In this episode, I talk to Jay Byrne about the importance of political patronage and why it's a fundamental part of the Democratic Party's system of power. Jay talks about how the system is designed to reward supporters and punish opponents.
00:01:43.080So a lot of people who have watched this are probably familiar, but it never hurts to go over the basics.
00:01:48.960Let's explain to people real quick what is the traditional meaning of patronage, and why is it so critical that the rights start to grasp this as a fundamental building block of political power?
00:02:00.600Yeah, so patronage is kind of one of the core ideas of political realism.
00:02:04.920Awesome. And to reframe Schmidt, it's the idea that the function of politics is to reward your friends and punish your enemies.
00:02:12.480And that's what patronage is, rewarding your friends.
00:02:15.280So it's kind of easiest to go back to the Roman world for this because this is still present, right?
00:02:20.200It's kind of a function of how humans organize themselves, but they're a lot less subtle than we are.
00:02:24.440And so the Romans, you know, if you wanted to vote, they'd say like, all right, well, if you vote for me, I'll give you a lot of money.
00:02:36.440And that still exists in our current system, obviously.
00:02:39.160You know, there are certain programs that are only available to kind of clients of the Democrat regime.
00:02:44.840You know, in some cases, they will just create jobs for their sinecures, even in the corporate world.
00:02:50.240I mean, that's effectively what HR is.
00:02:53.000And so what they do is they basically create a class of people who not only need rewards, like a positive thing, but depend on Democrats being in power for their employment.
00:03:06.240And so that creates a really strong bond between the people in power and their supporters.
00:03:12.180And, you know, like you've said before, a lot of conservatives kind of bristle at this idea.
00:03:28.480And if you don't understand it, you're not playing the game as it is.
00:03:32.480You're playing the game as you'd like it to be.
00:03:34.400And I think that's one of the reasons why conservatives have such a hard time winning the game that is politics.
00:03:42.240Yeah, and that's why political realism is so important.
00:03:45.040And I think that's why a lot of people listen to people like you and me and others in our sphere is we're describing the system as it actually works.
00:03:52.660Like I just spoke with the distributors about, you know, the system is what it does.
00:03:57.420We talk about what the system actually does as opposed to the ideal that we would like it to do.
00:04:02.960And the problem is that a lot of what has been passed on as conservative values or conservative principles are direct denials of the system.
00:04:13.140We all know that one of the reasons that communism failed is that it ignored realities about human nature, right?
00:04:20.760The incentives, the way that things line up when the state is just distributing things instead of giving people a profit motive and a reason to have their own interest in what they're producing.
00:05:19.140And if they're the one who is observing that fact and playing inside that reality and you're denying it, you're just going to lose.
00:05:27.000And so one of the things that we have done is really explain the necessity of the right to break down opposing patronage networks.
00:05:37.080Things like, say, the educational system, which, as you pointed out, provides millions of jobs.
00:05:42.960The educational system in many areas, in my area, for instance, is one of the two top employers in the entire area because of the amount of government subsidies that flow through it.
00:05:58.480That's an incredible amount of people who are completely dependent on the leftist apparatus and ideology and the Democrats staying in power for them to continue to get paid and continue to benefit in the way that they want.
00:06:22.440We can think of many examples where there is a direct payment of benefits.
00:06:26.640However, there are many that don't, and yet they still go ahead and support the regime very fervently.
00:06:32.900And so we want to have an understanding of why they do that.
00:06:36.960And you came up with this terminology, social-emotional patronage, which I thought was really helpful to explain that.
00:06:45.220So could you explain a little bit about what social-emotional patronage does as opposed to the kind of the material, classic, direct payment patronage that we are now familiar with?
00:06:59.220And when I say realization, other people have expressed ideas like this.
00:07:02.700And I sort of borrowed it from the economic concept of utility, which basically, and I'm boiling it down to the, you know, like a thumbnail version of that, is that people have sort of subjective value to things you can't really calculate, right?
00:07:18.100And so that's where I sort of got thinking like, well, okay, like, well, people tend to act in their own perceived best interest.
00:07:25.860You know, very few people, you know, walk in front of trains for no reason, you know, or burn all their money, you know, in a trash fire.
00:07:33.040But there are people like, and specifically, you know, millennials, single women who are very, very strongly connected to the regime.
00:07:44.220But these people are miserable, right?
00:07:46.540Many of them are not making very good money.
00:07:49.540You know, they have, they're saddled with incredible amounts of debt.
00:07:51.960And yet, despite all these things, which from a purely just like, you know, economic background, you'd say, well, they should, they should be very dissatisfied with power.
00:08:11.000And so from looking at that, at that perspective of utility, where it is subjective value, I sort of started to realize that the deal offered by the regime isn't monetary.
00:08:29.360And you referenced your discussion with the distributist.
00:08:32.540And he's very good about talking about the kind of current culture war as a war of belief.
00:08:38.460A war between fundamentally incompatible views of reality, what is good and evil.
00:08:44.620And part of that is that, you know, for both sides, there's a certain point where it is a religious commitment, you know, where you're making a sort of assumption of faith.
00:08:54.100And looking at these people, the rewards that they're given are sort of not earthly rewards.
00:09:00.520You know, it's this feeling that you are kind of a, you know, a saint of this secular religion.
00:09:05.900And that's the high-minded way to look at it.
00:09:07.840I think another way to look at it is effectively, they just really hate the chuds.
00:09:30.080And so I think that that sort of, especially for these more middle class types, we're very, very conscious of status.
00:09:37.640I think it's a strong reason they support the regime, even when it's not in their literal best interest from a dollars and cents perspective.
00:09:45.560Yeah, I think that's so important because, again, while conservatives may not be comfortable with the idea of patronage, yeah, they might feel like it moves against some of their principles.
00:11:34.720And I think this failure to recognize this kind of hamstrings the right ability to analyze the left because it's really easy to look at, you know, the kind of Antifa mugshots of these kind of, like, spiteful mutants, these, like, true freaks, you know, and they have, you know, facial tattoos and dyed hair and, you know, a rap sheet a mile long.
00:11:55.780And you can kind of understand why those people want to burn down a police precinct, right?
00:12:06.660But what doesn't make sense is, well, okay, why are the people three lines behind them laptop workers?
00:12:13.080You know, why is, you know, why are the, you know, the moms in yellow marching with Antifa who, by everything I've read, are just, you know, progressive mothers and grandmothers, right?
00:12:47.780At the center of my town is a statue to a 19th century doctor, right?
00:12:53.420There's a whole neighborhood named after him.
00:12:55.120And the reason that that man was exalted, right, that he was given a lot of social status, is that he gave up his private practice, started a free clinic for the community, right?
00:13:26.380You're motivating someone who is ambitious, who's a high achiever, to do things for the benefit of everyone instead of just for him, right?
00:13:34.160So that's normally a good and functional part of civilization.
00:13:39.120But because our elites are horribly corrupt and elites control that system of status, the whole status hierarchy is tilted towards terrible ends.
00:13:51.800And that's where you see people who are, on paper, relatively normal, signaling support of defunding the police, you know, all of these things that, if we're being really honest, don't serve their direct interest at all.
00:14:08.080This is, again, so critical because the mistake that was made so often on the right is the accusation of virtue signaling.
00:14:16.740Oh, look, these people are just virtue signaling.
00:14:28.080People always care about what other people think.
00:14:30.760And you should want people to signal that they are virtuous.
00:14:34.160What you want is for them to signal the correct types of virtue.
00:14:38.460And then this puts, you know, basically what a lot of these kind of burnt out, you know, the leftists who got, they couldn't tell the same dirty jokes they used to.
00:14:46.800They were tired of getting canceled as comedians or something.
00:15:10.500The social status was used against them to defeat them in this.
00:15:14.320And now these people are virtue signaling because they are the dominant social hierarchy.
00:15:19.640Everyone is virtue signaling against you because you have failed to maintain your level of social status.
00:15:28.820And so you don't actually want to shift away from this mindset.
00:15:32.620You don't want to say, oh, well, we're just not going to notice social hierarchies.
00:15:36.280We're just not going to notice virtue signal or status.
00:15:39.920You want to be the ones that define what that is in a positive way.
00:15:43.680You're never getting rid of this human instinct.
00:15:46.100The idea that you could just, you know, cringe somebody out of this, that worked for the left because they replaced their value, your value status with their own.
00:15:56.260It's not working for you because you are trying to pretend that it doesn't even exist.
00:16:02.040Well, and that's one of the kind of fundamental disagreements that I think we would have with the more IDW types is viewing that there can be a sort of neutral, you know, kind of null hypothesis of morality.
00:16:14.980Which is centered somewhere in the 1990s.
00:16:17.920And the idea is that that's when we achieved a truly neutral state where there was no civic religion.
00:16:25.240There was no overbearing, you know, moralistic faith ruling everything, which is very clearly not true.
00:16:32.220If you're up to date on your right-wing history, you'll be familiar with the fact that effectively the whole 90s was the state being weaponized against essentially random kooks in the woods for no good reason.
00:16:43.320You know, this is even referenced in Sam Francis' essay, Anarcho-Tyranny, when he talks about, well, who does the state go after?
00:16:49.200Admittedly, this was written 20 some odd years ago, so it's kind of a time capsule.
00:16:53.140But he talks about, you know, people we may not like, but people like, you know, Randy Weaver, who, I mean, wasn't really doing anything that bad, not worth what he got.
00:17:01.080But all through that, we see that there still is this overbearing social religion that has friends and enemies.
00:17:09.340There is no sense of neutrality in that.
00:17:11.560And it's pure revisionist history to suggest that there was ever this period where everyone was seen as kind of a neutral actor.
00:17:19.420And so my point in that is not to complain about things that happened 30 years ago, but it's to say that you don't want, you don't need to fall for that rhetorical trap.
00:17:27.500This is, much like patronage, something built into humanity.
00:17:31.920And no matter the era, no matter the society, you will find this exact same thing in motion.
00:17:37.840So another thing that you point out that I thought was really critical in the essay was the idea of the striver.
00:17:58.020Because I believe, you know, in this jargon.
00:18:01.100I am aligned with the values of the regime.
00:18:04.400And it's really important for people to understand where that comes from.
00:18:07.860Because, again, a thing that conservatives love to do is they look at, say, the barista, right, who's got her degree in intersectional feminism.
00:18:15.760And she thinks that she is more socially elevated than the plumber who makes $200,000 a year.
00:18:23.220And the conservatives, this just doesn't make sense to them.
00:18:27.180Because for them, class is tied to money.
00:18:41.740But, you know, they always put themselves somewhere in this because of the amount of money they make.
00:18:46.700However, the Starbucks barista is very sure that she has done something that elevates her above the plumber, no matter how much money the plumber makes.
00:18:56.880And if she's angry at the system at all, it's only because she was not given the material benefits that should go along with her ascension to kind of the ruling class.
00:19:19.740And so they feel the need to elevate them above themselves.
00:19:22.800And I've noticed specifically this the most with people who grew up in, say, like a middle class or lower middle class existence, but they had a lot of contact with upper middle class or upper class people.
00:19:36.300And there's there becomes this hunger to, oh, well, my parents were sending me to, I don't know, bowling camp or something while they were getting to go to Europe in the summer.
00:19:48.080And I can only achieve that by climbing classes, but I'm not going to make more money.
00:19:53.900I'm going to move up the status ladder by acquiring these opinions.
00:19:58.040And so they, you know, you see this drive to look down at their family who didn't give them the upper middle class or upper class upbringing that they deserve, the lifestyle they deserve.
00:20:09.020And they're going through the rituals that should help them ascend to this next status class, even though it may not come with kind of that monetary reward.
00:20:19.000And so I think there's a lot of confusion among conservatives as to where this interplay comes from.
00:20:25.240But I think it really is that that failure of Americans to understand that class is something that is separate from money and not understand and why so many people who were born into maybe conservative middle class households are resentful of them and trying to use kind of the regime's political beliefs to elevate themselves out of what they see as something that was beneath them.
00:20:48.900Well, certainly. And let's start out with that first premise that money and class aren't the same.
00:20:55.400I think that kind of on first expect or first, you know, contact people will look at that a little bit, you know, they'll find something objectionable there.
00:21:02.760But you see this very clearly when you look at two groups of people, rich conservatives, like let's take the MyPillow guy, for example.
00:21:13.680I don't remember his name, but that guy, right? He makes more money than I likely ever will in my entire life.
00:21:20.300He's a very wealthy man. But is he an elite, right? Is he part of the upper class?
00:21:25.440I would say no. He's not getting invited to speak at Harvard. He doesn't have, you know, the kind of connections that our elite ruling class does.
00:21:35.820And there are many people in that elite, particularly artists or activists who don't make all that much money, right?
00:21:43.580I mean, they're not starving, but they're certainly not making deep into the six figures.
00:21:47.860But there's a class difference between those two. And basically that comes down to, do you support the regime or not?
00:21:56.320And so you see that very clearly in kind of what are kind of the luxury beliefs, right?
00:22:01.740This is a term that's been around conservative circles for quite some time. I really like it.
00:22:05.160Which is there's this kind of trickle down effect where an idea is cool and high status.
00:22:11.540And, you know, there's this kind of continual attempt to, oh, I want to be like that. I want to be like the rich, famous guy. So I will copy that.
00:22:19.780So you see this very clearly with gender and sexuality, right?
00:22:24.140You know that the, I have friends who are on dating apps. I've said before I'm in my early twenties and all of them just talk about how much of a wasteland it is.
00:22:32.040Because many of these kind of boutique gender ideologies that were popularized at, you know, at Ivy's in the kind of like halls of power, but never really acted out.
00:22:42.980You know, these, these were bored, rich girls who shaved their hair. And then six years later, they're married with a kid, right?
00:22:48.160They don't act it out in the same way that someone further down the social status when they, when that idea trickles down, right?
00:22:54.580They actually go for it. And so you see this kind of like gradual move over time where the people at the top want to keep differentiating themselves.
00:23:02.940You know, they don't want to be too much like the stinky proles. So they'll innovate. They'll come up with something new.
00:23:08.020And so there's this kind of gradual march where everyone is trying to copy someone up the line.
00:23:12.860So the example I use in my article is sushi, right? Back in the eighties, this was like a very like out there cosmopolitan thing.
00:23:19.300So much so that in the breakfast club, it's this joke that, oh, the rich girl is rich because she eats sushi.
00:23:24.640I mean, now I don't live in a particularly big city, but there's like 25 restaurants that serve sushi and it's really cheap.
00:23:31.260Yeah, exactly. It's so much so that gas station sushi has been a joke my entire life.
00:23:36.260And so the point is, that's where you see a luxury good, which luxury goods and luxury ideas are, there's a similar structure there, trickle down the, down the scale.
00:23:46.220So talking about class and money not being the same, you see this in history as well.
00:23:51.880In the pre-revolution France, right, there was this distinction between kind of sword nobility and the nouveau riche.
00:23:58.940The idea is, oh, we are, even if we're less wealthy, we, the sword, have a title descendant from knights.
00:24:06.360So we're better than these kind of merchants who may be rich, but aren't as kind of, they're, they're newly arrived in wealth.
00:24:14.440They don't have the same kind of signifiers that we do.
00:24:16.660You see this again in, in, you know, Italy, when it was being, when it was being unified, right?
00:24:23.260In Lampedusa's book, The Leopard, there's this distinction between the old nobility and the merchants.
00:24:27.860And so that's something, again, like all of these things that are kind of built into how humans organize themselves.
00:24:34.000It's just something now that we've sort of deluded ourselves that this doesn't, this doesn't occur.
00:24:38.560Yeah, and that's the, the, something that, again, I don't think conservatives often understand is the need to constantly differentiate.
00:24:47.800Why is the revolution always accelerating?
00:24:50.460Well, one of the reasons, there are many reasons, but one of them is that there always needs to be a new language of the upper class with which to confound the lower class, right?
00:25:00.180You need to find a slight differentiation.
00:25:02.920So, oh yeah, you might've finally come around on gay marriage, you backwards, you know, whatever.
00:25:07.800But, but I mean, are you up for trans kids?
00:25:10.180Have you, have you, have you shown your loyalty that way?
00:25:12.520There's always a different differentiation that you can engage in to separate yourself.
00:25:18.380This is also why Wokeness is very useful as an inter-class warfare mechanism.
00:25:25.380Unfortunately, our nobility has nothing to do with swordsmanship at this point.
00:25:29.180And so rather than fight duels, the way that they get rid of each other, the way that they cancel their enemies is by out-lefting each other.
00:25:35.000It's why, one of the reasons Cthulhu always swims to the left, because that's the direction of social status.
00:25:41.480You use that cancellation in order to kind of win over your opponent.
00:25:46.360If you've got a rival at the office, you're both vying for a job, but you can, you know, go ahead and show your, that, you know, you have additional support for different communities,
00:25:56.080or you yourself have suddenly developed an amazing affinity for non-binary queer gender theory or whatever,
00:26:03.260then you could, you could surpass somebody who has the same qualifications as you.
00:27:47.880And I think one of the things that trips people up is they look at what leftists say about themselves.
00:27:56.200And leftists will describe themselves as, you know, David fighting Goliath, the eternal rebel.
00:28:01.960You know, it's always the plucky underdog, you know, the rebels from Star Wars.
00:28:05.600But one of the interesting things about the regime, about the system as it is, and this is something that both, you know, Jacques Ellul and Kaczynski identify, is that there's sort of this built-in mechanism to take that instinct to rebellion and fold it back in to the system, you know, as it stands.
00:28:25.520And that's sort of the interesting thing about that process of gradually increasing leftism, right?
00:28:31.780That you get to say, oh, we're ousting the elite.
00:28:35.280You know, we're getting rid of those racists who are keeping me from, you know, actualizing the sort of the things I deserve as a member of this new class, right?
00:28:46.240These people who use the right words, who are, you know, more loyal to this ideology.
00:29:10.640Like, what would be the thing that, if you could decide, would be, you know, things people wanted to emulate?
00:29:16.740What's obedience to the regime, right?
00:29:19.960So what we're seeing now is, you know, the past week, you know, leftists have been sort of trying to outdo each other in describing all the creative ways they'd like to punish Texans, you know, and red staters who maybe want, you know, Greg Abbott to have a certain say on what happens in his state, right?
00:29:36.420You know, posting the, you know, this is, you know, Sherman will riot again, you know, we'll nuke them, we'll bomb them.
00:29:42.460And these are people who describe themselves as, you know, anarchists, socialists, very edgy people who, you know, are really fighting the system.
00:29:52.020Well, that means the entire might of the U.S. government should be used to smite my enemies.
00:29:57.480You know, and we can laugh at that contradiction, but you have to understand that they are doing exactly what they're supposed to.
00:30:03.500They're not in any way a threat to power.
00:30:05.320They're just signaling for, you know, those kind of social emotional rewards of getting to feel like they are, you know, extra good and extra special.
00:30:14.620It's the it's the communist who's demanding a more extreme version of the current revolution.
00:30:19.700They're not actually doing anything brave.
00:30:22.720In fact, they're reinforcing and furthering the regime.
00:30:27.040But but but they get to act as if they're destroying some institutional enemy.
00:30:36.000Well, certainly and my entire life, something that I've heard from older people and I understand what they mean, but they were fundamentally wrong is, oh, well, once these people get out in the real world and they see that it doesn't work, they'll become conservative.
00:31:23.820And they are not making a rational choice in that way.
00:31:27.200They are they're essentially religious extremists.
00:31:30.820You should view them almost as, you know, crusaders or jihadis.
00:31:34.540You know, they are fully sold an idea.
00:31:36.720And so as this this kind of system seems to be fraying at the edges, you know, their ability to kind of make direct payments either decreases or they have to kind of make some some tights, you know, some cuts.
00:31:48.640They can't necessarily pay out the same way they do.
00:31:51.520People have said, you know, oh, this is good.
00:32:04.400They're in it because for them, that social status is worth more than money.
00:32:09.880They'd rather be high class than rich.
00:32:12.000And what I think we'll see is until that ability to dictate hierarchy, until that ability to dictate what is considered high class or what is considered cool.
00:32:22.820The right won't be able to get those people over.
00:32:26.480Well, and we see this a couple episodes ago you were on and we talked about different Republicans or conservative leaders who would betray the movement for the status the left would give them.
00:32:40.320And this always confuses, you know, why, why, why are David French or Roger or other people, why are they genuflecting before this, this aspect of the regime's morality?
00:32:52.140Why are they, why are they paying service to this when they're supposed to be on our side, when they're supposed to identify with us?
00:32:57.520When their social hierarchy should be different, right?
00:33:03.700They should be seeking to elevate themselves within our system and not look for the approval of others.
00:33:10.060And yet over and over again, we see that conservative leaders do exactly the opposite.
00:33:15.880They, you know, they kind of fall apart as soon as their status might be, might be challenged by the left.
00:33:21.800They make sure that they kind of fall over themselves anytime they might be accused of certain heresies.
00:33:29.480And the reason, you know, even though their own base probably wouldn't care or might even be excited that they would, you know, that they would say that kind of thing.
00:33:36.400And the reason is that even though they're, they're theoretically on the side of the right, even though they're supposed to be representing conservatives, they are still people who want to see themselves as high class.
00:33:53.900They want to make sure that they get nice articles in the New York Times.
00:33:57.460And those are the people that actually confer the status to them, that their socioeconomic position or even not even socioeconomic because we're right.
00:34:06.400Recognizing that that's not even the key factor.
00:34:08.920But their position in standing in class is one that is entirely dictated by the left.
00:34:14.320Only the left can can hand out the class in which they want to exist.
00:34:20.400And so they are constantly feeding that monster.
00:34:23.000And that's one of the reasons a lot of people reacted the way that they did to Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is very clearly at some level an elite.
00:34:32.240He, he, he was, he was maybe a new money guy.
00:34:35.660Maybe he didn't fit in with some of the elite, but he clearly, you know, he was friends with lots of celebrities before he ran for president as a Republican.
00:34:47.620And so he had broken into at least in some way, the elite levels, just despite maybe being new money or, or gauche in certain ways.
00:34:57.800And when he crashed out of that by, you know, set, telling the right, what they wanted to hear, telling what conservatives, what they really wanted to hear, the things they had always wanted to hear from their leadership.
00:35:11.000That's why he acquired a level of loyalty that many conservative pundits and, and, you know, uh, operatives and these things still don't understand.
00:35:22.160It was his willingness to counter signal his own class and his willingness to appeal so blatantly in a way that conservative leaders never do to the actual wants of the party to elevate himself inside their status.
00:35:37.380Is, is, is really, I think what solidified so much support behind him.
00:35:43.100And as you can probably tell from my avatar and my general disposition, I'm not one for, for white pills, but I will say, I think that the recent developments at the, the Texas border have been interesting because what I think we're, we might potentially be seeing.
00:35:59.060And if not now it will, I think eventually happen is that the ability to make that compromise, to be that sort of lukewarm Republican is kind of going away.
00:36:13.160Right. And so to me, look like I'm not, uh, let's say a personal fan of Greg Abbott, but I think that he came to a realization that he would no longer be in any form of power at all.
00:36:28.280And essentially from Washington's perspective, they've created this kind of principal agent problem, you know, where their middle managers, their governors, if they do what they want, they will no longer be middle managers or governors, they'll be replaced.
00:36:41.120So all of a sudden, well, you know, it doesn't matter if, you know, I, I get at least some kind of good boy points for going along with the regime.
00:36:51.140If I have no power at all, because again, these people, these elite people are incredibly ambitious, you know, they are climbers.
00:36:59.220And if they're completely kicked off the ladder, all of a sudden that's an opportunity, right?
00:37:05.840We've created a split within the elite and look like I'm a, I'm a firm elitist, right?
00:37:14.060And so I don't think we're ever going to get away from the kind of machinations of an elite class, but something we can hope for is essentially a system in which us and our people are an important block.
00:37:27.460And I think that that's kind of what you can hope for, especially in the system in which, you know, there's a splinter faction in the elite that needs friends to be brutally honest about it.
00:37:39.480There's a, there was a moment last week when a friend of both your and mine, a black horse who's been on the show and he's very smart guy.
00:37:49.600I'm not, I'm not trying to bag on here, but I just, I, it was a very relevant conversation.
00:37:56.440I said, oh, you know, you, you, you, this is not going to get solved at the state level.
00:38:01.240So you're, this is not going to get solved at the national level.
00:38:03.640So you have to take the state action no matter what.
00:38:05.900And he says, well, unfortunately it doesn't really matter if Greg Abbott takes the action because this is, this is a border enforcement issue.
00:38:14.040So either all of the states get involved or, or none of them do, because there's always going to be around.
00:38:19.040And I heard this from a lot of people like, well, they'll just fly people around or they'll bring them in by boats.
00:38:23.840Or they'll come in from another state.
00:38:25.520I'm like, no, you don't understand the situation.
00:38:27.640Like they're never going to fix this issue.
00:38:30.220There is no federal fix for this issue because they don't want it to be fixed.
00:38:33.520And so what you need is to play the man, not the ball.
00:38:36.660Like you don't need to fix the issue of immigration.
00:38:40.080It's critical, but you can't fix the issue of immigration until you have elites, elites that are absolutely forced back against the wall to take action about it.
00:38:48.960And so the interesting part is not like what legislation you pass through Congress to enforce the border.
00:38:55.160There's already tons of legislation that enforces the border.
00:38:59.400What you need is compliance of the governor.
00:39:01.380And the way you get that is to put them in a situation where they can only be on your side and still retain power.
00:39:06.440Like you were saying, Caesar, you know, he takes the he takes the populary path and he he crosses the Rubicon, not because he, you know, necessarily always believed in those things ideologically at his core, but because these are the only path to power.
00:39:22.600If he doesn't cross the Rubicon, he goes to jail.
00:39:24.820There's nothing left for him because the Senate will not allow him to climb any, any higher, you will not allow him to climb any higher.
00:39:32.840They will not allow him to achieve what he wants unless he goes ahead and takes action on behalf of people that he otherwise might not have supported.
00:39:41.500You have to put these elites in situations where they can only benefit by serving your interests, tie them directly and specifically to you.
00:40:05.460And I think you're right that until the right gains the ability to tie these elites directly to both your, your values and your, um, and your priorities, but also your status hierarchies, you'll continue to see them defect, defect, defect, because.
00:40:21.440They, you know, because their, their interests are lie really at the end of the day with the left, with the progressive power structure.
00:40:27.920And so you have to create a situation where instead the only way that they wield power is by joining your side.
00:40:35.700Well, and this is something that the left has actually got quite, quite good at, you know, is that I think that what they do a good job of is either directly primarying or threatening to primary kind of DNC strongholds.
00:40:51.760You know, to get people who are maybe getting a little bit comfortable to kind of move to a more extreme position.
00:40:58.280And I know that obviously, you know, Abbott's been in power for quite a while, but he was recently, there was kind of a challenger to his right.
00:41:08.460The point is he was a more extreme Republican and he didn't end up winning.
00:41:12.060But I think the combination of seeing a challenger to his right competition from DeSantis to be the kind of like the bestest, coolest Republican governor.
00:41:21.260And then also to be blunt about it, some less than flattering census data for the Republican Party in Texas.
00:41:27.860And I think that's sort of that realization that, oh, if I'm going to keep my hand on the wheel, I need to play the game.
00:41:34.620You know, I can no longer kind of sit back and let it coast.
00:41:37.840And especially when forces not aligned as much to the regime get complacent, they get taken out in an instant.
00:41:46.660I mean, that's what happened to the Republican Party in my home state of Virginia, right, is that they got very, very lazy and got completely obliterated.
00:41:55.080Now, you know, obviously, Youngkin has done some work to combat that.
00:41:58.520But I think that if we're looking for, well, how do we create an opportunity for, you know, for our policies to be represented?
00:42:06.640It's essentially put pressure to the right of these Republicans.
00:42:10.620Because, look, I'm not saying they're good people.
00:42:16.080And the process of making them interested in your self-interest is to basically put pressure on them.
00:42:22.140And I think that, you know, even if these kind of primary attempts are not successful, they certainly send a signal to, you know, these kind of ordinarily spineless politicians.
00:42:33.620So I think we've probably explained social, emotional patronage well enough.
00:42:41.340I do want to bring up a example in the news that's out today of very traditional patronage, which was that of Ilhan Omar.
00:42:49.120We got footage of her speaking at an event.
00:42:54.400And she says very clearly in this event, in this footage, that her first priority is Somalia.
00:43:05.120That's, you know, her nation of birth is her first priority.
00:43:09.460And that she puts that above the United States.
00:43:12.320Her second priority is Islam, being a Muslim.
00:43:15.460That's really the Muslim community is her next.
00:43:18.440And so all of these things are far more important to her.
00:43:21.940And she's willing to subordinate any other interest to this.
00:43:26.040And I think a lot of conservatives were amazed that she would say that kind of thing out loud.
00:43:33.420But I think that's just an indication of you're kind of in that late imperial moment where it's very clear that a large amount of people have come in from other cultures, other areas.
00:44:15.260And she's certainly not going to lose her seat because she's telling the people who vote for her exactly what they want to hear.
00:44:20.920But I think it was very rough for a lot of Americans who may not be aware of this particular relationship that is very common on the left to see that kind of so explicitly stated in front of everyone.
00:44:34.020And I think that, you know, this is a particularly egregious example.
00:44:37.920We've seen it with other nations as well, right?
00:44:39.920It seems it would beggar belief, considering how many Ukrainians work in the State Department, that that doesn't have some sort of bearing on our relation to the nation of Ukraine, right?
00:44:51.060Other nations obviously have sort of a similar dynamic set up.
00:44:53.960But that is a very, I like your phrase, kind of late empire, right, where all these kind of ethnic squabbles from different corners of, you know, the GAE are sort of being brought home to roost.
00:45:04.320You know, Canada has had this as well, you know, where they've had, I believe, that the Indian government allegedly assassinated a Sikh radical on Canadian soil.
00:45:14.080And this was just seen as sort of a normal occurrence, right?
00:45:17.520That as, you know, these populations come here, they bring their baggage with them.
00:45:21.780Obviously, this has been going on for hundreds of years.
00:45:24.320Similar things happened, obviously, in the Civil War with different European groups.
00:45:28.320But I think that as that becomes an ever more significant portion of the American population, that trend will continue.
00:45:38.720I was, you know, I was reading The Clash of Civilizations.
00:45:42.200And that book's written in 1995 by Samuel Huntington.
00:45:50.300And he specifically talks about kind of the critical nature of diasporas inside of these kind of large imperial battles and the role that they play.
00:45:59.380His example, because, again, it was written back in 1995, was kind of an Armenian confrontation and the way that the Armenians received large amounts of support from the American government, you know, to the level where it was called the, you know, it was called the Israel of the Balkans or something, you know, because of the level of aid they were receiving.
00:46:22.420And, like, how common it is, once you kind of have this hegemonic status, to have basically, like, a greater Somalia or a greater Armenia that's going to compel politicians to take particular sides in foreign conflicts that otherwise have no, you know, kind of interest in American, no American interest.
00:46:46.960And so it's just interesting to see that that effect has only intensified and only become far more blatant.
00:46:53.940I've been in scenarios where, you know, I was working for a politician and they would just kind of, you know, you would hear them talking about, you know, he's a Greek politician and no one cares about Cyprus.
00:47:07.040Like, you never say this in front of any other group.
00:47:09.200But when he's in front of his, like, Greek fundraisers, all of a sudden the issue of Cyprus is, like, first and foremost.
00:47:15.640And he's talking about how critical this is to, like, his entire existence as a politician.
00:47:21.020And so there's nothing new about this.
00:47:22.540This has existed inside, you know, every nation, especially as they grow to the size of an empire.
00:47:28.580It's just getting, it's incredibly pronounced.
00:47:31.180And it was just interesting that as we talk about patronage, that was very shocking to a lot of people who otherwise really shouldn't be shocked.
00:47:39.700Because this is kind of exactly what has been warned about by pretty much everyone, every paleocon for a very long time.
00:47:47.720And it's simply those chickens coming home to roost.
00:47:53.560And it's interesting because, you know, when you mentioned that, the example I always think of is, and this was kind of a trope in, you know, spy movies all through the 80s, right?
00:48:03.900Is the kind of Irish diaspora on the American Northeast Coast, you know, running guns to the IRA.
00:48:09.600You know, and that's kind of a non-controversial example, right?
00:48:12.760Because that's sort of out of, you know, everyone's kind of imagination currently.
00:48:16.780But again, that is just sort of a fact of ethnic diasporas.
00:48:21.080And as we get, as we pick up more and more of them, we sort of become entangled in more and more of these foreign conflicts.
00:50:07.840Yes, it is funny how terrible we tend to portray elites of just a few generations ago when considering what our current elites have unleashed upon the world.
00:50:22.580And that shows you how much healthier it is, right, to have a society where people are kind of competing over minute points of etiquette, which admittedly is kind of silly.
00:50:31.260But given the alternative is like effectively like large scale human sacrifice and castration, it's like, OK, well, I think that's a trade I'm willing to make.
00:50:40.540Like, it's really amazing the horrors that you can unleash by promising people to remove parts of human nature like, oh, well, we'll get rid of, you know, someone telling you you're a bad person because of your musical taste or because you don't hold your teacup correctly or because you didn't wear your suit to church.
00:50:59.140And all it will cost you is the testicles of your children, right?
00:51:02.900That seems to be the perfect deal that has been made.
00:51:07.560And it is it is kind of like social Lysenkoism, you know, where it's like we have this ideology and no matter the consequences, we will put it into action.
00:51:15.620You know, and it's sort of just like, well, OK, like, I guess maybe now you don't get made fun of at school for playing D&D on the weekends.
00:51:22.600But, you know, was it worth the cost of, you know, just everything, you know, all the kind of issues we both talk about.
00:51:30.680And apparently some people consider that a good trade.
00:51:49.600When you have especially with the overproduction of elites, again, turning universities and guys, by the way, this is a this is an entire chapter in the total state.
00:51:59.580So, you know, you can find a link to preorder that book.
00:52:03.080I'll go ahead and drop it in the description of the video if you'd like to preorder my book.
00:52:06.120But an entire chapter of the total state is dedicated to kind of the disaster that was turning colleges, the university system into the mechanism by which people ascend the social status hierarchy where the way we crown elites and the elite overproduction that many people have talked about, myself included.
00:52:26.540You just have to find all these different ways to kind of show your status.
00:52:31.500And when you're not really getting anything from a value out of your university degree, the best thing you can do is is that desire to counter signal everyone kind of down the ladder through, again, your jargon, your scholastic meritocracy, as you point out, life, Brian.
00:52:49.460Well, and one thing, sorry, I realized I should have brought I actually should have written about this in the article.
00:52:52.920This would have been a great point that I've only now thought about.
00:52:54.640But this is sort of the shell game that the regime played with Occupy Wall Street, right?
00:53:00.720It is people who are angry about, you know, oh, the regime is treating me unfairly.
00:53:05.100And essentially the offer they were given is, well, the real reason that you don't have what you want is is secret racists, you know, and you can instead of having a good life, you can essentially, you know, devote that instinct to climbing this sort of like completely made up social ladder.
00:53:23.500And it does sort of seem like, let's be honest, a lot of those people were those kind of like Midwest scholastic types, you know, who'd bought the promise of college, and it hadn't panned out.
00:53:34.520And so it was sort of kind of an alternate way for them to kind of experience like an increase in, I wouldn't say living standard, increase in social standard, I guess.
00:53:44.700Absolutely. Yeah, nothing, there's nothing more spiteful than the, than the guy who was promised greatness, and instead ended up with $100,000 and a useless degree.
00:53:58.480Trey 50 Daniel says people tend to act on their incentives, create the proper incentives for the Republican elite, and they will act accordingly.
00:54:05.020That's absolutely true. The only problem, I think, for a lot of people on the right is they don't know how to create those incentives anymore.
00:54:11.280They don't understand because, again, they don't get that link, they don't get the patronage link, they don't get the, you know, the way that this reciprocal relationship works.
00:54:22.300They don't understand how to create those bonds.
00:54:24.080And so, as I pointed out, one of the faults a lot of people play is they will say, well, I want them to enact policies for me.
00:54:31.140And it's like, okay, but they don't have the ability to do that, and they don't have the incentive to do that.
00:54:35.840So what can you do? Well, I can tie it very directly to their ability to just hold office as a governor somewhere, right?
00:54:41.760And like, so you need to focus it. You can't, it's, there's a reason that the incumbency rate of, you know, Congress is so high, and that none of them are held accountable.
00:54:51.820You know, those things are interlinked, as where, when you have an executive, there's a far more direct and one-to-one relationship between power and accountability.
00:55:00.100And this is why, you know, the ability to leverage Abbott is so much more powerful than trying to wrangle every single Republican senator or congressman.
00:55:09.920Thuggo says, is leftists claiming to be evil because of racism sanctimonious?
00:55:20.020Sorry, that one's a little difficult there.
00:55:27.100I guess they're obviously finding a shared moral vision.
00:55:34.380And they need to create an enemy and they need to differentiate themselves between, you know, between the evil racist, those that are below them in status and are therefore less holy than them and themselves elevate themselves.
00:55:47.980So in a way, yes, that that's, that's definitely part of it, which is another reason why it's so important to just not argue over whether or not you're racist.
00:55:56.720They're, they're just doing it in bad faith when you try to challenge that and, oh, you're the real racist.
00:56:02.480You're just confirming their frame that that's the most important thing.
00:56:06.080The thing that they define the thing, the term they have control of, you're reinforcing that.
00:56:10.520And so that's why it's always a mistake to play the play the game inside their moral frame.
00:56:15.360You don't need to, you don't need to show yourself to be the best one in the current moral hierarchy.
00:56:20.220You need to show that the current moral hierarchy is corrupt and that that's the mentality shift that you need from the right.
00:56:26.720And that's why conceptualizing this as a religious war or war of belief is so essential, right?
00:56:32.980Like you don't, you don't, you know, politely sit down with the Saracen and say, well, I'm not really a, you know, I'm not really a, you know, a heathen invader.
00:56:42.200You know, you basically, that's a conflict, you know, and, and you don't necessarily enter this as this is a, like you said, like a good faith accusation.
00:56:51.400You know, it is simply just a ritual denunciation, like calling someone a heretic.
00:56:58.160Uh, Simplar says it's very curious in Manhattan when a current thing happens and the New York times hasn't issued a feels the progressives here wonder around clueless, worried about having an opinion that might be wrong next Thursday.
00:57:12.140Right. That's exactly right. Then there's that dynamic is, is very real that when there, there has been no pronouncement on high, you know, that your entire social status, especially a place like New York is, is, uh, around, uh, you know, these kinds of pronouncements.
00:57:28.380You need to know what's right. So you can start telling everybody, but there's this lag time sometimes between the official organs, uh, and the, and, you know, uh, what we should believe this is actually what probably gives the upper class that, that moment, right.
00:57:43.060Where they can set the tone. And so, uh, you know, that, that's not, uh, that's not so much a flaw in the system as a feature.
00:57:49.200However, uh, yeah, it is funny to see when, when the left is, is grasping around, uh, between, between lag time transmission updates of the NPC, uh, frame firmware.
00:58:01.020Like what should we believe now currently? We don't know. Uh, it's, it's all very confusing.
00:58:07.000Uh, John Carter says the civil war was about destroying decentralized patronage networks and stealing the plebeians for systems, which provide no long-term benefit to them.
00:58:15.640Uh, civil war is about a lot of things, but that is absolutely one of them. Uh, you know, there, there are a lot of divides, uh, in the United States.
00:58:23.280There was always a tension between urban and rural, the merchant and the farmer, uh, the North and the South.
00:58:30.020Uh, this was, this was always a dynamic and sometimes it involves slavery and sometimes it didn't, but that's why boiling the civil war down to slavery is very stupid.
00:58:38.480Uh, it, it, it, it's certainly an important factor, but it is, is not the only factor and ignoring the other critical ones is, is always foolish.
00:58:46.720Uh, and one of the things that the civil war most absolutely did, uh, was kind of get rid of the idea that individual states really set their own culture and their own agenda and could, could operate independently.
00:59:01.320Uh, once you can no longer secede, uh, you no longer have the opportunity to ignore, uh, kind of, kind of federal mandates that the 10th amendment dies, uh, federalism kind of dies, uh, due to that.
00:59:13.360Uh, but we do, we do still have some of those remnants, uh, and it is nice that, that, uh, you know, guys like Greg Abbott can still, uh, flex some of that muscle, uh, because we still kind of reflexively feel that we have that, even if in practice, it hasn't been shown up until perhaps Abbott for a very long time.
00:59:31.920Well, and I think that, you know, just to be, to be very brief, if you're looking for kind of a fictionalized depiction of both what John Carter is referring to and, you know, this sort of direct system of patronage, uh, the classic movie gangs of New York is a great example.
00:59:46.760You know, it's about the birth of certain ethnic patronage networks in America effectively.
00:59:51.600Uh, and so if you want to see a movie version of my article, that's a pretty good, good place to start.
00:59:56.480When they're just important, you know, the Irish are getting off of the boat and immediately going on to the, you know, getting a uniform and going directly into the civil war, just going right down the river.
01:00:10.740Uh, Cliff Jaded says, even in Singapore, people will adopt Americanisms, progressivism in order to appear more upper class and elite liberalism swallows us all.
01:00:19.540Uh, yeah, you're not the only person to say that, uh, we've both been on Alex Casciuta's show and when I've spoken with her, you know, she said, well, in Romania, we have this, you know, the, the girls who want to sound like they're elite start talking about abortion law in Alabama.
01:00:34.880As if they have any clue, as if they could find it on a map, as if they've ever interacted with this, as if it has any impact on them.
01:00:41.320But they still know that like their status comes from alliance with the GAE.
01:00:47.300And so they go ahead and kind of regurgitate those concerns, even though it has nothing to do with what's happening in Romania or their lives.
01:00:55.460Uh, because, and that, that's really how, you know, you have a global empire is because everyone in the world who wants to have a certain level of status, uh, kind of changes the way they speak to align themselves with that.
01:01:08.000Though I think that is changing. Uh, I think that will continue to change as America's global presence or, or hegemony, uh, kind of wanes.
01:01:16.820Uh, but that is certainly a marker of kind of, of how this, uh, patronage works even beyond the borders of the United States.
01:01:24.800Well, and, and you see the, you see this because anytime there's sort of a regime approved presidential candidate, the same article comes out, which says, I'll have, you know, 70% of Europeans, you know,
01:01:37.840listed out by countries supports regime candidate, you know, and you sort of see that it's sort of a self-reinforcing thing.
01:01:44.320Like recently this article was written about Nikki Haley, but if you look back four years or four years before that, it's a recurring article.
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