Dave Distributis joins me to discuss the leftist reaction to Donald Trump's first day in office, and why it feels like it's a rerun of 2017. We talk about the parallels between the events of January 20th, 2017, and the reaction to Trump's Inauguration Day.
00:04:28.320But really, the most recurring comment that you saw when Trump was giving his speeches, the inauguration, everything else, was, well, there he is.
00:04:37.760Like, they genuinely did not have much to say.
00:04:41.560They kind of mumbled something about a lack of unity and, oh, he spent so much of his speech talking about the Biden administration.
00:05:44.820I want to get through kind of the news hit parts, you know, first.
00:05:49.340And then we'll do the deeper dive here in a second.
00:05:52.300So the first thing that I think was interesting was, you know, Donald Trump came during this, the speech when he was being inaugurated.
00:06:02.100And he spent a good amount of time just right up in front, you know, telling all of the Biden administration, you failed, you were terrible, you were abusive.
00:06:12.100He actually called it the, you know, today liberation day, as if we had been under some form of occupation, not entirely wrong.
00:06:20.140You know, and so, you know, the kind of the first thing that he did right out front was kind of focus in and hone in on the complete failures.
00:06:30.100I doubt that any president has quite been so directly harsh in front of both the outgoing administration and his opponent as Trump was.
00:06:39.440But he made it very clear that the failures were enormous.
00:06:42.360You know, he came out and immediately said that the last election was rigged.
00:06:45.460I mean, he was pretty brutal up front about, you know, the failures of the Biden administration, its abuses, and what he intended to do about them.
00:06:54.920Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, this is, I don't know exactly.
00:06:59.380So, I mean, the big question here is, it really is kind of out of our hand.
00:07:03.920We can talk about exactly trying to curry influence inside the administration via social media, which is going to be, you know, this is something that actually happens.
00:07:14.600You saw this with the H-1B debate during Christmastime, where, you know, the various apparatchiks sort of float ideas.
00:07:23.000And then, you know, online, you kind of get a real-time testing of how those things float.
00:07:27.960But the real question is not really about Trump's rhetoric.
00:07:31.260I kind of know what Trump's rhetorical pattern is.
00:07:34.520The real question is, how much is Trump willing to fight with the total state to get his people in there?
00:07:42.780And how many of his people can he get in there?
00:09:36.200Can you take control over the endowments?
00:09:38.660Can you take control over how people approve grants?
00:09:42.420I mean, the money that comes from grants and endowments is absolutely enormous when it comes to the universities.
00:09:49.180And if that system can be seized and arranged so that colleges like Hillsdale and other alternatives become, in some sense, easier or better players for actually skipping up this money, then all of a sudden the entire game changes and there could be massive downstream effects.
00:10:10.000But, you know, this is the thing, though, and I don't want to go on too much of a rant, but, like, the ruling class, right now, they're kind of dazed.
00:10:47.820We need to see kind of what his moves are.
00:10:50.560And, you know, we can cheer from the sidelines.
00:10:53.040We can kind of try to push things a little bit like people did online in the H-1B debate.
00:10:57.840But really, you know, the next hundred days are really dictated by the people that Trump's already selected and the moves that they're going to make.
00:11:08.620And we're going to have to kind of react to the historical effects that fall out from these circumstances.
00:11:18.680Obviously, you know, we both know that it's not about the surface rhetoric.
00:11:22.620It's not about, oh, you know, I mean, Trump said a lot of good things today.
00:11:27.520He said he plans to militarize the border.
00:11:29.880He plans to declare, you know, cartels inside the United States as terrorist organizations.
00:11:37.080He was talking about, you know, reshoring, you know, tariffs, all kinds of stuff.
00:11:41.820A lot of the things that you would expect, you know, not massive things outside of the militarization of the border.
00:11:49.780I think that was probably the biggest one.
00:11:51.840But he also took some actions right away.
00:11:53.860I mean, the one that I'm glad he did, but it's probably obviously the least directly impactful to the deep state itself, is, you know, formally declaring that there's only two genders.
00:12:05.360You know, that is now the law of the land, you know, as it were.
00:12:24.360Now, more importantly, the more concrete thing that that actually happened today was that the CBP app that the Biden administration had created was shut down.
00:12:37.520And so that app, the one that that immigrants have been, you know, basically been using to just enter the United States in mass has been closed and all the appointments that were on it have been canceled.
00:12:50.380In fact, this we've talked about the the crying immigrant.
00:12:54.140Yeah, I guess I can just show the video here real quick so people know what we're talking about.
00:12:59.020But this became kind of the first, you know, oh, no, Donald Trump has ended us all here.
00:13:05.300You know, it's a, you know, very sad that she will not be getting her appointment to come in and collect American taxpayer dollars.
00:13:13.100But, you know, this, you know, canceled all these appointments for people coming in, shutting down that program immediately was was definitely a good thing to see.
00:13:24.540Hopefully we're following up a lot with that.
00:13:27.080You know, obviously, we both know that immigration is is one of the largest issues, something that absolutely has to happen.
00:13:33.640And the faster you do it, the better, you know, there's already been rumors.
00:13:40.700Administration officials have said that there are going to be raids in places like Chicago and in other cities within the first week or two.
00:13:51.620It feels like the most important thing is how much of the deep state can he repeal or replace?
00:13:57.780And and the biggest battle for that while the left is stunned is really moving through his own party, you know, navigating kind of the Republicans.
00:14:06.780How many of those can he get disciplined on side so he can move important people into those positions while the left is still trying to collectively quiet, you know, licking its wounds?
00:14:16.220This is oftentimes something that I think conservatives miss is that the if you if you essentially created new bodies like to to to address the humanitarian issue, you can you can actually get your way.
00:14:32.620Like, for instance, if you created the office for humanitarian repatriation, right, like that would be like, how can we find how can we get people who are no longer able to work in this country by law, like the best lives outside of this country and stuff at all with your own guys, then all of a sudden, like, it's not deportations.
00:14:57.140And, you know, and and and and so like these things like it sounds stupid, right, but this is this is how this is the name of the game.
00:15:05.400The name of the game is creating systems of government that do that essentially increase your power base and that are very, very hard to repeal.
00:15:14.920And and and and and then putting the question that that that the left wants to center kind of outside of politics, essentially, and the question that needs to be outside of politics at this stage is the idea that illegal immigrants get to stay here, period, in any condition, if they are illegal, then is not a political question.
00:15:36.920They have to go home, period, period, this is not a political question, this is decided, this is done.
00:15:43.480And the only question is, you know, who is the best person at deporting them, right, like in the best quality of deportation, we have the best quality deporters you can possibly imagine.
00:15:55.680The Democrats will never be able to do it as efficiently or as or as humanitarianly or as kindly as we do, right.
00:16:02.040And that has to be the frame of the conversation, you know, but again, like there's so many dimensions to this, because as everyone points out to the question is not simply legal immigration, illegal immigration, but also legal immigration, like H1B reform has to be part of this.
00:16:19.780And, you know, just this, the entire concept of the point system writ large has to be part of this conversation.
00:16:26.420And, you know, this there's a whole set of new stakeholders here who are going to be trying to subvert this effort inside the Trump administration.
00:16:35.440And we don't exactly know what their moves are going to be.
00:16:39.400We can just kind of observe them happening on social media.
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00:17:13.260Yeah, there's obviously a key moment here as we look at the immigration issue, like you said, where it's not just illegal, but legal that needs to change.
00:17:23.680And I feel like Elon and Vivek did us quite the favor by kind of bringing H1B to the forefront.
00:17:30.420I think that's something that probably would have been under the radar for the vast majority of people on the right as they kind of focus on the illegal issue.
00:17:38.560If they hadn't tried to kind of launch this narrative on Christmas Day, but because they did, a lot of people suddenly realized that many of the jobs they want are being filled by H1B recipients.
00:17:52.220But also Panda Express managers are listening to H1B.
00:17:57.100So many of the jobs being held up by kind of mainstream conservative pundits are also being filled by this.
00:18:05.420And really that ability to continually focus that.
00:18:09.200I mean, there's a certain level that this is online.
00:18:11.440You know, but as we're seeing more and more, online discussions are leading to real-world effects.
00:18:19.800You know, Curtis Yarvin was in the New York Times this week.
00:18:22.660We'll talk about that in a second, I'm sure, as well.
00:18:24.980But we're seeing that there's actually quite a bit of leverage that the online sphere can kind of bring to this.
00:18:30.800You know, we don't want to overblow the importance.
00:18:33.160Ultimately, you know, they're not sitting at the table in many of these cases.
00:18:38.540But the fact that this is kind of present and, you know, that people were made aware of this allows there to continue to be pressure put on that.
00:18:47.260You don't have that ability to just kind of slide the H1B thing under the door anymore now that you've kind of blown that open.
00:18:53.500Yeah, I mean, this is something that I kind of want to talk about before we get on to the New York Times-Yarvin interview or whatever.
00:19:00.920But this is sort of a turning point or a crossroads for the conservative movement.
00:19:05.260And the question is, do you actually want to rule this country?
00:19:08.700I mean, do you actually want to rule it?
00:19:10.340Or do you just want to, like, nag people or scold them?
00:19:13.600And this is something that, you know, Rufo, you can see this kind of his best and worst form has come out in these last several months.
00:19:23.500And, you know, this is a person who's been a very effective operator.
00:19:29.520He's been a very effective operator across the Biden administration in particular.
00:19:34.580And he talks to people on the right wing, and he seems like he understands these principles.
00:19:41.760But then at the end of the time, he feels like sometimes he doesn't understand them.
00:19:45.560The conservative movement needs to actually start taking ownership over these core levers of power and these core stakeholders and these core interest groups.
00:19:56.820You don't get power by going around and nagging people over plagiarism.
00:20:02.920I mean, that's very – it was a great optics victory when he caught Claudine Gay at Harvard in that scandal.
00:20:09.240But that's not – your role is not to go around and make sure the progressives are following their own rules.
00:20:15.940Your role is to go around and create power coalitions out of problems that the progressives aren't addressing.
00:20:22.720And a big problem that progressives aren't addressing right now are how do Native young men, Americans who are born here, how do they get effective jobs that allow them to participate in a meaningful way inside a middle class or a class of people that has some share of political power?
00:20:41.200And this is intimately connected to the university's problems in a way that's much deeper than plagiarism inside these bureaucrats that – they always had symbolic jobs anyway.
00:20:55.980And in the age of all of the generative AI stuff, the question of plagiarism has meant less than it ever has before.
00:21:02.120But at any rate, this is the question, like how do you actually deal with this problem and how can you take the question of young men, young men who are born in America, as Bruce Springsteen would say, and how do you take them and give them futures?
00:21:20.660The crown's on the gutter in this question.
00:21:23.200The left certainly isn't going to answer it.
00:21:25.000The last time I was on, you were talking about the left's masculinity problem.
00:21:28.020They have absolutely no vision for men of any race, but for white men in particular.
00:21:35.020And what's kind of frustrated me right now is this crown in the gutter, the conservative movement, just refuses to take it.
00:21:44.900Just like the Daily Wire refuses to fill the vacant area of high classic culture like Shakespeare production, the mainstream conservative movement, they refuse to actually cut out a way that they can systematically change the government to make it serve a whole class of people that needs to get served and that the left will never serve.
00:22:11.940Yeah, it's been like a huge frustration of mine to see them kind of not take this opportunity.
00:22:18.040Hopefully something will change where they can actually, you know, come into a new role where they actually might rule.
00:22:49.920I think he's done a lot of great work.
00:22:51.480Obviously, one of the most effective conservative activists in our lifetime.
00:22:55.880That said, you know, when you look at the left, the left is offering their entire Patriarch Network a giant glut of make work jobs.
00:23:07.580Right. Like just massive amounts of if you believe in what we believe, there is a future of high status, well-paying jobs that will open doors to you across, you know, corporate, corporate, the corporate world, the NGO world, the government sector.
00:23:24.280You know, we can turn the world into your oyster if you believe in what we believe in.
00:23:28.940And the rights response to that is like, well, no.
00:23:33.580You know, like, it's like, like, have you go get go work at Panda Express and work your way up.
00:23:39.140Right. Are you hitting on the kid? Are you hitting on the girl at the gas station?
00:23:42.080You know, like that's that that's the response.
00:23:44.360And, you know, specifically, you know, Rufo said, well, you know, I hired one guy.
00:23:49.360It's like, well, you hired like the most unstable human being alive.
00:23:53.280But, you know, he's like, I heard one right wing male and it didn't work out.
00:23:56.920So I'm going to fill my jobs with like Biden supporters who have worked in the adult film industry.
00:24:02.360And it's like, OK, like maybe you aren't the guy to give this speech, you know, maybe maybe maybe some guys do need to hear the tough love speech.
00:24:11.580But maybe we could get a guy to give the tough love speech who is, you know, connected, you know, 50, 60, 100 young men with, you know, promising, you know, important jobs like maybe that's more the way to do this.
00:24:25.100I mean, again, I think that there are many different avenues that the right it would be good if the right was actually employing conservatives that would be or the right wingers that'd be fantastic.
00:24:35.200But also, you know, just opening up and saying, hey, we're we're going after disparate impact.
00:24:40.160We are going to work on the credentialing system in the university to make it so that, you know, you can you can get certifications instead of having to, you know, pay pay the, you know, the toll at these different left wing universities to indoctrinate yourself before you step into any position of power.
00:24:57.840There are there are there are a plethora of options.
00:25:00.540You know, you can have a all fronts type attack on this in the same way that they've kind of been saying they're going to do with immigration.
00:25:08.460And yet there doesn't seem to be an understanding of how critical this is.
00:25:13.140I mean, I looked at a recent statistic and it was, you know, the most hopeful demographic for the Trump presidency was 18 to 28 year olds.
00:25:23.760You know, it's the it's the boomers that had the lowest actual, despite what you would think from kind of the conservative energy, they have the lowest hopefulness rating.
00:25:32.440And it was, you know, the young people that had the highest hopefulness rating for the incoming administration.
00:25:37.400Seems like you have kind of a very good opportunity to strike while they're in hot air.
00:25:41.960And instead, the answer is kind of like, oh, you know, we got we got other stuff to do, I guess.
00:25:46.340Well, I mean, just this is one thing that that Yarvin was really and I I really didn't think Yarvin actually conducted himself very well in the Rufo Yarvin debate, which was sort of a I was like a prime fight.
00:26:01.500Was that I think that was 2024, actually?
00:31:35.640Some people are saying that this is like autism, that this is like, you know, Elon had kind of a spurky moment.
00:31:41.640And it kind of fits into that whole saying that, you know, a sufficient level of autism is indistinguishable from self-sabotage.
00:31:50.640Or, you know, I mean, he's a very physically awkward person.
00:31:55.640If you see him at the Trump rallies, he's he's like runs on stage and starts leaping in the air and throwing his hands around, you know, looking like a child who's in distress in a theme park line like that.
00:32:06.640You know, this is very common behavior for Elon.
00:32:46.640But but he just kind of like he kind of he was a guy in another room with a rally that was completely unendorsed or connected to any mainstream, you know, right wing thing.
00:32:55.640But but what the thing is, is that this this salute, which is, again, almost identical to the Elon one.
00:33:01.640And probably, let's be honest, I don't think Richard Spencer is a Nazi.
00:33:15.640But that but that that moment was so toxic that the media over the course of the last four years used that moment to kind of wedge and roll up the Trump movement and roll out their own anti fascist like European style Antifa activism in the United States over the course of four years.
00:33:38.640To the extent where you have like an army showing up in 2020 to burn down American cities in the name of fighting Trumpian fascism.
00:33:45.640And, you know, all right, which was, you know, Spencer's word for his movement that he stole from, I think, Godfrey or something.
00:33:53.640Yeah, like it didn't exist before then, like all of the hysteria around that.
00:33:58.640And sure, there's leftists losing their mind over this Spurg out moment from Elon, but like nothing's going to happen like this.
00:34:10.640It's going to be a moment that people put into a gif and like, you know, send out to each other on social media, like, you know, it's going to be kind of like a meme for right wingers to recognize each other.
00:34:22.640There's going to be a lot of good mornings, good mornings, you know, that thing there.
00:34:27.640But, but like, no, no one's going to care about this in, in, in two months.
00:34:32.640It's not going to be, it's not going to be like another anti fascist leftist surge based on this.
00:34:38.640Like, this is not fixing left's narrative problems.
00:34:41.640It does not give them activist energy.
00:34:44.640No one's feel like no one on the left is feeling energized by this.
00:34:48.640They're, they're still incredibly, incredibly confused.
00:34:51.640I mean, they're trying to go Trump's Hitler again, you know, and what's so ironic is that, that, you know, I kind of lied when I said that I don't completely pay attention to the left side.
00:35:01.640Everyone in left is like, why are all the conservatives disrespecting Martin Luther King today?
00:35:09.640And what's so notable about this one is that usually you have, well, I mean, I guess some, some, some.
00:35:14.640Some normie cons are going on about Martin Luther King, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:18.640But, but now these days, almost all of the conservative influencers that are as old or younger than me are all either not commenting on it or counter signaling Martin Luther King.
00:35:31.640And the left actively aware of how left wing he was and how much he would have been against all of their beliefs.
00:35:38.640And, and, and, and less complaining about this, but the problem is, is that once, once the right stops embracing these icons of the left and Martin Luther King certainly was one of them.
00:35:51.640The, their, their power to, to take umbrage over us, not celebrating him or us kind of seeing him for, you know, for the complicated individual that he was, and he was morally compromised in, in, in a number of ways, which I'm sure you're aware of.
00:36:07.640And that's deciding that, okay, no, we're not going to treat this person as a secular saint and, and, and, and teach our children that he was the greatest hero of American history and then get gobsmacked when they go away to college and learn that he was a socialist who supported affirmative action.
00:36:22.640And once that is taken away from them, they don't have the same angle to, to do this whole, like Martin Luther King versus Adolf Hitler story that was so effective for the, that they did in 2017.
00:36:39.020There, there's this weird transition where the left kind of got done with Martin Luther King, right?
00:36:42.840Like he wasn't radical enough for them.
00:36:44.600And so conservatives pounced on him saying, uh, you know, conservatives pounce, Republicans pounce.
00:36:49.140Uh, but they, you know, they, they, they embraced him saying, oh, well, you know, that we're the real heirs of Martin Luther King.
00:36:55.620Now that the left is done with him, we can pick him up and we can embrace him.
00:36:59.860And he, that's our mantra, you know, it's, you know, you know, content of your character, et cetera, et cetera.
00:37:06.100But once you, once you transition, you realize actually the content of Martin Luther King's character was a lot of cheating on his wife and being a socialist.
00:37:14.140Yeah, calling, you know, calling for, uh, you know, affirmative action and racial quotes.
00:37:19.420And, and Rufo would have nailed him back then.
00:37:41.960Like, do you, do you, as the left run back to Martin Luther King saying, oh no, this is what we really wanted the whole time.
00:37:47.420You know, like you've already transcended well beyond this guy.
00:37:50.540This guy isn't sufficiently radical by several miles for you at this point.
00:37:55.020And you're right that, uh, you know, the, between, you know, the Elon throwing the Roman and the crying, uh, immigrants, it feels like a repeat, right?
00:38:02.820We're hitting all the beats, you know, we're, you know, look, look at all this fascism, look at all the, the, and just nobody cares.
00:38:22.640But at this point, conservatives are the only people that care about this mythology.
00:38:28.280They're the only ones who care about these, these liberal ideas.
00:38:32.780Uh, everyone else has moved on because we realize that these symbols are totally irrelevant to the question over who rules North America and who creates the ideology that will teach to the next generation, which is the critical decision about who rules.
00:38:48.000And, uh, you know, the, the, the, the problem is, is, is that the, the reigning PMC coalition, uh, it doesn't really have a good answer for this anymore.
00:38:59.460Once, once, once they're kind of civil rights, Uber all less kind of grinds to a halt and they have to on, on, on, unravel this a little bit.
00:39:08.820And they're kind of like lost children.
00:39:11.040And, and I guess this probably might, might get in us until the, the next thing you want to talk about, but the, the, the vibe shift has happened.
00:39:20.520And the vibe shift is that our ruling class is totally lost.
00:39:24.820They are still in control of the institutions.
00:39:27.000They still have the money and power and we largely do not, but they also do not have a working political formula.
00:39:33.720And so what they're, they're just like kind of casting about like to random people that they would never have platformed before and, and, and thinking like, okay, can we make peace with this person?
00:39:43.860How could, how can we integrate choice elements of conservatism and neo reaction?
00:39:49.000And I don't know, communism or, or I don't anything, anything to make our political formula work anymore, anything that lead, because what they're worried about is once they shift the narrative, there'll be this like cascading narrative collapse that will cause everyone to kind of defect on them at once.
00:40:07.260The way that it happened in the Soviet union, like once the Gorbachevian kind of retraction came, like everyone kind of stopped believing in it at once.
00:40:16.260And then basically anyone could step in and take power.
00:40:20.480And, you know, eventually Vladimir Putin did.
00:40:22.940I mean, there's a person, a transitional figure that as of no consequence that everyone made fun of in the nineties in the form of Yeltsin.
00:40:31.320But, you know, that's what they're worried about.
00:40:34.040The thing is, and so they are in fact trying to put the woke away.
00:40:37.860The problem is, is that nothing can, is really working that well.
00:40:41.580And that's why, that's why the left hasn't researched.
00:40:47.120Is the resurgent going to be Bernie Sanders?
00:41:44.280It would be hilarious if, you know, the kind of the progressive regime falls because Tucker Carlson found out that groceries were affordable somewhere else, just like the Soviet Union.
00:41:55.360Like, oh, you mean you can just go places and buy groceries for affordable?
00:41:59.500There's places where you can buy affordable housing in other countries.
00:42:02.740But you really do have that moment where I think you're right.
00:42:06.980We're not facing a full circulation of elites yet, right?
00:42:09.760But what we have seen is several key elites defect, at least to some extent.
00:42:16.080We're seeing a counter-elite that is at least forming and some of its members are in place if we have not seen a complete revolution inside of all these different, you know, these different institutions.
00:42:28.780And so the question is, you know, do we think that this is something that will be kind of aborted, you know, midstream?
00:42:37.460Like, is this something that that Trump can get over the finish line, the right can get over the finish line?
00:42:42.360Does it does it seem like they have the vision and the momentum and the understanding necessary to do this?
00:42:48.280Or will eventually, like, just kind of Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg kind of, you know, bro out, go on Joe Rogan, you know, practice a little MMA and then kind of go right back to what they were doing before.
00:43:02.180But they don't announce all of their diversity hires quite so loudly.
00:43:08.020What they want to do is they want to have kind of like a Richard Hananiya-style Silicon Valley-focused elite human capital conservative progressivism or, like, new progressivism that is Silicon Valley.
00:43:22.340The problem is that their core young activist class does not like that.
00:43:28.320You know, they're not going to be on board with that.
00:43:30.840And so this is the thing, the ruling class does not know how to properly situate itself so that they have an activist class of young people.
00:43:42.740Now, I mean, there is kind of this weird thing where, paradoxically, you could see, like, a lot of the economically dispossessed young men from both the left and the right, they both have an interest for a much, much more radical circulation of elites.
00:43:57.800But the problem there, again, is that any kind of alliance like that would essentially just become an extension of the right wing at this stage because the left is just so insane that they could never organize anything or put forward a leadership class that wouldn't immediately just kind of descend into its own self-destruction.
00:44:18.160And so I think, you know, the real losers, I mean, I'm making predictions here, but it seems like the real losers are the people who imagined a genuine left-wing radicalism being the alternative to the PMC.
00:44:31.240And, you know, there is an opening here for the elite human capital types to kind of become the new establishment.
00:44:40.180But at the same time, as they become kind of more brutally capitalistic and more kind of coldly and uncaringly just maximize GDP as much as possible, they also open themselves up to a more kind of – a much, much more intellectual populist opposition that sees the sort of spiritual holes.
00:45:04.280And is able to kind of capture a lot of the Christopher Lash type ex-leftist intellectuals and merge them into kind of a new spiritual revolution that provides a new vision for humanity, which is – I guess that's kind of always been my hope.
00:45:22.280Is to kind of – to see kind of a new kind of Christian spirituality emerge from the spirituality that was left over from people like Reinhard Niebler and then revivified in the form of right-wing politics that can bring, you know, a new understanding of collective responsibility to the fore.
00:45:47.020Now, if someone's like here from Curtis Yarvin, he'll say, like, oh, that's – it's way, way, way, way, way, way too early for that, right?
00:45:56.380We need to go through this sort of soulless Caesarean Silicon Valley phrase before we have the kind of Merovingian renaissance that I'm imagining.
00:46:06.000I'm borrowing from Spengler here, obviously, or maybe not so obviously.
00:46:10.380But, you know, I think that is more the dynamic that's coming out.
00:46:15.140In some sense, you know, we'll always have leftism with us, but the kind of runaway leftist effect that we saw from 2012, that might be in remission for a really long time, potentially.
00:46:30.740Well, like you said, you know, when we saw even for a moment the left mention that they might need to address the problems of men, you know, the activists and even much of the media class lost their mind, right?
00:46:46.160Do you remember that moment where they're like, well, we got to get our own Joe Rogan?
00:46:49.900And people just lost it on, you know, the few voices that were like, maybe announcing that we hate half the population isn't the way to win this thing.
00:46:59.420You know, that almost shattered, you know, part of their coalition, just people suggesting that they make that small adjustment.
00:47:06.420So I think you're right that ultimately the left is not going to be able to reform itself into something that is going to appeal to a large amount of, you know, kind of the young activist base.
00:47:17.540And when we see kind of the elite human capital guys slide in, yes, they can make certain arguments that appeal to, you know, I'm sure a percentage of the elites that don't want to completely see a full circulation or trying to find a way to capture this.
00:47:33.320But again, we see the HB1 blow up, we see the, you know, the Great Panda Express scandal, you know, it becomes clear that a lot of those answers aren't good.
00:47:43.480Like, you know, not to get too in the weeds on the internet, but if you saw the Hanania, Jared Taylor, you know, interview and Jared Taylor start insulting a bunch of, you know, white guys in the middle of West Virginia.
00:47:58.140Like, it's very clear that, you know, I understand these people have an audience somewhere in kind of the upper middle class to elite, you know, but they don't have any kind of real support base outside of that.
00:48:14.720And I, I know that seems like a weak criticism since we're fans of elite theory, but it reminds me of kind of the, um, uh, sorry, what is the, the, the Catholic, uh, version of Christian nationalism?
00:48:47.460It feels like the same thing with the elite human capital guys.
00:48:49.940Like it's a movement for a handful of elite guys in the middle of nowhere, you know, built by a bunch of elite guys who feel straight in the middle of nowhere.
00:49:31.980I, you know, this is, uh, you know, you, you need to have a certain number of, of energized young men to, to make these dreams come true and to get new political formulas going.
00:49:45.800And, uh, I guess this is, this is just the, the problem right now is that every, every avenue has kind of been cut, cut into pieces.
00:49:55.100There, there are no, uh, but here, here's, here's another dimension of this too, right?
00:50:01.820And this, this is the same thing true with the Panda Express or, or the Zoomer question.
00:50:07.040Uh, and you can kind of see like what the, what the new political formula needs to be in the future for the human race.
00:50:14.000So, you know, Jared Taylor does this whole thing about, uh, you know, shitting on poor people from Appalachia.
00:50:20.960Uh, this has kind of been, um, this has kind of been like just how the ruling class in America has been everywhere since the end of the civil war.
00:50:29.860It's kind of been like, as soon as you enter into an elite space in America, like you can just insult the people from the South.
00:50:36.980It is like, it is like, this is people do.
00:50:39.920And, you know, I think even, even elites in the South kind of do that, which apparently was what happens.
00:50:45.320Uh, and, and, and, and fortunately, this is, this is one of the seedier elements of, of class and caste dynamics in inside societies.
00:50:53.800But I think what, what kind of needs to also be said, and there's sort of a J.D. advanced dimension to this too.
00:51:00.360It is true that, that poor populations in Appalachia and Zoomers, they do need a lot of tough love.
00:51:09.540Uh, it's just really, really important.
00:51:12.100And this is sort of what we're fighting over right now.
00:51:14.980It's really, really important that the people who are signing up to be their leaders demonstrate that they're giving this tough love because they're trying to form them into something better.
00:51:26.220That they actually love them that, or they actually loyal to them.
00:51:29.860You have to demonstrate you're loyal to people in order to be able to, you know, be the proper purveyor of, of the tough love that you're supposedly giving them.
00:51:41.020And, and, and, and, you know, the, the problem here is I think less so with Jared Taylor.
00:51:45.360And I think a lot of people getting angry at him.
00:51:47.700I think there's genuine reasons to kind of, I think, you know, think that he's wrong in a lot of regards.
00:51:53.340And I've criticized him in the past for, for various things, especially his theology, you know, which is much overly racial, racially focused.
00:52:03.220But the, the, the, I think that if you have an established track record of defending people collectively.
00:52:11.580Then I think you, you, you, you as a leader have the ability to kind of give people a little bit of tough love as encouragement.
00:52:18.700That also has to be part of the conversation.
00:52:21.400If we kind of walk into this, oh, we just want to be validated.
00:52:24.960We just want to be, you know, we want to be told how wonderful we are as our families fall apart, as our IQ goes down, as, you know, everyone's having wedlock out of, children out of wedlock, as we have increasing drug issues.
00:52:40.040I mean, you know, the African-American community got that from the Democrat Party.
00:52:43.860And then I'm not sure that they're better for it.
00:52:46.580I mean, I know they're not better for it.
00:52:48.200And so, you know, there is sort of a much more mature conversation going on here.
00:52:53.620And, and, and we'll need, I'm not so sure this is the right time to have that conversation right now, because right now, really the elites have to understand what their vision is before they start selling it to the rest of the American people.
00:53:08.280But that, that, that tough love is going to have to be a dimension of that vision.
00:53:15.820It's amazing the difficult truths you can tell people when they think you actually care about them, but it's the caring about them and the showing your loyalty and demonstrating your ability to reach out for someone, you know, it's the, you know, not, not to make this a, you know, a theological thing or a spiritual thing, but, you know, where else are you going to go?
00:53:34.760As you say, our problems are spiritual here.
00:53:36.280Or, you know, if you just walk up to someone on the middle of the street and you're like, you need Christ, you know, that works like a very low percentage of the time.
00:53:45.100But if you have a presence in someone's life, if you are helping to build a better community, if you are putting forward an example of what, you know, you're being an exemplar of kind of what a good life and what a good family looks like, you are creating opportunity for people in your community.
00:54:00.360And then you turn to somebody and they're like, man, you know, how, how do I make my life better?
00:54:04.900And you're like, well, the same way I did, you know, by, by embracing Christ, that's a much more effective way to tell them something that's a little difficult.
00:54:13.060And the same thing is true. Like, do, do people in, you know, downturned parts of the United States need to work harder? Do, you know, Zoomers, you know, need to embrace certain aspects of hard work?
00:54:25.900Sure. And many of them, I think, would be willing and open to that message if it was coming from someone who's like, by the way, I've built an employment network to make it easier for you.
00:54:35.680By the way, I've torn down the barriers that were real and that are accumulating against you in the university system.
00:54:42.320And this is what you need to be doing. You know, if you have built that relationship and you have that ability to speak into someone's life, then those harsh truths are valuable.
00:54:52.960But when you're just blurting them out, you know, to people who you're denigrating and say, ah, it's, you've been talking about, you know, the, the problems of inflation and illegal immigration and DEI for the last four to eight years.
00:55:05.220And then you're like, man, it's all fine. You'll, you know, then no, they're, they're not going to listen to you.
00:55:09.800And that's, that's also the thing about this, you know, not to harp on this H1B thing or the Panda Express that I mean, it, it never feels like the conservative movement is grooming a new ruling class.
00:55:24.740It always feels like they're just saving their jobs. Like this job is going to be here today, but I'm not like actually conquering something because if I was conquering a, you know, a country, you know, I, I'm setting that country out so that my, you know, sons and daughters can inherit it.
00:55:47.000And it never feels like the boomer conservatives are, are, are acting like their sons are going to inherit it. It sounds like, well, you know, you're here to make me feel like I've earned what I have.
00:55:58.680And, you know, I guess like, hopefully it'll be there for you. I mean, good luck if it isn't. And, you know, that that's not, that's not good enough. There needs to be an ownership over the system at some fundamental level.
00:56:10.440And, you know, I think this is, this is the conversation that needs to happen. And I guess, you know, on, on, on, on, on, on, on our current ruling class side, I guess, you know, we were going to talk about some of this, this Curtis Yarvin in the New York times thing.
00:56:23.380I mean, I, I guess when you, what you, what you see in blue America is like the kind of flip side of that. They, they game the system, they cornered it and they, they created the perfect environment for which anyone could just walk in and get power and money dumped on them.
00:56:42.660But then they forgot to actually invite people in, like invite the young men who could wield that power and who could be the people who would, would take control and, and, you know, create a new vision and not just kind of repeat the platitudes of the 1960s over again.
00:56:59.200And what happened was, you know, a bunch of people like Claudine Gay, a bunch of these sycophants who were just there to kind of re-up the, the feel good boomer messages of the 1960s, took all the money and positions of power and then just sat on them until the whole narrative became completely incoherent.
00:57:18.520And now, now, now, now everyone's looking at it and they realize it makes absolutely no sense. And I guess they're, they're going to try to make peace with people like Curtis Yarvin or I know something who knows, right?
00:57:33.800Well, yeah, we've mentioned it several times, so we might as well get into it. You know, a very surreal moment, obviously like Curtis Yarvin has been on Tucker Carlson at this point.
00:57:43.740He, he, he's not, he's, you know, obviously you've been reading Curtis for a very long time. I haven't really been reading him all that long, despite, you know, doing quite a bit of translating you are into, you know, normie friendly language as a, as a, as a, you know, no small part of my career.
00:58:01.960But, you know, this is a guy who just four years ago was completely untouchable, right?
00:58:07.380He just, his name, mentioning his name would get you fired, uh, in, in many circles. If someone found out you were reading Curtis Yarvin, it was, it was a, it was scandalous.
00:58:17.060Right. And now this week, uh, you know, the, the New York times interviewed Curtis Yarvin and they, you know, we've had outlets, you know, vanity fair and others, you know, scandalous member, you know, mentioned his name.
00:58:29.280Oh, here's the evil, you know, anti-democracy fascist philosopher. That's fueling, uh, you know, the, the Trump administration or Bannon or somebody like that.
00:58:38.300But this is the first time where, even though obviously the interviewer was still, you know, dismissive and hostile in some ways, it felt like, no, Curtis was being interviewed because he was ascended.
00:58:50.040Like his ideas are important. And if you are in a New York times reader, you need to interface with this. Now, this is no longer some scandalous blog that, you know, some kid is reading, uh, you know, on, on some dangerous forum.
00:59:02.840This is, this is ascendant power and you need to understand it.
00:59:06.780I mean, I kind of did the, I watched the interview and it, it always shocks me how whiny it didn't used to be like this. They didn't used to be right now.
00:59:18.440Every single NPR and New York times interviewer just feels like these effeminate little flops, like they're, they're doing this catty mean girl stuff.
00:59:29.800I mean, this is what they left us always do. They try to, they try to kind of like ambush Curtis with his worst quotes, always involving Anders Breivik and his statements about slavery or whatever.
00:59:41.440And then they try to like link him to elements of the Trump administration. But there, but there was, I mean, it was interesting that they actually gave him questions that seemed genuinely curious.
00:59:52.540I don't know what is going to happen with that, I guess.
00:59:56.680My favorite moment was with the interview was like, I find your historical references difficult to understand.
01:00:03.660Like, I think they obscure, like they, I find them more obscuring than enlightening.
01:00:10.180Like what would really help me is if you just put a label on yourself so I could put you in a box, as opposed to mentioning all of this horrible stuff about, you know, the primary sources of actual slave narratives in the years immediately following emancipation.
01:00:25.140I would really prefer if you stop providing context that actually proves what you're talking about and just give me the bullet points so that I can attack them as a straw man.
01:00:33.820I, but the thing is, is that like, I mean, they want kind of like the James Lindsay boomer, I call it the James Lindsay boomer bullets, right?
01:01:02.800I need to be able to tell my kid that Marxism is stupid.
01:01:05.180Give me five things to say real quick so I can stop listening to him.
01:01:08.080And, you know, the thing is, is that as we, I'm very ironic with James Lindsay is eventually he comes to sort of some of the things that Marx correctly observed about the self-defeating nature of liberalism and sort of like this pure growth capitalism.
01:01:25.780I don't like the word capitalism, but, you know, like, what's so funny is that like you eventually kind of hit, you end up glossing over critical truths that you need to understand.
01:01:34.760You know, the problem is, is I guess if this stuff can become mainstream in New York Times circles, it does seem like it opens up sort of like a big abyss underneath the feet of our current ruling elite.
01:01:54.260Now, if they can keep the conversation continuously on kind of the kookier elements of Curtis Yarvin, like the kookier elements of Curtis Yarvin are like neo-monarchist Silicon Valley overlords.
01:02:07.240Like if that, if they can make that the bullet point on Curtis Yarvin, you know, pairing it, pairing it up with, you know, maybe, maybe we shouldn't have abolished slavery in 1865 or whatever, right?
01:02:17.920You know, like if that can be like the bullet point on Curtis Yarvin, then, you know, then it's kind of easier to digest.
01:02:24.560But the New York Times audience isn't like the audience of James Lindsay.
01:02:28.620The New York Times audience exists inside a mode of constant dialectic.
01:02:36.880And so if Curtis Yarvin's ideas are acceptable, they have to become part of the discourse.
01:02:41.140And then sort of his more cogent criticisms become part of the ruling class's own kind of death drive, if you want me to put it this way.
01:02:52.200It becomes kind of part of how the ruling class, and I was going to develop this idea, but I haven't really had an opportunity to.
01:02:59.580Oftentimes, and this happened to the Soviet Union too, the ruling class gets into this mode where their own deconstruction gets pointed at their own power structures, and they begin to kind of abolish themselves.
01:03:14.380And this might be, you know, I don't want to blow this interview out of proportion, but this might be kind of the beginning of that process taking root.
01:03:24.440I do not know how you mainstream the stuff that's in the original UR in sort of elite centers of blue areas and not have it eventually come back to the fact that the entire ruling class decides that the ideas that they had previously dedicated to themselves are morally bankrupt and are not worthy to rule.
01:03:49.400They already kind of have that mode inside of themselves.
01:04:07.660In the Soviet Union, there was an answer.
01:04:09.860There was like the State Department's puppet, Boris Yeltsin, but Putin hadn't come around yet, right?
01:04:17.560Like the pure nationalist Russia hadn't come around yet.
01:04:20.140And the same thing is true, like the obvious person to give power to are like these Silicon Valley soulless elite human capital people like Mark Zuckerberg, like the bro Zuckerbergs or the Elon Musks.
01:04:35.240Like that's – but that's not a moral vision that anyone can believe in.
01:04:40.060That's not something that can inspire people to build better lives to themselves.
01:04:45.180And so, you know, like how long can the civilization proceed in sort of this like we're just doing pure GDP human optimization, elite human capital.
01:04:56.700I think that this is fundamentally degenerative.
01:04:58.920This is also what kind of eventually sunk Curtis Yarvin, in my opinion, was that he kind of like ignored core elements of his own insight, like specifically the Carlisle-ian ones.
01:05:11.780He kind of – this is what the great irony was is he is the person who introduced me to Carlisle, but he seemed to – and Carlisle is this great understander that systems come down to kind of the motivating heroic spirit that inhabits them, a very Spenglarian idea.
01:05:27.920But then Yarvin internalizes this and realizes that personnel are policy.
01:05:34.500And then all he does is like, oh, all we have to do is like slide the best system over it.
01:05:38.900And so if we have a system that acknowledges inside itself that the human matters, then we can totally get away from the human.
01:05:45.900And, you know, you see this in like this kind of ridiculous later idea of Yarvin that like you could make Joe Biden monarch and then he did be imbued with the virtues of a virtuous – like the system of the
01:05:57.920system would force him into that position.
01:06:00.540But that can't happen because the system is fundamentally has to be run by humans.
01:06:24.300So if you pay attention to Yarvin's writing, in a lot of ways, it feels like, especially after he's come out under his own name, you know, he's not under Mitch's Mallbug anymore.
01:06:33.760It feels like he has been writing in a way to get the most obvious system stuff through and then perhaps later on filter back in the things that are, you know, they're more spiritually necessary.
01:06:52.960It's more about virtue, becoming worthy, these kind of things.
01:06:55.980I know, like I said, I'm not trying to 5D chess here.
01:06:59.580But I do think there are certain parts of this that have been shaved off in an attempt to streamline and deliver it to a core audience that will buy into, you know, kind of the effective acceleration stuff.
01:07:12.760Now, hoping that that will add in later, almost in a Peter Thiel, you know, kind of hybrid Christianity, you know, why can't I remember any philosophers today?
01:07:51.180Yeah, and he says continuously, like, I know at some point someone's going to have to start a cult, but I just don't want to have any part in that.
01:07:58.660And so I don't know if he's focusing on the systems analysis because that's where he's strong and he's going to have to let somebody else figure that out, or if he's just trying to deliver the best message at the moment and there's more to that.
01:08:10.580But I would just say that I think there might be a little bit of adjusting his message in his current, you know, delivery structure.
01:08:17.620Not so much that he's forgotten all of Thomas Carlyle, but.
01:08:20.560Yeah, I think he understands his own limitations.
01:08:23.380That's my guess about this whole thing.
01:08:25.940And, you know, I think this is, this is what everyone's kind of understanding right now.
01:08:33.480This is like 2025 is when we understand all of our limitations.
01:08:37.560Like the New York Times PMC class realizes that it's lost all moral authority and there's no more political authority that believes in.
01:08:45.980The left realizes that it's not actually a communist revolution.
01:08:49.960The right realizes that it doesn't have the ability to actually be an alternative, or the conservatives realize that they don't have the ability to be an actual alternative ruling coalition.
01:09:01.560And, you know, and Trump realizes that he's probably not Caesar.
01:09:05.220He's going to try to go as far as he can.
01:09:07.360And 2025 is just like, okay, how far can you go in the right direction before you eventually tap out?
01:09:14.040And then, you know, when the baton goes to the ground, we'll see like what we can clump together to take the next steps.
01:09:22.380But, you know, for me, it's fairly clear, you know, what needs to happen.
01:09:26.600It's just that there's no one there situated to do it.
01:10:10.600Sometimes I am baffled by the marathon nature of them.
01:10:13.900I know, you know, you like I technically make more content than you, but you might actually like concentrate, you know, a good week and a half of my content into one stream.
01:10:23.500I have to take those nights where I get the night clear to do as much as I can.
01:10:33.280Blue Wizard Rope says Angel Summoner and Basket Weaving Bandits.
01:10:37.060Yes, the James Lindsay has correctly identified us, but your ability to summon celestial super beings is making my community organizing look a little bit redundant.
01:10:48.240Well, I have teamed up with your, you know, as a papist, you should recognize that my ability to team up with the Vatican as a Southern Baptist and produce, you know, the connection to any given, what was it?
01:11:01.500Zoroastrian demons, you know, it's quite a feat.
01:11:04.120I still have the funniest plot line of 2024.
01:11:09.480Well, you know, and I don't, I don't want to spend the entire time on this, but, you know, James was full on like calling for assassinations on his timeline.
01:11:16.720Like recently, like he was, he was saying we are having a Bonhoeffer moment after calling JD Vance a fascist.
01:11:22.340So anyone who's doing the smallest amount of math there, I mean, the man has absolutely lost his mind and is calling for violence and doxing.
01:11:30.660It's just sad because, you know, he, he preaches to a boomer audience and I think a lot of them, they're going to like start talking about Hegelian dialectics in a room full of people that like actually went through a philosophy course and they're just going to get laughed out of the room.
01:11:46.240Well, the good news is that nobody who goes through a philosophy course knows what a Hegelian dialectic is either.
01:12:03.340And, and, and, you know, you can tell when people are talking out of their backsides.
01:12:09.020And anyone who follows James Lindsay's bullet points is on a fast track to make a fool out of themselves in a pseudo intellectual context really quickly.