The Auron MacIntyre Show - On the Question of Chimping ｜ Guest： Dave Greene

00:00:00.620 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:07.460 The Young Republicans have a group chat leak where they say naughty things. The Young Republican organization reacts the wrong way, but J.D. Vance reacts the right way, which is very heartening.

00:00:18.800 We're also going to be discussing the utility of chimping. Does it work? Is it worthwhile? Or should we be doing something else?

00:00:25.840 Joining me today to talk about that is one of our favorite guests, Dave the Distributist. Thank you so much for coming on, man.

00:00:32.260 Hey, thanks for having me on. I always enjoy being here and discussing current events.

00:00:37.540 Of course, and we are doing this in the evening because of Dave's schedule. So sorry, guys, no live questions today. We won't be able to answer the chat.

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00:01:51.500 All right, Dave. Well, let's start with the news of the day first, and then we can probably move into the wider strategic discussion here.

00:01:58.700 So recently, a group chat broke out.

00:02:04.520 There was a leaking of this group chat to Politico, and apparently it had a number of influential young Republican leaders inside of it.

00:02:13.360 And there was a lot of, let's just say, questionable, joking, a lot of edgy memes, that kind of thing, things that often get thrown around with young people.

00:02:23.360 They like to push boundaries.

00:02:24.300 They like to make, you know, fiery jokes, especially when they assume it's between each other and it's not going to be getting out there.

00:02:31.300 Now, it's very obvious that this chat has been leaked because currently the Democrats are dealing with the fact that Jay Jones, who's running for the attorney general in West Virginia, his texts have come out.

00:02:45.280 Now, these texts were, of course, to a Republican colleague, and they expressed the idea that he ultimately wants to kill his political opponents.

00:02:53.900 He wants their children dead.

00:02:55.780 He said he wanted to watch their children die in their arms.

00:02:58.740 And he felt so passionately about this that not only did he text the messages, he actually called the representative he was talking about, the Republican he was talking about, and told her emphatically, no, really, there is a logic as to why I should be able to feel this way.

00:03:13.940 This is obviously a very heinous thing, especially when you're supposed to be the attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in Virginia.

00:03:21.620 However, they're trying to make a false equivalency here in the hopes that ultimately this will diffuse the situation in that election.

00:03:31.880 The young Republican organization immediately came out and said, we have to, you know, decry all these people.

00:03:38.700 We absolutely denounce all of them.

00:03:40.840 Their lives should be ruined.

00:03:41.980 We should disassociate from them completely, which was the terrible reaction a lot of people kind of expected from the Republican establishment.

00:03:50.800 But we saw J.D. Vance respond by actually coming out and saying, you know what?

00:03:55.760 The left doesn't get to cancel our people.

00:03:57.940 They don't get to decide when we tell people enough is enough.

00:04:01.480 And when there is a actual viable Democratic candidate running for a major elective office who has done way, way worse, that should be the focus of the story and not this group chat.

00:04:12.500 Exactly the kind of holding a frame we desperately want Republicans to do, but we so rarely get.

00:04:17.480 What's kind of your initial reaction to, I guess, the way that the story has broken?

00:04:23.260 Well, I mean, there's so many dimensions of it's hard to really know where to begin.

00:04:27.620 Obviously, the reaction you get from the young Republicans is ridiculous.

00:04:31.900 You know, I always remember this back, not to be too autobiographical, but when I was a student in college in California, I remember being, I was affiliated with like the College of Libertarians or something like that.

00:04:46.220 And I was at a party with a bunch of Republicans and the leader was freaking out because someone had brought a keg over and like there was underage drinking at this party.

00:04:58.460 And they thought this would impact their reputation when they ran for politics, whereas when I went to the parties organized by progressives, they were planning like illegal acts of civil disobedience, you know, maybe even riots occupying government buildings, occupying things.

00:05:16.460 Like explicitly illegal acts, like not just their lower orders, like their leaders were participating in this kind of stuff.

00:05:24.500 And so there's this feeling of I can't be in the same room as something that every college student does, like, you know, 19-year-olds drinking versus I am literally plotting illegal actions through the party apparatus on the progressive side.

00:05:40.540 And so, I mean, you know, it's just this bizarro world that we've known about for the longest time where the rules don't apply to anybody who's a leftist.

00:05:49.620 If you are a leftist, then explicitly illegal actions are essentially part of your life as a young person.

00:05:58.880 You literally have Obama being educated by Bill Ayers, a notable terrorist.

00:06:04.200 I think some of his actions even killed some people.

00:06:06.440 And on the Republican side, there's just this idea that your whole experience as a young Republican is to uphold norms.

00:06:15.620 This dynamic, I mean, I think everyone realizes at this stage that this dynamic is not sustainable.

00:06:20.960 It's not sustainable, I mean, for so many reasons.

00:06:24.120 Essentially, there's no way you're going to be able to get through college as a young person and not say bad words or not have some kind of private record of you doing something.

00:06:36.440 That would not play as a politician and to try to dredge up statements by young Republican 22-year-olds and then use it as an excuse for basically credible threats that were said by a politician that's running for office is insane.

00:06:54.740 And I guess, I mean, it tells you more about the state of the conservative movement than it does.

00:06:59.460 I mean, we've known about this double standard for years.

00:07:01.840 We've known about why this wouldn't work if you know anything about the dynamics of young people.

00:07:06.500 I guess the only real mystery is why do so many conservatives think that they can still operate this way?

00:07:16.440 They can still essentially cancel their young people for saying naughty words in private group chats.

00:07:23.220 And then in an environment where politicians are making credible, I don't necessarily know if I want to use credible, but, you know, on the border of credible death threats against their political enemies and their children.

00:07:38.100 Yeah, it is one of those scenarios where obviously the gravity of the remarks are radically different.

00:07:47.280 A few jokes between people in a group chat that they never think is going to be public, people who don't hold any kind of power is very different than someone who is directly looking at named people and saying, I want them dead.

00:07:59.860 I want their children dead.

00:08:01.300 I'm not just going to text this to you.

00:08:03.300 I'm going to, like, call you afterwards and clarify that, no, this isn't a joke.

00:08:07.500 I really mean it, and I really want them dead, and that's morally justifiable.

00:08:11.660 Oh, and also, I am likely to be the next attorney general of the state of Virginia.

00:08:18.420 Like, obviously, the gravity of these situations is very different.

00:08:22.380 But the other thing, as you point out, is really the impulse to say, well, you know, if we're just more principled than our opponents, then obviously we're going to win this thing, right?

00:08:33.600 Like, ultimately, if...

00:08:35.900 I mean, there seems to be a desire to do this.

00:08:38.260 Like, they make it worse than it actually is.

00:08:40.580 A good example of this is there's this text that a bunch of Republicans are floating around.

00:08:46.080 I don't know if you want to show this, but the text says they're just screen capping this thing, and the text says, great, I love Hitler.

00:08:55.280 That's...

00:08:55.700 And all these Republicans, they're broadcasting this as why we have to stand up against hate in our own ranks.

00:09:02.340 But if you look at the context in which this was said, the response is that someone said that we need to be the most right-wing person in the room.

00:09:12.360 And then the person said, great, I like Hitler, because the joke is, who's the most right-wing person you can think of, Hitler, right?

00:09:19.860 So if you read it in the actual group chat, it's obviously a joke.

00:09:25.400 It's obviously designed to be like, oh, because the PR people told us to be very, very right-wing, we're going to literally go full Nazi or whatever, full mid-century German.

00:09:36.960 And then you have Republicans taking it out of context and running with the worst version of the actual thing.

00:09:48.720 They're literally not sugarcoating it.

00:09:51.380 They're literally shitcoating it so that they can make it more of a scandal.

00:09:56.060 It's almost like they benefit from having this scandal be worse than it actually was,

00:10:02.160 to the point where they're doing the Democrat Party's work for them.

00:10:06.960 Well, many such cases, right?

00:10:09.580 But yeah, there's obviously this desire, and I put a little thread together today about this on Twitter,

00:10:17.060 but I know I'm preaching to the choir to you, but ultimately, it's still true, very obviously,

00:10:24.200 the Republican Party sees the left as the only legitimate power in the United States.

00:10:29.940 And so even when the right wins elections, even when they're theoretically holding power,

00:10:35.380 ultimately, if they want to cancel someone, if they think they have some kind of difference with someone,

00:10:39.980 if there's some kind of internecine combat inside the conservatives or the GOP,

00:10:46.580 the answer is to run to the left, to run to the establishment media, right?

00:10:50.800 Like, no one ever gets canceled out of the right for being too left-wing or too centrist.

00:10:56.640 The power is by canceling them, by painting them too right-wing.

00:10:59.860 So even in our most right-wing party in the United States,

00:11:03.340 being right-wing is the worst possible thing you could do.

00:11:06.920 And obviously, as you said, these are even jokes in context.

00:11:10.020 They make far more sense when you take any kind of time with it.

00:11:12.820 But ultimately, the point is to signal,

00:11:15.300 I'm just not as right-wing as the other people,

00:11:17.260 and therefore, I'm one of the good ones.

00:11:19.220 And that's actually what grants me moral superiority and the ability to lead.

00:11:23.960 It's crabs in a bucket.

00:11:25.460 All of these establishment people,

00:11:27.000 they're not thinking about developing their young men.

00:11:29.520 They're thinking about competing.

00:11:31.320 They assume that there's a finite number of slots,

00:11:33.420 and they're competing for those finite slots.

00:11:35.640 But it's funny that you mention about who owns morality

00:11:38.260 because there's this Jon Stewart clip going around

00:11:41.940 that I think was originally being forwarded by people on the left.

00:11:46.300 But then people started responding to it.

00:11:49.140 Andrew Klavan started responding to it on the right,

00:11:51.240 where Jon Stewart looks into the camera and says,

00:11:53.860 you don't own Christianity.

00:11:55.140 You don't own patriotism.

00:11:56.600 You don't own the military.

00:11:58.840 You don't own those things.

00:12:00.140 Those are all of our things.

00:12:01.720 And of course, the response is from the conservatives,

00:12:05.640 is these are all things,

00:12:06.840 Christianity, patriotism, the military,

00:12:09.740 that the left has been bashing,

00:12:11.260 not least of which was Jon Stewart,

00:12:13.740 who made a career on bashing those things

00:12:16.300 as they exist in America.

00:12:18.520 But what's so funny is that the conservatives

00:12:20.460 that are contesting Jon Stewart over that,

00:12:22.960 they believe the left owns morality.

00:12:25.020 They believe that the left owns experts.

00:12:27.160 They believe that the left owns culture.

00:12:29.840 And they betray the idea that the left owns culture

00:12:33.280 because they always use the left's framework

00:12:35.600 for morality and for cultural acceptance.

00:12:38.200 Their actions demonstrate that they think

00:12:41.980 that the left is the ultimate arbiter

00:12:44.300 for what counts as a cultural faux pas

00:12:46.320 and what it does not.

00:12:48.240 And you can see this because, I mean, I don't know.

00:12:50.580 I mean, you can see this because they're,

00:12:52.560 you know, we were talking about these things

00:12:54.500 like Hitler and like racial slurs

00:12:57.800 or bad words that have to do

00:12:59.760 with offending protected classes in America.

00:13:04.440 If these chats had come out

00:13:06.900 and they were referencing Stalin or Che Guevara

00:13:10.700 or any other number or Mao,

00:13:13.660 or if there were slurs against Christianity

00:13:16.620 or against any of the,

00:13:18.800 or against, you know, white people,

00:13:21.080 would this be a scandal that anyone would enforce

00:13:24.780 in the neutral media?

00:13:26.940 And the answer is obviously not.

00:13:28.480 As a matter of fact,

00:13:29.320 that's just how people talk in the academy

00:13:32.140 and how you're expected to talk in the academy.

00:13:34.420 If you can, if you can go through a college classroom

00:13:37.740 and not hear those, those slurs

00:13:40.200 or those bashings being done,

00:13:42.580 not by the students,

00:13:43.480 but by the actual faculty,

00:13:45.300 then you must have gone to a conservative college.

00:13:48.440 This is just de rigueur.

00:13:50.000 And there's not an understanding

00:13:51.760 of that world that we live in.

00:13:53.740 So what the conservatives are essentially saying is,

00:13:56.140 no, the left owns morality.

00:13:58.080 The only morality we have in common

00:14:00.400 is the morality that the left puts forward

00:14:02.800 as its political agenda.

00:14:04.320 We do not obviously enforce standard against slurs

00:14:08.960 as they occur against any of the groups

00:14:10.820 that are represented by the conservative coalition,

00:14:12.880 but we do when it comes to the groups

00:14:14.840 that are represented by the progressive coalition.

00:14:16.960 And not only that,

00:14:18.280 we endorse that moral standard.

00:14:20.640 They'll complain about the double standard,

00:14:22.620 but then they'll go along

00:14:23.940 and enforce the moral double standard.

00:14:25.440 So what do you think this ultimately says

00:14:29.280 to young people who are coming up

00:14:31.580 in these scenarios, right?

00:14:33.500 Because one of the big things

00:14:34.880 about being on the left

00:14:36.220 is of course never having to say

00:14:38.260 that you're sorry.

00:14:39.480 You're on the side of power.

00:14:40.660 You're on the side of right.

00:14:41.920 And so ultimately that means

00:14:44.040 that these people are going to rally behind you

00:14:46.000 as you pointed out,

00:14:46.840 even the slurs,

00:14:47.880 even the slander,

00:14:49.240 everything that comes from the left

00:14:50.720 that's the most heinous,

00:14:51.820 that gets deployed by everyone

00:14:53.720 in every setting

00:14:54.680 and it's encouraged and allowed

00:14:56.180 and no one's ever held to account.

00:14:58.140 The left can consider

00:14:59.140 all forms of genocide

00:15:00.940 and political violence

00:15:02.380 and ethnic cleansing

00:15:04.420 and they can promote all of this stuff

00:15:06.740 and none of it ever catches up with them.

00:15:08.940 It's barely even mentioned

00:15:10.460 if somebody has supported

00:15:12.320 a violent revolutionary

00:15:13.620 or been a violent revolutionary.

00:15:15.720 They praise violent revolutionaries

00:15:17.380 like they're breathing air

00:15:18.500 to the point where

00:15:19.540 they'll defend their own guys

00:15:21.500 who have bombed people,

00:15:22.560 who have attempted to murder people.

00:15:24.560 Bill Ayers, as you pointed out,

00:15:25.700 will be a tenured professor.

00:15:27.600 Bernadine Dorn,

00:15:28.360 these people will continue to hold power.

00:15:30.680 They will be taken care of.

00:15:32.000 If you're a young radical on the left,

00:15:34.020 you're safe.

00:15:34.940 If you're a right winger

00:15:36.160 who's even mildly making jokes somewhere,

00:15:39.900 your entire career could be on the line

00:15:41.780 the minute a group chat leaks.

00:15:43.580 Yeah, I mean,

00:15:43.960 young Republicans have to worry

00:15:46.160 about 19-year-olds drinking next to them.

00:15:49.020 young Democrats

00:15:50.860 literally occupy buildings

00:15:53.180 and protest

00:15:54.040 and do acts of

00:15:55.040 illegal acts of civil disobedience.

00:15:56.940 That is the pattern you see throughout.

00:15:58.960 I mean,

00:15:59.180 I know this kind of touches on

00:16:00.680 the subject that we were talking about

00:16:02.260 before this,

00:16:03.060 but

00:16:03.200 it really is

00:16:05.980 the deficit

00:16:07.360 in being able to organize young people

00:16:09.560 is just so obvious at this stage.

00:16:12.480 And

00:16:12.560 especially in the wake

00:16:15.340 of the killing of Charlie Kirk.

00:16:17.120 the idea is,

00:16:20.500 and it used to be

00:16:21.480 that the Democrats

00:16:22.660 and progressives

00:16:23.580 owned young people.

00:16:25.800 And

00:16:25.980 obviously,

00:16:27.140 this has changed

00:16:28.320 in a

00:16:29.100 basically in the last 10 years

00:16:31.200 when you see

00:16:31.700 now an increasing number

00:16:33.040 of specifically young men

00:16:34.880 identifying as

00:16:36.500 not necessarily conservatives,

00:16:38.180 but not progressives.

00:16:39.960 Now,

00:16:40.660 the question is,

00:16:41.860 is,

00:16:42.320 and obviously,

00:16:43.100 if progressives own young people,

00:16:45.200 they own the future,

00:16:46.100 and there's no reason

00:16:47.160 to oppose them whatsoever,

00:16:48.800 right?

00:16:49.200 Because,

00:16:49.720 you know,

00:16:50.520 you're making the future

00:16:51.480 compete with the past.

00:16:52.480 But if

00:16:53.240 conservatives think

00:16:54.540 that they actually

00:16:55.820 have

00:16:56.840 a vision of the future,

00:16:58.720 that they're actually

00:16:59.320 competing for power

00:17:00.480 against progressives

00:17:02.100 in a real way,

00:17:03.140 and not just,

00:17:04.080 we want to slow things down,

00:17:05.540 we want to

00:17:06.620 meddle with the numbers

00:17:08.740 and the specifics

00:17:09.400 of the progressive vision.

00:17:10.680 If they actually

00:17:11.740 have an alternative vision

00:17:12.880 for the future,

00:17:13.740 then they're going

00:17:14.760 to have to start

00:17:15.460 cultivating

00:17:16.540 an alternative

00:17:17.480 leadership class,

00:17:19.060 an alternative

00:17:19.540 leadership class

00:17:20.760 in politics,

00:17:21.720 and an alternative

00:17:22.240 leadership class

00:17:23.240 in culture,

00:17:24.280 and in

00:17:25.280 all avenues of life.

00:17:27.020 But in particular,

00:17:28.000 the kinds of

00:17:28.960 elite positions

00:17:29.860 that you'd expect

00:17:31.260 to be at the top

00:17:32.240 of society,

00:17:33.320 that you'd expect

00:17:33.880 to have the top

00:17:34.920 positions of status.

00:17:36.300 and there's just

00:17:38.040 no understanding

00:17:39.400 of what this would take

00:17:41.080 to the point where

00:17:42.220 Charlie Kirk,

00:17:43.560 who, you know,

00:17:44.240 for all of our

00:17:44.800 disagreements with him,

00:17:46.360 what I think people

00:17:47.360 realized when he was

00:17:48.540 assassinated was

00:17:50.220 this was the face

00:17:52.460 of what it meant

00:17:53.340 to be a young,

00:17:55.200 conservative,

00:17:56.140 elite person

00:17:56.940 to the point where

00:17:58.280 young men could look

00:17:59.360 at him and say,

00:18:00.440 he has an admirable life.

00:18:03.780 He has a life

00:18:04.720 that I would envy.

00:18:05.540 He looks more like

00:18:07.480 part of a ruling class

00:18:09.060 than half the people

00:18:09.980 that I'm expected

00:18:11.500 to recognize

00:18:12.300 as experts

00:18:13.260 or a ruling class

00:18:14.380 that couldn't really

00:18:15.140 rule over me

00:18:16.060 wherever I live.

00:18:17.860 And this is

00:18:18.660 such a deficit.

00:18:20.020 I mean,

00:18:20.180 what would it take

00:18:21.160 for the conservatives

00:18:23.360 to realize

00:18:24.280 the historic opportunity

00:18:25.760 that they have?

00:18:27.240 They have,

00:18:28.280 in this moment,

00:18:29.160 and I think that

00:18:29.880 they will maintain this,

00:18:31.280 they have

00:18:31.960 the cohort

00:18:33.060 of young men

00:18:34.820 that you typically

00:18:36.160 expect a ruling party

00:18:37.820 to want to monopolize.

00:18:39.720 And instead of

00:18:40.260 forming these people

00:18:41.240 into leaders

00:18:42.020 and telling them

00:18:43.040 that they should

00:18:43.740 look for higher things,

00:18:45.540 that they should be

00:18:46.220 looking for the top

00:18:47.000 positions

00:18:47.560 in decision-making,

00:18:50.020 in managerial positions,

00:18:51.340 inside local government,

00:18:53.580 they tell all their

00:18:54.460 young people

00:18:55.020 to keep their heads down,

00:18:56.380 don't ruffle any feathers,

00:18:57.560 and to work

00:18:58.140 for Panda Express.

00:18:59.240 And, you know,

00:19:01.380 I think they're doing this

00:19:02.900 because they're operating

00:19:05.880 in this kind of mentality

00:19:07.300 that they're basically

00:19:08.280 the JV party

00:19:09.920 to the progressive mainstream.

00:19:12.000 And their job

00:19:12.780 is to go around

00:19:13.600 and call out

00:19:15.000 the mistakes

00:19:17.180 of the actual

00:19:18.400 varsity team,

00:19:19.520 not to actually create

00:19:21.080 a replacement government.

00:19:22.740 But the real job

00:19:24.960 of, well,

00:19:26.620 any anti-progressive force

00:19:28.560 in this particular moment

00:19:29.700 is to essentially

00:19:31.120 create an alternative

00:19:32.400 ruling class

00:19:33.580 and to demonstrate

00:19:34.320 that this ruling class

00:19:35.680 of people

00:19:36.740 is more competent,

00:19:39.560 more stable

00:19:41.380 than the people

00:19:42.280 who are currently

00:19:42.960 governing them,

00:19:43.960 not only in government,

00:19:45.120 but also in culture as well.

00:19:48.080 Yeah, I mean,

00:19:49.260 to put this

00:19:50.340 as bluntly as possible,

00:19:52.100 your chances

00:19:53.740 of becoming

00:19:54.340 an influential

00:19:55.260 right-wing

00:19:56.160 think tank

00:19:56.940 or, you know,

00:19:57.700 otherwise influence

00:19:58.960 or anything like that,

00:19:59.980 it's better

00:20:00.780 to just become

00:20:01.520 a porn star

00:20:02.300 than it is

00:20:02.840 to be a young Republican.

00:20:04.180 Like, your path

00:20:04.960 to career success

00:20:06.080 is actually

00:20:06.840 much better

00:20:08.140 as a conservative,

00:20:09.900 professional conservative,

00:20:11.140 as a former porn star

00:20:12.200 than it is

00:20:12.820 someone who was

00:20:14.360 sitting in a right-wing

00:20:15.120 group chat.

00:20:16.300 But, you know,

00:20:17.380 one of the interesting

00:20:18.320 responses here,

00:20:19.340 of course,

00:20:19.740 has been

00:20:20.540 J.D. Vance's.

00:20:22.180 And this is not

00:20:22.880 the first time

00:20:23.400 that Vance has done this,

00:20:24.400 right?

00:20:24.560 When we had

00:20:25.260 the Doge staffer,

00:20:29.140 the well-known

00:20:30.080 big balls

00:20:30.800 who went out

00:20:32.500 and, you know,

00:20:33.260 his chats were leaked

00:20:35.180 and his opinions

00:20:35.860 were leaked,

00:20:36.780 you know,

00:20:37.280 he was brought back in.

00:20:38.780 You know,

00:20:38.880 they reinstated him

00:20:40.080 into Doge

00:20:41.840 and J.D. Vance

00:20:43.720 was one of the people

00:20:44.280 who came out

00:20:44.880 and said,

00:20:45.420 hey, this is what

00:20:45.980 we're going to do

00:20:46.560 because we're not

00:20:47.140 just going to throw

00:20:47.620 people to the wolves

00:20:48.400 anymore because

00:20:48.960 the left-wing media

00:20:49.680 tells us to.

00:20:50.860 And we saw the same

00:20:51.820 thing today

00:20:52.660 from Vance.

00:20:53.460 Even after

00:20:54.140 the young Republicans

00:20:55.200 had already come out

00:20:56.060 and done the denouncing

00:20:56.980 and we have to cancel

00:20:57.860 these people,

00:20:59.000 Vance came out

00:20:59.520 very directly

00:21:00.080 and said,

00:21:00.600 no, we don't do

00:21:01.360 this anymore.

00:21:01.940 This isn't how

00:21:02.500 we run things.

00:21:03.580 We don't just cancel

00:21:04.460 people because the left

00:21:05.360 do some kind

00:21:05.940 of hit piece on them.

00:21:06.840 The real story

00:21:07.780 is the violent

00:21:08.800 Democrat running

00:21:10.120 for office,

00:21:10.740 not the,

00:21:11.520 you know,

00:21:12.060 college Republicans

00:21:12.800 making a joke somewhere.

00:21:14.580 What do you think

00:21:15.400 about that shift?

00:21:16.520 And Vance is,

00:21:17.400 Vance apparently

00:21:18.260 at a pretty,

00:21:19.340 you know,

00:21:19.680 obviously a very high level

00:21:20.780 trying to shift

00:21:21.500 the mentality

00:21:22.400 of the response

00:21:23.140 of the Republican Party.

00:21:24.500 I mean,

00:21:24.760 I think this is just

00:21:25.480 one of the most

00:21:26.560 notable developments

00:21:27.400 that's come out

00:21:28.060 of the second

00:21:28.460 Trump administration

00:21:29.120 is essentially

00:21:30.020 the end of cancel culture.

00:21:31.900 In one year,

00:21:33.600 basically,

00:21:34.640 the government

00:21:35.880 has signaled

00:21:37.000 that it's not

00:21:37.740 going to play ball

00:21:39.880 with left-wing

00:21:40.640 cancel culture

00:21:41.320 attempts anymore.

00:21:43.760 And this is,

00:21:44.380 I mean,

00:21:45.080 you and I both know

00:21:46.520 how even two years ago,

00:21:49.220 you know,

00:21:49.880 Christian schools,

00:21:51.400 which I shan't name,

00:21:53.600 were essentially

00:21:55.000 running cancellation

00:21:55.980 campaigns for the left

00:21:58.020 in the name

00:21:58.540 of leftist ideas

00:21:59.420 for very similar

00:22:01.600 bad words said

00:22:03.520 on the internet

00:22:04.260 with no victim

00:22:05.360 coming forward.

00:22:06.660 It was just,

00:22:07.480 they violated

00:22:08.100 the leftist morality,

00:22:09.460 therefore,

00:22:10.140 we have to purge

00:22:11.040 our ranks.

00:22:12.100 So this is,

00:22:12.660 and I think

00:22:13.040 this is promising.

00:22:14.480 And, you know,

00:22:14.740 the question is,

00:22:16.400 you know,

00:22:16.760 A,

00:22:17.080 I mean,

00:22:17.540 there's a lot

00:22:18.680 of questions

00:22:19.200 that are occurring

00:22:20.120 in this particular

00:22:20.760 moment because

00:22:21.420 so many things

00:22:22.340 are up in the air.

00:22:24.000 The question is,

00:22:25.480 to what extent

00:22:26.540 is this reduction

00:22:27.900 of cancel culture

00:22:28.860 going to be made

00:22:29.940 permanent?

00:22:30.400 Is this going

00:22:31.940 to be a feature

00:22:32.640 of the Trump

00:22:33.340 administration?

00:22:34.360 And then when

00:22:34.920 the Trump administration

00:22:35.740 leaves,

00:22:37.580 then it just

00:22:38.920 goes back to normal?

00:22:40.140 I think that's

00:22:41.060 unusual.

00:22:42.360 What the right wing

00:22:43.400 has to learn

00:22:44.260 in this moment

00:22:45.040 is that we never

00:22:46.060 cancel our own.

00:22:47.560 The cancellations

00:22:48.420 only work

00:22:49.720 when they're done

00:22:50.680 in coordination

00:22:51.680 with the conservative

00:22:52.880 movement.

00:22:53.780 Now,

00:22:53.920 I mean,

00:22:54.180 I,

00:22:54.780 for your audience,

00:22:55.780 I know you know this,

00:22:56.980 but not a person

00:22:58.520 I necessarily

00:22:59.180 am a big fan of,

00:23:00.320 but if you remember

00:23:00.860 Milo Yiannopoulos

00:23:02.180 from 2016,

00:23:04.220 he had this

00:23:05.440 sort of position

00:23:06.280 in the center

00:23:07.140 of Republican

00:23:08.040 politics up

00:23:09.060 until 2017.

00:23:11.080 And then,

00:23:12.280 I don't even remember

00:23:13.180 exactly what did it,

00:23:14.260 but it was something

00:23:14.820 having to do

00:23:15.500 with him describing

00:23:16.520 his past

00:23:17.380 and,

00:23:18.460 you know,

00:23:18.740 his torrid

00:23:19.420 sexual past

00:23:20.720 or something like that,

00:23:21.620 which was widely

00:23:22.540 known even before that.

00:23:24.660 And,

00:23:24.820 yeah.

00:23:24.920 he had explained

00:23:27.420 that he had been

00:23:28.080 molested as a young man

00:23:29.760 and that's why

00:23:30.440 he was gay,

00:23:31.520 which,

00:23:32.140 you know,

00:23:32.320 many such cases.

00:23:33.460 And he said,

00:23:34.140 this is very normal

00:23:35.060 for,

00:23:35.800 you know,

00:23:36.620 the gay community.

00:23:37.800 You are preyed on

00:23:39.200 by older men

00:23:40.700 and that is considered

00:23:41.640 very normal

00:23:42.300 and I considered it normal.

00:23:44.360 And for this,

00:23:45.060 yeah,

00:23:45.260 he was considered

00:23:46.660 to be pushing pedophilia

00:23:48.200 because he just pointed out

00:23:49.200 that actually

00:23:49.740 that's how you get

00:23:51.020 most gay people.

00:23:52.080 Yeah.

00:23:52.540 Every,

00:23:53.200 everybody

00:23:53.820 who knows

00:23:54.620 a gay person,

00:23:55.560 I mean,

00:23:55.820 there are some exceptions

00:23:56.640 obviously,

00:23:57.380 right?

00:23:57.540 But this is a very,

00:23:58.960 very common story

00:24:00.240 if you've talked

00:24:01.440 personally

00:24:02.020 to specifically

00:24:03.360 gay men

00:24:04.060 and for some reason

00:24:05.360 he got canceled

00:24:07.320 for this

00:24:07.720 because the conservative

00:24:08.740 movement hopped

00:24:09.660 on the cancellation.

00:24:11.500 They talked themselves

00:24:13.020 into thinking

00:24:13.640 that this was

00:24:14.100 a cancelable offense.

00:24:15.720 So maybe

00:24:16.420 J.D. Vance

00:24:17.420 is signaling

00:24:18.000 that conservatives

00:24:19.300 overall

00:24:20.080 or non-progressives

00:24:20.960 overall

00:24:21.380 are just not going

00:24:22.040 to participate

00:24:22.500 in this

00:24:23.020 in which case

00:24:24.040 this situation

00:24:24.840 might become permanent.

00:24:27.020 But really,

00:24:28.000 you know,

00:24:28.160 the wild card here

00:24:29.340 and the wild card

00:24:30.560 in a lot of ways,

00:24:31.920 the most unstable element

00:24:33.240 of our political reality

00:24:34.600 right now

00:24:35.420 and the thing

00:24:36.840 that I'm kind of

00:24:38.260 looking at

00:24:38.660 very, very intently

00:24:39.840 is the center left,

00:24:42.000 the center

00:24:42.560 and moderate left.

00:24:44.740 They're the people

00:24:45.740 who are kind of

00:24:46.360 up in the air

00:24:47.120 at this point

00:24:47.740 about where

00:24:48.200 they're going to go

00:24:49.020 and how they're

00:24:49.940 going to arrange

00:24:50.520 themselves politically.

00:24:52.260 I think the center left

00:24:53.400 in particular

00:24:54.100 is going to be,

00:24:57.440 the left as we know

00:24:58.460 it is kind of

00:24:58.900 in the process

00:24:59.400 of disintegrating.

00:25:00.400 There will be

00:25:00.840 a new left

00:25:01.840 that comes about

00:25:02.820 in the wake

00:25:03.620 of this integration

00:25:04.900 of the 20th century left.

00:25:07.100 But you can see

00:25:08.280 how the kind of ideas

00:25:11.280 that you would see

00:25:11.960 in a Slate magazine

00:25:12.960 or a New York Times

00:25:14.280 that just flat out

00:25:15.500 don't make any sense.

00:25:16.960 You can be a

00:25:19.020 revolutionary Marxist

00:25:20.500 leveler

00:25:21.100 like Hassan Piker.

00:25:23.080 That makes sense.

00:25:24.460 And you can be

00:25:25.220 kind of a right winger.

00:25:26.580 That makes sense as well.

00:25:28.040 But I'm not so sure

00:25:29.140 Ezra Klein's position

00:25:30.880 makes sense

00:25:32.160 in the abstract.

00:25:33.440 It's obvious

00:25:34.120 that he is

00:25:35.280 kind of conning somebody.

00:25:37.140 But at the same time,

00:25:37.980 you've just got

00:25:38.460 so much money

00:25:39.220 and power

00:25:39.960 in these positions.

00:25:41.640 And they really

00:25:42.960 have to decide.

00:25:43.980 You know,

00:25:44.280 those center left people,

00:25:45.740 the people who manage

00:25:47.180 these institutions,

00:25:48.040 they have to decide

00:25:49.480 how much they want

00:25:50.400 to play a ball

00:25:51.080 with leftist identity politics

00:25:52.880 or to what extent

00:25:54.280 there is going to be

00:25:55.400 this giant coalition

00:25:56.800 to cancel wrong thinkers.

00:25:59.080 And I think

00:25:59.620 that's also going

00:26:00.480 to play a role in it.

00:26:02.300 Up until today,

00:26:04.480 and I think

00:26:04.840 this might change

00:26:05.720 now that it looks

00:26:06.400 like the Israel-Palestine

00:26:08.080 conflict is coming

00:26:08.940 to a close,

00:26:10.440 that that particular

00:26:11.680 section of the left

00:26:13.580 has been much

00:26:14.460 more wary

00:26:15.900 about just pouring

00:26:17.140 gasoline

00:26:17.720 on their far

00:26:19.440 left blanks

00:26:20.380 hysterias.

00:26:21.820 And so,

00:26:23.020 you know,

00:26:23.380 I'm not so sure

00:26:24.140 what this bodes

00:26:24.660 for the future,

00:26:25.900 but I don't know.

00:26:27.620 I think that

00:26:28.100 the new reality

00:26:29.540 just has to be

00:26:30.700 that public

00:26:31.760 cancellation

00:26:32.260 over faux pas

00:26:33.700 on group chats

00:26:34.760 can't be a thing

00:26:35.420 on the right.

00:26:36.300 Or there's just

00:26:37.240 not going to be

00:26:37.860 any activism.

00:26:38.520 I'm interested

00:26:41.060 about exploring

00:26:42.140 that disintegration

00:26:43.220 of the left

00:26:43.780 a little more

00:26:44.640 because,

00:26:45.420 you know,

00:26:45.940 famously,

00:26:46.560 obviously,

00:26:47.000 I had a bet

00:26:47.440 on whether

00:26:47.880 the woke

00:26:48.240 would be put

00:26:48.720 away.

00:26:49.620 The smart move,

00:26:50.740 of course,

00:26:51.000 was always for

00:26:52.100 the left

00:26:53.060 to put the woke

00:26:53.720 away.

00:26:54.380 That was always

00:26:55.060 a point of agreement

00:26:56.000 between me

00:26:57.200 and Nima

00:26:58.120 is that ultimately

00:26:59.100 the smart leftist

00:27:00.560 would attempt

00:27:01.220 to put the woke

00:27:01.900 away.

00:27:02.400 But I believe

00:27:03.600 there were too

00:27:04.140 many true believers

00:27:05.160 that the momentum

00:27:06.460 was already

00:27:07.200 too far gone

00:27:09.220 and that there

00:27:10.080 was very little

00:27:11.000 desire ultimately

00:27:12.220 for moderation

00:27:13.060 inside the party.

00:27:14.380 Even if the

00:27:15.320 established leftists

00:27:16.260 know that

00:27:17.420 embracing the

00:27:18.080 activists is a

00:27:18.840 mistake,

00:27:19.400 it's where they

00:27:20.180 want to be.

00:27:21.080 Right?

00:27:21.240 Like,

00:27:21.500 they're jealous

00:27:22.640 of those positions.

00:27:24.280 It's not like

00:27:24.720 they're not moderating

00:27:26.780 because they ultimately

00:27:27.480 think that these

00:27:28.080 positions are wrong

00:27:29.180 or, you know,

00:27:30.220 that they're destructive.

00:27:31.920 They're only moderating

00:27:32.720 because they think

00:27:33.280 they can't sell them

00:27:34.140 quite yet.

00:27:34.840 And even then,

00:27:35.620 it's tenuous.

00:27:36.320 Ezra Klein's

00:27:37.560 like just the

00:27:38.400 Naples Ultra

00:27:39.240 example of this.

00:27:40.600 I mean,

00:27:40.800 he,

00:27:41.600 like the abundance,

00:27:43.000 like abundance,

00:27:44.400 like why didn't

00:27:44.920 Obama provide

00:27:45.900 abundance?

00:27:46.560 Like abundance

00:27:47.020 was essentially

00:27:47.800 Obama's campaign

00:27:49.540 in 2008.

00:27:51.220 It was like,

00:27:52.060 it was the

00:27:52.360 technocrat people,

00:27:54.260 the reality,

00:27:55.480 you remember

00:27:55.780 the reality-based

00:27:56.640 community from

00:27:57.640 the early days

00:27:58.360 of blogging?

00:27:59.120 I couldn't even

00:27:59.800 believe that,

00:28:00.300 but it's essentially

00:28:01.260 the same thing.

00:28:02.480 So Matt Iglesias,

00:28:03.580 I know Matt Iglesias

00:28:04.940 isn't technically

00:28:05.880 involved in the

00:28:06.720 abundance thing,

00:28:07.480 but he might as

00:28:08.060 well be.

00:28:08.580 It's the same

00:28:09.000 position.

00:28:10.160 It's all of these

00:28:10.920 people who are

00:28:11.520 preaching this

00:28:12.600 sort of,

00:28:13.300 this new idea

00:28:14.640 of secular

00:28:15.700 progressive

00:28:16.760 technocracy.

00:28:18.360 The problem is,

00:28:19.580 is there's just

00:28:20.580 no audience

00:28:21.840 for it.

00:28:22.680 There's no

00:28:23.140 audience for it.

00:28:24.720 Maybe,

00:28:25.480 I think the idea

00:28:26.900 is that there

00:28:28.220 could be an

00:28:29.480 audience for that

00:28:30.520 among kind of

00:28:32.100 millennial women.

00:28:33.140 millennial women

00:28:34.740 are a very

00:28:35.320 loud base

00:28:36.640 in the

00:28:36.940 Democratic Party,

00:28:37.700 but they're not

00:28:38.160 a particularly

00:28:38.820 large one.

00:28:40.640 And because of

00:28:41.460 that,

00:28:41.780 you can get a

00:28:42.640 lot of hot air.

00:28:43.840 I mean,

00:28:44.040 Ezra Klein's

00:28:44.800 positions make

00:28:45.500 no sense.

00:28:46.740 Nobody in their

00:28:47.360 right mind thinks

00:28:48.360 that the Democrat

00:28:49.580 Party is going to

00:28:51.320 snap their fingers

00:28:52.360 and suddenly leave

00:28:54.200 behind identity

00:28:54.860 politics and start

00:28:55.820 making infrastructure

00:28:56.920 projects their

00:28:58.000 thing.

00:28:58.800 If they could do

00:28:59.700 that,

00:29:00.080 they would have

00:29:00.460 done that in my

00:29:01.660 home state of

00:29:02.160 California,

00:29:02.880 which they

00:29:03.280 obviously haven't.

00:29:05.220 And everyone

00:29:06.380 knows that as

00:29:07.040 soon as they

00:29:07.400 get back into

00:29:08.080 power,

00:29:08.900 they're going to

00:29:09.440 forget about

00:29:09.940 abundance and

00:29:10.480 they're going to

00:29:10.760 start hiring

00:29:11.620 their client groups

00:29:14.340 back into

00:29:14.780 government and

00:29:15.220 then you'll never

00:29:15.640 hear about that

00:29:16.320 again until

00:29:17.040 there's another

00:29:17.660 populist explosion.

00:29:19.260 That's where the

00:29:19.820 energy is.

00:29:21.180 I guess,

00:29:21.660 the conflict that

00:29:24.680 I'm tracing here

00:29:25.940 is the kind of

00:29:27.960 well-to-do people

00:29:29.120 that occupy

00:29:29.800 institutions.

00:29:30.580 Now,

00:29:31.320 this isn't a

00:29:31.860 voting bloc.

00:29:33.560 This isn't going

00:29:34.520 to be somebody

00:29:35.180 who makes any

00:29:35.940 decisions.

00:29:37.020 But when it

00:29:37.780 comes to,

00:29:39.080 two interviews

00:29:40.200 kind of occupied

00:29:41.280 my mind very

00:29:42.540 greatly.

00:29:43.940 And this was the

00:29:44.520 Ezra Klein,

00:29:45.300 they were both on

00:29:45.780 the New York

00:29:46.160 Times.

00:29:46.560 I mean,

00:29:46.700 it's amazing.

00:29:47.640 In the Trump

00:29:48.000 administration,

00:29:49.260 the Trump administration

00:29:49.880 has accomplished

00:29:50.600 the impossible.

00:29:51.420 It created a

00:29:52.080 ceasefire in

00:29:52.760 Gaza and it

00:29:53.860 made the New

00:29:54.280 York Times

00:29:54.760 temporarily

00:29:55.500 interesting,

00:29:56.380 with some

00:29:58.500 help from

00:29:59.020 Ross Douthat's

00:29:59.880 interview podcast.

00:30:01.600 But it's not

00:30:02.720 necessarily

00:30:03.440 interesting that

00:30:04.220 they have new

00:30:04.900 ideas.

00:30:05.360 It's interesting

00:30:05.900 in that you're

00:30:06.420 showcasing

00:30:07.300 basically a

00:30:10.460 mind in the

00:30:11.380 process of

00:30:12.040 struggling over

00:30:12.820 two contradictions

00:30:13.760 that they're

00:30:14.200 trying to

00:30:14.700 resolve.

00:30:15.460 So the two

00:30:15.900 interviews that

00:30:16.380 I thought were

00:30:16.740 really interesting

00:30:17.260 were the

00:30:17.560 Ezra Klein

00:30:18.160 versus the

00:30:18.700 Ta-Nehisi

00:30:19.240 Coates

00:30:19.640 interview,

00:30:20.360 where you

00:30:20.900 literally saw

00:30:21.840 the avatar of

00:30:23.060 identity politics

00:30:23.880 conflict with

00:30:25.040 Ezra Klein.

00:30:26.100 And of course,

00:30:26.560 Ta-Nehisi Coates

00:30:27.240 is a walking

00:30:28.020 contradiction.

00:30:28.800 None of his

00:30:29.120 ideas make any

00:30:30.100 sense or even

00:30:31.800 he just basically

00:30:32.980 has historical

00:30:33.700 anecdotes that

00:30:34.740 he returns to

00:30:35.520 again and again.

00:30:36.860 But he's trying

00:30:37.380 to, Ezra Klein

00:30:38.620 is trying to

00:30:39.440 kind of talk

00:30:40.600 sense into

00:30:41.480 Ta-Nehisi Coates

00:30:42.500 and he's just

00:30:43.460 not having it.

00:30:44.520 He's just not

00:30:45.260 giving an inch.

00:30:46.900 And there was

00:30:47.620 an interview

00:30:48.440 where you could

00:30:49.700 literally see them

00:30:50.680 trying to put

00:30:51.240 the woke away

00:30:51.880 like you say,

00:30:52.560 Arne, it would

00:30:53.160 be that interview.

00:30:54.140 You can literally

00:30:54.780 see Ezra Klein

00:30:56.420 trying to walk

00:30:57.500 the woke

00:30:58.320 literally back

00:30:59.160 from the precipice

00:30:59.940 and just not

00:31:00.580 getting any

00:31:01.140 ground in the

00:31:01.860 process of that.

00:31:03.400 And the other

00:31:03.780 one was the

00:31:04.360 Hassan Piker

00:31:05.140 versus Ross

00:31:06.360 Douthat

00:31:06.900 interview,

00:31:07.680 which again,

00:31:08.160 like another

00:31:08.620 avatar of the

00:31:10.280 woke, so to

00:31:10.840 speak, is

00:31:11.260 Hassan Piker.

00:31:13.280 And, you know,

00:31:14.320 okay, maybe he'll

00:31:15.020 get canceled

00:31:15.680 because he's in

00:31:16.320 the process of

00:31:16.980 having a scandal

00:31:17.860 over, of all

00:31:19.200 things, shock

00:31:19.880 callers, which

00:31:21.240 is the most

00:31:21.920 ridiculous thing.

00:31:22.720 Like, oh, I

00:31:23.160 want to murder

00:31:24.360 every conservative

00:31:25.660 in the United

00:31:26.480 States, and

00:31:27.600 that's fine.

00:31:28.360 Like, that's

00:31:28.800 something that we

00:31:29.280 might entertain.

00:31:30.780 But, oh, my

00:31:31.720 God, I put a

00:31:32.240 shock collar on

00:31:33.080 my dog.

00:31:34.820 You're not going

00:31:35.500 to work in this

00:31:36.000 town ever again,

00:31:37.080 Hassan.

00:31:37.680 But, you know,

00:31:38.120 regardless, you

00:31:39.040 know, if it's not

00:31:40.000 Hassan, it will be

00:31:40.920 somebody else like

00:31:41.860 Hassan.

00:31:42.320 Hassan represents

00:31:43.340 where the youth

00:31:44.280 energy is in the

00:31:46.480 left.

00:31:46.900 It is vindictive.

00:31:48.200 It is looking for

00:31:48.980 someone to blame for

00:31:49.920 all of its problems.

00:31:50.900 And one, you

00:31:53.380 know, what

00:31:53.780 obviously the

00:31:54.680 solution the left

00:31:55.420 has is that the

00:31:56.420 cause of all of

00:31:57.920 your problems as a

00:31:59.440 young person, as a

00:32:00.760 minority, as really

00:32:02.780 anybody who has

00:32:03.920 problems with

00:32:04.640 reality, the cause of

00:32:06.080 all your problems is

00:32:07.120 the American white

00:32:08.060 middle class.

00:32:08.940 Go get them.

00:32:10.380 And that's the

00:32:10.860 message that, you

00:32:12.000 know, that's what

00:32:12.580 people are talking

00:32:13.240 about when Hassan is

00:32:14.500 basically justifying

00:32:15.660 violence against

00:32:16.680 conservatives or when

00:32:18.160 destiny is justifying

00:32:19.320 violence against

00:32:20.020 conservatives, as

00:32:20.800 they both have

00:32:21.460 many times.

00:32:22.940 People don't

00:32:23.700 acknowledge this in

00:32:24.480 the New York Times,

00:32:25.440 but you can, there's

00:32:26.620 records at that,

00:32:27.480 right?

00:32:27.880 They're basically

00:32:28.580 saying that the

00:32:29.140 cause of all your

00:32:30.300 problems, young

00:32:31.640 person in the

00:32:33.020 progressive coalition

00:32:33.800 is with middle

00:32:34.900 class white Americans

00:32:36.540 or our middle

00:32:37.820 class Christian

00:32:38.500 Americans.

00:32:38.900 That is, that is

00:32:39.640 the scapegoat that

00:32:40.600 we're going to make

00:32:42.320 for the problems of

00:32:43.260 America.

00:32:44.580 And, you know, I

00:32:46.100 just don't think that

00:32:46.800 there's going to be

00:32:47.440 much space for this.

00:32:48.620 It is obviously the

00:32:50.580 thing that will sell

00:32:51.700 democratically in the

00:32:53.260 future for the left

00:32:54.260 wing coalition.

00:32:55.240 It makes absolutely

00:32:56.480 no sense.

00:32:57.840 In no way, shape, or

00:32:59.120 form are the

00:33:00.540 problems of Hassan's

00:33:02.160 audience caused by

00:33:03.620 Red America.

00:33:05.500 Red America is not

00:33:06.860 the reason why rent

00:33:08.500 is too high in New

00:33:09.700 York or L.A.

00:33:11.040 Christians are not

00:33:12.460 the reason why people

00:33:14.680 in that cohort can't

00:33:16.040 form families or that

00:33:18.000 they have decreasing

00:33:18.700 economic opportunities.

00:33:20.840 But that is, that's

00:33:22.240 the line that sort of

00:33:23.680 makes the Democratic

00:33:24.360 Party work.

00:33:25.560 And because of that,

00:33:26.400 they're going to have

00:33:26.980 to pursue that.

00:33:28.040 Now, what the real

00:33:29.220 struggle is going to

00:33:30.000 be, how is Ezra Klein

00:33:32.540 and the rest of the

00:33:35.080 people who know

00:33:35.840 better at the New York

00:33:36.860 Times, how are they

00:33:37.620 going to justify these

00:33:39.320 insane positions to

00:33:40.560 themselves?

00:33:42.000 And in that, is there

00:33:43.720 any opportunity for

00:33:45.540 people to break away

00:33:47.000 and join something

00:33:47.920 different and not look

00:33:49.360 like they're just

00:33:50.600 handmaidens to

00:33:51.740 absolutely insane

00:33:53.060 vindictive radicals?

00:33:56.840 I know you're going to

00:33:58.160 be basically slaves to

00:33:59.240 their base.

00:34:00.960 Well, you know, here's

00:34:02.400 the thing, right?

00:34:03.180 Like, so when in doubt,

00:34:04.880 it's usually best to bet

00:34:06.060 on the management, right?

00:34:07.180 Like that's, that's the

00:34:08.240 elite theory 101, right?

00:34:10.280 So for the managerial

00:34:13.060 left, the wokeness is

00:34:14.700 simply a tool to bring

00:34:17.120 them into power, right?

00:34:19.300 That's the wedge, that's

00:34:20.560 the narrative, that's the

00:34:21.600 noble lie, but they're

00:34:23.220 smart enough to know

00:34:24.260 ultimately that while

00:34:25.500 they might hold some of

00:34:27.060 those positions, going

00:34:28.760 full bore is a mistake

00:34:30.220 and that there is a

00:34:31.280 radical version of this

00:34:32.280 that is too far and that

00:34:33.640 power is more important

00:34:34.900 than, you know,

00:34:36.100 establishing some

00:34:37.260 coherent set of

00:34:38.640 principles and so

00:34:40.600 they deploy it

00:34:41.800 tactically, but

00:34:42.760 ultimately it's not

00:34:43.840 something that drives

00:34:44.960 their actions.

00:34:46.600 The problem is that

00:34:47.720 the percentage of the

00:34:49.660 managerial left that

00:34:50.760 understands that has

00:34:52.340 been shrinking rapidly

00:34:54.020 and you can tell this

00:34:55.040 by the elevation of

00:34:56.080 guys like Coates to

00:34:57.240 leadership.

00:34:58.220 Normally you wouldn't

00:34:58.620 let a guy like that get

00:34:59.520 anywhere near any

00:35:01.080 level of power.

00:35:02.420 Coates does not

00:35:03.020 understand this.

00:35:04.400 Right, correctly,

00:35:05.320 right, exactly right.

00:35:06.620 And so now you have a

00:35:07.620 problem where the

00:35:09.200 balance of power,

00:35:11.000 where normally the

00:35:11.940 managers would have

00:35:12.900 been, you know,

00:35:13.660 keeping a tight rein on

00:35:14.700 this stuff and deploying

00:35:15.660 it tactically.

00:35:16.900 Now too many of them

00:35:18.340 believe this to

00:35:19.700 actually properly

00:35:21.660 curtail it.

00:35:22.940 And again, this comes

00:35:24.100 from when you look at

00:35:25.800 them, you can see

00:35:26.500 that's where they want

00:35:27.380 to be all the time.

00:35:28.820 You know, they're

00:35:29.700 having to fight their

00:35:30.960 own impulses to

00:35:32.320 to stop them from

00:35:34.140 completely embracing

00:35:34.960 this.

00:35:35.340 This is always a bad

00:35:36.300 place to be, right?

00:35:37.700 Because as someone who's

00:35:38.860 trying to control these,

00:35:40.080 when you are barely

00:35:40.860 attempting to give in

00:35:41.820 to your desires, you

00:35:43.800 will eventually fold to

00:35:45.120 that.

00:35:46.120 And so I see

00:35:47.200 repeatedly the

00:35:49.000 radical edge moving

00:35:50.440 further and further in

00:35:51.760 to what should be the

00:35:53.360 managerial, you know,

00:35:54.660 kind of gatekeeping

00:35:55.480 apparatus of the left.

00:35:57.020 And I just don't think

00:35:58.000 it's a struggle that the

00:35:59.080 managers can win.

00:36:00.260 Because as you point

00:36:01.820 out, the entire logic

00:36:03.020 of the enterprise has

00:36:03.900 come apart entirely.

00:36:05.600 And so there's no more

00:36:06.300 like through line

00:36:07.180 narrative except like

00:36:08.760 white straight Christian

00:36:09.720 men are the problem

00:36:11.140 and you should probably

00:36:11.900 kill them all, right?

00:36:12.760 Like that's the

00:36:14.060 underlying argument

00:36:15.780 of basically all of

00:36:16.820 leftism.

00:36:17.320 It's the only thing that

00:36:18.080 coheres the coalition

00:36:19.980 at this point.

00:36:21.400 And so you can't,

00:36:22.240 there's only so many

00:36:22.820 steps away from that

00:36:23.860 you can actually take

00:36:25.140 while maintaining the

00:36:26.660 coalition at all.

00:36:28.720 And that, I mean,

00:36:29.180 Coates is winning.

00:36:29.940 If you look at the

00:36:30.860 comment section in the

00:36:32.260 New York Times

00:36:32.800 interview, if you listen

00:36:34.160 to the podcast

00:36:35.120 retrospectives by

00:36:36.160 leftist podcast, and

00:36:37.100 yes, I do listen to

00:36:37.940 leftist podcasts, they

00:36:39.700 all, if you've even

00:36:41.140 listened to people in my

00:36:42.820 own blue state, they

00:36:43.640 all say Coates had the

00:36:45.740 better side.

00:36:46.520 He was in the right.

00:36:47.840 We are on Coates' side.

00:36:49.920 The problem is that

00:36:50.820 Coates' understanding of

00:36:52.580 this is in layman's

00:36:55.460 it's just cuckoo bananas.

00:36:56.700 Like there's no, you

00:36:57.580 can't run a country on

00:36:59.840 Coates' ideology.

00:37:01.200 You can't do anything

00:37:02.340 responsibly.

00:37:03.780 It's, it's his idea is

00:37:06.260 that we're going to assume

00:37:07.400 everyone in who is my

00:37:09.960 opposition is the moral

00:37:11.500 equivalent of the Ku Klux

00:37:12.740 Klan.

00:37:13.080 And this is

00:37:13.660 Reconstruction America.

00:37:14.740 and we just need to

00:37:16.600 like suppress them using

00:37:18.640 our, you know, our

00:37:19.980 mandate, which, you

00:37:21.220 know, where they got

00:37:21.960 this mandate, who knows?

00:37:24.640 So I, I don't, I mean,

00:37:25.980 this, this contradiction

00:37:27.180 is not going away.

00:37:28.680 The leftist managerial

00:37:30.380 class will try to ape

00:37:31.920 Coates and this is going

00:37:33.640 to create for them a huge

00:37:35.660 number of cognitive

00:37:39.540 dissonances, situations

00:37:41.320 that are just kind of

00:37:42.500 insane.

00:37:42.940 And I guess this is

00:37:44.940 sort of my criticism

00:37:45.760 with the whole, you

00:37:47.560 know, the Wright's

00:37:48.880 reaction to the Charlie

00:37:50.220 Kirk assassination.

00:37:51.500 I really felt that a lot

00:37:52.880 of things were done

00:37:53.960 right.

00:37:54.720 There was a lot of

00:37:55.560 righteous anger that I

00:37:57.640 felt was just perfect.

00:37:59.540 I mean, I, I, I'm not,

00:38:00.640 I mean, I'm angry too.

00:38:02.100 It was appropriate.

00:38:03.100 Sorry.

00:38:03.360 It was appropriate.

00:38:04.160 I don't, I mean, that

00:38:05.020 makes it sound like it

00:38:05.900 was worth it for Charlie

00:38:07.180 Kirk to die, to get the

00:38:08.180 anger.

00:38:08.840 There was, there was

00:38:09.800 this understanding and on

00:38:11.880 the right that,

00:38:12.940 we need to pursue

00:38:14.320 antifa and leftist

00:38:16.300 activism to the ends of

00:38:17.560 the earth.

00:38:18.160 And that is absolutely

00:38:19.260 100%.

00:38:20.000 If we do not seek justice

00:38:21.480 in this moment, then we

00:38:22.880 are not a country and we

00:38:25.040 are not a political

00:38:25.760 movement.

00:38:26.300 If we, if, if, if one

00:38:27.620 of ours can be

00:38:28.880 assassinated in broad

00:38:31.000 daylight by the

00:38:32.340 opposition and then have

00:38:33.680 the opposition escape the,

00:38:35.560 from, with the

00:38:36.060 consequences of it, except

00:38:37.360 for just like the minimal

00:38:38.840 proceduralism necessary to

00:38:39.940 claim that rule of law is

00:38:41.740 to win effect, then we

00:38:43.420 are not a political force.

00:38:45.120 But at the same time, I

00:38:46.400 feel like, especially after

00:38:49.340 the, the, the, the memorial

00:38:51.140 service for Charlie, I felt

00:38:53.020 that red America kind of took

00:38:55.540 the wrong lesson.

00:38:57.260 The, the, and it started

00:38:59.040 with the, the memorial service

00:39:00.720 for Charlie Kirk as well.

00:39:02.880 Uh, America, red America,

00:39:05.580 other than wanting to pursue

00:39:07.320 the, the killers and the rat,

00:39:09.320 the leftist radicals, which

00:39:10.340 they absolutely should.

00:39:11.920 I got the impression that

00:39:13.620 red America, meaning

00:39:15.620 conservatives generally felt

00:39:17.020 like they were on the

00:39:17.960 defensive.

00:39:19.000 That is not the case.

00:39:21.100 Uh, red America and the

00:39:23.760 conservatives are on the

00:39:24.980 offensive right now.

00:39:26.680 Uh, you, we are 100%

00:39:29.240 correct when we say the

00:39:31.180 discourse is dead and that

00:39:33.020 there really are no non-fake

00:39:35.160 conversations with the left.

00:39:36.780 They're just performances

00:39:38.000 essentially.

00:39:38.980 But that being said, the ball

00:39:43.380 is in the court for red

00:39:44.640 America to kind of put

00:39:47.080 forward some kind of vision

00:39:49.480 of America that people

00:39:51.900 who do not like the left

00:39:53.500 can be confident in.

00:39:57.120 And to do this, I think

00:39:59.020 there needs to be a desire

00:40:00.000 to move further into spaces

00:40:02.400 that are classically been

00:40:04.180 owned by the left spaces

00:40:07.020 where people discuss ideas

00:40:08.500 spaces where discourse occurs

00:40:11.160 and kind of take ownership

00:40:13.240 over that.

00:40:13.960 And I felt like the, the

00:40:16.200 reaction emotionally after

00:40:17.820 the Charlie Kirk Memorial

00:40:18.940 was to kind of turtle up

00:40:20.240 and to put our defenses up

00:40:21.780 when really we should be

00:40:23.480 trying to expand outward.

00:40:25.700 Uh, the left does not

00:40:27.060 own morality.

00:40:28.300 The left does not own

00:40:29.400 culture.

00:40:29.860 The left does not own

00:40:31.080 the avenues of discourse.

00:40:32.940 As a matter of fact,

00:40:34.000 they've abandoned all of

00:40:35.100 these things.

00:40:35.740 And I feel like Charlie Kirk

00:40:38.060 should be a signal for

00:40:40.580 young men or really anyone

00:40:43.560 in the conservative movement

00:40:44.380 to try to fill the positions

00:40:45.780 that are, are no longer

00:40:47.960 really there for, uh, that,

00:40:52.260 that they aren't really

00:40:53.060 being embodied by our

00:40:54.540 current crop of, of

00:40:55.940 progressive leaders.

00:40:57.080 And I, I don't see that.

00:40:58.880 I feel like that's sort of a

00:41:00.120 deficit in the, the vision

00:41:02.340 that the conservatives have

00:41:03.540 about the world.

00:41:04.380 That's interesting.

00:41:07.400 Cause that, that was not

00:41:08.400 my take, I guess, after

00:41:10.020 all of this, um, uh, I, you

00:41:13.700 know, on the defensive is an

00:41:15.260 interesting turn of phrase.

00:41:17.140 Obviously in many ways, uh,

00:41:19.620 the Trump administration, uh,

00:41:21.120 did come out and say, you

00:41:22.300 know, Hey, we need to

00:41:23.080 declare these people a

00:41:24.640 foreign terrorist group.

00:41:25.540 We need to dismantle the

00:41:26.460 NGOs.

00:41:27.380 Uh, we, you know, we

00:41:28.560 need to, uh, only become

00:41:30.760 more aggressive with our

00:41:31.980 deportations and sanctuary

00:41:33.440 serious cities and ice.

00:41:35.060 We need to arrest, uh, Antifa

00:41:38.100 when they're assaulting

00:41:39.080 people, these kinds of

00:41:39.880 things.

00:41:40.080 It took a little bit of

00:41:41.040 well, chimping, which was

00:41:42.460 going to be another topic

00:41:43.520 we'll discuss here in a

00:41:44.420 second.

00:41:44.940 Uh, but, but that did seem

00:41:46.280 to be the way that they

00:41:47.080 embrace that.

00:41:47.960 And, you know, I

00:41:48.900 understand what you're

00:41:49.420 saying that ultimately the

00:41:50.460 right needs to enter into

00:41:51.500 these spaces and all of that

00:41:52.820 makes sense, but I'm not

00:41:54.260 sure how you do that

00:41:55.040 immediately after the

00:41:56.140 death of Charlie Kirk,

00:41:57.360 you know, it's a couple,

00:41:58.220 it's, it's a month ago at

00:41:59.180 this point, maybe.

00:41:59.980 Right.

00:42:00.220 And so you have a

00:42:01.300 situation where it's not

00:42:02.440 like you're going to go on

00:42:03.440 a spree of installing

00:42:04.740 college professors because

00:42:06.220 Charlie Kirk was shot.

00:42:07.860 And so, you know, to the

00:42:09.120 extent that the right

00:42:09.940 needs to engage in

00:42:11.220 discourse, well, they're

00:42:12.280 continuing the TP, uh,

00:42:13.720 USA, uh, you know,

00:42:15.740 events there, they're

00:42:16.880 doing all the discourse

00:42:18.120 that's available.

00:42:19.200 But when, when you see

00:42:21.060 someone shot through the

00:42:22.060 throat, I don't, I'm not

00:42:23.020 sure if the, the answer

00:42:24.340 is more on-campus

00:42:25.640 debates, uh, but, but

00:42:27.360 to the extent that it is

00:42:28.520 that, that is occurring.

00:42:29.660 So I guess I'm just not

00:42:31.660 sure what, I mean,

00:42:32.940 but the answer is, the

00:42:34.280 answer is definitely more

00:42:35.500 Charlie Kirk's like that,

00:42:36.740 that has to have, like

00:42:37.660 the left, I mean, you

00:42:40.060 know, Charlie Kirk was,

00:42:42.900 you know, this is the,

00:42:43.660 I'm sorry to interrupt you,

00:42:44.740 Aaron, but like this is,

00:42:45.760 you know, this is the,

00:42:48.380 the, the left when you,

00:42:50.360 when you, when you're

00:42:50.920 playing a game against

00:42:51.840 an adversary, you can

00:42:53.400 feel the moments when

00:42:55.500 they are, they feel

00:42:57.080 fear.

00:42:57.800 And, and that's what I

00:42:59.460 loved about debates and

00:43:01.360 about listening to

00:43:02.860 leftists talk about

00:43:04.280 Charlie Kirk.

00:43:05.020 You can, you can see

00:43:06.140 when they're on solid

00:43:07.440 ground and you can see

00:43:09.180 when they're on, what,

00:43:10.380 when they really get

00:43:11.120 scared, something in

00:43:13.080 Charlie Kirk's image was

00:43:15.320 deeply frightening to the

00:43:18.140 left and to the leftist

00:43:19.680 project.

00:43:20.960 You're right.

00:43:21.820 We don't need more kind

00:43:23.020 of, well, I mean, I

00:43:24.260 don't know.

00:43:24.680 I mean, maybe having

00:43:25.480 fake, the debates are

00:43:26.480 fake.

00:43:27.020 There's like nothing,

00:43:27.760 there's no doubt about

00:43:28.500 that.

00:43:28.800 Like nothing's being

00:43:29.340 decided by these debates.

00:43:30.900 These are performance

00:43:32.100 art and, you know, and

00:43:34.820 they're even, they're

00:43:35.480 increasingly ridiculous

00:43:36.560 performance art because

00:43:37.760 it's like, when, if you

00:43:39.760 go to debate on college

00:43:41.140 campuses, it's just like,

00:43:42.500 I have the right to have

00:43:43.720 this opinion and not get

00:43:44.760 shot, change my mind.

00:43:46.420 Like, you know, you're

00:43:48.140 debating for your right to

00:43:50.340 have this opinion without

00:43:52.120 violence being used

00:43:53.460 against you.

00:43:54.220 It's almost a self-refuting

00:43:55.520 thing to begin with, but

00:43:57.240 we absolutely need to

00:43:58.420 create more Charlie Kirk's.

00:44:00.760 I'm 100% with you and

00:44:02.880 Yorvin.

00:44:03.500 I mean, we need to just,

00:44:04.360 these NGOs need to get,

00:44:05.880 go down.

00:44:06.980 These organizations,

00:44:08.400 these, they're obviously

00:44:09.380 fundling money to Antifa.

00:44:11.020 They all need to get

00:44:11.960 seized.

00:44:12.740 The more radical, the

00:44:14.100 better.

00:44:14.500 I don't know if the Trump

00:44:15.420 administration is ready

00:44:16.500 for that, but

00:44:17.780 conversely, there needs

00:44:19.920 to be a whole amount,

00:44:22.180 a whole, there's a whole

00:44:23.620 opportunity, and there

00:44:25.240 needs to be a commensurate

00:44:27.540 amount of spending put

00:44:29.640 into the project of

00:44:32.200 creating more leaders

00:44:33.300 like Charlie Kirk, and

00:44:35.040 that's what I am not

00:44:36.040 seeing.

00:44:36.800 When, when one person

00:44:37.960 falls, there should be 10

00:44:39.140 people standing up that

00:44:40.240 are just like him, or 10

00:44:42.040 positions ready to employ

00:44:44.080 young men just like him.

00:44:45.720 Maybe not necessarily

00:44:46.620 going on and having

00:44:48.060 debates with college

00:44:50.840 students, but to

00:44:52.140 organize men, to put

00:44:53.620 them to the point of

00:44:54.720 being smaller leaders in

00:44:56.560 their own community.

00:44:57.680 The thing that really

00:44:58.500 scared the left about

00:44:59.540 Charlie Kirk was not

00:45:01.280 him having debates

00:45:04.080 with the microphone.

00:45:05.980 I mean, a lot of people

00:45:06.620 did that.

00:45:07.220 What scared the left

00:45:08.100 about Charlie Kirk was

00:45:09.520 the fact that he looked

00:45:11.480 like a youth organizer.

00:45:12.920 He looked like a leader

00:45:14.120 that could inspire a lot

00:45:15.440 of other young men to

00:45:16.720 follow suit.

00:45:18.100 You know, when, when he

00:45:18.900 got killed, the, the

00:45:21.000 things that people

00:45:21.960 remembered about Charlie

00:45:23.160 Kirk was not that one

00:45:24.700 time that he really like

00:45:25.920 owned somebody in, you

00:45:28.020 know, a Jubilee debate.

00:45:29.300 No one remembered that.

00:45:30.340 And that wasn't what

00:45:31.360 scared the left either.

00:45:32.480 What scared the left was

00:45:33.560 him standing up and

00:45:34.560 going, become a leader,

00:45:37.080 found a legacy, support

00:45:38.880 America, go back to

00:45:40.780 church and, and, and,

00:45:43.040 and become a symbol for

00:45:45.680 your own community about

00:45:47.040 what that community

00:45:47.900 stands for.

00:45:49.080 That's what absolutely

00:45:50.940 terrified the left by

00:45:52.620 within the image of

00:45:53.860 Charlie Kirk.

00:45:54.380 And that's what

00:45:54.700 absolutely inspired the

00:45:56.300 people that found his

00:45:58.420 assassination so

00:45:59.900 devastating.

00:46:01.040 And one of the reasons

00:46:02.440 why there aren't those

00:46:03.540 young people is that

00:46:04.660 there's no funding for

00:46:06.200 them.

00:46:06.540 There's no organizations

00:46:07.740 that put people

00:46:08.840 forward that if you

00:46:11.340 are a college student,

00:46:12.240 if you're a 22 year

00:46:13.680 old or an 18 year

00:46:15.600 old, and you go on

00:46:17.400 to a college campus,

00:46:18.900 you're immediately

00:46:20.060 made aware that there

00:46:22.420 is a place for you as

00:46:24.240 a political leader in

00:46:25.300 the future.

00:46:26.180 Whereas everything,

00:46:28.000 everything in a

00:46:29.040 college campus tells

00:46:30.500 you, and you have to

00:46:31.940 be kind of autistic not

00:46:33.040 to get the message,

00:46:34.520 everything in a college

00:46:35.540 campus, and college is

00:46:36.820 still where we train our

00:46:37.720 professional managerial

00:46:38.680 class as much as we both

00:46:39.920 would like that not to be

00:46:41.100 the case.

00:46:41.740 That is where you get

00:46:42.920 your certificate of

00:46:44.080 certification that allows

00:46:45.500 you to be a manager.

00:46:46.860 But everything on a

00:46:47.840 college class from how

00:46:49.240 the debates are

00:46:50.340 conducted in the college

00:46:51.340 classroom to how

00:46:52.920 activism is run in the

00:46:55.120 student body

00:46:55.660 organizations, I already

00:46:56.800 pointed out the massive

00:46:57.740 double standard, everything

00:46:59.320 tells a young 19 year

00:47:01.500 old, young man, that if he

00:47:04.940 wants to have a future as

00:47:06.520 a well-to-do person in

00:47:08.980 society, he has to keep

00:47:10.440 his head down, he has to

00:47:12.320 not rock the boat, he has

00:47:14.120 to not, to the extent that

00:47:15.640 he has principles that

00:47:16.640 differ from

00:47:17.100 progressivism, he has to

00:47:18.400 keep them quiet.

00:47:19.520 And Charlie Kirk said the

00:47:20.780 exact opposite, and that's

00:47:23.060 what made him such a

00:47:23.940 threat.

00:47:25.160 That is the kind of image

00:47:26.860 that needs to be brought

00:47:28.040 in, that needs to be made

00:47:29.520 more visible to the left,

00:47:32.060 to Blue America in some

00:47:33.540 way, that there is a path

00:47:35.280 to be proud, there's a path

00:47:38.460 to be ostentatious, ostentatious

00:47:40.420 is the wrong word, a path to

00:47:42.100 be prominent, a path to be

00:47:44.340 a community leader and hold

00:47:46.120 distinctly non-progressive

00:47:47.580 views.

00:47:48.500 And if the only way you can

00:47:50.780 give Blue America that

00:47:53.180 message is to literally have

00:47:54.580 these fake debates with

00:47:55.740 them, then maybe we need to

00:47:57.400 be having more fake debates,

00:47:58.780 even though they will

00:47:59.580 absolutely resolve nothing

00:48:01.080 discourse-wise.

00:48:02.500 Still, emotionally and

00:48:03.740 spiritually, the dialectic is

00:48:05.220 there is an alternative to

00:48:07.760 Hassan Piker, there is an

00:48:09.640 alternative to Ta-Nehisi

00:48:11.120 Coates, and there is an

00:48:12.240 alternative to being like a

00:48:14.240 manager that lives their

00:48:15.960 entire lives in the fear of

00:48:17.940 offending Hassan Piker or

00:48:19.780 Ta-Nehisi Coates.

00:48:21.380 That message needs to be

00:48:22.740 brought to Blue America.

00:48:24.100 I'm not so sure the best way

00:48:25.760 to do that, but I think it

00:48:27.140 starts with investing money

00:48:28.660 and resources and directing

00:48:30.880 young men to kind of be those

00:48:32.400 leaders.

00:48:34.580 I certainly agree with all

00:48:36.020 that.

00:48:36.540 I guess, like I said, the only

00:48:38.680 confusion is just I wouldn't

00:48:40.620 expect the Republican Party or

00:48:42.280 the conservative establishment or

00:48:44.400 even, you know, outside forces to

00:48:46.760 suddenly spring into action on

00:48:48.140 that inside a month after the

00:48:50.120 man's death.

00:48:50.860 I think that ultimately this

00:48:52.760 probably does spur them along

00:48:54.480 those lines.

00:48:55.380 I just, you know, from my own

00:48:57.240 experience going to Charlie

00:48:58.520 Kirk Memorial here locally and

00:49:00.520 talking to people about this

00:49:01.780 kind of thing, I think that's

00:49:03.040 exactly what's being kind of

00:49:04.560 planted.

00:49:05.180 And obviously it'll take time to

00:49:06.340 cultivate that.

00:49:07.180 And both of us would like to

00:49:08.280 see the right cultivate those

00:49:10.700 people in an active way instead

00:49:12.200 of doing what we're seeing with

00:49:13.240 the young Republicans here.

00:49:14.640 But ultimately, I think the

00:49:15.840 leadership of guys like Vance

00:49:17.020 probably does open up an

00:49:18.460 avenue for that.

00:49:19.480 So, you know, at some level, I

00:49:21.480 think that that's going to

00:49:23.020 occur.

00:49:23.620 I think more space for that to

00:49:25.380 open up is happening.

00:49:27.180 Also, both of us are part of an

00:49:28.860 organization that I think is key

00:49:30.280 to cultivating those kind of

00:49:31.940 young men.

00:49:33.080 And so, you know, I think the

00:49:34.840 answer is just that, you know,

00:49:36.960 places like the Old Glory Club

00:49:38.260 become key, you know, organs

00:49:41.920 inside of a larger conservative

00:49:44.600 ecosystem.

00:49:45.220 But that's going to take a little

00:49:46.300 bit of time.

00:49:46.700 And I didn't expect anyone to

00:49:47.940 come around and just knight these

00:49:49.260 people as leaders of the

00:49:50.800 conservative movement.

00:49:51.740 Because it's not just one, like,

00:49:53.080 you know, there's there's the

00:49:53.840 exit group.

00:49:54.440 There's new founding.

00:49:55.540 There's like and I, you know,

00:49:56.700 I've I haven't I've been involved

00:49:58.680 in multiple of these

00:49:59.620 organizations.

00:50:00.200 But I guess, you know, it's so

00:50:01.760 funny because you're seeing this

00:50:03.060 from the perspective of people

00:50:04.160 who run Charlie Kirk

00:50:05.200 memorials.

00:50:06.380 Nobody is running Charlie Kirk

00:50:07.800 memorials where I live, but

00:50:09.440 they're all talking about

00:50:10.560 Charlie Kirk.

00:50:11.540 And they need to understand that

00:50:13.800 when they talk about Charlie

00:50:15.500 Kirk, there are

00:50:16.600 talking about somebody who's at

00:50:18.360 the table with them.

00:50:20.060 None of this, like, I get to

00:50:21.660 redefine what Charlie Kirk

00:50:23.380 was and say that he was a Klan

00:50:26.000 member or a neo-Nazi.

00:50:27.560 Because that's what everyone

00:50:28.480 wants to do.

00:50:29.440 Everyone here, everyone in Blue

00:50:31.520 America, everyone in Berkeley,

00:50:33.180 California.

00:50:33.700 I don't live in Berkeley,

00:50:34.460 California, but, you know, I'm

00:50:36.000 privy to the conversations, right?

00:50:37.960 Everybody in Blue America, they

00:50:40.280 want to tell themselves the story

00:50:42.840 that, oh, it was regrettable that

00:50:45.160 Charlie Kirk got killed, but he was a

00:50:48.320 fascist.

00:50:48.840 He was, you know, a horrible

00:50:50.540 person.

00:50:51.040 He was everything that they're

00:50:53.000 trying to now use these group

00:50:54.500 chats to say about young

00:50:55.780 Republicans they want to say about

00:50:57.440 Charlie Kirk.

00:50:58.300 That narrative has to be stopped.

00:51:01.180 The people who are like Ezra Klein or

00:51:06.660 like any of these professional

00:51:08.140 managerial class people who have two

00:51:10.640 brain cells to rub together have to

00:51:12.760 know that when they say that Charlie

00:51:15.340 Kirk was some label that makes him

00:51:18.680 beyond reproach and possibly, possibly a

00:51:22.780 legitimate subject of, we don't want

00:51:25.440 violence anywhere, but, you know, this is

00:51:27.400 not very important because he was this

00:51:29.460 insert label, they need to know that

00:51:32.380 they're labeling other people in their

00:51:34.800 circle that other young men look to and

00:51:38.220 will try to follow, and that by labeling

00:51:41.460 Charlie Kirk that, they are labeling all

00:51:43.980 young men, whatever, fascists, racists,

00:51:47.980 Nazis, whatever.

00:51:49.560 And that message needs to be put into the

00:51:52.880 minds of Blue America.

00:51:54.880 Not, I mean, obviously, like you said,

00:51:57.080 they're never going to be able to walk

00:51:59.620 away from their coalition, but there is

00:52:02.760 going to be immediately, I think, a

00:52:04.800 demand for some kind of acceptable

00:52:07.520 alternative or some kind of alternative

00:52:09.920 that geographically exists in the context

00:52:13.020 of urban America that is thinking in

00:52:16.060 directions that are more along the

00:52:18.560 directions of, well, not progressivism, that

00:52:21.760 break from the directions of the

00:52:23.700 progressive coalition. And that's sort of

00:52:26.600 the basis of making the America sort of

00:52:31.700 fundamentally ungovernable from a

00:52:33.940 progressive point of view.

00:52:38.060 Well, I guess we should get to the topic

00:52:41.620 we were actually supposed to discuss at the

00:52:43.440 beginning, since we're coming up on an

00:52:46.300 hour here. But I have, I guess, managed a

00:52:53.040 few campaigns on the interwebs using the

00:52:57.740 tactic of chimping, some tactical

00:53:00.140 chimping, if you will. And basically, you

00:53:03.340 know, again, to be clear, we're both

00:53:05.240 proponents of elite theory here, right?

00:53:07.160 Like, we don't need to argue over whether

00:53:08.760 populism or public opinion is the ultimate

00:53:12.160 decider. Like, we both know how this game

00:53:14.480 works. However, I have engaged in the

00:53:18.160 tactical deployment of popular opinion

00:53:20.920 to sway certain aspects of administration

00:53:25.800 behavior or cancellations of people like

00:53:28.900 Jimmy Kimmel. And while obviously there's

00:53:32.560 no 100% success rate on these things, I feel

00:53:36.240 like they have overall been a positive

00:53:38.820 force. They have not necessarily permanently

00:53:42.820 changed things, but they have moved things in

00:53:45.560 a positive direction, I think, across the

00:53:48.200 ways I've deployed them. I don't think you

00:53:49.900 should use it all the time. I don't think

00:53:51.780 you should fool yourself that this is

00:53:53.400 ultimately a decider of power or this is

00:53:55.640 somehow a substitute for building real

00:53:58.260 power, building real institutions,

00:54:00.360 cultivating leadership, any of these

00:54:01.720 things. But I do think it is worth having

00:54:04.140 this club in your bag and recognizing that

00:54:07.140 especially now, the way that the current

00:54:09.800 Trump administration works, whether we like

00:54:11.700 it or not, this is a real tool that really

00:54:14.680 does drive things.

00:54:17.480 And I know people will be like, oh, well,

00:54:19.200 this is an illusion.

00:54:20.980 You know, you're just reacting to whatever

00:54:22.720 happens and saying you had some kind of, no,

00:54:24.860 I'm like getting calls from the White House

00:54:26.240 about this stuff. So it's like, I'm not just

00:54:28.060 cooking up the idea that people might be

00:54:30.420 listening to like what we're doing here.

00:54:32.540 And so I just want to get your reflection

00:54:36.160 on, I know you're not a fan of the phrase

00:54:38.800 chimping, but the, and I get that, but, but

00:54:42.160 the general deployment of at least tactical

00:54:44.460 chimping in as, as a tool one can use in a

00:54:47.920 wider set of strategies.

00:54:51.020 Like I, there's nothing you said there that

00:54:53.060 I disagree with whatsoever. I mean, chimping

00:54:55.320 is the tool that we have in our arsenal right

00:54:59.440 now. And it is the tool that we have to

00:55:01.980 interact with the Trump administration. We, we

00:55:04.140 have a populist hammer. That's the only way

00:55:07.300 that we can exert pressure. I mean, Trump,

00:55:09.320 Trump's coalition is a coalition. His ruling

00:55:12.720 selectorate are a group of people, some of who

00:55:16.500 agree with us and some of who don't agree

00:55:18.600 with them. And Vance himself is the perfect

00:55:20.440 example of that. He, he is simultaneously

00:55:23.660 somebody who is sympathetic to populism, but

00:55:27.080 is also a product of these kind of elite, you

00:55:31.100 know, Amy Chua corporate types of the sort of

00:55:34.260 Silicon. I don't know, I think they're, I think

00:55:35.620 they're East coast people, so they're not Silicon

00:55:37.040 Valley, but they're in the same, the teal set.

00:55:39.840 Right. And the only way that you can kind of

00:55:42.480 take people in the Trump administration and

00:55:45.160 push them in your direction is to threaten them

00:55:48.220 with a populist consequence. But I mean, I guess

00:55:51.480 the point, the point of chimping is to get to a

00:55:54.180 point where you don't need a chimp anymore, you

00:55:57.480 know, or, or you, you are largely concerned with,

00:56:02.260 with actually building or advancing some kind of

00:56:07.540 agenda where you don't need to have the, the, the, you

00:56:13.040 don't need to constantly rely on the chimp reflex.

00:56:15.960 The, the, the, the broad, I mean, chimp I'm using

00:56:18.420 broadly appealing to populist anger is what we're

00:56:21.340 talking about. Right. And, you know, I, I will

00:56:24.640 point out, I mean, you know, this too, that in the

00:56:26.660 internet, in internet history, that the term chimp was

00:56:30.480 usually designated as sort of a futile expression of

00:56:35.300 populist anger, specifically a futile expression of

00:56:39.140 populist anger that was done by certain democratic

00:56:43.600 client groups that are notably not served by chimping

00:56:47.560 out, you know, these demographic democratic client

00:56:51.260 groups, the client groups of the urban elites, their

00:56:55.820 anger is constantly respected, so to speak in this, in

00:57:00.740 the, in the way that it, it, it gives them, it gives them

00:57:04.660 sort of dispensations from the state, but their communities

00:57:08.580 are in total shambles. They are completely, I mean, I guess

00:57:12.700 I'm not completely slaves to the, the, the ruling class, but

00:57:16.360 you know, as we've said before, you know, they can force

00:57:18.640 them into certain positions, but, but these populist

00:57:21.780 positions that they're in have not helped their community,

00:57:24.560 have not allowed them to get any kind of economic

00:57:28.300 independence. And, you know, because of that, whenever I

00:57:33.260 look at, at the, the, the tool of using populist anger, my

00:57:39.920 immediate reaction is, okay, so how are we going to use this to

00:57:43.480 get into a position or to get into some kind of a place where

00:57:48.740 we don't need to use this anymore? I feel like if you, if

00:57:52.900 you are a people who, who only are able to, their only kind of

00:57:57.860 thing that they have in their corner is the ability to rabble

00:58:01.100 rouse, then you're in a pretty bad position. And I would really

00:58:06.260 like us to see if we can't figure out some way that

00:58:12.140 conservatives can get a victory. And it feels like a victory

00:58:16.040 that is won and not necessarily, that's won by, I'm sorry to put

00:58:21.860 it this way, but won by kind of the elite vanguard of the right

00:58:26.080 wing, rather than the elite vanguard of the right wing going

00:58:30.320 through some kind of populist, you know, populist violent reaction

00:58:36.860 online, I guess. I don't exactly know what that would look like

00:58:40.260 right now, but I have, I hope for something like that.

00:58:44.480 I would just, I would largely agree. And of course the, the, the key

00:58:48.940 difference between, you know, the, the joke chimping that we're

00:58:52.280 talking about and actual real life demonstrations is of course, we're

00:58:57.860 not burning down our neighborhoods. Right. Like, so, so when we use

00:59:01.840 the phrase, it's a, it's a, it's a tongue, you know, firmly planted

00:59:04.860 in cheek, uh, variance of this. Uh, but I also would encourage you to

00:59:09.420 think of this a different way. Um, what if the chimping working is

00:59:14.200 the elite vanguard winning?

00:59:17.140 Yeah, but I mean, yeah, yeah. Well, I, this is a great point. This

00:59:21.420 is, I mean, this is, but this is, but this, this only makes me more,

00:59:25.660 you know how I, we were talking originally about how, um, you know,

00:59:29.840 the differences between how Republican young Republicans were

00:59:33.520 forced to operate on campus and how young Democrats were, well,

00:59:38.600 they didn't call themselves, they didn't call themselves young

00:59:40.600 Democrats, but they were being groomed for those positions.

00:59:42.540 Anyway, you could tell, uh, the, when, when people want something

00:59:48.880 in blue areas and they are college professors and they are, uh, kind

00:59:56.520 of in the managerial class, they don't have to do that. They, they

01:00:01.240 just, they, they create kind of this consensus, uh, among themselves.

01:00:06.060 And then the consensus, I, I, it's almost magic. I mean, Yarvin, when

01:00:10.740 we were both Yarvin fans, but Yarvin has described how this happens

01:00:13.620 multiple times, this consensus that forms in these institutions like

01:00:18.340 the university, this kind of is absorbed into the ether of the managerial

01:00:24.820 elite. And then the institutions just kind of do what they want as, as a

01:00:29.780 matter of doing business. They don't have to, when, when people wanted gay

01:00:34.720 marriage, I mean, there were, and like there were gay pride parades, but

01:00:38.660 those were, I mean, the gay pride parades were basically just parties that

01:00:41.900 the elite threw for themselves after they decided that this was the way

01:00:45.420 they wanted to do things. When you talk about how they actually mainstreamed

01:00:49.280 homosexuality, this was an opinion that came down from these elite avenues

01:00:55.300 and it just kind of flowed into the culture generally, and it flowed through

01:01:00.660 their institutions and it, it had much more to do with, with, I mean, Judith

01:01:05.560 Butler was real, a little bit more of a response to this trend in intellectual

01:01:10.080 thought than, you know, a progenitor of it, but it's still, she's a symbolic of

01:01:14.820 how these ideas came to be. And, uh, Judith Butler doesn't need a chimp. Uh, Judith

01:01:19.840 Butler does not need to create an occupation of, uh, the, the administration

01:01:26.820 building in Berkeley to get her way. It, she just has an idea. And then the, the

01:01:32.760 people who, you know, the, the regions of the university of California just decide

01:01:37.080 that this is just the way things should be. Uh, it's that kind of, uh, effortless

01:01:45.060 exertion of power. That is the marker of an elite class that young people want to be

01:01:52.060 part of, uh, no one reached Judith Butler, but everyone knows that she has

01:01:56.100 power. It's very obvious. Right.

01:02:00.120 But here's the key, Dave, and I'm with you with all of that. Like all of that makes

01:02:03.080 perfect sense. I agree with all of that. Right. But here's the key. Right. So we,

01:02:07.300 we both read Yarvin, right. The, the, the, the, the purpose was to create an anti

01:02:11.540 cathedral, right. Anti-university. Right. So what does that look like? What, what does

01:02:16.660 the, what does the true, what, what does an insurgent elite do to unseat the current

01:02:22.920 epistemological structure? Right. So what, so right now we don't have access to those

01:02:28.280 positions and we're never getting access to those positions. Like you're smart. You

01:02:33.260 should be teaching a thousand people every year, something really important. And

01:02:37.920 you're just never going to hold one of those positions. Right. And it's never coming.

01:02:41.020 Not that I haven't tried.

01:02:42.360 Exactly. Right. It's not that you haven't tried. It's not that you're not qualified. It's

01:02:45.440 not that you're not smarter than 75% of the liberals holding those positions, but you

01:02:49.680 are never holding those positions until we put tanks in Harvard yard. Right. So

01:02:53.860 until we have tanks in Harvard yard, how do we create the anti cathedral? How do we

01:02:58.960 create the anti-university? Now we can create these Hillsdales and, and, and these

01:03:04.380 other things. And those are good. I support those. I'm not against them. But what I'm

01:03:07.960 trying to say is you grew up in a scenario where you, your parents are professors. You

01:03:14.080 wanted to be a professor. You were well-entrenched in academia. And for you, the occupation of

01:03:19.580 those buildings, the holding of those particular castles is power. Right. And, and to a large

01:03:25.900 extent, that's correct. However, what I'm trying to say is if we want to reimagine in

01:03:30.860 the current, if we truly want a paradigm ship, if we are creating Machiavelli's new modes

01:03:35.600 and orders, we have to be willing to step out of that paradigm and say, what does it look

01:03:39.760 like to create something very different, but just as effective? And so what I'm trying

01:03:44.380 to tell you is that we have the Avenue, we have the anti cathedral, we can drive elite

01:03:51.100 opinion in a different way. Is it as effortless and classy as we want it to be at the moment?

01:03:57.380 No. Is the goal to get it there? Yes. But is it working? Is, is it ultimately, is, is there

01:04:03.900 a certain level of once public opinion cascades through Twitter? It lands in the, in, in the

01:04:10.860 inboxes and in the cell phone feeds, the timelines of all the most important people making those

01:04:17.120 decisions. And they actually alter the decisions they're making and the personnel that they hire

01:04:21.680 and the, the, the, the things that they implement based on that. And I think the answer to some

01:04:26.560 extent is, yeah, is it total? No. Is it where we want to be? Absolutely not. Is the, is the

01:04:30.960 mission done? No. However, it's lacking certain key qualities. That's the thing.

01:04:35.400 Of course, of course, again, not perfect, but, but what does it look to really make this

01:04:40.600 right? Like that's something to consider in this moment. Does it need to look exactly like

01:04:45.620 tweed patches in Harvard on your jacket or like, does it, does it look a little different? And that's

01:04:51.280 okay. Right. Is there a way to manufacture this that, that is different and gets us to a place we

01:04:56.080 want to go that doesn't look exactly the same way that Judith Butler currently wields

01:05:00.800 that? Well, this is so fascinating, Aaron. I could talk for hours over just that one thing

01:05:06.820 you threw out there because you are right that you, in this moment, in the last three years,

01:05:12.480 we have something that looks like a very, very vague shadow of an alternative cathedral. A it's,

01:05:20.780 it runs on chimp energy, which means that almost all of the ideas that it puts forward are all

01:05:26.600 negations of ideas. They are not positive visions. They're all, I don't like this.

01:05:32.620 Because that's what chimp energy communicates. I don't like this. Chimp, chimp, chimp. I'm angry.

01:05:37.620 That's not how ideas get, get done or processed. And I have to say, I'm going to be more radical

01:05:46.300 than you. You know, we don't need tanks in Harvard yard. We need to have Harvard. We need to let the

01:05:52.660 universities burn. And I don't mean like that. I mean, you know, these to be fair, you and Charlie

01:05:57.780 Kirk agree on this. So yeah, you're just, you're just channeling Charlie Kirk. Yeah, I will. Well,

01:06:02.560 exactly. I, you know, and Horace Luper call, but the, the little nerd reference there, the, the thing

01:06:10.560 is that we could say that we physically, I'm not really, what I want to say is that the Peter Hitchens

01:06:17.760 once said that I do believe in conspiracies and conspiracies are called let's have lunch.

01:06:25.080 You're right. We don't need like tweed jackets and the old way of doing universities, but we do need

01:06:31.200 to have groups of people who are kind of upstanding people that are invested in the future of people,

01:06:39.060 invested in the actual future of institutions, sit down and hash out what sort of the reasonable

01:06:45.340 vision of the future is going to be. And that's kind of the missing piece is that there, there still

01:06:54.240 aren't any kind of like conservative adults in the room. And I hate to say that because at this point,

01:07:00.040 there are basically no adults in America. I mean, there are, but they're all kind of people who work

01:07:05.060 day jobs and then go home and manage very, very small things. There, there are no kind of responsible

01:07:11.580 people, the way you saw responsible adults in something like the Kennedy administration or the

01:07:17.860 way you start responsible adults and the elites of the 1950s, you know, the, the silent generation,

01:07:23.260 the greatest generation, those people, those are all gone. But, but that is the thing that we're

01:07:27.740 trying to have reemerge. And it's my instinct that, uh, that as, as corrupt and as backwards as blue

01:07:39.640 America is, there is some component of their cultural apparatus that you need to build a new

01:07:47.460 type of mature culture that actually can fulfill this role. And the, the only way that the thing

01:07:55.740 that's kind of missing is that you need to make their, you basically need to clear the left out of

01:08:01.140 adults. The left needs to be, uh, a bunch of crying children and a bunch of people that are complete

01:08:06.680 slaves to crying children or, you know, the, the left needs to be ruled by its chimp energy and not

01:08:12.920 using it. And conversely, the right needs to be composed of people who are willing to essentially

01:08:20.280 lead the chimp energy in a productive way and have those conversations and come to those

01:08:26.320 consensuses in a productive way. And the way I see this playing out is to essentially

01:08:32.560 shatter the center left. The center left is the, the weakest part of the cathedral's link. And it

01:08:42.700 needs to be clear in no uncertain terms that you're either an apostate from progressivism in a meaningful

01:08:50.340 way, maybe looking towards a moderate version of right-wing ideas that you see in, you know, people

01:08:57.940 who are kind of following the pattern of Charlie Kirk upstanding individuals, or you're just a slave

01:09:03.000 to people like Hassan Piker or Ta-Nehisi Coates, which are in turn slaves to, you know, really, really

01:09:09.960 base urges among their own, among their own audience. And, uh, in that political dynamic, I think that

01:09:17.700 there's a possibility that what we're saying in the beginning of the Trump administration can evolve

01:09:24.760 into this kind of mature collective way of managing ideas and discussing ideas. I have no idea how you'd

01:09:35.320 manage that institutionally because we're not going to take over the universities. And in some sense,

01:09:40.720 the universities themselves are a little obsolete, but you still need to have people sitting down and

01:09:45.840 saying, let's have lunch and hash this out. Uh, if that process doesn't happen, then all you have is

01:09:52.140 people yelling at each other on the internet. And that will just be, I'm afraid you're going to

01:09:57.340 become like Hassan Piker and we're going to become slaves to the basest elements of our own audience.

01:10:03.100 And I genuinely fear about that scenario.

01:10:05.580 So I want to bring hope to you. I want to bring a message of hope, Dave, because here's the thing.

01:10:12.380 I think that those conspiratorial lunches are taking place. In fact, I know that they're taking place.

01:10:18.140 I also know that they're being informed by guys like you more than you realize. And so what I'm

01:10:26.540 trying to say here is that, um, obviously we do this in public, right? It's so the, the, some of the

01:10:33.540 more serious policy discussions are happening in private. Uh, but I think in a lot of ways, um,

01:10:40.100 obviously there's always, you know, there's a lot of podcast space. There's a lot of internet space and

01:10:44.320 some of it is more spurious and some of this is completely ridiculous. And some of his rage bait,

01:10:48.640 some of it is, is, is more, you know, productive, but I think in a lot of ways, um, you know,

01:10:55.120 I guess, and, and please, you know, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here. I'm not trying to

01:11:01.480 elevate my own, my own importance or anything, but how many universities had a debate on the level

01:11:07.440 of Nick land and Alexander Dugan in years? Yeah. I mean, that's exactly, I don't, I'd only watched

01:11:14.880 half of that debate, but, uh, yeah, but this, because the thing is going on my own time, but I

01:11:20.480 remember saying that and saying, if the universities were actually doing their job, the, this debate

01:11:28.240 would have happened in Harvard and Yale and not, and it would have happened in 2021. It wouldn't have

01:11:35.420 taken five years for them to put it together. Right. But the universities aren't doing their

01:11:39.680 job. And the only relevance they have is to host debates. Like sometimes they'll invite Yarvin on,

01:11:45.380 which is itself kind of bizarre, but, uh, you know, these, these places are all, uh, you know,

01:11:52.780 but, but that, that is only to say that we are just so far behind where we need to be. I,

01:11:59.360 Oh, I'm not saying we're not going in the right direction. We are going in the right direction.

01:12:03.120 It's just that, you know, there just needs to be like a hundred Charlie Kirks at this

01:12:08.820 stage, right? There needs to be a thousand Charlie Kirks. Uh, and you know, it's, it's

01:12:14.800 going to, and you're saying, Oh, well, it'll take us 20 years to produce a thousand Charlie

01:12:18.440 Kirks. Then it's going to take us a lot longer for America to dig us out of this hole that

01:12:22.600 we're in. I guess the only thing it's going to take us a little while to produce more

01:12:27.580 Charlie Kirks, but that that's the nature of, of, of building virtue. You can't rush it.

01:12:31.820 There's no, there's no, there's no virtue escalation pipeline. Uh, but ultimately people

01:12:37.200 are going to want to live Charlie Kirk lives and not Hassan Piker lives. And that will just

01:12:41.200 bear itself out over time to an extent. Uh, but, but what I want to say is I don't think

01:12:46.920 we're behind on this. I think we're leading on this. Like I, I genuinely believe when I talk,

01:12:52.860 I talk to a lot of conservative academics at this point, all 20 of them, like all, all, all

01:13:00.280 20, like right-wing, uh, you know, uh, political science professors and every one of them is like,

01:13:05.300 yeah, all the interesting work is being done outside of the university. Like nothing like you

01:13:10.160 guys online are doing way more interesting work than anything that's being done in any doctoral

01:13:15.620 program anywhere. Like when we want to look at new ideas, when we want to figure out what's going on,

01:13:20.200 we don't read any of our colleagues. We don't, we don't look at the research that our friends

01:13:24.500 are doing. We don't know. We go to random schizo podcasts on the internet.

01:13:29.520 Can I give an example of this? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you're mutual friends

01:13:34.140 with this person, but the blogger known as Aiden Paladin. Yeah. Yeah. She did this fascinating

01:13:40.000 anthropological study that used excess male births and correlated it with kind of like

01:13:46.760 stress among parents. And she used that as a proxy to trace civilizational health.

01:13:54.260 That is brilliant. That is like, there are three PhD, anthropology PhD theses in that. And

01:14:02.040 because that allowed her to do broad longitudinal analysis of civilizational health using a feature

01:14:09.440 that we can broadly measure historically, which is what we almost never have. And that was so original

01:14:15.520 and so brilliant. And of course, like it goes up as a YouTube video and like a thousand people or

01:14:19.680 2000 people watch it. It's just, it's such, it should be fair is way more than anyone reads a

01:14:24.480 university paper. Well, right. Yeah, of course, of course. But there should be, I mean, there should

01:14:28.860 be multiple different books about this kind of thought pattern. And I think, you know,

01:14:36.920 it still could use a lot of refinement. Don't get me wrong, but, but this kind of thinking about

01:14:43.180 the problem is something you just won't see in universities today. Yeah. And that's why I'm

01:14:47.740 saying, I think the anti-university is here. I think we're building, I think we're in the middle

01:14:52.600 of it and it doesn't look, I know it, I know it doesn't, it doesn't look like the blue state.

01:14:58.620 We're sitting on the quad and, and playing some hippie guitar while discussing that. No,

01:15:04.140 I know it looks different, but I think, I think you got to break out of that. And again,

01:15:09.520 it doesn't mean that this is where we stop, right? I'm not, I'm, I'm with you. Ultimately,

01:15:13.260 these need to become institutions. These need to become a ways to train young people. We need to

01:15:18.860 make giant investments. We need to encourage donors to, to, to, to subsidize this kind of stuff. Like

01:15:25.380 I'm with you with all that stuff. I mean, you know, we, we agree totally. We're all, we're both

01:15:29.500 adherents of elite here theory. There's lots of overlap here. I'm just saying, if you update your

01:15:35.340 mental model and allow there to be a little more space for new modes and orders, I think you might

01:15:42.020 find that you're not as far behind as you want, or you think you might be, and you, you might actually

01:15:48.380 be already a part of the counter elite you're wanting to cultivate. If you will just shift, I,

01:15:54.980 you know, we, we've talked about, we've talked about the conservative movement needing to shift from

01:15:59.360 a loser's mentality to winner's mentality. And frankly, I think it's time for the distant,

01:16:04.960 right? The online, right? Whatever you want to call it to do the same. You're not out of power

01:16:09.460 anymore. You're in power. You have influence. You can build institutions sitting around and going,

01:16:16.080 Oh no, like why isn't the administration making exactly the thing I want today? Like that's done.

01:16:22.220 Like we are here now. And so it's time, it's time to recognize that it doesn't mean become overly

01:16:28.000 self-important or, or, or inflate your, your ego or your power beyond what you have. I'm just saying,

01:16:34.600 I think we're in a place now where we can exert that power. We can exert that influence. We can

01:16:41.200 build these things and pretending like we can't, or we don't have it, or it's out of reach, or the,

01:16:47.220 those are no longer helpful things. We're not a bunch of guys hiding behind pseudonyms,

01:16:52.180 typing stuff out, desperately hoping that someone will read it anymore. That's just not where we are.

01:16:57.480 So I think it's time to shift that mentality. I will, you know, that's a great note to

01:17:02.240 endorse on, but because I'm a pessimist, I have to like, I 100% agree with everything you just said,

01:17:07.540 but you know, there, there's one great tragedy in all of this. And that is when the left was ascending,

01:17:13.780 our civilization was ascending, the population was exploding. There were just tons of young people

01:17:19.420 and tons, tons of youthful, youthful energy. Now, when the distant sphere is ascending,

01:17:25.860 our population is old. It's a much older population. And what happens, and this is what

01:17:32.860 I've experienced, and I kind of lament this in, in my own life, is that you see very slowly the old

01:17:39.800 progressive order lose the ability to pull things off, like great books clubs and classical music,

01:17:45.320 music and, and various, even the hipster stuff they used to do, they can't pull off anymore.

01:17:50.140 And you see these things that you used to love and they fall by the wayside.

01:17:54.560 You know, we're not going to be able to pick everything up. We just won't have the energy

01:17:58.540 for that, right? So it's going to be, I think that the future of interesting things and beautiful

01:18:03.920 things, the seeds of that being organized and given a political voice will be found on what we

01:18:09.920 currently call the right wing, what will in the future just be called common sense, you know,

01:18:16.820 and, and this is the future of that. But in, in some ways, it's kind of, it's kind of a life raft,

01:18:25.380 right? We're, we're Robinson Crusoe grabbing things off the boat while it goes down. And, you know,

01:18:32.440 the, the, the dinghy can only hold so many things because, you know, of just the finite nature of

01:18:40.080 our own movement and the historic moment that we live in. Yeah. And, and ultimately, you know,

01:18:46.520 the only way out is through. So, you know, that, that, that's, that's a reality that we can't change,

01:18:52.720 you know, no matter how clever or tactical or disciplined we are. And so we have to make a do,

01:18:59.220 you know, with kind of the tools that are available to us as, as I think any movement

01:19:03.400 ultimately does. And so I just, I'm just saying that while I'm with you, the, the wider context

01:19:08.440 of this is important. I don't disagree. I just do think that it's wise to keep those tools available

01:19:15.780 to us, to recognize that there are wins to be had there, to build on them and to not, not I guess,

01:19:22.580 black pill on the fact that we're not going to do everything exactly the way the left did it,

01:19:26.900 or exactly reclaim the glory of all the things we thought are, were glorious. There's no future

01:19:32.240 in past glories. The, the, the future is in, is in building the new thing and having the vision

01:19:37.640 for the new thing. And of course, being, you know, conservatives being right wing, we want to carry

01:19:43.100 that tradition forward, but we also want to revivify it. We want to bring it into the world we occupy now,

01:19:49.900 rather than lamenting that it's not going to take exactly the form that we had previously. So I,

01:19:54.960 that, that, that's all I'm saying. I largely agree of course, with what you're saying there,

01:19:58.440 but I just, I just think it's, it's good to shift our mentality into a winning mentality at this point.

01:20:03.600 We are in positions of power. There are people listening to us. We can do things. It's not all

01:20:09.660 just, you know, crying on the internet into the void. Sorry, but those are, that's just not where we

01:20:15.040 are anymore. People with power are listening to what you're saying and what you're doing. And it's time

01:20:19.640 to act like that. That's all I'm saying to, I think a wider, uh, DR, not just yourself, but,

01:20:24.980 but a wider dissonant, right. That in some time, in some ways still falls back on its, you know,

01:20:30.420 oh, well, ultimately I'm just a guy posting in the internet. Like, sorry, those days are behind you.

01:20:35.080 So I guess you got to act like you got responsibility and real impact.

01:20:38.560 And I'll say, I'll say this now, this is probably the, we're coming to the end,

01:20:41.640 but, uh, people are listening to us, but don't ever think that what you say are just the words

01:20:50.860 you put on the internet or the, the things you write. People are looking at the right wing

01:20:58.200 as an example. And the more that we can look and act, Charlie Kirk's legacy is more in his image

01:21:06.960 than in his books. And it's more in his advice he gave to young people than in his ownage or

01:21:14.240 pwnage of college students. Charlie Kirk's legacy is not a correct answer to, uh, to, to, to some kind

01:21:21.560 of furry, uh, you know, spirit animal. His, his, his victories are always looking that person in the

01:21:28.140 eye and saying, by the way, God loves you and you can live a better life. And there's a, there's a

01:21:33.740 truer way to do this. And, you know, we are here for it. Like, those are the victories, not the,

01:21:38.680 that that's what stands out. I think he said that even when he didn't say that. And I think that's

01:21:45.260 what the real power is. Uh, you know, I think that's what people have to keep in mind. If you're

01:21:50.260 not an influencer is that, uh, that says a lot. And, um, you know, I think people should keep that in

01:21:57.800 mind. Agreed. All right, guys, well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up. Once again,

01:22:03.120 this was a pre tape guys. So sorry, we cannot answer questions from, uh, the audience today,

01:22:09.440 but of course, always a pleasure to speak with Dave before we go. Is there anywhere you want

01:22:14.480 people to go? Anything you want them to check out anything you're working on? Uh, well, I,

01:22:19.600 I'm trying to start some projects, but they will all appear on my sub stack. If you're interested in

01:22:25.460 written essays, and then I have a YouTube channel that I mostly used to use for video essays, but it's

01:22:31.640 mostly a podcasting platform, uh, because of the algorithm, the sub stack is called letters from

01:22:37.440 fiddler screen. And the YouTube channel is called the distribute test. Excellent. All right, guys.

01:22:43.880 And of course, if it's your first time on this channel, you need to subscribe on YouTube, click

01:22:47.520 the bell notifications, all that stuff. So, you know, when we go live and if you want to get these

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01:22:55.320 platform. When you do leave that rating or review, it really helps with the algorithm magic.

01:22:59.560 Thank you everybody for watching. And as always, we'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - October 17, 2025

On the Question of Chimping ｜ Guest： Dave Greene ｜ 10⧸17⧸25

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