Performative Opposition to Wokeness | Guest: Patrick Casey | 2⧸6⧸23
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per Minute
190.36415
Summary
Everyone knows it s important to battle wokeness, but are they really fighting against it? What is the opposition to it? Patrick Casey, the host of Restoring Order, joins me to talk about it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
00:00:10.720
Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
00:00:25.260
Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
00:01:42.920
Everyone knows it's really important to battle wokeness.
00:01:45.840
Even Bill Maher and sometimes Barack Obama speak out against wokeness.
00:02:01.080
He's written for magazines like Chronicles and American Greatness.
00:02:10.060
It was really interesting because you suggested the stream topic.
00:02:14.400
And then as soon as you did, and I was like, well, that's a great idea.
00:02:18.420
There are all these examples that just started popping up.
00:02:29.580
So you said to me, let's talk about this opposition to wokeness.
00:02:33.380
Because like I said, we know everyone now is supposed to be opposed to this.
00:02:38.800
All mainstream conservative outlets, even so many centrist liberals, and even some guys
00:02:44.600
like Barack Obama have said, we need to calm down on this stuff.
00:02:48.820
We had Bill Maher this weekend, every conservative's favorite guy to cheer on right before he makes
00:02:55.300
He came out once again and did one of his little tirades about how you got to be careful with
00:02:59.840
the woke revolution because it'll come for you like it has for him.
00:03:05.760
So we have these performative oppositions to wokeness.
00:03:09.880
These stances were people who maybe went along with a lot of the woke revolution, were interested
00:03:15.860
in a lot of the things that might have been precursors to the woke revolution,
00:03:18.240
suddenly find themselves needing to step out and say, I oppose this.
00:03:23.580
We'll get into some of the people on the right who do this, because I think you made some
00:03:27.520
very good points about that as well when we talked beforehand.
00:03:30.460
But let's start with some of these people on the left.
00:03:32.480
Why are they feeling the need now to step out and oppose wokeness like this?
00:03:38.300
Well, it might depend on the person, but I think overall there's some commonality with people
00:03:47.020
Because you might have someone like Bill Maher, I'm sure he's kind of a comedian, I guess.
00:03:53.140
At the very least, he's someone who likes to poke fun at things.
00:03:56.440
And of course, you're not allowed to poke fun at the sacred cows of the left.
00:04:01.160
And I think you do have some people who are rich and famous and don't like to be told what
00:04:09.120
When it comes to people who are a little more like Barack Obama, you mentioned that he made
00:04:13.700
some comments a year or two ago on call out culture, calling out you can't be totally woke.
00:04:19.860
But I think you do have some political operatives who probably understand that the excesses of
00:04:27.080
wokeness are absolutely fueling the right and that it's providing some easy, low hanging fruit
00:04:34.160
for the Republican Party to critique when you have just the visceral hatred directed at entire
00:04:40.780
categories of people, Christians, men, white people, conservatives in general.
00:04:46.700
Now, coming from critical race theory, it's very easy for Republicans to run on it, to
00:04:52.220
campaign on it, for conservative media to point out that this is an issue, to get clicks
00:04:58.640
And I do think that you have some people who are absolutely opposed to everything that we
00:05:07.180
But at the same time, they recognize that wokeness is maybe not the correct way to reach
00:05:15.660
No, I think that's a good distinction because I think you do have like three distinct groups
00:05:21.580
First, you got the ones that you just talked about, which are these people who they're in
00:05:27.900
They have all the same biases, all the same hatreds.
00:05:31.300
They have very similar agendas, but they don't want to boil the frog too quickly.
00:05:38.560
We need to be more careful about the way in which we kind of dismantle these people.
00:05:43.540
And so it's really important to make sure that we don't push certain areas because it
00:05:50.740
It might make it too easy for the right to make certain arguments.
00:05:54.480
And so I think you're right that that's one very distinct group.
00:05:58.740
And then, of course, like you said, you got the Bill Maher group.
00:06:01.160
And these are mainly like comedians or rich people who just, you know, they thought that
00:06:06.180
the whole point was to just have this free speech and be able to take shots whatever they want.
00:06:10.560
Now, they're still mostly going to take shots at the safest targets possible.
00:06:14.720
Bill Maher is going to spend way more time making fun of the right and Christians and
00:06:18.420
religion in general than he is people on the left.
00:06:23.560
He doesn't want to have people come behind him and tell him what to do.
00:06:26.540
And I think there's also the third, which is kind of that intellectual dark web, you know,
00:06:32.040
community, which still, I think, center left, if you're fair at all.
00:06:35.520
And there, of course, they want to have free inquiry.
00:06:39.220
They want to be able to look at the subjects they want to at universities or something with
00:06:44.040
still many very specific caveats, but a wider range than the woke would be willing to look at.
00:06:50.600
And so they also see this as kind of a threat to their center left.
00:06:54.760
They wanted to get off the revolution a couple decades ago.
00:06:58.040
And so they're they're really they have a lot of consternation about the people they
00:07:02.340
encourage most of the way through suddenly telling them that to what to do.
00:07:06.880
So I do think you're right that those are those are some of the key groups when it comes to
00:07:11.100
wokeness and the people who are kind of slightly opposing it from the left for different reasons.
00:07:17.480
And, you know, one thing that unites them other than ostensibly being against wokeness and
00:07:22.860
cancel culture is that they're not really right wing.
00:07:27.900
I don't think that, you know, political alliances oftentimes are defined by
00:07:32.240
coalitions of people who are uniting against something that they all oppose.
00:07:36.000
And I'm not saying everyone needs to fit, you know, X, Y and Z ideological purity tests
00:07:41.060
in order to be considered right wing or on our side.
00:07:44.100
But these people, ultimately, you can tell it's many of them are unhappy existing in a political
00:07:49.700
coalition that includes paleocons, neoreactionaries and whatever.
00:07:53.800
Um, I don't know if we want to name names on the show, but, uh, I know that some of them
00:07:58.040
in the, in the intellectual dark web have, you know, attacked you and Christian nationalism.
00:08:02.020
These are, it's almost like they think it's the same.
00:08:04.460
They're drawing a horseshoe theory, like Christian nationalism, which means a million different
00:08:09.520
Some of these people in the intellectual dark web view wokeness and Christian nationalism as
00:08:14.740
equally threatening to this, uh, ideologically neutral, you know, form of classical liberalism or
00:08:21.780
something that, you know, you have pointed out in your videos never existed to begin with.
00:08:25.700
So, uh, it's just kind of, you know, it doesn't mean these people are enemies necessarily, but
00:08:29.280
it's, uh, if, if people get one takeaway from the show, it's that someone saying they're against
00:08:34.240
anti-wokeness, uh, is really not enough to mean that they're, they have the same ends in mind that
00:08:41.220
So very often these people specifically take their tact because they say, well, I might be
00:08:46.700
against the left now because they're in power, but the right is way more dangerous, right?
00:08:50.660
This is very, a very common refrain from these people.
00:08:53.320
So they do, uh, they are currently focusing their energy on, you know, the, the radical left
00:09:01.820
It's very difficult for anyone to pretend, uh, that that's not the case.
00:09:05.720
They have almost complete control of every institution in the United States.
00:09:08.980
So it would be really comical to focus almost entirely on the right.
00:09:12.660
But the very minute that anyone on the right happens to step outside of their like super
00:09:18.080
neutral version of classical liberalism, all of a sudden you see the, the knives come out
00:09:23.140
and they, they're very clear that while they will mainly spend their time focusing on the
00:09:27.920
left, it's really important to immediately knife anyone to their right.
00:09:30.960
The minute that they step out of line, because their real fear at the end is not woke, just
00:09:35.380
they're not really worried about this, what they're really worried about is that someone
00:09:39.360
might, you know, have some kind of, uh, position that isn't derived directly from, I don't
00:09:48.280
I mean, the minute you, you whip out Hegel, uh, you're, that's when the knives come out.
00:09:52.500
That's when you've revealed yourself to be a great threat to, uh, yeah, you've revealed
00:09:59.440
That's kind of one of these meme, um, you know, uh, terms that gets thrown around a lot
00:10:05.980
And I think it's part of, part of that is oftentimes in politics, yes, your alliances are defined
00:10:11.560
by what you're up against, but sometimes the, the greatest political, uh, uh, battles are
00:10:18.280
oftentimes with people with whom you're very close.
00:10:21.040
And I think oftentimes that's lamentable, um, you know, it depends, it really depends on
00:10:25.680
the context, but you know, the thing with a lot of the intellectual dark web types is they
00:10:30.400
understand they are opposed to paleocon dissident rights stuff just because they do ideologically
00:10:37.420
But the other thing is they understand that there is just really a lot of grassroots opposition
00:10:42.280
to evils like critical race theory and the LGBT madness playing out in schools all across
00:10:48.460
Um, and they understand that, you know, the more conservative iterations of opposition
00:10:53.900
to that are, are, um, you know, are opposed to kind of, it's a competition basically.
00:11:02.320
It's that there's almost like a competition or a battle as to how to frame some of these
00:11:06.960
things, wokeness, how to oppose it and so forth.
00:11:09.600
So, you know, it doesn't mean that again, everyone who, you know, either you could disagree with
00:11:13.380
a tweet of theirs is, is, uh, the enemy or something of the sort.
00:11:16.320
But again, it is worth trying to keep people's motivations in mind and understand how some
00:11:23.720
You don't want to spend all your time running around and smashing people on the head who
00:11:27.260
are mostly pulling in your direction in a key battle, but you also want to understand
00:11:30.900
that those people are motivated to peel a particular direction and they will, the moment they have
00:11:36.840
If you look, um, at someone like Andrew Sullivan, you know, he's now been, uh, been classified as
00:11:43.280
some kind of conservative at this point, though.
00:11:46.280
I mean, I, I, I guess I do know exactly how that's possible, but, but, but, you know,
00:11:51.420
he just came out yesterday talking about like basically giving the conservative case for
00:11:56.220
trans kids, like giving the, you know, the, the, like, well, here's the moderate position
00:12:00.060
and people have to remember that this guy also labels himself as an opponent of wokeness,
00:12:05.680
So when you, ever, you put people like this in the coalition, that's fine, but remember
00:12:10.300
that if they then gain the ability to kind of dictate the framing, now they can create
00:12:16.000
a wedge where they're saying, well, if you want to continue to be part of the pop, the,
00:12:19.280
the coalition, you need to be on board with this aspect of what we're going to do next.
00:12:23.440
And this is exactly how we get the neoconservative cycle where conservatism, the right wing is
00:12:28.240
constantly pulled left over and over again by trying to appease people like this in the idea
00:12:32.960
that at some point they'll form a broader coalition, victory will come and that they
00:12:36.240
can kind of revert things back to the way they hoped it would be.
00:12:42.080
It's, it's striking a delicate balance between not, you know, declaring anyone with whom
00:12:46.260
there's some disagreement and enemy, but also recognizing that there, there is cause for
00:12:51.940
concern when it comes to these, you just have to be wary of, again, people's motivations,
00:12:59.140
And when, once they start drifting into, well, here's why we should, you know,
00:13:03.240
The conservative case for trans kids or whatever.
00:13:06.020
That's when you have to say, okay, well, this is part of me, not what we should be about.
00:13:10.380
And, you know, this is something that should be pushed back against.
00:13:16.920
So, yeah, I think it's a huge deal for people to just kind of understand that, especially
00:13:21.380
when people explicitly tell you guys like James Lindley explicitly said, like, I am more
00:13:26.740
worried about the right at the end of the day than I am with the, with the woke left.
00:13:29.780
And when they tell you that you should just believe them.
00:13:31.600
And that doesn't mean that they might not do some kind of valuable work and there's
00:13:34.700
not something on which you could agree or some area which you could push back, but just
00:13:41.000
Like they've been very explicit with their motivations.
00:13:43.340
Don't lie to yourself that eventually you're going to win these people over.
00:13:46.460
They're, they don't really like you at the end of the day.
00:13:48.380
They're just on your side because they have to be.
00:13:50.880
You're, you're, you're a ally of convenience, not one of conviction.
00:13:55.860
So, so we've talked about some of this performative opposition on kind of the left and the center
00:14:01.800
here, but I wanted to go ahead and get into the right as well, because again, the one thing
00:14:05.940
that every kind of bog standard con ink, you know, run of the mill establishment conservative
00:14:17.320
They couldn't, they couldn't understand the lines around it.
00:14:20.060
They couldn't really name for you more than one or two things in which it's connected to,
00:14:23.920
but they do know it's really important for them to oppose it, especially if they're, you
00:14:31.680
So you are putting out yesterday, a few people who are eyeing very clearly a presidential run
00:14:39.700
here soon, probably going to try to contest either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, whoever
00:14:44.840
ends up being the kind of the front runner in that, that competition.
00:14:49.420
But these people are very similar in that they all know they need to be, you know, kind
00:14:55.600
of opposed to wokeness, but they don't really know how best to approach it and what a meaningful
00:15:03.880
And, you know, we previously went into the three categories of performative opposition to
00:15:09.480
You had, of course, the kind of comedian celebrities who want to be able to tell fat jokes or something
00:15:22.940
So if that, if you haven't been convinced that just criticizing wokeness alone is, does
00:15:28.080
not make you some kind of edgy dissident, doesn't mean you really know anything or you have sound
00:15:33.520
Also, I want to give a shout out to Academic Agent who pointed me onto that in a speech
00:15:40.360
But I do think it's this category of conservatives, of Republicans, really, who are ostensibly
00:15:47.520
anti-woke, but are nevertheless not on our sides, our side singular, that is the most cause
00:15:54.420
Because these are people who are trying to get our vote.
00:16:03.200
But as of now, someone like Mike Pompeo, however, is trying to get your vote, at least
00:16:13.840
She tweeted out, CRT is anti-American, like, boom, wow, crazy.
00:16:19.460
And I think it's particularly insidious that some of these types are starting to voice opposition
00:16:30.120
They understand that critical race theory, opposition to it, is growing at the grassroots
00:16:34.480
level, that this is what the average Republican voter really cares about.
00:16:39.000
But just keep in mind, these people have no intention of delivering.
00:16:41.820
And to the extent that they would deliver, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't go far enough to
00:16:51.240
We can talk about the individuals in particular.
00:16:53.500
We can talk about what would actually need to be done to end wokeness, wherever you want
00:17:02.380
So let's start from the individuals, and then we'll go to the wider question of effective
00:17:08.480
So I know, for instance, Nikki Haley, her presidential run is the worst kept secret ever.
00:17:14.240
She quasi-announced her run like three or four different times, which I think is kind of amazing.
00:17:19.600
It's really fantastic how good consultants are at extracting payments out of people who
00:17:31.440
But nonetheless, there are plenty of people who will be willing to funnel money through
00:17:38.380
So I guess it's going to work out for them at the end of the day.
00:17:41.600
But Nikki Haley, like she said, she's got to go through the steps.
00:17:48.580
But when it comes to any kind of specific application of that idea, she falls down almost
00:17:56.640
Like she opposed the ban on transgender athletes and female sports in her own state.
00:18:04.000
Of the controversial plans, like making sure that like men dressed as women don't slam
00:18:14.400
That's a softball over the plate for anyone who's trying to oppose wokeness.
00:18:17.260
But this was a bridge too far for, you know, for the the Chamber of Commerce candidate Nikki
00:18:23.360
When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?
00:18:27.600
When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.
00:18:32.680
When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.
00:18:35.340
When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner.
00:18:39.080
Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.
00:18:41.700
So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes.
00:18:44.940
Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
00:18:57.300
And that's a very important thing to keep in mind is I was thinking in terms of, you know,
00:19:03.260
these people would maybe enact some policies like that, like banning men in women's sports.
00:19:08.700
And that would be, I mean, it's something I support.
00:19:11.320
But some of these steps designed to combat many things the left is doing, particularly
00:19:15.900
critical race theory and the LGBT madness are, you know, I support, you know, some degree
00:19:21.160
of incrementalism, I suppose, but you got to keep in mind that some of the people offering
00:19:25.420
this stuff might just view that as the end, right?
00:19:29.180
It's, oh, well, we banned men in women's sports.
00:19:34.400
But someone like Nikki Haley isn't even willing to go that far.
00:19:37.320
So you have different degrees of performative opposition to wokeness.
00:19:44.100
And yeah, Nikki Haley's like not even willing to go through, not even willing to support like
00:19:47.720
the bare minimum of, you know, maintaining some sense of sanity in this country.
00:19:51.940
So again, that should kind of tell you all you need to know about about Nikki Haley and,
00:19:56.620
you know, just how opposition to stated opposition to CRT and wokeness really isn't enough.
00:20:04.540
Because I know you were reading Mike Pompeo's work and, you know, God bless you for doing
00:20:10.320
You're really an impressive project there that you're taking on.
00:20:14.180
But Mike Pompeo is another one of these guys that seems to, you know, some kind of MAGA
00:20:20.740
energy maybe, but never really felt like he was behind anything, didn't really have roots
00:20:25.880
in the movement, didn't really understand the issues at play, was more riding a wave than
00:20:32.500
When this kind of person mouths the opposition to wokeness, what are they doing?
00:20:39.140
Sure, and I'm actually more concerned about a Mike Pompeo type figure or type opposition
00:20:46.060
to many of the things we're against than I am Nikki Haley, because I'm reading Mike Pompeo's
00:20:53.700
And believe me, I am by no means a Pompeo supporter.
00:20:56.640
But it's particularly insidious because I'm reading it and I'm like, it seems like reasonably
00:21:05.360
Now, this is the guy who I believe hired Mark Milley.
00:21:07.820
You know, there's so much to critique when it comes to Pompeo, who was CIA director and
00:21:15.260
So there was a lot of bad stuff that went on under Mike Pompeo's nose, many bad people
00:21:21.140
And, you know, yet in his book, he's saying things like, you know, I'm just a white guy.
00:21:25.080
Why would, you know, this bureaucracy want to hire me?
00:21:27.200
And I'm like, wow, OK, he's calling out the left's anti-white agenda or something of the
00:21:33.980
A few years ago, you wouldn't have heard anyone say that.
00:21:38.160
But what what Pompeo represents is is a there's would he even do anything?
00:21:44.960
And B, I would I would say this, even if he were to get elected president or something,
00:21:50.880
I could see him doing kind of some of this low level opposition to wokeness that fundamentally
00:21:57.120
It would be things that, you know, if were they steps in the right direction would be
00:22:04.320
So I know while he was at the secretary of state, he was taking issue with some of the
00:22:12.880
Now, again, did he actually do anything to stop it?
00:22:15.320
Well, however much power he had, it doesn't seem like he did.
00:22:18.240
But, you know, even if he cracked down somewhat on this at the end of the day, pre wokeness,
00:22:23.600
we still had racial favoritism, we still had affirmative action, we had still had a lot
00:22:28.220
of civil rights law that was that was doing bad things.
00:22:33.520
It's really this stuff coming to fruition in particularly obscene and egregious, invisible
00:22:40.760
So just kind of doing away with the surface level stuff would take us back to the Bush
00:22:45.940
Basically, you would still have mass immigration going on and particularly in foreign policy
00:22:50.840
And we all know that very often empires die because they expand and they spend so much
00:22:56.840
energy and money just doing who knows what on the other side of the planet.
00:23:01.720
And I think the statistic is of all of the empires which have existed throughout world
00:23:05.240
history, two thirds of them have ceased to exist by year 250.
00:23:09.260
America has, yeah, there's no indication that we're going to fare much better.
00:23:14.780
And so Pompeo also is opposed to wokeness because it gets in the way with this kind of new form
00:23:20.200
of neoconservatism where they're pursuing the same agenda, but they just at least say
00:23:27.120
And we all understand they're creating the preconditions where boots on the ground might
00:23:30.920
But, you know, World War Three or antagonizing Russia and whatever else.
00:23:34.500
So it's really that you got to forget that globalism isn't really inherently left wing.
00:23:39.620
I would say it largely is, but you still have the outer party, right?
00:23:42.560
You still have like right globalism and Pompeo absolutely represents that.
00:23:46.420
So even if you have that, but you take away like some of the crazy trans stuff and some
00:23:53.760
of the, you know, diversity, whatever, what you still have is very rotten and America will
00:23:58.700
still die even if you don't have the excesses of wokeness.
00:24:01.680
So again, oftentimes it's those who are at least appear to be the closest to you, right?
00:24:06.680
Or the wolves in sheep's clothing, and those are the ones you need to be the most aware
00:24:10.540
Yeah, I think it's really important to address that arc as well.
00:24:14.260
The opposition to wokeness on the grounds of it creates inefficiencies for the empire,
00:24:21.840
There's a huge understanding, I think, coming from a number of people who understand that
00:24:27.640
the changes to the military, the approaches for recruitment, the approaches for structuring
00:24:33.800
the military, the kind of training it's undergoing, the people it's purging out of it, it's setting
00:24:40.900
Now, right now, the United States, all it does is, like you said, it's just baiting people
00:24:49.280
We're not going to fight Russia, but we are going to ship tanks and the people who maintain
00:24:53.200
it and the people who, you know, advise about it to a war zone.
00:24:59.700
Now you have a situation where you actually need to put troops in the field.
00:25:04.340
And the question is, can a force of people who were selected for their political loyalty
00:25:11.000
rather than for their ability to conduct a violent action against the enemies of the
00:25:15.920
United States really stand up in that kind of situation?
00:25:20.040
I think a lot of people in the military are hoping that technology and, you know, just the
00:25:24.040
ability to outspend and use economic leverage and things will always put the United States
00:25:28.340
in kind of the winning position when it comes to these altercations.
00:25:31.680
But there's a real rubber meets the road situation.
00:25:34.600
And we've seen that, unfortunately, the United States, through many different reasons, has
00:25:38.720
been able, unable to convert things like Afghanistan into wins because they have chosen very, you
00:25:47.740
There's no been no real good of the United States behind these actions.
00:25:50.840
And so guys like Pompeo, who are have an investment in that foreign policy might say to themselves,
00:25:57.220
well, I do want to push back against wokeness, but solely for the fact that it's going to
00:26:01.900
keep American expansion or keep, you know, hegemony out of the hands of the people who I support.
00:26:09.000
And that's a real issue, you know, because wokeness is a big aspect of what's going on right now.
00:26:15.840
Like you pointed out, it is a symptom or a logical manifestation down the road, evolution
00:26:21.640
of different movements that have been coalescing in the United States.
00:26:27.500
And the imperial, you know, kind of forever war aspect of the regime is something that,
00:26:33.640
as you pointed out, many people on the right are, who are at least invested in permanent
00:26:38.160
Washington, still think is very important, even if they're willing to dial back the wokeness
00:26:43.900
a few decades to make sure that it's more efficient than what it's doing.
00:26:49.200
And I think if you to go to Machiavelli's, who's Machiavelli, the lion fox dichotomy,
00:26:55.760
where the lions are, there's a lot to be said of the differences between the two.
00:27:00.000
But just for now, anyone who's not unaware, the lions are kind of like a bolder statesman,
00:27:04.140
I think tend to be a little more conservative, opposed to change, whereas the,
00:27:08.160
foxes are, they're craftier and they're more prone to subterfuge and whatever else.
00:27:12.540
So much of, so much of Pompeo's gripes with the State Department bureaucracy and the bureaucracy,
00:27:17.820
federal bureaucracy in general, which he outlines in his book, are lion complaints about the
00:27:23.860
He's complaining that under Obama and, you know, this kind of permanent State Department
00:27:28.800
bureaucracy, that they're, they're too opposed to doing like bold, grand actions.
00:27:35.300
And it's, it's like, okay, well, your complaint about the State Department is they're like
00:27:40.220
not as willing to do like insane stuff on, you know, against all of these, you know,
00:27:45.580
they're not as willing to like take it to Russia, take it to Iran.
00:27:48.520
I don't have any real major sympathies to these, these other nations, but I'd like to like,
00:27:53.440
not, you don't want them to, you know, blow us up and invade us or whatever, of course,
00:27:56.900
but we, we really don't want to antagonism, antagonize them.
00:28:00.140
And that is what so much of globalist foreign policy has, has been about.
00:28:04.240
So, so much of what Mike Pompeo was taught, has talks about in his book with regard to
00:28:09.060
foreign policy is, you know, saying that America's back, we're back on the world stage.
00:28:14.400
He's saying that we're back from the Obama era.
00:28:17.340
Well, what was before the Obama era, the Bush era, that's like kind of what these people
00:28:22.320
And the Bush era, you still had mass immigration.
00:28:25.860
It was, it was, you know, in theory, more conservative, I guess, more performatively
00:28:29.920
conservative, but that, that, you know, so much bad stuff happened there for people who
00:28:36.580
So Mike Pompeo, yeah, there's, there's a lot to be concerned with here.
00:28:39.980
And, you know, the unfortunate thing is many voters out there would fall for that act of,
00:28:44.580
you know, today we're getting rid of like, you know, 2% of the diversity programs at the
00:28:50.360
Pentagon, you know, president Pompeo says this, everyone cheers for him, things like
00:28:55.740
And you just have to ask yourself when some of these changes to proposed changes are
00:29:01.060
actually actual policies that, that get rid of wokeness, some degree of wokeness, woke
00:29:05.140
policies, you have to ask yourself if these are fundamentally changing any things, whether
00:29:10.800
And I think if you want to look at like actual good stuff that's being done with regard to
00:29:15.340
wokeness, you could look to Christopher Ruffo and the things he's doing down at the college
00:29:20.540
and I believe Sarasota, Florida, and Ruffo's made it very clear that like, if you see him
00:29:24.940
doing one thing, it's like, this is part of like a bigger, uh, opposition to wokeness.
00:29:30.520
It's not, you know, someone who's running for president, who's saying that they're going
00:29:34.100
to do away with like some really just ground level woke policy and then, Hey, okay, I hope
00:29:39.420
you are, I hope, uh, I earned your vote kind of thing.
00:29:41.600
So, um, and I think Ruffo to his credit is, has also said that, you know, it's not just
00:29:51.640
We're not, we're not trying to get to like this value neutral thing.
00:29:53.780
No, we're getting rid of leftist policies and bureaucracy and we're placing, replacing
00:29:59.660
Now that doesn't mean that everyone's going to agree on everything.
00:30:02.440
I'm sure everyone watching this, we might all have a different, uh, visions of what,
00:30:07.120
you know, our ideal laws and conservative country would look like.
00:30:09.960
But as long as we can agree on those basics, uh, I think that's, I think that's very important.
00:30:14.500
Another thing I would add with regard to the things Ruffo's working on and DeSantis and
00:30:18.360
some of these other governors is, um, it's, you're, you're fundamentally doing away.
00:30:23.180
You're, you're doing material damage to the other side.
00:30:27.680
You're, it's not just that there's going to be less indoctrination.
00:30:30.400
It's you're getting rid of jobs and money for the other side.
00:30:33.980
And Trump, to his credit, uh, with his executive order that was short-lived because he didn't
00:30:40.500
He signed the executive order in 2020 and a number of colleges were like suspending diversity
00:30:45.300
festivals and like limiting curricula just to see how things played out.
00:30:49.200
So, um, it's, uh, it's very important to look at the actual ramifications.
00:30:52.660
If someone's doing something against wokeness, right?
00:30:55.440
Is it just like bare minimum and they're hoping that that's enough for you to vote for them?
00:30:59.460
Or is it part of a process of, of incrementally or even very quickly in the case of what's
00:31:04.960
happening at the college and Sarasota, is it, is it part of a comprehensive plan to just
00:31:09.560
like get rid of the woke infrastructure overall?
00:31:14.280
I hear so many people, I hear this all the time telling me, oh, well, you know, we don't
00:31:22.760
We should be focusing on whatever marginal tax cuts or economic incentive or whatever.
00:31:27.400
What they don't understand is while the cultural issues are enough in and of themselves, it
00:31:34.340
If someone is looking to mutilate a child, you know, under the, the auspices of gender
00:31:40.460
ideology, that should be enough to generate opposition.
00:31:43.600
But this stuff also has a very powerful effect.
00:31:46.620
Like you're talking about with the woke patronage, each step of this revolution has built into it
00:31:52.460
It has built into it payday, sinecures, infrastructure.
00:31:59.040
There are people who are cashing checks off of all of this stuff.
00:32:02.300
And the great thing about more than just saying the word saying, oh, it's anti-American or
00:32:09.600
But the thing about actually taking that action is not only does it build something for your
00:32:16.480
side, but it, it harms the essential infrastructure that the left requires in order to continue
00:32:26.520
Look, there are plenty of people who are true believers, of course, in wokeness.
00:32:30.740
In fact, most people who are plugged into the network are on some level true believers, but
00:32:35.660
you have to understand that people's, you know, beliefs are heavily influenced by their
00:32:41.320
If there was no one who is offering high prestige, high paying jobs to people who are just, you
00:32:48.900
know, vomiting out all kinds of woke garbage in books and giving seminars to corporations
00:32:54.880
and it being provided, you know, the, these lifetime appointments inside the university
00:33:00.640
system or high prestige roles inside the media.
00:33:03.580
If these things were to disappear tomorrow, a lot of people would look for the next thing
00:33:08.320
that provided them that power, that money, whatever.
00:33:13.480
You can whine about that, but that's just human nature.
00:33:15.880
And so you have to understand that a lot of these people are, they believe in the stuff
00:33:22.180
But at the end of the day, if things went in another direction, they'd be on board with
00:33:25.940
And so I think you're right to point out the stuff that Chris Ruffo is doing, because
00:33:30.120
like you said, people might not agree with every aspect, every, every ideological part
00:33:35.600
of some kind of alignment, but he is taking apart specifically institutions and organizations
00:33:45.380
And the thing that the right never does, that left does all the time is take scalps, right?
00:33:50.060
When the left comes after someone, they finish them.
00:33:54.060
They make sure that they can't have a job anymore.
00:33:57.940
The right is like, yeah, well, we really don't like that.
00:34:02.120
But Ruffo, Ruffo, Ruffo, I've seen that and I'm making the Peter Pan references.
00:34:06.780
But Ruffo is there, you know, and he's making sure that while he makes that these people no
00:34:12.220
longer have a pipeline of material funding for this stuff and prestige, he's also creating
00:34:18.980
and possibly installing a network of people who would be on his side, on our side.
00:34:24.700
And that's incredibly important because it gives a place for people to go.
00:34:32.320
And it also gets rid of that dangerous, neutral notion that you're talking about.
00:34:36.600
Many people, again, people like Andrew Sullivan and even Jordan Peterson have come after Chris
00:34:48.840
Why are people like Jordan Peterson coming after someone like Chris Ruffo?
00:34:53.440
Why don't they want to see someone like him succeed in establishing a counter narrative
00:35:02.120
I hadn't really considered that angle prior when I was doing some basic show prep.
00:35:08.140
I've seen, and I was even tweeting about Jordan Peterson with, what did he say?
00:35:12.280
Careful, you know, don't support the government censors or something.
00:35:16.300
And yeah, well, that's just the thing is at the end of the day, you can say you're in support
00:35:22.160
of something, you're against something, you can use it to grift donations and get clicks
00:35:30.440
But at the end of the day, when someone is actually taking substantive action against whatever
00:35:36.480
you claim to be against, that's when it really, you know, your true colors are revealed.
00:35:45.160
And at the end of the day, so many of these people actually aren't willing to do what must
00:35:52.020
Nothing that Ruffo is doing is like extreme or like fascism or anything of the sort.
00:35:56.720
Um, it's, it's basically fully lawful and just, that's the thing.
00:36:01.440
It's like, okay, you're using the laws to get rid of like bias against entire classes
00:36:07.480
And somehow that's, oh, is that government censorship, Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson,
00:36:12.200
who's been tweeting out about how, if you say like LOL and LMFAO, that you're, that you're
00:36:21.040
But, um, and again, uh, you'll, you'll see the true colors.
00:36:25.340
You'll, you'll see someone, what, what they're really about in how they respond to people who
00:36:30.600
are actually dismantling left-wing bureaucracies.
00:36:34.520
Uh, and, you know, we talked about this earlier.
00:36:36.080
It doesn't mean that there necessarily are enemies, but if you're not willing to support,
00:36:40.320
if someone isn't willing to support the only conceivable way that you can do away with
00:36:45.800
wokeness, which is doing away with the, the, the institutions and the mechanisms by which
00:36:52.060
wokeness is made law, by which people who are insufficiently woke are punished.
00:36:57.420
You're not willing to do away with all of that.
00:36:59.400
Then, you know, you're just, then it's performative, just like the title of the show.
00:37:02.960
So people should definitely be wary of all that.
00:37:08.980
And again, not, not to spend the whole time bagging on Peterson, but he, he, you know,
00:37:12.980
he's done this before when it comes to people like the Canadian truckers, right?
00:37:16.980
You know, Oh, we need to stand up against tyranny and you need to show your, your, your, uh,
00:37:23.840
Oh, here are some people putting themselves on the line saying no to the government.
00:37:32.820
Everyone gets a stern talking to and receives a book deal.
00:37:37.820
And so we routinely see people like this come after, you know, guys like Rufo.
00:37:42.660
And again, like I said, Rufo is really not providing any kind of extreme pushback.
00:37:47.080
He's simply stripping out the incentives to go the other direction.
00:37:50.820
And he's making sure that there's some kind of real, uh, there, there's something to fill
00:37:57.340
the void and nothing radical, nothing crazy, but just understanding that there needs to
00:38:01.160
be some kind of understanding of basic American pride, basic rationality, basic, you know,
00:38:07.720
just things that were common sense in the culture, uh, a few decades ago.
00:38:12.220
So they'd be okay if those things reasserted themselves in order to push back against what's
00:38:19.860
It's, it's, it's really might not, in my eyes, might not even be sufficient, but at
00:38:26.580
And I think that that's the real thing is that that's why all these people get worried,
00:38:32.420
They never expected opposition to wokeness to require anything of substance.
00:38:38.480
They always thought that it would simply be swatting away a few people who had crossed
00:38:43.040
the line, who had gone too far and take the revolution a little too fast.
00:38:47.560
They never thought it would actually mean that the pendulum could possibly swing the other
00:38:52.460
They've never seen the pendulum swing the other way in their whole life.
00:38:55.800
And so they can't imagine a scenario in which, look, as Rufo pointed out, he's not asking
00:39:01.320
for the government to, to even ban the vast majority of this stuff.
00:39:04.520
He's just saying the, the citizens should have the right to regulate the institutions
00:39:11.220
And that seems to be a bridge too far for so many of these people.
00:39:16.240
Again, nothing that he or most other people who are, who are taking steps, even including
00:39:21.000
Trump with his executive order, none of these people are actually advocating for anything
00:39:26.540
And yet that's how they're treated by many of these purported opponents of, of wokeness.
00:39:33.220
Another thing to keep in mind is with regard to how many of these people who claim to be
00:39:41.800
against wokeness, so many of them want to keep it within the realm of ideas, the battle
00:39:47.940
And I'm not against discussing the theory and the intellectual genealogy of some of these
00:39:54.060
ideas, but I think that we should be the people who are trying to make it all that.
00:39:58.640
That's, that's an important thing to keep in mind.
00:40:00.180
The Jordan Petersons, the, some of the intellectual dark web, that's really what a lot of these
00:40:04.260
types want to do is just have you thinking about like these obscure thinkers and oftentimes
00:40:11.260
Hegel invented wokeness or something that's like, okay, well, whatever, whatever like
00:40:15.400
little nugget of, of truth that you're trying to like blow up into this big theory is probably
00:40:20.940
But the thing to keep in mind is with that distract, what does that distract you from?
00:40:24.680
That distracts you from, again, like doing material, political, nonviolent, material damage
00:40:29.880
to the woke bureaucracy, which is what needs to be done.
00:40:33.580
That's the only, the only way that any of this is going to be stopped.
00:40:37.480
Conservatives just really need to get it through their heads that the battle of ideas is, it's
00:40:44.460
only useful insofar as you can win people over who are going to do other things such as take
00:40:49.940
political action to do stuff like Rufo's doing, some of the stuff Trump did in office, that's
00:40:57.220
Wokeness isn't just some idea that's out there that infects people's minds and, you know, you
00:41:07.260
And as a result, you have to stop it from emanating from the halls of power.
00:41:11.480
And that involves, you know, some type of people, you know, you could say peaceful regime
00:41:16.820
change, but at the very least, the peaceful restructuring of institutions.
00:41:22.960
It is in some states when I'd like to see a lot more of that.
00:41:26.460
Whether or not it can happen at the federal level is kind of up in the air.
00:41:29.580
I think we probably got a few election cycles to see whether or not there's any hope there.
00:41:32.880
I'm not quite as pessimistic, but, you know, there's a lot of debate in my, you know, political
00:41:37.100
circles as to whether or not there's any hope for kind of a national restoration.
00:41:40.920
And yeah, I understand the people who are a little more pessimistic on that, but I think
00:41:44.920
I think we'll see, regardless, plenty to be due, plenty to be done locally and nationally.
00:41:49.600
But yeah, you have to, there's an apparatus, right?
00:41:51.700
There are institutions that are mandating these things.
00:41:55.360
And, you know, just the battle of ideas doesn't, is only useful insofar as you get people, convince
00:42:02.580
So, yeah, I've said this, you know, before, but I always ask these, you know, principled,
00:42:09.480
classical liberal battle of ideas types, like what does winning look like to you?
00:42:14.760
Like, do you think that at some point you just slammed down kind of the final argument,
00:42:20.340
like, like some kind of atheist debate me bro from a decade ago?
00:42:25.440
And then all of a sudden those on the radical left are like, oh, you're right.
00:42:29.860
You've, you've tracked the exact genealogy of your idea ideas and they like shake your
00:42:33.580
hand and they like turn over the keys to the global American empire.
00:42:37.440
And, you know, you know, Kenny Loggins plays in the distance.
00:42:40.360
Like, it's just one of those things where it's like, what, what does this actually look
00:42:44.140
And none of them have an actual path to victory.
00:42:47.040
None of them actually understand what it takes.
00:42:49.680
And I, like you, am very encouraged at the fact that there are changes that take state,
00:42:54.840
A lot of people, you know, Trump, DeSantis, the showdown, you know, all this kind of thing.
00:42:58.800
I've said many times as a floor resident and a DeSantis fan, I think Ron DeSantis is best
00:43:04.400
served in the country is best served by him staying in Florida.
00:43:10.440
He's showing what leadership looks like at a local level.
00:43:14.880
I think that there's way more to be done by building these influences and these networks
00:43:19.860
inside states and showing what can be done in that arena rather than just throwing someone
00:43:25.700
into a grinder, which is exactly what a battle with Trump would be.
00:43:30.160
And then having their talents wasted, even if they possibly win once they're wounded and
00:43:38.080
I would take 10 Ron DeSantis governors over owning the House and the Senate with the weak
00:43:47.620
I just think that that would be way more powerful.
00:43:49.840
And so I'm one of these people who does not have a lot of faith in the ability of the national
00:43:58.180
But I do think that guys like Rufo working with guys like DeSantis are showing that change
00:44:07.100
There is the federal rot has not spread so entirely to some of these areas and they can
00:44:13.800
create a blueprint for people who do want to build actual change, show what real opposition
00:44:20.760
It's not cracking some jokes on your late night comedy show or, you know, talk about
00:44:26.000
how we got to get rid of this because we won't be able to invade Russia if we don't, you
00:44:33.060
It's getting into these institutions when all of your institutions have been captured by
00:44:38.380
Like you said, the only thing that the only option you have is to completely replace these
00:44:43.360
things with something that is better, that completely removes the ability of progressives
00:44:51.700
And I think that happens much more effectively with operatives like Rufo working at a more
00:45:00.280
And we've been given in the last really few months a few examples of regime change kind
00:45:06.360
of at the microcosmic level, right, at the smaller version, not at the national level,
00:45:14.580
There's some parallels to, you know, the government and so forth, how you can, you know, fire a
00:45:19.740
lot of the diversity, you know, hires and whatever else and actually get like a company that runs
00:45:25.020
And we're kind of seeing there are many lessons to be learned for people who are interested
00:45:31.600
The lessons is, you know, hostile takeover and seeing these things play out.
00:45:38.640
And one important thing to keep in mind is there's this kind of idea.
00:45:42.740
I think I think Theron Beattie tweeted this out.
00:45:44.880
He had a very good article on revolver.news talking about everything that Rufo did and
00:45:51.020
One important thing to keep in mind is there's often the idea of the long march through the
00:45:55.960
The idea that you're just going to get conservatives and, you know, we're all going to go get into
00:46:01.640
academia and we're going to slowly take it over.
00:46:05.640
And you can learn some things from studying how the left took over our country.
00:46:10.180
But it's important that we can't cargo cult the left.
00:46:12.860
We have to keep in mind that the the situation when the the doors were almost why basically
00:46:21.580
And you could argue that even, you know, there was a quiet top level elite revolution that had
00:46:27.900
But the important thing to keep in mind is that at Twitter with Elon Musk and also at
00:46:33.360
the college down in in Sarasota, Florida with with Chris Rufo, there's it was kind of like
00:46:40.320
I think Jarvan refers to that as like a decapitation strike.
00:46:42.700
It's not this wasn't, you know, Christopher Rufo like worked his way up.
00:46:46.520
He like got a low level job using a fake name or something.
00:46:54.380
All of a sudden, you know, out with the old in with the new.
00:46:57.840
And I think there's a lesson to be learned there.
00:47:01.280
We're talking about like peaceful political change.
00:47:03.500
And I think I think that's probably going to be the way that we see institute that that
00:47:08.580
probably is going to be the more winning strategy for the right.
00:47:12.940
We can't just quietly take over the long march through the institutions.
00:47:16.540
No, I mean, I support people, you know, getting getting experience in like local politics
00:47:21.000
I'm not saying like don't work within institutions at all.
00:47:24.400
But there is something to be said for the right and left being fundamentally different,
00:47:30.020
The left can just like eat away at things over time, whereas the right oftentimes just,
00:47:40.080
So I just think it's very interesting to study some of these.
00:47:44.100
I mean, that's the thing with it's harder for other people out there to just like buy
00:47:49.400
You need to have hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:47:52.220
So telling people, you know, just telling someone to go buy YouTube or something, well,
00:47:58.680
But I do think that, you know, Rufo's model down there with that college more easily replicable.
00:48:05.140
Now, that isn't to say it was easy, but, you know, I think that could be replicated in
00:48:12.460
I would like to see others, red states, you know, Texas, some of these others that have
00:48:17.420
like decent governors and many patriotic political activists to see what's going on in Florida
00:48:24.420
And if we can do that all over the country, then, right, that's not the national level
00:48:28.100
restoration, but state resistance to leftism, to globalism, regardless of the outcome at
00:48:35.280
the federal level going forward is going to be very important.
00:48:38.420
So I think there are many, many lessons to be learned here, and hopefully other people
00:48:45.120
Yeah, I think it's really important to point out the left, the metaphysical dynamic, the
00:48:49.420
difference there between left and right, because this is something that Yarvin talks about,
00:48:54.380
He talks about how, you know, entropy and extropy are not the same thing.
00:49:01.300
The left is able to win because it uses entryism to move into these institutions and slowly
00:49:08.280
erode their conservative nature over time, right?
00:49:15.360
Cthulhu swims slowly, but he always swims to the left.
00:49:18.580
This is kind of the nature of the left is that they disassemble, they break apart traditional
00:49:24.140
coalitions, and they reform and reinstitute hierarchies based on their ability to kind of offer
00:49:30.920
these things to people who otherwise might not be advantaged.
00:49:35.340
And so this is something that the left does very well.
00:49:44.100
It needs to take control of things in a more abrupt manner, as you were talking about.
00:49:48.520
And again, that can mean in a very simple thing like Rufo, you know, being, you know,
00:49:54.600
appointed in some level of influence inside this educational institution, right?
00:50:03.780
It doesn't happen by slowly wearing away the foundations of leftism.
00:50:08.960
You're not going to get a bunch of, you know, influential 20-something conservative academics
00:50:20.260
That's how change comes in the rightward direction.
00:50:25.120
Like you said, there's things we can learn from the left.
00:50:26.860
It's good to understand how things came to power, but obsessing about the way they did
00:50:32.460
things doesn't teach you how you can do things, how you can secure victories.
00:50:36.660
Understanding that, I think, is really essential.
00:50:39.280
Well, we are stacking up a decent amount of super chats here.
00:50:43.360
So I want to go ahead and get started on those here in a second.
00:50:46.480
But can you let people know where to find your stuff, Patrick?
00:50:50.940
Well, if you go to at RestoreOrderUSA on Twitter, you can follow me back on Twitter.
00:50:56.560
Thank you, Elon Musk, for giving me a second life.
00:51:04.140
I do interviews with all sorts of people, many people you would recognize from Mr. McIntyre's
00:51:14.860
All right, guys, let's go ahead and go to these super chats real quick.
00:51:18.900
Please remember, guys, if you would like to listen to the show as a podcast, do remember,
00:51:23.860
of course, that it is now available on all your major podcast platforms.
00:51:27.560
So go check out the Orin McIntyre show on Apple, Spotify, any of these guys.
00:51:31.260
And when you do, just leave that rating or the review.
00:51:39.860
Says, you ever notice how quick Norwecons are so quick to give praise to the left comedians?
00:51:54.280
You will very regularly see conservatives of very high stature run, you know, the cartwheel
00:52:02.760
They'll just sprint towards any kind of criticism of Bill Maher from the left.
00:52:07.600
You know, you can almost see all the articles being queued up from all of your conservative
00:52:14.020
Bill Maher out there firing back against the woke left again.
00:52:17.080
But then when the average person gets canceled, nothing.
00:52:20.380
Like there's no there's no support for those people.
00:52:25.020
It's all support for guys like Bill Maher and never anything for people.
00:52:30.340
Average people are getting their lives destroyed.
00:52:31.940
And I've talked about this phenomenon many times.
00:52:34.300
You know, the right cancels to the left reaches out to its left and cancels to its right.
00:52:39.820
And the right reaches out to its left and cancels to its right, which should tell you something
00:52:44.020
about our political dynamic in the United States.
00:52:46.620
The conservatives know it's safe to rush out and secure the support of someone like
00:52:51.860
Bill Maher because he's never really going to get canceled.
00:52:56.840
Yeah, he lost a TV show way back when, but he bounced right back.
00:53:00.200
Like there's never really going to be any kind of consequences for standing up for a guy
00:53:05.460
But standing up for someone who might be a little bit to your right, that's way more dangerous.
00:53:09.820
Because at any moment, you could be linked to this person.
00:53:13.840
All of a sudden, you're the one getting canceled.
00:53:15.600
So I think there's a lot of things at play in this dynamic.
00:53:19.180
But I think that the fact that our culture is very quick to always extend infinite chances
00:53:25.200
to left and immediately cancel people to the right is a big part of it.
00:53:37.760
Thank you very much, sir, for your donation there.
00:53:44.540
One of the hardest aspects of pushing back against wokeism is being branded authoritarian
00:53:49.480
by those who portray liberalism as a value neutral.
00:53:53.040
Even people on the right still don't know what time it is.
00:53:58.440
So often people assume that the imposition of left-wing values is the neutral position, right?
00:54:06.320
So if you are pushing back against the left-wing, you must be authoritarian.
00:54:11.800
Now, the left is, of course, canceling any and everyone it can.
00:54:14.360
It's destroying anyone who speaks out against them.
00:54:16.960
They're literally putting people like the FBI on people who protest, who are Christian,
00:54:22.640
or sending them after parents who don't want to see transgenderism pushed in their school.
00:54:26.900
So you, but this is not authoritarianism, right?
00:54:31.040
Authoritarianism only arises when the right wants to stop the excesses of the left, never
00:54:36.140
when the left is going after just average people on the right.
00:54:41.360
But feel free to jump in if you have anything to say, Patrick.
00:54:45.340
Well, I think in your work, you cover the, you know, shatter the illusion of value neutrality
00:54:51.520
It's really important to stress is that it just really never existed.
00:54:54.880
There's this just kind of like fake history where, you know, America prior to wokeness
00:55:05.380
Like, I remember them being repealed, like at some point in my lifetime.
00:55:09.860
Now, I'm not saying that like those, we need to bring those back right away.
00:55:12.900
Otherwise, the country is going to be destroyed.
00:55:14.560
But I mean, it's worth pointing out that, yeah, someone's values always will reign.
00:55:18.820
And the people who are trying to tell you that what they support is value neutral, like
00:55:25.240
That is a political act masquerading as, as one being neutral.
00:55:28.320
So oftentimes, once you peel away the invocations of neutrality, of humanity, of, of democracy,
00:55:34.920
whatever, there's like a very shrewd and cunning political agenda there.
00:55:39.880
So it's, yeah, conservatives who are kind of rubes who think, well, well, if we do anything
00:55:43.840
with the state, then the other side's going to do it to us.
00:55:47.200
So, um, yeah, there's, there's, if you just look at what made the West great to begin
00:55:52.020
with, it's, there's always been, you know, respect for traditional Western religion, right?
00:55:57.120
Christianity, patriarchy, things of this nature.
00:56:00.180
So, you know, we're not advocating for like extreme right-wing authoritarianism, just that,
00:56:05.360
you know, it should be illegal to, uh, you know, do child drag shows or whatever form
00:56:14.640
So yeah, just telling people, please stop feeding children.
00:56:24.440
And I like to explain to people that the nineties is a weird apex, right?
00:56:28.400
People who live through, you know, I'm a child, I was born in the eighties, but I'm a child
00:56:32.960
A lot of people want to get back to the nineties.
00:56:37.320
Everybody was, was making money and then you could do whatever you wanted.
00:56:41.220
But I try to explain to people that there, this was a cultural apex.
00:56:44.720
You had the, you know, the, the right was, or, or conservative tourism or whatever you
00:56:49.160
want to call it, traditional values, whatever they were in control for a very long time,
00:56:55.920
And then for just a very moment there in the nineties, it looked like the ball was just
00:57:05.180
And people who saw it in the air were like, oh, the ball just always hangs in the air.
00:57:09.480
And then it started falling down the other direction and the left became completely in
00:57:17.460
You just viewed a small window of time in which there was this cultural battle going on
00:57:22.660
where like one side didn't have total domination over the other.
00:57:26.160
And you viewed that as the natural state of culture throughout history, but it's not at
00:57:33.980
And it's certainly not how the culture of the United States has worked.
00:57:36.140
If you have any interest in the actual traditions, the actual values of the United States, the
00:57:41.260
actual return or just continuance of something that used to be uniquely American, you can't
00:57:48.420
pretend like the nineties is the reflection of kind of how that works.
00:57:52.100
You have to understand that not all assertions of traditional values are somehow authoritarian.
00:58:04.920
When your culture is so far to the left, any move to the right feel too fast.
00:58:11.120
That's why the left just screams, you know, they just absolutely lose their mind the minute
00:58:16.360
people provide even the most mild pushback, right?
00:58:22.100
You know, all credit to Trump is not a strike against him, but Trump is a blue dog Democrat,
00:58:26.460
He's, he's culturally liberal on a lot of things.
00:58:29.520
He has a, but he has a lot of good instincts when it comes to like protectionism and, and
00:58:33.840
opposing foreign wars or forever wars and these kinds of things.
00:58:37.520
And unfortunately at this point, that's about as far right as the country can go.
00:58:42.000
And then that, that, that is considered radically right wing at this point, being, being a blue
00:58:47.640
dog Democrat is as, as radical as people can be on the right wing at this point.
00:58:54.840
When you, when you've painted Trump as the return of the German painter, anything beyond
00:59:00.760
But of course, Trump is very mild and moderate in comparison to a Republican party of just
00:59:07.560
And so I think it's really difficult for people to see that shift because it, you know, it
00:59:14.140
But if you look back with any historical context, you can see that in fact, uh, you know, we're
00:59:19.520
not, there's nothing again, crazy or radical by saying, maybe you should just ban child directions.
00:59:24.600
Like that's, that's a perfectly reasonable thing that would have been very obvious just a
00:59:28.920
few decades ago would have been, uh, taken as for granted without any pushback.
00:59:33.160
Do you remember, there was an article at some point during Trump's first and hopefully not
00:59:39.120
only, uh, term where it was in a mainstream publication.
00:59:42.440
It was like a major journalist who it was like, I, I, man, it's very vague.
00:59:46.720
Uh, it was either an article or a tweet, but basically saying that like, it's an insult to
00:59:52.080
Hitler to tie Trump to, so it was like some high profile journalist made this, this claim
01:00:00.720
I don't, but I remember, I do remember that article because of, because they literally
01:00:06.780
And I mean, you did have people push back against that because even, you know, the average New
01:00:10.140
York times journalist, that's like not the standard line, but there are people out there
01:00:15.200
And that's just because to see like someone mildly right wing in, you know, doing things
01:00:20.540
against the left to them, it's like, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's more, you know,
01:00:28.040
And then, you know, it seemed like it was a sincere, uh, you know, expression of, of
01:00:38.080
You have to, you have to, again, there are plenty of people who are motivated by the material
01:00:46.640
incentives, but they really buy into this stuff.
01:00:49.040
They, they, they are true believers and they, they really do have this, uh, this view of
01:00:55.240
history where Trump is the apex of, of, of, you know, that, that, uh, no form of rightism
01:01:01.880
No form of like fascism or anything were ever defeated at the end of the day.
01:01:05.360
Uh, they, they were just continued and now brought even more powerfully forward by people
01:01:11.040
And so, yeah, they can enter, they can, uh, entertain ideas like that, uh, without any
01:01:20.680
And it looks like Noam Chomsky, I believe, uh, said that he believes that Trump is the
01:01:26.220
And I think, I think people did press him on that.
01:01:28.260
Like, well, Stalin, Hitler, and I'm pretty sure he, he stuck to his guns there, which is
01:01:32.420
just like, this is the guy who's argued against the free trade, neoliberal policies and foreign
01:01:38.900
And really the, you know, some guy comes along who's like mildly socially conservative and
01:01:43.780
Now all of a sudden it's very silly, but it shows you how insane the vanguard of the left
01:01:53.580
And the minute someone on the right makes exactly the same arguments, they'll just declare
01:01:58.100
because at the end of the day, it's friend enemy all the way down.
01:02:00.580
And I will say, I'll take a moment to give credit where credit's due.
01:02:03.700
You do guys have guys like Jimmy Dore and you do have guys like Glenn Greenwald.
01:02:08.040
And we'll disagree on almost everything, but they, they do have the courage of their
01:02:13.580
They really did buy into this as the idea of the left.
01:02:17.740
Now they're wrong that that's what the left was, but they, but they at least had the courage
01:02:21.560
to break with that and in many ways paid a cost for it.
01:02:24.500
So I, I, I do want to, you know, give those guys a credit because there are people who,
01:02:29.520
who did hold those dues, but it is hilarious that guys like Chomsky who are supposed to be,
01:02:33.700
you know, just this, this intellectual vanguard, this radical left that, you know, that fight
01:02:38.760
against the establishment and are always pushing the left to go further.
01:02:42.340
The minute someone on the right says something similar to what they've been saying their entire
01:02:46.640
Oh, that guy's actually, uh, Hitler because, you know, of course he is.
01:03:01.600
Bro Weinstein is probably the most sincere with Lindsay.
01:03:04.500
On the other hand, Harris is now off the spectrum.
01:03:09.420
There are, um, this was always a loose, loose coalition of thinkers.
01:03:14.360
There are people like Harris who dabbled their toe in and immediately lost their mind.
01:03:19.320
The minute Trump came around and they never really had that conviction very clearly from
01:03:23.500
the way that Harris has reacted saying, yeah, I believe in free speech in the marketplace
01:03:27.400
of ideas, but you have to ban Trump and it's okay to fabricate evidence to do so.
01:03:31.300
Two guys like Brett Weinstein, who, uh, you know, still would oppose many of maybe socially
01:03:38.960
conservative positions, but he does seem to have a general, he, you know, again, in his
01:03:44.620
defense did speak out a lot about the pandemic and related things that we can't talk about.
01:03:49.320
So much on YouTube, but, but he, he took big steps and big hits and suffered bans and
01:03:56.980
So it is fair to say that many of these people shouldn't be totally lumped in together because
01:04:08.800
I don't really have an interest in going after people who are generally pulling in the same
01:04:19.600
direction, but the thing that will always, and every time set me off, the thing that I will
01:04:26.780
always stand up against is people who attempt to cancel people who should be on their side
01:04:33.520
because they don't agree with them in every way.
01:04:36.140
So when I see people like Lindsay, when I see people like Peterson, when I see many other
01:04:41.200
people on Twitter, jump on and say, oh, well, yeah, we agree against wokeness.
01:04:46.980
We're a hundred percent against this stuff, but I see that you might be in a camp that I
01:04:51.160
And so I'm going to go out of my way to cancel you, destroy you, slander you, because I don't
01:04:58.500
want, I want to make sure you're not in the coalition when we win.
01:05:03.100
I have a problem with those people and I will always push back against those people because
01:05:07.040
if they were telling the truth, if they were really only here for the opposition of wokeness
01:05:12.680
or whatever this stuff is, then they would be fine with saying, okay, well, we got to get
01:05:22.060
They're oftentimes lying and smearing with the attempt to try to push people out of the
01:05:28.640
coalition so that they can reign supreme whenever they think they get themselves back to the
01:05:34.540
I haven't seen a lot of that from Brett Weinstein.
01:05:36.900
I haven't paid a lot of attention to him a long time, but for guys who don't have that propensity,
01:05:43.440
For people who do, that's when I have a problem.
01:05:46.020
Again, I benefited greatly from the work of Jordan Peterson.
01:05:52.900
That's why I'm so disappointed with what he's doing now.
01:05:56.020
I say these things from a position of appreciation for someone who I thought did really important
01:06:03.440
And I want to see them back on that track doing the work that matters, not sniping at
01:06:07.900
people trying to cancel them or push them out when they try to do something that's valuable.
01:06:13.680
That, that, that's always when I have a problem.
01:06:15.660
That's always when you, I don't go out of my way to pick e-drama.
01:06:18.380
The only time you'll see me talking about people like this is specifically when they try to
01:06:23.620
cancel or hurt other people who are supposed to be pulling that direction.
01:06:34.360
Well, as a nineties kid, I want to say thank you so much, sir.
01:06:37.420
Uh, I will remember all of my teenage mutant Ninja Turtles and double dragon NES cartridges.
01:06:42.860
Uh, but, uh, but I appreciate you calling my fond childhood memories, uh, uh, cringe.
01:06:47.640
I know one day all of that'll sound just as boomery as the Beatles do now.
01:06:51.780
So I'm, I'm really, I'm ready for that, uh, uh, for that to hurt, but all right, let's
01:07:01.900
So make sure you're checking out restoring order.
01:07:04.200
Make sure you're checking out, uh, Patrick stuff.
01:07:06.380
I want to thank him so much for coming on today.
01:07:10.220
And I also want to say that if you, again, uh, it's your first time here, make sure that
01:07:17.040
Uh, if you have not go ahead and jump on and subscribe to the podcast as well.
01:07:22.720
And if you do so, go ahead and leave that rating and that review.