Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - Timcast IRL #470 - Author Of "The Next Civil War" Stephen Marche Joins, Says We Are On VERGE Of Civil War

00:00:00.000 Hey, you guys know me.

00:00:01.000 Every other word out of my mouth must be civil war or something like that.

00:00:04.000 And people are in the chat saying, Tim, civil war pool.

00:00:08.000 Well, I certainly think we're in a cold civil war.

00:00:12.000 Maybe it's even hot.

00:00:13.000 It's just too early for us to realize it on a grand scale.

00:00:17.000 But things are absolutely getting crazy.

00:00:18.000 We have a couple big stories.

00:00:19.000 I mean, one of which is this Black Lives Matter activist who was arrested.

00:00:23.000 You need to turn that volume down.

00:00:24.000 What are you doing here?

00:00:25.000 I got you, homie. 0.99

00:00:26.000 I get one.

00:00:27.000 You get one.

00:00:28.000 This Black Lives Matter activist was bailed out by BLM, by Black Lives Matter in Louisville, after he was arrested over the attempted assassination of a Jewish Democrat.

00:00:38.000 Now, they're saying he's mentally unwell.

00:00:41.000 Other people have pointed out, it's been reported, that he was actually advocating for a black nationalist organization called, what was the name of it?

00:00:48.000 I'm forgetting the name.

00:00:49.000 It's the armed forces of some extremist organization or whatever.

00:00:53.000 Pan-African Socialists or something?

00:00:54.000 No, it was a similar group to the black Hebrew Israelites.

00:00:58.000 And so when this stuff happens and you're getting the, you know, attempted assassination of politicians, it's coming right after Adam Kinzinger said, you know, he believes that it's possible a civil war could start.

00:01:08.000 And if it does, you will see targeted assassination.

00:01:10.000 So I want to get into this.

00:01:12.000 And we do have a lot of stories coming out now.

00:01:13.000 We got the National Guard deployed in New Mexico to be teachers and things like that.

00:01:17.000 We've got the trucker convoy, obviously.

00:01:18.000 That's up in Canada, but there's talk of an American convoy.

00:01:21.000 We've got cancel culture.

00:01:23.000 We've got, you know, similar issues around this.

00:01:25.000 We've got, in Florida, they've just passed a bill to ban abortion after 15 weeks, which of course is generating a lot of controversy.

00:01:33.000 Joining us to discuss this in depth is the author of The Next Civil War, Stephen Marsh.

00:01:38.000 Hey, pleasure to be here.

00:01:39.000 Do you want to quickly introduce yourself?

00:01:41.000 I'm a writer.

00:01:42.000 I'm a Canadian.

00:01:42.000 I wrote this wonderful book.

00:01:45.000 Yeah, and I sort of think a next civil war is very much a real possibility for the United States in the near future.

00:01:52.000 I think you wrote... What did you write for The Guardian?

00:01:54.000 The next civil war is here.

00:01:55.000 Well, that was an excerpt from the book.

00:01:56.000 I mean, the book got excerpted in The Guardian and The Washington Post and Foreign Policy.

00:02:01.000 Sort of the more technical aspects got excerpted in Foreign Policy.

00:02:05.000 And so, yeah, it's been around.

00:02:08.000 And it was based on an article I wrote in 2018 in Canada about the possibility of a civil war, which I was talking about then in 2018.

00:02:18.000 And so, yeah, I'm a stray cat journalist.

00:02:20.000 I go around and write for whoever leaves out a little plate of milk for me.

00:02:23.000 So, I think we've actually, on this show, discussed your article.

00:02:26.000 I know I talked about it on one of my other channels.

00:02:29.000 Oh yeah.

00:02:29.000 And I think there's like a core that we completely agree on, but then there's like a divergent worldview we have based on, you know, different political parties, which I think will be a really interesting conversation.

00:02:39.000 What's the core we agree on?

00:02:41.000 Well, I think it's, you know, people are forming.

00:02:45.000 At the time we read the article, it was easy for me to pull out the excerpt and be like, you mentioned something about people are sort of tribalizing.

00:02:53.000 They're focusing more on, you know, their own in groups and things like that.

00:02:56.000 And that's causing this like outward spread.

00:02:58.000 You've talked about things like cancel culture.

00:03:00.000 Yeah.

00:03:00.000 Specific scenarios and stuff so I'm like I'm reading your articles and I'm like I think we we agree on those things

00:03:06.000 But then there's certain specific points in politics. I think what disagreements are sure yeah, but but that doesn't

00:03:11.000 You know whether or not we agree on something like a trucker convoy

00:03:14.000 It doesn't change the fact that the core of what's happening civil war conflict the escalation we agree

00:03:19.000 yeah, I mean I definitely think an a nonpartisan observer can look at the United States and

00:03:25.000 I mean, it's a textbook case of a country headed for civil war.

00:03:27.000 It's not really a question of your political affiliation.

00:03:30.000 It's really a question of deep structures that, you know, anyone can see.

00:03:35.000 So those are not, I don't really think of that as a partisan issue.

00:03:38.000 Right.

00:03:38.000 I agree.

00:03:39.000 And what I keep saying is, you know, to a lot of people who maybe are on one side or the other, it doesn't matter if you think you're right.

00:03:45.000 What matters is both sides think they're right.

00:03:47.000 Well, I mean, there's that old expression, would you rather be married or right?

00:03:51.000 Right.

00:03:51.000 And like in America, a lot of people would rather be right than married.

00:03:54.000 You know, that's that's where you're at now.

00:03:56.000 I mean, I should say, like, I don't really think of myself as a partisan in the United States because I'm a Canadian.

00:04:01.000 So my like when I talk about Canada.

00:04:03.000 We can definitely talk about Canada, but what we're seeing in Canada is essentially a proxy conflict for the hyper-partisanship in the United States.

00:04:11.000 And I think of myself like, I think when you think of Canada, you think left.

00:04:16.000 But honestly, as I've crossed the United States writing this book and as I've interviewed the experts, I'm not part of these tribes, right?

00:04:23.000 Like, I'm outside of all of these tribes.

00:04:25.000 So it's not really that we have a difference in tribalism, so much as I have a different perspective because I'm a different citizen of a different country.

00:04:33.000 Well, so we'll get into everything.

00:04:34.000 Yeah.

00:04:35.000 We'll get into all this stuff.

00:04:35.000 Plus, we have a bunch of other stories, too, when we get into the specifics on, but also hanging out is Daniel Turner.

00:04:40.000 Yes, great to be back.

00:04:41.000 Daniel Turner, your favorite energy expert, powerofthefuture.com.

00:04:44.000 And because of the coming civil war, I live on a very large farm, far, far away from civilization.

00:04:51.000 So I'm fascinated by this conversation.

00:04:52.000 So good to be here.

00:04:53.000 We have incredible chicken conversations.

00:04:55.000 Behind the scenes.

00:04:56.000 This seems like a pretty functioning farm to me.

00:04:58.000 I mean, you got fresh eggs, I see the incubator downstairs.

00:05:01.000 I mean, like, you're one step away from Jeremy Clarkson running a, like, I own a farm show.

00:05:05.000 I mean, we grew some vegetables in our garden, but... How'd they go?

00:05:10.000 We grew all tomatoes at once because we were newbies and didn't know what we were doing.

00:05:13.000 And then we had, like, 50 tomatoes to eat at one time.

00:05:16.000 Oh, that's when you need to can them.

00:05:18.000 You need to get the sauces going.

00:05:19.000 We went berry picking because there's, what are they called, wine berries everywhere.

00:05:23.000 This is a beautiful part of the United States of America, I gotta say.

00:05:26.000 This little corner of West Virginia and Maryland.

00:05:28.000 In the summertime, there's wineberries.

00:05:30.000 They're a Chinese raspberry, and they're everywhere.

00:05:32.000 And people pull over their cars on the side of the road and pluck some and just eat them.

00:05:35.000 But we'll get into all that as well.

00:05:37.000 Am I here to talk about agriculture?

00:05:39.000 Yes.

00:05:39.000 How do you rate wineberries on a scale from 1 to 10?

00:05:43.000 Good to see you, man.

00:05:44.000 Pleasure to be here.

00:05:45.000 I'm looking forward to hearing about this documentation you've come across.

00:05:49.000 I'm not going to waste any time, Ian Crossland.

00:05:50.000 Catch you guys soon.

00:05:52.000 I am stoked for this conversation with our northern neighbor.

00:05:54.000 Canadians are always incredibly nice guests and very nice people in general, and it's been a really interesting conversation before the show.

00:05:59.000 It's going to be a great one, so glad you're here.

00:06:01.000 Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com and become a member to help support all of our work, support our journalists, support this show.

00:06:09.000 As a member, you'll get access to exclusive members-only segments from the TimCast IRL podcast.

00:06:14.000 Now, truth be told, because of how we're going to be handling today's episode, it'll be a little different.

00:06:18.000 Normally, we focus on, like, topical news.

00:06:19.000 I don't think we're going to have a members segment, because I think we're going to try and hit every possible point we can in one big conversation.

00:06:26.000 Whereas normally, we try and, like, create, like, a special segment for members.

00:06:29.000 So I think we just might go a little bit longer than usual, but let it be open and free to the public for everybody to just watch.

00:06:35.000 But that being said, we do have a massive library of members-only videos.

00:06:39.000 You definitely want to check those out because you're helping make sure this business can continue to operate.

00:06:44.000 If, in the face of cancel culture and all that stuff, this is how it all operates and you keep our journalists employed, don't forget to smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends.

00:06:54.000 Let's just jump in to the first article we have here from January 4th by a man named Stephen Marsh.

00:07:00.000 The next U.S. 0.77

00:07:00.000 Civil War is already here. 0.77

00:07:03.000 We just refuse to see it.

00:07:05.000 I saw this.

00:07:06.000 It's tagged by The Guardian, The Far Right.

00:07:10.000 And as I was reading it, you know, there are some things in it that I was like, okay, I don't know if I agree with that.

00:07:15.000 I think you talk about voter suppression and things like that.

00:07:18.000 I think it's one of the issues.

00:07:19.000 But as I was getting into it and talking about how we've got these, you know, look, a potential political assassination attempt.

00:07:26.000 Yes.

00:07:26.000 That's not necessarily like a left-right thing with this Black Lives Matter activist.

00:07:31.000 It just shows that there's extremism emerging in this country.

00:07:35.000 But of course, you also have serious things over the past several years, like Charlottesville,

00:07:38.000 where there's these clashes in the street.

00:07:40.000 Yes.

00:07:41.000 So let's just start from the beginning, though.

00:07:42.000 You wrote a book, The Next Civil War.

00:07:44.000 This article is titled The Next U.S. Civil War is Already Here.

00:07:47.000 I don't write the headlines.

00:07:49.000 You didn't write that?

00:07:49.000 Yeah.

00:07:50.000 So do you think that it is likely?

00:07:52.000 Is it your opinion or is it a journalist's assessment?

00:07:56.000 Well, the book is really based on the best available models.

00:08:00.000 That's how I did it.

00:08:02.000 I tried to keep myself out of it as much as possible.

00:08:06.000 So, you know, the leading experts that... Foreign Policy did a survey, like, their number was a 67% chance of a civil war.

00:08:13.000 That also coincides with polls about average Americans, how likely they think a civil war is.

00:08:21.000 So, you know, I feel with this stuff you don't need to exaggerate.

00:08:24.000 It's so scary anyway that, like, what I wanted to do in the book is be as precise as possible, right?

00:08:30.000 And use the best available evidence that I could.

00:08:33.000 So, you know, yeah, there's a process underway.

00:08:37.000 The United States is a textbook case of a country headed for civil war on a number of fronts.

00:08:41.000 And it's not one thing.

00:08:42.000 It's actually what they call a complex cascading system.

00:08:46.000 So, it's things feeding into each other.

00:08:49.000 So, on one hand, it's political illegitimacy.

00:08:51.000 On the other hand, it's effects of climate change.

00:08:53.000 On the other hand, it's the levels of inequality, which are at unprecedented levels.

00:08:58.000 You know, literally levels that haven't been seen since 1776.

00:09:02.000 And all of these things contribute to each other and factor into each other.

00:09:07.000 And that's why the United States is kind of in a unique position because, you know, all these things are happening in the rest of the world as well, but it's the way that they feed into each other that creates such a dangerous situation for the United States.

00:09:17.000 Are there specific things that you found factored across multiple potentials that you just kept showing up?

00:09:22.000 Like, this is one of these things that it seems to be in all these scenarios.

00:09:26.000 Well, the big... I mean, there are a few ones that are big.

00:09:29.000 Like, I don't really separate them out because I do think they feed into each other.

00:09:33.000 But, like, the decline of faith of institutions, so the fact that only 20% of Americans believe their electoral system is fair, you know, that's right.

00:09:42.000 That's a condition that's just right for civil war. 1.00

00:09:44.000 The fact that 33% of Americans think that it's okay to use violence if your side loses, and that's...

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00:11:14.000 That is a huge factor.

00:11:18.000 So that's a big one.

00:11:21.000 I'm curious how much of that is honest.

00:11:23.000 And what I mean by that is...

00:11:24.000 Well, you know, these models are all of different strengths.

00:11:27.000 So like, all I can do is tell you what they say.

00:11:30.000 No, no, for sure, for sure.

00:11:31.000 So I think, you know, just leaping off from there, we have the story about the Black Lives Matter activists

00:11:37.000 accused, allegedly shooting this Democrat.

00:11:40.000 Certainly there have been instances where far-right and right-wing groups have engaged in violence.

00:11:44.000 But if you look at institutional support, When it comes to, say, Black Lives Matter in 2020, you get Kamala Harris soliciting donations to bail out rioters.

00:11:56.000 You have a Black Lives Matter activist who's arrested for the attempted assassination of a politician, and Black Lives Matter fronts $100,000 to bail him out.

00:12:03.000 You don't have that same kind of thing on the right.

00:12:06.000 Well, let me answer that question in two ways.

00:12:09.000 Okay, so the first thing is that the process that civil war experts talk about, and this happens all over the world, happens in Chile, it happened in other places that had civil war, is called complementary radicalization.

00:12:22.000 So what you have is left-wing groups or right-wing groups taking extremist positions, and this causes people on the other side to get more radical.

00:12:31.000 So that's an area that transcends, you know, Partisanship like that's that's another that's a process that's underway.

00:12:40.000 Yeah, where as things get more extreme on the left They get more extreme on the right that causes the left to get more extreme that then causes the right to get more extreme Right, and so that's that's a very toxic Process that is extremely hard to escape from now.

00:12:55.000 The other thing I would say is that when I talk to You know, this is just let me just give you this perspective.

00:13:01.000 You can take it or leave it.

00:13:02.000 You know, you might be useful to you.

00:13:03.000 It might not be but when I talk to like members of Secret Services of other countries and they're thinking about what a collapsing America looks like they're not really afraid of the left because the left is inherently self-defeating.

00:13:18.000 It is much less organized than the right like and it's also it's much less effective as it as a group.

00:13:25.000 So like when you look at a group like the Oath Keepers They have it together.

00:13:31.000 They have it together in a way.

00:13:34.000 Whereas when you look at left-wing institutions, like the Women's March after the Trump inauguration, it had somewhere between half a million and a million people at its opening rally.

00:13:45.000 It imploded in internecine politics almost instantly.

00:13:52.000 And the term woke institution basically doesn't exist because they eat themselves, right?

00:13:58.000 So all I would say is both these processes are underway, but I would say that when I talked to experts on civil war from other countries and people who are worried about the stability of the United States, it was definitely far-right extremists that were their primary worry.

00:14:14.000 What about the institutionalization?

00:14:15.000 Well, hold on.

00:14:16.000 I wanted to address this real quick.

00:14:18.000 Yeah, go ahead.

00:14:18.000 I don't think you're wrong, but the way I see it is the right I would describe as sharp, the left I would describe as blunt.

00:14:26.000 Black Lives Matter was able to raise, you know, what, tens of millions of dollars for relatively nebulous causes, but that attracted thousands of people to riot in the streets over 2020.

00:14:39.000 The damage caused was severe and it did result in a lot of death, but it was very, very widespread.

00:14:44.000 So typically what we see a lot of, especially at the start of Donald Trump's run for the

00:14:49.000 presidency, I was actually on the ground at a lot of these Trump rallies, you see

00:14:53.000 a blunt level terrorism. It never exceeded the, it was political violence.

00:14:58.000 Terrorism to me is a technical term that would not apply to that.

00:15:02.000 In terms of this book, like, Terrorism is very specific.

00:15:08.000 It has very specific consequences.

00:15:11.000 I'm not to say that we're not dealing with political violence.

00:15:15.000 Political violence to me is a better term.

00:15:17.000 So the political violence you'd see on the left would be rampant, but low scale.

00:15:22.000 So there'd be a lot of instances of someone getting punched in the face, or someone getting pushed in the street, or people running around and knocking over garbage cans.

00:15:29.000 It was incessant.

00:15:31.000 It was never rising to the point where, you know, for a lot of it, people were losing their lives until, I think, the riots.

00:15:38.000 But we've seen riots in the past.

00:15:39.000 But see, to me, as an outsider, who's right and who's wrong, and the nature of the violence is less important to me than the stability of the system.

00:15:48.000 Right.

00:15:48.000 Like as a Canadian up north, like wanting America to hold on so that we can trade with you.

00:15:54.000 Like what I'm concerned with is the stability of the system.

00:15:56.000 So, you know, like when defund the police happened, right?

00:16:01.000 Maybe the worst political idea of Well, I mean, it's a high bar.

00:16:06.000 No, I'm on board with it.

00:16:08.000 Keep it going.

00:16:09.000 We love it.

00:16:10.000 For electoral purposes, keep supporting them.

00:16:12.000 But, you know, also completely non-doable and insupportable.

00:16:17.000 Well, they did in one place.

00:16:19.000 They couldn't get it achieved anywhere else.

00:16:21.000 They got it in Minnesota and then where else?

00:16:23.000 I think 260 departments had their budgets slashed.

00:16:25.000 And then they came back, right?

00:16:26.000 Not all of them.

00:16:27.000 But a lot of them did come back.

00:16:29.000 Yeah, or CHAZ, right?

00:16:30.000 Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which is probably the number one example of left-wing resistance to federal authority.

00:16:39.000 I mean, that is a subject in the book, but it has very little impact when compared to the militias.

00:16:49.000 So I can name a ton of things like Chazz, the Chazz Chop, that was in Seattle.

00:16:55.000 Then you also had the Portland attempts.

00:16:56.000 You had the occupation in Minneapolis.

00:16:59.000 Well, the Oath Keeper List, I mean, they have, well, obviously January 6th, I mean, would be at the top of the list, but, you know, as a very highly destabilizing action.

00:17:09.000 But, you know, like the other thing about the right is that they understand the importance of institutions in a way that the left does not.

00:17:17.000 You understand, I'm not judging.

00:17:19.000 I'm just saying.

00:17:20.000 I agree.

00:17:22.000 When you look at the Oath Keeper list, when it came out with that 40,000 names, they'd infiltrated very deeply into police departments, into school boards.

00:17:33.000 When I talked to Michael German, who was an undercover agent with the FBI in far-right movements, he was like, once they discovered I had no tattoos, they were like, you're never going to talk to anyone rough ever again.

00:17:45.000 We're going to run you on a school board. 1.00

00:17:47.000 That's what we're going to do.

00:17:49.000 What I mean to say, just because I want to make sure I can let Daniel come in, is I think one of the reasons there's a lot of people who don't think that the far right elements, many people on the right don't think that there's a big threat from them because they don't see it a lot.

00:18:04.000 The way to describe it is it's sharp versus the left's blunt.

00:18:09.000 I think you're right when you say that they know the importance of institutions.

00:18:12.000 The right talks about losing institutional control at the time.

00:18:15.000 What the left doesn't understand, what they have is numbers.

00:18:18.000 People will go out in the street and march and smash things, but a day later, where are those activists?

00:18:23.000 Yes, and they have no policy.

00:18:27.000 Their policy ideas are unfeasible.

00:18:29.000 Well, that's generally true.

00:18:31.000 I mean, I think that's true of the left and the right.

00:18:34.000 Well, what's happening in America is it's entering a post-policy phase.

00:18:37.000 The government can... I mean, this is the other thing we talked about.

00:18:39.000 You asked, like, what are the major causes?

00:18:41.000 Like, one is this decline in institutions, but it's also that the government is... America is essentially becoming ungovernable, right?

00:18:48.000 Like, Biden has spent 11 months getting diplomats In place, right?

00:18:55.000 The US government is constantly threatening to renege on its debt.

00:18:58.000 I mean, that's playing Russian roulette with all of this.

00:19:02.000 All of this prosperity.

00:19:02.000 The Federal Reserve is ungoverned.

00:19:04.000 They've never audited it.

00:19:06.000 There is a huge number of ungovernable... To me, as a Canadian, when you look at the big Build Back Better bill or whatever it's called, that's a budget.

00:19:16.000 That's a Wednesday in a mature democracy.

00:19:19.000 Like, you just pass a budget and that's it.

00:19:22.000 In the United States, those basic functions of government are increasingly impossible or extremely difficult, and that leads naturally to a politics of rage, right?

00:19:33.000 Where it's like, because you can't ever enact policy, Whether you're left or right, everything becomes aesthetic.

00:19:44.000 Everything becomes an aesthetic, artistic gesture of your own anger and your own beliefs

00:19:49.000 in a concept that transcends essentially real actions, real government actions.

00:19:57.000 And that's a huge, to me, that's maybe the number one factor.

00:20:00.000 Yeah, people think they're supposed to be creating policy, they should be stripping

00:20:03.000 away bad policy right now.

00:20:05.000 When I hear American politicians think tanks and so on, say like, we have to do this with

00:20:10.000 the tax rate, we have to, yeah.

00:20:11.000 Yeah.

00:20:12.000 No, no, I'm saying, I'm saying, pop your mind.

00:20:14.000 Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

00:20:18.000 Like, when I hear them talking about parental leave or something, it's like, you guys can't pass, you can barely pass a budget.

00:20:23.000 Why are you even having these conversations about parental leave or whatever?

00:20:29.000 You're in a system that is increasingly non-functional.

00:20:32.000 And the thing is, one of the most important models in the book is that that is only going to increase.

00:20:38.000 Dude, I was watching Canadian Parliament go nuts and people were heckling, basically.

00:20:41.000 I was like, in an American court, you'd be thrown out if you heckled.

00:20:45.000 Well, have you ever seen the British one? 0.90

00:20:47.000 It's like a holdover from British. 1.00

00:20:50.000 Even the speaker was like, you guys, cut it out.

00:20:53.000 They're trying to like, it's 21st century where adults don't scream over each other.

00:20:57.000 They're definitely not adults.

00:20:58.000 But it comes from British Parliament where they're trying to interrupt the guy speaking.

00:21:02.000 They're trying to disrupt him.

00:21:03.000 British Parliament is one of the great entertainments of all time.

00:21:09.000 The question period.

00:21:14.000 The point of a parliamentary system as opposed to the American system is that there's a concept of the loyal opposition.

00:21:21.000 So your job is to attack the government.

00:21:25.000 Whether you think they're right or not.

00:21:27.000 And that's just when they're like, yeah.

00:21:31.000 And that, and that creates, that creates an environment where I, where, you know, every leader has to be humiliated.

00:21:37.000 Like, like every leader, every politician, no, everyone's just a servant.

00:21:41.000 Right.

00:21:42.000 And that's, that's, that's just a completely different condition in the United States.

00:21:46.000 I don't know if we lost the point you were trying to make before, Daniel.

00:21:48.000 No, I think it's, it's, it's worth bringing back, not just because it's my point, but I think it touches on what you were saying of institutions.

00:21:57.000 So you mentioned the Oath Keepers and we were also talking about Black Lives Matter in the sense of institutional dysfunction and how I love that you said the right sees institutions as inherently necessary or valuable. 0.69

00:22:11.000 Well, as opportunities for advancement of their own program.

00:22:16.000 Both sides now are destroying institutions.

00:22:20.000 Well, absolutely.

00:22:21.000 But one of the things that I'm curious about is when you take a group that is, I think, incredibly polemic, and that does cause a lot of division, which is something like Black Lives Matter, institutionally, they're golden. You have Bank of America who writes them

00:22:35.000 checks. You have the NBA. You have major institutions that support what I think is a purely

00:22:41.000 political entity, but it is held up to this level. And I think that causes a lot of rage because

00:22:47.000 the Oath Keepers, regardless of what you think of them, would Bank of America ever write them a

00:22:51.000 check? They probably couldn't even get a loan at Bank of America. So I think there's institutions

00:22:56.000 that...

00:22:56.000 have chosen sides and I think that's leading to a greater level of the division.

00:23:02.000 Well, the money in American politics is really confusing.

00:23:05.000 Because, like, for example, like you saw the New York Times article about dark money that

00:23:10.000 came out like a week ago.

00:23:11.000 Like, I mean, that to me is the most appalling story in American politics that I know of,

00:23:17.000 where the money that $2.4 billion that decided the 2020 election, no one knows where it came

00:23:25.000 Some of it came from foreign sources for sure, but nobody knows where it came from.

00:23:28.000 Now, $1.5 billion went to the Democrats and $900,000 went to the Republicans.

00:23:35.000 900 million?

00:23:36.000 Sorry, 900 million, yeah.

00:23:38.000 Did I say billion?

00:23:39.000 You said 900,000 went to the Congress.

00:23:40.000 Oh, right.

00:23:42.000 My Canadian small-time politics stuff.

00:23:46.000 And then there's the other fact that while Republicans are pro-business and so on, 70% of American GDP comes from Biden-voting counties.

00:23:56.000 That seems to me like one of the key facts that's going to determine the future of this country In civil war or out of it or at the end of it and so like I think there's that I will acknowledge I find it confusing like where where money goes to where is coming from like where what it is supporting and what it wants.

00:24:17.000 I find it confusing that certain political causes are objectively accepted to receive money, or to be on the board, or write a check to, and others are not, because those causes are aligning more and more towards people's beliefs.

00:24:33.000 Well, the Koch brothers wrote a lot of checks.

00:24:34.000 I mean, the Carr brothers wrote a true love show.

00:24:36.000 know they do know they do absolutely but I mean but you're never going to go to a 1.00

00:24:43.000 a Knicks game and at the halftime show have them give a $500,000 check to this

00:24:49.000 political cause but you will see it for something like Black Lives Matter you

00:24:53.000 will see it for something like Planned Parenthood you will see

00:24:56.000 So the philanthropy of politics, I think, has become very, very divisive, because certain philanthropic groups are tolerable, and others are not.

00:25:06.000 And real quick, it's only one Koch brother.

00:25:09.000 Right, sure, right.

00:25:13.000 I think they also stopped giving money to political causes, too, a few years ago.

00:25:18.000 I think they give it to, like, reform things.

00:25:20.000 They just decided they're not doing partisan politics anymore.

00:25:23.000 There are a lot of wealthy individuals that are willing to fund either side.

00:25:27.000 You know, Peter Thiel's got a lot of money and infrastructure.

00:25:29.000 I mean, the point is really not who is giving money to who.

00:25:33.000 The point is, like, all this money is destroying the system and making it inherently unstable.

00:25:38.000 There's also the politicization of everything, which is where you have homophobic chicken

00:25:43.000 and you have LGBTQ positive cookies.

00:25:48.000 Or you know, like, you know, like there were like literally every aspect of life is

00:25:54.000 politicized. That also is classic prelude to civil war.

00:25:58.000 But this is an interesting point because potentially what was the start of the culture

00:26:03.000 war, depending on how you asked Gamergate, you're familiar.

00:26:06.000 This is this was a lot of people who identified themselves as left libertarian on the

00:26:10.000 political spectrum, being angered that everything was becoming political because you had

00:26:15.000 these, quote unquote, news organizations, video game news and video game companies

00:26:20.000 increasingly putting very specific ideologies in their games.

00:26:23.000 And people were upset with that.

00:26:25.000 Right.

00:26:25.000 So they would agree with you, like, why are we politicizing everything?

00:26:28.000 Please don't bring me into Gamergate, man.

00:26:30.000 I mean, my life is in danger.

00:26:33.000 I was playing Heroes of the Storm last night on Blizzard, and I was like, if I type F the CCP, am I gonna get banned off of Blizzard?

00:26:39.000 I didn't test it, but I was wondering.

00:26:40.000 Well, there are certain things that YouTube banned, but to the point about politicizing everything, video games did used to have a lot of politics in them, but it was more of background, acceptable American views.

00:26:56.000 When they started becoming very different, at core, having some kind of Marxist tinge to a lot of them, What do you mean by Marxist?

00:27:06.000 I will say, in America, that word has a meaning that you don't understand.

00:27:11.000 In the true sense of Marxist ideology of oppressed versus oppressor.

00:27:15.000 Well, okay, I mean, to me Marxism is, there's lots of oppressor versus oppressor ideologies, but Marxism to me is strictly a class-based struggle.

00:27:26.000 All other structures are invalidated.

00:27:29.000 No, but that was a key point.

00:27:31.000 I mean, I think around Occupy Wall Street we had the very much class-based narrative of the 1% versus the 99.

00:27:36.000 Well, exactly.

00:27:37.000 Occupy Wall Street to me is, that's a Marxist struggle.

00:27:41.000 Video games almost can't be.

00:27:42.000 I mean, he rejects any aesthetic category.

00:27:46.000 Well, so, are you familiar with the origins of critical race theory?

00:27:48.000 Yeah, but that's not... I mean, to me that's...

00:27:52.000 That's not Marxism.

00:27:53.000 I mean, you know, I think it has come to mean something in this country that I just don't recognize in my own readings of Marxism, in my own readings of... To me, that's an identity politics formulation which is a completely separate thing from Marxism.

00:28:11.000 Well, when it comes to Roblox, you want to talk about video games enslaving people in a class-based system?

00:28:16.000 That's what it is.

00:28:16.000 Totally off-subject.

00:28:17.000 So, critical race theory, specifically, Kimberly Crenshaw wrote that Marx didn't understand American racial politics, and that the idea of oppressed versus oppressor can't just be class-based when race is inherently tied to class.

00:28:29.000 Right.

00:28:30.000 Yeah, but I mean, that's inherently a rejection of Marxism, right?

00:28:34.000 Like, I mean, right, like that, like Marxism, like in the Jewish question he says, you know, there are, there are no, there are in effect no ethnicities, all there is is class.

00:28:44.000 So to me, this whole reading of Marxism... It's a semantic issue, though, is what I was saying.

00:28:49.000 I guess so, but it does seem to me pretty important that... Because Marxism conjured so much evil in the world, because it conjured so many totalitarian regimes, to call something Marxist to me is...

00:29:04.000 I mean, that's kind of the ultimate insult because it was ultimately so evil, right?

00:29:09.000 And that's not what applies to these other forms.

00:29:14.000 Let me bring you there.

00:29:15.000 So I went down to Occupy Wall Street on like day three.

00:29:18.000 Right.

00:29:20.000 So, you know, I end up streaming and stuff, but it started out with conservatives, libertarians, liberals, and leftists all in one place saying, we very much oppose the bailouts, the corruption in the system, the revolving door policies.

00:29:32.000 In the first week, there was so much talk about these big banks got bailed out.

00:29:37.000 The guy who works for the pharmaceutical companies gets a job with the FDA.

00:29:41.000 The guy from the war machine, Halliburton, becomes the vice president.

00:29:44.000 It's a revolving door.

00:29:45.000 Yes, sure.

00:29:46.000 But within about two weeks, Critical race theory took over, and all of a sudden you couldn't speak at their assemblies if you were a white man, and if you wanted to speak, or I should say you're at the bottom of the list on their progressive stack.

00:29:59.000 So it started out as essentially Marxist, the class-based oppression.

00:30:05.000 Quickly turned into a bunch of intersectionalists, critical race theorists coming in and saying, no, no, you guys don't understand.

00:30:12.000 Race is actually the core component.

00:30:14.000 And then all of a sudden the narrative there shifted, the libertarians and conservatives left.

00:30:18.000 And this was one of the starting points, at least in the culture war that I've experienced, where all of these things took over.

00:30:24.000 When I'm talking about self-defeating left-wing politics, this is what I'm talking about.

00:30:30.000 Like, what is required from the left now, more than ever, in a complete sense, is solidarity.

00:30:39.000 And it is completely incapable of providing that, even on the most basic levels.

00:30:44.000 Right?

00:30:44.000 And that's why, to me, like, because my book, what my book is about, is about collapsing systems.

00:30:51.000 Right?

00:30:51.000 And how systems collapse.

00:30:53.000 And like, what is causing the collapse of systems.

00:30:56.000 The left is actually too weak to cause a collapse of the system, because it eats itself in five minutes.

00:31:01.000 That's why Occupy Wall Street went nowhere.

00:31:03.000 But that's technically not true.

00:31:04.000 Well, Occupy Wall Street resulted in a massive shift of wealth from for-profit to credit unions.

00:31:09.000 And it resulted in, I think, the Democratic Party pulled their money out of Bank of America and moved it to Amalgamated, which is a union-operated bank.

00:31:16.000 Oh, yeah?

00:31:17.000 How much was that?

00:31:18.000 The DNC's funds?

00:31:19.000 I don't know.

00:31:20.000 I can't remember.

00:31:21.000 Tens of millions, maybe.

00:31:24.000 Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network.

00:31:30.000 Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

00:31:37.000 There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election.

00:31:46.000 We do all that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer.

00:31:50.000 Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

00:31:53.000 It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.

00:31:55.000 Well, tens of millions, I mean, like, we're talking about the United States of America.

00:31:59.000 But it's a big, you know, you plant the seed of a cultural shift and that matters.

00:32:04.000 So when I look at Occupy Wall Street and I see the rise of what was effectively a form of, I think it was overtly critical race theory, It then makes its way into something bigger, into media, it expands.

00:32:16.000 That was the first experience I had with it.

00:32:18.000 It was kind of a crazy experience to see how racist they were.

00:32:21.000 I mean, overtly separating people into different racial categories to make them vote on policy was insane.

00:32:27.000 Do you think you would qualify as someone who was comp- like the process of complementary radicalization would apply to you?

00:32:34.000 Oh yeah, absolutely.

00:32:35.000 That's interesting.

00:32:37.000 How do you negotiate that?

00:32:41.000 I'm curious.

00:32:42.000 The way that the experts that I talk to think about it is like an inverse pendulum.

00:32:50.000 As a pendulum swings, it tends to the center.

00:32:54.000 But in American politics, the energy sends it to more extreme forms.

00:33:01.000 We're not seeing the same level of extremism on the right as we are on the left.

00:33:05.000 Oh, I disagree.

00:33:06.000 I mean, I would have to disagree with you there.

00:33:08.000 Like, I mean, you see, there's all kinds of right-wing extremism.

00:33:13.000 And the other thing about extremism on the right is also way better armed.

00:33:18.000 Well, let's talk about some examples.

00:33:20.000 January 6th?

00:33:21.000 We got, that's a big one, for sure.

00:33:24.000 There you go!

00:33:24.000 But what else?

00:33:25.000 The Oath Keepers list, 40,000 people.

00:33:28.000 What did they do?

00:33:28.000 What have they done?

00:33:30.000 Well, January 6th, I mean... But look, January 6th you had 800 people?

00:33:36.000 Well, I mean, certainly, like, they're... Relatively disorganized.

00:33:39.000 Okay, well, the extreme right in the United States is, of course, really hard to figure out.

00:33:44.000 You know, the way I think of it is as a, like, a smorgasbord of ideologies, some that are completely incompatible, and some that are... So there's... It's true for the left, too.

00:33:54.000 Oh, the left is totally chaotic.

00:33:57.000 I mean, for my own sake, I think we can just dismiss the left as a force in America, because it is so disorganized and it eats itself.

00:34:09.000 So what you see on the right is there are sovereign citizens, there are three percenters, You know Oath Keepers there. There are sagebrush rebels.

00:34:18.000 There are as you know Second Amendment absolutists there are tax evasion people.

00:34:24.000 There are Tax avoidance people so there's a whole what have they done?

00:34:28.000 well of the political murders of every year which are amount to like about 70 on average since

00:34:35.000 2015 I think the number don't quote me because it's in the it's in the book and I don't have it on my fingertips

00:34:42.000 but I think it's like 72% are far far right and like 7% are far left and the middle is like

00:34:51.000 So, like, I would say, like, when I talk to the experts, the fear of political violence is much clearer from the right.

00:34:59.000 And that's why I said I feel like the far right is more sharp, right?

00:35:02.000 When they do take action, it's extreme.

00:35:05.000 Well, you know, we're also dealing, I think we should acknowledge this because we are all trying to stay human beings here, is that we're dealing with a lot of people who are on the line between mental illness and political affiliation.

00:35:17.000 We're dealing with a lot of people who are criminal.

00:35:20.000 You were just simply criminals and use politics as a cover for their violence and like that has to be acknowledged too, right?

00:35:27.000 And that this and that this political radicalization gives them cover for mental illness and for and for their violence, right?

00:35:34.000 So those things all like to also those numbers like to be clear are not from the FBI.

00:35:41.000 They're from journalist reporting organizations who are going through newspapers to figure out what are violent crimes.

00:35:47.000 And they're defining who's far-right and who's far-right.

00:35:49.000 Well, they're trying to pick up the pieces, but honestly, this work has not been done at a government level, and it's been done at an academic level, so it's not ideal.

00:35:57.000 I want to get back to that point, because I don't think we've got a chance to flesh it out.

00:36:00.000 So, my point was that there's substantially more far-left polarization and extremism compared to the right, and to make my point, Let me ask you a question.

00:36:14.000 Would you fear violence against you at a right-wing rally?

00:36:20.000 I've always gotten along really well with far-right people.

00:36:24.000 I quite like them.

00:36:28.000 Just real quick for the sake of argument.

00:36:30.000 You wouldn't, really?

00:36:32.000 I definitely would.

00:36:33.000 When you go to a far-right rally, there are many, many people walking around with large weapons.

00:36:39.000 I don't know what a far-right rally is.

00:36:41.000 Also, I look like this.

00:36:41.000 I'm like a white dude from Alberta.

00:36:43.000 know I've been on the ground for I went on the ground for maybe also I look like

00:36:48.000 this I mean I'm like I'm like a white dude from Alberta so you'd be more

00:36:52.000 likely to get attacked by the far left well I don't I've never felt threatened

00:36:57.000 by the far left now you know I'll give you a Let me give you an example.

00:37:05.000 I attended the 2016 inauguration.

00:37:07.000 I covered it for a Canadian magazine.

00:37:10.000 What I fear, genuinely, is not really either side.

00:37:14.000 It's when the two sides are together.

00:37:17.000 That's what's scary.

00:37:18.000 Donald Trump's inauguration.

00:37:19.000 Yeah.

00:37:20.000 There were about 400 black-clad leftists smashing windows, starting fires, and attacking people in the streets.

00:37:26.000 Yeah, there were plenty of far-right groups there, too.

00:37:29.000 But they weren't doing anything.

00:37:30.000 Well, they were sort of triumphantly there, too.

00:37:35.000 Well, there was some violence, but I would say that the atmosphere of menace?

00:37:40.000 Like, you're just asking me my feelings, right?

00:37:42.000 So it's just, you know, it's my personal experience, but there's also a really great example.

00:37:47.000 But you look like you looked him.

00:37:49.000 I mean, like, if you were a black woman and you were at a far-right rally, I think that would be a completely different thing.

00:37:54.000 And, like, that's one of the things that I've always found... Far-right people get along with me very, very well.

00:38:01.000 I like talking to them.

00:38:04.000 They're nice guys.

00:38:05.000 Like, honestly.

00:38:07.000 They're perfectly polite.

00:38:09.000 You want to know what I saw in Portland?

00:38:11.000 I saw the far-left screaming the N-word over and over again at right-wingers.

00:38:16.000 I saw the Proud Boys with a bunch of different people of different races, and there was a black Proud Boy who was walking down the street, and Antifa was screaming incessantly the N-word at him.

00:38:25.000 I've been on the ground on all these things.

00:38:27.000 Daryl Davis.

00:38:28.000 We have very different experiences with these things.

00:38:29.000 For sure.

00:38:30.000 Are you familiar with Daryl Davis?

00:38:31.000 No, I don't know who that is.

00:38:32.000 He's the black jazz musician who, he decided, you know, he thought to himself one day, how could someone hate me if they don't know me?

00:38:39.000 So he started going to Klan meetings.

00:38:41.000 Oh yes, that guy.

00:38:42.000 Yeah, he's fantastic.

00:38:43.000 And we booked him to speak at an event called Ending, what was it called?

00:38:47.000 Ending Violence, Racism, and Authoritarianism.

00:38:50.000 He was our keynote, our headline speaker to talk about de-radicalization.

00:38:54.000 Antifa threatened to burn the theater down, so they canceled on us.

00:38:58.000 The after-show venue refused to back down, so Antifa came and protested.

00:39:03.000 And he said, look guys, don't worry, I'm gonna go talk to him.

00:39:06.000 And when he went out there, they started screaming at him, chanting at him, and wouldn't let him speak.

00:39:10.000 He wrote a Facebook post, which went viral, where he said, I've never experienced anything like this.

00:39:15.000 That I was able to go and talk to Klan members as a black man, but he couldn't even talk to these leftist activists outside without them screaming at him.

00:39:21.000 Well look, all I can tell you is the experts I talk to, the people that study this stuff, are much more afraid of the right than the left.

00:39:30.000 Could it be that they are on the left?

00:39:32.000 Well, they're from foreign countries.

00:39:35.000 So the answer is yes, they are on the left.

00:39:38.000 If they're from Belgium, yes, they're on the left. 0.99

00:39:42.000 I'm going to go back to one thing you said.

00:39:44.000 I haven't been to a far-right rally, I've been to Trump rallies.

00:39:50.000 My experience has been that if you are a black woman, people will go so much further out of their way to be accommodating because they want to demonstrate that much more that they are not racist. 0.90

00:40:03.000 Because they have been pinned by the left as, you are a Trump person, you must be a racist.

00:40:09.000 And I think I find that amazing that that's what has to be done, but that is what happens.

00:40:14.000 Don't you think the time has come to stop asking yourselves who is more to blame and start figuring out either how do we reconcile this or how do we come to some kind of conclusion that is not violent?

00:40:27.000 I mean, you're talking about like...

00:40:30.000 All of this stuff, you're getting yourselves really angry about this stuff.

00:40:35.000 Not in the slightest bit angry.

00:40:37.000 No, no, no, look.

00:40:38.000 No, no, no, that's not fair.

00:40:40.000 Just because it's a heated conversation.

00:40:42.000 Listen, I'm not blaming anyone.

00:40:44.000 I'm just saying, the point of this book is really that the moment has come where you have to ask yourself, How do we get ourselves out of this cycle of those people are awful, or our people are awful, but that's in response.

00:41:01.000 The crisis that is facing you is no longer one of who is right, but how do you work out these structures into a way that is civilized?

00:41:13.000 You're killing me.

00:41:14.000 I know the answer.

00:41:15.000 You've got to give them something to live for, and you've got to unify people with an idea.

00:41:18.000 Civil war is the worst thing that can happen.

00:41:21.000 Sure.

00:41:21.000 Death is the worst.

00:41:22.000 Being conquered by a foreign country is nothing compared to civil war. 0.85

00:41:27.000 It's the worst thing that can happen to a country.

00:41:29.000 It's a disaster.

00:41:30.000 China will come in if this escalates. 0.81

00:41:34.000 In part of the book, I'm imagining what it would be like to have a negotiated settlement with the United States, which would have to be internationally monitored.

00:41:41.000 And we love that in this country.

00:41:42.000 What would America love more than Chinese peacekeepers on the ground?

00:41:48.000 Again, I have my bias and I'm very well aware that I have my bias. So no bones about it. So

00:41:53.000 go after me, but let me make my point. So you said when you look at political assassinations

00:41:57.000 or political murders, and you said those numbers were based on journalists who dig into and look at...

00:42:02.000 Well, assassination is a separate question.

00:42:04.000 Not assassination, murders.

00:42:05.000 Political violence.

00:42:05.000 Political violence, and they were done based on journalists who dug into the story and read it.

00:42:10.000 In five years from now, if a journalist reads an op-ed in the Las Vegas Post, which talked about the Black Lives Matter attempted murder in Louisville, They called him a right-wing Trump supporter, basically.

00:42:25.000 They said that this is the cause of right-wing violence.

00:42:28.000 And they said, although he is not, and if you read the op-ed, and I sent it to Lydia, because I was so apoplectic.

00:42:34.000 As of now, he has not been identified to any right-wing groups, but this is Trump violence.

00:42:40.000 This is an editorial in the Las Vegas Sun after it came out that he was a Black Lives Matter activist.

00:42:45.000 So you want to say to that editorial board, What are you doing?

00:42:50.000 Why are you writing a story saying this is a right-wing extremist who shot a Jewish, tried to kill a Jewish man running for mayor, when all of the evidence there says he is a left-wing radical?

00:43:02.000 But I'll answer that, and then I want to answer a point you made.

00:43:06.000 I don't want to hear your answer to my question, because I think you're a very interesting case of somebody who has lived through complementary radicalization.

00:43:14.000 And I would like to know how you see escaping from it.

00:43:17.000 There isn't an escape.

00:43:19.000 But to your point, it's a conflict.

00:43:24.000 They're going to say what they need to say to support their side by any means necessary.

00:43:29.000 And so you actually have groups called, like, by any means necessary.

00:43:33.000 The reason why there is no escape, so you asked me if I am, I forgot how to phrase it, but like if I am subject to complimentary Well, I'm curious.

00:43:43.000 I don't know you, but you seem to me like you would fit into that category that I've seen sociologists describe.

00:43:51.000 I mean, maybe that's not fair.

00:43:52.000 And if it's not, please tell me.

00:43:53.000 No, no, it is without a doubt.

00:43:56.000 But I think the issue at hand is, What's the best example to give?

00:44:05.000 The truckers in Canada are a really great example.

00:44:08.000 I supported Occupy Wall Street, their right to protest.

00:44:12.000 I interviewed people on the ground.

00:44:14.000 I defended Extinction Rebellion when they blocked the streets in DC and put up a boat and said, we demand to be heard.

00:44:22.000 When Ron DeSantis was working in Florida on the anti-riot law, I said, it is wrong to make it a felony to block a road.

00:44:30.000 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

00:44:34.000 See, I'm the opposite.

00:44:35.000 I want them all banned.

00:44:38.000 But here's what happens.

00:44:39.000 The same people that I met ten years ago who defended the right to occupy streets are now opposed to it in Ottawa.

00:44:46.000 Well, Ottawa's a very different situation because it's been going on for three weeks.

00:44:50.000 And Occupy Wall Street went on for two months.

00:44:52.000 Well, I was opposed to Occupy Wall Street.

00:44:53.000 And you also had the Chazz and the Chop.

00:44:55.000 You also had Minneapolis.

00:44:56.000 But it's not about your views.

00:44:58.000 It's about the fact that we have, in this country, Two parent factions within those parent factions. We

00:45:05.000 describe them as left and right. It's fairly nebulous You have several smaller groups. Many of them don't like

00:45:10.000 each other. Mm-hmm Antifa people don't like Democrats But I don't hate them, but their politics do align

00:45:16.000 sometimes well barely, but

00:45:19.000 But institutionally, right?

00:45:20.000 So the Democrats support Black Lives Matter to try and earn votes, which then gives funding to, say, the federal government gave funding for COVID relief that the Illinois government then gave directly to Black Lives Matter.

00:45:31.000 I believe it was $300,000.

00:45:32.000 That would never happen with the Oath Keepers.

00:45:35.000 That would never happen with the Proud Boys.

00:45:36.000 In fact, the Proud Boys get called terrorists and evil and demonized.

00:45:40.000 So here's my point.

00:45:41.000 When you look at civics data, civics, if you're not familiar, they're a polling organization that have a massive map, a time spread going back like five years of all these different issues.

00:45:51.000 You can see that independent voters, people who are unaffiliated, right now overwhelmingly agree with the right.

00:45:58.000 When it comes to issues of the economy, when it comes to issues of job, presidential performance, when it comes to black lives matter. 0.96

00:46:03.000 But you know why that is, right?

00:46:04.000 Why is that?

00:46:05.000 Because there are no independent voters in America anymore.

00:46:07.000 It's only about 7%.

00:46:09.000 I think the last one is a 4%.

00:46:10.000 Lots of people on the right call themselves independent, but if you talk about voting behavior, people who actually shift, vote Democrat sometimes and vote Republican sometimes, that percentage in America is negligible.

00:46:25.000 It's always been negligible.

00:46:27.000 Yes, that's true.

00:46:28.000 Independent voters have always somewhat leaned Democrat.

00:46:31.000 Republicans would win if they could convince just enough to move on the other side.

00:46:34.000 Republicans call themselves independent on a much higher level.

00:46:37.000 That's why that number is that way.

00:46:38.000 But what we're seeing now with Pew data is that there's a specific graph showing hyperpolarization, and you have a larger portion of Democrats becoming Republican, Independents becoming Republican, than the inverse.

00:46:49.000 So here's what I see.

00:46:51.000 I see my views mostly unchanged on principle, save the Second Amendment.

00:46:56.000 In the past several years, I went from moderate to, hey, we should respect people's rights, but maybe have some gun control.

00:47:03.000 Now I'm just outright, you gotta change the Constitution before you can do any of this stuff.

00:47:07.000 Second Amendment is Second Amendment.

00:47:08.000 That's chapter five.

00:47:10.000 So, but, you know, to have, in this country, people who are uninformed on policy or a specific industry try to regulate it and then fail repeatedly, that's exactly why, one of the reasons my position's on this changed.

00:47:25.000 Right.

00:47:25.000 So when I say something like... Yes, I see what you mean.

00:47:28.000 Let me explain the complementary radicalization.

00:47:31.000 It's not that my positions have become far-right.

00:47:35.000 It's not that my positions have become increasingly conservative.

00:47:38.000 Nope, I've always been pro-choice.

00:47:40.000 In fact, I used to be further left when I was 18.

00:47:43.000 Then I became fairly liberal and I've remained there save gun rights. 0.88

00:47:46.000 I became a little bit more libertarian.

00:47:48.000 The issue is that the other side is increasingly becoming authoritarian.

00:47:53.000 The left is increasingly embracing insane tactics that are destabilizing the system.

00:47:58.000 And then, of course, I do watch the right respond in turn.

00:48:02.000 Now, this is a storm.

00:48:03.000 There is no way out of it. 0.97

00:48:05.000 But I'll be damned if I'm going to give up my principles to try and negotiate with psychopaths. 0.91

00:48:09.000 So when I say something... But you just acknowledge. 0.64

00:48:11.000 Like, see, this to me seems to be a key point.

00:48:13.000 You're like, well, the right responds the same way.

00:48:15.000 So surely you've got to get to a point in your country, or just for your own soul, where you're like, the psychopaths are everywhere.

00:48:24.000 We need to find a way out from the psychopaths.

00:48:27.000 It's not just, the problem is not just the other side psychopaths. 0.90

00:48:31.000 It's all of the psychopaths.

00:48:32.000 Well, so let me put it this way.

00:48:34.000 If a guy comes into my- If I'm in the middle of a field, and I watch two guys, and one guy's, like, hanging out with his kid, and they're playing catch, and then some dude in a black mask walks up and punches him in the back of the head, he turns around and starts fighting, I'm not gonna be like, oh no, a fight!

00:48:50.000 Can we please compromise?

00:48:51.000 I'm gonna be like, that dude punched that guy!

00:48:53.000 Arrest him! 0.95

00:48:54.000 Arrest him!

00:48:54.000 That guy's defending himself!

00:48:56.000 But you know somewhere, there's some guy who's in a left-leaning podcast who thinks exactly the same thing, except from the other side.

00:49:03.000 And he's wrong.

00:49:03.000 He thinks, but he's not, I mean, like, does it matter?

00:49:07.000 It does.

00:49:07.000 So look.

00:49:08.000 I don't think it matters.

00:49:09.000 Well, listen, Joe Biden, right?

00:49:13.000 Joe Biden is not the source of this.

00:49:14.000 No, no, no, but I'll give you an example.

00:49:16.000 Joe Biden, based on all available journalism and research we've done, engaged in a very serious criminal act with Ukraine. 0.91

00:49:24.000 As opposed to the fully legal activities of Donald Trump?

00:49:26.000 report we have his own statements we've got Matt Taibbi's reporting we have

00:49:30.000 sworn affidavits out of Ukraine from Victor Shokin as opposed to the fully

00:49:33.000 legal activities of Donald Trump well give me a specific example of like I'm

00:49:37.000 Donald Trump's illegal I mean he's about to be charged don't make the mistake of

00:49:39.000 creating false binaries by nothing to do with each other specifically citing Joe

00:49:44.000 Biden taking a very specific action with with respect to Ukraine that any

00:49:48.000 reasonable person can look at the journalism coming out of this and be

00:49:51.000 like wow what he did there Now, look, by all means, call out Donald Trump for any criminal activity he may have done, but everyone seems to do it.

00:49:59.000 He seems to be in the hot seat 24-7.

00:50:01.000 He was under investigation for a hoax.

00:50:03.000 The Russiagate hoax was just not true, but that doesn't happen to the establishment Democrat side or the leftists.

00:50:09.000 Black Lives Matter engages in wanton destruction in some of the smallest towns in this country, over $2 billion in damage. 1.00

00:50:16.000 And your perspective is the right is more dangerous.

00:50:20.000 It's not really my perspective.

00:50:22.000 I would say that would be the general perspective of experts on civil war and the conditions of the United States.

00:50:28.000 I mean, those are the models that I'm working from.

00:50:30.000 Right?

00:50:31.000 Like, but I would say, like, surely you can see that these, these sides, that each side has a case.

00:50:40.000 And that they, and that the problem here is not, the problem here is not that, you know, what has happened, but the fact that there is no way for anyone, you know, democracies only work when, if you lose your side, the other side is still valid.

00:50:58.000 Those are the conditions of democracy.

00:50:59.000 What you're saying to me, and what I hear, is that that's no longer possible.

00:51:01.000 And so that, like what you're saying to me is, and what I hear is that that's no longer possible.

00:51:10.000 And that's really what the book is about.

00:51:13.000 And that is, like, I'm kind of, like I'm imploring you as a neighbor.

00:51:19.000 This is a book written out of love.

00:51:20.000 This is not a book written out of contempt for the United States.

00:51:23.000 This is a book written out of profound love for the United States.

00:51:27.000 I've lived in the United States.

00:51:28.000 I've worked there.

00:51:29.000 I have a lot of American friends.

00:51:30.000 I have my Trump-voting cousin in Seattle.

00:51:33.000 I think Canada has a kinship relationship with America.

00:51:39.000 Where we're, you know, Northrop Frye, the great Canadian literary critic, said that a Canadian is an American who rejects the revolution.

00:51:46.000 And I think that's largely true, right?

00:51:49.000 Quebec was asked.

00:51:50.000 They said no.

00:51:51.000 They said no very close though.

00:51:53.000 I mean, you know, like, the other thing is, I come from... We almost took Montreal in 1812.

00:51:57.000 No, you had the worst general in the world.

00:51:59.000 You had the terrible, terrible general in 1812.

00:52:00.000 The real danger was 1860.

00:52:01.000 But, um...

00:52:06.000 Where was I?

00:52:06.000 I now completely lost my train of thought.

00:52:09.000 My point, though, is that as someone who is concerned for your country and as someone who wants you to have a stable country, you are going to have to get to a point where you either come to some kind of divorce, which seems to me like when a marriage reaches the point that the United States is at, you'd sit the kids down and say, like, it's over.

00:52:31.000 But that will lead to violence.

00:52:33.000 Well, I don't think there's a way to avoid violence at this point.

00:52:36.000 The question is, how do we get out of it?

00:52:39.000 Let me ask you a question.

00:52:40.000 Stop focusing on the psychopaths and start focusing on what's causing psychopathy.

00:52:44.000 Because if you try and wipe out the psychopaths, they're just going to keep appearing.

00:52:46.000 Exactly. 0.97

00:52:47.000 It's like trying to drown a vampire in blood.

00:52:49.000 Let me ask you then, you want to end the conflict.

00:52:53.000 What I want is for America to survive as a democracy.

00:52:56.000 That is what I want, very specifically.

00:52:58.000 How do you feel about your healthcare system in Canada?

00:53:00.000 I love it.

00:53:00.000 Okay, get rid of that and go fully private and we've got a deal.

00:53:04.000 Yeah, no.

00:53:05.000 No, no, no, no, no.

00:53:06.000 You have to compromise with me.

00:53:08.000 Right.

00:53:08.000 Will you give up your state health care system?

00:53:11.000 You know, that's a fair point.

00:53:14.000 That's fair.

00:53:15.000 I'm sitting here... I see what you mean.

00:53:16.000 I'm sitting here with people telling me that... So, I'm going to go right into the stereotype for everybody who's listening.

00:53:23.000 I come from a second-generation mixed-race family.

00:53:26.000 They fought, my grandparents were forced to flee numerous states because it was illegal to cohabitate and to have kids.

00:53:32.000 This is some of my family experience.

00:53:34.000 I grow up, once again, with my mom, who's mixed race, marrying a white guy and having a second generation mixed race family.

00:53:40.000 And I genuinely believed when I was a kid, growing up in Chicago, like we had come to this position where we recognized race was less important.

00:53:47.000 Martin Luther King Jr.' 's dream.

00:53:49.000 It didn't matter what I was, or my Latino friend, or my Asian friend.

00:53:53.000 We were all just friends in the neighborhood.

00:53:54.000 And then I got to experience critical race theory.

00:53:57.000 And these people looked me in the eyes and said, I don't know what you are, so you're not allowed to be in any of these groups.

00:54:03.000 But all the white people go there, the black people go there, the Asians go there, and the Mexicans go there. 0.64

00:54:07.000 That's what they did at Occupy Wall Street.

00:54:08.000 They were called spokes, the spokes council.

00:54:12.000 And they said there were working groups and there were caucuses.

00:54:15.000 And the caucuses were race-based and gender-based. 1.00

00:54:20.000 And so they quite literally said, if you want to vote on how we spend money, all the black people have to go in the group of black people and decide how black people want money spent. 0.96

00:54:27.000 And I said, that's insane. 0.93

00:54:29.000 And I will fight against that tooth and nail because my family experienced this.

00:54:34.000 In this past election in California, they tried to repeal their civil rights amendment from their constitution.

00:54:40.000 I ask you, you say that we've got to come to this position where we come together.

00:54:44.000 Would you be willing to allow a bunch of white people in a majority white state to discriminate against black people in the name of peace?

00:54:52.000 You know, I don't think I'm going to be faced with that question.

00:54:55.000 And certainly the world is perplexing to me enough without what ifs, but I'd actually like to ask you a question because I don't, I don't know the answer to this.

00:55:05.000 Even after I spent five years writing this thing, like, how do you think this is going to end?

00:55:12.000 I mean, I've heard you say there's going to be a civil war.

00:55:15.000 I think we're in a civil war.

00:55:16.000 I mean, I think you're, well, you're literally in civil strife.

00:55:20.000 In a technical sense, like, you are already technically in civil strife.

00:55:24.000 And that was 27 deaths per year or something?

00:55:26.000 No, it's 25.

00:55:27.000 But, like, America's a funny country.

00:55:30.000 Like, America's so big and so diverse and so geographically huge that those numbers are probably not as meaningful as they are in the rest of the world.

00:55:36.000 But on the other hand, I think we're in agreement, right?

00:55:39.000 Is it an older metric?

00:55:41.000 No, it's the standard metric, but it's still not, like, You know, America's America's different, right?

00:55:47.000 Like America is a very different place.

00:55:48.000 Like I don't think America is an exception.

00:55:50.000 I don't think the laws of political gravity don't apply to the United States, but like when you're applying these standards, it's just a little it's just a little more complicated than it would be for Canada, right?

00:56:01.000 But on the other hand, do you think political violence is going to become normalized?

00:56:08.000 That there's just going to be a lot more assassination?

00:56:10.000 Do you think there's going to be street fights?

00:56:13.000 All of those things are happening.

00:56:15.000 I can't foresee a scenario.

00:56:18.000 One of the problems here is that by 2040, 50% of the country will control 85% of the Senate.

00:56:25.000 Right.

00:56:25.000 So this is like this becomes like this is classic anocracy.

00:56:28.000 So, you know, civil wars tend to happen in like civil wars don't happen in full democracies like Denmark and they don't happen in autocracies like Russia.

00:56:38.000 They happen when there's a in the gray area.

00:56:41.000 Right.

00:56:41.000 In this in this area where it's unclear whether it's democracy or autocracy.

00:56:46.000 So do you think like I can't foresee a scenario where there will be an uncontested election ever in the United States?

00:56:51.000 Oh, you're completely correct.

00:56:53.000 I mean, going back to since Gore and Bush, it's just been, and even then you still had some degree of strife and insanity with previous elections, but it was really bad starting then.

00:57:07.000 There's a bunch of different ways I see this.

00:57:12.000 I don't think the right wants to control the left, but the left does want to control the right.

00:57:17.000 Well, the right wants to control the country.

00:57:20.000 I disagree.

00:57:21.000 So you think the right would be happy with just the states controlling their own?

00:57:26.000 Because, I mean, one answer to this is radical defederalization.

00:57:30.000 I mean, that's something that's been talked about for long enough.

00:57:33.000 We are supposed to be radically defederalized.

00:57:36.000 We're not.

00:57:37.000 Well, you already are.

00:57:38.000 But we're not de facto.

00:57:41.000 We're supposed to be radically defederalized.

00:57:43.000 Compared to other countries, like compared to any country in Europe, compared to anywhere in Asia, you are radically defederalized.

00:57:49.000 As you were traveling the country writing this, geographically did you find intensity in certain areas?

00:57:57.000 I'm just curious, because it was a big country.

00:57:59.000 What do you mean by intensity?

00:58:00.000 As you were traveling the country writing this book, when you were in State X, were you like, wow, I really feel a burgeoning civil war here.

00:58:10.000 New York City, I'm from New York City.

00:58:12.000 No.

00:58:13.000 Texas, not to knock Texas.

00:58:15.000 Did you go to any region that you were like, these people are ready to be separated from their friends?

00:58:19.000 I found it everywhere.

00:58:20.000 Really?

00:58:21.000 Yeah, I mean, it was extraordinary to me where I would find it.

00:58:26.000 Like my friends who are in media in the Hudson Valley, they feel very much under threat.

00:58:31.000 Like they feel, they feel like if you run for dog catcher as a Democrat in Hudson Valley, someone will send you a picture of a gun saying we're coming for you.

00:58:39.000 Right?

00:58:40.000 Like, never mind.

00:58:42.000 But, I mean, the thing about America right now is that everyone feels under siege.

00:58:47.000 Right?

00:58:47.000 Like, everyone feels under siege from one kind or another.

00:58:50.000 Whether it's cultural siege.

00:58:52.000 Whether it's political siege.

00:58:53.000 Whether it's siege from political machinery.

00:58:56.000 Right?

00:58:57.000 That's the extraordinary thing.

00:58:58.000 Like, I'm going to talk to you guys.

00:59:00.000 You all feel under siege.

00:59:03.000 I feel under siege to varying degrees with the censorship algorithm on YouTube.

00:59:07.000 They're trying to tell me to live in a segregated world.

00:59:08.000 Exactly.

00:59:09.000 They're hitting me in the back of the head in an open field and well, no, no, they're trying to tell me

00:59:14.000 To you understand in a segregated world exactly and I will go and I will go and talk to black lives matter organizers

00:59:21.000 Which I have also done and they will they will say exactly the same thing

00:59:25.000 They will say they will say literally exactly the same thing

00:59:29.000 And they're lying to you.

00:59:31.000 And that's what they say about you.

00:59:33.000 Yes, exactly.

00:59:34.000 And when Russiagate was a hoax, when the Covington Kids was a hoax, when Jussie Smollett was a hoax, at a certain point don't you say to yourself, maybe they're lying to me?

00:59:42.000 Well, then there's the, you know, then there's January 6th, and then there's, then there's Trump calling up the tanks in Washington on the 4th of July.

00:59:50.000 Well, what is that?

00:59:52.000 What is that?

00:59:53.000 Well, on the 4th of July, when the- During a parade?

00:59:55.000 Yeah.

00:59:57.000 But hold on, hold on.

00:59:57.000 Oh, sorry, am I not close enough to the mic?

00:59:58.000 Yeah, just stick with it.

00:59:59.000 That's not a lie!

01:00:01.000 Listen, if you're going to mix... I don't do the rage.

01:00:05.000 So if you want to have someone on to explain to you the crimes of the right, you can definitely find a lot of people.

01:00:12.000 If I'm going to cite overt, widespread lies, and then you cite January 6th, which is unrelated to what I was talking about, I'm going to ask you... Oh, I think you're asking... Well, I mean, if I were to count Trump's lies...

01:00:25.000 I mean, how many hours do we have here?

01:00:27.000 If we're going to talk about the lies of the right, any Trump speech has 30 of them.

01:00:33.000 I don't like comparing Trump and Biden.

01:00:35.000 They're both authoritarian.

01:00:36.000 I'm not talking about one guy. 0.70

01:00:37.000 Trump is a symptom of this.

01:00:39.000 I actually say that in the book.

01:00:42.000 He's a symptom rather than a cause, for sure.

01:00:46.000 But if you're asking me, are there any right-wing people who lie, That's not what I'm saying.

01:00:50.000 I'm saying you'd say that Black Lives Matter would accuse me of lying.

01:00:54.000 And my response is, Jussie Smollett, that thing was an obvious lie, but it was picked up by actors and celebrities and every mainstream news organization.

01:01:01.000 Russiagate was three, four years of outright lying.

01:01:05.000 Ukrainegate, all of it turned out to be lies. 0.97

01:01:07.000 Hands Up, Don't Shoot, another lie.

01:01:09.000 The Covington Kids, another lie.

01:01:11.000 Eleven Trump associates have been indicted.

01:01:16.000 But indictments don't mean anything other than people are at war with each other.

01:01:19.000 John Durham is investigating them the same as they're investigating him.

01:01:23.000 What I'm talking about is... Are you really going to argue with me?

01:01:25.000 Are you actually going to say that the Trump administration was an honest administration?

01:01:30.000 You don't believe that.

01:01:31.000 I didn't say that.

01:01:32.000 Okay, so you would admit that they're lying.

01:01:35.000 Oh, absolutely!

01:01:36.000 Well, there we go.

01:01:37.000 But my point is, Trump is... How many viewers does the right command in terms of institutional media?

01:01:46.000 Well, Fox News is the biggest news organization in the country, by far.

01:01:51.000 Well, yeah, I mean, we're in media breakdown.

01:01:55.000 This is actually a large part of the structure, too, like the information breakdown.

01:01:59.000 That's also a big part of the book.

01:02:01.000 But like it's, that's actually, that's a, you know, when I talked about a complex cascading system, that's, that feeds into both sides in different ways, in asymmetrical ways.

01:02:10.000 But, but, you know, like one, one way of thinking about this struggle is that it is a mimetic struggle in the Jeff Jazea, you know, definition of it.

01:02:21.000 Here's the point I'm trying to get to.

01:02:23.000 If you look at the politically homeless faction, the intellectual dark web faction, the post-liberal faction, conservatives, and even hardcore MAGA Trump supporters, they all agree, for the most part, on a typical worldview, except for certain Q elements, which don't make up that many people. 0.61

01:02:40.000 I don't think I can really agree with that.

01:02:42.000 I mean, I really tried.

01:02:43.000 I mean, maybe it is my own failing, but I mean, part of my job was trying to figure out, like, what are the intellectual coherences that you find in this?

01:02:52.000 And I found that, I mean, one of the things I find really interesting about the American right in general is their love of esoteric information, right?

01:03:01.000 Like, an esoteric knowledge, where, like, something becomes more valuable because it's less believed.

01:03:06.000 What's an example of that, if you have one?

01:03:08.000 Well, QAnon would be like the ultimate example.

01:03:12.000 QAnon is pretty powerful.

01:03:14.000 There's 50 people going to run in 2022 who are QAnon supporters.

01:03:18.000 What does that mean?

01:03:19.000 Well, 50 members of the Republican Party support QAnon.

01:03:23.000 They're going to run in 2022.

01:03:24.000 Here's the issue I think you might have.

01:03:26.000 We've had Marjorie Taylor Greene on the show, and she's rejected all of that stuff. 0.91

01:03:31.000 So when you don't actually... The space lasers and so on.

01:03:34.000 That's not true, actually.

01:03:35.000 That's fake.

01:03:36.000 That's a lie.

01:03:37.000 Right?

01:03:37.000 So if you base your perception off a faction that is lying to you nonstop, of course you're going to believe, well, that both sides must be bad.

01:03:44.000 Marjorie Taylor... Do you not understand that I've had this exact conversation with people on the left?

01:03:49.000 And I've actually stated exactly this in 100 plus shows of this, that the reason civil war, in my opinion, is inevitable is because you have two sides both saying, I'm right.

01:04:00.000 I'll give you an example, a riddle.

01:04:01.000 You may have heard this one.

01:04:03.000 This will be fun for all the kids at home.

01:04:04.000 Don't tell me.

01:04:05.000 I want to guess.

01:04:07.000 You come across, you're walking down a road and you come to a fork in the road and you see there's two paths and you know that one road will lead you to imminent death and one road will lead you to safety.

01:04:20.000 There are two men standing on each side.

01:04:23.000 Oh, yes.

01:04:23.000 The old one.

01:04:24.000 How do you know?

01:04:24.000 One always tells the truth.

01:04:26.000 One always tells a lie.

01:04:26.000 Right.

01:04:27.000 I know this one.

01:04:27.000 How do you know?

01:04:28.000 I heard it differently.

01:04:29.000 Which road is the right path?

01:04:30.000 What is it?

01:04:31.000 Oh, God.

01:04:32.000 I know it.

01:04:32.000 You asked.

01:04:35.000 I've heard it as heaven and hell.

01:04:37.000 Yeah.

01:04:37.000 Where the angel always tells the truth and the devil always tells a lie.

01:04:41.000 And you ask the devil.

01:04:43.000 No, no.

01:04:44.000 You ask the angel, is the other one a devil?

01:04:46.000 You don't know which one is which.

01:04:49.000 That's fine.

01:04:50.000 You want me to give you the answer?

01:04:51.000 Yeah, I can't remember it.

01:04:52.000 I've heard it before.

01:04:53.000 You ask either one of them what the other would say.

01:04:55.000 Right.

01:04:56.000 And then take the opposite path.

01:04:57.000 And take the opposite path, yeah.

01:04:58.000 So the issue here is there is obviously a more complex system of variables here.

01:05:05.000 Well, that's my point.

01:05:06.000 But... That's actually a really good way of putting it.

01:05:11.000 So if that's the condition where one's the angel and one's the devil and you don't know which one is right, Like, surely we have to come up with something more clever than the other side's wrong.

01:05:24.000 I suppose the issue is, the reason I use the Biden example is because if you were to ask the average journalist in this country, did Joe Biden engage in a quid pro quo in Ukraine, they will tell you no.

01:05:37.000 But the actual answer is yes, he did.

01:05:40.000 I think journalists actually are pretty complicated.

01:05:42.000 I mean, I know a lot of them.

01:05:44.000 You know, as I said, I'm a freelance writer, so one of the advantages I have is that I go into a lot of shops.

01:05:49.000 I'm like a stray cat.

01:05:50.000 Like, I go into the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and the New Yorker, the Atlantic and so on.

01:05:55.000 And I would say that the general opinion that the American media are all the same, That's not necessarily true.

01:06:03.000 What is true is that people who went to Ivy League schools tend to have a very similar outlook on life.

01:06:12.000 These organizations, most of them are in New York, or they tend to be in big cities where they're surrounded by like-minded people.

01:06:18.000 I will say, as far as I know, they're only in New York, Washington, and LA.

01:06:22.000 But let me ask you, because I think the best example is the Biden thing, were you aware that Joe Biden engaged in a criminal quid pro quo?

01:06:30.000 I'm not sure I would define it that way, but also I'm not sure I have that whole story.

01:06:35.000 Why don't you?

01:06:35.000 this is... Like, and you know when I don't like there's a lot of things... Why don't you?

01:06:40.000 You know I was with the president... Well there was a bunch I was at a I was at a

01:06:43.000 cottage with these friends I have who are in their 80s And one guy told me, they were all giving me life advice.

01:06:51.000 And this old dude said, you know, one of the most important things in life is to know you don't have to have an opinion on everything.

01:06:57.000 You don't have to think, I know the answer to X, when you don't.

01:07:02.000 And so I actually go through life not knowing the answer to almost everything.

01:07:08.000 And so when I write books, what I try and do is figure out exactly what I do know.

01:07:15.000 And also be clear about where I got my knowledge.

01:07:20.000 What happened with Biden in the Ukraine?

01:07:22.000 I don't know.

01:07:23.000 Shouldn't you, though?

01:07:24.000 I mean, if you're writing about a civil war and there have been accusations made against Donald Trump in terms of a quid pro quo... Donald Trump does not figure in this book.

01:07:33.000 Neither does Biden.

01:07:34.000 To me, honestly, horse race politics?

01:07:36.000 Irrelevant.

01:07:39.000 What Marjorie Taylor Greene said, what Ted Cruz said today?

01:07:41.000 Irrelevant.

01:07:42.000 The structural problems that the United States faces are so profound that all of the politics, to me, that consumes everything is all irrelevant.

01:07:54.000 It really, really does not matter.

01:07:56.000 The reason I bring it up is just to try and set a baseline.

01:08:00.000 I started covering Occupy Wall Street.

01:08:03.000 I had been an activist in my younger years.

01:08:05.000 I worked for non-profits.

01:08:06.000 I go to Occupy Wall Street.

01:08:07.000 I start documenting things, and I say, I just want to show people what's happening.

01:08:10.000 I ended up getting a job at Vice and being the founding member of Vice News, doing on-the-ground reporting in Ukraine and Brazil and Venezuela.

01:08:17.000 And then from there I went and joined ABC Univision's joint venture, once again trying to do news, but that's where they got hyper-polarized.

01:08:24.000 Within six months of me being there, they said, we're far left.

01:08:27.000 That's our pitch.

01:08:28.000 We are targeting progressive young people.

01:08:30.000 Oh, as a freelancer, you think I don't see that?

01:08:32.000 Institutions all the time that I'm part of suddenly become hyper-polarized.

01:08:37.000 But it's always to the left.

01:08:38.000 Well, institutions... Yes, no, you're fair.

01:08:41.000 That's fair.

01:08:42.000 They almost always go hyper-polarized left.

01:08:44.000 That's true.

01:08:44.000 And then they immediately die.

01:08:46.000 Like, that's the other thing.

01:08:47.000 Vice's evaluation.

01:08:48.000 Right.

01:08:49.000 Like, they go... That's one of my points about the left, is like, once an institution becomes woke, it almost immediately starts dying.

01:08:56.000 That's my fear about the Federal Reserve management happening slow.

01:08:59.000 I want to make this point.

01:09:00.000 Sorry.

01:09:00.000 Yeah, I'm sorry.

01:09:01.000 I don't mean to interrupt.

01:09:02.000 No, I know.

01:09:02.000 I'm talking a lot this one, but I do want to make this point, is that, as a baseline, I've been reading the news and doing the research and the fact-checking on all of these stories, and it's come to a point where the right tends to be correct on these things, and the left goes off into Wally world every time.

01:09:18.000 UkraineGate being a really great example of the corporate press, the establishment Democrats, and the left all lying about what Joe Biden did with respect to Ukraine, when more and more reporting keeps coming up proving he actually did this, even based on the mainstream media's own previous reporting, say from Politico.

01:09:36.000 Politico publishes a story, as does the New York Times, that Ukrainians meddled in the 2016 election in an effort to help Democrats.

01:09:44.000 Not that the Ukrainian government did, but that elements of higher-ranking officials in Ukraine did.

01:09:49.000 A court even ruled this in Ukraine.

01:09:52.000 Joe Biden engages in a quid pro quo where he brags about it on camera.

01:09:55.000 But if you come out and say that, you're called right-wing.

01:09:58.000 They say it's fake news, you're lying, and it's not true.

01:10:00.000 I live in a world based on, do you have sources for that?

01:10:03.000 Just the other night, we got reporting that the person who tried to assassinate the Democrat was a BLM activist, and I said, no, no, no, no, no.

01:10:09.000 We are not.

01:10:10.000 That is a rumor.

01:10:10.000 It is not confirmed until we can get official confirmation on the story.

01:10:14.000 Even though there had been, I just hadn't seen it.

01:10:15.000 Because if I don't have the official reporting from a trusted source, it didn't happen.

01:10:19.000 But every single time I go to the news, a good majority of what's considered mainstream corporate press is outright wrong and they defend it.

01:10:27.000 For example, the crack pipe story.

01:10:30.000 Jen Psaki goes on TV and says, we were never going to give out crack pipes.

01:10:34.000 That's a lie easily proved by looking at the organizations they were contracting who give crack pipes.

01:10:40.000 I pulled up two different sources, international and national, that say safe smoking kits include meth and crack pipes.

01:10:46.000 Yet when the right comes out and says this, Snope says, false.

01:10:50.000 All of the corporate establishment press are saying it's not true, there were never any crack pipes.

01:10:54.000 Then Jen Psaki goes on TV and says, no crack pipes. 0.94

01:10:57.000 Why was there an objection to them giving out crack pipes?

01:11:00.000 Crack pipes are not good.

01:11:01.000 Crack is bad.

01:11:01.000 by exacerbate crack pipe smoking.

01:11:04.000 See in Canada I remember in the 90s there was a, I remember going to parties

01:11:10.000 and there was a government program to give out straws for snorting cocaine.

01:11:16.000 Because it was being, AIDS was being.

01:11:19.000 He communicated nasally.

01:11:21.000 And so I remember and I was like, yeah, that's that's the government I like they give out This is what happens but listen Do you do you honest are you honestly telling me that you feel like when you see something on Fox News?

01:11:35.000 You feel like it's probably correct and that it's not and that it's and that it's and that you've never seen a story on Fox News That was not was a lie No, I call out Fox News, it's just I call them out less frequently.

01:11:47.000 And Fox News is one station compared to... The problem here is the informational networks.

01:11:52.000 It's not the sides.

01:11:53.000 That's what I'm trying to tell you.

01:11:54.000 But what ends up happening is, after a decade of this...

01:11:58.000 It has become so divergent that you cannot convince an 18-year-old who's voting for these policies that the majority of their life was based on lies.

01:12:08.000 So I'll give you another example of what's caused all this, and I don't know if you looked into this, but have you looked at the LexisNexis data on critical race theory and woke terminology?

01:12:19.000 No, I have not checked that.

01:12:21.000 At the end of the 2000s, LexisNexis tracks massive spikes in the New York Times saying things like white privilege, racism, class privilege, etc.

01:12:29.000 You don't need LexisNexis to tell you that.

01:12:31.000 Right.

01:12:31.000 Well, so, several things happened.

01:12:33.000 One, millennials who are in colleges, who are learning these things, started to age into the workforce.

01:12:39.000 But the biggest thing that happened was Facebook created the algorithms that prop up content based on how many keywords are in them.

01:12:47.000 So someone who's eight years old, it goes on Facebook, and they start getting inundated with videos of police brutality for ten years.

01:12:54.000 Why?

01:12:55.000 Because it clicks really well.

01:12:56.000 Anger and justice themes do really, really well on Facebook.

01:12:59.000 But so does the opposite, dude.

01:13:01.000 I mean, definitely.

01:13:02.000 Absolutely.

01:13:02.000 I mean, like... Anger and justice can go either way.

01:13:05.000 Well, like, the... I mean...

01:13:08.000 I feel like I'm repeating myself, but surely we can all see that I've definitely not been a friend to wokeness.

01:13:16.000 You can read my writing on it.

01:13:18.000 I've been punished enough for it.

01:13:20.000 But just to be clear, my point here is really this, that the crisis that your country is facing is so severe that these debates are increasingly meaningless because they take place in a context of Essentially, semantic collapse.

01:13:41.000 Dude, you can see people in the metaverse wearing with black avatars and with white avatars.

01:13:45.000 It doesn't matter if they're black or white in real life, but you'll see them segmented into their little avatars in the game, and they're going to act like real life, as if it's real.

01:13:53.000 People are wired to be like that.

01:13:54.000 I'll make this point real quick.

01:13:55.000 And we can change that.

01:13:56.000 But semantic collapse.

01:13:57.000 I want to hear what you think about it.

01:14:00.000 I want your opinion on that.

01:14:01.000 I'm curious about that.

01:14:03.000 You already mentioned that these media organizations tend to drift left.

01:14:07.000 Well, there's both.

01:14:09.000 Fox definitely has gone way right.

01:14:11.000 And he's going way right.

01:14:13.000 Tucker Carlson has become increasingly more populist and supportive of previous left-wing positions.

01:14:18.000 Now, Hannity, I'm not a big fan of, but hold on.

01:14:20.000 Hold on there a minute.

01:14:21.000 Mike.com is a really great example.

01:14:24.000 And I'll tell you why I think this is happening, and probably why it is happening.

01:14:28.000 Mike.com, when they first started, they were libertarian.

01:14:31.000 They were pro-Ron Paul.

01:14:33.000 But within a few years, they became completely woke.

01:14:35.000 Why?

01:14:36.000 At Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, what is deemed safe?

01:14:41.000 Wokeness.

01:14:42.000 So I had this conversation with Jack Dorsey, for instance.

01:14:44.000 There are certain things you can't say on social media.

01:14:47.000 It almost always favors the left.

01:14:49.000 But you're massively successful doing the opposite of that.

01:14:52.000 And I'm a centrist!

01:14:53.000 I mean, come on.

01:14:55.000 Like, there are certainly right-wing people.

01:14:56.000 Like, Joe Rogan?

01:14:58.000 Joe Rogan's not right-wing.

01:14:59.000 Well, no, I wouldn't say he's either.

01:15:00.000 He's pro-UBI. 0.90

01:15:01.000 I wouldn't say he's either, but... Well, then maybe, like... The right has been decimated on social media.

01:15:06.000 And so these companies see the algorithms favoring... Certainly the left would say the other thing.

01:15:11.000 But when Mike.com starts off libertarian and then becomes woke, when Vice.com starts off as an edgy bro frat boy kind of punk website and becomes feminist, when ABC News funds hundreds of millions of dollars and then six months later says, we're going woke everybody, it is not going the other direction, it's flowing one way.

01:15:32.000 No, no, no.

01:15:34.000 I mean, it is just flowing always.

01:15:38.000 The process that's underway is complementary radicalization.

01:15:41.000 I mean, that is what it is.

01:15:42.000 It's like the right becomes more right because the left becomes more left.

01:15:46.000 Have you seen the Pew data on this?

01:15:48.000 Well, yeah, but the Pew data unequivocally supports radicalization online as being a right-wing phenomenon.

01:15:55.000 Stochastic terrorism would be that. 0.96

01:15:56.000 Except Pew shows that the Republican Party has moved on a scale of 0 through 10, with 0 being left and 10 being right.

01:16:01.000 They've moved 1.5 degrees to the right since 1994, and the left has jumped three points.

01:16:06.000 Yeah, but it depends also if you check the racial resentment numbers, which spike hugely for Republicans, right?

01:16:14.000 So like, there are a whole bunch of ways of reading those numbers.

01:16:17.000 What are those numbers?

01:16:18.000 The racial?

01:16:19.000 Racial resentment. 0.52

01:16:20.000 So racial resentment is like, well, it's a pretty complicated sociological thing, it's a bunch of different factors, but it's like, it's not necessarily racism per se, it's whether you feel threatened.

01:16:33.000 And so that and so that that number like rather than being an ideology like rather than being a Ideology as in I am a racist it is like how you feel about certain aspects of life But so that and those numbers were identical for Democrats and Republicans in I think 1990 and then they again Don't quote me on that, but I won't address the semantic yes, because I would really like You know we're here.

01:16:59.000 We're doing this show people are listening to it right now What are we doing to prevent semantic breakdown?

01:17:07.000 Well, I don't know.

01:17:08.000 I mean having a conversation that clarifies definitions like Marxism, for instance, is probably helpful.

01:17:12.000 Right.

01:17:13.000 Racism has come to mean completely different things.

01:17:17.000 I've been doing this for so long that I try to stay extremely precise in all the terms.

01:17:25.000 As you said, I don't like to use terrorism unless it is actually the technical definition of terrorism.

01:17:33.000 Part of the book, because this stuff is so fraught, I want to have the terminology exact.

01:17:38.000 What is civil war?

01:17:40.000 What is civil strife?

01:17:42.000 Well, I think you can be, but it requires a certain amount of loss.

01:17:48.000 It requires a certain amount of loss of force in your argument.

01:17:52.000 For sure it does.

01:17:53.000 Humility, man.

01:17:54.000 The left and the right, the right has a traditional view of language, like we use words that mean things they meant 20 years ago, and the left has redefined things.

01:18:03.000 Well, the left is involved in a language etiquette that is totally destructive and just as self-consuming, as I said.

01:18:12.000 As Mark said in the German ideology, there was a man who thought, if I define river differently, no one will drown.

01:18:20.000 And that's what the left has become, where they think that definitions will change reality.

01:18:26.000 I have a good example of what I think is contributing to the breakdown and why I think there's no solution.

01:18:32.000 I feel like many on the right are looking for an anchor.

01:18:34.000 Like, just tell me where we stand and where we are, and I'll try and figure out what's going on.

01:18:39.000 Whereas the left just says, I will do as the tide flows.

01:18:43.000 So the example on this is... But the left eats itself.

01:18:46.000 Well, certainly they're a swarm.

01:18:47.000 But that doesn't mean they go away.

01:18:48.000 Let me finish this point.

01:18:49.000 Sorry.

01:18:50.000 Well, nobody goes away.

01:18:51.000 I mean, if people went away, it would be easier.

01:18:53.000 The point I was going to make is, I saw a meme recently where someone was talking about vaccines.

01:18:59.000 And then someone responded, they said, someone made the meme about seatbelts.

01:19:03.000 They were like, oh, we should ban seatbelt mandates.

01:19:06.000 And someone said, you know, hate to break it to you, but seatbelts aren't intended to prevent an accident.

01:19:10.000 They're meant to reduce your risk of injury in the event one happens. 1.00

01:19:13.000 And then all of the people on the left started laughing, saying, how stupid do you have to be? 1.00

01:19:16.000 That's literally what vaccines do. 1.00

01:19:18.000 The problem is, for people on the right, Joe Biden came out publicly and addressed the nation saying vaccines prevent transmission.

01:19:25.000 And Dr. Fauci and they all said something very similar.

01:19:28.000 Now I understand science changes, but it's very difficult to latch onto something if it goes back and forth.

01:19:33.000 Well, I mean, we're dealing, like, the situation with, like, this is a chaotic moment of real chaos.

01:19:40.000 That has nothing to do with semantic chaos.

01:19:42.000 That has to do with the fact of trying to figure things out.

01:19:44.000 Also, suddenly there's Omicron.

01:19:46.000 I mean, people are doing this on the, well, that's just, you know, stuff happens.

01:19:53.000 Like, you're just trying to figure out what the hell happened.

01:19:56.000 I am not saying, you know, fault on either side of this, what I'm saying, one of the things that is causing a divide is people have different tolerances for a change in information, or they have expectations.

01:20:05.000 That's possible, although it seems to me like the radicalization is happening, you know, at the same level, and happening, and don't you feel everyone's out there looking for an anchor?

01:20:19.000 I mean, God knows the people I talk to on the left are desperate for some kind of stability.

01:20:23.000 I mean, that's the one hope I have is that, you know, the chaos has become so intolerable to people that they need some kind of, they really start to crave structure.

01:20:35.000 They're scared to step through the fire.

01:20:37.000 So again, to throw it back to Jussie Smollett, for instance, Covington kids, big cultural moments that were absolutely wrong.

01:20:45.000 For a lot of people that, you know, we've even had on the show, they've said, this was the moment I said, I just can't live this way anymore and I need something solid.

01:20:53.000 And so I said, I can't trust these people who keep lying to me and I look for something else.

01:20:57.000 I mean, those are very specific moments.

01:20:59.000 Like what's the, what's the technical term for the fallacy where you take one example and exclude it to everything else?

01:21:04.000 I mean, you know, everyone has their example.

01:21:06.000 God knows there's enough tolerance.

01:21:07.000 God, there's enough chaos out there.

01:21:09.000 There's enough nonsense.

01:21:11.000 But why take more?

01:21:14.000 Because they never apologized, they never admitted it.

01:21:16.000 See, I think, not to be too much of a salesman, you actually have a lot of information about this that I don't have, but I think what I try to do in my book is go 30,000 feet in the air.

01:21:29.000 I think your book buys a lot of information I don't have.

01:21:31.000 Yes, I think it does.

01:21:32.000 But I think we need some perspective on this stuff.

01:21:38.000 Like, Jesse Smollett is not a major incident in American history.

01:21:42.000 It's a grain of sand in a heap.

01:21:44.000 That's a really good way of putting it.

01:21:46.000 But it was a joke!

01:21:49.000 But it wasn't a joke in the sense of the way institutions latched onto it, the way elected officials latched onto it, the media latched onto it.

01:21:56.000 And I think one of the ways where, I don't want to say I disagree with you, but where we see the world differently, I do not see the right trying to cancel the left the way the left tries to cancel the right.

01:22:07.000 Small example of that you have this lovely singer British chick Adele who won an award and Because of the current time period a week ago.

01:22:17.000 It was a gender-neutral artist of the year and in her acceptance of speech She said I wish it weren't I won't fake a British accent. 0.96

01:22:23.000 I wish it weren't Although she's cockney. 1.00

01:22:26.000 I wish it weren't artists of the year.

01:22:27.000 I wish it were Woman of the Year, because I love being a woman.

01:22:31.000 That turned into Adele's trying to cancel the trance movement. 0.97

01:22:35.000 Adele should be banned on Spotify. 0.78

01:22:37.000 Stop buying Adele.

01:22:38.000 I don't ever see that on the right.

01:22:39.000 And proof of that is, two years ago, the NFL, they kneel at the anthem.

01:22:45.000 Stop watching the NFL.

01:22:46.000 No one stopped watching the NFL.

01:22:50.000 Look at the Super Bowl numbers.

01:22:52.000 Look at the playoff numbers.

01:22:53.000 The right can't go to a cancel culture the way the left can.

01:22:57.000 What would have to happen for people to stop watching the NFL?

01:23:00.000 It's unimaginable.

01:23:02.000 Exactly.

01:23:03.000 The Civil War could happen or not, but the NFL is going to continue.

01:23:06.000 But look at the movement to get Taylor Swift to pull her record off of Spotify because of Joe Rogan.

01:23:11.000 I don't think you see that on the right.

01:23:12.000 There are calls for it.

01:23:13.000 Certainly there are calls for it.

01:23:15.000 The NFL being the best example.

01:23:17.000 We should stop watching the NFL.

01:23:18.000 But they don't.

01:23:19.000 Yeah, the right couldn't boycott Netflix after Cuties came out.

01:23:25.000 You guys are worried about Jussie Smollett, and you're worried about the NFL, and you're worried about the Halftime Show.

01:23:33.000 No, no, no.

01:23:34.000 Hold on.

01:23:34.000 Those are grains of sand in the heat.

01:23:36.000 Yes.

01:23:36.000 No, no, no.

01:23:36.000 Fair enough.

01:23:37.000 I'm worried about commentary.

01:23:38.000 What the left's worried about is that by 2040, 50% of the Senate is going to be controlled by 50% of the country.

01:23:41.000 40-40, 50% of the country is going to be in, 50% of the Senate is going to be, sorry, 85%

01:23:46.000 of the Senate is going to be controlled by 50% of the country.

01:23:48.000 That's a good thing.

01:23:49.000 But that's, well, I mean, that really to me devolves into like pseudo-democracy.

01:23:54.000 We're a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

01:23:56.000 Ah, well, see, this is where we get into, it's time to separate.

01:24:00.000 Because, like, I think there are two visions of America.

01:24:03.000 One is a constitutional republic, a settler republic, and the other is a multicultural democracy.

01:24:10.000 And I think they are fundamentally irreconcilable.

01:24:12.000 I agree.

01:24:14.000 And they're actually, you need two countries.

01:24:17.000 Because, like, the time has come for, like, these are both visions that have their merits, and they have their demerits, right?

01:24:25.000 But, you know, certainly I am on the side of multicultural democracy all day, forever.

01:24:31.000 That's where I come from.

01:24:33.000 You mean like 51% decides the law?

01:24:35.000 Yeah, with minority protections.

01:24:37.000 What's a minority protection?

01:24:38.000 Well, those are by law.

01:24:40.000 So those are not... Well, I mean, if you actually want to know what I believe, it's the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian Constitution, which is incredibly specific and was written in 1982 and contains all this beautifully articulated in a simple way.

01:24:53.000 But my point really here is like, Whichever side you're on of this, these two countries can't coexist.

01:25:00.000 It has to be one or the other, and it really can't be both.

01:25:04.000 I'd like to see people democratically choosing where their tax dollars go, but also having some sort of republicanism.

01:25:09.000 That's a good point.

01:25:11.000 That would be an idea of an amalgam.

01:25:14.000 America has been an amalgam. 0.68

01:25:15.000 America is a massive contradiction.

01:25:17.000 The beauty of America, its great gift, has been its capacity to hold contradictory ideas at the same time.

01:25:25.000 Um, like that is, that is the glory of America.

01:25:28.000 And because it's a constitutional republic, it's able to.

01:25:30.000 Well, I think actually it's, when you go back to the original constitution, it contains a whole coast of political ideas that are in conflict.

01:25:38.000 And also, you know, it, it believes in, it believes in, in struggle as it believes in disagreement.

01:25:44.000 I mean, that's the, that's the amazing gift of the American constitution is that it believes that You don't need unity.

01:25:52.000 You need disagreement to get to the best answer, right?

01:25:55.000 But that only works if you have a concept of yourself as a unified whole.

01:26:01.000 And when that evaporates, when that dissolves, you're left with irreconcilability.

01:26:09.000 Have you read Washington's Farewell Address recently?

01:26:11.000 No.

01:26:12.000 I mean, it's really worth reading because it's a great work of genius.

01:26:16.000 It's a really fascinating Book because he worked because he predicts exactly where you are right now like exactly where you are right now And he did it you know on his retirement.

01:26:28.000 I imagine you did a lot of research on the first American Civil War Yeah, I mean There's so much work on it like I would never call myself an expert on that like I definitely read a lot of books about it But just you know I'm not I would never There are some things in here that I do consider myself an expert on but that there are so many Civil War experts Just because you asked me earlier what I thought was going to happen.

01:26:47.000 We didn't quite get into it.

01:26:48.000 I will say we spent a lot of time, you know, you from 30,000 feet, me from someone on the ground trying to explain my positions.

01:26:56.000 I don't think I need to explain them to you for the most part.

01:26:58.000 I think, you know, you wrote a book.

01:27:00.000 I obviously want to explain it to the audience.

01:27:02.000 But as for what I think is going to happen, we hear a lot of peaceful divorce.

01:27:05.000 You mentioned these two countries can't exist.

01:27:08.000 But there is, in my opinion, no scenario in which there's a peaceful divorce.

01:27:11.000 It's almost impossible.

01:27:12.000 And the reason for it is, it was actually someone on the show brought this up, I can't remember who, but they made a great point.

01:27:17.000 There's two countries, you can say multicultural democracy and constitutional republic, both have their merits.

01:27:22.000 The first civil war, what happened?

01:27:24.000 It was like, I think four states legally seceded.

01:27:27.000 Yeah.

01:27:27.000 Everybody was like, all right.

01:27:28.000 Then I think seven more states joined in and they all went, well, okay then.

01:27:33.000 And then the North said, but these military bases are ours and we're going to remain in them.

01:27:38.000 And that's when Fort Sumter, South Carolina, they said, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:27:40.000 Hold on.

01:27:41.000 You got to leave.

01:27:43.000 Nobody believed the muskets were loaded.

01:27:44.000 Nobody believed the cannons were armed.

01:27:46.000 They all thought that it was just bluster and there would be no fighting because it could never happen here.

01:27:50.000 That's right.

01:27:50.000 And then the bombardment started.

01:27:52.000 No one foresaw the first civil war.

01:27:53.000 Yes.

01:27:55.000 Even though in hindsight it all seems perfectly clear and the structures are all there and it's like there's no way that it couldn't be a civil war after the nullification crisis and the bloody Kansas.

01:28:07.000 After whatever happened here.

01:28:09.000 Harper's Ferry.

01:28:10.000 Harper's Ferry.

01:28:10.000 We're like 15 kilometers away from where this happened.

01:28:13.000 But even Fort Sumter, I mean Jefferson Davis said it's probably nothing.

01:28:20.000 I bet the leaders of the North knew there was something coming.

01:28:22.000 As soon as they left, they're like, yo, we're getting that back.

01:28:24.000 They had to go to Europe to buy guns, the North. 0.99

01:28:28.000 The industrial superpower of the world in 1850 had to go to Europe.

01:28:33.000 I wonder how much of our treasury they sold out for those weapons.

01:28:36.000 They bought a lot of guns.

01:28:37.000 And so here's what happens now.

01:28:41.000 So it'll bankrupt the country too.

01:28:41.000 There was a great statement.

01:28:43.000 I think Texas had written this, that they had joined the South simply by nature of geography.

01:28:47.000 Yes.

01:28:48.000 Not ideology.

01:28:49.000 Same thing would happen today because... Well, Texas was a slave state.

01:28:53.000 California was a free state.

01:28:54.000 And that's where they lined up.

01:28:56.000 But they were so nascent.

01:28:57.000 I mean, you're not talking about large groups of people.

01:29:01.000 Right, right, right.

01:29:02.000 In the First Civil War.

01:29:03.000 And then you also had slave states who joined the North by nature of geography.

01:29:07.000 Yeah, because of geography, yeah.

01:29:08.000 So what I think would happen- But there was only one, right?

01:29:11.000 Maryland, I think?

01:29:13.000 I think West Virginia, too.

01:29:14.000 West Virginia was not a slave state.

01:29:16.000 West Virginia seceded from Virginia.

01:29:18.000 So what would happen today is you would likely have New York, Illinois, California, maybe Washington, maybe Oregon.

01:29:25.000 You write all that stuff, I imagine.

01:29:26.000 I'm going to show you the map that I got.

01:29:28.000 I want to know whether you think it's reasonable.

01:29:32.000 But go on, please.

01:29:34.000 So I think it could start with rapid defederalization.

01:29:37.000 218.

01:29:37.000 But then ultimately what will end up happening is one side's going to say, yeah, I'll slide that

01:29:43.000 over. One side's, what's the page number? 218. One side's going to say, let me grab this book.

01:29:50.000 Hey, those nukes, those weapons, those resources are ours and we want them.

01:29:56.000 The other side's gonna say, sorry, no dice.

01:29:59.000 Fighting starts.

01:29:59.000 Well, the problem is, like, to negotiate a settlement, you need goodwill.

01:30:03.000 Right?

01:30:03.000 There are countries that negotiate separation, like Czechoslovakia, where they do negotiate in goodwill, and that's what happened with Norway and Sweden.

01:30:11.000 Yeah, tell me what you think of that.

01:30:12.000 I mean, that is not a... I wonder what the best way to show this is, actually, because I don't... I wonder if I... So...

01:30:18.000 I can't do it. Well, it's basically the north, northeast and then the south and Midwest and then

01:30:23.000 California to Oregon and in Texas. Have you seen the poll?

01:30:26.000 I think it was you go data showing the different five different regions of the US. You've

01:30:30.000 got the Midwest, the South, and they were all basically saying, yeah, let's break off.

01:30:34.000 You know what you will really like in that book is the psychometric data, which is like different

01:30:38.000 personality types by region, which is actually fascinating and like goes to really deep

01:30:44.000 seated structural differences between between these groups.

01:30:47.000 But that was the one that I had only had three.

01:30:50.000 I like how Texas is just goes back to Texas.

01:30:52.000 Well, Texas, they have a very active nationalist movement that's quite together.

01:30:59.000 And also, Texas would 100% work as a country.

01:31:02.000 What do you think?

01:31:04.000 Do you think it's close?

01:31:05.000 I think you're close.

01:31:05.000 The only issue is I think it ends up with a bunch of war.

01:31:09.000 Well, the problem is, first of all, to negotiate a settlement, you need goodwill.

01:31:13.000 And then the UN, to negotiate with the UN, which I know sounds ridiculous, but, you know, you can't, no one will land in an airport until you have a UN agreement that you're a separate country, is really, really hard, especially with a country that has security, general, what's it called, security council placement.

01:31:30.000 So, like, it would be incredibly difficult.

01:31:34.000 Let me ask you a question.

01:31:34.000 To negotiate a secession.

01:31:36.000 Have you researched abortion?

01:31:38.000 Well, no, that's polarization.

01:31:41.000 That's part of polarization.

01:31:42.000 Of course, I did just write something about it in Lit Hub, about the politics of abortion as a factor in polarization.

01:31:53.000 I mean, you know, the most bizarre thing about it is that, you know, this is again looking at it from a foreign country, is like, Abortion in the United States should be one of the policies that everyone agrees on. 0.59

01:32:07.000 It is a success story.

01:32:09.000 Women get more control over their reproductive health every year. 1.00

01:32:13.000 Abortion rates have declined 19% between 2011 and 2017.

01:32:17.000 If you want to end abortion in America, keep doing exactly what you're doing. 0.99

01:32:21.000 It's a policy success.

01:32:25.000 No one can see it.

01:32:26.000 Everyone is screaming at each other.

01:32:28.000 No, like someone said is screaming life.

01:32:31.000 The other one is screaming choice.

01:32:33.000 If you were to ask yourself what the correct policy is, you would see that the policy is both like women get control over their reproductive health. 1.00

01:32:43.000 That's what leads to declines in abortion rates. 1.00

01:32:46.000 And so it's a win-win for everyone.

01:32:49.000 But because it's so divided, they can't see those basic facts.

01:32:54.000 That's not really a contributing factor to what I'm talking about in the book.

01:32:57.000 The reason I bring it up is I think it could be a strong moral issue in this civil war.

01:33:03.000 Oh, it's huge.

01:33:04.000 It's a huge thing.

01:33:04.000 But there are a whole bunch of them.

01:33:06.000 Church attendance, corporal punishment in schools.

01:33:09.000 The sociological factors that go into it are actually really significant.

01:33:14.000 So, are you familiar that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Roe v. Wade?

01:33:18.000 Yeah.

01:33:18.000 Well, not on Roe v. Wade, on Mississippi.

01:33:19.000 On Mississippi, yeah.

01:33:20.000 Florida just, they just passed a ban after 15 weeks.

01:33:24.000 Right.

01:33:25.000 And so, man, we've had a bunch of people in here, we've had legal experts, and everyone seems to agree that Roe v. Wade will be overturned.

01:33:32.000 It's gonna cause so much anger.

01:33:34.000 There's already 12 states that have trigger laws.

01:33:37.000 As soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, instantly banned.

01:33:40.000 So my question is, you mentioned the far right.

01:33:42.000 Here's what I've said.

01:33:44.000 Do you think that when that happens, do you think Republicans will try to ban abortion nationally?

01:33:50.000 Oh, I have no idea.

01:33:51.000 Like, that's not... I don't have expertise in that.

01:33:53.000 Like, I'm sorry, but like, I just can't really give an honest or accurate answer to that question.

01:33:58.000 I mean, I would say that once that happens, that... Like, one thing that I notice in this book is, like, the right has said concept of civil war for a long time, right?

01:34:11.000 Like, for at least since the 90s.

01:34:13.000 And it was a fringe position, but it sort of became more mainstream in 2008.

01:34:17.000 But I think the left is actually starting to catch up.

01:34:20.000 The left is actually starting to catch up to the idea that this country isn't working, its institutions are failing, there's going to have to be a response to this, and I think abortion could be a major trigger of it.

01:34:30.000 I think there are a lot of people who don't... You know you asked me that question, what if healthcare was taken away from me?

01:34:37.000 It will be like that for them.

01:34:39.000 So there's a lot to this.

01:34:42.000 For one, many conservatives have told me, no, Republicans will never try to ban it federally.

01:34:46.000 Not only that, they can't.

01:34:48.000 It can't be federally legislated.

01:34:51.000 It has to be at the state level.

01:34:53.000 But my question is, do you think there's any number of right-wing people, any small number, who would be willing to go to an abortion clinic the moment Roe v. Wade is overturned and say, with force, end what you're doing right now?

01:35:08.000 Well, you know, the criminalization of abortion is one of the worst policy ideas it's possible to have, because you have to ask yourself all kinds of questions.

01:35:17.000 Like, are you going to start a DEA for abortion?

01:35:22.000 Sure, sure.

01:35:23.000 That's not an argument.

01:35:24.000 But my point is, they're not really thinking about policy.

01:35:26.000 No, no, for sure.

01:35:27.000 But do you think people would be like, do you think there would be a John Brown of abortion, who's going to walk up to an abortion doctor and just blow his brains out?

01:35:34.000 But it's already happened.

01:35:36.000 It's happened many, many times.

01:35:38.000 There's been a huge amount of violence around that.

01:35:40.000 It's kind of the question I'm getting to.

01:35:43.000 When we're talking about the numbers of what constitutes political violence, that doesn't qualify as political violence in the stats that we looked at.

01:35:51.000 Going up and killing an abortion doctor.

01:35:52.000 But I, of course, would qualify it as that. 0.99

01:35:55.000 Right.

01:35:55.000 So like, yeah, like, absolutely, I think.

01:35:59.000 So the point is not really the violent extremists.

01:36:02.000 The point is, do they start a police force?

01:36:05.000 Like, how are they going to actually manage?

01:36:07.000 Like, you know, the Texas law was not policy.

01:36:10.000 It was just like, we're going to start this crazy bounty system that I mean, no one knows what the hell that would look like.

01:36:16.000 They don't want to actually answer the question of what Yeah, and they've gone a long way already.

01:36:22.000 this would look like especially given the fact that you know america can even

01:36:25.000 control the flow of hair i think it's i think it's simple i think these red

01:36:28.000 states are gonna they're gonna shut down all of their planned parenthoods and

01:36:31.000 yeah and they've gone a long way already and when you look at proximity to abortion access in america

01:36:36.000 like red and blue states she i mean just the world of difference

01:36:40.000 so what you either get to a point where you know uh... california immigrant sanctuary state they're

01:36:46.000 already defying federal law

01:36:48.000 Then you've got... Yes, they certainly did in 2016.

01:36:50.000 I mean, Jeff Sessions, that's a big chapter in the book.

01:36:52.000 But I'll tell you what else.

01:36:53.000 I mean, New York voting for non-citizens to have the right to vote.

01:36:56.000 Massachusetts voting for non-citizens to get driver's licenses.

01:36:58.000 This is my point.

01:36:59.000 Like, I think the left is starting to figure out, like, that would have been, those kind of defiant actions would have been typical of Red states for its whole history, but I think now oh, sorry. 0.95

01:37:10.000 I've got it mixed up You know, you know everywhere else in the world red means left You know why that's right.

01:37:16.000 Yeah, it was it was 2000 election, right?

01:37:18.000 Someone explained it to me Yeah, but it used to be the other way around it used to be the other way around.

01:37:22.000 Yeah But so now people on the left are figuring out We're gonna be in defiance of federal authority So we've had sanctuary cities on the left for a long time.

01:37:34.000 We've had now California sanctuary state.

01:37:36.000 Do you know how our elections work in this country?

01:37:39.000 The electoral college?

01:37:40.000 Well, yeah.

01:37:41.000 I mean, I almost put a chapter in the book about it, but I could not find unbiased opinion.

01:37:49.000 That was the thing that was so amazing.

01:37:51.000 It's like, I can't find anyone who could explain it to me in a coherent way.

01:37:55.000 The electoral college.

01:37:55.000 Well, the electoral college.

01:37:56.000 Yeah, I understand that.

01:37:58.000 In the United States, non-citizens do have voting power in every single election.

01:38:04.000 So when California says, we are going to allow non-citizens into this country and provide them benefits, they are seizing federal authority. 0.94

01:38:11.000 The way it works is... I'm sorry, seizing?

01:38:13.000 Oh, okay, I see what you mean.

01:38:15.000 Seizing federal power.

01:38:16.000 Yeah, okay, gotcha.

01:38:17.000 They're stealing disproportionate amounts of power within our federal... Well, I would say they're in defiance of...

01:38:21.000 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:38:21.000 They're actually stealing.

01:38:22.000 Okay, all right.

01:38:23.000 So here's how it works.

01:38:24.000 The Electoral College is based on congressional seats.

01:38:26.000 You get an electoral, uh, elector vote, and your seats in Congress are based upon your population size, not citizen size.

01:38:33.000 Right.

01:38:34.000 So when California allows in non-citizens, the census is done, non-citizens are counted, and they get extra congressional representation, which then results in, it results in disproportionate voting power, and it results in disproportionate power to elect the president.

01:38:48.000 I think, according to the Heritage Foundation, California last election only got one additional electoral vote.

01:38:53.000 But when we're talking about, you know, what is it, 538?

01:38:55.000 I mean, that's substantive.

01:38:58.000 That's a decent amount of gained power.

01:39:00.000 And it's not just California, it's other sanctuary cities and states.

01:39:03.000 So, the left likes to come out and say it's unfair that the Senate is comprised of, you know, X amount of senators who come from only a certain amount of states when they're engaging in defiance of federal authority to give themselves disproportionate votes in Congress and the Electoral College.

01:39:19.000 But, I mean, it's really kind of much of a muchness because the problem here is, like, I think you're going to have an election relatively soon.

01:39:27.000 Like, not, I don't know if it's 2024, I don't think, I don't know if it's 2028, might even be 2032 if you're lucky.

01:39:33.000 Well, you're going to have a president lose the popular mandate by 10 million votes and still win the election.

01:39:38.000 And that's the way it's supposed to be.

01:39:40.000 Well, that's, I mean, whether that's the way it's supposed to be or not, you're going to have a huge number of people in your country who don't regard themselves as living in a legitimate democracy.

01:39:52.000 But we're not a democracy.

01:39:54.000 Right.

01:39:54.000 Never have been.

01:39:55.000 Okay.

01:39:56.000 Well, I mean, you did call yourself the world's greatest democracy for a long time.

01:40:00.000 Yeah.

01:40:01.000 And in 2000, you said, we're going to export democracy to the world.

01:40:04.000 These are media establishment politicians who have no idea what they're talking about.

01:40:08.000 Well, you know, you did call yourself a democracy for 240 years.

01:40:11.000 I mean, like... Who did?

01:40:13.000 Well, like, Ronald Reagan.

01:40:16.000 Like, I mean, like, every American president I ever heard called himself a democrat.

01:40:20.000 So if you're saying you're not a democracy... And this is part of the problem.

01:40:24.000 So there's a reason we have an electoral college.

01:40:27.000 There's a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin.

01:40:29.000 Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for lunch.

01:40:32.000 A republic is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

01:40:36.000 I'll give you a- That's not- that's- that's minoritarian, but that's not the same thing as- that's minority protection.

01:40:41.000 That's not the same thing as minoritarian rule.

01:40:43.000 I mean, that is- that is very big distinction.

01:40:45.000 I mean, in Canada, we understand this really implicitly.

01:40:48.000 Right?

01:40:48.000 Like, we have a minority population, French Canadians, who are, you know, who have to be protected from the majority rule by, like, just to keep the country together.

01:40:57.000 Good call.

01:40:58.000 Right?

01:40:58.000 So that's like a very distinct, that's a distinct thing.

01:41:06.000 The fact that people choose to live in populous states, you actually need a functional control for that so people don't all just crowd into one tight space and they actually spread out.

01:41:16.000 And that is the system.

01:41:17.000 But that's the opposite of where we're going in this world.

01:41:19.000 I mean, other than you, who moved from... No, no, no, actually, we're actually seeing people leave cities because of the problems.

01:41:25.000 Yeah, well, it's probably also COVID.

01:41:27.000 From Wikipedia, it looks like we are officially a federal presidential constitutional republic.

01:41:32.000 Yes.

01:41:32.000 So let me give you an example.

01:41:35.000 So you mentioned minority protections is a good thing. 1.00

01:41:37.000 The example that I experienced... But minority protection is different from minoritarian rule.

01:41:41.000 I love that.

01:41:42.000 That's important.

01:41:43.000 So in California, when I was covering the drought, we went to East Porterville, a small, mostly migrant city with no water. 0.95

01:41:51.000 Why?

01:41:52.000 The farmers were not allowed access to surface water because of the drought.

01:41:56.000 The surface water had to be rerouted to cities.

01:41:59.000 Why?

01:41:59.000 Because the cities had voting power and voted away the water from the people who actually had it.

01:42:04.000 So what happens is the farmers, being a large portion of the United States' economy, said, we're going to have to drill deeper and deeper into groundwater.

01:42:11.000 And they went down thousands, even tens of thousands of feet.

01:42:14.000 The small family migrant workers could only drill about 30 feet and their water went dry.

01:42:20.000 That's chapter three.

01:42:21.000 big cities inequality etc well it's not that so much as the water problem

01:42:25.000 that the united states faces yeah i mean actually that was the

01:42:29.000 that was the chapter that kept me up at night it's funny not any of the none of

01:42:32.000 none of the politics stuff like it's funny the one that kept me up was

01:42:35.000 talking to like an expert at the usda on corn did you did you uh look into the

01:42:40.000 the lawsuit attempts to seize great lakes water Yeah, well, well, of course, in Canada, we're really obsessed with this because like we have all the water, right?

01:42:48.000 Like we have one fifth of the world's natural water supply.

01:42:51.000 And so what happens when you guys run out of your water is of great concern to us.

01:42:56.000 So there was an attempt by, I could be getting this wrong, it's been a while, Arizona, I think, was filing a federal suit.

01:43:02.000 Right.

01:43:02.000 Claiming they had access to the Great Lakes, but the problem for them was the Great Lakes Coalition includes Canada.

01:43:08.000 Yes.

01:43:09.000 So I think specifically Ontario.

01:43:11.000 Yeah, well, and Manitoba as well.

01:43:12.000 And Manitoba.

01:43:13.000 And so basically they were like, we have an international treaty on this water, you can't That's right.

01:43:18.000 And that's really important to us.

01:43:20.000 Important to you?

01:43:20.000 I'm from Chicago.

01:43:21.000 Right.

01:43:22.000 I mean, yeah.

01:43:22.000 The thing about Lake Michigan, for instance, is that we were depleting it because so much water was being consumed.

01:43:28.000 We had to put in environmental protections to make sure the water replenished before so we could only take so much from it.

01:43:33.000 Well, I mean, the worst thing to me is the Ogallala Aquifer.

01:43:36.000 Which they're accessing to grow.

01:43:38.000 Like we live in an era of completely cheap food, like artificially cheap food, largely driven by Midwest, the genius of Midwestern farmers who have innovated corn to a point of, you know, extreme productivity.

01:43:52.000 And that's driven by this aquifer that is not renewable.

01:43:57.000 That's just water they're taking out of the ground, that when it's gone, it's gone.

01:44:02.000 And where they go from there, they don't really know.

01:44:06.000 I want you to imagine a world where we don't have cheap food anymore.

01:44:10.000 That's added to all this stuff we're talking about, right?

01:44:14.000 Added to all this conflict.

01:44:17.000 That's when things start to get real in a hurry.

01:44:21.000 I tweeted this a while ago.

01:44:23.000 In 50 years, we are going to look back and laugh about literally flushing fresh water down the toilet.

01:44:29.000 Well, I mean, you already have it in certain places.

01:44:32.000 When California goes through its droughts, people brush their teeth very carefully.

01:44:37.000 Some people do.

01:44:40.000 Some people do.

01:44:41.000 Some people don't.

01:44:42.000 I think most people don't.

01:44:43.000 I was encouraging people to pee in the sink for a while.

01:44:47.000 Do it.

01:44:47.000 Don't waste that water for it.

01:44:49.000 Ian, you pee in the top of the toilet.

01:44:52.000 I roll a 20.

01:44:53.000 Roll initiative.

01:44:54.000 No, you pee in the top of the toilet so you can flush with urine.

01:44:57.000 Oh, that's the way.

01:44:59.000 News you can use.

01:45:01.000 That's useful stuff.

01:45:03.000 Did you ever, in any of these, when you were thinking of all the potential possibilities, did you ever find out No, I mean, that was not something I looked at.

01:45:11.000 hey we're gonna supply your weapons and help you win when you give us states

01:45:14.000 when you win we'll take Florida on no I mean that was not something I looked at

01:45:19.000 I mean what I looked at was inequality levels which are of course like

01:45:22.000 catastrophically high and you know they there are no examples of history of

01:45:29.000 countries with inequality rates like the United States that don't end in war

01:45:33.000 revolution or mass death like it's like it's a like it's a I have a lot of like, on the one hand this, on the one hand this, in the book, right?

01:45:44.000 Some examples go this way, some examples go the other way.

01:45:46.000 But when you look at inequality levels like the ones you have in the United States, they only go one way.

01:45:50.000 This is financial inequality?

01:45:52.000 Well, income inequality is the main one, but it's also the wealth inequality, the wealth gap, which is catastrophic.

01:46:03.000 And this past couple of years, it's just exploded.

01:46:08.000 It builds on itself, right?

01:46:09.000 I mean, that's the thing about capital.

01:46:11.000 It builds on itself.

01:46:12.000 It might be a problem is that you give money to your kids.

01:46:14.000 I like it. 1.00

01:46:14.000 I mean, it's always been normal, but it's making stupid rich people. 1.00

01:46:18.000 Kids that aren't qualified for the money are growing up with it and have all this power. 0.98

01:46:22.000 Well, as I say, I try not to judge anyone.

01:46:24.000 It's not every time.

01:46:26.000 I'm looking at structures here, but what I do know is that when you get to inequality levels with this kind of structural problem, it just creates huge amounts of turbulence.

01:46:35.000 Obviously, you pointed out problems.

01:46:36.000 Have you thought of any solutions?

01:46:39.000 Well, I mean, like Tim here, I'm not sure I see... So don't judge me!

01:46:46.000 No, I'm kidding.

01:46:48.000 I think my strength in this book is that I'm not on either side of this, so I don't really... I disagree.

01:46:55.000 Well, I want stability.

01:46:58.000 I think you are on the left side.

01:47:01.000 Well, I guess maybe, but, you know, I would say that I kind of tried to consciously work against that.

01:47:06.000 Like, obviously, I'm a Canadian.

01:47:07.000 I believe in socialized medicine and gun control, but the Conservative Party believes in that, right? 0.69

01:47:12.000 Like, so it's... I definitely don't feel affiliated with the Democratic tribe, right?

01:47:17.000 Like, and I don't feel like... Like, when you mentioned Biden, like, you know, he means nothing to me.

01:47:22.000 But the truckers.

01:47:23.000 Oh, you want to do the truckers now, eh?

01:47:25.000 Oh, sure.

01:47:26.000 You know, I don't know.

01:47:27.000 You finally got your first A in.

01:47:28.000 Thank you.

01:47:29.000 It's been all evening.

01:47:30.000 Did I say A?

01:47:31.000 Yes, you did.

01:47:31.000 I didn't even know.

01:47:32.000 Finally.

01:47:32.000 I was waiting for it.

01:47:35.000 Well, I actually say it a lot.

01:47:37.000 So, just to start this off, the same people who supported occupational protests with Occupy Wall Street and the CHAZ.

01:47:46.000 See, I would never support any of those, and Canada wouldn't support any of those.

01:47:49.000 But, um, in America, these same people are now in at odds and defiance.

01:47:54.000 Well, if I can be honest with you, like when I hear the debate here about the trucker convoy, it is it's like, have you ever seen like a movie where you know what really happened?

01:48:05.000 And like you see the movie and you're like, it has nothing to do with, like it's just so distorted that it has nothing to do with reality.

01:48:12.000 The largest support for the Trucker Convoy I've seen in my life was driving here in Maryland and someone had a big sign up.

01:48:21.000 Right?

01:48:21.000 I mean, you have to remember, like, here it's become, like, all this stuff about Trudeau and, you know, all this, like, the person who did the original Emergencies Act was Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, who's a populist conservative, and I personally have called him a tinpot Northern Trump in the pages of the New York Times.

01:48:43.000 He would, like, this is a very, the political context of this in Canada is just completely separate from the political

01:48:52.000 context here.

01:48:53.000 Like it's just a completely different framework of interpretation of events.

01:48:58.000 And you know, I think...

01:49:00.000 We get our news about it from Canadians.

01:49:02.000 Well, they're coming to talk to you, right?

01:49:05.000 No, no, no.

01:49:07.000 We watch people on the ground who are reporting.

01:49:08.000 They're on the ground talking and interviewing people.

01:49:10.000 Well, yes, but they're sending the sites to American news sources.

01:49:13.000 If you look at the Globe and Mail— No, no, no.

01:49:15.000 If you look at the Globe and Mail— Piva Fry is a Canadian lawyer who's livestreaming it.

01:49:19.000 Right.

01:49:20.000 So I just turn on his stream and we just watch what he's talking about.

01:49:22.000 Right.

01:49:23.000 He's not the only source we use.

01:49:25.000 So for the most part... I would just say the reporting that I've seen in American sources from both sides, like, has really... Like, I was trying to think, like, how could I explain this?

01:49:35.000 And I was like, well, you know, the Quebec premier, who is a conservative, like, he's definitely the right, a month ago proposed a tax on the unvaccinated.

01:49:46.000 Right?

01:49:46.000 Like, just a straight tax.

01:49:48.000 This is a different world than the world you guys are in.

01:49:51.000 You know what I mean?

01:49:53.000 Because of universal health care... But we have that too, though.

01:49:56.000 Like, DC had a vax mandate.

01:49:59.000 You couldn't go inside buildings.

01:50:00.000 Attacks?

01:50:01.000 Did any American politician suggest, you know what, if you don't get a vaccine, you're going to have to pay a levy?

01:50:05.000 No, they gave people free money.

01:50:06.000 I want you to imagine an American conservative politician saying, we're going to tax people for not getting vaccinated.

01:50:10.000 We're gonna like I want you to imagine an American conservative politician

01:50:15.000 Saying we're going to tax people for not getting back what we saw was

01:50:19.000 I gotta put this back up here. Oh, yeah For the what we had were that everyone's actually going to

01:50:25.000 listen to big big organizations, um hospitals and uh corporations

01:50:29.000 Saying if you don't get vaccinated, we're deducting we're slashing your pay, but see

01:50:34.000 Or firing you.

01:50:35.000 Yeah, or firing you.

01:50:36.000 Universal health care just completely changes the dynamic of all of these questions, right?

01:50:41.000 And that's why Canadian anger at the truckers is so profound and so wide.

01:50:49.000 Like, you know, why 70% of Canadians want to call in the military, right?

01:50:52.000 And, like, 70%, like, these are people with kids, right?

01:50:56.000 Like, and, you know, like 90% of Canadians want them gone, right?

01:51:00.000 Like, the reason for that is, like, when you're in a universal healthcare system, They're when they get sick, it costs me money.

01:51:11.000 It's a burden on the taxpayer, right?

01:51:14.000 And like when they get sick, it takes a space like my cousin cam who's got problems with his heart and need surgery like when they're sick.

01:51:22.000 When they're filling up the hospitals, he can't get the treatment that he needs.

01:51:26.000 I have a question.

01:51:27.000 Did they distribute vaccines on the basis of race in Canada?

01:51:31.000 Yeah, well, they went to indigenous populations first because they were more vulnerable to the disease. 0.88

01:51:39.000 So they did go, but those are, you know, very, those are remote communities.

01:51:42.000 I had a friend... Like that's an affront to... No, I don't think so.

01:51:46.000 No, for our values?

01:51:47.000 Right.

01:51:48.000 No, but they're more, they're more vulnerable.

01:51:50.000 Like those are, those, they, it went to vulnerable communities first.

01:51:53.000 That's very racist.

01:51:54.000 Experimenting on the most vulnerable.

01:51:56.000 No, no, no, quite literally in the United States to claim that a certain person of a certain race has different susceptibilities or different traits based on race is overtly racist.

01:52:03.000 I think sickle cell anemia was endemic to the African American population.

01:52:06.000 That's racist.

01:52:08.000 In America, it's a small war, I guess.

01:52:11.000 So it's contradictory.

01:52:13.000 I wouldn't say it is contradictory.

01:52:15.000 In the United States, it is.

01:52:17.000 What I'm saying is that the Canadian facts on the ground are just totally separate from the debate that you guys are having.

01:52:29.000 Another thing is, less than 30% of the fundraising for this group came from Canadian sources.

01:52:34.000 I actually read that wasn't true.

01:52:37.000 Well, it really depends on how you read the numbers, but it's definitely the majority of the funding came from American sources.

01:52:44.000 But that's the give, send, go.

01:52:46.000 That's the give, send, go.

01:52:48.000 The only sources I've seen on it are that the majority was actually Canadian sources.

01:52:51.000 No, I have completely different sources.

01:52:54.000 And therein lies one of the big problems.

01:52:55.000 It's a six, it's a nine.

01:52:56.000 Yeah, you guys are both, who knows, it's the same game.

01:53:02.000 Well, you can look it up.

01:53:03.000 Well, you know what the problem is?

01:53:04.000 There's no way to look it up.

01:53:06.000 I know, isn't that the truth.

01:53:07.000 If I type in Canadians funded truckers, I'll find all the sources.

01:53:11.000 Yeah, everything.

01:53:12.000 If I type in Americans did it, I'll find all the sources.

01:53:14.000 Yeah, yeah, I know.

01:53:15.000 So I'm like, I don't even know what to search for.

01:53:16.000 But I would just say, when I see the American debate around it, I've yet to see an American left-wing source say that the number one enemy of the truckers is Rob Ford's brother.

01:53:30.000 The left-wing source?

01:53:32.000 Yeah, like MSNBC, it's become this debate around Justin Trudeau or whatever, but the point is, the conservatives have all said, go home.

01:53:42.000 He is the most conservative.

01:53:46.000 He's also the most powerful conservative in Canada.

01:53:47.000 If I were gambling, I would say he'd be our next conservative prime minister.

01:53:51.000 I think this might make him the next conservative prime minister.

01:53:58.000 He's very active in this, right?

01:54:01.000 So no one seems capable of mentioning that.

01:54:04.000 I'll tell you, you know what?

01:54:05.000 I got a prediction.

01:54:06.000 Here's what's going to happen.

01:54:07.000 When the Civil War breaks out in the United States, we annex Canada. 0.89

01:54:09.000 First thing.

01:54:10.000 I want to do a TV show about it.

01:54:13.000 I've asked myself the question, how would an occupied Canada act?

01:54:21.000 Would we resist?

01:54:22.000 Because we're talking here, if I were to tell you I was an American, you would believe me.

01:54:27.000 I would.

01:54:28.000 We would believe you.

01:54:31.000 So it would create, what kind of occupation would it be?

01:54:34.000 Let me tell you.

01:54:35.000 I'll tell you exactly.

01:54:35.000 Do you have ideas how it would go?

01:54:36.000 I know exactly how it would happen.

01:54:37.000 So imagine now, it's one year after the occupation.

01:54:41.000 All the Canadians are dancing in the street in their cars, throwing money in the air. 0.96

01:54:45.000 They've all got gold chains.

01:54:46.000 Everyone owns a Lamborghini.

01:54:47.000 They're all rich and successful. 0.91

01:54:49.000 They're like, man, this freedom stuff worked out way better than our crappy government. 0.82

01:54:54.000 That's pretty funny.

01:54:57.000 I think America and U.S.

01:54:58.000 should get together.

01:54:59.000 Well, here's the thing.

01:55:00.000 What I really wonder about it is, what if they made every province a state?

01:55:06.000 So that would be, let's say, ten provinces a state.

01:55:08.000 That would make America way left-wing. 0.99

01:55:11.000 Suddenly, overnight, America would be a left-wing country.

01:55:17.000 Wasn't there a belief back in the 80s and 90s when Quebec was doing its stronger separatist movement that Northwest Territories would try to apply for American statehood, giving us a direct road to Canada?

01:55:28.000 There was Alberta.

01:55:31.000 I mean, there was a lot of chaos.

01:55:32.000 There was a lot of crazy thinking out there.

01:55:34.000 So you just had your Civil War.

01:55:37.000 I mean, so, there's martial law declared in my country now.

01:55:41.000 Like, if the government wants to seize my bank accounts, they don't need a court order.

01:55:45.000 That's crazy.

01:55:45.000 Right.

01:55:46.000 Still?

01:55:47.000 Oh, right now, I thought you meant from the Quebecois separatist movement.

01:55:53.000 In 1970, when they declared martial law, they arrested people.

01:55:57.000 You didn't need a warrant to arrest anyone.

01:55:59.000 My country has nearly died twice in my lifetime, 1982 and 1995.

01:56:03.000 This is not a book of judgment.

01:56:05.000 This is a book of like, what's amazing to me, what's the most shocking thing, maybe one of the most shocking things that's happened in my life, is that somehow Canada has become the stable country and America has become the unstable country.

01:56:17.000 I mean, if you told me that that would happen when I was 20, everyone would have laughed in your face.

01:56:23.000 I think it's, in all seriousness, I do think Canada gets involved in whatever civil war happens in the United States.

01:56:28.000 Oh, we're in trouble.

01:56:30.000 The trucker convoy is already your political proxy.

01:56:34.000 It's a political proxy conflict on our soil of your toxic discourse.

01:56:40.000 It feels right.

01:56:42.000 I don't think it's our toxic discourse.

01:56:43.000 I think the UK's been experiencing this.

01:56:46.000 Canada's been experiencing it.

01:56:47.000 The US.

01:56:48.000 But Canada has resisted it in a lot of ways because of Because of a bunch of really odd policies like we have very strict immigration But we are very pro-immigration and we have we have we didn't 2008 didn't happen to us, right?

01:57:02.000 Like we didn't we didn't have Occupy Wall Street because we are because we're so vulnerable We because we're not America like we had to protect our banks and our banks came through very safe It's the center of the Empire exactly what Montreal says are the most culturally diverse city in Toronto is Toronto.

01:57:22.000 Toronto's more than half foreign-born.

01:57:24.000 It's an open city.

01:57:25.000 Except I'm pretty sure Toronto's majority white.

01:57:28.000 Um, no.

01:57:29.000 I mean, the thing that's funny is like Canada has multicultural policy even though we're about... Well, I'm sure Toronto is majority white. 0.65

01:57:37.000 It's just half foreign-born.

01:57:38.000 Yeah.

01:57:39.000 But, you know, Toronto, you know, Canada is about 78% white and... Yeah.

01:57:46.000 Whereas the United States is 58%.

01:57:48.000 So it's, you know, there's quite a gap there too.

01:57:52.000 47.9 is the plurality.

01:57:55.000 The plurality is white.

01:57:57.000 The plurality, so it is not a majority white city.

01:58:00.000 That's interesting.

01:58:00.000 It is not majority white.

01:58:01.000 Interesting.

01:58:02.000 Well, that makes sense.

01:58:03.000 Yeah, which is interesting.

01:58:04.000 That's very different policies over in Canada compared to... Well, we're bringing in 400,000 immigrants next year, right?

01:58:10.000 And that's in a country of 40 million.

01:58:15.000 In Canada, the more patriotic you are, the more in favor of immigration you are.

01:58:19.000 I think that's a huge difference and I think you were talking about abortion and how you think it's a polarizing issue and it is.

01:58:25.000 I think should the civil war come, those who are not here legally should be the ones who are most concerned because there are parts of this country that they will ask for your papers and you will flee to California or Illinois or New York.

01:58:39.000 Well, already in 2016, there was a flood of people across the border.

01:58:42.000 You know how many, in a civil war, people would flood the borders that aren't natural, that would fight for a side to get their citizenship?

01:58:49.000 Like, you'd have millions and millions of foreign people.

01:58:51.000 Oh, like my great-great-grandfather, who was Irish, who fought for the North because he wanted to be an American.

01:58:56.000 Except Ian, in New York now, you can vote as a non-citizen.

01:59:00.000 So they're gonna just go to the state and be like, we're here anyway.

01:59:04.000 And then that's it.

01:59:06.000 So, you know, that point I made about taxes and geography before, I think one thing you might end up seeing in the map you have in your book might actually be an accurate starting point.

01:59:15.000 Yeah, I mean, it's very much like... States will align based on... Yeah, I mean, it's like a, that's, that's like, you know, a bar room suggestion.

01:59:21.000 Like, obviously, it's not, it's not like how it would actually happen.

01:59:24.000 Actually, I think, interestingly, I would, I'd be willing to bet New Hampshire, at this point, would declare independence in any conflict.

01:59:32.000 Well, that's another possibility.

01:59:34.000 Because you're familiar with the Free Staters, right? 0.99

01:59:35.000 Yeah, well, and also Vermont.

01:59:37.000 There's a huge separatist movement in Vermont that's very serious.

01:59:40.000 And, well, I mean, they're not as serious as Texas.

01:59:43.000 But they'll get occupied very quickly.

01:59:46.000 You know, do people want to occupy countries anymore?

01:59:51.000 No.

01:59:52.000 What would be the value in occupying New Hampshire?

01:59:55.000 Access.

01:59:56.000 To what?

01:59:57.000 To maple syrup?

01:59:57.000 To the other states that are part of your union.

01:59:59.000 I guess.

02:00:00.000 I mean, I don't really go there.

02:00:02.000 I would assume that what would happen is that there'd be the attempt to control.

02:00:10.000 It would be the civil war that I envision. 0.95

02:00:14.000 Would not be really between sides.

02:00:16.000 It would be between the forces of order and chaos.

02:00:18.000 People would try.

02:00:19.000 Right.

02:00:19.000 It would be between people who want disorder and want breakdown and people who are trying to keep the institutions alive by by force.

02:00:27.000 And like and of course the problem is as America's learned in its counterinsurgency strategy and as you know I talked to an anonymous colonel who was responsible for drawing up what they call full spectrum operations in the homeland like the more you try to control the population militarily that

02:00:43.000 just spreads violence unit you know i think you're right about that

02:00:45.000 point about ordering chaos

02:00:47.000 but my vision of it is the democratic establishment

02:00:51.000 that which used to be the democrat republican like uniparty until donald trump came in

02:00:55.000 then you ended up with these neocons joining the democrats like bill crystal

02:00:58.000 lincoln project people the democrats

02:01:01.000 saw these far-left individuals is progressives as away to bolster their ranks and get votes

02:01:06.000 Essentially, the one ring.

02:01:08.000 They thought they could wield the power, but they can't.

02:01:11.000 Because the woke, the cancel culture stuff, the far-left, they are a chaotic and destructive force.

02:01:17.000 But it's also that the institutions themselves are rotting from the center.

02:01:21.000 It's not just a question of, like, the partisanship.

02:01:24.000 It's a question of, like, is the Senate a functional body?

02:01:28.000 No.

02:01:28.000 No!

02:01:29.000 Right, like it isn't.

02:01:31.000 It's not a functioning body.

02:01:32.000 You should check out... You're in a government which supposedly has control of all three levels of... and they can't pass basic policies.

02:01:41.000 Well, people don't know what agrees on them.

02:01:44.000 Well, exactly, and they can't whip. 1.00

02:01:47.000 In British parliamentary system, when you control the system, you make the decisions and then you are responsible for them.

02:01:53.000 It used to work this way.

02:01:54.000 Do you know how Congress works?

02:01:56.000 So we had Marjorie Taylor Greene on, and she said, when she went to Congress, she was confused because she's sitting there and there's like 10 Democrats, or like 5 Democrats and like 5 Republicans, and there's some random guy she doesn't know at the speaker's podium, pulls up a bill and goes, bill, assembly bill, you know, congressional bill 473, in favor, Democrats, and they go, meh, Republicans, meh, Democrats have it, next bill, They must have hated her.

02:02:22.000 no one's even voting on the stuff right so she called a roll call vote which forced all the members

02:02:27.000 of congress back to actually record their votes in a state of her and they 0.83

02:02:30.000 could they come after her for it and that's probably why you hear these

02:02:33.000 insane stories about her in the press because she's in defiance of 1.00

02:02:36.000 and it's one work so we had time well nasi on

02:02:40.000 with you know what their job is i mean you know Fundraising.

02:02:42.000 Their job is fundraising.

02:02:43.000 Exactly.

02:02:43.000 I mean, when you actually talk to, I've been interviewing a politician lately about the inner workings of electoral politics for a possible sequel to this book, and, you know, it's staggering.

02:02:55.000 Like, I had like a 20 minute conversation with this guy, and I was like, oh, well, no wonder this system is so screwed up.

02:03:02.000 All they can think about all day is the three levels of fundraising.

02:03:06.000 Dark money, social media money, and bundled money.

02:03:11.000 That's what they do all day.

02:03:13.000 That's a big problem.

02:03:15.000 It is non-functional.

02:03:17.000 It is a non-functioning system.

02:03:19.000 I agree.

02:03:19.000 And we need to go to Super Chats.

02:03:21.000 So we did a little bit of longer show today because, you know, typically what we do with the members-only segment is we'll save like a spicier story for TimCast.com's segment.

02:03:32.000 But I figured because we're going to be having kind of an amorphous conversation about Civil War and politics, it wouldn't really work out to do that.

02:03:38.000 So I just, we extended the normal show.

02:03:39.000 Now we'll go to Super Chats.

02:03:41.000 The hate mail's already started.

02:03:42.000 I was going to say, just forewarning, there's a lot of Canadians and they're like, truckers, no! 0.97

02:03:47.000 Well, I mean, you know.

02:03:48.000 Let's read it.

02:03:49.000 It's actually a good question.

02:03:50.000 Yeah.

02:03:51.000 Wrestler Town says, If Mr. Marsh started writing his book five years ago, I'd like to know which right-wing activists he had to compare to the left at the conception of his book.

02:04:00.000 His go-to January 6th example happened one year ago.

02:04:03.000 Well, what inspired it was the Trump inauguration and the general atmosphere of violence.

02:04:10.000 I mean, I wouldn't say at the beginning of it I was like... I mean, I went and talked to various prepper groups.

02:04:15.000 I went to talk to various far-right groups.

02:04:19.000 I talked to Richard Spencer.

02:04:20.000 I talked to various members of the far-right and going and meeting them in Ohio and in the field research.

02:04:29.000 So that's different than, I would say, icons or something like that.

02:04:34.000 And I just, you know, I got along very well with them.

02:04:36.000 And they, and also like, you know, Sons of Confederate Veterans and things like this, like, you know, and sovereign citizens and constitutional sheriffs and sagebrush rebels.

02:04:50.000 And so, yeah, I would talk to all these different groups.

02:04:52.000 Now, you know, like the specific violence that they're involved in is sometimes purely

02:04:59.000 in their own minds, right?

02:05:01.000 And sometimes the right wing groups, I mean, you go and meet these guys and sometimes it's

02:05:06.000 like this is a hobby.

02:05:09.000 Thinking about the Civil War, it's like, am I with a far-right group who's plotting the overthrow of the U.S.

02:05:15.000 government, or are these basically like birdwatchers?

02:05:18.000 Then how do you compare them to the $2 billion?

02:05:21.000 And that's the insurance maximum.

02:05:23.000 We think the damage from the George Floyd riots was actually higher than that.

02:05:26.000 Well, there's lots of violence on all sides here.

02:05:29.000 I mean, surely.

02:05:29.000 There's not.

02:05:31.000 Well, I mean, all I can say, like, you can read the book and check my sources, but those are the sources that I have.

02:05:36.000 They come from foreign sources.

02:05:39.000 They're not Democratic or Republican.

02:05:41.000 There's no lack of right-wing violence in this country.

02:05:44.000 But there's certainly substantially more coming from the left.

02:05:47.000 I would not say that.

02:05:48.000 My evidence would say the opposite.

02:05:50.000 So there was $2 billion in damage across the United States.

02:05:54.000 Well, that's property damage.

02:05:55.000 I mean, it depends.

02:05:55.000 I guess, I don't think I... Which is like destroying 30 people dead.

02:05:59.000 Well, I was dealing with murders, right?

02:06:01.000 Like, I don't think I was... I think 26 of those were murders and 32 were just... I never did a comparative analysis of property value damage.

02:06:11.000 I guess I probably should have done that.

02:06:13.000 I just went with the murder rates.

02:06:16.000 but it's not going to be because the murder rates are where you get closer to

02:06:20.000 that's where you get close to the definition of civil war i i guess it by

02:06:23.000 i guess technically by disagree i mean if you've got uh...

02:06:27.000 mass movement funded by corporations

02:06:29.000 that advocates and and the vice president herself is is is providing

02:06:33.000 bail for people who are burning down buildings and smashing

02:06:36.000 windows and killing people

02:06:38.000 like we're there man like we look look how mullah harris

02:06:42.000 Well, Donald Trump saying what, you know, how about the Republican Party saying January 6th is legitimate political discourse?

02:06:48.000 What was the specific context around that?

02:06:50.000 Well, I don't know, but like... Well, then I don't think you have a point.

02:06:53.000 Well, I would just say that there's certainly been legitimization of violence on the right.

02:06:57.000 Like, I don't really think that's debatable.

02:07:00.000 You gotta give me a specific example, because I can name... January 6th.

02:07:03.000 January 6th is one thing that happened one time, and I can give you over the past several years... I mean, the French Revolution is one thing that happened one time.

02:07:09.000 Sure, but hold on, we're talking about 800 people, of which several hundred fought their way to the front tunnel entrance, and the other several hundred walked through the back door that was opened by police.

02:07:19.000 But I can also go back to, like, Everett.

02:07:21.000 I can talk about Ferguson.

02:07:21.000 Well, there's the Oregon state, the Oregon, Mike Nierman, when he let in the rioters who... I mean, the other thing... Nothing happened there!

02:07:31.000 They opened the door and the guy got in trouble.

02:07:32.000 I can talk about... Well, the vandalism of the legislature.

02:07:36.000 A guy went to the ICE facility with an AR and firebombed it.

02:07:40.000 We had the guy Aaron Danielson get shot and killed.

02:07:43.000 We had over 800 instances of low-tier, what I call, blunt force violence.

02:07:48.000 This is something that has been repeated in this conversation.

02:07:51.000 You say, show me an example, then I do, and then you say... He keeps saying January 6th.

02:07:57.000 Well, that's a pretty big one, man.

02:07:58.000 But that's the only one?

02:07:59.000 I mean... Like, it happened one year ago.

02:08:02.000 After a decade of political violence from the left... Well, would you consider sovereign citizenship to be right-wing violence?

02:08:07.000 Because certainly the groups that I do, do.

02:08:10.000 On what scale are these guys?

02:08:11.000 About 50 murders a year.

02:08:13.000 And those are murders based on...

02:08:15.000 People killing cops at traffic stops.

02:08:18.000 So, as I said, there are definitional questions here.

02:08:21.000 Like, I'm not trying to hide anything.

02:08:24.000 But certainly that would...

02:08:25.000 Like, you would probably not consider that a far-right group.

02:08:28.000 You probably... You might just consider those criminals.

02:08:30.000 What makes them right-wing?

02:08:31.000 They believe in no taxes.

02:08:35.000 They come from small government ideology.

02:08:40.000 They believe in the rejection of the 14th Amendment.

02:08:44.000 They're the roots of QAnon mentality. 0.98

02:08:48.000 But this is so far separated from, like, how does that relate to a Trump supporter?

02:08:55.000 Well, we're not in the realm... Well, they're roughly on the same spectrum.

02:08:58.000 I mean, when you're dealing with the far right in the United States, you're dealing with a huge collection of ideas that are not coherently connected.

02:09:06.000 But Black Lives Matter is.

02:09:07.000 And they marched together in the 100,000s.

02:09:08.000 Well, and it also strips itself apart very quickly and is also filled with a lot of segmentation.

02:09:15.000 So, like... Like, I mean, there's no... Like, I would say... All I'm saying here is, you know, you would say that your right wing Does not commit any violence.

02:09:26.000 I don't say that.

02:09:27.000 Well, there's some violence.

02:09:28.000 But if you're looking at, like, mass terms of violence, like, you have to look at things like sovereign citizens, or QAnon, or, you know, etc.

02:09:35.000 Like, it would just not be reasonable to say that those are not right-wing political violence.

02:09:39.000 But this is why I explained in the beginning that the right engages what I define as sharp, acute instances, and the left is... Well, let's stay with that.

02:09:46.000 Because, like, that seems to me quite correct.

02:09:48.000 The one substantially worse.

02:09:51.000 I don't believe that.

02:09:52.000 I believe that... Well, it depends what you mean by worse.

02:09:55.000 Let me explain.

02:09:55.000 So the sovereign citizens of the United States are not a destabilizing factor?

02:09:59.000 They absolutely are.

02:10:00.000 I mean, the FBI declared them the number one threat to police.

02:10:03.000 Yeah, but the FBI goes and sends 12 agents to a garage pole rope.

02:10:10.000 Well, you know, this is the thing where I'm a Canadian and I'm an outsider.

02:10:14.000 So to me, when you're against the FBI, that's where... Americans have not had a good relationship with the FBI.

02:10:22.000 Well, no one has a good relationship with the police forces of their country.

02:10:26.000 All police forces need reform.

02:10:27.000 The FBI is called the Administrative State or Deep State.

02:10:31.000 J. Edgar Hoover was like the head of the FBI for 48 years.

02:10:33.000 So, you know, the motto of Canada, the motto of America is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

02:10:38.000 The motto of Canada is peace, order, and good government.

02:10:41.000 The motto of America is, in God we trust.

02:10:42.000 What I find with peace and order is you can have a slave state that's suppressed its population into peace and order, and they're still slaves and unhappy, but there's peace.

02:10:51.000 So I think a good example of the breakdown, and there's no middle ground, right?

02:10:58.000 Well, that's it.

02:10:58.000 The middle ground is gone.

02:10:59.000 Everybody in the chat perceives you as far left.

02:11:02.000 Right. 0.97

02:11:03.000 I mean, in my own country, that would just be so ludicrous.

02:11:06.000 Well, no, but far left doesn't mean, like, you refer to certain people as far right, far left, it's meaningless.

02:11:12.000 They're worldview signifiers.

02:11:15.000 Yeah, that's a fair point.

02:11:16.000 I mean, I would say I'm talking about a specific category of ideologies.

02:11:20.000 I'll tell you, you know, like, I'm doing research and I come across a story about a guy, no one say his name, seriously, And, uh, because if you do, YouTube will shut the show down instantly.

02:11:30.000 That is, there's nothing, uh, on the left, so I sit down with Jack Dorsey, and we pull up a tweet of an Antifa account overtly calling for, organizing, and inciting violence and giving instructions on what to do, and they went, meh.

02:11:44.000 Look, dude, there's lots of evidence of right-wing radicalization through social media networks.

02:11:49.000 Like, lots of it.

02:11:50.000 Sure, sure, sure.

02:11:51.000 My point is, I mean the algorithms point to extremism of both kinds.

02:11:57.000 So the data actually shows, because I've covered this for years, a flow towards the left.

02:12:04.000 But we've actually had, there's a researcher who mapped out all of political YouTube and found it flows 2 to 1 to the left.

02:12:11.000 And this is easily exemplified by the fact that right-wing channels get banned all the time and left-wing channels don't.

02:12:16.000 They get propped up and they get mainstream media coverage.

02:12:20.000 i have no evidence of that so like steven crowder for instance is a piece of

02:12:24.000 mainstream conservative he gets strike strike strike strike strike and then he

02:12:28.000 has to go on hiatus taught the strikes roll off his channel gets forced on a

02:12:31.000 rumble meanwhile you have anti-foot channels they don't left-wing political

02:12:35.000 channels they don't experience same thing uh... on on twitter you talk to people on face book role really

02:12:41.000 groups where we would go to the venture peers as well and face

02:12:44.000 book is predominantly older you know boomer and stuff like that

02:12:47.000 well so i mean the people i was a rivals i mean about the other point is that

02:12:53.000 like that do you have to understand

02:12:55.000 i've gone across this country i've talked to people from both sides you all

02:12:58.000 say they're both very different But that means you haven't done the fact check.

02:13:02.000 Because I haven't come to your side?

02:13:04.000 I'm 30,000 feet in the air.

02:13:06.000 I don't think you understand, right?

02:13:08.000 The right calls us liberals.

02:13:11.000 Trump supporters call us liberals. 0.90

02:13:13.000 Ian is a weird, hippie, communist, something-or-other, authoritarian. 0.94

02:13:18.000 I'm a magician.

02:13:19.000 And I'm in favor of universal basic health care.

02:13:23.000 I support progressive taxes.

02:13:25.000 But in this country, the left will call me right-wing and the right will call me left-wing.

02:13:30.000 Honestly, I'm kind of in the same position.

02:13:32.000 Right?

02:13:33.000 Your group is calling me far left, but when I was an Esquire columnist for years, I was considered like Norman Mailer and constantly called out for all these kinds of questions.

02:13:43.000 Here's my point, though.

02:13:44.000 Sorry.

02:13:45.000 No, go ahead.

02:13:45.000 Finish.

02:13:46.000 We've got to do Super Chats.

02:13:48.000 The main issue was when you cite the FBI, it's a signal to these people you haven't done any research into the FBI.

02:13:56.000 I've interviewed a lot of FBI agents.

02:13:57.000 But you haven't done the fact-checking. 0.79

02:13:59.000 So, like, when the New York Times lies and makes up fake crap, and then we have to fact-check it and prove it wrong with evidence... This book is deeply fact-checked.

02:14:07.000 This is why I used the joke... Deeply.

02:14:09.000 I mean, I'm... I don't... I have a lot of failings.

02:14:13.000 I have a lot of stuff to be humble for.

02:14:16.000 But this book is correct.

02:14:17.000 So, but this is why I use the Joe Biden Ukraine gait as a really good example.

02:14:21.000 Because if you go to the New York Times and ask them, did Joe Biden quid pro quo, they'll say no.

02:14:27.000 And that's factually incorrect.

02:14:29.000 All evidence points to the fact that Joe Biden did this.

02:14:32.000 He's even on video saying he did it.

02:14:33.000 And for some reason, So when the FBI doesn't prosecute Hillary Clinton, doesn't prosecute Joe Biden or even investigate these things, when you have the collusion between Twitter and Facebook shutting down the story about Hunter Biden's laptop, when Hunter Biden is publicly known to have illegally acquired a handgun or disposed of one, nothing happens!

02:14:53.000 Oh no, they reported on all that.

02:14:55.000 No, no, no, I'm saying the FBI hasn't done anything.

02:14:57.000 Oh, well, I mean, you know, the number, like, everyone always says that about crime, and the thing about crime is, like, tiny, only tiny little amounts of crime are ever prosecuted.

02:15:05.000 The DHS specifically comes out and says it's effectively the right that is the problem.

02:15:10.000 Without talking about BLM and the billions of dollars in damage, people say they have no credibility.

02:15:15.000 If you cite them, they'll say... Well, one side says that they have no credibility.

02:15:18.000 I mean, the problem we're in is the one we keep going back to, which is, like, the sides are so divided now that, like, literally there is no common ground in fact, there is no common ground in narrative, there is no common ground, like, in institutions, there is no common ground in language.

02:15:32.000 Exactly.

02:15:33.000 Right?

02:15:33.000 And, like, when you're in that condition, you either have to find a way back to that common ground or split up.

02:15:38.000 You're not far left or right.

02:15:40.000 I mean, like, this is it.

02:15:41.000 Like, you either have to work towards, let's find a way to talk together, or you have to say, it's done.

02:15:47.000 You're not far left, and it's unfair to say you are far left.

02:15:50.000 Far left?

02:15:50.000 I mean, look at my suit!

02:15:51.000 No, no, for anyone to say you are, because the reason why you're not far left is because you're here, because the real far left in America, and people may say the real far right.

02:15:58.000 Well, you may underestimate my desire to sell books.

02:16:02.000 They would not sit together and have this conversation, and that is one of the biggest problems.

02:16:06.000 I mean, I do political debate for a living, even though I've been very taciturn this evening, but it is hard to find an open-minded And I'm sure they would say the same about us, but we don't

02:16:15.000 sit together.

02:16:16.000 Crossfire is gone, right?

02:16:17.000 We don't sit together and have these intellectual conversations.

02:16:22.000 We have four panelists who think the way we do on our program and they have four—

02:16:25.000 And who can scream aloud.

02:16:26.000 Exactly.

02:16:27.000 And that's political discourse.

02:16:28.000 So I do think, you know, some of these super chats are making points that we've probably

02:16:34.000 already made and it's probably not relevant to make, but I do want to read them anyway.

02:16:38.000 Madison says, easy experiment.

02:16:40.000 Wear a MAGA hat at a leftist event.

02:16:42.000 Wear a BLM hat at a right event.

02:16:44.000 You'll see who talks and who uses violence very clearly the left.

02:16:49.000 Blair White, for example, wore a MAGA hat around Hollywood and got physically assaulted.

02:16:52.000 I mean, I've been to, I went to, one example is Boston.

02:16:57.000 I mean, those kind of experiments to me have so little value.

02:17:03.000 They don't mean anything.

02:17:05.000 I went to a rally in Boston.

02:17:06.000 The right came with shields, the left came with clubs and bats.

02:17:10.000 There's lots of clubs and bats on the others.

02:17:12.000 Everyone has clubs and bats.

02:17:14.000 I think the 30,000 feet perspective is super important if we're going to survive.

02:17:19.000 Yes, exactly.

02:17:20.000 I want you to survive.

02:17:21.000 Please survive.

02:17:22.000 As your neighbor, as your friend and neighbor, please survive.

02:17:27.000 And the only way you're going to survive is by either finding some way to get into common language or to break up.

02:17:34.000 I think science is part of it.

02:17:35.000 Let me, let me, I've just got to read more of these.

02:17:36.000 Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

02:17:37.000 Mike says a major pipeline project in Canada was attacked by 20 masked individuals with axes and flare guns deep in the woods this morning.

02:17:44.000 Millions in property damage, destroyed heavy equipment and work camp.

02:17:47.000 Media silent.

02:17:48.000 Well, the left would take that because like all of the indigenous protests about pipelines got broken up very quickly and quite aggressively.

02:17:57.000 And like for you know, like the Ottawa police were sued for $60 million successfully for their for their brutality over the G7 with the leftist protests.

02:18:10.000 So actually I think I mean this is that's a Canadian example.

02:18:12.000 So it's actually not very relevant but You know, one of the things is, like, there are many people on the left asking, like, well, if these were left-wing protesters in Ottawa, would they be treated anywhere near as decently as they have been so far?

02:18:27.000 Like, there's a lot of... And I, frankly, I sympathize with that.

02:18:33.000 We have this super chat from, uh, Legamothegain.

02:18:37.000 I'm probably pouncing that wrong all the time.

02:18:38.000 He says, right-wing esoteric knowledge like QAnon is crazy, but is less insane and far less dangerous, mainstream and institutionally entrenched compared to standard progressive dogma.

02:18:49.000 It's ridiculous to make an equation between the two.

02:18:52.000 I mean, I do find that interesting.

02:18:54.000 That's not in my book, and I find it one of the more fascinating things that I didn't answer.

02:18:58.000 There are a few, like, mysteries that were kind of around the edges of the book that I... because I tried to be really specific and, like, really only say what I know.

02:19:09.000 But, like, the fascination with esoteric knowledge on the right, I just find it fascinating.

02:19:15.000 There was a... Are you familiar with the... You're probably not.

02:19:17.000 You're Canadian.

02:19:18.000 The indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act.

02:19:21.000 No, I don't know that.

02:19:22.000 Although I should.

02:19:23.000 What is that?

02:19:23.000 So, in... I think it was 2012, Barack Obama signed into law in... Our National Defense Authorization Act reauthorizes, you know, spending on national defense and stuff.

02:19:33.000 Yeah.

02:19:33.000 And Obama signed into it.

02:19:35.000 He was like, oh, no, I can't believe they're doing this.

02:19:37.000 But it was everybody, you know, the United Party puts it in.

02:19:40.000 It allows the U.S. 0.90

02:19:41.000 to detain anyone anywhere in the world for any reason at any time and hold them wherever they want.

02:19:45.000 Right.

02:19:46.000 And so Dave Smith was telling a story on Joe Rogan's podcast where he said Brian Stelter was complaining that conspiracy theory videos about how, you know, certain tragic events didn't really happen were dangerous.

02:19:59.000 And, you know, Dave's point was like, if some weirdo guy makes a YouTube video, it's like, sure, it's annoying, and Brian Seltzer's like, no, it's dangerous!

02:20:07.000 And he goes, you know what's dangerous?

02:20:08.000 That Barack Obama signed into law the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, and the media didn't cover it.

02:20:16.000 Yeah, I mean, I think there's so much that's dangerous right now.

02:20:20.000 Like, you know when I called it a complex cascading system?

02:20:23.000 Yeah.

02:20:24.000 These things all feed into each other.

02:20:26.000 You know, like one of the things that I think is happening that's, you know, probably I shouldn't have brought up right at the end of this conversation, is like people's sense of what is real is fraying.

02:20:38.000 They don't know what is real.

02:20:39.000 That's part of the esoteric information.

02:20:41.000 They lose faith in institutions, but what is actually happening is very hard to tell.

02:20:46.000 And I think that's part of the contribution to this chaos.

02:20:53.000 What was the term you used?

02:20:55.000 Semantic?

02:20:57.000 You had a really good way of phrasing it.

02:21:00.000 I'll look at the tape later.

02:21:01.000 Semantic argument?

02:21:02.000 No, semantic carnage or something.

02:21:04.000 I forget what it was.

02:21:04.000 I don't think that was me.

02:21:05.000 I think you said that.

02:21:06.000 No, no, no.

02:21:06.000 It was you.

02:21:07.000 I said it.

02:21:08.000 Oh, you did.

02:21:08.000 What was it?

02:21:09.000 No, I'm just taking credit.

02:21:10.000 Someone made a good point.

02:21:11.000 I was going to take credit.

02:21:12.000 Say it in the chat, you guys.

02:21:14.000 Semantic corruption?

02:21:15.000 I forget what it was.

02:21:16.000 When you're talking about that love of esoteric knowledge, that's kind of what God is.

02:21:19.000 And it seems like that resonates with people on the right.

02:21:22.000 I don't think of people on the right or left much like that.

02:21:24.000 Ian, it seems like religion was always part of that.

02:21:26.000 One of the core components of religion is to proselytize and spread your religion,

02:21:30.000 not to hold it within.

02:21:32.000 The decline of religion in American life is actually a huge part of this, in my opinion.

02:21:36.000 And if people are reaching for some sort of knowledge that they can latch onto,

02:21:39.000 that's Q, or whatever it is.

02:21:41.000 I think exactly.

02:21:42.000 And I think you get the sense of meaning that you got from church.

02:21:46.000 You get in politics now and it's... Wow, that's super dangerous.

02:21:50.000 Yeah, and that's very dangerous.

02:21:51.000 I want to address a lot of these super chats.

02:21:53.000 Yeah.

02:21:53.000 Because I think, you know, one of the things I was making early, the point I made early on is that we agree on a lot of the core issues that's happening.

02:21:59.000 Yeah.

02:21:59.000 But we probably, we disagree on like... Well, I think you have a perspective and my perspective is 30,000 feet in the air.

02:22:06.000 That's what I would like to say.

02:22:07.000 A lot of people are commenting like, oh, he's wrong about this, he's wrong about that, you know, and he's wrong about civil... No, I think Stephen is very much correct about civil war. 0.60

02:22:14.000 I think there's probably core political issues that we have different views on.

02:22:18.000 But, like, that's why I thought it would be fascinating.

02:22:19.000 But I don't know, I mean, I think when you actually... Like, you're in favor of universal health care, you're in favor of progressive taxation.

02:22:24.000 I mean, the problem that we're dealing with here is that when you talk about politics... We've had this whole... We've talked for like two and a half hours now about politics.

02:22:33.000 Policy has been...

02:22:35.000 Five minutes?

02:22:36.000 Ten minutes?

02:22:36.000 Like actual policies.

02:22:38.000 But let me explain.

02:22:39.000 I can back up everything I claim with a source that is effectively academic and mainstream certified.

02:22:47.000 And I'm a civil libertarian.

02:22:50.000 My views are on freedom of the individual.

02:22:54.000 Decentralization is typically how I put it.

02:22:57.000 I don't like the idea that you get one despot who thinks he knows everything.

02:23:00.000 We've seen how that goes.

02:23:02.000 But the problem is I've been on the ground at all of these protests.

02:23:05.000 I spent the start of my career going to different protests and talking to people and what did I find?

02:23:10.000 When I would go to like a right-wing event, they would be very specific to the point of like, this is my thing, this is my thing.

02:23:16.000 And so like a Trump rally, they'd say, my factory closed down, Trump wants to bring factories back and end free trade.

02:23:22.000 I'd go to left-wing rallies and they'd say, I don't know.

02:23:25.000 See, I had this experience when I was in 2015 where I covered the Canadian election and then I went down and covered a Trump rally and a Sanders rally, like right after each other.

02:23:36.000 They were both in Iowa within three days of each other.

02:23:38.000 And so this is what a Canadian debate is like.

02:23:42.000 Sir, we need to spend $428 million on education.

02:23:45.000 You're completely wrong.

02:23:46.000 We need to spend $485 million on education.

02:23:49.000 It's all numbers and it's all boring technical policy things.

02:23:54.000 I mean, it's unwatchably boring.

02:23:56.000 Then you go to America and it's God and socialism.

02:24:00.000 These grand ideas that have no practical applications, that are incredibly vague, and just simply are essentially aesthetic categories.

02:24:12.000 What we're talking about here is language.

02:24:18.000 But if you were to actually sit... Like, I think the abortion question comes up here again, where it's like, if you were to actually sit down, like, what are our policy objectives?

02:24:26.000 We want women to be in control of their bodies, and we want abortion rates to decline.

02:24:32.000 Guess what?

02:24:33.000 Guess what?

02:24:33.000 There's a really good way to do that.

02:24:35.000 But you're wrong.

02:24:36.000 That's right.

02:24:36.000 I'm wrong, because that's not what they want.

02:24:38.000 No, they want no abortion at all. 0.94

02:24:39.000 Right.

02:24:40.000 Well, if you want to get—well, that's not ever going to happen.

02:24:43.000 It will, by force or by decree.

02:24:45.000 The United States cannot control the flow of heroin onto its streets.

02:24:48.000 The idea that it's going to control a major surgical procedure that you can get chemically— You don't got to look at it so absolutely.

02:24:54.000 The idea among the pro-life right is— Well, that's my point.

02:24:56.000 You don't have to look at absolutely.

02:24:58.000 Shut down the abortion clinics and end the government sanction of murder.

02:25:01.000 Right.

02:25:02.000 That's their view.

02:25:03.000 That's their view, and that is essentially a religious view.

02:25:05.000 Whereas if their views were policy-based, if they were like... How is that not policy-based?

02:25:11.000 Because the policy asks, what is the end we're looking for collectively?

02:25:15.000 Ending the government support of murder.

02:25:17.000 But see, that's not a policy, that's a vision.

02:25:21.000 What do you mean?

02:25:22.000 A policy is like, we want a result.

02:25:24.000 The result we want is fewer abortions. 0.89

02:25:27.000 want the if you want result we want is the government to stop supporting

02:25:29.000 abortions that's it that's it again you're in this that you're in a

02:25:32.000 static political category you're like you're asking large questions about what

02:25:36.000 your government is who you are what you are as a people put aside those

02:25:41.000 Ask, what do you want?

02:25:43.000 They want the government to stop actively supporting... Well, see, that's right.

02:25:46.000 And see, I would never... Like, I would say that, you know, in sensible countries, what you ask is, what do you want to do here?

02:25:55.000 Like, what do you actually want to achieve?

02:25:57.000 If you want to achieve lower abortion rates, there are many, many ways to do that.

02:26:01.000 Criminalization would not be among them.

02:26:02.000 But I think this is your bias, right?

02:26:05.000 Well, I think my bias is pro-policy.

02:26:07.000 Like, what I believe is that government is an agent of policy.

02:26:10.000 There certainly is, like, hey, we live in a country and the country takes X position.

02:26:18.000 We would like the government to stop taking that position.

02:26:20.000 It's that simple.

02:26:21.000 Yeah, and see, that to me is the least interesting question in politics.

02:26:25.000 The question of what is the government... The pro-life crowd understands abortion will still exist.

02:26:31.000 They just say, like, here's the line we want to set.

02:26:33.000 That's right.

02:26:34.000 It's a moral question of their own identity, of who they are and who their government is.

02:26:39.000 And that is the thing about America.

02:26:41.000 It's like you have this idea of yourselves as a shining city on a hill, as a beacon for the world, whereas I think in other countries that are perhaps more stable, it's like, well, what are we doing here?

02:26:53.000 How can we make life a little bit better?

02:26:55.000 How can we make things, we're in these systems, how can we make these systems better?

02:27:01.000 When you get to the systems questions, when you get to those policy questions, there's actually a lot of common ground.

02:27:07.000 It's actually quite possible to build things together.

02:27:12.000 I agree.

02:27:12.000 We have another super chat here.

02:27:13.000 Yeah, sorry.

02:27:14.000 I'm going on too long about this.

02:27:15.000 No, but I agree on that.

02:27:16.000 We probably agree on a lot of things.

02:27:18.000 Yeah.

02:27:18.000 But we have a good, this is a good super chat.

02:27:20.000 Seth Houser says, there are no two versions of America.

02:27:23.000 It has always been a constitutional republic formed by the founding fathers.

02:27:26.000 It's actually a really good point.

02:27:29.000 When you said that there's a multicultural democracy and a constitutional republic, what you're, this country has always been a constitutional republic, albeit with politicians making improper statements about being a democracy or whatever.

02:27:42.000 Or like for 240 years.

02:27:44.000 Sure.

02:27:44.000 I mean, okay, but the Founding Fathers had arguments about over federalism and what the Republic was.

02:27:49.000 Ulysses S. Grant in the First Civil War wrote about what the Republic was.

02:27:52.000 They didn't call it democracy.

02:27:53.000 Benjamin Franklin has comments about democracy about we're not a democracy and why we're not a democracy.

02:27:58.000 But the point is, that's not what Madison said.

02:27:59.000 But anyway, for sure.

02:28:01.000 But the point is, if this country was formed as a constitutional Republic, And we now have an emergent multicultural democracy.

02:28:11.000 No, no, I don't think that would be accurate to say that it's emergent.

02:28:14.000 I mean, it is in place.

02:28:16.000 It has been in place for at least since 1860.

02:28:18.000 I'll tell you what the real government is right now is Google.

02:28:22.000 Well, that's the other question.

02:28:23.000 And that is another aspect of the book.

02:28:26.000 Did the First Civil War properly end?

02:28:28.000 And I agree.

02:28:28.000 When you go back to the original founding father documents, there's immense contradiction built into them, right?

02:28:35.000 I think the Civil War never ended.

02:28:37.000 Well, also you could say it began at the beginning of the country.

02:28:39.000 It began with the Three-Fifths Compromise.

02:28:41.000 It began with all the compromises that were embedded in the Constitution that ultimately were between slave and free states that were not subject to compromise.

02:28:52.000 Did you read about, I think it was the 1872 election in the United States?

02:28:55.000 1876, you mean? 76.

02:28:57.000 I always mix it up.

02:28:58.000 Where they basically were like, we'll just rubber stamp, you know, and negotiate who's the president.

02:29:03.000 Well, I mean, you know, one of the subjects of this book is what an American occupation would look like.

02:29:08.000 And of course, 1876 was the end of the first American occupation, which was the North's occupation of the South, which was a low level civil conflict, right?

02:29:17.000 With lots of terrorist groups and lots of, and lots of conflict.

02:29:20.000 And basically 1876 was, You know, the thing is, occupation never works, right?

02:29:25.000 Like, it simply never... You can't really occupy people against their will.

02:29:30.000 It just is not feasible.

02:29:31.000 Well, I don't know, 20 years in Afghanistan, I think, proves you wrong.

02:29:35.000 The North American settlers... I mean, when you read... Like, one of the guys I interview for the book is a guy named Daniel Bolger, who's a real expert in counterinsurgency and, you know, saw it in Iraq and saw it everywhere.

02:29:47.000 And he's like, you know, there are basically no examples of this working.

02:29:50.000 But when you read his book, you keep waiting for the... This book is called Why We Lost.

02:29:55.000 You keep waiting for the losses.

02:29:58.000 They don't lose at all.

02:29:59.000 They win everything.

02:30:00.000 It doesn't matter.

02:30:01.000 It makes no difference.

02:30:02.000 I think if we were doing wargaming of your book, which we're not going to do because we'll go back to Super Chats, I think that the most important variable is who is what party, what faction is the president at the time.

02:30:15.000 And that would be, I think the Civil War, the American Civil War, I think would have been very differently.

02:30:19.000 It would have been very different if there was a different president of a different party.

02:30:23.000 And so who controls DC, who controls the military, who controls the powers of the federal government, I think will determine an awful lot.

02:30:30.000 Again, if we were playing wargaming.

02:30:32.000 Yeah, I mean, I worked on the assumption in the book that the military oath would hold, because it does seem to me like it would.

02:30:39.000 I believe so.

02:30:42.000 It was taken extremely, extremely seriously.

02:30:45.000 I mean, one of the problems here is that the military is the last institution with widespread respect in the United States.

02:30:53.000 Which is not healthy.

02:30:56.000 When that's the backdrop, that's not good.

02:31:00.000 But the generals in the Washington Post a few months ago openly discussed would the military fragment in the case of a contested electoral college vote.

02:31:10.000 That's a whole level of terror that I didn't put in the book, but it seems to me entirely plausible.

02:31:17.000 So we have this one from Babak.

02:31:19.000 He says, hi, I am 20 and throughout high school, my teachers told me the party's switched and that Dems are not trying to take your guns.

02:31:26.000 The left lies to children.

02:31:27.000 When I was a child, I will not compromise.

02:31:29.000 I thought that was a good comment.

02:31:33.000 One thing that I think is apparent to a lot of people, if you pay attention, is that the Democratic establishment makes demands.

02:31:39.000 The Republican establishment says, no, wait, don't.

02:31:42.000 And so gun control is a really good example. 0.95

02:31:44.000 Well yeah, one's progressive and one's reactionary.

02:31:47.000 That seems to be the pattern.

02:31:50.000 So there's no one actually fighting for... This is why Trump comes around.

02:31:55.000 Even though he was in favor of gun control and banned bump stocks, which was an insane and absurd policy that ruled by decree.

02:32:01.000 But when people on the right say, the Second Amendment says, the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed.

02:32:07.000 The Democrats ban guns, seize guns, arrest people for guns, and the Republicans say, slow down there, Democrats.

02:32:13.000 This results in the Trump phenomenon.

02:32:16.000 People finally being like, I can't take it.

02:32:19.000 I don't care.

02:32:20.000 Give me the human Molotov cocktail.

02:32:21.000 I'm done with this.

02:32:22.000 Well, that, I mean, and there's going to be that on the left too, right?

02:32:26.000 Like that, that's what we were saying.

02:32:29.000 That's what we were saying before.

02:32:29.000 Like the best way to think of Trump is as a symptom.

02:32:32.000 Yeah.

02:32:32.000 Like, I mean, I think that's the, the, the, the, when I go and talk to like NPR people and so on, I wonder if I'm the only person this year to talk to you and NPR at the same time, but, uh, possible.

02:32:42.000 But like the, the part they find controversial is, um, that I say, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, all of this would be exactly the same.

02:32:52.000 Right, like the Trump, like what we're dealing with here are deep-seated structural problems

02:32:58.000 that are built into the, they transcend completely the outcomes of elections.

02:33:06.000 This is why I can't stand the Trump fraud narrative that I'll give you a funny example. I have never once stated

02:33:14.000 that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

02:33:15.000 Right.

02:33:16.000 Nor that there was widespread fraud that would have changed, in fact, quite the opposite.

02:33:19.000 My first reaction when I started hearing this was I was like, dude, I'm not playing the same game 0.96

02:33:24.000 where Hillary Clinton came out and claimed Russia and all this other garbage, trying to be fake. 0.99

02:33:29.000 You are. 0.99

02:33:29.000 I mean, I think you are. 0.99

02:33:29.000 to do audits. They did audits. They didn't come out with anything substantive and the 0.99

02:33:32.000 company shuts down. People are like, Tim, look at all the data. I looked at all the

02:33:35.000 data. There's some interesting stuff there. But ultimately, here we are. It's 2022. And

02:33:40.000 the issue for me is, are we just going to keep playing this back and forth?

02:33:43.000 You are. I mean, I think you are.

02:33:46.000 Absolutely. Country just rips apart.

02:33:48.000 If that's what we keep doing, we have to change course.

02:33:50.000 I'll tell you the funny thing. There are organizations right now that, there's an organization that

02:33:56.000 has raised tens of thousands of dollars off of the lie that I am a proponent of Trump's

02:34:03.000 Right.

02:34:04.000 Even though it's 100% fake.

02:34:05.000 You'll get news outlets lying about my views.

02:34:08.000 Oh man, I'll give you a great example.

02:34:09.000 They take clips of me, they take clips of Joe Rogan.

02:34:13.000 There's a really great post, I can't remember who put it up, I think it was Zed Jelani.

02:34:16.000 We've had him on as a guest several times.

02:34:18.000 He said, in all those instances of Joe Rogan saying the N-word, he was actually arguing against racism.

02:34:24.000 Right.

02:34:25.000 And they were taken out of context to make him seem racist because... Sure.

02:34:29.000 So here's why I think, you know, you mentioned we're in civil strife.

02:34:31.000 I think it's civil war.

02:34:33.000 Well, that's a technical threshold.

02:34:36.000 It's strictly terminology, but we're definitely seeing the normalization of political violence.

02:34:41.000 I think we can agree on that.

02:34:43.000 I'm talking about fourth and fifth generational war. 0.70

02:34:45.000 Have you researched any of those things?

02:34:47.000 Well, not really.

02:34:49.000 So this is when... Think about what the purpose of war is, right?

02:34:54.000 To gain control of an asset resource land or a people.

02:34:58.000 When you look at what started the first civil war, it was these military bases and then eventually, like preserving the Union, gaining control and holding one government over the South because they were trying to secede and form their own country or whatever.

02:35:10.000 What if you never had to fire a shot to accomplish that?

02:35:13.000 Well, yeah.

02:35:14.000 So, fourth and fifth generational warfare is when you get into insurgency with fourth generational, and fifth generational is manipulation and propaganda.

02:35:20.000 You mean mimetic warfare?

02:35:22.000 I mean, the thing I find pretty... I actually wrote about that for Foreign Policy.

02:35:26.000 I think it's a really... You know, I actually think what's happening in Russia and the Ukraine, not to go off on a completely different thing, but I think it's one of the earliest instances of truly mimetic warfare.

02:35:35.000 You know, Marshall McLuhan said the Third World War will be an information war fought with no distinction between civilians and military.

02:35:42.000 And we're in it.

02:35:44.000 And I think in that sense, if you were to think of the Civil War as a mimetic war, Or as an informational wars or diathetical war, which is what Lawrence of Arabia called it, that you are absolutely in it.

02:35:58.000 That's why I think when we if we talk in terms of left and right, we've already lost the war because our mind has been changed by the mean to think in that way.

02:36:05.000 Well, I think, you know, I think it's natural to have a left and a right, and I think it's natural to have disagreement.

02:36:12.000 I don't think you need to be in a unified country that that's somehow better.

02:36:19.000 You have to feel you're on the same team, though.

02:36:21.000 It's true that it's natural to have a left and a right, but not to have two political parties in control of a government.

02:36:26.000 That's not natural.

02:36:27.000 That's been formed on purpose.

02:36:28.000 i want to read this one super chat and make a point about many of the ones

02:36:31.000 uh... gold macro says thanks for coming steven you've been an

02:36:35.000 interesting voice on these matters

02:36:36.000 but understand for many you're asking them to sacrifice all they feel is right

02:36:40.000 and honorable for the sake of peace with those who hate them

02:36:43.000 well would you rather be married to write It's like what I said right at the beginning.

02:36:46.000 That's why I asked you about the healthcare thing.

02:36:48.000 And you know, I take that point.

02:36:50.000 Like, I genuinely do.

02:36:51.000 Like, if someone were to ask me that, if that were the choices, I don't know what I would do.

02:36:56.000 There's a lot of comments where they're like, you know, this guy is wrong, and you know, obviously.

02:37:03.000 But to the people who are— I'm not everyone's cup of tea.

02:37:05.000 No, for sure.

02:37:06.000 And I knew, having seen your Twitter, we had these disagreements, but I thought, you know, we try inviting many other people of opposing views.

02:37:14.000 They don't come on the show.

02:37:15.000 Well, you can have me anytime.

02:37:17.000 Oh, I thought it was a fantastic conversation.

02:37:19.000 And for the people who are saying they don't want to buy your book, I think that is wrong.

02:37:25.000 I think they should buy your book.

02:37:26.000 The book has stuff in it that is not me.

02:37:28.000 I genuinely think it's worth reading.

02:37:32.000 Look, I understand if people are like, I don't want to buy his book because he doesn't deserve my money or it'll make him rich or whatever.

02:37:39.000 No, no.

02:37:39.000 I think they should read it because, as I often say, if you think he's wrong, wouldn't it be valuable if they knew all of your thoughts and ideas and research and where it came from?

02:37:48.000 And then, by all means, you can take the book.

02:37:49.000 We've actually had a couple people comment saying they did read your book and felt you were wrong or whatever, and that's the right answer! 1.00

02:37:55.000 You know, at least almost 40% of the sources are Republican.

02:37:58.000 Like, I would just add.

02:38:00.000 I don't think these people like Republicans.

02:38:02.000 I probably didn't help myself then.

02:38:06.000 No, but I mean, I read CNN all the time, and then I'm like, that one's wrong, that one's wrong.

02:38:11.000 And then I read Breitbart too, and I'm like, that one's framed poorly, and that one's wrong.

02:38:16.000 But like, because you have to read everything, and then try and figure out, on a lot of articles it's tough.

02:38:22.000 So like, because when the New York Times says X is true, I'm like, you just said something.

02:38:28.000 Like, how am I supposed to know it's true just because you said it?

02:38:31.000 Well, as someone who's worked for a bunch of publications, I would say if something is in the New York Times, that's the most reliable news source of anything I've worked for, with the possible exception of the Atlantic.

02:38:41.000 When you go to the Atlantic, when something's fact-checked by the Atlantic, it is fact-checked within an inch of its life.

02:38:49.000 The New York Times, I caught in what I view as a major scandal of publishing a news piece, getting boosted in the algorithm, and altering it to an op-ed for sustained growth.

02:39:01.000 They do it all the time.

02:39:02.000 It's called stealth editing.

02:39:03.000 But other than that, I mean, you look at what they did with Project Veritas, where they just lied about them, and then basically never fact-checked it, got sued.

02:39:12.000 It was so egregious that they've actually, surprisingly, Veritas has gotten past the motion to dismiss, which is I thought the New York Times lost a lot of its credibility when they published Anonymous, and they said this was a high-level Trump staffer with intimate details of the Trump administration, and then it turned out it had like the same position I had in the Bush administration, where, you know, you have a job, but like their editorial board, their senior leadership allowed that to go forward, saying this is, they made it look like it was a cabinet position, and they did it for political expediency.

02:39:44.000 What did you guys think of the Palin trial?

02:39:47.000 Oh, the dismissal?

02:39:48.000 Yeah.

02:39:49.000 We talked about that last time and libel is very hard.

02:39:53.000 I think times to be Sullivan needs to be removed.

02:39:56.000 Are you familiar with what that is?

02:39:57.000 Yeah.

02:39:58.000 Get rid of it.

02:40:00.000 You really think so?

02:40:00.000 I mean, it would make you...

02:40:04.000 I thought it was fascinating that someone was the fall guy, right?

02:40:08.000 That one editor said, yeah, this is on me.

02:40:10.000 James Bennett, the ultimate.

02:40:12.000 I mean, James Bennett is a fascinating man because he's been in the middle of these struggles and attacked by both sides.

02:40:21.000 For being absolutely superb at his job.

02:40:24.000 I mean, the best op-ed editor I've ever worked with.

02:40:27.000 I just don't think the New York Times would ever allow such a piece about Kamala Harris.

02:40:31.000 Oh, I don't know about that.

02:40:32.000 I would not agree with that.

02:40:36.000 With Brad Stevens, there's a lot of people.

02:40:37.000 Let's wait and see.

02:40:38.000 For those that aren't familiar, Times v. Sullivan is the standard that basically you have to prove, if defamation is of a public figure, you have to prove they either knew it was false or were acting recklessly.

02:40:49.000 And malice.

02:40:50.000 Actual malice means that they knew.

02:40:54.000 That they knew and that they wanted to hurt this person.

02:40:56.000 No, no, no.

02:40:57.000 Hurting is... In Canada, it's completely different, and it's so much easier to sue somebody for libel.

02:41:03.000 In the U.S., actual malice doesn't refer to intention to cause harm, necessarily.

02:41:07.000 It's that you knew it was wrong and you didn't care.

02:41:10.000 Recklessness is that... Very hard to prove.

02:41:12.000 Impossible, unless you get into discovery.

02:41:15.000 Recklessness is that, for the New York Times, for instance, if they publish something, you'd have to prove that they didn't follow their standard procedure for verification.

02:41:23.000 And if you can't get past a motion to dismiss, and you can't because of its own stance, it's insane.

02:41:30.000 Someone, they outright make up stories about me.

02:41:34.000 I can't get into them because of litigation and stuff like that.

02:41:37.000 But they'll outright lie and make everything up.

02:41:39.000 And then they're just like, we assume it to be true.

02:41:41.000 Like we had a source who said it, therefore it's fact.

02:41:45.000 That you should not be able to get away with that.

02:41:46.000 And the anonymous sources stuff has gotten out of control.

02:41:49.000 It's insane.

02:41:49.000 And then on top of that, you have to prove damages.

02:41:53.000 That's easier to do.

02:41:54.000 No, no, no, no, no.

02:41:56.000 Well, Palin could have done that.

02:41:57.000 So with Project Veritas, the New York Times argued their reputation is so tarnished, you can't possibly cause them damage.

02:42:07.000 That's what happened with Benedict Arnold.

02:42:10.000 He was sued for libel.

02:42:11.000 He won.

02:42:13.000 And he said, but your reputation is worth six cents.

02:42:17.000 That's what they gave him?

02:42:17.000 And they gave him one.

02:42:18.000 That was like in whatever, you know, The Traitor, Benedict Arnold.

02:42:22.000 Like in the Revolutionary War.

02:42:24.000 They were like, yeah, you were slandered.

02:42:26.000 Your reputation is worth sixpence.

02:42:28.000 Before he left America?

02:42:29.000 No, after.

02:42:30.000 So I'll read, we'll just read two more because we've gone a bit long tonight and I think it was worth it.

02:42:34.000 Papa Romano says, I disagree with him a lot, but a great guest.

02:42:37.000 Yo, thank you people need like need to understand we would we would have a lot more guests That are more like mainstream journalists and leftists if they were willing to come on.

02:42:46.000 Am I gonna become your pocket leftist?

02:42:48.000 No Maybe the pocket Canadian Crossfire was one of the best shows of all time news wise and we need that's kind of what I want.

02:43:00.000 I will say I We have made a lot of money off people not liking you.

02:43:04.000 They're sending in superchats like, he's wrong, I don't like him.

02:43:06.000 It's so good to have someone from Canada, because your perspective is invaluable for me as an American.

02:43:11.000 I was grown in this system, so I need... Well, I do think we, as I say in the book, we're like Horatio to your Hamlet.

02:43:17.000 We're this small, irrelevant country, right on the edge.

02:43:21.000 I've lived in America, I have American friends, I love America, but I'm not American.

02:43:26.000 Right, like, so I'm not part of this, you know, America's not my mother, right?

02:43:30.000 Like, it's like when you say, like, with, like, healthcare, like, that, my blood goes up.

02:43:34.000 With your stuff, my blood does not go up.

02:43:36.000 You see?

02:43:36.000 Right.

02:43:36.000 So there's different things that are important.

02:43:38.000 Absolutely.

02:43:38.000 Gun control, stuff like that.

02:43:40.000 Oh, yeah.

02:43:40.000 Gun control's different.

02:43:41.000 Canada's, like, again, it's really odd because, like, nearly half of Canadian homes have a gun in it, but it's not the same gun culture at all.

02:43:47.000 Right.

02:43:47.000 So there's like, and it's certainly much, much more regulated.

02:43:51.000 And in Canada, cops kick in people's doors and go into their houses and arrest them.

02:43:55.000 And it's harder to do in the United States, though they do it for sure.

02:43:58.000 Well, I mean, I don't think we have like quite Canadian cops are incredibly nonviolent.

02:44:04.000 I mean, that's part of the problem with with Ottawa.

02:44:07.000 Like, you know, when the truckers came for Paris, they just sent in the tear gas and it was all over in half an hour.

02:44:13.000 That happens every day in France.

02:44:14.000 Yeah, I mean, yeah, and like that's what would happen here incidentally like if a trucker convoy started and they went

02:44:19.000 into Chicago It would not it would be over in a day

02:44:22.000 Yeah, like you would not it would not be like Canadian police being like let's try and not hurt anybody

02:44:27.000 But I mean, I think I might get to the end of the same without well, I should buy Wall Street is actually an

02:44:32.000 interesting example But I think if this thing ends without any violence, God willing, it will be oddly a kind of national achievement.

02:44:43.000 Was there violence from BLM in Canada?

02:44:45.000 There were BLM marches.

02:44:48.000 They were much smaller.

02:44:51.000 Yeah, then here.

02:44:54.000 There were a series of indigenous movements that were about pipelines, but also about, you know, historical genocide, cultural genocide.

02:45:07.000 They were burning down churches because they were essentially... Right-wing indigenous groups? 0.99

02:45:14.000 Well, I would say national groups.

02:45:17.000 They would not fall into either category.

02:45:20.000 They're themselves, right?

02:45:22.000 They have support from the left, though.

02:45:26.000 I actually think they have a lot of broad support.

02:45:28.000 Like Stephen Harper, who was the last conservative prime minister, he was the first person to acknowledge crimes in the educational system, and he actually made a very powerful statement about it.

02:45:42.000 I want to I just read one more because we've gone long and we'll wrap it up

02:45:46.000 But um cowboy ish says Tim the guy has demonstrated that he has bias

02:45:51.000 Why is it wrong to give him our money to check for ourselves?

02:45:55.000 So I think I wonder if this question is shouldn't it be wrong, right? Is that what they mean or?

02:46:00.000 Or are they agreeing with me?

02:46:01.000 I wanted to read that because my point is, if you only get news from one source, you'll have no idea what you're arguing against.

02:46:10.000 And then I remember I was working for Greenpeace and I was outside of a bookstore and I saw Glenn Beck's book, Arguing Against Climate Change.

02:46:17.000 And I was like, I should read that.

02:46:19.000 And I went, I was, I think I was like 21.

02:46:20.000 I went to the bookstore and I started skimming through it to see like some of it, read a couple of chapters and I didn't buy the book.

02:46:25.000 I put it back.

02:46:26.000 Buy my book!

02:46:29.000 Don't read it in the store!

02:46:29.000 If someone's going to make an argument, and you're like, I completely disagree with this person, wouldn't you want to arm yourself with the facts and data to properly be able to argue your points?

02:46:40.000 Yes!

02:46:40.000 And not only that, I don't think people should take everything you've said here as everything that's in the book.

02:46:44.000 Oh, no, no, no.

02:46:46.000 We barely touched on, we only touched on two chapters.

02:46:48.000 Right, right.

02:46:49.000 I think people might read through that and be like, oh, okay, this one has less to do with some of the stuff they talked about, because we have our bias on this show.

02:46:55.000 Long story short...

02:46:57.000 I understand them saying they don't want to give you money.

02:47:00.000 That I get.

02:47:01.000 But reading as much as you can.

02:47:04.000 It's not that much money.

02:47:06.000 It's just a bunch.

02:47:07.000 Man's gotta eat also.

02:47:08.000 I only get a royalty.

02:47:09.000 It's not like you're giving me the money.

02:47:12.000 I just think I'm a proponent of learning and reading as much as you can.

02:47:16.000 And that's why I'll watch CNN and read what they're writing and be like, When I come out and say hey this story was wrong

02:47:23.000 It's because I read the story read about the author looked at what they were researching and said here's what they

02:47:27.000 missed not because I

02:47:29.000 Saw the headline and went that's not true. Bye and then to close out the article. I got to read that stuff

02:47:34.000 Otherwise, I'm like I think reading in itself is an act of depolarization

02:47:38.000 You know, like I think actually Trying to understand people and trying to be in their

02:47:45.000 language for a bit Yeah is really is really helpful, you know

02:47:50.000 I wrote this book explicitly trying not to judge.

02:47:54.000 I went and talked to all sorts of people.

02:47:58.000 I really would feel like I'd failed if I didn't feel like the Oath Keepers that I interviewed felt that they were represented fairly.

02:48:07.000 I am not trying to skew anything.

02:48:12.000 Even people who I consider outright criminals.

02:48:15.000 I'm trying to get their point of view and put it on the page.

02:48:18.000 And I think that's key.

02:48:20.000 If you want to understand people, that's what you have to work towards.

02:48:24.000 Yeah.

02:48:25.000 All right.

02:48:25.000 I think we should wind it down here.

02:48:27.000 So go to TimCast.com, become a member.

02:48:30.000 We're not going to do the member segment because we decided just to do this segment extra long to have this deeper conversation.

02:48:35.000 But becoming a member does help support all of our work and there is a massive library.

02:48:39.000 So there's tons of other segments you can watch and it is greatly appreciated.

02:48:42.000 when you sign up because your membership sustains us.

02:48:45.000 You can follow the show at TimCastIRL on Instagram.

02:48:48.000 You can follow me at TimCast as well.

02:48:50.000 Don't forget to like this video, smash the like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends.

02:48:56.000 Do you want to shout out anything else?

02:48:57.000 No.

02:48:57.000 Your book, your social media?

02:48:58.000 Just the book.

02:48:59.000 Well, I'm at Steven Marshall Twitter if you want to follow me.

02:49:01.000 But, you know, you probably don't.

02:49:03.000 They'll probably disagree with you.

02:49:06.000 No, they should.

02:49:06.000 They should tweet at you.

02:49:07.000 The book's... Oh, please don't tell them to tweet at me.

02:49:10.000 I like to tweet a lot.

02:49:11.000 Don't do that to me.

02:49:12.000 Like, six months from now you come back and you're wearing a MAGA hat, and you're like, I learned, I believe everything they've said!

02:49:18.000 I was depolarized.

02:49:19.000 I was depolarized, or I was repolarized.

02:49:21.000 Or I was just turned into an American, really.

02:49:24.000 Yeah, you're wearing an American flag.

02:49:26.000 Yeah, right on.

02:49:27.000 Daniel!

02:49:27.000 Yes, Daniel Turner, Power of the Future.

02:49:29.000 It's great to be here.

02:49:30.000 And I want to give a shout out to our farm Instagram page.

02:49:33.000 So love your local gay sheep farmers here in Virginia.

02:49:37.000 Bristol Farm, Virginia.

02:49:39.000 And it's called Bristol Farm because that was the first hotel we ever stayed at in Vienna, the Bristol Hotel.

02:49:43.000 So we named our farm after that hotel.

02:49:45.000 And so Bristol Farm, Virginia on Instagram.

02:49:47.000 It's new.

02:49:48.000 We're trying to get people because we love small farms and we're trying to connect with other small farmers.

02:49:52.000 Now everyone can agree with that.

02:49:55.000 If you've checked you agree with that. Thank you local farming like these these leftists. They hate farm animals

02:50:01.000 The way to depolarize is to get the hell out of cities and get away

02:50:06.000 You're not that wrong and breathe make people raise it raise a couple chickens together

02:50:11.000 Yes and have them focus on

02:50:12.000 chickens eyes and people won't be so angry to to tweet and hate and things like that if they have to muck out stalls 0.85

02:50:18.000 and Clean and fresh and get fresh

02:50:22.000 Yes, thanks for coming in and doing the top-down view. That's really really

02:50:26.000 Pleasure.

02:50:26.000 Yeah, man.

02:50:27.000 And maybe next time you're here, we can go a little higher and look from like 100,000 feet.

02:50:32.000 Cosmic next time.

02:50:35.000 Cosmic orders.

02:50:35.000 Beautiful.

02:50:36.000 Follow me at iancrossland.net.

02:50:37.000 I'll see you guys next time.

02:50:39.000 Thank you guys all very much for tuning in.

02:50:41.000 I always love to have conversations where we don't fully agree on everything.

02:50:44.000 To me, that's very much the spice of life.

02:50:45.000 So I appreciate you guys for bearing with us and for sending us all your crazy superchats.

02:50:49.000 You guys can follow me on Twitter and Minds.com at Sarah Patch Lids.

02:50:53.000 Thanks for hanging out, everybody.

02:50:55.000 Become a member at TimCast.com and we will see you all tomorrow night.

Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - February 18, 2022

Timcast IRL #470 - Author Of "The Next Civil War" Stephen Marche Joins, Says We Are On VERGE Of Civil War

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