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Jan. 17, 2023 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:17:34
Clifton Duncan
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Welcome to the Delling Poll with me, James Delling Poll.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, and I really am.
But before I introduce him, let me first have a word from our sponsor.
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Now, to my special guest, Clifton Duncan.
Clifton, I'm really glad that you are here on the podcast.
And before we start, I'm famous for not doing any research, but you very kindly sent me a talk you'd given to one of the Mises groups.
I do kind of know all about you, but just give us a sort of the short version of your story.
You're an actor who is effectively Destroyed his own career by taking a principled stance against the vaccine.
Yeah, so essentially, I'm Clifton Duncan.
I'm a classically trained actor, went to one of the top conservatories in the country, and I worked just about for a decade to position myself to be a singing actor of note in New York City, which is very difficult to do for those who know the industry.
But 2017, things began to really take off for me, and I was doing television, off-Broadway, on-Broadway.
You know, doing quite well.
And then 2020 came along and everything shut down.
I was based in New York City.
And, you know, from the beginning, at the beginning, I was very much in the Covidian cult.
And but as the year wore on, I began to have lots of questions and thought that this is the wrong way to go.
And then at the end of 2020, I contracted the the illness.
Absolutely.
And from that point on, vaccine mandates went wide across the industry.
They're still in the industry, which means I effectively cannot work.
I lost my manager.
I lost my voiceover agent.
I went from up and coming to absolutely nothing.
So that's sort of my story in a nutshell.
I can imagine.
I mean, this is serious, what you did.
Because I'm looking at you, and I'm hearing the way you speak and stuff.
And you're good-looking, you're poised, you've got a good speaking voice.
I think you must have cost yourself a lot of money.
You could have done really well, I suspect.
You're not just some crappy two-bit no-talent.
Well, the thing about that is that I recently posted a video of myself singing a song called This Nearly Was Mine from the Rodgers and Hammerstein show South Pacific.
And it was a nice way to sort of signal to everybody that I'm not just some random person that you're referring to.
I actually have the chops to do what I'm talking about.
And, you know, so in a way, it works to shame the industry and what they're doing because they're at a time, ironically, and for those who are not watching, I happen to be a black American.
So at a time when the industry is embracing, you know, wokeness and diversity hiring full on and going full on into this anti-racist religion.
I'm not allowed to work at all.
It's quite bizarre.
It's been very difficult, to say the least.
Yes, you are the wrong kind of black, because obviously, part of this kind of world we live in, it's not enough to have the right skin colour.
You've also got to have the right set of beliefs.
Otherwise, you get sort of un-blacked, don't you?
Yeah, I said that.
I said, you know, I don't know why there's any debate as to whether or not transracialism exists, because obviously everyone knows that any black person who votes for the Republicans instantly becomes a white person.
So, of course, there's transracialism.
It's already a thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about the bit of your career where you believed in the Covidian religion.
I mean, how long did that last for?
For about three months.
So, you know, and the irony is that while everyone else in the US was focused on Donald Trump's first impeachment, it was the YouTubers that I was listening to that were saying, hey, there's something going on.
in, you know, out of Wuhan and now it's in the Middle East and now it's, it's hit Italy and France and Spain.
And now, you know, and by that time, this is a very New York way of beginning this sentence, but I was even talking to my therapist about it.
In January, you know, I would come to her office, which was in Chinatown, ironically.
You know, I'd have my masks, my mask on, my gloves on.
I mean, I was one of the few people in New York, it was like me and like some middle-aged Dominican women who'd be on the train, you know, wearing surgical masks and gloves.
And we were ridiculed by people.
And then, of course, you know, two months later, it became all about, you know, wear your mask, wear your mask, wear your mask.
I remember one person specifically, just, he saw me with a mask on in public as I was about to get on the subway.
And he goes, you know, The people who are wearing the masks, they must be the ones that got it.
So that was sort of the attitude at the time.
And you know, I'm stocking up on canned goods and medical supplies.
And even at that time, I remember I spent about an hour one night in lower Manhattan, walking around to every convenience store and pharmacy that I could find, trying to find surgical masks.
And they were already sold out at that time.
So I had to pay like $75 for a box of 50 masks, which by the way, had printed on the box because they don't want to get sued.
that these masks don't stop any viral transmission.
But I was warning my friends, sending them statistics and pestering them, telling them to get prepared.
And I probably freaked out my roommate because I was walking around in what I called my hazmat suit and just obsessively disinfecting any knob or handle and surface that we had in our apartment.
I took it very, very, very seriously.
That's – you've kind of gone some way to answering a question I was going to ask you later on about your journey and why it is that you get what's going on when 99.99% of people, particularly in your world, the acting world, the entertainment world, have been absolutely bloody useless.
I mean – I'm not sure whether journalism's any better, but yeah, definitely I would expect little sense from the entertainment industry.
But it's interesting that you were obviously frequenting the kind of websites and stuff Which, which were already reporting the stuff coming out of Wuhan, the stories about Chinese people collapsing in the streets, the kind of, the more edgy stuff about how if you analyse the composition of the gases being released, do you get, do you ever get this one?
Right, yeah, the crematoriums in China.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
See, you were already, I have to say, Clifton, you were already with me, slightly down the alternative rabbit hole at that time.
And I was like you.
I mean, I didn't go full mask, but I did...
I was one of those people who thought there's some really bad shit coming our way and no one is aware of this yet.
We need to prepare.
I mean, my form of preparation was doing things like looking for stocks to short.
I shorted a cruise line and made $10,000 out of it.
But I did take precautions.
I did believe for a time, especially I think my peak fear, probably maybe the same with you, the stuff coming out of Italy.
The stories about the hospitals, you know, with sort of patients on the steps because there was no room in the hospital and stuff.
And I thought, wow, this is the big one!
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, well, the irony is that, well, for one, I haven't owned a television since 2009.
So I think that sort of saved me in a way.
And I became what I guess you would call red-pilled in 2014.
So I'd already had a healthy distrust of the press and the media.
And so, you know, I stopped watching TV.
I was already sort of, you know, addicted to YouTubers and everything.
Um, but, uh, yeah, it was, but it was, what's interesting is that, you know, actually having access and actually having a more, uh, diverse array of friends and opinions, you know, like I had one friend who, you know, she sent me a couple of articles, one of which was the op-ed in the wall street journal by Johnny Anita's, uh, back in March, 2020, who said, you know, this thing might not be as deadly as they're saying it is.
And at the time I was annoyed, but because I respected her opinion, um, I kept the sort of door open.
And then as time wore on, it just, things began to make less and less sense.
And it seemed as though, and this is where the sort of sensitive artist soul in me comes out, is that everything that we're being asked to do in order to mitigate the spread of this virus seems to be completely antithetical to living a healthy, normal, vibrant life.
And you know, why are we, you know, what are we doing to our children?
Why are we being asked to cover our faces?
Why are we being asked to, you know, to isolate ourselves completely?
And especially when there's data that came out that things like stress and anxiety and depression leave one more susceptible to infection.
And so, you know, it's as though over time I began to sense that everything that we were being asked to do was the opposite of what we should have been doing.
And that was sort of when I began to say, hold on, something is really weird here.
And also as a New Yorker, I was watching what Andrew Cuomo was doing very closely.
Andrew Cuomo, for those who don't know, is our disgraced former governor.
His approach to mitigating the virus involved the usage of nursing homes and the allegation is that he caused tens of thousands of needless deaths with this executive order which said that people could not be discriminated against based on whether or not they tested positive.
Something like that.
And it just sort of spiraled out from there.
You know, there was an article in the New York Times that came out that said, you know, it was the sensational headline about how the New York death toll climbs to over 10,000 after 3,700 deaths are added to the total.
But the thing is, the sub-headline said that they were presumed COVID deaths, meaning these people were not even tested.
So immediately I said to myself, well, hold on a second.
In a time where we need as much information as possible to ascertain just how deadly this thing is, why are we making guesses?
Why are we making assumptions about this thing?
And then later on, we had the hospital ship that was sent over by the president at the time, Donald Trump, which was barely used.
We had several makeshift hospitals, which were converted big buildings, which are also barely used.
And so all these indications were that the thing was not quite what they were making it out to be.
And yet the restrictions not only persisted, but in some cases they were increased.
So over time, it began to dawn on me that something was really weird.
And then I moved to Atlanta, which is in the American South in June of 2020.
And calling it the difference between night and day would be an understatement.
In Atlanta, I mean, the strip clubs were open, bars were open, nightclubs were open.
So basically, you could get a lap dance at Magic City, but you couldn't go see a Broadway show.
And it was so bizarre.
And there weren't any mass deaths.
And you know that if there were, I knew that if there were, because I looked, it would be all over the news.
And it just wasn't.
It was so bizarre.
That's... I didn't know about Atlanta.
Um, well...
Well, no one's talking about Georgia.
Georgia has had lax restrictions since April of 2020.
And I think there was an article in The Atlantic that said, you know, Georgia's experimenting with like mass death or whatever.
But, you know, down on the ground, it just it wasn't as big a deal.
Although the more Democrat an area was and the more affluent an area was, the more seriously they took the virus.
But then you had these absurd spectacles where You know, you could go to the gym and be mask optional, right?
While the gyms in New York were closed.
But then the Starbucks across the street would require you to wear a mask.
You know, it was such a schizophrenic kind of thing.
And that really cemented for me that something was very amiss.
Right, right.
Yeah, there was a wildly different, a big difference in the uptake among whites and blacks, wasn't there?
Absolutely.
Tell me about that.
Well, here's the thing, you know, and this is why these vaccine mandates, you know, and people Oftentimes people, especially I guess if they're more right-leaning, they don't like to, they're sick of the racialization of everything.
But what makes everything, what makes it all so alarming and bizarre is that at a time where the political left, especially in the United States, is going full on into wokeness and diversity.
Meanwhile, you have black Americans who are the least vaccinated demographic.
And part of that, you know, like I would be so I had a job at a nightclub.
Right.
And I would have patrons come up to me who would say, you know, you know, Marvin Hankler, the famous boxer, you know, he had that vaccine.
Right.
You know, Hank Aaron, the baseball player, you know, he had that vaccine.
Right.
DMX, the rapper dies.
You know, he had that vaccine.
Right.
And so, you know, it's you can't.
The strange thing about the Democrat Party in the United States is that they spend generations, literally generations convincing black Americans that every institution in the country is united against them in anti-black sentiment.
And yet they expect black people to then turn around and line right up to get these shots in their arms.
Even though we have, you know, a history of racist experimentation and medical experiments on black people, which, which quote unquote liberals and progressives would pay lip service to.
And then say, well, you know, they still deserve, you know, they just need more education or, you know, whatever happens to them happens to them.
Excuse me.
And, you know, the biggest irony is that I think in the minds of a lot of people, the only people who are rejecting these shots, which I refuse to call vaccines, We're rejecting these shots.
They have a picture in their mind that it's a bunch of knuckle-dragging, redneck, hick, hillbilly Trump supporters.
But black Americans vote over 90% Democrat, and yet they're the least vaccinated demographic.
They have no idea.
I still have not seen one person honestly address this issue.
Yeah.
The theory, I think, in this country, and I wonder whether it gels with your own thinking on this, is that black people as a sort of community are more suspicious of government because they've been dicked around by the state.
They don't think the government is their friend, they don't think the police are their friend, so that they're more disinclined to take This product, which they're told is good for them by the government.
Is that right?
Well, that's pretty much the idea.
In fact, you have, you know, rappers such as Common, you know, who has lyrics in a song about this is why we don't trust your vaccine.
So, like I said before, it's just bizarre to see that the complete 180 of people who will indulge black hesitancy regarding our various institutions and yet then expect them to line up.
And the irony, you know, from a health perspective, The comorbidities that are more prevalent among black Americans would ostensibly lend them.
It creates a stronger argument for a higher vaccine uptake within the community.
But at the same time, we still ain't taking it.
So, you know, you have to come to grips with that, honestly, and the fact that they impose, the government impose, these employers impose these mandates which are life-destroying, not to mention school closures which had a disproportionate impact on our children.
It's just unconscionable.
So, you fled New York for Atlanta.
Which must have been like, well, you must have felt so relieved to escape from that claustrophobic hell.
But just tell me a bit about what it was like living in New York through the vaccine tyranny.
Because I mean, I've grown up watching films, movies about Made by New Yorkers about New York.
And they always come across, you know, I think of the Ernest Borgnine character in Escape from New York, for example, the taxi driver.
And, you know, they're no-nonsense people who just get on with things, and we love New York, we're great, we're the tough people, we don't take any shit.
And yet, they became these kind of vaccine pantywastes, didn't they?
They would allow themselves to be tyrannised by their governor.
Well, I wasn't there for the vaccine tyranny, but this is why I call it the city formerly known as New York.
New Yorkers have this idea of themselves, this opinion of themselves, and no one else is as impressed with themselves as New Yorkers are.
They have this idea that they're smarter, that they're more cultured, that they're more educated, and just better people than everyone else.
And I think people have to understand that if you live on the island of Manhattan, During 2020, there was no escaping from any of the propaganda that there was this big, scary pandemic going on.
You would walk out of your apartment door, there would be arrows on the sidewalks telling you what direction to walk in.
There would be circles outside of various institutions telling you where to stand to maintain social distancing.
If you wanted to go to Trader Joe's to get groceries, you had to wait like an hour in line because they were only letting in a limited number of people in the dead of winter, by the way, which is nice for the immune system.
You know, there are placards on buses and taxi cabs.
There are digital announcements on the subway.
There are, you know, in various languages, signs everywhere.
So there was literally nowhere you could turn where you weren't being terrified in some way and reminded that there was some deadly virus in the air.
So on one hand, you know, I do have some sympathy for people.
You must understand that people on the ground were propagandized into imbecility in a way.
Um, but it, it, it just blew me away that New Yorkers who, as you were saying, tend to be very, no nonsense, but they're very nice people.
Like if you need directions or something, or you need help, like it's easy to stop somebody be like, Hey, you know, can you tell me where to find yada, yada, yada.
Um, you see lots of great human moments, um, among people because there's such a crush of people.
Um, but that so many New Yorkers just complied unthinkingly with all of these measures and And then on top of that, you have people in the entertainment industry, particularly actors, who view themselves as, you know, we are rebels against the status quo.
Well, the status quo determined that they're not essential and they agreed.
And I'm thinking to myself, this is Broadway.
Broadway is one of, you know, New York City is one of the cultural centers of the world.
And people come from all over the world to see Broadway shows.
We are central.
We are very important to the identity of the city.
Our arts institutions are very important to the identity of the city.
And they bring in big money.
And yet these so-called artists who were so passionate about their field allowed themselves to be rendered non-essential by, you know, idiots like Bill de Blasio, our former mayor, and, you know, Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Fauci.
It was really unbelievable to watch.
That's been the biggest thing for me is that I can't believe that New Yorkers who are so supposedly tough and smart and sharp and, you know, have sort of an FU attitude completely retreated into fear and distancing and isolation.
It was just so bizarre to watch unfold.
No, I noticed something similar happening in the West End of London, which is our equivalent of Broadway.
And I noticed Well, Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, who must, you know, derive quite a bit of his income from the West End.
And he was somehow not fighting this stuff.
He was going along with all the mass tyranny and all the vaccine tyranny and stuff.
And you go back to the Second World War, there are stories of The plays carried on running in the West End.
There was a time when the Café de Paris got hit by a bomb, and there was a band playing at the time.
London was famous for its blitz spirit, for carrying on despite the risk of being dying, because life was more important.
And yeah, so what you're describing is shocking.
Can I add to that?
Can I add to that?
That, you know, the idea of the show must go on.
So our union, our actors union for stage actors, Actors Equity Association, I know they have equity over in the UK as well.
They sent out an email in 2020 saying that the the adage that the show must go on is outdated and unjust, by the way, so that they put a racial component into it as well.
And what really irked me, I mean, I came out of conservatory in 2009, right in the midst of the recession at that time.
Despite the fact that the industry is, they're saying that it's racist, I have been encouraged my entire performing career since I was 16 to continue on in my career.
But one of the biggest things is that, especially if you're a New York theater performer, you're not doing it for the love or excuse me, for the money.
Um, but there's this idea that, you know, there's a certain toughness, a certain grit that you have.
Um, and we as performers, you know, we have an obligation and a duty to our audience, AKA our public to, you know, put on the best show possible.
And, um, you know, Stella Adler, the famous acting teacher, um, once said that she never even got a headache.
So our, our health, our strength has always been, um, you know, the pride and joy.
You can't do eight shows a week, whether it be Hamlet or Hamilton and not be in tip top shape and have great conditioning that, you know, at that level, you need to have that kind of conditioning.
That's a part of our job.
And so for these people to just sit back and say, to allow their industry to be taken away from them.
It was really, really frustrating to watch.
And I will say, speaking of Andrew Lloyd Webber, I gained some respect for him because he was, at least at some point, stood up and said, "We have to open shows.
We have to do shows." But here in America, the Phantom of the Opera, one of the longest-running shows on Broadway, has had to close.
And so this has been the consequence of their idiocy, their Covidian cultism, is that now, you know, every couple of weeks, there's an article that comes out about how audiences have not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
And, you know, shows keep closing.
They can't keep them open.
And anyone with two brain cells to rub together, you know, would have told them this would be the consequence of A, Alienating swaths of people, both your foreign and domestic audience, by imposing these ridiculous COVID protocols.
And B, your programming is just way too woke.
Nobody wants to watch this nonsense.
Mixed martial arts isn't having this problem.
American football isn't having this problem.
The NBA isn't having this problem.
You know, it's the entertainment venues and the arts institutions in New York.
They just they persisted and requiring, you know, masks and vaccines and boosters for entry for a lot of people.
And people have been turned off completely from the generations of people, by the way, have been turned off from the arts.
You know, if we'd been doing this podcast in 2019, we could have had a really good discussion about woke in the arts and how it's destroyed everything and, you know, I mean, all the crap.
But I've come to the view, I don't know about you, since 2020, that woke is just A distraction from the bigger picture.
For example, I've noticed that I've been very disappointed by a lot of my journalistic peers, people I used to admire for their outspokenness on issues.
And they've used woke, you know, oh yes, I'm really angry about pronouns, or I'm really angry about diversity casting, and you know, political correctness is everywhere.
And you're thinking, yeah, you can be really brave on this stuff, but when it comes to calling out the biggest infringement on freedom in the life of anyone around, or probably ever, there's never been such a concerted war on human freedom as I think has taken place in the last two years.
And they're weirdly silent about it.
Do you think that as well?
Well, I do think that there is a – I mean, I sort of have been loath to use the term woke to apply to everything.
That said, these people unironically refer to themselves as woke, so it's not necessarily not an unfitting description.
I think that if you take the problem beyond wokeness, it maybe has to do with this idea of collectivism versus individualism on a broad scale.
People who value, maybe have a pathological obsession with safety and inclusion, making sure everyone is taken care of, versus people who understand that there are risks that come along with freedom and an open society, but that those risks are preferable.
to a society where in everything, where we must, you know, constantly focus on the care and safety of others, you know, because everyone has different needs and yada, yada, yada, which, you know, it completely eradicates the needs of the individual.
So maybe, you know, getting to your point and your question is that the wokeness is a symptom of a bigger problem.
And that was expressed.
And, you know, I think there's, it's not, it's not an accident that the people who tend to abide by, by the woke religion, so to speak, also are still hook, line and sinker with COVIDianism.
They're sort of two branches from the same tree.
Yeah, I think so.
I've got to ask you, by the way, you mentioned you were red-pilled in 2014.
What was your moment?
So, I think it was kind of gradual in a sense, but it really exploded in 2014.
I mean, in 2009, I was just out of grad school, out of conservatory, and I had gone through a horrible, horrible breakup.
Yeah.
And I stumbled upon this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, which is like the first unabashedly pro-male book I'd ever read.
And I turned page after page and I thought, I was like, wow, I'm reading about myself on each of these pages.
And so that book was the catalyst for me not being ashamed of being a man.
And you know, our industry is very, very caustic towards men and masculinity in general.
So that began my journey of sort of diverging from popular opinion in many of our arts and entertainment communities.
But by the time 2014 came along, I don't know how I ended up stumbling down these rabbit holes.
But I do remember that, A, there was the whole – people remember the Michael Brown incident in the United States where the slogan, hands up, don't shoot, came from.
So for those who don't remember, this man in Ferguson, Missouri, I believe the state is, was gunned down by a police officer named Darren Wilson.
And the allegation was that Michael Brown had his hands up, he's just an innocent kid, and he was surrendering, and the cop gunned him down in cold blood.
But the forensic evidence and surveillance evidence footage supported the story of Officer Darren Wilson.
But But yet you saw all these politicians, all these media personalities, you know, go along with the narrative of hands up, don't shoot.
Some of them are still doing it to this day.
And I'm like, dude, even the Washington Post had diagrams from the medical examiner hired by the family of the deceased who determined that there's no way that this narrative is true.
At the same time, around August 2014, there was a controversy you may have heard of called Gamergate that erupted.
Yeah.
And it was one of those things where I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I saw how it ballooned outward from just starting as a sex scandal and internet drama, and then it became this big culture war kind of a thing.
I can't go into the intricacies of GamerGate because it's too complicated to get into, but what I saw was that as a second-hand observer, I saw myself who understood where the GamerGators were coming from.
I saw myself referred to as an angry, privileged, cis-white male.
And, you know, and so I would have these arguments on people with Facebook who are just so confident that Gamergate was about keeping women out of gaming and it's about, you know, it's about anti-feminism and yada yada yada.
I'm like, guys, it's complete nonsense.
And it was also a glimpse of how, quote unquote, progressives, they treat dissenting opinions.
They shut them down.
They never even, you know, entertain these opinions, no matter how reasoned, no matter how logical, no matter how polite and civil you are.
They also shut down any dissenting opinions from racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women who disagree with the larger narrative being pointed out.
And I think maybe the most important things that I saw The difference between how the mainstream press reported on the on the issue versus what was actually going on.
And I think that was the point where I said, OK, we can't believe any of this stuff.
And then, of course, Trump gets into office.
Everyone loses their minds.
I didn't vote for him, but the reaction to him was just so insane.
And, you know, and I could see like, guys, they're.
Blatantly lying.
Like, you don't even have to make up stuff to criticize about Trump.
There's plenty there already.
Why are you making stuff up?
So, you know, that was sort of my beginning of, you know, I had this sort of internal ideological shift away from this idea, this sort of feminist idea, which was then sort of parlayed into an understanding of, via the Mike Brown incident, how racial grievances are via the Mike Brown incident, how racial grievances are stoked for political power.
And then you see how the sort of progressive cabal operates in terms of stifling opinion and just reporting on complete, absolute nonsense.
So that was sort of my red pilling.
I guess I'm sort of fortunate that that happened.
Well, as you know, once you've gone down the rabbit hole, there's no turning back.
There's no turning back.
In fact, what you do is you find ever more rabbit holes and you find yourself going deeper.
So if you were red-pilled... Because what you're describing there is kind of entry-level stuff, isn't it?
Realising that what we're told about feminism is...
It's not necessarily so.
But then there's another level where you start realising that actually feminism... Now, are you here yet?
That the feminist movement was actually funded by our dark overlords in order to bring women into the tax base, basically.
So they could make more money?
Well, there's that theory, but I mean, well, you know, there's that.
There's also, you know, and I found this innocently, there's a show called the Scottsboro Boys that came out about over a decade ago.
And in the course of my research, so for those who don't know the background of 1933 and Scottsboro, Alabama, these nine black boys who range in age from 19 down to 12 were falsely accused of sexual assault by these two white women.
And it was complete nonsense.
But This case galvanized the nation and even garnered international attention.
Some say that it was one of the catalysts for the Civil Rights Movement, which is interesting because, but then in the course of my research, I learned that the Communist Party had taken a very keen interest in the racial politics of the United States.
So, you know, and I've related to what you're saying about feminism.
There is this idea that It's sort of a Trojan horse, right?
These sort of identity politics are Trojan horses in order to usher in other things which have nothing to do with their stated purposes.
Yes.
So, in terms of economics, I totally get where you're coming from and I understand that.
What's the term?
The paradox of declining female happiness sort of bears this out where you have women now who are self-reporting levels of unhappiness, which are higher now than they were in the 1970s, even though their opportunities and rights have expanded.
You have one in four women, I think, are now on some sort of anti-depression medication.
So it's like, guys, if everything's going so swimmingly for you, why are you so miserable?
It's very interesting.
But the big rabbit hole right now for me that I don't want to go down is about vaccines.
Yeah, well, we're fine.
I mean...
It's just...
Sorry.
I was going to say because everyone's Every single person, and I will say one of the silver linings about the last couple of years, is that so many people have been awakened and had their eyes open.
And so many of these people, um, there's a lot of people from many walks of life who, because of their, they've seen how the, this particular quote unquote vaccination campaign has rolled out and how these particular shots have been sold, that now they're not only questioning these vaccines, they're going down the rabbit hole of every vaccine.
And they always say to me, Oh, you haven't, you haven't gone down the rabbit hole yet, have you?
You know?
So it's, it's, it's, there's a lot of stuff there that I'm like, Oh man, really?
Well, we love our canine friends here.
While James is away, I'll plug my own podcast, The Clifton Duncan Podcast, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify.
I'm going to release it because it's just jumping up at me.
Well, we love our canine friends here.
While James is away, I'll plug my own podcast, the Clifton Duncan podcast, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify.
Now he's coming back.
It was even worse earlier on, Clifton.
It was actually, it was farting in my office.
And it's really cold here and I had the choice between having my window open and freezing or having it closed and suffocating.
Anyway, the dog is now being, is being fed.
I forgot what we were talking about.
Oh yes, that's right.
Rabbit holes.
So are you saying that you haven't yet gone down the rabbit hole which might lead you to being called an anti-vaxxer?
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't know why I'm so hesitant, but I've been criticized actually by anti-vaxxers because I've given interviews where I say, you know, I'm not one of these sort of crazy anti-vaxxer people.
But then they're like, oh, well, if you're calling us crazy, then you obviously have not done your proper research or whatever.
Yeah, well, it's that and also just sort of, you know, just sort of ignorant.
And there is a very, I think it speaks to this very powerful, the power of social pressure.
And one thing I don't understand is this sort of this cultish zeal to protect any and all vaccines.
I mean, you know, I'm of the opinion that, you know, vaccine criticism and skepticism in the short term Spoiler alert!
Spoiler alert!
They are right.
and safer vaccines in the long term.
But yeah, it's just funny because everyone's like, oh, oh, it's not just this one.
It's like all of them.
Okay, spoiler alert, spoiler alert.
They are right.
But here's the thing.
So I was listening to your talk, your Mises talk, and you were saying, and I totally agree with you, by the way, that one of the great things about the last two or three years is that you and I have encountered the most amazing people, the most amazing people that we'd never have met otherwise.
And they come from all walks of life.
And they're just united by one thing, which is that they believe in the truth, however unpalatable it might be.
And they've got other things in common.
They're fearless.
They don't take shit from authority.
I mean, it's been great.
But...
The corollary of that, the downside of all these people, it's like herding cats.
Because of their nature, because they are the kind of people who are determined to go their own way and it's required a certain bravery to do so, they're very insistent that they know what the right way is and everyone else can ghost off themselves.
So you get this problem where I suppose it's further down the rabbit hole than you know.
Oh, I was red-pilled back when Kennedy was assassinated, so I know so much more about this than you do.
You've had that with the anti-vaxxers.
They think that you're a lightweight, which you are, I'm afraid, on this subject.
Because you haven't gone all the way.
You haven't gone down that particular rabbit hole fully yet.
But you were.
Yeah, it's inevitable.
It's only a matter of time at this point.
But I think I still hold on to this idea that I want to be viewed as respectable, which is ironic because these people obviously, given their behaviors over the past couple of years, they've thought nothing of telling me that I should be a second-class citizen, or worse, because of my refusal of this one particular shot.
But I do think that there is What I tend to do, I've noticed in myself, I mean, like I'm an atheist, for instance, and I went really, really hardcore into it and very, just very much a dick about it.
But I've walked that back, especially considering that in the past two years, the Christians in my life have been far more even keeled and much more of a force of positivity than these crazy secularists.
But I do think that Or I went deep down the anti-feminist rabbit hole before I scaled that back.
So I think maybe people, what happens with people, I know one guy who went total anti-vax.
And I think there's a point where maybe people go to the extreme, maybe they return to the mean, maybe I'm projecting my own stuff here.
But I definitely know there's a time where it's like, oh, I have this degree of special knowledge that you don't have, versus sort of being humble about it and saying, Yeah, you know, like there's a guy online, for instance, on Twitter called The Real Truther.
And, you know, he's dedicated himself to just, you know, exposing misinformation and taking down anti-vaccine misinformation or whatever.
We've kind of become frenemies now because it's like, because he sort of understood that, you know, it's not that I'm against all vaccines or whatever, you know, maybe that won't last for long.
But, you know, but he's like, I see that you're sincere in your beliefs and your biggest problems with the mandates.
And I have come around to be from, from, um, having more, I won't say extreme opinions about, about, uh, these particular shots.
I mean, you know, some of the stuff out there is, um, I mean, there's theories about, I'm sure, you know, the nasty population there's like creatures living inside these things and so on and so forth.
I've gone more towards like, you know, it's just not for me.
If you want to take it, I mean, that's on you, but I'm not going to tell you whether or not to take it.
And I just don't feel like fighting about it anymore.
And so maybe, you know, I'm trying, maybe I'm trying to be safe.
Maybe it is cowardice.
Maybe I am being a bit of a pussy as you're implying.
But I also don't, you know, want to be, I think extremism in any form I don't think is really good or healthy.
I was only jokingly calling you a pussy.
I think what you've done is already, you've already displayed, I'm going to give you, maybe not a Congressional Medal of Honor at this stage, but I think you've definitely earned a Silver Star at least.
No, I thank you.
You've done what everyone in the acting profession should have, not just acting industry, but everyone in the media industry, everyone in the medical industry, what they should all have done is saying, I am not taking this experimental therapy until it can be demonstrated, one, that it has passed all its safety procedures, and two, that it's necessary in the first place.
Most people failed that, that basic test.
It required courage, particularly in your industry, to, because I mean, you, I imagine you quite liked being on the stage.
I, you know, I just, um, it's just what I, what I do.
You know, some people, I say oftentimes, some people build houses, some people build computers, I build characters for whatever reason.
You know, I'm not one of these people who saw some musical when they were like four years old or something and decided for themselves, I have to do this for the rest of my life.
It's sort of, I sort of fell into it and over time it just became a big part of who I am and what I do.
I never got into it to be any kind of activist.
It was just, I'm good at this and I enjoy it and it keeps me out of an office.
And I'm making a decent living at it, which most people can't say that about themselves.
So I was very privileged in a lot of ways.
And one of the big disappointments, and I alluded to this before, is that you have all of these people.
who they present themselves as though they are, you know, and, you know, this is sort of another podcast entirely, but this idea that these people have completely turned back on their beliefs.
It's an industry that's very, like, it's very anti-capitalist, very heavily Marxist.
Before 2020, it seemed we understood that the pharmaceutical industry was not to be trusted.
And yet, all it took was enough, this, you know, propaganda blitz to convince all these supposed warriors and revolutionaries that need to fall in line.
And I think the biggest disappointment for me is people who I mean, it's one thing I have some compassion for those who are genuinely afraid and are acting out of fear, but then there are those who know that I'm right, who agree with me, and they'll tell me so in private, but then publicly they'll post about, oh, I'm so happy to be back at this show and I'm doing this now.
So they get to keep their careers.
You have actors who are, uh, they're using fake vaccine cards, you know, and people who are just straight up lying.
Um, and for me, I, I'm at a point where I'm like, I don't think I can ever trust any of these people ever again.
Um, you know, based on how they've, how they've behaved.
And, uh, you know, I don't think, I don't think of myself as some sort of courageous or brave person.
I just, I just said, no, it's not for me.
And If you don't like it, that's your right, but just don't infringe on my ability to earn for myself.
I mean, it's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all of which I was accomplishing during my time in the entertainment industry.
And they've not only ruined that for me and for lots of other people.
I get messages from people who are driving trucks now for the first time in their 40s after working for two decades or whatever.
There's also parents who reach out to me and say, "Yeah, my child has been studying for ballet or theater since they were three or four years old, and now they can't be in the industry or they can't get into their favorite school." So there's been generational damage to the reputation of our arts institutions.
And all because people just either through groupthink, a combination of groupthink and cowardice just haven't said anything.
And I don't know how the ship will ever right itself.
It's going to take at least a very, very long time.
Yeah.
Are you saying that even now, in order to work in the acting industry, you've got to be jabbed?
The mandates are still in place.
Disney has been the only company that dropped them, but right now, I mean, there's nowhere... I do hear that people are auditioning and finding work here and there in some of our regional theatres, but generally speaking, there's nowhere I can work in the entertainment industry at all because of my refusal.
And this is in an era, by the way, where the CDC, who these people continually pass the buck to, has said there's no point in distinguishing between vaxxed and unvaxxed people.
The military has just dropped their vaccine mandates.
So many people have moved on, but it's deep blue America for some reason.
They're stuck on this.
And in the arts and entertainment industries fields, Um, which are very, very, quote-unquote, progressive, which, you know, obviously they're not.
Um, they, they're, they're sticking to it.
They're just, they're going along with it, and they keep on persisting with this, and it's just, it doesn't make any sense, and it's, frankly, embarrassing.
But, so, not even in Atlanta?
I mean, if you wanted a job as a kind of, um, a pole dancer, could you, do you have to be jabbed for that?
Well, I mean, no!
Of course not!
I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's a different, uh, it's a different industry, although, ironically, although, ironically, well, I guess, but, Well, ironically, though, our union, the Actors' Equity Association, is now representing strippers.
I guess people aren't paying their dues as much, so they need some extra money to keep the whole thing afloat.
Lots of the Marvel stuff, for instance, shoots down here in Atlanta.
There was a film shoot just the other day near my house, so I have to walk past all that all the time, knowing I can't be a part of it.
I don't want to get into the, oh, why me kind of a thing, but people ask me all the time, well, what about Atlanta?
It's the same thing.
It's the ideology.
Throughout the country, there is this thing, either you're talking about community theaters, regional theaters, or Broadway, or TV and film, where you cannot work if you have not gotten, or you can't show proof of vaccination.
It's just they won't let it go.
So what percentage of actors who are still working are using fake, how many bought fake passes?
Oh, I have no idea.
I haven't looked into any of that.
I just, you know, people just tell me, you know, I just got a fake one.
You know, why don't you get a fake one?
I'm like, well, because I'm not a liar.
Yeah, sure.
But I don't know the answer to that question.
And there have been some high profile Actors who seem to have been damaged by vaccines.
Well, actually, I'm thinking of Justin Bieber, who's not really an actor, but he seemed to get side effects, and Celine Dion, I think, died, didn't she, or something?
No, no, she came down with some illness.
I think part of the issue right now, though, is that now everything's being attributed to the shots, which I don't know if that's very helpful.
But I know there was an actress who put out a video where, you know, she had palsy.
Half of her face was paralyzed and she was crying about it.
And she still said in the video that she would do it all over again.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, so again, you get a glimpse into how these people are kind of captured by this, you know, covidianism, as I have termed it.
Um, I, um, you know, there's speculation that certain Broadway performers, um, whom I won't name, um, have been damaged and, um, you know, and it's, it's impacted their careers and, uh, they may have difficulty and never work again.
But, um, you know, and you hear stories, um, I mean, I have a friend who's, um, A, her daughter, who was, uh, 20, 21 years old, was, uh, blinded by a childhood vaccine in one of her eyes.
And she still, um, could not get an exemption from the mandates in the industry.
So now she's working on the farm somewhere delivering goats for a living.
And then, but her older stepbrother took one of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines.
And within 12 hours, he suffered cardiac arrest and died.
It's on his death certificate.
And this is a guy who worked for like Saturday Night Live, the Colbert show, The Lion King.
And apparently, you know, for The Lion King, they just took his stuff and left it out of his locker and just left it for his father to come pick up his His father is also not, not vaccinated.
This, you know, this, uh, imminent sort of scene designer who, you know, master X, you know, master with expertise.
Um, they wouldn't even allow his father inside the theater to collect his, his dead son's belongings.
This is how ridiculous, um, it has been this entire time.
I reckon, because I think they've relaxed, did you mention they've relaxed the ban on the requirement to be vaccinated in the military and so on.
I think they're gradually They're gradually withdrawing their restrictions.
But would you even want to go back into this industry? - Well, that's what I mean.
You know, it's really difficult because I literally went from one year having legends in the industry, you know, telling me that you're amazing, You know, one woman asked me, and I said this in a speech at Mises, I said, you know, she goes, how, why are you not famous yet?
Are you an asshole or something?
So I went from that kind of, of, of praise and, and, and, you know, and anyone can just look, you know, Google me and look up, you know, my, my resume or whatever.
To people saying that you deserve to be a second-class citizen and not deserve to work and you should be denied medical care and yada yada yada.
So, directly to your question, my knee-jerk response is no.
Why would I want to work alongside people who have exhibited such little foresight, such little critical thinking skills, who allowed themselves to violate each and every principle that they claim to hold dear?
in order to protect themselves from a virus with a 0.2% infection fatality rate, which is highly survivable, highly treatable.
They just are too ignorant to understand any of this because all they do is listen to the TV.
Yeah, but come steady, they are actors, don't forget, Clifford.
Well, here's the thing, James, because it shouldn't be like this, right?
In the classic sort of acting texts, like from Stella Adler, like I mentioned before, who's Marlon Brando's teacher, Uta Hagen, you know, they stressed the importance of actors being educated, cultured, having an understanding of, you know, because we need to know, you know, literature, you know, because we need to know, you know, literature, we need to know cultures, history to understand, you know, just the human condition over periods of time.
We should, we should theoretically not be as dumb as we are.
Uh, but I often joke now, you know, one of my issues, my main problems is that maybe I'm too smart to be an actor, but, uh, I'm not smart enough to do much of anything else.
So I'm kind of stuck.
You know, but it's just, it's just, it's astonishing to watch.
I don't know why I'm so surprised, though, to be honest.
Well, now you've taken this public, now you've got profile as a kind of rebel against the vaccines.
I wonder whether you might get on set, you know, people might be nasty to you.
If you ever went back, they'd sort of Probably.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, again, and this goes back into this...
how wokeness and all this stuff is kind of folded in.
They're just branches of a larger tree.
You know, there is a group of conservative actors who, you know, that they meet in secret.
They literally meet in secret.
And you can't talk.
It's like Fight Club.
You can't ever talk about them.
The group is invite only.
And they're all terrified.
They are terrified of being outed for their political beliefs.
Because they know it's going to damage their career prospects.
So it's a very, very real problem in the industry.
And it's like, you know, it's not as though people are talking about, you know, Jewish conspiracies or whatever.
They're just, you know, it could be something as basic as, yeah, I think the climate alarmism is a bit overblown.
Or, yeah, you know, I think men and women are different.
You know, and now these are grounds for you to get to be, you know, to be canceled.
You can't say these things publicly.
There are actors who are already established who...
You know, it's pretty obvious that even if they haven't said it explicitly that, you know, they're not on the spectrum of, you know, progressive wokeness or whatever.
But the thing is, they're already established.
And so they have a little bit more leeway to air their opinions.
But even then, you know, they don't really get that much into it.
I mean, I think Denzel Washington, for instance, one of the greatest actors of all time.
It's obvious to me that he is a more conservative minded person.
He talks about family, Uh, he believes in God, you know, he's, he's just one of these people who, you know, he's expressed a healthy skepticism of the press.
Um, you know, there's just so many things where I'm like, this dude, he's a conservative.
I bet he votes Republican, but, um, he won't say that out.
He won't say that publicly.
Um, I know Kelsey Grammar is another guy who, you know, leans, leans that way.
Um, Sylvester Stallone is another one.
These are all people who were established, you know?
Um, so they can afford to kind of, I mean, like a Matthew McConaughey can go on Jordan Peterson's podcast.
He can go on Joe Rogan and suffer no consequences because he's got his Oscars already.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But what about people who are less known, who are up and coming, who are younger, um, and, and more interested in like exploring different sort of ideas.
That's, that's what's exciting to me about all of this is that I didn't even know there was a way, another way to think.
I mean, before we got on, I was reading, um, I was reading Hayek.
And it's just, it's so, it's like, it's like a feast of just new ideas and exciting ways of thinking to explore.
And it's a shame to me that people who should be the most open-minded among us, that being actors and artists, you know, have turned out to be some of the most closed-minded authoritarians you could imagine.
And what they're really doing is they're starving themselves of such a rich, rich monopoly of human thought and idea and just, I mean, it's exciting to me, but apparently not to these people.
Yes.
I was thinking about, were you reading The Road to Serfdom or one of those other ones?
Yeah, I'm about halfway through it.
And then I have The Constitution of Liberty right after that that I'm going to start on.
The thing that struck me reading Hayek was he makes no distinction.
He thinks there's no meaningful distinction between Nazism and Communism.
He just says this is all collectivism.
They're all the same.
And I think he's right.
I think this is the eternal battle.
The collectivists think that we are unfit to decide our own destinies and this narrow elite wants to make rules for us.
And they always have done.
They despise us and our job is to resist.
Yeah.
And there's also this, um, I mean, and I, I'm familiar more with that mindset from reading Thomas Sowell, uh, but you know, it's this idea of, you know, the vision of the anointed, um, you know, or a conflict of visions.
You have these people who they have, you know, the, um, what does he call it?
The, uh, the unrestrained vision of, of life where, or, or, or, or of humanity where, you know, this, they sort of, value, the knowledge, even the definition of knowledge is different for them, but knowledge in terms of this sort of pseudo clergy of people who can dictate to all of us, you know, what's best for us versus the, the accumulated wisdom, uh, from, of the ages and, and of the masses, um, which is more straight, which is of the ages and, and of the masses, um, which is more straight, which is more, uh, shared by those with Um, what I enjoy about Hayek
right now is that for, at least for the time being, he's helped me more deeply entrench this idea of myself I mean, I self-identify as a liberal.
And I love how Hayek talks about the corruption of language on the left, where now in America, at least, you have people who call themselves conservatives, even though they have more liberal-leaning principles, either be that economically or socially.
And the people who call themselves liberal tend to be more authoritarian and want to place more power in government.
It's complete corruption and bastardization of the language.
But yeah, it is that push and pull between what I'm terming, I'm beginning to call idealists versus realists.
The idealists say we should have health care for all, and the realists are like, yeah, that's nice, but how do we pay for it?
And I think that in a utopian society, which, you know, it's no place, those two forces would be checking and balancing each other because everyone has blind spots that they don't recognize.
And I think there's value in Listening to those who have different opinions about this kind of stuff.
But right now, what we're suffering from is that, you know, you have a very small concentration of people in academia and entertainment and journalism who have one specific worldview, but they have a disproportionate ability to get their messages out there and influence the masses.
And that's kind of what the issue is now.
I'm not kind of straight away from your point about Hayek, but that's kind of where I am.
Yeah.
I was thinking, Clifton, you've got this... I can describe it as a glow, maybe.
You've got... It's the lights.
Yeah, what I mean is that people who have freed themselves from the Matrix, I never get any sense that they regret their decision.
There's a sort of aura of confidence and joy and excitement and a sense of purpose.
Have you found that since you...?
Well, given the events of the last couple of years, I have to confess that a sense of purpose has eluded me thus far.
And that's been very difficult.
But I will say, and I have a friend named Carrie Smith, who people might know.
She came out as a liberal who voted for Trump.
And she used to also be in entertainment.
She was a manager for comedians.
And when you see pictures of her from that period in her life, she's dead behind the eyes.
She looks miserable.
And now she's the sweetest, most bright, vivacious person you could imagine.
And part of it is that, especially as a minority, a racial minority, you live in this environment where everything is oppressive and everyone's out to get you.
And, you know, society is broken, society sucks.
Versus once you get out of that and you see, okay, you know, I call it the anti-matrix, actually, where in the film, The Matrix, the people who are in it, they can enjoy their red wine and their steak and everything's fine because they're ignorant of the true reality of their situation, of their existence.
But yet now, in the anti-matrix, you have people who are in The Matrix who are going freaking insane increasingly, whether it's Trump or COVID or the climate or whatever.
And people on the outside are like, yeah, life isn't perfect, but It's not that bad, you know?
And on top of that, it's like, you know, I think about someone like Jordan Peterson, for instance, who has inspired me, you know, to read, you know, Solzhenitsyn and to read these Russian novelists and to explore, you know, all these great works of art.
And, you know, and finally, or Victor Davis Hanson, the conservative scholar in the U.S., he has a great video talking about the importance of Greek classics.
And so now I'm finally going back and reading all that stuff I should have read in my actor training.
And again, it goes back to this idea that there's just this wealth of wonderful, wonderful material, just a feast of exciting ideas and frankly, interesting people.
I think one of the blessings of the past couple of years, maybe this is part of my glow, is that I now have a network that includes scientists, economists, journalists, writers.
I mean, all kinds of people with differing opinions.
um But they're so much more interesting and way smarter than my former colleagues.
And that to me is really exciting.
I just wanted to point out, you've got me excited, because I read the Iliad and the Odyssey for the first time, shamingly, in the last couple of years.
And I was thinking, how did I not read these formative texts of Western civilization before?
They are fantastic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, uh, Prometheus Bound, I read that.
Um, I, I started on, um, I started the Odyssey and I was like, Oh my God, if I had read something like this when I was a young boy, there's no telling, you know, how deeply inspired I would have been, you know, you know, and just this epic tale of like these gods and, and there's this big journey.
I'm like, it's so, it's so engrossing and it's so rich and the language is just so full.
I mean, I'm a big Shakespeare fan anyway, so I'm a big fan of just great language, but It's just, you know, the size, the scale, the scope of all of this, you know, you go back and read, um, you know, Aristotle and all these other people, like these, these people had like a lot of it figured out thousands of years ago.
And, um, you know, so in a way it's sort of like maybe a rebirth because you're experiencing things for the first time and, um, and you realize, wow, you know, humanity has accomplished such great things.
I mean, one example I can think of, I was really depressed.
I was doing a play in 2010 and trying to figure out like why, What's the point of all this?
I don't know.
And I had a mentor at the time who said, he just kept repeating to me, go to the museum, go to the museum, go to the museum.
And finally, I took him up on that advice and went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
And when you see the works, I mean, it was the sculptures especially that really got to me, you know, like the Pieta or something like that.
And you see And you walk up close to these marble statues where the flesh looks like flesh and every single hang and fold of the clothing and curl of hair is etched in marvelous detail.
And you're like, I can't believe that someone had the vision, the discipline, the gift, the imagination and the dedication to put this out here.
And now here I am, hundreds if not thousands of years later, just in awe of it and moved to tears by just the scope and the power of the human drive for creativity and creation.
I mean, it's such an amazingly powerful thing.
And if you live a life where, I mean, a big part of the left is cynicism and nihilism.
And you have to deconstruct everything and you have to be all postmodern, yada, yada, yada.
And I mean, that has its uses in some aspects, I think, in terms of trying to see things differently and kind of question everything.
But if you go too far down that rabbit hole, so to speak, it removes you from just the wonder and the splendor and beauty and the awe, frankly, of what humans can accomplish.
And so I think maybe the glow from people is this recognition that, sure, humanity is flawed.
We've made a lot of mistakes and caused a lot of problems, but we're also capable of just great transcendent works of just miraculous beauty.
And it's very life affirming in a way.
Well, Clifton, I'm going to make a prediction.
I know you're an atheist at the moment, but it seems to me that you're on a very similar journey to the one I was on a few years ago.
And I think once you start asking questions like, well, where did this stuff come from?
I mean, for me, truth No, James, it's so funny to me, because I am of the mind that I don't think I'll be, you know, I'm going to be, you know, necessarily a God person, but part of my journey over the past couple of years, right, has been, it's been, can art and artists
Can the work that we do create experiences which are akin to the kind of religious or divine experiences that people feel that they experience?
Is there a spiritual realm?
Because in this era where we think we're so advanced, we have all this technology, we're so rational and logical, but clearly in scientific, so to speak, clearly it's not enough.
It's not enough in terms of the dimensionality of human beings, and I think for me, my My central question right now is trying to find what that connection is between, you know, the spirit realm or the soul or, you know, these larger sort of transcendent questions or maybe energies, I don't know, and what artists do.
And I think about when you read about great performances and you read the great acting theory books from the past, and they talk about how when you have a performer who is operating at the peak of their imaginative faculties, there's like an electrochemical impact and they talk about how when you have a performer who is operating at the peak And that's when they're operating at their peak level.
And it's like, what if that peak level is close to godliness?
You know what I mean?
So it's those kinds of things.
And people are attacking me like, yeah, God is talking to you.
It's just a matter of time.
And I'm not as offended by it as I was like 10 years ago, especially in the wake of people like Sam Harris, who put himself on my radar by attacking dogmatic beliefs, but only to become a dogmatist himself.
And it's like, well, that's disappointing.
It is interesting.
It's a recurring theme.
I'm not offended by it, and I understand where you're coming from, but it is funny.
Maybe you're right, but I'm not sure.
That is definitely on my plate right now, this relationship between creativity and imagination and maybe the divine spirit, I don't know, or the universe, however people might define godliness.
It's really interesting.
It's nothing to fear.
And in a way, what you're going through now is very much what I went through.
What it is, it's the missing link in the puzzle.
Because once you start asking questions about where does the muse, the creative muse come from?
How is it that when I used to write novels, You know, there was stuff that was coming in there that was like, that felt beyond my capabilities, that was nevertheless sort of transmitting itself through my fingertips onto the... Yes.
And I'm sure it's the same with acting.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to push it because I think you're already going there anyway.
So tell me, how do you make your living now?
Well, I was waiting tables.
The big joke is that what you normally do is that you wait tables until you make it.
I made it, then I started waiting tables.
But I quit that because I just couldn't stand it.
So right now, I'm doing like audio books here and there.
If anyone has anything they want me to read, pay me and I'll do it.
I'm starting to move more strongly into content creation, which is starting to provide some dividends, so to speak.
I do think that I've always wanted, and the older that I got in the industry, the more I resented the fact that there's so little control that you have.
Yeah.
And now I'm in a place where I have all the control that I want.
So I would love to be able to make a living doing podcasting, writing essays.
I posted, like I said before, a video of myself singing, and it got a really, really brilliant response.
So more of that kind of content.
And I love that we live in a world now where you can put out your work and your ideas.
Yeah.
People will pay.
You don't need big donors or sponsors.
People will be like, I'm on a pension or fixed income.
I only have a few dollars, but I like what you do, so here you go.
And you get enough of those people and you can do well for yourself.
And to me, it cuts out the middleman of being an entertainer because there's no agents, there's no production companies.
I get to communicate directly with a following.
And After I posted that video of me singing, you know, I had lots of people who said, you know, I followed you for your political commentary, but I didn't know you were this good.
And so I'll support whatever you do.
And that to me is really heartening because, A, it says to me that there's a vast, vast audience out there of people who, contrary to the opinions of these a-holes who are cloistered in blue meccas or, you know, these blue urban metros, the sort of unwashed, uncouth these blue urban metros, the sort of unwashed, uncouth masses that they think are out there are actually really, really, really starving for the kind of work that we've been talking about in the past few minutes.
Because you don't need an Ivy League degree or an especially high IQ to know if something is good or not, or whether or not you like it.
And that's sort of the magic of what we can do as a performer.
So right now, basically I'm between jobs, but I'm trying to make up a new job.
And it is what it is.
And I'm sort of going by instinct and by gut and trying to figure stuff out.
But I've got some good people and good advice, and it seems to be working out.
Slowly but surely, it's kind of coming together, which is nice.
Brilliant.
Well, where can people find you?
Ah, well, I'd love to get this opportunity to plug myself.
Yeah, I think you should.
But yeah, so I have a podcast called The Clifton Duncan Podcast.
I make it easy to remember.
You can find it on YouTube and on Spotify, primarily.
I'm having an issue with my Apple account, so I can't get it on there.
I don't know why, but that's there.
My YouTube channel, Clifton Duncan, same thing.
You can find me on Twitter.
at CliftonADuncan.
I'm on Instagram, but I rarely use it, but that's CliftonDuncan online.
And I also have a sub stack, which everyone does now, called Musings from the Apocalypse, which I update once every like 17 months.
But, you know, so you can find me in all those places and say hi.
As much of a dick as I may seem on Twitter, I'm actually pretty nice and approachable, so. - And I now want to see this clip of you singing.
Where do I find that?
It's my most recent video.
It's on my YouTube channel.
I mean, I can send you a link just privately if you'd like.
But yeah, it's this.
I'll post it below this as well.
Oh, great.
I've been banned from YouTube for wrong thing.
It's really annoying.
Oh.
Well, they're also the same people that were banning people for talking about vitamin C and vitamin D at the beginning of the pandemic.
These people have no idea what they're doing or what they're talking about.
Well, they do.
They know exactly what they're doing.
Yes, you're right.
You're right.
They want to kill us all.
When you realize that, that's beyond the next level of enlightenment.
They're going to kill us all, then you'll find God, and then it'll be complete.
Well, there you go.
There you go.
Clifton, I've so enjoyed talking to you.
I'm glad we could find a space.
I know I'm quite sketchy about organising these things.
By the way, viewers and listeners, really thanks a lot for your support.
Keep supporting me because people like Clifton and I, the establishment The powers that be do not want us to make a living.
They want to destroy us.
And I know that all sorts of obstacles are put in your way when you try and fund me.
But do try, if you can.
Be determined.
Locals, Subscribestar, Substack, Patreon.
One of those you'll find a way through that will accept your payments, and I really appreciate it.
Clifton, thanks a lot again, and good luck with your new career.
I think you've done the right thing, and it's really nice not being owned by the man.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, it's not the first time in my life I've been booted out of one machine only to find greener pastures.
So, you know, I appreciate your support and it's been a great pleasure, James, and thanks for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, one more thing.
In your journey through the Russians, because I guess I'm also going on a journey through the Russian literature at the moment, what's your standout favourite at the moment?
Well, I mean, one of my favourite playwrights is Anton Chekhov.
He always has been, you know, so that's sort of a stalwart right there.
Um, I just, he has such a keen understanding of, of human beings, um, that, you know, as an actor, it's a joy to work on.
He's one of the few writers where he allows his characters to be as complex as we are as human beings.
It's a genius, a genius writer.
Um, I got through the first part and it's so funny, right?
I got to the first part of Crime and Punishment, not knowing anything about the plot.
And by the time I got to the end, I was like, wow.
If that's a concern, I wasn't expecting that.
I agree.
You told me about Crime and Punishment and I thought, well, I don't really want to read this because, like, so he kills two innocent women and then presumably gets caught.
I mean, like, he's a psycho.
Why would I want to read this book?
But it's just great, isn't it?
It's just, it's riveting.
It's so riveting and it's so rich and so deep.
And that's the thing, when you live in a culture where we're trying to decolonize everything and cancel all these old authors for being rich, white, not even Europeans in this case, but you know what I mean.
You're robbing yourself of experiencing these great, great works that just, they expand your understanding of not only of humanity, but also of yourself and they enrich richer experience.
And it's just, it just, it just, It's one of the things that makes life worth living, encountering these texts.
It's a gift that these people have left behind.
And I will say, in closing, that I spoke to Um, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the son of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
And he, he said something that really left a chill down my spine, which was that, you know, cause I asked him like, why is it that, that the Russians, you know, whether it's opera or ballet or, or the theater or, you know, or literature, poetry, you know, they have this, this great rich, um, artistic tradition. they have this, this great rich, um, artistic tradition.
Why is that?
And, um, and you know, and then how is it destroyed?
And he said, you know, in the wake of the 20th century and Stalinism, he said, in his opinion, it's never been recovered.
The Russian arts have never recovered from the damage done by totalitarianism.
And so you would wish that more artists were more forward thinking and can see that.
And that's where I'm like, oof, more people need to speak up and say something because I don't want to go down that route.
Yeah, we could go that way too.
You're right.
I think Russian culture was systematically destroyed by the same people, by the same forces which are now trying to destroy the West.
Exactly.
It's one and the same.
Exactly.
They hate us.
Well, thanks a lot, Clifton.
Have an enjoyable rest of Sunday, and great to meet you.
Likewise, James.
You too, man.
Take care.
Thanks a lot.
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