.

00:39:23.620 And that's intentional. So I'm you can cite correctly that there are a lot of people looking at what's going on and believing it's AI or believing when they see AI videos.

00:39:35.180 But but that doesn't just work for one side that applies to both very obviously.

00:39:39.580 And if we're doing value free analysis, we need to admit that we can't just say, well, my side.

00:39:44.100 I don't know if you've ever seen the meme with the boats and my base podcasters and my amazing war propaganda and then their subversive propagandists and all these things.

00:39:59.800 We're kind of doing that.

00:40:00.980 Like both sides see each other's efforts as subversive or unrealistic or coping all simultaneously.

00:40:08.720 And I've seen this, again, all across the spectrum.

00:40:12.420 So this is a problem, I think, of just modern warfare. And he's right. And, you know, to an extent, academic agent is correct about how this is impacting people. But I think just saying, oh, well, it's just the pro-America-Israel side doing this. I think you're selling that to yourself. I think the truth is that both sides have bought in very deeply to the delusional propaganda. And it's very difficult to grasp where we are at the moment.

00:40:35.340 uh whitkoff and kushner are taking the blame for starting this um but let's go into some of the

00:40:46.260 ways in which i think that you know we're watching the absolute collapse of american supremacy in

00:40:53.860 real time okay one trump has been talking for a week about taking this karg island okay he's

00:41:01.940 already claimed that iran is defeated and 100 without a military about 15 times this week and

00:41:08.920 every time yeah but again this is what donald trump has done for years an academic agent has

00:41:14.300 made very like entire videos about the way that donald trump speaks and the way that he uses

00:41:19.340 strategy and deploys rhetorical tactics and uh you know overstating your case is basically like

00:41:24.740 the donald trump stamp right like this is what he's going to do he's done it in every other

00:41:29.160 scenario he's done it with his polls his elections his favorability his uh you know different pieces

00:41:34.300 of legislation he wants to pass he always overstates his case so is he overstaying his

00:41:38.820 case in the war yeah of course you know is it great no probably not is this maybe an inappropriate

00:41:44.140 time for that level of bravado perhaps but ultimately this is not in any way different

00:41:48.740 behavior i don't think it's indicative one way or another of the current condition of the american

00:41:53.740 empire like i just don't see how two years ago donald trump having the same rhetorical strategy

00:41:59.160 uh didn't signal the decline of the american empire but now it does it just doesn't make a

00:42:04.400 lot of sense time he says it more and more people laugh at him uh but he's also just been threatening

00:42:09.080 like he's already said this island is completely destroyed he said that about four days ago

00:42:13.540 now now he's saying um oh he's weighing up the seizure of it they've been talking about these

00:42:19.380 things for a week okay about a week ago trump was saying like if haran don't do this that we're

00:42:27.800 gonna hit them 20 times harder 30 times harder and netanyahu was you know and there's a lot of

00:42:33.680 i'm not gonna get into is netanyahu dead stuff as far as i'm concerned he's alive and i'm not

00:42:39.960 gonna get into it so here he kind of admits yeah so the other side is engaging in like this ai

00:42:46.540 stuff saying oh well everything i don't like is ai is is kind of like backtracking and saying well

00:42:51.960 yeah that is happening on on that side too but i'm not going to get into it well that's kind of

00:42:56.680 important thing to get into you can't claim that one side doing it means that it's you know it's

00:43:01.200 it's uh the end of the american empire and then the other side's doing the exact same thing it's

00:43:05.080 like well i'm just not going to get into it also again you'll kind of notice that uh academic agent

00:43:10.520 has more or less forgotten his own comparison about trump and kayfabe like that's again like

00:43:15.760 so much of his correct analysis of trump's rhetoric is completely vacant from this analysis and i i

00:43:23.400 don't know why uh again that doesn't mean that we're winning it doesn't mean that america is

00:43:27.720 dominating it could be it could not be i think it is but even if it isn't like trump using the

00:43:32.820 same rhetorical tactics that you have personally you know dissected on a regular basis i don't

00:43:38.560 think that's evidence in any given direction okay if he i just don't want to get into that okay it's

00:43:44.280 it's slot coded for me and i'm gonna stay away from him again yeah both sides are doing the slop

00:43:50.460 so you can't cite one side doing slop and saying that's the end of the american empire and then

00:43:54.600 just ignore the other side doing slop i'm glad you're not engaging in it i'm glad you have a

00:43:57.640 realistic understanding of it but that means that it's not an indicator and citing it as an indicator

00:44:02.180 is poor evidence but if you remember about a week ago natanyahu's like tonight there's going to be

00:44:09.540 big surprise right all of these kind of promises and threats nothing happens just nothing just

00:44:17.060 just no there's no delivery threats are made red lines are crossed nothing happens

00:44:23.540 absolutely nothing happens okay um and so uh yeah there's lots of things going on here right

00:44:34.660 the fact that trump in the run-up to this war spent a huge amount of time attacking british

00:44:44.580 troops european troops attacking his allies threatening greenland threatening denmark

00:44:50.820 okay having a go at canada threatening to annex canada having a go at mark carney having a go at

00:44:56.980 Keir Starmer having a go at all of his allies and um he also if you remember about a week ago

00:45:05.460 said to Keir Starmer we don't need your help we don't need your help we the war is already won

00:45:12.020 so you can't come in now Britain or try to claim a piece of the glory we don't need you

00:45:18.660 now Trump is freaking out and saying we can't we can't commit anything to defend the Strait of

00:45:26.100 of Hormuz after all this big talk we can't do it can you come and help us please so

00:45:33.720 I understand why people in foreign countries don't like the rhetoric directed at their leaders

00:45:41.620 even leaders they hate like academic agent hates Keir Starber why does he care if someone insults

00:45:46.680 him but he cares because ultimately he's patriotic for his nation which is the right thing to do like

00:45:51.440 even if you are ruled by someone evil, you know, our side, our guys first, even if they're the bad

00:45:57.140 guys in our, in our country. Fine. I get that. But the idea that Donald Trump couldn't commit

00:46:04.200 enough resources to the Strait of Hormuz seems unlikely, right? Like we have how many aircraft

00:46:10.560 carriers, like 16, there's two of them in the region. I mean, we could put more there. I don't

00:46:16.660 know if that's military advisable. Perhaps that's why I think ultimately the point is that

00:46:21.360 the Trump administration does not want to be seen as over-engaging in this region. This is kind of

00:46:26.680 supposed to be a one and done, right? Like we want those quick wins. Now, I think that's always a

00:46:32.240 trap. I've warned against that, but that is the mentality. And so I don't think it's like the

00:46:36.620 American military can't bring more power to bear, that we desperately have to have England or

00:46:42.300 someone show up, but simply that Trump wants to be seen as somebody who is more or less casually

00:46:47.400 conducting war so americans don't worry about it keep going to the mall uh the american military

00:46:52.820 has got you uh done again i don't think that's a great mentality but that is the one that it seems

00:46:57.240 like trump has kind of embraced again i don't think that signals the end of an empire uh obviously

00:47:02.760 in many cases the classic imperial move is to pull in other nations to kind of take that hit

00:47:09.060 for you buddy like that's that's the old move right like you go in if you're julius caesar

00:47:13.960 if you're alexander i'm not comparing trump to either of those figures but i'm just saying

00:47:18.780 the classic imperial conquering move is to go out and recruit locals and use them against each other

00:47:24.460 hey even america did that when it was taking over indian territory we side with one tribe of indians

00:47:30.580 who have hated another tribe of indians for many many many centuries and we use them against each

00:47:35.920 other that's how the spanish conquered mexico or like latin america right is they they got all

00:47:41.700 these people who hated uh the aztecs it together and they like use it to uh to defeat them so

00:47:47.780 recruiting other countries to kind of do your job for you especially countries that are closer to

00:47:52.000 the conflict is kind of a classic imperial move now maybe the fact that trump can't ultimately

00:47:56.780 compel them to do so uh it shows some level of weakness i suppose you could say that that was a

00:48:02.680 misstep uh he did not uh properly court those relations to deploy those resources uh but i

00:48:08.400 the idea that like well you're just running to britain because you can't possibly uh muster the

00:48:12.800 necessary military might i'm skeptical about that italy no spain no japan no france now it's written

00:48:23.440 hesitant here it was reported that france was sending 10 warships and the french government

00:48:29.760 had to come out and say this is we're not doing that okay so france not sure norway

00:48:38.080 no canada no australia no germany which is literally weak a vassal state no china haven't

00:48:46.180 said anything starma uh i mean if we're citing the fact that china isn't involving itself in the war

00:48:54.460 on the american side uh all right like obviously if china was gonna back anyone probably not us i

00:49:01.900 That doesn't feel like evidence in the slightest. Same with Spain, right? I get maybe the UK or Germany. Those are pretty consistent allies. They're usually on board for what we're doing. But I think we're reaching pretty desperately when we're like, oh, why is it China throwing these ships in on the American side of the war against Iran, the place where China gets a lot of its oil? I don't know, man. I could do the math on that. How is this evidence?

00:49:28.920 morning has given a speech what a tear to my crystal eye when i watched this speech because

00:49:36.500 i was really worried i was like fucking starma's gonna let us down again he's gonna you turn again

00:49:40.940 actually starma has told trump to go and do one and his speech was actually about

00:49:47.200 giving relief to people who are going to be feeling the squeeze because of the increase

00:49:52.280 in fuel prices so britain has been kept out of the war my goodness can we cut if there's a world war

00:49:59.460 can we take a time out for once can we do it can britain stay out of the war for once in its

00:50:05.920 entire existence i'm feeling hopeful netherland no response south korea no confirmation

00:50:14.120 to south korea also by the way pissed off because the americans have removed thad missiles from

00:50:20.660 there and put them across to israel and then immediately the north koreans started doing

00:50:27.880 missile tests and you know beating their chests uh you know there's also news this morning that

00:50:34.420 there's activity around taiwan how much of that is slop i don't know but the fact is now here i

00:50:41.100 think aa has a better case now this this is a point i think he's making that is very relevant

00:50:46.140 One of the things that allows you to maintain this global empire is the fact that so many countries are dependent on you for military hegemony.

00:50:54.660 They know that ultimately the only way they can kind of contain their enemies is by basically leveraging your military technology or your military directly.

00:51:04.480 And when someone like South Korea sees you rapidly deploying critical armaments on the behalf of another nation, they're going to start worrying about, hey, how do we increase our priority inside the American empire?

00:51:19.020 And if the answer is you can't because Israel just has primacy no matter what, well, now you've got a real problem because now you can't offer people that imperial deal.

00:51:27.320 You can't say, OK, we are ultimately the hegemon. We control the area and we're going to dictate these terms. But the deal of us dictating this term is that you stay safe, that like ultimately, as long as you remain under our imperial umbrella, you retain that that not not really sovereignty, but at least a sphere of influence inside the American empire that is significant.

00:51:49.140 And if that sphere of influence and ultimately safety can be popped because one country calls upon America to once again come to its aid, then I think there is a legitimate concern by other nations who are more or less plugged into the American geopolitical framework that they could be abandoned at any time.

00:52:09.200 And this is probably the most cohesive argument that we get here, that there could be serious problems at the heart of the American empire.

00:52:17.360 Now, I still don't think that I still think it's very overstated to say, well, therefore, the American empire is over. But I do think that this is a legitimate weakness. This is a legitimate sign of serious issue. You do not, as the global hegemon, want to favor one of your what should be like satrapies over others so blindly that it's obvious that like you're going to abandon these other realms no matter what.

00:52:42.760 Like, it can't be that when imperial, when, when Israel, you know, cracks the whip, all of a sudden, all the other allies don't matter. And the, you know, the message being sent to places like South Korea is that's kind of the case. You know, we don't really care. We were funding Ukraine. We're still, we're still, your tax dollars are still funding Ukrainian bureaucrats, but we've completely shifted away from that war, right?

00:53:04.320 Like that proxy war with Russia, we're not even we're not signing new bills to fund them.

00:53:09.340 We haven't really completely removed our support there.

00:53:12.940 But it's very clear that when Israel wanted to get involved here, we kind of just withdrew everything else and started focusing.

00:53:19.740 And that is, I think, scary for a lot of people who ultimately are kind of hitching themselves to the wagon of American empire.

00:53:25.900 So I think this is probably one of the better cases being made here.

00:53:29.480 all of these people in the hour of need the hegemon says jump nobody says how high everybody

00:53:36.680 says go and do one why are they saying go and do one because trump has spent the past

00:53:42.280 year completely severing and burning all his bridges and running down europe and having a go

00:53:49.840 at all of his allies so he has isolated america and also because this war was a war of choice

00:53:56.740 and it's a war for israel and of course all of these places know what the shot is again i do

00:54:03.380 think this is kind of the strongest argument that he has uh i don't know about the severing all the

00:54:08.220 allies but it's very clear that they realized that there was some level of damage done to

00:54:12.340 different european relationships that's why marco rubio kind of delivered that speech

00:54:17.040 about european heritage and how it's tied to america and how we are descendants and our

00:54:21.660 civilizations flow from each other and that's uh why we feel kind of this eternal bond with the

00:54:26.920 europeans that was a good speech in many ways but unfortunately um it's hard to look at then

00:54:33.920 subsequent actions and wonder well is that speech was that primed to then generate a level of

00:54:39.680 loyalty before moving in on on this kind of action uh you know that's concerning if we're if we're

00:54:45.360 kind of pre-staging our addresses with Europe to hopefully engender support for them this kind of

00:54:52.260 thing and that's why you really want to avoid even the appearance that ultimately Israel is

00:54:56.560 dictating this foreign policy and while a lot of people are scoffing at that even though like

00:55:01.320 that's what Marco Rubio functionally said that's kind of what Trump said that's what Joe Kent

00:55:05.820 definitely said uh you know there's sorry there's too much smoke on this fire I get it like I know

00:55:11.260 we're all worried about people asking questions I know it's the worst thing we can do right now

00:55:15.040 But this is, you know, this is at the heart, a serious problem.

00:55:18.620 You can't be a global hadjumon and also do the bidding of a minor partner whenever it

00:55:23.900 seems like they want.

00:55:24.820 Like, that's pretty bad.

00:55:26.140 And no matter how people want to cope about this, we're not really beating those allegations.

00:55:30.560 If you want to avoid this, you really have to take back sovereignty on this issue.

00:55:35.960 Know what the shot is, and they're not going to get involved.

00:55:39.820 All of this is telling me that the U.S. empire is cooked, okay?

00:55:45.040 Trump had all this big talk about the Strait of Hormuz, won't commit even one warship there

00:55:51.760 himself and nobody else will either. The US bases in all of these Gulf regions were meant to be a

00:55:59.040 guarantor of security. As long as the US bases were there, you don't get attacked. Iran has

00:56:04.700 completely destroyed the credibility of US security guarantees and also the behavior of Trump,

00:56:13.440 His total subservient allegiance to that little country in the Middle East, Israel, making that the one unprincipled Smithian exception above all others has completely also destroyed his credibility and America's credibility with all of these supposed allies because they.

00:56:32.520 now again however you feel about the assertion about the level of israeli influence it is

00:56:37.900 undeniable that for america to maintain positive relations with these gulf states they do need to

00:56:43.360 prove that they can ultimately defend them in scenarios like this now iran is not popular with

00:56:48.800 many of the countries around it and so many of these countries being struck aren't suddenly you

00:56:53.760 know on the side of iran against the united states it would be foolish to assert that and i don't

00:56:59.460 really think that that's necessarily what uh academic agent is saying here uh but uh just

00:57:04.700 because they aren't on the side of iran doesn't mean they're suddenly feeling really good about

00:57:09.160 their relationship with the united states and if the global hegemon that you're kind of handing

00:57:14.220 your sovereignty over to in exchange for protection can't protect you then they're going to go look for

00:57:19.380 someone else or they're going to try to develop sovereignty of their own this is kind of the

00:57:22.960 classic move right like even go down to feudalism if the feudal lord can't protect you from the

00:57:27.920 barbarian why are you paying taxes to the feudal lord right why are you giving him support does it

00:57:33.780 make any sense that's a whole deal so if the united states is the feudal lord in this scenario but it

00:57:38.840 can't protect the gulf states uh you know from kind of the barbarians of the of the iranian strike

00:57:44.360 then ultimately even if they don't like iran even if they're not kind of on iran's side they see

00:57:50.280 themselves as not really needing to kick back up to the guy in charge because he's not fulfilling

00:57:56.420 his part of the bargain anyway at the end of the day all government is just a mafia okay and the

00:58:01.680 deal with the mafia is if i pay you off you don't hurt me and no one else hurts me i get it like i

00:58:08.080 am not able to defend myself i am i am in some way subservient to you but if you can't you know

00:58:14.940 follow through with the promise i'm gonna go find a guy who can there's gonna be another mobster who

00:58:19.580 can get the job done in this case something like china right and so the situation you're in is you

00:58:25.300 do not want to turn all these Gulf state allies into, at the very least, kind of neutral players,

00:58:30.720 because ultimately when Israel wants to start a war, you can't defend them. And that's really

00:58:36.880 the key point here. Again, Iran might not be building a lot of goodwill by striking these

00:58:41.620 areas, but the idea that the U.S. bases are guarantors of safety for these Gulf states,

00:58:47.120 and that's kind of the deal, that's very true. Academic agent is right about this.

00:58:50.240 you can see if you're in south korea and they're moving thad missiles from your base to the israeli

00:58:55.760 base or if you're even in your ukraine and they're moving defense down from ukraine down to israel

00:59:02.880 or if you're in the gulf and they're just you're seeing that iranian missiles are coming in

00:59:10.000 completely without interception completely without us intervention because all of their thoughts and

00:59:18.560 minds trying to defend Tel Aviv. By the way, they can't even defend Tel Aviv. We can get onto that

00:59:23.040 in a second. So this is another good point. Ultimately, one of the big concerns from people

00:59:29.020 like me who were against the Ukrainian war is, and remember when we were against war? Wasn't that

00:59:34.600 great? I enjoyed that time. That was a nice time for us. Anyway, at the time, we're very worried

00:59:41.000 that the depletion of American stockpiles of munitions and other key assets was going to be

00:59:47.200 a serious problem and it's very clear that especially with you know our manufacturing

00:59:52.800 base and everything else we simply cannot keep up uh supplying the entire world uh with things

00:59:58.860 like missiles interceptors you have to fire a lot of this stuff just to knock basic missiles out of

01:00:03.380 the sky uh it only gets harder you know when you're talking about more advanced hypersonic stuff

01:00:07.920 and so the stockpiles get depleted rather uh rapidly and so the problem is when you're kind

01:00:14.560 of out there guaranteeing the safety of other nations you're playing an asymmetrical game

01:00:19.120 because every missile needs to be stopped and if you know whenever you're missing them you're kind

01:00:24.440 of showing a level of weakness uh you know that that iran can still cause damage iran doesn't

01:00:30.580 much like vietnam iran doesn't need to like come in and dominate and like go back and conquer the

01:00:36.800 united states to ultimately win the war right did vietnam win the war against the united states

01:00:42.180 will the united states left so in that sense yes uh could it have ever at its height really gone

01:00:48.020 toe-to-toe with the u.s threaten the u.s mainland no of course not so you have to understand that

01:00:53.400 disproportional wind condition involved right like the guys in afghanistan uh were way less uh

01:01:00.140 proficient than u.s soldiers like obviously u.s soldiers were far better than the taliban at

01:01:05.840 combat but the key was making the price too high to maintain our presence in this faraway land

01:01:12.800 and it turns out that a bunch of goat herders with improvised explosives and ak-47s can ultimately do

01:01:18.740 more damage than the guys spending billions trillions of dollars on military tech if they're

01:01:24.820 dedicated enough and they're willing to take significant losses and iran has kind of shown

01:01:29.280 the desire to do so and so ultimately i think there is a very legitimate concern that the lack

01:01:35.320 of interceptors the inability to maintain that uh you know the the the we all love to talk about

01:01:41.440 technological supremacy we all love to talk about how warfare has changed fundamentally and the new

01:01:46.820 technology drones nukes hypersonic missiles they've all changed the landscape and it's true to an

01:01:52.140 extent but at the end of the day tech only goes so far right like ultimately especially when we

01:01:58.160 have the scale down tech like drones that could be reproduced by much smaller countries without

01:02:02.340 the same manufacturing base, without the same level of complexity, every time you're spending

01:02:06.640 a trillion dollars on military hardware, they're spending way less and still wasting your trillion

01:02:11.740 dollars. So how long can you go toe to toe as an economic power who's leaning entirely on its

01:02:18.200 ability to manufacture really high quality weapons, technological advanced weapons? If

01:02:24.740 they're not gaining you significant advantage, if your opponent is out leveraging you, then that is

01:02:29.500 a huge concern and you could run through those stockpiles very quickly which it appears we are

01:02:33.280 getting there uh so that is a real concern i think again this is more of the more substantive points

01:02:39.380 from academic agent here but they've all got to be thinking hold on a second what what are we what

01:02:45.840 are we even getting out of this what this was all just for that one place over there we're a lesser

01:02:51.300 ally than these other places and every single one of them is thinking about this at the moment

01:02:58.920 so again this is uh true and it's also in line with george washington george washington said

01:03:06.080 very clearly uh that having favored nations will be bad for many reasons talked a lot about foreign

01:03:11.780 influence well you know but also said that ultimately other allies other countries will

01:03:17.980 become jealous of that special relationship and they will stop doing business with you it will

01:03:22.240 hurt your ability to have uh you know kind of these relations with other nations so you want

01:03:27.320 to be careful about favoring one nation above everybody else because it's going to create

01:03:30.660 exactly the attitude that academic agent is worrying about so i think in this instance he's

01:03:35.740 standing on the same ground george washington is and that's pretty solid ground this is what's

01:03:40.240 happening in the world right now um yeah there's some stuff about uh russia there um

01:03:48.400 um so yeah i mean as uh alex uh my buddy alex master says there uh the global american empire

01:03:59.040 was only ever a cultural and economic mirage the supremacy of the dollar and the saturation of

01:04:03.700 hollywood have decayed beyond utility in the last 20 years i'm sorry to our american cousins but it

01:04:09.540 is over and your currency and clout are going to zero and that is what we're seeing right now

01:04:15.340 so part of this is true but i think attributing it all to this conflict is a bad read and for a

01:04:24.540 very simple reason uh you know we were seeing this in the class of civilizations thesis right

01:04:30.660 like ultimately uh samuel huntington was talking about the fact that we were going to see the

01:04:35.900 fracture of this uh you know bipolar world you had these two sides you had the the u.s and you

01:04:41.900 had the Soviets. And every one of these countries was now going to be searching for their own sphere

01:04:45.980 of influence after that conflict collapsed. And so people were going to try to move into modernity

01:04:51.780 without being attached to either the USSR or the United States. They were going to try to create

01:04:56.520 their own cultures, their own currencies, their own spheres of sovereignty. He was predicting that

01:05:01.360 back in the 1990s. And I think he was absolutely correct. So if that was Huntington's understanding

01:05:07.020 decades ago, I don't think the Iran conflict is suddenly the inflection point. Again,

01:05:12.380 you could say it's a data point in a larger trend. I think that's right. You could say that this is

01:05:17.680 the nature of what happens when the world radically shifts from this too great power mode

01:05:23.900 into a understanding where other emerging powers are going to start making plays on

01:05:29.000 the global stage. But again, that's part of an ongoing process, one that has been identified

01:05:34.400 for many many decades by important scholars and so noticing that you know hollywood has declined

01:05:40.320 and its cultural influence and that other nations are trying to move to their own dollars their own

01:05:44.900 currency become more self-sufficient these kind of things i think that's just the nature of

01:05:48.200 globalization uh proving to be uh tenuous at best and so if you want to say that the united states

01:05:55.700 is just like the arbiter of globalization all right fair there's an argument to that but

01:05:59.620 ultimately i think just saying that that's because the american empire itself is collapsing as

01:06:03.860 opposed to there's a larger geopolitical grand force that is kind of driving these different

01:06:08.920 spheres of influence towards their current actions. I think that's a little hazier.

01:06:14.520 And actually, I'm not, it's actually could and should be a liberation for Americans.

01:06:21.420 Our American friends have got their own fight here. They have watched a movement that was

01:06:28.800 supposed to be about draining the swamp. It was supposed to be about winning their country

01:06:33.740 back completely hijacked by people like laura looma and mark levin and ben shapiro and all of

01:06:41.820 the and basically trump selling out his base for all of these disgusting individuals that's the

01:06:48.620 american fight right now so i do appreciate academic agents saying this because oftentimes

01:06:55.100 he is not very careful with his language about america and it seems like he conflates uh the

01:07:00.620 the regime with the people uh people that he knows who don't feel this way and that can be

01:07:05.380 pretty frustrating uh so i'm glad he takes the time to say okay that this you know there are

01:07:09.760 friends in america and they are they are worried about this fight and this they are seeing their

01:07:13.380 movement subverted uh because oftentimes he will treat maga as if it was never a real movement as

01:07:18.700 if it never had this as if this was not ultimately like a legitimate goal or desire by uh the people

01:07:24.880 of the united states uh and so it's really good that he ultimately kind of uh comes out and

01:07:29.980 clarifies this, because I do think that's a critical point. I think there are a lot of people

01:07:35.200 like myself who are very concerned that people like Laura Loomer and Mark Levin are now considered

01:07:39.800 the standard bearers of MAGA. Guys like Ben Shapiro, who hated Trump and attacked him at

01:07:45.120 every turn and said he was incredibly dangerous and that we could never vote for him. Guys like

01:07:49.500 Mitch McConnell, who said that if Trump is ever in power, it'll destroy the United States,

01:07:54.400 are now out there praising Donald Trump. I myself have worried about this, have said this is a

01:07:59.120 problem said, we really need to care about this fact. So I'm glad that academic agent takes the

01:08:03.740 time to make that distinction. Okay. And if you're American, you should probably ask them,

01:08:08.520 what's the empire ever done for me? Okay. Cause it not only is it messed up all of these European

01:08:14.840 countries, hollowed out their industry. Okay. Uh, I knew, I mean, you know, the story that

01:08:21.020 that's just the whole reason MAGA exists in the first place. Not only has it done all of that

01:08:24.840 stuff um but also it's done it to america as well america so this is entirely fair right and i agree

01:08:34.680 with a lot of this but you'll notice that academic agent began by lamenting the loss of the british

01:08:40.460 empire that churchill was a betrayer for handing over uh the british empire to the americans right

01:08:47.220 that's how he characterized it so the question becomes well what did the empire do for the uk

01:08:52.340 Like, why is it that you think that it didn't have that impact on England, but it did have that impact on the United States? And the answer is, of course, it did have that impact on England. You're seeing the wages now. A lot of people just want to blame America for what's happening to Europe. But in many ways, the imperial ambitions of European powers also did this to themselves.

01:09:13.100 None of this is like monocausal, right? Like all of this has very complicated networks involved, many different aspects coming in. Empire is always a tradeoff. It's always a positive and a negative. And the American empire has had many profound negative impacts on the U.S., but obviously it's had positive ones. We are as rich as we are. We're as powerful as we are. We are secure in many ways as we have been geopolitically because of the empire.

01:09:39.580 We certainly have a level of ability to dictate world actions and world economics. We have been allowed to create many different domestic achievements because of this, but also many bad things, right? Like there's also the fact that we have at least probably 50 million or more people who shouldn't be here in the United States right now. And the same again is true of the UK.

01:09:59.500 so i i think you know i i'm not disagreeing with any of uh academic agents uh kind of points about

01:10:07.580 the american empire and what it's done to uh the american people i've made many of those points

01:10:12.320 myself but we can't we can't go like well empire good for the uk bad for the united states unless

01:10:18.540 the honest truth is the uk is a little jealous that it doesn't have the empire anymore right

01:10:24.580 And I get it. I get it. I get it. I do. But there's a little bit of that going on. Right. And we have we should probably admit that it's OK. I don't hold that against anybody. I'm not I'm not over there, you know, attacking anyone with that. But, you know, let's just be clear. Empire is good and bad for both the UK and the US. And we can kind of see that play out over and over again.

01:10:46.460 America itself has had this done to itself. It's almost like ground zero, the first place that was occupied, you could put it that way. And it could be that this fight between Laura Luma and Tucker Carlson and the fight for the heart and soul of MAGA will ultimately be the fight for the heart and soul of America.

01:11:06.560 And I want Tucker Carlson to win that fight. And I want the American people to win that fight. And I want Laura Luma and Mark Levin and all of those other disgusting individuals in the Epstein class to get their justice and get their comeuppance.

01:11:21.360 again very you know happy that aa takes the time to say ultimately i want the american people to

01:11:28.940 win i want what's best for the united states important to do that important to take the time

01:11:33.460 uh to to make that clear uh so people don't think you just hate america that you're just on the side

01:11:38.660 of you know someone like iran ultimately that you are ultimately hoping the best for the american

01:11:43.400 people okay as yarvin said this is a fantasy he says that's impossible well we'll see something

01:11:50.340 impossible if you believe it's impossible i want these people to get their comeuppance maybe they

01:11:56.100 will um so yeah yeah more goth here you know mr president the straits of hormuz remain closed

01:12:05.140 nobody's coming to help the markets are crashing and china has surrounded taiwan they'll have to

01:12:10.580 wait mark levin is getting ratioed on x that is literally the dawn short of it um i mean look at

01:12:17.860 at this chris brunette maggot is completely 100 dead maggot is now just a zombie skin suit

01:12:26.080 worn by mark levin bill ackman barry vice jared kushner captive dreamer

01:12:32.920 i was look i mean don't get me wrong i i agree that largely there has been a very bad infiltration

01:12:42.140 especially of neoconservatives back into uh the maga movement does that mean mag is dead well i

01:12:47.520 mean maybe i don't know it depends on what we're doing definitions here obviously academic agent

01:12:53.960 listed a bunch of people he hopes end up kind of taking over the american scene winning the battle

01:12:59.440 are those people still maga are they something else i mean it seems like the same coalition to

01:13:04.700 a certain extent uh just shorn of the neocon infiltration so maybe we want og maga i mean

01:13:11.900 you know but again is this the american empire are these the same things uh i don't i don't think so

01:13:17.200 uh but you know i certainly share his sympathy that i ultimately hope that the you know the

01:13:22.120 neocons that have skin suited a good amount of uh kind of the maga movement are forced back out

01:13:26.800 i've been making this case for a long time there years ago by the way when you were all cheering

01:13:32.980 the shit on i was there on my own i think i haven't forgotten closington prudentialist i will

01:13:40.460 never forget let's not get petty i mean come on like okay so at some point some guys you know

01:13:47.160 said something nice about trump i don't think either clossington or prudential prudentialists

01:13:51.580 were blind to the possibility that things might not go well and this is important especially as

01:13:56.400 academic agent himself is kind of involving himself in his own politics in the uk finally

01:14:01.200 because he has a movement he thinks might really work with rupert lowe and uh it's restore right

01:14:06.640 not reform reform restore it's you know that i need you guys to to at least make the terms

01:14:13.240 slightly different. But ultimately, he's kind of been pushing the Rupert Lowe movement. A lot of

01:14:18.500 guys who are aligned with academic agent are investing in the politics of England for the

01:14:22.440 first time in a while since the no seats thing. And the problem with backing a candidate is they

01:14:27.260 can ultimately betray you. That's kind of the deal, unfortunately. So it's always easier to

01:14:32.740 be cynical and argue against things and be a critic than it is to support things. So at some

01:14:40.460 level you know different american commentators proven incorrect entirely possible uh i've been

01:14:46.040 wrong uh academic agents been wrong uh that's how being a commentator works you're going to be wrong

01:14:50.620 uh sometimes uh but i do think it's uh you know especially as more uh more people in the uk are

01:14:57.760 kind of spiritually investing themselves in rupert lowe and that movement and by the way godspeed i

01:15:02.980 hope you save your country uh but but when you're doing that just you know have a little sympathy

01:15:07.520 for your american allies uh because at some point what if rupert lowe turns on you or is

01:15:12.340 unsuccessful or you know things get skin suited uh you end up in the same position i hope it doesn't

01:15:17.280 happen but let's not be you know let's not close our eyes on this one right like anytime you invest

01:15:21.920 in a leader you're gambling some level of credibility on the idea that they might end up

01:15:27.000 winning and you might be wrong look like you know plato and the you know uh tyrant syracuse right

01:15:33.300 like yeah sometimes you get these things wrong sometimes they don't work out but he who dares

01:15:38.960 nothing loses everything right and so i think ultimately uh you have to have some faith in

01:15:44.380 your country you have to have some faith in restorative political movements and whether or

01:15:48.480 not donald trump ultimately works out for the united states and i hope he does and whether

01:15:51.880 rupert lowe ultimately works out for the uk and i hope he does having some level of faith in them

01:15:57.140 is is not a crime now blind faith is bad if you look around at many of the people

01:16:01.880 that AA is naming now,

01:16:04.900 I don't think they are blindly following Trump.

01:16:09.080 So let's give people the room to have hope, at least.

01:16:14.560 It's not always just about being cynical and being correct.

01:16:17.480 If you bet on cynical outcomes,

01:16:20.860 you'll be right more often than not.

01:16:22.360 Trust me, I'm one of those people

01:16:23.400 who often bets on cynical outcomes.

01:16:25.520 But at some point, you have to give people the latitude

01:16:27.860 to be able to invest in the future of their country.

01:16:30.360 Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray, Chris Ruffo, Mark Dubovitz, Shabos Kesterbom, Eyal Yacoubi, John Poderitz, and Batya Ngar Sargon.

01:16:47.340 Why? Because Trump says those that speak ill of Mark Levin will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound.

01:16:58.540 they are not maga i am trump is continuing to crash out completely surrender his entire legacy

01:17:06.700 to these people to mark levin they yeah again i'm i am as worried about this development as a is here

01:17:15.400 he's of course on very solid footing on on this particular critique you can see shoe on head

01:17:20.600 with this image which says everything says everything and what we're seeing is a convergence

01:17:28.520 of people who see this from the left shoe is from the left don't forget and people who supported

01:17:34.100 trump from the right you're seeing people who are libertarians like dave smith or people who are

01:17:41.200 from the marxist left like the young turks and anna kasparian or shoe or some of my uh communist

01:17:48.180 buddies or k-led morphing okay they all see it i yeah okay so the left hates america marxist hate

01:17:56.880 america okay like don't get me wrong uh i i appreciate a good leftist analysis from time

01:18:04.340 to time uh but the idea that because these people have noticed it well they're doing that anyway

01:18:11.000 beforehand uh they just didn't like trump and making them not like trump now is no different

01:18:15.240 I mean, even shoe on head calling shoe of the left is itself almost kind of a joke at

01:18:20.620 this point.

01:18:20.980 Like, I guess to the extent that she's like economically leftist, but, you know, she got

01:18:24.720 married to a Catholic and had a family and she's not really that leftist anymore.

01:18:29.440 I think it's just fair to say that, you know, those those of us who are hoping that a pro

01:18:33.300 American stance would would be the central aspect of Trump presidency are a little worried

01:18:39.000 now.

01:18:39.640 And the left who never cared about a pro American stance still doesn't like Trump.

01:18:45.240 Libertarians see it. Nationalists, people who support Trump from the nationalist right or even the white nationalist right, they all see it.

01:18:55.240 So there is a perfect convergence of left, right, centre, libertarian, nationalist, Marxist.

01:19:04.240 It doesn't matter where you're from, everybody can see the same thing.

01:19:09.240 trump does not survive this i'm telling you he won't survive it this is an almighty crash out

01:19:15.120 and uh when all is said and done i i maintain i think we'll be seeing pete hegseth go to jail

01:19:21.380 uh so sorry this is just delusional like this and again this is not value-free analysis

01:19:29.000 whether you think pet you could say pete hegseth's a war criminal but the idea he's actually

01:19:34.040 going to jail who's putting pete hegseth in jail come on but i guess the democrats after the whole

01:19:38.840 things over that's the plan on what charges that he was the secretary of war like that's his job

01:19:45.060 he does what the president tells him to do like he's gonna go to jail for that i mean maybe if

01:19:50.260 they're just throwing all republicans in jail and that's a big possibility by the way that's why i

01:19:55.300 don't want us doing this that's why i don't want us on iran we have to win all the elections we

01:19:59.760 have to stay in power the right cannot give up power in any way shape or form because the left's

01:20:04.340 going to throw a lot of people in jail anyway so maybe pete hegseth will go to jail just because

01:20:08.560 like because of you know so is every other republican but i think the idea that like pete

01:20:13.340 hegseth singularly is going to go to jail because we had this war in iran did did donald rumsfeld

01:20:21.520 go to jail did dick cheney go to jail no like again i i understand the concern i understand

01:20:30.220 the problem but let's not overblow the idea that like all of a sudden a guy like pete hegseth is

01:20:35.500 going to end up in prison for doing whatever he's supposed to do in that moment again you can

01:20:40.680 disagree with his demeanor you can disagree uh with the way that he is presenting himself uh you

01:20:46.260 can disagree with the war itself uh but don't don't you know don't lie to yourself about the

01:20:50.800 idea that like people are gonna if if there's one thing we know about the american empire

01:20:55.640 nobody goes to jail for starting a war that's just not how it works here is uh mike who says

01:21:04.100 you can tell that painting himself into a corner with this war and having no options is really

01:21:09.660 getting to donald trump who maintains that all the footage that we see is ai uh you know he's

01:21:16.600 finally hit rock bottom and you know there are people up and down my timeline regressing ever

01:21:24.140 having voted for trump this is a movement that is over guys okay and it's having not only a bad

01:21:31.900 effect for trump politically and america in the world it's having a bad effect for the allies who

01:21:38.620 try to stick with trump and america like modi in india now people are burning effigies of modi

01:21:46.220 he is seeing a massive cratering of support for modi in india because the average guess what the

01:21:53.740 average indian is indian first not israel first and modi is causing real problems for uh india

01:22:03.500 by supporting the wrong side essentially in this and as i mention here iran's record against india

01:22:11.020 in history when this clash has happened in the past which is i don't know what modi's thinking

01:22:16.540 about cyrus annexed the west in indus darius conquered punjab turned into a satrapy back in

01:22:24.620 the ancient world and then if you fast forward to the early modern period nadir shah comprehensively

01:22:31.500 defeated the mughal empire sacked delhi took the peacock throne and uh this massive diamond called

01:22:40.940 somehow that ended up uh with the british um you have to look into the history of that but there was

01:22:46.540 so i'll agree here i mean i don't know anything about indian politics and i'm not going to

01:22:51.200 pretend to and i don't care and i'm not going to learn this you can't make me do it just send them

01:22:56.340 home uh but uh i really um i guess i do understand his point here that ultimately like india cares

01:23:03.720 more about india than it does about the global american empire i have zero doubt that's true

01:23:08.400 uh you know obviously uh indian immigration into america is a big problem for many uh reasons but

01:23:15.160 one of them is that many indians don't care about the united states they kind of just want to set

01:23:19.340 up their own culture in the united states they have no interest in assimilating they're going

01:23:23.040 to build hindu temples and they're going to uh you know go ahead and create their own uh cartels

01:23:28.640 ethnic cartels and our businesses and these kind of things uh indian is india is just not a

01:23:33.840 assimilationist culture uh into the u.s it never has been and so i have no doubt that the state

01:23:38.960 of india is itself also in no way interested in uh you know giving over uh it's it's uh interests

01:23:45.440 to uh you know other other nations including the united states or its larger empire

01:23:49.680 uh so yeah that that wouldn't be surprising to me though again i i know nothing about indian

01:23:54.320 politics um deal or either where it was sold to victorio something uh somebody in the somebody

01:24:01.760 in the chat will know about what happened with that uh i think carl lyle actually has an essay

01:24:07.360 about that massive diamond um but uh yeah i mean we have a real problem here trump has a credibility

01:24:16.400 crisis he keeps on making threats and those threats turn out to be bluffs he doesn't make good on them

01:24:23.360 okay and it's it's a problem okay if you're talking about the straighter four moves

01:24:29.280 and you know he started off with um you know if you do this we'll hit you 20 times blah blah blah

01:24:35.920 You'll never do this. Then it comes down to, oh, well, we can't send anyone. And now it's literally begging the rest of the world to sort this problem out on his behalf.

01:24:48.940 Again, I think this is an overstatement. And I say this as somebody who, again, thinks that the entire Iranian war is ill-advised.

01:24:58.160 uh but i i think we're i think we're overblowing the rhetoric here i think that we are ignoring

01:25:03.920 the fact that trump always used overblown rhetoric i think the idea that america is begging

01:25:07.860 everyone at this moment to to come in and and save them because they're in this incredible

01:25:12.980 crisis is incorrect now again that doesn't mean that i think the united states has this all locked

01:25:17.580 up i don't think it's going to be easy street in fact i worry it's not and that's why i say we

01:25:21.560 should just leave declare victory go home right like i that's been my my position the entire time

01:25:26.580 hey, we blew up all this stuff and we killed all these leaders and hooray, regime changed,

01:25:31.840 let's go. Like, that's fine with me, man. That's fine. I don't need to hold Trump accountable for

01:25:37.440 every one of his words because that's never happened anyway, right? Like, that's just not

01:25:41.680 what happens with Donald Trump. I'm not going to change my standard now. But I do think it's time

01:25:46.880 for the United States to say, boom, mission accomplished. Let's walk away. It is honestly

01:25:52.060 one of the greatest humiliations in american history no sorry again like afghanistan iraq

01:26:00.080 vietnam wildly more uh embarrassing for the united states maybe iran will get there maybe

01:26:06.580 in six months this will look like another vietnam i'm worried that could happen but it is just too

01:26:11.820 early to make these declarations like i'm sorry but even the withdrawal from afghanistan under

01:26:17.500 biden was far more uh insulting and demoralizing to america uh than the current conflict we're just

01:26:25.400 wildly overstating the case here and we shouldn't do that and um you know part of me is like amazing

01:26:33.200 amazing but another part of me is like come on guys going out like this this is bad it's bad

01:26:40.700 it really is it's it's an embarrassment not not just to america it's just an embarrassment to

01:26:46.900 everybody it was an embarrassment to me right and i i know i've been seen as being like anti-trump

01:26:53.820 for a long time but there was there was a time where i was like kind of you know said good things

01:26:59.980 about him you know six seven years ago he's even made me look like a chump he makes everybody look

01:27:04.800 like a chump um and at the moment he's making america look very clownish on the world stage

01:27:10.940 probably something to remember when you're calling out you know guys who also supported

01:27:16.220 trump previously you know just let's all have a little humility there i think it's up to americans

01:27:21.820 to try to get rid of this guy now 20 i mean he's lost he's completely lost it the the white house

01:27:27.900 is compromised um all sorts of details are coming out about the level of corruption like for example

01:27:34.700 on the tic tax on the tick tock sale when larry ellison uh bought tick tock or bought the stake

01:27:40.620 in TikTok there was a 10 million dollar kickback for the Trump family you know blatant corruption

01:27:48.620 on these sorts of grounds you know the coming out for Mark Levin in this way persecution of

01:27:55.340 Tucker Carlson now at the behest of a disgusting hag like Laura Loomer there is a crisis point

01:28:03.740 in american domestic politics and it has spilled over into a massive crisis of uh international

01:28:11.980 politics here so that last part is true um you know i don't know about the we will have to dissect

01:28:18.780 the rest but uh that the fact that a domestic dispute in the united states has spilled over

01:28:24.300 into foreign policy that's an important observation and one we should keep in mind uh i think it was

01:28:29.420 was daryl cooper who said uh that american or was it daryl cooper maybe it was somebody somebody

01:28:35.300 said uh that america doesn't have uh you know uh foreign enemies they have foreign enemies that

01:28:42.060 remind them of their domestic enemies uh and that's really true like the american uh left

01:28:47.520 hates the united states and is often uh you know characterizing the rest of the world as as basically

01:28:53.780 stands in for american chuds uh and even uh you know different factions of the american right

01:28:59.440 have a similar outlook and so many of these things spill over and this is so true of empires

01:29:04.220 in many areas right that their foreign actions uh take place in this way i mean you you know you

01:29:10.220 look at caesar's uh conquest of gaul and part of it is just caesar's a great man who's going to

01:29:15.060 conquer what he can but a large part of it is that he keeps campaigning in gaul because he can't come

01:29:19.200 home because of the domestic strife happening there so this is you know where the roman empire

01:29:24.220 started if you look at the actual roman empire was exactly this kind of situation uh so saying

01:29:30.560 that this is the end of the american empire when that was the beginning of the roman empire

01:29:34.260 uh i think could be wrong right like i think we we should take that longer view again i don't want

01:29:40.560 my american domestic politics spilling out into foreign uh conflicts uh but if we are just

01:29:46.320 analyzing this in a value-neutral way, we have to admit that that occurrence itself is not an

01:29:51.920 indication that empires are over. Sometimes it's an indication that empires are just getting

01:29:55.540 started. So we should keep that in mind, right? I don't like this fact, but simply noting that

01:30:01.220 fact doesn't mean it's evidence of American imperial collapse. And the world stage. I think

01:30:07.880 unless something drastically changes in the next couple of weeks, this is it for America. I think

01:30:14.220 it's i think it it's the moment where in years to come just like we remember the suez crisis at the

01:30:22.160 beginning of the end of the british empire from 1956 2026 will be remembered as the big as the

01:30:30.360 as the suez as the beginning of the end for the american empire again like the whole point of suez

01:30:37.400 as a comparison is that ultimately britain couldn't get the job done uh it didn't have

01:30:42.420 enough sovereignty and it needed ultimately like the approval of like the us and the ussr more or

01:30:47.980 less to like make things happen right like that it needed that diplomatic pressure that additional

01:30:52.320 weight it was no longer uh sufficient for it because it was subservient to another power

01:30:58.860 we don't seem to see that in the united states yet right like we we might be seeing the you know

01:31:04.900 decline of american influence at some level we might see serious problems in the structure of

01:31:10.560 the American empire. I can go along with you on that. But what country is going to swoop in and

01:31:16.640 resolve this crisis on behalf of the United States? Is it going to be China? Is it going to

01:31:20.660 be Russia? Who are we talking about here? What Suez-like power is going to step in?

01:31:27.480 What American-type power is going to step into this American Suez crisis and create a similar

01:31:32.140 scenario? Maybe that will happen. Maybe he will be proved correct. It's possible. But again,

01:31:37.800 i think we're just way way too early for this for this declaration um and maybe he'll just call a

01:31:43.700 shot maybe he'll be babe ruth and and it'll go exactly as he planned and by all means i'll be

01:31:47.700 like yeah man you you called it you were right uh but i i just think we're out in front in front of

01:31:52.200 our skis on on this a little bit and that's my point in this longer video again academic agents

01:31:56.480 a friend this is not a video that's about tom hawk slamming on him or owning him or proving him

01:32:00.960 wrong uh my my point here is to say that while there are i think some valuable points made in

01:32:06.520 here, some correct analysis in here, some insights that we should be listening to and that I agree

01:32:11.620 with. I do think that we're really overstating the case in this video. And that's my concern

01:32:16.960 is not that there aren't valid concerns that AA isn't pointing out real problems,

01:32:21.200 but that ultimately the idea that like Pete Hegseth is going to jail and Donald Trump is

01:32:25.880 going to be removed from office and the entire American empire is collapsing. And even the idea

01:32:31.440 that the iran war is a disaster already because people are thinking videos are ai i i feel like

01:32:38.100 these statements are kind of overwrought and so i think it would be best to to pare this back

01:32:42.140 and say okay here are the complications here are the issues here's my concern here are historical

01:32:46.940 uh you know parallels those could all be correct i think in many ways uh some of his analysis here

01:32:52.180 was very cogent uh on issues that america is facing and the nature of the conflict uh but i

01:32:58.160 just think it it behooves us to be a little more careful on how we are applying that if if we

01:33:03.540 overstate our case on this um i think we're really missing the ball that said uh we should probably

01:33:09.940 go to the super chats here real quick and see oh we have quite a few all right well i better get

01:33:14.400 started uh brems wingle says let me shrink this down so i have a easier way of reading this i

01:33:23.360 think the fact that your crane wasn't wrapped up in a year is more of an indicator of the stalling

01:33:27.100 and failing of the ga i actually tend to agree with that actually uh i think the fact that uh

01:33:32.280 ukraine um ukraine is a real power right or sorry i should say russia is a real power and the fact

01:33:38.160 that the united states could not win that proxy war outright especially the way joe biden uh kind

01:33:44.400 of explained with uh you know the crushing of the currency and all that stuff the fact that that

01:33:48.480 very much backfired on the u.s in that scenario i think that's actually a better indication of

01:33:55.000 uh, the loss of American hegemony, uh, than what is basically a couple of week old military

01:34:01.260 operation, uh, in Iran. Chair code Nixon says our fall implies the rise of other powers. Trump is

01:34:08.100 really currently roll rolling by China's rise by like 20 years right now. No real competitors

01:34:13.200 exist today. You know, I, I worry about China, but ultimately I think you have a point there.

01:34:17.560 Like, you know, that's kind of what the point I made at the end there, that the whole reason the

01:34:21.040 Suez crisis is kind of significant is it really shows that at that point, the UK was subservient

01:34:26.360 to a different power, right? It's not just that the UK lost, it's that it had to bring in another

01:34:31.440 rising power to kind of, it had to ask the permission of another rising power to resolve

01:34:36.280 this issue. And I just don't see America in that place right now. If China has to step in and

01:34:41.440 resolve this conflict, if Russia has to step in and resolve this conflict, if some other rising

01:34:45.760 power has to step in to resolve this conflict, then I think you've got a much better case.

01:34:49.140 but at the moment i think we are overstating it and i think your point about china there is well

01:34:53.360 taken midlife crisis joe says if we can't deliver on threats of to summon allies our empire is

01:35:00.220 failing uh if not breaking that's irrefutable uh again not necessarily just because uh a a

01:35:09.040 another power does not immediately come to your aid when you ask uh maybe it means that ultimately

01:35:14.360 there is some level of decline uh or that your sphere of influence is shrinking in some way

01:35:19.460 but the idea that the american empire is over is just false like especially if we're going with

01:35:24.520 aa's original definition of empire right if you're saying that the america was an empire just by

01:35:29.600 moving across north american content continent do you really think that america is going to lose

01:35:34.500 control of the north american continent do you think america is going to lose control

01:35:37.320 of the contiguous 48 states because if that's the empire if that's like the natural empire

01:35:42.080 i don't think that's going to happen at all right so when we say the the decline of the empire we

01:35:46.780 really have to be more specific if you're saying like the entire global hegemony okay maybe but

01:35:52.060 the american empire is very likely going to exist in some form or fashion for quite a while now

01:35:57.700 nixon says america west's uh societal degeneration due to internal decay and corruption is totally

01:36:05.540 separate issue to the global empire many empires were corrupt again very good point yes i think

01:36:10.180 that the detriment of the empire is that spiritual collapse inside it's uh you know the america but

01:36:16.980 as it's often said there's a lot of ruin in a nation and there are many empires that were

01:36:20.920 corrupt degenerate for a long time uh you know we've looked at places you can look at something

01:36:25.260 like uh the ottoman empire you can look at places like the byzantine empire before it uh and there

01:36:31.640 were serious signs of decline even the roman empire for a long time before it fell right

01:36:36.860 the Roman Empire was declining for centuries. So the idea that it's going to collapse because

01:36:44.540 it started to decline, those are just not the same thing. And especially, yeah, if your main

01:36:48.320 standard is decay in the homeland. Again, I'm living in the homeland. I don't want any of this

01:36:52.400 to happen. But just from an objective argument, I think it's very clear that this is not necessarily

01:36:57.020 the case. Ken Arthur says AA is wishcast again. He wants America to take an L, not just Trump,

01:37:03.280 because he blames america for britain's problems i'm gonna be honest i think there's some truth to

01:37:07.500 that and i've seen a lot of that recently i think some of that just comes from not having a lot of

01:37:12.600 momentum in your own country and i've noticed that as rupert lowe has risen the um the anti-american

01:37:18.740 sentiment in the uk right has kind of uh died down a little bit now obviously with the war in iran

01:37:24.240 and all the pressure has evolved some of that has kicked back up uh but that for the intermediate

01:37:28.360 period where all of a sudden the uk had uk right had something to rally behind all of a sudden the

01:37:34.080 like hating on the u.s seemed to shrink away and i think that is a serious uh issue right like if

01:37:39.600 you have something to fight for yourselves you're less obsessed with blaming some other nation for

01:37:43.340 like where you're at even if there's legitimate points that the united states has had a negative

01:37:47.380 impact in different ways on uh on the uk and i think there is fair points to be made there i think

01:37:52.840 a mentality shift comes when you see hope for your nation and i think that's why you're seeing

01:37:56.560 more and more people in the uk become plugged back into the uk politics and less obsessed with like

01:38:02.660 blaming america for whatever's going on in their country at the moment

01:38:05.260 mani you says as an american who uh has roots going back to the colonial area i love my people

01:38:12.000 and i see the europeans critique of our culture and share it however not a fan of the hostility

01:38:15.880 towards us but i get it yeah i think a lot of people feel that you know as the old uh saying

01:38:21.540 goes yeah okay it's a problem but it's our problem right and you don't want other people coming in

01:38:25.680 and throwing uh you know rocks through your window uh so yeah i you know we'll notice the

01:38:31.960 same issues in many ways that uh academic agent will notice uh but we we want to be able to deal

01:38:37.580 with them right like and that's a natural thing and i think the same i think the uk feels the

01:38:40.720 same way i think that's just a natural way that that anyone feels uh shaker silver says big

01:38:46.580 conflation with the empire built uh for globalists that leeches off u.s and military activity and

01:38:51.960 undermines the sovereignty as being for america yeah i mean of course right like i've made this

01:38:58.000 argument many times over that the empire does not really serve americans as such um

01:39:03.840 so yeah i guess i agree with that maybe there's more being said there but i guess i just give my

01:39:10.800 general agreement uh don zalog i'm not sure how to say that uh says uh 1776 will commence again yes

01:39:19.980 uh alex jones is in the chat florida henry says office or in the field i haven't heard anyone

01:39:26.400 talk about the iran war not a word i don't know what that means it means people do not care

01:39:31.300 like they don't like it really is america is checked out of this uh one way or another uh

01:39:37.280 there's probably like a general grumbling of uh this uh distaste with the war i think with non

01:39:43.700 trump supporters uh but this is really not a passionate thing for most people and that's why

01:39:47.580 I say, I'm not, maybe you could say

01:39:49.480 that's a spiritual sickness in itself,

01:39:50.980 but the idea that this is just gonna cause

01:39:53.740 the collapse of the American empire

01:39:54.960 and everyone's going to jail

01:39:56.200 and Donald Trump will be pushed out,

01:39:57.820 probably not, probably not.

01:39:59.460 I don't think the average American

01:40:01.080 really cares deeply about this.

01:40:02.620 Sadly, they should probably care more,

01:40:04.660 but I think, again, you look at Vietnam,

01:40:07.980 you even look at Iraq and Afghanistan,

01:40:09.940 there were far more popular movements

01:40:12.280 against those wars.

01:40:13.560 There's a lot more kind of discussed

01:40:17.200 and a lot more pushback and even more kinetic uh kind of rebellion against uh those actions

01:40:23.620 and comparatively iran war just doesn't have that now maybe as it stretches on we'll see it maybe

01:40:28.140 it's just too early but if it's too early then maybe it's too early to declare it one of those

01:40:32.260 wars as well right like maybe we do have to kind of wait and see at some level balu says history

01:40:38.520 will compress the vietnam war in afghanistan into a single era it was 75 years between the

01:40:42.760 goss sacking rome and the end of the empire that's a great point that's a great point like that that

01:40:47.400 that you this could be compressed into like okay here's just this hundred years of decline or

01:40:52.620 something in the united states entirely possible right but that's why i'm saying we should have

01:40:56.820 this historical long view we should have this context right maybe maybe again if any point

01:41:03.340 will be the pivot point for the american empire i think it'll be vietnam if we look back in 300

01:41:08.160 years and we're writing the story about the collapse of the american empire i think it will

01:41:11.720 begin with vietnam and maybe iran will be one of these defeats uh you know that that will be noted

01:41:17.880 right uh but i don't think that it's ultimately going to be the hinge point and that that's

01:41:22.920 really where i'm going with that count arthur says if uh i were british or european i would

01:41:29.420 find the idea of america declining incredibly seductive because it eases the pain of knowing

01:41:33.080 that european has already europe has already declined yeah again i hate to admit that i think

01:41:38.460 there's part of that that's true, but it's like a cousin or a sibling that's doing well.

01:41:46.300 When you're not doing so great, your years are behind you. You still love that person,

01:41:50.900 but you kind of wish they weren't doing so well. If you didn't have to hear from mom about how

01:41:55.940 John has a successful marriage and business, and you're still looking for a wife and a real career,

01:42:02.720 right like there's there's some of that going on um and and so i i think uh there is truth to that

01:42:09.220 and look i if america was in the same place then and maybe it will be then maybe we'll feel the

01:42:14.280 same way you know eventually i think that's entirely possible uh j6 says a is a theater kid

01:42:20.540 uh politics for the right i mean don't yeah i don't think we need to be mean to the guy like

01:42:24.480 i said he's a friend and i i don't i think he has valuable analysis i do think that some of

01:42:29.500 This is a little overwrought, but, you know, I don't think that's fair.

01:42:33.820 Henry, the gorilla says, as long as the dollar is king, the American empire goes nowhere.

01:42:38.860 And yeah, I think that's true.

01:42:40.300 Now, A implies very briefly in there that maybe that won't be the case forever.

01:42:44.140 I think there's probably a good case to be made that the dollar can't be king forever.

01:42:49.240 However, he doesn't really elaborate on that there.

01:42:52.060 And, you know, without any additional evidence or of this kind of being the inevitable case,

01:42:57.240 I think it's a fair point to say, as long as America is kind of the cornerstone of the world economy, then that's going to be the scenario. Now, China might quickly eclipse us in that. Maybe BRICS will eventually work. I don't know. There's certainly a lack of faith in the American financial system when it comes to the way that we've approached things like natural resources and printing and banking, the way we deployed our banking to try to punish our enemies has reduced faith in it.

01:43:23.400 people are considering moving their currency, their currencies into other things. You have

01:43:27.960 competitors like Bitcoin. So this could be something that unravels in the future. But I think for that

01:43:32.500 fact that it is still dominant right now, I think you're right that that means the decline of the

01:43:36.860 or the collapse of an American empire is probably overblown. All right, guys, well, we're going to

01:43:41.980 go ahead and wrap this up. Once again, I want to thank everybody for coming by. It's been fantastic

01:43:46.160 speaking with you. I want to, by the way, want to say thank you to Academic Agent for making the

01:43:50.820 video uh like i said i do think there are some valid points in here and this is a friendly uh

01:43:55.180 exchange here uh this is not an attempt to say ah he's wrong about everything and uh how could he

01:44:00.580 say these things uh just just pointing out my areas of agreement and disagreement uh one of

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01:44:22.320 way, very special show coming Friday. Make sure you're subscribed. I don't want to spoil anything

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01:44:38.840 next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - March 18, 2026

No, the US Empire Isn't Over： Responding to Academic Agent ｜ 3⧸18⧸26

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