TRIGGERnometry - Michael Malice： Take the White Pill

00:00:00.320 There's this idea that, like, you know, this is the end of the line, America's doomed,

00:00:04.980 you know, we're reaching levels of authoritarianism that should be considered impossible.

00:00:09.860 And I'm like, guys, you have no idea what authoritarianism is.

00:00:14.940 So my mother is Venezuelan, and I had many people explain to me over the years

00:00:20.800 why Chavez was wonderful, and my cousins who had to flee from their lives from his regime

00:00:27.280 were wrong and bigoted.

00:00:28.980 Is there not a part of you that when you hear this,

00:00:31.000 you kind of feel the need for violence toward these people?

00:00:37.960 I'm not joking at all, Michael. 0.53

00:00:39.960 You can literally feel my piss boiling whenever they talk to me. 0.95

00:00:44.580 My own family, they were one of these so-called kulaks, 1.00

00:00:47.360 and my grandmother's little brother starved to death

00:00:51.260 because of what was happening.

00:00:53.120 So there's just so many receipts of just,

00:00:56.160 not to mention the gulags of course of atrocities that so many people whose names we will never know

00:01:02.340 have been forgotten and i'm like you know over my dead body is this going to be swept under

00:01:07.600 the rug of history hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constant

00:01:23.000 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:28.520 Our brilliant and returning guest today is a man of many skills and talents,

00:01:32.160 but primarily he's an author, and his latest book is called White Pill.

00:01:35.820 Michael Malice, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:37.640 Thank you so much, guys. I'm very excited to be here.

00:01:40.120 It's great to have you back on the show, man.

00:01:42.100 You've written this book attempting to get people to think more positively about their own lives 0.93

00:01:47.960 by highlighting all the horrible shit that happened in the 20th century, 0.96

00:01:51.920 particularly in the country from which you and I both come. What was your thinking behind doing 0.99

00:01:56.520 that? What I was shocked at, and I would love to hear your guys' feedback about this, is that

00:02:02.680 the Cold War was the absolute primary foreign policy concern for both the UK and the US for

00:02:08.620 several decades. And now it's been won so decisively that people have forgotten it even

00:02:13.880 happened. The Soviet Union is almost this historical asterisk. I mean, there's many 1.00

00:02:18.360 movies about world war ii in the states you know we talked about the civil war the revolutionary

00:02:22.480 war but the fact that this was the complete utter victory over an indisputably evil empire

00:02:29.340 is just kind of a shrug and it's just odd to me especially given what the people of eastern europe

00:02:35.360 had to go through and many other countries of course had to go through for so long that their

00:02:39.280 story is being swept under the rug especially when this is something that occurred within our

00:02:44.260 lifetimes. So it's just very odd to me. And, you know, the more research, you know, as you said,

00:02:50.240 I'm from there, the more research I did, the more I realized how poorly understood the atrocities of

00:02:54.820 the Soviet Union are. Maybe perhaps there isn't a nice narrative like with World War II. And I'm

00:03:00.840 like, all right, well, people need to know more about this. And I'm someone who tells stories.

00:03:04.440 So I'm going to put a stop to that. And so I did. But particularly, I mean, we can talk about the

00:03:10.240 Cold War and stuff, because that really is very interesting, particularly given what's going on

00:03:13.540 now. But one of the interesting things to me was the approach you've taken, which is kind of

00:03:19.240 similar to the approach I took in my book, An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West, again,

00:03:22.960 trying to explain to people like things haven't always been the way they are and things in most

00:03:27.860 parts of the rest of the world have not been anything like as comfortable as what we enjoyed

00:03:33.700 and what we enjoy today. Why do you think that's such an important message right now?

00:03:39.160 Well, I think for a personal level, you and I could both speak to that. This is what

00:03:43.500 we went through. This is what our families went through. But something that really drives me crazy,

00:03:48.540 and I don't know if this is the case in British politics, here in American politics, especially

00:03:52.720 among conservatives, there's this idea that this is the end of the line. America's doomed.

00:04:00.020 We're reaching levels of authoritarianism that should be considered impossible. And I'm like,

00:04:04.580 guys, you have no idea what authoritarianism is. And frankly, despite having written the book on

00:04:11.460 North Korea as well, I didn't really have a good idea of how authoritarianism works and how

00:04:16.560 pervasive it is. In Prague, there's something called the Museum of Communism, which I sent

00:04:21.320 my protege to visit because they have some really funny captions because it's not written in a

00:04:25.340 respectful manner. It's very derisive about what the Prague people experienced. And that was the

00:04:30.760 moment I realized that what we went through, our families went through, is the pervasiveness of it

00:04:35.060 all. If in the States or the UK you hate Trump or Boris Johnson or woke ideology, you can turn it

00:04:41.020 off listen to sports music read any book you want but there was nowhere else for them to go in these

00:04:46.260 countries everything everything music sports the news the television program your friends had to

00:04:52.820 be perceived through the filter of politics and what that does to a people psychologically is

00:04:57.860 something i think for all of us it's very hard to wrap our heads around but it's very important

00:05:02.060 to try to grapple what that reality is like michael do you think part of the problem is that

00:05:08.040 we're simply not educated on the evils of communism so when people see communist heroes

00:05:13.800 that are Che Guevara on a t-shirt they go oh that's a freedom fighter when actually if you

00:05:19.120 scratch the surface the Cuban regime were pretty brutal to put it mildly I think and that's by

00:05:25.880 design I'll put on my tinfoil hat for this because I think western media outlets and this is something

00:05:31.040 I cover extensively in this book had so much blood on their hands and they ran so much interference

00:05:36.340 not for communism as an ideology which we can understand okay someone has this worldview they're

00:05:40.780 promoting it that so on and so forth but for literally stalin and and the atrocities and

00:05:45.260 you know there's a great movie called mr jones about how gareth jones who'd been a british

00:05:49.680 reporter uh got out of the train a few stops earlier and exposed what was going on in the

00:05:55.300 holodomor with the starvation of the ukrainians and it wasn't just that this was being kept

00:06:00.740 quiet by Western sources is that he was personally derided as, you know, a liar, someone who's kind

00:06:07.620 of had these prejudices against the Soviet Union. So decade after decade, this wasn't just World

00:06:12.080 War II where it's like, all right, we got to team up with Stalin to fight Hitler. We could wrap our 0.85

00:06:16.000 heads around that argument. But even before that, you know, they were making so many excuses and

00:06:20.440 not just excuses, but advocating for the idea that the Soviet Union is the nation of the future.

00:06:25.980 And one of the cover girls on the book is Emma Goldman, you know, who is a violent anarchist

00:06:30.380 who believed in bloody revolution in her own words she got deported to the ussr she fled with

00:06:36.120 her partner in crime alexander berkman and very famously she was in london uh you know after they

00:06:42.080 left and you know when she was giving a talk standing ovation right red emma's here you know

00:06:46.740 she was the the og when it comes to you know red radicalism and she goes guys these this is not a

00:06:53.480 nation for the workers what they're doing to these workers is things the czar would never think of

00:06:57.520 And by the time she was done, you could hear a pin drop. And they were telling her who had just left, who had sat down with Lenin personally and said, this isn't what we're supposed to be for. We're supposed to be free speech for free speech and for the workers. They told her she didn't know what she was talking about.

00:07:11.360 So that kind of idea of people in the West, these intellectuals, influencers from the comforts of their own home, feeling comfortable explaining to people who were there that they don't know what they're talking about, how things really are, is a trend that I think has continued to this day in very disturbing ways.

00:07:29.520 and i completely agree with you michael so my mother is venezuelan and i had many people

00:07:36.040 explain to me over the years why chavez was wonderful and uh my my cousins who had to

00:07:43.280 flee from their lives from his regime were wrong and bigoted i have to ask you do you is there not

00:07:51.040 i'm not joking at all is there not a part of you that when you hear this you're kind of

00:07:55.380 feel the need for violence toward these people i'm not joking at all michael you can literally

00:08:04.380 feel my piss boiling whenever they talk to me but it came to the point in my own life where i

00:08:10.300 realized that talking with these people it wasn't going to lead to anything because they had their

00:08:15.020 own way of looking they had their own way of thinking and when venezuela inevitably collapsed

00:08:19.660 and we have 96 percent of the population living in poverty they've all moved on to the next course

00:08:24.760 and the reason that socialism didn't flourish is because it wasn't allowed to flourish it's the

00:08:29.640 same old narrative yeah but it's it's not just the narrative which we could all wrap our heads

00:08:34.000 around it's that oh you don't know what you're talking about and i do and it's like because i

00:08:38.680 read i don't know what newspaper would be equivalent there but i read the new york times i read the

00:08:41.980 washington post therefore i'm an informed citizen it's just unconscionable uh and and again there

00:08:47.180 case after case of, you know, authors, vice presidents, and reporters who went to these

00:08:53.240 places and feel comfortable pontificating to their lessors about what things are really like over

00:08:59.140 there. Well, wasn't there this, is it Durante, the New York Times journalist who got, he got a

00:09:04.660 Pulitzer for basically covering up all the atrocities that were happening in the Soviet

00:09:09.060 Union? Technically, he got the Pulitzer earlier, because he also got an interview with Stalin. So

00:09:13.740 that wasn't why he got the pulitzer but the headline was russians not starving merely hungry

00:09:19.700 or something to that effect i i i i get why you laugh but it's like these are millions of people

00:09:27.500 who are starved to death intentionally and and the thing that's really scary he said oh there's

00:09:33.360 there's no famine nor is there likely to be and then he says the russians are merely tightening

00:09:38.140 their belts well you know why you tighten your belt because you don't have food that i mean it's

00:09:42.880 not a fashion statement. They're not doing the treadmill. And the way the, which I didn't even

00:09:47.860 realize how the Holodomor worked, you know, they want to requisition all the grain. They wanted to

00:09:52.160 break the kulaks. So they would go to your home in the middle of the night. And if you weren't 1.00

00:09:56.720 gaunt, if you weren't losing weight, they knew you were hiding food. Your own body would betray

00:10:03.180 you. It was the law that you had to starve. And when Gareth Jones, the reporter, went to these

00:10:09.040 villages, they all told them the same thing. We're doomed. There's no food coming. And it's

00:10:14.980 really kind of something that's been swept under the rug historically. And thankfully,

00:10:20.540 I could discuss a little bit more in this book. Yeah, right. And we actually did an interview

00:10:25.220 with a very good historian of the Soviet Union called Giles Udy. And in that, I talked about

00:10:30.020 my own family. They were one of these so-called kulaks. And my grandmother's little brother 1.00

00:10:35.620 starved to death because of what was happening so when we laugh we laugh because the line is

00:10:40.900 ridiculous but of course he's a terrible tragedy uh there's no one would would underplay that 0.51

00:10:46.120 i gotta say well i gotta be pedantic it's not a tragedy this was done but you know this wasn't 0.95

00:10:51.300 some for you know some hurricane or you know like some typhoon this was an atrocity

00:10:56.140 yeah it's it's a very good point michael but as well you know the the journalists who went against

00:11:03.760 a grain even very famous left-leaning journalists like Malcolm Muggeridge I mean it didn't help

00:11:09.800 their careers did it no he talks I thought yeah they you know when he when you go against the

00:11:16.440 kind of uh narrative that your industry is putting forward um you know they asked Malcolm

00:11:22.200 Muggeridge years later because he was a hardcore lefty I think his dad was in the Fabians uh so

00:11:26.440 he had the pedigree and they asked him well what happened to you as a result of exposing this

00:11:31.700 because he used a diplomatic satchel to get the information out of the Soviet Union. He goes,

00:11:35.840 oh, me? I couldn't get work. So the fact that their depravity and malfeasance was exposed by

00:11:41.900 one of their own, they knew to seek retribution. And that's certainly the case nowadays when people

00:11:47.460 in certain industries step out of line their techniques to make sure that that doesn't happen

00:11:53.200 twice. And Michael, what do you make of the situation now where in the West quite often

00:11:59.140 people, and look, there's some evidence that societies have become more, you referred to

00:12:04.500 earlier, more authoritarian. And people go, oh, this is just like, you know, this is almost like

00:12:09.260 a digital gulag. And, you know, this is Soviet. How do you feel about people doing that? 0.69

00:12:14.740 Yeah. When Mike Bloomberg was mayor of New York City, and he had a ban on how big the sodas you

00:12:19.960 can get at 7-Eleven was, and Mike Huckabee, who was governor of Arkansas at the time, his daughter

00:12:24.280 just became Arkansas governor, said, this is like North Korea. And I'm like, I assure you,

00:12:29.720 the size of the soda is not the issue in North Korea. So I think these glib hand wavings are

00:12:37.800 things that I find uncomfortable. And again, this is one of the reasons I wrote this is because

00:12:42.980 people think authoritarianism is just like, okay, you have to go to school and they teach you 0.97

00:12:48.380 stupid things and you can't speak out about politics and everything else is fine. And if 0.98

00:12:53.420 that was the extent of it i'm kind of almost fine with that right we're talking about living from

00:13:00.100 morning to night in constant fear and at night you're waiting for the doorbell to ring when you

00:13:04.520 don't know who's going to turn who against each other and the techniques that the soviet union

00:13:09.960 used to make sure people broke which i did you know discuss extensively in this book were very

00:13:16.260 clever i mean they they were very smart about how because people sit here think okay there's nothing

00:13:22.120 you can do to me that's going to make me kind of, you know, spill or sign a confession I didn't sign.

00:13:28.060 Well, you have children, don't you? So when you have this kind of collective guilt and when human

00:13:32.500 life and human rights don't exist, you know, very quickly, no matter how tough you are, let's get

00:13:37.520 your kid in front of you and see what you're going to confess to. You had Jews confessing 1.00

00:13:41.400 and plotting with Hitler, you know, since before Hitler was in power, it was just absolute madness. 0.65

00:13:46.780 Yeah. Well, this was, and again, it doesn't even have to be as extreme as like, we're going to

00:13:51.360 kill your child. I mean, I talk about this in my book. My grandfather said some things about the 0.95

00:13:57.060 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And within a very short period of time, him and his wife lost their

00:14:02.880 jobs and both their children were kicked out of university. Right. So this collective punishment

00:14:07.500 system, and this is in the 80s. So the period you were talking about earlier, it would have been

00:14:12.020 way worse. And of course, you had a system if you were married to an enemy of the people, 0.96

00:14:17.560 quote-unquote that was a crime it was a crime to be related to somebody who's an enemy of the

00:14:23.320 people it gets much worse than that because here's what happens you're uh you're arrested

00:14:29.240 constantin right then your wife is arrested for being an enemy of the people what's she going to 0.95

00:14:33.800 do she can't really plead innocent but right away your kids are now orphans overnight now the thing

00:14:39.480 is what happens to these kids no this happened to gorbachev when he was a kid because one of his

00:14:44.760 grandfathers was arrested. And in his words, his house became a plague house. Now, none of the

00:14:50.000 other kids are going to play with that kid. The teachers are going to make it a point to distance

00:14:53.920 from that kid. In fact, there's a story in the book where, you know, one girl who overnight

00:14:59.180 became an orphan because her parents were vanished. She had a family friend. They took her in. But he

00:15:03.840 went to someone high up in, I believe it was Moscow or St. Petersburg and said, what do we do

00:15:07.980 about this kid? And it's like, look, do you want to be associating with a daughter of the enemy

00:15:12.660 of the people, because that makes it look like you're conspiring with them. So they had to put

00:15:17.120 her on the street. So there was hand wringing in the Kremlin, because all these kids are

00:15:22.120 understandably killing themselves now, because not only the orphans, like no one will talk to

00:15:26.580 them or associate with them. So again, no matter how bad we all think it can get, there's more

00:15:33.060 layers to hell in this, you know, evil place. I love shopping for new jackets and boots this

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00:16:01.660 up at rakuten.ca that's r-a-k-u-t-e-n.ca and what it shows as well is that the understanding

00:16:11.920 that people have in the west of these issues they can't possibly comprehend because in a way

00:16:16.960 michael to give them their due unless you've experienced it unless you've heard the stories

00:16:22.520 unless you've been around people who've experienced that it's impossible to to understand it just is

00:16:30.520 the life of constant fear so one of my friends henry who grew up in venezuela and is venezuelan

00:16:38.260 he came over to the uk and he went for a meal with my family my parents are now very old

00:16:43.800 and henry was talking and my dad said to him henry you're going to need to speak louder

00:16:48.360 i can't hear you and he said i'm sorry but in venezuela we're used to whispering

00:16:53.900 oh yeah so you don't even notice you just adapt constantly and as a result i don't think that

00:17:03.600 you can read about this but unless you experience it it's impossible to understand that's the tagline

00:17:10.400 on the back of the book it's almost impossible to convey to a free people what it is like to

00:17:14.560 live in a totalitarian dictatorship let me give you the closest parallel even i could feel was

00:17:19.880 when I visited North Korea. And the thing is, if you think about your environment, right? You think

00:17:25.080 about the wall behind you, the neon, your clothes, who you're talking to, the books in your room,

00:17:30.600 the microphones, when every aspect is different and alien, that sum of that environment is

00:17:38.380 something completely impossible to describe because like the difference for a fish between

00:17:43.380 being in like in a river or being in a fish tank, it affects every single aspect of everything you

00:17:48.400 do. And that kind of combination is so much bigger than some of its parts. And again, even having

00:17:54.420 only spent one week in North Korea, it's almost impossible for me to just articulate what it's

00:17:59.740 like to be in a country where there's no internet and no access to the outside world. I can kind of

00:18:04.320 explain it. It's like being in a dream state where you're like kind of floating in this country that's

00:18:09.080 devoid of attachment to anything outside itself. But to actually physically be there, to wake up

00:18:14.740 and not know what day it is and not have it really matter because you don't have news every day is

00:18:20.280 pretty much the same as the other other than the weekends we don't know what that's like and here's

00:18:25.140 the other thing that i think for those of us you know the level of horrors they all knew they can't

00:18:31.360 leave so you know there's many of these countries even war-torn countries right you know the blitz

00:18:36.860 you knew this is going to end at some point right you knew this is you know tempo even covid this is

00:18:42.280 not going to go on forever. They were told from birth, this is your reality and there's nowhere

00:18:48.880 else to go. And don't even think about trying to get out of here. Because if you do, someone is

00:18:54.340 going to turn you in and your family. Right. And this is one of the things that I think when people

00:19:00.580 talk about this in the West, it's like the easiest thing, the easiest line to give people to get them

00:19:06.340 to understand what those societies were like was those countries had borders to stop people getting

00:19:13.420 out. I mean, that tells you enough, I think, about everything that was going on inside. We have

00:19:19.560 borders. We argue all the time in the West. You know, we got to enforce the borders because people

00:19:23.560 want to come in. Those countries had borders to prevent people leaving. And also, I talked

00:19:29.620 extensively about the Berlin Wall in this book because this fell during my lifetime and I didn't

00:19:33.980 really appreciate why this was such a big deal and what a kind of monument to obscenity the

00:19:40.100 Berlin Wall was. The idea of encasing. There's this great line from a historian in the book

00:19:45.740 where I go, it's kind of deranged. It's the only prison on earth where the people who are imprisoned

00:19:50.420 are the ones who are free because they encased West Berlin entirely. But they called it the

00:19:56.020 official term, the East German term, was the anti-fascist rampart. And it worked great. Not

00:20:01.260 one fascist even tried so much as to get into East Berlin, but it's not just that you couldn't

00:20:06.160 leave. They would also lie. You know, it's like, you wouldn't want to leave because on the far

00:20:11.760 side of the Iron Curtain, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, the Klan runs everything and 0.80

00:20:16.260 people are homeless and they're starving. We have it so great here. There's this great scene

00:20:20.980 in the late eighties when Bortz Yeltsin, who was high up in the USSR at the time,

00:20:26.680 went to houston to visit nasa and as a side trip he stopped into a supermarket the supermarket's

00:20:32.520 still there and he's walking around and this isn't filled with dignitaries and senators these are

00:20:38.940 like school teachers and truck drivers and they're the food he's seeing he'd never seen his life

00:20:44.240 and he's flying back to uh the ussr via miami and on the plane he has his head in his hands

00:20:50.200 and he's like they had to lie because otherwise people would understand how bad we have it so

00:20:56.720 again it's not just that there's a narrative or they're twisting the truth there's no other way

00:21:03.120 that like they knew how bad it was and they lied constantly 24 7 and frankly that cynicism toward

00:21:12.360 the media was one of the things that broke down this totalitarian nightmare and michael that being

00:21:19.260 the case does it worry you the cynicism that we have towards the media in our societies where we

00:21:24.180 no longer trust the media it's the best thing ever these people are i mean it's it's it's very

00:21:30.780 healthy when you're trying to construct a narrative based on lies when people don't believe what you

00:21:37.620 say and there's this amazing story like the story of the prague the um velvet revolution in in prague

00:21:43.080 in czechoslovakia is just just a beautiful heartwarming story and and people can look

00:21:48.760 read about in the book but there was the the police started beating protesters men women and

00:21:54.200 children just they wouldn't let them leave they're beating them near wencheslaus square

00:21:57.600 and rumor went out and it was reported like voice of america and other outlets that there was a

00:22:02.340 student i'm blanking his name was supposed christopher smith was killed by the cops and

00:22:06.660 then the protests got bigger and there were two students by this name at the universities and

00:22:11.820 the authorities like he's fine and they were and they brought out both of them from the cameras

00:22:15.320 to go look look Christopher Smith is fine and they were telling the truth but after decades no

00:22:20.460 one believed them they really thought that they killed this kid and the protests got bigger and

00:22:24.380 bigger and a spoiler alert the entire government resigned and it was a peaceful transition that's

00:22:30.320 why it's called the revolution to a liberal democracy which remains to this day so there

00:22:35.540 are many stories where the cynicism towards those who lie and oppress their own for a living

00:22:41.240 was the healthiest response. And Michael, let's say that there's a young kid watching this and

00:22:47.400 by kid, I mean, somebody in their teens in college and, you know, they're, you know,

00:22:52.340 they believe in communism and all the rest of it. What would you say to this kid

00:22:58.940 who may be listening and may be open to being persuaded?

00:23:05.200 Don't believe your teachers. This is where the poisoning starts, the universities.

00:23:10.180 and i would tell them to i mean this is one of the reasons i wrote this book you know it's to

00:23:15.640 explain what this was like what this really means in practice and you know there's this argument

00:23:20.880 you guys are very familiar with i'm sure that this wasn't real communism real communism hasn't

00:23:26.200 been tried it's like lenin and trotsky were true believers they were the kind of evangelists they

00:23:32.400 were the prophets that all right we're going to not put anything get anything in our way

00:23:37.600 we're not going to be weak we're not going to be middling this is our chance to kind of do

00:23:42.580 full-bore communism and and they succeeded and what this book demonstrates and history demonstrates

00:23:48.620 is what that actually means in practice and again it's not you don't take my word for it or

00:23:54.580 someone some conservative it was emma goldman alexander berkman who were hardcore hardcore

00:24:00.340 violent revolutionaries who saw it firsthand and they were the ones who uh kind of warned about it

00:24:06.180 the west to completely deaf ears hey kk do you like spring cleaning no in my country men who

00:24:14.100 were caught spring cleaning were executed and it was correct decision why cleaning weakens men to 0.81

00:24:19.860 fight bear you must be dirty and hairy like real men when you can no longer defend woman from bear 0.98

00:24:25.460 attack you're useless well that escalated quickly bear attacks can escalate quickly okay well 0.99

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00:25:58.940 And Michael, that's one of the reasons I'm excited about your book being out,

00:26:02.220 because I see kind of in our space, whatever that space is,

00:26:07.040 a lot of people have spent a lot of time focusing on what's gone wrong.

00:26:11.060 You know, postmodern neo-Marxism or whatever it is, people go,

00:26:16.160 OK, this has happened. This has happened. This is what's going wrong.

00:26:18.480 This is what's going bad. This is what's not working.

00:26:20.360 And like you said, it does lead a lot of people into a kind of dooms space in which they feel, you know, America's over, Britain's over, the West is tired.

00:26:30.060 You know, we must embrace our new Russian overlords or whatever is the ending of that process. 0.51

00:26:36.420 And that has caused, I think, now in me and in lots of other people now, I feel, a search for a positive vision of the future.

00:26:44.820 People are starting to think about, OK, we've identified what the problems are with wokeness.

00:26:50.080 So we've identified what the problems are with the two mainstream parties and the establishment, etc.

00:26:54.880 The media are clearly lying to us a lot of the time, etc.

00:26:58.580 Right. And your book is a OK, I mean, good.

00:27:01.880 As we say in Russian, everything is understood in comparison.

00:27:05.820 So the comparison is useful. Now what?

00:27:09.020 Well, I'm glad I can speak to you guys about this specifically as opposed to Americans, because the British had this before. 0.66

00:27:16.120 1979 the the british empire went from the sun never sets on the british empire because it

00:27:22.280 spanned the globe to not having electricity you had they had like four hours a day of electricity

00:27:26.980 the garbage in leicester square was two meters tall uh it was a given that the best days of

00:27:32.720 great britain were behind her and that the country is kind of a historical joke at this point right

00:27:37.880 it was called the sick man of europe yeah right and someone who is very controversial in in your

00:27:43.020 country, namely Margaret Thatcher, said, I can't bear the idea of Britain in decline. Now, she's a

00:27:49.840 very controversial figure, but you can't dispute that Great Britain in 2023 is in a far better

00:27:55.640 place than Great Britain was in 1979. And the idea that Great Britain is kind of a joke and over,

00:28:02.380 I don't think is something people say with any kind of credence anymore. So this is an example

00:28:07.160 in your country in not that long ago where people were saying the same thing and with far more

00:28:13.800 reason there was there seemed to be no mechanism to turn the ship around it's got to be managed

00:28:19.360 decline uh you know we had our run pit bull chap and now it's just kind of we're slowly drifting

00:28:25.080 toward the grave and that ship got turned so that's one example but the other example is again

00:28:31.180 why do people ascribe the villains of the day to be omnipotent and omniscient you know one of the

00:28:39.840 points that i make in this book and that i constantly talk about is the enemy class is

00:28:44.920 not full of impressive people these are rishi whatever his name is i don't pronounce his last

00:28:49.680 name and sarkir these aren't gods you know these aren't these amazing figures and you know i sure

00:28:56.280 wouldn't want to go up against them in an argument. Like, are you crazy? You know, so when 0.95

00:29:00.980 you have this idea that, you know, the people who are opposed to liberty and freedom and human

00:29:05.320 dignity are unstoppable, when you look at who these people are, they're far closer to snakes

00:29:11.600 than to gods. And I'm not saying at all that they wouldn't do the worst atrocities possible. That's

00:29:18.060 part of the point of the book. But the point being, they don't always get their way. Why are you

00:29:23.380 allowing them to lie to you and say we're always going to win because that's all they do is lie

00:29:29.580 at some point i'm going to get what i want or at the very least there's the possibility

00:29:34.820 and as long as there as there is the possibility of victory people have to fight for it yeah and

00:29:42.000 one of the things that you are highly critical or i would say things or world views is cynicism

00:29:49.320 you hate a cynic don't you michael explain to me why i think it's the worst i don't i don't want 0.75

00:29:55.460 to say worst okay but it's really one of the most like kind of unconscionable perspectives for 0.98

00:30:00.580 people to have first of all it's this kind of like too cool for school everything sucks like 0.99

00:30:05.280 it's true 90 of movies suck 90 of comedians suck 90 of books suck possibly including my own 0.98

00:30:11.520 but you're telling me no books are good no movies inspire you and change your life 0.99

00:30:16.560 no conversation makes you a better person. No program makes you think about our world and our

00:30:22.780 place in it. So when you're a cynic, you preemptively excuse yourself from achieving

00:30:28.140 anything or hoping for anything because it's just like you hand wave it away. And it's an easy trap

00:30:32.860 to fall into. I think it is very much perpetrated by the media because it allows people to just

00:30:39.060 kind of, you're cool if you're a cynic, but if you have hope or optimism or anything is sunny,

00:30:43.820 that's juvenile or illegitimate or kind of a joke and that's a very useful technique to encourage 0.98

00:30:50.540 people to stop fighting for their values and to stop hoping for things better for themselves and

00:30:55.020 their families and i think it's regardless of someone's politics if you're surrounded by this

00:31:00.360 and i think this is a very constant you can speak to this also i'm sure it's a very russian

00:31:04.800 perspective because i remember very vividly you know there's this show called russian dolls which

00:31:09.180 was the version russian version of um oh man it was so good i remember the whole family sitting

00:31:14.220 down to watch it i talk about it all the time because it was the first time you could see

00:31:18.620 russian politicians being satirized and and made fun of and uh and it's never happened before or

00:31:25.720 since really properly wait there might be a different show then here in the states it's

00:31:29.320 our version of jersey shore with with a bunch of russians i was thinking about a different one in

00:31:35.420 the 90s we had this show called uh hookley puppets it was called a spitting image anyway sorry but

00:31:41.420 the point i brought it up is there was this scene where this girl she'd been struggling she she had

00:31:45.700 like eight different majors she didn't know what to do she took an aptitude test and it said lawyer

00:31:50.880 and she's like oh you know what i enjoyed my pre-law classes so she there's a scene she's 1.00

00:31:54.400 down with her mom they're getting manicures or whatever she goes mom you know i finally figured

00:31:58.020 out i want to be a lawyer first reaction how are you going to pay for it and she has this complete 1.00

00:32:02.080 breakdown is just like why is it whenever i have something positive in my life your first reaction

00:32:07.920 is to look for a flaw to look for a problem what people don't know how to pay for law school this

00:32:12.000 isn't on and she just loses it and i could really relate to that because this kind of like always

00:32:17.520 looking for the darkness always looking for the way out to give up is so pernicious whereas opposed

00:32:24.400 to me and and the point of the book and just i think people should fight in general is there's

00:32:30.960 the possibility that you're going to achieve your dreams and i gotta tell you i failed a lot in my

00:32:36.160 life and i'm fine with it and i'm sure you guys have too because as long as i gave it a good

00:32:40.880 college try and i don't always get what i want i feel happy and i can meet my maker knowing i did

00:32:46.080 my best with what i had yeah well there's such such an important point and i think one of the

00:32:51.280 reasons that these uh cynical narratives are so uh pernicious and so common is i don't know have

00:33:00.000 have you ever heard of this experiment where like they put a rat in a cage with an electrified floor

00:33:05.440 and as long and it gives us the rat an electric shock with a certain regularity and what they

00:33:11.740 found was as if you put a button in the cage that the rat can turn off the electric shock the rat

00:33:16.440 will carry on you know trying to stop the electric shocks but if there is no button and they can't

00:33:21.860 control its environment then the rat just lies down and takes it basically and i think a lot of

00:33:27.580 these responses that people are tempted to go into, they're a feeling of a lack of control.

00:33:33.320 They're a feeling like there is these, and both left and right have a version of it. You know,

00:33:38.840 to the left, it's systemic, whatever, it's structures of oppression, it's the patriarchy,

00:33:44.220 it's whatever. And to the sort of more anti-woke right, there's Davos and Klaus Schwab is personally,

00:33:49.160 you know, taking over their life or whatever it is. And it's a way of basically saying,

00:33:54.040 i don't control anything i can have no impact i'm just going to sit here and be resigned and cynical

00:34:00.460 yeah i i was on some conservative podcast they were talking about how joe biden is putting the

00:34:05.400 last nail in the coffin in america i'm like we're one nail away from america being destroyed what

00:34:10.060 does that even mean destroyed right and it's just and if you your perspective is that the

00:34:15.080 biden administration in two years and 51 democratic senators can destroy america well it's a wrap

00:34:21.080 and get out of this country because you hate america because to me it's just absurd that you

00:34:25.880 know a country as prosperous as we are which certainly has problems let's let me not put

00:34:30.460 sweet rolls on the rug but to say that we're two years away from absolute destruction to me is

00:34:35.440 absolutely crazy to the point of being dishonest and it's also these narratives are highly addictive

00:34:41.880 we all know and we're not going to mention any name certain channels that feed and fuel a doomsday 0.99

00:34:47.640 narrative they get millions of views and a lot of the time everything's shit 0.96

00:34:54.300 i should change the book title look how shit things can get and it's coming to america right 0.95

00:35:03.400 now yeah exactly get your copy but they put out the same narrative again and again there doesn't

00:35:09.800 seem to be very little variety in the output you look at it and even a cursory glance will make it

00:35:16.180 Well, once you analyze it, you realize that a lot of these arguments don't have a lot of merit, yet people tune in.

00:35:22.500 They love it, don't they?

00:35:24.180 Oh, and then you could have.

00:35:25.480 And the thing is, then they can say that they're being rational because they could open up any newspaper and find bad news and be like, look, look, I'm not being irrational.

00:35:34.180 The newspaper validates my perspective.

00:35:36.220 So it does become a self-fulfilling cycle.

00:35:38.980 I think COVID certainly allowed people who are, you know, neurotic or anxious or depressed now to externalize their neurosis because now it's not calling from inside the house.

00:35:49.740 It's the whole country or the whole world that's experiencing this.

00:35:52.620 And how can you expect me to have any hope or vision of happiness?

00:35:55.380 So I think it's a very useful technique if you want to conquer a people or a peoples to convince them that their victory over you is impossible.

00:36:05.900 And then you don't have to fight because they could just go home, shrug their shoulders and be like, all right, you know, I can't win.

00:36:11.900 I have no hope. The people I'm against are too powerful or been around too long or control too many institutions.

00:36:17.800 And I'm just going to kind of, you know, watch sitcoms have a pint. And that's the end of that.

00:36:23.180 And I think it's a very smart move on their part. But I really hope that the people listening to this don't fall into that trap. And you don't have to be this, you know, braveheart freedom fighter, but you can certainly be a better person tomorrow than you are today. We all have that power within us.

00:36:41.580 Not everyone is going to be Joe Rogan, but we could still be successful podcasters, as an example. So when people put in that perspective, you have that kind of motivation to do something about the values that you hold.

00:36:54.280 and also not all of those actions have to be public actions i think you know you went when

00:37:00.180 you you not everyone's joe rogan and you could be a successful podcaster but you could also just

00:37:05.780 have kids and raise them well or you could make a difference in the job that you do whatever that

00:37:11.320 job is and and that in itself will not only make the world better it actually is going to make your

00:37:16.220 life a hell of a lot better versus sitting there and listening to yet another three-hour conversation

00:37:21.100 about how civil war is coming you know what i mean and it's also here's the other thing with

00:37:25.020 cynicism it's very important for cynics to make sure everyone around them is cynical it's almost

00:37:29.960 like a zombie apocalypse because as soon as you have one example that disproves your narrative

00:37:35.660 that everything sucks and we're doomed your entire hypothesis falls apart so psychologically it is 0.51

00:37:41.600 necessary for them when they are surrounded by people who are if not thriving at least going in

00:37:47.020 that direction to pull the rug out from under them because otherwise they're going to have to do

00:37:51.080 some dark looking in the mirror and they're not going to like what they find. So I very much

00:37:56.620 caution people, if you're surrounded by this kind of negativity in your life, especially in

00:38:01.780 casual friends, make sure that this person is more of a benefit than a cost to you because

00:38:07.700 it really is very pernicious and sinister. Michael, do you think part of the problem as

00:38:13.600 well is that people just buy into systems and paradigms way too much? So whatever the system

00:38:20.340 may be like the college system they believe that you go to college you get your college degree and

00:38:25.000 that your life when you leave will be sorted and well life doesn't work like that life doesn't

00:38:29.520 happen like that just because you get a college degree doesn't mean you're going to get a great

00:38:32.880 job whatever school you go to do you think that's part of the problem as well yes and i think it's

00:38:38.660 by design and i think it starts in school because the whole point of school is to make people as

00:38:43.040 homogenous as possible to break young spirits you don't want little boys running around you want

00:38:47.320 them asking too many questions you want to look everyone's learning at the same rate as everybody

00:38:51.440 else everyone is told that we all kind of basically think the same these are things that are completely

00:38:56.280 untrue and it there's this winnowing effect where if you're kind of challenging the narrative that

00:39:01.640 the teacher at the front of the room who's more often than not apologies to your audience uh if

00:39:05.860 they get offended at this a mediocre person uh you are really kind of taught a very bad lesson

00:39:11.600 very early on and i think this is intentional because i think schools i i'm pretty sure it's

00:39:16.440 even worse in the UK than the United States, are there to design to teach kids not to think 0.65

00:39:21.340 critically and not to challenge basic assumptions. You can only challenge within a context that is

00:39:26.720 presented as you, you know, the equivalent of setting kids up for the Overton window.

00:39:31.000 And I think it's very hard at a young age to kind of break out of that and not kind of be

00:39:36.140 under that thumb. But it's something I think that's very, very necessary and that I personally

00:39:40.780 had to do myself as well. Michael, moving on. Well, hold on a second. Are you not going to

00:39:45.680 tell him you're a former teacher you do the 10 times in every other episode he slags off teachers

00:39:51.800 you say nothing no come on stand up for yourself i'll back you up come on no i do i do agree i

00:39:58.480 actually agree with you michael so in the uk what uh education has in fact become it's not it i would

00:40:05.440 even say it's worse than that because education has actually become uh every school is now a

00:40:11.300 factory for data harvesting yes it's not about teaching it's about factory it's a factory for

00:40:16.080 data harvesting so that when the education minister of the day is questioned by his uh

00:40:21.800 is one of his opponents they can then go well look the you know the grammar you know the kids

00:40:27.340 are writing better by 22 are they actually writing better no not really you're just teaching them to

00:40:33.560 pass the test which has little to no value and it's just basically justifying your job that's

00:40:39.540 also the problem with education is that it's now a political football as well i would just like to

00:40:44.500 say on behalf of everyone here at trigonometry we believe there's some very good teachers out there

00:40:48.380 and we have tremendous respect for them and by no means are we suggesting that you're all terrible

00:40:52.180 i didn't say all you just meant most it's not a game of russian roulette i'd want to play

00:40:58.740 you're not a big fan of school michael i gather no not government schools especially i don't know

00:41:05.920 how they are in the UK, but here in the United States, it's probably the only place that many

00:41:09.800 people experience violence in their lifetimes. And this is kind of this idea that, you know,

00:41:14.920 first of all, everyone learning at the same rate as everyone else is nonsensical.

00:41:19.500 The point of schooling explicitly is to make good citizens. And what that means is people

00:41:24.920 who are servile and obedient. I mean, it's a euphemism for a very pernicious goal to have

00:41:30.620 everyone basically thinking the same things within narrow parameters. And that's how you get a

00:41:35.920 powerful state. Michael, here's the thing. It's not also that. It's also to give you certain

00:41:42.180 skills for you to be able to access education, the workforce. But I take your point. Do you

00:41:47.680 sometimes not worry, though, Michael, and I have this myself, in that your experiences

00:41:52.960 has led you to have such a deep distrust of authority that you worry you can go too far

00:42:01.060 the other way no i'm an anarchist there's no too far i'm there i've told turn the dial up to 11.

00:42:10.320 so you just think to yourself like because surely some we do need some form of government michael

00:42:17.120 surely we do in order to make the road in order to make sure that you know the roads don't say

00:42:22.580 the trains it's about where they run to yeah exactly but you know you know the roads work

00:42:28.400 you know the water works whatever else do you not think that we need government for that

00:42:33.700 without government how do we have water i mean my god no i don't think we need government for

00:42:39.220 any of that and i think without government who's going to imprison us in our homes for weeks at a

00:42:43.100 time for no reason my god it's it's unconscionable no i don't think i think first of all i don't like

00:42:48.340 that term we need because that always means i want um and no i do not want government at all i

00:42:54.100 There are, of course, organizations and mechanisms that are important that establish rules and regulations within their purview.

00:43:01.620 But in the sense of a government, no, I think government's illegitimate.

00:43:06.440 So how would society work without government?

00:43:09.660 Society works. This is a kind of a sidebar, but society works despite government.

00:43:16.300 Everything that works in society is done voluntarily by people.

00:43:20.400 Adam Smith talked about this at great length, by people fighting for their values, working

00:43:24.620 peacefully with everyone else. It's only when force is introduced into a relationship via

00:43:29.200 private criminals, such as muggers, or public criminals, which are governments, that you have

00:43:33.720 strife and other things like that. Well, I mean, if you remember, we talked about anarchism a lot

00:43:39.760 in our last conversation, so people can go and check out the full conversation if they want.

00:43:44.260 um michael so you i mean one of the things we talked about is the need for hope and the need

00:43:51.640 for uh the belief that positive positive things are possible and i appreciate that in your

00:43:58.140 conception positive change would be to get rid of government can i say one thing it's not just

00:44:02.720 positive things are possible this whole book is demonstrating that positive things have happened

00:44:08.540 So this isn't some Pollyanna thing about like, oh, hope for the best.

00:44:12.080 We've seen great, extremely positive things happen within our lifetime, but they're not

00:44:17.820 discussed because, as you guys mentioned, they don't fit this doomsday narrative.

00:44:21.440 Well, right.

00:44:21.980 And actually, I mean, you made the point right at the beginning about the Cold War.

00:44:25.720 And maybe this is a good opportunity to come back to it, because I think to answer your

00:44:29.080 question, I think part of the reason is it's kind of like COVID in a way.

00:44:33.000 Once something bad is over, people just want to move on.

00:44:36.820 Right.

00:44:37.060 I think that's part of it.

00:44:38.260 Another part of it is that the entity which previously was our enemy in the West, the Soviet Union, no longer exists.

00:44:46.760 And so it was very easy to go, OK, well, that's done now. Let's not worry too much.

00:44:51.520 But as we see in terms of what's happening in Ukraine now, you know, things don't it's not like that part of the world suddenly just disappeared or all became liberal, beautiful liberal democracies or whatever.

00:45:03.360 And that legacy, I mean, that's what's happening in Ukraine now. It's continuing to run, isn't it?

00:45:07.700 Oh, absolutely. So, you know, one of the points I make is that if someone is, you know, anarchists get accused of being utopians, utopias don't exist. But progress does. Things, great victories happen on a national, international and personal level all the time. And if we're going to be cynics, we're going to pretend that's not true. And it's just demonstrably false.

00:45:28.620 like everyone listening to this has had great victories in their lives moments where things

00:45:33.620 had been where your fears you know there's this kind of imagine going back in time 10 years ago

00:45:39.260 and talking to yourself and remembering all those fears you had all those anxieties many of them

00:45:44.180 never ended up happening and some of them did and you know what you were able to handle them you

00:45:47.780 were strong enough so I think that kind of is very important to have in mind to realize and but the

00:45:53.960 other thing is i i think we underestimate how much the media and the academia love war love

00:46:01.160 bloodshed because the cold war and the fall of the soviet union was very largely a peaceful one

00:46:07.500 you don't have this triumphalism that we storm normandy and all these boys lost their lives and

00:46:13.660 of course i'm not you know kind of dismissing what their accomplishments was and those enormous

00:46:17.820 sacrifices to be fair but that story is much more kind of easy to tell in terms of heroism

00:46:23.740 then a bunch of people got together looked around and said this is not right and we're going to do

00:46:29.800 something about and we're going to dismantle sometimes against our own will this enormous

00:46:34.400 edifice that has been built up over the decades um so what about rocky four

00:46:38.340 so so so touche so so you know that was one of the reasons i wrote this is because that narrative

00:46:49.320 of the victory of good over evil is not something in popular consciousness, but I think it needs to

00:46:54.740 be, especially as you said, Russia and Ukraine are still very much in the news today for obvious

00:46:59.740 reasons. And do you think part of it as well, Michael, is nowadays, I almost feel like because

00:47:04.480 of this slightly, you know, we do see the world through this sort of post-modernist everything

00:47:09.800 is relative lens to some extent. Like you say, good and evil, most people couldn't even define

00:47:15.280 what good and evil are anymore right well i don't know about anymore i think this has been a long

00:47:20.160 time where this idea of good and evil was speaking to earlier is regarded simplistic or naive or

00:47:26.500 juvenile or 1950s it's and this was you know the leading up to the last story of the book

00:47:33.300 the idea was detente because the argument was okay look we tried to fight communism in north

00:47:38.780 korea that was in the korean war that was a draw we tried to kind of uh cuba the cuban missile

00:47:44.160 crisis. The Vietnam War was a disaster for the West. The rational, sane, informed person knows 0.98

00:47:51.540 the Soviet Union isn't going anywhere. We have to make our peace with it. This is going to be a 0.98

00:47:56.960 two-polar world for millennia. Star Trek had Chekhov because even in the far-flung future,

00:48:02.580 it's going to be the Americans and the Russians. And Ronald Reagan, who became president and

00:48:07.400 elected in 1980, sat down in the late 70s and he said to his colleague, he goes,

00:48:12.060 do you want to hear my strategy for the cold war it's simple and some might say simplistic

00:48:16.040 we win they lose and you know for him and and margaret thatcher with the home office when she

00:48:22.140 or excuse me the foreign office when she was dealing with gorbachev they told her these

00:48:26.300 changes are cosmetic they're not going anywhere you don't know what you're talking about you have

00:48:31.780 to be realistic and realism means you have to accept that this is going to be two superpowers

00:48:37.280 in perpetuity. And my favorite moment, well, not my favorite, up there, is when Lech Walesa,

00:48:43.820 who was the head of Poland, was talking to Helmut Kohl, who was the head of West Germany.

00:48:48.280 And Lech Walesa goes, you know, I don't think the Berlin Wall is going to be around for much longer.

00:48:52.840 I mean, the way things are changing so quickly. And Helmut Kohl laughs in his face. And he goes,

00:48:59.240 you're young. You don't understand how these things work. This is going to be a long process.

00:49:04.540 it fell the next day and helmet call says i'm at the wrong party and got on a plane and got his

00:49:11.320 ass out of warsaw so there's so many moments in this book when educated smart and cynical people

00:49:18.140 are like you can't expect things to get better or if they are going to get better it's just kind of 0.87

00:49:23.260 putting a bandage on a greater wound this disease is going to be eternal we've tried everything we

00:49:28.620 had and nothing's going to change. And things happened gradually and then suddenly. That's so

00:49:34.560 interesting because as you were speaking that I was thinking, kind of looking 10, 15 years into

00:49:39.040 the future. And I don't think, you know, 5, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, anyone in the West would

00:49:45.480 have really given half a shit about the leader of Russia dying, for example. Okay, well, they've got 0.98

00:49:50.440 a new one called Boris again. Great. You know, who cares? Right. But now.

00:49:57.520 That would be like a very significant moment. Right. And that is going to happen in the next

00:50:02.080 10, 15 years, almost certainly. Or at least there will be a change of leadership for sure.

00:50:06.760 So we're kind of going to a world in which things really are starting to matter again in a very

00:50:12.240 bad way, but also in a very significant way. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm going to push back a

00:50:17.980 little towards the late 70s, early 80s, you know, Reagan kept trying to have summits with the

00:50:23.440 Soviet Union, but the leaders kept dying on him because there's one old man after another, you 1.00

00:50:27.920 know, and he didn't really know what to do about it. And then when Gorbachev comes in, he was the

00:50:32.520 first Soviet leader to be born after the creation in 1917 of what became the USSR. And this was a

00:50:39.320 radical change in a direction that everyone listening to this, I believe, would very much

00:50:43.600 be in favor of. So it certainly is the case that leadership does matter. And, you know,

00:50:47.540 when Putin goes away, the next leader could be worse, most certainly, or it could be someone

00:50:52.100 who's, you know, better or who knows even what those terms mean in this context. But yeah,

00:50:58.200 it's interesting how forgotten this whole story was. And I think that's just completely

00:51:07.140 and it's just what really bothers me isn't just necessarily the Cold War, because that's kind of

00:51:11.420 high politics what's being forgotten is the oppression that these people went through the

00:51:17.860 the secret police the show people were put on trial and forced to denounce their own families

00:51:23.880 and admit to things that were literally impossible oh i met trotsky at this hotel even though the

00:51:28.580 even though the hotel no longer had existed and then you had the reporters you know defending

00:51:33.120 these trials there were so many signatories to these letters in the west saying we need to adopt

00:51:37.860 the ways of Stalin, and they have free speech there, and you don't know what you're talking

00:51:41.520 about because you're trapped by the bourgeoisie. So there's just so many receipts of, not to

00:51:48.340 mention the gulags, of course, of atrocities that so many people whose names we will never know

00:51:53.000 have been forgotten. And I'm like, you know, over my dead body, is this going to be swept

00:51:58.080 under the rug of history? Michael, does the experiences of your family and the experiences

00:52:04.360 of writing this book. Does it make you hypervigilant within your own country as to

00:52:09.160 your own freedoms being eroded? I don't know, but it makes me hypervigilant about the nature of evil

00:52:16.680 because Americans have this idea that evil is someone with weird facial hair banging the desk

00:52:23.540 and foaming at the mouth. And what happens in these countries, and I'm sure you guys can speak

00:52:28.320 this as well, is it's these little bureaucrats, these absolute mediocre people, just the bottom

00:52:35.760 of the barrel who are put in positions of power simply because they're following the party line

00:52:41.240 and they will do everything to maintain that power and lord it over you. It's the person when

00:52:48.140 you want to go to the hospital and get medicine and he's the one guy standing between you and

00:52:52.420 getting medication for your family and he's going to make you tap dance because this is his

00:52:57.380 opportunity to feel like a big shot. The best example of this was Ceausescu, you know, who was

00:53:02.560 the head of Romania. And in any other country, you know, if you take one look at this guy,

00:53:07.120 the complete simpleton, he'd be some kind of mail clerk who'd be befuddled when the address says,

00:53:12.120 you know, 73 Smith Avenue, but it's 73 Smith Street, and he wouldn't know what to do about it 0.88

00:53:16.960 and just be kind of crapping his pants. But this guy was given absolute power and was praised,

00:53:22.780 you know, from sunrise to sunset in this country. And what happened to the Ceausescus in Romania

00:53:28.500 is, you know, one of my favorite stories in this book. Well, right. This is one of my favorite

00:53:34.540 stories as well, because it kind of shows you the thing that you're talking about, which is

00:53:38.000 things change quickly and they change suddenly because he formerly at least had a 90 something

00:53:43.860 percent approval rating the day he was summarily executed, the day before he was summarily executed

00:53:50.140 after being arrested. So, well, on that positive note, Michael, things can change quickly and

00:53:57.040 suddenly and for the better. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. I hope everybody gets to read

00:54:01.700 The White Poach. It's a great read. And before we let you go, and before we do our questions for

00:54:06.640 our local supporters that they've already submitted, tell us, what is the one thing we're

00:54:10.740 not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? The perniciousness of the

00:54:15.460 universities and those who staff them. I think that is where the poisoning starts. And I'm very

00:54:22.000 gladdened by, in America at least, it went from people thinking the fights in Washington and the

00:54:28.220 government, and then they've shifted to the tactics of the corporate press. But behind them is the

00:54:33.860 last leg of that stool, and that is the university system. And I'm very, very gladdened by this,

00:54:38.840 because I think a university staff, professors of the intelligentsia are as a rule, not particularly

00:54:45.640 impressive people and just nasty and just very small minded. And when we take the fight to them,

00:54:52.280 I think that's when victory will be achieved. And I don't think they're going to be able to put up

00:54:55.600 much of a fight at all because they've never had to defend themselves. Michael, thank you so much

00:55:01.540 for coming on the show. If people want to get your book, if people want to find your other works

00:55:06.240 online where is the best place to do that uh white pill book.com and i'm on twitter at michael

00:55:11.020 malice and i apologize in advance for the crap of my social media output and malice.locals.com

00:55:17.100 awesome michael thanks for coming on uh guys head on over to locals where we're going to ask your

00:55:21.700 questions and you'll get to see the answers and only you'll get to see the answers if you support

00:55:25.700 the show thanks for watching thanks for listening and we see you very soon another brilliant episode

00:55:29.860 like this one or raw show all of them go out at 7 p.m uk time and for those of you who like your

00:55:34.940 trigonometry on the go it's always available as a podcast take care and see you soon guys

00:55:39.660 my version of national divorce is uh texas regains its sovereignty from the occupying 0.98

00:55:46.120 regime in dc and everyone else can fuck off and do whatever they want 0.99

TRIGGERnometry - March 20, 2023

Michael Malice： Take the White Pill

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