The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ America First & Regime Change with J. Burden

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now, as you may have detected from my recent coverage,

00:00:04.360 I have some slight concerns that the burgeoning American empire and the American First movement

00:00:10.880 are perhaps possibly incompatible. So in order to discuss this issue, I've invited on long-term

00:00:17.520 political observer and commentator and interviewer who has recently gone full-time in the sphere

00:00:24.240 after a very successful sort of fringe interviewing thing, which blossomed to be a mainstay of our

00:00:31.660 sphere. Jay Burden. Jay, thank you very much for coming on. Yeah, thank you so much for having me

00:00:36.040 on, Dan. It was very kind. So you've recently gone pro. Tell us about what you're doing and where

00:00:41.740 people can find you. Sure. So my primary output is the creatively named Jay Burden show, which you can

00:00:48.580 find on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, anywhere you listen to podcasts. Dan, I've obviously had you

00:00:54.260 on my show a handful of times. Pretty much everyone else from the Lotus Eaters. Yeah, just top tier

00:00:59.860 guests. So all of your favorites, you can find them there. And as Dan has intonated, this is what I do

00:01:07.680 now. So there is both a free and a premium version. The business model should seem familiar to Lotus

00:01:13.580 Eaters. But the difference is all of the content is on both. You just get it early and ad-free if you

00:01:19.000 throw me a few bucks. Excellent. Well, I hope people check that out. So, Jay, the reason I kind of wanted

00:01:24.720 to speak to you because there is this question of the soul of the GOP. And, you know, it wasn't really

00:01:32.520 that long ago, certainly for most of my lifetime, the GOP was pretty much basically just a neocon

00:01:38.680 party. And now that descriptor fits significantly less well. It's gone through a transition. Can you

00:01:46.960 tell us about how the GOP made that transition and where you think it lies today?

00:01:54.480 Sure. So when we're talking about the American empire, everything goes back to FDR. Much like the

00:02:01.460 French, we have a sequence of technically contiguous republics. But really, it is a new, completely new

00:02:09.880 empire. Obviously, you have the founders. It is remade with Andrew Jackson, remade during the Civil

00:02:16.380 War, and then very much so remade through FDR. As I'm sure you know, he made a number of sweeping

00:02:24.300 economic changes. He brought in our sort of pension pyramid scheme that's still a millstone around our

00:02:31.100 neck. But also, he is what launched the American empire from a regional to a international superpower.

00:02:38.240 Right before then, we still had colonies, but they were, you know, tiny little islands no one cared

00:02:42.260 about. We were still invading foreign nations, but they were mostly within our hemisphere, right north 0.82

00:02:49.500 and central American countries. And so that's really what launched America as an empire. We know it

00:02:55.440 today. And so because of that, the Republican Party, the conservative movement writ large,

00:03:01.660 its first real identity, because before FDR, there really were no conservatives in America.

00:03:07.040 It was what flavor of progressive were you? And so the original conservatives, so to speak,

00:03:12.900 existed in opposition to FDR. You have figures like Garrett Garrett, kind of what we call now the old

00:03:20.600 right who existed in opposition to FDR sweeping changes. Just for example, FDR made owning gold

00:03:27.760 illegal. He stole all of the gold in America. Not many people remember that, but effectively,

00:03:33.860 we had our great 20th century dictator the same way that Germany and Russia did. You see this in Orwell,

00:03:41.500 right? The idea of these three national superpowers, they're kind of the same. And obviously,

00:03:46.920 I'd much rather live in FDR's America than Stalin's Russia. But fundamentally, we did a lot of the

00:03:52.800 same things. We had effectively a controlled economy. If you want to look into this, you can

00:04:00.740 look up the NRA, not the rifle one, an earlier one, which was an attempt by FDR to set price controls

00:04:07.940 for everything. Now, that got struck down. It was one of the few things he lost on, but that indicates

00:04:13.740 the direction he was going. So the reason I bring this up is to say that the conservative movement

00:04:18.340 in America does not have a particularly old tradition. It doesn't go back to the founding

00:04:25.040 of America and claims that it does are kind of a cope. So as we've said, right, there are a number

00:04:32.440 of republics and we are still in FDR's America, right? This is the way that our country justifies

00:04:40.800 itself. You may have noticed that every time we've picked a dictator to pick a fight with,

00:04:45.120 he is likened to a certain Austrian painter. That is the myth that justifies the American empire.

00:04:52.160 We saved the world from Mustache Man, and so we get to control everything. 1.00

00:04:58.560 So the conservative movement really has its, I guess you could say, second kind of rejuvenation of

00:05:04.560 life in opposition to the Civil Rights Act, right? That is another kind of step forward in the growing 0.84

00:05:12.240 evil of the American empire. And in response to that, you get figures like Richard Nixon,

00:05:19.020 who was extraordinarily popular. We're still being rocked by anti-ice riots. Even now,

00:05:25.580 it's not quite as much in the news, but it's still going on. And many people have brought up

00:05:30.980 Kent State when U.S. National Guard, I believe, ended up shooting eight protesters. And while that

00:05:38.400 moment was sort of immortalized in the protest movement, you can read songs about it from Buffalo

00:05:42.580 Springfield and others. But what's not often discussed is that propelled Nixon to two of the

00:05:49.000 greatest electoral victories in history. The conservative movement, what we see now in the

00:05:54.980 Tea Party and then the MAGA base, is very much Nixon's coalition, what we call the silent majority, 0.56

00:06:01.060 the people who were opposed to what was the woke of their day. And so after Nixon, that base,

00:06:08.660 which sort of became the Republican Party, and you can even hear leftists talk about this with the

00:06:13.160 great party switch, when areas like the American South swapped from, effectively, you know,

00:06:18.960 Democrat control for generations.

00:06:20.320 They can never put a year on it, though. They can never put a year on this switch, yeah.

00:06:24.380 Or show anyone who actually crossed the floor or anything like that.

00:06:28.340 Right, exactly. But point is, that became, that group became the Reagan coalition. And with that,

00:06:37.960 the kind of driving thread of that party, that political tendency, became the Cold Warriors. And that

00:06:44.540 continued up until the wall fell. And through this entire time, you've got to remember,

00:06:49.340 America has been effectively at war since World War II. The whole government, the whole society is set

00:06:55.960 up to fight the Cold War. That's why we exist. And so when the wall falls, we have a dual loss of

00:07:03.020 purpose. Both, what is the point of this country? What is the point of this economy? Which again,

00:07:07.800 is a war economy. And also, well, what is the purpose of the Republican Party and the conservative

00:07:13.980 movement? And you have a split then. And the reason we have the neocons and their opposition,

00:07:20.200 the paleocons, is those are two different reactions to the wall falling. The neocons say,

00:07:25.840 awesome, we did it. We defeated the Reds. Now we get to rule the world. We need a new enemy to fight. 0.84

00:07:31.280 And that enemy first became the militia movement, domestic. It became figures like Tim McVeigh,

00:07:37.320 became Waco. It became that. And then very quickly morphed into the scourge of radical Islam, 1.00

00:07:44.580 quote unquote. And the paleocons said, no, no, no, we did it. You told us this is why we were doing 0.90

00:07:50.780 all of these things that in another time would be considered unwise or unsensible. It's because

00:07:56.420 we were fighting a war. Now we are a normal country again. We don't need to control the world

00:08:01.980 because communism is dead. It was a good faith reaction. And unfortunately, those people were

00:08:08.400 politically defeated. I would argue until now, there's a great interaction with Paul Gottfried.

00:08:14.160 I was talking to a friend of mine, and he obviously was one of the original paleocons back in the early 1.00

00:08:19.420 90s. And when asked about him versus his opposition, he said, well, there's one thing that I feel quite

00:08:26.020 good about. My friends are getting younger. My enemies are getting older, right? So the neocons won,

00:08:31.040 but now look at them, right? You've seen an immense brain drain. I mean, look at the difference

00:08:36.760 between Irving Kristol and Bill Kristol. Irving Kristol, regardless of your opinions, was a competent

00:08:41.320 guy. He's very smart. Bill Kristol is stupid, like a very stupid man. So that tendency has died as a

00:08:48.780 voted force, right? It's not alive. It's not living anymore, but they still have an immense amount of

00:08:53.800 power. And so the reason that I'm going through all of this is to say America as an empire exists to

00:08:59.520 fight a war. And obviously, as this regards the economy, we still kind of have a command economy.

00:09:07.320 We've sold off an immense amount of our industrial base, and that happened during the 70s and 80s

00:09:13.640 under these kind of neoliberal or neoconservative economics. But what we do have as far as

00:09:21.760 manufacturing is entirely high-end defense manufacturing. So an example I think of,

00:09:27.840 there's a town not too far away from me called Radford, Virginia. Other than having a very

00:09:33.060 unimpressive university, what do they have there? They have a missile plan, and that is the only

00:09:39.840 good-paying local job that isn't connected to the university. So one of the devilish things about this

00:09:45.360 is, like I said, when people talk about military Keynesianism,

00:09:51.180 we do effectively still live under an economic system where the government decides to spend money

00:09:58.220 on things, and that effectively creates a jobs program. And so that's the really thorny issue,

00:10:03.620 right? Well, why do we always pick wars? Well, one of it is because we have bloodthirsty psychopaths 0.52

00:10:09.120 at the wheel. That's definitely part of it. Another part of it, and this is why there's such a deep

00:10:14.880 divide in the Republican Party, is in a lot of red states, in a lot of rural areas, what good jobs

00:10:20.800 there are, are defense contractors. And this goes down to, obviously, the high-end stuff like planes

00:10:26.160 and missiles, but even small things like, you know, who makes the, you know, the boxes for trucks,

00:10:31.280 and who does all of these things? So a slight diversion here, but it is relevant. You say you've

00:10:37.000 got the high-end stuff, and I agree you have, but a lot of the basic components going into these

00:10:42.440 things are now manufactured in China. That's true. But remember, right, I think it's called the

00:10:48.400 Berry Amendment, but there's a requirement at how, made in America, any piece of gear, any piece of kit

00:10:56.080 the US Army uses. And obviously, you're 100% right. And this is a very real problem. And even under

00:11:01.320 Biden, you saw a desire through the CHIPS Act to return that sort of specialized manufacturing to the

00:11:07.600 US. I think that that pivot is real. But on the other end, it goes down to, I mean, things you

00:11:12.940 would never even think of, like nylon, web gear, stuff like that. There are a million different

00:11:17.920 mom-and-pop shops with, you know, five to 100 employees that make some specialized piece of kit

00:11:24.200 in some town you've never heard of. And that is the cornerstone of the economy. And to go back to my

00:11:29.600 point that the US exists to fight a war, a very valid question is, why do we keep making tanks?

00:11:37.580 We make tanks all the time. And what do tanks exist to do? Well, effectively, the M1 Abrams is designed

00:11:44.300 to fight in Germany against the Russians. It's not designed for what we've been doing since the Cold

00:11:51.180 War, which is, you know, kicking over mud huts and blowing away goat farmers. Which, I mean, look, 0.98

00:11:58.040 I don't have sympathy for many of those goat farmers personally, but you can look at something 0.96

00:12:02.100 like the M1 Abrams and say, well, that's not what you do. Yeah, it's not the right tool for the job.

00:12:06.900 We do that because, one, we sort of just never stopped preparing for the Cold War. And two,

00:12:13.780 that's a huge economic engine. Those things are incredibly expensive. It takes a lot of effort

00:12:18.840 to make them, all the way down to the shells that they fire. And no one really wants to get rid of it.

00:12:24.960 And so it creates this sort of devilish problem where we are constantly preparing for a war

00:12:29.820 and need to justify this massive military expenditure. So getting back to the war in Iran.

00:12:38.440 Well, okay, it's not officially happened yet. It seems as if it's happened, or it's about to happen,

00:12:43.860 rather. So let's look at kind of our immediately preceding horrible, stupid neocon war, 0.99

00:12:51.000 war in Afghanistan, right? That cost us, depending on who you ask, roughly $3 trillion, an immense 0.99

00:12:57.340 amount of money. Going back to the fall of the Berlin Wall, that is the last time we as a country

00:13:05.380 had a budget surplus. I don't particularly like Bill Clinton for any number of reasons. But when

00:13:12.100 he talks about the freedom dividend, right, that surplus we had by no longer needing to fight the

00:13:17.780 Cold War, that was an option to be a normal country again. We could have some semblance of 0.99

00:13:23.280 sound economic policy.

00:13:24.420 The only thing I would add to that is that Clinton also got lucky in that that period just happened to

00:13:30.020 be peak workforce participation. So that was the peak number of boomers of the peak generation

00:13:35.400 who happened to be in work at the time. So you would expect from the demographic flow for that

00:13:39.500 to also be a strong period.

00:13:41.440 A hundred percent. And this will be relevant. So what happened is after that, we sort of entered

00:13:48.520 shall we say a mutually agreed upon insanity, where the left massively ratcheted up the welfare state,

00:13:57.160 the right massively ratcheted up defense spending, and no one really wanted to touch taxes because

00:14:03.760 that's an uncomfortable thing for everyone involved. And so you have things like obviously the global

00:14:08.440 war on terror, which just Afghanistan alone cost several trillion dollars. And that doesn't count

00:14:13.140 the sort of knock on effects, like how much the VA costs, the other things. And the left launched a

00:14:19.080 massive expansion of social welfare. I mean, look at the sort of ninja loans that created the housing 0.59

00:14:25.620 collapse. Look at Obamacare, look at any one of these things. And so if you look at a graph of the

00:14:30.820 U.S. debt to GDP ratio, we're currently sitting at 1.23 debt to GDP. Obviously that-

00:14:37.840 You cost 37 trillion in debt this morning.

00:14:40.840 Oh, geez. Yeah. Okay. So point is quite a lot. And I'll be honest, I am not one of these,

00:14:50.140 the sky is falling people, because at least in my entire life, the debt has always been a problem.

00:14:56.000 And sure, there are very real hard limits to that. But if you make everyone in the world use your

00:15:04.040 money and have a giant stick, you can kind of get away with things that normal countries can't.

00:15:09.820 We could argue about to what degree is that system kind of coming to an end. But to get back to your

00:15:14.540 original question, and I realize this is 20 minutes into an answer.

00:15:19.240 It's a good answer, so I'm happy with it.

00:15:20.620 When we talk about that split all the way back to the 90s between the neocons and the paleocons,

00:15:26.420 the paleocon movement has gone through several instantiations, right? We obviously had the 1.00

00:15:32.340 original paleocons, Pat Buchanan, people like him. And the next time that comes around is the tea party.

00:15:39.060 You may remember this is when I was kind of in grade school, an early teenager. And look,

00:15:45.460 this was effectively the same silent majority coalition. You can look at the rallies and see

00:15:51.020 normal, hardworking, predominantly white Americans. And what did these people organize around?

00:15:57.840 Well, it was one, anti-war, because there were certainly a very small but vocal conservative

00:16:03.200 opposition to those wars that grew over time. And also, the tea party in particular was extremely

00:16:09.440 opposed to Obama and his spending, right? It was a budget hawk movement. And when that movement was

00:16:16.700 sort of absorbed into MAGA, it kept some of its tendencies. MAGA cares much less about the budget,

00:16:25.140 really, than previous versions of this did. Trump and, you know, Besant and people like him are much

00:16:31.300 less concerned about debt than Republicans have been previously. Now, an objection would be to say,

00:16:36.980 how much did the Republicans really care about the debt? The answer is not very much if we look at

00:16:42.100 their actual revealed preference. But that's sort of gone by the wayside. But what he has kept from

00:16:49.380 the Buchananite right is, one, a desire to return manufacturing to the US. We see this dismissively

00:16:56.860 referred to as protectionism, but also an opposition to war. That's really where Trump launched himself

00:17:06.100 is by attacking the Bush family, by saying all of these wars are stupid and wrong and haven't worked 1.00

00:17:12.540 out in our best interest. And so to me, the split that you're talking about, if Trump goes ahead and 0.99

00:17:20.480 does it, if he says, you know, America is going to back up Israel, that will 100% shatter the MAGA base.

00:17:29.860 Because, look, there certainly are those neocons, those boomer conservatives who don't really care,

00:17:36.620 who would be just as happy voting for another George Bush and just like that Trump talks tough.

00:17:41.600 But also, there's a large portion among the MAGA base, particularly younger voters who won Trump

00:17:48.420 the 2024 election, who are very much opposed to this. I realize this is by definition an anecdote,

00:17:55.120 but I talked to quite a lot of global war on terror veterans, right? The people who actually were at

00:18:00.540 the front lines of this conflict. And almost to a man, they are furious with the idea that Trump is

00:18:08.040 going to take us back. If you look at Trump's speech in 2020, when he was leaving power, what did

00:18:14.320 he say was his legacy? He said, the thing that I am, and this is a paraphrase, not a quote, the thing I am

00:18:18.880 the most proud of is I was the one US president who didn't start a war. And fair enough, right? That was seen 0.78

00:18:24.460 by the man himself as an integral part of his legacy. Why many people liked him, why he was

00:18:29.600 able to open up a new segment of support Republicans were not traditionally able to access. And to see

00:18:35.820 that thrown away effectively for nothing, we're not going to gain anything from this. We're very

00:18:41.600 unlikely to actually turn Iran into some sort of Western style democracy. I can't even say it without 0.87

00:18:48.260 laughing. It's very, very upsetting, genuinely, and it will 100% splinter his base. One of the

00:18:58.660 other things that we need to talk about is that Trump is in sort of a rough spot. The economy is

00:19:04.580 not very good. I'm sure you've discussed that before in America. There have been gains in certain

00:19:11.820 areas. It seems like the housing market is starting to cool, but it's still incredibly high cost of living.

00:19:16.720 That brings up certain, I mean, that puts pressure on any precedent. Also, we need to acknowledge the

00:19:24.100 fact that Trump's ICE raids are divisive. I happen to support him, but they have hurt his popularity

00:19:31.640 among certain demographics. And look, I get it. Trump is probably not running for another term.

00:19:36.900 So this may be indeterminate to him, but there is a very real possibility that if he gets us into a war,

00:19:42.100 particularly a war for Israel, which is extraordinarily unpopular, he could effectively

00:19:48.500 hand the entire rest of government in the upcoming elections to the Democrats because he's effectively

00:19:54.780 self-sabotaged. So sorry, Dan, I realize it's basically a 25-minute answer to a very simple

00:19:59.700 question, but nonetheless, that's sort of where I see it.

00:20:02.360 No, I think that depth is probably necessary. But so getting to the heart of what many people are

00:20:08.840 seeing is a betrayal, what were they sold with America First? I mean, what are the key tenets of

00:20:13.860 America First?

00:20:15.460 Yeah, so effectively, America First applies to both economic and foreign policy. The economics is

00:20:21.760 pretty easy to see, right? When Trump launched his sweeping tariff regime, right, that we were all

00:20:27.800 assured was very briefly going to bring the world to its knees. The deal was, and honestly, it was much

00:20:32.980 more generous than it was sort of portrayed in the media, but it was basically a system of reciprocal

00:20:38.600 tariffs, right? If you in Vietnam tariffs our goods at 93%, guess what? That's what you're getting

00:20:45.720 from us. It's funny, I attempted to buy a suit during the middle of it. It's actually remarkably

00:20:52.000 difficult to get a made in America suit for less than the price of a cheap used car. But when I went to

00:20:58.980 checkout, and it's funny, this was going around social media, and I just completely missed it.

00:21:03.680 There was a 193% tariff added on to the price of that. I don't know where they were sourcing it from,

00:21:11.660 but it took my suit from being something I could afford to, again, two or three months of mortgage

00:21:17.300 payments. And all of a sudden, it didn't seem so appealing. So that's part of it, right? A system of

00:21:23.040 reciprocal tariffs. And one of the things that, I'll be honest, I am very anti-war, but I would 0.99

00:21:29.200 almost take the trade of another war in the Middle East if Trump actually made good on his promise to

00:21:33.980 end income tax. I realize that sort of compromises my principles, but it's a pretty good bribe.

00:21:41.120 It's a bribe, but it's a good one.

00:21:43.400 Yeah, it's one you have to consider. But the reason I bring it up is because Trump had basically said,

00:21:48.140 or at least talked about, there's a chance that we could, because we are one of the biggest markets

00:21:52.940 in the world, we could replace our income tax with tariffs. And look, that hasn't happened. It

00:21:59.740 seems rather unlikely. Again, I will lose my mind if it happens. I will be MAGA for the rest of my life

00:22:06.220 if he doesn't. But it's basically saying, well, if you want access to our massive capital markets,

00:22:14.620 you're going to have to pay us for the privilege. And this is in stark contrast to the neocons or

00:22:19.560 the neoliberals who were free traders, who were globalists, who basically said, we want to

00:22:24.260 maximize the velocity of capital by removing any barrier to entry.

00:22:30.520 Now, what's interesting about this is this is another area in which Trump is sort of on a knife

00:22:37.200 edge about whether he is going to betray that or not. One of the things you may or may not know

00:22:43.100 about America is that we have massive federal holdings of land, particularly west of the

00:22:49.740 Mississippi. These are things obviously like the famous Yellowstone National Park, but there are

00:22:54.760 dozens and dozens of others. This is untouched wilderness. Some of it has kind of light

00:22:59.040 agriculture on it. We will let cows graze on it, as you saw with the kind of Bundy standoffs of 10 to

00:23:04.820 15 years ago. But there is a, and I'm struggling for lotus eaters friendly words here. There is a,

00:23:14.240 shall we say, rhino, Republican in name only, senator from Utah who is very much trying to get

00:23:21.260 Trump to privatize this land with no provision for U.S. national purchase. So effectively selling

00:23:28.940 out our birthright to BlackRock, to the Chinese, to other people like that.

00:23:36.360 Oh, I was going to say, if he's selling it to farmers, I'd be okay with that.

00:23:40.680 Of course not. That would make entirely too much sense. And also, let's be honest, a lot of this

00:23:46.260 land is unsuitable for agriculture. It's, you know, mountain ranges, it's deserts, it's things that are

00:23:52.360 very beautiful, right, that form the kind of birthright of America. But realistically, unless

00:23:58.140 you want to put housing for H-1B visas or strip mine it, it's not particularly useful. But the

00:24:04.520 reason I bring that up is that's another area where we could potentially see another betrayal.

00:24:08.740 But one of the positive things, and I think this is a bill put forward by Raskin and, weirdly enough,

00:24:16.780 Senator John Fetterman, right, the mentally retarded Democrat from Pennsylvania. 0.98

00:24:22.660 But weirdly, a Democrat who's received a sufficient head injury that he actually talks sense a lot of 0.72

00:24:28.620 time.

00:24:29.500 Yes, it turns out you can have a stroke and technicality come out smarter on the other end

00:24:36.040 of it. But the reason I bring that up is they're putting forth a bill to do the opposite, to basically

00:24:40.440 say to limit the amount of land that Chinese in particular, but also other foreign adversaries

00:24:46.660 can buy in the US, particularly around US military bases, which has been a major problem, particularly

00:24:52.220 under Biden. And so the reason I bring this up is to say that while Trump has been America first on

00:24:57.940 certain aspects of the economy, right, setting up kind of terriers, tariff barriers, expressing a

00:25:04.620 desire to return manufacturing to the US, there are other areas that are undecided, right? Similarly,

00:25:09.560 are we going to erect a barrier to capital? Or are we going to become a sort of international

00:25:16.000 corporate bordello?

00:25:17.960 So I'll give Trump currently, you know, by the America first standard on economics, sort

00:25:24.820 of an incomplete, right? We haven't seen this come out. There are very major decisions to

00:25:29.120 be made. But given his past track record, it seems as if this is something he wants to go

00:25:34.540 through with. Now, the foreign policy, Trump 1.0 had a remarkably good, in the grand scheme

00:25:41.240 of things record on this. And in fact, there were cases like we saw with Syria, where he

00:25:47.160 was better than what we actually got. We have generals admitting, oh, we just lied to the

00:25:52.820 president. We just said we took all our troops out of Syria and did it anyway. So fair enough, 1.00

00:25:58.220 you can't really fault him for that. He thought he was doing something America first, right,

00:26:02.480 pulling us out of this useless foreign war. But he was lied to. I can't really blame him for that,

00:26:06.920 especially the first time around. I mean, according to your civics class, that just doesn't happen.

00:26:12.700 But it turns out, in the state of exception for a certain sort of partner country on the

00:26:18.140 Mediterranean coast, that happens, right? Okay, let's look at Trump 2.0. Well, we've seen some

00:26:24.540 strong signs, right? He very much wanted to end the war in Ukraine. It seems as if Russia has decided

00:26:32.540 they don't want to end it. So again, he wasn't in power for the last four years. He signaled an

00:26:39.140 intention to end that war. Fair enough. You know, I can't blame him for something that is very much

00:26:45.000 out of his control. But we started to see worrying signs with the Houthis, right? And on one hand, 0.97

00:26:52.720 I get it, right? We are the world police. We are the empire. And part of that, as I'm sure as a Brit

00:26:59.120 with a saver on the wall behind you, you're aware, that involves protecting international

00:27:03.520 shipping. That's part of the deal. That's why you're in charge. The Houthis had blocked off 0.90

00:27:08.400 that street. And so... I mean, that is explicitly why dollar is the world's reserve currency. It's

00:27:14.480 because of global shipping government. If you would like to see the full version of this premium video,

00:27:19.580 please head over to lotuseaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our premium content.

00:27:29.680 so...

00:27:30.360 so...

00:27:39.800 so...

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 24, 2025

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ America First & Regime Change with J. Burden

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