Supplementary Material 16: Riding a Phoenix to Rescue the Gurusphere
We plunge ever deeper into the convoluted world of guru punditry and are dazzled at the theatrics at the 'Rescue the Republic' event, inspired by the profound insights of Eric Weinstein on political speeches, and thrilled at Michael Moynihan's hard knock interview with the moderate heterodox thinker Megyn Kelly. Join us won't you?00:00 Introduction and Health Check Adventures04:15 Exploring the GuruSphere and GuruCon08:57 Matt and Chris Debate Round 1: The Unholy Alliance16:35 Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson's Prayer Time24:51 Bret's Amazing Metaphor: David and the Phoenix36:01 Matt Taibbi's Speaking Truth to Power with the Bible40:24 Rage Against the War Machine43:25 Eric Weinstein's analysis of Kamala Harris58:44 Joe Rogan's Bias and Broken Conspiracy Prone Brain01:13:53 Michael Moynihan softballs Megyn Kelly01:26:11 Cynical Chris and Moderate Megyn: Alex Jones & Tucker are right!01:32:57 Hard Knock Heterodoxy01:47:35 Matt and Chris Debate Round 2: Left and RightThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (2 hr 1 min).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksRescue The Republic WebsiteRage Against the War MachineAll the videos from the Rescue the Republic eventEric Weinstein deciphers Kamala's speech for Chris WilliamsonMegyn Kelly Enjoys Watching Legacy Media Crumble | HONESTLY
Supplementary material where I take the reins and I do the introductions and Matthew Bride, the psychologist, sits there and takes it while I, Chris Kavner, the anthropologist, give the introduction, make the analogies.
I call him Rodney to my Del Boy.
Do you get that reference?
No, I do not get that reference.
It's very complimentary.
British.
People will understand.
So it's very good.
Trust me.
Okay, fine, fine, fine.
Well, good on you.
I'm glad you got lots of energy.
You're going to have to carry us this episode because of all the delays, you're getting your health checks and you have to catch buses and trains to places.
And I've been waiting.
And now it's the late afternoon.
My old tired bones are aching.
Levels are low.
This is the supplementary section, Matt.
We're allowed by the people listening.
They allot us a little bit of time to mention daily events.
Not too much, but I can just mention, yes, today was a bit of a hassle because there's this thing called an annual health check in Japan.
It's very impressive.
Lots of jobs and places do it, but you kind of go to a location and you go through these little stations.
And they take various measurements.
Blood, they take your blood pressure, eye test, ear test, the whole thing.
And it's very much like, you know, you're a little character in a team hospital or two-point hospital.
Does somebody tap your knee with a little hammer?
No, no.
There is no reaction test, but there is eye test and whatnot.
But genius that I am, I had arranged the booking, and you're not supposed to eat before it.
And then...
I went to the place on my campus where I expected it to be.
And it was not there because I booked a time at the other campus, which is one hour away, a completely different location.
So I had to travel all the way over there and then get a new time and then continue not eating.
And now I'm back.
So that's it.
I've got my measurements taken.
But that was a bit of an annoying jaunting around Tokyo day, really.
It's good.
Well, I know you like testing yourself.
You like measuring yourself.
You like quantifying your body.
I personally just prefer not to know.
I'm long overdue, a decade overdue of having a health checkup.
I'm supposed to have a serious one being of my age.
But I just, I figure what I don't know can't hurt me.
Aren't you supposed to get, like, inspected?
Like, colon cancer.
Isn't that a concern?
Don't even mention these things.
If you don't say the word, then they can't get you.
I'm going dangerously into the realms of indulgence with this, but I'll just mention, Matt, that there is an anime over in Japan.
I don't actually know if it's that popular now, but it's like a little anime where the Immune system is portrayed as like anime characters, fighting all our anime characters.
You know, it's like cancer is a character and the red blood cells and all this and my sons are enjoying it a lot.
So I'm getting like a kind of adult version of Kurtzgesak.
Yeah, if you ever wondered what Kurtzgesak would look like, you know, as an anime, well, that's the series for you.
I forget what it's called, but I have to watch it every night because my...
The youngest kid is obsessed with it at the minute.
So, there we go.
Very good, very good.
Alright, well, I hope you just come back clean.
What have you got for us today, Chris?
What's happening?
Yeah, a lot of idiots said a lot of nonsense in the Guru's sphere, but they can't stop.
They will not stop.
Every week, they're out here, are doing themselves.
And there was a kind of GuruCon event.
This is Brett Weinstein's Rescue.
The Republic.
That happened, and that was like a black hole for all the...
Like, you know, sometimes the term grifter is overused, but in this case, it was a meeting of the biggest grifters, lots of gurus, lots of polemical idiots, and also people that I thought had gone from the discourse.
The food babe showed up.
The food babe is like Vanny Harry from...
Skepticism in the 2000s where she was, you know, decrying chemicals being in foods.
You're eating chemicals, Matt.
It's chemicals.
And there she was on the Rescue the Republic event talking at the same thing.
The same thing.
So it's a really good illustration of the crunchy, conspiracist, right-wing populist crossover that the conspiracy folks and others have been documenting.
Yeah, yeah, completely wild.
Just a conglomeration of the worst possible people.
Think anti-vaxxers and MAGA chuds and grifter influencers and conspiracy theorists.
Just all blended together to a great big frothy...
Rhetorical milkshake.
Disgusting.
But you can't overestimate how seriously they take themselves.
Like the splash screen on their thing and all their promotion stuff is got...
You know that there's a famous photo of someone, I think it's George Washington, in a boat going across the river, probably to bonk the British over the head with a...
There's a new constitution.
Right.
Yeah, the new constitution.
Instead of the traditional characters, you've got Russell Brandt and Donald Trump sitting at the head of the boat and Brett Weinstein is there in the middle looking at Pierre Corey and all the anti-vaxxers there.
They're all there in the boats because they're the new people here to rescue the Republic.
Rescuing the Republic with Trump.
Being the one who's there to do it, of course, because now this is the Unholy Alliance.
RFK Jr. was one of the top-billed speakers, right?
And RFK Jr. is now on board the Trump train, helping them.
And they've even got like a terrible, terrible new slogan.
Instead of MAGA, it's MAHA.
Make America healthy again.
Yeah, a bit of a nod to the anti-vaxxers there.
It's all apparently a resistance against the conglomerate of industrial complexes.
So it's the complexes that are the bad things.
The military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, the censorship industrial complex, immigration industrial complex, it goes on.
Oh, academic one as well.
So yeah, you can see the sort of glue that binds it all together.
The common thing is anti-institutional, conspiratorial.
And it is an interesting indication of just where the current state of, I guess, right-wing politics in the United States, which is that it is conspiracy theories that bind them together, which puts it in our turf, Chris.
Puts it within our ballywick, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, the other sign that you see there is they had...
Like Rob Schneider, the kind of, used to be, well, not even used to be super famous, but was at least a Hollywood figure, comedian.
It's a bit like Kevin Sorbo, right?
You know, ex-Hercules is now a MAGA Republican or whatever.
So you had figures like that, and you had Zuby, the anti-woke rapper.
And Tulsi Gabbard, of course, showing up there.
It is the kind of people that you might see at the Republican convention these days.
You know, Hulk Hogan or whoever.
Like a kind of weird clown collection of old actors and comedians and fringe politicians and anti-vaxxers.
Yeah, like an impressive collection of the greatest minds the world has to offer.
Yeah.
Chris, I think the other thing it's worth emphasizing is that I think there's a temptation amongst generally progressive, sensible people to characterize this kind of thing as essentially extreme right phenomenon, you know?
But it's not, really.
I think that misses some important things.
Like, it's got Robert F.K., Genity...
Like, don't get me wrong, I see your suspicious face.
Yeah.
But it has a bunch of people there, like Jimmy Dore.
Yeah, Jimmy Dore is for...
Matt, you're not making your kiss.
Well, yeah, because this is like saying, look, it's got a wide range of people, like Constantine Kissin', you know, Lex Friedman.
They're all terrible.
I'm just saying the thing that binds them together is not purely...
Right-wing stuff, it is a bunch of conspiratorial woo health.
Like, we've talked about this before, Chris, where Brett and Heather in many ways are these crunchy woo health people, like refugees from the 60s.
Yeah, but they are, yes.
But the other plank that connects all of these people is that they're there to promote...
Trumpism.
But that's right-wing.
I'm not denying that at all, Chris.
I'm just saying it's limiting to just think of it as a purely traditionally right-wing thing.
It's got an awful lot of anti-vax and conspiratorial and woo health flaky stuff mixed in as well.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, my suspicious fears comes because I just think that the conspiracy theory thing is...
The explainer there.
The same as J.P. Sears.
He is a crunchy, you know, life coach man.
But, no, he's a MAGA guy as well.
So, like...
Well, these days, I mean, we've been conditioned by Trump and MAGA to think of right-wing stuff as, like, fundamentally anti-institutional and stuff.
Like, it isn't.
It's a new form.
So I see what you're confused about.
You're saying it's not the standard neocon.
Like, it's not George Bush and all that.
It's not the conservatism of...
And it's not even, like, it's not even purely hard right.
Like, there were extreme right-wing people around the Bush administrations, for instance.
They're the guys that orchestrated a lot of those wars that these guys see as delegitimizing the government.
But I'm just saying this is a different kind of faction.
The bit that I don't...
This is why I don't see that.
Like, I mean, I see the point about them not being the traditional neocons, but everyone there is, like, right.
They're Jack Posobich types, or they're Tulsi Gabbard types, or they're people who pretend to be, like, centrist or ex-liberals, like Breath or RFK Jr., whatever.
But they are all.
MAGA reactionary types who, like, so that's the bit where if you say, well, it's wrong to classify them as right.
I'm like, but who is on, so where's the left-wing influence in that group?
They are absolutely right-wing by modern American standards, right?
But...
You're like defining right wing as whatever they are.
It's like a bit of a circular argument, right?
No!
There's been a weird shift, right?
Where the conspiracies and the weird anti-institutional stuff is a big driving force.
Yeah, but it's right wing populism.
I just think it's like a new bottle.
Like they're all talking, what are the concerns about anti-immigration, about protectionism and things like...
Oh, yeah, there's certainly a lot of stuff there that is right-wing, like restore family sovereignty, anti-immigration, as you say, but like weird libertarian stuff as well, like secure monetary freedom from the finance industrial complex.
But that's like Alex Jones libertarianism, which is like alternative currencies and stuff.
You know, it's like libertarianism in America is like a strongly right-wing phenomenon, right, whenever they survey it.
I think the reason why we're getting confused is that you're defining right-wing as whatever the reactionary, weirdo, non-left-wing people are in the United States right now, right?
Whereas it's evolving.
Well, one of us is confused.
I agree.
But it's perhaps not me.
But we can let others decide.
They can listen and judge for themselves.
So who's confused?
Matt or me?
Am I simply defining people as right-wing in a circular way?
Or is it because they are, in fact, just saying all the standard things that people on the right, populist, reactionary right, often say?
Who can say Matt?
They haven't always been anti-vax, Chris.
Who?
The right wing?
Yeah, the right wing.
Yeah, just a bit.
But like Alex Jones was at the...
I agree.
I agree.
I'm not saying there is nobody there who would have previously been associated with kind of left wing crunchism.
But I just think that movement has been strongly co-opted by MAGA in the modern era.
And that is not like a confused thing where, well, is MAGA right wing?
No, MAGA is right wing.
MAGA is right-wing.
So if you're all pro-MAGA, if you're on a boat with Trump to rescue the Republic, you're not like a diverse spectrum of political views, right?
No, of course not.
It's just that you're defining the right-wing, which is whatever MAGA is today, right?
Yeah, so if you just categorize stuff as, oh, it's right-wing, then you're just not really, like, it could just be a bit of a thought-terminating thing where you're not actually thinking about all of the weird shit that's driving people.
No, no, but that's good.
You know what?
We have to create, generate controversy and conflict.
We agree on too much because on the left, you have progressives, you have moderates, you have communists.
Whatever.
You've got all these different factions of people with different views or whatever.
It's just a broad category of, say, left and right wing.
But there are different factions within it.
It doesn't mean they're all the exact same.
I'm not saying they're not right wing.
I'm not saying it's not a right wing.
Are you sure that's what you didn't say?
I'm saying if you want to understand it, the appeal, and it is populism, but it's a conspiratorial anti-institutional.
Which is, you know, it's a somewhat new thing.
That's all.
All right.
All right.
Write in your answers on a postcard.
Who's right, Matt or Chris?
We'll put it up on the Patreon.
But nonetheless, Matt, whatever the source of their idiocy is, you know, it's like that thing in Game of Thrones.
Like, what is dead can never die.
What is stupid will never stop.
It will continue to spread.
And I feel playing a couple of clips from some of the speeches.
We can't get through them all because there simply is too many to cover.
But there are some highlights.
So first, this is Russell Brand and Jordan on stage.
And you're going to hear some crowd work.
Because part of this event is, you know, you've got a live crowd.
You've got to get them engaged.
So listen to this.
Or if they're terrifying you into fear of the future and using force and compulsion to regulate your obedience.
And I would say unless you want to be slave-like sheep who have no proper destiny to play, then find the divine invitation and forego the terror and force.
*crowd cheers*
Ladies and gentlemen, I happily concede this unofficial debate rap battle to the great Jordan Peterson!
Now, I know you've got some fantastic speakers coming up.
I can see Jimmy Dore down there.
I've had a magnificent conversation with Jimmy.
And above all else, when I speak to Jimmy Dore, he impresses upon me the necessity for unity, the necessity to remain vigilant, the opportunity to find alliance between one another, to focus on the issues: health, ending war,
free speech, not personalities.
And if I have your permission, I would like to end in a short prayer on this holy and auspicious day.
You got a bit of ranting, a bit of word salad from Jordan Peterson at the beginning.
Then you got Russell Brand playing Master of Ceremonies of some description there.
Yeah, shouting out, I see Jimmy Dore back there!
That's Jimmy!
And then high-minded ideas, Matt.
The most high-minded.
Ending wars, peace, health, love.
Who could be wrong?
Who could be against these things?
You can see there, though, in his few lines that there's like a...
There's just a small shift required of Russell Brand to go from his previous version of conspiratorial word salad.
Left-wing revolutionary.
Left-wing revolutionary to...
This kind of right-wing coded.
So, you know, I'm just saying.
I agree.
I completely agree.
It's easy for people that slip across.
We are both in agreement.
That's fine.
That's fine.
That observation fits both models, I'll say.
But you heard him tee up a prayer, Matt.
Now, of course...
Good Christians and whatnot will know that the Bible has various injunctions about being performative with your religiosity.
And you know, Russell said, it's not about personalities.
It's not about, I'm making a show of things, right?
Jordan Peterson on stage with him.
Yes, he's shouting out him, you know, saying, oh, big up Jordan and whatnot.
Yes, Jordan is in a two-faced suit with his like red and blue thing and they're strutting around the stage.
But...
It's not like they're both going to kneel down on the stage and performatively engage in a prayer, is it?
Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ, I call upon your name on this occasion.
May it augment an era of peace.
May we reach out our hands in friendship, in particular to those that we might imagine we would oppose.
May these institutions that were once regarded sacred, so sacred in fact that any incursion upon them as on January 6th was regarded as a kind of heresy.
May the values that warrant these buildings, these institutions, that flag this nation.
Being regarded as one nation under God returned to the forefront.
May I pray, Lord Jesus Christ, in your holy name, that all Americans of all cultures and colors and persuasions come together in your name.
I ask, Heavenly Father, for a new era of peace, that Satan be cast out in your name in all his forms, but in particular in the bizarre, Kafkaesque, Huxleyesque, late Orwellian form of totalitarianism, bureaucracy in the name of care.
Lord, I ask for true republicanism and true democracy, that every individual may feel their freedom, their freedom to open-heartedly engage in discourse and conversation with one another in good faith.
An end to the deception, the lies, and the censorship and the control.
Respect the honor of the individual,
Yeah, yeah, that's quite a prayer.
Chris, it is a shame that we don't have visuals on our podcast because like you said...
The cast on the stage there, it does look like a collection of Batman villains, doesn't it?
You've got the Two-Face Joker type thing, and then you've got the Lothario.
And meanwhile, you've got the crowd kind of milling around there who look like these characters from a Far Side cartoon.
Quite accurate.
I've not heard that many prayers before, Matt, that reference.
January 6th, Kafka, and true republicanism during their exhortation towards the Lord.
That's a unique kind of prayer style that he's invented there, Russell, in his short time as a Christian.
Almost as if it's not really about the religion and it's a little bit more about playing up to a certain religious audience.
One could cynically suggest that.
No?
January 6th, getting the shout-out as well.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's right.
A revolt against these corrupt things that people are treating as sacred.
Like, yeah.
Yeah, clearly he sees prayer as just simply like an empty receptacle for him to do his normal spiel.
Yeah.
Yes, and we should also mention that there was a tweet put out by Russell Brand that received some attention where he said it might seem a bit soon to be baptizing people, but the apostles did it on day one,
so here we are, and they included two pictures of him doing an adult baptism, looks like somewhere in the UK, probably, with himself and another man, both in their...
Underwear, him in his tighty-whities, the other black boxers, and no top, they're just in their underwear, baptizing someone who looks like he's wearing a Star Trek uniform.
I don't know if you've seen that, but I did see under the comments that somebody was saying, like, in this religious group that he's become attached to, adult baptisms, yes, they happen.
They never happen, like, shirtless and...
In your underwear before.
That's not what usually occurs.
So it's just another tick in the performative.
Like, if you wanted to baptize someone while in your underwear, sure.
You know, like, maybe there's a reason to do that.
But when you're posting it on Twitter, there is something of a performative element that seems hard to ignore.
Certainly, yeah.
Yeah, well, it gives him a chance to show off his, you know, rather svelte body.
I think that had something to do with it.
Does that get people's things going?
So, yeah, and Jordan, you know, just to say Jordan as well, famously conflicted about his religious things, but kneeling down beside Russell on stage with his eyes closed, looking deep in the mood there.
So, yeah.
He's on board.
He's on board, yes.
So that was Russell and Brand and Jordan Peterson's prayer time.
Let's hear next from one of the key figures.
I don't know how central he was actually in terms of getting the stage organized.
I kind of feel like Brett couldn't do that.
But he's tried this many times to get these kind of events off the ground and they often haven't led to this level of excess.
All the different unity attempts and whatnot.
So this is, I think, one of Brett's crowning moments.
And of course, the man was there himself.
Now, since this is an event and Brett wants to do well at it, he needed, you know, to set up some concepts for the speech that would be important.
And everyone is trying to get the audience reaction.
You heard like Jordan and Russell doing it, right?
You're going to hear Brett doing it here as well, but you know, Brett can be a little bit highfalutin for these kinds of events.
So let's hear him set the groundwork for a line that he's going to deliver that will
The most important things we pass between generations are myths.
Stories that are so powerfully important, they are encoded in a special, sacred layer.
And in our case, the myth we need...
It comes to us from the Greeks, the founders of the ancient West, the one from which the modern West ultimately emerged.
It is the story of the phoenix, a mystical bird that instead of making chicks, lights its nest ablaze and raises anew from the ashes.
Watching the modern West burn, I believe it is no accident that this story points us to a hidden solution, a remedy for which we just so happen to have the ingredients.
One of our explicit purposes in this gathering was to galvanize the unity movement, bringing representatives together from across the global West.
And if you will allow me to draw on another myth, I believe our mission will become clear.
I call the thing that has captured our system Goliath.
It is the force that prevents all meaningful change.
In the biblical story, Goliath is a giant, a man, a large man, but a man all the same.
In our time, Goliath, like everything else, has scaled way up.
The force that wants us to be terrified to exercise our First Amendment rights in our own capital, that's Goliath.
Now look around you.
Do you all see what I see?
David has scaled up.
We are David.
We are mighty and our time has come.
Thank you.
So, there you had the myth of the phoenix introduced and Brett likes this David Goliath story and he did get an applause line there when, you know, look around you.
We are the meek.
We are David.
But together, we will take down this Goliath.
But that isn't the applause line I want to highlight.
But what did you think of that, Matt?
Well, yeah.
I don't think I'm the target audience.
All the clips I've heard from this event, including the ones you've played, Chris.
I didn't hear much specifics.
Like, it's a lot of rhetoric, right?
Oh, it's a lot of rhetoric, yeah.
A lot of rhetoric.
But, you know, a little bit weak on specifics.
I wonder, did you hear other stuff that was more specific, like actual specific things, or was it all like that?
No, it depends what you mean.
Like, I mean, the food babe had very specific chemicals she was upset about and was holding up like packets of crisps in, you know, in the U.S. that has this ingredient.
So that's quite specific, like a complaint.
But the solutions are, they're always the same.
Drain the swamp.
Drain the swamp type solution.
Drain the swamp, touch nature.
You know, Huberman, they should just get his protocols because basically it's...
It's that.
And whatever Joe Rogan might have uttered that week as well.
And, you know, unity, Matt.
Unify across the spectrum around Trump.
We've got to unify.
We've got all these diverse perspectives of everyone agrees on anti-vaccines.
Everyone agrees that we have to stop Kamala and all that.
Stop immigration.
All that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, so we've set the groundwork, Matt.
We've got the myths laid out.
You've got the phoenix, an important image.
The West is burning, Chris.
The West is burning.
They've brought the greatest minds from the West together for this event.
Now let's see if Brett can inspire them at the end of his speech.
If he can get a line that they can get behind.
What's he got up his sleeve?
Now let's put the two myths together.
Goliath made a terrible strategic error.
He is ungodly powerful, but he's dumb as a box of rocks.
His error was this.
He terrorized all the competent, courageous people and set about driving them from the institutions.
Now they gather in a post-political unity movement and come to know their power.
We have every single person you could possibly want on our side.
We have all the courage, all the integrity, and all the know-how.
*crowd cheers*
The question is how to drive Goliath out and infuse all that talent and insight back into the system so it can be renewed.
In 1787, Ben Franklin was asked if the Constitutional Convention had produced a monarchy or a republic, and Franklin famously replied, a republic if you can keep it.
Today, David and the Unity Movement face a similar question.
What we must deliver is a republic if we can phoenix it.
I have learned from decades of study of human nature that important concepts emerge independently.
Did you get the line there, Matt?
Was it a republic if you could phoenix it?
If we could phoenix it, yeah.
And he didn't, to be fair, he moved on fairly quickly after.
It was a little bit of a confused...
That's just very typical Brett, like setting up this elaborate alternative theory of the republic and whatnot, and then thinking there's this cool line.
that he's gonna you know be like Franklin this kind of quotable line that everybody knows and it doesn't really work and one it's not grammatically Correct.
It doesn't work grammatically.
It's just so incredibly labored, isn't it?
Take these two metaphors, these two legends and mush them together.
So they're going to phoenix it.
They're going to phoenix it.
They're going to build a republic again from the ashes because it's all burning.
It's all totally corrupt.
All of the good people, all of the people with integrity, the people with courage, the people with ability are up there on stage.
People like him and Jordan that have been driven out.
Of the institutions.
And they want back in.
Let me in!
Yeah, I had the CV job.
We've got all the people here.
We've got Bubbles, the Clyde, Giggles, McWiggles.
We've got the Joker.
We have Lothario.
We've got Tootsie Tumbles.
We've got a whole raft of anti-vaxxers.
They're going to take...
Rob Schneider.
He's going to take care of things.
It's amazing to see the reality juxtaposed with what they are in their own mind.
The incredible self-importance of it just comes through all the time, isn't it?
It's just the contrast between what you're seeing and hearing, which is a clown car, versus just how incredibly seriously they take themselves.
It's beautiful.
Plus, Brett...
Online.
Like, you could never do justice to the level of self-aggrandizement that Brett will display.
Because he described how this event was going to be like the fulfillment of Woodstock.
Like, very much part two to Woodstock.
With the same cultural impact of Woodstock.
Is that fair?
It does not have the Woodstock vibe.
I mean, from the shots I saw in the credits, I'm not sure where it was held, but it just looked from the images a bit like a parking lot.
It's a pretty nondescript area of tarmac, and there's a bunch of sort of lumpy, far-sighted people standing around in their shorts and T-shirts, kind of staring goggle-eyed blankly at things.
Does not have the Woodstock vibe.
Yeah.
I mean, Woodstock had a whole bunch of the leading musicians of the 60s and 70s, right?
When was Woodstock?
The lead 60s?
69, I think.
Yeah.
Well, they were still around.
I mean, they stayed around, right?
But in comparison, you've got Zuby, Rob Schneider.
Yeah, it just doesn't quite...
I guess you've got...
Russell Brand, he was in films.
And, Matt, like, literally a day ago or so, Brett was on Twitter warbling about, you know, Elon and how he's now decided that this, the valuations of Twitter that came out that presented as having lost all this money,
that, like, that's wrong, right?
And he understands nothing about economics, but he's sure it's all, like, conspiracy to try and damage Musk.
But at the end of it, he says, Anyone who spoke or attended the Rescue the Republic rally in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, and then read the Wall Street Journal's preposterous article about it, knows that this tactic is in the air in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.
The news is not the news.
The analysis is not the analysis.
The science is not the science.
The value is not the value.
We're living in Plato's cave.
Follow the white rabbit.
Like I've said so many times, he's immune to cringe and he thinks he's so...
Like he's a revolutionary leader and that.
But Plato's Kiev, just a note again, getting abused there.
Poor Plato's Kiev.
You can't go within 100 metres of that Kiev without being misrepresented.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's what he was up to.
I'm not done though, Matt.
I'm not done.
This isn't as bad, perhaps, as on the nose as the other ones, but just to give a bit more vibe of the carnival-esque atmosphere that was there, here's Matt Taibbi being introduced.
I think it's by Lara Logan.
Just listen to this.
See if you can pinpoint this spot where I noted, like, oh, that's a bit unusual.
And Matt Taibbi has a voice that reaches beyond the feedback loop.
It breaks through the information dominance.
And it's very, very important.
So I want to ask him to come out on stage.
Where is he?
Where is Matt?
Mack Taibbi, we need you.
Woo! Woo!
Woo! Woo!
Woo! Do you want me out there?
Do you want me out there?
Oh, come on.
Do you want me to open?
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
So who screamed there?
Yeah, that sounded like it might have been an unhinged big Tybee fan in the audience, right?
Just to be clear, that was the announcer who did that.
It was like another hinged primal scream.
When he comes out, he's like, well, thank you for that gracious introduction.
I was like, did you enjoy the holy yell that was featured in it?
There were just so many moments where it's like the kind of thing that could be the Wes Anderson.
Film where the mic, you know, kind of does feedback and then they go, wow!
Yeah, I imagine that Taibbi doesn't usually experience that kind of excited screaming.
No, no.
And Taibbi as well, like, you know, yes, he's gone down this road of being, you know, a conspiracy-prone, populist-leaning kind of guy, self-aggrandizing, but is cadence a delivery?
He's still very much that of a bit of a wonky journalist, slightly awkward guy, right?
But he's here, Matt.
He's on the stage.
And he did give a speech that was well-received.
But I just want to point out another instance that you might regard as pandering.
We saw Russell and Jordan praying on stage.
Now, Matt Taibbi, hard-nosed journalist, he isn't so biased as the, you know...
Stoop to prayer, because no, he wouldn't do that.
And unlike the busybodies of the internet age, to whom words are just another overproduced, overplentiful, unnecessary and vaguely hazardous commodity, like greenhouse gases or plastic soda bottles, people like Madison understood the value of language.
In 1787, you might have to walk a mile or five just to see a printed word.
It was probably the Bible.
Now, I'm not religious, but I've read the Bible, and of course so did they.
They knew the Gospel of John.
In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And this was a reference to Genesis.
In the beginning God said, let there be light, and the world was born.
So for them, the Word was infused with the power of creation itself.
It wasn't a small thing.
This wasn't...
Just law.
This was metaphysics.
This was cosmogony.
We were a little country run by a bunch of jumped up tobacconists and corn farmers who needed an ally to withstand the wrath of European royalty.
And we got it by lighting a match under human ingenuity and creativity and passion.
There you go.
Pause for...
Reception.
But just I find that he would move into essentially like a Jordan Peterson-esque reference to biblical stories and their importance and just a little on the nose, Matt, with this particular crowd.
Well, I'm noticing again that it's all very vague, like big on metaphor, big on sweeping statements and rhetoric.
Yeah, very light on details, right?
Seems to be the common theme.
Yeah.
Chris, a quick question.
This is off topic, but is this event...
I remember another event, Rage Against the War Machine, which was organized by different people, but it was linked to it.
It has a similar kind of thing.
Did you come across that one?
Rage Against the War Machine?
No, was that the band?
Were they involved?
No, it wasn't, but it's a play on that.
Rage Against the Machine.
No, I was just checking.
You have to mention what it was.
You cannot...
Okay, so it's a different event, different speakers, but I see them cross-promoting each other and a lot of people tweeting about the same thing.
This happened in September 28th, so quite recently as well, again at the Washington Memorial.
The day before the Rescue of the Republic event.
Yeah, so this one is, you know, abolish the CIA, the military, industrial state.
Disband NATO.
Disband NATO.
Not one more penny for wars in Ukraine.
Or Gaza.
Yeah, conflate those two things.
Pardon Julian Assange.
Yeah, anyway.
Slash the Pentagon.
Oh, well, yeah, it's all the same.
Look, Jimmy Dore, Ron Paul, Tootsie Gabbard, and it's organized by libertarian people in America.
Imagine that, Matt.
Imagine.
The Libertarian Party having a bunch of right-wing go-heads.
That's surprising, given how diverse their political senses are.
Yeah, yeah.
But again, this speaks to our little debate we had at the beginning.
You know, this is, yes, it's on par for an extreme Libertarian point of view.
But, you know, a few years ago, this would be stuff that you might see at a hard left type.
Get together, you know, peace now, stop the military-industrial complex.
Oh, stop the war, sure.
But like the, you know, Ron Paul and Rand Paul always have been like right-wing chuckleheads in libertarian suits.
Just pointing out, it's an interesting agglomeration of themes.
Agreed.
I agree.
I'm being very careful not to incite a second debate.
And you're exercising restraint as well, Chris.
I am.
I appreciate that.
Well, so that was what Brett and friends were up to.
RFK Jr. also gave speeches.
You can imagine, right?
You get the idea.
Chrissy Gabbard, what's she going to be saying?
Same thing.
And they're all talking about how...
We need to unite.
We need to, you know, restore freedom, all these kind of things.
And how are we going to do it?
Well, there is one figure who's known for really respecting democracy and the rule of law, and that is kind of Donald Trump.
So there we go.
That's what we got to do.
Now, another member of the Weinsteinian family appeared with Chris Williamson.
Offering us modern wisdom.
And good on Chris, having Eric there.
You know, it's important that people have Eric for multiple hours so that he can talk and provide his insights to large audiences.
Because God forbid that we forgot whatever Eric wants to waffle about.
Thank Lord we have people like Chris and Dario, the CEO and whatnot, ready to bring the Weinsteins back.
I could think of nobody better, Chris, to hold his feet to the fire and really push him hard on some of his more extreme claims.
I'm sure he did a great job.
It's probably better not to play any clips from it.
Well, unfortunately, I have some.
So there was a clip that went around, and I think it's hard to do justice to it without playing the full length of how far it went, but I've broken it into two parts, Matt, so that we don't get overrun by Eric.
Brett is there.
He's open.
You know, he's a pro-Trump guy now.
And as we know, the Eric Weinstein special is to feign nonpartisan elder statesman above-it-all positions, right?
He wouldn't be so crass to come out in favor of a side.
It just so happens that almost always his critiques and whatnot are focused on...
The Democrats and left-wing figures and the woke and whatnot.
And he's not so vocal when it comes to the far right.
They've been misunderstood, misrepresented.
But Eric doesn't have a horse in this race, Matt.
And Chris Williamson was wondering, Kamala Harris, she said various statements which are a little bit waffly, a little bit word-solid.
And what do they mean?
What could it mean?
Let's sit down and analyze her speech.
Is it just, you know, politicians chatting shit?
Or could it be something else?
Can you please try and explain to me what you interpret by what can be unburdened by what has been?
What does that mean?
Thank you.
I don't know if I should say.
There's a line in Marx where sometimes you hear certain phrases like a world to win.
AOC uses the phrase we have a world to win, which comes from the end of the Communist Manifesto originally written in German.
It was the name...
I used to hang out in the Revolutionary Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the communists because they print everything in every language.
So if you're trying to learn multiple languages, they'll print the same text in all of these languages and you can compare.
It basically says you have to wipe out what has been to arrive in the new.
And where's it from?
What can be unburdened by what has been?
If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at patreon.com slash decodingthegurus.
Once you do, you'll get access to full-length episodes of the Decoding the Gurus podcast, including bonus shows, gurometer episodes, and Decoding Academia.
The Decoding the Gurus podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support.
Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace, and save Western civilization.
And if you cannot afford $2, you can request a free membership, and we will honor zero of those requests.
